Jerkwater

by Jamie Zerndt

  All the screwdrivers they had were too big, so Kay dug through Norm’s top dresser drawer where he kept all his knick-knacks. She knew he had a Gerber somewhere that might work, but while looking for it she came across an old blue bag with a yellow drawstring. Seagram’s Crown Royal. At one time, she knew he’d kept his poker chips in it, but opening it now she found a few old matchbooks and a silver key. Kay put the key in her coat pocket and dug out one of the matchbooks. Les Deux Magots, 6 Place Saint-Germain-des-Prés, 75006 Paris, France. There was a picture on the front of a woman sitting outside a café drinking coffee. She wore a yellow dress with a matching yellow bonnet, the kind with a veil that used to be popular in France back in the forties. She knew Norm had once been on leave in France, had spent time in Paris, but he’d never spoken about it much. And, as far as she knew, had nothing but contempt for the French. Or “frogs” as he always called them.

  She found the Gerber behind an old pack of playing cards and turned it over in her hand, feeling the heft of it. She’d seen Norm open the thing countless times but had never paid all that much attention. Didn’t he squeeze it? Yes, he squeezed it and it popped open. She tried this, but nothing happened. Her hands were shaking now. She wasn’t okay. This wasn’t okay. Why couldn’t he be there to help her? She squeezed again to the point where she was afraid she’d break the dumb thing. Her hands wouldn’t stop trembling. There was a hotness behind her eyes, too, an anger mixing with the tears that were now starting to fall. She was afraid she wouldn’t be able to stop if she gave into it. She went back into the living room and sat on the couch and squeezed harder and harder, putting all the hotness into her hand, but the tears kept dropping one by one, and suddenly it was all too much, the Gerber, the slow vanishing that would soon consume her, the afternoon and the light it was holding outside the window, and she threw the remote across the room, threw it as hard as she could without looking where she was throwing it because the world was blurry now, and she heard it crash against the wall, or maybe the TV, she didn’t care which, and when she looked up and wiped her face with her sleeve she realized it wasn’t the TV, or the wall, but the urn on top of the TV that the remote had hit. At first, she was worried that the ashes might have spilled out, but they hadn’t. Only the top had come off, the bag lying there intact on the carpet and through the tears she started to laugh, a heaving sob of a laugh that erupted in big chunks she couldn’t control. Pike shit. She had thought about dumping the ashes in the lake once, the way other people do in the ocean or off a mountain top, but somehow that didn’t seem right either since Norm always said the lake was mostly full of seaweed and pike shit. She eased herself off the couch and crawled on her hands and knees over to the urn and carefully placed the ashes back where they belonged. She wasn’t laughing now. Or crying.

  She felt rested.

  Like she’d just woken from a long nap.

  Chapter Six:

  Douglas

  The sun was setting behind the Wampum Shop as Douglas went about picking up the oil rags Marty had once again left scattered just about everywhere. Marty was busy at the computer, busy pretending he wasn’t looking at fish porn.

  “You almost done over there?”

  “Huh? Oh, yeah, I finished like ten minutes ago.”

  Douglas shook his head, tossed the handful of dirty rags into the bin by the back door. It had been busier than usual that day for some reason, people coming in for oil changes and alignments one after the other. Marty actually had to earn his pay that day, which meant cutting down on the socializing. And even though Marty’s talent for small talk usually annoyed Douglas no end, he also knew that it kept him in business, that it provided his customers with something he himself wasn’t very good at.

  “You wanna grab a beer?” Douglas asked once they’d gotten the shop all squared away. “My treat.”

  “Naw,” Marty said. “I better head home.”

  “Since when do you pass up free beer? Scratch that. Since when do you pass up free anything?”

  Marty shrugged but didn’t say anything. There was no comeback, no return insult, which worried Douglas a little. He’d been acting strange lately, and, for a while, Douglas attributed this to Norm’s death. But now he wasn’t so sure. “So I’m the one who did it. Well, Shawna and I did.”

  “Did what?”

  “Burnt down the loon.”

  “Fuck off you did.”

  Douglas smiled to himself but didn’t say anything more.

  “I’m shocked. What did that bird ever do to you?”

  “Shawna needed to let off some steam, and I guess I thought the loon seemed like a safe option.”

  Marty shook his head. “So much for liberal guilt.”

  “I thought you’d be proud of me.”

  “For what? Turning pyro?”

  “I don’t know. Just don’t go telling anyone, okay?”

  “Yeah, we’ll see.”

  “Marty...”

  “Okay, fine. I won’t tell anyone.”

  “Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you something. Shawna seems to think you were at one of those fishing rights protests. Is that true?”

  Marty seemed caught off guard by the question, fumbling with his keys before finally answering. “I only went once. It was stupid. I left when people started throwing shit.”

  “So you weren’t yelling things at people?”

  Marty shook his head. “I might be an asshole, but I’m not that breed of asshole.”

  When Marty got in his truck, Douglas walked over, said, “So are you doing okay? You seem a little off. Well, more off than usual.”

  Marty stuck the keys in the ignition. “It’s nothing for you to worry your pretty little head about.” For a few seconds, Marty played with the keys dangling in the ignition like maybe he was going to say something more but, instead, just smiled weakly and started the engine. Douglas kept quiet, waved once he drove off. He knew from experience Marty wasn’t about to tell him about anything until he was good and ready.

  Douglas was debating whether to go solo to the tavern or go home and check in on his mom when he noticed someone walking towards the shop. The figure was silhouetted against the backdrop of the road and the setting sun, afire with pinks and purples.

  “My knight in shining armor,” the figure said.

  The halo of fire, Douglas soon realized, was due more to the redness of the person’s hair than the departing sun. “Jenna?” he said quietly, a hand shielding his eyes as if he’d blind himself should he look at her directly.

  “The one and lonely.”

  Douglas had a hard time imagining somebody like Jenna being lonely, but he nodded anyway. “Headed home?”

  “I was,” she said, coming to a stop. There was a slight chill to the air now, and her breath came out in white puffs. “But my car decided it was going on strike. No advance warning or anything. Can you believe that?”

  “The nerve,” Douglas said, seeing where this was going. “You want me to take a look?”

  “Looks like you were just leaving for the day, weren’t you? I’m really sorry. I wouldn’t ask, but it’s not like I can call a taxi out here, can I?”

  “You could, but it would take Morris about an hour to get here. And there’s no guarantee he’d show up sober.”

  “I’ll make you the best cup of coffee you’ve ever tasted...”

  “That wouldn’t be too hard to do,” Douglas said, putting his car keys back in his pocket. “Dad always kept Maxwell House at the shop if that tells you anything.”

  Douglas walked with her, his tool bag slung over his shoulder, and during the short walk they talked about her painting, how running the shop was taking up more of her time than she had expected. “But I guess I don’t have to tell you about that, do I?”

  Douglas wanted to tell her how running the shop was fairly new to him, but he knew that doing so wo
uld open up a whole different conversation he wasn’t, for once, quite in the mood for. At least not with her. Not yet. “Have you thought about painting at the shop? I mean, behind the counter or something when you have breaks.”

  “Breaks? What are those?”

  “Is it that busy?”

  She pulled her hair back as she walked, twisting it into a sort of braid and then releasing it again. It revealed her neck for just a split second, the path of small hairs there.

  “It gets busy enough sometimes,” she said, “but it’s all the prep and cleaning and ordering that’s really keeping me busy. I think if I set an easel up behind the counter all it would do is remind me that I’m not painting, you know?”

  Douglas nodded. Drawing, for him, was a luxury now. Something he often missed while at work. And sometimes in the evening, when his hands were cramped from, say, being wrapped around a lug wrench all day, the simple act of drawing seemed monumental.

  “How about you?” she asked after a bit. “You drawing much?”

  “On and off, I guess. It’s not something I keep track of.”

  She looked at him hard, like she was listening to a song on the radio she couldn’t quite make out the lyrics to. He could tell she wanted to ask him something more, but, for whatever reason, she kept quiet.

  Once they got to the coffee shop, Jenna handed him her car keys and went inside to make him something. He was already pretty certain what the problem was based on what she’d told him so far, but he went ahead and put the key in and tried to turn it over anyway. Nothing. He jiggled the gear shift a little and tried again, but the trick didn’t work, so he popped the hood. At times like these, he felt like a dentist. Rooting around, looking for things that maybe weren’t a problem yet but soon would be if not taken care of. By the time he’d finished the examination, he counted two other cavities besides the one rotten-tooth starter. Deciding to keep quiet about the worn serpentine belt, he leaned back against the front fender and watched Jenna inside the shop. She’d turned on all the lights and it felt a little like he was watching a fish in a fish tank. There was something about the way she moved, almost like she was lighter than other people, like she wasn’t tethered to the same mundane things. He didn’t stand a chance with her. He knew that much. She was just in need of a little help and he reminded himself not to start thinking it was anything more than that. Besides, even if there were some interest on her part, it would soon be gone once she’d gotten a look at his drawings.

  “What’s the verdict?” she said as she came out with a steaming cup in her hands. “Benign or malignant? Give it to me straight.”

  Douglas couldn’t remember which of those were worse, so he just took the cup and said thank you.

  “It’s probably still a little hot. You might want to give it a second or two.”

  Douglas nodded and thought about how best to explain things. He didn’t want to come off like the guy at the electronics store in Minocqua who kept rattling off strange words Douglas didn’t understand when trying to explain why the repair shop’s computer was fried. There was contempt there, of Douglas’s ignorance of all things computer-related. It was similar to how the doctor had seemed to be annoyed when describing what had happened to his dad.

  ...acute myocardial infarction...bitmap...congestive heart failure...recursive function...coronary thrombosis... terabytes...

  “It’s probably your solen--” Douglas started to say, but then caught himself. “It’s probably your starter, but I’ll need to get under the car to check. Do you know if you have a jack?”

  Jenna looked at the engine as he talked, nodding her head like she knew just what he was talking about. It was something most of his customers did, something Douglas himself did when talking to the computer guy and doctor even though he’d been completely lost in both cases.

  “I think there’s one in the trunk,” Jenna said, but when Douglas started walking around behind the car, she stopped him. “Do we really need to worry about this? I mean, it’s not like you’ll be able to fix it right now anyway, right?”

  “No, I guess not. I’d have to order you one.”

  “Well then,” she said, “I guess it’ll have to keep until tomorrow.”

  “I was thinking of going to the bar. Would you maybe want to--”

  “I don’t drink.”

  “Oh,” Douglas said, picturing the empty bottles sitting on the kitchen counter back home. “Sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “It’s a long, boring story. I’ll tell you about it sometime if you want.”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  “Take a sip.”

  “What?”

  “Of your coffee. You haven’t tried it yet.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  Douglas did as he was told and swallowed what tasted like a blowtorch dipped in chocolate. “Whoa,” he said, his tongue melting. “You sure this doesn’t have alcohol in it?”

  “Just some flavored coffee. And a sprinkle of magic maybe.”

  “Well, whatever it is, it’s good.”

  “Maybe I should open up a coffee shop.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far.”

  Douglas offered to get his car and return to give her a ride home, but she insisted on walking back with him after she’d locked up. There weren’t many cars out, but, as they neared the repair shop, one slowed, and a man leaned out the window. “Your girlfriend’s a whore!” Douglas noted the license plates. Illinois. He was about to apologize to Jenna when he saw that she had her middle finger raised high in the air. And she was smiling. The bastard in the car must have seen this because he stopped right there in the middle of the road, the red of his tail lights reflecting off the pavement.

  “They’re not from here,” Douglas pointed out. “They’re probably just drunk.”

  “They’re probably just assholes,” Jenna said, lowering her hand.

  He expected an argument from her, but Jenna kept quiet as he approached the idling car. Douglas found himself thinking, once again, of his father. He could almost see him slapping the roof of the car, asking, in a tone that was somehow both friendly and intimidating, if they were lost and needed any help. But that wasn’t Douglas. He wasn’t his father. Not even close.

  As it turned out, though, there wasn’t much of anything for Douglas to handle. Just as he was coming up on the car, it started to slowly creep forward. He could hear something being smashed inside the car, then a crumpled-up beer can being tossed from the driver’s side. Once the car picked up speed and disappeared down the road, Douglas picked up the empty.

  “And that’s why I don’t drink,” Jenna said. “What a bunch of creeps.”

  “I’m sorry about that. They aren’t from here,” he said again stupidly. “Not that that helps any.”

  “It doesn’t.” She grabbed his hand, squeezing it, like she were the one comforting him. “Thank you, though,” she said. “For trying.”

  Once they got his car, Douglas drove them out onto highway 51 and then down county road FF. Jenna’s house was much the same as his parents’: a green tin roof and a cluttered backyard that led down to a lake. The only thing different on the outside, as far as Douglas could tell, was the siding. There was none.

  “I’m having it replaced. Demo’d it myself, though. To save money.”

  “Winter will be here soon.”

  “It’ll get done.”

  Douglas didn’t say anything but depending on who she called to do the work, chances were it wouldn’t get done. People didn’t hurry much in Mercer. It was something he figured grew up out of the gray solitude of the place. In a way, it was very European. There was never much hurry. About anything. And the sooner she came to understand that, the sooner she’d find peace in Mercer.

  “Will you come in for a few minutes?” she asked as she got out. “I wanted to show you something.”

  When J
enna opened the screen door, it creaked just like theirs at home. Douglas followed her inside, half-expecting to see his mom snoring on the couch, her mouth hanging open, the TV hissing white. But, instead, Douglas found a dog wagging its tail.

  “Douglas, meet Shredder. Shredder, this is Douglas. He’s going to visit for a little bit.”

  Douglas knelt down in front of the dog and let it lick his face.

  “He likes you.”

  Jenna opened the door and let the dog out. Douglas wondered if she was aware of the wolves in the area, if the dog knew to stay near the house or not. It was a big dog, some sort of brown lab mix. A tennis-ball chaser. And maybe a deer chaser if he was unlucky enough to come across any. Douglas had once seen a neighbor’s dog, an old weather-beaten Siberian husky, being chased down the street by a deer with its rack lowered like a snow plow.

  “This is what I wanted to show you,” Jenna said, walking over to an easel and turning it around. “It’s still a work in progress, so, you know, keep that in mind.”

  It was similar in size to the others hanging in her shop, only slightly more subdued in subject matter. In the painting was a wheelchair with a baby sitting in it. There was a food tray connected to the wheelchair, and, on the tray, a marriage certificate alongside a photo of a young smiling couple. The overall effect was somehow both creepy and beautiful. Which, now that Douglas thought about it, was exactly how he’d felt when he’d first seen the paintings in her shop.