Preston Falls : a novel

by Gates, David, 1947-

  She slips out of bed, pulls the sheet over him, silently unzips her bag and finds clean underwear, socks, t-shirt, jeans and her book; still in her nightgown, she creeps out into the hall. She stops outside Mel's door, then Roger's, to listen for their breathing, then tries to steal down the stairs without making them creak (good luck), to change in the bathroom. But Rathbone has heard her: he waits at the foot of the stairs, tail wagging.

  She opens the kitchen door to let him out and stands barefoot on the cold stepstone. Beyond the unmowed meadow, it's still dark under the trees. So empty of sound this morning; depressing up here when the birds have gone. This has been the worst summer she can remember: too hot, too tropical. Probably because of what's being done to the planet. In Chesterton, weeds crowded out the basil and fennel and dill she'd planted in the backyard, even though she tried to get out there for at least a couple of minutes every day. (One more thing that was her fault yet not her fault.) Plus the rabies epidemic, mostly in raccoons but also in bats and foxes and skunks. She'd even been afraid to let Mel and Roger pet Rathbone: though he'd had his shots, what if he tangled with some rabid animal whose saliva . . . and so forth and so on.

  Though she hates to admit it, Preston Falls was probably no worse than Westchester County. Right in Ossining, a woman was bitten by a fox while working in her garden. Another woman, in Larchmont, was attacked by a raccoon while putting out the garbage. Jean warned Mel

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  and Roger: You never, ever, approach a strange animal. And guess how the epidemic started. She found this out from the vet where they took Rathbone. A bunch of coon hunters in North Carolina ran out of local raccoons to kill, so they trucked in new raccoons from Florida and a third of them turned out to be rabid, and the rabies has just crept north and north and north. Completely and absolutely a male thing.

  But her own truly scary moment came in Preston Falls. On Fourth of July weekend, a raccoon tottered into the dooryard in broad daylight, eleven o'clock in the morning. Rathbone—who, thank God, was in the house—started barking his head off and the raccoon didn't even react. Willis ran upstairs and came back down with this gun, for God's sake, that Jean had no idea he even had. This rifle, with a telescope. A real Lee Harvey Oswald special. In their house. He slid aside an inch of the screen they'd put in the kitchen window, dropped to one knee, and rested the gun on the windowsill. The crack of it echoed off the house, then off the hills, but Jean could swear she also heard just the little thoonk that was the bullet hitting. The raccoon stood still a second, shivered, then tipped over, his legs started clawing, and Willis shot him again as Mel came running in, shrieking, "What is going onT' Jean said, "My God, where's Roger?" and Roger said, "I'm right here. Mom'' giving the Mom that extra little edge of contempt. He was standing in the doorway to the dinmg room, taking in the whole scene. Willis shot the animal a third time, and Jean said, "Isn't that enough}''

  He turned and looked up at her. ''You want to do this?"

  Gun in hand, he walked out into the yard as Jean and Mel and Roger crowded at the screen door. Like the young'uns and womenfolk watching Pa, in some movie. Willis approached the animal slowly, keeping the gun pointed. It didn't move. He stood right over it and shot down, twice more.

  He came back into the kitchen and asked if there were rubber gloves.

  "What are you going to do?" said Jean.

  "Dig a hole, stick him in, torch him, cover him up," said Willis. "Thing was obviously rabid."

  "I want to watch," said Roger.

  "Shouldn't you call the health department or something?" said Jean.

  "I doubt they care," said Willis. "Rabid raccoon number ten thousand eight hundred and fifty-seven. We have those gloves or not?"

  "Let me look," she said. "What about—did he bleed out there?"

  "No. He was one of those new-model raccoons that's all solid-state." Then he quickly said, "Actually, he bled less than you'd think."

  "But it could spread from just blood, couldn't it?" she said. "Like what if some animal got into it? Or if Rathbone—you know."

  "Fine," he said. "You're worried about it, pour gas over it and we'll torch that too. That can be your contribution to public health."

  Willis went for the gas can and the shovel, and she found a pair of yellow rubber gloves under the sink; he leaned the shovel against his shoulder to put them on. Then he walked over to pick up the raccoon, Roger a step behind. (Mel had gone back upstairs in tears.) Jean sloshed gasoline over where she saw blood on the grass—Willis was right; she'd expected more—then carried the gas can way far away. She wadded a page of the Times business section into a ball, touched a match to it, tossed it at the spot, and a wall of flame whooshed up. When the fire died down, she rubbed the sole of her shoe across the burned earth, and tiny pale flames sprouted up again.

  Finally she went inside. From the window she could see Willis out in the meadow, standing watch over his own fire, shovel braced in his armpit, baseball cap on his head, looking, at that distance, just like a local. His big dream.

  At least none of them got rabies, that was one good thing you could point to. Except for Memorial Day and the Fourth, she and the kids ended up not spending much time in Preston Falls. She'd already used up most of her vacation on days Mel and Roger had off during the school year. And after working all week and taking the train home, she'd be too bushed to face that four-hour drive on Friday night. And then the four hours back on Sunday afternoon. So on Friday evenings Willis would stay long enough to have dinner and help put the kids to bed, then stick some things in his truck and off he'd go. We can deal, he'd said, way back when she told him she was pregnant the first time, and admitted the timing wasn't terrific. This was the answer she'd wanted. (The tone was just Willis being Willis.) And that, Jean thought then, was their true wedding day. Though of course she never said so, for fear of putting him off. We can deal. So of course who's dealing now?

  She definitely had the right to say something about this gun suddenly appearing out of nowhere, no matter how seldom she came up here. But even by the Fourth of July, with two months of summer still to get through, she was weary. So she simply said, "I trust you keep that thing locked up."

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  He sighed his martyr sigh. "I'm not a complete asshole," he said. "Whatever opinions there are to the contrary."

  But the next day, after he came back from doing errands in town, she was rooting around in his truck, looking for his county map, and found a True Value bag behind the seat, with a bicycle lock in it. All the bicycles were down in Chesterton. And they already had locks.

  The stepstone's too cold to stand on any longer with bare feet. She comes back inside, leaving Rathbone to run; Willis claims he knows to stay out of the road. She takes her clothes into the bathroom, lifts off her nightgown, pees, puts in a new tampon, washes her hands and face, brushes her teeth. Toilet needs a good scrubbing, especially with people coming today—one of those things it's easier just to do yourself than to nag Willis about fifty times. Though it does seem excessive to be up scrubbing toilets at five-thirty in the morning. She gets the can of Vanish out from under the sink, pours some in and closes the lid on the frothing and hissing.

  She makes a pot of coffee, takes down the white mug that says JOE, puts it back and takes the black mug with the picture of Alan Jackson— a gift from Carol, who calls him a "babe." The JOE mug had been a gift to Jean's father for his seventy-sixth, and last, birthday. Mel had picked it out, from a revolving rack at Kmart; she was five then, and so proud of being able to read. He thanked her and patted her head, but he was second only to Willis in seeing what crap everything was. When he gave Mel that little mocking smile Jean had seen a million times, she could've hit him: her own father, who she knew was dying. The mug turned up in a box of stuff Carol had packed for Jean when she went through the house in Sarasota after Mom died. Jean, in turn, stuck it in a box of stuff for Preston Falls, where Willis took to using it. Figure that one out. Because Willis hadn
't liked her father (who had?), and it was like drinking out of a dead enemy's skull. Or because of the expression cup of Joe. Or because he thought Joe was a joke name. Willis always has about five reasons for everything.

  It's still only quarter to six. She takes her coffee into the living room (Alan Jackson really is a babe) and settles in on the sofa with Sense and Sensibility. It's the part where WiUoughby publicly humiliates Marianne, and Jean's secretly cheering him on. Which worries her. You're supposed to identify with Elinor and feel bemusement at Marianne, but Jean absolutely loathes Marianne and wants to see her get her stupid face rubbed in it. So she must be bringing her own whatever to this.

  There's a tv in his dream, the old cabinet kind where the screen's behind doors, and he opens it to a movie where a whore is taking off her blouse, then her actual brassiere; you see the man's hard-on beneath his jockey shorts. Unbelievable: this is on television, where children might be watching? Willis resists getting involved with the whore himself, aware that he's in bed dreaming and there's the problem of cleanup. Instead he goes out to the sidewalk, realizes he's got no clothes on and wakes up. He's alone in bed in daylight in Preston Falls. The Unnamable is arching and aching: he reaches into his jockey shorts and grabs the shaft so the head's sticking out of his fist. Just a boy and his dick. No. Better just get up, go downstairs and piss.

  Through the open window, a phoebe's two notes, like someone softly beckoning. Otherwise, silence. He pulls on yesterday's jeans (the Unnamable already subsiding) and yesterday's t-shirt. Rathbone hears him from down in the living room; his nails come clicking up the stairs and here he is, panting and wagging. Willis strokes his head and sings, Oh doggie, doggie, it's a wild world — doody-doody-doody-doody-dump, then goes downstairs with Rathbone pushing past him, trotting to the kitchen door, looking back, wagging harder. Willis lets him out, then sees, sticking out of the refrigerator door, an envelope with a note written on the back:

  Took kids to town to get chicken etc. Coffee is on the stove.

  }

  He gets the JOE mug down, pours in milk, then fills it with cold coffee. He splits a fork-split Thomas' English muffin with a paring knife— hey, fuck them —sticks the ragged, cratered halves in the toaster and gets

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  out the butter. Be a kick to do that thing where you make the Indian maiden's tawny knees into her breasts, which is still about the most hilarious fucking thing in the world. Except Jean will see the creases in the cardboard. Unless you stick the box in the garbage. No. Insanity. It's also insane to start off your day—your two months—with a bunch of butter when the idea is to be light and free. Dear God, help me, he prays, and is amazed to find himself actually putting the butter back, as if a higher power were guiding his hand. Woo, scary shit.

  He eats the English muffin dry, washing it down with seltzer a meme la houteille. With the kids gone, this would be a good time to wrap those condoms, if he can remember where he put them. They're a gag present for Champ and Tina, the comic prologue to their real present: a weekend at Mohonk Mountain House, where they'd once spent a night after Tina won five hundred dollars in the lottery. Oh right: they're still out in the truck, behind the seat. And there used to be wrapping paper on the top shelf in the pantry, left over from when they spent Christmas here three years ago. (They kept it out of sight because it was the paper Santa's gifts had been wrapped in; three years ago Roger stiU believed.) Willis drags a chair into the pantry and finds the dusty rolls still up there: snowflakes, holly and shit, Christmas balls, Falstaffian Santas, one roll just with season's greetings over and over and over. Hey, in for a dime: let's go with the balls. He cuts off what looks about right with a carving knife—thinking Did you ever see such a sight in your life? —and then it takes him ten minutes of yanking drawers and banging cupboard doors before he finds where the fucking Scotch tape got put.

  He steps outside, stiU barefoot, onto the sun-warmed stepstone, and smells the air. Loamy, grassy, little hit of pine—Jesus, you could bottle this shit. At the top of the maple tree, a few leaves have turned red. Rathbone, who must have heard the screen door slap, comes tear-assing around the side of the woodshed with a stick in his mouth. So Willis walks a few steps out into the wet grass, soaking his feet and the cuffs of his jeans. This gets old in a hurry. He makes a token lunge for the stick while Rathbone dances away, then he goes back inside, thinking Du wuschest mir die Fiisse. At one point in his life (when Jean was pregnant with Mel, in fact) he went to see Hans Jiirgen Syberberg's Parsifal film twelve times in twelve days.

  Time is it, anyway? Ten o'clock? Better go pay off Calvin Castleman before he comes pulling into the dooryard honking his horn. One morning last fall, Willis came back upstairs (still half asleep) after paying

  Calvin for a load of wood, took his pants off again, got back in bed and explained to Jean that this was a country thing, the noninvasive alternative to coming right up and banging on your door. "Oh please," she said. "People with manners cally on the telephone, at a civilized hour, to ask if it's convenient.''

  Willis puts on his green Dickies work shirt, mostly so he'll have a pocket to stick his checkbook in—certainly not to make Calvin Castleman think he's anything but a weekend pussy from Westchester. The thing is, what could you wear in Preston Falls that wouldn't be a costume? This morning it no longer seems worth getting into a big thing about where Calvin dumped the wood. Shit, it's got to be stacked anyway.

  He takes the truck over, though really he should walk the three-tenths of a mile, whatever, if he's so serious about getting healthy. But that would be a gaffe in Preston Falls. By his driveway, Calvin has a sign saying GUN SHOP SAWS SHARPENED FIRE WOOD, and what could pass for a piece of metal sculpture: an oil drum sliced lengthwise with a cutting torch to make a trough, welded to an angle-iron stand. HOG ROSTER FOR HIRE. Calvin also wheels and deals used cars, sells vodka and Canadian whiskey on Sundays for a five-dollar markup and works on slate roofs. He once offered to install a new metal roof for free in return for Willis's roofing slates. Willis turned him down, then worried that a real country person would have jumped at the deal. You also used to see BMWs and Lincoln Town Cars jouncing in and out of Calvin's driveway late at night, but he seems to have cooled that after he was busted last year and his lawyer got him off on some bullshit technicality. Ever since Willis started coming over, the gun cabinet in the shop part of the trailer has had the same three guns, with manila tags hanging from their trigger guards: a single-shot 20-gauge ("Asking %35'')', a double-barrel 12-gauge ("$175 firm") and a 12-gauge pump ("$125"). This was where Willis bought his .22, a Marlin with a scope and a composite varmint—head of woodchuck, tail of rat—carved into the stock. Calvin hides his real guns in the living quarters of his trailer, in a compartment behind a curio cabinet with blown-glass elephants and little china Dutch girls.

  Calvin Castleman's out front, leaning into the engine of a rotting Cadillac with a peeling vinyl roof; over the fender he's draped a greasy red plastic thing with indecipherable traces of white lettering.

  "Ho," says Willis. Preston Falls-speak for Hello. "This your rig, Calvin?"

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  Calvin straightens up, wiping blackened hands on blackened work pants. "Is now," he says. His pubic-looking beard has an inch-wide white streak down one side, whatever that's about. Deep, grimy lines in the red face, though he can't be forty.

  "Where'd you find 'er?" says Willis. Probably pushing it, though Calvin's asked him shit that's way more personal. When Calvin first came by and introduced himself—Willis had been unloading a U-Haul with stuff from Chesterton—he asked straight out what they'd paid for the place. Willis thought it was stupidly coy not to tell him; he was also proud of getting it for his lowball offer. Calvin pressed his lips together as if with sudden heartburn, turned away and shook his head; then he turned back and said he'd had his eye on the place for the woodlot but didn't have any use for another house. Willis assumes Calvin hasn't forgotten getting boned—or giving himself awa
y for that little moment. He also assumes tnat Calvin assumes he hasn't forgotten.

  "Took it in trade," says Calvin.

  "So what's she need?"

  "Oh, this and that. Leastways the engine's free and the fuckin' block ain't cracked."

  "You keep it or fix up to sell?" Willis talks the talk better and better.

  "Somebody come by and twist my arm they probably could have it. Hell, fresh coat of paint? Little bodywork? Set of wire wheels instead of them fuckin' piece of shits they got on there?"

  Willis nods to show he can envision it. "Listen, let me write you a check for that load of wood."

  "Tell you the truth, I just as soon wait till you got the cash on you. More I can keep my business the hell out of everybody's fuckin' computers, happier I fuckin' am."

  "I hear you," says Willis. "Sure. I can go down to the cash machine."

  " 'Cause it's all the one computer, you know? That's where we're gettin' to. After that bullshit here last year, I had 'em come and take out their fuckin' telephone. I told 'em, I said, I don't even want your fuckin' cable goin' in my house. They were listenin' in on the fuckin' telephone. My lawyer found that out."

  "Yeah, I remember you telling me," says Willis.

  "Good job I had him, or I'd been in jail right now with all the niggers. And this is what your God damn taxes go for."

  "Hey, that and Bill Clinton's salary." Contempt for Bill Clinton is

  their common ground politically. True, Willis comes at it from the left and Calvin from the right, but still. Willis sometimes thinks Calvin's shit about niggers and liberals might just be a sort of ritual ordeal he puts you through to test your worthiness. "So listen, I better get a move on if I want to hit that cash machine. I got my brother coming up later on."

  "Hell, you got company this weekend I ain't in no hurry," Calvin says. "Next time you come up be good enough."