by David Rhodes
She sat in the lobby until after midnight, waiting. She assumed they would make some provision for the ruined people left inside at closing time; but when she finally asked someone, she learned the casino stayed open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
This also seemed impossible. How could any place stay open all the time? Yet in this new place where she found herself, anything and everything could happen. The supernatural safety net that had always protected her had been taken away, and she continued to sit in the lobby.
Over the next several hours, the shame, horror, and stupidity of what she had done became well documented in her mind. At two-fifteen she went outside, hung her purse around her neck, and began pushing herself through the parking lot toward the highway.
FEAR
WADE ARMBUSTER KEPT A CUSTOM AUTOMOBILE IN HIS FATHER’S machine shed, under a gray car cover. Most of the year it just sat there, surrounded by tractors, plows, rakes, forks, skid steers, fans, and other machinery. He had provided his most treasured possession with multiple layers of peerless green lacquer, into which he could stare as though into a still pool of water, and an interior of rich, oiled leather. With the hood open, the car smiled like an extrovert with new braces. He considered it a work of art more than a machine, though functioning was one of the requirements of machine art.
Sometimes in the middle of night he would slip out of the trailer beside his parents’ house to the darkened shed and unwrap it, pulling the cover from the fenders as if he were pulling clothing from rounded hips, heels, and shoulders. Then in the illumination of a single bulb in the rafters, he stood back and gazed, sometimes for hours. The interlaced shadows, curves, lines, and colors seemed in some primitive language to reveal more about himself, about passion, about life, than he could fully explore.
He viewed it from different angles, never able to fathom the whole, each new view a separate avenue of insight. The genius of the black and orange flames on the front fenders—the perfection of the frolicking waves conforming to the contours of the hood—held a secret that promised to open soon.
On this cold winter night, Wade climbed inside and sat behind the wheel, where a row of darkened gauges looked up at him, mute, shiny, and spotless. He turned the ignition to On and listened to the hum of the small electric motor in the trunk, pumping racing fuel to the carburetors. He stepped on the accelerator twice and turned the key. The massive engine groaned loudly, painfully again and again, and then came howling to life, the sound reverberating from of the building’s steel sides. A cloud of fuel-rich exhaust loomed up behind.
At every touch of the accelerator, the motor responded—as quick as a sliver. He turned on the parking lights to illuminate the little green bulbs in the housing of the gauges and surveyed the quivering needles that reported on conditions inside the engine. After assuring himself several times that all was well, he armed the nitrous oxide injectors and touched the toggle switch mounted on the gear shift lever. The engine coughed, spit, and filled the shed with an acrid mist. The nitrous tank was frozen. It was winter. He’d forgotten about that.
Wade revved the motor several more times to clear the ports and turned it off, climbed out, and shut the driver’s door. He stepped back to admire the car from the rear and felt almost good enough to go back to bed. Everything seemed just right. Unlike much of the rest of his life, this part, right now, seemed in good order.
But then he noticed something he didn’t like and drew his tattooed hand over his closely cropped hair. He spit on the concrete floor, rubbed his neck, and stepped several feet to the right, hoping to correct the impression.
There it was again, an angle of the car that did not look good. Plain, homely. He spit again and stepped back. He’d seen this before. It had always bothered him about the car and was part of the reason he’d bought another set of alloy wheels—to compensate for the sagging quality of the trunk. Something looked too heavy, bulging, old and fat, coarse and crude.
He closed his eyes and attempted to rid himself of the impression through a condemnation of it—as though some momentary spirit of ugliness had entered the shed from the outside, making his beloved the branch upon which the black witches jabbered.
It was the right car, he insisted, often pictured in magazines. It turned heads. He had consulted experts. Many of them. Last year he’d won prizes at car shows. People often looked at him with envy streaming from their faces.
But when he opened his eyes the evil twins were still there: banality and vulgarity.
He experienced fear. What if this was not the right car? What if he had overlooked a critical part of the vehicle’s intrinsic nature—something that could never be lacquered over, sculpted away, softened by files, sandpaper, and polish, or offset by a view of the massive, chrome-plated differential? Was there something inherently wrong, subtle yet terribly flawed, that he had overlooked?
The only way now to prove to himself—to find out for sure—that he had the right car, was to drive it. He rolled aside the steel door on the front of the building and climbed behind the wheel. Driving at this time of night violated the narrow conditions of his parole, but he couldn’t help himself. Once this kind of internalized fear appeared, it imposed restrictions on the choices he could make.
Fear, more than anything else, had to be listened to. It was the only true guiding principle. Without fear, life would be impossible. And when all the unneeded, superfluous thoughts and feelings were eliminated—the slate of experience wiped clean to the essence of sensation—there would be nothing left but fear. Guarding the palace of oblivion, it stood alone. Without fear, human life had no direction, a moth with one ragged wing.
The engine came instantly back to life and he drove through the opened door. Outside, the three- inch exit pipes did not seem quite so loud, and Wade attempted to creep through the farmyard without waking his parents—a hopeless ambition. Due to the pitch of the camshaft and the stall converter, slow speeds were difficult. The staggered lurching, surging, and gasping that so delighted those attending car shows, drag strips, and rallies now proved a liability. The engine died three times before he reached the road, and his parents’ bedroom window on the second floor lit up like a warning light in the sky.
Once he was over the little hill to the north of the farm, he shifted into second gear, cracked the throttle, and felt the joyous thrust of acceleration pressing him back into the seat.
Turning onto the deserted state highway, he left twenty yards of parallel rubber stripes on the concrete before settling into a level hundred miles an hour. The night was clear, the engine now warm, and the heater began to circulate leather-softening air. All of the windows of the houses he drove past were darkened.
His sense of rightness returned. The steering felt tight, the motor and exhaust sounded just as they should, and the hood and fenders in front of him seemed perfect. Everything was in its proper place. He turned the radio on, loud, and drove several miles along the deserted highway.
As he approached town, a few cars began to appear—old guys in pickups and station wagons going home after the bars closed. He saw some younger people, two small guys in a rusted Honda, a long-haired, heavyset fellow pumping gas into a SUV.
At the traffic lights he turned right to avoid the police station and drove away from town toward Highway 87. He could cross over into Thistlewaite County and return home.
He felt bad about his parents. They would be worried. His mother probably waited for him in the trailer. His father—in the final throes of losing his farm—would interpret this as one more overwhelming failure that he could not prevent.
More cars appeared on the side streets, old guys.
Ahead on the left, the casino parking lot was only about a quarter filled. He could see a woman in a wheelchair pushing herself in front of a row of parked cars. Several rows away three young men climbed out of an old Camaro. Two were about his age. The driver, the biggest, was older, maybe thirty- five. They left the doors of the Camaro open. From the wa
y they walked, Wade knew something was going to happen. Their breath froze in front of their faces, giving them an animal-like appearance.
They met the woman, and one of them grabbed the handbag around her neck and attempted to run away. But she refused to let go. In the struggle she was pulled from the chair onto the parking lot. But she still would not let go.
Wade did not think about what he would do. He did not feel a sense of duty, outrage, or anger. He did not feel anything. He simply turned into the parking lot and put his foot to the floor. His back tires burned a rubber arc toward the line of parked cars, coming to a stop fifteen or twenty feet from the youths and the little woman still holding onto her handbag.
Wade climbed from his car and looked at the older man. “I’d leave that woman alone if I were you.”
“Would you,” said the bigger man, walking toward Wade.
“I would,” said Wade.
“Maybe you should mind your own business, motherfucker.”
“Maybe not.”
Wade had been in a number of fights during his twenty-eight years. The latest, begun outside a restaurant and ending up inside, resulted in a six-month parole. In all of his other fights—until the actual fighting started—he had been fearful. The possibility of being a coward had terrified him.
But now he was not afraid. He had actually been more fearful, in an overall sense, before he had seen the three get out of the Camaro. As soon as he pulled into the parking lot, all vestiges of fear vanished.
In short, he couldn’t remember ever feeling so good. He wasn’t worried about what he looked like, whether he belonged there, whether someone would think he looked like a hillbilly. He simply knew what to do.
The bigger man prepared to swing but Wade hit him first, knocking him momentarily off balance. It was a good punch and he knew he would win if he was given the opportunity to continue. Wade landed another solid blow, knocking the other man down, then stepped to the side and shouted at the man holding the purse, “Let go of that.”
Then three things happened at once. A brick hit the side of Wade’s head, the handbag was ripped from the woman’s hands, and another car pulled into the parking lot. It sat a safe distance away, the headlights shining at them and the horn honking.
The three ran back to the Camaro, jumped inside with the handbag, and sped through the lot.
Wade ran to the small woman, lifted her from the pavement, ignored the overturned wheelchair, and hurried with her to his car. Holding her in his right arm, he opened the passenger door and set her on the custom leather seat. Then he joined her inside. “Don’t worry, Ma’am, we’ll get it.”
The two of them sped after the tiny red taillights half a mile down Highway 87.
REUNION
RUSTY SMITH LIMPED INTO THE WORDS REPAIR SHOP ON WEDNESDAY afternoon, and Jacob handed him a manila envelope with “Carl Smith” written on the outside.
“I’m afraid it isn’t very good news,” he said.
Rusty stared briefly at the envelope, shoved it underneath his arm, and took out his billfold. “How much I owe you?”
“Nothing,” said Jacob. “It didn’t take long and, well, any friend of July’s is a friend of mine. But don’t tell him that. He’s not sentimental, if you know what I mean.”
Rusty, who as far as sentimentality was concerned made July Montgomery look like a Polish grandmother at Christmas, surveyed the shop. “Is that for sale?” he asked, pointing at a red four-wheeler.
“No, that’s in for repairs.”
Rusty stepped inside the craft shop, walked down the aisles, and bought three small quilts, each marked at twenty-two dollars. “Don’t give me any change,” he told Clarice, handing her four twenty-dollar bills.
At Eli Yoder’s farm he pulled in the driveway, scattering chickens and bringing the dog to full, vocal life. Rusty walked to the house over the lumpy narrow path stamped into the snow and knocked on the door. The large woman opened it.
“Here,” he said, handing her the quilts.
“What’s them for?” she asked.
“Them’s for you,” he said, and walked away.
In the basement of his farmhouse he sat on his milking stool, lit a cigarette, and stared at the name of his brother on the envelope. Then he tossed it on the floor beside him, finished the cigarette, and lit another.
The stair door opened.
“Russell,” called Maxine. “Russell, are you down there?”
“Yup.”
“Are you smoking?”
“Not really.”
“When you come up, bring your work clothes. I’m starting a load of laundry.”
She closed the stair door and Rusty opened the envelope. The obituary inside had been copied from an Appleton newspaper. His brother died several months ago. Preceding him in death were his parents, Nona and Frank, and his two sisters, Nora and Elsie. He was survived by his one daughter, Winifred.
No mention was made of a brother.
There were more papers inside the envelope, but Rusty did not read them. He lit another cigarette and straightened his left leg, hoping to change the focus of pain in his knee and clear his mind of unwanted thoughts. Ten minutes later he gathered an armload of dirty clothes and climbed the stairs. Maxine opened the door and he carried them into the laundry room.
“I’m going out to the barn,” he said.
He stopped at the dog pen, and the giant white terrier crossbreed came slowly out of her house and looked at him. “That’s okay, old girl. You don’t have to get up. Go back to sleep.”
He continued to the barn. A bitter March wind knifed through his jacket and he stood for a while in the snow, listening to the cold. The horizon of trees drew a ragged edge against the milky sky, an uneven zipper. High overhead a pair of crows beat wings in rhythm, then one branched off to the east as the other continued north. Rusty resumed walking, making fresh tracks in the white, crusted surface.
The barn doors were frozen shut. He kicked one free and dragged it through the icy snow until a slot large enough for him opened up.
Inside, he put away several tools that were lying on the bench, hanging them in their proper places along the pegboard.
Don’t make no difference, he thought. They’re dead. Knowing it didn’t change anything. Not one pale sliver of the real world had changed.
He walked deeper into the building, into the long room where the cows had been milked. The stale smell of cow hide and manure still lingered here. Stanchions rose out of the concrete in two skeletal rows. Iron sentinels. In the dim light the whitewashed walls turned gray, the massive oak beams in the ceiling outlined by long troughs of shadow.
The empty room magnified the silence, and the shuffling sound of his boots against the concrete dissolved into it. He sat on a plywood box next to a window and stared into the woods in back of the barn. Dark trunks like black marble pillars rose out of the snow.
He looked through the window for a long time, until the light faded from the afternoon and the inside of the barn had become as dark as a tomb. Dead, he thought. All dead and lying in the ground, and I’m the oldest. Doesn’t seem right. A bottomless error.
The wind rattled the frame of the window.
Cold in here, he thought, lighting a cigarette and struggling to his feet.
Then he heard a sound and his heart stopped momentarily, sharpening his attention to a fine point. He dropped the glowing cigarette and squashed it. In the haymow above him something moved.
Walking in the loose hay.
Heavy.
Human heavy.
In his barn.
Hiding.
A faint sound, a groan.
Silence again.
Utter silence.
Rusty eased back onto the plywood box. He sat very still, looking from time to time at the ladder leading to the mow, which could hardly be seen in the darkness. Twenty minutes later as he rose again to leave, a loud clamoring, scrabbling sound came from the far end of the building.
M
ore movement above in the hay.
Heavy walking.
Then nothing.
Rusty crept out of the barn, leaving the slot in the door open and following his own trail in the snow to the house. In the basement he loaded his rifle and shoved a flashlight into his jacket pocket. He ignored Maxine, who opened the stair door and announced that dinner would be ready in a short time.
Halfway to the barn, he stopped.
People desperate enough to be hiding in privately owned, unheated barns would probably be capable of some violence if they were threatened. Just what did he intend to do?—carry the rifle up the ladder, shine the flashlight around, and take aim? His knees would give out before he reached the top.
He went to the garage and drove away in the pickup.
Five miles later July Montgomery opened his front door and invited Rusty inside his small kitchen. Rusty refused.
“I need your help. Someone is in my barn. I heard ’em. I need you to climb up there and find out who it is.”
“Sure, Rusty,” said July, buttoning a long- sleeved cotton shirt around his undershirt. “Step in here while I get ready. I just finished milking and took a shower. Want a cup of coffee?”
“I’m in a hurry.”
Rusty stepped just far enough into the kitchen to close the door behind him.
July sat at the oak table and pulled a pair of white socks and brown boots over his feet and a short time later followed Rusty home in his own pickup.
Maxine came out to greet them when they pulled in the drive, and Rusty told her to go back inside. “I’ve got something in the barn to show July.”
Rusty took his rifle from behind the front seat and they walked together across the snow.
“You got any lights in there?” whispered July.