He gestured to the cliffy walls of gabbro-striped quartzite just to the east. The river running through them widened and flattened once it escaped their grasp, flowing tame past the campus and through downtown, unabashedly picturesque, a chamber of commerce wet dream.
“It funnels the wind right into town. Freezes your ass off soon as it’s dark. Winter should be a treat. Anyway, I got company, man.” He held his hands before his chest, sketching breasts, then moved them down and out. Hips. “What happened to the Dainty Lady?”
The car — its unwelcome nickname bestowed by Gary back in Enumclaw — sat ticking in a miasma of exhaust and something more ominous. “It started making a noise just over the Idaho line. Some red lights came on. And I’m about out of gas. Just a couch, man. That’s all I need.”
“Say no more.” Gary disappeared indoors. The home’s scabby facade, so dispiriting as the car sputtered up to it, now beckoned with the promise of warmth and Benson-sized horizontal surfaces. Benson heard a girl’s high, protesting voice and Gary’s soothing tones. He turned sideways to the wind, his T-shirt and shorts an inadequate defense. Sweats lurked at the bottom of his duffel. He’d retrieve them once he got settled on Gary’s sofa.
The door opened. Benson stepped toward it. Gary’s outstretched hand, a twenty-dollar bill snapping in the wind, stopped him. “This should cover gas, couple of beers besides. This town is crazy friendly. Hit up anybody in a bar, you’ll find that couch. That’s how I got this place. Ask around about jobs, too. That’s the quickest way to get one. Catch you in a few days. Oh, and hey — welcome to Missoula.”
Benson’s hands twitched. He imagined shredding Andrew Jackson’s face, tossing the pieces at Gary like handfuls of dirt flung into an open grave. “Keep your fucking money.” That’s what he should have said.
He took the cash.
A shit job — lobbing rolled-up newspapers from the Dainty Lady onto the chemically treated lawns of the old folks who were the only ones subscribing to the Missoulian anymore — was easy to find. A shit place to live, not so much. Although the job eventually led to the place.
For the privilege of earning twenty cents an hour over minimum, forget about benefits, Benson rolled out of the backseat at three-dark-thirty. He coaxed the Dainty Lady, with the rebuilt transmission that had maxed out his only credit card, through fog-shrouded streets to the Missoulian’s loading dock, where stacks of newspapers awaited. There, Benson spent a couple of hours rolling and rubber-banding them, leaving his hands sore and swollen and slippery-gray with ink.
He’d have taken longer still but for Harlan, the guy assigned to train him. Papers flipped and spun in Harlan’s hairy hands, rubber bands snapping like a teenager’s gum. “Got to be quicker,” Harlan said. “We ought to’ve hit the road by now.”
The papers were supposed to be on doorsteps by six thirty, latest, but they didn’t even head out until six. Harlan, knowing the route, held out his hand for Benson’s keys. He pointed the Dainty Lady up a hill stair-stepped with asbestos-shingled split-levels showing their age, cars sardining their driveways, the street lined with overflow, as though every house had thrown a party at the same time.
“Students,” Harlan said. “They pack them in there, charge them God knows what. You see all those cars in front of a place, keep driving. Not a one of them takes the paper.”
“Then where are we going?”
“There.” Atop the hill, a sign proclaimed, Mansion Heights.
Benson winced at the violation of show, don’t tell. The homes, steroidal versions of the stuccoed boxes taking over Gary’s neighborhood, told plenty. Wraparound decks that took advantage of the hilltop views nearly doubled the already excessive square footage. Naturally uninhabited at the early hour, the decks gave the appearance of permanent disuse, bereft of chaise longues or barbecue grills or other signs that anyone actually took his ease there. Benson tossed a half-dozen papers in front of three-car garages.
“Who lives here?”
“Nobody who wants to stay.” Faded FOR SALE signs adorned several yards. Unsold lots, thick with weeds, abounded. “Recession hit before they finished this place. It’s hardly worth the drive up here.”
It was nearly eight by the time light spilled like skim milk over the summits, playing catch-up with the Dainty Lady as Benson and Harlan headed for the far side of town, trying to make up time, speeding past the acres of apartment complexes beyond the chain restaurants and big-box stores. A few subscribers lived out by the dump, in the fast-built and faster-falling-down developments that housed the families who’d never make it into the striving neighborhoods closer to the university.
Benson rubbed his pitching arm. He was supposed to work with Harlan for a week, but told him never mind after the guy broke into a rasping fit of giggles on their way back to the newspaper.
Benson thought Harlan was laughing at him because, even after two hours on the route, his papers sailed into aborvitae and petunias, even into the yards next door. But Harlan disabused him of that notion: “Let the biddies walk.”
“Then what’s so funny?”
“That right there.” Harlan jerked his head toward an elementary school. In the playground, slides and swings awaited tiny bottoms. “I’m not supposed to be within a thousand feet of that place. And yet here I am. Bite this, judge!” He grabbed his crotch with both hands.
“Jesus Christ.” Benson caught the wheel just in time to avoid sideswiping a parked car. The Dainty Lady had a wicked pull to the right. Benson knew only one reason a judge would order someone away from places with little kids.
“Heh-heh-heh.” The seat shook with Harlan’s laughter.
“I think I’ve got this down. You don’t have to come with me tomorrow.”
The silence went on and on, broken only by the thwack of a few final papers.
“Looky there. Over by those widowmakers.” Harlan lifted a paw and pointed. A FOR RENT sign leaned against one of the towering cottonwoods that flanked the entrance to a trailer park. The trees, notorious for a shallow root system prone to giving way in storms, stretched outsized limbs capable of crushing the mismatched dwellings below.
The car rolled past. Nobody living in a trailer had money for the Missoulian.
“You said you were looking for a place to live? Might be that back there is your new home. Heh-heh-heh.”
“Dude. It’s not even ironic.” Gary jammed his car key into the bottom of a can of Hamm’s (which was ironic) and shotgunned it, his idea of a dramatic gesture to underscore his revulsion as he scanned the Mountain View Mobile Home Park.
Three doors down, a row of purple-headed irises bobbed beneath the ministrations of a woman with a watering can. Her short skirt crawled north of decent over meaty thighs as she bent to pluck a few weeds. “Check out the cougar. Talk about a walking STD.”
The woman straightened. Shot them a look.
Benson waited for a smile, a shrug, maybe even a Sorry, from Gary. But he turned his attention back to the trailer, a camper, really. “Don’t tell the group you live here.”
The “group” being some of the others in Gary’s classes. They convened at his apartment in the bungalow on Sunday nights to critique one another’s stories before turning them in for the verdict of the whole class. Benson had learned his lesson that first night on Gary’s porch. He didn’t ask to be included; just showed up after Gary let slip about the gathering, then sat back while Gary stammered his way through the whole here’s-my-friend-sitting-out-the-semester explanation. Benson even brought a submission, typed on a library computer and printed out for ten cents a page. Gary was old-school that way, wanting hard copies of everything. Easy for him. The money Benson spent copying a story for each of the eight people in the group would have funded a half-tank for the Dainty Lady. Money wasted, he thought after the first Sunday night.