The Big Both Ways

by John Straley

  “You drive really well,” Slip said, his eyes darting back and forth from the road to the steering wheel, his left hand arching out a bit ready to grab for it.

  “Look’s like you’ve got something there,” he said, and pointed to the front of her shirt.

  “What?” She looked down.

  The top three buttons of her sweater were undone, and she looked down to where there was a small smear of blood across the top of her chest.

  “Oh … oh …” she said, and started wiping at the blood. The left tires crunched on the road apron. Slip reached over and took the steering wheel.

  “Slow down and let’s pull over,” he said, straining to keep the car on the road.

  She let up on the gas and her hands fumbled at the stain. The big Lincoln slowed to a stop on the side of the road, and Slip reached across her lap to pull on the brake. “You must have gotten some of that dog’s blood on you after all.”

  “I’ve got a clean handkerchief in the glove box,” she said, her fingertips twisting at the fabric of her dress. Suddenly she looked down the road to where there was a small gas station beside the river with a few cabins behind it.

  “I need to rest,” she said, and wheeled back out onto the road.

  It was awkward watching the woman making arrangements with the homely boy wearing overalls. It was only the middle of the afternoon and she was renting a room. When she came back, she threw the key on his lap and lurched the car up to the first little cabin along the edge of the woods. She opened the door and her hands were still shaking.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “I was only able to get one room with a small bunk.” She didn’t look him in the eyes. “You could stay on the floor, or you could wait for a ride out on the road. The boy here said there is a bit more traffic later in the afternoon.” She pulled a leather bag out of the backseat and dug around in it. She pulled out a surprisingly big roll of bills and peeled off a ten dollar bill then waved it nervously in his direction, still without looking at him.

  “For your trouble,” she said.

  “No,” Slip said, “I think I’ll stay.”

  She held out her hand. “My name is Ellie Hobbes,” she said.

  He took her hand, and though the skin was soft her grip was much stronger than he expected.

  There was a tin stove in the corner of the cabin, one bed, and one chair next to a table that stood beneath the only window. Slip brought in his bindle of clothes and his toolbox and set them both under the table. Outside, the river slid past in a constant rush. The water was a light emerald green, and the spring current turned the rocks in the riverbed so that there was a consistent chunking and chortling above the sizzle of water. Slip started a fire in the stove with some cedar chips and a couple of pages from a magazine. Then he added splits of dry fir. They crackled inside the stove sending whiffs of smoke puffing out the seams until the flue started to draw.

  Ellie sat on the narrow bunk. The metal webbing creaked underneath her and she seemed even smaller than she was. Her hands cupped around her elbows as if she were trying to hold herself in. Slip sat on the floor in the corner of the room. He propped his bindle behind him and leaned against it.

  “Tell me about yourself,” she said. She shivered even though the room was warming up and the dampness was retreating through the cracks in the walls.

  He told her that his friend had died in the woods earlier in the day. He had been topping a tree. He told her because he believed that women were sympathetic, but all she said was, “bastards,” very softly under her shivering breath.

  “Tell me about what you want to do,” Ellie said, breaking the awkwardness between them. So he told her about working on Grand Coulee Dam. He told her his plans to go back east of the mountains and get land to start a ranch. He told her about electrification and power to pump water, about irrigation and how the Great Basin country would soon be a productive paradise. He talked about how beautiful and green the fields would be and how there would be nothing like it anywhere in the world. He was happy talking about this fantasy he told himself was his future, for he really didn’t know how to talk about Jud’s death.

  He talked about his friend Andy who had worked alongside him on the Grand Coulee Dam, and about how they had talked about going in together on a place, about how Andy was a good worker and had been saving up some money by working in his uncle’s barbershop down in Seattle. He explained that he was intending to go to Seattle and round up Andy, and as soon as they could get a truck and a few materials together they’d head straight over Stevens Pass and start looking for a place.

  Ellie laid down on top of the covers. She lay on her side with her hands for a pillow. Slip knew that she was only partially listening but he didn’t mind. He stopped talking, thinking she was asleep. But as soon as he did she opened her eyes, staring intently toward the stove.

  “I don’t mean to talk so much,” he said.

  She closed her eyes softly once and then opened them again. In the darkening room he noticed she had faint scars under both eyes, fishhook size, right in the spots where the bruises were rising.

  “What do you do?” he asked softly, not sure he really wanted to know. A bird walked on the tin roof, its small claws ticking into the room.

  Ellie looked straight at him. “Let’s not talk about what we do.”

  “All right,” Slip said, and he pretended to be looking over his fingernails as if he had some intention of cleaning them.

  “I want to fly an airplane,” she said. Even though her voice was soft and sleepy, there was resolve running underneath.

  “I was up in one once. On the takeoff I thought the whole thing would fall apart right there rolling along the ground. But then …” and she raised her hand slowly out over the edge of the cot, “we rose into the air.” She was smiling out into the atmosphere of the room.

  “Did you fly it yourself?”

  “Oh my no. It takes lessons, lots of lessons to learn to fly. I was with a barnstormer, a guy just passing through. I married him.”

  “Did he teach you to fly?” Slip asked.

  “No. He … well … he took off with another young girl.” And then she smiled ruefully, the curled scars under her eyes strangely bittersweet.

  “You got a family?” Slip kicked his feet out toward the cot a bit more.

  “I had a sister but now she’s dead.”

  She took a deep breath and shifted so the springs shrieked. She looked at Slip, curled on the floor. His eyes were open, staring at her as if he knew her, but of course he didn’t.

  “I’m sorry,” he said once again, the words turning sour in his mouth.

  “No,” she said. “That’s all right. She was married. She and her husband died in a house fire.”

  “That’s hard,” was all he could think of to say. But his mind wandered to his parents’ graves alone in a dusty field now wholly owned by the bank.

  “I’m tired of talking. I need some rest,” Ellie said. “Just a little bit. Then we’ll get going.”

  And she closed her eyes.

  It was dark when he woke up and the tin stove was barely warm. She was lying against him on the floor, her arms curled around him. She gripped him tightly with the same surprising strength he had felt in her handshake.

  “What time is it?” she asked, her breath warm in his ear.

  “I don’t know. It’s dark.”

  “We better get going,” she said, and she sat up, pulling her coat around her shoulders. “I need to take care of the car.”

  They stood up and awkwardly straightened their clothes. Slip fussed with the stove, doing anything he could to get past the anxiety of waking on the floor with this woman he did not know.

  Outside, the river kept at its work and the rocks tumbled one after another down the riverbed. The lights from the gas station spattered up through the trees and Slip could see the red taillights of cars gliding down the road.

  He grabbed up his bindle and toolbox, then walked out the door behind
Ellie. She walked directly to the driver’s side door and Slip walked around the back end of the car. A sliver of light cut through the trees from the gas station and ran across the car, which was parked on an incline, its nose facing uphill toward the cabin. As Slip walked past the trunk, he stopped short. There was a sour smell in the air, like the musk from a big animal, a black bear or a dead bull in a ditch. The breeze stirred and the smell of the cool river slid around him. Then he looked down at the rear end of the car where the light sparkled on the bumper.

  The Lincoln had a carriage-style trunk, and down near the latch a dark line of liquid traced along the bumper and a fat blob of liquid hung from the edge of the chrome. He knelt down and touched it with the tip of his finger. It was blood.

  They didn’t speak while driving. A light rain began to fall as the sunrise poured over the fields and forests. Farmhouses showed dim lights through rippled windows. In one of the fields, Slip could make out the form of a lanky kid walking behind the loose-limbed cows ambling toward the barn.

  Still they didn’t speak. Slip kept rubbing his fingers together. He simultaneously thought of the soft flesh of her body and the blood on the bumper. He wanted out of the car and at the same time he wanted to drive with her straight through the night and on over the pass to the Columbia River country. He rubbed his finger against his thumb where the stickiness of the blood was still rough. Maybe it was just blood from that dog she hit back up the road, but the instant he thought it, he knew it couldn’t be true.

  After a few hours they traded places and Slip drove. Every once in a while Ellie would nod her head and tell him to take a particular turn. He didn’t know where they were going, but it didn’t matter because each mile gave him more time to think.

  Eventually there were street signs and small houses on little lots laid out in straight lines.

  “Pull in here,” she said, and he aimed the Lincoln into the driveway of a clapboard cottage with a willow tree dripping over the front porch. The ground beneath was a mâché of narrow yellow leaves no one had raked up the autumn before. An ugly terrier with an infected cut across his snout pulled against his chain in the corner of the yard. When they drove in, the dog stopped pulling and sniffed the air blindly. When Slip opened his door the dog began to growl.

  A screen door slammed against its hinges and a tall man in a wool coat came out on the porch.

  “What the fuck took you so long?” the man asked. He stared at Ellie from under the brim of his hat.

  Slip kept his eyes on the man. He was out of place on this sad little dairy farm. His hands were big and fleshy, with a Masonic ring girdling one of his fingers as if it were meant to cut it off. His shirt was clean but his tie was pulled aside. He gave the nervous appearance of someone who had been waiting a long time in a place he didn’t like. Slip didn’t know him and didn’t even know his type, but he was dangerous, of that he was certain.

  “And what the hell happened to your face?” the tall man barked.

  “I ran into a wall,” Ellie said, as Slip set the car’s brake.

  “I see you also got some help,” the tall man grumbled. “That wasn’t in the deal we talked about.”

  “I got the car stuck and needed the help. He doesn’t know a thing about our business,” and she opened the car door. “We could use some breakfast,” she said and started walking up to the porch.

  A short, fireplug of a man in only his shorts and undershirt walked out behind the tall man. The little man was unshaven and carried himself like a heavyweight boxer who had been shrunk down in the wash.

  “You get me what I want. Then we’ll talk about breakfast.”

  “Just some coffee, and a biscuit if you have one. That’s all we need.” She looked over at Slip, whose eyes were darting back and forth between the two men. Her expression was pleading, her eyes begging him to say nothing.

  A young woman with stringy black hair stepped out onto the porch. She held a baby cocked on her hip in a way that made Slip think she had lots of babies in the house. The short man rolled his shoulders toward her and hissed, “Get that child back inside, Ida.” The tired woman turned and went back inside. When the screen door banged against the unpainted door frame, the baby in her arms started to cry.

  “We won’t be long, I promise,” Ellie said to Slip, and then walked behind the car and opened the trunk with a key. She rummaged in the back. Another dog came slinking around the corner of one of the sheds and growled at the rear end of the car.

  “Hush now,” Ellie said to the dog. Then she slammed the trunk down hard and walked back toward the porch holding what looked to be a leather attaché case. “This is all of it.”

  The tall man produced a toothpick from his coat pocket and put it in his mouth. He didn’t reach for the case but let her put it on the porch at his feet. He appeared to be about to say something, but he looked at Slip and just nudged the corner of the case with the toe of his leather shoe.

  “Everything else still in there?” he said, nodding to the car with the damp end of the toothpick.

  “Yes it is, and like I said, we’ll take care of it right after breakfast, unless you’d like me to leave it here and we can take the train to town.”

  Slip stepped away from the car. He wanted to get his clothes and his tools out. The two men on the porch were like bare wires and the air was charged between them. He half expected lightning to strike.

  The tired woman came out on the porch holding a rusty tray of food. She timidly walked down the steps and handed Slip and Ellie cups of coffee, then handed them each a fried egg sandwich. Slip took the food tentatively like a dog stealing meat, thanked her, and sat on the steps. Drops of egg yolk spattered his jacket as he bit into the sandwich.

  The tall man bent down and picked up the case Ellie had brought from the trunk. Slip could see there was blood smeared on the smooth leather. The man opened the case and pawed through the papers. He stopped and looked at his right hand, which seemed to have a smear of red on the palm. He stared down at the two of them eating their breakfast. Slip noticed that the man’s eyes were gray, his face was pale, and there was the chill of winter about him.

  “You sure this is everything?” the tall man blurted out, not really speaking to anyone but giving voice to his growing frustration.

  Ellie did not look up at him as she ate her fried egg sandwich. “Everything,” she said.

  The tall man walked off the porch and around the back where he had parked his own car. In a few seconds he was gone, leaving nothing but the oily smell of exhaust.

  The tough little man went back inside and didn’t come out again. Slip finished the last of his coffee, poured the grounds out onto the mud, and put the cup on the porch. Inside, the babies were crying, and Slip could see the tired woman staring at them through the water-stained curtains. He waved as she backed into the dark and the curtains fell together.

  The sun was breaking over the hill behind the house when they pulled back onto the main road. The low-slung rays of light lit up the grass making a sparkly haze and wisps of ground fog rose straight into the air. The earth seemed to be holding on to the silence of the night. Off to the east the mountaintops glowed silver, and the first light poured across the coast to the ocean where salty air was beginning to rise.

  As Slip drove, Ellie sat closer, and now when she told him to turn the car she touched his shoulder lightly with the tips of her fingers. They drove about an hour and came to a fenced area on a slough. There was a barge landing with a ramp built out over the water. The loading area was deserted, and the window of the guard shack was as dark as a missing tooth. She pointed up the ramp and Slip drove the Lincoln to the edge and got out. She reached under the front seat and took something out from under it. It was a green file folder with a few pages of yellow paper wedged inside. She clutched the folder to her chest a moment then reached over the backseat and took out a black wool coat and her leather bag.

  “Don’t forget your things,” she said, and opened the back door
from the inside. She stepped out, circled the car to the driver’s side, let off the parking brake, and pulled the gear shift into neutral. Slip grabbed his tools and bindle.

  “Do me a favor and grab the registration from around the post under the steering wheel,” she said to Slip.

  He had set his gear down. The car was starting to roll. The car door was open. A small light was lit under the dash beside the glove box. On the steering wheel column was the car’s registration. He ripped it free as the car began to gain speed. Stepping back, he looked at the paper in the leather case in his hand. All he read was “Floodwater Security” before she took it from him, and they stood there watching the big Lincoln as if they were launching a ship.

  The great car eased slowly toward the slough. As the front tires went over the lip the undercarriage smacked down on the ramp. There was a loud scraping of metal on metal for two seconds and then the car stopped.

  “Come on. She just needs a little help,” Ellie said. She threw the file folder onto the grass beside the shack, then she walked over, grabbed the rear bumper, and put her shoulder against the trunk. There was just a rind of dried, brownish blood along the bumper. Slip could see a vein of it widening and branching out toward the seam of the trunk. He put his hands on the bumper and set his feet firmly beneath him.

  They were face to face as they pushed. Slip could smell the coffee on her breath. She hadn’t changed clothes back at the house but had washed her face in the water from the garden hose. Damp hair rimmed her face and it struck him that her eyes were changeable—perhaps they drew the blue out of the day—because now they seemed to be a colder blue, like the water in a high lake, inviting but cold enough to numb.