by Minick, Jim;
“Do you know Jesus as your personal savior?” Dickson tilted his head to peer at him.
Will looked out over the valley. For months he had waited for this job, listening to Aunt Amanda say, “Any day now, any day.” He wanted to keep it. Yet what the hell should he say?
“That’s what I feared,” Dickson said. He started walking again, his short legs moving fast, his shoulders bobbing side to side. Will half jogged to keep up.
The day’s heat settled on them as they moved across the parking lot of the Blue Mountain Service Plaza. Will shifted the shovel in his hand to get a better grip. He and Buddy Dickson both lived on the other side of the mountain in Path Valley, but until this morning, Will had never really spoken to him. Back in high school, when Will rode the bus, a bunch of kids huddled on Dickson’s porch before getting on. They always grumbled about the old man coming out at 6:30 a.m. to make sure they weren’t smoking. They’d hold up those leaflets he handed them, about the end times coming soon. Then they’d drop them on the bus floor or sometimes light them with their matches and watch them burn. That all seemed like a long time ago. Woody had warned him, calling Dickson kooky. But this?
As they walked, Dickson popped his hands together—not a clap but louder, a pop caused by the fingers of one hand curved in an O. The sound echoed from the hillside, like a .22, a pop that never really boomed like a big gun but deadly all the same.
At the curb, Dickson looked up at the mountain behind Will. “I knew your mother, knew her before she married Sam, and I knew him, too. We went to school together, and I always thought she was a fine lady and a good Christian. She went to church faithfully even without your father.” He stared at Will. “She knew the way to heaven.”
Will wanted to spit but held it.
“But I’m worried you don’t, Will Burk. It has bothered me to no end that Sam let you wander into the dark depths of hell. So, I’ll ask you again—are you saved?”
Will kicked his toe on the pavement, the words about his mother sinking in.
Dickson waited a while before muttering, “I heard you had the Devil in you.” He took the shovel and leaned it against the trash can before stepping up on the curb. “I want you to sweep the lot. Start here.” He pointed to the exit ramp; he had to shout as a truck roared past. “And push it to the edge from twenty feet out.”
Will didn’t know how to respond to this demand. At his feet, cigarette butts and gum wrappers mixed with dried mud and gravel. All of it Dickson wanted him to push uphill.
“The trash goes in this can. Be sure to pick it out,” Dickson ordered. “The rest of it, the gravel and dirt, shovel it up on the bank, beyond the grass.”
Dickson checked, making sure Will understood. “And,” Dickson popped his hands, “I want you to go all the way to the other side, over there beyond the truck pumps and incinerator.”
The broad lot felt about the same size as the lower meadow back at Will’s home, at least an acre. The incinerator seemed like a quarter mile away.
Dickson paused while Will took in the task. “While you’re out here, I want you to think about that barn fire that happened yesterday. Hell is a thousand times worse than any fire here on earth.” He waited, but Will kept looking away. He didn’t know anything about any barn fire. “And I want you to think about your mother and the Lord. What would she want for you? And your father, too—who knows where he is now—but think about what he’d want for you. Consider all the good things God has done for you. He can save you, Will Burk, but you have to let him in.”
Dickson stepped down from the curb. “I expect you done with this by lunchtime, so get to it.” He marched back down the slope, his step, somehow, even lighter than before.
Will pushed the broom. “What the fuck do you know about my life, Dickson, you ol’ Dickhead? And to bring my dead mother and father into this. Shit.” With each stroke, the broom made a heavy swish and a swirling cloud. Dust coated the inside of his mouth, while the sun scorched his neck. Five minutes in, sweat stung his eyes and soaked his new shirt. He wished he was swimming at Lake Caledonia.
“So, this is how you pump gas?” Will spoke to the water hydrant. “I bet you could pump it good as ol’ Dickhead himself, don’t you think?” Will leaned on the broom handle, the whole plaza sitting before him. The Esso station and Howard Johnson’s Restaurant shared one long limestone building with a slate roof, all of it surrounded by several acres of parking lot. To his right, cars and trucks zipped along on the pike, heading to Philly or Pittsburgh or who knew where. Beyond the highway, farms filled the wide Cumberland Valley. To his left, the steep slope of Blue Mountain sagged over him, its long spine stretching to the east and west. High above in the cloudless sky, two ravens circled and chortled.
Sometimes he imagined seeing his mother—in the grocery store, out in the garden, or, this morning, in a car pulling out of the plaza. He had stared at her photo so much that her blue eyes and playful grin lived on the backside of his eyelids. “She died at your birth,” Aunt Amanda always said. Yet why only a year on her tombstone? Why no date, his date? And why did his father never speak of her when he asked? Damn him, anyway.
“And damn you, too, ol’ Dickhead,” Will mumbled as he swept. A car accelerated past heading out the exit, and the passenger threw out a cigarette butt. “Are you saved?” he imitated Dickson. “And what the hell are you going to say to him when he asks again, Will Burk?” He picked up the shovel and heaved the first pile of dirt. “What the fuck are you going to say?”
For a while, Hank Williams filled his head. Hear the lonesome whippoorwill. He sounds too blue to fly. Will had heard a whippoorwill last night outside his apartment window, there at the edge of Spring Run. It had surprised and pleased him to listen to that little bird so close.
He’d heard them as a child on his father’s farm, the rocking rhythm putting him to sleep. But his father didn’t like them, their loud calls “an aggravation.” One whippoorwill kept singing from a stump at the edge of their yard, so one evening, his father lit the stove and heated an empty iron skillet. When it got too hot to touch, his father picked it up with his shirttail, loped out of the house, and set the skillet on that stump. A few minutes later, the whippoorwill started to sing, but his song ended after the first whip. Will ran out to find an empty skillet. He was thankful for that, at least. He knew his father would’ve been happier to have a dead bird rather than a scared bird.
The midnight train is whining low. I’m so lonesome I could cry. Will matched his sweeping to the rhythm of the song. Gravel clattered in the shovel. He coughed from the great dust cloud.
Where he worked, Will couldn’t hear Woody or the other men at the pumps. They were too far away, and the cars building up speed as they passed drowned out all other sounds. Most of the travelers ignored him, but some beeped and waved. Will waved to the first one but stopped when he saw the jeering smile. Except for the cars and his swirl of dust, the air didn’t move. He bent to sort out burger wrappers, butts, and other debris. Dickson watched, so Will tried not to rest too often. Best to plow through this chore and be done.
Will’s biceps burned from pushing the damn broom, and the old injury in his right elbow flared with each stroke. The worst, though, were the blisters on his hands. They burst to reveal the rawness of each layer of skin—pink and red and seeping.
When his mother died, Aunt Amanda took over most of Will’s raising, and this included taking him to church. Even when he was only six, he tired of Mrs. Clayborne always having that “I’m so sorry for you, you little orphan boy” look in her old eyes. He hated the hard benches and the boring sermons. He hated everyone else sitting with their mother and father. He hated never getting an answer when he asked why the Lord couldn’t save his mom. And he especially hated the preacher saying the Lord worked in mysterious ways. Even at that age, Will knew it was a lie.
“So, I’m saved from going to church.” Will wiped his forehead and talked to himself. That might be the one thing he had in common wit
h his dad—that and blue eyes.
But Dickson was in his head now. “What do you believe in, Will Burk?” he heard Buddy ask.
“Goddamnit, what’s it any of your business?” Will almost shouted this. His sweeping quickened. “I believe in doubt, if you have to know. Or I believe in being saved from religion.” This brought a smile. He remembered Mr. Harris, his high school history teacher, who taught them to know thine enemy, so he had the class read a little of Mr. Marx. Will thought the old Commie had it right—that “opium for the masses” line.
I’m one of the not-masses, he thought. I believe in birds and trees and Aunt Amanda’s shoofly pies. A nip of whiskey every now and then. And, of course, the beauty of the female body, can’t forget about that.
Around 10:00, Woody brought him a glass of water. “How you doing?”
Will shrugged and spat.
Woody was two years older, and Will used to catch rides home from football practice with him in his sunrise red Chevy that flew over the hills at 90 mph. “My first day”—Woody talked fast, always talked fast—“I had to do this for ol’ Dickhead, too. That was two years ago, and I don’t think it’s been swept since.”
Will downed the water. “You got any beer in that car of yours?”
Woody looked at the Bel Air. “Not today. Can’t say I’d recommend it either, with ol’ Dickson. If ’n you want to keep your job.”
Woody offered him a stick of gum. “Don’t take it personal or nothing. This is just how he treats all the new hires.” He took in what Will had swept so far. “You’re getting it.”
Woody turned to head back to the pumps, but Will stopped him. “Did he try to convert you?”
“Oh, hell yeah. Me and everyone else that’s worked here since 1901. Just tell him what he wants to hear and he’ll leave you alone.” Then Woody added, “Buddy’s all right, just a stuffy bastard sometimes. But he’ll treat you right once you survive this.”
Will mopped his forehead and combed his hair before he returned to sweeping.
A raven cawed from somewhere to the north, close by. All morning, Will had heard or seen two of the big black birds, and several times he watched one fly down to the incinerator and pick up bits of donuts and hamburgers. Just about every time, the raven flew straight up to an outcrop above the plaza. “You got a nest up there, don’t you?” Will said as he watched for movement on the cliff. He considered how far a hike it might be, how much time it might take, and when he might be able to go look. Not today, but soon.
By 11:30, Will saw the end of his sweeping another fifty yards or so away. This close to the incinerator, the smell of rotten food wafted over him, rank in the dead air of summer. He had some shade, now, at least, but his hands burned with each grip of the handle. He’d given up cursing Dickson. And he’d stopped thinking about the fool he was, thinking his time working through high school at Ernie’s shop would somehow elevate his status in the pump jockey world. Instead, Will wished for another cup of water, or even better, a cold beer. And he wondered about that fire.
At noon, he pushed the broom one last time and walked into the garage to hand it to Dickson. “I hope you had time to think about all I asked you,” the old man said.
Will ignored him. He found his thermos of water and held it gingerly away from his blisters. Again, he thought of his father—all of those years of silence, of never getting answers, the power in just shutting up. Dickson got called out to the pumps, and Will sat on a swivel chair in the garage to eat his lunch.
Finally, after his meal, Will approached the pumps. There was a break in traffic, so the men gathered in a loose circle. Will shook hands as Dickson said their names. Along with Woody, Will knew round-faced Scoop, who’d taught him in Sunday school when Will used to go, and Dino, whose red hair flared at first base on the Doylesburg softball team. But he didn’t know the other one—a tall, bald man named Bishop; he lived somewhere on this side of the mountain, just off the Blue Mountain exit.
Will crossed his arms and listened. Someone asked Bishop about a barn fire.
“It was as big as the Bailey fire two years ago,” Bishop said slowly. “Almost as big as the sock factory fire way back.” He kept his head down. “And there wasn’t a damn thing we could do. We pulled in and emptied our tanks, sprayed close to ten thousand gallons, all for nothing. We saved the other buildings, but not the big one.”
Scoop saw the question on Will’s face. “The Peter Franklin farm at the edge of Hopewell, just on the other side of that little ridge there.” He pointed to the southwest, across the pike. Will looked to see a thin column of smoke still rising.
“The daughter, Ada, works at HoJo’s,” Woody said. “She’s a looker,” he added with a wink. “I already tried, but she’s too religious for me. You might have better luck.”
“Anyone hurt?” Dickson asked Bishop.
“Not too bad, I don’t think. Jesse Shupe sucked in too much smoke and had to sit in the ambulance for a while. And one of the Franklin women burned her hands real bad. I think it was Kate, the mother. Those two women, boy, I tell you, they went into that burning barn before anyone else showed up, and they got all them animals out, all but one that got pinned under a beam. Them cows must’ve been some kind of panicked, but those women loosed every one.”
They were all quiet for a moment. Then Dickson asked, “Cause?”
“Hard to tell. Probably green hay or bad wiring. Seems like it’s always one of those two.” Bishop turned to face the pike. “They say the daughter’s a powwow doctor. Say she can heal people, cows even.” He watched the traffic. “I hope she can work her magic on her mother and them cows that got burned.”
A Cadillac pulled up, and Dickson told Bishop to take his lunch break. Then he swung his arms and clapped. “OK, Burk, time to pop that cherry.” A retired couple waited in their shiny car.
“Easy now,” Scoop teased.
“Don’t scratch that baby,” added Dickson. For a moment, this was the only customer, so the men stood or leaned on the pumps to watch.
“That boy’s starting out in style,” Dino said, while he tucked his shirttail into his pants. “You watch out, Buddy, he’ll be manager in no time. No doubt about it.”
“Normally we’d all help you,” Woody explained. “But this first time, we want to make sure you get it right in case Dickson, here, decides to go find that broom again.”
Will ignored them, tried to look calm while he checked the oil.
“You missed a spot.” Woody nodded toward the back window Will had just washed.
“And make sure you wipe the headlights,” someone else added.
When the Cadillac pulled away, Scoop slapped Will’s shoulder and said, “Congratulations.”
Under his breath, Dino said, “Well, it’s done.” Then louder, “I think he owes us a case of beer, what you say?”
They all agreed.
Will just shook his head and looked away.
The banter continued all afternoon as the customers kept rolling through—businessmen in ties, their suit coats over the backseat, families on vacation, station wagons packed with kids, stuffed toys, beach chairs. In slow moments, Will and the other men told jokes or traded punches. In busy times, they just sweated and kept the cars rolling.
When his shift ended at 3:00, Will was glad he could ride home with Aunt Amanda. He adjusted the quarter-pane window to blow the wind onto his face.
“It looks like you survived Buddy,” she said as they pulled onto the pike. “Tell me what happened. What did he have you doing?”
“I had to sweep the lot.” Will looked in the side mirror at his grimy face. He should’ve washed better before he left. “Got these as a result.” He opened his palms to show her.
Aunt Amanda glanced at his hands and shook her head. “I was afraid of that. He can be a scoundrel, that man. I’m sorry you hurt your hands. I thought he had given up that little ritual.” The wind blew one of her gray curls loose, but even after a day of work, her HoJo’s uniform looked
freshly ironed. “I thought about warning you, then realized you’d find out soon enough. You just go along with his demands, and he’ll leave you alone eventually.”
His whole life, Aunt Amanda Wingert had warned him about everything—swimming in the deep hole, riding his bike on the road, playing his sax too loudly, even in the barn. And later, drinking Old Tom Stoddard’s home brew. Yet here, for the first time, she hadn’t said a word. Will was too tired to ask why.
Aunt Amanda reached to turn on the radio. The announcer said that at least forty U.S. soldiers were killed in Korea in battle that day. She quickly clicked it off.
Will watched the trees slip past. He leaned against the door and closed his eyes. He didn’t want to think about Dickson or Korea or anything. The wind blew his hair as he fell asleep.
6
Same Day
The morning after the fire, Ada woke to the taste of smoke and the thought of Jesse Shupe. She didn’t want to remember him, yet there he was, touching her chin, clucking his tongue at her. She wondered what he had thought last night, and if he was all right. Mid told her that he had to sit in the ambulance for a little while, but he didn’t stay there long. Ada brushed her hair and tried to think about something else. She didn’t look out the window.
Instead, she made tea—that was all her stomach could handle. After a few sips, she called Mabel, her manager at HoJo’s, to tell her she wouldn’t be coming to work today. “I need to stay home,” her voice hoarser than usual.
Mabel had heard about the fire, about her mother’s hands, and said, yes, of course. “Stay home tomorrow, too, if you need to.”
Ada mixed batter for biscuits. Even if she couldn’t eat, she could feed her parents. She remembered when she was eight and her mother forced her to stay inside. Ada wanted to go out with her father and brother, wanted to help with the milking. “Why do I have to stay in and Nathan can go out?” she had asked.