Too Cool
Part 2
He thinks about what could happen, and he curses all the wrong moves he has made and the danger he has brought to Jeanne and Tom and Ava. He glances at Jeanne, her hands on the dash again, her perfect profile like sculptured wood--Jeanne Windriver, his Indian princess, first love. She is so fine--soul-cool. She has rebelled against her parents, turned her back on them and home and every lesson she has ever learned, all for love of car thief Triple E. And now she is in the kind of trouble she couldn't have imagined only twenty-four hours before, snug in her robe, watching Cheers on tv, while her mother made popcorn in the kitchen and her dad in his easy chair spat tobacco juice into a coffee can.
Safe and adored then, but now her foundations are all overthrown. Triple E's destiny is her destiny, and he has no idea what his destiny will be, no idea where he is going, what he is doing. He has no plan, has no notion of what he will do if the road plays out at a ranch house, or worse yet, plays out in the middle of nowhere. In some corner of his mind, a little voice is speaking to him, telling him to give it up, that he is putting Jeanne and Tom in an impossible position, hurrying faster and faster toward zero-nada-nothing. For her sake, if you love her, go back, surrender, apologize for what you did to Mrs. Bridgewater, get back on the boxing team, go back to the barn and the Goodpasture cows, be with your buddies, your fellow j.d.'s in the dorm. What had been so bad about that? It hadn't been so bad.
But he knows he can't go back. Not there, no way. They all hate him really, they all want to beat him up, make him pay for what he did to them. What buddies? None, not any. And escaping from Goodpasture the way he did, it was the point of no return. Too many points of no return in his life. If the cops catch him, they'll fix him good, send him up to Golden or the correctional school at Buena Vista, where they knew how to deal with incorrigible criminals like bad bones Triple E.
He rams the Oldsmobile up one hill and down another, unwinding from the mountains, finding the trees playing out and the car lights breaking over rolling prairie in the distance. He sees black brush and powdery snow. He sees stunted trees, and he sees some cattle. At one point he stops the car and watches a small herd nuzzling fresh bales of hay.
"We're close to somethin," he says. "There's a ranch around here."
"I feel lost," Jeanne says. "I don't know where I am."
"Just a little more," he says, trusting in luck.
"I don't like this," says Tom, his voice a whisper. "It's spooky."
They go on and pretty soon the snow is getting thicker on the road and Triple E is having to plunge the car through drift after drift, breaking a trail, following the bare outlines of the road as it winds beside some whitened arroyos. The car becomes a bulldozer sending surge after surge of powder in front of the lights.
They descend into a shallow ravine, the bottom so obliterated by snow there doesn't seem to be a road. Triple E thinks about stopping and trying to back out. He knows he will need the chains to get moving from a dead stop at such a steep angle. The chains are in the trunk, where he put them after bottoming out at Monarch Pass. He and Tom can put them on again. It would be the safe thing to do, but he decides to throw the dice. He guns the engine. The car dives into a sea of white and lurches sideways and stops. He tries reversing and rocking the car. The tires whirl.
When he and Tom get out to look, they see snow covering the rocker panels. The car is high-centered. There is nothing for the wheels to grab onto.
"We're fucked," says Tom and goes back inside.
Walking to the top of the ravine, Triple E looks around for lights in the distance, a ranch house, another car, anything; invisible flakes tick at his face. Shielding his eyes he looks and looks, but all he sees is darkness thick as pudding.
When he gets back to the car, Jeanne asks him what they are going to do, and he says he and Tom will dig the car out in the morning. He turns the lights off. The heater is on and it is warm enough. They still have plenty of gas. They can hear the wind howling and making zithering noises at the edges of the windows. The snow sweeps in front of them in ghostly sheets. Sometimes a gust of wind makes the car shudder.
They sit in the dark eating Oreo cookies and drinking milk. They smoke cigarettes. Triple E thinks about Mrs. Bridgewater having so much faith in him, telling him he could move mountains. He wonders what she thinks about him now.
After what he did to her, she probably wants him dead, he figures. He knows he went a little crazy, a little nuts. But he's much better now. And he doesn't blame anybody who hates him. His father long ago said he was too much trouble and it's true.
"I think we should go to Idaho, don't you?" says Jeanne. She is chewing a cookie, her breath smelling of chocolate chip. "I hear Idaho is God's country. People go there to start over. It was in a magazine I read. 'The Zealots of Idaho' it was called." She waits for him to say something, but he keeps quiet. "You guys could get jobs as lumberjacks. Lots of logging in Idaho."
He likes the word lumberjack, feels it fits the kind of rugged guy he is, a guy meant for forests and mountains, an explorer type like the men who opened the West. The old breed of real men. Triple E the lumberjack. And Jeanne, she could get a job as a waitress somewhere. They would get a cabin in the country. They would settle in, go to the city now and then for movies and dances and parties. Goodpasture Correctional Facility would become just a peculiar dream. The city of Stone Garden creeping like a tentacle over the prairie land, the open spaces yielding to a sprawl of houses, none of that would matter much. One day maybe he would write home and send pictures and shock hell out of all those who had written him off. It's a cheery thought.
"Yeah, Idaho maybe," he says.
Later, after Tom falls asleep, Triple E and Jeanne make slow, painful love, going all the way for the first time, no hesitation on Jeanne's part anymore, she's ready. No mention of the oath she swore to her parents that she would stay a virgin until she got married. Triple E penetrates her and she gives a little cry and then she lies there, her hands on his shoulders, her mouth open, her eyes closed.
Afterwards there is blood. He takes off his undershirt and gives it to her. She sits there, holding the undershirt between her legs and they talk about love, how it was probably love at first-sight, only they didn't know it right away, it took some time to wake up. Triple E tells her about seeing her at school, how she was wearing her white shoes and tight blue skirt and a blue sweater and long, loopy earrings. Her hair black like blindness. And he heard somebody say, "There she is, that's Jeanne Windriver, whoa baby."
She says she remembers him always in his fatigue jacket, jeans and tennis shoes, and his hair over his forehead, and his eyes following her, coaxing something extra into her walk.
Later, Jeanne sleeps with her head in his lap, her legs curled on the seat. She looks like a little animal all bunched up in her furry jacket, and Triple E feels soft, feels a tenderness that settles in his chest and throat. He wants to take care of her. He wants to love her. He strokes her hair, bends down and kisses the side of her head. Then he leans back, closes his eyes, tries to sleep.
Sleeps.
He wakes with a start. He is sweating. The car is too hot. Reaching over he turns the ignition key and the hum of the motor dies. He cannot see out the windows, but he can hear what is going on. Angry gusts of wind buffet the Oldsmobile. There is a teasing, sadistic whine leaking through the car's imperfections. A sense of submerging, of suffocation, fills him. He feels the deep pool of snow rising. He looks at the ceiling and wonders how high it is now. Can he swim to the top of it? Will there be a way out in the morning?
Primitive fear. He is so puny, a bug in the grip of the storm, and his heart is inadequate and he will not be able to cope with what is coming. It is God's judgment on him for what he has done. He's not sure if there is a God, but he makes a little plea anyway. He says, "C'mon, man, what did I ever do to you?" He closes his eyes.
The tink of BB's on tin cans, the shattering of glass bottles. Triple E and Chuck Pump got in some practice before turning their BB guns on each other.
The great dirt bluffs at Sand Creek. A forty-foot drop to the bottom, and Triple E wanted to push Pump off and see if he bounced. Below was the valley carved by a million years of running water. There were cattle grazing on the lush grasses. There were huge trees, their branches pasted with leaves. The wind hit the cliffs, rising upward, blowing dirt in Triple E's face.
He and Chuck played war, shooting at each other from behind brush and hills. At noon they took a rest, sitting with their legs over the edge as they surveyed the valley. Triple E had thought for some time about making a parachute and jumping off the cliffs. Once when he was younger, he made a chute of his bed sheet and got Chuck Pump to jump off the roof of the house, with the sheet tied under his armpits. Triple E held the chute open, letting the wind fill it while he urged Pump on. Pump leapt and broke his ankle that day, and Triple E got beat with the peachwood paddle and his butt was so sore he waddled like a duck.
Triple E backed away from the cliff, whirled like a gunslinger and shot Chuck Pump in the forehead, and Pump hopped around, yowling, nearly going over the edge, until Triple E yanked him back. And Pump said, "Yeah, that'd be real funny, you turd!"
Pump rubbed his finger over the BB stuck in his forehead, shiny as a new penny. He dug it out and looked at it. "You tried to blind me," he said. Chuck grabbed him and they wrestled in the soapweed. Triple E ended up on his face in a hammerlock. And Chuck said: "The day I can't whip your ass is the day I'll suck the head of your peter in the middle of Colfax Avenue on the Fourth of July!" It was something he would say a number of times over the years, but at the bluffs that day was the first time Triple E heard it. "You'll what?" he said.
When the two of them were little they were best buddies. That was before Tom Patch came along. Before then, Chuck would follow Triple E everywhere, his hand always on Triple E's shoulder, possessive. He would do what Triple E would do, say what Triple E would say, believe what Triple E believed. And that was all fine, until Tom saw them one day and said they looked like fags walking around arm and arm like that. Then Triple E made Chuck keep his hands off and started snapping at him, calling him plumhead like the others did, making fun of the plum-colored birthmark on his temple.
One day Chuck went up to Tom Patch and said, "Hey you, Tom Patch. I hear you think you're bad." And Tom stepped on Chuck's foot and shoved him on his can and said, "That's right." Chuck followed Tom from then on, dogging his footsteps, hitching his pants low like Tom, wearing his shirt sleeves up like Tom, checking out the girls and leering at them the way Tom did. Chuck got heavy and bad, and that day at the cliffs when he got Triple E in a hammerlock and said he would kick his ass or suck the head of his peter, Triple E, laughing and yet almost crying from the pain in his arm, told Chuck that he sounded like a butt-bopping faggot. The words had given Chuck pause, relaxing his grip just long enough for Triple E to break away and slug him in the nose. Chuck bled all over and swore vengeance. He took off for home, holding his nose, blood pouring through his fingers.
And then there it was: the cat. It was a stray thing somebody had dumped. It came up to Triple E giving him soft cat mews, whining, begging to be friends. Triple E pet the cat until it purred. Then he thought about the roof and Pump and the parachute. The roof hadn't been high enough. Hadn't been time for the chute to open.
Triple E took off his undershirt and made holes in it for the cat's legs. He knotted the neck. He dressed the cat in the undershirt and held it where the wind shot up the bluff face. The undershirt ballooned and Triple E let the cat go. It wriggled around and tried to climb the parachute. Cat and undershirt plummeted forty feet down and hit and bounced, creating a small brown cloud. The cat got up and ran a few feet and collapsed.
Triple E hurried down and got the cat. It was bleeding from its mouth and ears. He wrapped it in the undershirt and jogged all the way to Stone Garden, to the veterinarian. The vet asked him what happened to the cat and Triple E said he had no idea, he just found the thing starving out on the prairie by the bluffs. When the vet said it was dying and there was nothing to do, Triple E's chin started trembling and he felt like he might cry. It was awful, the damned thing coming along and tempting him that way. "And look what happens to you," he said, rubbing the cat's soft ear.
"What did you say?" said the vet.
"I'm bad luck," said Triple E.
"Geez, I thought I had forgotten that," he whispers.
Jeanne stirs. "What, honey?" she says.
"Go to sleep," he says. "It's nothin." He strokes her arm, her hair. Kisses her hair. Her hair smells smoky, sexy.
Another gust of wind slams into the car and the snow is swept from the windshield for a moment, but there is nothing much to see, ghost-flakes licking at the glass. Triple E starts the car, welcomes the heat. The digital clock says 1:48, a tiny pulse of red light counts the seconds ticking away.<BR>
"God, listen to that wind," Jeanne whispers.<BR>
<BR>
After the wind dies down and the snow piles up, insulating the car, it stays warm for longer and longer periods. Triple E falls into a deep sleep around two-thirty with the gas gauge near the three-quarter mark. When he wakes five hours later, the car is like a sauna inside. He hurriedly shuts the motor down and cracks a window, putting his mouth to the crack and sucking crisp, clean air. He sucks some snow into his mouth and feels it melting, trickling down his hot throat. The gas gauge is now a tick above one-half.<BR>
Tom Patch coughs and he says, "I gotta headache, I gotta piss." And he tries to open the door, but can't. "Christ, what's this?" he says. "Are we buried alive?" He rolls down the window and starts digging a way through the snow wall. He plunges into it, wiggling his way out of the car.<BR>
"I gotta go too," says Jeanne.<BR>
Triple E rolls his window down and pushes aside the snow and climbs out. He sees clouds touching the earth from horizon to horizon, the clouds closing round them like walls. The wind nibbles at his face. He can feel snow settling on his stubble hair, wetting his scalp.<BR>
"It's scary," Jeanne says as she comes out behind him and looks around.<BR>
"Tom and me will get us outta here," he tells her.<BR>
"You think so?" says Tom, his voice scornful. He is pissing in the snow, writing his name. tOm PAtcH.<BR>
Jeanne squats while Triple E holds her hand to keep her from falling over. He sees the snow melting yellowish beneath her bottom. Her ass touches the snow and she squeals. When she is done he takes his turn. Then they climb back into the car.<BR>
Jeanne uses Triple E's blood-spotted undershirt to dry herself. He lies down, his knees up, his head in her lap, while she rubs her thumb round and round the indentation on his forehead. The indentation is white and oblong and shiny, an emblem of when he nearly got his head blown off.<BR>
"We're gonna need help," says Tom, his tone filled with annoyance. "No way we're unstickin this piece of Cutless Ciera crap by ourselves." He is leaning over the seat, eating a Twinkie and slurping milk from the jug, setting the jug on Triple E's stomach after each drink. Between bites he tells them he is going back to the highway and flag somebody down. Everybody in these parts has a four-wheel drive. That's what they need to pull the car out, a four-wheel drive.<BR>
Triple E tries to talk Tom out of it, saying it is too far to the highway, and even if he got there, no one will want to drive a four-by down some treacherous, lousy road and risk getting stuck. The cops are probably still sniffing around too. They will catch Tom.<BR>
But Tom won't listen. He is going and that's that. He doesn't think it's far.<BR>
"I'll be back in no time," he says. He stuffs some cookies in his pocket and gets out. He is wearing a leather jacket with chrome studs and a black knit cap. He has good boots on. Triple E and Jeanne watch him bend his head into the wind and climb to the top of the ravine. He turns and waves and shouts something, his words scattering in the wind. Snow swirls around him playfully and then he disappears.<BR>
"Tom Patch, you can't talk to that mungo," says Triple E. "He thinks he knows everything."<BR>
"No, he knows he knows everything," says Jeanne, her voice catty.<BR>
Triple E looks at the tracks and the spot at the crest where Tom sunk away. The seconds tick by. The wind erases Tom's footprints, and the snow seems to shift around, making restless patterns that come and go. It's as if live things are crawling underneath, giant snow worms or something.
<BR><P>
<a href="">Stories & Sources home page</a>
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<a href="brenna1.htm">Too Cool, Part 1</a>
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<a href="brenna-e.htm">Concerning the Excerpt from the Novel <I>Too Cool</I>
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