He wakes with his chest so full it might burst. He wonders whether he has had a heart attack, or is simply dying of loneliness. "I have to go back," he tells Rose, not caring that she is asleep, and will not hear.
The summer rains in the Rockies come all the way up from Mexico. Or so Cash has often told himself, in an effort to make himself believe he's leading an exciting life. But Mexico or no, the rain is terrible for tourism, the Health Corral has been empty all day. Tracey sits at the checkout counter reading the gossip magazines, asking Cash whether he believes a woman could actually give birth to triplets with three different fathers. Cash thinks of his own wild daughters, and doesn't doubt it.
Rose wasn't afraid to go back to work. At lunchtime she reported it was the same over there, no business. She claims the news has gotten around and nobody wants to come into a store where a man took his life. Cash knows better: people around here would come in hunting bargains, hoping for a suicide sale. It's the weather causing the slowdown. Vacationers expect perfect happiness, perfect weather, and if they don't meet it here they'll drive on toward Missoula or wherever else they imagine they will find it. Young people, like Rose, one eye always on the road out of town.
When Cash hears the first shots, he feels strangely exhilarated. He'd thought maybe they would call off the bird shoot because of the rain, but the boom of gunfire comes again, rattling the plate-glass store front. He leaves his post at the checkout and presses himself near the window, waiting. "They're shooting those pigeons today," he tells Tracey.
"I read about that in the paper. That's gross, isn't it? They can't just let some poor little birds alone?"
"They're weed birds," Cash says. "They want to live here but they can't. That's why they keep going around and around up there."
He feels another boom, and the subtle aftershock. His whole body vibrates with the plate glass. Suddenly the birds are there in the sky, not circling in their perfect wheel but scattered in every direction by twos and threes, turning in flighty panic. On their own. He thinks of the place a world away from here where he climbed trees with no greater longing in his chest than to find a nest full of eggs. Cash can see his own face in the plate glass, empty with relief, as the shot birds fold their wings and vanish one by one, finding the ground at last.
12
The Twilight Zone of Humanity
ALL THREE GENERATIONS OF ALICE'S family have been lifted into the air for the first time this summer: first Turtle and Taylor flew to Chicago and back, and now the first leg of Alice's own flight is coming in for a landing. Alice feels this shows an unusual degree of togetherness. Her plane scoots under the clouds, revealing the Mississippi River and St. Louis far below. A huge metal arch on the riverbank stands higher than any building, put there for no purpose Alice can envision. As useful as spitting off a bridge, but people do such things, to prove they were here on earth for a time. The descending plane sweeps over the largest graveyard Alice has seen so far. Her neighbor in the window seat has spent the flight hunched in silence, and now remarks: "Well, that's some welcome."
"I can see the point of it," Alice says, determined to disagree cordially with this cheerless woman. "If you have to make so much noise, you'd just as well pester the dead as the living."
"We won't have far to be carried if we don't make it," the woman says dryly. She has a surprisingly small head, and auburn hair that looks artificial, and for the whole trip from Lexington she has been wearing an aggrieved little face as if her shoes are on the wrong feet. Alice is dismayed. She'd expected everyone else on the plane to be experienced travelers from big cities slouched back in their seats, snapping open their papers to the Money section. But here she is as usual, bearing up those around her. To change the subject from graveyards she asks, "Is St. Louie the end of the road for you?"
The woman nods faintly, as if the effort might be incompatible with her hairstyle.
"I stay on till the next stop, Las Vegas," Alice reports. "I've got a daughter and a little grandbaby out there that have fell on hard times."
The woman perks up slightly. "She divorcing?"
"Oh, no," Alice says, "my daughter's never been married. She found the little girl in her car one time and adopted her. She's independent as a hog on ice."
The woman turns back to the window and its outstanding display of graves.
"Somebody just left the baby in her car and said 'So long, sucker!' What could she do?" Alice reaches for the pictures in her purse. "It turned out all right, though; that little girl is a pistol. Whoever left her off had no eye for good material."
Alice flatters herself that she knows how to get a conversation going, but for this woman it's the subject of divorce and graveyards or nothing; she snaps the window shade down and closes her eyes. Alice leaves the pictures of Turtle in her wallet, dreading the picture in her mind's eye: an old woman talking to herself. She offers a peppermint LifeSaver to the man across the aisle but it's the same story over there, he barely shakes his head. They are a planeload of people ignoring each other. Alice has spent her life in small towns and is new to this form of politeness, in which people sit for all practical purposes on top of one another in a public place and behave like upholstery.
She can't remember when she was ever around so many people at one time that she didn't know. They look strange: one is shrunken-looking with overblown masses of curly hair; another is hulky and bald, the head too big for the body; another has the troublesome artificial look girls get from earrings, glasses, a glint of braces, too many metal things around the face. It's as if these people were all produced by different manufacturers who couldn't agree on a basic design. Alice saves this up to tell Taylor when she gets to Las Vegas. Whenever she used to mention to Harland anything more than life's broadest details, he thought she was cracked. But Taylor will know what she means.
Alice takes off her glasses and lays her hands on her face, feeling her eyes like worried, wet marbles under the lids. Taylor in trouble is not something Alice knows how to think about. Everything she's done before now, however crazy-quilted it might have seemed, always ended up with the corners square. The first time Taylor took a step, she walked right out the door of the Pittman P.O. Alice was at the counter buying stamps and asking the postmistress, Renata Hay, when her baby was due; Taylor was eleven months old and hung on the hem of Alice's coat until she felt she'd grown a heavy tail back there. Suddenly a grand round of applause went up among the old men waiting for their Social Security checks, and Alice turned in time to see her baby headed out into the street. Old Yancey Todd held the door for her like a gentleman.
Some people would say a headfirst child like that was bound to wind up headfirst in the mop bucket. Alice doesn't think so. In her heart, she knows her daughter would have looked both ways before she went out to play in East Main. Or Yancey would have flagged down the cars. When you're given a brilliant child, you polish her and let her shine. The universe makes allowances. When Taylor called from a phone booth in Las Vegas with her soul broken in twenty pieces, Alice felt deeply betrayed. The universe has let them down.
The seat-belt sign dings on, and Alice opens her eyes. A stewardess is coming slowly down the aisle taking people's plastic cups away, like a patient mother removing toys her babies might try to swallow. Alice watches, marveling at the outfit: under her navy blazer she wears a buttoned white shirt and a paisley silk tie with, even, a fine gold chain fastened across it. How long it must have taken her to get it all just right, in spite of her busy life. Alice is a passenger in need of comfort and she takes some from this: the touching effort some people put into just getting dressed in the morning, believing a little gold chain fastened over a silk tie will somehow make a difference.
Taylor and Alice tower over Turtle, holding on to each other with heads together and legs apart, leaning like a crooked teepee. They stand that way for a long time in the airport while people walk around them without looking, desiring only to make their connections. Alice's empty white sweater sleeves
hang from her shoulders. Turtle pushes her head against Taylor and holds the hem of her shirt, since there isn't anything else. She met her Grandma Alice once before but that time nobody was crying.
"Mama, I haven't been like this, I swear," Taylor says. "I didn't fall to pieces till just this minute."
Alice rubs her back in a circle. "You go ahead and fall apart. That's what I'm here for." Turtle watches the hand with big knuckles move up and down her mother's back, and waits for something to fall. After a while they move apart. Taylor tries to carry everything Alice has.
"What'd you put in this suitcase?" she asks. "Rocks? Harland's headlights?"
"I'll Harland's headlights you," Alice says, laughing, smacking Taylor on the bottom.
She comes down to Turtle with a hug. She smells like chewing gum and Kleenex and sweaters. Turtle thinks: this is the telephone Grandma. She is nice and this is how she looks.
"Turtle, you can carry this carry-on bag for Grandma, okay?" Taylor stoops to put the strap over Turtle's shoulder. "I can't believe how strong you are. Look, Mom, doesn't she walk like a queen? I swear I didn't teach her that. It's a natural talent, she has perfect posture."
Turtle leans against the weight of the bag and puts each heel and toe on the long blue line in the carpet.
Alice blows her nose again. "Did you all eat? I'm starved. I had roasted peanuts for lunch."
"We had apricots for lunch," Turtle says, and her mother starts crying again. It's the crying that looks like laughing from the back, but isn't. The most bad thing would be if her mother goes away and the bad place comes. Turtle wishes she could put the words she said back in her mouth and eat them. They would taste bright and sour, like dimes. She feels the door of her back teeth closing. There are forty or a hundred people in the airport so she makes sure to follow the blue jean legs and the white grandma sandals. Their heads are big and too far away like dinosaurs. The talking comes out like round bubbles. When they go outside the sun hurts a little, as much as water hurts when it runs out hot on your hands.
"Turtle, Turtle, Turtle," someone is saying. "It's okay, Mama, I told you about." All the cars are shiny animals under water. They can't get air.
Somewhere else in the old place was that shine of angels or stars too close, the underwater, shoes on the floor and no light and a man's voice across your mouth and you can't get air. A woman crying.
A woman turned on a flashlight and moved her arms that were like fish arms, and her mouth opened and closed.
"We can eat at the coffee shop," her mother's voice is saying. The bubbles break open and Turtle hears each one of those words come out. So much time has passed that it might be another day, or the same day but dark. It isn't dark. They are in the car, moving. The front seat is far away. A boy on a bicycle goes by, the gold bicycle lifting its front wheel off the sidewalk again and again like a scared horse. The boy has a yellow shirt and blond hair in his eyes, laughing, not afraid. His feet move faster than he is going. Turtle kneels on the seat and looks back, watching this one boy and bicycle that look the right way, until they are gone. She sits down again.
"The good news is you can get a hotel room in this town for eleven dollars a night. If you stay in a junky place with a casino downstairs. I guess they figure on getting your money by other means."
"They done got yours," Grandma says.
"A hundred and ten dollars. I could shoot myself."
Turtle sees her hands, and thinks: These are my hands.
"That's if you would have stopped when you got to the top. That's not what you started out with."
"No, we started with fifty."
"So that's all you lost, really."
"Why didn't I stop?"
"Because you were speculating. If you could get a hundred and ten out of fifty, why couldn't you make a thousand out of a hundred and ten."
"Stupid."
"Stupid as every other soul in this town, honey. Look at those neon lights, and tell me who you think is paying the electric bill."
"We were feeling lucky."
"That's who's paying it. Mister and Missus I was feeling lucky."
"We found the fifty dollars on the car windshield. Turtle found it." She looks back in the driving mirror and smiles. Her face around her eyes is red and white. "It felt like maybe that money was charmed." She laughs the way that means nothing is really funny: tssh, pushing out air, shaking her head. "I still can't believe a person could put two hundred quarters in a slot machine one right after another and not win anything."
Grandma laughs. "You've got a hair of your daddy in you. Foster was a gambler."
Turtle says, "Mama, do you have a daddy?" But they don't hear, the words only walked inside her ears. The back-teeth door is still closed. When her six-year molars came in, they felt like a pocketful of small rocks squeaking and rubbing.
"A better one than me, I hope."
"Lord, no, he wasn't worth a toot as a gambler. If there was a storm coming in he'd bet you it was going to stay dry, just to put spice in his day. One time he bet a man he could outrun his dog."
"What kind of a dog was it?"
"I don't know, but it left Foster at the starting post. If the dog had lapped up as much Old GrandDad as Foster had, Foster might of had a chance."
Turtle opens her mouth wide and says, "Mama, do you have an old granddad?" In the front seat they both laugh out loud. True laughing, not pushed air. They have heads on their bodies, laughing mouths, and hands; they look the right way again. Turtle has hands also. She lies down and hugs herself.
"Look at us. Three crazy girls in the city of lonely hearts." Taylor squeezes Alice's hand on top of the table. The hotel is called the Delta Queen Casino, and the coffee shop is decorated in a conartist theme: on the wall are large framed photos of Clark Gable as Rhett in Gone With the Wind, and Paul Newman in The Sting. The red plastic chairs look like someone got them in a bad trade. The background music is a chorus of high steady dings, the sound of coins in slot machines, which reach Taylor like repeated small slaps in the face. She can't believe she was a fool just like every other fool. The one thing she's always hoped for is to stand out of the crowd. She grits her teeth at the TV screen over the bar, which is blinking out colorful letters and numbers so that the people who don't want to waste any time can play video Keno while they eat.
Alice is making conversation with Turtle. "Do you hate it when old ladies make a big fuss and tell you you've grown two feet?"
Turtle shakes her head.
"Well, you have." She bends her gray head close to Turtle's and speaks seriously, without condescension. "You're a big long-legged girl now, not a baby anymore." Taylor watches the cards of her own childhood played out at the table. Alice always knows what you need. Being near her mother makes Taylor aware of all her inside parts, cradled soft things like the livers in supermarket chickens.
"Taylor says you know how to write your name." Alice fishes in her huge purse for a pen, and turns a napkin on the table in front of Turtle. "Can you show me?"
Turtle shakes her head again.
"Doesn't matter. You still know how, right? If you need to sign a check or something, then we know we can count on you. No sense wasting a signature on a napkin."
She leaves the pen on the table. From the casino someone's voice shouts out "Ho-ly," followed by the chattering rain of quarters into the jackpot bucket. Taylor is afraid she's going to cry again and send Turtle into a tailspin, so she keeps her face behind the plastic menu. "What do you want for dinner, Turtle?" she asks. "A glass of milk and what else?"
Turtle shrugs. Taylor can see the gesture without even looking.
"Grilled cheese?"
"Okay."
Taylor looks over the top of the daily special and tells Alice, "You get kind of hypnotized, sitting there listening to the quarters ding. Then you start thinking, 'It's been this long, my number's got to be almost up.' And then you put your hand in your pocket and pull out a gum wrapper."
Alice holds on to her ha
nd.
At a table nearby, a wife and husband are having a fight. They have on matching outfits, jeans and fringed shirts that cowboys might wear, or people in a cowboy-related industry. The woman has colorless flippy hair molded together with hairspray so that it all comes along when she turns her head. The man looks very old. "Five hundred dollars," he keeps saying, again and again, like the talking change machines out in the casino that will turn your paper cash into silver dollars. The woman says different things each time, including "Like hell" and "You don't know your butthole from the road to China." Suddenly she stands up and starts hitting him on the side of the head with her purse. Her stiff hair wags excitedly. The man bends his head down and accepts the blows as if he has known all this time they were coming, like pie for dessert. Taylor is relieved that Turtle has her back to this event.
"I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't said you'd drop everything and come," she tells Alice. "I swear I was at the end of my tree."
"Well, it was good timing," Alice says. "I'd run out of marriage and I needed a project. Have you heard any more about," she moves her eyes slowly toward Turtle and back.
"It's okay to talk about it, Mama. Turtle knows. I called Jax last night and he said there was nothing new."
They both look at Turtle, who has put the menu very close to her face and is quietly reciting the names of different foods.
The woman who was hitting her husband sits down for a breather. She drags heavily on her cigarette, as if her only possible oxygen must come through that less than ideal source.
"This is the twilight zone of humanity," Taylor announces. "That's what Jax would say right now: 'We have arrived at the twilight zone of humanity. Let us bow our heads in a moment of silent prayer.'"
"I believe he's making you turn cynical," Alice says. She adds, "That waitress over there has been staring at us like a stuck pig."
"I know. I hope she's getting her eyes full."