sleepy, indecipherable self. That picture, Chico remembers, was taken less than a month
after his Dad married the bitch.
That your mother and father?’
‘It’s my father,’ Chico said. ‘She’s my step-mother, Virginia. Come on.’
‘Is she still that pretty?’ Jane asks, picking up her coat and handing Chico his
windbreaker.
‘I guess my old man thinks so,’ Chico says.
They step out into the shed. It’s a damp and draughty place – the wind hoots through
the cracks in its slapstick walls. There is a pile of old bald tyres, Johnny’s old bike that
Chico inherited when he was ten and which he promptly wrecked, a pile of detective
magazines, returnable Pepsi bottles, a greasy monolithic engine block, an orange crate
full of paperback books, an old paint-by-the-numbers of a horse standing on dusty green
grass.
Chico helps her pick her way outside. The rain is falling with disheartening steadiness.
Chico’s old sedan stands in a driveway puddle, looking downhearted. Even up on blocks
and with a red piece of plastic covering the place where the windshield should go,
Johnny’s Dodge has more class. Chico’s car is a Buick. The paint is dull and flowered
with spots of rust. The front seat upholstery has been covered with a brown Army
Blanket. A large button pinned to the sun visor on the passenger side says: I WANT IT
EVERY DAY. There is a rusty starter assembly on the back seat; if it ever stops raining
he will clean it, he thinks, and maybe put it into the Dodge. Or maybe not
The Buick smells musty and his own starter grinds a long time before the Buick starts
up.
‘Is it your battery?’ she asks.
‘Just the goddam rain, I guess.’ He backs out onto the road, flicking on the windshield
wipers and pausing for a moment to look at the house. It is a completely unappetizing
aqua colour. The shed sticks off from it at a ragtag, double-jointed angle, tarpaper and
peeled -looking shingles.
The radio comes on with a blare and Chico shuts it off at once. There is the beginning
of a Sunday afternoon headache behind his forehead. They ride past the Grange hall and
the Volunteer Fire Department and Brownie’s Store. Sally Morrison’s T-Bird is parked by
Brownie’s hi-test pump, and Chico raises a hand to her as he turns off onto the old
Lewiston road.
‘Who’s that?’
‘Sally Morrison.’
‘Pretty lady.’ Very neutral.
He feels for his cigarettes. ‘She’s been married twice and divorced twice. Now she’s the
town pump, if you believe half the talk that goes on in this shitass little town.’
‘She looks young.’
‘She is.’
‘Have you ever -‘
He slides his hand up her leg and smiles. ‘No,’ he says. ‘My brother, maybe, but not me.
I like Sally, though. She’s got her alimony and her big white Bird, and she doesn’t care
what people say about her.’
It starts to seem like a long drive. The Androscoggin, off to the right, is slaty and
sullen. The ice is all out of it now. Jane has grown quiet and thoughtful. The only sound
is the steady snap of the windshield wipers. When the car rolls through the dips in the
road there is groundfog, waiting for evening when it will creep out of these pockets and
take over the whole River Road.
They cross into Auburn and Chico drives the cutoff and swings onto Minot Avenue.
The four lanes are nearly deserted, and all the suburban homes look packaged. They see
one little boy in a yellow plastic raincoat walking up the sidewalk, carefully stepping in
all the puddles.
‘Go, man,’ Chico says softly.
‘What?’Jane asks.
‘Nothing, babe. Go back to sleep.’
She laughs a little doubtfully.
Chico turns up Keston Street and into the driveway of one of the packaged houses. He
doesn’t turn off the ignition.
‘Come in and I’l1 give you cookies,’ she says.
He shakes his head. ‘I have to get back.’.
‘I know.’ She puts her arms around him and kisses him. “Thank you for the most
wonderful time of my life.’
He smiles suddenly. His face shines. It is nearly magical. ‘I’ll see you Monday, Janey-
Jane. Still friends, right?’
‘You know we are,’ she says, and kisses him again … but when he cups a breast through
her jumper, she pulls away. ‘Don’t. My father might see.’
He lets her go, only a little of the smile left. She gets out of the car quickly and runs
through the rain to the back door. A second later she’s gone. Chico pauses for a moment
to light a cigarette and then he backs out of the driveway. The Buick stalls and the starter
seems to grind forever before the engine manages to catch. It is a long ride home.
When he gets there, Dad’s station wagon is parked in the driveway. He pulls in beside
it and lets the engine die. For a moment he sits inside silently, listening to the rain. It is
like being inside a steel drum.
Inside, Billy is watching Carl Stormer and his Country Buckaroos on the TV set When
Chico comes in, Billy jumps up, excited. ‘Eddie, hey Eddie, you know what Uncle Pete
said? He said him and a whole mess of other guys sank a Kraut sub in the war! Will you
take me to the show next Saturday?’
‘I don’t know,’ Chico says, grinning. ‘Maybe if you kiss my shoes every night before
supper all week.’ He pulls Billy’s hair. Billy hollers and laughs and kicks him in the shins.
‘Cut it out, now,’ Sam May says, coming into the room. ‘Cut it out you two. You know
how your mother feels about the roughhousing.’ He has pulled his tie down and
unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. He’s got a couple -three red hotdogs on a plate. The
hotdogs are wrapped in white bread, and Sam May has put the old mustard right to them.
‘Where you been, Eddie?’
‘At Jane’s.’
The toilet flushes in the bathroom. Virginia. Chico wonders briefly if Jane has left any
hairs in the sink, or a lipstick, or a bobby pin.
‘You should have come with us to see your Uncle Pete and Aunt Ann,’ his father says.
He eats a frank in three quick bites. ‘You’re getting to be like a stranger around here,
Eddie. I don’t like that. Not while we provide the bed and board.’
‘Some bed,’ Chico says. ‘Some board.’
Sam looks up quickly, hurt at first, then angry. When he speaks, Chico sees that his
teeth are yellow with French’s mustard. He feels vaguely nauseated. ‘Your lip. Your
goddam lip. You aren’t too big yet, snotnose.’
Chico shrugs, peels a slice of Wonder Bread off the loaf standing on the TV tray by his
father’s chair, and spreads it with ketchup. ‘In three months I’m going to be gone anyway.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘I’m gonna fix up Johnny’s car and go out to California. Look for work.’
‘Oh yeah. Right.’ He is a big man, big in a shambling way, but Chico thinks now that
he got smaller after he married Virginia, and smaller again after Johnny died. And in his
mind he hears himself saying to Jane: My brother, maybe. Not me. And on the heels of
that: Play your didgeridoo, Blue. ‘You ain’t never going to get that car as far as Castle Rock, let alone Canada.’
‘You don’t think so? Just watch my fucking dust.’
For a moment his father only looks at him and then he throws the frank he has been
holding. It hits Chico in the chest, spraying mustard on his sweater and on the chair.
‘Say that word again and I’ll break your nose for you, smartass.’
Chico picks up the frank and looks at it. Cheap red frank, smeared with French’s
mustard. Spread a little sunshine. He throws it back at his father. Sam gets up, his face the
colour of an old brick, the vein in the middle of his forehead pulsing. His thigh connects
with the TV tray and it overturns. Billy stands in the kitchen doorway watching them.
He’s gotten himself a plate of franks and beans and the plate has tipped and bean-juice
runs onto the floor. Billy’s eyes are wide, his mouth trembling. On the TV, Carl Stormer
and his Country Buckaroos are tearing through Long Black Veil at a breakneck pace.
‘You raise them up best you can and they spit on you,’ his father says thickly. ‘Ayuh.
That’s how it goes. He gropes blindly on the seat of his chair and comes up with the half-
eaten hotdog. He holds it in his fist like a severed phallus. Incredibly, he begins to eat it…
at the same time, Chico sees that he has begun to cry. ‘Ayuh, they spit on you, that’s just
how it goes.’
‘Well, why in the hell did you have to marry her?’ he bursts out, and then has to bite