by Warren Read
PART TWO
Stevens County, Washington State 1976
“April is the cruelest month, breeding
lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
memory and desire, stirring
dull roots with spring rain.”
—TS Eliot, The Waste Land
9
Nadine LaSalle kept herself a few paces behind her man as she walked with him from the front porch down the slope to the old well. He didn’t push her to hustle up or anything like that, the ground being so uneven and steep, and peppered with baseball-sized rocks half-buried in the dirt. She carried the week’s trash in a paper bag clutched to her chest while, just ahead of her, the tin bucket knocked against his leg as he lumbered along, a black storm of flies swirling around the glistening slop inside.
“I don’t see why we can’t use the fur,” she said.
“We ain’t using the fur.”
“Seems like a waste to me.” Her voice came in punches from the unsteady path. “We ought to be using the fur.”
“I don’t need the hassle,” he said. “Tanning’s a pain in the ass.”
There were four rabbits in the bucket, four minus the meat and bones which were presently simmering on the stovetop in a pot of broth over a low pine wood fire. She could learn to tan hide if she had a book to show her how, or if there was someone who could walk her through it once. She had learned to do a lot since she met Lester Fanning. Since the day he spotted her outstretched thumb and pulled over, inviting her into the warmth of his old Ford’s cab.
“It’s complicated,” she’d said to him then.
“I hate complicated,” he said back to her. “What do you think of ‘simple’?”
“I’d say ‘simple’ sounds like a nice, juicy slice of heaven.”
Three hundred miles and a thousand acres of forest later, and here’s where she was.
They came down the last part of the ridge to where the black hole of the old well looked up at them from its spot in the midst of young alders. She stopped at the triangle rock like always, tossing the bag in a high arc so that it dropped easily into the mouth. Lester walked right up to the edge and stared down. He looked back over his shoulder at Nadine and winked.
“Make a wish, baby.”
“I want an electric stove,” she said. “And a dryer.”
He tipped the bucket upside-down and the stew of innards and matted fur, red on mottled gray, fell silently into the hole. “You ain’t supposed to say it out loud,” he said. “Now it won’t come true.”
Lester turned and walked past her back up the hill to the house. To the house with its wood-fired stove and tin can candles, and the wringer washer, a house that might have been modern fifty years earlier. A tiny hut that you had to go out the back door and walk through a gauntlet of dusty old cars with rims sunk into the dirt, all under a hundred feet of low-hanging ponderosa needles, just to take a take a piss. Thirty years old with everything either behind or ahead of her stinking like rot, Nadine had wanted simple. And with Lester Fanning, lucky or not, she got simple.
He powered ahead up the hill with the bucket swinging like a crank, pushing him farther and farther away from her. The incline was tough on her legs. Nadine was not a petite woman, though she was slimmer now than she had been before all of this. Everything about her body was just as it should be, she decided. And anyway, Lester liked a woman with some extra meat on her. “It gets cold up there in the winter,” he told her that day. The decision to go ahead with it had been sealed at the Hardy Pine Diner only a couple hours after he’d picked her up, somewhere between the short stack of pancakes and her fourth cup of coffee. “A little extra insulation will do us both good.”
He was older than her by a good fifteen years, but his eyes held the surprise and eagerness of a boy, and it was that combination that stirred a mixture of comfort and excitement in her, like she could curl up in those blue pools and sleep for months. They kept her that way the entire time in the diner, as she poured the past decade of her life over the table between them, the men who had showed up and then run off or pushed her away with nasty habits or the hard revelation of a closed fist. She talked on and on, her hands clasped together and tucked between her knees, denim taut and strained. And somewhere in there, she couldn’t remember when, he said, “I got no mercy for any man who dares to raise his hand to a woman.” He reached across the table and she slid one hand from her lap and let him hold it in his. It warmed her like a velvet scarf, and when she found her voice catching he said, “I got a place a little out of the way that you could stay if you want. No expectations.”
He was up on the porch by the time she soldiered up over the ridge. The sun was hovering over the tips of the hemlocks now, limp like the cowlicks of little boys’ hair. She was sweating already but that was nothing new. It would only get hotter as the day went on, and the constancy of the woodstove would make it all that much more ridiculous. He had the Hills Brothers can on his lap, and he drew out dollar bills one at a time.
“I’m heading into town for a couple hours,” he said, licking his thumb. His hair was not fit for town, swept back over his head like some fifties guitar player, oily and streaked yellow among shocks of gray. “Anything we need that I don’t already know about?”
She wiped her arm across her forehead, slick. He’d fill up the gas cans for the generator; that was typical. They were well-stocked with chicken feed and toilet paper, and most all the usual amenities for the rest of the month.
“Nothing comes to mind,” she said. “If there’s a new Enquirer out I’d like that.”
He laughed. “I got a shelf full of books in there and you won’t crack a single one. You’d rather read that trash.”
“I can’t concentrate on a whole book,” she said.
“That shit is empty calories, Nadine. You’re better than that.”
“Jesus Christ, Lester. It’s cheap entertainment,” she said. “We got no TV up here. The radio doesn’t pick up but a half dozen stations and it’s not like I’ve got some lonely housewife next door I can walk over and meet at the fence for lemonade.”
He set down the can and walked down to her, where she stood at the base of the porch steps, and cupped his hand behind her neck, his palm callus-riddled, the scratch of fingernails bitten to serrated edges. Still, the touch was warm and forgiving.
“You’ve got me, baby,” he said. “Ain’t I entertaining enough?”
She reached up and held his wrist and he tightened his hold. Those blue eyes squinted against the sun, lines like hens’ feet stretching from the edges.
“In your company, who could ever be bored?” she said. She leaned forward then, and he kissed her, his sandy face scratching at her lips, the smell of coffee and wood smoke almost, but not quite, erasing the tang of his hair.
Nadine went on into the house and then to the kitchen and lifted the lid from the simmering pot and stirred the contents around some. She picked up the black, round plate and tossed another chunk of alder into the firebox. It was already hot as hell in that kitchen. She went to the window and propped it open with a stick of kindling and undid the buttons of her shirt to let the halfhearted breeze find her damp skin.
In the ten-plus months she had been with Lester, Nadine had grown to love the roundness of her own hips, and the way her breasts pushed against her arms when she leaned over to lace her boots or worked her hands through a mound of dough on the flour-dusted countertop. She no longer gave a minute’s notice to the texture and fullness of her hair but appreciated the ease with which the whole chestnut mane could be tied back in a rubber band and forgotten, her skin like a baby’s, free of the greasy cosmetics she had spent so much time trying to apply just so, all in accordance with other people’s expectations. Here in the hills she didn’t even have to look into that little round shaving mirror if she didn’t want to, clouded and scratched as it was, not even for the occasional guest who happened by. She knew nearly every trail and grove and meadow on the hundred o
r so acres around them, and while she longed for some of the conveniences she had always taken for granted, there was a security in not worrying about when the next thing would give out, or catch on fire. Or leave her hurting.
Outside under the big cottonwood, Lester was mucking around at the back of his Buick, the trunk lid standing straight up like a topsail. Boxes moved from his arms to the open space, sliding back and out of sight. They were the things he dealt in, tools and connectors and circuits. Stuff she likely could have helped him with if she’d had the slightest inclination, and if Lester hadn’t warned her in no uncertain terms to stay out of the shed for fear of her messing it all up and tossing the next month’s income down the old well. Truth was, she was more than happy to oblige. What she didn’t know about the shadows in Lester’s life could keep her free.
He shut the lid and gave the car a bounce, then climbed in and fired it up, a plume of blue smoke farting out the backend. As he rolled off down the drive, Nadine undid the rest of her shirt and let it fall open. She took one of his beers from the icebox and went on out to the porch, sinking down in the rocker where she took a good swill from the bottle and scanned the edges of the forest for any rabbits that might have avoided the traps this time.
10
Louis Youngman stepped through the living room in bare feet, the floorboards creaking under him like a bear’s growl, so much louder in the dim light of dawn than at any other time of day. There was a racket still lingering in his jaws and teeth, as if he’d been pummeled about the face in his sleep. He ran a finger through this mouth, half expecting to find it covered in blood when he brought it out.
The grind of his brother’s snoring seeped in from the opposite wall, rhythmic and intrusive. He did not want to share this time with Vinnie. There was so little of it for himself anymore, these moments of quiet solitude. Outside in the driveway, the streetlights washed his cruiser in a gentle coat of ashy blue. The sky was only now beginning to break. A single pickup truck passed by with barely a hum.
On the ridge of the sofa was his uniform, exactly where he’d laid it the night before, the star barely winking where the five-thirty sun caught hold of the tines. There were wrinkles in that shirt that he ought to have ironed out, but then wrinkles and creases, and dust, seemed to be the way of Louis’s world. Some days, he felt like it was all he could do to swing those stubborn legs of his out of bed and walk across that cold oak floor to see what the previous night had left for him.
“Lou.” Vinnie’s voice, dropping like a dead branch.
Louis froze, his bare feet still waking up. Tiny needles. “Go back to sleep,” he called out. He went on by his brother’s bedroom, then past the dining room table that hadn’t been used for anything other than bills and paperwork in years, and the framed photos he hardly noticed anymore. There were, instead, the scattering of handwritten signs taped up as constant guideposts for Vinnie—directions to close the door and stay inside, to leave the plugs and outlets alone. Phone numbers to call and reminders that no one other than Delores Jackson was allowed inside the house while Louis was gone.
The bulb over the mirror was lousy and fluttered like a moth, but it cast enough light for Louis to shave without the risk of cutting an artery. He leaned in and opened his mouth wide, and ran his finger in there again, looking over his teeth. They were one of the few sturdy things in him left, he thought. And as he stood there, gaping like some trout left on the creek bed, the dream came back to him.
He had been drinking beers with Vinnie at a roadhouse, some place that probably existed in the world somewhere but nothing that sparked a memory for Louis in any real way. Vinnie had reached over to take the bottle from Louis’s hand. “It’s busted, Lou,” he said, his walrus-mustache working over his lip. And sure enough, the thing was jagged halfway down the neck. Louis fished a finger into his mouth and began removing spires of glass, blood washing over his hand as he drew them out.
“That ain’t a good look on you,” Vinnie said to him.
“It sure isn’t,” Louis answered. He ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth, and the molars broke loose like pebbles from a mud bank. Vinnie’s eyes gawked at him in horror, and it was then that Louis woke up, wrapped in an ache like he’d been socked in the jaw, his teeth ringing from back to front.
There were times when this happened more often than others, these dreams where, at some point, his mouth came apart in pieces. Dr. Syd told him it was all connected to his teeth, from the sleep grinding, and the unreasonable stress he wasn’t bearing up well enough under.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Louis started, knocking his hip against the sink edge.
His brother stood there in the bathroom doorway, yellowed long johns sagging from stumpy hips, shock of white hair sticking out all over like a dandelion head.
“Jesus, Vinnie,” he said. “You look like you just hatched out of an egg.”
Vinnie squinted into the glare of the bare bulb, that divot in his forehead catching a smoky shadow. “I gotta pee,” he said.
“That’s fine.” Louis backed up and let his brother past him. “I’m gonna head on into the station,” he said. “Do my shower there.”
Vinnie leaned over the bowl, the stream pungent and unsteady.
“Hit the bowl, Vin.” The noise of water, finally.
“What time are you home?”
“It’s next to the clock,” Louis said. It was always there, on the yellow strip of paper he’d taped to the wall.
Vinnie did himself up and moved past Louis without so much as a flush, and made his way back to his bedroom. He was older than Louis by four years, but it had been a long time since Louis felt like a kid brother, since Vinnie’s mind started to get lazy. He stopped in the doorway and waited for Vinnie to find his place under the blanket.
“Be nice to Delores,” he said. “They won’t be sending anyone else out.”
“Don’t they have somebody white down there they can send?”
Louis picked at the paint on the molding. “Don’t say that, Vinnie. That’s ugly. Be lucky they have anyone at all who’s willing.” He looked over at his uniform draped over there like it was his own body that lay over the back of the sofa, flat, empty, and lifeless. “Delores Jackson is a good woman.”
Vinnie snorted and rolled over onto his side. “She’s a pain in the ass.”
Louis set his jaw, and the electricity reached from his teeth into his eyes. “You’re a pain in the ass,” he said. And then he closed Vinnie’s door harder than necessary, and went to find his shoes, in the hopes that he might get himself to the station before the rest of Stevens County was awake.
11
It was on a winter afternoon that seemed like a million years ago, Nadine making the long walk home from school, her friend Connie in tow. The two of them were playing at smoking like they often did, using pussy willow twigs and the gray clouds of their breath in the chilly air. Sophisticated city women, they pretended to be, strolling between the shops. They were both thirteen. It was already getting dark.
They separated at the corner of Seventh and Spring Street, Nadine going on into her house, where her mother sat alone in the living room with the heavy orange curtains all pulled shut. There was not a single light on in the entire place.
Nadine asked, “Is the TV broke?”
“I come from the doctor,” her mother said.
“’Cause of your coughing,” Nadine remembered.
“Yeah, well it’s bad.” She said it as if she were talking about someone else, like a soap opera character. “It’s all over in there. There ain’t nothing they can do.” Then she lit a cigarette and got up from the sofa and stood there for a good minute or so, staring at the television that was not on.
It was bad, in the end anyway. Though she acted like her time would be up tomorrow, Nadine’s mother went on like that for another eight years before the cancer finally took her. And while anyone else might think that extra time was a blessing, for Nadine it was
eight years of waiting and worry, and countless mother-daughter fights that always ended with warnings of regret and guilt, of just how sorry Nadine would be once it was all over. And the funny thing was, by the time it really did happen, Nadine had nothing left to regret. There would come a time when she determined it would all have been a hell of a lot easier if she’d been able to walk through those eight years half-blind, that the gift of not knowing what waited for them all would have been too precious to give up.
Nadine had gotten accustomed to Lester’s treasure trips, the two or three times a month when he’d disappear for a few hours without much explanation, returning home, sometimes after dark, with a car load of all kinds of crap that he’d picked up someplace for twenty bucks or so. He’d move it all into the shed, usually in the low light of the car’s headlamps, with barely a word to Nadine about it all other than the great deal he’d made. Now and then it’d be just a single bag, or yellow envelope, and a quiet transfer behind lock and key, no questions taken because, as far as Lester was concerned, his work was his business. If she didn’t need to be told, and there wasn’t a great deal she could do about it anyway, Nadine was content living in ignorance.
Typically, she’d wait up for him, curled up with an afghan blanket next to the kerosene lamp, a magazine or a crossword to keep her busy until he came in. On this particular night, though, she was feeling none of it. He’d left hours earlier with the promise of being home by dinner, and she’d cooked up a good pot of stew that now sat cold and untouched in the icebox. She shut down the generator and went to bed. He’d lumber in sometime later, she decided, smelling of beer or gasoline, or both. She’d steel her temper and rub his back, so that he would quit yammering about all the people he’d spent his hours with that she didn’t know, and he’d finally fall asleep.