Lucky Strikes

by Louis Bayard

  “That won’t be necessary,” said Miss Wand.

  She got in the car without another word. The sheriff stood there a spell. Then he climbed in and drove away.

  Nobody let out a cheer. Hiram went inside. Janey got back on her swing. Chester, he went and collapsed in one of the Adirondack chairs in front of the store.

  “You got a light?” he asked.

  He sucked on a Chesterfield for a good five minutes.

  “Lester Mashburn,” he said.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Unfortunate soul with a troubled childhood and what they call a checkered history.”

  “What’s he got to do with anything?”

  “Last January, I helped him beat a class-one burglary charge. He didn’t have any cash to pay me with—at least none he could lay hands on—but he was grateful all the same. Turns out, he has a particular gift for forgery.”

  “Good for Lester Mashburn.”

  I set in the chair next to Chester. We watched the sun drop over Spring Mountain. Gold, then red, then purple.

  “I could lose my license,” said Chester.

  “Naw. The devil will just make you run one more lap round Fire Lake.”

  “That was your mama’s line,” he said.

  “So it was.”

  “Thing is,” he said, “they can still locate the original birth certificate. And when they do, they’ll be back. I’d guess we’ve bought ourselves maybe a week or two of grace.”

  “Well, now,” I said, dropping my head against the chair. “That’s more than I’m used to.”

  Chapter

  NINE

  That Saturday, a real gully washer swept in from the west. Lightning zippering cross the sky and thunder gunning like a race car and rain hammering all night long on the tin roof. It was the kind of noise that made any other noise impossible. Earle, he wanted to listen to Death Valley Days, but all we could find on the radio was some Charlottesville preacher going on about 2 Corinthians, so we turned off the set and played pinochle. Then I put Earle and Janey to bed. I told ’em the “Tale of the Lover Who Feigned Himself a Thief,” and they went right off, and I had a mind to clean dishes, but I went off, too.

  The rain pushed through sometime in the night, but it give the air a good scrubbing. The next morning, I put on a sweater and set on the front porch with a mug of coffee, watching the fog yawn off the mountains. It’s a good time of year in Walnut Ridge. Forsythia blooming by the fence. Pink azaleas budding out of the forests. Robins and bluebirds. I set watching a spell. Then, out of habit, I give the station a once-over.

  Something was wrong.

  Only I didn’t know what. I checked the pumps first, then the service bays. The truck. Nothing. Then my eyes, with nothing else to do, drifted skyward.

  The sign.

  The sign was gone. From the iron scroll atop the signpost dangled a length of chain … and nothing more.

  In a daze, I walked over to the patch of ground just beneath where the sign had been. I stared down at a heap of broken granite.

  From somewhere in the mess, a few letters peeped through. B … A … O … all that was left of BRENDA’S OASIS.

  I went down on both knees. Scooped my hand through the clumps of stone.

  “A little early to be praying, isn’t it?”

  I whipped my head round. Hiram Watts had come up behind me. Wearing a pair of long johns, two sizes too large, and sucking hard on a Lucky. He started to say something, but then he got a load of my face.

  “What is it?” he said.

  Next second, he was standing alongside me, looking at what was left of our sign. “Jesus,” he whispered.

  I stood up, angled my face toward the road. “Reckon that’s what we get,” I said, “making a sign out of a tombstone.”

  It come flying back then. The day we first loaded that granite slab in the truck. Mama grinning as she give it a coat of plaster and painted on the letters, slow and steady.

  Gotta spell it right, she’d said. ’Cause this ain’t never coming down.

  Just one more thing she was wrong about.

  Hiram bent down, grabbed the length of chain that had once held the sign in place. “Holy cow,” he said, with a soft whistle. “It’s cut clean through.”

  And now it was someone else’s words that come swirling up. Next big wind, that sign of yours gonna come right down.…

  “Harley Blevins,” I said.

  Hiram’s face creased. “That fellow from the wake? With the black clothes and the silver hair?”

  “Same one.”

  His eyes ran up the signpost, all the way to the top. “Scampered up there all by himself, did he?”

  “He don’t do nothing by hisself.”

  I confess I thought of Dudley in that moment. In those stupid knickers, holding his irises like they was rattlers.

  “What’s this Blevins fellow got against you?” said Hiram.

  “It ain’t me, it’s Brenda’s Oasis.” I took a step back. “Can you believe it? This dump? He wants it more ’n mother’s milk.”

  “Why?”

  I watched a logger truck come down the hill, gears gargling.

  “He’s got all the rest,” I said. “Every Standard Oil station from Winchester to Strasburg to Marshall. If he gets Brenda’s Oasis, he gets the last one.”

  “Little kingdom of petroleum.”

  “And him the king. Emperor, too.”

  Hiram flicked the end off his cig butt. “And he doesn’t mind knocking down a sign or two to get it.”

  “Oh, this here’s what you call a warning shot. Not the first one, neither. Who you think brought the sheriff here the other day?”

  “That’s a tough thing to prove.”

  “I don’t need to. Least of all to you.”

  Hiram dropped the cig on the ground, mashed it under his boot. “What did I go and do?”

  “Nothing. That’s what you went and done. When that sign was being cut down last night, where were you?”

  “In bed. Just like you.”

  “And how much closer was your bed? Hell of a lot nearer than mine. If anybody could’ve heard what was going on, it’d have been you.”

  “Through all that rain and thunder, I suppose.”

  “You set up there in that damn room. Day in, day out. Staring out the window or up at the ceiling or whatever the hell you do. You never lift a finger to help. We could be starving to death for all you care.” I snatched the dead butt from the ground. “You don’t even pick up after your damn self!”

  He stared at the butt, then looked away. “All you ever asked me to do was to be here, Melia. Stand and be counted. That was the deal.”

  “Yeah, well, I might just give that deal a look-over. ’Cause you keep coming out ahead.”

  “I’m risking jail—isn’t that enough?”

  “Bet you’ve risked worse. Bet you’ve done worse.”

  I could see the grooves carving in around his eyes.

  “Guess you’ll never know,” he said.

  “Guess not.”

  “Guess I won’t be sticking around long enough for you to know.”

  “Fine by me.”

  He started to walk away, then turned back. “You know what? The next time you hire someone to be your father, don’t expect an actual father. You get what you pay for.”

  “Yeah, well, my real daddy would be a damned sight more use than you are.”

  “Then where is he?”

  And now it was me walking.

  “Melia,” I heard him say.

  *

  I think I told you, I don’t make a habit of crying. So when I get in a rage, I walk. Mama used to call it Melia’s stomp, and I suspect I was stomping, just a little bit, as I crossed Sheep Creek Road and turned up Mountain Vale Lane. I’d walked near half a mile before I knew where I was going.

  The grave looked pretty much like we’d left it. Janey’s wildflowers had long since blown away, but the cross Earle had whittled, that was still there, p
oking out on a slant. I tried to straighten it, but it wouldn’t.

  “Hey,” I said.

  That’s as far as I got.

  It’s a thing no fool has ever been able to explain to me. What do you say when you’re standing over somebody’s grave? Whatever’s in the ground is all bones and rot, and if it’s the person’s soul you’re after, well, for all you know, it could’ve flown clear to the other side of the world. Nothing to stop it. So I didn’t say another word to Mama, because I couldn’t be hundred percent certain anybody was listening.

  She come back all the same. The end days, mostly. Those minutes—hours, sometimes—when she could pry herself clear from the pain. Her eyes’d get buttery, and she’d look around like she was seeing everything for the first time. It was then I could come and sit with her. Even touch her.

  ’Course her skin was like paper, you could tear it just by looking, and if you come near a bone, you’d be sorry, but her hair never caused her no pain, so I just combed it. Over and over. Waiting for her to say whatever come to mind.

  “Melia, we should start selling road maps.”

  “Melia, we should get us a windmill.”

  “Uniforms, Melia! With our names all stitched over the pockets.”

  It was kind of like her Christmas list, I guess. Santa, get me a new furnace. Plate-glass windows. Another underground tank. She’d talk awhile, then fall asleep for a stretch, then wake up and start in again.

  It’s funny, when she was healthy, Mama was always so by-God happy with her lot. You could shake her all day long, and not a single beef would fall out. So it threw me, I confess, hearing how much wishing she had hoarded up in that heart of hers. Wish upon wish. Curtains in the parlor. A gramophone. Encyclopedias. A pianola!

  Late into the evening, though, she’d get scary quiet, like a pot that’s about to fall from a shelf. I think those were the times it come home. There wouldn’t be no pianola nor windmill. No Santa. Not for her. That’s when she’d turn and find me. Yes, find me, even though I’d been in that room for hours, and her face’d kind of fall open, and she’d say, in a high, thin mountain voice, “My baby girl.”

  Jesus, I hated that.

  Baby girls don’t hold a house together. They don’t keep a business running while the gal who bought the goddamned place is busy dying. Ain’t nothing baby about that. I’d get so mad, I’d have to leave the room. Covering my ears because I didn’t want to hear her calling after me.

  Maybe she wasn’t calling.

  I don’t know how long I stood by her grave that Sunday. At some point, I stopped thinking and started in to listening. There was a robin in a crab-apple tree, some field mice in the sagebrush.

  By the time I got back to the station, the sun was high in the sky. I could see Janey on the front porch, stepping through an old iron hoop. For the millionth time that day, probably. Stepping through, lifting it back over her head, starting over.

  “You missed all the hubbub,” she said.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Daddy Hiram took the truck.”

  “Say again?”

  “He took the truck.”

  I did a quick pivot. Scanned the house, the road, the station, everything in between.

  “You having me on?” I said.

  “No, ma’am.”

  My heart shrunk to the size of a taw.

  “Why in hell didn’t you come find me?” I shouted.

  “I didn’t know where you was.”

  A spike of shame.

  “Listen to me, Janey. Listen real careful, okay? Did Hiram say where he was going?”

  “Don’t know as he did.”

  “Well … God almighty, when did he leave?”

  “Hour ago. Maybe two.”

  In a daze, I ran the mileage. Two hours at forty an hour. Eighty miles. If he was heading north, that’d take him nearly to the state line.

  “Don’t know why you’re carrying on,” said Janey. “He’s our daddy.”

  “I don’t care who he is! He can’t just go running off with our truck like that. Goddamn! I’m gonna…”

  Call the police, but the thought struck itself down. Call ’em and what, Melia? Ask ’em to arrest your own father? For taking a truck that, by rights, belongs to him?

  “Now, don’t go making a stink,” said Janey. “You’ll just get Earle in trouble.”

  I looked at her. “How’d Earle get into this?”

  “Well, who do you think was driving?”

  “Earle?”

  “Why, sure,” said Janey. “Daddy Hiram said he don’t know the local byways too good, and Earle, he’s tall enough now to see over the wheel.”

  “He ain’t never drove before.”

  “That ain’t so. He said he drove with you.”

  “Once or twice! When there was no one else on the road!”

  “Well, it must’ve took ’cause Earle climbed in there like a champ. Never looked back. They went yonder.”

  I followed her finger down the road to where it curved east.

  “Oh, dear God,” I said. “Lord help us all.”

  “They said they’d be back ’fore nightfall,” said Janey.

  You’ll learn this about me. I ain’t no good at waiting. First thing I did was go to Hiram’s room. I found his comb, his razor, his Colgate’s Rapid-Shave Cream. Half a pack of Luckys. A bar of Octagon soap. A mangled-up back issue of Time.

  He wouldn’t have left these behind, would he? Not if he was fixing to leave for good. He would’ve at least taken his cigs?

  Question on question, and behind ’em, the question Chester had posed.

  What do you even know about this fella?

  So that afternoon was about the longest I’ve passed on this bitter Earth. Couldn’t sit, couldn’t move. Couldn’t stand to be talked to, neither, as Janey learned to her regret. Best I could do was break open a can of succotash round about seven and heat it up on the stove and then leave a plate of it by the mulberry bush where she was hiding. I was too stirred up to have a bite myself.

  The night come down slow, and I was giving some thought to Emmett Tolliver’s medicine.

  Emmett had gifted us a jug of it two years before—when Prohibition was still on—’cause he didn’t have cash for a new carburetor. Mama had a way of letting folks pay how they could, so when Emmett brought over the medicine, she took one look and bust out laughing. She’d given up hooch a while back, and me, I took one sniff and nearly lost my supper. “It’s safe with us,” Mama said, laughing. She put it in the root cellar, and there it had stayed, mostly, but if there was ever a time I was tempted to sample, it was that night, waiting on Hiram and Earle.

  A little past nine, I heard a swell of gravel … the little squeal song our Ford makes shifting into second. Next thing, I was out the door running, with Janey following after.

  The truck was just pulling up in front of the house. I didn’t even wait for the engine to shut off, I drug Earle right out of the cab and sent him sprawling on the gravel. Give him a kick for good measure.

  “What the hell?” he said.

  “Don’t you never do that again!”

  “Do what?”

  “Drive off in that truck without telling me is what.”

  “You wasn’t here to tell.”

  “I don’t give a shit!”

  Earle picked himself off the gravel. “We was on a mission, Melia.”

  “What kind of fool talk is that?”

  Like an answer to my query, Hiram Watts climbed out the passenger’s side.

  “Reckon you’re mighty pleased with yourself,” I said.

  “Partly,” he allowed.

  “Reckon you thought it was a good idea putting a child behind the wheel of a pickup.”

  “He was the nearest to hand.”

  “And it never crossed your mind he might kill hisself?”

  “It’s Sunday. Roads were empty.”

  “Plus I’m a natural,” said Earle. “Ask Daddy Hiram.”

  “It
’s true, the boy’s a prodigy.”

  Now, I’ve never seen a rhinoceros in real life, but I imagine he’d charge just the way I charged Hiram Watts in that moment. Snorting. Head lowered.

  “Know what?” I said. “It was one thing having you up in that room all day doing nothing. That was just irksome. But now you’ve gone and done something, and it’s worse. It’s the most—the most stupid goddamned…”

  Problem was I didn’t have a word in mind, so I flailed.

  “Irresponsible!”

  Earle laughed first. Then Janey.

  “I swear I’m gonna smack you both,” I said.

  “It’s because you sound like a mama,” said Hiram.

  “Not our mama,” said Earle. “But somebody’s.”

  “Excuse me, am I the only one here—on this whole goddamned planet—who cottons to how crazy this was? You could’ve got pulled over or thrown in jail. You could’ve got driven off the road and left to die.”

  “We’re here,” said Hiram.

  “Well, congratulations. Congratulations on both of you.”

  “Geez,” said Earle. “Don’t you even want to see it?”

  “See what?”

  Hiram had already walked round to the back of the truck, and he was pulling down the flatbed gate.

  “Earle,” he said. “Keep those headlights on.”

  With a wheeze, Hiram hoisted up a burlap bag. Set it in front of the truck, then pulled the burlap down.

  The first thing I saw was a desert.

  Maybe the finest desert I’d ever seen. The sand the color of a deer’s flank, and in the center of the sand a blue pond, and from this pond a camel, drinking. Above the camel was a blue sky, a different blue from the pond. In this sky was a string of clouds, and the clouds spelled …

  BRENDA’S OASIS

  I knelt down. Ran my finger through the sand, waiting for some of it to lift off.

  “It’s made of porcelain enamel,” said Hiram. “Lasts forever. Easy to clean.”

  “They told us you wash it like a car,” said Earle. “Hose it down, and it’s brand-new. I’ll clean it, Melia, I swear.”

  For the first time, I saw the pyramid. Tiny little thing, not much more than a blond shadow in the far corner, but you couldn’t mistake it for nothing else.