Act of Grace

by Anna Krien

  Gerry stood behind a Ford sedan, studying its lines for bends and warping. It had clearly been totalled and beaten back into shape. He moved on, stopping at a shiny black Honda. Its lines were straight. He walked around it, picturing the car in pieces, putting it back together. There was some rust, but he didn’t plan on having it forever. He walked a few steps backwards to check that the tyres were aligned.

  ‘You want to take a look inside?’ The salesman, a wiry man in a blue-and-purple parachute tracksuit, had come over. He held out a squareish key. ‘Where you headed?’ he asked, when Gerry took it.

  ‘Probably Palm Springs,’ Gerry mumbled, opening the Honda. The interior stank of spearmint and cigarettes.

  The engine fired easily. Gerry dropped the gears, pumped the brakes, and checked the wipers, indicator and lights.

  ‘Happy for you to take it for a test drive,’ the salesman said, as Gerry contemplated the bumper-to-bumper traffic. Gerry popped the bonnet instead. He put his hands in the engine and felt around like he’d watched his dad do, feeling along the saddle for grit, signs of welding. He checked the hoses for leaks and undid the caps, turning them over. Held the dipstick under his nose, sniffing. The salesman watched him shrewdly. ‘Where you from?’

  ‘Australia,’ Gerry replied, keeping his eyes on the engine, slipping his hand under the belt and stretching it.

  The salesman perked up. ‘Australia, hey? You know Melboorne? I got a cousin there.’

  Not wanting to chat, Gerry shook his head. ‘It’s a big place.’

  It wasn’t a great rig, but he could get in there, maintain it. The price, $1095, was written on the windscreen in white texta. ‘I’ll give you a thousand dollars, cash.’

  The salesman grinned like it was too easy. ‘Deal.’ He held out his hand. Reluctantly, Gerry took it.

  In the trailer, after counting the cash and signing the paperwork, the salesman looked at him before he slid the key over. ‘Listen, kid, only advice I got for you is this. You get pulled over, you put your hands on the dash. You don’t move them. If a cop asks for ID, you ask ’em if you’re allowed to get it. I’m saying this because you’re not from here.’

  The rattle of the dog chains made Gerry flinch as he walked back to the Honda. Carefully he drove the car out and into the long centipede of traffic, inching past grimy bungalows with barred windows, convenience stores protected by metal grilles, boarded-up squats. The road was framed with billboards: the rectangles spun atop buildings, were lined up along walls. There were advertisements for lap-band surgery, coconut water, Burger King, libel lawyers – men with hammy moustaches and wide Texan hats – and churches: Meet Reverend Steve. He Doesn’t Have All the Answers But He Knows Who Does.

  Gerry furtively scanned the people in other cars, jaws flapping even when there was only the driver. Men with chests like Chesterfields, their flesh buttoned tightly into their shirts. Women with plastic talons glued to their fingers, driving with small dogs on their laps. Young guys who drove like they were wrestling an alligator, whipping out the back of their car like a tail, weaving forward. Gerry felt a fucking fool. How old was he when he got hooked on the idea of America? Eight, nine? He’d had this perfect image of the southwest, all Lone Star and hard men with good hearts. It wasn’t as if he had his head in the sand; he had watched The Wire, Michael Moore, all that stuff, seen the endless school shootings on his feed, but his idea of the southwest, his cowboy country, had remained like a jewel lodged in his mind.

  Gerry tried to restrain the panic as he drove in loops, spaghetti highways tossing him from one concrete strip to the next. He’d set his phone up at the airport but the wheel on his GPS turned lazily, refusing to focus. The square green signs announcing each turnoff only made sense to Gerry once he’d passed them.

  What was he doing here? The question went around his head. His T-shirt was clammy with sweat. It was hard to breathe. The city seemed crushed into history already, a length of strata, thin as bible paper; a patina of dust, smog and concrete. In the flat grey sky, the orange sun dribbled like a split yolk. For fifteen seconds or so, Gerry took his foot off the accelerator, the other cars belting past as the Honda slowed. What if he just stopped? Would someone come to tow him? Would they tell him if he could take his hands off the dash?

  Eventually the traffic began to spread out. Hummers, coupes and sedans were peeling off, and the Honda didn’t feel so hemmed in. Behind him Los Angeles was a hazy glow, buildings pocked with window-shaped embers. Gerry swung out at the next exit, not even bothering to read the sign, and he was spat into the desert, the road blistered with truck lights. He drove, too scared to stop, and for two weeks he travelled like that. He shat out hard knots in gas-station toilets and drove grimly from campsite to campsite. Every day he raced the sun, desperate to arrive before it got dark.

  At night he didn’t bother with a fire. He didn’t use his cooker, eating what he bought from the gas stations in his sleeping bag, shivering and listening, worrying about bears and worrying about people with guns. He wondered if he ought to buy one and shut his head up once for and all.

  Gerry pictured his father’s satisfaction if he came home early, his charade of perplexity. ‘What, you couldn’t do a little campervan trip in the States?’ Gerry could hear it. ‘I did three tours of the Middle East and you can’t even stick out a few weeks in California?’

  He took up smoking. Sucking on the white sticks for sustenance, like his father did. Days went by when he didn’t speak to anyone. His head felt like a nest of broken things. A couple of times he tried getting drunk, downing a bottle of bourbon in his tent, but his father’s voice only got louder. You fucking stupid, Gerry? What’s your plan, Gerry? You look like a faggot, Gerry. His father, knocking on his head like a door. Knock, knock. Anyone home, Gerry?

  One night he punched himself. He rammed his fists into his face and his ears, boxed his own skull, searching out the soft parts and crushing his knuckles against them. Then he zipped his sleeping bag all the way up and sobbed, a muffled howling. In the morning his face was a bloodied mess.

  A few times he stopped at tourist attractions. Took photos. He bought postcards and never sent them. He drove past a jail that had a neon VACANCY sign flashing out the front. And near the Mexican border he kept his hands on the dash while a policeman shone a torch in his face, another cop looking under the Honda.

  ‘What you doing out here?’

  ‘Camping.’

  ‘Let me guess, you’re a birdwatcher?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A warning: you pick anyone up out here and we’ll take you in too.’

  ‘Okay, sir.’

  How easily it came to him, this obligingness. He disgusted himself. ‘Okay, sir,’ he said as he drove on, mimicking himself. ‘Okay, sir. May I lick your balls, sir?’

  Gerry never saw anyone come out of the desert to flag him down. But then, he made a point of not looking. You see what you want to see, and you don’t see what you don’t want to see. One of his father’s sayings.

  So, did he want to see Eva? Even though all that was visible was her calves and lace-up boots sticking out from under the bus? God, yes.

  The brightly painted vehicle was parked in a clearing on the side of the highway. A jack was wedged precariously underneath. Next to it a set of legs were twisted like liquorice, trying to dig the heels of their brown leather boots into the gravel. Gerry pulled over and parked a little way off. As he approached the bus, he could hear the person grunting and the ping, ping, ping of metal on metal. ‘Fuck, shit, fuck!’

  Gerry knelt. He glimpsed the back of the girl, much of her hidden in shadow as she cursed, her upper body, mostly shoulders and arms, trying to force a wrench downwards. She had a gold-and-brown cobra tattooed on one of her calves. The snake’s hood flattened as it reared up behind her knee.

  ‘Hey,’ he called uncertainly, and the girl jumped, banging her head.

  ‘Ow!’

  ‘Sorry, I —’ Gerry stopped talking as she scrambled o
ut, holding the lug wrench aloft. She was so unexpected: her short dark hair flopping over grey eyes, her small ears rattling with silver jewellery, and a thin white scar running up the side of her neck like a single gill, luminous against her ruddy skin, mottled with freckles. Even her lips had a dusting of the tiny mud-brown spots. But it wasn’t just her; his own reaction caught him off-guard, the way his breath snared in his throat. He had become so used to the loathing and the highway. The bone-dry deserts. The lakes in massive stone basins that looked like drained baths, rimmed with algae. He’d felt ugly and could only see ugly, but she was exquisite.

  She looked at Gerry and he found it hard to return her gaze, his eyes slipping nervously to the side. After a pause, she seemed to relax, and loosened her grip on the wrench. She kicked an old tyre that was lying on the ground. ‘I got the first one out fine, but the second is being a bitch.’

  ‘You want me to try?’ Gerry winced at his voice. His words felt lumpy, unused for so long.

  ‘Sure,’ the girl said. She handed him the wrench. ‘If you do get them off,’ she added, ‘it’s probably because I already loosened them for you.’ Gerry nodded solemnly and she grinned. ‘I’m kidding!’ She wiped her greasy hands on her top, a faded turquoise Miami Dolphins T-shirt. Savaged into shorts, her black jeans stopped at the knees. Gerry felt himself blush. He crawled quickly under the hood of the wheel hub. In the oily darkness he breathed freely, gathering himself. He placed the wrench over a fat lug and tried to spin it downwards. His hand slipped.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ he said. ‘Someone put them on tight.’

  ‘It’s those stupid machines,’ the girl called back. ‘The ones they use at mechanics. They put them on too tight.’

  Gerry repositioned himself, coiling his body so he was inside the hub. Steadying the wrench around the lug nut, he put his weight on it and pushed down. He felt a small movement. He did it three more times, finally getting it, the bolt easing free. When he held it out, the girl whooped: ‘Yes!’

  It took twenty minutes to take out the rest of the bolts. Gerry was hot, aching from being bunched up, but he didn’t want it to end. When he crawled out, handing her the last bolt, the girl did a victory dance and he felt like weeping. Go back to the car, drive to Catalina, set up the tent, eat tuna from the tin, sleep.

  ‘You did it!’ the girl said, clapping.

  Gerry allowed himself a lopsided smile. ‘Only because you loosened them,’ he said.

  The girl snorted and punched him playfully on the arm. They both looked at the tyre Gerry had rolled out. It was bald and tattered. Gerry shook his head at it. ‘Where’s your spare?’

  ‘That is the spare.’

  ‘Oh?’ A small gust of hope picked up in Gerry’s chest.

  ‘It’s okay. Elliott’s gone to get a new one.’

  ‘Oh.’ The gust died. ‘Well —’

  ‘I’m Eva.’ She stuck out her hand.

  Gerry took her hand without looking at her. ‘Hey.’

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘Gerry. Well, I better get going.’ He started walking back to the Honda. He’d left the door wide open.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  Gerry felt a twinge of annoyance at the girl. ‘Catalina,’ he said, turning to answer her.

  ‘Oh. Okay.’ She shrugged. ‘Well, thanks.’

  Gerry nodded. ‘No worries.’

  In the Honda, Gerry tried not to feel revolted by the empty drink cans and chip packets. He put his hands on the wheel. They were streaked with grease. He sighed. Jumped when she tapped on the glass.

  ‘Do you have to be in Catalina?’ Eva asked, when he wound the window down. Gerry was barely able to answer. He shook his head. ‘Then have a drink with me,’ she said.

  *

  The bus’s original interior had been gutted and replaced with a small kitchen and a booth with yellow vinyl seats and a laminex table bolted to the floor. At the rear, where the back seat would have been, there was a double mattress piled with pillows, a ginger cat asleep in a wave of linen, curled like a croissant. A guitar was propped in the corner, and books spilled over the floor; the ceiling was strung with fake vines and flowers. Dozens of tiny cacti sat snug in eggcups on the table while streaks of flour and grains of rice were stuck to the kitchen bench. Brown bananas lay next to a sticky blender. Near the folding door, Gerry read the chalkboard leaned against the wall. Pancakes! Freshly squeezed juice! Smoothies!

  Eva filled two metal cups with rum and squeezed a lime in, letting the juice run through her fist. ‘Let’s sit outside,’ she said, grabbing a leather pouch on her way out. Gerry followed her across the reddish earth, the cactuses cartoonish with their prickly arms sticking out like traffic wardens.

  Eva stopped at a bunch of rocks and climbed to the tallest one, balancing the cups. Clumsily, Gerry followed. ‘Cheers,’ she said, when they were settled. They clinked cups. Opening the leather pouch, Eva chatted as she rolled a joint, Gerry eying it warily. She told Gerry that she and her friend Elliott had driven out from San Diego for the summer and were planning to finish up at Burning Man in Nevada.

  ‘You’ve never heard of it?’ She looked at Gerry in amazement. ‘Oh my god, you’d love it.’ She described a week-long party with thousands of people. ‘No, not a party,’ she corrected, ‘a gathering. Everyone turns up in the middle of nowhere and builds a city in the desert. At the end of the week, everything is burnt.’ She smiled wistfully. ‘Leave no trace.’ She lit the joint, exhaling in a swirl. ‘You should come with us,’ she said, passing him the joint.

  Gerry shrugged. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t love it. Trying to seem casual, he took a toke. He’d only had a few joints in his life; a girl he’d been sleeping with for a few weeks had been into it, always bringing a spliff when they hooked up. They’d made him feel strange – not in a way to make him not like it, but not enough to enjoy it either. The girl, Tilley, would go all breathy and giggly. It had annoyed him. The joint didn’t seem to alter Eva; she sat upright, humming as she took it, chatting seamlessly through the smoke.

  She and Elliott, she continued, had gone out with the Border Angels near the Mexican border. ‘We put out bottles of water for people crossing the desert.’ She tilted her face enquiringly at Gerry. ‘Do you think that’s stupid? Elliott was a total bitch about it. He thought it was a dumb idea, that no one would find them.’ She looked at Gerry intently. ‘What do you think?’

  Gerry tried to work out what to say, feeling an odd, faraway panic. The joint crackled between his fingers. A ripple of nausea passed through him, his hands suddenly clammy. ‘I don’t know,’ he mumbled. ‘How many people are crossing? I guess it depends on heaps of things.’

  Eva nodded. ‘Well, it felt better than doing nothing. And the people in the Border Angels, they’d heard from migrants who managed to cross that they found the water.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Gerry managed to say. It was getting on. He stared at the Honda turning to shadow and leaned towards it like an animal keen to return to its den. He fumbled in his pocket for his cigarettes, tapping one out, hoping it would steel him. He sucked it weakly. He felt woozy. Eva’s hands flitted as she spoke. He felt the colour drain from his face. ‘I’ve gotta go,’ he said abruptly, standing up. His cup slipped from his hand, clattering over the rocks. He sat back down, on his knees this time, hunched over.

  ‘Gerry?’ the girl said as he heaved. ‘Jesus, are you okay?’ She was not quite touching him, but too close. He felt queasy. He retched again. ‘Shit,’ she said. ‘Gerry? Is there anything I should know?’

  He squinted, the girl blurring in his vision. He shook his head. ‘I’m okay,’ he said. ‘I’m just tired.’ He stood up again, wobbling as he carefully climbed down. It was almost night, pink spooling out over the horizon. He began to shiver. ‘I’ve got to go,’ he said, fixing his eyes on the Honda, walking towards it.

  Beside him, Eva put her hand under his armpit nervously, trying to help. ‘Your shirt is soaking,’ she exclaimed. Gerry nodde
d grimly. His teeth began to chatter. ‘Come on,’ Eva said as she steered him away from the Honda, ‘you can sleep in the bus.’

  *

  On a length of foam, Gerry sweated and shivered. He dreamt his car had been stolen and became anxious. He mumbled and kicked a blanket off. His eyes snapped open when Eva pressed a wet cloth to his forehead. ‘My car,’ he said wildly.

  ‘Shh,’ she said. ‘It’s okay.’ She rubbed the cool cloth down his arms and wrapped it around his feet. When he woke next, it was black outside, a moonless night, and quiet. He sat up, his bones weak as kindling. The girl was on the mattress, asleep, the cat on the pillow next to her head, licking itself.

  He needed to piss. He got up stiffly. His sneakers and socks were set neatly at the end of the foam. She must have taken them off. He stumbled outside and felt the hot relief as he leaned out with his hips, smelt the curdled scent of urine. Stars winked at him. He climbed back up the steps and into the bus, spying a bottle of water, and gulped it, letting some dribble down his chin.

  Eva woke up. She watched him drink. ‘You okay?’

  Gerry nodded sheepishly. ‘Yeah, I think so.’

  ‘You hungry?’

  He was about to say no but realised he was starving. He looked through the window at his Honda. What was in there? A loaf of sliced bread, a half-eaten packet of pretzels, some Ritz crackers, a cheese spread that didn’t seem to go off in the heat. He felt nauseous again.

  ‘Do you have any fruit?’ he asked. ‘Just an apple?’