Lucky Strikes

by Louis Bayard

  Well, it was just then the world sent another sound our way. A low rasping, like a gutter scraping against a tin roof. Didn’t rightly know what it was till I saw Gus lift his head. Dear Lord, I thought. That boy is growling.

  Then come three barks—short and high and sharp. In the next second, he was gone. Galloping like a quarter horse straight for the store. And the chain racing after him, whistling across the gravel and then, with something like a wheeze, snapping tight.

  I heard the crash of glass and a man’s cry, half-stifled. Then it was my own bare feet I was hearing, dashing cross the gravel.

  Hiram was a couple seconds behind, only ’cause he was reaching for the Rayovac. The light exploded around us, dragging shapes out of the dark. A man. And, fastened to his flailing arm, a dog.

  With a sad cry, the man flung Gus into the darkness. Grabbed his tore-up arm and hightailed it for the road.

  I went after him, but before I’d got more than ten feet, a pair of headlights burst into view. Half-blinded, I swung an arm over my eyes. Heard a door slam, the scream of tires. In the next second, they was past me, churning up the road and screaming toward the mountains.

  Sweat dripping off my chin, I turned and trudged back to the station.

  The Rayovac was on the ground now, and in the angle of light it cast, I could see Hiram bent over something still and yellow.

  Gus.

  A second later, that dog was rolling his snout toward the sky and dragging himself up on his breadstick legs. He give his head a shake, and little drops of crimson scattered from his mouth.

  “Jesus,” I whispered. “He must’ve got clobbered.”

  Then I heard Hiram’s dry chuckle. “It’s not his blood.”

  Gus put his front paws atop my knees and scaled me like I was a mountain. Pushed his face right toward mine and showed me the red coating on each and every one of his teeth.

  “You just got yourself a guard dog,” said Hiram.

  Chapter

  TWENTY-TWO

  It was but the one brick, but it sure made a nice crater in the store window. Cracked our Star Tobacco sign, too, and knocked over the coffee grinder and took a nice gash out of our rice bin and made a hash of the Del Monte display. By the time it come to rest by the cheese cutter, it’d made quite a career for itself.

  We called up the glazier from Riverton. A shortsighted, hard-smoking cuss named Lewis Quint who’d given up drinking and was none too pleased about it. I’d say he swore a blue streak, only the words never made it out his throat.

  “Mm firkin gum.”

  “What’s that, Mr. Quint?”

  “I said twenty bucks to replace it.”

  Hiram stared at the hole. “How much to make it plate glass?”

  “Grrr. Mmmm. Forty.”

  Hiram frowned. “And how much to make the whole storefront plate glass?

  “Mod sham, hundred!”

  “That’s right steep,” I said.

  “Plate glass makes us look professional,” Hiram said. “You said so yourself.”

  “Gold plate’d make us look even more professional. We can’t afford that, neither.”

  On and on we went till Lewis Quint flung down his hat and commenced to jumping up and down like Rumpelstiltskin.

  “Eighty-five!”

  “Done,” said Hiram.

  *

  Well, what should show up that very afternoon but Harley Blevins’s butternut Chevy Eagle? Strolling into the station like the lead car in an Armistice Day parade. Earle was already jogging toward it, but I put out my hand to stop him, and after peering inside to make sure there was no other passengers, I went straight to the driver’s side. Drug Dudley out of his seat and flattened him against the car.

  “Guess you’re right proud of yourself,” I said.

  “For what?”

  “The toilet weren’t enough. The whitewalls and that nasty old tar. No, you was gonna break into the store and what? Steal all the Bit-O-Honeys?”

  “Girl, you’re talking crazy.”

  Well, here we come to the problem. There was a real, real, real small chance that I was crazy.

  See, I’d never once caught Harley Blevins in the act of doing anything. He sure weren’t the guy who heaved that brick through our window—he weren’t tall enough—and whatever car that feller jumped in sure as shit wasn’t a Chevy Eagle. If you was to dust the whole station for fingerprints, you probably wouldn’t have found a single one belonged to Harley Blevins.

  So there was a teeny tiny little speck of a chance that he was innocent. Only I didn’t believe it.

  ’Course I didn’t have no evidence to back me up. All I had was a feeling, and it’s feelings that’ll get you called crazy. Which there was a teeny tiny little speck of a chance I was.

  Anyway, I grabbed Dudley Blevins’s left arm and, with the calmness of the truly crazy, I unbuttoned his sleeve and rolled it up. A few seconds later, we was both staring down at the pale, veined skin of his forearm.

  Not a mark on it.

  “What the hell is going on?” he said.

  “Feller tried to do a number on the store last night. Got his left arm chewed up by our guard dog.”

  “Left arm?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Maybe you got another one somewhere.”

  I said it just to make him mad, but he got quiet instead. Rolled his sleeve down, then got back in the car and drove off without a word. The dust from his rear tires was just clearing when I turned and found Janey, looking cross.

  “I could’ve told you it weren’t him,” she said.

  I was all set to give her what for, but it looked like something already had.

  “Girl,” I said, “you been too long in the sun.”

  “Feels like it.…”

  I give her a second look, then a third. The sunburn had gone and scalded her throat, left rows of bumps along her skin.

  “You feeling hot?” I asked her, holding my fingers to her forehead.

  “It’s August, Melia.”

  “I mean inside.”

  “A little.”

  “You feeling itchy?”

  “Something awful.”

  “How’s your throat?”

  “Pissed off.”

  “Show me your tongue,” I said.

  She did.

  “Okay, put it back in,” I said.

  “What do I got? The streptococcus?”

  “Something like that. Tell you what, Hiram’s going into town to pick up some gaskets. Maybe he can have Doc Whitworth swing by.”

  “I’m a nurse,” she said. “Don’t nobody need to heal me.”

  But when we got her into bed, her temperature was 103. By the time Doc Whitworth showed up, the rash had spread all the way down her chest and her back. I probably should have stayed with her through the poking and prodding, but I had to go out on the front porch. ’Cause Elsie O’Donnell was waiting for me there.

  Elsie had lived two doors down from us in Cumberland. She was part of a big Irish family, ten or eleven kids, the dad never around, the mama making vats of soap in the backyard. Elsie stood out ’cause she had red hair just like Janey’s and was just as conceited about it. Then one day, Elsie took ill. Fever out of no place, crawling rash, throat of knives.

  And a strawberry tongue. Just like Janey had.

  Elsie hung on two months. They funeralized her in an open casket, and it looked like half her skin had peeled off.

  Behind me, I could hear the screen door creaking open.

  “It’s scarlet fever,” I said.

  “Seems so,” said Doc Whitworth.

  He folded up his stethoscope and wormed it into a pouch in his carpetbag. “You’ll need to bring her in for an injection,” he said.

  “Horse serum.”

  “It works, Melia.”

  Didn’t work for Elsie O’Donnell.

  “Now, she’s going to have to stay off her feet for a while. Which means she’ll need looking after.”

  “We’re able.”r />
  “Just keep her comfortable. Make sure she’s got enough liquids in her system and whatever food she can keep down.”

  “’Course.”

  “Oh, and keep Earle away. He’s still young enough to catch it hisself.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He hoisted up his bag and walked down the porch steps, pausing after each step, pausing longest at the bottom. “I’m sorry, Melia.”

  “What for?”

  “Seems the Lord might’ve chosen not to pile on you folks like this.”

  “One more,” I said, “I don’t even know the difference.”

  *

  Me and Hiram gave the nursing thing our best shot, but we didn’t have Janey’s knack, and we sure as hell didn’t have the time. No sooner would I run inside with some cool water to splash on the child’s face than Mr. Marcus Sutphin from Limeton would drive on by in his ’27 Hudson, wanting to know why his fan belt keeps slipping. I couldn’t tell him it was ’cause he had a 1927 Hudson, so I had to figure out if the bearing was dry or greasy or loose or just plain broken, and that’d take time, and just as Hiram was coming into the house to spell me, Mr. Marcus Sutphin’s 1934 girlfriend would get a hankering for Hershey’s chocolate almonds, and did Hiram have any of that Blue Moon pimento-and-American-cheese spread? And some Ritz crackers to go with?

  Well, that would take the both of us out of the picture, and the only one who could step up with the nursing was Earle, only he weren’t allowed nowhere near his sister, so he’d just stand there by the pumps, looking lost as an old kite, and the whole day’d pass like that, in fits and starts and gasps and me as tired by day’s end as I’d ever been.

  “We got to close up for a day,” I told Hiram. “Or something.”

  But we both knew it would take more than a day to get that girl well. There she laid, shivering and dripping, not even enough strength in her to use a chamber pot. And pressing over every pore, the ghost of Elsie O’Donnell.

  That night, we was getting washed up for supper when a knock come on the front door. Such a little mouse of a knock, I almost didn’t hear it. Standing in the glow of our one lightbulb was Mina Gallagher. Near as surprised to find herself there as I was.

  “Chester ain’t here,” I said.

  “That’s not why I’ve come.”

  We stood there.

  “I understand you’ve got a sick child,” she said.

  “She’ll be okay.”

  “Well, I’m…” She skittered her fingers up the side of her face. “I’m happy to sit with her awhile. If it’s all right with you. You know, I—I nursed all four of my sister’s children through scarlet fever. It takes a few weeks to run itself out and—and the thing is you all are so busy with your work, you can’t possibly…” The weirdest smile climbed out of her mouth. “And my house is as clean as it’s ever going to be.”

  I might’ve stood there the whole day in that doorway, trying to make sense of what I was hearing, but from behind me, I heard Hiram’s low soft voice.

  “We’d be most grateful, ma’am.”

  Chapter

  TWENTY-THREE

  That first afternoon, she stayed but a couple hours. Next morning, though, she was back bright and early with fresh bandages, sponges, compresses, towels, porcelain bowls. She stayed the whole day, spreading calamine lotion over Janey’s rash, spooning water and orange sherbet and beef consommé into her mouth. Putting blankets on when she took a chill, taking them off again when she had the sweats. Cleaning her vomit, changing her sheets, plumping and replumping her pillow.

  Speaking nary a word the whole time.

  Oh, she’d consent to nibble on canned loganberries and Macfarlane Lang’s savory crisplets, and for supper, Hiram coaxed her into having some warmed-over Franco-American spaghetti, but she ate all alone on the front porch, with nothing but a glass of lime-juice cordial to wash everything down. She left without even saying good-bye.

  She was back the next morning, though, with an armful of books. Hans Brinker, Little Women, Black Beauty. Every so often, I’d pass by the room and hear Mina’s flat, thin voice. “The first place that I can well remember was a large pleasant meadow with a pond of clear water in it. Some shady trees leaned over it, and rushes and water-lilies grew at the deep end.…”

  Now, I figured she was reading to keep up Janey’s spirits, but when I peeked in that afternoon, the girl was out like a light, and the words was still pouring out of Mina’s mouth.

  The third day, she brought a sponge and some Murphy Oil Soap and went to work on the floors. But every time Janey’d so much as move, Mina went running back to her.

  We closed early that night ’cause Hiram and Earle wanted to have a couple hours’ go at the tar. Me, I stuck around outside as long as I could, cleaning gunk out of the gas nozzles, but after a while, there weren’t nothing for it but to go inside. Mina was just where I’d left her, in the husker chair by Janey’s bed. In her lap was a pile of red yarn that was slowly getting knitted into … a hat? A glove? The breeze from the north window made her cotton print dress swirl, and at her feet lay Gus the guard dog, tail softly twitching.

  “Is everything all right?” she asked.

  “I was just checking.”

  Skin had started peeling off in thin, scabby flakes from Janey’s face. In a little while, I knew, the skin would start to come off her hands, her fingers, her toes.…

  “Fever must be going down,” said Mina. “She’s not hallucinating as much.”

  “She hallucinates?”

  “Oh, sure. A little while back, she was going on about dinosaur juice. Isn’t that funny?”

  I tipped myself back till my head was resting against the wall. It seemed to me that my heart was cracking, just a little. “There’s a history to that,” I said.

  “Is that so?”

  “When Mama first bought this place, Janey didn’t want no part of it. Couldn’t stand the smell of gasoline, said it made her sick to her stomach. So Mama said, ‘Well, think of how them poor dinosaurs feel. Turns out oil is just what’s left of dinosaurs after they been dead a good long spell. Like, millions of years, right? So every time we pump gas, we’re pumping dinosaur juice.’ Well, Janey loved that. Next morning she was the first out of bed, jumping up and down on her pillow, shouting, ‘Let’s go pump us some dinosaur juice!’”

  I half closed my eyes.

  “So that’s where that comes from,” I said.

  Mina said nothing.

  “I guess I ought to thank you,” I said.

  “No need.”

  “I mean, it’s right nice of you to do all this. Seeing how we ain’t family or nothing.”

  “Well…”

  I set on the edge of the bed. The sheets was new washed and crisp. Hospital corners.

  “Listen, Mrs. Gallagher. Mama ain’t round to defend herself so … I think folks might’ve given you some wrong notions about her.”

  “Melia.”

  “I swear to you, her and Chester never—”

  “Melia, I know.”

  A wash of silence. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her take up her knitting needles, then set them down again.

  “You may not believe this,” she said, “but I admired your mother. No, truly I did. I remember the first time I met her, I thought, Well now, here’s a woman grabbing life with both arms. Squeezing it dry. It was—it was warming to be around her.” She stared into a pocket of space. “I certainly can’t blame a man like Chester for wanting to be … warmed.” With her fingers, she brushed the underside of her chin. “Do you know the only person who ever made me feel that way?”

  “Who?”

  “Chester Gallagher. And I had to go and ruin it by marrying him.”

  She was silent awhile. Then she took up her knitting once more.

  “When I was your age, Melia, I knew this married couple. The Renaults. I’d run into them maybe once or twice a week—they were friends of my parents—but I’d always find myself staring at them. Because they di
dn’t make any sense, you see, they—they just seemed like two strangers sharing the same house. You couldn’t imagine how they’d ever been thrown together in the first place. It was all just a terrible mistake.

  “And then, just the other night, I was lying in bed next to my husband. We’d said scarcely ten words to each other all night, and that’s when it struck me. We’re that couple! The Renaults! And it doesn’t make any more sense when you’re in the middle of it. You go—crawling back through the years—like you’re crawling through shag carpet, looking for an earring—trying to find that point where everything started going wrong. But you can’t, and then you wonder if maybe it was a million points—a million little—pulling aparts—and there’s no use even mapping them all because you’ve become the Renaults, and there’s no going back.”

  She give herself a little shake.

  “Or so it sometimes appears,” she said. “At three twenty-five in the morning.”

  The knitting needles fell into her lap just then, and her eyes went wide, like she was gazing through the ceiling and out to the night sky. Next second, she was laughing.

  Laughing don’t even cover it. Big honking gulps that she tried to stop with her hand and wouldn’t be stopped. Who knew she had such a sound in her?

  “What?” I said.

  “Oh…” She fingered the wet out of her eyes. “I had a passing thought, that’s all. I thought, Mina Gallagher, if you’re spilling out your soul to this girl who doesn’t even like you, it’s pretty obvious you need more friends.”

  She laughed some more then, only it weren’t quite so fierce.

  “Can’t say I got much time for friends myself,” I said.

  “No,” she said, softly. “I’d guess you wouldn’t. What about that Blevins boy?”

  I didn’t say nothing.

  “Well,” she said. “Never mind. God knows there’s no hurry.”

  A new breeze come rushing in from the north window, it made the candle flame shrink back. In the corner, by the porcelain bowls, a blue bottle fly was diving and dancing.