The Wally Lamb Fiction Collection: The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much is True, We Are Water, and Wishin' and Hopin' (144 page)

When I look up again, the cedar tree’s in flames. . . .

I awoke to a car horn’s blare. Jesus! Jesus!

A rock ledge rushed past, headlights crisscrossed in front of me. I veered to the right and drove over an embankment, unsure how far I’d fall.

There was an ugly scraping sound beneath me, I remember— the wail of my own
Oh, no! Oh, no!
My head bounced against the roof. Barreling toward that tree, I held out my hand to stop the collision. . . .

I was out for a little while, I guess. I must have been. I remember pulling my hand back inside the busted windshield. Remember the pain, the pulsing blood.

That same cedar tree grew in a pasture, not the river. A half dozen Holsteins stood staring at me, griping from the far end they’d run to when I’d come flying over their bank. Disturbed their peace. I grabbed a paint rag, pulled the tourniquet tight with my good hand and my teeth. I got out of the truck. Sat down in that frost-dead field.

The mist had stopped—had made way for a bright, hard-edged
moon. Crumbs of windshield glass glittered in the hair on my arm. In the moonlight, my blood looked black.

Up on Route 22, I saw a vision: the steady flow of gamblers in cars, driving to the Wequonnocs’ casino. “
What do you want?
” I had yelled through the frozen river to my dead grandmother. “
What do you want?
”

GOD BLESS AMERICA
! the five-foot-tall letters proclaimed across Constantine Motors’ showroom window. Translation: Prove your patriotism with your down payment. Buy a car and stick it to Saddam.

I was seated across from Leo’s desk, waiting for the insurance guy to show. I’d gone right from the hospital to the phone—had kept hitting Redial Redial Redial until someone at Mutual of America finally answered. They’d tried to put me off—to give me an appointment with the claims adjuster the following week. “Look, lady,” I’d said. “I make my
living
with that truck. One way or the other, someone’s looking at that vehicle
today
!” So there I sat, twiddling my thumbs at Constantine Chrysler Dodge Isuzu instead of pulling those shutters over at the Roods’ like I’d promised. I should have been running point by point through my arguments to the Security Board a couple more times instead of just sitting there. Me and my seventeen stitches, my Tylox high.

Omar the ex-athlete was seated at the sales desk across from
Leo’s, talking on the phone. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. I understand that, Carl. But
you’re
talking about some car in the abstract and
I’m
talking about this cobalt blue Dakota that I’m looking at right out there on the lot.” He was wearing a shirt, a tie, and a red, white, and blue baseball cap. “Plus, if you act now, you’ve got the added savings of our God Bless America promotion.”

God bless America!

I cut it off to heal the nations!
. . .

My stitched-up hand was starting to hurt again. My neck now, too. The doctor over in the emergency room had tried to order me one of those collar things, but I’d refused. I’d said yes to the pain pills, though—three of them in a little brown envelope and a prescription for a dozen more. I considered popping another one now but decided against it. If that claims adjuster was going to give me a hassle, I didn’t want to sit there smiling at him like Goofy.

My truck, man. My livelihood. . . .

I looked over at Omar in time to catch his eyes jump away from the sight of me. Banged up, bandaged up, slumped in the chair: I must have looked about as pathetic as my truck. “Where do you want this thing towed to?” the state cop had asked me out at the accident. “Constantine Motors,” I’d said—a knee-jerk response.

A wave of nausea passed through my gut. My hands started trembling, my legs. Last thing I needed right about then was to lose it in front of Omar. I cleared my throat, stood up. “Tell . . . uh . . . tell Leo I went to the can,” I said.

Omar looked over like he hadn’t been aware of my existence. “Huh? Yeah, sure thing.” I got up and headed for the men’s room.

I locked the door, looked at my face in the mirror. Night of the Living Dead looked back. Another wave of queasiness came and went; I broke out in a clammy sweat. I rested my head against the wall and listed all the things I was supposed to be able to fix: my truck, my brother’s placement, the Roods’ house.

We made a baby, Dominick. You and me. . . .

I saw, again, the way Joy had looked when she got to the emer
gency room that morning: no makeup, her hair all crazy. “Hold me,” she’d said. Broke down right in front of everyone. Cried against me. In almost two years together, it was maybe the second or third time I’d seen Joy cry. Those tears meant there was
something
between us, right? That she felt something, whether she’d been screwing someone else or not. Right?

When the shaking subsided, I got up and doused my face with cold water, purposely avoiding the mirror. I walked back out into that gleaming showroom.

That’s when I noticed the patriotic balloons bobbing from the business manager’s platform desk: bouquets of them. Looked like a goddamned altar, that desk. In the name of the father, and the son, and the dollar bill. Leo was strolling toward me from the opposite direction with our two coffees. He was wearing that fancy Armani suit of his and one of those
God Bless America!
caps like Omar’s. Every employee at the freaking dealership was wearing one of those caps, even Uncle Costas and the secretaries. They had a major theme going on, courtesy of Kuwait.

“Here you go, Birdsey,” Leo said, handing me the coffee. “What time did that guy say he’d be here?”

“Ten-thirty.” I squinted up at the wall clock for the umpteenth time. Ten fifty-five.

Leo sat down, put his feet up on the desk, his hands behind his head. “And your brother’s thing is
when
?”

“Four this afternoon.”

“What do you think? You gonna be able to spring him?”

I shrugged. Needed to change the subject. “What’s with the doofy-looking hats?”

He reached up and took off his cap, tossing it onto the filing cabinet next to his desk. “It’s the old man’s idea. He ordered a gross for giveaways. We’re having a Desert Shield rally this Saturday. Tent, hot dog roast, zero-percent down.”

I rolled my eyes. “You got hat head,” I said.

“What?”

“Hat head.” I pointed at the ridge the cheap hat had made in his
forty-dollar haircut. That’s what he told me once that he pays his “stylist”: forty bucks a throw.

He took a little mirror out of his desk and tried tousling away the damage. That was
Leo’s
biggest problem: hat head. “Hey, if Big Gene thought it’d move cars off the lot, he’d dig up
Patton
and stick him in the window.” He leaned forward, whispering. “With the economy this sucky and the Boat talking about more layoffs, nobody’s buying
nothing
. September was our worst month since the gas crisis.”

I’ll cry for ’em later on, I thought. Checked the clock again. 11:03. Where
was
that insurance fuck?

I watched Leo’s eyes follow his coworker Lorna across the sales floor. “Hey, you know what I found out yesterday?” he whispered. “About the she-bitch over there?” He drew a pen out of his desk set, plunged it in and out, in and out of the holder. “She and Omar. One of the mechanics caught ’em doin’ the big nasty after hours in the back of a Caravan. The old man’d go ballistic if he found out. You know how he hates that black-on-white stuff.”

Get a life, Leo, I thought. I tried swiveling my neck from side to side; it hurt more when I turned to the right than the left. It was stupid of me not to have gotten that collar.

“So, Birds,” Leo said. “You got any idea how long that hearing thing’s going to take this afternoon? I got an appointment at five thirty. If it starts at four, I should be back here by five thirty, shouldn’t I?”

My leg pumped up and down. My fingers drummed on his desk. I told him Ray could take me. “I’ll
take
you,” he said. “I don’t mind
taking
you. I just gotta—”

“I don’t
know
how long it’s going to take,” I snapped. “I’ve never
been
to one of these things before. Okay? It’ll just be simpler if Ray drives me.”

“Hey, don’t bite
my
head off. Wasn’t
me
who fell asleep at the wheel.”

In the next breath, he started yapping about his stupid movie—telling me how he was waiting for them to FedEx him the script and then the next step was blah blah blah.

I checked the clock again. Did some calculating. If that insurance idiot showed up in the next fifteen or twenty minutes, I could probably still salvage an hour or so over at the Roods’. Pull those shutters off, minimum, so I could take them back to my place and prep them. It’d be awkward with my hand bandaged up like this, but I could do it. . . . Except how was I going to get the damn things home with no truck?
Shit.

“But don’t worry, Dominick,” Leo was saying. “The old man and I’ll take good care of you. Put you in a Dodge or an Isuzu five-speed, no
problemo
. That Isuzu’s a good little truck, actually. You wanna have a look-see while you’re waiting?”

I said I doubted they’d total the pickup. We both looked out at it and Leo shook his head. “That truck is
gone
, my man,” he said. “That vehicle is
DOA
.”

11:12. My hand was starting to hurt like it meant it. If I moved my head to the right, pain shot up my neck. Okay, here’s what I’d do, I thought: I’d take another one of those painkillers right after I was through with the insurance guy, go over to Roods’ and pull the shutters—see if Ray could borrow Eddie Banas’s truck. Then I’d go home and get a couple hours’ sleep. Set the alarm—give myself an hour to clean up and go over my notes. If my hand hurt this bad by afternoon, I’d just have to tough it out until after the hearing. Be great, otherwise: me standing before that Security Board, zoned out on narcotics.

I asked Leo if I could use his phone again. “Dial nine first,” he said.

“Mutual of America. How may I direct your call?”

It was the same woman I’d talked to the other three times. She was getting a little less polite with each call. “Look, lady,” I told her. “I spent half the night in the hospital, I got about a thousand things I’ve got to take care of today, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to spend my whole day waiting for your representative to show.” She told me there wasn’t really anything else she could do, but that she sympathized with me. “Yeah, well, your sympathy isn’t doing me a
goddamn bit of good, is it?” I snapped back. Banged the phone down louder than I’d meant to. Every
God Bless America!
cap at the dealership turned its bill in my direction.

“Hey, Birdsey, chill out a little,” Leo said. “No shit, you’re stressing
me
out, man.”

I got up. Walked to the other end of the showroom and back. Sat back down. “What time does the old man usually get here?” I said.

“Gene? What is it—Wednesday? Any time now.”

“Great,” I said. “Just what I need: seeing Daddy Dearest.”

“Yeah, the guy’s got a hell of a nerve showing up at his own place of business, don’t he?” He threw up his hands. “I’m kidding, Birdsey. I’m
kidding
.”

A waxed white Firebird pulled into the dealership and coasted down to the body shop. A young guy in shades got out, walked around my truck, squatted in front of it. Strictly business, now that he’d finally managed to arrive.

“I’ll be out in a couple of minutes,” Leo said. “I just want to try my producer again. See if he can tell me when they’re sending me my script.”

The investigator aimed his camera at my wreck. It whined, shit out a Polaroid. “You the claims guy?” I said.

“That’s right.” When he turned around, I recognized him: one of those weight lifters at the health club. He practically lived down there. “Shawn Tudesco. Mutual of America.” He held out a square, manicured hand for me to shake—withdrew it when he saw
my
bandaged hand. Down at Hardbodies, this asshole strutted around like a little bantam rooster.

“You’re late,” I said.

“Right again,” he shot back. Which was all I was getting in the way of an apology.

He propped the Polaroid in a tuck of the pickup’s mangled bumper, aimed, took another. A third. A fourth. He had one of those slicked-back Pat Riley hairstyles, a tiny red earring in one ear. Couple of times, I’d seen him leaning against the counter down
there, chatting it up with Joy. Spandex Man—God’s gift to women. Took steroids, was my guess.

“What’s this?” he asked me.

I followed his fingers along my smeared windshield. “That? . . . It’s egg.”

He cocked his head to the side. “Egg?”

“Kids last night. Celebrating Halloween a day early.”

“Yeah?” He just stood there. I was the first to look away.

He stretched on a pair of plastic gloves and pulled some glass crumbs from the windshield. There was a brown smear where my hand had busted through the glass, some dried drips on the hood that he bent close to look at. What was he doing? Doubling as an FBI agent or something?