Something Rich and Strange: Selected Stories (6 page)

It was a Thursday in early February when Andrew called. Twelve inches of snow had fallen that day, and Barry, who owned a truck, had to drive Ginny to work. After reading cancellations for everything from schools to day-care centers to shifts at local mills, she offered a free ball cap to a listener naming the poem that began “Whose woods these are I think I know.”

There were two wrong answers before Andrew’s voice said, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”

“You win a WMEK ball cap,” Ginny said. “You can come by the station during business hours to pick up your prize.”

For several seconds neither spoke. Ginny cut the volume in the control booth and heard the Norah Jones song she was playing. She wondered if it was the radio in Andrew’s kitchen or the one in the back room where he painted.

“I knew you’d taken RTV classes, but I had no idea you were doing this,” Andrew said. “How long have you had the job?”

“Almost three months.”

“I just happened to have the radio on to find out about school cancellations.”

“Well, it’s a lucky night for you,” Ginny said. “You’ve won a ball cap and no school tomorrow.”

“The lucky thing is hearing your voice again,” Andrew said. “I didn’t realize how much I missed it until this last hour. Ten months haven’t changed that. Don’t you think it’s time to let me back into your life?”

“I’ve got to go,” Ginny said. “More cancellations to read.”

Ginny hung up the phone. Only then did she realize her left hand was raised, her index finger touching her upper lip.

It was four hours later when she heard a banging on the door. Ginny cued another song and left the booth. She assumed it was Barry, but when she entered the foyer Andrew’s face peered in through the glass. She kept the door latched.

“I’ve come to pick up my prize,” he said, his breath whitened by the cold.

“The station doesn’t open for business until eight thirty,” Ginny said.

“You’re here.”

“I’m doing a program, a program I need to get back to.”

“It’s cold, Ginny. Let me come in.”

She unlatched the door and he followed her to the control booth.

“You can sit over there,” she said, pointing to a plastic chair in the corner.

Andrew watched and listened the next hour as she read cancellations, gave away another ball cap, and played several requests. Tom Freeman came in at 5:40 and Barry a few minutes later.

“This is the Night Hawk,” Ginny said at 5:55, “and it’s time to leave the airways to those birds that fly under the sun. So here’s a song from those day-fliers The Eagles.”

She turned up the volume as the intro to “Already Gone” filled the room.

“OK,” she said to Andrew. “We can get your ball cap now.”

Andrew followed her down the hall and into the station’s reception room. Ginny opened a closet filled with ball caps and T-shirts.

“There,” she said, handing him a cap. “Now you have what you came for.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Andrew said, fitting the cap on his head. “But it is a nice cap.” He pulled the bill down slightly. “How does it look?”

“Perfect fit,” Ginny said.

“I thought we might have breakfast together,” Andrew said.

“Barry’s supposed to take me home.”

“I can take you home after we eat.”

“I don’t like to be around a bunch of strangers,” Ginny said. “I get tired of the stares.”

“We’ll go where there aren’t many people,” Andrew answered. “That ought to be easy today. Everyone’s hunkered down with their white bread and milk.” When she hesitated, Andrew placed his hand on her forearm.

“Please,” Andrew said, “just breakfast.”

“Let me tell Barry I’m going with you,” Ginny said.

Soon they were driving through the center of town in Andrew’s jeep. Few tire tracks marked the snow the jeep passed over.

“This should fit the bill nicely,” Andrew said, and turned into the Blue Ridge Diner’s parking lot.

The snow had stopped but gray clouds smothered the dawn. The parking lot lights were still on, casting a buttery sheen over the snow. Inside, the waitress and cook stood across the counter from a middle-aged couple who sat in plastic swivel chairs. They were talking about the weather, their voices soft as if also muffled by the snow.

“Let’s sit in a booth,” Ginny said. The waitress turned from the others at the counter.

“You all want coffee?”

Andrew looked at Ginny and she shook her head.

“Just me,” he said.

Andrew nodded toward the counter where the waitress continued to talk to the cook and the couple as she poured the coffee.

“A scene worthy of your moniker.”

“No, not really,” Ginny said. “Too much interaction.”

Andrew turned his gaze back to her.

“In the painting the man and woman are a couple.”

“I don’t see that,” Ginny said. “They aren’t even looking at each other.”

The waitress brought Andrew’s coffee but no menus.

When she saw Ginny’s face up close, her lips pursed to an O before she quickly turned to Andrew.

“There’s not much choice as far as food,” the waitress said. “Our deliveryman is running late, so it’s pretty much waffles or toast.”

“Waffles sound good,” Andrew said.

Ginny nodded.

“Same for me.”

Andrew stirred cream into his coffee. He held the cup but did not lift it to his lips. He leaned to blow across the coffee’s surface, then raised his eyes.

“You’re wrong about that couple in the painting.”

“What do you mean?” Ginny asked.

“They are connected, the man and woman. Their faces may not show it but their arms and hands do.”

“I don’t remember that,” Ginny said.

“Well, I’ll show you then,” Andrew said.

Coatless, he walked outside. Ginny watched through the window as he stepped into the lot, rummaged in the back of the jeep. The waitress brought their waffles as Andrew returned with a gray hardback the width and thickness of a family bible. He pushed his plate and cup to the side and laid the book open on the table.

“There,” he said when he found the painting. “Look at her left arm and hand.”

Ginny leaned over her plate and studied the picture.

“I’m not convinced. Because of the perspective it could go either way, like whether the Mona Lisa is smiling or not.”

“Maybe you just don’t want to admit you’re wrong,” Andrew said, and paused. “Maybe you’re wrong about several things, like not being able to teach again, like you and me.”

Andrew reached out and laid his palm against the scar on Ginny’s face. She jerked her head sideways as if slapped.

“OK,” he said, slowly lowering his hand. “I made a mistake tonight. It won’t happen again.”

They finished their waffles in silence, and did not speak until Andrew slowed in front of her apartment.

“Don’t pull into the drive,” Ginny said. “You might get stuck if you do.”

Andrew pulled up to the curb but did not cut the engine. Ginny got out and trudged across the yard, her black walking shoes disappearing in the white each time she took another step. She did not look back as she opened the front door. Inside, she took off her shoes and socks and brushed the snow off her pants. She looked out the window. Only one set of tracks crossed the yard. The jeep was gone.

Ginny slept as the sky cleared to a high, bright blue. By noon the temperature was in the forties. When her alarm clock went off at three, she lay in bed a few minutes listening to cars slosh through melting snow. She would not need a ride into work. She would drive herself across town, looking through safety glass as she passed the school where she had taught, then the hospital where her face had been stitched back together, the restaurant where she and Andrew had eaten breakfast.

At the radio station she would unlock the door, and soon enough Buddy Harper would end his broadcast and leave. She would say, This is the Night Hawk, and play “After Midnight.”

Ginny would speak to people in bedrooms, to clerks drenched in the fluorescent light of convenience stores, to millworkers driving back roads home after graveyard shifts. She would speak to the drunk and sober, the godly and the godless. All the while high above where she sat, the station’s red beacon would pulse like a heart, as if giving bearings to all those in the dark adrift and alone.

T
hey had been moving up the road a week without seeing another farmhouse, and the nearest well, at least the nearest the owner would let Sinkler use, was half a mile back. What had been a trusty sluff job was now as onerous as swinging a Kaiser blade or shoveling out ditches. As soon as he’d hauled the buckets back to the cage truck it was time to go again. He asked Vickery if someone could spell him and the bull guard smiled and said that Sinkler could always strap on a pair of leg irons and grab a handle. “Bolick just killed a rattlesnake in them weeds yonder,” the bull guard said. “I bet he’d square a trade with you.” When Sinkler asked if come morning he could walk ahead to search for another well, Vickery’s lips tightened, but he nodded.

The next day, Sinkler took the metal buckets and walked until he found a farmhouse. It was no closer than the other, even a bit farther, but worth padding the hoof a few extra steps. The well he’d been using belonged to a hunchbacked widow. The woman who appeared in this doorway wore her hair in a similar tight bun and draped herself in the same sort of flour-cloth dress, but she looked to be in her midtwenties, like Sinkler. Two weeks would pass before they got beyond this farmhouse, perhaps another two weeks before the next well. Plenty of time to quench a different kind of thirst. As he entered the yard, the woman looked past the barn to a field where a man and his draft horse were plowing. The woman gave a brisk whistle and the farmer paused and looked their way. Sinkler stopped beside the well but did not set the buckets down.

“What you want,” the woman said, not so much a question as a demand.

“Water,” Sinkler answered. “We’ve got a chain gang working on the road.”

“I’d have reckoned you to bring water with you.”

“Not enough for ten men all day.”

The woman looked out at the field again. Her husband watched but did not unloop the rein from around his neck. The woman stepped onto the six nailed-together planks that looked more like a raft than a porch. Firewood was stacked on one side, and closer to the door an axe leaned between a shovel and a hoe. She let her eyes settle on the axe long enough to make sure he noticed it. Sinkler saw now that she was younger than he’d thought, maybe eighteen, at most twenty, more girl than woman.

“How come you not to have chains on you?”

“I’m a trusty,” Sinkler said smiling. “A prisoner, but one that can be trusted.”

“And all you want is water?”

Sinkler thought of several possible answers.

“That’s what they sent me for.”

“I don’t reckon there to be any money in it for us?” the girl asked.

“No, just gratitude from a bunch of thirsty men, and especially me for not having to haul it so far.”

“I’ll have to ask my man,” she said. “Stay here in the yard.”

For a moment he thought she might take the axe with her. As she walked into the field, Sinkler studied the house, which was no bigger than a fishing shack. The dwelling appeared to have been built in the previous century. The door opened with a latch, not a knob, and no glass filled the window frames. Sinkler stepped closer to the entrance and saw two ladder-back chairs and a small table set on a puncheon floor. Sinkler wondered if these apple-knockers had heard they were supposed to be getting a new deal.

“You can use the well,” the girl said when she returned, “but he said you need to forget one of them pails here next time you come asking for water.”

Worth it, he figured, even if Vickery took the money out of Sinkler’s own pocket, especially with no sign up ahead of another farmhouse. It would be a half-dollar at most, easily made up with one slick deal in a poker game. He nodded and went to the well, sent the rusty bucket down into the dark. The girl went up on the porch but didn’t go inside.

“What you in prison for?”

“Thinking a bank manager wouldn’t notice his teller slipping a few bills in his pocket.”

“Whereabouts?”

“Raleigh.”

“I ain’t never been past Asheville,” the girl said. “How long you in for?”

“Five years. I’ve done sixteen months.”

Sinkler raised the bucket, water leaking from the bottom as he transferred its contents. The girl stayed on the porch, making sure that all he took was water.

“You lived here long?”

“Me and Chet been here a year,” the girl said. “I grew up across the ridge yonder.”

“You two live alone, do you?”

“We do,” the girl said, “but there’s a rifle just inside the door and I know how to bead it.”

“I’m sure you do,” Sinkler said. “You mind telling me your name, just so I’ll know what to call you?”

“Lucy Sorrels.”

He waited to see if she’d ask his.

“Mine’s Sinkler,” he said when she didn’t.

He filled the second bucket but made no move to leave, instead looking around at the trees and mountains as if just noticing them. Then he smiled and gave a slight nod.

“Must get lonely being out so far from everything,” Sinkler said. “At least, I would think so.”

“And I’d think them men to be getting thirsty,” Lucy Sorrels said.

“Probably,” he agreed, surprised at her smarts in turning his words back on him. “But I’ll return soon to brighten your day.”

“When you planning to leave one of them pails?” she asked.

“Last trip before quitting time”

She nodded and went into the shack.

“The rope broke,” he told Vickery as the prisoners piled into the truck at quitting time.

The guard looked not so much skeptical as aggrieved that Sinkler thought him fool enough to believe it. Vickery answered that if Sinkler thought he’d lightened his load he was mistaken. It’d be easy enough to find another bucket, maybe one that could hold an extra gallon. Sinkler shrugged and lifted himself into the cage truck, found a place on the metal bench among the sweating convicts. He’d won over the other guards with cigarettes and small loans, that and his mush talk, but not Vickery, who’d argued that making Sinkler a trusty would only give him a head start when he tried to escape.