Chapter 40
When the beat up Honda rolled off of Gompers, and barely kept all four tires earthbound turning onto Old Woods Road, Merritt was walking from the house to start the morning routine at The Outpost.
Tilda had asked him where he thought he was going without smooching the top of her head. Everyday he smooched the top of her head, Tilda twisted up in some yoga pose, but still always receptive to a kiss, then off he went, and fifteen minutes later – Tilda the fastest shower taker in all the west - off she’d go to the Forest Service reception desk.
The car veered off the road and halted down at the railcars. Merritt backed up as far behind his houseline as possible while still maintaining a view of the railcars. Watching dust rise, he dialed Clay’s phone.
Late last night, sitting inside The Outpost, the lights off, all the cars gone, ice pressed against his head, Merritt, collapsed in his office chair, had taken a call from Clay.
Several stiff drinks had softened the pain from where the tall kid with the big nose had bashed Merritt. After the pain, Merritt was dealing with the shaking. The realization that just for the sake of pussy, and paying for that pussy, more and more people kept getting hold of his balls and the potential for squeezing if not outright ripping them clean off. Tilda was beautiful. Blonde going all white, and some deal with the devil paying off, wrinkles here and there, but she was still capable of looking across a room, meeting his eyes and emptying his lungs. Thing was, she just wasn’t a screamer, a squirmer, and she’d stopped giving him head shortly after the wedding. Out at Butcher’s Camp Massage he’d paid to experience those options. Multiple times.
When Clay called late last night, Clay was at the hospital with Bret. Post-stun gun, Bonnie wasn’t doing so hot. On the drive to La Grande Bret had pulled over, stopped, thrown open the back seat doors and jammed his thumb into his sister’s mouth to keep her from biting off her tongue. Recovering from his stun gunning, Clay immobile in the front passengers seat, only able to hear Bonnie make noises. Once arrived in La Grande, all sorts of hospital tubes were hooked up to Bonnie. Monitoring. The baby might be fine. The little heart might still be beating a trip hammer beat, but after the stun gun experience, the brains might be a ruin.
Clay had given Merritt a simple job. Merritt spots that piece of shit, he calls Clay. That’s it.
Dialing Clay, Merritt looked up the street towards Auntie’s. The old boys crew holding forth on gravel had disintegrated down to just Hudson and Henderschott.
Clay answered after three rings. “It’s Clay,” he said.
“It’s me. Merritt. I think I see him.”
“Who?”
Merritt supplanted the impulse to rip Clay a new one.
The Pope. No, Merritt was calling to tell him the squirrel from the Zippy Mart sign was at it again, dry humping the Patriot’s Kiosk.
“Sipe.”
“Where?”
“The railcars.”
“What the fuck’s he doing there?”
“Ask him yourself. I’m done. I did what you wanted.”
“Watch him,” said Clay. The signal quality frayed, turned watery, went mineral and echo-like, Clay in a satellite orbiting earth.
“That’s all I’m going to do. And you can have the $500 back. For last night. I don’t want it.”
“Is anyone with him? No. Fuck it. Fuck it. I don’t care. Fuck it. Bret. Me and Bret. Payback time. Like a bitch.”
Over the phone, Merritt heard an engine turn over. Then a high pitch shriek. The jeep roared to life. Merritt could almost picture some high-density explosion, something apocalyptic, Clay in jeep flying out the fireball towards earth. He hung up.
Merritt walked the usual route to The Outpost, west to east, along the city park.
He looked over his right shoulder at the old Ruchert place. Far as he knew, when the big boy wasn’t out at Butcher’s Camp, Bret still lived there with his mom. Nothing big and slow lumbered out from under all the tree limbs out into the light.
Merritt turned left and walked north on Woodruff Road towards Main Street and his business. Some days Tilda drove to work. Just to have the car handy. He looked back at the Ruchert house. Placid. A moss licked shingle shack hunched behind weeds and low slung cedar limbs.
From The Outpost parking lot, he looked southwest, past the city park brick barbecue, the see saws, the jungle gym, the epic pine tree, towards the far corner, waiting to see Tilda, either on foot or driving their car. Earlier, right before heading out to join up with the boys for that morning coffee, he’d looked out the picture window, across the park, seen Clay had claimed his jeep from The Outpost parking lot at some point. Tilda had snuck up on him. Leaned her chin on his shoulder, asked what was so interesting out there in the big bad world.
She’d already asked so many questions about his bruises. She didn’t approve of his stoicism, not wanting to bring cops into some broil up in front of the Up’n Up late last night after wrapping up a favor for the Ruchert’s, hosting their business meeting. Merritt had made up something chivalrous and human, demeaning, a drunk and his drunk girlfriend getting into it, Merritt trying to play peacemaker, instead getting thrashed on by both parties, the woman the more violent of the two. Come to his senses the man had pulled his lady off, apologized to Merritt. Both short and fat, near lethal. You just never knew people. What they were capable of. Tilda had laughed and told him that wasn’t always true. She knew him. Knew him through and through.
Watching his wife of 20-odd years walk across Old Woods Road onto Gompers towards her job he wondered what Tilda would think about those plans for Tiffany Pleshette whipped up by Bonnie, and Merritt, only too ready, too scared, to comply.