A Place Of Light Page 10

  Mrs. Woody was fiddling with the vent window. “Can’t you do something about that exhaust?” she said. “It’s awful.”

  Just outside the city, Roy swung onto the expressway. “We’re almost there,” he told her.

  “If I live that long,” she answered through the handkerchief she held over her nose. “Why are you going this way? You know I hate the expressway.”

  “You said you wanted this to be a fast trip.” “I said short, not fast.”

  A terrible screaming noise started up from the engine.

  “What in God’s name?” Mrs. Woody cried.

  Roy took his foot from the gas and felt the control knobs on the dashboard. He leaned forward to listen while he steered the car.

  “What is it?” she asked him. “Is it the engine?” She clutched the purse in her lap.

  “I don’t know what it is.” He pulled the car onto the shoulder and turned off the engine. “I hope it’s not the water pump,” he said.

  “Well, this is a fine thing.”

  Roy got out and raised the hood while his mother sat hugging her purse. She watched him move from one side of the car to the other, poking under the hood. When he went around back and opened the trunk, she got out.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Thank God I had some oil in the trunk,” he said. “There’s barely a drop left in the engine.”

  “Well, what kind of fool drives with no oil?” she said.

  He opened the cans with his jackknife and poured two quarts in. “I hope to hell that’s all it was,” he said. He got back in the car and started it. The engine screamed, and Mrs. Woody jumped back, raising a hand to her face.

  “It’s going to explode,” she shouted to him. “It’s smoking.”

  Roy cut the engine and came around front. “Christ Almighty,” he said to his mother. He looked under the hood. He felt around inside the engine, and when his hand touched a shiny belt, he pulled back. “It’s the goddamn belt burning up,” he said.

  “Can you fix it?” Mrs. Woody asked.

  “Maybe I can get that belt off,” he said. He looked around at what little traffic chugged up and down the expressway. He touched the belt again, trying to figure out what it was attached to and how to take it off.

  “Is there a gas station anywhere?” his mother asked.

  “Now how the hell would I know?” Roy answered.

  “I wish you’d stop that,” she told him.

  “Oh for Christ’s sakes,” he said. He went for a screwdriver and pried at the belt for a little while. He started the engine again, and it screamed and smoked. Mrs. Woody backed away and ducked her head so she wouldn’t get hit in the face by flying debris when the whole thing blew.

  He shut the engine and sat with his hand to his forehead for a minute. He started the car again, and the same thing happened.

  “I knew something like this was going to happen,” Mrs. Woody said to him when he came back around to the front of the car. “And you ask me why I never go anywhere.”

  Roy stared at the smoke curling from the engine. He squinted his eyes and looked out across the expressway to see where they were.

  “Now what?” she asked him. “You couldn’t even break down on a road we know. No, it had to be here, nowhere.”

  He shook his head, looking down the expressway.

  “Is there anybody you can call?” she asked.

  “Nobody that’s home.”

  “Well, I certainly don’t know anybody,” she told him.

  “I’ll have to drive it to a gas station,” he said.

  “You can’t drive like this. It’ll blow up.”

  “It’s only the goddamn belt,” he told her.

  “Well, I’m not riding in this car,” she said. “I’m staying here until you do something that makes sense.”

  “Look,” he said, “the bus station’s down that street.” He pointed across the lanes. There was an exit a few feet up the expressway, on the other side. “You can wait in the bus station for me. I’ll drive you that far.”

  “You walk right over there and call a tow truck, that’s what you can do.”

  “I’m not calling no tow truck,” he told her. “I can drive as far as a gas station, and it won’t cost me nothing to do it.”

  “You’re going to ruin your car – what’s left of it. That’s what it’ll cost you.”

  “I’m telling you the damn car won’t blow up,” he shouted. “Now get inside so we can get the hell out of here.”

  If they hadn’t been out in public, she would have slapped his face. She turned her back to him and folded her arms across her chest. She felt something rise up in her – some old forgotten feeling. Sometimes she wondered why she’d ever bothered to have a child.

  “Well, I’m going,” he said. His voice shook a little from having yelled at her, and she was glad.

  “You going to just stand here on the side of the road?” he said. “Or what?”

  When she wouldn’t answer, he became almost apologetic. “I’ll walk you over, all right? And then come back here and drive the car by myself to a gas station.”

  She turned on him. “And then what? What am I supposed to do waiting in some smelly bus station with you God-knows-where with a car that doesn’t run?”

  “I’ll come get you as soon as I fix the car.”

  She looked across the expressway, her face rigid. “I don’t see any bus station.”

  He pointed. “I’ll go with you. They got chairs to sit in and probably a coffee machine.”

  “Coffee?” she spat. “What do I want with coffee?”

  When she turned on him like that he felt like a little boy again. As much as he liked to think she was ridiculous beyond hope, the worst thing in the world he could imagine was losing her. “Well, you can’t walk over there alone,” he told her. “It’s too dangerous at night.”

  “Dangerous?” she yelled. “I’ll tell you what’s dangerous. Listening to you. That’s how I got here in the first place. You’re not walking me anywhere.”

  He took a step back, like he’d been struck. After a while he fumbled in his pockets. “At least take this,” he said, handing her some change. “If you get thirsty, or if they got those pay toilets.”

  She gave him a vicious look. She pulled her sweater on and clutched the purse to her body. “Look at that,” she said, nodding to the pink color in the sky. “It’s already getting dark. I don’t know how I get into these things with you. I don’t know what I did that you had to turn out this way.”

  She turned to go, and he started after her. “Don’t you dare follow me,” she told him. “Don’t you dare come anywhere near me until you’ve got that car fixed.”

  He shoved the change back in his pocket and watched her go. He waited until she got across to the other side and was headed for the exit. Then he started the engine and did a U-turn. When he neared her, the car smoking and screeching, he pointed to show her the direction she should go, then raised his hand to wave good-bye. She put her hands to her ears and turned away from him.

  Once the sound of his car died away, her head began to clear. She had a little moment of panic when she wished she had agreed to ride with him, exploding engine and all.

  She lurched over the uneven grass, with all its hidden bumps and holes, to get to the sidewalk, and began sweating, as cool as the air was. Only a few cars passed by, but nobody seemed to take notice of her. Still, she was embarrassed to think what she must look like. Once she reached the sidewalk she moved more easily, but she still had to watch out to step around smashed beer cans and a hubcap and a pile of broken glass.

  Bus station, he’d said. But there wasn’t any bus station, none that she could see anyway. There wasn’t anything except empty buildings: a giant tire warehouse, a boarded-up used furniture store. She reached what she’d thought was the main street, but found it full of the same thing: nothing.

  When Roy was away it had been easier to pull the blinds on some facts of her life. No
w that he was back, the old gnawing, uneasy feeling was back, too: that he was her son, and that she’d had something to do with the way he turned out.

  She started in the other direction. Trash blew along the gutters. The cool, damp air smelled of dirt and crumbling brick. Only a couple cars passed. She shivered as she realized she was in the kind of place where things happened to people.

  She stopped at the corner. Up ahead was an abandoned gas station and a used car lot. She looked at the street sign, but it meant nothing to her. All she knew was the boulevard where the department stores were, and the highway they usually took into the city. Roy hadn’t told her what street the bus station was on, and she had a terrible thought: Maybe this was the wrong exit altogether.

  She went back the way she’d come. Maybe there’d be a phone booth down the other block. She passed a dented garbage can filled to the brim with broken wood slats and plaster. Even the trash here was useless.

  The most unusual thing she had ever found thrown away was a ten-by-fourteen gold-framed picture of Jesus, his throbbing heart pierced by an arrow, with little flames leaping up from it. Someone had put it out for spring cleanup, and she’d taken it. The picture stood upright on its own, and in back was a small electric light bulb. When you plugged the picture in, Jesus lit up, and that red heart seemed to pulse and bleed before your eyes, while the flames flickered around it. Sometimes she’d take it from the shelf in her closet and set it on her dresser. She’d plug it in, turn off all the lights, then switch the picture on, and it would make her go still, as if the light of the picture were sucking ever y difficult thing right out of her.

  Not that she had much to do with Jesus anymore. She’d decided a long time ago that if she was anything, it would probably be a Unitarian, since they never mentioned God. Just the same, she could use something to calm her about now.

  The sun was going down and it was getting cooler. She pulled the sweater around her and buttoned all the buttons. Two men stood outside a bar up ahead. They stopped talking and looked at her. “Hey, Grandma,” one of them called. “I’m all yours,” and he laughed. A shock of fear and shame went through her, and she turned and walked away fast. She listened to hear if they were following, but only heard them laughing back near the doorway.

  She was afraid, in a way she had never been before. All her life she had been so careful to always be prepared. And here she was, danger everywhere. It was as if she had been sleeping nicely in her fresh, comfortable bed and someone – something – had whisked her up and dropped her here, of all places. But why? What had she done?

  She came to the corner and stopped. When she finally got the courage to look behind her, she saw a woman approaching, from down past the bar. She was a small black woman, and she wore a large, bright yellow knit hat. She walked so slowly that she hardly seemed to be moving. But eventually she reached the men, who didn’t even give her a glance, and kept coming.

  Mrs. Woody looked up the other street, then at her wrist, pretending she was wearing a watch and was waiting for someone. Every once in a while, though, she’d glance back to check the woman’s progress, and was relieved each time she saw the yellow hat bobbing closer.

  When the woman reached Mrs. Woody she slowed down, if it was possible to go any slower and still be moving. She turned her head to Mrs. Woody without looking at her, and nodded as she continued her slow walk to the corner.

  “How are you?” Mrs. Woody blurted. What she meant to say was “Stop! Help! Something awful has happened to me.”

  The woman came to a standstill. She smiled, looking up at the buildings. “Oh, I’m pretty good,” she said.

  Everything about her was slow: her speech, her walk, her movements. “It’s cold,” she said, looking up at the buildings. She shook her head. “Mm-mm. Lord, it’s cold.”

  It was chilly, yes, but not cold. She was dressed in a pale lavender coat, the color almost faded out of it. She clutched a crumpled Rexall Drugstore bag to her breast. And that yellow hat! It was obviously hand-knit, of thick, bulky yarn, an original all right, something halfway between an oversized tam and a sawed-off bakers’ hat. The woman had pulled it way down over her ears, in a way that made her look ridiculous, with her small nose and fine cheekbones poking out from under all those coils of thick yellow yarn. She looked like some kind of exotic bird – or one of those people from a foreign country who wrap their heads in cloth. Who would wear such a thing out in public?

  “It is getting a little cold, isn’t it?” Mrs. Woody said politely.

  The woman laughed, looking up the street. “Everything getting higher, too,” she said.

  Mrs. Woody glanced at the buildings to see what she meant.

  “Can’t buy nothing no more,” the woman said.

  “Well, that’s the truth,” Mrs. Woody answered, seeing her opening. “Why, right this minute I’m supposed to be in Sears buying a coat I don’t even want and can’t afford. It was my son’s foolish idea. And his car broke down and he left me here. He told me to wait in the bus station, but there’s no station in sight. I’ve looked all over for it. Thank goodness you came along . . .” She was out of breath. She looked at the woman, full of hope.

  “Ha!” the woman said, startling Mrs. Woody. “You go to the store and spend all your money, and it don’t hardly even put nothing in the bag. Hardly worth to carry it home.”

  “That’s right,” Mrs. Woody said, a little confused. She waited, but the woman said nothing more. “I have to find the bus station,” Mrs. Woody said at last. “My son . . .”

  “Mm-mm,” the woman said, glancing her way again without meeting her eyes. “An’ it’s so cold.”

  “Yes, it’s cold, all right,” Mrs. Woody said, disheartened. “It’s cold, and things are getting higher.”

  The woman laughed, as if this was the funniest thing she had ever heard in her life. She stood slowly nodding her head at the sidewalk, looking pleased. “Now you’re saying something,” she told Mrs. Woody.

  Mrs. Woody stared at her. What if Roy had called the bus station looking for her? What if he’d fixed the car and was there right now, looking for her? He’d just figure she’d found someone to drive her home, and he’d go home, too, and then what?

  A car went by, an old junk driven by a middle-aged man with tangled hair and a mustache.

  “Lots of people out tonight,” the woman said. “Going places fast.” She chuckled to herself.

  The street was deserted. Most of the streetlights had come on, even though it wasn’t dark yet. Down in the next block, the bar’s sign glowed red in the window, casting an eerie light on the two men. They stood hunched together with their hands in their pockets and nudged each other as they talked. Mrs. Woody had the strange feeling that they were planning something that involved her.

  She turned to the woman, who stood clutching her paper bag and nodding into space. “My, that’s a beautiful hat,” she blurted.

  The woman looked at Mrs. Woody for the first time. Her eyes were like little brown marbles lying under pools of water. “A friend give me this hat,” she said, beaming.

  The woman’s smile made the skin stretch across her cheeks in a way that reminded Mrs. Woody of an antique lamp she’d once seen, the shade made of heavy, semiopaque paper that barely let any light through. The force of the smile had parted the woman’s lips, too, and a piece of gold glinted at Mrs. Woody from her front tooth.

  “My God,” Mrs. Woody gasped.

  The woman nodded. She looked up and down the street. “I didn’t know it was so cold out,” she said, and she shivered. “I came out this morning to feed the birds. Lord, it was cold then. An’ it’s cold now.”

  Feed the birds? Mrs. Woody could just see it: the woman hobbling along the deserted street with a cellophane bread bag full of crusts, a flock of pigeons swooping and cooing around her.

  “I have to find a telephone!” Mrs. Woody shouted. “I have to leave a message for my son.”

  “Uh-huh,” the woman said. “I know.”
>
  “My son’s going to try to find me,” Mrs. Woody cried, “and I won’t be there.”

  The woman shook her head, smiling, with an understanding look. “I know it,” she said. “Yes I do.”

  The two men down at the bar laughed and looked their way. One began to walk toward them, but the other laid his hand on the man’s arm. He said something and the man made low growling sounds that started them both snickering.

  “For God’s sakes,” Mrs. Woody cried. “Do you know where there’s a telephone?”

  The woman seemed to come to attention. She gathered herself together, rustling her paper bag, and looked away from Mrs. Woody.

  “One’s in my building,” she said. “For sure.”

  It seemed to Mrs. Woody that a long time passed before she was able to speak. “Your building?” she said. “Where you live?”

  And right then and there a new vision opened before her. She gazed up at the crumbling, destitute buildings. It had never occurred to her to think of stepping inside one of them.

  “Up the street,” the woman said. “Right where we headed.”

  We, Mrs. Woody thought. A little shiver ran through her. “Do you think . . .?” she said. “Would it be all right . . .?"

  “It cost a quarter,” the woman said.

  Mrs. Woody breathed a sigh of relief. Of course she would pay for the call. Of course. There wasn’t anything wrong with that.

  She looked expectantly at the woman, waiting for her to say something more. But the woman stood smiling up at the buildings, as if their conversation about the phone had not even taken place.

  But then Mrs. Woody realized that the woman’s arms and legs were getting into motion. Without a sound she had stepped off the curb and started across the street. Mrs. Woody followed, uncertain of what had gone on between them, uncertain that she was even meant to follow.

  She walked as if in a dream, aware only of the occasional sound of glass crunching under her feet, and the cold smell of soot in the air, not knowing where she was going, but hoping it was somewhere.

  The front door of the building was stuck. The woman had to push against it with her shoulder to get it open. And there they were, inside. A steep flight of stairs rose before them, and Mrs. Woody looked up into the darkness where they disappeared. A bare light bulb hung above them, suspended from the longest frayed cord she had ever seen. It barely cast enough light for them to see each other.