The End of Vandalism (11 page)

“That ought to hold us,” said Louise.

Dan had to go out later and help the fire department burn down a shed on the Lonnie Pratt farm. Sometimes when people had old buildings they wanted to get rid of, they would donate them to the fire department for practice. Dan returned at ten-thirty, took a shower, and came into the bedroom with a white towel draped across his head. “They do all right when they set the fire themselves,” he said.

Louise put down the magazine she was reading. She enjoyed the elevated perspective of their new bed. “Climb up here and talk to me,” she said.

The women of Trinity Baptist gave Louise a bridal shower in the cafeteria of the old school. Louise, Mary, and Cheryl Jewell sat at the head table. The other women filed solemnly by, leaving packages, and then they sat down and watched Louise open them. She got a popcorn maker, a birdhouse, a carpet sweeper, a shoeshine kit, and a framed poem about the dogwood tree. She got a fishnet heart in which to save ribbons. Inez Greathouse stood and prayed for the marriage. “Louise has a wonderful name,” she said. “Because if we take off two of the letters and rearrange the remaining ones, we have the word ‘soul.’ The Christian soul we know is bound for heaven; and
two souls such as Louise and Dan, who commit themselves to God’s love, will never falter in life’s journey. Oh, there will be fights, because there are always fights. And there will be times when Louise and Dan are convinced their hearts are breaking. We have all been there. But if they have faith, their hearts will not break, and that is God’s promise to us all. Amen.” After the prayer everyone had small, bitter cups of coffee. When it was over, Louise and Cheryl went to the tavern for a beer.

Cheryl Jewell had come back from Kansas City to be maid of honor. Her presence in Grafton was controversial. She was divorced from her third cousin Laszlo and usually flirted with him when in town. But Laszlo was remarried, to a woman named Jean. Also, Cheryl and Laszlo had a daughter, Jocelyn, who now lived with Jean and Laszlo. And Cheryl was staying with her Aunt Nan, whose house stood right next door to Jean and Laszlo’s on Park Street. All these names are not important except to show the delicacy of the situation. Nan Jewell was bossy and opinionated but did not take sides in this matter, as she disapproved of Cheryl and Laszlo equally. Cheryl had sexy gray bangs. She was always in school and always involved with someone unworthy of her time. Currently she was studying botany and dating a chemist named Walt.

“He runs away every time we make love,” said Cheryl.

“You know who else was like that?” said Louise, and whispered the name of someone they both knew.

“I mean he literally runs away,” said Cheryl. “He puts on tennis shoes and he’s out the door. He goes up around the reservoir, down the graveyard, and back, a total of four or five miles. There’s something I don’t trust about joggers. The blankets are still warm and I hear his soles hitting the pavement. I don’t think it’s normal. And I also happen to think he has a glass eye.”

Louise laughed. “What do you mean?” she said. “You can’t tell?”

“Well, sometimes he gives me a look, and I think, My God, those eyes are glass,” said Cheryl.

“Dan’s eyes seem real,” said Louise.

“He’s all right,” said Cheryl.

“Hi, ladies,” said the gambler with the ponytail. He stood at the table, holding a cigarette near his mouth. “Say, Louise, I’m afraid that bet we made didn’t pan out.”

“I didn’t make a bet,” said Louise.

“Well, I put that ten dollars in for you. But the horse pulled up lame. Isn’t that the way? The race was fixed, too, which is the hell of it. I guess you can’t fix Mother Nature, much as we might like to.”

“How are your fish?” said Louise.

“Last I heard, the tank had stabilized,” said the gambler. “So when’s the big event?”

“Saturday,” said Louise.

He sent a stream of smoke toward the ceiling, took off his baseball cap, and settled it on Louise’s head. “Here’s something blue,” he said, and moved on.

“Who the hell is that?” said Cheryl.

“Larry Longhair,” said Louise. She got up, put money in the jukebox, and played the first and second parts of “Rock Your Baby” by George McRae.

“Remember this?” said Louise.

“I played it when you and Tiny got married,” said Cheryl. “Everyone hated it.”

“No, they didn’t,” said Louise.

“It isn’t a tune for the French horn,” said Cheryl. “I realize that now.”

“You were in the music academy. We assumed you knew what you were doing.”

“It was an interesting experiment,” said Cheryl.

“Much like the marriage itself,” said Louise.

“You know, I miss hanging around and talking,” said Cheryl. “Sometimes I think I’ll get back with Laszlo.”

“What about Jean?”

“Yes, well, that’s the problem,” said Cheryl. She sighed. “I have to tell you. Don’t take this wrong. I mean, it isn’t negative. But the word around town is that you’ve changed.”

“What do you think?”

“Yes, but not how they mean,” said Cheryl.

Louise lowered the visor of the cap and took a drink of beer. “How have I changed?” she said.

“It’s not like you’re repenting or anything,” said Cheryl. “It’s more like, O.K. This is the way.”

Louise nodded. Rod Stewart sang “Maggie May” on the jukebox. “You know what I never liked about that song?” said Cheryl.

“What?”

“Well,” she said, “if it really don’t worry him none, you know, when the morning sun shows her age—why even mention it?”

“This is true,” said Louise.

Louise stayed at her mother’s house the night before the wedding. She lay in her childhood bed, on her side, in the shape of a question mark. At the suggestion of
Hey, Teens!
magazine, she had climbed a stepladder twenty-three years ago and pressed glow-in-the-dark stars to the ceiling. Louise had been greatly influenced by
Hey, Teens!
when she was a
teen. She had made and worn easy-to-make clothing that really looked very bad. She had joined the Gary Lewis and the Playboys Fan Club. The stars barely glowed, and she saw them faintly from the corner of her eye.

She fell asleep and dreamed. Louise had simple dreams most of the time. She had little patience for those who would draw her aside and say, “Listen to this dream I had. I was talking on the phone with my cousin, and then it was like I was the phone …” Anyway, in this dream Louise and Dan were driving home at night from Morrisville, and Dan took a steep road that Louise had not known about. They glided up through the country. The sky was like a map of the sky, with concentric rings, big blue planets, names and distances printed in white. The road climbed sharply, and the scenery was lonely—a dark house, black pines—but beautiful in the planetary light.

“Do you take this route very often?” said Louise.

“In fact, I never have,” said Dan, “but I’m familiar enough with the road system to know this will level out up ahead like a hawk’s nest.”

It didn’t, of course. The car went over the crest of the road and dropped into endless dream darkness. Louise woke, breathing hard. She heard a strange smacking noise and went downstairs. It was one-thirty in the morning, and Mary was mopping the walls of the hallway for the reception. She wore a housecoat with the sleeves rolled up. She had never mastered cleaning, and as she flailed the plaster with the cords of the mop, she seemed to be losing ground.

“I wasn’t going to do this,” said Mary. “But I started in with a sponge, and don’t you honestly think the mop does a better job?”

Louise yawned. “You’re paranoid,” she said. But she pitched
in, unfolding and setting up three card tables with the distinct and tropical smell of Mary’s basement.

They listened to a talk show on the radio and made their way down Louise’s list. Their work acquired the intent and wordless pace that can be reached only after midnight. Louise chased cobwebs with a cloth-covered broom. Mary sewed the hem of Louise’s dress. Louise taped white ribbons to the lamps. Together they made sandwiches without crusts.

The talk show featured a woman in Rapid City interviewing an agoraphobic. But the guest got nervous and went home halfway through.

“I guess she wasn’t lying,” said Louise.

“You always had the opposite problem,” said Mary. “You never wanted to come home.”

Louise sat in the kitchen curling ribbon with the blade of a scissors. “One time I did,” she said. “I had a flat tire and it was raining and I didn’t have a coat. I remember wishing and wishing I was home. Well, I’m going to bed.”

“Don’t be scared about tomorrow,” said Mary.

“Good night,” said Louise.

“Good night.”

In the morning they made punch—orange juice, grapefruit juice, pineapple juice, and vodka. Sun poured through the kitchen windows. They stood mixing and sampling until they were happy not only with the punch but with the house, the weather, and the lives they had led so far.

Heinz Miller came over shortly after noon. A retired farmer, he lived next door with his wife, Ranae. He wore a short-sleeve white shirt and wine-red slacks.

“Our cable just went out,” he said. “Would you mind if I turn on the ballgame? Got some money on the Twins. It’s the
top of the third with one man on and nobody down. Our cable went blank. I thought of you.”

“How much money?” said Mary.

“Three thousand dollars,” said Heinz.

“Good Lord,” said Louise.

“How much?” said Mary.

“Three thousand,” said Louise.

“I know it’s a lot,” said Heinz. “I bet it with those guys at the Lime Bucket.”

“Well, Heinz Miller,” said Mary.

“They used psychology on me,” said Heinz. “They made it sound like I wouldn’t have any money
to
bet. They said the farm economy is so poor that when a farmer moves into town it’s usually to live in low-class housing. So of course I told them all about the house. Like an ass. ‘We finished the attic.’ ‘We put in a breakfast nook.’ The next thing I knew we were betting three thousand dollars. But I’m going to ask you not to tell Ranae. I believe it’s best she doesn’t know. If she found out, I think she would take my gun and kill me.”

“You have it coming,” said Mary.

“She really has gotten attached to that gun,” said Heinz. “And she used to hate it. Couldn’t stand to see it. Didn’t even want it in the garage. Then the other day I noticed it was missing from the cupboard by the Drano there, where I keep it. Next thing I know, here comes Ranae walking up the street with the gun in her hand. Well, it turns out she’s been taking it down to the sand pits every afternoon. So I ask her, you know, why the sudden urge to be a sharpshooter. And she says—get this—she says, ‘Heinzie, I’m thinking about doing away with you.’ How’s a fellow supposed to respond to something like that?”

“She walks to the pits every day?” said Mary. “I should start
walking. A lot of people walk these days.”

Heinz Miller turned on the ballgame, which was between the Twins and the Tigers. “What do you bet this is fixed,” he muttered, and lit a cigarette. “Doctor said I shouldn’t smoke, so I got some of these low-tar jobbies.”

Louise brought him a cup of punch and took a cigarette. She and Heinz sat on the davenport smoking and watching the ballgame, an ashtray between them. Louise wore a red and white bathrobe, a blue towel around her hair. “Are you coming to my wedding?” she said.

“When is that, honey?” said Heinz.

“Two o’clock,” said Louise.

“That you would have to ask Ranae,” said Heinz.

“You could at least congratulate me,” said Louise.

“Congratulations.”

“Thank you.”

“How do I pay these men?” said Heinz. “With a check?”

“Hell no, they won’t take a check,” said Mary, who had been listening from the kitchen.

“You wouldn’t think so,” said Louise.

“I can’t watch,” said Heinz. The Tigers had runners on second and third. He turned down the sound and covered his eyes. “What’s happening?”

“The count is three-and-one to Tony Phillips,” said Louise. “And here’s the pitch. Phillips swings. It’s a line drive single to right.”

She went upstairs and dried her hair. Then she sat on the bed, looking at a framed photograph from her first wedding. In the picture she stood alone in a white dress, day lilies in her arms. Her eyes looked hooded and desirous and empty.

She had been stolen not long after this picture was taken.
Seven of Tiny’s friends had grabbed her on the church steps after the ceremony. Bride stealing was traditional but rather pointless in the modern era. They put her in a car and drove fast to Overlook Park in Chesley, where everyone settled on a ledge above the river. She still had the lilies in her lap.

Marijuana and a gourdlike bottle of Spañada were handed around. Dusty light seemed to follow the path of the river, and Louise got loaded on two drags of Hawaiian marijuana. She wondered what had happened to the mild grass of high school—gone forever. Then it dawned on her that these men could throw her off the ledge and into the river. This seemed suddenly very likely, and she had the impression that the notion was blooming in all of them. She wondered if by spreading her arms she could fashion wings from the extra fabric in her wedding dress. Maybe it was supposed to have been a kite in the first place. She could glide all the way to St. Louis, or someplace far like that.

Louise got away without much trouble. She retreated from the ledge, carrying the train of her dress, fingertips touching the twigs and leaves that had hooked in there already. She climbed into a car. The doors and trunk were open and the radio was well into that very long Southern song about the bird who would not change. She started the engine and drove away. A cooler bounced from the trunk at the speed bump in the park. In the rear-view mirror she could see bottles and ice tumbling along the pavement.

Now she took the old wedding picture into the closet, where Mary kept a cardboard barrel of coats. When you were in Mary’s house you were never far from a store of old coats. Maybe she knew something no one else did about climate patterns. Louise buried the picture in the coats.

She brushed out her hair and put on her dress. It was yellow with white flowers and a low back. She tied a rose-colored ribbon in her hair, spread her arms, and turned toward the mirror. Her hair was long and brown, and the ribbon made it look coppery.