Five Skies

by Ron Carlson

  “But your house, the ranch.”

  Darwin folded his arms and leaned upon them. He put his head down and rocked slightly. “What a year,” he said quietly. “You don’t want to eat without the boy, do you?”

  “Let’s go find him,” Arthur said, standing up.

  They had to lock the turkey in the pantry chest to keep it away from coyotes, and they went to the truck.

  At ten minutes after nine o’clock, Darwin turned off the old ranch road and crossed the railroad tracks at the end of Main Street in Mercy, easing the big white flatbed truck over the rails wheel by wheel and throwing the headlight beams across the side of the two-story mercantile, the building standing in their sight as if wakened.

  “Cut through the alley, Darwin.” Arthur Key pointed right. “Let’s see if he’s at the Antlers.”

  Ahead they could see the blue and white lights of the Antlers sign pinning the town to the night, three cars in front, all pink on one side from the beer lights in the window. There weren’t five other vehicles parked the length of the old street. The two men hadn’t been in town after dark all summer.

  Darwin hauled the truck in back of the first row of buildings and slowed behind the Antlers. Marion’s Blazer and a motorcycle stood alone in the gravel lot. They continued in the alley of the dark garages and buildings of the hamlet, weeds growing from every cornice and volunteer willows sprouting behind the sheds. In the dark it all reminded Arthur of his old neighborhood in Dayton, his father, his mother, Gary. Darwin drove back to Main and across to the freestanding Laundromat, a small block building full of white light. Through the big front windows, the two men could see the room was empty.

  “I guess we should go over to the girl’s house then,” Darwin said. It was one of the strangest moments of the summer, the two men up in the front seat of their truck looking in at the two rows of washers and dryers. There was a huge calendar stuck up on the rear wall by a white clock which read 9:20, and a sign in red letters: OVERALLS, GREASE AND ASPHALT—WASHERS 1 AND 2 ONLY.

  “You worried or just pissed off?” Darwin asked.

  “I’m hungry,” Arthur said. “He’s in love. He doesn’t need to eat.”

  Though all the dryer doors were open, Arthur Key stepped down from the truck and went into the bright laundry. It smelled like powdered bleach and Arthur walked down the row of washers and dryers. The back door was half open and when he looked out to check for the jeep, Arthur Key saw their laundry scattered in trails throughout the dirt parking there. He picked up two shirts and smelled that they had been washed. Everything was damp and had been thrown on the ground.

  He went quickly to the truck and told Darwin. Then Art jogged across Main Street and stepped into the Antlers. One table of three guys watched a baseball game on the elevated television. He went behind the bar and slipped through to the kitchen where Marion was filling a rack with pint glasses.

  “Arthur Key,” she said. “In town? How can I do you for?”

  “Did you see Ronnie tonight?” he asked her.

  “I saw Darwin’s jeep over at the laundry. I think Traci was going to help him with it, right?”

  “Who is that kid who is after Ronnie?”

  “Darren. He and his buddy Buster were in here about five. You want a beer?”

  “Later, we need to find Ronnie.” Arthur smiled at the woman and went out the front where Darwin waited in the truck running.

  “Was it all over the place?” Darwin asked him.

  “It was more than Ronnie dropping the socks,” Arthur Key said. “He had some assistance making this mess. It is going to be something, if we can find him.”

  The lights were on at Marion and Traci’s house, but there was no jeep in front. Darwin went to the front door and opened it and hollered in, and in fact went inside the little bungalow and called for Ronnie and for Traci and hearing nothing he came out. “The door wasn’t locked, but they don’t lock their doors.” He was back in the truck and the truck was idling.

  “That feels funny,” Arthur said. It was more than a funny feeling for him. He, as much as any time in the entire summer, was ready for the immediate moment; he wanted with all his teeth and arms and fingers to find something and fix it. “Where are they?”

  Darwin’s face was serious. “This town,” he said. “Let’s go get the laundry. I don’t want to go back out tonight, until we find him.”

  The spotlight over the back screen door of the Laundromat was riddled with frantic moths, hundreds churning and bumping the beacon. It took Darwin and Arthur one minute to gather all the clothing from the ground and bring it inside the facility. There on the two tables they picked the garments that needed to be washed again, and Arthur went across the wide old Main Street to the Antlers for two beers and forty quarters. The old barroom was empty now, ten o’clock on a weeknight in Mormon Idaho, and Marion said she’d finish cleaning the grill and come across to take their ironing. “When was the last time you wore an ironed shirt?” she asked him.

  “That would have been the old me,” Arthur said, and he heard it as being true.

  “I wouldn’t mind meeting that guy,” she said. “If you knew him.”

  He looked down. “I did.”

  “Well, look for me across the street. This will be ten minutes tops.” When he pushed out the front screen, she was at his arm and gave him a small box of Tide and a bottle of bleach. “Ten minutes.”

  Striding back he saw the old pickup truck with the one wrong door which they’d seen at their camp was now parked in front of the laundry, and inside the building he could see the girl, her dirty blond hair up in a clump, talking to Darwin. She was agitated in her white tank top, and when he entered the space in the bleached light, he saw there were muddy finger stripes across her shirt, which he knew were blood.

  “Ten o’clock P.M.,” she was saying again to Darwin. “No fucking way.”

  Arthur walked past them to where the washers waited and he charged them with detergent and bleach and lodged the quarters and started the machines.

  “Don’t be doing that,” she said. Her face was oddly patched and red, and there was silver sweat in her hairline.

  Arthur Key turned his attention to her. “Where’s your boyfriend, Gina?”

  She started at her name and then went to the washers, opened them behind him. “Look at the sign, mister. We close at ten o’clock P.M.”

  Key took her by the arm and lifted her around to face him. He shut the washers with his other hand. “You’ll be open late tonight. We had a problem, but you know about it, don’t you?”

  “Let go of me,” she tried to yell, but her voice cracked.

  “What’s going on tonight?” he asked her, pointing at her shirt. “Who’s bleeding, Gina?”

  “I have to close up and get home. It’s ten o’clock P.M.” She pulled away and he let her go. “I’ll call the sheriff on you assholes.”

  “The phone is right here,” Darwin said, pointing to the payphone on the wall.

  As Gina went to the door, Arthur Key saw Darwin’s jeep go by on Main Street. Marion came jogging in, clutching three bottles of beer in her arms. “Ronnie and Traci just drove by,” she said, putting her cargo on the laundry table. “They’ve gone down to the clinic.” She was at the payphone. “I’ll call Randy.” Key turned and followed Darwin half a block up the street to the dark clinic.

  Darwin was there first and had Ronnie’s face in his hands holding it up, a spectacular raspberry on one cheek that ran with a kind of grain onto the corner of his forehead. There was black blood down his nose forming a small goatee on his chin. His eyes were bright. Traci got out of the passenger side of the vehicle and came around. Her jeans were bloody in two patches, the size of a hand or a face.

  “What are you guys doing in town?” Ronnie said. “Where’s that turkey?”

  Darwin turned to Arthur. “He’s okay. He’s all cut up, but he’s okay.” Marion had his wrist now and she looked into his eyes.

  She turned to Traci.
“Are you all right?”

  “They didn’t touch me,” Traci said.

  “They stole all our clothes,” Ronnie said. Now he folded his arms. “Darren and Buster came by and started a bunch of trouble and they stole our clothes and threw them all over the place and made a mess. We went and got all of it.”

  Key saw the other figure now, in the back of the jeep below the spare. Ronnie reached in and pulled him up. “This is Darren. He was in our camp last week with that piece of work.” He pointed at Gina where she stood glowering in the laundry doorway. “He broke his nose and has been passed out and he may have a broken rib. That’s why we’re here at the clinic. He’s been bleeding on our laundry for about six miles, which is where we fought. About two miles from the bridge. Buster has gone home. Gina and Buster left about the time that Darren went down. Does this make sense? Can you hear me?” Ronnie bumped his left palm against his ear. “I didn’t kick him. I never kicked anybody, not once.”

  Darren had now helped himself out of the vehicle and sat on the cement step of the clinic walkway, elbows on his knees. Darwin knelt before the boy and checked his nose carefully with his thumb and forefinger while Darren sat still. Finally the man stood and said, “It’s not broken.”

  “I’m going home,” Darren said.

  “You wait here for Randy,” Marion told him. “I’ll stay with him,” she said to the group. “Traci, take the jeep and go get the Easy Wash and we’ll send these guys back to camp in good shape.”

  The group stood in the gravel parking lot of the village clinic, five people above the defeated boy. Arthur saw that Traci had Ronnie’s hand, and she let it go and said, “I’ll be right back.”

  She took the jeep and the three men walked to the Laundromat. Gina had fled. “I know where there’s a turkey,” Darwin said. He opened the door of the flatbed and pulled himself in. He backed out. “You guys start the wash.” As he eased onto the roadway, Randy’s Subaru passed him, the stick-on blue light flashing above the driver’s door.

  “Did you cook it okay?” Ronnie said. They were in the white room. He ran the water into the oversize laundry tub and began to rinse his face.

  “God knows,” Arthur said. He could see their reflection written on the expanse of the front window, two ghosts in a stark tableau. Arthur hadn’t been in a room at night in this lifetime, but before he could founder Traci was back and hauling in the great loads of laundry and sleeping bags and solvent. Arthur helped her and then, lifting the last load from the jeep, he turned and saw in the theater of the lighted room, Traci washing Ronnie’s face with a rag, her hand on his bare shoulder as a brace as she scrubbed up behind his ear and around his neck, under his chin, rinsing the rag and then his face and the other ear and his chest as he stood with his eyes closed. It was love. Arthur stood transfixed. Love had been no friend to Arthur, and even now seeing it in others alarmed him in a way he could never explain—with a kind of sickening hope.

  Marion arrived and the bloody clothes were soaked, and the five big utility washers began to churn heavily. A short while later the white truck nosed up to the bright building and Darwin climbed out with a metal bucket full of wrapped potatoes and in the other hand the turkey in its ashen wrapper of wire and foil so that when he entered the large soap-smelling room he appeared the survivor of a disaster.

  “Let’s get this man a shirt,” Darwin said of Ronnie, who stood arms folded leaning against the bank of washers. “So we can eat.”

  From the truck he also brought the plaid picnic blanket and spread it over the large laundry table in the back. Marion crossed to the Antlers and returned with a box of silverware and plates and salt and pepper and a stick of butter and napkins and a maroon Antlers T-shirt with a silver antelope screened onto the chest which she handed to Ronnie to wear. “Those are ten bucks,” she said. “Credit. Thirty days same as cash.”

  “Thirty days,” Arthur said. She looked at him.

  Darwin had given Ronnie the wirecutters and the boy clipped the chickenwire end to end. Darwin pulled the foil layer away and then the next, and steam twisted off the brown bird in spirals.

  “It’s a turkey,” Traci said.

  “And potatoes,” Darwin said, handing them around.

  Darwin lifted a drumstick onto Ronnie’s plate and the turkey shifted and fell apart, revealing the onion and the orange inside and the smell of the arrangement hovered over the table. Marion bowed her head and Traci followed, so the three men exchanged a glance and looked down while she said grace. When she looked up she said, “It smells amazing.”

  Traci started to tell the story while they sorted their plates and began to eat, how Darren had come into this very room wanting to fight Ronnie and hit him from behind, just once so as to start the thing, but when Ronnie turned, Darren stood in the door and told them that he couldn’t fight in town. “Ronnie and I were just starting the laundry and Ronnie said, No way, he didn’t have time, that he’d meet him tomorrow, anywhere.”

  “We thought he had gone,” Ronnie said. “That’s when his buddy and the girl and he came back and tore through here taking our stuff and throwing it around.” Traci cut a thick pat of butter and spread it on Ronnie’s potato.

  Marion had opened the beer and the bottles stood amid the dishes on the green plaid blanket while everyone ate and Darwin lifted spears of the turkey and dropped it onto their already full plates.

  “These potatoes are good,” Ronnie said. “That fire must have been about right.”

  “So you went after them,” Arthur said to the boy.

  “I had to,” Ronnie said. “You sent me to do the laundry. We followed them out past the four corners and on the far side of the four-way, they threw our stuff in the ditch and they were waiting in the dark. Traci told Buster to stay back, that it was just Darren, and he did and the whole thing didn’t really last that long.”

  Traci told how Darren had run at Ronnie, tackling him on the asphalt and climbing him with his knees and standing quickly up. “He kicked him and Ronnie rolled over and got up.” Traci looked from face to face. “I thought he’d hurt you and there was blood.”

  “It was the damndest thing,” Ronnie said. He looked at his plate, the drumstick.

  “Use your fingers,” Marion said. “Pick it up.”

  He did and he continued. “He swung at me at the same time I swung, but he brought his head with it and there’s no reason for it and I didn’t intend it, but he just nailed his face onto my fist. Arthur, I mean, I wasn’t exactly looking, but I felt it.” Ronnie looked at his hand.

  “We all felt it,” Traci said, “and there was blood everywhere in a second. Buster and Gina just took off. Darren was in the road.”

  “We picked up the stuff and asked him if he wanted a ride to town.”

  “I never kicked him.”

  There was a shuffle in the front of the room, and two backpackers stepped in the front door of the Laundromat. “You open?” one said. They were both about twenty.

  “Go ahead,” Marion said. “It’s all night tonight.”

  They came in and shucked their packs against the first tier of washers and began to pull out their dirty clothes. Arthur got up and threw two loads of clean wet laundry into the dryers. Now the reflection of the dinner party in the big windows looked like an old photograph at a wedding, and he stood to the side for a moment before rejoining the table.

  Darwin rolled the carcass of the turkey and forked slivers of meat from the sides and bottom; it was almost all gone.

  Ronnie pointed at the remains with his drumstick and said to Traci, “Did these guys tell you how they cooked this bird?”

  “I’ve got a brand-new quart of vanilla in the freezer across the street,” Marion said. They all looked at her. It was eleven o’clock, near the end of the first turkey dinner in the Mercy Laundromat.

  EIGHTEEN

  RONNIE WAS CAUGHT. He opened his eye and the light knifed him like a stick, and now blind he woke without a sound and sat on the cot, barefoot and silent
, his breath stopped in the dark. His heart was in his face, and the air in the tent was heavy. He listened and could hear only the blood chugging in his neck. He’d been dreaming of his mother in her kitchen and he’d been waiting to hear what she would say. Ronnie looked down and saw in the hollow of his shoulder the point of light which had stabbed him, and he bent his eye there and saw the ray of moon shooting through the bullet hole in the canvas wall. He knelt and put a hand on Arthur’s cot and it was empty.

  Outside, the moon had just cleared the eastern horizon skylighting the echelons of ruined hills at the rim of the world, and flashing all the rest of the sage and the lumber and the campsite into two dimensions like a graveyard set in a comic play. The black shadows of the utility poles and the wire angled out in a stark chart on the ground. Ronnie stood and pulled on his workshirt, making a shadow that startled him, and he went to the table and put his fingers on it and listened. The night was warm. He was going to call when he saw the ash of a cigarette and the two figures at the roadgate.

  He walked out barefoot in the cool loam, barelegged in his boxer shorts, entering the perimeter of the low voices, Arthur’s and Darwin’s. They watched the boy’s approach printed like a black-and-white film in the lit night. “Who’s smoking?”

  Darwin lifted a cigarette from his shirt pocket and struck a match.

  “I thought you quit,” Arthur said.

  “I smoke with ghosts. What is this meeting? Are we working two shifts?”

  “It’s a night,” Arthur said. He was also barefoot wearing his sweatpants and an undershirt. “Darwin was going for a walk. I believe he does it every night.”

  “Some nights,” Darwin said. He was moving in a slow pace south along the track.

  Ronnie stood a moment watching their backs. “I might as well tell you boys, there’s nothing down this road this way or that.” He then followed after Arthur, the fine dust on the smooth hardpack a strange pleasure on his bare feet. “Is this overtime?” Ronnie said.