The Lipless Gods

by Brian Stillman

  Chapter 8

  Fire season had left the Little Creek Forest Service with a skeleton crew. The business office reduced to just the one skeleton. There were hours upon hours of overtime available out there, but Gwen had promised Lori she'd keep an eye on Henry. Plus, a lot of times you flew in smaller and smaller planes to reach the fires. Just a little turbulence and there she’d be, in front of strangers, filling every barf bag on board.

  It wasn't like Henry couldn't take care of himself, but Alec had bailed town completely, and Gwen would feel guilty about her part in that for a while to come. It was better Alec was gone. For a jerk, he had some semblance of a noble streak. Their cheating had consisted of a lot

  of looks, some fantasizing and masturbating on both their parts, and one - count it - one hook up. That's it. A January evening, he'd rung her doorbell. She'd been eating chili, wearing a toothpaste-stained sweatshirt and jammie bottoms, catching up on The Daily Show. Alec's

  breath smelled of cigarettes. His mouth definitely tasted the same. They tried to do it on the living room floor, but Gwen's back wouldn't have it. They moved into the bedroom. Done, he didn't have time for a cuddle. He'd told Lori he was just going out for a walk. Artistic temperament and all. Needed to think on things, refill his vast artistic reservoir. Still, he made it seem like Lori started a stopwatch the moment he walked out into the gloom.

  After that, he didn't keep her in suspense. Alec stopped over a few nights later, didn't go any deeper into her house than the living room, and didn't even sit down. Gwen was a catch, he’d kept saying, but he didn't see any kind of future for them. He'd already decided to

  leave Little Creek. Abandoning Lori would be bad enough. Abandoning Gwen would be worse.

  After he left, she cried, just a little, more from losing a fellow confessor than a fuck-buddy. She hadn't shared details of her professional derailment with anyone other than her aunt since moving to Little Creek. Alec seemed set to fulfill that role, and she'd gotten a little too excited at the prospect. By the following morning, she was shaking her head, playing back his saying she was a catch like he'd seen it off some old movie, and was trying to make it his own statement, but the original source poisoned the borrower's tongue. Despite the substantial theatrical resume he'd alluded to over the course of his detour into small town life, Alec not a good enough actor to hide the way Cagney or Bogart had called some starlet, some clutch of bones long shoveled down into California soil, a catch.

  From her desk inside the Forest Service office, Gwen had a view right onto Lori and Henry’s driveway. Earlier she'd recognized Norm Pleshette's truck and Tiff, but definitely not the man that had ridden over as Tiff's passenger. After Tiff left, Gwen had gone over and knocked, walked around the house, but hadn’t gone inside. Maybe she’d missed it. Both Tiff and the stranger had driven away. Minutes ago, on the pretense of asking Henry if he wanted to eat out at The Outpost tonight, she'd tried to shake information from the kids without being too blatant about it, and Tiff volunteered some tale about a traffic collision, some guy needing a place to rest. And there the guy was now, standing and talking to the two kids, cropped up like a beanstalk from beneath the gravel.

  Mary Lou was in McCall. Teresa in Arizona. Gwen didn't have to tell anyone she was getting up and walking out and across the street to chat. Responsible enough to at least call up the task manager on the computer and lock it.

  Mostly, the black suit prodded her. The thermometer was slated to hit and hover in the upper 80s. Other than old men little less than their bones and liver spots, no fool willingly sported all black come summer in eastern Oregon.

 

  Dust covered, his pants looked derelict. Sipe looked like a derelict, recently rolled, slow to heal. The Amazon headed up the driveway waving and smiling and talking to the kids, Sipe took a snapshot of what he looked like and placed it in her head. Maybe she’d called the cops before exiting the Forest Service. Sipe imagined sprinting, surprising some Barney Fife on patrol, the cop hitting brakes on the gravel road, watching Sipe leap off the highway, start running through the tall grass for the thick timberline.

  The Old Man had guys working for him that’d be more upset about the state of their clothes than their head, or Connie’s whereabouts. Sipe didn’t know the names on the tags inside his clothes. Secretly, he shopped secondhand. Looked for the stuff that was black. Waiter cast-offs. Sipe not about to invest thousands in something that might get so soaked in oil or dirt or blood he had to burn it.

  “This is Mr. Sipe.” Tiffany pointing at him, smiling. “This is the guy I was telling you about, Gwen.”

  Sipe tried to look exactly like a guy a kid with peroxide blond hair and an orange tank top could vouch for. He imagined the two Amazons getting hold of him, Gwen the feet, Millie the arms, part of their workout pulling him apart, tossing the corrupted ends to dogs.

  Henry remained pale. Recovering from Tiffany’s dark promise to Sipe. Scared Gwen would ask too many questions.

  “That’s quite the bump you got on your head.” Gwen crossed her arms under her chest. A pose conveying the unspoken expectation that she’d now hear Sipe match whatever story Tiffany had concocted. Connie’s mom had convinced the Old Man to let one of her pals come in, teach the fellas body language, conversational turn taking. It was right after this slaughter down in Aberdeen. Months prior to the cell phone fiasco, the Old Man still sweet on the blonde, malleable. If she thought she could save him the time and trouble of replacing dead employees, why not? Just a week or so ago Sipe, visiting his storage space, came across a Deborah Tannen paperback, bought for the ‘class’.

  Knowing it was self-conscious, Sipe still touched the bruise.

  “He’s lucky,” said Tiffany. “You’re lucky. I think his brother must still be en route or something. I can’t remember. How far away is Billy from here? He’s up in Clarkston you said?”

  Sipe nodded. “Yeah. He said he’d get here soon as he could.”

  “Yeah,” said Tiff. “I mean, if my uncle’s place had a basement or even air conditioning I’d totally let you rest there, but I mean, Henry’s house has like the coolest basement in town.” Tiffany plucked at her shirt. “It’s awful sticky today for one reason or another, huh?”

  “Tiffany said your car was totaled?” asked Gwen.

  “Pretty much.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “It is what it is. I’m alive. My head doesn’t feel too good, but you get what you get.”

  Trying to sound homey. Sipe didn’t dare smile. When he smiled he looked like his father. He remembered his father smiling. People looked away, like too confident, a resuscitated skeleton overplayed its hand, trying to fit in with the living.

  “Where you going?” asked Gwen.

  “Lunch,” said Tiffany. “I mean, we could eat here, but I really, really want an Outpost shake for some reason. And they can’t fuck up a grilled cheese. Sorry.” She laughed. “I mean they could, but they don’t. Henry said he’d treat me since I’m taking him swimming later on.”

  The boy blushed. It didn’t matter if it was over being roped in to the lies created on the moment. He looked like the kind of kid that would blush no matter who mentioned him. A girl mentioning him, of course he instantly transformed into a tomato in sneakers.

  “Is this your first time in Little Creek, Mr. Sipe?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s pretty tiny. It’s quiet. It does have its good qualities though. Like milkshakes.”

  Tiffany laughed, snorted and laughed, and Gwen couldn’t help but smile. When the trio was walking across the Forest Service parking lot, the black asphalt fresh-looking, dark as licorice whips, Tiffany looked back over her shoulder and waved. Sipe didn’t look back.

  “Man,” said Tiffany. “Maybe she’s not a teacher anymore, but she sure acts like one. Suspicious as all get out.”

  “She was a teacher?”
asked Sipe.

  “Mm-hmm. Not here. Somewhere else. Then she quit and moved here. Her aunt lived here. Then she moved to Arizona, gave Gwen her house and all. What’d she teach, Henry?”

  “High school. English, I think.”

  “She looks out for Henry when his mom is gone. Sheesh. Still standing there.”

  Sipe’s thoughts only disrupted when they hit the intersection with Mrs. King’s abundance of landscaping. The little old woman protected by a sunhat, crouched down in a northern corner of her lawn. Tiffany had pointed up the steep incline of the hill, told Sipe the red house up there, seemingly protected by enormous pine trees, that was Gwen’s place. It pulled him out of imagining sleeping in Henry’s basement, unaware of Gwen or maybe it was Millie or a conglomeration of those two and his sisters, looking down at him, gauging the best, the most painful way to purge the world of so obvious an insidious weed.