Charlotte Rogan - Now and Again

12.7 Maggie

Maggie was glad to see the bicycle leaning against the shed. She had left her empty duffel in the house, but she kept her backpack with her as she mounted the bike and started pedaling. The crunch of the gravel beneath the tires brought to mind the free, almost floating feeling of heading off to Phoenix all those months ago. This was entirely different. With every revolution, the front tire rubbed against the fender, which was rusted and bent, and the brakes squealed whenever she slowed down. Even the wind generated by the bicycle was dusty and seemed to suck at her rather than blow. But the tires were new, and they bounced obligingly over any potholes or stones they encountered.

When she turned onto Main Street, she kept her head down in case there was traffic, but even though it was nearly lunchtime, everything was quiet. It was as if the town had shrunk in her absence, or she had somehow grown. She passed the town’s lone office building, although now, from the looks of things, they were getting another, and the Main Street Diner had a freshly painted sign indicating it was now called the Main Street Café. She peered at the window as she went by, but the glass storefront only reflected her image back at her, and if any of the customers were watching her from the leatherette booths, she couldn’t see them. She thought of eating dinner there with Lyle and Will and wondered if she was having a memory of the past or a happy premonition of the future.

An oil truck whizzed past, frightening her because she hadn’t seen it coming. It was as if the film of her life had been spliced, leaving out the vehicle’s approach and also its departure, for just as suddenly, it was gone. Even the air seemed jumpy, as if it were attached to her nerves and images were painted on it in thin colors rather than seen through it, or as if the town she had lived in for her entire life was only a mirage or an elaborately constructed set that could be changed at the whim of an unseen director, someone she envisioned smoking and laughing at her from a canvas chair with his name stenciled on the back or flirting with a winsome assistant rather than caring about what was taking place on stage.

She recognized the feeling as a combination of apprehension and loneliness, and then she realized that the apprehension was turning into full-blown fear. Where was Lyle? She passed the turnoff to the Church of the New Incarnation and thought of going there to seek refuge in its sparkling vastness. She missed having the shell of a church around her, and if she went there, she could ask the pastor for advice. She could ask God to forgive her for reneging on her promise. But all she could think about now was finding Lyle.

The bell on the Catholic church was chiming the hour when she turned the corner by the muffler shop. A group of men were sitting outside smoking cigarettes and drinking Dr Pepper. She wondered briefly what their lives were like, whether the good in them outweighed the bad. Now she could see the bus station far ahead. It was little more than a storefront with a park bench outside for waiting. An old metal awning and a thin tree provided a stripe of shade, and just beyond was a chain-link enclosure for long-term parking. She thought she recognized Lyle’s truck at the end of a short row of parked cars, but the glare of the noonday sun made it difficult to tell. She paused for a moment at the top of the hill before pedaling forward again.

The truck’s window was open, and as she got closer, she could see that the driver of the truck was wearing aviator glasses and a blue shirt and a baseball cap that she imagined — no, she knew! — was made of crushed red felt with the letters OU stenciled on the front. Lyle! He was looking in her direction. He was looking and she knew in her heart he had recognized her. But even when she took one hand off the handlebars and held it up in joyful greeting, causing the bicycle to teeter dangerously beneath her, Lyle didn’t wave back. Worse than that, he turned away. Of course he was angry with her. Anyone would be.

Anyone, she thought, except for Lyle. Lyle didn’t get angry.

Maggie pressed her sneakered foot on the brake just as the truck lurched through a gap in the chain-link fence, wheels spinning. It careened sideways into the road and gained momentum before slamming up on the curb, across the sidewalk and into the bench and the spindly metal stanchions. He had seen her! He was warning her away! A side street was coming up. As Maggie skidded into it, the bicycle’s tires shimmied and slipped in the gravel. She almost lost her balance, but then the tires bit, and by some saving miracle, she didn’t fall.

12.8 Danny Joiner

— The what? I can’t hear you, soldier. You’d better speak up.

— The dust. Just there…in the distance…eleven o’clock…

— What dust?

— About three or four klicks up the road.

Danny could see Kelly crouching now, lowering himself on strong arms. And Le Roy, who only that morning had laughed for the first time since anyone could remember, was flattened in a patch of striped light from the barred window, muttering, “Fuck this shit,” over and over to himself. He looked from the shiny barrels of the guns to the FBI logos to the laced and polished boots and tried to decide if he was experiencing a flashback or a dream or just a particularly vivid scene for the epic. It seemed very real, but all of the scenes had seemed real before he turned them into words and wrote them down.

By the waters of Babylon…

— Get going. You should have left when it was dark.

— Just let Pig Eye stay. He was supposed to go home last week.

— We were all supposed to go home.

— But Pig Eye.

He got slowly out of his chair, adjusting the blue mechanical pencil so it was horizontal now rather than vertical, the plastic barrel of the body arranged so that it lay just underneath the last words he had written — words that might make a fitting last line, which would make his epic shorter than he had imagined it, but lots of things were either longer or shorter than he had thought they would be — the war, for instance, and innocence and life. He felt sharp and clearheaded, if somewhat unhinged, and then not unhinged, but brittle and coldly righteous. Strong. A bell was ringing. It was the bell at the railroad crossing. He felt a bullet of comprehension click into its chamber. That’s all it was — the train! But a train didn’t explain the guns and the boots and the voices that were finished shouting at Le Roy and had started shouting at him. One of the agents took a step forward, and through the thick plastic visor, Danny saw Harraday’s eyes staring at him, the hollow eyes of a natural killer.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m writing a rap epic.”

By the waters of Babylon,

A soldier makes a lucky shot…

— Tell them who you are.

— I am an American soldier.

— Tell it to them, and say it like you mean it!

He turned to face the door. The perfect word was out there. It was somewhere between his ear and his eye. He could feel the guns aiming at it, and then it shifted ever so slightly until it was dead center, right in the middle of his forehead. Help, he thought.

Le Roy had his eyes closed. Kelly was moving his mouth, but no sound was coming out. Or, if sound was coming out, he couldn’t hear it. Maybe he was deaf. He didn’t think he was deaf, but he couldn’t absolutely rule it out. Where was the captain? The captain should be there to tell them what to do. Or his recruiting officer or the doctor or the sergeant who had always smoked him in basic training but who had taught him everything he needed to know. He straightened his shoulders.