|
|||||||
|
|
|
|||||
|
|
|||||||
|
|||||||
|
|
|
|||||
|
|
|||||||
Fiction
published in Freezerburn
Back To Table Of ContentsThe Traveling Man, the Husband, and the Writer
by Paul Pekin
The traveling man was already pleased by the waitress and her short dark hair. She caught his eye, a tall, sturdy, not entirely young woman with an easy open smile. "Did you hear those guys?" she said. "They just noticed now that I got my hair cut. That was almost two weeks ago!"
The traveling man took a seat. He took another look at the waitress. There was a table of old farmers across the room, joshing and talking crops.
"That's a fine haircut," he said. "You're a damn good looking woman."
The traveling man ordered chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes and white gravy, whole kernel corn, coffee with sugar and cream, and later he had a piece of pie. Lemon meringue. He was overweight, over fifty, and left a generous tip.
"What a nice man," the waitress said to her friend. The friend was a little older and wore her brassy hair in an upsweep.
"Good tip?"
"Do you know what he said? He said, 'You're a damn good looking woman.'"
The waitress imitated the traveling man's deep warm voice. She almost got it right.
The friend knew all about this kind of a man. They could lay it on, they surely could.
And yet it wasn't what the traveling man had said. It was the way he said it. You're a damn good looking woman. You could tell he meant it.
The waitress had several hours till the end of her shift. There was a poor but private mirror in the ladies room and she made several visits to it. Until today she hadn't been too sure of the new haircut. Now she said to her friend:
"I think I'll keep it this way."
"Keep what?"
"My hair."
The Danton Diner is a quarter mile off the interstate just after one of those blue highway signs. "Next Exit, Gas, Food." There is a town at this exit too, but hardly any reason why someone coming off the interstate should drive the extra mile to reach it. You can make an immediate choice right here--Shell or Marathon, The Chicken Hut or The Danton Diner, and this is what people generally do.
The town of Danton amounts to a single main street good for hardware, haircut, pharmacy, and post office. Not much to do except on Sunday morning. Hope Baptist Church, the United Tabernacle of God, the Church of Jesus Christ On the Mount, the Danton Fundamental Baptist Church. On Sunday morning a whole lot of praying goes on.
The waitress lived in a rented home about three blocks off the main street. This put her very nearly into a farmer's field, but it was a good place to raise kids, dogs, and vegetables, and far enough from the nearest neighbor so you could have a good husband/wife fight without starting up a scandal.
When the waitress got home she saw that her husband was still out. This meant that the children were still watching television. There were three children, the oldest, disobedient and boy crazy, the youngest, spoiled rotten. Between them was a boy who was not likely to amount to much.
The waitress bounced in carrying a bag of bread, milk and cat food she had picked up at the Five Star. There was a blank expression on Dolly's face--she ought to have been in bed an hour ago, and David had his hand in his crotch again. "Okay, gang, next commercial," she said. Said it most cheerily. If the children had paid any attention at all, they would have seen that their mother was in an unnaturally good mood.
Instead, the oldest daughter, the boy crazy one, said something that normally fetches such a daughter a good crack on the mouth. An educated person would call such behavior "acting out," an attempt at rebellion, a cry for parental attention. Our waitress called it sass and let it go by this time. She was in too good a mood to fight. Imagine. Three big kids and tonight a strange man had called her a "damned good looking woman."
And now, the husband.
Ray Ottridge was not native to this part of the country. He had just drifted in from some nearby state and somehow never drifted away. He was a short dark man with a little goatee beard that did nothing to endear him to the neighbors who might have forgiven a beard or long hair on a country western singer but somehow preferred to think of Ray, who had never completed high school, as a hippie.
Ray worked at the Turner Marina on Lake Heron, the only job he could get. Lake Heron was one of those reservoir lakes made by the Army Corps of Engineers, not a real big one or a very popular one, the fishing was better in half a dozen places within two hours drive. Ray pumped gas, sold bait, handled the rental boats, cleaned up, repaired things, and sometimes did a bit of guiding. You wouldn't think it to look at him but he was a good guide, he knew where the bass were, and it wasn't his fault if they seldom got over eleven inches long. The limit, of course, was twelve.
The trouble with this marina job was the pay. Absolute minimum and no benefits unless you count free bait and all the eleven inch bass you could smuggle home. Ray drank a lot now, and you could see that this was the way it would always be.
The children were asleep when he pulled in. He could hear the television playing. His wife was waiting up, smoking a few last cigarettes. It aggravated him that she smoked, even though he himself did the same. What was he working for--the tobacco company?
She was sitting on the couch in a dorm shirt, her bare legs crossed. That movie about the invasion of the killer rabbits was playing on television, the second time within a month. This did not improve Ray's disposition. He walked straight up to the set and turned it off. Stuff like this usually started the wars, but tonight she remained calm, even smiled. A cold chill ran through him. She was going to want sex.
"You want it on?" he said. "You want to watch the same damn movie all over again?"
"Whatever you like," she said.
"Who around here gives a fuck what I like?" He stomped into the kitchen and found a can of beer. Then he stood in the doorway, examining his wife.
"What the hell you so smug about?" he said. "You with your hair all cut off."
She touched the back of her neck, almost caressed it. "I'm going to keep it that way."
"Sure. You would. You don't give a damn how you look."
"Maybe I look pretty good. Maybe other people think so."
"What other people?" His eyes grew narrow.
"There was a man in the restaurant. He said I was a damn good looking woman. He meant it."
"What man?"
"Just a man. A traveling man."
"Hah. It was something more than that. I can tell."
"What can you tell?"
"If some traveling man said something like that you wouldn't give a damn. It was someone else, wasn't it, and you just have to rub my face in it."
"Oh, Christ. Just because some stranger gives a woman a compliment."
"It wasn't no stranger. I ain't that dumb. I know who it was. I know why you're all curled up here like a kitten, smiling, laughing at me."
"Now you stop that, Ray Ottridge!"
"It was that writer guy, wasn't it?" He took a step toward her. She rose to meet him. She was half an inch taller than he. She could fight like a man and did he ever know it.
"I told you to stop that," she repeated. "I haven't seen that man and if I did, so what?"
"So what?" he said, clenching his fists. "So what? You say so what!"
They were eye to eye now and blazing. He wanted to hit her more than anything else in the world. "Go ahead," she jeered. "Try it."
"I'll put an end to this," he said. He charged out the front door, still carrying his can of beer. She followed as far as the porch.
"You stay away from that man," she cried. "You hear me, Ray Ottridge? You want to fight, pick on someone your own kind."
Then the pickup was roaring down the moonlit road. She waited a moment to see if he would turn back but the night grew still. There was a great harmony of tree frogs on every side.
The writer lived all to himself in trailer about six miles outside of town. He was a quiet unathletic man who did not see well without his glasses. He had come to this town less than a year ago hoping to find solitude. Perhaps he had found too much.
Lately the writer had been troubled by recurring bad dreams. He would find himself on Main Street, approaching the post office, a stack of those familiar manila envelopes under his arm. This writer spent a lot on stamps; even in his dreams. In this dream, he was approached by a group of faceless townspeople who had a question. "What are you doing here? You do not belong in our town."
The writer would wake up from this dream knowing it had told him the truth. But it had given him no answers either. Where did he belong? His childhood home was buried beneath an expressway, his old school friends were scattered across a continent, his parents were beneath the earth. Jobs he had held no longer existed. Women he had known were now fat matrons no longer interested in love. Even the stories he wrote, endlessly circling the mails, seemed lost and distant and the few that did get published appeared in print as cold hearted strangers.
Exactly where did the writer belong?
He was working on a story about love when Ray Ottridge came to his door that night. Ray did not knock, he thumped. The whole trailer shuddered beneath his blows.
The writer opened the door. He knew Ray Ottridge and despised him for having so attractive a wife. Still, he was polite.
"Ray! Is there trouble?"
"You're damn right there's trouble," Ray Ottridge said, grabbing the writer by the collar. Suddenly the writer found himself on the ground outside his trailer, looking up at the stars. It was a clear night and they went back to infinity.
"Get up and fight, you fag," Ray Ottridge said.
The writer got to his feet. He was smart enough to take off his glasses and slide them under the step. "What's this all about?"
"A damn good looking woman, huh?"
Ray Ottridge was drunk, but the punch he threw was accurate enough. He knows I love his wife, the writer thought. And I never told anyone, not even her!
The writer was no match for Ray Ottridge and took a pretty good beating. Sometimes, in our society, a grown man forgets what it is to take a good beating. Forgets how it feels to be smashed again and again until the shock and the pain turn into humiliation and then rage. The writer groveled on the ground, helpless, waiting for Ray to stop.
"There's going to be more," Ray said. "If you ever look sideways at my wife again." He got into his truck and sped off.
The writer retrieved his glasses and went back into the trailer. He glanced at his word processor and saw his words glowing on a little green screen. This was what he had become. A man whose dreams had turned into random flecks of electricity. He felt as if he had just been pushed out of the world of living men.
The writer took less than a minute to make up his mind. He went to the closet, got out his shotgun, checked the chambers to see that they were loaded, and ran to his car, leaving the trailer standing open. He was not the kind of a person who liked to drive fast, but now he put the pedal on the floor and let the night rush by.
Like so many drunk drivers, Ray Ottridge had slowed up. The writer came on his tail lights just as they reached town, and stayed right behind until he parked.
Ray Ottridge was feeling good now. He had defended his honor, and he had gotten even with his wife. He didn't even notice the car pulling up behind him. He didn't even hear the writer get out and slam the door. He was on the first step of his porch when the writer called out his name.
"Ray! Ray Ottridge, you son of a bitch!"
That turned his head. The writer raised his gun and fired both barrels and Ray Ottridge, taking both loads in the chest, was dead. Dogs began barking in nearby houses. The writer threw down his gun and began running aimlessly through the fields. The moon was bright and the sky stretched on without end.
* * *
The traveling man had been on the road continuously since leaving the Danton Diner. His eyes were heavy now and he was watching those little blue signs. Next exit, gas, food, motels. He pulled off, chose a motel where a young man chewing wintergreen gum rented him a room. He pocketed the key, and drove over to the diner. "We never close," the sign said.
The traveling man ordered coffee with cream and sugar, a piece of dark chocolate cake, and took a second look at his waitress. She was almost fifty with salt and pepper hair trimmed close to her head the way he liked it. You could see that she was tired, but she managed a smile. "Oh," she said. "That's good cake. I wish I could have some, but I have to watch my weight."
"You?" the traveling man said. "I doubt that. You're a damn good looking woman."
And he meant it, every word. You could tell.
the end
