Richard Ford - The Lay of the Land

But what the hell more do I need to accept that I haven’t already, and confessed as the core of my be -ness? That I have cancer and my days are numbered in smaller denominations than most everyone else’s? (Check.) That my wife’s left me and probably won’t come back? (Check.) That my fathering and husbanding skills have been unexemplary and at best only serviceable? (Check.) That I’ve chosen a life smaller than my “talents” because a smaller life made me happier? (Check, check, double check.)

More tears are falling. I could laugh through them if I didn’t have a potentially self-erasing pain in my chest. What is it I’m supposed to accept? That I’m an asshole? (I confess.) That I have no heart? (I don’t confess.) But what would be the hardest thing to say and mean it? What would be the hardest for others? The Frantals? For Sally? For Mike Mahoney? For Ann? For anybody I know? All good souls to God?

And of course the answer’s plain, unless we’re actors or bad-check artists or spies, when it’s still probably plain but more tolerable: that your life is founded on a lie, and you know what the lie is and won’t admit it, maybe can’t. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Deep in my heart space a breaking is. And as in our private moments of sexual longing, when the touch we want is far away, a groan comes out of me. “Oh-uhhh.” The sour tidal whoosh the dead man exhales. “Oh-uhhh. Oh-uhhh.” So long have I not accepted, by practicing the quaintness of acceptance by…. “Oh-uhhh. Oh-uhhh.” Breath-loss clenches my belly into a rope knot, clenching, clenching in. “Oh, oh, ohhhhhpp.” Yes, yes and yes. No more no’s. No more no’s. No more no’s.

A single rain spatter strikes the hood of my cold vehicle. I’m roused and gaunt, mouth open. Ears stinging. Fists balled. My feet ache. My neck’s stiff. My interior parts feel wounded, as if I’d been sealed in a barrel, tupped off a cliff, then rolled and rolled and rolled, bracing myself inside until stopped, upon a dark terrain I can’t see but only dream of.

“What now?” These are spoken words I manage. In the rearview, through the fogged back glass, there’s still the red smear of BAR across the lot. Two cars are left — the low-rider and a big Ram club cab. It feels late. Traffic on the 35 bridge has thinned to a trickle. “What now?” I offer again to the fates. I breathe a testing breath (no heart pain), then a deeper, colder one I fill my chest with and hold for my inner parts to register back. My temples go bump-bump-bump-bump behind my eyes, which feel tight. It’s better to close them, hands in my lap, cold knees together, elbows in, cranium on the headrest, chest expanded with held-in air. Dampness sits in the cockpit. I breathe out my deep inhale. And though it’s said (by ninnies) that we can never experience the exact moment of sleep’s arrival, still — and in a speed that amazes me — I do. “So it turns out, see, that China’s really fucking BIG” are the words I’m thinking, and they are like velvet with their comfort.

T ap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap. A pale moon’s face, young, mostly nose and chin and eyebrows, hangs outside my window glass — apprehensive, puzzled, a slight uncertain smile of wonder.

Is he dead? Is it too late?

At first it doesn’t scare me. And then, when I realize how deep in sleep I’ve been, I’m startled. My eyes blink and blink again. My heart goes from imperceptible to perceptible. Robbed, bludgeoned, dragged, heels in the muck, to the cold Manasquan and schlumped onto the tide like a rolled-up rug. I shrink from the glass to escape. I utter a small frightened sound. “Aaaaaaaaaa.”

The moon’s mouth is moving. Its muffled voice says, “I went to a club over in…” Static, static, static …“I seen your vehicle from the bridge…like…” Static, static.

I gawk through the glass, unable to fix on the face. My cheeks are cobwebby, my mouth bitter and dry. I’m frozen in my jacket and thin pants, but I’m willing to go back to sleep and be murdered that way.

“…So, are you, like, okay?” the pimpled young moon mouth says.

“Yep,” I say, not knowing who to.

But criminals don’t wonder if you’re okay. Or they shouldn’t.

The muffled voice outside says, “Did you find your keys?” An agreeable grin says, You’re a poor dope, aren’t you? You don’t know a goddamn thing. You’ll always have to be helped.

I push at the window button. Nothing happens. I struggle at the ignition, where there’s no key inserted. Things fall into place.

Chris speaks something else, something I can’t make out. I push open the heavy-weight door right into his chest and forehead as I hear him say “…under the mat.”

I stare up. He is no longer in his blue mechanic’s shirt that shows off his tattoos, but in a Jersey long-coat of inexpensive green vinyl manufacture, which makes him look like a seedy punk and is meant to. He’s cold, too, his hands stuffed in his shallow pockets. He’s rocking foot to foot. His nose is running, his forehead reddened, his hair a yellow tangle. But he is in positive spirits, possibly a little wine-drunk or stoned.

Cold air smacks my cheeks. “What time is it?”

Chris breathes out a congested nasal snurf. “Prolly. I don’t know. Midnight.” He looks over to Squatters. The BAR sign’s dark, but visible. No cars sit outside. Route 35’s a ghost highway, the bridge empty and palely lit. A garbage truck with a cop car leading it, blue flasher turning, moves slowly south toward Point Pleasant. “I seen your rig still here. I go, ‘Uh-oh, what the fuck is this?’” Chris shudders, tucks his chin into his lapel and breathes inside for warmth.

“I looked under the goddamn mat,” I say. I’m feeling extremely rough, as if I’d been manhandled for the second night in a row. I’m grinding my molars and must look deranged.

“That mat out front of the office,” Chris says, fidgety, chin down, pointing around toward the front door at a mat that’s invisible from my car. “We leave ’em there. That way, the car looks like it’s just sitting.”

“How the hell am I supposed to know that?”

“I don’t know,” says Chris. “It’s how everybody does it. How’d you get in?”

“It was unlocked.” I am slightly dazed.

“Oh. Man. I messed that up. I shoulda locked it. Lemme get them keys.”

Chris doesn’t act like a struggling American Existentialist scholarship boy at Monmouth, but a sweet, knuckleheaded grease monkey weighing a stint in trade school or the Navy. He is who he ought to be. It is a lesson I could apply to my son Paul if I chose to, and should.

Chris hustles back with my arrowhead fob, but grinning. “Didn’t you get cold in ’ere?” He swabs his nose, sucks back, hocks one on the gravel. He is someone’s son, capable of a good deed performed without undue gravity. He has saved me tonight, after nearly killing me. I now see he has SATAN inked into the flesh of his left metacarpals and JESUS worked into the right ones. Both inexpertly done. Chris is on a quest, his soul in the balance.

“Yeah, but it was fine,” I say. “I went to sleep. How much for the window?” I straighten my left leg, where I’m sitting half out the door, so I can reach my billfold. I’m tempted to ask who’s winning his soul. Old number 666 rarely has a chance anymore except in politics.

“Thirty,” he says. “But you can mail it to him. It’s all shut up. I gotta get home. Tomorrow’s a holiday. My wife’ll kill me.”

Wife! Chris has one of those already ? Possibly he’s older than he looks. Possibly he’s not even Greek. Possibly he’s a father himself. Why do we think we know anything?