American Boy

by Larry Watson

  Sure that I would soon see the pursuing headlights of the doctor’s Chrysler in the rearview mirror, or even the flashing red lights of a county sheriff or highway patrolman, I drove as fast as I dared. Curves came up before I could slow for them, and I often veered over into the oncoming lane. I hit icy stretches of road before I could prepare for them. But as long as the highway behind me was dark, I was free, and my speed only made that state more exhilarating, though that state had to be temporary. In addition to any other offenses, I was now a car thief.

  Obviously, I no longer had any hope of a life with Louisa Lindahl. But even as I admitted that to myself, I had to smile at the thought. As if I’d ever had a chance! I never would come closer to Louisa Lindahl than I had when she’d lain anesthetized on the doctor’s table. The other occasions of contact had been stolen, forced, or inconsequential. The kiss had been nothing but mockery. I’d believed that I could compete with a grown man, and a man of power and stature at that, a man of intelligence and charm and good looks. I wasn’t going to Denver with or without Louisa. I was heading back to my hometown, and once there, I’d park the Valiant right where it belonged—in the Dunbars’ driveway. Then I’d walk home in the cold once again, and climb into my own bed and wait for the punishment that was sure to come my way. The best I could wish for was that I’d fall asleep quickly, so I wouldn’t have to lie awake and think about what a self-deluding fool I’d been.

  Fast in the track of these realizations came a strange sensation. A calm suffused me, and it was composed of equal parts resignation and hope. As I covered the lonely miles, hunched over the steering wheel, the feeling that came over me was similar to what I’d felt driving in the other direction, when the wind subsided and the snow faded—maybe I’ll make it.

  The car’s heater provided enough warmth to stop the rattling from the chills I’d had since being stomped into the snow. I leaned back and eased up on the gas.

  That was when it happened.

  The sudden deceleration might have caused the tires to lose their bite. Maybe I touched the brakes. Perhaps I hit a patch of black ice. Whatever the cause, the Valiant suddenly went out of control, revolving furiously down the highway. If another car had been coming, I’d have been helpless to prevent a collision.

  Eventually the car stopped spinning, only to slide backward into a snow-filled ditch. For a moment I sat there, unable to believe my luck, and paralyzed by thoughts that canceled each other out. You could have been killed. Now you’ll never get away.

  I knew what I’d find when I climbed out of the car. A few trees stood near the road, and their remnant bur oak leaves chattered in the wind. A coil of snow tumbled across the highway. Overhead a near-full moon glowed with a pale, cold light. The stars glittered like chips of mica in a black road. Somewhere, at a distance beyond sight, a wood fire kept someone warm, and that aroma found its way to me. Exactly as I’d feared, the car was sunk in snow up to its doors. In the trunk was the shovel I’d made Johnny pack, but I had no idea where to begin, or whether it would do any good.

  I gave up. Either the doctor would come along or I’d freeze, and I was so cold and tired that the first option didn’t seem so awful.

  At just that moment, a car approached. I had an impulse to leap into the ditch, high-step through the snow, and hide among the trees. But I stood my ground, and the car’s headlights cast my shadow back toward Bellamy. It was an old Hudson, with piles of snow clinging improbably to its sloping lines. It stopped next to me and the Valiant, though the driver made no attempt to pull over to the side of the road. The passenger’s frost-covered window rolled down, but it was the driver who shouted out to me.

  “You got trouble, ain’t you?”

  “I sure do.”

  “You ain’t hurt?”

  “No.”

  “Where you going?”

  “Willow Falls.

  “You’re pointed the wrong way.”

  The man in the passenger seat removed his hat, as if its brim might be blocking the conversation.

  “I know,” I said.

  “How long you been stuck?”

  “Just a few minutes.”

  “So you ain’t froze.”

  “Not yet.”

  The Hudson’s engine misfired, coughed, and threatened to die, but the driver gunned it and kept it running.

  “You got money?” he asked. “We could get you out of that ditch for the right price.”

  “Only a couple bucks.”

  He laughed. “Then I guess that’s the right price!” The Hudson’s gears clashed, and he eased the car onto the shoulder.

  In spite of the cold, the two men who climbed out of the car were in shirtsleeves. In the moonlight I could see that the passenger, a slender, stooped man, was walking slowly and grimacing as if he were in pain. But the driver was big and robust enough for both of them. He looked like a grizzly bear shaved and made to wear a T-shirt. Both men were Indians.

  Like almost everyone who grew up in our corner of Minnesota in that day and age, I had been exposed to plenty of anti-Indian bigotry during my formative years. As part of this instruction in racism, we were taught to be wary and perhaps even fearful in our dealings with Indians. But even if I had taken those lessons to heart—and I hadn’t—I wouldn’t have cared that night. What could they do—rob me of the few dollars I was going to give them anyway? Steal the car that wasn’t mine? Beat me up? The side of my face was swollen from the doctor’s fist, and the small of my back ached from the pressure of his foot. I had nothing to fear from these two.

  Together we walked back to inspect the Valiant. The Indians smelled of wood smoke, whiskey, and cigarettes.

  “Yep,” said the bear-man. “High-centered. You’re in there good.” But this was not the expression of hopelessness it might have seemed. “You and me’ll push,” he said, “and Barney’ll drive. He’s sick, so he’s got to take it easy.”

  Barney was bending over even farther.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Bellyache. He’ll be off his feed for a couple days and then he’ll be fine.”

  Barney obviously objected to having his condition minimized in this way. “Bellyache!” he growled. “Feels like I been gut shot!”

  “You ever been?” Barney’s friend asked.

  Barney said nothing.

  “Then I guess you can’t say, can you?”

  Then we stopped and listened. A car was approaching, the whine of its engine sounding at first like a taut wire vibrating in the wind. When I realized it was coming from Willow Falls and not Bellamy, I relaxed. Headlights swept around the curve of the highway ahead of the car, and then it appeared. The driver saw us and slowed. And then something—the depth to which the Valiant was sunk, the presence of two Indians along the road, the lateness of the hour, the quickening cold—changed the driver’s mind, and he sped up again.

  Barney grunted and crossed his arms over his abdomen.

  The big Indian asked me, “Got a flashlight?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know!” He found my answer hilarious, and his laugh boomed out across the dark snowy plains.

  “It’s ... my mother’s car.”

  That was even funnier to him. “Barney, look in his mother’s glove box and see if his mother’s got a flashlight like a mother’s supposed to have.”

  By this time Barney had folded himself into the car. “Nope,” he called out. “No flashlight.”

  The big Indian stepped into the ditch behind the car, and I followed. My shoes and socks were already soaked. “What the hell,” he said. “It don’t much matter. If we gotta push, we gotta push.”

  “There’s a shovel in the trunk.”

  “Yeah? We’ll try muscle power first.”

  The snow was not as deep behind the car as it was in front. We positioned ourselves at each side of the back bumper, ready to push once Barney started the engine and put the car in gear.

  “Okay,” the big Indian said to me, �
�get ready to step back. Barney’s going to rock it—drive, reverse, drive, reverse. Kind of like dancing.”

  Barney couldn’t have heard this and no signal passed between the men, but right at that moment, as if on cue, the Valiant stuttered once, then roared to life. I was standing over the exhaust pipe, and fumes rose to my face. I placed my hands on the car’s trunk and felt its cold metal right through my gloves. I was ready to put my back into it—a chance for physical release after the frustration and humiliation of the beating at the hands of Dr. Dunbar and his son.

  We pushed and pushed, but the Valiant didn’t move more than an inch or two forward. Then backward, when Barney shifted into reverse to try to find a spot where there might be a little traction. The rear wheels whined and spun in place, spitting snow up into our faces. The smell of burning rubber and automobile exhaust overpowered the odor of the big Indian’s whiskey breath.

  Two more cars passed while we were heaving and straining against the Valiant’s trunk, but neither stopped. The second car slowed, and I eased up in my grunting effort to glance in its direction. A boy looked out at us from the backseat, his face as pale as moonlit snow. I thought I saw his lips move, and I imagined him telling the driver they should stop. But the car sped by, and my glimpse of him lasted no longer than my glimpse of Louisa Lindahl’s bare breasts.

  As if that passing car told him once and for all that the car would never leave the ditch with the help of any hands except those that were already on it, the big Indian said, “The hell with it. Let’s get this fucker out of here.”

  Barney punched the transmission into gear once again, and his big friend heaved hard, releasing a sound that was equal parts grunt, roar, and scream. “Heerr-ahh!” And before its echo died away, he damn near lifted the Valiant out of its ruts. Instead of helping push the car free, I was soon being pulled along behind it. The wheels spun and whined and churned up more snow, but Barney managed to drive the car out of the ditch.

  And he kept on going, cruising down the highway for a good fifty yards or so before the brake lights blinked on and the car glided to a stop at the side of the road.

  My momentum was already carrying me that way, so I ran after the car while the man who had been strong enough to heave the car clear stood in the snow and gasped for air.

  When I caught up to the Valiant, Barney’s head was thrown back and his hat had fallen into the backseat. His eyes were closed, and he was trying to bring his knees up toward his chest.

  I opened the car door and the dome light came on. Barney didn’t even glance at me. He was too busy biting back his pain and shaking with chills.

  Instinctively, I put my hand to his forehead. “Damn—you’re burning up!”

  Barney smiled through his pain. “And he says it’s just a bellyache.”

  “A fever means infection.... Where did you say the pain was?”

  “Down here,” he said, indicating the position of his hands on his abdomen.

  “Lower right quadrant.... Have you been vomiting?”

  “I puked a couple hours ago. But I haven’t ate much, so there ain’t much to bring up.”

  “Diarrhea?”

  Barney closed his eyes again and shook his head. “Huh-uh.”

  The big Indian caught up to us, and he stood behind me, looking over my shoulder at his ailing friend. “Gettin’ worse, Barney?”

  Barney nodded and slid lower in his seat.

  “You could have appendicitis,” I suggested.

  “Nah,” Barney said. “The army already took my appendix out. For free.”

  “Okay, okay. Let me think. Pain in the lower right abdomen. Guarding. Fever. Chills.”

  “Fuckin-A he’s got chills,” the big Indian said. “What’s the goddamn temperature? Ten?” He stamped up and down and flapped his arms. “I got chills. Hell, we all got chills.”

  “This is different,” I said. “Barney, will you do something ? Will you lie down across the front seat?”

  “He lays down,” the other man said, “he ain’t going to want to get up.”

  But Barney complied. He stretched out across the seat, a shudder coursing through him as if he’d just tossed back a shot of whiskey.

  “Okay, Barney—” When Dr. Dunbar treated a patient gripped hard by illness or injury, he made a point of saying the patient’s name as often as possible. It was a way, the doctor used to say, “of keeping the patient in the world.”

  “Here’s what I want you to do,” I said to Barney. “I know your stomach hurts, but I want you to put your hand, okay, both your hands, right over the spot that hurts the worst.”

  Barney did as I asked.

  “All right, Barney. Now press down right there. Right on the spot. Okay, good. Keep pressing. A little harder. Now, when I tell you, take your hands away. Fast. Okay—now!”

  Barney was an obedient patient, even when everything I asked him to do caused him pain. And the last step was agonizing.

  He jerked his hands away on command and instantly cried out. “Oooh! Goddamn!”

  His knees jerked upward and he twisted so hard to the side he almost toppled off the car seat.

  Just as I’d expected. Blumberg’s sign. Dr. Dunbar had told us about it as a test for peritonitis when a perforated bowel almost killed Harley Platt, the owner of a butcher shop in Willow Falls. Then Dr. Dunbar made Johnny and me lie down, each in turn, while he pressed on our abdomens and showed us how to check for rebound tenderness.

  I reached into the car and grabbed Barney’s ankle, bare above his oxford, its cracked worn leather his only protection against snow and cold. I wasn’t trying to control him; I was trying to comfort him, though I had no idea whether I had that power.

  In a voice as gentle as I owned, I said, “How are you doing, Barney? Okay?”

  Through his pain, Barney managed a smile. He was too polite to say anything about the stupidity of my question. “Okay,” he said, and struggled to sit up again.

  I motioned for Barney’s friend to join me behind the car. There, both of us eerily illuminated by the car’s taillights, I said, “Your friend’s in bad shape. He’s got an infection that’s making him really sick. He has to go to a hospital.”

  He nodded, his smile dimming for the first time. “I’ll see how he’s doing tomorrow. If he ain’t better I’ll take him to the VA hospital.”

  “No,” I said firmly. “Tomorrow’s no good. It will be too late. Your friend’s got peritonitis. He’s only going to get worse. This is an emergency. You have to go to the hospital in Bellamy. And you have to drive like hell to get there.”

  Barney was out of the car now and limping toward us. I don’t know if he’d heard the word “peritonitis,” but he knew we were talking about his condition.

  “Hey,” Barney said, “are you a doctor or something?”

  The wind seemed to die as the snowy plains around us waited for my answer.

  “No,” I said. “But my father was.”

  20.

  I DIDN’T RUSH BACK TO WILLOW FALLS, and not just because I was shaken after spinning out and sliding off the road. I couldn’t handle any more suspense. If Dr. Dunbar was speeding after me and his wife’s car, I was ready to be overtaken. If law enforcement was on my trail, I was ready to be caught.

  But I saw just two other cars on the drive back to Willow Falls, and neither driver displayed any interest in me. The streets of my hometown were snow packed and drifted over, but completely quiet, and I drove the Valiant back to where it belonged.

  Lights burned in a few windows of the Dunbar home. Was Mrs. Dunbar waiting up? Didn’t she know that neither her husband, nor her son, nor Louisa Lindahl was likely to return to their own bed that night? Didn’t she realize that when they did return none would be the person who left? And for that matter, did she have any sense that though she was comfortable and warm in a place with light and heat, her house had been blown apart as surely as if the afternoon’s winds had flattened every wall that sheltered her?

  The drivewa
y was partially cleared—perhaps the result of the twins’ enthusiastic but inefficient shoveling—but I managed to park the Valiant in its usual spot in the garage. When Johnny and I left the house that afternoon, the wind had stacked snow on the porch so high we practically had to climb over a drift to leave. But during our absence the wind had shifted and now the path in and out of the back door was as clear as July. I entered quietly and paused in the kitchen to announce my presence. “Hello,” I said. “It’s Matt. Anyone up?”

  No one answered. I slipped off my shoes and padded into the house’s quiet, warm interior. In each room I called out softly, but there was no response.

  I found Mrs. Dunbar in the living room, asleep on the couch. On the table next to her was an ashtray brimming with lipstick-stained cigarette butts smoked right down to the filter, and the cup she had been drinking coffee from didn’t have a saucer.

  I probably could have crept through the house and completed my mission without waking Mrs. Dunbar or her daughters, but I didn’t want to take a chance. For a moment I stared at her. Her hair was mussed, her mouth was open, and her skirt had ridden up above her knees. What won’t you do that Louisa will?

  “Mrs. Dunbar,” I whispered.

  She was stretched out on the couch and didn’t stir. She was wearing the clothes she had worn that morning to church, and her pearl necklace—those omnipresent pearls—were twisted and tugged tight to her throat.

  I crouched down beside her, close enough to hear her breathing. “Mrs. Dunbar?” I said, louder this time.

  She came awake suddenly, but without a physical start, as if her body lagged well behind her mind. Her eyes blinked open, and she recognized me. “Matt?” she said, but she was already looking past me.

  “I came alone,” I said. “I was afraid my mom would be worried, so I drove back in your car. The others will come later tonight or tomorrow morning.”