Lone Rock

by Duane Lindsay

  He undressed, carefully hanging up the good quality suit, put on blue jeans and a pullover sweater of gunmetal gray. He sat back on the bed, piling two pillows for support. He picked up a pack of Winstons from the table and tapped one out, lighting it with a gold Zippo lighter. The flame lit up his face, making craggy shadows of black eyebrows, and glistening on blue eyes.

  If you discounted wine and women, both of which he thought of as hobbies, cigarettes were his only vice. He drank wine because he had little else to occupy him on the road and casually pursued women because he couldn’t have a steady relationship until these projects were complete. Another year, he thought calmly, certainly no more, and this would be over.

  Another million stolen.

  He picked up a paperback Harold Robbins novel and read for two hours before switching off the light and falling asleep.

  7 – It’s Farther Than You Think

  Adrian lay exhausted somewhere in Englewood, CO., alone on a sagging single bed in the Broadway Motor lodge.

  He dozed fitfully on a faded green cotton bedspread in an ancient pine paneled room, built when auto lodges were new, and last remodeled during the Nixon presidency. Fatigue, anxiety and several dozen cups of coffee had kept him awake enough to check in—Sign here, how many in your party? Credit’ card or cash? What’s you auto license number?” He waited in the gathering darkness for hours, noting the John’s meeting the Jane’s a few doors down, in rooms apparently rented by the hour, before falling into a dull, nervous sleep.

  He woke Saturday morning and looked around with a sort of mystified interest. How had he come to be here? Light seeped in through dirty shades, casting a cave like pall on the tiny room. The room was depressing: a bed here, night stand, lamp, TV on the dresser, heating unit on the wall, bathroom over there.

  Bathroom. Adrian got up and stretched. He opened a tiny bar of soap, shaved awkwardly, showered and dried off. He struggled into a tee shirt and the jeans with the slit in the right leg and went to the curtains, pulling them open.

  Light blinded him. Blinking, he gazed out at an old narrow parking lot, faded asphalt, oil stained and dirty with barely visible whitish lines marking spaces. Several cars were still parked despite the hour. He spotted his van across the way and felt slightly relieved, as if he hadn’t really believed it would still be there, unmolested.

  He grabbed the crutch, patted his hip pocket for the key and opened the door. He spotted a Denny’s down the block, within crutch distance and eventually he was sipping coffee from a thick white mug. He read the comics and considered the crossword for later.

  “More coffee?” asked a waitress, holding a pot.

  “Yes, please.”

  She stared at him as she poured. Adrian tried not to catch her eye, fearing she might ask.

  She asked. “What happened to you?”

  “Skiing accident.” Best not to explain Jesus Gallegos and the bus and the killing. Best not to even think about it.

  He was tired of driving. Bone weary in a way he’d never felt before, the idea of getting back in the van dismayed him. Why not stop here? He returned to the paper and spread out the want ads, reading them with an intensity born of need, circling anything even remotely applicable. He ordered a grand slam breakfast that he didn’t want so the waitress would leave him alone and circled eight possibilities.

  “Looking for work?” The waitress poured coffee in the mug.

  “Yes.”

  “Good place for it. Denver’s in a boom right now.” She sounded personally proud.

  Stiff from too long in the booth, his leg aching, he over tipped her and shambled back to the Motel, alone with the thin printed pieces of hope. Silting on the bed he read through them a dozen times.

  He looked at the phone on the bedside table and wished he’d brought his cell, knowing he would have thrown it from the window if the calls had continued.

  Sunday he went to the office for directions. He glanced down at the address scratched on the newspaper.

  “Where’s South Newton Street?” he asked to a sixtyish looking woman with dark curly hair. She wore a checkered blue and white cotton shirt with a western yoke and a pair of new Levis over polished pointy toed red cowboy boots. She put down a TV Guide and came over.

  Over a pair of reading glasses she noted the scar, the cast and the crutches and immediately became Adrian’s mother.

  “Child, what happened to you?” Her voice boomed loud in the small room.

  “Car accident.”

  “Bullshit.” She leaned forward, crowding the desk and Adrian backed away, nervous at the sudden closeness. She caught the movement, interpreted it correctly and toned down her personality.

  “I’m Delores.” She held out a hand, pulled it back, looked sheepish.

  “Adrian,” he said.

  “Pleased.” She sounded as if she meant it. “You’re not from Colorado are you?”

  “No.”

  “I knew it. I’m good at voices. Say something.”

  “Something? Like what?”

  “Back east,” she said, snapping her fingers with a loud crack. “Ohio.”

  “Cleveland.” Adrian smiled, making his scar stretch. “And you read it on the card.”

  She laughed out loud, pleased at Adrian as if he were a favorite son.

  “Oh my, we’re going to get on just fine.” She fiddled with something beneath the booth and lifted the counter top.

  “Now,” she said, advancing on him, “Let’s sit down and you tell me everything.”

  Everything was, of course, edited. She drank tea from a pot on the counter, loading it with five packets of sugar and two imitation creams, refilling the cup nine times while they talked. He hadn’t spoken to anyone in a long time and it felt good to hear his own voice and see sympathy in another person’s face.

  He didn’t talk about Jesus.

  He wondered, briefly, how she’d look if he told her, but quickly put the whim aside.

  She nodded to keep Adrian talking as the sun slowly set in an orange haze, marking the room with a peach hue, until he felt relaxed and peaceful. The front door opened and let in the muted rumble of cars passing on Broadway.

  A man entered, to the tinkling of the overhead bell. “Gerald,” said Delores in a pleased voice and rose to greet him. The man looked as windblown as an old rock. His bald head with a halo of white hair and a face deeply lined with creases made him appear gentle. Stomping his boots on an ancient welcome mat he stepped forward, looking at Adrian with friendly interest.

  He reached the chair where Adrian sat gently curled (left leg) and stiff legged (right).

  Adrian felt his own face tighten. It was an extraordinary sensation, like a cloud covering the sun, leaving a sudden darkness and chill.

  Gerald came closer, growing in Adrian’s perspective like a storm cloud.

  He shivered and his body trembled as adrenaline poured through him. His left hand tingled and burned and he clutched at the grip of the crutch, holding it like an awkward shield that could protect him somehow.

  Gerald paused, right hand extended, his expression puzzled. He looked back at Delores for help.

  Adrian’s eyes were wide and fixed on Gerald. His breathing became a gasping pant.

  “Back.” His voice was a hoarse whisper” “Please...get back.”

  In confusion and concern, Gerald obeyed.

  Adrian‘s crutch fell from his fingers and he curled his arms around his chest, sinking back further into the chair, fully in night, immobile in terror, repeating, “Now what?” as if it was a mantra.

  8 – Why Didn’t He Just Fly Away?

  Adrian escaped to his room, alarmed at his reaction. What the hell had happened in there? A guy gets a little close and I go all to pieces? Was this some new symptom of his injuries, like Vietnam veterans who experienced flashbacks? Could he have PTSD? He’d been fine with Delores, so what had happened? This was crazy.

  Yet the feel of no air to breathe, the tightness in his stomach, the
overpowering need to escape were very real. In the safety of the pine walled room, on top of the faded pastel green bedspread, Adrian could still feel the terror circling like scavengers all around him.

  He wasn’t safe here. He took a few deep gulps of air let the air out slowly until he could breathe again. He hobbled to the door, spied out, feeling eyes on him everywhere.

  He returned to the bed and brought out the ads from the Post. Yesterday, getting a job had been the first priority. Now, with the vague chemicals of fear still sloshing inside him, ancient programming in the genes called for safety. Food, shelter, clothing: mankind’s hardwiring; everything else was secondary. He felt no hunger; the idea made him gag. He needed shelter.

  Unwanted sections—Sports, Lifestyles, Business, Comics, Parade Magazine and Editorial went to the floor. Where were the classifieds? He picked through the pile again and spread the real estate ads on the bed.

  He circled twenty in frantic haste, not knowing Cherry Creek East from Green Mountain West. His interest was only for “house for rent” and “available now.” He pulled the motel phone to the bed and dialed.

  “I’m calling about the house for rent. Is it available?”

  “‘No.”

  “Thank you.”

  On a Sunday morning no one wanted to answer the phone at all, and an actual showing was out of the question. Adrian was down to his last three circled ads, listening to the ghostly ringing in the distance.

  “Hello?” An older woman’s voice.

  “The house?” Adrian peered at the ad. “On Coors Street. Is it still for rent?”

  “Sure is.”

  “Is it available?”

  “Yes.’”

  “I mean, now? Today?”

  “Yes.” Some uncertainty in the voice.

  “Can I see it?”

  “I suppose. When do you want?”

  Adrian consulted his watch: 11:30. “In an hour?”

  Definite suspicion now. “Why the rush?” she asked.

  “I just moved into town,” Adrian said quickly. “From Ohio. I’m an engineer.”

  Somehow that calmed her. If he was an engineer, he couldn’t be a drug dealer. “When did you say?”

  “Around 12:30?”

  “Sure. The Avs don’t play ‘til two.”

  She gave directions to a place called Friendly Hills, west near the foothills. Adrian gratefully hung up, left a fifty-dollar bill with the room key and fled.

  Denver in early spring had crisp cool air, dry and pleasant in the lungs with no trace of Lake Erie or the Cuyahoga River. To the north were the silhouettes of tall buildings, to the west the foothills ambled up to meet the white caps of the mountains. With few trees to block the view, Denver spread out to the horizon in all directions. Everything seemed brighter, sharper, more in focus than he remembered Cleveland.

  Friendly Hills, according to scrawled directions, was on highway 285, just past Bear Creek Lake, over to the north. Adrian took the exit he’d been told, turned left and right and got lost. He backtracked through a maze of rounded streets, past houses that all looked alike. The suburban standard of a late sixties building boom. Browns predominated, and pale green and tan and occasionally white on ranch or triplex homes. Garages in the front, short driveways full of cars. Several houses sported black and purple Rockies flags which fluttered in the slight breeze.

  Adrian found a gas station, re-oriented himself, and turned. He swung into a wide driveway in front of a brown brick and wood ranch-style house. It wore brown shutters like bruises next to peeling vanilla paint. The front door had been painted brown enamel, dulled and cracking after years of neglect.

  He struggled out of the truck, leaned against the open doorframe and stared. The yard was dead weeds and dirt. Sparse grass grew in isolated tufts. A small stand of aspen trees shimmied in the front corner amid a border of rocks, their leaves twisting silver-green with a tiny rustling noise like a miniature waterfall. An add-on porch hung over the front door, hovering atop the house like an angry sentinel.

  A woman opened the door before he could knock, gesturing him inside. Adrian entered a small living room where a picture window facing west provided a view of an identical house across the street.

  The carpet was beige. The walls had once been white, but now they glowed yellowish with tobacco stains. The windows held no blinds to keep out the afternoon sun.

  “I’m Mrs. Pocatello,” said a sagging woman of about seventy, wearing blue jeans and a faded checkered shirt. She was about the size of a wasp and as well proportioned. Tiny body, small waist, sharp features.

  She said, “What the Hell happened to you?”

  “I had a climbing accident.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Mrs. Pocatello lit a cigarette, appraising whether she wanted this this appointment to be over right now. Finally, deciding, she pointed with a cigarette and said, Living room.”

  She walked a few feet down a narrow hall and again pointed. “Bedroom.” Point. “Another bedroom.”

  Small rooms, each had closets with no doors. One of them had once been a bright blue. Beneath the white coat the old paint peeked out from baseboards and corners.

  She turned around so suddenly that Adrian had to swivel on his crutch to avoid her. She whisked down the hall like an aged spirit and pointed, without stopping at a door. “Laundry,” she said. You can wash your clothes in there.”

  I don’t have any laundry, thought Adrian.

  She shuffled along the hail. Trailing behind, Adrian reached the kitchen.

  “Kitchen,” she said. “The rent’s $1,600 a month. I want first and last and a deposit of $600. You can have pets or not, I don’t care. It’s available immediately, you can move your things in now.” She considered him like an indifferent auctioneer. “You want it?”

  I don’t have any things to move in, Adrian thought. It wasn’t exactly self-pity, though he could have made a case for it. Just a sour feeling. I have no things.

  He looked around the tiny kitchen. Cracked tan Formica countertops, too few cabinets and avocado appliances. The windows needed shades that he couldn’t put up, the walls demanded paint he couldn’t provide, the rooms needed furniture he didn’t have and couldn’t move if he did. It was as barren and lonely as a prison.

  He had never seen anything as grim in his life.

  “I’ll take it,” he said.

  Adrian woke up on the floor with a memory.

  When he was seven, his father had read him Robinson Crusoe. At one point in the story, his father read how Crusoe had come across a “grassy plain’ while exploring the island interior.

  Adrian listened for a while before giving in to curiosity. “Dad?” he asked solemnly. “If Robinson Crusoe found a grassy plane, why didn’t he just fly away?”

  Why didn’t he just fly away?

  Now, lying on the hard floor with a winter coat and a thin pillow, watching pale sunlight crawl along the ceiling, he’d become Robinson Crusoe himself. A castaway.

  He considered his plight. He was alone in a strange place. He had no food, few clothes, no furniture, pots, pans, utensils, glasses. His socks smelled, his body ached. he was injured, had no job and no prospects. He was unemployed and afraid. And—oh God!—he had to pee.

  With a groan he rolled up and over and rose to his knees. His back creaked. His joints popped. He felt ninety years old. He pulled himself to his feet, hopped to his crutch and teetered to the bathroom. Standing, one footed, swaying slightly as he relieved himself, he added, “and no toilet paper.”

  In the bedroom, he slipped on an oversized Cleveland Browns Tee-shin over various casts and bandages. He crutched through the very empty living room into the equally empty kitchen. Christ. not even a chair.

  Motionless in the early morning light, he began to realize the extent of his mistake. He should’ve packed. At least clothes, maybe a chair or two. He had room in the truck. But he’d been in such a panic.

  How would he have carried anything anyway? He coul
d have gotten Sheila to help, of course, but everything would be in the truck here and he couldn’t...he paused, thinking.

  Was this how Crusoe felt, isolated and desperate, alone on his island? Did he also want to sit down and wait for something to happen? Adrian didn’t know. He’d been too young when his father had read it. He only remembered the action parts, not the inhuman loneliness, the sense that no one in the whole world knew where you were—or cared.

  He sighed. The rush to this house had been another mistake. He should have stayed at the Motel. He should have taken longer to find a place, looked until he found something furnished. But he hadn’t been thinking clearly. Not thinking clearly was a problem.

  Okay. He shut his eyes and thought about Crusoe. What would he do? He’d get breakfast, Adrian decided. And here he had a distinct advantage over his fictional castaway. Here were restaurants. In fact, he’d seen a coffee shop not too far away.

  Progress. Everything else could wait except a shower and breakfast. He heard his stomach rumble an interior protest and thought about the continuing difficulties of bathing. The shower could wait.

  He drove to the White Spot diner and found a new problem not shared with Robin son Crusoe: people. Crusoe could look any way he pleased, but here in civilization people stared. From the moment he entered the diner, Adrian felt eyes crawling over him. He imagined them stopping on the casts, pausing on his bandaged face, wondering, “what the hell happened to this guy?”

  He saw the faces turn hastily away as he hobbled to the nearest booth, awkwardly twisted his body sideways to get in and leaned the crutch against the coat hook. He knew he looked like a derelict; battered, unshaven and smelly. He kept his head down as the waitress delivered coffee and a menu.

  Monday was a blue funk. He sat on the floor against the rear wall of the living room, his back against the faded paint. facing the window. Coming from the east, the sunlight was dim. From the floor Adrian couldn’t see anything but the patchy blue sky.

  He wondered what he was doing. Already he regretted running away. “It didn’t solve anything,” he told himself. He adjusted himself for a slightly less uncomfortable position, his leg stretched out stiffly on the brown carpet. His bad arm rested on his lap.