No One Is Coming to Save Us

by Stephanie Powell Watts

  Henry had told her she was too beautiful to be serving platters of food. At the time it hadn’t sounded slick or like a practiced line, but she make the mistake of telling her sister, who had rolled her eyes, like she’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book. Carrie had to look around to see if he was talking to her. He was a handsome man, a respectable man, not a bum or a user-fool like most of the other men who hit on her at the restaurant. There was nothing nasty about the way he admired. He seemed to have been thinking out loud. He remembered her from high school he said, from class he said, but he couldn’t remember the class. She had not remembered him. Most of the black people, even the ones in her own graduating class, had been a mystery. She had not been friends with any of them.

  “You don’t remember me, do you?” he’d asked.

  “I probably do,” she’d said.

  “I sat in the seat with your name carved in it. Some lovesick boy carved it.”

  “Kids.” She laughed though she’d been flattered at the memory.

  “Okay let me know if you need anything,” she’d said, but she was sure something had just started with the two of them.

  HENRY WOULD SHOW. He always came eventually.

  Her sister was afraid to believe. People are afraid to believe in their own hearts, Carrie thought. She couldn’t blame her for doubt. The fear, the judgment from those who always have the answers, those whose cynicism makes them fear faith in the sunrise, how much less will they believe in the power of transformation in the lives they were living. Carrie knew she was a little ridiculous, but she loved Henry. Was it so impossible that their situation might end well? That her faith in that love could be rewarded and everything turn out okay? She wasn’t gambling. Gamblers lose. They know they will lose and wait for things to come crashing in on them. She wasn’t gambling.

  Of course the start of a day can be very different from the end. Carrie had started the day feeling all that hopefulness. She had seen Henry sad, she knew he was hurting. It couldn’t be long before their real lives could begin. After fourteen unanswered texts and the after the clock struck 9:00 P.M., then ten and now five past eleven, and, she couldn’t keep believing, her love, her hope which is love in action, had bled away from her body.

  Henry’s key turned in the trailer door. He opened it slowly like he feared he might be too noisy. “Carrie, baby you awake?”

  Carrie watched the television as if she had been struck deaf and hadn’t heard Henry enter.

  “How are you?”

  “Did you bring anything?” she said still staring at the television screen.

  “What?”

  “When you used to fuck up at least you’d bring a gift.”

  “I’m here. I said I’d be here. What are you watching?”

  “Television.” Carrie had seen that episode of the Twilight Zone many times. The newlyweds have car trouble and end up in a town where they find a machine that tells the future. Quickly the newlyweds became obsessed with the vague predictions from the toy in the diner. People looked for signs everywhere.

  Henry sat at the edge of the couch and made sure that a full cushion separated him from Carrie. He had not wanted to hurt her or his baby. She knew that. She had to know it. He wasn’t sure how not to hurt them. Henry almost got up to look in on Zeke. The door to his room had a wooden sign with his name in different color letters. Carrie would go crazy if he woke up their son.

  If you squinted and didn’t look up, you’d think you were in a condo. Once inside you wouldn’t know you weren’t living in a nice-looking apartment. and not a trailer at all. The only trailers Henry had ever seen before this one had been flimsy things with walls that looked and felt like corrugated cardboard and if a big man fell the whole works might tumble down after him. Not Carrie’s trailer. It was a nice one, a double-wide, nobody’s cheap. You might hear the word trailer and think extreme poverty, tin can living, and there is a reality to that, no question, but some of them are nice, built well, and only in some moments with some turn of thought do you remember the world under your feet could be hooked up to a truck or hoisted on a flat bed and taken anywhere. Carrie’s trailer felt permanent and open with good height ceilings. The walls solid, real-feeling, not like living in a gas station bathroom like Henry had assumed. Carrie’s parents had bought the whole thing for her, almost brand-new, gave to her the three acres of land that the house sat on. From her porch there was a beautiful view of a copse of trees and just beyond them, the surprise sparkle of a faraway neighbor’s pond. Nice if you liked that kind of thing or if you hadn’t spent the best part of your life trying to escape it. Carrie’s father and uncle had cleared the land for her and leveled the road to her door. They didn’t say it, but these kindnesses were their last acts to her, a generous good-bye that meant they wouldn’t have to feel guilty for never speaking to her again. She was invisible or worse, she never existed. They were the answer to the question, What kind of people buy off their own child? All Henry could think about were the underbrush, the small animals, the ticks that lived in those woods unheard and unseen except for the nasty discovery of them stuck to you eating you alive from the inside out.

  On no day did Henry ever conceive of himself living in that trailer. Henry had never loved Carrie, though he liked her. He tried to love her, but it wouldn’t take. Years ago he had almost walked out on her and the relationship. They saw each other so little and nothing had happened that he couldn’t just walk from yet. He’d never planned on a relationship, but a casual thing, nothing serious, just a nothing to get him over the hump. She had not wanted more than that either. But she’d gotten pregnant. How does that even happen anymore? They were grown people with grown people’s choices. The fact that they were in this predicament was terrifying and ridiculous. But there was nothing to do. Henry tried to believe that he wanted a permanent life with Carrie, and there were moments over the years that he almost convinced himself that his future would include her. But that feeling never stuck for long.

  “I didn’t know if you would let me in.”

  “I didn’t asshole. You have a key.”

  Henry didn’t push it. There had been days Carrie had put the chain on the door and he’d looked like Jack Nicholson from that horror movie. All work and no play, all work and no play.

  “What are you doing here now?”

  “I told you I was coming today.”

  “You said you’d be here to see Zeke. It’s eleven o’clock. He’s been asleep for hours. I didn’t even believe you so I don’t know why I’m mad.”

  Henry moved over on the couch to get closer to Carrie.

  “Don’t move over here. I’m not kidding with you.”

  The couch was a good one, with down back pillows, probably a hand-me-down from her parents. “I couldn’t get away.” Henry thought about what he had done with his day, an early breakfast at McDonald’s, followed by general wandering around town, a quick trip to the thrift store to paw through their DVDs, and finally two episodes of Murder, She Wrote to round out the afternoon.

  “You didn’t work today. I’m not stupid.”

  “I’m sorry, Carrie,” Henry said, and he meant it. He’d had every intention of seeing his son, he wanted to, but he couldn’t help but disappoint. He considered that maybe he liked feeling like a failure, but that didn’t seem to be it. He feared he’d feel like a loser whatever he did. “I’m here now, baby,” He said.

  “Why did you ignore my calls?” Carrie asked and looked directly into Henry’s eyes. Henry was smart enough to know there was no answer that would suffice for this question.

  “I told you to call me. I told you it was an emergency. Didn’t you worry or care? Didn’t you even wonder?”

  Henry had finally turned his phone off to avoid talking to Carrie. He couldn’t stand to hear her disappointment. “I’m sorry, baby,” Henry said, and he felt it. If she kept drilling at him he would cave and tell her how sad he was, how his life left him turned inside out, nothing satiated him for long, but any go
od feeling ran with ferocity out the sieve of his heart, how he couldn’t imagine how he would make it from this year to the next year until he finally didn’t have to worry about it anymore, how the best he could do, or make, or believe gave him so little. Worst of all, he was a grown man, almost a middle aged man and he still didn’t understand what the hell he wanted.

  “There is really something wrong with you. I’m so sorry I didn’t see it sooner.” Carrie looked back at the television screen. The actor that would later play Captain Kirk was frantically reading his fortunes from the penny machine. No matter how insignificant every one of them sounded like prophecy.

  “I saw your wife,” Carrie said.

  “Where?” Henry asked.

  Lights flooded the trailer windows. You didn’t venture out there in the sticks, not out as far as Carrie lived, unless you are very lost or on a mission. Henry got up to see and turned on the floodlights outside. “Where did you see her, Carrie?”

  “So now you’re interested in talking to me?”

  “Did you go to my house?” Henry turned to look at Carrie. His organs were melting, his inner self dissolving into a slime puddle that would eventually ooze out his ears and onto the carpet.

  “You expecting somebody Henry? Don’t you dare bring anybody to this house.”

  Henry opened the curtains. “Why would I do that? What happened, Carrie! Stop messing with me.”

  “I saw her at Walmart.” Carrie stood beside Henry at the window. A car passed by the trailer and was in the process of turning around. “Do not let anybody in this house? Do you hear what I’m saying?” Carrie hated her breaking voice. “What ass comes to somebody’s house at eleven o’clock anyway, besides you?”

  “Did you talk to her? Why won’t you just tell me?”

  “I tried to tell you. You didn’t care. Who is it?”

  Henry studied the car, a new one with good wheels, a flash of metal not plastic rims.

  “Is it Ava?” Carrie asked.

  “I don’t know,” Henry said irritated. He had not until that moment considered that it might just be Ava. “Looks like just one person.”

  The car stopped in the middle of the dirt road. The driver turned his lights off, thought better of it, and turned the headlights back on.

  “What’s he doing?” Carrie glanced at the door to her son’s room. If there was danger she could take him out the back to the old people that lived down the road, past the pond. They might not like her, but in an emergency they would take her in.

  “Let him wait,” Henry said.

  “Who are you talking about?”

  Henry stepped out onto the porch with his hands on his hips, tried to look brave. The door opened to the car and the man approached the trailer. “You stay in here,” Henry said to Carrie. “Stay in the house, okay?”

  “JJ,” Henry said to the man who just stepped into the floodlight. He hoped he didn’t sound surprised or intimidated. “You better move your car from the road.”

  Jay walked back to his car and parked it beside Henry’s in front of the trailer. He stopped on the bottom step of the trailer and looked up at Henry and then Carrie standing on the small porch.

  “It’s Jay. You doing okay?” Jay had seen Henry with the curtains open staring out at him. He’d almost lost his nerve and gone back home, but when Henry came onto the porch he couldn’t just leave.

  Henry waited just long enough that he hoped Jay would be annoyed.

  “It’s late man,” Henry said with as little warmth as he could. Jay hesitated on the bottom stair, unsure if he should come up on the porch. “What you need?” Henry said but he didn’t look over his shoulder at Carrie. She was almost certainly pissed off by now and he wanted to maintain the upper hand with somebody.

  “I saw your car,” Jay said.

  “Gimme a minute.” Henry turned around and stepped back into the trailer, grabbed his bottle, and walked out onto the small trailer porch.

  Jay waited for him on the bottom step.

  “How are you?” Jay said to Carrie. She stood in the doorway and stared at him. “Didn’t I see you the other day in Simmy’s?”

  Carrie nodded as she crossed her arms over her chest. In the crush of people during the lunch rush, she did remember this quiet man all by himself. He might not have said two words his whole meal.

  “I’m Jay Ferguson.” Jay raised his hand in greeting. Carrie did not wave but kept her hand limp and noncommittal.

  “He just got here anyway,” she said and tilted her head in Henry’s direction. “Are you the one building the house up the road?”

  “Yeah, that’s mine.”

  “My parents live near you on High Top. They can probably see your house.”

  “I could see over the whole valley.” Jay smiled to Carrie. “That’s what I liked about it from the beginning.”

  “Look, man. Visiting hours are over.” Henry tried to make his voice sound easy, but he was annoyed at Carrie and Jay’s conversation.

  “Keep your voice down. Zeke doesn’t need to know you finally showed up,” Carrie said. She wanted Jay to know that despite what was happening to them at that moment she had a respectable house where people worked, sat at the table to eat, didn’t allow strange men in at all hours. Carrie imagined that this man in his nice car and expensive shoes might just think she was Henry’s trash—cheap and disposable. Why else would he come to her house, get out of his car in the middle of the night? You don’t do that with people you respect. She could see in his face he was now ashamed of that.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you had a child here,” he offered to Carrie. “I shouldn’t have bothered you,” Jay said. He’d expected to find out about Henry’s secret life, a woman probably, maybe drinking or drugs, gambling away his money in somebody’s basement. He had not considered a child.

  “Let’s go man,” Henry said.

  Jay nodded at Carrie, who looked over her shoulder at the television screen. The young Captain Kirk and his new wife were in their car, riding away and into an uncertain future they could not predict. That’s what people did, right? Face their uncertain lives together? The Twilight Zone ending almost made her cry. The men had once again noticed each other and she was invisible in her own house.

  “Don’t bother coming back,” Carrie said.

  “Leave me alone right now, Carrie,” Henry said.

  “I mean it this time.” Carrie closed the door behind them.

  Outside the air smelled like gravel dust. The only sound out there in the woods was Jay’s cooling car still ticking in its many joints, an old man making the slow descent down to a low-riding couch. Jay loved the sky up here, inky black so many stars that even the most cynical started to believe in other worlds.

  Henry slid up the bottle he took from the kitchen out of the paper bag. He slid the neck of it up and out like a trombone.

  Jay shook his head no.

  “It’s good. Made in Ireland,” Henry read from the label. “You know those fuckers know how to drink.” Henry took a dainty drink and readjusted his face from the peaty smell. “She’s a good girl.” Henry nodded his head toward the trailer. “She’s just tired.” Henry drank a sip of the whiskey between his clenched teeth. “Tired of me mostly.”

  “That’s on you, man. I don’t know anything about it,” Jay said.

  “I know.” Henry felt his face go hot. “I told you so you would know.” Henry held the bottle on his knee while both men watched the golden liquor settle, the hurricane inside slowing to a stop. “Been a long time.”

  “What does that mean, Henry?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. You look good to a lot of people around here. You know that? That must feel good, right? You must feel like somebody.”

  “All the people in the world that care about me are in this town. That’s all I know.”

  “You think I’ve got fans all over the country? That’s all you get, man. Wait, wait,” Henry said, though Jay had said nothing.

  Jay reached for h
is pocket for his cigarettes, an old habit he couldn’t shake after six years quit.

  “What do you want, Jay? Its spooky as shit out here.” Henry took a quick drink of the whiskey that burned at the back of his throat.

  There are two hundred billion stars in the galaxy, and from where they stood he could see them all. Jay wasn’t afraid. “I don’t mean you any harm, Henry.”

  “You don’t mean me any harm, that’s the funniest thing I’ve heard all night. I know what you’re doing here. You’re not fooling nobody, man. You want me to tell you everything is all okay? Is that it? When did we get to be friends?” Henry spat out. “This is how people lose their goddamn lives, JJ. Running up on people in the dark. Nobody would ever come looking for you out here. You know that?” Henry’s hand started to shake. He could hear everything in that moment, the creaking of the trailer, his son’s turning in his bed, Carrie’s rushed, angry breaths. Everything had fallen and broke into pieces. Somebody had to pay for that. Henry didn’t mind if that person was JJ.

  “You’d have to kill me first,” Jay said quietly. “Can you do that, Henry?”

  Henry gripped the bottle tighter. He had never been a violent man, and beating a man to death, even one he’d been comparing himself to for most of his adult life, wasn’t a part of who he’d ever been. Years and years ago, Ava had told him that JJ had been in Raleigh for days with Ava in her room. He had suspected JJ was somewhere in the picture, but she told him herself. He should have found and killed JJ then.

  Jay reached for his keys, jingled them in his pocket. “This was a bad idea, Henry. I swear to God, I’m not here for craziness. I swear to God.”

  It was almost midnight and the air was still warm, still pleasant enough for a walk. So much violence lay dormant under the surface of the world, waited for the slightest provocation to explode into being. How easy it was to find chaos. These woods that should have consumed them all years ago from foolishness, drunken car rides, hateful men and boys, women too, predators with evil intent, waiting in the shadows for the vulnerable and the left behind. Let those beasts stay hidden.