Desperation Road(74)

He drove out of his neighborhood and along Delaware Avenue and he crossed over the interstate and drove out into the emptiness of those beloved back roads where so much happened. There was beauty in the depth of the sky and the black of the trees and the stillness of the empty acres. He turned off his radio and unbuckled his gun belt. Unsnapped the holster and pulled out the pistol and set it on the seat next to him. He pushed a button on the armrest and his seat leaned back and he turned off the air conditioner and rolled down the windows and the warm wind wrapped around him like the arms of a good friend. He drove farther and farther out until the random lights were gone and there was only the man and the land and the night. Safe from any approaching cars he slowed down and turned off his headlights and coasted along with only the orange glow of the parking lights leading him as if the cruiser were some alien craft examining a foreign terrain.

He thought again of his sons. Thought of how quickly they were becoming men and he hoped they would become good ones and he wished that he had a better understanding of what that meant. He thought he had that understanding until tonight. Thought he could sit down with them in the living room and tell them what a good man was and how to become one and maybe he still could but he knew that whatever he decided to do about that pistol and that murder would somehow taint his definition of a good man. Knew that whatever he decided to do there would remain an uncertainty that would walk with him and sleep with him and go with him to ball games and cook out with him in the backyard and grow old with him.

He had always liked the badge and the law because it gave him what was right and what was wrong and he was adrift between that by no fault of his own but it didn’t matter. He was there anyway. He held his arm out the window with his palm facing forward and he felt the wind through his fingers, hoping to get a grasp of that undetectable thing that would give him an answer and then protect him from the things that came with that answer but nothing wrapped itself around his fingers and nothing crept out of the darkness and past the orange glow and into the cruiser and nestled beside him. He held his arm out and he held his hand open and then he slowed and came to a stop. He turned off the ignition. Turned off the orange lights. Silent black in front of him and behind him and all around him. He rubbed his hands together. Rubbed them on his face. Lay his head back on the headrest. And he sat there in a daze under the weight of the crown that had been given to him.





51


OCTOBER. THE THICKNESS OF SUMMER GONE AND REPLACED WITH the relief of the autumn air. Russell sat in his truck in the parking lot across the street from the elementary school and watched the first falling leaves spin and scatter across the playground. He rubbed at his face and felt the softness of his beard. Thicker and fuller as if it could soften a blow if it had to. He looked in the rearview mirror and picked specks of paint out of it and then he picked at the paint on his hands and fingernails and he tried to figure out how much longer it would take him to get done with the house he was working on so that he could get paid. He needed to line up another job soon. In a couple of short months the easy fall weather would be gone and he needed to find as much work as he could before the cold and rain of winter. A child’s workbook sat on the seat next to him and he opened it and looked at her capital letters. Some of them were successes. Some had a ways to go. She has a lot of catching up to do they kept saying and he knew that even by saying this they were being nice.

The bell rang and the double doors opened and children filed out in lines with teachers leading the way and some loaded onto buses and others crossed the street and made their way home along the sidewalks. Other children walked to the end of the breezeway to where the cars were lined up and one by one they disappeared into backseats. Every day he had to wait for Annalee to appear. She told him that she didn’t like going out with everyone else. That she wanted to wait until they were gone. When the crowd thinned and the cars and buses moved out into the street the double doors opened again and a woman with glasses held the door while Annalee walked out with her arms folded and her steps careful. She looked up and down the breezeway and when she was satisfied she looked across the street and Russell waved to her and then he cranked the truck and drove over to pick her up.

She tossed her backpack in first and then she climbed in and he said hey and she asked if they could go get a milk shake. They drove down Delaware Avenue and stopped at the Star Drive-In and she got banana and he got chocolate and then they drove out to Mitchell’s where he planned to let her out and then use every minute of daylight to paint as much as he could. Mitchell and Consuela and Maben were sitting in chairs in the backyard shucking corn and dropping the husks into silver bins. He looked out into the backyard and noticed that the statue of the Virgin Mary was draped in a white sheet and he asked her what that was about. It’s a ghost, she said. A big white ghost. For Halloween. Consuela tied two sheets together. You mean sewed two sheets together, he said. Sewed, she repeated. He nodded and told her he’d be back later and she got out of the truck with her milk shake and she shut the door. She ran a few steps but then she stopped and turned around and waved at Russell.

He had hoped that his father would understand in the way that his father had asked him to understand Consuela and he had. I want them to stay out here over the barn but I’ll pay the bills, he’d said. Fine, Mitchell answered. But it ain’t gonna be easy. I know, he’d said. But she’ll be up and going good before long. And then it’ll be better. And that was as much as they had talked about it. Mitchell fished with Annalee and drove her around the place on the tractor and Consuela had tried to make her a dress once or twice though success was still on hold. Maben moved from chair to chair. Dizzy often. But not as often as before. Beginning to help in the kitchen. Learning from Consuela. They all ate dinner most nights out at his father’s place and then they would sit on the back porch and take turns reading with the child while the nights fell cool around them. After the reading and the sitting were done Maben and Annalee would say good night and walk out to the barn and up the stairs and Consuela would take her slow, melodic walk out into the backyard and around the Virgin Mary and out to the pond. She would touch Mitchell on the shoulder as she would return and then she would go inside and Russell and Mitchell would have a bourbon or two before calling it a night. If someone were watching them from the road there would seem nothing peculiar about this collection of people.