THIRTEEN
We followed 257 for a quarter-mile, blowing by a hardware-and-bait shop lit only by a John Deere sign in the window. Then Billy abruptly veered left off the interstate, onto a roughly paved, unlit road that swept up into a grove of high shrub and pine, then ope vhimaded ned to acres of flat field.
“Where we goin’? I thought April’s property was off Two-fifty-seven.”
“It is. Mount Victoria road parallels Two-fifty-seven. We’ll come back out onto it at Tompkinsville.” Billy winked. “Watch this, Greek,” he said. Then he cut the headlights of the Maxima.
For a couple of seconds Billy and I were green, and everything outside the car was black. I grabbed the handle of the door and gripped it until the road ahead began to appear, slowly, in a bluish light. The moon was bright and almost directly overhead.
“You sure you want to do this, man?”
“Like we used to do, on that stretch of Oregon Avenue, down in the park.”
“We knew that road.”
“I know this one,” Billy said. “Roll your window down, man, it’s not too cold. Enjoy it.”
I did, as Billy maxxed out the heater fan, then rolled his own window down. Maybelle came forward and laid her head partly on my arm, partly on the door, leaving her face out, letting the wind blow back her ears. She closed her eyes.
The sound of the heater meshed with the wind. I had a slug of bourbon and passed it to Billy. Through the glass of Billy’s roof the moon shimmered above as if it were submerged in water. We passed a small gas station with an old Sunoco sign lit and suspended from two chains at the corner of a two-lane intersection, then moved on. No headlights approached from ahead or from behind.
Low trees began to appear on either side of the road, and the road grew darker. Billy saw something just ahead of his path, or maybe he didn’t, and he laughed piercingly and swerved, and we drove onto a shoulder of loose gravel. There was a sharp, screaming metallic scrape. Maybelle yelped, and there were sparks, and I drew back my face just as something shaved it like a quick, cold razor. I turned and looked through the rear window, and saw a roadside mailbox uprooted and tumbling back onto the shoulder in the fading rouge glow of our brake lights. I checked Maybelle and she was all right, though now she was lying bellyflat on the backseat, her head resting firmly between her two front paws.
Billy’s laughter was softly manic. I cackled with him and rubbed my right cheek, feeling raw skin but no blood. Then we were in a forest of pine, and there was almost total blackness, except for the light through the space between the tree line above, a light that snaked parallel with the road. Billy’s laughter ebbed and he shifted his sight from the road to the tree line and back again, navigating the course while negotiating the serpentine curves. At the bottom of a steep incline the road seemed to end in a finality of shadow, but Billy turned the wheel sharp right just as we seemed on the edge of the chasm, and then we were suddenly out of the trees and on the flat blue road again, the vast, open, moonlit fields on either side.
After another mile Billy tapped on the headlights, and we merged back onto 257, turning left. I cracked two more beers, handed one to Billy, and lit a cigarette for myself. We passed a Methodist church and several bungalows with screened porches set back from the highway, Ponti {ighettacs and Buicks parked in the yards. A couple of markets that sold gas and liquor and lottery tickets slid by. Both the markets and the houses were closed and unlit.
Two miles later Billy turned right at 254 and accelerated down a straight stretch of highway toward the lights of Cobb Island. He slowed as we neared the water and drove by two crab houses and bars on opposite sides of the road. The bar on the right had lit Christmas lights strung around its low-rise white facade, with lights that ran along the dock as well, out into the channel beyond a gas pump and boat ramp. The road rose as we crossed a bridge with cement rails that arced over the channel and connected the mainland to the island. When we rolled onto the island, Billy pulled the car into a lot past an IGF grocery store and killed the engine in front of a small bar called the Pony Point.
“A nightcap?” Billy said.
“How’s my face?”
Billy grabbed my chin and turned my head into the light. “You’ll make it.”
“Let’s go.”
We chugged the rest of our beers and put the empties in the backseat, where Maybelle now slept. Out in the lot I tripped stepping up over a concrete divider and felt Billy grab my jacket and yank me back into balance.
“Keep your shit,” he said. “Let’s have some fun.”
We stepped into the Pony Point. The place consisted of one small room paneled in knotty pine with a U- shaped bar extending out from the wall that divided the front of the house from the back kitchen. The bar was nearly filled. “Tight Fittin’ Jeans” by Conway Twitty was shrieking out of the tinny jukebox. I felt heavy and slow as I moved toward the bar, but by now I had acquired that singular glow of imagined invincibility that is bestowed upon certain drunks during particularly blessed binges.
Billy and I found two empty red vinyl stools on the west end of the U and bellied up. A large jar of pickled pig’s feet rested on the bar between us. I signaled the barmaid, a woman in her sixties with steel gray hair flipped on one side. She moved slowly to our curve in the U as she wiped an aquamarine bar rag across her hands. When she reached us she kicked her chin up just a bit to signal for our order. One of her spotted hands, with short, hard nails painted apple red to match the color drawn across her lips, rested on her hip. That hip, which still had a shape distinct from the rest of her, was slightly cocked. Grandma, with a fistful of rolled nickels.
“What can I get you fellas?”
“Two beers and two whiskeys,” I said. “Make the beers Budweisers and the whiskeys Grand-Dad.”
“I suppose you take your bourbon straight up,” she said, and tilted her chin up once again to let her eyes look us over.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She served the beers at once and rooted around the rack for a couple of shot glasses. While she did that, Billy and I tapped bottles and drank deeply. Then I had a look around the Pony Point.
On the east curve of the U sat three drunken men, their shoulders touching as if joined. The man in the middle was young, with a flattop and pale skin and an over-the-lip wisp of light brown hair masquerading as a mustache. He was bookended by two older men, one of whom was a well-worn version of flattop. Several beers sat in front of the three of them. The two older men looked quickly over to flattop and sang, in ravaged unison, “I’m gonna stick… like glue.”
Flattop looked into my eyes from across the bar and yelled, with a crooked smile, “Tomorrow ah’m a fuckin’ marine!” The Pony Point was filled with noise, but I could have heard the kid from out in the parking lot.
Our bourbons were served, and I raised my glass to Flattop before tapping Billy’s and tipping the shot to my lips. The warm liquor slid down with slow-jazz ease. I savored the afterburn, then asked the barmaid her name.
“Wanda,” she said.
“Wanda, buy those two older ones their next round. And give the soldier in the middle whatever he wants.”
“Sure thing.”
Billy said, “And we’ll take a couple of those pig’s feet, honey.”
Wanda said, “You got it.”
A hand wrapped around my arm. It was attached to a little man in a Cubs cap who was sliding onto the stool to my right. The man was not very old, but he had lost his teeth and on this night at least was not wearing the replacements. He used my arm for support as he adjusted his butt to the center of the stool.
“Thanks,” he said, and removed the cap to wipe a fuzzy, rather bullet-shaped head.
“No problem.”
“I see you’re buyin’,” he said matter-of-factly. He was trying to look up at me, but his gray eyes were missing the mark, shooting up toward the beamed ceiling.
“Why not? What are you drinking?”
“I’d love some whiskey. You like Conway Twitty?”
