A Peculiar Grace (9 page)

“What were you up to? You sure came running.”

He said, “I was in my workshop.” An awkward word.

And she heard it. “Your forge, right?” She went on. “Did you make that bed in your room?”

He looked at her. The bed was simple with traditional arches for the head and foot boards but run through with leaves of ivy and brass snakes up the four corner posts and each post topped with a copper bunch of grapes. No apples there! The first truly beautiful thing he’d made, all in the haze of hangovers and small snorts.

She said, “That’s right. I snooped. I can’t help it.” Then she said, “Who’s that pretty blond on your bedside table?”

Hewitt breathed deep even as he nearly laughed at her choice of words. As if Emily herself was draped over that little nightstand instead of the framed photograph she was speaking of.

He said, “I made the bed. And that girl’s an old girlfriend long gone. But that’s my business.” Before this could be pursued he said, “Well Jessica, this is what I was thinking. You’ve either got a lousy sense of direction or were just ambling your way to where you were going. Would it throw you too far off track to spend another day here? What I was thinking was we could fuel this Bug up and maybe you and I could take a little trip. No big thing. Just where I can’t get to on my tractor. There’s stuff I need and I could show you the sights. People spend fortunes to come up and ride around in the country and they never do see what they should see although of course they don’t know the difference. Because nobody but the local folks get off the main roads.”

She spat into the dirt. “Goddamn. It’s cold up here.” There was gooseflesh on her thighs and arms.

“Wait till midday. You’ll sing another song then. So what do you say, Jessica? Shall we drive around a little bit?”

She looked all around the yard, her head moving as if taking it all in for the first time. She said, “You don’t have a car.”

“I used to.”

“Did you wreck it?”

“There was a time I couldn’t have more than a couple drinks and had to get out and roam around. I was lucky I never hurt anybody except myself. And yup, the last one did in the car.”

“You never got another one?”

“Can’t drive. The state took my license. I use the tractor to get back and forth to the village and mostly get what I need there. But every now and then it’s nice to get out. That’s pretty much what I was thinking of.”

“It’s not like there’s a soul waiting for me to arrive anywheres.” As if she had revealed herself she shook her head and turned partway from him so all he could see was the tip of her nose and cheekbone and the hair over her ear on that side.

A plume of tenderness washed over him.

It was as if each pebble and the grains of dirt between those pebbles kept her in some acute study or potential rapture or both. Her eyes snaked slow across the ground between them, finally striking his boots to work their way up his pantlegs and shirt where they rested or perhaps even sank deeply into the skin of his lower throat exposed behind the open collar of his shirt.

He waited.

Finally her eyes came to meet his. Her dark eyes seemed wet to him but with no evidence of tears. Looking into her eyes he felt his mouth twist one end up and the other down, his own hidden sorrow unleashed beyond command.

She said, “How far are you talking about?”

“Not so far. Over the river to New Hampshire. Twenty-five, thirty miles.”

She nodded. “Let’s do it. Although I’m not sure I can pay you just now for the gas. But I’ll get you the money. I will.”

Hewitt considered this. She wasn’t strictly saying she didn’t have any money but the implication couldn’t be avoided. Of course she might be fine for what she needed but saw no reason to pay for his joy ride. And it might even be possible she worked this angle, the poor stricken girl every chance she got. He shrugged and said, “It’s a small spit of gas. I’m happy to spare that if we could get out and let me shop a little. You don’t have to worry about paying me back. We’d be even is how I see it.”

She paused. A moment of consideration. Then smiled and said, “That bed is sure beautiful. Can I see your forge?”

He smiled back. “Nope.”

O
NCE ON THE
narrow dirt roads she drove as if she’d been on them all her life, easing along at thirty-five or forty miles an hour. They were climbing up through woodlands that opened here and there for a house lot or a somber wornout century-old sheep pasture or down in the low spots small bits of bog. Coming onto any sort of turnoff or intersection he’d silently point the way, giving her plenty of time to note his choice and the ride was smooth and unhurried. She was quiet and that was fine. Her legs and arms were pale white, causing him to wonder where exactly she’d come from most recently.

His boots rested on a cushion of trash and a quick glance down told him her comments about her diet were understated. She seemed to have an affinity for Coca-Cola in cans and Snickers candy bars. And even with the backseat emptied there remained the reek of the unwashed. He glanced over at her. She was intent on her driving but also active, her eyes and sometimes her face moving to take in all around her, as much of what was passing as she could.

He finally spoke. “So’d you paint this car yourself or’d it come that way?”

She flipped her head at him, eyes hooded and hair bouncing his way. She said, “I told you I plain don’t have any perspective.”

They drove on. For the next mile or so he felt as if he was taking the temperature inside the little car. Things felt alright. He put his right foot over his left knee which was a considerable job and twisted the least bit sideways toward her in his seat and as if commenting on what a fine day it was said, “So what happened to you, Jessica?”

If she was upset or perturbed by his question she did not show it but drove on in silence long enough so he had to point another road juncture. He wondered if she was taking this time to prepare her answer or simply to have rote words appear that way. And immediately decided that he could not do that: even if he was wrong in the end he had to trust her. Or there was no point to any of this.

She said, “You don’t smoke, do you? I mean cigarettes. I could use a cigarette just now.”

“I never liked it. Made food taste funny and I couldn’t smell a thing.”

“Well there’s other things do worse than that. But it’s not like I need to smoke, you understand?” She glanced at him.

A hen partridge dusting in the side of the road blew off. Hewitt said, “But sometimes it comes in handy.”

“This was my grandma’s car she gave to me when I turned sixteen so I could get back and forth to work and school. I was trying pretty hard about then. And my grandmother was the only one who really ever understood me. The Bug was twenty years old with thirty thousand miles on it and Grandma’s eyes were failing her so it was a good thing all around, school all day and then drive up to Oxford to waitress at the Holiday Inn and then home to do my schoolwork, at least what wasn’t done in study hall already which was most of it—I hated getting home at ten thirty eleven o’clock at night wasted from
smoking pot with the guys worked the kitchen and try to do homework. But even then things had gone downhill and I knew I was dancing not walking like everybody else. You know what, Hewitt, it’s a pure shithole trying to figure out what was really going on with me and what others said was. It was a fuck all the way round. A bad one. You know what I mean.”

“I believe I do.”

“I was a happy little girl, at least I thought I was. Sure there was weird shit going down in my family but I never seen a family didn’t have that. I thought I was normal. I had my moments but I thought it was just part of life, of growing up. Like when the thoughts in my head got racing far ahead of what I could keep up with. Or times when I would get so lonesome for no reason I could name that I’d lay on my bed and cry. But it all seemed okay. Course my mama and daddy weren’t talking much to each other but I never saw any fights either.”

Hewitt heard the pause and said, “That doesn’t sound so strange to me. I think most growing up is like that. One way or another.”

She drove on a while. Hewitt was a little lost but knew where east west north south were and so he just waited for the roads to proclaim themselves. At some point they would start downhill and all would be clear from there.

Jessica said, “All the sudden not a thing made sense. It was so fucking weird, Hewitt. I was going along and doing fine I thought and all the time my mama and plenty others were talking about me behind my back. It was about this time my daddy run off to Memphis with that girl Tina which I don’t much blame him for. It was more show than he was getting in Water Valley. Or being a diddly country lawyer. And I shit you not, Hewitt. I think in my heart that’s where things really went wrong. You can’t be sixteen years old and have your daddy run off with a woman just barely out of college herself and not expect some effect. Kids have that shit happen all the time. But me, I rolled up like a caterpillar touched with a stick. But the thing, the funny thing is everybody had to believe it was
bigger than it was. While all it was was just me. For a good while I was out of school more than in. Dragged here and there to see different doctors who expected me to explain myself to them which was like asking dirt to explain itself and they would get angry or frustrated and decide I needed some kind of pills. Except they wouldn’t work. Off we’d go to another one. And more pills to try. I felt like I was the itsy-bitsy spider there for a while. And the drugs were like a long dragged-out dreary day with nothing to do. Then came the afternoon I overheard the doctor talking to my mother about maybe having me hospitalized. For my own good, he said. For the first time I was really scared. I realized those fuckers could do anything they wanted to, so I stopped fighting them. I took the pills and went to my sessions and did my best to look like I was trying to do my best, which is what they want. They don’t want more than that I can tell you. That lasted six months and I counted every minute of every hour of those days. I kept taking the pills because there was too many people keeping track. But I still had my waitress job and there was this guy Daryl working the kitchen I trusted. So I saved up a couple hundred dollars and one night I went to work and never did go home again. I’d smuggled clothes out a piece or two at a time until the front of that Bug was stuffed full. That night after work I went over to Daryl’s house and we pulled the Bug into his garage and shut the doors and he had all these cans of spray paint and we smoked reefer and did a few lines and stayed up and painted this fucker ever which way we could think to. About four in the morning I drove the fuck out of there. Summertime and that red sun coming up like the eyeball of the world turned upon me so I went until I hit the interstate and turned west. Not because I had a plan. I just had to get rid of that sun.”

Hewitt remained silent. They were dropping down through the last hillside and while she couldn’t see it, he knew those flashes low in the trees were sunlight on the big river. After a time he said, “When was that?”

She didn’t look at him. “I guess close to ten years.”

“You ever been back?”

Now, one hand on the wheel she glanced over at him, the other hand pushing her hair clear of her face. “I float in and out,” she said. “I go close enough long enough to keep the car up to date paper-wise. Basically,” she looked hard at him, “I’m doing the best I can.”

T
OO MANY HOLES
, was what Hewitt was thinking as he went about his errands. She turned herself loose in Hanover, agreeing to meet back at the car in an hour.

So he paused after delivering the mixed case of wine to the backseat of the VW that at least here in Hanover wouldn’t attract the sort of scrutiny it might in other towns around. Even the story of that paint job. What was that about? She was smart enough to know you can repaint a car but with the same plates they can find you if they want to. The multiples of they that might apply. Yet her telling had been so matter of fact, nearly off the cuff as if the story related what happened to someone else instead of an ongoing present.

This all told him nothing he hadn’t known yesterday when he found her at her spindly campfire up in his woods. The details provided since were nothing more than a half-dozen nails in the walls of an otherwise empty room that he might hang her fragments of story upon.

He knew the smart thing was to send her ass down the road.

He also knew he wasn’t about to do that. At least not yet. His curiosity was piqued. Beneath this was a genuine desire to know more.

He whistled softly, almost a whisper of a whistle as he hiked down the street to the Co-op where he could buy the couple of sacks of grocery items he couldn’t purchase closer to home.

T
HREE HOURS LATER
he was pacing about the general area where the Bug sat well laden but with no sign of its owner. He’d walked both sides of the street a couple blocks either direction from the car. She’d taken the keys and he could see her driving off without
him, without even noticing or paying attention to the bags and boxes in the backseat. It was so late past their meeting time he knew there was trouble of some kind. There was money enough in his wallet to call a taxi for the trip home. But the more he paced the more he was inclined to stay. He felt he couldn’t abandon her—a part of him even wondering if this was some test of hers—a notion that rankled yet he understood. That, he decided, was his big problem.

Compounding his reel of judgment was that he was in the last place good for him to be stranded with this sort of sticky mind-fucking. All those children out in their summer clothes, skin and hearts and minds taut and flushed and tracking as they never would again and their walking around not knowing and he watched in fear of encountering some version of his younger self or selves because she was always with him. Although he had not once been fooled—there never was a girl with hair like hers or the radiant presence that shone just walking. There were a handful of pale imitations but certainly no Emily. He could see each movement of her mouth, lips and eyes saying this to him—those rare occasions when doodling along on some project or sitting gazing blank in the evenings some near forgotten fragment would come back and her voice would be fresh in his head as if she were in the room. Time to time he caught her smell also. For years until they quit making it he used the brand of shampoo that had been hers. Then, suddenly he could no longer find it; replaced or discontinued in the vast shuffling of corporations. Although every once in a while he’d be in a grocery store and a woman would pass him and he would smell that scent. For all he knew it was something else altogether, the whiff of memory false.