The Quiet Streets of Winslow (28 page)

“What?”

“That my life was going to get better,” he said.

“But it didn't.”

“No,” he said. “I guess not.”

I was looking out the window at the scraggly area in front of the trailer, beyond which was a chain-link fence; a broad, empty street; and a view of Bucket of Blood Drive. It was clearly visible from his window. I debated whether or not to ask if the name of that street had significance for him and decided against it. It was probably no secret in Holbrook that that was where Jody's car had been found.

“Was losing that job when you got yourself in a bit of trouble?” I said. “You have that DUI on your record, and that assault charge. What was that about?”

“That was stupid,” he said. “A friend and I got into it. He was drunk and called the police. He was sorry about it later and apologized, told the police it was his screwup. He felt bad about it, and he should have.”

“That apology was important to you, it sounds like.”

“It's how people are supposed to treat you when they make a mistake.”

“Did Jody ever say she was sorry for how she had treated you?”

“No.” I had the feeling he said it more sharply than he had meant to. “But she didn't owe me that. I mean, all she did really was move on, like girls do.”

After I left his trailer I drove in the direction of Bucket of Blood Drive. Would Kevin have been smart enough to clean Jody's car of prints, inside and out? Well, people watched television. I resented police shows for the unrealistic aspects and the realistic, both—more so for the latter. And unlike a lot of single men his age, Kevin cleaned up after himself, as did Nate, for that matter. And both of them were left-handed, although Kevin seemed to be ambidextrous.

On Bucket of Blood Drive I parked where Jody's car had been found and got out of my SUV. Let Kevin Rainey see me there, I thought. I imagined he would be watching.

chapter forty

NATE ASPENALL

I
WAITED AT THE
Painted Desert Overlook for half an hour. I sat in my truck with the windows down, listening to the wind as it swept across the plateaus with their muted colors and the blue of the sky reaching down to them. It was after four by then, and the light was changing. To the west there was a quilted pattern of thin, white clouds that trailed off into wisps at either end.

I did not look at Mike Early's SUV or Jody's car directly but held them in my peripheral sight. I believe it's human to not want to know too much. Instead I took myself back to the day before, after we had had drinks at La Posada and Jody drove me to my pickup. I did not leave at once, as she had imagined. I drove down the windswept streets of her neighborhood, past the small houses, the small yards, the fenced-in dogs, the kids playing, the out-of-work men congregated in the short alleys, the quiet streets of Winslow, where Jody said not much happened and not much changed.

People were coming home from work, and a train was going by on the Santa Fe rail line. Beyond the railroad tracks was flat, empty land as far as you could see, all the way to the horizon. I drove past
Walmart and a liquor store, past a pawn shop and a Super 8 and a Burger King. Then I circled back to Jody's part of town and drove past her house, and her car was parked there and nobody else's, and I caught a glimpse of her through the small window, talking on her cell phone. Who was she talking to? Of course I couldn't know. She was talking to her mother, I told myself. She was saying,
I'm just going to stop for groceries, Mom, and I'll be over
.

Only then did I leave Winslow for Flagstaff.

A
T THE OVERLOOK
the plateaus were becoming inflamed with the approach of evening, and a photo album in my head opened onto Delia Lane and myself on my bicycle, with Sandra running alongside, when my dog Philly ran out into Nightfall Street. Before we could shout her back we heard the squeal of tires. However long ago you lose something the original pain comes back. It did then at the overlook. It was deep and overwhelming—the emotion of a dream that had somehow come into my waking life, then subsided. You could go back and forth between waking and dreaming, I saw, but it wasn't an ordinary occurrence.

A minute or two after that, Mike Early drove out of the parking lot. I saw Jody get into her Toyota, and she sat there a minute, brushing her hair as she looked at herself in the rearview mirror. That was when I started my truck and pulled up next to her, where Mike Early's pickup had been. She was shocked to see me. She looked twice, as if not believing it, and tears came to her eyes. Her expression was a confusion of anger and hurt, and I had not expected that. I had thought she would be defensive, embarrassed, ready to offer an explanation.

I got into the passenger seat of her car. She wore jeans and a close-fitting, gray sweater I had not seen before, made out of a thin material.
Her face hardened into stubbornness. It was as if she had decided: this is what I will do.

“How could you spy on me?” she said.

“Spy on you doing what?” I said.

“What does that mean?”

“It means what were you doing in Mike Early's truck?”

“What are you doing here, at the overlook?” she said.

Her eyes were cold, and I found myself explaining that I had stayed in Flagstaff in order to go on the Reservation and sightsee. That was what I had done, and now I was on my way back. It was the truth, or mostly the truth.

“I bet you stayed in Winslow last night,” she said. “Then you parked near my house today and saw Mike Early drive up. He was on his way to visit his sister, by the way. He was just visiting. Then you ended up following us here.”

I dug in my pocket and showed her the receipt from the motel in Flagstaff. She wouldn't touch it and I set it in the small compartment between the seats.

“So what?” Jody said. “So big deal. You stayed fifty miles away.”

“What were you and Mike doing?” I said. “That's all I'm asking you.”

“Talking.”

“About what?”

“Nothing special,” she said. “This and that, same as always. What difference does it make?”

“Okay,” I said. “I was wondering.”

“What did you think we were doing?” Jody said.

“I couldn't see you at all. I could only see Mike.”

“He's taller than I am.”

“I know that.”

“What's wrong with you?” Jody said. “What's happening to you?”

“Nothing.”

“It's like you're turning into another person.”

“I'm fifty different people. Everybody is.”

“There's only one of me,” Jody said.

“There's you with me,” I said. “Then there's you with Mike Early.”

I didn't mention that there were undoubtedly others. Already her face was crumpling. But before that, something else flew across it, and I was certain of what she had done.

“I don't want your ring anymore,” she said.

She took it off and held it out to me. I could see the indentation it had left on her finger.

“No,” I said. “It's yours, even if you're saying forget about all the rest.”

“The answer to marrying you is now no,” Jody said. “Is that what
all the rest
means? You can't even say the word, Nate. I don't think you would have married me. You don't live in the world at all. You don't know what reality is. There's always been something off about you.”

“Like your head is on straight.”

“It's straighter than yours.”

“How do you figure?”

“I keep trying,” Jody said.

“That's what you call it?”

“Now you're being mean,” she said. “Mean and ugly and jealous, like most men. I didn't think you would be like that, Nate. I didn't think you would spy on me.”

“I wasn't following you, and I wasn't spying on you. I told you that. And here's what I'd like to know, Jody. What difference would it make, anyway, if you and Mike were just talking?”

“Don't put this on me.”

“But you were here with him.”

“Take the ring back,” Jody said.

“I don't want it.”

“I would never marry you now,” she said.

“As if you would have before.”

When I got out of her car, she called after me, “I was going to, Nate. I was going to say yes.”

She drove out to Highway 87 in the direction of Winslow, and I watched her go, watched her Toyota until I couldn't see it anymore. Then I drove toward Winslow myself.

chapter forty-one

TRAVIS ASPENALL

M
Y FATHER SAID
that Nate wouldn't answer his cell phone, not for him or Sandra or Sam Rush.

“Well, that's his choice,” Dad said. “It's his right. There's nothing anybody can do about it.”

“Maybe Nate didn't go back to Chino Valley.”

“No. He did. Sam Rush is aware of it.”

We were out on Canyon Road with the dogs. My mother had told Dad after supper, “Go outside. Go do something. You're fidgety.” In a lower voice she had said, “You know how Damien picks up on things. Travis is stronger. He knows how to look after himself.”

We were crossing the road with the new dog, Recluse, up ahead of us. Pete was keeping pace with us. He was doing all right, old as he was. He didn't want to look bad in comparison.

“What does Sam say about Nate?” I said.

“Not much.”

“He tells you a lot, though.”

“There's more he doesn't,” Dad said.

“How do you know?”

“I know him, and I know how the world works.”

He looked behind us, to the east, where the sky was a pale color, like the inside of a shell.

“It seems like Jody hurt Nate,” I said, “and probably other people. That makes it not that hard to understand.”

“Somebody losing his temper, you mean.”

“Yeah.”

“There's no justification for violence,” Dad said.

“Unless you're fighting in a war, in which case you can get court-martialed for not killing people.”

“You've been talking about this in school?”

“In history,” I said.

“Well, war is different. Not that I don't see it from your point of view. War is stupid and unnecessary in most cases,” Dad said. “But let's leave war out of this.”

“I'm just saying I can see how it could happen, losing your temper.”

“To that degree?”

“I'm not saying I would do it, Dad, just that I could sort of understand it.”

“Understanding it is one thing. Condoning it is another.”

“Don't be all Sunday school with me,” I said. “You don't even go to church.”

“Now you sound like your mother.”

We were out in the desert, taking a shortcut to Squaw Valley Road.