Homesick Creek (19 page)

“My own state of health is that I’m fine.”

Gabriella raised both hands high in surrender. Bob stood up and tugged his jacket straight. He had reached the door when she said softly, “I don’t know if you pray at all, but if you do, this might be a good time to step things up a little.”

But Bob didn’t pray. He believed that people like him and Warren, people who’d strayed but not yet fallen, were too insignificant for God’s full attention. If you were very bad, you got a bolt of lightning. If you were good—like Crystal was good, like Anita was—you got wings when it was over. But if you were Bob or Warren, damaged men of no particular accomplishment, you were overlooked by God and Satan alike. You were as invisible as a single drop of rain.

Bob didn’t get back to the dealership from the clinic until three o’clock, but his service bay was as empty as when he’d left. All was right with the world, at least as far as cars went. Bob stuck his head in Hack’s office and let him know that he was going out again. Hack maintained a no-questions-asked stance around the dealership as long as Marv Vernon wasn’t around, and right now the old man was in Scottsdale, Arizona, playing in some old man’s golf tournament.

“You want my truck?” Hack said.

“Nah. It’s not raining anymore.”

Hack lifted a dismissive hand, and Bob ducked out of the office again. Hack was a good man; God forgive Bob for any time he might have said otherwise, and there certainly had been times. But lately he’d come to find out Hack Neary understood that sometimes a man just needed to be left alone, and that was a rare quality. When he’d seen how Bob had stopped drinking and all, he’d loaned Bob his new dirt bike, no questions asked. Bob kept it stored out behind the used car lot. With the bike, he could get from the dealership to the homestead in ten minutes flat—less on a dry day when he could really open her up and fly. Rain gear took care of the rest. He was usually back at the dealership in time to hitch a ride home to Hubbard with Hack or Doreen.

Today he made it in just over nine minutes. He slowed down as he rounded the last turn, the one where the road wound down the valley wall like a ribbon of wonder, leading to the homestead he increasingly thought of as his. He and Anita had gone through dwellings like other people went through beater cars, running them down, using them up, moving on. Some had been livable enough. Not all of them, though. And Anita minded, he knew, though she hadn’t talked about it since the eviction from Adams Street. She didn’t need to. He’d seen her in Hack’s living room, seen her face when she beheld for the thousandth time that goddamned baby grand and all those fucking rabbits. Yeah, he’d seen her.

Now, from his position on the hill, he found himself looking down upon bounty. The roof was completely mended with sound shakes he’d either split or harvested off the barn; the porch was propped up with a couple of two-by-fours, ready for more but stable in the meantime. He’d replaced all the rotten floorboards with barn salvage, and the windows were trimmed out with new frames. He figured he’d pay for a couple of windows out of the paycheck he’d be getting late next week.

The place was really beginning to look like something, goddamned if it wasn’t.

He parked the dirt bike inside what was left of the barn—an old carcass of a thing now, whale bones left out in the open too long—and came through the newly weather-tight front door into the house. Dry as dry. He felt the unfamiliar thrill of pride. Warren would appreciate it. He had finally called Bob at the dealership late in the afternoon about three weeks ago, in the middle of February.

“Jesus, where the fuck have you been?” Bob said once Francine put the call through.

“Hell.”

“Yeah, well, even hell must have a phone number and a mailing address.”

“I’m in a place off Burnside.”

“That’s the part of town where all those bums are.”

“Yeah. It’s an okay place, though. I’m subletting it.”

“Subletting?” Bob said.

“I’m renting it from the guy who’s technically renting it, except he died, so now I’m him.”

“You’re renting an apartment as a dead guy?”

Warren sighed. “It’s complicated, Bobby. This place is sort of a hand-me-down from one person with AIDS to another.”

“Are you kidding? Jesus, Warren—I mean,
Jesus
. Sterilize everything. Get some Lysol or bleach. Do you have any bleach?”

“Honey,” Warren said dryly, “it’s way past time to bleach.”

“Yeah, well,” Bob conceded. “So, you know, are you okay?”

“Okay? Sure I’m okay. They fired me. Didn’t I tell you they’d fire me? Well, they did. I have a KS lesion on my cheek now, so, you know.”

“Shit,” Bob said sympathetically.

“I’m going to try and get on as a checker or something at Fred Meyer. They have benefits.”

“Yeah?” Bob said. He didn’t really know anything about Fred Meyer. “So how’s Sheryl doing?”

“I don’t know. She’s called me once or twice.”

“You tell her anything?”

“At first I just told her I didn’t love her anymore and that was why I was moving out, but Christ, Bobby, you should have seen her eyes.” Warren’s voice broke. “Hell, I figured the truth might actually come as good news, after that. So I told her the real reason.”

“Yeah?”

“She said,
Oh
. That’s all she said:
Oh
. I told her I didn’t think we’d need to get divorced because she’d get everything as soon as I died, anyway, and we might as well save the legal fees.”

“Fucking hell.”

“Yeah,” Warren said wearily. “So what about you, Bobby?”

“I went to the clinic a few weeks ago. I’ve got it too.”

The line was quiet for a long time.

“Warren?” Bob said.

“Yeah. And Anita?”

“She doesn’t know.”

“Jesus, Bobby, you’ve got to tell her.”

Bob’s voice dropped. “The thing is, I’m fine, but she’s got these lymph glands. Swollen nodes, or whatever.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. She’s had them for a couple weeks now, maybe.”

“Tell her,” Warren said. “Bobby, you’ve got to tell her.”

“Nah. I’ll take care of her.”

Warren’s voice rose. “What about you? What about when you get sick, Bobby, huh? What are you going to do then?”

“Yeah, yeah. Listen, I’m working on the old homestead. No kidding, you should see it.”

“What the fuck are you doing that for?”

Bob shrugged at the phone.

“Well, I guess that’s good,” Warren said.

“You should come down and see it.”

“Jesus, Bobby.”

“No, I mean it. Weyerhaeuser’s put a road in through there. You can just about drive right up to it now.”

“Yeah?”

“You should come back,” Bob said quietly. “Come home.”

“I’ve got to go,” Warren said.

“Just tell me where to find you,” Bob yelled, but Warren had already hung up. Bob started tearing up right there in his service bay. Jesus. He wiped his eyes on his coverall sleeve. Maybe he’d drive up there to Portland, find Warren, and bring him down. Maybe he just would.

Bob-and-Warren. They were closer than marriage, closer than brothers, than lovers. They were halves of the same whole, a unit indivisible.
One plus one equals one
, that’s what they used to say to each other.

Warren had always been the smarter of the two of them, but also more scared. He was afraid of high winds, low bushes, loud noises, certain tones of voice, dying in his sleep. Fear was what had started it all, their spooning up at night when they first started staying over at the homestead. Warren was scared, and Bob was cold, so they started swapping body heat for courage. Bob wrapped his arms around Warren’s skinny chest at night and found him no more substantial than a sheaf of twigs, of bird bones. Bob held on, and Warren whispered stories about princes and wizards, about wise men and saints. Love stories, though Bob didn’t recognize them then. Spooned up like that on the crackling mattress ticking, his little pecker would bloom, and then Warren’s would too, and it had felt good and natural, them playing; something lambs would do, something free and unimportant, like picking your nose. Warren and him, they’d had that secret between them all these years: the fact that they
did that
when they were alone. To Bob,
that
wasn’t sex, not the hot, bottomless, black velvet well you could sink down into and die happy. Sex was Anita, the only woman Bob had ever wanted, though some others were nice to look at, even ornamental. And he’d look, sure, he’d look; he was a man, wasn’t he? God had given him eyes. Yes, he’d looked, all right, but he’d never touched, and that was all right with him. Anita had been beautiful enough to last him, and not just when they were younger. She’d been beautiful all the time, even when her hair was messy and her eyes weren’t made up and she’d put on some pounds. Not that he’d ever told her. Not that she’d believe him if he did. He had tried once or twice to tell Warren about her, about what it felt like to love her, but Warren had sulked.

“I don’t know why you don’t like her,” Bob used to say, running his hands through his hair in vexation.

“I like her,” Warren said defensively.

“Well, it sure doesn’t seem like it.”

“I just miss doing stuff by ourselves.”

“What stuff?” Bob asked, because even then they were finding time to
do that
, even if it was only back in the woods at the end of Chollum Road.

“I don’t know, go out to the homestead. Talk.”

“We’re talking now,” Bob would point out, but Warren’s eyes would get watery, Bob would chuff in exasperation, and the conversation would be over one more time. It only got better when Bob was able to convince him to date Sheryl Miller so Anita would have another girl to go to the bathroom with and Warren wouldn’t feel left out. Sheryl, with her skinny legs and food allergies, so shy, so needy herself that Warren had seemed robust in her presence. Rumor had it that her father beat her, beat her mother, but she’d never talk about it when Warren asked. They’d coupled up like two broken things, gentle with each other in case they stumbled on something that hurt. It had been touching, seeing Warren pull out chairs for Sheryl, order a hamburger for her so she didn’t have to speak in public. Sheryl had looked just like a doe with her big eyes and the true, trusting nature of a preacher’s daughter. Anita used to say that even when she and Warren joined forces, the two of them could barely stand up in a medium wind; anything stronger, and they’d be blown across three counties. They went bowling together over in Sawyer sometimes, and Sheryl would use a child’s ball, her hands were that small. Bob always remembered that about her, the way she looked rolling those black bowling balls so weakly they wobbled down the alley, bumped into the pins, and stopped. Warren had tried to teach her to be more forceful, to use at least an eleven-pound ball that could pick up speed, but she’d start to cry and Warren would look stricken and they’d end up huddled miserably in the gallery, waiting for Bob and Anita to finish and drive them home.

Sheryl. As Bob recalled, she’d collected thimbles. They were her single passion, which struck Anita, for one, as pretty damned sad. “If her father really beats her, you’d think she could find something to collect that would at least protect her better—I don’t know, welder’s face shields or baseball catcher’s suits or fencing masks.”

“Does he beat her?”

“That’s what they say. She sure is funny about changing in the girls’ locker room, I’ll tell you that. She always goes into a bathroom stall. One time Bernadette walked in on her in the nurse’s office, and she said she saw bruises all over her back.” Bernadette—that had been before Hack changed her name to Bunny.

“Bernadette lies,” Bob had pointed out.

“Sheryl lies. C’mon, everyone does. You never lie?”

“Not unless I have to.”

“So when do you have to?” Anita asked. “To me?”

“Nah, come on, Anita. I wouldn’t lie to you.”

“Bet you would.”

“Would you lie to me?” Bob said.

“If I had to, I guess I would.”

“Why would you have to?”

“I don’t
know
, Bobby, I’m just saying. And I bet it’s the exact same way for you, only you’re not honest enough to say it.”

Well, she’d been right about that, the way she’d turned out to be right about most things over the years. That he drank because it was easier than trying; that he sabotaged things when they were going well. That he was a good man who’d never amount to shit, and that it was his own damned fault. But he was proving her wrong now, boy. He was sure going to have something to show her when the homestead was all done, her and Warren. Maybe he’d even take Hack Neary out there one day. Maybe he just would.

It was past dark when Bob finally got back to the dealership and parked the little dirt bike around back. He was startled to see Anita sitting perfectly still in a chair in the showroom, her face all puffy and pale, her hands folded in her lap like church. She stood up when she saw him.

“Hey, baby,” he said, wiping his hands and face on a rag.

Anita waited until he was close enough to touch her. “Sheryl just called,” she said. “Honey, Warren died last night. I’m so sorry.”

chapter eleven

Nobody dies of pneumonia anymore,” Bunny was saying to Anita. They were folding clothes at Anita’s kitchen table and drinking coffee laced with Bailey’s Irish Cream. “Nobody young and healthy anyway.”

“I know,” Anita said, matching socks. “That’s exactly what I said.”

“So what did Bob say?”

“It just made him mad. He said if Sheryl said it was pneumonia, it was pneumonia.”

“Well, I bet she could sue that doctor,” Bunny said, flicking a lint ball off a pair of Bob’s work pants. “I mean, tell me the last time you heard of someone dying of pneumonia who wasn’t eighty years old or a transplant patient or something like that. Name one person. See? You can’t. I bet the doctor fucked up and gave him the wrong antibiotic or something. You should tell her, Nita.”

“Maybe,” Anita said.

“Are you going to the funeral?”

“They aren’t having one. Sheryl said Warren told her once if he died, he didn’t want any service.”

“He said that?”

“Two months ago.”

“Maybe he had a premonition or something,” Bunny said. “You hear about that happening sometimes.”

“I don’t know, everybody says that kind of stuff. Haven’t you ever told Hack where you want to be buried?” Anita said.

“Well, sure, but that’s only so he won’t put me next to Daddy. Can you imagine having to spend all eternity next to the bastard?”

Anita snorted appreciatively. She hadn’t liked Bunny’s father either. He had always stared at her breasts.

“Not even cemetery services, though?” Bunny said.

“No, he wanted to be cremated. You know him and Sheryl were separated, right? Well, she said why would he want to be around her, dead, when he didn’t want to be around her when he was alive? So Bob had her send the ashes down here.” Anita nodded in the direction of the living room.

“You mean that’s him in there?” Bunny said, looking.

“Uh-huh.”

Bunny shuddered. “It would give me the willies knowing that Warren Bigelow was sitting on my TV set in a jar.” She went and picked up the green urn and turned it around in her hand, finally turning it completely upside down. “I hope she didn’t pay much for this. I think it came from the Sentry Market. Remember when they were doing those giveaways, a free vase or serving dish or whatever for every place setting you bought? Mom picked up a couple just for the hell of it, she thought they were so pretty. They sure break easy, though; plus you just look at them wrong, and they chip.” Bunny set the jar back down on the television gingerly and nudged it into place with a fingertip. “It was made in India,” she said, returning to the table and dipping into the heaped laundry basket again. “You don’t think of them making something like a jar over there, just those cheap bedspreads you can’t wash with anything else. We had one once that turned Hack’s T-shirts completely pink, and you know Hack isn’t going to wear a pink T-shirt even if no one can see it. I had to buy him all new.”

Anita nodded, snapping towels straight and folding them. Every one of them had a frayed place in the selvage.

“Well, I guess you can’t say no to something like that, though, taking someone’s ashes and all,” Bunny ruminated, pulling up a pair of Crystal’s overalls from the clothes basket. “I mean, what if Sheryl would have just put them in the garbage or something?”

“That’s the thing,” Anita said.

“So how’s Bob taking it?”

“Bad.” Anita smoothed the stack of towels that was smooth already. “I went to put out the trash yesterday, and he was just standing there in the rain—no hat, no jacket, nothing, just standing there.”

Bunny raised her eyebrows. “He drinking again?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

Anita gave her a look.

“It just sounded like he might have been, doing something like that.”

“Well, he wasn’t.” Anita folded a small pair of underpants. They were Crystal’s favorites, the ones with a picture of Winnie-the-Pooh on the butt. Anita had bought her a set of them, one pair for every day of the week, a different character on each one.

“Let me see those,” Bunny said, holding out her hand. Anita passed her a pair. “They’re sure cute,” Bunny said. “Where’d you find them? Fanny’s granddaughter Maisy’s crazy about Winnie-the-Pooh. Fanny said it’s about enough to drive them all around the bend. She’d sure like these, though.”

“Wal-Mart. They were on sale a couple of weeks ago.”

“I’ll have to tell her.”

“Crystal can’t wait for Wednesdays, because she gets to wear Eeyore,” Anita said, taking the underpants back from Bunny and folding them. “She hasn’t figured out that she can wear Wednesdays any damn day she wants to.”

“Well, because the underpants police might tell on her.”

“Yeah.” Anita laughed softly. “I told Doreen to keep her mouth shut about it; this way it’s good practice for the days of the week.”

“Sure.” Bunny brought over the Bailey’s from the counter. “You want some more?”

Anita held up her hand. “I’ve still got some.”

Bunny added some to her mug and screwed the cap on loosely, for when they wanted more.

“So anyways,” Anita said, “Doreen got mad at me for buying them because she doesn’t have the money to pay me back.”

“Pay you back for what?” Bunny said, drinking.

“The
underpants
. I told her they were a gift, but she got mad anyway.” Anita sighed. “That girl loses her temper at every little thing anymore, especially at Crystal. I feel like I spend half my time just keeping the two of them separated, I swear.”

“Well, Doreen’s got a lot on her mind,” Bunny said, licking a dribble of Bailey’s from the outside of her mug.

“Yeah. Did I tell you about Danny’s divorce attorney? The boy is sitting there fat and happy in prison, contributing exactly zip to the family, and Doreen gets a call from his slimeball lawyer saying Doreen will have to turn over half their bank account to him.”

“Is she going to fight it?”

“No, spend it. That way there won’t be anything for Danny to get.”

Bunny clucked sympathetically.

“They only have two hundred and sixty-six dollars anyway, and that’s with her working two jobs.” Doreen had taken a night shift at the Dairy Queen in Hubbard on top of her hospital job over in Sawyer. “She’s working her ass off to keep her and Crystal going, and he’s sitting there in that penitentiary in Salem getting all his food and clothes for free.”

“Aw, honey.”

“You know what she said? She said she should just go out and knock over a bank or something, and she’d be set for life. No kids, no bills, no husband holding his damn hand out.”

“Well, she does have a point. Not that she should do it, but she’s only nineteen, Nita,” Bunny said, as though Anita didn’t know it. “Is that Tommy Elliott still coming around?”

“He is, but Doreen won’t have much to do with him. He has that cerebral palsy, and it makes him walk sort of herky-jerky. He’s a nice boy, but she says it embarrasses her to go anywhere with him because people look.”

“Doesn’t his father own the Office Place?”

“Yeah. It’s a good business. I pointed that out, but she just said, ‘What, so he’s going to give me and Crystal free pens and pencils for the rest of our lives?’ ”

“She’s going to have to get a hold of herself, or she’ll be nothing but a smoking ruin by the time she’s twenty-five,” Bunny said.

“You try telling her that, though. She just slams her bedroom door and won’t come out until morning, not even to tell Crystal night-night. Me and Bob, we’re going to end up raising that child yet, see if we don’t. I told Bob so just last night.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing. He just gave me a funny look.”

“He’s probably worried about you.”

“If he was worried about me, he’d stay home sometimes and help around the damned house.”

“You look better, though, I have to say. Maybe it’s burned itself out.”

“Maybe so,” Anita said. “I’ve felt better the last couple of days, but I didn’t want to jinx it by saying anything, you know? God be praised.”

“God be praised,” Bunny echoed, and held up her spiked coffee mug to clink against Anita’s.

Hack absently blotted water off the table at the Wayside with his Budweiser coaster. Shirl was half done with her beer already. Most women could nurse a beer forever, but not Shirl. She’d called him at work and asked him to meet her here for a beer and some talk. Well, she was talking, all right. “I’m saying keep your dick in your pocket. That’s all I’m saying. What’s between you and Bunny is between you and Bunny. Just keep your damned dick to yourself.”

“Jesus, Shirl.”

She looked at him shrewdly. “You think I’m just some old gal, don’t you? Just some big old cow who’s never seen the world—”

“I don’t think that.”

“—but I’ve seen a thing or two. I know you, and I know my daughter. If you’re cheating on Bunny, she’ll never be able to forget it, and she’ll never let you forget it either. She’s a tough nut. She hangs on. When she was a little girl, she used to sulk for days if she didn’t get something she had her sights set on. For whatever reason, she has her sights set on you, and she has ever since she first laid eyes on you. You know what she told me that day? She said, ‘I just met my husband.’ That’s just how she put it: ‘I just met my husband.’ She meant she’d seen you. She was crazy about you then, and she’s just as crazy about you now. Maybe more.”

Hack took a steadying breath. “Look, Shirl, I’ve always been straight with you. You and Bunny can believe me or not. This is the last time I’m going to say it to you, and I’ve already said it for the last time to Bunny: Rae Macy is an employee. That’s all. I know where my goddamn dick belongs. But let me ask you something. How come no matter what I do, you and Bunny think it has to do with sex? Hell, I put on a new pair of briefs that
Bunny bought me
in the first place, and she starts sulking. Why does it always have to do with sex?”

“Because you’re a man, son,” Shirl said dryly, narrowing her small eyes in amusement. “Sex is your brass ring, your first-place ribbon, the hot fudge on your sundae. I know you, mister. I always have.”

“Shit, Bunny gets all bent out of shape if I go to Portland to see Vinny, for chrissakes.”

“Uh-huh. That’s been a hard thing between you, all these years. Bunny’s cried many a bitter tear about you and that child. She’s a jealous woman, and it’s a hard thing to be jealous of your own daughter.”

“There’s never been any funny stuff between me and Vinny, Shirl, and you know it.”

“Course I know it, baby,” Shirl soothed. “Did I ever say there had? But you have a powerful feeling for that girl, and Bunny’s always been one to keep good things for herself.”

“Yeah.” Hack shook his head.

“How come you’ve never had kids of your own?”

Hack shrugged.

“Well, you’ve been a real good father to that child, better than that worthless piece-of-shit JoJo would’ve ever been. Man couldn’t spend a month under one roof without turning mean—meanest boy I ever knew. We were glad when he took off. Good riddance, I told Bunny. Vinny, she didn’t get anything of his bad nature, and I thank the Lord for that. That little girl always had the sweetest temper, sweeter than Bunny even, and Bunny was a sweet one when she was little.” Shirl cracked a wicked smile. “Course, she’s toughened up some over the years.”

“Some,” Hack said, grinning.

“Hell, I don’t know, she always did feel she was getting a smaller piece of the pie than everybody else. I don’t know why; never did. Maybe if she’d gotten more attention from her daddy, or maybe that’s just bullshit, all that crap about how important it is to be the apple of your daddy’s eye or whatever. I never have been able to make up my mind about it. When I was little, we were lucky if our daddy remembered our names, he was gone that much.

“My daddy never did forgive my mother for having us eight girls and just one boy.” Shirl chuckled. “We lived way upriver in the woods, but every Sunday we kids came down here to church by boat. My mother didn’t get to set foot inside that church for seven years straight one time, she was so tied down with the babies. There was no such thing as a crying room in those days; kids were expected to behave or stay home. Course, I was the youngest, and by the time I was old enough to remember, my mother was sitting right up there in the front pew regularly, belting out ‘Rock of Ages.’ The woman had feeling, but she could
not
carry a tune.”

“You want another beer?” Hack said.

“Talked me into it,” said Shirl, holding out her glass.

Hack supposed it was his lot in life to be surrounded by strong women. There was Shirl, of course, and Cherise, but there’d also been Minna Tallhorse, who was stronger than anyone he’d ever met, male or female.

The key to Minna’s strength, Hack thought, lay in her ability to hunker down and take it when anyone else would have run screaming from the room. She was there the day Cherise came back, fifteen months after disappearing without a word. Hack had walked into the apartment to find Cherise drunk, the Katydid crying, and Minna Tallhorse towering over the living room like an avenging angel. Hack had already half prepared himself, having seen parked in front of the apartment the kind of flashy piece-of-shit car Cherise liked to drive, in this case a Camaro the color of freshly spilled blood.

When he came into the living room, Cherise was bearing down on the Katydid. One of Katy’s eyes was swelling shut.

He didn’t remember lunging for Cherise, but he must have. What he did remember was Minna Tallhorse clapping restraining hands on both of them and holding them apart until they’d calmed down. She pushed Cherise into a chair across the room and motioned for Hack to sit next to the Katydid on the sofa.

“Well, then,” Minna Tallhorse said, “you must be the mother.”

So she must have just come in a minute before Hack.

“Yeah,” Cherise said. “And who the fuck must you be?”

“She’s our friend,” said Katy.

“Well, I’m back now,” Cherise said. “You don’t need a friend.”

“My name is Minna Tallhorse. I’m a social worker. Your children have been under my supervision for the last eleven months.”

“Yeah?” Cherise said, faltering but still shifty-eyed, looking for the angles. “Well, they’re real good kids.”