Borrowed Hearts

by Rick DeMarinis

  Caught three lunkers this morning. All over twenty-four inches. It’s 7:00 A.M. now and I’m on Ruby Street, the ghost town. The streets are all named after stones. Why, I don’t know. This is nothing like anything we have on the coast. Karen doesn’t like the climate or the people and the flat sky presses down on her from all sides and gives her bad dreams, sleeping and awake. But what can Ido?

  I’m on Onyx Street, number 49, a two-bedroom bungalow with a few pieces of furniture left in it. There is a chest of drawers in the bedroom, a bed with a rotten gray mattress. There is a closet with a raggedy slip in it. The slip has brown water stains that look like bums. In the bottom of the chest is a magazine, yellow with age. Secret Confessions. I can imagine the woman who lived here with her husband. Not much like Karen at all. But what did she do while her husband was off working on the dam? Did she stand at this window in her slip and wish she were back in Oxnard? Did she cry her eyes out on this bed and think crazy thoughts? Where is she now? Does she think, “This is July 15,1962, and I am glad I am not in North Dakota anymore”? Did she take long walks at night and not cook? I have an impulse to do something odd, and do it.

  When a thunderhead passes over a cyclone fence that surrounds a site, such as the one passing over D-6 now, you can hear the wire hiss with nervous electrons. It scares me because the fence is a perfect lightning rod, a good conductor. But I stay on my toes. Sometimes, when a big cumulus is overhead stroking the area and roaring, I’ll just stay put in my truck until it’s had its fun.

  Because this is Sunday, I am making better than twelve dollars an hour. I’m driving through a small farming community called Spacebow. A Russian word, I think, because you’re supposed to pronounce the e. No one I know does. Shade trees on every street. A Russian church here, a grain elevator there. No wind. Hot for 9:00 A.M. Men dressed in Sunday black. Ladies in their best. Kids looking uncomfortable and controlled. Even the dogs are behaving. There is a woman, manless I think, because I’ve seen her before, always alone on her porch, eyes on something far away. A “thinker.” Before today I’ve only waved hello. First one finger off the wheel, nod, then around the block once again and the whole hand out the window and a smile. That was last week. After the first turn past her place today she waves back. A weak hand at first, as if she’s not sure that’s what I meant. But after a few times around the block she knows that’s what I meant. And so I’m stopping. I’m going to ask for a cup of cold water. I’m thirsty anyway. Maybe all this sounds hokey to you if you’re from some big town like Oxnard, but this is not a big town like Oxnard.

  Her name is Myrna Dan. That last name must be a pruned-down version of Danielovitch or something because the people here are mostly Russians. She is thirty-two, a widow, one brat. A two-year old named “Piper,” crusty with food.

  She owns a small farm here but there is no one to work it. She has a decent allotment from the U.S. Government and a vegetable garden. If you are from the coast you would not stop what you were doing to look at her. Her hands are square and the fingers stubby, made for rough wooden handles. Hips like gateposts.

  No supper again. Karen left a note. “Lloyd, I am going for a walk. There are some cold cuts in the fridge.” It wasn’t even signed. Just like that. One of these days on one of her walks she is going to get caught by the sky which can change on you in a minute.

  Bill Finkel made a remark on the way to the dispatch center. It was a little personal, and coming from anybody else I would have called him on it. But he is the lead engineer, the boss. A few of the other guys grinned behind their hands. How do I know where she goes or why? I am not a swami. If it settles her nerves, why should I push it? I’ve thought of sending her to Ventura to live with her mother for a while, but her mother is getting senile and has taken to writing mean letters. I tell Karen the old lady is around the bend, don’t take those letters too seriously. But what’s the use when the letters come in like clockwork, once a week, page after page of nasty accusations in a big, inch-high scrawl, like a kid’s, naming things that never happened. Karen takes it hard, no matter what I say, as if what the old lady says is true.

  Spacebow looks deserted. It isn’t. The men are off in the fields, the women are inside working toward evening. Too hot outside even for the dogs, who are sleeping under the porches. Ninety-nine. I stop for water at Myrna’s. Do you want to see a missile silo? Sure, she says, goddamn right, just like that. I have an extra hard hat in the truck but she doesn’t have to wear it if she doesn’t want to. Regulations at this stage of the program are a little pointless. Just a hole with a sump in it. Of course you can fall into it and get yourself killed. That’s about the only danger. But there are no regulations that can save you from your own stupidity. Last winter when these holes were being dug, a kid walked out on a tarp. The tarp was covered with light snow and he couldn’t tell where the ground ended and the hole began. He dropped the whole ninety feet and his hard hat did not save his ass. Myrna is impressed with this story. She is very anxious to see one. D-7 is closest to Spacebow, only a mile out of town. It isn’t on my schedule today, but so what. I hand her the orange hard hat. She has trouble with the strap. I help her cinch it. Piper wants to wear it too and grabs at the straps, whining. Myma has big jaws. Strong. But not in an ugly way.

  I tell her the story about Jack Stem, the Jewish quality-control man from St. Louis who took flying lessons because he wanted to be able to get to a decent-sized city in a hurry whenever he felt the need. This flat, empty farm land made his ulcer flare. He didn’t know how to drive a car, and yet there he was tearing around the sky in a Bonanza. One day he flew into a giant hammerhead—thinking, I guess, that a cloud like that is nothing but a lot of water vapor, no matter what shape it has or how big—and was never heard from again. That cloud ate him and the Bonanza. At the airport in Minot they picked up two words on the emergency frequency, “Oh no,” then static.

  I tell her the story about the motor pool secretary who shot her husband once in the neck and twice in the foot with a target pistol while he slept. Both of them pulling down good money, too. I tell her the one about the one that got away. A northern big as a shark. Pulled me and my boat a mile before my twelve-pound test monofilament snapped. She gives me a sidelong glance and makes a buzzing sound as if to say, That one takes the cake, Mister! We are on the bottom of D-7, watching the circle of sky, lying on our backs.

  The trailer stinks. I could smell it from the street as soon as I got out of Bill Finkel’s car. Fish heads. Heads! I guess they’ve been sitting there like that most of the afternoon. Just the big alligator jaws of my big beautiful pikes, but not the bodies. A platter of them, uncooked, drying out, and getting high. Knife, fork, napkin, glass. I’d like to know what goes on inside her head, what passes for thinking in there. The note: “Lloyd, eat your fill.” Not signed. Is this supposed to be humor? I fail to get the point of it. I have to carry the mess to the garbage cans without breathing. A big white fire is blazing in the sky over my shoulder. You can hear the far-off rumble, like a whale grunting. I squint west, checking for funnels.

  Trouble in D-7. Busted sump. I pick up Myrna and Piper and head for the hole. It’s a nice day for a drive. It could be a bearing seizure, but that’s only a percentage guess. I unlock the gate and we drive to the edge of it. Space-age artillery, I explain, as we stand on the lip of D-7, feeling the vertigo. The tarp is off for maintenance and the hole is solid black. If you let your imagination run, you might see it as bottomless. The “Pit” itself. Myrna is holding Piper back. Piper is whining, she wants to see the hole, Myrna has to slap her away, scolding. I drain my beer and let the can drop. I don’t hear it hit. Not even a splash. I grab the fussing kid and hold her out over the hole. “Have yourself a good look, brat,” I say. I hold her by the ankle with one hand. She is paralyzed. Myrna goes so white I have to smile. “Oh, wait,” she says. “Please, Lloyd. No.” As if I ever would.

  Myrna wants to see the D-flight control center. I ask her if she has claustrophobia. She lau
ghs, but it’s no joke. That far below the surface inside that capsule behind an eight-ton door can be upsetting if you are susceptible to confinement. The elevator is slow and heavy, designed to haul equipment. The door opens on a dimly lit room. Spooky. There’s crated gear scattered around. And there is the door, one yard thick to withstand the shock waves from the Bomb. I wheel it open. Piper whines, her big eyes distrustful of me now. There is a musty smell in the dank air. The lights and blower are on now, but it will take a while for the air to freshen itself up. I wheel the big door shut. It can’t latch yet, but Myrna is impressed. I explain to her what goes on in here. We sit down at the console. I show her where the launch-enabling switches will be and why it will take two people together to launch an attack, the chairs fifteen feet apart and both switches turned for a several-second count before the firing sequence can start, in case one guy goes berserk and decides to end the world because his old lady has been holding out on him, or just for the hell of it, given human nature. I show her the escape hole. It’s loaded with ordinary sand. You just pull this chain and the sand dumps into the capsule. Then you climb up the tube that held the sand into someone’s wheat field. I show her the toilet and the little kitchen. I can see there is something on her mind. Isolated places make you think weird things. It’s happened to me more than once. Not here, but in the ghost town on the other side of the lake.

  Topside the weather has changed. The sky is the color of pikebelly, wind rising from the southeast. To the west I can see stubby funnels pushing down from the overcast, but only so far. It looks like the clouds are growing roots. We have to run back to the truck in the rain, Piper screaming on Myrna’s hip. A heavy bolt strikes less than a mile away. A blue fireball sizzles where it hits. Smell the ozone. It makes me sneeze.

  This is the second day she’s been gone. I don’t know where or how. All her clothes are here. She doesn’t have any money. I don’t know what to do. There is no police station. Do I call her mother? Do I notify the FBI? The highway patrol? Bill Finkel?

  Everybody in the car pool knows but won’t say a word, out of respect for my feelings. Bill Finkel has other things on his mind. He is worried about rumored economy measures in the assembly and check-out program next year. It has nothing to do with me. My job ends before that phase begins. I guess she went back to Oxnard, or maybe Ventura. But how?

  We are in the D-flight control center. Myrna, with her hard hat cocked to one side, wants to fool around with the incomplete equipment. Piper is with her grandma. We are seated at the control console and she is pretending to work her switch. She has me pretend to work my switch. She wants to launch the entire flight of missiles, D-l through D-10 at Cuba or Panama. Why Cuba and Panama? I ask. What about Russia? Why not Cuba or Panama? she says. Besides, I have Russian blood. Everyone around here has Russian blood. No, it’s Cuba and Panama. Just think of the looks on their faces. All those people lying in the sun on the decks of those big white holiday boats, the coolies out in the cane fields, the tinhorn generals, the whole shiteree. They’ll look up trying to shade their eyes but they won’t be able to. What in hell is this all about, they’ll say, then zap, poof, gone.

  I feel it too, craziness like hers. What if I couldn’t get that eight-ton door open, Myrna? I see her hard hat wobble, her lip drop. What if? Just what if? She puts her arms around me and our hard hats click. She is one strong woman.

  Lloyd, Lloyd, she says.

  Yo.

  Jesus.

  Easy.

  Lloyd!

  Bingo.

  It’s good down here—no rules—and she goes berserk. But later she is calm and up to mischief again. I recognize the look now. Okay, I tell her. What next, Myrna? She wants to do something halfway nasty. This, believe me, does not surprise me at all.

  I’m sitting on the steel floor listening to the blower and waiting for Myrna to finish her business. I’m trying hard to picture what the weather is doing topside. It’s not easy to do. It could be clear and calm and blue or it could be wild. There could be a high, thin overcast or there could be nothing. You can’t know when you’re this far under the wheat. I can hear her trying to work the little chrome lever, even though I told her there’s no plumbing yet. Some maintenance yokel is going to find Myrna’s “surprise.” She comes out, pretending to be sheepish, but I can see that the little joke tickles her.

  Something takes my hook and strips off ten yards of line, then stops dead. Snag. I reel in. The pole is bent double and the line is singing. Then something lets go but it isn’t the line because I’m still snagged. It breaks the surface, a lady’s shoe. It’s brown and white with a short heel. I toss it into the bottom of the boat. The water is shallow here, and clear. There’s something dark and wide under me like a shadow on the water. An old farmhouse, submerged when the dam filled. There’s a deep current around the structure. I can see fence, tires, an old truck, feed pens. There is a fat farmer in the yard staring up at me, checking the weather. I jump away from him, almost tipping the boat. I am not the weather! I want to say. My heart feels tangled in my ribs. But it’s only a stump with arms.

  The current takes my boat in easy circles. A swimmer would be in serious trouble. I crank up the engine and head back. No fish today. So be it. Sometimes you come home empty-handed. The shoe is new, stylish, and was made in Spain. I’m standing on the buckled porch of 49 Onyx Street. Myrna is inside reading Secret Confessions: “What My Don Must Never Know.” The sky is bad. The lake is bad. It will be a while before we can cross back. I knock on the door, as we planned. Myrna is on the bed in the stained, raggedy slip, giggling. “Listen to this dogshit, Lloyd,” she says. But I’m not in the mood for weird stories. “I brought you something, honey,” I say. She looks at the soggy shoe. “That?” But she agrees to try it on, anyway. I feel like my own ghost, bumping into the familiar but run-down walls of my old house in the middle of nowhere, and I remember my hatred of it. “Hurry up,” I say, my voice true as a razor.

  A thick tube hairy with rain is snaking out of the sky less than a mile away. Is it going to touch? “They never do, Lloyd. This isn’t Kansas. Will you please listen to this dogshit?” Something about a pregnant high school girl, Dee, locked in a toilet with a knitting needle. Something about this Don who believes in purity. Something about bright red blood. Something about ministers and mothers and old-fashioned shame. I’m not listening, even when Dee slides the big needle in. I have to keep watch on the sky, because there is a first time for everything, even if this is not Kansas. The wind is stripping shingles from every roof I see. A long board is spinning like a slow propeller. The funnel is behind a bluff, holding back. But I can hear it, the freight train. Myrna is standing behind me running a knuckle up and down my back. “Hi, darling,” she says. “Want to know what I did while you were out working on the dam today?” The dark tube has begun to move out from behind the bluff, but I’m not sure which way. “Tell me,” I say. “Tell me.”

  Billy Ducks Among the Pharaohs

  The Billetdoux front yard should have told me right away that the job wouldn’t amount to much. The lawn was overgrown with spikey weeds, what grass there was had died a number of seasons ago, deep tire ruts oozy with muck grooved the yard, and a rusty tub filled with crankcase oil sat on the warped porch. But I had just turned eighteen and was still untuned to the distress signals the world volunteers with unfailing reliability.

  Price Billetdoux—he pronounced his name “Billy Ducks”—answered my knock. He was in pajamas and bathrobe, even though it was midaftemoon. He stood before me, dark and grizzled, blinded by ordinary daylight. When he focused on me he shoved his hand into his robe pocket as if looking for a gun.

  “I’m the one who called,” I explained quickly. I held up the newspaper and pointed to his ad. “I want to try it, photography.”

  “Amigo,” he said, pulling a crumpled pack of Camels from his bathrobe, “come in.”

  I followed him into the kitchen. There was a plump girl at the stove peeling an egg off a skil
let. She was also in pajamas and robe. She had stringy, mud-colored hair and very small feet. She looked about twelve. I figured she was Billetdoux’s daughter.

  “Pour us a couple of cups of java, will you Shyanne?” he said to her.

  The girl dragged two cups out of the sink, rinsed them, and filled them with inky coffee. She moved listlessly, as if she had been sick and was just recovering.

  Billetdoux lit his Camel, drank some coffee, made a face. He had haggard, bloodshot eyes. Dark, tender-looking pouches hung like pulpy half-moons under them. He squinted at me through the smoke, sizing me up. Then he explained the job. No salary. No insurance. No fringe benefits. No vacations. Everything I made would be a percentage of the gross. I would go from door to door, trying to get housewives to let me take pictures of them and their children. I would offer them an eight-by-ten glossy for only one dollar. That was the “bait.” How could they refuse? But when I went back with the print, I would also have a portfolio of five-by-sevens, three-by-fives, plus a packet of wallet-size prints. The portfolio would cost anywhere from $5.95 to $11.95, depending on how many prints were purchased. Of course, if they accepted only the eight-by-ten “bait” item for a buck, there was no profit or commission.

  “You can make a hundred or more a week if you’re good,” Billetdoux said. “And your hours are your own. I’ve got a boy over in Sulphur Springs who nets one-fifty.”

  I admitted that I didn’t know the first thing about taking pictures, but he fanned the air between us as if to not only clear the air of cigarette smoke but also the heavy cobwebs of confusion from my mind. “I can show you how to take pictures of prize-winning quality in ten minutes, amigo. The job, however, is salesmanship, not art.”