How the Hula Girl Sings (22 page)

“Makes you sound like you’re a gas station attendant all right. Could have been a rocket scientist or lawyer with a name like Ervis, I bet.”

“It might have all been a little different then.”

The dull white moon came up and hung right over our heads. It made me wonder where my Charlene was. Riding on some bus, all alone, somewhere along some highway right now, somewhere close, somewhere far away. Nestled between some elderly lady and an overweight traveling salesman, she was safe at least. I looked up and watched Junior sorting through the letters, mumbling little words to himself. He began the next word, starting with an
F
, as a light flashed upon us.

A car passed down the road, shining its headlights through the dark. Then it stopped. It stopped and slowly began to back up. Junior dropped the bag of silent words and hurried down the ladder, panicked.

“I’m scared, Luce. I’m scared as hell.”

“I’m scared, too, pal.”

“Whatever happens, Luce, I want you to know you’re the best friend I ever had.”

The car, a Chevy, turned around in the middle of the road and began to slowly head our way. I looked at Junior, then whispered, “OK, pal, start running.” I held my breath and started off, my feet hitting the dirt as fast as they could. I heard Junior behind me crying, but I never stopped to turn around and look.

tonight

We hurried down the side of the road, sneaking along the culvert to the woods, where we waited by the river, doing our best to catch our breath.

Everything was still and all the stars in the heavens above began to spin around, pinning us right down in place. Some mockingbirds chirped some quiet regretful tunes, flickering their wings in the dark. Tiny white insects darted on by, shimmering like felled constellations. We could hear strange voices and saw the flash of headlights just beyond the edge of the heavy green trees. We crept to the small gray boathouse, the same one I had first been to with Charlene, and there I found the rowboat.

“We can head down river awhile, then cut back to town,” I said. Junior hauled the small boat in his arms, placing it in the trembling water. We climbed inside, holding our breath as the river immediately pulled us along.

There was a warm-eyed fawn resting its little brown eyes over the river’s edge. It disappeared right back into the dark as soon as the rowboat approached. Beneath us in the murky depths, a twelve-point buck lay still and lit up by a thousand stars stuck in its antlers. Everything turned dark and strange. A spooky old hoot owl crooned and muffled up its breast as we swung on past, crashing into thick green branches and cattails, drifting farther and farther away, deeper and deeper downstream. We were trapped. Trapped beneath all of creation, beneath all the things that had judged us and our sins and all the strange and horrible things we’d already seen and done.

We spun on down that river, plummeting along, crashing into reeds and upturned rocks, Junior silent, his head rolling heavily on his big shoulders.

“Perdition
,” Junior whispered. “We’re heading straight down.”

I shook my head.

“We’re heading straight down to darkness,” Junior whimpered. “Straight to the Devil hisself.”

I could hear things chattering and whispering out in the dark as the rowboat caught hold of a current and began to spin straight into a gruesome patch of gray-silver rocks. The boat pounded hard against the slate, loosening its boards along the bow. Then it all broke loose. The boat began to fall apart right under our weight.

“We’re doomed,” Junior cried. “Doomed to an eternity in hopeless hell.” Water began to fill up the boat around Junior’s feet. His hefty weight was pulling us right on down.

“Hush up now,” I mumbled. “Just be still.” The boat was sinking. The cold gray water began to rise up to my chest as I kicked free. I dug one arm under Junior’s neck and pulled us both out of the boat, just its nose rising out of the wake, still drifting, floating off and away down the river and straight into the dark of the night. Junior was as heavy as a tombstone. He felt like he was made of stiff and solid rocks. I pulled and breathed hard with all my guts and finally towed him up into the high mass of thin yellow grass.

I lay there in that cold water for a long time. I lay there on the bank the rest of the night until I felt the first rays of sunlight beam down upon my face.

Then I opened my eyes.

Then I pulled myself up on the grass all the way. I looked down to see if Junior was awake. He stared back at me with his big eyes and flopped beside me on the bank. He dropped his face in the dirt and began crying, digging his big fingers in the mud.

“Get up,” I whispered, wiping my mouth. “Come on now, get up.”

“I can’t,” he muttered, keeping his face against the ground. “I can’t go on no more.”

“Listen to me, Junior. You’re gonna get the hell up and we’re gonna tread back into town and down to the bus depot and get out of here all right. Now get up, man. Get up right now so we can leave once and for all.”

“No,” he mumbled. “You go on. Just leave me. Leave me here so they can finish me off.”

I grabbed hold of the back of his shirt and shook him hard.

“Get up!!” I shouted. “Right now!! Get up and move!!” I kept tugging on his shirt and his big head, pulling him up. He struggled to his feet and wiped some of the dirt off his chin and leaned against me, still crying, still muttering to himself.

“Now we’re gonna walk, you hear? We’re gonna walk right to the bus depot and get the hell out, OK?”

He nodded once and we started walking, edging along the woods down a thin brown path. We were both silent. Junior’s eyes were all gray. He looked strangely peaceful, peaceful and quiet and accepting as all hell. My own face was a twisted-up portrait of rage. My bad eye had swelled up again. We tracked back toward La Harpie through the woods, cutting across some farms to avoid being seen. The sun was up and reaching its height, and right from town I could hear church bells beginning to ring. Everything under my feet was dull and brown and dirty. Junior’s face was still calm. He walked beside me, staring straight ahead, silent as ever, watching the horizon as it grew from behind rows and rows of stiff yellow corn. We made it out to La Harpie Road, about a half-mile from town, a half-mile from the bus, and then in the middle of someone’s cornfield, still as could be in that morning light, Junior stopped and stared down at his hands like he had just taken the last step he might ever take.

“Wait,” he mumbled. “Oh, Jesus, just wait.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“I need to go back. I need to go to the hotel.” “The hotel? What the hell are you talking about?”

His big round face shined with grease.

“I need that photograph. I need to get it back.”

“Photograph?”

“My photograph.”

“Dammit, Junior. You go back there, those men are going to kill you. It’s just a goddamn picture. You have to let it go.”

“I can’t. I can’t.”

His big blue eyes shined deeply.

“Jesus, pal, can’t you get another goddamn picture somewhere else?”

“No,” he muttered. “This is the only one. The only one.”

“Jesus.” I shook my head.

“She’s dead, Luce. Dead and gone.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t. She’s dead. By my own hand. I sent her down a river on a raft.”

“Christ,” I whispered. I felt like I was about to vomit. The sun began to spin above my head. Everything else faded to red.

“She was fourteen years old and got pregnant from the man down the road. He had a wife and two kids and she kept being pregnant a secret. I did what I thought would save her.”

“Christ Jesus. Jesus.”

“I put her out of reach. I took those two lives to keep her pure. Now I only got one to give back to her.”

“No, no, Junior. Don’t think like that. We have to leave town. Right now. We can’t go back.”

“That’s all I have left. That’s the only sign that she ever was. That photograph. I need to go get it and then I’ll meet you at the bus depot.”

“Junior, don’t. Junior, no!!” But he was already down the road, limping along. I watched his thick form cross the road into town and disappear behind a line of trees. I stood there for a minute more. I don’t know. I guess I was waiting for him to turn around, to turn back, but he didn’t. He just disappeared right behind those thick green elm trees and faded right away.

I turned and began walking fast. The sun was beginning to peak and it was hot as hell on my back. No one was around. No cars passed. Most of the entire town was at church right about now. My face felt sore. My teeth began to chatter again. I took a deep breath to try to keep myself together and took a step ahead.

I made it to the bus depot and bought myself a ticket from a man with a long thin mustache. He stared at me for a long moment as if considering whether he should sell me the ticket or not. I sat down and waited. Two minutes went by. Then something spurred me beneath my skin. I was sure Junior had run into trouble. I ran right out of the depot and back into town, right past the gray town hall and the little antique shop and the church steps and the bingo hall. I didn’t care who saw me now. I wanted to die or be sure Junior was OK. The church bells began to ring hard in my ears. They burned deep in my brain with solemn golden tones as I turned and headed toward the hotel.

I ran down the street holding my breath, sure any sound I made would tell the whole town where I was. I made it a block away from the hotel and looked around. The street was empty. I kept my breath in and walked quickly toward the hotel, toward the front porch. It was all quiet and faded white.

A shot rang out.

BOOM!!!

I ran the rest of the way down the block and pulled the front door open hard and ran down the hall to the front stairs and started up, feeling my whole head fill with blood. Someone passed me on the stairs, some tenant whose face was unlit and dark and headed on their way down. I was on the second-floor landing, then up on the third floor and down the hall, and then there it was, his open door, wide and parted, a kind of perfectly rectangular dark space. Less than a minute had gone by. Less than a minute had burned out. I stared at that blank open doorway. Some light poured on out. Some dust hung about, dancing like tiny angels in the wake. I ran right inside and caught sight of his big gray body gathered in a lump on his belly on the floor. His head laid right against the closet door. His sideburns looked thick and gray and covered in sweat. His big left hand was outstretched and reaching ahead. The other was draped beside his round white cheek.

There was his blood spread across the room. Cold and silent and still.

There were two small words left beside his chubby white face, spelled out in perfect red letters left by his tender white digits, still and perfect beside where his right hand was laid.

“to forgive”

That was it. All he could say. Written perfectly in his own blood. Written perfectly and left for no one to see.

It was all done. It was all gone.

There was a halo of maroon that rose from the back of his head. He had been shot with his back turned by some unknown man, a coward, a man who didn’t even have the courage to stare poor Junior in the face.

I was trembling. I was falling down. I was holding the wall to stand up as Old Lady St. Francis came running up the stairs. I began to back away and run down the stairs and out the door just as that old woman’s scream filled my ears.

I ran fast as I could down to the middle of town, following the church bells until I was standing on the chapel steps. I put my hand to the big gold handle and then stopped myself. I could hear the organist’s soft-keyed hymn and that town’s lowly golden song. Then the church went still. Everyone was quiet, listening to the words coming from the pulpit.

A good man,
I thought to myself, standing on the steps.
A very penitent man must have shot him in the head.

I turned from that church and walked on out and waited for a single shot to knock me out of my body and down the cold white stone steps of the chapel. But it never came. The organist’s hymn resumed, and the congregation all took voice in a low, sullen kind of tune, singing softly as I limped down the street, keeping my eyes nearly closed, still waiting, still waiting for that single shot to the back of my head. I made it all the way to the bus depot and sat there in a dirty blue seat. No one came after me.

G-U-I-L-T-Y

I carved that word in the blue plastic bus depot seat with my old room key so someone might see. When the bus pulled up, I took my seat on board and waited again. Everything seemed ready to fall apart. Everything seemed thin and frail and weak.

Then the bus door swung closed suddenly with a hush. And all at once, everything disappeared. There was no sound. There was no movement. There was nothing behind me now. There was only somewhere to go. Someplace to leave.

I settled into that empty red seat and stared out the window as the bus began to roll forward and the world rolled past.

Junior Breen was dead. It was written there in the lines upon my hands. Upon my own face. I leaned back in the seat. I laid my head against the window and began to cry.

There was no voice or word sent from him to see me off. But he was close. Everything I had ever held to me was now close. I began to cry some more and hold my face in my shirt-sleeve. It was covered with dirt and blood and mud. It was full of the heavy musk of water and sweat and dirt.

I cleared the tears out of my eyes and stared hard out the window.

Somewhere out there the truth was waiting. Somewhere out there, something had to be waiting for me. With my poor Charlene. It seemed like she was the only thing I could still imagine. The only thing I could still see as real.

Later, riding through the dark, crying to myself, alone on that bus, I thought about everything, about Charlene and the gas station and poor ol’ Junior and Clutch and Monte and L.B. and Old Lady St. Francis and all the other things I had tried to keep from myself. All the guilt and pity and shame that stretched out behind me dark as the road ahead. There was nothing out there but the blue-and-red-and-white spade-shaped sign that read “
Interstate 80”
and the low hum of the big silver wheels flying over the pavement, the quiet rumble of the engine and bus as it passed over another mile of blackness, slipping down along the thin yellow lines that divided the road from the twilight, and the night from the road below. There all alone I realized something. Maybe Charlene and I were already together. Maybe I was already beside her. There was the night right between us. It moved from me to her in silent black waves, whispering all the things I had been afraid to say. There was the darkness, and we had shared that together, too. Now there was nothing between us but space and time—space which fell silent under the quiet breath of the dark sky, and time that disappeared beneath the restraint of the black rubber wheels. There was nothing behind us now but the blackness in our dreams and nothing ahead of us either, not yet, there was only us and the hush of the cool blue night, playing on between us like a gentle little lullaby. It all made me wonder. It all made me think.