Chico shifts his gaze beyond her ghost, out beyond the house. Raining.
Patches of snow sloughed away to reveal the bald ground underneath. He sees last
year’s dead grass, a plastic toy–Billy’s–a rusty rake. His brother Johnny’s Dodge is up on blocks, the de-tired wheels sticking out like stumps. He remembers times he and
Johnny worked on it, listening to the superhits and boss oldies from WLAM in
Lewiston pour out of Johnny’s old transistor radio–a couple of times Johnny would
give him a beer. She gonna run fast, Chico, Johnny would say. She gonna eat up
everything on this road from Gates Falls to Castle Rock. Wait till we get that Hearst
shifter in her!
But that had been then, and this was now.
Beyond Johnny’s Dodge was the highway. Route 14, goes to Portland and
New Hampshire south, all the way to Canada north, if you turned left on US 1 at
Thomaston.
‘Stud city,’ Chico says to the glass. He smokes his cigarette.
‘What?’
‘Nothing, babe.’
‘Chico?’ Her voice is puzzled. He will have to change the sheets before Dad
gets back.
She bled.
‘What?’
‘I love you, Chico.’
‘That’s right.’
Dirty March. You’re some old whore, Chico thinks. Dirty, staggering old baggy-tits March with rain in her face.
‘This room used to be Johnny’s,’ he says suddenly.
‘Who?’
‘My brother.’
‘Oh. Where is he?’
‘In the Army,’ Chico says, but Johnny isn’t in the Army. He had been working
the summer before at Oxford Plains Speedway and a car went out of control and
skidded across the infield towards the pit area, where Johnny had been changing the
back tires on a Chevy charger-class stocker. Some guys shouted at him to look out,
but Johnny never heard them. One of the guys who shouted was Johnny’s brother
Chico.
‘Aren’t you cold?’ she asks.
‘No. Well, my feet. A little.’
And he thinks suddenly: Well, my God. Nothing happened to Johnny that isn’t
going to happen to you too, sooner or later. He sees it again, though: the skidding,
skating Ford Mustang, the knobs of his brother’s spine picked out in a series of
dimpled shadows against the white of his Haines T-shirt; he had been hunkered down,
pulling one of the Chevy’s back tires. There had been time to see rubber flaying off
the tires of the runaway Mustang, to see its hanging muffler scraping up sparks from
the infield. It had struck Johnny even as Johnny tried to get to his feet. Then the
yellow shout of flame.
Well, Chico thinks, it could have been slow, and he thinks of his grandfather.
Hospital smells. Pretty young nurses bearing bedpans. A last papery breath. Were
there any good ways?
He shivers and wonders about God. He touches the small silver St
Christopher’s medal that hangs on a chain around his neck. He is not a Catholic and
he’s surely not a Mexican: his real name is Edward May and his friends all call him
Chico because his hair is black and he greases it back with Brylcreem and he wears
boots with pointed toes and Cuban heels. Not Catholic, but he wears this medallion.
Maybe if Johnny had been wearing one, the runaway Mustang would have missed
him. You never knew.
He smokes and stares out the window and behind him the girl gets out of bed
and comes to him quickly, almost mincing, maybe afraid he will turn around and look
at her. She puts a warm hand on his back. Her breasts push against his side. Her belly touches his buttock.
‘Oh. It is cold.’
‘It’s this place.’
‘Do you love me, Chico?’
‘You bet!’ he says offhandedly, and then, more seriously: ‘You were cherry.’
‘What does that-‘
‘You were a virgin.’
The hand reaches higher. One finger traces the skin on the nape of his neck. ‘I
said, didn’t I?’
‘Was it hard? Did it hurt?’
She laughs. ‘No. But I was scared.’
They watch the rain. A new Oldsmobile goes by on 14, spraying up water.
‘Stud City,’ Chico says.
‘What?’
‘That guy. He’s going Stud City. In his new stud car.’
She kisses the place her finger has been touching gently and he brushes at her as if she were a fly.