by Warren Read
“What about the girl?”
Mitch said, “Hide nor hair. We don’t know anything about her, other than what little the kid could—or would—say. She called in on your radio and bandaged you up before taking off. Lester’s got so many rigs up on that place, God knows what she’s driving.”
When Louis asked if they had a name for her, Mitch just shook his head. “For all we know she was a temporary thing for him. The kid seems to think she saved him from being right there next to Otis Dell. I’d say he’s right.”
Hattie hummed along with the radio and steered the Fairmont with one hand, holding her cigarette at the wing with the other. Vinnie rested with his back against the passenger door, watching over Louis as he sat in the back seat as if his little brother might fall out onto the pavement at the next turn of the wheel.
“I’m thinking this is it,” Vinnie said.
“What’s it?”
“This,” Vinnie said, waving his fingers over his head like casting a spell. “You could have been down at the morgue, Lou.”
“No.”
“Yes. And then what? Who’s gonna take care of me?” He side-eyed Hattie, who shot him a look. “You’re good for shits and giggles,” he said to her. “But I ain’t counting on you to bail my ass out of jail if it comes to that.”
“Good,” Hattie said, “Neither am I.”
“Nor me,” Louis said.
“Damn it,” Vinnie said. “That’s no good.”
They turned down Polk Street, past the cherry trees already dropping their blossoms in wide skirts of pink over the edges of the roadway. Hattie brought the car to a stop in the driveway and offered to walk him inside. Louis declined, swinging the door open and climbing out.
“I appreciate the taxi ride,” he said, and then he went up his walkway without looking back.
Vinnie rolled down the window and leaned out. “You give a holler if you need anything,” he said.
Louis put up his hand, giving a thumbs up. There were at least a half-dozen people he’d call first if he got in a real bind, but Vinnie’s offer was worth that much.
He let himself into his house, dark, the smell of overripe bananas. The photo of him and Vinnie on the shelf as young fellows, against the scaffolding of the Grand Coulee, smiles like Boy Scouts. Had he ever been that young and happy? What he didn’t know about the world that lay ahead of him.
The moment was cleaved by the hard ring of the telephone. Louis moved quickly to the kitchen, snatching the handpiece from the cradle.
“I’m alive,” he said.
“I know that.” It was Holly. “I wanted to make sure you got home okay.”
“I got a ride.”
“I know that, too. I also know who drove you, which is why I thought I’d call.” She laughed then, soft and throaty. “I’ll be by after my shift to check up on you.”
“I don’t need that,” he said. He leaned against the jamb and looked out the little kitchen window, in the direction of the station.
“Says you.” He could see her there at her phone, winding the spiral cord through her fingers like she always did. Probably working her crosswords as she talked.
“I appreciate the offer. I don’t want you to put yourself out for me.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it. You’re just a couple turns out of my way.” She said Just a minute, and then there was some muffled talk, the scratch of her hand over the mouthpiece, and then she was back.
“I’ll bring by some fried chicken,” she said. “You just settle in that big chair of yours and watch something on the tube till I get there.” And before he could say anything to that, she hung up on him.
He set the phone down and went over to the picture window in front and pulled back the drapes, letting the afternoon sun in to wash over everything, every dusty shelf and tabletop, coffee rings in places he never set his own mug. The carpet could do with a vacuuming.
He found a can of furniture polish in the laundry room and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d used it, though not remembering didn’t concern him. He supposed these things were good for quite a while.
Something caught his periphery, a flash of pink from out the window in the street. The little boy with the name of Luis pedaled that bicycle of his from one end of the block to the other, back and forth, pausing now and then to pick something out of the basket, to hold it up to the sky. And even though the kid was far enough away that Louis couldn’t even gauge a guess as to what he had in his hand, there was no mistaking the smile. A smile so big that you could say there had to be nothing greater in the world for him at that moment than a low-bar bike with a good-sized basket, and tassels so shiny they could catch the sun on a day when nothing else could.
40
Mitch stood behind the counter and talked into the phone, taking pains to keep his voice low, eyes clicking up at Rodney now and then, mostly keeping his back to him. Whoever he was speaking to did not ask to talk to Rodney.
“Someone will be here for you soon,” Mitch said, but then he added that “soon” could mean in a few hours or a day. He wasn’t sure who that someone would be, either, but he hoped it would be a parent. “Your mom and dad will make the trip, don’t you think?”
Rodney thought of the question with his mother and father together, the two of them side by side in the car, and that didn’t seem likely. Not for him.
Mitch set Rodney up in a back room on a well-worn sofa with a stack of old scouting magazines and a twelve-inch color television, a few small bags of chips, and supermarket-fried chicken. The television played continuously as Rodney drifted in and out of sleep, sometimes dreaming of Charlotte Street and the endless warehouse floor, and his mother seated on her stool behind the counter.
Only once did he find himself on the drive leading from Lester’s, though it wasn’t the drive, really. This one was riddled with cactus and snakes, and the steaming vapor of a swamp somewhere off in the distance, and he jumped from boulder to boulder as the sound of tires crackled over gravel behind him, Lester’s voice bellowing into the night.
Rodney opened his eyes to see a man on the television screen standing on the ledge of a tall building, his arms spread out at his sides like Jesus. The man was shouting to someone behind him in the building, maybe, or down below. There were policemen looking up at him and it appeared as though he might jump from the ledge at any moment.
“Well, look at you.”
In the doorway was a man who did not look like the person who had left his family behind months before. His arm stretched upward, hand gripping the jamb like he always did. The hair was shaggy at the ears, though, and the thick mustache he wore was not his. For a good moment it seemed to Rodney that this person who might be his father could not possibly be him. But the smile.
“We’ve been half crazy,” he said. “Your mother and me.” He came over and sat next to Rodney on the sofa, and Rodney lay down over his lap, neither of them saying anything, not about where the other had been all this time or what had happened to them. Or the mustache. It was just the feeling of his father’s body against him as he breathed, his hand moving in little circles over Rodney’s back.
The view was clear and free through the windshield as they made their way out of town, southeast, his father said, in the direction of Montana.
“You got it fixed,” Rodney said, reaching up and running his fingers over the glass.
“It’s against the law to drive with a busted windshield,” his father said. He glanced over at Rodney. “I didn’t need to be reminded of that day.”
Rodney nodded, and traced his fingers over the glass again.
“You know what I mean?”
“Yeah.”
They came down from the hills, leaving behind Boone and its tumbles of sage and errant rocks, settling into the expanse of farmland, sheets of green stretching out like one long, deep breath.
“I know about that Otis fellow,” his father said. “About him and your mom.”
Rodney nodded, hi
s stomach rolling, not from hunger.
“I know about what happened to him, too, up there at that place,” he said. “You shouldn’t have had to see that.”
Rodney looked over at his father, and his eyes were red and pooling, and he blinked at the roadway as he drove.
“Did he do anything to you?” he asked. And when he looked at Rodney a single bead had dropped from his eye, holding place just above his cheek. “Did he—”
“No,” Rodney said. He thought of the slap, when he had been crying and Otis snapped. But that had been after Kruger’s, and the crack on Otis’s head. Rodney wondered, now, that perhaps Otis hadn’t known better.
“Is Mom coming?” he asked.
“To Missoula?” His father nodded, slowly. “Eventually. That’s the plan. She’s tying things up in Hope, and then we’ll get it taken care of.”
They drove in silence for a bit, Rodney listening to the click of the patched roadway beneath them. Up ahead, a long freight train moved into view, and the crossing arm lowered slowly, red dots winking like Christmas lights. They came to a stop, Rodney’s dad cutting the engine.
“Looks like a long one,” he said, craning his neck and looking past Rodney.
“Yeah.”
“Timing,” he said.
Rodney nodded.
They sat there, his father scratching at a spot on the steering wheel with his thumbnail, as the first of the cars clicked past, flatbeds and livestock cars, mostly, cattle gazing through the slats like bored tourists.
“I know about Mr. Kruger, too,” he said. “About the robbery.”
Rodney wasn’t surprised about this. Of course he’d know about it. He felt his throat tighten, the warmth of his blood rushing to his face. “I’m sorry about that,” he said. He caught a tear with his sleeve before it could fall.
His father put a hand on his knee. “You don’t need to feel guilty, Rod,” he said. “You’re a kid for Christ’s sake. Otis Dell—” He stopped, cleared his throat. “It’s going to be okay.”
Rodney gave a hard shake of his head, biting down on his lip until it stung. It wasn’t okay, he wanted to say. Nothing about what happened was okay.
Rail cars continued to clip by, the rust and paint of boxcars blinking past like an old film. The whole train seemed to stretch from one end of the world to the other, and for a moment Rodney imagined that they could be at that crossing forever.
A single pickup truck, its rounded hood and its old cowboy hat-wearing driver, blinked at them from the opposite side through the gaps of the rail cars.
“But he’s dead,” Rodney choked.
“Yeah, I know.”
“Otis killed him.”
His father pulled his hand away. “Who’s dead?” he asked. “Who are you talking about?”
“Mr. Kruger.” Rodney was crying now, his sleeve working over his face like a washrag. “Otis killed him.”
“Oh Jesus, Rod. That’s what you’ve been thinking all this time?” He ran his hand over Rodney’s hair, warm and soft against his scalp. “Kruger’s fine,” he said. “Walking around on crutches. A good shiner, I guess. But he’ll be fine. He’s a tough nut to crack, that fellow.”
His father fired up the engine as the last of the cars rolled by, the green caboose trailing off down the line.
“People make mistakes, Rodney,” he said. “If they’re lucky, they get the chance to fix them. If not, well—they do what they can to make up for them.”
The road opened up ahead of them, a black slice through an endless green plane. Rodney counted the cars passing them from the opposite direction, wondering why on Earth any of them would want to go back there.
41
Nadine had unpacked a lot in the months she’d been on that side of the mountain with Lester, from occasional bouts of misery, to flashes of joy, to moments of genuine relief. But there was nothing like the wonder of watching that mountain range shrink behind her, watching her rearview as she dropped over the pass westward. As rugged as it was, Lester’s old Ford sailed reassuringly over the pavement, clearly thankful for the downward slope after the steep, alpine climb.
She had fit as much as she could into the cab, and it was fine that there wasn’t a great deal for her in the end. She had no need for the dozens of stereo receivers and CB radios, and boxes of silverware and miscellaneous cheap watches that littered that mysterious shed of his. After the weeks of secluded business having taken place in there, Nadine was surprisingly disappointed to see that, for the most part, it was all just a bunch of useless shit.
There had been the things he’d already placed in the Buick, though. More interesting pieces. The can of silver coins, a hat box heavy with jewelry that Nadine knew at a glance was the real thing. There was money in bundles, too, cash bills of twenties and fifties, as if Lester had been running his own bank—too much for her to take the time to count there on the hill. And the suitcase. The horse and cowboy stitched on the side. She’d thought it was a child’s thing at first, something for plastic toys or wooden blocks. But there was enough in there—rings, watches, cufflinks—to dress a fancy man from New York to San Francisco and pay for the trip five times over.
She told herself that Rodney was okay, that he’d found his way out. Flagged down some kindly trucker on his way into Boone, maybe, or even a passing cop out on patrol for drunk drivers. He had to have done so, otherwise how would the sheriff have known to come up there? That part stayed with her, and she was thankful for that. God knows, she needed something to smooth all the thorns still holding onto her.
But the thing with Lester wouldn’t let go of her. Lester there at the well, looping back to her in a never-ending slideshow. The glance of horror on his face, the recognition that she had betrayed him. That the ground beneath him had disappeared, those arms of his stretched in impossible ways, reaching for what was not there. The soles of his shoes, white from the sunlight that poured in from above. And the sound at the end. The hideous sound.
She took a hand from the wheel and worked the radio dial, turning it slowly in search of something. So much got filtered out by the mountain that most everything she landed on was angry talking or masked with heavy static. When at last she found something, she was half-relieved and somewhat surprised to hear it was a gospel station. A woman’s voice, bell-like, almost smothered by the rainstorm of guitar picking around her:
Someday I’ll cross the river, being inside the home gate
I may look back to earth here below
I may see a dear brother I’ve known along the way
Sitting down by the side of the road.
Nadine reached back to the dial then skipped over to the volume, turning it up higher.
Jesus, she thought. Was it Sunday already?
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There are more people to thank than can fit on this page, so I’ll distill it down to the golden few.
Thanks to Robert and Elizabeth at Ig Publishing for taking me on this second time around, and to Stewart Williams, whose incredible cover design managed to capture the whole story in a single, stunning image.
Huge appreciation to my Rainier Writing Workshop mentors Scott, David, and especially Kent, whose early guidance remains ingrained in me years later. To my writing cohorts Mary, Andrea, Jessica, and Lynn: That long weekend we spent creating, reading, laughing, and staring out at the fairgrounds of Fort Worden was the genesis that brought Otis from a scatter of notes to near flesh and blood. And to my mother, for her unbiased fandom and eager copyediting skills.
Finally, heart and soul to my patient and generous husband Shayne, for giving me the time, space, and encouragement to bring this thing from a mere idea to the bookshelf.
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