Richard Ford - The Lay of the Land

Wade’s twisted around, facing back, able now to see the pipe he’s smacked. Without looking, he sends the Olds lurching forward in “D,” burns rubber, then stabs the brakes and stops again, the motor racing to indicate he’s somehow gotten into “N.”

“Wade!” I shout. “Hold it. Hold it.” I’m coming to give assistance, in spite of Wade being the shameless procurer for his own daughter. I’ll have to take charge of him now, transport him home in my vehicle, meet Vicki/Ricki, go to dinner, etc., etc., none of which I want to do. Too bad the Asbury cop’s left already. He could arrest Wade, call the EMS and Ricki could claim him in the Monmouth County ER, where she’d know all the procedures.

Wade’s mouth’s still working vigorously. He fires a look of betrayal out at me, seeing I’m coming to help him. I’m to blame for all of this. If I’d gone down to the Grove and made everybody happy, none of this horseshit would be happening. I don’t know what made me think I could befriend the father of a former love interest who spurned me. These conjunctions aren’t meant to happen except among the primitive Yanomami. Not in New Jersey.

Wade’s staring down at his dashboard. Rust and road crap have dislodged from the Olds’ chassis, though nothing seems broken or hanging. One of the Ostrich Burger letters has slid off his roof and lodged under the passenger-side wiper blade. It is an H. The sign now reads EAT EALTHY.

I step out in front of Wade’s car and raise my hand like an Indian. I see he’s furious. He could easily run me over. You read about these deaths in the paper every day. Wade grimaces at me through the windshield. His engine suddenly kicks up a mighty whaaaa, and I start backpedaling, my hand still up in the original peace sign, and almost stumble back on my ass as he socks it into “D” again and the Olds springs ahead with a screech, headed toward the EXIT and the traffic-clogged business street leading to the Parkway. I’m all out of the way but can feel the Olds’ side panel whip past me. It’s as if I’m not here, not even a holiday statistic. Wade’s fighting the wheel to get himself into the EXIT side of the curb-cut. His shoulder dips left, his hands still at ten and two. Brack, brack, brack. The old Eighty Eight judders, bucks, then judders again — probably the parking brake’s on — heading across the empty lot into the ENTRANCE side, not the EXIT. “Wade!” I shout again, and start walking toward his car, its brake lights glowing, exhaust shooting out. I’ll help him. I’ll drive him. The Olds dips stopped, then noses out toward the traffic that’s backed up at the red light. Though the red immediately goes to green, and the cars commence smoothly forward. Wade’s head is oscillating back and forth, hawking a place in the line, his mouth still going. I’m moving toward him. I haven’t helped him. I’m very aware of that, but I will — for all the difference it’ll make. A young woman in a blue Horizon full of kids smiles at Wade, waves a hand, motions his beater out into the flow. And in just that number of precious seconds and before I can get there to give help, Wade smoothly becomes traffic, his taillights blending into the flux of the street and on under the Parkway overpass. And gone.

Eyes peeled, I cruise busy 35 South — Bradley Beach, Neptune, Belmar. I’m expecting a storefront to be open at 3:30 on Thanksgiving eve, with GLASS on the menu. These places thrive on every street corner in America, though they vanish when you want one. Cultural literacy’s never perfect.

Wintry effluvium has turned my vehicle into an icebox, and I’ve cranked the heat up on my feet, my belly already sensing a mixed signal from my hot dog. The three boats parable is, in fact, a useful moral directive, and though Wade would sneer at me, in my own view I’ve heeded it by giving a wide berth to the Grove and Vicki/Ricki, or whatever her name is. Of course, my more natural habit would be to consider most all things as mutable, and to resist obstinance in human affairs, an attitude which has helped me to think more positively about Sally’s return and not to be flattened like roadkill by her abandoning me (I think of myself as a variablist). The realty profession itself thrives on the perpetual expectation of changes for the better, and is permanently resistant to the concept of either the rock or the hard place. Ann, however, once pointed out to me that a variablist can be a frog who sits in a pan of water, looking all around and feeling pretty good about things, while the heat’s gradually turned up, until cozy, happy pond life becomes frog soup.

In the three boats story, a man is floating alone in an ocean without a life jacket when a boat passes by. “Get in. I’ll save you,” the boatman says. “Oh, no, it’s fine,” the floating man answers, “I’m putting my faith in the Lord.” In time, two more boats come along, and to each rescuer the man — usually me, in Wade’s telling — says, “No, no, I’m putting my faith in the Lord.” Eventually, and it isn’t very long in coming, the man drowns. Yet when he stands up to meet his Maker at the fated spot where some rejoice but many more cower, his Maker looks sternly down and says, “You’re a fool. You’re assigned to hell forever. Go there now.” To which the drowned man says, “But your honor, I put my faith in you. You promised to save me.” “Save you!?” fearsome God shouts from misty marmoreal heights (and this is the moment the old liver-lipped procurer of his own daughter likes most, when his scaly eyelids blink down hard and his tongue darts like a grinning Beelzebub). “Save you? Save you?” God thunders. “I sent you three boats!” And off goes Frank forever.

The last time Wade told this story — in reference to who the American people should’ve chosen but probably didn’t in this doomed election now awaiting God’s wrath — God supposedly said, “Three fucking boats! I already sent you three fucking boats, you morons. Now go to hell.” God, Wade believes, sees most things as they are and has no trouble telling it.

But the point’s plain. Drowning men save themselves, no matter how it looks from the shore and even though it’s not always easy to assess your own situation. Vicki/Ricki’s my last boat, Wade believes. Though in my view (and what could she look like after sixteen years), she’s only a ghost ship out of the mists. To drive to the Grove and reconnect with that old life would be treacherous even for a variablist — as asinine as Sally heading off to Mull or Ann wanting to forge a new union with me. In the modern idiom, that boat won’t float. And I’m resolved to stay here even in the deep water, waiting for the next one, even if it’s the boat to you-know-where.

T he first glass place I see — Glass, Glass, & More Glass — is closed, closed, & more closed. The second, Want a Pane in the Glass? in the 35 U-Need-It Strip Mall, has its metal grate chained to the sidewalk and everything dark within. The third, in Manasquan — forth-rightly called Glass? — appears open, though when I walk inside the dingy, echoing, oily-lit front showroom with its big sheets of plate glass leaned against the walls, there’s not a soul in evidence. I step through a door to a long, cold, shadowy room with empty wide-topped tables where glass could be cut. But no one’s around — no sounds of skilled labor in progress, or the after-work noises of back-room pre-holiday whiskey cheer. Which suddenly turns me spooky, as if a storage bin of cooling corpses awaits beyond the next door, a pre-holiday revenge-hit by elements from north of here.