Lucky Strikes

by Louis Bayard

By now, there weren’t no hard edges left anywhere. Just a soft hump of purple that I knew to be mountains.

  “You gotta understand, Hiram. To me, all this was just what was keeping me from going anyplace else.”

  “And where was it you wanted to go?”

  “Anyplace else.” I smiled, dug my heel into the gravel. “Don’t know as I had a special place in mind. Pittsburgh, maybe.”

  “Well, now,” he said with a wriggle. “I’ve got news for you, Amelia Hoyle. There’s nothing keeping you here but you.”

  “Spoken like a rolling stone.”

  He chuckled. “Not anymore, ma’am. I’m head to toe moss.”

  “Thought it was fungus.”

  We was quiet, smoking our cigs. Though I noticed, after a while, Hiram weren’t even smoking his, just bringing it in the direction of his mouth and letting it drop again.

  “Know what?” he said. “I hope you do some rolling of your own, Amelia. But don’t be surprised if you end up where you started. You’re the deep-rooting kind of plant.” The cigarette—just one long pillar of ash now—fell to the ground. “You should be getting on back.”

  I stood up. Give him the once-over.

  “You sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure. Gus and I have some serious hay to hit.”

  “And you don’t need nothing?”

  He shook his head.

  “There’s some cans of Franco-American if you get hungry.”

  He nodded.

  “I’ll come by early tomorrow,” I said. “Just to be on the safe side.”

  He shrugged. But as I was walking back to the truck, he called after me.

  “Amelia.”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s an honor being your dad.”

  “’Course it is,” I said.

  Well, true to my word, I was back by five thirty the next morning. I give a little knock, for politeness’ sake, then pushed the door open.

  It was quiet, which I figured to be a good sign. He was still sleeping, wasn’t he? I turned the corner and pulled open the curtain, and there was Gus doing his little worry dance about the bed. And there in the middle of the bed lay Hiram. Who weren’t worrying about nothing no more.

  His brogans was fresh polished, his shirt and trousers ironed, his hair washed and combed. At the foot of his bed sat a row of six empty bottles, all with the same label. OPIUM CAMPHORATED, FOR U.S.P. TINCTURE: LIQUID NO. 338.

  Lord only knows how he put his hand on that much laudanum. I can’t imagine Doc Whitworth would’ve gone to such a risk, so either Hiram smuggled it out of the hospital himself or he bribed somebody to do it for him. The only thing I can say for true is how he forced that bitter liquid down. Beneath his outstretched right arm sat a half-empty bottle of Dr Pepper.

  The same soda-pop chaser I’d used with Mama in her final hours. Which Hiram Watts knew full well, just as he knew this was the bed where she’d given up her last breath. What better place, he must have thought, to make his own peace?

  I set myself down next to him. I wrapped my fingers round his cold, cold hands. I said, “The honor was all mine.”

  Chapter

  THIRTY-THREE

  Hiram Watts left this life in the early morning hours of September the eighth.

  His death was noted in the Warren County Register and was mourned by the regular customers of Brenda’s Oasis. Warner the trucker was heard to say that Hiram was plenty all right.

  Mr. Watts was buried on a hill overlooking Jenkins Orchard next to a woman he’d never met. The funeral ceremony was private, attended only by Mr. Watts’s three children and by Mr. and Mrs. Chester Gallagher.

  No speeches was made nor prayers said, though Janey Hoyle did, upon request, sing “Amazing Grace.” In addition, she supplied the wildflower arrangement, and Earle Hoyle fashioned a cross from sticks that was judged even finer than his last effort.

  It was decent weather for a funeral. Very nearly cool in the shade of the locust tree.

  The mourners departed for home a little past eleven.

  *

  That’s how it all seems even now, like it was happening to some other idiot.

  The next time I recognize me in the picture—well, that ain’t till the next day. I remember standing in front of the store, trying to figure out what to do with all the flowers folks had brung. Lilies and snapdragons and zinnias and I don’t know what else, piled to God’s shoulders. Wouldn’t have been too much trouble to make ’em look pretty, but I didn’t have it in me. So I just stood there.

  As for the flowers, they set the whole week, wilting and rotting, till Mina come and swept them all away.

  Not too long after, a parcel arrived for Janey. Small and flat, bound in butcher’s paper.

  “Ain’t my birthday till next month,” she said.

  “Well, who cares?” I said.

  She peered at the return address. “Where’s Los Angeles?”

  “Open it!”

  Two seconds later, we was staring down at a framed photograph of Clark Gable.

  Wearing the same surgeon’s shirt he wore in Men in White. His face turned maybe a quarter away from the camera and the light playing just right. In the clean blank space just across his heart was written the words …

  To Janey, with all my deepest respect

  I touched the picture, saw the words, heard the little rush of air from Janey. But my senses kept snagging on something that weren’t part of the picture. A monogrammed note card tucked into the frame’s lower right-hand corner. I pulled it out and read,

  Hiram, you old cuss!

  When are we going to take the boat out to Catalina again?

  The same hand as had signed the photo. And right beneath it, the letters CG.

  I looked at Janey. “It’s not…” I looked back down. “I mean, it can’t…”

  “It is,” she said.

  My hands was trembling so hard now, I didn’t know where to put ’em.

  “Melia, you okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “No. It’s just…”

  Clark Gable was real. Clark Gable happened.

  And if Clark Gable happened, Hong Kong happened. And ladies’ hats in San Francisco happened, and writing ads in New York City happened, and playing Casca in Chicago happened … and what in God’s name hadn’t happened?

  “I know,” said Janey. “You thought he was full of hooey. Well, I knew better. Daddy Hiram never said an untrue thing in his life.”

  Only he did, I thought. At my specific request.

  And in that moment, the only excuse I could come up with was that whatever Hiram had lied about had turned out true after all.

  Soon as we moved back into the house, the Gable photograph went on the wall next to Janey’s bed. Which made Earle no end of jealous, owing to that he didn’t have a movie star of his own. So I cut out a picture of Myrna Loy from Photoplay and got a frame for it and got Mina to write, To Earle, A fine young gentleman and a most promising individual. Earle give it one look and tossed the picture on the bed.

  “She ain’t so much,” he muttered.

  But that very afternoon, Myrna Loy’s likeness went on his wall. Hasn’t come down since.

  *

  Christmas was quiet, I won’t lie. But Earle took it on himself to cut down a blue spruce, and we set it by the front window and decorated it with strands of old popcorn and Kellogg’s Rice Bubbles. The Gallaghers bought Janey some tortoiseshell combs, and Earle got a black-lacquer box for his treasures. Me, I got a knife-pleated chiffon dress in pale rose with pleated cuffs and something called a fichu collar. It was a young woman’s dress—that much was clear from the moment I lifted it out of the box. I glanced at Mina, and she put up her hands and said, “No hurry.” But red bars was crawling cross her cheeks, and Dudley was looking away.

  *

  Somewhere in February, Janey’s teacher, Miss Fensterman, come to see me. We stood outside on the new front porch, and she went on about how Janey weren’t performing to her usual stan
dards. Weren’t raising her hand or writing on the blackboard or eating her lunch or even cleaning the erasers.

  “There’s no fathoming the girl,” said Miss Fensterman. “She acts so sad all the time.”

  I could feel my nostrils flaring.

  “What the hell makes you think she’s acting?”

  She stopped blinking for a couple seconds. “I was—I didn’t—”

  “Tell you what. You go and lose all the things my baby sister has lost in life and see how sad you feel.”

  Didn’t trust myself to leave it there, so I walked back into the house and slammed the door after me.

  Later that night, I made a point of asking Janey to help me balance our accounts. Truth is, the books had fallen way behind since Hiram left, so the two of us set for a good long time in the light of an old kerosene lamp, and I watched her running her fingers down each column—doing the sums in her head, just like Hiram said, and making little clucks every time she caught me out on something.

  “You can’t add for beans, Melia.”

  “Did I ever say I could?”

  “You need someone full-time on this.”

  “Part-time, maybe.”

  She frowned, bent her head closer to the page. “Might as well be me. I ain’t got no use for school no more.”

  I studied the back of her head in the greasy brown light.

  “Well, now,” I said. “School might’ve been a waste for me, but … Daddy Hiram said you was some kind of mathematical genius. Said you was smart enough to go to college. So I don’t know, maybe we should give this thing another shot. See what happens.”

  “Another shot,” she said.

  “For his sake.”

  She raised her head, pushed the ledger away.

  “How’s he even gonna know, Melia? He’s dead.”

  “Oh, hold on there, missy. You don’t think he’s got a say-so in all this? You don’t think he’s looking down right now? I’m telling you, if you don’t go and make something of yourself, he’s gonna haunt you all your days.”

  “He already does.”

  Well, I had no reply for that. So we set there for some time, staring down at those fool numbers. Finally, after I don’t know how long, Janey said, “I’ll tell Miss Fensterman I was just restin’ my eyes.”

  *

  Earle was doing his level best to hang on in school, but he kept saying as soon as he turned sixteen, he was gonna sign on with the Civilian Conservation Corps. Learn something worth learning.

  No question, with Hiram gone, he’d become a broodier cuss. Quiet at breakfast, quiet at supper. Quick to disappear. Every Sunday, him and Gus’d spend hours in the woods, no matter the weather, and not come back till the sun had near dropped off the mountains. His Great Heap o’ Treasure got smaller and smaller. Sometimes I’d glance through the front curtains and find him setting in one of the tire swings. Too big now even to make it move and not caring if it did.

  Round about March, he started having nightmares. The come-running kind. It was hard to know what to do—he didn’t want to be held no more, but he was okay with me setting by his bed. Most of the time, he never went back to sleep, just laid there with tearless eyes, waiting for the first sign of light.

  “You want to tell me about it?” I asked him finally.

  But he didn’t say nothing.

  “Is it the same dream?” I asked. “Each time?”

  Still nothing. But I figured there was but one event that could keep calling him back again and again. It had to be the night of the fire.

  Hell, hadn’t I spent a lot of time there myself? Only I’d never had to point a gun at a man and take his life from him.

  “You didn’t do nothing wrong,” I said. “You know that.”

  He stared up at the ceiling.

  “Listen now,” I said. “We just gotta find us a new way to look on this. I mean, we was in a by-God battle, Earle. Just like the World War. There was this country, and its name was—its name was Harleyana, and it was evil, and it was trying to invade the good country of—I don’t know…”

  “Brendaland,” he offered.

  “You’re getting it now. And all it come down to in the end was one lone soldier, brave and true. And if he hadn’t have been there, why, there’d be no Brendaland left, and the world’d be a sorrier place. I tell you what, if I had something shiny to hand, I’d pin a medal on that soldier right now. Maybe you got some tinfoil hidden away somewhere?”

  “In the lean-to…”

  “Well, okay, I’ll make you a medal tomorrow. But here’s the thing about being a soldier. There comes a time to stop fighting. So next time you—you go back to that night—see if you can’t just set your gun down. I mean it! Drop it on the ground and walk away.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Why, sure. ’Cause once you start walking, you know you’ll end up right back here. And we’ll be waiting on you, same as always.”

  I don’t know if any of that took, but the sleep got easier after a time. One thing never changed, though, and that was Earle’s feeling toward guns. Wouldn’t go near ’em, not even on a bet. Shotguns, cap guns, air rifles—it didn’t matter. Whenever his friends asked him to go squirreling, Earle’d shake his head just the once and tell them to come back when they wanted to catch trout.

  *

  Business kept strong through the winter. Dudley worked the store, when he weren’t dreaming up next week’s special or running the newest ad to the Warren County Register. Me, I did my best to keep the gas flowing and the engines lubricated, but the rush got so fierce sometimes I’d catch myself doing something I’d never done before—wishing for another mechanic. I even went and talked to a couple of Harley Blevins’s old employees. Oh, they was decent enough fellers, knew their way round an engine, but when it come down to it, I couldn’t find no one I trusted like I trust myself.

  Guess that’s something I’m still working on.

  So here we was living on the cheap, making our bank payments, paying down our debts. Making the goddamn thing work. And the whole time I felt like we was in some rickety old Model T with four bald tires. All it’d take was one blowout to send us swerving off the road.

  See, in the eyes of the law, me and Janey and Earle was still orphans. And orphans wasn’t supposed to be running their own business, living in their own house. Orphans was supposed to be wards of the state. So what was gonna happen when the state decided to come for us?

  By now I was pretty sure nobody in Walnut Ridge would rat us out—not so long as we kept their cars humming. As for Judge Barnswell of juvenile court … well, Chester kept him stocked up with Cream of Kentucky bourbon and took care to lose to him once or twice a week in seven-card stud.

  When I thought on it, there was but one soul in the world who could kill the whole deal for us. And that just happened to be the same person who come bicycling past the station every Sunday, just a little after the Happy Creek United Methodist Church let out. Her hat was pinned to her head like a dead butterfly, but there weren’t nothing could keep the frizzy locks of Miss Wand tied down for long. Strand after strand went whipping into the breeze, and what with the sleeves and the skirt of her dress flapping away, too, she looked like a parade’s worth of flags.

  But whenever she got to Brenda’s Oasis, she slowed to a halt, and everything about her went quiet—her head quietest of all—and she stayed there for near a minute staring up at our sign.

  And me staring at her the whole time, like she was a Model T tire about to give way. Sometimes I’d think I should just have it out with her, see which way she was tending. But looking back, I don’t think she knew herself. That’s why she come by every week, waiting for a sign. And the only sign she could find was ours.

  So winter barreled into spring, and spring slipped away without a thought, and then June come round.

  You’ll get to know early June. Those first knuckles of heat come bowling up from the south and meet those cool soft bellies of mountain air, and the heat give
s a punch, and the mountains punch back, and every barometer inside of ten miles gets drunk-dizzy, and the haze, before your eyes, turns from blue to gray to white and then back again. It’s like the world’s trying on summers in a store mirror.

  Well, that’s what it was like that morning. The morning a Studebaker Dictator, deep green, come driving down Strasburg Pike.

  Moving as quiet as a car can move, I believe, and still be moving. I thought for sure it was lost, but once it turned into the station, it seemed to know where it was heading.

  Earle was still at school, so I was working the pumps, and Dudley was painting his sixteen-year-old charms onto some old biddy’d come in for a candy bar. Even from thirty feet off, I could hear him. “You telling me you don’t have the newest Rand McNally? Lordy, roads change round here near every day. You can get lost inside an hour without an up-to-the-minute map. Hey, now, is that husband of yours a fisherman? He is?…”

  So there I was, waiting for that Studebaker to come my way, but it hung back.

  By now, the glancingest of rains had started to fall. I went up to the car real slow, and I doffed my cap and peered through the tinted windows, and I said, “Can I help you, mister?”

  The door opened, and a woman got out.

  She was dressed right smart for Walnut Ridge. Silk-and-linen summer dress with a wide-brimmed straw hat and ivory heels. White gloves dangling from pink arms.

  “Hello, Amelia.”

  “We met?” I said.

  She tilted her face toward the rain. “I think it’s my hair,” she said. “It’s not so long as it was.”

  I stood there, utterly still.

  Looking back, it weren’t just the hair, it was her whole being. The only sign of the old Ida was the trace of nerves that clung to her as she kept cutting her eyes back to the car.

  “Well, now,” I said. “I figured we’d seen the last of you.”

  “I guess I did, too,” she said, soft as mist.

  It come back to me in a beat. The sight of her flying through those hospital doors.

  “It weren’t right what you did,” I said. “Running off and leaving him like that.”

  “I know,” she said. She give me a sheepish smile, then palmed some of the rain off her face. “If it makes you feel any less sore, it was his idea.”