Andrew Statum

That was the way the old man had been with him, he remembered, staring out as he stirred his coffee at the white-capped La Salles, placid and blue in the distance. And though it was difficult for Marcus to imagine, the old man himself, back in the war, had been a leader of men. For he was, as he remembered him, despite his build, a gentle creature who wept unexpectedly at invisible things and who, when he wasn’t in his cups, read mystery novels quietly in the warm solarium of his rented split-level. He could see how his beam-wide shoulders and that broad, Merovingian chest may once have been fitted for the exigencies of war, but it was hard for him to imagine his sad, kind face gnashing with rage or his body, macerated as it was with age and disuse, strained and taught in the act of killing. Never once had Marcus seen the old man raise his hand in anger. Nor, for that matter, had he seen him display any emotion beyond a far-away, contemplative reserve. Occasionally, on weekends he wasn’t with his mother, Marcus remembered him chuckling at something on television, or congratulating him on a job well done in school, or, once, applauding wildly when he won the pinewood derby. But for the most part, throughout his youth, the old man, like the mountains, on their distant blue thrones, was a grand, silent presence.

“You need anything else, honey?” He had been in the corner booth of the River Bend Diner for over an hour, keeping a rigid, unmoving sentry out the wide window at the semis blowing by on Highway 70. “No thank you,” he said, forcing a brief smile into her face creased in ache, for her feet hurt something fierce and her back was flaring up (at least it won’t be another baby, thank God) and it wasn’t even one o-clock yet and she was damn tired of refilling his decaf (four cups already and yes she’d bring him more because that’s Mr. Branson’s policy but she sure as Hell wouldn’t be pleasant about it) if all he was going to order was pecan pie and sit there like a bump on a log staring out the window with the crumbs for company. And what was he looking at anyway, she thought, shuffling back to the counter where she replaced the carafe with the green ring (and Lord almighty weren’t her fingers swollen up, like sausages) and picked up the one with the orange ring (green and orange, all day long, green and orange) and went about serving up the regulars who ordered more than just pecan pie, thank you very much, (and speaking of which bling ding ding here comes three of the fat ones “Hi boys I’ll be with you shortly,” they do love the smile) and who didn’t sit there staring out the window but made nice conversation and asked about her health and asked after her family and asked after Gerald, which was nice, even if he was good for nothing, and even if her baby was dead (cups full at table ten) and even if her niece was fixing to get herself pregnant with that hound dog football player Williams, she knew his father back in high school and he was no good, it was still nice of them to ask (no coffee, just waters, back for that, table eight, remember that, water, table eight, water, eight, not too much water, there’s too much water, he won’t come up, he won’t come up). She’d have to chain that girl’s knees together or she’d learn the hard way what it’s like to have a baby with not a dime or a man to your name, not even one of these hogs at table six which’d still be better than nothing at all (he won’t come up, he won’t come up).

She pauses, briefly, remembers herself, and goes on.

And wasn’t it a beautiful day to be alive, thought Joseph P. Anderson, named for his grandfather, Adelai Joseph Anderson, prospector, financier and amateur geologist, who was somebody, who started the Anderson Copper Mine outside Chalis, Idaho which ran in the black for almost a generation until his daddy sold it off for parts and took the money, but not his wife and son, to Las Vegas, Nevada, where he lived like a prince at The Sands until he lost it all on 43 black one night and shot himself in the desert, at least that’s the story he got from Mama, God rest that good woman’s soul, yes, he thought, walking across the parking lot of the River Bend Diner with his buddies Will and Chet, what a beautiful day to be alive. 75 degrees. Dry as Utah always was. Good for the health. Come to think of it, his eczema had completely dried up since he moved here, what was it?, two years ago almost?, and he was on his way to having everything he wanted, even if that hateful woman did take all he had in the divorce. But he had started over in a new place, he thought, as Will went first, bling ding ding, then Chet, and then him, coming in last like the gentleman he was, up and quit running logs for Van Larson Brothers out of North Bend, Oregon where it was November all year round and it rained every day, picked up the pieces and started over in Provo, Utah where that hateful, evil woman couldn’t get at him and where he was going to make something of himself. But why are they going to the left, oh, there’s someone in their booth, Jesus he nearly fell over, such a force of habit to head straight back to their booth. He was going to stay and he was going to make it. But he needed someone to love to share it with. But no one wanted to love a big old boy like him, a big, fat, stupid trucker nobody who could barely fit into this stupid booth on the left, unless it was Francis!, here she comes!, she’s back from being sick!, the shiniest angel that ever did marry a stinking no job drunk, but he could make her happy, he knew it, he worked hard, and he would work hard for her, if only she’d let him.

“Afternoon, fellas.”

“Hey, Francis,” says the biggest one with the scrubby beard, she couldn’t remember his name, Jim or John or Jack, something like that, he was always looking to get her into the back of his truck, “you look wonderful today,” and maybe she would, if she weren’t tied to Gerald, and what’d the harm be?, it’s not like she’d get knocked up again, and it’s not like Gerald had been paying much attention to her spots, and how would he ever find out?, if only James or Jonas weren’t so fat, like he’d squash her flat as a pancake, and besides, there was the blood, and he would be horrified, and there was the smell, and she would be embarrassed.

“Well aren’t you just the sweetest thing. But don’t I look wonderful all the time?” Careful, no drops on the table, don’t be in such a hurry, they tip good, or was it Sean, something S-H, or C-H, Chuck?, Charles?, Chernobyl?, where’d she heard that word before?

“Sweetheart, you’re about the most beautiful flower there is in the garden, but I don’t want the other girls getting jealous.”

“Believe me, honey,” she says, moving from cup to cup, four in a square, careful not to spill, “these other girls aren’t going to get jealous of you waving that little prickly pear of yours around. They all seen plenty bigger’n that before.”

The booth erupts in laughter and the men bang their thick hands on the table and everyone on the diner turns to see what the sudden noise is all about and she looks back at that man in the corner with a sly grin on her face to show him how a good customer is supposed to act around her and that she didn’t give two hoots about his meanness and he could order all the decaf he wanted and she wouldn’t worry about the water or the blood or the money or Gerald, no, she wasn’t going to let it bother her, not one drop.

“We missed you while you was out, Francis. You feeling better?”

“Oh, honey, I never been better in my life. What can I get you boys?”

He heard their laughter, coming at him suddenly from across the dull linoleum, saw them shaking in their booth, all except for the really fat one, who looked, somehow, scared, and that wide-hipped waitress who wasn’t too old and saggy to be unattractive yet looking queerly over her shoulder, checking the status of his cup. Men laughing, deeply, like the men on his crew, laughter he couldn’t share for the old man had crept back into his life, having written him, out of the blue, asking him to meet. For what purpose, Marcus didn’t know, though he had a suspicion it would be about money. He sipped his coffee, which was cold, and stared out the window at the mountains, their growing shadows cast like driftnets across the endless pale ocean of desert, harvesting some aimless, hidden creatures of the scrub.

Like all his dealings with the old man, the letter was unexpected. At last contact he was in Florida, but the return address on the envelope in his jeans pocket said Las Vegas. He didn’t give a phone number, and the letter, which he had memorized, was bereft of detail.

Marcus,

It’s been a while. I’d like to meet up and talk. Not over the phone. Am in Vegas now and can drive to where you are. Please write back soon.

Love, Pop.

He wrote back saying yes, it had been a while, and sure, he’d love to meet up, and included directions to the River Bend Diner and suggested they meet in two weeks so he could put in to the Park Service for leave and arrange for the crew to run itself under Chapman’s authority. The old man wrote back saying he looked forward to it, he’d see him there around 2 pm, Love Pop. He told the crew he had family obligations and apologized for the short notice and trusted they would keep to the trail construction schedule while he was gone, to which they all groaned their assent and made some cracks about him meeting his boyfriend for a wild night in town. Very funny, he said, very funny. He had to smile about it now, following a trailer flaring its air brakes as it passed down the off ramp of exit 160 and out of view, these lazy, idiot country men. He knew they all thought him queer, except for Chapman, the only one he could count on, because he read books after work and didn’t dance with the heated, snaggle-toothed cougars at Jackson’s when they went out together on Saturday nights. But what did he care? Let them have their jokes, as long as they got the job done. If only they could all be more like Chapman. He’d quit these jackals one day and go back to school for something, leaving them all to bleach and crumble like skeletons in the sun. But not yet, he thought, looking around the diner and pausing briefly at the table of fat flannel-clad men and noting the high crown of their hats, he wasn’t ready to leave this land just yet.

There’s nothing like breakfast with friends, thought Joseph P. Anderson, perusing the menu from which they had ordered their food five minutes ago and sipping the coffee Francis had poured especially careful, he could swear by it, into his mug, unlike the way she poured it into Chet and Will’s, which was a good sign. It showed she cared enough about what he thought about how she poured his coffee to change how she poured it into his mug so that she wouldn’t spill a drop and this made him feel good. He smiled and looked up from his menu across the restaurant out at the rigs flying by on 70. They run them fast out here. So fast it was hard to keep up. That was something Joseph had yet to become accustomed to. He never nudged above 35 back when he was running logs down the narrow roads on Snake Mountain, the fir trees on either side as thick as fabric and tall as castles that one miss, one slip six inches to the right and that strange gravity of the mountain would catch your load and next thing you know you’re rolled over and swallowed up in the trees for good. Of course at Transworld Van Lines they recommend you don’t go above the posted speed limit, but when you’re getting paid by the mile and you get a bonus if you make good time, well hell, that’s more of a recommendation to go as fast as you can right there. He heard of a couple guys got hooked on pep pills before moving on to meth, got them from the foreman so they could run all night red-lined out at 90 (not official company policy, they said, but they sure as hell made it plain known they got that stuff for you if you want it) and pull into wherever they’re going bright and early in the morning and ready for work. Didn’t Chet tell him about some guy –

“Hey Chet.”

“Yeah?”

“What’s the name of that guy you told me about, whatshisname?, got some No-Doze from his foreman? Took a fistful and had a stroke or something while he’s driving?”

“Oh you mean Tommy Arnez,” says Will.

“Is that the guy?”

“Yeah. Me and Tommy, we used to run 84 together up to Boise.”

“Yeah that’s it. What happened to him?”

“Tommy? He had a stroke and then he went and got saved. Didn’t I tell you all about his?”

“Yeah but I don’t remember.”

“Chet, you want to hear this?” Chet nods and sips his coffee. “Well me and Tommy, this must’ve been about three years ago, before you got here, Joe, but me and Tommy, one night we’re running sheet rock out to Portland when we get separated in a hailstorm. I call him on the CB and tell him I’m pulling over to ride it out but he says he’s going to push on through and by the time I get to Portland later that night he had already dropped his load and headed back. Left me a message saying he was pulling an all-nighter. I get back to the depot the next night, right on schedule, and when I ask how he was doing and they told me he hadn’t got back yet. Soon after that Annie calls, that’s his wife, Joe, and she says he’s been in an accident and they took him to Salt Lake Regional. So a bunch of us caravan up there – oh thank you sweetheart.”

“You’re welcome, honey. Ham and eggs over easy with white toast, here you go. And three eggs scrambled with biscuits and gravy, right here. You boys need anything–”

“Oh, Francis, I’m sorry,” says Joseph, “I ordered the sausage patties, not the biscuits and gravy.”

“Oh, dear,” she says, after a long pause, in which the low, rumbling moan of another rig barreling down exit 160 ignites, a rapid spate of percussive pistol reports, and dissolves in the air of the River Bend Diner. “I’ll be right back.”

Her face changed when he said it. He saw it. He hurt her feelings. Now she was upset with him. She was happy, and now she was upset. She took his plate and she went away angry. Because of what Joseph P. Anderson said. Now she could never love him. He shouldn’t have said it. He should’ve eaten the biscuits and gravy, even though he didn’t want it. He had hurt her and he hadn’t meant to. How could he explain it to her that he hadn’t meant it? He should have just eaten what she gave him. Why did he have to open his big fat stupid mouth?

“So anyway, as soon as we get up there to his room we’re all surprised to find him doing ok. He’s got a bandage around his head and his face is cut up and bruised pretty good but other than that he looks fine. He tells Annie to go wait outside and as soon as she shuts the door he lets out a deep breath and says ‘Boys, my life of sin is over. I’m saved.’ But he can only say it out of one side of his mouth because half his body is frozen from a stroke. See, he’d turned around right after dropping his load in Portland and by this time it was well after midnight and he says he had to make it back to Twin Falls before morning. So he pops a couple No-Doze he got from Roger, that was the foreman, Joe, before Tim came on, and he’s feeling alright but not alert so he pops a couple more, and then a couple more, and by the time he gets to Baker City he’s on fire and he’s downing these things like Smarties, two at a time. But then as soon as he crosses the river into Idaho he says he heard, like, a snap inside his head, like a firecracker went off behind his eyeballs, you know?, and then, all of a sudden, his limbs shoot out rigid and get stuck that way and he can’t move the right side of his body. So he jerks the wheel with his left hand and the rig gets away from him and he jumps the median, goes through the railing and crashes into a church next to the highway, plows right through the front doors and goes straight on down the aisle – bricks and pews and shit flying up everywhere – all the way up to the altar where he finally slams into the wall. And he’s sitting there, frozen, and he can’t do nothing but watch as this giant crucifix comes loose from the wall and falls straight down on the hood and then slowly keels over, like a tree getting cut down, and comes crashing through the windshield cutting his face all to shreds and when Tommy opens his eyes, there’s Jesus Christ himself staring him face to face up over his crown of thorns. He said if that weren’t a sign from God, he didn’t know what was. Joe? You even listening?”

“Yeah, I’m listening,” he says. But he shouldn’t have said it. He couldn’t believe how stupid he’d been when he opened his big stupid mouth (that’s what that evil woman always told him, that he had a big stupid mouth he didn’t know how to keep shut) and said he’d ordered the patties instead of the stupid biscuits and gravy even though he had and even though he wanted the patties instead of the biscuits and gravy which had made Francis upset. He’d done that. He’d made Francis upset. He was so stupid, and it was stupid of him to move to Provo and it was stupid of him to think he could ever get a woman like Francis to love his big dumb fat stupid self and it was stupid of him to think he could start over as a knew person who wasn’t quite as stupid as the old Joseph P. Anderson. He couldn’t think right, that was the problem.

“So he tells us he’d been saved by Jesus and he was giving up his life of sin. So I say, ‘What life of sin, Tommy? You’re about as pure as the driven snow.’ And then he starts telling us how he’d been seeing this girl up in Twin Falls whenever he made a run. Fourteen years old. He’d met her one night hanging out at the Texaco Travel Plaza up there off exit 173 and soon after that he was sneaking her out at night while her parents were asleep and getting her loaded on beer and bedding down with her in the sleeper. This had been going on for, like, six or seven months. He’d even told her he was thinking about leaving Annie and starting a family with her up in Missoula where he had some relatives that could set them up real nice and with Annie and two kids and a good job and church twice a week. For a kid. None of us ever saw that coming. It was like he was telling us about a different person who none of us knew, but it was him. It was him all along, but it was another part of him, a part he’d kept hidden from everyone all this time…”

But Joseph P. Anderson doesn’t hear what his friend William Howland says because Joseph P. Anderson is thinking about why he opened his big dumb mouth and told Francis he had ordered the patties, not the biscuits and gravy, even though he did want the patties, which made Francis upset and would keep her, because of what he said, from ever loving a big fat stupid rhinoceros like him. He wanted to tear out his hair. He wanted to cry. Why did he say it? Why couldn’t he just let it be? Why did he have to correct her? Maybe if that man with the beard weren’t sitting there looking out the window he could’ve sat over in the booth where they normally sat and Francis wouldn’t have forgotten his order because it would’ve been just like every other time they’d ordered from that booth and he wouldn’t have had to send back the biscuits and gravy and maybe Francis would’ve seen that he was a good man after all who had a lot of love to give her and who could make her happier than that stinking drunk Gerald who couldn’t hold down a job and couldn’t even raise a family of Chia Pets if his life depended on it. If he weren’t so hungry all the time, he thought, he wouldn’t order stuff that Francine couldn’t remember. He would’ve ordered a salad like Dr. Samuels told him to start eating, even though a salad wouldn’t have filled him up and Chet and Will would’ve made fun of him for ordering a salad, but wait, wait, in his truck, in the glove compartment, he remembered, he’d go to the glove compartment and get the pills. How could he have forgotten? He was tired, that was it, he was tired from driving late last night and he just needed a little pep, even though, he remembered, he had already taken two that morning which was the prescribed amount and he never, as a rule, exceeded the prescribed amount, but why not just this once? But it wasn’t just this once, he remembered, because he had taken more than he needed before, like when he was having trouble staying off the rumble strips, and once before when he went out with that girl Chet set him up with – it was nice of Chet to do that even if she was a sour woman who wouldn’t let him kiss her goodnight after he spent thirty dollars on her dinner – so he wouldn’t make a pig of himself, and once when he’d split a pair of jeans at the depot, but he only really used them to help take off the pounds which was what Dr. Samuels said he needed to do, for his heart. And so what if they made him feel more lively and he could focus better when he took them? That’s what he needed, he needed to pay attention to people’s moods. When he took the pills he could pick up on people’s moods and he felt better looking, too, because he didn’t eat as much and he felt smarter because when he took the pills he could follow what was happening in a conversation which he sometimes had trouble with. He could even anticipate what someone would say next and he could make a funny response quicker than everyone else because he knew it was coming because he was paying attention and if he could show Francis he could pay attention to her moods then maybe she could love him.

“I forgot my wallet,” he says, interrupting Chet and Will who are talking under their breaths about Tommy Arnez’s recent involvement with the LDS, and squeezes across the booth with great effort. “What?,” says Will. “I forgot my wallet. I’ll be right back.” He pops out of the booth, careful to pull the black t-shirt beneath his flannel down over the lip of his belly so Francis wouldn’t see (he had to lose the weight, he just had to) and makes his way to the door which flies open with a bling ding ding and sets off across the parking lot, breathing heavily and in full sweat, barely avoiding the unshaven, barrel-chested, stooped old man trundling an oxygen tank through the thin, high-desert air behind him.

Why is it (bling ding ding there goes that bell again with someone coming or leaving but either way, she thinks, she always has to answer to the bell) this is always the coldest place in the diner? In the very center of the restaurant, surrounded on all sides with stoves and ovens and all them Mexicans cooking and frying and chattering like sputtering engines all day long and you’d think it be hotter than hell (good Lord, it’s worse than she thought) especially now that Mr. Branson finally saw fit to turn on the radiators, that cheap bastard, and yet not even a little tiny bathroom in the center of a restaurant can hold any heat. There must be a draft coming in from the ceiling somewhere, she thinks, because she gets a chill in her thighs as she lifts up the peach pleats of her uniform skirt before resting herself on the seat as cold as ice that it almost hurts to sit down (time was when she didn’t hang over the seat on all sides with hips like potato sacks, back when she was a skinny-minny cheerleader and the boys always sniffing after her). And she can smell it before she sees it and when she looks down she thinks that this time she might have gone clean through onto her new uniform and she doesn’t understand how all that could’ve come out of her without her feeling it. But that’s to be expected, Dr. Roberts told her (not Dr. Samuels anymore, that quack, who sold uppers and Oxycotin and anything else anyone wanted for a small fee – she had heard things, she had a nose for these things, and she had seen those zombies coming out of his office) for at least a few weeks after the procedure but damn if it still wasn’t a shock to see a whole dark red lake in her underpants. She’s going to have to use the rest of the roll to wrap up the pad enough so nobody else sees it (or, good Lord wouldn’t that be embarrassing, what if someone smelled it, complained to Mr. Branson there’s a dead animal in the bathroom) and oh hell, hell and damn she didn’t pack another one in her purse! Damn and hell she could kick herself for not bringing another one with her. How could she have forgotten? Hell! She’s going to have to use more toilet paper, she guesses, roll up a wad of this thin scratchy paper Mr. Branson insists on buying and stuff it in there like she’s making a teddy bear for Trent (she suddenly feels nauseous) ‘til she can run over to the Walgreen’s or ask Beatrice if she had an extra one except, she remembers, that Beatrice, because she’s still young, uses tampons and with her insides as dry as a burlap sack she might as well stick a fistful of bees up there so she’s going to have to go over there on her lunch break and she probably won’t have time but for a quick bite, yet again. But she supposes that’s not such a bad thing, as she crumples up a big wad of paper and stuffs it down in the place where Trent came out of (that’s how a woman’s supposed to look, hairy and wide, like a beast, and she guessed that’s why they don’t like cats, because deep down they’re afraid of it and she told him if he wanted it shaved he’d better do the same to his and he hasn’t asked her to do it since and ain’t that just like a man, you ask them to give a little something up of their own and they shut their mouths) because she was getting a little on the heavy side and she holds the wad in place with one hand (but Trent’s dead, he would say, so why does she keep talking about him like he was alive? Don’t tell her her baby’s dead, she would say right back, didn’t she know it! She was there, after all, she was there when he died, and where was he, she would say, where was he? Or did he not remember where he was when their baby drowned? He was at Jackson’s, she would say, getting liquored up and sniffing around those cunts half his age and acting like a fool, she would say, like a damn fool!) and she gets her underpants up with her other hand as far as her knees and suddenly she can’t go any further because she is overwhelmed with grief.