American rust (10 page)

9. Isaac

T
here was a noise and he woke up; he hoped it was morning but there was just the blue black of night, bright stars. The TV is on, he thought, but it was not the TV It was from the porch. Poe and Lee talking. You know why. After a time he heard Poe say he loved her and she repeated it back to him and then it got quiet, he could feel the skin on his neck tingle like he was drunk. It's all of them, he thought. Lying right to your face.

They were on the porch, where his father had hung his workclothes so as not to get the dust in the house. He remembered grabbing his father's legs but his father, wearing dirty long johns, pushing him away until he dressed. Is that a real memory, he wondered. Or just something you think might have happened.

He listened a while longer, heard his sister suddenly whimper. All of them, their human condition. Even your own mother waded out to sink. Pocketful of rocks. Final eyeblink, saw her whole life in it. Wonder did it make her feel good or bad.

He needed something to rinse his throat. Keep this up, he thought. Keep this up and it's back to the river in no time. He got up and stood near the open window in the cold breeze his head was swimming, he had a feeling his room was enormous, looking around in the dark it seemed the walls stretched on forever like a fever dream, he remembered his mother holding iced towels to his neck. Taught fourth and fifth grade because she couldn't handle the older ones. Old man tells everyone she was pushed. Coverup, he says, uninvestigated murder. Can't go to heaven if you kill yourself.

Even her—she lived only for herself. Got tired and checked out. Easy to be generous when it doesn't matter but when the hard decisions come you see what they all choose. It doesn't matter doing right when it's easy. Her, Poe, Lee, the old man. As if they're the only ones alive on earth. Meanwhile you're always expecting different. It is your own fault expecting things.

You are the one who let her go—watched her walking down the driveway, last you saw of her. Maybe the last anyone saw of her. Maybe she saw someone along the way. Wish she did and wish she didn't. That was the happiest you'd seen her in a while. Went up to your room and then saw her walking. Seemed out of place but didn't know what. A nice day, she was going for a walk. Back to your reading.
Time
magazine. I was reading
Time
magazine when my mother died. If I had chased her down, he thought. Why would you have—there was no reason. Nice day for a walk. What no one knows about you. I didn't know, he thought. Alright alright alright. Put it out of your mind.

He stood in the dark listening. The voices started again, giggling, then the porch door opened and closed. He watched them walk out into the driveway holding hands, kissing their good- byes. Maybe you only care because they're happy, he thought. But he didn't think that was true. Poe was walking alone across the dark lawn, down the hill toward the road, Isaac watched him and the strange way he had of bouncing on his toes. Poe turned again and waved to Lee. That's all, you're being petty. Angry because they are happy. Then he thought no, it has nothing to do with that. It's because of what they have inside. But somehow you've turned out worst of all of them.

He reached for the light but it was too late, there was a loose fluttery feeling in his chest, his heart was beating faster than it ever had and his legs went loose and he sat down. There was a warm feeling like he was pissing himself. Faulty wiring. He took deep breaths but it was beating too fast, fluttering too fast to pump blood. Like the kid who died at soccer. Didn't confess. Please God, he thought. He sat against the wall and he couldn't get enough air and he was distantly aware of being cold again and wet everywhere. He tried to call out for his sister but he couldn't and then the feeling began to pass. He felt embarrassed.

You need to get out of here, he felt more than thought. On shaky legs he got himself up and turned on the light, examined himself, his thin naked body, there was almost no substance to it. He was still shaking and wanted to sit back down but he made himself stand until his legs felt strong again. He was clammy with sweat but that was all. Get up and get moving. Get. Out. Of here. He wiped himself off with a shirt and grimaced. Look at you—when it comes down to it you think Lord God come and save me. Confession get my pardons. Christ, he thought. He felt embarrassed though of course there was no one to be embarrassed in front of. Go on and pay a visit to St. James. Dear old Father Anthony, moral guide and choirboy fondler. Ten Hail Marys and a blowjob. Jerry what's- his- name, the kid from Lee's year, had a breakdown. Meanwhile half the town still goes—easier to believe that young Jerry was a liar. Diddle our sons but you can't shake our faith.

He knew it wasn't true about his sister. She was not a bad person. Their mother dying, it had driven Lee away, she'd gone off to college right after. He didn't think she'd chosen another life, not exactly, but a different path had been offered and eventually she'd decided to take it. How can you blame her? You made one visit to New Haven and knew it was right for her. Probably right for you, too, but too late for that. No, he thought, that's just your pride.

Most of what he needed was in the backpack he'd left by the machine shop. That was the first order of business. It was a crime scene but so what. He couldn't believe they'd been so stupid today, just walked through the field. It would have been easy to stake the place out and make sure no one was watching. Lessons of hindsight. You are not playing by the same rules as last week, even. No more stupid mistakes. He found a spare set of thermals and began dressing, his heavy cargo pants, a heavy flannel shirt, wool sweater. Get your fishing knife, you might need it.

He bent the sheath loop backwards so it would sit inside his waistband and still clip to his belt. He looked at himself in the mirror, a knife in his belt, and felt ridiculous. Go down and talk to your sister. No, it's too late for that. It was stupid but there seemed to be no way around it. You're going to die alone, he thought. This isn't kid's stuff anymore.

You didn't have to leave this way. Only now you do. Took the car the other day up to Charleroi and then you were on 70 West and you kept going, just to see what it felt like, nearly ran out of gas and got home after dark, he was waiting for you. Sitting on the porch, just waiting for you in the dark. Meanwhile you are twenty years old.

I had an appointment with Terry Hart that I missed.

Why didn't you ask him to pick you up?

You know I don't like to do that.

Alright,
you told him.
I'm sorry.

It's my car,
he told you.
Don't borrow it again unless you tell me where you're going and when you'll be back.

Knew he was pushing you—the car was your only freedom. But that is his way. Could have lent you the money to buy a car but didn't. When you got that job in the Carnegie Library—two hours each way on the bus—he got sick all of a sudden. Four visits to the doctor in a week. Wanted you home but wouldn't say it. That was his way of telling you. And you gave in. Some part of you was happy to give in. The same part of you that has kept you here waiting two years now.

The air in his room suddenly felt thin and he had an urge to get outside as quickly as possible but he took a final look around and made himself think. There was the ceramic bank his mother had given him, he hadn't wanted to break it before, it was in the shape of a schoolhouse and it had been full for years but now he cracked it on the edge of the dresser, took the dollars and the quarters, counted it, thirty- two fifty, left the rest of the change on the bed. Rifling his desk for anything else he needed to bring, Social Security card, anything, but he'd packed so carefully the last time that there was nothing. Everything—the money, his journals, everything else—was in his surplus Alice pack sitting under that pile of scrap metal in the field. Unless someone found it. Unlikely, he decided. They had no reason to search the field, everything they needed was in that building. He glanced briefly at the picture of his mother over his desk but it didn't inspire any sort of feeling. It is because of her checking out that you lost Lee and now you've lost Poe as well. Or maybe that happened a long time ago. Either way it's better that you know it.

He got his spare schoolbag and put a blanket and extra socks in it just in case. In case nothing. You need to get the other pack. After a final inventory he went softly down the stairs, found his sister asleep on the couch, her foot tucked in a hole in the torn plaid cover. He watched her as he laced up his boots. Cheats on her husband, falls fast asleep. Miraculous conscience. Deleted at birth. These are just things you are saying to yourself, he thought.

She opened her eyes, groggy, not sure who was there. He walked past her toward the door.

“Isaac?” she said. “Where are you going?”

“Nowhere.”

“Wait a second, then.”

“I heard you and Poe.”

She looked confused and then she was more awake, she looked again at his backpack, his coat and hat and hiking boots. She untangled herself and stood up quickly. “Hold on,” she said. “It isn't how it sounded. It isn't anything. It's an old thing but now it's over.”

“You told him you loved him, Lee.”

“Isaac.”

“I believe you. I know that somehow in your mind, both of those things can be true.”

“Just hear me out.”

She took another step toward him and bumped a pile of ancient books, which fell heavily to the floor, startling her. For a second he seemed to see her clearly, her hair disheveled, hollows under her eyes, the grand old living room now filled with junk, so different from the way their mother had kept things. The house literally falling apart around her. She didn't know how to handle any of it. The only thing she knew how to do was leave.

“Soon we'll both be out of here,” she said. “We're really close.”

“It doesn't matter anymore.”

She looked confused and then the old man began calling out from his bedroom. Isaac ignored it.

“Should we check on him?”

“He does that in his sleep every night.”

She nodded. Because nothing is required of her, he thought. Then he was angry again.

“I swear this is all about to get fixed.”

“You were a day too late,” he told her. Before he could hear her reply he was out the front door, making his way toward the road in the dark.

1. Poe

I
t took him, he didn't know, half an hour to walk home from Lee's house. Two miles, give or take. He passed through town, the long main drag, it was even darker than normal, no lights on anywhere except for Frank's Tavern. It seemed like forever since they'd been there but it had only been a few hours. It was long after closing time now, but the lights were still on. Everyone knew why that was. Poe was careful to not look in the windows as he passed, you didn't know who might be in there. The bar had nearly gone out of business for back taxes but somehow Frank Meltzer came up with a bunch of money, claimed it was some aunt that gave it to him but most people said he'd flown down to Florida and driven back in a minivan full of dope. Ten- thousand- dollar paycheck, if you had a clean record you just had to call the right people, but only if your record was clean. Being a mule, they called it. But it was just like the movie said: once you were in, they didn't just let you out. He wondered if Frank Meltzer was sorry he'd done it. There was another place like that, Little Poland, supposedly the Russian mob had bought it but meanwhile the food was still good, people would drive all the way down from the city to eat there, pierogies and kielbasa.

He was making good time. He had long legs—a fast walker. He was thinking a lot. He thought you'll follow her. You'll follow her to Connecticut. Plenty of schools up there you'll get a scholarship. Except Christ what was wrong with him. She had moved in with her boyfriend, husband now. It was all a fantasy what he'd just had, it was not the last time they'd sleep together it didn't have that feel, it didn't have that tragic, sitting around crying feeling. But it was close. They would do it one more time and it would be horrible, sex followed by five or six hours of intense bawling and holding each other and complete and utter misery. And then he would never see her again. She would not come back to the Valley he could be sure of that. Four years gone, down the tubes. Only Christ it wasn't four years, it had never been four years, it had only been fun and games that had gone on four years, it was not the same as being together. They had never been together properly except the one Christmas break three years back when she came home the whole week. One week of walking down the street and holding hands and all, kissing games, all your standard boyfriend- girlfriend activities. The rest of the time it was just sex. That had seemed good at first, a pretty girl who just wanted sex and not much else. You did not think those girls really existed. But now it didn't seem good at all. She would go back permanently to her other life, because that's what it was, she had two lives and this one, the one here in her hometown, this was the life she was trying to get rid of. It was another world entirely she had out there, he had not seen it but from the way she talked he could imagine it, that new world, mansions, educated people, a butler involved. It was not even doctors and lawyers, it was another level entirely. It was the level of having butlers. Only maybe those were only from movies. Butlers were outmoded, probably. He guessed it was all robotics now.

And look at him here now, walking down a dirt road, an actual dirt road, he imagined her new husband driving his BMW or whatever it was down the road, look honey, we are driving on an actual dirt road. How quaint. Well yes. He had seen a picture of the new husband once, back when he was still just a boyfriend. He looked queer. That boyfriend of hers looked like an actual homosexual. Wearing a pink oxford. Maybe that wasn't queer in Connecticut but still, that pink shirt, it had given Poe a good deal of satisfaction to see it in that picture. Though here he himself was on his dirt road, walking home as he had no functioning vehicle, his own home, not mansion but a doublewide trailer, just ahead of him. He could see the porch light just ahead. It was nearly five in the morning. Before going inside he took a leak in the bushes so as not to wake his mother with the bathroom noises. He was careful to be quiet—his mother she wasn't a good sleeper and if there was anyone who needed it, about three years of good sleep, it was her.

He made it into the house quietly and into his bed. Falling asleep he had to remind himself that bad things were happening to him, but that wasn't how it felt. This will all blow over, he decided.

It was late in the morning when he woke up, clearheaded, the best he'd felt in weeks, he checked the clock and knew his mother had already gone to work. He was thinking about Lee again, lying there in his bed in his room with the sun shining on him. The south- facing window, he hated it, you didn't get good sleep once the sun came up. He needed to fix the curtain rod, it'd been broken for weeks now. And the tape was coming off his old posters, Kiss, why had he ever liked them anyway, plus Rage Against the Machine, someone said they were communists. The good thing was that with no curtain over the window he could see a long way, almost to the river, and on account of the sun it was already hot in the room. It felt good though he hadn't slept well. The warmth.

He would go to the library and fill out the applications for schools, April 10th now, another day advancing, it would not stop until he died. Only even then it would not stop, the day he died would be like any other day. He hoped that was a long way off. He got up and went outside in his boxer shorts, it was another beautiful day the kind that reminds you how good it is to just be breathing, no matter if nothing else is going right. You are breathing, he thought, more than many can say. He looked at his car, his 1973 Camaro, last of the small- bumper models, before the government came in with its five- mile- per- hour bumpers that ruined the lines of the car. He would never own one newer than 1973. You would have to be an idiot. The Camaro was sitting where the tow truck had left it a month earlier, off to the side of the driveway. Leaves and dirt on top of the new paintjob he'd paid for. He'd dropped the transmission racing Dustin McGreevy in his new WRX Subaru, Dustin going on and on about pop- off valves and turbos and then Poe had smoked him the first time but the second time Poe'd dropped the tranny, the original Turbo-matic, torn the inside of it all to pieces and they'd had to leave the Ca-maro in the ditch and Dustin had given him a ride home. So much for American steel, said Dustin. Least it isn't my mom's car, Poe told him, flicking the Jesus air freshener.

That was a lesson, he decided, McGreevy's Japanese car, it had only won because it hadn't destroyed itself. They knew what they were doing, the Japanese—plenty of steel still got made there. Special alloys. You wanted to believe in America, but anyone could tell you that the Germans and Japs made the same amount of steel America did these days, and both those countries were about the size of Pennsylvania. He wasn't sure about that last fact, but he guessed it was true. Pennsylvania was a big state. Not to mention all the expensive cars were made there—overseas—Lexus, Mercedes, the list went on. Happening to the whole country, he thought, glory days are over.

Anyway he'd put almost eight grand into the Camaro, punched- out 350, Weld rims, new paint, much of it on a credit card he'd stopped making payments on. He'd probably get three or four grand all told. Maybe thirty- five hundred. Speaking realistically. It had rust. It was not a good investment. It was not like putting your money with Charles Schwab. Get something cheap, good on gas. Toyota or something. He tried to think but no, the car, that old Camaro, it hadn't gotten him any pussy he wouldn't have gotten otherwise.
Pussy magnet
is what the guys at the hotrod shop called that car of his, but that was a bunch of bullshit. You could not trust people who told you things like that. The car was a loser, through and through. As his mother had said it would be.

He would put an ad up on the Internet to sell it, do it at the library when he went to do his college applications. Some stupid kid would buy it same as he had. He'd pick up an old Civic or Tercel, good on gas. Listen to yourself, he thought. Buying an actual little car like that. Unthinkable even a month ago, you are changing. You are changing in front of your own eyes. He got a hose and bucket and sprayed the leaves and dirt off and got his special car soap from the house and sudsed the Camaro so it wouldn't look so bad for a buyer. He was still wearing his boxer shorts. It felt good being out there in the sun like that, practically naked, he could feel the heat all over him.

Then he heard someone coming up the road. It sounded like his mother's Plymouth. He didn't think his mother would be back that early, but maybe so—her hands were getting worse every day. That was another thing he hadn't considered—that soon his mother would not be able to work, at least not much. Winters were hell on her. She pulled in next to the trailer and there she was, his mother, dressed for church and him standing in his underpants in the driveway, nearly one o'clock in the afternoon. She shook her head, but not in a friendly way. She was not happy to see it.

“I'm selling it,” he said, by way of making up for being caught like that.

She just looked at him.

“The car. I'm getting something that runs. I'm going to college. In September, if I can.”

She didn't say anything.

“I'm gonna call that coach at Colgate College,” he continued. “He said I could check in with him anytime. And there'll be other places. Either way I'll be in school by this September. And not any California University of Pennsylvania, either.”

“Okay,” she said. She went up onto the porch. She didn't believe him.

“I'm serious,” he said.

She went inside.

He followed her in. He looked around for a pair of pants to put on, as if it would make him seem more serious.

“Are you really going,” she said. “Or are you just saying that so I don't start charging you rent.”

“I'm going,” he said. “I'm going to the library to get the applications. Get them in the mail soon as possible.”

“What about letters from your teachers and copies of your transcript?”

“Right,” he said. “I'll do that, too.” He had forgotten that part.

“Billy?”

“Yeah.”

“You're a good boy.” She hugged him but still, he could tell, she didn't believe him. Who could blame her? He was hungry and he went to the fridge, there was nothing he wanted. He checked the chest freezer on the porch, but it was nearly empty as well. Some venison wouldn't hurt anything. He would go and get a deer—poaching—it ran in the family. There were too many deer now, they kept on extending the hunting season but never enough to catch up with the deer population, a little poaching it was no big deal. Fifty pounds of venison, it was free money. Though his mother wouldn't touch it.

After getting dressed he took his .30-30 off its rack, his Winchester 94 from before Winchester went to shit, the gun was fifty years old. Top-eject the way God wanted and no scope—that was for people who couldn't shoot. An original Lyman peep. Someone might have guessed it was his father's or grandfather's rifle but neither one of them knew or cared to take care of anything this nice. He'd saved and bought it himself, passing up the clunky newer models, mostly plastic, that cost half as much.

He dropped a few cartridges in his pocket, three was the right number, then walked down into the field, it was definitely spring now, that rich green smell was everywhere, he wondered where it came from. After slipping into the small blind he'd built, he drew in the air, even the damp soil in the blind smelled rich, it was just the smell of things growing. Smell of life, really. He pushed a pair of blunt- nosed rounds into the magazine. It was all a cycle. It would continue long after he was gone. It was turning out to be a good day. Though already he'd nearly pissed it away, he wouldn't get to the library before it closed. It's Sunday, he thought. Probably closed anyway. He would get it done tonight and still mail the apps tomorrow. But for now it was a nice day and you did not piss away days like this in the library.

The field had not been mowed in a year and the grass was high and the goldenrod was taking over. He would have to mow it soon. He would do that tomorrow as well, a field unmowed did not stay a field very long. He would stop being the kind of punk that put everything off till tomorrow. No excuses it was time to grow up. In his way he was still a momma's boy. He admitted that now. He was good at some things but not at others. He looked out over the land, rolling off in all different directions as far as the eye could see, it was all ridges and hollows, deep wrinkles in the earth as if God had taken a great armful and squeezed it in on itself. Like when you play with the skin on a dog's face, it all wrinkles up. He had not even bothered to get another dog, he thought about that. He was still mourning Bear. But Bear had been dead two years. Was that mourning or being lazy? He went back to the rolling terrain. Of course God was not the explanation. Isaac would know why it did that. Underground plates, probably.

The field descended gradually to a stream and then the land went uphill again, a hundred different types of green, the pale new grass and new buds on the oaks and darkness of the pine tree needles, the hemlocks. Spring—Christ even the animals loved springtime. You called it all green but that was not correct, there should have been different words, hundreds of them. One day he would invent his own. The air was cool and the sky was very blue. Christ it was a nice day. It could have been back in Indian times, a day like this, with the land all greening up and beautiful. He did not see why people would ever want to leave here. It was a beautiful place and it was no exaggeration to say it. It was because of the job situation. But that was changing as well. The Valley was recovering. Only it would never be what it had been and that was the trouble. People couldn't adjust to that—it had been a wealthy place once, or not wealthy but doing well, all those steelworkers making thirty dollars an hour there had been plenty of money. It would never be like that again. It had fallen a long ways. No one blinked at taking a minimum- wage job now. He had not been old enough to see it fall is why it didn't bother him. He just saw the good parts of it. That is a gift, he decided, to only see the good parts. Because we're the first ones to grow up with it like this. The new generation. All we know. But things are improving in different ways. Right now, right from where he was sitting, there were patches of woods that he remembered being overgrown fields when he was younger. Oak, cherry, birch, the land going back to its natural state.