American rust (6 page)

“Well, that's what you told me.”

“I forgot what day it was when I said that.”

She shrugged. “I heard U.S. Steel is doing aptitude testing next month. You could put in a call up there.”

“Goddamn hour and a half in traffic each way.”

She could smell the booze on him. “We could move closer in to the city, live in an actual house.”

“We ought to be moving further away. Live a real country life instead of trying to pretend we're gonna move up in the world.”

He looked at her. “What are you laughing about,” he said.

She shook her head and stopped smiling. They looked at each other awhile longer and there was something about his face. She was looking at him and he had a strange look and then she knew.

“What,” he said.

“Virgil,” she said.

“What?”

“The mortgage is due this week, plus it's April and we still owe taxes from two years ago. I'm on a payment plan with the IRS.”

“Danny Hobbes owes me three hundred bucks. We can always make more money.”

It was quiet and she kept rubbing his leg. “Remind me again why you came back,” she said.

“You know I've got money.”

“What about your disability this month?”

“That's what I lent to Danny.”

She nodded.

“What about getting other money from the government.”

“We ain't gonna pass the asset test for welfare. Plus they sign you up for some shit job now so you're fucked if you think you're gonna have time to look for a real job. There's no goddamn point if it don't lead to actual wage-paying employment.”

“You should apply for it anyway,” she said. “Your son isn't working, either.”

“I already looked into it,” he said. “Between the house and my truck we're not even close to qualifying. It's the asset test.”

“Your truck is six years old and I make nine- fifty an hour.”

“Well it's too much,” he said. “You still giving away your time at that shelter thing?”

She looked at him.

“Maybe for a little while you could do something else that paid instead, I mean if you're so worried about all this.”

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

“I was just thinking out loud,” he said. “Don't get all mad, now.”

“We'll get by,” she said. She still had her eyes closed.

He leaned over and kissed her.

“Let's have a drink to get this out of our heads.” He grinned and went out to the truck.

Give him some time, she thought. Be a little more generous. He came back inside brandishing a half- empty bottle of Kentucky Deluxe and, after finding clean glasses, poured one for her and one for him. She wanted to tell him about Billy coming home hurt last night but something stopped her. She took down her shot of whiskey and so did he and then he started kissing her.

Then he unbuckled her jeans and slid them down.

“You don't want to go to the bed?” she said.

He shook his head. He slipped inside her and she lifted her legs around him. Soon she could feel it building and then she forgot where she was, she was pulling him in and in and trying to get closer, they could not be close enough. He was still going and she hoped the feeling wouldn't end. She felt him get very hard and his whole body went rigid and it started to build up in her again but then he stopped moving. She rubbed his back and he was not looking at her, or at anything, he was just still. She found a comfortable position for her legs and they were like that for a long time. She dozed awhile, had strange thoughts, if Virgil was able to take home some money she'd be able to go back to school, here he was, then she thought you could probably plant the tomatoes soon, take them off the windowsill and get them into the garden, the peppers as well. She decided she could spare a few dollars and plant more herbs this year. Virgil began to move again inside her.

“Let's go to the bed,” she said. “I don't want Billy coming home and seeing us like this.”

She got up and walked to the bedroom; Virgil followed after her carrying the whiskey bottle. Worry about tomorrow's problems tomorrow, she reminded herself. They sat in bed and Virgil took a long pull from the bottle and then another, and then passed it to her.

“Drinking that whiskey like you stole it.”

He mumbled something in response—there was something going on. He didn't look at her; when she reached between his legs again he wasn't interested and then she didn't think she was, either.

“What's going on with you?”

“I've just been thinking.”

“I'm sure you have.”

“Maybe we should take it slow,” he said.

She thought about that. In the old days she wouldn't have dared say it, but now she told him: “You just want to fuck, in other words.”

“We don't have to put it like that.”

“Except that's how you'd put it to someone else, right? What you told Pete when you went fishing today.”

“Nothing's changed with you, has it?”

She wiped between her legs with the sheet and pushed it away, her stomach got tight but then she didn't feel anything, she was just looking out the window. The day was nearly over. She could have been lying next to anyone. There was still time to get the tomatoes in the ground. She felt herself choke up.

“You leaving?” she said.

“I wasn't planning on it.”

“Maybe you better.”

“This is still my house.”

“I've made every payment on my own since you left, and a couple hundred dollars here and there doesn't make a dent.”

“Come on.” He rolled toward her and she felt the frame give under his weight. They had never been able to afford a proper bed. Then there was the trailer with its fake wood paneling. She had never wanted to live here—she'd let herself be talked into it.

“I talked to a lawyer from the shelter.”

He looked at her, half- grinning.

“She said the house is legally mine until you pay your share.”

“That's a bunch of bullshit,” he told her.

He was right—she hadn't talked to any lawyer. But she was surprised how angry her own lie made her feel. She believed those words. They might not have been the truth but they should have been.

“Go talk to someone,” she said. “See for yourself.”

“You're a fucking nightmare, Grace.”

“Get out. Bud Harris said it's a felony, you still owing so much on child support.”

“Our kid isn't a child anymore.”

“It doesn't change what you owe. The court still ordered it.”

“You would bring a cop into it, wouldn't you?”

“I would. I will.”

“Well, that figures.”

She was quiet.

“Petey's wife said your cop boyfriend takes enough pills to kill a steer—Xanax, Zoloft, the whole routine. Biggest prescription in Fayette County.”

“Maybe CVS ought to know their employee is going around talking about people's business.”

“Most people think that Barney Fife motherfucker is queer.”

She thought, he's got a bigger pecker than you do, but she kept her mouth shut. She suppressed a giggle.

“What,” he said.

“Go on and take everything you brought last night.” She watched him dress and walk out, he was shaking his head the whole time. When his truck pulled out she thought she might cry but she didn't. She forced herself to get out of bed, knowing that if she didn't she might end up stuck there, wallowing. She wondered who she could call to find out for sure but it didn't matter, she knew, knew he'd run out of money, maybe gotten dumped by one of his girlfriends so he'd looked her up. It was what the girls at work had told her was happening, they'd been watching it go on forever, but she hadn't wanted to believe them. That was when she started crying. Not too much, though. She picked up the bottle of whiskey he'd left, undid the cap but it seemed distasteful that his mouth had touched it. Into the trashcan.

The sun was getting lower. She hoped Billy would come home soon but what if he didn't? She should get a dog, maybe. It wasn't too late to go to the shelter, they could always use extra help. She could call Harris.

It hit her suddenly how cruel Virgil was, he was an empty shell, he'd gotten by his whole life on his looks, but that would change for him as it was changing for her, and what would be left—-just the mean streak. The parts of Billy she worried about, the quick temper, it all came right from Virgil. She wondered how she'd never seen it before, but then she knew she'd always seen it, she'd chosen to ignore it. She was making another decision now, or it felt like it had been made for her, it felt impossible at that moment that she'd ever loved him. You're probably just in shock, she thought, but then no, it was like a switch had been turned off.

The tomatoes were there in the window, she carried them out and got a shovel from the shed, out behind Billy's half- done projects, a parts car he'd bought to keep his other car running, riding lawn mowers, the four- wheeler. Worrying about him again, coming home last night with the cut on his neck. But things like that had happened many times before, never that bad but still, he was a magnet for trouble. She should have taken him out of this place a long time ago.

Kicking the shovel hard into the dirt, she planted all six tomatoes and the peppers as well, setting the trellises and stepping on them to set them firmly. It was nice standing in the breeze, her hands dirty, looking at the plants and the freshly turned soil, looking out over the rolling hills, it was a good view. Forty- one was not so old. It was almost too young to be president. She would call Harris. He was a good man, she'd always known that.

Of course she could just keep going like this, being alone, but there was no point to it. You felt strong for about a week and then you were just alone. And Bud Harris, he was a good man, uncomfortable but what did it matter, the ones that had the easiest time talking also had the easiest time screwing around behind your back. That was a lesson you didn't learn until it was too late. But it was not too late. Harris, he was respected, there was a reason she'd nearly left Virgil for him, two different times she had thought seriously about it, and Virgil, Virgil was not respected by anyone and there was a reason for that as well. I will sleep with Buddy tonight, she thought, it will clean me out, it was a giddy notion. Virgil had done worse, he'd come to her smelling directly of other women. She wondered if he'd given her any diseases. She had been checked, though most of the time she'd made him use condoms, that was the one smart thing she'd done in her life.

She walked around the inside of the trailer. When they bought it Virgil swore it was temporary, that they would build a house soon enough. She wondered why she'd listened. It was an old trailer, at least it was a doublewide but it leaked air everywhere, fake paneling from the 1970s, she'd splurged to replace the carpets but with the boy in and out of the field so often they were quickly ruined again. Virgil had wanted to put plastic covers on the couch but she hadn't permitted it. She sat on the couch and could feel herself drifting away, thinking about things, but there was no point in it, she needed to get a handle on life instead of spending her time daydreaming. At least the garden was done. That was an accomplishment, it would pay off the rest of the year.

She nearly called Harris's cell phone but then she thought about how he would feel if he found out that Virgil had just been over. It wasn't fair to him. Not to mention Harris probably had other girls himself. Not to mention she had burned him twice, now. She would have to ask him gently. She would have to allow him his dignity. He wouldn't just come at her beck and call. She could wait, collect herself, have some dignity of her own. She went to the mirror, pulled her hair back in a tight ponytail. That was the way she should wear it, tight and away from her face. She would get a haircut, no one wore their hair long anymore, it was stringy. She still had her cheekbones, she'd always had good bone structure. Half of it was the way you carried yourself, she had been depressed, there wasn't any question about that. She would take baby steps. With a little mascara things would be fine, she'd run out months ago, she would get more tomorrow. She fixed herself a small dinner and watched the sun go down from the porch, there was no moon and the stars came out very bright. She went back inside and watched an old scratchy yoga tape the director of the shelter had given her, she liked all the stretching, it felt as if the poisons were coming out. After that she fell easily into sleep.

5. Harris

H
arris and Steve Ho had been sitting in the black- and- white Ford Explorer about three hours. It was Harris's idea—he just had a feeling. The state cops, the county coroner, the DA, everyone else was long gone. From the top of the ridge they could see over the meadow, the half-collapsed remnants of the main Standard Steel Car factory, grown over with vines, the small machine shop where they'd found the body. There were old boxcars in the field and a peaceful, pleasant air about the place. Nature assimilating man's work. In his much younger years, he had seen things like it in Vietnam, abandoned temples in the jungle.

Harris glanced at Steve Ho. Steve Ho was off duty; he was not being paid to be there, which was not unusual. Ho looked comfortable, young and comfortable, a short stout man, a full head of black hair, resting his hands on his big belly. An M4 carbine across his lap—like many other younger cops, Ho had an inclination for things like that, body armor and such. Ho was only three years out of the academy, but Harris was overjoyed to have him on the force. Steve Ho was easy to work with and left his radio turned on even when he was off the clock.

By comparison, Harris felt old and bald. He reminded himself that he was not—not that old, anyway. Fifty- four. Anyway this feeling had nothing to do with being old, it was just that this was turning into a very bad day. He wanted to be at home, sitting in front of a fire with his dog and a glass of scotch, maybe watching the sun go down from his back deck. He lived by himself in a small cabin,
the compound
was how he referred to it, a high place overlooking two valleys. The sort of place a boy would dream of living, but then reality, in the form of a wife and kids, would set in. Harris had talked himself into buying it a few years back. Though well built, the cabin was remote and depended on a pair of woodstoves for heat, had little radio or television reception, was accessible only by four- wheel drive. Not a place any woman would ever want to live. It was another excuse. Another way to keep an even keel, cowardice pretending to be independence. Though Fur, his malamute, loved it.

He'd been first to arrive at the crime scene—there'd been an anonymous tip—and he'd felt relief when he saw the body. Clearly a transient. No painful phone calls, no horrible visits to people he liked. Those things got worse with age, not better.

He was still standing near the body, absorbing things, when he saw a familiar jacket. Then heard another vehicle—the state trooper—bouncing down the old access road. He scooped up the jacket and stuffed it behind a workbench. The young state trooper walked in just after and Harris had tried to conjure his name. Clancy. Delancey He couldn't think straight—he knew this man. But Delancey was oblivious to what Harris had just done. He nodded his greeting, then looked at the body.
He's a big one, huh?

People came and went all day but the jacket had remained, unnoticed, where Harris hid it. Now, sitting here with Steve Ho, he was extremely nervous, not so much that he'd hidden the jacket as much as that the jacket belonged to Billy Poe. He rubbed his temples; he'd gone off Zoloft a few weeks earlier, which was not helping things now. He tried to separate the things in his mind. Hiding the jacket was probably not bothering him. You didn't arrest every kid you caught breaking windows. Or every citizen who drove home after a few too many Budweisers at happy hour. Good people got one free pass. Kids got two, though the second one might be a handcuffed ride in the Explorer. There was a role everyone played in the community, an unspoken agreement. Which was basically to do right. Sometimes that meant stopping people for a dirty license plate, other times it meant letting people go who were committing felonies. Which is what anyone did when they consumed three beers and put their keys in the ignition. You couldn't say it but that was the truth—it was not the law so much as doing right. The trick being to figure out exactly what that was.

Listen to you, he thought. Trying to distract from the question. Which is whether you ought to be defending Billy Poe. Get out of this truck and go down there and discover that jacket. You should have already arrested him. At least that was one take on it—Even Keel's. Even Keel had also made him buy a cabin on top of a mountain that no woman in her right mind would ever consider living in. Even Keel was a coward. Harris decided he would sit there. He would watch and see what happened. He would see which part of him turned out to be right.

    — — —

Near sundown, they spotted movement at the far edge of the meadow near the train tracks.

“Now there's two people who don't want to get seen,” said Ho.

Harris got an even worse feeling. He lifted his binoculars. He couldn't make out the faces on either of the two people in the meadow but he could guess from the size and the strange bouncing walk. Coming back to get his jacket. A tightness was growing in his chest. As the two got closer, he could see clearly that it was Billy Poe and one of his friends, the short kid whose sister had gotten all those scholarships. He thought about Grace. He felt sick to his stomach.

“You okay?” said Ho.

Harris nodded.

Ho was looking through his own binoculars, an expensive Zeiss model.

“That who I think it is?”

“Believe so.”

“You want me to go down there?”

“Just hold on.”

It was quiet for a few seconds, then Ho said: “You better make sure this doesn't burn you, Chief. The whole town knows you put in a good word for him last time. You've said yourself—”

“Do me the favor.”

“You know all I'm saying, Chief. This ain't the old days.”

Harris turned on the light bar for a few seconds to let the two in the field know they should come up. They both froze.

“They're gonna run for it.”

“That kid's sister is at Harvard. He isn't running anywhere.”

As predicted, the two began to walk glumly up the hill toward the Explorer.

“You ought to take a look through these glasses, Chief. I can see every last goddamn zit on their faces.”

“Later,” said Harris.

But it was a clear enough picture. Billy Poe and some friends had come out here to drink, maybe score some meth, and things had gone bad. Meaning Billy Poe had beaten one of them to death, then panicked and took off, and was now coming back to clean up his mess. The saddest part being he'd gotten this other kid mixed up in it. Harris wondered if there was a way to keep that one in the clear. People like him still had a chance.

It was not Billy Poe he really worried about. He'd known for years where the boy would end up. He'd bent over backwards, he had put his own name on the line, knowing the entire time what would happen. By a certain age, people had their own trajectory. The best you could do was try to nudge them into a different course, though for the most part, it was like trying to catch a body falling from a skyscraper. Billy Poe's trajectory had been clear very early; it wasn't Billy Poe he was worried about. It was Grace and what this would do to her.

Ho said: “You know I always hated that prick Cecil Small, but it's bad timing with the new DA. Cecil Small might have been willing to float a break.”

“I never said a thing about it.”

“I know you're worried about your nephew there.”

“He ain't my nephew.”

Ho shrugged. They watched the boys walk up the hill.
Young men,
Harris corrected himself Billy Poe was twenty- one. Somehow that seemed impossible. When he'd first met Grace, her son was five years old.

“Here they come,” said Ho. “I'll put on my mean face.”