Mendocino And Other Stories Part 15

"Good idea."

I leaned over the seat for the cooler. We each had half of the remaining sandwich, then took turns taking bites from an apple.

"Amy Levin," he said. "Tillman Crane and Amy Levin on Interstate 80."

"Getting philosophical, are you?"

He reached over and laced his fingers through mine.

"Maybe we should tell people my name is Amy Smith or Amy Johnson or something."

"You really are nervous about this, aren't you?" He pulled his fingers away, then put his hand on top of mine and curled it into a fist; he held my hand captive under his, as if it were a tiny animal that might dart away.

"I don't know," I said. "It's just-families. G.o.d, isn't it hard enough without having to contend with someone's family? If we were going to California I'd be nervous, too. I'd probably be more nervous."

He laughed. "You have a lot of faith in me, I see."

"That's not how I meant it," I said. In fact, I'd spent a good deal of time imagining just such a meeting: the two of us sitting side by side in my parents' living room, a convivial discussion of something other than the sorry state of the nation, during which my father would not raise his voice. I'd present Tillman to them as a kind of gift qua challenge: Look here, it would say, his parents didn't march on Washington or wear sungla.s.ses for three days when Martin Luther King was shot. And he hunts. But I was afraid that, once I was back at home, some part of me would be in their camp with them, looking for the bright side.

Tillman let go of my hand, returning his to the wheel. "It's just my brother," he said. "You have nothing to be nervous about."

"I know," I said. "I guess I'm just nervous that I'll be nervous."

"Amy, Amy, Amy," he said. "Where did I find you?"

"At a boring party."

We were silent for a while. Then Tillman said, "I don't think it's so hard. Am I missing something? I thought we were having fun."

"Fun?" I said. "Fun? Is that the point?" I pulled my feet up onto the seat and wrapped my arms around my knees. "I've often wondered."

TILLMAN'S PARENTS HAD died four years earlier, when Tillman was twenty-seven, within four months of each other. He was flip with me about it at first, saying his mother had died of boredom causing his father to die of anger. Finally, in a bar one night, I told him that I thought it was strange he hadn't told me what really happened. I said it quietly, eyes downcast-I didn't want him to miss that he'd hurt me by not telling me. "You want the gory details, do you?" he said, and I blushed; but he didn't give me a chance to respond. He said in a rush that his mother had had a surprising, fatal stroke when she was sixty-one, and that after that his father just gave up on life. "Packed it in," he said. "Threw in the towel." I asked him what he meant and he took a sip of beer and gave me a look of such intense melancholy that I was certain I'd made a terrible blunder, one he could never forgive. In the moment before he spoke again I wanted to take it all back, to be someone other than myself-not just someone who could stop herself from prying, but someone who wouldn't even want to know.

"He sold the hardware store," Tillman said, holding out his thumb so he could enumerate his points, "where, incidentally, my brother worked." He pointed his index finger. "He auctioned off every piece of furniture in the house with the exception of one chair and one table and the f.u.c.king TV." He added his middle finger. "He gave away all of my mother's cooking stuff-to a little hog pit of a restaurant that has since gone out of business." His fourth finger. "He burned her clothing"-at this he raised his eyebrows and gave me a brief, horrible smile-"and then he sat around in his bathrobe, watched TV, and ate nothing but cold cereal and canned vegetables for three and a half months." Tillman picked up his beer and drained it.

"And?" I said reflexively.

"And he died. He died. He died."

"I'm so sorry," I said lamely. "That's awful."

Tillman picked up his empty gla.s.s and began tapping it on the table. "True love," he said, shaking his head. "Can you beat it?" Abruptly he stopped tapping the gla.s.s and stood up. "Let's go," he said. "This place is a pit."

Since then we'd talked little of his family, and because of that I'd told him little of mine. I did know a few things about his brother: that he lived in an apartment over a shoe store; that he didn't have a regular job but earned his living working for farmers in the spring and summer and being a handyman and sometimes a mechanic in the fall and winter; that he'd been married and had a seven-year-old daughter who lived with his ex-wife up in Rapid City, South Dakota. After lunch I'd learned that he had a girlfriend named Patsy, although about that Tillman could have been kidding. Did he have a dog? I wasn't sure, but I thought he might.

When we got to Barneyville it was nearly eleven; we'd been driving for days, weeks. "The strip," said Tillman, waving his hand at the car lots and fast food places we pa.s.sed. These gave way to the kind of main street I'd been expecting-a row of small, sad businesses with names like Fin and Fur Pet Store and Dew Drop Inn. At the corner where we turned there was a bridal shop in whose window four or five mannequins with teased-looking plastic hair modeled bridesmaids' gowns in unnatural shades of violet and pink. There was no bride.

Half a block down the street Tillman pulled into a narrow alley and drove back to a little clearing where a toylike dirty blue pickup truck was parked. "Well, he's here," he said. "That's a good sign."

We got out of the car and unloaded our stuff, moving slowly because of the stiffness in our muscles. When everything was lying on the gravel Tillman took a few steps backward, leaned his head back, and yelled, "CA-SEY!"

A moment later someone was thundering down a long flight of stairs, and the back door opened. Out came Casey-a slightly older, slightly stocky Tillman. He had the same unruly light brown hair, the same droopy mustache; he was even dressed just like Tillman, in old jeans and a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up to reveal the forearms of a nubby white long-underwear undershirt. The resemblance was remarkable, but it didn't surprise me as much as the fact that he wasn't sixty-five years old and wearing a bathrobe; I'd been expecting Tillman's father.

"How do," he said to Tillman, and they shook hands.

"Not too bad." Tillman was grinning broadly-a bigger smile than I'd ever seen on him. "This is Amy."

Casey held out his hand and we shook. "Hi," I said and smiled at him; he didn't quite meet my eye. "It's nice to meet you."

Casey picked up our suitcases. "You see that Carson's is all closed up?" he said to Tillman. "Stupid son of a b.i.t.c.h."

"I saw."

Tillman grabbed the gun and the cooler, leaving me the Scotch. It was my gift to Casey, and I was regretting a little my choice of Cardhu, in which my father indulged himself once or twice a week. (It had been his suggestion; I'd thought it better than my mother's, "a nice basket of jams and mustards.") I was regretting even more the green and white striped paper and the blue ribbon with which I'd adorned the bottle. As I followed Tillman up the stairs I briefly considered stripping off the gift wrap, but I couldn't think of anywhere to put it.

We entered the apartment through the kitchen. A big black dog came bounding toward us, jumping up on Tillman and licking his face.

"What a beautiful dog," I said in my stupidest girl-voice.

"Perry!" Casey said, and the dog sat.

"Good boy," Tillman crooned, scratching the dog behind the ears. "Good, good boy."

Casey led us into a very small room off the kitchen-the floor was covered almost entirely by a double-bed mattress, made up with brightly flowered sheets and a pea-green blanket. "Great, Case," Tillman said. "Perfect. Thanks."

"Thank Patsy," Casey said. "It's all her mother's stuff." He set down our bags and edged by me to get back into the kitchen. "Want a beer or something?"

Tillman smiled at me and touched my hip as he followed Casey. "Great," he said. "Perfect. Thanks."

I left the Scotch on the mattress and stood in the doorway. Casey got two beers out of the refrigerator. He opened them both and handed a bottle to Tillman. Tillman turned to me. "Aim?" he said, not something he'd ever called me before.

"I'd love one."

Casey set his beer on the stovetop. "Sorry," he said to the floor. "Excuse my manners." He got another beer out of the refrigerator, but rather than handing it to me he set it down and opened a cabinet for a gla.s.s.

"Oh, that's OK, Casey," I said. "I don't mind the bottle."

He shrugged, closed the cabinet, and handed me the beer. "Suit yourself," he said.

We stood there sipping. Perry circled me and I reached a cautious hand out to pet him. Finally Tillman said maybe we could go sit down, and Casey pushed off from where he'd been leaning and led us into the other room. It evidently doubled as his bedroom and living room: in addition to a few easy chairs grouped in front of a TV, in the corner there was a platform bed on legs about five feet tall. Underneath the bed were a primitive-looking bureau and, hanging from a pole which ran from one leg to another, four or five hangers for clothes.

Tillman crossed the room and bent to look at the arrangement. "Pretty nice," he said, turning back to look at Casey. "Been a busy beaver, hey?"

Casey smiled. "Look at this." He went over to the bed and fiddled with something on the underside of the platform, then swung a small ladder down. "Magnets," he said proudly.

Tillman motioned me over. "See how he's got this rigged up?" He demonstrated how the ladder swung up to rest against the platform when it wasn't in use, then swung back down so Casey could climb into bed.

"I didn't know you did carpentry," I said to Casey.

"I just fool around with it." He sighed and ran his hand through his hair.

"Shall we have a seat?" said Tillman.

There were exactly three chairs, and it occurred to me to wonder what we'd do if Patsy came over while we were there; on the whole, seating difficulties aside, I hoped she would. I went over and sat in the far chair, a worn-out crushed-velvet recliner. Tillman and Casey exchanged a glance. "Oh, I'm sorry, Casey," I said. "Is this where you usually sit?"

He snorted.

"That's the death chair," said Tillman with an uncomfortable smile. "That's where he never sits."

AT SIX THE next morning I allowed myself to get out of bed and tiptoe through the kitchen to the bathroom. I'd been lying wide awake almost the whole night, wondering how I had come to be where I was; I couldn't have felt more at odds if I'd been lying in a hut in the middle of the Australian Outback with no one for company but the strange man who'd picked me up hitchhiking late that afternoon. After fifteen or twenty minutes in the death chair I had pleaded fatigue, and when Tillman came to bed an hour or so later he gave me a vacant smile and was snoring inside two minutes.

Snapping on the light in the bathroom, I realized that I'd failed, the night before, to notice that it had a window. I pulled aside the lime-green gingham curtain (thank Patsy?) and looked out. It had snowed during the night, just a dusting, and across the whitened rooftops I could see a lone traffic signal, its red light pulsing on and off. As I watched, a tow truck made its way down the street and disappeared.

I sat on the closed seat of the toilet and picked up a warped copy of Popular Mechanics that lay on the nearby radiator. It opened automatically to an envelope addressed, in a child's hand, to Casey. The postmark was Rapid City, SD. I slid open the envelope and pulled out a folded sheet of stationery. The paper was lined, with a row of strawberries along the top. "Dear Daddy," it read in painfully neat, rounded cursive. "How are you. I am fine. We are writting letters today in school today. Did you get your truck fixed? I hope you got it fixed. Tomorrow I am going to sleep at Julie's. Yours truley, Tina M. Crane."

I put the letter back in the envelope, the envelope back in the magazine, and the magazine back on the radiator. I used the toilet and washed my face, then tiptoed back through the kitchen to our room and slipped under the covers.

Tillman rolled over and put his arm around me. "What time is it?" he mumbled.

"Six-fifteen."

He turned away from me, groaning. "A person needs to sleep," he said. Then he reached back, groped for my hand, and pulled my arm around his waist.

"COFFEE," TILLMAN SAID. "I must have coffee. And food."

We were waiting by the truck while Casey took Perry for a quick walk. I was torn between wanting to look and wanting to avoid looking at the grey canvas vest Tillman wore under his jacket-there were little loops all over the front of it and I'd watched in a kind of strange fascination as he'd slipped his bullets into them. "Sh.e.l.ls," he'd corrected me. He'd given me some long underwear to put on under my jeans, and an extra sweater to wear under my jacket, and I felt stuffed into my clothes like a little sausage bulging out of its casing. Already my feet were cold.

Casey and Perry appeared at the mouth of the alley. "What say we stop at Burger King?" Casey called.

Tillman waited for Casey to reach us. "Great minds think alike," he said. "Amy was just saying how hungry she was." He elbowed me. "Right, Aim?"

"Patsy'll be on," Casey said. "Did I tell you she made manager?"

"No," Tillman said. "I don't believe you did."

Casey nodded. "That's pretty good money, you know."

"And such a nice place to work," said Tillman.

Casey didn't reply. After a moment he walked over to look at Tillman's car. "How's it running?" he asked.

"Pretty good," Tillman said. He took a step closer to Casey. "It's not a bad little car."

Casey circled it, bending over here and there for a closer look. He turned to Tillman. "You end up getting a new starter?"

"Forty bucks."

Casey shook his head. "Should've got it here."

"I live in Chicago," Tillman said. "What am I supposed to do, drive fifteen hours to save ten dollars?"

Casey shrugged. "It's your car." He walked back over to the truck and let the gate down so Perry could jump in, then he opened the door and pulled a long-armed plastic brush from behind the driver's seat. He swept the snow from the windshield and climbed in. After a moment he leaned over and flipped up the lock on the pa.s.senger side.

Tillman gave me an awkward smile, then went over and held open the door.

WE DROVE BACK out to the strip, where Burger King was situated between a Mini-mart and a car wash. Casey led us to a cash register manned by a teenaged girl with permed blond hair who giggled and blushed when she saw him.

"Kelly belly," he said. "What's good today?"

She shrugged her shoulders and giggled some more.

He leaned against the counter and pulled his wallet out of his back pocket. "I'll have the usual, Kelly," he said. "Put whatever these two want on my check." He took a ten from his wallet and handed it to her, then ducked under the counter and went back to the kitchen.

Tillman and I ordered, and when our food was ready we took our tray to a table near the window. Tillman handed me my coffee and unwrapped his egg thing. "Should we wait for Casey?" I said.

"This is Burger King, Aim."

"Aim?"

He grinned at me and bit into his breakfast.

"I don't think Casey likes me," I said. I stirred cream into my coffee and looked up at Tillman.

"He's just shy," he said. "Don't take it personally."

"It's hard not to."

"Well, do you like him?"

I blushed. "I guess I don't really feel I know him yet."

"Well, ditto, I'm sure."

I took a sip of coffee. "Is Patsy going hunting with us?"

"Here they come," Tillman said. "Let's ask her."

Patsy was a tiny, doll-like woman about my age-twenty-six or twenty-seven. Her coppery hair was held back in a girlish ponytail.

"I hear you're from California," she said to me once Tillman had introduced us. "Casey and I almost went to San Francisco last summer, didn't we, honey? We were going to drive out and stop in Reno to try the slot machines, but the truck wasn't working." She turned to look at Casey. "Right, honey?"

Casey had unwrapped one of three hamburgers on his tray, and had just, with his first bite, bitten off nearly half of it. He nodded.

"Nice breakfast," Tillman said.

"I know," said Patsy. "Can you believe it? Every morning it's three hamburgers and a strawberry shake. Least when I'm work-ing-technically you're not supposed to offer burgers till breakfast is over. Tell them what you have when I'm not working, Casey." She leaned forward. "Burritos. From across the street. He's ruining the lining of his stomach."

Casey was impa.s.sive while Patsy spoke. He finished the first burger and began working on the milk shake. He appeared to be formulating a response, and I found myself fearing a little for Patsy. But when he finally looked up he just smiled at her and said, "I like burritos."