Richard Ford - A Multitude of Sins

In the parking lot she heard men’s voices, talking and laughing, followed by car doors closing and engines starting and tires rolling over gravel. Farther away there was a sudden blare of country music, as if a door had been thrown open. Then the music was muffled, so that she realized she’d been hearing it for a while without knowing it. Someone shouted, “Oooo-weee,” and a car roared away. She’d brought in the bottle of gin from the car, and she reached it off the bedside table, unscrewed the cap and took a tiny sip — just to kill the stale-paper-bug-dope taste. And then she couldn’t help wondering, idly, she knew: does this really come to an end now? Couldn’t this go on a little longer after tonight, without the need of a fixed destination? There was a small good side to it. They both understood something. People ended things too soon, lacked patience when they could go on. If they truly erased themselves with each other, they could go on indefinitely. She could, anyway. And Howard wouldn’t resist, she assumed. This was a view she was glad to have, something more than she’d expected from this night. A surprise found in the dark.

On the concrete stoop of their teepee lay the littered brown husks of two hundred beetles killed by the bug dope somebody’d squirted around the door after they were asleep. Unpleasant to step on them. An Indian woman was sweeping them off the other teepee steps, using a broom and a plastic dustpan. A young Indian man with a ponytail was standing beside her watching and talking softly. The only other car in the lot was a dented black Camaro with yellow flames painted on its side and a spare-tire doughnut on the back.

The morning sun was warm, though a cool autumn breeze shifted the dust across the hardtop toward the casino, where there were still some cars and trucks in front. It was eight. A small neon rectangle, previously invisible on the STRIKE IT RICH sign was illuminated to say BREAKFAST NOW BEING SERVED. The blue police lights were turned off.

Breakfast was an idea, Howard thought, shirtless in the teepee doorway, his eyes aching. He couldn’t find his shirt on the floor in the dark room. But it would be a relief — even without his shirt — to eat breakfast in the empty casino while Frances slept on. They’d seen it all in a casino. He could bring coffee back, pay for it with the drinks coupons.

Up behind the STRIKE IT RICH, treeless brown mountains stood stark against the cool sky. These weren’t available when they’d arrived last night. You definitely never got a view like this in the east — just trees there and clouds and a smaller hazy sky, even by the ocean. So this was good — the drive had brought them up to where the air was cleaner, thinner; to a beautiful wasteland no one but Indians could stand to live in. And somewhere beyond this was the Grand Canyon — the big erosion hole Frances was now sleeping through. Maybe she’d forget about it and want to drive back to the convention.

He stepped out into the lot, shirtless, in his terry-cloth shorts and sneakers. Across the highway, beside the casino, was a small, new-looking, white clapboard chapel with a steeple and some plastic-looking stained-glass windows, surrounded by a white picket fence that also looked plastic. For quickie marriages, Howard thought, a wife you ended up with when you got lucky in the casino. Like in Atlantic City. Indians owned it, too, he was certain. A wooden sign in the grass-less fenced yard read, CHRIS DIED FOR YOUR SINS, which put him in mind that his family had been Christians. The Camerons — Presbyterians, somewhere back in Scotland. Not Christians, per se, anymore. Sunday was everybody’s personal day. But perfectly good people. His father was always pleased to see a church.

Except, what this crummy little chapel made him consider was that life, at best, implied a small, barely noticeable entity; and yet it was also a goddamned important entity. And you could ruin your entity before you even realized it. And further, it occurred to him, that no doubt just as you were in the process of ruining yours, how you felt at the exact moment of ruining it was probably precisely how this fucked-up landscape looked! Dry, empty, bright, chilly, alien, and difficult to breathe in. So that all around here was actually hell, he thought, instead of hell being the old version his father had told him about under the ground. The breeze moved just then across his bare chest, giving him a stiffening chill. A Greyhound rumbled past on the highway, stirring up dust and bringing a lone man out of the casino door to stare. Just being out here, Howard thought, was enough to spook you, and make you ready to have Chris go to bat for you, before you fell victim to something awful — despair you wouldn’t escape from because you were so small and insignificant. Or worse. He felt completely justified to hate it here. He was glad his father wasn’t along. The Greyhound was becoming a speck on the highway heading south. He needed to get Frances to forget the Grand Canyon and get in behind that bus back to Phoenix. He’d really just come along for the ride — to keep her company. None of this was anything he’d caused.

When Frances stepped out of the teepee into the sharp light and cool breeze, she looked tired — her blue, anchor blouse rumpled, and her sapphire earrings missing, leaving just the little holes showing. Though she looked happy. She’d showered and slicked back her short blond hair, and had her purse and the gin bottle in hand. She looked younger and like she wasn’t sure where she was, but wasn’t displeased about it. Whatever last night had been hadn’t left her dissatisfied, though he couldn’t remember much except that it hadn’t lasted very long and he’d passed out.

He’d bought Styrofoam cups of coffee in the casino and was sitting on the fender of the Lincoln, looking through her Grand Canyon book. He’d found his shirt and felt better, though he was ready to leave.

“You rarin’ to go?” Frances was looking around the empty lot and up at the mountains. She smiled at the pure blue sky as she sipped her coffee. Her throat was congested and she kept clearing it. She wasn’t really steady, her eyes were slits, her face puffy.

“Ready to go somewhere,” he said, hoping for Phoenix, but not wanting to press it.

“Isn’t it beautiful here.” She blinked, her cup to her lips. “Are you happy?”

“I’m great.”

“Last night?” she said. She looked confused. “You know? After you were asleep? I woke up, and I had no idea where I was. I really didn’t even know who you were. It was weird. I guess it was the gin. But I got on my hands and knees and I stared right down into your face. I could feel your breath on my eyeballs. I just stared at you and stared at you. I’m glad you didn’t wake up. You’d have thought you were in the middle of an operation.”

“Or that I was dead.”

“Right. Or that.” She noticed all the beetle husks that had yet to be swept off the teepee steps. “Oh dear,” she said. “Look-it here.”

“Who’d you think I was,” he said, slipping off the fender.

“I didn’t know,” she said looking at the beetles all around her feet. “I didn’t think you were anybody. You could’ve been an animal. You could’ve changed shape.”

“Did you think I was Ed?”

“No.” She reached into her purse for her car keys and nudged a few husks with the toe of her pink shoe. “No resemblance there.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“No. You wouldn’t,” she said and seemed annoyed, and began walking toward the car. “Come on,” she said. “We’re late.”

A mile beyond the motel, a green highway sign said SOUTH RIM—85 MILES. They turned that way, and Howard put on the Tito Puente music, then remembered what it was and turned it off as the road immediately began climbing and they began encountering campers and more tour buses creeping up and coming down. The landscape that was beginning to be below them looked flatter and smooth, pinkish like a sand sculpture, and, Howard felt, totally different from when he was on the ground in it, when it seemed spooky and uninviting. When he’d thought it was hell.