Bill Warrington's Last Chance

by James King

  “Singer—”

  “—Songwriter,but what do I know? All I can say is, we’ll see. And we won’t be able to see if you don’t give it a try, right?”

  “Right.”

  It was getting darker now. Bill suggested that maybe April would want to turn on the headlights. She did. A few minutes later, she asked, “Where are we going, Grandpa?”

  Bill didn’t even need to think about the answer, for which he was grateful.

  “You’ll see when we get there. You’re going to love it.”

  “And then west?” April asked. “To San Francisco?”

  “You bet, April. Definitely. Golden Gate, cable car to the stars, the whole bit.”

  They drove on. It was almost completely dark now, and Bill could see that April was getting a little nervous about the headlights coming at them. He suggested they start looking for vacancy signs.

  “Grandpa?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks.”

  “For what?”

  “For remembering my name.”

  Bill didn’t know how to respond. He stared into the darkness.

  “Grandpa?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Can you tell me a story about my mother?”

  “What kind of story?”

  April shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe a story about when was she about my age.” She paused. “Maybe a time when she got in trouble.”

  Bill laughed. “We could drive to California and back and I’d still be talking,” he said. “Your mother was a first-class pain in the ass.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  April tried, surreptitiously, to crack open the driver’s-side window. Her grandfather hated having any of them down while they were driving. He claimed the racket hurt his ears. She didn’t want him to be uncomfortable, but the air conditioner wasn’t working, despite his insistence otherwise, and his stale pipe tobacco smell, his old-person smell—he hadn’t taken a shower in two days—and his more than occasional farts were nearly suffocating her. Fortunately, he had lapsed into another of his storytelling jags and didn’t seem to notice the sudden sharp and steady low whistle of air.

  “We were driving along I-80 in the middle of Iowa, just as we are now,” he was saying, squinting into the sun as they headed west. “Your mother sees this sign for Arnolds Park on Lake Oko-something-or-other. An amusement park. Well, that was it. She wanted to go to Arnolds Park. She made it her mission, no matter what we had planned.

  “I told her to forget it, that it was miles out of the way. But those damned signs kept showing up along the road, and the begging and the pleading would start all over. ‘Look at the roller coaster! A Ferris wheel! Bumper cars! Please, daddy, please!’ ”

  Her grandfather chuckled, and then grew quiet. April wondered if he’d pick the story up again, start another one, fall asleep, or announce that he needed to take a leak, in which case she would have to pull onto the side of the road and let him out so he could take care of business then and there.

  “Right now,” he’d said when she’d first suggested they wait for a rest area, “unless you want me to piss my pants.” She was pretty sure it was illegal to urinate right there on the side of the road, so she nervously checked the rearview mirror for cops whenever her grandfather had to “answer the call,” as he put it. She guessed that they’d both be in a lot of trouble, she for driving without a license; he for indecent exposure or something.

  It appeared that this was either a pause or a prelude to sleep, for he wasn’t fidgeting the way he normally did when he needed to relieve himself. She hoped it was just a pause. She enjoyed the stories he told of her uncles, Mike and Nick, but she didn’t know them well enough to imagine them as little boys or as anything but older men. She sometimes daydreamed while her grandfather talked of them, but when the story featured her mother, she had no trouble paying attention, no trouble picturing her as a little girl.

  “Then she started in on her brothers,” her grandfather said after a mile or so of silence. “ ‘Wouldn’t you rather be on a roller coaster than looking at some dumb lake full of salt?’ she asked them. ‘If you had your choice, would you rather sit by a stinky lake or smash cars into each other?’ ” He laughed. “She was unrelenting. Here she was, the youngest of the three of them, pretty much telling them what to think. She never did take a backseat to anyone.”

  “That’s for sure,” April said. “She’s always gotta be in the driver’s seat. Drives me crazy.”

  “Watch how you talk about your mother,” he said.

  She didn’t understand. Was this how adults made conversation? It was okay for them to trash someone, but don’t you dare try. She wanted to say she was just agreeing with him. But he didn’t give her the chance.

  “She doesn’t let up,” her grandfather said, as if that awkward little exchange had never happened. “She kept working on her brothers. ‘Who cares about some stupid natural wonder? Mountains are boring. What about roller coasters and go- karts? What about fun? That’s what vacations are supposed to be about.’

  “I told Clare to get her to shut up, but Clare didn’t have any more luck than I did. Besides, she was on to me. She knew, without my telling her, what my plans were. She was like that. We were like that. Didn’t need to talk our feelings to death. So finally I pulled off to the side of the road. I turned around and told her that if she said another word, we’d turn the car around and head back to Ohio and she wouldn’t see anything. I told the boys the same thing went for them, even though they hadn’t said anything. I looked each of them in the eye and asked them if they understood. They all nodded.”

  Her grandfather snorted at the empty road ahead.

  “Here’s the thing: April knew she had won. And so she kept her mouth shut. If she suspected that she had lost, if she thought that I wouldn’t make the turnoff and take us to Arnolds Park, she would have kept whining and complaining. I’m not saying I would have turned around and headed back to Ohio. But if she had kept complaining, I would have stayed straight on I-80 to Salt Lake City.”

  “You mean Marcy.”

  “Huh?”

  “You said April had won. You meant Marcy.”

  Her grandfather looked over at her. “I’m talking about your mother. Not you.”

  “I know that, Grandpa. I was just saying what you said.”

  “You don’t need to tell me what I said. I know what I said.”

  He occasionally yelled at her like that. But then he seemed to forget it after a while, so April just chalked this up to his general crankiness.

  “Anyway, I drive hundreds of miles out of our way so that April can see this damned park. And when the kids figured out—signs would tell us we’re headed in the right direction for Arnolds Park, just sixty miles ahead, then forty-five miles, ten miles—well, they couldn’t sit still. They were jumping all around the backseat. We didn’t put people in jail back then for not wearing a seat belt. April leaned over and hugged me from behind and nearly made me drive into the other lane in front of an oncoming semi.”

  April didn’t bother correcting her grandfather.

  “We get there and of course the kids go bonkers. They want to ride every ride. But the ride they want to ride most is the roller coaster. What the hell was the name? Legend! That’s it. The Legend. That’s the first thing they want to do. Ride the Legend. And the boys challenged Clare, thinking that she’d be too scared to go on it. That’s probably when the boys realized that their mother wasn’t scared of anything. She wasn’t scared of standing up to her father when her father told her she could marry better than a Warrington. She wasn’t scared when she lost most of her blood delivering Mike. She wasn’t even scared of the crap that killed her.”

  A short pause. April scrambled to think of something consoling to say that wouldn’t push the old guy further down the black hole he’d just brought them to. But then he resumed, his voice lower, a little softer. “It’s been so long, I sometimes forget some of the things she did,” he sai
d.

  “Like what?” April asked.

  “Anyway,” he went on, as if he hadn’t heard—or decided to ignore—her question, “we all went over to the roller coaster. But at the entrance to the line, there was one of those signs that says you must be this tall to ride this ride. And your mother wasn’t tall enough. Not nearly. She raised holy hell, and I tried to talk the attendant to let her through. I didn’t get anywhere until my pal Abe Lincoln somehow found his way out of my wallet. Before you knew it we were being strapped down into one of the cars.”

  He paused. “Actually, we weren’t being strapped down. It was one of those bars that they lower to your lap. It was good and tight across my lap, but there was lots of space between the bar and your mother’s lap. The attendant saw this, and I thought he was going to tell us to get off. I put my arm around your mother to show him that everything was going to be fine, that she was all nice and secure. What did he think? I was going to put my daughter in danger? I winked at him, and he kind of nodded and shook his head at the same time and moved on to check the other cars.”

  Her grandfather turned his head to look out the passenger-side window. For the next few minutes there was just the sound of the tires on the road, the wind whistling through the small crack in her window, and her grandfather’s loud breathing. She was afraid he might have fallen asleep.

  “What happened?” April asked.

  “Huh?”

  “On the roller coaster, remember? The story you’re telling?”

  “Of course I remember,” her grandfather said. “What do you think, my brain is Swiss cheese? Let me get a breath every now and then, will you? You’re just like your mother: in a hurry to be in a hurry. What’s the rush? We’ve got a thousand miles or so to go.”

  He fell silent again. April figured he was going to punish her by keeping quiet. This game was starting to get on her nerves. Okay, he was an old man. Fine. He was having a little trouble with his memory. Actually, more trouble than maybe anyone realized. But there were times when he was so sharp, so funny, that she was convinced there was no way he was losing it. So when he got quiet in the middle of the story or seemed to lose his train of thought, April could never be sure if he was pulling some sort of stunt on her or if he was just being ornery. That was the word her mother used most when she described him: ornery. The word fit. April could see that now. He was being ornery. She didn’t like it. After all, she was doing all the work lately: all the driving, all the explaining or apologizing to front-desk clerks and waiters and waitresses when her grandfather got cranky or forgetful. But a lot of the time he was completely cool—charming, an older person might say. It was like traveling with a freakin’ bipolar.

  “Come on, Grandpa. What happened?”

  She waited for the angry outburst, but it didn’t come.

  “I kind of hate to even think about it, even now,” he said. “But I guess you’re going to hound me to death, aren’t you?”

  “Hey, you’re the one who started telling the story in the first place. Don’t start something unless you intend to finish it.”

  It was a line directly from her mother’s mouth, and April thought that that might be the reason her grandfather looked over at her, eyebrows raised, the hint of a smile on his face.

  “So you’re the one giving life lessons now?” he said.

  Like that, April thought to herself. How can he be losing it but remember stuff like her English essay, the imaginary essay that, in a lot of ways, started the two of them on this road together? It just didn’t make sense. Her grandfather had to be playing games with her.

  “Like most roller coasters,” her grandfather said, “this one started off with a big hill. You know, to build up the tension, the excitement. And there were signs along the way as the cars were slowly pulled up the hill: ‘No turning back now.’ ‘Hold on to your hats.’ That sort of nonsense. I read the first one out loud to your mother. But when I looked down I saw that she was scared. I held her a little tighter and told her that this was going to be fun. A blast. But then I looked up and I could see that the hill was pretty steep. The sign at the top was ‘The Point of No Return.’ Suddenly, your mother felt tiny sitting next to me. I held her tighter, tried to reassure her that everything was going to be fine. I tried to make a joke.

  “But then she looked up at me and said—and I’ll never forget this, we were about halfway up the hill at this point—she said, ‘I don’t think this is such a good idea, Dad.’ And of course she was right—it wasn’t. And I felt stupid for what I’d done—even as I tried to convince her, and myself, that everything was going to be all right. When she said that, she sounded like a grown-up. The grown-up I should have been.

  “I tried to reassure her, and I held her even tighter. But as we continued up that hill, she kept sliding down, slinking down, lower in the seat. So I tried to pull her up. But we were on such a sharp angle it was difficult for me to move.

  “And then we reached the top. Of course, we weren’t there but for a second, maybe less. But from there, near the top and at the top, you could see everything: the other rides, the picnic area, the parking lot, and the surrounding farms. And the lake. And a town not too far off in the distance. A few buildings.

  “It was quiet for a second. And I heard it again: ‘Dad, I don’t think this is such a good idea.’ I don’t think your mother actually said it again. I just heard it in my head. Or maybe I’m just thinking that’s what happened. It’s been a few years.

  “And then your mother slipped off the seat entirely, beneath the bar, and into the area for your feet, between the seat and the front of the car.”

  He took out his handkerchief and mopped his brow.

  “Underneath the safety bar?” April asked.

  “She was such a skinny thing,” her grandfather said. “And I couldn’t reach her.”

  He paused again. April had to restrain herself from asking what happened.

  “Oh my god, the scream that came out of her as we went down that first hill. I was thrown back in my seat, but even after that there was no way I could reach her. The safety bar was locked, and the curves threw me back or to the side. I couldn’t reach over the bar. She was sliding back and forth at my feet, banging into the side of the cart. She was screaming and crying and I was yelling for the operator to stop, but of course my screams were drowned out by the others. There was no way the kid could see us, anyway. Oh, sweet Jesus. Those jerks and curves were knocking her around like a Ping-Pong ball. I tried to use my legs to push her against one side, but the ride was just too jerky. I couldn’t keep still. I tried to put them over her so she wouldn’t fly out of the goddamned car, but there was never enough time before the next curve or dip. Oh my god, the way your mother screamed. And then she stopped screaming.”

  How was it that her mother had never told this story? April tried to think of the few times they had gone to amusement parks, Cedar Point or Six Flags. Her mother had always been a bit overprotective and kept telling her to be careful, but she didn’t make a bigger deal out of it than any of the other million things she nagged April about.

  “Was she knocked out?” April asked.

  “As soon as the safety bar was released, I picked her up and started running,” her grandfather said. April knew he hadn’t heard the question. “She was out cold, and bleeding from a cut on her forehead. She was a real gusher. Blood everywhere. All over her, all over my shirt and pants. People screamed when they saw us.

  “Clare and the boys were there, right where they were supposed to meet us. They were laughing, probably about how much they had enjoyed the coaster. But then they saw us. Clare . . . the look on her face . . . I think that if she’d had a gun on her, she would have shot me. No question. No explanation. I had hurt her little girl. That was the one thing about her that scared me: the way her feelings could suddenly turn, go cold. You became insignificant, a little speck of nothing. In this case, I was worse than that. I was evil.

  “You know how people sometimes
ask that stupid damned question about what you’d do differently if you could do it all over again? Some people say they wouldn’t change a thing, which is baloney. You go through life and you don’t wish you could change anything? You haven’t been living. For me, it was the moment I slipped the kid a fiver. Because from the look on Clare’s face, I knew she was capable of hating me. Or maybe I knew I was capable of making her hate me. In either case, I thought I’d lost them both. So that’s the thing I’d change. Even more than what happened much later, when I actually was losing Clare.”

  April was afraid he was diverging again. But she dared not speak up or ask a question. He was getting off track. And what was he talking about wanting to change much later, with Clare?

  “I was screaming at people, asking where first aid was. But I guess they were so shocked at the sight: a man with a little girl in his arms, blood everywhere, a woman and two young boys chasing after him. No one could give me an answer. So I decided to just run to the car. We’d get in the car and drive to a hospital. I’d seen the town from the top of the roller coaster hill. There had to be a hospital in there somewhere. Clare was yelling at me to stop, but I kept running. We got to the car and the boys jumped in the back. I got in the passenger side, still holding Marcy, and told Clare to drive. Clare started arguing with me. She wanted to see Marcy. She started shouting, asking what had happened. The boys in the back were crying now. One of them asked if she was dead.”

  He shook his head and leaned back. He grew very quiet. A few minutes later, April heard the deep, rhythmic breathing. There was no reason to wake him to finish the story. The end of the story was that her mother had been fine. The end of the story was that her mother kept on being a little girl for a while, then went to high school and met her father and eventually—too soon, she’d heard her mother say more than once—she’d had her. And now this trip. This trip was pretty much the end of the story.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN