Just North of Nowhere

by Lawrence Santoro

  Bunch topped the last hundred feet of the bluff road. Cool air washed him; just about took the July sweat down to his skin. His legs pumped easy now, his bare feet rolled faster round and round. Nothing to it. Barely out of breath he touched macadam at the top of the ridge and turned to look over his town.

  Down the valley of the Rolling, dark green and shade-gray night was exploding slowly out of the day. Clouds were blooming overhead, big ones rising, sucking in for a blow. A black anvil, miles high, sailed toward town. Another – what’d they call’em? Another ‘cell’ coming. Far off, the air went bumpity, thumb-dummb grumble dummmmmmb-rummmm-rummmmb against the insides of Bunch’s ears. He felt it against his chest. The sky tasted like a penny.

  A good day, a pretty day. Ah. That was why he took the job. Nice days like this!

  Less than a quarter of a mile of ridge road and Bunch pulled up to the little place where Karl had been born and raised. By then, the lightning-edge of the storm was cracking and close. He leaned the big red bike against the Dorbler’s porch and hoisted the paper sacks from the carrier. Arms full, Bunch tapped the front door with his elbow. Nothing. Tapped harder with his foot. Still nothing.

  Bunch poked his head through the unlocked door and called. “Old folks?” Nothing. “Dorblers?” Not a sound. And again. Still nothing.

  Where the hey? Folk their years should be at home in thunder weather and them with no car to drive and Karl at the store, lousy son that he was.

  Bunch went to the kitchen, calling every couple seconds. Old folks spooked easy. Dealing with terrorists in their summer tents had taught him that one thing. He put the bags on the table and waited a minute or so, expecting to hear them any second, upstairs, from another room, somewhere.

  Nope.

  “What the hell,” he said, finally, and headed to the door. Should he put some of the stuff that would melt or go bad into the ice box? He argued with himself. He’d pretty much decided he shouldn’t when, through the sink window, he saw them.

  Across the way and up the crest of the rise, the two old people stood by the fence line. On the other side of the wire was the cleared and dug out mud flats of Karl’s “Dorblerville” development or whatever he was calling it these days. The mud and ruin stretched from the rim of the bluff to the rolling hills.

  “What the hell?” Bunch said again.

  The old folks waited, a wooden wheelbarrow by their side. In the barrow, around them on the ground, were jars, big Mason jars, hinged glass lids yawned open to the sky. The containers caught the afternoon thunderstorm light. They stood out bright against the dark earth and green weeds.

  The woman’s arm wrapped the man’s waist. His arm embraced her shoulders. They stood touching from shoulder to ankle, overlapping each other like lovers. The old woman’s head was tilted upward and she stared at the stormhead rising over them.

  “What the...?”

  Sparks crackled on the wire fence, danced along the ground. Between them, she and the old man raised a long black pole, angled it into the pouring air.

  Lightning smacked the ground nearby, touched the fence. Snake tongues of light and heat licked up and down the pole. Same second, it seemed, the air lit with noise and fury.

  “Huh,” Bunch said.

  The couple didn’t flinch as light and crackles washed down the pole, wrapped them in ripples. Noise rammed the earth and the crackles jumped into the jar by their side.

  Didn’t miss a beat! The old man clacked the glass lid shut on the thing, snapped it rubber-gasket tight. Son of a bitch if the jar didn’t light up like a tiny thunderstorm was trapped, banging around inside.

  Took a second, but Bunch laughed; threw back his head and yowped at the ceiling. He’d never in all his life ever seen anything the hell like this damn fool thing for sheer wonder and joy. Another crack-bang down cut and another jar snapped shut, filled. Each time they caught it, the arms, chests, shoulders and legs of the old folks glowed with liquid fire, like they’d gone wet with it, soaked in it. Bunch pounded the sink and laughed full tears down his cheeks.

  In a few minutes, the couple was chasing storm shots around the ridge. They’d sucked the weather dry! Hell, it hadn’t been a big cell but ten, twelve of the Mason jars were flickering full of summer thunder, summer light, and summer heat. In lulls between big down-cracks, the jars rumbled their own small, quiet thunders.

  Then that was it. They’d petered-out the lightning. Done, the folks gathered their put-up weather and loaded the barrow.

  Bunch left the grocery bags and slipped out the front door. He kept the house between his back and the old Dorblers as far as he could. No reason they should know he’d seen. If they wanted folks to know, they’d have said it their own selves, he figured. That figured. He figured he’d keep his mouth shut too.

  The old folks didn’t bother to see him peddling down the road.

  Son‘bitch, Karl hated this shit! Come back from up there and now Bunch was grinning! Fire his ass, too, but then who the hell’d delivery for him for almost nothing a day? Nobody.

  On his once a month visit up to the folks’s, Karl wanted by the Christ to say some damn thing. He planned on it.

  When he pulled up to the house, music squeaked out from inside. Muted horns, thumping base, tinny voice, a Negro crooning, “My Best Wishes,” a thumpy pieceashit with shouting at both ends. He remembered it from years gone. From when he was a kid.

  It stopped dead when he hit the porch. Mother and daddy opened the door a second later. They looked well; didn’t only look good, they were good. Great, in fact. Goddamn. Supposed to be 90-something years old! He was supposed to worry about them. They were supposed to give fears of calls in the night. Mother, cripes’ sake, looked like a moose. She’d gone from old-lady lean to damn near, what was it? Voluptuous—a word he remembered from school for cripes’ sake.

  Karl couldn’t sit through dinner; kept getting up to pace, looking at one then the other.

  “Karl, for cripes’ sake, you gotta tap your bladder? Go. You know where the damn toilet is.”

  His mother! She didn’t talk like that. Not since he’d been a little shit.

  And they were happy to see the ass-end of him pulling out at 10 o’clock – and not a minute too quick, he figured. Heading away, the damn Negro music starts in again! In his rearview, the lights went out. All except for the cellar. From that window a thin edge of bright slipped across the damp lawn. The music was loud. Karl gunned the engine and started running numbers so to not think!

  The Sons of Norway were suddenly Goddamn good. They killed the teachers from the Consolidated Schools, the Grangers went down dead and they slaughtered the Stockpen Bulls – including the Indians, Pierre Trois-Coeur LeMais and his brother Andre, whom no Swede, Norwegian nor German had defeated in darts in anyone’s memory.

  The usual afterwards fights had started to spill onto Commonwealth and now included blooded knuckles and at least one broken nose. For the first time since Vinnie Erikson had become town cop, he’d actually booked one of the Sons, Pohl Ketillson, for malicious mischief. Vinnie wouldn’t say what that had been about!

  Karl’s old folks started showing up at the Wheel about the time of the first big fight. Even young, Egil and Astrid had avoided the Wagon Wheel and its crowd. Now, they seemed positively aquiver with delight in the neon and TV-lit place with its heavy tobacco and armpit air.

  Seemed to Karl, anyway. The music, as always, bothered him. Even the stuff that Droopy guy had left. But he supposed it was part of tavern life. If he hadn’t owned a silent piece of the joint, he would have complained to Ivan about the noise and the fuss got up next door to the Wurst Haus. People – god bless ‘em – liked noise, he figured. Hell, it turned a buck.

  Could have clocked Karl with a feather first time he caught the folks there. On his visit night, too! He’d done his good-son trip up the ridge and found no one! No one at home! He yelled, looked upstairs, out back...he even stood for a second at the cellar door but, damn, he didn’t want to go do
wn there. He rattled the door, made enough noise to wake the dead—if they’d been dead. Nothing.

  In the end, he jumped in his van and came down to town to report a missing person, persons! Came right to the Wheel because he figured that’s where Vinnie’d be. And there they were: Mom, hipped to the bar, foot up, talking – laughing – with the Italian lady from Slaughterhouse. The one half the men in town were all twittery about and all the woman were saying was some kind of witch. Mom was laughing with the witch, their two heads together, whispering and laughing!

  Across the room, Daddy sipped whisky and whispered with old Lester Hellstrom. Whispering with a deaf guy! And Lester was laughing! Like they’d sealed a deal or some Goddamn thing!

  Mom saw Karl standing in the doorway, mouth hanging. She slapped her head and started laughing—at him.

  “Egil! Say, Egil, we forgot Karl’s visit night!”

  Daddy turned to look at Karl and damn if he didn’t slap his head. “Well, okay,” he said. And that was that! Not even an “uf-dah!” and he was back whispering to Lester, Lester, who just nodded, big grin on his toothless mouth, and looking at dumb Karl in the doorway.

  After the night’s fight, he offered the old folks a ride.

  “We’ll walk,” Daddy said.

  “Nice night, Karl. We can use the exercise. See you,” Mom said. And off they went, holding hands, across the town bridge and up the long switchback.

  Cripes!

  It took until the second week of August before Karl realized things up there were out of hand.

  The Sons of Norway were whispering; heading up to the ridge, driven by friends, kids and grandkids. Sometimes they walked, in twos, or fours...

  Karl first thought, “what the hell; other old folks to hang out with? Do ‘em good.”

  Pretty quick that turned into, “What the Jesus Christ on a stick’s going on up there!” Vinnie the cop stopped by to ask that very question one night as Karl was counting out at the store.

  “What the hell you mean, what’s going on?” Vinnie bit Karl’s ass, best of circumstances.

  “I mean with the Sons of Norway and the half the other folks over 70 trotting up to see your dad and mom!”

  “And what’re you sayin’?!”

  Vinnie flipped open his notebook. “I’m saying they stay fifteen minutes, a half hour, then they come away, big smiles on their faces. Forty nine eight of ‘em last week alone! I mean: what the hell’s going on up there?”

  “Christ, you got me, G-man! They’re drug dealing up there! What the hell I look like, Vinnie? A damn crime lord?” Karl meant it snide. Vinnie didn’t smile.

  Oh, Jesus, Karl thought. May be! Something was. Maybe something was wrong. If wrong – wrong like what he joked about – they could come in – not just Vinnie, real cops – and confiscate! The store, his place, the land up there, all of it, everything, all of it was in their name! He’d not gotten to doing the trade-for-a-dollar thing he’d been planning, so, oh Christ! If they were doing something, something illegal, the law could (holy shit) come in, take the place...take the whole parcel, everything, his life, take it at market rates...all the improvements he’d made, was planning to make, was banking on making over next ten years, the land up there would be worth... Would...could...make him a couple times over a millionaire.

  Karl smiled at Vinnie. “Ahhh, I don’t know, Vin. I think they’re just a couple of lonely...hanging out with...you know? Other folks, old folks of their age...”

  “Oh yeah?” the cop said a serious look filling his face as he leaned in toward Karl. “You seen your mom lately?”

  The ridge was dark. Thunder had rolled, distant, all day. Night had stayed hot, heavy. On the way up to the ridge, a stream of traffic passed him, descending. Old people. On foot, in cars. One horse – two riders.

  Karl stopped a quarter of a mile past the house and parked among the graders and backhoes on the site and walked back along the muddy verge. He waited in the shadows near the house. A man and two women descended the porch, got into a classic Jaguar sedan and took off down the hill. He couldn’t see who the hell they were, but the car was not Bluffton. Tourists maybe, but together, the trio added up to a good 190 years, Goddamnit!

  The house lights went out. Cellar lights came on. That did it. All he could take. He wasn’t going to jeopardize the future of Dorblerville, the future of the damn town, for crineoutloud, for the sake of some weird shit the fogies were up to.

  The door was open. The house was dark. It smelled like. Well, like what that damn kid had said!

  Karl stood at the top of the cellar steps. God damn this! He yanked the knob. Light poured up and over him. From below, a rattling rumble filled the root cellar. A place he’d always been (admit it, now) a little afraid! It was dark down there and smelled like living things were crawling from the dirt. Heavy smells. Thick stuff like...

  He didn’t want to remember. That was Goddamned kid fears. Crawlies and boogie men!

  The place was warm and bright, now, and the light that flickered over him from below tingled his lips and eyelids. Made his parts twitch a little down there. Above the rumble were singing negroes again, like a heaven choir. Atop them was another sound: Laughter. Soft laughing. Not like snickering at a joke. Not like that, no. Like being tickled soft and the softness punctuated with hanging silence. He didn’t remember much laughing in that house.

  He descended a few steps into the brightness, meaning to call out. He couldn’t. The tingle had reached his tongue; made him thick and a little stupid.

  A few more steps along the creaky wooden stairs and his feet and legs were bathed in warmth, a warm like wading into a hotspring where live water crawled up his legs and tickled his...manparts.

  He sat on the steps and bent to look.

  Mom and daddy. Yes. Stark naked. Dancing slowly in the now stately piano music that grew out of the walls. The negro voice gargled a sweet melody, the song played, oh yes, it was...was in his head not ears. The voices crowded the days from him.

  There was mother. Naked. Daddy holding her in his arms. The two danced a slow waltz to flutes and piano...

  Karl could hardly swallow, but there she was. And she was. Pregnant. Obviously. Near term. White. Old. But her breasts were filled, had sagged beautifully over her belly, her nipples – he couldn’t think what else to call them even if they were his mother’s (and mothers should not have nipples his head kept screaming), but – her nipples were dark, brown dark, engorged. Another school word, engorged.

  Around the dancing pair, the shelves that once held stewed tomatoes, seven-bean salad, put-up vegetables of all sorts, now held rows of Mason jars – some dark and empty, but many filled with light, flashing light. From these came the sounds of distant rumbles, from the open jars drifted echoes of thunder, the smell of ozone.

  Mother reached to the shelf nearest where she danced and picked up a jar, flipped open the wire catch. The lid sprung back and rumbles eased out. She held it over their heads and, laughing, poured. Lightning scrambled out and down them rolling and rollicking like a dozen-litter of pups. Rippling light covered everywhere they had played, thunderheads of bright and dark honeyed over them. It covered her hair and his, it rolled down their bodies. Crackling in liquid fire, the thundercloud flowed over her belly and ran trickling between her legs to the floor.

  Mom and Daddy splashed in it, barefoot dancing. When they turned to see him, they weren’t surprised.

  They didn’t want him there but there he was: Sitting on a step, soaking in storm light, bent, staring, wide eyed and stupid.

  “Oh, Karl,” his mother said, “go on up and wait in the kitchen.”

  They took a horrible long time about it! When they came up, they were, thank God, clothed! Mother was still pregnant. She made tea.

  “You’re going to have a brother,”

  “Reckon it’s a boy?” daddy said.

  Mother smiled and rested her arm over the bulge in her belly. “It’s a boy.”

  Karl couldn’t move
his mouth. Mom’s smile was horrible. “You.” He grunted.

  “You may have to care for him finally, Karl. Our age. You gotta figure that.”

  “What?” he said.

  “The lightning,” she said.

  “Aw, he won’t believe!” daddy said. He took a long nip from the jar by the table leg. Light licked his lips, dribbled down the smooth flesh on his chin. “That kid never believed nothing.” He said it like Karl wasn’t even there!

  “Gotta believe, son,” mother said. She licked her fingertips, sucked a few drops of cloud.

  “He don’t believe. Karl won’t believe nothin’. We made a stupid shit, Astrid. Face it. Let’s not make the same mistakes.”

  Mother smiled and pressed her hand on daddy’s. Karl recognized the gesture. Seen it a thousand, thousand times.

  “Magic?” Karl said... Not believing.

  “Something like.” Daddy said.

  “That woman! That Italian woman!”

  They smiled. “Belief’s more like,” Mom said. “But it comes out magic. Maybe you have to be our age before it comes real.”

  “Point is, Karl...” and Pop leaned forward until he was nose to nose with his son. “You ain’t inheriting. When the boy comes, he gets it all. You hear?”

  “But,” Karl said somewhere between the two of them.

  “That fellow and his two...” daddy looked at mother...

  “His two ‘friends’,” she said and laughed a little at the word.

  “That fellow in the sporty car and his two friends. He’s a lawyer from up the Cities. He did a new will. A barter deal. Three jars for him, a couple each for his ‘friends’ and, bang, he wrote us up one sweet testament.”

  “‘Hold up in any court. County, state or country…,” mother quoted. She jumped a little and smiled, touching her belly. “He kicks,” she said, “Like a sunuvagun!”

  “You’ll have full hands with this one, you betcha!”

  “And I figure he’s not going to want to see any ‘Dorblervilles’ or ‘Karlsburgs’ or whatever out there.” Mother looked out the sink window at the mud flats in the moonlight.