The Flicker of Old Dreams Page 11

  15

  When work is slow, I struggle with ways to spend my time. I’ve pulled the shoe box from under my bed to run my fingers through the collection of buttons. They fill the bottom of the box, two or three buttons deep.

  Everyone I’ve ever embalmed is here, even a man I’d kissed, a onetime thing, and to be honest, our second encounter, when he came to my workroom, was nicer. I pick out one button at a time, feeling the details under my fingertips. The clear, nicked button from Mr. Mosley’s flannel shirt, a thread still attached; the rose-shaped button from Charlotte Taylor, whose pink blouse and padded bra covered thick tracks of mastectomy scars; the anchor-shaped button from small Daniel Keller’s blue-and-white sailor’s outfit. He had the smallest-sized casket we sell, and still, he hardly filled it, his body curled at one end of the box as in sleep, wrists touching.

  Sometimes I take out two or three buttons and put them in my pocket for the day. I don’t know why. It’s dumb, but I do it.

  I head downstairs into the mess our house has become. Pop and I have nothing to do and yet dishes pile in the sink because I’m no good when I’m not working, and this is my father’s state of being when I don’t step in.

  I check his office and he is there, staring at the bills as if some solution will come to him that stretches our income.

  “Numbers tough?” I ask.

  He looks only at the papers and grimaces.

  “Fridge is kind of empty,” I say. “Do we have enough in the account for groceries?”

  “Maybe just get eggs and an onion,” he says.

  “Potatoes?” I ask.

  “Okay,” he says. “Nothing more, though.”

  Outside the school bell rings, though it’s not time for school to let out. It is the wind grabbing the rope.

  My feet scrape across the dirt road, kicking up dust. As I pass the Goldens’ house, I watch Doris, at the window, painting what might be a clown. The sound of women laughing makes me look up. One wears her curly hair tied back with a white headband. The other wears a pink hat with a pom-pom. This view I know well—the backs of neighbors, mostly at funerals—a world so near but out of reach. My father always nudges me—Go on, talk with them. But why? Someone can say, Hello, but mean, Oh, it’s you. Someone can say, Join us after the service, but mean, Please don’t.

  These women live the kinds of lives my father wishes I had. Married with children and friends.

  One of the women reaches into her purse, applies ChapStick, and then holds it out for the other, who takes it. This simple gesture is so touching, so painfully unfamiliar, that I ache. When I was in school, I longed to be invited into these circles, wondering what girls whispered to each other that sent them into giggles. I feel for the buttons in my pocket, roll them between my fingers.

  The three of us hear something speeding down the road and turn to watch a truck as it swishes by, too close, slowing alongside the women. The one with curls leans toward the driver’s window.

  The driver is not from Petroleum. You can tell by the license plate. The first numbers tell what county you’re from. There are more- and less-trusted counties, some so different from us, it’s like they’re from a different state.

  The women look at each other, then there is a quick change of expression.

  “Maybe you should just move on out of here,” the one with curly hair says, and they walk on, ignoring the driver, who now seems to be waiting for me.

  “Excuse me,” he calls out the window.

  I look to the women, who pause to see how this will go.

  “Excuse me,” the man says again.

  He holds out a business card.

  “I own a wrecking crew,” he says. “Know who I can talk to about that gray tower by the highway?”

  This happens every now and then. A stranger stops in the diner and asks if someone would like to hire him to knock down the central monument of our town. The women stop to watch my response.

  “There’s no one for you to talk to,” I say.

  “I could take down that old structure,” he says. “Make it a nice clean piece of land there.”

  “Go on,” I say. “We don’t need your help.”

  I’m just copying the words of the curly-haired woman, really. I wouldn’t have thought to say anything so bold if I hadn’t heard her first. The man gives me his card nonetheless. When he pulls away, I scrunch it up.

  We hear the criticism all the time—how Petroleum needs to join the modern world or else die away, chained to the past. What this stranger considers an eyesore is a link to our history. No need to scold our people for trying to hold on a little while longer to something they’ve loved. The tower may collapse on its own, but no out-of-towner’s going to kick it down like something only good for scrap wood.

  We watch the truck pull up to the deserted VFW, then the deserted pool hall, then the barbershop, still in operation, but closed today. Finally, the driver reaches the Pipeline, and the three of us smirk. He’ll get an earful in there.

  “That’s telling him, Mary,” the woman with the pom-pom says. And I know her.

  “You showed him,” the curly-haired woman says, but I watch the one in the pom-pom who sometimes held my hand as we played the game Eddie so many years ago and, later, scrambled out of the pool because I’d fouled the water.

  The stones push against my rib cage. My hand wants to reach for the pain, but I would rather pretend the hurt has faded, like their names. The door opens at the diner, and the stranger storms out. When his truck flies past, the woman with curls grabs the scrunched business card from my hand and hurls it after him.

  “Get out of here,” she shouts.

  They break into laughter, and then, timidly, I do too. I feel a touch on my back, the hand of someone I believed would always reject me. I begin to laugh so uncontrollably, I inhale dust from the road.

  “You can walk with us if you’re headed to the school,” says the one with curly hair.

  “What’s happening at the school?” I ask, my voice froggy.

  “Final band rehearsal,” says the one with the pom-pom.

  I am in tears. I wish I could stop, but I am in tears, laughing and sobbing.

  “Oh, this dust,” the women say together as I bend over, trying to cough it up.

  This hand on my back. This moment of sorority. I can’t stop choking, no matter how many times I try to swallow or clear my throat. We are nearly to the entrance of the grocery. I’m tempted to continue on to the school with them.

  “Mary.”

  All three of us turn to see who has called my name.

  “Mary,” Robert calls again and holds his hand up in hello. He has just come out of Vinter’s.

  I’m coughing, shaking my head to show I can’t talk.

  I feel the hand release. The price I pay for this hello fills me with grief and resentment.

  “We’re going to be late,” says the one with the pom-pom. “Are you sure you’re all right? Because we have to go.”

  And I know I cannot continue on to the school, where I’d sit awkwardly in the gymnasium bleachers with mothers watching their children, wondering why I was there. They’d only invited me to be polite, certain I’d say no. I wave and nod my head, my throat still spasming. Yes, go. Go.

  Robert reaches into his grocery bag as the women continue on toward the school.

  “Here,” he says.

  He opens a can of orange Shasta and hands it to me. I drink a long sip, cough again, drink another.

  “Every time I cough or blow my nose,” he says, trying to joke, “I find some of this town has snuck its way inside.”

  From the moment he offered me a drink, I’ve felt a relaxing in my rib cage. I want to fit in with the others, but with Robert, I can just be.

  “You know, we should grab coffee sometime,” he says.

  I almost let myself laugh again. It sounds like the kind of thing people say in big cities.

  “How ’bout Thursday morning?” he asks.

  “Y
ou’re serious?”

  “Sure I am,” he says. “I hear there’s a great diner in town.”

  I rub my pointer finger under each eye to wipe away any smudged mascara.

  “Would ten work?” he asks.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  “Okay. Yes,” I say.

  A tiny smile, but genuine.

  “I almost forgot,” he says, looking toward his bag of groceries, “I’ve got ice cream for my ma in here. I better get it in the freezer.”

  Once he’s on his way, I open the door to Vinter’s. Advertisements flutter against the bulletin board just inside, and I notice announcements for the Blizzard Festival and winter concert. I have agreed to have coffee with Robert on the same day as our town’s biggest festival. All of Petroleum will have the day off to witness our date.

  16

  The shift in weather is distinct—grass hardening, creeks freezing, Brine Lake thickening with slush. Along Main Street, children in crimson jerseys decorate shop windows with snowflakes and snowmen. Many adults wear their old crimson basketball or cheerleading uniforms, whichever half still fits. The high school band sets up their music stands in front of Vinter’s grocery, and a clarinet player squeaks out a scale.

  I watch from the house as families set up stalls and unfold tables on Crooked Hill Road and Main Street. The closest fill up with canned goods, sausage, fudge, food that’ll save. Others hold crocheted blankets, sweaters, and even a selection of Doris’s paintings. I wonder how long they will live in Petroleum homes after she’s gone.

  Neighbors load still more tables with secondhand supplies: hand-crank lights and hand-crank radios, shovels for the front and back doors, flashlights, weather seal tape for drafts, portable power generators and extra gas, chain saws, bags of salt and sand, gas-powered snow throwers, matches. Another table displays hand-me-downs: skates, snow pants, parkas, bedding. There’s even a fix-it corner where you can bring busted snowblowers, televisions, anything at all, and someone will get it working for you again. The festival is less a celebration than a day to prepare for the upcoming snowstorms. Today neighbors will weatherproof homes, share tools, supplies, and labor.

  Under light flurries, Slim climbs a ladder, carrying a large artificial snowflake. Several of the students who ride his bus mill below, looking up as he attaches the ornament to the top of a pole. They have a love-hate relationship with Slim, spending so many hours ogling the back of his strange head, and yet he is the man who rolled an oil drum full of rattlers through town, the man who safely delivers them to school and home each day. You see all of this in their hesitant waves good-bye.

  Because this is the other reason for the annual Blizzard Festival. It’s the move-in date for students who live on the outlying ranches. These children, like generations before them, will stay in what has become known as the winter dorm until the school bus can be certain of making the journey to and from their homes again.

  Their families move through the crowd toward the hotel with suitcases and boxes full of bedding. Each year, the Blizzard Festival falls on a different date. This year’s is fortunate. Because of the mild beginning to winter, families could be together over the holidays.

  Fritz stands at the entrance, ready to receive his new boarders. They will now be under his care except for when they’re in school. To look at his stooped, wiry frame, you wouldn’t think he could control the kids, but they fear his temper and his cane, so they keep their rooms clean, study (or at least stay quiet) for two hours after dinner, and are in bed by nine o’clock.

  He lines the kids up in front of the hotel as they arrive, and I step on the front porch to count.

  “One more,” Fritz shouts. “Don’t dawdle.”

  I recognize the long periwinkle coat I’ve seen draped over the back of our kitchen chair. Without it, I might not have recognized Martha, her face appearing older without the flirtatious smile or the cheeks red with passion and shame. Her husband, in jeans, oilskin jacket, and felt Stetson carries a suitcase, and Minnow carries a basketball and a pillow.

  “Line up,” Fritz tells her.

  In years past, every room would have been filled to capacity with cots lining the walls, but this year there are only sixteen boarders: five girls, eleven boys. Martha reaches out to squeeze her daughter’s shoulder and Minnow shrugs it away, joining the line of students.

  I pay special attention to this girl named for the wine-stain birthmark near her forehead. I’ve overheard Martha talking about this stain quite a lot, sharing how she and her husband decided it looked like a small fish, and fishing was the one thing that each of their families had in common. Thinking up fish-themed names was something she and her husband bonded over, a mercy, since they had struggled for most of their marriage to remember what they liked about each other.

  Minnow sweeps her hair over the birthmark and holds it in place with her hand. And I’ve heard Martha talk about this too, how she cut bangs for her daughter when she was teased by classmates, and later tried to help her feel more confident so that when the wind tossed her hair aside and exposed the mark, she was not ashamed.

  I wonder if Minnow knows our parents are having an affair, if she sees her mother’s red truck left too long in the school parking lot, her mother sneaking through the back alley to our house. For a moment, I catch the teenager’s eye, and she scowls in a way that seems to indicate she knows.

  Pete’s white Ford pulls into our driveway, and by the time I head inside, he’s already come through the back door.

  “You missed some excitement outside the Pipeline,” Pete says, nodding hello as I step into the kitchen.

  “What’s happening?” Pop asks.

  “Larry Rogers—you know, with the long beard,” he says for my benefit. “He lost a finger working yesterday. This morning he’s walking around, giving everyone a look.”

  “Did he bring it in a jar or something?” I ask.

  “Nope,” he says. “He unwrapped the bandages and showed off the stump.”

  “They couldn’t reattach it?” Pop asks, setting his toolbox on the kitchen table.

  “By the time he got to Agate, all they could do was tidy it up and make sure it didn’t get infected.”

  “That’s a shame,” Pop says, checking through his tools.

  “Oh, he’s all right,” Pete says. “Probably never had so much attention.”

  “Let me grab a tape measure,” Pop says, “and then I’m ready to get to work.”

  He and Pete have a big day of labor ahead of them, helping to prepare the Purvis’s home for storm season while Mrs. Purvis spends the day at the hospital with her husband.

  “You’re welcome to join us, Mary,” Pete says.

  “I’ll probably just wander around,” I say, as if I’m not watching the clock for my coffee date with Robert. I’m dressed in the same flannel and jeans as a normal day, but I’ve slipped on a silver bracelet that was my mother’s, which I turn round and round at the cuff of my shirt.

  My father returns with the tape measure and a knit cap.

  “No crimson pride, Allen?” Pete asks, offering my father his choice of the scarf he’s wearing or the school flag jammed into the band of his sheriff’s hat.

  “I’ll have the flag,” Pop says.

  Pete takes off his hat, his hair pressed flat and a pink indentation circling his forehead. He detaches the flag with Petroleum School written on it, and my father looks for a place to pin it on his blue suit. Finally, he lets it peek out of his breast pocket.

  “All right,” Pop says and grabs his equipment.

  Pete places the hat back on his head and it settles into the pink groove. Once they leave, I shut the door and watch from the front window again as they emerge from around the corner, arms full of tools and a couple of sawhorses. I’ll bet that crimson flag has fallen out of my father’s pocket already.

  I slip on my parka and gloves, ready to head to the diner for coffee. Do I dare call it a date? I weave
my way into the crowd. Most of my neighbors roam about the displays, sipping hot chocolate and chatting, when I spot something out of place. Black in a throng of crimson. Clipped pace when everyone else saunters. Staring ahead while others socialize. Empty hands when others are working, carrying, purchasing.

  The high school band plays “Let It Snow,” while the mascot for the Petroleum Oilers, wearing a hand-sewn oil drip suit that many say looks a lot like a Hershey’s Kiss, mingles with the crowd. Whenever the oil drip turns toward me, trying to shake my hand, I change direction.

  Greetings between neighbors are enthusiastic. For many who live farther out of town, the festival is the last guaranteed day before spring thaw to see friends. But an enthusiasm of a different nature is also building. It’s the children who voice it first. “Is that him? Is that the younger brother?” These kids weren’t even born when Robert lived in town, and still they watch with a sense of suspicion. “Why’s he come?”

  Neighbors who are perfectly decent on other days scowl and refuse to step aside so he can pass. There are taunts and bumps, and I’m reminded of our game inside the grain elevator, the joy of pointing our fingers at whoever played Robert. I’m afraid to approach him.

  Down the road, my father unpacks tools. Pete senses the tension—I know this because he seems to follow the black jacket through the crowd. He measures a wooden board, then looks up again.

  What makes Pete so popular in this town is that he has an instinct about when to step in and when to let things go. Marital and parenting disputes. The scrape running across Robert’s truck. This is the kind of business he avoids. He famously turns a blind eye to thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds taking a practice drive through town. It’s how most of us learned. And he doesn’t take a hard stance against what residents set on fire during open burn season. He understands how hard it is to get rid of trash—from dried Christmas trees to construction waste to animal carcasses—and he doesn’t harp on choices made by practical folks on tight budgets. Pete steps in only when he thinks someone’s actions hurt the safety or dignity of the community.