Lizard wine, p.11
Lizard Wine, page 11
"Yes, for a short–"
A nurse ran around the corner, her heavy breasts bouncing wildly in her white uniform. "Doctor Ambrose?"
The doctor turned.
"It's Cara Hanson," she said, and from the look on her face, Don knew it was not good news.
Both men rose. "Stay here," the doctor said, and Don wanted to scream. Now he knew what it meant to pace in a waiting room.
Two hours later, he was holding Cara's pale hand in her hospital room. She'd lost the baby, her arm had been splinted, and she'd been shot up with Demerol until she was woozy and barely conscious. She was conscious enough to cry, and she held onto Don's arm and sobbed.
He cried too, giving vent to terrible pain, a deep well of shame.
When she had gone to sleep, he went down to the gift shop, bought Cecelia a stuffed elephant, and took it to her. She grinned when she saw him, and he played with her for a while. The nurse told him the bandage on her head was just covering a scrape, and it didn't appear there was anything to worry about. She thought Cecelia would go home the next morning.
Don went home and fixed dinner for himself and Kaiser. Kaiser slept with him that night. He wiggled and wiggled until Don held him close.
Cecelia came home the next day, but Cara was in the hospital for a week. The internal damage was minor, but the broken arm required surgery and a metal plate bolted to both good ends of the bone. It would take at least eight weeks in a cast.
Don ran the household by himself, taking time off work, finding a sublime pleasure in seeing that the kids were clean and the house was together, that meals were nutritious and on time. It was a facet of his personality that he hadn't known existed, and he liked it.
But it was only for a week or so.
When Cara came home, she was weak, gaunt and had dark circles under her eyes. He put her to bed and fed her chicken soup and corn muffins. He made her stay put for three days, and only let the kids in to sit on the bed and talk to her for an hour twice a day. The fourth day she didn't ask his permission, she just got up and began to do for the family.
Don went back to work.
They didn't talk about it. They didn't talk about the fall–Don never found out what happened–they didn't talk abut the baby, they didn't talk about the future. They didn't make love, and after she was healed, they didn't hold each other in bed any more. She was preparing herself, he knew. He didn't blame her. And as much as he wanted to tell her that he'd changed his mind, as much as he wanted to tell her he'd stay with her, hold her, walk through life with her, he wasn't sure that he did, and until he could be absolutely sure, he wouldn't raise her hopes.
The cast came off. She was again fully self-sufficient. He knew she was self-sufficient, because she never once said it was her fault that the baby died. She never once said it was his fault either, although he felt as though it was.
The supervisor at work had singled Don out as a scapegoat for his own inadequacies.
The kids were shrill and messy.
Life was back to normal.
One night in bed, Cara said, "We'll wait for you, you know. We'll always be here if you want to come back." He pulled her close, swallowed his unworthiness and kissed her neck, buried his psyche in her maternal wisdom.
The next day he dressed for work, but instead of taking the car to the train station, he walked to the freeway on-ramp, stuck out his thumb and got a ride going west. He was too much of a coward to even say goodbye.
He took a succession of day jobs, invented a history, affected a country boy accent, bought a backpack and a sleeping bag. He slept out, mostly, finding showers here and there, taking a room during the winters. He didn't care much for the south, or the far north, and always headed west. California didn't suit him. It was too close to home, family, relations, commitments, expectations, responsibilities. He took back the nickname Buck, loving the anonymity it afforded. He circled Oregon and Washington a couple of times, ever resisting the impulse to send postcards to Cara and the kids.
He was surprised at the type of people he met on the road. He expected to find retarded, stupid or brain damaged people. Alcoholics. Drug addicts. Bums. But they were all people. They all longed for things that seemed to be out of reach. Many were highly principled, many were crooks. He felt an odd kinship with all of them, except for those who pined away for a family. There were those who had lost their spouses to disaster or divorce, who cried for them, and talked incessantly about how lucky everybody else was to have a wife or kids. Those people made Buck nervous. He dared not confess to them, because he knew he'd done wrong. He'd done Cara, his best friend, wrong. He'd done those adorable, helpless children wrong. He was a loser, a bad egg, a joke.
He was only a winner when he was with others whose sins matched or surpassed his own.
He embraced the code of honor they all lived by. It was an ask-no-questions code. It was a live-and-let-live code. Nobody blew the whistle on anybody else, nobody wanted to know anything about anybody, nobody told anything about anybody. It was a solitary existence, and it drove some of them a little bit nuts, but Buck dove into the anonymity and loved it.
And then he landed the painting job in Eugene, Oregon.
Niles zeroed in on him right away, which was fine with Buck. Niles had a good heart, and he was loyal to the tooth. He also needed somebody to help him look after himself, and Buck fell easily and readily into that role. This was the perfect kind of responsibility to take. Help someone help himself. Not like kids. Kids were totally dependent, needy. Niles was just a little bit needy, and if Buck walked out of his life at any time, Niles would get along just fine.
Buck enjoyed Niles. Niles was sleeping in an abandoned car under the bridge. He was the one who knew about the night watchman who let him take showers at the mill at night.
Then came the Songster, needy in his own way. The Songster told the two of them about the boxcars–he could have told everybody, or nobody, but for reasons Buck never understood, he told only the two of them–and the three lived each to his own personal boxcar, almost like roommates in a very strange apartment house.
Buck knew that the Songster, too, sought out those whose sins paled his, and while Buck never told anyone about Cara–not until the camping trip anyway–the Songster knew that Buck had skeletons in his closet. Just like Buck knew about the Songster.
But the Songster was dirtier. Much dirtier.
~~~
Buck jumped out of the car and slammed the door. Snow fell softly, muting whatever sounds there could be out in the woods. He watched the moisture in his breath steam out, and concentrated on steaming out all his anger.
He took deep breaths, the fresh air tasting faintly of something bad, like dogshit. Maybe he'd become so used to the nasty smell of the inside of the Pontiac that fresh air smelled bad. He smiled wryly to himself. That'd be just about right. Live in crap long enough and it begins to feel like home.
He closed his eyes and leaned against the car. He felt the cold metal behind his back, felt the wet as the snow melted and soaked into his shirt and the top of his jeans. He took another deep breath and listened. He thought if he were blind, he would still know when it snowed. He could hear it. There was no other silence quite like it.
He opened his eyes and looked around. If it weren't so dark, he'd walk down to the lake, watch the big flakes as they fell on the water, floated for a moment and then smooshed out and became part of the lake. He always thought it was an odd sight, snow at the edge of water. A snow covered beach. He remembered his whole family going out to the mountains in the winter so the California kids could play in the snow. He and Ronnie would crouch down next to a little trickle of a stream and watch it melt the snow. They'd set snowballs in the middle of it and watch the lacy patterns as the cold water slowly ate away the snowball.
Flakes fell on his eyelashes. He stuck out his tongue and caught a couple.
Snowballs.
He swiped a handful from the hood of the Pontiac and packed it tightly. His fingers began to feel the icy, wet cold through their insulation layer of alcohol, and he could visualize them turning red. When he got back into the car, they'd ache.
He remembered snow-crusted mittens and socks.
A snowball fight. He'd like to throw a snowball right into the Songster's stupid face. He'd like to bust his fucking nose.
He walked over to a tree, tucked the snowball up on a branch and unzipped his pants. He emptied his bladder, and just as he finished, he heard the car door open.
"Oh, God," Tulie said. "It smells sane out here."
She stood with her back to him, arms out and face to the sky. He could hear her taking deep, ragged breaths. She took a few steps away from the car. He took his snowball from the tree, took careful aim and whacked her right in the middle of the back.
She screeched, ducked, and a moment later, a snowball came back over the car toward him. The darkness was an added handicap; Buck couldn't see the snowballs until they were almost to him. He scratched a couple together quickly and lobbed them over the car, then ducked and ran around the back of the car and to a tree behind.
He could see her still crouched next to the car, making snowballs and throwing them over the car. But he was behind her now, in perfect position for an ambush. He quietly put together an arsenal and piled them up by his tree. When he had a few, he attacked.
She screamed, that wonderful girlish trill, and ran around the nose of the car, but not before he'd nailed her at least four times.
Then the front passenger door opened. The sickly yellow interior light illuminated the filth and nastiness of the Pontiac that Buck had forgotten about. For a moment, he and the girl had been little kids again, clean and pure and lost in the joy of a snowstorm in the woods. Then Niles stepped out, and Buck remembered that he was an adult, an adult with history and shame.
"Whatcha all doin'?" Niles asked as he lit up a cigarette.
A snowball sailed through the air from the front of the car and took the cigarette right out of his mouth.
"Hey! Ow!"
Buck started to laugh. God, she had a deadeye.
"I'm still the champ!" she shouted.
"Hey, shit, you hurt my lip."
The girl laughed at Buck's laughter which made Buck laugh harder.
"Hey," Niles said. "Not funny. Hey, who threw that?"
That made them laugh even harder, and soon the two of them were laughing at each other more than anything, and they heard Niles begin to chuckle as he wanted in on the joke and that made them laugh harder yet. Tears ran out of Buck's eyes. He was weak and helpless and it felt so good. God, that felt good.
"Hey, where are you guys?"
Tears ran down Buck's frozen cheeks. He could see Niles standing there, illuminated by the car's interior lights, hearing disembodied laughter in the woods. Buck picked up a snowball and threw it at Niles, hitting him in the arm.
"Hey!" He turned toward Buck.
Then the girl threw one that hit him in the back.
"Stop!"
Buck threw another and the girl threw another, and Niles jumped inside the car and slammed the door to get away from them.
Then the light was gone, that dirty yellow, that nicotine-tainted light that showed the ratty interior, the smelly carpeting, the rotten seats, the Songster.
The Songster.
The light wasn't gone for long. The Songster opened his door and got out, not even bothering to go to a tree before unzipping his pants and letting that used beer fly.
Buck lost his joy. So did the girl. He heard her footsteps crunch through the snow toward him. "That was fun," she said.
"Yeah," Buck said, and he began to feel protective and brotherly toward her. He wanted her to stay away from the Songster, he didn't want anything to happen to her, not here, not in his car, not ever. She was a bright girl with a good future, and he wanted to save her from the fucked up kind of life he had led. He wanted to save her from the fucked up kind of guy he was, the Songster was, Niles was.
She came closer, and he could smell her perfume as it steamed off her in the cold. She lay a hand on his arm. "Take me home," she whispered.
Some weird alarm went off in Buck's head. Something about women dividing men. Something about brothers sticking together no matter what. He realized that he and the Songster and Niles had all been friends before she came along, and suddenly he and the Songster were at each others' throats, and that didn't need to be. That didn't need to be. They could live in peace and harmony, and Buck could just turn his head away from the Songster whenever he needed to. He didn't need to judge the Songster. He couldn't. He'd never see this girl again, but he might be living and working with Niles and the Songster for a long time yet.
He shook her hand off his arm and said, "It's cold out here, I'm getting back in."
"Please," she said, her fingers digging into his throwing arm.
But Buck didn't want any women telling him what to do. That's how it starts, he thought. You do something nice for them and suddenly the wheels are in motion. A guy gets ground to dust under one of those wheels.
His attitude disgusted him.
"Get back in the car before you freeze." Buck bent down and scraped together a loose snowball. He tossed it casually over the top of the car and it hit the Songster right on the back of the neck.
"Fuck," the Songster said, and turned around. He spotted them, and ran toward them. The girl made some kind of a sound and went running off into the woods. Buck stepped out of the way, and the Songster chased after her. They'd probably screw each other in a snowbank, he thought.
Buck snorted, walked back around the car and got in, feeling as dirty as the Songster, as dirty as Niles and his cigarettes, as dirty as the yellow light of the broken down Pontiac. He heard that girl squeal again, but it didn't sound the same. It ticked off another little alarm in his head, but he turned it off. He shut it down.
His heart pounded. He had had it within his power to help that girl, and he hadn't. Does that mean if the Songster hurts her that it's his fault?
Fuck.
He put his mind right off of it. He tried to think they were playing in the snow, although the Songster wasn't exactly the playing-in-the-snow type of guy.
Buck wondered if they'd get snowed in here at the campground. He tried not to listen for the girl in case she was in trouble. Instead, he listened to Ronnie in his memory as they lay on the top bunk of the rented cabin in the mountains, watching the snow fall.
"What if we get up and it's ten feet deep?"
"What if we get up and it's so deep we can't get out?"
"Yeah, can't push the door open."
"And the windows. . . We'd have to slide the window open and then dig out, tunnel out from the window up to the surface."
"The car'd be buried."
"We'd starve."
"Nah. We've got lots of food."
"But we'd be here until spring. We'd have to hunt."
"Set traps."
"Think Dad brought a gun?"
A gun. What a profound thought. It silenced them both as they wondered if their father had brought a gun and what it meant if he had and what it meant if he hadn't. If he had, he was a hero. If he hadn't, it meant his family would starve to death.
"Let's go ask."
They jumped down from the bunkbeds and ran through the cabin and down the stairs to where their parents were talking quietly by the fire.
"Dad, Dad!" they both shouted. Each one wanted to be the first to ask the question.
"Did you bring a gun?" Ronnie asked.
"A gun?" Their father smiled. "No, why?"
"You didn't?" Suddenly he wasn't the protector they had always thought he'd be.
"No. I don't believe in guns. You boys know that."
"But in the wilderness. . ." Buck said.
"Survival. . ." Ronnie said.
Their parents laughed, and the boys put their tails between their legs and went back upstairs to bed.
Even today, Buck thought his dad should have told them that he had guns, lots of guns, elephant guns and tiger guns and crocodile guns. All the guns they would ever need, but they were packed away safe and wouldn't be unpacked unless they were needed. That would have saved the vacation.
Instead, the brothers were disappointed in the trip, in their parents, and maybe a little bit disappointed in life.
If Kaiser asked me a question like that, Buck thought, I'd tell him the fantasy.
But Kaiser would never ask a question like that, because Buck had robbed him of that privilege.
Suddenly what his father had done on that snowy day seemed insignificant, compared to what Buck had done to Kaiser on this snowy day and every other snowy day since Buck had let his own personal yellow streak–uglier than any the Pontiac company had ever made–ruin the little boy's life.
~~~
Tulie saw the Songster spin, and she knew he wasn't going to chase after Buck. She ran for the woods, hoping the Songster would lose interest. She could hide out there, flapping her arms and trying to stay warm until morning.
But he kept after her.
Tell us about that woman.
She picked up the pace, grateful that she had been an athlete, because now she felt she was running for her life.
That woman didn't leave on her own.
Cowboy boots were not the best thing for running, but her strengths were youth and fear. She clomped through the snow, her breath rasping in her throat that was still sore from throwing up all that beer and tequila and chips and stuff. It was hard to see, she had to be sure to pick her feet up high and keep moving.
I got a knife.
She ran down by the lake, the words echoing in her head, squirting adrenaline into her bloodstream. She could hear the Songster right behind her. She made a quick right turn into the thick of the woods, but it was too dark to see where she was going. She was afraid of falling and breaking a leg or something.
She had no game plan.
. . .what to do with your body after we murdered you.
She ran through some tangled undergrowth that brushed against her face and pulled at her clothes. She stopped and listened and tried to think. She'd get lost out here. She'd fall and break something. She had to get smart.
