Chemistry and Other Stories

Deep Gap

After the second time his hardware store had been robbed, both times at night, Marshall Vaughn bought a pistol. He kept it under the counter, but unlike his younger brother, Keith, a highway patrolman, Marshall was sixty before he needed to point the pistol at another human being, and it wasn’t in his store but in an apartment 150 miles away.

He had not killed the men, but he knew he could have and would have if they’d not left when he told them to. At the time, it was as if some part of himself left his body, the way people claimed in near-death experiences. He’d seen not only his son and the two black men but himself as well, as though he were watching the whole event from behind a one-way mirror. Later Marshall wondered if somehow his soul had indeed left his body the moment he’d stepped inside that apartment.

What he’d found in there was worse than he had imagined, and what he’d imagined had scared him enough to bring the pistol. The door was unlocked, and inside all the shades were down and the only light came from a TV. The room reeked of unwashed flesh, spoiled food left on plates and in boxes, and whatever had filled the pipes strewn on the floor like toys after a child’s tantrum.

Brad did not turn his face from the TV screen when Marshall spoke his son’s name. Only the black men looked up.

“What the hell do you want?” one of the men demanded.

“He’s going home with me,” Marshall said.

There had been other words after that, and when things got to a point where words were useless, Marshall brought out the gun. The men left, and quick as Marshall loaded up Brad’s possessions in the Camry, he and Brad left also and drove west toward Deep Gap.

“Don’t you even care that you’re killing yourself?” Marshall asked, but his son did not reply. Instead, Brad leaned his head against the passenger-seat window and closed his eyes. As they drove out of the city Marshall remembered weekend fishing trips to Price Lake. They would leave at dawn, Brad sleeping all the way, but soon as Marshall parked the car Brad’s eyes would spring open and the boy would gather his rod and tackle box. They’d fish two hours and return home in time to open the hardware store at nine or, if it was Sunday, to get dressed for church. That was before Linda had come to find the role of mother and wife, in her words, “too confining.” After she left, there never seemed to be time for fishing trips.

MARSHALL WENT BACK to Brad’s apartment the next weekend, and he drove his pickup instead of the Camry. He cleaned up the place as best he could, filling the back of the truck with bulging trash bags. He settled up with the apartment complex manager. While still in the city limits he stopped at a convenience store and threw the trash bags in a Dumpster. He wanted to carry as little of Charlotte back to Deep Gap as possible.

Now, six months later — after Brad’s two months in a drug rehab center, after two more months with a counselor in Lenoir — two young men came into the hardware store and Marshall soon realized nothing but the locale and the skin color of the drug dealers had changed.

“What can I do for you?” Marshall asked when the one whose eyes were not hidden by a Carolina Panthers ball cap stepped closer. The man pulled a check out of his jeans pocket and laid it on the counter. Marshall read the name on the check and the amount and then looked back at the man who stood before him. He wore a black T-shirt that provided a sharp contrast to the pale, unlined skin, the long, blond hair and wispy mustache. Marshall guessed him to be in his mid-twenties.

“It bounced,” the man said. The voice did not sound native, and Marshall guessed he was probably a college student who’d stayed in Boone after graduating or flunking out. The man nodded at the check. “We want our money.”

The other young man stepped closer and Marshall saw enough of a face beneath the cap’s bill to recognize Larry Crawford’s youngest son, Jared. He and Larry had grown up together back when Boone was a one-stoplight town. They’d attended the same schools and the same church, and now Larry ran a service station in Boone just two blocks from Vaughn Hardware.

“We didn’t want to go to the bank about this check, Mr. Vaughn,” Jared said, his eyes hidden by the cap. “We figured we ought to come to you first.”

“I’ve got a feeling your father wouldn’t be too proud of you right now,” Marshall said.

The other blond-haired man spoke.

“This doesn’t concern his father. It’s about getting what’s owed us.”

Marshall paid them, and though it was only four-thirty he put the Closed sign on the front door. As he drove down Main Street he passed Blue Ridge Texaco. Larry Crawford cleaned the windshield of a car parked in front of the full-service island. Unlike Marshall, Larry hadn’t had the chance to buy out a sibling and own a family business. “Must be nice to have something like that handed to you,” Larry had said to him once. “All my old man gave me was some good whippings and a final hospital bill to pay off.” Marshall had been surprised at the bitterness in Larry’s voice. Marshall wondered if it was possible some part of Larry might be pleased that a Vaughn owed a Crawford money, even if that money was for drugs.

There were eight stoplights in Boone now. Traffic moved in congested lurches from one light to the next. Ten minutes passed before Marshall got to the turnoff that took him toward Deep Gap, toward the trailer he’d rented for Brad three months ago. The trailer sat on land three miles from Marshall’s house, the house Brad had grown up in. Close to home but far enough away, as the counselor had suggested, that Brad felt some independence. Which was also the reason for the checking account, another of the counselor’s suggestions.

ONCE HE WAS clear of the Boone city limit sign, Marshall turned on the radio. An archaeologist discussed recent evidence that the Americas had been inhabited by humans much earlier than previously thought, and not only by people of Asian origin but also by Africans and Europeans. These earlier cultures had their own distinct ways of making tools, their own burial customs and languages. Then they had simply disappeared. No one knew if they’d died out because of famine or disease or had been annihilated or assimilated by other tribes.

The Camry Marshall had given Brad so he could drive to work and to counseling was parked by the trailer. Marshall didn’t knock before he entered. Brad lay sprawled out on the couch, watching cartoon characters flash across the TV screen. The flesh around his eyes was puffy. Brad wore only a pair of ragged boxer shorts, though the window air-conditioning unit cooled the room enough that condensation formed on the windows. The trailer reeked of drugs. It was like formaldehyde to Marshall, an odor not forgotten once smelled.

“Why aren’t you at work?” he asked.

Brad did not look away from the cartoon.

“Didn’t feel up to it.”

“Jarvis Greene did me a personal favor hiring you,” Marshall said. “The least you can do is show up for work.”

Marshall took the check from his pocket and held it out to his son.

“I paid it, but I swear to God I won’t the next time.”

“So,” Brad said. “I never asked you to pay it. I never asked for that job either.”

Marshall had never struck his son, never even spanked him, but a part of him wanted to strike him now, this moment, and not stop until he drew blood, maybe not stop even then. Like six months earlier in Charlotte, it was as though a door stood before him that, once opened, he’d never be able to close. Marshall made himself speak, afraid to let the silence intensify what he felt.

“I’m the only person on this earth that gives a damn about you. Your drug dealers don’t. You sure don’t.”

Marshall did not mention Brad’s mother. That was understood, had been for a decade. Still, a part of Marshall wanted to mention her, wanted to say, whether it was true or not, that much of what had gone wrong in Brad’s life could be traced back to her desertion.

“That counselor is right about one thing, Son. If you don’t think your life’s worth something, then sooner or later no one else will.”

Marshall paused at the door.

“Don’t miss work again. Jarvis Greene’s not going to put up with that kind of sorry behavior, and I wouldn’t expect him to.”

As he drove back to the store, Marshall wondered if he’d made Brad go to college at Appalachian instead of UNC, Charlotte, or if Linda had left a few years later, his son’s life might have been different. Once Linda was gone, should he have closed the hardware store at four instead of six. When Brad had grown more remote, should he have tried harder to talk to him, kept better tabs on him during high school.

Marshall wanted to believe that there was no single moment in Brad’s life when it all began to go wrong — a moment that might have been avoided. He wished he could believe that whatever had so flawed his son was inevitable, no different than a child born with cerebral palsy or a malfunctioning heart.

WHEN HE GOT back to Boone, Marshall thought about phoning Keith at the highway patrol office, then decided to walk down to Blue Ridge Texaco instead. Larry Crawford was in the garage changing the oil on a Mercedes with Florida plates, his hands and forearms and brow blackened by oil and grease. Larry tightened the drain plug and stepped out from under the car.

“What you need, Marshall?” he asked as he wiped his hands on a rag.

“If you got a minute I’d like to talk to you about our boys.”

“I got a minute,” Larry said.

Marshall told him about the visit that morning in the hardware store, about the check and what that check was for.

Larry stuffed the rag in his back pocket.

“Jared’s twenty-five years old,” Larry said. “Like your son he’s a man and way past the time for me to tell him what he can and can’t do.”

“So this doesn’t bother you?” Marshall asked.

“I didn’t say that,” Larry said.

“You’re telling me it’s something you’d have considered doing when we were his age?” Marshall asked. “I know you better than that.”

“You know me, do you?” Larry said. He wiped sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand, lengthening the black smudge on his brow. “Well, I’ll tell you something. I don’t blame Jared. I’m fifty-eight years old, and I spend my day changing oil and pumping gas for college students and tourists so my boss can afford a second home at Myrtle Beach. And what have I got? I’m near deaf and my back and knees hurt all the time. I wouldn’t want Jared to live as sorry a life as this.”

“Even if it means going to jail if he gets caught?” Marshall asked.

“There’s all different kinds of jails.”

“I can tell Keith about what Jared is doing,” Marshall said, “and you can bet he’ll put an end to it. I almost did but came to see you instead.”

A Jeep pulled up to the full-service island.

“You’ll do what you’re going to do,” Larry said. “Just make sure you ain’t blaming the wrong person for your boy’s problem.”

Larry took out the rag and wiped his hands again.

“I got work to do,” he said and walked toward the Jeep.

THAT NIGHT MARSHALL had trouble sleeping. He woke at first light and could not fall back asleep. He dressed and made coffee, then went out to sit on the front porch. He owned twelve acres but each year his land seemed less a homestead than a shrinking island. Developers had bought up most of the surrounding farms and turned them into subdivisions and gated communities. There had been a time he knew every man, woman, and child in Deep Gap on a first-name basis. A time he could see only one other house from his front porch. Now he could see two dozen, their yards and driveways replacing what were once pastures and fields.

“Cultures disappear, are replaced by other cultures, and that’s as it should be,” the archaeologist on the radio had said. Marshall had no problem understanding the disappearing part. As a child, he’d found arrowheads and pottery shards in his neighbors’ fields, occasionally even in the vegetable garden his father tilled behind the house. They surfaced from the ground like afterthoughts, something briefly remembered before being forgotten again.

And not so different from the men who’d once come into the hardware store on Saturdays. Men who wore dirt-crusted brogans and Red Camel overalls and who after their sales were rung up lingered awhile to talk, sometimes about hunting and fishing, sometimes religion and politics, inevitably, the weather.

Only a few such men were left in the county now, all old. They’d been replaced by college professors and wealthy retirees, people who liked the “quaintness” of Marshall’s store — the smell of linseed oil on the oak floors, the potbellied stove and ceiling fan. That was why they shopped at Vaughn Hardware instead of True Value or Kmart. Marshall knew they found him and his mountain accent quaint as well, were always surprised and a little disappointed when they came in and heard NPR on the radio, or found out he had a degree in agriculture from N.C. State.

“You’re a dying breed,” a retiree from Ohio had told him last month. “When that Wal-Mart comes next year they’ll cut your business in half.”

At a few minutes after eight, just as Marshall prepared to leave for Boone, the phone rang.

“I had to fire Brad,” Jarvis Greene said. “You know how it is with a construction crew. You let one man lay out and pretty soon the whole crew figures they can get away with it as well.”

“I know,” Marshall said. “You gave him a chance. That’s all I expected and I appreciate your doing that.”

Marshall put down the receiver. For a few moments he debated calling either the counselor in Lenoir or his brother at the highway patrol office. But he didn’t. As he drove to the hardware store, Marshall remembered the first months after Linda had left, how Brad, though twelve at the time, had insisted on sleeping with him every night. Once the boy had waked him at three in the morning. “You won’t ever leave me?” he’d asked, and Marshall had held him close and promised he never would. At that moment Marshall knew Brad would have made the same promise to him had he asked. But not now, Marshall thought, not now.

TWO WEEKS PASSED before Jared Crawford showed up at the hardware store, another worthless check in his hand. He came in alone.

“I’m not giving you anymore money,” Marshall said.

“Somebody’s got to pay us,” Jared said, refusing to meet Marshall’s eyes. “Me and John got people to pay too.”

“Then why did you take a check you knew was worthless, Jared?” Marshall asked.

“We got to be paid,” Jared said, his cheeks reddening, still not meeting Marshall’s eyes.

At least he’s got some sense of shame about this, Marshall thought.

“You take that up with Brad,” he said. “That’s between you and him.”

“We’ve already did that,” Jared said. “He said he didn’t have any money.”

“Where is your buddy?” Marshall asked.

“He wouldn’t come, didn’t want me to come here either. He wants to go over to Brad’s trailer and take Brad’s TV and CD player. If that don’t make us square he figures to take the rest out of Brad’s hide.”

Jared finally looked at him.

“He’s going to do that this afternoon, Mr. Vaughn, if you don’t pay. That’s why I came.”

“I’m not going to pay,” Marshall said. “I told you that once already. How about leaving now. Some folks actually still work for a living.”

Only a few customers came in during the afternoon, so Marshall spent much of the time unloading boxes in the back room. There had been changes in the front part of the store — fluorescent lights, electric heat, shelves stocked with bird and grass seed instead of tobacco and corn seed, lawn mowers and rakes filling corners instead of hoes and plows.

But the back room was the same as half a century ago when Marshall first began helping his father and grandfather run the store on weekends. A single dusty forty-watt bulb hung from the ceiling. Tin signs advertising DeKalb corn seed and Aladdin lamps were nailed on unpainted wall planks. The smell of sweet feed lingered, as did the smell of the Prince Albert pipe tobacco his grandfather and father had smoked. As Marshall opened the first box, he looked around and realized the world he understood had been reduced to this one room.

Marshall waited until four-thirty before he turned the sign on the door. He lifted the gun from under the counter and took it with him.

Once he got to Deep Gap he turned right at the intersection, opposite the road that led to Brad’s trailer. Marshall drove slowly past where his elementary school had been, past the land his grandparents had once owned. He drove up back roads he hadn’t been on in years. He looked through the present into the past, bringing back farmhouses and barns and pastures and woods.

He did not drive to Brad’s trailer until the dashboard clock said six. The only car parked out front was the Camry. The TV and radio were gone and an open window gaped where the air-conditioning unit had been. Brad lay on the bed in the back room. One eye was swollen completely shut, and a cut below the eye would need stitches. When Marshall asked if anything was broken, Brad pointed to his ribs. Marshall pressed the flat of his hand against his son’s left side and the boy’s face tightened.

Marshall had learned in Charlotte he could take another man’s life. Now he believed he could take his own. He stepped back from his son and showed the pistol, past some point he could not give a name to.

“If you want me to end this right now I’ll do it,” Marshall said, “but it’s got to be both of us. I’ll even go first if that’s what you want.”

Brad started to speak, but Marshall stopped him.

“Don’t answer quick. Think about it first and think about it hard.”

Marshall laid the gun on the bedside table, then walked into the front room. He stared through the open window where the air conditioner had been. Osborne Mountain rose in the distance, above it a blue sky so deep it seemed not so much a color as a clearness beyond distance and time. Marshall knew there were houses on that mountain but distance and summer foliage hid them. Eight or ten thousand years ago a man would have seen nothing more than this, a leaf-greened mountain and a blue sky.

When he went back the gun was on the table.

“So you want me to go first?” Marshall asked.

“No, I don’t want that, for you or me,” Brad said. “I want to get better.”

Marshall felt more resignation than relief when he heard his son’s words. There would be no quick fixes for either of them. It might take weeks or months or even years before either one of them knew if Brad could live the truth of what he now claimed. But that was what he would do, try to save his son, because there was nothing else left to save.

“Can you walk?” Marshall asked, and Brad shook his head.

Marshall lifted his son from the bed. Though Brad was thirty pounds lighter than Marshall, it still wasn’t easy. Just getting him off the bed and into his arms took several tries, and he nearly tripped going down the trailer’s cement steps. By the time Brad lay on the Camry’s backseat Marshall gasped for breath.

Brad had not moaned or whimpered though Marshall knew the jostling must have been excruciating. As he drove toward the hospital Marshall remembered another moment years earlier when he’d made a similar trip.

Brad was playing in the creek below the house and had come too close to a hornets’ nest. Marshall was on the front porch reading the paper when the boy came running toward him, hornets swirling around his terrified face like a malevolent halo.

Marshall had run to meet him, swatting the hornets with the paper, picking them off the boy’s skin and hair. He’d been stung several times himself, but Brad had been stung a dozen times, all on the face and neck. Linda hadn’t been home, so Marshall had laid Brad in the backseat of the Plymouth station wagon.

“It’s going to be all right,” he’d reassured his son that morning twenty years earlier. He said those same words now, willing himself and Brad to believe them as they rode together toward a place where the injured came to be healed.