The End of Vandalism (29 page)

Albert was looking at his speeding ticket. The cop had mistakenly written in Albert’s date of birth as the date of the infraction. Albert showed Ned.

“I couldn’t have broken the law on this day. I was in the hospital being born,” said Albert. “They can’t make me pay this.”

But Ned disappointed Albert once again, saying that in the case of a clerical error, the police could in fact rewrite the ticket at any time. “In other words, pay the two dollars.”

“It’s sixty dollars,” said Albert.

“Pay.”

It rained on Friday. There had been a forecast of snow for several days, but by this time no one was taking it very seriously. People’s guards were down. It seemed as if winter was going to rain its way into spring.

Albert did his chores around sundown. He had to feed the hogs and check the watering systems at three locations. He came home, showered, and shaved. He dressed in thin blue pants, a white shirt, and gray jacket. In the kitchen he almost fell over the new electric ice cream maker that Claude had bought. The freezer was full of ice cream and still the thing was humming away.

He picked up Chiang and they drove out on the dirt road that connected Wylie and Boris. Here they had hidden a cooler in the ditch. Albert ran to it with an umbrella over his head and got a bottle of Boone’s Farm. They sipped wine as they drove up to Chesley, listening to the radio.

They had the Friday night shrimp at a supper club called the Lifetime. Ruby Jones tended bar there. She was a cousin of the nurse Barbara Jones and known for carding infrequently. She was very popular with underage drinkers.

Yet the Lifetime had a quiet and almost elegant atmosphere. There were not many fights, and even when there were, the tactics were gentlemanly and afterward the participants would say, “What were we fighting about? We weren’t even fighting.” It’s hard to say how places acquire the feeling found within them. Ten years before, Lifetime and Rack-O’s, which is outside Romyla, had been on more or less of an even footing. They were both close enough to Stone City to draw upon its sizable population, but far enough away to be regarded as country places. So explain how Lifetime became genteel while Rack-O’s deteriorated into a haven for dopers.

There is no answer. It’s just interesting.

Lifetime had indirect yellow lighting, red Naugahyde booths, and blue-green felt tables for billiards and cards. When young people came here, they imagined hopefully that this was the environment in which adulthood was conducted. There was a jukebox with a thick and buzzing sound, full of Al Green records. Albert and Chiang played these songs, knowing they could not stay together.

“We could get a loft in Morrisville and I could work at the pin factory,” said Albert.

“Are there such places in Morrisville?” said Chiang.

“There are abandoned factories, that’s for sure. It would just be a thing of finding one with an apartment.”

“You have to continue your schooling.”

“Why?”

“Because you are smart.”

“Sometimes I don’t feel very smart.”

“Would we still be allowed in school if we lived together?”

“You can if you’re pregnant. Ravae Ross proved that beyond a shadow of doubt.”

“I’m not pregnant.”

“If you were, they wouldn’t split us up.”

“Albert, the foreign-exchange people answer to no one.”

“On the other hand, working in the pin factory could be very boring.”

“Come to Taiwan,” said Chiang. “I want to show you my room. I want to show you my bed. I want to show you the path I walked to my old school.”

“And I want to see them,” said Albert. “I know I could build bicycles. I made a lamp in shop once. There were little strips of metal on it. It’s not the same as a bicycle, but still, I would probably do pretty well.”

“If my uncle can do it, you can, easily,” said Chiang.

There was a dance floor with sawdust, and they walked out onto it and moved to the music. She seemed light and strong in his hands. Even during the fast songs they did not let go of each other.

Later, they got involved in a card game. The game was a local variation of poker called Russ Tried Screaming. No one knows how the game got this name, although there are some speculative guesses. The deal moved to the left, and the dealer called the game. In a low game you didn’t want anything you normally wanted.

Chiang was the only female playing but so skillful with cards that she quickly won the respect and courtesy of the gamblers. You could tell they were going out of their way to avoid certain words that came naturally to them. One of the gamblers was a man called Mr. Steak because, it was said, you could always win enough money from him to buy a steak dinner.

Meanwhile, the rain was turning to snow. When Albert and Chiang left, Albert having won nine dollars and Chiang
twentythree dollars, the snow was falling in heavy feathers that caught in their eyelashes.

“Look,” said Albert. It was the sort of snow that appears to fall from an especially great height.

“This is the snow of goodbye,” said Chiang.

In retrospect, they should have stayed in Chesley. Someone would have taken them in. Thousands of people wound up stranded that night. But the center of Chesley at this moment was sheltered from the wind. And for this reason Albert and Chiang did not know what they were getting into.

They left Chesley in Claude’s station wagon. By the time they reached Melvin Heileman’s corner, visibility was so poor they could not see the windmill. The wind had combined with the ragged snow to produce a blinding curtain on all sides.

Albert turned west onto the gravel road leading to Grafton. Some would ask later why they had not gone back to Chesley. They had been drinking and maybe their judgment was not the best; also, it was only eight or nine miles from where they were to the Robeshaw farm. Anyone who has ever ridden horses knows how strong the pull is toward the barn.

There were no other cars. Chiang said she could see the road fairly well from her side of the car. She suggested that Albert let her steer. Albert could not understand why the visibility should be better from her side. He suspected that she was just saying this because she did not trust his ability to drive. He said that if anything happened and it was later learned that she had been steering while he worked the pedals, they would look like fools. She was thinking about survival and did not realize what a serious thing it is to look like a fool in Grouse County.

They went in the ditch.

“I think we have to walk,” said Albert.

“If we do, we will die,” said Chiang. “We must bundle up and wait here for help.”

“Like who do you have in mind, Chiang?” said Albert.

“I don’t know,” said Chiang. “Someone will happen by. All those card players. Someone must be going our way. I can’t leave this car.”

They sat for a while with this disagreement like a block of ice on the seat between them. The wind gripped and shook the car. Albert climbed in back. He found a blanket, a hat, a pair of gloves, and some flares.

“I’m going to walk now,” he said. “I will find a place and come back for you.”

“How far is it?”

“I don’t know,” said Albert. “I’m not sure where we are. We could be in a couple places.” He slipped the blanket onto Chiang’s shoulders. “I’ll find a place where we can stay, and then I’ll be right back. Don’t think I won’t. And don’t shut off the car, because it won’t start again. Remember that. Don’t shut off the car. I’m going to crack this window a little bit.”

“Goodbye,” said Chiang.

“I’m really glad you ended up at our school,” said Albert.

The hat blew off his head and disappeared in the storm. He crossed a bridge but had no idea what bridge it was. The wind screamed, a thousand-voiced choir. He covered his ears with his hands and found the back of his head thick with ice.

He prayed not to die, promising in return to treat everyone decently in the future. His hands and feet became numb, and he felt that the line between the storm and himself was getting blurry. He imagined Chiang in the car, bathed in
warm orange light. He imagined the orange light on her hair. Her eyes were closed. His love.

Then he remembered a time when he was very young and very sick. He did not remember what he was sick with. He woke dry-mouthed with a dizzy fever. The shades were drawn and the light coming through them had taken on their orange color. His siblings were outside throwing rocks at the window. He went downstairs and told Marietta. She went outside and came back in shortly after. A chill moved through the house. “See, Albert?” she said. She had one of Claude’s hats in her hands, upside down and full of hailstones. “It’s only bad weather,” she said.

Albert stumbled and fell to one knee. He was tired and, having fallen, was not sure which way he had been going. This is how it happens, he thought. Then something pushed against his shoulder. He turned to see a large dog whose white fur blended almost perfectly into snow.

Louise and Dan were making out as the storm began. Wind worked its way through the caulking on the bedroom windows, and a candle flickered on the nightstand. They felt warmth and longing in the house with waves of snow moving past the yard light. They had missed each other, but even that did not account for the desire they felt right now.

Since Louise had come back from Minnesota, they had treated each other tenderly and helpfully. If they were in the kitchen, one would say to the other, “Do you want scrambled eggs? What do you feel like?” Or if Dan had to be out late, he would pull into the driveway, see the bedroom light on, and know she had waited up for him.

Now they slid their clothes off and made love slowly and lovingly. Dan liked the colors of her hair and skin, the long
smooth arc of her back, the sound of her breath. He thought that he would never know anyone like her. They came in a moment of stillness, wrapped in each other’s arms and seeming to summon everything that had happened to them, good and bad. Their lives rushed in at them, and this is what they were holding on against. They slipped away into sleep. The candle burned lower and lower before going out.

It was about two o’clock when Louise woke, hearing what she thought was a cat trapped in the storm. It was a moaning sound, followed by glass breaking out of the front door. They put on robes and went down and let Albert Robeshaw in. He was practically insensible, frozen half to death.

Louise dried his hair with a towel, made him tea, peeled the frozen jacket off his back. She turned the oven on and sat him in a chair before it. Dan took broken glass from the window frame, as he had done in his trailer when Louise broke in, and with duct tape fastened a piece of cardboard where the window had been.

When Albert’s teeth stopped chattering and he was able to make sense, he told Dan and Louise that Chiang was still in the car. His hands were wrapped around the cup of tea. He did not know how far he had come.

Dan got a coat, gloves, and a large red hunting hat for Albert, and they all dressed and went out to the cruiser. They had not gone very far when the car shuddered and failed.

“Now what do we do?” said Louise.

“Only one thing to do,” said Dan.

“How far is it, Albert?” said Louise.

“I don’t know,” said Albert.

“What were you near?”

“I couldn’t see.”

“Walking is crazy—Chiang is right,” said Louise. “Henry has a tractor with a cab.”

“It will probably kill too,” said Dan.

“It’s diesel,” said Louise. “It can’t. There aren’t any spark plugs.”

Henry Hamilton was awake and listening to the storm. He let them in and rummaged in a kitchen drawer until he found the key to the tractor.

“Albert, why don’t you stay here,” he said.

“No, I can’t, Mr. Hamilton.”

Louise drove with Dan and Albert on either side. The cab had a good heater, and the visibility was better this high above the road and looking down through the headlights. After a half mile the lights picked up the side of Claude’s yellow station wagon.

The car had gone into the ditch at a right angle to the direction of the road, which gives you some idea of how disoriented Albert and Chiang had been. The lights were off. The car might have been abandoned for days.

Albert and Dan climbed down from the tractor and waded through the drifts. The station wagon was not running, and in fact had killed within five minutes of Albert’s leaving. Dan opened the door. Chiang was lying across the seat, wrapped in the blanket that Albert had given her.

“I thought you had forgotten me,” she cried.

Dan carried her to the tractor. He could feel her shivering. He boosted her up the ladder and into the cab, where Louise hugged her and laughed and said how do you turn this thing around.

The storm lasted three days. A lot of livestock died because of the cold and the fact that in many cases no one could get to
them. The pheasant and deer populations also suffered large losses and would take several seasons to come back.

On Saturday, the second day, Dan and Albert walked through the driving snow out to the road where the cruiser had died. They lifted the hood and found the engine packed solid with snow. They scooped and chipped this away, pulled the battery, and took it back to the farm for recharging. In this way they at least got the car off the road. That afternoon the snow let up a little. Dan went into Morrisville, where he would spend the next two nights dealing with car accidents and heart attacks and other emergencies of the storm.

Henry came over to the house with bread he had baked. He, Louise, Chiang, and Albert ate thick slices of bread and played Monopoly all afternoon and well into the evening. Louise won, with hotels she deftly distributed on the green and yellow properties. Henry specialized in the inexpensive places and seemed content with the low-key game they afforded. Albert was one of those players who land on Chance and Community Chest all the time, play an interesting game, and go out fast. Chiang owned the railroads and utilities.

At nine o’clock they walked Henry home and then came back, and in Louise and Dan’s room watched a movie called
Two-Lane Blacktop
on television. It was funny and pointless, with a lot of driving. James Taylor said nothing, but kept looking at people with absolutely no expression on his face. Louise, Albert, and Chiang drank beers, made jokes at the screen, dozed on the bed. Louise got up to shut off the television after the movie had ended, and Albert and Chiang lifted their heads sleepily, wondering where they were. “It’s
all right, stay,” said Louise. She got a blanket from the closet, covered them up, and crawled under the blanket herself. They slept deeply and without dreams in the bed that Dan had built.