Marvel and a Wonder

by Joe Meno

  “Yes ma’am.”

  She nodded, buttoned up her blouse, and turned to stare out at the factory’s broken shadows. He had hurt her feelings somehow, not meaning to, but he had hurt her deeply, he knew that now, and wished he had had the sense or the guts to never have climbed into her car.

  “How is that horse of yours?” Lucy asked, giving the key in the ignition a quick turn. “It’s a quarter horse, isn’t it?”

  “Yes ma’am. She’s fine. Raced against one of Bill Evens’s two weeks ago and won.”

  “Bill Evens? He’s awful smooth. You better keep an eye out for fellas like him.”

  “I got faith in our little mare.”

  “She sounds like a sleeper. I grew up riding horses, you know.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You ever ride her?”

  “No ma’am. One of my farmhand does. She’s too fast for someone who don’t know how. To be honest, the idea of climbing on top of it makes me a little sick to my stomach. We set out there and watch her run, though. That’s enough for me.”

  “That’s a shame,” she said flatly. “She being a racehorse with no other horses around. They’re pack animals, you know. They do much better in pairs or a herd.”

  “Well, we try not to let her get lonely. I’ve been thinking of maybe getting a goat for her. Keep her company.”

  “Well, I won’t keep you,” she whispered, pulling up beside the curb on Main.

  “About them coyotes, ma’am? Would you still like us to come out your way?”

  “I don’t know. You all have done enough for me already. Jim Dooley was just out there the other day fixing my septic tank.”

  “Well, I believe I got a few traps laying around. It wouldn’t be any trouble. You name the day.”

  “I hate to burden you.”

  “How’s tomorrow afternoon?” Jim asked.

  “Tomorrow afternoon it is,” she said with a little smile.

  Jim opened the car door and climbed out, then turned and leaned in through the open window. “Ma’am?”

  “Yes, Jim?”

  “About that other thing?”

  “What other thing?”

  Jim stared at her, her dark eyes now shaded by a pair of sunglasses. Somehow, without him even noticing, she had touched up her lipstick. He looked away quick, understanding it had all been a mistake and nothing she wanted to mention or hear talked about again.

  “We’ll see you tomorrow, ma’am.”

  The station wagon pulled away, rattling as it went, its muffler sparking along the pavement. Jim looked across the street and noticed that the screen door of the Bide-A-While had been propped open. He glanced down at his watch and saw it was already past four o’clock. He straightened the white cattleman hat, made sure his shirt was buttoned, and then moseyed across the street, his constitution upended, his whole body in fierce need of a stiff drink.

  * * *

  The arcade at the truck stop a few blocks from the town square was the only place that had both Galaga and Centipede. They were old-school. They were the real deal, from when video games were about the future. The future when people would just be brains. Everything now seemed like it was being made for the jocks at school. They were all about guns or cars. Because outer space was for little kids. And nerds. The boy, Quentin, had no problem admitting he felt like both. He stared down at the overly simple, blockish shapes, smiling, seeing that none of his top scores had been beaten on either machine. There were a couple of truckers, he had seen them playing before, who were pretty serious about Galaga. They were a lot older than him but remembered the game from when it had first come out. It didn’t matter, because these two machines were his, his high-score nickname QQQ glowing brightly at the top of each of their electronic registers. The boy turned and shoved his crumpled-up dollars into the change machine. Three dollars would give him twelve games, which he had more than enough time to play. He turned his headphones up as loud as they would go, the bass causing the Walkman’s small speakers to vibrate, Biggie shouting, “Catch me if you can like the gingerbread man / You better have your gat in hand,” the white spaceship darting back and forth along the bottom edge of the arcade screen, the angular insects making their march forward. Two truckers, both of them with greasy-looking ball caps atop their heads, one with a reddish beard, the other leaner, stepped over from the tiny diner to watch.

  “I seen this kid play before,” the tall one said. “He can play the hell out of this game.”

  They stood over the boy’s shoulder as he jerked the joystick back and forth, tapping the fire button feverishly. One line of insects after another disintegrated in tiny puffs of smoke. There were the red and yellow honeybees, the red and pink butterflies, the greenish-looking mantises. When a boss Galaga swooped onto the screen, trying to capture his ship, the boy quickly dodged its blue-green waves, hiding in the corner until it was safe.

  “Dang,” the one with the red beard muttered. “This boy is like Rain Man.”

  “He is.”

  The boy smiled, tapping the fire button again and again, the reflection of his two admirers making brief, ghostly shapes along the surface of the screen. When he had finished his first game, only using three quarters to get to the thirty-second level, finally biting it on the challenge screen, he turned and nodded at the two men standing nearby.

  “I can put your names under the high score if you want me to,” the boy said. “I’ll do it for thirty dollars.”

  “What?” The two truckers looked at each other, completely confused, then smiled back at him.

  “I’ll sell you my high score. For thirty dollars. I can put your name there instead.”

  The one with the red beard laughed, the other shrugged his shoulders, and both said that they were not much interested in having their names recorded as the best players at Galaga. Quentin pushed his glasses up against his face, then went back to his game, dropping another quarter, capturing the top three high-score positions entirely for himself, entering QQQ each time, glancing over his shoulder to see if maybe the two truckers had changed their minds. But they hadn’t.

  When he saw it was almost quarter to four, he purposefully crashed his spaceship three times, killing himself and ending the game. And then, like a gunslinger, he strode away from the tiny truckstop arcade out into the shallow, vanishing sunlight. Though his headphones were still blasting Biggie’s rhymes, he was almost certain that the two men were standing behind him, watching him go, talking to each other, wondering what his real name was.

  * * *

  What the grandfather tended to drink when he came to town was beer. Two beers, in bottles, always Miller Lite. He had rarely failed to order the same thing, every Saturday, for the last thirteen or fourteen years, ever since the boy and his mother had appeared one day, squatting on the front steps, a single suitcase and a paper sack full of clothes at their feet, both of them looking dirty and scared. Since then, he had made it point to drive into town at least once a week, whether for supplies or simple escape.

  But today he asked for a shot of Crown Royal. Gordon the barkeep smiled, staring down at the already uncapped bottle of beer in surprise. Gordon was a leather-faced old-timer with a patch of closely cropped white hair, cut exactly the same way it had been in the navy nearly fifty years before. His arms and hands were covered in age spots and brown moles. A blotchy tattoo of an eagle perched on an anchor was fading to a blue smudge along his right forearm.

  “Whiskey? But I already popped the top on this one for you.”

  Jim sighed, wiping the sweat on the back of his neck with a white handkerchief. Somehow the handkerchief smelled like her, like magnolia, and something else, syrup or sugar water, he wasn’t sure what.

  “A man’s got the right to change his mind once in a while,” the grandfather said.

  “You don’t want the beer then?”

  “I’ll take the shot of rye like I said.”

  “Well, you don’t go changing something like that, just like the
weather. You sure you don’t want this one?”

  “Gordon.”

  “Jim.”

  “Do you got a shot of whiskey back there or not?”

  “I do, but I’m wondering if I might be a little too superstitious to serve it to you.”

  “They serve drinks at the VFW still?” Jim asked, picking up his hat.

  “Not until after six. So I guess you’re stuck with me until then.”

  “Are you going to serve me or not?”

  “I haven’t decided yet. Is everything all right out your way?”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Well, if I wake up tomorrow and the moon’s where the sun’s supposed to be, I’ll know why.”

  “Fine, fine, just pour me my drink.”

  Gordon turned, sought out the bottle, poured a generous amount into a filmy shot glass, and then slid it suspiciously across the counter to Jim. “We got peanuts too,” he muttered.

  “I don’t care for peanuts. You know that as well as anybody.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you, seeing you drinking hard liquor, I don’t know what I know anymore. I’m wondering if I’m having one of them, whatdoyacallit, out-of-body experiences.”

  “It’s not likely.”

  “You got a reason to be drinking hard liquor? Is it an anniversary or something? Maybe I shouldn’t be joking.” He squinted at the grandfather and then spoke in a tender voice: “Is today the day you lost Deedee?”

  Jim heard the name out loud and a nerve as raw as winter sprung in the corner of his eye like he’d been stung by something. He stared at the amber liquid before him, closed his eyes, then flung it back. It burned all the way down, turning to heat near his chest, landing at the bottom of his stomach.

  “Nope. Just wanted a change of pace is all.”

  “Well, you’re entitled to that. As much as anyone, I guess. How is everybody out your way? Your grandson heading back to school?”

  “Supposed to go back in a week. All he does now is sit up in his room listening to his music and playing the video games. It’s a chore to get him to raise a hand to help, but he does. I don’t know what kind of future a boy like that is gonna have. I’m thinking he oughta consider joining up. The army, I mean.”

  “These army boys today, they don’t got to worry about nothing. They get sent to Germany, Japan. They got nobody shooting at them, nobody looking to do them any harm. We got rid of all the bad guys and now these soldiers just sit around playing pretend.”

  “He ain’t got the meanness for it. He cries to see a peep get sick.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “He takes after his mother in that way. His grandmother Deedee too. She would sob if a sparrow fell.”

  “Well, they ain’t like us anyway. The world’s a different place now, that’s for sure.”

  “That it is.”

  “You want that beer now?”

  Jim looked down at the empty shot glass and shook his head. “I’ll take another one of these if that don’t send you into a spin.”

  Gordon smirked, surprised once again, and slid the glass into his palm. “You drinking to remember or drinking to forget?”

  The cigarette smoke from the rest of the bar seemed to curl about Jim’s head, the cloud of it reflected in the mirror behind the rows of glass bottles in the half-light of the bar. He did not answer, just gazed down at a cut on his left thumb and noticed that the jukebox was playing a song he used to know by George Jones and Tammy Wynette. They sang raucously, “Our Bach and Tchaikovsky is Haggard and Husky . . .”

  Gordon poured a second shot and slid the stubby glass across the counter. “I said, you drinking to remember or drinking to forget?” Gordon repeated, proud of his own cleverness, which, in this particular atmosphere, was not a feature he could always show off.

  “Neither one, I guess.”

  “You just in a drinking mood then?”

  “I guess.”

  “You mind me asking how’s that daughter of yours?”

  Jim considered the question and the liquid before him, like a glassful of honey, its surface serene and still. “You’d have to go over to Gary if you want an answer to that one,” he muttered, tossing back the shot.

  “She’s over there now, huh? You think she’ll come back for her boy and bring him to live in Gary with her?”

  Jim, feeling the tremendous warmth extending all the way up from his belly, just shook his head, his thumb resting on the rim of the empty shot glass.

  “Well, you’re a right-kind fella in my book for taking him in. A fella of your age, expected to look after some young person whose own mother don’t have the time. You’re a better man than me. My girls bring their kids around, and after a half hour I’ve had my fill. You say you thinking about getting him to join the military?”

  “It’s a thought.”

  “Sounds like a losing battle,” Gordon said. “Either way, you still be worried about him.”

  Jim nodded, once again in silence, not wishing to engage Gordon on the subject any longer.

  “You want that beer now?”

  “All right.”

  Gordon dug into the cooler under the counter and found the bottle that had already been uncapped. He set it before Jim with a grand gesture, even going so far as to slide a paper napkin underneath it.

  “So how’s that horse of yours?”

  “Fine.”

  “Fine,” Gordon said, mocking Jim’s curt answer. “Someone gives you a racehorse and all you say is fine? Is that all?”

  “We haven’t had much of a chance to run her. Busy with the chickens like always.”

  “Heard she beat one of Bill Evens’s a few weeks ago.”

  Jim grinned. “She did.”

  “Bill Evens, that’s mighty rich company.”

  “So they say.”

  “You plan on racing her again?”

  “If the right situation came up. Sure.”

  “Right situation, huh.” Gordon gave a quizzical look. “You never found out who sent it, did you?”

  “Some lawyers back east. It’s part of some settlement. That’s all we ever heard.”

  “Well, I sure do like your luck. I do. Nobody ever dropped off a racehorse at my place.”

  “You don’t ever know. You’re still young.”

  “That I am,” Gordon said, grinning ear to ear. “I appreciate you noticing.”

  “Couldn’t help it. Wouldn’t nobody but a young person talk a fella’s ear off while he’s trying to drink.”

  “How do you like that? I always thought you come in here for the conversation.”

  “I come in here to be alone,” Jim said, smiling now, though speaking the truth. “But someone always ends up hassling me with a pile of questions.”

  “Well, there’s an empty table over there,” Gordon said, his feelings obviously hurt. “You can be my guest.”

  Jim lifted the beer from the counter and stepped over toward the empty table. As it turned out, the whole place was empty except for an ornery-looking couple muttering threats to each other over their watered-down mixed drinks and a boy, not older than twenty-one, twenty-two at most, playing the digital poker machine. The kid seemed to study Jim’s face for a moment, then glanced back down at the game.

  Jim paused at the jukebox, pulled a dollar from his wallet, slid it into the machine, and commenced to search for the Tammy Wynette song that had just been playing. Gordon strolled toward the end of the bar and called out, “A fella gets himself an expensive racehorse and then walks around putting on airs,” to no one in particular. “It’s a shame is what it is. An honest-to-God shame.”

  Jim found the Tammy Wynette song, which was named “(We’re Not) The Jet Set,” and punched in the number, B-31, then again, then a third time, the jukebox lighting up brightly. He turned, ignoring Gordon standing there, and took a seat at the table, nodding a hello to the kid playing computer poker. The kid, from beneath the bill of his dirty hat, nodded back, his eyes narrow and uncertain.

/>   “You sure you don’t want us to order some caviar?” Gordon called out, mopping the bar’s counter with a dirty blue rag. “I’m sure they got some down at the A&P.”

  “The beer’s fine, Gordon,” replied quietly. The song started up again, and he tapped his boot along it.

  “You would think a fella coming in here for the last ten, fifteen years would be kind enough not to rub his glad tidings in your face,” Gordon cackled to the empty seats before him. “But then you’d be wrong. Some people, they come into wealth and they change.”

  Jim took a tug from the glass bottle of beer and checked his watch, already tired of being hassled. Besides, it was near five o’clock, or at least it was close enough for him to forfeit the songs on the jukebox and the nearly full beer. He stood, pushed in the chair, and made his way up to the bar, wallet in hand.

  “How much do I owe you?”

  “Who, you? Mr. Moneybags over here? Daddy Warbucks?”

  “Yeah. Daddy Warbucks.”

  “How about a thousand dollars and we’ll call it even?”

  Jim sighed, staring down into his wallet. “Gordon, what do I owe you? I got to meet the kid.”

  “One-fifty for the beer. Two each for the shots. That makes about one thousand by my figuring.”

  Jim fumbled for a fiver, then a single, set them down on the bar without further comment, and turned toward the door, Gordon’s laughter echoing all the way back into the streaming daylight.

  _________________

  Afternoon giving way to a purple dusk. The town a wasteland, a desert. Three spent dandelions, their rounded white blooms bowed beneath the arcing sun, growing from between the upset pavement. The red, white, and blue debris of a bottle rocket blown up against the rusty metal gutter.

  * * *

  On the way toward Main, the boy pondered what else he could do to scrounge up the thirty dollars he needed to purchase the pair of waterborne lizards. Other than robbing a bank or the donut-and-pie shop—the only place in town where anyone still ate—he couldn’t think of anything. He walked along the sidewalk, his snowman-shaped shadow stretching before him and to the left, the headphones whistling with Biggie’s rage, “Nigga, you ain’t got to explain shit / I’ve been robbin’ motherfuckers since the slave ships.”