American Salvage

by Bonnie Jo Campbell

  He will never tell them or anyone about the outline of the girl stepping from the fog with such animal grace, her head tipped back to reveal her throat. In the next hour they will ask him repeatedly if he drove over the white line—he could have when he was looking at the Hendrickson house, although he honestly doesn’t think he did. He will not tell them how the girl’s face looks like Ricky’s face. They will ask him if he has been drinking, and they will not believe him when he says no. The county sheriff ’s department has recently purchased their first Breathalyzer machine, and a second police cruiser will arrive with the machine in the trunk, and they will test him and fiddle with the adjustments and retest him repeatedly, and repeatedly he will pass. Inside his own body, however, he feels the residue of what he has drunk over the years, feels the residue of all those Friday night binges acutely, as exhaustion in his joints, in the shaking of his burned hand, in his infected jaw.

  If they take him to jail, they will feed him, he thinks, and if he pleads guilty, they will sentence him, and he may be able to get his infected teeth pulled. A kindhearted jail nurse might acquire for him the ointments he is supposed to use on his burns to keep his skin elastic. If he goes to jail, though, they will impound his car. In any case, they will never let him see the girl again.

  Sixteen years ago he realized he would never tell anyone that he had helped Ricky build that scuba gear out of lengths of hose he swiped from the school science lab and a welding oxygen tank nabbed from the service station. Ricky was not supposed to try the gear without him, especially not at night. After attending Ricky’s funeral and looking into the coffin, the hunter had been unable to return to school, although it was only three weeks until graduation. He took the job in the Paw Paw foundry. Kids who didn’t know crap said that Ricky’s body had had over five hundred bloodsuckers stuck to it when they dragged him out of the muck.

  The police car smells of smoke, and the hunter wishes he had a cigarette. From the back seat, he studies the face of the pond. The fog has thinned, revealing slushy ice stained pink by dawn.

  Nobody is skating; nobody ever skates anymore, although he recalls skating every cold day of his youth, recalls the grace of the neighborhood girls, who were mean to him in their yards, tough-talking on the road, but fluid and sweet on the ice. The hunter wonders if his old skates are somewhere at his father’s house.

  The girl has made him think of a time when he was fourteen, one morning between

  Christmas and New Year’s, when he awoke before dawn. His father was working the night shift and wouldn’t be home until eight a.m., so he borrowed the old man’s twelve-gauge shotgun and went to the pond’s edge, into the bushes in front of the Hendrickson house, where he lay on his belly and awaited the deer whose tracks he’d seen on the ice, three days in a row. Just as a pale light shone in the east, the deer emerged from the bushes, four does and a buck. They stepped across the ice, lifting their hooves high, setting each hoof down again delicately, five deer clicking like one machine whose parts were too complicated to synchronize. This would have been his first kill, and he has always felt shame at his inability to shoot the buck, but that’s not what has haunted him all these years. It is more the complication of the overlapping bodies, the mystery of the herd. Their legs seemed impossibly thin on the ice, and their delicate bodies combined to become one powerful creature; they reminded him of the gangs of girls who passed him in the school hallways and at Campbell Lake in their bikinis and on the sidewalk in front of the beer store, tossing their heads, laughing.

  He could have hit the buck, he is sure, if he had focused and shot right away, but he became interested in the mechanics, in whether the elaborate machine, snorting clouds of breath, would make it across the pond, whether the deer would avoid the dark patch he noticed near the bank. The hunter’s head and lungs were overfilled to bursting that morning with cold, clean air, and he began to sense that the animals were, all five, going to turn and look at him in unison, or else launch into the air, into actual flight. He was warm in his snowsuit, and he remembers the way his body felt—

  languorous from sleep, loose-jointed, his muscles supple like that buck’s. Then a shot sounded, although he had not fired, and an orange flare exploded over the ice. A second bottle rocket arced over the pond, hissing smoke, spitting sparks. At the sound, all five bodies, all twenty legs kicked out of that fussy, halting motion and leapt over the dark patch and onto the snow-covered bank, where they ran as separate beasts. Another bottle rocket flew, showering orange light above the rustle of hooves in snow.

  “You bastard!” the hunter yelled. He liked the clean sound of his own voice in the cold predawn air. “You son of a bitch and bastard!”

  When Ricky Hendrickson shot off a fourth homemade rocket over the pond, the hunter sprang up the hill, tackled Ricky easily, rolled him over, and straddled his back. Ricky was small, didn’t stand a chance against the hunter, who rubbed his face in the snow until he howled.

  If only the hunter could have seen into the future. He would have gathered that skinny pest up into his arms. Would have pulled that puny freckled son of a bitch and bastard to his chest and rocked him like a girl rocked a baby doll, begged him without shame not to die. Later on, when his dad sent him to his room for getting snow in his shotgun barrel, the hunter stewed over that lost kill, imagined himself pulling the buck home around the pond on the Hendricksons’ toboggan, imagined that buck already hanging in the garage when his dad got home. His dad would have spent the day in the garage with him and gone to work that night and bragged about his son, and maybe that would have changed everything. They would have eaten venison, his venison, all winter.

  Back in the snow, the boys wrestled, and breath shot out wildly from their mouths and noses. The hunter shouted up at the sky, “I coulda had that buck!” Ricky shrieked and twisted as the hunter shoved snow down his back. Somehow Ricky wriggled free, tore off the hunter’s wool cap, tossed it away, and said, “You couldn’t hit the side of a barn, man.” The hunter grabbed one insulated boot and tackled Ricky again. He reached way down the front of Ricky’s jacket this time, down inside his shirt, and pressed a handful of packed snow against that kid’s warm skin.

  The Solutions to Brian’s Problem

  SOLUTION #1

  Connie said she was going out to the store to buy formula and diapers. While she’s gone, load up the truck with the surround-sound home-entertainment system and your excellent collection of power tools, put the baby boy in the car seat, and drive away from this home you built with your own hands. Expect that after you leave, she will break all the windows in this living room, including the big picture window, as well as the big mirror over the fireplace, which you’ve already replaced twice. The furnace will run and run. Then she will go to your mother’s looking for you, and when she does not find you, she will curse at your mother and possibly attempt to burn your mother’s house down. Connie has long admired the old three-story farmhouse for its west-facing dining room with window seats and the cupola with a view for miles around. You and Connie have discussed living there some day.

  SOLUTION #2

  Wait until Connie comes back from the “store,” distract her with the baby, and then cut her meth with Drano, so that when she shoots it up, she dies.

  SOLUTION #3

  Put the baby boy to bed in his crib and sit on the living room couch until Connie comes home. Before she has a chance to lie about where she’s been, grab her hair and knock her head hard into the fireplace that you built from granite blocks that came from the old chimney of the house your great-grandfather built when your family first came to this country from Finland—blocks you gathered from the old foundation in the woods. Don’t look at the wedding photos on the mantle.

  Don’t look at Connie’s wide wedding-day smile, or the way her head tilts back in an ecstasy that seems to have nothing to do with drugs. Don’t let the blood stop you from hitting her one final time to make sure you have cracked her skull. Put her meth and her bag of syrin
ges and blood-smeared needles in her hand so the cops find them when they arrive. You will tell them it was an accident, that you were arguing and the argument escalated because she threatened to shoot meth into your baby.

  SOLUTION #4

  Just go. Head south where it’s warm. After a few hours, pull over at a truck stop and call your mother to warn her to call the cops if she sees Connie. After that, pretend not to have a wife and baby boy. When put to the test, Connie might well rise to the occasion of motherhood. Contact the union about getting a job with another local. Resist taking any photographs along with you, especially the photographs of your baby at every age. Wipe your mind clear of memories, especially the memory of your wife first telling you she was pregnant and how that pregnancy and her promise to stay clean made everything seem possible. Do not remember how the two of you kept holding hands that night, how you couldn’t stop reaching for each other, even in your sleep. She lost that baby, and the next one, and although you suspected the reason, you kept on trying.

  SOLUTION #5

  Blow your head off with the twelve-gauge you keep behind the seat of your truck. Load the shotgun with shells, put the butt against the floor, rest your chin on the barrel, and pull the trigger.

  Let your wife find your bloody, headless corpse in the living room; let her scrape your brain from these walls. Maybe that will shock her into straightening up her act. Let her figure out how to pay the mortgage and the power bill.

  SOLUTION #6

  Call a help line, talk to a counselor, explain that last week your wife stabbed you in the chest while you were sleeping, that she punches you, too, giving you black eyes that you have to explain to the guys at work. Explain that you’re in danger of losing your job, your house, your baby. Tell her Connie has sold your mountain bike and some of your excellent power tools already, that you have been locking the remainder in your truck, which you park a few blocks away from the house now.

  Try to be patient when the counselor seems awkward in her responses, when she inadvertently expresses surprise at the nature of your distress, especially when you admit that Connie’s only five foot three. Expect the counselor to be even less supportive when you say, hell yes, you hit her back.

  Tell the counselor that it’s the little things, too, that at least once a week Connie rearranges things in the house, not only the furniture, but your financial files and the food, all of which last week she moved to the basement, including the milk and meat, which you then had to throw away. Then realize that the counselor probably has caller ID. Hope that the counselor doesn’t call Social Services, because a baby needs his momma. Assure the counselor that Connie is a good momma, that she’s good with the baby, that the baby is in no danger.

  SOLUTION #7

  Make dinner for yourself and your wife with the hamburger in the fridge. Sloppy joes, maybe, or goulash with the stewed tomatoes your mother canned, your mother who, like the rest of your family, thinks your wife is just moody. You haven’t told them the truth, because it’s too much to explain, and it’s too much to explain that, yes, you knew she had this history when you married her, when she got pregnant, but you thought you could kick it together, you thought that love could mend all broken things—wasn’t that the whole business of love? Mix up some bottles of formula for later tonight, when you will be sitting in the living room feeding the baby, watching the door of the bathroom, behind which your wife will be searching for a place in her vein that has not hardened or collapsed. When she finally comes out, brush her hair back from her face, and try to get her to eat something.

  The Burn

  After ten at night you had to prepay for gas at the station in Plainwell, and Jim Lobretto didn’t realize how much his empty two-gallon can stank of fuel until he got it inside. He might have left the can outside the door while he paid, but knowing his luck, some bastard would steal it. He warmed his hands by rubbing them together and got himself a foam cup for coffee. Because he’d met the girl at the bowling alley bar, he’d spent more money than he’d intended, and because he’d given her a ride home, all the way out to hell-and-back Orangeville, he’d run out of gas two blocks shy of here. He had only seven dollars left: three for gas, three for cigarettes, and one for coffee to keep him awake on the drive back to Kalamazoo.

  At first Jim Lobretto thought he’d wait for the fresh pot of coffee somebody had just started, but the machine dribbled with an aching slowness beside the fluorescent-lit single-serving bags of chips and the stale doughnuts under scratched Plexiglas. He’d been awake nearly twenty-four hours already, and he apparently wasn’t young enough for this anymore. Jim picked up the old pot of coffee. As he poured the burnt contents into his cup, a big Ford pulled up in front of the glass wall of the gas station, a spanking new red F-250. Didn’t even have plates yet, just a dealer paper taped to the window. Lucky son of a bitch.

  “Shit!” Jim howled as the coffee overflowed onto his hand. He dropped the cup and it exploded like a liquid bomb, splashing the cupboard and his legs. coffee spread on the floor around him, making him feel as though he’d wet his pants. A few drops stained the pale leather shoes of a young woman holding a gallon of milk. She looked at him through her oval glasses as though he were a dog turd and turned away before he could apologize. He picked up the cracked white cup and tossed it into the garbage. He wiped his hands on his pants, scraping his burned thumb and finger.

  The woman behind the counter sighed. “Don’t worry about that spill, sir. I’ll take care of it.”

  If his car hadn’t run out of gas two blocks away, if he weren’t out of cigarettes, he might have walked out, might have let the door slam shut and separate him from the whole lousy business.

  Instead, he stood there watching as a small, ferrety-looking guy slipped out of the driver’s seat of the new Ford and weaseled up to the counter in front of him. Jim could tell that everything was going that guy’s way. He probably had some union job that paid twice as much as Jim’s job at the foundry.

  And now he was driving around showing off his truck, day and night, probably hoping for snow so he could use his four-wheel drive. Jim would have liked to tell the guy it was too damned cold for snow, so he ought to just calm down. When the guy left, Jim moved toward the counter, said he wanted two gallons of gas and a hard pack of Marlboros.

  “And I’ll pay for that coffee.”

  “You don’t got to pay for it,” the woman said. She was fat and pink like his dad’s new wife.

  “I said I want to pay for it.” His words hung in the air, sounded like a threat, even to him.

  He reminded himself that this lady worked by the hour and was going to have to clean up the coffee whether he paid for it or not. While Jim waited for his few pennies change, he wondered if the woman had children who demanded bigger allowances from her. Maybe she had a husband or a boyfriend who was always on her about being fat. He didn’t want to waste his time thinking about strangers, but he’d gotten his head all loosened up from talking to that girl tonight. She said she was going back to get her nursing degree at the community college where his dad’s new wife worked.

  Jim had been in the doghouse with his old man since a few weeks after the courthouse wedding. He’d been having some beers with his dad, and he’d said something. It was something he and the guys at work said about fat women, and he’d been thinking the thought since first laying eyes on the new wife. Halfway through saying it, Jim changed his mind and wanted to stop himself, but the whole thing came out anyway. “How do you screw her?” he’d asked. “Roll her in flour and look for the wet spot?” His dad had turned away, disgusted. Although the old man himself used to make jokes like that, Jim knew it had to be different when you had a fat woman of your own.

  The new Ford truck headed off toward the highway, and Jim carried his can of gas the two blocks back to his old Barracuda. He’d had plans about fixing up the car in his old man’s garage, but now the wife’s car was in there. At Jim’s apartment in Kalamazoo, he had only on-street parking, b
ecause the lesbians upstairs had made a deal with the landlord to use the whole garage. By the end of this winter, if Jim didn’t do something, his rear body panels would be rusting through.

  When he thought all the gas was out of the can, he yanked out the plastic spout, and about a cup of fuel splashed down his right leg, all over his thigh and knee, colder than ice water. “Son of a bitch!” he yelled into the empty street. “Son of a bitch!” he repeated. A light came on in the second-floor window above a grocery with a Mexican sign. Jim briefly regretted shouting, but he figured the Mexican guy was in a warm bed and was going back to sleep, while Jim had to drive fifteen miles home. When he noticed a Virgin Mary in a bathtub in the tiny front yard of the store, he made the sign of the cross as an automatic gesture and then felt stupid and hoped nobody had seen. Maybe a guy up there in the apartment had insomnia and had finally gotten to sleep for the first time in a week. Or maybe Jim’s shouting had made their baby cry, so the guy’s wife had picked up the baby and was feeding it from a swelled-up breast. Anyhow, Jim told himself, he didn’t give a crap. As the heater kicked on, the inside of his car began to stink of gasoline, and he unrolled the window about four inches to cut the smell. He rolled the window back up when he started to freeze.

  Just before he turned onto the highway, a sign flashed, “$39.99 single,” advertising tiny cabins. If he’d had the money, he might have stopped. Nothing was waiting for him at home other than an unmade bed and a plant that had been there when he moved in. And the dykes upstairs who held hands whenever they headed out to the garage. They rode double on a Harley Sportster 1200, which meant Jim Lobretto couldn’t get a motorcycle so long as he lived there, because he couldn’t afford a decent one that big, and he definitely couldn’t afford a Harley. The women must have put their bed right up against the heating duct, because he sometimes heard them moaning. He got mad at them for intruding on him with their pleasure, but he always listened, and all those sounds made him worry that a man might never make a woman feel as good as another woman could. He’d never mentioned the lesbians to the guys at work, although they’d have enjoyed the hell out of the situation. He didn’t want them coming over trying to hear the sounds.