Preston Falls : a novel

by Gates, David, 1947-

  Willis is headed home, crashing like a motherfucker. Gray daylight now, but he keeps the headlights on because the speedometer and all the dashboard shit look cozier lighted up, like having a fire going. But this music's irritating the fuck out of him. Even the name. Public Enemy: like it's some big irony. He flips up the little handle on the tape deck and yanks it out of the dash, and that by Jesus shuts the son of a bitch up. He rolls down the window, heaves the thing backhanded right across the road and into the brush, then the bag of tapes after it, plastic cassette boxes flying open in the wind, clattering on pavement. In the mirror he catches them scattering in an instant of red taillight.

  This road should be familiar; it's just that the rain and fog are fucking everything up. And it really pisses him off, because he is not lost. He thinks about stopping the truck and getting out and chucking the God damn guitar and amp over the side too. But he's sort of out of that mood now and on to money worries. Up ahead he sees a billboard with the Marlboro Man slinging what looks like a pair of leg braces over his shoulder. Shit, so he's somehow crossed over into New York State? Vermont has that billboard law. Actually, they must be branding irons. Leg braces, Jesus. Willis himself used to be a Marlboro Man, in the sense that he used to smoke Marlboros. Oh, years ago. He could do with a fucking Marlboro right now. Maybe he'd better pull over somewhere.

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  put the guitar and amp in the cab out of the wet and see if he can't nap a little.

  Sometime after the billboard he passes a picnic area: green-painted tables, green-painted trash barrel with a crow perched on the rim. He finds a driveway to turn around in and doubles back; the crow flies away when he pulls in. He shuts the engine off, his ears still roaring, gets out, smells the good piney smell and lets rain soak his hot head. He starts to shiver. He wrestles the amp out of the back and sticks it on the floor of the cab on the passenger side, then tilts the seat-back forward to put the guitar case in the space behind. And there's the duffel bag he never remembered to bring into the house, with the .22 inside.

  Now the rain's pinging on the metal and bouncing off the windshield. So it's hail, actually; can that be possible? He locks the doors and lies down on the seat, knees bent, face jammed into the woven seat-back, heavy feet hanging off into space. He closes his eyes: white sparks seething.

  When he finally makes it back to the house, he just leaves all his shit right in the truck and slinks inside like an evfl thing exposed in daylight. The rest of this day is nuked out for sure. Though he's proud to have a day nuked out by drugs again after all this time. He reads Dombey and Son until he falls asleep on the couch, then wakes up with his head hurting. Takes Advil, makes coffee, finishes Dombey. Starts Our Mutual Friend. In the chapter about the R. Wilfer family he falls asleep again, then wakes up from a nightmare he can't remember. It's dark outside.

  He steps into the bathroom to piss in the toilet like a civilized man, and down goes his left foot through the fucking floor and up goes the other end of the board like a seesaw. It's just crawl space under there; his bare foot touches wet, cold earth. Great: so now we've got a hole in the fucking floor. Plus he's scraped the living shit out of his calf and shin, right through his jeans. He works his leg free, goes outside onto the step-stone and pisses into the grass, which is what he should have done in the first place. Big skyful of stars. He feels guilty for not having spent more time looking up at them during his life. Christ, the fucking stars and you're not impressed?

  Okay, better get back in there and start dealing. He yanks that floorboard out, kneels and shines the halogen flashlight in underneath: sure enough, got two floor joists rotted through. And why have two floor

  joists rotted through? Because there's a pipe down there and the son of a bitch is leaking. And what does this mean? This means ripping up enough floor to get down in there to patch the fucking pipe, and then doing something about those joists. Maybe cut away what's rotten— looks like a foot or two of each joist—and piece them back together with pressure-treated two-by-six.

  He gets the pinch bar and wrenches up a couple more floorboards to make room to work, then plugs in a droplight so he can see what the fuck he's doing. Yep, there's your problem right there: little bulge in the copper pipe, with water pissing out of a quarter-inch slit. Son of a bitch froze and split down in there, maybe last winter, maybe the winter before. Or the winter of '72—^who the fuck knows? Okay, so the next step is to shut off the water to the bathroom and hunt around for the plumbing shit.

  He gets that section of pipe cut out, cuts a piece to patch in there and steel-wools the ends. Only then does he discover that he doesn't have any straight fittings. Son of a bitch. So this means he's got to go into town. For two fucking thirty-five-cent pipe fittings. Except everything's probably closed anyway at this hour. Okay, fine: tomorrow. He can make it one night without a bathroom.

  So back to Our Mutual Friend. When he comes to where Silas Wegg tries to buy the bones of his amputated leg, he gets up and starts more coffee. And of course forty-five minutes later has to shit. He takes the roll of toilet paper and the flashlight, gets the shovel out of the woodshed and heads out behind the house. In a stand of sumac he's been meaning to cut down he sets the flashlight on the ground; by its light he digs a hole, takes down his pants and squats over it like a fucking aborigine. The Robert Blys was a good name and not too obscure.

  He takes three fingers of Dewar's up to bed. This puts him under, but an hour later he wakes up quaking from some dream about the devil. He turns on the light and reads awhile. Goes downstairs for more Dewar's. Sleeps again, sort of. Eventually it's gray outside the window, then blue. He goes down and starts coffee.

  He makes it into town in time to have the morning bowel movement in the rest room at Stewart's. Front page of the Rutland Herald says it's Friday; so a week ago he was in his office in New York? Not possible. He remembers to get Calvin Castleman's $150, then hits the post office

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  for the first time since he's been up here. Bunch of junk mail, and bills for fucking everything. Then to True Value, where he picks up four fittings—couple extra just in case.

  In Calvin's dooryard, he pulls up behind that big-ass Ford F-250, with the homemade stake body and the deck of rough-sawed lumber where Calvin's piled his woodcutting shit: two chainsaws, peavey, gas can, jug of bar-and-chain oil. He finds Calvin out by the Cadillac; the engine's suspended above the gaping hood by block and tackle rigged up to a branch of a maple tree, and yellow leaves are plastered on the windshield.

  "Look like you're raising holy hell," says Willis.

  "Yah, had to pull the fuckin' engine." Calvin sets an extra-long wrench down on the fender.

  "Thought I better come pay you for that wood." Willis gets out his wallet. "Td have come by sooner, but I guess you heard about my little— adventure." He was about to say contretemps. No response. "Hundred and fifty?"

  "Yup." Not quite an ayup. Calvin wipes hands on pants and works his bulging wallet out of his hip pocket.

  Willis counts out the bills. "By the way. I also wanted to thank you for putting me onto your lawyer."

  Calvin nods. "He will get the job done." He takes a pack of Luckies out of his shirt pocket. "So you and him hit it off, did you?" He lights the cigarette with a pink plastic lighter.

  "Yeah. He seems to be an okay guy." It feels like a bad idea to teU Calvin about going over to jam. Though why, exactly?

  "I had an idea you and him probably hit it off," says Calvin. "Him playing in a band, and I know you play some. Once in a while I'll hear you if the air's just right."

  "You're kidding. Shit, you have to let me know if it bothers you." He sees the pure white paper of the cigarette is grimy where Calvin's fingers touched it. Jesus, every once in a while the smell of a fucking cigarette.

  "Nah, don't bother me. See, I had an idea you probably hit it off."

  It's like every other conversation with Calvin Castleman: the subtext is that Willis doesn't know what
the subtext is.

  Crouched in that hole in the bathroom floor, Willis smears on the soldering paste and pushes pipe and fittings together; he fires up the BernzOmatic, touches the solder wire to the hot copper and sees it melt away into quicksilvery liquid racing in to seal the joint. He gives it a minute to cool, then goes and turns on the water. The pipe shudders and goes still again. He comes back and looks the joints over. Good. But shit—there's a drop of water gathering. Then another. Then a tiny spout whizzing up out of a fucking pinhole. God damn it to shit.

  He goes and cuts off the water again and tries to sweat the son of a bitch apart, but of course now that there's water in the pipe, you can't get it hot enough. So he ends up cutting the son of a bitch. And now he has to go through all this shit again? No fucking way. Out in the shed he's got some radiator hose that should be about the right size and if he's lucky some hose clamps. He cuts off six inches of hose with the hacksaw, works soldering paste into each end with his pinkie, then twists and forces the ends onto the cut-off pipes. He tightens the hose clamps to the point where he's afraid he'll crimp the pipe, turns the water back on, and bingo. After all that fucking BernzOmatic Sturm und Drang. Hillbilly plumbing: why the fuck not?

  The thing with his greased pinkie working in that tight hose inspires him to lie on the couch and haul out the Unnamable just on the off chance. But he can't get it happening. Which is cool. Okay, so now the next thing is, patch those joists and put the floorboards back. Though of course he forgot to stop at the lumberyard for two-by-sixes. Fine. Tomorrow. Today he'll stack that wood, maybe hit that lawn too. He zips up and reads Our Mutual Friend until he starts to doze, then has to wake himself from another devil dream, which he can't remember except that the devil really does have horns.

  Eventually he notices the sky out the window is reddish. If you don't even go out and look at the sunset, then what the fuck is the point? So he goes out and looks at the sunset and what the fuck is the point? Orange cloudbanks, pulsing gold at the edges, and Willis standing there regarding them, with all his bullshit that he can't drop for a second. He goes back inside, the sky still blazing away. It occurs to him that he hasn't checked the answering machine for God knows how long. Shit: the son of a bitch is blinking. One blink. He just knows.

  He hits Play, and Jean's voice says, "1 need to talk with you." So he did know. Which is scary just by itself. It's too late for her to be in her

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  office; she must be home. He goes into the kitchen and dials. She picks up on the first ring.

  "Hi, it's me," he says. "I just got your message. When did you—"

  "I can't talk now."

  "Sorry," he says. "When would be—"

  "I'll call you later." Dial tone.

  Fine. Fuck you too, lady. May he remind her that she asked him to call? Though on the other hand, she's obviously in the middle of putting together a dinner, vetoing unsuitable tv shows, listening to Roger piss and moan about how Net Nanny blocks him off too many Web sites, starting subtly to steer the evening toward a quiet bedtime. All the shit he should be there to help with. It's the end of their first week of school, and he hasn't so much as spoken to his children. Though wasn't he forbidden to? Okay, what you don't want right now is to start thinking about when you used to read to them, Mel always on your left and Roger on your right, both in flannel pj's, a child's head resting against each shoulder. But hey: there they are and here you are. And isn't this the way you wanted it?

  He puts on VPR and starts fixing oatmeal. They're playing some generic nineteenth-century piano shit. Schumann? He stirs in raisins, and it turns out the old ear's still good: the piano goes into fucking Trdumereiy so this must be Kinderscenen. And that's enough of that. He kills the boombox and eats his oatmeal while reading the part of Our Mutual Friend where Noddy Boffin starts pretending to be obsessed with misers; then he takes his bowl and spoon out to the kitchen and steps outside into the warm, breezy dark. Stars and a half-moon. He just can't get his head around it that each of these things is like the sun and that some could be whole fucking galaxies. Well, not really at the top of his list.

  By eleven o'clock Jean still hasn't called back, and he starts coffee. (What would be great is some cocaine.) He's halfway through his first cup when the phone rings.

  "I was starting to wonder if you'd gone to bed," he says.

  "No. I've been busy. What happened at your thing?"

  "What, the court thing?"

  Jean says nothing, which he takes to mean yes.

  "It went okay," he says. "Fifty-doUar fine."

  "Well, Good for you."

  He says nothing.

  "So now what happens?" she says.

  "In what sense?" he says.

  She says nothing.

  "Listen," he says. "I agree that things haven't been going well."

  "Oh, so you agree with that."

  "That's not helpful, Jean."

  "Well, what do you think would be helpful?"

  "I don't know," he says. "Maybe having this time apart?"

  "Oh," she says. "So you come back at the end of October and everything will be fine."

  "Why are you—"

  "We could go somewhere as a family again and not have it end up you being taken away in handcuffs'}''

  "That wasn't completely my fault," he says. "As you know. But I understand that I should have controlled myself. And Fm incredibly humiliated that you had to see it—and especially that the kids saw it."

  ''You were humiliated? Tell me something. Have you thought about trying to get some help in controlling yourself? Or with any of your other problems?"

  "Like what other problems?"

  "I don't even really know anymore," she says. "Whatever it is that's making you so dissatisfied."

  "Well, I'm hoping that I can use this time away to get a handle on some of that."

  "But since you already spend as much time away from us as possible, I don't quite see how this is supposed to help."

  He says nothing.

  "You're due back at work when?" she says.

  "October thirty-first, Halloween. Appropriate, wouldn't you say?" Whatever this means: probably something as witless as Witches are had and so is going hack to work.

  She says nothing.

  "That's a Monday," he says.

  "Then I guess we'll see you that Sunday night."

  "This feels so terrible." He takes a sip of coffee, which has gotten cold.

  "Listen," she says. "It's eleven o'clock, I'm exhausted, I've just gotten the kids to bed, and now I have approximately half an hour to myself. In which I can either wash my hair and clean the downstairs

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  bathroom or I can do what I feel like doing, which is have some scotch and feel sorry for myself. What I don't feel like doing is trying to think of something to say that will make you feel better about yourself. Because I don't actually think you should."

  "Isn't Carol there?" he says. Damned if he's going to let her bait him.

  "No."

  "But I thought she—"

  "She'll be here sometime next week. She stopped off for a couple of days in Taos."

  "I think I'd better come down there," he says.

  "As someone who wishes you well, I wouldn't."

  "Would not}'' he says.

  "You'd be coming back to someone who would not be fun to be with. And who would probably not snap out of it at the first kind word."

  "Well," he says, "maybe you need this time too."

  Silence.

  "I have to go now," she says.

  "Wait."

  "For what? For me to break down weeping? Or for you to? So you can get your little jolt of feeling for the night?"

  "Jean, you're not actually telling me anything about myself I don't know."

  "Good night," she says.

  Dial tone.

  Well. Okay, so whatever that was about, he guesses it wasn't a summons to Chesterton. Unless it's up to him to figure out that it
was. Willis unplugs the phone to prevent a hysterical callback: he didn't like the sound of that thing about the scotch. The coffee's starting to brighten him up, though, so maybe he'll play some guitar. But maybe instead of punishing his ears with the electric tonight, he should get out the J-200, which he feels sorry for because it never gets played anymore. He fetches it in from the woodshed and opens the case: the strings are rough with rust. There should be steel wool under the sink; he looks, then remembers it's still in the bathroom with the plumbing shit. He loosens each string in turn, pinches and rubs the steel wool along it until it squeaks, then tunes it back up. Shit, great-sounding guitar. A crime that it never gets used.

  I

  By Saturday night, Wrayburn has married Lizzie and Rokesmith is still dodging Lightwood, who could finger him as Julius Handford. Willis sets the alarm so he can go to church in the morning—not because of this devil shit, especially, though it is weird to have so many dreams about the devil. Though you could dismiss that as a father thing, probably. It's because he just feels sort of out there. But won't it make him feel even more out there to watch himself going to church for the first time in however many fucking years? Since he was thirteen, probably, during his mother's Unitarian phase. Still: if shit like the Lord's Prayer makes AAs feel better—^look at Marty Katz—then dot dot dot. It's like he doesn't want to get into magical thinking but he's almost at the point where it's sort of that or get somebody to put him on Prozac. What he wants, really, is more cocaine, which is probably the worst thing for this, whatever this is. Tonight it takes two three-finger jolts of Dewar's to put him under, and he dreams that the devil is sitting on a tall throne that's also sort of the electric chair, except the devil's own energy is powering it.

  When the alarm goes off, he starts coffee and puts on his man-of-the-people Sunday best—brown Dickies work pants, khaki work shirt, with a brown knit tie. Kind of a Nazi vibe, actually. Hey, the old man would be proud. So balmy this morning he doesn't need a jacket. Can it be Indian summer already?