Collected Stories of Reynolds Price

by Reynolds Price

  Blix said “You want to drive?”

  I could not imagine riding a mile between them. I smiled and said “You trust me?”

  “No,” he said and smiled. “But I don’t trust anybody else who’s with us either.”

  “Not yourself?” I said.

  “Oh, me, yes,” he said. But by now he was lit with something like glee. Cold, wet and stiffening with mud, he looked up to me once more from the ground and said, “No, you do it. Magic, magic—” He flung out his arms in a wizard posture, his hands clawed downward, eyes blared, laughing.

  “How far do we go?” I said.

  “Ask Dora,” he said.

  She said “About two mile.”

  Blix held his fading pose—“You’ve never been here.”

  Dora said “I know.”

  Blix said, “Two miles may mean twenty but—magic! magic! We’re charmed, we’re saved.” And before I could think—accept or decline— he’d trotted through sucking mud to the passenger side and taken my old seat.

  So I drove us on—nothing else to do; I could not fold now—and after a hundred yards, I was glad. The steering demanded every quantum of my energy—time, eyes, mind. (The truck would hold the road calmly for yards, in the ruts as on rails; then—no warning—the wheel would lurch in my hands and I’d save us again. Blix and Dora understood and barely spoke.) And after all, I was piloting at last—not ideally, not alone (with all this breathing cargo) but at least at nobody’s mercy but my own (and the engine’s, the snow and mud’s, the night’s).

  For instantly, it was night—the air too thin to hold light or color once the sun had sunk. In my concentration, I’d hardly noticed and pressed toward the glass to see the road.

  Finally Blix said “Light has been invented.”

  I looked over to him for clarification and the truck slewed badly; I fought it into line.

  “Your headlights,” he said.

  I said “I can see.”

  “It’s my truck,” he said.

  “It’s Uncle Sam’s,” I said, “ergo mine as much as yours.” But I switched on the lights and wallowed ahead at an unsteady ten or so miles an hour. Through pure intensity of searching, I saw in my first slow mile a single house set far back on our right (not a hogan—logs?), no trace of light but the voices of dogs above our roar; then nothing again, then a ‘49 Buick abandoned, maroon (its lovely slave-bracelet hood-ornament intact!); then nearer the road on my left a sheepfold built carefully of wood (where was all this wood found?) but abandoned too, collapsing, not a sheep in sight. All this time the road was struggling to halt us, expel us, ditch us—short flat stretches of a hundred yards or so that (though the mud was deep) raised our hearts (all three; I could taste that in the air—hope! we’d continue!); then a sudden bucking of steep hills, deep drops. I thought, at the top of every hill (they were steeper and steeper), that we’d see Dora’s truck; but half an hour later (five miles farther in) we were still moving on through emptiness. Not exactly desolation—the Dead Sea, Death Valley, are no doubt sparser—but this road, the few feet of shoulder we could see (barbed wire, short old-style power poles, then sage again and pinyon), was competing handsomely. I thought of Auden’s stanza from “The Shield of Achilles”—

  A plain without a feature, bare and brown,

  No blade of grass, no sign of neighbourhood,

  Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down,

  Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood

  An unintelligible multitude.

  A million eyes, a million boots in line,

  Without expression, waiting for a sign.

  —Whose eyes? What boots? For it did seem inhabited, waiting, watching unintelligibly. No signs of people though, beyond my little cargo. We might have been voyagers bound for Arcturus. We had passed that single house at dark—nothing proved it a home except barking dogs— but nothing since, unless that Buick was inhabited (a genuine possibility). And not only no imaginable place to sit but, I suddenly knew, no place to turn around. Not a driveway, sideroad or wide turning space. I could circumnavigate the globe in these two ruts—a Flying Dutchman in search of rest. But the thought didn’t faze me; cheered me slightly, in fact. I was on-course; could not choose not to be; to Hell with future bridges.

  Blix said again “Jesus.”

  He had seen before me, being free to look farther than the ten nearest yards. Up the road—a level stretch—a white pickup truck, its tail toward us, immobile in our tracks. Dead-center of the road.

  “Is it yours?” I asked Dora.

  “Yep.” She nodded, frowned.

  We were twenty yards from it. Blix said, “Better stop here. If we can’t get it out, we’ll have to get round it.”

  I could see, even from there, that it wasn’t stuck at all. The road, in this stretch, sloped to each side from a crest; and the crest was not mirey. The tires were resting in no more than two-inch mud. I thought, quite clearly, “Abandoned as ruined”; then I stopped and said to Dora, “No grandma in sight.”

  “She don’t live here,” she said.

  Blix said “Good thinking” and opened his door.

  The previously ambulatory Indian in back had climbed out already and was at the truck looking, hunkered up beneath the rear, before Blix touched ground. And as Blix moved toward him, the drunk looked up and, smiling broadly, said, “Broke! Half-in-two! Goddamn if she don’t broke the damn axle!” He paused, lit with pride in Grandma’s achievement.

  Blix simply stood.

  Dora, who’d stayed in by me, slid out; and again in back the other drunks were rousing, muttering, trying to climb down.

  Again I stayed inside. I’d already, in my head, abandoned Dora’s truck, and was rapidly computing. By my watch—past seven—we were eight miles in, off the Gallup-Zuni road. Where did this track lead—if we could pass the wreck somehow? To Grandma’s hogan—-how much farther was that? Would we be welcome there?—would Dora go at all? I’d kept the engine running for the sake of the lights; but I had my window open and, even without the sun, the air seemed not too cold, nothing scary, maybe 40°.

  The drunk girl and the second man had come round now and were hauling one another toward the others in the light.

  Free again. But trapped? No room now even for dream-escapes. I could not gun past them or race in reverse alone through eight miles of mud. But I was not responsible. The trap was not mine—not chosen by me, not self-deployed (except insofar as I’d meant this trip to be a change, relief, light-entertainment among the more seriously deprived than I)—and clearly I was safe. At the worst, a night in Grandma’s hogan (a few fleas, chilly, the sounds of family-humping); at best, an exhilarating triumph over mud (a tricky turn-round, then the trip back out—surely faster now, three Indians lighter, the mud chilling and thickening).

  Blix turned and came toward me, opened my door, climbed up.

  I stayed in place, behind the wheel.

  “Slip over,” he said.

  “You still don’t trust me?”

  “No.”

  I didn’t move.

  “Please,” he said. “I have got to try and drive us around this wreck.”

  I moved, he sat, I said “What’s beyond it?”

  “Grandma’s, I’m assuming. I’m assuming somehow we can stay there till morning or turn and come back. “

  “She won’t have you,” I said.

  “You know her?”

  “No. Do you?”

  “Never saw her,” he said. “Can’t read her mind either.” He shifted gear downwards.

  “I can,” I said. “She’ll hate your sight.”

  He actually waited. He shifted into neutral, faced me and said “Why?”

  I was looking ahead. No Indian-Bureau expert could have separated Dora more effectively from her drunk—what? kin?—than our white headlights. In their glare, ahead, huddled at the wreck, she had crossed back over—to my eye at least—and hung there by the others (not with them though) as oblivious to us as a fetus to its moth
er. Not true exactly. They all were fetal now—pale, lunar in our light, but with simple needs only, which their element supplied (the thin air, the muck), not in need of us. Cruel to addict them. I answered Blix, “Because you’ve ruined Dora.”

  He nodded. “Check,” still hung-fire, not moving.

  “Leave then,” I said.

  “Now?”—his tone considered it as possible, not preposterous.

  “The kind thing,” I said.

  “How?” Blix said.

  “Is this a through road?”

  “Who knows?” he said.

  “—We won’t till we try.”

  “What if it dead-ends at Grandma’s hogan?”

  “That’ll be round,” I said. “We can circle it.”

  “We’d meet her coming back—Dora, we’d meet.”

  “She’d have got the message by then,” I said.

  “What would it say?”

  I thought. “It would say, ‘It is a far far better thing—’”

  “That would be from you,” he said. “What would my message be?”

  I said “Write it yourself then.” I was tired of the game and thought for the first time since dark of the VISTA spy. I could play him now, an invincible trump.

  But Blix said, “Oh I have. Many times in many tongues.” He was of course looking ahead to where she stood, talked at by her kin, silent herself but not turning to us. Allowing us our choice now—why? Blix said, “What it would say—‘love you and you’ll sit in my head till I die, but I’m leaving now because you need me too much; you are needing something from me that I have not got, not enough to give at least, that you won’t even name. Don’t wave when I pass.’”

  “‘—Don’t groan when you die,’” I said.

  Blix appeared to accept it, if he heard me at all. He began to reverse us, slowly, twenty yards. Then he moved slowly forward on Dora’s truck, bearing gradually right.

  The Indians moved left, out of our way, whatever we were doing.

  Dora watched with grave attention but took no step to join us.

  When we’d got twelve feet from the back of the wreck, the lights showed our only hope—a channel only slightly wider than our wheelbase, its right third composed of a shallow-looking ditch.

  I said “Can we make it?”

  Blix said “I’m trying.”

  I didn’t say what I wondered—trying what? He’d left our sure ruts, entered virgin mud, was skirting Dora’s truck. Even our engine was silent with tension; yet clearly it was working—we were moving, and forward. Blix and I had already flanked the front of Dora’s truck; ten more seconds we’d be clear. They passed and we were; her wreck was behind us; our lights again shot ahead unblocked, open road.

  Blix began to ease us left, back up toward the center; and our front end went, maybe half the way, before our tail slewed round and down toward the ditch. Blix pumped a little gas and we made a little distance more toward safety; then our tail slewed again and began to sink. Blix said once “No” and gunned, to blast us out. The wheel spun quietly in its wet relentless socket; the chains seized nothing.

  So I said “Yes”—meaning nothing in particular, to break the silence.

  And the helpful drunk appeared at Blix’s window. “You stuck again. You better let him drive.” He smiled toward me.

  I nodded to take the compliment, then lowered my glass and tried to look back. The tail was in darkness thick as the mud; but what lay beneath my door seemed solid snow, trees a few yards beyond. The Indians were gathering on my side to watch; Blix was climbing down on his; so I opened my door and stood to see and then jumped to earth, the first touch in hours. I almost expected an Antaeus jolt of energy—I would love all this, I would sacrifice to serve it, Everything we look upon is blest. There was no real jolt; but I was at least in snow not mud, the drunks seemed gentled and sobered by this latest, only one wheel was stuck and it seemed within rescue; so in gratitude, I struck a little inward from the road to gather brush—traction for the wheel.

  Blix was standing, staring, mute.

  Dora still had not joined him but hung with her own. (It was her home.) They were talking rapidly, quietly, like diffident machines, without stress (passion or complaint) in a language claimed to be the most delicate of all, the most difficult to master. Four desperate souls— three drunk as loons—mired to their ankles in snow and mud, murmuring steadily (no trace of urgency) in the world’s most sophisticated language. Chinese sages in a late Yeats poem. Helpless idiots.

  Only Dora was silent but she listened.

  There were clumps of stunted trees a few yards away. I went to them and took an armload of sticks. The four minutes’ effort had me sweating lightly and breathing fast—I thought more of the warmth than the altitude: good, tonight would be warmer than last night at least; Grandma’s might even be bearable. The sky showed the reason—low thick clouds, the day’s warmth trapped on us; we were under a bell; pray it didn’t lift.

  When I got back to the truck—my shoes still barely damp—Blix was up in the cab. Dora, the girl and the happy drunk were bracing themselves to push from the rear. Only the other man—too dazed to push?— was standing aside.

  He watched me coming with my load of brush, really studied me; then when I stopped near him, poised to hand it down to Dora (who was nearest the stuck wheel), he had reached his conclusion, drained my meaning. He even came to me—three or four steps—touched my loaded arms, shook his head No and said, “You ain’t gonna start no fire with that.”

  Fire had been the furthest thing from my mind, but I had to ask “Why?” He’d threatened an irrational prohibition and I wasn’t welcoming those.

  His head shook on, a mime of negation—“We ain’t got no matches.“

  I laughed but he didn’t. He was in dead-earnest (and right, as it turned out—not a match among us; how did he know?). So for racial harmony, I tried to stop. I managed a solemn nod—still more loaded with sticks than anyone in Grimm—then surrendered to the spectacle of me marooned (maybe) with four redskins in snow and mud at roughly 7,000 feet and not one of us with the simple knowledge of how to nurse fire.

  Before I’d decided to sacrifice my shoes and join the pushers, Blix made his first try at driving out, a forward-backward-forward struggle that left the four Indians stuccoed with mud—Dora in sneakers—and the wheel buried deeper, and sinking fast. In a moment of waiting, it settled six inches—was it in quicksand? or (far more likely, considering the day) in some small spot where the earth lacked a crust, some tunnel to the center? Entrance to the afterworld, a four-day journey.

  Blix shouted something then from the cab, and I assumed he would make a second try and that pushing was more good to him than sticks; so I dropped my bundle and said to the drunk, “No, but come on; we can push.” Then I stepped past him to jump for the ditch.

  But the other drunk—the helpful one, pushing—said “No! Stay there.”

  I thought he meant his friend so I kept climbing down.

  But he said again “No.”

  I stopped and said “Me?”—my feet still clean; only my hands were wet.

  The man didn’t answer but held out both arms toward me. It seemed the gesture of father to child—Jump, I’ll catch you—and I took another downward step.

  But a woman said “No.”

  I looked—Dora surely; she was facing me; the drunk girl was yards away, leaning on the far wheel (retching or pushing?).

  “Yep, he means you stay there”—Dora; I saw her say it, with as much force as she’d yet mustered today.

  “Why?”

  “You better stay.” She turned from me to brace for another push.

  The helpful drunk waited—to see that she stayed?—and when I’d held still for four, five seconds, he tensed himself again, ready to push. But the engine died. They didn’t relax but waited in place for Blix to recrank. The girl was retching—with a vehemence that threatened to produce her baby, from one or more orifices.

  Blix’s door opened, h
is feet hit mud; he showed at the back—stepped round the girl—and stared at the sunk wheel, then up at the hooded sky, then to Dora not me. He asked her “What now?”

  She did not move to him but held her ground—or was held by it; her sneakers were buried. She shrugged once, unsmiling.

  The two drunk men moved back toward Dora’s truck (leaving the retching girl) and began to talk there.

  Blix said, across six feet of space, to Dora, “Do you know where we are?”

  She looked behind her—which was my way, but past me. Then she faced Blix and pointed back. “We walk through there to Dunder.”

  He asked “How far?”

  “I don’t know. Not far.”

  “It’s not a road though.”

  “Nope,” she said.

  “Have you ever walked it?”

  “Not since I was little.”

  I saw us scrambling down uncharted canyons in pitchdark snow, bodies on crags—but only that: I saw it not feared it.

  “Where’s your grandma’s?” Blix said.

  She waited, debating the admission of her lie; then yielded partly— “Up this road.”

  “How much farther?”

  Another wait—longer; was she really figuring distance? She said “Pretty soon.”

  “Close?”

  “Yep.”

  Then Blix looked up to me and said “You decide.”

  I was shocked by the burden, but at once I said “Grandma’s.” {Why? It seemed help but, better surely, it seemed a necessary test for Blix, an ordeal to face—Dora in her rank dark mysterious family, mute in their impenetrable language but condemnatory: She is dying slowly, you are speeding her toward it, but you will not come with her. I wanted to watch that, through cold, fleas, meanness.)

  Dora said, as quickly, “No.”

  Blix touched his sunk truck. “It makes the most sense,” he said.

  She waited, looking down. She had not seen me for whole long minutes; and that was as I wished—to be transparent now, a witness clear as a pane of glass. But of whom was she thinking?—who waited at Grandma’s? who were our drunks? was it all of her and Blix? some desperate dance-for-two she was planning? She said to Blix “Wait.” Then she went, head bowed, toward her own truck, her kin. With her back to us, she began to speak at them.