“I’ll keep the car running.” Then Wayne was on the radio again, checking in with the captain down on the ground, and Sol was suddenly grateful, because Wayne might tell the worst and dirtiest jokes Sol had ever heard in his life, might be a walking invitation to a sexual harassment suit, but he was a rock when things went sideways.
Wayne tapped the hook one last time, gave the order and Sol felt himself lifting, sudden weightlessness, a sway, harness cutting into him. Sky and city and mountains turned a slow disorienting circle. Wind-tears froze on his lashes. He grabbed one of the ropes attached to the basket with one hand, and looked to Marty, whose blue eyes were reflecting sky and not much else.
Shitshitshit.
Sol, now dangling off the side of the building, tore off one latex glove and put his bare hand onto Marty’s chest, into the rip that they’d cut through his vest and shirt and undershirt. Hand to chest, skin to skin. The pressure welling against his fingers was enormous, without heat or cold, so big it was like a whale breaching the ocean’s surface.
“No,” Sol said, firm as the earth, solid, spinning in the wind and the air, a hundred feet in the sky. Flying. “No,” looking Marty in the eyes. “Écoute-moi, Marty. You stay right here, this isn’t anything a doctor can’t fix. We’ll get you down to the ground, into the rig. Wayne drives like every day’s the Indy, five minutes to the hospital. Don’t you get all morbid on me—” and the pressure lessened. Sol checked Marty’s vitals, which were better, his color was better, the eyes blinked and focused.
“Am I gonna die?” Marty asked again as Sol peered over his shoulder, could make out the faces waiting for them on the ground. He glanced back at Marty, shook his head.
“Not this time,” he answered.
* * *
Marty’s paperwork was hellacious, mostly because it was a workplace accident, which always brought out the lawyers. Every T was crossed, every I dotted. Sol put up with Wayne’s running monologue about a stripper he’d once dated while they ate a very late lunch in Denver Health’s cafeteria.
Up until Marty, the shift had been pretty boring, as daytime shifts sometimes were. Now it looked like snow was in the forecast after a surprisingly un-white Christmas, and Sol knew that sale-shoppers rushing home plus snowstorm was sure to equal vehicular disaster.
“I tell ya, Sarrazin,” Wayne went on, oblivious to Sol’s concentration. “The suction that girl could bring to bear—”
Sol held up a hand. Wayne, to his credit, stopped. “Who was the attending?” Sol asked, knowing full well but wanting Wayne to shut the hell up.
Wayne rolled his eyes, told him, and then got up to help himself to another coffee. “Next year, you and Robbie should come with us to Vegas. Cheryl always has a blast and if you fly Christmas Day, it’s a steal. I mean, gambling all night Christmas Eve? It’s like…like…”
Sol glanced up. “Nothing says ‘Come let us adore Him’ like a straight flush.”
Wayne’s smile widened. “Exactly!”
The idea of Robbie spending Christmas Day in Vegas was virtually inconceivable; she always insisted on going to her sister’s and spoiling the nieces and nephews while Renard ran amuck. This year, while they’d been seated for turkey, the dog had eaten an entire gingerbread house left unguarded on a coffeetable, crawled under a bed, and thrown up extravagantly. Sol had heard all about it this morning when she’d come through the door, Renard following sheepishly behind. Sol was glad work provided some excuse for missing this sort of bonne spectacle.
Sol read over the last of the report, signed it, and then stood. “I’m gonna check on Marty, see if he’s out of surgery yet.” Wayne shrugged magnanimously: whatever you say, partner.
Marty was still in the OR, but seemed to be doing well. His wife was in the waiting room and as soon as she spotted Sol and Wayne, she burst into tears, wrapped herself around Wayne’s massive frame, and cried on his uniform. Sol drank from the fountain and tried to make himself invisible, which wasn’t difficult with Wayne around. Mrs. Marty told them that she had always known her husband was going to die on the job, she’d had his chart done.
Sol assumed that Wayne would say something totally inappropriate, given five additional minutes.
Then he realized he could use a few minutes. He gestured to Wayne over the wife’s shoulder, rotated one finger in the air, then splayed all of them wide: take off in five. Marty wasn’t dead, wasn’t even dying thanks to them. Wayne would probably point that out real soon to the missus because Wayne didn’t have a lot of time for superstition.
Down the corridor in Admitting, Sol sweet-talked one of the counter clerks, asked if he could use her computer to check the latest weather warnings, and waited until she was busy with a desk request before tabbing the browser window and entering a new address in the field. He keyed in an EMS search site, and using the login already associated with the terminal, entered the Nebraska system, then made a specific inquiry for Lincoln County.
It had been almost ten days since the last death, after all, and Sol had been keeping an eye on this part of the rail line, just to see if anything else was happening. Ten days and counting; the whole thing felt like a time bomb.
Sol looked up, had to close his eyes briefly before continuing. Ten days since his father’s death, not some anonymous body by the tracks. He swallowed. The last time he’d seen his father in the flesh, he’d been just another stiff, mangled beyond recognition, fingers curled in a ward, and his own son, who had learned all he knew about death and ghosts from those hands, had not known them. That death had been the last one for this particular ghost working the lines in and out of North Platte. Although, technically, it was more than ten days, because Aurie’s ghost had said it had been killed by something different than the ghost both father and son were hunting. If Sol could believe his father’s ghost, Aurie’s killer wasn’t a spirit at all. It was something baser, more lethal. Hated. Les petits mauvais, les diables.
Not something that Sol had ever thought to contend with, a devil. Not something he knew much about.
The computer’s little hourglass circled around, waiting for the site to cough up the data. Not a lot of people had been the subject of EMS responses in Lincoln County over the last ten days, so it didn’t take much effort to scroll through the entries. Then: December 24, two DOAs eight miles west of North Platte down the line at Hershey. Possible murder-suicide, nature of injury blunt trauma to the head. Like with the others in Bailey Yard, Sol thought, knowing it was a stretch. This nice couple hadn’t died in a rail-car, weren’t accountants or retired teachers inexplicably trying to catch a ride at the tracks and getting murdered by a ghost for their troubles. This couple had died in their house. He checked an online map: the house was right by the tracks.
Identity, Paul Hurst and his wife Aileen. Sol wrote this down on a piece of paper, along with the names of the investigating officers and the dead couple’s home address, and folded it into his jacket pocket. He exited the site, erased the history, and got to his feet as the clerk gave the visitor at the counter directions to the outpatient clinics.
Sol called thanks over his shoulder, wondering when he’d get a chance to go back to Nebraska, given that he was working a double shift tomorrow. He wondered why he was really going. Bon Dieu, don’t I have ghosts in Denver? Why go looking for them, even asshole ghosts? But he knew how many had come when Baz had sung, and he felt a sudden chill, a swoop of dread, like he’d forgotten something enormously important. Ghosts were one thing, devils another, and there was Baz, right in the middle. Take care of him, gars. Dammit. Their father had been killed while hunting a ghost, but he’d been killed by a devil. Were ghost and devil linked?
And that’s why he had to go back.
Still the tail end of a shift to go, thank God, otherwise he’d just worry this like a bone, might give in and call, make sure Baz was okay. He returned to the rig, parked out front under the Speer Street entrance, and saw that Wayne was already sitting in the passenger seat, a satisfied smile o
n his round face. Sol tapped the window, and Wayne rolled down obligingly.
“You don’t like that kind of shit, do you?” Wayne asked as Sol held his hand out for the keys. The temperature was dropping, the sky was the color of dryer lint. “The thank yous and the hugs. Sweet baby Jesus, it’s the best damn part of the job. That and the thank-you pussy.”
Sol opened the back, jumped in to stow the cleaned and resupplied ALS kit. He secured the compartment, then returned to the cab, where he took the driver’s seat. Wayne had managed to grab two cans of Coke for them, and since there were no calls from dispatch, they sat for a moment, considering the landscape: low buff and brick-colored buildings, the park just to the north, trees fine and fuzzy as an old lady’s hair.
Sol took the soda without comment, and considered Wayne’s question. “The thanks are just, you know. Not necessary.”
“Aw, you’re such an uptight bastard.” Wayne slurped loudly. “That’s what Robbie tells me anyway.”
“Mais, not when we’re in bed, she don’t,” Sol returned, laughing softly. Robbie had once commented, after a particularly out-of-control staff BBQ, that bear repellent would work well on Wayne.
Wayne shook his head in disbelief. “That guy was circling the drain, man. I mean, seriously, Marty was a cocktail weenie on a toothpick. He’s all pre-code-y, and you’re swinging like Tarzan out there. I’m down the elevator, get to the bottom thinking no point in hurrying, because you’re coming down with a stiff, and then. Dude’s alive.” Wayne stared in frank admiration. “Fucking amazing.”
“Bon,” Sol said, nodding. “That’s why I do it. So I can see your little face light up like that.” He grimaced. “Not for thank-you sex. Jesus.”
The next call, whenever it happened, would probably take them to end of shift, so they lingered in the bay for longer than usual, taking a break. The construction site rescue had been one of those textbook ones that you read about, the kind that would have made the evening news if someone had been there with a camera, and both of them knew it. Not an everyday call, that one. Most calls involved confused old folks, vomiting drunks, infants with ear infections. Might as well savor the big shiny ones.
But Sol had already moved on from Marty’s rescue, had returned to the tracks, which led to Baz. If his brother had tried to call on Christmas Day, Sol had been working and no one had been home to answer: Sol had forgotten to turn on the answering machine, maybe on purpose but he wasn’t sure. In any case, there wasn’t any way of saying ‘screw you’ to Baz without calling him directly.
Which Sol wasn’t quite ready to do, on account of how they’d left things.
Sol had woken up in the shitty North Platte motel room, the keys to the Wagoneer on the bedside table, holding down a note. Going to Minneapolis to get Dad’s stuff. You can pick up the ashes this afternoon. I’ll be in touch—or call me. Keep my stuff, okay? I’ll be back in a few weeks. Thanks! Baz.
He’d used an exclamation point, spazzy idiot. Sol had stayed in that bed for most of the day, only getting up to shower, shave, and drive over to the funeral home, where a suitably dour matron had given him a cardboard box of ashes. He didn’t have any idea what to do with them, where the proper place to return them was. Last seen beside the tracks. Adieu, Papa.
He knew where, was lying to himself. Down south, that’s where you returned someone like Aurie Sarrazin. That’s where he belonged, always had, his river-blood running with salt, had been exiled to these white northern roads. People like Aurie belonged at the edge of the continent, where the land gave up, lost its battle with water. Where things shifted and changed and were unmappable, roads raised like veins, only to be washed away by the sorrow that was Gulf weather. Routes lost, land, history, soul—all temporary things.
Half his co-workers had volunteered after Katrina, and despite his father’s stated wishes to the contrary, Sol had gone too. Had wanted to be a hero, do what his father couldn’t, what his father had forbidden. Sol had come back within days, had been sent back, actually, had taken leave for weeks afterwards, another casualty of what that place had become.
He was never going to Louisiana again, not for any reason. And he hadn’t spoken to his father since, save a handful of times, all at Baz’s behest.
So Aurie was just going to have to make do in this landlocked place, where the land married sky, not salt water. What did ashes matter, in any case? After putting the cardboard box on the floor of the front passenger seat, Sol had crawled back into bed, slept straight through and returned to Denver the next morning, put what was left of his father on a shelf in the back workshop, next to Baz’s half-constructed bike. He had picked up an extra shift an hour later, and had not looked back.
Of course, he’d told no one at work, nor used his father’s death as an excuse for taking off a few extra days, especially with it so close to Christmas. In fact, he’d taken more shifts as the weather worsened in the week leading up to Christmas—a memorable skidding plane at the airport providing ample overtime even without the usual mayhem. Christmas was always the best time to pick up shifts: lots to do and no one wanting to do it. Robbie had been busy too, people needing their hair done around Christmas, though a new haircut meant squat by the time Sol saw anyone. It was true: no one in the back of an ambulance cared about clean underwear. Or hairstyles.
They’d almost finished their drinks when the snow started. It didn’t take long for the light to fade, the temperature to drop, and for the calls to come in. Dispatch: MVA, ten minutes out. Sol started the engine, Code 10—lights and siren—and they were wheels up.
The Grindery had slumped into bored neglect some time in the mid-80s, judging by the vintage plastic letters that spelled out ‘Todays Soup: gardan veg’. The diner could have been in any small town anywhere in Canada, but it certainly wasn’t in downtown Toronto, and that’s all that really mattered to Lutie. She stared at the plastic wrapped pastries stacked on the counter beside a ‘We Support the Troops’ coin donation box and wondered if she was hungry enough to experiment with botulism. God alone knew how long those buttertarts had been embalmed.
There was almost always a double-double to be had at the base Canex, but she’d had enough of army culture to last a lifetime, and coming up here for Christmas break when her family’s last posting had been at CFB Kingston added insult to injury. Kingston, at least, knew coffee from coffee.
Lutie chewed her pen, compiling a mental list of pros and cons about the city of Brandon, Manitoba versus Kingston, Ontario. Plenty of cons, damn few pros. Take travel times: Kingston was two hours from her home base at the University of Toronto. Brandon, or more precisely, CFB Shilo, was two days straight west, if you didn’t need sleep. The weather hadn’t exactly cooperated, either, even though Lutie had good snow tires. The Trans-Canada highway had been closed just west of Winnipeg because of white-outs and she’d had to overnight at a crappy motel.
I should have flown, she thought. Flying though, that meant tickets and arranged schedules and being trapped on a military base without wheels, and that was how Lutie had spent the last ten years of her life. Not a chance, thank you very much.
She’d driven into downtown Brandon because she couldn’t stand her mother fussing over her anymore; since Christmas Eve, when she’d arrived typically late, her mother had made sure everything was the way Lutie preferred it. Her own room, with familiar pillow cases. First choice of television offerings. And yesterday, she’d been given far too many presents, an overflowing stocking, and the turkey was browned to perfection. Dad had given her the drumstick before remembering that she’d been eating vegetarian for close to a year.
This morning, citing Boxing Day sales as her excuse, she’d eaten a peanut butter sandwich on the fly and fled. Dad had sat back in the worn leather La-Z-Boy that he’d had since before forever, smiling at her in a way that said he understood her fidgeting. He had been in uniform, had been working non-stop. Troops had just come back from Afghanistan, meaning that the chaplain’s services were required more
than ever. A weird reversal of common sense: coming home was often harder than leaving.
The irony was not lost on Lutie.
She glanced up from her novel, hoped that the practice of leaving a paying customer alone for hours on end applied here as much as it did in big city coffee shops, and checked the clock on the wall. Maybe another hour, and then she’d have to get going. She should probably grab something to eat, though. In deference to Lutie’s eating habits, Mum was making lasagna for dinner and Lutie hadn’t had the heart to tell her that her vegetarian version sucked.
Finally, she slipped the novel and a notebook into the day pack she carried around like it was part of a uniform, and smiled obligingly at the woman behind the counter, who also nosed a book, chicken soup for somebody’s soul.
Outside, the thermometer had dipped way below freezing, and with the wind kicking up from the northeast, it was bitter. When they’d lived in Edmonton, there had been chinooks, but there was no such winter relief here. Her car, a dependable Japanese model that was as non-descript as the landscape, complained and didn’t want to start immediately. She was careful not to flood it with her efforts, but also considered how having car trouble might be turned to advantage: No car, no way home, no lasagna, no stilted conversation.
But then her dad would have to pick her up and that would make her feel guilty, because he’d do it so willingly. They were so damn normal, all of them. In contrast.
She pulled the car from the curb, edged down a road lacy with cold-cracked pavement, and headed north. It didn’t take any time at all to be in the country, flat sheets of white, grass poking through, dotted tracks of coyote or dog or some other animal running across fields and over fences, tracing paths to destinations unknown. The landscape was solid, permanent, didn’t change much. Despite the snow, the view would be pretty much the same in summer, just different colors, leaves on the far trees. Changes were slow, not easily parsed. In some ways, the prairies were better than a lot of places in that regard, where change came so fast, so frequently.
Deadroads Page 6