The Lost Highway (15 page)

She had a pet skunk, and a beehive. The skunk was not descented, but would not spray her. It usually hung about under the porch, and there was a raccoon that slept in a maple at the side wagon road. The beehive was active, and she watched the drones day in and day out, sitting beside it without being stung.

On her wall, besides a picture of Tony Stewart the NASCAR driver and a picture of her father pitching horseshoes, was the picture of her in the local paper, for winning the mathematics prize. In the far corner was a picture of her and Rory. Rory and she were supposed to get married when they were seven, but had not managed to do so. So now Rory was her love and she had his ring. But as long as she had known him, and had waited, he had not kissed her. It seemed as if he did not quite know how. And this summer they had drifted apart, and she knew he sometimes only said hello because he felt he had to, and spent more time down at the cottage with Robin Anderson, whose mom and dad were rich. She felt a loss deep in her heart, not because she thought of marrying him but because in one way it was the loss of her youth. There was a time, on the first spring days, when changing to his short underwear he would strip off his pants, and she hers, and in his shorts and her panties they would run about in the yard, until twilight bade them stop. But one year they both realized they could not do it anymore, and it was a loss that was both understandable and melancholy. That the springtime would never again smell so sweet or be so inviting. And so was this loss. In her own way she tried to hang on to him and disliked that Robin Anderson a whole lot.

She picked up her guitar and began to play. She played almost every night by herself. For she spent most every night and day alone. So with her feet going, and her legs and her bum moving, she strummed for thirty-five minutes “All Along the Watchtower,” which she had been trying to learn now for three weeks.

Finally, after the fourth request to turn the music off, she put her guitar down, snapped off the amp, and lay on the bed with her hands tucked behind her head, her impish face suddenly looking serene and beautiful.

On the wall near the NASCAR driver was a picture Father MacIlvoy gave her three years ago. It was of a little girl crossing a bridge over troubled water, at night, and a guardian angel guiding her way. Father MacIlvoy gave this to her at her confirmation, because Amy was frightened of water and had never learned to swim.

Amy got into bed in her underwear and thought of what she would do if Alex actually gave them $700. She found herself dividing it up, between so many people she didn’t have a cent left for herself.

She now stared at the ceiling, and listened to the night. The trouble was summer was fast coming to an end, and she had lost touch with Rory and everyone, and some didn’t speak to her anymore, for Amy was busy with Fanny Groat and did not see them. She thought of this, and thought of the demands Fanny made on her time.

The night whispered around her, and rain fell on the tin roof. After a while, she rolled over, touched the statue of the Virgin for luck, and fell asleep.

Once Minnie turned out her light, and the house became silent, the skunk walked up on the back porch and chewed at an apple left out on the arm of the veranda chair. The raccoon sat at the far end of the porch, watching the skunk carefully, now and then shaking water from its thick gray fur and lifting its paw.

—

A
LEX
C
HAPMAN WANTED TO SEE THE NUMBERS THAT
Burton had written down. He would do that in the morning by bringing in the ticket he had taken from Minnie, and saying it was his uncle’s. They would check the numbers and find they were not the ones—convince Burton he was mistaken. That would square him with Burton, and give him time to find the real ticket and claim it as his own.

He would get into the house, find the ticket, switch it, and—he thought of what he would do with thirteen million. Once he did that, and got his hands on the money, no one would be the wiser. No one at all. Of course he would help everyone, and become the benefactor he believed his uncle could and should have been.

Except, perhaps—Amy might know. She was a very wise little girl. But he would put her in his ethics course, and she taking this course would see how wise he was—especially as concerned young women. (This was in fact his main hope, to be considered by young women to be considerate of young women—especially, for some reason, Amy.) So, seeing this, she would realize he wasn’t like her father and all the others. Yes, and so it would all work out!

He was overcome with giddiness, for in his mind the person he wanted to impress besides Minnie was her daughter.

Seeing Amy tonight had brought back an uncomfortable memory, however. A few years ago, something had nagged at him. He wondered if he could ever have children. He wondered why Minnie would randomly meet Sammy at the shore, and then have a child, when he was the one who had saved for the album. He tried to forget this, but could not.

He went to Dr. Miller, and got a sperm test done. This sperm test proved he was sterile. That in fact, he probably never would be able to have a child. It was what in a sense he had known from the first. He never told a soul about this, and sometimes late at night he would take out the letter from Miller and read it, then stare at the vast expanse of sky and all those stars, born and dying, and try to understand how the world worked. Was shy little Amy planned for in a way that superseded everything Alex himself intended? If this was the case, everything was known and understood, even the love that he and Minnie had for one another. If one wanted to believe such stupid things. But then sometimes he would think, what did he believe that was any better? That was, he thought, the one predominant question, and was either yea or nay.

Lately he had again attacked Minnie for being supplicant to the wishes of society, to religion, and to other impediments, and believed or wanted to that it was he, not she, who had fallen away from love. But he hadn’t fallen away from love. Each time he saw her he still trembled. Little Amy noticed this but was too polite to say anything. And he sometimes felt badly saying sarcastic things with the little one there. He knew he shouldn’t. But at times he couldn’t help it. It seemed that the only friend Amy had this summer was her mother—he had noticed this. Therefore, it made it worse if he was sarcastic to the woman the little girl admired and relied upon.

“But sometimes,” he decided, “you have to say what you know! How can she just sit around waiting for Sam—not a woman I respect would do that!”

Perhaps he was remembering his mother here.

—

T
HE SAME WIND THAT YESTERDAY BLEW HOT ON HIS FACE
now was tinged with the very first trace of autumn, and Burton stood in the garage behind the glass counter and said nothing about the ticket that Alex had passed him. He was angry at everyone today—and said he might close up his garage or sell it. Kids teased him, stole his chocolate bars, and older people tried to fool him always with that mischief, easily laughed at, that lessened human integrity. All summer long they played in his skiff, out on the Bartibog, and he never minded that—but yesterday a boy had thrown an oarlock into the water and had set his boat adrift. It had taken him an hour to find it, far down the shore in a swell of incoming tide. Sometimes they took and hid it up Arron Brook, or far down the shore. And he was mad at this as well.

Alex had spent the morning polishing his shoes, so he still smelled of polish, and was wearing a crumpled white shirt that he had not worn in two years. For some reason he believed he would find the ticket today and make his way to Moncton to claim his winnings.

“This is my uncle’s ticket,” he said, and he tried to catch his breath, which he almost always did when he lied.

“What’s this then?” Burton said with authority. He took the ticket and checked the numbers he had written. He looked at Young Chapman and sniffed. He then shook his head as if he distrusted a former idea, and rubbed his nose quickly.

The only sign that he was June Tucker’s son was the perplexed look that sometimes overcame him. Other than this, there was no resemblance—for June Tucker had organized the world about her, and demanded the world, and Burton had not. Alex had written June Tucker three letters, never mentioning that he knew her son but asking her opinions on various subjects he was writing columns on. She never answered him, but once in a while she would be quoted by someone else, and it always made him jealous. He did not know why. She had studied sociology, so therefore to him her views must be important.

“I was far off,” Burton said and put the ticket up to the light. After he did this he stared at Alex strangely. Again the suspicious look that made him resemble his mother overcame him. Then he scratched the numbers over, that he had written next to Jim Chapman’s truck’s serial numbers, and painfully copied Alex’s numbers down, which to Alex seemed to be to his benefit. It was at this time that you got to see something of the problem. Burton had two fingers on one hand, and three on the other, and when he walked he hobbled, because one foot had been amputated halfway back on the day after his birth.

“The only other ticket I give out that day was Poppy—but he always checks his ticket here, and he didn’t say nothing. I don’t think he was the winner.”

Any other ticket that had been sold had not been registered.

“That’s all right—” Alex said, putting the ticket away. “We all make mistakes, Burton. But I’m glad we didn’t tell him,” he said. “He would never forgive you. So I told him I wanted to look at his ticket and here it is. He has never forgiven me for dozens of things. I still have the welts and sore ribs to prove it.”

Burton nodded, scratched his face with his scarred right hand, and said nothing.

“Never mind, Burton,” Alex said, remembering his own tears as a child, “everything will work out. Lots of people get tickets here—I often buy one.” (He was happy he planted that seed.)

Alex stayed for a minute and then turned and walked out across the dusty front parking lot and the road, his suit pants billowing in the morning sunshine.

He had managed to see the numbers Burton had crossed out. Yes, those were the exact winning numbers and the sight of them was both exhilarating and scalding. For those were the numbers Burton had told him, and the ones his uncle must have. But where would the ticket be?

The trouble was Alex had lived on his own—but he was very worried about doing this all on his own. Still, who might he get to help him? Burton was out of the question—for obvious reasons. He wondered if he went to Minnie, might he entice her? “Entice” was the word, and just this once, too. Then his thoughts fell briefly to Amy. She perhaps was the one to try and entice.

She would never do it, he thought, but he did not say, “She is too principled.” He said, “She is too straitlaced.” And he had the uneasy feeling again, of realizing he was trying to fool a woman and young girl, who for months had had only each other, who all last winter had lived alone in the little house. Alex knew as well that Amy’s friends had moved on to other friends. One day he was there she spent half an hour showing him her pollywogs just so she could talk.

This caused him to reflect on what he was doing, and to think once again of going to tell his uncle the truth and have a moment of reconciliation. This really seemed the best thing to do. And he started out toward his uncle’s house, with his heart lighter for thinking of this.

When he got to the drive, however, he saw his uncle holding his fly rod up to examine it. His uncle didn’t see him. He looked to Young Chapman to be old and sad standing at the front of his 120-acre lot, with old crushed drywall and cinder block about his feet, staring at this rod he had made himself some fifteen years back, and had taken over two hundred salmon with. Perhaps the only thing he was justifiably proud of. As much as he tried to get Alex to fish with him, Alex could never seem to manage the motion to cast.

It was very strange, but the sun seemed to come out furiously at this moment, and hit the eyes on the rod and make them gleam. Alex scratched his pointed nose and tried to think of what to do.

Apologize, he thought, get it over and everything will be all right.

He was set to do this, but something prevented him.

What would happen after that reconciliation? Too many things disallowed it. His uncle’s cantankerousness. His constant displeasure at Alex’s democratic stands. Old Jim’s idea that God was just and therefore would have given him the ticket because of this supposed justice. All this would be held against Alex, so Alex would be forced to grovel, and he couldn’t do it again!

Since all of this would come into play, he would not, could not, bring himself to tell his uncle anything. And he turned and walked back toward his house, as the wind blew against his face. He thought again of Amy and her mother, hoping he would get them a few dollars.

Tell him tell him tell him,
the wind seemed to say.

—

A
LEX WALKED ON TOWARD HIS HOUSE, AND AS HE DID HE
thought of his former belief in Christ and his hardness of heart when it came to this belief now. His constant response, at once cynical and satirical against it, was that millions upon millions had died because of this belief.

In the seminary there were older men, teachers who believed in the winged serpents that were sent north by the devil, swept on the wild wind of the earth, to whisper sweet nothings into the innocent ears of children, all sleeping in innocent poses half-dressed, disheveled but sweet flowing hair, with lilacs and roses, and the blue, blue eyes of God. The devils, with red tongues, there to harm them; the guardian angels there to protect them.

A fairy tale, almost sexual, among men who held power and very much power over others—simpering, confused, and arrogant men who until the end of the 1950s controlled whole households in their palsied grips, decided who was good or not, what families could be singled out for castigation at any time. (In fact, this was why the Tuckers and their counterparts the Patches stayed so destitute.)