Bright Before Us (26 page)

He nodded.

He lowered his arm after a moment and went into the truck, returning with three peanut butter sandwiches
wrapped in wax paper.
Happy birthday,
he said, holding two of them out to me.

 

Then we pulled that junk out of the wood crate in the truck and shot at it. The other handgun was a gleaming .357 Magnum revolver, and I stuck with that for the rest of the day. When Martin hit the basketball it jumped an inch into the air, and then he lay down on his belly to shoot at a gigantic empty bottle of Tide. He set out those five jugs full of water with a big grin. And sure enough, when I finally did hit one—my last shot of the day, the first with any measure of accuracy—the water gushed forth in a translucent stream of victory.

Not bad at all,
Martin said, patting me on the back.
You'll be sore tomorrow
—he motioned toward my arm—
in the wrist and such. Take the day off.
He held out a ten-dollar bill.

I wanted to tell him,
There's no need, you've done enough. Please, Martin, you've already been so kind.
But I said nothing. I reached out and took the money, folding it into my pocket.

I retrieved the massacred detergent bottles and plastic jugs, and when I turned to walk back I saw the brass peppering the dirt—our spent shells. Martin came out from the cab with a big plastic bucket. He set it down and began bending to pick them up, bracing himself with a hand on his knee.
Martin,
I said.
Let me do that.

Alright,
he said, settling on the tailgate.

The bucket was soon full.
How many years have you shot the salute?

Robert lives in Lincoln,
he said. He pulled his eyeglasses from his face, polishing them with a handkerchief.
And Vance lives in Des Moines.

Christmas,
he said.

Sure,
he said pleasantly.
When did you see your family last?

I looked out at the fields.
You barely know me. You don't know me from Adam and you took me out in the fields and handed me a gun.

He waved his hand.
I can tell about people,
he said.
And you seem like a fine boy to me.

The next morning, I woke to a creaking on the burned house's pine floor. A small boy stood over me, his figure blotting the hexagonal window's streaming sunlight. It was Peter, Dale's grandson.

You live here?
he said.

I sat straight up.
Peter?

I looked out the window, my heart in my throat.

Where's your granddad?
I said, half shouting.

I looked out the screen door behind Peter. Scuffed handlebars leaned against the steps like plastic antlers.
I used to have a bike like that,
I told him, my pulse slowing.

His expression shifted abruptly, narrowing in sudden suspicion.
Don't you have your own house?
His face was a sunburned knot.
Don't you got a wife and kids?

Outside, the sugary contents of a spilled drink lay in a vivid red puddle near the porch steps.

Yes,
I said. I leaned back on my palms, the grit on the wood floor piercing my hands.

At home,
I said, hesitating. I pictured Greta's soft and indelible face.
With their mom.

I shook my head.

They could come here and play with me,
he said.
Sometimes I play store.

Groceries,
he said.
You use leaves as money.
He pointed toward the highway.
Your kids ever swim in the lake?

I glanced out the window.
No,
I said.

I thought of the bay. The wet air; the ringed white salt stains on the boulders just beyond the shore. I remembered digging for hours there as a kid, compiling whole indexes of green, smooth rocks, and pulling the legs off the ghostly white crabs, and listening to the bass thud of the roiling surf.

He smiled nervously, suddenly shy, and took a step backward.
I ain't supposed to talk to strangers,
he said, his face twisting.
You a stranger? I only seen you once or twice.

A summer wind pelted the side of the house with dirt. I thought about how to answer. Would I let one of my students talk to me? Some homeless drifter? And yet—I knew Dale, didn't I?

No, Peter,
I said finally.
I'm not a stranger.

He brightened.
Good,
he said.
Could we go into town so you could buy me a candy bar?

As we walked along the overpass, crossing the highway, Peter slowed his bike to match my pace.

Where does your dad work?
I asked him.

I don't know,
he said.

Yeah,
he said. That was the end of his sentence. I smiled.

At the general store, Peter clattered his bike to the ground—no lock necessary—and made a beeline for the candy display.

What's your favorite one?
I asked him.

Look!
he said.

Oh, I hate those,
I said.

They hurt your teeth,
Peter said, giddy.

I'm a Kit Kat man,
I said.

Can I get two?
he said, bracing for me to disapprove.

Sure thing,
I said.

He grabbed two Look! bars.

Don't you want two different ones?
I said.

He looked up, his brow knitted.
What for?
he said.

We were walking toward the checkout line when Dale came up from behind.

Pete,
he barked.
Goddammit, Peter, get over here.

What?
Peter said, genuinely shocked.

What the hell is this?
Dale said, looking at me.

I was out for a walk,
I said,
and I ran into Peter.

Peter looked up at me.
No you wasn't.
He turned to Dale.
He was sleeping in that burnt-up house by the gas place.

Dale's eyes went wide.

Dale took Peter's hand, gripping it with both of his.
You don't even know his name,
he growled at the boy.
I don't even know it.

The checkout girl stared up at us.

Look, Dale,
I said.
It's not like I've never met the kid.

He stared at me coldly.

I choked on the words midsentence. It's not like I would ever hurt a child, I had almost said.

I set the candy bars on the counter. Dale looked down at them, confused. I walked toward the door, then paused and turned around.

I'm sorry,
I said.
I didn't mean to cause any harm.
I left the store and began walking toward the burned house—toward what had become my home, toward the place where I could no longer stay.

 

My life in Chappell had pressed a reset button. My most basic assurances—that I was a man with a wife, with bills to pay, with a job and a requisite middle-class trajectory—had ruptured. Who was I, anymore, but the owner of a small white car, with so many of Martin's dollars in his wallet? I started to run, my ankles aching with each step, each shock of pavement. The noise had quieted. The situation was reframed. The answers were in the questions I
hadn't asked—and I had asked so few; my God, how long I had gone without asking anything of my days, emptily performing them as though they were inexhaustible. I bit my lip, losing my breath, thinking the thoughts I had tried to push down—
You ignore everything you don't want to see
—since I had left California: my wife, coming home to an empty house each night. The girl I had loved, so completely and utterly gone. Edmund—wherever he was, whoever he was with—robbed of a vital chunk of his trust.

I was, it had suddenly become clear, a career asker of the wrong questions. A man with limited foresight. A man with infinite hindsight. A man whose fingers fingered two quarters in his pocket.

I slowed my pace as I reached the pay phone outside the brick post office.

As Buckingham's extension rang, I spun the grimy phone book on the end of its chain tether. The air smelled like heat.

How long, I asked myself, did I want to run?

 

Besides the notebook, pens, a deeply discounted haircut from Martin, and those early, misguided meals, some money had gone to toothpaste and soap, a muffin, a deck of cards, a lone can of beer. Nothing that wasn't disposable, nothing I would keep. But with the money I had brought with me and the money I had earned—how I hesitate to phrase it that way—I walked to Chappell's lone mechanic's shop. He drove us in silence to the old Texaco station, lifted the hood of my car, and began to tinker. I knew the effort was useless: I would have nowhere near enough money to make whatever repair he suggested.

I saw him eye the car's stratified filth.
You say she just broke down today?

Yeah,
I said.

I'd tow her,
he said,
but the tow truck's in the shop. You believe that!
He reached out to slap me on the shoulder for emphasis, but I didn't respond.
No matter,
he said, unnerved. He did some maneuvering near the engine—I couldn't tell you what he touched, where he looked, if I tried.
You say it caught fire when you were drivin'?

Right,
I said.

Well there's six flammable liquids under the hood,
he said.
Did it smell real bad?

Well, yes I can, sir ... it ain't near any of the fluid lines.
He ducked under, grimacing.
I'll tell you what happened. You got some grass or some dirt up in there, and it heated up on the engine, looks like. You say you put it out with water?

He grimaced: a response to my profanity.
Yes sir,
he said, though he was roughly thirty years older than me.

He jump-started the battery, charged me eighteen dollars for his time, writing up a small invoice on a pad of carbon paper, and then clattered away in the pickup. I put the brown leather suitcase into the backseat. The engine turned over without incident, as though I had imagined it all—the smoke, the fire—as though four minutes had passed instead of four weeks. I had almost three quarters of a tank left. I scraped the wipers over the windshield's layer of dust. I didn't revisit the lake, the barbershop, the hatched crosses. I rolled down my windows, turned on the radio, and made my way to I-80's on-ramp.

Hours later, I let myself think of Martin. I imagined him opening the door at nine o'clock to find me absent. I imagined him looking up and down the street for me. And I hoped he had just put the broom back in its closet, going about his business without further thought. I hoped that he forgot me that very second, that he never thought of me again. I hoped—for his sake, and for the sake of a few others—that I was easy to forget.

W
e'll need witnesses,
you said, so we headed north. In your car, as I drove, you rifled through your purse.
I have my birth certificate—are you sure she has yours?

Yeah,
I said, glancing over my shoulder to change lanes.

I haven't seen your mom in a long time,
you said.

My mom liked what it said about her son that his best friend was a girl. She liked how you said please and thank you. She liked how your parents sent Christmas cards and invited her to Memorial Day barbeques she never went to.