I parked in the assigned area and walked through the diesel gas pumps to get to the restaurant. Trucks pulled in and stopped with great, creaking brakes. Trucks pulled out with tremendous chuffs, like steam engines. Gnomelike men and heavy trolls with straining bellies jumped down from their vehicles that exuded heat, dust, and smoke. I walked quickly to the restaurant.
The restaurant was brightly lit and flooded with instrumentalized country standards that, without their words, were almost sinister. I took a stool at the counter and ordered a senior special grilled liver and onion dinner.
“Honey, you all right?” asked the waitress. She wasn’t old, maybe only thirty, but had the mannerisms, makeup, and hair of someone much older.
“Why?”
“You look pale.”
“Oh,” I said. “I probably am pale. Nothing that liver won’t fix.” I smiled and pushed my menu back across the counter. I was arguing with myself in my head. Everywhere I looked there were men eating alone, eyeing me in various degrees of subtlety all the way up to open staring. I wanted to protect my solitude, but at the same time this solitude was giving me anxiety. I was halfway through dinner when I noticed a dirty hand on the counter out of the corner of my eye. The nails were outlined in black. This was a hand that never came clean. I smelled gasoline and oil. I turned my head. The man sitting next to me must have been close to fifty. His face was deep and lined. In contrast, his body was lean and youthful. His jeans were narrow but ample for his small hips. His forearms were muscled in an exaggerated way, like Popeye. He was drinking a cup of coffee and smoking a cigarette. I finished my dinner and he left me alone. I had a headache coming on—a bad one—and needed a cigarette, but I’d forgotten mine in the car. I looked back over at the weasely guy and caught him straight in the eyes. His pack of Raleighs was on the counter.
“Can I have one of those?”
“Didn’t know folks like you smoked anymore.”
“And what kind of folks are those?” I took the pack off the counter and shook a smoke out. He lit a match and held it for me.
“I meant it as a compliment. You look like quality people.”
“No offense taken, but you really shouldn’t be so quick with your pronouncements.” The cigarette tasted like pure tar, almost liquid. “You have no idea what kind of person I am.”
He was intrigued. He looked straight at me and I held his look. “I’d like to get your dinner for you.”
“No,” I said. “But you can get me a drink.”
“Don’t drink anything but coffee anymore.”
“I love coffee.”
He nodded to the waitress and she topped us both off. He watched me stirring creamer into my coffee. I watched him drumming his fingers on the counter.
“Do you like country music?” he asked.
“Sure,” I replied.
His truck was parked out on the edge of the truck stop, which was a small concrete island in an expanse of endless, hissing grass. The parking area was lit by street lamps that made the light dim and far, as if the lamps were a part of a man-made constellation glowing for some other, skybound life form. The concrete out beyond the dull pooling of those lights was cracked—thrown up in some areas and eroded in others. Where the ground showed through, more grass thrust itself skyward. A smell of moist soil soaked the night air. The silence was briefly interrupted by the hooting of a distant owl, and then—by contrast—increased. I followed the man across the uneven tarmac to the truck. He leaped up to the cab with ease and I was close behind him, although without the same grace. He was a primitive with no need for conversation. He placed his oil-tainted hands on my face and pulled me to him. My stomach churned and for one moment—with his tongue inside my throat—I thought I would be ill.
I pushed him off, which he seemed to like. “Why don’t you put on some music?” I said. I pulled my feet up on the seat.
“There’s some tapes in the glove compartment. Put on anything you want.”
I dropped the glove compartment open and a straining light came on inside. Willy Nelson, Red-Headed Stranger. Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Best of. There were some other tapes—Johnny Cash, James McMurtry, John Prine—in among the papers and empty cigarette packs. I dug around. My fingers found a long, leather sheath. At first I thought it might be a flashlight and brought it out. It was a knife with a handle inlaid with antler, a big knife. The blade had to have been six inches long. I pulled the knife out of the sheath. There was a hook at the end, a serrated edge, a smooth edge. The knife was clean, recently oiled. I could see my reflection lit by an outside fluorescent light, distorted through the center, where the blade rose to a low spine.
“What do you use this for?”
“It’s a deer knife.”
“Do you kill the deer with it?”
“Hell no. That’s for gutting. You can use it to skin a deer too. Or a rabbit.”
I held the knife, mesmerized, envious.
“You should put that knife down,” he said.
“Why?”
“Blade’s sharp. We wouldn’t want an accident.”
“An accident?”
“You wouldn’t want to cut yourself.” I saw fear flicker in his eyes and then his hand reached across to me, reached to reclaim the knife.
I remember that I didn’t want to give it up.
I’ve never fully accepted the idea of accidents. Rudimentary knowledge of Latin demands that we recognize that “accident” comes from “accidere,” to happen, and that “accidere” comes from “cadere,” to fall. I, however, would like to point out the “dent” (although an accident itself) in the word—teeth—because accidents are the teeth of life. Occasionally man finds himself in the jaws of existence, chewed over, and when there is no reason that makes sense, the happening is an accident. This occasion for onion-peeling comes about because of the years I spent mulling over the word. Every now and then a car hits a patch of ice and terminates the lives of all the churchgoing folk within it, and maybe that is accidental, but growing up with my mother I found that a ponderous number of accidents were always happening.
When I was thirteen, my father found himself in the desirable position of making a business deal. To cement the goodwill between him and his future ally, he decided to have a dinner party. My mother referred to such moves as “prostituting one’s family.” She referred to the people invited to these parties as “the living dead.” Business parties at our house acquired the acronym N.P.s, which sounded antiseptic and proper, but actually stood for “necrophiliac prostitution.”
My job was to entertain the son of the future ally—someone named Tim, who was twenty years old, and happened to be home that weekend from Bowdoin. I had no idea what Tim and I were supposed to talk about (I was in the eighth grade) and as I greeted the guests at the door, standing with a bland smile between my father and mother, pictured the evening as a complete loss. Tim, however, turned out to be attractive in a boyish, uncultivated way that must have appealed to me in my youth. He had a cut on his forehead, misbehaving hair, and a crumpled jacket. His father was clearly disappointed in him and I felt the blood surging into my hand as I shook his. The adults went to sit in the living room and I waylaid Tim, placing my hand boldly on his arm.
“How’d you get the cut?”
“This?” Tim’s hand flew up to his forehead. “Hockey puck.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said and smiled. “Do you smoke?”
“Do you?”
I gestered to the door with my head. As we were leaving, my father—aware of my precocity—called after me. “Where are you going?”