He stopped me when I got there. "And listen, don't push her, understand? No is no."
For some reason that final admonition really did piss me off. "I know what words mean. I used to teach them."
"I got that part, just when a lady says no, she means it."
"Mr. Trucks…Walter," I said slowly, drawing out his name the way I would an unruly or impolite student I was going to shame into contrition, or at least try, "I am not some kind of sexual predator come west to spread an east coast malignancy. You know that, right?"
"All I mean," he said, "is that…she's had a bad time…"
"That's what Brenda said. I'm not going to do anything to make her bad time worse."
"You don't know that."
"I know myself—I don't go around screwing up people's lives."
"Most people don't, not on purpose. Around here we're all a little protective of her."
"Is that why you wanted to go over there with me?"
"No."
"That wasn't very convincing. Listen, I'm not running from anyone and I'm not going to hurt some old woman living alone."
"She's not an old woman," he said, the words barely audible, but I had pretty much tuned him out. I slipped on the jacket and opened the front door. I thought I heard his voice as I went out—maybe he had something more substantial for me to wear—but I wasn't waiting. I didn't slam anything or throw a tantrum—two tactics I had perfected with Natalie—I just left.
Outside where the temperature had dropped noticeably, I felt some remorse. I could easily have told my whole sad and miserable story to Walter Trucks so that he could rest easier sharing his town with the likes of me. I understand—and I understood then—that we're all so anxious most of the time that we view any stranger as a threat. We'd even elected a president who more or less promised to protect us from strangers. Even so, I didn't like being treated like a teenager in a convenience store. Most teenagers don't care much for it either. I know—I used to teach them.
And though I am fully aware of the concept of a gift horse, my feet hurt. Years ago my father would buy shoes and have them "broken in," often just in time to bag them for some clothing drive or other. The shoe break-in period—something I'd remanded to the dark ages, had somehow been resurrected by Walter Trucks' loafer cache. And how the hell did these shoes turn up in Sage? Did some truck break down in the mountains, then limp into town where the citizens quietly and impassively killed and, of course, ate the driver, stole his merchandise, then nonchalantly rolled the vehicle into some permanent snowfield where it would lie buried for eons? Made sense. Walter's take in the operation must have been the shoes and slippers. Someone else probably kept the sport coats and slacks; another, skirts and dresses or maybe underwear and socks. I wondered who had the gloves and outerwear...if I could only find the cannibal with the outerwear.
The chilly rain had become a raw, icy drizzle that gave the town an artificial but not unappealing gloss. I remember saying to myself that perhaps the Sage Department of Tourism had polished everything for me, then laughed quietly at my own joke and decided to be careful whom I shared it with. In Sage or anywhere else, natives are allowed to have a sense of humor about their towns; interlopers aren't. And with my borrowed penny loafers and lost demeanor, I was deeply entrenched in that latter group—a fact that Mrs. O'Leary would probably have little trouble discerning.
Chapter 5
Unlike my approach to Walter's "Lunch," this time I rang the bell. Before I could step back and allow a reasonable space to develop between anyone inside and me, the door swung open, revealing a woman in a green flannel floor-length housecoat, zippered to the chin.
"Thought I heard someone," she said, "but I couldn't imagine who'd be out on a night like this."
"I guess I would, ma'am." I said, and immediately felt stupid. Ma'am is what the polite folks in Dodge City called women in the reruns my father used to watch and maybe still does. This was not Dodge City; I wasn't that polite; she was not a ma'am.
"I'm looking for a Mrs. O'Leary."
She nodded almost imperceptibly. "I'm Mrs. O'Leary."
A Miss maybe, or a Ms., but she sure as hell didn't look like some crotchety hermit or frustrated schoolmarm who had chosen to hole up in a town that time had, if not forgotten, certainly misplaced. Nor was she some misshapen matron with the corpse of a former lover decomposing in her bed. No, the closest she would ever come to a Faulkner story is maybe reading one. And forget that Chicago woman with the malevolent cow. Walter Trucks's trailing words came back to me: she's not an old woman. He was right. My hastily carved mental image had crumbled and left the residue somewhere in the puddles behind me.
Even in the half-light between her doorway and the street, I thought I saw her eyes quaver, partially hidden as they were behind small lenses in thin red frames—a style that would have been right at home on any high school sophomore who had suddenly become incurably cute, or thought she was. And her complexion looked, well, it looked young. I understand how makeup can work its magic in the hands of an experienced user, but her youthfulness seemed natural. Had I passed her on the street, I'd have guessed she was thirty, but her situation—isolated in a place like Sage, and that tinge of gray, and that "bad time" in her past—she had to be closer to my age. Either way, my goofily contrived plan to play on the sympathies of an old woman, to pass myself off as the lost and lonely "kid" on his own, turned out to be farcical. Let me review here: so far I had chosen the wrong night, the wrong weather, the wrong clothing, the wrong shoes, and the wrong plan. And I wasn't even counting the wrong bus that almost ran off the road because the wrong mountain goat wandered into its path.
So far so good.
She removed the glasses and twirled them in her right hand for a second or two, then said, "Well, since you're out there, may I ask why you're out there?"
"I've just come from Walter Trucks's," I said, pointing meaninglessly behind me and realizing that dropping his name was no different from having him accompany me. "He said there might be a room for me in your…in the motel."
She put her glasses on again, as if to study me more closely—to find the lie I had just tried to sneak by. "Did he say that? That sounds more like something Brenda would say. She has a somewhat cheerier temperament. Seems to me Walter would say the opposite."
"Must be tough to keep a secret in this town," I said.
"It's not a secret."
"You're right," I said. "Let me start over: Mr. Trucks said there probably would not be a room."
"He's right: there would not be. But since you came here anyway, who are you?"
"I'm Calvin Hopper, ma'am."
Jesus, again with the ma'am'?
"It's nice to meet you, Calvin," she said. "So you need a room?"
"Yes. How did you know Brenda recommended you?"
"I'm not psychic, Calvin. That bus comes through here only to make a drop. It came through here this evening. Brenda drives the bus. Brenda knows me. I've never seen you before. You knew enough to come here looking for a room. Like I said, I'm not psychic."
She allowed me enough room to stand just inside the doorway half out of the weather, but she did not seem willing to grant me any more access.
"Calvin Hopper, huh?
"Yes."
"Calvin—not a very common name when you were born, I'd say mid-sixties. Do people call you Calvin?"
"Cal, usually."
"I'll call you Calvin," she said, then added without altering her expression or taking much of a breath, "I'm not going to rent you a room."
"Well, at least you've saved me a lot of needless