Damaged Goods (3 page)

“You’re such an idiot, Silvie,” she said. “A map. Why the hell didn’t you bring an effing map?” She felt near tears, but bolstered herself against them. She could hear some long-ago voice.
What good will crying do?

She decided to go for help first, then come back for her things, so she locked the passenger door and rounded the back of the car to make sure the hatchback was secured as well. She’d checked it a hundred times since leaving Wyoming two days ago, but she did so again just to make sure. Then she pulled her jacket tight, slung her backpack over one shoulder, and started up the road in the cool evening light.

She’d barely gone ten steps when a glistening black truck pulled onto the shoulder ahead, blocking her path. It was new. Still had its temporary tags in the window. The tailgate boasted its Hemi engine and four-wheel-drive superiority, and Silvie grimaced, even as she was grateful that someone had stopped. The truck itself felt like Wyoming all over again.

A man stepped out, but stood with the door open, as if he was still deciding whether to offer help. She tilted her head, smiled very slightly in an attempt to appear friendly without seeming helpless. He nodded a greeting and shut the door. He came toward her and she noticed that he was taller than she’d originally thought, with thick wavy hair the color of his truck.

“Car trouble?”

She gazed over her shoulder at the VW and shrugged. Wasn’t that obvious?

He walked past her to the car, but didn’t hide his sideways glances. “What’s it doing?”

“Nothing. It’s dead.”

He looked back as if to see if she was playing with him. She smiled and shrugged again. He nodded, a faint smile of his own.

“What was it doing
before
it died?” He took the opportunity to stare at her as he waited for an answer. His eyes were black, and the longer he looked the blacker they appeared.

“It sounded like a sick lawn mower hacking concrete. Then it died.”

His eyebrows went up and she slid inside to release the hood. After several minutes of fiddling with things in the engine, he asked her to try to start it. The car made a terrible crunching sound but fell silent again. Silvie joined him and peered down into the dirty engine, her fine gold hair ruffling in the breeze between them.

“Hate to say it, but you threw a rod.” He turned and surveyed the road ahead where his pickup sat.

“Is that serious?”

“Yup. You can kiss this car goodbye.”

“You’re kidding me.” She twisted in the soft evening air, looking out at the foothills now collecting a cap of menacing gray clouds along the western end. “What am I going to do?”

“Do you live around here? I can give you a lift home.”

“Damn it! What am I going to do?” She glared at the ugly car.

He shoved his hands into his pockets and waited for her to answer.

“I’m on my way to Lincoln City. I—” She scuffed the sole of her worn-out leather shoe in the gravel. She didn’t need to explain anything, especially to a stranger.

“Well, is there someone you can stay with?”

“I just drove out from Wyom—I mean Montana.”

Her cheeks flushed hot. “I—I was living in Montana, then visited a friend in Wyoming … before I came out here,” she stammered.

He stared down at the Wyoming license plate but said nothing.

“It’s kind of a long story.”

He nodded.

She tipped her head back and looked at the gray sky, then over at the car, then up the road again.

“What are you doing on this road if you’re headed to Lincoln City?” His question sounded like an accusation.

“I got lost. I took a wrong turn coming through Portland and I just … I just figured southwest, go southwest and you’ll find a main road or the beach.”

“Navigation by dead reckoning, huh?”

“Works most of the time.”

He laughed, and she joined in. She noticed how white and straight his teeth were. He was older than her—in his early forties, maybe. She glanced at his hands, but he had them tucked into the pockets of his jeans.

“Would’ve worked if your car kept running. Scholls Ferry turns into 219 and crosses over 99. There’s a big sign telling you which way to the beach about six miles up the road.”

They stood in awkward silence. She looked back in the direction she’d come. Portland lay behind a low band of hills, unseen from where they stood.

“What’s in Lincoln City?” he asked. He tipped his head to the side and waited for her answer as his eyes darted intermittently from the pavement to her and back again.

“The sea,” she finally answered with a little-girl smile she’d used too many times to know.

Another silence. The man eyed the oncoming dusk.

“Do you think I could maybe pay you to drive me there?”

“I … uh. Not tonight, I expect.”

She waited. He was a guy, and the one thing she understood about guys was that if you gave one a problem he’d offer a solution. Especially since he’d already stopped to help.

“That’s a two-hour trip down and another two back,” he said quietly.

Silvie set her backpack down and returned to the car for her keys. She slammed the door harder than she’d meant to.

“Look—” he started.

She noticed that he had a habit of pressing the palm of his hand flat against his forehead, which was carved deep with a scar fresh enough to still have color. The outline of his expensive pickup loomed behind him. It was no indication of his status in her mind. She knew plenty of men who had thirty-thousand-dollar trucks and six-thousand-dollar single-wides, most with a vicious blue heeler chained to the front step.

“It’s too late to go tonight, and tomorrow I have a sale.” He stared off a moment. “Where did the week go? And Wednesday is always busy with cleanup, but I could take you down there on Thursday. You—” He kicked gravel at her pathetic car. “You don’t have to pay me.”

Thursday?

“There’s a motel down in Newberg. You could maybe stay down there for a couple nights.”

Silvie was already shaking her head. She’d left home with nine hundred dollars and had already burned through nearly a hundred in gas and food. After paying too much for a room at the Motel 6 in Boise, she vowed she’d sleep in her car until she found a place to stay. That money was all she had.

“I’ll just—” She glanced at her car. She could leave most of her things behind. “I’ll just take what I can carry and hitchhike.”

“That’s not safe,” he blurted.

“Well, I can’t really afford a motel.”

“It’s not the best solution, but—” He drew a breath as if already regretting his next words.

Silvie felt like a burden, and he hadn’t even made the offer yet.

“There’s a small apartment on the second floor of my sale barn. It’s not really a barn,” he added quickly. “We just call it that. It’s more like a—” He seemed to search for the right word, pausing to stare down at the road too long. “A warehouse.” The declaration was abrupt, awkward, and laced with an odd sense of victory. “You could stay there for a couple days.” He looked at her apprehensively. “It’s not … well, it’s a bit of a mess. No one’s actually lived
there for a long time. But it has a foldout sofa and a bathroom with a shower.”

Silvie fought the urge to say no. It had been drilled into her never to accept a gift the first time it’s offered. Her mother’s way of imagining they were humble, though the family routinely trawled for handouts. She studied the man’s face. She guessed that he wouldn’t offer a second time.

“That’s really nice of you,” she finally said.

“Don’t say that until you’ve seen the place.” He laughed. “I’ll get a rope and we’ll tow your car up there. It’s just a couple miles. You don’t want anyone to break into it during the night. And they will if it’s sitting here on the road.”

“Thanks.”

He shrugged and turned toward his truck.

“I’m Silvie,” she said to his back.

“Hershel. Hershel Swift.”

Hershel reclined against the cold sofa in the soft shroud of darkness that encompassed his living room. The outline of his breakfast dishes loomed near his head on the end table. He gazed up at the ceiling, thinking about the girl he’d left at the auction barn. Pretty. Young. Twenty-four, twenty-five maybe? He knew she was lying about Montana. She’d answered the question too quickly, and the first story matched the plates on her car.
God, she was young
.

He pressed his hands against both temples, trying to push back the ever-present pain in his head. Why had he stopped to help her in the first place? That was the question he grappled with now. Before he’d realized what he was doing, he’d already pulled off the road. It wasn’t until he’d gotten out of his truck that he figured he was into something he didn’t want. He didn’t believe he would have stopped before … before the accident. Hershel pressed his fingers in harder, making his vision go dark as he went back over his conversation with the girl. No, he was sure he wouldn’t have.

What was her name again? Silvie? Is that what she said her name was? He guessed he might have stopped after all. But he wouldn’t have left an attractive young thing like that alone in the apartment down at the sale barn. He’d have brought her home,
made her a cheese sandwich or whatever he had in the kitchen, and then fucked her brains out. Hershel was a good-looking man—tall, with a full head of wavy dark hair and black, black eyes. A gift from his Nez Percé grandfather on his mother’s side. Women had fawned over him from the time he was in junior high, and no matter how little effort he put into his relationships there were always plenty more waiting.

Hershel got to his feet. The pain in his head surged forward, trying to get out through the scar along his hairline. He paused to give it time to recede again. He didn’t find the idea of fucking her brains out repulsive—in fact, quite the opposite. It was the idea that he wouldn’t be able to sustain himself, or that the pain in his head would cause him to black out and crush her. Otherwise, he would have taken advantage. Instinct told him so. Was that who he really was at heart? Or who he had been? There were moments—palpitating moments—when he felt certain he’d lost who he was in the accident.

He clicked on the furnace and cool air blew dust through the vents. After a moment it warmed and he adjusted the digital display to sixty-eight degrees. Then he went to the kitchen, opened a bottle of painkillers, and swallowed two pills before making himself the sandwich he might have offered the girl. If he thought it would get him into her pants.

Silvie nosed around the dingy single-room apartment, looking for a heater. She found nothing. The place smelled of dust and mushrooms. She was coming to associate that rich organic aroma of rotting plants and dampness with Oregon. She peered into the dirty sink in the kitchenette, then ran water into it, creating muddy streaks. She opened the cupboard above the cracked brown counter and found a single coffee cup. She turned a circle where she stood and took in the whole of the tiny room. An
orange plaid sofa that folded out into a bed, without sheets or blankets. In the corner stood a console television from the seventies. A small green dinette set was shoved up against the opposite wall, next to the bathroom door.

She’d been so worried that her Good Samaritan would turn out to be a rapist once they were alone in this place that she’d refused his offer to show her where things were, or to get her something to eat, or even to help her bring some of her things in. He couldn’t remember which key opened the door to the building. She’d stood there as rain began to soak into her jacket, watching him fumble with the lock, cycling through a half-dozen keys—all very distinct in shape and color—until he finally found the right one. This can’t be his building, she’d thought. But before she could get her wits about her and come up with a reason to leave, he’d opened the door and was leading her inside. She’d calmed herself by reconciling the name across the front of the building with the name he’d given her on the highway.
SWIFT CONSIGNMENT AUCTION
. Hershel Swift. But then anyone can pretend to be someone else.

She went to the only window in the apartment, a small one in the bathroom, and peered down at her car. A utility light cast a grainy yellow hue across the gravel lot, but the car was sheltered and out of view from the highway. The building sat alone on the road and was enveloped by a large filbert orchard on three sides. When she’d first seen the trees arching into rows of perfectly spaced tunnels, she’d marveled at its vastness: a virtual ocean of trees. It seemed to go on for miles. Now, in the dark, the place felt like the very edge of the world. What lay beyond it? How far was the next house from here? Could someone slip through the trees below and get to her? Would anyone hear her if she screamed?

The rain had dampened her clothes and she wanted the blanket in her car, but what might lurk in that orchard worried her too much for her to go after it. She returned to the sofa, where she pulled her legs up under her and wrapped her coat tightly around her shoulders, shivering.

After an hour or so, she got up to warm herself by walking around the room. Her toes felt nearly numb and her limbs were stiff. She checked the lock on the door again, chewing her lower lip at the thought of how easy it would be for someone to break in. So she shoved the dinette against it, imagining that it would give her time to find a weapon, or squeeze through the bathroom window. She thought of the two-story drop and the gravel below.