Grace turned around and stomped out of the water. “Screw you,” she said, feeling an equal mix of anger and embarrassment.
She yanked the towel off Beverly’s shoulders, sat on the telephone pole, and dried off her legs.
Beverly sat beside her. “They were just fooling around, Grace.”
“Uh-huh, I know.” Grace didn’t look at her friend.
“Why’re you so upset? It was only a goof.”
“I thought he was… Can we just get out of here? I wanna go home.”
Beverly started to answer, but Hooch and Ricky came to a decision for the group.
“Your turn,” Hooch said to Ricky. “Climb on up, mister brass balls.” He blew a snot rocket into the water.
But Ricky was already putting his clothes back on, slipping on a boot. “Gotta boogey, my man. We’re outta beer, and the store’s gonna close soon.”
“Oh man, already?” Hooch said.
“Yessir,” Ricky said.
Hooch slicked his hair back with both hands. “What’re we waiting for? Let’s go.”
This was a subject that required no debate. Out of beer? Have to get more. It was practically the natural law of male teenage life.
Hooch trudged out of the water, rinsing the mud from his body as he went. When he made landfall, Grace noticed he had a long, thin gash on the top of his foot. It was bleeding, but he didn’t seem to feel it. He got dressed in a hurry, and so did Beverly.
Grace just wanted the evening to be over. She wanted to go home. It was the last time she would ever do a favor like this for her friend.
Ten minutes later, they were all packed in Ricky’s car again. The stale scent of lake water and damp towels mixed with the ugly smell of beer breath. Grace disliked the car almost as much as she did Ricky and Hooch. But it wasn’t so much the car itself she didn’t like. It was the way Ricky drove it: fast and loud. Dangerously.
One day, he would hurt someone. Or worse.
2
Elhouse and his wife, Gertrude (Gertie to those closest to her), never had delusions of retirement. It simply wasn’t in the cards for them, and they were just fine with that. They ran a farm and never had children who could take over, so the work was what they had. But it was honest work, and it was an honest life. They both agreed on that. Not that they ever said as much out loud to each other, but it was a thing that never needed discussion. That was just the way it was. It was understood. And it was good. A shared rule born out of forty-five years of marriage. Contentment, Elhouse had learned, lived not in the words spoken to one another, but in the moments where they were not necessary. In the comfortable silences of a life spent together.
Even as they got along in years and their age crept up through their fifties, then their sixties, and now found them both spry and gray in their seventies, they never entertained the idea of not working. Of not tending and cutting the hay. Not raising the chickens and cleaning the coops. Or planting corn. And why should they? Both were in good health, and both wholeheartedly agreed that keeping active and busy had seen to that. As Elhouse’s father had always said: The day you retire is the day you start dying. And with every season that passed, those words seemed to gather more weight. A person needed a purpose, Elhouse believed, a reason to plant one’s feet on the floor come sunrise, and since neither Gertie nor Elhouse was ready to start dying, retirement wasn’t an option.
They did, however, enjoy taking their evening walks. It might’ve been the closest thing to a recreational activity they had.
Their farm was on fifteen acres of flat land on the outer edge of Gilchrist near Big Bath, and their house sat at the front of the property along Waldingfield Road, a narrow, dirt access road that began off Route 2 and cut through to downtown Gilchrist.
“You about ready, Gert? Daylight ain’t waiting on you,” Elhouse said over his shoulder, and went back to what he was doing.
He was sitting on the front steps of the porch, lacing up his boots. If he didn’t make sure they were tight, he would get blisters again, and then he would have to hear his wife tell him all about it, especially if it caused them to cut their walk short. She liked to get in five miles, which meant walking in the direction of town until they reached Gould’s Creek, then turning back. Two and a half miles each way. That was what Elhouse referred to as his wife’s “Long-haul Backbuster.” He could do it, sure, but he was just as satisfied walking to the fallen elm, sitting for a few minutes and having a pipe of Cavendish, then heading home. His route, full circuit, was just shy of three miles, and that sat far better with his feet and back than Gertie’s five. He had found that hers left him sore, and also had them walking back in the dark this time of year, and he didn’t like that. The narrow road was dangerous after dark, especially during the summer when the kids took to getting drunk up at the lake, often turning Waldingfield Road into their own personal drag strip on the way back to town.
The screen door opened and clapped shut behind him. “Ready when you are,” Gertie said.
Elhouse pushed himself up and faced his wife. “My, my, my, Mrs. Mayer, don’t you look like beauty’s finest hour.”
He was in the same dirty overalls and cotton shirt he had worn all day, but his wife had changed into a dark-blue house dress and cinched her gray-white hair back into a ponytail. She looked twenty years younger, Elhouse thought.
“Oh, stop it, Elhouse,” she said, playfully abashed. She took the railing and came down the steps. “If you think I’m leaving the house in filthy chore clothes, you better think again. Just because I live on a farm doesn’t mean I’m an animal.”
They both laughed.
Then Elhouse repeated what he had said: “I meant it… a beautiful vision you are.”
“You tie your boots right this time? I don’t want to make it halfway and have to start listening to you complain about blisters.”
Elhouse wiggled his feet, looking down at them. “Just did. Military knots, guaranteed by the good old US of A.”
Gertie smiled, and they headed out of the driveway and down the road in the direction of town. As always, she set the pace, and tonight she walked slowly but with a steady, measured gait. Elhouse recognized her five-mile stride. His back wouldn’t be spared this time, and that was okay. It was never that bad once they were into it.
3
They reached the creek just as the sun went mute in the sky. That meant they had roughly forty-five minutes before full dark, less than that in the thickly wooded parts of the road, which made up most of it. Gertie’s pace had gotten them to the Gould’s Creek Bridge in less than an hour, and that was good time. Elhouse’s back and feet were barking, but it was nothing a few Blue Ribbons couldn’t handle when he got home. And at least he didn’t have any blisters.
He looked over at his wife. Gertie was leaning with her back against the bridge railing, her eyes closed and her face looking up to the darkening canopy of trees. She breathed in deep through her nose and smiled, just taking it all in.
“Nice, ain’t it?” Elhouse said in a reflective tone. He was chewing on the end of his unlit pipe, his forearms resting on the railing as he leaned over and watched the water ten feet below.
Gertie didn’t respond, but he hadn’t expected her to. It was one of those comfortable silences that would say all they had not to each other.
A leaf, bobbing and listing in the water, passed under the bridge, and Elhouse followed it up the creek until his eyes lost sight of it. After that, he just watched the creek snake away, listening to the hypnotic burble of shallow water running over rocks. He watched where the creek bent and disappeared into the darkening woods, and just let his eyes relax. He stared into the shadows, trying to see beyond them. He did that for thirty seconds or so. A minute. Maybe two. Eventually he lost track.
“I love the way it smells out here,” Gertie said, breaking her husband’s trance. “It reminds me of when I was a little girl.”
The air was cool in the woods around the creek, but it was still sticky with a st
range, chilly humidity, like a damp cellar full of organic scents. And a faint smell of smoke.
Elhouse looked away from the dark pocket of the woods he’d been staring into. “What’s that, now?”
Gertie lowered her head, opening her eyes and looking at Elhouse. “You fall asleep on me? I sure hope not. I don’t think I could carry you back.”
“No, just thinking.”
Gertie turned around and put both hands on the railing. Then she put a foot up on the lower crossbeam and rocked back slowly, moving like she was in the prime of her life, and maybe she was. “I said the smell out here reminds me of when I was younger. Always does.”
“Yeah?” Elhouse said, distracted. “How so?”
“I don’t know. I can’t put my finger on it exactly. Ain’t you ever smell something that makes you think of a thing—a time, a place—you forgot about… or that you didn’t even know you’d forgotten?”
Elhouse worked the pipe to the other side of his mouth using only his lips. It was a practiced move. “What the hell are you talking about, woman? I think this fresh air’s gone straight to your head.” The truth was Elhouse knew exactly what she was talking about, and he didn’t know why he had denied it.
She sniffed, amused. “Oh, you know what I’m saying. I’m sure you do.”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do. That’s okay,” she said matter-of-factly, a smile touching her lips.
Elhouse rubbed the side of his face with a flat hand, his eyes moving from his wife back to where the creek disappeared around the bend. He suddenly became aware of a strange sensation of being watched. He kept staring into the woods, and he was certain he felt something looking back. That feeling came with an uncomfortable sense of dread. Like something in his world was out of alignment.
“We should head home. It’ll be night soon.” He slapped his neck. “Buggers are bad tonight, too.” There hadn’t been a mosquito; he just wanted to leave that place before the growing feeling inside him had a chance to become full-sized.
Gertie looked at her husband, reading the wooden look setting on his face. “Okay, let’s go. Is it your back or your feet?”
Elhouse forced a smile. “Little of both, I guess.”
“All right, I suppose that’s enough for tonight.”
Gertie sidled up alongside Elhouse and took his arm as they began their walk back.
They were less than a half mile from home when the sound of a racing engine cut through the quiet of the woods, shattering their peaceful evening. It started far-off at first, but in an instant, the noise was on top of them, everywhere, heading in their direction. After a few seconds, it came into view. The car fishtailed around the long bend a hundred yards up the road, its headlights wild and pitching, bobbing up and down over the shallow potholes. At normal speeds, that hundred yards might’ve seemed like a great distance, but the car was not traveling at normal speeds. The engine was grinding at full throttle. A rooster tail of dust billowed out from the car’s rear tires.
“Watch yourself, now, Gertie,” Elhouse said. “It’s that goddamn Osterman son of a bitch. I’m gonna kill im.”
They shuffled to the shoulder of the road and stood in the brush and tall grass on the edge of the steep embankment that dropped off the road.
Panic burst whitely in his gut. The Osterman kid was really flying. He didn’t look like he even had control of the car. Elhouse stepped in front of his wife.
Ricky either didn’t see them, or he didn’t care. The car was headed right for them. It couldn’t have been more than a hundred feet away. The headlights blared yellow. The black car screamed in their direction, engine ripping. It was still breaking loose in the dirt, but it straightened out and Ricky goosed it, the intake taking a huge gulp of air.
“Slow down!” Elhouse yelled, shaking his fist at the car, as if that would do any good against the two tons of steel and rubber barreling toward him at seventy miles per hour.
“I don’t think they’re stopping. Now move it!” Gertie tugged on her husband’s arm, trying to pull him down the embankment. Her words were hardly audible over the roar of the engine.
They tumbled down the embankment right as the car sped by, one tire riding the shoulder, narrowly missing them both.
From inside, someone yelled, “Fuck outta the way!” and cackled, then threw something out the window. As Elhouse fell, he saw a beer can tumble across the road. The car was full of kids.
Elhouse lay in the brush at the bottom of the embankment for a few moments, staring up at the fading evening sky behind the canopy of trees, listening as the chug of the engine and the screams of the teenagers disappeared down the road. The summer insects became the only sound again, and the air fell still.
Gertie was breathing beside him. He sat up and looked at her. “You okay? I’m gonna kill those bastards. I swear, if it’s the last thing…” He looked after the car, shook his head, and turned back to his wife.
She blinked rapidly, eyes searching for something, as if she were waking up from a deep sleep. “I’m all right… I think.”
“It was Nate Osterman’s boy again.”
Gertie tried to sit up and winced. “I think I twisted my knee.”
Elhouse helped her position herself, then slid her dress up and looked at her leg. Her left knee was already starting to swell, and a small cut on her shin was weeping blood. There was also a knot over her eyebrow that would likely bruise.
“Yeah, I think you might’ve knocked it good. Prolly sprained it,” Elhouse said. “Goddamn idiots. Nearly killed you. They been drinking out at the lake and tearing up and down this road drunk all summer. I’m sick of it. I told Corbin, but he ain’t wanna do nothing about it.”
“Oh, it’s okay. I don’t want to make it into a big to-do.”
“No, it isn’t okay. We’re lying down in a ditch. Ain’t nothing okay about that.”
“Gettin all worked up about it won’t do any good, now will it? Nothing we can do about it. Boys will be boys. Don’t you remember racing around when you first got your license? No sense in getting some kids in trouble over a little accident.” She touched her knee softly and grimaced.
Normally, Elhouse admired her willingness to find the best of any situation, no matter how one-sided it was. But this time, her optimism nearly made him blow his stack.
“What’re you going on about, woman? That weren’t no accident. He almost killed us both. He prolly would’ve if we didn’t get outta the way.”
“Oh, don’t be so dramatic.”
Elhouse bit his tongue; it wasn’t worth getting into an argument now. He got to his feet, wiping off the seat of his overalls, and offered his hand to Gertie. She took it and he pulled her up, putting his arm around her waist and taking the weight off her bad leg.
“Let’s just get you home so we can tend to that knee,” he said.
She took a hobbled step. “All right. Get me bandaged up, and I’ll be right as rain tomorrow.”
“Woman, you’re staying off this leg until it heals. None of your tough-as-an-ox stuff. You want it to get better, you rest. Let’s go. Easy now.”
They made their way up the embankment and were back on the road, Gertie intact but with a new limp. Elhouse looked in both directions, then down at the crumpled beer can on the side of the road. Suddenly, as if something had called his name, he turned and glanced over his shoulder.
“Something wrong?” Gertie asked.
His eyes lingered long on the deep darkness spreading in the woods as night fell. Something was out there. Watching. He could feel it in his heart.
“No,” he said. “Thought I heard a deer, maybe.”
They headed in the direction of home, their pace slow, but together steady.
4
“What’s the matter with you?” Grace yelled, once she was out of Ricky’s car.
They were parked in front of the liquor store. A woman and her young son glanced at the commotion as they passed by, but kept on going up the sidewa
lk. They stopped to turn around and gawk once they reached the corner. A man pulling boxes from the bed of his truck stopped what he was doing, too.
“What?” Hooch said, and shut his door. “He was kidding around. Relax.”
But Hooch didn’t sound like he believed his own words very much. It sounded more like he was trying to convince himself of it.
Beverly, arms folded, went toward Grace. “Grace, calm down. It wasn’t a big deal. Let’s just forget about it, okay? He won’t do anything like that again.”
“Are you serious, Bev? Yes, he will. He’s a psycho. I’m not getting back in that car.”
Ricky got out and looked at Grace from across the roof of his car as she stood in the street, her fists clenched at her sides. “Beer? Booze? What’ll it be? I’m buying,” he said, grinning arrogantly.
Grace snapped, sidestepping Beverly so that Ricky knew she was speaking to him and only him. “You could’ve killed them, you jerk!” She had never been so angry in her life, and she wanted him to feel stupid. It was the only way she knew how to fight back, even though she hated stooping that low.
“Yeah, but I didn’t,” Ricky said dismissively. He shut his door, lit a cigarette, then rested his arms on top of his car and stared at Grace. “You wanna get over it and move on? We can keep having a fun time.” He hesitated, then smirked at her. “But you don’t gotta act like a bitch just because your dad’s the law around here. Un-bunch those panties, Gracie.” He stuck out his tongue and wiggled it suggestively.
She stomped her foot, feeling silly for doing it. “You’re a psycho, Ricky. You think I was having fun with you today?” She laughed at him. “Oh please. Forget it. You think you’re so cool and funny, but you’re nothing but a loser. I bet Chris doesn’t even like hanging out with you.” She looked at Hooch. His face was stalled with surprise. “He only does it because he thinks he has to. He’s afraid of you because you’re crazy.”
Ricky’s face went dark, his eyes sinking deep. “You better watch your mouth. You don’t want to mess with me, Gracie. You don’t know what I can do. I—”
Gilchrist: A Novel Page 7
