One Simple Thing

by Warren Read

  So, when the phone rang and pulled her from sleep, her first instinct was that something bad had happened, because the man never called to tell her he was running late. He was calling from jail, she figured, or maybe it was county hospital trying to track down his next of kin.

  “Nadine.”

  “Lester,” she said, “what the hell is going on?”

  “You wouldn’t believe it,” he said. “Hell of a thing.” He was stranded in the middle of nowhere by a drained gas tank, and, according to him, he had walked a good half-dozen miles or so to the nearest phone, all wearing his old cowboy boots that were good for everything but walking. Right now, he was sitting in a noisy little bar somewhere off Highway 62. “I’m probably halfway to Kettle Falls,” he said.

  “Oh Jesus. What time is it?”

  “Ten past midnight.” He let her groan and stretch and get her head clear, then told her to get out of bed and to take the gas can from the garage. “Take the GMC,” he said. “The keys are in the visor.”

  She didn’t know this roadside bar but she knew the highways and most of the road names he rattled off to her. “I’ll get there when I get there,” she said, and then she hung up the phone and took her time getting dressed, washing her face in the basin and grabbing a handful of Saltines before she made her way out to what Lester liked to call the “garage,” really more of a ramshackle firetrap than anything else. It had plank walls and a leaky roof, and a pair of crooked doors that could be closed and latched, and apparently that was all good enough for Lester to pile a bunch of shit inside and give the thing a name.

  When Nadine got herself in the driver’s side of the bench seat and dropped the keys into her hand, she expected the truck would not start, and she was right. The cranky ignition, the lazy strain of the starter grinding to a mere click. She pulled out the headlamp knob only to see the dullest of yellow illuminate the low grass in front of her.

  There was no time to deal with the generator, and the long wait of a battery charge—though it was true that she fought with every nerve in her body the pressure to hurry for him. He had not given her the courtesy of an explanation, or even a clue, of where he was going or what he was up to. He’d simply announced that he’d be gone for a few hours and that was it. Now here it was, six hours later. And there he was, sitting in a rowdy tavern in God-knows-where, probably three drinks in before he even bothered to pick up the phone to call her.

  If there was a grain of forgiveness inside of her, it was in the pure fact that he’d had the foresight to leave the pickup with its frontend facing the drive. She popped the tranny into neutral and positioned herself behind the open door and gave it a good, firm shove. The old truck rolled itself gamely. Nadine leaned into it, digging in hard and the thing moved slowly forward, and the ground changed under her feet as she went, the pickup pitching and dipping and rocking with the downward terrain. When she knew she’d gotten to the clearing at the top of the drive, she jumped on up to the seat.

  She could barely see the path in front of her, and she knew it would stay that way until she could get the engine going to feed the headlamps. The big camping flashlight she held outside the window gave just enough to let her make out the slight, gentle turns on the way down.

  She pulled off the clutch and there was the jolt of the gears catching hold, and a sad cough as the truck seized, refusing to kick in. Nadine cursed at the decrepit thing, giving it a few more feet before trying again. A couple more attempts and the engine finally growled to resurrection. “There’s the baby,” she said, patting a hand on the dash like it was a pet, continuing to two-pedal it all the way down, gunning the engine with her right and holding down the clutch with her left to coast until she got to the bottom.

  Turning out onto the highway, she opened up the throttle and followed the roadway north all the way to Mead, then broke off due east in the direction of Kettle Falls. There were a few forks and turnoffs along the way, through a terrain of scrub and rock so endless it may as well have been Mars. The needle on the fuel gauge jittered between a quarter tank and empty with every rut and divot she rolled over, and right about the time she thought she’d earned the right to give it all up she caught the blue haze of an all-night gas station, just over the next ridge.

  It made no sense that it should be there, this dirty, stuccosmeared box out in the middle of nowhere. A pair of sickly-looking pine trees towered at either end of the place, their tops hunched over in sleep or near death. At the far corner of the station, a lone yellow car sat, with a crumpled fender and a plastic-covered rear window. Not wanting to risk the need for a jump out here, Nadine popped the truck into neutral and set the brake, left the engine running, and went inside.

  The attendant was an old scarecrow-looking coot, slouched next to a filter-stuffed ashtray, Zane Grey paperback unfolded in front of him. Lord, she knew those books—from her father, from the worn collection on Lester’s shelves. Never had she been interested enough to even crack one.

  “I feel lucky to see you,” she said to him.

  He rolled his eyes up at her, nodded, and said it was a sentiment that he got quite a lot this time of night. And when she asked him how far she was from the Hitching Post Tavern, he said, “If you’re dead set on going there, just take this road another four miles or so till you see the old burned-out church. Hook a right and you’ll be there before you know it.”

  It was just after two when she pulled into a gravel parking lot outside a sorry-looking dive, a cracker box barely holding itself up under a sagging shake roof. All sorts of clutter hung from the eaves and clapboard siding, the kind of thing someone might do to dress up a dying place to try and make it all look intentional—horse bridles and a few pitchforks, some coiled rope and a scatter of horseshoes. Draped over the front door: a big old saddle.

  The lot was mostly empty, and all the neon was dark, with the exception of a single Busch sign that vibrated in the window. Nadine reached down and grabbed the tire iron from beneath the seat and carried it with her across the parking lot to the front door. Taking hold of the handle, she gave it a good pull, only to be met with a firmly set deadbolt.

  “Lester!” Her voice was a firecracker and it went in all directions, unanswered. It was cold out here and she hadn’t thought to bring her coat from the truck, and as she circled the shingled building and bounced the tire iron against her leg she listened for any kind of sound. It was dead quiet, no Buick and certainly no Lester to be seen.

  “You all right?”

  Nadine did an about face, the iron swung out from her side and clenched tight in her fist. A woman stood with her back against the front door, a jacket tumbling from her folded arms like a plaid waterfall. The blue of the Busch sign cast half the woman’s face in a ghostly veil, and it looked like she was an older gal. She pushed herself off the door and walked toward Nadine like she knew her.

  “I’m guessing you’re Nadine,” she said. She undid her arms and let the jacket hang down at her side.

  “What do you know?”

  “I know I heard your name so many times tonight I’m probably gonna start calling my dog after you when I get home.” She met Nadine under the hum of the security light, and her face was clear as water now. The hard, soap-scrubbed skin, dry and weathered, silver hair strands drifting like spider silk.

  “You missed him by about an hour,” the woman said. “My guess is by now he’s passed out on a jail cell cot downtown.”

  Nadine snapped, “Goddamn it,” and the woman said, “I’m sorry, hon. I’ve been there a time or two and it ain’t fun.”

  He had been on the cocky side of things from the moment he came in, apparently. “The beer just turned up the volume,” the woman said. “By the time the cops showed up he’d busted three of my glasses and nearly got his ass handed to him by more than a few yahoos in there.” She unfolded her jacket and slid her arms inside the sleeves. “Plus, my bartender’s a welterweight with a few trophies on his shelf, so I can tell you your fella probably got mighty l
ucky tonight.”

  “He’s not my fella,” Nadine suddenly heard herself say. And it felt right, not a lie, really.

  “Well, that’s good,” the woman said. “I hate to think of him sharing all that charm with someone like you.”

  Nadine got directions to the station, thanked the woman, and cranked up the engine and drove off down the highway, taking the first hard right and following the serpentine road toward the dull halo of light emanating from behind a band of trees.

  The police station sat in an open lot next to a liquor store, both buildings boxy and rugged like they were cut from the same block of wood. She pulled into the asphalt lot and took the spot farthest from the entrance. The long walk to the glass doors was as good on her legs as it was hard on her feet. A sign that read, “Closed except for emergencies,” was posted right above a red, plastic button. Nadine considered the button for a moment, then decided that Lester being in the jug, however inconvenient, likely did not qualify as an emergency.

  She woke up in a sweat, the air thick and sweltering as the sun blanketed the inside of the cab through the windows. It was almost nine. How she had managed to sleep that long and hard on a knobby bench seat, springs poking through here and there, Nadine had not a clue. She sat up and took time to untangle herself, to loosen up her joints and take in the fresh air of the new morning before going on in to finally see what misery Lester had gotten himself into.

  When she walked into the station the woman behind the counter barely looked up at her. She was one of those country girls desperate to be mistaken for a townie, fingernails shined up red like a sports car, hair done up in one of those tight-curled, ratted things. She was planted behind a high counter with the desk cutting her off from the world like she was running a bank in one of those old west towns. Behind her was a few square wooden desks, dark and glossy and tidy with stacks of paper and coffee cups with pencils poking out. Each desk had its own black telephone, the cords curling across the floor like snakes. On the far wall was a wide corkboard, layered with photographs and newspaper clippings, the faces of people in their worst moments looming in the distance, looking back at her.

  “You coming in from the pickup truck out there?” Her uniform was like cardboard over her chest, no shape to speak of.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Let me guess.” She reached to one side and dug a manila folder from beneath a stack of paper. “Prince Charming.”

  Okay, that hurt. In any other life Nadine would have turned and walked right out, said she’d meant to be at the dog pound and just got confused. “If it’s the last name of Fanning, I’d say yes,” she said. “Is there bail to arrange?”

  The woman opened the file and rushed a sigh, too early in the day to already be exhausted. She was making this hard. “No,” she said. “If you’ll claim him and take him, you can have him.”

  Nadine wanted to know what he had done to land himself in the can, and the woman just said he was belligerent. “Belligerent to the point that he very nearly got his head handed to him on a pole. If it hadn’t been for that waitress calling us in you might have been standing down there at the morgue instead of here.”

  They came out through a side door that Nadine hadn’t noticed, a sturdy metal thing that groaned when they pushed through it. Lester shuffled alongside a uniformed escort, a handsome youngster who looked like he could have just stepped out of the hallways of the local high school. For his part, Lester looked like he might have just missed the coffin. His shirt collar was torn so it barely clung to his neck, and his left eye was swollen nearly shut.

  “It’s about damned time,” he said. “Did you get lost on your way?”

  “Don’t you start with me,” she said. “How about the next time you decide to get your ass thrown in the jug, you make sure the goddamn truck battery is charged?” She looked at the woman, who stared down at her hands, the edges of a grin barely suppressed. “And while you’re at it, you might want to keep a little gas in the damned tank. You’re lucky I’m here at all.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’m the luckiest son of a bitch in the whole goddamned world, ain’t I?”

  They drove the entire distance from the jail to Lester’s car with barely a word between them, save for Lester’s demands of where to turn, and when. By the time they reached the turnout some miles from the tavern, the sun was a good distance over the hills and Nadine had rolled her window down to cool things some, and take up some of the quiet. The rear end of the Buick stuck out from behind a tree trunk.

  “Pull up here,” he said, reaching behind the seat and taking out a milk jug funnel.

  “You want help?” she asked.

  “No, I don’t want help.” Lester climbed out of the pickup and flung the door shut behind him. He only got a couple steps before he stopped, turned around and leaned back in the window. “Look, baby,” he said, “I know you could of just hung up that phone and went on back to sleep.” His eyes were welled up now, and his lip vibrated like he might cry at any second. Like he was barely out of his trainers.

  “Lester,” she said.

  “It’s just been a real shitty night.”

  “I know.”

  “Plus, I got a million things still left to do, I can’t even—” He drummed his fingers on the door. “You go on home and I’ll see you when I see you.”

  He closed the door and went to the bed and pulled out the gas can, and he looked to her only once over his shoulder as he dragged his feet over the dust toward the car. Then he disappeared behind the ash tree to where she could no longer see him.

  12

  Louis Youngman laid his Stetson on the counter beside him and scratched out a few more details in his report. The duty nurse had given him the only spare room, two little chairs and a low, papered cot. He leaned against the wall and wrote against his arm while the couple simmered in their seats. Next door, the racket from their son had finally quieted down.

  The boy’s father had thought it would be fun to have fireworks for his birthday.

  “I tried to tell him,” the mother said before turning to her husband. “I tried to tell you, Ronny. A six-year-old’s party is loud enough without throwing explosions into the mix. And anyways where in God’s name did you think you’d find safe fireworks in the middle of April?”

  “At the rez,” the father said between sips of his coffee. “They sell ’em year-round out there. You know they do that, right, Sheriff?”

  Louis said, “Yes I know that.”

  They sat in that little room, the three of them surrounded by framed cartoon illustrations of people’s innards, while the doctor finished up with the boy next door. The youngster, he’d reassured the parents, would retain almost all of what he’d started the day with.

  “He’s six,” the mother said, wiping at her face with her sleeve. She was a petite thing, probably barely a hundred pounds after a casino buffet. “You should of seen how he held up the number the second he woke up this morning—five fingers on one hand, one on the other,” she cried. “The sixth one is the most important, you know. It’s the pointer,” she sniffed. “The steeple.”

  “Things were fine,” the father said, his eyes pooling and red. There was alcohol on his breath, though he was lucid and fairly articulate. “We had a piñata. About ten people showed up, only three of ’em with presents. Things kind of went south from there.”

  “Soon as that damn lighter came out of your pocket,” the woman said.

  Louis tapped his notepad against his knee and closed the cover. It was an unfortunate situation, but there was nothing more he needed to do here. He’d put a call into child protective, maybe write a citation for the illegal fireworks. The finger was punishment enough, and both parents seemed plenty broken up about the whole thing. There was no need to break up the family over it.

  “Are there any more explosives?”

  “God no,” the woman said, shaking her head so hard her body rocked from side to side. “I threw every last one of ’em out the wind
ow on the way here.” She pulled back then, as if she’d just thrown herself into a citation for littering.

  The father gave a bit of a laugh, a short cough that he grabbed hold of almost too late. “I guess I didn’t notice that before,” he said, motioning to Louis’s name tag.

  Louis snapped the plastic tag with this finger. He’d heard it more times lately than seemed possible.

  “Youngman,” the man went on. “Old guy with the last name of Youngman. That’s pretty damned funny.”

  “Oh Ronny, Jesus Christ,” the woman said. “I’m sorry, Sheriff. Some days I swear he gets out of bed and just leaves his brain there on the pillow.”

  Louis eased himself back into his cruiser and laid the Stetson beside him on the passenger seat. He drew his seatbelt over his chest and readjusted the side mirror before pulling out onto the highway, steering himself back in the direction of Colville. He went on past acres upon acres of ribbed, parched dirt, the dust having found its way over the road surface in occasional red patches. Up ahead, the white-paneled barns of the old Grauman farm continued to molt out there in the open fields, the gleaming lone silo catching the sun against a cloudless sky, blue as a robin’s egg. Everything from here to the Canadian border was kindling dry and itching to go up with the slightest spark. There was no business having fireworks out there, a kid’s finger only one of many good arguments against it.

  Right around the point at which Blue Creek Road branched off from the 395, his radio crackled awake.

  “Sheriff?” It was Holly. “You out there?”

  He picked up the handset and held it to his face. He pressed it close and spoke quietly, as if, even in the emptiness of his car, someone else might hear him.

  “I’m here,” he said. “What’s the situation?”