The Wash

by Cary Christopher

  Javier nodded again, “I agree and he’s not a friend. More like an acquaintance. We worked together briefly.”

  Steve drained his beer, “Let me ask you something then. He’s asking me to help him out with a car. Should I do it?”

  Javier turned to Steve, “I wouldn’t. Jason Reller is the least honest man I know. You’re very likely to get fucked over somehow.”

  “That’s kind of the vibe I got.”

  The two turned back as J.B. distributed the glasses again.

  “Shots are ready,” he said. “You ready for another beer to go with yours?”

  Steve tipped up his bottle and let the last few drops dribble past his lips, ‘I am now.”

  He was feeling better and better now that the alcohol was hitting his system.

  “J.B. put another round for these guys on my tab,” Javier offered.

  “Thanks man,” Steve said and slapped Javier on the shoulder.

  “No problem,” Javier downed his shot and motioned to Robert to join him.

  The two men walked away from the group and over toward the kitchen door in the back of the bar.

  “You see who’s here?” Javier nodded toward the booth where Reller sat idly chatting.

  “I couldn’t miss him. It’s not like he was trying to be discreet. He came right in and made himself at home.”

  “Do you know what he’s doing here?” asked Javier.

  “No. I didn’t get any phone calls today arranging a meet up. Did you?”

  “No.”

  Robert pushed the door to the kitchen open and Javier followed him in, “I also don’t see any other professionals in the building, present company excluded. If he’s got no business here, he’s breaking the rules.”

  “He’s already breaking the rules,” Javier said, “Steve just asked me about him. He went to the shop and started asking for help with a fast car. The stupid son of a bitch even dropped my name as a business acquaintance.”

  “What do you want to do?” asked Robert.

  Javier stared through the small window at the red-haired man, “I’ll call Fenton tomorrow. We need to have a powwow about his boy. If Fenton wants to continue dealing through Jim’s, he’s got to keep Reller in line.”

  “Sounds good,” Robert said.

  As the two men walked back into the bar, Javier stole a glance back toward Reller. For the tiniest moment, the two locked eyes and Javier could swear he saw the red-haired man smile.

  At the far end of the bar, Derek and Randall Thompson sat huddled over two glasses, their graying, unkempt beards coming perilously close to soaking up whiskey. The elderly brothers were regulars at Jim’s, coming in for a drink five to six nights out of the week. Anyone outside The Wash would say the two had a problem, but those in The Wash knew otherwise. Neither were alcoholics. They generally bought one drink each and just sat quietly at their corner of the bar. That said they were far from what most would call normal. Derek and Randall were twins and neither of them had ever spent more than a few hours apart in their entire lives. They ate, drank, worked and lived together. As far back as anyone could remember the Thompson boys had been more like the town hermits. Their house lay way out on James Ogden Trail where the pavement gave way to gravel. Beyond that the road continued up into the mountains and got lost somewhere on the other side. The two men lived in the same house they grew up in. Neither had ever attended a public school and as far as anyone knew, neither had ever been married nor even been seen with a woman. Their parents had been farmhands who worked for the Ogdens when there were still Ogdens in The Wash. Growing up, it was obvious the boys didn’t have a knack for academics but they could carry out tasks well enough. They were perfect for the type of hard manual labor that comes with working on a farm. By the age of six, the boys were working with their father and later, when the farm sold, it didn’t take too long for them to find work again.

  Hygiene, however, was not their forte. As anyone who worked with them or got near them at the bar could tell you, Mondays were always the best to sit next to them. Through sheer habit, they tended to bathe on The Lord’s Day. The rest of the week, grooming consisted of a reapplication of Right Guard each morning. Neither would have gone that far if not for Chris Jenks, their supervisor at the Sevier River Dairy Farm. After their first week on the job, he told them, “If I can smell you above the cow shit, then it’s bath time, fellas.”

  Seeing that they didn’t quite follow where he was headed, he explained the merits of using deodorant and the boys took the information without being offended. They simply stopped at the General Store on their way home and bought Right Guard, since it was the only deodorant Chris had named. Now they bought a stick every two weeks and shared it. While they were dirty and eccentric, they were also part of The Wash and the regulars at Jim’s would have felt something was amiss had they not been there each week. The locals would nod or say hello but rarely did anyone sit with them or try to talk. The only person who did regularly speak to them was Robert, who always made it a point to say hello and ask how they were doing. Derek Thompson liked Robert well enough. Randall didn’t much care for anyone but he would nod and smile through his thick gray beard.

  Derek cupped his glass of whiskey in two hands and stared across to the other side of the room. Randall followed his gaze.

  “That’s him, ain’t it?” he said with an inflection more statement than question.

  Derek grunted, “Yep.”

  “What do you think he’s doing out there?”

  “Don’t know.”

  The sound of the music and conversation drifted around them for a few moments.

  “I don’t like him,” Randall said.

  “Me neither.”

  “Property is property.”

  “Yep.”

  “Laws is laws.”

  “Yep.”

  Across the bar, Jason Reller looked at the two men staring holes in him. He raised a glass to them but neither man responded. He frowned slightly and went back to his conversation.

  “Don’t nobody know what he’s doing out there,” Randall said.

  “Nope.”

  “I’m bettin’ it ain’t no good though.”

  Derek turned to Randall.

  “We should stop him.”

  Randall nodded, “He shouldn’t be out there.”

  “Property is property,” Derek repeated.

  “And laws is laws.”

  V

  Steve, Wendell and Cindy stumbled out of Jim’s and into a bitter cold Utah night.

  “I’m okay to drive,” said Steve and even as he said it, he knew he wasn’t anywhere near ‘okay’. Still, all three of them lived less than a couple of miles away. With no chance of police around and practically no one out this late, he figured there was no harm in offering.

  “We should just walk,” Wendell replied.

  “I’m for walkin’” Cindy chimed in.

  “Suit yourselves, I gotta get home.”

  Steve fiddled with the keys and walked over to his battered Dodge pickup. Climbing into the cab, he unlocked the passenger door but no one followed his lead. He looked back and saw the two of them headed toward the highway, hands shoved in their pockets and weaving slightly.

  “Well, maybe Wendell will get lucky after all,” Steve said to himself. He fired up the truck, backed out and honked on his way by. Focusing hard, he managed to keep between the lines long enough to turn right at the first road. It wasn’t the most direct route to his house but it was off the main highway and even though there were hardly ever troopers who bothered driving through The Wash, Steve felt more comfortable this way. The road was lined with houses on his left side. On the right there was open pasture broken up by a large pond fed by the river. The Ogdens dug the pond to water their cattle over a hundred years before. Now it was privately owned by a rancher who lived near Panguitch. The only thing on that side of the road that didn’t belong to the rancher was a small patch of land at the very end, where it doglegged left. Th
at was deeded to Cindy’s family years before and she lived there in the same house in which she grew up.

  ‘Shouldn’t take them too long to get this far,’ thought Steve as he made the turn.

  He drove the final two hundred yards to his house and pulling into the driveway, he saw the light on in the living room. Sara would be in front of the television. She’d probably push him into the bedroom unless she thought he was too drunk. Then she’d likely just let him fall asleep on the couch beside her. Either way, he knew she wouldn’t say a word about the tequila on his breath, the late hour or the fact he was drunk.

  As he fumbled with the door lock, Sara yanked it open. She grabbed him and pushed her lips up against his. Her breath was salty with sweat and Steve realized she wasn’t wearing anything as he wrapped his arms around her.

  “I’ve been waiting all night for you to get home,” she breathed as she pulled away.

  “What’s gotten into you?”

  “Do you really care?” she asked, pushing her hips up against him. He picked her up and kicked the door closed behind him.

  Wendell and Cindy had been walking about ten minutes when he finally got up the nerve to put an arm around her. They had turned off the main road and were walking past the old Ogden pond. The wind was picking up and it was cutting right through Cindy’s jacket. Wendell pulled her close to him.

  “It’s not much but at least it’s a little warmer,” he offered.

  Cindy knew exactly where this was going and even though she didn’t really want to go there, she didn’t push him away. The fact was, it did make things a little warmer. But he was still too young and way too naive for her.

  They walked a little further before Wendell leaned his head a little closer to hers and she pulled away and stopped.

  “What?”

  “Look,” Cindy started, “I don’t know exactly what you’ve heard about me but getting me drunk isn’t the way into my pants, Wendell.”

  His shoulders dropped as Cindy resumed walking without him. He jogged up next to her.

  “I appreciate you walking home with me and I appreciate you finding me attractive, but you’re way too young. I’m 32, Wendell. I’ve got to be at least ten years older than you.”

  Wendell perked up, “But you’re not. You’re only eight years older. Eight years is nothing.”

  “No, Wendell. Eight years is everything when the eight years involves a guy in his twenties. You’re still just a bag of walking hormones. I’m not looking for that. I’ve had fifteen years of dating guys like that.”

  The two walked in silence until they came up on Cindy’s house. Facing him for the first time, she noticed just how bloodshot his eyes were.

  “Look, you’ve got at least another fifteen minutes to walk from here. Do you want to come inside and warm up for a minute? You could borrow a blanket or something to wrap around you for the walk home.”

  “Nah. I’ll jog it and be warm enough. It won’t be that long. I’ll wait here and watch to make sure you get inside safe.”

  Cindy smiled, “Chivalry is a good start to winning me over.”

  “Allow me to walk you to the door then.”

  He walked up the driveway with her and watched as she got the door unlocked.

  “Well thanks for walking with me,” she said and even through his drunken optimism Wendell heard in her voice the evening was over.

  “See you around,” he nodded and headed back to the road.

  The air was icy cold against his cheeks and while it didn’t sober him up, it did help him keep the world from spinning out of control. He stopped, stretched his chin toward the sky and took a deep breath. It sobered him a little more and he looked back down toward Ogden Pond. The moon was full and bright, shining down on the water and lighting up the pasture in a soft white glow. He’d seen Ogden Pond almost every day for the last three years but tonight, it seemed like it was out of place, like it was somehow a different shape or not quite real.

  He shook his head quickly to clear it and started to turn back in the direction of his house. Something moved on the edge of the pond. He paused and stared, squinting through the tequila haze.

  Sitting on its haunches and peering intently at the water sat a coyote.

  “The hell?” Wendell mumbled and took a step toward the pond. He’d never seen a coyote around here before.

  As he watched, the water rippled slightly and what looked like a bloated human torso emerged. It pulled itself up far enough that its upper body was in the shallows, its back end still submerged. Propped on one slimy, wet hand the thing gestured to the coyote and then toward the road.

  Wendell strained to get a closer look. There was something fuzzy and faded about the thing in the water. It wasn’t quite there. He took a hesitant step toward the pond when suddenly the thing looked directly at him. In the moonlight, Wendell could see its giant black eyes and broad lipless mouth. The face looked squashed, flattened and broad.

  ‘It’s a frog,’ he thought. ‘It’s a giant fucking frog.’

  The lips pulled back to reveal hundreds of needle-like teeth and Wendell could swear he heard it hiss above the sound of the wind. The coyote turned in his direction also. It stood up on all fours and started trotting toward him. Wendell turned and ran.

  For the first hundred yards, he swore he could hear soft padded feet following him but soon lost the sound in his own breathing and the pain of his burning lungs. He went full speed and when he made it to his doorstep, he snuck a look behind him as he fumbled for his keys. There was nothing but the street and the long, fingers of the nearly barren oak tree bordering his lawn.

  He got the door open, stepped inside and locked it behind him before collapsing against the entryway wall and sliding to the floor.

  “It’s the tequila,” he said, still gasping. “No more tequila.”

  Outside the wind picked up and the temperature continued to drop.

  VI

  When morning came, Cindy’s head felt like her brain had been replaced with a felt balloon. Everything was soft and fuzzy in the light of the new day and she couldn’t seem to focus on anything she tried to do. Luckily, she had the day off from Dora’s, so there really was no need to even get out of bed if she didn’t feel like it. She lay there thinking about everything that had happened the night before and wondered about the bits that weren’t clear. Despite his protests to the contrary, J.B. seemed to be sulking. For her part, she’d known the relationship was going nowhere. Even if he’d kept her around, he wasn’t interested in settling down with anyone. In fact, besides tending bar at Jim’s she couldn’t figure out just what it was he wanted to do with his life. The man read constantly about all kinds of subjects but about nothing she thought would do him any good in the real world. It was all mythology, religion and conspiracy theories.

  One time he spent an entire evening trying to convince her there really was a government UFO cover-up. The thing was, it hadn’t sounded all that crazy coming from him. At first she thought it may be just infatuation but later she realized it was because he was so logical in his explanations. In fact, he never asked her to believe there were little green men. He just asked her to acknowledge there were things in the sky people couldn’t explain. It was hard to fault him on that line of reasoning.

  The other thing that intrigued her was J.B. didn’t fit the description of a UFO nerd. He was broad shouldered, dark and had the body of a weightlifter but not the macho personality. That was what first captured Cindy’s interest. The fact he wasn’t just a hard-bodied lunkhead set him apart and for the first few weeks she thought she’d finally found a guy in The Wash who wasn’t two-dimensional. Soon she realized he was just like all the others. He only wanted two things: someone to screw and someone to listen to him. He never asked her what she was feeling, what she was hoping or about what her ambitions were. He just never seemed to care. She realized it was another dead end within the first two months of them sleeping together. Still, she decided to let the relationship run it
s course because looking around, there weren’t many other options.

  She looked over at the digital clock on her nightstand. It was just after 9:30. Even though she wanted to just lay there and wait for the hangover to pass, the thought of a cup of coffee and her need to pee got the better of her. She threw the covers off her legs, sat up and rolled off the side of the bed. Everything swam for a moment and then she got her feet under her again. She shuffled to the toilet and just as she sat down, there was a knock at the front door.

  “Just a minute!” she yelled, though she doubted anyone could hear her from the bathroom. She tried to think of who it could be but came up blank.

  The doorbell sounded as she finished up. She glanced in the mirror and realized just how horrible she looked. The bell rang again.

  “Just a minute! I’ll be right there!”

  Wearing only a long t-shirt and underwear, she grabbed a pair of sweatpants sitting on top of the dryer in the hall and quickly stepped into them. She was tying the drawstring when she reached the door, unlocked the bolt and opened the door a crack.

  “Ms. Walker?” the well-dressed older man at the door inquired.

  “Can I help you?”

  He smiled a broad smile at her, “I’m hoping you can. I’m not sure if you know me or not, but my name is Phillip Anderson and I own the car lot at the other end of town.”

  “I’ve heard about you. Look, I’m not in the market for a car right now...”

  “I’m not here to sell cars,” he interjected. “The fact is, I’d just like to spend a few minutes talking to you about your house.”

  Cindy sighed, “I’m not in the market for any aluminum siding either, or painting, or a new roof.”

  “You misunderstand me. I don’t want to sell you anything. I’m here to ask you a few questions about your house. I understand it may be an inconvenient time so if you don’t feel like talking now, I would be happy to come back.”