All I Have in This World (10 page)

Witherspoon watched Stallings take the man out to the Electra. They stood alongside it talking, as if what they were saying was the most important thing in the world, as if the car were not the thing that mattered. But Witherspoon was staring at the car, not at the men. Maybe the car didn't matter at all. He loved a sell, and he felt confident that he'd made the right decision hiring Stallings, but he found it hard to get excited about the money he'd make off that Electra or the cars that Stallings would move for him in the future. And yet the longer the men lingered there, talking and laughing, as if the car could wait, the more Witherspoon focused on the car. He believed, after a time, that it sure did matter. He thought about the dollar bill framed by his grandfather hanging in his office, the first buck earned by Witherspoon Buick. The night before, after dropping Stallings off in his neighborhood and locking the doors before Stallings reached the stoop of his row house, Witherspoon felt as if he'd done something terrible, hiring this man. As if his motives were impure, as if everything he did these days, especially poaching Stallings, was done to line his pockets.

Stallings shook hands with the big man and held the door open for him. As the man climbed behind the wheel, the vehicle shifted only slightly under his girth. It was a good car, the right car for him. But it was more than that; it did matter. Maybe it was the most important car Witherspoon had ever sold. Cleveland was all to hell now. So much hate and fear and violence, so much poverty, so much distrust between the races. Witherspoon walked outside so he could better watch the Electra as it made its way out of the lot. For as long as he could, he kept the blue in his sights as the Electra turned onto the boulevard and entered the stream of other cars. When it stopped at the light, a rare slice of late spring Cleveland sun caused its window to glint. Then the light changed and Witherspoon watched the car drive away, off into the world, a sparkling symbol of something new, of some change in this city—in this country, hell, the whole world—that he had had a hand in creating.

By three in the afternoon, on the lot of Kepler's Fantastic Deals!, Marcus had narrowed it down to a Ford Ranger pickup with 106,000 miles, an ancient and deeply suspect Volkswagen Thing with a sloppy backyard camouflage paint job whose mileage, given that it was nearly thirty years old, struck him as dubiously low at 173,000 miles, and a 1984 Buick Electra. The odometer on the Buick registered only 60K and Marcus believed it. It was a sweet, low block of a ride, light blue with a strip of black vinyl along the bottom of the doors, perfect for rumbling around town with the windows open.

Each vehicle had its perks. He'd loved his pickup and he had needed it, too—he wasn't the type to drive a truck around with nothing but autumn leaves in the bed—and the Ranger was a no-nonsense workhorse, a five-speed so stripped down—not even a radio—that it seemed like it would get him to Patagonia and back on a couple of tanks of gas.

The VW was butt-ass ugly, badly camouflaged, and capable at any minute of breaking down on the side of the road, but the fact that it was a damn lie made it fitting for a man deceiving his blood kin.

As for the Buick, Marcus saw himself steering that bad boy around town, the other hand out the window, drumming the side-view in time to the tunes or surfing stiff-fingered the fresh Texas breeze. He would not defile his vinyl tabernacle with Top 40 or talk radio; only deep southern soul or country old school and forlorn allowed.
Isaac Hayes at Wattstax, Dusty in Memphis,
that old silver fox Charlie Rich—when had he ever come up with a playlist just looking at a vehicle? And say Marcus got himself some companionship: She could start out on the passenger side, upside the window, but as soon as they got acquainted she could slide right across the seat and suction herself eventually, barnacle-like, to his side. Maybe put her head on his shoulder? No save-it-for-marriage bucket seats for the Buick. Yet it was a sensible ride, mature, dependable, more straight-and-narrow than bank-robbery getaway. Unless you wanted to lose a muffler, you'd be an idiot to take it off-road, say, on an ear-popping, downshifting descent through a series of gulches, bottoming out in a riverbed in the middle of which ran a trickle of suds demarcating one country from another.

While he was studying the Buick, a woman appeared suddenly from the rows of Fantastic Deals. Marcus had noticed her earlier, briefly, when he was checking out the VW
,
but the way she had been standing at the edge of the lot, looking not at the cars but at the plastic streamers fluttering in the wind kicked up by passing traffic, made him think she was either waiting for a ride or slightly crazy. But now she appeared to be looking, like him, for an automobile.
His
automobile, it seemed, since she had moved to the other side of it. Her hair was black and shoulder length and her skin was olive and later he would remember that the word
lithe
came to mind as he studied her, along with the word
lovely,
neither of which were common to the lexicon from which his adjectives to describe women were drawn.
Lovely,
too, was not a word he'd ever think to apply to someone so effortlessly attired, not that he went for the painted, put-together types. She was wearing a tank top, flip-flops. Worn jeans hung low and tight over her hips, and instead of a purse she'd slung the strap of a faded backpack over her shoulder like a schoolkid. Marcus knew jack about fashion but he could tell when a woman got up in the morning and yanked on whatever articles of clothing happened to be lying on the floor, and appeared more striking than if she had spent a half hour pulling clothes out of the closet, leaving behind on the bed a reject pile so high it resembled a body in slumber.

It had been weeks since Marcus had even noticed a woman, so bound up in his various miseries had he been, and so unwilling or unready to give up the wound licking set off by Rebecca's leaving. That this woman, standing just on the other side of the Buick, so close he might have smelled her perfume were she the type to wear same, seemed so entirely indifferent to his presence was maybe what made him so aware of
her.
But he wasn't about to say anything. He did not like that he was wasting time thinking of such things. “A lump of Lord have mercy” did not even make his list. This woman was distracting him from his purpose. Therefore she was not on his side. The way she stood so close, only the car between them, and ignored him was ample proof that she was not on his side in more ways than one. Maybe it was the night he'd had—the lack of sleep, grieving over his lost truck, the flytrap seeds he would never see again, the other useless items the Border Patrol claimed would turn up in some draw but he feared were lost to him forever—but Marcus did not want to lose anything else. He'd gotten there first. That Buick was his.

M
ARIA'S MOTHER HAD WANTED
to come along with her to the car lot.

“I've known the Kepler boys for years, I've bought two vehicles from them,” she said on the way into town.

“Thanks, but I know you have to get to work.”

“Do you even know what to look for?”

“I can handle it,” said Maria. She knew that with her mother along, she could not lose herself in what she had dubbed Rand-om: the kingdom of Randy not as he had been but as who he might have been. The sum of all the parts she had not recognized when he was with her. Occasionally she felt Randy's presence in a way that was free of guilt and regret. Mostly she felt him in a way that was black and heavy. Today she needed him to come lightly to her and to leave proud of her fearlessness. She believed he would be with her, guiding her, but she'd not be able to feel or hear him with her mother there asking questions and making decisions for her.

“Well, at least let me run in and introduce you,” said her mother.

“It's only a half mile from the motel,” said Maria. “I can walk.”

“Okay,” said her mother, as if she remembered that she had promised to stay out of Maria's way. “You just call me if you need me.”

But obviously her mother had called Bobby Kepler, who was deeply involved in a take-out feast of barbecued chicken, mac and cheese, and cole slaw when Maria walked into his tiny office. He knew exactly who she was. He stood up from his desk, barbecue sauce staining his fingers, and started right in on how well he'd known her father, played ball with him in high school, great guy, so sorely missed. Maria smiled and thanked him, said she did not want to disturb his lunch, and she was relieved—and a little surprised, for even though she had never bought a car before, she was aware of the stereotype of the officious and relentless used-car salesman—when Bobby Kepler said he'd be right out, feel free to look around and see if there's anything out there you fall in love with. Then he mentioned names—Astro, Saturn, Corolla—that reminded her of class field trips to a star party up at the McDonald Observatory. She smiled as if she knew what he was talking about and headed out on the lot.

What a strange feeling it was to go shopping for something so huge and have no idea what she wanted. Looking at the rows of cars, she felt unprepared and ashamed of her lack of planning. If buying a car was her attempt to honor Randy's passion, shouldn't she have at least gotten on the Internet and googled “how to buy a car”? Surely there was some book you could purchase called
Car Buying for Dummies
? She tried to summon those endless conversations between Randy and her father; she tried to remember the Nova in the drive, its hood propped open, exposing its complicated system of belts and points and plugs. Maria smiled at her recall of these terms she'd long forgotten. That such detail was lurking in her psyche made her feel a little less helpless.

Still, none of the cars seemed right to her. Too big, too flimsy, too high up, too green, too sporty. Only one drew her interest. It was squat and boxy and the slightly washed-out blue of the wide sky above. Randy would never think to buy such a car for himself, but he would approve of it for her. He would want, above all, for her to be safe. This car was safe. Runaway grocery carts in the parking lot of the Thriftway would alter their course rather than collide with its fearsome grill. There were nicks in the paint and she noticed a slight dent below the gas tank, but in her mind the car could fend off a bulldozer, none the worse for wear.

She read the name: Buick, it said up front, and along the back, in chrome cursive. Was Buick good? Any minute now Bobby Kepler would have cleaned the chicken to the bone and would emerge from his tiny office reinvigorated and full of questions for her. Randy, tell me now, quick, is this the one?

And then she noticed the man standing on the other side of the car. How had she missed him? He must have been hiding from her. When he was pretending not to look at her, she looked at him. He was of medium height and solidly built—well fed, she'd have said had she cared to say one way or the other—and his brown hair was thinning and graying a bit at the temples. Around here, white men of his age were either ranchers or hippies. He wasn't dressed like a hippie, really, nor did he look like a rancher, though it seemed from his skin that he was no stranger to the sun.

Even her notice of this stranger on the other side of the Buick threatened to keep Randy at bay. Yes, you loved cars, but I know you loved me more. So gone on her was he that she both feared his love and took it for granted. How is it even possible, she wondered now, to fear something you don't appreciate, something you don't even notice at times? He was kind to her father and she made him feel bad for that. He was passionate about his future and she ridiculed his passion. Even though she had only a vague idea of what she wanted to do with her life—a master's in deaf ed seemed, now, a schoolgirl fantasy—privileging her future over his is what tore them apart. What killed him. He knew what he wanted. Who knew what they wanted? He knew things she did not and she thought she was smarter and less provincial and she let him know it. No, God, Maria, don't think that way, especially here, now, in a place as sacred to him as an old-growth forest. Think of him now as he was so often in their Airstream: sweet tempered, big eared, vain about his hair. He always carried a tube of Chap Stick and applied it so liberally that when she poured him a Pepsi to go with his sandwiches, the rim of his glass would smudge with gloss. He loved Dwight Yoakam and he claimed to have a crush on Debra Winger based solely on one scene in the movie
Urban Cowboy.
She wished she could remember which scene, but she knew it had nothing to do with a mechanical bull, which Randy deemed ridiculous, suburban Texans getting thrown not from an animal riled up by their attempt to tame it but by a tangle of wires controlled by some wannabe cowboy with a lever.

Randy, do you know how sweet you were? How smart? It is so hard to know anything at all when you are that young, but it is far harder to look back on your youth and
think
you knew anything at all.

Maria looked up from the Buick. She saw the man looking at her and she saw him smile. To him it would appear, not that she was talking to her dead high school boyfriend, but that she was studying a car she was interested in buying. The man had a nice smile. His bottom lip was thinner than the top, which made his smile a little crooked and a lot nervous. For some reason his nervousness calmed her.

Over the hiss of cars on the boulevard she heard the door to the office slam. Maybe over time, Randy, you would have eased up or been ground down by my careless way of loving you back. And then I would have missed the way you always slipped your hand in the back pocket of my jeans when we were crossing the street, I would have missed the way you cared for me more than anyone I have let care for me since.

One of the Keplers, now she could not remember which one, would be upon her in seconds. How do you tell if a car is any good? Randy was not there and he was not coming.

Without even looking his way again, Maria said to the man on the other side of the car, “Excuse me, do you happen to know—I mean, I'm sorry to bother you, but is this a good car?”

“Looks decent from the outside,” he said.

“Will you test-drive it for me?” she asked.