A Kind of Flying: Selected Stories (50 page)

“Nothing but good things,” I said. “How’re you doing?”

He came closer and looked at my face, concerned. “You sick?”

“No, I’m great. Long day.”

Victor appeared with the cargo sheet and handed me the clipboard to sign. He and Jesse exchanged glances. I looked up at them. Victor put his hand on my chin and let it drop. “Too much tail.” He was speaking to Jesse. “He got the truck and forgot what I told him. Remember?” He turned to me. “Remember? Watch what you’re doing.” Victor took the clipboard back and tapped it against his leg. “When the tanks start to fall, run the
other
way.”

A moment later as I was getting ready to move the truck, Jesse came out with his white lunch bag and gave me his leftover burrito. It was as heavy as a book and I ate it like a lesson.

But it was a hot heedless summer and I showered every night like some animal born of it, heedless and hot, and I pulled a cotton T-shirt over my ribs, combed my wet hair back, and without a word to my parents, who were wary of me now it seemed, drove to Scottsdale and buried myself in Elizabeth Rensdale.

THE SUNDAY
before Labor Day, I didn’t call Linda Enright. This had been my custom all these many weeks and now I was breaking it. I rousted around the house, finally raking the yard, sweeping the garage, and washing all three of the cars, before rolling onto the couch in the den and watching some of the sad, throwaway television of a summer Sunday. In each minute of the day, Linda Enright, sitting in her father’s home office, which she’d described to me on the telephone many times (we always talked about where we were; I told her about my phone booth, the heat, graffiti, and passing traffic), was in my mind. I saw her there in her green sweater by her father’s rolltop. We always talked about what we were wearing and she always said the green sweater, saying it innocently as if wearing the sweater that I’d helped pull over her head that night in her dorm room was of little note, a coincidence, and not the most important thing that she’d say in the whole eight-dollar call, and I’d say just Levi’s and T-shirt, hoping she’d imagine the belt, the buckle, the trouble it could all be in the dark. I saw her sitting still in the afternoon shadow, maybe writing some notes in her calendar or reading, and right over there, the telephone. I lay there in my stocking feet knowing I could get up and hit the phone booth in less than ten minutes and make that phone ring, have her reach for it, but I didn’t. I stared at the television screen as if this was some kind of work and I had to do it. It was the most vivid that Linda had appeared before me the entire summer. Green sweater in the study through the endless day. I let her sit there until the last sunlight rocked through the den, broke, and disappeared. I hated the television, the couch, my body which would not move. I finally got up sometime after nine and went to bed.

Elizabeth Rensdale and I kept at it. Over the Labor Day weekend, I stayed with her overnight and we worked and reworked ourselves long past satiation. She was ravenous and my appetite for her was relentless. That was how I felt it all: relentless. Moments after coming hard into her, I would begin to palm her bare hip as if dreaming and then still dreaming begin to mouth her ear and her hand would play over my genitals lightly and then move in dreamily sorting me around in the dark and we would shift to begin again. I woke from a brief nap sometime after four in the morning with Elizabeth across me, a leg between mine, her face in my neck, and I felt a heaviness in my arm as I slid it down her tight back that reminded me of what Victor had said. I was tired in a way I’d never known. My blood stilled and I could feel a pressure running in my head like sand, and still my hand descended in the dark. There was no stopping. Soon I felt her hand, as I had every night for a month, and we labored toward dawn.

In the morning, Sunday, I didn’t go home, but drove way down by Ayr Oxygen Company to the Roadrunner, the truck stop there on McDowell adjacent to the freeway. It was the first day I’d ever been sore and I walked carefully to the coffee shop. I sat alone at the counter, eating eggs and bacon and toast and coffee, feeling the night tick away in every sinew the way a car cools after a long drive. It was an effort to breathe and at times I had to stop and gulp some air, adjusting myself on the counter stool. Around me it was only truck drivers who had driven all night from Los Angeles, Sacramento, Albuquerque, Salt Lake City. There was only one woman in the place, a large woman in a white waitress dress who moved up and down the counter pouring coffee. When she poured mine, I looked up at her and our eyes locked, I mean her head tipped and her face registered something I’d never seen before. If I used such words I’d call it
horror,
but I don’t. My old heart bucked, I thought of my Professor Whisner and Western Civ; if it was what I was personally doing, then it was in tough shape. The gravity of the moment between the waitress and myself was such that I was certain to my toenails I’d been seen: she knew all about me.

THAT WEEK
I gave Nadine my notice, reminding her that I would be leaving in ten days, mid-September, to go back to school. “Well, sonnyboy, I hope we didn’t work your wheels off.” She leaned back, letting me know there was more to say.

“No, ma’am. It’s been a good summer.”

“We think so too,” she said. “Come by and I’ll have your last check cut early, so we don’t have to mail it.”

“Thanks, Nadine.” I moved to the door; I had a full day of deliveries.

“Old Gil Benson is going to miss you, I think.”

“I’ve met a lot of nice people,” I said. I wanted to deflect this and get going.

“No,” she said, “you’ve been good to him; it’s important. Some of these old guys don’t have much to look forward to. He’s called several times. I might as well tell you. Mr. Ayr heard about it and is writing you a little bonus.”

I stepped back toward her. “What?”

“Congratulations.” She smiled. “Drive carefully.”

I walked slowly out to the truck. I cinched the chain hitches in the back of my Ford, securing the cylinders, climbed wearily down to the asphalt, which was already baking at half past eight, and pulled myself into the driver’s seat. In the rearview mirror I could see Victor and Jesse standing in the shadows. I was tired.

Some of my customers knew I was leaving and made kind remarks or shook my hand or had their wife hand me an envelope with a twenty in it. I smiled and nodded gratefully and then turned business-like to the dolly and left. These were strange good-byes, because there was no question that we would ever see each other again. It had been a summer and I had been their oxygen guy. But there was more: I was young and they were ill. I stood in the bedroom doors in Sun City and said, “Take care,” and I moved to the truck and felt something, but I couldn’t even today tell you what it was. The people who didn’t know, who said, “See you next week, David,” I didn’t correct them. I said, “See you,” and I left their homes too. It all had me on edge.

The last day of my job in the summer of 1967, I drove to work under a cloud cover as thick as twilight in winter and still massing. It began to rain early and I made the quick decision to beat the Salt River flooding by hitting Mesa first and Scottsdale in the afternoon. I had known for a week that I did not want Gil Benson to be my last call for the summer, and this rain, steady but light, gave me the excuse I wanted. Of course, it was nuts to think I could get out to Mesa before the crossings were flooded. And by now, mid-September, all the drivers were wise to the monsoon and headed for the Tempe Bridge as soon as they saw overcast. The traffic was colossal, and I crept in a huge column of cars east across the river, noting it was twice as bad coming back, everyone trying to get to Phoenix for the day. My heart was only heavy, not fearful or nervous, as I edged forward. What I am saying is that I had time to think about it all, this summer, myself, and it was a powerful stew. The radio wouldn’t finish a song. “Young Girl,” by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap or “Cherish,” by the Association without interrupting with a traffic bulletin about crossing the river.

I imagined it raining in the hills of Boulder, Colorado, Linda Enright selling cookies in her apron in a shop with curtains, a Victorian tearoom, ten years ahead of itself as it turned out, her sturdy face with no expression telling she wasn’t a virgin anymore, and that now she had been for thirty days betrayed. I thought, and this is the truth, I thought for the first time of what I was going to say
last
to Elizabeth Rensdale. I tried to imagine it, and my imagination failed. I tried again, I mean, I really tried to picture us there in the entry of the Scottsdale townhouse speaking to each other, which we had never, ever done. When I climbed from her bed the nights I’d gone to her, it was just that, climbing out, dressing, and crossing to the door. She didn’t get up. This wasn’t
Casablanca
or
High Noon
, or
Captain Blood
, which I had seen this summer, this was getting laid in a hot summer desert town by your father’s oxygen deliveryman. There was no way to make it anything else, and it was too late as I moved through Tempe toward Mesa and Gil Benson’s outpost to make it anything else. We were not going to hold each other’s faces in our hands and whisper; we were not going to stand speechless in the shadows. I was going to try to get her pants off one more time and let her see me. That was it. I shifted in my truck seat and drove.

Even driving slowly, I fishtailed through the red clay along Gil’s road. The rain had moved in for the day, persistent and even, and the temperature stalled and hovered at about a hundred. I thought Gil would be pleased to see me so soon in the day, because he was always glad to see me, welcomed me, but I surprised him this last Friday knocking at the door for five full minutes before he unlocked the door, looking scared. Though I had told him I would eventually be going back to college, I hadn’t told him this was my last day. I didn’t want any this or that, just the little visit and the drive away. I wanted to get to Scottsdale.

Shaken up like he was, things went differently. There was no chatter right off the bat, no sitting down at the table. He just moved things out of the way as I wheeled the oxygen in and changed tanks. He stood to one side, leaning against the counter. When I finished, he made no move to keep me there, so I just kept going. I wondered for a moment if he knew who I was or if he was just waking up. At the front door, I said, “There you go, good luck, Gil.” His name quickened him and he came after me with short steps in his slippers.

“Well, yes,” he started as always, “I wouldn’t need this stuff at all if I’d stayed out of the war.” And he was off and cranking. But when I went outside, he followed me into the rain. “Of course, I was strong as a horse and came back and got right with it. I mean, there wasn’t any sue-the-government then. We were happy to be home. I was happy.” He went on, the rain pelting us both. His slippers were all muddy.

“You gotta go,” I told him. “It’s wet out here.” His wet skin in the flat light looked raw, the spots on his forehead brown and liquid; under his eyes the skin was purple. I’d let him get too close to the truck and he’d grabbed the door handle.

“I wasn’t sick a day in my life,” he said. “Not as a kid, not in the army. Ask my wife. When this came on,” he patted his chest, “it came on bang! Just like that and here I am. Somewhere.” His eyes, which had been looking everywhere past me, found mine and took hold. “This place!” He pointed at his ruined house. “This place!” I put my hand on his on the door handle and I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to pry it off without breaking it.

Then there was a hitch in the rain, a gust of wet wind, and hail began to rattle through the yard, bouncing up from the mud, bouncing off the truck and our heads. “Let me take you back inside,” I said. “Quick, Gil, let’s get out of this weather.” The hail stepped up a notch, a million mothballs ringing every surface. Gil Benson pulled the truck door open, and with surprising dexterity, he stepped up into the vehicle, sitting on all my paperwork. He wasn’t going to budge and I hated pleading with him. I wouldn’t do it. Now the hail had tripled, quadrupled, in a crashfest off the hood. I looked at Gil, shrunken and purple in the darkness of the cab; he looked like the victim of a fire.

“Well, at least we’re dry in here, right?” I said. “We’ll give it a minute.” And that’s what it took, about sixty seconds for the hail to abate, and after a couple of heavy curtains of the rain ripped across the hood as if they’d been thrown from somewhere, the world went silent and we could hear only the patter of the last faint drops. “Gil,” I said. “I’m late. Let’s go in.” I looked at him but he did not look at me. “I’ve got to go.” He sat still, his eyes timid, frightened, smug. It was an expression you use when you want someone to hit you.

I started the truck, hoping that would scare him, but he did not move. His eyes were still floating and it looked like he was grinning, but it wasn’t a grin. I crammed the truck into gear and began to fishtail along the road. I didn’t care for that second if we went off the road; the wheels roared mud. At the corner, we slid in the wet clay across the street and stopped.

I kicked my door open and jumped down into the red mud and went around the front of the truck. When I opened his door, he did not turn or look at me, which was fine with me. I lifted Gil like a bride and he clutched me, his wet face against my face. I carried him to the weedy corner lot. He was light and bony like an old bird and I was strong and I felt strong, but I could tell this was an insult the old man didn’t need. When I stood him there he would not let go, his hands clasped around my neck, and I peeled his hands apart carefully, easily, and I folded them back toward him so he wouldn’t snag me again. “Goodbye, Gil,” I said. He was an old wet man alone in the desert. He did not acknowledge me.

I ran to the truck and eased ahead for traction and when I had traction, I floored it, throwing mud behind me like a rocket.

By the time I lined up for the Tempe Bridge, the sky was torn with blue vents. The Salt River was nothing but muscle, a brown torrent four feet over the river-bottom roadway. The traffic was thick. I merged and merged again and finally funneled onto the bridge and across toward Scottsdale. A ten-mile rainbow had emerged over the McDowell Mountains.