Ashes Read online

"Open it, J.D.," said the voice. It was a young, hollow voice, with the kind of drawn-out accent a country girl might have. The long syllables reverberated inside the tin can of the trunk space.

  J.D. looked around the junkyard.

  "Stick it in, muscleboy," the voice taunted. "You know you want to."

  He unlatched the trunk and it opened with a rush of foul air.

  She sat up and arched her back.

  "Cramped in here," she said. The moon shone fully on her, like a spotlight. The raw flesh of her face was tinged green, and her eyes were ringed with black. She reached up to smooth her hair and her arm hung like a broken clutch-spring.

  "You… y-you're dead." But that was dumb. He knew machines didn't die, they only got rebuilt.

  "Now, do I look dead?"

  J.D. didn't know what to say. It wasn't the kind of thing he could look up in the troubleshooting section of his owner's manual.

  "Still got a few miles left on me," she said, tugging at the strap of her dress that had slipped too low over her mottled chest. Her eyes were wide but as dull as Volkswagen hubcaps. "Besides, all I need is a little body work and I'll be good as new."

  "What's the big idea, screwing up my date like that?" J.D. angled his head so he could look at her out of the corners of his eyes.

  "Your cheating days are over, rough rider. You've only got room in your heart for one girl now."

  "Whatchoo talking about? And why did you dump over my toolbox?" J.D. couldn’t be sure, but it looked like radiator fluid was leaking from her eyes.

  "A lady's always in search of that one good tool. What say we get it on?"

  "No. I'm going to stuff you behind the seat of that Suburban over there, and you're going to stay until you're both a collector's item."

  "J.D., is that any way to treat a lady?"

  "Well, you ought to be glad I think enough of you to leave you in a Chevy. There's plenty of Datsuns out here."

  She shook her head, and tattered meat swung below her face. "I don't think so, muscleboy."

  Her finger flexed like a carb linkage as she beckoned him closer.

  J.D. couldn't help himself. He was as captivated as he'd been by his first Hot Rod magazine. She smelled of gasoline and grave dirt, hot grease and raw sex. She'd oozed out all over the spare tire. He'd never get his trunk clean.

  "I think we're ready for a midnight run." She slid her mangled tongue over her teeth.

  He leaned over the back bumper. He felt a cold limp hand slide behind his Mark Martin belt buckle. She put the mashed blackberries of her lips to his ear.

  "And from now on, I ride up front," she whispered, and her words came out with no breath.

  Three months, and J.D. was dragging.

  The summer heat was wearing on him, and he'd lost twenty of his hundred-and-forty pounds. But it was even worse for her. She had gone from pink to green to gray and still the meat clung stubbornly to her bones.

  He hid her during the day, in a self-storage garage he rented. Floyd had given him hell at first, asking him why he walked all the time these days, was he afraid of putting another dent in Cammie or what. But lately Floyd had quit the ribbing. This morning Floyd said J.D. looked like he'd been run all night by the hounds of hell.

  "Something like that," J.D. wanted to say, but he'd promised to keep the affair a secret.

  And that evening, as he'd done every night since he'd picked up his new passenger, he carried a five-gallon can of gas to the garage and filled up the Camaro.

  And when the sun slid behind the flat Midwestern horizon and midnight raised its oil-soaked rags, he backed the car out and pointed it toward the street.

  "Where to tonight, Cammie?" he asked, as if he had to ask.

  She grinned at him. She was always grinning, now that her face was mostly skull. "The usual, muscleboy."

  He drove out to that three-mile stretch of open black road and idled. Oblivion beckoned beyond the yellow cones of the headlights.

  "One-sixty-five tonight," she said.

  He gulped and nodded. One-sixty-five. He could do it. Probably.

  Not that he had any choice. He could damage her flesh, but couldn't break the timing chains of love.

  "Okay, Cammie," he said to her.

  As J.D. stomped the accelerator and jerked his foot off the clutch, he wondered if this would be the night of consummation. Would she let him release the steering wheel as he wound into fifth gear, making them truly one, all blood and twisted metal and spare parts?

  He glanced at her. There was no sign of requited love in the dim holes of her skull. She was as cold as a machine, unforgiving, more metal than bone, more petroleum than blood.

  She was going to ride shotgun forever, as the odometer racked up miles and miles of endless highway.

  If only he could please her. But he was afraid that he was nothing to her, just a vapor in the combustion chambers of her heart.

  He shifted into fourth.

  DOG PERSON

  The final breakfast was scrambled eggs, crisp bacon, grits with real butter. Alison peeled four extra strips of bacon from the slab. On this morning of all mornings, she would keep the temperature of the stove eye just right. She wasn’t the cook of the house, but Robert had taught her all about Southern cuisine, especially that of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Before they met, her breakfast consisted of a cup of what Robert teasingly called a “girly French coffee” and maybe a yogurt. He’d introduced her to the joys of an unhealthy start to the morning, along with plenty of other things, the best of the rest coming after sundown.

  Even after two years, Alison wasn’t as enthusiastic about the morning cholesterol infusion as Robert was. Or his dog. About once a week, though, she’d get up a half-hour early, drag the scarred skillet from beneath the counter, and peel those slick and marbled pieces of pig fat. The popping grease never failed to mark a red spot or two along her wrist as she wielded the spatula. But she wouldn’t gripe about the pain today.

  Robert would be coming down any minute. She could almost picture him upstairs, brushing his teeth without looking in the mirror. He wouldn’t be able to meet his own eyes. Not with the job that awaited him.

  Alison cracked six eggs in a metal bowl and tumbled them with a whisk until the yellow and white were mingled but not fully mixed. The grits bubbled and burped on the back burner. Two slices of bread stood in the sleeves of the toaster, and the coffee maker gurgled as the last of its heated water sprayed into the basket. Maxwell House, good old all-American farm coffee.

  She avoided looking in the pantry, though the louvered doors were parted. The giant bag of Kennel Ration stood in a green trash can. On the shelf above was a box of Milk Bones and rows of canned dog food. Robert had a theory that hot dogs and turkey bologna were cheaper dog treats than the well-advertised merchandise lines, but he liked to keep stock on hand just in case. That was Robert; always planning ahead. But some things couldn’t be planned, even when you expected them.

  Robert entered the room, buttoning the cuffs on his flannel shirt. The skin beneath his eyes was puffed and lavender. “Something smells good.”

  She shoveled the four bacon strips from the skillet and placed them on a double layer of paper towels. “Only the best today.”

  “ That’s sweet of you.”

  “ I wish I could do more.”

  “ You’ve done plenty.”

  Robert moved past her without brushing against her, though the counter ran down the center of the kitchen and narrowed the floor space in front of the stove. Most mornings, he would have given her an affectionate squeeze on the rear and she would have threatened him with the spatula, grinning all the while. This morning he poured himself a cup of coffee without asking if she wanted one.

  She glanced at Robert as he bent into the refrigerator to get some cream. At thirty-five, he was still in shape, the blue jeans snug around him and only the slightest bulge over his belt. His brown hair showed the faintest streaks of gray, though the lines around his eyes and mouth had grown
visibly deeper in the last few months. He wore a beard but he hadn’t shaved his neck in a week. He caught her looking.

  Alison turned her attention back to the pan. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “ Not much to say.” He stirred his coffee, tapped his spoon on the cup’s ceramic rim, and reached into the cabinet above the sink. He pulled the bottle of Jack Daniels into the glare of the morning sun. Beyond the window, sunlight filtered through the red and golden leaves of maple trees that were about to enter their winter sleep.

  Robert never drank before noon, but Alison didn’t comment as he tossed a splash into his coffee. “I made extra bacon,” she said. “A special treat.”

  Robert nodded, his eyes shot with red lightning bolts. He had tossed all night, awakening her once at 3 a.m. when his toenails dug into her calf. He must have been dreaming of days with Sandy Ann, walking by the river, camping in the hollows of Grandfather Mountain, dropping by the animal shelter to volunteer for a couple of hours.

  Alison moved the grits from the heat and set them aside. The last round of bacon was done, and she drained some of the bacon grease away and poured the eggs. The mixture lay there round and steaming like the face of a cartoon sun. She let the eggs harden a bit before she moved them around. A brown skin covered the bottom of the skillet.

  “ Nine years is a lot,” she said. “Isn’t that over seventy in people years?”

  “ No, it’s nine in people years. Time’s the same for everybody and everything.”

  Robert philosophy. A practical farm boy. If she had been granted the power to build her future husband in a Frankenstein laboratory, little of Robert would have been in the recipe. Maybe the eyes, brown and honest with flecks of green that brightened when he was aroused. She would have chosen other parts, though the composite wasn’t bad. The thing that made Robert who he was, the spark that juiced his soul, was largely invisible but had shocked Alison from the very first exposure.

  She sold casualty insurance, and Robert liked to point out she was one of the “Good Hands” people. Robert’s account had been assigned to her when a senior agent retired, and during his first appointment to discuss whether to increase the limit on his homeowner’s policy, she’d followed the procedure taught in business school, trying to sucker him into a whole-life policy. During the conversation, she’d learned he had no heirs, not even a wife, and she explained he couldn’t legally leave his estate to Sandy Ann. One follow-up call later, to check on whether he would get a discount on his auto liability if he took the life insurance, and they were dating.

  The first date was lunch in a place that was too nice and dressy for either of them to be comfortable. The next week, they went to a movie during which Robert never once tried to put his arm around her shoulder. Two days later, he called and said he was never going to get to know her at this rate so why didn’t she just come out to his place for a cook-out and a beer? Heading down his long gravel drive between hardwoods and weathered outbuildings, she first met Sandy Ann, who barked at the wheels and then leapt onto the driver’s side door, scratching the finish on her new Camry.

  Robert laughed as he pulled the yellow Labrador retriever away so Alison could open her door. She wasn’t a dog person. She’d had a couple of cats growing up but had always been too busy to make a long-term pet commitment. She had planned to travel light, though the old get-married-two-kids-house-in-the-suburbs had niggled at the base of her brain once or twice as she’d approached thirty. It turned out she ended up more rural than suburban, Robert’s sperm count was too low, and marriage was the inevitable result of exposure to Robert’s grill.

  She plunged the toaster lever. The eggs were done and she arranged the food on the plates. Her timing was perfect. The edges of the grits had just begun to congeal. She set Robert’s plate before him. The steam of his coffee carried the scent of bourbon.

  “ Where’s the extra bacon?” he asked.

  “ On the counter.”

  “ It’ll get cold.”

  “ She’ll eat it.”

  “ I reckon it won’t kill her either way.” Robert sometimes poured leftover bacon or hamburger grease on Sandy Ann’s dry food even though the vet said it was bad for her. Robert’s justification was she ate rotted squirrels she found in the woods, so what difference did a little fat make?

  “ We could do this at the vet,” Alison said. “Maybe it would be easier for everybody, especially Sandy Ann.” Though she was really thinking of Robert. And herself.

  “ That’s not honest. I know you love her, too, but when you get down to it, she’s my dog. I had her before I had you.”

  Sandy Ann had growled at Alison for the first few weeks, which she found so unsettling that she almost gave up on Robert. But he convinced her Sandy Ann was just slow to trust and would come around in time. Once, the dog nipped at her leg, tearing a hole in a new pair of slacks. Robert bought her a replacement pair and they spent more time in Alison’s apartment than at the farm. Alison bought the groceries and let him cook, and they did the dishes together.

  The first time Alison spent the night at the farm, Sandy Ann curled outside Robert’s door and whined. He had to put the dog outside so they could make love. They were married four months later and Robert was prepared to take the dog with them on their honeymoon, an RV and backpacking trip through the Southwest. Only a desperate plea from Alison, stopping just short of threat, had persuaded Robert to leave Sandy Ann at a kennel.

  “ You got the eggs right,” Robert said, chewing with his mouth open.

  “ Thank you.”

  He powdered his grits with pepper until a soft black carpet lay atop them. The dust was nearly thick enough to make Alison sneeze. He worked his fork and moved the grits to his mouth, washing the bite down with another sip of the laced coffee.

  “ Maybe you can wait until tomorrow,” Alison said. She didn’t want to wait another day, and had waited months too long already, but she said what any wife would. She bit into her own bacon, which had grown cool and brittle.

  “ Tomorrow’s Sunday.” Robert wasn’t religious but he was peculiar about Sundays. It was a holdover from his upbringing as the son of a Missionary Baptist. Though Robert was a house painter by trade, he’d kept up the farming tradition. The government was buying out his tobacco allocation and cabbage was more of a hobby than a commercial crop. Robert raised a few goats and a beef steer, but they were more pets than anything. She didn’t think Robert would slaughter them even if they stood between him and starvation. He wasn’t a killer.

  “ Sunday might be a better day for it,” she said.

  “ No.” Robert nibbled a half-moon into the toast. “It’s been put off long enough.”

  “ Maybe we should let her in.”

  “ Not while we’re eating. No need to go changing habits now.”

  “ She won’t know the difference.”

  “ No, but I will.”

  Alison drew her robe tighter across her body. The eggs had hardened a little, the yellow gone an obscene greenish shade.

  Sandy Ann had been having kidney and liver problems and had lost fifteen pounds. The vet said they could perform an operation, which would cost $3,000, and there would still be no guarantee of recovery. Alison told Robert it would be tough coming up with the money, especially since she’d given up her own job, but she would be willing to make the necessary sacrifices. Robert said they would be selfish to keep the dog alive if it was suffering.

  “ Want some more grits?” she asked. Robert shook his head and finished the coffee. She looked at the fork in his hand and saw that it was quivering.

  Sandy Ann ran away when Alison moved in. Robert stayed up until after midnight, going to the door and calling its name every half-hour. He’d prowled the woods with a flashlight while Alison dozed on the couch. Sandy Ann turned up three days later in the next town, and Robert said if he hadn’t burned his phone number into the leather collar, the dog might have been lost forever.

  Sandy Ann was mostly Lab, with a
little husky mix that gave its eyes a faint gray tint in certain light. The dog had been spayed before Robert got it at the pound. Robert’s mother had died that year, joining her husband in their Baptist heaven and leaving the farm to their sole heir. Sandy Ann had survived thirty-seven laying hens, two sows, a milk cow, one big mouser tomcat that haunted the barn, and a Shetland pony.

  Until today.

  Alison’s appetite was terrible even for her. Three slices of bacon remained on her plate. She pushed them onto a soiled paper napkin for the dog.

  “ Four’s enough,” Robert said.

  “ I thought you could give her one piece now.”

  “ It’s not like baiting a fish. A dog will follow bacon into hell if you give it half a chance.”

  Robert finished his plate and took the dishes to the sink. She thought he was going to enter the cabinet for another shot of bourbon, but he simply rinsed the dishes and stacked them on top of the dirty skillet. His hair seemed to have become grayer at the temples and he hunched a little, like an old man with calcium deficiency.

  “ I’d like to come,” she said.

  “ We’ve been through that.”

  “ We’re supposed to be there for each other. You remember April eighth?”

  “ That was just a wedding. This is my dog.”

  Alison resented Sandy Ann’s having the run of the house. The carpets were always muddy and no matter how often she vacuumed, dog hair seemed to snow from the ceiling. The battle had been long and subtle, but eventually Sandy Ann became an outdoor dog on all but the coldest days. The dog still had a favorite spot on the shotgun side of Robert’s pick-up, the vinyl seat cover scratched and animal-smelling. Alison all but refused to ride in the truck, and they took her Camry when they were out doing “couple things.”

  “ Do you want to talk about it?” Alison asked. She had tried to draw him out. In the early days, Robert had been forthcoming about everything, surprising her with his honesty and depth of feeling. Despite the initial attraction, she had thought him a little rough around the edges. She’d been raised in a trailer park but had attended Wake Forest University and so thought she had escaped her breeding. But Robert reveled in his.