by K B Jensen
Where to? South? To anywhere, I didn’t care. I just wanted to get the hell out of there, and the funny thing was I couldn’t stop thinking about the numbers. They were just bouncing around my head, the decimal points, the way they blinked on the screen. Over and over again I was doing the conversions in my head, and I couldn’t get it to add up. I just couldn’t let it go.
I don’t know if they charged me with a crime. I don’t care. I didn’t commit one. It was just a mistake. I shouldn’t have opened those envelopes. Was it really any of my business? I should have kept my mouth shut, maybe. No good deed goes unpunished, I thought.
The bar of soap in the shower left my skin feeling dry and sticky. I slathered it all over every crevice I could find, behind my ears, between my toes. It felt good to be clean again. I stepped out of the shower and dried myself with the fluffy towel.
I slipped on the coveralls and the white T-shirt. I looked like a young version of Mr. McGregor. I nervously popped my head outside the door and came out looking like an old-timey farm hand. It just wasn’t who I was.
“Well, that’s much better,” she said.
We sat back down at the Formica kitchen table.
“So Peter, what are we going to do with you?” she said. “What can we do?”
“I’m no good at menial labor,” I said. I’d never ride a tractor.
“You don’t have to be good at it. You just have to do it.”
“That’s not exactly what my degree was in,” I said.
“We don’t care if you have a degree or not.” There was something pure about the way she spoke.
“I’m a city boy, not a farm boy,” I said.
“Can’t you be both?” she said. “You got to let go of your pride, son.”
I shook my head. “I’ve given up enough of my pride already.” I was never going to pick up that garden hoe. I’d die first. Working with my hands seemed beneath me at the time. I was meant to work with my brain, I thought.
“Well, what’s your problem?” she asked, leaning back in her wooden chair. “Tell me so I can help.”
“If you were punished for something you never did and lost everything, what would you do? Would you do it then to settle the score?”
“That depends on what it was.”
Stealing, I thought. Stealing.
“Peter, you have to be more specific. How can we help you?” she said.
“I need a new profession,” I mumbled. I looked away from her for a moment and stared at the large, pink flowers on the wallpaper behind her.
“You could give me your truck,” I said, eyeing the key rack. “I need a ride down south.”
She shook her head. “I’m not going to just give you my truck.”
“I could take it,” I said. “You wouldn’t be able to stop me. Or would you rather give me a ride?”
“A ride?” she squeaked. “With a stranger down south? I don’t think so. I’m not a country bumpkin.”
I jumped up and took the keys off the key rack. I sprung through the back metal door and it swung back with a heavy slap. I ran to the old Ford truck at the start of the gravel driveway. It was unlocked and I jumped in. I started it up and flew down the driveway, with the truck kicking up the dust.
“Peter, stop!” she yelled. “Peter! Stop, thief!”
Mr. McGregor had come back from the fields. As I made my way back to the county road, I heard a shotgun ring out behind me.
I wiped my hand on the coveralls and swore. I had lost my brass-buttoned coat. What would my mother say?
But I couldn’t steal from the old lady. I got about fifty miles, and I pulled over off onto a country road, the gravel spitting up from the tires, a cloud of dust behind me. I put my head against the steering wheel and thought about what I’d done. What was the point? Now I’d really be in trouble with the law. I was really in the wrong, and I’d hurt someone who showed me a kindness.
My stomach ached from the vegetables. I felt ill. The humid heat from outside the truck crept in. It was just like me to steal a truck with no AC on my way to Alabama. But somehow I fell asleep anyway. I closed my eyes and fell asleep and dreamt of children’s stories, the old lady that lived in the shoe, the witch from Hansel and Gretel, and I wondered what they must have felt like, to have so many children and nothing to feed them or to have someone come and eat part of your home, call you a witch and shove you into an oven. I woke up dreaming about frosting and gingerbread, and I decided something stupid, I decided I had to go back to the nice old lady in the country house, apologize, give her back her truck. After all, she was only trying to help, wasn’t she?
When I opened my eyes, the stars were twinkling, the frogs were croaking in chorus, the crickets played their own matching symphony and the last of the fireflies were flashing their light show. Take the truck back, I told myself. You aren’t a thief. And so I drove back to the house. The windows were dark. I wondered where they were. I stopped the truck about 100 yards from the house, turned off the lights before I got there so they wouldn’t see me.
I saw a scarecrow by the pond wearing my jacket, and remembered I was still wearing Mr. McGregor’s clothes. I took off the overalls and the gray white shirt with holes under the armpits, and I pulled off my old pants and my old collared shirt and the jacket with the brass buttons from the scarecrow. I could feel straw itch against my neck, and I scratched the itch now and then as I got back into my old clothes. The old lady had a twisted sense of humor hanging my clothes up like that.
A cat was watching me on the other side of the pond. I caught the movement in the corner of my eye, the tail twitching and felt suddenly I was not alone. I froze for a moment like a small animal caught in fight or flight, unsure which strategy would save it from an owl, if anything could. And then I heard the shotgun cock behind me.
“I don’t care. You can shoot,” I said loudly. “I’ve already been shot at once today.”
“But that was by Mr. McGregor,” Mrs. McGregor said. “Unlike him, I don’t miss.”
“Look, I’m sorry, Ma’am,” I said. “I’m real sorry.”
“You best be on your way, son,” she said. “Start walking now.”
“Look, I’m sorry,” I said. “I changed my mind. I felt so ashamed after you showed me how kind and Christian you were.”
“I changed my mind, too, after you stole my truck,” she said. “About how kind and Christian I am.”
I could hear the anger in her voice, and I took a step backwards, falling into the pond. I flailed my arms in the air, but it was too late. She thought I was coming at her, and she took a shot. No good deed goes unpunished, I thought. No good deed goes unpunished.
Just like she promised, she didn’t miss.
* * *
She lingered in the silence, unsure of what to say or how to feel. There was nothing but darkness in the car. Something about the story unsettled her. It had rattled off his tongue in the dark as if every detail were true. There was a familiarity to it.
“What’s your name?” she asked. “You never did tell me your name.”
“Peter,” he said, smiling.
“Whoa,” she said. “That’s all made up, right?”
“I’m not dead, am I?” he said quietly with his eyes downcast.
“But that bit about the bank,” she said, the panic rising in her stomach. What kind of man had she let in her car? Was he some kind of criminal? A thief?
“I’m tired,” he said. “I think I need to rest for a while.”
“And that bit about wandering around on the farm,” she said. “It sounded like you’ve been there.” Was he a criminal? She wondered.
“A lot of things sound real,” he said. “That doesn’t mean they are. It’s a fairy tale. You should know that these things aren’t real. Aren’t you a writer?”
“But Peter,” she said. “You’re not a writer. At least you never said you were.”
“Maybe I’m just a storyteller.” He smiled again. Or was it a grimace? “It’s a modern
spin on The Tale of Peter Rabbit for Christ’s sake. Didn’t your mother ever tell you any stories when you were a kid?” He laughed.
You are the most cheerful dying hitchhiker I’ve ever met, she thought. The bandage was dark crimson in the back. How could he be so articulate and be dying at the same time? Maybe he was playing up the injury, she thought, no, she felt kind of ashamed for thinking that. He couldn’t fake that amount of blood.
“How can you be so good at telling stories after a blow to the head?” she asked him. Everything seemed suspicious, his whole story.
“It’s one of the great mysteries of the universe,” he said. Then he blinked a few times and closed his eyes.
Peter’s head rolled forward. Fuck, she thought, he was passing out. No he wasn’t passing out. She stared at him, a muffled panic building up inside her.
He stirred. His eyes blinked open.
“What?” he asked. “I was just sleeping.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” she said.
She handed him the bottle of stale water and told him to drink it. After all, it couldn’t really hurt anything. He gulped it down and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.
“Peter,” she said. “I think I should leave the car and try to get some help. I don’t think anyone can see us where the car is with all the snow. Can I borrow your boots?”
Why hadn’t she thought of it before?
“Over my dead body,” he said. “Don’t you remember what you said about the survival shows? They always say to stay with the car. I feel much better after the water. Much better.”
“Okay,” she said.
“What’s your name?” he asked softly. “You never told me your name. Where are your manners, my friend?”
“Julie,” she said.
“Julie,” he murmured. “What does it mean? Ahhh.” He closed his eyes and opened them again. “It means young. You are a young soul. And I’m an old, troubled soul.”
His answer sent chills down her spine. He was right. How did he just know the meaning right off the top of his head like that?
“Why don’t you tell me something about yourself?” she asked. “Why don’t you tell me about Elizabeth?”
“What’s there to tell?” Peter said.
“What’s she like?” Julie asked. “Is she real?”
“Yeah, Elizabeth is real,” Peter said. “She’s very beautiful, too beautiful for her own good. She was given everything, because of it. Everyone always said she was spoiled. But I didn’t listen. I loved her anyway.
“I remember the first time I took her on a date. I remember the earrings she wore, pieces of sparkling glass and dangling metal. She drank just a little too much. I remember her slurring her words ever so slightly, nodding forward with those earrings bobbing below her ears. But there was something magnetic about her. She could always make me smile. She knew how to look at a man.
“I carried her home. She was wearing shoes, stilettos, and they weren’t comfortable and she kept complaining about them so I flipped her over my shoulder with her legs dangling in front of me, one hand on her calf, trying not to impale my hands on her damn shoes. I carried her back to her apartment, and I put her to bed. I remember her putting her arms around my neck as I leaned over her, begging me to stay. So I did, and I never really left. We moved in together a couple months later. I don’t think she liked to be alone, said she spent too much time alone as a kid. Well, that’s what her therapist told her anyway.”
Julie nodded but didn’t say anything.
“I was always disappointing her,” Peter said. “We fought over the credit card bills. I’d tell her she was spending too much on clothes, that we didn’t make enough money for designer labels, that I couldn’t keep paying the rent alone. I was trying to save. She never yelled, said she didn’t want to be like her parents, but she had this silent streak. She could hurt you with her silence, could wield it like a weapon for days.
“‘What are you saving for?’ she’d finally say. ‘I don’t want a house. We don’t have kids. Let’s just live a little.’
“‘But I want a house, I want kids, well one day, and that’s not going to happen with a lousy credit score,’ I told her.”
“‘You don’t understand what it’s like to be a woman,’ Elizabeth said. ‘We have to keep up appearances.’
“I remember the way she uttered those words, with a glare and a glance that said, my appearance, well, it left something to be desired. I had put on a few pounds then. This was before I started hitting the gym.”
Julie tried to imagine Peter’s face rounded out with a little weight. His jaw was a harsh line in the dark. “But surely there must have been a reason you loved her,” she said, searching his face. “Was it just because she was beautiful?”
“No,” Peter said. “I think it was because she needed me. We needed each other. She could be so sweet at times. Or maybe it was more primal than that, a physical reaction, a chemical reaction that I just couldn’t help. Do you get to choose who you love? What if they aren’t worthy of your love? Do you get to choose then?”
“I bet you would have spoken more highly of her before your breakup,” Julie said.
“Yeah, probably,” Peter said, shrugging his shoulders. “You know, my heartbreak is really none of your business.”
There was an awkward silence broken by the sounds of the car. One last cough of hot air spurted out of the vents as the engine shuddered. Julie let it shudder a few times before she turned the key to the off position. She didn’t want to total the car over one last puff of warmth. He looked at her, and she looked at him, and she knew it was just a matter of time before she was back in his lap again with his hot breath on her face and the blood trickling down onto her jacket, too.
“Crawl back over here,” he said, motioning with his pointer finger at her. “I’m cold.”
And she did crawl over there because what else was she going to do? It was a question of survival.
They were face-to-face and she got to see the little lines on his face, around his eyes and mouth, the dots of his pores, and breathe in his scent. He didn’t smell like a homeless man. He smelled like he had showered recently. She could smell soap on his skin, also another smell, that human smell. He didn’t smell homeless. What a strange, little shallow thought.
“I don’t want to be here,” Peter said, breathlessly. “I want to be anywhere but here. Can’t you just take my mind off of all this? Take me on another trip. Take me anywhere but here and this shitty car. Tell me a story about the currency of love. Tell me a story about a boy and a girl who actually love each other.
“That’s a tall order,” Julie said, furrowing her eyebrows. “I’m worried I’m going to put you to sleep.”
“That’s okay,” he said. “Consider it a lullaby, a bedtime story.”
“But I’m afraid of you going to sleep. You might not wake up.”
“I’ll stay awake,” he said. “Besides, these stories, passing stories to pass the time, it was your idea anyway. What else are we going to do?” He raised an eyebrow.
The Danish Sun
The Danish sun was dimming, but the sky was streaked in red and violet hues. The two of them sat on the bench and watched the evening and morning blend together. They watched the brief, precious darkness and then the first yellow streaks of sun glow through it.
“I can’t remember if it’s dawn or evening,” he said.
“Is there a difference?” she said, laughing.
The bench overlooked a green pond. It snapped into focus bathed with the bright light. Two ducks swam by. The day had begun in the night.
“I love the Danish sun in summer,” he said. “It never seems to end.”
She smoked a cigarette while they sat there. All the Danish girls smoked, well almost all of them. The smoke hung heavy and gray around them.
“I don’t ever want to leave,” she said quietly. “I love this place.”
The words made him swallow. He had asked her what she thought
of living in the States, but he told himself it didn’t matter right now. It was too beautiful of a nighttime dawn to worry about such things.
She had her legs stretched out in front of her and his hand was on her thigh. The white dress had ridden up a bit, a distraction. He wondered if she did it on purpose or if she had just had that many drinks.
They had stumbled out of the club, sweaty and tangled hours ago. The pulsating music had crushed them together, dancing in a kind of collision. It was almost pitch black in the place aside from the strobe lights flashing. He had Carlsberg after Carlsberg and danced with the green bottle in his hand. But the buzz was wearing off. The beauty was wearing off. The day was starting at night.
The reality was breaking through the dawn, red and bloody like broken sunlight. She wasn’t coming to the States. And he wasn’t moving here.
“Don’t you love me?” he asked.
She sighed. “Of course, I do.”
“But you say you’ll never leave Denmark.”
“Honey, a relationship is based on compromise,” she said.
“Then compromise,” he said.
Her face turned ashen. The rosy cheeks drained of all their colors.
“Why should I be the one to compromise?” she said. She smirked as she said it, but he could see the corners of her eyes pinch into a glare.
He had broken the rules. She had explained them to him from the start. You don’t boss a Dane around, and you don’t act arrogant. He had done both. Would she still love him?
Like an answer, she interlaced her fingers in his. He stared at their hands together, pale and bathed in the bright four a.m. sun.
“We have months to figure it out,” he said.
“Months for me to convince you to stay,” she said smugly. “I have my methods, mister.” She rubbed his leg gently.