Just North of Nowhere (7 page)

“Goddamn Music anyway,” Bunch said. “I found that bike but I earned that radio. Had all the music I needed and didn’t need no sharing.”

Ivan stared.

“Nothin’s free, there friend,” Karl said.

Herb tapped his Pilsner. “Another, if you would. I'll be back.” He slid a ten in Ivan’s direction and was out the front door.

Herb blinked at the white sun. He breathed dead fish, softener, and soap. He opened the Pontiac’s trunk and clicked open a worn leather case. Inside were a million things. He sorted among them and in a blink had gathered a handful of sharp black discs. Then back into the cool dark bar where beer and sweat could be breathed and friendship drawn through the nose.

“These are warm.” He handed three discs to Ivan. “This,” he gave him a fourth. “This will be pleasant in the summer. Yes,” his jowls quivered, “when it’s hot.”

Ivan shuffled the discs, squinted the labels in flowing beer light.

“What’s them?” Bunch asked.

“45’s.” Ivan said, looking at Herb.

“Play one,” Herb said, trying to make himself the least droopy he could. “If you like. If you don't, that's okay. The red labels are hot, the orange, warm. It goes like that. The blues are cool.”

Ivan reached for the key ring beneath the bar. “Where you from, there. . .?”

“Herb,” Herb said.

Ivan clicked among a hundred or so keys to find the one to the Mighty Wurlitzer. “You sound like you’re
from
somewhere, Herb.”

“Chicago,” Herb said. His eye flaps quivered.

“Well, what the hell?” Ivan said, separating a barrel key from the rest, “it ain’t exactly jumping in here. I’ll spin one up.”

“What the hell!” Herb said.

Bunch stared into the mirror behind the bar. “Damn Goddamn music anyhow.”

Herb felt Bunch’s reflected eyes on him. They squinted, washed him with interest.

In the same mirror, Herb watched Ivan at the jukebox. In white light, Ivan worked among bourbon, Irish, Scotch, and gin bottles.

Herb also saw Herb. The rolling neon glow from the bar soaked him, a sagged disaster, a pitiful wreck. A man? “Hell no!” as men might say.

Ivan closed and latched the juke. “Requests?” he said.

Herb smiled. “Warm, warmer, hot, or cool. ‘S up to you.”

“Warm!” The old blind man shouted from the rear of the bar.

“Ken’s call! Warm it is...” Ivan pressed a button. The machine clunked.

Herb knew what they heard. What he heard wasn't much. But they! Well, at first, they heard just pootley-poop stuff no better than the average rinky-dink garage-band cover of some Jimmy Buffett island washed sweat and rum-fed dissolution lick. A guitar barrel roll, some ukes, maybe, maybe a couple dozen rainsticks. Or maybe steel drum ding-a-longs. Maybe something else. Maybe it was all voices feigning instrumental tootles. Maybe it was the rattling down of real rain on meaty palm leaves still on tropical trees; maybe it was the soft roll and hissing suck of distant surf on black sand… But something was there that made a shimmer inside the ears. There was song, but damned if you could make out the tune.

Herb looked from face to face.

Ivan? Ivan never bothered with words or melody. Herb saw that, but something had him. And Karl, down at the end of the bar, he had stopped sucking pretzels and toting fortunes in his head. He had surrendered the numbers in his heart to the heat of tropical noon. Herb saw that. Oh, yes.

The blind man – Ken – his nose pointed toward the tin ceiling. His head scanned back and forth, nostrils open, the hairs of his ears quivering.

Sound wrinkled from the juke, sound flowered from the light-filled liquid that burbled in tubes along the sides of the machine, it twinned out the grilles and up the walls, it soaked the floor like a wash of surf.

The whole place listened, breathing.

The smell: sea salt and coconut oiled body. A scent of sweat – not Bunch's greasy secretions.

Herb sniffed the air near Bunch, caught. . .

. . .the beer and meat-sweats he’d worked up roofing the Sons of Norway Lodge.

That was not the song. The song’s sweat varied, person by person: Asbury Park, summer, 1941. Boy sweat, the boy wading against the pull of the ocean, a boy so young he had suddenly – that day, that evening, that minute – realized the strength of his legs. The first time ever, he’d felt the power in him! The sweat was a blossom on the boy’s face as the mighty Atlantic towed against his shins, calves, hips. It was the sweat of the fight he knew he’d win even against the whole damn world, forget this piddlin’ ocean! The sweat was the bloom of damp heat that coated the kid the minute he'd broken free of the undertow. It was the sweat of expectation as he ran the beach to the blanket, to the girl he knew waited beneath the blanket. It was the sweat as he forced his feet against the dry sand that tried to swallow him to the ankles, it was the sweat of his need to feel the girl's arms and her lotioned body around and under him before they sanded each other, naked as the moon’s lip pulling itself over the ocean’s horizon. It was the sweat as the boy looked into the face of the girl and saw forever there, one forever ending right then, another forever stretching on and on.

Juke music quivered beneath the surface, moonlight on water, it wrinkled a bit before popping solid in the night hot air of the bar.

Ivan smiled.

Herb thought the music was fine.
They like it,
he said to himself. Not to his taste but he knew what people liked.

Herb slipped out the back door onto the rear deck overlooking the river.

Summer waited in the air, rose from the cliffs across the way. The year was still cool and late afternoon covered the town. The shadows of the bluffs crawled across the water toward Herb standing above old muck and dead fish.

He loved it all, this town, the people he’d met in the bar. Maybe he would not, finally. Maybe they would disappoint and he would not end the road trip here in Bluffton but Bluffton had offered a deal to remember.

The jukebox nattered on, inside. A touch of its warmth carried to the porch. If people liked it – and so far they had – they'd like him. He loved being liked. He did. Being liked was rare. Rare, he guessed, for everyone anywhere.

He looked upstream and down. On both sides of the Wagon Wheel, buildings overhung the riverbank. The bar, the laundromat, all the buildings all the way, both ways, stood on steel props.

“Hmmmmm,” Herb put his gut to the railing and leaned over. Dark water rippled near the pillar. Over the plinky-tink from inside, he heard the river nibbling, felt its rush and thrum against his gutline. When rains came heavy and long, when the river flowed rich in anger and the dam upstream could not contain it all and it poured forth. . .

Herb felt forward, backward, found a time when the stream raged and bowed the pillars of the porch, when the valley’s funneled wind torqued the deck, the Wagon Wheel with it. In that time, imagined, Herb felt the porch heave like a ship, heard the building’s long groans as wood strained against wood. Chairs, tables, brooms, juke box, shuffleboard, patrons leaned, rolled, or fell with the Wagon Wheel’s cant. In his mind, he crossed the floor, planks alive with wind and the river’s licks, felt their dance in his tiny feet. Then he let it go. The wind abated, the river sagged, recumbent. The Wagon Wheel eased, creaked to the vertical, floor boards settled, antlered heads found their plumb, bottles and brooms righted.

“Hmmmm,” Herb said again.

“It’s alive,” Bunch said at Herb's shoulder. He blew a breath of beer and smoke into the sag of Herb’s face. “The river, there; alive. Wriggles like a worm. See there…” He pointed upstream where the flow curved from the woods and houses. “They put in a dam up there, hundred years ago, maybe.”

Herb nodded.

Bunch stuck his smoke into the corner of his mouth. “They snapped her, pulled her, dredged and filled her. They dammed her up and spilled her over. Figured her for straight and civil!”

Herb tasted the tobacco-suffused scent of Bunch. It was good, his weedy exhalation. He couldn't understand those who could not, would not abide a smoke. He didn't, himself, of course. No, but he surely loved to breathe it when others did so for him.

Bunch squeezed one eye shut against the rising smoke and peeled the soaked paper from his lip. “Dam didn't work worth shit,” he said, “Rolling River wouldn't be tamed by dammin'.

The water was dark now. The river – ninety-three feet wide here, Herb estimated to within an inch or so, wider some places, narrower at others – licked quietly at the long edge of the town.

“I see,” Herb said.

Bunch leaned over the rail. “They stuck dynamos on her to suck the electric out of the water. Tried to tame it that way.” Bunch wrinkled his face under Herb’s nose. “Didn't work, neither.” Bunch leaned on the rail. “Now they let her go. The Rolling’s still wrapping itself around the town, eating it up.” Bunch sucked the last from his smoke and flicked the brown butt sizzling into the stream. “Which ain't going to happen though. Nope. I live on this river. Up Slaughterhouse, out County H, down by Papoose Crick, there,” he pointed. “Under the bridge. I watch the town. Take care of her. River and me’s got agreements going way back. Nothing going to happen here unless we agree. River takes care. I do too. I shovel winters, cut summers, do patch work, here and there. I keep out Chippewa spooks down by the Crick – most of them, anyway. I do other things. Keep stuff going. I watch things come and go. Did since I was a kid.

Herb felt like smiling and he did.

Bunch drew back, cocked his head. “You got a smile, there, makes a guy feel like sucking a double-aught barrel.”

“I’m afraid so,” Herb said, “it’s just my look, though, not my way.”

“I figure you're here for a visit, right; stay a little, then gone, just another terrorist? Am I right?”

“Mm,” Herb said, “more or less a tourist. More or less,” he added.

Herb breathed the scent of the man, again. Yes: fragrant with life. His jowls quivered with it.

“Touring,” Herb said. “But I was going to do something,” he added. “To be honest...? Do you want me to be honest?” Herb asked.

“Nope,” Bunch said.

Yes, Herb liked this place. The opulent aroma of Bunch mingled with fish flop from the river. It roistered with the animal medley – piss, shit, fear, and blood—from the stock pens. The gorse, mosses, fungus, and trees in leaf across the river added a loamy richness to the cool air. Herb smelled worms, too, and other things, so many other things. It was a symphony of riches here. He liked this town and he wanted it to like him.

“I'll stay for a bit,” he said to Bunch. “This is an interesting place. I like the people. I like your river.” He patted the porch railing. “I like what grows here.”

Bunch straightened. He flexed as though he were working up to grabbing Herb by the ears and tossing him over the rail so the river could flush him along.

Herb’s arms hung at his sides, followed the curve of his body. From his wide hips, his legs tapered to tiny feet. His ears sagged in pendulums and his cheeks drooped in wattles below his chin. His upper lip slipped another quarter inch over the lower and his eyes went wet and soft.

“I’m warning you,” Bunch said in a fume, “I look after this place!” His fist made a humming pass inches from Herb's 200-watt nose.

“And a good job it is, too.” Herb nodded and did not dodge or flinch the whistling haymakers Bunch slipped through the air around Herb’s head. Bunch
meant it
. Herb liked that. “A place this nice needs a protector. It’s precious. I like it and I'll enjoy it for a while. Then I'll be gone.”

Without actually stopping his feints and footwork, Bunch relaxed. “Yeah?” he said.

“Yes.” Herb said. “While I'm here, well, I like to share with friends. There are things I'll share.”

“Yeah?” Bunch said again and stopped swinging, kept up his footwork.

“Won't
know
I'm here. Except I may leave a thing or two. Then I'll be gone. I hope you'll remember me with fondness when.”

“Yeah?” Bunch said panting.

Bunch’s heart thumps pounded in Herb’s ears

“Yes.” Herb said. He took another breath and returned to the bar.

The music had ended. Ivan stared into the rippling juke light. Old Ken’s nose still pointed to the ceiling. At the end of the bar, Karl stared at the beerfall sign.

“Have another one, fella?” Ivan said to Herb. “On the house!”

“Not now,” Herb said, “but thank you, thank you.” Then, almost as a second thought: “You liked the song?”

Ivan blinked. “Huh? Oh yeah. Sure. Thanks. That’s some sweet music!”

“I thought you would.” And Herb was out the door and in his car.

Bunch was right behind. “Hey. Droopy!” he called.

Herb rolled down his window.

“Where you from?”

“Chicago,” he said.

“Yeah!” Bunch said shaking his head. “Yeah! Chicago! You said.” Bunch grabbed the car door as the engine came to life. “You're from Mars, ain't you?” he said and gave Herb a wink and a nod. “Huh?”

Herb drooped. “No.” Herb looked behind then backed the car carefully into the street. “No,” he said again and eased down the way looking for a place for the night.