Nothing Gold Can Stay (3 page)

She glared at him and Sinkler raised his hands, palms out.

“Just teasing you a bit, darling. You should have brought another dress. I know I told you to pack light, but light didn’t mean bring nothing.”

“Maybe I ain’t got another dress,” Lucy said.

“But you will, and soon, and like I said it’ll be a spiffy one.”

“If I do,” Lucy said, “I’ll use this piece of shit for nothing but scrub rags.”

She let go of the cloth. The branch had scratched her neck and she touched it with her finger, confirmed that it wasn’t bleeding. Had the locket been around her neck, the chain might have snapped, but it was in her pocket. Or so he assumed. If she’d forgotten it in the haste of packing, now didn’t seem the time to bring it up.

As they continued their descent, Sinkler thought again about what would happen once they were safely free. He was starting to see a roughness about Lucy that her youth and country ways had masked. Perhaps he could take her with him beyond their first stop. He’d worked with a whore in Knoxville once, let her go in and distract a clerk while he took whatever they could fence. The whore hadn’t been as young and innocent-seeming as Lucy. Even Lucy’s plainness would be an advantage—harder to describe her to the law. Maybe tonight in the hotel room she’d show him more reason to let her tag along awhile.

The trail curved and then went uphill. Surely for the last time, he figured, and told himself he’d be damn glad to be back in a place where a man didn’t have to be half goat to get somewhere. Sinkler searched through the branches and leaves for a brick smokestack, the glint of a train rail. They were both breathing harder now, and even Lucy looked tuckered.

Up ahead, another seep crossed the path and Sinkler paused.

“I’m going to sip me some more water.”

“Ain’t no need,” Lucy said. “We’re almost there.”

He heard it then, the rasping plunge of metal into dirt. The rhododendron was too thick to see through. Whatever it was, it meant they were indeed near civilization.

“I guess we are,” he said, but Lucy had already gone ahead.

As Sinkler hitched the sagging pants up yet again, he decided that the first thing he’d do after buying the tickets was find a clothing store or gooseberry a clothesline. He didn’t want to look like a damn hobo. Even in town, they might have to walk a ways for water, so Sinkler kneeled. Someone whistled near the ridge and the rasping stopped. As he pressed his palm into the sand, he saw that a handprint was already there beside it, his handprint. Sinkler studied it awhile, then slowly rocked back until his buttocks touched his shoe heels. He stared at the two star-shaped indentations, water slowly filling the new one.

No one would hear the shot, he knew. And, in a few weeks, when autumn came and the trees started to shed, the upturned earth would be completely obscured. Leaves rustled as someone approached. The footsteps paused, and Sinkler heard the soft click of a rifle’s safety being released. The leaves rustled again but he was too worn out to run. They would want the clothes as well as the money, he told himself, and there was no reason to prolong any of it. His trembling fingers clasped the shirt’s top button, pushed it through the slit in the chambray.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Y
es, I guess you could call them that, Mr. Ponder answered when Donnie asked if he’d brought back any war souvenirs. This was eight years ago. Mr. Ponder was already an old man then, his hearing almost gone along with half his teeth. He had a bad hip too, which was why he hired Donnie and me to paint and shingle his farmhouse, paying two fifteen-year-olds half what a grown man would work for. We’d ride our bikes from town and be there by eight. Quitting time was supposed to be five, but a few extra minutes always passed before he came out and told us to stop. Funny how that watch of his runs slow only at quitting time, I’d tell Donnie. That old man won’t cut you much slack, Ben Reece at the hardware store had warned. But it paid more than cutting lawns.

Our only break was thirty minutes for lunch. We’d sit on the porch and eat what he brought out, usually bologna sandwiches and chips, cans of Coke to wash it down with. He’d eat with us, but never said much except to complain about spilt paint or bent nails. Part of it was him being nearly deaf, but Ben had told us Mr. Ponder had never been outgoing, even before his wife had died. All that summer we were out there, no one but the mailman stopped by, and all he did was stick a few bills and advertisements in the rusty mailbox and drive on.

But this one day, Donnie said something about joining the Marines when he turned eighteen, and Mr. Ponder started telling us about fighting the Japanese in World War Two. On them islands you weren’t even a man anymore, he told us. It’s a wonder any of us could come back and be human again.

It was an unsettling thing to listen to, not just the stories about men burned alive and bodies blasted up into trees but how Mr. Ponder told it, not in the bragging way you might expect, or angry and hard-eyed. His voice was soft and he looked at us the whole time almost tenderly. When he finished, Donnie and me looked down at our half-eaten sandwiches, not sure what to do or say, waiting for Mr. Ponder to finish his sandwich or complain about something we hadn’t done right, but he kept sitting there in the chair across from us. His eyes were damp. I looked over at Donnie and saw he was thinking the same thing as me—that if someone didn’t say something, Mr. Ponder might start crying right in front of us. Donnie asked if he’d brought back anything from the war. Like souvenirs, I mean, Donnie stammered. That’s when Mr. Ponder said he guessed you could call them that and Donnie asked if he’d like to show us. After a few moments, he said maybe we should see them and we went into the front room. A battered footlocker was between the TV and couch, and Mr. Ponder took some magazines off the top and opened it.

Donnie whispered that he bet it was a Japanese pistol or knife, that or a sword or flag. Mr. Ponder fumbled around in the locker a few more moments until he found what he wanted. He lifted a pint jar, and his gnarled hand held it out before us. It was one-third filled with what looked like gold buttons. Think about what a man has to become to do such a thing, he told us, and then that man be back home a year before it felt wrong. I’ve thought many a time to bury them, but I never can do it. It’s like that would be getting off too easy somehow. He had placed the jar back in the paper bag. Anyway, Mr. Ponder had told Donnie and me, the next time you see one of them war movies that makes it all seem a lark, think about what’s in this jar. Then he’d placed the jar back in the locker. The rest of the summer he never said another word about war or much else.

“The way I figure it,” Donnie says, “that old man still owes us. Hell, he was paying us half what he should’ve. We worked harder for him than we ever did on that road oil crew.”

Donnie gets up from the kitchen table and goes to the refrigerator. It and the TV are the last things left in the trailer that can be plugged into a socket. Microwave, VCR, air conditioner, they’ve all been pawned, or like his car, repoed. He still has electricity, but the front room’s curtained windows and the one bare bulb make the room feel like a root cellar. Not that there’s much to see other than empty cans and pizza boxes, in the corner a generator and a welding machine we haven’t yet sold, that and a couple of four-cell aluminum flashlights stolen from the same construction site. Donnie comes back with two beers and hands me one.

“You been listening to me or not?” Donnie asks. “That Beck fellow in Asheville says he’ll pay twelve hundred an ounce. Twelve hundred. There’s got to be close to three ounces in that jar. We’ll have to break into a shitload of them snowbirds’ places to make that.”

“Did you tell him what it is?”

“I told him and he said so what, that it all gets melted down anyway. He don’t give a damn. Hell, he told me a medical student brings him a couple of gold crowns a month.”

Donnie looks at me. He’s still lit up but he won’t be much longer and I won’t either.

“What we got left?” I ask.

Donnie takes the plastic pill bottle from his front pocket and twists off the cap. He gives the bottle a shake and two tabs fall onto the table. I’m hoping hard they’re pinks.

“Snake eyes,” he says.

He leaves the two 10s on the table, rubs a fingertip over one like he wants to make sure it’s real. He’s thinking about swallowing it, though he knows he better wait.

“With that kind of money, Marvin will cut his price enough for us to deal some ourselves. I might even get my wheels back.”

“Ponder hardly ever leaves that house,” I say.

“We’ll go at night when he’s asleep,” Donnie says. “He couldn’t hear worth a shit eight years ago. You could run hounds through that house and he’d not know.”

“But if he does, or sees the flashlight,” I say. “He’s got at least one gun in there, and you know he can kill a man.”

“I’m willing to chance it,” Donnie says. “I’ll be the only one inside. Both of us go in there we’ll just trip over each other. All you got to do is drive and help me get in a window. We do it tonight and this time tomorrow we’ll be in high cotton.”

I haven’t had anything all day and the craving’s working on me. My eyes are on the tabs and I can’t get them to look elsewhere. I’m owed fifty dollars for a load of wood I cut, but the guy’s been dodging me. I’ll have to drive all over the county to track him down. I put the OC in my mouth and swallow what’s left of the beer. Donnie takes his too. I think how there was a time a 10 would have me walking on sunshine half a day, but now it just takes the edge off.

“Ain’t you tired of all this nickel-and-diming,” Donnie says, “having to hustle up money every fucking day?”

“If we could just steal a few scrips,” I say.

“You know that ain’t happening,” Donnie says. “Even Marvin can’t get them anymore.”

We sit there a few minutes. Donnie’s right. I am tired of the nickel-and-diming. Sometimes it’s a temp job on a construction crew or cutting firewood, sometimes shoplifting or breaking into a vacation home. It’s always just enough. Come morning you’re back where you were the day before. Just a week where it wasn’t that way would be like taking a vacation, just floating along the way they do on those cruise ships, everything taken care of.

“Just steal the jar and leave, right?” I ask.

“I know you’re the one that made the good grades at school,” Donnie says, “but give this old boy some credit. I’m not fool enough to dawdle in there. It’ll be like special ops. Identify the target, get in, and get my ass out quick.”

“What time?”

“We leave here at midnight,” Donnie says.

“We better wear dark clothes.”

Donnie smiles.

“You mean like ninjas?”

“A black T-shirt and jeans.”

“Sure,” Donnie says.

I get up from the table.

“You can stick around here till then,” Donnie says.

I shake my head and get out my keys. Even though I’m starting to feel the OC, the trailer’s stifling. I live in an old mill house with a leaky roof and rotting boards, but at least it’s not like being in a storage shed. Donnie follows me outside. It’s one of those nice June evenings when the air cools off soon as the sun starts to fall, the day’s heat making the coolness all the better.

“We used to haul in some nice trout right before dark,” Donnie says.

“We did.”

“That was something how we could work our asses off all day and still have the starch to wade that river two hours,” Donnie says. “I guess when you’re young like that you can do most anything.”

“I reckon so,” I say.

We stare out toward Balsam Mountain. I know we’re both remembering how good those evenings were. We’d wade into the river wearing nothing but our jeans and tennis shoes. We’d throw some water on our hair and chests and let it clean off the heat and sweat and grime. Sometimes we’d catch trout and sometimes we wouldn’t, but that didn’t much matter.

Donnie smiles at me.

“Hell, we ain’t even twenty-five yet and talking like we’re ready for the rest home. When we cash in tomorrow, we’ll buy some gear and hit the river, catch us a bunch of trout. Get a case of beer and fry those bad boys up.”

I nod though I know it won’t happen.

“Yeah, that’s what we’ll do,” Donnie says. “It’ll be same as it ever was. I bet there’s even one of them big rainbows holding beneath Three-Mile Bridge, except this time I’ll catch it instead of you.”

I pick up Donnie at midnight and we drive out 107 and turn onto Mr. Ponder’s dirt road. The few houses and trailers we pass have all their lights off, the folks inside enjoying the sleep of the righteous. We round a curve and the headlights slash across a battered mailbox with “Ponder” on it. The house is dark. I drive another quarter mile and turn around, drive back slow.

“It’d likely be fine to just pull off on the side,” Donnie says, but when I get to where the cornfield was I turn in.

I shut off the lights and bump across a few old rows, far enough to where someone going by won’t notice the truck. I turn around to face the road and cut the engine. Donnie turns on his flashlight and I do the same. As we get out, he pulls something from the back of his jeans. His hand settles around the handle and I glimpse steel.

“Chill, buddy,” he says. “It’s just a screwdriver to prize a window or that locker.”

There’s a couple of big white oaks between the field and Mr. Ponder’s house, so we use them for extra cover. A big-bellied yellow moon is out, a few stars too. We palm the flashlights so just enough light leaks out to see a step ahead. His bedroom is at the back, so we step up on the porch, moving cautious so the boards don’t creak. The front door is to the left of the window. Donnie nods at me to try the knob, just on the off chance. It turns.

“Damned if he ain’t invited us in,” Donnie whispers, placing his hand where mine was. “Go on back to the truck. If a light comes on, you be ready to haul ass.”

He opens the door slow and goes in. I cup the beam and walk back to the truck and wait. The window’s down but the cool air can’t stop me from sweating. All the while I’m looking toward the house. A smudge of light shows for a moment in the front room. Then it’s gone. I know it’s Donnie’s flashlight but I can’t help thinking that if I saw it out here someone inside could have seen it too. The OC’s worn off and I’m wishing bad I’d kept that last tab for now. I take my pack of cigarettes off the dash and light one. That helps a little, enough to finally let my mind drift a bit.

I think about those evenings on the river, not just the year we worked for Mr. Ponder but the summer after Donnie and me turned sixteen and worked on the highway department’s road oil crew. That was hard work too, especially since the older guys gave us the shit jobs. But we still went to the river most evenings, even the summer after our junior year, at least until we began hanging out with some hard-living guys on the road oil crew.

The best time was always right before dusk. The water got quieter, more still, especially the deep pools. Sometimes there’d be a mayfly hatch, and it looked like pebbles hitting the surface. It was the trout feeding, but they wouldn’t make splashes, just those tiny sips, as if even they didn’t want to break the stillness. Donnie and me would break down our rods, knowing a spinner wouldn’t work with a hatch going. But we wouldn’t go right on home. We’d sit on the bank a few minutes. Donnie might smoke a cigarette but otherwise neither of us hardly moved. It was like the stillness had settled inside us too. The kinds of things that could fill a mind at such times—bad stuff at home, wondering if you’d cut it in the Marines or have money enough to go to A-B Tech—didn’t seem so worrisome.

I’m so deep in the back-then that it takes a door slamming shut to remember where I am now. In front of Mr. Ponder’s house, a flashlight’s full beam slides across the ground a few moments before sweeping upward through tree branches and into the sky. Whoever it is, it’s like he’s sending up flares. The light jerks down and settles right on the truck and I’m wondering if whoever’s holding that flashlight is also holding a gun. Then I hear singing and know it’s Donnie. He comes toward me, jerking the flashlight this way and that as he sings a Jamie Johnson song.

“Damn, Donnie,” I say when he gets in. “He might not hear but he can damn well see. He can still call the law.”

“We’ve got no worries that way,” Donnie says, but I’m watching for a light to come on as I crank the truck and drive out of the field.

I don’t take an easy breath till we’re past the farmhouse, and my arms are still shaking when Donnie turns on the overhead light. He’s got a paper bag in his hand that looks to be the same one as eight years ago.

“We hit the jackpot tonight, son,” he says, and takes out the mason jar and shakes it. “Like when we was kids and had piggybanks, but what’s in here sure ain’t copper. I got us more than this jar too.”

“We said we’d not take anything else,” I say.

“I wouldn’t have,” Donnie says, “but it was too quiet in there. I mean, an old man like that’s going to snore or at least breathe heavy. I finally checked out the bedroom to see if he was even in the house. He was laid out on that bed and deader than a tarred stump. His clothes were on and arms at his sides like he was just waiting for the coffin.”

“You’re sure,” I say, “I mean, about him being dead?”