Nothing but Blue Skies

11

By walking the creek bottom through the sparsely settled neighborhood, single file, they approached the small, run-down house of Boyd Jarrell. The muddy banks of the creek made a coarse sucking sound around their shoes as they walked. By the time they got close, hunkered down in the red willows and startling clouds of red-winged blackbirds, only Frank still had shoes on, and that was because his laced up. The others had lost theirs in the mud. Their legs were black almost to their knees, and those who had tried to retrieve their shoes, Lucy and June, had black arms. Frank tried over and over again to get them to be quiet, but they chattered away and laughed through their noses when he signaled at them with downward cuts of his right arm and mimed the words “Keep it down!” When they were close, he stopped and said in a low anchorman voice, “If he hears us, he might start shooting.” He got perfect silence.

A bank of untended lilacs enclosed a small back yard with a picnic table that had built-in bench seats on either side, a burn barrel, a clothesline, a swing set (Does he have kids? Frank wondered. How can I not know if he has kids?), a barbecue with a red enamel lid and a crooked little crabapple tree still in blossom. An open lighted window faced into this yard and there was a table just inside the window at which sat Boyd Jarrell, apparently asleep with his head on his arms.

They managed to slip through the lilacs quietly and Frank whispered his plan for them to sit at the picnic table and observe. They didn’t quite understand, so he went forward and sat on one end of the bench seat facing the house. He gestured for the others to follow. June came and sat next to him, then Joanie. Finally, Lucy came and sat. It was her relatively light extra weight that caused the picnic table to flip over on top of them. Frank felt the wood press his face and heard June’s hissing Okie curses. Joanie was on all fours, bucking, trying to get it off all of them in one powerful gesture but then complained she had gotten splinters in her rump. Frank grasped the table and raised the whole thing back into place with a red face. Lucy remained sitting on the ground, cross-legged, muttering, “I just hate it.” Frank’s first concern was Jarrell, but he saw his position hadn’t moved. They sat again at the table, two on each side.

Then they watched.

“Is he asleep?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is he passed out?”

“That looks the same as asleep.”

“Where’s the little woman?”

“Nowhere to be seen. But you know what? He’s moving.”

He was. More than that, a continuous murmuring could be heard. Riveted, Frank tried hard to make it out.

“What’s he saying?” Lucy asked.

“I don’t know. If you promise to be quiet — Joanie, this goes for you — I’ll go up and listen.” Joanie covered her mouth with both hands. The others nodded compliance and Frank crept to the window. He listened until he could understand what Jarrell was repeating.

He was saying, “I have nothing, I have nothing.” It was a choking voice and Frank felt an immense weight fall upon him. He stood looking in the window until Jarrell became silent again, his head rested in his arms. And it wasn’t for a long moment before Frank was conscious of the burning eye that gazed out at him.

“Ladies,” he said in a clear voice. “I’m afraid he has seen me. Why don’t you get home as best you can. I’m going to have a word with Boyd.”

Boyd Jarrell rose slowly to his feet and his shadow shot across the yard. The women screamed and ran headlong into the willow bushes.

Frank wanted to slip away too, but this was his responsibility. He walked around to the door, which was unlighted. He tapped on it and got no response. He tapped again. Nothing. He opened the door. It seemed to open into the abyss.

“Boyd?”

He walked in.

“Boyd? It’s Frank.”

Frank walked around the house calling Boyd’s name. It was a plain house with a beer company print of Charlie Russell’s Last of the Ten Thousand for decoration. In the bedroom were a pair of dirty jeans over the back of a chair. The empty drawers of the dresser were pulled out. There were coat hangers on the floor and the closet was open, with a handful of worn snap-button shirts hanging inside and a battered pair of rough-out cowboy boots with curled-up toes.

He went back to the kitchen and looked in the pantry. There was a bottle of whiskey in there and he poured himself a shot at the sink and sat down. It was quiet. He sat and listened. He made out a train a long way off, then perfect quiet once again. He sensed that he was being watched from the side but didn’t turn that way for a moment, instead sipping the whiskey before deciding to look. He turned slowly and discovered a deer staring at him through the kitchen window. Beyond her, two others stood high on their back legs and ate the crabapples out of the tree in the yard. The deer faded from the window and Frank sighed. He made a note and weighted it with the whiskey bottle. The note said, “Stopped by — Frank.”

“Who’s the note for?”

Frank looked up. Boyd was in the room with him.

“Why, it’s for you, Boyd. I couldn’t find you.”

“I told the old lady to get lost. She didn’t want to get lost. So I helped her get lost.” His face looked dazed with backed-up rage. “Now I’m back.” Frank looked at the face. Boyd was almost beyond anger, his rage was so abstract. Frank felt himself turn helpless. This was just the moment when blood should have been flowing to his limbs, but it seemed to be going the other way. He felt like a flounder. He thought he might try defusing this situation by telling Boyd that he felt like a flounder, but there was not a lot of humor in the air.

“While I’ve got you,” he began.

“While you’ve got me?”

“Yes, while I’ve got you.”

“You’re not funny.”

“I didn’t think so, no,” Frank said. “What about the can. I use the can?”

“You gonna wet your pants?”

“Actually, possibly.”

“Go ahead, and then I want you right here.” Boyd gestured toward the hall with a jerk of his lips. He slowly wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as he watched Frank.

Frank went into the bathroom and closed the door. Then he turned around to look at the door. Good, a bolt lock. He locked it. Then he took in his surroundings. A toilet, a bathtub with a pipe ring around the top and a telephone-shaped shower head on a flexible metal pipe, and a big open window with the breeze pushing its plastic curtains.

“You better open up,” came Boyd’s voice. “I heard you lock it.”

Frank could see the door flexing against the restraint. He didn’t answer but looked at the window. He knew Boyd was thinking about the window too.

“I hope you’re not gonna watch me take a leak,” Frank said in a loud voice. He turned on the tap and hot water came out at a hard volume. When the steam billowed from the spray, he detached the shower head and stood next to the window. A few moments passed and Boyd lunged into the window space. Frank let him have it full in the face with the shower head. Boyd howled and went over backward. Frank ran through the bathroom door, up the hall, through the kitchen and out the front door.

Seeing Boyd come around the corner with one hand clapped to his face, Frank jumped into Boyd’s black Chevy half ton and got the doors locked before Boyd could arrive. Boyd picked up a rock from the driveway and brandished it alongside the driver’s window. Frank looked out, expressionless as a manikin, as he lifted his right hand slowly from his knee and felt the keys rattle against the back of his hand. He started the truck. Boyd went a short distance away and began beating a cottonwood tree with the rock. Frank felt he had no choice. He turned around and went out the driveway.

It wasn’t until he got out to the highway that he looked into the rearview mirror and saw Boyd crouched in the bed of the truck. So he went up Sand Hill Road to Blind Creek Road, the most potholed road in the county. He drove up Blind Creek Road as fast as he could and still successfully wrestle the wheel. Sometimes Boyd was four or five feet in the air. He could now see that Boyd was ready to beat the window in if he could, but there was nothing in back but a spare tire that bounded around, seeming to chase Boyd from place to place in the bed.

Blind Creek Road rejoined Sand Hill and took him into Belwood, still at a high rate of speed. As he entered Belwood, he could see the cloudy security light in front of a single-bay car wash and a green Chrysler Coronado starting to nose into the huge, whirling, soapy brushes. He drove in behind it, blowing his horn frantically. The Chrysler stopped and he bumped it from behind, still blowing his horn. The Chrysler pulled forward and Frank eased the Chevy into the car wash, looking up into the rearview mirror just in time to see Boyd vanish under the brushes. He pulled forward just a bit more and slid across the seat, letting himself out the far door. By crouching next to the wheel well, he was able to slip out without getting soap-brushed.

The big rack overhead rolled forward, transporting the huge spinning brushes and their load of hot water and soap. By the time Frank stood up enough to see, the owner of the Chrysler, a heavyset man in a nylon windbreaker, was standing next to the left fender of the truck, presumably waiting for the driver to get out. Frank slipped around the side of the building, and by the time he got across the street where there was a bar, he could hear oaths and the exchange of blows.