The New Valley Page 23
I ain’t gonna hit you, he said.
You quit it, I told him.
Oh come on get over here.
You coulda hit me.
Get over here, he said, or I will.
I was at the top of the fence when I seen him standing there. He was pointing the gun at me.
Oh boy, he said. I got me a big one. Big old Sarver coon. I’m gonna make me a hat.
Futz off, I told him.
Big old coon tail hat, he said. Let me see your tail, Sharpie.
Futz off, Mailman, I told him.
He was laughing. Then he wasn’t laughing. Get down here, he said.
Put down the futzing gun, I told him.
Get the fuck down here, he said. Now, Geoff. I’m not fucking kidding. Here come the cops.
I looked back at the road. Them trees around the bend was lit up colored.
We left the bags where they was and run for the dump hill. It was dirt put over top the trash and pipes what stuck out of the ground and it was hard running in the dark. I guess Roy was looking to get over the other side but we wasn’t even at the top when the cop car pulled in behind his truck. Its lights come on. Roy gone down. I gone down with him. We lied there. There was two cops come out. They walked around the truck. They was talking to each other and looking at the windshield. One of them gone back to the car and done something in there. The other started talking out at the night how we should quit hiding if we was around.
Roy said something to me real quiet.
What? I said back.
This is great, he said. Right? Like being kids again. Fucking great. I haven’t done something like this since I was—since I was a kid.
I looked at him. In the moonlight I could see his teeth smiling. He give me a punch in the arm.
Shit, he said. Shit, Geoff. Look at them. Look at those fucking cops.
I don’t know what I ever seen him so happy.
I bet that’s Jim Heatwole, he said. One of them sure as shit is. Fucking Jim Heatwole. Me and him were in the same grade. We used to go out to the overpass at night and fire bottle rockets at cars. I learned to call turkeys from his dad. Holy fucking shit Jim Heatwole.
He rose his hands to his mouth and done a turkey call. He had to quit when he started laughing. The cop come to the fence and shined his flashlight in. Roy rose the gun. He looked down it like he was gonna shoot the cop.
You’re a bad influence, Geoff, he said. He give my boot a kick with his. You make me digress back to a kid.
I’m not a kid, I said.
Me neither, he said.
After a time the cops got back in the car. We watched them back down toward the road.
I haven’t had this much fun since I got married, Roy said. Don’t ever get married, Geoff, he said. He kept his gun on the cops till they was gone. Then he said, You ever been hunting?
Nuhuh. Jackie says I ought not be allowed near guns.
Jackie, Roy said. Jackie doesn’t know everything.
What are the cops gonna do? I said.
I don’t know. Maybe get the truck towed. Maybe call the house. You know, I haven’t been hunting since I married Jackie. The house. The baby. All of it. What was the last good time you had, Geoff, I mean really, really good time?
I thought on how it was last night when I spread out the trash and watched them yard critters come out of the woods, but I didn’t say nothing.
You know when it was for me? Roy said. It was hunting. Not the last time I went, but one of the last. I’d already met Jackie. We were already engaged. I was hunting with this other woman.
He was quiet for a time.
You want to go back to the truck? I said.
He just turned on his back and lied there looking up. He stuck the gun so the wood part was on his belly and the other part was at the sky. He said, She and me, we came to this place, this place that was—I don’t know what hell it was, but it was—she’d got a buck, not a big one but her first of the season, you know, but she’d gut shot it and we were tracking it. Jesus, we’d tracked it I don’t know an hour, two, way, way back up into the hills. It was getting dark. I wanted to turn around but she had a real thing about finishing it, you know, so it doesn’t die that way, and we kept finding its blood till it was too dark to see it. I didn’t know how we were gonna get back. I didn’t know how we were gonna survive the night. And then she said, what’s that over there? It was a house. I mean kind of. I mean one of those hillbilly houses, you know? No one there. Just left to rot. But there was a fireplace. We broke in the door and made a fire in there and it was—it was fucking magical, Geoff. You don’t have a night like that twice in your life. Least I haven’t. In the morning, we woke up and went out. It had snowed. It was so bright it was hard to see but I could make out other houses. It must have been an old hillybilly family’s homestead or something. There were three or four old houses and what looked like some other stuff down by the river and—
What was down by the river? I said.
I don’t know, he said. Me and her kinda went back again in that one we’d slept in and…. He did a small laugh.
What was the name? I said.
Jen, he said. She was—
Of the river. What was the name of the river?
I don’t know. Must have been the Swain. Jen wasn’t as pretty as Jackie, but she was…. We had a hell of a good time together. We had a hell of a good time.
What was the road you was on? I said.
What road?
The one what crossed the Swain.
What’s got into you?
What was the road you was on when you gone in after that buck?
Hell, he said. I don’t know. We came out on the—that one that goes up to the national forest.
Off forty two?
Yeah. Why?
I didn’t say nothing. We lied there looking up at the sky.
After a while, he give another laugh. There was this hippie place, he said. At the corner. One of those wackos was out there by the road trying to live in a tepee. I swear to God. Sticks and tarps. A one-room tent and he was married, poor son of a bitch. He came out with his wife. They gave us a ride to the truck. Jen was embarrassed. She thought we stank like sex. Probably did, too.
Roy took the gun off his chest and poked the metal end at my knee.
Well, he said, you make your choices and you live with them. Then you marry women and live with them and they make the choices. He got up. He stared at me where I lied there. Look at you, he said. What are you thinking about?
Nothing, I said.
Something, he said. He stuck the gun end in my chest. Hey, you ain’t gonna tell Jackie none of this are you?
Nuhuh, I said.
You tell her I’ll shoot you like I did those coons.
I ain’t, I said.
Good boy.
He stuck down his hand at me. I got up on my own.
When we got back to the house all the windows was dark. Roy looked at them while he picked at what glass he hadn’t knocked clear of the windshield.
Guess she’s already gone to sleep, he said. He looked at the windows like they made him mad. You know, he said, this winter we oughtta go hunting. You and me, Geoff. What do you think of that? Maybe I’ll even get you your own rifle. I’d like to see her face then. He reached over and put his hand half on my neck half in my hair. His laugh come so quiet I felt it in his fingers more than heard it. He said, You ever hear the one about the guy that brings his retarded buddy on a hunting trip?
No, I told him.
Me neither, he said. I think I’m gonna make one up.
I know what you is thinking. You is thinking there’s lots of them old hill folk places way back in the woods of them ridges. Most like you think there ain’t no Sarverville at all. That’s what Linda would say if she was here. She would say Roy was just telling me a story. How do I know he even ever been up there after some buck? She would say, Geoffrey, you got to learn what is stories and what is true. But she ain’t here.
It is late late late and I am tired in my brain now too. Them yard critters is back. Loud as they was before. Don’t they smell the dead ones? Why don’t they just go on to some other yard? Why don’t they go wherever they go in the day? I have tried to find it. I gone back in them woods and stood there real quiet and looked all around and I ain’t seen none. Must be they go to the way way back woods. Way way back where them true wild critters live. Them ones what don’t want yards, what don’t want towns, what don’t want people or even people’s trash. But if they do, why do they come back at night?
Here is what I think. When them yard critters go all the way to that way way back I expect they is turned away there, too. I expect they is beat back to the edge till they got to give the yards a try again. Well sooner or later they got to tire of it. Sooner or later they gonna come in the yards till them yards is full up and just stay. Either that or they gonna give up and disappear. Just be gone. Gone all the way to the way way back woods, and then to whatever is more back than that, gone so far they can’t even see the yards no more, or smell the trash, too far for anything what might get in their brains and say to them come back come back you yard critters, come back and try again.
Monday of July
There’s one more thing you oughta know about what happened last week, what I ain’t told you the other night. While I was standing on the Sunoco curb watching for her, Russ and Vic drived by. That plastic they taped over the back window rattled more loud than the engine even, and the front end grille was still beat in. But they’d got new headlights, and the taillights was done up with colored plastic. They seen me and doubled back and come in for gas. Russ rolled down the window.
Hi, I said.
Regular, he said. Fill her up.
He didn’t say nothing else till I told him how much. He give me a twenty.
Keep the change, he said.
Buy yourself a new face, Vic said.
They drived off.
I want you to know that was the first time I talked to them since the last time at Crigger’s. I don’t hang out with them no more. So don’t go and dump together what happened with them with what happened with me. If you knowed how it started that night you wouldn’t even try. If you knowed, you woulda come out of Crigger’s a whole lot quicker than you did.
Even after that time Linda told me I oughta go home, I still rode over every night and I’d hunker down in the dark at the edge of the crap field beyond the lot and watch her come out for her smoke breaks, and sit there till I watched her leave. Once I seen you leave in your truck behind her. It gone on like that for three, four nights till Monday come again and Russ and Vic come again with it. From where I sat in the dark I watched them park. I watched her come out. She throwed the trash in the Dumpster and they flashed their lights at her and she looked their way and shook her head. The van flashed its light again. She shook her head again.
She said, Not tonight.
The music in the van got louder. Russ stuck his head out the window. What? he said.
I’m sorry, she said. I’m through.
After a second he said What? again.
I’m done with it.
I can’t hear you, he said. Come here.
Why don’t you turn off your music, she said.
He turned it off. It was back to just the music coming out of Crigger’s.
Vic said, You want us to tell your husband?
Oh grow up, she said.
I know who he is, Vic told her.
Good for you, she said. Too bad he already knows.
You want us to tell everybody else? It was Russ. Come on, he said. Just come over here we’ll talk it out.
She took a cigarette out her bag and lit it and stood there like she was thinking. Then she walked over. Once she was there they talked low. I couldn’t hear what they was saying. I couldn’t see her, neither. She was on the other side of the van and all I could see was Vic leaning in toward Russ, who must’ve been talking to her. Then Vic was gone from his seat, climbed in back, and I could see a bit of her then when Russ moved his head and I guess I must have been looking at that cause I don’t remember hearing the slide door open.
What the hell do you think you’re doing? she said, loud.
Then Russ was sudden out too and she said, Get your fucking—
I stood up from where I’d hid. The whole van was shaking. I could see pieces of them all moving like crazy and then they was inside and the door slammed shut.
Hey, I shouted. Must have shouted it a bunch more times before I started running. On my way I picked up a handful of gravel and chucked it at the van so’s it hit all bangs. The door gone open. I heard someone else running other side of the van and figured it for Russ and Vic seen me coming, but when I got open the side door and jumped in, it was empty. Now what I was stopped running I could hear them. They sounded out toward the side of Crigger’s like she’d been making for the front lot. I got out the van quick and seen them where they’d got her.
They was in the crap scrub, out of the light, halfway down a ditch, but I could tell it was Russ at her head sitting on her arms and bunching her shirt up to her neck where he’d stuffed it in her face and was pressing on it to keep her quiet. Vic was trying to get his pants off and keep her legs open same time.
I was on them so quick I hadn’t thought what to do once I got there. I just grabbed Vic off and we was shouting, and then Russ was on her, and I left Vic to get Russ off, and Russ hit me in the face, and I could feel I was hitting something on him too, and then I heard her and seen Vic on her and Russ knocked me from the back. I almost falled on Vic. He was on her, going at her, and when I tried to grab him off he hit at me so’s by the time I got him off Russ was on her with her legs kicking and her shirt over her head, and her top part of underwear come loose and took her things with it so they was slid off her into the grass and Vic shouting how she was a freak and how I was a freak, too, and I let go Vic and got Russ off and did all what I knowed to do. I laid down on her. Spread myself so she was covered up. Our chests lain flat to flat. It’s me, I told her. It’s okay. I got you. Then I couldn’t talk for the kicking. I shut my eyes and put my hands over the back my head and tried to breathe through the beating what they give.
When it stopped, it stopped sudden. I ain’t ashamed to say it, you was a better fighter than me. I don’t know what you did to them, but when I rolled over enough to look up they was running off through the crap field and you was standing there with that skillet. I still remember the look on your face. You was so full of anger it come out like something pure and good. I could see in it while you shouted at them, could see how much you loved her. Even now, what with all you done to me, I remember that and I know you ain’t a bad person. I know you and me, we is most like more of a kind than any other two men in all of Eads County.
Get off her, was what you said.
She told you it was me, Geoffrey, and what I didn’t hurt her.
You said it again, Get off her.
I got up quick as I could but I guess it wasn’t quick enough, which I understand why you done it. One more shove wasn’t nothing anyhow. Don’t think I didn’t notice what you helped her up like a real gentleman, or what you give her your suit jacket and how you got down and picked up the parts of her body I confess I didn’t know women could take off. Her underbra was sagged heavy with them. Funny how different she looked without the curves up f
ront and how even when she strapped them on and pulled her shirt down over I couldn’t see her woman shape the same way how I done before. I wanted to help her inside but I understand why you didn’t let me. That’s why I waited till she was gone in with the kitchen people what had come out to watch, so she couldn’t hear, when I got up and said to you what I did.
You looked at me the way people look at me. Like somehow the fault what they’s confused lies on me. I could tell you didn’t believe me, neither. You asked me, What?
I repeat it now same as I did then: She wouldn’t have never got to this if it wasn’t what she married you.
I don’t know what’s so hard in that to understand. But I said it a third time and you looked like you finally got it. You may be a handsome man, Mister Podawalski, and I hold no grudge on you, but you got a ugly kind of smile. And it was double ugly then. Maybe once you read this you can write me back what you was smiling about, what with the boys who done it to your wife still out there in the crap field somewhere hid.
Are those your friends? you said.
They used to be, I said.
Is that their van? you said.
I said it was.
Then you gone to work with that skillet and the glass busting and smashing and all that metal making all that noise.
Wednesday of July
The strange thing is the more I write to you the more you take up my head alongside her. I wonder if you wake up same time I do what with the first trucks rolling down Abe’s Knob Road and it still dark outside. Or if there’s just lights what’s in the ceiling and you get up whenever they turn them on. I wonder what they give you for breakfast, and if you think on what it was like to have breakfast with her. Sometimes I shut my ears to the baby crying upstairs and Jackie trying to fix it and Roy in the bathroom already cussing, and I draw your house in my head and the table what I sat at that one time, but I try and draw it how it would be in morning and I can almost make the sound of my chewing cereal into Linda chewing it cross the table. I wonder if you had just one Mom. I wonder if we drink the same kind of beer, and if Linda was the first and only, and if you use one of them electric buzzers for your beard. Once or twice when I been out on the Sunoco curb looking in the windshields for her, I thought I seen you. It couldn’t been you, I know, but what’s the strange thing is I wanted it to be.