The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims (152 page)

“If it is, you’ll need a new one,” Roy said.

“That’s what Pete thinks, too.”

“What is this, a three-fifty?”

“It’s a Chevy,” she answered.

“I mean the engine. What is it?”

“Three-fifty,” the boy called from around the truck.

“I figured we’d have problems and everything,” the girl said, “but damn. I thought we’d at least get through North Dakota.”

“You’re from Montana?”

“Yeah. Right across the border. Are you from here?”

“Yes,” Roy answered. “I live just outside Verona.” He thought it strange that he said this the way other people said they lived just outside Chicago or ten minutes from Manhattan. Like it meant something. There wasn’t much inside Verona, and there was nothing just outside it, except sunflower fields and Roy’s house.

“We haven’t been on the road two days and now . . .” She left the thought unfinished and smiled at Roy. “I’m Alice,” she said. With the
s
sound, the tip of her tongue made a brief appearance between her teeth and then vanished.

“I’m Roy. I know someone in Verona who might have the part you need. I can give you a ride. If you want.”

“Let me ask Pete. My brother.”

She walked back to the ditch, and Roy stood at the corner of the truck, watching. He didn’t believe they were related. Something about the way she said “my brother” after Pete’s name. Something about the emphasis, the hesitation.

Pete had been lying on his back in the dead grass, and at Alice’s approach he sat up, wiped his forehead with the inside of his arm, and complained that it was hot.

“Finish making my shorts and he’ll give us a ride into town,” Alice said. “He told me some guy might have the part.”

Pete took the jackknife from his pocket, opened it, and began to cut into what remained of Alice’s jeans. Roy watched
her stand there, still and relaxed, eyes forward. He saw that Pete, while bending his head in close concentration, did not touch Alice at all, not even brushing a knuckle against her skin. Only the frayed ends of her shorts grazed her thighs, and Roy found himself staring. He looked down at his own pants, studying the symmetrical cuffs that rested on the laces of his thick shoes.

When Pete finished, Alice stepped out of the second denim tube as she had the first, picked them both up, and draped them over her arm, like guest towels on a rack.

“Are you ready, Roy?” she asked, calling him easily by his first name.

“Sure.” He nodded.

Pete stood up stiffly and brushed the dirt off his knees. “Let’s go, then,” he said.

Carl was behind the bar drinking coffee when they walked in. Roy asked if he’d seen Artie around, almost hoping that Carl would say no. It was cool and dark in the bar, and Roy didn’t feel like hunting anyone down in the late-afternoon heat.

“His boys were just in for pops,” Carl said. “They told me he was out back of his place cleaning snapping turtles. You need something?” Carl was looking at Pete and Alice.

“These folks had a breakdown about ten miles back. I thought maybe Artie’d have a fuel pump might work for them.”

“Well, now, he might,” Carl said. “If anyone’d have it, that’d be Artie.” He glanced at Pete and Alice again. “You folks are lucky to break down here. Other places aren’t so helpful.”

“Well, then, how about a beer?” Pete said. “Alice? A beer?”

She shook her head.

“Just one, then. Whatever you got on tap.”

Carl raised an eyebrow, and Roy knew he was wondering if the boy was under age. Roy didn’t know how old Pete was and
didn’t really care, although he did wonder briefly how long it was since Carl had served a customer who was a stranger.

“I’ll be back soon,” Roy said, and left for Artie’s.

There was one sidewalk in town, and he was halfway down it when Alice caught up to him.

“Hey,” she said. “Mind if I come?”

Roy shook his head.

“This Artie guy have a shop or something?” she asked. “A garage?”

“No. Just a yard full of engines.”

“What if he doesn’t have it? The fuel pump.”

“Then we’ll have to drive to La Moure.”

“Is that far?”

“Half-hour or so. Forty-five minutes, maybe.”

Roy found himself picking up his pace to match Alice’s, although it was too hot for anything faster than a stroll.

“That guy shouldn’t’ve given Pete a beer.”

“Carl? Why not?”

“Pete’s only seventeen.”

“Well. It’s his bar.”

“Still, he shouldn’t sell Pete beer. The last thing I need is Pete drinking at four o’clock.”

They walked, and Alice looked around, although there wasn’t much to see. There wasn’t a shop on the street that wasn’t boarded up or closed, with the exception of Carl’s bar and the post office. They didn’t have a bank in Verona anymore. They didn’t even have a grocery store.

When they reached Artie’s house and Roy saw the front door lying across the porch next to a random pile of hubcaps, he began to wish that Alice had stayed back at Carl’s with Pete. He didn’t want her to think that everyone in Verona kept their property like that. One of Artie’s boys ran out of the house and stopped when he saw Roy and Alice in the yard.

“Hi, Mr. Menning,” he said. Roy smiled, but couldn’t remember the child’s name. There were three of them, all about the same age, all with homemade crewcuts and the hard, round bellies of kids who eat a lot but run around more.

“Is your dad around? Cleaning turtles?”

“He finished that this morning,” the boy said. “Now he’s fixing a chain saw.”

Artie came from around the back, wiping his hands on his jeans, and, as if the front yard could only hold three at once, the boy vanished into the house. They were good kids, all three of them. Everyone said so. Terrified of their father, Roy had heard.

“I was wondering if you might have a fuel pump for a Chevy, a three-fifty,” Roy said. “Some folks broke down out of town.”

Artie was looking at Alice with interest. “What can I do for you?” he asked, as if Roy had not spoken. She seemed to understand the game, and asked for the fuel pump again. She didn’t appear to be put off by Artie’s long hair or by the tattoos that, like a lady’s gloves, covered him from his hands to his elbows. Artie had left town as a teenager and returned for his father’s funeral almost a decade later with the boys, the hair, the tattoos. Roy didn’t like him, but he was the closest thing to a mechanic in town, now that the gas station was gone.

“Only Chevy parts I have are for that thing.” Artie pointed at a small sedan without wheels resting on four pieces of firewood. The hood looked as if it hadn’t been closed for years.

“You sure?” Roy said, but Artie ignored him, instead asking Alice where she was from.

“Montana.”

“Where in Montana?”

“Fort Peck. Across the border.”

“I know it,” Artie said. “By the reservation.”

“Yes.”

“Shit. You’re no squaw, are you?”

“No.”

“I was gonna say. Better watch out for my scalp if you were, right?” Artie smiled, but it was an unnatural, almost painful, expression, as though he’d got a fishhook caught in one corner of his mouth, and someone was tugging at it.

“If you don’t have the part, we’re going to La Moure,” Alice said, and Roy admired her for expressing the idea as if it were her own. As if she had the slightest idea where or what La Moure was.

“Not today, you ain’t,” Artie said. “Everything’ll be closed by the time you get there.”

Alice glanced at Roy, seeming to weaken with that piece of information. He noticed that Pete had cut her jeans unevenly, and the dingy gray cotton of her right pocket was showing about an inch below her shorts. It hung heavily, as if she were carrying a lot of change. Roy didn’t like the idea of Artie being able to tell what was in Alice’s pockets. He didn’t like the way Artie watched Alice.

“We’ll go to La Moure tomorrow, then,” Roy said, and before Alice could answer, Artie said, “You look just like a girl I knew in Beaumont, Texas.”

She looked at him, silent.

“You don’t play the flute, do you?” he continued.

“No,” she said, “I don’t.”

“Because this girl from Beaumont played the flute, is why I ask. You could be sisters. I wondered. What’d you say your last name was?”

“Zysk.”

“Spelled?”

“
Z
-
Y
-
S
-
K
.”

“Zysk.” Artie whistled. “There’s a word that’d bring you about a thousand points in a Scrabble game.”

“Except it’s not a real word,” Alice said.

“Real enough for me,” Artie said, and Roy decided that it was time to go right then. He thanked Artie, who asked, as they were leaving the yard, “Y’all up at Carl’s?”

“We won’t be for much longer,” Roy answered.

“I’m gonna clean up and stop by.”

“Like I said, we’ll probably be gone by then.”

“I’ll see you there,” Artie said, and stepped over a hubcap to enter his house through the screen door that guarded it so feebly.

Pete cursed at the news and told Roy, “We’ll have to stay with you tonight.”

“Goddamn it, you’re rude,” Alice said, and Pete walked to the other end of the bar to read the song list on the jukebox, which hadn’t been plugged in since Carl bought the microwave.

“You’re welcome to stay with me, you know,” Roy said. “There’s plenty of room.”

“We’ll stay in the truck. He’s an idiot. He’s a rude idiot.”

Roy ordered a sandwich for Alice and a beer for himself. The bar was as quiet as a library.

“What do you do?” Alice asked.

“Me? I drive a snowplow in the winter and a combine in the summer.”

“You’re not a farmer?”

“Not anymore.”

Carl brought Roy his beer and waved away his dollar, but Roy folded the bill and slid it under the napkin dispenser when Carl turned his back.

“Do you like those jobs?” Alice asked.

“Sure. I’m always finding people broke down when I’m snowplowing.”

Alice laughed. “You rescue them, too?”

“What I do is keep a stack of magazines with me.”

“Why magazines?”

“I tell them to sit in their cars and read a magazine until help comes. Gives them something to do. Or else they get restless and decide to walk, and that’s when they die.”

“From walking.”

“In the snow.”

“From being bored. They die from being bored. Wow. If we’d started walking today, we just would’ve gotten hot.”

“You’re always better off staying with your car,” Roy said, and Alice nodded.

“Are you married?” she asked.

“My wife died of a heart attack two years ago this winter.”

Alice did not say that she was sorry, the way people usually did, so Roy did not have to say that it was okay, as he usually had to.

“I’m going to be a nurse,” Alice said. “Maybe.”

“That so?”

“Yeah. I’m going to Florida for nursing school. Pete’s coming along with me to make sure I’m all right, and to work if I need money.”

“That’s nice.”

“My mom made him go.”

“Oh.”

“You have kids?”

“One girl. She’s thirty-two.”

“She live around here?”

“She works in Minneapolis. She’s a model, for catalogues and newspapers.”

“She must be pretty.”

“Yes.”

“I’d like to do that, but my nose is too big.”

“I don’t know much about it.”

“She must make a lot of money.”

“Yes.”

“She visit you a lot?”

“Not so much,” Roy said. “Not since her mom died.”

“I’ll tell you what would be a great job,” Alice said. “Photographer.”

“I don’t know much about that.”

“Me neither.” Alice looked behind her, at Pete and the jukebox, at the tall wooden cash register. “That Artie guy’s a real piece of work,” she said.

“I knew his father.”

“He’s a screw-up, huh?”

“I don’t know.”

“He reminds me of my brother. My oldest brother. With the tattoos and everything. All of my brothers are dumb, but this oldest one, I tell you, he’s as good as retarded. Get this. When he was in the army in Germany, his girlfriend back home got pregnant. Here he’s been gone five months and she’s suddenly pregnant. So what she does is send him a letter saying, ‘I miss you so much, I want to have your baby.’ She says in the letter, ‘If I had your baby, it would remind me of you and I wouldn’t be so lonely.’ What you have to realize here, Roy, is that my brother’s wanted to marry this girl since forever. So she sends him a dirty magazine and an empty mustard jar and tells him to—I don’t know how to say this—to do it in the jar and send it back to her so she can get pregnant with it. Understand?”

“Yes,” Roy said.

“So my brother, a complete idiot, does this. And then he believes her when she writes to him and says she’s having their baby. Can you believe that?”

“This was your oldest brother?” Roy asked.

“Yes. A fool. Everyone in the world knew about this scam, and people even told him that it was a scam, but he still believes her.
I
even told him that it was a scam, and he still believes her.
He still believes that it’s their kid. Like whatever he sent from Germany to Montana made that baby after however many days in the mail.”

Roy didn’t know what to say, so he nodded.

“I’m sorry,” Alice said. “That was gross.”

“That’s all right.”

“But it shows how stupid my family is. My brothers, anyway.”

“Well. That’s some story.”

“No kidding.”

Artie walked into the bar. He had pulled his hair into a ponytail and was wearing a baseball cap, green, with a configuration of initials on it. His shirt had white snaps, and as he passed through a ray of sun they shone like dim, symmetrical pearls.

“Looks like you got some new company,” he said to Carl as he sat down next to Alice. “Visitors from the distant land of Montana.”

“Your kids were in today,” Carl said.

“They causing trouble?”

“They told me you’d got yourself some snappers, is all.”

“If my boys cause any trouble, you tell me.”

“You better invite me over for soup,” Carl said, and Artie asked Alice, “You like snappers?”

“Turtles? Never had them.”