He could barely breathe. “I’m sorry.” He measured each word, one syllable at a time. “I fought hard for the record, but there’s no way to reverse the decision. It’s final.”
He waited a moment, then said, “Now they’re sending me to Greece.”
“When?”
“Today.”
“You used me,” she said.
“No. I didn’t—”
“You broke your promise to me and the whole town.”
She didn’t sob, but tears fell down her cheeks. He reached out and touched her arm. She shook off his hand.
“You think I wanted it to turn out this way? I didn’t know how to tell you last night. I thought I could save it—”
They were on Highway 8 just outside of town. An empty two-lane road. Willa braked hard in front of the Animal Hospital, a small cinder-block building. The truck rocked on its springs. “You’re here,” she said.
“Willa. Please.”
“Get out.”
She wouldn’t look at him. He opened the door and slid from the truck. Stood on asphalt and watched her screech away.
“Willa!” he called.
The truck kept going, and his heart ached even more than his battered nose.
A poster on the wall showed the respiratory ailments most commonly associated with poultry. Another gave the five critical criteria for diagnosing a bovine hernia. The examination room was big, tiled in white, with a stainless steel table in the middle.
J.J. sat on the cold surface, legs dangling over the edge. Doc Noojin wore a white coat and a stethoscope around his neck.
“If a cow’s nose was broken,” Doc said, “this is what I’d do to it.” He put two big hands on J.J.’s face. “This would hurt the cow, so—”
With a quick, jerking movement, he wrenched the busted nose.
J.J. let out a primal scream that silenced the hospital and the kennel. Not a beast stirred.
“There,” Doc said. “Cow’s nose would now be reset.”
Cow’s nose would now be reset….
J.J. dreaded how he would look when the swelling was gone. He feared the nose that once savored the exotic aroma of Bedouin camel would never work properly again. His perfect nose.
“What about painkillers?” he said.
“Well …” Doc scratched his beard. “A cow with a broken nose would take phenylbutazone. It comes in a big pill.”
He reached into a drawer and found a bolus the size of a salami.
“Let’s see, you’re about one-fifth the size of a cow, if you get my drift. You do the math.”
J.J. tried to follow through the haze in his head.
“Everything will be fine in a few weeks,” he heard Doc say. “Although this cow we’ve been talking about won’t win any beauty contests for a while.”
J.J. looked in the mirror. He was barely recognizable. His eyes were slits encircled by black-and-blue rings.
“Thanks, Doc,” J.J. said, his voice as flat as his face.
He climbed off the examining table, grabbed the giant pill, and headed for the door. Every dog barked at him as he left the hospital and walked slowly back into town. Cars and trucks ignored him as they passed.
At the corner of Central and Fourth, he stopped and touched his nose. The pain was justified, even satisfying. It was punishment for the suffering he had caused.
He heard his dad’s voice. “Stick to the straight and narrow, son. Stay in your own lane.” For the first time in his life, he had ignored the advice and single-handedly caused a multicar wreck. How had he managed to screw everything up so badly?
Would he ever like himself again?
It was time to leave this forsaken place where the sky was gray and the old wind blew. J.J. looked down the empty expanse of Main Street. All the flags and banners had been carried off, the souvenir stands carted away. For a moment, Superior had tasted greatness, but now everything was back to normal. Except everything was changed forever.
SEVENTEEN
Erushed from his bed, threw on his overalls, and went straight to the barn. He didn’t bother to stop and look out on his empty fields. He didn’t spend a moment studying his pasture, grass all flattened where the news organizations had built their pavilions. He was glad they were gone. They only muddied what was once crystal clear. Never mind all that. No time to look back.
There was serious work to do.
He went straight to the great contraption in the barn. He spent the morning meticulously examining every part, oiling the gears, changing the belts. He had taken the machine for granted. It ground down a 747 without so much as a squirt of oil in appreciation. Now it needed care and attention.
He scrubbed grit from the gear box, washed dust from the fans. The work was cleansing. It was, in the purest sense, a labor of love. He never wanted the record in the first place. He just wanted to show Willa he would do anything for her. And that was what he would do.
As a boy, he’d gone with his father to see the Cornhuskers play football at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln. He remembered the inscription over Gate 4, carved in stone: “Not the victory but the action; not the goal but the game; in the deed the glory.”
They were fighting words. Winning words.
The record didn’t matter. Only the love did.
He changed the spark plugs and filters. When he was finally done with every crank and lever, the sun was straight overhead and it was so hot, it hurt. Arf watched from the shadows of the barn as Wally marched out to the last remaining section of the 747, the vertical and horizontal stabilizers. It was all gone but the tail fin, covered with a 20-foot wooden scaffold. He climbed up with his saw and began working on the rudder and dual hydraulic actuators. It wouldn’t take long to polish off the fin. If he really chowed, without interruption, he would be done. Finally.
No matter what they did to him, no matter what they thought or said about him, they would never be able to take this away.
He would eat the plane, no matter what.
He found her by the river, sitting on the mossy trunk of an old cottonwood that had toppled into the water. She heard him coming down the path.
“I wanted to see you before I left.”
“How’d you find me?” she asked.
“I made Iola talk.” He smiled as best he could given the wad of a bandage across his nose. “Something to be said for looking scary.”
“There’s really nothing left to say.”
“Sure there is. Please, may I join you?”
Willa shrugged. He sat down on the trunk not far from her. She was still wearing the shorts and T-shirt from the morning, but she’d kicked off her shoes and was dangling her toes in the water. The stream was flat and low. Crickets buzzed, and birds quarreled in the trees. Her face was streaked from crying.
“You didn’t have to come,” she said. “I’ll be fine. It’s better if we just forget what happened.”
“I can’t do that,” he said. “I’m sorry about everything.”
Willa raised her eyes. “Yeah, well, it was my mistake too. I thought we were falling in love.”
She reached for a stone, skimmed it across the smooth stream. Then another rock.
“The record is 38 skips,” he said. “Wimberley, Texas. It was quite a—”
She motioned with her hand. Stop it.
Then she said, “I looked up the Taj Mahal. You said it was the greatest place in the world because of the architecture, the symmetry, the style.”
“I remember.”
“That’s the difference between us. You see the statistics, the surface. I see something else.”
She threw another rock.
“It’s love, not marble, that made the Taj Mahal,” she said. “A prince loved a princess so much he built it for her as a monument when she died.”
J.J. ached as he looked at Willa. She was beautiful in ways that had nothing to do with the distance between her eyes or the ratio of her waist and hips. She saw deeply where he did not. She would have led him to tho
se places, shown him those feelings.
“You only see the statistics and the tonnage,” Willa told him. “Maybe that’s why you and I were never meant to be.”
The breeze picked up and sent fluffs from the cottonwood trees down onto the water.
“You’re right,” he said. “Wally’s building you the monument. He never wanted a world record, he never wanted the attention. He only wanted to show you how much he loves you.
“I ruined something pure and beautiful,” he continued. “I barged in with The Book, didn’t listen to him, didn’t listen to you. I destroyed something truly great.”
Dragonflies zipped over the grass.
Willa’s voice, when she spoke, was strained. “You should go.”
J.J. took one last look at her. Memorized her face, her eyes, her halo of wild hair.
“I won’t forget our time together,” he said.
He wanted to kiss her, but she turned away, set her gaze on a rock far downstream. As if she were erasing him, as if he had simply stopped existing. He wanted to die.
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
Then he began the long, sad climb up the path and away.
She stayed by the river all afternoon. It was her sanctuary, where she had fished with her father, floated on inner tubes with her friends. Now she had to cope with this memory: J.J., his face swollen and bruised, telling her he was leaving, that he would never forget her. The words came from him as if they made perfect sense. Leaving, remembering, good-bye.
She tiptoed into the stream and watched the carp nip at the fluffs of cotton that floated on the surface. She washed her face and dried it with The Book of Records T-shirt that he had given her.
She had fallen fast for him and with good reason. His worldliness. Something about his funny way of projecting statistics onto everything—as if all those numbers would protect him from his feelings. Something about the way he ate corn on the cob, rotating the ear like a lathe. Something about his frayed collars. The sweet way he looked when he said her name. Willa. As if he wanted to hold the word in his mouth for as long as he could.
And yet …
She hated him for leading her on, for breaking promises, for making Superior worse off for having believed in him. She should have known better than to give herself over so quickly, to open up, to care.
J.J. was right. Wally was the man building her the Taj Mahal. He was the only one who ever had. He might be the only one who ever would. And she knew just what she had to do.
EIGHTEEN
A cloud of dust rose up on the road. Wally recognized the truck by the clanking engine even before the old green Ford pulled up to the porch. He knew he should offer to tune the thing up for her. But when he saw her, his throat went dry and he reached for his root beer. He choked on the aluminum grounds.
Willa stepped out of the truck and slammed the door. Her hair was loose and wet. She wore a white blouse, a simple skirt, and sneakers.
“Hey,” she said. Arf wagged his tail, trotted down the steps and licked her hand. “Hi, boy.”
“Evening,” Wally said. “Didn’t expect to see you out here again.”
“Sorry. I should have called.”
“No. Glad to see you.” He worried why she had come, yet at the same time, whatever the reason, he was happy just to look at her, an apparition, so beautiful.
“Get you something to drink?”
“Sure,” she said.
“Juice? Beer? Stabilizer?”
“A Bud would be great.”
Wally went into the dark coolness of the house. He was flabbergasted. What was she doing there? Had she noticed the 747 was almost gone, not much more than a bunch of bones in the yard? He checked the mirror on the way to the kitchen. His hair was askew and he had crumbs on his chin. Not exactly the way he wanted her to see him. This was the first time she had visited, not counting the time she came to pay her respects when his parents died. He mashed his hair down and wiped his face, hoping he looked human enough, even if his face wasn’t at all symmetrical.
He rinsed metal grounds out of the bottom of a glass, filled it with beer, and brought it out to the back porch. Willa was sitting on the steps, her back up against a column, legs propped up on a bag of seed.
“How you getting on?” she asked.
“Fine,” he said. “Hoping for a good harvest. Fingers crossed.”
She looked out at the fields. “Sure is quiet out here.”
“Sure is. All those folks made so much noise, I couldn’t think straight or get much sleep.”
“Glad they’re gone?”
“Yup. Just me and Arf again. The way we like it.”
Wally took a drink, then said, “So what brings you to the country?”
He watched as she seemed to search for the right words. She looked at the fin of the 747 rising against blue sky. One last section of the plane. The rest, devoured, every frame and stringer, because of his insatiable love.
Finally she spoke.
“I want you to stop. I want you to quit eating the plane.”
He measured her words, thought for a while, then said, “But I’m almost finished, Willa. Just a little bit more to go.”
“It’s over. There’s not going to be any record. There’s just no point.”
“There is a point,” he said. “I never cared about all that. You know why I’m doing this. I wanted your attention.”
Willa looked him full in the eye. “You’ve got my attention.”
He let the moment hang. “I wasn’t sure you noticed.”
“Of course I did. How could I miss it?”
Willa laughed and Wally guffawed a bit too loud. The wind came up and rustled the maple tree. Arf panted. A pretty harmony. Maybe it would last just a bit longer. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
“Want to stay for dinner?” he asked. “I’ve got a ham.”
“Love to,” Willa said.
She curled up on his old sofa. Wally liked seeing her shoes lined up neatly on top of the Persian rug that belonged to his grandma and grandpa. Their pictures, old sepia photos, looked down on the beat-up lowboy. Always stern-faced and disapproving, they seemed to smile this night.
“So, what made you decide to eat the plane?” Willa asked when dinner was over and the dishes were washed.
It was night. She was in his house. Eating his food, laughing at his jokes, sprawling on his furniture. This was the most amazing evening of his life. It had been worth every fastener, bolt, and spanner.
“It’s a long story,” he said.
“I’m in no hurry.”
Wally filled two mugs with coffee and brought one to Willa. He set his down on the table cut from a slab of oak. Then he sat down beside the woman of his dreams.
“It all started with Otto,” he said.
“Hornbussel?”
“He worked in the circus all his life, mostly as a clown, traveling the country. When he was home for vacation, I used to follow him around.”
Arf jumped up on the couch between them and nuzzled his nose into Willa’s lap.
“Remember the day I ate the thermometer?” he asked.
“Of course,” she said.
“Well, when Otto heard about it, he told me stories about the great international performers who ate dangerous things.”
“Like what?”
“There was a man in London who ate gravel and rocks. They called him Lithophagus. It’s Greek or something for stone eater. He was famous around the world. Another guy ate iron. People came to his shows with keys, pins, nutcrackers, bolts, and he chewed them up.”
“Never heard of such a thing.”
“It’s all in a book that I read. French guy named Dufour made his name eating burning oil, boiling tar, and acid.”
“Come on.”
“He finished off his show by eating the candlesticks and candles, leaving the theater in darkness.”
“This is all true?”
“Yup, and then Otto helped me cut up some car keys
with a pair of wire snips. I ate them. Some nails, too. From that moment, I knew exactly what I wanted to do when I grew up.”
“So what happened?”
“I wanted to join the circus,” he said, “but Otto wouldn’t let me. Told me I’d end up like him. Drunk. Poor. Alone. He said I should stay put and grow corn. Like Dad and Granddad before him.”
“You think you made the right choice?” “Sure,” Wally said, gazing into her face. “That’s why when the plane crashed in the field that night, I thought it was a godsend. A sign from up above.”
He looked into her lovely eyes. “And now I know it was.”
For all his size and strength, he was so gentle. They talked for hours. He was a good man, a kind man, a man who loved her. He was smart enough, and funny, too. He was peeling an orange for her with a buck knife. She looked at his hands. Cracked, weathered hands. His face wasn’t handsome, but it wasn’t homely. He had big shoulders and a reassuring calm.
“Did I do any permanent damage when I hit J.J.?” he asked.
“You squashed his nose, but he’ll live. He left town today for some unsuspecting country.”
“Can’t say I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want to talk about him.” And then, unable to stop herself, she did. She began describing the first time she saw him in the office. “Figured he was just another huckster, you know?”
Wally nodded. “You were right.”
“Yeah, but …”
She found herself describing the ways he had snuck right into her heart.
“We ended up in Righty’s field. Eggs flying toward me, rolling end over end. We tried for a world record. It wasn’t his idea. It was mine!
“Then Blake tried to fly to Kansas, and J.J. climbed the water tower and got him down. Pulled the little twerp out of the clouds, deposited him safe and sound on the ground.”
“The least he could do,” Wally said.
Willa stared off into space. She saw a flicker of lightning, then a candle inside the Spartanette. Twenty-four hours ago she thought she had found love….
Wally coughed. His face was stiff. All at once, he didn’t look well. She didn’t want to hurt him, but all she could do was talk about J.J. She reached over, took his hand.