Road to Thunder Hill

by Connie Barnes Rose

  From where I stood on the highway, the Four Reasons was less than half a mile away and normally I could have seen it from here. But the wind had picked up and the ice pellets had turned to a mix of snow and freezing rain. Add that to a bare highway, and you’ve got slippery. I was thinking I should have brought my toothbrush because I might end up spending the night on the couch at the Four Reasons. The next thing I knew, my foot had hit a patch of ice and I was sitting on the road with a wrenched ankle.

  I could see the Four Reasons’ yard light up ahead. It was so close, but from where I sat it could have been in the next county. I also noticed Billy parked in the lot, which meant that Olive and Arthur were there, along with the pot of mulled wine simmering on the stove. Olive would have whipped that up the very second Alana called to tell her that Ray and Trish couldn’t make it for cards. Could Olive and Arthur come instead? Alana wasn’t about to spend Saturday night with nothing to do.

  I was thinking about how I should turn around and go back home when I almost got run over. I was sitting right where Thunder Hill Road meets the highway to town when the black of night turned to blinding light. Normally, because there’s a bend in the road near the bottom of the hill, cars slow down well before the intersection. But they wouldn’t expect to see a person sitting just left of the stop sign, or the wet hairy dog standing there licking that person’s face. The car skidded to a stop but not before it spun out and the headlights were again in my eyes. More annoyed than scared, I lifted my arm to shield my eyes and waved the other at the driver to turn off the fucking lights. Then someone came walking towards me and I almost didn’t recognize Bear because he’d gone and shaved off his beard since I’d seen him in my kitchen earlier this morning.

  I grabbed the stop sign post and pulled myself up. Good old Bear was pretending to be more concerned about Suzie’s welfare than mine. I thanked him for that as I wiped the snow and ice from the seat of my pants. Then he asked me what the hell I was doing out in the storm. I said I might ask him the same thing.

  “Hog Holler.” He pointed down the road.

  “Doing it up tonight, are you Bear?”

  “Didn’t feel like being alone.”

  “Me neither.”

  “Ray didn’t make it home?”

  “Nope.”

  There was some foot shuffling. “Want a lift to the Four Reasons?”

  “I don’t know if that’s where I want a lift to, but I guess I can’t stay here either.”

  “At a crossroads, are we?” He laughed.

  “Cute.”

  Bear helped me into the front seat of the Rover. Then he gave Suzie a boost into the back seat.

  “A couple of old cripples,” I said.

  “Suzie’s not that old, is she?”

  I said I’d go with him to Hog Holler, if only to keep him out of trouble. The wind was driving the snow so hard that we crawled along that stretch of Thunder Hill Road that runs close to the water. It was so wild out there a person wouldn’t have been able to make out the string of summer cottages that sit right beside the road. I was thinking this but then I saw a sliver of light coming from where I knew the old Chase cottage to be. No one had occupied it for years.

  “Did you see that?” I said to Bear. “It looked like there was a light on in the old Chase cottage.”

  “No shit,” he said, but when he suggested we turn around to investigate I said it had likely been a reflection from our headlights on a piece of metal and we dropped it. This was no night to be frigging around. Bear turned on the radio to an “Oldies” station and we sang along at the tops of our voices all the way here to Hog Holler where Bear is now sorting his cards.

  “Whose crib? Mine?” Then, “So where’s Ray? I thought he was coming home today.”

  “Well, he’s not.”

  “Ah, that explains it. Fifteen for two.”

  “Twenty-four. Explains what? My grouchiness?” I ask.

  “Go. No, the reason why you were wandering around out there on the roads.”

  “Six for thirty. Is that a go? My being out on the road had absolutely nothing to do with Ray not coming home.” I move my peg and count up my points.

  “Sure,” he says, nodding his head. “So, then, why didn’t he come home? The storm?”

  “That’s what he said.” I move my peg six holes. I watch his face as he counts up his points and moves his own peg seventeen holes.

  “Sounds like you don’t believe him.”

  “Of course I believe him. Why should he lie?”

  Bear shrugs. He has just skunked me in the game, so he sniffs and says, “Something smells around here.”

  I ignore him and say, “It doesn’t take much these days for Ray not to come home.”

  Bear raises his eyebrows. “I thought you bought his excuse.”

  “Would you?” I watch him closely, because if anyone knew if Ray has a hot one down in Newville, it would be Bear.

  He shrugs. “I guess it’s up to you to decide to believe him or not.”

  “Yeah, but if you knew, would you tell me?”

  “Are you nuts?” He laughs, but then he sees how serious I am because he says just as seriously, “I haven’t a clue what Ray is up to.”

  “Oh come on,” I say, poking at his shoulder like this subject is all a big joke. “Don’t give me that crap.”

  “Don’t put me in this position, okay Trish? And don’t say you don’t know what I mean, because I know you do.”

  I don’t say a thing, because he’s on to me, and I’m scared my tears will bust right out of my eyes.

  “Trish?”

  “Okay, okay,” I say and then I try laughing. “God, I sound so bitter, don’t I? Sometimes Gayl calls me a bitter old woman. And the other day she called me an immature freak.”

  “Bitter old woman and immature freak,” he says, shaking his head. “That Gayl sure has your number.”

  “Which do you think I am, Bear? Or is that also an unfair question?”

  “Yes it is, but this is more fun, at least.” He pretends to seriously mull this over. “Hmm, bitter old woman or immature freak. I’d have to say that, ah, I’ve seen you both ways. So it’s a question of deciding which I’ve seen more often.”

  “Thanks, pal,” I say, still fighting back the tears, which now sting my eyes. I must look awful when I cry because last year, when Ray was packing to leave for Newville, I was crying my eyes out and he kept emptying his sock drawer and all I could think of was how he once would have held me tightly and not let go until every single sob had stopped.

  If Bear has noticed the tears he isn’t letting on. He folds up the cribbage board and says, “It makes sense at our age to fit somewhere between bitter old and immature. Hey, I know, maybe they should call it middle age.”

  I smile at this. “You want to know what pisses me off about getting older, Bear?”

  He shakes his head and mouths the word, “no,” so I plunge ahead. “Maybe this is silly of me, but I thought I’d have everything figured out by the time I turned forty.”

  “Silly you.”

  “Didn’t you think that too?”

  “I’ve always avoided thinking about the future,” Bear says. “But then again I never got much done in life. There’s always a trade-off, don’t you think?”

  I nod, but I’m distracted because he has suddenly reached down to lift my injured foot into his lap. Now he’s rubbing my ankle and now he’s unlacing my boot, so when he says, “No, I didn’t care much about what was ahead either, except for what was about to happen in the next hour,” I realize I have forgotten what we were talking about. He grips my boot and tugs.

  “I used to live that way too, remember?” I say, wincing as the boot gives way.

  “Didn’t we all?”

  “You still do. You’ve
got the perfect life. You don’t have to deal with anyone if you don’t want to.” I reach down to pat Suzie who has rested her snout on my knee. Before he left Perry had even found a can of dog food that was who knows how old but Suzie didn’t seem to mind. I say to her, “What are you so worried about? You have the perfect life too!”

  That had been obvious, from the moment we arrived at Hog Holler hours earlier and Bear fetched a towel from the bathroom and proceeded to rub Suzie dry.

  “You spoil her,” I’d said.

  He smiled, “Don’t be jealous. If you let me, I’ll dry you off next.”

  10. Waxing

  NOT FIVE MINUTES AGO the lights in Hog Holler flickered twice before going right out. Bear poked through drawers and cupboards until he found a candle shaped like a wild boar’s head.

  “Where does Perry find this stuff?”

  He struck a match and we’ve been staring at the candle ever since. Not talking, just staring.

  Now the wax drips around the wild boar’s tusks and pools over the table. I fiddle with it, pinching and rolling it, while Bear rolls and pinches joints out of his super home-grown. This is the stuff Alana calls his “wheelchair weed,” because after she smokes it, she really can’t move. Never stops her from smoking it though.

  Sometimes Alana falls off the booze wagon. Everyone can see it coming when she starts drinking in the daytime and staggers out to the pumps wearing her blue corduroy bathrobe tied so loosely her boobs swing in and out of sight. When it gets to that point, Danny runs her into town to the detox center. A week or so in there is usually all it takes to get her to swear off drinking forever.

  At least she tries, but around here it’s real hard to stay on the wagon. People tell her they’re proud of her, but secretly they hope it won’t last too long. The problem with Alana is that she’s never satisfied with quitting drinking herself, and it becomes her mission to rescue everybody from the bottle. Everybody agrees that the world might be a better place if booze didn’t exist, but like I tried to tell her once, nobody likes to be told they’re all fucked up when all they want is a good time.

  “You think your mother’s just looking for a good time when she drinks?” she asked.

  Normally, Alana would never mention my mother’s drinking to me, but get her sober and look out. She’s not afraid to cross any lines, and that one she really shouldn’t. It’s not like I haven’t tried to get my mother to quit drinking. It’s just that we have an agreement. I don’t complain to my mother about Olive busting into my life if she promises not to complain about how lonely she is. She has lots of friends in town, but no, she’d rather drink and miss my father. I’ve told her she has to move on. Once she painted a portrait of him holding a pint of blueberries. It’s a pretty good likeness but I think she painted his long nose a bit too long.

  Sometimes my mother spends the whole day in bed staring at him there on the wall. A few times, I’ve even heard her muttering to him.

  When it comes to Olive, my mother’s take is that since she’s here and might very well be my actual half sister, I should try to be friendly.

  This always gets my back up. “First of all, I do make an effort. And second, she’s not my actual half sister and you know it.”

  “I don’t know it for a fact,” she said. “But I do know why you’re so stubborn about it. Because you are definitely your father’s daughter.”

  “That’s right. And he wasn’t fooled.”

  “He did leave her Kyle House, remember?”

  “Yeah, but more to punish me than anything.”

  “You know,” she said, and reached over to tap my hand. “Your father and I talked about Olive near the end and I think he realized he could have been wrong.”

  “He probably wasn’t in his right mind at the end.” I’d said, fiddling with the braiding along the edge of my placemat.

  My mother looked at me over her glasses. “Sometimes I wonder how you got to this age without learning a few important lessons about life.”

  I knew whatever I might say would sound mean, so I went to the window and pretended to be interested in the back yard. I heard my mother’s stick clicking along the floor until her hand was on my shoulder.

  “Why not think of Olive as a work in progress rather than a festering thorn?”

  “Festering thorn,” I laughed. “Thank you. That’s the perfect word to describe how I feel about Olive.”

  “And that’s really too bad, because years from now, you’ll wonder how you ever let these feelings get the better of you.”

  “That doesn’t help me much now, though does it?”

  “No, it doesn’t. Not one bit.”

  “Then what’s the point of saying it?” I asked and almost laughed. Now my mother considers herself a fortune teller too?

  “Look at those starlings out there,” she said, pointing to the bird feeder hanging from the juniper tree. “If your father was still around he’d be out there with a BB gun. He hated starlings.”

  “I remember that. But I can’t remember why.”

  “He thought they were greedy birds. Dirty too. Your father was particular about certain things.”

  “But starlings are greedy. And they’re dirty too,” I said. “My father was right.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I could tell she was nodding her head up and down, but I wasn’t about to show that I noticed.

  When Alana is on the wagon I’m not apt to see her on an evening like I normally would simply because I like to have a drink or two. Instead we’ll spend an afternoon together. We do lots of back-road driving. We track down water springs along the road or find abandoned farmhouses to poke around in. Alana walks from room to room in a total daze, feeling the energy of those souls who lived and died within their walls.

  It’s Olive who spends time with Alana when everybody else is busy celebrating the weekend by drinking. It’s Olive who makes her some fancy espresso coffee while they sit and hook rugs. Alana gets all wired from the coffee and rocks to the rhythm of her hook while Olive sits upright in a straight chair, her head bent over her work. I bet they spend the whole time gossiping about who all’s drinking.

  Alana probably starts it off, telling the story of Clayton Card, the guy who’s now sleeping it off over there on Hog Holler’s couch. “Now there’s someone with a big problem. Clayton starts every day of his life with a beer.”

  Olive will nod and say, “Probably doesn’t know any better.”

  Alana will shake her head. “I knew Clayton when he was little and he was the sweetest kid you ever saw. Totally the opposite of Perry. When Danny and I first bought the store he hung around every day doing any odd job we could think of. He was about thirteen, I guess, not quite at the drinking age. But by fifteen he was drinking with his father. The both of them are the sweetest souls on earth when they’re sober but they’re some stupid when they’re drunk.”

  “It’s a shame,” Olive will say.

  Alana will add, “It’s scary, how much people change.”

  Olive will say, “Look at Patricia’s mother.”

  “Poor Bette.”

  “Would you say Bette is an alcoholic?”

  “Oh, definitely. Has been for a long time.”

  “Patricia certainly gets testy about it.”

  I can almost see Alana heading right into this one. She’ll say something like, “Well, look at what happened to her and Ray and that big fight they had over her mother’s drinking. I’m telling you, it ruins lives.”

  “I’m beginning to wonder if there isn’t more to the story about Ray being in Newville.”

  Alana won’t catch this at first; she’ll be too busy going on about me. “Not that Trish is one to talk about drinking. Just because she doesn’t go on benders like Ray doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a drinking problem. Half the time you
’d never know she’s had a drink.”

  Right about now she’ll wave out the window into the darkness. Cars passing by at night toot their horns when they see her sitting in the window. She’ll say, “Trish would have a real hard time quitting herself.”

  “I’ve noticed how much she drinks,” Olive will add, as if she doesn’t drink her own self stupid with all her fancy wines. “I wonder if it’s her drinking that sent Ray off to Newville.”

  “Maybe, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s his own drinking that sent Ray off to Newville,” Alana will say, and that’ll put an end to this pretended conversation with me thinking that even if she has it wrong, at least Alana’s heart is in the right place.

  On such a night, when my head goes in these directions, there’s often an easterly wind blowing up off the strait. It whips around from behind the house so all I can hear are whistles and moans and the doors creaking in their frames. Suzie gets all restless and spooked on nights like this. So do I.

  Funny how tonight at Hog Holler, Suzie hasn’t moved an inch from where she lies between Bear’s chair and mine even though the metal roof is cracking and banging so much it sounds like it might fly off at any second. Bear has this calming effect on people, so I guess this extends to dogs too.

  The baseboard heaters are crackling as they cool down. I’m noticing the cold now, except for my injured foot, which is all toasty from the rubbing it’s getting. The other foot has managed to find its way onto Bear’s lap too and now that boot is off too and he’s pushing his thumbs into both soles. Now what’s he doing? Tugging on each of my toes, that’s what.

  “Where the hell did you learn how to do that?” I whisper.

  “Olive loaned me a book on reflexology.”

  I can feel my eyebrows rising like Suzie’s hackles do. Bear laughs and tells me he was over there the other day to sweep her chimney and to see about setting up some beehives in her garden. She was telling him about her sore back and how Arthur was so good at back rubs, and he told her he liked to rub feet. Ordering him not to move from the spot, she ran out of the room and up the stairs.