The Crossroads (2 page)

Except for the time in the army, he had spent all of his forty-one years within range of the sound of this junction of major routes. During the day he was not aware of the droning whispering roaring flow. It was money flowing by. A predictable percentage of it would be left in the hands of the Crossroads Corporation.

Too many times he had heard the long sickening shriek of rubber followed by the curiously prolonged, crumpling, jangling thud that meant blood and death.

Seldom did he have a chance merely to listen to it. He knew that the flow was picking up because of the early ones, the travelers who rise before dawn to trust reflexes still sodden with sleep. It was a still night. He could identify the direction from the sound. Now on this Friday morning near the end of June, the tourists from the Midwest, the last stragglers who had wintered in Florida, were grinding north, up Route 71. Six hundred yards from where he lay, they were passing under the big bridge that lifted the east-west Route 82 gracefully over Route 71. Ten miles north of the cloverleaf interchange, traffic on 71 entered the city limits of Walterburg. Route 82 was
a limited access bypass. Ten years ago the two routes had crossed in the heart of Walterburg.

For over a half mile before reaching the interchange, and for three quarters of a mile after passing under 82, the northbound tourist passed through a carefully planned and regulated commercial area owned and operated by the Crossroads Corporation.

At infrequent intervals there was a faint flick of reflected light against the bedroom window. That was caused whenever a northbound car or truck, traveling north on 71 transferred to 82 west. They would go through the underpass and then swing around the northeast curve of the cloverleaf. At one point in that curve the headlights swept across the Motor Hotel, and some of the light would reach beyond the knoll to where the children of Papa Drovek slept in the four homes owned by the corporation, on the wooded slope above the creek.

Truck traffic was heavy. From time to time he could hear the far-off chuff of air brakes as one of the big rigs would turn into Truck Haven, south of the interchange. A few dollars coming in, a few pennies for the net.

He picked up his watch from the night stand and looked at the luminous dial. Ten of six. At this hour Truck Haven was the only service facility operated by the corporation that was open. It was open twenty-four hours a day. Gas, diesel oil, minor repairs, bunkrooms, showers, a big lunchroom. Funny, he thought, how counter girls for Truck Haven are so hard to find—the right kind. They have to be clean and brisk and pretty. Good-tempered and earthy. Not tramps. But willing to kid along with the drivers. Man comes in off the road for pie and coffee, he wants to kid around with a pretty girl who remembers him from the last time. Even though tips were unexpectedly good, there was a turnover. And when you put a few sourball girls in there you could read the result on the gross, not right away but a couple of weeks later. Funny how so many tourists stop there too. At night they see the big rigs, patient as elephants in the floodlights, and stop to gas up and eat. Wise kids and service people made more trouble for the girls than the truckers ever did.

In ten minutes the Crossroads Pantry, down there across from Truck Haven, would open. By now people would be packing up to get out of the Midland Motel, slamming their car doors, yapping at their kids. Midland was simpler and cheaper than the Crossroads Motor Hotel. And it emptied out earlier.

The next thing to open would be the Motor Hotel Restaurant, up here just north of the Motor Hotel. Seven o’clock opening. Then the big gas station across the way. All the stuff, like nets reaching out into that endless traffic flow, seining dollars.

The window had turned gray. Clara, ten feet away, rolled over and snorted once in her sleep. Tanked again last night, he thought with familiar distaste. And suddenly he couldn’t remember if he had heard Nancy come in last night. He had meant to stay awake. He knew he could not get back to sleep wondering about her. He got up quietly and went down the hall, listened for a moment outside her door, then turned the knob, opened it and looked in. His fifteen-year-old daughter lay sleeping, her back toward the door, her young hip mounded high under the blanket, her dark hair spread on the pillow in the gray of dawn.

Just as he reached his bedside he heard the siren, a sustained screaming, coming fast, dying after it had cleared the road ahead, arrowing south, picking up again far below the underpass. The state police, he thought. He got into bed, heard the second siren coming. Ambulance. Something bad down south on 71, probably at the River Road crossing. They needed a light down there. Just as one was needed up at the Crossroads Shopping Center. But too many lights, too many accidents, and sooner or later the state boys would swing 71 all the way around Walterburg. And that would really bitch the gross. He made a mental note to arrange a casual conversation with Randy Gorman, the County Road Commissioner. Randy would know if the state boys had started thinking and planning. Good thing he’d hiked the quality of Randy’s usual gift case of hooch last Christmas.

Today, he thought, I’d better go up and see Papa
and take him his check and ask him about the automobile agency. I’m going to do it anyway. But I have to ask. Better keep thinking about more lease deals all the time. Insurance against their moving 71 away from us.

He realized he couldn’t get back to sleep. He showered and shaved, put on gray flannel slacks and a lightweight wool shirt in slate-blue color. He went to the kitchen, put two heaping spoons of powdered coffee in a mug, ran the hot water until it was as hot as it would get, filled the mug, and carried it out into the sweet fresh smell of the June dawn. He walked down to where the sound of the morning brook was louder than the traffic.

In him the Polish blood of Anton Drovek and the Irish blood of Martha McCarthy had made a big-boned, driving man, sandy hair on hard skull, strong hard face, bright-blue skeptical eyes, deep chest and wide shoulders. A man of shrewdnesses and subtleties, of occasional wisdom and infrequent self-doubt and boundless energies.

He sipped the coffee and looked at the other three houses. Carried them on my back, he thought. Pushed them and bullied them and yanked them along with me. Took all the chances. Built it up in spite of them.

And then, in his moment of wisdom he grinned inwardly at himself. Big shot! And where would I have been, where would any of us have been if it hadn’t been for Papa, who just happened to start his little Crossroads Market on exactly the right spot, and had that peasant land hunger to go with his small successes, so that he kept buying and buying? His success, not mine. It’s gotten so big I don’t think he understands it any more. But probably he does. More than I think.

He thought of his father with love. They all should try to visit the old man more often. He wouldn’t last a hell of a lot longer. Seventy-one this year.

The crossroads came to life in the misty warmth of the June morning. Traffic climbed slowly toward the full rush and roar of daytime traffic. At the Crossroads Motor Hotel, Walter Merris, the lean, fastidious, ambitious resident manager, relieved the night man and handled the
few remaining wake-up calls. The maids were starting on the rooms of those who had left early. Betsy Merris made up the deposit to take down to the main office of the corporation and checked the reservation file. During this process Walter found three good opportunities to hiss at her about her abysmal stupidity. She was a dumpy little woman with the eyes of a kicked dog and an air of nervous apology.

In Unit 17, a young bride and groom, still slightly damp from the shower they had shared, wedged the bathroom door at such an angle that they could, from the bed, watch themselves in the full-length mirror making morning love. Down in Unit 9 of the Midland Motel another bride and groom prepared for a day of travel. She lay weeping helplessly into the pillow while he shaved in such an angry way that he cut himself. When he cut himself he turned and called her a stupid bitch. She gave a wail of utter desolation.

In the busy Crossroads Pantry, at a table for two by the big front window, a mild and hung-over salesman for roller bearings, with a wife and two kids up in Camden, tried to conceal his distaste for the brassy dish he had picked up fifty miles west on 82 in a roadside bar at five the previous afternoon. The morning light was cruel to her. She was attacking her eggs like a man shoveling snow, waving bitten nails and calling him “sweetie” in a voice audible at thirty paces. He wished he knew more about the Mann Act. He wished he’d never stopped at that bar. He wished he wasn’t a salesman. He was certain everybody was aware of the relationship. He wished he was slightly dead.

A half mile north of the salesman, alone at a corner table in the main dining room of the Motor Hotel Restaurant, a thirty-six-year-old woman breakfasted on hot tea and dry toast, looked out at the traffic—drifting by in an unreal silence outside the hushed, air-conditioned room—and thought about death. She was unmarried, a doctor of medicine. She knew the implacability of the thing inside her which had gaunted her, given her face this special pallor, pushed her eyes back into her head.
The clothes she wore, the convertible parked in front, seemed planned for a younger, gayer woman. She was never without pain any more. She knew that if she had waited much longer she wouldn’t have been able to drive herself home to die. She wanted a few days to lie in the hot sun of her childhood on that familiar Florida beach. When it became bad enough, she would take the pills. But it was hard for her to believe that she would never come this way again, that every dog and bird and shrub she saw would outlive her.

Directly opposite the restaurant, on the other side of the divided highway, was a row of small stores in a long building set back from the road. A sundries store, laundry and dry cleaning, a hardware store with a post office substation, a bakery, a little gift shop. An old man was sweeping the walk in front of the sundries store. She saw a gray Volkswagen drive in and disappear behind the block of stores. A few minutes later a tall girl came walking around from in back of the stores, walking light and lithe in morning health, sun on her fair hair. She wore a sand-colored sleeveless dress with a small formal aqua collar, and keys sparkled in her hand. She unlocked the door of the gift shop. The name in slanting gold script on the display window was Jeana Louise. The woman in the restaurant saw the girl smile and say something to the old man and go inside.

She thought, with a certain familiar and comfortable smugness, My eyesight is perfect. But then the realization came again. Like a bitter wind blowing against her heart. Undiminished. What good are my eyes? What good are all the well parts, the perfect parts?

She tipped extravagantly because the waitress had been pleasant, a plump young girl with an open face, and because money had become a wry thing to think about. She paid her check and walked slowly out to the convertible. As she touched the door handle the pain struck with maliciousness. Remember me? It doubled her slightly, making sweat that was icy in the sunshine. In a few moments she was able to straighten up. She got in and, on an impulse of bravado, put the top down, took a gay
kerchief from the glove compartment and tied it around her lifeless hair.

There was a gap in the medial strip opposite the restaurant. When she paused there, waiting for a cluster of southbound cars to whir by, she looked over and saw the tall girl leaning into her display window, her pretty face serious and intent as she flicked at the window merchandise with a gay feather duster. Live in health, Jeana Louise, she thought gently. Live long and live well, my dear.

So then she could turn, and she turned south, accelerating. By noon on Saturday she would be home, back to the golden beach of her girlhood.

The man in the big gas station directly across from the Crossroads Motor Hotel saw her go by. He had stood there on the wide blue-gray expanse of asphalt, squinting in the sun, thumbs tucked in the bellyband of his trousers, watching her up there waiting to make the turn south, feeling the little automatic gut-tingle of excitement that came whenever he looked at a strange and potentially attractive woman. But when she went by he turned away with a little shrug of disgust. Sallow old bitch, trying to look like young stuff. Going around begging for it. Tired merchandise in a fancy package.

He turned and looked toward his car. It was still up on the rack. Soon as you get south of Washington, they take all day. He walked slowly past the service islands where uniformed attendants were feeding the tourist cars. Big damn operation. Station looks like an airport terminal. Should have come by air this time. Maybe more like some kind of shrine. Place of worship along the highway. Bigger share of consumer dollar every year into service operations. Food, clothing, cleaning, entertainment, automotive. New prop under the economy. Net increase of better than nine thousand damn fools every day. Three and a half million of them a year. All with their mouths open. Baby birds. Memo. Take a look at those baby food companies again.

He was fifty, a chunky restless domineering man, richer than he had ever hoped to be, walking nimbly along
the very edge of legality, hungry for more—more of everything, money, food, women, power, now on his way down to make a personal investigation of a syndicate land-fill operation made possible only by the careful bribery of those public officials pledged to prevent further land fills on Florida’s west coast.

A too-handsome and powerfully built young man was working on his car, a big new Chrysler, arrogantly dirty. Fescher looked at the young man. Husky brute. Too much sideburn. Name embroidered over pocket. Glenn. Had his uniform tailored to show off that build. Vain son of a bitch. Kills the women. Wish I’d been built that good. Hell, I do all right.

“Think I should maybe take a room across the road, Glenn?”

He looked out from under the car. “About one more minute, sir. It wouldn’t take long to give it a wash job.”

“Don’t merchandise me, sonny boy. Just finish it up fast.”