“Thank you for calling, Edna,” Ward Hooper said now. “Please tell everyone hello for me. I hope I see you all again one day.”
“I will,” said Edna. “And tell your wife hello for us.”
She lay the phone down on the table next to her coffee cup. Her SAD was back, big time. She could feel the weight of it pressing down on her shoulders and neck as if it were a ton of fresh snow, pushing any happiness out of her. After Ward Hooper left town, it was as if her life went back to being just a life again, with all the sparks gone out of it. A life unplugged. Venice without electricity. What about that excited chill she got seeing his white pickup parked at Blanche’s? That’s when she sat outside in her car, using her compact mirror to dab on some lipstick. Then that sparkling pause at the front door when the brass knob seemed about to burn her hand, that surprised expression on her face when Ward glanced up to see who made the bell ring. That “Oh, you’re here, Ward Hooper?” look that she had practiced over the months he was in town and now, now that the look was as good as it could get, she had no more use for it.
***
It was eleven o’clock and Billy Thunder was sound asleep when he heard his phone ring. With no odds jobs to be found around town that day, hard as he had solicited for them, he had nothing to do but sleep in, buried beneath several blankets. He lay on the narrow bed listening as his answering machine clicked on. “This is Thunder. You know what to do, so do it or hang up the phone.” Then came his Grateful Elvis. “FuckYouNowFuckYouVeryMuch.” Billy heard the sound of heavy breathing, a sense of living energy on the other end of the phone line. He could tell that it was the older and fatter one, George Delgato, or Jorge, as he called himself. Jorge always paused a long time before he said anything, even when Billy did answer the phone. It was part of his swagger, a way of doing business that said, “I’m so important I’m not in any hurry at all.”
Billy leaned over and peered down at the incoming number that always turned up as if by magic on his telephone. He knew the Portland number by heart, but this wasn’t a Portland number. All it said was Out of Area in the plastic window box. Billy waited, staring at the telephone as if it might tell him who was holding the receiver on the other end of the line. If it were the Delgatos, surely they were still in Portland, driving that big ugly Caddy from bar to bar, their stomachs riding ahead of them like air bags, acting like mafia big shots and waiting for night to fall so they could chow down on steaks at Murray’s Restaurant & Bar. But why hadn’t Raul’s phone number announced itself as usual? There was a click now. Whoever was calling had hung up. Billy picked up the phone and punched the little star and then 6 and 9. He got an automated voice. We’re sorry but the last incoming call cannot be… He hung up. Before any kind of panic could set in, Billy laughed so that he could hear for himself there was nothing but calm in his voice. Those two idiots had a hard time finding Murray’s once they’d hit the Bacardi bottle, which started around noontime. They were screwing with his head, wanting him to think they were on their way north. Good move. It almost worked too. Le muerte visitará. Death will visit.
Billy lay back on his bed and shut his eyes.
“Patearé asno de muerte,” he said. I’ll kick death’s ass.
And this was when the sadness came creeping in, his younger life coming to haunt him, to remind him of how bad his present life was turning out. There had been a time—had it been in his freshman or sophomore year of high school?—that he had been the golden boy. He was good with math, good with languages, good with art and history, good with geography. His brother and sister still seemed to love him. He had first pick of girls in his class and was good at baseball, better at basketball. So when had his future risen up like a snake and turned to bite him? How did it happen that he was now in Mattagash, Maine, in a camper that would look like a soup can if someone wrapped a Campbell’s label around it, with business associates who often had to close down shop for a stint at the local penitentiary? He thought of the girlfriend he had left behind in Portland. Her name wasn’t Elizabeth Miller at all, but Phoebe Perkins. She was a waitress at Murray’s Restaurant & Bar, and she believed for certain that Billy Thunder was the best idea to ever stroll into her life. When he left Portland to avoid those bouncing checks and maybe establish a new business arm in a remote and deprived area, Billy hadn’t even stopped at the restaurant to say good-bye. The last he had seen of Phoebe was when she slid away from him in bed, at her apartment on Baker Street, had showered, had dressed in her pink uniform that all the waitresses wore at Murray’s, and had kissed him good-bye as he lay half-asleep. His mother would have said that Phoebe was a good girl. Maybe that’s why Billy believed somewhere down in the parts of his heart that were still good, still running on conscience, that Phoebe Perkins deserved someone better than a small-time drug dealer recently let go from the home office. He should have told her that he was leaving town for a while, until things cooled off. The problem was, that last check he wrote and the one with the most numbers on it, a check for one thousand dollars and zero cents, was written to someone named Phoebe Perkins. Billy had postdated it and was certain he could eventually make it good. So Phoebe had put the check on her dresser and had cashed one of her own. She counted a thousand dollars worth of bills into Billy’s hand. Ten Ben Franklins. He needed that money to pay off a loan from the Delgato cousins so that they would keep him on the work force as their best salesman. You have to spend money sometimes to make money. Everyone knows that. When the Delgatos demanded their thousand back, that’s when Billy had written the check to Phoebe. So while he was at it, he wrote a few more, one to Mason’s Grocery for $300, and one to Everette’s Construction Company for $500, and one to Lori’s Lawn Supplies for $200. Mason trusted him just enough, Everette was someone he knew from back in high school, and Lori was an older woman who had the hots for him. That would be enough to give Phoebe back cash money for the grand he’d borrowed. He would tell her to tear up the check he’d written to her, now that his bank account had become a hotbed, with checks bouncing like Mexican jumping beans. But then Billy couldn’t stop writing bad checks. The phone company got one, the water company, the electric company. His brother got a $100 check for his birthday and his sister the same, although their birthdays were months away. Splurge on your special day! Billy had written next to his signed name. He wrote checks to people he hardly knew. One was for $75 for the oldest waitress on the floor at Murray’s, a generous tip because she was over sixty and should be at home watering flowers instead of working so hard to make a living. So the bank wanted him too, along with Mason, Everette, Lori, and the others. Billy felt like that pastry he had read about as a kid, the gingerbread man, with everyone in town chasing after him, wanting to sink their teeth into his ass.
Still, everything could have been fixed somehow, with enough time and money, except for one thing. When he’d gotten that money from Mason and Everette and Lori, the thousand bucks that would repay Phoebe and stop her from depositing a check that would only bounce to the moon and back, Billy hadn’t given her the money. He had gone down to the local poker game in the brown two-story building on the corner of Frisk and Renfrow, the best damn poker game in town, with the intentions of making that thousand dollars double, maybe even triple. As he rang the doorbell on the second floor where the game was held, he imagined himself strolling into Murray’s the next day, using that slow, sexy walk he knew he had. He’d wait until Phoebe could pour herself a glass of Coke and take her ten-minute break, sitting across the table from him and staring at him like he really was someone important and worthwhile. He knew what he’d say to her, dragging it out before he finally produced the money. Here’s a thousand bucks to cover the check I wrote you, Phoebe, because it’s gonna bounce. And here’s another five hundred for trusting me. Buy yourself something pretty. But instead of saying any of those things to her, Billy had hurriedly packed up and left town. He did this because it had taken him less than two hours to lose every penny of the tho
usand bucks.
But he still had hope at that point. The Delgato cousins—big, stupid, ugly idiots—had been paid back their thousand and so still liked and respected Billy enough to support his interests in expanding the company northward. “Where the fuck is Magga-tash?” George had asked, when Billy first told them of his plans. The white Mustang was already packed with his suitcase and his mother’s old scrapbook of family photos with plenty of Mattagash ancestors peering out at the modern world with tight-lipped smiles. “Mattagash is at the end of the road, north of Caribou,” Billy had told George, or Jorge, and watched as he chewed his steak. Jorge probably thought that if a car drove north as far as Bangor, it would fall off the edge of the world. “Think you’ll have good sales so far up in the sticks?” asked Ralph, or Raul. And Billy replied fast and sure, “Absolutely. They’re starving up there for good supplies.” He watched as Raul chewed his own steak. They were steak and baked potato men, and they washed it all down with Bacardi, and it was a mortal shame that someone like Billy Thunder worked for those two idiots in the first place. But Billy had jumped from a cliff and no matter how hard he flailed his arms, he couldn’t seem to do anything but keep falling. Somewhere down below, he knew, was the bottom, with all those jagged rocks waiting like teeth for him to hit. One day, when his ship came in, Billy would be his own boss, running a legitimate business of some kind and Phoebe would be the girl he would settle down with, once he’d known a lot more women first. And so the Delgatos supplied him well. And Billy made sure everything was nicely hidden down in the coils of that classic convertible before he struck out for the outpost known as Mattagash.
And for a time, after he got settled in, Billy was actually gaining ground, could see some blue sky above the cliff, even if it was illegal blue sky. He figured he could work all summer, pay Phoebe back, give her an extra grand for the trouble he’d caused, and even have a nice nest egg for himself. So, what went wrong? That’s what he asked himself each day when he woke up past noon with a tongue that felt like someone had laid carpet on it during the night, his head aching, his heart talking to him before he could shut it up. What went wrong? He could blame it on the pretty French girls in Watertown and their demands to be wined and dined until the roosters crowed. He could blame it on Texas Hold ’em, the only poker game he could find and one built more on good luck than good skills. Whatever he might blame it on, Billy had slowly stopped sending money back to the Delgatos. They believed his phone calls at first, his reasons why. Dentist. Mechanic. Uncle Sam. Aunt Someone. And stupid as they were, they kept sending him the small brown box with Elizabeth Miller, Portland, Maine, on the outside wrapper. How many boxes was he now behind? Four? Five? He no longer remembered, but he was certain Jorge Delgato, big dumb George, missed every penny as he chewed his steak and stared across his baked potato at Raul.
But what hurt Billy the most, what stirred his heart in those waking hours, was Phoebe. He hated his own cowardice in how he had treated her. When he thought of Phoebe, he remembered her in the small ways, the important ways. He thought of how she washed her uniform by hand, leaning over the small sink in her apartment. “Because I can save money this way,” Phoebe told him, the first time he asked why she didn’t use the machine in the apartment laundry room that ate quarters for a living. He remembered the pantyhose hanging to dry on the shower rod in the narrow bathroom, the shape of Phoebe’s legs still in them. He remembered her curled asleep on the sofa, knees drawn up to her chest, the stray cat she had rescued from one of the restaurant’s trashcans nestled by her feet, which were probably aching even in her dreams. Being a waitress is a tough life. But loving Billy Thunder had turned out to be even tougher.
Billy knew his eyes had teared up, for he felt a strong emotion wash over him, part loneliness and part shame. The ringing phone startled him. The Delgatos again? He listened as the message played. This is Thunder. You know what to do. Then the Grateful Elvis. When he heard hysterical laughter being recorded, he didn’t bother to sit up and look at the incoming number. He reached for the phone.
“Jesus, Buck,” he said. “You’ve heard it a hundred times.”
For a few seconds, Billy listened to noises that might be considered guffaws on the other end of the line. No one would ever appreciate and enjoy his Grateful Elvis more than Buck Fennelson, his fourth or fifth or sixth cousin. But now the guffaws seemed to blend into what might be taken for sobs. And that’s when he knew that while the Grateful Elvis was still cracking Buck Fennelson up, something else was making him cry.
“Mona left me,” Buck finally said.
11
SATURDAY EVENING
Orville and Meg Craft sat at their dining room table, a candle flickering between them. On each of their plates was a generous serving of Chinese Pie, that mixture of hamburger, mashed potatoes, and creamed corn beloved by Mattagash cooks. It was really shepherd’s pie with the addition of corn. But somewhere along the culinary path, it had become known as Chinese Pie. Orville couldn’t remember the last time Meg had done that, set the dining room table and opened a bottle of wine. Most often, they ate in the kitchen where they could watch the small TV over the sink, rarely speaking except to ask each other to pass the butter or the salt. Sometimes, Meg took her plate into the sewing room and ate there while she sent emails and read messages. But tonight she had even selected two of the wine glasses out of her china cabinet, a place so forbidden to Orville and the children that they never dared open its door. This supper then, this site of bread-breaking, would be the best atmosphere to deliver the speech he had ready for her.
Sitting alone at his cabin that morning and watching more of the migrating geese disappear over his pond, Orville had spent a lot of time thinking about what he would say. Then he had gone to Blanche’s Café with the idea of talking man to man with Billy Thunder. But it hadn’t been the right time at Blanche’s. Billy was already at a table with Buck Fennelson and the whole room was full of eyes and ears. Now, however, was certainly the right time to talk to Meg. He would not wait until they finished the homemade chocolate pudding she’d whipped up, despite how much he loved it. When was the last time Meg had given him chocolate pudding that didn’t come in a little plastic tub with a seal over its top? He was ready with his speech. Meg Craft, I’m your husband. I don’t want to hear about dryness, and I certainly don’t want to hear about yeast. So, go to the drugstore in Watertown and buy whatever it is you women need once you reach a certain age. You get it, and you meet me in our marital bedroom at least once a month. I don’t think that’s asking too much.
He would talk later to Billy Thunder in some private place, maybe even down at that tin can where he was living until December killed him. Orville was a changed man and it had nothing to do with retirement. It had to do with the electricity of life, that sweet current that pulses through the young but disappears when older humans need it most. Husbands and wives, even those who are not yet seniors, are supposed to take up gardening, bird-watching, ceramics, golf, travel, knitting, stamp collecting, tropical fish. Orville had read a hundred magazine articles and listened to all the radio talk shows on Sunday mornings at the cabin. Never had anyone said, “Listen, life is short. Pretend your body is still in its twenties. Jump for the brass ring. Swing for those bleachers. Dive into the deep end of the pool. Act like a fool if you must, but at least live.” He would remember that October day until it came his time to die, the day he delivered his last letter, the day of the blueberry pie, and then home from the mountaintop to Meg. The things that flash before a man’s life as he dies are made of moments like that.
“I’d like to say something,” Meg said then. She passed him a spoon for his pudding. The pudding was creamy and thick, the way Meg’s mother had learned to make it from her own mother, melting genuine squares of chocolate. It was real pudding and the cream on top had been whipped by hand. Orville put the spoon down after a couple bites. He looked at Meg, waited.
“I think we need to ge
t some more of them pills, and we need to pick a special time, even if it’s just twice a month,” Meg said. “Husband and wife time.”
Twice a month. Orville felt jubilant. Jubilant: full of delight and joyous abandonment. He looked at the woman he had married so many years earlier. How did she know how he felt since they rarely talked?
Two times every thirty days.
“I know you’re too shy to buy them yourself,” Meg continued, “so I can ask Lillian to get an extra prescription. She’s letting Porter take them now, did you know?” No, he didn’t, but he had overheard at Blanche’s that Booster Mullins, Christopher Harris, and Phillip Craft had all been given sanctions from their wives.
Orville felt relief floating up inside him as if it were a balloon, relief that he wouldn’t have to speak to Billy Thunder about anything personal, let alone a subject as private as Viagra. And it was a relief that Meg still loved and wanted him after all, despite his paunch and his white legs and his thinning hair.
Meg went to the kitchen then and came back with the coffee pot and two cups.
“Of course, I’d never discuss this with Lillian unless you gave me the okay,” she said. She poured him a cup of coffee and then slid her fancy milk creamer toward his reaching hand. It was the one her mother had given them as a wedding gift, the crystal creamer coming with a crystal sugar bowl. Meg had used the set for the small gathering at the house after her mother’s funeral and, later, her father’s funeral. And she had used them for Debby’s wedding reception which had also been held at home, when their oldest daughter married. But Orville couldn’t remember seeing the creamer in service other than those three times. Instead, it held court next to the sugar bowl, both safe behind the glass door of the china cabinet and looking quite superior to the regular dishes the family used daily. That’s when Orville noticed that the plate on which he’d been eating was one of Meg’s fancy plates, with a bouquet of red roses in the center and a gold trim circling the outer edge. Before he could comment on how nice the dishes looked or say anything at all, such as Sure, Meg, go ahead and get some pills from Lillian, she produced the crystal sugar bowl. She put it down gently and close enough that Orville’s spoon could reach it without any effort.
The One-Way Bridge Page 15
