by Vicki Grove
There was a lot more I wanted to tell her, like that everything in this beautiful treasure house of a world breaks, and sometimes things break so bad all you can do is hope to get your heart to stop bleeding long enough for you to sift through the ashes so you can try to gain some slight understanding. But some things that break real bad can be mended if you’re lucky enough to have someone on your side with a ton of glue who won’t give up.
I couldn’t get any of that said, but from the look on her face, I guess I’d said enough for right then.
There were folding chairs put up under the ancient oak trees at Bud’s family cemetery for the funeral. The preacher at the Heisterbergs’ Methodist church read scripture, and then it was nice the way people told funny and interesting stories about Bud, how he’d been as a boy and then a young man. Janet had cousins to sit and cry with, so Officer Stephens and I just stood together a little to the side, pretty much unnecessary.
And then it was over, and Janet wanted time with her relatives, so Officer Stephens and I got into his police cruiser and drove toward Bud’s old house along the rough road that cut through the blowing wheat. He parked near the Olds, and we crossed the overgrown yard and settled ourselves on the bottom porch step.
We propped our elbows on our knees and automatically began staring straight ahead, hypnotized by the endlessly moving grain. It went from being afternoon to being early evening. The air lost most of its warmth, and the purple shadow of the house reached far into the wheat.
I finally heard him draw in a deep breath. “Well, we oughta get back,” he said. “Janet’ll be needing us. She was awful upset when I told her about Bud. He was an old guy with a bum heart, but the fact is, it’s always a sad shock when it happens.” I nodded, then instead of getting up to leave as he’d suggested, we both just sat there staring across the fields to where the glint of cars marked the cemetery. He passed his police hat absently from hand to hand, as he’d been doing ever since we’d first sat down.
“Well,” he said, and this time he stood, put on his hat, and began walking toward the police cruiser. Even from the back he looked trustworthy. Something in his shoulders.
“Officer Stephens?” I called. “You go on ahead. I don’t think Janet should be driving right now, you know? So I’ll drive the Olds back home.”
He knew from my story that I’d failed my designated driver test and had lost my focus and my nerve, so I think I expected him to nix that idea. Maybe I even hoped he would. The hospital had only released me on the provision that I check in with the Clevesdale Clinic by tomorrow, so my physical condition for driving a car wasn’t that great either.
“Right,” he said, giving Bud’s old car a glance. “Got those horse-choker antibiotics the hospital gave you? And the heavyduty Tylenol?”
I took both bottles from the pocket of the jacket Janet had brought for me to wear to the funeral. I held them up.
He nodded and got into his cruiser, then rolled down the window. “You want to follow us back?”
I shook my head. “I need to go by and thank the Heisterbergs. I’ll be along after that, though. Tell Janet not to worry, I won’t be more than an hour behind you.”
That was the only untrue thing I told Officer Stephens that day. I’d already thanked the Heisterbergs and told them goodbye. What I needed was to be there at the old house for a little while longer, to say my own good-bye to Bud.
“Well,” said Officer Stephens. And then he just kept looking at me through his open window. “Tucker, I’m not gonna ask if you’ll be safe on the road going back to Oklahoma. The drive won’t be easy for you, but it’s never gonna get easier than it is right now. And I gotta say, the story you told me this morning is far-fetched, still . . .” He drummed his fingers on the side of the car door and frowned.
“Thing is, Tucker, that part about the cigarette lighter? We’ve seen it a thousand times at the station. Some kid that doesn’t smoke will lay in Saturday night smokes as a pickup device, to make the girls think he’s bad boy cool when he drives up. Chances are real good Trey wouldn’t have let you drive down to the beach, no matter how drunk he was or if you’d stayed cold sober. He had that car to show off with, and you can’t do that unless you’re behind the wheel when you arrive at the party.”
I just stared back at him.
“Right,” he said, and started the ignition. “Don’t beat yourself up so bad, that’s all, Tucker. This past week was likely the worst you’ll ever have in your life. Take what you can learn from it, make it a part of the code you go by, then give it the gas and get back in gear again. Janet needs you, you know.”
And then he raised a hand to say good-bye and drove toward Janet down that same rutted road he and I had traveled earlier. The same road Bud and I had found when we’d been traveling either the wrong direction or the right one after that Chiefs game. The road the black truck had taken on its journey toward the sky and whatever lay beyond it.
It wasn’t even a real road, just a little hardscrabble byway of the Oregon Trail, better known in some circles as trail number 11,404.
I sat watching his dust and wondered, what did he mean, make it a part of the code I went by? I didn’t have a code. Did regular people have one, or just policemen?
Before the bonfire I would have defined myself as being in control of myself, of my thoughts and emotions, but that wasn’t what you’d call a code, and it wasn’t even accurate, at least if you knew me well, like Trey did. Neither was Trey’s “innocent wonder” idea. Not a code, and not accurate, then or now. Trey surely knew that too.
I went slowly to the Olds, not bothering to put on a wellness act like I had during the funeral. I was hunched forward at the waist like I was about a hundred years old, and I moved with both legs stiff like some zombie from a laughably bad movie.
I opened the driver’s-side door and was nearly overwhelmed by Bud’s smell of Burma-Shave and foot powder. For the first time I noticed that where the driver sat, the sagging beige bench seat was molded to Bud’s shape. I slid in beneath the steering wheel, conforming my legs, rear, and back to where Bud’s had been for so many thousands of miles. Bud was far wider than me through the hips and shoulders, but that was all to the good. The lumps and ridges Bud had worn into the thin beige plastic held me in place but gave me the room I needed to stretch and shift with those thick bandages.
I reached across and thumbed the button on the glove compartment door. It flipped open and disgorged its contents, much as it had when Bud had opened it, searching for the map. I leaned on my right elbow to stir the pile of small junk now covering the passenger-side floor, looking for a pen or pencil and something to write on.
Officer Stephens was right. The drive home wasn’t easy, and I knew the worst part would come last, so I dreaded it the whole way. When you’re heading west into Oklahoma from Missouri, you can’t help but see the ring of silver hills rising from the zinc mine fields. Gravel mountains that glow against the sky, a dreamscape, magical.
Six nights ago I’d been drinking with my friends inside the secret ring of those counterfeit mountains. They’ll always loom, I thought as I drove right toward them, my hands so sweaty they were slipping on the wheel. You’ll always know they’re out there.
The inside of the dark car was bathed in eerie green light from the instrument panel. Everything glowed, strangely fluorescent, and blood began to beat painfully in my ears.
I took the rearview mirror and turned it toward myself, then looked into it and sat straighter until the top of my head . . .
I punched the mirror aside just in time. The next day my knuckles were bruised and they stayed bruised for a while, reminding me never to do that again.
The house was filled with people all that weekend, mostly Janet’s friends and fellow waitresses, some old guys Bud had played cards with, the neighbors, including the Brandywines. A couple of police officers came with Officer Stephens on Saturday afternoon and he came alone on Sunday afternoon. The lady at the driver’s license off
ice who’d had to give Bud three separate vision tests and tell him three separate times in a row that he’d flunked came and cried and said she’d felt just awful doing that, and Janet told her she was extremely grateful to her because the last thing Bud needed was to be driving. People brought tons of food, so much it wouldn’t all fit in the refrigerator.
I kept going out to the hoop house, harvesting anything that was ready. It was comforting to be able to make big salads to go with all those casseroles.
It’s what happens when somebody dies. At least, I guess it is. People come over and bring food and say how sorry they are and maybe cry together.
I went to the clinic Saturday afternoon, got my bandages changed and set up an appointment for three days later. Then I tried to hang around downstairs, thinking it was the polite thing to do. But by late Sunday morning I couldn’t stand it. I told Janet I was going outside and she could call me if she wanted me, I’d stay close enough to hear her.
She took my face in her hands. “You okay?” she asked. “Yeah, yeah,” I said, and I grabbed a spade and went across
the street to even up the muddy ruts in Mrs. Brandywine’s yard so it’d be ready for some new nasturtiums. Then I drove the Olds into our backyard and washed and polished it. Then I went inside and dug out the vacuum, brought it out to clean the vinyl floor mats. I couldn’t bear to throw any of the junk on the floor away, so I stuffed it back inside the glove compartment.
Then I drove the Olds into the garage and drove Janet’s Taurus into the backyard and washed and polished and vacuumed it.
Now what? I admitted to myself I’d been avoiding my room, but with the outside tasks caught up, it was either there or downstairs. Anyhow, what was I afraid of? Trey’s rock was still on the windowsill, jiggling, but I’d slept up there for the past two nights with it doing that, so why did I dread going up there now, in broad daylight?
Because it was time to do something about Trey’s rock, that’s why.
Before I could think about it any longer, I took the stairs quickly, and once inside my room I jerked my desk chair over against the window, then immediately straddled it backward and stared down at the pebble with my forehead against the glass.
“So, Trey? What’re you trying to tell me, buddy? Are you saying you wouldn’t have let me drive, there at the end? Because you wanted to make an entrance? Did you really call me loyal, buddy? If I knew that was true, it would mean the world to me. But I could sure understand it if you’re angry instead. But, well . . . either way, we both have to move on, and I can’t do it until you do it.”
“Tucker?”
I jumped up, toppling the chair, and whirled around to see Mrs. Beetlebaum standing in my doorway. For a few seconds I couldn’t remember how to think and I just stood there gawking at her, not truly comprehending who she was. For one thing, she wasn’t wearing one of her long dark dresses or her black leather school shoes. She had on a pair of brown slacks and a light purple sweater and white socks with small cats embroidered on them and Birkenstock sandals, I think is what you call them.
“Oh, I’m so sorry to have startled you, Tucker!” She put up her hands, then she smiled and clasped them behind her and took a step forward. “I did knock, and your mother said it would be fine to come on up and pay my respects.”
“No! I mean, yes, thanks, come in!” I grabbed the chair and stood it on its feet.
Mrs. Beetlebaum began walking slowly around my room, her long hair trickling down her back like a silver waterfall. She looked at all my stuff with a bright smile. Even when she stopped to take in the shelf where I keep my collection of wornout running shoes, she looked like someone studying a painting at some fancy art gallery.
“I keep . . . thinking I may need those,” I explained weakly. The best of those pairs looked like something that had been run over a few times by a bulldozer or something.
“Things contain memories,” she said. “They become more than mere objects.”
I nodded, glad she understood. I’d won a race in each of those pairs.
Mrs. Beetlebaum moved on to the bulletin board I’d had since third grade. I used to have it covered with stuff, but I hadn’t used it in a while. Yesterday, though, I’d tacked the list I made at Bud’s old house up there. I’d found an old broken pencil in Bud’s glove compartment that I’d managed to put a point on with my thumbnail. For paper I’d used a napkin with ancient mustard staining one corner.
“Uh, Mrs. Beetlebaum?” I said to her back as she read the list. “I . . . don’t need your coin any longer. I was going to give it back to you at school tomorrow. I’ve kind of, like, got some questions about it?” Only about a million.
“I’ll bet you have,” she murmured, but she didn’t turn, just kept reading. The list wasn’t long, but the pencil had been pretty shoddy, so it was taking her a while. I walked to my backpack and yanked out the jeans I’d worn to Nebraska. They were stiff and rank, a total mess. I felt for Trey’s lighter and found it easily, but the obolus was stuck by a glob of mud to the pocket it was in.
I finally worked it loose and put the lighter and the muddy coin together on my math book, which was lying with some other stuff on the side of my bed I don’t use.
Mrs. Beetlebaum finished reading and totally surprised me by coming over and actually bouncing up to sit on my messy bed, right beside the math book. She looked down at the obolus, then picked it up, holding it between her thumb and forefinger.
“You met the ferryman, then,” she said with a mysterious smile.
XV
She squinted up at me, looking me over carefully. “Yes, yes, you look . . . clearer. Sad, of course. Yes, sad, maybe I’d go on to say heartbroken, but much, much clearer.”
I’d noticed that myself in the bathroom mirror. I was pale and sort of bruised-looking under my eyes, but the thing that had been living inside my eyes had moved out.
“My father-in-law, Karl, gave this coin to me, Tucker. In fact, he urgently pressed it upon me much as I pressed it upon you. He was an archaeologist and worked for much of his career on a group of islands in the Aegean Sea. One fateful day, when he’d been working in Greece for several months without bothering to visit home, he received a letter from the States sent by his wife, my husband’s mother, telling him she was divorcing him and marrying another man. Karl said he realized too late that he’d ignored his family for the sake of his career, and he felt such bitter regret he could barely walk, or think, or remember to feed himself or sleep.
“Karl had a co-worker who became very worried about him, especially when he began making dangerous mistakes on the job, even causing small landslides at their work site two different times. This man, this worried co-worker, was Greek, and one day he came to Karl and pushed this coin into his hand.” She shrugged. “Karl was told that he must keep the coin in his pocket and not surrender it under any circumstances, just as I told you when I gave you the obolus.”
Mrs. Beetlebaum put the coin back onto its little nest of mud there on my math book. She folded her arms. “I’m not sure how it works, Tucker, but here’s what I think. Picture a beautiful energy inside you. See it as a flowing golden ribbon, the unbroken ribbon of life that keeps one moving, making plans, laughing at jokes and smelling flowers, even feeling the sort of authentic, human sadness that eventually turns to memory and heals the heart. Now picture that precious ribbon snapped in two, broken quickly and cleanly, like anything else wound too tightly. Only drastic measures may realign the two ends to reconnect that flow.
“That’s where the obolus comes in. There aren’t that many of these around now, though in classical times they were common, placed in the mouths of practically everyone who died. The ferryman never got over wanting that payment, so these attract him, and once he comes for you, you’re forced to, well, snap out of it. That is, you’re forced to make the decision to reconnect with life. It’s like a cosmic slap in the face. Yes, I think that’s the best I can explain it. You must reconnect with life or . . .”
She left it at that, so I finished her sentence. “Or surrender the obolus and . . . die?”
She sighed. “Yes, I think that’s about the size of it. Strong medicine, yes? But as I said, drastic situations require drastic measures. I doubt a person can live long anyway with that vital energy flow broken. One becomes almost, well, a sleepwalker, unable to respond to life’s many demands and challenges. Karl, for instance, might easily have gotten co-workers killed with his inattention to the dangerous ground he and the other archaeologists on his team were excavating at the time.”
I pulled my desk chair up close to where she sat and dropped into it. “But how do you think that ribbon thing gets wound too tight in the first place?”
She took hold of my wrist and leaned very close. “I think by a shock releasing too many powerful emotions—guilt, grief, regret? Karl gave the coin to me two weeks after my husband, his son, died of cancer. I would not say I was exactly suicidal, but I dreamed every night about going across the darkness to Theo, taking his hand and bringing him back up to the world of light with me. Or else in my dreams I’d stay with him there, wherever he was. I wished my days away, waiting only for night to come, when I could again live in my dreams. So yes, the ribbon of life inside me had snapped, though I was only aware of being in a sort of chilly daze. Someone who’s been there must recognize the symptoms for you, you see. You’re too numb to know anything yourself. You certainly were too numb, weren’t you, Tucker?”
Mrs. Beetlebaum patted my hand and slid from my bed. She went to stand at my window with her back to me.
“The day after Karl slipped the obolus into my jacket pocket, I was in the public library, where I worked at that time,” she said. “I was listlessly pushing the book cart from aisle to aisle, shelving books, when I turned into the Mythology section and, well, there it was. The ferryman.”
She turned to me. “How did it appear to you, Tucker? As male? Female?”
“Female. A girl with knobby knees and a motorcycle jacket. Pink hair and attitude. Red cowboy boots.”