Philipp Meyer - American Rust

“I can be there tomorrow. What the hell, I'll get Bolton to drive me there now, we'll be there by three A.M.”

“No, it's okay,” she said. “I just needed to hear your voice. I think I already feel a lot better.”

“Call me later. Or call tomorrow morning, whatever you want. Do you have the checkbook?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Use it. If it's bad trouble I'll ask my father to look someone up.”

“Don't ask your father.”

“You don't have to worry about him.”

“I know. I'd just rather you not ask him.”

“Alright,” he said. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she said.

After they hung up she stood there in the cold, it was very dark and the air was very clear, there were bright cold spots of light in the sky above her. She began walking back to the car. She would have to keep this inside her forever, there would not be any person she could ever talk to. Well, she thought, at least you know you'll make a good lawyer.

When he woke up it was morning and he was lying in tall grass behind the warehouse. He could hear several motorboats on the river. Why won't that eye open? He touched it. Dirt and dried blood. Stay here till I'm better, he thought. Root and hibernate. Come out when the weather's better. The locals friendly. He looked around him. It's fine now, he thought. Get up.

It was a warm windy day and above him the sky was dry and deep blue and the clouds were blowing south, a V of geese flying against them. Original itinerants. As for the kid he's not worried. Thinks back to his days in Vietnam — Special Forces — this is nothing. Back from the dead like Easter. Feel of a spear in his busted ribs, bone bruises, a nice day of walking ahead of him.

With the pain in his side and legs it took him half a minute to get to his feet. The ground was wet, his sleeping bag covered in mud; his clothes were filthy. He made his way back, the tall grass moving in the wind, flattening and standing up again, the warehouse was not nearly as remote as it had seemed in the dark — maybe two hundred yards from the main road. The dirt lot strewn with trash and beer cans, an occasional condom. Mark of communion. Wishing to repay his blood debt to Swede Otto, the kid visits the hideout of local delinquents, submits his holy vessel for redemption. Milk of his human kindness draws them in like blood, gets baptized in his own there's the church of it. He looked up at the brick warehouse with its scarred facade, the high arched windows. Only see — still his hands are filthy — the debt still owed.

In the dirt lot he came on his own pile of scat from the previous night, stopped to kick dirt over it, thought possibly the kid should not compare himself to Jesus. Then he thought: least of my worries. If there's Hell it's so thick I'll be standing on shoulders — hypocrites at the bottom, plenty of churchgoers. Special compartment for popes.

He limped across the field toward Route 906. There was a good deal of traffic and he could see it wouldn't be a pleasant walk — the road was barely wide enough to hold the cars. He was moving very slowly. Pretty sure you broke a rib — hurts to inhale. Arms, legs, and back all bruised. He touched his face and could tell it was encrusted with a mixture of dirt and blood, his lips and cheeks and eyes swollen. It seemed like a miracle he hadn't lost any teeth. You aren't cut out for this, he thought. But as soon as he thought that he got a picture in his mind of the Swede standing there looking at something, his bulky army coat and his tan cargo pants nearly black from soot. Believe what you want but the evidence shows something different. The empirical data supports a different hypothesis. The kid seems to be quite capable — making mistakes but learning quickly. A certain amount of hard- wiring in evidence. Rusty, is all.

Route 906 sat along the edge of the floodplain that ran to Monessen. The side of the valley rose behind it, just woods, but along the riverflat there were old buildings, warehouses, factories. The traffic was heavy, all subcompact American cars and old pickups. There was barely enough pavement for the cars and not much space even in the weeds — the air shook even as the smaller cars passed. A half dozen people were walking at various intervals in the same direction as him — toward Monessen, which had once been one of the most prosperous towns in the Valley but was now one of the poorest. The remnants of a U.S. Steel coking operation still limping along, employing a few hundred people. Otherwise, plenty of Section Eight.

Half an hour later he reached Monessen, the main part of town looked like Buell, a riverflat blending into a steep hillside, neighborhoods terraced along the heights, stone churches, wooden churches, three Eastern Orthodox churches with gilded domes. Trees everywhere. From a distance it looked peaceful. Up close it looked abandoned — most of the buildings in complete disrepair, vandalism and neglect. He passed through the downtown, there were a few cars parked, but mostly it was empty buildings, old signs on old storefronts, ancient For Lease signs in most of the windows. The only hints of life came from the coke plant by the river, long corrugated buildings, a tall ventstack burning off wastegas, occasional billows of steam from the coke quenching. A scooploader big enough to pick up a semitrailer was taking coal from a barge and dumping it onto a conveyor toward the main plant. The train tracks were jammed with open railcars full of dusty black coke but other than Isaac, there was not another actual person in sight.

In the middle of town, he found an open restaurant. The waitress sat alone at a table by the front window, staring at something outside in the distance and smiling until she saw him come in. The sunlight was on her and she didn't want to get up. He guessed she was about fifty, her hair was dyed blond.

“Hon,” she said. “I can't have you looking like that.”

“I'll get cleaned up,” he told her. “I got jumped.” He looked around the diner, restaurant, whatever it was, there was only one other patron.

She shook her head. “There's a hospital across the bridge over in Charleroi,” she told him.

“I can pay.” He opened his wallet to show her. He could smell the food, frying potatoes and meat, he was not going anywhere. He was surprised to be standing up to her — in the old days he would have walked out immediately, gone looking for another place. “Put yourself in my shoes,” he said.

For a moment he wondered if he'd said too much, but then she sighed and pointed him toward the back of the diner, toward the bathroom. The other patron, a middle- aged black man with his lunch pail, looked up from his magazine at Isaac and then quickly back to his magazine. He sipped his coffee and didn't look at Isaac again.

To get to the men's washroom he had to edge by stacked boxes of paper towels and cooking oil, and once inside he locked the door and stood in front of the mirror. A corpse mucked up from the riverbed. Or a mass grave. His pants and coat were covered with mud and grass and his face was smeared with ashy dirt. He would not have let himself into a diner, or anywhere. One eye was badly swollen and his lip was split and it was hard to tell where the dried blood ended and the dirt began. After using the toilet he stripped and stood in front of the sink and mirror; his filthy brown face didn't belong to his pale white body pink scrapes along his ribs, the faint purple of developing bruises. He washed his hair and face in the sink, splashing dirt everywhere, thinking man the most fragile creation — them more than you. Now the cold towelwash, way to clean a corpse. Body's last bath. Special attention to crevices — probably they use a hose now, drip dry, automatic wash for bulk processing. Who knows who touches you after you're dead? He took another handful of paper towels and wet them and continued to bathe himself. Shivering already, water cools quickly. A tub a warm womb we take for granted — the nature of wombs. My mother bathed herself. Wonder if they cleaned her after. Like the bogmen — preserved in peat. Not Swede Otto — no baths at taxpayer expense. Pauper's grave too expensive. Incinerator his final warmth. Clear out your head, he thought. You're not there yet.