In due course, Mansfield will tell her that he sells seed and some heavy equipment wholesale, just outside of town proper, and then he’ll let his pants fall to the floor, step out of them, and move behind her as he places his cold, bloodless hands around her belly and tries to turn her while she resists slightly, and then some more, until he has to use a little force, and then they’ll do a give-and-take shuffle to the bed, where he’ll push her down and take her clothing off a bit at a time until finally they’ll be doing it, and then he’ll completely embody that goatlike carnality, grunting and groaning, while she keeps her eyes closed and concentrates on the spot Shank had pointed out to her on the water earlier, and she’ll think about how it would feel to be devoured by darkness and then spat out somewhere, startled and renewed, fresh and tight from a spigot into a bucket or out onto a lush lawn somewhere pleasant — yes, she’ll use that image, hold on to it, and it will make things easier for her, he thought down in the lobby, waiting for her to emerge from the elevator, which she did, about forty-five minutes later, raising her hand to adjust her hair, glancing around for him with a bit too much eagerness.
There was something in her face, a slackness in her jaw that foretold the confession she’d give an hour later, driving through the moonlit suburb of Lakewood, speaking softly, saying: He had that string tie on the whole time, and it kept bugging me. You know, those cold metal tips kept brushing me, and it was like they were saying, Here I am, yank me. We’re ready to go. Just grab hold. Cross the line, he said. Not out loud, but with his hands and his you-know-what. I said no. He struck me and said, Cross it. I said no. He hit me again. Then those strings told me: Draw me tight. And so I did. I did. It took all my might. I dug a knee into his ribs, tightened the bolo tie around his throat, and rode him like a bronco until he stopped moving, she said.
Shank could just barely make out the shape of her face in the pale Ohio light. Go on. Go on, he said, and she said, Well, what do you want to hear? Give me the nitty-gritty, he said. Give me the sick parts that this country ain’t ready for, the bits folks would never believe. He waited, listening to the engine shudder. Well, she said, his teeth popped out during the fight. His bridge, I guess you’d call it, the four front ones, and when I was done I popped them into my mouth and said, What’s up, doc? You didn’t, he said, feeling the laugh come up from his ribs and then listening as she laughed in response.
Eventually they were up on the beach road, passing sensible homes, locked tight and frowning out at the lake with mute but unshaded windows while the first light came along the edge of the lake and he explained to her how even Erie would ignite if you touched a match to it correctly, and then he rambled on, trying to stop himself at first, about the time he’d witnessed the Cuyahoga River burn, a calico blanket of shimmering flames elbowing its way into the heart of Cleveland, and how the sight of it had changed everything and made him aware that his calling wasn’t with the Lord, because there hadn’t been a single recognizable sign of prophecy in that water, even as it burned.
After a swing up to Detroit for no good reason except to pay off a gambling debt and to cast a glance at Lake St. Clair, they headed east along the dreary tedium of Canada, Highway 401, the staggering dull flatness and repetition. This part of Canada’s nothing but a feeble reflection of U.S. glory, he said. Then he carried on about old draft-dodger buddies who’d gone nuts from missing the American stuff. Guys who hallucinated burger joints, strip clubs, and billboards behind their eyelids. I avoided that. I skirted that issue, he said. I went into the merchant marine to get around running to Canada, and I got around it easy while my buddies went over and came back fucked-up, or dead. Do I feel the guilt that comes from that? I certainly do. Do I live each day pondering it? I certainly do. Do I lament the way history chewed my best buddies up? I certainly do. Do I wonder at the great forlorn gravity of the way things went in the past? I most certainly do. Do I spend my days in a state of total lament? I certainly do. Do I tell the same old threadbare stories over and over as a way to placate the pain that is stuck between my rib bones? I do indeed. Am I just another lost sixties soul who dropped one tab too many and can’t extricate myself from a high? I certainly am. And then, from that point, he kept talking, unable to help himself, until his discourse expanded (while she dozed and slept fitfully, rising from her dreams to catch fragments of his voice) and he fell into a reverie and told a long story as he drove, keeping close to the speed limit because the Mounties were out, their hats aslant. Here’s the story, verbatim, as he told it:
There was this guy named Ham. This was just after my buddy Billy-T came back from his first tour of duty. You had to surmise Ham’s story, because otherwise he was pretty much a blank slate. A big guy, the son of a pipe fitter from the Upper Peninsula, he was living in that shantytown I told you about, the old hobo hangout near the Kalamazoo River, a spot beneath the railroad tracks, not far from a gravel pit. Anyway, Ham had this wigwam setup, an assemblage of old sheet iron, tar paper, birch bark, leather, nylon, deer hides, and bearskins laid over the original Potawatomi wigwam frame, arched branches twined with petrified deer hide, and the old smoke hole, too — and there was another shack, which had originally been a sweat lodge or something. You went in and smoked some hash and listened for the spirits to call. And they did call, man. Those spirits came in all forms and sizes and said things you’d never forget, at least not for a while.
Anyway, Ham had this girl, Maggie, a street kid from Detroit, a real looker, with those baby blues, bright blond hair, and a lispy little pair of lips that had trouble around polysyllabic words. Naturally, I took a shine to her, but she was Ham’s, and you couldn’t so much as look her way without getting him on your case. I snuck a glance anyhow, when I could. One day, I took her by the hand and led her down to the river and told her I’d baptize her right there if she wanted, and she said she did, go on, do it to me, make me clean or whatever. My study at the Bible institute was a year or so behind me then, but the words were still around, and I could still utter them in a convincing way. Full immersion, I told her. The works. Right down to an evocation of the Holy Spirit, which would pass into her soul, and so on and so forth, and her soul flying upward, skyward, I said, and so on and so forth. I admit, I laid it on thick, talking about the purity of her heart this, and the salvation of the soul that, and so on and so forth, and she listened to me attentively while her hands, tiny things, fluttered like hummingbirds sipping from her ears. Even now, when I think about it, I can imagine them fluttering on my shoulders and breastbone. (Here he lifted his hands from the steering wheel and waved his fingers.) Anyway, the Kalamazoo was one of the most polluted rivers in the world at the time. You could’ve walked across it if you’d had the will to do so. That sounds like an exaggeration, I know, but it was loaded with pulp waste from the paper mills, along with whatever Checker Cab felt like adding to the mix. In any case, I led her through the bush to the shore and we stood there looking at the water. This was early evening, or maybe dawn, or maybe early afternoon, late fall, perhaps, but a warm day for sure. The sky tried to reflect itself in the water but failed. Clouds and trees fell against the surface and were lost forever. The fish in the Kalamazoo begged for the hook. You’d flip them onto the shore and they’d flex their gills as a way of saying thanks. A few hardy bugs stalked the surface, yanking their gummy feet. You’ll do better, I mean gracewise, without those garments, I told her.