Some People Talk with God

by John Enright

  Back at her room in the St. George, Amanda washed her hair and pampered herself with a long soak in the tub. With her cell phone battery dead, no one could reach her, no one could find out where she was. Was this the thrill escaped convicts felt? She could go anywhere, do anything, be anybody in perfect anonymous freedom, no strings attached. Wearing her new outfit, she had dinner at the fanciest Italian restaurant in town. She was the sole patron eating alone. They gave her a table by the window. She felt mysterious and enjoyed it. Afterwards she went to the bar she had gone to the night before, for a nightcap, and flirted again with the cute bartender. But this night she left early, leaving him an excessive tip.

  The next morning Amanda checked out of the St. George again and drove back to Diligence. This time they had one lane completed and open at the washout. She had forgotten it was Saturday. Most of the girls’ cars, including Denise’s Bronco, were parked in the driveway. Amanda went in the front door and straight up to her room, where she quickly packed a small bag. Before she zipped it up she relented and tossed in her phone charger. She would just bring it; she didn’t have to use it. A couple of the girls saw her as she left, but they just stared and she didn’t acknowledge them. Back on the highway, she headed north. It was a perfect high summer day. Montreal was less than five hours away on the interstate.

  About halfway there Amanda got bored with the thruway monotony, and it was time for a pit stop. She pulled off at an exit marked Ticonderoga Ferry. It wasn’t like she had an appointment in Montreal, or even a reservation. An hour before, she had out-distanced her Albany oldies station, and since then she had been driving in silence with just her vagabond thoughts, which were acting as free and wandering as she was. For some reason her thoughts had ended up in her gallery of embarrassing moments, the mortifying memories that made her cringe. There was no suppressing them. There was also nothing to distract her: this exit was one with no services. She drove along through a forest tunnel, reliving scenes that she wished she could redo or at least erase from memory. She drove for ten minutes, past empty lakes and through tiny crossroad hamlets named Severance and Paradox, like comments on her thoughts. She thought of turning back, but now there were no places to turn around, and surely this fine county road went somewhere with a restroom.

  Another ten miles of trees brought her to the outskirts of the town of Ticonderoga. She found a restroom, then a restaurant, then a bar and grill. People ignored her. She was a stranger in a town suspicious of strangers. That was alright by her. That suited her fine. From a tourist map she found the old fort down by the water. In the gift shop she bought a postcard that she thought she would send to Nemo, who, according to Morgan, liked old forts. Then she remembered she had no address to send it to, had no idea where he was or where he was headed. Just like all the gone folks in her gallery of botched memories. She found the fort depressing—all stone walls and sharp angles unscathed by battle and not nearly decrepit enough to seem real. At a package store she bought bourbon and ginger ale and cashews and Slim Jims, then she found a motel and checked in. She spent the night behind her triple-locked door watching cable TV, doing her escapist best to avoid listening to the voice in her head. She did not recharge her cell phone’s battery. She went to sleep chagrined.

  ***

  “Ready?” Vernon asked. He was standing at the door to Dominick’s room.

  “Ready for what?” Dominick said. “Probably not.” It was Monday morning. Dominick was sure of that because he was reading the Monday morning Register Star, sitting up in bed.

  “Ready to go,” Vernon said.

  “I wasn’t aware I was going anywhere.”

  “You mean Sissy didn’t tell you I was coming?”

  “No, but it’s nice to see you, Vernon. Come in and sit down.” Dominick gestured to the armchair by the window.

  “You’re not packed?”

  “Am I moving? Where to?”

  “My place for now, I guess. Sissy just said come and get you.”

  “I’m really not ready to travel,” Dominick said. Just getting out of bed was a variety of torture. He couldn’t imagine a long car ride back to Catskill.

  “I put some pillows in the back seat. You dose yourself good. You’ll make it.”

  “Vernon, I—”

  “It ain’t your say. It’s Sissy’s. Come on, let’s do it.”

  Susan helped, first by bringing Dominick a tall glass, half-filled with orange juice, that he could fill with vodka to take more pills—three this time—and then by helping Vernon repack what few of Dominick’s things had gotten unpacked. Dominick got himself slowly dressed, resting between movements to let the pain subside. He thought of it as a bayonet, something unsterilized. Susan didn’t speak when Vernon was in the room, but when he left to carry the bags downstairs she said, “Sissy said you would be leaving. Where are you going?”

  “To Vernon’s, I guess. Did Sissy say anything else?”

  “No.”

  Dominick grunted getting to his feet from the edge of the bed. He was barefoot. There was no way he was going to bend over to put on socks and shoes. Susan came over to him, bringing his cane. He supported himself on her shoulder instead. She put her hand on his back. “What are you going to do, Susan?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Why? Should I do something?” Her hair was still wet from her latest shower.

  “Sissy is not throwing you out too?”

  “No, I don’t think so. She didn’t say anything like that. Just that you had to leave. Why?”

  “When it is time to go, it is time to go—the houseguest’s mantra. Will you stick with me down the stairs?”

  “Sure,” Susan said with a smile. She hung onto him down the stairs, her thin arm around his hips. At the door Dominick gave her a kiss on the top of her head where her hair was parted, and Susan gave him a little hug.

  The trip to Vernon’s place was made tolerable by the oxycodone kicking in and a cigar, his first in days. He found an almost comfortable position amidst the pillows in Vernon’s back seat. Neither he nor Vernon mentioned Sissy again. Dominick suspected that the opiates were having more than just an analgesic effect. He noted that he didn’t feel like talking. In fact, he had very little interest in thinking at all, even though he knew his current situation called for more than spaced-out passivity. He stared out the window.

  Vernon seemed to understand. “How many of them pills did you take?” he asked.

  The sound Dominick made in response was affirmative but not an answer.

  “Okay,” Vernon said. “Enjoy the ride.”

  Vernon’s house was off a back road on the other side of Catskill—roads with no road signs and few houses—rocky, canyon country, not farmland. Lots of woods out the thoughtless car window. The gravel driveway followed the contour of the land down into a clearing in a hollow where a low gray-shingled bungalow squatted beneath some tall old trees. Bungalow perhaps was not the right word. It was bigger—longer—than a cottage but just as humble. A weathered brick chimney rose above it. Off to one side was an equally antique shed. The old Caddy scattered chickens in the yard as it pulled up.

  Dominick swung his legs out of the back seat and sat there for a minute, catching his breath from the pain that the effort had caused. An arthritic old beagle with a grey muzzle got up from the shade of the shed and came over to him, walking slowly, like two pains visiting.

  “That’s Mustang,” Vernon said. “You got to watch out for him. He’s the meanest hound around. Aren’t you, Mustang?”

  Mustang sniffed Dominick’s outstretched hand, took a look behind him into the back seat to see if anyone else was there, then ambled back to his spot in the shade.

  “Only he doesn’t attack fellow crips.” Vernon got Dominick’s bags out of the trunk and headed for the house. They were parked at what appeared to be the front door, but Vernon walked off to the left. “Your room is down here,” he said as he turned a corner of the house. Dominick followed slowly. There was a small side yard with a h
oneysuckle bush and the door to another room attached to the end of the house. Inside the room there were a double bed, a dresser, a chair, and two windows looking out at dense greenery speckled with sunlight. A good half of the room was occupied by piles of cardboard boxes. “Used to be Sissy’s room,” Vernon said. “When she left I started storing stuff in here. You know how that goes.”

  Dominick did not know how that went, but the bed was freshly made and looked comfortable. He headed for it.

  “Sissy fixed that up for you,” Vernon said. “I’ll get the pillows from the car.”

  Somewhere between the car and the bed Dominick had picked up a pricker or a sliver or something in the sole of one of his bare feet. His attempt to view the bottom of his foot was called off due to the pain of bending. When Vernon came back with an armful of pillows, Dominick said, “Vernon, I …”

  “I don’t know what you are doing here either, but you are here, so we’ll make the best of it. I ain’t no nurse, but all you need is bed rest. You’ll have to eat my cooking, and I’m gone most of the day, but all that is your problem, not mine.”

  “No, Vernon, would you mind taking a look at my foot? Something’s in there.”

  Vernon dropped the pillows on the bed and sat down beside Dominick. “Show papa.”

  Dominick leaned back and put his foot up on his opposite knee. Actually, this pain was a distraction from the rest. The ceiling above the bed was low and there was an old Michael Jackson poster pasted there.

  “Yep, a thorn,” Vernon said. “Let me get my glasses and a tweezers.”

  The farther Dominick lay back the more comfortable he became, until he was stretched out on his back, his arms spread wide beside him. His mind was still not dealing in coherent thoughts. What was he doing here in this sharecropper’s cabin? Who was this person on the ceiling above him? Both male and female, white and black, a member of Sissy’s past pantheon. Who was Sissy?

  “Anesthetic,” Vernon said, handing Dominick a cold can of Ballantine Ale. It took him but a minute to extract the thorn and the pain went away just like that, so simple. “I got to get to work. Through that door,” Vernon pointed to a second door in the room, “is my room then the rest of the house, the bathroom, kitchen, etcetera. Feel free. Keep the outside door closed or the chickens will come in. I’ll be back when I get back. You need anything?”

  Dominick managed to shake his head. “No, thanks,” he thought he said, but he wasn’t sure. Vernon left. Dominick heard the Caddy drive off and he got himself properly onto the bed. There was no means of escape. He didn’t even know where he was. Did that make him a prisoner? He rolled onto his good side. He felt safe. He fell quickly asleep.

  Chapter 19

  Amanda did not like Montreal. She did not like being treated like a foreigner, and everything seemed expensive. Her hotel room smelled funny. She did some haphazard, halfhearted shopping, then left after two days. The night before she left she plugged in her battery charger and recharged her cell phone. No messages, not even from Morgan. Usually return trips seem shorter than trips out, but this time the ride south seemed to creep by. She didn’t stop until she got to Albany, where she pulled off and gave Morgan’s phone a call. No answer, an automated voice-mail box—leave a message at the tone. Amanda had thought she would offer Morgan a ride home, seeing as she was passing through.

  There seemed to be an awful lot of traffic headed south out of Albany for an overcast weekday afternoon. Then an ad on the radio clued her in—tomorrow was the Fourth of July, a Thursday holiday. The city dwellers were fleeing their walls for a long country weekend, and Amanda, who was just headed home, had to share the road with them—boxy campers with names like Wilderness Invader, SUVs with canoes lashed to their roofs and dirt bikes on the back, sports cars with their tops down and invariably a white-haired white male behind the wheel.

  The Fourth of July, already. What a non-holiday that had always been, an interruption in summer’s peace, an inconvenience. Definitely an all male occasion—the village parade with the men in uniform marching almost in step, the marching bands, the antique cars with old guys in old uniforms in the back seat, the old fire trucks, the loud gun salutes, then at dusk the fireworks—all the men toys on full display, not to mention that most patriotic of pursuits, getting drunk with your buddies. Amanda’s girlhood memories of the Glorious Fourth was of a workday—she and her aunties and Grandma Win fixing food all day then cleaning up.

  One Fourth of July Grandpa Joe had driven them all into Boston. It must have been in ’76 for the big celebration, which would have made her eight years old. Of course, they could not afford to stay there. They drove into Boston in the early morning and then drove the three hours back home that night. Amanda remembered just a lot of walking and crowds where all she could see were the backs and butts of adults. Grandpa Joe said she was too big to get up on his shoulders. It was just as well; she had already wet her panties. Someone gave her a cold corn dog to eat. She had hated corn dogs ever since.

  Even the traffic on Route 9W out of Catskill was heavy, and she was happy to leave it behind at the Diligence turn-off. The road at the washout was now completed and paved. It was still early enough; perhaps she could beat everyone else home and have the place peacefully to herself for an hour or so before retreating to her room. She looked forward to sleeping in her own bed. As she came out of the last curve before the drive to the Van Houten house she saw the cars parked along the road, almost blocking it. There were four or five of them, clustered around where the gate had once been and would one day soon hopefully return. She slowed to a crawl as she drove up to them. There was a small crowd of people gathered at the driveway entrance, all facing the house at the top of the rise. In front of them was a man dressed in black reading from a book.

  Amanda buzzed down her window to ask what was going on just in time to hear everyone in the crowd call out “Amen.”

  The preacher or priest or whoever he was up front started again, “In the name of the Lord, I—”

  Amanda laid on the horn. They could do whatever they wanted to do—at least they knew enough not to go onto her property—but she didn’t have to sit there and listen to it. The horn got their attention. “Excuse me,” she said. “You are blocking the right of way?”

  The people moved aside without a word.

  “Thank you,” Amanda said.

  The preacher dude still stood there in the middle of the driveway, not sure what to do. A minute ago he had been so sure of himself, so in control, another guy in uniform lording it up. Now he had a chance to be a martyr and he stepped aside.

  “Carry on,” Amanda said as she drove by him.

  There was no one at the house, no cars parked there. Amanda let herself in and carried her things into the house, then for some reason she locked the front door behind her and went to check that the kitchen door was locked and latched as well. She didn’t know what was going on, but the security felt good, though she didn’t like the solitude. From the window of her room she could see the road, where the cars were turning around and driving away. She called Morgan’s phone again and left another message: “Where are you? Come home.”

  ***

  It was amazing how many Jeopardy questions Vernon got right, on a wide variety of topics. Vernon listened to the TV quiz show as he cooked dinner. Listened rather than watched because the TV set, a nice one, flat-screened and large, was in the living room and Vernon was in the neighboring kitchen with the door open. Vernon would just belt out the answer from the other room. “Madagascar.” “Herbert Hoover.” “Lost wax method.” Occasionally he would miss one he knew: “Oh, that short bitch with the bad haircut, you know.”

  Vernon did much better than Dominick, who quickly took to yelling out the answers he guessed before any of the three contestants. Dominick was seated in the small, low-ceilinged living room on a tall padded bar stool with a back and arm rests that Vernon had hauled in from somewhere. It had seen a lot of duty as a bar stool, but it was still functi
onal and much more welcoming to Dominick’s condition than any of the other available seating—a limo’s former back seat that now passed for a couch and two ex-bucket seats.

  Vernon’s humble abode—as he called it—was not so much a house as a series of rooms that had grown on one another. The two rooms in the middle—the kitchen and living room—were the oldest, the parent rooms, the first homestead, built around the central chimney with its dual fireplaces. Those rooms sloped and slumped with settled age, nary a true right angle remaining. Over the years additional rooms had been added—off the kitchen a small bright room that Vernon called the dining room, and off the living room a later, larger room that was Vernon’s. Sissy’s room, now Dominick’s, had been tacked onto that even later. Another late addition was an indoor bathroom off the living room. What this ensemble of spaces shared was a feeling of usefulness, of having never been abandoned. The people whose tread had worn these pine plank floors smooth had also made sure that the roof was fixed and what was rotted got replaced. There was a wisdom to the old place, the way the windows caught all of the twilight.

  Dinner that first night was bacon and eggs and home fries. “I can eat breakfast any time of day,” Vernon said. “That’s what I felt like tonight.” No apologies. Dominick ate, his appetite having returned. It was good. “Fresh eggs,” Vernon said. After dinner they watched the end of a baseball game on the big screen, Vernon in one of the bucket seats. Dominick did not care who was playing. It was all the same, which was the same as nothing, to him. He found the repetition satisfying. One batter hit half a dozen pitches foul before drawing a walk. Unlike other sports, but akin to life, the pace of the game was erratic. The action could drag with nothing much happening for innings, then suddenly explode into hits and runs and throws and collisions—like a thunder storm interrupting a summer afternoon—then return to lassitude. They drank ale and smoked Dominick’s cigars.