Just North of Nowhere (17 page)

It was Leslie. Really.

And it was he, Eugene himself, aged 13, who followed, hooting.

Eugene, aged, mature, left behind and silent in the parking lot, watched the children thump up the boardwalk steps to the
American House—Eats
. They grappled the door, the door screeched, banged shut. Then the night was quiet with distant Shakespeare.

Oh, Jesus. It was she. Truly. It was he.

Eugene waited in the shadows across the street from the restaurant. He couldn't go in. He couldn't go in, sit, and watch them. Not after his pie frenzy. He was noted. He'd be remembered.

He consoled. Children take no longer than
that
with anything. He remembered: A soda pop – gulped in a flash. A piece of pie – three chews and
gone
. At twelve, he could watch a two hour movie in a minute and a half. He remembered. Life was a full-out run when he and Leslie were kids.

Well, ha!
They still were kids, he reminded himself. Through the plate glass, at the counter, there they were. They quivered with life. That was she: flame red hair, cut ragged with big shears and fury. Yes, it truly was. He recognized her. More, he knew her by her energy. He knew her by her rhythms. He'd caught it in her passing. Her scent was the same: a rich mixture of sweaty girl, day-old dirt, week-long clothes.

And himself. A billion little things fit. That boy at the counter in the American House in Bluffton, the one debating:
Should I? Chocolate or vanilla fudge? Vanilla fudge or chocolate? Cone or Cup? Should I at
all
? It’s what time? Will I be home on time? Will I dream? Will I wake?
It was Eugene, aged 13. He'd get the fudge in a cone. She was Leslie, aged 12 and she'd have butter pecan in a bowl, no spoon!

They were out in four moments flat. Another two moments and the boy looked at his watch for the fourth time. He quivered, sucked his ice cream, looked again at the watch, rocked back and forth, then rocketed up the street in a panic of time and darkness, running half backward, half forward, both ways at once, “See you tomorrow. See you? Yes? Yes.”

Leslie sat on the steps where Eugene’s rocket trail began.

She never tried to follow. He’d always wondered what she did when he’d gone.

She sat and sucked ice cream from a paper bowl. Leslie did that. She hated cones. Soggy, drippy, leaky. Bite the bottom off to suck the melt (
you
have
to do
that
, for cripes sake
), it runs all up your arm. Lookit! Jesus!

Old Eugene – he knew he was ‘old’ – couldn't wait. Had to see. Old Eugene crossed the street.

Light spilled from the restaurant’s bright interior. She sat in silhouette lapping from her paper bowl, a shadow that watched Eugene’s approach. When he neared her the restaurant light bounced off him and lit her face. She squinted at him, right eye shut, lip curled, head cocked. Her look. Always. When Leslie gave herself to thought, her face gathered at her nose. It wasn’t attractive, but it was she.

The pressure of her stare touched him. In a heartbeat, he stopped.

She put down the bowl. “Hi,” her voice sounded like a “You’re the pie guy everyone’s talking about.”

“Leslie?” he said.

“Yep.”

“What are you?” He couldn’t finish it. This was silly. She was NOT. Could not be. This was another girl who looked like. “I'm sorry,” he said, “this is a mistake. You remind me.”

She picked unconsciously at a scab on her arm. “Huh.” she said, “I remind you? That’s cool. Around here no one reminds anyone of anyone. Stupid, huh? Too small, I guess. Everyone’s just, you know? What they are.”

Eugene nodded. That was she. Had to. . . “If I were dumb enough to ask, you, you’d tell me you’re a foreign correspondent, right? Covering hotspots and war grounds of the world, right?”

She grinned like an imp. “You read minds. I like that.” In the next moment she gave the scab her full attention. “No. I
WAS
going to be a war correspondent and cover hotspots and battles. Now, I’m a witch. I’m being trained!”

In another moment she had the scab off. She bled and the blood swept a clean streak in the dirt on her arm. But she'd already forgotten about it by then.

“Well,” he said… How many times had Eugene watched, disgusted, as Leslie picked herself bloody?

A million.

He resisted making
HIS
face and telling her what a crud she was.

They had fought every day, about everything. They'd thrown mudballs, snowball, clods and rocks at each other. They’d rammed each other with wagons, bikes, and with themselves on skates. They hit each other with balls, sticks; lashed with rope whips and cold hose water. Whatever there was to hurl, had been hurled by one at the other.

He'd once, in a passion, stuck his pencil into her arm and the point had broken off inside. Until the last day of their lives together, Leslie carried the small dark smudge under the skin just below her right shoulder, a tiny tattoo.

There it was on this Leslie's arm. Fresh. New.

“Hurt yourself?” Eugene said.

She looked squinty for a billionth of a heartbeat, then held up her bleeding arm. “Him!” she pointed with her chin at the closing hole in the air that had been made with the passing of the boy chased by time. “He did it. Down at Elysium. I hit him with a duck and he stabbed me with a pencil.” She thought for a second. “He said the duck wasn’t a duck but something else. A monster. He keeps monsters.”

“Monsters?” Eugene said.

“It's what he can do.”

“’Keeps monsters? That’s ridiculous. He should know better. He will know better. No monsters.”

“This was. . .” she thought for a second, “day before yesterday. I'll probably get lead poisoning and lock jaw.” She laughed at the idea.

“If you have lock jaw, and you feel it coming, just hold your mouth open. That way they can pour water and stuff food down your throat 'til you’re cured.” He remembered his advice and smiled.

She nodded. “That’s what he said.”

“I know,” he said. “See, I knew you,” he said carefully, “. . .us. About a century and a half ago.” She didn't move. “I knew you when I was…” He stopped and thought how to say it. “I knew you when I was him.” He nodded at the empty street where young Eugene had gone. “Really! I mean, I was him. He...is going to be me. You’re someone I've known all my life.”

“Imagine,” she said.

“I don't want to scare you. I'm not a creep or anything. I want you to know that.”

“I know,” she said. “You're Eugene and I'm...Leslie.” She picked up her ice cream and lapped it like a cat.

“Look,” he said, “I don't know how this happened. Leslie and I were friends. A long time ago. Somewhere else. I did that to your arm.” He pointed to the open wound. “Only with us? We were pencil fencing. It was in the gym at Twelfth and Oxford. That was our grade school.”

“No duck?”

“No duck. It was an accident but I ended up in the principal's office and daddy, my father, had to come get me. And I guess he thought I was. . . Well, you don't get lock jaw, by the way, and lead poisoning? Not from pencils. But you do keep the mark. For. . .” he didn't know how to say it. “You keep the mark for as long as I knew you.”

She squinted at his hesitation, then nodded. “Yeah. So? Am I living backwards?”

He shook his head, but he didn't know. He didn't.

“I gotta get a grip,” she said.

“You believe me?”

She slurped more ice cream. “Sure,” she said between licks. “I figured I'd leave the point in there, anyway.” She squeezed the bloody little wound and smeared a pale red streak across her muscle. “It'll remind the jerk what he did.” She gave an evil chuckle, cocked her head like a beagle. “Did it? Make you feel shitty about what you did to me? Forever? For as long as you knew her? Me?”

Eugene blushed but figured it was too dark for her to see.

“So what happens? Do we get married? I'm counting on it. He doesn't know yet, of course not. You didn’t, did you? We're going to be married and have a hundred children. It's magic,” she added. “You may not know that. You didn’t know I’m going to be a witch.” She shut up and looked at him.

“No. That was all different.”

She nodded. Waited.

“You're going to be very tall,” Eugene said. “In a year, maybe two, you’ll shoot up. Six feet by the time you’re 17!”

“Six feet?” She considered it.

“You'll grow into it. It'll be tough at first. Then you'll crush everybody's heart.”

The door opened and light spilled across Eugene's face as a couple left the restaurant. “G'night,” each of them said to the girl. They gave Eugene a silent nod and a look as they brushed by him on the steps.

He bowed his head, embarrassed to be seen talking to this child.

She did her imp grin again. “I have got to get the hang of this time thing,” she said. Then: “Did I die?” she said.

The simplicity shocked him. He didn't know how to say. Simple back was best. “Not so far as I know. So far, you lived. Happily ever after.”

She gave the squinty look.

He slid a step down from her and sat on the railing. “I've been happy, too. No, I'm successful. I write. Well, television. I did. Now I make ads. Commercials. I did. I'm working on a screenplay.”

“No hundred kids?”

He shook his head.

“Well, you probably never wanted them. A hundred kids! What do I do? Do I do great things?”

From down the way, from the theater by the river, the night sent forth the line: “Now, fair Hypolita, our nuptial hour draws on!”

“You are going to be the most beautiful woman in the world,” Eugene said. Tears threatened. She was all there. All the best of the world, there, in this funny looking, smelly kid.

“Huh. I wondered. Figured it could go a couple of ways. Really funny-looking or the other way. Carrot-tops are funny like that.”

He was staring. Breathing her.

“I guess we didn't get married?”

He shook his head. “Never can tell.”

“I do become a witch, though.”

“Maybe.” Another simple answer. “Yes, maybe. I wasn't there.”

“Well, for crineoutloud. What happened?”

Later, when it was entirely dark, he walked through the town.
Angle on me
, he thought without recording,
walking through
. He’d walked one end of town to the other, from the dam and Elysium Park all the way back to the American House and the theater. He saw only one person on the street, a man, barefoot, wifebeater T walking the other direction.
Even in paradise, the homeless
,
he thought.

Leslie was off. Into the night. Home. In bed. Awake, probably, thinking of names for the hundred kids, planning adventures. There was so much he didn’t say, so much he couldn’t tell her. Wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Hell, he couldn’t even tell her which pie he liked best in his binge at the
Eats
.

This was a good place. He could stay; could write here. Here he felt it. Maybe here he’d write that script that would get him that statue that would let him stay somewhere. Stay here maybe, maybe stay forever. He looked forward to watching her grow. He looked toward another year of watching her grow tall. Too tall for Eugene Roy. He wanted to see whether, this time, they'd get together. Could he wait for her? Would she wait for him? This time, would she and the boy get together, live happily ever after?

He’d settle, wait, and watch. He had time.

It was long after midnight when he got back to the hotel. Instead of going into The Bluffs, he got in the car. He was all the way to someplace called Cruxton before he realized he'd left his suitcase in that room in Bluffton.

Hell, he'd live without it.

Karl knew mom and daddy were doing it. Couldn’t prove it, but cripes, he knew. Mom pushing 90, daddy dragging it maybe, he didn’t know for sure. He kept his temper but it bit his ass because he felt a wicked truth in the snickers he’d heard up the aisles at the market. Someone else? Cripes, he’d be snickering himself! Be damned, though, if he’d let his own delivery boy pass snickers. Fired his ass! Like
that
!

Snickers were considerable at the Wagon Wheel too
and
at the Sons of Norway for crineoutloud. The Sons seemed wrapped in some kind of disgusting joy over it! Even at Goddamn church, people looking at him and biting their lips not to laugh. At him! Him damn near 60, and the folks – his folks – just too damn old for...well for
doing
it. But they were. Regularly, seemed like. Bit his Goddamned tail!

Through winter, spring, and into summer, the looks got worse and the snickering bolder. Cold, warm, now hot, and cripes, people were laughing loud. Cripes,
Einar
was grinning (and Einar never cracked smiles over any Goddamned thing), Esther at the Eats was showing teeth. Even Andre Trois-Coeur LeMais at the stock pen was giggling—and him a stoic damn Indian!

About the only one in Bluffton hadn’t caught on was Bunch and, well cripes, who could tell about Bunch?

The day he heard the delivery kid dealing details right in his own cereal aisle? That topped it for Karl. He’d been back by the cold locker, stuffing venison grind into casing. The kid had just returned from delivering up to the folks’s place and was
supposed
to be re-pricing canned. Instead, he was hanging by the john-door with his buddies from the Catbirds – bunch of bums, the whole mob of them laughing – in
that
way! The kid was talking, the others making mouth noises and snickering in their noses.

“So I go inside,” he says, “you know? And they’re like pulling clothes on, buttons open. Like I caught ‘em, you know? And you know the place smells like...”

Karl figured the kid did some kind of funny thing because the circle of boys erupted in a barely contained explosion of ‘ahhh, gross man!’ and, you ‘shittin’ me’s?’

“No, man! Place smelled like the fish case!”

That was it. In his own store. An employee! Karl threw five good dollars of sausage casing into the sawdust and busted from the back into that circle of pimples and hair.

“Damn your eyes, Pat Erland, you grab your pay and get your ass out of here,” he shouted to the kid. “Second thought, I’ll put what you’re owed to your mom’s account next time she comes. Let her know what kind of foul mouth she’s feeding!” Then he was nothing but sputters that ended in, “All of you! Go on, get! You, there! You lousy ball players, you!”

The Erland kid shrugged and tossed his paper cap and Wurst Haus apron on the floor. The mob sauntered out in grins and snorts. In his damn store, the bastards snort him like that! He was a joke to these sonsabitches! To kids who walk out on jobs like
that
! What happened to work, loyalty, respect, to taking lessons from mistakes, begging second chances? No more. That was doggone gone! Besides, damn Consolidated baseball hadn’t won a game anyone could remember!

The door jingled and slammed but the kids hung out on his damn sidewalk, under his shade awning, still laughing!

That hadn’t helped Karl’s mood. He spent the rest of the day in the garage behind the store. The place was July-hot and stunk of roof tar, dripped oil, arc welds and Bunch. Karl stayed because he needed to yell at someone and beat on something noisy.

Bare feet stuck out from under the front end of the Henry J. Blue arcs flashed and cracked every couple seconds, molten red sparks skated across the concrete by Bunch’s legs.

The piece of crap Henry J had been a pretty good deal: a couple cases of
Leinie
and ten pounds of cheap wiener meat to Wayne in Cruxton. Karl had towed the thing, Cruxton to Bluffton, at 4 in the damn a.m. right past Vinnie Erikson’s nose – fat bastard snoring (like always) in the town prowler out on County H by the old Magic Light Drive-In (which Karl wished like hell he could get his hands on).

The whole deal: vehicle, head cover gasket, set of plugs, some sheet metal and a couple, three feet of re-bar to beef up the front end was not going cost out at a penny over a hundred bucks. The rebar was his anyway, from up the job site, same with the welder. Karl charged it back to other accounts. Bunch’s labor would trade out at a couple pounds of ready-made burgers and a dozen corn dogs – all wrote off as spoilage. Sweet deal. The J would made a good little deer hunter; figured to poach five, maybe six or seven out-season buck on the highway before Vinnie caught him having one of those ‘accidents’ or till the vehicle plain died under him –
and
most of that first 100 bucks would return when he scrapped her back to Wayne. Whole deal would net out at. . .

He rolled the numbers for the sixth time when he gave up. Hell, he wouldn’t have said out loud to anyone but he was doing it because, all right, because it was something to do, nights: Drive the roads. Catch a deer, freeze it in the lights, take it out in a well-timed run and hit. And under Vinnie’s nose! Rub the fat bastard’s nose. Something to do alone, nights. Run the numbers. Something to do. What they call ‘fun’.

Bunch slipped from under the rust bucket, popped the cap on a
Leinie
. “‘Kay there. Give her a whack.”

Karl hauled his 10 pound maul and let fly – BANG—on the reinforced fender! Nothing. He gave it a roundhouse swing on the other side, another and another. Big noise, showers of rust chattered from under the J, but the same nothing, not a dent in the re-bar'd sheet steel. Karl stood on the bumper and jumped, all 240 pounds of him, up, down, up down. The old J screeched on its springs but nothing wiggled. Bastard’d take out a charging bull, never mind a light-bodied buck, forget a doe froze in headlight!

“Might do,” Karl said squinting, wanting to hit it again, smack, smack, bang; find something wrong!

“Yup,” Bunch said, mouth around the tall boy.

The first rumbles of thunder started about that time.

First storm of the season! A son of a bitch. Folks scooted indoors and watched from the dry, tasted copper in the air.

Even Bunch was impressed. As the storm rolled over West Bluff and filled the valley he stood ankle deep in mud behind Karl’s garage. Chill rain washed the sweat and cinders from him. The ozone cleared his head. Bunch didn’t often part with a day’s sweat that easy but this was too darn pretty.

Darts night at the Wagon Wheel and there were all 23 Sons of Norway, gathered by the window to watch the light and thunder!

“Uf-dah,” Isaac Goodmansohn said as a big one whack-smacked the air and threw black shadows on everyone behind him. The whole bunch, except Lester Hellstrom, deaf as a post, jumped back from the glass afraid it would bust from the sound. “Uf-
dah
,” Skip Larsohn agreed. Deaf Lester stood blinking.

More storms were on the way, cells of them, the weather people said on TV. A whole system was working up the Rolling Valley.

“Ya, and they know our weather all the way up in them Twin Cities!” Adolph Lednicer said, shaking his head.

“Ya,” Isaac said to his beer, “and Egil’ll be up to Astrid up there on Eastridge.”

“Figure they know THAT up in the Cities too!” Skip said on top of everything.

Except for deaf Lester, everyone had a good one about that!

Egil and Astrid Dorbler sat on the porch of the little place up on Eastridge. Their place. All around, where once had been trees and growing fields, now were mud flats. Scrub grass had sprouted after winter thaw and spring had turned to hot. Looked like shit. Big yellow graders sat by the sides.

Egil and Astrid had managed, barely, to keep the house out of the hands of the developer – their son Karl – but the house was about it for the homeplace.

“We’ll, see about that,” Astrid had said.

“Ya,” Egil had said.

Now, the chill of the first thunder’s rain misted Egil’s face. Cool after a pretty hot day. The wattles beneath his chin relaxed in the wet. He stuck out his jaw a little and Astrid laughed. She had a pretty laugh.

“You'll crack,” she said, then repeated it because he never damn heard her, first time. She creaked a little, herself. Didn’t make a big deal of it, though. She rolled her shoulders. The bones made soft adjustments clicking in place under her thin skin. Click-Clunk.

“Uh-huh,” he said. “Got more than cracking to do.” Egil didn't bother to smile, but Astrid knew the smile was there. She laid her hand over the old man’s. Blue veins on blue veins. He did smile at that. She liked that.

Karl had dent-can surprise dinner. Wasn’t bad. Wasn’t good, but cripes, it had to be. Even poor folks wouldn’t take no-label cans these days or cans with dubious dents and bulging tops. Even at discount! Somebody had to eat it up. A damn waste otherwise. Tonight: Boiled white potatoes. Garbanzo beans. Cranberry sauce. And corned something. Pretty sure it wasn’t dog food and not bad.

Night was quiet after the storm. The pots simmered. Karl stirred. Nobody around to bother him. Good. No kids. Wouldn’t have ‘em. No wife. Never married. No brother to come by to worry him over money, no sister to call worrying at him about
her
kids. Karl was an only, just the way he would have picked it, if he’d made the pick. Just the way of things. No friends stopped by. Hell, Bunch was the closest thing he had to a friend and he didn’t much care for him. Karl stirred the pot with the spuds – didn’t smell, but they’d be hot.

Most of Egil and Astrid’s friends were dead or dull as turds.

Here: They’d come for dinner – the live ones, from the Sons – they’d munch what they could, not much talk, then stay for a couple cribs. An hour of that and one or the other Dorbler would lay down his or her cards and disappear from the table without excusing. Sometimes Astrid, sometimes Egil. Sometimes both!

A couple minutes and the friends would begin to worry. Half an hour and they’d say, “Where the heck’s Egil?” or someone might say, “He fall in? Ha, ha.” Some woman might wonder if “Astrid needs a hand in the kitchen, there,” and teeter off to find...no Astrid. No Egil. Kitchen, toilet, neither place! There’d be eyes and grins and the evening would end. The friends would leave. Then, Astrid and Egil would go down the cellar steps and taste the lightning.

Bunch couldn’t figure why he took the job. A damn delivery boy! Him? He didn’t mind the work. Felt good peddling up the switchback road to the top of the bluffs. He didn’t mind hauling for old people, or taking meat and stuff from rich folks, hell, that was decent work.

But it was summer damn it; time for real things. There was the rest of that roof on the Sons of Norway! Fences were sagged, house boards warped, sheds to tear down or sheds to put up. A thousand things had happened over winter and as spring got going. Shit, terrorist season was in full swing, summers! That alone gave him plenty to do.

That was one thing.

The other thing was: except that Karl Dorbler was a source of regular work, Bunch plain couldn’t stand the pain-in-the-ass richer-every-day-and-with-every-dollar-that-much-meaner son-of-a-bitch.

Bunch topped the last hundred feet of the bluff road. Cool air washed him; just about took the July sweat down to his skin. His legs pumped easy now, his bare feet rolled faster round and round. Nothing to it. Barely out of breath he touched macadam at the top of the ridge and turned to look over his town.

Down the valley of the Rolling, dark green and shade-gray night was exploding slowly out of the day. Clouds were blooming overhead, big ones rising, sucking in for a blow. A black anvil, miles high, sailed toward town. Another – what’d they call’em? Another ‘cell’ coming. Far off, the air went bumpity, thumb-dummb grumble dummmmmmb-rummmm-rummmmb against the insides of Bunch’s ears. He felt it against his chest. The sky tasted like a penny.

A good day, a pretty day. Ah.
That
was why he took the job.
Nice days like this!

Less than a quarter of a mile of ridge road and Bunch pulled up to the little place where Karl had been born and raised. By then, the lightning-edge of the storm was cracking and close. He leaned the big red bike against the Dorbler’s porch and hoisted the paper sacks from the carrier. Arms full, Bunch tapped the front door with his elbow. Nothing. Tapped harder with his foot. Still nothing.

Bunch poked his head through the unlocked door and called. “Old folks?” Nothing. “Dorblers?” Not a sound. And again. Still nothing.

Where the hey? Folk their years should be at home in thunder weather and them with no car to drive and Karl at the store, lousy son that he was.

Bunch went to the kitchen, calling every couple seconds. Old folks spooked easy. Dealing with terrorists in their summer tents had taught him
that
one thing. He put the bags on the table and waited a minute or so, expecting to hear them any second, upstairs, from another room, somewhere.

Nope.

“What the hell,” he said, finally, and headed to the door. Should he put some of the stuff that would melt or go bad into the ice box? He argued with himself. He’d pretty much decided he shouldn’t when, through the sink window, he saw them.