Bone Fire (17 page)

He cracked the door open, listening until his legs started to quiver, and when he was sure they were all asleep he crept downstairs with his backpack, the dirty sheets under his arm. He put them in the hamper and tiptoed into the kitchen, where he didn’t need to turn on a light with the yellow glow from the streetlamp pouring in through the window over the sink.

He made two sandwiches with the lunchmeat and cheese he found in the refrigerator, stuffing them both into a single Ziploc baggy and slipping that into an outside pocket of his backpack. He got an apple and put that in too. Then he found the pad and pen by the phone and sat at the kitchen table, thinking about what to write. He wanted them to know he appreciated everything they’d done for him. He thought writing it longhand in pen was better than printing it out on the computer—more personal, like they were friends.

Thank you, very much
, he wrote.
I had a wonderful time. It is a good thing to know I have a brother and sister, and a spare father and mother
.
Your house is nice and quiet even though you live in a city. I will have lots of stories to tell from this adventure, and good times to remember. Don’t worry because I know how to get home. I paid attention on the trip here. Good-bye, Kenneth
.

He left the note on the kitchen table, where it would be the first thing they saw when they came down for breakfast. He checked the LCD display on the microwave and it was only just after midnight. He was too excited to know if he was sleepy.

He emptied his pockets and counted out the money on the counter by the sink. This was the third time, but he wanted to make sure he hadn’t made a mistake. McEban had given him two fifty-dollar bills, and he’d saved seventy-three dollars from his allowance, all in ones, a thick roll held tight with a rubber band. The computer had said the bus ticket would cost a hundred and four dollars, and he laid out the two fifties and four ones, stacking twenty singles for expenses beside it. He folded the last forty-nine dollars, doubling the rubber band around it, lifted up his pants leg and stuffed it down the top of his boot. He put the money for the ticket in his shirt pocket, the traveling money in his jeans.

He thought leaving cash for the food he was taking might be insulting, so he dug in the bottom of his backpack for the empty Copenhagen can McEban had let him have. He popped the lid off and pinched the top layer of Kleenex away and lifted the arrowhead out, a long, tapering point made of moss agate that he held up to the light over the sink. Then he set it on top of the note and added a postscript.

This is mine and I’d like you to have it. I found it when I was six and one half on top of the Bighorns, but I can’t tell you exactly where. It is a secret. I made two sandwiches. Kenneth again
.

After taking a hard look at everything in the kitchen so he could recreate the room for McEban, he slipped out the door, and stood under a shade tree by the garage, watching the street. It was empty. He whispered the full content of the lies he thought he might have to use to get home, to reassure himself he had them
firmly in his memory. His mother had told him once that it wasn’t lying if you told people what they wanted to hear, so he’d lain in bed at night thinking about every problem a ten-year-old boy might encounter on an eighteen-hour bus trip, all the questions he might be asked, making lists of the answers he thought people would want to hear. He didn’t kid himself about them not being lies.

Then he picked up his basketball from where he’d left it on the edge of the driveway.

J
EAN WASN’T THERE
when he got home, and he looked for a note but couldn’t find one. He showered and shaved and stretched out on the bed and fell asleep with the windows open and a breeze coming through. He slept undisturbed for an hour and a half, and when he woke she still wasn’t home. He remembered vivid fragments of a dream in which he was flying, or falling, but couldn’t piece together any sort of narrative, wondering if the ALS was affecting his subconscious as well.

He pulled on a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt and went out to the kitchen to find something to make for supper, taking a Tupperware container of cooked rice from the refrigerator and layering the bottom of a bowl with it, then browning a package of hamburger and spooning it over the rice. He grated a hard cheese onto the hamburger and nuked it for a minute, then diced part of an onion and a red pepper, and dumped them on top. It was his favorite meal, something he’d made after school when he was a kid.

He carried the bowl to the couch in the living room, surfing through the channels while he ate. He ended up watching an episode of
CSI: Miami
, jeering at the story line as he imagined a lot of cops did.

After he’d cleaned up the kitchen and she still wasn’t home, he
found her stash in the back of her underwear drawer and rolled a joint that he took out to the sunporch so he wouldn’t stink up the house. Having smoked dope only a couple of times in college, and never since, he couldn’t remember what was supposed to happen to him, but it was a relief, even briefly, to be focused on something other than his body’s deterioration. He sat back, waiting for it to kick in, and imagined Jean driving up and catching him, and when this scenario just made him laugh he assumed he was stoned.

He stayed out on the porch through the evening. When it was dark, he turned on the bug zapper hanging under the eaves and sat listening to the intermittent buzz of bugs frying and the sounds of the neighborhood winding down. The phone rang once and he let the machine get it, but the caller didn’t leave a message.

It was after midnight when he stripped out of his clothes and went to bed, and he wasn’t quite asleep when she came in, making no effort to be quiet. He heard her mix a drink in the kitchen, and when he opened his eyes she was standing in the bedroom doorway staring at him.

“Don’t pretend you’re asleep,” she said.

He folded an arm behind his head. The light was on in the hallway behind her, and he could see the outline of her legs through the thin material of her skirt. “You drunk?”

“Drunk enough to come home.” She walked into the room, set her drink on the dresser, pulled her blouse over her head and stepped out of her skirt. She threw her clothes toward the closet and took a sip from the glass, then put it back.

“What does that mean, exactly?” he asked.

“What does what mean?” She slid her panties down, kicking them toward the closet too, and stood at the foot of the bed, winging her elbows out to unhook her bra, tossing it after the rest. She cupped her breasts up and ducked her chin to blow back and forth across them. “Jesus, that feels good,” she said.

“What does it mean, saying you’re drunk enough to come home?”

She snorted a short laugh and walked to the window and sat on the sill staring at him, holding the cool glass of ice and whiskey and water against her forehead, her legs crossed at her ankles.

The light from the streetlamp turned the hair at the crown of her head amber and lipped just over her shoulders, falling in scallops on her left hip and thigh. He thought she still looked good but knew it really didn’t matter anymore. That part was over. “You going to answer me?”

She finished her drink, set the glass on the windowsill and stood away from the window. “You know damn well what it means.”

She was rotating her head in a circle like he’d seen pro basketball players do to loosen up before going back onto the court. She pulled the sheet away and stepped across him, straddling his hips, settling down on his limp cock. She paused as though she couldn’t remember what came next, then leaned forward and kissed him, her hips fidgeting. He could feel her breasts pressed against his chest.

“I know you can do this,” she said. “I need you to.”

She reached down between her legs, gripping his cock and working her thumb at the base of the glans, smiling like she would at a joke that wasn’t funny. She kissed him again, grinding her hips in punishing little circles and digging at his chest with her fingernails. When she checked again and his cock was still limp, she rolled off and lay staring at the ceiling. “That makes what?” she asked. “The last three times?”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

She got up on an elbow. “Really?”

“I probably ought to try something. Viagra, maybe.”

“Maybe you should.”

She got up and pulled a black T-shirt from under her pillow. Stenciled on the front, under a white horse head with an orange mane, was
Denver Broncos
. The shoulder seams reached almost to her elbows and the hem hung mid-thigh. She retrieved her glass
from the sill and went back to the kitchen, and he heard her making another drink.

Then she was standing again in the doorway. “You know what pisses me off?”

“I guess not the whole list.” He folded his pillow behind his head.

She was leaning into the jamb with one leg bent up, pressing the sole of that foot against the opposite knee. It made for an odd silhouette, he thought, birdlike.

“You know what Viagra’s good for?” she asked.

“I think so.”

“Yeah, well I do too. It’s a real lifesaver for the assholes who are getting it someplace else. Every Tom, Dick and Crane can come trotting home with their limp dicks, whining about the heartache of ED. ED, my ass. Your only dysfunction is you’d rather fuck stray pussy more than me.”

“Funny, they don’t say anything about that in the ads.”

She sipped her drink. “I need to know something,” she said. “So I can keep everything in perspective.”

“All right.”

“I’d like to know when you think you might have the balls to tell me what’s going on.”

“That’s something we can talk about tomorrow.”

“You mean when I’m not drunk?”

“Yes.”

“Fuck you.”

She straightened her leg, leaning over into the opposite jamb, and he stood up and found where he’d dropped his clothes on the floor and stepped into the sweatpants and sat back down on the bed.

“You want to know the worst thing I ever did?” she asked.

“Tell me.”

“I really hate that tone of voice.”

“Go ahead. I want to know.”

She walked away, and he pulled the T-shirt on. She was sitting on the counter beside the sink when he came into the kitchen, the bottle of Jim Beam next to her. He sat at the table, and she leaned back against the cupboards.

“So, the worst thing I ever did?”

“I’m ready,” he said.

She parted her legs and, when he looked away, turned to spit in the sink, pulling the T-shirt down over her knees. She lit a cigarette from the pack by the bottle and dropped the paper match in the drain. “I wished you were dead. That’s the worst thing I ever did.”

He stared at her.

“I don’t mean fuck you, fuck me, I wish you were dead. I mean the whole nine yards, front to back. Smell the blood, watch the light go out of your eyes, appear appropriately heartbroken at the funeral, answer the condolence cards promptly and pack your shit off to the landfill.” She took a long drag from her cigarette, tilting her head back to exhale, staring at him down over her cheeks. “So how does that sit with you, Mr. Maybe-Viagra-Might-Let-Me-Fake-Fuck-My-Wife-Now-and-Then?”

His left arm and both calves were buzzing, and he tried to swallow and coughed. “Not great.” He cleared his throat, careful not to gag. That’s what frightened him most, the choking. He’d watched it happen to his grandfather.

“Good,” she said, “because I didn’t even get to the part about burning sage in every room of the house to run your fucking stink out.”

He wiped the spittle from the corners of his mouth. “Have you thought about me dying today?”

“Today’s not over with yet.” She drained her glass and poured it half full of whiskey, holding it under the tap for a splash of cold water.

“You’ve been drinking a lot, even for you.”

“Have I?”

“Yes, you have.”

She sipped the drink. “Why don’t you tell me what you expect me to do?”

“I guess I don’t know what to expect.”

“Jesus, you must fucking think I’m made out of iron or something.”

“I think you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. I still think that.”

“You’ve got a twisted way of showing it.”

“I haven’t been feeling well.”

“But well enough to fuck your ex-wife. That’s something, isn’t it? I’m sorry you haven’t been up to handling us both.”

“That’s not what’s happening.”

“Bullshit.” She drank down half her drink.

“It’s not like that with Helen.”

“Give it the fuck up, Crane. Janice Obermueller already told me she saw you two having dinner at the Olive Garden in Billings.”

They heard a car pull into the drive, then a door slamming shut.

Jean slid off the counter, staggering sideways toward the refrigerator before catching herself. “You want to know something? I really do wish you were dead. It would’ve been easier for you.” She stubbed her cigarette out in the sink, looking at him over her shoulder. “Because right now you’ve got to hate yourself even more than I do.”

They could hear a light knock at the screen door, and Jean pushed away from the counter.

“I didn’t make love to her.”

“Couldn’t, or wouldn’t?”

“I just didn’t.”

The knock again, still light.

“Come on in and join the party,” Jean called.

She was gripping the backladder of a chair, bracing herself, when the girl stepped into the doorway, the kitchen light reflecting off her eyebrow stud and the ring in her lower lip.

“I need to see the sheriff,” she said, nearly whispering.

Jean stared at her, weaving, then shrugged and dropped her hands from the chair. “I’m going to bed.”

She turned and lurched toward the bedroom, holding a palm out against the wall to steady herself, and he heard a picture fall in the hallway.

“I’m Janey Schilling,” the girl said. “My sister said you wanted to talk to me.”

They walked out around her car and he held the door open to the cruiser and she ducked in.

“I’m sorry it’s so late,” she said. “I saw your lights on, so I thought it would be okay.”