Joy, PA
Page 21
This is how many times we stab her.
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Aftermath. In the end, there is no mystery. There is no conspiracy. In the end, as in the beginning, there are only humans, mucking about in the slough. Abigail Augenbaugh stands in the yard, in her Sunday best, awaiting the Rapture. Her Rapture. Stands there through a light rain, through the spasms in her back, the cramping calves. Abigail stands, enduring in her penance the gawkers, the chiders, awaiting her Rapture.
“Jesus?” she says, mistaking the empty Coke bottle tossed from a passing car. “Are you there?”
No. In the end, Abigail Augenbaugh just goes back into the house. Just. The same house. In the end, there is Burns Augenbaugh, crying down in the basement after Pastor Mike left some soup on the doorstep. The tribulation—of local news, of courtrooms, of doctors, lawyers, and expert witnesses—is immediate and hellish. No other way to say it. But soon (predictably, inevitably) peters out. And before the summer is over, there is Tim DeFonzie, who mows the weedy patch of Augenbaugh yard, who takes his Weed Eater and trims around the house. Because it needs to be done.
No. In the end, the rooms of the Augenbaugh house are no more or less empty than before. The boy’s absence is as immense as his presence was. In the basement there is the sump pump’s obscene suck and the comforting roar (though subdued) of the crowd on the PGA Masters Historic Edition game.
One day, because it had to be done, Abby picks up Burn’s prescription from the pharmacy. At the register, she avoids eye contact. Looks instead at a display of Med-Minders, buys a blue one, a seven-day dispenser. That afternoon she organizes her husband’s pills for the week. Then, because it had to be done, she continues the practice.
In the end, Abigail Augenbaugh will go back to the Slinky plant, back to the blessed schkkk-chick-chicka of the box-and-tape machine. Some of the Slinky employees talk to her; some don’t. She doesn’t drive anymore, and in walking she passes the ad hoc shrine of candles and artificial flowers and photographs behind the apartments, near the dumpster, where Cheyenne Onkst died. Was killed.
In the end, Abigail will not know that one of the other waiters at the country club where Cheyenne worked will hang a strand of origami butterflies in her locker in the employee bathroom. Nor that many of her classmates in Bio 101, at the community college, will not notice her absence. Kids drop classes all the time. Abigail will not know these things. They will happen anyway.
In the end, there will be Carole Onkst and her estranged husband, fighting because he thinks cremation is “wrong.” Carole’s wishes will hold sway, but she’ll make concessions she’ll regret for the rest of her life. The father will have Cheyenne’s face tattooed over his heart. Carole will take a few weeks off as guidance counselor at Joy Area Middle School. She just isn’t capable of guiding. Abigail will not know these things.
The Rapture billboard will be plastered over with a Lite Beer advertisement featuring a girl in a really small bikini holding a hockey stick. Everybody will see the change. And the benign hump of Scald Mountain will press down upon Joy, PA, for the foreseeable future.
One day, Carole Onkst sits at a red light, thinking about (mercifully) nothing. It is May. Or June. Or July. It doesn’t matter. A bus pulls up in the next lane. Carole Onkst looks out of her window into the scowling face of a pink princess the size of her car: A Disney ad covers the length of the bus. Carole blinks, looks up, because she has to. Looks into the window, into another face, the face of the passenger looking back at her. Abigail Augenbaugh is on her way home from her weekly visit with Willie. The women see each other. Abigail looks away, because she has to.
The bus’s air conditioner is broken. Abigail struggles to catch her breath in the stifling heat. Because visiting hours are right after work, Abby wears her Slinky smock. The polyester fabric is hot and sticky. Abigail knows this intersection. She cranes her neck, looking between the rows of seats and through the windshield for something she couldn’t name. Carole Onkst means to flick on the turn signal, but her hands tremble and miss the mark. The windshield wipers flap madly. It is May. Or it is not. Scald Mountain doesn’t care. Abigail Augenbaugh can’t breathe, and in that airless, choking moment, does the bravest thing she’s ever done. She looks back, into the face of Carole Onkst. The face of Carole Onkst is there. Maybe it never left. The Bradford pear trees offer up their petals. The mountain, its shadow. Abigail looks and sees Carole Onkst lift her hand, slowly, and press her palm to the window. And Abigail Augenbaugh breathes in the gesture. And it is good.
Abigail Augenbaugh reaches toward her own thin pane. The traffic light turns green. The bus veers left, leaving a cloud of diesel smoke in its wake. Carole goes straight. And it is good.
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I am Willie. Do you know me?
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank the following for their expertise and generous support (and one of them for her very existence): Officer Kermit Alwine; Matt and Dalia Evans; Officer H. T. Fownes; Michael Griffith; Simon Lipskar; Michael “The Jerky Jenius” Lowery; Thomas Metzger; Lee Peterson; Marci Rowland, PhD; G. C. Waldrep; Gary James “Xavier” Weisel; and Jerry “The Godfather” Zolten.