“Drink,” she said. I looked at her and lifted the pitcher. Before I got to the bottom, my sister ordered a six-pack to go.
“We're leaving,” she said. Maurine and I had had our share of falling outs, and I wasn't about to start one now.
Before I could get my seatbelt on, Maurine jammed the car into reverse and squalled out of the parking space. She shifted the gears, and I felt that good feeling of being pressed back into the soft seat. Without taking her eyes from the road, she tore off three of the beers from the six-pack, popped the tops, and handed two of them to me. It felt good to be racing out of town.
“That two-timing dickhead,” she said. Then she looked over at me. “Drink,” she said.
I'd almost finished the second beer when we coasted into Steve's driveway. The house was dark and empty. “Finish up,” she said, nodding toward the beer in my hand. I tilted it up and Maurine opened her door. As soon as I stepped out of her car, I turned my back to pee.
“Don't you do it,” Maurine threatened. She was holding up the key to Steve's house and making for the door. “Come on,” she said.
I hadn't realized until I started toward Maurine how drunk I was. By the time I got up the steps, she already had the door open. She took my hand and led me through the dark living room, through the kitchen, to a little laundry room where the moonlight came through the window. She dropped my hand and opened the dryer door.
“There,” she said, pointing into the dryer then turning her back. I stepped a little closer and unzipped my pants, feeling like I was standing on a boat. When I was done, Maurine turned the dial to More Dry, shut the door and pressed the start button.
It's funny what pulls people together, keeps them together. For twelve years Marion Walker hated me. He played tricks on me at school and called me names on the school bus. After graduation, he went to work at his old man's wrecker service. I didn't miss him calling me a fat ass or farting on the bus and then pointing at me. But as it turns out, him and Maurine and me are the biggest Dale Earnhart fans in this town. Marion and me weren't really friends, but when I told him on the phone about the four slashed tires on the black 'vette, it was like we had a common enemy. I described to him my calls to the insurance crooks and the deputy, and he punctuated the conversation with, “those bastards,” and “that low-down dog.” Marion even offered to come by my trailer and pick me up. But I told him Maurine could take me to the church if he'd meet us there. She owed me.
“I'm takin' em down,” Maurine said on the phone.
“What'd you say?” There was static on her portable phone.
“I'm out here taking down the Christmas lights,” she said, “off the dish.”
When Maurine and I pulled into the church drive, she laid her head to the side and brought the car to a quick stop. “Something ain't right,” she said.
“No shit,” I said, looking at the black, lame 'vette.
“No. Not the tires. Something else,” she says in that the-spirits-are-speaking-to-me-voice.
We just sit there a second when we see Marion's wrecker coming up the road. Maurine pulls up near the 'vette and Marion pulls alongside, and I'm four feet from the driver's side with my key in my hand before I realize somebody's busted out my window. I can't believe it. I really can't. “Somebody busted out my goddamn window,” I say. I can't believe it. I'm walking around like those guys in Vietnam movies who've just had their arm blown off and stagger around staring at their nub.
Marion steps over and looks inside. “Evander,” he says, then looks down. I look over at Maurine and I know she wants to kill too. “Bad news, Evander,” Marion says, stepping away from the broken window. I look inside the car and see that the cassette player has been ripped from the dash.
I feel the veins throbbing in my temples. Maurine takes hold of my arm with both hands, leans her cheek toward my shoulder, and rocks softly. “Shhhhhh,” she says, “Shhhhhhhh.”
“Ain't nothing to do but get what's left of this baby on wheels and get the hell out of here,” says Marion. He starts over toward the wrecker, head down like a bull fighter who's done his deed.
“Goddammit, somebody's gonna pay,” I say in a voice that doesn't sound like mine.
“Don't use that language, Evander,” Maurine said, dropping hold of my arm, “not at the Lord's house.”
I look at the thousands of glass pebbles in the front seat. “I'm gonna kill somebody,” I say.
Marion returns with a wooden block incline, drops to his knees and places the sharp end up against what used to be the left front tire. “We got to get it up a few inches to get the jack in. Start it up and give it just enough gas to roll it up on the block.” Marion slides down on his side and gives the block a sharp kick.
I open the passenger door, look back at Maurine, then rake the glass out of the seat.
“The preacher is gonna love that,” Maurine says, looking at all the glass on the ground.
“Fuck him,” I say.
“Shame on you.”
I put the key in the ignition, and Marion and my sister take a step back, like they're half expecting the thing to blow. Only guess what? Nothing happens. I turn the key and nothing happens.
“Go ahead,” Marion says, “fire it up.”
“What the hell you think I'm trying to do, spank my damned old dead monkey?” I'm about at my limit now.
“Pull the hood latch,” Marion says, reaching for a rag in his back pocket. He lifts the hood and I hit the ignition again. “Forget it,” Marion says, bringing the hood back down. “They stole your battery.”
Now I'm pacing like a rabid dog, smoking like a fiend. Marion is wiping his hands in his rag, and Maurine has her chin in her palm, studying the car.
“Gotta have a battery,” Marion says finally. “Can't do a thing without a battery.” And then Maurine goes into this low wail and starts to rock on her heels like a retard. “Ooooooh. . . .Ooooooh,” she says. Her eyes are all blank and staring into the face of the 'vette, and Marion and I exchange looks and then turn back to Maurine, who's gone mental on me. We look from the 'vette to Maurine, then back to the 'vette. Then I see. The license plate, the black number three license plate on the front of my car, the air-brushed Dale Earnhart license plate—is gone.
Marion has a fifth of Jim Beam and a full tank of gas, so we ride in to Darlington, park the wrecker across from Joe Weatherly’s famous track, and drink and smoke cigarettes for a while. We stare out at the track and trade Earnhart stories. For a while I forget about the 'vette. Then Marion mentions the wife and kids, and we're rolling again. He offers to take me back to my trailer, but it's way past suppertime already. I tell him he can just drop me off at The Paradise Lounge, which is right on the way.
“Saturday night,” Marion says, pulling to a stop. “You just might get lucky, Evander.” He's looking into the bar's window. “Me, it's Saturday night with the wife and kids.”
“Come on inside,” I say. “Let me buy you just one drink.”
“Nah,” he says. “It's not so bad.”
When I walk in the door at The Paradise Lounge, every eye in the place turns on me like scorecards at the Olympics. Word is out about my car. And as I wait for George Miles to draw my first beer, I'm just sure as hell people are whispering and laughing. I'm not in the mood for anything funny, not one bit.
George sets a beer in front of me. “I think you bought the last round, Evander,” he says. “This one's on me, Bo.” Then he bends over the bar. “Don't look now,” he says man-to-man, “but we got a whole new world of possibilities here.” He nods over toward the jukebox, and I see Robyn Couch, whose tits, like the rest of her, are bigger than I remember. “Free at last, free at last,” George says, which is his way of saying she is divorced. Robyn is sitting alone.
George can tell, I guess by the look on my face, that I'm not feeling too confident, and he begins a story about when he got drunk at Myrtle Beach and picked up a midget at a night club. He wiggles his fingers as a way of describing the midget'
s legs jutting out from the front seat of his car. Then someone beside me speaks.
“Hey, Evander. You don't remember me, do you?” I'm as surprised as I am drunk, and I can't speak. “You took me to the prom, remember?”
Robyn's face is close to mine, and she is so clean and neat. She smells brand new.
For I don't know how long the 'vette disappears from my mind. It's just me and Robyn, and I open my mouth and the words come out and she laughs and takes my hand and says, “Oh, Lord, Evander, I'd forgot.”
Beers arrive. Everybody at The Paradise Lounge seems so happy and my favorite Eagles' songs play on the jukebox. At some point, Robyn lays the warm palm of her hand against the side of my face and looks at me with shiny, shiny eyes and says, “Oh, yes,” and everything goes away.
Sometime later, Robyn says she's going to the bathroom. George has his eyelids rolled back into fish eyes and he's doing the boogaloo behind the bar and people are laughing and singing.
Then I spot Steve, Maurine's ex-fiancée, come in the door. I look at him in his Jeff Gordon T-shirt and think about how much my sister loved him and about her crying on the phone after he sent her the chocolate chip cookies for a Valentine's present. My heart begins to do a one-eighty. He catches my eye and heads straight for me.
Maybe it's my imagination, but he smells like ammonia.
“Is Maurine here?” he says.
“No. And if she was—”
“We got something to straighten out. I really got to see her, Evander.”
I'm thinking he's looking for a way to get even for his dryer.
“What you really got to do is leave her the hell alone.”
“I have something for her. I gotta find her.” His eyes are scouring the bar. I see Robyn heading my way from across the room.
“What'd you have for her this time, dog biscuits?”
“Fuck you, and your dog,” he says, looking, I think, at Robyn.
Then everything goes white.
One of the rescue squad guys is standing over Steve, who's still lying on his back near the poker machine. Robyn's hands cover her mouth and her mascara looks like Alice Cooper's. The music has stopped and the whole crowd is watching the deputy put the cuffs on me. My cheek feels like an apple is growing out of it.
As I'm led toward the door, somebody shouts, “I found it!” and hands over a small box to Steve, who is sitting up by this time. He opens the box as the deputy leads me to the door. Then he looks up at me with sad, sad eyes, and I see the little diamond resting in his hand.
The deputy doesn't say anything on the way to jail, but he slows down to about five miles an hour as we drive past the church. Slow enough that I can see the figure of a man sitting behind the wheel of the 'vette.
When I wake up, I'm rolling again. I can see the outline of the morning at the edge of the dead fields. At first I think I must be in Robyn's car. It smells like a woman. But then I see that it's Marion Walker who has bailed me out of jail. He's driving his wife's Honda, which I've never seen him in before. I remember thinking that's funny, and I think I even smiled, then I was asleep again.
First thing Sunday morning, my boss from HAPPY VIDEO calls. I'm still a little drunk when I answer, and all I remember is I'm fired when I hang up the phone. I'm asleep again when the phone rings a second time, only this time it's the preacher calling me from church saying he hates to inform me but somebody has broken out my window and stolen my cassette player.
“Battery, too.” I say.
“Beg your pardon?” the preacher says.
“And the Earnhart plate.”
There is a long pause. Then he asks if I want to pray for my car, and I say yes and he does the honors for two or three minutes. There is another long pause. He asks if I feel better, and I say I do. Then he starts something that sounds like I Told You So and I hang up.
The next time I wake up, somebody's in my room. I pull the pillow from my face and see Maurine with her back to me, going through my closet.
“Oh, hey, Evander,” she says, holding up my black suit which still has the plastic from the cleaners. “Get up now. I've got a surprise for you.”
When I walk out from showering and shaving, Maurine has come back from the store with a Pepsi and a honeybun for me.
She makes sure my tie is on straight, and we head for her car. In the backseat, folded in half, is a near life-size cut-out of Dale Earnhart. “I got it from the Sav-Way yesterday,” she says. “I put it in your car last night, behind the wheel, just in case anybody driving by got any funny ideas.”
The old guy at Olan Mills is very professional about everything. Maurine gives him the discount coupon, tells him what she wants, and sends me to the car for the Earnhart cut-out. The guy is positioning the stools for us to sit on when I come back in. He takes Dale from me and props him just so using an extra tripod behind the stools, then sits Maurine and me down and squares up our shoulders, and turns my face so the bruise don’t show. Earnhart is smiling over us.
After the guy snaps the first couple of pictures, he tells us to relax and take a deep breath. Maurine looks over at me and smiles.
“This was a nice surprise, wasn't it, Evander?” She leans over and hugs me a little bit, and the photographer catches the moment.
I look back at Dale. Then I think about the license plate and the 'vette, then Marion Walker and George Miles, and Maurine. I think about Steve. And finally about Robyn Couch and the way her hand felt on my face.
My heart starts swelling up, and I feel like I'm someplace else when Maurine gives me a little tug.
“Smile, Evander, honey,” she says. “You look like you're about to cry.”
Wrecker
Marion Walker
The truth is complicated. I don't mean knowing it. Knowing it isn't so hard, sometimes. But getting it told can be next to impossible. The more you try to say it, the farther from it you get. Like pushing the same ends of a magnet toward one another, the more words people say to one another the farther they get from what they are trying to say, until you hear stuff coming out of your mouth and you say to yourself, where the hell did that come from? Or the other person says, what do you mean? And the fact is, you don't have the slightest idea what you mean. Then you get into the explaining, and before it's over the two of you are pushing each other across Colorado when you both know the truth lives in Carolina. Sometimes it's just better to keep your mouth shut.
It's not that you don't know the truth. It's just that when you do know something, and you know that it's true and somebody tells you to explain or to give examples, it just ruins it. We all know some things that are true. It's the telling that gets in the way. But when you love somebody, and you know it's true, and still she wants you to explain to her what love is, the telling screws up the thing you're trying to say. Everything goes wrong. Before it's over you hear yourself yelling things you never intended to say, things that aren't even in the least bit true. Things you'd never say. Things you can never take back.
I want to get it right.
Let me try to give you an example. I've gotten calls from the Highway Patrol at all hours of the night when it's so cold a dog would jump a cat for no reason. So cold I'd have to use ether to get the engine started. I'm hungover sometimes. I leave a warm bed and dress in the dark. If she knows I'm gone, she never says so.
I climb in the cab of my wrecker, and even through the cushion I feel how cold the seat is on the backs of my legs. My breath fills up the whole cab. Sometimes I'm still a little drunk. The gear stick sends an ache through the palm of my hand. When I pull them up from under the seat, my gloves look like chopped off hands. It's that cold. I'm feeling like hell. And I know what I've got to look forward to. I ain't about to get warm. And I'm thinking about what I'm leaving behind. I'm thinking of my wife and the things I don't know how to say to her.
Then heading out east, out to Lamar or Timmonsville there are breaks in the sky, and I know that later the sun will be coming up. I have a cup of Sav-Way coffee
. Everything is quiet, the way it is in the South when everything is covered with snow and the moon is full. The blower is hot on my knees now and I can turn it down, too. For a second, I'm not thinking about anything or any body.
Then I start up a hill and the sky is the color of the ocean just before a storm, gray or bluish, maybe slate colored. Then, at the very top of the hill, the moon is right there, sandwiched between the white land and the sky that's like a tide. And for a second you can't catch your breath, and you're glad as hell to be there, and you feel like the whole damned thing was planned just for you, or that you've slipped into a moment not meant for a human to see. And you forget about what waits for you eight or ten miles up the road and about what you've left as many miles behind.
There's just you and all this white world around you. It's early in the morning. You're warm, and there's the sky and the moon and the snow everywhere. What I'm trying to say is it's a feeling. That feeling is what I'm trying to say is what true is. It is that feeling, that thing I feel for her, that I can't get across. It all gets lost in the explaining.
I wish I could tell you what it's like at that time in the morning when you come to a flat stretch before the final curve and see the red and blue lights dancing over the snow way up ahead. I feel a little sick, because of what I know way down deep. But at the same time the lights on the snow, red chasing blue, blue chasing red on the ice and snow, and way back the beginnings of the sun and the receding tide of slate sky above, there is a feeling there. Still, I get that churning in my stomach on account of knowing and not knowing for sure what I've got ahead of me.
She says there's something missing.
When I was a boy, before I knew what those lights really meant, I would've sat at the top of the hill and imagined they were lights on a flying saucer or the second coming of Christ. Now I know what it means if the EMS guys are still there when there's snow. It means somebody's dying, dead, or damned near it. Sometimes it means I've got to move some steel before they can finish their work.
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