Lucky Strikes

by Louis Bayard

  Dudley looked at me, and I looked at him.

  “Oh,” said Hiram, “I’m not gonna sugar it for you. Room’s hotter than damnation in the summer. Colder than an Eskimo’s ass in the winter. Tolerable nice in spring, but you can’t keep the window open too long or you’ll get all fumey from the gas.”

  Such a dazzlement, hearing my own words circle back to me.

  “So what do you say?” said Hiram.

  “It’s right decent of you, Mr. Watts.…”

  “No, it’s not. It’s not even my property. Amelia’s the one that’s got to sign off.”

  My face got a grain warmer.

  “Hearing no objections,” said Hiram, “I will consider the deal closed. Now, then, son, why don’t I show you to your new digs?” His right hand rested lightly on Dudley’s shoulder as he walked him back round the store. “You’ve come at just the right time. Earle’s heading back to school in a week, and we’re going to need a fella to man the pumps. Seems to me you’d be perfect for the job. Think on it, will you? Say now, have you ever eaten chop suey? No? Well, strap on the feed bag, brother.…”

  Dudley went to sleep an hour before nightfall. Stumbled back down the next morning in some old clothes of Hiram’s and drunk three cups of joe, one after the other. “Put me to it,” he said.

  So for the rest of the day, he mopped the service bay, cleaned gutters, charged batteries, stacked fan belts and lamp bulbs and radiator seals, changed tires, cleaned oil. He might’ve gone straight through to nightfall, but Earle was mad to practice his shooting, so off they went into the hills behind the house, Gus following hard on. Don’t know how far they traveled, but from time to time, you could hear a little crack echoing back down on the hills.

  “Lord,” said Janey, flopped in her bed. “You’re jumpy as a cat.”

  “I ain’t no such thing.”

  “Then why’d you just draw the bolt on the door? We don’t never draw the bolt.”

  “Wind’s kicking. You want the door blowing in on us?”

  She squared her jaw and glared at me. “What if it does?”

  “Well, then. All the dust and unmentionables from the road.”

  “Unmentionables,” she said.

  “Shut up and go to sleep.”

  To my vast surprise she did, a little after eight. Dudley and Earle come back not long after, carrying their rifles over their shoulders and dragging the last threads of daylight with them. Me, I made a real stab at sleeping, but I knew it weren’t no use, and after what felt like ever and a day, I got up and threw an old raglan sweater over my shift and tiptoed outside.

  Hiram was snoring on the porch swing, and Gus, he was lying in a bundle of old tarps. His head cut toward mine, and one of his bristly ears ratcheted up.

  “Good boy,” I said.

  It’d been a long time since I’d climbed the steps to the room over the store. They was steeper than I recollected. Also, the knob turned slower. But turn it did, all the same, and I gazed into the bluing shadows and found the outline of him in the bed. For a while I listened to his breathing. Then I eased myself onto the mattress and pressed myself, light as I could, against his back. He stirred and started to rise.

  “Don’t,” I said.

  So we laid there like that, neither of us making a move. If his head so much as twitched my way, I’d give it a swat. “Hsst.” Then I’d nudge my chin into the back of his neck. He hadn’t had a bath since Christ knows when, but I didn’t mind. The sweat and the dirt—the smell of fermenting apples in his hair—it was him.

  After some time, I hooked my arm round him.

  “Okay if I talk?” he said.

  “I guess.”

  But he held off for a spell.

  “I wanted you to know I’m sorry,” he said.

  “You didn’t do nothing.”

  “All those times you said my uncle was doing evil on you, and I never believed.”

  “Well, he’s your kin,” I said. “You’re supposed to take his side.”

  “Point is I’m sorry.”

  Even in the dark, I could see how the little hairs on the back of his neck stirred when I breathed on them.

  “Reckon I’m sorry, too,” I said.

  “For what?”

  “Just felt like saying it.” I slid my free hand into the tangle of his hair. “Thing is, I really did want to go walking with you, Dudley. That time in the woods.”

  “Tomorrow’s Sunday,” he said.

  “So it is.”

  “We could go and lie on our rock.”

  I drew out a strand of his hair. “It’s our rock now?”

  “Ain’t nobody else claimed it. Possession’s, like, nine-tenths of the law.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “I read it.”

  We went quiet again. The space between his breaths got longer and the breaths deeper, and it suddenly washed over me. He was sleeping! Can’t explain why it was so amazing, so fearful, a body falling asleep in my arms.

  I dozed off, too, but never for long. Sometime toward morning, Dudley’s breathing changed into a high, choked hiss. Brakes, I remember thinking. Castor oil. I believe I actually tapped him on his chest like he was an engine that needed to be sounded. Then he jerked up in bed.

  “Smoke,” he whispered. “Smoke.”

  Chapter

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Stooping to grab his shotgun off the floor, Dudley raced for the door and galloped down the stairs—then stopped. On every side of him, smoke had piled up.

  “Damn,” he whispered.

  In the next second, a sharp fire crack come ringing in our ears. Putting a finger to his lips, he crept to the front door and peered out the window. Then he closed his fingers round the door handle and, after one last glance at me, pushed the door open.

  I watched the door swing after him, saw the smoke surge round. Then I heard the sound of something hard meeting bone.

  Swallowing down the poison air, I stole to the back of the store. The windows there was double-hung, and it weren’t no trouble to open one now and squeeze through. And there I stood, on the other side, blinking in my bare feet.

  Dawn was still an hour or two off, but smoke was gushing toward the sky and mattressing against the front porch of the house. My eyes hurt so bad, I had to smear ’em with my forearm just to keep ’em open. I pressed myself to the wall and inched round to the front of the store. And now the heat, deep and furious, tore the smoke open to reveal two towers of fire, right where our gas pumps used to be. Each tower as high as a man.

  And I could see fire snaking round the columns of the porte cochere, chewing on its shingles, stripping off its paint.

  For I can’t say how long, I wandered at queer angles, like an old witty, pulling back from the blaze one moment and then lunging at whatever caught my eye. There was Harley Blevins’s butternut Chevy Eagle … there was the hose hanging out Harley Blevins’ gas tank … there was the gas trickling out the hose … there was the channel of fire heading straight for the store.…

  Through our new-bought plate-glass windows, I could see purple-brown haze. I could smell the ripe scent of roasting food. Pork and beans and ketchup and granulated sugar. Cream corn and soft-shell pecans.

  So many things rushing in on my senses, but I never once got a load of Gus. Not till I tripped over him.

  He was still tied to his chain, and his legs was splayed on both sides, and there was a seam of black round his closed eyes. Next to him lay the remains of a steak, and all I could think was I didn’t know Gus liked steak. I leaned over him, put an ear to his chest. Somewhere down there a heart was fighting.

  From the nearby darkness, I heard a low, clotted groan. Crawled toward it on my hands and knees. And there was Hiram! Lying in the gravel with a good chunk of his left side missing and nothing to stanch the wound but his own quivering hand.

  The smell of gasoline rose from him like swamp mist. Gasoline in his shirt and trousers, his hair and skin. All he needed was one spark to go up
like a bonfire.

  A great roar then as the porte cochere’s last column toppled and the roof come down with a hoarse cough and the fire rolled toward us like a creek. Numbly, I grabbed Hiram under his arms and started to drag him away. But the gravel was an agony on him, and the harder I pulled, the deader his weight.

  “We can’t,” I huffed. “We can’t.…”

  His lips was moving. I lowered my ear and heard …

  “Janey … Earle…”

  The house was nothing more than a shape now—a notion—shrouded in sulfur smoke. I took a step toward it, trying to part the haze with my hands … and then heard the voice I’d been waiting for all along.

  “They’re just fine.”

  Harley Blevins, standing between me and the house.

  It took me a second to recognize him in his overalls. His face was hollow with shadow under a duck-hunting cap. A sawed-off shotgun was slung over his shoulder.

  “I bet you’re full of regret, ain’t you, young lady?”

  Now here’s the part you won’t strictly credit. It hadn’t crossed my mind till now that I was responsible for any of this. It all seemed like something happening to some other girl—some other family—in some other world.

  Harley Blevins give his temple a scratch with the stock of his shotgun. “Now here’s what you need to understand, Miss Melia. This is all ’bout the bottom line. See, if word ever got out that Ol’ Harley got bested by some little girl in his own backyard—that’d be bad for business, wouldn’t it? On the other hand, if that same little girl got hauled through courts and torn from her grieving family, well, that might make it into one of them bleeding-heart newspapers, and that’d be bad for business, too. So what’s a businessman to do?”

  He paused now, for savor.

  “An accident, that’s what. Kinda thing happens all the time.”

  At the edge of sight, that creek of fire was rolling, ever so hungry, in Hiram’s direction.

  Talk, Melia. Buy space.

  “I don’t see how bullet holes would go down as no accident.…”

  “You know, I got a feeling nobody’s gonna be looking overmuch for holes.”

  The heat was like nails, driving into my skin.

  “So you just gonna shoot us outright?” I whispered. “Like a bunch of old mares?”

  “It’d afford me no pleasure. I tell you what, girl, there’s times I think if you’d have been my bride, I’d be governor by now, and you’d be first lady.”

  “First lady in…” The smoke caught me. “In hell, maybe.”

  A flicker of light from his eyes. “See now? You are a believer, Melia Hoyle. That is gonna delight the soul of Our Lord.”

  He was walking at me.

  “We can make a deal,” I said. “Can’t we?”

  Still walking.

  “I just gotta get Hiram to a doctor … I’ll do whatever you want.…”

  Still walking.

  “What do you want?” I cried.

  “What you got?” He took his shotgun off his shoulder and swiveled it at me. “You prepared to beg, Melia?” He cocked his head back toward the Chevy Eagle. “You prepared to get in that there backseat and make a man happy?”

  “I’ll … which one do you…”

  Then he raised his gun and put me square in his sights. And it was Mama’s words come sailing back. Smile, Melia. Smile ’em all to hell.

  That’s what I was doing when the blast come.

  It sounded like Judgment itself. Only it entered my body like a feather.

  I still had legs to stand on, eyes to see, a heart pounding for all it was worth. Death, that old cheat, he was just like life, only more so.

  The only one who looked truly changed was Harley Blevins. His head swayed like wheat, and the skin sagged off his jaw. His knees went. Then his hips. Then the rest of him, puddling on the ground.

  From the great daze of fire and shadow stepped Earle Hoyle, eleven years of age, holding the shotgun he’d just learned to use the day before.

  He dropped it to the ground now. Turned his face to mine, and in the sulfur light that bathed us, he looked wiped clean.

  We held each other hard.

  “Let’s get our daddy,” I said.

  The blood was curdling out of Hiram as we carried him to the garage. I looked up then and saw Janey floating toward us like some apparition. Her bed quilt was wrapped round her, and in her arms was a mess of bandages—her whole supply, best I could tell. She knelt by Hiram and wrapped his midsection till the blood had slowed to a leak.

  “Hush,” she said. “All is well, brave soldier.”

  “We got to get him to a doctor,” said Earle.

  But I didn’t want to move him again, not if we could help it, and our only telephone had gone up with the store. I took Earle very gentle by the shoulders, stared right into him.

  “I need you to drive into town.”

  “No.…”

  “The keys is on the post just inside the front door. You head east, okay? Anywhere you see a light, you start banging. Someone opens the door, you tell ’em there’s a fire and a man’s been shot.”

  “What if I don’t find nobody?”

  “You keep going. Worse come to worse, you drive yourself to Front Royal. You remember where the fire station is?”

  “Corner of North Royal and Peyton.”

  “That’s my boy. You keep going till you get help, and then you come right back, you hear?”

  “Why can’t you come with?”

  “’Cause I gotta save the house.”

  His eyes clouded as he stared into that glacier of smoke.

  “We ain’t got time for this, Earle. When it’s all done, I’ll set and weep with you, but right now, I need you to park yourself in that there truck, can you do that for me?” I dabbed his face dry, cupped my hand under his chin. “You’re my big man.”

  In a matter of seconds, his taillights was swallowed by smoke—but not before they called out the still form of Harley Blevins.

  And in that instant, I saw Earle disappearing into a different kind of smoke. A police interrogation room with no windows, just sheriffs and deputies. Blinding him, kicking and punching and jabbing him. Was it you shot the gentleman in question? Was it you?

  Next second, I was taking hold of Harley Blevins by the arms and dragging him straight to the blaze.

  Telling myself the whole way that I was just dragging out an old carpet or a bag of kindling. The heat was monstrous on my face and back, but I kept going till I was within reach of it. Then I planted one foot on Harley Blevins’s hip and pushed till he was rolling into the fire’s arms. His overalls went black, then bright orange. Steam rose off him, and his flesh crackled like something on a spit. His own words come rocketing back.

  Nobody’s gonna be looking overmuch for holes.…

  The rest is just heat lightning. Flashes in the dark.

  I’ve got my ear to Dudley’s mouth. Making sure of the breath that’s coming out. Staring down at his hard, soft face. Dragging him … where?…

  I’m watching martins and jays and mockingbirds, bursting from their homes in the eaves and screeching into the night. Thinking of all the life that’s been over our heads all this while. A whole other world pressed on top of ours …

  I’m watching the roof of the store peel back like a sardine tin. Watching a gale of flame boil toward the sky, spit out plume after plume …

  I’m watching the first sparks land on the front porch of the house.…

  I’m stumbling toward the well. Sending down the pail and drawing it back up. Running to the house and flinging the water and running back to the well. With each pass, the air in my lungs shrinks down. A thimble … half a thimble …

  Couldn’t tell you how many times I traveled from the well to the house and back again. Might’ve been ten, might’ve been a million.

  I do recall that somewhere in the midst of the scurrying, the queerest notion entered my head. It was almost like the smoke was swaddling me. Hu
gging me so tight that when at last I went crashing to earth, it bore me up a little so I wouldn’t land too hard.

  Then it pulled away of a sudden so I could see all the things that’d been shut from sight. There was Dudley sleeping off the knot in his head. There was Earle driving down Strasburg Pike. Mama! In her best gingham dress, waving from the far side of the road. Clear as sun in her Joan Crawford slippers.

  And alighting right in front of my face—out of nowhere and out of nothing—that old redbird. Peering into me with eyes so large and dark, it weren’t no trouble to swim right through.

  Chapter

  TWENTY-NINE

  A sound. Lonesome as the moon. Rising, falling, rising again.

  Dudley’s face, pale and beady. Earle’s face swimming round it.

  A man I don’t know, bending over me. Hat says VOLUNTEER FIRE. That’s funny—he don’t look like a fire.

  The dark folding over me. Like a blanket draped over a birdcage.

  Chapter

  THIRTY

  “Mama…”

  I woke to air. Running through me like current. My eyes blinked open, gazed round.

  Light was streaming over me. Sunlight, sawed into diamonds, sprawling cross a woolen blanket.

  Atop that blanket lay an arm.

  My arm.

  I commanded it to rise. It did.

  There was another arm did the same thing.

  Piece by piece, I put the world back together. I was laying in something that looked very like a bed. I was wearing a light cotton gown with a paisley pattern. To my right was another bed, empty. Between me and the bed was a small nightstand, with a vase of marigolds on it.

  (I hate marigolds.)

  Straight ahead of me was a window. Directly above me, a skylight. To my left, a wooden bench … and in the bench, a shape. Gathering feature the longer I looked at it. Rising and speaking.

  “Mornin’.”

  Dudley.

  “Don’t talk,” he said.

  Well, if you’ve learned one thing about me by now, it’s that I don’t like taking orders. But here’s the funny part. I couldn’t talk. My fingers went dancing up my throat, aiming to pry the words loose, but all they found was plastic.