Otherworldly Maine (17 page)

“She paused to get her breath back, then looked at me. ‘Do you know how long that is, all told?'

“‘No'm,' I says, thinking it sounds like about a hundred and ninety miles and four busted springs.

“‘It's 116.4 miles,' she says.”

I laughed. The laugh was out of me before I thought I wasn't doing myself any favor if I wanted to hear this story to the end. But Homer grinned himself and nodded.

“I know. And
you
know I don't like to argue with anyone, Dave. But there's a difference between having your leg pulled and getting it shook like a damn apple tree.

“‘You don't believe me,' she says.

“‘Well, it's
hard
to believe, missus,' I said.

“‘Leave that grout to dry and I'll show you,' she says. ‘You can finish behind the tub tomorrow. Come on, Homer. I'll leave a note for Worth—he may not be back tonight anyway—and you can call your wife! We'll be sitting down to dinner in the Pilot's Grill in'—she looks at her watch—'two hours and forty-five minutes from right now. And if it's a minute longer, I'll buy you a bottle of Irish Mist to take home with you. You see, my dad was right. Save enough miles and you'll save time, even if you have to go through every damn bog and sump in Kennebec County to do it. Now what do you say?'

“She was lookin at me with her brown eyes just like lamps, there was a devilish look in them that said turn your cap around back'rds, Homer, and climb aboard this hoss, I be first and you be second and let the devil take the hindmost, and there was a grin on her face that said the exact same thing, and I tell you, Dave, I wanted to
go
. I didn't even want to top that damn can of grout. And I
certain
sure didn't want to drive that go-devil of hers. I wanted just to sit in it on the shotgun side and watch her get in, see her skirt come up a little, see her pull it down over her knees or not, watch her hair shine.”

He trailed off and suddenly let off a sarcastic, choked laugh. That laugh of his sounded like a shotgun loaded with rock salt.

“Just call up Megan and say, ‘You know 'Phelia Todd, that woman you're halfway to being so jealous of now you can't see straight and can't ever find a good word to say about her? Well, her and me is going to make this speed-run down to Bangor in that little champagne-colored go-devil Mercedes of hers, so don't wait dinner.'

“Just call her up and say that. Oh
yes
. Oh
ayuh
.”

And he laughed again with his hands lying there on his legs just as natural as ever was and I seen something in his face that was almost hateful and after a minute he took his glass of mineral water from the railing there and got outside some of it.

“You didn't go,” I said.

“Not
then
.”

He laughed, and this laugh was gentler.

“She must have seen something in my face, because it was like she found herself again. She stopped looking like a sorority girl and just looked like 'Phelia Todd again. She looked down at the notebook like she didn't know what it was she had been holding and put it down by her side, almost behind her skirt.

“I says, ‘I'd like to do just that thing, missus, but I got to finish up here, and my wife has got a roast on for dinner.'

“She says, ‘I understand. Homer—I just got a little carried away. I do that a lot. All the time, Worth says.' Then she kinda straightened up and says, ‘But the offer holds, any time you want to go. You can even throw your shoulder to the back end if we get stuck somewhere. Might save me five dollars.' And she laughed.

“‘I'll take you up on it, missus,' I says, and she seen that I meant what I said and wasn't just being polite.

“‘And before you just go believing that a hundred and sixteen miles to Bangor is out of the question, get out your own map and see how many miles it would be as the crow flies.'

“I finished the tiles and went home and ate leftovers—there wa'n't no roast, and I think 'Phelia Todd knew it—and after Megan was in bed, I got out my yardstick and a pen and my Mobil map of the state, and I did what she had told me . . . because it had laid hold of my mind a bit, you see. I drew a straight line and did out the calculations accordin' to the scale of miles. I was some surprised. Because if you went from Castle Rock up there to Bangor like one of those little Piper Cubs could fly on a clear day—if you didn't have to mind lakes, or stretches of lumber company woods that was chained off, or bogs, or crossing rivers where there wasn't no bridges, why, it would just be seventy-nine miles, give or take.”

I jumped a little.

“Measure it yourself, if you don't believe me,” Homer said. “I never knew Maine was so small until I seen that.”

He had himself a drink and then looked around at me.

“There come a time the next spring when Megan was away in New Hampshire visiting with her brother. I had to go down to the Todds' house to take off the storm doors and put on the screens, and her little Mercedes go-devil was there. She was down by herself.

“She come to the door and says: ‘Homer! Have you come to put on the screen doors?'

“And right off I says: ‘No, missus, I come to see if you want to give me a ride down to Bangor the short way.'

“Well, she looked at me with no expression on her face at all, and I thought she had forgotten all about it. I felt my face gettin' red, the way it will when you feel you just pulled one hell of a boner. Then, just when I was getting ready to 'pologize, her face busts into that grin again and she says, ‘You just stand right there while I get my keys. And don't change your mind. Homer!'

“She come back a minute later with 'em in her hand. ‘If we get stuck, you'll see mosquitoes just about the size of dragonflies.'

‘I've seen 'em as big as English sparrows up in Rangely, missus,' I said, ‘and I guess we're both a spot too heavy to be carried off.'

“She laughs. ‘Well, I warned you, anyway. Come on, Homer.'

“‘And if we ain't there in two hours and forty-five minutes,' I says, kinda sly, ‘you was gonna buy me a bottle of Irish Mist.'

“She looks at me kinda surprised, the driver's door of the go-devil open and one foot inside. ‘Hell, Homer,' she says, ‘I told you that was the Blue Ribbon for
then
. I've found a way up there that's
shorter
. We'll be there in two and a half hours. Get in here. Homer. We are going to roll.'”

He paused again, hands lying calm on his thighs, his eyes dulling, perhaps seeing that champagne-colored two-seater heading up the Todds' steep driveway.

“She stood the car still at the end of it and says, ‘You sure?'

“‘Let her rip,' I says. The ball bearing in her ankle rolled and that heavy foot come down. I can't tell you nothing much about whatall happened after that. Except after a while I couldn't hardly take my eyes off her. There was somethin wild that crep' into her face, Dave—something
wild
and something
free
, and it frightened my heart. She was beautiful, and I was took with love
for
her, anyone would have been, any man, anyway, and maybe any woman, too, but I was scairt
of
her, too, because she looked like she could kill you if her eye left the road and fell on you and she decided to love you back. She was wearin' blue jeans and a old white shirt with the sleeves rolled up—I had a idea she was maybe fixin' to paint somethin on the back deck when I came by—but after we had been goin' for a while, seemed like she was dressed in nothin' but all this white billowy stuff like a pitcher in one of those old gods-and-goddesses books.”

He thought, looking out across the lake, his face very somber.

“Like the huntress that was supposed to drive the moon across the sky.”

“Diana?”

“Ayuh. Moon was her go-devil. 'Phelia looked like that to me and I just tell you fair out that I was stricken in love for her and never would have made a move, even though I was some younger then than I am now. I would not have made a move even had I been twenty, although I suppose I might of at sixteen, and been killed for it—killed if she looked at me was the way it felt.

“She was like that woman drivin' the moon across the sky, halfway up over the splashboard with her gossamer stoles all flyin' out behind her in silver cobwebs and her hair streamin' back to show the dark little hollows of her temples, lashin' those horses and tellin' me to get along faster and never mind how they blowed, just faster, faster,
faster
.

“We went down a lot of woods roads—the first two or three I knew, and after that I didn't know none of them. We must have been a sight to those trees that had never seen nothing with a motor in it before but big old pulp trucks and snowmobiles; that little go-devil that would most likely have looked more at home on the Sunset Boulevard than shooting through those woods, spitting and bulling its way up one hill and then slamming down the next through those dusty green bars of afternoon sunlight—she had the top down and I could smell everything in those woods, and you know what an old fine smell that is, like something which has been mostly left alone and is not much troubled. We went on across corduroy that had been laid over some of the boggiest parts, and black mud squelched up between some of those cut logs and she laughed like a kid. Some of the logs was old and rotted, because there hadn't been nobody down a couple of those roads—except for her, that is—in I'm going to say five or ten years. We was
alone
, except for the birds and whatever animals seen us. The sound of that go-devil's engine, first buzzin' along and then windin' up high and fierce when she punched in the clutch and shifted down . . . that was the only motor sound I could hear. And although I knew we had to be close to
someplace
all the time—I mean, these days you always are—I started to feel like we had gone back in time, and there wasn't
nothing
. That if we stopped and I climbed a high tree, I wouldn't see nothing in any direction but woods and woods and more woods. And all the time she's just
hammering
that thing along, her hair all out behind her, smilin', her eyes flashin'. So we come out on the Speckled Bird Mountain Road and for a while I known where we were again, and then she turned off and for just a little bit I
thought
I knew, and then I didn't even bother to kid myself no more. We went cut-slam down another woods road, and then we come out—I swear it—on a nice paved road with a sign that said
MOTORWAY B
. You ever heard of a road in the state of Maine that was called
MOTORWAY B
?”

“No,” I says. “Sounds English.”

“Ayuh.
Looked
English. These trees like willows overhung the road. ‘Now watch out here, Homer,' she says, ‘one of those nearly grabbed me a month ago and gave me an Indian burn.'

“I didn't know what she was talkin' about and started to say so, and then I seen that even though there was no wind, the branches of those trees was dippin' down—they was
waverin
' down. They looked black and wet inside the fuzz of green on them. I couldn't believe what I was seein'. Then one of 'em snatched off my cap and I knew I wasn't asleep. ‘Hi!' I shouts. ‘Give that back!'

“‘Too late now. Homer,' she says, and laughs. ‘There's daylight, just up ahead . . . we're okay.'

“Then another one of 'em comes down, on her side this time, and snatches at her—I swear it did. She ducked, and it caught in her hair and pulled a lock of it out. ‘Ouch, dammit, that
hurts!
' she yells, but she was laughin', too. The car swerved a little when she ducked and I got a look into the woods and holy God, Dave!
Everythin
' in there was movin'. There was grasses wavin' and plants that was all knotted together so it seemed like they made faces, and I seen somethin sittin' in a squat on top of a stump, and it looked like a tree-toad, only it was as big as a full-growed cat.

“Then we come out of the shade to the top of a hill and she says, ‘There! That was exciting, wasn't it?' as if she was talkin about no more than a walk through the Haunted House at the Fryeburg Fair.

“About five minutes later we swung onto another of her woods roads. I didn't want no more woods right then—I can tell you that for sure—but these were just plain old woods. Half an hour after that, we was pulling into the parking lot of the Pilot's Grill in Bangor. She points to that little odometer for trips and says, ‘Take a gander, Homer.' I did, and it said 111.6. ‘What do you think now? Do you believe in my shortcut?'

“That wild look had mostly faded out of her, and she was just 'Phelia Todd again. But that other look wasn't entirely gone. It was like she was two women, 'Phelia and Diana, and the part of her that was Diana was so much in control when she was driving the back roads that the part that was 'Phelia didn't have no idea that her shortcut was taking her through places . . . places that ain't on any map of Maine, not even on those survey squares.

“She says again, ‘What do you think of my shortcut, Homer?'

“And I says the first thing to come into my mind, which ain't something you'd usually say to a lady like 'Phelia Todd. ‘It's a real piss-cutter, missus,' I says.

“She laughs, just as pleased as punch, and I seen it then, just as clear as glass: She didn't remember none of the funny stuff. Not the willow-branches—except they weren't willows, not at all, not really anything like 'em, or anything else—that grabbed off m'hat, not that
MOTORWAY B
sign, or that awful-lookin toad-thing.
She didn't remember none of that funny stuff!
Either I had dreamed it was there or she had dreamed it wasn't. All I knew for sure, Dave, was that we had rolled only a hundred and eleven miles and gotten to Bangor, and that wasn't no daydream; it was right there on the little go-devil's odometer, in black and white.