Twisted Tree

by Kent Meyers

  It works, I tell him. A minute. I’ll be out.

  But now she has a head of steam. It’s like the kid and I are in some other universe, and she’s still going on: Once I realized a ticket was half the price of this ring set—that can’t be coincidence, can it? I mean, it means something. There’s even a word for it.

  There’s coach, I say.

  He splurged on this ring set. I’ve got to honor that. Serendipity. I’ve read about it. Things are connected, and they’ll just—they connect.

  I stare at the rings under the glass, the diamonds, the rubies, the Black Hills gold, the big old class ring for Spearfish High School right under my nose.

  Lorraine, I say, you’re doing some mean math to get to serendipity. But OK. It all works out. Bill comes back and Lorraine’s not there. Lorraine’s where Bill’s been, flying on a wedding band. Cute. I’ll give you that.

  When I look up, her eyes are wide.

  How do you know our names? she asks. Her voice is breathy with surprise.

  I act dumb: You must have told me.

  No. I didn’t. Did I?

  I shrug. She lets it go.

  So, she says. When he comes back, guess what? I won’t be at the airport waiting to pick him up. How he’s going to get home, I don’t know. But when he does, the door’ll be open. And on the table, what? A receipt for my airline ticket. With the destination cut out. And the price circled. And a receipt for these two rings. With that price circled, too, and then multiplied by two. And I’ll leave him a ten-dollar bill for the difference. He only owes me the flight.

  Lorraine, I say, I’m impressed. Only, serendipity’s not worth much in here. There’s coach. Bill’ll get the message.

  The message is for me.

  Her voice is hard, like I have some kind of obligation to understand.

  I don’t buy symbols, I tell her.

  Seven-fifty.

  We’ve got nothing to talk about.

  All right, then.

  All right.

  But she doesn’t move. She tips her chin up and to the side and gives a little sniff, but that’s all. OK. Let her pose if it makes her feel better.

  I’ve got to check on those kids, I say. Sorry I couldn’t help you.

  And I actually am, a little. But I’m not in business to help every nut case who walks through my door. I scoop the money back up, lock the cash box inside the case. When I go outside, my tools are scattered all over the sidewalk. It’s near closing time, but it’s still hot. The earrings have crossed some wires. They can’t even match colors. By the time I get out from under their dash, the back of my shirt is soaked. I turn the ignition on. They’ve got a CD in already, and it starts up, someone screaming something. I turn the volume down.

  It works, I say.

  They’re grinning, bobbling their heads like they think there’s a rhythm somewhere in that noise, matches the clappers in their brains.

  How about we drive it around some, the tall one says. Could we? See how it sounds moving? You know, with the windows open and all?

  That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard, but Lorraine must’ve weakened my defenses, because I say, OK. But I’ve got your license number. I close in half an hour. You’re not back, I call the cops. And pick those tools up first.

  Back in the shop, I can’t believe it, she’s still standing there. Hasn’t moved. Doesn’t move when I go around the counter. Doesn’t even turn her head. When I come right in front of her, her eyes catch mine, but barely. That’s all.

  You’re still here, I say.

  I’ve got my toe on the floor alarm button.

  You changed your mind, then? You want the three hundred?

  I open the case, get out the cash box, lay the bills on the counter.

  There, I say, and push the cash toward her. I pick up the rings and put them on the shelf behind me, but I don’t completely turn my back. You read it in the paper all the time, it’s the quiet ones who end up going postal.

  But she doesn’t move a muscle. I turn, tap the money with my index finger.

  Go ahead, Lorraine. Take it. It’s worth more to you than the rings.

  You’d think she’d had a stroke.

  I’m closing soon. Cash or merchandise, one or the other.

  Her mouth sets hard.

  Cute, I say. Except I don’t see the humor. You’re not out of here when I close, I call the cops. How’s that for cute?

  It doesn’t faze her. It’s like she’s turning into stone in front of me, except for her eyes. They’re brighter all the time, brick-colored but nothing like stone about them. I put both hands on the counter and lean toward her.

  Come on, Lorraine, I say quietly. You don’t want the cops to haul you out. Take the three hundred. I can’t go higher. That’s the limit. Really. I’ll give you a receipt for the seven-fifty. Bill won’t know the difference.

  She doesn’t say a word, but I already know what she’s thinking: I’ll know the difference. It occurs to me that I might sound just like Bill, bullying first, then pleading—even if in either case I’m the reasonable one. I throw up my hands and spin away from her.

  You want to get arrested, fine! I yell. Just don’t blame me. It’s my store, Lorraine. My place! My money!

  I go to the window. The light’s so bright out there it hurts, but I stare into it wide-eyed until it doesn’t anymore. A couple of Chinese women from the air base, married to American guys, are leaving the little spice store across the street. Or maybe they’re Filipino or Korean or Vietnamese, or hell, I don’t know, Cambodian, Thai, what else is there? Their mouths are open, their teeth are white, they’re laughing.

  And then I turn around to this dark thing. Standing there. I’ve been looking out the window so long, and it’s so dim by the counter, I can hardly make her out. She looks like some statue I got in, some mistake in judgment, cast in concrete and painted black, that I’ll never unload. Like a bad dream of dealing. Like something that if I bulldozed the place, knocked the whole building down, would still be standing there when the dust settled, like an old stone chimney in the middle of nowhere where a house once stood.

  I’ve never cheated on my wife. I give to CARE and March of Dimes and I walk in Relay for Life and I call the cops if someone tries to sell me stuff I think is stolen. Everyone comes in here wants to think they’re getting cheated—because by God, if I’m cheating them, that’s proof they’re innocent and pure. All I do is buy and sell and pawn. Stuff doesn’t get mucked up with meaning here. It’s just stuff. My house doesn’t have a million rooms and I don’t drive a Hummer just so I can send a message: I got it and you don’t, and to hell with anything else. My son never got a girl pregnant and dumped her, and my daughter never neither. They both worked down here and knew a thing was a thing. I didn’t have to give them a Game Cube or an iPod—which I got a few of here—to let them know they meant something to me.

  So what right’s Lorraine got to make me feel like nothing counts for me but money? I get so sick of people using this place to prove how good they are. They may’ve got themselves so addicted to drugs or gambling or some other demon that they need to unload everything they own to keep the addiction going, or they may’ve lost all their dreams some other way—but by God at least they’re not that cheap sonofabitch who buys and sells the things. I’ve never bought or sold a dream, or a demon for that matter, in my life, and it’s a hell of a lot more moral to make a gram of gold a gram of gold than it is to make it forever or some such goddamn nonsense.

  I walk back to the counter, banging my heels on the floor so the whole place shakes and echoes, and I grab the phone off the hook.

  I’m calling the police, I growl. It’s past closing. You’re trespassing.

  That gets her, I can see it. Probably never even had a speeding ticket. But she holds her ground. I don’t use 9-1-1, it’s not a real emergency, and the last thing I need is the police not responding to a real emergency because I’ve given them fake ones. I punch the numbers in, then hold the phone a
way from my ear so she can hear it ringing.

  Police.

  I’ve been watching her, and all of a sudden there’s this voice in my ear wanting to know what I want, and I’m staring at those frightened eyes of hers—and I can’t do it.

  Sorry, I say. Wrong number. Sorry.

  I slam the receiver down and spin away from the phone and bang my hands on the counter. Light jangles off every shivering point and edge of ring and jewel under the glass.

  All right! I yell. I’ll give you your seven-fifty. Because I don’t care about it, Lorraine. You understand? I don’t care about that money. And I sure as hell don’t care about your serendipity. It’s bullshit, what you’re doing, making these rings into—

  I wave my hands, I can’t even finish that sentence. It’s pathetic is what it is, me giving in to this. But I don’t care.

  I grab the cash box off the counter and open it so hard I bend the hinges. I lift it three feet off the countertop and tip the whole box upside down. Coins roll and clatter, landing at her feet and mine, and rubber-banded wads of cash thump and flop, and loose bills float and settle, on the counter and the floor and around her thin hands unmoving as tree roots on the glass.

  There! That’s all the cash I got. Take it all if it means so goddamn much to you. Fly to New Zealand, first class and one way. Just get out of my store.

  Her whole face softens and breaks apart, like the life in her eyes is melting out into the stone. Then she shuts her eyes and holds them shut. I stand there with the cash box upside down in my hands, the bent lid hanging. And I realize how hurt she is. It’s seeping out of her, now that her face is softening. I can’t move. It’s like I’m seeing her for the first time, like that statue I thought was concrete, I’m seeing through the dust and grease of it to some lost piece of art and am just starting to comprehend what’s being offered.

  Then she sighs, and her eyes open, and they’re bright and not angry, and I realize by the way they’re looking at me that they’re not seeing angry either. It’s all gone. From both of us. It’s just us, looking at each other.

  Thank you, she says.

  Which, after all this, is as crazy as anything else she’s said.

  Her hand floats over the bills but then pauses and just hangs there. Now she’s undecided. Happens all the time. The deal done, and then the doubt. I could say, Forgive him, Lorraine. Maybe he’s changed. How do you know unless you find out?

  But I made the deal. I’m a pawnshop owner, not a counselor.

  She goes through with it, but not so easy. She finds seven hundreds and two twenties, but then her hands shuffle through the bills like she can’t focus. I bend down and pick up a ten that’s on the floor by my feet and hold it out to her. It’s limp, moving a little from the air conditioner’s flow. She looks at it for a while, then finally reaches out and takes it.

  Then, before I can drop my hand, she grabs it and squeezes. She’s holding the ten, so it’s a paper squeeze, but even through the crumpled money it feels real.

  I don’t know your name, she says.

  Ed. Ed’s Pawn?

  Of course.

  She squeezes again, the ten crushed between us, then lets go.

  Ed, she says—and it’s funny to hear, no one ever says my name in here—what happens?

  She’s looking at her rings—my rings—on the counter.

  Yeah, I say. Well, sometimes I’ll get a young couple in here, you know, without a lot of money but, you know, in love, and—

  She reaches out and touches the back of my hand.

  It’s OK, she says. That’s a lie. You’re sweet.

  What can I say to that? I tell the truth in here all the time, and no one ever tells me I’m sweet.

  I better go, she says.

  Aren’t you forgetting something?

  She stares at me, then it hits her. The receipt! she says.

  I find a pen and hunch over the counter with it.

  Last name? I ask.

  Lipking—no, Durant. It was—I mean, Lipking’s his name. But mine’s Durant.

  Lorraine Durant, I say aloud, writing it.

  I concentrate on the letters and numbers, making sure they’re legible and pressed hard so her copy will be clear. I circle the $750.00 for her, then pull the receipt out of the box and tear it off. I separate my copy and hand her the yellow one. She fumbles around in her purse, putting it under some flap, then puts her hand out. It’s so thin in mine I’m almost afraid I’ll break it.

  Lorraine, tell me something. Would you’ve let the cops haul you out? Really?

  She hesitates, then says: I would have.

  I look at her, debating.

  I’m glad to hear that, I say. But why here? Why me?

  I cook Chinese, she says. So, you know, that store over there. I’d see your sign. It’s hard to find Chinese spices in Twisted Tree.

  Twisted Tree! Where that girl was from.

  Yeah. I know the family. She used to run. She and her best friend would run by my house.

  She was in here.

  In here?

  Brought in a rodeo buckle. I told her, Keep it. Someday you’re going to want to show that to your kids. But she insisted. Had this air. Like she knew exactly what she was doing. Then three weeks later I see her picture in the paper.

  What happened to it?

  The buckle? Guy bought it. Some collector. I kinda hid it, figured she might come back for it, but he nosed it out and then there wasn’t nothing to do but sell it.

  That’s too bad.

  Yeah? Maybe it is.

  I gotta go.

  Wave to Bill for me up there when you pass him.

  She smiles, sort of: her lips smile, her face looks sad, and her eyes—they look like they’re already gazing down, and the world’s going by.

  I watch her out the door, then pick up the fallen money. I’m turning the open sign around in the window when I hear drums and screaming coming around the corner. The Camaro sways into a parking spot. Fifteen minutes past closing. They hop out and march through the door. Before they can say anything, I do.

  You’re late. I gave you guys a break. Could’ve had you in handcuffs by now.

  Sorry, the tall one says. We lost track of time.

  I let them shuffle. Finally he says, The system’s OK, I guess.

  That’s bullshit. You don’t lose track of time with an OK stereo system. But I just wait.

  Will you take a hundred and fifty for it?

  That’s fifty less than what I got it marked, and they’re feeling guilty. Can’t, I say. That one’s already clearance. Blue-light special. Low as I can go.

  They look at each other.

  Well—it’s too much.

  I’ve got them over a barrel. I could say, If you think so, take it out. You know where the tools are. It’s tempting. But hell—I can get my price and make them feel good besides. Why crucify them? They’re just kids.

  Look, I say. The deal’s good. You won’t get a system like that anywhere for that price. You already got it installed. You can use it tonight. Impress the girls. Who knows?

  They grin. The shorter one lifts up on his heels and drops back down, and the tall one looks at the floor and then says, Well, OK. Two hundred. With a three-month guarantee.

  Surprises me. Got more in reserve than I thought. Good for him. But I never give guarantees. This is used stuff. I don’t take in junk, but it’s buyer beware here. But I think of Lorraine, probably the first time she’s ever flown, lifting up to some other life. What the hell.

  Two months, I say. I’ll guarantee it two.

  They look at each other, debating.

  But they’re already there. I clinch it. I wait a moment more, then say: With a system good as that one is, two’s as good as forever.

  Traces

  WE ALL KNEW THE crazy sonofabitch was out there. Don’t know how many times people told me of waking at night to the sound of his rifle. Hell of a way to be jerked out of dreaming. Shane Valen was a weird sonofabitch from a
long line of weird sonsabitches. Not that anyone ever caught him in their headlights bending over an antelope or mulie. Nothing like that. Just guts the next day stinking and shining in a cloud of flies. We all knew who’d done it. Goddammit, Greggy, they’d say to me. Can’t you do something about that goofy bastard?

  Tried once. Turned on my rack and pulled the sonofabitch over for a friendly chat. This was the middle of the afternoon, after he was leaving the rodeo—about the only thing that got him off his ranch during the day. He’d show up, stand at the fence a couple hours, then leave. Never cheer, never clap. Just stand, looking through the fence at the barrel racing. I pulled him over at the edge of town as he was heading home.

  Shane, I said when I got to his window.

  He jerked his head, I guess he was responding.

  Enjoy the rodeo?

  It against the law? he asked.

  Hell no, Shane, I said. You watch all the rodeo you want. Reason I stopped you is, I been getting complaints you’re driving at night without headlights. Reports you’re trespassing all over the county. Thought we should talk about it.

  He stared out his windshield. Stared so long I damn near wondered if I’d really spoke. Finally he said, Anyone cut me?

  Cut you? I asked.

  Trespassin? Anyone cut me trespassin?

  Hell, wasn’t nobody in the goddamn county hadn’t come across Shane’s pickup parked along some back road at night with Shane behind the wheel and his rifle across his chest. Maybe you’re coming home from Ruination or from a wedding dance, weaving a bit on the gravel, and then up from the night that rusted hulk of a pickup rises. Crazy bastard’d stare right into your headlights, so your lights’d bounce up and down on washboards, say, and his eyes’d be going on and off red. Spooky as hell. And you know damn well he was creeping along, poaching, and saw your headlights from miles away, so he pulled off the road like that. A piece a the darkness. You know damn well, too, if you’d go over the next hill and cut your own lights and come back, you’d find that sonofabitch moving along slow, feeling the edges of the road in the dark like a goddamn snake.

  Well, Shane, I said. They ain’t so much caught you, but—