Lucky Strikes (14 page)

“How was the
business
?” she cried.

I'll give the child this much credit, she needed but the one look at my face to know there weren't no point inquiring further. And Earle, he didn't even look up. He was writing down state capitals for school, and it was taking the usual forever, his hand crawling cross the page.

“Holy God,” I said. “How long can it take you to write ‘Tallahassee'?”

“I'm slow and steady,” he said. “Like the tortoise. That's why I always win the race.”

“Can't be much of a race,” I said, “if you could win it.”

Was out of my mouth before I could call it back.

“Don't listen,” Janey whispered to him. “She's got her mean tongue on.”

“Shut up,” I said.

“We just gotta lay low till it wears itself out.”

“Know what, missy? You'd get a mean tongue, too, you walked in my shoes.”

“I ain't gonna walk in your shoes. I'm gonna get me a husband.”

“Well, good luck with that. You can't even cook.”

A little flush in her cheeks. “Ain't got nothing to cook
with
.”

By now, I was getting so hot I didn't trust myself, so I stalked on out. Hiram found me ten minutes later, in one of the Adirondack chairs by the store, my knees pressed hard to my chest.

“Okay if I join you?” he said.

“Free country.”

I don't know what made more cricks, Hiram setting down or the chair rising to meet him.

“Guess you and Dudley Blevins didn't exactly fly to the moon?”

“It was your goddamn fault,” I said.

“That so?”

“You're the one told me to treat him like an enemy. The second I did, it got ruined.”

Hiram frowned.

“So Sun Tzu wasn't exactly relevant to your situation?”

“Seems not.”

He was quiet a stretch.

“I'm sorry, Melia. I didn't know you had actual feelings for the boy.”

“I don't. I mean, I don't know.”

He fished in his pockets for a cig. “Bet you wish you had your mama here right now.”

“No more 'n usual,” I said. (Though, truth be told, I was feeling it particular just then.) “It's just boys is too much work.”

“I remember thinking the same about girls.”

“Ain't got time for that nonsense nohow. Harley Blevins is lowering his price again.”

Hiram tapped the cig, twice, against his wrist. “Trying to grind you down, I guess.”

“Must be working 'cause I'm feeling mighty ground.”

He struck a match against the chair, carried it to his cig. Held the first drag as long as he dared.

“You follow suit,” he said, “you make this Blevins character a happy man.”

“What other choice I got?”

“Stop playing in his yard. That bastard can keep slashing prices till the end of time 'cause he's got the pockets and the volume. You don't. So you figure out what
you've
got to sell.”

I pressed my palms over my eyes. “Lord, Hiram. I sell gas.”

“You're one of the best natural mechanics I've ever seen, Melia. No one else gets an engine up and running the way you do. What's more, you've got this
place
.”

“Big deal.”

“Why do you think those truckers come here every blessed day?”

“I dunno,” I said, turning my hands skyward. “Location?”

“Harley Blevins's nearest station is eight miles down the road. They could blow by this place without another thought, but they don't. They get something here they don't get from the Blevinses of the world.”

I set my hands in my lap. Give the station as hard a look as I could stomach. All I saw was the patched-up air hose and the gas pump that didn't ring no more when the gallons was ticked off and the outhouse door that wouldn't shut the whole way. And stains and pits and gouges that weren't never going away.

“Reckon they liked Mama,” I said.

“But they're still coming, aren't they? By the dozens.”

“If I got so many folks on my side, Hiram, then how come I ain't winning?”

“I'll answer that with another question. Would Harley Blevins go to this much trouble if you were losing?”

I set for a time, studying on that. I said, “We owe the First Bank of Virginia one hundred and thirty bucks by June the first.”

“That so?”

“I don't have a hundred and thirty bucks. And lest you got some rich relation you never told us about, you don't neither.”

“Not at present.”

“So maybe it don't even matter what the price of gas is tomorrow. Maybe nothing matters.”

“Do you know?” he said. “Now might just be the right time for Madame Ouspenskaya.”

 

Chapter

FOURTEEN

He didn't say another word about it, but next morning, he asked me where the Western Union office was, and Thursday afternoon, he took the truck over to Front Royal, and come back that evening with a stack of handbills.

“Janey and Earle, you two done your homework? All right, I want you to walk these into town. Stick 'em wherever they won't blow away. Best place is on the windshield of a parked car, right under the wiper, but if you can squeeze 'em under a doorway or against a window, that works, too. Oh, and anyone passes you by, you be sure to give 'em one. Along with your best smile, Janey. Yep,
that's
the one I mean.…”

“Hold on, now,” I said. “What exactly you planning to hand out here?”

“Oh,” he said, and handed me the bill right on top.

READS PALMS, TAROT, CRYSTAL BALL

OFFERS LOVE SPELLS, MONEY SPELLS, PROTECTION SPELLS

CARRIES MESSAGES FROM THE GREAT BEYOND!

5 CENTS PER VISION

Just below was a drawing of a gypsy lady. She had dangly earrings and a pair of heavy ol' lips and something on her chin that was either a beauty mark or a bullet hole. But mostly she had eyes, black as new tires, rising right off the paper.

“Who the hell is this?”

“That's the good madame herself.”

“You're telling me this old hag is coming to our station?”

“Sure she is.”

“She can't be for real.”

“Close enough.”

Those eyes was hard enough to cut through bone.

“Is this even what she looks like?”

“Close enough.”

“Well … where is she?”

“I've still got to fetch her. Say, can I have the truck Friday night?”

“Friday…”

“I'll have her back here by Saturday morning.”

It come flashing over me then. The image of that evil-looking lady sitting in my truck.

“I don't know, Hiram.”

“I'm telling you, the townsfolk will love it. The worse the economy gets, the more people seek guidance from above.”

“Ain't that what Pastor Goolsby's for?”

“Pastor Goolsby won't tell them how long they're going to live. Or carry messages from dead Aunt Sadie. Oh, but you missed the most important part of the deal.”

“Where?”

“Right there, at the bottom of the bill.”

Lubrication Special

Any car 98 cents

“Ouspenskaya's just the hook,” said Hiram. “You're the one who's gonna pull 'em in. Once they get a load of what you can do, they're ours.”

Was the peppiest I'd ever heard him talk.

“But this is just two cents less than we normally charge,” I said.

“Which is what makes it a special. Keep reading.”

“
FREE!
Inspect tires. Inflate tires. Check wheel alignment. Test brakes …
Hiram, we already do that stuff for free.”

“So what? People are always looking for a break. Oh, and I came up with a slogan, too. What do you think?”

If Your Car's PARCHED …

Bring It on by Brenda's Oasis!

“See, I chose the word
parched
because it makes a person think
desert
, doesn't it? Imagine now. You're dragging your sorry carcass over sand dunes. Sun beating down, no water in sight. Camels all dead. Lo and behold, out of nowhere comes an oasis. Not a mirage, either—the real thing. Praise the Lord.”

“They'll get all that from a single word?”

“Sure.”

I set the bill down on the dining table.

“Where'd you learn to think like that?”

“Oh.” He shrugged. “I used to write copy for J. Walter Thompson. Back in the day.”

Name could've been J. Venus Mars for all it meant to me.

“Listen, Hiram, our people ain't lawyers or bankers or Rotary wives. Our people is truckers and tourists.”

“God bless the truckers
and
the tourists, but they won't keep you afloat. You've got hours and hours every day where nobody's stopping by. This afternoon, I drove by three of Harley Blevins's stations. Pumps working around the clock. You wouldn't think it in the middle of a depression, but they're there,
everybody's
there. Farmers and coal men and schoolteachers. Bank clerks, stationmasters. They're going to Harley because they don't know about you.”

“And Madame Whatsherhoozit is gonna bring 'em?”

“She's going to start. The rest is up to us.”

I stared into those bottomless oil-black eyes. Then I glanced up at Janey and Earle.

“Well, what you waiting for?” I said. “Get moving!”

The bills all got put somewhere, and not another word was said on the subject of fortune-telling till after supper Friday when Hiram was climbing into the truck.

“Wait,” I said. “You haven't even told me where this crazy lady lives.”

“Washington,” he said.

“As in DC?”

He nodded.

“That's a far piece,” I said.

“Oh, it's not so bad. I've got a full tank.”

“It's dark out, though.”

“Fewer cars that way.”

“You sure you don't want Earle to go with you?”

“No, I'm good.”

“Well, okay.” I closed the door after him. “Just don't—drive in a ditch or get yourself killed.”

“I will do neither of those things. Tell me something,” he said.

“What?”

“When did you stop being an
uh
-melia?”

“Sorry…”

“On your birth certificate, it says
A
melia Hoyle.”

“Oh. Yeah. Got shortened.”

“Why?”

“I dunno. Mama always said I was in too much of a dang hurry to be dragging all those letters after me. Guess it was just easier to chop one off.”

Hiram nodded.

“Well,” he said, “it appears I have sufficient time in my day for extraneous letters. So if it's all the same to you, I'll tack it back on.”

I didn't say yes or no. Truth is, I'd never figured such a thing for being possible. Putting a name back to where it had been.

“Good night,” he said. “Good night, Amelia Hoyle.”

He held down the clutch till the engine was of a mind to go.

“See you in the morning,” he said.

*   *   *

An hour after he left, the rain come. One of them
sincere
rains that wants to claw up every last smell from the earth. Most of the time, Earle and Janey love to go to sleep to the sound, but that night, they was on edge and kept asking for more Sinbad stories. I had to really put the poor feller through his paces—crocs and apes and man-eating giants and I don't know what else.
Enough
, I said finally, but even then, they wouldn't go off.

“Where's Washington?” asked Janey.

“Oh,” I said, settling into the bed space between her and Earle. “It's due east of here.”

“Is it far?”

“Two, three hours by car. We'll get there ourselves someday.”

“Franklin Delano Roosevelt lives there,” said Earle.

“That he does.”

“Mrs. Roosevelt, too.”

“When she ain't busy.”

They was quiet for a bit, but Earle spoke up again.

“That fortune-teller throws any evil my way, I'll send it right back.”

Seems I wasn't the only one troubled by that picture.

“She don't really look like that,” I said. “That's just, you know, art.”

“I'll give 'er what for,” said Earle.

They finally nodded off around midnight. Me, I was up another hour, listening to the rain. Don't know how long I slept before I jerked up in the bed. A pair of lights was sweeping across the front of the house.

I crept to the door. In the driving rain, I saw two shadows, queerly joined, rising and falling together.

“Hiram?” I whispered.

“Give me a hand,” he said.

“Where?”

“Up to my room.”