It was too much to think about now. The hanging smell of vomit gave him a headache. He reached over and put his hand on Claudia. He’d leave it there until his arm fell asleep or she woke and turned. Trucks closed his eyes and pulled the scratchy blanket over his nose. He breathed into the material, and the warmth of his breath returned to him, like the blanket was breathing right back.
EVERYTHING’S ALL RIGHT, ISN’T IT?
Trucks and Claudia sat in the shelter lobby for hours. He was waiting for a phone call from the library. He didn’t figure it would come that morning, but he was hopeful it might. They’d had breakfast when the doors opened, then came straight back. Claudia had been so composed and patient. He really admired her for that. For putting up with him and all that he asked of her.
He reached out and squeezed her knee.
“You wanna get moving?” he asked.
“Yeah, a lot,” she said.
“Hang tight, then.”
Trucks stood and walked to the counter. He handed over the wooden token with 37 burned into it. The woman went to the back where there were rows of cubbies and returned with the navy duffel bag. Trucks pulled out a plastic bag from the side pocket. He filled it with a jar of peanut butter, a knife, a few apples, some crackers, and bottles of water. Then he gave the duffel bag back. He asked the woman several questions. She gestured, gave directions, and signaled where to go. Trucks thanked her and walked over to Claudia.
“Let’s hit it,” he said.
Claudia jumped up. They zipped and buttoned their coats and headed for the door. Trucks paused and looked back one more time. He imagined hard that the phone would ring. They’d ask for him. He’d get on the line with the hiring manager who’d tell him he was a perfect fit. Just the guy they were looking for. He’d accept the job and hang up and hug his girl so tight. He could hardly imagine a job so peaceful. The building like a church. Calm. Quiet. Still. Something light-years from what he’d known. An opportunity that could really change things. Bring in decent pay. Safety. A new start. That fresh thing he’d been telling his girl about.
Claudia tugged on his sleeve. Trucks snapped out of it and turned.
They walked through the door. The stinging wind was back. Trucks looked down to make sure Claudia’s coat was cinched up. He was taking her to the northeastern edge of town, so at least they’d have their backs to the wind on the way.
“Where we going?” she asked.
“You’ll see. It’s nothing special, but it should be nice.”
Claudia looked confused.
“You wanna guess?” he asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Let’s keep it for a surprise,” she said.
“Okay, but it’s really not a big deal. You’ll probably be more disappointed than surprised,” he said.
As they walked, Claudia took June’s perfume out of her pocket. She pulled off one of her gloves, tucked it between her elbow and ribs, dabbed some of the perfume on her finger, and rubbed it on both sides of her neck. Then she capped the little shampoo bottle and returned it to her pocket. Trucks could smell June real heavy in the air.
“You love that stuff,” he said.
“Yeah. I miss her,” Claudia said.
“You think about her a lot?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes she’s in my dreams. And those are usually pretty good ones. Except when she gets far away and disappears. Or when we’re waiting on the road hitching and she doesn’t stop. Like she’s mad at us now.”
“Do you think she’s mad at us?”
“We were all friends and had fun. Then we left her. She was really nice to us, but she didn’t have to be. She did nice things that other people don’t.”
Trucks patted her hood.
“I know what you mean,” he said.
“I don’t know why we had to leave.”
“It’s not easy to explain. I tried to explain after you had your bath in the hotel. Maybe I didn’t do a good job of it.”
“Why do we have to leave people who give us stuff and be nice? Aren’t we looking for them? I thought that’s why we always go. Cause we wanted to find the good.”
Trucks thought as they walked along. The sack of supplies brushed against his leg with each step. Traffic was slower than he’d imagined. People who passed would smile and nod. He’d expected a bigger-city feel. More hostility. He just didn’t know anything about Montana or its cities or way of life. He could only go on his expectations and what Gerald had said. So far, Gerald was right. The people seemed mostly kind and giving. Trucks knew he needed to let go of expectations founded on nothing but assumption.
“Don’t we want the good?” she asked.
“Of course,” he said.
“So why do we leave it?”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. Hey, are you feeling warm enough? Doing okay?”
“I’m okay,” she said.
“Okay.”
They walked in silence for a bit.
“We want the good, but sometimes we have to leave it behind because the good comes with other things. Things you’ve already felt now as a kid and will only feel stronger when you grow up.”
“Like what?”
“Like expectations. Like disappointment. Like people come into your life and start out real good, and you think you’ve really found something. You draw this picture in your head of what you think they are. What they maybe make themselves out to be. Then, after a while—sometimes it’s weeks, sometimes months, sometimes years—their real self comes out. Sometimes it’s only kinda bad. Sometimes it’s real bad. And sometimes it’s so awful you can’t stand to look at it because maybe what you see in the deepest dark parts of them are your own sicknesses. The hidden places inside you that nobody else gets to see. The things you have to live with because you’re you. And maybe you were born with it, like a knock in the head, or maybe it’s something that came about because you were dropped from shelter to shelter and home to home until you didn’t even know who you were anymore. Just passed around like an unwanted gift. The kind of thing nobody wants but everyone takes for a while. I don’t know, Pepper Flake. This is hard stuff. Maybe I shouldn’t be saying this.”
He looked over at her as they walked. Her face was calm.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I wanna know. ’Cause what if you go too? If you’re gone like them, then I wanna know everything. I wanna know before you leave.”
Trucks reached out and held her hand.
“What do you mean? I’m not going anywhere. I’ve told you so many times.”
“But when we were hitching you said you were gray ’cause of the camera.”
“The what?”
She thought a moment. “You said you were gray ’cause of the good and bad people make. The camera.”
“Oh. You mean karma.”
“Yeah. You said I’m one of the good ones, but if you can turn gray, then what if I turn gray? And what if you see my dark spots and get scared and wanna go?”
“It’s not gonna happen. You’re the only person who gives meaning to what I do. And I’m such a fuck-up that, if anything, you’d wanna leave me, not the other way around.”
“No! I wouldn’t,” she said. She pulled her hand away.
“We’re doing our best. I know that much,” he said. “My whole life all I’ve tried to do is protect you. That’s my job. To give all I can and make sure no harm comes to you. Whatever it takes is what it takes. And maybe I’ve not done so good sometimes, but I’ve put a lot into it, and I think that counts for something. But what you really wanna know is why we left June. And I kinda covered that already. It’s about not owing anyone. About being careful of the people who seem to have too much good and too much light. And maybe she really was as wonderful as she seemed. I don’t know. I can’t see beyond the obvious signals sometimes. But just know we didn’t leave her because she seemed to have bad. We left because she seemed to have no bad, and that can be scarier than the other so
metimes. Because you can imagine the kind of hope that builds inside, and what would that do to a person if that hope was broken? I don’t wanna know. But anyway, does that help? Isn’t that what you wanted to know?”
Claudia nodded. Then she said, “And to know about Mama.”
“I promised I’d tell you when the time was right. It’s a hard thing to talk about. It won’t make you feel good. It’ll be difficult. It’s really just something for when you’re older and can maybe handle it better. And I swear on everything that I’ll tell you when it’s right. I hope you trust that.”
Claudia didn’t say anything.
“Do you trust that?”
“I don’t know.”
“I need you to trust me. I’ve gotten us this far, right?”
“Yeah.”
“So trust me. You’re safe. I’m not dead. We’ve got food and a place to stay. Everything’s all right, isn’t it?”
Claudia nodded.
“We’re making it in the world, aren’t we?”
She nodded again.
“So have some faith in me.”
“What’s faith?”
Trucks laughed. “When you believe in something you have no solid reason to believe in.”
They walked in silence the rest of the way. Trucks using his memory to call up the directions the woman had given him. They angled down the streets. Sometimes stopping in alleys to look at hand-drawn posters for music gigs or art galleries.
When they finally got to the place, Trucks stopped and looked up. Claudia did the same. Nuts and bolts and all kinds of microchips and wires were painted in a scatter across the awning. Trucks reached for the door handle. It looked like Gadget Ratchet was open for business.
GADGET RATCHET
The store was the size of a large closet. The man behind the counter worked on Claudia’s left hearing aid. The one that had been giving her trouble from the start. She sat in a plastic chair against the wall and held the other hearing aid in her hand. Trucks had suggested she take it out to keep from throwing off the balance in her head. Though he didn’t know anything about wearing a hearing aid. He just figured.
Trucks leaned against the wall. The protective outer shell of the hearing aid was flipped over on the counter. He watched the man switch from working a mini-screwdriver to picking at the guts of the hearing aid with a small tweezers. Trucks couldn’t believe how complicated the inside was. All the tiny moving parts. The processor chip and amplifier and receiver. The man cut and stripped the ends to a skinny new wire. He pulled out the old wire and replaced it with the slick new one. The whole time his glasses were sliding down his nose. He had his tongue between his teeth. He concentrated that way. It reminded Trucks of some of the odd quirks he’d seen in fellow boxers. The twitch of an eyelid. Cocking the head slightly to one side or the other. Rotating the glove in and back when waiting to launch.
“Getting close now,” the man said. But he never looked up. Like he was just egging himself on.
Trucks looked down at Claudia. She had on her new black jeans and green sweatshirt from the thrift store. The one with the reindeer. She traced the good hearing aid in her hand with a fingernail. He thought he heard her making little sounds like she was fixing the hearing aid. Just like the man.
On the counter, down from the man, was an old sewing machine. Its casing was off and resting on its side. He could see the pulley and bobbin case and connecting rods. The arm and bed shafts dismantled. Next to it was a radio. Beside that a beige vacuum. On the small shelves, just over the shoulder of the leaning man, were scattered screwdrivers, needles, wires, pliers, folded rags. Probably about anything a man would need to work the trade. Then something entirely out of place. Right in the middle of the repairing fray. A ceramic gentleman from decades ago. Hair chestnut brown. A matching moustache. A baby blue tuxedo coat and matching pants. Black shoes. White gloves. Bowtie too square. A violet boutonniere. One arm dangling straight, the other at his waist and edge of his suit jacket like he was in the middle of reaching for a hidden gun. He had an expression. An open mouth. A look of sadness and fear in his eyes. Like he was confronting something out of his control. Like this movement would change the rest of his life.
Trucks heard a light snap.
“That’s about it,” the man said. He held the hearing aid up to the light and flipped it around. He did it like he was holding an emerald.
“That fast, huh?” Trucks said. He took a few steps to the counter.
“Doesn’t take much. Had a loose wire. The amp was a little distorted too. With some fidgeting and fixing, I think I got it about right.”
The man handed the hearing aid to Trucks. Trucks held it in his palm and raised and lowered his hand. Feeling the weight of it. It meant nothing about whether or not the fixes had worked. He just had that sad ceramic figure on his mind.
“We’ll need to get the little one over here to test it out. Let us know how she’s hearing with it. I usually get the bigger hearing aids to work on. People from the old folks’ home on Parkhill. Bigger ears with age seems to be a truth.”
The man waved Claudia over. She jumped out of the plastic chair and came up to the counter. Trucks hooked the fixed hearing aid over her left ear and fit in the earmold. Then he grabbed the other one and did the same. He turned on both hearing aids, heard and felt the clicks. Then he rolled the dials to where she usually heard best.
The man leaned on his elbows and looked over the counter.
“Hey there,” Trucks said to Claudia. “You hearing everything okay?”
“Yup,” she said, and gave the man a thumbs-up. “It’s not blurry anymore. You fixed my hearing phones.”
The man laughed. “Well, if your ‘hearing phones’ ever need fixing again, you can stop on by.”
“Get your coat on and grab our sack,” Trucks said to Claudia. Then he turned to the man. “I guess we need to settle up. We came from the Beartooth Rescue Mission. The woman at the desk said you give deals to people in hardship. She said you probably still did, anyway. That true?”
The man looked at Claudia. She had her coat on and was getting into the oversized gloves.
“Sure thing. For the kid. For the hardship. Let’s just say five bucks. In the future, you need any fixes, just promise to come back again or tell others about us, okay?”
Trucks agreed. He pulled the folded wad of cash from his pocket and peeled off five ones. He laid them on the counter. Then he stuck out his hand, and the man shook it.
“I’m grateful,” Trucks said. “If my girl can hear clear again, that puts us in a better place.”
“Agreed,” the man said. “Remember to stop on back. And tell anyone who needs something electronic fixed, I’m the guy. Big or small, weird or not. Don’t matter to me any.”
“Will do,” Trucks said.
The man turned from them and onto his next project.
Trucks reached for Claudia’s throat flaps. Snapping them together had become reflexive. He held the door for her as she walked out ahead of him carrying their sack of supplies. Then he looked back one more time. The man was bent over the cracked-open sewing machine. Working his hands in its metal guts. Humming a calm tune. Trucks had to take another look at the porcelain statue. Something about it unnerved him, but he couldn’t place what. And something about the violet boutonniere, from this distance and angle and the light coming in from the door, didn’t look like a simple, delicate flower. It looked like the bleeding spread of a fatal wound.
TWO MOON PARK
They walked east. Away from Empire Steel and Iron Works and a few machine and welding shops. They took a little road along the Yellowstone River. Cut past the water plant. When the road ran out, they kept going. It was a long walk. They went several miles, but Claudia didn’t complain. The river was frozen over, but Trucks led her up to it anyway. They stood at the riverbank and looked down at the ice-hardened water. The sun long gone behind a thicket of clouds. The world gray again.
“Well, it’s maybe not
much to see now,” Trucks said. “But I wanted you to have a look.”
“Were fish in there?” Claudia asked.
“Still are.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they’re more made for the cold.”
“But it’s frozen,” she said, pointing at the ice. “Why aren’t they dead?”
“They probably know where the warm pockets are deep down. Between rocks. Probably swim to the bottom where it’s warmer. Stay away from the ice surface.”
“Is that what you’d do if you were a fish?” she asked.
“Probably. Except I’d grab you first and bring you down with me. We’d find some algae to eat and have a nice winter.”
“And if we were fish, we wouldn’t have to hitch. We could just drive ourselves through the water.”
Trucks laughed. “I suppose.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Do you think it’d be fun if we lived down there as fish?”
“I don’t know that the lives of fish are all that fun. I imagine it’s pretty dark and cold, and you’d be having to dodge enemy fish and watch out for fishing hooks and snakes and bears trying to pick you outta the water.”
“That sounds scary,” she said.
He realized he wasn’t doing a good job of playing into her fantasy. But he wanted her to know how the real world was. It wasn’t just some easy thing you could skip through. At least not for them.
“But what would we look like if we were fish? I think I’d wanna be purple and flat and small so I could fit anywhere I wanted. And I’d wanna have wings so I could swim sometimes and fly outta the water when I wanted to go someplace else. It’d probably be boring being in the water all the time.” Claudia sniffed. She bit into the fingers of her glove.
“Sounds like you’ve got fish life all figured out. What would I look like?”
“Hmm. You’d be big and silver. And you’d have muscle fins so you could swim fast and save us. And it’d be better than now ’cause with fins you couldn’t wear boxing gloves so you couldn’t fight. And then they wouldn’t take me away.”
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