“Sure,” A.J. said. “Anything you need.” It was uncharacteristic of Eugene to request an indulgence. A small dread settled on A.J., a premonition of crisis.
“I would like for you would come back next week,” Eugene said. “I don’t get much company up here, and it gets a little quiet. You can take the Jeep so it won’t be so much trouble getting back up the road.”
A.J. felt bad for Eugene.
“Now, that’s odd,” he said. “I was just about to tell you that I might come up next week and check on you.” He was shaking his head as if he could not believe the coincidence. Eugene couldn’t believe it, either.
“When it comes to lying,” Eugene said, “you really suck.”
“You mentioned two favors.”
“The other one is kind of large.”
“The first one was kind of large,” A.J. pointed out. “What is it?”
“When it’s time, I want you to kill me.” A.J.’s head snapped around as if he had been slapped.
“Run that one by me again.” Maybe it was Eugene’s idea of a joke.
“You heard me,” Eugene said. His tone was so flat A.J. knew it was no jest. They stared at one another momentarily. Then they both looked away. A.J. felt slightly nauseous, as if he had been hit hard in the solar plexus.
“How the hell can you ask me to do that?” he asked.
“I’m asking.”
“You must be crazy. If you want to shoot yourself or blow yourself up, go ahead. But leave me out of it.” A.J. felt like he was breathing mud. “I know ten or fifteen people who would be happy to accommodate you. Hell, Diane’s daddy would pay you to let him do it.”
“I’d do it for you,” Eugene said quietly.
“I’d never ask you to,” A.J. said with certainty.
“Never say never,” Eugene said with a small sigh. “You don’t know what might come up.”
“I’ve got to go,” A.J. said abruptly. He had heard enough. He walked across the clearing to retrieve his bat from the porch. Eugene meandered toward the cabin and met A.J. when he returned. They stood like Lee and Grant at Appomattox. Eugene swayed. His pupils were dilated.
“Are you coming back?” he asked.
“Yes,” he said. “I’ll come back, but I won’t kill you.”
“Well, I’m batting.500 at least.” Eugene said. “Take the Jeep. I’m high all the time, now, and I can’t drive it. If I wasn’t dying, I’d be having one hell of a good time.”
“No, you keep the Jeep. You might run out of something to shoot. I’m going to borrow a bulldozer and clean up that road. Winter is coming, and it’s already a mess.” A.J. had decided on the spur of the moment that fixing the road was his best alternative to a series of long walks in the Georgia mountains.
“I assume you’ll be borrowing the dozer from Jesus Junior,” Eugene said, referring to Johnny Mack.
“He’s the only one I know who has one,” A.J. replied. Eugene seemed to consider this for a moment. Then a smile crossed his face.
“Good luck with that,” he said as he walked back onto the porch. A.J. headed on across the clearing and down the trail. As he neared the Lover, he heard six shots ring out, and he knew that Eugene’s faithful Jeep, like its owner, had entered its final days.
CHAPTER 3
I got the bus.
– Excerpt of posthumous letter from Eugene Purdue to Slim Neal
A.J. MADE QUICK WORK OF THE WALK DOWN THE mountain. He was unsettled. The afternoon had been like a trip into the Twilight Zone. So much so, in fact, he wouldn’t have been much surprised to find Rod Serling standing in the road, wearing a black sport coat with narrow lapels, chain smoking and eyeing him with intensity. He decided to stop at Billy’s Chevron for a Coke and some non-apocalyptic conversation. A dose of normalcy would do him good after the recent festivities up on the mountain. The establishment sat at the crossroads right outside of town.
“You’ll be needin’ some tires soon, Will,” Billy said, peering at the rubber on A.J.’s truck. Billy called his male patrons Will and his female customers Missus. He was ancient and grizzled. At the moment he was shaking his head, as if he found it hard to believe that a grown man would run around on such a pitiful set of tires.
“You sold me that set last month,” A.J. said, sipping his cold drink. Billy was an old country boy who had done extremely well for himself by adhering to the simple belief that every vehicle had some problem that should be repaired by Billy.
“Well, they’re wore some,” Billy said stubbornly. “Maybe we need to line her up and rotate these front tires while there’s a little life left in them.”
A.J. was now fully alert.
“We ‘lined her up’ when we put the tires on,” A.J. noted. “Maybe your alignment machine was out of whack.” Billy was squatted down, looking at the tires. He scratched his head and lit a slightly bent cigarette. Confusion was etched on his grainy features. As A.J. watched, he saw Billy nod his head twice and look up with certainty in his eye. A resolution had been reached.
“Here’s what we need to do, Will,” Billy said, standing and dusting his hands on his pants. “Bring her in next week and I’ll line her up and rotate those tires. You must’ve run over a pothole or something and knocked her out.”
Actually, it had been a curb. A.J. had vaulted it while avoiding one of Estelle Chastain’s more erratic driving maneuvers. But he wasn’t telling Billy that.
“Don’t you worry,” Billy continued. “I’ll fix her up good as new.”
Ironically, at that moment, A.J. saw Estelle’s aged Ford motoring up the highway, running astraddle the broken white line in the middle of the road. All that could be seen of Estelle were two white gloves clenched on the steering wheel and the top of her head, complete with pillbox hat. She peered with myopic eyes in A.J.’s general direction, and he knew it was time to go. He exited after pointing out the danger to Billy, who was no fool and took cover. When Miss Estelle came to town it was every man for himself, vehicular Darwinism based on survival of the quickest.
In his rearview mirror, A.J. saw Estelle swing into the Chevron in a long, slow arc that left her parked with her right front tire up on the pump island. Billy came out from hiding and squatted in front of Estelle’s car-elevated for convenience-and when the venerable mechanic began to slowly shake his head, A.J. knew the game was again afoot.
It was dusk when A.J. arrived home, exhausted. He sat for a moment and gazed at Maggie’s Folly, his name for the family manor. He and his wife, Maggie, had bought it thirteen years ago, an abandoned Victorian dwelling that had seen better times. It was built during the days when the wealthy kept summer homes in cool mountain valleys to escape the heat of the city. This particular structure was built by a carpetbagging entrepreneur who had traveled to Georgia in 1866 with the intention of stealing a fortune and living the good life, both of which he managed to do before being shot fatally in a bawdy house by the estranged husband of one of the employees of the establishment. As A.J. sat, he remembered the first time he and Maggie had seen the house.
“I want it,” Maggie had said as they walked through the creaking, moldering foyer. “Look at that stained glass! Look at that stairway!” She turned and looked at A.J. “We have to buy it.” A.J. thought that ten or fifteen skilled craftsmen could have it whipped into shape in a couple of decades or so, if their luck held and it didn’t rain too much.
“Who are you going to get to fix this dump up?” he had asked, but it was token resistance. The deal was done from the moment they walked through the door, and he knew it.
“I didn’t marry you for your good looks,” Maggie replied, folding her cruel arms around his poor, doomed neck. The house continued its decline momentarily as she kissed A.J. Then they drove down to the bank and arranged to buy it.