Daredevils (20 page)

“Mother,” he says.

“Yes.”

“Her parents are saddened, Mother. If not altogether surprised.”

Ruth nods calmly.

“She has taken the coins?”

“Yes, Mother.” He endures this.

“But not the strongbox?”

“No.”

It doesn't square. Why would the girl take the sack—that vain, incautious sack of gold coins—and not the locked metal box right behind it in the drawer?

She can tell that he is merely enduring her questions. Bearing them, as an obligation he must meet. It is the same for her. She imagines this conversation is part of the price she will pay to live in the celestial kingdom, in the glory of the Lord. She imagines the Lord's pleasure in her passage of this trial. Ruth does not know, still, what they are doing here in Idaho, whether they have left Short Creek for good, and when she inquires Dean tells her he doesn't know, he is still praying about it, and never once does he
inquire about her opinion or ask her whether she has prayed about it, though she has, and though she has been answered.

Ruth opens her eyes and says, “Perhaps it is the Lord's will that she has taken the gold.”

“I cannot see it so, Mother.”

“Perhaps the Lord will use these events to remind us.”

“Remind us of what?”

Ruth whispers, “That we have lost our hold on the iron rod.”

“Forgive me, Mother. Perhaps I was blinded. Perhaps I have erred.”

Ruth knows that Dean does not believe he has erred. She hears his swallowing of grievance, his pride in his humility. His satisfaction with himself, that he is able to so patiently pretend to accept her criticism.

“Erred in which way, Father?”

Dean does not speak for a long time. The darkness in the living room has deepened against the weak light from the kitchen, gleaming on the glass bell of the lamps, on the wood-grained arms of the couch, casting thin shadows in the nap of the carpet. He leans forward, elbows on knees, hands folded together, very nearly in the aspect of prayer. He lowers his head, raises it as if to speak, and lowers it again.

Dean says at last, “Perhaps everything, Mother. Perhaps everything I have ever tried to do,” and this, too, his self-pity, is but another part of her lot in this earthly life.

The girl has never been right. And Dean's man has never been right. She opposed that from the start as well, and Dean insisted that Mr. Baker was trustworthy, that he had shown his reliability, and Ruth recognized the truth: that was how the world and its values seeped into your life and corroded it, one harmless step at a
time, one innocent inch at a time, one arrogant Gentile at a time, until you could not recognize the damned from the saved.

She submits, submits. Dean sleeps beside her. She becomes more alert with each passing minute. It comes to her every night, this wakefulness. She thinks that perhaps the Lord's will is aligning with her own. Perhaps a humbling is what Dean requires. Perhaps those who have left them now will never return, just as she wishes.

Loretta

Somewhere deep in the rocking recesses of the night, Loretta tells Evel she wants to call him by his real name. She feels this must be a secret that he shares with few people, a talisman, his Sampson hair.

“Come on,” she says. “What is it?

“You don't know what it is?”

He seems genuinely surprised.

“I know it!” Jason says, erupting like a bubble in thick stew. “Robert Craig Knievel!”

Evel Knievel stares heavily at Jason, as though trying to will him away, and says, “Good for you, kiddo.”

“I've seen every one of your jumps but one,” Jason says, head wobbling, eyes misfocused. “I missed the last one. Wembley. My fuckin' parents wouldn't let me watch it. They made me go to a family dinner.” He turns to Loretta suddenly. “Dinner with
your
family. Hey.”

She pretends to smile. For Evel. She and Evel smile, patiently, together at Jason.

“My fuckin' parents,” Jason says again. “They didn't want me to watch the Snake River jump.”

“Uh-huh,” Evel Knievel says.

“Are you sure you don't remember me? You said, ‘Thanks for coming, buddy.'”

“Yeah, no,” Evel says. He grins at Loretta.

“But my parents! Can you believe that? Can you fuckin' believe it? Greatest thing ever. Biggest day we ever saw.” He looks at Evel, lets it sink in. “Didn't want me to go. Didn't want me to do it.”

“It's not exactly my favorite thing to talk about, bud.”

“Ah, hell,” Jason says. “Man, don't let that get to you. Everybody makes mistakes.”

They are all wasted, Loretta knows—she is blissfully drunk, protected from the world, narrowed down to the essences—and yet there is something in Jason's drunkenness that is distasteful, something loose and undisciplined and helpless, as if he were a marionette with half his strings cut. Evel leers at her. No one has ever looked at her so frankly. Not even Bradshaw.

Jason burps, and holds himself urgently still, then takes huge, steadying breaths through his nose. Evel sits back, swirls his drink.

Jason says, “Good Lord, you're amazing.”

Evel shifts in his seat, frowns at Loretta.

“No, seriously, man, you are,” Jason says. “I've never met anyone like you.”

Evel stares hard at him—like,
Stop it
—then turns toward Loretta, who barks once, a laugh escaping from a herd of laughs within. Evel Knievel smiles at her, and in his smile there seems to be some form of original light, something shining from within. Jason stifles a burp, and looks again like he might be sick, and Evel says, “You okay, buddy? Everything gonna stay inside?” and he smiles at her, a smile of pure light. A sour, sickening smell wafts in. She realizes: this is what her future is like. Not like the magazine
ads. Not something static and pretty—but something beautiful and ugly at once. It includes a famous man, a worldly man, just showing up at your table, and it includes the possibility that you might find yourself cleaning up the vomit of a boy.

Loretta starts telling Evel the truth about them, sort of, saying they'd gotten tired of their families and run away. She leaves out Dean and all that. At one point, Jason snaps to attention and slurs, “And that's not the fuckin' half of it,” but she reaches under the table, grabs a thick inch of skin above his knee, and twists it, hard.

“Holy crap,” Jason yelps. “Knock that off.”

Loretta smiles sweetly at Evel.

“How old are you kids?” he asks her.

“I'm eighteen,” Loretta says.

He begins to spout advice.
Always be true to yourself. Never let the bastards win. Don't be afraid to fail. Fail your asses off. That is how you will succeed. Be nice. That is the most important thing—be nice.

“Couple kids like you,” he says, lowering his head and waving his hand as though he were giving a blessing. “Be good to each other.”

“Yes,” Jason says.

“No,” Loretta says. “It's not that way.”

Jason looks at her, astonished.

“Be good to each other,” Jason says, and reaches for her hands, which she pulls into her lap.

“It's not like that,” she says to Evel Knievel.

“It is like that,” Jason says loudly. “Come on. Yes, it is.”

She ignores him, doesn't even look his way. Just keeps her eyes on Evel, and shakes her head.

Jason

Jason has slumped back on the seat. He sees little burn holes in the fake red leather, little blackened edges. It reminds him of the start of
Gunsmoke,
when the paper is burning away. He believes he will sleep here. The whiskey has gotten inside his nose, inside his eyes. It is making everything strange. Loretta and Evel are ignoring him, and that makes him wonder if he is even here anymore, or if he is dreaming this, and then he notices the burn holes again, and he thinks about
Gunsmoke
again, and cowboys, and heroes, and Sunday afternoons.

He wakes with a start at the sound of Loretta laughing so hard she cannot catch her breath. “You're so
funny,
” she screams.

The bar is empty but for them and the bartender, who watches TV, leaning on an elbow.

Evel says, “You're a real cute girl.”

Jason musters himself into a sitting position and says, “You can say that again.”

Loretta rolls her eyes and says, “Thank you, Robert.”

Evel says something Jason can't understand because the words are too low. When he next opens his eyes, Evel is whispering in her ear, and she is squinching up her shoulder like he's tickling her, and he says, “You grind me up, silly,” or maybe he says, “You're firing
me up, Jilly,” or maybe he is calling her a filly, and Jason doesn't like that, but it seems as if his eyes are stuck closed.

At some point, Jason says, “Maybe we should take this party up to the room.”

Or maybe he doesn't say that. Maybe he hears it. Maybe Evel says, “Maybe we should take this party up to your room.” Or it might have been Loretta. “Maybe we should take this party up to our room.”

 • • • 

Is Boyd angry that they return, loud and drunk, at two
A.M
., with a bottle and a bucket of ice? Does he wake and, seeing their guest, leap from bed and join in the fun? Does he storm out in a rage? Do they sit around and listen to Evel tell stories about Caesars Palace, Wembley Stadium, Reno, Twin Falls? Do he and Loretta sit together on her bed, while Boyd and Jason sit on theirs? Is that the conversational layout? Do the people in the neighboring room call the front desk to complain about their raucous laughter, their shouts of joy? Does Jason regale Evel Knievel with all the ways that he has worshipped him? Does Boyd tell him stories about their attempts to jump bicycles and minibikes off ramps Jason built with two-by-fours and cinder blocks? Is Jason the butt of the joke in those stories? Do they tell Evel Knievel the story of the bunny bash? And what does he have to say about that? Does he say to Boyd, “Good for you. I hate those little fuckers.” And does that affect Loretta in any way? Does she recoil at his heartlessness? Or does she spark up, move toward it? For isn't there something attractive in cruelty? Something essential and manly and gorgeous? Does Jason realize this as they talk—does he recognize his lack and regret it? Does he mope about it? Does Evel Knievel pull a small
bindle from his shirt pocket and snort from it? Does Loretta do the same? Does Jason say no thanks? And does Evel Knievel sneer? And does Jason finally vomit, or does he make it through?

 • • • 

Jason comes out of the bathroom feeling lighter, relieved, but still weaving. Loretta and Evel are in hysterics, while Boyd watches them, bemused. Jason thinks:
That man is not Evel Knievel. The hair's wrong. The attitude.
At some point, he opens his eyes and finds he is lying on his side, fully dressed, feet itching hotly inside his tennis shoes, and the room lights are still on and he can hear the sound of someone sloshing the ice bucket. Then he is back in the yard at the farm, outside the milking barn in the middle of the night, and his father is yelling at him from inside the barn. “Jason Reed Harder! Have you got all that miffling done?” And he looks down to see that he has a carrier full of bottles for the calves, and the bottles are full of beer, and he has to haul them to the calves and get them to drink, but the calves don't want to drink, they gum the bottles and leave them slick with mucus, and Jason's father shouts again, “I better not find that you haven't finished that miffling!” and so he drinks from the bottles himself, tasting the slick, grassy slime of the calves' mouths on the nipples, and Evel Knievel, who is sitting in the back of one of the calf pens, says, “Come on, kiddo. You can drink one more.” And Jason is standing in a circle of men in the desert behind Dean's house, and he is surrounded by bloody, misshapen bunnies, a sticky mound of fur and flesh, and a faceless man wearing a Scotch cap and a denim jacket says, “How are we going to eat all these fucking jackrabbits?” and Jason turns to find Boyd standing there, face and T-shirt bleary with blood, working on a large mouthful of something and holding
a jackrabbit with a bite taken out of its side, and he says, “Aren't you going to get that miffling done?” and Jason wants to cry, he wants to drop to his knees and sleep everything away. He says, “I don't know how,” and Boyd says, “
That
figures.” And there is a pounding in Jason's temples and an ache inside the bone of his skull, burning like a bed of embers, and his mouth is dry, so dry, and he hears a squeaking, a metal bouncing, and Loretta's voice slithers from the dark, saying, “No,” and then, more softly, “Shhhh,” and Jason thinks she is talking to him, and he prepares to say, “No what?” when he hears a voice, no words, just the deep baritone music of it, and she snickers, and Jason keeps his eyes closed tight now, will not open his eyes now, because he knows it is Loretta and Evel out there together, and a soft, steady squeaking begins, a working of the bedsprings, and then a groan and Loretta says again, “Shhhhh,” a note of delight and alarm, and Jason feels Boyd poke him in the back, once, hard, with his finger, and then there is nothing but the compression of the springs like a metronome, like the ticker Jason's mother kept on the piano,
tick-tick-tick-tick-tick,
for an hour, for seven hours, for nine days, for months and months, for the rest of Jason's life,
tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick,
and then a freeze, a seizing, and one loud
sproing
and squeak, and a final “Shhh.”

Jason feels sick in his flesh. The death of something is stinking him up. He peeks through his eyelids. The room is sunk in blackness, but for a band of bright light falling through a slit in the curtains, slicing across two shapes in Loretta's bed and a ball of cloth on the nightstand a few inches from Jason's face. He lies on his side, back to Boyd. Tiny sprung fibers glow on the cloth in the light, and Jason realizes it is Loretta's lavender underwear just as
her hand emerges from the darkness to grab it. Evel Knievel begins to snore like a gasping engine, deep, shuddering blasts, followed by long, wheezing inhalations. The way Boyd snores. Or Jason's grandfather. It carries the precise tone and rhythm of his dead grandfather, rending the peace of the night, the room like a grave.