Just North of Nowhere (9 page)

“Yep,” Bunch said.

“Okay, then Bunch,” Vinnie had said. His leathers creaked some more. “A word to the wise is enough, huh?” Vinnie made a gun with his finger and clicked his tongue.

“'Betcha...” Bunch said.

“Okay, then. Getchya later,” he said. Cop boots sucked muck as Vinnie hauled his fat up the bank to the road and into the prowler, scrapping his feet in the spalls by the roadside.

“Hey there, Vinnie,” Bunch called. He was awake by then. “Say, you don't figure you're gonna want any more work done on that engine, now, do you? I mean soon? She sounded like she picked up kind of a cough, there you know...”

Vinnie winked down from behind the wheel, and shot Bunch with his finger again. “Later,” he said. The prowler growled to life smooth as snot, and purred back toward town.

“Guess not,” Bunch said.

Then it hit him.
Vinnie! Vinnie Erikson, Bluffton born and raised, comes out on a chilly morning, because that Italian woman complains.
“Complains about me!” he wondered aloud. “Says I’m peeking her, and Vinnie believes her!” His mind started in:
Peeking! Peeking her? Peeking her what? Peeking when? When she's getting up for one of her three, four baths a day? Peeking when she's going to bed or getting up and it still dark, maybe, or when she's walking around by candle, nights, barefoot everywhere, walking in that thin blue slip she wears—the pale one with the little rip down the side under her right arm, there...?

...He touched himself where, thinking about it...

He looked at the day. Hardly sunup and he was halfway started.

Then he thought:
folks worried I'm getting a little nuts, are they!
Then he thought aloud, “...well piss and hell, maybe it's time to go on and get indoors, then, okay?!” Maybe he
was
a little off. Okay?

Okay, he'd head to town. He’d find a place! Put up with all of it for a while. He had before, winters. Shoes and other clothes, his own stink coming out of his shirt holes and pants. He'd find somebody who'd put up with him.

By the time he climbed to the roadway, he was thinking deeper. Folks wanted money for rooms nowadays. He didn't have any of that, didn't want any. He'd have to find a place that would want to be shared.

That was first.

He'd also have to put up with people getting him started. “Hey Bunch,” Ivan down by the Wagon Wheel might say some night, sounding like he cared about the answer—Bunch could hear it now! “Say, Bunch? What’re your thoughts about that new stop sign, the County put up there, down by Three-Way?” Ivan'd wink at Karl Dorbler, down the far end of the bar. “What you got to say about that, huh Bunch?”

Karl would hang over his beer and suck salt off a pretzel rod. Wouldn't say anything.

Bunch wouldn't want to, but he'd do it anyway. He'd look Ivan right between his fat-sunk eyes and start up.

Started, Bunch might go for a bit, or might end like. That! Starting, he never could tell, but Bunch did not like stop signs. Stop signs and a bunch of other things got him going, going good!

He'd have to put up with that in town.

Slow days, taking things in, keeping track, Bunch took maybe fifteen minutes to walk to town.

That morning, his legs were dungaree pistons and he noticed nothing. Five minutes, and he was past where Slaughterhouse Way peeled off Old County H at the “BLUFFTON – Pop 671,” sign. Moving fast and still thinking.

Maybe he
was
peeping the Italian lady. May be. Before he thought too much about it, he'd passed the stockpens. He was thinking about bare feet, her bare feet, candles, hers, her light blue slip, torn, showing nutbrown flesh under her arm...there...

...He scratched himself where...

He could see things in his head, walking.

Then there she was.

As always, since the Italian lady had shown up, the power lines running by the river along Slaughterhouse Way, bellied down full of fat black birds. The birds just sat and waited.

The woman sat on her stoop. A bandanna wrapped her head and a tea cup, a dainty thing, sat by her on the busted cement step. A broom leaned against her thigh.

“You are an irritation,” she said.

One of the blackbirds crapped a big one; flopped, PLOP, on the roadway by Bunch's bare foot.

“Morning,” Bunch said.

“A waste,” she said.

“Cripes,” he yelled at a second crapping bird.

“You squander the bicycle I gave,” she said.

Huh, he thought. “You gave?” he said.

She sipped from her cup, “I gave. You wasted. I took.”

“My bike?” he said. “You took it?”

She spat on the ground, “A waste you are! Pedaling up, down. Making noise. Frighting people!”

“You what?” he asked. It was still sinking in. “You? You dropped her down in the mud by my place?” Bunch said.

She nodded. “Payment. Making my old Saab run that night I arrived stalled in the rain and thunder!”

“Huh! Wasn't no terrorist lost it, then?”

“What?” she said.

“I thought a terrorist lost it off the roadway, you know, taking a leak...”

“No tourist,” she said. “I. I owed. I paid...”

“Cripes. What. . .”

“Now I took away. I choose...”

“Cripes. What for?” he asked.

She stared down her nose. “Because you live like a troll!” She rolled the word and dragged it. “A thing! A Norwegian's fantasy,” she said. “Fix yourself!” She turned her head and sipped from her cup. “Fix yourself,” she muttered into the delicate china hollow.

Bunch was having a hard time. He stared at the woman. He looked at the ground, then at the wires, overhead, making sure about those damn black birds...

“Now, wait,” he said at last, working it out in his head. “I earned the damn thing, is what you're saying? That bike
and
the radio, for crineoutloud...”

At the mention of the radio she hissed like a snake! “That radio! Oh, that damned radio!” She hissed a long sip from her teacup. “Bah! Never mind. Never mind.”

“What,” he yelled.

“I’ll not speak,” she said.

“Speak what?”

“No. I'm inscrutable,” she said. Then in a half second, “Think of me that way, then! I am just a strangeness!”

“Huh,” Bunch said.

“Enigmatic. Mysterious!” she said, and drained the cup.

He stared.

“I gave that bike so you could work effectively. So you might improve yourself. 'Give a man a fish, he eats...teach him to be a fisherman...? You know the story? Yes.”

“What?”

“I gave more value than you earned that night, helping my Saab automobile. And you? You drive up and down, up and down, that radio blares you like a buffoon...you jump, make eyes to fright people. You are a child with a toy, you see?”

“See?” Bunch said. “See? You don't know,” Bunch said. He always started slow. “You think you know?”

“I...” she started.

“You don't know what I do, woman!” He was starting up. “I got a job of work in this town.” He shook his head, looking at the ground. He didn't know where to start.

He started with the Indians. “My job of work in this town! See? There's war going on, down past my place, there, at Papoose Creek. Them old Indians? The dead ones from a long time ago? They whoop every night, now, winter's coming. Who knows if they're gonna get up to something, something I don't know what...and I have been watching for one hell of a long time, woman, don't you think I haven't...that's my job, you know, and that old place, that old peeky-boo place down across the river at the bridge, there! Who knows about that?! Huh? Damn old house shows up and hangs around for months now, maybe nine, I don't know! Go reckon that, why don't you? And things. Things you know nothing about, being an Italian lady and damn near a terrorist from some city not from here who tries sneaking into town in the middle of the thunder and stalls that CAR of yours—and who knows what YOU are?—and when I come and by God get you going and tell you NOT to let Einar at the good service rob you—and you let him rob you anyway—THEN turn around and sell him that pretty good car—even though it's a foreign piece of crap—and let him have it for next to nothing, you know, then you move in here, buy a place, and think you're, for crineoutloud, part of the town because you
own
a bust-down damn house by the river—them big black birds always hanging over, crapping on the road...”

Bunch dodged sideways as one did just that. He didn't miss a beat.

“...Who knows what the hell THAT means, them birds, and because you have pretty Italian ways about you and walk up and down giving Vinnie Erikson eyes, giving him that woman smell you got—and don't you think half the men in the town haven't noticed that—yeah, even the Sons of Norway, don't think THEY aren't talking about you—don't you think half the men, okay ALL the men in town except a couple, have thoughts about your bare feet and that blue thing you wear, nights, with the torn place here, you know what I mean, here?” He pointed to himself under his arm where... “And because you got that streak of white hair above your eye there, you think because you're some kind of mystery...”

“The bicycle is by the little house.” She said it quiet but loud enough.

Just started, Bunch stopped! Like-that.

“Huh?”

“I placed the bicycle by the porch of the little house.”

Bunch cocked his head. His eyes opened wide.

“The small place across the water from the bridge. That little darling place.”

“Cripes,” Bunch said.

“No one lives there. I checked. There is no deed. Nothing is registered. I put the bike there. Days ago! I thought you would see it, you see? That you would go take it.” She made a clenched fist at him. “I thought you would get the idea, when over there, perhaps, to go in, to look at it, to get the idea to fix that little place. To make it a nice place. You fix other places! I thought that you would perhaps like to live there, make a respectable home and not sleep under a bridge.”

Thunder shook in his head.

The Italian lady slowed. “I thought that you would, well, make yourself a decency...” She stopped. “What?” she said staring at the thundercloud in him. “What?”

“You went over there? You crossed? You took my bike to the house across the creek?”

“I did,” she looked down her nose at Bunch. Her nose holes flared. “And put it by the porch.”

“Cripes,” Bunch said. “Cripes,” he shouted. The birds flapped. “Aw, Cripes,” he yelled. “You plain ignorant woman, don't you know you never trust a house as wanders!”

Her mouth paused.

A stock truck roared between Bunch and Cristobel. The black birds took flight in a rush of heavy feathers and falling shit.

Bunch was full out running by the time it passed. “Cripes, crimminie, and cripes!” he yelled as he ran among the line of cars that had tailed the slow-moving truck with its load of cow bellow and stink. “Aw, cripes my Goddamned mighty, woman. You don't know what you're doing!”

Worse than her not knowing, Bunch realized on the run,
he
didn’t know!

Fast as he could, he didn't care what, he ran. Three minutes and he was home.

The little house was there, its bare ass-end tucked back among the fall skeletons of the forest.

No bike. Not in front, not on the porch. Wherever Cristobel had put it, the damn thing was gone. The shallows, where the Rolling River and Papoose Creek flowed together, ran quietly with hardly a ripple. Dragonflies and damsels buzzed in the sun. Front to back along the side of the house, man-tall flowers stood like orange blooded troopers, stiff-backed, green stemmed.

They were new. These Fall bloomers hadn't been there a day ago, not last night, not this damn morning, for crineoutloud! Now, they looked like they'd been there all season, like they'd stay until the snow wrestled and downed them.

Bunch pictured a passel of out-of-towners – heard them in his head – he imagined them stopped on the trail. There they were: looking across the shallows, all girly about the pretty, “Oh, the flowers, oh the color, oh, the smell!” “Want to pick one?” “Oh, sure!” “Think anyone'll mind?” “Oh no, they’re wild!”

In Bunch's head, the city people waded, tip-toe, across. They wandered among the tall bright blossoms, bent to touch their faces to them, to gather the pretty things. He imagined them stepping onto the porch, just curious, just a little...

A growl scratched the back of Bunch's throat. He'd hoot them the hell off! Chase them from his piece of the bank. His, not that damn house's! He heard Karl down at the Wurst Haus, “Can't mind Bunch! Ought charge for him, local color, ha, ha!”

Bunch leaned over the bridge rail, looking for real now.

Just a one-room stilt-shack standing a foot off-ground on stumpy bowlegs. No cellar, no foundation. Bunch knew built places, knew the insides and outs of places, knew places like Doc Dog knew cow guts and cat balls.

Bunch squinted. The place looked one way, but was another. Way another! Today, the porch was a froze-open yawn, the door hanging open, lazy. An edge of light spilled across the shade of the buckled red cedar porch floor. Not warm firelight, but light thin and fuzzy, like winter sun on morning ice. The cold light made the old deckboard frosty red.