Читать книгу Flood Moon - Chuck Radda - Страница 5

The buildings in Sage, instead of connecting into some whole, seemed set apart from each other by little alleys and passageways, as if each were suffering from some malignancy requiring quarantine. Here and there a light would reflect upwards from a large puddle and show each building in duplicate; and I thought of Edgar Allan Poe, the American writer who often employed multiple images and reflections to create horrors that were greater than the sum of their parts. I didn't think the architecture of Sage masked repulsive concepts like incest or living entombment or obsessive murders (even with the cat interment fresh in my mind), but I never really understood that Poe theory until I saw Sage.

I was not horrified, and despite what would occur in the weeks and months to come, I did not attach any macabre qualities to the place. In fact I'd have been better off thinking of the artist Edward Hopper, and not just because we share the same last name. Actually he and I share a connection. My late uncle Teddy met him once back in the fifties—found him shopping at some hardware store in Eastham. I guess they got to talking—it must have been a sight: my uncle had one of those stoic and angular faces you see in Hopper's paintings, and Hopper himself who actually was the stoic and angular guy in the paintings. Somehow they found a family link, something slightly more significant than the usual six degrees; and ever since I learned that, I've developed an appreciation for the isolation the artist conveyed in his work. I wasn't sure I was going to appreciate the isolation of Sage with as much fervor.

This particular faux-Hopper landscape lacked, among other amenities, a bus depot: Sage would be just as likely to have a planetarium or a Ferris wheel, especially since any convenience store with an Internet connection can distribute schedules and print and sell tickets these days. Where I grew up those activities had been relegated to a somewhat disreputable and forbidding "tobacco shop" over in Hyannis—one that sold girlie magazines to adults in a back room behind the back room, the first back room being filled mostly with curious teenagers waiting to get thrown out by the owner who was fond of reminding them that "this is not a library." If only it had been, research would have been a lot less tiresome.

I wasn't sure if Sage even had a tobacco shop, and Internet porn had pretty much obviated the need for any back rooms. But the town did have a kiosk, and I don't mean one of those annoying little shacks in the mall selling garish jewelry and phone cases and horrid art prints. This particular kiosk, seemingly built of scrap lumber and one abundantly caulked sheet of smoked, translucent plastic, seemed perfectly suited for someone like me—someone stepping off a bus into a driving norther. The open end of the structure faced south, a tribute to good planning and climatology. It would be possible for a person to stand there for hours, especially on an evening like this, gathering his thoughts, and figuring out what to do next—unless, of course, the wind shifted and he died of exposure.

"Hanratty hates detours," the bus driver said. She had pulled my bag to the lip of the hatch.

"Whose Hanratty?"

"The guy who gave you the finger. He has family in Boise and he just wants to get there. You slowed him down. You're not the first. Did he remind you the VistaCruiser isn't a bus, it's an Oldsmobile?"

"Twice."

She laughed. "He says it to everybody. Soon enough people won't know what an Oldsmobile is. Then what?"

"Silence?"

"Maybe, I think he skimped on his meds today."

"Two handfuls isn't enough?"

"Not usually."

She was still repositioning luggage when I apologized for her trouble.

"It's not your fault," she said. "Gallatin wants to make this run, people are gonna use it."

"It has to be a losing proposition."

"They need the Boise Line—there's money in college kids going to State or connecting to Seattle—but they couldn't have it unless they agreed to serve Sage whenever anyone needed to be brought here."

"Like me."

"Like you. And it's only five, maybe six months out of the year when the pass is clear. Sometimes less."

"Well, I appreciate it, and listen, you don't have to stop the full fifteen minutes."

She looked around. "I figured I'd wait for whoever was coming to meet you."

Something in my expression must have tipped her off: she began tugging at the ringlets of the streaked blonde hair that hung down beneath that gray Gallatin Transit cap and looking in every direction but mine. She knew no one was coming.

"It's not a problem," I said.

"Are you sure?"

"Really, you don't have to wait," I repeated. "You're going to ruin those shoes." I pointed to her lime-green espadrilles which, given the current weather, looked more than a bit out of place. By comparison my running shoes were a reasonable and intelligent choice.

"Got twenty more pair. No one's meeting you?"

"Not that I know of. Did you say twenty?"

"Thereabouts. Do you have a place to stay?"

"I thought I'd find a motel room."

She shook her head, a gesture I construed as being less than promising.

"This isn't any of my business, but if you want to go on to West Yellowstone with us, you're welcome to. I can even drop you in Gardiner just outside the park...outside Yellowstone. It's practically on the way and there's plenty of motels there. It's past tourist season. You'll be able to get any room you want, and cheap."

"There are no rooms here?" The phrase lodging available from some website had burrowed into my brain far enough so that I knew I was not simply imagining it.

"There's a resort west of town. I could drop you there."

I said no. West of town wasn't going to help me.

"The only other thing," she said, "is a motel that's open about two days a year."

"Two days? Doesn't that harm its Triple-A rating?"

"I guess" she said, ignoring my attempt at humor. "The woman who owns it only rents one room."

"That's gonna drop her down a few diamonds too."

Not even a smile. Maybe it was my delivery or maybe she had a better understanding of my plight than I did.

"The owner," she said, "gets some sort of tourism tax break by allowing a room to be rented to…you know…tourists."

Despite her attempts to maintain at least a modicum of optimism, my stomach had begun tightening. That famous Horace Greeley directive, "Go West, young man, and grow up with the country" began to ring very hollow very fast. I had already grown up in the East and did not need to grow up again somewhere else. I just wanted to be somewhere else, but also I didn't want the driver to complete her run thinking she'd left me to die.

"You're not abandoning me," I said, "I'll get that room."

Her expression did not change. "The owner is…the owner has had a tough go of it."

"What kind of tough go?"

"Just a lot of setbacks, you know?"

She looked straight at me: the avoidance was not in her eyes but in her answer. I knew setbacks. I didn't require details.

"All the more reason to open up the place, make some money."

"I think she has enough money. It's other things that…but as far as the room goes, I would give it a shot."

She was making a herculean effort to generate enthusiasm, and I was gratified that she thought enough of me to string me along.

"I will definitely try," I said, beaming like a drunk at a topless bar.

"Just explain your situation to her."

"I definitely will."

"Definitely," she repeated, then after a short pause added, "are you one of those people who use definitely when you mean probably not?"

"Definitely," I said, because she was definitely right. "But this time I have no choice unless I want to sleep here." The leak in the kiosk had grown into a steady pattering.

"Or...get back on the bus," she said. "You can maybe hitch a ride back here tomorrow, if you still need to. Daylight's easier. People will be around."

"I think I need to stay here now," I said. "I'll…" the next definitely was poised and ready to roll off my tongue. "I'll figure something out. That motel, what's it called?"

"It's not called anything. It's the motel."

"It doesn't have a name?"

"No. No diamonds either."

This time she smiled, and her eyes, a pretty silver blue, reflected some of the scant ambient light. She was actually attractive. I know how condescending that sounds, but I guess there are certain occupations with which one does not associate attractive women—bus driver being fairly well up on the list. Of course in second grade I had a crush on a school-bus driver, a tall woman with an almost obscene amount of champagne blond hair corralled into large curls that blew around like a wheat field in a storm whenever she slid her window open and drove fast. I called her "Blondie," a tribute to my profound imaginative skills. In the seat right behind her, every day without fail, sat her daughter, a well-behaved and sweet kid with similarly blond, ribbon-festooned pigtails, who always had with her a ratty, one-eyed, dark brown teddy bear. The child seldom uttered a sound, just sat submissively strapped into some car seat, even though the little girl must have been—in her own pre-school way—bored out of her ever-loving mind. I was interested only in the mother, but in retrospect, the silent child and I made a better pair—we probably had more in common. I also owned a one-eyed teddy bear: the two of them could have shared their tales of loss.

"Last chance," the driver said, "I won't charge you extra if you get back on."

"I don't want to be the first long-haul bus lynching," I said, "and I will be when these people figure out I changed my mind."

"I tried," she said, then pointed to the nameplate on her left breast. "Brenda LaCroix—this is basically my run." From an inside pocket she produced a business card.

"We're going to be in West Yellowstone about three and a half hours from now, some place called the Steak Chateau. If you change your mind, call the second number—it's my cell—I can swing by this way tomorrow and take you back to Billings."

"That'll piss off tomorrow's passengers."

"That's their problem. Just remember, if the pass is closed, and it may very well be, I won't be able to do that either. You'll have to get yourself to Gardiner and I can pick you up there on a different run. But call. Do you have a cell?"

I told her I did. Packed away and uncharged. I had decided to live without it for a while—an idea that seemed suddenly daft.

She looked at me, this time more quizzically than sympathetically. "No place to stay, no cell phone, no shoes. Are you sure you don't want to get back on?"

"I thought service here might be sketchy."

"It is that," she said, "sketchier still when the phone is dead."

She stepped back on to the bus, and returned with a handful of change. "You can probably make a credit card call, but just in case, there's an actual phone booth at the Exxon station. I don't want you dialing 9-1-1 because it's the only free call you can make."

"Do they even have 9-1-1 in Sage?"

"Oh they have it," she said. "There's a state trooper on call about eighty-five miles from here."

The math was sobering. Eighty-five miles. If he drove eighty-five miles-per-hour—hell, even I can figure that out. That's sixty minutes of CPR, or holding a gunman at bay, or stanching the bleeding from a serious wound. In Sage 9-1-1 seemed more or less theoretical. I took the change.

"I'll pay you back."

"Forget it, I find this much change in the seats every trip. Better see Walter Trucks first. He's right over there in that restaurant. He'll feed you."

"Trucks?"

"Like things you drive. If he's not there he's with Mrs. O'Leary—you can kill two birds."

"And Mrs. O'Leary is who?"

"She owns the motel."

"Is she Trucks's girlfriend?"

Brenda laughed. "Not hardly. But Walter will help you out. Don't forget to call if you change your mind."

She looked skyward. The rain had picked up a little and the shoulders of her white shirt were soaked through.

"You should really get going," I said. "I'll be fine."

"I didn't say you wouldn't be. Good luck."

"I'm Cal," I said, "Cal Hopper."

"Saw your name on the luggage tag. Good luck, Cal." Again she entered the bus, but again she stopped. Her passengers, at this point, must have been in the early stages of insurrection, but she held up an index finger to them—some indication of a momentary departure, then descended the steps, reopened the baggage compartment, pulled out a red paisley umbrella with a handle molded into the shape of a duck, opened it, and handed it to me.

"I collect five of these a week when the weather is bad. That kiosk looks a little leaky."

I thanked her.

"And don't sleep in that shed tonight. You won't, will you?"

"Jesus started in a manger."

"I don't think any wise men are coming to Sage, other than you of course. Remember, Walter Trucks."

Then as if suddenly realizing it was raining, she covered her head with her hands, hurried back into the driver's seat, closed the door, and drove off. The intensity of the taillights diminished quickly as the deep green of the VistaCruiser dissolved into nothing more than a slate-gray movement with a hazy red glimmer. Within seconds the glimmer was gone too.