Homesick Creek

by Diane Hammond

  While he was gone, Bunny looked around. Mostly there were good salesmanship awards and junky little plaques on the wall, Ford promotional trash, but on Hack’s desk there was a little ceramic teddy bear planter with an ivy growing out of its stomach. Vinny and Bunny had bought it for him last year, after he’d paid off Vinny’s Ford Fiesta as a surprise. Bunny noticed there was a lot of dust on top of the teddy bear. The ivy was dry too, like no one ever watered it. Then she noticed a fancy day planner on his desk with a different photograph of Vietnam or Cambodia or someplace for each month. So he’d told her about being over there, how much he’d liked it, all the danger and no rules.

  Hack came back with two styrofoam cups of coffee from the service department. For the next half hour Bunny drank her coffee and Hack made phone calls. He kept trying to get her to talk, so he could get a hint about her frame of mind, but she just shushed him and went back to doing what she’d been doing: watching the saleswoman, who had tiptoed back to her office and was staring at papers on her desk and fooling with one of her earrings. She didn’t seem to be getting much done. Hack was better at this than she was. Her phone rang once, and she jumped about a foot.

  “Well,” Bunny said at the end of the half hour, “this was real interesting.” She set her empty coffee cup on Hack’s fancy day planner and stood up.

  “What was interesting?” Hack said. Bunny saw him flick his eyes across the room to the saleswoman’s cubicle. She was blotting her face with a Kleenex. “Hearing a bunch of boring phone calls?”

  “Oh. Well, that too.”

  “What else?”

  Bunny shrugged. “Just getting a chance to see some things.”

  “Things?”

  Bunny made a big deal out of finding her car keys in her purse. “Oh,” she said. “You might as well bring that dirt bike home. I called the Leonard kid from work. I said you asked me to drop off a check, and he said he couldn’t figure out why, since you already paid cash.”

  Hack stood up and sifted pocket change.

  “Most people don’t keep secrets worth a damn, Hack,” Bunny said, pulling out her keys. “It’s really pretty easy to find things out if you want to know them. It’s even easy to find things out when you don’t want to know them. Like there are probably a lot of things you could tell me right now that I don’t want to know about.”

  Hack clenched his fists inside his pockets.

  “There’s really just this one thing I want to know,” Bunny said. “I want to know if you’re leaving.”

  “Here?”

  “Here.” Bunny stabbed her finger into her chest just above her name tag.

  “Aw, crap.” Hack looked at her and then turned to look out over the showroom floor, over the glossy new cars, over the saleswoman, over the entire town of Sawyer, at someplace so far away not even Bunny could see it. His arms were crossed over his chest so tight Bunny could see his shirt seams pulling. And watching him Bunny thought, He’s getting older. He’s got a little gut and he sits down heavy and he gets up heavy and half the time when he goes dirt bike riding anymore he gets hurt. All this time, and I never noticed.

  “Jesus, Bunny.”

  “Okay.” Bunny nodded and slung her purse over her shoulder. When she got to the door, she said, “The kid says he’s waxed it for you.”

  “What?”

  “The bike. He said to tell you he put a coat of wax on it for you and got it all polished up. I told him you’d stop by after work.”

  He nodded at the window.

  “See you at home,” Bunny said.

  “Yeah.”

  She left the showroom without looking back, even though she could feel Hack turn around, finally, and watch her go. She knew he’d keep watching until she drove completely away, and then he’d go talk to the saleswoman. Bunny didn’t know what he’d say after that, what she’d say back, how they’d feel, what they’d decide to do. All she knew was she had to buy a can of wax, go over to that kid’s house, and make his dirt bike shine until it was perfect.

  chapter two

  Hack Neary stood in the showroom window, watching the rain lash the string of plastic flags around the car lot and wondering what in hell difference honorable behavior made. No one believed him anyway, even when he was telling the truth, as he often did. People heard what they chose to hear, even when it upset them. If Bunny thought he was playing around, then he was as good as playing around, and it didn’t matter what he had to say. Plus now he was catching grief over the dirt bike when she hadn’t even heard the details. The kid had made him such a great deal that he could turn around and sell it in a minute for a profit. It had been a business decision. He didn’t even ride that much anymore. It beat hell out of his knees, which were trashed anyway from jumping out of helicopters in Vietnam. He’d be forty in another month, forty. Jesus.

  Last May, when Bunny had turned forty, Hack had bought her a used baby grand, a beautiful black glossy thing polished to a near-perfect shine. Not that any of them played the piano, but it was damn classy-looking and expensive as hell, something you’d have to be earning good money to buy, something you’d have to be successful to own. Dooley Burden still razzed him about it at coffee sometimes. Hey, Liberace, you still got that piano? Ha, ha, ha. Bunny posed some of her stuffed rabbits inside the open top—a preacher, a doctor, Little Red Riding Hood. A couple of years ago she’d begun selling them, putting makeup on them and dressing them in costumes: farmers and wizards, doctors and clowns. She sold them at Passionetta’s Fudge and Candy for spending money, so she and Anita could go up to Portland sometimes, have a girls’ day out to shop or, once, to go to a Chippendale’s show. For Hack’s birthday last year she’d made him a rabbit dressed in fishnets, garters, spike heels, and a boned merry widow. He’d found it sitting on the bathroom shelf next to his toothbrush first thing in the morning, holding a little sign saying OOH-LA-LA—HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Not that she really spoke French.

  It was Hack who’d started her on collecting rabbits in the first place—what, thirteen years ago? Jesus, no, fourteen—back when she’d still had the body of a centerfold and the desire to use it. That was also before he paid for three years of orthodontia to correct the overbite he’d secretly loved because it gave her a wistful look. He missed that. Now she had a perfect bite and teeth that were prettier than she was. She should have just left herself alone. As far as rabbits went, she’d probably bought about a million since then, until he couldn’t turn around without seeing some of the damn things. There were rabbit lamps, rabbit light switches, rabbit salt and pepper shakers, rabbit clocks, towels, oven mitts, toilet paper holders. She’d even bought him a pair of pajamas with rabbits on them. He liked to sleep naked, but she’d said she was tired of him poking her all the time with his nighttime erection. What kind of woman gave a man hell about something he did involuntarily in his sleep? He bet even men in comas got hard-ons. She’d finally conceded that he didn’t have to wear the pajama tops, just the bottoms. Every six months, like acid in an open wound, she got him a brand-new pair at JC Penney.

  Hack absently sifted the change in his pocket, watching the showroom window weep and flex in the wind. When he drove to work this morning, the Hubbard coast guard station had already hoisted the storm flag, a black square on an orange ground, the third storm warning this season, and it was still only just December. When he drove by Hubbard Elementary on his way to work, seagulls were already gathering on the athletic field a block back from the beach. You could always predict the weather by watching seagulls. He’d probably have a hell of a ride going home over Cape Mano, the headland between Hubbard and Sawyer. It didn’t matter; he had a heavy, muscular truck that could withstand any wind. He might just stop at the little overlook, see if any fishing boats were making a run for the harbor. Coming through the Jaws on a storm sea was a chancy thing even for experienced skippers like old Nate Jensen or Jordie Nelson. Anyone younger and the coast guard would have its boys out in the surf, fighting like hell to bring the boat in.

&nbs
p; A year ago, maybe a year and a half, Hack had spent the night in his truck at the Cape Mano overlook. It hunkered down at the very lip of a thousand-foot cliff; if you looked out instead of straight down, you could almost be flying. He’d tucked himself into a sleeping bag inside the cab and felt every little gust and blow, watched the halogen lights appear and disappear as fishing boats bucked and yawed out near the horizon. He’d told Bunny he was at a regional sales meeting over in Eugene. He still didn’t know why he’d taken such a risk; the overlook was screened from the highway by only a ratty fringe of coastal pines. If it had been daylight, someone would have seen him there and recognized him right away, his truck’s being one of a kind with all its toys and extras, the winch and Playboy mud flaps, the radar detector and CB antenna. If she’d found out he was really spending the night in his truck just three miles from home, she would have been mad as hell, and he could never have explained it. He’d done it anyway, told his little lie, had his night out, and in the morning he’d gone to work like it was just another day.

  As a sudden plague of hailstones overtook the passing traffic, Hack heard Rae pock-pock-pocking up behind him in her expensive high-heeled shoes. Her perfume wrapped itself around him like sin. He smelled it even in his dreams; sometimes at night he buried his head in the dirty laundry hamper in the hope that some of it might be clinging somehow to one of his shirts—not that it ever did. Before he knew her, he’d never known anyone who’d worn perfume like that. Bunny’s perfume was some sweet cheap thing she’d gotten in Hawaii two years ago and wore only when she was going out with her girlfriends.

  Rae Macy. Rae Macy was the most exotic woman Hack Neary had ever known. Long-necked and white-haired at twenty-nine, she walked straight and tall and light on her feet as though she were connected directly to heaven—the walk of a ballerina, maybe; the walk of a courtesan. She didn’t talk like other people either. Complicated words and sentences spilled out of her like expensive candy, and when she told a story, she could have been reading a book out loud. Half the time Hack had no idea what she was talking about, something he found unnerving, him being a bluff talker himself.

  She came around to stand right beside him now, the length of her arm lightly touching his. No one else was in the showroom.

  “Hi,” she said softly.

  “Hi.” He kept looking out the window instead of at her, but it was a hollow gesture. She had him. He bet she knew she had him.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Yes?”

  She did that, asked questions twice if she thought he wasn’t answering honestly, or if he was feeling something different from what she expected him to feel. He could sense her looking at him, assessing. “Was she okay?”

  “Who?” He knew who.

  “Your wife.”

  He didn’t want to talk about that.

  “She overheard me on the phone, didn’t she?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m so sorry. I know I shouldn’t have—”

  He cut her off. “It’s okay.”

  Rae folded her arms tightly across her chest, sending up a fresh whiff of perfume. Did she fold her arms on purpose to make her silk shirt open up more? He could see some of her bra. It looked expensive—lace and ribbon. Bunny wore plain, cheap white underwear she got at the outlet stores. Not that it mattered. He’d seen her breasts a million times, though she didn’t let him touch them much anymore. He loved the creamy slope between a woman’s collarbone and breast, glimpsed in the V of a partially unbuttoned blouse. Rae’s blouse, in this case. Everything she wore looked good to touch: silk, cashmere, soft leather, soft wool. She didn’t have to dress up like that, but she said she had always dressed up in San Francisco and she wasn’t about to compromise her standards now, just because she lived in a small town. He thought she was wasting her time, but he enjoyed the view all the same. Most of the women he saw wore knit pants and blouses. That or jeans. He’d never seen Rae in jeans, but then he’d never seen her anywhere except at work. You’d think he’d run into her once in a while in the Sawyer Safeway or someplace on the weekend, but he never had. Not that he came over from Hubbard much on the weekend. Bunny never wanted to, not even to go to a movie.

  “What are you thinking about?” Rae said quietly.

  “Nothing.”

  “Oh, as though I believed that.” She turned abruptly and walked away. He probably should have given her a real answer, but he didn’t know what he was thinking about or if he was thinking at all. He could feel the first gentle pulsing of a migraine.

  He grabbed his leather-look jacket from the coat tree in his office and headed out to the service area to shoot the shit a little with Bob. When he got there, though, Bob’s service bay was empty again. Over at the service desk Francine smiled at him as he came in. She was a big, friendly girl, the kind built for having babies. You weren’t supposed to say that kind of thing anymore, but it was true just the same, and Francine would have probably taken it as a compliment. She and Jerry had just celebrated their first anniversary. Francine still kept a photo album of their Hawaii honeymoon on her desk for people to look through while they waited for their car. First thing you saw after the reception shots was Francine in a tight black bathing suit, posing for the camera like a World War II pinup girl, only heavier.

  “Hey, Hack,” she said. So far she was the only person he’d seen today who seemed genuinely glad to see him.

  “You’re looking mighty good,” Hack said. “You still on that liquid protein diet?”

  Francine flushed with pleasure. “I’ve lost ten pounds already. Jerry can’t believe it. He’s so proud.”

  “You tell him he better watch out. If he doesn’t keep an eye on you, some stud’s going to try and snap you up,” Hack said, because he knew it would make her happy. Even ten pounds lighter, she wasn’t a girl who would turn heads. “Did Bob come in at all?”

  “No. Anita called in for him.” Francine gave Hack a look. They both knew Bob was drinking again.

  “Well, at least things look slow,” Hack said.

  “Yeah. Mr. Vernon isn’t coming in today either.”

  “Good.” If the old man did show up, Hack would tell him Bob had just left for a dental appointment. Marv never worried about the service department, though, unless someone complained. It always made money.

  “Are you going to call him?” Francine said.

  “Guess I’d better.”

  “Well, be sure and tell him there’s a full day of appointments tomorrow. Plus we already got one call from someone whose truck roof was caved in by a tree falling on it.”

  “Okay, I’ll tell him.”

  Back in the showroom, Hack could hear Rae’s long fingers flying over her computer keyboard. She had the most beautiful hands he’d ever seen. She was always writing something, poems or stories and shit. She’d shown him a few, and he’d pretended to like them so he wouldn’t look unsophisticated. One was something about a bird with a broken wing, and another had some kind of chorus that kept repeating, We’re a mystery about to unfold / We’re a morality play about to be told. Whatever the hell that meant. Maybe she’d write about him one day. Now, to keep her spirits up, he winked at her as he walked by her cubicle, but his heart wasn’t in it. Where his peripheral vision was supposed to be, there was nothing but wavy lines. It was his third migraine in a month.

  He picked up the phone on his desk and speed-dialed Bob over in Hubbard. Anita picked up.

  “He get lit again last night?” Hack said.

  “Yeah. He spent twelve dollars on beer, and all I’ve got in the refrigerator are two eggs and a bottle of olives.”

  “At least it’s nutritious, though.” He absently flipped the pages of his fancy daybook. He’d never use a thing like that, a foo-foo thing, but it was nice of Rae to give it to him. She’d given him a few other things too: a letter opener Bunny hadn’t noticed, a fancy pen he’d already lost but was hoping to find before Rae asked him about it. Actuall
y, he wished she’d stop giving him things unless they were edible. What was he supposed to do with them? It wasn’t as if he could bring them home. Come the day Bunny really got suspicious, he was going to have to make one hell of a dash to the nearest Dumpster.

  “Yeah, right,” Anita was saying.

  “Look, I’ll talk to him tomorrow; just make sure he gets here.” Bob usually drank himself under the table for a couple of weeks, maybe a month, but he always popped out of it sooner or later. Hack liked to drink too, but he didn’t get blind drunk like Bob. He didn’t disappear like Bob either. Bob would just pick up and go. He never told anyone where he went, not even Hack, but he always came home after a couple or three days, and it had been like that for years. Anita told Bunny once that as long as he came home alone, she was beyond asking questions except whether he’d be leaving her permanently or not. And Bob always said, Darlin’, I love you. Only way I’ll leave you is if you ask me to. So far Anita hadn’t asked him to. Hack didn’t expect she ever would. Anita was like that: all blow and no rain. That was one of the things he liked best about her. Hack and Anita had had their differences over the years, but he gave her full credit for sticking by Bob the way she did. Not that he really understood why, but it was a generous act just the same.

  “Look, the old man’s not coming in today,” Hack told Anita now over the phone. “I’ll punch the time clock for him. That’ll give him five hours anyway.”

  He picked a dead aphid off one of the dead leaves on his plant, ivy or whatever. He guessed he hadn’t watered it enough. He wondered if he’d ever watered it. Bunny and Vinny were good at stuff like that, but Hack never remembered until it was too late.

  After he got off the phone with Anita, he looked out the showroom window from his office. There was hardly any traffic now; no one was going to buy a car with the weather like this. He stood up, fished his truck keys out of his jacket pocket, and told Rae he was going out to the bank. It wasn’t true, but he said it anyway so she wouldn’t want to go with him. Lowering his head and leading with his shoulder, he pressed through the rain and wind and made it into his truck without too much damage to his hair, which was thinning more than he liked to admit. Every morning he arranged it carefully and sprayed it with Bunny’s Aqua Net, which helped some.