Back Roads (16 page)

“Did you do it, Harley?” Church cried after me.

Once I got outside, I stopped to catch my breath.

There weren’t many carts to bring in. I gathered up the few strays and took a seat on the cart return’s metal railing to try and calm my gut. I felt like I was going to puke. I probably wasn’t supposed to take those pills on an empty stomach.

The sun had just gone down. The sky was gray tinged with blue. Across the road, the hills beyond the car wash looked even bluer. They rolled away from me like an ocean’s waves but without the violent motion.

Technically they were mountains—part of the Allegheny foothills—but mountain was too colossal a word for them and foothills was too humble. Hills, on its own, sounded solid and comforting which is what they were most of the time.

Laurel Falls was a nice enough town. Named after pink flowers and crystal waterfalls. Sitting at the bottom of a small cup of a valley. It was the county seat so it had its own fairgrounds and an old-fashioned red brick courthouse with big white pillars and a gold clock tower. It had a hospital, two malls, a drive-in, the new Super Wal-Mart, a YMCA, and a Planned Parenthood clinic that was always hopping. But it was too big. Eight thousand people last census.

I didn’t mind working here but I was glad I lived in Black Lick, which was a town named after a poisoned chunk of salt. Population: 118. Me and the girls were 3 percent of our town. We were almost significant.

A woman pulled in and parked her car and gave me a dirty look on her way into the store. She was probably going to complain I was a loafer. I didn’t care. I would have set there all night except while I was doing it I forgot the reason why I was out there in the first place until it was too late and Callie Mercer came wheeling her cart toward me.

Esme saw me before I could do anything about it.

“It’s Jody’s brother,” she announced, beaming at me and giving a royal wave. “Hi, Harley. Hi. It’s me. Esme.”

“Hi, Harley,” Zack chimed in. “It’s me too.”

Callie came to an abrupt stop in the middle of the lot when she saw me. Zack went lurching forward in the cart seat, then snapped back. A roll of paper towels tumbled out onto the blacktop. She bent down and picked up the paper towels.

“I wondered where you were,” she said to my feet as I came up next to her. “I mean, I know you work here but I didn’t see you. Not that I was looking for you.”

She wedged the paper towels back in the cart.

“Not that I wasn’t looking for you either. I mean, if I had seen you I wouldn’t have minded seeing you.”

She straightened up and pushed her hair away from her face. She finally looked at me and I looked at her. I imagined what it would have felt like to look in her eyes when I was inside her. I started thinking about Amber fucking that boy on the couch and how he hadn’t been looking at her. I wondered if she had been looking at him.

I went back to that night in my mind and instead of lowering my gun and going outside, I blew his head off. It exploded like an overripe pumpkin, but it didn’t stop him. His body kept pumping away at Amber. The stump between his shoulders jerked back and forth sending blood spraying everywhere. Then he shuddered and collapsed from coming or dying or both. Amber pushed him off her and rose up from the couch, naked, spattered in his blood and brains, and she thanked me.

“Do you need help with your groceries?” I asked Callie.

“You don’t have to do that,” she said.

I glanced down at my orange vest. “It’s kind of my job,” I said.

“Oh, right.” She made an embarrassed laugh. “Sure. Thanks.”

I started loading bags in her trunk while she leaned into the car to buckle Zack in his seat. I watched and put a bag, heavy with canned goods, on top of her loaf of bread.

“Is Jody at home?” Esme asked me.

“Huh?” I said.

“Is Jody at home?” she repeated, firmly.

“Sure.”

“Mom,” she called out. “Can I play with Jody when we get home?”

“It’s almost nine o’clock,” Callie responded with her head still stuck inside the car. “You’re going straight to bed when we get home.”

“Brad had this business dinner tonight down in Latrobe,” she started explaining to me after she finished with Zack, “and tomorrow he has a golf game with the same people so he’s just staying there. I forgot about it so I didn’t have anyone to stay with the kids.” Her voice trailed off. “I’m sorry. You don’t care about any of this.”

I finished loading and closed the trunk lid. Callie walked over and stood next to me and stared at her rear bumper. Her forehead was creased with concern. I knew what she was going to say to me.

I wished I could be MOST GUYS. I wished I could just come out and ask her if she wanted to have sex with me again and if she said no, I would figure it was because there was something wrong with her and I wouldn’t let it bother me. Or I wished I could have kissed her. I never got around to kissing her mouth. I was pretty sure I was a terrible kisser so I wished I could kiss her like MOST GUYS and when I stopped she’d be wet and pliable.

But I wasn’t MOST GUYS; and she wasn’t the Virgin Mary. She wasn’t a ruthless whore either. She didn’t want to hurt me, but she couldn’t fix me either. It was too big of a job. I think I scared her.

“Harley,” she started.

I didn’t want to hear it. I couldn’t stand to hear it.

“I really like that artist Francis Bacon,” I blurted out.

Her forehead smoothed out again except for two faint lines that were permanent. She gave me a silky smile. My ace in the hole. Every woman had her weakness. My mom’s was Valley Dairy’s maple walnut ice cream. Whenever Dad brought her some home for no reason, he was golden for days.

“You liked ‘Figure with Meat’?” she asked a little uncertainly.

“That’s the one with the Pope sitting between two bloody sides of beef, right? Yeah, I liked it.”

“Huh,” she said. “Did you read the description?”

“Sure.”

“Which explanation do you believe? That the artist was saying the Pope is a butcher, or that he was saying he’s as much a victim as the slaughtered animal behind him?”

“I thought the Pope was laughing.”

“Laughing?” she said, startled.

She slipped her hands into her jeans pockets. I watched them go, remembering how they had given me gently brutal strokes.

She leaned back against the trunk.

“He did a series of paintings around the same time of screaming figures wearing business suits. Some critics say he was trying to show the anguish experienced by people in authoritarian roles. I think he was saying they’re evil.”

“Maybe they were dancing?” I tried.

“Maybe,” she said, smiling and nodding.

“Is he dead?” I asked.

“Who? Francis Bacon?”

“Yeah.”

“Mom!” Zack shouted. “Esme’s touching my car seat!”

“I think he passed away in ’91 or ’92.”

“Good.”

“Good?” She laughed.

“I want to put him on my list of dead people I’d like to meet.”

“Do you have a list of living people you’d like to meet?”

I shook my head. “I figure I have a better chance of meeting people I’d like when I’m dead.”

She laughed again. I was being serious.

“Is it a big list?”

I shook my head. “I’m just starting it.”

“Mom!” Esme stuck her head out the back car window. “He’s singing the Barney song! Make him stop!”

Esme’s shrill words affected Callie like a whip cracked behind her. She jumped around and rushed at the window and Esme’s head instantly disappeared. Callie’s head followed and a heated buzz came from the car.

Then she walked back to me, smiling calmly, and announced, “I have to go.”

“Sure.”

“No, wait,” she said suddenly.

She took a deep breath with her whole body the way kids do and began an earnest discussion with herself.

“I want to apologize to you for the way I left. For everything, really. Not to imply that it wasn’t wonderful. But I’m not sure it should have happened. Actually, I know it shouldn’t have happened. I feel like I took advantage. But I wanted to help. You were so upset. Of course, there are better ways to help a person. Or maybe not. I guess I wasn’t thinking too clearly.”

The only word I heard was wonderful. It was a word to describe tea parties. When I thought of our night together, I pictured fire-ravaged buildings.

“It’s okay,” I told her.

“No, it’s not.” She brought a hand to her forehead with a
worn-out air. “I tried waking you and I couldn’t. You actually had me worried there for a minute or two. I thought maybe something had happened. Kids have heart attacks too. Then I realized you were just sound asleep. I know that’s no excuse for leaving you there. Outside. Alone. At night.”

She laid each word down then paused and considered them like a card hand before carefully adding, “In the mud,” and, “Near the water.”

“It was a terrible thing to do,” she finished.

“It’s okay,” I said again.

“It’s just that”—she hadn’t finished—“while I was waiting for you to wake up I started thinking about all the awful things you might think about me.”

“What things?”

“My God, Harley. I’m married with two little kids.” She said it with a fearful awe like it was a rare medical condition. “I couldn’t stand the thought of you thinking I’m some pathetic, bored housewife on the prowl for boys to corrupt.”

CORRUPT. It appeared one neon letter at a time across the trunk lid. Once it was all there, I stared at it for a moment, letting it burn into my brain, then I snuffed it out with a blink of my eyes.

“And I’m so much older than you. Do you know how old I am?”

“Twenty-eight?” I guessed.

“I’m thirty-three,” she corrected me simply.

I was glad to see she wasn’t one of those women who turned into a gushing, giggling mess because some guy told her she looked younger than she really was. I hated that.

“Amber thought you were over thirty,” I said.

She raised her eyebrows. “Oh, she did?”

“I don’t want to hurt your feelings,” I said, changing the topic from Amber, “but when I think about you, I don’t think about
personal shit like you being married or having kids or how old you are.”

“What do you think about?”

“You really want to know?”

“Yes.”

Zack started wailing.

“Your butt, mostly.”

“My butt?” she repeated, her lips melting into another smile. “Do you think about my butt a lot?”

“Define ‘a lot.’ ”

“Once a day.”

“Yes.”

The car started rocking. Through the rear window, I could see stuffed animals and small hands and feet flying around.

“Look, Harley,” she said in an aggravated rush. “This obviously isn’t a good time to talk about all this. I’ve got to get these two home to bed, and I’m sure you need to get back to work.”

“Right,” I said.

“If you’d like, you could stop by tonight after you’re done with work. Brad’s out of town, and I usually stay up pretty late.”

“Sure,” I said.

She looked pleasantly stumped. “Okay.” She gave me a final smile. “Then I’ll see you later.”

“Later” echoed in my brain. I couldn’t move my legs until I heard her car pull out of the lot and drive off down the road. I prayed she hadn’t seen me in her rearview mirror standing stiffly with my eyes glazed like the first time I had been combed with a metal detector.

I went straight there. I never even thought about going home first and doing stuff like changing my clothes or brushing my teeth or picking her a bouquet of my mom’s daffodils. I showed up in my blue Shop Rite shirt and Dad’s coat with my hair sweating beneath my Redi-Mix cap.

I was prepared though. I kept the art book in my truck and I studied a couple more pictures under the parking lot lamps before I drove out. I showed up with my head crammed full of “impassioned brushwork,” and “bold composition,” and “carefree lines of great verve and fluidity.”

She answered the door, smiling, wearing a short black tank top and drawstring pants that hung low on her hips. I was pretty sure Victoria’s Secret would have called them loungewear.

“Hi, Harley,” she said. “Come on in.”

The floor inside the door was made of the same polished stones as the kitchen floor. The walls were a varnished gold wood. On a row of black iron hooks hung Esme’s backpack, a Tweety Bird umbrella, two little coats, a purse, and a man’s flannel shirt.

“You want to take off your coat?”

“No,” I said. “I mean, yes.”

I took it off and handed it to her. She hung it next to the shirt. I took off my hat too and messed up my hair with my hand so it wouldn’t be flat. I wished I could see a mirror but I reminded myself if she was the type who cared about hairstyles, I would have never made it this far.

She turned and walked into the house, calling over her shoulder, “Do you want a beer?”

“Sure,” I said Her bare feet padded over her stones. I followed her, glancing around me nervously, not fearing the bad but fearing the good. I felt like I could stand my ground if her husband burst out of the bedroom waving a shotgun at me or if I found a freezer full of body parts from other boys she had CORRUPTED and then decided to dispose of. But I felt like I would go running screaming from the house if she slipped her fingertips into my pants again.

She opened the refrigerator door and leaned into it. I could tell by the way her pants stretched and clung to her ass that she wasn’t wearing anything underneath.

All of me went stiff. Not just my dick. If Francis Bacon could have seen me he would have painted me standing rock-hard and purple-faced in a sideshow tent. He would have called it “The Amazing Erection Boy.”

“Here.”

She held out a beer bottle to me. She took one for herself too, but I already smelled something harder on her breath. So she had to get a little trashed to be able to do it with me again. I didn’t care.

I tried to twist off the cap and it wouldn’t come. She giggled at me. She was very trashed. She handed me a bottle opener, a gold one shaped like a stag. His antlers fit over the cap.

“I like your bottle opener,” I said, handing it back to her, and cringing at my words.

“Thanks,” she said. “It belonged to my grandfather.”

I had lucked out. Instead of sounding like an idiot, I had complimented someone she loved.

“You never told me what happened to you Saturday night,” she said, pausing to sip from her bottle. “I was worried about you. You were so upset and your mouth was bleeding.”

“I fell.”

“You fell?”

“Yeah.”

“Everything’s all right at home then?”

“Yeah.”

I glanced at the bottle opener sitting on her kitchen counter and thought about my own grandfather and how my dad had blown his chance with him. If he had been honest with him at the end, he might have had some CLOSURE. He might have felt like he accomplished something and then maybe he might have been able to accomplish something else.

“No,” I said suddenly, my face burning. “Everything’s not all right at home. Everything sucks at home.”

She watched me, not with pity or curiosity or even concern. It took me a moment to figure out what it was since I had never seen it before. It was respect.

“Is there any way I can help?” she asked.

“You can fuck me again.”

I almost didn’t get the words out before a sob blocked my throat. She dissolved in front of me behind a blur of tears. I wiped them away with the back of my hand, then I felt the hand being pulled away from me. She placed it on her throat like she wanted me to strangle her.

I took my thumb and pressed it against the perfect black freckle in the hollow of her throat. Her hands went under my shirt and her mouth went to my mouth. Her lips, the weight of her against me made me drop my beer.

The bottle exploded when it hit the stone floor. Glass shards and beer foam sprayed everywhere. I jumped back and held up
my hands in front of my face, knowing I was going to get hit and knowing there was nowhere I could hide, but I had never learned to take my punishment like a man.

Not like Misty. She always closed her eyes and tilted her head up like she was waiting for a kiss. I admired her bravery. All those times Dad dragged her off to her room, slamming the door behind him, I never heard her cry or scream.

“I’m sorry,” I cried.

“It’s all right,” she said.

She took a step toward me. I heard the crunch of glass beneath her feet, but she kept coming. My hands were shaking. I was crying like a baby. I just wanted to go home.

She kissed me again. I felt her hands behind my neck and in my hair and her tongue in my mouth.

I thought it was going to be different this time. I wasn’t hysterical tonight. I wasn’t stupid with need. But it was the same. My hands crawled blindly over her body, trying to hold her, but she kept sliding through my fingers like she was made of oil.

I wasn’t equipped to deal with the agony of anticipation. I wanted to be inside her. That was all I cared about. If I could be inside her, everything would be all right. I told her so.

She led me to the glass-topped table and pulled out a chair. She pushed me down into it, then slipped out of her pants. I was right. There wasn’t anything underneath. There wasn’t anything under her shirt either.

She knelt down on her knees naked between my legs to unzip my fly. The soles of her feet were bloody. Like Jody’s. From that piece of pipe. I had to get rid of it.

She took me in her hand and climbed on top of me.

It hadn’t been real.

And guided me inside her.

Jody’s feet were fine.

I did even less this time. I didn’t do any of the things I had promised myself I would do if I got a second chance. I didn’t
look at her. I didn’t pay attention to her. I didn’t care if she enjoyed it. I let her ride me while I held her around the waist and felt all my rage and grief being sucked from me each time she raised and lowered her hips.

By the time we finished, she had emptied me of everything. Good and bad.

When I opened my eyes, I had the swirling galaxy feeling again. She hadn’t left me this time though. She was still sitting on top of me, resting against me, with her head on my shoulder and her breasts against my Shop Rite shirt.

She kissed my neck, then my lips, and shifted in my lap. I felt myself slip out of her. She studied me like she was going over her notes and was happy with them.

“You look like you could sleep for days,” she said quietly, and kissed me again. “Even in this uncomfortable chair.”

She smiled and pulled back, holding me by the shoulders, still clamping my legs between her thighs. I stared dumbly at her body and wondered if I could touch her now without losing my mind.

“Come here,” she said.

She crawled off me and held out a hand. I took it and held it for a moment before I could stand up.

She walked out of the kitchen, tiptoeing on the ball of one foot because she had cut her heel on the beer glass. I followed and stood in front of the glass shelves with the jungle room behind them while she bent over to fluff the pillows on the couch for me.

“Lie down,” she said, patting the cushions.

I didn’t move and she made a funny look with a questioning smile.

“Something wrong?”

She didn’t seem to know she was naked. Or if she did, she didn’t know she was beautiful. Or if she knew that too, she didn’t know being naked and beautiful made her mind-numbing.

“Huh?”

“Are you okay? Come here.”

She sat down on the couch. I went and sat next to her. She pushed me down gently on my back, then turned and started taking off my shoes. I was glad I hadn’t worn my boots to work today after getting them wet during my trek through the woods. She probably would have thought they were stupid. Amber was right about them.

“Your foot’s bleeding,” I told her.

“I know,” she said, glancing down at it. “I need to go put something on it. I need to clean up that mess in the kitchen too.”

My fear came rushing back. I started to sit up. “I’m sorry,” I said, urgently.

“It’s all right.”

“I’ll help you clean it up.”

“No.” She pushed me down again and leaned over to kiss me. I grabbed her and starting kissing her back. She pulled away and told me to calm down and slow down.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m a rotten kisser.”

“No, you’re not. You just need to relax and not think about it.”

She climbed over me, pushed up on all fours, and bent her head down until our mouths were almost touching, then she started running her tongue back and forth over my lips.

“I’m thinking about it again,” I said, swallowing hard.

She stopped and gave me a look that was pretty close to the way I thought a woman should look at a guy if he had done a good job.

“You need to go to sleep,” she told me.

“Are you coming back?”

“Yes.”

I watched her limp out of the living room. She left a trail of tiny bright red drops on her gold floor. I wanted to tell her, but I still didn’t know what to call her and I was already falling asleep.

She woke me in the morning. Weak gray light filled the room. I looked around trying to figure out where I was. I saw a big stone fireplace and a jungle behind glass shelves holding framed family portraits of somebody else’s family. I had slept so deeply, I didn’t feel like I had slept at all.

“Harley.”

She was hovering over me in the cleanest, fluffiest white bathrobe I had ever seen. I wanted to rub my face in it. I reached for her.

“No, Harley.” She brushed my hands away. “We can’t. I let you sleep too long. Zack’s already awake.”

I woke up a little more.

“I’m sorry,” She stood up and tugged on my hand. “But you have to go.”

I hardly recognized her from the night before. She was irritable and all business. I was familiar with mood swings—I had spent my life in a house full of females—but Callie didn’t seem to swing as much as she switched.

She hurried me to the front door and piled my shoes, my Dad’s coat, and my hat in my arms.

“Chances are Zack wouldn’t say anything but you can never be sure with three-year-olds.”

“Right.”

“I’m sorry.” She sighed and dragged her hand through her hair. “I hate to rush you off like this. Like you’re some sort of criminal.”

“It’s okay.”

“I don’t know when I’ll be able to see you again,” she went on, “between the kids and Brad, and you working two jobs.”

“I can quit one.”

She looked up at me. The creases on her forehead were more noticeable in the morning light. Two lines beginning and ending at nowhere. She was standing sort of lopsided. I noticed the end of a Band-Aid on the outside of her heel.

“Very funny,” she said, frowning.

I was being serious.

She sent me off with a promise that she’d call me. I walked to my truck turning her words over in my head, savoring them at first, then ripping them apart looking for hidden meaning. I decided to believe her.

It was early when I got home. The clock in my truck didn’t work, but I figured it was about 6
A
.
M
. I had left Jody and Misty alone all night. Amber had gone out. She was right about me being paranoid. If Jody and Misty could stay by themselves during the day, they could do it at night too. Betty had been right too, saying I was using it as an excuse to avoid visiting Skip.

Maybe I would go visit Skip after all, I thought to myself as I crossed the yard. Maybe I could get Callie to come too.

The idea was brilliant, so brilliant I had to stop and take a seat on the couch carcass.

I wondered if she ever got to go away overnight like her husband did. She could make up a story and meet me there. She could meet me anywhere. It wouldn’t even have to be overnight. It could be more realistic. An hour. Fifteen minutes.

Summer was just about here. The nights would be warm. I thought about how easily she slipped out our first night together. How her husband and kids never even knew she was gone. We could meet in the woods. We could meet in her clearing.

We could meet at the old mining office.

The front door opened and Elvis ran out. He went straight to the woods without noticing me. Amber stepped out on the porch.

She wasn’t wearing one of my T-shirts like she usually did. She had on a short, silky red robe. Beneath it I saw the black lace nightie she had worn the night we had our last big fight. She reminded me of the times Mom put on slinky stuff waiting for Dad to come back from the bars after a bad fight. She only did it when she knew Dad had been right.

It was way too early on a Saturday morning for Amber to be
up already. Maybe she had stayed out all night too and just got home. She had done that twice before. Both times we had a big fight about it. I didn’t feel like fighting right now so I wasn’t going to ask.

“What are you doing?” she shouted at me.

I made myself more comfortable on the couch.

“Where have you been?”

I ignored her. I was busy thinking about the office. I could clean it out. I could fix it up. I could put curtains on the windows.

She came over and snapped her fingers in front of my face. “What is with you? You look stoned. Are you stoned?” She bent over and sniffed me. “Where were you all night?”

“I fell asleep in the woods again.”

“The woods.” She rolled her eyes at me. “I swear to God, you are so fucked in the head. Do you know what kind of people sleep in the woods?”