Smith Henderson - Fourth of July Creek

“I’m Ell,” she says. She squats. Wool socks, unshaven calves of blond down, her dress is bunched so that he can see.

“Hi,” he says.

“How old are you?”

“Nineteen.”

“Sure you are.”

He sets down the sticks.

“You make anything at this bullshit?” he asks.

“Depends. Should get a little more foot traffic as the holidays come on. Thanksgiving’s a good time to be out, if it ain’t too cold.”

“Thanksgiving? Hell. It’s fuckin freezing now.”

She looks up the street.

“You got a spot?”

“What kind of spot?”

“A place to bed down for the night.”

“I’m just trying to make enough to get a blanket.”

“My man is in jail today.”

“He is?”

“Yeah. Are you a raper?”

“A what?”

“I’m pregnant with my man’s baby. So you can’t mess with me. He’ll fuck you up. You a raper?”

“You’re the one come over here. I ain’t done shit to you.”

“My man’s in jail.”

“I know. You said already.”

“I got a spot. But I don’t want to be there alone. But I don’t put out too. But if you need a spot, it would be good there were two of us and one of us was a guy.”

He puts his sticks in his shoe box and his shoe box in his bucket and his bucket under his arm.

“Let’s go already.”

Pete hiked beneath scudding thunderheads up past Separation Creek where Jeremiah Pearl had threatened him, threatened to kill the boy. The clothes were still lodged in the cleft of the rock where Pete had put them. He stashed a few cans of beans there and the giardia medication. He thought the vitamin C might attract animals, so he’d wrapped the bottle in plastic, put it into a paper sack, and stuffed it in under the clothes with his card.

He surmised that it was all certainly pointless.

One weekend he drove down to Missoula as there was no longer any chance he’d run into Beth. Traipsing out of Eddie’s Tavern with Spoils and Shane when he spotted Mary across the street heading into Warden’s Market alone. He told the fellas he’d be along and hoped that he was lying. Inside she was looking at the beer and the wine like she couldn’t decide what on earth to have. She sensed his approach and his attention but didn’t recognize him right away. He wavered there, a little drunk.

“Pete,” he said, touching his chest. “You bandaged up my hand.”

Before she could reply, he palmed a bottle of red and asked her did she have a place they could drink it. She smiled at the ceiling as if to say not again, not again was this happening, was she going to take a man home. She put the bottle back on the shelf. He swayed in the air in front of her like a song was playing. She fetched a better bottle, and let out her arm for him.

She lived some blocks away in the Wilma Building. They went in through the door next to the theater lobby and to the elevator. A gray-skinned elevator operator in a vestigial red suit with epaulets requested her floor, though he must have known. Pete asked him what he was looking at, and the man took in Pete for a moment longer. He told Mary no overnight guests allowed.

“Who do you think is staying overnight?” she asked.

When they made her floor, Pete dug in his pocket and gave the operator a ten-dollar bill. The man folded it several times, put it inside his coat, and wished them a good night. The accordion gate rattled to. Pete watched the elevator operator’s silhouette descend with low-grade delight.

She leant on the wall, the bottle of wine dangling in her hand like a short club.

“So you’re the one who thinks he’s staying over.”

“There could be more gatekeepers. A jealous cat. I make no assumptions.”

“Shut up,” she said, striding toward him like she might brain him with the bottle.

They were at it when the elevator opened again and discharged one of her neighbors, who rushed past them, Mary’s dress opened to the navel. She clutched it closed, took up the wine bottle from the floor, and led him inside.

When Pete woke he had no notion of the layout of her place. The window was covered by an opaque blanket or quilt, and when he pulled it away from the window the light from the street wasn’t much to see by and the blanket fell back anyway. She breathed thick with contentment next to him. He touched her through the sheet and she arched toward him, the warmth of him, in the tropism of desire, and when he stilled, she ground against him in her sleep, moaned, and paid out a sweet winey sigh.

He got up and made his way blind as a mole. Glass things on the dresser tinkling as he bumped it. He stepped on what seemed like a paper sack, and found the door by chancing upon some hinges. A closet. Jesus. He moved along the wall, found the light switch, the door molding, the glass doorknob. The hinges screeched and he stopped and listened. She breathed on as before. He slipped out of the bedroom.

The neon light of the Wilma marquee illumined her tiny living room and kitchen, said too that it wasn’t even late, that movies showed yet. They had simply fallen asleep like old lovers. What a nice idea.

He padded into the kitchen for a glass of water. A dull ache, the onset of a hangover. He thought he’d handle it with the wine.

He popped the cork and there was a knock at the door. The elevator operator. Maybe the manager. There was another soft knock like the person was using a single knuckle, like the knocker was getting discouraged.

“What are you doing?” she asked. Crimson hued and nude.

He held up the bottle. Whoever was at the door tried the knob. He glanced in that direction, did she want him to check it out. She gestured vaguely, as though people were always knocking, and shucked on a silk robe and yawned.

“You hungry?”

“I could eat.”

“Pour me some of that.”

She kissed him and he put on his underwear and T-shirt and they drank wine out of little juice glasses as she cooked, and she batted her eyes at him in mock affection and he stood behind her and kissed her neck as she worked. Hot fumes drove him to an open window with the view of the marquee.

“Jesus, what are you making?”

She smiled, strained noodles. Her robe fell open more than once and he caught sight of the lattice of white scars on her belly and over her heart that he’d felt in the dark. She caught him looking and came over and sat him on the chair and filled his mouth with her heated tongue and moved over him until he was splendidly awash in an opiate stupor and didn’t move at all when she went back to finish cooking. The marquee winked out and in a bit she turned on a lamp, scented the bulb with something from a dropper, and came back with two steaming bowls.

“Come on,” she said, patting the floor.

They ate facing one another cross-legged. He was starving.

“It smells like hell, but I could eat this the rest of my life.”

She grinned and told him it was lo mein.

“Where did you learn to cook like this?”

“Not sure.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

She started to laugh, covered her face with her fingers, and peeked through them at him.

“I can’t remember your name,” she whispered.

“It’s Pete.”

She mouthed the words I’m sorry .

“It’s fine. I like that you forgot. Mary.”

She blushed. He held up a glass and she clinked it with her own.

“You’re adorable, Pete.”

“Thank you.”

She pushed some of his hair behind his ear.

“You’re welcome. Another helping?”

He nodded and she took his bowl and filled it again and his small glass of wine too. She watched him eat approvingly, lustily. Like the witch fattening him up. And he would have let her eat him, feed him to whatever animals she kept, whatever. When he finished, she asked did he need another.