Twice in a Lifetime (5 page)

“Eddie, I can’t marry you,” she declared.

For an instant, the banker’s smile faltered, but he quickly recovered, bringing it back to its usual intensity. “You say that now,” he replied, pausing to lick his lips, “but given enough time, I’m sure you’d come to realize that—”

“No, I wouldn’t,” Clara said, daring to cut him off. “I can’t marry someone I’m not in love with. I just can’t.”

Eddie’s expression reflected his desperation. “All I want is a chance to—”

“I’m
never
going to be in love with you.”

As soon as the words left Clara’s mouth, she regretted them. Eddie’s reaction was immediate; this time, when his smile disappeared, it stayed gone. His eyes narrowed, his cheeks flushed a deep red, and his lower lip trembled. Clara knew that she’d both angered and embarrassed him.

“You’re turning me down? You’re rejecting
me
?!” Eddie snapped, his voice shrill enough to make Clara worry that other people in the bank could hear.

“I’m sorry, Eddie, but—”

“If you don’t care about what I can give you,” he said, spittle foaming on his dry lips, “maybe you’ll give a damn about what I can take away!” Furiously, Eddie snatched back up the paper detailing Clara’s house loan, crumpling one of the corners in his clenched fist. “What if instead of making this disappear,” he spat, “I took your home and everything in it?”

Clara was too stunned to answer. Nothing could have prepared her for this side of Eddie Fuller; she’d never seen him so angry. She wondered if it had been there all this time, lurking just beneath the surface, waiting years to be let out; his father’s death had apparently unlocked the door.

“But…but I told you…” she finally said. “I’ve always paid on time…”

“So what?” he answered with a sneer. “Do you think I can’t alter the ledgers to make it look like you’ve fallen behind, and that it was only because of my father’s generosity that you were allowed to skate by? Just like that,” he explained with a snap of his fingers, “you’d be out on the street.”

“You…you’d do that…if I didn’t agree to marry you?” Clara nearly shouted, her voice laced with panic, her heart racing.

But then, bizarrely and faster than flipping a light switch, Eddie’s anger vanished and his familiar, dopey smile returned.

“Now, now,” he soothed. “Don’t go getting all worked up. I wasn’t saying that I was
going
to do that, only that I
could
.”

Clara reeled. Her troubles were already bad enough without this. Eddie was blackmailing her, plain and simple. If she didn’t give him what he wanted, if she didn’t agree to become his wife, he would take away everything.

Still smiling, Eddie came back around the desk and knelt down on the floor in front of her. Clara worried that he was going to formally propose, like something out of a trashy romance novel, but he just took her hand and stared at her; when he licked his lips, it made her want to retch.

“Never mind all that loan business,” Eddie told her, acting as if he wasn’t the one who’d brought it up, using it against her like a weapon.

“All right…” she muttered.

“What we need is a new start,” the banker continued, giving her hand an insistent squeeze. “I’m sure that the next time I come over to talk with—”

Eddie’s ramblings were interrupted by the ringing of his telephone. After he had answered, settling back into his chair and propping his feet on the desk, Clara took it as her cue to leave; if Eddie tried to stop her, she didn’t notice.

All the way back to her teller window, her head swam.

How am I ever going to get out of
this
mess?

U
P, BUDDY
. It’s your turn to drive.”

Drake slowly blinked his eyes as he swam up from the depths of sleep. He leaned against the Plymouth’s passenger-side door, a wool blanket draped over him for warmth. Music played faintly on the radio, some scratchy jazz, a trumpet braying out a long, lonely note. When he didn’t immediately move, Amos reached over and gave his shoulder an insistent shake.

“I’m not kiddin’ here. The road’s growin’ faint and I’m havin’ trouble keepin’ my eyes open,” the mechanic said.

“Yeah, yeah, give me a second,” Drake replied.

He sat up and swiveled his head, trying to get the kinks out of his neck while he looked out the window at the countryside. The sun hadn’t yet risen in the east, but it was painting the underside of a flock of clouds a dull orange and red. It had gotten cool in the night, so fog clung to the ground; it hung above small creeks and huddled among trees.

“Where are we?” Drake asked.

“Just passed through Colton, a wisp of a place if there ever was one,” Amos answered. “Wasn’t a single light on in the whole town.”

“That’s because they’ve got the good sense to be in bed instead of driving the back roads to nowhere,” Drake said, then yawned. “Why didn’t you pull over and get some shut-eye?”

Amos shrugged. “Wasn’t tired, least not then.” He looked at Drake and smirked. “Besides, what with the way you snore, a dead man couldn’t get any rest.”

Drake laughed. He’d always marveled at the older man’s stamina: even after a long, hot day at the track, Amos could stay up for hours, playing pinochle and drinking with other drivers and mechanics, sweating bullets as he tinkered under the hood, or, like now, driving countless miles in the middle of the night. But later, when he did finally lie down, it’d be nearly impossible to wake him until he got his sleep. If Amos was at the end of his limits, it was best that they switch places.

“Besides,” he explained as he pulled off the road and onto a spur cut into a stand of evergreens, “I’ve got to take a leak.”

“By all means, then,” Drake said. “I wouldn’t want you to wet your pants, especially when you’re sitting behind the wheel.”

Amos dug around in the backseat, grabbed his coat and a roll of toilet paper, and then disappeared into the woods. Drake got out and stretched his legs. The air was crisp, almost chilly, and he felt refreshed. When he’d been younger, he could have jumped straight out of bed and into his car, then raced for hours, but now he needed some time to get his wits about him.

“You’re turning into an old man,” he muttered to himself.

Lately, Drake found himself thinking a lot about age. He wasn’t young anymore; getting behind the wheel, racing against drivers half his age, choking on dust, and sweating like a hog were beginning to take a toll on him. He knew he couldn’t keep doing it forever, that there would come a time to hang it up, but he’d been running on fumes for years and still won enough money to make it worth his while.

He’d been born in Iowa, the second son of a pig farmer, an overly religious man whose day began with the coming of the sun and ended with its going. Music was forbidden, as were books other than the Bible; Drake always wondered if his father detested smiles, too, since his face was always twisted into a frown. His mother, a woman who had come from Norway when she was a little girl and therefore never felt comfortable speaking English, was more lively. But she was too cowed by her husband to protest when he took off his belt and whipped his stubborn son for disobeying him. Drake’s older brother had no reservations about spending the rest of his life knee-deep in pig shit, but Drake refused to accept that his world would never extend much farther than the fence line at the edge of his family’s property.

Drake had vowed to leave someday, even if he’d had no idea how.

The answer had come unexpectedly. He was fifteen, his desire to get away so intense that he could scarcely stand to be in his father’s presence, when he’d first experienced the joy of riding in a fast car. A friend’s older brother had returned from his successful new life in Chicago driving an automobile unlike anything rural Iowa had ever seen. It was a Ford, brand new and dazzling to Drake’s eyes, no matter that it was caked with dust from the dirt roads. It was obvious that its owner had only come home to brag about his new life, but Drake didn’t care; he couldn’t take his eyes off the car.

Finally, he’d gotten a chance to ride in it. Sitting in the passenger seat, Drake was wide-eyed as they roared away, the driver whooping like a banshee, zigzagging dangerously across the road while kicking up an enormous cloud of dust. Drake’s heart had pounded in his chest not from fear, but exhilaration. Right then and there, before the ride was even over, Drake knew what he wanted to do with his life. A few months later, he packed a bag, snuck out of the farmhouse in the middle of the night, and took the first train he came across.

He had drifted south into Missouri and eventually settled in Hampton, a little place that barely deserved the speck it took up on a map, finding work in a garage. Drake knew a fair amount about engines from fixing his family’s tractor, though he quickly learned that it wasn’t the same under the hood of the latest automobiles. Still, he proved to be a quick study. The garage’s owner, a kindly old man named Dave Eichelberger, took Drake under his wing, patiently correcting what he did wrong while also encouraging him to learn as much as he could. He even let Drake drive his own car, a beat-up Packard that was frustratingly difficult to start. At first, Drake choked the engine, slammed too hard on the brakes, and blew out his fair share of tires. But it didn’t take long before he found that he had some natural ability behind the wheel. He soon longed for more and more horsepower, to go faster and then faster still.

His first race had been the thrill of his life. Again, it had been Mr. Eichelberger who’d prodded Drake to enter, finding him a car to drive and paying his entry fee. Sitting behind the wheel, the engine rumbling, the steering wheel vibrating in his hands, waiting for the checkered flag to drop, was something he would never forget. The race had been a blur—someone had bumped him from behind and he’d finished in tenth place—but Drake hadn’t once stopped smiling. He kept at it, learning the tricks of the trade, getting steadily better until he started to win more than he lost. Somehow, the years had brought him from then to now.

Drake dug around in the Plymouth until he found an apple he’d bought at a roadside stand. He bit into it, crunching noisily; juice ran down his chin until he wiped it away with the back of his hand. For a long while, he was content to eat, watching how the rising sun blossomed across the treetops, colored the gently stirring leaves, and warmed the air. It hadn’t risen high enough to shine off the car or the small trailer that carried their tools, but it grew lighter by the second. The arrival of morning set the birds to chirping.

When Drake finished eating, he tossed the apple’s core into a bush and started to wonder what was taking Amos so long. The thought crossed his mind that his friend had gotten lost or stumbled onto trouble. He considered shouting out to him, but then held his tongue.

A man’s private business is his own…

Instead, Drake again rummaged through his things until he found a worn paperback novel;
Tarzan and the Leopard Men
by Edgar Rice Burroughs, one of his favorites. Leaning against the Plymouth, he licked his finger, turned the pages to where he’d left off, and began to read. Once Drake had escaped the restrictive life imposed by his father, he had discovered books and the joy they could bring. He enjoyed tales of all kinds: cowboys and their wild adventures in the Old West, pirates who sailed the seas in pursuit of treasure, New York detectives who searched for the one elusive clue that would solve a murder, glimpses of a future filled with flying cars and green-skinned men from Mars, and especially tales of an abandoned baby raised by apes to become the king of the jungle. He liked to immerse himself in another time and place. When he read, Drake embraced the solace and quiet, so very different from the loud, dangerous life he led. Normally, he could escape for hours at a time.

But not today…

Drake put down his book; he’d read the same line three times and was too distracted to follow the story. His thoughts whirled. Not for the first time, he asked himself just how much longer he was going to travel backcountry roads in the middle of the night and live out of his car, always looking for another race to run or sucker to fleece. He wanted more, longed for something different, something he had trouble naming but knew was out there all the same, calling to him. He was getting older; most men his age had long since settled down, taken the opportunity presented to them by the G.I. Bill to get an education, buy a house, find a beautiful wife, and raise a couple of kids, with a dog for good measure.

But not him. He was getting into a fistfight with a muscle-bound hothead over a handful of wadded-up bills.

Occasionally, Drake wondered if it wasn’t already too late. Maybe while he’d been busy speeding one way, life had been racing in the opposite direction and he would never catch up. He’d tried to broach the subject with Amos a couple of times but had never gotten very far; for the mechanic, racing was his life, and he couldn’t understand why Drake didn’t feel the same. So here he was, still driving and still wondering what else was out there, what he might be missing.

Drake shoved his book back into his duffel bag, but once his hand was inside, he paused. Digging a little deeper, he touched the thick wad of money he had secreted away, safely out of sight. The cash represented most of his savings; there was more, a couple thousand he’d deposited in a small bank in Illinois. He had never been comfortable with the idea of someone else holding his money, for it to be out of his hands, and he worried that if he ever found himself in a situation where he needed it, it wouldn’t be there. Drake knew it was risky to have it on him, that he could be robbed, get in an accident, or have some other calamity befall him. So he remained careful and cautious at all times; not even Amos knew it was there.

But some days he questioned what he was saving it for. Since leaving Iowa, Drake had had no contact with his family. He’d never met a woman he felt strongly enough about to want to settle down. There had been no property, no business venture he’d wanted to invest in. So instead, whenever he won a race, he just put his winnings with all the rest, and waited for…

“Beats the hell out of me,” he muttered.

Once again, Drake began to wonder about Amos. He understood that a man needed his privacy, but this was getting ridiculous. But then, just as he was about to shout, his friend stumbled from between two bushes. He looked a little dazed.

“What the heck happened to you?” Drake asked. “I was starting to wonder if you hadn’t run off on me.”

“Not yet,” Amos grumbled. “Just took a while to find the right place. The brush back there has more bugs than a dead fish.”

Drake laughed. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d be so choosy. Makes you sound dainty, like some society gal who powders more than her nose.”

Amos scowled. “Fancy yourself a comedian, huh?”

They shared some food and a cigarette but little conversation before getting back in the car. Amos looked out on his feet; his eyes were glassy and he couldn’t stop yawning.

“You get all the rest you need,” Drake said as he turned the key in the ignition and the engine roared back to life. “I’m good to go.”

“Wake me when you want to stop for lunch,” Amos answered, bunching up his coat into a makeshift pillow and settling against the door.

“You got any particular place in mind?”

“I was aimin’ for this little town called Sunset,” the mechanic replied, then stifled a yawn with the crook of his arm. “Keep headin’ west and watch for signs. I ain’t been there in ten years, but I remember it was a nice place right along the Missouri. Who knows, we might even be able to scrounge up some action.”

“Sunset it is.” Drake pressed on the accelerator harder than he normally would have and the Plymouth shot back out onto the road, spraying gravel and causing Amos to curse.

They were off.

Amos leaned against the Plymouth’s door as the car raced down the road; Drake, happy to be back behind the wheel, paid no mind to potholes or the rocks pounding against the undercarriage. Most times, the mechanic might have complained, but not now. Slowly, he slid down the slippery slope toward sleep, dreamily giving himself over to the morphine he had injected into his arm.

After they’d stopped, Amos had retrieved his coat, as well as the drug hidden in its inner pocket, and gone into the woods, lying that he needed to empty his bladder. Once he was far enough away to be sure he wouldn’t be followed, he found a secluded spot and rolled up his shirtsleeve. Pulling out a length of rubber tubing, he tied off his arm, raising the veins at the crook of his elbow. Next, he inserted a needle into the dark glass bottle, drawing out the milky liquid, carefully measuring the right amount—too much and he wouldn’t be able to make it back to the car. Seconds later, he was flooded with the sweet relief that he so loved and had to steady himself against a nearby tree.

Amos Barstow was an addict, through and through.

Morphine had a hold on him; it was an insatiable animal that demanded to be fed. He had known many others like him: drunks who crawled back inside a whiskey bottle in the early church-time hours of a Sunday morning, gamblers who would’ve bet their children’s shoes that the next roll of the dice would come up in their favor, and old men who still chased every skirt they saw. They were all the same, all addicts, all slaves to their demons, no more able to quit than to sprout wings and fly.

Though sometimes the morphine sure made it feel like he
could
fly.

It had begun innocently enough. Two years ago, while working on a car, Amos had had an accident; trying to yank a stubborn bolt loose, his wrench slipped, resulting in a deep cut that ran the length of his forearm. His doctor had prescribed morphine to dull the pain. Generously, he’d given the mechanic a bottle, warning him to use it only when needed. At first, Amos had done as instructed, but the dreamy way the drug made him feel, with all his pain and worries blissfully floating away, soon became a lure he couldn’t resist. So he started to use it more often. When the first bottle was empty, he bought another. By then, it was too late. He was caught in a snare and couldn’t get out.