Short Cuts (17 page)

I heard steps on the porch, the mail slot opened and clinked shut. We looked at each other.

He pulled on the vacuum and I followed him into the other room. We looked at the letter lying face down on the carpet near the front door.

I started toward the letter, turned and said, What else? It’s getting late. This carpet’s not worth fooling with. It’s only a twelve-by-fifteen cotton carpet with no-skid backing from Rug City. It’s not worth fooling with.

Do you have a full ashtray? he said. Or a potted plant or something like that? A handful of dirt would be fine.

I found the ashtray. He took it, dumped the contents onto the carpet, ground the ashes and cigarettes under his slipper. He got down on his knees again and inserted a new filter. He took off his jacket and threw it onto the sofa. He was sweating under the arms. Fat hung over his belt. He twisted off the scoop and attached another device to the hose. He adjusted his dial. He kicked on the machine and began to move back and forth, back and forth over the worn carpet. Twice I started for the letter. But he seemed to anticipate me, cut me off, so to speak, with his hose and his pipes and his sweeping and his sweeping.…

I took the chair back to the kitchen and sat there and watched him work. After a time he shut off the machine, opened the lid, and silently brought me the filter, alive with dust, hair, small grainy things. I looked at the filter, and then I got up and put it in the garbage.

He worked steadily now. No more explanations. He came out to the kitchen with a bottle that held a few ounces of green liquid. He put the bottle under the tap and filled it.

You know I can’t pay anything, I said. I couldn’t pay you a dollar if my life depended on it. You’re going to have to write me off as a dead loss, that’s all. You’re wasting your time on me, I said.

I wanted it out in the open, no misunderstanding.

He went about his business. He put another attachment on the hose, in some complicated way hooked his bottle to the new attachment. He moved slowly over the carpet, now and then releasing little streams of emerald, moving the brush back and forth over the carpet, working up patches of foam.

I had said all that was on my mind. I sat on the chair in the kitchen, relaxed now, and watched him work. Once in a while I looked out the window at the rain. It had begun to get dark. He switched off the vacuum. He was in a corner near the front door.

You want coffee? I said.

He was breathing hard. He wiped his face.

I put on water and by the time it had boiled and I’d fixed up two cups he had everything dismantled and back in the case. Then he picked up the letter. He read the name on the letter and looked closely at the return address. He folded the letter in half and put it in his hip pocket. I kept watching him. That’s all I did. The coffee began to cool.

It’s for a Mr. Slater, he said. I’ll see to it. He said, Maybe I will skip the coffee. I better not walk across this carpet. I just shampooed it.

That’s true, I said. Then I said, You’re sure that’s who the letter’s for?

He reached to the sofa for his jacket, put it on, and opened the front door. It was still raining. He stepped into his galoshes, fastened them, and then pulled on the raincoat and looked back inside.

You want to see it? he said. You don’t believe me?

It just seems strange, I said.

Well, I’d better be off, he said. But he kept standing there. You want the vacuum or not?

I looked at the big case, closed now and ready to move on.

No, I said, I guess not. I’m going to be leaving here soon. It would just be in the way.

All right, he said, and he shut the door.

BILL JAMISON HAD ALWAYS
been best friends with Jerry Roberts. The two grew up in the south area, near the old fairgrounds, went through grade school and junior high together, and then on to Eisenhower, where they took as many of the same teachers as they could manage, wore each other’s shirts and sweaters and pegged pants, and dated and banged the same girls – whichever came up as a matter of course.

Summers they took jobs together – swamping peaches, picking cherries, stringing hops, anything they could do that paid a little and where there was no boss to get on your ass. And then they bought a car together. The summer before their senior year, they chipped in and bought a red ’54 Plymouth for $325.

They shared it. It worked out fine.

But Jerry got married before the end of the first semester and dropped out of school to work steady at Robby’s Mart.

As for Bill, he’d dated the girl too. Carol was her name, and she went just fine with Jerry, and Bill went over there every chance he got. It made him feel older, having married friends. He’d go over there for lunch or for supper, and they’d listen to Elvis or to Bill Haley and the Comets.

But sometimes Carol and Jerry would start making out right with Bill still there, and he’d have to get up and excuse himself and take a walk to Dezorn’s Service Station to get
some Coke because there was only the one bed in the apartment, a hide-away that came down in the living room. Or sometimes Jerry and Carol would head off to the bathroom, and Bill would have to move to the kitchen and pretend to be interested in the cupboards and the refrigerator and not trying to listen.

So he stopped going over so much; and then June he graduated, took a job at the Darigold plant, and joined the National Guard. In a year he had a milk route of his own and was going steady with Linda. So Bill and Linda would go over to Jerry and Carol’s, drink beer, and listen to records.

Carol and Linda got along fine, and Bill was flattered when Carol said that, confidentially, Linda was “a real person.”

Jerry liked Linda too. “She’s great,” Jerry said.

When Bill and Linda got married, Jerry was best man. The reception, of course, was at the Donnelly Hotel, Jerry and Bill cutting up together and linking arms and tossing off glasses of spiked punch. But once, in the middle of all this happiness, Bill looked at Jerry and thought how much older Jerry looked, a lot older than twenty-two. By then Jerry was the happy father of two kids and had moved up to assistant manager at Robby’s, and Carol had one in the oven again.

They saw each other every Saturday and Sunday, sometimes oftener if it was a holiday. If the weather was good, they’d be over at Jerry’s to barbecue hot dogs and turn the kids loose in the wading pool Jerry had got for next to nothing, like a lot of other things he got from the Mart.

Jerry had a nice house. It was up on a hill overlooking the Naches. There were other houses around, but not too close. Jerry was doing all right. When Bill and Linda and Jerry and
Carol got together, it was always at Jerry’s place because Jerry had the barbecue and the records and too many kids to drag around.

It was a Sunday at Jerry’s place the time it happened.

The women were in the kitchen straightening up. Jerry’s girls were out in the yard throwing a plastic ball into the wading pool, yelling, and splashing after it.

Jerry and Bill were sitting in the reclining chairs on the patio, drinking beer and just relaxing.

Bill was doing most of the talking – things about people they knew, about Darigold, about the four-door Pontiac Catalina he was thinking of buying.

Jerry was staring at the clothesline, or at the ’68 Chevy hardtop that stood in the garage. Bill was thinking how Jerry was getting to be deep, the way he stared all the time and hardly did any talking at all.

Bill moved in his chair and lighted a cigarette.

He said, “Anything wrong, man? I mean, you know.”

Jerry finished his beer and then mashed the can. He shrugged.

“You know,” he said.

Bill nodded.

Then Jerry said, “How about a little run?”

“Sounds good to me,” Bill said. “I’ll tell the women we’re going.”

They took the Naches River highway out to Gleed, Jerry driving. The day was sunny and warm, and air blew through the car.

“Where we headed?” Bill said.

“Let’s shoot a few balls.”

“Fine with me,” Bill said. He felt a whole lot better just seeing Jerry brighten up.

“Guy’s got to get out,” Jerry said. He looked at Bill. “You know what I mean?”

Bill understood. He liked to get out with the guys from the plant for the Friday-night bowling league. He liked to stop off twice a week after work to have a few beers with Jack Broderick. He knew a guy’s got to get out.

“Still standing,” Jerry said, as they pulled up onto the gravel in front of the Rec Center.

They went inside, Bill holding the door for Jerry, Jerry punching Bill lightly in the stomach as he went on by.

“Hey there!”

It was Riley.

“Hey, how you boys keeping?”

It was Riley coming around from behind the counter, grinning. He was a heavy man. He had on a short-sleeved Hawaiian shirt that hung outside his jeans. Riley said, “So how you boys been keeping?”

“Ah, dry up and give us a couple of Olys,” Jerry said, winking at Bill. “So how you been, Riley?” Jerry said.

Riley said, “So how you boys doing? Where you been keeping yourselves? You boys getting any on the side? Jerry, the last time I seen you, your old lady was six months gone.”

Jerry stood a minute and blinked his eyes.

“So how about the Olys?” Bill said.

They took stools near the window. Jerry said, “What kind of place is this, Riley, that it don’t have any girls on a Sunday afternoon?”

Riley laughed. He said, “I guess they’re all in church praying for it.”

They each had five cans of beer and took two hours to play three racks of rotation and two racks of snooker, Riley sitting on a stool and talking and watching them play, Bill always looking at his watch and then looking at Jerry.

Bill said, “So what do you think, Jerry? I mean, what do you think?” Bill said.

Jerry drained his can, mashed it, then stood for a time turning the can in his hand.

Back on the highway, Jerry opened it up – little jumps of eighty-five and ninety. They’d just passed an old pickup loaded with furniture when they saw the two girls.

“Look at that!” Jerry said, slowing. “I could use some of that.”

Jerry drove another mile or so and then pulled off the road. “Let’s go back,” Jerry said. “Let’s try it.”

“Jesus,” Bill said. “I don’t know.”

“I could use some,” Jerry said.

Bill said, “Yeah, but I don’t know.”

“For Christ’s sake,” Jerry said.

Bill glanced at his watch and then looked all around. He said, “You do the talking. I’m rusty.”

Jerry hooted as he whipped the car around.

He slowed when he came nearly even with the girls. He pulled the Chevy onto the shoulder across from them. The girls kept on going on their bicycles, but they looked at each other and laughed. The one on the inside was dark-haired, tall, and willowy. The other was light-haired and smaller. They both wore shorts and halters.

“Bitches,” Jerry said. He waited for the cars to pass so he could pull a U.

“I’ll take the brunette,” he said. He said, “The little one’s yours.”

Bill moved his back against the front seat and touched the bridge of his sunglasses. “They’re not going to do anything,” Bill said.

“They’re going to be on your side,” Jerry said.

He pulled across the road and drove back. “Get ready,” Jerry said.

“Hi,” Bill said as the girls bicycled up. “My name’s Bill,” Bill said.

“That’s nice,” the brunette said.

“Where are you going?” Bill said.

The girls didn’t answer. The little one laughed. They kept bicycling and Jerry kept driving.

“Oh, come on now. Where you going?” Bill said.

“No place,” the little one said.

“Where’s no place?” Bill said.

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” the little one said.

“I told you my name,” Bill said. “What’s yours? My friend’s Jerry,” Bill said.

The girls looked at each other and laughed.

A car came up from behind. The driver hit his horn.

“Cram it!” Jerry shouted.

He pulled off a little and let the car go around. Then he pulled back up alongside the girls.

Bill said, “We’ll give you a lift. We’ll take you where you want. That’s a promise. You must be tired riding those bicycles. You look tired. Too much exercise isn’t good for a person. Especially for girls.”

The girls laughed.

“You see?” Bill said. “Now tell us your names.”

“I’m Barbara, she’s Sharon,” the little one said.

“All right!” Jerry said. “Now find out where they’re going.”

“Where you girls going?” Bill said. “Barb?”

She laughed. “No place,” she said. “Just down the road.”

“Where down the road?”

“Do you want me to tell them?” she said to the other girl.

“I don’t care,” the other girl said. “It doesn’t make any
difference,” she said. “I’m not going to go anyplace with anybody anyway,” the one named Sharon said.

“Where you going?” Bill said. “Are you going to Picture Rock?”

The girls laughed.

“That’s where they’re going,” Jerry said.

He fed the Chevy gas and pulled up off onto the shoulder so that the girls had to come by on his side.

“Don’t be that way,” Jerry said. He said, “Come on.” He said, “We’re all introduced.”

The girls just rode on by.

“I won’t bite you!” Jerry shouted.

The brunette glanced back. It seemed to Jerry she was looking at him in the right kind of way. But with a girl you could never be sure.

Jerry gunned it back onto the highway, dirt and pebbles flying from under the tires.

“We’ll be seeing you!” Bill called as they went speeding by.

“It’s in the bag,” Jerry said. “You see the look that cunt gave me?”

“I don’t know,” Bill said. “Maybe we should cut for home.”

“We got it made!” Jerry said.

He pulled off the road under some trees. The highway forked here at Picture Rock, one road going on to Yakima, the other heading for Naches, Enumclaw, the Chinook Pass, Seattle.

A hundred yards off the road was a high, sloping, black mound of rock, part of a low range of hills, honeycombed with footpaths and small caves, Indian sign-painting here and there on the cave walls. The cliff side of the rock faced the highway and all over it were things like this: NACHES 67 –
GLEED WILDCATS – JESUS SAVES – BEAT YAKIMA – REPENT NOW.