The Evening Road

by Laird Hunt

  We had been swimming in the White River and she was gone before our hair was dry. “Oh, Calla,” she had said and I hadn’t said anything and you tell me what kind of story that is and then she had climbed in their car.

  Didn’t make any difference that about a week later she was back. Back to climb trees with me and swim and kick at me in our bed and sing the “Wang Wang Blues” when we woke up. Didn’t matter that I was the only one could see and hear her. Or that she wasn’t there all the time. That she would leave me for long stretches. Go out and walk. Visit other states. See the world, learn its ways. Now there was the map I wanted. One that would show me where she was walking, where all the others who had left me had gone, where I should go.

  We hadn’t seen them coming, that cornsilk couple. Suddenly they had just been there, like smiling monsters in a story, and we went running and splashing around all day like slit-throat ducks. Matron at the orphan house said afterward she didn’t know where they had taken Hortensia. That there wasn’t any way to know. That it didn’t matter how many times I asked her. That I should sit back down and eat my supper and be happy for her and stop pretending she was sitting in her seat next to me and “Goddamn it, Calla Destry, be still!”

  You don’t have the map, you need eyes, I thought. You need about a hundred out here if you want to catch it all. Catch it all and not get caught. The way Hortensia had been. Gobbled up by the smiling monsters. I got down out of the tree, brushing on the dark green oak leaves as I went, and it was when I stopped my glance on the dent that little girl had made in the Dictator’s driver’s-side door that I saw it. Plucked it up out of my magic mind. Uncle D kept some of his lettering paints and brushes bagged up tight in the Dictator’s trunk, said it was his storage shelf, kept the tools of his trade safe and serene. The Dictator was sitting in the oak shade and the metal had started to cool. I emptied the jars of paint onto its backseat, picked out the ones I liked, unscrewed their lids, chose a brush, started with the little girl’s dent, drew a almond shape around it. Made eyelashes on the almond. Thought about Big Bob’s map. Colored in the middle where the metal had shown through. The paint trickled here and there but I dipped my brush light and mostly it held.

  “Eyes all over,” I said. I let myself imagine that Uncle D was there nodding and watching me work. That Aunt V was sitting over by the tree fanning herself. That Hortensia in her blue hat was laughing at my latest notion. That even Roscoe was there. Arms folded over his chest. Big Bob and his little dog, Myrtle, too. They were the frame for my map. We had all driven out of Marvel together. Maybe stopped on our way out at the Handy Brothers for cold soda pop. Hortensia’s favorite had been orange cream. Lord, I wished I could have shared my part of Big Bob’s orange with her. How she would have clapped her hands. Maybe wherever she was, she was eating oranges. Pineapples and lemons too.

  I could see mop doll hanging way up in the branches and suddenly felt sad for her. Shouldn’t be anything hanging on this day. I brought her back down and leaned her against the trunk and put a pair of eyes on her mop fringe with red paint and talked to her and to myself as I worked on the Dictator. “Don’t you leave this beauty with any blind spots. I want it to see everything. Everything, now. Everywhere. No more surprises, all right?”

  When I was done I screwed the lids back on the paint, left them sitting on the backseat, walked over to the tree and stood by mop doll and told her that the Dictator had never looked more beautiful and that I thought sure Uncle D would agree. My hands were covered in paint so I wiped them on the ends of mop doll’s dirty fringe. She looked good with red and green and blue and gold at the ends of her hair. “You look good,” I said. I told her we had to go. To Ryansville. Where Leander lived.

  I had seen him in the daylight only once before, that very first time. Taking his jelly-bread stride across the courtyard square. I was helping sell flowers by the diner. He came over, bought a rose, gave me a wink, and whispered would I meet him that very night in the alley behind the bank for he had matters of gravest import to discuss. I laughed at the silly sound of his voice and even sillier words but I met him. I told him my name was Calla Destry, and he said I was the most beautiful young woman he had ever seen, that I was more beautiful than any woman who had ever appeared in any of his dreams or in the dreams of any others since the world was made. Then he took his hand out from behind his back where he had been hiding it and produced the flower he had bought from me earlier. The flower was wilted plenty and I already knew it didn’t have any smell. But apart from Roscoe once tearing me up some narcissus and tossing them to me as we got up to no good near the White River not one week before Aunt V and Uncle D came to the orphan house to offer me a spot in their vehicle, it was the first time anyone had ever given me a flower. Leander might have tried to kiss me on that first night and I surely would have let him only a gang of cornsilk boys started kicking at empty boxes down the alley and Leander gave me a bow, told me to meet him again the next week, and off he went running.

  The next week he did kiss me. His mouth tasted like violet candy. I put my hand a minute on his waist and found it soft as an uncooked snickerdoodle. When it came time to part our ways he started in to fretting because he had just sold his father’s Ford and wouldn’t be able to easily get back to see me. He had sold it, he told me, upon his father’s death and with his mother’s accord, so that he could use the proceeds to further his political ambitions. “I will be governor someday,” he said. It was a strange thing to say in an alley after dark in the middle of some sweet kissing and we both laughed a little. He had a pretty laugh. Higher and finer than his voice. Roscoe did not have a pretty laugh. Roscoe was just a boy not much older than I was, but he already had a laugh that croaked doom, like a frog swallowed by a cat swallowed by a wolf eaten up ugly by a bear. I got beat down by another girl in an alley when I was still learning how to swing and Roscoe laughed his laugh at me instead of helping me up. He would have laughed it long and hard to see me selling flowers. I told Leander about our yellow beast, our Dictator, hiding under its shroud, in our shed, behind my new home. I told him, and my visits to see him commenced. And here on a day of mobs and murder I went driving with my mop and basket and car covered in eyes and Uncle D’s paint jars rattling on the backseat towards another visit.

  So and despite all, up and out of my chest my heart flew, racing ahead of the Dictator, rising fast for Ryansville, leaving my body feeling slow and faint and oh so small behind me. Small is how I felt when I got there anyway. Small, and stupid too; I was happy enough to have put eyes on the car and the mop when I was out in the country, but I found I didn’t like the idea any too much, when I got to Ryansville, of sailing through the streets with my companion in that bright eyeball-covered machine. The world is full of rocks. And full of rope. Which is saying I had a thought as my heart fell hard out of the sky and down my throat and back into my chest about turning around and heading straight for Big Bob’s fishing spot. Skip the mobs. Skip the murder. Wait for dark to make my visit. I took the thought so far I slowed the Dictator down at a four-way stop near the lane that led to Leander’s, and, fool that I was, I then found a way to stall it.

  Matron had had a stereoscope at the orphan house in Indianapolis I was allowed to look through sometimes. Most of the cards she had were of cornsilk children and cornsilk grown-ups with not a cornflower anywhere to be found; state of the world and nothing special. She had one stack of cards, though, that was just landscapes and buildings and monuments didn’t have in them any people of any variety at all. And those were the cards I loved. Because without anyone in them I could imagine they were full of cornflowers. Cornflowers by the hundreds, hiding behind trees, behind doors, waiting to push up windows and holler out as I looked in. I wanted more than anything else in the world after Hortensia left to live in there with them. Sometimes I thought I heard a familiar cough or a laugh come from just around one of the quiet corners and did all I could to pour myself out of my eyes and onto that street or empty forest glad
e. One time, after I had described it to him, Roscoe came to see me late into the small hours and we sneaked into Matron’s office and studied up on those stereoscope pictures by lamplight.

  “We’re in there,” Roscoe had said, taking to the idea straightaway. “That’s you and me just down at the end of the street past those rail tracks. That’s us swimming just below the surface of the lake. We’re everywhere,” he said. “What about Hortensia?” I said. “She’s in there too. Hell yes, she is. We’re all up there in the clouds. Beyond the banks of the river. On top of those pyramids. On our thrones in that palace. You can see us in that woods, look close now, that’s us hiding behind the trunks of those trees.”

  And for a strange minute that early August evening—with the Dictator’s engine ticking towards quiet, and a cardinal calling down the street—cornsilk Ryansville had some of that feeling for me. World emptied out and ready for other feet to be the ones to walk its roads. Other faces to answer its doors. To tend its shops. To honk its horns and light its lights. Still, pretty dreams of a moment put aside, I wasn’t ignorant, wasn’t dumb. I knew it was a cornsilk had taken those pictures of empty landscapes and that it was cornsilks had built every inch of what I was looking at now. If there was anyone hiding behind Ryansville’s trees or waiting quiet behind its curtains, it wasn’t cornflowers. That was for sure. And when I had had that thought I had another I didn’t like as I looked around the Dictator at the empty streets. They’ve got one going over here too is what I thought.

  Any fool wasn’t me would have flown back on out of Ryansville then, would have found Big Bob, who had been kind to me, or turned my searching to Aunt V and Uncle D, who had both that morning shook their heads as they looked my way, shook them slow and long as I walked out their door, but instead I started the Dictator back up, drove it off behind a derelict shed had been covered up into a cave by vines and shrub trees, made sure I did a better job hiding it this time, grabbed my basket, and got out. Left mop doll sit there with the jars of paint to keep her company. Started stepping forward, not even sure what I was walking toward. It was like the silence had a smell. The emptiness a taste. I made my hands into fists that felt good even if it was just to keep them from shaking. Calla Destry—the version of her that made fists and went forward and didn’t fear.

  I found the good people of Ryansville gathered outside the Methodist church. I didn’t see any bloody shirt but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one. They were smiling and nodding their heads and murmuring “Yes” and “That’s right” and “Uh-huh.” Some of them turned and saw me come up but if one of them did raise his eyebrow at the sight of me, that was the worst I got. I went on and even stepped up among them and ready now to unfist my hand and fetch what was in my basket, but when I got up close enough I saw I wasn’t going to have to because it wasn’t any boy or girl up a tree they were attending to. They hadn’t caught themselves any cornflowers. Unless, of course, they had just been waiting, spidery, for the right fly to come along. I took a step more and got a smile out of a nearby heavy lady who was sweating even worse than all the rest of us. Sweating so much the edge of her yellow hat brim was wet. A smile from a lady. They didn’t want to lynch me.

  I breathed out and felt my mind relax for it was just a group of cornsilks entertaining themselves on a summer afternoon. Just people maybe like that Erastus Fellows but in Sunday suits and clean overalls and pretty dresses. I couldn’t see him yet but he was loud, this speaker they had. A great booming voice to break through the crickets and cicadas sawing it up everywhere around us. A voice coming to the close of its orations. Talking about supper to be eaten, then buses to be boarded and a noble journey to be made and a Christian and patriotic mission to be fulfilled. I shivered and thought, Wrong, and my head spun and the fat woman smiled at me once more and I looked slowly from her over to the speaker and as my eyes traveled the voice stopped booming and grew softer a moment, soft and tender for that second, and in that second before my eyes had completed their journey I knew whose voice it was.

  As soon as Leander had stopped his speaking, the whole crowd gave up a last hurrah and went heading hard for the church doors. They went in one great, sweat-soaked rush, saying things about catfish and cornbread and getting a good place on some buses when the buses got there. They went so hard and fast that a minute later there wasn’t anyone left in the churchyard except Leander, who had his handkerchief out and was wiping with it at his forehead. I had been standing just at the edge of a great tall rose of Sharon and started to step toward him, so he could see me and I could call him over, and he could tell me what all this meant and why in hell he hadn’t come to see me by the river that morning, not to mention what all this talk about buses and righteous missions was, but as I started forward I saw a woman come up out of the church carrying a plate loaded with food. She set her plate down at a table and presently my sweet Leander skipped on over.

  She looked to me, did this woman, like she was worth about two cents and some old turkey feathers, but my Leander who hadn’t come to see me that morning headed straight on over to her. Just about flew his way over, though you could see even fifty feet off that she didn’t have any interest in talking to him, least not with her plate piled high in front of her. Leander was dressed in a suit I hadn’t seen before. It didn’t fit him worth a dog catcher’s curse and his hairpiece had come loose a touch. He put his hand on his hip and started talking and the lady answering. She had on a tight green dress and blue shoes. She had what you might call a button nose and a great big chest. Her hat could have used some adjustment; a couple sharp sprigs of long red hair had sprung loose.

  While Leander leaned over this lady, the horde started percolating back up from the church with their own plates piled high. Looking at those plates, and now the lovely clean-fried smell of fish swimming over at me, I realized that the only thing I had eaten since a couple of Aunt V’s flapjacks early that morning was Big Bob’s special orange, which had sat like Shangri-La in my mouth and nothing in my belly. I thought this and heard my stomach grumble and then that heavy lady who had smiled at me a few minutes before came out of the church with two plates. It took her a long time to get to me since she walked slow and stopped to talk at every table. But get to me she did.

  “Here you go, doll,” she said. “This is God’s food and made to be eaten by all.”

  “By all—you sure about that, ma’am?” I said.

  “Go on, now, it’s good. I know the girls who cooked it. One of them is aunt to that fine speaker we just heard. I came all the way over from Forrest to hear him. I saw you got there at the end but he could really hit the high notes. He’s going somewhere. You can see it a mile off.”

  She laughed and we both looked over at Leander. He had just left off talking to the red-haired woman and was making for the church doors.

  “His aunt cooked this?” I said.

  “She’s a sweet one, just like he is.”

  “What about his mother, did she help?”

  “His mother? Say, honey, did you bring something for the supper?” She was looking at my basket. “’Cause if you did I could take it down for you.”

  I looked at the basket, then at her, then had to bite at the inside of my lip not to laugh at the image of the heavy lady taking out the gun and laying it down in the church basement with the catfish and casseroles.

  “Did he really make a good speech?” I said, biting even harder and getting the better of myself.

  “I thought it was about the best I ever heard. Church and country. Got in some mentions of wildlife. Wildfire too! And then all this talk about highways, lanes, and thoroughfares.”

  I didn’t know what else to say so I just said, “That sounds fine.”

  “You enjoy that now, doll, and aren’t you the handsomest thing,” she said. “You remind me of a girl we once had to work in our kitchen. Only you’re a little lighter-skinned.”

  I told her I wasn’t even allowed into the kitchen at home. This was true. I had cooked some
back at the orphan house but had burned up the three things I had tried in Aunt V’s kitchen and been banished.

  “Enjoy and remember,” she said. “It ain’t nothing but good Christian folks here, even if there is a few bad ones. There’s always a few bad ones in every bunch!” She gave out a wink and a cackle like there was something extra about what she had said that I was supposed to understand and she walked off with her own plate. I stood there and watched her walk, her legs so thick you couldn’t be sure she was making them bend, then, fierce hungry as I was, I took the catfish she had given me and tossed it deep into the rose of Sharon.

  While I had talked to the nice Christian lady who believed I looked like her kitchen helper, Leander had come back out of the church, flitted here and there between the tables, then flew off. So I got the thought in my head that maybe now with his speech done and his supper eaten he would be on his way home and reckoned his home would be as good a place as any other to have our talk. We needed to have our talk. It couldn’t wait. I straightened up and smoothed the front of my dress, started to leave, maybe get there first, catch him on the lane that led up to the house. Have our talk somewhere off away from his mother. Not disturb her. Keep it quiet. Quiet as what I had to say and how he would answer would let me be.

  But then I heard a rumbling and looked out through the leaves and pink Sharon roses to the road. As I watched, a line of five fresh-painted lily-white buses pulled up. My Leander was behind the wheel of the first one. He gave its horn a few good honks then leaned out the door and hollered, loud enough so that even I could hear it, far enough away as I already was, “Anyone ready to get on the road to Marvel and join the party, climb aboard!”