Chapter 20
“He says he has to go to the bathroom,” Tiffany told Sipe. “Is the gas station ok? The Zippy Mart?”
“All right.”
Tiffany told Connie ‘All right’, then laughed, then hung up. After the initial pit stop in Pilot Rock, Connie and Tiff meeting and exchanging cell numbers, Connie had called a couple times during the drive back to Little Creek. Even along the steepness. Sipe’s guts had gone cold, imagining Tiffany listening to the Old Man’s kid grunt and expectorate as the car cab crumpled, and he turned into jelly, one more dead motorist notched on Battle Mountains’ belt.
“He did an impression of you,” said Tiffany. “It was pretty good.”
Henry had called Tiff. He’d gone out of town, out to some cabin, and interestingly enough, the Quinn Dobbs guy had appeared. No sign of Hope, but it looked like someone had been crashing inside the cabin.
The sun primed for a long descent into the west, the landscape glinting with copper highlights. Everything seemed of one piece. The cars driving past, north, towards Pilot Rock or Pendleton, they seemed to come out of nowhere. The wind tower blades were still. The Zippy Mart sign glowed with a dull white light, the crazed squirrel encrusted in plastic the color of mooncrust, more yellow than white.
Foregoing the signal, Connie zipped out, drove past them, and cut across the lot, past the gas tanks, and parked at the side of the mini-mart. Already out, headed towards the entrance as Sipe turned wide, ignored the parking slots, and ended up idling Lori’s car perpendicular to Connie’s rear bumper, stopping so he could look towards the highway and also past Tiffany, out the passenger side window, at the mini-mart front doors.
“What are you doing?”
“Keeping an eye on things,” said Sipe.
“What things?”
“Things.” He tried to come up with a word that would get it across.
“You don’t trust him?”
“People do things.”
“Like last night.”
“Yeah.”
“You look so cool now. I should’ve gotten some sunglasses, too,” she said. “We could be twins. Brother and sister. Father and daughter. Or lovers.”
“Probably not.”
She sighed and sat back in her seat. Yawned, patty-caked her thighs. The noise bothersome, but he wasn’t about to force her to stop.
Trees behind the Zippy Mart formed the line of demarcation with the Collar place, a lot composed of abandoned farm machinery and sheep and chicken pens. The trees looked too close together to allow admittance. Sipe’s normal state to check everything in a continuous orbit, right-front-left-back, Sipe glancing at the rearview mirror when a man pushed through the greenery, onto the asphalt, past the air and water pump and then onto the cement, walking in-between the Lexus front bumper and the big white ice box with polar bear decals.
“That’s Bug,” said Tiffany. “Collar. I was telling you about him. He was with Henry.”
Sipe watched Bug at the minimart door, the plaid shirt and a pair of grimy jeans, Bug working a finger under the brim of a grimy ball cap before he went inside.
“Guy that was with Henry?”
“Out at the cabin. Right.” Another yawn. “I should go talk to him. He’s probably sick of me. I bugged him about Hope before. But I’m so sleepy all of a sudden. Oh my gosh. I think this thing has seat warmers. That’d be the nudge. I did that, you’d have one passed out Pleshette on your hands.”
Cars had driven both directions out on the highway. No one slowing and turning and driving for Little Creek. That’s what he was waiting for. The Wub. The timeframe seemed right. Flight from Seattle to Walla Walla or Pendleton. The drive. The Wub might already be in Little Creek. Waiting. On the drive from Pendleton, Sipe had checked the rearview religiously. Fate deciding to deal nothing but turds, why not send The Wub, why not have him end up right behind Sipe and Connie, a little caravan, a little reunion out in the middle of nowhere.
A gleaming black sedan, a sibling to the Lexus, sibling to all the cars in the Old Man’s stable, heading south on Highway 395 slowed on approach to the intersection, waiting for a rickety pickup truck headed north to putter past before turning left, rolling on towards Little Creek.
Sipe could imagine some stooge from the Old Man’s Walla Walla winery meeting the Wub at the Walla Walla airport. The stooge told the Wub some associate in the venture. A wine taster, a vintner with local issues to address. The stooge loading a locked slender black case in the trunk, brethren to the slender black case Sipe had put in the Lexus trunk before driving to St. Helena.
The black car turned. Sipe could imagine the car rolling left and inside a grim death’s head grin holding, facing him at a tendon-snapping angle.
“Call Henry. Tiffany. Hey. Tiffany.”
“Mmsleepy.”
“Tiff. Call Henry.”
“Ow.”
“Call Henry.”
“You pinched me.”
He cupped her face and brought his so close he could have kissed her.
“Call Henry. He needs to get out of his house. Now. Right now. Or he’s dead.”
Her pupils expanded. Her brain shrinking like a conveyor belt conducted Tiff and Tiff’s brain in opposite directions. He ran his finger down the length of her nose.
“Call him.”
Released, her hands slapped all around her body, the phone in her lap elusive. Sipe’s pointing down cued her and she picked it up. Dialed. Swore. Something about no bars. She popped the door handle and got out of the car. Walked away without shutting the door. She started to run towards the gas tanks like she might sprint back into town. Then stopped. Rotated this way and that, the modern equivalent to tilting the TV rabbit ears this way and that, trying to clear the snow from the signal. She shouted ‘Henry’ and then lowered her voice while appearing to talk a mile a minute.
Meantime, Bug exited the minimart, clutching a milk carton and junk food. He looked at Tiff and then through the open passenger side door in at Sipe. Moment later, he was past Connie’s car and through the trees, back onto his property.
Connie exited. Looked at Tiffany, he made a face, and started around the side of the minimart. Engine left running, Sipe got out, called out, and standing on the driver side of the sedan he motioned Connie to come on over.
“Everything ok?” asked Connie.
“I think I saw him. The Wub.”
“Shit. Where?” Connie looked around, down the broad sweep of the valley like the shooter might be perched at the top of one of the wind towers, blades motionless in the deep throat of afternoon.
“Going into town.”
“You saw him like you saw him. Him him?”
“Just a car.”
“Look, Sipe, man, I don’t want to be a dick or anything, but it could just be nerves. What, was it a black car?” Sipe nodded. Connie said, “Uh huh. Right. I’m just saying. It’s been a day, man. It’s been a couple three days compacted into one.”
“It felt right.”
“’It felt right’. I know. I know.”
Tiffany walked back towards them. Not running. Not breathless.
“He’s not at the house. Henry, I mean.”
“Good.”
“He’s with Gwen. When he got back, from the cabin, she grabbed him, took him to The Outpost for a milkshake.“
Sipe didn’t care where Henry was just so long as it wasn’t the house.
“Fuck that sounds good,” said Connie. “They make good ones?”
Here Sipe thought Tiff would go all moonie-eyed, twist her hair through her fingers like sure, since Connie asked, she’d love to go get a milkshake.
Tiffany said, “Bug Collar had strawberry-banana Quik.”
Connie returned the look Sipe sent his way.
“It was strawberry-banana Quik. And hot dogs. And a bag of sour cream and onion potato chips.”
/> “Sounds like a meal to me,” said Connie.
“That’s like Hope’s favorite snack. The drink, the Quik? It’s really gross. And she mashes up the chips and rolls the hot dogs in them. One day it’s going to get her, catch up to her, and she’s going to be even fatter than me.”
“You’re not fat,” said Connie. “You’re pretty cute, you know, even if you’re trying to rock that orange shirt. Not many people make orange sing, you know.”
“Leave the car,” said Sipe.
“Hm?”
“We’ll leave the car. The Old Man’s car. He’ll know it. The Wub. He doesn’t know this one. The Honda. We’ll take this one into town.”
“All right.”
Sipe pointed at Tiffany. “You need to stay here.”
“I’m going to ask her,” said Tiffany. “I’m gonna go in there and ask the clerk how often Bug’s been buying Quik and sour cream and onion potato chips.”
“Can you stay here? After you do that? I don’t want you to go to town right now.”
That wall of green, those trees held her attention. Sipe had to say her name, almost walk around the car and touch her.
“You need to stay out here.”
She looked at him. Nodded.
Connie ran in, Tiff behind him, Connie ever the gentleman and holding the door for Tiff, inside, he hefted some bullshit about car trouble at the clerk, and came back out, Sipe getting impatient while the kid checked all the doors on the Lexus.
Speeding across the Zippy Mart asphalt towards the intersection Connie asked Sipe, “That kid, she’s pretty smart, isn’t she?”
Checking the highway north and south, Sipe accelerated through the intersection. Once they were through it, he found the time to shrug.
The Lipless Gods Page 21