The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving (23 page)

the box

W
e
ary of Dot's hounding, and harassed by my thoughts, I'm gripping the wheel a little tighter than usual as we wind our way up through the rugged Bitterroots toward the Montana border. Trev has fallen asleep in his wheelchair, his mouth wide open. He's scruffy. He's got bed head. He's going to need a shower. Stretched out in back, Dot has resorted to headphones. Her green Chucks tap out a rhythm against the elbow rest. Her sweet lips mouth angry words. Occasionally she blows her bangs out of her eyes or contemplates her fingernails, looking bored but comfortable.

At Lookout Pass, without warning or expectation, without so much as a cloud visible for the past thirty miles, we round a wide bend not unlike thirty bends before it, when suddenly it starts hailing stones the size of marbles.
Th
ey're beating hard on the roof.
Th
e din is such that Dot removes her headphones, and sits up.
Th
e racket wakens Trev, who rolls his shoulders and straightens his head. “Holy crap, now what?”

“Look at the freakin' size of it,” says Dot.

Pellets begin collecting on the wipers and under the lip of the hood, pounding the glass like gravel, hammering the roof.
Th
e clatter is so loud that Trev is forced to raise his voice to be heard.

“No way,” he says. “
Th
is is insane.”

On the roadway, hailstones shimmy like oil on a hot skillet. You can hear them bouncing up against the floor of the car, rattling under the grille.
Th
ey quickly begin to accumulate along the fog lines. Just ahead, a pair of trucks have pulled over and are huddled on the shoulder against the onslaught, their red lights flashing dully through the haze. I slow to thirty as we pass. I ought to pull over, too, and I'm almost certain Trev is about to suggest as much when abruptly the hammering ice gives way to the muted patter of rain, and suddenly the world seems quieter than ever.

“Damn,” says Trev.

“
Th
at was intense,” says Dot. She's left her seat and is on her knees now, just behind Trev and me, leaning in close, her gloveless right hand clutching the armrest of Trev's wheelchair.

“Totally intense,” says Trev.

Th
en we all lapse into a reflective silence, the kind you savor after big events. About a half mile past Henderson, I spot through the haze a shit-can Isuzu pulled over on the left shoulder with its hazards on. A figure hunches in the rain before the rear wheel, clutching a tire iron. Slowing as I pass, I see that it's a very pregnant woman. Drenched, she is apparently having a tough time removing the flat.
Th
ere's a dude smoking a cigarette in the passenger's seat who appears to be barking instructions out the open window. Without consulting Trev, I pull off on the left and back slowly down the shoulder until I'm fifty feet or so in front of them, where I throw the van in park and leave it idling.

“I'm gonna see if they need a hand,” I say, hopping out of the van into the downpour.

Th
e Isuzu is at least four different colors, if you include bondo gray. Really, it's several cars fashioned into one.
Th
e hood is blue.
Th
e front left side panel is yellow.
Th
e doors are green. Cars are speeding by at seventy miles per hour, trailing sheets of gritty road water. When the girl turns on her haunches to greet me, her enormous belly pressed tight against a cheap cotton dress, she's smiling. You can tell she smiles a lot. She's young, maybe three years older than Dot. Her heart-shaped face is wide open and freckled, framed by straight, wet, dirty blond hair to the shoulders. Her hazel eyes seem to hide nothing. She's lovely in the most wholesome of ways. Even extremely pregnant, squatting in a nasty rain squall on a muddy shoulder, with a tire iron in her hand, and a fuck-stick of a boyfriend hollering instructions at her, she's got that unsullied youthful glow about her, the same one that Dot tries so hard to hide.

“
Th
e thingy just snapped right off,” she explains. “And the lower thingies won't budge.”

“Lug nuts,” says her skinny companion impatiently, through the open window. “
Th
ey're called lug nuts!”

“You guys want me to call a tow truck?”

“Ain't got no money for a tow truck,” he says, spitting out the window.

“We've got Triple A,” I offer.

“Never mind that,” he says. “I've got business in Missoula.
Th
en we gotta make Jackson 'fore she busts. Ain't got time to deal with this rice burner. Damn cylinder block's made out of aluminum cans, anyway. Probably wouldn't make St. Regis, even if it
did
have four wheels.”

With that, he climbs out of the car with a cigarette dangling from his mouth.

“I'm Peaches,” says the girl, standing upright. “And that's Elton.”

Elton looks like a skinned weasel—weak chin, beady eyes, long body. He's wearing a dirty Copenhagen cap, with the brim pulled down low, and a flannel shirt that looks like it may have survived a house fire.

“Elton's got a lousy back,” she explains. “
Th
at's why I'm changin' the tire.”

“Fishin' injury,” he explains.

Something about Elton doesn't inspire confidence. Could it be the fact that he'd let his pregnant girlfriend change a tire on the shoulder of an interstate in the rain? Or maybe it's just those beady eyes. He doesn't seem dangerous, exactly, or even malignant, just sort of shifty.

“So, you goin' as far as Missoula, hoss?”

“Let me talk to my friend,” I say. “He's in charge.”

Elton nods doubtfully and spits on the ground. “All right, then.”

I stride back to the van and station myself by the passenger's window, signaling to Dot to roll it down as an eighteen-wheeler speeds past, spraying me with a light mist.

“
Th
ese guys need a ride to Missoula,” I explain.

“I dunno,” says Trev. “Dude looks sketchy to me.”

“
Th
e girl's nice,” I say. “And she's pregnant—really pregnant.”

“What do you think?” Trev asks Dot, over his shoulder. “It'd be crowded back there.”

“Fine,” she says. “But I wanna smoke first.”

Dot crawls around the driver's seat to smoke on the shoulder in the rain, as I give Elton and Peaches the thumbs-up. Peaches soon hefts two huge suitcases out of the rear hatch and begins conveying them toward the van with tiny, hard-won steps.

“Don't let that right one drag,” says Elton from behind her. “It's gettin' muddy!”

Ten minutes later, Elton, Peaches, and Dot are all crowded into the backseat, and we're driving along in silence.

“So, business in Missoula,” I say, by way of making conversation.

“
Th
at's right,” says Elton.

“What kind of business you in?” I inquire.

“None of yours,” he says.

“Elton's gonna make us rich,” says Peaches. “He invented a—”

“Shush up,” says Elton.

“Well, you said that—”

“I said it ain't patented yet. Don't go runnin' your mouth.”

“Your secret is safe with us,” I say.

Elton meets my gaze with narrowed eyes in the rearview mirror. “Well, I ain't takin' that chance, hoss. Not until I got my patent. And not until I got all my ducks in line so far as investors and such.”

“Oh, c'mon,” says Dot. “Just tell us.”

“Hell no. I ain't tellin'. Ain't nobody gonna steal my idea.”

“Well,” I say. “At any rate, sounds like you've dotted your i's on this thing.”

“Hell yes, I did. I got a whole business plan wrote up. I even sent it to myself to get it postmarked—see, then I kept the whole plan sealed up in the envelope.
Th
at's to protect the idea until the patent comes through. In some cases it's admissible in a court of law. Long as it's postmarked and sealed up tight. I got 'er in a safe deposit box.”

“Boy, you've really covered your bases,” I say.

“Hell yes. Fella don't just squat on top of a gold mine with no protection and no plan. You gotta keep a lookout. And you gotta know how to mine that gold. Idea's only as good as its execution.”

“You've got that right.”

“Hell yes, I do.”

“Must be a hell of an idea.”

“Hell yes, it is.”

“I don't blame you for keeping the lid on it. Probably smart.
Th
e suspense is killing me, though. Must be a good one.”

Flush with excitement, Elton leans forward, and speaks in low earnest tones. “Fine then, I'll talk around the edges a little bit, but I'm not tellin' my actual idea. Just the edges.”

“Fair enough.”

“And this don't go no further than this van, you hear? I'm dead serious about that.” Like a leery weasel, Elton frisks us with beady eyes. “You got that?”

“Got it,” we say.

“Well then, first, let's talk about basic business principles and whatnot. For starters, you gotta consider—even before you consider the capitalizin' part—whether or not there's a market for your idea. And there's a market for mine. Trust me, I worked in the industry. Matter of fact, there's a bunch of products already on the market tryin' to do roughly what my product does, but none of them work for diddly.”

“Like what?” says Dot.

“Well, for starters, you know them fake electronic dog boxes they sell to keep burglars away?
Th
em ones that's motion-activated, so that it sounds like you got a watchdog?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, they don't fool nobody, and they sure as shit don't scare nobody. Fact is, they got a zero point zero percent success rate at burglar deterrin'.”

“You researched it?” says Trev.

“How d'ya s'pose I ended up in the joint in the first place? By burglin' houses, that's how. And who d'ya suppose oughta know more about deterrin' burglars than a burglar? You want a game warden, hire a poacher. So, yeah, I researched it plenty. Eighteen months on the inside gave me plenty of time to think about this—really wrap my brain around it. Idea like this don't just come to a guy like a flash of lightnin'. Takes concentration—a whole mess of considerin'. Like I say, you gotta ask yourself all the right business questions: Who's gonna capitalize it? Who's gonna handle the manufacturin'? You gotta ask yourself, is my idea executable?”

“So what's your idea?” I say.

Again, his beady eyes meet mine in the mirror, squinting fiercely. “Nice try, hoss.”

“Right, the edges, sorry. Well, what about the capital, where does that come from?” I say.

“He's got a plan for that, too,” says Peaches brightly.