Jeffery Deaver - Praying for Sleep

Trenton Heck stared into the night sky through the sliding door of his trailer. In front of him, on a red vinyl place mat, sat a plate of tuna salad and rice; at Emil’s feet was a bowl filled with Alpo and spinach. Neither had eaten very much.

“Oh, Lord.”

The plate got pushed across the table and Heck swiped up a quart bottle of Budweiser, gulping three stiff swallows. He realized that he’d lost his taste for beer as well as his appetite and set the bottle back on the table.

Aside from a glaring light above the table the trailer was dark. He walked over the yellow-and-brown shag carpet to his green easy chair, a Sears “Best,” and clicked on the pole lamp. It gave an immediate comfort to the long space. The trailer was large, a three-bedroom model. It was sided in sunlight-yellow aluminum, the windows flanked by black vinyl shingles.

Although Heck had lived here for four and a half years and had accumulated almost everything that a married then divorced man would by rights accumulate in that time, the rooms were not cluttered. Trailer makers are savvy about closets and storage areas; most of Heck’s earthly possessions were stowed. Apart from the furniture and lamps the only visible accessories were photographs (family, dogs), trophies (silver-plated men holding pistols in outstretched hands, gold-plated dogs), a half dozen needlepoints that his mother had produced during the period of her chemotherapy (easy sentiments-“Love is where the home is”), cassettes for the stereo (Willie, Waylon, Dwight, Randy, Garth, Bonnie, k.d.,) and a couple of small-bore targets (center-riddled with tight groupings).

Because he was feeling sorry for himself he read the foreclosure notice again. Heck opened the blue-backed paper and laughed bitterly as he thought, Damn, that bank moves fast. The auction was a week from Saturday. Heck had to vacate the Friday before. That part was as unpleasant to read as the next paragraph-the one explaining that the bank was entitled to sue him for the difference between what they made by selling his property in the foreclosure and the amount he still owed.

“Damn!” His palm crashed down. Emil jumped. “God damn them! They’re taking everything!”

How, he thought bitterly, can I owe more than what I bought with the money they lent me? Yet he knew some things about the law and supposed that suing him for this sum was well within their rights as long as they gave him notice.

Trenton Heck knew how fast and bad you could ruin a man’s life as long as you gave him notice first.

He figured he could live without the trailer. The worse tragedy-what hurt him like a broken bone-was losing the land. The trailer had always been intended as a temporary residence at best. Heck had bought these acres-half pine forest and half low grass-with some money an aunt had left him. The first time he’d seen the property he knew he had to own it. The thick, fragrant woods giving way to yellow-green hills gently sloped like a young girl’s back. A wide stream slicing off the corner of the property, no good for fishing but wonderful just for sitting beside as you listened to the water gush over smooth rocks.

And so he’d bought it. He hadn’t asked the advice of his sensible father, or his temperamental fiancée, Jill. He went to the bank, horrified at the thought of depleting a savings account larger than any he’d ever possessed in his life, and put the money down. He walked away from the office of a surly lawyer the owner of four and seven-eighths acres of land that featured no driveway, well or septic tank.

Or a dwelling either.

Unable to afford a house, Heck bought a trailer. He’d allowed Jill a part in that decision, and the young waitress-born never to be cheated-had slugged walls and measured closets and interrogated salesmen about BTUs and insulation before insisting that they buy the big one, the fancy one, the Danger-Wide Load trailer (“You owe me it, Trenton”). The dealer’s men eased the long vehicle onto the pinnacle of the prettiest hill on the property, right next to the spot where he planned to build his dream split-level.

These hopes of construction he believed could be achieved as easily as he’d built his hundred-yard driveway: easing his pickup back and forth between the trailer and the road fifty times. But the savings he’d planned to replenish never materialized, and therefore neither did the house. Finally it came to the point where he could no longer afford the trailer either. When the first overdue notices arrived, Heck recalled to his dismay that the bank had loaned for the trailer on condition it take back a mortgage on the land as well-all his beautiful acreage.

The same land that as of a week from Saturday was going to be somebody else’s.

Heck folded the papers and stuffed them behind a statement from the veterinarian. He walked to the plate-glass picture window, which faced west, the direction the storm would be coming from in just a few hours. In the truck, on the drive back home, he’d heard several announcements about the storm. One of them reported that a twister had cut a swath through a trailer park in a town seventy miles west of here. There’d been no deaths but several injuries and a great deal of damage.

Hearing this newscast, just as he happened to click on the old radio, seemed to Heck a bad omen. Would his trailer survive intact? he wondered, then whispered, “And what the hell does it matter?” He picked up a roll of masking tape and peeled off a long strip. He laid down one long diagonal of an X. He started to do the cross strip, then paused and flung the tape across the room.

Walking into the bedroom he sat on the spongy double bed. He imagined himself explaining this whole matter to Jill-the foreclosure, the lawsuit-although he often grew distracted because when he pictured this conversation he pictured it very explicitly and couldn’t help but notice that his ex was wearing a hot-pink peekaboo nightgown.

Heck continued to speak to her for a few minutes then became embarrassed at the unilateral dialogue. He lay back on the bed, gazing at the roiling clouds, and began another silent conversation-this time not with Jill but with Heck’s own father, who at this moment was many miles away, presumably asleep, in a big colonial house that he’d owned for twenty years, no mortgage, free and clear. Trenton Heck was saying to him, It’s just for a little while, Dad. Maybe a month or so. It’ll help me get my life together. My old room’ll be fine. Just fine.

Oh, those words sounded flat. They sounded like the excuses offered by the red-handed burglars and joyriders Heck used to nab. And in response his father glanced down the long nose that Heck was grateful he hadn’t inherited and said, “For as long as you like, son, sure,” though he was really saying: “I knew all along you couldn’t handle it. I knew it when you married that blonde, not a woman like your mother, I knew …” The old man didn’t tell his son the story about the time he was laid off from the ironworks in ’59 then got himself together and started his own dealership and made himself a comfortable living though it was tough… He didn’t have to, because the story’d been told-a dozen times, a hundred-and was sitting right there, perched in front of their similar but very different faces.

Times aren’t what they were, Heck thought as he nodded his flushed thanks. Though he was also thinking, I’m just not like you, Dad, and that’s the long and the short of it.

He took a swig of beer he didn’t really want and wished that Jill were back. He imagined the two of them packing boxes together, looking forward to a joint move.

A truck horn sounded in the distance, an eerie carrying wail, and he thought of the lonely whippoorwill in the old Hank Williams song.