Hank & Chloe

by Jo-Ann Mapson

  “She’s like me,” Chloe answered. “Even when everybody else quits on her, she gets up and keeps going.”

  “I would never quit on you.”

  “You did the minute you took those papers.”

  “Jack Dodge had your background checked. I knew nothing about it.”

  “But you read them all the same.”

  Hank didn’t answer. It was true. She washed Hannah in the tub, used a whole bottle of Paul Mitchell shampoo, and clogged up the drain several times. They stepped back from the tub while the dog shook herself.

  “My God,” Hank said. “She’s so thin.”

  “She’ll gain it back. Where have you been?” Chloe asked her, over and over, and received only the woofing cries of Here I am now as an answer.

  Hank tried to help with a towel, but Chloe said she could handle it. She used the hair dryer until it overheated and quit. She gave up, both she and Hank so wet and grimy they were shivering. Hannah tentatively took to exploring the house, fascinated with the stairway for some reason, going up and down the carpeted steps and pausing to howl into the spaces she hadn’t gotten brave enough to enter. Chloe hugged herself.

  Hank stripped off his T-shirt and sweatpants, turned on the water. “Let’s take a shower,” he said. “Just to get warm. I won’t try anything, not even to wash your back.”

  She steadied herself, taking hold of the countertop.

  “Listen, you’re not that secure on your leg yet, and let’s face it, we both reek.”

  “Keep the shower door open so Hannah can see me,” she said.

  “I will.” He helped her over to the tub, got her to a sitting position, then took the clothes she handed out to him and set them on the sink.

  She was tired; the turquoise tile swam before her eyes. She sat down in the back of the tub while Hank stood near the shower head, washing his long body with short, hard, businesslike strokes, anxiously glancing back at her now and then. He handed her the soap and turned his back.

  “You can turn around, Hank. I’m not going to bite you.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “Why?”

  “Whatever’s wrong between us, well, nobody’s explained that to my penis.”

  She finished washing, rinsing herself with the facecloth. “Turn the water off.”

  He reached out and twisted the knobs until the water stopped. Then he stood there, his back to her, dripping.

  “Hank, turn around.”

  His pale skin was beaded with moisture. Down the flat of his chest to the curving arc of his erection he placed a hand to cover himself up. “I’ll get out.”

  She reached out to him, touching his ankle. He looked down at her hand. Finally he knelt in the tub, facing her, water streaming off his face, his hair. His face was tense.

  “Nothing’s changed how I feel,” he began.

  She placed her fingers over his mouth. “Don’t spoil it by talking. Don’t waste a minute of this by mouthing some worn-out words that don’t mean shit compared to this.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “You know what I’m saying. Come inside me. Fuck me, make the hurt go away.”

  It was no good—the tubs were small in this complex—just like the rest of the town, three-quarter scale looked like a great idea on a blueprint, but when you fitted actual lives inside the lines it didn’t quite fly. He helped her out of the tub, scooped up her wet body, and took her to the bed, the sheets knotted beneath them. He wasn’t half-anything now. He knelt between her legs, entered her; she rose up to meet him, her eyes shut tight. Hannah cruised by and barked once, then climbed up on the bed and curled up, watching. Chloe held onto Hank’s shoulders, tucked her chin in the hollow of shoulder where it fit best, wrapped her legs around his thighs, melded herself as much as she could to his body, taking every thrust of his and sending back her own strenuous echo. She was a strong woman; if her leg had been healed she could have lifted Hank up as easily as he did her. The sound of their slapping flesh resounded in her ears. They slowed down together, as if they had each arrived at the same swift conclusion that this was the last time, and it might be wisest to savor each moment, memorize each finger’s placement. They moved slowly against each other, hips rolling in cadence, holding back sensation deliberately, trying so hard not to feel anything too wonderful that they were both biting their lips when orgasm came, first to Chloe, who clutched at Hank as she started to heat up and cry out, consequently flipping whatever switch it was that made him come, just a half second behind her, shouting her name into the hollow of her collarbone, moving against her long after he was finished. She lay there holding on, feeling him arch and rock, feeling the fluids run between them, nothing separating them but their ridiculous complicated minds—whoever said man was a domesticated animal was being sadly optimistic. She didn’t want to move, or to think. Hank was breathing quietly into her hair. Hannah butted her damp nose at Hank’s buttocks and he jumped, and then he was no longer inside her.

  Chloe started to get up.

  Hank said, “I want to say that they’re just pieces of paper. That it doesn’t matter what’s written on them, that I don’t care. But we both know differently.”

  She stood by the bed looking away.

  “You met my parents. My father categorizes everything—nuts, bolts, grocery receipts, emotions—all the same to him. When I was thirteen years old I took a girl from school to a dance. My father’s parting words? ‘Keep it in your pants, son.’” He rubbed his face. “So, you see, Chloe, it doesn’t take a Brahman to make me understand the power of the written or the spoken word. Words are powerful; sometimes they change everything, permanently. But they can be overcome. It’s your past. You have to face it, and I have to face up to sneaking learning things you might have told me in time, had I been patient. Screw Jack Dodge, he probably has his paper boy investigated. I’ll do anything for you, whatever it takes to make you smile again. I don’t want to lose you.”

  “This isn’t about doing anything. I need my life back.”

  “I thought this was your life.”

  “No, it’s your life, Hank. Mine’s back in that canyon, with the pump handle for getting water, and no electricity, and the fold-out bed. I want my stuff, Hank. My crummy, third-rate belongings and my memories. Can’t you see?”

  He shook his head.

  She took his face in her hands and kissed the planes where the tears streaked down from his eyes. When he shut his eyes, she kissed them too, lightly running the tip of her tongue over the eyelids, feeling the smooth globe of eye beneath, wondering what it saw staring up into the top of his skull. She held on to him until he was asleep, then she got up, dressed herself leaning on the cane, motioned to Hannah, and the two of them went, Hannah hanging her head out the passenger side window of the Apache, all that lost time erased for her in the familiarity of her old space. She relaxed, probably recognized the way home before Chloe herself did.

  It was a quick trip. They exited the freeway at Lake Forest, drove ten miles past the sprawling developments, and finally left the city lights behind to enter the canyon roads.

  A few of the old barns were flattened, new lumber shining pink as skin against the rubble. The hills were still covered with the green grassy plants of early June, which gave the impression this was fecund land, but in a few weeks the sun would burn it to cracked amber. Fire warnings would go up, those billboards that beseeched cigarette smokers to wait a few more miles before lighting up. Hugh and the boys would be moving his small herd of range cattle to his ranch up north, two or three days of work that nearly always ended with Hugh and the Stroud Ranch people on the front page of the newspaper again—a full-color photo of the rustic cowboy life juxtaposed with the Disneyesque drawings of what this land could be, developed by the grand vision. A crossing deer leapt in front of her truck, and Chloe swerved, cutting into the oncoming lane, instantly thanking God she was alone on this road. She braked to a stop, shooting an arm out protectively to shield Hannah. Hannah
gripped the seat with her paws, and they watched as the deer disappeared into the brush, white tail giving a final snap up in the darkness. She pulled back into her own lane, her heart beating hard. She patted Hannah, checked her rearview mirror, then drove on, past the corner bar with the motorcycles parked out front, past the stables where Absalom had lived, and died, and then made a right into the road to Hughville. She slowed the truck down as she came to the first of the back roads. The voices were here again, Sister…other people’s lives crowding into and over her own. Excuse me, Ma’am…. Saddleback was a small mountain; she’d climbed it three or four times herself and stood breathless at the top looking down across the wide span of land that ended at the ocean. She knew whales moved along this coastline, same as they had all those years ago, when the Indians had stood in the same place and looked to the sea with a feeling of pride and companionship. Every year the whales came back this way. She felt a part of that same process, that migration. All of them, the travelers through here who kept on moving across the land, the ones who stopped when they hit the edge of something, sought out space to call their own. It was important to foster independence. If you stayed in one place too long you grew sour, people started trying to regulate who owned what, land, ocean, birds, people. Migration—that was what it was all about. The oak trees to her left were nobody’s back when covered wagons and men on horseback stopped under their shade, they were nobody’s now, though Hugh Nichols held paper that made them his, allowed him to cut or water as he saw fit, and would eventually be the developers’, when Hugh wore out. She stopped the truck and pressed a hand to her face. Her skin felt hot, almost feverish. Too much had pressed in on her in too short a while to make any of it understandable. Peace would come back to her. Kit seemed to think if she learned about the past, maybe went after finding her mother, there were answers there, too. Chloe didn’t think so. Look what going after her past had done—she and Hank were finished. She sighed, glanced down the winding road to stand of elderly oaks. There, in the shadows of the trees, stood a young girl in a flowered sunbonnet, her smiling face looking out toward this desert land, as she hovered a foot above the highway Whatever was there to smile at? Why wasn’t she tucked into her grave, sleeping her deserved peace? Maybe moving here had set her free, and she hadn’t died in full sun, running her tongue over cracked lips, rambling over the memories of another home. Nunca seremos vencidos. Este nina…For Christ’s sake, I’m tired, talk to me in English…. You have to go on. For the children…Then she was gone, the flower print of her bonnet phantoms the eye conjured out of exhaustion. Come back here, Chloe implored the girl, the others. You’re all supposed to be dead, gone, part of the past, but you’re here with me, so you must have something to tell me. She saw only trees, night sky, the blue-black broken by a few smudges of clouds. Everything was sleeping, from Hank in his bed down to the smallest insects straddling the leaves. She cut the motor, and her ears throbbed with the silence.

  Hannah trotted ahead of her to the cabin. Whatever wreckage they encountered, Chloe knew it was right to come back. It was her place. There was no money owed; she paid her rent, trucked out her trash, and Hugh let her be unless he wanted to deliver a monologue.

  Hannah came loping back with a crushed A & W root beer can, which she dropped at Chloe’s feet. “Oh, good girl,” she said, patting her, and tucked the can into her jacket pocket with trembling fingers. The cabin was there. There was yellow police-line tape everywhere, somebody—Francisco’s daughter?—had tied it around tree trunks, rocks, whatever was big enough to hold a bow was decorated. She smiled, The door had been replaced on new shining brass hinges; even in the dark she could see the repair work. Inside—she was afraid to look—what if someone else lived there now? Hannah barked. Chloe opened the door. Her house was in order, as much as broken, trampled things could ever be put in order.

  She sat down on the folded-up couch bed. Fingerprint dust smudged the turquoise vinyl. Her footlocker, likewise; the lid torn completely from its cheap hinges, but someone had carefully packed the ribbons, letters, and pictures back inside the bottom half. The gallon jars she’d kept for storing food were gone, but someone had left a gallon bucket, a new glass oil lamp, a fifty-pound sack of dog food inside a larger plastic bag, and a couple of glasses for drinking.

  She found a matchbook in her pocket, set the aluminum can on the counter, and lit the lamp. When the sputtering wick caught and settled into smooth flame, she replaced the glass chimney and set it down on an orange crate, watching the light fill her small room.

  So it wasn’t a town house in an all-new city. There wasn’t any dishwasher, or a stereo cassette player, or even a flush toilet, but it was home: hers. Hannah butted her head against Chloe’s knee, laid her head down there, and huffed. “You’re welcome,” Chloe said, and took out the letters from her footlocker and began to read.

  CHAPTER

  20

  Come ride fence with me,” Hugh Nichols called out as Chloe came around the front of her cabin the next morning, her hands full of wadded-up yellow police tape destined for the Dumpster. She squinted up at him. The sky was just beginning to lighten, and the oak leaves fluttered in the breeze. “You don’t have to leave for work yet, and I could use another set of eyes.” He threw her the reins of Ringer, an old buckskin with a white rope burn around his neck.

  She caught them and whistled for Hannah.

  “Well, I see the mutt’s done traveling.”

  “Yeah. Late last night county called and said they had her. She ripped things up a bit down there. That’s my dog. Another bill I owe, but I’m glad to have her back.” She ruffled the dog’s fur, then turned and pulled herself up using the horn of the saddle.

  “That’s a good way to end up on your can,” Hugh said. “I’m surprised your doc would cut the cast off if your leg wasn’t ready to do its old job.”

  “Well, Hugh, I kind of went to the kitchen-knife doctor. Just couldn’t hack the plaster prison one more second.”

  “And the other prison, too, it seems. Unless you got the professor inside there, a-tied down to your bed.” He laughed hard. “Won’t forget to water him now and again, will you?”

  “He’s not here, Hugh.”

  “Too bad. I was growing fond of the fellow. Teach him to ride, he might make a halfway decent partner for you.”

  “I’m not interested in a new partner. Hannah’ll do.”

  Hugh reined Lucky, his Appaloosa gelding, to the left, and they started up the hills. “Chloe, you’re good at just about everything that you do, save lying.”

  She felt her face redden. “I’m not lying.”

  He laughed again. “You might not know it, but you are.”

  “I’m not, goddammit. That whole deal was just one of those mistakes that seem like a good idea when you get your pants down.”

  “True enough, lather anything up with a liberal dose of springtime libido, it’ll seem just about logical.”

  “For awhile, anyway.”

  Hugh smiled. “Don’t beat yourself up over it. You’re human, like the rest of us fools. Now let’s ride fence.”

  “What are we after?”

  “Edith’s breachy mare, what else? Good-for-nothing palomino. Odds are she’s by the apple trees, working herself into colic, so let’s take the long way around and get to her last. Maybe with luck she’ll choke on something.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “Maybe I don’t, but I sure mind getting booted out of a warm bed to chase that fool horse every other day.”

  They rode their horses at a walk for nearly an hour before they found any wire down, and when they did, a long wisp of bloody horse tail was caught in the break. Hugh cursed softly.

  “The hair’s yellow.”

  “Of course it is. The Steve McQueen maneuver. None of my other horses are that dumb. Why she had to have that horse—I had a nice little paint all picked out for her, but no, didn’t she just have to have Trigger’s sister!”

  He prattl
ed on, but Chloe only heard bits of what he said, as if he were the lightest rain she had to pass through on her way somewhere else. The sky was bright now. It had a yellowish cast to it, not the usual blue. As they moved into summer, the blue seemed to fade. Each glistening tree limb they rode under would soon dry in the early sun.

  She was sorry about Hank, even sorry about last night’s sex; one hell of a memorable way to say adios, but it wasn’t fair. It bit into her heart like heroin did, maybe. She’d never been one for drugs or booze—just watching Fats drink had soured her—but she could well imagine stealing car radios to feel that good again, even if it lasted only a moment. She felt tired, puffy, and drawn thin all at the same time. Her head ached from too little sleep. Across her belly, her old jeans cut tight. She reached inside her waistband and undid the button. The cook must have slipped with the salt shaker when he was breading that catfish. Three meals a day made you get lazy. They stopped a moment, and Hugh unbuckled a saddlebag.

  “Coffee?”

  She saw the chrome flash of thermos, smelled the bracing aroma, and felt her throat close. “No, thanks.”

  Hugh took a swallow and screwed the cup lid back on, stowed it back in the saddle bag. Maybe she was getting a presummer bug, though it wasn’t really the time of year for it. Hannah kept up, her hardy little trot must have carried her more miles than Chloe could imagine. She kept the white dog within sight, wary lest she lose her again.

  “Be out of the cabin by noon.”

  “What?”

  “Good. I’ve got your attention again. I’ve been talking at you for the last half hour, but you’re somewhere else, aren’t you?”

  “I was listening. I was waiting for you to say something worth answering, that’s all.”

  He shook his head and legged Lucky up ahead. Fats had trained Lucky from a colt. He was a made horse when Hugh bought him, and Hugh’d kept him in shape the last twelve years. Forget all the tired Appy jokes, Chloe found the horse handsome, and she felt herself envy Hugh this sound horse—any horse trained by Fats. When they were at the top of the ridge, stepping carefully, granite and shale crumbling beneath the horses’ hooves, he spoke again. “There’s a few things I’ve been meaning to say to you about Fats.”