Part 4 (1/2)

DeAlton.

I SEE YOU BOYS SEE YOU BOYS are doing a little remodeling. are doing a little remodeling.

No, that's good. I like it. It kind of opens the place up, don't you think? A person needs some room. A little elbow room. A little room to stretch out, make himself comfortable.

Hey, thanks. I don't mind if I do. Your sister won't ever bake for us at home. Not for the old home team. No, sir. Not anymore. She used to when we were first married but I guess she kind of ran out of gas for that sort of thing.

Isn't that right, Donna? Isn't that right?

Now don't bother with that, honey. Quit that. There's no cleaning that up. You try every time and it's no use. Besides, there's all this plaster dust everywhere. But like I said, honey, isn't that right? About when we were first married?

She used to bake just all the time, Creed. All the time, but not anymore. The only way to get a pie or a plate of cookies out of this woman is to come out to the farm. Come on out to the farm with me Come on out to the farm with me, she says, and I'll bake everybody an apple pie and I'll bake everybody an apple pie. That's what she says. And I have to confess I'm a sucker for it. Not that I wouldn't come out anyway. You know.

Now that's that's a delicious cookie right there, honey. Oatmeal raisin? Are there walnuts in there too? a delicious cookie right there, honey. Oatmeal raisin? Are there walnuts in there too?

Nice. I thought so.

To tell you the truth, I never knew why you boys needed the two rooms here to begin with. It was just the usual, I figure. I mean it was just the way folks ordinarily set things up. A bedroom here, a living room there, what have you. The usual. But now you can lie in bed and watch TV all the way over there by the door. That's what I call luxury. That's what I call living. I guess you could move the set over here by the bed if you wanted to, but that would make things kind of cramped.

Oh. I see. Well. If the outlet doesn't work anymore then you don't have much choice in the matter. So yeah. This is what I'd call an innovative solution to the problem. Good thinking. A big room like this with the bed and the kitchen table and the fridge and the TV all at once? That's living. Man oh man.

1985.

Tom.

HE KEPT A LITTLE DOPE in the car, even though he knew it was probably a bad idea. It was in a Baggie, right there in the glove box where any cop would be sure to look right off. He had put the first of it there the summer before, kind of by accident on account of he'd been in a hurry and he wasn't thinking, and then once the glove box was contaminated and all he figured that he might as well just keep it up. Maybe if he got stopped and they looked in the glove box and found that much they'd quit, instead of just finding a few traces and deciding to search the whole d.a.m.n car. in the car, even though he knew it was probably a bad idea. It was in a Baggie, right there in the glove box where any cop would be sure to look right off. He had put the first of it there the summer before, kind of by accident on account of he'd been in a hurry and he wasn't thinking, and then once the glove box was contaminated and all he figured that he might as well just keep it up. Maybe if he got stopped and they looked in the glove box and found that much they'd quit, instead of just finding a few traces and deciding to search the whole d.a.m.n car.

He stopped where his uncles' dirt lane met the pavement and rolled himself a joint and lit it. Just a skinny one. Some of the gra.s.s stuck to the red spiral of the cigarette lighter and he wondered if a cop would look there too if one stopped him. At least he wasn't drinking. He knew guys who didn't just drink and then drive but actually did both at the same time, guys from the construction site and guys from the community college, and it never failed to freak him out. Fazio, the foreman on the job, showed up every morning in his big red pickup with his big red forearm hanging over the doorsill and a can of Genesee standing right there in his big red hand, the can dressed in a little foam jacket to keep it cold. The foam jacket was Day-Glo orange and it had VERNON D DOWNS printed on the side of it over and over. They gave them out at the track on week-nights, to drum up business. Fazio thought it made the beer can look like it might be a c.o.ke. printed on the side of it over and over. They gave them out at the track on week-nights, to drum up business. Fazio thought it made the beer can look like it might be a c.o.ke.

He turned north onto the paved road and hit the gas but the old VW didn't do much. The road was nothing but hills all the way to Ca.s.sius and beyond. The VW had to work hard. The sun was down by the time he got to the beach. He had a little apartment that he rented on the second floor over a body and fender shop on the edge of town, just past the last of the bars. The body shop was closed at night and he was working days so it didn't matter how much racket they made, banging on fenders or whatever. The whole apartment stank, though. That penetrating plastic smell of solvent got into everything. It made it hard to breathe, and now and then he worried that just living here might be causing him some sort of long-term harm. Plus he was afraid that if he lit a joint or a cigarette the whole place might go up one of these days. On the other hand, that same fear was helping him cut down on the smoking. So you took the good with the bad.

He parked the VW in the body and fender lot and sized up a couple of new wrecks on either side of it but he didn't go straight into the apartment. Instead he walked down the main drag toward the water. The rides were going full blast, with kids screaming and carnival music blaring and lights shooting out every which way. His parents had never taken him there when he was growing up and he didn't have much interest in any of it now, but he stopped and watched the carousel go around for a few minutes. He smoked a cigarette and watched the little kids going up and down on the horses. The horses made him think of the old horse on his uncles' farm, long dead.

He crushed out his cigarette on the sidewalk and went on past the Clam Shack and Harpoon Gary's without giving either one of them much thought. Growing up around here, he never saw the names of these places as either ironic or aspirational. He never much saw them at all. The places and their battered signs were just what they were. Fixtures. Both Gary's and the Shack had big decks that looked out in the general direction of the water, and both of the decks were crowded with summer people and people who'd come over for supper from Ca.s.sius and Verona and maybe as far away as Rome, the summer people wearing beach clothes and the locals still dressed for work. The beach looked westward across the lake, so these places on the water did a pretty good business around sunset. At least in the summer. Come winter they'd be shut.

He kept walking until he got to the Woodshed, which was on the other side of the street, just across the bridge, above where Fish Creek emptied into the lake. Beyond it were a couple of campgrounds and some empty docks but that was pretty much it. Kids hollering on a swing set somewhere in the dark, in compet.i.tion with the screaming from the rides back in the direction he'd come from. Neon beer signs buzzed in the windows. A cardboard sign on the door advertised LADIES' NIGHT LADIES' NIGHT, but there weren't any ladies around when he walked in. Then again it was early.

Preston.

MARGARET AND I' I'D BEEN to the movies and we came home late. The night was plenty clear, I remember. There was a big wide moon and a lot of stars. You might be surprised at how few stars you can see in town, compared to what you see out here. Even though Ca.s.sius isn't a big city it's big enough that the stars have to compete with street lamps and headlights and whatnot. It's darker out here in the country and the sky seems to light things up more. Anyhow we pulled up and something caught my eye over at the Proctor place. to the movies and we came home late. The night was plenty clear, I remember. There was a big wide moon and a lot of stars. You might be surprised at how few stars you can see in town, compared to what you see out here. Even though Ca.s.sius isn't a big city it's big enough that the stars have to compete with street lamps and headlights and whatnot. It's darker out here in the country and the sky seems to light things up more. Anyhow we pulled up and something caught my eye over at the Proctor place.

Creed was in the backyard taking in laundry. Sheets, it looked like. I pulled up by the barn and stopped and put it in park and got out. Margaret stayed. Those boys didn't keep a wash line up, so he'd strung rope in between the barn door and the rearview mirror of the school bus. Not the busted one on the pa.s.senger side, but the other. The one on the pa.s.senger side tore off the day it got here and the other one broke not long after that. I think the conveyor picked up a rock and maybe flung it somehow. It was either that or I don't know what. You've got to watch out around a farm. That's the lesson. The gla.s.s is still all over. Regardless I spied him taking in sheets and that wasn't exactly the usual thing, never mind in the middle of the night, so I stopped and went over to ask him what the holiday was. Those boys never were much for laundry.

He said his brother'd been having trouble holding his water. I thought he meant Audie. That's what a person would think and I told him so. He said no, it was Vernon. He'd been having the trouble for a while and they were just now getting around to was.h.i.+ng out the sheets. They'd got to the point where they couldn't stand it anymore, and they had to wash them out because they didn't have money to buy new-not so much as once, to tell the truth, and definitely not on a regular basis if Vernon was going to keep at it. Coveralls they could get a year's use out of and buy more from Philipson's in Ca.s.sius and then burn the old pair, but not sheets. Not if Vernon was going to have that kind of trouble every night. Creed stood there by the school bus with a look on his face I could see in the dark. Like a man sizing up something he doesn't much like the appearance of. The start of something or maybe the end of it.

Tom.

TOM WAS NEVER going to pa.s.s for tall, but the low ceiling in the Woodshed gave everybody who came in the door a kind of unconscious stoop and he wasn't any different. The front room held a long bar with n.o.body at it or even behind it, and a couple of bowling machines with polished wooden lanes that you lubricated by shaking out some kind of wax from a canister with holes in the lid. It looked like greasy yellow popcorn salt. Instead of b.a.l.l.s they used round metal pucks that weighed enough to do some damage. Tom had taken one of them in the eye late one night and he still had a swelling that was beginning to look like it would never go away. The yellow wax stung your eyes, too. He remembered that. He'd had to go in the men's room and bend over the sink and rinse it out, and then get some ice for the swelling. He never did find out who threw it. going to pa.s.s for tall, but the low ceiling in the Woodshed gave everybody who came in the door a kind of unconscious stoop and he wasn't any different. The front room held a long bar with n.o.body at it or even behind it, and a couple of bowling machines with polished wooden lanes that you lubricated by shaking out some kind of wax from a canister with holes in the lid. It looked like greasy yellow popcorn salt. Instead of b.a.l.l.s they used round metal pucks that weighed enough to do some damage. Tom had taken one of them in the eye late one night and he still had a swelling that was beginning to look like it would never go away. The yellow wax stung your eyes, too. He remembered that. He'd had to go in the men's room and bend over the sink and rinse it out, and then get some ice for the swelling. He never did find out who threw it.

The back room was a bunch of little tables cl.u.s.tered around a low stage covered in Astroturf. The Astroturf was melted in places from dropped cigarettes and it probably amounted to a huge fire hazard, but it was st.u.r.dy and it provided good footing no matter what got spilled on it. Sometimes they had a band but not tonight. Once upon a time they'd had strippers on the weekends, but now that was just a fond memory shared by a handful of old-timers, vets of the Second World War who'd come home and gone straight to the Woodshed with visions of Betty Grable in their heads. Every now and then one of the old dancers, a heavyset bottle blonde from somewhere up on Fish Creek, would stop in and get up on the little stage and shake what she still had just for old times' sake. There were always a few tips in it. Her knees were going fast, though, and conditions had reached the point where she was starting to need help getting up onto the Astroturf. Before long there wouldn't be anybody left who wanted to give her a hand, anybody left who even remembered those glory days.

REO Speedwagon was cranking from the jukebox and a few regulars were hunched over the tables, working at getting drunk. One of the guys called out to him, calling him Tommy Boy Tommy Boy, which he hated. It drove him back out into the front room. He settled on a stool and got out his smokes and lit one of them and pulled on it hard. He was pretty sure it made the buzz from the dope he'd smoked on the ride over rise up a little bit, and that was good, but on the other hand it might have been all in his head. He sat knocking his lighter on the bar and Sal came out from the back at the sound of it, thinking somebody out there was impatient.

”Oh. It's just you.”

”Just me.” Tom drew on the cigarette again. ”That's right.”

”You're early.” He put a gla.s.s under the tap and pulled Tom's usual.

”Sometimes I like to get a head start.”

”I can see that.”

It was a while before the place filled up. A bunch of college kids on summer break were working the bowling machines. Most of them looked like regular kids out of Ca.s.sius High-home from wherever, doing factory work or construction for a couple of months-but two or three of them were all decked out with pressed jeans and those alligator s.h.i.+rts with the collars turned up and they looked like they might have come over from Syracuse or someplace just to see how the other half lived. Tom's natural inclination was to hate them for that, but he tamped it down. The bar itself was mostly regulars except for a couple of girls at the other end. One of them looked predatory and the other one looked dazed. He'd never seen either of them before, he didn't think. He drank his beer and watched everything. The jukebox ran through ZZ Top and Van Halen and w.a.n.g Chung. That awful ”We Are the World” came on but somebody gave the machine a good kick and the needle skipped and the changer pulled up some Elton John instead. Tom didn't hear any complaints. A couple of men approached the girls and smiled at them and put a little money on the bar. They drank for a while but they all seemed kind of nervous with it except for the predatory girl, who was kind of dancing without getting up from her stool. Tom sat and drank and wished he'd gotten to them first. Watching them a little in the mirror. They were younger than the college kids and he was older all of a sudden. What a world. Time just went by no matter what a person did.

Around eleven Reed showed up. Reed was his last name. His first name was Karl but he never went by it. He'd been too cool to hang out with Tom in high school, but things were different now. Now he sold real estate in Ca.s.sius and Verona and sometimes over here at the beach, and even though he'd made some money he'd never figured out how to grow up. He'd peaked in high school-when he'd quarterbacked the football team and gotten the head cheerleader and all the usual what have you-but that was that and he was still stuck in it even though it was all over, even though it was half a dozen years ago and he was going to fat and losing his hair and coming to places like this to check out the women and score a little dope from Tom Poole, whom he'd never even condescended to greet in the hallowed halls of Ca.s.sius High.

Tom liked it. All those years Reed had had something he'd wanted-a lot of things he'd wanted, come to think of it-and now the shoe was on the other foot. ”Hey, buddy,” he said when Reed came in. The way a person says it who isn't your buddy and doesn't want to be. Just relis.h.i.+ng the sound.

”Hey.” Sal brought Reed a beer. There was an empty stool next to Tom's and he took it. Tom lit a cigarette and Reed looked at the pack and raised his eyebrows as if he'd never seen anything so terrible. ”You still smoking those?” he said. ”They'll kill you one of these days.”

”Thanks for the input.”

”I'm just saying.” He leaned back in his stool and made himself comfortable, acting like he was still first-string on the varsity team or something. Like anybody still cared or even knew. Old habits.

”I hear you. And I'll tell you what. I'll quit smoking the minute you lay off the cheeseburgers.”

Reed sucked it in a little and smiled. ”It's the munchies, man. I got n.o.body to blame but my favorite dealer.”

Which got the attention of the college kids over at the bowling machines.

”Sure,” said Tom. ”Everything's always my fault.” He raised a finger and Sal brought him another beer. He waited until Sal was gone and then he lowered his voice a little. ”I don't deal, anyway. There's dealing and then there's growing. Two completely different things.”

Audie.