Percival Everett - Half an Inch of Water - Stories

It came time to close up the shop and the truck was still there. He wouldn’t worry about it tonight. He did hope that Donnie was all right, at least alive. He’d just locked the door connecting his office to the service area when he heard a noise. He unlocked the door and looked into the garage. With the big doors down it was pretty dark in there. He reached to the wall beside him and flipped the switch. Nothing happened. He grabbed the flashlight from the bracket by the door. He shined the light past the Land Cruiser in the middle bay and onto the back wall. Nothing. Another sound came from behind him in the office. He tried the light in there as well, but it didn’t come on. He thought he saw someone pass by the window. He got scared. He went to his desk, opened his drawer, and took out his.38. He checked the chamber and saw it was loaded. He picked up the phone and called the cops on speed dial.

“Can you send a car to Harold’s Garage, over on Cypress? I think I have an intruder.”

Harold heard a louder noise from outside, like an empty fuel can falling over. He let himself out the office door. He could see better outside and so he turned off his flashlight. He walked along the wall of the building. He added a new fear to his current one, that the police would show up and shoot the man with the gun. He made his way to the back and the Silverado. He looked around.

It might have been there the whole time and he hadn’t seen it. Regardless, it was there now. The cardboard box was sitting on an oil drum set against the wall of the garage. Suddenly it was hard for him to see, as if the darkness had fallen extra fast. He switched on his light and looked all around.

He looked at the box and stepped closer to it. He opened the flaps and peered inside. He shone the light into the box and could just make out the mass of light brown, maybe blond hair and maybe an eye. The box stank.

And now the police were on the way. His head was swimming. Fucking Donnie, was all he could think. Then he heard footfalls on the gravel around the corner. He hadn’t heard a car, so he didn’t think it was the cops. But if it was and he had the pistol up, they might shoot him. They would shoot him. He saw no beams of flashlights approaching the corner and so he thought it probably wasn’t the police. He was shaking. He looked at the head, trying to figure out what to do.

When he looked up again he saw someone large. Larger than either Donnie or Keasey, but something wasn’t quite right. He shined his light at the figure. The man was wearing a muddy suit, but above the collar of the filthy jacket was nothing. His once-white shirt was red and black, but there was no head.

Harold felt like he wanted to pass out. Was this a joke? The man, the body, was huge, six feet without the head. Harold looked at the box, picked it up, and pushed it toward the suit.

“I take it this is yours.”

The muddy hands reached out and took the box, and the body walked away into the darkness.

When the police arrived, they found Harold sitting with his back against the front tire of the Silverado.

“Sorry, boys, it was a false alarm. The power went off and I’m afraid I got spooked.”

The cops looked around. “Are you all right?” one of them asked. “Yeah.”

“Well, your lights are back on,” the other said.

“Okay,” Harold said.

“Sir, are you sure you’re all right?”

“I’m sure.” Harold stood and nodded.

The police left. Harold went back into his office. He switched off the light in the service area and locked the door. His hands were shaking. He walked over to his desk and was about to put away his pistol, but thought better of it. He put the gun in his pocket.

He sat on the sofa and switched on the television. Somewhere on the West Coast somebody was playing baseball. The daylight was startling even on the screen. Harold knew he would never see Donnie again. He knew also that Keasey was gone, along with his pregnant wife. The Silverado? He’d have to figure out what to do with that. He’d claim it was abandoned, maybe. Then he stopped thinking about all of those things, realizing that he was trying to distract himself. What had he just seen? What would he tell Shannon? Would he tell Shannon anything? Would he show up for work the next day? He looked back at the game. It was so sunny in California.

I had done some work on the reservation nearly ten years earlier, helping to engineer an irrigation ditch that brought water from a dammed high creek down to the pastures of Arapaho Ranch. I slept on a half dozen different sofas during the seven months of the project. The tribe paid me well and I left, thought that was the end of it. Then just a few weeks ago I received a letter from a woman named Roberta Cloud. I was not so much surprised by the call as I was by the fact that she was still alive. She’d actually had a friend write for her as she was blind now, the letter stated. The friend said that Roberta needed my help. It was a short letter, to the point, without many details. The letter ended with an overly formal “Until I see you I am sincerely, Roberta Cloud.”

I made the drive up from Fort Collins on a Thursday. I left in the morning and stopped at Dick’s Dogs in Laramie for an ill-advised early lunch. I loved the dogs, but they never loved me back. I drove into a stiff early-winter wind that caused my Jeep to burn more gas than usual. The high-profile, flat-faced vehicle felt like it was on its heels as I pressed into the breeze. I hit Lander midafternoon and drove straight through to Ethete. Ethete was just a gas station with a convenience store. There was a yellow light at the intersection that flashed yellow in all four directions. I stopped and grabbed myself a cup of coffee.

A heavyset woman rang up my drink and the packaged cake I’d put on the counter.

“Think it will snow?” I asked.

“Eventually,” she said.

I nodded. “Can you tell me how to get to Roberta Cloud’s house?”

“She’s on Seventeen Mile Road.”

“Where on the road? Closer to here or Riverton?”

“Did you know it ain’t seventeen miles, that road?”

“How long is it?”

“Changes,” she said. “I’ve never measured it myself. Some people say it’s only thirteen miles. Dewey St. Clair said it’s nineteen, but I think he just said that because he was always late for work.”

“How will I know Roberta’s house?”

“She’s at the first bend. There’s a purple propane tank in the yard. Big one.”

“Thanks.”

I drove back to Seventeen Mile Road and turned east. After a couple of miles I saw the bend and there was the big purple tank. Someone had scrawled Indian Country across it in white paint, but the last letter of the first word and the last two of the second were worn off, so it read India Count. I rolled into the yard and waited behind the wheel for a few minutes. A black dog came trotting from the house next door. I got out and opened the back of my Jeep. I placed a carton of cigarettes on a stack of three new dishtowels and a twenty-dollar bill on top of that. The dog walked me to the door.

I knocked lightly. I didn’t remember Roberta all that well. I recalled only that she was the oldest person I had ever talked to. She looked to be ninety back then. The gift was customary. I didn’t know if she smoked, but the tobacco was important. I knocked harder and a woman called for me to enter. I did.

Roberta Cloud sat in a rocker across the room, backlit by the sun through a window. She didn’t rock.

“Ms. Cloud?”

“Yes?”

“It’s Jack Keene.”

“Mr. Keene, you came.”

“Yes ma’am. You call, I come. That’s the way it works.”