And cottages full of diamonds.
RANDALL’S Corners looked to be suffering no prosperity. Two live souls stood jawing in front of a gas station.
“I’m looking for Arnie Norris,” I said to the one who shuffled over to the pump.
He gave me a careful look-over. “You a friend of his?”
“ Korea.”
“Arnie never came back here.”
The warmth of the gin in my gullet faded away. “How about the Norris in the phone book?”
“His brother’s son.”
I bought eighty cents worth of gas and followed his directions to Arnie’s nephew’s house. The nephew didn’t warm much to the idea that I’d served in the army with his uncle.
“You have no idea where he might be?” I asked through the screen door, clutching my hands together behind my back so as to not betray any agitation.
“He never came back here after Korea.”
I drove back to the pay phone at the gas station, trying not to panic. I’d been counting on that tap for a twenty.
I couldn’t recall where Whiffer was from, but Billy Dabbert hailed from Cedar Rapids. The operator had a number.
“Billy?” I almost shouted, much relieved, when someone answered.
“Is that you, Billy?” an ancient voice croaked back.
“I’m looking for Billy.”
“Where the hell you been all these years, Billy?” the confused voice asked.
The old gentleman was out of gray cells. I was out of dimes. I hung up. I’d have to detect the route myself.
I continued north, straining to remember what I could. We’d played a four-tuner outside of Detroit, then headed west. Low on gas, spooked by not encountering any towns, we’d stopped at sunset, drank, slept in the car. Next day, suffering the effects of the mash, I’d kept my head shrouded the whole way to Tadesville. Afterward, I’d hitched a ride from a guy driving a truck to Kalamazoo. Tadesville had to be in a line between Detroit and Kalamazoo.
It took four days to get to Ann Arbor, west of Detroit, being as I had to find gas stations crowded enough to allow a fast-exiting, nonpaying patron. Ann Arbor ’s courthouse had no record of a Tadesville, but they did have a big map showing county roads. I studied it for the route we’d likely taken, then set off westbound on skinny blacktop that wandered through towns named Bridgewater, Norvell, and Napoleon. I spent the night in the car outside Joppa. And then I came to Rasden. It had two church spires visible from the town square.
It could damned well have been that last four-tuner we’d played.
The sun climbed higher as I continued west through spindly, second-growth woods and long-abandoned farms. Then the trees got taller and thicker, until at last they twined together so thick I lost sight of the sun and the fields beyond the road.
I drove on, mindful of the drooping gas gauge and the growing thought that I could have made up the whole business about Tadesville and the lady in the woods. I’d been stupored that day, and in that condition, my mind had never been a stranger to inventing things. Maybe Tadesville was one such episode; maybe I’d browsed the ring someplace else, and my shredded brain had invented the woman so as to not remember the actual thieving.
I began to shiver. It had been hours since I’d swallowed the last of my provisions. I put the top up and turned up the heater full blast. Still I shook. Best to get out of this forsaken country, quit chasing a remembrance that never happened. I sped up, squinting ahead for a road I could take south to the interstate and, if fortune smiled, potentially a poorly tended package liquor store.
Suddenly, the cracked blacktop fell away, and I was driving on dirt, kicking back brown dust like I was fogging crops. There was a curve. The thick trees ended. And it was there, fifty yards up, baking under a full sun.
Tadesville.
And more.
I straight-armed the steering wheel and slammed on the brakes, crunching the tires deep into the dirt.
Arnie’s ’37 Plymouth was still parked at the side of the road.
The chalky blue paint was almost all weathered off, exposing huge blotches of gray primer and brown rust, and the tires had shriveled to thin black circles, but there was no doubt. It was Arnie’s car. And behind, still hitched to the bumper, was our stage trailer, piled with the tattered, rotted remains of our army-drab duffel bags.
Long needles prickle-danced up my back. I shut my eyes and squeezed the steering wheel hard. Crazy; I’d gone crazy from the mash, crazy from the gin. I wanted to giggle, but I didn’t have the courage. I begged God, to whom I had not spoken in decades: let it be a hallucination.
I opened my eyes, slow.
Arnie’s car. The trailer. Both the same.
I killed the motor.
Nothing moved in the hot, sudden silence. No cars, no people, no damned, droning flies. The air was dead, like when we’d first pulled into Tadesville.
I got out, shutting the car door easy, but still the sound boomed off the storefronts like three beats from a marching drum: the grocery, the General Feed, the long building with no name. More paint was gone from each of them, weathered away like skin flaked from a corpse too long in the desert. Above the grocery, yellow strings-remains of curtains-hung limp in the window, like entrails dangling from something dead.
My feet kicked up dirty puffs, dry as brown talcum, as I crossed the street.
The Plymouth ’s windows were down. I leaned in. Arnie’s keys and dog tags hung on a chain from the ignition. The cloth upholstery was shredded off the driver’s seat, the tops of the exposed seat springs shiny. Someone had been sitting on them recent, keeping away the rust.
My old suit jacket lay crumpled on the mildewed mohair in back, still balled up from when I’d used it as a pillow. I reached in, pulled it out. The rotted fabric came apart in my hands.
I let it fall as I went back to the trailer. My duffel was on the bottom of the pile, the stenciled “Olton” faded against the bleached army green. I undid the brass hook and pulled the putrid canvas open. My white shirts with their long, pointy collars rested on top, green-yellow now. I felt down, pulled out a pair of black gabardine slacks, a tie with a garden full of flowers, and my other suit. Everything was thick with black mold. At the bottom was a pint of Jack with two swallows left. Jesus.
I pushed it all back in the duffel, tried to wipe the black from my hands.
Run to the car. Turn the key. Get away from this place.
Once, I had the strength. Not now. Now I needed.
It was a perfect day for browsing.
I went back across the street, each step muffled by the dust, inevitable. I opened the Pontiac ’s trunk, took out the banjo case, dimly heard as the falling lid sent more drumbeats off the storefronts. At the intersection, I turned the corner. Like before, it was cooler under the thick, dark canopy of leaves. Almost cold.
I walked down the half mile.
THERE’S no meat on Arnie, Billy, and Whiffer. Their skin hangs loose and yellow, like rotting shrouds. They look like the people that came out of Auschwitz -haunted, like they’ve seen hell. My skin’s a little tighter. I haven’t had to browse as long.
We come every day about four thirty, drag what’s left of the duffels to the ground, and pull ourselves up on the trailer. We start tuning. Arnie’s only got two rusty strings left on his guitar, but it doesn’t matter. Always, we counted on Billy and Whiffer. Most folks have never seen jug and washboard.
We lead with “Divin’ Duck.” Surefire stuff, used to be. But nobody comes. Across the street, my Pontiac, white on black with red vinyl interior, sits low on rusted wheels. The tires went flat years ago, and the top is tattered from sun rot. I sleep there. I don’t know where the others sleep.
Arnie starts a banjo joke. I shuffle forward, make like I’m drooling. Nobody laughs. There’s nobody there.