Gravity Box and Other Spaces (2 page)

“Not yet.”

Sheriff Edmunds' mouth twisted. “Well, you better. You tell Mr. Ginter here?”

“He knows.”

“Well, all right.”

“Excuse me, Sheriff,” Egan interrupted. “I saw a house on fire across the road.”

“Menlow's,” Sheriff Edmunds said. “Burned to the ground.”

“Was anybody—?”

“Frank Menlow. His boy got out, but we couldn't do nothin' for Frank.”

“Oh. Sorry. I, uh—” Egan wanted to walk away, feeling oddly embarrassed about having asked.

Suddenly Sheriff Edmunds stabbed a finger toward Brice. “Find her, Brice. Don't need more trouble.” He nodded toward Egan. “Good talkin' to you, Mr. Ginter. Maybe I'll see you in town.”

Egan only nodded in return and watched the sheriff fold himself back into his car and back down the hill. When Egan turned to say something to Brice, the man was gone.

“Christ,” he muttered. “Deliverance People.” He glanced skyward. “Thanks, Curt.”

The next morning, Egan found an enormous steel urn under the sink in the compact kitchen and made a full pot of coffee, then started cleaning. This became his routine for the next several days, during which he battled spider webs, destroyed mouse nests, swept out crickets, and swiped away layers of dust. The outside world receded, and he began to appreciate Carl's insistence that he come out here. He was even thankful the place didn't have a phone.

“I draw the line at doing windows,” he announced the morning he knew that the place was finally clean enough.
He poured a cup of coffee and went out to sit on the front porch in one of the rickety Adirondack chairs.

It was quiet. There was only the sound of rustling trees. The air was cool and pleasant. He waited and stared into the patternless forest around him.

He fidgeted. He shifted position. He cleared his throat and tapped a complex rhythm on the arm of the chair. Nothing worked to calm a stirring restlessness. Within minutes everything he wanted to forget about the city, his family, Clair, and the complications of his life filled his mind.

For the last three weeks, movement had worked to distract him: going from room to room, cleaning and straightening, or driving aimlessly gave his problems an impossible target to hit. The idea of coming all the way out into the hinterlands, “the Boonies” as Curt called it, seemed likely to leave those nearly sentient problems confused, as if his sudden absence might cause them to find someone else to pester and free him from their gnawing attention. Unfortunately, reality had other plans.

He gulped the last of his coffee and strode with pronounced exaggeration through the house to refill his mug. He looked out the kitchen window and considered chopping up some fire wood. A few logs lay near a broad stump and a double-headed axe rested just inside the back door, but he had never cut wood before, and the woodpile was already pretty substantial.

“Hell with it,” he muttered as he grabbed his jacket and headed to his Cherokee. Without giving what he was doing much thought, he headed down the blacktop and headed down the road to town. He passed the ruins of the farmhouse, now just a charred ugly ruin in the midst of the other farm buildings that stood around it like mourners.
Menlow
, Egan thought. It felt odd knowing the name of the man who had died there, as if he were intruding.

Something caught his eye. He slowed down to get a better look. There was movement. Yes, there it was again. Someone had just come out behind one of the buildings, moving with care through the debris. He seemed to be searching for something. He cradled a shotgun in his left arm while shoving aside blackened boards and sections of burnt wall with his right. There was an intensity about him, a singular purpose that seemed to drive him through the wreckage. Egan drove past. He couldn't shake the feeling that there was something familiar about the man. He kept turning it over in his mind until he grabbed the right memory. It was that man who had lost his wife. It was Brice. Not knowing really what to make of it but happy to have solved the small riddle, he sped past and hurried on to Saletcroix.

He parked between two pickups across the road from The Pumphandle and made his way inside.

“It's not rainin',” the bartender said, grinning at him.

Egan stared at her for a moment before he remembered: rain check. “But I'm thirsty,” Egan said, smiling. “What do you have on tap?”

She nodded and drew him a glass. “Only got one kind. Road washed out the other day. My delivery couldn't get through.”

“As long as it isn't light.”

“Never.”

He took a long pull and set the glass down. “I'm in luck. My favorite.”

“No matter what it is, I expect.”

He laughed. “I'm Egan. Egan Ginter.”

“And you're stayin' at Curt Albright's place for a bit. I'm Bert.” She must have noticed something in his expression because she continued, “Short for Roberta.”

“Hey, Bert's fine with me. Um, did you say the road washed out? It hasn't rained since I've been here.”

“Other side of the ridge. We thought it might send us some, but it stalled at the crest and poured on the next county. It ain't rained here since, well, in nearly eight weeks.”

“Oh. I thought it looked dry.”

“This one's been a bad spell. You hungry, Egan? I make a good cheeseburger.”

“I wasn't until you mentioned it.”

He watched her walk away again. This time she wore a pair of painter's pants that hung loose from her waist, but Egan still enjoyed it, his imagination supplying detail.

“Did I hear Bert say you was stayin' out to Albright's?”

Egan turned towards the voice. Four men crammed into the center booth gazed at him from beneath their hats, beer bottles and glasses scattered over the table between them. As far as Egan could remember, they were a different bunch than those who had been here that first day.

“Yes, I am.”

The one on the left, on the end, nodded. “Did you see Menlow's burn down?”

His question caused an uneasy stir in Egan's gut. “I drove by what's left on my way here. There wasn't much.”

“You didn't see nobody around didn't belong there?”

“Hal,” one of the others said. “Drop it, why don't you? Lookin' for trouble won't solve nothin'.”

“Keep your opinion to yourself,” Hal growled and looked back at Egan. “Did you?”

“How would I know? I'm new here.”

Hal continued to stare at him for a time, and then he took a long drink from his bottle.

“The sheriff told me someone survived.” Egan didn't know why he was trying to keep the conversation going.

Hal nodded. “Frank's boy. He's stayin' with me.”

“You're a relative?”

“Frank was my brother.”

“Oh. My condolences. Does anyone know what started the fire?”

Hal grunted. “Brice Miller's bitch wife.”

“You got no proof of that, Hal,” one of the others said.

“How much you need? She runs off. Reverend Cady shoots hisself. Drucker's prize bull gores itself on a combine, and my brother's dead. It ain't rained since she took off, and every damn one of you's been havin' one thing or another bust or go wrong and don't you say otherwise. You know it's been like that.”

Egan stared at the man trying to make sense of what he was saying. He recognized the words, but their meaning was lost on him, as if he were watching a foreign movie and the subtitles were wrong.

“Wait,” he said. “Excuse me. Your local minister shot himself?”

The man in the right-hand corner made an impatient gesture. “Cady was a crackpot. All that talk about organizin' principles and animistic chaos. I'm surprised he hadn't done it long before now.”

“A crackpot you listened to, Sam,” another said, and they all laughed. “Hell, I couldn't of repeated all that stuff if you'd paid me.”

“It was entertainin',” Sam admitted. “But he was always a bit tetched. Can't blame the inevitable on Esther Miller. And as for Drucker's bull, the damn fool shoulda
knew better than to let it run loose in the same field. Damn thing was special, but it was still just a stupid animal.”

“And Frank?” Hal challenged.

Sam looked down at his glass. “Well.”

“And all the other stuff?”

“Coincidence.”

“My ass, ‘coincidence'.”

“Is everyone looking for this guy's wife?” Egan asked.

The men all nodded. “‘Bout seven weeks now, ain't it?” Sam asked.

“Seven weeks,” Egan said, chuckling. “Anyone stop to think she's left the area?”

“No,” Hal said. “She ain't gone. She's still lookin' for a ride out. That's what she wanted with Frank. She's got to have a ride out.”

Egan suppressed another laugh. The expressions they all wore were grim, perfectly serious, as if contemplating an unpleasant truth and hoping someone would change the subject.

“Here you go, Egan,” Bert said behind him, setting a plate down on the bar. He turned, and she winked at him. “Made this with my special sauce.”

Egan was happy to turn away from the conversation. The food smelled wonderful. “I'm honored.”

“You may well be.”

He finished his cheeseburger, then ordered another, and chased them with more beers. Egan knew how to nurse his drinks to make it look as if he was having too much, but he rarely lost control to the point of inebriation. He stayed and talked with Bert. They laughed, and he stayed longer, almost till full night. She joked that he should not drive after so many beers and since she did not want to drive all the way out to Curt's A-frame he would have to come home with her. He agreed with little
coaxing. He did wonder, though, how the evening might progress.

He never remembered the course of his seductions. He could not explain later how any of them happened. At best, he sensed the point at which a line was crossed and the rest became inevitable. The whole process seemed so automatic, so out of his hands, that he went through periods of guilt and withdrawal. But the shame and self-reproach never lasted long and soon enough the cycle started again. One of his friends, when Egan had tried to express his dismay over his apparent “gift” for seduction, told him that he listened well and people found that very attractive.

“You're kidding,” he had responded.

“No, no. Think about it. Don't you find it very appealing when someone pays complete attention to what you're saying, as if every word meant something?”

He could see that, certainly, but not why it had to always go so wrong or why he seemed so helpless to stop the process, even here, in the back of beyond, as if fate kept putting him in the path of women he could neither leave alone or refuse.

It was a short trip down a street which Egan had completely overlooked during his first drive through the town to Bert's four-room house. The street opened between two of the buildings on the far side of the road and looked like a narrow driveway to a rear parking lot, but small houses, drawn back from the street, lined both sides of the incline. Bert pulled into the grassy yard of one a quarter-mile from the tavern. A single lamp glowed in the front window.

He hesitated on the diminutive concrete slab that acted as a porch. Bert bent forward slightly to unlock the door. Egan wondered how upset she might be if he begged
off and went home. She stepped inside and flipped a switch. He hesitated, but then let himself enter her living room.

“Make yourself to home,” she said. “I'll put on coffee. Be right back.” Bert disappeared into the back regions of the house. A few moments later he heard water running.

The living room contained a pair of loveseats, a recliner, and a stereo system that surprised him. The rack of CDs surprised him even more, containing a mostly classical selection. He chided himself for making assumptions, remembering vividly a lecture from a former lover about that (“When you assume, you make an ass out of you and an ass out of me”) and sat down on the loveseat facing the hallway.

“So, Egan Ginter,” she said, coming back in. She had pulled her shirt out of her pants. “Are you married?”

Away from the deceptive dimness of the tavern Egan saw that she was older than he had first thought. It didn't bother him, though. What did was the fading bruise on the left side of her face, just below eye level.

He laughed. “No, Mrs. McCutcheon, I am not.”

“Touché. I forgot about her askin'. Well, fair is fair. You get to ask me a direct question.”

“Okay. If I think of one, I'll ask.”

“Then I'll take another turn. How come you're not?”

“Married? I can't—” He stopped and studied her more closely. Sarcasm would end the evening immediately, he realized, which might not be a bad thing. But it would hurt her. Maybe not badly, but Egan did not want to hurt her at all.

Then why'd you let her bring you here?

Because it was easy
, he answered himself.

Easier than going home alone and because refusing would have hurt her, too, though probably much less than
anything that he might say or do now. He could never work out how to choose between the lesser of two evils, so he followed events and hoped things worked out.

And ended up hurting everyone—

“Sorry,” Bert said. “Didn't mean to hit a nerve.”

“No, it's—I was going to say I'm not married because I never found the right person.”

“But—?”

“But the truth is I always find the right person. I just don't know what to do next.”

Bert frowned. “I don't follow.”

“Neither do I.”

“You've never asked anyone to marry you?”

“It—no. And, they've never asked me, either. It's like we meet and everything goes along just right, and things are perfect, couldn't get any better. Just at the point where I should say or do something to make it last, somehow it slides by and fades away. I never know.”