Giorgio Faletti: I'm God

‘Are you a soldier?’

His expression was confirmation enough. The word Vietnam wasn’t spoken, but hovered in the air.

‘Drafted?’

He had shaken his head. ‘Volunteer.’

Instinctively, he had bowed his head as he uttered this word, almost as if it was something to feel guilty about. And he had immediately regretted it. He had looked up again and looked the other man full in the eyes.

‘What’s your name, boy?’

The question had caught him off guard.

Noticing his hesitation, the man had shrugged his shoulders. ‘One name’s as good as another. It’s only so I know what to call you. I’m Lukas Terrance.’

He had stood up and shook the hand the man held out to him. ‘Wendell Johnson.’

Lukas Terrance had not shown any surprise at the cotton gloves. He had nodded towards a large black and red pick-up. It was standing by a pump behind them, and a attendant was filling it up. Attached to the back of it was a tow-cart carrying a single-seater car for dirt track races. It was a strange vehicle, with open wheels and a driving compartment that looked as if it could barely contain even one man. He had once seen a similar one on the cover of Hot Rod magazine.

Terrance had explained his situation.

‘I’m going north, to the Mid-Ohio Speedway near Cleveland. Chillicothe isn’t really on my way, but I guess I can make a little detour. If you don’t mind travelling slowly and without air conditioning, I’d be happy to give you a ride.’

He had responded to the offer with a question. ‘Are you a racing driver, Mr Terrance?’

The man had started laughing. On his tanned face, a spider’s web of lines had formed at the sides of his eyes. ‘Oh, no. I’m only a kind of handyman. Jack of all trades. Mechanic, chauffeur, cook.’

He had made a gesture with his hands, a gesture that seemed to say: That’s life.

‘Jason Bridges, my driver, is travelling all nice and cosy on a plane right now. We mechanics do the work, the drivers get the glory. Though to be honest, there isn’t all that much glory. As a driver he’s crap. But he keeps going. That’s how it is, when you have a father with a fat wallet. Money can buy you cars; it can’t buy you balls.’

The attendant had finished filling up the pick-up and turned around to look for the driver. When he spotted him, he had gestured eloquently towards the line of waiting cars. Terrance had clapped his hands, as if to bring their conversation to a conclusion.

‘OK, shall we go? If the answer’s yes, from now on you can call me Lukas.’

The corporal had picked up the bag from the ground and followed him.

The driver’s cab was a chaos of road maps, crossword magazines and issues of Mad and Playboy. Terrance had made space for him on the passenger seat by shifting a packet of Oreos and an empty can of Wink.

‘Sorry about the mess. We don’t get many passengers in this old wreck.’

He had calmly left the service station behind him, and then Florence, and finally Kentucky. Soon, those days and those places would be only memories. The good ones, the real ones, the ones that would stay with him all his life, like cats to be taken on his lap and stroked, those he was about to create for himself.

It had been a pleasant journey.

He had listened to Terrance’s anecdotes about the racing world and especially about the driver he worked for. Terrance was a good man, a bachelor, practically without fixed abode, who had always been involved with races, though never the really important ones like NASCAR or the Indy. He mentioned the names of famous drivers, people like Richard Petty or Parnelli Jones or A. J. Foyt, as if he knew them personally. Maybe he did. Anyhow, he seemed to enjoy thinking he did, and they were both fine with that.

Not even once had he mentioned the war. Once over the state line, the pick-up with its racing pod in tow, had taken Route 50, which led straight to Chillicothe. Sitting on his seat with the window open, listening to Terrance’s stories, he had seen the sunset, with that tenacious, persistent luminosity typical of summer evenings. All at once, the places had become familiar, until at last a sign appeared saying Welcometo Ross County.

He was home.

Or rather, he was where he wanted to be.

A couple of miles after Slate Mills, he had asked his surprised companion to stop. He had left him to his bewilderment and the rest of his journey, and now he was walking like a ghost in open country. Only the lights of a group of houses in the distance, which on the maps went by the name of North Folk Village, showed him the way. And every step seemed much more tiring than any he had trodden in the mud of Nam.

He finally reached what had been his goal ever since he had left Louisiana. Just under a mile from the village, he turned left onto a dirt path and after a few hundred yards came to a building surrounded by a metal fence. In the back there was an open space lit by three lampposts where, between stacks of tubes for scaffolding, an eight-wheel tow truck, a Volkswagen van and a Mountaineer dump truck with a snow shovel were parked.

This was where he’d lived. And it would be his base for the last night he would ever spend there.

There was no light inside the building.

Before continuing, he made sure there was nobody around. Then he moved forward, following the fence on his right until he reached the side that was more shadowy. He came to a clump of bushes that hid him from view. He put his bag down and took out a pair of wirecutters he had bought in a general store. He cut the fence just enough to allow him to enter. He imagined the sturdy figure of Ben Shepard standing in front of that breach, heard the sibilant voice he remembered lambasting ‘those fucking sons of bitches who don ’ t respectother people ’ s property ’.

As soon as he was inside, he headed straight for a small iron door, next to a blue-painted sliding door that allowed access to vehicles. Above it was a big white sign with blue lettering, telling anyone who was interested that these were the premises of Ben Shepard – Demolition RenovationConstruction. He didn’t have a key any more, but he knew where his former employer kept a spare one.

He opened the glass door that protected the fire extinguisher. Just behind the extinguisher itself was the key he was looking for. With a smile on his tortured lips, he took it out and went and opened the door. It slid inwards without squeaking.

One step and he was inside.

The small amount of light coming in from outside, through the high windows on all four sides, revealed a space full of tools and machinery. Hard hats, coveralls hanging on hooks, two cement mixers of differing capacities. On his left, a long counter filled with tools for use with wood and iron.

The damp heat and the semi-darkness were familiar to him, as were the smells. Iron, cement, wood, lime, plasterboard, lubricant. The vague odour of sweaty bodies from the hanging coveralls. But the taste he had in his mouth was completely new. It was the sour taste of enforced separation, a sudden awareness of all that had been taken away from him. Everyday life, affection, love. The little of it that he had known when Karen had taught him what truly deserved that name.

He advanced in the semi-darkness, taking care where he put his feet, towards the door on the right-hand side. Making an effort not to think about the fact that this place full of rough surfaces and sharp corners had meant everything to him.

Beyond that doorway, clinging to the wall of the building like a mollusc to a rock, there was one large room with a single window protected by an iron grille. A kitchen area and a bathroom on opposite sides completed the layout of his old home.