“Go Skullcats,” said Grip, climbing up into the driver’s seat. He leaned out the passenger side and pulled Jory up into the truck. “Oh, man,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “Not exactly ice cream weather.”
Jory hugged her arms close to her chest. “Grace doesn’t even have a coat on,” she said, and slowly she began to cry.
“Ah,” said Grip. “Don’t do that—don’t do that.” He patted her leg and then started the truck engine. He rubbed his hand over his face. “Grace is a very smart girl,” he said.
“You said that before, I think,” said Jory, wiping her eyes with her coat sleeve. “Or maybe it was my dad.”
“Well, she is,” said Grip. “She’s the smartest girl I know.” He peered backward and backed the truck out of the trailer court. “Present company excepted.”
“Thanks,” said Jory. “I guess.”
The rain came down in uneven sheets. Grip turned on the wipers and they slapped ineffectually back and forth, making a strange squeaking sound on each return trip.
Grip turned on the heater and then the radio. Sam Cooke decided he’d been loving her too long to stop now.
“How come some men have such beautiful voices?” said Jory. “My voice sounds like a squawking crow.” She pulled the hood on her jacket back and tried to straighten her hair with her hands.
“I love crows,” said Grip. “Have you ever seen those bottles of Old Crow whiskey where the crow is smoking a cigar?” He shook his head. “Crows look just like that, like old men who are getting together for a card game . . . and half of them are going to cheat.”
Jory tried to smile. “I like the way they talk to each other. And the way they have to hop before they can take off.”
“Yeah,” said Grip. “They’re too heavy to just start flying, so they have to get a running start.” He leaned forward and peered out the rain-splattered windshield. “I’m thinking about a crow tattoo.” He turned to Jory. “What do you think—a big old crow right on my chest?” He mock flexed his arm. “Very manly, right? Right?” He grinned.
“When did you get the snake one?” Jory tried not to sound shy.
“Oh. Yeah, well, I was living in Texas a while back, in Austin, and a friend and me went to this tattoo parlor on the corner of Twenty-third and Guadalupe, where an old Indian woman said that snakes were good medicine. That this tattoo would bring me luck.” He grinned. “I must have been drunk.”
“Did it?” Jory looked out at the rain coming down. “Bring you luck?”
Grip adjusted the rearview mirror. “I don’t believe in luck.”
“Not at all?”
“Nah.” Grip wiped his sleeve across the windshield. “People do what they’re going to do and then things happen.”
“So you don’t believe in God, either?”
Grip inspected Jory’s face. “Does it matter what I think?”
“Yes,” she said, and peered down at her feet. She moved her wet moccasins against the truck’s floor mat.
Grip sighed. “Okay,” he said. “So why would God, if there is a god, need us to believe in him? What point would that serve?”
“Because it would prove that we were willing to trust in something we couldn’t see or touch or anything.”
“And why does that matter? Is it some kind of a test that God’s giving? Like, hey, here’s this really outrageous idea, and if you believe it—even though there’s absolutely no proof of any kind—then you get to go to heaven? What kind of weird setup is that?”
Jory watched the rain dripping down the side window and blurring the trees and houses.
“And if God, if there were a god—let’s just say there was a god—why did he, if he knew everything about everything, why did he not know that Adam and Eve were going to eat the apple? And why did he set it up so that they would? And if he was so great and all-powerful and everything, why did he have to fix his mistakes by making himself human and getting himself killed? None of it makes any sense—not from a logical standpoint or even a theological one.” Grip shook his head. “I mean, it’s a kind of neat story in a sick, messed-up, tortured sort of way, but it doesn’t make any sense.”
Jory drew a star in the condensation on the window. “My dad says that humans need a god, and that we’re lost without one. That we wouldn’t know how to live if we weren’t afraid of getting punished in the end.”
“Your dad says that?”
“Yeah, sometimes he’s very practical, but he also thinks that we should live like Christ did. That Christ was the greatest living example of how to behave.”
“Well, okay,” said Grip. “And that would be great if that’s what people did, but no one lives like that, so it really doesn’t matter.”
“Some people try to.” Jory erased the star with her hand. The window was now smudgy and impossible to see out of. “Sometimes.”
Grip turned the wipers on high and leaned toward the windshield. “Shit, it’s raining too hard to see anything out there. I don’t think it’s even safe to drive. I can’t see the other cars anymore.” He slowed down and tried to steer them toward the side of the road. “Hang on,” he said. “We may end up in the ditch.” They bumped and lurched to a stop, and Grip turned on the truck’s flashers. “We’ll just sit here for a minute until it clears up some.” He tried to peer up out of the windshield at the sky. “I don’t ever think I’ve seen it like this here. In Texas, it rained so hard the rainwater ran uphill.” He turned around and reached back into the truck’s refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of beer. He opened the top and handed it to Jory, and then got another one out for himself. He took a long drink and then leaned forward and fiddled with the radio dial.
“Wait,” said Jory, grabbing his hand. “I like that song.” Jory tried to hum the tune for a second and then stopped. “What is that?” she said.
“Duke Ellington,” said Grip. “‘Prelude to a Kiss.’”
“It sounds like one of the old victrola songs, but there aren’t any words.”
“There are words. Sarah Vaughan does it best.”
“What are they? The words, I mean.”
“Be quiet a minute and I’ll tell you.” He cleared his throat and began singing.
Jory grinned and took another sip of her beer. Since she’d already been drunk, she guessed it didn’t matter much that she was drinking now.
Grip’s scratchy baritone filled the truck’s cab for a moment or two longer and then died away.
Jory clapped her hands and smiled hugely. “You have a really nice voice. How do you know all that stuff? All that old stuff?”
Grip took a drink of his beer. “Because I’m all old and stuff.”
“No, you’re not,” said Jory. She took another hesitant sip of her beer. “My teachers at school are all way older than you.”
“Thank God for that,” said Grip. He clinked his beer bottle against Jory’s. “Maybe you should hook me up with one of those ancient crones.”
“There’s Ms. Lindbloom, my English teacher—she’s actually really pretty. You’d probably like her.” Jory drank some more of her beer. It was tasting a little less bad.
“Nah, I never go for the pretty ones. They’re too much trouble. I like the ones that nobody else likes. The ones with lots of zits and ugly legs.” He drained the last of his beer.
“Well, thanks a lot,” said Jory, making a face.
“What?” said Grip, leaning back in his seat. “You thought I liked you or something?” He rolled his eyes. “Definitely not my type.”
“What? Why not?” said Jory, kicking at him with her wet moccasin.
“Hey,” he said, swiping at his leg. “These are my best pants now, so don’t go getting them all messed up.”
Jory reached over and brushed at the imaginary dirt on his pant leg. “Do you really think I’m too ugly?” she said, looking serious.
Jory could smell the bitter tang of beer on his breath. She breathed it in and leaned toward him and all of a sudden she could see his eyes quickly searching hers for something. His mouth was cooler than she had expected. His lips were softer and his chin scratched hers horribly. Her head was filled with a thrilling sort of buzzing. He was running his tongue over the front and back of her teeth. She breathed in the whole smell of his mouth and his face and then his neck. “Jory,” he was saying into her hair, and then he had her by the arms and he pushed her back into her seat. “Hey,” he said, and she could see his chest moving in and out, fast.
“Hey what?” she said, trying to read his face. Her body was still singing with new knowledge.
He turned around and put his hands on the steering wheel. “Hey,” he said again.
“I’m not a baby,” she said.
“I know that,” he said. He ran his hand over his face. “I think it’s clearing up,” he said, and he reached up and wiped wildly with the palm of his hand at the inside of the windshield. “I think it’s mostly stopped.” He leaned forward and turned on the truck’s ignition. It coughed and sputtered and refused to start. “Shouldn’t have left the radio on,” he said. He turned the key again and the truck’s engine groaned once or twice and then finally caught. “Okay,” he said, and pulled the truck back roughly onto the roadway.
They rode along in silence for a block or two. Jory tried to look out through the windshield. The rain was still coming down as hard as ever. The wipers could barely keep up. It was like being inside a gigantic car wash that never stopped. “Maybe we should pull over somewhere,” said Jory.
“No,” said Grip. “We can make it. It has to slow down in a minute or two.” He rolled down the window and stuck his head out. “Dammit,” he said. He tried to wipe off the side mirror with his coat sleeve. It was no better than before. He cranked the window back up. The rainwater ran off his head and down his coat; he shook his head like a dog. “This is insane,” he said, and tried to turn the wipers on high. The wipers whipped back and forth with greater urgency, and then suddenly the wiper blade nearest Jory snapped off and flew away into the wind. “Goddammit!” Grip pounded his fist against the steering wheel. The lone wiper squeaked back and forth. The world in front of Jory was a watery blur.
“Let’s just stop,” Jory said again.
“Please be quiet.” Grip leaned forward, peering intently through the small swath the lone wiper cleared in the windshield. “I think we’re not too far from Hope House. Hey, wouldn’t that be great? We could stop there—I’m sure they’d like me to pay them another visit.” He laughed bitterly once and shook his head. His rain-wet hair was the color of old pennies.
The truck hit a pothole, probably the same one that Nick’s car had hit on the way out, and Jory slammed against the truck’s passenger door. “Ow,” she said as the truck now veered even more sharply to the right and began slowing. “What’s going on?” Jory asked. She rubbed her right shoulder.
“Flat tire,” said Grip. The truck made a loud thwap-thwap-thwapping sound and they pulled off the road and came to a stop next to some sort of shadowy outbuilding. Jory tried to peer out her window but could see next to nothing through the downpour.
Grip rested his forehead between his hands on the steering wheel. “We don’t have a spare,” he said. His voice was directed toward the floor. “There’s not enough room in the back to carry one.” He turned his head and looked sideways at Jory with his head still resting on the wheel.
“Maybe this is inexorable fate,” said Jory. “The unexpected expected.”
“What?” said Grip.
Jory rolled her window down. “There’s a barn,” she said. “Or it could be a really weird house.” She opened the truck door and jumped down and ran toward the building. She could hear Grip calling her name from inside the truck. She splashed through the mud toward what looked like an overhang. There was a door underneath it with a curved top and a wooden handle at waist height. Like a hobbit house, Jory thought before she could stop herself. She pounded on the door and tried to stamp the rainwater off her shoes. Her moccasins were ruined. The door opened just as Grip came sloshing up beside her. Jory recognized the man in the doorway only after she had said hello, and even then for a second she wasn’t sure. It was the black eye and the bandage across his nose that made him look different. Plus the fact that he was no longer holding a guitar.
Inside there was a fire burning in a small stone fireplace and a large dirty brown dog stretched out next to it. “Some guard dog you are,” said the guitar man fondly. “We could all be dead by now.” The dog thumped its tail lazily against the floor. “Yeah, you know we’re talking about you, don’tcha?” The guitar man stared at Grip. “I wouldn’t have let you in except for her.” He nodded his head at Jory.
Grip said nothing.
“Do you think we could maybe use your phone?” Jory asked.
“Sure,” the guitar man said. “If I had one.” He squatted next to the fire and placed a small log on top of the one that was already burning brightly. “No phone, no TV, no radio.” The guitar man was wearing what looked like buckskin pants—what Jory imagined buckskin pants would look like—and a long-sleeved undershirt with several large holes in it. He had two gold hoops in one of his ears and his hair was in a long dark braid that hung all the way down his back. “You wanna hang your clothes up by the fire? It’s the only way you’re gonna get dry.” The guitar man stood up and gestured at Jory.
Jory looked at Grip.
Grip shrugged.
Jory took off her wet moccasins and her jacket. She handed them to the guitar man.
“Anything else?” he asked, cocking his head and smiling.
Grip gave him a look.
He held up his hands. “Dude, I just meant, like, her socks or something.”
Jory peeled off her horribly wet knee-highs. “Ugh,” she said, and handed them to him.
The guitar man stretched her clothing out on the hearth. “Toasty in no time,” he said.
Jory sat down on an old green velvet couch. Or what used to be a green velvet couch. The velvet was now so thin and worn that there was hardly any velvet nap left at all. There was a coffee table of sorts in front of the couch that appeared to have been hewn out of a middle of a tree. Jory ran her hand over its smooth-ringed top. Everything in the little house—the walls, the floor, the ceiling—all of it was made of thick planks of wood, sanded smooth and varnished a glossy, almost glowing golden brown.
“Weird weather, huh?” the guitar man said. “Doesn’t usually rain like this. I saw a double dog around the moon the other night, though, and sure enough—” He snapped his fingers.
“I think that means there’s going to be a frost,” said Jory. “It’s actually just the nearly frozen condensation in the air that makes it look that way. There really isn’t anything around the moon at all.”
“Her father’s an astronomer,” said Grip. “There’s no arguing with her.” He glanced grudgingly at the guitar man as if the two of them suddenly had something in common. “Her sister’s the same way.”
Jory turned to the guitar man. “You haven’t heard anything about a girl wandering around lost, have you? My sister—you maybe saw her on Halloween—she’s gone. We can’t find her.” Jory glanced back at Grip, trying to gauge from his expression just how much to say. Grip, for some reason, wouldn’t meet her eyes. Jory continued, “She sort of wandered away from our house a night ago. Last night, I mean.”
The guitar man leaned down next to the fire and poked at it with a long stick he had hanging below the mantel. Sparks, like angry insects, flew up out of the burning logs. “Are you sure she’s lost?” he said, looki
ng back at Grip. “Maybe she doesn’t exactly want to be found.”
“Ah, the great philosopher,” said Grip, standing up. “Don’t get all voodooy with me. If you’re just dying to say something, go ahead. If you aren’t, then shut up.”
The guitar man held up his hands again. He was decidedly smaller and thinner than Grip. “This is my house, man,” he said. “You’re just standing in it. You asked to come in, remember? All I’m saying is that lots of times people leave places because they want to. You know?”
“Are your clothes dry yet?” Grip frowned at Jory. “There’s no point in sitting around here.” He marched over to a tiny window and looked out.
“Look,” said the guitar man. “Don’t get all jumpy. I’m just pointing out something, is all.”
Jory walked over to the fireplace and picked up one of her socks. It was slightly less damp than it was before. She turned to the guitar man again. “You haven’t seen her, have you? Or heard anyone say anything about a tall dark-haired girl? Well, she used to be dark haired—now she mostly doesn’t have any hair. She’s seventeen, and she’s . . . pregnant.”
“Pregnant,” said the guitar man, as if this were a slightly pleasing thought. “Well, well.”
“Well, what?” said Grip. “You have something to say about that?” He looked out the window again. “What I really need is a spare tire. Do you or any of your so-called friends have something I could use, even temporarily? I’ve got about five bucks”—Grip fished around in his pants pocket—“six bucks and change, if you can find me a truck tire.”
“You’re asking for another favor?” The guitar man smiled and pulled gently on one of his earrings. “Not quite as high and mighty as the last time I saw you. You nearly broke my nose, man.”
“Look, do you think you can just find me that tire?” Grip laid a five-dollar bill in the guitar man’s hand.
He shrugged. “There’s a couple of old ones in the woodshed. You can check it out if you want.”
Grip glanced briefly at Jory. “I’ll be back in a minute.” He struggled into his wet coat and went out the front door.
The Girl Who Slept with God: A Novel Page 30