The Indestructible Man Page 7

  Sam stumbles over the dirty clothes to the bedside table to get it. “Wait a minute,” he says as he bends down. “What’s this?” He comes up holding Minnie’s jewelry box, empty except for a string of purple beads hanging out.

  From the driveway outside we hear footsteps; then a car door slamming, and the old Nova spinning its tires in the gravel. I open the blinds but all I can see is a cloud of dust where the car had been. Sam and Charlie push me aside to look. “That son of a bitch,” Sam says. He hands me the ax handle we’d brought in case we had to get rough. “Stay with him a minute,” he says, and he and Charlie and Byron go outside to look.

  Joe lets out a howl that makes me want to hide under the bed and starts pulling at his bonds with ungodly strength, so hard that the ties dig into the wooden bedpost, and into his arms too, leaving dark red tracks in his skin. He gives one last, hard jerk and the ties finally snap. Then he rips the gag off his mouth, and I know I have to do something, so I run to the bed, try to grab his wrists and pin him down.

  “Jimmy,” he says, wheezing and panting. “It’s me!”

  I turn my head away and try not to listen.

  “Jimmy! I’m no demon. And Brother Stewart’s no preacher. Him and Minnie—”

  “No—shut up,” I say, wishing my hands were free so I could plug my ears. “Don’t you talk to me.”

  “Dammit, are you that stupid?” Joe wrenches his arms free and grabs me by the shoulders. I try to keep him down, but on my best day I’m nowhere near as strong as him, with or without the devil. We wrestle until he flips me off the side of the bed, and I land hard on the floor. He unties his feet and starts limping toward the door, still slow from being tied up so long. I crawl after him and hold onto his ankles until he falls to the floor. He kicks at my head two or three times, hard enough to make me see stars, but I grab him round the legs so he can’t crawl away without dragging me.

  “I ain’t letting you out this door,” I say.

  Joe turns over in my arms, reaches up, and takes my head in his hands—not hard, just enough to hold me still, but he could twist it right off if he wanted to. “Listen to me,” he says, slow and quiet. “There’s no devil in me. Brother Stewart’s been playing games with you, and he just ran off with Minnie and all our valuables. This is me talking. If you let me up now, I can still catch ’em.”

  I look into his eyes and for a minute it seems like he’s telling the truth, and I start to loosen my grip on him.

  “That’s it,” he says. “Just let me go so I can get that bastard.”

  For a second my hands relax, and he starts to slink through the doorway. Then I remember what Brother Stewart said about the devil being silver-tongued and sounding like Joe when it really wasn’t, and I know I have to stop him. I reach for the ax handle, and before he can get up I swing it hard as I can. Joe is on his belly, calling my name and trying to crawl away, but I bring it down on him again and again, until he’s quiet and still and I’m sure the evil has finally left him.

  Dirt and Shit

  It’s Saturday night and I’m following Jeff home from Yukon Eric’s on a two-lane road just outside of town. I’ve had a little more than I should’ve, but it’s a clear night and I’m not that bad off. I’m a few car lengths behind him but keeping up, then up ahead I see this cloud of dust covering the road, so thick it blocks out everything past it. I honk for Jeff to watch it, and slow way down—out here somebody could come barreling through and plow right into you, or a deer might run out of the cornfield. But Jeff keeps gunning it until the dust swallows him up, pickup and all.

  I head in slow, not knowing what I’ll see—maybe Jeff’s truck flipped over in the ditch, maybe aliens for all I know. But just when I’m about to barrel in, it disintegrates, and I only catch a few furls against my windshield. The next thing I see is Jeff’s truck, sitting on the shoulder near the cornfield, headlights on and hazards blinking.

  I get out to check on him, figuring he’s just had a little close call. His truck’s caked in thick brown dirt, the window’s wide open and he’s holding the steering wheel like he’s about to rip it out of the dash. I ask if he’s okay but he just sits there, gripping the wheel and looking off into nothing.

  “Hey.” I grab his shoulder and give him a little shake. “You okay?”

  His face is covered with dirt, and he wipes one cheek clean with the palm of his hand. He stares at the grime for a minute, then looks up at me real slow, scared like he’s just looked into the face of God. Before I can even pull my arm out of the truck, he floors it and takes off at a good hundred miles an hour, kicking up a trail of dust behind him. I jump in my car to chase after him, but he’s already two miles up the road and I know I’ll never catch him.

  Next morning I call to see if he made it home all right, but there’s no answer. On the fourth or fifth try the phone’s busy. It stays busy for the rest of the afternoon, so I take the hint.

  Monday morning he’s not at work. Roger, the foreman, says he called in sick, only Jeff doesn’t call in sick unless he’s about to drop dead. He’s supposed to help me load a bunch of heavy steel beams onto the truck, but since he isn’t there Mike, one of the new kids, has to help me, and not five minutes in he accidentally drops a beam on my foot. It takes everything I’ve got not to blow my stack, but I keep it to myself. Mike’s a nice kid, a couple of years younger than Jeff and me, and we’ve sort of taken him under our wing. The nurse checks me out later and says I’ll be okay, so Mike’s off the hook. But not Jeff.

  When I get home I’m sweaty and tired and my foot still hurts, so when I call Jeff I’m in a shitty mood. After about a dozen rings he finally picks up.

  “Yeah?”

  “Hey,” I say. “What’s the deal? Roger said you called in sick.”

  “I know,” he says. “I’ve been thinking.”

  “Everything all right?” I ask him. “You were pretty shaken up.”

  “No kidding.”

  “So what happened? Abducted by aliens or something?”

  “No,” he says, and sounds disappointed in me for thinking it. “I’m not sure what happened. After I went into the dust it was like I could see something I couldn’t before. You follow?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t know how else to explain it.”

  “You showing up for work tomorrow?” I ask him, trying to change the subject because I’ve never heard Jeff talk like that before.

  “I don’t know yet,” Jeff says. “I need a little more time to think.”

  I’m not sure why, because as far as I’m concerned Jeff got a little drunk, drove into some dust a tractor kicked up, and had a close call. “What’s to think about?”

  “There’s just more to it.”

  “Well, don’t take too long. We’re cutting this week and if I work with Mike again I’m afraid he’ll slice my damn hand off. See you tomorrow?”

  “Maybe. I can’t promise anything.”

  “Whatever.” I hang up. Even though I can’t figure out why, I don’t feel quite right.

  Jeff doesn’t come back until Wednesday. I see him as I punch in but he’s busy cleaning shit off some steel beams. He just sits there, staring at the shiny parts under the dirt, like he’s doing the most important job in the world. At lunch, when we all go out and take off our shirts to catch some rays over BLTs, he just disappears. I go to check on him and find him sitting in his truck. It’s still caked in dirt, but there’s a few streaks where it’s rubbed off, like he ran his hands through it. I go to say something and he doesn’t notice me, so I walk up and knock on his window. Some of the dust rubs off on my hand.

  Up until now that truck’s been his whole life, and normally he’d kill me for even touching it. But normally he wouldn’t let it stay that filthy. He rolls the window down slowly, like I’m interrupting something important.

  “What’s up?” I ask him.

  “Just thinking.”

  “About Saturday night?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “I think I
’m starting to get it.”

  “Yeah? And what are you starting to get?”

  “I’m still not sure I can explain.” He pokes his head out the window and looks down at the ground, at me, at the side of the truck. “What’s all this?” And he shows me his dirty hand, points at the parking lot, the dust blowing in the breeze, the side of the building.

  It takes me a second to catch on. “Uh, you mean the dirt?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “Dirt. It’s all covered in dirt and shit. So are we. And all of this.”

  I look myself over and I’m a little grimy, but otherwise I don’t see any shit on me. “Okay. So?”

  “It covers everything.” He runs his finger over the truck, leaving a shiny black trail in the caked-on dirt.

  “Uh-huh,” I say. “You know, you can wipe the dirt off, Jeff.” Just in case he’s forgotten, I reach out and wipe a little off the truck. “See?”

  Jeff’s eyes get wide and he smiles. “That’s it,” he says. “That’s it exactly. I knew you’d get it. You can wipe it off. All of it. From everything. Even from us.”

  “Yeah,” I say, and I keep wiping the dust away, and for a minute I’m actually proud of myself for getting it on my own. And for that minute it all makes sense and there isn’t anything crazy about Jeff, even when he takes my hand and starts guiding it through the dust. Then I come to my senses.

  I jerk my hand back. “Okay. This is pretty fucked up.” When I wipe the dust off on my pants, Jeff reaches down like he’s trying to stop me. His face falls and he doesn’t look angry or disappointed. Just sad.

  “You don’t get it,” he says.

  “Sorry,” I tell him.

  I’m still hungry and feel like I need to be somewhere else, so I go back to my lunch, and when I bite into my sandwich I try not to taste the dirt from my hands.

  On Friday afternoon it takes me forever to convince Jeff to come out to Yukon Eric’s. I even promise Martha will be there. She works in the all-night diner, and she’s pretty and sweet and smart. I know she and Jeff have something going on, and though I’d never tell Jeff, I’d give anything for a shot at her. I figure she’ll be able to take his mind off what happened to him for a little while. After he’s convinced I won’t let up, he shrugs and gives in.

  Before we go home Mike asks if he can come too, and I say yes, but it bothers me a little. For the past couple of days he’s been hanging around Jeff too much, sitting there glassy-eyed while Jeff talks. And when I see him pass Jeff on the way out, he just says, “Dirt and shit, man,” and Jeff looks down at him and nods.

  On the way to Yukon Eric’s Mike is in the back seat listening to Jeff go on, with Martha smashed in between them, looking really upset. Allison, Martha’s best friend, is next to me. When we picked them up and Martha saw Jeff in the car she was all smiles, but he hasn’t said much to her since then. I don’t understand that, because if a girl like Martha hung on me like she does him, I’d damn sure pay attention to her.

  When we get there the music’s too loud as usual, and there’s a pretty good crowd. We have to twist around as we walk so we don’t get in the way of anybody’s pool game. I head to the bar to get us a pitcher, and I drag Mike and Allison with me so Jeff and Martha can talk. I hope they’ll talk, anyway. Mike is still giving me the creeps, so I give him shit and ask in front of the bartender if he’s even old enough to be in here.

  It takes a good ten minutes to get the pitcher, what with the crowd—long enough for them to work it out. I hope when we get to our table they’ll be taking a walk outside. But they’re not even looking at each other; Jeff’s staring off into nothing, and Martha looks like she’s about to cry. Before they see us she tries to hold his hand, but he pulls away like he’s afraid to touch her.

  We sit down and I think about what a fun evening it’s going to be, and what I’ve done to Martha.

  “Jeff?” Allison says. “Why so quiet? Something bothering you?” I haven’t told her about Saturday night. That’s between Jeff and me and maybe Martha.

  Jeff looks at her like he’s looking through her eyes and into her brains. “No,” he finally says. “I’ve just been thinking a lot lately.”

  “About what?” Allison asks, and Martha shoots him a nasty look.

  “All this. And us,” he says, and gestures like we’re supposed to take it all in. “Like it’s all covered and buried, and there’s something better underneath. You ever get that feeling?”

  “No.” I say. I want to cut this off before it gets embarrassing, and before somebody starts hassling us.

  Jeff goes on talking. “Well I have, lately,” he says. “There’s...I don’t know. More. Under all the dirt and shit. And we have to clear it all away before we can get to it.” And he looks at Martha when he says it, and she turns away like he’s really hurt her.

  Mike nods like he’s hearing the Gospel, and nice kid or not I swear to God I’ll deck him if he says “Amen.”

  “That’s really interesting,” Allison says.

  For another half-hour or so it’s like that—Jeff and Mike and Allison talking about dirt and shit, me making stupid cracks every so often. It’s not like it usually is, with us laughing and getting hammered and making asses of ourselves. Martha’s just sitting there, tired of all of it. I can tell she’s working up the nerve to get up and leave.

  Eventually she grabs her purse and gets up. “I’ve had enough of this,” she says and heads for the door. Jeff and Allison don’t try to go after her, so I follow her. “Wait a minute. How you getting home?”

  “I’ll call a cab,” she says, and keeps going. And for a minute, even though I’ve never raised a hand to Jeff in the ten years I’ve known him, I want to pop him right between the eyes, because there’s no excuse for treating Martha that way.

  I try to talk her into coming back inside so we can straighten things out, but it’s crowded and I accidentally run into a guy at one of the tables as he makes his shot.

  “Hey, you fucked up my shot,” he says.

  “Sorry, pal.”

  I start off after Martha again, but all of a sudden his hand is on my shoulder, turning me back around.

  “You fucked up my game, man,” he says. “I have money on this game.”

  Normally I’d let it go, maybe pay for the guy’s next game, then go on my way. But he’s got hold of me, and I’m not in the mood.

  “I said I was sorry, asshole,” I say. “Now get your damn hand off me.”

  “You better be sorry,” the guy says.

  That’s it for me. Martha’s disappeared and the asshole’s in my face and his hand’s still on me, so I grab his collar and shove him up against the table. He gets back up and we’re ready to go. I’m so into it that I don’t notice Jeff coming up behind me.

  “Knock it off, guys,” he says. “This ain’t right.”

  “Mind your own business,” the guy says.

  But before the guy can do anything Jeff puts a hand on his chest, and one on mine, like he’s going to push us apart. But he doesn’t. He just holds his hands there, real gentle, and looks the guy in the eye. “Like I said, this ain’t the way.” For a second I think he’s going to knock Jeff’s head off, but then his arms fall to his sides and he steps back. He looks just like Jeff after he drove through the dust.

  “You’re right,” he says. “No trouble.”

  I can tell he’s embarrassed, and his friends don’t know what happened. I’m a little confused too, because whatever rubbed off on him didn’t rub off on me.

  “Let’s go,” Jeff says, and we do, Allison and Mike at his heels. Martha’s nowhere in sight, and I don’t expect I’ll be seeing her any time soon.

  I don’t sleep much thinking about what happened, and next morning I go over to Jeff’s place without calling. If he’s really seen something big, had some kind of vision, I want to know. And if he’s lost his shit, I guess I want to know that, too.

  “Hey,” I say as he opens the door and I push my way in. “Whatever you said to Martha cr
ossed the line. She didn’t deserve that. And that thing with the guy in the bar—I don’t even know where to start with that.”

  He thinks about it for a minute. “I’m sorry. I wish it hadn’t happened, but I guess it had to. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Then tell me again,” I say. “Dirt and shit, right?”

  Jeff looks at me like I’ve hurt him. “Man, you don’t get it. You almost did before, but—I don’t know how else to show you. It’s like—I don’t know. Like this.” He reaches out and lays his hands on the top of my head. I want to pull back, but I can’t. He just holds his hands there, gripping my head, like something’s supposed to gush out his fingertips into my brain. I even expect it, like maybe whatever happened to Mike and Allison and that guy in the bar is going to happen to me. But the only thing that passes between us is the sweat from his hands going into my hair.