Paul Kavanagh - Not Comin' Home to You

“I can just close my eyes and know what your eyes look like.”

“Mean and beady.”

“Oh, no.”

He grinned. “I got us food enough for a month,” he said. “Sandwiches and Cokes and a mess of candy bars. They even had these little packages of dried beef like old Trevor eats on when he’s hiding out up in the mountains. I got us a mess of them. I figure we might as well fill up right across the way. Let him check the oil, too. Engine’s been sounding funny. Nobody’s gonna look at you twice with the sunglasses on. You might even go to the ladies’ room, freshen up a bit. Reason I was so long, I had a quick shave in the men’s room there. They had one of those machines sells you everything you could think of. Puzzles and key chains and rubbers and aspirin. Toothbrush, toothpaste. I put in a couple of quarters and got a little plastic razor with a blade in it. Blade might of been plastic too for the shave I got, but I hate looking sloppy.”

“You look fine.”

“I’ve had closer shaves, but it’ll do. He’s coming to my side of the car so you get out your side and just walk right on over to the ladies’ room. You see where it’s at?” He leaned his head out of the window. “Fill her with the high test,” he said, “and maybe have a look under the hood.”

Back on the road he said, “Had a stack of papers at the store there. Albuquerque and El Paso, Texas. Had your picture right up on page one of the El Paso paper. Tell you, it didn’t look a whole lot like you. I guess somebody might recognize you from that picture, but he’d be going some to do it.”

“How come you didn’t buy a paper?”

“That anxious to see yourself? Now that you’re a celebrity? I guess you’ll be wanting to keep a scrapbook next.”

“No, I just—”

“Thing is, they had a picture of me, too.”

“Oh.”

“I should of got it just so you could have a good laugh over it, Must be five years ago they took it. I got picked up, you know, for borrowing a car, but I got off. Meantime they gave me one of their haircuts and took my picture.” He laughed. “Hair all of a quarter-inch all the way around, and I’m looking about fourteen years old in that picture, and the expression on my face, I must have been scared to hell when they snapped that picture. I don’t guess it looks much like me now.”

“I wish I could see it.”

“Do you? I guess you will sometime or other. What I thought, though, is I buy a paper and it just might put somebody in mind of taking a long look at me and at that picture, and looking from one to another you might see the resemblance. Sandwich okay?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I got every kind they had to make sure of finding something you’d like.”

“It’s very good,” she said.

“I could eat one of those Clark bars,” he said, “if you’d unwrap it and hand it to me.”

She was groping for a candy bar when she found the necklace, It was a piece of cord strung with round pebbles half an inch in diameter. They were smooth as glass, cool to the touch. Most of them were black, with some a dark gray.

“For you,” he said. “Oh, it’s no big deal. They’re what they call Apache tears. They come all polished like that. Theresa story goes with ’em that the Apache women used to cry when their men were killed in battle, and then their tears would turn to stone. Because they were so brave or I don’t know what. That necklace wasn’t but a couple of dollars, so I guess those Apache women did a lot of crying.”

She worked the catch, fastened the string of glossy stones around her neck.

“It’s beautiful,” she said.

“Well, I thought because of the story, and that place being called the Apache Tears Trading Post. Doesn’t look like much. Thought it was black glass beads at first. Actually there was volcanoes years ago and that’s where they came from.”

“I like the story about the Apache women better.”

“It does make a good story.”

“I think it’s true. They cried and their tears turned to stone. Is it okay if I believe it?”

“You believe what you want, baby. I’ll believe it, too, if you want.”

She touched the stones at her throat, learned their shapes with her fingers. She was not a Catholic, but the image that came to her was of nuns saying their rosaries.

There had been times, a couple of years ago, when the idea of becoming a nun had not been without appeal to her. She had pictured herself cloaked in black, spending years and years deep within the convent walls, devoting herself to service, never hearing a loud voice. Around that time she had occasionally imagined that Judy might have become a nun. It did not seem impossible then that Judy might have experienced a profound religious feeling that could have led her to such a turn.

She thought of Judy now, and wondered how her sister really corresponded to the several pictures she’d formed of her over the past few years. Judy in a nun’s habit, a stewardess’ uniform, a nurse’s starched white clothing. All of those images, so easily held so long in the mind, now refused to stay in focus. Because there really was no Judy any more. Not in her life, not really. Judy had been gone from her for six years, and in a sense Judy had ceased to exist outside of her own mind, where she had been free to draw Judy’s picture any way she wanted.

“I didn’t stop wanting that Clark bar, Betty.”

“Oh,” she said. “I’m sorry.” And reached into the bag to get it for him.

In a city called Roswell he said, “Sporting goods store.”

“Do we want sporting goods?”

“Bullets. Shells for the gun.”

She had forgotten.

“Right in the middle of town, though.” He kept on driving, “Be happier with one on the outskirts.”

“Why?”

“Just easier is all. I like to do my stopping on the edge of something so I can he right on out of it when I’m done.”

“Oh.”

He drove through the city to its southern edge, then circled around to the western side and explored first one commercial street and then another. The city reminded her of Grand Island, although she couldn’t say why. It looked to be larger, and the buildings were nothing like buildings in Grand Island, all of them constructed of adobe and topped with flat roofs.

“There was one.”

“A store?”

“On your side. Passed it. Shit. We’ll go around the block and park right in front.”

They circled the block and there was a parking space almost directly in front of the store. Mort’s Sport Shop, with fishing rods and rifles in the window. On its right was a laundromat, a narrow storefront with rows of washers and dryers. On Its left someone named Michael Moscato dealt in real estate and insurance.

“Won’t be long. You might get down in the seat a little.”

She sat still for a minute or two after he had gotten out of the car. She felt thirsty then, and got a can of Coke from the bag. She was struggling with the ring top opener when she saw the policemen out of the corner of her eye. There were two of them, tall lean men in gray uniforms and tooled boots and broad-brimmed Western-style hats. They had come up the sidewalk behind her.

She absolutely froze. She wanted to turn her face away from them but couldn’t stop watching them. At first she was sure they were coming to the car, and then when they continued on past her she knew they would enter the sporting goods store. Maybe the proprietor had stepped on a button that would summon them. Or maybe they were just looking to pick up a hunting rifle, and they would walk in the door and Jimmie John would see them and—

It seemed to her that they paused when they were abreast of the entrance to the store. But then, magically, they were walking as before, walking on past the sporting goods store, walking down the broad street away from her.