It wasn’t there.
16
1985
ALTHOUGH HE HAD GROWN UP nearby—perhaps because he had grown up nearby—Walter had never visited Luray Caverns, and he took a notion that he and Elizabeth should spend a day there. It seemed a foolish thing to do, given that money was always tight, yet the various highway signs called to him. He really wanted to see those caverns, not to mention the classic cars, although he didn’t understand why there was a collection of classic cars at Luray Caverns. He talked himself into thinking it would be a nice treat for Elizabeth.
But Elizabeth, to his surprise, argued on the grounds that it was an extravagance. He had been picking up fewer jobs of late and they had been sleeping out more often, even as the nights got cooler here in the mountains.
“Hey, I’m just thinking of trying to do something fun for you.” Besides, who was she to argue with him over money? Who was she to argue with him about anything? She seldom talked back, and he didn’t like the fact that she was starting. This was a troubling development. She needed more discipline.
“I’ve been,” she said. “Just two years ago.”
“What was it like?”
“Okay. All I learned was how to remember the difference between a stalagmite and a stalactite.”
He didn’t want to ask, but she clearly wasn’t going to volunteer the information: “And how do you remember?”
“Stalactites, which have a c, hang from the ceiling. Stalagmites come up from the ground.”
“Well, then, you could just as well remember g for ground, couldn’t you?”
That cowed her.
“Sure, I suppose you could.”
“And you may have gone, but I’ve never been. Is that fair?”
“You said it was something you wanted to do for me,” she said, correctly and infuriatingly. “If it’s my choice, I’d rather use the money we’d spend on that for something else.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. A meal in a restaurant, one night, instead of fast food or making do with cold things from grocery stores. Something to wear.”
“I’ve got even fewer things to wear ’n you.”
She started to say something, thought better of it, slumped back in the front seat of the car with a sigh so heavy that the exhaled breath stirred the bangs hanging in her eyes. Walter saw, in that moment, what it would be like to have a teenage daughter one day, how exasperating and tender and terrifying.
In the next instant, he realized that he would never have a daughter, or a son, or a wife. Something was coming for him, something big. Yes, because of what he had done, but also because that was his destiny. His death would be heroic, at least. A chase, a battle. He would die large, and that pleased him.
Yet what had he really done except try to have the things that others have and take for granted, things that came so easily. All around him, he saw people, couples, holding hands and enjoying each other. He saw men much less good-looking than himself, and probably less capable, with knockouts, and he could not understand how that happened. He had started out wanting nothing more than a girlfriend, and he had wanted a girlfriend because, one day, he wanted to have a wife, then kids. True, he had rushed things, he had made poor choices. But it was hard, making good choices, when you had to settle for meeting people on the fly. And once you were out of school, how did you meet people at all? Working in his father’s shop wasn’t any way to meet women. The few that came in, he never got to talk to them, and the coveralls made him look shorter than he was. Even if they could see past the coveralls, to his nice face and his green eyes, they probably thought, Oh, a grease monkey. A grease monkey! Did people know how smart you had to be to work on cars? Hell, doctors weren’t any smarter than mechanics. Doctors got to specialize. One did the heart, one did the brain, one did bones. He and his father were the kind of mechanics who did everything, domestic and foreign, and they were honest. No one who knew them had ever called them out on a single charge. One time, a stranger had been passing through and had a breakdown, and it was a newer car with an electrical ignition, always tricky, but they had gotten that guy back on the road the same day, which meant they saved him the cost of a motel, and all he wanted to do was ask why they had gone ahead and replaced his brake pads, which were thin as handed-down baby pajamas. He had been a tall man, probably only six or seven years older than Walter, who was seventeen at the time, but he carried himself as if he was important. The inside of his car smelled of cigars, and when, the repairs finally done, they had switched the car back on to check everything, the music that poured out of the radio was classical, opera. Walter didn’t believe for a minute that the man really enjoyed that music. He was on the lookout to impress someone. But Walter also realized that it probably worked, and girls were impressed. God, women were shallow.
“We’re going to the caverns,” he said to Elizabeth. “It’s educational.”
She sighed harder, went beyond sighing, stuck out her bottom lip and made a noise that was downright rude. His palm itched to slap her. He flicked her cheek, not hard, and was pleased to see her eyes go fearful.
SHE WAS ENJOYING THE TOUR, he could tell, even though they weren’t dressed quite warmly enough for the caverns. Soon they would require more clothes. Coats and sweaters and boots. He needed to figure things out, find more permanent work. But he couldn’t land a mechanic’s job if he couldn’t provide references, and opening his own shop would involve way too much capital and overhead. Besides, what he would really like to do is run his own general fix-it shop, a place that promised: “If you can break it, I can fix it.” Or: “I can fix anything from a screen door to a broken heart.” He had stolen that line from Earl, the one who had gone off to the Marines. He had been younger than Walter, but nice, one of the few people who didn’t seem to think he was a moron. Could Walter enlist? No, it wasn’t like those old movies where people joined the French foreign legion and disappeared. Or that movie that had come out just a few years earlier, about a guy who parachuted out of a plane with $200,000 in ransom. Boy, the woman in that movie had been pretty, just his type. Thin, but with really big breasts and one of those curly smiles. Could he get a ransom for Elizabeth? Not much, based on what he knew about her parents. She was always talking about how they didn’t have a lot of money. Computers could find anybody, no matter where they went. He had seen that movie War Games. What was he going to do? His mind was so busy running through his options, or lack of options, that he could barely pay attention to the tour guide.
There weren’t many people on this tour, only one school group. Younger kids, no more than ten or eleven, and loud, loving the way their voices boomed and echoed. Elizabeth looked at them curiously, as if she couldn’t remember being that young. Then he realized—it wasn’t age that made her distant. It was him, the life he had created for her. She wasn’t part of their world anymore, a world with parents and television and dinner and school. She had accepted this so readily that he found himself losing a little respect for her. True, he had made sure to scare the shit out of her at first, and showed her that he could hurt her—swiftly, searingly, with not much effort. But he had not raised a hand to her since those first few days, and still she stayed. He didn’t count today, that was just a tap, a warning. He was stuck with her, in a way. Why this one, the one who had just stumbled on him? Why couldn’t he have a girl he chose? Nothing was ever fair.