Pickard County Atlas

by Chris Harding Thornton

  Her head buzzed as she tried to connect her own dots. She couldn’t. Not right this second.

  “Meantime, stay away from empty houses,” he said.

  She asked why his truck was in Wilton. It was all she could think to say. She asked if he’d been looking for his mom there.

  “No,” he said, drawing out the word so it ended higher than it started, like the answer was obvious. Like Pam was slow. “That was so I’d need a ride this morning.”

  Anna was pinching a toe. She asked Paul which one it was. The one that ate roast beef, he told her.

  Pam needed to stall. She needed to figure out what it all meant. What the cross fire was and what came next. She said she couldn’t take him to Wilton right now. She’d left a load of towels in the dryer and the timer didn’t work. If she didn’t get back, it’d burn the place to the ground. And she needed to feed Anna and put her down for a nap. She’d take him to Wilton after.

  At the trailer, Pam warmed leftover tuna casserole in the oven, which left the place so sweltering she might as well have turned the oven on and left the Correlle dish on the counter. It would’ve heated as quick.

  Then she put them both down for a nap. Pam wanted Paul out of her sight. She couldn’t take the sound of his voice anymore. She put Anna in the crib she was too big for, and she sent Paul to her and Rick’s room. Alone, she tried to get the dark tacks of Harley’s eyes out of her.

  Instead of dragging out the sewing machine, she patched Rick’s jeans by hand. While she sewed, the tumble of towels in the bathroom vibrated every layer of plywood and sheet metal and linoleum and the tips of the orange shag in the living room until she was numb with it.

  When she did feel something, it was panic. The dryer. She’d forgotten the reason she’d needed to get back to the trailer in the first place. She’d left the dryer going since early morning. She sprinted to turn it off. When she did, her first thought was she was lucky the element hadn’t gone out. Her second thought was how much the electric bill would be. Her third thought was if she’d just left the thing going, left the towels tumbling, maybe they would’ve caught fire, which would have taken care of the whole goddamn everything. If it hadn’t burned the trailer to the ground, at least it would’ve burned up the goddamn towels, which had woven together at the frayed edges.

  She pulled half the load to the top of the dryer, each terry-cloth rag knotted to the next. The other half spilled up from the open door like a magician’s trick handkerchief pulled from a gaping mouth—like the thin, tense thread of her voice yanked from her at the station. She felt the black pins of his pupils again. But instead of feeling like a dead bug, she remembered the pins of his five o’clock shadow and the thumb she’d wished to the divot of her hip bone. And tracing it all back there, she felt a heat that had nothing to do with ovens or dryers left on too long or a trailer baking under a late July sun every day so the heat never left it, no matter how many box fans you propped in the windows.

  She went to the kitchen for scissors to cut apart the towels. She pulled open the junk drawer. The bottom corner of the phone book peeked from beneath a layer of spare fuses and random screws that’d lost their holes and whose displacement was probably why every single thing in her life didn’t work. There sat the screws and bolts to every single thing in this trailer that stayed broken while Rick ran off to Arnold or Bayard or Burwell to fix the same things all day for people he didn’t know. She pulled the thin book from the drawer and set it on the counter. She flipped to J.

  There were Jensens in Wilton, in Wanahee, and there, in Madson. Jensen, Harley: 513 N Linden, MADS 68596..…. 6462. He was right there. She left the book flipped open. She slipped it back in the drawer, covering the screws and nuts and bolts.

  18

  RICK HAD STILL NOT SLEPT.

  He hadn’t slept the night before last because he couldn’t. He’d needed to get back out to the trailer in Arnold. But last night, when he could’ve slept, he’d decided he wouldn’t. Not with the smell of Pam’s hair like warm soap and the sound of Anna’s purr of a snore from the next room. It was so loud she could’ve been right there nestled in his ear. Rick’s skin had prickled up all night like a plucked bird’s, but it was nice. Warm. They were all right there. The three of them. He may not have known where Mom was, he might never know where Dell Junior ended up, but he knew where he and Pam and Anna were. All he wanted was to stay like that. That was the way things were supposed to be.

  Now, though, he did wish he had slept. The sun was too bright. It was drying out his eyeballs. And he swore the highway wasn’t up to code. It was too thin. Almost too thin for the van to fit.

  Then again, it could’ve been the road wasn’t too thin but the hills were too thick. Big, rolling, then lopsided, jagged shapes. They hid the highway from anybody not on it. They hid all sorts of things, those hills. They hid rivers that looped and twisted so much they looked fake. Scooped trenches made fancy on purpose. The hills hid ranches. Lakes. Whole towns. In grade school, he’d heard a story about two sisters lost in the hills. They’d been chasing wildflowers. One wandered off for help and wound up baked like a pot roast.

  In fourth grade he heard that story. He sat up front, and the teacher got nervous halfway through and hurried the end. She hadn’t looked at him. Rick felt bad for her. He wanted to tell her it was okay. Dell Junior didn’t get baked like a pot roast in the sandhills. Or if he did, it wasn’t till after he got killed with a shovel.

  At the trailer Dad bought, the fire was not from wiring. Sure as shit, it’d been a cigarette in the back bedroom. Insulation hung down like dirty pelts, like in some old western he’d seen. Some mountain man outfitter’s store in an old western. The cowboy must’ve drank till he forgot the cigarette. Till his hand went limp to the mattress. Somebody must’ve caught the fire quick, but not quick enough for the cowboy. Everything in the other rooms looked normal, just smoke-stained. Couch, table and chairs, books, some eight-tracks. Everything looked right in every room except this one, where there was no bed frame or box spring or even the coils of a mattress. The only thing in this bedroom was a bubbled black and cracking nightstand. That must’ve been why the owner lied the first time. Thought Dad wouldn’t buy the place if he knew somebody’d been cremated here.

  Dad would just be glad wiring wasn’t the problem. The place needed gutting, but Rick could salvage it. He drove into town and used the pay phone outside the post office. He called and told Dad what he thought. Four days. Rick didn’t know where he came up with it, four days. He didn’t know if that was right or not. Dad said do it in three, then. After they hung up, Rick called Pam. She said she was in the middle of sewing his jeans and doing laundry. She was pissy or distracted. Whatever she was left him with a feeling like beetles in his stomach, all scattering around. When the operator clicked in and told him to deposit more change, he said he’d call back later.

  That afternoon, he was pulling out the bathroom paneling. His leather-cased transistor radio kept him company. It blared an AM station out of Valentine.

  The sink was fine. The paneling wasn’t bad, either, but it had to go. It was stained with smoke and had a reek no amount of bleach could ever get out.

  The screen door slammed. It sent a vibration through the place. Footsteps pounded. He gripped the crowbar as they neared, shaking the floor.

  “Rick.”

  Rick took a long breath. It was Paul. That settled the swarms in his stomach.

  “Nice place.” Paul dropped a twelve-pack of High Life on the bathroom vanity.

  “I know it.” Rick pushed the sharp wedge of the bar between the panel and stud. “Went into town, called Dad. Says get it done in three days.”

  Paul looked around. “You know, trailers are temporary by nature. Think it’s safe to let this one go. Think it’s safe to part this one out.”

  “Nah, we can salvage it. But three days. Seems tight.” The paneling pulled back with a shriek that made Rick’s eyes pulse. Paul’s aftershave didn’t help.


  “I see you slept.” Paul was staring at Rick in the smoky mirror. Rick caught a glance of himself but didn’t look too hard. He was pasty. Bug-eyed. He looked like shit.

  “Can’t leave Pam three days,” Rick thought out loud. “Shouldn’t have left her this morning. She sounds riled already this morning.”

  “You talked to her?” Paul said.

  “Yeah?”

  Why was he asking that? Of course Rick talked to Pam. Rick always talked to Pam after he got to out-of-town jobs. Why wouldn’t he have talked to Pam?

  Paul tore open the thin cardboard of the twelve-pack and grabbed a bottle. He asked if there was another pry bar. Where it was.

  “Why’d you ask me that?” Rick said.

  “What?”

  “If I talked to Pam.”

  Rick watched him in the mirror. He looked blank. Paul never looked blank, but now he did. He stared down the hole in the sink. “Saw her this morning is all. She came and got me from the drunk tank. Thought she probably mentioned it. Pickup was in Wilton, she gave me a ride.” Paul shrugged. “Nothing.” There was something he wasn’t saying.

  Nothing. The beetles in Rick’s stomach scattered and swarmed. Nothing was something. Rick didn’t know what nothing was, but he knew it was something.

  “She probably thought it’d piss you off. The drunk tank thing.” He asked about the crowbar again.

  “You eat yet?” Rick asked.

  “What?” Paul said it like Rick wasn’t making sense.

  “I need a break. I need some food.” He knew he must’ve needed some food, though he didn’t feel hungry. When did he eat? Last night. He’d picked at the tuna casserole Pam had made.

  “You need some fucking sleep is what you need.”

  They took the van to a highway diner in Thedford. There was a pay phone in the lot. Rick told Paul to go on in. Rick said he’d call Dad about the trailer. See if he wanted them to strip it instead.

  Rick shut the accordion door of the booth. The sun glared through the glass so he felt like an ant under a magnifying glass, like the hairs on his arms might catch fire. He slid the door open. The ring signal purred through the earholes. Six rings. Six rings before Pam picked up and said hello. Like she was curious. Like she wasn’t sure who it would be.

  Who else would it be?

  She asked where he was.

  He’d told her this morning where he was. “Thedford,” he said. “Getting a bite to eat.”

  She sighed hard. A pissed-off sigh. “If you’d reminded me, I would’ve packed sandwiches.”

  “No—I know. I picked up some bread and bologna.” He hadn’t. “Paul needed something to eat. Paul showed up.” He waited.

  “Yeah?”

  Why’d she take so long to say it? Was her voice higher than usual? Anna babbled something in the background. He was glad to hear her but wanted to hear Pam. He thought he heard somebody else. A voice in a tunnel. “You got the TV going?”

  She said she did.

  “Yeah, Paul showed up finally,” he said again.

  “That’s good,” she said. “Should help you get done sooner, won’t it?”

  Nothing. Nothing about picking Paul up from jail.

  “Coming back tonight?” she asked him.

  “He said you picked him up from jail this morning.” He tried to force a little laugh behind it, like it was funny somehow. It should’ve been, probably. The sun glared through the glass. The glass blocked the air. He stepped partway out of the booth to feel the air move. To catch a breath.

  Please insert twenty-five cents, the operator said, clicking in and out on the line. He dug in his pocket for change. He cradled the phone between his ear and shoulder and sifted through nickels. Something in the background squealed. The TV again.

  “You there?” He fed the slot five nickels and a dime and hoped Pam couldn’t hear them. He also hoped it counted the dime. It didn’t sound like it counted the dime.

  “I’m here.”

  “You sound winded.”

  “I’m trying to—” she spat out and stopped. She went on, “I’m rolling dough.”

  “All right.”

  “For noodles.”

  “Okay.”

  “For tuna casserole.”

  “Okay, I said.” Wait. She made tuna casserole last night. “Didn’t you make tuna casserole last night?”

  “Yeah, and then your brother ate it, and it’s all I got to make.” Her voice was getting tight. Wound up.

  Paul ate the leftovers. Did Paul spend all morning there? She picked him up from jail, and he ate there. Was he there already when Rick called earlier? Why wasn’t picking up Paul from jail and him spending all morning there worth mentioning when Rick talked to her earlier?

  She was on a rant now, and he could picture her like she was right in front of him. That tendon in her neck stuck out, right above the knob of her collarbone. He knew that tendon, and in a way, knowing it comforted him. But there was something else there, too. Something he didn’t know. Something he couldn’t picture. He could only sense it. She was still ranting. She was listing every ingredient she had in the house. “Oh. And a stick of fucking butter,” she said. “I guess me and Anna could share a stick of fu—”

  A click. Please insert twenty-five cents. No way they counted that dime. The operator sounded so close. Like she was right there in the glass box. While Pam and the trailer and Anna sounded so far away. Another click. Something hissed from the TV. Applause. He dug in his other pocket. A quarter.

  “You there?” He shouldn’t have asked. He knew she was. He could hear the TV. “What’s Anna doing?”

  “She’s fine,” she said, though it wasn’t what he’d asked. “She’s right here.” That wasn’t what he’d asked, either.

  There was a space of quiet. The distant hiss of TV applause again.

  “You staying out there, then? Tonight?” she asked him.

  He looked to the windows of the restaurant. He tried to see where his brother sat inside, but the glass was set too high in the brick. All he saw was a reflection of the gutter on a house behind him. It was the old U-shaped kind, the gutter.

  Something was wrong. Something right there in front of him. Something that was too big or too near to see. As if he were standing midway up a sand hill and couldn’t see the dune, just the dirt and grass and flowers that grew up in spikes. He looked to the diner windows again. He couldn’t see himself in the reflection. He couldn’t see even the top of the phone booth.

  “Yeah,” he said. The lie came out spent and thick. “Yeah, gonna stay the night in Thedford.”

  19

  LATE MORNING, the middle of Harley’s night, he stretched on the couch, head resting on the crook of his elbow. The TV screen flipped but all he saw was Pam with the girl on her hip. It took an extra two fingers of bourbon to put the warm buzz between his ears, another for him to stop piecing everything together.

  First he thought she’d been covering for Paul. She’d been messing with Harley to keep him off Paul’s trail, for whatever purpose. But the Avark bit and Paul’s jail cell ramblings about his brother’s wife cleared things up. If they hadn’t, the look on his face would’ve. Paul was tickled as could be, getting Harley and Pam in the same room. Paul had been the reel-to-reel that played in Harley’s head on endless loop the night before last: the cracking twigs and rustling grass, the distant engines. Paul was Ecklund’s possum, and Paul set fire to the roof sealant. Which meant the vision of Paul getting his jollies watching Harley come and go from the home place wasn’t paranoid. Paul had seen his sister-in-law and Harley get acquainted. Which also meant Harley might now have two Reddick boys to contend with.

  The rest of it, the theft, the fire, the why of it all, Harley had no idea.

  The TV picture rose, lowered, and flipped. In between, two Phyllis Dillers filled the screen. At the bottom was her head, at the top her shoulders and chest. He set his glass on the end table, made his eyes shut.

  The ring of the phone jerked him fr
om sleep. An anchorman on TV wore a thick necktie and thicker hair. Harley’s heart raced. He thought he’d slept to the ten o’clock news. Then he checked the window. Sun glared around the drape like a solar eclipse. He made his way to the phone.

  “It’s me,” she said.

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “Meet me where we were the other night?”

  The burst of a laugh came before he could stop it. “Hell, no.”

  She said nothing for a bit. Then, “I’ll be there anyway. If you want to know, that’s where I’ll be.” She hung up.

  * * *

  AS SOON AS he walked in the portable, Harley saw Glenn’s mouth ringed in a thin, perfectly round white line. The bottle of antacid sat on the desk like a mug of coffee might have, within reach of his thick, short fingers.

  Glenn’s job had been killing him since he was a deputy. He wasn’t suited for it. Never was. He’d never wanted it and never asked for it. He’d inherited it. Half the people saw the last name and thought they were voting his dad in again. The rest checked him on the ballot because he’d been put up unopposed.

  Harley made his way to the coffee maker. “You need to goddamn retire, Glenn.”

  “Doris Luschen’s place got hit.”

  Harley stopped, mid-pour, and kept his back turned. “When?”

  “Services were ten-thirty, went till, I don’t know. Noon? The daughter-in-law called. Same one that called in the welfare check. Doris probably died to get away from her. Said it happened during the funeral or church reception or—I don’t know what. Harley, that woman knew every bobby pin in the bathroom drawer. Every chicken leg in the icebox. Probably had those little colored-dot price tags stuck on every one of the old lady’s things before she so much as sneezed.”

  Harley went to his desk with a cup of coffee not brewed black enough. He needed something stronger to help him to get his bearings.

  “Came in and stole some preserves, a loaf from the bread box, gas can from the garage, and then, what do you know, all of Doris’s damn clothes. Her goddamn clothes.”