Wildman

by J. C. Geiger

  “It runs,” Robert says. “Now let’s get down to business. Analysis, parts, and labor.”

  “Okay,” Lance says, doing his own calculations. He had Goodview Towing’s $187 invoice plus whatever he still owed at Macland’s, plus four nights at the Trainsong. That, taken with 11 unheard voice messages on his phone and 4 minus 1 people returning to Bend would leave him with exactly $0 of his mother’s money to spend.

  “Ready?” Robert asks.

  “Ready.”

  “First: analysis!” he says. “This. Well, this was a special case.” He paces, circling the Buick like a detective. “Quite a story, too. You’ve been here how long? Four days?”

  “Five.”

  “Five.” Robert whistles. “You know a little about cars, Lance. Is that right?”

  He starts to say no, then stops himself. “Yeah. A little.”

  “So you know as a mechanic, you apply logic first. Then equipment. Then skill. In that order. Understand?” Lance nods.

  “First!” Robert lifts his index finger like a struck match. “Logic. Your dash was failing. That’s electrical. So that’s where we start. Follow the path, my friend. Electricity comes from the battery. It goes where first?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “The starter, Lance. The starter. This will be important later. You need two things to start an engine. Spark and fuel. Remember that. So I check your starter, and there’s a spark. That means your battery is functional. And your starter is functional. Not a long walk to the dashboard from there, but a couple fuses along the way. And there, we find culprit number one!”

  Robert plucks a fuse from his shirt pocket and throws it at Lance’s chest. Red plastic with metal buckteeth. It bounces off him, plinks onto concrete.

  “Blown fuses?” Lance says. “But I changed—”

  “One problem was the fuses,” Robert says. “One. But like people, it’s never just one thing, Lance. Cars are complex. See, when the fuse to your speedometer blew, it spiked your needle right up the center. Like you told me, remember?”

  “Yes.”

  “But there were two blown fuses.” Robert throws another one, and Lance catches it this time. “And whereas a speedometer might give you a flashy show before it dies, a fuel gauge will just plain freeze.”

  “Freeze,” Lance repeats. Eyes narrowing to a squint.

  “I’m guessing that happened back in Seattle,” Robert says, circling closer. He holds up two fingers. “Two things to run an engine, Lance. Spark and fuel. Spark you had. But fuel? Well.” He steps so close Lance can feel his breath. “You were just. Plain. Out.”

  “Out?” Lance says. “I was out of gas?”

  “Case closed!” Robert claps his hands.

  “Out of gas,” Lance repeats.

  “Now back to parts and labor. This job took me exactly half an hour. I installed two 20A fuses in your vehicle. And two gallons of premium-grade American gasoline.” A plastic gas container appears in Robert’s hands. He drums the hollow side with his fingers. “And you, my friend, are as good as new. Or as good as 1993. But that was a good year, son. A damn good year. Now let’s get you squared away.”

  Back in the office, Robert pulls out his calculator. Two fuses at two dollars each. Eight dollars for gas. Sixty-five dollars for diagnostics. Robert charges Lance’s card a total of seventy-seven dollars.

  “Thank you,” Lance says.

  “Just doing my job,” Robert says. “Bea tells me you’re off to graduation.”

  “Yeah. On Friday.”

  “So what happens after that?”

  Lance had a scripted answer to this question. But his script is gone, and pressure is building behind his eyes. He stares at Robert’s desk.

  “It’s okay. You don’t need a plan,” Robert says, tossing him the keys. “You got a car.”

  Lance catches the keys. Heavier than he remembers. Robert rockets up from his chair and by the time Lance is in the Buick, he’s already back to work. Cursing and shaking his head. Pacing his concrete palace left to right, right to left.

  The Buick’s engine fires.

  Lance lifts his foot off the brake and is in charge of three thousand pounds of steel. The upholstery, embedded with 156,000 miles of memories. Dried mud from a hundred trails worked into floor mats. The cling of stale cigarette smoke, winning its battle with Febreze. And swinging from the rearview mirror, the brass treble clef his grandmother gave him on his twelfth birthday.

  Twenty miles an hour feels fast.

  The forest rushes around him. Strange to sit and move so quickly, choosing your direction with a flick of the wrist. Back on Highway 2, the feeling is so surreal he almost forgets to stop for more gas. He sits for five minutes, but no one comes out. He’s in Washington. He’ll have to pump his own.

  The road back to the Trainsong motel feels too steep and fast, like driving down the side of a mountain. He bombs over hills, slips around greased curves. When the road straightens out, the clouds and pavement join into a single silver chute and there is no stopping him. He learned to drive on a country road like this, and can see his father chewing on an apple in the passenger seat, tapping the dashboard to Jethro Tull. Rolling papers, flapping in the wind.

  Don’t ever do this, okay? Don’t ever do this.

  The Trainsong comes into view, and Lance pulls into the parking lot. The breeze through the window dies. The Buick bakes in the sun, and Dakota’s front door is closed. He moves fast.

  His motel room is still a wreck. His life in folders and suitcases, strewn over the carpet. An unmade bed with dents in the sheets. He imagines the bed cordoned off with yellow tape. A crime scene. The things he’s done. When he leaves, this room will be cleaned and used by someone else. They will have no idea what happened here. What could’ve happened.

  But there is no Seattle. There is no other option. Never was.

  An animal jolts awake in the cage of his chest.

  Run, the animal shrieks. RUN.

  Things and memories. He will stuff them all into bags and throw them in the trunk. Dark and safe and all locked up.

  Plastic folders bend and crack as he shoves them in the duffel. A fat ball of dirty clothes. The suitcase zipper will not swallow the lump. Cram it in. Stomp it down. Too much to fit. These khakis won’t fit. These jeans won’t fit. Stone’s body will not fit. Goodbye, Dakota will not fit. And he’s breathing hard, he is wiping his face and the room is neat with a suitcase, a trumpet case, an orange duffel bag.

  He looks over the walls. The cats stare back, trying to tell him something.

  The bathroom!

  A massacre of toiletries. Squashed tubes, plastic bottles. Evidence of last night, staring up from a wicker trash can. Obscene. He unspools a glove of toilet paper and piles it on top. He slips a finger under the bathroom mirror and it opens. Empty.

  He remembers gaps in a medicine cabinet.

  The morning he found the letter there was a missing comb, toothpaste, razor, aftershave. His father’s lines of absence were sharp and clear in cupboards and shelves, in the tools missing from the outlined Peg-Board in the garage. Lance closes the medicine cabinet. There is still a wineglass under the sink.

  Outlets clear.

  Nothing under the bed but a wooden block.

  The parts of the room that belong to him all have handles. He hangs everything on his arms and shoulders. He can barely carry it all. Grip, slipping. One trip to the car. He’ll reverse out of the parking lot, reverse down the highway, reverse this trip all the way back to Bend, all the way to last Saturday.

  NOW! RUN!

  Alarms, air-raid sirens. He’s out the door and moving too fast. He might spill headfirst down painted steps. He makes it to the car. He shuts the trunk and is in the Buick with locked doors and all is still.

  Something jabs his thigh.

  A room key anchored to a broken plastic train and a conversation with Cheri and hundreds of dollars he does not have. Cheri is in her office, a horizon of frizzy hair over her monito
r. No time for Cheri. Lance starts the car. He pulls forward, rolls down the passenger window, and tosses the key. It lands on the wicker mat with a bounce. Ha! Perfect! His engine purrs, carrying him to the edge of the highway. One right turn and he’ll be gone.

  Blinking, clicking. As soon as this white pickup passes.

  C’mon, white pickup!

  In the rearview mirror, a parking lot. No one chasing him. He can do this.

  You are valedictorian.

  You are the first-chair trumpet player.

  You jumped a train.

  Dakota is in love with you.

  He could’ve said something. Left a note.

  Or a letter.

  He could’ve left a letter.

  Lance’s foot flattens the brake.

  “No,” he says. “No, no, no.”

  He jerks open the glove box: starlight mints, registration, receipts, a small flashlight, two rubber rings, crumpled carbon copies—and he heaves them onto the floor. Please just be here! Can you just be here?

  There is no letter in the car. The highway is clear. Turn signal, clicking.

  He could go. Can’t go. Lance makes a tight U-turn. He pulls back into his space. He’s out of the car, heaving himself up by the handrail, a balcony sprint to his room. A stone doorknob. Locked. He pats his pockets. He curses, turns around.

  His room key is on the mat downstairs.

  Lance makes it down around the corner and—no—Cheri is standing up. Rising from behind her computer. She never stands up. Why is she standing up? Slowly, she moves toward him. He’ll be caught. He runs faster but his legs are moving at slow-nightmare speed and he can’t go fast enough, can’t get there until she’s at the door, scowling behind glass.

  He smiles, lifting his key.

  She opens the door and he’s already halfway up the stairs.

  “Breakdown!” she yells. “Hey Breakdown! What the heck are you doing?” He slams the door to his room and bounces off the corner of the mattress, hand closing on the nightstand drawer. He jerks it open, contents slamming forward: Bible, phone book, letter. The letter. He pulls out the envelope that says lance. He breathes, holds it to his chest.

  Across the room, there is a pad of paper on the small desk. A blue pen.

  Could he do it? Could he lift that pen? Could he write the name Dakota?

  Now there are footsteps, coming up the stairs. Cheri is after her money. He walks to the door, hoping to beat her to the knock. If he can open the door and smile and say Hey there, she won’t be suspicious.

  But when he opens the door he is not smiling at Cheri.

  It’s Dakota. Dakota, climbing out of memory. With a scent and a body and a sour, electric feeling between them. Red-rimmed eyes. Eyes that have cried all day wrap themselves around him and his packed bags and an empty motel room.

  “I’m glad I caught you,” she says.

  “Caught me?”

  “Before you left. You were moving pretty fast.”

  She comes in and sits on the bed. Their bed.

  “They want to see you before you go,” she says.

  “Dakota.”

  She’s staring at the sailboat. “Just say the words. If you have to go, just say the words.”

  “Which words?”

  “‘I truly appreciated our time together. And I must ask that you please don’t follow me home.’” She looks at him with glassy eyes. He can’t look back.

  “I’m not leaving,” he says.

  “Okay.”

  “Who wants to see me?”

  “Everyone,” she says. “They need your story.”

  Dakota still steals ground when she walks, moving faster than her small steps should allow. Gliding across the parking lot, down the hillside. She does not look back. Not once.

  The fire pit is abandoned. Cordoned off with strips of yellow and orange tape, knotted around sunken rebar. Some of the group’s things are still inside where they left them. Empty bottles. Tipped-over cans. A black fleece. It all looks important now.

  They continue to walk. They are five hundred miles into the woods, and it will be five hundred miles out. The sky is already losing light, and the place she is taking him is nowhere he wants to be. Halfway down the path they once walked from Sugarville, Dakota turns into the brush and steps into the space they’ve carved out for themselves.

  The fire pit sits in a thicket of blackberries and nettles. Logs have mossy tops, and Meebs and Rocco are standing over a smoldering hole in the ground. They’re trying to start a fire without Dakota. She steps forward and thorned branches swallow the path at her back. Lance couldn’t get out if he tried.

  “Well, look,” Mason says.

  Lance is looking at the blond girl by the fire. A girl he does not immediately recognize as Breanna. She has cried away her makeup and hard eyes and any trace of cleverness, as if Stone’s death cracked her shell wide open and a real girl came pouring out. She looks about fifteen. Maybe she’d always looked this soft when she was alone with him. Maybe she’d look this way tonight, and never again.

  They are all raw.

  Tragedy and Meebs are a poor fit. His eyes are too wide, mouth so small. Like a sad cartoon. Mason looks old. Hunched and scowling. Overnight, he’s a few years closer to his father. Rocco is the most together.

  Put that log here, Meebs. C’mon, man.

  Did he care? Was Rocco used to this? How much had he lost in his life?

  Lance’s eyes are stinging. He can’t help it. He wipes his cheeks. They all look different and new. Did he ever really know any of them? Does he know anyone at all?

  He sits next to Dakota. Looks down at her hand.

  “You brought your horn?” Meebs asks.

  Lance nods, pulling the case close.

  “Blower,” Rocco says.

  “We heard you talked to Stone,” Mason says.

  “Did you go back down like I asked?” Breanna says, her voice thin.

  “Yeah, I did.”

  Her shoulders sag. “Thank you for going. Thank you for talking to him.”

  “That kind of depends on what you said, Blower,” Mason says.

  “What did Stone want to talk about?” Breanna asks, only looking at Lance.

  The campfire remains a gray, smoking pit. Dakota coughs. Meebs and Rocco shuffle around, jabbing it with twigs.

  “He said a lot of things,” Lance says. He tries to push his voice out smooth, but it’s cracking, ready to snap. “He told me about basic training. He seemed to feel better after we talked. I didn’t know he would do it. If he’d said anything, I would’ve told someone.”

  “He didn’t say anything about Telluride?” Mason asks. Something is creeping up behind his eyes. A wolf in its cave. Lance stares at the wolf, wondering what it wants.

  “Did he mention Telluride?” Rocco asks.

  They are leaning forward now. They all want something from him.

  “Yeah,” Lance says. “He did.”

  “Yep,” Mason says, leaning back. They’re all nodding, listening to a drumbeat Lance is just beginning to hear.

  Their fire has finally started. It’s a flimsy thing, no core. It will not hold up unless they keep feeding it, blowing at the smoke until they see stars and taste soot and feel sick from it. But you can keep that kind of fire going a long time.

  “I guess he finally went for it,” Rocco says.

  “He should’ve known better,” Mason says. “Guy couldn’t jump trains for shit.”

  They’re looking at him again. Lance’s turn.

  They need your story.

  He just has to say the words. This story will catch and burn. Stone was trying to jump a train to Telluride. Breanna is still looking at him. She wants something different than the rest of them. She wants the truth.

  “He was so sad, Breanna,” Lance says.

  She’s crying, hard. Staring at the ground.

  “Hey,” Mason says. “Leave her alone.”

  Breanna’s shaking her head.

  “That�
��s not it, Mason,” Lance says. “He wasn’t that bad at jumping trains.”

  “You don’t know,” Rocco says. “He fell twice before.”

  “Did you drop him?” Lance asks Mason.

  “Excuse me?”

  The wolf is out now, baring its teeth. C’mon, Mason. Jump and bite. Tonight, he is strong enough. He will grab that wolf by the throat and strangle it.

  “Did you let go of his hand? Like you let go of mine?”

  Breanna stops crying.

  “Did you drop him that night?” she asks Mason. “Did you do that on purpose?”

  “Are you questioning me?” Mason snaps.

  “Yeah. What are you going to do, Mason?” Breanna says. “Fire me?”

  “You’re seriously talking shit to me, Bre? Who gave him a job when he got discharged?” He’s talking to everyone, using his ringmaster voice. “Answer me! Who found him a place to live when he got bounced from his dad’s? Who’s closing down his whole place tomorrow to host a party for his ass?”

  “Yeah,” Lance says. “You’re such a good friend.”

  “You got something to say, Blower?”

  “Was he too good at guitar?” Lance says. “Is that why you called him Stone?”

  “Shut your fucking mouth—”

  “Did Dakota like him better?”

  “Okay, I’ll shut it for you.”

  Mason is standing.

  “Come on over and try,” Lance says. He stands, and everyone is standing.

  “Calm down,” Dakota says.

  “Look,” Rocco says. “It’s no one’s fault. No one pushed Stone in front of that train.”

  Lance is shaking his head, no, no, no.

  “Stone was riding to Telluride.” Meebs uses a clear, monotone voice. Like the comment is designed to play on a loop.

  “You’re wrong, Meebs,” Lance says.

  “Blower,” Rocco says. “Shut up.”

  “You want to know what he really said about you all? You want to know what he said about his friends right before he jumped in front—”

  Something knocks his head to the side. The world tilts and his eyes water and when he wipes them clean it’s Meebs, seething, panicked by what he’s done.