I am dangerous.
Don’t tell me that.
I want to kick his little brown ass.
Don’t do it, Tom. I’m telling you not to do it. You smack him around, it comes back on me. Because here I am just slapping your wrist. And then let’s say—assault, you waste him. You kick his head in. Kick his ass. Well then that Hindu’s going somewhere else. And I get accused of racism or something. The state or someone gets down on me. The department of whatever kicks my ass.
Things are fucked up.
I gotta show I’m following the rules. This is America. Land of the free. You ever listen to these rap people like this nigger who calls himself Snoop Doggy Dogg? Kill cops, freedom of speech? So how we gonna stop your landlord?
Tom shook his head. It’s bullshit, he said. Jesus.
Calm, said Nelson. Keep it together. I’m way too busy for this type of call. So don’t throw his business cards next time.
I can’t afford to pay a thousand bucks a month to park my ass in this miserable dump.
Well you rob a bank I’ll catch you, Tom.
Isn’t there some rule about notice or something? He’s gotta give me a month or something? Before he can raise the rent?
Nelson smiled. Hey, he said. Come on. Slow down. You’re the one threw the business cards. That little grease monkey didn’t do anything the law doesn’t let him do anyway. It’s a free country—didn’t I say that? He can charge whatever he wants, can’t he? For a room in his motel?
Tom snuffed his cigarette against his bootheel. Maybe you could get him deported, Nelson. Why don’t you check his green card or something? Get him out of here?
Nelson stood, tucked his shirt, felt his belly. It isn’t him that’s gotta get out. It’s you, Tom, if you can’t meet his price.
All right, said Tom. I see where you stand.
I stand just where I have to stand. Not necessarily where I want to.
Right.
It is right.
Fuck you too.
Why don’t you talk to him? Apologize? Try to work something out?
Tom put his boots up casually on the table, laced his fingers at the back of his head. Apologize my ass, he said.
Calm, said Nelson. I appeal for calm. I think you should give it time, calm down. You’ve got too much on your plate now, Tom. Try to be peaceful about it.
His wife’s got an ass.
I noticed that.
Well let me sit here and think about it.
Good move, said Nelson.
He left and Tom thought for less than five minutes. Then he began to pack his things. Packing felt redemptive, cleansing. There was always the option of clearing out and it felt right to embrace that. How easy it was; flight, retreat. Tom didn’t own much. He liked it that way. Traveling light and unencumbered. A fugitive and his earthly possessions. He didn’t pack in orderly fashion, but neither was he careless about it. His rage, as always, was pointed outward—a searchlight blinding whomever it illuminated. At the same time he felt like a deer caught in headlights. The moment before roadkill. Deer and driver. His rage reflected back on him. Tom knew well about dire straits but these were deeper circumstances. Yet there was no point in ruining or losing anything, his binoculars or steelheading reel. His possessions had value, suddenly, as possessions do for the shipwrecked.
When everything was laid out across the bed he double-locked the door behind him and walked toward the maintenance shed. Maybe Pin was watching from the window. It didn’t matter. Tom didn’t check. Let Pin feel how Pin felt. Jabari’s cleaning cart, at Cabin Fifteen, was tucked up under the moss-covered eaves. She knew everything by now, of course. Well let her stew while she cleaned her toilets and turned up her nose at American excrement. Let her ponder the maintenance man who smelled of nicotine and wouldn’t go away. Intrepid of her to have ventured forth while Tom the Terrible yet lurked on the premises, man-eating tiger drags woman to her death, villager washing sari in stream pulled under by massive crocodile. But were there crocodiles in India? It hadn’t been covered at North Fork High School. He’d never seen it on the Discovery Channel. Pin, on the other hand, was holed up, a house rat. He wasn’t going to show his caramel face. So Tom went into the maintenance shed and took a tarp and skein of twine, an act of petty larceny. They weren’t his. But who used them other than he, Joe Maintenance? Pin didn’t even know the tarp existed. Tom had folded it, kept the twine neat, and left them there in their places. It wasn’t theft except technically. He was borrowing his own work supplies. It was raining and he would need a tarp. Tom went out with it under his arm. Tom Cross, tarp owner.
He ran the defroster. More deliberation. He double-parked in front of his cabin, trapping a Chrysler minivan. In plain sight of Pin if Pin was watching. Tom put his firearms and fishing rods on the seat where rain couldn’t get to them. Also his cartons of shells and rifle rounds, his tackle boxes, his reels, his binoculars, his knives, his fifth of Crown Royal, and his hunting boots. Collected talismans—he locked them in.
At the table he wrote a note—all caps. I FIGURE THE MATTRESS IS WORTH FIFTY DOLLARS SO HERE’S YOUR FIFTY FOR IT. That was all. Three tens and a twenty. He was not a thief, wouldn’t stoop to stealing. They were going to have to be happy with that. What else was there to say? The whole time I wanted to fuck your wife and I’ll bet you Pin she wanted to fuck me? In fact we did it in Cabin Nine every day while you watched As the World Turns? Tom spread the tarp across the floor with the twine placed in forethought underneath it and hauled the mattress in one move off the box frame with his clothes and worldly possessions piled on and wrapped everything, the mattress and his personal items, afterward it looked like something from a horror movie or perhaps recovered from an archaeological dig, the jute twine lashed a tight dozen wraps including a pair of slipknotted loop handles, the clean mean package of a physical perfectionist, of someone devoted to the things of this world, to trim and tackle, gear, equipment, everything always had to be right if it involved objects in the spatial realm, but what other way was there to do things? It only felt good this single way. It was always worth the effort it took. Tom felt primeval satisfaction.
He broke camp. Last go-round. Heat off. Shades pulled. Drawers checked. Under the bed. Tom allowed himself a weird short pause, a paltry sentimental moment. Bachelor-pad blues? Well better than homeless. Pine board walls and cable television. He’d hung his hat, put his feet on the bed. Anyway, he thought, go fuck this place. He pulled the wrapped mattress out into the rain and muscled it into the bed of his pick-up, shut the cabin door and double-locked it. As usual in his adult life, everything unimportant was in order.
Tom knew he needed his pick-up canopy and so drove straight to his old lost house, where he’d left it rotting in the backyard. There was of course the issue of the restraining order enjoining him against just such a retrieval—technically Tom couldn’t be on his own premises—but more tangible was Heidi Johnston’s Corolla, parked by the force of sheer bad luck so as to block his access route. Tom had hoped to snake under trees, repossess his canopy unmolested, start the hold-down nuts with his fingers, and be history in less than two minutes. He could tighten the bolts a mile up the road with a hijacker’s grin on his face. Only now this impediment: a Corolla. Plenty of times driving by for a glance he’d seen strange cars parked in front of his house and had fantasized mostly for the wounding pleasure of it but also as a disenfranchised husband that Eleanor had taken a variety of lovers, that everyone in town knew about her antics but kept a straight face when he was around, though on the other hand he knew full well that these cars belonged to the volunteers who called themselves the Cross Family Committee. To the women from church who came to help Junior, wipe his ass, change his clothes, shampoo and shave him, range his limbs, splint his arms and legs in place, count his pills, prepare his meals, feed him and then wash the dishes, comb his hair, clip his nails, change the bandages at his breathing tube and swab clean his piss tube. Massage and knead his gut each morning to make him pa
ss a stool on a plastic sheet and empty his piss bag in the toilet. These women Father Collins applauded weekly, an institutionalized part of his mass—Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give. Or: So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another. Or: And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins. Or: Be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord. Father Collins listed the CFC members by name during this weekly, dutiful interregnum: Constance Pedersen, Julia Corn, Julia Neiderhoff, Tina Van Kamp, Heidi Johnston, Carolyn Meyers, Carol Boyle, Marilyn Davis, Grace Weaver, Beatrice MacMillan, Leah Long, and Annabelle Fletcher, whose grandfather was a North Fork pioneer—Annabelle had written a book about him—and who herself had Parkinson’s disease. Cedar Shakes and Prairie Potatoes: Tom had read it with froward interest. A book of myths: old Fletcher had been a royal jerk, according to those who knew him. Owned a lot of river bottom. On Sundays dressed like an East Coast dandy. His granddaughter idolized him, obviously. The other women were unremarkable and uniformly dull and dowdy except for Julia Neiderhoff, who had the throat and calves of a mare, dark hair, and a classical chin.
Almost from the day that Junior came home they’d taken over running Tom’s household and had ruined his privacy. A coven of sounding boards for Eleanor, too—Tina Van Kamp was twice divorced and goaded Eleanor onward. They all commiserated, certainly. Some were married to loggers themselves and so brought familiar complaints to the table. Tom’s house became a women’s club, a coffee klatch, a radio talk show, a touchy-feely caucus. The smell changed—antiseptic deodorizer alchemized by high furnace heat into a damp effervescence. Lipstick stains on coffee cups, a thing he’d always found loathsome. And clutches of dried flowers in his bathroom. Eleanor’s vocabulary suddenly changed—I’m not sure you value what I’m saying, Tom, I don’t hear you honoring my feelings, Tom, Well fuck you then, he eventually came to answer, and get these witches out of my house! Except, it was true, they took care of Junior. Without them, forget it—Tom knew that. But why couldn’t they just be good Samaritans and leave off doubling as marriage counselors? Why did they have to meddle in his marriage and get inside his wife’s troubled head, talk her into despising him? When he came home he’d find say Marilyn Davis seated at the table next to Eleanor, Diet Pepsis, carrot sticks, open Bibles, heavy talk, Hey, he’d say, how’s Junior doing?, but it was like he’d brought cold weather with him, they suddenly fell conspiratorially silent, when he went upstairs they started again, or sometimes he found three or four together praying like nuns and holding hands, their heads bowed, their eyes shut: Heal the sick, Give us the strength, Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death, other times someone read Bible verses: And when they were come in, they went up into an upper room, where abode both Peter, and James, and John, and Andrew, Philip, and Thomas, Bartholomew, and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon Zelotes… Tom would slip past them with a beer in his fist, take a shower, and lie on the bed with the door shut and the television on, when Eleanor came in he’d steel himself, it was time for combat again.
So what to do? He could open the door to Heidi Johnston’s Corolla, slip her transmission into neutral, and gently prod her car out of his way with the front bumper of his pick-up. Or he could bluster afoot into his forbidden backyard and drag his canopy around the side of his house like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Neanderthal Man, a savage making off with shelter. Or he could knock on the door with polite humility and explain to Eleanor obsequiously that if possible he would like to collect the canopy and that he hoped for her dispensation. In other words, there were no good options. His life had come to this absurd pass: merely mounting a canopy on his truck was now freighted with tumultuous questions. Hog-tied, hamstrung, pinned, pincered. Wherever he turned, complexity. Tom tapped his steering wheel with his thumbs and quelled the urge to bash the Corolla. Then he parked and groomed his hair in the rearview mirror because looking good was a kind of revenge and he wanted Eleanor to feel pain.
At the door she said Restraining order, Tom. Don’t make me have to make a phone call.
She didn’t look good. Washed out, severe. He didn’t even like her anymore. Here was a woman he’d come inside of probably at least three thousand times and he didn’t want to touch her any longer. That was the strangest part for Tom—the cavernous depth of his revulsion. But she was drying up: crow’s feet, frown lines, sexless religiosity. And always adding new inner strictures. Knobby fingers with knitting needles in them, he couldn’t face that kind of future. But it was already here. Ellie wore sweaters and had a loose ass, a paunch. Sorry, he said. I know this is wrong. But all I want is the canopy for the pick-up. I don’t even have to come inside or bother anybody, Ellie. I just need to get around back, grab the canopy.
He was standing in the rain but she wasn’t. It was clear to him that she was afraid, outweighed by eighty-five pounds. In the presence of an irrational opponent who in prior meetings had demonstrated, to her mind, how fully he was prone to rage. Nine-one-one, she said to him. I was told that if you ever came around to call nine-one-one.
I’m not coming around. I’m just picking up my canopy, that’s all. I’ll pick it up and then I’ll be gone. Just let me in the backyard.
No Tom.
Yes Ellie.
Eleanor set her chin a little harder. I’ve also been advised not to argue with you should you happen to show your face illegally which is what you’re doing right now. I’m not even supposed to speak with you, period. So this is it: good-bye.
Wait.
She tried to shut the door but he put his foot in its path and the door stayed open halfway. Wait, he said. Eleanor. Just wait a minute. Come on, wait. Just let me get my canopy.
Heidi Johnston appeared behind Eleanor, or part of Heidi Johnston. He probably outweighed her by fifteen pounds, but Heidi was only five two or three, a woman with a grotesquely mammoth chest, pruny all around the mouth and clearly short on estrogen. One of those manlike adipose women North Fork harbored in very large numbers, the town’s most prominent genetic marker: fat and masculine androgynous females buying cake mix at MarketTime or selling raffle tickets at Burger Barn. Heidi, he said. Hi-dee-hay.
Be careful, Heidi, said Eleanor. He’s very violent.
I’m not violent.
Yes you are.
Come on, said Tom. I just want my canopy. How complicated is that? A truck canopy? Why is it such a big deal?
But it’s a very big deal to Eleanor, said Heidi. It’s very important to her.
She’s not here? said Tom. Eleanor? She can’t maybe speak for herself?
She’s very capable. If you’d only listen.
I’m right here listening.
No you’re not.
Then what am I doing?
I don’t know.
Well get out of the way then. This isn’t your business.
I’d go for the phone, put in Eleanor, but I don’t want to even risk it right now. Unless—wait—I’m going for the phone.
You go ahead, Heidi urged her. She faced off with Tom, stared him down, beady little angry animal eyes. Eleanor, said Tom. Be reasonable. I’m not here to do something criminal. I’m only here for my canopy.
That canopy, said Heidi, is community property. This is a community property state. So one you don’t own that canopy anymore and two you are doing something criminal by breaking the terms of your restraining order and showing up here at all.
Wasn’t it usually a guy in this role? The slick new boyfriend standing up to the hapless discarded ex-husband? Tom moved more boldly into the doorway. Look, he said. Eleanor. All I want is the god damn canopy. I’ll tell you what you can have the house, even your lawyer would agree to that. I’ll trade you the house for the canopy, Ellie. Take advantage of me.
Nine-one-one, said Eleanor.
This is a waste, said Tom.
He went out again, yanked opene
d the Corolla’s door, and moved the stick into neutral. Don’t you touch my car! yelled Heidi, but he made himself deaf to her shrill entreaties even while she advanced on him like an overweight pit bull. I don’t have a beef with you, warned Tom. It’s just that your car here’s in the way and right now—I have to move it.
Heidi briefly quickened her pace, but at ten feet suddenly halted. Her eyes were wet. Too much adrenaline. That’s my car, she said.
I’m going to move it, answered Tom. It’s in my way—I’m moving it.
No you’re not.
Yes I am.
You touch my car I’ll get you arrested.
I thought you were a religious person.
I’ll press charges, get you arrested.
Didn’t Jesus say to turn the other cheek? Have mercy on the desperate?
Stay away from my car. Last warning, Tom.
You aren’t threatening to shoot me, are you?
Stay away from my car like I said already.
Your car’s on my property, though, said Tom. I have a right to move it.
He laid his shoulder into her bumper and rolled the car ten feet. She called him names and yelled while he did so: Everybody knows all about you you sinner this whole town knows how abusive you are, everyone knows what happened you know, you paralyzed your own son for the rest of his life, how can you even live with yourself? how can you even stand to be you? everybody knows what a lowlife you are, what scum you are, what a jerk you are, you’re screwing Tammy Buckwalter, you’re down to living in a motel cabin, now get your hands off my car I mean it get your hands off my car!
Tom maneuvered his pick-up through the trees and was hauling the canopy into place when Eleanor slid open a window behind him and said The cops are on their way Tom they’re on their way right now.
I just want the canopy, Tom answered.
That’s not the point.
It’s the only point.
You always think you know so much.
I only know one thing—I need this canopy.