“Go have your fucking tea.”
The storm door slapped behind her, and the landing vibrated with her steps. Her legs carried her across the dirt and past the trailer’s shadow, into the full sun.
She slipped into the bucket seat of the half-Bondo-and-primered Nova SS and twitched at the scalding vinyl beneath her cutoffs. The engine roared to a high idle. She’d asked him a dozen times to check the timing. She punched the gas once, quick, to make it settle before she pulled out.
She drove to her parents’ place north of Madson but not for any goddamn money. She drove to drive. She drove because she needed some air.
By the time she was far enough down the gravel to see Dad’s pickup wasn’t there, it was too late. Her mother always knew when somebody was coming, and if she saw Pam’s car turn around, she’d get the smug satisfaction of thinking her youngest daughter was afraid of her. Which Pam was. Babe Reinhardt had the parenting style of one of the meaner breeds of birds. If she thought you were old enough to leave the nest, you did, or she pecked out your eyes. Not to mention she was just dark. Always ready with some anecdote about hobos melting in train cars.
At the back door, Pam’s fingers coiled around the pull of the screen. Through the wire mesh and across the kitchen, Babe had her back turned, doing something by the sink. Maybe she didn’t know Pam was here after all. Maybe she’d had the water running and didn’t hear the tires. Maybe Pam could still leave.
“In or out.” Babe’s short salt-and-pepper perm bobbed when she spoke. Even her perm was curt.
Pam picked the path of least resistance. She crossed the short length to the harvest table and sat in Dad’s chair. On the counter by the sink, Mason jars wafted steam. It rippled in waves as Babe poured stewed tomatoes straight from the pot. She wiped the lips and worked the lids and rings. The sight of steam in the heat put Pam on edge. “Where’s Dad?”
“Feed store. To get salt, he said.”
“Salt?”
She craned her head around, face flushed from the steam, and eyed Pam to let her know she was a moron. “For the water softener. How long did you live here?”
Too long, she wanted to spit, but she wouldn’t have meant it. Not completely. There were things she missed. For one, she could breathe here, beneath the high ceilings. She missed those. She missed walking into this room before dawn to see Dad at the table with his percolator, listening to livestock and grain futures on the AM radio. Always there, like the jars in the pantry.
“Salt, my ass. Those old men are a bunch of hens.” Babe took the lid off a simmering pot, filling the air with more wet clouds. “So? Where’s Anna and what are you pouting about?”
“I’m not pouting.”
“That’d be new.”
“With Rick. I needed to run errands. We need towels.” She heard how it sounded after it came out. Babe probably thought Pam was after hand-me-downs. Never mind Pam never asked Babe for a goddamn thing.
“Some in the linen closet, top shelf. Pretty raggedy, but if you want new, you’re out of luck.”
“I’m headed to Gordon’s. To see if they have any sales.”
“Oh. Well. La-di-da, then.” She changed the subject. “How’s his mother?”
“Still crazy as a shithouse rat, I’d guess.”
“Watch your mouth,” Babe said, but her thick torso bounced with a short, silent laugh. “What do you mean, you guess? She didn’t go to the funeral? Or the memorial—what do you call something like that, with no body to bury?”
And there she went. There she went throwing dead bodies into a conversation like somebody else would mention chairs or spoons. “I don’t know. I didn’t go. Anna’s too young to understand.” In truth, Pam had used Anna as an excuse to avoid the funeral, the memorial, the whatever it was, in case Rick’s mother did go. The whole thing was morbid, and Virginia Reddick gave Pam the creeps. The woman had the same pilot-light eyes as Rick, but they didn’t plead. They didn’t wring you out. They landed on you and lit so you swore you could hear the whoosh of a furnace. Then they stared like they meant to burn a hole straight through you.
“Understand what? A funeral with no corpse? I think I’m probably too young to understand,” Babe said.
“How about corpses in general?”
“Well, that’ll be a nice rude awakening down the road.” Babe dropped her emptied pot in the sink and turned on the tap.
Without being told, Pam got up and grabbed a towel to dry. Above the rush of water, Babe tried making small talk. She asked how Rick was. She asked if Pam was feeding him.
“Feed him, patch the crotches of his jeans, vacuum his dirt—”
“So you’re married, then.”
“At least yours isn’t helpless.”
Babe sputtered a breath between her lips and eyed Pam like she was a moron again. “They’re all helpless. Only more useful than babies when they can hold down a job.” She passed Dad’s coffee cup for Pam to dry.
“I’ll let him know that’s why you keep him around.”
“It’s what ‘married’ means. You keep somebody around. Hate to think what the hell you thought it meant.” She stopped and held a fork above the foamy basin. “Speak of the devil.” She told Pam to put his cup front and center on the cabinet’s bottom shelf. Otherwise he’d never see it.
Pam listened for tires on the drive, but there was nothing until the screen door spring creaked. She breathed relief till she turned back and looked. Red stepped in and smeared the dust from his boots on the rag rug. He really was turning into an old man. He looked ganglier in his threadbare gingham and worn denim. His ears looked bigger, poking up higher and more sunburned than they used to.
He called out to no one in particular, “Why’s a chicken coop got two doors?”
“Hope you remembered what you went for,” Babe said.
“If it had four, it’d be a sedan,” he said.
“And Sis here’s asking why I keep you around.”
“My good looks.” He winked at Pam before he gave her a one-armed hug. He strode to Babe and tapped her shoulder. She kept washing but ducked the bill of his Cargill hat for a peck. He gave her back a stroke like it was the neck of a cow.
If he’d been to the feed store, Pam realized, he might actually have some cash. Not a hundred, not enough to make a dent in a down payment, but maybe enough for some gas, some groceries so she didn’t have to dig into the savings again.
She went to tug the thin fabric of his sleeve right as he stepped out of reach. He gave a wad of bills to Babe. Pam’s hand fell empty and useless. She’d been stupid to even think it. She’d been stupid for a lot of things.
Babe asked him when the gas truck was coming. Thursday, he said. There was plenty of diesel but only enough regular to fill the car and combine. Babe opened the lid of the ceramic beehive cookie jar and dropped in the cash. Then Dad headed off through the dining room and into the hallway.
Pam dried a pot and nested it inside another on the counter.
“Plan on putting those away?”
Pam carried the pots to the cupboard.
“Mother,” Dad called from the bathroom. The word echoed, and even in the thick heat, Pam felt a chill.
“Medicine cabinet,” Babe yelled. “I moved all his garbage off the sink when I cleaned this morning. God forbid he open a cabinet and look.”
He’d called Babe “Mother” tens of thousands of times when they still had kids in the house. And Pam was here now. But suddenly she wondered if he did it when the kids weren’t around. Pam suddenly wondered if he ever called Babe anything else. And if he didn’t, Pam wondered if that meant Babe was right, that all of them really were a bunch of giant, helpless, goddamn babies.
The thought, or maybe it was the adrenaline from the argument with Rick still wearing off, made her a little light-headed. She wanted to go upstairs to her old room and crawl beneath the quilt and the fresh, bleach-smelling sheets of her twin bed. She wanted to wake the next morning as the Pam Reinhardt she’d been before Pam Reddick ever
came to be. She wanted to walk into this same kitchen to the low monotone of cattle futures and the smell of the percolator. But there was no bed up there anymore. Only a bunch of boxes and Babe’s sewing machine.
Pam dried the silverware in silence and set the forks and spoons in the drawer. She said she should go. She needed to head home so Rick could get back to work.
Babe dried her hands and followed Pam out. The two parted ways wordlessly. Babe rounded the back of the house to the garden, and Pam slipped into the Nova’s bucket seat. When the vinyl scorched this time, she didn’t twitch. She punched the gas to quell the engine’s roar and made a three-point turn toward the road.
The car crested the hill where drive and road met. Pam idled and leaned into the wheel automatically, leaned in as she always did when straining to get a clear view past the fuel tanks.
High on a set of spindly steel legs, the rust-red reservoirs jutted from the brush like a pair of headless mechanical heifers.
She eyed the Nova’s fuel gauge. A little less than a quarter tank.
There was enough regular gas to fill the car and combine, he’d said.
She checked the rearview. Babe’s shadow was a low mound. It rolled darkly across the dirt.
Pam made the turn, headed for home.
3
WHEN PAM GOT HOME, Rick drove to his dad’s double-wide across the court. He sat at the kitchen table waiting for Paul, who needed to get his shit together. The kid did decent work when you could get him to, though. Rick admired the full remodel they’d done on the trailer a few years back. They’d lined the raised kitchen with aluminum railing, lightweight but powder-coated to look like cast iron. Two short steps dropped down to the living room, where the walls were done up in bronze velvet flowers. The wallpaper was a bitch, but it looked good. Worth the wasted roll gummed up by paste, even if Dad gave them hell about it. The lower level’s floor was a sea of deep white shag that hid the base of an armored knight statue guarding the hall. Little guy wasn’t quite full-scale, but then people were likely smaller back then. Either way. Neat little guy.
Rick had to admit, his old man had an eye for what’d look sharp, right down to the retractable lamp pulled low above the table’s veneer. Under the glow, Dell Senior’s bifocals pored over his spiral job notebook. The sheet was filled with writing sunk so heavy into the pages you could read the back as well as the front. He turned a page that crackled as if it could break.
At least Paul’s not being there yet gave Rick a chance to ask about money to get to Arnold tomorrow. He got as far as saying things were tight.
“Can’t loan you none. Least not till I get paid on this Wilton job. Shelled out two hundred for a headstone the other day, in case you forgot.”
Rick hadn’t forgotten. At the cemetery, Dad said he was lucky he’d worked a discount on the plot, given no hole would ever need digging. For a second Rick had been glad Mom wouldn’t come out of her house for the funeral that morning. It sounded bad, talking money when they were there to put Dell Junior to rest. Or at least put the idea of Dell Junior to rest. Eighteen years without a body, Rick couldn’t blame Dad for trying. Anyway, Dad wasn’t one for tears and speeches. The way his fingers shook when he squatted down, inspected the carving, said enough.
Today the same hand was steady as he turned another page. A few brassy chunks, one with a Mason insignia, ringed his fingers. Most men couldn’t pull off rings outside a wedding band, but Dad did.
“I didn’t mean a loan. Just, Pam wondered—”
“Cut the shit, son. Whatever you’re asking, ask.”
“Some cash up front for gas, the motel.”
“I don’t know. Think you can keep hold of the receipts?”
“I said I was sorry about that.”
The white-streaked crest of Dad’s pompadour was trained so well it hardly needed any hair grease. The peak pitched forward a bit as he studied the notebook, and the slim, close-trimmed line of his skinny mustache gave a twitch. Like something on the page didn’t smell right. “No need to tell me sorry. It’s your pay gets docked when you can’t keep hold of the receipts.”
Dad scratched the little triangle of curls jutting from the V of his collared shirt, not like he had an itch but like he was finger-combing it. His Action Slacks whispered below the table. He leaned back in the chair and reached for his wallet. He pulled out five crisp twenties, fanned them like a hand of cards, and put two back. He dropped sixty on the table and returned to his notebook. “Should cover two nights’ motel, gas there and back, and leave me with change. That’s worst-case scenario, three days.”
The front door opened as Paul gave his usual pair of knuckle raps. He came in smoothing his bed head. He’d no doubt remembered to slap on the aftershave but couldn’t be troubled to run a comb through his hair. Long strands caught the light that shone in behind him. They made him look electrified.
“Get it done in two,” Dad said and turned his attention to Paul by way of raising his voice. “Glad to see you could pencil us in.”
“Interviewed a new secretary last night. Good help’s hard to find these days.”
Rick said, “Need to get your shit together is what you need to do.”
Dad’s thin mustache tucked up on one side in a grin. “Good help’s hard to find,” he repeated on a low breath. “Was about to call your boyfriend, Jensen. See if you were shacked up down at the courthouse.”
“Nah. Won’t let him get past second base. You raised me better than that.”
Dad gave a snort. Dad thought Paul was a real riot. “Your mother been up to the cemetery yet?”
“What am I, my mother’s keeper?”
“Long as you want to live on my dime,” Dad told him.
Paul asked if Rick was ready to go and said he’d drive himself. He had some affairs to attend to later in Junco, he said. Rick didn’t know what the hell that meant. He knew he probably didn’t want to know.
Rick stood and slid the twenties behind the can of dip in his pocket. He wished he had time to swing home, tell Pam he got Dad to front the money. It’d be one less thing she’d worry about for no reason. Sometimes it was like her brain kicked into high gear and ran hot till it fried the wiring. He didn’t know why she got so worked up. They managed. They got by. She should’ve known by now: Rick did whatever he had to where family was concerned.
* * *
RICK AND PAUL drove separate back out to the Wilton job to put a second coat of sealant on the roof. They propped the ladders at each end of the mobile home, climbed up, and met in the middle to mop their way backward.
A few strokes in, Paul belted Black Sabbath’s “Electric Funeral.” He jeered the wah-wah of guitar between verses.
“Keep it down.” Rick was pretty sure the old lady who owned the trailer was inside. No old lady needed to hear about atomic bombs and angels from hell. Likely kill her.
Paul bellowed louder.
Rick had no patience. Not after Paul’s no-show this morning. “You hopped up again?”
“‘Hopped up,’” Paul repeated. “Spoken like a true hep cat. Nah. Got some in the pickup if you want. Rarely touch the stuff these days. Don’t need it. High on life.”
“Great thing to keep around, cop pulling you over every other day.”
“Jensen? He lacks creativity. Never checks outside the glove box. Meanwhile, I got it hid behind the horn pad. One side popped loose, and I said, Lemons into lemonade, friend. Lemons into lemonade.” He tapped his temple. “Resourceful.”
“You better hope. Last thing Mom needs is you going to jail.”
“First thing she could use is a tranquilizer dart to the neck.”
Rick gripped the mop handle tight and reminded himself: all Paul knew was after. After Dell Junior was gone, after Dad moved out, after Mom took to cursing Dad into her short glass of scotch on the recliner arm. All Paul knew was after her tall yellow pile of hair slid to a permanent tilt and the ropes of smoke colored a shadow on the ceiling above her. She spent every night
like that, smoking, sipping, till the cursing turned to that little bird trill of hers. It’d trail along with George Jones. Trail along with whoever was on the big console Zenith radio.
Paul had been barely four. He didn’t even remember Dell Junior. Rick tried to imagine that sometimes and couldn’t muster it. He didn’t want to. When he was a kid and still at Mom’s, anytime Dell Junior’s face faded, Rick studied the picture on the hallway wall. There he was. Dell Junior standing astride the Schwinn in the yard.
“She ain’t been up to the cemetery?” Rick asked.
“Could not tell you.”
“Why not?”
“We should talk about that, but I’d rather not do it on a roof.”
The fumes and glare from the aluminum sealant made Rick’s eyes water like somebody’d tugged his nose hairs. “What’s going on?”
Paul slapped and mopped on the silver coat, widening the wet line between them. “Mother has quit the premises.”
Rick stopped. “The fuck does that mean?” The wood handle of his mop was thick and sticky with old tar and sealant.
Paul squinted up at the sun, white teeth glaring back at the light. He wiped a temple with the shoulder of his T-shirt. “She took off,” Paul said. “Don’t overreact.”
“What?”
“Told you she wouldn’t care for the headstone deal. She left the night before last.” Paul said she’d taken her old powder-blue Plymouth Savoy. Dad paid her bills, so all she would’ve had to go on was whatever gas was in the tank. Who knew how much was in there. Probably not much. The car sat in the garage for years. Paul went out once a week and started it, put it in gear so it didn’t seize up. “She was pissed as a feral cat,” he said with a little laugh, as if it were a hell of a thing. “But vindicated. Ask me, she’s been waiting all along for him to pull some shit like this.”
“Where is she?” Rick kept tight hold of the mop handle.
“Vicinity of Dell Junior, I suspect.”
“She don’t know where he is, Paul.”
“She’d beg to differ.”
“Goddamn it,” Rick snapped, then remembered the old lady in the trailer. “If he was wedged in a crawl space or stuffed down the chimney of some old house, they would’ve found him.”
Pickard County Atlas Page 3
