One Simple Thing

by Warren Read

  “Go get my hat from the car.” He reached behind himself and pulled the door open, and kicked it to the wall.

  Rodney went to the back seat and fished around until he found the yellow baseball cap with its hammer picture and salt ring over the rim, and he brought it to Otis, who now stood slouched against the cinderblock just outside the bathroom door. He snatched the hat from Rodney’s hand and slid it down over the paper towel bandage, tucking everything up inside like he was putting on a wig.

  “Wait for me in the car,” he said, wiping his hands over his jeans. Then he limped around the corner of the building to the little payphone that was mounted to the outside wall of the station. It was something to see, that was for sure. The way Otis jammed that handset against his ear. The way he held onto that cord, and pounded those numbers like he was killing ants. And he stayed that way the entire time, not once looking back to see if Rodney had actually gotten in the car, instead of turning tail and running off into the apple orchards that fanned out behind them.

  Otis danced in the sun, moving his weight from one foot to the other, waving an invisible lasso over himself then dropping it gently, brushing it lightly over the outside of that yellow cap like he was dusting pollen. There was a sharp cry from off in the trees, a hawk maybe, and Otis turned around finally to look back at the car. The phone pressed right to his mouth and those lips moved like he was shouting at someone, his eyes locked perfectly to Rodney’s. His mouth froze, and he pressed a finger to his opposite ear. Listening, now. Once more he put his hand to his head and that mouth started up again, rattling a few more things into the phone before he finally turned and dropped the receiver onto the hook.

  He came back to the car, kicked and beaten. “We’re going north from here,” he said. “We gotta be invisible for a few days.”

  “What about Mom?”

  “What about her?” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Your mom’s fine.”

  “That was her? Just now, on the phone?”

  He looked at Rodney with eyes narrowed. Deep channels ran from his nostrils to the edges of his mouth, and he stayed like that for a long time, hardly moving, a face carved from an old tree trunk.

  “I said she’s fine,” he finally said.

  And with that, he cranked the engine and launched the Bonneville out onto the highway.

  23

  They sat there in the booth, the three of them, picking at burgers and nursing ice water in red plastic glasses. Hattie and Vinnie took up one side of the table, their backs to the window, Hattie just helping herself to his French fries like they were her own.

  “I always wanted to ask you something,” Hattie said to Louis. “But I don’t want you to get all knotted up over it.”

  Louis shifted in his seat.

  Vinnie said, “Here we go.”

  “Vinnie says you never got married,” she said. “From where I’m sitting, I’d say that’s a damn shame.”

  He was a lifelong bachelor, and he knew the kinds of stories that might kick up. There had been women he had loved in his life and, if he was honest with himself, a few men he’d grown awfully fond of, but not in the way folks might raise eyebrows over. There were plenty of things he understood about men and women, though few he’d ever experienced full on. He always thought it would happen unexpected, but here he was, almost seventy.

  “I have a hard enough time sharing space with him,” Louis said, nodding to Vinnie. “I think I realized a long time ago that I don’t always make the best company.”

  “In other words,” Vinnie said, “he don’t like people.”

  At the far end of the parking lot, as a lone woman had set up a tent and was sitting in a big rocker underneath, fiddling with something in her lap. Around the tent was a perimeter of colorful, gaudy blankets hanging from strung lines like laundry, the kind of things you’d see covering windows in the welfare rentals in town: horses rearing up on hind legs, Elvis in profile, three different kinds of Jesus. A breeze was picking up, the blankets rippling on their lines like caught fish.

  “I had two wives, the first in Detroit and the second in Tacoma,” Vinnie said.

  Hattie straightened up. “I thought you said you was only married once.”

  “I said I had two wives. I never said they was both mine.” He gave a belly laugh and elbowed Hattie good-naturedly, but she said nothing. Still, he kept at her and nudged her again, and she finally gave up a laugh of her own, elbowing him right back. The two of them looked over at Louis then, like they were up to something sneaky right there in front of him.

  Just then, a little car pulled up to the tent in the parking lot, and Louis watched as a woman got out. She walked right over to a queen-sized blanket with a picture of a buck drinking from a pool that was as blue as a robin’s egg, and grabbed hold of the blanket’s corner, like she was examining a pelt.

  “So,” Hattie said, side-eyed to Vinnie. “You gonna bring it up or do I got to?”

  “Jesus,” he said. “I was on my way there.” He took a drink of water, the ice bunching against his lips.

  “Bring what up?” Louis asked. The possibilities could stretch from here to Canada.

  Hattie would not take her eyes from Vinnie, and the old man kept his chin down, looking up at Louis, a dog waiting for permission to move.

  Hattie finally spoke up. “He wants to shack up,” she said, helping herself to another French fry. “We both do, I guess.”

  Vinnie leaned back in his seat as if Hattie had put out a fire at his feet. Cool relief ran down his face.

  “Your place, I’m assuming?” Louis said to her.

  Vinnie nodded, putting his hand on Hattie’s leg. “No reflection on you, Lou.”

  The woman outside now had three blankets draped over her arms, and the trunk of that little car popped open, a trunk that looked so small it couldn’t hold one of those things, much less three. She folded the blankets up into a bunch and shoved them into that space. Louis could see she was having a hard time, bending down and crawling partway in to move things around.

  He reached over and took one of the fries himself. “You still work with Tip over at U-Pick?”

  Vinnie blew smoke across the table and tapped a clump of ash into the tray. “Who are you talking to?” he asked. “What’s Tip got to do with this?”

  “Now and then,” Hattie said. “He ain’t fired me yet.”

  Louis stirred the fry into the pool of ketchup, slowly, less interested in eating it than the movement. “No hard feelings, then,” he said. “Between you and Tip, I mean.”

  Hattie rolled her eyes. “My days of romance with that man are but the snows of yesteryear,” she said. “Tip couldn’t care less if I move one man or twenty into my place.”

  “That’s not”—Louis looked over at Vinnie, at those eyes of his, half empty and roaming from his own knotted hands to Hattie’s, fingers entwined.

  “You can check up on me if you want,” Vinnie said, not looking up from the table. “Send one of your lookouts if it’ll make you feel better.”

  “Hattie,” Louis said. “Think you could meet me at the U-Pick tomorrow?

  Vinnie said, “Why do you want to go to the U-Pick?”

  “I can meet you,” she said, ignorning Vinnie. “I’m there anyway.”

  At last the woman outside got into her car and pulled away, stopping at the edge of the lot. She moved her head from side to side, waiting for the half-dozen or so cars to pass by before finally pulling onto the highway, no turn signal to be bothered with.

  24

  Lester held both beers by the necks, neither of them cold. Nadine took one, pulling her feet under the chair so he could scoot on past her.

  “He’ll be here in a couple days, if he makes it at all.” Lester sank into his rocker and took out a cigarette, lighting it up and tossing the match off the porch into the dirt. “It’s a different situation this time,” he said. “This Otis Dell character is bad news. I want you to stay clear of him.”

  Nadine tipped the b
ottle to her mouth, took a full drink before answering. “If he’s so bad, why is he coming here?”

  “I can handle him.”

  The chickens were acting up behind them; something was likely lurking near the hen house, a raccoon probably, or a coyote. Nadine had secured the pen, so she knew it was tight as a drum.

  “Should I expect something out of him?” she asked. “Maybe keep a knife on me or something?”

  Lester pushed air through his teeth. “He ain’t like that,” he said. “He’s an asshole and a liar. He might put his hands on you if you let him, but it’s nothing a good knee to his balls wouldn’t take care of.”

  Nadine took another drink and stood up from her chair, taking the four steps down to the dirt. She stood there for a good minute or two, watching the branches of the far pines dip and spring back, a gray sparrow darting in and out of the grove, hopping from one tree to the next.

  “I don’t need this kind of headache, Lester. This is turning out to be as far from simple as it gets.”

  “Jesus Christ, lady.” He snapped his cigarette butt onto the ground near her. “I’m not wagging my tail at the thought of him here, either. But it won’t do either of us any good if I turn him away.”

  “What do you mean by that, Won’t do us any good?” She never saw Lester as a man who did anything he didn’t want to do.

  He shook his head at her. “It ain’t gonna be more than a few days at best. I promise.”

  She felt her body sink, the weight of defeat sliding down her bones. “Should I even bother asking anything more?”

  “The less you know, baby.” He raised his bottle to her. She could use another one of those, warm or not.

  “I guess I’ll make up the sofa, then,” she said.

  “No.” Lester swung open the screen door and held it there. He turned and looked back to Nadine, letting his gaze fell over her for as long as he’d ever done, until Nadine couldn’t take it anymore and looked away. “There’s a mattress in the back of the Dodge,” he finally said. “Put some blankets in there for him.”

  “That old van?”

  “I don’t want that sonofabitch setting one foot in my house.” Then Lester went inside, letting the screen slam hard behind him.

  25

  They had traveled through fields of tall cornstalks and the crisscrossed acres of clipped grass that stretched out forever, to the low hills that wrapped them on all sides. Otis looked to be trying to stick to country roads that wound through old farmland with roadside signs warning of God’s word and the evils of drunk driving. Cockeyed fence posts connected strings of sagging barbed-wire.

  At one point, shortly after he swilled down an entire can of Coke, Otis steered off to the shoulder and vomited a brown fountain out the open window onto the pavement. “Well damn,” he said, wiping his sleeve over his mouth. “I didn’t see that coming.” The stench filled the car, of cola and the nastiness of everything else that had come up with it.

  The cars passing by had their headlights snapped on now. Rodney hadn’t realized until then that dusk had already begun to settle.

  “Are we gonna get a motel?” he asked.

  “A motel,” Otis said. “Look at you. The little prince.” He knocked the car into gear and meandered back onto the highway, leaning over the wheel and scanning the horizon like he was looking for birds, or flying saucers maybe. This went on for a good five miles or so, until he finally took a left branch off the route onto a downward running access road.

  Rodney asked, “What’s here?” but Otis ignored him, still hugging that steering wheel, his eyes rolling from hill to field now.

  “Otis,” Rodney said.

  “Otis,” he echoed back to Rodney, then suddenly he fell against the driver’s side window. The Bonneville started to drift, the rise of the nearby shoulder looming toward them. Otis’s eyes fluttered and his breathing hissed through a hard-bitten jaw, the white foam of spit pushing through his lips. The casting of fields came up over the dashboard and Rodney grabbed hold of the wheel, bringing the car back into its lane. He managed to push Otis’s foot from the gas, enough of an interruption to allow a rolling stop against the graveled shoulder, inches from the split rail fence.

  Rodney slid the gearshift to P and fell back into his own seat, his shoulder pressed firm to the door. Otis looked to be coming around, his breathing more settled, hands moving over the steering wheel as if he was rediscovering it after a long sleep. It was when Otis shifted himself in his seat that Rodney saw the dark bloom that now spread out over his lap.

  “There’s water spilled on me,” Otis said, running his hand over his crotch. He looked up at Rodney. “What did you spill on me?”

  Rodney told him he hadn’t spilled anything, but he could not bring himself to say anything further.

  Otis dabbed at his lap with his fingers and surveyed the view that stretched from one window to the other. The blood on his forehead had begun to crust over now, the tiny cracks breaking up the heaviest of it.

  “I called the number,” Rodney said.

  “What?”

  “I said I called that number, even though it wasn’t a Lincoln.”

  Otis pulled his chin to his chest and searched Rodney’s face like he was hearing all of this for the first time.

  “If it was Mr. Kruger I was supposed to watch for, you should have said so.”

  Otis dug around in his shirt pocket and took out a pack of cigarettes, sliding one from the pack, bent and beaten. He punched in the dash lighter and thumbed toward the glove compartment.

  “Open that up.”

  Rodney did as he was told. A small revolver dropped into the cradle of the door, almost toy-like, with a cylinder about the size of a Ping Pong ball. Rodney looked over at Otis, who sat there grinning at him as if he had caught him red-handed in something. Maybe with one of those skin magazines of his.

  “Go ahead and pick it up,” he said.

  Rodney wanted no part of this thing, but Otis insisted, pushing on Rodney’s elbow. “Pick up the damn gun,” he demanded. “Feel how heavy it is.”

  Rodney lifted the pistol like it was a dead animal, holding the grip between his thumb and forefinger. And it was heavy in spite of its small size. Otis said, “Hold it like you mean it,” and then Rodney took it in his palm, running his finger along the trigger guard, turning it over in his hand, from one side to the other.

  “It’s a nice piece, huh?” Otis nodded out the window. “Point it, point it out there. Out into the field.”

  Rodney kept it where it was.

  “Don’t be a puss,” Otis said. “Point it out the window and see what it can do. There’s no one around. But hurry the hell up.”

  Rodney leveled the barrel so that it pointed in the direction of the far distance, and he knew that Otis would not leave him alone until he did it. He squeezed down on the trigger, and there came the hard kick before the crack of the gunshot even registered.

  “Sonofabitch!” Otis said, and then he gave a kind of animal howl before snatching the revolver from Rodney’s hand and stuffing it under his seat. And as if nothing had happened at all, as if there hadn’t just been a bullet fired from this car, he slid the Bonneville into gear and pulled out onto the highway, the weight of acceleration whipping Rodney into his seat back.

  They drove in silence for a good while, Otis staring straight forward, wild-eyed, chewing on his lip, only once or twice glancing in Rodney’s direction. Finally, he reached over and smacked Rodney’s arm.

  “Do you know what an accessory is?” he asked.

  “You mean like a crime?” Rodney had seen this in stories. People who helped roll the body up inside the big carpet or dig the hole in the woods, or wipe up all the blood from the bathroom floor.

  “Yeah. Like in a crime.”

  Rodney said yes, that he knew what an accessory was.

  “Good,” Otis said. “Then I don’t need to say anything more.”

  And he didn’t, not for a long time. When the sun dropped co
mpletely behind the far ridge and the roadway began to bleed indistinctly into the shoulders, Rodney suggested headlights, and Otis snapped them on without a word. There was a strange warmth that came from the glow of the dashboard lights, and Rodney felt a certain security in being able to see that there was plenty of gas, that the engine temperature was in the middle. That they were not going a great deal faster than they were supposed to.

  Otis turned into a forest service road, bringing them up above the highway into the curtain of trees. The headlamp beams slid over pine trunks like piano keys, and Rodney thought there were moments when he saw eyes in there looking back at him, eyes of men and monsters.

  In time they came to a turnout and Otis pulled into it, laying on the brakes and killing the engine.

  “Here’s your motel,” he said. “You can have the back seat all to yourself and I’ll stretch out up here.”

  Rodney opened the door. The air outside was cool but not cold, and there was much in that car to make him think he would not be getting anything close to a good night’s sleep.

  “Do you have a blanket or anything?” he asked.

  Otis laughed at him. “A blanket,” he said. “You might turn up a hand towel back there if you’re lucky.” He gave Rodney a shove against his leg. “You and me, we’re fugitives now, in case you ain’t figured it out yet. No blanket is the least of our troubles.”

  Rodney climbed into the back and pushed the candy wrappers and empty soda cans onto the floor and laid out over the bench seat. An excavated flannel shirt, draped over his torso, did a lousy job of anything other than stinking like Otis. In the front, Otis soon began to rattle the interior with his snoring, breaks of snorts and whistles, and the occasional dead space after the heavy rush of exhale. In those moments Rodney did not think Otis would take another breath in his life, just a stone silence, outside of Rodney’s own heart knocking in his head. And then there would come the sudden gasp, and Otis would suck in a roomful of air, as if he’d just surfaced from a deep-sea dive.