“That sounds more like you than Mac Pellier, but okay, I stand reprimanded and deservedly so. It was goofy and terrible giving him the scotch. I’m glad he’s in the shelter. Help him with the tooth, for God’s sake. And save the whisky for me when I get back. What else is happening?”
“You don’t get it.”
“I do. I get it. Next topic. What else is happening? Be nice for a minute.”
“No, you are making light of it, Nick, like you do. Who are these Louisville people you’re meeting?”
“Business people, I told you—from a previous life, you know. Old friends, really, and we probably ought to be going to a ball game, but anyway—back tomorrow evening.” Change the fucking subject. “How’s your apartment doing?”
Quiet on the other end.
“Did they get it pumped out?” Too much recent rain and her ground floor apartment was flooded. Nice royal blue rug under an inch of stinky storm sewer backup.
“You know I can’t talk about personal stuff on the office phone. Give us a call when you get back from visiting with your friends from Louisville.” And she was gone from the line.
“They’re not my friends,” he said, too late. “And what’s so personal about wet carpet?”
Emma was the most beautiful woman Nick had ever been out with. He loved her commitment to the homeless shelter, which was where he met her. She was active in the same parish where Nick ran the annual fund drive for the Guatemala relief program. She was prominent in local politics and had run for mayor a few years back. She marched annually against strip mining in the foothills and sat on the resources advisory board for the Appalachian Center that was a sort of United Way for the poverty regions nearby. Except for some very occasional fun, Emma was relentlessly focused on “the issues,” as Nick’s friends in business in Louisville would have put it, if he had any. She was a serious woman, and that, Nick noticed again, as if for the first time, was a major part of the turn-on.
The highway stretched ahead, and he rode it through the next half hour hoping he’d begin to feel better. When he was short on sleep, things would nag at him. Lies. He was in a swamp of them. Lies make you weak. What else? The letters. He’d not destroyed Carol’s either, though a couple of times he’d said he had in an effort to get her to follow his lead. She didn’t. Oh well. So in Tuscola, Illinois, and in Athens, Ohio, hidden somewhere in piles and bundles were equal halves of a six-year love affair in letters (compared to the time and effort of the letters, Carol and Nick’s actual time together was miniscule), and while Nick was sure he could handle it on his end, he was not sure Carol, innocent and pure of heart in so many ways, and married with a couple of young but savvy kids around the house, could muster the required duplicity to properly stash her end of the mess and protect them both. It was a chance they both kept taking, because their love was like a vortex—pulling them together, pulling them down, pulling them down together.
He kept his cache of her letters in a U-Haul moving box taped shut with silver duct tape, a roll of it. There was a slot like a mailbox or piggy bank in the top, and after reading her letters he’d slide them each through the slot into the darkness where they piled up, read once and banked. He lived only with Buck, who was his older son, who was into his own thing and never gave the activities of Dad much thought. Certainly he would never go into one of seventeen million sealed boxes in the garage with a packing knife, which was the sort of effort such an intrusion would require, and once someone cut into the box, there was no way Nick wouldn’t be able to tell. So how was Carol handling security? Her letters had to go. Nick vowed that he’d revisit the issue this time and get that solved, too. The Vietnam lie and the letters. Both. Now was the time.
He knew how it would go.
“They are beautiful letters, Nicky. I’ll hide them better but I don’t want to throw them away.”
“Why?”
“They’re love letters, that’s why. They’re to me, and they’re love letters. From you. I can’t burn them. Yours are gone. So in a way they’re all that’s left. I’ll hide them so nobody can ever find them.”
There would be tears. He would see from this how much quiet stress and real pain Carol was holding in as she lived these two lives, one wife-and-mother life visible to all, and one sharp little shard of doomed and secret pain and glory, their affair hopefully hidden well.
•
Nick was glad the sun was shining, finally, when he got where he was going. In Coal Grove, the Ohio River helped define the town’s shape, sliding swollen and brownly behind the Super Walmart and the car deaver parts/wrecker service (a hundred rusty hulks with hoods gaping and trunks too) and four warehouses that opened to docks of barges the teenagers loaded as summer jobs. There were hills, and Nick parked on the shoulder of one, a side road above the main highway, so he could see a good distance down to the Super Walmart parking lot, the place where he and Carol would meet, as arranged, as they’d done one other time in this town. From this point, parked in shade on the grassy slope, he could watch her pull in. The day before, she’d driven from Tuscola to Cincinnati, where she was supposedly seeing her mom, who was supposedly staying with her sister, Carol’s aunt, who was sort of sick but they might go out from time to time, perhaps even a day trip, down to see the dogwoods, or something, hard to reach you know, will call when possible, etc. Convoluted and twisty trail. With luck, no one tries to follow.
What would she look like this time? Big trucks rattled by on the highway. A car wash was busy across the road and down a ways, and Nick watched some fishermen with their dockworker sons pamper their pickups and one housewife with kids in car seats wiping down her SUV. Her untucked t-shirt said “Exotic Landscaping.” She was young and pretty. Nick still had good eyes. He was playing Van Morrison, “Into the Mystic” on repeat, and he had a headache though he didn’t notice until he shut the engine off and stepped out. For a while he stood by the car in fresh mowed grass. The side road he was parked along led up to a private school on the hill, and this whole area was groomed and planted as a way of promising passersby that the invisible school above and out of sight would take good care of kids.
Closing his eyes against the headache, Nick leaned on the car and ate an apple, listening to the music, a different song. The cell phone rang again, and he reached in and got it. Buck.
“Hey,” Nick said. “Is everything fine?”
“Yip.”
“Had lunch?”
“Nope.”
“Whattup?”
“Emma called again, and I said why don’t you just call him—you got his cell number—and she said she tried and nobody answered.”
“Ah.” Nick finished his apple and lofted the core into a wooded area next to the road. He reached for a second one out of a bag in the backseat. He checked the register and sure enough, he’d missed a call.
“And I wanted to ask you something anyway.”
“Shoot.”
“When do you think you’ll be back and can I take the car for a few days?”
Nick said, “Day after tomorrow, and yes. Where you going?”
“Columbus, and I know you don’t want me taking the bike up there.”
“Right you are, buddy boy. How long will you be gone?”
“A few days. Two or three. That okay?”
Of course it was. Buck needed a life, too. “That’ll be fine,” Nick said. “I haven’t ridden the motorcycle for a while.” Together they owned a Honda Shadow. It was black and fast. Mostly Buck used it, mostly locally.
“Yeah, you haven’t ridden it because I don’t go anywhere where I need the car.” They both laughed ruefully. “In fact, I don’t go anywhere at all.” Nick could hear his son opening and closing cupboards as he talked. “How’s the poor SOB car running and is the transmission work we did holding up? I know the muffler’s in the toilet, but…well I’m glad you’re road testing it and we should paint it while the rust…”
Suddenly Nick picked up a vibe. “I’m going to ask you a direc
t question, Buck, and I need an answer. Have you been into the pharmaceuticals this morning?” He could hear it in his voice, an altered, yammering, scattered stutter running through his son’s regular talk like brain static.
“Nah, I’m just tired,” the lad said too slowly.
Nick’s heart sank. He had the urge to drive straight back home. The center wasn’t holding. “I don’t feel good about this. If I can tell over the phone, it’s a problem.”
“Well, anyway, your girlfriend called so you should call her right back.”
“Clean up the act before I get home, or you’ll be peeing in a bottle instead of taking the car to Columbus. It’s out of the question, this shit starting up again.”
“That’s cool,” Buck said. “Have a nice time down there, and old Davy and me’ll hold the fort. Is the bacon in the refrigerator still good?”
“Yes.” Pretty bad when you can’t leave town even for a few hours without things caving in.
“That’s good because I’m fierce about hunger at this time.”
Nick was ready to go home. Oh how he hated this. Big pressure in his chest. His son. He didn’t say anything.
After a few moments, Buck spoke. “Okay. Well, you hang in there, Daddy-o. And I’ll catch ya on the flip-flop, or whatever you used to say on the CB.”
The boy was stoned. Jesus.
•
Nick stirred and paced for a while, a couple of times around the car, over to the fence row in the deep shade of a stand of poplars to stare at the trickle of a stream. He remembered Buck as a little boy, all energy and go go go. He went by Nicholas, Jr. then. Now Nick remembered once when Buck was about five, he and his brother playing in a school playground on a Saturday. From a distance, Nick watched as several neighborhood kids surrounded the boys and teased them, particularly going after Nick’s younger son, Matthew. Buck thought they were going to hurt Matt. He picked up a fallen tree limb that seemed twice his size and charged into the group of six or seven taunters, sending them running in all directions, and then led Matt back to Nick, who was standing by his car. Nick had remained amazed at that ever since. He desperately wanted for divorce not to be the ruination of that wonderful, brave little kid.
On the cell, he dialed up his ex-wife. It was mid-morning in Kansas.
“Hello.” Same voice as ever.
“Hi, it’s Nick.” They hadn’t talked in a year.
“Hi. How are you?” Automatic stroke, didn’t really want to know. Same tone as ever.
“Okay.” Nick took a deep breath and dove in. “I just wanted to tell you I think Buck’s back into stuff. I’m on the road. He’s been fine for a good long time, best I can tell. But today I’ve been gone for just a few hours, and I just talked to him—it doesn’t sound good on the phone.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah.”
“Hmm. Are you sure?”
“I’m thinking of bagging the trip and heading back.”
“Right.” She cleared her throat.
“How’s Matt?” Although he hadn’t talked to her in a long time, he talked to Matt weekly, and Matt always said he was fine. But it was checking-up time.
“He’s fine.”
“Grades good and all that?”
“Oh yeah, all that. He’s being scouted, he probably told you, and of course if the baseball’s going well, you know and so on. And we’re traveling all over hell’s half-acre to games. He’s a jock, when it’s all said and done.” She cleared her throat again. “At least now we’re seeing light at the end of the tuition thing.”
“Uh-huh. That’ll be a relief.”
“Shall I call Buck and sort things out?”
“I’m not asking you to, but if you want—sure. He’s seemed fine, and I’ve been watching.”
“To the extent you can.”
“Yeah. I’ve been watching close,” Nick muttered.
“Maybe the scars from last time are wearing off.”
“Probably so.”
“Why don’t you make some stuff up. Tell him police again. Tell deaver him jail this time. Tell him people are suspecting and this time it’ll be bad. Make shit up. You’re great at it.”
Nick stared into the trees.
“Use it to do good, for once.” She laughed the dark laugh.
Nick stared deeper into the trees. He was remembering a few things about why things didn’t work out. Every time he called, for the last many years, he imagined that maybe the anger would have relented. After each call it was clear to him it never would. Grudges aren’t what women want, but they carry them well and far.
“Okay, Nick,” she said, maybe some reconciliation in her tone. She’d landed the punch of the day and felt better. “I’m glad you told me. Not much I can do from here. I don’t think I’ll call him. He needs somebody to trust him.”
Nick was quiet.
“So where are you?”
“I’m down by the Ohio River, meeting some friends from Louisville, a little R&R. It’s spring break for us.”
“A little R&R, huh.”
“Yeah.”
Quiet on her end now.
“But I don’t have to be here. If crap’s gonna fly, I can head back just as quick. I’m thinking seriously of it.”
“No, no. Do the R&R, Nicholas. You probably need it, with your rough life.”
He stood there for a few moments, quiet, staring into the trees, holding the phone to his head like a gun. Finally he said, “Okay. I just wanted to tell you. Bye.”
Nick clicked her off, good fucking riddance.
•
Carol had worn a ribbon in her brown and frosted hair last time, in Indianapolis fourteen months before. That was their fourth goaround since he’d moved away, and Coal Grove, then, the fifth, was not intended to be Coal Grove at all but instead they would, he hoped (planning not being his strong suit), drive deep into the mountains in Eastern Kentucky and find a proper B&B. He looked up toward the private school, bit into the last of his second apple, and gave more thought to going home. Maybe he would feel better if he did. In a way he was really looking forward to Carol’s arrival, in another way he was churned up and wanted to start the car and drive home immediately and nothing less would suffice.
Right then her car shot by. There was a ribbon, white. He watched the rented Mercury Sable, creamy white, as the turn signal came on and she spun into the big horrible parking lot. She would circle once looking for him, then find a shady spot with a decent view from which to watch for him to arrive. But he was here, watching her arrive.
He hopped in, turned around, found a slot in the traffic on the main road, and cruised fast down the hill just catching a yellow light and turning in with his rusty-red Oldsmobile Cutlass––he and Carol had done the deed in it one night back when they lived in the same town. He drove cars to their knees. This one was from the early nineties and he was proud for her to see he still had it and thus hadn’t changed a bit.
She saw him turn in, and instead of parking they drove up sideto-side, facing opposite, and hopped out fast. They kissed in broad daylight because in Coal Grove they could. Besides Indy and Coal Grove, they’d met in Washington, D.C., Kansas City, and Tampa—always only for precious hours stolen in a hotel room paid for by whichever of them was on the road for whatever convincing reason could be divined.
They put all Nick’s things in Carol’s trunk and left the red clunker parked in shade next to a collection point for shopping carts. Nick hopped in the rental, and Carol smiled and chatted behind the wheel—Nick half listened and looked at her fresh face and laughing eyes. Her diamond flashed in the sun as she turned left into grim and deaver gritty downtown Coal Grove, with its cracked concrete streets and littered asphalt lots. The old brick buildings of the business district hid behind aluminum-and-glass rehab solutions done in the 70s, now dull and fading. They’d have been quaint at this age had they just been left alone.
“How is everybody?” Nick asked.
“You mean Lowell
? He’s great. I see him around the college all the time. Looks exactly the same.”
Nick was thinking about the old days and didn’t hear Carol’s reply. She had a tendency to branch, and he had a tendency to drift while she branched, and they’d been together less than ten minutes and all their tendencies were kicking in.
Nick looked up from his reverie surprised to see where they were going. “What are we doing?” he asked, interrupting the tail end of a story about Wally and the kids and some bad pizza.
“What are we supposed to be doing?” She smiled.
“I figured we could get lunch and decide where to go. Further south, though.”
“Nick, I brought lunch. You know that.”
“The mountains are pretty.”
“You never listen to me.”
“Dogwoods.” Nick smiled at her. She was right. What had she said this time that he missed?
She was turning in to the grimmest Holiday Inn in all Ohio, dusky green streaked with brown. In effect, it was a museum of Holiday Inns—a time capsule really—dingily preserving some corporate iteration from 1960, the days when they were proud of their aluminum window sills and air conditioning. The management could snatch victory from the jaws of mortification by shining it up and making the fact that time had passed them by into a marketing device. But Nick figured if they could spot potential like that they wouldn’t be running the Coal Grove Holiday Inn.
“I thought we’d go down into Kentucky and find a B&B in the foothills. We said that’s what we were going to do, isn’t it? And I know you don’t think I listen but I don’t remember you saying we were going to the Coal Grove Holiday Inn.” He gestured toward the poor thing. “Or I’m almost sure I wouldn’t have driven down here.”
“Well, now, that’s a point,” she said.
“Seriously. Not here, please.”
“Ah,” she said, parking under the portico of the motel office.
“Ah what.”
Forty Martyrs Page 7