East of Denver (6 page)

A hand slammed against the windshield. I yelped. Dad laughed. Before I could slap the locks down, Clarissa McPhail climbed in. Back seat. The car sagged.

“I got a six-pack.” She passed bottles to Dad and me.

Dad took a sip from his beer and said, “This here's the good stuff.”

I said, “How long you think this'll last?”

“Half hour, maybe,” said Clarissa.

“That sounds about right,” said Dad.

“Too bad about the game,” I said.

“Yeah. Too fucking bad,” said Clarissa. She covered her mouth with her hand. “Sorry, Emmett.”

Dad took another sip. “Cuss all you want. I don't give a damn.” He said “damn” like it was the dirtiest word that ever came out of a human mouth.

“Softball's stupid,” said Clarissa. “Whyncha turn on some music?” She wedged herself between the front seats until she could reach the radio. She pushed buttons and twisted knobs. Only one station. Talk radio, and you couldn't hear a word due to all the lightning static.

“Middle of damn nowhere,” said Dad.

Clarissa twisted the switch off.

Lightning sent glowing capillaries across the sky. Before the sparks had faded, thunder snapped. The softball field lights blinked and turned black. It was dark now.

“You better hope there's no tornadoes,” said Clarissa. “We wouldn't be able to see one until it picked up this little car of yours.” She added, “I don't know why you drive this puss-mobile when your dad has a perfectly good pickup.”

“Tornadoes,” said Dad. “You can hear 'em from a mile away.”

“Better hope so,” said Clarissa.

We listened to the rain.

I heard something. I said, “Did you guys hear that?”

“Alls I hear is rain,” said Clarissa.

A whistling sound. Growing louder. Dad and Clarissa tipped their ears. We peered thru the windows, looking for a funnel cloud. All we saw was dark, distorted by the rain running down the glass.

Nobody spoke. The whistle grew louder, like a siren.

“It's a siren,” said Dad. He pointed out the back window toward the road. A red light grew, the siren shrieked. It passed, the pitch dropped.

“Fire truck,” said Clarissa.

All around us, headlights came on. Engines revved and pickups pulled out of their parking spaces to zip down the road behind the fire truck.

Clarissa slapped the back of my seat. “What are you waiting on, Poindexter?”

“I don't follow fire trucks.”

“Someone's house is on fire.”

“Don't you have a softball game to finish?”

“Not when lives are at stake. Let's go!”

I turned the key. We went. I thought I was driving fast, but it wasn't long before the last taillights had disappeared before us. I drove on, following Dad's finger, which took us off the highway and onto squishy dirt roads. He thought he knew where we were going and I didn't care where we went. Clarissa sat in the back seat and shivered in her tube top. I turned on the heat and said, “If you feel around, you'll find a blanket back there. Prolly wedged under the passenger seat.”

With much shifting about, Clarissa bent over and found the wool blanket I kept in my car because Mom always told me it could save my life.

She said, “It's kind of ratty.”

“It'll warm you up.”

I looked in the mirror. She put it over her shoulders. She seemed more decent that way. We drove on.

The rain moved east, taking the lightning with it. Except for some tatters of wind, the night became pleasant again.

“Tell me about airplanes,” I said.

“Not when we're looking for a fire.” She and Dad had their noses close to the windows, breathing steam, watching for the fire truck or a fire or a tornado. Anything.

“We're wasting gas,” I said.

“There it is,” said Dad.

CHAPTER 8

VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT

Lightning had struck the lonesomest cottonwood tree in the world and split off a branch, which landed crossways on the power lines. The wind was bouncing the branch on the wires. Every little gust made a quick electrical short and sent up puffs of sparks. The branch, with its wiggling leaves, was dark against the sparks.

I stopped the car and rolled down the window. We watched for a while. Wind hummed thru the power lines. Heat lightning flitted in the east.

The situation didn't seem terribly dangerous. But we reckoned we should do something; one of those sparks could fall into the pasture grass and set off a real burner.

We drove toward the nearest yard light, about a mile away. Ezra Rogers's house. Ezra was ninety-nine years old, the oldest person in Keaton. He was older than Keaton itself. When he walked, he leaned on a homemade cane. The flesh over his left eye sagged down low, with an ugly yellow eyeball peeking out underneath. He went to my mom's church. I'd seen that eye plenty. Ezra's first wife had died decades ago. His second wife, Mirabelle, had come to him via mail order. They'd been married for sixty years. He taught her to drive when she was eighty-six. Her first lesson ended with a car-shaped indentation in the Keaton State Bank. The bricks got replaced, but the outline was still there.

Peering thru the window, we could see that he and Mirabelle were watching TV. The volume was loud enough for us to understand the dialogue from outside.

Clarissa hit the door with her fist.

Ezra and Mirabelle continued watching their TV show.

“Why don't we just walk in?” I asked.

“Ezra keeps a shotgun,” said Clarissa. She hit the door again.

“Shotgun, my ass,” said Dad. He opened the door, cupped his hands around his mouth, and yelled, “Ezra!”

The old man spun around in his chair, stood up, and hovered toward us. He was dressed in a T-shirt and a baggy pair of underwear. He leaned on his cane all squinty-like and said, “You hungry?”

“That depends,” said Dad. “What's on the menu?”

Clarissa stepped forward and stamped on the floor. “Ezra, there's a fire!”

“A far?”

“A fire. Across the road and up a piece. Lightning hit a tree. There's a branch in the telephone lines and it's gonna start a grass fire and we need your phone.”

Ezra was skeptical. “Wasn't no lightning tonight. I felt the thunder. Wasn't a peep of no lightning.”

Dad took our side of the argument. “Say, Ezra, I'm pretty sure there was lightning. I mean.” He paused, trying to put together a sentence. We waited. “What they're saying. It's the truth.”

Ezra nodded. “If you say so, Emmett.”

Phone call made, we shouted good night to Ezra and Mirabelle and returned to the scene. The branch was smoldering now. Bits of glowing ash floated to the ground and made the moist grass smoke.

Ten minutes later, the fire truck arrived, followed by the caravan of pickups. The volunteer firemen stood under the tree and discussed the night's events. The original fire alarm, the one that had killed the softball game, had been a falsie.

After some mild debate, the volunteer firefighters concluded that they didn't want to mess with an electrical fire so they radioed Jimmy Young, the local representative of the Rural Electric Association.

As they waited for Jimmy to arrive, folks drank beers and discussed the time Troy Earhardt tipped up a section of sprinkler pipe to scare out a rabbit that had hidden inside. The rabbit wouldn't leave so Troy stood the pipe straight up and shook it. The pipe touched a power line and Troy died. He was a good kid. The whole thing was tragic.

His school record for the triple jump still stands.

Half an hour later, Jimmy Young arrived in his company truck. He looked like he'd just woke up. Thirty drunken softball enthusiasts watched as he extended a fiberglass pole, jiggled the wires, and let the branch fall to the earth. Without a word, he got back into his truck and drove away.

CHAPTER 9

BREAKING AND ENTERING

We were driving back to Keaton.

“Worth every penny,” said Dad.

“What's that?” said Clarissa.

“The fire department,” said Dad.

I said, “I'm not following you.”

Clarissa said, “They're volunteers, dummy. He made a joke.”

I turned to Clarissa. “Tell me about airplanes.”

“I wish we had some more beer.” She said, “Six beers between three people only makes you thirsty.”

“If I get more beer will you tell me about airplanes?”

I looked at her in the rearview mirror. She nodded.

Keaton doesn't have a liquor store so I made a detour to Dorsey.

Dee's Liquor was closed. We sat in the parking lot and watched fluorescent lights blink in the refrigerators.

“Why would a liquor store close on a Friday night?”

“In the summertime, it's always closed on Fridays,” said Clarissa. “It's her mobile day. Bring the booze to the people. Usually she's at the softball games. But since the games are rained out, she'll be down at the gravel pits. That's where the high school kids hang out nowadays. Later she'll make a run to the poker night at the Catholic Church.”

“Since when is there a Catholic Church out here?”

“There isn't. That's just what they call the Quonset hut on the old Bennett place.” Clarissa shrugged. “Whatever. The store's closed and we need something to drink.”

“Shit yes, we do,” said Dad. He looked at me and Clarissa to see if we heard him.

“Language, Pa.”

Clarissa sighed. Dad sighed.

I said, “You know what she oughta do? She ought to leave a key out so responsible people can go in and buy booze even when the store's closed. We're responsible people. I'd even tip her some.”

Clarissa said, “Leave a key out. Wouldn't that just be hilarious?” She got out of the car and tried the door of the liquor store. Locked. Then she lifted up the doormat. There was a key.

I rolled down the window and said, “Okay. Time to go home.”

She put the key in the door and turned it.

“Pa, tell her to knock it off.”

“Looks like she's got things under control.”

Clarissa looked left and right. No witnesses. She tiptoed inside, opened a fridge, and exited with a case of beer.

“You leave enough money?” I asked.

“I don't have anything on me.”

“Then you just committed larceny.”

She put the key in my hand. “You pay. Go on. It's fun. Kinda creepy in there with all those half-naked women looking at you from the walls.”

She was right. It was creepy. It didn't feel like I was committing a crime. I felt like I was snooping in someone else's bedroom. I was ready for Vaughn's mom to pop up from behind the counter with a shotgun and fill my belly full of rock salt. I walked very carefully. I opened my wallet. I didn't have to look—I knew I had eighteen dollars. I left it all on the counter and was about to walk out when a car pulled into the parking lot. The engine thumped loud, as if the muffler had rusted off. I hid quick behind a cardboard swimsuit model.

Talking. Laughter. Footsteps. The door to the liquor store opened. I saw high-tops and blue jeans. I heard a cooler open and close. A voice said, “That looks about right.” A hand slapped the counter. Footsteps out. Door closed. I squatted behind the swimsuit model until my knees went numb. The absolute worst thing in the whole world would be for someone to find me hiding like a chicken.

A hundred years later, the mystery car revved up and backed out of the parking lot with a friendly toot of the horn. I stayed put. Another hundred years later, there was a knock on the door. Laughter. The door opened. Clarissa said my name. I crawled out from behind the swimsuit model.

“There's my boy!”

She hugged me close. She seemed drunker than before.

I said, “What's the deal?”

“What's the deal?” she repeated.

“Who was that?”

“D.J. Beckman. You didn't recognize him?”

“I didn't look.”

“Surely you recognized his car. You don't need to see that thing to know it's him.”

“That was the Nova?”

“Yep, but uglier. Just like him.”

When D.J. Beckman was a sophomore, he bought a beat-up, shitty 1972 Nova for two hundred dollars that he'd most likely pinched from his parents. The car was fast and loud and cool. It was a muscle car, built right before anyone started giving a fuck about mileage or safety or anything. It was also one good-sized badger mound from busting into a hundred pieces.

He always said he was going to restore it to mint condition. He never did. Instead, it remained perpetually on its last legs. Apparently, for twenty years and counting.

I said, “Was he on to us?”

“I told him that me and your dad were on a date.”

She was still holding me. I shook out of her arms. “That's disgusting.”

She was hurt. “What'd you want me to tell him? That you were robbing Dee's Liquor?”

“You coulda come up with something better than that. Anyway I was
paying
Dee's Liquor.
You
robbed the place. If D.J. starts telling people you're dating my pa . . .” I didn't know what to say. There was nothing nice to say, that's for sure. “That was dumb.”

Clarissa stopped being happy. “He ain't gonna tell people me and your dad was on a date. In fact, I didn't tell him that me and your dad were on a date. I was messing with you. What I really told him was that we came up here—the three of us—to buy some beers but the store was closed. We were about to leave when you decided you had to take a shit. And I told him you were behind the building squatting. He wanted to go scare the you-know-what out of you, but I talked him out of it.

“Then he said, ‘If you want something to drink, you just need to use the key under the doormat. Everyone knows that.' Then he looked under the mat and didn't see the key. I thought he might suspect us of something but he didn't 'cause he's an idiot. He just tried the door, pulled it open, walked in, and got some beers and schnapps. I even saw him put money on the counter.”

She pointed to the counter, which had no money on it.

She frowned. “Maybe he didn't put any money on the counter. I couldn't really tell from outside.”

“Maybe he took the money
I
left on the counter.”

She said, “That seems likely.”

“We need to leave something.”

“Even though Vaughn's mom's a creep.”

I said, “Even though.”

“I ain't got anything, Shakes. You know that.”

“Everything I had is now in D.J. Beckman's pocket.”

“Let's just go,” said Clarissa.

“It ain't right.”

“You wanna see if the credit card machine's working?”

“You think?”

She grabbed my wrist and dragged me out the door. “You got no sense of sarcasm.”

Dad was in the car with an empty beer bottle in his hand. “Where's the party?”

I said, “Night's over.”

Clarissa said, “The night ain't nothin', Shakespeare.”

“It's not even night,” said Dad. I didn't correct him.

“Let's go see Vaughn Atkins,” said Clarissa. “He's all alone.”

I said, “No.”

“You said I was dumb,” said Clarissa.

“No.”

She dragged her finger under my chin. “We'll talk about airplanes.”

We went to Vaughn Atkins's house.

When we got there, Vaughn was lying on his bed watching a Kirk-era
Star Trek
episode on the TV. No sign of the wheelchair. He was still wearing his inside-out shirt and pajama pants. No tennis shoes. His legs looked straight.

He waved at us like nothing was wrong, like he hadn't fallen down a flight of steps a few hours ago.

I said, “You doing okay?”

He said, “Fine. Why?”

If he didn't bring it up, I wouldn't bring it up.

He said, “How was the game?”

Dad said, “Everybody lost.”

Laughter. We settled in.

Dad fell asleep on the beanbag almost instantly.

We watched TV, talked, and drank the beers we'd stolen from Vaughn's mom's store. During a commercial break, Clarissa asked Vaughn, “You sure your mom isn't gonna come home and start yelling at you?”

Vaughn shut off the TV. “Who cares? Anyway, nights like this, she never gets back before midnight.”

I said, “What's she doing, do you think?”

“Selling beer to minors, whoring around, skinning coyotes. What do I care? She's a grown-up. You figure out how that banker ripped your dad off yet?”

“Yeah, you figure that out yet?” asked Clarissa. “You figure out how Crutchfield ripped you off?”

I said, “I'm not really interested in the
how
of it. What I really want to know is why he thinks he's gonna get away with it. I'll get answers. He's going to meet with me. We were supposed to get together last Saturday, but he couldn't make it. Neal Koenig said he'll be back this next week. When I go in there, we'll get it all cleared up.”

Clarissa burped incredulously. “You're a sucker. Crutchfield was at the bank on Saturday. I don't work on Saturdays, but I know that airplane. He lands it on the road and taxis out back behind the bank. I drove by. I saw it parked there. If the airplane was there, then Crutchfield was there. If Crutchfield was there, then Neal was lying to you when he said he couldn't make it. You got lied to.” She made a face. “You need to figure out how to tell when people are fucking with you.”

“I need someone to empty my colostomy bag,” said Vaughn.

“We're trying to converse,” said Clarissa.

“One of you's gotta do it.”

“It ain't gonna be me,” said Clarissa, waving her finger and head back and forth in a sassy maneuver that could have only been picked up from daytime TV. “Let Shakespeare do it. He can't smell.”

I said, “Don't use my handicap as an excuse to make me do your third-world bullshit chores.”

Vaughn said, “If this bag of shit doesn't get off me, I'm gonna catch hepatitis. And which one of us is handicapped, again?” He glared at me.

I had dragged him up the stairs and watched him fall on his face. I should probably do anything he wanted for a very long time. “Fine,” I said. “Gimme.”

Vaughn reached under his shirt. He pulled out his fist and raised his middle finger. “You, my bard, are one gullible little bastard. Colostomy bag! I shit natural.”

He and Clarissa giggled. Dad snored.

Clarissa opened two more beers, handing one to Vaughn and tipping the other into her mouth. When her gulp was finished, she wiped her mouth with her forearm and said, “I feel like we're really connecting.”

“You've got that right,” said Vaughn.

Clarissa said, “I feel like we're on the same level. Like we're part of a kinship.” She gritted her teeth. “Like that.”

“Like a waterfall,” said Vaughn.

“You wanna know something about me?” said Clarissa. “A secret?” She had reached the confessional stage of drunkenness. I was not at that stage.

I said, “Only if it's intended to humiliate me.”

“Why you gotta say that? This is totally, totally, totally true. I want to tell you guys, both of you, 'cause you're my friends.”

“We're your friends, too, Clarissa,” said Vaughn. “Say anything you want. We're right with you.”

She took a breath. Then, solemnly, she said, “I have emetophobia.”

Vaughn and I were silent. Without opening his eyes, Dad said, “I never met a phobia I didn't like.” He resumed snoring.

“It means I'm afraid of vomit.”

“How
do
you survive?” asked Vaughn. He was not connecting with Clarissa quite as much now as he had been a moment ago.

Clarissa plowed on, oblivious to Vaughn's sarcasm. “That's not the point. Survival doesn't apply to this situation. The point is that the situation applies to why I'm an anorexic. That's my confession. I am Clarissa McPhail and I suffer from anorexia nervosa.”

Vaughn was fully not connecting with Clarissa now. “With all due respect—”

“Don't you even say it. I know what you want to say and it's crap. Just because I'm fat, you think I can't possibly have an eating disorder. You're wrong. I haven't had a bite in over a week. If I keep this up, I'll die. You're the only people who know. Listen to me. I wanted to be bulimic, but I couldn't because I'm afraid of vomiting. So I'm anorexic. I've stopped eating.”

“You aren't anorexic,” said Vaughn.

“Yes,” said Clarissa, “I am.”

“Why?” asked Vaughn.

“Because.” She spoke in a tiny voice. “Because sometimes I feel ugly.”

She was sitting on the edge of Vaughn's bed with her spandex bra and tight britches, hunched over, belly fat folded, hair messed up, a frown mushing up her face. Vaughn and I exchanged glances.

Vaughn looked her over. “You aren't ugly.”

“No, I am,” said Clarissa.

“I don't think you're ugly,” I said.

“I think you're purty,” said Vaughn.

I said, “You're downright attractive.”

“A real looker.”

“Cute.”

“Hot.”

“Sexy.”

“Beautiful.”

Clarissa was glowing. We were all connecting again. We were all on the same side.

“Hey, Vaughn,” she asked, “you got any of those famous brownies I keep hearing about?”

Vaughn reached into his pillowcase and pulled out two plastic bags full of brown goop.

I said, “You sure that's not your colostomy bag?”

Vaughn ignored me. “One bag contains hash brownies. One bag contains meth brownies.” He looked carefully at the bags. His eyes were crooked from the booze. “I can't remember which is which. Anybody wanna play guinea pig?” He pulled a brownie out and handed it toward me.