Everything (4 page)

What’s going on?

Had a little pileup on the river, RL said, bluff but unconvincing.

* * *

Is everybody OK?

Edgar here thinks he might have broke an arm.

I’m pretty sure, said Edgar. He wasn’t complaining, but it wasn’t a joke either.

She opened the door for him and he got in, cradling one arm with the other, and sat still, staring ahead, while they piled the gear into the back of the pickup. RL wouldn’t even look at him and he wasn’t talking to anybody. Edgar was pissed. When they were loaded up, RL stuffed himself into the jump seat behind Layla, where he didn’t fit well. She could feel his giant bony knees in the small of her back.

Drop me at Chief Looking Glass, would you? RL asked. I’ve got to pick up the trailer and it’s on the way. I’ll meet you down at Saint Pat’s.

Layla smelled stale beer and cigar smoke and rolled her window down an inch. She didn’t want to, didn’t want to, didn’t want to. But she didn’t want to have to back the trailer, either. Edgar sat beside her, radiating anger. What was it about men? If she stayed with Daniel long enough, would he turn into one of these? Would he smell of sweat and sunblock and beer? Would he scratch and bleed? RL liked to see a little of his own blood once in a while. He really didn’t mind. Layla never understood this.

They let RL off to run the shuttle, and then it was just the two of them on the way to the hospital. Layla couldn’t think of a single thing to say. It was going to be a half-hour drive from here at least.

* * *

How did this happen? she finally asked.

It was just dumbass, he said.

What kind?

Edgar told her about the wreck, then, and when he got to the part about being caught underwater with his hand tied down, Layla could tell how frightened he had been. Still was. He said, I didn’t think I was going to get out of there.

He held a hand out, palm toward the windshield, as if to ward off the death angel; and out of the corner of her eye she noticed that he was graceful in his movements, like the arc of a good cast—she could feel it in her own body, when it worked. Grace.

Also the smell of sweat and beer and cigars was her father’s. With him gone, the truck just smelled of river water.

RL is such an asshole sometimes, Layla said.

My fault more than his, Edgar said. I was sitting at the oars.

It just seems like this kind of crap always happens when he’s
around
, you know? And it never happens to him, either. Always to the people around him, the lucky bastards.

Edgar laughed, then felt it in his broken arm. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him pale.

* * *

You got a mouth on you, he said.

So I’ve been told.

Did you grow up around RL the whole time?

Layla laughed. She said, You think there’s a connection?

Could be.

Mostly I did, she said. When my mom first got back to town, she thought she wanted to try her hand at me. I went back and forth for a while till she left again.

Went where?

RL didn’t tell you the story? He loves to tell this story. No, she ran off and followed the Grateful Dead around, years at a time. She used to sell hemp necklaces with rocks and beads and stuff.

Get out of here.

No, it’s amazing.

I’ve only seen her that one time at the store.

No, she doesn’t look the part at all anymore. Unless you see her with a sleeveless shirt—she’s got this whole spiderweb tattooed on her shoulder and part of her arm. It’s huge. It’s actually kind of awesome.

* * *

Live and learn, said Edgar. They settled back into silence, but it was a companionable silence now. They were on the same side, though Layla didn’t know of what. After a minute, Edgar started to laugh. He didn’t explain himself, and she didn’t ask why. She didn’t need to. She already knew so much.

Later in the bar
they had beer and cheeseburgers under a wall of photographs of grinning fishermen and women holding unbelievably large fish out in the air. RL was half drunk by then and he had to be up at five thirty in the morning to take the clients Edgar could not. So he ordered a Johnnie Walker on the rocks for himself and another for Edgar.

Who’s going to drive you home? asked Layla.

I’m all right, RL said.

You might be out of luck for today, she said.

Out of
bad
luck, you mean. We used up all the bad luck. It’s going to be sunshine and sweet peas from here on out.

* * *

RL sat back in his chair and watched the waitress’s ass for a minute. He was being a dick and he knew it. But he felt obscurely that the other two were ganging up on him, a little vibe when he walked into the waiting room at Saint Pat’s just as Edgar was coming out with his new cast. He should maybe have gotten there earlier.

But since RL’s mother died, he hated hospitals, the stink of them, the machine quiet and hiss. Behind the politeness and soft voices lurked suffering and death. Her last ten days, when he slept in the waiting room, or in a chair in her room while she struggled for breath, RL sometimes took the elevator up to Labor and Delivery just to watch happiness, just to believe in it. Strolling the corridor, feeling like a spy—he didn’t belong there, he had no business—RL strained to see the new mother through the half-open door, the little blanket-wrapped bundle, the older brother or sister with balloons or flowers, the sad exhausted husbands who were happy but something else at the same time, something nobody cared to name …. Even in the happy place, the other crept in. A kind of machinelike compassion, real, inadequate. As sorry as they all fucking were, his mother wasn’t coming back.

Layla was drinking diet soda and looking beautiful and disapproving with her long beautiful neck until Edgar said something funny and then she liked him. His cast already looked dirty in the dim bar light. The waitress disappeared into the next room, tall and blond, a basketball player maybe. She had a high-set ass like a black woman and long muscular legs.

RL said, You can take the store, can’t you?

* * *

Edgar said, Me?

It’s wages work, RL said. Probably enough to keep you going for a while. You won’t make what you make guiding.

No, I appreciate it. I’m not going to know what the hell I’m doing, though.

There’s no great trick to it, RL said. The little ray of sunshine here can show you how to run the cash register et cetera.

There’s not much to it, Layla said.

No, I do appreciate it. I was kind of counting on some of that money.

RL looked at him, his grateful kindly face, and suddenly he was done—done with the evening, done with the scene. Five in the morning loomed in front of him and the raft still half deflated by the side of the stream and clients to please, never his favorite part of the operation. The blond waitress with the beautiful ass was not going to sleep with him and this last glass of whiskey was not going to make anything better. He drained it, ice rattling his teeth, and threw sixty dollars at his daughter.

Settle up, he said, would you? I’m going to take a leak.

She was surprised by this turn of mood, he could see it in her face, her and Edgar. I am your father, RL thought, I disappoint you. That’s what I do. That’s my job. In the green toilet light his eyes like a wino, his fat gut bulging, his fishing shirt with the silly flaps and buttons. What was he trying to prove? The boy in him. Tying flies
and rowing boats—a boy’s idea of a man’s life—and here he was with a daughter and all, circles under his eyes like fucking Rembrandt. Piss came slower and weaker always. He had managed to make a little money—fisherman and landlord—and keep his daughter alive. That was all. There were times when that seemed like enough, but here, alone in green light with his dick in his hand, it did not.

When he came back to the bar they were head down, talking. This wasn’t exactly wrong, but it wasn’t right. Change and check were already on the table, good to go.

I’ll run the casualty home, RL said. Meet you back at the house.

I might go out for a while, Layla said.

Out where?

You know,
out
, Layla said. The other side of the door.

I don’t like you out in the bars.

Which is exactly where we are right now, she said.

OK, OK, OK, he said. Just don’t make a racket when you come in. I’ve got to be up early.

I’ll bring the brass band, she said.

In the car, Edgar said, That girl’s a ball of fire.

* * *

Sometimes, RL said. She feels comfortable with you, you see that side of her. She’s a complicated girl, though, sometimes she just runs out of gas. She seems a lot older than she really is.

This was meant as a warning and Edgar heard it that way, maybe. He settled in his side of the truck and shut up for the ride back to his house. It was early but late, the streets just lining up with college drunks and Layla out there somewhere among them. RL had been awake since six and didn’t understand why all the yelling, the drinking, the driving around in cars. Though he remembered the moment when the boat had tipped over the lip of the dam with a great pleasure. Dangerous fun. But fun.

What did you do?

Edgar’s wife stood in the porch light like she wasn’t going to let him in. A drooly little toddler girl watched from the living room behind her, scared. Then Amy turned to RL.

What did you do to him? she said. Why does this garbage always happen when he’s out with you?

It’s not his fault, Edgar said.

I didn’t say it was, she said. You’d better come in.

She stood aside in the doorway and watched RL sideways and angry. He wasn’t fooling her. Edgar inside with his daughter in his arms and then Amy closed the door on him and RL was alone on the porch. He could hear the fight starting up behind the closed door. A nice night, finally cooling off, insects buzzing in the shadows
and RL alone again. The yellow light of the living room spilled out onto the lawn, warm—a promise of family, a life inside, a place to go.

He made his way back to the truck and drove to his own empty house. The message light was blinking red on the telephone but RL ignored it in favor of one last beer on the deck. And possibly a cigar. Definitely a cigar. He’d pay for it in the morning, but he couldn’t sleep right now anyway. RL was restless, restless. The town spread out below him, a bowl full of lights, headlights, streetlights, little lights spilling from warm little houses and always the cars on their way to somewhere. Who was that on the phone? RL didn’t really want to know. He sat back and watched the lights and sipped his beer and watched the late Northwest flight out of Minneapolis line up on the airport across the valley, miles away. The runway lit up as the plane approached, twinkling in the night air. He lit his cigar and sat back in his lawn chair to watch. Man, drink, deck, summer night, cigar.

RL took a basic pleasure in big engines, jets and graders and locomotives, a pleasure that was carried over from his Ohio boyhood. He used to take Layla to the overpass at the north end of town and together watch the trains underneath their feet, sometimes feeling the diesel heat, the clangor of boxcars run together, the screech of metal brakes. Something about him that women didn’t trust, that they didn’t like exactly. It wasn’t just the broken bones, the trouble that followed him. It wasn’t the guilty fact of him sitting with a drink in his hand at midnight when he had to be up at five, the toy pleasure of watching the big jet land across the way. They still flew the old three-engine 727s in and out of the valley, one of the last places they could fly them, too noisy for almost anyplace
else, but they could punch through an inversion layer like nobody’s business.

No, it was something else they didn’t trust, something intangible. The fact that he liked this day, that he felt alive in the face of it. Something happened, nobody died. Boredom was held at bay. Mission accomplished. Not a woman alive, at least none RL had met, would have followed this logic. Maybe they were right. Maybe let the women run the world for a change, if they weren’t already. But RL felt a deep conviction that he was right about this. Prudence could be carried only so far before it became cowardice, and cowardice was a dead end.

He looked forward to explaining this position to Edgar’s wife.

Across the valley, the 727 followed the bright beams of its landing lights down, a long shallow glide that circled the valley and then straightened in alignment with the runway. He could barely hear the big motors. Then touchdown, all safe, a kind of inner thrill.

Then the phone rang again and he went and looked at the caller ID: his ex-wife, Dawn, calling at midnight. RL did not know much, but he did know well enough to leave this call for another day. The women of the world would have to find somebody else to pick on tonight. He was done with errands, done with explanations. If this was an emergency, it was not his emergency. He took a bottle of Trout Slayer from the fridge, in case the first one ran out, and went back outside to watch the lights, to feel the summer, fading fast. After a minute, the phone began to ring again, and he let it.

Nothing good will come of this
, June thought. Nothing good ever came of a man with a clipboard or a mustache or a big hat, and Howard Emerson had all three.

Funny thing, he said. They were striding through cut hay, walking the back fence line where it ran up next to the state park. June could smell the river, late summer, low water, muck and rot. They were right by the water.

Bunch of hippies back in I think it was 1969, Howard Emerson said. Borrowed money from Mom and Dad and I don’t know who or what-all else and they got together and bought six hundred acres down on Kootenai Creek and started a hippie commune, the real thing. It didn’t last long. I guess they all hated each other by the end, plus there was some random shooting and so on by the locals.
That was back when the Posse Comitatus was in action—you ever hear of them?

No, said June.

Make the Freemen look like a Sunday-school outfit, said Howard Emerson. Anyway, they got run out of there—or they run themselves out, whichever—and I guess none of ’em could stand each other enough to talk to one another. The place just sat the same as you’re doing, leasing out the hay and renting out the house. Thirty years of this. Then one of ’em died, I guess, and they called me up to put a value on the place. None of ’em had any idea. They about fell down when I gave them the number. Jim Canady lives there now.