Q Road (31 page)

“Maybe we have to keep one farm going around here,” Milton said. “Helping him is the Christian thing to do, anyhow. We've all got to help each other in this life.”

Parks said, “I just couldn't imagine this place without George's farm.”

Milton and Steve nodded.

“Well, he says he's starting on the beans on Friday.” Parks spoke slowly, though he felt as though he were gushing. “Next few weeks I'm working six in the morning until two, so maybe I could give him a hand in the afternoons. You know, he's still using some of the equipment he bought from my dad's farm.”

Steve said, “I always had an urge to farm. That's why I moved into this neighborhood, because I liked being next to farmland.” He took another slug of beer and got jolted again, this time with an inspiration about farming. His desire to work the land swelled in him, became as powerful as his desire for any woman ever was.

“So you figure Margo's run off with Johnny,” Milton said. “You're saying they disappeared at the same time?”

“Well, I only got Rachel's telling me that other version of her story, but it's about a month after her post box expired and there
was a DNR incident report right before that of Margo threatening a conservation officer. Nobody actually remembers seeing her after that September.”

“You make it seem like it's no mystery at all. Good thing you come back to Michigan, Tom.”

Parks sighed. “Still, I don't know if I'll get used to George and the girl together.”

“What do they call that?” Steve said. “A May-December marriage, right?”

Milton said, “Yep, they got a May-December marriage going, all right. God works in mysterious ways.”

“A May-December marriage,” Parks said. “Well, here's to pinning a name on a thing.” He drained his glass.

Milton said to Steve, “If you think Rachel's a different kind of person, you should've met her ma.”

“Yeah, Margo was a heck of a woman,” Parks said. “Makes Rachel seem downright domestic, I guess.”

“Her ma could gut and skin a poached deer in thirty minutes,” Milton said.

“And bury the innards,” Parks said, “so you didn't know a hole was ever dug.”

“She could skin out a skunk without breaking the sac.”

“And sometimes you'd find yourself staring at her for a long time without realizing you were even doing it,” Parks said, and the clear-flowing memory of Margo's face came to him, as though he'd just seen her. “That woman was as beautiful as the day is long.”

“Sounds like a heck of a woman, all right.” Every sip of Steve's beer tasted better and better, and as he watched the two men and listened to them talk, Steve realized that Milton was gay. A few minutes later, though, Steve was less sure. He looked up at the muscular carved Jesus. Steve just couldn't assemble the evidence he'd gathered over the course of the day. He didn't really know what was going on beneath the surface of this neighborhood. Maybe
that made him a little uneasy, but by the bottom of his glass, he decided he was never one to shy away from a challenge.

“Yep,” Milton said, as if that word pulled together the day's events, put it all to rest, at least temporarily. “So you want one of them sandwiches like that, Tom? Ham and cheese?”

“That'd be great, Milt. I can't believe I haven't eaten in more than ten hours.”

When Milton returned from the kitchen, he waited on the two golfing couples, then returned and refilled Parks's and Steve's glasses without taking any money.

WHILE APRIL MAY WAS WAITING FOR LARRY TO RETURN
from visiting his brother in Benton Harbor, she arranged her four biggest pumpkins with some straw out on the porch steps. She supposed it was a good thing she hadn't waited until this afternoon to steal straw from George's barn. Poor George, she thought, as she arranged the pumpkin gourds as a dining room centerpiece. Poor George, she'd continued thinking as she put the two smallest pumpkins over in the bay window with some Indian corn she'd saved from last year. What she was feeling most strongly this evening wasn't sympathy, though—it was elation that the pain in her foot was gone. She hadn't been entirely free of that pain since she was a girl of seven. It was as though all her life she'd been pinned to the ground by that old nail, but she'd finally stood on tiptoes tall enough to free herself.

By the time her husband arrived home, the wild-limbed flames across the street had died down and a house-sized heap of orange coals glowed atop the black earth.

“I don't know if I want to carve the pumpkins this year,” April May told Larry during their late supper. “I kind of like them whole.”

“You'll have to make at least one into pumpkin pie.”

“I make pumpkin pie out of a can,” April May said. “I've always made pumpkin pie out of a can. I can't imagine making pumpkin pie out of a pumpkin.”

“Well, these little ones here are real cute,” Larry said, pointing his fork at the table's centerpiece.

This morning April May might have preferred the smaller, more perfect pumpkins and pumpkin gourds, but over the course of the evening she found herself favoring the big ones, the misshapen, asymmetrical ones with flattened, dirty sides. She was no longer planning to burn down her house, but she was seriously entertaining the idea that on Halloween she'd dress in black and paint her face and jump out from the bushes and scare children who came to the door. She laughed aloud at the thought of it. Maybe she'd skip Christmas altogether this year, keep celebrating Halloween right through to the New Year.

“You seem cheerful,” Larry said. “Anything happen today?”

April May couldn't believe that her husband still had not noticed that the barn across the street was gone. He'd pulled in to the driveway, parked his truck, and slogged into the house by the side door, exhausted from spending the day with his brother at the hospital. At first she'd thought it funny that he hadn't even noticed the smell of burned wood, but now she realized she was being cruel. She took Larry's left hand and tugged at him—he stood up automatically—and led him onto the porch. They hadn't sat out there for ages, but now her husband fell into one of the dusty cloth chairs April May had been meaning to get rid of.

“My God, what happened?” Larry still gripped his fork in his right fist.

April May breathed deeply, reluctant to exhale the smoky air.
She'd seen her whole neighborhood sprung open by the wind when she was seven, she'd birthed and raised three children from scratch, and she'd seen a teenage girl bury a man without ceremony. Dozens of bonfires had blazed for her, but never had she seen such a spectacle as the barn. In those flames she'd seen the ferocity she'd wanted in the pumpkin faces she'd carved over the decades. She could never explain all this to Larry. Because Larry did not know what Johnny had done to the girls in that barn, April May could not expect him to appreciate how justice could be beautiful even as it was merciless. The fire may have been started by a boy's careless act, but it had burned with vengeance for her daughters, and for Rachel.

Poor Larry, thought April May, poor Larry had missed the fire, and there was so much he would never know.

“Poor George,” Larry said.

“Oh, George will be fine.”

Larry continued shaking his head. The sun had already set and the sky was quickly darkening.

“What do you think about buying an RV?” April May said. “And driving to the Pacific Ocean. We can ask Tommy Parks to stay here while we're gone.”

Larry said, “That's something to think about.”

But April May didn't really hear his response. At the pleasure of even suggesting they drive west she felt a sensation in her chest like birds lifting off the ground.

David Retakker lay deathlike in his ditch all afternoon and then shook himself back to life sometime after dark. Before him, where there had been first a barn and then a blaze, now a pile of coals glowed. David didn't know how long he'd slept, but his breathing was a little easier now, and he was able to stand. He limped to within twenty feet of the coals, as close as he could bear the heat,
then circled around slowly. The nearest maple, the bigger, older one, was gone entirely, but the maple on the other side, slightly farther away, smaller and leafless, remained. The cows no longer huddled in fear beside the creek, but simply chewed their cuds under the night sky as they might chew cuds under any sky, fully adjusted to their barnless condition. The old stone foundation of the barn's lower level barely protruded above the coals at the back.

David tried to feel a perverse pride about having caused all this wreckage. Maybe if he lived past tonight, havoc and misery would become his marks. Maybe his life's work would be to ruin things, to tear structures and people apart, to crash and burn through life not caring. But trying to force himself to embrace what he'd done quickly exhausted him, and he let himself sink back into regret.

Maybe he would stop at home now and tell his mother to go ahead, get the heck out of here, leave Michigan and go to California. Before destroying the barn, he might have been able to leave with her, but now he couldn't possibly. If his mother forced him, he'd pretend to give in and follow along, but the moment she got drunk, he'd sneak out and find his way back here, even if it meant hitchhiking the whole country. David would hide in the woods beside the golf course. He might steal food from neighbors but only enough to survive, and people might even leave food out for him as they would for a stray cat or dog they liked. He would try to remember everything Rachel had taught him about trapping and hunting, and for hours each day he'd pick berries at the edge of the woods and collect walnuts and crack them open with a hammer, which he'd return to George's shed as soon as he finished with it. He might grow a few green beans and melons where Rachel used to garden beside the
Glutton.
Maybe he could even live on the boat. And his only goal in his secret new life would be to help George. In the evenings, after George went into the house for dinner, David would continue stacking hay or cleaning a barn or digging a trench, helping George the way elves sometimes helped people. He would
never ever again rub poison ivy on himself—he would, in fact, avoid poison ivy with more care than ever, because he needed to be his strongest from now on, needed to be as healthy as possible in order to do the most he could for George.

David imagined his ankle healing thick and twisted, stronger than before but deformed enough to be a reminder of what he'd done. After his skin burned in summer and chapped in winter, after scars covered him, he would be so tough he couldn't even cut himself with a knife. Without his inhalers, David's lungs would reshape themselves so his breath would be permanently ragged and short. Soon enough he would become the monster of this place, living unseen like the ghosts of animals killed here by Rachel and her mother and by the Potawatomi Indians. David was certain that some of Rachel's tribe must have stayed behind, and David would find their hiding places, maybe even find secret bands of Indians with whom he would live while he devoted his life to George. Probably that was what Rachel's Corn Girl had been doing. Probably she'd just been trying to hide and grow her corn, when she took a careless chance and fell. David would no longer take chances in climbing the silo behind the house on P Road or jumping from wagons to haystacks. He held his hands a little farther out in front of him to warm them. The cows murred softly near the creek. Gray Cat stood a few yards away, waving his tail. Since David had last taken a good look at him, Gray Cat had become full-grown, and he looked healthy and whole. David called out, “Here, kitty-kitty.”

Gray Cat approached but stopped about ten feet away, when both the cat and the boy heard the porch door of the Rathburn house opening. Gray Cat sped away into the cornfield and David hid beside the bedspring portion of the fence, which had blackened from the heat. From there, squatting down, he watched April May lug an old cloth-covered chair across the street. David knew he should help her, but he wanted to stay hidden, and really she
seemed to be doing fine by herself. When April May stopped, David thought she was going to sit in the chair beside the fire, but after a rest she kept dragging the chair closer, so close her skin must have been burning. Then she lifted the chair and heaved it onto the fire. It tipped over onto the hot coals and looked like a defeated throne of hell. David watched it blacken and burst into flame. April May stood with her hands on her lower back for a while, then walked around the fire, as if to see it from other angles.

As she approached his hiding place, April May said aloud, “God, I love a fire.”

David assumed she was talking to him, and he almost stood to respond, but when she moved away and said it again, he realized she was talking to herself. Maybe she, too, would need his help sometime in the future. David could help her and everybody else and so become the secret hero of Queer Road. Gray Cat rubbed against his leg, and David ran his hand over the cat's body. Gray Cat purred roughly, made a sound that started, stalled out, and started again. Maybe Gray Cat would become his truest friend in the new life. David didn't notice the car slowing on the road behind him until it turned into the driveway. He stood to see which vehicle it was, and inadvertently showed himself in the headlights before turning and running toward the creek, panting and dragging his bad foot.