Goshen Road Page 3

  THE NEXT day was clear, with a warm breeze that smelled of the richness of summer. Town boys wore shorts as they raced outside after school. Lux sat on the post-and-rail fence at the edge of the parking lot beside the school buses, waiting for junior and senior dismissal. He took a note out of his pocket, unfolded the lined paper, and reread his own tight scrawl.

  Hey Good Lookin’,

  It’s past midnight, and I’ve got Hank Williams running through my mind! I couldn’t sleep and I thought about coon hunting but the doc says no shooting, so I went out tonight just to see the moon. It was almost full, there was a silver ring around it, and it took me a while to figure out what I was thinking about. I was thinking about you! I drove up the old logging road beside the gas well to where Lester treed a coon for me last week. Do you know what happened? As I was getting ready to leave, out came that old she-coon from the edge of the woods. I sat there, and soon it called and two twin kits came running out behind it, looking all tiny and squirrelly, running sideways, and I could see it all in the light of the moon. I wished you was there to watch this. Would you come out for a drive? I won’t take you anywhere you don’t want to go.

  Your Friend,

  Lux Cranfield

  PS. Can l come around for you tonight at dark?

  Lux looked up as Dessie came out at last bell. He could see her right off, wearing a yellow-and-white flowered skirt, smiling about something. She looked older somehow than last night, more like a town girl. He began to wave at her, but then he stopped. She was halfway back in the bus line, talking to Jerry Higgs, the teacher’s boy with the gold Nova, a senior who’d won a scholarship to WVU. Lux’s jaw set, and he turned away. His hand clenched as he crushed the note into a tight ball. He pulled his A-1 cap down low on his face, rubbed at his eyepatch, then headed in the opposite direction. When Billie Price walked over to the fence, Lux had almost reached the Jeep.

  “Hey, Lux,” Billie called. “Want to give me a lift home?”

  “Not today,” Lux said. He stared once more at the bus line, turned toward the Jeep, and then stopped. The note felt solid in his right hand. He gripped it and then threw it hard enough to hit Billie on the top of her dark bangs. “Give that to your big sister, will ya?”

  “Sure, Lux.” Billie fumbled to keep her schoolbooks from hitting the ground as she picked it up. “Nice throw!” she called, but he started up his Jeep and didn’t seem to hear.

  ALL THAT afternoon Lux drove with the Jeep’s top down, sipping beer out of a grocery sack, listening to Top of the Country, WKKW. He passed the A-1 mill, where for almost a quarter mile irregular boards, cutoffs, and slabs were stacked on the side of the road for the taking. He passed the giant sawdust pile at the south end of the chipper, then headed toward the ridge and turned off at the muddy logging road that ran along North Fork into the deep woods. He felt like a green kid for letting himself get torn up. He should’ve seen that dead limb. Anyone who knew anything would have looked in all directions, including up, and once he’d seen it, he should have planned his cuts before he started up the saw. But hey, Lux thought, bad luck is bad luck, and sometimes your number comes up. Soon he’d find out more about his left eye. From what he could feel, it seemed like the stitches had healed. If he had his way, he’d kick off the cowboy boots and trade them for steel-toe boots, be back in the woods with Alan Ray and the crew.

  And then there was Dessie. She must’ve seen him today at the school fence. Didn’t she want a ride home? What was she smiling about with that pissant Higgs? Where were his old teammates? Were they at practice? Last year it would have been him pitching, laying on the gas to see how much heat they could take. Now that was something to look back on, but not a part of him, not something to look forward to.

  Lux shifted the jeep into first gear, then second. The sun was slanting lower in the west. He wondered if any girl was worth this trouble, but then again, he’d known Dessie all his life, she was as straight as an arrow, raised right, respected. Bertram wouldn’t let her get away with much. Lux popped open a can of beer. As the warm alcohol stung his lips, he remembered how he felt last night, his breath steaming in the cold air, the far-off barking of farm dogs and baying of coonhounds, the light of the full moon, the shadow of the bare branches; then later, staying up all night, how many times he tried to write that note, trying to figure out what he wanted to tell her, trying to get each goddamn word just goddamn right.

  He guided the Jeep along the gravel road, stretching out his arms and fingers, missing the weight of his chainsaw, the way it ripped into oak and cherry, the sweet greasy smell of burnt sawdust mixed with chain oil. Most of all he missed the work, the task at hand, each felled tree its own kind of puzzle. Lux killed the Jeep’s engine beside a logging cut to listen for the distant whine of the saws, maybe to catch a glimpse of his crew, maybe say hey. But all he heard was the tick of the manifold cooling, the creak of trees in the wind, the cries of distant crows settling in to roost.

  THE RISING moon lit the edges of clouds in the east when Lux parked on the wide shoulder of CR 57 and walked over the Prices’ footbridge. The golden retriever came out of the doghouse and halfway growled, but when she saw who it was, she yawned quietly and wagged her tail, watching from the end of her run. The house was dark downstairs, but upstairs light glowed in several windows. Bertram and Rose’s room, probably, was on the uphill side of the house, back from the road, where a single shaft of dim light slanted back toward the chicken pen. In the front, facing the road, could be the girls’ rooms, but where was Dessie? Lux picked up a small handful of gravel, then squinted, stood back in the shadows. He felt like a relief pitcher who’d been called to the mound but wasn’t sure which direction to throw the ball. One or two small stones could tap at the base of a window frame, but which window?

  There was a way to get closer, and he pulled himself up into the lower branches of a large flowering crab apple tree between two shaded windows. He held onto a branch above his head, straining to listen to the noises in the house. From his perch in the tree, the moon dimmed behind dappled layers of clouds, the air around him was so fragrant he was almost dizzy. It smelled like girls. What was he thinking, he wondered. He was afraid to let go and rub his eyepatch, afraid he might take a sneezing fit. He wondered whether he should get down and leave, just cut his losses. He shifted his weight to get more comfortable, and the limb creaked under his feet.

  Suddenly Billie’s shadowy profile appeared near one of the shaded windows. She said something to her sister somewhere in the house. Lux focused on the window frame, and even though Dessie was nowhere to be seen, he tossed a couple of small stones at Billie’s head, then winced as they clattered against glass. The shade flew up and the window lifted. Billie stared outside, craning her head toward the road. “Hey, Lux, is that you?” she called into the night air.

  “Good God, girl,” said Lux, “You’re loud enough to be heard halfway to town! Where’s your sister? Did you give her that note?”

  Billie gestured at the next window. “She’s a-waitin’ for you.” Billie’s overly loud whisper was like something from a school play. He turned to his left, inching out to get a better look. As he neared the slender end of the limb, the slick soles of his new boots began to slip, the limb bent, then it snapped. He slid down, his boots thudding into the soft dirt of the flower bed below. “Ah, shit!” he said, trying to keep his voice down but not succeeding.

  Chickens begin to cackle and cluck from their pen, and a second window opened. A blonde head stretched out. “Lux?” Dessie said. “Where are you?” Lux waved his cap toward the light above his head. He was afraid to raise his head and see Bertram or Rose. He prayed that they would keep doing whatever nightly things they were doing. He wished the chickens would shut the hell up. He wished his blood would stop hammering at his forehead and temples. Standing there, he saw his pa’s face, darkly shaded, but somehow right before his eyes. “Now who’s the old fool?” his pa cackled.

  “Go away!” he finally mumbled.


  “Lux, I’m coming down!” Dessie said quietly. “Me too,” said Billie from the next window. “You just stay put up here and watch for Mom and Dad,” Dessie told her sister, and despite it all, Lux grinned.

  A door opened at the rear of the house, and Dessie appeared around the corner. “Hey, lumberjack!” Dessie said as she stood beside Lux shining a flashlight into his good eye. “It looks like you fell out of your tree!” She motioned him away from the windows and toward the darkness.

  “Worse than that,” Lux said. He shook his head and focused on Dessie, trying to see her eyes. Dessie’s face seemed scrubbed and bright, and the rest of her was too dark to see. He pointed her flashlight away from his face toward the crab apple. “I might have broke that bottom branch. And I flattened some of your ma’s flowers, and there’s some kind of prickly plant.” He held his hand under the beam of the flashlight. “Feels like I run my hand into a hill of red ants. I wanted to brush ’em off, and they latched onto my face.” The back of his hand motioned upward; fine gold cactus needles spread from his cheeks to his mouth and glinted on the dark of his eyepatch.

  “Oh, for the love of Pete, Lux, you got into the prickly pear,” Dessie said. She scanned his face. Then she stepped back inside through the back door. As Lux waited, afraid to scratch or move in any direction, she returned with a washrag, a bottle of witch hazel, and a pair of tweezers. Under her arm, she had a can of beer. “Where’s your Jeep at?” she asked. “Never you mind,” said Lux. He poured the soothing witch hazel onto his hands and splashed at his face. “You just help me out here, and then I’ll be going. I’ll come back in the morning to help clean up.”

  Dessie shone the fading flashlight up at Lux’s face; his good eye blinked. He wished he could see, he wished the pounding in his head would ease, he prayed that the next sound he heard would not be Bertram busting out the back door. He took a deep breath and instead heard Dessie’s hushed tones. “Quiet, Lux,” she said. “Set that beer under your shirt and stoop your head down. Hold this light right here. And be still, we better get these spines out first thing.” Her hands smelled like the nurse’s office. Lux tried to keep his arm from shaking as she worked with the tweezers. Hopefully, Billie was keeping watch. Dessie pulled at thin spines on his cheekbone and along his jaw. Recalling a trick that eased his nerves before a game, he began counting backward. “Ninety-nine . . . ninety-eight . . . ninety- seven,” he said, taking a breath between each number.

  “What are you going on about, Lux?” Dessie asked, and then, “Can you please hold still?” she said again, holding his trembling hand firmly, for a couple of spines on his knuckles, easing them out. “Ninety-four . . . ninety-three . . . ninety-two . . .” Lux muttered, staring at the outline of the back door in the stark moonlight. Dessie turned off the flashlight, brushed off her slacks, and set the supplies behind the back door. “Let’s get going,” she said softly. “We can’t stay here,” she said. “We’ll have the whole family out here.”

  Lux shook his head and started to speak, but Dessie put her index finger up to her mouth. She led the way down the walk to the doghouse beside the footbridge. The hammering in his temples became less noticeable with each stride. The cool dampness of the air near the creek washed over the skin on his arms and eased the sting on his cheekbones. The dog thumped her tail and then let out a whine, but Dessie stopped to quiet her, stroking her on the head. “Do you think we should take Lucy up into the woods with us?” she asked, looking up at him.

  She stood on the edge of the field. She looked up from the dog’s bright eyes into his good eye. Her face was washed in moonlight, her eyes full of life, the hayfield furrows behind her a patchwork of light and shadow; like the sight of her after the accident, but more like a dream in black and white. Lux stared hard at Dessie to match this image with his memory of her.

  He collected his thoughts. “Don’t worry. There ain’t nothing to be afraid of out there, and anyways, I’ll look after you,” he said. He stared at her, hoping she would believe this, and then he reached for her hand.

  “You’re sure about that, Lux?” she asked, her eyes wide with a sense of adventure. A warmth shot through her firm hand into his. Lux nodded. “I am. You’ll see,” he said. Though he was trying look as serious as possible, a smile played across his face. He took it all in. At that moment, he felt like the future was as clear as the moon, so round, so bright, so close he could almost reach out and touch it.

  Dessie paused and nodded, then with a slight grin she spoke up. “Well, I guess I should’ve brought along a broom,” she said. Lux stood back a step, trying to catch her meaning. “What? Why in the world did you say that?” he asked. He dropped her hand. Was she worried about taking the Jeep up into the woods? About getting the Jeep dirty? Was she worried about him? Did Bertram tell her to do that kind of thing?

  “OK, not funny, I guess. Uhm, I was trying to make a joke,” Dessie said. “You know, a broom? So you could sweep me off my feet, of course.” She shrugged, holding back a smile.

  Lux smiled back, and looked over at the tall white shape of the Price farmhouse against the dark hillside. “OK, OK. I get it,” he said. “Hey, we won’t need any old broom.”

  Dessie laughed. “You sure got off to a good start, Ace,” she said, her phrasing an exact imitation of Bertram’s cadence and drawl.

  Lux looked at her, catching on. He cleared his throat, swallowed. “Hey, I’ll give it my best shot, you’ll see,” he said. Then, reaching out for the thick twisted cable, partly to steady himself and partly to figure out where to set his feet, he took several unsteady strides onto the footbridge, making his way from plank to plank. With a sweep of his arm, Lux waved at anyone, real or imagined, who might happen to be watching them. It was all he could do to catch up to Dessie as she raced over the bridge, caught the roll bars, and swung herself up into the passenger seat of the open Jeep.

  TWO

  SOMEBODY TO LOVE (1967)

  ALL THROUGH NINTH GRADE, BILLIE PRICE PICKED half-smoked Lucky Strike cigarettes out of the living room ashtray and smoked them down to her fingertips without her parents catching on. She rarely got to smoke a whole cigarette because Bertram kept his Luckies in his shirt pocket. Sloppy seconds would do. It was easy enough to collect an almost whole cigarette from the butts that he stubbed out and abandoned, little white crooked swans in the large black swan-shaped ashtray, but in order to smoke them she had to keep out of sight.

  After her drama teacher had caught Billie smoking in the girls’ room back in September, her parents threatened to paddle her if it happened again. Bertram claimed to believe in “Spare the rod, spoil the child,” but he was a reluctant enforcer. But though infrequent, it had happened, and Billie did not want a repeat performance. Rose relied upon logic as well as good old-fashioned Pentecostal guilt. For her part, Billie figured that what her parents did not know would not hurt them or hurt her. Their ignorance would be her bliss, or at least help her avoid her mother’s sermonizing. She wasn’t worried about stunting her growth or shortening her life. She did not care about bad breath, wrinkles on her face, or worst of all, attracting the wrong kind of male attention. Rose had it all wrong. For Billie, the lure of smoking was so private, so special, a little glamorous gift that only she could give herself, a brief glimpse at the way life should be, instead of the way life was: school, chores, homework, school, church on Sunday mornings, church on Wednesday nights, homework, clothes on the line, clothes off the line, then repeat. One more endless month until the end of June when school let out.

  Worst of all, Billie would need a new spot to smoke. She had been sneaking down to the crawl space under the front porch, but warmer weather meant the front porch could be occupied at any time. Other options included the spring house, a little storage pantry in the backyard dug into the steep hillside where seed potatoes and canned goods were stacked on moldy shelves, but that place was as spooky as a crypt; or the barn across the field, but too many stories about fires in barns kept Billie from smok
ing around dry hay in any kind of weather.

  As for inside, Rose was always downstairs fussing around; upstairs, her parents’ bedroom was off-limits, and that left only the girls’ bedroom, a large rectangular room Bertram had divided using a three-quarter wall to create some privacy. Sound and light traveled over the divider, and smoke would too. A window in the walk-in closet could be cracked open for a few furtive puffs, but lately Dessie was always in that closet, dressing and undressing, trying on blouses, skirts, and sweaters to see what matched, dancing from the closet to the full-length mirror in the hallway, examining each outfit, pulling off rejects and piling them in a heap on the closet floor. Face it, Hurricane Dessie had blown in from some seacoast, and Billie had to keep out of the way.

  Lately, every item of clothing Dessie selected contained some shade of green. “Wouldn’t you just know that green is Lux’s favorite color!” Dessie said shortly after she and Lux started going out together, as if that was a positive attribute. As usual, Dessie had been standing in front of the mirror, rolling up the waistband of her skirt, securing it with safety pins. From the back, Billie saw the hem hanging crookedly above Dessie’s knees.

  With Dessie upstairs, Rose roaming around downstairs, and Bertram off running Saturday errands, Billie decided to chance a quick smoke in the crawl space. When she was sure no one was looking, she selected a barely smoked cigarette, strolled down the porch stairs, pried open the rusty trapdoor near the base of the porch, slipped in, and eased it closed so it wouldn’t slam shut. On all fours, she crawled to a spot where she could peek out through diamonds of light filtering through the latticework. Billie brushed cobwebs from her hair and pebbles from her palms, reached above her head along the beams, and found the matches she’d hidden on a narrow ledge.