Marvel and a Wonder (10 page)

He was out the door, plastic bags in hand, staring down into a small creek before he remembered the mask and the pistol stuffed into the back of his pants. He shouted, bearing his fangs. It was one mistake after another with him. It was like his head was on someone else’s body. Angrily, he shoved the bags of Sudafed into the cab of his truck and wondered where in town he might find some blue iodine. His plan was to use the red, white, and blue method for cooking up his first batch. He had the red—phosphorous, which he had brought back with him from California—the white—the ephedrine which he had just bought—but not the blue, the iodine. He had closely watched the homo he had been sleeping with and his nurse sister who had decided to turn their garage into a meth lab. There was something he was supposed to do with lithium batteries but he could no longer remember. His head was throbbing. His eyes were making a weird noise; he could feel them vibrating like electric bug lamps. A terrible violence was now coursing through his veins. He felt that unless he saw something injured, he would not be able to breathe again. He snatched the pistol and mask from the back of his pants and limped off toward the adult bookstore, which was situated behind an abandoned creamery. All at once he was frightened by the sound of his own teeth.

* * *

In glossy letters, the billboard reads:
Private Pleasures. Lion’s Den. Dancers Show Club. Brad’s Brass Flamingo. Brad’s Gold Show Club. Wild Cherry Show Club. The Torch. Silk ’N’ Lace Gentleman’s Show. Alaskan Pipeline. PT’s Show Club. Night Moves. Pair-A-Dice. Pandora’s. Kitty Kat Lounge. Satin Lady. Shangri-La. Shangri-La East. Shangri-La West. After Hours. Danzers. Black Cherri. Bleu Diamond Show Club. Body Heat. Busybody Lounge. Chances Are. Chances R. Class Act. V.I.P. Show Club. Club Zeus. Club Rio. Club Centerfold. Club Paradise. CT Adult Store. Déjà Vu Love Boutique. Déjà Vu Showgirls. Industrial Strip. Dream Club. Twice as Nice. Exotic She Lounge. Red Garter. Filly’s. Rising Sun. Stimmelators. Strippers. Sunset Strip. Jokers Wild. Glo Worm Lounge. Suzie-Q’s. Hideaway. Lucky Lady. Our Doll’s House. Stardust. Hoosier Girls Showclub. Harem House. White Diamonds. Poor John’s. Lollipops. Peaches. ShowGirls. Visual Enjoyments. Hots.
A face, a shoulder, a rampart of blond hair, of red hair, of hair as black as the evening, the suggestion of cleavage, or no suggestion at all, an unflattering shot of some girl’s surgically enhanced décolletage, the mascaraed eyes staring out lonely-like from the flat plane of the billboard unto the side of a gas station, unto a cow pasture, unto a field of corn.

* * *

On the way to the blue pickup, Jim found his legs had become unsteady. He leaned against a parking meter, watching the sun as it sunk behind the rectangular facade of the deserted post office. He made wayward steps from the Masonic temple, his knees buckling some, as he strolled from one parking meter to the next. When he glanced up he saw a station wagon pull up in front of the realty office across the street. A good-looking woman climbed out, shoved the door shut, then glanced at the reflection of herself in the passenger-side window. The woman dabbed at some lipstick at the corner of her lips and stepped lightly into the realty office, Jim’s eyes escorting her the entire way.

It was Lucy Hale.

Jim blinked once, then again, disbelieving his luck. He groaned, pulling himself to his feet, fixing his hat atop his balding head, checking to be sure his breath was okay and his shirt was still buttoned right, then slowly made his way toward the end of the block, staring through the glassy windows of the realty office, watching as Lucy shook hands with Eugene Tibbs, a greasy-looking real estate agent. Eugene placed his free hand on Lucy’s shoulder, grinning like a wolf, walking her over to his desk, where the two of them took a seat. The agent placed a few papers before Lucy to sign, which she did, pausing for a moment; then, nodding discreetly to herself, she put the pen to the page, signed, and stood up quickly, offering her small hand to the real estate agent again before turning back toward the office door, rushing out, one hand already reaching up to her dark eyes, the other fumbling for something in her purse. She was unlocking the rusty car door now, climbing inside, slamming it shut, holding both hands up to her eyes, her mouth drawing closed, her chin rising and falling slightly. Leaning there against the signpost on the corner, Jim hesitated, seeing the tears running down her face; then, seeing the stoplight had changed in his favor, he crossed, moving in a rickety fashion down the gray pavement, slowing up beside the station wagon, knocking gently on the driver’s-side window twice.

When she looked up, Lucy Hale did not appear to be anything other than stunning, even with the tears and mascara streaked along her cheeks. There was something about this woman that made you wish for courage or ignorance—either one, or both. Lucy smiled, dabbing at the corner of her eyes with a balled-up tissue, and rolled down the window.

“Wouldn’t it be my luck to have to run into you today,” she said, stuffing the tissue into her shoulder bag. “Here I am, not even dressed and carrying on like an absolute idiot.”

“Lucy,” Jim muttered, for the word seemed to sum up all he felt at that moment, a kind of tenderness, a shared sense of the widower’s and widow’s grief, and an out-and-out roused-up pleasure in seeing the shape of her crying face.

“Of course you of all people would have to catch me crying like this.”

“I was passing down the street and saw your car there.”

She edged a finger along her eye again, catching a final, solemn tear, and then she exhaled deeply, her sizable chest heaving slightly. “Well, Jim, I finally did it. I finally did it.”

“Did what?”

“I put it up for sale. I didn’t know what else to do. I talked to the lawyer, I talked to my brother, I even talked to my dad. And they all told me the same thing: if you can’t run it, there’s no sense in hanging on to it.”

Jim pulled the brim of his hat down to block some sun that had begun to make the wrinkles near his eyes ache.

“So I finally decided to do it. It’s been two years, and I’ve tried. God knows I have. I feel like such a traitor, Jim. I do. He worked so hard for everything we had, and he tried to make that place a palace. But I don’t know the first thing about raising sheep, and try as I might, it just doesn’t come natural to me. I’m fifty-three years old, Jim. I am. No matter what anybody tries to tell you. I never married that man when I was fourteen. I was young but not that young. And here I am, fifty-three, having to start all over again. I don’t know the first thing about sheep. I tried to learn but I’m just too old, I guess.”

“I don’t know anybody in town that would ever use that word to describe you. There are some folks I know who don’t even think you’ve turned forty.”

“Well, that’s because they only see me in town. I’ve got a face, Jim, the kind you put on. It takes all kinds of makeup and smiling when you don’t feel like smiling. When I’m at home, I’m a mess. Who am I kidding? I’m a mess now. I’ve been one since Burt died on me.”

“I’m sure some of us, Jim Wall or Jim Dooley, we could lend you a hand. If you were still interested in running the place.”

“I appreciate that, Jim, I do. You fellas, all of you, Jim Dooley and the Walls, all of you have been awful kind to me. But I just can’t keep it up anymore. To be honest, I never much cared for sheep. When they cry, it sounds like a child crying. They’re just too ghoulish to have to hear every night when you’re trying to get to sleep.”

“Well, you did your best. And nobody can fault you for that.”

“I know one person who could.”

“Who?”

“Burt.”

“He wouldn’t fault you. I’m sure he wouldn’t.”

“You didn’t know how he built that place, Jim. Out of nothing. Absolutely nothing. My father gave him a pair of sheep as a dowry. He had an acre maybe and worked it all the way up to what we got now. He’d be up in the morning before me and wouldn’t get to bed until after I was already asleep. He loved it, Jim, that place. He loved it the way you love another person. It’s our family, that place.”

Jim nodded, knowing there was nothing more to be said. He glanced down at her hands, saw them busy fumbling for another balled-up tissue.

“The funny part is he’s the only person I’d like to get advice from on all this. I keep thinking if I could only get him to look at these papers for me . . .”

“I’d be more than happy, if you wanted a second pair of eyes on anything.”

“I wouldn’t dare bother you, Jim. You been too nice already.”

“Just being neighborly. Burt woulda done the same in my place.”

“Well, what’s done is done, isn’t that right?”

“I guess it is.”

Jim saw that she was smiling again, her pearly teeth tucked behind a pair of lips that looked softer than anything ought to be.

“Who knows? Maybe no one will buy it,” she said, her voice brightening.

“Who knows?”

“I guess I oughta be celebrating. Though I don’t feel much like it.”

“You should.”

“Hey, I just got an idea,” she said, her eyes meeting his. “How do you feel about having a drink with me?”

* * *

Outside the sunshine was being uncooperative. Everywhere Gilby turned, he had to squint, his eyes sore from it, his neck beading over with sweat. The reflection of himself in the glass windows gave him a definite guilty feeling. He looked like a crook, his longish hair scraggly in the back, his chin unshaven, a hood, a lawbreaker exactly like his older brother. Who knows? Maybe Mr. Peel with his Sunday school bifocals was right. Pulling the brim of his baseball hat down over his eyes, Gilby decided the only thing left to do now was to head over to the Bide-A-While and see if he couldn’t use the money he had borrowed today to win big off the video poker machine. He turned the corner, finding Main Street deserted, with the saloon in sight at the end of the block.

_________________

At first they tried parking behind the Baptist church, but a cleaning lady gave them the evil eye. Lucy Hale blushed a little, pulling the station wagon out of the parking lot and turning down another alley. “I got a half-pint of blackberry schnapps in the glove compartment,” she said. “Unless that’s too low-class for you.”

“Not at all,” Jim stammered.

The station wagon pulled down a narrow side street off Main, flying over the brick-paved road, then they idled before what remained of the CutCorp Knife Corporation, a tan-colored manufacturing plant that seemed to blot out all the angles of the sun with its rectangular shape. Lucy put the car in park, switched off the engine, and unlatched the glove compartment, retrieving the stout-looking bottle of schnapps. She offered him the first sip, which he refused on principle. “Ladies first,” he smiled.

She unscrewed the plastic cap, pressed the glass against her soft lips, drinking deeply, a single thread of purple liquid looking glossy on her chin. She grinned when she was done and handed the bottle over to Jim who, overcome by the sweetness of it, only took a small sip. He could feel the waxy traces of her lipstick against the bottle’s ridge, the glass still warm from her mouth, and a pang of nervous disappointment at immediately knowing what would—in a million years—never happen. He coughed a little as the sweetness bit against his tongue, his eyes tearing up, him smiling as he passed the bottle back.

“Too sweet for you?” she asked, and he nodded, wiping the corner of his eyes. They both turned and looked at the boarded-up plant hulking before them, the many broken and missing windows gaping there like the missing teeth of a corpse.

“We had money in this place,” Lucy whispered. “Not a lot. But some. They’re over in India now. We sold everything we had in it before they went over. We could have pulled in a fortune but Burt had made his mind up.”

“My Deirdre worked a summer there. When she was done with high school. I used to drive her here, every day, six in the morning. She was a different girl then.”

“It was all different.”

“It was.”

“When I was little, there was a pond out here we used to swim in. Now there’s just this. It makes you feel like you been robbed, don’t it?”

“I guess so,” he said.

“That’s the feeling I can’t live with. Right after Burt . . . it’s like I’ve been stolen from. You know what I mean? It’s like I was asleep and woke up to find someone stole an arm or leg from me. And where do you go looking for an arm or leg? Nowhere.”

Lucy took another sip from the bottle and offered it again to Jim, who raised his hand, kindly refusing.

“Do you know anything about coyotes?” Lucy asked.

“Some. Not much.”

“They’re coming inside my fence now. Derrick, he’s that high school boy who still works a couple days a week, he said they took two lambs. Dragged them right out into the woods.”

“They aren’t too hard to get rid of. All you need is to tighten your fences, find out where they’re coming in, and set a few traps. We can come by and do that for you whenever you like.”

She turned to him, her dark eyes staring him right in the face, her left hand moving up to touch the crags of his cheek, the other still holding the bottle. It felt like Jim’s heart had maybe stumbled off the edge of a cliff. There in the shadows of that failed business concern, in the widow’s passenger seat, he felt like he was going to faint, the heat of the sun through the car’s windshield making his forehead sweat, his lips sticky from the blackberry schnapps, his left shoulder and hand not numb but tingly as it was the appendage closest to Lucy, her face, her chest.

“Well, I guess we oughta head on . . .” was all Jim got out before he felt her mouth against his. She was fast, this one, her lipstick smearing upon his lips, her teeth clinking gently against his own, her hands quickly finding his. She was leaning over, setting the glass bottle between the two seats, beside the parking brake. She was acting bold, unbuttoning her rayon blouse, and Jim, his hands feeling like they had grown ten sizes, fumbled for her breasts, finding only the hard wire of her brassiere. Everywhere he turned, her mouth was already there, and then she was sliding her left hand, the palm and fingers unfairly soft, down the front of Jim’s jeans. He felt his breath go, like the wind had been knocked from him, wondering what he was supposed to do next, but in that moment, Jim—the silent, lean-faced chicken farmer, the former MP and frequenter of a few Pusan whorehouses—found his ability to attain an erection, like his optimism, like his once wavy hair, was gone, gone, gone. There was nothing to be done about it, no matter how quickly she kissed him or where. Below his waist there was just a dull ache, the feel of her fingernails tracing an arc around his uncooperative privates. When—after a few more minutes of smiling, then laughing, then her face growing a little sour—she saw that what she was tangling with was more of a medical impossibility than simply the shyness of a man unaccustomed to someone else’s touch, she slipped her hand back out from beneath his waistband and placed her palm flat against his chest.