Читать книгу Blind Shady Bend - Adina Sara - Страница 10

WINSTON BACKED HIS TRUCK down the driveway onto Blind Shady Bend and became aware of a new groaning sound, a painful metallic gasp as he shifted gears, heading toward the first bend in the road. The truck had one hell of a time bumping over the potholes that came at regular intervals from the edge of his property down past the old fill site, and only barely pshutted its way down the hairpin turn at the defunct water tower. He couldn’t recall the last oil change, and figured it was overdue for new rotors. He sighed at the very thought of it.

Winston didn’t feel like waving this morning. Lately, he’d been getting lazier with his waves and today he had no interest at all. There were fewer and fewer folks around that he recognized and none of the new ones bothered to wave back. The Henleys gone to a nursing home somewhere in Cornville. He’d meant to pay a visit but time got away from him and they were likely dead by now anyway. Mrs. Heilsbrun after the second turn and before the car cemetery, she and him had a wave going on some twenty years now. Phil Heilsbrun used to come into the store, stocking up on roofing nails in late autumn, hose attachments in late winter, always ahead of the game that guy was. But he stopped coming around some years back and sure enough, heart attack had got him. With Vera it was the cancer. In her breasts. Winston sometimes thought it was his fault, that if he’d only touched her more, he might have noticed the lump before it was too late.

But since their spouses passed, it seemed like he and Mrs. Heilsbrun had grown shyer, their waves more timid. Used to be one of them would sing over the motor of his car, “Looks like we’re in for a warm streak,” or “Hope you had better luck with your huckleberries. Mine just fell rotten.” Something cheery and short while he slowed down to make the curve. These last few years it was just half a wave, neither wanting the other to make too much of the friendliness.

He had one hand on the steering wheel and his waving hand poised and ready, just in case, when Pete came running out into the road. Winston slammed on his brakes which brought out yet another new sound, a more troubling one, high pitched and haunting, like it came from the dead.

“Hey, did you hear?” called Pete, breathless and still in his pajamas.

“Hear what?”

“Lundale got a call from some old lady asking about my land” pointing to the vacant site adjacent to his. “Can you beat that?”

“It’s not your land, Pete” Winston reminded him, then wished he hadn’t. Last thing he wanted was to engage Pete in this kind of half-baked gossip that spread like wildfires in these parts and died down just as quickly.

“Heard it from the source. Turns out Blackwell left the land to his sister. Can you beat that?”

The idea of someone coming in to claim this property, maybe clean it up a bit, did capture Winston’s interest. Against his better judgment, he pulled up the emergency brake, resigned to getting the whole story.

“Lundale says she sounded strange but wouldn’t say much more than that. Wonder if she’s anything like her brother?”

Winston never knew the man but remembered the rash of motorcycle noise that roared through the trees back when Vera was bedridden. In those days he was exhausted all the time, with Vera needing constant tending, keeping up the hardware store, trying to cook himself and the boy a decent dinner. Last thing he needed was to be awakened by roaring engines in the middle of the night. But he didn’t inquire, figured other neighbors would complain if it got too bad.

“That was a long time ago, Pete. I’d guess 15 years at least.” His son Robin was grown, a father himself now, so it had to be a decade, at least, maybe more. At the time, Winston had worried about his son getting into trouble over there but the trouble went away on its own. Once every few months or so, a lone motorcycle would ride up and Winston figured it to be the owner, came to recognize the harmonica wailing through the madrones in the late night air. There’d be that sweet skunky smell mixing with honeysuckle in late September but by and large the place was quiet. Apparently this mystery neighbor wanted no trouble, caused no trouble, and deserved his tranquility as much as the next man.

Winston didn’t dare open his mouth, but he did recall reading something a few months back about a motorcycle crash on Highway 49 that killed the Blackwell fellow. It happened all the time. Bikers thinking they could make it across the 4-lane stretch, trying to outrun the semis that came barreling down the winding highway. This time the motorcyclist had lost out to a produce truck heading north. Newspaper said the guy lived on Blind Shady Bend, which is why he’d taken notice.

“Don’t get yourself riled up,” was all he said to Pete. “The property’s been a dump for years. Might be a good thing for all of us if someone cleaned it up.”

With that, he raised his hand, giving Pete a full-on no-nonsense wave, and headed on down Blind Shady Bend and into town.

Winston held the title of General Manager of Highway Hardware, complete with his own office (a huge closet really), two tall metal file cabinets (bottom drawers stuck shut), and a sense of stature and significance that no one thing before in his life had come close to providing. He’d started as a stock boy almost thirty-seven years before, and he still felt just a little more upright when he walked through the front door, past Joyce and Gladys at the registers, quick nod to Roger in Paint, Gil in Electric, and Frank, too old to fire, Frank who barely fit between the aisles but knew plumbing like nobody else.

Winston took pleasure in shaking out his heavy metal spray of keys, the longest of which unlocked the metal door marked “W. TILL – MANAGER.” He’d automatically take a quick shy glance behind before entering. Even at this point in life, when doubts and fatigue and burgeoning confusion interrupted him at unexpected intervals, the certainty of his relationship to that one small place kept him from feeling that his life was all but past.

Most customers preferred to stand around and wait for him before asking anyone else which spot remover to buy. They even waited for him to cut new keys, as if the other employees didn’t know how to work the machine properly. Customers were more than happy to line up outside his door and wait, so intent they were on his sound and patient advice. Whatever time it took would be less time than buying the wrong thing and then having to drive all the way back to return. They knew that when Winston said, “Howdy, may I help you” he really meant it.

But today Winston had to keep his office door shut—not even a crack to allow in the shuffling sounds of customers wandering the aisles. He had screwed up an order last week. Six cartons of three-penny nails, enough to build a new hardware store, when he only meant to order six boxes. He’d been making other mistakes lately, little ones that no one noticed (he hoped), and that he managed to fix before anyone from accounting found out. This mistake was going to take some time to clear up, and the kids were due home by 3, (was it 3 or 2?) because Robin mentioned something about working late over in Sierraville. Today there would be no time to help customers find overhead sprinklers, no exchanging inside hinges for out. All the things he loved to do. Today there would be none of that.

He couldn’t locate the order book and the key to the inventory file cabinet had jammed in the lock. The only locksmith within reach was recovering from hip surgery.

He sighed, and just like that his mind turned, as it constantly did nowadays, to his son Robin. Robin with his marriage shaken loose, the kids with no mother, and Timothy’s nose running a yellowish green snot. Maybe he ought to call a doctor. What if something happened to that child, then what? Robin was in too much of a hurry to be any kind of father to those kids. Dropping them off like baggage at school, pushing them into the truck, out of the truck, they might as well be sacks of laundry. Sweaters twisted inside out, broken toy parts, mismatched shoes, all tossed in the back seat where they’d get sandwiched between screwdrivers and wrenches. Fast food wrappers, wrinkled attempts at artwork, their small lives were already turning into a cluttered heap.

“It’s just a cold, dad. Kids get colds.” Robin didn’t seem in the least bit concerned about his son’s dripping nose. Maybe that was a good sign. Maybe grandfathers were too old to know the difference between simple colds and early stage diphtheria. But the green stuff had been coming steady and it couldn’t be right.

How was he supposed to help with the kids—a man who couldn’t figure out how to open a jammed inventory cabinet. A man who left the key to the safe in his trousers on top of the washing machine and today he desperately needed to find that nail order so he could get a full return. It might have to wait until Monday but it’s a holiday Monday he thinks, Memorial or Veteran’s or maybe that was last week. Winston’s mind was racing now, bedraggled grandchildren, stuck file cabinets, and now he started to wonder whether he remembered to turn off the humidifier in the kids’ room.

At this last, overwhelming possibility, Winston lay his head down on the soft wad of accounting books splayed across his desk, flopped his arms out flat across the table in exhausted supplication, and allowed his tired body to convulse in three heaving, excruciating sobs.

No tears came. He wished they would, imagined they might cool down the hotness that burned in his throat, bathe him in some interior kind of way. This life had become all too much for an old man to sort through. He shuddered with the enormity of his existence. How was it that life led so desperately downward?

“Mr. Till, are you still there?” Lindsay’s gentle knock informed him that it was 2:30, time for him to end his day, finally.

“Yes, dear, I’m just finishing up” he answered, collecting his coat, his lunch bag that hadn’t been touched, some horse stickers for Timothy and princess stickers for Grace (hadn’t he given them the same ones last week?) and said his goodbyes to the staff.

He hadn’t accomplished nearly what he needed to but for some reason, Winston found himself looking forward to the drive home. Robin had hinted that he might leave the kids for the whole weekend. He had landed a great job in Peardale, twenty miles south, a deck with built-in spa, whatever that meant. Winston tried to picture folks lying naked outside in full view of their neighbors and got stuck on the thought.

What would he do with the kids all weekend, maybe take them to the hardware store again. They seemed to enjoy playing up and down the aisles, Lindsay treating them to the mints behind the counter, Len giving them sandpaper samples and address numbers and Elmer’s glue. Or maybe they’d just stay home. He liked being home with them, even with nothing to do. There was noise in the house now, noise that he didn’t need to generate. He was glad he had offered to let Robin and the kids move in. It made him feel like a father, made him drive faster than usual to beat them home.