Volt: Stories (11 page)

“Yeah,” she said, and kicked a hunk of asphalt. “To who, the Easter Bunny?”

Jorgen could feel himself coming untethered, like he often had over there, where kids slept in the dust and nothing got buried and everything felt like it wasn’t quite real. He grabbed Mary Ellen’s hand and pulled it to his lips, pressed the back of her hand to his cheek. He felt her pull away, or maybe it was him. She said his name, and then he was crying, and he let go of her hand and ran across the road and jumped down into the ditch. She followed, and then they were in the field, treading over the nubs of corn.

“Hey, big dummy,” she called. “Where you going?”

He shook his head.

“Come on, Genie.” She hooked her arm around his elbow and turned him back toward the road.

“I’m trying to tell you something,” he said, but he couldn’t think how to explain himself. His mind was a mess. All he could see were figures on a couch, a dead deer on a barroom floor.

“Will you take care of my bird?” he finally said.

“That what this is all about?”

“Tad and them others ain’t worth a shit.”

“All right,” she said. “Sure.”

He nodded. “Don’t know who else to ask.”

“Poor thing.”

Jorgen swallowed hard, took a breath. “I’m just tired is all.”

She grinned. “I was talking about the bird.”

He was exhausted, was sure if he fell he’d never get back up again.

“Don’t sleep much no more. I just walk around, you know,” he said.

“All night I just walk around.”

She rubbed his arm. “I appreciate you taking me out here.”

He tried to focus. “The cold don’t bother me.”

“We going to the garage?”

Jorgen nodded.

“So much for romance,” Mary Ellen said, and laughed a sigh. Then she tugged his hand, stopped them both. “You all right?”

He forced a smile, shrugged.

She smirked, too. “I’ll call my mama. Get you some pills that’d put a mule to sleep.”

Jorgen’s smile faded. They climbed the hill in silence. Jorgen thought about stopping, but he took one step and then the next. Low clouds drifted overhead. In a gap of open sky, tiny red lights from an airplane blinked, then slid behind the clouds. Jorgen watched the lights appear again, for but a moment, before they were gone.

They stood in the gravel drive in front of the garage. The ATV sat in the tall grass beside the door. Dogs lay atop a rusted-out car. A German shepherd, face matted over with mud, hobbled out of the grass with one gimpy leg.

“Tad said to knock three times,” Jorgen told Mary Ellen.

She hurried toward the garage. Jorgen trailed her, the old dog at his heels. He’d just wanted to be part of something. His whole life, that’s all he’d ever wanted. That’s why he’d enlisted, had gone overseas.

More dogs trotted around the building, bounding about Jorgen, sniffing low at the garage. Mary Ellen stopped at the door. She took off his jacket and tried to hand it to him.

“I don’t want it,” he said. He helped her back on with the jacket, zipped it up. He peered into her eyes, hoping a kind of understanding had passed between them.

She grinned, kissed his cheek.

Then he looked off at the fields. He heard the three rattling knocks on the aluminum door. The dogs barked. The door clacked as it raised, and light burst over them as the gang inside hollered like a surprise party.

The buck deer was strung up with chains from the rafters, was draped in a red gown. They’d painted its hooves red and tied a bouquet to one, stapled a blond wig and a big white hat to its skull. Beside it sat Tim Eddy Jenkins, bound to a chair with silver tape. His nostrils trailed blood, the old squeeze box between his hands. Tad, in a powder-blue suit, hair slicked back, struck Tim Eddy’s legs with a switch and Tim Eddy pulled apart the bellows and sound, not quite music, screeched out. The boys whooped. Tad took the buck by the forelegs and pretended to dance.

Mary Ellen backed into Jorgen. She stared as if to recognize him. Jorgen shoved her into the road, and she was enough of a local to know to run. Dogs ran along with her, barking, and the boys piled out howling as they gave chase down the hill. Tad ran the hill, too, far behind the others.

Mary Ellen didn’t stay on the road. Jorgen watched her descend the berm and break headlong into the corn. The boys followed her in.

Their shouts fell muffled. Halfway down, Tad sat on the gravel road, then lay back and covered his face with an arm.

Jorgen shuffled slowly down, his hands in his pockets. He stood beside Tad, who sat upright and wiped tears with his sleeve. “I just loved her so much,” he said. Jorgen nodded, watched the flats far below. A couple of boys came out of the rows, Mary Ellen nowhere to be seen. Tad smacked Jorgen’s leg. “Hey,” he said, and reached up a hand. “It’s good to have ol’ Genie back.”

Jorgen stared at the hand. He pulled his hands from his pockets, hugged himself against the cold. The others were emerging from the corn and climbing the ditch bank, shouting, laughing. Jorgen walked down. He passed through them all. One of them asked where he was going, but he didn’t answer. He crossed the highway and sidestepped down the ditch and pushed into the corn.

Jorgen wandered a long while, pressing deeper into the field, corn leaves raking his neck and face, his boots heavy with mud. Then he stopped. The wind had stilled, the world hushed.

Jorgen stomped a mat of stalks on which to lie. Moonlight seeped over him. He gazed into the muzzy stars, thought of the freight yard, of watching the boys load lumber and pallets of feed and steel forms from the Leighton foundry.

Over in the war, to lull himself to sleep, he’d play in his mind the trains coming and going. Jorgen wondered if once he got back over there he’d have the same patrol. He recalled a spot on his loop, a crater burned into a hillside, where each night he’d sit and glass the valley of stone, the land as bright as milk in the moonlight, until the others caught up and he’d have to return to the road.

FORT APACHE

The electric sign for the Krafton Bowl and Lounge was a vibrant white square atop a tall post. Set back from the road, the lounge’s roof and all but one wall had collapsed. Smoldering lumber jutted from charred brick. Bowling lanes lay exposed to the night, and in the lane oil lapped tiny spectral flames like a riot of hummingbirds. Firemen shoveled dirt over the lanes. Others held blankets at the building’s corners. A tuft of sparks rose from a joist and drifted down onto the dry prairie, where a man smothered it beneath a stretch of wool.

Walt trailed his brother Lonnie and little nephew, Calvin. His eyes stung. His nostrils burned. Today was his birthday, and he fanned away smoke with the gray fedora he’d bought hoping to look a bit like Bogie or Cagney, even Ladd, any of the picture-show toughies. Smoke hazed the road. Under the sign’s electric glow, a bare-chested man leaned against the post, breathing hard into a paper sack.

“Anyone harmed?” Lonnie called to the man.

The fireman crumpled the sack, stared down at Calvin. Lonnie let the boy smoke to keep him quiet and a cigarette dangled from his lips. “Say,” the man said, “you got more of that tobacco?”

Lonnie pulled a cigarette from his pocket. The fireman took it in his blackened fingers, stooped to light it off the end of Calvin’s. Smoke seeped from his lips as he rose. His eyes narrowed on the sky. High overhead tumbled a wing of burning ash. The fireman backed under it, turned on his heels, raced across the road.

“Hey,” Lonnie shouted, “how’d it start?”

“Small fires make big fires,” the fireman called back, wading into the prairie, tripping circles beneath the drifting embers, staggering through the high grabbing grass.

In the sign’s pale light, Walt studied his brother’s eyes, bright and blue and tracking the ash’s flight. Then they drew onto Walt.

“Small fires make big fires,” Lonnie said, with lilting reverence. “I surely hope so.”

They descended the hill into town. Sharpton’s Hardware was dark, with red, white, and blue streamers draping its windows. Mounds of produce lay in front of the general store, and amid them a goat asleep with its beard between its hooves. Up the road stood the tall brownstone that housed the picture show. Over the sidewalk, over the golden stars stenciled onto the concrete, hung the marquee.

DOUBLE FEATURE:

FAR FRONTIER

&

FORT APACHE

Lonnie cut into the side alley. Walt followed, Calvin clutching his hand. They passed rancid Dumpsters and crates shimmering white with sleeping pigeons. The back side of the building opened onto listless prairie, the sedge undotted but for an old telegraph depot gone to ruin.

They stopped at a metal door, and Lonnie yanked it open. A frail boy in a red usher’s jacket and bow tie stood guard inside—Lester Muncie, a former schoolmate who’d been two grades ahead of Walt. Lester grabbed for the door, but in one fluid movement Lonnie shoved Lester and wedged a hip in the jamb.

Lester didn’t fight. He turned back into the flickering darkness, his eyes on the screen, and pretended not to see them hurrying past.

The first movie was ending. Orchestra horns blared as Roy Rogers rode Trigger through a shadow-cut arroyo. Walt climbed the stairs into the balcony and the music faded and the houselights bloomed. Up in the top row, Frances, Lonnie’s girl and Calvin’s mother, sat beside her sister Georgette. Hep James, Lonnie’s best friend, sat two rows down. Lonnie settled into the aisle seat beside Frances, and Calvin hopped onto his mother’s lap.

“Hey, Walt,” Frances said. “That’s a swell hat you got.”

“Ain’t you the movie star,” Georgette said.

Walt sat beside Hep, who’d have been handsome if not for a scar across his left eye and cheek. Just after Hep returned from the war, some boy slashed him with a switchblade in an alley behind a bar up in the city. Hep had lived for a time in the city, but after that he came home.

“Roy surely got beat to hell and back in that one,” Hep said, slumped in his seat.

“And not a scratch on him,” Walt joked.

Hep looked perturbed. “Where’d you get that dumb hat?”

“It’s a gift,” Walt said, embarrassed. “Haley wants me to wear it on the berry wagon. Says folks’ll buy better if I look more sophisticated.”

Hep sneered. “Haley want doilies in the shit house, too?”

Lonnie called down, “Bowling alley’s got burned up.”

Hep snapped upright, turned to Lonnie. “Fire get anyone?”

“Nah.” Lonnie sounded disappointed.

Hep slid down again and propped his boots on the seat in front of him. “Well,” he said, “life ain’t a goddamn movie.”

In the booth behind them, the projectionist loaded a reel. Calvin rolled himself along the red velvet covering the walls. Frances looked grave whispering in Lonnie’s ear. Georgette came and sat beside Walt, smiling with soda-wet lips, a dab of licorice stuck in her teeth.

“Having a fun birthday?” she asked.

“What’s it to you?”

“I can help you have fun is what.”

Hep elbowed Walt, loudly sniffing.

Walt didn’t know what Hep meant by this, though he knew it was vulgar. To avoid Georgette’s gaze, he leaned out over his knees. The balcony was five rows, and beyond was the open expanse of the theater. Directly below the screen, town kids congregated around a marble wishing well. Marilyn Garfield, the girl Walt wanted to love, was down there. She wore a green skirt and stood with one leg straight, like a ballerina. That spring, she’d told him he looked like Montgomery Clift and he decided she was the one.

But Walt had never spoken to Marilyn beyond selling her berries. He was seventeen, slight for his age. By his whiskerless cheeks, one might think him younger. Moreover, the same childish fear he once had of going into their dark stables, or being alone in his bed at night, had taken hold of Walt. He glanced back at Lonnie, who’d been in the war, and who now sat listening to Frances prattle on, and wondered if his brother had for even a single moment been as afraid as he was at all times.

The lights dimmed and everyone took their seats. The projector beam flowed above Walt’s fedora. Up on screen, an aging soldier rode in a stagecoach beside a teenage Shirley Temple. Her eyes were those of the little girl Walt had seen in so many films. But now she was a woman named Philadelphia, and she strolled a desert fort in a petticoated dress. She asked another woman if she’d help fix up her father’s place.

Without a conscious moment of sliding, Walt was inside the screen, there on that dusty road behind the battlements, the sun sweltering above and everything of this world gone—the red fabric walls, the stuttering projector, Hep and Georgette, and the whole shitty town.

“How’s she keep that frilly dress clean?” Georgette breathed into Walt’s ear. “The hem’ll be black as mud.”

“Please be quiet,” he begged.

He closed his eyes, opened them, breathed and breathed. Soon Philadelphia and a young soldier had fallen in love. When the soldier declared his intentions to marry her, the colonel would not look him in the eye. Philadelphia’s face was full of anguish, and a screw in Walt’s heart tightened.

“Went riding once and now they’s getting married?” Georgette whispered. “This show’s just silly.”

Two rows behind Walt, Lonnie and Frances were kissing. Walt reached past Georgette and smacked his brother’s elbow.

“I need money for peanuts,” he said.

Frances sucked her lip, smoothed her skirt. Lonnie dug a half dollar from his pocket and slapped the coin into Walt’s palm. “Take Calvin with you.”

John Wayne cantered his horse through a pass lined with Apaches, their fierce faces painted for war. Walt stood and the screen went dark. The crowd catcalled up. Hep punched his thigh. The projector’s beam lay warm on Walt’s neck, and he knew they’d all been plucked from danger and love, from another time, another place, and set back into this dark, sticky-floored theater, in the heart of nothing much that mattered.

A blue-haired woman named Eloise read a paperback behind a long counter. Calvin pressed his nose to the glass, and Eloise held up a crooked finger. She read half a minute more, then marked her place in the book with a ticket stub. Her eyes were teared over, and she raised them to Walt.

“Never marry an Arabian,” she said. “They’s hot for the evening, but cold come morning.”

“I just want some peanuts and licorice.”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “Peanuts and licorice.”

Eloise shook a paper sack and stirred peanuts under the roasting lamps. Walt moved along the counter to where photos of movie stars were displayed beneath the glass: Roy Rogers in a white hat tilted to match his grin; Robert Mitchum hunched over a campfire; Betty Grable dressed as a saloon singer, showing a long, slender leg and pointing six-shooters in the air.

“Anything else?” Eloise said. A sack of peanuts sat on the counter. Calvin leaned against the glass twirling a licorice whip.

“You got photos of Shirley Temple?”

“Well”—Eloise shuffled down and slid open the back of the counter—“we ought to, I think.”

She set a photo album before her, then licked her thumb and turned the stiff pages, stopped on a picture and spun the album to face Walt. The photo was of a little girl singing. She wore a ruffled dress, her hands framing her face as if they were the petals of a flower. He’d meant to see a picture of her as Philadelphia. But there was something in this child’s face that recalled the innocence of youth and drew from him a nostalgic pulse of joy.

“How much?” Walt asked.

“Half a dollar.”

Walt glanced about the lobby to be sure no one was watching. “Keep the other stuff,” he said. “I’ll take the picture.”

Eloise’s nose wrinkled. “That boy’s woffed on that candy.”

Calvin hugged Walt’s leg, licorice swinging from his mouth.

“It’s my birthday,” Walt said, placing the half dollar on the counter. “I’m seventeen today.”

“Well,” Eloise said, pondering. She turned to the ticket booth by the entrance and hollered, “Earl!”

The booth opened and out leaned Earl. “What you need?”

“This gentleman wants to purchase a star photograph,” she said. “He’s short a nickel. He tells me it’s his birthday and I’m wondering if that means anything to you.”

Earl looked Walt up and down. “How’d you get in here?”

Walt glanced back at the theater doors, heard Indians whooping, rifles popping. “Don’t know.”

“Didn’t buy a ticket from me.” Earl approached Walt. “Lester let you in the back?” he said, grabbing Walt by the strap of his overalls. “I’ll pluck that sneaky goose.” He dragged Walt to the front, crashing him through the glass doors and out to the sidewalk.

Earl stalked back into the lobby, wagging a fist at Eloise, and then Calvin was there at the door. The boy flattened his lips against the glass, giggled, ran off. Earl trailed the boy into the dark theater, then Eloise hurried around the counter and across the lobby. She inched open the door, slid out the photo of Shirley Temple.

“Take it,” she said, “and don’t say nothing about it.”

Walt took it.

“You all right, boy?”

Walt stiffened his lip, trying not to cry. He nodded.

Eloise’s eyes were full of doubt. “Well,” she said, “have you a fine birthday, child.” She turned away and the door clicked closed.

Walt sat on the curb in the marquee’s light. Smoke draped a fog over the valley. Lester emerged from the alley and crossed the road toward a maroon Studebaker. Walt tucked the photo of Shirley Temple into his bib and trotted over.

“Hey, Lester,” Walt called. “I get a lift?”

Lester spun startled. His eyes were wet, the pocket of his shirt torn dog-eared. He no longer wore his usher’s jacket. “Fuck you.”

“What’s wrong with you?”

Lester spat at Walt’s boots.

“Hey now,” Walt said. “I got kicked out myself—”

“Fuck you.” Lester’s chin trembled.

“I didn’t do nothing to you.”

Lester turned to his car. “Fuck you, queer.”

Walt watched him open the door, felt the muscles in his shoulders tighten. “Take it back.”

Lester climbed into the car.

Walt blocked the door. “Take it back.” He clutched Lester’s shirtfront.

Lester was crying. “Fuck you,” he mumbled. “Just fuck you.”

Walt punched Lester’s mouth, felt a tooth give. Lester flopped across the seat. Then slowly sat upright, pulled his feet in over the pedals, started the motor. He gripped the door handle, looked up at Walt. His eyes were glazed. Blood trickled from his lip.

Walt had never hit anybody that way and immediately felt ashamed. “I just wanted a ride.” He offered Lester his handkerchief, but Lester wouldn’t have it.

Walt stepped back, and Lester closed the door. The car pulled away with its headlights off.

Walt sucked a cut on his knuckle, worried some others felt for him the same disgust and pity he’d felt for Lester. He crossed back over to the theater. Earl sat in the ticket booth eating peanuts. Walt leaned against the
Fort Apache
movie poster. He tugged his fedora low, trying to look tough, glaring at Earl through a circle cut in the glass.