American rust (33 page)

Expected everyone to be superior but they didn't act it. It's beautiful where you come from, isn't it?
I guess. Not like here, though.
People thought that was funny: you mean not like New Haven? No, he's right. It is beautiful here, we all take it for granted. That was the physics major, boyfriend of the moment.

I am burying these things, he thought. I am never going to think about them again.

    — — —

In the morning he kicked the shelter apart and dug a hole for his scat and kicked dirt over it when he was finished. Erase your traces. Still have that last sandwich. He walked a little until he could see the interstate and the cars rushing on it and the sun was on him. Then he ate his last bit of food and drank the rest of his water.

He continued the same way along the interstate. No idea where you are. Up in Michigan. What would Poe do if he were here? No idea. Make a bow and arrow or something. Don't need it. Wonder what's happened with Otto the Swede. Can't guess. No point. Sooner or later I'll cross some tracks. Need to get some money first or something to eat. Find a reststop and wait long enough, something will turn up. Except I don't want to do that. As you prefer. Starve then. There's an overpass, take a survey.

From the overpass he could see far down the highway, how flat the land was, the cars and trucks rushing underneath, the noise deafening. The sun bright you tore your new pants. Wonder when. Thorns and all that barbed wire fencing. Lucky you don't have lockjaw. Don't lean too far over that rail now. Feel the air pushing up at you. You could float, just for a second. Kinetic energy of a Mack truck: one- half mass energy squared. Eighty thousand pounds times eighty miles per hour square it over two. Except you need feet per second. Alright a hundred fifteen, then. Five hundred twenty- nine million foot- pounds. Your weight, one hundred ten pounds. Would not slow the truck. No, technically I would. Just not enough to notice.

Get off the bridge she would have done it no matter what she wasn't a tough person. If she had married someone different, though. Then you would not exist. You existing means on one specific second they did that and it was you. You existing means she married him. You existing means she did that. Two weeks missing you all knew what she'd done none of you would admit it. Hoping she left the family started a new life, knew the alternative. Burying her he refused to leave, wouldn't move his chair from next to the hole. You and Lee had to push him. Telling people at the funeral, all his friends, anyone who would listen he told them she'd been murdered. Except people knew. They always know after someone does something—put two and two together. You blamed him and you didn't. He blamed himself, though. If there's one thing you can be sure of it's that. Meanwhile he kept testing you
—will you leave me, too?

Now he is alone, knowing what he did to her, that you don't forgive him. Alone, his daughter forgave him so she could leave. No I forgive him for that it's the act he puts on. Because he has to. What his insides must look like. Same as what you did to the Swede, part of you will die so as not to understand it. Cold white hollow at your center. Kept warm by others or it leaks out into the world. What makes a man: love honor morals. Someone to protect. Man alone the rational animal. A man alone is a rational animal. Strip away what's decent. Hang on to your knife. Keep on until you're stopped.

You keep going like this or you can lean here, lean a little farther, hurt for a half second and then nothing. I am not afraid of that, he thought. It is the unfinished business. Leaving plenty of it. It is only Poe.
Only Poe
that is not what you thought when he pulled you out of the water.

I am lucky he thought I am lucky they cannot see me like this. Walk then. Start walking. Alright. I will get off this bridge. I will get off this bridge I will choose something.

1. Poe

O
n his third day in the hole, the same short pudgy guard came back again and rapped on the bars and told him to cuff up.

“I ain't gonna talk to him,” said Poe. “Today or ever.”

“You got to sign your papers. Until you sign your papers, you don't even got a fuckin lawyer.”

“I ain't signing nothing.”

“Christ,” said the guard. “And I wondered why you were in here.”

The guard stood waiting, just in case. Poe decided he would ask the question. He would let himself ask it. Finally he said, “Can he come down here?”

“Fuck no your lawyer can't come down to no fuckin SHU. They got a fuckin room upstairs all laid out for it.”

“Well I ain't moving. He can come and see me.”

“You are one stupid- ass convict, you know that.”

“I ain't convicted yet.”

“Well something tells me you will be.”

“Tell him to mail me those papers.”

“Suit yourself,” said the guard. “But anyway, it's a woman, you should probably know that about your own goddamn lawyer. She's not bad-looking, either.”

“How long am I gonna be down here, anyway?”

“Not too long,” said the guard. “Not too long.”

He listened to the man's shuffling footsteps disappear. The other inmates on the block called out to him but the guard passed them by as if both deaf and blind. Poe decided he had not done badly. He had not caved in, his second chance he had not taken it. But he didn't know the third time, he was not sure he could say no again. He sat back in his bunk. He could hear one of the J-8s, the loonytoons, shouting for help that would never come, he had been shouting for two days straight.

There was no good answer. It was him or Isaac. There was no way they could both come out of it. The day they took him out of isolation was the day Clovis and the others would be waiting for him. One way or the other he was spilling his guts—shank or lawyer it was his decision. As soon as the lawyer knew who really killed old Otto, from there it would go to the DA and then it would be Isaac in these shoes and not him. But maybe Isaac would have some way of coping with it better than he himself did. It was a distinct possibility. Though smaller, he might be better equipped. Mentally stronger. You're just scared, he thought. If you stay scared you know what you'll pick.

He closed his eyes and ate the last section of orange he'd saved from breakfast, the eating would distract him. He lay and chewed and waited for the empty feeling to be interrupted, he was either empty or full, overfull, there was no in- between. The truth was people died every minute. Were dying. The only real miracle was the human perception that it would not be him. But it would be. It was the only certainty. It was back to the darkness, a cycle. It was back to the darkness, a cycle, a comfort. There was no point to the putting off. It was a spiral of shame, shame of being wrong, of being wrong that you were the source of all existence, when really, when you were born, you were the same as a name on a gravestone. A gravestone of the future. A born destiny. Only now his name would be put upon the list of men. There was a list kept somewhere and his name would be recorded it was an honor.

Except it wasn't. It was only dying. It was dying and being afraid. No matter how many sums in your favor, hero or coward it did not matter, it would not change the truth of your own death.

He was a good person. His choices had done some good. If he had gone away to Colgate, if he had not been living in Buell, he would not have been home the day Isaac decided to walk out on the thin ice over the Mon. That was the one brave thing he had done. Isaac had gone maybe ten feet, it was obvious the ice wouldn't hold him, then he just dropped through and Poe had run out after him and dropped through as well, felt the ice give way and had his moment of panic and stayed on course. He had saved Isaac English. It was the best thing he had done. Isaac had not had it easy but he was a good man—rarity, that combination—you were not supposed to say it, it was not the American Way to admit it, but generally the harder you had it the more of a piece of shit you were. Except the rich were even worse, they didn't understand life, the stories Lee told her rich friends looked at the world the same as a retarded person, as a person with actual brain damage, that was how they understood life, it was no wonder that the world was such a fucked- up place. It was nearly all of them, it was all people, really, that were pieces of shit. He himself was lucky that way, not rich and not poor. And Isaac, when he'd changed his mind about taking his own life, he had come to Poe. Poe had gotten him warmed up and then given him an ear and listened to him, they had sat there talking all night. If that wasn't a sign, he didn't know. It showed you there was a reason for all of it, despite nearly killing that boy from Donora, he had saved Isaac English. It was a sign and fuck all the rest of them, Harris, the DA, and all the rest who were coming after him that he hadn't even met yet, he wouldn't tell them a fucking thing, this was the one thing in his life he was not going to fuck up.

He was at the end of his rope it had not been a long one. He didn't know what he expected. More warning, like a cancer, only there had been warning, there had been many warnings, it was only that he had not been capable of seeing them. And so here he was, it was inevitable, it could not have gone another way.

There was nothing in the hole he could use for a weapon and besides they would search him anyway. He would figure something out when he got back to the general population, find a piece of metal, sharpen his toothbrush handle, make a razor out of a Coke can, it was better than nothing. He would take as many of them with him as he could.

2. Lee

S
unday night and she was going slightly crazy she'd already talked to Simon, she didn't think she could read a single word of another book, she needed to get out of the house. She searched her planner for phone numbers, found Joelle Caruso and Christy Hanam. She called them both and they agreed to meet at Joelle's uncle's bar.

The bar was busy for a Sunday, nearly all faces she knew from high school, or at least the older and younger siblings of people she'd known. She was struck by how big all the men were, more than weight- room big, it was steroid big, sitting in overlarge T-shirts with the sleeves cut off, their arms crossed, muscles on display. But what else was there to do? Many of the women, it seemed, were starting to soften, barely into their twenties, maybe they weren't welcome at the gym. Lee was glad she'd worn a sweatshirt and no makeup.

“Good to see you again, hon. I can't believe you're back so soon. That was Christmas, right?”

Lee looked at her. “I think it might have been last Christmas.”

“God,” Joelle said, “you serious?”

“I think,” said Lee. She pretended to consider it. “Yeah, it was last Christmas, a year and a half ago.”

“Well, I guess that tells you all you really need to know then, doesn't it.” Joelle shook her head.

“You got married,” said Christy, touching her ring.

Lee held it out. She was glad she hadn't worn the engagement ring.

“Congratulations, girl. A guy from school?”

“His name's Simon.”

“Church wedding or one of those modern ones?”

“We didn't really have one,” said Lee. “We went to the JP.”

“Holy shit, she's having a kid.”

“No. It was just a spur- of- the- moment thing.”

“Listen to us,” said Christy. “What a bunch of bitches.”

“How are you guys, anyway?”

“Oh, fat, everyone's fat. The men lift weights, shoot steroids in their butts, we just get fat.”

“They get fat too,” said Christy.

There must have been some agreement in Lee's face, because Christy said:

“No, we're all doing pretty good. I got my own house now, I pay my own mortgage. We're not all doing bad.”

“Christy wrangles retards for a living.”

“Special ed,” said Christy. “I teach speds.” She shoved Joelle playfully. “You are such a little bitch.”

“What do you do?”

Lee wondered why she hadn't come up with an answer to this question. “Well,” she stammered, “I guess I've been applying to schools again, and I dunno, helping my mother- in- law with her business.”

“So did he at least give you an engagement ring or anything? I don't see one.”

“No, it didn't fit right.” The truth being she'd been embarrassed to wear it.

“They're all the same, aren't they? You want another drink?”

Joelle could have gone behind the bar herself, but instead they all waited for her uncle to come over.

“This is a weird question,” Lee said, “but you guys haven't seen or heard anything about my brother, have you?”

“I thought he was off in school.”

“No,” said Christy, “he's still here. You see him around sometimes.”

“What's he doing, then?”

“Looking after our father,” said Lee.

“That's weird. Even between the two of you, he always seemed to be the one who would get out of here.”

Lee felt her ears getting warm.

“All I mean is, you always knew how to get along with people. He just seemed like the type that was so smart he didn't know how to talk. You could tell he probably belonged somewhere else.”

“I dunno. There was my dad to look after, I guess.”

“Your dad?” Joelle shook her head. “It ain't like there's a shortage of places for your dad around here, not with a steelworker's pension. I mean right now, just put your head out the door and look. They're building towers for old people all up and down this valley. Home health is about the only kind of job you can get now, teaching's out, home health is in. If Christy hadn't gotten that job with the kids, she'd be swapping out bedpans.”

Christy nodded. “She's right, unfortunately.”

“It was probably your mother,” said Joelle. “A kid like that is going to be tight with his mother. Something like that happens, it's gonna hurt him pretty bad.”

There was silence as they all looked into their drinks.

“On worse news that might cheer you up,” said Christy, “you remember Billy Poe? From the football team, freshman when we were seniors?”

“Sure.”

“Killed a bum in one of the old factories. Beat him to death.”

“Why the hell would you even be in one of those places,” said Joelle. “Nothing good could come of it.”

“Everyone's got secrets.”

“What does that mean?”

“Maybe he was gay or something. They meet up in strange places, it's not exactly like they could come in here and have a date or something.”

“I can tell you for sure that he wasn't gay,” said Joelle.

“You cannot.”

“As a matter of fact, I can.” She held her two fingers a good distance apart. “Course the asshole never called me once he got it.”

Lee felt her face getting hot.

“Well, I'm sure now he'd be happy to have any of us. He isn't gonna see a woman for a long time.”

“I feel sorry for him,” said Joelle.

“Do you think he did it?” said Lee. She felt guilty for asking and had to look away but neither of the two caught it.

“Who knows?”

“He did beat the absolute shit out of Rich Welker once, who entirely deserved it, but everyone noticed that it went on longer than it could have.”

“And that kid he got arrested for last year.”

“That one too,” said Joelle.

Lee nodded and sipped her white wine, it was very sweet.

“So you ever think you'd move back here or anything?”

“I don't think so,” Lee said. “Or not anytime soon.”

“Thank God,” said Joelle. “I'd never get laid if you did.”

“You really are a whore,” said Christy.

Lee smiled and raised her eyebrows.

“Nah, it's just a joke, it's nothing around here but the same old faces since the third grade. Do a boy once in school, know it's a mistake but five years later there's no one else and the bar is closing so you do it again. Ten years later you're married to him. Look at our mothers and it's even worse today. All the smart ones leave.”

“You guys think you'd ever do that?” Lee immediately regretted asking it but both Joelle and Christy shrugged it off.

“Doubt it. I'll probably work here until I die.” Joelle waved her hand around, encompassing the bar. “And she'll take care of the retards.”

“From the fetal alcohol.”

“We're practically a team.”

They both laughed.

“But really, it's not bad. Your car breaks down along the road, you know you only gotta wait two minutes before someone you know comes by. There just isn't that far you can fall.”

“You two ought to come visit me,” said Lee. “We could go to New York.”

“I'd like to do that,” said Joelle.

“Please,” said Christy.

“No,” Joelle said. “I'm serious. Me and Jon- Jon went on that cruise to Jamaica, I'm not like you. I'm practically an adventurer.”