The Animals: A Novel (13 page)

6

HE TALKED TO HIMSELF AS HE DROVE, HIS VOICE A SLOW, NEARLY
silent murmur, big trees sliding by at the edges of the highway and then the first ramshackle buildings of the town beginning to appear. He had been thinking about that day when they first met and that memory had sparked another and another. He could not have imagined ever being apart in those days, in the hot desert of his childhood. He could not have imagined a bridge from there to here, and yet here he was, driving toward the one person he had hoped—in the agonized guilt of what had happened, of what he had done—that he would never have to lay eyes upon again, even though he knew all the while that he would return, his voice in the car riding the same accusation: Why else would you have kept the safe for all those years? You might have rid yourself of it at any time but you never did and now
here you are.

He parked the truck at the edge of the Safeway parking lot and sat there with the motor idling, still talking softly to himself and staring around at the various cars—dirty Subarus and pickups—for any sign of the man who had once been his best friend in all the world, willing himself to stay there only because he thought the cargo he held in the bed of the truck would be the end of it, would close that one part of his past that he had left flapping open. The last thing tethering him to the world he had fled.

When he saw Rick at last his first thought was that he had come to look like his father, the man who, when they were children, would beat him and his mother until their screaming at last brought the sheriff into the trailer park. The resemblance filled him with a sadness impossible to articulate. He did not know what he had expected after so many years, but not this tiny broken car, not this filthy yellow Honda, its fenders rusted into holes and the door squealing on its metal hinges. And yet here he was in the parking lot of the grocery store, his body the same lanky frame protected only by a loose denim jacket insufficient for the cold and jeans that rolled down over the tops of scuffed cowboy boots.

Bill stepped out onto the asphalt. Hey, he said.

Rick stood there by the car’s open door, staring back at him, his face inscrutable. The years had streaked his black hair with gray.

I bet you’re glad to be out.

So there you are, Rick said at last. The voice the same. The eyes sparking blue in the freezing air.

Here I am.

Across the expanse of the parking lot, the Safeway sign glowed dim under a sky rolling with dark clouds. Pickup trucks in rows. A maroon sedan passing slowly, the driver nodding as they made eye contact.

That a cop?

Just someone from here in town.

Rick’s eyes followed the car and then turned back to where Bill stood beside the pickup.

You’re gonna have to follow me, Bill said.

No way.

There’re too many people here. Follow me.

I’m not following you anywhere.

You’re gonna have to, Bill said, and before Rick could react he slid back into the cab of the pickup and gunned out of the parking lot, his heart pounding, hands gripping the wheel so tightly that he had to will them to uncurl when he turned onto the street. He looked into the rearview mirror and saw nothing but the anonymous vehicles of his neighbors. Come on, he said. Come on. His breath stilled, stopped. And then at last the tiny yellow car appeared from the receding parking lot and swung onto the road behind him.

The figure in the mirror: a ghost from his memory. Even at this distance Rick looked like his father. The angular shape of his face had hardened and weathered like the desert itself, implacable, lines running under his eyes and the eyes themselves drooping at their most distant and downward edges, wet and clear and wide. There he was. There he really was.

He followed the highway south out of town, through the Kootenai’s broad, flat floodplain to where that valley pinched closed into a folded landscape of ridges and pines, scraps of cloud drifting between them like foam on some inland sea. He checked the mirror again and again, as if the yellow car might, at any moment, evaporate in a cloud of steam like his own exhaled breath. Because he wanted to be shut of it. He needed to be shut of it. And so he needed the yellow car to be there, to be following him as the forest hemmed in the road once more and their route was reduced to shadow.

Half a mile before the rescue he took a dirt turnout that expanded onto a brief patch of gravel partially hidden by trees and brambles and beyond which lay a small clearing surrounded by forest. Near the center of that circle, he drew the truck to a stop and waited for Rick’s car to appear. Then he opened the door and stepped out. Even now, so close to the end of it, he could feel his gut turning as if run through with an iron rod. The earth covered with dry tamarack needles the color of toast.

Then Rick was out of the car, standing there in his thin coat. What the fuck is this? he said.

Just someplace out of the way.

Don’t try anything, Rick said. This is bullshit. As if to underscore the statement, he pulled his jacket open to reveal a pistol handle extending from the front of his jeans.

Look, Bill said, you want to do it in town, with everyone watching? ’Cause we can go back to the parking lot if you’d rather do it there.

You’re stalling, Rick said. You’d better have what I came up here for.

I have it. He dropped the tailgate and hopped up onto the bed of the truck and pulled the plastic tarp free. The safe looked smaller than it had in the closet, a squat iron box not more than two feet on a side, its thick black paint shining.

What is this? Rick said. The rancor in his voice was replaced by something like bewilderment now.

What’s it look like? Bill knelt next to the box, pulling it forward a few feet clear of the cab and then stepping in behind to shove it the length of the bed.

I told you not to fuck around, Rick said at last.

I’m not. Bill was panting now but he had managed to get the safe to the tailgate and he stepped down onto the forest floor again. I never opened it, he said.

What the fuck you mean you never opened it?

He shrugged, his fingertips momentarily slipping into the tops of his jean pockets and then returning to hang loose at his sides.

Seriously? Rick said. He looked from the safe to Bill and then repeated that simple motion.

Seriously.

There was a pause and then Rick said, I don’t get it.

There’s nothing to get. Just put it in your car and go. You can have the whole thing. Whatever’s in there.

Rick stared at the safe. No, man, I don’t get it, he said. You never opened it?

I never did. I’m just trying to do what’s right.

What’s right? I should fucking shoot you. That’s what’s right. Why didn’t you open it, you fucking idiot?

I don’t know. I just didn’t.

My mom fucking died, man. God-fucking-dammit. You stupid asshole.

How different he looked and yet how much the same.

It’s like you just turned your back on everyone who gave a shit about you, Rick said.

I had to start over.

Rick looked at the safe again and shook his head. Put it in the trunk, he said.

Grab the other side.

Fucking asshole. You don’t know what I had to do to survive in there. Some of those guys would kill you for a pack of smokes. So you’ve got to kill them first. Do you understand what I’m telling you?

Come and help me.

I already tried that and look how it worked out, Rick said but a moment later he came to the safe and they lifted it together. Rick was so close to him now, separated only by the two feet of that heavy iron box. How old he looked. His skin gray.

When they reached the car, Rick pulled open the hatchback with one hand and they lowered the safe, the little Honda’s suspension heaving with the added weight. Then they both stepped back from the car. Bill was panting from the exertion, his hands on his knees. You got fat and out of shape, Rick said.

I guess so.

You know, I came up here thinking that if I saw you it might make sense to me. What you did. Who you are. All the fucking lies you told me. My mom. All the shit I did in prison. Everything.

Bill straightened and looked up at him, this broken man with his cane who returned his gaze with an unwavering stare, and Bill felt a shiver run through him as if that gaze were physical contact, a silver wire sparking against his flesh. He shook his head.

Yeah, you don’t know shit. You just ran away and never looked back.

I made a life for myself.

Is that what you did? Because it seems more like you ran away and hid in the forest like a pussy.

It was silent for a long time. Bill looked at the dead needles that littered the ground at his feet. How’d you even find me? he said.

Shit, man, Rick said and there was actual mirth in his voice now, it’s not like you moved to Paris, France. You weren’t in Reno. You weren’t in Battle Mountain. So where else would you go?

If you knew where I was, then why didn’t you turn me in?

Because I don’t fucking do that. Take care of your people. You think that was a fucking joke to me? That was the only thing that mattered. But you fucked it up. And you fucking killed my mom.

Bill had begun to quake inside, as if a faint flutter of panic had entered him and now flapped against his ribs. I didn’t kill your mom, he said. That’s ridiculous.

Same as, Rick said.

The quiet settled over them, two men in a clearing beside a road periodically sounding with the long hiss of a passing car.

I don’t know what else to say, Bill said at last. He hoped his voice was steady. Now that the safe was out of his life, he wanted more than anything to simply drive away and be done with it, but he lingered. I’m sorry, man, he said. I don’t know what else to say about it. You’re right. I left all of it behind and never looked back.

Goddamn right you did. So what am I supposed to do now?

Exactly the same thing.

Oh, is that right?

Yeah, Bill said. You’ve got the safe. That’s what you came here for, isn’t it?

Fuck you. I know what you’re doing. I’ve seen that weird little zoo. That’s what you care about now? Those fucking zoo animals?

Yeah, he said, that’s what I care about. There was a tremble in his voice now. He did not expect Rick to have seen the rescue and perhaps he was bluffing but the thought of it filled him with a thread of cold sharp air. What do you want from me, Rick? he said.

You’re living a goddamn lie up here. Bill Reed. That’s the icing on the cake right there. Bill fucking Reed.

I’ve changed, Bill said.

Now that’s the first thing you’ve said all day that made any sense.

Go home, Rick, Bill said. Or go find yourself a new place to make into a home. You’re free. Go do something with it. I did.

Yeah, Rick said. Easy for you to say. He looked out into the trees for a moment as if in thought and then, without another word, he stepped into his car and pulled the door closed behind him. A moment later the engine chugged and the little Honda turned out onto the asphalt of the highway and was gone.

He did not know how long he stood there in the clearing, watching the empty space the car had vacated, watching the trees and the white cloud of his breath. His heart seemed wrong somehow, beating much too fast, his breath coming in hollow rasps that he could neither slow nor stop. The metallic taste of adrenaline on his tongue.

HE RETURNED
to the damp, dilapidated travel trailer he had inherited from his uncle and made himself a sandwich and then sat eating it at the tiny table, his eyes staring in the direction of the window but seeing nothing there, not the glass nor the trees beyond. Instead, he could see only Rick, his face so much older than he had expected. How time curls back on you, returns so completely that it is as if geography itself is the loop, all your choices rendered only moments in a chain of possibility that leads one to the next, the lit fuses pulling forward over the years and each tinderbox drawn by your own sense that you have chosen them and by so choosing are adhered. This no different. For twelve years he had wondered what would happen when Rick came out of prison at last, what payment would be exacted, hoping without cause or reason that his friend would have come to terms with what happened, that he might have been forgiven, but then he knew that this was unlikely to be the case, for he did not even forgive himself and he knew that Rick did not forget such things; he had not when they had been children and he certainly would not now. His rage was the same, as was his movement, his carriage and his bearing, the look in his eyes, and the occasional flash of his smile. Grayer and more haggard but otherwise the same.

It felt as if the whole of his past was closing behind him. Closing at last. His mother had moved to Phoenix to live near his aunt Lucy. His brother’s grave in the desert of Nevada as it always would be but there was no reason to visit such a marker. The cluster of trailers where he and Rick had grown up were someone else’s now, if they were still there at all. Sunday nights he would sit on the stained, broken green sofa with his brother at his side and his mother in her recliner, each of them with an individual oven-warmed compartmentalized meal, watching Marlin Perkins drive his Jeep alongside a cheetah, pilot a road grader into a hippo pool, guide a hawk to land on his outstretched gloved fist. His brother. His mother. Often Rick as well. Nothing in his life ever felt as safe, not before and not since. Then the night Marlin wrestled the anaconda, and everything was changed. It sometimes felt in the weeks and years that followed as if that night had swept clean some illusion, revealing the geography for what it had been all the while, the boundaries of his life circumscribed upon a landscape he had not chosen. Not even the Truckee River managed to flow out of that dry basin, instead pouring ever and always into Pyramid Lake and evaporating slowly into the sky. Kangaroo rats skittering through the shadscale. The sagebrush stretching in all directions, the cold bare peaks of the mountains like islands floating above, and you a faint dim speck between them, indistinguishable from the scrubby spike-covered plants that everywhere held fast to the dry, hard sand.