Dream Wheels (9 page)

“The knee,” Birch said.

“Yessir. Landed square and it busted all to hell. Don’t know why. The angle, I guess.”

“One of those things,” Birch said.

“Just one of those things,” Lionel echoed.

“It was over.”

“Yeah. Done. I didn’t know it right off though. I tried to come back, but I couldn’t get enough squeeze. Hurt too damn much. So I hung ’em up.”

Birch gave him a look. “So why you telling me this now? Why you telling me this story you told me a thousand times?”

“Well, I guess I just kinda remembered it myself, looking at my grandson all wrapped up and broke. Kinda important now for me to recall what I learned out of that.”

“And what’s that, Daddy?”

“I learned that it ain’t the fall that kills you, son. It’s the gettin’ up that hurts like hell.”

Birch nodded. “That knee still hurt?”

“Only if I think about it,” Lionel said.

She watched the young man approach her on the darkened sidewalk and felt fear. As he got closer she realized he was just a kid. He was grinning at her. Guys were all the same no matter what the age, she thought, and gave a small sideways glance despite herself. Jesus, Amie, she thought, the kid’s all of fourteen, maybe fifteen tops, and you’re giving him the eye. Long day, she figured and clutched the money bag a little closer to her body as she neared the bank deposit chute. The kid was still grinning. Horny little bugger, out way too late for his age, she thought as she stepped up to the bank drop.

“Nice night,” the kid said.

She looked at him, the silly grin still pasted to his face. “Yes,” she said. “Kind of late for you, isn’t it?”

“Not really,” he said, stepping closer.

“Excuse me,” she said, pressing against the wall.

“No. You excuse me,” he said.

It happened like the slow-motion roll of dreams. One hand reaching into the pocket of the windbreaker in one long roll of motion. She told the police after that she’d actually expected to see the gun before it emerged into the low light, shimmering like a small fish. She gasped. The kid looked back over his shoulder and down the length of the street almost casually, then raised the gun higher toward her face.

“I’m gonna need that,” he said. The grin was gone.

“I can’t,” she said.

“No time for can’t,” he said. “Just give me the bag.”

“I can’t,” she repeated.

He stepped back a pace and aimed the gun hard, his arm rigid. “This ain’t no game now,” he said, so calmly it surprised her. “You have to give me that bag and I’ll just disappear. Don’t need to be no bigger deal than that.”

She started to cry. Loyalty was strong in her and she couldn’t bring herself to simply hand over the store’s earnings. The kid looked around again.

“Jesus,” he said, “don’t do that. Fuck. Just give me the bag.”

She kept crying, clutching the bag tighter and stepping out into the light of the street.

“Goddammit,” the kid said, waving the gun at her.

She told the police that he almost bolted then. She could see it in his thighs, the momentary clutch of muscle ready to spring.

There was a brief blip of siren, high and hard, and they both looked down the street at the unmarked police car easing to the curb, red dashboard light flashing. The kid blanched, pivoting his head back and forth, trying to determine a direction to flee.

“Go down the alley!” she said.

He looked at her, stunned, and stepped away, sidling toward the alley on the other side of the street. She wanted to tell him he was going to the wrong alley, that he should go down the near entrance. The kid moved across the street in small sideways hitch-steps, facing the policemen, the gun pressed to his thigh. She would recall the silvery glint of it for years after. She would recall the rubbery feel of time, watching the drama unfold in front of her. The kid’s small steps, the thin thighs of him trembling through the jeans, the shaky plant of each foot edging toward the freedom of the alley in counterpoint to the firm voice of the officers, their own guns raised
toward him, one of them crouching to aim while the other stepped sideways toward the opposite sidewalk, talking to him, commanding him. The kid’s jaw shook and he raised the gun tentatively, the hand shaking too. He was crying. Huge, gulping, chin-shaking swallows made his Adam’s apple jump in his neck and when he raised the gun to cradle it in both hands she sensed that it was more to quell the shaking and make a bigger bid for the alley than any real threat. The voices of the officers hit the air like punches, each driving the crazy beat of the action into a herky-jerky staccato. She saw the muzzle flash and the kid’s arms kick back high and hard with the recoil. He looked surprised. There was another boom. The bullet drove the kid backwards a few feet, where he crumpled to the concrete and time regained itself.

Immobility was the worst. Joe Willie felt trapped. He understood now how the calves felt when the ropers had them tied. It seemed that sudden. The calf bursts out of the gate and four seconds later he’s dazed on the ground, incapable of moving, while the horse maintains a taut line to prevent him from getting away. Four seconds. That’s how fast this felt. It didn’t seem like any time at all since he’d been straddled over the chute staring down at the deep brown sea of the bull. He recalled the kaleidoscope thrill of the arena spinning crazily around him, the colours flashing and the sound of the crowd like surf crashing on the rocks. Clear, like it was moments ago. Like time melted. He remembered the conscious times, minutes when he lived with the realization of what happened, but they had an unreal quality to them, fuzzy, obscure, hard to hold. Then the dark times, when the morphine sent him under, were empty except for the bear. What the hell was that about? Cowboys told all kinds of funny stories about the things medication had
done to them, and right now it felt best to put it down to some addled morphine dream. Still, the bear turning into an old woman was eerie, something a part of him remembered but far too faint to pinpoint.

He tried to move but had to settle for a hitching of the shoulders. He grimaced. The ceiling, flat, empty, still. His life. That’s what his life was going to be from now on. Motionless as he was right now.

“Joe Willie?”

He turned his head and saw his grandmother seated at the bedside.

“Hey,” he said.

“How do you feel?”

“Like a roped-up calf,” he said.

“Can I do anything?”

“No.”

“Do you want anything?”

“No.”

“How about a TV? We could get you a TV. Would you like that?”

“No. I don’t want a television. I don’t want a radio. I don’t want a newspaper. I don’t want anything. Nothing. Nothing but to be left alone.”

“Okay,” she said. “I suppose we can arrange that too. Except there’s a lot of people that really want to see you. A lot of people that care.”

He stared at the ceiling while she waited. “There’s nothing for them to see,” he said. “The show was in the arena and the show’s over. Tell them that.”

“Joe Willie?”

“What?”

“It’s okay.”

“What’s okay?”

“It’s okay to feel the way you feel right now.”

“Thank you,” he said. “That helps so much.”

“We understand. We really do,” Victoria said.

“Do you? Good. That’s really good that you understand. Because I don’t. I don’t understand any of it. Eight seconds, Grandma. One life all boiled down to eight seconds. Less really. What’d I make it? Five? Five seconds? So I was three seconds away from being the best, from being the champion. Three ticks of the clock away from the top of the world and now I can’t even move into the world. And when the cast comes off and the carving up they done heals, I won’t be able to move around it either. Limp, yeah? Hitch-step around, dragging one arm like some cripple, some invalid. You all understand that? You can explain how I’m supposed to handle that? Can you?”

He felt tears but tightened up his insides until the urge left him. When he looked over at her she was nodding. She reached out and laid a hand on his good one, squeezed it.

“It’s a lonesome business, riding,” she said. “Maybe that’s why a man can get to love it so much. Maybe because there’s only him. Only him when the gate gets thrown wide and the bull or the bronc busts out into the open. Maybe there’s something in that moment that makes a man feel like it defines him, sketches him out, gives him detail. I don’t know, I’ve never done it. But I helped three men do it. Helped three men make it the focus of their lives. And I guess I learned something about it. I guess I learned a little about what it feels like, about how the ride feels, the thrill, the excitement, the danger. And maybe I know a little something about the sound of it too. The thump and grunt and crash of it, and the sound of the crowd. I know a little something about the noise of it all. How that sounds. But you know what?”

She looked at him. Waited.

“What?” he asked.

“I don’t know anything about the quiet. The silence. I don’t know anything about how the silence feels when it’s over. When the lights go off in the arena and you’re left there standing with your rigging, the crowds are all gone, the arena’s empty and you stand there wondering what to do next. I don’t know anything about that. Cowboys always keep that one to themselves. Even your grandfather, even your daddy. So it makes it hard to understand how it must feel to you right now, knowing that those lights aren’t ever going up for you again, that the chute won’t get thrown open one more time. But if you were to tell me, maybe then I’d have a chance to get it. To know how that feels. Maybe then I’d know how to help you.”

He looked at her and she could see him searching for the words.

“I don’t know either,” he said. “It ain’t never been this quiet before.”

They looked at each other silently and she nodded.

She put the tips of her fingers to her face and traced the line of her cheekbones. In the mirror she watched her fingers rise and fall as they followed the line of contusion and then dipped into the natural hollow and felt the looseness of her teeth under the skin, and she pushed her tongue against them and felt the push against her fingers and winced at the sudden stab of pain. She dropped her hand and slid the middle finger of the other along one line of her jaw and then the other. There were bumps there and a heaviness at the mandible joint where his fist had landed most squarely and she opened and closed her mouth a few times and heard the crackle of bone on bone. She tried to smile but the split flesh of her lip was just beginning to heal and it
held stiffly so that she managed only a grimace, the emptiness of her eyes giving it the perpetual flatness of a catatonic. She felt none of the reassurance the smile was meant to offer her and she tried to wink at herself but the puffed purple flesh around her eyes turned it into a garish tic and she settled for a squeezing together of the eyebrows, leaning in toward the glass and staring into the depths of her eyes. None of them had ever done this. None of the men. They’d always been disarmed by her beauty and the fact that she had actually chosen them so that when arguments erupted or differences became so starkly apparent she’d always been given a kind of immunity from the fallout, a grace culled from her startling exotic look, the half-bloodedness, the mulatto coffee-and-cream complexion and the great hazel sharpness of her eyes.

But he was different. She’d known that from the very start, but there was something in his power that pulled her along despite her misgivings. He knew things. He knew about a woman’s body, was fascinated with them, and he’d explored her fully, learning where to touch her, how she liked a finger placed, a tongue, the rhythm that turned her on and how to bring her to a point of release and let her go, building and stoking the fire in her until he finally took her over the edge. She felt plumbed, known and captive, and it was fascinating. The idea of a big, powerful man doing things to her body she’d never felt before was exciting. She’d given back, and that excited him further although he always retained control, always reined her in with a big palm on her buttocks or back. Then it turned mean. He started to take her. He’d simply walk in and have her, leave her limp and aching once he’d satisfied himself and watch television or demand to be fed. Staring at herself in the mirror, Claire wondered why she hadn’t left when it became obvious how cruel he could be.
She cursed herself. Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid about men. But hope was a strange thing. Hope could make you blind. Hope could tell you that things weren’t what they seemed, that some things were just a phase, a mood, a glitch. Hope could even convince you that if you did as you were told it would all smooth out in time and you’d wake up one morning wrapped in the arms of a man who adored you, worshipped you and sought only to fulfill you. But hope bruised too, and Claire fingered her swollen nose and felt the crush of loss that hurt more than the beating. Hope sometimes felt worse than dying.

There was nothing in the mirror of the vibrant, beautiful woman. There was just a hag, beaten into submission, used, discarded, tossed into a corner until it was time to be used again.
Hag
. She felt fury building in her, a raging, bitter fury that flicked against the sides of her belly and seemed to warm the wounds on her face, make them smoulder, cauterize them in the rank vetch of resentment, disdain and hatred she felt inside her for all the men, all the promises, all the heartache, disappointment, disillusionment, new beginnings and random glories that flared briefly for her but became extinguished in the sop of whispered intentions that were only come-ons dressed up in consignment clothes. Claire pounded her fists against the top of the bureau and then raised them to her temples, held them there, squinted her eyes tight shut to excise the memories, then opened them to look at herself again.

She couldn’t be seen like this. Not until she figured out what she had to do. Eric had been careful to exercise control over everything. The only money she had came from the weekly allowance he doled out for groceries and household things. It was generous and they ate well, but Claire had never
once considered the need for a financial resource of her own. The cellphone in her bag rang at least six times a day with Eric asking where she was and what she was doing. He was always demonstrative, giving her encouragement and compliments during those calls, sweet even, though the whispered niceties always carried a vague sexual undertone. She had no idea of the bank accounts, which bills were due when, or how the house itself was maintained. Eric took care of all of that. He even bought clothes for her, often sweeping in on a wave of whiskey fumes to present her with another dress, suit or some lingerie that he’d ask her to model for him while he sat on the sofa and watched. He gave Aiden money, bought him things, and he’d paid the debts she’d built up before they met. Her role was the dutiful, obedient housewife, and he reminded her constantly about the lack of stress in her life, how he took care of everything, how she never needed to worry, and for the longest time she hadn’t. Her reward was the sex. That’s what he told her, and at first she hadn’t really minded. But this was different. This felt like slavery.