* * *
Ray wakes in a sweat, alone. He dresses shivering outside the yurt. It takes him minutes to remember Bellum’s gone to the Standard for the day to check on Vessey.
While she’s away, he’s responsible for ordering their sidecar. On the hike down, he visits the salon in the village before placing his conspicuous call. He finds that Crystal’s Cuts doesn’t open till ten.
Tempted to go make his call unshorn, he sees himself fending off a horde of firefighters come piling out of their front door while placing his order for a European sidecar. He decides—then, there; here, now—that he wanted to realize his future with Bellum, not jeopardize it. Determined to be careful, he would kill time along the Neversink Reservoir, making a mental list of anything at camp they should take on their road trip. An hour later, he returned to the salon and stood with his hand gripping the ornate brass knob. He didn’t pull. Inside, someone overweight with a shaved head, back to the door, fussed with blue-bathed combs.
Ray’s breathing shortened, his muscles strained, and he took a few expansive breaths to stretch his chest and calm himself. Here he was, more angry, more anxious, than he’d been in years, panicked even, before a shave and a haircut.
He could let go of this knob and hike into Liberty alone. Clean out his storage unit, hop on his bike, and ride solo into the sunset. Be done with this whole phase of his life, Bellum included. Their time together beautiful. If anything, it lessened his need for answers. He no longer cared so much who was behind Baum.
The barber looked in the mirror. Face of a woman. A woman barber with a shaved head. Her reflected frown, its harsh judgment, coupled with Ray’s confusion, his mistake of her gender—it obliterates the future he imagined. He about-faces. Takes two, three steps down the sidewalk before the salon door dingles open.
“I help you?” Unmistakably a woman’s voice.
He raises a hand but doesn’t turn, doesn’t stop.
Behind him, footfalls scuff on the bluestone slabs. She’s coming for him, and he whips around to face the fat lady.
She smiles, says, “Hey, it’s okay. Come on in. It’s a little early but I’ll open. I’m happy to get you trimmed high and tight if that’s how you like it.” Her sympathy, her absence of embarrassment for him, and for herself—she looks like a bald Mama Cass who survived the ham sandwich—it knocked him backward on his worn boot heels. She held his forearm, her nails bubblegum pink, and pulled him to her salon and inside, locking the door behind her. She was drawing him back into the promise, the hope, not phony, of riding that Blue Ridge wave with Bellum.
She commanded him to sit, and he sat. He closed his eyes, to better appreciate the electric tingle of the woman’s plastic-tipped fingers scouring his scalp, could see another Ray Tyro take his cash and head up into the Adirondacks. Buy a rocky parcel, build his own timber-frame cabin. Enroll in a furniture-making class. Spend the rest of his life by himself making deck chairs and—
“I volunteer at a shelter in Liberty once a month.” She got his neck situated in the snug curve of the sink wall, and he sat straight up, gasping, reaching a hand to his throat.
“Easy,” she told him. She got him resituated. “Not saying you look vagrant now, just saying you’re not the first ruffian I’ve cleaned up, and I’ve got a sense about these things. Caught one look at you through the window and just knew. After I’m done with you, you’re gonna break a heart or two. First one just might be mine.” She rinsed out the shampoo and shampooed him a second time. “You’re gonna clean up real nice. This”—she twisted tight his hair at the back of his head and wrung out the ponytail—“this is nothing. Now my inclination’s short on the sides and tussled on top. But don’t let me influence you unduly. You’ve got a Jude Law under there yearning to come out. And I’m not talking about the Jude Law in Road to Perdition. Can hardly believe…”
On she went, Crystal, his eyes closed the entire time. Her endless uttering, a salve, didn’t keep him from crying behind closed eyes when she clacked on the Oster clippers, ran them over his chin, his cheeks, the sides of his head, the thrum of the razor the same as those used by Army barbers the world over, from the first day of boot camp to the last shampoo, shave, and a trim you get before they dress you in blues and lay you in your box.
He had a hard time fighting his way out of the plastic sack of the barber smock to wipe the tears from his shorn cheeks, so she wiped them for him. When she said, “Have a look,” he shook his head. “Scared,” he said, the first thing he’d said to her.
“Howbout I describe you to you, then you take a look.”
He nodded.
“Didn’t find my Jude underneath,” she told him. “There’s a hint, but not the young Jude.” She cupped her hand on the back of his head. “Hair’s thinning like his, here.” She traced a circle on his crown. “And receding, so I cut it close. Not as close as mine mind you. You got the face to pull it off. Bone structure of a Woody Harrelson. Left the scruff on your cheeks. Till you get some sun, you should keep what I call a midnight shadow. You ready?”
He opened his eyes. The sight of himself, his face unmasked, made him grin painfully and his eyes filled.
“I’m so relieved to see you smile,” she said. “Oh no, are those more tears? Oh, honey. You look beautiful. Ready to reenter the world and take it by storm.”
He nodded. He wasn’t sure if he liked it, didn’t want to reenter the world, but he was ready to try in the company of Bellum. “Thank you. What do I owe you?”
“This one’s on the house.”
“No please, let me pay.”
“Honey, you’d have to kill me before I took your money.”
* * *
The Standard seemed unchanged. Silent in the melting snow. Empty. And Bellum found Vessey in the Library of Esther House, a rotting wing-backed chair pulled close to the hugely inefficient hearth. An alpaca fur draped over his legs and lap. He fussed with something. The smell in the great room was bookish and smoky, and an erratic ticking came from Vessey. His head bowed, she’d think him asleep if not for the blur of his hands. Knitting needles. A basket at his side.
“Vessey, you knit?”
He didn’t look up from his work. “How you doing, darling?”
“We’re doing okay.”
“I’d say so, if you’re talking in the plural. Was worried about you.” He looked up, looked ten years older than the last time she saw him. “But then I remembered you can take care of yourself.”
“Where’s everyone else?”
“Gone, everybody but Wiz. Having him around’s worse than being alone.”
“And Milt?”
“Thought about scattering him here somewhere, but I’ve got no idea where. And they’re gonna raze this place, or worse. All kind of parties tromping through. So I decided I’m gonna keep him. Take him with wherever I go. Say hi.” He pointed to what looked like a 105 mm howitzer casing on the mantel over the hearth. “Why don’t you come back here? Help me do like he did. Keep Standard Company going. Till we find someplace else.”
“Can’t,” she told him. “Got to get my shit sorted. Do something about my desertion. Divorce my husband. Know what I keep thinking? What if that woman died cause I was afraid of getting arrested? Don’t think I’d’a been able to live with myself.”
“Well she didn’t die, thanks to you.”
“You know if she’s still at Vassar Brothers?” When he said he didn’t, she asked him if he wanted to go for a ride.
“I’m gonna stay, but the van’s yours for the taking.”
* * *
Evangelína’s neck was wrapped with gauze so white it was nearly blue. She rasped but she didn’t sound like Milt. Milt’s rasp had been dry, the rattle of stubborn winter leaves. Evangelína’s rasp sounded like Daddy wet-sanding the clearcoat off a factory-finish paint job.
They talked for a half-hour, gossip mostly, girl talk, Evangelína doing most of the talking. She was open and withholding both, seemed not to care why Smith was there
, nor who she was. They didn’t talk about the mauling, and Evangelína didn’t know Smith helped save her life. Evangelína said she’d started collecting workman’s comp but she was sure she’d be fired. When Bellum asked if she had family in the area, Evangelína said, “Mamí doesn’t fly. One of my bosses flew up. I refused to see him. Doctors are trying to get me home by New Year’s. I’m being airlifted in a few days.” When they said their awkward goodbye, Evangelína fished out a business card, SW&B Construction, and Bellum stared at it, thought to ask questions, but this woman was in no condition to offer answers or advice. Besides, Smith didn’t care. She wanted only one thing: to be back in the yurt with Ray.
* * *
At the payphone outside the fire station, Ray placed his call to Hudson Valley Custom Cycles, and while on hold, the burly firefighter Ray roughed up for the fuckall fun of it walked out the door.
Ray had cover behind the small stall of the payphone, and he reached and touched his Bloodshark in the small of his back, the only blade he brought, but he didn’t pull it.
The firefighter came around to get a better look, and Ray obliged him, stepping out from behind the payphone. He raised a hand, waved like a runner-up beauty queen.
Cocking his head, squinting, he nodded, not recognizing Ray without the beard.
The voice over the phone said the Steib could be there in three weeks. “Aint cheap but it’s pretty, and it’ll look intense on that Dark Horse of yours. I’ll be excited to see it.”
* * *
The wind is strong and whistles through the seams of the yurt, making it breathe like a living thing, Smith inside the belly of it. Waiting in the half-dome feels dreadful—she knows that this, the guilty pleasure of their time together, can’t last.
She’s not alone long, but when she hears someone, or something, busying outside the camp, she storms out red-blind with rage. There stands a stranger. She charges punching, clawing, manages to bite a hand, and he—the stranger—wraps her up, drags her screaming into the yurt. Their ground-and-pound fight stops when she feels his face against hers, sees the clean-shaven skin of his cheeks, so sickly pale, chafed, but beautiful. His hair cut short, his hair thin but his head so wonderfully rounded. She pleads, kisses him, Ray, and their fight becomes foreplay, rough, he the angry one now, tearing her frayed clothes, ripping her tattered panties from her waist, the elastic cutting her skin, he plowing into her with a pleasure so intense she can’t tell it from pain.
Afterward, he’s apologetic, and she doesn’t respond, ashamed for feeling like she’s just received the best punishment she’s ever had.
* * *
When the sidecar’s ready, they hike into Liberty, to Hide-Away Storage and Ray’s unit. He pulls a wee key from his boot lace and pops the tiny padlock. “Bigger the lock,” he says, “more they think you have to steal.”
Before he rolls open the door, he pulls his kerchief from his pocket, tells her turn round. She does. He ties a blindfold over her eyes. It smells so powerfully of him that she feels something somersault in the hollow between her hips. Then follows a twinge of fear, that he’s hiding something—he feels the fear too, though the objects of their fear diverge. She’s afraid of what he’s withholding; he’s afraid of what he’s lost. He wants to include her, and he promises himself that after these last kept secrets, he will tell all, give all, and from that moment on, they’ll be of a mind.
He pulls open the storage door to the daylight. All looks in order. He checks the stuffing of the camel saddle. The cash is there along with the BlackBerry phone and an old wedding photo; his chest eases. He pulls out a bound stack, a hundred hundred-dollar bills. He figures in the cost of the sidecar, gas, splurges, leathers for Bellum, maybe a second bike, a possible detour down to Houston, and he pulls out two more $10,000 stacks. He puts the cash in his pack along with the thin Canek file, and he pockets Baum’s phone. He unzips the plastic suit-bag hanging from a stamped notch in the sheet-metal wall. He pulls out his basic black leathers—pants, riding jacket—and zips the bag on his dress blues. After he draws off the canvas throw covering the motorcycle, he rolls the bike into the sun and finds it ridiculous, this matte-black street scrambler, not the look of it but the expense. He re-covers it. Through the stupefying heat of his embarrassment, he asks, “Ready?”
When she nods, he unties her blindfold. Then, he yanks off the canvas.
Underneath is a motorcycle like a flexed black muscle. A Kings Mountain Indian, before Polaris bought the brand. The bike’s dark curves are a femme fatale’s but the underlying mechanics, so chrome they glare white, are masculine.
“Wow.”
“You don’t think it silly?”
“A little.” She smiles. It’s a motorcycle like a marble Adonis reclining in a tight black dress. She doesn’t say that it’s maybe the sexiest vehicle she’s ever seen. All in all, a dead-serious bike.
“Here’s my favorite part.” On the front fender, there’s the iconic accent: a die-cast chief’s head wearing a stylized steel warbonnet. The glass face of the chief is a backlit lamp that glows from within. “Take her for a spin.”
She says she’ll wait but he insists. Distrustful, a little confused, she pulls on his half-helmet, cranks the ignition, and it tumbles slowly over, struggling, the winter a drain on the battery. Then it catches and rumbles between her legs. She guns the throttle and grins. The bike hops ahead and she’s off.
* * *
Before he shuts things up, Ray gets the contact info for his former colleague, Joe Ginsu, a PO box in Sierra Vista, Arizona.
In the Hide-Away office, Ray talks to the manager, a geriatric gearhead with whom he has a rapport. Asks if a package is shipped to the office, could it be placed in his unit.
“Sure thing. Do it all the time, especially for the boys over doing the fighting. We get a box, so long I can lift it, I put it in. Least I can do.”
Ray wants to thank him and go, a powerful need to be out of these shady dealings he’s hiding from Bellum. Even though it’s reckless, Ray puts the phone on the countertop. On the phone he puts the mailing address. “Box’ll be information. Dangerous in this day and age.” Ray peels off five hundred-dollar bills. “If I pay for shipping, and for your trouble—” He puts the hundreds beside the phone. “—might you mail this?”
* * *
At the bike shop Ray does the talking, and the dealer winks at Smith and ribs Ray for riding bitch. The dealer tells them the Steib’s still crated, give him three hours, so they eat lunch at the diner two doors down.
In public with their relationship for the first time, she feels like a high-school sophomore in love, horny as humanly possible, making out in every nook, decency be damned. When they go to collect the bike, it’s parked out front in the sun. It’s slowing traffic. The in-house mechanic meets them with a long, low whistle of admiration. Ray pays cash and they take the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge across the Hudson, ride down to Ranting and Raving Leathers in Hopewell Junction. There, Bellum’s fitted for a pair of leather pants and a leather jacket, both tawny brown. Together, Ray and Bellum are black and tan.
* * *
We just gonna leave all this behind.
That’s right.
We’re not taking anything?
Everything I have of value’s in my storage unit except my NVGs, which I’ll deposit before we leave. I’ll take my Bloodshark and tomahawk, some clothes, and you.
What’ll I take?
If you’re gonna travel with me, one thing you won’t take’s that pistol. I just might be the only soldier in the history of American soldiering against the Second Amendment.
Only thing I still have given to me by Travis. How should we get rid of it?
Should do what the Iroquois do. Iroquois warriors would bury weapons under a white pine to seal a truce. Tree would then become a tree of peace.
* * *
Sounds—of Mamí making saffron tea in Chichí’s copper kettle; of a hummingbird juddering at the window, trying to sip from the red
sash on the other side of the glass; of the straw broom whispering over the Saltillo terra-cotta tiles laid throughout the house, tiles handmade by Tlaxcalteca artisans, a few in the hall outside Evangelína’s bedroom impressed with the paw prints of a coyote, and it’s with these prints that Mamí takes special care, standing barefoot on baked Mexican earth, sweeping out dirt that drifts into divots made by a criatura mexicano—these sounds, and the images in her mind they inspire, are her salvation. Each tells a story Evangelína’s been deaf to. She tells these stories to herself until Mamí enters her bedroom, bearing a glass of horchata, checking the bandages on her neck, the gauzy wrap around her lower abdomen, the small incisions for the surgery to sew together her Achilles tendon. The nurse is in the house somewhere.
Evangelína feels she’s doing time in solitary, Mamí the warden. Gradually, Evangelína’s getting better, stronger, and she expects her new hearing to flag. But it hasn’t. Vividly, sometimes painfully, acute. When Evangelína tells Mamí, Mamí says she’s now hearing with the ears of the cat that tried to kill her. To Mamí, her attacker was balam, the jaguar, lord of the jungle, it was Chief Jesús taming the serpent, and it was Papí.
* * *
Smith and Ray ride from Liberty to Highlands in the rain. They arrive sopping and cold. Ray pulls into the lot of a B&B, Grand Lady by the Sea, and the room they’re given smells like the name. Before Ray strips off his wet leathers, he uses the room phone to call 7-Eleven. He asks for Sharyn and, after a pause, wants to know when she works next. He hangs up. “Tomorrow early,” he says. “We’ll drop in, say hi. Then be on our way.”
“You’re not gonna warn her?”
“Element of surprise.”
Next morning, they wake and ride. He shows her his old Catholic school, Our Lady of Perpetual Help. They coast down a hill, highest point on the eastern seaboard south of Maine, and into the little town like a crab trap.
The Standard Grand Page 24