by Rene Steinke
Hal prayed to bring goodness and rightness back to his family. He prayed for guidance and strength and wisdom. Hal knew he could pass his success on to Cully too, and actually, he did feel the wealth coming, like sunlight in the clouds, the way one beam would come down and seem to point itself directly at him, how, when he prayed, he felt a face above him somewhere, nodding in agreement.
HAL WENT OVER to Quaker’s Landing to show an old colonial. The prospective buyer was a pretty, almond-eyed blond woman with a tattoo of a bluebird on her upper arm, dainty, just at the curve of biceps. They walked up to the black wooden door with a strange pilgrim-head knocker. Taking the colonial cues too far, if you asked him.
“I like that park down the way,” Ms. Lansing was saying.
He put the key in the lock, and it wouldn’t turn. “The high school just made the list in Texas Monthly. I know a lot of the teachers myself—went to school here with some of them. And my son’s there now.” He wrenched the key in the other direction. “Just having a little trouble.” He leaned against the door and turned the key. It moved halfway, but wouldn’t click open. He moved away and jiggled the door while he turned the key, trying to make it catch, but that didn’t work. “I’m sure this is the right one.”
It had happened to him before, not with this house but with others. The owner got accustomed to the loose locks and the specific trick to unlocking them and forgot to tell the person showing the house.
He rang the bell again. “Maybe someone’s home. Just a minute.” He was smiling, thinking, Goddamn these fuckers.
“I like this one,” she said in her kitten voice. “It’s the perfect size, and I like those columns, I don’t know why.” He called the owners on his cell, but he got the answering machine.
“Well, let me try this one more time.”
He put the key in the lock and telegraphed a sense of his will into the key, and this time, by God, it turned.
“Hooray!” said Ms. Lansing.
“Hello!” he called out. “Hello! Realtor here!” Just to be safe. He’d more than once caught people in bed, usually with their pajamas on, but still.
They walked inside, and he saw Ms. Lansing’s posture wilt. On the table, plates with the dry yellow lacy remnants of eggs, a pitcher of souring milk. In the living room, kids’ Legos scattered across the carpeting, a dirty doll with blue chewing gum stuck in the hair. A faint smell of diapers and diaper wipes. Standing in the mess, he felt repelled by humanity. People, wanting to fail. It was easy enough when you weren’t trying.
“I guess they forgot to tidy up this morning,” he said.
She averted her gaze out the window to the next-door neighbor’s well-kept yard.
In the old days he would have already been planning how to get a drink in him, but instead he said a small, positive prayer to keep himself on track.
He always told Cully the same thing—God wants you to do good. “Let’s see what else we’ve got for you today,” he told Ms. Lansing. He only had to walk with his eyes straight on the path and not look away.
He was back in the office, emailing with a mortgage broker, Dennis, an annoying, self-important guy with a huge forehead, who relished his power, took hours to return emails but even longer to return phone calls. Diana, the company’s administrative assistant, was out sick, and though the office was quieter, everything was taking longer to do. The water cooler stood nearly empty next to the bathroom door. He could hear only Stan at the cubicle way at the other end, clicking at his computer keyboard.
When his cell phone rang, he hoped it was Dennis, so he could finish their damn deal, but he saw Cully’s name flash on the screen.
“What’s up, son? I’m in the middle of work here.”
“I ran out of gas.”
“What do you mean you ran out of gas?”
“I just forgot I was on low, and didn’t see the light, and I was driving back from the gym and got stuck.”
The rectangles of fluorescent lights above him seemed to zap and intensify, a spidery headache forming in his forehead. “Dammit, Cully!”
Hal had found a hundred cigarette butts behind the house by the spigot to the garden hose. And Cully had been falling asleep regularly just after dinner on the couch in front of one of those stupid shows where the guy or the gal gets a rose. Since his suspension, it didn’t seem as if Cully always showered in the morning, and his mother scolded him for the stubble on his cheeks.
“Sorry, Dad.” Something in his voice sounded tremulous, just a shade.
“Where are you?”
“Out in the oil fields.”
“Now what in the hell are you doing out there?” The fluorescent rectangles seemed to be clacking together, the papers strewn over his desk shuffling themselves—he’d never get it all untangled before night.
“I’m in the middle of something. Where’s your mother?”
“Don’t know. She’s not answering.” It wasn’t like him to run out of gas—he treated that truck like a treasure.
“I’ve got a mountain of work here, Cully. It’s got to get done today. Can’t you call a buddy or something?”
“I could, but I think my phone’s about out of juice.”
This was not like his son. One of the reasons he’d trusted him with a truck in the first place was that he so lovingly and responsibly took care of it, the regular oil checks, a wash on Saturdays. And he had dozens of friends he could have called, was on that phone all the time.
“Dad? Are you coming?”
“Just sit tight. You may have to wait, but I’ll get there.”
He got his car keys from his suit jacket and went out to the lot.
It was so hot that his dress shirt stuck to him in sweat. What was Cully doing out there near the oil fields anyway? Hal got into his car and drove to the gas station, filled up a small gas can, and put it in the trunk. When he got back in the car, he looked at the index card on his dashboard, and remembered what Pastor Sparks had read from Scripture the other day. “There is no lack, for my God supplies all my needs.” No lack.
He spotted Cully’s truck parked on the shoulder at the end of the dirt road, the black oil rigs seesawing in the dry land beside them, bobbing their heads up and down. The thin smell of heat and chemicals.
Hal put the can of gasoline on the ground next to the truck’s back wheel, and opened the passenger side door. Cully’s face was red and covered with sweat.
“Whatever made you want to come out here?” Hal asked.
Cully looked at him blankly, then lifted the corner of a smile. “Sometimes I come out here to think.”
“Think?”
Cully nodded. The pimples around his chin formed an angry purple beard, and he was still wearing his dirty gym clothes, which smelled rank.
“Think about what?”
“Stuff. A lot going on right now. Seems like it’s hard to keep it all straight. Never mind. You got some gas for me?”
“Look, I know you’re missing the big game with Spring,” Hal said, “but you can’t let the pressure get to you. You’ve got to practice as if you’re going back tomorrow.”
Cully pushed his hair, wet with sweat, away from his face and nodded. “I know. I just feel it’s all bad out there, that there’s not one good thing.”
Cully was upset, but Hal felt manipulated, having to come to him this way. “You want to talk about it?”
Was it the girl? There was a prickling at the back of his neck. Hell, he’d seen the same thing and worse, back in the day.
“Nah. Just makes it worse.”
Cully had maybe not told him everything, but he wasn’t going to pry—these were teenagers, and prying only led to stony silence. “You’ve just got to be logical about it. Say your prayers. Tell Jesus what you’re working for.”
“Jesus, isn’t he already supposed to know?”
“D
on’t bullshit me. You know that isn’t the point.”
Cully rubbed the tops of his thighs with his hands.
“I’m just saying you’ve got too much time on your hands now. Just do your schoolwork and run your laps. Don’t think too much—think long, you think wrong. There’s a lot of wisdom in that. You okay, son?” Hal needed to talk to that Dennis, start to move toward closing on this house.
“Yeah, I’m good.” Cully nodded, his face pointed at the front windshield, as if he was determined to get out of there.
Hal wasn’t sure he believed him, but the papers on his desk seemed to spread before him in phantom slips, floating around the car. “Alright, I’ll get going then. We can talk again after supper.”
Cully got out, opened the gas can, and poured the contents into his truck.
Hal got out after him, and walked over, put his hand on Cully’s shoulder. “I’ll wait to make sure it starts.”
He and Darlene had spoiled him. Cully didn’t know what it was to have to get himself out of a situation. Hal wondered if maybe, for Cully’s sake, he shouldn’t have answered his phone.
Hal got into his car and sat there with his hands on the steering wheel, smelling the bitter, vaguely plastic air. The equipment they used out here so often looked like cartoon versions of spaceships. Down the road, and off to the right, a squat blue round tub seemed to spin in the heat over the gravel, but when he stared at it, it kept still.
WILLA
WILLA HEARD THE PHONE RING, and then her mother talking hoarsely in the bedroom. “She wouldn’t do that.”
Beneath Willa’s feet, the red, yellow, blue, and green stripes moved, just barely, as if someone were tugging at the rug. She paused, halfway down the stairs, listened hard, imagined the voice on the other end of the line.
Ever since her mother had driven her home from school, planes cruised through the clouds overhead, cars had obediently followed patterns of traffic lights, and the world had been too quiet. Even her mother—though she’d smoked one cigarette after another in the car.
Willa heard the rustle of her pacing in the bedroom. She heard her say, “No, I didn’t know.”
Willa plodded down the stairs, swiveled on the end of the banister to turn in the entryway, passed the living room, and went into the kitchen, where two carrots lay chopped on the cutting board, the long green leaves hanging over the side of the counter. She took a glass down from the cabinet and held it under the faucet in the sink until it overfilled with water.
There was a prayer and maybe a medical operation you could do to get virginity back. She was trying to remember where she’d heard that. Girls resurrected themselves that way, but how could it really work? Either you were or you weren’t. She could have left when she’d been offered that drink. She could have pulled her hand away from Cully’s and told him to take her back to school.
When her mother came down, her face was flushed and shiny. “That was Ida Johnson,” she said. “You need to tell me what all happened over at that house.”
Willa closed her eyes and leaned her head back to drink down the glass of water. She remembered now another guy who’d been there, his blue sneakers, and a gravelly but high voice. And she didn’t know if she remembered or had imagined someone leaning over her, asking if she was alright.
Willa turned on the faucet again, stared at the glass while she filled it. “I told you, Mom. I don’t remember, I swear.” Without looking, she knew what was in her mother’s face—lines and lines of disappointment, chaotic scribbling.
“You have to tell me,” she said, but her face said the opposite thing. She waved her arm as if to get rid of a circling fly. “Come on, get your shoes on. We have to take you to Dr. Davis.” She said it as if medicine might still be able to rearrange what had happened.
As they passed the open fields and the storage warehouse, on the radio in the car, there was a warning that Bush Intercontinental’s air traffic control signal had gone off the grid. She looked out the window at the clouds, wishing for the hole in them to widen and pull her up into it. If she didn’t remember, how could it possibly be her fault?
A LITTLE WHILE AGO, she’d read a book about the dispensation period, the ten years when people would be left behind, just before the Rapture. The book opened with an airplane ride, babies and children disappeared from their seats, sprung off to heaven; one pilot was gone too, and one (who was having an affair with the stewardess) was not taken. As they came in for the landing, other planes were crashing all around. “You know what I’d do if I heard the world was ending tomorrow?” said Dani, when she saw Willa reading the book. “I’d plant a goddamn tree.”
The doctor’s office was in a string of buildings, each one made up to look like an identical house with a triangle roof and an eave over the door. Dr. Davis, who was an old friend of her mother’s (they used to play in the marching band together), wore gray braids, and she had a low, kind voice. First Willa’ s mother went alone into the office, and Willa could hear her through the door.
“We don’t want it to get out, whatever happened. Willa made a mistake, that’s clear enough. Can you just take a look at her?”
The doctor’s talking went on in a muffled way.
“She’s just a girl. I know. I don’t want the police. You know what they might make it out to be. You know what they’ll say.”
The doctor said more Willa couldn’t hear. She stared at the window’s calico curtains. The tiny red flowers were meant to seem homey, but here among the modern, plain furniture, they seemed cheap and dishonest.
When her mother came out, she said, “Go on in, okay?”
Dr. Davis led Willa to an examining room, handed her a blue paper gown, and gently asked her to undress.
On the wall, there was a diagram of the female anatomy cut neck to midthigh, the purple uterus a paisley at the center. Next to it, the tall T of the scale. Overhead, the white lights sputtered like lightning.
Dr. Davis examined Willa’s body under the drape, while Willa stared at the ceiling, crossed with strips of fluorescent fixtures. She’d managed to scrub the inked letters off her skin, but now Dr. Davis would know what happened anyway. Making her voice extra gentle, the doctor warned her about the speculum, which was somehow worse than it would have been if she’d been brusque. “Now, here,” she said. Against her eyelids, Willa saw dancing orange fireworks. She wanted to ask how two sips of vodka and Red Bull could make you lose your memory. She wanted to tell her how she’d trusted Cully, and then the hours flew away, but the doctor wasn’t asking any questions, just seeing for herself. The orange fireworks stretched and disintegrated.
“Are you in any pain, honey?” That had gone away days ago.
“No.”
“You and your mom can trust me, you know.”
“I know.”
“Do you want to tell me?”
Willa opened her eyes and turned her head to the wall. “There’s nothing to tell. I don’t remember.”
“You don’t know who did this?”
Willa’s eyes began to ache. She started to speak, but only a crushed sound came from her throat.
“Okay, Willa,” said the doctor, her smooth hands patting Willa’s ankles. “You can get dressed now.” She left the room, and Willa heard the doctor’s soothing, professional voice, talking to her mother on the other side of the closed door.
There was a bottle on the equipment table with a wide bottom and a narrow top, and a small fracture at the top of the glass. So now her mother would know too. Below the table, near the floor, something emerged from the white, its horns short and conical, the face a lamb’s. Another one. When it opened its mouth, maggots crawled around the tiny body of a dead mouse: its paws folded together, its tail hung stiffly over the tongue. The beast averted its face, and in its whimper, there was that same voice she’d heard before: “What does she want?”
Willa pull
ed off the gown and stepped into her jeans, buttoned her shirt, and when she looked up, the beast was gone. She came out from the examining room, saw her mother’s face, terrible and red.
On the way home in the car, the sun fell in flat yellow panes on the windshield. They passed the junior high school, ornate lettering on the faded green sign. It seemed unbelievable that just three years earlier, in the seventh grade, Willa had sat in the ancient auditorium, studying scratched initials on the old wooden seats, wondering whether or not the kids who’d scratched them were grown-up now or already dead.
Her mother said, “I think you better tell me.”
She wanted her mom to stop talking, but she knew now, and there was no good way for Willa to explain. “Well, I had some vodka. I didn’t think it would do that to me.”
“Do what to you?”
“I didn’t think it would hurt me.”
Her mother’s hands trembled on the steering wheel. Willa had to tell her what she didn’t know, or the questions could go on forever. “I can guess what probably happened.” The air in the car seemed frozen, as if she’d have to hack through it to speak again. “But I don’t remember it.”
Her mother shook her head. “Now what will you do?” She rooted around in her purse, and Willa knew she was searching for a cigarette. She smoked secretly, away from their father, and kept extra cigarettes in the zippered pockets and pencil bags. She always said she was praying for the will to quit. “Was this Holbrook the one you talked to after church?”