He closed his eyes and tried to think of something else. Of Carly. Or Cameron. Or Caroline. Yeah, Caroline. That was it. Oh Caroline. Oh God yes Caroline. Got to find her again. Hope she’ll let me again. Caroline. Try not to forget.
He shook his head when he thought about his father and the woman. Her dark skin and black hair and broad shoulders and wide hips but somehow fitting nicely alongside his father’s straight frame. And he had noticed his father’s movements, more careful and concentrated than before. Almost frail in the way he fought with the stubborn catfish fighting on the end of the line.
He took a drink and was glad that he wouldn’t be around for the fireworks this year and he hoped that it wouldn’t be anyone he had known. Sometimes he wondered if there would ever be a time when he wouldn’t think of such things. Or perhaps maybe he’d grow to be an old man and those things would be gone out of his head like an old phone number or grocery list. But he looked at the sky and he listened to the night and he seemed to know the answer.
24
HE WOKE SATURDAY MORNING TO THE CALLS OF BIRDS AND THE low chugging murmur of a fishing boat. The sun rising and a mist across the lake. He crawled out of the truck cab and walked to the water’s edge. Moved his head around in a stiff circle then stretched his arms wide and groaned. He could only think of coffee so he watched as a crane flew low across the water and then he headed for home.
When he pulled up to the house a man in a pair of slacks and a crisp blue shirt was standing in the driveway. He wore glasses and was balding in front and he had his hands on his hips as he looked at the broken windows.
Russell parked on the street and walked over to the man.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey there,” Russell said.
“Everything okay over here?”
“Everything’s all right. Just an accident.”
“Sounded like a few accidents.”
“I said everything is all right,” Russell said.
“You sure?” The man pulled at the end of his nose. He looked at the house again and then back at Russell. “You know I got kids over there,” he said. “You understand what I’m saying?”
“I speak English.”
“You know who did it?”
“What do you care?”
“I saw him. Saw the truck. Got the tag number.”
“I don’t need it.”
“We’ve been living here eight years without a peep. I don’t want nothing funny over here. It’s quiet around here.”
“And it’s gonna stay quiet,” Russell said.
The man shook his head some and then gave in. “Fine,” he said and he started across the driveway. Then he stopped at the edge of the yard and turned back to Russell. “I saw what happened. People don’t do stuff like that without a reason. That guy meant business. Next time I’ll be calling the cops.”
He walked to the minivan in his driveway. He climbed in and honked the horn and three boys and a woman came out of the house and joined him. The boys looked over at Russell as they skipped to the car but the woman never looked over, her eyes on her husband and then on her lap as she sat down in the passenger seat.
Russell went inside and cleaned up the broken glass and window frames and then he made a pot of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table. The phone rang and it was his father and he told him about the windows. Told him he’d be right out to get a tarp and a hammer and some nails and yeah it was them.
He drove out and his father had what he needed waiting on him, including a ten-foot ladder. They ate lunch and then they put it all in the back of the truck.
“Need some help?” Mitchell asked.
“I got it,” Russell said and he drove back to the house.
The ladder reached the top of the windows and Russell tacked the tarp at the top and bottom corners. It would be no use in calling on a Saturday about new windows and Monday before anyone could get there to replace them anyway and he hoped that the mosquitoes wouldn’t carry him away before then. He also knew that anyone could get in whenever they wanted and he figured he’d be sleeping in his truck out at the lake again. When he was done he went back inside and drank some water and then the phone rang again. Damn it, he said. He picked it up and said yeah I got it. They’re covered just fine. Yeah the ladder was tall enough.
They said goodbye and hung up and Russell went into the bathroom. He washed his hands and he looked closely at his beard. The gray strands here and there. As he was looking he heard a car door slam in front of his house and he tried to remember where he had set down the shotgun. He peeked out from around the corner of the bathroom and he could see out the diamond-shaped window of the front door. He walked across the living room and he seemed to recognize the vehicle from somewhere. A big black four-door thing. He opened the front door and there she stood at the foot of the steps.
“Hey,” Sarah said.
25
UP CLOSE HER HAIR HAD A REDDISH TINT STREAKING THROUGH the brown. She wore black slacks and short black boots. A white shirt with the top four buttons open and forming a V.
They sat down together on the steps and stared ahead at the house across the street. She took her feet out of her boots and sighed. She wore no socks and Russell looked at her feet. At the flaking red polish of her toenails. He then looked at her hands and her nails were smooth and something was written and smeared on the top of her left hand. She wore her wedding ring and a watch.
“You look the same,” he said.
She smiled a little. “Please.”
“You do.”
“Well,” she said. “You look like you could use a few good meals.”
“I’m gonna catch up. Don’t worry.”
She tilted her head as she studied his face. “I like your disguise,” she said.
He touched the whiskers on his chin. “It’s been getting mixed reviews. But I think it keeps me hidden pretty good.”
“I might have walked right by you.”
“I might have stopped you.”
She patted her hands together. Looked at her feet. Stepped back into her boots.
“You all right?” she asked.
He leaned back on his elbows. “Yeah. I’m fine.”
“I bet your daddy is happy.”
“He is.”
“I bet your momma is, too.”
“It would’ve been good for her to see me sitting here.”
“I bet she’s smiling wherever she is.”
“I’d hope.”
Sarah held her hands together between her knees, fingers intertwined. She rubbed her thumbs together. “So. What are you gonna do? Help out Mitchell?”
“Nah. Mitchell doesn’t really have anything he needs help with anymore. He sold about everything except this one little house that I guess he hung on to for no other reason than me.”
He got up from the steps and walked to the truck and took out his cigarettes. He lit one as he walked back to her and sat down. He offered her one and she hesitated. Smiled and said I don’t do that anymore. Then she said what the hell. For old times’ sake. And she took one and he lit it and they sat together smoking.
“Nice house you got down there,” he said. “Blue. Your idea, I’m guessing.”
“Ride through there in the daytime and you’ll see all those big houses are white. Couldn’t stand it.”
“Neighbors like it?”
“All but one old woman who walked over after we were about halfway done and said we didn’t know how to respect a house like that.”
“What’d you say?”
“Nothing. Can’t say nothing to people like that.”
“Chicken.”
“Not chicken. Mature.”
“Same thing.”
He flicked his cigarette into the bushes and he thought of the girl who had spray-painted stop signs and shotgunned beers and skinnydipped. He thought of her not telling the old woman what she wanted to tell her. Maybe her kids had been standing within earshot. Maybe her husband. Maybe i
t was simply who she had become.
“You still mad at me?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No.”
“You sure?”
“I told you then and I tell you now. Nothing to be mad about. Seems like you told me the same thing.”
When it started she had made the four-hour drive twice a month to sit and talk with him for half an hour. Driving alone into the middle of God knows where, across the flat Delta lands and toward a concrete palace where the offenders survived one another. Frisked by men with guns. Touched in places where it would have been impossible to conceal anything. He had been embarrassed when she saw the kind of people he was living with and the kind of people who came to visit them. She had forced herself into smiling and forced herself into talking of the world outside the walls though her strained expression did little to conceal what she truly felt.
“I don’t think I can come back, Russell,” she had said after two years of visits. Her voice wavering and her eyes glassy.
“I wouldn’t if I was you. No sense in it.” He had known it was coming and in some ways was relieved to hear it but he answered staring at the tabletop between them.
“What do you mean no sense?”
“No sense in it. You know what I mean.”
“You don’t have to put it that way,” she said.
“There’s no other way to put it.”
“I know.”
“Good. I know, too. Go and don’t come back.” He had practiced being harsh in the solace of his cell, talking to a cinder block as if it were the woman he loved. The woman he knew he had to persuade to get on with her life.
“I mean it,” he said. “Don’t come back.”
She looked around at the other people. Fought to keep from crying. Then he told her that there was nothing easy about it. It don’t matter if we do it now or tomorrow or a year from now. There won’t be anything easy about it ever and the only thing to do is just get up and go get in the car and go. Don’t even look at me.
So she did. She pulled a tissue from her purse and wiped her nose and eyes and didn’t look at him as she got up and didn’t look as she walked to the door and as she drove across the Delta she reached up and snapped off her rearview mirror and threw it out the window.
There had only been one more letter three years later which explained her new life. He had flushed the letter down the toilet but he kept the envelope it came in so that maybe one day he could go to the address on it and try to get her to look at him again. Like she was now.
“You want a beer?” he asked.
“I’m already smoking when I shouldn’t be.”
“Why shouldn’t you be?”
“Because, Russell.”
“So. You want one or not?”
“I want one. But I’m not drinking one. I gotta pick up the kids.”
“Kids. Plural.”
“Plural.”
“How many?”
“Twin boys and a girl.”
“How old?”
“The boys are four and the girl is about a year and a half.”
“And who is our hero?”
“Don’t say it like that.”
“I know. Sorry.”
“I thought you said you weren’t mad.”
“I’m not mad at you. But there’s a lot of shit I am mad at. Seems you’d understand that.”
She set her cigarette down on the step. “I can.”
“Seems of all the people I know you’d understand it.”
“I do. Jesus. The doors don’t close in my mind, either.”
He stood up from the steps and walked into the yard. Hands in his pockets. He faced her. Looked at the blue tarp. Looked at the old Ford.
“What happened to your windows?” she asked.
“Just replacing them. You know how windows get on older houses.”
He then wanted them to be quiet. No more words. All he wanted was to walk over and sit down next to her and hold her hand. He thought that if he could do that then there would be something to hope for. That he could think he was really home.
So he walked over and sat down next to her and he held her hand. And she let him for a long, silent moment that reached back into the years. But then she took her hand from his and rubbed her palm down his back and she stood up and took a piece of paper from her pants pocket. She handed it to him and he looked at it. The note that he had dropped in the mail slot of her front door.
“Russell,” she said. “You can’t do this anymore.”
He wadded the note and held it in the palm of his hand.
“Okay,” he said.
“I’m not kidding.”
“Okay.”
“There’s a lot between us now. A whole lot.”
“I know. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love you,” he said.
She folded her arms. Looked toward the sky. “That doesn’t mean I don’t love you, either,” she said. “Just means there’s nothing to do.”
“It means that and a helluva lot more.”
“It’s probably not even the same kind of love.”
“Maybe not for you.”
“I can’t come back over here. You gotta promise you won’t come around the house.”
“I promise.”
“You probably wouldn’t even like me anyhow the way I am now.”
“I could say the same thing. But I bet I would.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I bet I would, too.”
She then reached into her other pocket and she took out a ring. The ring he had given her. The ring she had said yes to. She placed it in the middle of her open hand and held her hand out to him.
He looked at it. “I don’t want that.”
She moved back to the steps and set it down beside him.
“I got to go,” she said.
“Sarah, take that back. It’s yours.”
“It was. Once upon a time.”
He nodded. And she nodded. And she stood there waiting for him to get up. Waiting for him to say something else. But he didn’t move and he didn’t speak. So she walked to her car and got in. She looked at him as she drove away but she didn’t wave. And neither did he.
26
SHE WASN’T TO THE END OF THE BLOCK BEFORE SHE WANTED IT back. God, she wanted it back. Couldn’t understand now why she had given it to him so forcibly. Without compassion. Couldn’t understand now why she had felt like she had to bring it with her at all. She stopped at the stop sign and looked over her shoulder. He was still sitting on the steps. Looking not at her but ahead. She realized now that it was much more than a ring. Much more than something she had kept buried in her underwear drawer for eleven years. Much more than something she had been careful to conceal when she moved in with a husband and careful to conceal when they moved from the smaller house to the larger house. More than white gold and a small diamond. She realized now as she sat at the stop sign and looked over her shoulder at him that the ring was much more. Something magical. Never too far away. That led through a doorway and to another life in another world with another man and as long as she had the ring there would be that possibility in her mind. That place to drift toward. Not a world that she could cross into and not a world she was certain she would cross into if given the choice but a world that was available to her to think about sometimes when she was alone.
And now she had taken that small and magical thing and delivered it to the man who was in the center of that other world and she knew that by leaving it with him this part of her life would disappear. She turned right and began to make her way toward her mother’s house. Stopping at the end of each street and telling herself to go back though she damn well knew that she couldn’t go back after she had only minutes ago declared to him that she couldn’t come back. Not even to ask him to give her back that precious thing.
She moved across town. Driving and thinking about how she felt as she saw the note lying on the floor yesterday morning. Near the front door in the same place that the mortgage and th
e electric bill and the Christmas cards and other evidence of their existence fell every day except Sunday. How she had known who it was from and what it said before she knelt and picked it up and how she had read it once, twice, five, eight times as she stood in the quiet of the house in the earliest light. How she had read it over and over and how she had looked out the wide, rectangular window in the front door and imagined what he looked like in the night as he walked up her sidewalk and up her front steps and across her porch and to the door and how she had imagined what he looked like as he walked away from her door and down her steps and across her sidewalk, disappearing in the dark as he walked down the street with his hands in his pockets. And how as she stood there imagining him delivering the note, how she squeezed it between her fingers as if trying to get it to give one last drop and then hearing the first small voice of the day calling Mommy and then the other small voices following behind the first. Mommy, Mommy. And how she had felt as she smoothed the wrinkled paper on her thigh and then pulled out the waist of her pajama bottoms and stuck the note into the front of her panties as she heard the small feet hit the floor, preparing to come look for her. Helping to wash faces and brush teeth and then pouring cereal for the boys and sitting with the girl and helping her learn with her spoon as she felt the note flat against her skin as if it were his own warm hand against her soft flesh reaching down and touching her in a place that he knew. And how she was relieved when the big steps came down the stairs and the big voice came into the kitchen, giving good mornings and kissing heads and already prepped for the day with the tie tied and the face shaved and the smell of a freshly cleaned man. Your turn, he said. I’ll finish them up. She headed upstairs and she took the note from her panties and read it again and then she folded it while she hurried to get it together. In and out of the shower and hair and makeup done quickly and dressed and shoes and then the note folded an extra time and put into her pants pocket just as he called out. They’re ready. I gotta run. And how she sat down on the edge of the bed and then it occurred to her to take the ring and keep it with her until she found the courage to go and see him and how she took it from the back of the drawer where it had sat all those years and where it had allowed her to go through that doorway and into that other world. And she thought now that if she went back and asked for it then maybe he could somehow understand all these things that she had felt.
Desperation Road Page 12
