Ash Falls

by Warren Read

  “All right then,” he said finally, leaning to one side and taking his wallet from his back pocket. He cleared his throat and dug out two twenties, tossing them onto the table. “Payday.”

  “Payday,” Patrick echoed. He picked them from the table and slid to the edge of the bench. What little sun had dropped in was now gone, and he became suddenly aware of an itching in his feet. He stood up, pushing them onto the floor, and the itch worked its way over him, up into his legs and over his ass as he tucked the bills into his back pocket.

  “Hold up,” Tin said, dropping his arm out in front of Patrick like a tollgate. He drew it back and pulled another twenty out of his wallet, handing it over. “Christmas bonus.”

  Patrick pulled back. He wanted it, but he hadn’t earned it. He might screw up something later, leave a cage open, and Tin would cuss him out, bring up this twenty dollars he should have never gotten.

  “You don’t have to do that,” he said. “You already gave me a watch.”

  “I know I don’t have to, numbskull. Besides, I got one less piece of junk in the drawer now. And this,” he slapped the bill on the table, “you got coming.”

  “No.”

  “Don’t argue with me. It’s Christmas, goddamn it. Go and buy some more of that yellow for that hair. Or I’m gonna have to start calling you by your real name.”

  Patrick took the twenty and tucked it into his pocket, and moved from the table to the door. The bones of Tin’s shoulders seemed to rise up through his shirt, a landscape of knobs and ridges, his head sunk low, the scallop of vertebrae straining against the neck. He looked as if he might lean all the way forward and go to sleep right there, and it occurred to Patrick then to just go ahead ask the question that had crossed his mind more than a few times that morning as he had watched the old man with fat Charlie and the two Indians, the guys who mocked him so openly as soon as he turned his back on them.

  “Hey Tin,” he said.

  “Yeah?” He opened the folder again and began to spread the papers over the table once more.

  “So my mom, she usually does this Christmas Eve dinner,” he said. It’s nothing, usually just me and her. But I was thinking if you weren’t doing anything. You could come by if you wanted to.”

  Tin picked at the edge of one of the papers, moving the page back and forth as if he was comparing it to the blank table beneath it. “I don’t know, kid. You asking me to come and eat at your house, or you asking me for Christmas Eve?”

  “Both, I guess.” It bothered him that one should matter over the other, and he didn’t know which one was preferable. “It’ll probably just be roast beef and potatoes and all that,” he said. “She likes us to wear Christmas colors and stuff, but you wouldn’t have to. It’s a stupid thing but it makes her happy. It’s not a big deal.”

  “Roast beef? I’d have to wear my teeth for that. You already ask her?”

  “She won’t care. She likes you.”

  “You ask her first,” he said. He got up from the bench, taking hold of Patrick’s shoulder as a ledge to help him stand. Brushing past him, he made his way to folding door of the phone booth bathroom. “Ask her first and I’ll think about it. I don’t like putting my teeth in unless I have to.”

  Patrick pulled up to the library and braked in front of the courtyard, where the giant Ash Falls Christmas tree stood. He looped the chain from his bicycle around the lamppost and locked it in place, checking the time on his watch again, comparing it to the illuminated face over the library doors. A couple minutes off, close enough. He swept the bench clean and sat down, the cold sinking into his rear end almost immediately. The tree towered over him in a brilliant display, and up and down the street were constellations of countless colors, flickering and bathing clapboard and blanketed lawns in a glow that seemed to mimic something close to warmth.

  There was a time when all of this shit was exciting, the spackle of lights and frilly tinsel hanging from the store eaves, and the echo of carols coming from any number of tiny box speakers. He used to sit on this same stone bench in the library courtyard, sometimes with Marcelle, once with his mother, after getting a Polaroid with Santa at the firehouse on Virginia Street. He’d stare up at the giant spruce with its silver and blue globes and fake candles flickering on the fingertips of so many branches as he hummed carols, always the carols, and coalesce images of a day far off in the future, himself a father. Sometimes he wore a beard and other times not, and there might be a wife, hazy and non-distinct in the background, no real form or face, nobody he had ever met in his life. Often there would be a man, though, rugged and strong, like the men who sometimes came through town on motorcycles, or with knobby bicycles strapped to the rear ends of their German cars. It had all been so far in the future as he dreamed, sitting in the middle pews of the Episcopal church on Sixth Avenue with his parents, the Christmas Eve service, with the velvet warmth and the richness of incense, when they had all gone that last December 24th in Ash Falls, before Ricky Cordero took away their ability to blend in to it all.

  Deep in the branches of the courtyard tree, behind the candles and ornaments, Patrick rediscovered the chill of the prison visiting room and the saltiness of machine-bought chips, and iron echoes of immediate demands bouncing off concrete walls, and the crash of metal doors, three times on the way in, three times on the way out. There was the frigid alleyway behind the old church, the dance club with its deep, muffled breathing against peeling exterior, and the specter of strobe through stained glass, his body huddled against Shadow’s, legs warming one another, both of them waiting for the pill to finally kick in. And then later, in the doorway of the big house, the smell of baked bread and the side-eyed stare of Mama T. as she gave them their final warning. “Don’t come into my house if you ain’t clear-headed.” And then there was his mother again, coming down the front steps of their house, almost running to him, legs uncooperative beneath her, a hundred different words coming from a single, longing look. And there was Marcelle and Eugene looming outside of the Henrys’ house, fingers entwined like she was a captured bird, and then Shadow, and then Shadow, with his jet black hair and powder blue eyes, so far away, Shadow always hanging up first and never returning calls, Shadow’s sweet scent still faint on the shirt kept underneath Patrick’s pillow. And Mama T’s soft voice saying, “Shadow’s just like his name; here one minute, gone the next,” and the smell and the noise of the minks, the awful minks, pacing and crazy, and the simple, magic touch of and old man’s hand on his shoulder, and the medicine of sitting beside a curling blue-green river.

  All of it was so vivid in his mind and yet so distant, none of it repeatable. What lay ahead was as murky as the past was clear, he couldn’t begin to even imagine what waited for him. His father. His place in this town. His mother, and the unbelievable love and patience she had for a son who didn’t deserve it.

  He got up and made his way down the sidewalk, hands dug deep down in his pockets, forging through his own breath as it pushed out in tiny clouds. Awnings yawned under crusted snow, and winking lights cast sheens of red and green into sectioned cement slabs pocked with scatters of salt pellets. Behind the storefront windows, the Fotomat, the attorney and accountants’ offices, people moved back and forth in automatic motions, like finger puppets, or as if coasting on wheels. The orange-haired, mustached man who had always managed Hinkle’s drifted behind stenciled window snowflakes from shelf to shelf, unfolding and refolding sweaters, glancing up only briefly as Patrick looked over to take in his own reflection. A sharp cackle split the hum of holiday carols, canned music piped out from somewhere, and Patrick turned to see a woman standing under the garland-draped entry to the Louella’s Shear Genius Salon, blond hair ratted high so it hovered around her head, backlit like a giant halo.

  A kind of force took hold of him then, a gentle tug at his jacket, a calling that at once seemed both sudden and sensible. He felt the wad of cash in his pocket, and he looked back into Hinkle’s, at the stacks and rows of useless clothing, and
down the block to A&M Electronics, where even the batteries could be counted on to be overpriced. A low station wagon cruised past, the rattle of studded tires rushing over the music. He glanced both ways and cut through the cars parked at the curb, crossing over to P.J.’s Pawn and Loan on the west side of the street, its half-lit sign lurking behind a slush-specked window. The heavy door strained against his weight, and he pushed it harder, the kick of the bell causing the man at the glass wrap counter—not P.J., but someone Patrick didn’t recognize at all—to look up from the magazine he had spread open on the glass top.

  “How’s it going, Sport?” He had graying hair that was almost to his shoulders, and he tossed it back as he tipped his head up.

  “Good.”

  “What can I do you for?”

  Patrick walked up to the glass case and stood with his hands behind his back, scanning the perimeter of figurines and coins and jeweled rings and antique locks, and slivers of knife blades splayed out before him. What happened in the lives of these people, he wondered, that they would sell such treasures for so little, maybe hoping to come back and retrieve them when things got better which they would, of course, never do? Family heirlooms, gifts passed from father to son, to grandson, with the intention of forever, never imagining that the gift would one day be a token for someone’s next car payment, or a couple cartons of Marlboros, or maybe one more month’s trailer space rent before finally packing up to leave town for good.

  Patrick pulled at the band around his wrist. It was almost five o’clock. “You have any watches?” he asked.

  The man flipped the magazine closed. There was a woman in a bikini on the cover, dark and oiled so she almost looked plastic. “I got watches,” he said. He slouched to the back of the store, to an acrylic columned case that sat atop a wide, cherry wood sideboard. The case was lit by a tiny desktop spot lamp with one of those flexible necks, the kind that always reminded Patrick of a robot or a space alien. The wrist and pocket watches in the case looked to span decades, from shiny, digital faces to cloudy, ash-like discs with their elaborate covers tightly clasped shut over the time of day.

  “I was needing something with big numbers.” He leaned into the case and tapped at the carousel.

  “Big numbers? Roman or Arabic?”

  “Just regular. Arabic, I guess. That’s probably better.”

  The man took a key ring from his pocket and jimmied the lock on the case, then took out about a half dozen wristwatches, plus a couple pocket watches, snapping open the covers. He laid them out on the sideboard in a clean lineup.

  Patrick thumbed a few of them, feeling the smoothness of the glass, the cool plating of the metal bands or the fissured leather, the sweat of some stranger buried deep in the cells of the hide. He held them to his wrist and stretched his hand as far from him as he could, pretending to struggle in order to see the numbers. Maybe he wouldn’t want to put something on his wrist at all, whether he could read the thing or not. He picked up the pocket watch with the open cover and turned it over in his hand. The plate was simple, with a relief of what looked like leaves and waves around the circumference. The numbers on the face were big enough, not too fancy to make out. It worked. The tiny sticker on the back said $45.00. He put it back.

  “You like that one?”

  “Yeah, but it’s too much. I won’t have hardly anything left.”

  “Who’s it for?”

  “My grandpa.” It was funny how quickly that lie spilled out, and it gave him a flutter in his stomach when he said it, a pleasant sensation that made him want to laugh, at the mere notion that Tin Dorsay could be anyone’s grandfather. It was an absurd image, like something from an old black and white comedy. But it was not an impossible one. He could almost see it.

  The man leaned his elbows on the counter and held the watch in one of his hands. He turned it over and looked closely at the face, at the numbers that Patrick could still make out clearly, even from across the counter. He pinched the winding crown and turned it, glancing at Patrick a few times as he did so.

  “Tell you what,” he said. “Since it’s Christmas and all, how about I give it to you for thirty. Can you handle that?”

  The movement grew in his stomach, shifting and swelling until it might tip him off his feet. The deal was a good one, he knew, but he didn’t want to snatch hold of it just yet. He put his hands into his pockets and felt the crispness of the cash, rocking on his the balls of his feet, looking at the watch, taking it in his hand, studying the engravings on the cover. He was contemplating the offer as a good businessman would. It was past five o’clock, and the shopkeeper no doubt had places to be.

  “Okay kid,” the man said. He rubbed his hands together then displayed the empty palms. “Twenty-five. Final offer. You’ll get a nice watch for your grandpa, and I can close up and get home to my dinner.”

  Henry Tomas Kelleher

  He noticed it the second he walked into the trailer. Besides the usual fog of cat piss and overripe fruit, the unwashed underarms and aquarium shop moisture hanging in the air, other than the expected image of Susanna shoehorned into her beaten, orange recliner—what really caught his attention was the tree. Where there had always been shoebox towers, sagging lids, and water-stained bottoms, and bundles of yellowed newspaper striations, there now stood a lone Christmas tree. It was one of those fake things, a conglomeration of plastic and twisted wire, and it stood at stark attention in the corner, bound with a string of dim white bulbs and a single, snaking green garland. Spindle branches stuck out like the crossbraces of a telephone pole. A dozen or so tiny balls peeked out like fat, silver birds.

  The placement of this tree, in this house, was equally as strange as the absence of one had been in Lyla’s. A tree this time of year at the Henry place was one thing Hank could always count on. A big one, pressed into the same dark corner, riddled with the same collection of ornaments, the nutcrackers and glitter-spackled balls, and glass snowflakes, all topped with a writhing, motorized angel she had ordered some years back through a catalog that sold those kinds of things. But not once throughout the past two days—not through the drone of the power drill, the mounting of handrails and cabinet latches and chain door locks, between the countless trips up and down the basement stairs to drag Eugene’s boxy furniture to the main floor bedroom—not once did Lyla even utter the word Christmas.

  Still, he shouldn’t have been surprised that the tree was in this trailer. It was, after all, almost Christmas. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that nothing about the tree seemed right, not in this place, not with this person. It reeked of the accidental guest, the bride who turns up at the wrong church in the middle of a funeral invocation. Some well-intentioned person had cleaned out that corner and hauled away all the crap that had built up over the years. Then whoever it was dragged the horrible thing in and propped it up, trussed it with some old lights and a garland, threw on a few cheap ornaments and called it a day.

  “That’s not mine,” she said. He looked at her and she quickly cut away, studying the tree as if it were a stray dog that had wandered into her yard. “Tammy my caseworker brung it over in her hatchback. They got a new one this year at the welfare office. She said she thought I might want it.”

  “Well that was nice of her.”

  “I didn’t ask for it or nothing. She just brung it.”

  “She sounds like a thoughtful person.”

  “Yeah, well. All the time she’s on my case about how I need to stop getting stuff, that I got no room left in the place. And then here she comes with a Christmas tree in her car.” Susanna shrugged her shoulders. The small gesture moved her entire body in the chair.

  Slivers of condensation-spotted glass peeked through curtains that were drawn almost to the centers. Hank’s bag weighed heavy on his lap, and he thumbed the zipper, feigning interest, still making small talk about the tree and the nice light it gave off in the room, and the kinds of ornaments his mother used to bring home after the holidays, when everything in the Christ
mas aisle was half price. And when Susanna released a heavy sigh, it was saturated with such disinterest he could no longer pretend he wasn’t just rambling. He opened the bag and took out the small plastic pouch.

  He knew she was not going to like what he had to say to her, and he tried to be easy with the news, saying the words just as he had rehearsed them in the ride there. He was done, out of the business for good. No, it didn’t matter why. Things were just different for him now. “It’s simply the way it is, Honey,” he said. Honey. It wasn’t a term of endearment he used often, but he found it could help in circumstances like this.

  Nevertheless, her reaction was that of near panic. Her lips came apart with a pop, and she pulled herself into the chair, the strain on springs unnerving. Her eyeballs looked ready to leave their sockets, as if being pushed from behind. He said it again, Honey, and she sucked in her lower lip and squeezed her eyelids closed, the thin, feathery lashes trembling against her apple cheeks, her hand pressing into the blotchy flesh above her neckline.

  “Now then,” he said. He had expected as much from her, this carrying on. The dramatics. It was the reason he hadn’t wanted to come at all, why he’d had to force himself, instead of simply calling her on the phone. It was best to do it in person, he told himself, to be sure that in the wake of all the spectacle, she would be okay.

  “Oh geez Louise,” she said at last. “I’m sorry.” She dragged in a rattled breath and opened her eyes again. Fanning her cheeks, she looked down at the tiny plastic bag. “You just caught me off guard. I gotta think this through.”

  “I’ll make some phone calls if you want.”

  “You mean to get someone new to come over? ‘Cause that’d be okay.”

  Hank took his coat from the chair back. He stood and draped it over his arm, ready to leave, wanting so badly to leave. Susanna sat with her hands folded on her lap, filling the orange chair from arm to arm. The plastic baggie lay on the T.V. tray like a turd, more of an insult than a gift. It wouldn’t last her through the week. But that was it; she was going to have to live with it. He wouldn’t be bringing any more here on out, not a single gram.