by Richard Ford
“Jew drive here?”
“Yeah.” I reach my nose with my jacket sleeve and saw back and forth.
“You drive off and git in a wreck and kill some kid, you ain’t sayin’ you been in here. You got dat? I’m spose to take dem keys”—She regards me with revulsion, right hand on her silver bowie knife hilt. How can things change so fast? I haven’t done anything—“but I don’t wanna touch you.” She snorts back a stiff breath, as if I smell bad.
I am climbing off my bar stool, feeling light-headed but terribly heavy, like a sandbag puppet.
“Y’hearin’ what ahm sayin’?” Her eyes narrow to a threat. Termite might be her real name.
“Okay. Sure.” From my pocket I produce a piece of U.S. paper currency along with my Realty-Wise card. It could be a million-dollar bill. These I place on the bar. “Thanks,” I say, my mouth chromy. My hands are cold, my feet thick.
Termite doesn’t regard my pay-up. I’ve become her problem now, something else to lose sleep over. Will there be repercussions? Her job in jeopardy? Jail time? One more thing not to be thankful for.
But I’m already away, heading for the door, my gait surprisingly steady, as if the way out was downhill. I am, in fact, not drunk. Though what I am is a different matter.
Rain needles sting my cheeks, nose, brow, chin, neck when I make it out into the dark parking lot—painful but alerting. It was burning up in there, though I was frozen. Again, I may be catching something.
Cars with cadaverous colored headlights pass over the Route 35 bridge, motoring home to relatives, a quiet night before the holiday tangle, a long weekend of parades, floating balloon animals, football and extra plate-fulls. I have no idea what time it is. Since Spring Ahead gave way to Fall Back, I’ve been uncertain. It could be six or nine or two a.m. Though I’m clear-headed. My heart’s beating at a good pace. I even give a sudden optimistic thought to Ann and Paul (and Jill) in Haddam, enjoying each other’s company, reacclimating, forging new bonds. I don’t feel panicky (though that could be a sure sign of panic). It is merely odd to be here now—the opposite of where the evening seemed to be heading, though, again, I had no plans.
But bad luck, bad luck heaped on bad luck! The Quonset across the lot looms dark and silent, from all appearances closed up forever, the big metal door rolled down, the office—I can see from here—wearing a fat bulletproof padlock that catches a glint off the sulfur lights from the boatyard next door. Cut-out turkeys and Pilgrims in happy holiday symbiosis are taped to the window there, too. NO JOB TOO ABSURD.
I am incensed—and breathless. If I could just get out of here, I’d gladly hunt down the faithless Chris asleep somewhere, and strangle him in front of his father, uncle, whatever, then smoke a cigarette before attacking the old man with a pair of needle-nose pliers. Except I spy a rear bumper’s shine, a BUSH? WHY? sticker and a pale-blue-and-cream AWK 486, Garden State plate—mine. My Suburban’s parked in the oily shadows between the Quonset and a pile of tire discards. Left out, where I’m supposed to find it. I’ll send young Chris a whopper check that’ll pay his way through Monmouth and pave the path to dental school. If he’d hung around, I’d have bought him a shore dinner and told him about the things in life he needs to beware of—starting with lesbian bars and the false bonhomie of treacherous little coon-ass bartenders.
I hustle through the remnant mist, avoiding the lakes and flooded tire tracks. Most of the women in Squatters seem to have arrived in pickups with chrome toolboxes or else junker Roadmasters with rusted rocker panels. Despite the shadows, Chris, I can see, has performed a creditable repair, including sweeping out the broken glass. My window’s masked by multiple layers of gray duct tape backed by a slat of jigsawed plywood fitted to the hole. I could drive it this way for weeks and be fine.
The driver door’s unlocked and the interior I crawl into stiff and cold and dank. My eyes are still flooding with unavailing tears. But I am eager to get going.
Only where are the keys? The ones with the fake Indian arrowhead and miniature beaded warrior-shield fob made by the retarded son of Louis the Dry Cleaner and for sale on a card for three dollars (and you’d better buy one or your shirts come back with their buttons crunched). I handed them to Chris just before the “boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly” part. He had them, or the car wouldn’t be here and fixed. I saw it half-in the lighted garage bay when I checked—how long ago? Twenty minutes. How can a place of business go dark and its employees vamoose like ghosts all in twenty minutes? Why wouldn’t he just skip across and give me the high sign, a hand signal, a raised eyebrow, two monosyllables—“Yer done.” Cultural literacy should make this kind of masculine transaction a no-brainer—even in Greece. But not in Manasquan.
I go rifling through all the places keys can hide. The visor. The side map pocket. The glove box—full of extra chalet keys. The ashtray. Under the rubber floor mat. In the fucking cup holder. Tears are flowing, my fingers clammy, stinging when I scrape them on every sharp or rough surface. I’ve given my extra set to Clarissa in case I fall over dead and there’re complications with the authorities about getting my valuables sacked up and returned in a timely fashion. These things happen. How mindless would it have been to have Assif Chevrolet-GMC requisition twenty extras to distribute in every corner of my existence. I swear that on Monday, when I take my window hole for proper fixing (assuming I make it to then), I’ll issue the order no matter the cost, even though computer chips aren’t cheap. I consider getting out in the cold and crawling underneath, probing my bunged fingers under the gritty bumpers, into the wheel wells, inside the grille face. Though I’d only soak myself and compromise my flu-shot immunity. In any case, I know the sons of bitches aren’t there. They’re hanging “safely” on a fucking nail in the office, attached to a paper tag that says “Older dude. Red Sub keys. Payment due,” meaning the little Greek cocksuckers didn’t trust me to pay the twenty-five bucks the moment the sun comes up tomorrow; were happier to let me do whatever in hell a human being does in asshole Manasquan outside a dyke bar, the night before Thanksgiving, when you’re too crocked to call the police. While-U-Wait, my ass.
I pound my fists on the steering wheel until they ache and it’s ready to crack. “Why, why, why?” These actual words come with an all-new freshet of frustrated tears. Why did I do what’s so ill-advised? Why did I risk the Manasquan, knowing what might lurk here? Why did I, a nunce, trust a Greek? One who reads Fitzgerald? Faithless Chris, himself a callow young Nick. Why, oh why did I rashly count my blessings and leave myself at risk? Thanksgiving? Thanksgiving’s bullshit.
I should’ve driven down to the Grove with Wade, hied off with a mid-forties-body-style Ricki, downed the martinis, eaten the hanger steak, skived away in the night, right to the blind golfers Quality Court to test the lead left in the ole pencil. What higher ground am I occupying? For what greater purpose am I preserved? Do I have anything to accomplish before I’m sixty that makes an unserious boinking a bad idea when it never was before? Am I preserving clarity? Am I too good, too intent, too loyal, too cautious, too free to grab a little woogle when it’s offered and otherwise in short supply?
Tears and more tears come fairly flooding. Rage, frustration, sorrow, remorse, fatigue, self-reproach—a whole new list. Name it, I’ve suddenly got it. I gawk around through the fogged windows at the Squatters’ lot. A low-rider Chevette idles through and noses into the handicapped space. Two women in big coats climb out, one on crutches, and move slowly through the doors, which when open cast a blue-red blur into the night, where I’m trapped, wanting, needing someone to help me. No one inside would even remember me, though probably plenty possess automotive skills.
It’s another moment for cell-phone service. A chance to use the Triple-A I never bought. The ideal dilemma for an in-car computerized hot-line-to-Detroit for dispatched emergency assistance—though my Suburban’s a ’96. Too old. Of course, there aren’t pay phones anymore.
And for God’s sake and beyond all: What else i
s happening to me out here? I’m not about to die (I don’t think). “Bascombe was discovered deceased in his car outside a Manasquan bump shop, across from an alternative night spot on Thanksgiving morning. No further details are available.” No, no, no. Except this feeling I’m having reminds me of death and presents itself as pain right where my heart ought to be; only nothing’s spazzing down my arm, no light-headed, gasping or blue-faced constriction. It’s as if I’d done death already. Though I’d give anything, promise any promise, admit anything just to not feel this way, to see instead a hopeful, trusting Sponsoree materialize out of the misty night, seeking good counsel for his or her issues and shifting the focus away from mine. Since mine seem to be not that I’m dying, but that I just have to be here in some fearsome way—and me the last person on earth to truckle with stagy ideas of be-ness. Be-ness means business to me. (What is it about being trapped in your cold vehicle with no help coming and the promise of the night spent curled up like a snake in the luggage compartment that gives rise to the somberest of thoughts: the finality of one’s self, in defeat of all distractions put in the way? Possibly it’s cloying Thanksgiving itself—the recapitulative, Puritan and thus most treacherous of holidays—that clears away the ordinary pluses and leaves only the big minuses to be totaled.)
Of course, anyone could tell, even me, that it’s the Frantals’ sad family mini-saga that’s whop-sided me into painful, tearful grieving (if you’ve lost a child, other people’s child-loss stories magnetize around you like iron filings). And what else would you call my symptoms but grieving? Inasmuch as tucked away in the Home Buyer’s Guide, where I’d least expect it, is the juggernaut of acceptance—grief’s running mate. Their acceptance—of life’s bounty and its loss—which the world can honor, in the Frantals’ case, by plunking down some earnest money on a cunning Cape on Crab Apple Court.
But what the hell more do I need to accept that I haven’t already, and confessed as the core of my be-ness? That I have cancer and my days are numbered in smaller denominations than most everyone else’s? (Check.) That my wife’s left me and probably won’t come back? (Check.) That my fathering and husbanding skills have been unexemplary and at best only serviceable? (Check.) That I’ve chosen a life smaller than my “talents” because a smaller life made me happier? (Check, check, double check.)
More tears are falling. I could laugh through them if I didn’t have a potentially self-erasing pain in my chest. What is it I’m supposed to accept? That I’m an asshole? (I confess.) That I have no heart? (I don’t confess.) But what would be the hardest thing to say and mean it? What would be the hardest for others? The Frantals? For Sally? For Mike Mahoney? For Ann? For anybody I know? All good souls to God?
And of course the answer’s plain, unless we’re actors or bad-check artists or spies, when it’s still probably plain but more tolerable: that your life is founded on a lie, and you know what the lie is and won’t admit it, maybe can’t. Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Deep in my heart space a breaking is. And as in our private moments of sexual longing, when the touch we want is far away, a groan comes out of me. “Oh-uhhh.” The sour tidal whoosh the dead man exhales. “Oh-uhhh. Oh-uhhh.” So long have I not accepted, by practicing the quaintness of acceptance by…. “Oh-uhhh. Oh-uhhh.” Breath-loss clenches my belly into a rope knot, clenching, clenching in. “Oh, oh, ohhhhhpp.” Yes, yes and yes. No more no’s. No more no’s. No more no’s.
A single rain spatter strikes the hood of my cold vehicle. I’m roused and gaunt, mouth open. Ears stinging. Fists balled. My feet ache. My neck’s stiff. My interior parts feel wounded, as if I’d been sealed in a barrel, tupped off a cliff, then rolled and rolled and rolled, bracing myself inside until stopped, upon a dark terrain I can’t see but only dream of.
“What now?” These are spoken words I manage. In the rearview, through the fogged back glass, there’s still the red smear of BAR across the lot. Two cars are left—the low-rider and a big Ram club cab. It feels late. Traffic on the 35 bridge has thinned to a trickle. “What now?” I offer again to the fates. I breathe a testing breath (no heart pain), then a deeper, colder one I fill my chest with and hold for my inner parts to register back. My temples go bump-bump-bump-bump behind my eyes, which feel tight. It’s better to close them, hands in my lap, cold knees together, elbows in, cranium on the headrest, chest expanded with held-in air. Dampness sits in the cockpit. I breathe out my deep inhale. And though it’s said (by ninnies) that we can never experience the exact moment of sleep’s arrival, still—and in a speed that amazes me—I do. “So it turns out, see, that China’s really fucking BIG” are the words I’m thinking, and they are like velvet with their comfort.
Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap. A pale moon’s face, young, mostly nose and chin and eyebrows, hangs outside my window glass—apprehensive, puzzled, a slight uncertain smile of wonder.
Is he dead? Is it too late?
At first it doesn’t scare me. And then, when I realize how deep in sleep I’ve been, I’m startled. My eyes blink and blink again. My heart goes from imperceptible to perceptible. Robbed, bludgeoned, dragged, heels in the muck, to the cold Manasquan and schlumped onto the tide like a rolled-up rug. I shrink from the glass to escape. I utter a small frightened sound. “Aaaaaaaaaa.”
The moon’s mouth is moving. Its muffled voice says, “I went to a club over in…” Static, static, static…“I seen your vehicle from the bridge…like…” Static, static.
I gawk through the glass, unable to fix on the face. My cheeks are cobwebby, my mouth bitter and dry. I’m frozen in my jacket and thin pants, but I’m willing to go back to sleep and be murdered that way.
“…So, are you, like, okay?” the pimpled young moon mouth says.
“Yep,” I say, not knowing who to.
But criminals don’t wonder if you’re okay. Or they shouldn’t.
The muffled voice outside says, “Did you find your keys?” An agreeable grin says, You’re a poor dope, aren’t you? You don’t know a goddamn thing. You’ll always have to be helped.
I push at the window button. Nothing happens. I struggle at the ignition, where there’s no key inserted. Things fall into place.
Chris speaks something else, something I can’t make out. I push open the heavy-weight door right into his chest and forehead as I hear him say “…under the mat.”
I stare up. He is no longer in his blue mechanic’s shirt that shows off his tattoos, but in a Jersey long-coat of inexpensive green vinyl manufacture, which makes him look like a seedy punk and is meant to. He’s cold, too, his hands stuffed in his shallow pockets. He’s rocking foot to foot. His nose is running, his forehead reddened, his hair a yellow tangle. But he is in positive spirits, possibly a little wine-drunk or stoned.
Cold air smacks my cheeks. “What time is it?”
Chris breathes out a congested nasal snurf. “Prolly. I don’t know. Midnight.” He looks over to Squatters. The BAR sign’s dark, but visible. No cars sit outside. Route 35’s a ghost highway, the bridge empty and palely lit. A garbage truck with a cop car leading it, blue flasher turning, moves slowly south toward Point Pleasant. “I seen your rig still here. I go, ‘Uh-oh, what the fuck is this?’” Chris shudders, tucks his chin into his lapel and breathes inside for warmth.
“I looked under the goddamn mat,” I say. I’m feeling extremely rough, as if I’d been manhandled for the second night in a row. I’m grinding my molars and must look deranged.
“That mat out front of the office,” Chris says, fidgety, chin down, pointing around toward the front door at a mat that’s invisible from my car. “We leave ’em there. That way, the car looks like it’s just sitting.”
“How the hell am I supposed to know that?”
“I don’t know,” says Chris. “It’s how everybody does it. How’d you get in?”
“It was unlocked.” I am slightly dazed.
“Oh. Man. I messed that up. I shoulda locked it. Lemme get them keys.”
Chris doesn’t act like a st
ruggling American Existentialist scholarship boy at Monmouth, but a sweet, knuckleheaded grease monkey weighing a stint in trade school or the Navy. He is who he ought to be. It is a lesson I could apply to my son Paul if I chose to, and should.
Chris hustles back with my arrowhead fob, but grinning. “Didn’t you get cold in ’ere?” He swabs his nose, sucks back, hocks one on the gravel. He is someone’s son, capable of a good deed performed without undue gravity. He has saved me tonight, after nearly killing me. I now see he has SATAN inked into the flesh of his left metacarpals and JESUS worked into the right ones. Both inexpertly done. Chris is on a quest, his soul in the balance.
“Yeah, but it was fine,” I say. “I went to sleep. How much for the window?” I straighten my left leg, where I’m sitting half out the door, so I can reach my billfold. I’m tempted to ask who’s winning his soul. Old number 666 rarely has a chance anymore except in politics.
“Thirty,” he says. “But you can mail it to him. It’s all shut up. I gotta get home. Tomorrow’s a holiday. My wife’ll kill me.”
Wife! Chris has one of those already? Possibly he’s older than he looks. Possibly he’s not even Greek. Possibly he’s a father himself. Why do we think we know anything?
“Me, too.” A marital lie to make me feel better. “Thanks.” I effect a sore-necked look back at the duct-taped window, seemingly as impregnable as a bank.
“No problem,” Chris says. His skin-pink Camaro with a bright green replacement passenger door sits idling behind us, headlights shining, interior light on, its door standing open. “You’d be surprised how many of them babies I fix a month.” He grins again, a boyish grin, his teeth straight, strong and white. He’s leaving, rescue complete, heading home to his Maria or his Silvie, who won’t be mad, and will thrill to his return (after modest resistance).
“How old are you?” It seems the essential question to ask of the young.
“Thirty-one.” A surprise. “How ’bout you?”
