“It’s the cinderblock. It holds the AC.”
She finished her beer. “I’m going to take care of you.”
“I don’t want you to.”
“How do you think it’ll look if I leave you now?”
He was still lying on his side. He lifted his head, getting a hand under it. “It’s what I’d do.”
“No, you wouldn’t.”
“I might.”
She placed the can on the floor and stood and stomped it flat, then put it in her purse. “Here’s how it’s going to be,” she said. “Me and my girlfriends are going to go out every weekend and drink shots and I’m going to bitch about how hard it is watching you die. I might even let them pry it out of me that you tried to fuck your ex-wife.”
“You don’t have any girlfriends.”
“I’ll find some. It’ll be the best time of my life.”
When he closed his eyes she sat watching until his breathing deepened, then gathered up his clothes from where he’d folded and arranged them at the foot of his cot.
She turned off the light in the hall when she left, said good night to Pearl and put his things on the backseat of her car. She walked around and leaned against the trunk. It was raining lightly, enough that it made a purring sound. The air smelled of mown hay and sage and asphalt, and she didn’t feel a bit tired.
She lit a cigarette and got in behind the wheel and backed out into the street. She put the window down, enjoying the mist of rain against her cheek. I can do this, she thought. She tried to remember when she’d been brave in the past. She’d done what she had to do. She didn’t want to go right home, thinking she’d drive awhile before it got light, out toward the interstate, then turn around and go home and put clean sheets on their bed.
She shouldn’t have said that about Griffin, made him out as someone special, unforgettable. We all have our shit, and it had been twenty years, and truly, she would’ve found something to hate about him if they were still together. She flicked the cigarette out the window. That’s one thing she could change. If Janice Obermueller could quit smoking, how hard could it be? There were deer grazing the overgrowth of grass along the borrow ditches. Their eyes flashed red in the highbeams. Maybe she’d start exercising. She reached into her purse where it sat in the passenger’s seat for a can of beer.
She popped the tab and took a sip, thinking she might taper off the drinking a little. Nothing drastic. No meetings, nothing like that, maybe just start later in the day, and this wasn’t really like driving at all, more like gliding. It could be like that. She and Crane could have whole days together that were just this effortless. She could make it happen.
Thirty
KENNETH HAD ORDERED a second plate of waffles and the ripest banana their waitress could find. He spread the pulpy fruit on like it was cream cheese and poured maple syrup over the whole works, closing his eyes when he chewed so he could concentrate on the flavors. After each bite he swished his mouth clean with a swallow of milk.
“I’m not sure we’ve ever taken a real vacation,” McEban said. “Not that I can remember.”
“We did when you broke your pelvis,” the boy said. “When the roan colt fell over backwards and squished you like”-he looked down at his empty plate-“like a waffle.”
McEban tapped the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle spread out on his side of the table where he’d been studying the program of events. “This might work out a little better for us,” he said.
“I got to stay home from school for a whole week. And ladies brought food to the house and Paul and I played hearts. Remember? I drew pictures of horses all over your cast.”
“I remember.”
McEban folded his placemat back, borrowed a pen from the waitress and made a list of when the parade was going to run, the hours the carnival operated, when the rodeos and concerts began.
When they’d finished breakfast they stood out in the bright sun on the sidewalk.
“I guess first thing we ought to do is get a room,” McEban said.
“Can we wash the truck?”
McEban pulled the toothpick from his mouth, staring down at the boy.
“In one of those places with the spray hoses,” Kenneth said. “I’ve always wanted to.”
They took a room with two beds at the Super 8 on Lincolnway off I-25, then found a carwash on Missile Drive. There were a few others but the boy liked the idea of a road named after something that got shot into the air.
He sprayed the truck with soapy water and clean, alternating between machine-gun and laser-sword sounds, and when they were nearly out of quarters McEban parked at the vacuum stands and sorted through the clutter on the dash while Kenneth sucked up the gravel, gum wrappers, dried mud and horseshit from the floormats.
On Capitol Avenue he stood at the curb waving to the people on floats and horseback, to the older kids in the marching bands, and when the men came zigzagging down the street throwing handfuls of candy from little scooters tricked out to look like turtles, he fell to his knees and filled his cap with packages of M &M’s, wrapped taffy and miniature Baby Ruth and Butterfinger bars. There were people sitting on coolers and in lawn chairs, and at the corner a woman slouched in her chair cradling a baby in her lap. When she smiled he offered his cap, and she took a piece of candy.
“Thank you,” she said.
Her shirt was lifted up from her waist and he could see the bottom curve of a breast, the baby’s mouth pressed into her. She held a hand above his head to shade the side of his face, his cheeks contracting and relaxing as he suckled, an eyelid fluttering.
Then people were folding their lawn chairs and milling out into the empty street, the sidewalks draining. He looked around for McEban.
On the drive to the rodeo grounds he kept busy raking through his candy, finding the pieces he thought might melt.
“Did you get any Junior mints?” McEban asked.
“There’s some SweeTARTS.”
“I don’t want anything sour.”
He somehow got his cap back on his head even though it was still half-filled with candy. “Did my mom do that with me?” he asked.
A fire engine from the parade pulled alongside them, and the driver was drinking a beer.
“You mean like the lady at the parade?”
He nodded, feeling his face warming.
“Yes, she did.”
He leaned back against the seat and closed his eyes. He tried to imagine what it must have been like, if his mother would’ve tasted different than other women, but the embarrassment only deepened.
The rodeo lasted all afternoon and they ate plastic boats of corn chips topped with cheese and chili, sipping cans of warm Coke.
They went to the carnival in the evening, and McEban bought a roll of tickets that allowed them to go on any ride they chose, and they tried the Kamikaze and the Gravitron, and felt pukey and brittle afterward and were satisfied to use the remaining tickets racing around and crashing into each other in bumper cars. The man who took their tickets at the gate had a tattoo of vines and flowers that covered his whole face and the sides and top of his shaved head, and Kenneth tried not to stare but he couldn’t help it.
The next day they went to the parade again, then to the rodeo in the afternoon. It was two days now and they hadn’t seen a single person they knew.
McEban tapped him on the top of the head. “You okay?”
They were walking back across the parking lot, weaving through the cars and the press of people, the sun glaring off the rows of hot metal.
“I don’t remember where we parked.”
“But you’re having a good time?”
“It’s harder than I thought it would be.”
McEban stepped in front of him, squatting down so they were on the same level. “You need to go home?”
He shook his head.
“You look like you do.”
He thought he must have the dumb expression he got sometimes. He made his face perk up. “I’m having a really good time.”