Preston Falls

by David Gates

  “I don’t believe this,” says Willis. “You’re telling me you bribed the judge?”

  Reed takes another sip from his Dixie cup. “You were looking at some very serious criminal charges, my friend. And you waltzed out with a fifty-dollar fine. These things take a little doing.”

  “But you told me they were bullshit charges.”

  “Bullshit is as bullshit does.” Reed laughs. “Christ, whatever that means.” Sips again. “Listen, you’re a good guy, a horseshit guitar player—almost as bad as I am—and I like having you around, you know? So let’s just get this done, go back upstairs and rock out, what do you say?” He takes a good big gulp, ending with the rim of his cup on the bridge of his nose.

  “I don’t have it,” Willis says.

  “Come again?”

  “I literally don’t have it. I’ve got like a thousand dollars to live on until the first of November.”

  “Excuse me?” says Reed. “Am I missing something? You’re the head gazakis there with Sportif, whatever the fuck you are, chief bottle washer. Your wife, I understand, works full time, you own a house in Westchester, another house up here …” He shakes his head. “Does not compute.”

  “And you know what it takes to keep all that shit together?” says Willis. “Plus car payments, plus bills, plus insurance, plus all the other shit? Two kids in school? Commuting? We’re right up to the fucking edge every fucking month. To take this time off—okay?—I had to put a thousand dollars on fucking MasterCard.”

  “Hey, so there’s your answer.” Reed raises a finger and says, “Don’t leave home without it.”

  Willis shakes his head. “That thousand brought me up to the limit. I’m paying those bastards like three hundred a month.”

  “Then I guess you have a problem.” Reed takes a long swallow and looks into his empty Dixie cup. “But shit, you know? Maybe it’s not as bleak as you think, man. There’s that Telecaster, you know what I’m saying? Nice old Fender Twin to go with it? The classic setup. That’s got to be worth a few thousand dollars to the right person. And I remember you saying you had a prewar D-18? See, you’re in a lot better shape than you think.” He crumples his Dixie cup, opens his hand and lets it fall.

  “So in other words,” says Willis, “you want to take the guitar and amp.”

  “Tell you the honest truth,” Reed says, “I don’t like fuckin’ Fenders. I don’t like the way they sound, and I don’t like the way they fuckin’ look.” He takes a pack of Kools out of his shirt pocket, lights up and blows out a cloud of smoke, then cracks his window and flicks the match outside. Willis sees a wave of smoke flow over the edge of the window glass; he breathes in. “Hell, there’s got to be another answer to this thing. I mean, I don’t want you to have to give up your instruments, man. Like giving up a child.”

  Willis says nothing.

  “Okay, maybe this is stupid, trying to tiptoe up to this. I’m used to dealing with—” Reed tosses his head in the direction of the barn. He takes another drag, blows smoke out. “Okay, what would you say if I were willing to give you a very substantial knockoff on your legal fees? In return for doing me a favor.”

  “Shit,” says Willis, shaking his head. “Okay, let’s hear it.”

  “See, I knew it. Here, let me have that fucking thing.” Reed takes the bill out of Willis’s hand, puts it on the dashboard and takes another piece of paper out of his pocket. “This look any better to you?” He turns the dome light on again.

  Willis takes the paper. Like the other bill, it’s typed on Reed’s letterhead: Legal fees and expenses, $250. He looks at Reed, who turns up a palm and cocks his head. “I see,” says Willis. “Nice. So what’s this favor?”

  “Oh, pretty straightforward. On your way home tonight, you stop by our friend Mr. Castleman’s place and you hand him a manila envelope. Like a—what do you call ’em—padded envelope. Here, I’ll show you.” He bends forward, grunts, reaches under his seat and comes up with a mailing envelope taped shut with glossy tan tape. He sets it on the console between the seats. “You drop this by Calvin’s on your way home, then Saturday night, on your way to our little gig, you stop by again and he gives you a package. He’ll help you find a good safe place to put it. And then you just drive on over to the Log Cabin, obeying the speed limits and traffic signs as I know you always do, and at the end of the evening, I give you another envelope, which you again bring to Mr. Castleman on your way home. Simple.”

  “Fuck.” Willis looks at the envelope, then takes a too-big gulp from his Dixie cup and gags on it.

  “Hey, you okay, tiger?” says Reed. “Let me open a window here.” He rolls his window halfway down, crushes out the cigarette on the outside of the glass and tosses it. “Too much excitement,” he says. “So what do you think? Not so terrible.”

  Willis says nothing.

  “See, on Calvin’s end you’re just a neighbor dropping by. And on this end you’re a guy showing up to play his gig. Shit, not that anybody’s probably keeping tabs. But Calvin did have his little trouble, so the cops are on his case, and of course they’d love to put me away because I’m old-fashioned enough to believe that under our system every person has the right to an attorney.”

  “Fuck,” says Willis.

  “But you, see, you’re just a regular citizen to them, so your only risk is not showing up with what you’re supposed to show up with. Which ain’t gonna happen, right? Plus of course you get to share in the bounty, and I know you like the bounty.”

  He sniffs and flicks at his nose, and Willis feels a jolt of what, in another context, he’d swear was sexual envy. Champ’s foot between Tina’s thighs.

  “Here,” says Reed, reaching in his other shirt pocket. “I saved you a little taste.”

  8

  Willis wakes up with his right cheek in shag carpeting. Head hurts. He looks up at a woodstove resting on cinderblocks. The carpet, he can feel, is made up of many, many little hard artificial fibers. He’s got all his clothes on—his boots, even—and somebody’s put a stiff blue plastic tarp over him, with metal-rimmed holes along the edges. The tip of his nose is cold, but his clothes and the tarp hold in his body heat. Sick to his stomach, though not to the point of having to vomit. Got to stop doing this shit eventually.

  He props up on his elbow, which makes his head hurt so much his eyes water. These headaches must be a brain tumor; they really are not normal. He looks over and sees the drummer lying there. Right, now he remembers: Sparky passed out before he did, not that Willis passed out, strictly speaking.

  He has to piss, and his head hurts so much that it doesn’t make a shit’s worth of difference if he stands up or not. He steals over to the drum set, footfalls noiseless in the carpeting, and looks down. Willis guesses the guy’s okay: shoulders seem to be rising and falling. Booze fumes coming up—unless they’re coming off him. Willis packs up his guitar and shit, lets the lid of the case down quietly and holds each button thing to the side with his thumb so you don’t hear the snap. Pats pockets for his keys.

  Shit—the envelope. Now he really does remember.

  He parts the plastic sheeting and these cheesy-religious shafts of morning light are pouring through gaps in the barn siding. The good old truck’s where he left it, next to the Econoline; the other cars are gone. There’s a note or something on his windshield. He sets the guitar and amplifier down in the wet grass and takes a piece of yellow legal paper out from under the wiper: Drive safely. He unlocks the truck and feels behind the seat: envelope’s still there.

  He goes around behind the barn to piss, out of sight of the house. Just the tiniest steam rises where it hits the ground, so he huffs out his breath to see if it smokes and of course, of course, manages to piss on his fucking boot. To punish himself, he bites into his lower lip with his leftside canines: hurts like shit, which serves him right. He sucks the lip, tastes salty metal and spits blood on the boot he pissed. Fucking teach you, you fuck.

  The sun’s just above the treetops. As he goes bump
ing down the driveway, he looks over at the house: a light on in the low-roofed part and wavy clear air above the cinderblock chimney. Probably the bass player’s wife is getting ready for work, if she works. A woman’s disapproval: you can feel it radiating.

  All along the two-lane road, Willis sees little girls and little boys waiting for the bus, wearing blue denim jackets, or red-and-black-checkered wool jackets, or puffy nylon jackets in combinations of turquoise, red and yellow. Some peer from shacks their parents built to shelter them, others bounce up and down on their toes in the cold. One little boy sits reading inside a sentry box with a Union Jack painted on it. At the corner of a dirt road, near a bunch of mailboxes, a mom in sweatpants stands talking with a mom in jeans as five or six kids play tag, getting their shoes wet in the long grass. He’s tempted to yank the wheel and plow through the bunch of them. Well, not tempted, exactly: alive to the possibility. He squeezes the wheel tighter and passes by.

  The temperature gauge is up a hair now, so he tries the heater; sure enough, warm air blowing on his shins. A chill goes through him, the body giving up the tension it maintained against the cold; at least that’s Willis’s little theory. His head’s starting to feel better, so maybe he’ll stop off in Preston Falls for some coffee and pick up a paper. Jesus, reading the paper. But when he gets to where you can either turn off into Preston Falls or keep going straight until you hit Brown Road, he figures why push it. With this envelope behind the fucking seat, all you’d have to do is have a brake light or a turn signal out.

  Willis turns into Calvin Castleman’s drive; Calvin’s truck, heaped high with split cordwood, almost blocks the way. When he shifts down to creep around it, the clutch feels funky again. Could be the cold, maybe: isn’t there grease inside a clutch? That hardens and softens? He taps his horn and climbs out; in a window of the trailer he sees a corner of curtain pull to the side, then drop. The door opens and Calvin comes out in his shirtsleeves, unlaced work boots flopping.

  “Hey,” Willis calls.

  Calvin stares at him. “You were supposed to been here last night.”

  “Well, we sort of ran late,” says Willis, “so I ended up sleeping there. We were over—”

  “Yah, I know where the fuck you were. Reed know you stayed there instead of coming here? Look at me when I talk to you.”

  Willis meets his eyes. They’re set so close together that he can’t stop the thought: genetic inferiority. If Calvin can somehow read minds, he’s fucked. Willis blinks. Blinks again. Calvin’s not blinking. Willis sucks his lip where he bit it. Which must look submissive.

  “Look,” he says. “If there’s a problem about this, you need to take it up with Reed. All he told me was—”

  “Yah, there’s a problem. There’s a big fuckin’ problem. These guys I deal with, these are fuckin’ serious guys, you know what I’m talkin’ about? I was supposed to left here last night.”

  “Look,” says Willis, putting up both hands, “I don’t know anything about it.”

  “Well, that’s nice for you, ain’t it?” He shakes his head. “Son of a bitch motherfucker. You got it, right?”

  Willis points a thumb at his truck and Calvin follows him over; when Willis reaches behind the seat, Calvin grabs the envelope. “Let’s go in the house.”

  “What for?” says Willis.

  “Fuck are you worried about? All here, ain’t it?” “Whatever was in it is in it.”

  “Then you ain’t got a thing to worry about.” Calvin starts for the trailer. “Long’s he ain’t out to fuck you.”

  “How would he fuck me?” says Willis, catching up to walk beside him.

  Calvin looks at him. “How would he fuck you? All right, let me ask you something. I bet you ten dollars he didn’t tell you how much is in here. Right or wrong?”

  “Okay,” says Willis.

  “Let’s say we go in here and I open it up.” He steps onto his cinderblock doorstep and turns to face Willis. “And you’re short a thousand—whatever it is. So all’s he’s got to do is turn around and go, Well, it was all there when I give it to him. You with me here?”

  Willis says nothing.

  Calvin nods. “All new to you, ain’t it?”

  “I see what you’re saying,” says Willis.

  “Anyways,” says Calvin Castleman, “I doubt he try to dick around on this end of the deal, see, because he knows nothing’s about to go down till I get that straightened out. And he’s got people waiting on him. Me, though, I’d watch my ass on the back end.” He opens the door to the trailer, and Willis follows him into the smell of stale woodsmoke.

  Willis sits on the old car seat facing the display case with boxes of shells and bottles of Hoppe’s No. 9. Calvin rests a buttock on his gray metal stool, lays the envelope on his workbench, picks up a box-cutter and slashes through the tape. He sticks a hand inside, looks at Willis, stands up and turns his back. Willis looks around the room. The skin of some animal, tail hanging down, pushpinned to the paneling. A yellowing Far Side cartoon he can’t quite make out from here, taped up with yellowing tape.

  “Yah, okay.” Calvin opens the top drawer of a metal file cabinet and sticks the envelope inside. “So you come by here Saturday. What time you come by?”

  “We’re supposed to start around nine. He wants us there eight, eight-thirty to set up. So—seven o’clock?”

  “Best make it quarter to. Bring all the shit you’re going to bring, and you go straight there from here.”

  “Right.”

  “And you tell Reed he can go fuck himself. The last fuckin’ time, tell him. I like to know what the fuck I’m dealin’ with. And I ain’t so fuckin’ stupid I don’t know you get more than a taste.”

  “Then you know more than I do.”

  “Yah, so what is this, fun for you? Your fuckin’ weekends up from New York? You ought to stuck to auctions. Church suppers, that shit.”

  “Tell me about it,” Willis says. “This is not my idea of fun. Yours either, I guess.”

  “Yah, I give up on that shit a long time ago.” Calvin spits on his floor, rubs it with his boot. “So I guess you got the bill.”

  Back at the house, Willis starts coffee and checks the machine. Four blinks. He hits Play.

  “Hey, man, it’s Reed. Listen, you got to come rock and roll tomorrow night. Give me a jingle, right? It’s real real important we get together.” Beeeep. “Hey. Reed again. You there? Shit.” Beeeep. Long nagging buzz. Beeeep. “Willis. It’s Marty. Listen, bud, I hate like hell to bother you up there, but we’ve got a mini-situation on our hands, and I was sort of figuring, Well, by now he’s probably bored out of his mind up there staring at the trees, so, ah, if you get a chance. It’s Wednesday morning? Eight-fifteen? Actually, tell you what. You have a fax up there, why don’t I just fax the thing to you. At the very least you’ll be amused.” Beeeep.

  So Marty Katz is still on the planet. Dandineau Beverages. All very strange.

  Up in his study he finds the fax curling out of the machine: a page of Time magazine with the Sportif ad where the sweaty blonde’s tipping one back and it’s, like, do you really see her nips or is it just a trick of the light. So? He wrote a form letter to cover this six months ago. Willis tears it off the roll and takes it over to his worktable. Oh. Next to the ad there’s a photo of a syringe poking into a forearm (inset, head shot of teenage boy) to go with a story about high school jocks and steroids, plus some thought-provoking shit about values. Who among us is not implicated when some high school jock someplace shoots steroids? Willis picks up the phone.

  “Steroids,” he says when Marty answers. “Make-a you strong like bool.”

  “Hey,” says Marty. “Mighty white of you to call, old man.”

  “So do we really care?”

  “You don’t care. What do you care? You got trees to stare at. Bucky, however, cares deeply. And through Bucky I’m learning to care.”

  “Well, so that’s good, isn’t it?” says Willis. “There’s too little caring in this w
orld. That’s why our young people are turning to steroids.”

  “So you have any thoughts?” Marty says. “He wants a statement.”

  “Awright, good idea. That way we can point out the irony, just in case anybody missed it. Somebody should tell Bucky it’s now okay to bottle up your rage. I read somewhere that it doesn’t give you cancer after all.”

  “Why don’t you tell him? Here, I’ll transfer you.”

  “Okay, okay. Uncle,” says Willis. “I take it you already tried talking him out of it?”

  “We don’t all have your raw courage. I got Carey Wyman started on the thing.”

  “Oh, well, hell. Then you don’t need my help.”

  “Very funny,” says Marty. “Any chance you could look over his efforts?”

  “Sure, no problem. With or without him knowing?”

  “Oh, he knows. Probably easiest to talk with him online. You’re wired there, right?”

  “If you only knew,” says Willis.

  “I appreciate this. It shouldn’t take up too much of your morning. What exactly are you doing up there?”

  “Oh, you know. Drinking heavily. Doing drug deals with the locals. Got thrown in the slammer the other day.”

  “What did you, rape a cow?” Poor Marty thinks this is still heartless businessman badinage. “So you’re getting stuff done on your dacha?”

  “Little bit,” says Willis. “Mostly sitting on my ass.”

  “What the good Lord made asses for. Something to sit on while you’re watching football. Except you don’t watch football, right?”

  “No, I’m an intellectual. Don’t you read my stuff?”

  “I swear to God, if you’re writing a fucking novel up there … Anyway, look. I told Carey you might be in touch. And I’ll make sure Bucky knows you were pulling an oar on your time off. Might help you out of the doghouse. I told you what he said, right? When I told him we were having a pour for you? He said, ‘I think I’ll be busy.’ ”

  “So he was probably busy.”

  “You know, you worry me, little guy,” says Marty. “You’re kidding, yes? When you come back, you’re going to have to be a very good boy. You let it be known that you have a life. That’s the mother of all no-nos.”