American rust (20 page)

“Well just give me the word and I'll take off then,” he said. “If you're one of those loner types that can be a pain in the ass.”

Isaac shook his head and grinned. “I got no problems.”

They were coming up the north end of the coke plant. Isaac still couldn't get over the size of it, it was bigger even than the mill in Buell had been, but the man seemed not to notice and they stood in the brush at the riverbend, looking at the trainyard. There were at least a dozen different tracks. There were several long trains loaded with coke.

“You wanna go find a rail and ask which is which.”

“What do I say to them?” said Isaac.

“Same as anyone else.”

Isaac shrugged.

“You don't even know what to ask, do you?”

Screw this guy, he thought. He met his eyes in the dark.

“Alright, I'll do it for us. Sit tight.”

The man started to walk off, then stopped.

“My name's Winston, by the way. But most people call me the Baron.”

Isaac told him his name, then wondered if he should have made one up. No, he thought, this is what you've wanted. You can give this guy the slip if you need to. At the moment you need his help.

Shortly after that the Baron was back. “It's the big one there with the four units. The one on the end is just going upriver a little ways, but the big one is going to a place near Detroit. All kinds of shit comes and goes from there—it'll be easy for you to find something.”

“When's it due to get rolling.”

“Any minute is what he said. Usually that means a couple hours.”

Just then the triangle of lights came on at the front of the train and there was the sound of diesel engines turning over and then running at high idle.

The man grinned. “Christ, you're bringing luck to me. I'd been wanting to bash that boy in the head for three days. And now we got our taxi coming. You just watch what I do.”

“I know how to get on a train,” said Isaac.

“Suit yourself then, tough guy. I've been doing it thirty- seven years but I'm sure you can't learn a damn thing from me.”

“I'll pay attention.”

“Good man.”

The train began to move slowly and the headlights swept over them, blinding, and as soon as the engines passed they ran across the other tracks until they were alongside it, Isaac's footing was loose in the gravel, the Baron was running ahead of him and threw his backpack up onto the platform and grabbed the ladder and disappeared between two cars. Isaac tossed his pack up onto the rear platform of a different hopper car and pulled himself up the ladder.

He sat on the small metal platform facing the car behind him. It was still dark but by the grit on his hands he could tell the small platform of the coke car was filthy. He didn't care—you're moving and not lifting a foot to do it. Feels like a miracle after all that walking. See why people make lives out of doing this.

He sat with his legs outstretched, feeling the train gradually pick up speed, the noise from the train doubled then doubled again.

He watched the scenery pass, lights on the other side of the river. They were going faster and faster and it was getting cold in the wind. Get even colder once we get out of the Valley, once the tracks aren't bending around a river. He started to take his sleeping bag out, then he stopped himself—it would get sucked away. You're pretty much just gonna freeze your ass off. No, crawl in that hole. He felt around with his hands, there was a tall slot, a sort of porthole in the back of the car but he couldn't imagine the space inside was very large. At least it was more protected. He decided to wait.

After several minutes he could see Pittsburgh, the skyscrapers, the power plant on the island, and then the train slowed and began to turn left, west, he grabbed onto the railing and grabbed his pack with the other hand so it wouldn't slide off under the wheels. Then the city was receding as well, the tall buildings, the bridges and the river, gone.

1. Grace

H
arris had arrested Billy that morning and when Grace came home from work all the lights were off in the trailer, everything was just as she'd left it. Billy was not home, was not coming home. Maybe not ever again. She ought to get a fire going in case it got colder that night but she couldn't bring herself. Couldn't bring herself to get up from the chair. At first she'd been sure nothing would happen to him—blind mother hope all that was. An inability to face the truth. She would have to get used to this new feeling. Thought you were making big compromises but that was nothing compared to what's coming.

She had always thought—she didn't know why but her whole life she had thought that eventually, someone would come along and look after her the way she had looked after other people: her own mother, Virgil, Billy. So far that had not happened. It did not look to be happening anytime soon. Seemed that she had made this one bad decision out of love, she had been unwilling to give up Virgil, been unwilling to move away from him, to a place her son might have become a different person, and the consequence was that she had now lost Billy.

All for Virgil. Billy ending up this way, her bad choices all around. Your three semesters of college—how long was it before you stopped reminding people of that? That was dropped for him as well—Virgil—he couldn't make the bills on his own. And resented you for going to school, always asking when it would pay off. Even that early sign you ignored. I was twenty- two, she thought. With a young child and the Valley in a depression. It was a miracle I was able to do any of that at all. Looking back she thought she had been a braver person then. Another thing that had been chipped away. All the things you needed to know in life—you didn't learn them until you'd already made your decisions. For better and worse you were shaped by the people around you. Virgil had undercut her, a gradual erosion, the way the river undercut its banks. He had convinced her to stop educating herself, he'd convinced her to take a job she hated, because at some point he had realized that his wife might be manipulated into supporting his life of ease. A minor miracle given their surroundings, but he had pulled it off, at the cost of his wife and now his son. All it took was lying nearly daily about looking for work and, in the periods in which he did work, cashing his paycheck himself rather than bringing the entire thing home. She always remembered being stunned at tax time by how much money Virgil made on paper—very little of it ever seemed to come back to the family.

It made her sick now to think about it. The fault rested squarely on her shoulders, she couldn't push it off on Virgil. She should have seen through him. It just hadn't occurred to her that anyone could be so manipulative.

And there was Harris. He had offered himself numerous times and she had lost interest and, now that he wasn't interested, she was sick over Harris again. She didn't want to admit those things but they were true, it was some rule of human nature—you want most whatever you can't have. Virgil had always kept her unsure about his feelings, always inserting some sliver of doubt, she had always been the one chasing. Bud Harris had simply made his feelings clear.

She felt sick to her stomach thinking about it. She had done this to herself, to Billy. Deep breath. Of course it wasn't fair. Your entire life's work, that child. But she was not that old. She could expect another thirty, thirty- five years. It was all your outlook. She needed to have her own goals again. She would have to stop living for others. Since Billy making his choice to stick around Buell she'd spent most of her free time worried sick about him and in those years she'd forgotten to look after herself. It really had been her downfall. Other mothers had sons as well, they managed. Maybe it was just the rollercoaster Billy had put her on. Up and down and up again. Now down. But he didn't do it on purpose. It was just who he was.

She needed to collect herself. You could not live for other people. Christ, she thought, I shouldn't be thinking these things right now. But there was no choice. Billy had done what he'd done, and nothing could change it. She would have to go on living.

There was orange juice and a bottle of vodka and she made a tall screwdriver. She could not afford a lawyer, not any of the good ones. If she stopped making payments on the house it was possible but it would take her several months to save the money. By then it would be too late. She would have to trust Harris. The public defender. She shook her head. She would stop making payments anyway. Bank the money. Lose the place if she had to but you couldn't leave your son to the public defender. You might as well just skip the trial if you did that.

Don't make decisions before you have to, she thought. She went out to the back porch, taking the bottle of vodka and the orange juice with her, watched the sky get darker and sipped her drink. How long had it been—three years—it seemed like yesterday, she'd been talking to Harriet, the director of the shelter, about what you had to do to get a job as a counselor. Or social worker, she wasn't sure. They'd sat down, the two of them, and written it all down. School, that was what it came down to. It was a hurdle and you had to jump it.
It's simple,
Harriet told her,
you get some letters after your name. BA, MA, whatever. Until then, you'll be scratching in the dirt. A master's especially.
She must have seen the look on Grace's face because she smiled and shrugged.
Hey, we get old whether we do these things or not. Either way, we get old.

Time for a refill. The sky was dark and the stars were coming out, one by one. She remembered Virgil turning to her, it was Billy's senior year during a football game, Billy had just scored for the Eagles.
We did a good job raising him, didn't we?
That was what Virgil had said. That was when her eyes began to be opened—there had been no
we
involved in raising Billy. She had borne the burden from day one and until that moment at the football stadium, she had presumed that Virgil understood that—throwing a football to your kid an hour a week did not count as raising him. At any rate, that moment in the bleachers, that was when she'd begun to fall out of love with Virgil, though it had taken three more years to fully resolve. It gave her some satisfaction that Billy now hated his father. You can be a small person sometimes, she thought.

Where would you be if you'd taken Bud Harris up on his offer—six years into a government job, guaranteed retirement, health, pension. Billy would have grown up in the city, away from all this. No, she thought, you couldn't. Not when it was handed to you like that, you couldn't take it.

You got your hopes too high. Not for yourself, but for Billy. Thought he could be something he is not. But of course it was always like that. Love always blocked your view of the truth. And now …

Whatever happens, she thought. You are going to do your best and that's all. She sat there like that and cried for a while. Enough, she finally thought. Get up. No more drinking. She pitched the vodka bottle over the porch railing and into the yard.

A truck came up the road then, she saw the headlights and then it pulled into the driveway, wondered who it was and stumbled over the step going back into the house. Harris was standing there out front, in his uniform.

He saw she'd been crying and he opened his arms and she leaned into him.

“You want to come inside?”

“I thought I better tell you some things first.”

She closed her eyes and knew it would be bad.

“It's standard procedure in big cases like this but they took him to Fayette. Also I made him shave and get cleaned up for the mugshot but most likely his picture will be in the paper tomorrow.”

“How does it look?”

“It's not in our favor. Not unless he starts telling us what happened.”

“Fayette is the new one,” she said. She forced herself to say it: “The one where all those guards got stabbed.”

“Billy knows how to take care of himself. He's a big boy and they won't mess with him much, even in a place like that.”

“Can we get him out of there?”

“The DA has all the say in where he goes, given the charge.”

“I wish I'd voted for Cecil Small now.”

“Me, too,” said Harris.

“It's all a big game to them, isn't it? They've got no idea what they really do to people.”

“No,” said Harris. “I don't think any of them do.”

She'd set her drink down on the porch rail and she picked it up and finished it.

“This isn't your fault. You did more than anyone could.”

She shrugged. “I made one bad decision but I made it every day.”

“Some people go their whole lives like that.”

“I guess.”

“What are you drinking,” he said.

“Screwdriver.”

It was quiet for a second.

“Do you want one?” she said.

“Do you have anything for grownups?”

“Not really.”

“In that case I'll have one.”

“I have to find the bottle. I just tossed it into the yard.”

“I'll get it,” he said, laughing. They went into the house and Harris took out his flashlight and went out back and returned a few seconds later with the bottle. Then he stood looking out the back window, or maybe just looking at their reflections, as she made the drinks.

“Get your tomatoes in yet?”

She nodded.

“I'll get mine in soon, I hope.”

She nodded and looked at him. He took a sip of his drink and smiled at her. He was average height, average everything, he looked small standing there in the kitchen in his uniform. But that was not the impression he gave to others, in a room full of people everyone gave him a berth, it was a way he'd learned to act. But right now, even wearing his gunbelt, he was just himself. That was the thing about Harris—he was happy to drop his act. It was the difference between him and Virgil, who was always judging things, sizing you up, even when he was smiling. That was another thing which had never occurred to her before.

“I feel like an idiot for all those things I said yesterday,” she said. “I was upset but I know it doesn't excuse them.”

“I feel like that every morning.” He grinned. “We can sit down.” They went into the living room to the couch, she sat down on one end and he sat somewhere near the middle.

“You can slide over here if you want.”

He did and they sat quietly for a while and held hands. He adjusted his gunbelt so it wasn't pressing into her and closed his eyes and laid his head on her shoulder. His body went slack as if they had just made love. It was dark but they didn't turn on the lights. She had looked at him. A good- looking man in his way, his long face that changed expressions so easily. He might have made a good clown, he could exaggerate the shape of his face that way, he was a funny person. She ran her hand over the smooth top of his head, the short soft hair on the sides and back. Plenty of men his age would have grown it long, combed it over to hide their bald spot. He trimmed it himself once a week with clippers. As if he had nothing to hide. She'd once suggested he shave it all off, like the cop on that cable show, but he'd dismissed that as vanity.

Maybe it's just your body telling you to do this, knowing you need someone to take care of you. Just the body being practical. Not the heart. But that was not the way it felt. Her neck was tingling where his breath touched it and the feeling was running down her body. She put her hand on his belt but he lifted it away.

“Because you're on the clock?” she said.

“I'm still waiting to be convinced why it should work now when it's never worked before.”

“You came over, though.”

“I seem to be here.”

“We can try again.”

She put her hand on his lap a second time.

“I wonder sometimes if you know you're not being fair.”

“I don't mean it.”

“I know. That doesn't make it any better.”

He gently slid away from her, then stood up in the dark trailer. She found herself looking at his pants, just beneath his belt, and he noticed her looking.

“Christ, Grace,” he said. He started laughing.

“I'm unstoppable.”

“Maybe.” He looked around at things, but mostly out the windows. He cleared his throat. “Let's just give it a couple days or something. Let you take it easy awhile.”

“Alright,” she said.

“I'll see you.” He leaned and kissed her forehead and then walked out.

She listened to him go, his light steps across the porch, then the sound of him driving away. She knew she should turn on the light but she didn't want to, she was content just lying there like that in the dark, she could still smell his aftershave lotion in the room, feel where he'd touched her. It seemed the first time in weeks, no months, that she'd really felt hope.