Gravity Box and Other Spaces Page 2

  “Yes, I am.”

  The one on the left, on the end, nodded. “Did you see Menlow’s burn down?”

  His question caused an uneasy stir in Egan’s gut. “I drove by what’s left on my way here. There wasn’t much.”

  “You didn’t see nobody around didn’t belong there?”

  “Hal,” one of the others said. “Drop it, why don’t you? Lookin’ for trouble won’t solve nothin’.”

  “Keep your opinion to yourself,” Hal growled and looked back at Egan. “Did you?”

  “How would I know? I’m new here.”

  Hal continued to stare at him for a time, and then he took a long drink from his bottle.

  “The sheriff told me someone survived.” Egan didn’t know why he was trying to keep the conversation going.

  Hal nodded. “Frank’s boy. He’s stayin’ with me.”

  “You’re a relative?”

  “Frank was my brother.”

  “Oh. My condolences. Does anyone know what started the fire?”

  Hal grunted. “Brice Miller’s bitch wife.”

  “You got no proof of that, Hal,” one of the others said.

  “How much you need? She runs off. Reverend Cady shoots hisself. Drucker’s prize bull gores itself on a combine, and my brother’s dead. It ain’t rained since she took off, and every damn one of you’s been havin’ one thing or another bust or go wrong and don’t you say otherwise. You know it’s been like that.”

  Egan stared at the man trying to make sense of what he was saying. He recognized the words, but their meaning was lost on him, as if he were watching a foreign movie and the subtitles were wrong.

  “Wait,” he said. “Excuse me. Your local minister shot himself?”

  The man in the right-hand corner made an impatient gesture. “Cady was a crackpot. All that talk about organizin’ principles and animistic chaos. I’m surprised he hadn’t done it long before now.”

  “A crackpot you listened to, Sam,” another said, and they all laughed. “Hell, I couldn’t of repeated all that stuff if you’d paid me.”

  “It was entertainin’,” Sam admitted. “But he was always a bit tetched. Can’t blame the inevitable on Esther Miller. And as for Drucker’s bull, the damn fool shoulda knew better than to let it run loose in the same field. Damn thing was special, but it was still just a stupid animal.”

  “And Frank?” Hal challenged.

  Sam looked down at his glass. “Well.”

  “And all the other stuff?”

  “Coincidence.”

  “My ass, ‘coincidence’.”

  “Is everyone looking for this guy’s wife?” Egan asked.

  The men all nodded. “‘Bout seven weeks now, ain’t it?” Sam asked.

  “Seven weeks,” Egan said, chuckling. “Anyone stop to think she’s left the area?”

  “No,” Hal said. “She ain’t gone. She’s still lookin’ for a ride out. That’s what she wanted with Frank. She’s got to have a ride out.”

  Egan suppressed another laugh. The expressions they all wore were grim, perfectly serious, as if contemplating an unpleasant truth and hoping someone would change the subject.

  “Here you go, Egan,” Bert said behind him, setting a plate down on the bar. He turned, and she winked at him. “Made this with my special sauce.”

  Egan was happy to turn away from the conversation. The food smelled wonderful. “I’m honored.”

  “You may well be.”

  He finished his cheeseburger, then ordered another, and chased them with more beers. Egan knew how to nurse his drinks to make it look as if he was having too much, but he rarely lost control to the point of inebriation. He stayed and talked with Bert. They laughed, and he stayed longer, almost till full night. She joked that he should not drive after so many beers and since she did not want to drive all the way out to Curt’s A-frame he would have to come home with her. He agreed with little coaxing. He did wonder, though, how the evening might progress.

  He never remembered the course of his seductions. He could not explain later how any of them happened. At best, he sensed the point at which a line was crossed and the rest became inevitable. The whole process seemed so automatic, so out of his hands, that he went through periods of guilt and withdrawal. But the shame and self-reproach never lasted long and soon enough the cycle started again. One of his friends, when Egan had tried to express his dismay over his apparent “gift” for seduction, told him that he listened well and people found that very attractive.

  “You’re kidding,” he had responded.

  “No, no. Think about it. Don’t you find it very appealing when someone pays complete attention to what you’re saying, as if every word meant something?”

  He could see that, certainly, but not why it had to always go so wrong or why he seemed so helpless to stop the process, even here, in the back of beyond, as if fate kept putting him in the path of women he could neither leave alone or refuse.

  It was a short trip down a street which Egan had completely overlooked during his first drive through the town to Bert’s four-room house. The street opened between two of the buildings on the far side of the road and looked like a narrow driveway to a rear parking lot, but small houses, drawn back from the street, lined both sides of the incline. Bert pulled into the grassy yard of one a quarter-mile from the tavern. A single lamp glowed in the front window.

  He hesitated on the diminutive concrete slab that acted as a porch. Bert bent forward slightly to unlock the door. Egan wondered how upset she might be if he begged off and went home. She stepped inside and flipped a switch. He hesitated, but then let himself enter her living room.

  “Make yourself to home,” she said. “I’ll put on coffee. Be right back.” Bert disappeared into the back regions of the house. A few moments later he heard water running.

  The living room contained a pair of loveseats, a recliner, and a stereo system that surprised him. The rack of CDs surprised him even more, containing a mostly classical selection. He chided himself for making assumptions, remembering vividly a lecture from a former lover about that (“When you assume, you make an ass out of you and an ass out of me”) and sat down on the loveseat facing the hallway.

  “So, Egan Ginter,” she said, coming back in. She had pulled her shirt out of her pants. “Are you married?”

  Away from the deceptive dimness of the tavern Egan saw that she was older than he had first thought. It didn’t bother him, though. What did was the fading bruise on the left side of her face, just below eye level.

  He laughed. “No, Mrs. McCutcheon, I am not.”

  “Touché. I forgot about her askin’. Well, fair is fair. You get to ask me a direct question.”

  “Okay. If I think of one, I’ll ask.”

  “Then I’ll take another turn. How come you’re not?”

  “Married? I can’t—” He stopped and studied her more closely. Sarcasm would end the evening immediately, he realized, which might not be a bad thing. But it would hurt her. Maybe not badly, but Egan did not want to hurt her at all.

  Then why’d you let her bring you here?

  Because it was easy, he answered himself.

  Easier than going home alone and because refusing would have hurt her, too, though probably much less than anything that he might say or do now. He could never work out how to choose between the lesser of two evils, so he followed events and hoped things worked out.

  And ended up hurting everyone—

  “Sorry,” Bert said. “Didn’t mean to hit a nerve.”

  “No, it’s—I was going to say I’m not married because I never found the right person.”

  “But—?”

  “But the truth is I always find the right person. I just don’t know what to do next.”

  Bert frowned. “I don’t follow.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “You’ve never asked anyone to marry you?”

  “It—no. And, they’ve never asked me, either. It’s like we meet and everythin
g goes along just right, and things are perfect, couldn’t get any better. Just at the point where I should say or do something to make it last, somehow it slides by and fades away. I never know.”

  She looked skeptical. “You ain’t one of them men who just can’t make a commitment?”

  “No, I’m willing to commit. It just never comes up. It just never comes up—”

  His voice trailed off, and in the next instant Egan found himself holding her, shaking, terrified, his breath shuddering in and out.

  What? What?

  He couldn’t make any sense of what he was doing. He felt foolish, and then embarrassment took over, until he just felt bitter and angry. Bert patted his back and wrapped an arm around his head and rocked him as if he were a child.

  “I’m sorry, hon,” Bert said over and over. “I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.”

  He pulled away and gazed at the rack of CDs. He swallowed hard, amazed at himself.

  Just what the hell is this all about? he thought, then laughed to break the silence. He did not give in to his urge to run out the door.

  “It’s been crazy around here for weeks,” Bert said. “I shoulda known better. Lemme see about that coffee.”

  “Crazy—yeah—ever since Brice Miller’s wife ran off, I bet.”

  “Oh, that’s just local talk,” Bert answered from the kitchen. She came back with two mugs of steaming coffee. “People here have to explain everything. When things go wrong for no good reason, they make one up. But damn if it ain’t a persuasive argument. Seems like everything just started fallin’ apart after she run off.”

  “I met Brice. My impression was that she may have had good reason to run off.” This felt better. This felt normal.

  “Oh, that’s a fact. He’s a first-rate asshole. Where’d you meet him?”

  “First day, up where I’m staying, he just came out of the woods to tell me not to let his wife in. It seems like everybody is concerned about him getting her back, though.”

  “They say if she gets out everything will dry up and blow away.”

  Egan wiped his eyes, grateful for the bizarre conversation. His outburst seemed to be fading away to some distant place that was not part of him.

  “How is that supposed to work?”

  “Esther Miller is supposed to be a spirit or the embodiment of one, like the life force of the county. As long as she stays, there’s life. As long as she’s kept in line, there’s prosperity. I know, I know, don’t look at me that way. I’m just tellin’ you what folks around here believe.”

  “I take it you’re not from around here?”

  “Not originally. I moved here about eight years ago from Topeka.” She frowned, thoughtful. “I came through here on vacation and the place was a shambles. Farms were failin’. There was drought one season, floods the next. People were movin’. Some were dyin’. The Pumphandle was up for sale. I won’t tell you the price. You’d think I was a thief. I bought it ’cause I gotta cousin in the highway department. He told me a new interstate was planned to go through.” A dark smile crossed over her face. “Well, that didn’t work out, but I stuck with it. Brice Miller got married the next year.”

  “To Esther?”

  “To Esther. And damn if things didn’t improve. For about five years everything was as good as you could hope, but then they started havin’ troubles, and she run off a couple of times. When she did, people would have accidents, cattle would come down with the damnedest diseases. Stuff those tabloid people would just love, you know? This last time’s been the worst, with Frank Menlow dyin’.”

  “Why doesn’t Esther just divorce him and leave?”

  Bert shrugged. “People don’t think that way around here.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “Just stories. But it does have everybody upset. That doesn’t help anything.”

  Egan finished his coffee. “I think maybe I should go.”

  Bert reached for his hand. “Hey, I am sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault.” He sighed. “I guess I owe you an explanation.”

  “No—”

  “I’m here to let someone go. I’d been seeing her for almost a year. Things were—good. But that point I told you about came and went, and I expected to just drift away. It was obvious I was making her unhappy. I thought it was time to move on, let her get on with her life. I’d even started seeing other women. Last month she tried to commit suicide.”

  “Lord—”

  “I can’t stand hurting people. If that’s what I’m going to do to her, she doesn’t need me.”

  Bert was quiet for a long time, and then she leaned back. “You ever thought maybe you’re just a coward?” She stood and took his mug. “Sorry. I’ll give you a ride back up to the tavern so you can get your truck.”

  “That’s all right.” Egan lurched to his feet. He felt suddenly enraged, filled with a panicky energy. “I can find my way back. By the way, you owe me a direct question.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Who gave you the shiner?”

  She looked startled, as if she had expected a different question. “Brice Miller.”

  “For what?”

  “That’s two questions.”

  “Honesty’s cheaper by the bunch.”

  She almost smiled. “He blamed me for Esther runnin’ off. She used to come into the tavern and we’d sit and talk. I told her about Topeka. We talked about—hell, we talked about everything. I thought I’d seen sheltered people before, but Esther didn’t know anything about the world. Brice said I filled her head with city notions, and she ain’t satisfied to be here no more.”

  “You’re right. An asshole. You’re a good judge of character, Bert.”

  She looked wounded. He felt the impulse to apologize, but ignored it and made himself leave.

  The wind cut down the street, colder than Egan remembered it as he trudged back up to the state blacktop. By the time he climbed into the Cherokee he was ready to go back home, the simmering anger substituting for sobriety. He sat there for a time, considering his options.

  Drive away now, he thought, just leave everything where it is and go.

  Instead, he made a U-turn and headed for the A-frame. He could pack and leave tomorrow.

  Run away.

  Again?

  A coward—in other words, he reasoned.

  He was avoiding something. It really had nothing to do with an inability to know what to do, but an inability to accept responsibility. A therapist had told him that once. At the next session, Egan had shown her his credit report. “Look at this,” he told her. He had known it was an adolescent thing to do, but he had been so offended by the accusation and rejected it so absolutely that he had to refute it somehow. He was responsible.

  How else do you prove that you are responsible?

  By staying when all you do is cause pain? Or by rejecting all human contact? Or by doing what you always do, leaving when the new wears off and the irritations creep in and the daily rituals annoy more than delight?

  He shook his head as if to throw off the unwelcome thoughts and concentrated on the road. This was the first time he had been away from the house after dark. He hadn’t noticed before that there were no street lights, and it must have been a new moon because the night was black as pitch.

  Egan slammed on his brakes. His heart raced. A moment or two past the reaction he realized that something had shot across the road in front of him. He blinked at the swath of asphalt in his headlights, then reached to the glove compartment for the flashlight. He shone the beam into the brush on both sides and saw nothing. A deer maybe? He had no idea if there were deer in this part of the country. Maybe a dog. It had gone by too fast.

  “Shit,” he hissed and tossed the flashlight onto the passenger seat. He drove on with great care keeping his eyes and his thoughts on the road ahead, but still he almost missed the turnoff. Once on the dirt road the world seemed to shrink around him, grow darker still, and closer.

  The headlight
s fell on the porch as he pulled up. A woman sat on the edge of the bottom step. In the stark glare her skin seemed flat white and her eyes two dark holes. She was barefoot and her dress was dingy and colorless, mud brown.

  Egan left the lights on and got out of the Cherokee. “Let me guess. You’re Esther Miller.”

  “Can I come in?”

  Her face was round and her eyebrows thick, full arches. She looked up at him without blinking. Her arms were wrapped around her knees and showed scratches, like those on her shins.

  “Do you know your husband is looking for you?”

  She nodded. “I don’t want him to find me. Can I come in?”

  He noticed that she spoke with only a faint accent. He sighed. “Sure. Why not? I’m leaving in the morning, though, so you’ll have to make other arrangements.”

  She stood and Egan stared, startled. She was a compact woman, but in a way that suggested stressed boundaries, as if too much were contained by too little. Her body pushed against the dress she wore and everything else around her. Egan felt immediate raw desire.

  He went back to the Cherokee and turned off the headlights. He had no night vision, so he took care making his way back towards the house. When he stepped onto his porch, he breathed in the savory aroma of womanhood that clung to her. He moved to the door and fumbled with the key. A stupor filled his mind and complicated his movements, as if he were suddenly just too tired to continue with mundane tasks. Finally, he got the key into the lock, but he hesitated, reluctant to turn the knob.

  “Sorry,” he muttered, irritated with himself. “Hasn’t been a good night.” He twisted the knob and shoved the door open. He made an exaggerated gesture for her to precede him.

  “You first,” she said.

  Egan barked a laugh, flapping his hands against his thighs, and stomped into the house. He left the lights off and made his way through the shadows to the kitchen. He found the coffeepot and sloshed it to see if it contained anything, then went to the sink and turned on the small lamp over the stove.

  He heard the front door click shut.