David Gates - Preston Falls

"Fuck," says Willis.

"But you, see, you're just a regular citizen to them, so your only risk is not showing up with what you're supposed to show up with. Which ain't gonna happen, right? Plus of course you get to share in the bounty, and I know you like the bounty."

He sniffs and flicks at his nose, and Willis feels a jolt of what, in another context, he'd swear was sexual envy. Champ's foot between Tina's thighs.

"Here," says Reed, reaching in his other shirt pocket. "I saved you a little taste."

Willis wakes up with his right cheek in shag carpeting. Head hurts. He looks up at a woodstove resting on cinderblocks. The carpet, he can feel, is made up of many, many little hard artificial fibers. He's got all his clothes on — his boots, even — and somebody's put a stiff blue plastic tarp over him, with metal-rimmed holes along the edges. The tip of his nose is cold, but his clothes and the tarp hold in his body heat. Sick to his stomach, though not to the point of having to vomit. Got to stop doing this shit eventually.

He props up on his elbow, which makes his head hurt so much his eyes water. These headaches must be a brain tumor; they really are not normal. He looks over and sees the drummer lying there. Right, now he remembers: Sparky passed out before he did, not that Willis passed out, strictly speaking.

He has to piss, and his head hurts so much that it doesn't make a shit's worth of difference if he stands up or not. He steals over to the drum set, footfalls noiseless in the carpeting, and looks down. Willis guesses the guy's okay: shoulders seem to be rising and falling. Booze fumes coming up — unless they're coming off him. Willis packs up his guitar and shit, lets the lid of the case down quietly and holds each button thing to the side with his thumb so you don't hear the snap. Pats pockets for his keys.

Shit — the envelope. Now he really does remember.

He parts the plastic sheeting and these cheesy-religious shafts of morning light are pouring through gaps in the barn siding. The good old truck's where he left it, next to the Econoline; the other cars are gone. There's a note or something on his windshield. He sets the guitar and amplifier down in the wet grass and takes a piece of yellow legal paper out from under the wiper: Drive safely. He unlocks the truck and feels behind the seat: envelope's still there.

PRESTON FALLS

He goes around behind the barn to piss, out of sight of the house. Just the tiniest steam rises where it hits the ground, so he huffs out his breath to see if it smokes and of course, oi course, manages to piss on his fucking boot. To punish himself, he bites into his lower lip with his leftside canines: hurts like shit, which serves him right. He sucks the lip, tastes salty metal and spits blood on the boot he pissed. Fucking teach you, you fuck.

The sun's just above the treetops. As he goes bumping down the driveway, he looks over at the house: a light on in the low-roofed part and wavy clear air above the cinderblock chimney. Probably the bass player's wife is getting ready for work, if she works. A woman's disapproval: you can feel it radiating.

All along the two-lane road, Willis sees little girls and little boys waiting for the bus, wearing blue denim jackets, or red-and-black-checkered wool jackets, or puffy nylon jackets in combinations of turquoise, red and yellow. Some peer from shacks their parents built to shelter them, others bounce up and down on their toes in the cold. One little boy sits reading inside a sentry box with a Union Jack painted on it. At the corner of a dirt road, near a bunch of mailboxes, a mom in sweatpants stands talking with a mom in jeans as five or six kids play tag, getting their shoes wet in the long grass. He's tempted to yank the wheel and plow through the bunch of them. Well, not tempted, exactly: alive to the possibility. He squeezes the wheel tighter and passes by.

The temperature gauge is up a hair now, so he tries the heater; sure enough, warm air blowing on his shins. A chill goes through him, the body giving up the tension it maintained against the cold; at least that's Willis's little theory. His head's starting to feel better, so maybe he'll stop off in Preston Falls for some coffee and pick up a paper. Jesus, reading the paper. But when he gets to where you can either turn off into Preston Falls or keep going straight until you hit Brown Road, he figures why push it. With this envelope behind the fucking seat, all you'd have to do is have a brake light or a turn signal out.

Willis turns into Calvin Castleman's drive; Calvin's truck, heaped high with split cordwood, almost blocks the way. When he shifts down to creep around it, the clutch feels funky again. Could be the cold, maybe: isn't there grease inside a clutch? That hardens and softens? He taps his horn and climbs out; in a window of the trailer he sees a corner of curtain pull to the side, then drop. The door opens and Calvin comes out in his shirtsleeves, unlaced work boots flopping.

I 3 7

"Hey," WiUis caUs.

Calvin stares at him. "You were supposed to been here last night."

"Well, we sort of ran late," says Willis, "so I ended up sleeping there. We were over—"

"Yah, I know where the fuck you were. Reed know you stayed there instead of coming here? Look at me when I talk to you."

Willis meets his eyes. They're set so close together that he can't stop the thought: genetic inferiority. If Calvin can somehow read minds, he's fucked. Willis blinks. Blinks again. Calvin's not blinking. Willis sucks his lip where he bit it. Which must look submissive.

"Look," he says. "If there's a problem about this, you need to take it up with Reed. All he told me was—"

"Yah, there's a problem. There's a big fuckin' problem. These guys I deal with, these are fuckin' serious guys, you know what I'm talkin' about? I was supposed to left here last night."

"Look," says Willis, putting up both hands, "I don't know anything about it."

"Well, that's nice for you, ain't it?" He shakes his head. "Son of a bitch moxh^vfucker. You got it, right?"

Willis points a thumb at his truck and Calvin follows him over; when Willis reaches behind the seat, Calvin grabs the envelope. "Let's go in the house."

"What for?" says Willis.

"Fuck are you worried about? All here, ain't it?"

"Whatever was in it is in it."

"Then you ain't got a thing to worry about." Calvin starts for the trailer. "Long's he ain't out to fuck you"

"How would he fuck me}'' says Willis, catching up to walk beside him.

Calvin looks at him. "How would he fuck you? All right, let me ask you something. I bet you ten dollars he didn't tell you how much is in here. Right or wrong?"

"Okay," says Willis.

"Let's say we go in here and I open it up." He steps onto his cinder-block doorstep and turns to face Willis. "And you're short a thousand— whatever it is. So all's he's got to do is turn around and go. Well, it was all there when I give it to him. You with me here?"

Willis says nothing.

Calvin nods. "All new to you, ain't it?"

PRESTON FALLS

"I see what you're saying," says Willis.

"Anyways," says Calvin Castleman, "I doubt he try to dick around on this end of the deal, see, because he knows nothing's about to go down till I get that straightened out. And he's got people waiting on him. Me, though, I'd watch my ass on the back end." He opens the door to the trailer, and Willis follows him into the smell of stale woodsmoke.

Willis sits on the old car seat facing the display case with boxes of shells and bottles of Hoppe's No. 9. Calvin rests a buttock on his gray metal stool, lays the envelope on his workbench, picks up a box-cutter and slashes through the tape. He sticks a hand inside, looks at Willis, stands up and turns his back. Willis looks around the room. The skin of some animal, tail hanging down, pushpinned to the paneling. A yellowing Far Side cartoon he can't quite make out from here, taped up with yellowing tape.