The Lives of Edie Pritchard

by Larry Watson

  “Did it ever occur to you what I wanted was for you to love me back?”

  “And did it ever occur to you that maybe I did? But just not the way you wanted? Maybe you need to take what you can get.”

  On the road up ahead a cyclist is pedaling hard, his spandex-clad ass up in the air and his helmeted head down low. Because there’s no paved shoulder, Roy has to pull out to pass and, as they go by, the rider gives them the thumbs-up sign.

  “That must mean,” Roy says, “we’re heading in the right direction.”

  “I can’t think of any other possibility,” Edie replies.

  LESS THAN AN hour later, Roy and Edie pass the cyclist again. This time they’re traveling in opposite directions, his out of an out-and-back completed. They regard him with envy since they have no way of knowing where they are on their journey. Halfway or just starting? As far from their finish as they’ll ever be?

  But then Edie turns to look back at a farm they’ve just passed.

  “Wait.” She says the word so softly it’s as though she’s afraid of breaking a spell. “I think that’s it.”

  Roy pulls over with care as if it’s not gravel but glass crunching beneath the Highlander’s tires.

  “We just passed it,” Edie says. “That’s their SUV out front.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes, yes! I’m sure!”

  Roy makes a U-turn and speeds the quarter mile down the road to the farmhouse. He pulls into the driveway behind a black Chevy Blazer. Its license plate is from the state of Washington.

  The Highlander has barely come to a stop before Edie is out the door. Roy watches her stride up the driveway, away from him and toward a girl who has Edie’s blood, however diluted, running through her veins.

  Roy gets out of the car and walks back down to the road, and there he stops at the mailbox. There’s nothing to indicate the farm’s address, but sure enough, the letters S O L O N are stuck to the black metal. He walks by the weeds growing around the post, and then he sees it—the G that lost its adhesive and dropped to the ground. He picks it up and tries to stick it back in place, but it won’t stay put. He bends down and picks it up again. This time he opens the mailbox and places the glow-in-the-dark letter inside. “It’s been good to know you,” he says.

  He takes another step toward the road, where he can see the remains of an animal crushed by a passing vehicle. The animal—a raccoon? a possum?—is no longer identifiable, its carcass mashed so flat it has almost been absorbed by the road itself. Not even the outline of its body is discernible. Whatever the creature was it had fur, and a few tufts of hair still rise above the surface as if they’ve sprouted from the asphalt. Roy steps forward tentatively.

  “Roy! She’s here! Lauren’s here!” Edie calls to him from the porch.

  Roy plods up the driveway.

  Tiffany has answered the door, but she doesn’t invite Edie inside. She calls out, “Hey, Lauren! Someone’s here for you!”

  It’s not Edie’s granddaughter who appears however but Marilyn in an old pair of Converse high-tops, shorts, and a once-white T-shirt so stretched out it could have been Garth’s. All are spotted and streaked with paint. Her hair is tied back, and she’s pulling off a pair of canvas work gloves. She and Edie look at each other through the screen door.

  “Hello,” Marilyn says. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m Lauren’s grandmother.”

  “Uh-huh. You’ve traveled a ways.”

  “Well, yes. From . . . Is Lauren here now?”

  “Down in the cellar. She’s been helping me put up some shelves.”

  “Could I see her?” Edie asks. “Could I talk to her?”

  “I don’t see why not.” Marilyn starts to open the door and then sees Roy limping toward the house. “Hello,” she says. “Who’s this? Grandpa?”

  He steps onto the porch. “Just the chauffeur,” he says.

  Marilyn opens the door wide and, with a sweeping gesture, ushers Edie and Roy inside. “Your own personal driver?” she says to Edie. “Must be nice.” To Tiffany she says, “Go tell Lauren to get her butt up here.”

  Marilyn takes a step back and looks Edie up and down. “So, Lauren’s grandmother, I’m Marilyn Hoffman. That was my daughter Tiffany who answered the door. Sarah, my other daughter, is around here someplace. My husband is off fishing with our boy, Randy, and Lauren’s boyfriend.”

  She leads them to the kitchen and asks, “Can I get you something to drink? Coffee? A cold beer?”

  “I’m fine,” Edie says. “Thank you anyway.”

  “No thanks,” says Roy.

  “You’ve traveled some miles,” Marilyn says. “From Washington, I understand.”

  “You’re thinking of Lauren’s mother,” Edie says. “We came from Montana.”

  “Well, you could certainly pass for the mom,” Marilyn says. “But here you are—the grandmother, and of a teenager at that.” She gives Roy the kind of look that coconspirators might share. “Can you believe it?”

  Roy says simply, “I’ve known her a long time.”

  Marilyn cocks her head as though she’s waiting for further explanation, but none is forthcoming. “How did you find us?” she asks Edie.

  “Lauren called me. And sent me a text.”

  “And that was good enough to find your way here? I wouldn’t have thought that girl could give directions out to the barn.”

  Tiffany and Lauren emerge from the basement, and at the sight of each other Lauren and Edie rush into an embrace.

  Marilyn says to her daughter, “Go find your sister. You two make sure your room’s clean.”

  “Lauren,” Edie says, “this is Mr. Linderman. Roy, this is my granddaughter.”

  “Mr. Linderman?” Lauren says to her grandmother.

  Edie nods.

  Jesse suddenly appears, torso and feet bare as usual and eyes blinking as though he’s trying to clear away the world of sleep to bring the real one into focus.

  “If it isn’t Sleeping Beauty,” says Marilyn. “Come see who’s here for a visit.”

  Jesse smiles at Edie. “Hello, Grandma. Who’s this? You bring your boyfriend?”

  “So you know each other?” Marilyn says.

  “We’ve met,” Edie says. “But a ‘visit’? No, Lauren’s going to leave with us. We can’t stay.”

  “Whose idea is this?”

  “Both of ours,” Edie answers. Her arm is still around Lauren.

  Marilyn gives them both a long, hard look before she says to Lauren, “Then you better go pack up your shit.”

  “Can I give you a hand?” Edie asks her granddaughter.

  Lauren nods and they leave the kitchen together.

  As they walk past him, Jesse says with a laugh, “Bye-bye, Miss American Pie!”

  “Well, that’s that,” Marilyn says. She pulls her work gloves back on. “Now if you’ll excuse me. I’m in the middle of a project. You can let yourselves out.”

  Jesse and Roy watch Marilyn head back to the basement. “That Marilyn,” Jesse says, “she sure as shit doesn’t care about winning Miss Congeniality.”

  He opens the refrigerator and takes out a beer. “What about you?”

  Roy nods, pulls out a chair, and sits down at the table.

  Jesse brings over two cans of Bud Light, and then he sits down too. “So,” he says, “I guess Lauren can’t put up with us any longer.” He sips the beer and with a dainty gesture wipes foam from his upper lip. “Can’t say I blame her.”

  “Probably just missing home. That’s my impression anyway,” Roy says.

  “Must be nice to have a home to miss. Billy and I, we’re still trying to nail that down.”

  “Billy?”

  “My brother. Lauren’s boyfriend. If she’s gone before he comes back . . .” Jesse holds up his beer can. “Don’t know if there are enough of these in the world to help him get over her. He’ll be howling at the fucking moon.”

  “Why don’t you take him out and get him laid? I
n my experience that mends broken hearts a hell of a lot quicker than beer.”

  “Has that been your modus operandi?” Jesse asks.

  “It’s worked a time or two.”

  Jesse wags his finger back and forth between Roy and the other side of the room as though someone else is there with them. “You and Mrs. Dunn?” he asks.

  “What’s your question?”

  Jesse smiles. “Any old answer will do.”

  “Old friends.”

  “Ah,” says Jesse. He raises the beer can to his lips and in a few long swallows finishes it. “Old friends who travel the country together.”

  “Is that another question?”

  “Nah.” He belches and then goes to the refrigerator. “You want another? You got time. Lauren’s got her shit scattered all over upstairs. And you should see the bathroom. Fuck, man, she could start her own drugstore.”

  “I’m fine,” Roy says. “So how long you been here? In North Dakota, I mean.”

  Jesse shrugs. “Kind of lost track of time.”

  “And how have you been filling your days?”

  “You know. A little of this, a little of that.”

  “I do know,” Roy says, and for the first time all day, he smiles the Roy Linderman smile. “That just happens to be my line of work. A little of this. A little of that.”

  “Very unpredictable line.”

  “A man’s just got to keep his eyes open for where the deals are. Take you, for instance.” Roy leans closer to the younger man. “I hear you’ve got something I’ve been looking for. Mrs. Dunn said you’ve got yourself a handgun. Did she say right?”

  Jesse laughs but he seems unsettled. “Caught her snooping around in my gear. But yeah. Yeah, she said right.”

  Roy smiles again. “She’s not too knowledgeable when it comes to weaponry. I’ve been trying to get my hands on an automatic.”

  Jesse nods. “Glock. Nine millimeter.”

  “That’d be what I’m looking for, all right. I’ll tell you what.” He pauses and reaches into the front pocket of his khakis and pulls out a money clip, but he keeps it out of Jesse’s sight. From the clip he extracts a number of bills that he carefully folds over. When he holds up the bills a hundred is the only one visible. He says, “If what you’ve got is in decent condition, I’ll give you a good price for it.”

  “What would that price be?”

  “Let’s see the gun. What’d you pay? You’re entitled to make a profit.”

  “I got to know if it’s worth the trouble of climbing the fucking stairs.”

  Roy pinches the bills between his thumb and forefinger and reveals a second hundred. “First, let’s see what you’ve got. Then we can find a number that’s fair.”

  Without another word Jesse leaves the kitchen.

  Alone in the room, Roy places the folded bills on the table and sets his beer can on the bills.

  Jesse returns. He’s carrying a blue-nylon duffel bag. “You might get out of here before dark after all,” he says. “They’re already in the bathroom.”

  Roy simply holds out his hand.

  Jesse unzips the duffel and extracts the handgun, which he hands to Roy. The pistol’s sleek blue-black polymer surface is so unadorned it could pass for a child’s toy.

  Roy ejects the magazine immediately and inspects it. It’s empty. Then he works the pistol’s slide to verify that a bullet is not in the chamber either. He turns the automatic over in his hand. “Second-generation 17?” he asks Jesse. “This has got some years on it.”

  “It’ll do what you ask it to.”

  “Is it registered?”

  Jesse pulls a face. “Shit, man. Come on.”

  Roy hefts the gun in his hand. “I’ll give you three hundred.”

  “Hell, I paid three fifty.”

  “Did you now. An unregistered Glock. At least ten years old. Three fifty.”

  “I was trying to help a buddy out,” Jesse says.

  Roy puts the gun on the table near the beer can and the money. He points to the duffel bag. “You have ammunition in there?”

  “A box. Almost full.”

  Roy picks up the gun again. He asks Jesse, “You ever fire this?”

  “I’ve not had the occasion.”

  Roy smiles at this. “Okay. Four fifty. You throw in the ammo. And at that price I’m helping somebody out too.”

  Jesse extends a hand, and the two men shake. Then Roy lifts his beer can, exposing the folded bills. Jesse slides the bills away quickly and counts them. “I guess,” he says, “you had a number in mind all along.”

  “I knew how high I’d go if that’s what you mean. Now. The ammunition.”

  Jesse feels around in his duffel again, takes out a box of cartridges, and hands it to Roy.

  Roy opens the box and runs his finger down the rows of gleaming brass and lead. “Federal,” he says. “You get these at Walmart?”

  “The guy just threw them in with the gun. Does it matter?”

  “Not to me,” Roy says, and once again he releases the magazine. He sets the pistol down and proceeds to take a cartridge from the box and push it into the magazine. Then another—snick. And another—snick. Each time the spring resists slightly, then gives way to the human hand and the will it enacts.

  With each cartridge snapping into place, Jesse winces a little as though something sharp were scraping its way through his gut. He says, “The guy I bought it from was an addict. He was so fucking hard up I probably could have got it for ten bucks. Crack cocaine. How fucking stupid can you get.”

  “So you’re telling me,” Roy says without looking up from his task, “you paid three hundred and fifty dollars for something you could have gotten for ten?”

  “Like I say. I was helping out a buddy.”

  “So he could buy crack.”

  “Hey, he could have put a bullet in me and taken everything I had.”

  “Interesting relationship. You and your buddy.”

  “Like I say. A crackhead. A different fucking creature altogether.” Jesse reaches into his duffel bag again. “As long we’re buying and selling here, I might have something else in here that would interest you. How about something to help you stay awake on those long road trips?”

  Roy says nothing. He picks up the pistol now and rams the magazine into place. He stands up and pulls back on the slide to chamber a round.

  Jesse jerks back in his chair. “What the fuck, man?”

  Roy puts the box of cartridges into the pocket of his trousers. He lifts his shirt and tucks the pistol into the waistband of his trousers and pulls his shirt down over the gun.

  “You sure you want that in there?” Jesse asks. “Pretty dangerous if you ask me. Aimed right at your manhood and all.”

  “My manhood?” Roy says and laughs. “If you knew a fucking thing about the gun you used to own you’d know what it takes to fire it.”

  “Hey, you bought it. Stick it wherever you like.”

  “Fucking A I bought it. Now you listen. When we leave here today? I don’t want to see you in my rearview mirror. You know what I’m saying?”

  For a long moment Jesse simply stares up at Roy Linderman. Then he must see something in the older man’s eyes that compels him to answer. “Yeah,” he says. “I hear you.”

  As he’s leaving the room, Roy says, “Tell them I’m waiting outside.”

  When Roy reaches the car he opens the front passenger door and puts the Glock and the box of ammunition inside the glove compartment. He takes a cigarette from the pack and lights it.

  Moments later Lauren and Edie exit the house, Lauren carrying her graduation suitcase and Edie carrying a green-plastic garbage bag.

  Roy drops his cigarette in the dirt and grinds it out with his heel. He opens the Toyota’s liftgate and says, “Just toss it all in there. Let’s get a move on.”

  Climbing into the car, stifling in the heat of the midday sun, Edie turns to her granddaughter. “Don’t you want to say good-bye to anyone?” she asks.
<
br />   “Fuck no,” Lauren says, climbing into the seat behind her.

  WHEN ROY DRIVES into the parking lot of the Holiday Inn Express, he asks Edie, “What do you think? You want to head back or stay another night?”

  “How’s your back?”

  “It’s holding up.”

  “Then I’d just as soon get going.”

  He looks at Lauren in the rearview mirror. “How about you?” he asks. “You want to vote?”

  “Do they have a pool here?”

  “Nope.”

  “Go then, I guess.”

  “I’ll check us out,” he says. “You two can wait here.”

  Roy gets out of the vehicle, leaving its engine running. Edie and Lauren watch him walk across the lot.

  “What’s the matter with his leg?” Lauren asks.

  “He was in a car accident,” Edie says. “Years ago.”

  “Like when he was a kid?”

  “Not much more than that.” Edie twists around in the seat to look at her granddaughter. “You want to tell me what happened back there?”

  “So does he have like one leg shorter than the other one? Because he walks kind of like this kid I went to school with. He was in a bad accident when he was in like fourth grade, and after that his leg was all shriveled.”

  “When you called me,” Edie says, “you sounded like—”

  “And this is the really awful awful part. His dad was driving. Can you imagine? To be all crippled like that. And your own dad did that to you. And now this guy’s like a serious addict. Oxycodone and shit like that. Does Mr. Linderman take a lot of pain pills?”

  “No, he’s fine,” Edie says impatiently. “He lives with it. That’s all. He just lives with it.”

  Lauren is tapping away on her phone. “Do you know how to get on the Holiday Inn Wi-Fi? It says we’re close enough. So if you know what the password is—”

  “No, no, I don’t. Lauren. What happened?”

  Lauren answers with a deep sigh. She drops her phone into her purse. “Jesse. He . . . he touched me.”

  “He touched you how? Did he hurt you?”

  She snorts a laugh. “Not hardly!”

  “Then—”

  “You know. Like putting his hand where he shouldn’t.”

  “Did Billy know?”

  “It was probably his fucking idea. Those brothers. I mean, come on.”