American Salvage

by Bonnie Jo Campbell

  “Denny’s is open all night,” Pauline said, but there was no interrupting her mother once she got started telling one of her rambling stories.

  “I met a nice fellow there that night,” Mary Beth said, “an electrician. He’d been out of work all that winter and ended up fixing the trouble I’d been having with my electric ever since your brother Stuart jammed a penny into the fuse box so his space heater wouldn’t blow fuses. You remember how that penny melted?”

  “I guess I’d better go to work,” Pauline said, but she didn’t get in her truck, didn’t head out to the Farm N Garden, where she would wrestle rolls of barbed wire and bags of corn and laying mash into the backs of trucks for customers. She kicked at some ice ridges in the driveway with her insulated work boot, while her mother went on about dating the electrician, who eventually moved to Florida for a job.

  Yesterday afternoon at the Farm N Garden, while the blizzard darkened the sky, Pauline had spotted Harold puzzling over ice-melt products. He was the only customer in the store, although it was an hour before closing. He seemed in no hurry, so she watched him from the end of an aisle, crossed her arms and leaned into the wide, flat shovels hanging there. He read a fold-out label with considerable intensity, adjusted his wire-frame glasses twice, and studied the descriptions of several more products before lugging a box of environmentally friendly pellets off the shelf. He paused to readjust a bottle he’d knocked out of place. When he seemed about to leave the aisle, Pauline stepped up to him. He greeted her warmly, squeezed her hand with his free hand, looked at her as though she were a plant about whose growth he might be genuinely curious.

  They had chatted about the snowstorm, about Trisha’s brother in Iraq, and about Harold’s gardening plans. “I’m looking forward to trying some heavy mulching this year,” Harold had said.

  “And I’ll be starting lettuce and spinach in a cold frame.” Pauline admired the way Harold was longing for the growing season. She wondered if he similarly longed for the season of fruiting and the season of dying.

  She’d asked, “Do you remember when we used to go skating on the pond? Remember how once we skated in a blizzard?”

  “I do remember.” He nodded, seemed surprised to remember.

  Three hours later, after the snow had stopped, Pauline had met her fiancé Nick outside the Tap Room. He seemed, by comparison to Harold, small and foolish with his pink ears—he wouldn’t wear a hat because he didn’t like the way it flattened his hair. She was surprised Nick even heard her breaking up with him; their voices seemed muffled by the dense white breath hanging between them, or maybe it was the loud music coming from inside. He had gone on in. She had headed back to her little truck with the busted heater, had driven home with her shoulders hunched over the wheel.

  Pauline was still standing in the driveway waiting for her mother to finish her story. She took a deep breath and exhaled. She was grateful that out here in the country a person’s breath blew away without stagnating. This morning Pauline was wearing her arctic weight Carhartt instead of that flimsy leather jacket she’d worn to the bar. She had not intended to break up with Nick, but she didn’t regret it.

  When her mother finally finished her story, Pauline said, “I suppose that big mouth Stuart already called you and told you I broke up with Nick last night.”

  “Stuart called me last night at about ten, asked me if you were having a nervous breakdown or something.”

  “Is this the most gossipy family on the planet, or what?”

  Mary Beth said, “I like Nick.”

  “You like everybody,” Pauline said and kicked at a big chunk of ice that had built up behind her truck’s back wheel. “I was thinking, Ma, about when Harold lived here. That was nice of you to let him stay with us while his parents were divorcing. You didn’t even have money for fuel oil that year.”

  “Did I ever tell you about the time Harold’s dad threatened to burn my house down?” Mary Beth proceeded to tell a story Pauline had heard twenty times at least. “I told that guy, come on over, at least we’d be warm for a while. I figured I had insurance.”

  At the Farm N Garden yesterday afternoon, Pauline and Harold had laughed about skating in that blizzard all those years ago—Pauline had been thirteen, so Harold must have been sixteen.

  Still wearing their skates, they had slowly made their way back from the pond along the trail. The blizzard made it impossible to see more than a few feet, and Harold had taken her gloved hand so they could stay together. Back at the house, they had found themselves alone in the mudroom, taking off their skates, while the storm raged outside. The single-paned windows of the room were etched with frost blossoms, notched ice curves as intricate as Japanese landscapes. Their breath mingled, promised to fill the whole cold room. Harold had been wearing an oil-stained Carhartt coverall that had belonged to Pauline’s dad. She’d sat on the quarry tile in her snowsuit, with one foot on the ground, one foot in Harold’s gloved hands. The first ice skate had come off easily, but the second one was stuck. Harold removed his gloves, worked his frozen fingers under her snow-sodden laces. She felt the cold tiles under her. Then Harold tugged and the skate came off, and her sock slipped off, too, exposing her bare pink foot to the cold air. He’d squeezed her bare foot and breathed warm air on her toes like a kiss. Or had she imagined that?

  “Hey, Ma, does anybody skate on the pond anymore?” Pauline asked, but her mother didn’t seem to hear her, just kept talking about Harold’s father. She wondered if she’d get her mother’s attention if she said, “I love Harold. I have loved him since I was thirteen, and maybe I’ll always love him.”

  At the Farm N Garden yesterday, as the snowstorm blotted out the sun, Pauline had grabbed the collar of Harold’s parka and pulled his face to hers. Beneath the fluorescent lights in that aisle full of salt and shovels, she’d stood on tiptoe in her boots and kissed Harold the way she’d wanted to kiss him in that mudroom, the way she’d always wanted to kiss him, even on the day he married Trisha. He had accepted her kiss quietly at first, and she was about to pull away and apologize, but then he wrapped both arms around her, pulled her as close as their thick jackets allowed. He continued to kiss her, stepped her backward and then pressed her against the snow shovels. When three aluminum shovels clattered to the ground, Pauline had to pull away to keep her balance.

  Harold blushed pink and swallowed. “I’d better go.”

  Pauline hugged herself as she watched him proceed through the checkout lane.

  Harold felt Pauline’s gaze, but he didn’t dare look back to see her frowning. He swapped a few weather-wise words with the manager, who stood near the door. He took his wool cap and scarf out of one pocket and his gloves out of the other and dressed for the blizzard. He put up his hood and tightened the strings to cover most of his face.

  He drove home at ten miles per hour and then sat in his driveway with the windshield wipers on, looking out over his frozen garden, assuring himself it was still there beneath the snow, fertile and quiescent. Only when Trisha’s headlights lit up his rearview mirror did he finally get out of the car.

  Bringing Belle Home

  A man who trusted himself to own a gun could walk into this place and shoot these guys, one after another, watch the glass fly: Jack Daniels, Jim Beam, Yukon Jack, Johnny Walker Red. The bartender pocketed a dollar-fifty tip and smiled. Thomssen grinned and saluted, but he felt the grin pull tight across his face like a scar, and he might have been saluting the liquor army. He could resist coming here most days of the week, and he rarely came when his son was visiting, but on nights like tonight when he dropped Billy off at his ex-wife’s, when he couldn’t face his own empty house, he allowed himself a few hours. He was tall enough to see everyone in the place, and he told himself he was glad Belle wasn’t there to complicate things.

  The barroom chairs, like most chairs, were too small. His size made him powerful, got him instant respect, but he hated that he couldn’t walk into a place without being noticed. Tonight he hunkered
in his usual corner and tried to look smaller than he was. Billy might end up as big as Thomssen, seeing as his ma was tall, too. That was part of why Thomssen had married Elaine, because she seemed big and strong enough to stand up to him, but after ten years of standing up to him, she’d stood down. She was now married to a probation officer, a man who eyed Thomssen as though assuming he was always on the verge of committing a crime. Thomssen didn’t blame his ex-wife, and he had no complaints about the way she was raising Billy—she didn’t badmouth Thomssen, as far as he knew. The kid was certainly healthy—he already towered over the other guys on his basketball team. At age fourteen, he was still skinny, though, and nervous and awkward, especially with girls.

  The old Dewar’s scotch wall clock ran on bar time, twenty minutes fast, but it moved too slowly all the same. Caterpillar hats and John Deere hats dotted the place with yellow and green.

  Those feed caps wouldn’t fit on Thomssen’s head, although one year his pipefitting shop had ordered a few oversized union local 669 caps for him, and he’d felt so grateful, he had to slip away to the toilet to compose himself. Tonight he wore a wool stocking cap against the cold. Although the place was warm enough, Thomssen didn’t feel like taking off his hat or sheepskin-lined vest or his insulated flannel shirt. Keeping his body covered made him feel less noticeable, less a permanent fixture—he might not spend the whole evening in here, anyhow; there was no rule that said he couldn’t go home and sit alone in front of the TV, fall asleep at a reasonable hour, be rested for work tomorrow morning.

  The door opened and some other men walked in, regular sized, younger than him, kicking snow off their boots in a way that seemed athletic and fun loving. They closed the door behind them, shutting out the cold. When Pete behind the bar noticed Thomssen killing his double shot and beer, he brought out another pair. Thomssen listened to the chatter of guys racking up the pool balls and the sweet crack of the break.

  Then Belle walked in the door. Just like that, she walked in. His heart pounded and sent the liquor in his gut traveling, stinging to his size-sixteen feet and his calloused fingertips. A gust of cold air followed her, because she didn’t shut the door all the way. She made a racket disproportionate to her tiny frame, stomped her tennis shoes, rubbed her hands together for warmth. After the cold had permeated the whole room, she finally reached back and slammed the door. Everyone’s head turned at the slamming, and their looking made Thomssen angry, because he would have liked to have kept her arrival quiet.

  Belle walked to the bar and talked with Pete the bartender. The dim bar lights made her bleached hair with its prematurely graying roots look like silver and gold, and with the way she wore it hanging over her face, she could pass for a younger woman. Although it was only ten degrees outside, she was hatless and without a jacket, wearing a big sweater—one of Thomssen’s sweaters that had shrunk in the wash—with the arms rolled up into thick cuffs that covered her hands. He would give her his warm vest, he decided, if she’d come over and talk to him. He wondered how she had gotten there. Hitchhiked? Talked a taxi driver into driving her for free? He doubted that her daughter had driven her—her daughter wasn’t speaking to her, last Thomssen had heard. The bartender drew her a draft. She looked so small over there at the bar that it seemed to Thomssen he might be able to hold her bird body in one hand.

  Thomssen had been the age his son was now, fourteen, when he first met Belle, when Belle’s family had moved into the rental house next door. Thomssen’s father had been strict and would whip him with a belt once a month or so, but Belle’s father was stricter and meaner, dangerous even, and her mother was always sick and stayed in her room. Still, Belle broke every rule as fast as her old man could make them. She ran with older boys, smoked dope in her bedroom, skipped school, and cursed her father to his face. Once every week or two he lost his temper and whaled on her—broke her rib once, knocked a tooth loose another time. Their tar-paper houses were separated by only a narrow driveway, and Thomssen heard the roar of her father’s voice, the smack of her father’s belt, heard him push Belle into a bookshelf that toppled, heard him kick her into a corner with his work boots. And he would keep on her until she stopped yelling and went quiet. Thomssen fantasized about standing up to her old man, rescuing her, about saying, “If you ever hit her again, I’ll kill you.”

  His own dad warned Thomssen to stay out of the neighbors’ family business, “Or I’ll beat the hell out of you myself,” he’d said. “That girl next door is trouble. A grown man can see it a mile away.”

  “No girl deserves that,” Thomssen had mumbled, and that was as close as he came to defending her. Sometimes after those incidents, Thomssen would wait for Belle’s dad to leave for the night shift at the paper company, and he’d slip over and find Belle. Often she’d be smoking on her bed, defiant. She’d offer Thomssen a cigarette, and show him any wounds her father had inflicted. Other times she’d still be lying on the floor like something fallen from its nest. He used to help her onto her bed, put his arms around her, stroke her long, shiny hair, dark back then. He still felt heat go all through him whenever he thought about the way he had failed to protect Belle from her father—his first failure as a man.

  The young guy at the bar next to Belle moved his stool closer to her. He looked like Cal Movich’s son, Cal Jr., a tin knocker. It only took Belle a minute to slug her first beer, and Cal Jr.

  bought her a second. She smiled, laughed at something Cal Jr. said. Thomssen could see the baby-faced kid felt lucky to be talking to her. She leaned against the bar, energy surging through her tiny frame, the oversized sweater covering her rear end, her little legs sticking out below it. Those white canvas tennis shoes and no socks. No goddamned socks! She moved her feet a lot, putting one on the bar’s foot rail and then switching to the other, probably trying to thaw them out. He wondered if she could have walked there. The thought that she would walk to this bar with no socks on made his heart flood with warmth, because this was his bar; there were twenty bars downtown and three or four between here and there, and she had chosen to come here.

  They’d spent some nice times here, when they were first together after their twenty-one year separation, a few times with Billy, eating sandwiches for lunch, Belle always drinking more than you’d ever think she could. In photographs, Belle was never beautiful, but in the dim bar light, her eyes sparkled, and her new teeth were white against her suntanned skin. She used to smile with her mouth closed, but the old rotten front teeth had broken off when she’d jumped out of his truck and hit the pavement. They’d been arguing, and he’d reached over and grabbed her bare leg to make her listen. When he’d let go of her to shift gears, she opened the door and bailed, and although he was only going fifteen miles an hour, she hit the pavement jaw first. He jammed on the brakes, but her mouth was full of blood by the time he got to her. In the emergency room, Thomssen had been surprised at how a bruise had appeared on her thigh where he’d been holding her. Each month now he got a bill from her dentist. When Thomssen had seen Belle three weeks ago, she’d shown him how she could bite into an apple with her new teeth.

  Although she was halfway through her second beer, Belle still hadn’t looked over at him. She knew damn well he was there, knew if she walked over to him, he’d hand her money to get him a shot and a beer, and she could keep the change for herself. The only thing that bothered him was that she wouldn’t tip Pete. She didn’t have any respect for tradition; she didn’t understand how tipping the bartender and being polite and paying child support held lives and communities together.

  Her dad had beaten all the consideration out of her years ago, killed any pleasure she might have gotten from social niceties. Other people didn’t understand why Belle couldn’t behave, but they hadn’t heard the yelps of pain, hadn’t seen the bruises, hadn’t felt her shaking in their arms.

  Sometimes when Thomssen snuck over to comfort her late at night, she undressed him, fumbled with his buttons, tugged down the zipper of his jeans. On those nights she
used to lie still beneath him, her eyes glistening, while he made love to her. One day, though, she disappeared, and he never saw her again, not for more than twenty years.

  Thomssen had tried to love Elaine, Billy’s ma, but he never could muster for her what he had felt for Belle. Rather than fading with time, his feelings for Belle had lingered, like smoke that wouldn’t leave a small closed-up room, and he returned to the memories of his first silent and sweet love-making again and again, memories clouded by the haze of his guilt for not protecting her. Then he found her by accident, all those years later, at Gun Lake, sitting on a dock in dark sunglasses, swinging her bare, tanned legs. As she snapped a cigarette butt out into the lake, the feeling in his heart was as much terror as love, as much fear as hope that he could save her after all. They got married, and she called herself Mrs. Thomssen—signed it without hesitation on his checks, on her medical forms. For six months they’d gotten along pretty well. She’d been okay with Billy, if more flirtatious than seemed appropriate. But after that, things had deteriorated.

  One moment Belle was laughing with Cal Jr. against the backdrop of the liquor bottles, tossing her hair, and the next moment, she spun around on her stool and looked at Thomssen. He’d been staring at her and couldn’t look away quickly enough. She glared at him, long and deliberately, until he felt deformed and grotesque. Her contempt for him was large enough that it contorted his frame.