14. That Other Guy

Christopher lost the first three rounds of 'Bury the Cow' and decided like a graceful loser that it was time for him to drive again; by then, the pain of my nose was almost blinding me and the glow of victory was rapidly losing its charm, so I took a couple of codeine pills, leaned back in the passenger seat, and felt all shiny again for a while.

I dreamed briefly of dead men in trailers rising to their feet and tearing away duct-taped cardboard, and when they opened their mouths to scream for help, inside of them were the faces of children, their mouths opened in a scream—they were the ones screaming for help, not the dead men—while the faces of other children screamed from inside theirs.

I forced open my eyes and blinked against the sunlight as it strobe through the canopy of leaves above us.

"I was about to wake you," said Christopher.  "This is some really pretty country we're passing through—if you can forgive the diesel smoke you see hanging over the treetops every so often.  Truckers tend to take it slow through here because these inclines are hell on gears, plus these roads can dip twenty feet or more with no warning.  Because of the elevation, the atmosphere doesn't rid itself of exhaust fumes as quickly as it does in the lower parts."

I rubbed my eyes, shaking myself further awake and away from the screaming dead men.  "You sound like a tour guide."

"I know."  He looked out the windshield.  Tears brimmed in his eyes but he was smiling.  "You have any idea how long I've dreamed about seeing this road again?  I knew it would be just the same.  Most roads like this in Kentucky never change.  Thank God."

I sat up.  Outside it was raining—nothing spectacular, just one of those constant gray drizzles that leaves the road slightly muddy and everything else looking as if it's shimmering from somewhere deep inside.

Have you ever driven through Kentucky?  Now, I know from books and television and movies that actual cities are rumored to exist there, but from the route Christopher was taking, you'd never be able to tell it.

I have never seen so many hills in my life.  The road we were on was this twisting, turning, narrow two-lane snake that wound through lush trees crowding closer to the side every time we made a turn.  Even though it was only two-thirty in the afternoon, a luminous mist skirled across the road like ghost-tides lapping at shores no longer existent except in their ghostly memory.  We were going uphill all the way so far, and I think we passed maybe four cars, at least three times as many deer, and two semis who moved with the deep-gutted roars and slow, desperate deliberation of dinosaurs crawling from the tar.  The one time I dared to peek out the side window and look over into one of the deep ditches—just to see how deep it was—I about passed out from vertigo; the side of the hill (or was it a mountain?) dropped straight down, at least three hundred feet, and into a river speckled with the knotted, bare branches of trees gliding along, having caught a free ride on the current.

Still, I stared at that sheer drop.  "You've never driven this road before, have you?"

"Nope," said Christopher.  "But I've driven some damned dangerous ones, so don't worry—I'm not about to send us sailing over the side."

"Could I have that in writing?"

"Enjoy the view, why don't you?"

"I'm trying."

"Try harder."

Eventually, and about as suddenly as a roller coaster, the road plummeted to a short steel bridge that rattled and shook like a bag of bones as we crossed it.  Then I remembered that we had an actual bag of bones in here with us and heard the dead men screaming and felt sick and sad all over again.

Through the windshield I saw the shear side of a mountain—a rock face—then the road hung a 90-degree to the left, pointing us through yet another set of hills lined on either side with yet more thick firs and pines.  A family of deer stood among the trees nibbling at the grass; they lifted their heads and looked at us as we lumbered past.  I felt like we were intruding.

The road narrowed down to a single rutted lane here, and I occasionally spotted old, rusted railroad rails scattered among the trees, as well skeletons of homemade chairs, what looked like blankets, and swear I once spotted the remains of a log cabin.

Here and there, up on the mountainsides in the distance, shelves of rock hovered over what looked like shallow caves.

I pointed up toward one.  "Are those caves or something else?"

Christopher looked in the direction I was pointing.  "That's a cave—if it was a mine, you'd see timber propping the entrance."

"You know about mining?"

"You bet.  My grandfather worked these mines.  He used to talk about it a lot after he got sick and came to stay with us.

"All these mountains you're looking at, they're limestone with seams of coal. Sometimes the seam goes straight into the mountain, but usually it sort of just angles in and the coal shaft follows the seams.  The shafts are propped with timbers, and generally slate lies above the coal.  You take out enough of the coal and that slate—wham!—it'll come crashing down right on top of your head."

"Even if there are timbers propping it up?"

"Hell, yes.  Timber gets soaked over the years, it weakens, doesn't take much to make it snap.  Limestone is really porous, so there's always ground water.  In those days, when my grandpa worked the mines, if a miner hit a narrow seam, he had to lie on his back in the water—can you imagine what that must be like?  There you are, God-only-knows how deep down, in the dark, on your back in water, between all these rocks, pushing shovels backward over your shoulder to draw out loose coal."

"I'll stick with cleaning toilets and doing windows, thank you."

"Yeah… I wish Grandpa would have done something else.  Goddamn mines killed him.  Turned his lungs into blackened Swiss cheese and twisted up his back so bad he couldn't stand up straight.  He had to use a walker to move around, and even then me and Paul had to help."

I look ahead into the road.  The canopy formed by the tree limbs grew lower and thicker the wetter it was made by rain, and soon Christopher had to turn on his headlights.

"How much longer until we get to our first stop?" I asked.

"About that," he said.  "There's been a change in plan."  He looked at me.  "If you don't mind, I want to stop by my family's place first.  I've been thinking about what you said, about how I'm above it now, better than him"—he gestured with his head back toward the trailer—"and I've decided that this has to end now.  You talk to my folks, do your Mr. U.S. Marshal number, then I'll show myself and we'll call the cops and they can take him and do whatever they want."

"What about the bodies in there with him?"

Christopher paused, blinked.  "Think the police will believe it was self-defense?"

"I honestly don't know—but after what you've been through, I doubt any judge is going to want to put you in prison."

He nodded.  "Well… I'll guess we'll see, won't we?"

"You realize that I have no idea what your last name is?"

He laughed.  "I guess it didn't come up, did it?  It's Matthews."

I held out my hand.  "Pleased to meet you, Christopher Matthews."

He shook it.  "A pleasure, sir."

I sat back, checked myself in the mirror—the black eyes were so dark I looked like a raccoon—then patted down my hair and said, "My grandmother treated my dad like garbage his entire life."

"Now we get to it."

"You told me about your Grandpa, I'm going to tell you about my grandmother—unless you interrupt me again."

He mimed zipping closed his mouth.

"Look, the list of things she did to him when he was a kid—let alone what she did to him as an adult—would go on forever and depress the shit of you, so I'm just going to skip to thing that made me write her off permanently, okay?

"The last Christmas before Dad retired, money was a little tight—hell, money had always been tight, but this year it was even tighter than usual, right?  Dad only had sixteen dollars to buy Grandma a present, so the day before Christmas, he puts on his best coat and best boots and walks downtown because he doesn't want to waste money on a cab—no, my folks didn't drive, either one of them.  I mean, they used to, but both their eyesight was going and, besides, they could always call Tanya or me.  Anyway, he walks downtown—we're talking three, four miles in the middle of winter, ten degrees and snowing, a sixty-three-year-old man who's still recovering from radiation treatments from the first bout of cancer—he walks down and goes through all the stores, looking for something nice he can buy her with his sixteen dollars, and eventually he finds this really, really nice scarf, gloves, and perfume boxed set, thirteen bucks.  He shoots the other three bucks to have them gift wrap it because Grandma is supposed to come over and pick up her gifts that night.  Then he walks all the way back home in snow that's getting wetter and heavier.

"Grandma never showed up that Christmas Eve, she didn't show up on Christmas Day, or the day after, or the day after, not for New Year's… that present sat in their house for six fucking months before she got it—and even then she sent one of her other grandkids to get it, then went out of her way to call and tell him that she already had plenty of gloves and scarves but maybe she could use the perfume.  It broke his heart.  By then he was getting sick again—that little Christmas Eve stroll left him with walking pneumonia, and it was while he was being treated for it that his doctor discovered the cancer was back.

"Flash forward.  Both Mom and Dad are dead and buried—she didn't come to the either funeral, by the way, she had a little touch of the flu both times.  She decides to move down to Kansas to be near her sisters and sets about looking up my sister, who's living down there with her husband, and trying to 'make amends.'  My sister, by the way, made the drive all the way to Ohio and back for both funerals, and she was sicker than hell both times.

"Okay, so Grandma tries to make all nicey-nice with Gayle, and Gayle's too polite to tell her to go to hell—we both knew she was just an old woman trying to get into Heaven any way she could.  Grandma would call me sometimes to see how I was doing and reminisce about Mom and Dad like she ever gave a shit for either one of them.  I tell her that I got nothing to say to her and hang up.  So she sets about making Gayle her new, last best friend. 

"When Grandma died, she left a lot of money—well, what I consider to be a lot.  It was divided up among her sisters and living children and grandchildren—but Gayle and me, she left us a real nice chunk of change, over ten thousand dollars.  I didn't want her goddamn money, not after the way she'd treated Dad, and I told her lawyer as much.  Well, Grandma must have suspected I was going to say that, because she left a codicil in her will that if I refused my inheritance, it was all to go to Gayle—provided that I signed all the necessary papers.  By this time my sister has divorced her redneck hubby and wants to get the hell out of Dodge—or, rather, Topeka—as soon as possible, so she calls and asks me if I'd drive down to Kansas and sign the papers because if I did the money would be released to her that day.  How the hell could I say no?  I took the time off work, drove down, signed the papers, loaded up what Gayle wanted me to bring back, put her and the kids on a plane, and then had car trouble just outside Jefferson City.  You were around for everything else, so now I think we're up to date."

Christopher mimed unzipping his mouth.  "You really loved your folks a lot, didn't you?'

"Yes, I did—screw that past tense—I do.  Just because they're not here any longer doesn't mean I don't still love and miss them."

"I hope my folks have missed me half that much."

"I'm sure they have."

"Yeah…?"

"Count on it."

He looked at me and smiled.  "I realize this is going to sound incredibly stupid, all things considered, but man am I glad we grabbed you and not that other guy."

It took a second for that to fully register.  "What other guy?"

"Huh?  Oh—there was a dude about four miles behind you at a rest stop with a couple of flat tires.  I don't know what he ran over but it chewed the hell of them.  We were doubling back to get him when Denise spotted you.  She thought you looked nicer."

"Oh."

"I didn't mention that before?"

"Must have slipped your mind."

"Oh."

I imagined this guy now all safe and sound at home, kissing his wife, hugging his kids, petting the dog, bitching about the bills, and said:  "I hope the son-of-a-bitch is still stuck there."

We looked at one another, then burst out laughing.

The road dipped slightly, we went over another steel bridge—this one more stable than the last—and emerged onto a smooth and seemingly freshly-paved stretch of asphalt.  The trees thinned out near the road but were just as thick in the distance, and the sheer rock face on either side of us had obviously been blasted and smoothed by human hands.

"It'll be coming up on the right in a couple of miles," said Christopher.  "You need to make yourself presentable—there's a light jacket in the black duffel bag back there.  You should put it on to cover the blood on your shirt."

I moved to the back, grabbed the duffel bag, pulled it open, and immediately shrieked as the skulls grinned up at me.

"I said the black duffel bag."

"Yeah… uh… sorry."  I knelt there for a few moments, shaking, eyes closed, my heart pounding against my ribs, then took a deep breath, opened my eyes, and closed up the bag of bones.  "Sorry, Randy," I whispered to the top skull.  They'd be home soon, as well, to weeping families and waiting graves.

I found the lightweight camouflage green jacket—it was a little tight across the chest and the sleeves were a bit short, but I'd deal with it.

"Looks good on you," said Christopher as I climbed back into the passenger seat.

"It covers up the blood."

"Yeah, I know, but it looks good is what I'm saying.  Looks like something a real U.S. Marshal might wear."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

I took a deep breath, released it.  "So how do you want to work this?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean am I going inside, are you going to stay out in the bus and listen with the magic dish, am I using the phone first, what?"

He signaled for a semi to pass us, which it did with all the grace and subtlety of an elephant on a tightwire, then rubbed his eyes and said:  "You go inside and do your voodoo like with Thomas's folks; I'll wait out here until you signal me."  He shook his head.  "I won't listen in on you this time."  He looked at me.  "No need."

"I'll take that as a vote of confidence.  What am I supposed to do to signal you?"

"What do you think?  Step outside and holler for me."

"That'll work."

We dragged along behind the semi for another three-quarters of a mile, until it pulled off into the large and surprisingly crowded parking lot of a truck stop complete with a small motel, three gas islands, a showering facility, car wash, and restaurant.

"You never told me that your folks' place was so big," I said as Christopher maneuvered toward a parking space in an area designated MOBILE HOMES AND TRAILERS ONLY.

"It wasn't," he said, the surprise evident in his voice.  He killed the engine and looked out on the scene, open-mouthed.  "Good God—Dad had talked about trying to expand the place, but I never thought… wow."

The restaurant was one of those Mom-and-Pop establishments you pass on the road every trip; front porch, screen doors, neon beer signs hanging in the windows, a sandwich board with "Today's Specials" written in erasable marker, and an old-fashioned soda pop cooler out front—the kind with a lifting lid where you have to guide the ice-cold bottle through a series of metal tracks like a maze until it slides through a mini-turnstile at the end.  All that was missing from the front porch to make it something right out of a Normal Rockwell painting was a wooden rocking chair and floppy-eared hound dog lying across the top of the steps.

"The restaurant's a lot bigger than it looks on the outside," said Christopher.  "At least, that's how I remember it."  He looked at me and shrugged.  "I have no idea how many changes they might have made.  It's been… a while since I was here, you know?"  He was trembling all over.  "Hey, look over there."  He was pointing to an area behind the restaurant, just visible between it and the motel; a green patch of field, where there sat, up on concrete blocks, the remains of a gray 1968 VW Microbus. "I can't believe they still have that thing."

"Except for the no-wheels part, it still looks in fairly good condition to me."

He laughed.  "Maybe they'll sell it to you."

"Right.  Nothing against your folks or Volkswagens in general, but I don't give a shit if I ever I see the interior of one of these again."

"All in favor."

We both raised our hands.  I reached over and squeezed his arm.  "It's gonna be fine, my friend, just fine.  You're home."

"Not yet, I'm not… but damn, I never thought I'd ever be this close again.  Do me proud, Mark."

"You know it.  Look, it might take a while—remember how Thomas's dad reacted initially?"

"I know.  I don't think you're in any danger of having me take off on you.  Oh, that reminds me"—he dug around in his shoulder bag and pulled out a couple of twenties—"you might want to order some food or something.  Nothing irritated my folks more than someone who took up bar space without ordering."

I pocketed the money, checked myself in the mirror one last time, then climbed out into the rain, which was starting to grow heavier.

I stood beside the bus with my door open, staring at the restaurant.

"What is it?" asked Christopher.

"I think I'm as nervous about this as you are."

"Not possible."

I looked at him.  "Maybe not, but I'm running a close second."

"Which is just doing oodles to ease my anxiety, thanks so much."

"What are you parents' first names?  It might be helpful."

"Joseph and Ellen."

"And Paul's your brother, right?"

"Right."

"Any other names I should know?  Sisters or anything?"

"Not that I know of—but, then, it's been a while.  Are you still here?"

"I am now going."  I closed the door and began walking toward the front porch.  I kept thinking about what Trevor—the security guard at Muriel's—had said to me:  I actually feel like I'm making a difference today, you know?  How often does a guy get to say that?

As I hit the top of the stairs and reached for the screen door I felt, for the first time in years, like a worthwhile human being once again.

If I had any doubts about myself at that point, Arnold's words—You gotta be the one to finish this for us, Mark—erased them. 

They were all depending on me to do the right thing.

Maybe, after all of this, Tanya could depend on me for that, as well.

Odd, to believe your life has a purpose, after all.  Good—but odd.

I opened the door and stepped inside.