Three Miles Past Read online

  William opened his door, stepped down, and the mother dog came for him from the tall grass, and it was all slow motion, overfull with meaning, with detail.

  At the last moment he pushed her aside with his boot, stepped back into the truck. Rolled forward carefully, respectfully.

  After that, he started noticing all the dead animals along the interstate.

  Baby Green was still out there too, William knew. A fairy tale beanstalk he could never see again, because the graves were probably staked out by patient men with mirrored sunglasses.

  In the parking lot of the hospital, William opened a fifth beer. Some of it splashed onto the leg of his jeans and he stood up. It made it to the seat of his pants anyway. The crack of his ass.

  She would never talk to him now.

  Her name was Julia. A caramel-colored nurse.

  William had got her name off her nameplate by timing his entrance with her exit a week ago, then done it again, in case she’d just been borrowing somebody’s ID that night.

  Julia.

  She got off every night at eleven. Wore a series of headbands, probably to keep her hair out of patients’ faces. Or to keep them from falling in love with her.

  Tonight, William watched the waist of her aquamarine scrubs for a zip key, a handheld radio. The best forty-five seconds of the night were her, stepping across the crosswalk, dipping her head down for the cell phone, the call she only made once she was outside the magnets and radiation of the hospital.

  There was never any blood on her scrubs, never anybody walking with her. Just Julia, Julia.

  William smiled, nodded, and turned his truck on just after she’d passed, so his brake lights could turn her red in his side mirror.

  She never looked back.

  William drank the fifth beer down, eased out of Visitor Parking, past the security booth which pulled the blinds down at five-thirty, and out into the road. For a moment at thirty-five miles per hour, there was a squirrel in the road, flattened to the pavement.

  William said it aloud: “Squirrels.”

  They didn’t hold anything.

  ~

  What he needed now, and what he knew he didn’t need, was a camper shell for the Chevy. The one in his apartment he had pieced up with a hacksaw and a pair of tin snips, then finally just carried the last four big pieces away in the bed of his truck, left them in four different alleys, upside down to catch rain, become a nuisance, a mosquito pool, the edges sharp enough that only the garbage men with their thick, city-bought gloves would be able to lift them. And garbage men didn’t care about anything. William knew; it was one of the jobs his father had taken, after the Army, before all the wine coolers that didn’t count as drinking, that didn’t break any promises.

  Again William remembered building forts with his brother in the living room.

  Their father was always the Indian. The one who had taken their mother away.

  William slammed his fist into the horn of the Chevy. It honked. The man in the leather vest behind the counter of the pawnshop ratcheted his head around to the sound, then up the hood to William.

  William looked away, pursed his lips. Backed out.

  The paper had said they had camper shells, but it was just to get the hunters in, sell them a gun. William didn’t need a gun, though. He used his blinker to get in front of a blue El Camino. What he needed was a camper shell. Because if he didn’t get one, he would be back to tarps, and wouldn’t be able to drive on the interstate anymore, because the truckers would see, radio ahead.

  Because because because.

  William had three hundred dollars in his pocket, part of it an advance on his paycheck, part left over from selling the Ford.

  That was another reason he was leaving Houston: every day, he had to see his old truck across the road, cocked at an angle against the chain link, by the parts cars.

  Finally, in the classifieds, William found a camper shell. It was supposed to be north of town, and east. Tomball, in the crotch of I-10 and I-45. He had to call twice for directions, then listen for real the second time. Each time, the man who answered the phone thought William was calling about a help wanted ad, somebody to replace his son. One hour later—eight miles—William turned up the long driveway of the farm house, slowed alongside the camper shell. It was on an old Gentleman Jim, had been painted black and gold to match the truck, then had the paint baked on.

  William stepped out, ran his hand over the warm fiberglass then looked at his palm. It was glittering. Past it, the old man, picking his way through all the other junked cars. He held his hand out, looked over William’s shoulder at his Chevy. It was gold and white, the colors of some oil company from West Texas.

  The old man nodded.

  “It matches,” he said. “The gold, right?”

  The old man was sixty-eight, maybe seventy-four. A house twice as old as him, at the end of a series of dirt roads that were better than any fence. Most of the land around the house was weeds, some of it on the downslope spongy with swampwater, thick with frogs.

  William looked to the Gentleman Jim then raised one cheek, narrowing that eye. He shook his head no.

  “You don’t think it’ll fit,” the old man said. “It will.”

  “I know,” William said. “But—the paint, I mean. You can’t just spray fiberglass yourself.”

  The old man agreed.

  “Seventy then,” he said, no eye contact.

  William shrugged, looked to the shell again. The ad in the paper had an OBO after the $100. “I don’t know,” he said. Overhead, one small airplane whined just as another—yellow—broke from the line of trees down the hill from the man’s house.

  William flinched backwards, stumbled into the grass.

  The old man looked to the plane to let William avoid the embarrassment of trying to stand as if nothing had happened.

  “Maniacs,” he said. “There should be a law.”

  It was a cropduster. The racks of nozzles, the bitter smell in the air, then, just all at once, no smell at all. William knew the herbicide had numbed his nose. He still couldn’t talk.

  “Fifty,” the old man said, toeing the ground.

  William opened the envelope from his shirt pocket, counted out the three bills, and then the old man insisted on a receipt, was gone for ten minutes to the house, for pen and paper.

  William ducked again the next time the plane came, but this time saw a roll of toilet paper trail down from it. It was how the pilots flew when they didn’t have a spotter—how they marked their passes.

  “Maniac,” William said to the plane, low, smiling, then got the wrenches and pliers and flat-head from his truck, started getting the camper ready to move off the Gentleman Jim.

  When the old man came back with his receipt the Sold To part was blank. William wrote in Bill Dozier then laid on his back in the bed of the Gentleman Jim, placed the soles of his boots against the underside of the camper shell. At first, pushing with his legs, it just rained fiberglass down onto him—spun light—but then the foam seal on one side gave, then the other, and the camper shell shifted towards the rear of the truck. The old man stepped forward to take its weight, and, behind him, looking between his legs, there was a large, dark dog, loping through the grass.

  The old man followed William’s eyes, turned, then called something out to the dog, a name William didn’t quite catch. Blanco? Blackie?

  “He didn’t hear you,” William said.

  The old man laughed without smiling. “He heard me,” he said.

  Moments later, the black dog was there. A puppy in an adult dog body, unable to stand still. Excited just to be alive for another perfect day.

  William let himself pet it between the shoulder blades. The dog craned its head around, to lick the sweat from William’s wrist.

  William looked up, for the plane he was hearing again. It was what the dog had been chasing, probably. The shadow coursing along the ground, blackening a tree for a moment, so that it looked new again when the pla
ne was gone.

  William understood.

  He stepped down from the tailgate of the Gentleman Jim, all his weight on his left arm for a breath, the shoulder there forever torn.

  “What?” the old man asked.

  William realized he was making a noise in his throat.

  “Nothing,” he said, then took the old man’s eyes away from that side of his body, ran his other hand along the side window of the camper, in appreciation. All that was left now was to back his truck up, work the camper from one to the other, and screw it down. The foam kit, he would get in town. Then he could back the truck into the empty bay at work, chock the shell up on blocks, sand down the bed rails.

  But that was all later. Everything was later, nothing was now. Just the sound of that cropduster, the black dog streaking across the field.

  William was sure the plane wasn’t going to clear the trees this time.

  He opened his mouth to tell the dog, but the old man was still watching him, following his arm out to the dog, an acre away already.

  “Need one?” he said.

  It was a joke.

  Across the field, the yellow plane crashed up into the sky again, tearing away from the earth.

  “Not yet,” William said, swallowing his smile.

  Not yet.

  ~

  Three six-packs later, William sat up against the sink of his apartment and cried and cried. Like a baby, like a goddamn girl.

  The one name he never gave anybody was William H. Bonney. Billy the Kid.

  Surrounded by couch cushions in the living room, he had been Billy the Kid, his brother Jesse James, because his name had started with a J.

  Their father’s Indian name was Bites All the Way Through, was Kicks Open the Door Until the House Falls Over, was Born With Teeth, was Custer. This was when they didn’t understand, thought Custer was Indian.

  William rubbed heat into his shoulder and drank another beer, promised Julia that it was going to be all right this time. That he didn’t have to do anything. And then he said it out loud, like a defense, like the only logical answer—cowboys and Indians, Dad—but heard again his shoulder tearing, like the sound had never even left his body after all these years, had just been traveling back and forth along the guitar-string tendons of his neck, burrowing into his inner ear.

  The reason his dad had been jerking him up from the couch was because they weren’t supposed to play on the couch like that anymore. Because their mom was going to be home soon.

  William reeled his pocket watch up, studied it.

  Julia was in the eighth hour of her shift, probably. Holding the pad of her middle finger to a patient’s pulse, counting under her breath. The clock ticking, moving, each second two cents to her maybe, or more—a nickel? William had no idea how much a nurse made.

  He said it again, cowboys and Indians, then put himself back into the pound. As Pinzer. Walking down the hall behind the caramel-colored attendant who’s already off the clock. The pound where she has her keys zipped out from her belt, is twirling them around her index finger, letting them swing back to her palm again and again.

  William follows, follows, all the dogs in their runs barking and barking, but no sound.

  “This one,” he says, about a Husky, then, about a chocolate Lab with child eyes, “No, this one.”

  The attendant in front of him smiles, keeps swishing back and forth, knows, and William follows her around one corner, then another, and then she’s waiting for him with a hose. It’s on, just trickling because she knows how to work it. She asks if he’s thirsty and he says yes, drinks. When he looks up, she’s unlocking an empty run.

  He walks in behind her because she wants him too. She’s already stepping out of her scrubs, using her feet to pull the loose pants down each leg.

  William smiles at the tan lines he wouldn’t have expected on her, how close the top line of her bikini dips to her nipple, how close her aureole is to the sun—how wide it is, spreading like a stain, like she was dipped in something then laid out on her back—then sees that his hand is in his pants, like he told himself to do in the parking lot, and then she comes to him, hooking one brown leg around his side, grinding her warmth up against him, breathing into his ear, and that was the way he came back to his kitchen: hard, all the air in his apartment compressed in his lungs. Pushing with his heels on the linoleum.

  He barely made it to the hospital in time, then came just as Julia stepped into the crosswalk, gushing onto his chest and stomach so much he thought that maybe he was bleeding somehow, that he was shooting spinal fluid, then gagging from the thought of it, splashing hot vomit into the tilted well of the speedometer, down along the steering column to the firewall. Crying still, because he knew from the way he’d taken the caramel-colored pound attendant, from the way he’d been about to take her, the way she turned around for him, resting the tips of her fingers on the stained concrete, he knew she was pregnant now with a litter of puppies that were going to eat her the first chance they got.

  ~

  Two days later Al called him from the shop, to ask where he wanted his check mailed. What there was of it, after the advance.

  “I’ll come get it,” William said.

  “Not a good idea, hoss,” Al said back, low enough that William knew Mitch was standing in the bay by the phone.

  “Sorry,” William said, when it seemed like Al was waiting for him to say something.

  “Where you been?”

  “My shoulder,” William lied.

  Al laughed—shaped his breath into a laugh, it sounded like. So he wouldn’t have to smile.

  “This a workman’s comp issue?” he said, quieter, the punchline.

  William shrugged.

  After that, Al said something, William said something—none of it mattered, was like other people talking—and then William put the phone back on its cradle.

  He hadn’t been back to the hospital since the night he’d thrown up all his love for Julia, then fingered it back in. Off his chest too, the strings matting his beard. Since the night he’d started his truck when it was already running, the metal-on-bone sound of his flywheel jerking her head around in his side mirror, her hair in the brake lights sideways from her body for one perfect instant—a communion. A moment they’d shared, the rabbit recognizing a blind spot in the trail it had been walking for weeks now.

  An accident.

  William leaned into the wall by the phone and apologized to her again. Because now he had no choice—she knew his truck, had marked how the black and gold camper shell didn’t fit the oil-field pale body. Because now she was trying to remember if it had been there the night before, or was it last week? She was probably making up a history for him, even, William: that his brother was in ICU, that he was driving up from Galveston each night just to sit by the hospital bed, struggle through the day’s paper out loud.

  Like that could have saved James. Like anything could have.

  In his apartment, William smiled.

  Now that he had to do it, it would be easy.

  He spent the rest of the afternoon wiping down his apartment, even the underside of the toilet lid, the inside of the P-trap in the kitchen, then an hour trying to fit the magnet from the mouthpiece of the phone up into the earpiece, then two minutes locking the door behind him, then dusk at a filling station, for the Chevy’s two tanks, then lining the camper shell with black RTV sealant, because he hadn’t had time for the foam kit. All that was left was answering an index card that had been posted at the animal clinic with a red tack in the shape of a heart. An index card that had been posted just for him.

  The woman who answered the door was a girl. Eleven, twelve. Her eyes tracked all the way up William. His hands were already in his pocket, his sunglasses hooked into his flannel shirt.

  “Hello,” he said.

  The girl called behind her, for her mother.

  She was even better. William looked down along the porch, steadied himself on the wall.

  �
�Yes?” the mother said, one hand on her daughter’s shoulder, ready to pull the girl into the house, step between.

  William felt his eyes heat up about this.

  “The—the Lhasa,” he said, like a question.

  The mother tried looking past him, for his truck, but it was down the street where some Mexicans were working a lawn.

  “You’re . . ?” the mother started.

  William opened his mouth, stepped back in apology.

  “Just—sorry, sorry. I just . . . my daughter, I’m seeing her this weekend.”

  The mother looked up to him, to his eyes.

  “Her birthday,” he explained, and then it was there, the Lhasa, yapping, its tiny forepaws edging past the weather-stripping on the floor.

  The mother nodded. A cordless phone in her hand. William wondered how anybody ever strangled anybody anymore.

  The index card had said free to good home.

  The mother nodded down to William’s left hand. His naked ring finger.

  In return, he shrugged, squinted away, down the street, to the sound of a weed-eater or an edger.

  “She looks like her,” he said finally, lifting his chin to the daughter.

  The daughter shrank to her mother’s leg some.

  Inside, William smiled. Outside, he shrugged again, shook his head no. Arranged his face into an outside smile too.

  “I’m lying,” he said, like it had been going to come out anyway. “She’s—Kimbo. She’s not mine. My brother’s girl. Niece. I just like to . . . y’know. Pretend.”

  “Maybe your brother can—” the mother started, but William closed his eyes tight, shook his head no.

  “He can’t,” he said.

  That part wasn’t a lie.

  Two minutes later, the mother calling her husband, ‘to let him know about Vanessa,’ the dog—really just an excuse to leave the phone on, to let William know the phone was on—William stepped into the house, felt like he was balancing on the welcome mat. He looked back, where he’d just been, on the porch: there was no one watching.