Near Gary he turned off the interstate and wound along state routes, until he came to an intersection he hadn't seen for years, but remembered perfectly: Poindexter Road and Route 224. One sign pointed left toward Chesterton, six miles away, the other to his hometown of Marshall, four miles. He paused under a maple canopy of yellow and crimson, his head swiveling.
The pause, however, was only to let a Peterbilt stream past on the perpendicular. Once it was past, he turned decisively left and accelerated. There'd been no decision about which way to go.
Chesterton, Indiana, had a few upscale companies, like the one whose CEO he was set to see tomorrow, Hardwick Investments. He drove past it now, a two-story glass and metal structure in a groomed office park outside of town. But Hardwick was the exception. Soon he was into the real Chesterton, cruising by sagging and scabby one-level shipping companies and factories making products of mysterious purpose ("Compress-ease," "Multi-span Tensioner Plus," "Asphalux"). Plenty of abandoned ones, too. Forty, fifty years ago, when U.S. Steel and other heavy manufacturers were at capacity, there wasn't an empty commercial facility for miles around or an unemployed worker who didn't choose to be.
Hell of a lot different now, half ghost town.
Damn, I hate it here...
The Shady Grove Motel nestled in what was now better described as stump grove, thanks to Dutch elm, it looked like, but the place was otherwise pretty decent.
Ransom checked in and drove around back to his room, away from the busy road. He took a brief nap and then reviewed Joey's file again. He carefully went through his salesman sample bags, organizing the trays containing tools for cleaning and repairing computers. Everybody tended to think of computers in terms of software, forgetting they were also physical boxes with moving parts. Desktops sucked in plenty of crap and laptops not only did the same but also got tossed around mercilessly. If not properly cleaned, a computer could conk out at any time.
Ironically, though, it was the computer world itself that was endangering GKS Tech. People were now ordering more and more of the products online.
Thank you very much, TigerDirect.
The days of the traveling salesman would be over soon.
But Ransom knew he'd find something else that would suit. He'd always landed on his feet. He'd learned that early. His father had dropped out of community college and didn't value learning for anybody in the family. And so in reaction, Ransom decided that nothing was going to stop him when it came to education. Moderately smart, he'd muscled his way through high school by being extremely persistent. Faced with little money and less support after he graduated, the teenager did the army thing for two years, which let him slingshot his way into college, George Washington, in D.C., where he did very well. He foundered a bit after his discharge--Stan providing no guidance, of course--but Ransom heard back from one of his army buddies and the man hooked him up with some people in Baltimore. He took a temporary job that turned permanent. He'd never pictured himself in this line of work, but he turned out to be a natural.
Ransom Fell's ex could be wacky, with her walls of self-help books looming like glaciers in the living room of their old Baltimore apartment, but she was pretty sharp, Ransom never hesitated to admit, even to her. Beth would look at his situation with his father and diagnose that Stan Fells had not engaged in any "life lessoning" with his son. Instead, Ransom had to rely on "self-foundation-building," "me-ness," and "inner-core structuring." Despite the language, which could get even weirder, the ideas made sense. He would have phrased it more simply: Stan taught him shit and so he had to learn to fend for himself.
Which he did.
As for his mother, sure, she was there some of the time. Sure, she tried. But she largely checked out; who wouldn't with a husband like Stan? Besides, given his upbringing, Ransom figured a boy needs a mother only until he stops sucking and gumming pureed food. When the kid's able to walk, it's time for the other half of the act to step up. Your turn, Dad. Freud was totally screwed up--you don't want to kill your father; you want to go hunting with him, you want him to take you to a ball game. All. Nine. Fucking. Innings.
And with that thought he realized he was sitting forward in the cheap motel chair, hovering over his salesman's cases, shoulder muscles solid as a tire.
Shouldn't've come here.
The money's good. Gotta keep the boss happy.
Doesn't matter.
Shouldn't've come.
A little after six he worked out in the motel health club. For forty minutes he slammed along the treadmill and hefted free weights--30-pound barbells--as he worked up a good sweat despite the chill autumn air that bled into the underpopulated exercise room. These facilities were always kept cool in the motels and hotels. He was convinced it was to save money in heating costs and to discourage people from using them because of liability. A broken neck, despite the waiver, could be very, very expensive, he figured.
Ransom took a fiercely hot shower and at 8 p.m. he dressed in tan slacks and a dark shirt, pulled on his navy blue sports jacket and headed out the door. At the front desk a fifty-something guy who looked like a lifetime front desk clerk directed him to the Flame and Fountain, a steakhouse. He was there in five minutes. He hardly needed the restaurant's sign to find it. Out front an energetic, blue-lit water treatment surrounded an impressive plume of fire. Tacky, but the exhaust of grilled steaks was seductive.
He smiled at the hostess and passed her by. When traveling for work he never sat at tables, only the bar, which was what he did now.
Several stools away was a woman close to his age, late thirties. In front of her was a frothy drink in a martini glass with a stem the shape of a fat teardrop or skinny boob. It was that kind of bar.
Tacky...
Wearing a tan skirt and matching jacket, she was attractive, a little heavier than she probably would have liked but it was sensuous weight and definitely appealed to Ransom. Voluptuous. Her hair, probably bottle blond to combat premature white, not brunette, was matte textured and had been wrestled into a taut ponytail. When he'd sat down she didn't look his way. But then she wasn't looking at anything, except the New Yorker she gripped with fierce fingers, tipped in iron-clad red nails.
Ransom assessed: She'd broken up or divorced about five or six months ago and had finally decided the severing was for the best and was now determined to abandon the comfort of Haagen-Dazs or Doritos for the real world. And here she was, meeting that tough challenge head-on, no safety net, as a woman alone in a bar. You needed to be vigilant, confident and constantly measuring what came your way.
Ransom didn't think he'd have the energy to handle it.
He ordered a chardonnay, which turned out to be buttery and rich. Opening USA Today, he asked the bartender a few business traveler's questions about the area, more making conversation than satisfying curiosity. He noticed, through his periphery, that the woman glanced his way twice then returned to the magazine. The bartender moved on and this time when she looked toward him he noted--not directly but in the smoky mirror behind the bar--her eyes graze the ringless heart finger of his left hand.
Ransom gave it a few minutes longer then asked her politely if she'd eaten here and if so what was good.
Food is always a good intro (she'd had a decent chicken, she told him in a husky, humorous voice; but two steaks had walked by and they'd looked better). From that icebreaker there followed typical banter--careers first, of course, then glancing reference to exes and children (the former yes, the latter no, in both their cases), then sorties about TV shows and movies and media and very careful forays into politics and religion.
But still, an objective observer, fly on the wall, would note that they survived the ritual admirably, that the conversation flowed like silk and was buoyed with humor and that Ransom and Annie had more than a little in common. The New Yorker, NCIS, Dancing with the Stars and the guilty pleasure of Two and a Half Men, now that Sheen was gone. Cabs over pinots. They shopped at Whole Foods for special occasions, IGA or
Safeway normally. They each had secret indulgences: unshelled pistachios in her case, Mounds bars in his, a line that Ransom managed to deliver without a spark of lascivious intonation.
He had dinner--yes, a steak, which lived up both to her assessment and to the aromatic promise wafting through the parking lot. When he was through he talked her into sharing dessert, over two glasses of sweet wine.
And then, pushing ten o'clock, the night concluded. As indisputable as a chime, they both knew it was time to go.
But, the question remained, go where?
That inquiry was answered as soon as they were swathed in their coats and outside in the nose-tingling chill of the evening, under a dome of staccato stars. She said in that low voice of hers, "Walk me home? Just two blocks?"
"You bet."
And with that the night was settled. Love, or one of its many approximations, is always determined in subtle subtext.
They walked down a street canopied by rustling leaves, washed gray of autumn color because of the missing streetlights.
In the middle of a conversation about Miami, where Ransom had just been on business, she took his arm firmly. Her breast met his biceps with persistent pressure.
And sometimes, he reflected, the communications are less subtle than at others.
A moment later they heard a loud voice: "Hey, why're you with that old, you know, guy? You want a real dick?" The words slipped and slid as if they had vertigo.
He was stepping forward from an alley. The kid was white, acne speckled and beefy. Eighteen or maybe younger. Annie tensed immediately and Ransom increased the pressure on her arm as he led her around the boy.
"I'm talking to...you." His brows knitted belligerently but it was hard to bring off ominous since he couldn't focus.
Ransom smelled beer mostly and guessed his already hearty belly would swell to double its already impressive size in five years.
"What're we going to do?" she whispered.
"Just keep walking."
"Fucking slut. You're a fucking slut. You want a dick?"
"Go home," Ransom said calmly. "Get some sleep."
"I'll fucking take you down. I will. I'll fucking do it."
Tighter on Annie's arm, he moved to the left and then right, swerving slowly like a ship around an iceberg. The young man's eyes were swimming as he tried to follow them. Ransom decided that in the next sixty seconds the boy would jettison most of the alcohol that wasn't in his bloodstream and he wanted to make sure they weren't nearby when that happened.
The kid made a fist and stepped forward.
Ransom stopped and held up a hand, palm first. "Think about it."
"You asshole..."
"You hit me, it'll ruin your life. You'll be in jail for a year. You want to explain that to your parents? Your future employers?"
The hesitation was enough to let Ransom and Annie get a breaking-the-spell distance down the sidewalk.
"You're both fucking sluts," he shouted.
He didn't follow.
A half block away Annie whispered, "Oh, that was terrible." She was shaking. "I thought he was going to attack us."
"He couldn't do much damage in that condition."
Ransom looked back. The young man staggered around the corner and the sounds of what he'd predicted a moment ago floated unpleasantly into the sharp air.
The grunt, the groan, the splash.
Thinking suddenly of his mother.
Then, naturally, of his father, whose ghost seemed to be inescapable on this trip. A loner in school, skinny, Ransom was picked on a lot. He asked his father to teach him how to fight but the man scoffed. "Fighting's for fools. Don't ever get into a fight. You fight, I'll whip you."
"Why not?" young Ransom had asked, a bit confused about the apparent contradiction--and at the man's vehemence (he never spanked the boys).
But his father had offered a cool look that meant the conversation was over and made another phone call, lighting a cigarette. Ransom didn't get it at the time but he later decided that the reason he couldn't teach him self-defense was that he was all bluster. A coward.
And just like with schooling, Ransom made sure he didn't follow his father's path in this area either; his training in the army saw to that.
"You all right?" Annie asked.
"Fine." She'd be thinking he was tense about the real-life confrontation with the punk, not the remembered one with Stan.
She laughed. "I thought you were going to deck him." She squeezed his arm. "With those muscles you could have."
"We'll let somebody else teach him a lesson...Forgive me for not defending your honor."
"He called you a slut, too," Annie reminded.
Ransom frowned broadly. "Hey, that's right. And you didn't defend mine. I guess we're even."
Another husky laugh.
They arrived at her apartment.
She unlocked the front gate. He turned to her.
"So, is it good night?" Annie asked. Confident, prepared for rejection, prepared for the opposite.
Ransom read the signs. "No, it's not good night," he said firmly.
He had learned over the years--and not, of course, from his father--that indecision was usually a bad idea.
*
AT 2 A.M., RANSOM FELLS lay in Annie's bed, staring at the ceiling.
Then at her curled body, hair hovering stiffly around her angelic, pretty face, marred only by lipstick he himself had skewed. Her breathing was low and, even as she slept, seemed sultry.
For his part, though, Ransom was anything but peaceful. His jaw was tight. He was awash in that feeling yet again: the darkness, the bad, the guilt.
Not remorse for sleeping with her, of course. The evening had been completely mutual. He'd enjoyed her company and she his, he could tell, and the sex was pretty damn good, too. No, Ransom's heart was foundering because he knew very well it was going to end, and he knew how, too: thanks to him. Just like with Karen six months ago and Julia a few months before that.
Ransom still carried the glum residue of how those times--and plenty of others--ended, just as he would carry around the burden of his anticipated behavior with Annie.
Why couldn't he just feel good about meeting her?
He couldn't quite say why exactly, but, given his frame of mind, given this perverse sentimental journey, Ransom chose to blame his father. The man's distance, the failure to give his son guidance, to be a role model...that led to the conundrum: desperation to connect with these women, guilt when it was over.
Sometimes you just can't win.
A reluctant smile crossed his face. You come back to a place where for the first fourteen years of your life all you were aware of was your father's absence even though you were living in his house. Now, the man is dead and gone and yet he's everywhere.
Troubled thoughts finally gave way to sleep, though naturally it came packed with an anthology of troubled dreams.
*
IN THE MORNING, Ransom came out of Annie's bathroom, dressed, and he found her sitting up, smiling at him, the sheets ganging around her like an entourage.
Her look was pleasant and casual. And she asked, with no apparent agenda, if he wanted coffee and something to eat or had to be going. There was none of the edginess or downright bizarre behavior of some women at this stage of the liaison (like the one who had him listen to her entire playlist of Deer Tick, or the woman who got up at five to make him biscuits from scratch because he'd casually mentioned the night before at dinner that his grandmother made her own).
He told Annie he had a meeting but afterward he didn't necessarily have to scoot out of town too fast. Why didn't they talk later?
Her eyes narrowed.
Had he done something wrong?
She asked, "Did you actually say 'scoot'?"
His brow furrowed, too. "Can that just be our secret?"
"Deal."
She eased forward, wrapping the sheet around her, and kissed him. He gave her his phone number and then he was heading b
ack to the Shady Grove.
As it turned out, though, his plans altered. He got a message that John Hardwick would not be back into town until late that afternoon.
Irritated at the delay, Ransom Fells considered these unexpected free hours. And suddenly he decided on bald impulse to do something inconceivable.
He'd go visit his childhood home.
*
POPULATION 14,000.
The color of the timid sign welcoming drivers to Marshall was green, not white, which it had been when the Fells were living here but Ransom believed the number on it was the same. Could this be true, the town had not shrunk or grown in twenty years? Or had the city elders not bothered to transpose census data?
Marshall was a town that tended to ask, Why bother?
While Chesterton lived in the shadows of U.S. Steel, Marshall didn't even have the shabby grandeur of industry as a jewel in the crown. No looming cooling towers, no massive concrete blockhouses of refineries or smelters or assembly plants, no sweeping rusty vistas of marshaling yards (the name came from a minor nineteenth-century explorer, not railroad tracks), no faded, graffiti'd signs from the past century proclaiming its position in the economic spine of the nation.
Chesterton Makes, the Country Takes.
Even though the paraphrased words were stolen from Trenton, New Jersey, at least Chesterton could make the claim in honesty.
Not so, Marshall. Here were trash yards, smoldering tire dumps, service stations unspruced by national franchises, shopping centers surrounded by crumbling asphalt parking lots, anchored by small grocery stores not Targets or Walmarts. Pawn shops aplenty. The downtown featured mom-and-pop storefronts veiled with sun-blocking sheets of orange vinyl, shading products like office supplies, tube TVs and girdles. The movie theater, in which Ransom had spent a lot of his youth, usually alone, was closed. What was left of the poster on the front was nearly impossible to make out, but Ransom believed it depicted a young Warren Beatty.
The land was largely flat, both in geometry and color, and the billboards and roadside signs were bleached and crackled like Chinese pottery. The only bright hues came from death--the exiting leaves of maple and oak trees.