by G. M. Ford
The UPS driver was already out of the truck and on his way inside one of the buildings. They may run the tightest ship in the shipping business, but they're a pain in the ass in traffic. As far as UPS drivers are concerned, the world is their parking lot.
I'd made up nearly four blocks by the time the pickup had managed to force its way out into the left lane. I had no trouble making the light as he turned right up University. He was heading for the freeway.
I stayed a respectful quarter mile back as we worked our way up I-5. He wove in and out of traffic, missing no opportunity to make additional time, zigzagging through the building stream of afternoon commuters. I had no choice but to do likewise. When I was younger, I used to drive like this all the time. Today I expected to be pulled over, pummeled, and summarily arrested at any moment. I felt old and stodgy.
For the next fifteen miles only the constant thickening of the traffic allowed me to keep him in sight. As we roared through the confluence of I-5 and I-405, something was ejected from the truck window. It bounced several times and came to a stop on the shoulder. The Rainer can was still spinning as I shot past.
As the traffic thinned out on the north side of Everett, the driver put the hammer own. He was cruising at a smooth eighty. Bits of debris parachuted from the bed of the truck. The Fiat was flat out and losing ground. Another can was thrown from the truck. I was standing on the accelerator. The little car didn't have any more to give. Five more minutes and I was going to be history. I backed off. No point in eating an engine in a lost cause.
As I crested the top of a small rise, I saw the Ford, now a half mile ahead, veer sharply to the right and head down the Marysville exit ramp. There was still hope. I got back on the gas.
It was better than that. The ramp was full. The light was red. The truck was no more than a hundred yards ahead when I ran the yellow and made the turn toward downtown Marysville. For the first time, I could make out the red-and-blue flannel shirt of the driver through the dusty window.
We moved our way back out the east side of town, first through a lower-income residential neighborhoods, then through a seedy commercial zone, and finally, nearly at the edge of civilization itself, through an unpopulated area of defunct sawmills and construction companies.
Without so much as tapping the brakes, the driver made a ninety-degree turn into the gravel parking lot, spewing dust and stones at the truck fought for traction. I continued up past the next building and turned right.
The narrow driveway led back past the building. I pulled to a stop. I was in the back parking lot of Johnson Logging Supply. Several concrete dividers separated this little lot from the big one next door. I had a perfect view of the parking lot and the front door. The Ford was empty.
The Last Stand was a large bunkerlike bar surrounded by five acres of empty gravel parking lot. Two tiny windows marred the otherwise smooth block front of the building. They probably just needed a place to put the flashing beer signs.
They oversize lot was full of pickups and aging American sedans, parked here and there in no discernible pattern, some north and south, some east and west, some at odd angles like they'd died on the spot. Free-form parking. An affront to civilized society.
The flannel shirt was standing to the left of the front door making conversation with a couple of other Indians. He was no more than twenty, slim but well put together. From what I could see, he was a good-looking kid. A wide, smooth expanse of face accented by oversize dark eyes. His black hair was cut longer than was presently fashionable downtown but was nowhere in the ballpark of the flowing manes of the two guys he was talking to.
They could have been father and son. One was about the kid's age, his long hair held down by a black-and-white baseball cap. The Raiders maybe. His back was partially turned, but even from this distance I could see the acne scars that dominated his ruined face. The other guy was about sixty and moved with the lean stiffness of a cowboy. Three feet of graying hair sprouted from under his battered cowboy hat. He kept his arms tightly folded over his chest.
It wasn't hard to read the body language. The kid I'd been following was animated enough. He used his arms like an orchestra leader, punctuating his points with a series of sweeps and jabs. The other two might as well have been cast in bronze. They listened impassively, the older one occasionally turning away to sweep the dirt with a boot tip, glancing my way once or twice. They were otherwise unmoved and unmoving. While I was too far away to catch the words, they sure as hell weren't catching up on old times. The kid was in their faces about something serious, but they weren't going for it.
A one-ton flatbed roared into the lot and slid to a stop directly between my position and the front door. Through the dust, I could see six or eight more Indians, a couple of them women, climb down from the bed and start inside. The truck zoomed off, showering dirt and gravel as it made a wide loop around the lot, bounced back into the street, turned left, and headed back the way it had come. The local Metro shuttle.
The two other guys had used the diversion to make their escape. By the time the dust settled enough for me to see again, the pair were backing slowly toward the nearest jumble of parked cars, agreeing as they retreated.
They got into a peeling puke-green Nova. The older guy was driving. He must have missed the local driver's ed class. He pulled slowly from the lot, casting a tentative wave at the Ford driver as he went by. The kid shook his head sadly and went inside.
As the last of the dust settled to the ground, I considered my next move. It seemed a good bet that the Last Stand was not the watering hole of choice of the local yuppie set. I was betting on a full-scale, balls-to-the-wall, shit-kicker Saturday-night Indian bar. I stayed put.
I rummaged around in the cooler, came up with a turkey sandwich and a Pepsi. I punched the button for KPLU and was rewarded with an old Quebec tune. One of those excuse-me-while-I-slip-into-something-more-comfortable saxophone riffs that speaks of jagged skylines, wet streets, and slippery lingerie. I sat back, munching slowly, and waited it out.
For the first few hours arrivals far outnumbered departures. By ten-thirty the trend had reversed itself, and the lot began to clear. When the midnight NPR news interrupted my reverie, the big Ford pickup was but one of a dozen or so cars left in the lot. The Last Stand was getting down to the hard core. People with no better place to be. I was getting itchy.
I got out and stretched for the umpteenth time. I wandered over to the chain-link fence at the back of Johnson's little lot and pissed on the fence.
Loud talk and laughter rolled across the lot as two more cars filled up and headed elsewhere. The Ford stayed put.
I considered going inside but discarded the idea again. My initial impression had proved correct. The clientele had been exclusively Native American. I wondered whether my assumption that I should not be welcome was the product of prejudice or just common sense. Either way I'd stick out like a sore thumb, and the kid was almost certain to get a look at me. I stayed put.
It was one-twelve by the dashboard clock when the kid came out, walking a crooked path, and ambled over to his truck. He was carrying one for the road in his left hand. The stillness, I could hear him pumping the gas pedal. The truck roared to life on the fourth try. I backed the Fiat into the fence, shot up the narrow drive, and was waiting at the street when the Ford came into view. The kid wasn't taking any chances. He drove like he was looking for an address. Staying well within the posted limits, using his signals. I followed at a respectful distance as we wound our way back along the path we'd traveled earlier.
We cut under the freeway, past the Tulalip Cultural Center, and out toward the reservation. Traffic was light. I slowed and left more distance between us. He tooled along at forty for another five miles. Traffic was now nonexistent. We were the only two people out here. As the Ford disappeared around a sweeping left turn, I cut my lights and sped up. I stayed just far enough back to be invisible, hoping there were no cops around.
Another mile and the br
ake lights on the pickup flashed briefly and then came on full-bore. I slowed. He turned left into a dirt driveway. I pulled the Fiat to the right-hand shoulder, got out, and sprinted across the road. I had no way of knowing how far back the driveway ran or if there was a turnaround. The only safe course was to follow on foot.
As I started down the lane, I could see the pickup roll to a stop about a quarter mile down. I relaxed. The Ford's dome light came on briefly. I stepped into the thick bushes that lined the roadway. The kid got out, walked around the back of the truck, and leisurely took a piss in his driveway. He didn't bother to rearrange himself. Holding his sagging britches with one hand, he wobbled out of view to the right of the truck.
I started up the rutted track. House lights appeared through the thick branches that lined the road. I stumbled and nearly went to one knee. I moved from the wheel ruts, which were potholed and uneven, up to the berm of the road where the native grasses had been systematically mowed by the truck's undercarriage. The going got both easier and quieter.
I was nearly to the truck. I walked as quietly as I could. A small cabin, surrounded by a pole fence, sat diagonally across a hacked-out clearing in the forest. The builder had left one tree at each end of the yard. The kid was using them to anchor a clothesline. Several flannel shirts and a couple of pair of jeans moved slowly in the night breeze. One of the shirts was split completely up the back. I wondered why he'd bothered to wash it. No women. No kids. I could see the kid moving around inside the house.
When he came by the front window for the second time, he was stripped down to a yellowed pair of jockey shorts. He left the lighted living room and wandered toward the darkened end of the house. Through the window on the far right, I saw the refrigerator door open, its light casting dim shadows on the ceiling. The door closed. He turned out the lights on his way back through the houses. The place was dark. He'd gone to bed. I envied him.
I walked back toward the Fiat. When I reached the main road, I went hunting for his mailbox. No such luck. No mailbox of any kind was to be found within a quarter mile in any direction. Either he didn't get much mail or he had a box in town. I wandered back to the Fiat.
Sleeping in the Fiat was no-the-job training for curvature of the spine, to be avoided at all costs. While trudging up and down the road in search of the mailbox, I'd noticed a small turnout, big enough to hide the little car, about a hundred yards up on the right. I backed her in until the overhanging willow branches folded back over the front end. I forced the door open, grabbed my sleeping bag from behind the seat, and, using the sleeping bag as a shield for my face, rammed my way back out to the road.
About thirty yards short of the cabin, I once again stepped off into the bushes and pushed another twenty yards through the dense underbrush. I was in a small clearing, shielded from the driveway by a thick row of bushes but close enough so that there was no way he could drive by me without waking me up. I spread the ground cloth and then the bag. I took off my jacket and rolled it into a pillow. Fully dressed, I slid into the bag.
A few misguided clouds roamed about an otherwise perfect sky. Somebody once said that living in Seattle was like being married to a beautiful woman who was sick all the time. The lady was feeling fine tonight. I'd probably wake to snow.
Chapter 8
My old man was strictly an indoor guy. While he was a vapid defender of the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest, he was not personally inclined to go mucking about in it. He claimed the years of hardship and deprivation had exacted a terrible toll on his body, leaving him with a mysterious collection of bone-grinding ailments that made it impossible for him to survive even a single night in the great outdoors. I'd believed him.
In the fall after my twelfth birthday, he announced one evening over dinner that he had arranged for me to spend the weekend over in Ellensburg, pheasant hunting with a couple of my unless. They weren't actually uncles. People who came to the house for social occasions had full names. Mr. Handley, Council man Baines. Then there were the drunks and reprobates, the remnants of the old man's former life whom my mother refused to allow in her home. They were uncles.
A spirited argument ensued. My mother, showing her usual uncanny powers of memory, dredged up each and every foible, folly, and felony readily attributable to the chosen pair. The old man held firm. It was a rite of passage, he claimed. A boy's birthright. An initiation ceremony.
Obviously having anticipated just such an impasse, my father briefly left the room. He returned carrying a brand-new double-barrelled Ithaca sixteen-gauge shotgun and a box of shells, which he presented to me with a flair and flourish normally reserved for visiting potentates.
My mother knew when she was licked. She flounced from the room, her skirt dragging a chafing dish of steamed carrots to the floor behind her. Just before slamming the dining room door, she cast one glance at the old man and another at the carrots rolling about the carpet. The carrots got the better of it.
The next morning, long before daylight, I found myself wedged between Amos Johnson and Buford Patterson as Buford's battered Ford pickup labored over Snoqualmie Pass.
Amos and Buford passed a bottle of Old Crow back and forth in front of my face. About every third pass, one or the other would remember his manners and offer me a pull. I always refused.
While I was intrigued by the heady smell of the amber liquid and filled with an intense desire to be one of the boys, both Amos and Buford chewed while they drank. Between rounds, as the bottle rested in Amos's lap, I noticed about half a dip of wintergreen snuff floating contentedly on the surface like the Spanish Armada. The idea of straining the snuff through my teeth was more than I could bear.
Hunting was fine. Amos and Buford knew what they were doing. By noon they'd both bagged the limit. We made a pass by the truck, where they left the birds and packed up their own shotguns. Now it was my turn.
They led me across two fields to a wooded draw that cut partway down the hillside. They explained the procedure. They'd been saving this particular draw for me. I was to stand at the downhill end of the draw. They would start at the uphill end and work the draw, driving the birds before them. The birds would run as long as there was cover. Reaching the far end, where I'd be waiting, the birds would take flight right in front of my face. I was admonished to keep firing and reloading until I saw Amos and Buford emerge from the bottom of the draw.
Before it was over, I'd emptied both barrels four times and downed two pheasants. One cock, one hen. Oops. The guys weren't finicky. Meat was meat. They led me back to our campsite with a series of hugs and congratulatory claps on the back. Whatever failings I'd shown as a drinker, I'd more than compensated as a hunter. We ate the hen. Nothing had ever tasted better. I'd never felt more alive.
What I remember most vividly was that night around the campfire. Amos and Buford built a huge bonfire at the bottom of the little rocky wash we were using as a windbreak. It was early October, and while the day had been warm enough to raise beads of sweat on my upper lip a I'd trudged up and down the rolling foothills, the minute the sun went down, it got cold in a big hurry.
After depositing several logs bigger than my body on top of the fire, Amos and Buford rolled themselves into their meager bedrolls as close to the fire as they dared and summarily fell into comas.
I lay in my Sears mail-order sleeping bag and watched the stars. There was no middle ground. The front side of me facing the fire threatened to blister at any moment, while the back half of my body struggled to shiver. I'd never known such extremes. No matter how hard I closed my eyes, the lapping flames intruded into my sleep. The glow forced its way under my eyelids. The ripping and popping of the fire poked me from sleep like insistent fingers.
I sat up with a start. Amos and Buford were long dead. I didn't hunt anymore. The kid's cabin was a raging, white-hot inferno. Flames tore through the roof and escaped through the blown-out windows. I was better than a hundred feet away, shielded by a wall of vegetation, but the flames made my face fe
ll as taut as if it were caked with dried mud.
I scrambled out of the bag and ran headlong out into the driveway, branches tearing at my exposed face. I didn't get far.
Forty feet behind the truck the heat became so intense that I couldn't force myself any farther. The fire was white as a welding rod. I raced back and grabbed my sleeping bag.
I put on my jacket, unzipped the bag except for the very bottom, which I draped over my head, and began to inch my way toward the truck.
The cabin was beyond redemption. The roof over the kitchen end had collapsed already. Nothing in there was alive. If the kid hadn't escaped by now, he wasn't going to. That left the truck.
I could smell the exterior of the sleeping bag by the time I reached for the truck. The door handle burned my hand. I pulled my hand back inside the sleeve of my jacket and, using the sleeve like an oven mitt, jerked open the door. the plastic steering wheel was beginning to sweat. The truck would be the next to go. I leaned across the seat.
I opened the glove box and scooped the contents down the front of my jacket, where I hoped the elastic would keep it pressed to my body. One of the tires closest to the house exploded with a pop. The truck settled. I found the seat release and pushed the seat forward. A long Nike gym bag was behind the seat. I grabbed it and retreated without closing the door.
I'd made it halfway back to where I'd been sacked out when the truck went up like a rocket, throwing me to the ground. My lungs empty of air, I forced myself up and, dragging the Nike bag behind me, crawled another thirty yards down the driveway.
My sleeping bag was smoking. The green nylon on the outside had melted, exposing the wispy goose down to the breeze. Feathers, drawn by the chimney of the superheated air, rose up into the night and joined the funnel of debris floating sixty feet over the cabin. I realized I'd been unconsciously sobbing. I sat on my haunches, locking my arms around my knees, and tried to catch my breath. The air was too heavy for breathing.
