West of Here

by Jonathan Evison

  And how sad had the birthday cake ceremony in the employee lounge been this afternoon, that grotesque cake glowing like something radioactive beneath the fluorescent lights. In cobalt blue frosting: happy birthday, boss! executed in a rather austere hand. And the card: no penguin in roller skates, no toad with a crown perched rakishly upon its head, not even a punch line, not even an exclamation point after Happy Birthday. Just Happy Birthday. There you have it. You were born on this day, and here you are thirty-two years later, still disappointing yourself, your wife, and the ghosts of your ancestors. And there it was, emblazoned with thirty signatures to which Jared could assign no faces, except for Dee Dee, who had warded off his only advance by wielding her pepper-mace key chain. Thank God they didn’t have HR around here, thank God Dee Dee was the forgiving sort.

  A few people took advantage of the work stoppage to smoke cigarettes out back. Krig was among them. The rest of them sang “Happy Birthday” with all the jauntiness of Gregorian monks. Nobody called for a speech. Jared cut the cake. People dispersed. And here he was three hours later in his office, the cake growing staler by the minute, the card propped open on his desk in some hopelessly lame stab at sentimentality. No plans. Big fucking success.

  Jared knew the battle was over the moment it occurred to him that afternoon in front of the urinal — as he struggled desperately to pee while beside him Krigstadt thoughtlessly fired a wide stream at the porcelain — that in a certain way he envied a guy like Krigstadt, whom he envisioned, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, to be a happy guy, a hearty, prole-spirited average Joe, who drank canned beer with his buddies and had a thick-carpeted basement and watched football and hockey and wore T-shirts with winning teams emblazoned on them so that he could associate with a winner, and that was enough, the mere association. It was that easy. Raiders 32, Eagles 7. You didn’t have to be the coach or the quarterback or the guy in the skybox — you just had to be the guy with the thick shaggy carpet and the Raiders shirt. No scrambling up any social ladder, no debilitating self-consciousness or acute status awareness, just a Raiders shirt that said to the world, “That’s fucking right. What are you gonna do about it?”

  Why tackle success when you could let the pros do it?

  Jared finally mustered the energy to leave his office without knowing where the evening would take him. He figured he’d probably stop by the grocery store and buy a six-pack of Alaskan Amber and maybe some Thai from the deli, go home, watch World News Tonight on TiVo, or maybe, if Janis still wasn’t home, The Wizard of Ass. Maybe he’d poke around online, look into that plat development deal Doug Westermeyer was talking about. Could be a good investment opportunity.

  He waved to the Mexican cleaning girl on his way out, Maria, Estella, whatever. She waved back, but she wasn’t smiling.

  The Goat was still in the far corner of the front parking lot, and Krig’s silhouette was visible in the driver’s seat. His subwoofer was thumping. Jared checked his watch. Seven thirty. Krigstadt had been off for an hour and a half. What the hell was he doing out there? Maybe he needed a jump.

  As Jared approached the Goat across the gravel lot, he saw the flash of an orange halo appear suddenly around Krig’s head. And as he drew closer, he observed Krig chicken-necking in time to Aerosmith’s “Dude Looks Like a Lady,” his hand at his mouth as though he were kissing a butterfly, and a thin joint pinched firmly between his fingers, its little end glowing orange, unfurling a slinky plume of smoke toward the windshield.

  Krig was apparently oblivious of Jared’s approach, and the tap on the window caught him totally by surprise, yet he was not startled. He stopped chicken-necking and turned down the stereo, but he didn’t hide the joint. He rolled down his window.

  “What’s up,” Krig said.

  Jared couldn’t resist leaning slightly into the smoky interior of the car. The smell of the weed struck a sentimental chord with him. It reminded him, like only smells can, of freshman year at the U, his dumpy room at Delta Sigma Phi, the endless supply of cheap beer, the wonderful thoughtless immediacy of life.

  “So what’s up?” said Krig, a hint of impatience in his voice.

  “You all right? I thought maybe your car wouldn’t start.”

  Krig gave the fuzzy dash a firm pat. “Not the Goat,” he said. “The Goat leaves no man high and dry.”

  Jared snuck a glance at the joint between Krig’s fingers. The glance did not escape Krig’s notice. “Get in,” he said.

  Krig was quick to forgive Thornburgh for being an ass-munch and was more than happy to extend the olive branch, but it was Jared who forged ahead once Krig announced that “the doobage was toast.”

  “You wanna grab a beer?” Jared said.

  “Does the pope shit in the woods?” said Krig, who fished his Altoids out of the glove box and popped one in his mouth. He replaced the mints without offering one to Jared, checked his eyes in the rearview mirror, threw the Goat in reverse, and rained a rooster tail of gravel on the sidewalk as he tore onto Marine.

  Krig slowed to a crawl once they hit Front. He settled low in the driver’s seat resisting the urge to say every single thing that came to his mind, fighting off the instinct to engender familiarity too quickly. Boundaries. He had to remember.

  If Krig was trying to erect boundaries, Jared was trying to tear them down. Why not? What was he protecting? What threat could the shag-carpeted domain of Krig’s world possibly pose? Jared noticed Krig’s ring as Krig gripped the wheel: a chunky gold band with a blue and gold pendant inlay — P.B. ’84, it said. “I used to watch that varsity team,” Jared offered. “The one with you and Lauridson and Richards. The Bucket Brigade.”

  They missed the light at Lincoln. Krig gazed out the side window across the Red Lion parking lot toward the strait. He couldn’t remember what was there before that, but it was something else. The restaurant was called something else, too. And before that, it was just Hollywood Beach.

  “Bucket Brigade, my ass. We blew it,” said Krig. “We sure as heck didn’t put out the fire against Aberdeen.”

  “That was just one game,” Jared said. “You guys were unstoppable.”

  “Yeah, for three quarters. We folded, bro. I folded.”

  “You were a machine. Besides, Aberdeen had that Glovick kid.”

  “I was one for nine from the field in that semi game. I missed a free throw that could have put us up with a minute thirty-nine to go.”

  “Lot of time,” observed Jared.

  The light changed. The Goat crawled into the intersection. “We’re talking about the lead though, bro. The lead. I was an eighty-eight percent free-throw shooter. They only had one time-out left. No way I miss that shot.”

  “I don’t know, Krig. I don’t remember any of that. I was in junior high. I just remember it was the best team we ever had.”

  Suddenly, no fewer than three fire trucks and a chorus of wailing sirens rounded the corner on Lambert headed in the direction of Wal-Mart. Krig promptly pulled to the shoulder and let them scream past.

  “Wonder what that’s all about?”

  “Probably a fender bender,” said Jared.

  “Yeah, probably. So, you goin’ to Dam Days this year?” Krig asked.

  “Hell no.”

  “Why not?”

  Jared waved it off. “What a bunch of self-aggrandizing bullshit.”

  Krig didn’t know what to make of the statement. So he didn’t say anything. What was wrong with Dam Days? Sure, the bands usually sucked, and the smoked salmon was overpriced, and the crowds were kind of a pain in the ass, but it was Dam Days, it was a tradition, one of the last decent things left in P.B.

  “They want me to write some speech,” Jared volunteered as they crested Hogback.

  “About what?”

  “About my stupid family and a bunch of ancient history I don’t give two shits about. Screw that bullshit.”

  They drove in silence, past Payday Loans and the Wharf Side, past KFC and Taco Bell. They missed the lig
ht again at South Golf Course. Jared looked out his window across the deserted Rite Aid parking lot. The streetlights burned expectantly an hour before dusk. At night, this stretch of Route 101 glowed like the aisle of a convenience store. A guy could procure anything from 30-weight oil to Chicken McNug-gets along this stretch 24/7/365, a guy could Shop Rite, could Save On, a guy could even Think outside the bun if he were so inclined. A guy could do virtually anything in Port Bonita he could do in New York, Philadelphia, or Chicago. But somehow it was all pretty sad.

  “You know,” said Jared, looking out across the expanse of empty parking lot. “It’s funny how something can keep getting bigger even after it’s dead.”

  Happy hour was over by the time Krig and Jared arrived at the Bushwhacker. Jerry Rhinehalter from Murray Motors was still at the bar, along with a couple of guys Krig didn’t recognize. In the corner, a little black dude was having drinks with a familiar husky woman in heels. Was that Hillary Burch from high school — the one who almost bit Tobin’s dick off? It was Hillary Burch. The little black dude she was with had a milk mustache. This town was getting weirder by the day.

  Molly worked the bar solo. She was doing something new with her makeup, and her hair was pinned up over her ears. She looked like a mud shark in blue eye shadow and hairpins. One of her tits was hanging lower. But she made it work. Krig felt his heat rising when Molly came for their orders. Krig introduced his friend as “Jared Thornburgh,” and though the name apparently didn’t ring any bells for Molly, at least she saw that Krig wasn’t drinking alone, at least the guy he was drinking with didn’t smell like fish, at least the guy was wearing a dress shirt, a fact that might (Krig hoped) allude to his own upward mobility. And unless it was Krig’s imagination, Molly was a little more attentive than usual that evening, a little quicker on the refills, now and again flashing a little shark smile when she came for their empties. To top it off, she actually made a stab at small talk, something she’d never done before.

  “Hear all those sirens earlier? Crazy.”

  “Yeah,” Krig said.

  “Dumpster fire at Wal-Mart,” she said, brushing some stray hair out of her eyes. “You guys ready for another round?”

  Krig and Jared sat at the bar for two and a half hours, Kilt Lifter after Kilt Lifter, forging separate roads toward a collective past, summoning such points of reference as the Laurel Street stairs, the Lighthouse, and Swain’s General Store, enlisting such local benchmarks as the crab festival, lavender days, and the Clallam County Fair. Gradually, their experiential roads began to merge, finally converging in 1986 at the grand opening of the Port Bonita Fine Arts Center, where Jared’s dad delivered the keynote speech during the banquet. Krig worked as a busboy. The rest was history.

  They ordered some hot artichoke dip. Jared caught Molly eyeing his wedding band as she delivered the dip but didn’t say anything to Krig. In what proved to be the crowning moment of their burgeoning familiarity, Jared got Krig to admit that 1:39 was a lot of time, even with only one time-out left.

  “The game doesn’t end at one thirty-nine, Krig! A helluva lot can happen in one thirty-nine. Now, if you’d missed, say, six from the stripe, that’s one thing, but one measly free throw with a minute thirty-nine left? C’mon, Krig. That’s not a game breaker. Give yourself a break.” Jared drained his Kilt Lifter. “And besides, nobody remembers the details.”

  If Jared was kind in his appraisal of Krig, he was merciless in his appraisal of himself. By his fourth Kilt Lifter, Jared could barely contain his self-contempt.

  “But I am an ass-munch! You were right in the first place. I’m a class A prick. I fucking hate myself. My life is a fucking act, Krig. I’ve co-opted every bit of potential I may have ever had, and for what?”

  After five Kilt Lifters, it was all over. Jared told Krig about the stapler. “I’m the biggest pussy you’ll ever meet, Krig. You don’t even know what a — hic — pussy I am.” Jared pounded the bar with a fist, rattling the artichoke dip.

  The little black dude shot them a look from across the room. Hillary Burch was fiddling with her blouse.

  “C’mon,” said Krig. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Jared reached for his wallet.

  “I got it,” said Krig. Figuring the tab to be around forty, Krig dropped three twenties on the bar, but Molly didn’t notice. He rearranged the bills and fidgeted with his wallet a little, and was slow pushing his stool in, but Molly still didn’t notice. She was busy with Hillary Burch and the little black dude. But as Krig and Jared were on their way out the door, Molly called after them. “Nice meeting you, Jared.”

  Krig laid rubber pulling out of the Bushwhacker lot. Though he was smarting a little over the thing with Molly, he was determined not to blame Thornburgh. Thornburgh was okay. He liked Thornburgh. The guy needed Krig. The poor sonofabitch had damned near stapled himself. And on his birthday, no less. Look at him there slumping in the passenger seat. This guy needed to look his demons right in the eye or at least get so plastered that he didn’t give a fuck. Krig swung into the Circle K parking lot and left the Goat idling.

  “Back in a sec,” he said.

  Jared watched Krig lumber toward the front entrance. He could hear the muffled doon-doon of the bell as he entered the store. He fished his clamshell phone out of his pocket and snapped it open. No missed calls. Janis still hadn’t remembered. He snapped the phone shut. Well, at least there was Krig. Jared was ready to submit his will to Krig altogether, go wherever Krig took him. Why not? Clearly, Krig knew something about having a good time. Tooling around drunk in the Goat was a lot better than playing golf with Don Buford. He snapped his phone open again and checked the time. Ten forty. Let Janis worry. Let her figure out that she’d missed his birthday and feel terrible. He turned the phone off, snapped it shut, and replaced it in his pocket.

  Jared could see Krig in the back of the store at the glass cooler, contemplating his beer choices. Why couldn’t he be Krig? Why couldn’t he be satisfied with Krigness? Who knows if the guy actually saw Big-foot? Did it really matter? The guy believed. Or he wanted to believe. That’s what mattered. And what was the deal with that waitress? Why did she have to do Krig like that? It was obvious the guy had a thing for her. He wished he could get Krig laid.

  After considerable deliberation, Krig grabbed a twelve-pack of IPA and was on his way to the register when the thought of a Butterfinger stopped him in his tracks. He backed down toward the candy, where he found an Indian kid standing perfectly still in the middle of the aisle, clutching a bag of peanut M&Ms and a dead fish — was that a fucking shark? When it became apparent that the kid wasn’t going to move, Krig leaned over in front of him and grabbed two Butter-fingers. It was then he recognized his job shadow, Rita’s kid, Curtis.

  “What up?” said Krig.

  The kid said nothing. He was baked out of his gourd. It was like he was frozen there in suspended animation, except for his lips, which were silently at work.

  “Dude, what’s with the fish?”

  The kid wouldn’t answer. Bending closer to get a look at the fish, Krig saw the burns running up the kid’s arms.

  “You okay?” Krig looked down the aisle to the guy behind the counter. “Is he okay?” The guy at the counter shrugged. Shrugging back, Krig strode down the aisle to the register and set his beer on the counter.

  “’Bout to kick his ass out of here in a minute, if he don’t buy some-thin’,” said the counter guy. “This town’s gettin’ weirder by the day.”

  Upon his return to the Goat, Krig lobbed a Butterfinger to Jared, which careened off Jared’s wrist and landed on the floor.

  “Butterfingers,” said Krig.

  They crawled straight through town on Front and picked up Route 101 at Lincoln.

  “Where are we — hic — going?” Jared wanted to know as they passed Gertie’s.

  “You’ll see. Better eat that Butterfinger.”

  As soon as Krig took the sharp left onto Elwha River Road, Jared knew they were
headed for the dam. He wrestled an IPA out of the paper bag between his feet and tried to twist off the cap. Krig produced a church key from the glove box and flipped it to Jared. “Pop me one, too,” said Krig.

  Jared cracked the beers and looked out the window at the blackness. Now and again he caught a silvery flash of moonlight on the river. Both men lowered their beers as they passed a ranger at the Altair entrance, where, through the alders, Jared glimpsed the glow of a lone campfire along the bank.

  “Park rangers can’t do shit,” Krig observed, swilling his IPA.

  He killed his headlights as they pulled into the parking slab. He fished his headlamp out of the glove box. Jared grabbed the rest of the beers, and they walked down the gravel path to the viewing area. The dam was bathed in moonlight. The roar of the spillway, the low, bone-rattling hum of the turbines, the vertiginous dropoff from the lip of the gorge — all of it was dreadful and thrilling to Jared as he gripped the chain-link fence.

  “Damn,” he said, draining his beer. “Loud as ever.” Backpedaling a few steps, he hurled the empty bottle over the fence into the abyss, waiting for a distant shatter of glass, which never came. He grabbed a fresh beer from the box and opened it.

  If the dam was a source of dread to Jared, to Krig, the thought of leaving it was dreadful; the thought of walking down the road alone toward the very trailhead where he’d had his recent encounter was nothing less than terrifying. And yet, he was compelled to do so, for his own sake, and for Jared’s. Give the guy a few minutes to himself. Let him put things in perspective.

  “I’m gonna walk up the road a bit,” he said, snapping on his head-lamp.

  Looking back after a hundred or so steps, Krig could no longer discern Jared’s figure in the moonlight. The closer he drew to the trailhead, the darker the night seemed to get. He sat on a big cement block half covered with moss and stared at the dark hulking form of the mountains beyond the clearing, frisking the night with the beam of his headlamp. What was he afraid of out there?