Deadroads

by Robin Riopelle

  He was such a bad liar for someone who’d had so much practice. Sol got up, walked around and pulled the chair out from the desk. Besides, what did he care if Baz took a girl to help him clean out their dead father’s stuff? Better her than me, he thought, looking at the shoebox that he’d put on the desk. Why had he brought her along, though, through any of this? He lifted the lid, and Baz made a weird noise that could have been ‘stop’ or maybe ‘uh-oh’.

  Inside was a French-language songbook. Sol flipped through it, saw his father’s hand in the margins, assessing each song’s usefulness. For what, Sol didn’t know. The continuing feeling of not-rightness curled in his stomach like a beckoning finger.

  Underneath, a small box, and inside that, a ring. It could have only belonged to one person, that size, a simple fiddler’s gift for his bride, inscribed with the letters of poverty: 10K. Sol felt a chill, and put it back as though it burned. What the hell were they going to do with that? What grave could they drop it into, what bridge was high enough to throw it from, what water deep enough to drown it?

  He had his back to Baz, and for that, he was glad.

  The wallet was filled with the usual assortment of IDs, some old enough that Sol remembered them, others newer, made after he and his father had stopped speaking to each other—Fisheries and Forestry Warden, state police, Fire Service, even an IT service technician badge for a fictitious computer company, which was the most ludicrous disguise for their father Sol could imagine. Aurie had become stymied with anything more complicated than a calculator.

  “Take what you want,” Baz said from the bed. “I thought it was you in the photo, at first.”

  Sol had his back to his brother, but didn’t miss the skip in his voice. He sighed, not knowing, as usual, how to react to Baz and his heart-patched sleeve. “I’m way better-looking.” Humor might work best. The IDs spanned several years, but in every one of them Aurie Sarrazin looked beleaguered as a hound dog in hunting season.

  “Where do you think it was taken?”

  A strange musical sound startled Sol, like the startup tune a computer made. He couldn’t identify it, wondered if there was a weird alarm clock going off in the room. Distracted, he turned over the badge in his hand. What a dumb question. “I dunno. Photo booth in a mall, for all I know.”

  The sound came again.

  “What?” Baz asked, and Sol looked over at him and held up the ID questioningly. “Not that,” Baz’s eyebrows moved in ways that would make a dancer proud. “The photo. Of him and…Mom.”

  Sol stood very still, the weight of the wallet in his hand. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Baz made an irritated motion of his hands, almost as mobile as his eyebrows. “Would you answer your damn phone?”

  “Quoi?” Then realized that the sound was coming from his parka, folded over the chair back. Robbie’s present, tapping him on the shoulder. He hadn’t said no to her gift this time, not after what Madama Lopez had said. What Robbie had said.

  Avoid one conversation with another. He retrieved the small phone, looked at it as though it might explode, and flipped it open gingerly as a bomb squad defuser. “Hello?” and he had a momentary flash of grim humor: who’s the technophobe now, Sarrazin?

  It was Robbie, wondering if Baz was okay, and once again Sol was amazed that people paid money for these things, because what would Robbie do, one way or the other? She also passed along the message that Wayne could take his shift tonight, even though he’d been half-comatose with hangover.

  Well, Sol wasn’t going to make a four o’clock shift today in any case, so again, what was the point of the—

  And he was just in the middle of this, irritation and exhaustion and worry coming together under the general heading of ‘photo of Mom’ when he realized what had felt so wrong about Baz’s date, what he’d seen and not registered until now.

  She had swerved to miss the ghost.

  Which meant that she’d seen the ghost, which meant that she’d been using Baz, using Baz’s ability, sketchy as it was, potentially lethal—who the hell knew what it did to Baz, what it could do—and Sol literally couldn’t breathe.

  Robbie was wanting to know if he was still there, and Sol found that he couldn’t look at Baz. He rested one hand against the door frame to steady himself. “Look, I have to go,” he said quickly into the phone, not even knowing how to fake a graceful exit. He snapped the cell shut.

  “Sol?” Baz asked, and Sol knew that Baz was getting up from the bed, and he was hoping that he wouldn’t come closer. Before Baz could reach him, Sol turned around, both hands held up to ward him away, the phone dropped to the floor.

  “She doesn’t know how to get rid of them, does she?” he said, and Baz came up short, like he’d just run into a glass door, and Sol knew he shouldn’t be so pointed, but there was no one else and his fear was just on the surface, barely had to skim a hand over the side to touch it.

  “What?” But this wide-eyed dumb act wasn’t going to hold water, not today. “I don’t—”

  “She used you to get them to come, but she’s not a traiteur, she’s not like Dad and me, she’s not sending them away, or she’d have done it.” Sol was shaking like he was the one with a fever, and it had come with the speed and the force of a Japanese bullet train. Baz had been down by the tracks, and some girl at the right age for doing it had seen that he could draw the ghosts. A girl wanting to be a fortuneteller. “How,” he whispered, stopped on fear all dressed up as anger. “How could you be so stupid?”

  And he swung away from Baz, because it was either that or hit him, and they hadn’t had a fist-fight since they were kids.

  “I’m sorry, Sol,” Baz began.

  He kept his distance on the far side of the room, by the disgorged shoe box, opened like a patient on an operating table. One hand up, like that could stop anything. “I don’t want to hear your apologies.”

  But it was unfair. Sure, Baz had been raised with the same father, but not in the same way. He hadn’t been taught, he hadn’t been forced to learn. If anything, Baz had been kept from it, told to shut up, but not why, and was it any wonder that some conniving tea-leaf reading bitch could waltz in and bend someone as pliable as Baz to whatever she needed?

  Baz sat on the bed, his head in his hands, scrubbing his hair between long fingers. “Sol, I didn’t think that it would get out of control, I thought that if I just…” He looked up, miserable. Stopped against something he wasn’t going to say.

  “Did you know she was a fortuneteller when you picked her up?” Because those were some long odds, Sol had already worked out, for a would-be fortuneteller to come across a guy who could call ghosts with his singing voice alone. “How’d she figure it out? Were you singing in a bar or something?”

  Baz was exposed in some way that Sol didn’t understand, had some kind of invisible sign taped to his back that said ‘I sing for ghosts’ and maybe Sol should just get used to that. All his life, this was where Baz had been going and somehow, the idea that fate had already determined this scared Sol more than anything else.

  Baz probably didn’t need him being such a sanctimonious jerk. Baz must be feeling sick as hell; Sol remembered how he’d felt, after the ghost in New Orleans. This probably wasn’t so different.

  “Well?” he asked, tried to temper his voice, sand away the hard edge of it.

  The next words were muffled, because Baz still had his head in his hands. “I didn’t pick her up.” His head came up, and for the life of him, Sol couldn’t tell what that expression meant. “Lutie.” Eyes on Sol’s like the word meant something, was part of their vocabulary. “That was Lutie. Our sister.”

  Sol blinked, because these words made no sense, weren’t connected to anything he understood. He didn’t move, stood there like a tree in the middle of a field, begging for lightning to come on down and make him burst into flame. It seemed just as likely as anything else.

  Sit down before you fall down.

  Sinking onto th
e second bed across from Baz, he kept his attention on his brother’s face, because that was familiar: the ad hoc piercings, the scrappy goatee an afterthought, the way he licked his lips before speaking, especially if he didn’t know the reception of his words.

  “She had a right to know. About Dad. So, after I left you in North Platte,” Baz said and stopped, but Sol couldn’t figure out anything to say, anything at all to help him out. He needed help, Sol could see that, was floundering. Still. “I found her up in Manitoba. And so we went to Minneapolis and we—”

  Sol got up, and it was probably too fast, but he couldn’t stay in that room. He couldn’t stay. It was like a wound somewhere deep inside had been opened and he couldn’t listen to any more, couldn’t take in any more, not yet.

  “I need some air,” he said like he was talking about running an errand to the corner store and back. His voice was completely normal. This struck him as weird. He picked up Baz’s phone, held it out to him, and his hand was steady, which was also strange. I ought to be—but he couldn’t finish that. “Tell her to turn around.”

  “What? I don’t—” Baz said, and his voice did shake, all of him was shaking and Sol knew that should concern him, but he felt cold all over, dead.

  “Call her. She doesn’t walk away from this. I need to ask her a few questions. I need to find out—”

  “Okay, okay,” Baz demurred, one hand coming up; Sol had heard what his voice held. So had Baz. “Where are you going?”

  He zipped up the parka, pulled on his cap and gloves. “Out.” He remembered his father saying that, and sometimes he’d been gone for days.

  “Sol—” the worry in Baz’s voice stopped him cold.

  You’re not him, you’re not Aurie.

  He paused by the door, but didn’t turn around. Waited for the room to stop circling before speaking. He was flush with prickling adrenaline, but it was going to leave him soon, and in its place would be exhaustion. “I…just outside, I’m just having a smoke. Then…” One glance over his shoulder, and Baz looked like someone had kicked him. Sol couldn’t keep this up, the talking, the making decisions, any of it. “Christ, I need some sleep, Baz. Call her, and then I gotta crash.”

  He shut the door behind him without further word, and scanned the parking lot, hoping now for ghosts. Hoping for something to push against.

  My aim is true. Probably lucky there were none, because what was in his heart right then wasn’t about making paths, or helping, or healing. The fact that earlier this same morning he’d put a fortuneteller’s ghost to bed no longer made him feel invincible, because it wasn’t about protecting Baz anymore. There was no protecting him: something had changed, and he’d been seen and somehow their sister had been the one to do it.

  Anything else, all other feelings he might have about this, was moot, just didn’t feature against this bigger backdrop. That’s what he told himself. Because getting rid of a fortuneteller’s ghost was one thing, a hurdle, a personal point to prove.

  Preventing it from happening in the first place was another, and this was his job now.

  ELEVEN

  LE P’TIT DIABLE

  Headlights traveled over the curtains as a car pulled up outside and the tinny throb of an imported engine died a muttering death. Baz cautiously went to the door and stepped outside into the brutal cold to meet Lutie. She looked at him through the dusty windshield. He came around to the passenger door and she let him in.

  “He’s asleep,” Baz explained, dropping to the seat, but not closing the door. She hadn’t answered the first time he’d called, and when he’d gotten through, Lutie was miles away. “I’m not far behind and neither are you. Let’s get you a room.” He smiled. Lutie was hard-eyed, unapproachable. “I think they have vacancies.”

  Lutie’s expression didn’t change; she looked out the window to the teal-colored motel-room door, peeling, number painted over, only texture now, like a prehistoric earthwork on the prairie, wayfinding for spaceships. “Well.” Which was close to agreement.

  In the end, she got the room next to them, agreed that they’d have dinner together once everyone had some sleep.

  New Year’s Day had pulled past sunset before Baz woke up, disturbed by metallic shuddering in the shower. Pipes moving on loose clamps, rush of water, then abrupt cessation. A moment, heart thudding, room dark, he belatedly realized it was only his brother. As if to prove the point, the door opened and Sol was back out, scrubbing first his hair, then his newly-shaved throat with a thin towel, complaining about the water pressure, Baz’s razor, the housekeeping standards, the hard soap. How broke was Baz, Sol asked, that this was the best he could do for accommodation?

  Baz looked at the clock: five past seven. They’d slept away the afternoon, and that was probably for the best. For both of them.

  Sol wasn’t looking at him, possessed a contained solitude that kept conversation at an arm’s length, was sorting through the shirts in the box. He picked one and held it to his face for a moment, maybe to catch a fleeting scent of their father before drawing the worn flannel across his shoulders, and an expression tightened his face for a moment. Baz looked away. It was too personal, whatever it was. Then Sol cleared his throat, turned to Baz, and he sat down on the bed opposite, buttoning up the shirt, fingers steady, moment gone.

  He’d been in a fight, Baz saw that clearly from the bruises on his ribs, and the cuts on his temple and on his hands. He wouldn’t answer any questions about that, Baz was sure. Maybe he didn’t remember the fight. It wouldn’t be the first time for that, either.

  “Where is she?” Sol asked softly, facial hair trimmed short and neat, eyes on his fingers, then up. Calm. Most reasonable person in the universe, if Baz didn’t know better.

  Baz swallowed, jerked his head to the side. “Next room.”

  “Good,” and his equanimity had a glancing resemblance to the lull before battle, somehow, the soft steadiness of it, like he’d talked himself into something that he was going to regret but couldn’t avoid. Baz wished he had that knack, the ability to talk himself into the inevitable, especially in his sleep. “Let’s get something to eat at that place across the street. I’m hungry.”

  “Should we—” and Baz gestured to the wall. To the room next door.

  Sol stared at him as though he’d grown a second head. “Well, yeah.” It was the point, after all. Couldn’t accuse Sol of sidestepping anything, Baz thought.

  Baz changed his shirt and, pulling on his coat, followed Sol out the room into the cold and wind, put on his hat and watched as Sol walked without apparent hesitation to Lutie’s door and knocked.

  She made them wait a few moments and when she pulled open the door, the first person she saw was Sol, who filled the doorway, didn’t let Baz come closer. Blocking him. Protecting him, maybe, Baz thought, reconsidering. Despite this, Baz had the advantage of height; he met Lutie’s eyes over Sol’s shoulder.

  “We’re going across the street,” Sol said without preamble.

  “Hi,” she said, and it was sharp as a blade. “I’m Lutie.” Her eyes didn’t move from Sol’s face, and Baz had the idea that maybe he should just leave them alone, except that was a coward’s way out. This, right here, was all his doing. Besides, where would he go?

  Sol shifted his stance slightly, and Baz didn’t know if he’d been surprised by her quick adherence to the niceties, or was simply preparing himself for the next thing.

  “Sol,” he introduced himself, and Baz heard a hard kernel of laughter in it. “God knows we need to talk, but I think that we should eat first. Or during. Can we do that? Can we eat?”

  Lutie looked at Baz then, just for a second, with a tight smile that didn’t show her teeth, the awful green light from the fluorescent above, soft yellow from behind, her voice dry as prairie air. “Like normal people, you mean?”

  Sol splayed his hands: Sure thing, sweetheart. Baz didn’t know how you worked sarcasm into a hand gesture, but there it was.

  Lutie’s head tilted. “I’ll me
et you there.” And closed the door.

  Surprised, Baz grinned, enjoying the fact that she wasn’t budging in the face of Sol’s considerable and practiced fraternal authority. She’d come back, but she’d done that at his request, not Sol’s. This was going to be interesting. Sol didn’t say a word, just turned away, head down for a second, then up, looking around the parking lot. He wasn’t moving.

  He wasn’t going to move. He wasn’t going to be told where he was meeting anyone.

  “You are some piece of work,” Baz said.

  Sol, that slight smile on his face, the one Baz always dreaded because it meant that his brother was sticking to his guns, put his hands in the pockets of his parka, kicked at the windrow of snow laying across the parking lot. Got out a pack of cigarettes, lit one. Didn’t say a word, not for the whole freezing ten minutes it took Lutie to get ready and come out.

  When she did, she pulled up in surprise at the sight of the two of them waiting for her, and Baz hoped that Sol was satisfied. Baz was merely frozen.

  Wordlessly, they crossed the empty road, the old highway. These motels and restaurants and gas bars were leftovers of an earlier era of travel, were witness to a once-steady stream of Studebakers and Bel-Airs, were now succumbing to a slow decay, and Baz wondered if places had their own kind of ghosts, separate from the humanity that came and went so quickly.

  The diner’s neon sign lit up a full skirt of striped awning and Baz smiled wide as they entered because the whole place was red vinyl booths and chrome and pictures of 50s-era cars. The owners had pinned 45 rpm records to the walls as though they were exotic butterflies. The diner screamed ‘road trip’ and Baz felt immediately at ease, warmed up and ready to go. It was a faux construction, but it wasn’t a bad one.

  They sat in a booth away from the cold window, tri-fold menus offering a mind-numbing assortment of burger platters and shakes and sandwiches. In the background, Elvis warbled about fools rushing in, and though Baz thought he might soon crawl out of his own skin, neither Sol nor Lutie looked anything but utterly calm.