Round Rock

by Michelle Huneven

  Cosmic debris rained down as she slid her leg along his. Skin, hair, muscle, bone. Nothing else felt as real, as astonishing or gratifying as another human being.

  IT WAS still mostly dark when Lewis brought coffee outside to her. She raised up on one elbow, took the mug. The coffee smelled rich but was too hot to drink. She could hear a distant train, although she knew of no tracks anywhere in the valley. In the morning chill, she caught a first whiff of autumn.

  “Hey,” said Lewis. “Did I tell you I’m staying on at Round Rock through the end of the year?”

  “You are?”

  “Yeah. I’ve got some papers I need to finish, but I can do that here. And if I keep squirreling away the dough, I won’t need a loan for the winter quarter.”

  “Oh, good for you,” she said absently. Only later, as she processed insurance claims at the union hall, did she wonder if he maybe was staying on because of her. Uh-oh. It was like having a romance at summer camp and then being told you have to stay through Christmas. What was acceptable in the short run—unheated cabins, primitive plumbing, a lover with countless quirks—became a jail sentence.

  He had yet to take her to a movie, to spend the whole day with her or even two nights in a row in her bed. Since Joe had come, she hadn’t even been invited to dinner at Red’s. Everything was on his terms. If they were going to keep seeing each other, Libby decided, there would have to be some big changes.

  LIBBY had a tough week at the union hall, what with the end of the quarter, and everyone rushing to get accounts balanced. She worked late four nights in a row. Coming home on Thursday, hungry and exhausted, she lowered two slices of bread into the toaster and the lights went out.

  This had happened once before, and Stockton had taken care of it. She remembered where the fuse box was and found two scorched fuses but didn’t know if she should touch them. She phoned Billie and got her machine. There was no way to call Lewis; he didn’t have a phone at the Mills. She lit candles and got ready for bed, prepared to leave home repairs for the morning, then remembered all the catfish in the freezer.

  “Red?” she said. “You’re not asleep or anything?”

  “No. Joe and I are sitting here with the eggs, as a matter of fact.”

  “Oh, God, I haven’t been over to hold ’em for a while.”

  “That’s okay. Joe’s taking up the slack. I have to fight him for them. Everything okay?”

  She explained her situation.

  “I’ll be right over,” he said.

  “Oh, no. Not for a blown fuse,” she said. “Can’t you just tell me what to do?”

  “I can try.” He instructed her to throw the breaker and pull the fuses, and stayed on the phone until she returned.

  “Okay,” she said. “I got ’em.”

  “We can get your lights back on,” he said. “But first you have to promise me one thing.”

  “Depends.”

  A chuckle. “Promise you’ll buy new fuses first thing tomorrow.”

  “Oh, that’s easy,” she said.

  He told her to wrap the offending fuses in aluminum foil and again stayed on the line while she went back outside, inserted the silvery cylinders into their clamps, and threw the breaker. The trailer’s windows glowed yellow; a nimbus of bugs formed instantly around the porch light. The air conditioner rumbled back to life. Libby ran back to the telephone. “Let there be light,” she said.

  She pulled the bread out of the toaster and decided to make herself a drink instead. She found a few inches of scotch Billie had brought over last spring, mixed it with Diet 7-Up, and added a wedge of fresh lemon. Why had she stayed in this stupid valley?

  Headlights lanced the windows and climbed the wall behind her as Lewis’s pale Fairlane rolled up behind her Falcon. She went out to the deck to meet him. He bounded up the steps, grabbing her around the waist. They kissed, then he pushed her away with such force that she stumbled backward on the deck. His face was wild, as if she’d bitten his tongue.

  “You’ve been drinking!” His voice was a strangled squawk.

  She fought a surge of laughter. “You could taste it? I’m sorry.”

  He worked his cheeks, rolling the taste around in his mouth. “It’s so weird after all this time. Seven months.”

  She touched his arm. “I didn’t know you were coming,” she said softly. “You okay?”

  He took a deep breath, steadied himself. “What a rush! It all came flying back to me. How much I loved drinking.” He took hold of her wrists, held them tightly at her sides. His eyes glistened. “It was like meeting an old friend, but one who betrayed you. Who tried to kill you. It’s all so complicated. I really loved alcohol. I did.”

  “I’m so sorry,” said Libby. “If it’s any comfort, I don’t think I had three sips. But I had a hard day, and I blew a fuse, and I was feeling sorry for—”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Lewis said. “You can drink whatever you want. This is my issue.” He let go of her wrists, lowered himself onto the futon. Scratched his head. “Scotch, right? What did you mix it with, club soda?”

  “7-Up and lemon.”

  “Jesus. That’s disgusting.”

  “I wanted something weak, nothing I’d feel.”

  Lewis, leaning back on his elbows, started to laugh. “You didn’t want to feel it?” He patted the mattress, inviting her down. “What’s the point of drinking, then? You’re such a lightweight, Lib. Straight up or on the rocks!”

  “Look, I’m sorry I had alcohol on my breath,” she said. “But I’m not going to apologize for what I drink.”

  “Hey, no big deal. I’m just joking. Please come here.”

  She stepped back. “Just a minute,” she said, and let herself into the trailer.

  In the bathroom, she slipped out of her clothes and pulled on a cotton kimono. In the kitchen, she poured the drink down the drain. In the living room she sat down on the sofa.

  The candles were still lit from her blackout and she could see her mandolin, a present from Huey Labette, the lead singer of the zydeco band she’d fiddled for in New Orleans. And the antique standing lamp she’d bought for two dollars at a yard sale in Carrolton—although the glass sconce, a large frosted bowl, cost sixty at a lamp store. The Franklin stove Stockton had installed a week before he told her he was leaving.

  Lewis tapped on the door and poked his head inside. “What are you doing?” he said. “Is something wrong?”

  “Does everyone have to be a heavy-duty alcoholic to be taken seriously by you?” she asked. “Did it ever occur to you that other people have their own emotional lives?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “How come only your emotions matter?”

  “Me? Libby, I don’t even know what emotions I have. I wouldn’t recognize an emotion if it slapped me in the face.”

  “Oh, no. I think you’re very eloquent about them. Kissing me, for example, is like meeting somebody who betrayed you.”

  He stepped inside, closing the door softly, and knelt down before her. She kept her arms wrapped tightly around herself, so he began rubbing her left foot, pressed the pressure points, and jiggled each little toe before pulling it out with a small, knuckly pop. She stared over his head in the dark.

  Lewis set down her left foot and picked up her right. He gave it the once-over, then lifted it to his jaw like a telephone receiver. “Hey, grouchy girl,” he spoke into the heel, “let’s go to bed.”

  He made love to her slowly, with uncharacteristic tenderness. Her resistance gave way in stages, like fine strings breaking, their ends snapping in weightless arabesques. He stroked her face and whispered something in her ear—his first blurred endearment? Afterward, she wept soundlessly, tears coursing from the corners of her eyes. Lewis stanched them with his thumbs, smiling down.

  I did not expect, Libby wrote, to be tumbling dangerously toward love. Not at this time. Certainly not with this man. He has a beard, for heaven’s sake. And smokes. And makes even less money than I do. His feet a
re usually dirty. My mother will hate him on sight. Stockton will say I’d landed even further down the social ladder than he predicted.

  She wanted to see him right away, the next night, but he clearly had more self-control. She actually expected him on Saturday night—so they could go fishing on Sunday, as usual—but he neither called nor appeared, and Libby fished alone.

  This late in the summer, the water was shrinking, the band of crackled gray mud now wide as a highway. Don’t know what’s going on with Lewis, she wrote in her journal. I’m not worried. He’s been fairly consistent. Still, it feels strange, a little bleak, to be here without him.

  She felt better after catching a decent catfish—about a pound, maybe more—and better yet after catching another. She gave both to two young men who were trying to fish with string and gnawed-on chicken bones. The men spoke no English and appeared to be living in the hills. She also gave them one of her bamboo poles, some hooks, and the rest of her pork livers, which, she feared, they probably cooked up with the fish over a campfire for lunch.

  RED INVITED her to dinner on Tuesday night, and she was surprised not to see Lewis there. He was invited, Red said, but claimed to have overdue schoolwork. She downplayed her disappointment. She promised to take Joe fishing again, and they set a date for the following Sunday. Then, Joe showed her the eggs.

  The cradled eggs did not look good, and in fact they were quite cloudy, almost opaque, whereas the control eggs in the cupboard had only a skin of white foam. “Whatever you do,” Libby told Joe, “don’t drop them.”

  “YOU ASLEEP?” Lewis asked.

  What did he think? It was past eleven on Thursday night. “Where are you?” she asked.

  “At Denny’s in Buchanan.”

  She was too sleepy to make sense of this. “You coming over?”

  “I’m real busy this week,” he said. “I’ve got to get these incompletes out of the way. I thought I should check in, though.”

  “Oh.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “I didn’t know why you weren’t calling.”

  “I’m busy. That’s all.”

  She pushed herself up into a sitting position, wanting to say something she couldn’t say while horizontal. If you’re going to start with the weird stuff, let’s just cut it off cleanly. …

  He began to talk as if she’d actually spoken. “Libby, I’m no good at meeting expectations. I go right into reverse. I really do have a lot of work right now. I’ve lost seven months to getting sober. I don’t know where I’ve been. Detoxifying. In a sexual fog. It’s been great, too, but now I’ve got to get out from under this academic wreckage. I miss you, though. Tell me—are you outside?”

  “No. In my room.”

  “Got any clothes on?”

  “Lewis …”

  “Okay. Be that way. But I’ll see you soon. Don’t worry. We’ll get together. If I don’t blow town first. Just joking. Don’t worry. I’ll show up one of these days. That’s the tiling. I’m sober now. That’s what sober people do. Suit up and show up.”

  She had trouble sleeping for the rest of the night, a stomachache high up under her ribs.

  “YOU LOOK like hell,” Billie whispered to her. “Get your brains fucked out last night?”

  “Shhh …” Libby checked to see if either Bill had heard. They were at Happy Yolanda’s for breakfast. “No such luck,” she whispered.

  “Too bad,” Billie whispered back, then said in normal tones, “Here’s the thing. Dad and I want to give you a no-interest loan.”

  “That’s so sweet of you,” Libby said, as noncommitally as she could. She smiled at Old Bill. He nodded gravely and looked away. Old Bill was eighty-eight years old, slight and elegant, with snow-white hair and, as always in the summer, oatmeal-colored linen slacks and a white shirt. Libby was never certain how much Old Bill heard; he was, according to Billie, selectively deaf. Although Billie related stories of verbal cruelty, Libby had never known Old Bill to be anything but flawlessly polite.

  When Red Ray and Joe walked in, Billie had them pull up a table. “Help me convince Libby to build a house on her property.”

  Red sat down next to her. “Sounds like a good idea.”

  “I don’t even know if I want to stay,” Libby said. “Besides, I’d have no idea what to build.”

  “I thought the bastard left you plans,” said Billie.

  “Too expensive,” Libby said. “And awful. All cement and steel, like a jail.” She stopped, struck by her own observation: Stockton had designed them a jail!

  “What kind of house do you like?” asked Red.

  “Tiny, since that’s all I could afford.”

  “Money aside,” said Billie. “If you could have any kind of structure, what would it be?”

  “What I like they don’t build anymore. Something wooden and old-fashioned. A classic orchard house. Like yours, Red.”

  Everyone burst out laughing.

  “A teeny twenty-room mansion,” Billie said. “Now we’re talking.”

  “Not the mansion,” Libby cried. “Red’s house. The bungalow.”

  “That’s easy,” Red said. “Take one. I only have nine of them. They sit on stone supports. You could almost move one with a fork-lift.”

  “You don’t have any plans for them?”

  “Every conceivable plan,” he said. “A retreat center. A sober resort. Low-income housing. Anything I’d do, Billie would fight me every inch of the way.”

  “Someone has to preserve this ranch land or this valley would be”—Billie looked directly at Libby—“one … big … trailer court.”

  “I do love those little houses,” Libby said.

  “Think about it,” said Red.

  “You think about it. And if you’re serious, come up with a price.”

  “Oh, hell. You could pay for the moving. I should probably pay you to take one off my hands.”

  A small white bungalow sitting snugly against her hill: she wanted it so much, she was afraid to fully imagine it. Yet there was something else, too. A dark spot, an ache. Libby, surrounded by generous friends, suddenly missed Lewis keenly. Where was he? Why wasn’t he sitting here next to her, taking her hand under the table and placing it on his admirable erection?

  HE’D STOPPED reading. He’d stopped writing. He’d stopped thinking. He’d essentially stopped living his life. From the moment he came to Round Rock, he’d put his personality, work, and future on hold, and now he was in trouble. His advisor had told him he couldn’t register for the fall term because he was on academic probation. Over half his courses were still listed as incomplete, and three were already past due. But for the ineptitude of the registrar’s staff, he’d be facing three F’s. If he wanted extensions, he had to petition right away.

  As a last resort, Lewis pleaded getting sober. When he explained how he’d been interned at Round Rock, his advisor softened. “You’re very brave,” he said. “We want you back. So get your work in.”

  Inspired, Lewis devised a routine. Every night, after AA meetings at the farm, Lewis drove in to Buchanan, to Denny’s, where he sat in booth twelve. Six days a week, this booth was in Phyllis’s section. Phyllis was a skinny bottle-blonde with a chronically bloody nose caused, he was certain, by snorting methamphetamines by the spoonful. Not that he had any proof, but this theory explained her low weight, her frequent trips to the restroom, and her edge, although she was nice enough to him. Phyllis didn’t care if he kept the booth all night. She sat across from him for brief spells, during which she doled out her life’s story in terse sentences, which he, in turn, jotted down and fashioned into a poem. He considered including it in an appendix to his paper “Found Elements in Poetry, Art, and Architecture.” He called the poem “Shit, Yeah.”

  I married at fifteen.

  Of course I was pregnant.

  Did you really have to ask?

  You’ll meet Ralph one of these nights

  I can’t find a babysitter.

  He looked like a li
zard when he was born.

  Long and lipless.

  You bet I’m divorced.

  He was a college man, too.

  Bad news with a big mouth.

  He had forcible sex with my sister.

  And my mother.

  And me, too, of course.

  If that counts.

  Rape. Right.

  You are smart.

  He said he’d kill Ralph if I left.

  No kidding, I believed him.

  His hands had a life of their own,

  Snapped off doorknobs.

  See this nose?

  Feel it.

  Feel that?

  That’s just how it healed.

  One night I put ant poison in his food.

  Shit yeah, he got sick.

  What’d you expect?

  He ate ant poison, for chrissakes.

  Phyllis read it over several times. “Pretty bitchin’ poem,” she said.

  LEWIS wore pressed khakis. A bright white T-shirt. A black linen sport jacket. Black sneakers. His hair was pulled back in a ponytail. In the porch light, framed by the doorway, his face had a carved, princely look.

  “Want to get some dinner?” he asked.

  “I already ate.”

  “I thought we could go to Buchanan. Eat dinner and catch a movie.”

  “Wish I’d known. I wouldn’t have eaten that lousy torta.”

  “We can still catch a movie.”

  “Come inside,” Libby said, “so I can think about it.” Three steps into the trailer, she stopped. “Maybe you should go along without me.”

  He frowned, as if he couldn’t quite see her.

  “I’m tired. It’s almost nine. This doesn’t feel good.”

  “I’m doing the best I can, Libby. I’ve just been getting work done. I called you, didn’t I? Tonight I decided to take a break. I wanted to do something with you. Take you out for a change.”

  “How ’bout letting me in on these plans, so I know better than to eat dinner by myself?”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, in case you didn’t notice. I’m no good with this dating stuff. When I used to drink, whatever happened, happened. This is all new to me, doing things consciously. I don’t have the rule book.”