Preston Falls

by David Gates

  Calvin Castleman’s out front, leaning into the engine of a rotting Cadillac with a peeling vinyl roof; over the fender he’s draped a greasy red plastic thing with indecipherable traces of white lettering.

  “Ho,” says Willis. Preston Falls–speak for Hello. “This your rig, Calvin?”

  Calvin straightens up, wiping blackened hands on blackened work pants. “Is now,” he says. His pubic-looking beard has an inch-wide white streak down one side, whatever that’s about. Deep, grimy lines in the red face, though he can’t be forty.

  “Where’d you find ’er?” says Willis. Probably pushing it, though Calvin’s asked him shit that’s way more personal. When Calvin first came by and introduced himself—Willis had been unloading a U-Haul with stuff from Chesterton—he asked straight out what they’d paid for the place. Willis thought it was stupidly coy not to tell him; he was also proud of getting it for his lowball offer. Calvin pressed his lips together as if with sudden heartburn, turned away and shook his head; then he turned back and said he’d had his eye on the place for the woodlot but didn’t have any use for another house. Willis assumes Calvin hasn’t forgotten getting boned—or giving himself away for that little moment. He also assumes that Calvin assumes he hasn’t forgotten.

  “Took it in trade,” says Calvin.

  “So what’s she need?”

  “Oh, this and that. Leastways the engine’s free and the fuckin’ block ain’t cracked.”

  “You keep it or fix up to sell?” Willis talks the talk better and better.

  “Somebody come by and twist my arm they probably could have it. Hell, fresh coat of paint? Little bodywork? Set of wire wheels instead of them fuckin’ piece of shits they got on there?”

  Willis nods to show he can envision it. “Listen, let me write you a check for that load of wood.”

  “Tell you the truth, I just as soon wait till you got the cash on you. More I can keep my business the hell out of everybody’s fuckin’ computers, happier I fuckin’ am.”

  “I hear you,” says Willis. “Sure. I can go down to the cash machine.”

  “ ’Cause it’s all the one computer, you know? That’s where we’re gettin’ to. After that bullshit here last year, I had ’em come and take out their fuckin’ telephone. I told ’em, I said, I don’t even want your fuckin’ cable goin’ in my house. They were listenin’ in on the fuckin’ telephone. My lawyer found that out.”

  “Yeah, I remember you telling me,” says Willis.

  “Good job I had him, or I’d been in jail right now with all the niggers. And this is what your God damn taxes go for.”

  “Hey, that and Bill Clinton’s salary.” Contempt for Bill Clinton is their common ground politically. True, Willis comes at it from the left and Calvin from the right, but still. Willis sometimes thinks Calvin’s shit about niggers and liberals might just be a sort of ritual ordeal he puts you through to test your worthiness. “So listen, I better get a move on if I want to hit that cash machine. I got my brother coming up later on.”

  “Hell, you got company this weekend I ain’t in no hurry,” Calvin says. “Next time you come up be good enough.”

  “I am up,” says Willis. “I’m here the next two months.”

  “The hell happen, lose your job down there?”

  “No such luck.” Which is a shit thing to say to somebody up here scrabbling to get by. Or is Calvin simply a free man doing exactly what he wants? “Just took some unpaid leave.” Willis wants to make sure to get that unpaid in there. “See if I can get some work done on the house.”

  “Hell, then,” says Calvin. “I’ll catch up with you. I know where you live.” Structurally this is a joke, though only Willis smiles.

  4

  He’s just hit the part of Dombey and Son where Mrs. Skewton has her first stroke, when Rathbone starts barking outside. Willis gets up and goes to the kitchen door, and into the yard rolls this big-ass convertible, a Monte Carlo or something, rocker panels rusted to shit. It’s Champ and Tina, both in sunglasses and white t-shirts. Rathbone’s up on his hind legs, paws against the driver’s-side door. Champ gets out, tousles Rathbone’s ears, then stretches, his t-shirt pulling up. He’s starting to get a belly too, Willis is glad to see. Tina jackknifes herself over into the back seat, biker-shorted ass in the air.

  “Some wagon,” Willis calls. Not a Monte Carlo but an LTD. “Rathbone, enough. Sit.” He has to not look at Tina’s ass. “So whatta we got here, about a seventy-seven?” Shooting for the most ironic year possible.

  “Hey, seventy-fuckin’-two, bro,” says Champ. “Last year they made the ragtop. Hundred and sixty-eight thousand miles, and that son of a bitch purrs.”

  “She’s a honey.” Willis wishes Tina would hurry up and get whatever she’s getting.

  Champ switches to radio baritone. “Madge and I appreciate the built-in safety that only an American car can offer.”

  “So hey, welcome,” says Willis. “You guys made good time. You must have been up with the fuckin’ lark.”

  “You know me, early to bed,” Champ says. “Fuckin’ Tina, had to haul her out by the fuckin’ hair and pour coffee into her.”

  “He lies,” says Tina.

  “So how was the trip up?”

  “Well, I loved the shit out of it. I think the Jesus stations started to get to old Tina.”

  “Oh, you noticed that,” she says.

  “You got the best fuckin’ Jesus stations up here, man. Except for maybe Alabama. This guy was like interpreting and everything? All this completely addled shit. Six sixty-six? All that stuff. He was gettin’ into it.”

  “I would even listen to Howard Stern,” she says. “Hey, that your rig?” Nodding at Willis’s truck. “I’m fuckin’ impressed.”

  “You’ve seen that,” says Willis.

  “No way. Last time, you still had that Honda piece of shit.”

  Tina extricates herself, slams her door (big American ka-thunk) and comes around the front with a purse-sized Bert-and-Ernie bag slung over her shoulder.

  “I help you guys carry anything?” says Willis.

  “Carry your hostess present if you want.” Champ walks around and twists a key in the trunk lock. “Here, back here.” But Tina’s hugging Willis (he feels liquidy breasts, smells dirty hair) and saying, “Ooh, it’s nice to see you.”

  “Here.” Champ’s holding up two six-packs of Budweiser tallboys by the plastic. “Replace those essential minerals.” He always gives Willis shit about Sportif; the good way to read this is that Champ agrees flacking for Dandineau Beverages is beneath him. Champ, meanwhile, is clerking at the Counter Spy Shop.

  “Hey, replace this,” says Willis, giving him the finger.

  But Champ isn’t looking. “So, Teen,” he says, setting the six-packs on the ground, “should I give him the test?”

  Tina cocks her head.

  “You know. The—c’mere.” Tina goes over, he whispers, she shrugs. “My animal companion here,” he says to Willis, “blew the test big time.”

  “You’re a man, for God’s sake,” Tina says. “If you were wearing a skirt or something—”

  “He’sh going to guessh,” says Champ through bared teeth, “ish you don’t shut ut.”

  Tina turns to Willis. “He did this at the service area. I was mortified. All these like families and everything?”

  Champ climbs over the closed door into the back seat, sits down and calls, “Okay, you ready? Now watch, and tell me who this is.” He gets to his feet, turns and crawls over the seat and across the trunk on his hands and knees.

  “Rats leaving a sinking ship,” says Willis.

  “Whoa, getting warm.”

  “Let’s see—me taking a leave of absence.”

  “You dick,” Champ says. “Everything’s not about you.”

  “Hey, so they tell me,” says Willis. “Okay, I don’t know. Good money going after bad? Pride going before a fall?”

  “Cold, very cold. Shit, I got to take a piss something wicked.”


  “Why don’t you make him happy,” Tina says, “and say you give up.”

  “That would make me happy? To know my brother is an ignorant slut?”

  “Okay,” Willis says. “I give up.”

  “Jackie Kennedy!”

  Willis whams his forehead with the heel of his hand.

  “Unreal.” Champ dusts the knees of his black jeans, then wipes his palms on the thighs. “I thought at least somebody your age would get it. Isn’t that what fucked all you guys up?” He holds up a hand for silence and says, “Okay: Jackie, for three hundred. How did Jackie dislocate her back? Or, like, sprain her back?”

  Tina fetches a loud sigh. “Didn’t you have to go pee-pee, honey buns?”

  “Give up? She was reaching around, or kind of bending over backwards, trying to touch her Onassis. Get it? Reach her Onassis? I didn’t tell that very well.”

  “No kidding,” says Tina.

  “Christ, I gotta piss.” Champ trots around the corner of the woodshed.

  “I think it’s this country air,” says Tina. “So where’s the family?”

  “Jean went to hustle some provisions,” says Willis. “À la recherche de Frank Perdue.” He’d thought of this on the way back from Calvin’s; Tina’s the lucky one who gets to hear it. “And I guess the kids went along to get their little hit of civilization. Store in town has video games.”

  “Wow, you’d think they’d be running around in all this woods.”

  “You’d think,” he says, as Champ comes out from behind the shed, fiddling with his fly.

  Tina claps her hands over her eyes: see no evil. “Jesus, Champ. Why don’t you just shake off in front of us too?”

  “Hey, it’s my bro,” says Champ. “So listen, where’s the family?”

  ——

  Jean takes Mel and Roger to breakfast at Winner’s and stays at the counter drinking coffee and reading the Times while they play the video games. She leaves them there while she runs stupid errands: to the post office, to the cash machine, to the Grand Union, to Rite Aid for Off and Caladryl, to the new little hippie place for decent bread. But she can’t stay in town forever.

  When she pulls into the driveway, she has to go up onto the grass to get around this huge, sagging hulk of a convertible—the sort of car locals drive, except they don’t know any locals besides that creature Willis buys wood from. Mr. Hog Roster. (It took her the longest time to realize this was a misspelling and not some kind of registry, or an obscure farm tool.) So this must belong to Willis’s brother—who of course would also drive some V-8 rustbucket. The father really did a job on those two. She gets out of the Cherokee and sees the three of them—Willis, his brother and the girlfriend—sitting out on the plastic-resin Adirondack chairs Willis bought at Ames for $6.99, each with one of those tall cans of beer. Champ and the girlfriend look like a Gap ad with their matching white t-shirts and sunglasses. Do they plan their outfits? She wouldn’t put it past them. Willis has his boombox outside, plugged into the long orange cord. Champ stands up and raises his beer can at her when she gets out to unload the shopping bags. (Mel and Roger are still in the car, arguing.) Finally the girlfriend bestirs herself to pick her way across the grass in fetching bare feet and give a cheek-to-cheek air kiss. Tina: that’s the name. This apparently shames Willis into getting up and coming over too. Jean can hear some sort of depressing fifties country music going—not Hank Williams, she doesn’t think. Him she can usually tell.

  “Hi,” she says to Tina. “You must have made good time.” She looks at Willis, who’s just standing there. “Could you help with the bags, please?”

  “Melanie, that is one of the great t-shirts,” says Tina, touching a finger to Courtney Love’s fat red lip. Mel shrugs.

  Champ has finally roused himself and come over. “Cool,” he says to Mel. “And you, Killer,” he says to Roger. “You’re getting huge. You play middle linebacker? Here, what can I carry?”

  “Sit, both of you,” says Willis. “I got ’em.”

  “This is Roger?” says Tina in fake disbelief. “Roger, I wouldn’t have even recognized you.” Of course not, Jean feels like saying; she’s met him, what, once before? My guit-tar stays a little better in tune, the singer sings. The sun shines bright and there’s honey on the moon.

  Roger says to Willis, “She said we can’t go swimming.”

  “Roger,” says Willis. “When we have guests, it’s nice to greet them? You too, Mel.” He grabs up two plastic bags by the handles with his right hand and takes a third in his left.

  “But how come we can’t?” says Roger. Willis looks at Jean and raises his eyebrows: take a stand here, or let it go?

  “We ran into Arthur Bjork and the kids coming out of Winner’s,” Jean tells Willis. “They invited Mel and Roger over to swim in their pond, but I said we had company.”

  “I’m sure they’ll give you guys a rain check,” Willis says. “Speaking of which, it looks like it’s clouding over anyway. Tell you what. While I’m helping Mommy with the stuff, why don’t you show your uncle and his friend where they’re going to sleep.” I.e., Roger’s room, which he agreed to give up if he could sleep in his pup tent.

  “Why don’t you?” says Roger.

  “Hmm,” says Willis, setting the bags back on the ground. Heavy sons of bitches. “This is not going to end pleasantly.”

  “Roger,” Jean says, “you were warned earlier about talking back.”

  “You’re wrecking everything, Roger,” says Mel.

  “Melanie,” Willis says. “Let your mother handle this?”

  “Fine,” says Jean. “Yes, let me handle it. Roger, you have a time-out. You can take it in your sister’s room.” She picks up a bag of groceries in each hand and starts for the house.

  Willis picks up his bags again. “Wait, let me get the door.”

  Jean keeps walking.

  “Mom?” Mel calls. “Can I take a shower?”

  “Fine,” Jean says. She sets down a bag, opens the screen door and lets it slap behind her.

  Willis sets the bags on the kitchen table and goes upstairs to make sure Roger’s doing his time-out. When he comes back down, Jean’s standing at the counter, chopping an onion and stinking up the place like a fucking tenement. “Now, where to stow all this shit,” he says.

  She turns around, tears all down her cheeks. “I can deal with that.” Her voice is okay, therefore it’s the onion. “I’d rather you got the fire started.”

  He salutes and says, “Your wish.” To add is my command, he decides, would be too pissy. “You did remember charcoal, right?”

  “Yes,” she says.

  He finds it in one of the bags, under some celery and shit. “Ah, Kingsford: what ho. Now, I think we’ve got some lighter fluid left.”

  “I bought a new thing of it,” she says. “It should be there somewhere.”

  He brings the charcoal and fluid out to where they’ve got the hibachi set up on a flat rock. He takes off the black-crusted grills and dumps the old ashes into the high grass and weeds on the other side of the stone wall. He pours in a pile of charcoal and squirts on probably way too much stuff. Looking up from the tall, smelly flames, he sees a dark cloudbank in the east. He sucks his index finger and sticks it in the air, but his finger feels equally cool on all sides, so who the fuck knows. He brings the grills into the kitchen.

  “When you’re finished cleaning those,” Jean says, “could you put some olive oil or something on them? Maybe that’ll keep stuff from sticking this time.”

  “Yeah, when I’m finished.”

  He stands at the sink scraping burned-on grease from the grills with a putty knife, deftly dodging when Jean ducks in from time to time to wash a vegetable under the running water. He sprinkles Comet onto a piece of steel wool, scours and rinses, then saturates a corner of paper towel with olive oil and rubs it over the grills. To absolutely no purpose, it seems to him. Won’t it just burn off?

  He takes the grills outside and puts them on the fire; sur
e enough, the olive oil starts hissing. Shit, that sky looks evil. He washes his hands at the kitchen sink with Lemon Joy and goes into the living room. Roger’s back down from his time-out and he’s got his sneakers up on the couch: a no-no in Chesterton, but this couch is coated with hair and stinks of dog. Tina and wet-haired Mel sit cross-legged on the floor, Mel talking, Tina nodding.

  Champ’s perched like an ape on a pressback chair, sitting on his heels. “Say there, Dad,” he says. “These kids say they never been in a ragtop. We got time for a little spin before we chow, right?”

  “Can we?” says Roger.

  “Yeah, short one, I guess,” Willis says. “Ten, fifteen minutes? I just started the fire. Aren’t you sick of driving, though?”

  “Hey, not with the mighty turnpike cruiser.” Champ climbs down off the chair, stands and stretches. “Got to pick the music, though. What are you guys into—Metallica?”