You Only Get Letters from Jail (19 page)

“Time for what?” I said.

Hurley looked out the window at his cup in the gutter and the row of cars at the curb, and then he shut his window and the room changed its quality of sound. “Time to tell somebody, okay?”

The guitar made a seamless rift into “Louie Louie” and everybody cheered. Hurley stood up and opened the bedroom door, and the party moved upstairs, if only in volume, and then he stepped out of his room and I thought he might stop for a second, look back at me, wait, but he didn't. He just kept his back to me and closed the door.

After a while, I went downstairs, but I didn't look for Hurley as I walked through the crowd that filled the living room. When I hit the sidewalk in front of his house, I just kept walking, and then I was on asphalt, and then I crossed over onto dead grass and dirt. I knew my way without light, and I didn't need sunshine to call the corners, dips, potholes, and uneven places in the ground. I could find my way to the slough with my eyes closed, and I walked part of the trail that way, eyes closed, and when I came out on the open bank beside the water, I smelled the slough before I ever touched it and felt the quality of
the air change into a coolness that made goose bumps break out on my skin. There were frogs calling on all sides, back and forth so that the noises blended together into one long harmony of sound with crickets and the last remaining whine of insects that had become lost after dusk. I slipped my shoes off and went in with my jeans on. The mud felt good under my feet, a reminder that I wasn't sober, but I wasn't drunk either, and I had had enough by then to know the difference. I found the anchor stick and pulled it out of the mud so I could get the shoelace free. Then I took the loop and put it over my own wrist, felt the wet heaviness of the thin lace, and slid my hand the distance until I found the other end around hers, and I spun her slowly, so that her right hand turned toward the opposite shore and I turned with her. There wasn't enough room between us to make a full stroke, but I could half dog-paddle and keep her alongside me, both of us treading together toward the open water of the middle and the opposite shore beyond.

I would be sixteen before fall, maybe get my driver's license, start the high school year that counted for college, and probably be a better swimmer to take on crossing the slough by next summer. Across the water beyond the far shore was the freeway, and I could see the steady roll of lights and hear the drone of trucks shifting gears as they prepared to make the long turn toward north and the distant edge of the state beyond. I put my face in the water and held my breath, and even when I thought that I could hear voices on the near shore behind me, see the
narrow fingers of flashlight beams pointing in my direction and over my head, I kept my face down and stayed on course, felt the temperature change in the water below me, the shallow warmth giving way to deeper cold, pulled her weight and didn't think too much about where we were going—only that I could stay this way if she wanted me to.

My parents had bottomed out just about six months ago, divided and split, and I told each of them that I was staying with the other, but really I was somewhere in between. My father said he and my mother were bare-knuckled boxers who once beat each other down in three rounds in a gravel parking lot outside of a bar at the edge of some mill town they were passing through. He said he came out the winner despite the fact that he had a scar across his forehead, and he would not look me in the eye when he lifted his hair to reveal the jagged raised skin. My mother said that my father had crossed a line. That there are some lines that cannot be crossed and once they are, nothing is ever the same inside a person or out. She told me that someday I would cross that line, too, because it was unavoidable, genetic, a part of my blood, and I waited to see that line, to recognize when I had crossed it, because
maybe then I would be free from the pressure of knowing that it was coming toward me like a freight train or a car with its headlights off that hits you on an open road out of nowhere in the dark. Leeanne's father had given me a check for a thousand dollars to leave her alone. He told me as much—“Walk away,” he said—and I only half heard him because the other half of me had already walked right into his house when he was no more than a sleeping threat upstairs and I had had his daughter as much and as often as I wanted. I probably got her pregnant on purpose and she probably let me get her pregnant on purpose, and we both did it for the same reasons—because the line was somewhere and there was a before and an after and we both wanted to know on which side we stood.

It had been sprinkling earlier, nothing more than spit on the windshield, but we hit committed rain thirteen miles out of Mad River, and the first time that the four bald tires kissed themselves free from the asphalt and slid us out of our lane on a tight sheet of water, Leeanne called me a motherfucker and cinched the seat belt tighter around her pregnant stomach. The second time they did it she let out a scream, something like the small noises she made when we were in darkness—backseat, bedroom, her daddy's couch—when I was closest to her mouth, her lips on my shoulder and one eye toward the door, and as we fishtailed I knew that we would not see fourteen more miles to the next city. I slowed the Ford to a crawl on the broken shoulder of the two-lane highway and looked out at the dirty gray that had become our Sunday, and I
waited for Leeanne to say something hopeful that would let me know that if I went ahead and put us back on the road heading west, it would be the right decision even if the traction failed. But Leeanne just sat beside me on the split bench seat with both of her hands folded over the lap belt and her stomach where the T-shirt pulled as tight as the skin beneath it to cover the swell. The right turn signal was a hollow clicking that reminded me that time was wasting—even while we sat hidden in the rain—and down deep, underneath my fear and my hunger and the ragged edge of worry for everything I had done and was about to do, I was impatient to move and make distance.

“We can either wait or try to go back to that town,” I said. The last road sign had promised a new city in fourteen miles, Poker Flat, but we'd never make the ride over miles of downpour, bad tires, and not enough money.

“I saw a sign not too far back, off the road where some buildings were,” she said. “It might be a motel. Maybe we could stay there for a little while until the rain quits. I'm tired of being on the road.” She kept rubbing at her stomach. It was a movement that I had grown familiar with over the past couple hundred miles—one hand tucked under the top of her pants and the other hand smoothing down the shirt over the skin, one long stride, ribs to waistband, over and over again without sound.

“You sure it was a motel?” I said. My stomach made a noise that reminded me that motels and restaurants liked to take up space in the same parking lots, and where there was a bed for rent, there was bound to be food, and the last
time I'd had more than coffee in my mouth had been a lot of hours ago when there was still sunshine and flat clouds that were whiter than dinner plates. That was before I knew her father had offered her money, too, had threatened me dead, had done everything but yank a hanger out of Leeanne's closet and taken care of the whole situation himself.

“I saw buildings and lights,” she said. She did not look at me as she talked. Her hand was still moving in its steady arc over the hump of her stomach.

I rolled down my window so that I could see the road in both directions, and the rain came into the car for a minute; needled at my bare arms, put dark spreading stains on my short sleeves. The sky was heavy murk above us, bruised and black, and I knew that if I kept my head out the window for a while longer somewhere out there I would see lightning splinter toward the ground. The air had the smell of brine even though we were miles from any hope of water that didn't come from the sky. I switched on the left turn signal and then swung the car into a wide U and headed back.

I had hoped we could just keep driving on a loaf of bread and a package of lunch meat, fulfill my plan to just roll to a stop when the last of the gas gave out and call everything good and just start out wherever the car came to rest, and maybe we might have if Leeanne hadn't been six months pregnant. But plans have about as much substance as daydreams, and every time you are two steps away from everything coming true, somebody slaps you between your shoulder blades and knocks the reality back
into you. It doesn't help much that money goes half as far as you think it will.

We took the cheapest motel room and went straight to bed and wrapped the blanket around us. While Leeanne flipped through the television channels, I cracked sunflower seeds and spit the shells into one of the short glasses from the bathroom.

“You smell good,” I said. I reached out to touch her, to maybe pull her toward me and kiss her and feel the weight of her body against mine, but she was as firm as a cement freeway divider and she didn't turn or kiss me or touch me back at all. She just smiled and dropped her hand to her belly and she started her rub. It was a habit, like cracking knuckles, and I hated it. I rolled onto my side away from her and spit some sunflower seeds into the glass without cracking them. My lips felt chapped on the inside.

“The baby's sleeping,” she said. “I don't want to wake her.”

“You want me to rub your feet?” I said. “I can use a hot washcloth and make you feel better.”

Leeanne bit at her bottom lip and for a second I thought that she might start crying, but then she exhaled hard so that her bangs lifted off her forehead and then she turned to me and gave me a half smile. “I'm tired, that's all. Maybe you could just talk to me so I can fall asleep.”

I rolled over and put my hand over the top of hers while she rubbed her stomach even though I wanted her to stop. After a few rounds, she moved her hand out from under mine and I took over and I decided that I would move my hand the length of her twenty more times and then I would
stop. “Tomorrow I'm going to put some better tires on the car.” I rested my head against her so that I could listen to her breathe. Leeanne's eyes were closed and her inhales came slow and deep. I dropped my voice to a whisper. On the television a tiny lizard erupted from a leathery egg, blinked at the too-bright light, and slipped away into deep dark grass.

The motel was on Bond Road, just off the highway, and there was an intersection with a Flying J gas station and a few low buildings on gravel lots. Monday came up without sun, and I left Leeanne sleeping and went out to find food and tires that would get us the hell out of there.

The second building I walked up on had the sound of air gun and the smell of grease, and I could see a stack of radials twenty deep behind a chain-link fence. I walked the distance to the open double sliding doors and waited for the man working the gun to notice me. He finally looked up from the car he was bent against and I shot my hand up in a weak wave.

He flipped a switch on the back of the compressor and the garage was suddenly quiet, except for the sound of a radio playing old country turned low. “You need something?” he asked. He pulled a cigarette from the front pocket of his work shirt and pinched the butt between his lips so he could bite the filter off. There were flecks of tobacco in his teeth that I could see from where I stood.

“I need tires. Maybe one, maybe two. Probably four,” I said. “Two-thirty-fives. Used, if you have them.”

The man rubbed at his cheek and left a smear of grease where his finger had touched. He was not a tall man, but
his shoulders were broad, and both of his sleeves were rolled tight over hard muscle in his arms despite the fact that his hair had crept back from his forehead. “You a mechanic?” he asked.

I cleared my throat and wiped at my lips. “Shade tree mostly,” I said. “But I've done some things. Brakes and shocks, carburetors. I did most of the work on my own car.”

He spit a mouthful of thick saliva at the ground. “Must not have done such a good job if you're walking around instead of driving.”

“I've got my car,” I said. I pointed behind me, back toward the motel. “It's parked over where we're staying.”

He smiled and held his hand out toward mine. “I'm just giving you a hard time,” he said. “I'm Chuck.”

The chipped and faded sign that faced the road said
Deacon's Auto
.

“You're not Deacon?” I asked.

“Nope,” he said. “That's an old sign.”

“You think I can get a deal on some tires?” I asked.

“You ever changed out a 406 V8 for a 427 side oiler with twin four-barrel Edelbrock carbs?”

I scuffed my tennis shoe into the gravel. “No,” I said. “I never have.”

Chuck laughed and hit me hard on the shoulder. “Me neither,” he said. “But I always wanted to. Might still do it someday.” He led me into the garage and under the car on the lift. He looked up and pointed with a stained finger. “This one needs new rotors. Probably everything on the
front and the rear. I don't do anything fancy around here. Just patch them up and send them back.”

I could smell oil and gas and hot metal, new rubber and old tools. There was something about the smell of a gutted car that made me feel like I wasn't afraid of anything I had done. “I just need tires for a Ford,” I said.

“You want to earn some money?” Chuck asked me.

I looked up into the open underbelly of the car and saw things that were familiar and I could hold on to them and get a sense that was steadier than the road west and Leeanne's constant fucking stomach rub.