Just North of Nowhere

by Lawrence Santoro

  “Eminent Domain? Domicile?” sheriff Erikson yelled back. “You lived in that piecea shit Kaiser?” He yelled. “Bum!” he yelled again.

  “I got money!” Einar yelled at the sheriff’s back.

  Which got the sheriff’s attention.

  Einar had money. He hadn’t spent a cent while in the Army. What for? The Army gave him clothes, food and a bunk. He didn’t take to friends or friendship so he hadn’t to stand rounds of beers, loan out money or give up whatever else friends cost. Army stuck all his pay in accounts and Einar grew himself a wad, a back-in-the-fucking-world wad!

  The county took a hundred for vagrancy.

  Einar bitched up and down Commonwealth and spent enough of the wad to get good and schnockered at the Wheel and did enough grousing to piss off everyone who heard.

  When he came to he still had the wad—which turned out to be exactly enough for earnest money on the AMOCO, Pers Olafsohn having died three weeks before – about the time Einar had hit town grousing. Which is how he missed it.

  Then on, Bluffton noticed Einar. Army service had not improved his looks, temper, habits or nature but folks just naturally didn’t like him anyway: Einar, the grumbler, grouser, weasel, the sunofabitch.

  A couple, three decades later, not much had changed.

  Part Four

  EYES IN THE DARK

  “Aw heck, there, pretty pear,” Einar said.

  Night was quiet; no weather, no critters, the houses down the way from the shop were dark, all the folks, brats and mutts were tucked in and no doubt smiling.

  Einar ran his hand along the styling cut that dipped at the J’s door handle. His eye ran the curve of the line. It rose, then rolled in a gentle dip toward the tail where it reared up. The line crested in a fin, an empty lightless little thing, like a baby ’53 Caddy, its eyes still shut.

  ‘S hurting, she whispered with the tingle running in his spine. Mom says you’ll make me better, Einar.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he answered. “That son of a bitch. That Karl son of a bitch ain’t using you for a killing thing! No more, no ma’am.”

  The J percolated and cooed sweetly to Einar’s hand. You make me better, right honey? You take the pain, huh?

  It took Einar two days to realign her frame, pop and fill her ripples. A new driver’s side windshield took a week on rush order all the way from San Antonio. He dropped and benched the front quarter-panel for major surgery, spent an easy Sunday just rounding out the headlamp frame.

  He hated finishing, but he did. It was what he did. He tuned and tweaked her and she ran finer than frog fur. Didn’t look bad, either. Except for that shitty wooden bumper, she was a pear. A pear!

  He said something about that wooden bumper to her.

  Cripes, honey, she said back, I like it! Makes me feel, what the hell? A little bad! Her pipes growled and popped, she shimmied on her shocks.

  So he left it, left the Goddamn bumper. Top it all, he gave her a coat of primer, soft, flat, gray. She loved that. She sat drinking light from the overheads, giving nothing back, not a twinkle or a wink, nothing but gray flat cool.

  The time came when Einar couldn’t say she wasn’t ready yet.

  Karl came by – by night, of course, dressed for the road. The son of a bitch handed Einar the fifty bucks he’d said, left a bottle of Pauli Girl and drove to the dark.

  The shop was empty.

  Einar was out four, maybe five, hundred. He tossed the frothing beer at the road and the narrowing dark space between her two red taillights, at the Goddamn dark between!

  Karl was back three days later, the J’s fat-lip bumper sagging. “Goddamn Bunch an’ his shitty welds! Popped, there. You see there where? I got that cowcatcher wired up? Popped like THAT—on a doe. Cripes sake, a doe!”

  Einar crawled under. Sure as shit, Bunch’s shitty weld. He’d crystallized her with the heat.

  Einar touched the place. “Aw, cripes,” he said. A tear squeezed from his looking-eye.

  ‘S, okay, she said with his touch, ‘S okay, hon. She whispered like she was giving strokes, for crineoutloud. C’mon, c’mon…there, there, she crooned. It’s all right, I’m okay. Just tack it back. I’ll be fine...come on tack it back!” kind of antsy, you know?

  “It’ll take time!” Einar said.

  Karl grumbled but that was it.

  Einar didn’t rush. First, he cut some spring leaves, tied them together with steel bands. Then, he hacked off the whole damn thing, let the bumper clang to the cement, I-beam ringing, the blooded wood resonating like a marimba.

  What the shit! she said and cripes, what the...!

  “S’okay, little pear,” he said and took the grinder to her welds. He breathed oxidized metal from the spray of molten sparks that streamed over him like perfume so wicked! Then he reattached the wood and I-beam bumper with spring steel struts, fluxing his torch just so in the doing.

  “There honey,” he nudged the bumper. “She’ll give you some Goddamn bounce, now. Know what I mean? Absorb the whatchakallit so you won’t feel it so, for cripes sake. The shock. Sticking that thing on with re-bar! Re-bar don’t absorb shit! Crineoutloud what the hell them guys thinking!”

  The J didn’t say. She just stood and purred.

  See? Einar had no idea. Not about her. Not about himself, if it came to that. She just pissed him off sitting perfect and ready to go again. Silent, cool, gray as morning.

  Quiet makes some men go funny. And, well, Einar went into her and onto her, half-blind with piss! He screwed her timing, cranked her dwell into truly hairy numbers, pulled her number two plug, smacked the gap, then stuck the thing back. He spent the night with the J. She whimpered all the while.

  In the morning Karl took her.

  “Good Service!” Einar shouted at the empty road and he wept.

  “What for Christ sake?” Karl yelled the next day. “Piece-a-crap’s got no stuff! I give it gas, it dies! Cripes, Einar! This is what service has come to in this town!”

  Einar was cried out by then. “Ah, the timing’s skipped!” he yelled, “Cylinders is flooded, gaskets blowin’. Look at that! Plugs is fouled! Cripes, she’s too old for this shit! Too Goddamn old, Karl.”

  “Make it work.” Karl said. He didn’t yell.

  “She can’t take it, I tell ya!”

  Karl took him by the shoulders “You’ll make it take it! Service, Einar,” he breathed real quiet. “For crineoutloud!” he said at the door. Then he was gone, not even a Pauli Girl for Einar’s hand.

  Silence.

  “What? What?”

  Silence hissed in Einar’s ears. Einar, she whispered, using the hiss of the silence. Einar, you gotta service me, honey. Your name up there’s ‘Good Service.’ You know what? You know what would momma say, you pull this shit? You know what!

  The J took the Dragon’s voice from the world outside like the Dragon used to – barking dogs, squalling kids, talking TVs. From the evening outside and the fluorescents overhead, from the lousy radio on the bench, the Dragon’s voice clawed into Einar’s head. He heard, he heard like when he was on the Kiddorf Banks, nights, or when he’d been ass-up and into that long-gone Kaiser engine bay learning her ways. Fix her, make her run, you sunofabitch. You know what’s right, don’t you son? Sure as hell you do. Come on, boy, you gotta live here! You got a name!

  Einar did what was right, what was Goddamned right!

  When day came, Karl came. He came back and got her with the usual words. Paid his usual 50 bucks.

  Twice, maybe three times a week Einar would see her. She’d pass at twilight heading into the Driftless or maybe he’d hear her in the deep night, him wrapped in his stinking sheet on his cot behind the shop. He’d hear her pipes crack and almost feel the wind, her passing, catch her exhaust and that stink of blood that hung under her hood along with the burnt oil and dry rubber smell she never shook.

  Every other week, Karl rolled her in for something, something small: glass, spring, tie-rods. And Einar, damn him, Einar would make her bet
ter. She’d purr and call him honey and sweet hands, then go to do her dirt. And down at the Wurst Haus venison was always on special.

  Einar woke. Vinnie and the town prowler swept past, howling ruin through the night. Einar lay in his cot. The siren distanced but never disappeared as Vinnie threaded through Bluffton. Einar followed in his head. He saw the cop-kit spinning blue, spraying spalls and trailing siren moans as Vinnie fishtailed up the switchback to the bluffs above the town and the Rolling River. The car almost vanished from Einar’s ear into the Amish country around DorblerLand (or whatever the hell Karl was calling him mom and pop’s place nowadays) on the heights. The cop car stuttered through the woods, a whisper at the other end of town and behind the stockyards. Farther out, over Bunch’s bridge Vinnie went silent. By then Einar was tracking him by gut. He knew Vinnie. He’d double back down County H to the town. He’d breathe silent past the Italian lady’s place, Vinnie and the prowler sniffing night, orbiting Commonwealth by side street and alley, creeping Karl’s house and shed. He’d climb Church Hill to Morning Bluff: overlooking, panting, Vinnie would crouch at the wheel, cussing, looking for Einar knew what: for Karl, for the J, Goddamn it, the J and whatever dead thing Karl had hung from her, poached and bleeding.

  Seven, eight minutes, here he comes again, Vinnie and the prowler running past the Good Service again, quiet as feathers, lights off, passing in darkness and a suck of air, his dirt settling in a hushed shadow, after.

  “Oh, Pretty Pear, Pretty Pear” Einar thought, what are you doing, out there tonight? In his head saw her; her lying low in the woods beyond Karl’s (Bad) Kabins. She’d be dead, quiet, lights snuffed, the only sound a drip, drip, drip of blackness bleeding onto the dry leaves under her and Karl ducked, just breathing, his white face smiling like no one knew behind her wheel.

  “Cripes,” Einar said to the close, cold and smelly dark.

  For days the world went on tiptoe.

  At the Wheel, the American House – Eats, wherever Vinnie and Karl were together, looks went between them. Vinnie, cold in the eyes and Karl getting louder at whatever he did. Steaks, chops, brats slapped onto the counter at the store, doors shut with bangs, shoulders bumped, passing. Wherever!

  Even Bunch ducked in and out between them.

  Einar couldn’t stand it. Not for seven, eight days had Karl been by with the J.

  Bunch! There would be the son of a bitch, looking fat, regular work fat, his nose beer red and eyes watery from no sleep.

  Finally, Einar could take it no more, went gut to shoulder with Bunch at the Eats. “You working on that old J Karl’s got holed up in his shed?” he shouted.

  “What?” Bunch said, his face full with eggs and cakes. “Huh?”

  “Gimme no ‘Huhs’ or ‘whats’ you! That Goddamned Henry J Vagabond, the one now is gray that used to be red, you welding that Goddamn wood thing on her right to her frame using Karl Dorbler’s arc…that one!”

  “I know the car. I know the car. ‘What?’ is what I said, what about the car? Cripes, Einar! I’m eatin’ here!”

  “You’re working on her,” Einar said. “It’s you keeping her running, ain’t it? Ain’tcha?!”

  He was shaking with yells. Everyone was looking and not eating and Bunch was saying no, Goddamn-it, no.

  “Then what the hell!” Einar said, leaning into Bunch’s face, the face still full of eggs and short stack, looking up from the counter stool. “What the hell is keeping you in grunts and beers there, Bunch!”

  Esther was giving Einar the hairy eye. He didn’t care.

  “Them Pauli Girl beers Karl Dorbler is always ridding hisself of? They what the hell’s keeping you all red-eyed and twitchy, Bunch!? You tell me what!”

  “Einar. You back the hell off,” Esther said. “Bunch is working off this particular meal and several dinners past and some breakfast’s to come, painting my front or ain’t you noticed?!” She pointed at the white porch and the bright wood open to the sky.

  “He is routing my drain,” the Italian Lady said from down the counter.

  “Mice,” said one of the Sons of Norway from their table in the back. “Attic mice,” another one said. “Killin’ ‘em,” another said. “Uf-dah,” said another. The rest said nothing.

  From every corner, damn near everyone lit up with something Bunch was doing, had done or was about to get to doing. Round it went: “Asphaltin’ my drive,” “gonna dowse me a well,” Wingot Dickering said, “then he’s gonna dig her!” “Shingle my kitchen,” someone said, “re-hang my shed door,” another. “What’s it to you, anyway you weasel!?” they all said with their glares. “Sonuvabitch,” someone said with her voice.

  As they listed the jobs done, in the works and pending, Bunch sank lower and lower on his stool. A world’s weight on him all of a sudden.

  Einar threw up his hands and was gone.

  “Einar having it out with his feminine side, I guess” Doc Mouth said.

  Karl showed up at the shop that night. “Come on,” He said.

  “Where?” Einar said.

  “Take you your flatbed,” Karl said.

  “What’d you do to her?” Einar said.

  “Nuh,” Karl said, tipping his chin west.

  They drove into the Driftless. Heat oozed off Karl as he nodded Einar onto the ruin of Borgos Road. Nearly to Fatty’s place, Karl pointed and they turned off the busted roadway and into deep woods. The headlamps and roof lights quivered with the shocks of the trail. Brush swiped the sides of the tow. Einar? Out of his element, Goddamn it. Clouds of wee critters rose and spread from the growl of the engine. Eyes, Einar swore to himself, eyes appeared ahead and faded with their passing. This was not Einar’s world. When they got there – there being a five-trail crossing – there was the J, squatted, sunk four square into the forest floor. The spotlights slid off her flat gray finish and died in the darkness beyond.

  “Just like that!” Karl said.

  “Springs go?” Einar whispered.

  “Springs, shocks, whatever. Bam! Bam! Bam-bam like that! Flopped, like you see it!”

  Mites swarmed the beams. “I told ya, for-cripes sake. Didn’t I tell you? She’s too old for this shit.”

  Karl gave Einar, ten, fifteen, twenty seconds of looking.

  “Didn’t I?”

  “Vinnie was on the road, looking for me. Been looking for me, Vinnie has. And here I am, I’m on the road hunting and I duck back here, a place I to hell know like the back of my whatever and I turn off the engine, douse my lights and I’m sitting there…” He nodded toward the J, “and I know Vinnie’s coming, I hear him. He goes by like eighty, flashing, siren going and he passes. So I sit till it gets quiet. Now what do I see?”

  “Eyes,” Einar whispered.

  “Yeah. I see eyes. Eyes in the wood like we seen coming in. I don’t know what the hell these eyes they are. I think they’re deer, but I don’t know.”

  Einar snorted. It started as a shiver but he turned it into a snort. Nothing moved but the bugs.

  “So I think, what the hell, Vinnie’s gone and I flip on my lights, you know, seeing if I can blind whatever it is out there.”

  Karl stared at the night, now, his own damnself, past the J and into the woods.

  Einar didn’t know, but he did: the eyes were still there.

  “And there’s nothing out there under them eyes. They’re just, what the shit? Just eyes. Brightness in the dark, you know. So I go to start up, figure I’ll take at least one, maybe two—whatever it is—back with me. Without Vinnie knowing. Y’ get me? So, I make to start and I swear, Einar, I don’t even touch the key and there she goes.”

  “Where?”

  “Bam! Bam, bam-bam. Like I said she goes. One after the other, like that.”

  “So…”

  “So I get out. I get out and there’s nothing. No squawking. Nothing running in the bush. No birds. There ain’t shit, Einar. Not shit. Just dark and them bright eyes. And the J just sitting there and no good to anyone.”

  Karl ya
kked all the way back.

  Chained to the flat bed, the J squatted on her tires, her underbody resting on rubber. Einar felt her look on the back of his head. He felt the drag she made in the air. She said nothing in particular except a little whimper as the wind caught her on the curves.

  When they got to the shop Einar tipped the bed and the J squeaked onto the floor, her not wanting to, her tires gripping all the way. Her whimpers picked up with the buzz of the lights.

  “No, no,” he said to her. Then he said, “I’ll take care of her,” to Karl, then he shut the door on him. Son of a bitch was still talking as Einar shut off the outside lights.

  The J said nothing. She didn’t have to. Her wood bumper was nicked and splintered. Never mind the coat of paint Karl had slopped on it, blood pugs were bleeding through. And on top. She’d given another couple, three, hits since Einar last saw her.”

  “Six, damn days,” Einar said wiping his hands with a nearly clean rag. “Six days you hold up!” She had more wrinkles along her passenger side fender, a crease in her right door panel showed where she’d side-slid something. She showed, all right. “Aw, cripes there, you bitch. Why din’tcha just bust quick, like I made you to? Why not? Why not, Pretty Pear?”

  The fluorescents buzzed no word, the radio said nothing, the birds and critters of night stayed holed up and the air was clear, no wind, rain, thunder, nothing. The J kept shut.

  “What the hell’m I gonna do with you?” Einar said, looking her in the eye. “You go round with Karl Damn Dorbler doing vehicular whatchakallit?” he said, “Murder,” he said. “Even if with deer and such, it ain’t right. You’re a classic.”

  She said nothing as he rolled the jack under her.

  “I don’t know as I want to mess with you no more. That’s my honest word on the subject.”

  He cranked until the jack took the weight of the J’s body. She stood tall, still saying nothing.

  “I fer Christ’sake ain’t gonna make you…” He didn’t want to say. “Capable,” he said. “Road-worthy!” he yelled. And he wasn’t going to. “Goddamn you no, I ain’t!” He gave the hydraulic lock a whack and the jack hissed. But the J kept standing, tall, ready. Like nothing was wrong, nothing at all.