The road from Murder Valley back to Lee County made me uneasy. Again, too many IEDs. This drive was where Angus and I had our only real fight, because she’d confessed to wanting to skip out on us all, to go to college, and I was counting up the hardships nailing me to the cross I’d dragged down this road: Here I got robbed by a truck-stop whore. Here I slept in a haystack. Shaking my mean little piggy bank of wrath. It set my teeth on edge, that memory, along with the sound of the wiper blades scraping a
rime of hard frost on the windshield. The temperature had dropped overnight.
I was so lucky, I realized then. That Angus put up with me as long as she did.
The apartment building in Norton where Coach lived was the nicest place around, to the extent it almost didn’t belong here. Fancy paint job, gray with white trim on the outside stairs and porches. New planted trees and mowed grass all around the parking areas. Sidewalks. I saw kids out there tipping skateboards, like pavement was a normal thing. No clue.
I’d called ahead, so Coach wasn’t surprised. The shock was on my side.
Out with the red cap and whistle, in with the leather slippers and sad old man smell. The bushy eyebrows were white. He clapped me on the back and sat me in his living room on furniture I recognized from the old house. But the apartment looked as new inside as out. Carpet with vacuum marks, never-used fireplace. Coach was a whole new man in a tidy room. That’s
the deal of sober life: celebrate the fresh start, suck up your sadness for all
that was left behind. In Coach’s case, a shit ton of random sports equipment. Angus had told me about her hasty bulldoze of the big house, shoving the crap into back rooms before turning it over to some NASCAR group for office space. It rented for twice what they paid for this apartment. So they got by, after he stepped down from his job to focus on pulling it together. He’d been here the whole time Angus was away, and still looked
like a bird perched in the wrong tree. He told me they’d decided to sell the house. The renters had cleared out, and Angus was trying to get it fit to
show. She was over there now.
I told him I was sorry I didn’t get to his party last night. Oh, man. He lit up, naming names of who all was there. Generations of Generals. Father- and-son linebackers on the field. It was something, he kept saying, I should have been there. I didn’t tell him I would only have seen the missing teeth in that smile. QB1 Fast Forward. Cornerback Hammer Kelly. Big Bear, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot. My predecessor Collins. Cush Polk, a cruelty to make you tear your hair. He had OD’d on what must have been
his very first step off the narrow path. That good family, that preacher father, facing a coffin in wonder at God’s failed mercy. But Coach seemed content to dwell on another plane. He didn’t bring up the new coach or the losing season.
Nor did we talk about U-Haul. He’d faced embezzlement charges, but it got complicated and he wiggled out with fines and probation. I got this
news from Annie and Mr. Armstrong, that had tolerated U-Haul and his skank mother sliming them on rinse-and-repeat for years on end. Nobody was sorry to see those two slither away through the grass with no forwarding address.
I helped Coach drink a pot of coffee and make small talk around all the bigger things I wanted to say. That I was thankful for what he’d seen in me, sorry for the parts I screwed up. His mistakes were no more than the common failing to see the worth of boys like me, beyond what work can be wrung out of us by a week’s end. Farm field, battlefield, football field. I
have no words for that mess. But Coach and I were twelve-step brothers, there’s a code. I’d showed up.
I pulled up to the mansion with knots in my gut. Which made no sense, it was just Angus. Hello goodbye. The sight of her Wrangler settled me some.
Old four-wheel friend, the worse for wear. She’d mentioned putting over two hundred thousand on it, back and forth from Nashville.
I stuck my head in the door just as she walked into the living room carrying a box, which she almost dropped, doing a surprised little two-step. “Jee-sus on a Popsicle stick.”
“Back at you,” I said. It was freezing in there, they must have already cut off the utilities. She had on a red turtleneck and fleece type boots that looked like they’d come from the sheep to her feet with minimal processing. One of those overly colorful knitted hats with the earflaps and yarn braids hanging down. “Your pipes could freeze,” I said. “Want me to build you a fire?”
She set down the box and frowned at the castle-size fireplace. We’d tried roasting marshmallows in there as kids, and it never ended well. “Nah. Let’s not burn the place down till I’ve got the cash in hand.”
She stood there sizing me up, as people did now. I looked taller than I would ever feel.
“On the other hand,” she said, “I’d better get some free labor out of you.
Before you sell your book and get too famous for me to talk to. How’s Annie, by the way?”
“Oh crap.” I’d learned from Mr. Armstrong that it was not a false alarm, and I should stay tuned. A call had come in while I was driving, that rolled over to messages. I read it now, aloud: Woodie Guthrie Amato Armstrong. Seven pounds, one ounce, twenty-two inches.
“Seriously.” Her mouth shifted completely to one side, my favorite of all her smirks. I’d borrowed it for my character Bernie. If Angus noticed, she never said. “Are they too old to know what that’s going to be like, a little boy going to school with the name Woodie?”
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” I said. “By age five he’ll be going by something else.”
“Like Hard-On.” “Exactly.”
Another pause. We were a cold engine, not perfectly hitting. “Nice hat.”
She pulled it off and looked at it. “Right? I bought it off a guy on the street in Nashville.” Set free, her hair sprang into action, somehow girlier than it used to be. We were standing in the exact places where we’d first met. I felt reckless, like setting something on fire for real.
“Remember the first day I came here? And thought you were a boy?” The smirk shifted. “Angus, ‘like the cattle.’ ”
“Why?” “Why what?”
“Why did you let me go on like that, the whole day? You could have just said.”
She stopped smiling. “Late in the day to start asking now.”
I sensed myself picking a fight. The kind that helps you break up with somebody, evidently. “Right. I forget these things. How you always have to be queen of all the bees.”
The gray eyes went through several changes of weather before they settled. “Can you not think at all about how that was for me? I had no say in the matter. Some kid I’ve never met is moving in with us. Coach is finally getting his boy.”
“So you’re going to roll out the idiot carpet.”
She shrugged. “It wasn’t planned, it just happened. I remember thinking, maybe this is my chance. Like we’d get along better as brothers or
something.” She stared, waiting for me to catch up. “Being a girl in this house never got me anyplace great, you know?”
And I’d missed it all. The evil red eyes of U-Haul on her little girl body, her dad’s neglect, one root cause. And then came me, regaling her with my conquests. “Damn,” I said. “I’m sorry for all that. You were the brother of all brothers. Or sister, you pick. A-team.”
She smiled, but it was empty. “We missed you at the hootenanny last night.”
“You didn’t even know I was in town.”
“I did actually. June Peggot told me. And then you didn’t show up. I figured you’d blow in and out of town without saying hello.” She bent over to pick up her box. But I caught the thing in her eyes she was trying to hide.
“I wouldn’t do that.” I almost had.
I asked her if I could take a last look around the house. Really just to calm down. I went upstairs to the beanbag lounge, now a blank space with a stained ceiling. Came back downstairs and found her in Coach’s old office, sitting on the floor with paper piles spread in a complete circle around her, trying to figure out once and for all what needed to be saved. I asked about her job and she told me some about it, in-school services for kids that were wound too tight.
“Miss Betsy said you’re lighting out again for more school. For doctor or something.”
“Social worker. I’ve already lit out, technically. It’s a nonresidency thing, you do a lot of the coursework online. I’ll only have to be there in person a few months at a time.”
“In Nashville?” “Kentucky.”
I thought with a full heart of Viking and Gizmo. I took files she handed me and put them in a trash box. Getting up my nerve. “So. Miss Betsy tells me you’ve set your cap for some guy.”
She gave me the longest, strangest look. So I changed the subject, trying to think of respectful questions to ask her about social work. Would it be in mental hospitals or what. She said her main interest was kids. Abusive situations, incarcerated parents. I said no shortage in the supply around here, and she said that’s what she was thinking. Job security.
“You mean you’re planning on staying. Here.”
She nodded. “And it sounds like you’re not. You could be a famous cartoonist from anyplace, you know. We got us some real broadband in these parts now.”
“That’s all I’ve been thinking about for the last day and a half. It’s all I want, but I can’t picture it. Staying here as, you know. Who I am now. How do you even do it?”
“I don’t know. Day at a time? You just do what needs to be done.”
“But you’re god material, Angus. Not like the rest of us. You know that, right?”
Those manga eyes. Was it really possible she didn’t?
Back in the day, we never touched each other. Ever. The rule was hard and fast. But something made me reach over and open her right hand. I
drew a heart on it, closed it up, and handed the fist back to her. “I’m sorry, god-dess material. There was never any confusion in my mind, after that first snafu. Just so you know.”
She called it quits on the papers and turned to a box of massively tangled resistance bands. Blew out her breath and lay back on the floor. “Fuck this shit. I don’t guess you know anybody that could use a truckload of heavily used sports equipment.”
“I might, actually.” I was thinking of Chartrain’s teammates. Legless Lightning.
She sat up. “Then I hope you’re driving a huge motherfucking vehicle.” “Pretty small. But she’s a cutie-pie. Want to come outside and see?”
“You and your cutie-pies.” She shoved the box at me. “Take this out to the trash pile for me. First mountain on your left, can’t miss it. I’ll be out there in a sec.”
Outside it had gotten colder, not even yet noon. I stood watching my steamy breath come out of my mouth, which I took to mean I was still alive on the inside. Snow started to fall, just a little spit here and there. I lit a cigarette. Thirty seconds later she came out, and I hid the smoking gun behind my back. She laughed and said she was telling Coach. And then we were okay. We studied the giant pile of crap she’d hauled out of there. I told her where she could get a railroad-car-size roll-off for three hundred dollars. She checked out the Beretta and said of course I would have a car that’s the color of the ocean. I hadn’t even thought of that.
“Did you ever get to see it? After the tragically aborted early attempt?”
Two attempts. The school-trip rout at Christiansburg she meant. I’d never told her much about the Richmond-Mouse debacle. I finished my Camel and ground out the butt. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Okay, that’s a no. But it’s still out there. Just so you know.” “Do tell?”
“Yessiree Bob. You can take that one to the bank.”
“I’ll have to take your word on that. Given the college degree.”
For a minute the sun came out, while it was snowing. People say that
means the devil is beating his wife. Then the snow stopped, which I took to mean she was leaving the bastard. I asked Angus what she and Coach were doing for Christmas.
She gave me a funny look, chin pulled back. “What Christmas. That was all your doing.”
“But you seemed so into it. Am I wrong?”
“No. But we never knew how to do it before you came, and the magic went away again after you moved out. The magic was all you, Demon.”
We were quiet for a minute. I warmed myself on a little bonfire of remembered ridiculousness, and hoped she was doing the same. “I still have that ship. In the bottle. Everything else I’ve ever owned, I’ve lost by now or thrown out. But I kept that. You thought I was going places. We just didn’t see the bottle part coming.”
She opened her mouth, then shut it. Opened her empty right hand and looked at it, like something was in there. Then put it behind her back. “I’m sorry you and Annie didn’t get your book thing put together,” she said.
“I’ll get it figured out. And I’m sure she’ll get back to me eventually. I mean, how long can one baby last?”
She laughed. But something was winding down here.
“We could give it another go,” I said. “Christmas. What do you want?” “A big fat check for this house.”
“You know my price range. No real improvement there, sadly. I might have notched up a little on the naughty-nice scale, though.”
She leveled me with a stare that stirred something up I couldn’t name. Or was scared to admit to. “Okay. I have a present for you,” she said. “It’s not wrapped. I just thought of it.”
“Okay. Where is it?”
“Um. Five hundred miles from here. Directly adjacent to a bunch of sand.”
I laughed. “Thanks.”
“I’m serious. I’m giving you the ocean.” “It’s winter.”
“You know what? They don’t roll it up and put it away. It’s just sitting there. Take it or leave it, home skillet. One goddamn Atlantic Ocean on offer.”
“Can I get that to go?”
She pulled down the earflaps of her hat with both hands, like she might otherwise levitate, and got up in my face. As nearly as she could, being a
foot shorter, reaching up at me with the big gray eyes: Not kidding. She said she had the week off work, due to testing schedule or something. She asked if I had a deadline on getting back to Knoxville. I didn’t.
“So what do you say, Demon. Time to say grace and blow this dump?”
I followed her back to Coach’s apartment so she could grab what she needed. We took the Beretta, as the slightly less risky option. She said that sea-blue car was asking for it, and she was a good sport about it smelling
like an ashtray. We kept the windows down as far as Gate City, which was damn airish in that weather, but by the time we got on the interstate it was fine to roll them up. And I was still yet shivering for some reason, ready to jump out of my skin. Angus was a couple of steps out ahead of me, as she always and ever would be. So happy. Utterly chill.
She rifled through her bag of car snacks. Opened a bag of M&Ms and
threw one that bounced off my face. I called a traveling penalty. She picked it up off the floor and popped it in my mouth. “So, to get this straight, as far as your motives. You’re not in it for the suntan, right?”
I told her I was not. Just wanted to look at that big drink of water.
“Good,” she said. “Because it’s going to be cold. But there are lots of
advantages to going in winter.” She named them: No crowds. No strutting peacocks in Speedos. We’d have the place to ourselves. Motels would be half price. This was Angus trusting the ride, we were staying in a motel. I was extremely unclear about where we were headed. Was she still my
sister?
She smacked her forehead. “Oh my God. Oysters.” “What about them.”
“You can only eat them in winter! June, July, August, they’re poison. You have to wait till the months that have the letter R.”
This sounded highly doubtful. “Why is that?”
“Believe it or not, with my amazingly advanced degree, I don’t know. It’s one of these things you pick up. I went to New Orleans a few times with
friends.”
There he was, the friend. “And you’re saying it’s worth the wait?
Because I’m saying Mrs. Peggot used to cook them in soup at Christmas, and I was not a fan.”
“This is nothing like that. At the beach they’re fresh. You crack them open and drink them right off the shell. Raw. Technically I guess still alive.”
“And that’s a good thing?”
“You won’t believe how good. It’s like kissing the ocean. Demon.” She leaned forward so I could see her face, and drilled those bad-girl eyes into me with a look that threatened my perfect driving record. “And it’s kissing you back.”
Oh my Lord. The girl has set her cap. Not my sister.
We talked the whole way through the Shenandoah Valley. The end of the day grew long on the hills, then the dark pulled in close around us.
Snowflakes looped and glared in the headlights like off-season lightning bugs. Ridiculous nut that I’d been to crack. I drove left-handed with my right arm resting on her seat back, running my thumb over the little hairs on the back of her neck. The trip itself, just the getting there, possibly the best part of my life so far.
That’s where we are. Well past the Christiansburg exit. Past Richmond, and still pointed east. Headed for the one big thing I know is not going to swallow me alive.
