Everyone Dies Famous in a Small Town Read online

  Ben hadn’t wanted to do anything to jeopardize Conrad’s relationship with God; he had just wanted to talk. So he’d gone early, knowing that on that day the priest was hearing confessions. He thought that if Conrad didn’t go to confession, Ben wouldn’t have to wonder if he was regretting the kiss or if he felt guilty about it. Okay, maybe it was too much like spying, but he’d needed to know.

  From the back of the church, watching Conrad enter the confessional was like being punched in the heart. Of course Ben should have left, given him privacy, but instead he inched closer, leaning his head against the mahogany door, breathing in the paraffin smell of candles and guilt. He heard Conrad’s confession, whispered quietly, begging for forgiveness. The priest said something about the sins of the flesh, and to go forward and sin no more. Ben was instantly pissed off, but he managed to get outside before Conrad saw him. What a load of bullshit. He wanted to pick up a rock and throw it through one of the stained-glass windows.

  He would not let this go. He was going to talk to Conrad directly.

  He went back inside to the small room where the altar boys prepared for Mass, hoping to catch Conrad as he put away the incense and the chalice of Communion wine. The priest in the doorway was not Father Doyle but someone new. Ben had never seen this priest, who was disheveled and had strands of gray hair combed sideways across his scalp. From under furrowed bushy brows, he was watching someone leave hastily through the wide front doors of the building.

  Behind the priest, in the small room, a young altar boy holding the chalice was staring out at Ben like a deer in the headlights.

  “Are you all right?” Ben asked, stepping closer to peer inside.

  Both the boy and the priest flinched at the sound of Ben’s voice.

  “What’s your name?” Ben asked him.

  “Michael,” said the boy, his voice barely audible.

  The priest tried to shut the door, but Ben held his hand against it. “You look terrified, Michael,” he said. “Are you okay?”

  “I need to go find my mom.”

  Ben pushed his hand harder against the door, and the priest stumbled backward, caught off balance on the other side. Michael dropped the chalice with a clang and hurried past. He looked barely ten years old.

  “Everything okay?” Ben asked the priest, who had recovered his footing and was again pushing the door closed.

  “Why wouldn’t it be?” he said, bolting it from the inside.

  There was something really strange about that priest. Nobody ever stormed away from Father Doyle, or looked scared like that altar boy had looked. The thought of Michael’s big brown eyes continued to haunt Ben. He had tried for over a week afterward to reach Conrad but had no luck—Conrad didn’t take his calls and wasn’t home when Ben dropped by. Finally Lula had come to the door to say that Conrad had left town. He hadn’t even said goodbye.

  Two weeks later Ben received a postcard with a poem that explained nothing. It read like a suicide note.

  Green shoes thrown carelessly on a dry, wooden porch,

  Filterless Camel cigarettes

  And torn tablecloths holding half-empty beer bottles.

  You’re too beautiful for any of this.

  And because I cannot apologize enough,

  I plant flowers in old leather boots.

  And fear the root-bound violet

  Will die before morning.

  Ben knew Conrad had an uncle in Canada, and the postmark on the card was from a place very close to the border. Was it a cry for help? Apologize for what? The kiss? For leaving? Was Ben the root-bound violet or was that Conrad?

  He could not shake the feeling that Conrad wouldn’t have sent it if he didn’t want Ben to come looking for him.

  Now he really wished he could read the poem one more time, scan it for some missing clue, but it was in the glove box and he wasn’t going to reach across his passenger again. Coyote Jones’s voice returned, making them both jump as if he’d popped into the backseat. Ben saw the girl’s hand move to the top of her boot. She caught him looking and then pretended to be massaging her leg. She was hiding something, but Ben hoped she’d be out of his car soon and he told himself he didn’t care. He was tired of secrets.

  It was dusk, and the streetlights in Baker were just blinking on when they pulled off the interstate.

  “You’ll be okay?” Ben asked. The Texaco beckoned like a terrified animal crouched in the shadows. Someone had shot at the sign, and the “X” was the only light that still worked—sort of—if blinking intermittently counted as working.

  She opened the door before he’d even slowed all the way down at the pump, mumbling something that sounded like “bathroom key.” The way she bolted made him think again of the altar boy, running off in search of his mother.

  Ben filled the tank, went inside, and paid the woman behind the counter. She popped her gum and blew a bubble right in Ben’s face, then laughed. She had wobbly ears, made even more wobbly by the feather earrings that hung clear down to her shoulders. The nest on top of her head looked like it was held together by a whole can of hair spray, as if she was working hard on a theme. Even her eyeshadow was robin’s-egg blue.

  “Git in a fight with yer friend?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Yer girlfriend. She scooted out the back. Seemed like she was in a real hurry, stole my bathroom key.”

  Outside, Ben checked the doors to the bathrooms, but they were locked.

  He walked around the building, but all he saw were open garbage cans billowing trash everywhere and crows having a smelly feast. There was no sign of the girl. On the other side of the interstate was a shabby-looking motel. Its sign was also shot out, as if Ben had arrived just after neon hunting season. If she had left, she probably didn’t want him to go after her.

  Well, good riddance, he thought. But he had reservations about just leaving without knowing where she’d gone. Why couldn’t she have thanked him and said goodbye like a normal person?

  Because everyone left him like this, he realized. Stranded in the dark on the side of the road.

  Conrad used to tease Ben for caring too much about things that weren’t his problem: birds that flew into windows, returning lost gloves to their owners, and now the sudden disappearance of a girl with greasy hair and zombie eyes who he never should have picked up in the first place.

  He pretended not to see the woman with her face pressed against the window of the Texaco, smudging the glass with her breath. It was hard not to miss the feather earrings being blown by the fan behind her head, as if trapped birds were banging their wings against the windowpane.

  He pulled back onto the interstate, pointing the Mustang west, determined to put more distance between himself and Granville.

  “But you don’t even know where you’re going,” his mother had said when he’d told her he was leaving.

  “The postmark says Washington, just below Vancouver, BC,” said Ben. “I’ll call you when I get there.”

  “That’s a pretty big place—I’m sure Conrad isn’t expecting you to chase him down. You should wait in case he comes back.”

  “Well, he doesn’t get to weigh in, now, does he? He didn’t ask me if he could leave.”

  “Honey…”

  But Ben hadn’t heard what came after, because he’d been stomping up to his room and then had slammed the door. He didn’t usually stomp. Or slam. But nothing made sense anymore. He was terrified that Conrad was dead, so of course driving to the place that had swallowed him up was the only thing Ben could think of doing. Which meant maybe he hadn’t totally lost hope?

  Now it was just him and Coyote Jones alone on I-87. He saw signs for the Pawnee National Grasslands and couldn’t tell if he actually smelled wildfire smoke or if Coyote Jones’s description just made him imagine that he could. The fire had grown and was
threatening towns to the east of Granville. Coyote Jones said residents in neighboring towns should be prepared to evacuate quickly if the order was given.

  Everyone trusted Coyote Jones; his voice was as much a part of the landscape in this area as the dry sage and noxious purple loosestrife that grew along the trails and streams. Nobody Ben knew had ever even seen him, but in Ben’s mind Coyote Jones had one of those silky, waxen mustaches that curlicued at the corners of his mouth. Obviously he chain-smoked and probably shaved his head (to enhance his mustache).

  Funny how some guy with an illegal radio station was more trusted than anyone from the Forest Service or the state. It was always this way. If Coyote Jones said there would be a winter storm, people stocked up on canned food and batteries, but if the state put out a weather advisory, nobody even bothered to bring their horses in from the fields.

  Around here people trusted their own, not outsiders, no matter how many degrees they had in natural resource management. In fact, the more diplomas someone waved around, the more suspicious the locals became.

  Ben imagined the scene in Granville and all the neighboring towns within earshot of Coyote Jones’s station, people hovering near their radios, waiting for instructions. Even though it did sound like the fire was heading east, away from town, he decided to take the next exit and call his mom, just to check in.

  And that was when he saw it: the girl’s fancy backpack shoved under the passenger seat. Not like something that had been accidentally left behind, but purposefully stashed. He opened it and found a book of matches with “Granville” written on the inside cover, a piece of torn white fabric, and a few gum wrappers.

  “Ben, please come home,” said his mother through the phone line, which smelled like a campfire. He imagined each word she spoke hanging in the air, charred by smoke and secrets.

  “Mom, I need to find Conrad. I think something terrible has happened to him.”

  He cried messy tears, as if he were five years old again and had just fallen off his bike.

  “Lula called. Conrad was in a hospital on the coast; his dad went out there to get him. She was hoping you’d be here when he got back.”

  “Wait. What? Is he okay?” He held his breath.

  “Well, that’s why Lula called. He’s okay, except…he can’t remember anything. Not even his name. Lula thinks maybe seeing you will help.”

  “Why did he have to leave without telling me what was going on?” Now he was crying so hard he could barely hear what she was saying. Conrad was alive.

  “There are some things in life that people have a hard time even telling themselves.”

  He thought about the hitchhiker, her backpack, whatever it was she was hiding. If this pack wasn’t stolen, then her name might be Delia—which was what was written inside in black marker—but he doubted she’d wanted anyone to know that.

  He wondered if Conrad would remember their kiss now. Or even Ben himself. Or why he’d left in the first place. So many secrets.

  “I’ll be there in a few hours.”

  And if Conrad didn’t remember him, well, they had time. They’d just have to start over, and that wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened. Ben wouldn’t let him get away again.

  Conrad is alive.

  Conrad is alive.

  He slid down the wall of the phone booth and looked at the forgotten bits of people’s lives lying on the ground near his feet. Cigarette butts, a syringe, the stub of a bus ticket to Boise. A piece of blue chewing gum with teeth marks still in it. The rusty hinges of the phone booth kept the door from closing all the way, and just outside, in the pavement, one single purplish-blue flower was growing straight out of the cement. A pansy or a petunia or something else, he wasn’t sure. Conrad was the one who knew the names of flowers, not Ben.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he said out loud to the little parking-lot flower. “You’re too beautiful for any of this.”

  THE RIGHT KIND OF PEOPLE

  By the time Delia was sixteen she had a gum-wrapper chain that was forty feet long.

  One of her many babysitters had shown her how to make it when she was five. Probably Michelle, since she was the one Delia remembered best; she smelled minty and was always at the ready with a piece of chewing gum.

  “Only use the outside wrapper with the colorful designs. The foil won’t work and isn’t as pretty,” Michelle had told her, sliding the stick of gum from its wrapper, removing the foil, and popping it into her mouth. Then she opened the wrapper wide, folded it in half lengthwise, licked it to crease it, and split the two halves apart. The first one she folded in half again, then again, until it was skinny as could be, and then she folded it in half the other direction. She took one end and folded it yet again, to meet in the middle, then did the same to the other side. Michelle’s flying fingers boggled Delia’s mind, but she persisted and made her smaller, clumsier fingers mimic Michelle’s over and over again, ruining heaps of wrappers before she got it right. Once it stuck, it stuck.

  The tiny finished product had a little V shape that you could pretend was a mouth. And then you folded the other half of the wrapper and it fit into the first V’s mouth, and then the next one fit into that one’s mouth, et cetera, et cetera, and it just kept going. “You could go forever if you wanted to,” said Michelle. “I wish I’d started when I was your age, but now I’m too busy, you know, being a teenager and everything.”

  Delia did not know what that meant, “being a teenager and everything.” But she wanted a very long gum chain, so she decided to get cracking before anything having to do with being a teenager crept up on her. (Michelle had said it as if it was something you got even if you didn’t want it, like the chicken pox.)

  Whenever Delia went to the store she would scan the candy aisle for a brand of gum with a color she didn’t have yet and beg her parents to buy it. She had a lot of green Wrigley’s Spearmint wrappers, and the yellow ones too, called Juicy Fruit. She loved the checkered gum that tasted like oranges and the black jack wrapper, but she hated the spicy licorice taste of that gum, so she gave it to her brother. She kept all her wrappers in an old tobacco box. The gum she stashed in a paper sack, stripped of everything but their foil undies—this made her giggle like mad, the image of gum wearing undies—until she had no idea which flavor was which. She got really tired of chewing gum, and the sticks piled up in the paper bag.

  Her parents never said no to gum, because they had a lot of money and she could have asked for anything, like another pair of cowboy boots or another fringy leather jacket (she had six). That was the thing about being the child of a rich Wyoming rancher: you could have whatever you wanted. So packs and packs of chewing gum was nothing at all.

  The only rule was that she could not fold gum wrappers in church. Her parents were very Catholic. They gave a lot of money to the church, and her family had their own pew that they sat in every Sunday, in the very front row on the left side of the altar, where everyone could see them. Because of this, Delia and her brother had to look shinier than their friends, and they had to sit up straighter and fidget less than anyone else.

  One whole stained-glass window was also paid for by her father’s ranch: the seventh station of the cross, Jesus falls a second time. Her mother gave her a rosary to stop her fingers from pretending to fold and unfold invisible gum wrappers while she sat in the pew staring up at the image of Christ shouldering the cross. Behind him, his disciples looked worried, while other onlookers appeared to be jeering. She wished her daddy had left the soldier out of it, the one who was poking Jesus with a spear, trying to make him stand up, but her daddy said it didn’t work that way: “Some things you cannot change, not even with money.”

  At home there were barely any rules at all because home wasn’t a place where they had to impress strangers. Delia and her brother could do almost anything they wanted, and there was a lot of laughing and running
and sliding down the wide bannisters. There were ranch hands to joke with, and the general chaos of a house that has its own cook and maids who were constantly saying things like “I just mopped; go the other way around in those muddy boots.” There were inside dogs and outside dogs but only ever outside cats—because her brother was allergic, but they were needed to chase mice in the barn. Delia loved the cats and would go outside to snuggle them, but they weren’t used to being snuggled, and once she’d gotten a long scratch down her arm that got infected. She’d had to get a special shot because of it.

  “Cat scratch fever,” said her brother. “You’re going to start drooling and then crawling around on all fours and your hair is going to fall out.”

  Delia started to cry.

  “I’m just kidding,” he said, because he hated it when Delia cried. “Here, I got you some new red gum wrappers, what do you say? It’s cinnamon flavor. I found it at that huge grocery store in Casper, when Daddy took me with him last time. Please, Delia, stop crying.”

  Delia’s gum-wrapper chain was almost four feet long by the time she was seven. It was the same year she’d been given the important job of carrying the incense down the aisle during Easter services. Her brother was an altar boy already, holding the bucket so the priest could sprinkle holy water on the congregation, and they’d needed another set of hands. She could see the proud gleam in her mother’s eye, and was extra careful to do it exactly right.

  Delia loved church. She loved the fresh-cut flowers on the altar and the way the light played with the stained glass, making the colors splash like a rainbow across her brother’s white robe. She loved the smell of incense, and that day, because of her job, she was bathed in it. She threw back her shoulders and stepped carefully, slowly swinging the censer back and forth, back and forth on its chain. She moved only her eyes to glance sideways at her mother when she got close to her family’s pew. Delia knew she had been specially chosen to do this important thing, and the look on her mother’s face told her that God thought so too. Or at the very least, everyone else in the church should be thinking so.