Round Rock

by Michelle Huneven

  AS LIBBY turned up her road, she saw white and yellow lights hovering and swirling in the sky. Is this what UFOs looked like? The lights seemed to come from the area of her trailer. Would she be captured, probed, and then spend the rest of her life trying to convince people that such events actually occurred?

  The lights, she soon saw, came from vehicles parked in front of her trailer. Trucks. Large trucks. Fire trucks. And Billie’s great white Chevy.

  Her first impulse was to drive away, come back, and have it all be different.

  Billie’s foreman, Rogelio, had been out on patrol when he smelled something. He drove up to investigate and saw smoke seeping from the trailer, called the fire department on his CB, then busted down the door on the off chance Libby was inside. “The fumes could’ve killed him,” one fireman told Libby. “Just be happy you weren’t in there asleep.” He snapped his gloved fingers. “It happens that fast in these tin cans.”

  The firemen had thrown what they could onto the deck, covered it with a tarp, then gone back in and sprayed like hell. Now they shined spotlights so she could see to gather up some things.

  “Get everything of value out of here,” the fireman said. “There’ll be looters before morning.”

  “Looters!”

  “They come out of the woodwork.” He nodded toward the olive grove, as if that leafy darkness were full of eager eyes.

  Billie and Little Bill helped her pile as much as they could into the Chevy. Her musical instruments were safe, and a lot of her furniture seemed fine except for a terrible acrid smell. They worked for an hour or so, loading what they could, locking the rest in the sodden trailer. Back at the Fitzgerald adobe, Billie and Libby drank scotch in the library. “I must be numb,” Libby said. “It just doesn’t seem so bad. Not as bad as it could have been.”

  Billie put Libby in what she called the guest suite, two lovely wheat-colored rooms on the second floor. Wheat carpeting and curtains, wheat sofa and bedclothes. There Libby dreamt of trash heaps swarming with looters shaped like giant sow bugs. One turned, and the face in the gray carapace was Lewis’s. She woke, kicking at the sheets. What had they even been fighting about?

  While Billie was out doing irrigation, Libby dressed and drove back home. In the colorless dawn, the trailer looked bombed. She walked around it slowly. Where the south wall buckled away from the east wall, she could see into a cavern of spongy soot. Side windows had been blown out by the heat. Insulation hung from the ceiling in pendulous stalactites. One willow was scorched, its leaves yellowed and crisped.

  At least the trailer had contained most of the fire. One fat flying spark and the hillside would’ve ignited as if sprinkled with gunpowder. Chaparral actually flourished with fire, since many of its plants and grasses reseeded only after a burn-off. Even this fire, Libby thought, wasn’t necessarily a tragedy. The insurance money would pay for moving one of Red’s bungalows, and surely a house would appeal more to Lewis.

  She unlocked the door and found no signs of looting. The smell, however, was unbearable. It clung to her skin like a pervasive and adhesive evil, a scent of scorched hair and incurable anger that contaminated even her tastebuds; her saliva tasted like tincture of burning tires.

  She checked her watch to see if Lewis might be at the office yet. Guess who? she’d say. It’s me, the Little Match Girl.

  Her phone, however, was dead.

  WHEN Red Ray told him about the fire, Lewis was eating a chocolate doughnut for breakfast. He was going through a sugar phase. He woke up in the morning and thought of canned peaches and doughnuts even before coffee and cigarettes. He wasn’t getting fat—so far.

  “Billie stopped by this morning on her rounds,” Red told him.

  “She said Libby’s bearing up. The fire smoldered in the kitchen walls. It was only beginning to spread when the firemen got there.”

  “So she didn’t lose everything,” Lewis said.

  “It might’ve been easier if she had. As it is, she’s got a big job on her hands.”

  “Good thing you’re giving her a bungalow,” Lewis said. “You want half this coffee?” Before Red could answer, he picked up a styrofoam cup and filled it. Lewis broke the doughnut apart, scattering flakes of frosting over the carpet, and offered half to Red, who patted his paunch and shook his head. When Lewis gestured again, he accepted.

  “So go ahead,” Red said, “take the day off.”

  “What for?”

  “She’ll need all the help she can get. That trailer needs to be emptied.”

  “I thought,” said Lewis, “I’m not supposed to make any serious moves at this stage in my sobriety.”

  Red’s face clouded. “Don’t be an asshole. I can’t exactly see how helping a friend will land you back in detox.”

  “You don’t know Libby,” said Lewis. “I have a hunch somebody’s going to try to make her housing problem my housing problem.”

  Red put the last bite of doughnut in his mouth and chewed unhappily, as if the sweetness itself were upsetting. “You know, Lewis,” he said, “it is remotely possible that this fire isn’t just about you.”

  “I know, I know.” Lewis ducked his head, embarrassed. “Okay, big guy, I’ll do the good deed.” He struck a muscleman’s pose, arms flexed, fist curled to forehead. “I’ll clean the Augean stables.”

  Once in the Fairlane, Lewis could barely lift the key to the ignition. He was genuinely sorry about Libby’s trailer. She didn’t need any more grief, and he felt guilty enough for bringing up cohabitation the other night; some things seem like a good idea at three a.m., especially in the middle of an anxiety attack. But he wasn’t the answer to Libby’s problems before the fire, so what use could he be to her now? If Red cared so much, let him rescue the maiden in distress.

  At the farm’s front entrance, Lewis checked for oncoming traffic and, sure enough, saw a familiar blue Falcon coming from the east. How right can you be? She didn’t waste two minutes!

  LIBBY was experiencing a heady, if inappropriate, bout of elation. Tragedy struck and missed! The day itself was exhilarating—last week’s tinge of fall now deepened to a cool current, soft gray clouds blowing across the sky. Anything was possible. She could drive on, past Round Rock, out of this valley, turn north on the interstate into the Great Central Valley, land so resolutely agricultural as to still support general stores, grange halls, and tractor dealerships. She’d get a job in a small cafe, on the morning shift, and listen to the crop report on her way to work. She’d wear a fluted polyester uniform, let her hair go limp. She’d learn to make wisecracks about sorghum prices and hog bellies.

  Or she could take one of Red’s bungalows, paint it a woodsy green with white trim, set it high upon her hill, run bougainvillea on trellises, build a series of decks like rafts among the flowers and trees. There would be opera—Verdi or Puccini—in the air. She could see Lewis there, too: he’d be outside watering, or pruning fruit trees, his unmistakable brooding self, now sufficiently domesticated. We had our troubles, she’d say to people. Oh, believe you me. He didn’t know what he wanted. Spooked as a bird …

  She slowed for the turn into Round Rock’s front entrance and saw the familiar off-white Fairlane at the stop. The curly silhouette waggled this way and that. He looked right at her—his head ticked back in recognition, didn’t it?—and then he made a fast, sloppy righthand turn. The Fairlane skidded on a patch of gravel, slid, and she was sure it would go off the road. But a wheel caught, and in a big fishtail he was gone.

  She pulled over to the side of the road. “Okay,” she said. “Okay.” If she stayed absolutely still, she thought, she might not feel a thing.

  RED RAY found her twenty minutes later. The worst was over; that throat-corroding cry. She’d spat gobs of black-streaked mucus out the window and dried her eyes on her stinky, soot-smeared sleeve. Red peered in her window. “What are you doing in there?”

  His T-shirt was so white it hurt to look at. “Thinking.”

  “Coming up with anything?” />
  “No.”

  “Sorry to hear about your trailer.”

  “You already heard?”

  “Welcome to Rito,” he said.

  “And Lewis heard?”

  “He left a while ago to give you a hand.”

  She frowned, thinking this over. “I don’t think so. He saw me and took off. We had a fight and he didn’t want to see me. That’s pretty clear.”

  Red watched her without speaking.

  “I’m okay, now,” she said. “I really should get back.”

  Red reached inside to touch Libby’s shoulder. “Let’s take my truck,” he said.

  BILLIE was waiting for them at the trailer, her truck bed stacked with empty 3-Bill brand orange boxes. Libby packed the boxes while Red and Billie loaded them onto their trucks, along with the salvageable furniture.

  As she worked, Libby kept thinking she heard a car and hoped to see the Fairlane crest the hill. There was still time for him to relent—or was it “repent”? “Sorry, I choked,” he might say. “I flinched, but I’m here now, aren’t I?” She tried not to glance down the driveway too often, in keeping with the watched-pot principle. Also, she was embarrassed that, after all his antics, she still wanted Lewis to appear. She couldn’t help it. Some part of her—her heart or guts—hadn’t gotten the message yet, not quite. She found herself chanting under her breath what was surely a prayer, that Lewis would come, and come soon, before it was too late and this lapse became irreparable.

  NEXT STOP: the laundromat. Though reluctant to leave her alone, Billie and Red agreed to take the boxes and furniture to Billie’s warehouse while Libby monitored ten loads of stinky wash. “I need time to myself,” she’d said. “Please.”

  Once the clothes were sloshing, Libby walked up to the Mills. Why am I doing this? she wondered. Her trailer had burned, her life was in complete disarray, and all she could think about was Lewis? Clearly this was some kind of post-trauma derangement.

  She wanted to find him at home and miraculously equipped with a convincing explanation: his car exploded en route to her, he’d done an L.A. turnaround to fetch her bags of money, he had amnesia, anything. All she wanted was a wild story whose upshot was, We’re fine, we’re good, our future is bright.

  She knocked, then tried his locked door. She stood in the hallway, approximately where she’d kicked him only twelve hours ago. “Oh, God.” She was talking out loud now, like a crazy person. “Don’t let this be happening. Not to me. Not right now. Not again.”

  Hearing movement in the room, she became as quiet as air. She would wait him out, stand there motionless, barely breathing until he peeked to see if she’d gone. A knob squeaked and a door swung open—the one next to Lewis’s. An old man, his gray hair matted in clumps, staggered into the hall, legs hobbled by the pants around his ankles. His shirttails didn’t quite hide his genitals. He gazed at Libby without seeing her, slumped against the wall, and, with great concentration, began urinating on the carpet.

  LIBBY transferred ten wet loads into five huge dryers. Red and Billie showed up in time to help her fold. Libby was so happy to see them, she grew weepy. They were such good friends. And such lousy laundry folders. Billie had never folded a thing in her life, and thanks to his military training, Red was so ultraprecise and slow that he probably didn’t fold ten items total.

  Afterward, they went to Happy Yolanda’s for burritos. As soon as they ordered, Billie’s beeper went off. “Don’t say anything interesting,” she told them, and left to use the pay phone.

  Red asked Libby about her insurance—she always forgot he was a lawyer. “The only thing that worries me,” she said, “is whether I took Stockton’s name off the policy.”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem,” Red said. “If there’s a hitch, I’ll handle it for you.”

  Her eyes filled with tears.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Everybody’s being so nice to me.”

  “Why shouldn’t they?” he said. “Anyone who knows you wants to be nice to you.”

  “Not Lewis.”

  “Lewis’s difficulties in that regard have nothing to do with you.”

  Libby hated to cry. It hurt, and the back of her throat was already raw, her sinuses already ached. She put her head in her hands.

  Red smoothed her hair. “Lewis is a fool,” he said. “A total fool.”

  Libby, surprised by the force of Red’s words, pulled back to look at him.

  “Aw, c’mon,” he said. “It’s no secret, Libby. Hell. Ever since the day Lewis made a date with you, I’ve been kicking myself for not getting there first. Not that I deserve the time of day. But I am grateful for the time you give me.”

  This made her cry even harder, only this time it didn’t feel so bad. Less bitter, as if she were a fountain of pure emotion. Red put his hand under her chin and lifted her face. All she could think was how blotchy and swollen she must look. She ducked her forehead against his shoulder. His hand slid over her hair again, a caress so comforting and tender that she sobbed aloud. Red kissed the side of her head and she lunged up, out of her chair, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him on the lips.

  He clearly thought it was just a friendly buss, but she insisted, mashing her opened lips against his. Let him be shocked. After a very long moment—long enough to understand she was probably making a total fool of herself—his arms rose up and encircled her, and he actively began to kiss her back.

  They stopped, each took a breath, and then he kissed her: calmly, nicely. How had she never noticed his lips were beautiful, full and pale? She thought, fleetingly, she might actually pass out from all the emotions rampaging inside her, then remembered Huey Labette’s zydeco song “Fat Guys Are Great Kissers.” This made her smile mid-kiss, which Red felt. They stopped, pulled apart, his eyes amused and electric-blue. She sat back down in her chair. “Yikes,” she said.

  “Likewise,” he said.

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” he said.

  “Don’t look at me. My face is blotchy.”

  “Not too bad.”

  “At least I stopped crying,” she said, and reached for his hand, which he gave over. They held hands, a moment of insane happiness. Truly insane. “I’m probably certifiable right now.”

  “I feel pretty good myself,” said Red.

  Whole geographies were shifting inside her, washed by tidal waves of fear. She retrieved her hand.

  “I wish Billie would get back, because I have no idea what to say or do next,” she said. “Can we talk a little more about the insurance?”

  “Sure.” Red smiled at her.

  She dug in her purse. “I thought I should take this before anybody else saw it.” She held her fist under Red’s face. Opening her hand, she revealed the fuse, exploded through its tinfoil casing.

  Red closed his eyes. “Libby,” he said, “how long did you leave that thing in your box?”

  “Just a few days, I think.”

  “I’d say more like two weeks.”

  “Don’t go bawling me out.”

  “I’m not bawling anybody out. I’m just amazed. You better give it to me.” He went to pluck it from her palm, but she was quicker, and shoved it back in her purse.

  “What do you want it for, anyway?” she asked.

  “As your legal counsel, I want to be sure it’s in the right hands.”

  Billie returned, sliding her chair out and sitting down. “Rogelio found a company to haul your trailer away. Is Thursday morning okay?”

  “Fine,” Libby said. “If the insurance inspector gets there by then.”

  Billie lifted her burrito, paused. “What’s going on? Did I miss something?”

  Libby lowered her forehead to the tabletop.

  “Billie,” Red said. “Eat your lunch.”

  She obediently took a bite, and started talking with a full mouth. “If what I think is happening is happening, you have to let me know. I got fifty bucks riding on you two over at the grocería.�
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  “Eat,” said Red.

  Libby, her face resting on the cool Formica, confronted these questions: Can a person change just like that? Can Red Ray go from being the fat old sidekick to someone’s favorite living thing?

  IN L. A. it was the dregs of summer. Ninety-five degrees, with filthy, red-brown air and yellowing lawns. Never was Lewis so happy to see smog, and traffic, and poor Central American boys selling maps to the stars’ homes on Sunset Boulevard. In fact, only the stoplights bugged him. From Round Rock, it was four miles to the nearest stoplight, in downtown Rito; from Rito, another nine miles to the first Buchanan light. In Westwood there were stoplights on every corner, every few hundred yards something telling him what to do.

  His philosophy professor’s house was barely visible from the street. Set back, shaded by enormous oaks, overgrown with ivy and shrubs, this was what real estate agents called a “hideaway charmer,” the perfect choice for an academic embarking on a second marriage with his student bride.

  The yard was dusty, the leaves pinched from lack of water; hollyhocks were brown and long on the stalk. Ivy climbed over oak trees, camellia bushes, porch supports, alike. Sam’s vintage yellow-and-white Rover was in the driveway, its right fender battered and rusting from when he’d gone after it with a hammer one morning after it refused to start one time too many. Ringing the doorbell, Lewis could hear a television or radio humming loudly within. When nobody answered, he walked around to the side, tapped on the kitchen window. No response. The back door, however, was open.

  His professor was asleep on the sofa in the living room, the TV blaring a talk show. A glass sweated on the end table.

  “Yo, Sam,” Lewis said.

  Sam opened his eyes. “Lewis,” he growled. “Shit, man.” He stood up, stretched for half a second, then walked over to give him a hug. Sam was a hugger. He was okay at it, nothing clingy or sexual. Like you were on his baseball team. Still, Lewis’s skin constricted: the guy reeked.

  “When did you blow in?”

  “Today. It was time to come home.”