Beck

by Mal Peet

  Beck said nothing.

  “You don’t gotta listen to me, but I got more experience driving these roads than pretty much anyone you gonna meet.”

  When it became obvious that Beck was half-starved, Lester shared his food — canned meat eaten cold with brown bread. He poured homemade whiskey into two tin mugs, and passed one to Beck, sipping from the other constantly while driving, to control the cough. When it worked, the deep furrows on his face softened a little. It was cold in the cab; only the fug of their breath and the sting of moonshine offered any warmth at all.

  The whiskey went straight to Beck’s head and made him feel like laughing. Here he’d been smuggling top-quality Canadian Club across to the U.S. without ever tasting a drop, and now he was back in Canada drinking the worst sort of bathtub hooch and grateful for it. It burned like the devil going down, but it did somehow magic a feeling of warmth. He felt less gloomy with it looping around inside his head, until suddenly he’d had enough and dropped off to sleep, only waking when Lester pulled the rig over beside a tiny concrete roadhouse in the middle of nothing in every direction.

  The place looked empty but spat out noise and drunks and gamblers all night long. Lester hauled a couple of rough blankets out of the space behind the seats and the two men lay down overlapping, feet to the middle of the big wide seat, heads by each door. Beck had slept lots of worse places.

  He thought of Grace as he hovered between waking and sleep; he dreamed of her in the night; the first thing in his head when he woke was her. Later, he thought about Bone and Irma, brought up his memory-hoard of pictures of them, but something had gone wrong with it. Their faces were indistinct, blurred and bleached by rain. He wondered if they’d even remember him. If they were even alive.

  The realization struck that he was doomed always to move on, starting new connections, ending them before they grew roots. He couldn’t manage to see himself as a man with attachments and a life. Every stop he made was just a chapter in a longer, sadder tale. Did Grace really care for him? It didn’t matter. They could never be together. That was clear enough.

  He woke the next morning when Lester heaved himself up onto the step of the cab bringing with him good news and a great gust of cold air.

  “Ran a few things down to Toronto in the back of my truck for the grub slinger here,” he explained. “He’s got coffee with ham hash and eggs for breakfast. So rouse yourself.”

  Beck followed him into the roadhouse, which was blissfully warm and stank of beer. Lester’s friend served up an enormous breakfast of hash, fried eggs, toast, fried potatoes, and coffee. A sign over the cash register read NO COLORED — NO WOMEN — NO DOGS but Lester’s friend said that was only after dark, and anyway the boss wasn’t around to care who came in for breakfast. Lester drank from his flask all the way through the meal. Inside the roadhouse, he coughed less and his chest heaved less when he breathed. His friend joined them at the end for coffee and a slug of Lester’s home brew, talking about the crazy people coming and going and the poor son of a bitch found out back last week with his throat cut.

  “Prob’ly owed someone money.” He thought for a minute, then grinned. “Or more likely, someone owed him.”

  When eventually they returned to the rig, it was with bread still warm from the kitchen and smelling of yeast, so soft it didn’t need soaking in booze to chew.

  Lester started up the engine and poured them each a mug of hooch.

  “That cure’s gonna kill you if the cough don’t,” Beck said and Lester shrugged.

  “Can’t smoke no more; least I can do is drink. Ain’t doing my stomach no good, you don’t need to tell me that.”

  The sleet had turned to rain, enough to discourage Beck from leaving the cab except to wade out away from the rig and squat quickly by the side of the road. Even so short a journey left him soaked and shivering, and Lester threw the blanket over him with a shake of the head and a warning not to be catching noo-moan-ya.

  “I been trying to fix this damn heater the last five hundred miles,” he complained to Beck. “Sure would make life a whole lot more comfortable if I could.” He coughed again and this time it took a while for his heaving chest to settle. The ancient rusted old gas heater looked to Beck like it had started life heating a horse and carriage and he wasn’t surprised when, with a suck of air through his front teeth and a tut of disappointment, Lester failed once more to get it to light. “Damn piece of junk,” he muttered.

  They set off again, Lester sipping and coughing and talking as he drove, telling Beck about his granddad, a slave in the West Virginia sulfur springs, and his daddy, born a free man, who made his way to Canada to find farmwork. “And jus’ look at me,” Lester said. “I work for the company that owns this rig. Don’t exactly make a deal of money, no wife, no family ’cause I’m always on the move. But at least I can say no one owns me nor ever will.” He turned to Beck. “And you, kid?”

  Something about the gloom and cold of the cab, the uncertainty of his future and the turmoil of his past made the pressure to talk urgent; Beck thought he may as well tell someone what had happened in his life, because he himself could make less and less sense of it. And so he told Lester about Liverpool, and the Christian Brothers, and the Giggs farm, and then running away and working for Bone and Irma. And when he got to the story of the burning tree and Grace, he kept talking, as mile after mile spun away under the huge wheels of the rig. When finally he’d talked his whole story out, he stopped.

  He didn’t know how long he’d been talking, but it seemed like the largest expenditure of words his life had known and the longest time anyone had ever spent listening to him. The effort left him empty, physically weak almost, as if he’d done battle with a snake wrapped around his heart, and he slumped back, exhausted.

  They drove in silence for some time.

  “Why on God’s green earth did you up and leave?” Lester’s eyes were on the road.

  The question took Beck by surprise. “I had to go,” he said. “I couldn’t wait around for her to fire me.”

  Lester guffawed. “Fire you?” he said, eyes wide. “Don’t sound to me like that’s what she had on ’er mind.” He shook his head, chuckling. “Fire you, hoo boy. You got a strange idea about what women are like, don’t you, kid?”

  Beck wanted to cry out that he had no idea about women, no idea what they wanted from him or any man. Truth be told, he had not much idea about men, either.

  “Seems clear enough to me what that lady wanted. And it takes an original sort of guy to turn tail and run, jus’ when the big man upstairs’s dealing you a royal flush.”

  Beck slumped. “She’d have told me to go,” he said. “It was wrong.”

  “You think so?” Lester cackled and slapped one hand down on the big leather steering wheel. “Well, I know a thing or two about women,” he said. “And it don’t strike me you was in danger of being shown the door.” He glanced at Beck. “I could be wrong, ’course. Been wrong once or twice before in my life.” His laughter tailed off into a delighted hee-hee.

  “She’s older’n me, Lester,” Beck said. “And rich. And leader of a clan. With responsibilities to a lot of people.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And beautiful.” Beck muttered this.

  “Well, now,” Lester said thoughtfully. “What could a woman like that see in a kid like you? Not bad-looking yourself, I guess. Young. Good worker. Smart enough.” He thought for a minute. “The reason any woman chooses any man is one of them mysteries nobody understands. But she chose you. And what’d you choose? To live on the road, head for a place a thousand miles away where you never been, in order to find a couple of people might not even be still alive and, if they are, might be a hundred other places than there.” He shook his head once more. “You one crazy son of a bitch.”

  Beck’s heart contracted.

  “I ain’t gonna be the one telling you what to do with your life, but I sure can tell you one thing. You look at me nice and careful. You look at my life
. What’ve I got? One road in front of me and one behind and all the chances I had, lost. Not to mention a bad chest that’s gonna kill me any day now, no money for a doctor and nothing a doctor could do for me even if I had. Your life don’t get bigger on the road. It shrinks and shrinks till it’s so small all you can see is that little square ahead of you and that bottle beside you on the seat. It turns you old and sick and lonely, and then the day you realize the road’s the only thing on earth you love and it ain’t never gonna love you back, it’s too late ’cause you’re just about finished.” He coughed, a long ugly spasm.

  When eventually Lester’s breathing quieted, he sighed. “So you’re planning on going to Vancouver to look for your friends.” He shrugged. “They may still be alive. And then what? You gonna run booze with ’em in Vancouver till some lawman shoots you ’cause he don’t like the look of your face or throws you in jail for nothing ’cept being colored, or maybe they gonna change the law so everyone can buy whatever booze they like and then you out of a job?” Lester shook his head. “Someone tells you they love you, you take it serious, boy, ’cause hundreds of women ain’t gonna repeat that offer, even to a kid looks like you.” He paused and corrected himself. “Looked like you. Your face ain’t improved any being on the road.”

  Beck idly wrapped the fingers of his left hand around his right wrist and knew what Lester said was true. He was nothing but bones now, the flesh pulled tight across his face, skin covered with scabs and scars. He felt innocent as a child and old as the earth. He missed the lake and the sleepout. He missed the horses and learning something he could do. He missed the beauty of the place and the peace of it; knowing there was food every night on the table. Kindness. He missed sleeping in a bed. Security. Conversation. He even missed the judgment in Nah-ah’s gaze. No sighted person had ever looked at him quite so hard.

  He missed Grace.

  Most of all, he missed Grace.

  Lester dropped him on the outskirts of Medicine Hat at midday. Beck refused the offer of another night in the cab, preferring to set off right then, hoping for another ride. He was impatient to get to Vancouver. And besides, he knew if he stopped any longer and thought about it, he’d turn back.

  In the last hours of daylight, a few cars passed but none stopped. None even slowed. Night drew in and Beck walked off the road into a grove of trees offering minimal shelter from the wind and rain. He had a single blanket in his pack and half a loaf of bread, thanks to Lester. He missed Lester’s moonshine, for the warmth it gave body and soul. He missed conversation.

  It rained in the night, so hard that his clothes and blanket soaked up all they could hold and the rest sluiced off him. Beck tried to wring his blanket dry but couldn’t bend his fingers to grip it. Not a single car passed and he wished with all his heart that he’d stuck with Lester. He might have found a place to stay till the rain stopped at least. Instead he huddled under the trees shivering violently until his body turned numb and his brain floated off to another place.

  Toward dawn, he felt heat, crazy heat, and steam began to rise from his clothes. His teeth chattered and he soon found that his legs wouldn’t do what he expected of them, so he lay by the side of the road shaking, waiting to die.

  He lay still till the sun came over the horizon and then hauled himself to his feet, soaked with rain and sweat, half-crazed with fever, bones aching. His head swam with visions but he commanded himself to walk. If he didn’t walk he would die, and he didn’t want to die here where no one would find or bury him. One foot in front of the other, hour after hour, with the horizon changing not a whit so he may as well have been walking in place, talking to himself, laughing sometimes, counting out the steps to Vancouver with a little rhythm of self-loathing.

  Worthless nigger.

  Savage bastard.

  Lazy. Stupid. Dull as day.

  Wicked, sinner, orphan, fool.

  Vagrant hobo vagrant hobo.

  Fool of a boy.

  Fool of a boy.

  In as much as he could think straight, he thought Nah-ah was probably right. And Lester.

  Fool of a boy.

  Cars passed, but none stopped for the filthy, crazed-looking black boy dressed in rags.

  Hours passed and at last someone stopped. At first he thought it was Lester, a similar rig, large and heavy and brown with tarpaulins flapping over its load. Beck had long stopped hoping for salvation; he had long stopped hoping; he had long stopped wondering why he was walking or where. He tried to move faster, to stumble in the direction of the cab, to say thanks and somehow miraculously to haul himself up next to the driver, to sit for a moment, to let the wheels carry him forward toward his forgotten destination. He remembered Grace, the word, the concept. Grace. Grace. He would have laid down his life just then for either.

  He ran in slow motion, ever closer, never arriving, faster and faster. The cab stayed the same distance away. Tears of despair blinded him. Move, he told his legs. Move.

  The explosion threw him backward off the road and with an ear-shattering KABOOM the rig burst into flame, a gigantic ball of fire roaring up from the cab in a wall of heat and noise. Beck staggered upright, hair and eyebrows ablaze. He watched in horror as a man climbed slowly down from the cab, engulfed; a fire, shaped like a man. The man-fire walked slowly to the middle of the road, and though Beck could hear nothing over the roar, he saw the burning man throw back his head and laugh. And so the man stood, arms outstretched, laughing, burning. Beck watched in mute horror for what seemed like forever, watched the fire embrace him tenderly, with enthusiasm, joy, even. And still the man burned, and laughed.

  Creeping closer on his knees, he could see at last who it was, and it was the green eyes and the wild hair and the black skin that gave it away. He stood and watched. He stood and burned. Burned and laughed. Laughed and burned.

  Eventually someone stopped, though congratulations were not due the driver, who would not have bothered had it been possible to proceed without driving over the body in the road. He opened the door, shouted at the kid to see if he was alive, and when an answer wasn’t forthcoming, dragged him up onto his knees and, with difficulty, threw him onto the backseat with a sigh.

  Life is just one damned Christian act after another, he thought bitterly. And then, with no idea how he might be affecting the flow of fate, he set off at speed in the direction the kid had come weeks earlier, the direction Beck had turned to face, just hours ago, at long last.

  THREE DAYS BEFORE the Okan, Grace woke with a heaviness in her limbs and a dull throb in her head. Most days began like this now, loss and longing and a deep sense of failure weighing down her dreams and waking hours. There was no need to confess her state of mind to Nah-ah when a blind man with half a brain could add up the disappearance of the stallion with the dwindling of the foolish old mare.

  Grace washed and dressed and headed down to the road to welcome today’s arrivals. It had rained all night, a soaking, icy rain that cleared the air and turned the dusty earth to mud. She scanned the fields, sore muscles testament to the work of bringing the hay in under cover last night before the weather changed. They’d managed it, but only just, working by moonlight as the wind picked up and the pregnant clouds threatened to burst. Most of the harvest had been saved, but her back and arms told the story of it this morning.

  Damn it all, she thought, I’m getting old. Too old to work half the night hauling bales.

  There was already a good deal of coming and going among the tipis, greetings and reunions, a group of men in shirtsleeves carrying clothing back from the lake. A car, a Model T with dim headlights, jolted over the grass and parked alongside the other vehicles. The light lifted. Above the eastern rim of the valley, the sky turned from peachy blush to azure.

  Grace missed Beck and cursed him. She allowed her brain to dwell on him, closed her eyes and brought his face back to hers, his lips, his arms. His image floated in her head, and all at once there were flames, a raging explosion of fire and a figure alight. His eyes bur
ned through the flames, boring into hers. Those eyes, green flecked with gold. I will not be consumed, the vision told her, and the hallucination was gone.

  Grace stood perfectly still, afraid to breathe. She wasn’t one for prophecies, unlike Nah-ah, who specialized in them. She didn’t dare tell her grandmother what she’d seen.

  Across the long yard, wrapped up warm against the morning chill in her own tipi, Straight Speaking tossed uneasily, dreaming of an unquenchable fire and a blackened tree that burned and burned without being consumed.

  The few clouds in the sky were long and feathery, dissipating in a wind too high to feel. The people from the camp at Cooper’s Creek came first. The lead wagon, long and four-wheeled with rubber tires, was pulled by two horses and driven by the old man named Joe Iron Pipe. Next to him sat his wife. The wagon was loaded with long white poles, bundles big and small. A variety of children ran and played alongside. One of the walkers had a shallow drum slung over his shoulder. Two more wagons arrived similarly loaded. Then Jim Calf Robe’s truck, also with lodge poles laid out over the cab.

  Grace brought food and drink and stood gossiping with the women while the men constructed tipis. Four lodge poles raised up, tethered at the top; other poles leaned against them, the painted hide coverings spread up and around them. All erected at an unhurried pace. Meanwhile, children formed bands and competed in running and climbing and singing and making a racket. By the middle of the morning, a dozen or so tipis and a couple of canvas ridge tents had reached various stages of completion. They formed a rough arc around an open area of grass. Grace moved among them, greeting and conferring, poised, chasing visions of fire from her head.

  Straight Speaking was absent; as the Medicine Woman who would preside over the Okan, she remained in her tipi to begin the week of fasting and meditation.

  The reluctant good Samaritan covered Beck with a coat and gave him tea and soup when eventually the fever broke and he awoke. His head was cool, and he was barely able to speak or walk or even to hold the cup offered him, much less ask questions about where they were and what happened to the burning rig, and where they were planning on going next. Day after day, the movement of the car rocked him back to sleep and he got what he needed most, which was rest and quiet and warmth. But every time he closed his eyes, he saw the figure of the burning man, and sometimes it was someone else but most often it was him.