by Paul Flower
Please no. Please no. Jesse couldn’t straighten, he couldn’t shut off the music and he couldn’t shut out the truth that came with it: he’d killed this man––the man in this hole––over the price of a song. Mom, she’d made him think it was okay. She’d told him to kill his brother. And now was she leading him back here to finish the job? Had he ever stood up to her? No. No he hadn’t. His hands dug deep and clutched the remains, and he clenched his eyes, fighting back the contents of his stomach. In his mind, he felt the porch tilt and spin, and he fell. His knees slammed into the wood floor, the rest of him crumbling after them. He lay there, dazed. From inside the house, Mom’s voice: “You just remember, this part’s up to you. I ain’t bailing you out on this like I done… like I done on other things,” she said. “If I got to take care of everything, you go to your aunt’s house and stay there.
“Oh, and pick up that ice-tea glass before you come in for supper. I ain’t running no pig sty here.”
He heard her. And he heard the music, too. It was so clear. But there was something about it all, something in what she said or the way she’d said it that made his head spin even harder.
Chapter Twelve
He drove aimlessly, losing track of time, finally stopping at the river. He eased the Cordoba into a grove of trees near the water’s edge and parked. The engine throbbed. The eight-track tape player made a soft swish-whir that told him the tape was recycling and couldn’t find a track. He’d have to shut off the car to make the player stop running. He didn’t want to shut off the car, and if he didn’t want to, he didn’t have to. It was up to him. Darn straight it was up to him.
He studied the rain now falling full force on the windshield. Droplets swelled on the glass till they burst and ran together, forming tiny rivers.
Elvis blinked and tried to pick up the motion of the real river out in the darkness. His mom had always told him he had quite the imagination, that he was good at making up things—seeing things—in his head. She’d been right. As he sat at the river’s edge, he thought about the bridge that ran across it. He imagined he could walk over there, climb the bank to the sidewalk, hoist himself up on the railing, balance there for a breath, then just fall. The river would carry him away like a leaf. He’d be a leaf in a river, rushing nowhere. Elvis could see himself from above, his naked skin nothing more than a white stain gliding through the black of the water. The wind would whistle over him. The trees would rock and sway, waving good-bye as he floated past. Maybe a car would cross the bridge overhead, the people inside would laugh at something. He’d look up through the water and see them, their faces blurred and lit by the glow from the dashboard, their mouths open and heads thrown back, laughing at some dumb joke. He imagined it like a scene from that black and white movie, the Jimmy Stewart one they always show at Christmas.
Man sees no reason to live.
Man finds bridge.
Man jumps.
In his movie, in the Elvis version, there was no guardian angel to yank him out of the water. He just floated downstream and away, leaving no trace of himself except for a car he’d bought for next to nothing.
Elvis cocked the rear-view mirror so he could look at himself. His face was lit from below by the dashboard lights, his eyes were hollowed into his skull by shadows, and his nostrils looked like twin hairy caves. It’s not true, is it? It’s not. No. Yes. No. Stop it. Admit it. No. I said admit it. She’s gone. She isn’t. Yes. She is. Yes. She’s gone. The only one, the only one that understood, the only one you could… and him, he…
He pounded the steering wheel with his fist, then thudded his head sideways against the window, eyes clenched. Suddenly he straightened, fury in his eyes—in the fiery eyes of the guy in the mirror. They cheated on you. Yes, they did. Yes. Probably. Maybe they didn’t. They did. And, if they did? Well, then you can’t trust anyone? No. No you can’t, can you? No you can’t. You can’t because people, all people, lie. Not all. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. They do. Even the ones that, the ones that say they love you? Yes. Especially them. They do. Darn straight they do. They lie like dogs. Right. And you know what else? You know what? Say it. No. It’s not true. Yes it is. Say it. They die. No. Yes.. That’s it. They DIE. Yes. They lie. And they die. Yes. You get it now. Yes. All of them. All the ones that matter? Yes. Yes. They fucking lie then they die.
Elvis flopped back in the seat and shoved the mirror away, then sat up, eyes wild. Jimmy Stewart fell from a bridge on the edge of his mind. He slammed his naked shoulder against the car door. It wouldn’t move. He tried again. Nothing. Suddenly aware of the cold, he flicked on the dome light, twisted around and rummaged through the junk in the backseat. He found a dirty towel, wrapped himself in it, then curled against the door. He closed his eyes and saw his mother’s face. Whoa. He opened his eyes and stared out the window.
He was dead tired.
He stayed there, suspended, not moving, not thinking, not awake but not asleep.
Finally, deep in the night, Elvis stretched and groaned and threw the towel aside. He looked out at the night for several minutes, then leaned forward and pulled his wallet out of his back pocket. Fumbling with the flashlight, he managed to retrieve the scrap of paper.
M-43 East to Dormill. About 6/10 mi. down, left on M-140. Three miles out 140 to Fire lane 32b. Turn right.
He sat up slowly, pulled down the mirror, and looked from the note to his reflection. Slowly, he nodded, agreeing with himself.
****
There was a convenience store that sold cardboard-like pizza twenty-four hours a day. He’d bought a large with extra pepperoni: The Big Meaty, according to the sign next to the cash register. As Elvis turned on to M-43, the open pizza box slid away and almost off the Cordoba’s seat. He clamped onto the half-eaten slice already in his mouth. Gripping the steering wheel with his left hand, keeping his eyes locked straight ahead, he reached out with his right hand and caught the cardboard runaway.
A car roared past, cutting him short. Elvis didn’t react. He was strangely calm and, despite being naked from the waist up, unaware of the cold. He imagined finding a little cottage nestled in the woods. He’d break in and find Donnel’s socks on the bedroom floor, his shaving stuff in the bathroom, and that would be that. His fears would be confirmed, but heck, at least he’d know.
He tried to focus on the road, but his brain kept drifting. He was plenty pissed at Lavern, but the ache of losing her was wrecking the anger. Their marriage had been a lot like this car, he thought. This old car didn’t run quite right, but the seat fit his butt, and that crease on the rear end was bad, but they’d gotten it in that fender-bender the day Donnel fell off the ladder. That funny smell, well, that was from when they were on vacation and the jar of olives busted in the back seat. Yeah, Elvis told himself, things weren’t all that bad, not when you thought about them.
There was a guy standing in the middle of his lane, waving him down.
“Holy...” Elvis hit the brakes and reached for the pizza box. The car skidded on the slippery pavement. The guy jumped back. The Cordoba’s nose stopped inches from his thighs.
He was short, fat and balding—about thirty, maybe thirty-five, Elvis figured. He’d fastened the kinky strands of his wet hair into a baby ponytail, so what was left of his hair was pulled tightly to his head. Red-faced and soaked by the rain, with his flannel shirt half-out of his jeans, he looked beaten and tired. His car, an old gray Camaro, was parked on the shoulder of the road.
Elvis rolled down the window and stuck his head out into the cold drizzle. “Car trouble?”
“Well, yeah. And ahh... that’s not all, not exactly.” The guy took a couple, half-scared steps toward Elvis’ side of the car. “Look, man, I’m in some trouble... hey,” the guy caught himself. “You got pizza?” He walked to the open window and gawked at the box on the seat.
Elvis followed his eyes toward the open box. “Uh-huh, with all the pepperoni in t
he world on it.”
“Have some?”
Elvis looked at him. “You make a habit of stopping people on the road in the middle of the night and asking for food?”
“No. I’m just hungry’s all.”
Elvis hesitated. “You like lots of pepperoni on it?”
“Yeah,” the guy smiled, sniffed, and wiped his wide flat nose with the butt of his palm. “Like everything ‘cept anchovies. Had a uncle and a aunt once died from them—allergic.”
“Well here,” Elvis reached over and took a slice with two hands. He handed it through the window and glanced over his shoulder. There was nobody coming. “What kind of trouble you in?”
The guy started stuffing the pizza in his mouth. “I’m with this organization. It’s sort of a brotherhood, you know.” He leaned down and put his face just inches from Elvis’. His mouth was full of pizza and he was talking around it. A glob of red sauce on his cheek looked like thick blood. Elvis moved back a little, avoiding the pizza breath. “You know Jubal Brown?”
Elvis gulped. “You a friend of his?”
The guy swallowed. “Why you ask? Know him?”
“Sort of. Know people that know him.”
“Cool, very cool.”
“Well, not necessarily.”
“What you mean by that?”
“Never mind.”
The guy frowned. “Well, you probably heard Jubal got in some trouble today and…”
“Let me guess. You with him?”
“Yeah, how’d you know?” The guy squinted at him.
Elvis wasn’t sure how he knew. “Good guess, I guess.”
“Well, if you know Jubal, you know there’s one thing he can’t stand, and that’s uppity niggers. Know what I’m saying?” He laughed.
Elvis didn’t answer.
The guy started smiling and wiped the pizza sauce off the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. He sniffed. “Well today, we come out of this store, see, me and Jubal...”
“Got the shinola beat out of him good, didn’t he?”
The way Elvis said it—like Jubal getting the shinola beat out of him good was good—stopped the guy cold.
“You saw it happen then you ran away and now your car broke down and you’re afraid the same thing’s going to happen to you, that it?” Elvis suddenly felt awful about giving the guy pizza. He pictured Jubal in the hospital and Abe Lincoln’s head puckered forever.
“Well, yeah,” the guy stuttered, suddenly uncertain. “Yes I am. It’s not that I’m afraid of those boys that got him. They just always gang up, that’s all. They always come in groups. They don’t fight fair’s all.”
“So you been waiting here for one of your buddies to come cruising along, or someone like me. Is that it?”
The guy smiled and nodded. “That’s right. See, I lost my phone today and I figured I’d get someone that would understand, someone like you. I thought we’d go back into town and...”
Elvis couldn’t stomach any more. He hit the gas and the car lunged forward, the outside mirror catching the guy in the gut. Elvis glanced in the rear-view mirror. The guy was on his knees in the middle of the lane.
****
Elvis didn’t slow the Cordoba until he hit a curve. His eyes searched for the fire lane in Donnel’s directions. The car’s headlights, diluted by dirt and loose connections he’d never bothered to fix, washed the brown roadside grass with a shaky, half-hearted glow.
Something gripped his heart. The countryside, with no street lights or landmarks or homes, was so achingly familiar. He’d grown up out here. For the first time in a good long time, Elvis could feel his childhood. Shadows of thoughts and fears seemed to flit by the car in the night.
He put his face out the window and let the damp wind slap his face, trying to forget the guy back on the road. About a mile from where he’d left the guy, he saw the sign.
Elvis slammed his foot on the brake and the Cordoba fishtailed on the asphalt, then slid to a stop. He punched the wheel with the side of his fist, yanked the car into reverse and jabbed the gas. The wheels spun as the near-bald tires looked for traction. They caught. The car jerked back; Elvis twisted his neck around and angled the wheel to the right. There, he thought, there. He hit the brake hard.
The pizza was now on the passenger’s-side floor in a messy heap. Elvis squinted at the small sign. It was bright and official-looking, white letters on a red background. Fire lane 32b was a muddy track split by a knee-high Mohawk of weeds stretching off into the woods. The rain had stopped; the rubber wipers squealed across the dry glass. The pizza, which he’d eaten too fast, sent random cramps through his gut. The guy he’d knocked down suddenly worried him again, and the cloud of something dark and old hung in the car. Elvis gritted his teeth. “Let’s get it in gear, boy.” He slipped the Cordoba back into drive, gave it a shot of gas and flipped off the wipers. The car jounced down off the road and onto the track.
The car whimpered and groaned. The headlights jumped, throwing jagged, exaggerated shadows on the woods that surrounded him. Branches reached out and whined across the side of the car, asking him to reconsider what he was about to do. The weeds in the middle of the track played a tune on the Cordoba’s undercarriage.
At a break in the trees, he stopped. Go home, he thought. Get out. No. Go on. Yes. Find out. Go see. Ahead, the fire lane disappeared into the dark. To his right was a hard packed, one-lane gravel drive that disappeared into the trees. Elvis nosed the Cordoba onto the gravel. He could always find the end of the gravel drive, find a place to turn around and get out of there. Yes. Yes. He could always do that.
The driveway carried the Cordoba through the woods for several hundred yards before emptying into somebody’s backyard. Three old-fashioned street lamps illuminated a huge section of the well-manicured lawn. The house was new and, to Elvis, like something out of a magazine: two stories of brick with white trim and an attached garage. The yard was landscaped and wide; to his left, at the edge of the light, he could see a walking path cut into the woods.
Elvis figured it was a rich out-of-towner’s house—probably someone from Chicago. These places were usually empty this time of year, although Elvis wasn’t sure; it was late at night and the people inside could be asleep.
He drove to the garage and parked. Two more lights, mounted under the eves, came on. Motion detectors. Elvis looked at the directions scrawled on the scrap of paper. Donnel knew a lot of people in town, just like Lavern did. Donnel had a way of making friends, even with the tourists. Maybe he and Lavern were house-sitting the place. Maybe, maybe not. He didn’t know. Suddenly, he didn’t want to know. Then again, maybe he did. Maybe. He wasn’t sure what he wanted. Elvis backed the car up, wheeled off the gravel, dropped the car into drive and drove quickly back through the woods. At the intersection of the fire lane, he stopped, put the car in park and got out. Hands in pockets, hunched over, he paced in the dark. The night suddenly seemed endless. There were no turns out of it. Go one way, and you had the dead faceless man and the job he didn’t have. Go another, Lavern and Donnel. Go another, and there was this weird guy in the road. Now he was here. In the woods, the old stomping grounds. At a house that wasn’t his, owned by people he didn’t know.
He couldn’t go home. Not with all this stuff, all this bad hanging over him, turning in the breeze.
His hands shaking and suddenly damp, he opened the car door, got in, and drove till he found the driveway again. He stopped the car and closed his eyes. Elvis pictured Lavern scrubbing the fingernail polish from the carpet, Donnel shaking his head “no” and the faceless man on the floor dying. He thought about the hand of God. Ever since Lavern had gotten him to go to her church regularly a couple years back, he’d been half-aware of that hand. Elvis wondered if maybe all this stuff happening was God’s hand working. It helped to think that way, especially when nothing else made a lick of sense.
God’s hand directed your life, took you places even when you didn’t know it. Maybe God’s hand was taking him here. Maybe it was for a reason.
If it was, God had one weird hand.
He drove to the house, parked at the garage, shut off the engine and sat for several minutes, looking at the directions written on the crumpled paper. Lavern had been here, at this house, hadn’t she? Yeah, at least he thought so. Donnel too? The pain of both thoughts, of them being gone and being together, ripped through his chest.
For a minute, again, the temptation to leave—to just bag it—was almost too strong to fight. But the thought of God’s hand, strong but old and gnarled, clenching his head, fixed him in his seat. That hand had brought him this far. Maybe, he thought, the rest was up to him.
Elvis set his jaw, grabbed his flashlight and shoved the door until it opened. He got out of the car and walked tentatively past the garage and along the back of the house until he reached the back door. He peered inside. The room was dark, but it looked like the kitchen.
Heart pounding, Elvis pushed the doorbell. A smooth, rich chiming responded from deep inside the house. Again, he hesitated, not breathing. There was no answer. He pushed the doorbell again, waited. He knocked.
“Hello?” he said loudly, then, even louder, “Helllllooo.” There was nothing. No lights came on. No one rattled around in the house.
Elvis hung his head and watched the mist of his breath float away. Do it. No. Do it. Yes. Do it. He smashed the window in the door with the butt of his flashlight. The crash skittered through the woods.
With his left hand, he reached through the jagged hole in the glass, turned the lock, and twisted the knob. Once inside, he stopped and kicked some of the glass outside, then pushed the door slowly till it clicked shut.