The Weight of Gravity (21 page)

“Talk to your friends, Mother ... like I do.  Dad won’t hear you ... no matter how much you say to him ... I know from personal experience.”

Erika walked to the bottom of the stairs, to within arms reach of her son.  “Look at me!”

Jay turned slowly, but avoided eye contact.  “What the hell do you want?”

“We used to like each other, you and I.  There may have been a little love there too, don’t you think?  I’d like to think there was, Jay.  What happened?”

“Nothing, Mother.  Please.  Nothing happened.  I grew up, okay?”

“Look at me!”  He stole a quick glance at her.  “Jay!”

“Don’t go there, Mom.”  He turned away.

“Get your ass back here,” she demanded, losing patience ... losing control.

“WHAT-DO-YOU-WANT?”  Jay faced her.  “You want to know I’ve been with Kenny and Carlos?  Fine, that’s where I’ve been.  Mandy was there too.”

Erika waited, unsure whether she wanted to hear the rest.  “And?”

“Yes, yes, HELL YES!  We blew a little smoke, okay?  Nothing else!”

“Jay, you-were-warned,” Erika stepped toward him.  “They said they’d send you away if you got messed up again. You’re on probation.  Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

He came down to the step just above her and leaned in close, his darting eyes studying her face.  He had nothing else to hide.  “Look, I’m not going to any special school, okay.  I didn’t drop anything major tonight, just burned a little weed.  Go ahead, tell me that you and my dear ole dad, Garner, didn’t blow some in your day.  GO AHEAD!”

Erika was silent, standing her ground, unsure if Jay would shout again or hit her.

He leaned in closer, his brow tight and menacing.  “Right now, in this moment,” he whispered through clinched teeth, “I think you and Dad need to go fuck yourselves.”  He turned and started up the stairs again, speaking over his shoulder.  “Not something you’ve done recently, is it?  Not to each other anyway, right?”  He turned at the landing and was gone.

Erika sat at the breakfast counter and buried her face in her palms.

Garner was snoring when she went upstairs an hour later.  As she crawled into bed, repulsed and careful not to touch her naked husband, she thought about Max’s journal and the promise of undying love and devotion documented in its pages.  It was nothing more than the heartfelt musings of a young, passionate dreamer.  She tried to imagine what life would have been like had Max stayed in Cottonwood, or if she’d found the strength to leave with him twenty years ago.  Erika rested her head on the pillows.  Tomorrow, she decided, tears shrouding her eyes, she would take the journal from under the chair and burn it.

Chapter 26 - Max

              “Bar-b-cue, Boy!  It’s the soiree of the year!  Can’t pass on this one.  Be my date!”

             
“It’s time I hit the road, Doris.”

             
“Aw, come on, are three more days going to kill you?”

             
“Four days haven’t helped me.  I’d just be wasting more time.”  Max threw his folded socks on top of the shirts. He’d been packing when Doris came into his room.  “I’ve talked to everyone I wanted to and I’m still in writer’s hell.  Coming back to Cottonwood hasn’t helped.”  He put his hands on her shoulders.  “Doris, you’ve been wonderful.  And you’ve put five pounds on me.  That’s something.  But, I’m not going to get anywhere with my problems if I stay longer.”  He turned away and continued packing.

             
“All right then, nothing more to say.”  She began to leave, but stopped at the door.  “By the way, Mel asked me to make sure you came to this party.  What do you want me to tell her?’

             
“Mel?”

             
“You remember Mel, don’t you?  She said she was looking forward to seeing you there.”

             
“You and Mel sure talk a lot, don’t you?”

             
“Oh, we run into each other now and again.  I’ve seen more of her lately, though.  You might have something to do with that.  She might be sweet on you, Max Rosen.” She smiled.

             
“Stop it.  What will you and Mel have to talk about when I’m gone?”  He sat on the bed.  “When is this gathering?”

             
“Saturday … out at the Pie Paper Ranch.”

             
“If I go, will you let me slip out of town on Sunday, no questions?”

             
“Sure.  You know, if you want another reason to stay for the party, you told Clay at the
Fox and Hound
that you’d be out to see him and Cindy before you left.  I know they’ll be at the bar-b-cue.  So, if you don’t get by his place, you’ll see them there.”

             
“Good point.  Thanks for reminding me.  Clay is important to my writing.  He may be a central character in my new novel.”

             
“Glory be praised, you started a new novel?”  She walked back into the room, her hands on her cheeks.

             
“Just an outline in my journal for the moment, but it’s promising.  I called my agent and told him about the project.  He doesn’t care about specifics, just that I get something to him soon.  I’m still a long way from being motivated to put anything in the computer.”

             
“Congratulations, Son.  I’m happy for you.”

             
Max emptied his travel bag into the dresser and hung his clothes in the closet.  A few more days and he could kiss Cottonwood goodbye for another twenty-four years.

             
After lunch, he decided to do something he’d planned since the day he arrived – he’d take a walk in the desert.  It had been too many years for him to remember the trails he’d favored, but the landscape was the same.  He wanted to walk all the way to the railroad tracks and back, about four miles round trip.

             
“Wear your daddy’s feed-store hat and your new boots,” Doris suggested.  “There’re lots of critters out there now that the weather is cooling off.  And don’t go too far or you’ll miss dinner.  We’re having roast, potatoes, green beans from the garden, and Portuguese sweet bread.  I even picked up a bottle of merlot at
Connie’s Package Store. 
The good stuff!”
she said, as he walked through the kitchen.  “See you in a couple of hours. 
Be careful!
”

Max stepped out the back door into the bright sun
light looking very local wearing his new Dickie leather boots and the cap perched high on his head, certain he’d return in time for dinner.  He started out at a snappy pace, weaving through the clumps of overgrown cacti, towering ocotillo and yucca.  Occasionally, he’d hear a lizard or horny toad, he thought, scurry into the dry grass that grew most often beneath gnarled mesquite trees.  He remembered that rattlers weren’t aggressive and would get out of your way, as long as you gave them time to move, so he slowed his pace.

             
He came to a dry wash, about ten feet deep and thirty feet wide.  Along the upper embankment, where the vegetation was thickest, he had to carefully hold aside thorn clusters to pass.

             
The house grew smaller in the distance until sand hills hid it from view.  Ahead he saw the tracks.  When he reached them, he remembered that a short, sturdy trestle crossed over a gully about a hundred yards further down.  He was proud of himself when he found the crossing and recalled the nights he sat under the bridge waiting for a train to thunder overhead.

             
In the rock bed beneath the rails, Max found a spoon.  Maybe it fell from the train or was left behind by a transient.  He placed it on the track and then crawled down into the wash to sit on the flat stones beneath the trestle.

             
It was so quiet he could hear the wind threading through the branches of a powder bush.  With his eyes closed, Max could even hear the rustle of saw grass on the embankment above. 

             
Sunlight warmed his face until he lowered his head unto his forearms.  His mind was uncharacteristically silent for several minutes, but a growling sound crept into his dream, and then exploded in his ears as a train roared overhead. 
Didn’t see that coming.
  Max stepped out from under the bridge and watched the flat beds, car carriers, and tankers pass.

             
“Great fun!” he shouted at the train.  “Thank you for coming by to see me.  What a rush!”

             
When the last rail car passed, Max crawled out of the wash and stood next to the tracks where he could watch the train recede into the distance.  The spoon, now flatter than a communion wafer, was still where he’d laid it on the track.  As he held it up to the sunlight, he saw a brown haze in the distance that stretched the entire length of the horizon – from Tularosa to Cottonwood and beyond.  Even the four thousand foot Mescalero peaks were partially obscured from view.

             
“Dust storm!” He knew he didn’t have time to make it back to the house.  “Find shelter, Maximilian.  Quick!”  Max took cover under the tracks.  He moved closer to a stand of scrub oak and desert willow that grew on the far side of the culvert, partially blocking the opening.

             
The air was charged with anticipation -- no rustling saw grass, no birds or flies.  Nature’s creatures had been smart enough to take cover or move ahead of the storm.  It began with the gentlest of breezes, but like the freight train passing overhead, the wall of dust and debris hit Max without warning.  He clinched his eyelids and lips together, and pulled up his collar.  The wind, sand and rolling Russian thistle buffeted Max, shoving him side-to-side.  Taking cover under the trestle seemed like a smart idea until Max realized the wind blew through the wash like a wind tunnel.  Moments later, like the train rushing overhead, the storm subsided and he opened his eyes.

He climbed out of the wash and started back toward the ranch.  Almost immediately
, he felt the first raindrops, heavy and icy, as they pelted his shoulders.  He quickened his pace, certain that snakes were smart enough to go underground.

             
He sprinted no more than fifty yards before the rainfall became torrential and thunder rattled the ground beneath his boots.  It was as if he were standing under a waterfall.  Nothing was going to protect him from the storm and he’d have to reach the dry wash before it filled with water.  There was a stream, no more than a trickle, in the bottom of the gully when he got there.  He knew that a flash flood could hit as quickly as the dust storm, so he leapt off the embankment, falling on his hands and knees, then jumped up and sprinted to the other side.  He climbed up the muddy wall and continued on.  It was so dark now that he relied on flashes of lightning to illuminate his path.  He came within a hundred feet of the house before he could see it.  Doris was waiting inside the screen door on the back porch, towels in hand.

“Oh, Max!  You’re soaked.  Go change before you get sick.”

He threw the muddy boots into a corner and left footprints through his drenched socks as he padded across the kitchen floor.  He used the towels to dry off before changing into sweats and returning to the kitchen where Doris was waiting with coffee.  She’d left the lights off, preferring instead to sit in the gray haze left in the aftermath of the late afternoon storm. 

The thunder and lightning
moved quickly south.  Max was on the porch when the rain finally stopped.  The air was rich with the tawny scent of moist dirt and sweet creosote, and the temperature had dropped nearly fifteen degrees.  Doris snuck up from behind and draped a quilt over his shoulders as he stood sipping his coffee and staring out through the picture windows.

             
“Kind of a total sensory experience,” he told Doris.  “Wonderful.”

             
“I love storms like this … washes everything clean ... including your mind, if you let it.  You kinda got the worst of it, didn’t ya, city boy?”  She ran her hand through his wet hair.  “Very attractive.”  She wrapped an arm around his middle and rested her head against his shoulder.

             
“I’d forgotten about these late summer storms.  It’ll be Indian summer tomorrow, right?”

             
“Probably,” she said.  “It’s my favorite time of year.”

             
He was incredibly calm after his encounter with the rapidly moving storm, but emotionally exhilarated.  The light outside was soft, wrapping the desert in a more-red-than-brown sepia hue.  It was an eerie combination of soft light and warm shadows that made it difficult to judge the time of day.

Max waited until she turned to leave.  “Doris, do you think I’m doing the right thing?”

              “What ... coming back here, you mean?”