“How can I help you?”
“We’re looking for Whiskey Barrel Road,” Coach Fink said. “I was hoping you might give us some directions.”
“You gonna buy something?”
Coach Fink bristled but restrained herself. “Do you keep bottled water in the cooler? I didn’t want to disturb your cat.”
“That’s not my cat, and no, we don’t, just soda and ice cream sandwiches. There’s a spigot outside if you want water.”
Coach Fink pressed her lips together. She could feel the muscles in her neck bunching into knots. Without paying much attention, she selected a package of pork rinds from the shelf. She paid, waited.
“Whiskey Barrel Road?” she said.
“Never heard of it.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I said I never heard of Whiskey Barrel Road.”
“You acted like if I bought something you’d give me directions.”
“I did no such thing.”
“I’m telling you that’s what happened,” Coach Fink said, “and I’ll tell you something else. I think you know exactly how to find Whiskey Barrel Road but you’re holding out on me for some reason.”
“You can think whatever you want,” the woman said.
“Lady, I’m warning you. I am here on what will probably turn out to be a fool’s errand, and I’m not sure how I feel about that, and I strongly advise you to come clean ASAP.”
At that moment, in the tense and hovering silence, Bishop entered, wiping his feet. “I could go for some beef jerky,” he said, and then he stopped and looked around. “Is there a problem?”
“There’s about to be if this old lady doesn’t tell me how to find Whiskey Barrel Road.”
“Have you tried asking politely?”
The woman behind the register glared defiantly at Coach Fink. “There’s only one reason anybody ever comes around here asking after Whiskey Barrel Road.”
“We’re looking for a playwright named Eugenia Marsh,” Bishop said.
“That’s the reason.”
“I knew you were holding out on me,” Coach Fink said.
“We had reporters sniffing around the last few weeks, but you two don’t look like reporters. My guess is you’re just crazy fans. That play must really be something, the way you people show up here all the time.”
“I am not a fan,” Coach Fink said, “and you have about ten seconds before bad things begin to happen in this dump.”
“Let’s everybody take it easy,” Bishop said.
Coach Fink wondered what she would do if the old woman refused to answer, if her threats and posturing yielded no results. Part of her wanted to find out. She thought she might tip that jar of pickled eggs onto the floor. She pictured shattered glass, soggy eggs rolling around, pinkish fluid spreading across the hardwood planks.
“I hate that goddamn play,” she said.
The obvious truth of this remark, combined with a note of hopelessness in Coach Fink’s voice, had the effect of letting the air out of the situation. Turned out the old woman had no reason to protect Eugenia Marsh. She just enjoyed having a secret almost as much as she disliked strangers. While the old woman wrote directions on the back of Bishop’s map, she admitted that Eugenia Marsh was a bit of a snob when you got right down to it, the kind of person who could live in a place for decades and spend a grand total of fifty bucks or so in another person’s country store.
They followed her directions for a few miles down Route 16, then made a right on Sour Mash Lane and a left on Whiskey Barrel Road. The sign was so overgrown with ivy that they passed it twice before Bishop noticed it tangled in the greenery. “Must have been a distillery around here,” he said, and Coach Fink felt about his comment the way she often felt about history as a subject—it was engaged in pointing out the obvious. Human beings existed in the past. Events occurred at this location. Well, no shit, Coach Fink thought. And yet, as she piloted them down Whiskey Barrel Road, ivy climbing the pines and the bear oaks and draping tendrils from the highest branches, these tendrils dangling low enough in places to brush the windshield of her truck, she felt the presence of history in a way she couldn’t have explained, this feeling akin to but not exactly like déjà vu. Dapples of shadow on the pavement seemed infused with the uncanny; clouds wisped across the sky in arcane patterns. They passed a dilapidated barn on Bishop’s side of the road, the roof caved in, the rest of the structure leaning hard but hanging on, the barn, too, threaded through with vines, as if ivy was the only thing holding it up. Eventually a split-rail fence took shape in the undergrowth, and the ivy began to thin, creeping along the fence for a while before falling away to reveal fields of hay grass and, in the distance, the blunt and hazy shape of the Blue Ridge Mountains shouldering up beyond a line of trees.
And then a house stranded in a field—white clapboard, green shutters. Boxwoods planted around the porch. Chimneys on both sides. A pea-gravel drive dwindling toward the house through a row of cedars. Not identical to the house in Coach Fink’s dream but close enough to make her cheeks go hot, her hands numb on the wheel. There was a mailbox on a fence post down by the road, and Coach Fink braked to look inside.
Empty but for an old bird’s nest.
“What’re you doing?” Bishop said.
“Nothing,” Coach Fink said. “Just making sure we’re in the right place.”
“The address is on the mailbox.”
She turned into the driveway, tires crunching on the gravel, Pickett pacing in the bed, and stopped in front of the house. No other cars in sight.
“Tell me again—why didn’t we just write a letter?”
“Letters take too long,” Bishop said, “and are too easily ignored.”
“Looks like nobody’s home,” she said.
Coach Fink stayed in the truck while Bishop climbed the porch steps and knocked on the door. He waited with his hands in his pockets. Pickett whined but he stayed put. A wind chime played softly in the breeze, the sound of it blending in her ears with Pickett’s whine. After a minute, Bishop came down the steps and dropped the tailgate for Pickett. “We’ll check around the back,” he said, and she watched him peeking in the windows as he went, cupping his hands around his eyes, Pickett whizzing on the boxwoods. They disappeared behind the house, and when they reemerged on the other side, she opened her door and stepped out into the gravel.
“Let’s wait awhile,” Bishop said.
He found a branch under the trees and tossed it into the field for Pickett. The dog bounded through the hay grass, leaping high, then vanishing, only his tail visible, then leaping into sight again. Coach Fink sat on the tailgate of her truck. Pickett found the branch and brought it back and Bishop let it fly again. They waited more than an hour, a breeze washing over the field like wind over the sea.
XVI
It was Bishop’s idea to stay the night. They found rooms at the Rebel Rest Motel out by the interstate. For some reason, the manager booked them on separate floors, Coach Fink at ground level, her pickup parked just outside her door, Bishop on the second and highest floor, the view from his window an equally vacant chain motel across the road. He filled a plastic ice bucket with water for Pickett and left the TV on the news so the dog wouldn’t get lonely while he and Coach Fink drove into the town of Lexington to find a place to eat.
Like Briarwood, the nearby college was on spring break, and life seemed on hold without the students. Just two cars parked on Main Street, a brown Volvo hatchback and an old blue Mercedes, its left taillight busted out. Quiet brick storefronts: the coffee shop, the used bookstore, the hardware store, the haberdashery. The college was named for George Washington and Robert E. Lee, but the town seemed to favor Lee. A mannequin in the window of the haberdashery sported a bow tie with a Confederate flag motif. This was not to mention their motel. Perhaps the old Confederate felt more a part of the place than the revolutionary because Lee had actually lived here for a while, serving as president of the college after the Civil War, whereas Wash
ington had only provided an endowment. Bishop had always thought Lee an odd exemplar for the Southern male—meditative and spiritual by nature, physically unimpressive, more pastor than warrior by most accounts. Plus, Lee failed in his great campaign, whereas Washington, also a Virginian, was remembered for chopping down cherry trees and wintering at Valley Forge and routing Cornwallis at Yorktown. He supposed George Washington belonged to national history while Lee was mired in the history of the South. All of this Bishop considered over slices of pepperoni and mushroom in a red leatherette booth at a place called Small Paul’s Pizzeria.
“I love a college town when the students are away,” he said around a mouthful. “You get all the good without the bad.”
“So in this equation students are the bad?”
“You have to admit they make a lot of unnecessary racket.”
They had a pitcher of beer and shakers of powdered Parmesan and red pepper flakes. The jukebox played a song by Johnny Cash. Just finding Eugenia Marsh’s house seemed like progress.
Coach Fink sipped her beer, wiping foam from her lip with the back of her hand. As if patching into Bishop’s line of thought, she said, “You think she’ll be home in the morning?”
“I have a good feeling,” Bishop said.
On the way back to the Rebel Rest, they stopped at a convenience store for supplies—toothbrushes and toothpaste, shaving cream and disposable razors. Coach Fink bought a Twinkie for dessert. Bishop added a can of dog food and a six-pack. He took Pickett for walk around the motel parking lot and iced the beer in the bathroom sink, and then it dawned on him that he had no way to open the dog-food can. He tried the front desk, but the night clerk was no help, so he headed for Coach Fink’s room. Her window looked out over the sidewalk, and she’d left the curtains open. He could see her inside doing sit-ups on the floor with her feet wedged under the dresser. Eyes closed, fingers linked behind her head. Still in her street clothes—jeans and a flannel shirt. Blue light from the TV played across her face. She touched one elbow to her knee and then the other, and Bishop didn’t know whether to knock or leave her be. He stepped away from the window and counted to a hundred with his back to the door, but when he looked again she was going strong. The tendons in her neck put him in mind of guy wires on a bridge. He was still watching when she stopped and opened her eyes and saw him standing there. She made a face and rolled to her feet.
“I should have figured you for a perv,” she said, cracking the door.
Bishop showed her the dog food.
“You don’t by any chance have a way to open a can?”
Coach Fink sighed and pushed past him to her truck. She kept a Swiss Army knife in the glove compartment and managed to pry up one side of the lid. On TV, a young Sissy Spacek was cowering in a shower stall, being pelted with tampons by her schoolmates because her period had arrived and she didn’t know what it was.
“Is that Carrie?” Bishop said
“It had just started when I caught you sneaking a peek,” Coach Fink said. “You’re welcome to join me.”
Bishop said, “I’ll grab some beers.”
Back in his room, Bishop used his fingers to scoop the dog food out for Pickett. He washed his hands and sat at a small table by the window while Pickett ate. He’d been trying not to think about Lenore, but an image of her flared up against his will. She was staring out the window of his classroom—bored by history, distracted by the unbearable complications of the present. The obvious advantage of history is hindsight, but even so, people kept on making the same mistakes. Nobody ever learned. Nobody ever knew what was right or what was true. Not for sure, not in the present. He carried the beer downstairs with Pickett at his side. Coach Fink had left the door ajar, and Pickett trotted into her room like he expected to be welcomed. Coach Fink was propped on a nest of pillows in one of two double beds. She patted the mattress, and Pickett hopped up beside her.
“I used to have a dog,” she said.
Bishop passed Coach Fink a beer and took his place on the empty bed.
“Her name was Shirley,” Coach Fink said. “A Shetland sheepdog. She liked to herd the neighbor’s cows.”
Now a vision of young Coach Fink floated into his mind, a little girl in jeans and sneakers shooting hoops at a basketball goal nailed to the side of a barn, a Shetland sheepdog dancing around her legs. The vision was probably bogus, cribbed from some nostalgic G-rated portrayal of rural life. He had a hard time picturing her as a Briarwood student, though he knew she had been. On TV, Bible in hand, Piper Laurie was berating Sissy Spacek, mother hectoring daughter on the evils of lust and fornication. Bishop pointed.
“I bused her table once. Sissy Spacek. I used to work at this place called Faulkner’s back in undergrad. She lives just outside Charlottesville. Came in with her husband. They had the crab cakes, as I recall.”
“You can’t throw a rock without hitting a celebrity anymore,” Coach Fink said. “I saw Robert Duvall one time at a gas station in Loudoun County. He was just standing there at the pumps like everybody else.”
Bishop remembered how the actress’s presence among the ordinary diners had done nothing to make her seem more real. Instead, the restaurant itself had taken on the sheen of something imagined.
“Anyhow,” he said. “She’s pretty great in The Phantom of Thornton Hall.”
Coach Fink pushed up on her elbows.
“What’re you talking about?”
“The PBS thing,” Bishop said. “Sissy Spacek was great.”
“There’s a damn movie?” Coach Fink said.
“Well, it’s public television not Hollywood but yeah. Recorded live on Broadway after it won the Pulitzer.”
“How come nobody told me?”
“I assumed you’d seen it. I got it from the school library. Sissy Spacek plays Jenny. I forget who plays Eleanor, but you’d recognize her if you saw her. She’s on a soap commercial now.”
Coach Fink huffed and crossed her ankles. Bishop looked over at her, but her face was hidden from view by the table lamp. He could see her left hand opening and closing on the blanket. With her right hand, she balanced the beer can on the flat plain of her stomach.
“What’re we doing here, Bishop?” she said. “What’re you doing here?”
“That’s complicated,” Bishop said.
Coach Fink swung her legs around and stood between the beds with her hands on her hips. Glaring at him. She looked furious, dangerous. She toed her sneakers off. Then she lunged toward the edge of the bed, grabbed Bishop by the ears, and kissed him. Her lips were chapped. His eyes were open. Her freckles blurred. She pulled away and held his gaze. “You know what I like about this movie?” she said, jerking a thumb over her shoulder at the TV. A pause stretched out between them, long enough that Bishop began to worry that she wanted him to guess, but after a moment she provided the answer to her question. “The freak wins.”
“That’s not how I remember it,” Bishop said.
She kissed him again, and this time he kissed her back, his hands on her ribs, her shoulders. He let her unbuckle his belt, then lifted his hips to tug his jeans down while she stepped out of hers. They kissed again. Coach Fink took him in her fist and squeezed until he swelled. She straddled him, aiming him with her fingers. She pressed her face into his neck and found her rhythm. Breath hissed between her teeth and behind that, he could hear Sissy Spacek making her case to Piper Laurie. “I’ve been invited to the prom,” she said. Before long would come the pig’s blood and the fire and the hand grasping up from the grave. The way Bishop remembered it, that movie turned out badly for everyone involved.
* * *
Later, because they were feeling restless and awkward, because they’d finished Bishop’s beer and the movie was over and they could think of nothing else to do, they drove back out to Whiskey Barrel Road. Coach Fink cut the headlights and parked her truck beside the mailbox. There was a car in the driveway, windshield catching moonlight, but Bishop convinced Coach Fink they’d have better l
uck in the morning. Pickett sniffed at the air, thrilled by this strange outing, the house a silhouette of its daytime self, stars scattered across the night like beads from a broken strand of pearls.
“You’d have to really want to be alone,” Coach Fink said, “to live in a place like this all by yourself.”
“I get the impression that she didn’t like being famous very much.”
“Is that why she quit writing?”
Bishop shrugged in the dark. “Her second play tanked. She had some personal problems. Nobody knows but her, I guess. Maybe she just didn’t have anything else to say.”
Pickett circled, then settled on his belly. The dashboard clock glowed 11:58. Without looking at him, Coach Fink said, “I should tell you that we probably won’t be doing that again. The sex, I mean.”
“I appreciate your honesty,” Bishop said.
“I don’t mean to hurt your feelings. It was nice and all.”
“I’m glad you liked it.”
“Well, I did,” she said, “but I feel like we should make that more of a onetime thing.” She turned to face him, both hands on the wheel. “This is the part where you tell me you liked it, too.”
“I liked it, too,” he said.
They sat there watching the house without speaking for what seemed to Bishop like a long time, but the silence between them was not uncomfortable. Finally, Coach Fink reached for the keys and drove them back to the motel, where they retired to their separate rooms.
In the morning, at the house on Whiskey Barrel Road, they found Eugenia Marsh up on an extension ladder cleaning her gutters, an old blue Mercedes out front, the one from Main Street with the busted taillight. She was wearing overalls, a long-johns top, yellow rubber dish gloves. She didn’t acknowledge the sound of Coach Fink’s tires on the gravel, just kept tossing sticks and leaves over her shoulder. Her hair cut in that familiar bob.
“Is that her?” Coach Fink said.
At Briarwood School for Girls Page 11