Godspeed

by Nickolas Butler

  “Am I on speakerphone?” Gretchen asked coolly.

  “You are,” Cole said. “It’s me, Bart, and Teddy.”

  “Good. Gentlemen, you’ve been offered an opportunity. An opportunity to change your own lives and the fortunes of your families. Don’t find excuses to fail. Just do your jobs. Do your jobs, and the cosmos will smile upon you. I promise.”

  The men knew not what to do with this advice; it was not what they had expected her to say.

  “Now then, if you’ll excuse me, I have another call,” she said. “Good day.”

  They heard her hang up and then stared at one another, each offering deep exhales.

  “What about that mug who died?” Bart asked. “The cosmos sure as shit didn’t smile on him.”

  14

  After a series of voicemails and texts, Bart’s new dealer, Jerry, had sent him an address for a party he was working; an address Bart didn’t recognize. That was no real surprise. So many new houses were being built these days, so many new developments plotted along the valleys, the GPS programming couldn’t possibly keep up, let alone the battered gazetteer in the backseat of Bart’s truck. So he drove through the night, his left elbow resting on the door, a cigarette burning between his fingers. On a hunch he headed toward the golf course south of town.

  There wasn’t much keeping him at his apartment, and now that Margo seemed more or less out of the picture, the place felt lonelier than ever. Flush with cash, tired as shit, and sort of itching for a fight, Bart had put on his best cowboy boots, some tight Wranglers, and a black button-down shirt, with the bad intention of getting straight-up lit. He was looking to score, looking to fuck, or looking to knock someone’s teeth out—and any old combination of those options would do just fine.

  Slamming the door of his truck, Bart felt the adrenaline surge along with his testosterone. There was something powerful about walking into a party uninvited and doing so with the knowledge that your day-to-day job prepared you in a way to win just about any physical confrontation. He rolled up his sleeves, the veins of his arms like pythons pulsing beneath his sunburned and tattooed skin.

  The notion of building a house on a golf course represented everything Bart loathed about the construction business. Golf, in and of itself, did not bother Bart; fact of the matter was, he never really thought about golf. Thought about golf as much as he considered the politics of mainland China, say, or the rainfall in Belize. There was nothing necessarily objectionable about spending a Saturday morning outside, after all, with a cooler full of beer, maybe, taking your workaday frustrations out on a tiny Titleist ball; motoring around in a cart and talking to your buddies. But when you factored in the breathable collared shirts, the fancy spiked shoes, the performance visor hats, and the aerodynamic beta titanium alloy drivers, golf quickly became rather easy to hate. To say nothing of its worship of grass. That perfectly preened, chemically laden carpeting of fescue. And to build a multimillion-dollar house on a private golf club betrayed so much about the homeowners—gauche, look-at-me-and-my-money types needing to be in close proximity to other awkwardly loud rich people, all of them staring at one another from infrequently used outdoor furniture, or through the dusty lens of a decorative telescope never once aimed at the sky.

  Walking into the house, Bart felt even stronger, because this wasn’t the house they were building, and Gretchen sure wasn’t this kind of homeowner. She was a classy broad, and he meant that with profound respect. Never would she be caught dead building a home on the sixteenth hole just to make stupid small talk with people she didn’t even like, or to be seen grilling chicken breasts while sipping a glass of prosecco. She’d chosen to build her house alone, in the mountains, with a view of heaven, in a place where no one would ever find her. She might be some kind of plutocrat, sure, but Bart respected the hell out of this lady for her sense of aesthetics at least. And maybe even her priorities.

  As for this monstrosity . . . probably over seven thousand square feet, he guessed, with catalog furniture that could not help but be thoroughly intimidated by all that vacuous space, the art offloaded by some insurance company trying to update their office space with “fresh” wall hangings. Bart was no art major, but he knew when someone had taste or not. Gretchen had taste. Whoever owned this place had money, yes, but not enough to own the house outright, he guessed, much less properly furnish or decorate it.

  He passed through the entryway, where a hideous copper sculpture of a horse greeted him, then through the crowded kitchen and living room until finally he stepped out onto a back porch. A bartender stood vigil behind an outdoor bar, and Bart ordered a double Maker’s Mark neat, then, wielding a two-dollar tip in his right hand, asked the barkeep if he knew Jerry Swanson. Tweezing the tip from between Bart’s fingers, the bartender nodded in the direction of an outdoor propane fireplace. That always irked Bart: If you want to have a campfire, burn wood, not gas, for Christ’s sake.

  Jerry was in his mid-fifties, with a big gut and a penchant for gold necklaces, pinky rings, and exotic pets. A relic of the eighties, he seemed to have honed his fashion choices on popular Michael Douglas movies of that era, maintaining a meticulously trimmed stubble-beard and a single diamond-stud earring. His hair had long ago receded, but, as if in protest, Jerry had grown what remained into a rather desperate ponytail that he kept either wet or so laden with product that it appeared so. Jerry’s jeans, miraculously, were always stone-washed and held tight with a braided belt, his feet jammed into loafers, except during winter, when he preferred oversize UGGs.

  “I take it this is someone else’s place?” Bart asked.

  “Sure as hell ain’t mine,” Jerry replied, “but I’m thinking of tonight as sort of a pop-up shop. Isn’t that what you kids call it? Spontaneous retail.”

  “What?”

  “Anyway,” Jerry growled around a fat Rocky Patel cigar, “take a load off. I hear you boys have been working around the clock.” He smiled mischievously. “Tell me all about it.”

  The house may have been gauche, but in the darkness, Bart could see neither the golf course nor the neighbors’ houses. There was just the easy champagne laughter of women, the jocular arguments of a few drunken men, and the rustling of the aspen leaves above. It might have been worse. A light mist had begun to descend, but Bart hardly noticed it; the fire was hot against his kneecaps and his face, and the whisky felt wonderful in his chest. The chair he was sitting on might have been cheaper than its rather grand aspirations, but somehow it was far more comfortable than any stick of furniture he happened to own, and reclined there, telling Jerry about Gretchen’s house, he felt entirely apart from the party, and for the first time in several weeks, relaxed.

  “And the thing is, Jerry,” Bart said, “we get it finished before Christmas, there’s a huge bonus in it for us. Huge. I mean, real money.”

  Jerry leaned toward the fire that separated them. “Christmas,” he spat. “Brother, you couldn’t finish that house before Christmas if you were smoking all the meth in the world. That’s craziness. The heavy snow could start flying any day now. Hell, you’re lucky it hasn’t already. Then what? You gonna live out there? And even if you do, what about the finish work? How you gonna get your subs up there? You gonna pay to keep miles of road and driveway open? The fuck’s wrong with you?”

  “You’re wrong, Jerr,” Bart said confidently. “We are fucking cranking on this project. Morale’s high, the subs are really coming through for us, and we’ve just been working our tails off, man.” Having reassured himself, Bart eased back in his chair and took a final rip of his whisky. The mist had developed into something closer to a light rain, each drop of precipitation hissing in the flames.

  Across the fire, Jerry looked like an aged cherub, his face glossy with the mist and shining bronze and gold in the light of the fire. Over in the Jacuzzi, women were laughing loudly now as the rain began to intensify; he even thought he heard sex-type sounds, rhyth
mic thrashing and moaning. Glancing over his shoulder, Bart saw what appeared to be an ad-hoc orgy as some others among the party were already beginning to depart with the rain.

  “Well, Bart,” Jerry said as he stood from the chair, “let’s go chat in my office, how ’bout?”

  Following him past the Jacuzzi, Bart snagged a bottle of whisky as he drifted by the bar and then trailed Jerry through the house, its tiled floor a mess of dirty footprints. The kitchen island was piled with dirty plates, empty bottles, and discarded napkins. A middle-aged Mexican woman stood at the sink filling a dishwasher. Bart waved at her on his way out the front door.

  She gave him a dour little nod as she reached for the next plate.

  Out in Jerry’s new yellow Dodge Charger, the rain drumming against the roof and running down the windshield, they got down to business.

  “So, you lookin’ for something along the lines of recreation,” Jerry asked, “or maybe a little more practical?”

  “I love coke,” Bart said, “but I can’t afford the comedown. And I fucking hate the idea of meth, but . . .”

  “It’s a rocket ship,” Jerry finished. “Nothin’ better if you find yourself needin’ to build a cathedral in all of a month.”

  Bart had been down this road before, and he knew what it meant. He loved meth, loved being strapped to that chemical missile and whizzing through the days. He was lucky, he supposed, because in the past, he’d managed to stop every time. Something had always scared him off at a critical point—the way a kid on the street would stare at the skin of his face; or a hallucination wild enough to make him quit, make him crawl into a hole and let the meth trickle its evil way out of his system.

  But right then, he knew no other answer. He saw the weeks stretching out ahead of him, endless and yet totally insufficient, and as weary as he was now . . . Gretchen had talked about climbing stairs, about how she thought of that as an insurance policy. Well, maybe a little meth now and again would be his insurance of sorts. He knew, even in the abstract, how ridiculous that sounded, but . . . it was energy, wasn’t it? However you got there. And he knew there’d be mornings ahead when he’d need that energy, need it to fly through the backbreaking days and bleary nights. There was just so much work ahead of them. All the flooring, all the trim, all the painting, all the cabinets, all the lighting, the exterior porches, the doors, the closet systems . . . And not just all that work, but the added pressure of getting it done perfectly. This lady had standards. She wasn’t your average homeowner, who would tolerate a poorly hung door or window trim that wasn’t perfectly snug. Everything had to be just so. Perfectly so.

  “I need an ounce,” Bart said, exhaling, his wallet well-bulging in his back pocket, flush from the draw money.

  “The fuck, man? You gonna start dealing?” Jerry asked, startled. “Put me out of business! What d’you need an ounce for?”

  “This house,” Bart explained, “it’s tucked way back into the mountains. If we get stuck back up in there, I ain’t gonna find any reinforcements, man. May as well have a little inventory, you know?”

  Jerry reached into the backseat for a gym bag.

  “I don’t just keep an ounce on me, man,” Jerry said. “The ski bunnies and frat bros are more into Molly or coke or weed . . . but I can hook you up with maybe four, five grams for now. . . . Call me back in a week or two and we can get you the rest.”

  “Works for me,” Bart said, handing Jerry the cash.

  They exchanged: a fat wad of dampened twenties for five little plastic baggies of beautiful translucent crystals.

  “Appreciate it, Jerry.”

  “I’ll send you a text in a week when I get the rest of your shit.”

  Bart opened the passenger-side door. The rain was falling hard and cold now, and he couldn’t help feeling he tasted a hint of winter in the wind.

  “Hey, Bart,” Jerry said, rolling down his window a crack. “Watch yourself, hombre.” And then the dealer drove off into the night.

  15

  No one could remember such rain. Down it came, for days on end. Late in the evenings the rain became snow, and on the fifth morning, with just a light drizzle coming down, Cole exited the highway onto Gretchen’s road and stared with dismay at the once rather tame river, now raging up and over its banks. It was almost unrecognizable. And the road had been ravaged. Because it had been built in haste, and because the summer had been remarkably dry and mild, the roadbuilders did not think to install many culverts, and now, where water coursed down off the mountains and foothills and swept over the road, some stretches were nearly impassable. Cole thumped along the road at a cautious crawl, the coffee in his travel mug sloshing everywhere.

  The bridge itself was destroyed, he now saw, lying in the river beneath a giant boulder, which must have somehow come down off the mountain in the night, miraculously missing the house at least, and the hot springs. Now it sat there, in the middle of the river, hulking there on the broken bridge like a drunken ogre, water angrily frothing all around it, the banks on either side of the river thoroughly chewed apart.

  “Fuck,” Cole yelled. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

  Cell phone reception in the canyon was hit-or-miss, so he backed the truck down the road to the first spot where he could actually turn around, then floored it almost all the way back out to the highway, where he finally dialed Gretchen. The call went straight to voicemail, and Cole left a message, doing his best to sound both at once professional and sufficiently urgent.

  None of the subs had come to work the day before due to the road conditions, and now they were looking at a delay that could stretch on for days, certainly, and maybe weeks. . . . Indeed, it was entirely possible the project would now have to be shelved until the following spring or summer. Removing the broken bridge would take a day or two at the very least, to say nothing of constructing a new one. He didn’t know the first thing about how bridges were put into place and could not imagine the profound amount of forethought and engineering involved before you even began site excavation. To say nothing of the fabrication of a goddamned steel bridge! Cole felt his heart thumping inside his ribs, felt sweat beading on his forehead and trickling down his back.

  Teddy’s truck pulled up beside Cole’s, and they both rolled down their windows.

  “You’re not even gonna believe it,” Cole said, motioning up the road. “But we are royally fucked.”

  Teddy rubbed at his face and absentmindedly tugged at an ear. “Tell me the bridge’s still there,” he said quietly.

  “The bridge is fucked, is what it is,” Cole said, slamming his hands against his steering wheel. “Fucked!”

  “So . . . Crap . . . What are we gonna do, Cole?”

  Cole shook his head, then threw up his hands in defeat. “I have no idea, Teddy. Never needed to build a bridge before.”

  They sat there in their idling trucks, the mist slowly alleviating, and finally, for what felt like the first time in weeks, the sun began to burn a hole through the cloud cover, some of the higher peaks now shining white with freshly fallen snow.

  Cole rubbed at this jawline, trying to piece together their strategy.

  “All right,” he said, “you text the subs. Tell ’em we’re gonna have a few days’ delay. Blame it on the road—they’ll swallow that easily enough. But don’t feed ’em too much information. If you tell ’em about the bridge, they might just move on to the next project, figuring we’ll never get this thing untangled. Right now, I need to get a hold of Gretchen.” He took a long gulp of coffee. “You seen Bart?”

  “Not yet,” Teddy said. “Reckon he’s on his way.”

  “Why don’t you text him and tell him to save his gas. Explain about the bridge. We’re all going to be a lot more valuable today in town, sad to say.”

  “You want to make phone calls from my place this morning? I’m sure Britney would make us breakfast. We got plenty of juice and s
ome doughnuts from the grocery store. . . .”

  * * *

  —

  It was several hours before Gretchen called back; she’d been in a meeting. Her voice sounded slightly different over the telephone—more tired, perhaps—but she was as professional as could be; she wanted photographs of the bridge for her insurance people and assured Cole that help was on its way and coming as quickly as possible.

  It was left to Cole to address the elephant in the room, the notion that they’d lost time due to an act of God.

  “I hear you,” she said evenly. “And yet the deadline, I’m afraid, remains the same. It may be that you cannot finish the house before Christmas and, well, that is something I will simply have to accept. But that is still our goal. So, all I can tell you is: Find a way, all right? Find a way. And know that I’ll do everything on my end that I possibly can to help you in doing that.”

  Two days later they stood at the end of the road, watching an excavator reach its steel teeth into the river and remove the boulder and what was left of the bridge, setting them off to the side.

  “Save that boulder,” Cole ordered. “Christ, has to be the most expensive rock in the world. Maybe Gretchen will have some use for it.”

  The road crew was back now, constructing new culverts in the washed-out areas and regrading the surface with fresh gravel. There was talk of paving certain stretches of the road, not least on either side of the new bridge, if and when it arrived.

  And so they waited, checking their phones every other minute for a message from Gretchen, checking the calendar and the time, even as December 25 inched closer and closer with nothing for them to do but wait—wait for the insurance adjustor to visit the site and okay a new bridge; wait for the bridge-building company to show up and build it; and hope against hope that when all those factors aligned, everyone would be ready to snap back into action.