Charmer

by
Elmo Lum

She doesn’t beg.  Some of them beg, like on a movie—really terrible begging.  Stupid, stupid pleading, sometimes.  But she’s not that way.  She keeps quiet kneeling there, right on the edge of crying.  Biting her lip and not that old.  The age of independence.  It’s hard for him to say these days, but to his eyes she looks that age:  the Age of Independence.  It makes him want to protect her.  Although he knows he won’t.  He’s a man of the world and knows there’s no protection.

What’s your name?

Oh, God.

What’s your name?

Brandon.

What was that?

Brandon. 

You mean like a boy, Brandon?

She nods.

No kidding.  That what they’re naming girls these days?

She shakes her head. 

Huh.  I never met a girl named Brandon before.

Oh, God.

Brandon.

Please, sir.

You shouldn’t call me sir.

Please.  I just want to go home.

I know.  They all want to go home.

Oh, God.

I’m sorry.  I probably shouldn’t have said that.

Please stop.

I’m sorry.  I should never have said anything.

Please stop saying that.

Saying what?

Saying you’re sorry.

I’ll try not to say it again.

I think I’m going to pee.

Don’t feel bad if you do.

If you let me go, I’ll do anything.

Don’t say that.

Please, I’ll do anything.  Just please let me go.

Stop saying that!

What do you want?

Shut up!

I’m sorry.

Don’t apologize.

I’m sorry.  Oh, God, I’m peeing my pants.  Oh, God, I wet my pants.

Don’t feel bad.

I don’t know why I told you.

You’d be surprised at how many of them do. 

The resolution was that he stop talking to them and now he’s gone and broke it.  He’d made it all the way through number one without speaking, but number two, he liked number two.  She was that age.  That’s what he thinks it was.  She was that age right on the cusp of everything you’re about to do, and if you don’t begin it at that age, you’ll never begin it at all.  That’s what he believes.  Except number one was that age, too, but he didn’t want to know her name.  Maybe it was that number two didn’t cry.  He thinks maybe that’s what it was.  Number two had some spine. 

When it’s over he feels it’s over and he has to sit on the ground.  He doesn’t know why but every time he has to sit on the ground.  He looks at them together, number one and number two, side by side, both prone.  Always prone.  It’s his habit, just like any habit.  And then he has to sit on the ground.  But maybe it isn’t really.  Maybe one day he’ll end it different and he won’t have to sit on the ground. 

He lies on the ground.  He didn’t use to lie on the ground.  He’s taken it up of late.  Getting older, he thinks, getting tired, he thinks.  Feeling time.  It could be.  Or it could be he’s taken to lying down for the sake of lying down.  Him facing up and them facing down.  He doesn’t think he has to lie down.  Not the same way he has to sit.

He stands in the sun patch, watching the sun road, watching the car’s approach.  He pushes his thumb.  The car rises past; his thumb follows the car.  The car fades dappled gone.  He turns.  The road curves empty, up into the trees, and up behind the trees stands the shadow green hill.  It’s spiked with one white trunk.  He’s at peace.  It’s how he gets.  A sense of new peace after every new time. 

Up the road he watches where a logging truck turns.  It drives clean from the trees and roars down the straightaway.  He points his thumb out and the truck blasts up and past.  He ducks away from the pelting shingles of bark peeled from the logs.  His eyes burn.  He shades his eyes.  He blinks turned from the sun. 

He hears it before he can see it.  Rising pitched and louder, thrumming clean up the asphalt, blobbed through running eyes, and he thumbs out, half-blind.  The tires squeal short and the engine drops to a throb and he scuffs up to the window which the driver hums down.

Where you headed?

Into town.

I can take you.  What’s the matter with your eyes?

Allergies.

I should warn you I drive hard.

So I saw.

You still want a ride?

Sure.

Not everyone wants to ride with me.

Never turn down a ride.

Is that your philosophy?

It sounds like a good one.

Okay then.  She peels in; he presses one hand to the dash.

Nervous?

I’m just old.

You’re not so old.

I’m not so young.

Don’t tell me you didn’t speed in your day.

No, I did.

Then don’t tell me about women drivers.

It’s just that it’s been a little while.

Then let me remind you.

She burns down through the trees, through the slatted light flashing between the trunks and down through the pools of shade blocked off the hill.  They break out from the trees, flat in afternoon sun, and she punches it high and his head snaps back and he grips the handle on the door.  She looks unconcerned and short, peeking over the rim of the wheel down the hood.  She downshifts and dives the car down into the trees, flickering dull through the curves.  He leans with them.  The tires peel the hairpins and they speed out from the trees, the hill stretched before them down above the town.  Traffic runs.  She pulls the car back.  She sits back and says, Oh, yeah.  There’s my fix for the day. 

I know about fixes.

Do you?  So what’s your fix then?

I better not tell you.

What, are you coy?

I just better not tell you.

You are coy.

Think what you like.

I told you my fix.

You show me yours, I’ll show you mine?

Now don’t get ahead of yourself, mister.

I should point out you showed me yours of your own free will.

True.

Plus you warned me.

True again.  I need to fix that.

Don’t fix that.  You give fair warning.

So what did you think?

Of what?

Of my fix.

I think I’m old.

I’m serious.

You know how to drive your car. 

It’s not mine; it’s my boss’s.

Your boss lets you drive this car?  You’ve got a brave boss.

He’s seen me drive.

So have I, and if I was your boss and this was my car, I don’t know if I’d let you drive it.

You just said I drove fine.

There’s a difference between my car and someone’s boss’s car.

Um hm.  I work down at the hospital.  Where do you need to go?

Just the Safeway.

Hitchhiking for groceries?

Yeah.  My car’s broke down. 

That’s rough.  Right here okay?

Right here’s fine.

Good luck getting back.

Take care of this car.

I take care of it fine.

It comes into his head one goes first and one goes second.  If there are two it has to happen that way:  one first, the other second.  It stops him—he’s never thought of it before.  For all the years he’s done it, it’s new.  One of them first, the other second.  He’s never thought before that there’s an unavoidable order. 

He thinks it must be harder for number two.  No matter how quick he does it, no matter how he sets it up, number two would be in a position to realize everything.  Every fact of destiny, laid out in order.  Every last memory known.  Number ones can hold out hope, but number twos?  And then he wonders:  would he hold out hope?  Would he be surprised?  That could be the worst thing, holding out hope, then being surprised.  It’s a greater distance, after all, from holding out hope to realization.  He wonders if that’s the nut of it:  the distance between want and get. 

Though that distance for number one versus number two should be the same.  The wants are the same and the gets are the same.  Except if anything number two would want it more.  If you know that’s what’s your destiny down to every last detail, who wouldn’t want a second destiny more?  If anything the distance is greater for number two.  It gives him new respect.  She didn’t cry or beg.  Though maybe she was resigned.  He couldn’t respect that, resignation.  But it wasn’t like she held a choice.  What material distance separates acceptance and resignation? 

Need a ride?

Hey yeah.

Where are you going?

Up Zayante.

How far up?  I’m going as far as the gate.

Farther up.  But the gate’ll be fine.

You live up there?

Yeah.

I didn’t know many people lived up there.

Most don’t.

I’m just going as far as the gate.

I know.  That’ll be fine.

Just so you know.

From the gate he catches a ride in the bed of a pickup truck and watches the sun spread orange, still, behind the receding trees.  It’s cooling in the shadowed turns and he hunkers below the wind against the cab where a dog tail wags in the back window.  Dog ears whiffle in the wind.  He leans around the cab, yells directions to the driver, who nods and skitters off the road to across his driveway chain.  He hops down, stiff, pulls up his bags and says thanks to the driver who skids out with a wordless palm wave.  It’s the bluing hour.  He crunches the gravel to his door and shoulders his groceries in, kicking the door half shut behind and returning to shut the door.  When he’s unpacked the groceries he lifts the flashlight from the drawer and bangs out the back screen door to the garage where the two of them lie.

He lines the bucket.  It’s a thing he learned years ago:  you have to line the bucket.  The one time he didn’t he couldn’t get out the stains.  In the end he had to cut it up and burn it in the oven.  The smell was terrible.  His eyes watered and his head throbbed and he ran into the house and lay down.  It was hours before he could sit up again.  For sure he thought the smell would drift and reach the neighbors. 

Flashlight up his armpit, he lugs the bucket out the door, down the brushy path to the shape dark of the oven.  Wielding the spade, he bangs open the door, scrapes the charcoal, and upends the bucket.  He shakes it to empty.  Metal ringing in the heat, he shovels it all in the oven.  He bangs the door shut with a jab of the spade.  He takes back up the flashlight and bucket.  The moon lies thin.  He switches the flashlight off, eyes to the sifted sky.  The night is scalloped around with the trees.  His back isn’t as young as it was.  Two, three more buckets, and then he’ll call it a night. 

Hey, no boss’s car?

You haven’t got your car fixed yet?

I got a buddy owes me a favor.  He’ll do it for cheap but not fast.

Groceries again?

Among other things.  This your real car?

This is my real car.

I have to say, this looks more practical than I imagined.

I confess, I’m a mother.

Ah.  Son or daughter?  Or both?

I got me a girl.

How old?

Six and trouble.  She’s a sweetheart, though.  You have any kids?

I don’t know about me and kids.

Oh, come on.

I’m serious.

Everyone thinks that.

Maybe they do.  But I still don’t know.

They drive down through the gray half-light down between the deep, thin trunks, dark in the turns and bright ahead where the curves break from the trees.

She says, Listen.

Yeah?

Would you like to go out sometime?

You mean on a date?

Yes, on a date.

You’re serious?

Why not serious?

I guess you’re not married.  I hope you’re not married.

No, I’m not married.

I’m probably old enough to be your dad.

I don’t know about that.  But forget about it.

You don’t even know me.

This is usually what the dating process is about.

You know, I’ve never been asked out before. 

Oh, there’s always a first time. 

And I’ve never gone out with a mother.

Well, it can be your first time for that, too.  But only if you say yes.

Then I guess I’ll say yes.

He thinks of her as his daughter.  It wouldn’t be the first time.  She’s his daughter and there’s been some tragedy and now there’s nothing left but to bury her.  What’s left of her.  He’s the father and he has nothing of her to remember her by except herself and it’s the only way he has left to honor her memory.  A burial.  Not even a grave, since it won’t be a grave:  no marker, no stone.  Just a burial—the act of burying.  A slim reminder of a daughter to a distant father. 

He doesn’t think it for all of them.  But for Brandon—he even knows her name.  It’s dangerous.  It’s the kind of thing you can let slip under questioning.  A name when you’re not supposed to know a name.  He counts it as a slip-up—a stupid, stupid oversight.  When he has a record of being good—he’s not a keeper of trophies.  Everything left of them dumped or burned or buried.  Even when he was tempted.  Then he went and asked her name.  The worst part being, he wasn’t tempted.  He forgot.  He plain forgot. 

The spade whangs—he’s hit a rock.  Raising the spade, he stabs the dirt, feeling out the edges.  He digs a ring with the rock in the center.  He thinks he can feel under the bottom.  Placing the spade flush against the rock, he steps both feet on the spade.  He bounces, puts a foot out, steps with both feet and bounces again.  Levering the spade handle against the edge, he pops the rock out.  The underside hangs strings of dirt.  He pushes it with his boot aside.  He chops down farther down the hole.

The bucket puffs off clouds with every step from the garage.  At the hole he’s dug he tips the bucket and pours it down the hole.  It fills too high—he’s dug too shallow.  He swears turned to the sun.  Scooping slow, he spades the ash back in the bucket laid on its side.  He chops the hole out wider.  Pouring careful he fills the ash back and rolls the rock back down on top.  He mounds the dirt on after, in between layers stamping it down.  He rakes the gravel back across.  The dirt left over he sifts around the driveway. 

From the sun the garage is suddenly dim.  He racks the spade against the wall.  He treks to the house and lugs back the kitchen trash and empties it into the bucket.  He ties the liner up tight.  Lifting the clamshell garbage lid, he dumps the liner in.  He fans the gnats and slaps the lid down.  He stands in light outside.  He remembers the car.  The car, he thinks, he’ll do later when it’s cooled. 

Rule 1:  No little kids

Rule 2:  Nobody pregnant

Rule 3:  No hitchhikers

He’s never killed a man before.  It’s not a rule, he’s just never killed a man before.  He’s never thought of it.  He’s never looked at a man and thought, he’s the one.  Although he doesn’t look at a woman and think, she’s the one.  There’s a process.  A meeting, a saying hello, watching, considering.  It has to be right.  The situation has to unfold in such a way that when it’s finished—and he can see it finish—they’re his.  Every detail applies.  How he feels, the time of day.  If it’s spring or if it’s autumn.  The convergence of events must be perfect.  And it’s never been perfect for a man.

So this is where you live.

This is where I live.

So are you going to give me the tour?

It’s pretty much what you see.  There’s the house, there’s the garage, and here’s everything around it.

Is all this land yours?

There’s a fence runs along this side.  You can’t see it in the dark.  On that side it goes into the trees about a hundred yards.  In the back, well, there’s not even a fence there.  But it runs in—it depends—maybe fifty to two hundred yards.  It was cheap when I bought it.

You haven’t done anything with all this?

I like it the way it is.  Lots of deer, coyotes.  Come summer the place is flocked with quail.  Once I saw a bobcat—you won’t see too much of those.  I hear the drought’s driving the mountain lions down from the mountains.  I haven’t seen one but it’s probably a good thing I haven’t.

This is great.  You like it wild.

It’s not that wild.  I live on it.  I got utilities and a road.  But I like it. 

What’s that?

Deer, I think.

Oh, I see them.  My kid loves deer. 

You’re coming from the wrong side.  You have to face the wind.

Where’s the wind?  There’s no wind.

Around this side.  That’s it.

They’re a bunch of women.

I think that last one’s a buck. 

I don’t see any horns.

Antlers just start coming in about now.

Randy buck coming in after the does?

No, he won’t rut til fall. 

We scared them.  Come back, deer.

They’re pretty tame around here.  They won’t go far.

You know, my kid chases deer.

Does she? 

Sometimes her mother chases bucks.

I can vouch for that. 

Can you?

I should say so.  You’re something of a charmer, he says.