Whitechurch

by Chris Lynch

  He called me. Right there at the police station while I sat in the cage. He lifted the number when they were interviewing him at the desk.

  The cops didn’t think it was all that funny once they worked it out. I thought it was pretty all right once I did.

  I point at the face, and Mary Martha turns to check. She pounds the glass and he goes away.

  “Don’t mind these people here. I’m an employee, remember. And if you had any idea what these boys put inside themselves … you’d walk to Boston.”

  “I don’t want to go to Boston,” Pauly says.

  I know in an instant he is cemetery serious.

  “Are the drivers really screwed up all the time? Do you think we really might crash?” Pauly has swung around to the side of the train, looking forward into the mad wind. He is leaning way far out, the way they told you not to as a kid or a pole would tear your head off. I’m suddenly aware of the sound of the train as I watch Pauly. Like the noise is the soundtrack to his actions, and that noise is like the assault of drummers on the street, a hundred drummers on the street, banging and banging away on big metal cans, going faster, then faster, then harder, until they’ve gotten inside you, beating from inside you.

  Mary Martha still thinks this is a conversation. “Nah, I was just—”

  “I don’t sleep with anybody but Lilly,” Pauly says, and he is saying it to me. Then to Mary Martha. Actually, he’s screaming it, fighting the wind. “I want to see Lilly. I don’t want to see Boston. I don’t sleep with anybody besides Lilly.”

  He doesn’t. Doesn’t sleep with anybody besides Lilly. Nor with Lilly herself.

  Now it sounds like helicopters. Like beating blades of helicopters are coming up from beneath our feet. I look down. Then up at Pauly. Then down again, like I cannot tell which of these things is really happening.

  “Don’t hang so far over there, Pauly,” I say.

  “Pole’ll take your head off,” Mary Martha says.

  His only acknowledgment is to bare his teeth. His mouth blows wide open and distorted and he hyperventilates, hissing in and out between his teeth.

  We come tearing through an old mail depot, and the poles now do come whipping past, one-two-three-four, swings of giant bats just missing Pauly’s head. I recoil with every one. Mary Martha gasps. Pauly fails to notice us. He’s treating the poles the way a bullfighter treats bulls, leaning into them, daring them, yapping at them.

  Until I yank him back in.

  “Cut the shit,” I say.

  For all the world, he appears to be answering a statement I didn’t make. “You think so? Oakley, you don’t really believe that, that she’s gone.”

  Fortunately he’s not looking for a response from me, because I am empty. He turns toward the back railing. The smoke is all gone, which is probably good. The wind and mainly fresh air are still with us, which is good. Poles don’t tear heads off from the back of the train.

  “Relax, Pauly,” I say. “Boston’s not that far away from Whitechurch.”

  “But it is,” he snaps. “It’s all the way away. Do you understand me? It is all the way away, and if I go, then I don’t get back. You understand?”

  I don’t. But I haven’t given it a great effort either. He will uncoil on his own. “No, Paul,” I say. “I don’t understand.”

  Mary Martha doesn’t either. “You aren’t half the fun you’d figure to be, Pauly.”

  He is hanging over the back rail, and I fear he is going to get sick. I step right up next to him, same hunched posture, shoulder tight up against his. The tracks are flying past beneath us. And the river is flying past beneath that. Our un-beautiful river is not quite brown. Tawny, you’d call it, tawny and flat as it flies by below us as if it actually had a life of its own, rather than just the illusion of motion created by the train’s real motion. Me and Pauly are both looking at it the same long way.

  “Ever see Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?” he says, looking up and crookedly smiling at me. The words are not the problem. The crooked smile and the nearly imperceptible bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet is not the problem. It’s the sudden hungry thrill in the squint of his eyes. That’s the problem.

  “No, Paul.”

  “It’s about these two buddies in the old—”

  “No. I mean, no, we are not jumping.”

  “Ah, hello?” Mary Martha says. “Is this a private party?”

  Pauly looks over his shoulder at her. He speaks in a loud confessional whisper. “Are you a virgin, Mary Martha? Was Penelope a virgin? Or like, with a new name did you get to start over again?”

  “Right. I’m getting in out of the rain,” Mary Martha says. It is not raining. She goes inside and shuts the sliding door.

  “Maybe we should rob trains and stuff. Better than staying behind in Whitechurch, huh?”

  He is hanging far over now, staring down at the railroad ties slamming by beneath our feet. The sound of the drummers backed by highspeed highway traffic, and crashing surf. Pauly’s feet are barely touching the platform.

  Through all the din, I can still hear myself breathing. Through my nose. Hard, clipped, small explosions of air. I sound more like a train than the train does.

  “Why all the we, Paul?” I say, finally say. “We should jump off, we should rob trains. I don’t want any of that, okay? You wanna rob a train, you rob a fuckin’ train.”

  Now the rain does come. And it comes in torrents.

  “And if I want to jump?” he asks, and he looks so so pleased with this bend in the conversation, it’s as if I have made all the bad things go away.

  I’m out over the edge myself now. The rain is coming so heavy it is shoving us downward. The chunky brown railroad ties are rising to meet our faces halfway. I feel the blood coming to my head, pooling behind my eyes, and the sound is now a cattle stampede across a steel surface.

  “Go on,” Pauly says. His own eyes look swollen, as if the same blood dam is about to burst in him. “Go on and tell me. I’ll get you started even. ‘Pauly, if you want to jump …’”

  I turn to him, and our faces are so close the rain is running off the tip of my nose onto his cheek.

  “Can’t even make this fuckin’ decision without me, can ya, Paul?”

  He looks like a corpse. The blood has run out, gone somewhere inside. Cold and fishy in the eye, whiter than bone.

  I straighten up. He continues to hang there like a gaffed tuna.

  “Where are you going?” he croaks.

  “Goin’ to get a life, Paul.”

  I have my hand on the steel handle to the door to the train.

  “I love you,” he says before I open the door.

  “Cocksucker,” he says after I open it.

  I stand there looking at Mary Martha and the conductor, sitting in the rear seats playing cards. They stare up at me.

  “Ah, that didn’t mean either of the things you probably think it would.”

  She shakes her head at me. “People are one-hundred-percent right about you two.”

  I nod. “Regardless. Will you do me a favor and pull him out of the rain in about five minutes? I have an appointment.”

  “Okay,” she says, and returns to her game. The conductor sneers at me.

  I have my hand now on that heavy sliding silver door, looking through that small window right into the sweet open real-life face of that girl, and she is happy to see me too, waving me in and in I am coming, look out now, because I am going to finally step through, join up….

  I never open that door.

  The engine bucks, like something has bounced off us, then decelerates.

  I run hard all the way to the rear of the train once more.

  Mary Martha is sitting there, edged up a little closer to the conductor, still playing cards.

  “See you back in ’Church, cocksucker,” Mary Martha says as I shoot through the rear exit.

  The train has jerked to a stop in this the first station on the Boston trip.

  I hop do
wn off the back of it and follow after him.

  Watch

  I SIT AT THE WINDOW watching the wind blow.

  Rather, watching the evidence

  of the wind blowing at forty miles per hour.

  The mushroom cap of an exhaust unit

  on the roof of the bakery

  across the street,

  spinning like a whirligig,

  the trees that grow in a line behind

  the main shops of the town,

  dipping down below the roof lines, springing back up,

  ducking again,

  fighting for position

  against the wicked wind we get around here.

  Watching from my room, facing the street, set on the second floor

  over the empty shop where up until one month

  ago

  they sold fifty different blends of coffee

  but now they’re gone

  because Whitechurch

  only ever wanted

  one.

  And I watch,

  across the street and three doors left,

  as the big plate glass window of the

  Laundromat

  bows, twists, distorts,

  tries to pop itself

  out of its frame

  onto the street.

  But I’m not watching that,

  even if it is entertaining.

  I’m watching the Red-Headed Stranger,

  who is doing his laundry

  because it is Wednesday evening,

  and as Whitechurch knows

  he does his laundry on

  Wednesdays.

  Tell the truth though, I’m not even watching

  that.

  Of course I’m watching it, that is,

  the same way I’m watching

  the whirligig

  and the trees

  and the window.

  Satellite visions they are,

  pulling my eye closer

  to the source.

  The Red-Headed Stranger struggling

  to light a cigarette

  with his rain-slicker hood

  pulled tight around his face

  and his hands cupped against the wind

  is close to the center,

  but not it.

  It is Lilly.

  Lilly watching the Stranger.

  I am watching Lilly

  watching the Stranger.

  And then, there is Pauly.

  Pauly watching Lilly

  watching the Stranger

  light a cigarette

  in the light of the ’mat.

  I’m watching that.

  I am the only one watching that.

  Because none of the other players

  even knows yet

  that Pauly is there,

  skulking

  in the doorway of Chuck’s International Auto

  Parts,

  watching Lilly

  watching the RHS.

  Pauly named him that.

  After the guy had been in town

  a few days

  and been the subject

  of a few thousand

  conversations.

  Came out of nowhere

  our own red menace,

  remains nowhere

  even as we

  watch.

  The only redhead in town,

  Lilly observes.

  And isn’t that queer,

  we don’t have one

  of our own

  and we never

  noticed before.

  We do now.

  We notice.

  Which is why Lilly is there,

  inside the Laundromat

  looking out at RHS,

  and Pauly is outside

  looking at her,

  with the rain coming down sideways

  in the wind,

  a little hail mixed in,

  bouncing right off Pauly’s unmoving face

  in the doorway of Chuck’s International Auto

  Parts

  across the street

  one flight down

  and three doors over

  from my window.

  White Rabbit

  I GRAB UP MY orange mackintosh from the hook on the back of the closet door, and go down to the shiny street.

  It’s just getting dark, and the blue-white fluorescence pours out of the place and highlights Adam Everly, the ’mat’s manager, son of Asa Everly, the ’mat’s owner. He stands on his stepladder trying to clutch the top rung and at the same time to apply a giant X of tape to the window to keep it from shattering. He’s already Xed the inside, but that isn’t enough for Adam, who is a good son, a conscientious Laundromat manager, and who is thirty-five years old and otherwise unemployable.

  “Hey Adam,” I say to our man Adam, who is somehow still more of a kid to the locals.

  “Hey,” Adam says, but not in a friendly way or even a dead-middle-zone way like I said it, but in an aggressive way.

  “It’s not my fault you’re all wrapped up in tape, Adam.”

  Adam has been struggling to escape the roll of nylon-reinforced plastic tape, going from the methodical peeling and stretching method to the flailing, growling, thrashing method that only makes tangled tape worse.

  “No,” Adam says, going limp like a person surrendering to quicksand. “It’s not your fault.”

  The hail, now the size of pencil erasers, is bouncing off my rubberized coat like it is all a planned assault on me alone. It is just the coat for these storms. I stand with my hands in the pockets and nothing on my face as far as I can feel. Just as if I’m still watching the weather from my warm chair—which would be the smart thing—rather than standing in it. I look toward Chuck’s International Auto Parts, then past Adam into his dad’s business which will be Adam’s business once the drink finishes its work on Asa’s organs, then back to Chuck’s again. Chuck’s is a more stable Whitechurch business, as Chuck drinks less than Asa does except when they’re together.

  “The window’s not going anyplace, Adam.”

  Adam looks up at it, the window, for an answer. “No?”

  “No. You did great. I was watching you. The building will fall down, but the window will still be hanging. Sell me a Lotto.”

  That is the other thing that happens in the Laundromat. Lotto tickets. Asa is diversifying the business. Providing for the kid, who nobody figures stands much of a chance anyway.

  “I got the winner tonight,” Adam says. “I’ll sell it to you. But when you win you gotta buy me dinner at King’s. I can feel it. This night’s a winner.”

  He says that every time he sells a ticket.

  I buy one anyway. Stand there in my dopey, dripping mac, hand a dollar to Adam, and send him behind his small Formica counter to punch up the numbers machine and make it buzz-tik-ik-tik-tik-buzzzz. “You’re right,” I say as Adam Everly hands over the ticket, “that definitely sounded like a winner.”

  “So, you gonna take me to King’s for dinner when you win?” Lilly says, banging her shoulder into mine. The two of us then lean, side by side, on our elbows and watch Adam do the other thing he does behind the counter. Fold other people’s underwear.

  Me and Lilly are the same height, five foot ten, and of similar square and gristly build. We could be brother and sister, and people have often said stuff to that effect. Pauly is taller than us by two inches.

  “King’s is gonna be crowded that night,” I say. King’s is the best restaurant in town, with a sign in he window to prove it that says BEST RESTAURANT IN TOWN that nobody takes issue with. Except for the food. It’s a very nice place, just that the food is kind of putrid-tasting. I’m happy enough o have company at my celebratory dinner there, so that when I have to push my plate away after three bites of canned-salmon pie, somebody will be there to help me out. Because the waitresses quiz you when you leave food at King’s.

  “Hey, Adam,” Lilly calls.

  Suspiciously, Adam turns his eyes up fr
om the folding. He isn’t all that used to being chatted up by most people. Certainly not by the town’s Major Young Woman. He makes a nice pleat, Asa says of his boy, but he could bore the fuzz off a peach. “Hey, Lilly,” he says back.

  “You want me to help you with that? Me and Oakley, we can help you with that, can’t we, Oak?”

  “No, we can’t.”

  “No, you can’t,” Adam Everly says, getting busy busy in the whites. The colors sit in a knot behind him. He is diligent about separating. “Nobody’s supposed to be touching anybody else’s things. ’Specially their underthings,” he says super-seriously. “That’s one of the sacreds of the business.”

  “Sacreds, huh?” Lilly says. “You know, you never figure there are sacreds in some businesses. Guess they can pop up anywhere, huh?”

  He listens without looking at her. “Yes,” Adam Everly says, “I think they can.”

  Lilly is not convinced. “So let us help anyway. How sacred is sacred?”

  Adam Everly is mortified. “Sacred,” Adam says. “Sacred is very sacred. This might not be much to you, it might not look like anyth-th-th-thing to you.” He starts stuttering. Adam Everly went to a special school for years to fix his stutter, and Lilly is bringing it back by wanting to handle Whitechurch’s underthings. “B-b-b-but something has to mean something to a person. It’s imp-p-p-portant to somebody … Lilly,” he says, then returns to folding.

  She stops grinning, looks to me. I point at her like she’s a bad girl, which nobody believes. Not even wounded Adam Everly believes it. Bad girl, Lil.

  “I like the way you say my name,” she says to him. He does not look at her. “L-l-l-lilly. It doesn’t even sound wrong when you stutter it. Sounds pretty. Sounds singsongy.”

  He looks up at her with narrowed eyes and a seedling of a smile. “Your boyfriend. He’s always wanting to hold everybody’s things too. You’re a pair. The two of you,” Adam says.

  “Hey, lemme fold,” Pauly says as he bursts through the door, propelled, as if the storm threw him up. “If these guys get to fold, you gotta let me.”

  “No,” Adam Everly says.

  “Adam,” Lilly says softly. “Sorry about the underwear thing. You’re right, it is important. You’re a gent.”