This is Just Exactly Like You (36 page)

FREE TRIP TO HEAVEN. DETAILS INSIDE. That’s what the sign says this morning out front of the Holy Redeemer, and Jack gives the metal building a half-salute as he drives by. Rena’s gone back to the condo
to take care of one or two things
. She stayed last night, but they slept in their clothes. Something’s lighter between them. She snored. Jack doesn’t even remember dreaming. He rolls his window down further and reaches around Hen, scratches Yul Brynner between the ears. The dog’s along for the ride. Seemed right to bring him.

Butner’s called him already, said the concrete guys could drop in the sidewalk in a day.
In an afternoon, really, he said, man. One afternoon. Those guys are some fucking pros, I’ll tell you that.

How much?
Jack wanted to know.

So there it is. His plan. Undersea creatures and a backyard sidewalk tricycle racetrack. For his son, who, if Jack’s going to be honest about all this, may never actually set foot on the thing. Bethany gave him a Batman Big Wheel for Christmas two years ago and all he ever did was move the adjustable seat up and back. Then again, it’s possible Hendrick might sketch out tensile strength schematics for the sidewalk on the back of a receipt by the time they get out to see Zel. Or just engage in some casual cocktail party conversation. No way of telling how it all might go.

At the lot, three orange NCDOT dump trucks are in line by the topsoil pile. One’s towing a huge bulldozer. Butner’s leaning against the fender of the lead truck, and Ernesto’s standing next to him. Four or five NCDOT guys are out there, standing around, tan NCDOT shirts stretched over their bellies, orange NCDOT baseball caps. Everything looks like it’s on the verge of being very official.

Butner waves Jack over. He’s looking a little less official, wearing a black T-shirt that says CHEVROGODDAMNLET. There’s a cartoon of an old Camaro giving a toothy snarl underneath the lettering. Maybe Jack ought to order them some PM&T shirts. That would look pretty sharp. American flags and an embroidered pile of pine bark. A tomato. A half-dead stomped baby possum. Butner says, “This is Jack Lang, our COO. Jack, these gentlemen would like to purchase some of our topsoil. I told them we could probably make them a deal.”

Ernesto takes Hendrick over to show him the big dozer, lifts him up into the cab. One of the NCDOT guys, a little skinnier than the others, holds his hand out, says, “Kenny Trimble. We’d like to take about forty yards.”

“Have we got forty yards?” Jack asks.

Butner doesn’t even look at the pile. “I said we’d give him what’s sitting here, see if we could take delivery off the farm this afternoon, and finish him up that way.”

Jack says, “Doesn’t the state normally—”

“They’re working off the clock today,” says Butner, cutting him off.

Kenny Trimble looks embarrassed. “We’re adding a turn lane back at 100,” he says. “And we’re a little stalled, waiting on more equipment. Road digger, paint guys, that sort of thing. They’re held up.” He nods back up the road. “But the Reverend down at the church there said if we’d scrape his property and put topsoil down, he’d pay five grand.”

“What, at the Redeemer?” Jack says. “We’d have done it for that.”

“They’ve got the heavy machinery,” Butner says, meaning the bulldozer. Hendrick looks tiny up there in the huge seat, surrounded by yellow caging and levers. The bulldozer’s blade gleams along the edge where it’s been cut clean of paint. It’s at least five times as big as either of their skid steers, makes them look like toys sitting there by the mulch. “I went on and quoted them fifty a yard,” Butner says, letting a little smile show.

“Fifty?” Jack looks over at the office door. Butner’s taken down the sign advertising their per-yard prices. They charge twenty-four for topsoil.

“They’re willing to pay a premium for our discretion.”

“We’d ask you to keep it fairly quiet,” Kenny says. “Not sure the home office would understand. But we’d just be sitting idle all morning otherwise.”

“It’s kind of a win-win,” Butner says.

Jack squints at the Holy Redeemer. The lot out front is nothing but scrub, clay showing through the weeds in spots. It would take him days to do it with their little skid. It’ll take these guys a morning. He does some quick math. Twenty-six extra dollars per yard times forty yards is right at a thousand over and above what they’d normally get. A mortgage payment. The cost of the undersea creatures. He looks a while at the bulldozer trailer. He says, “Would that trailer hook up to our truck?”

Kenny eyes the hitch on Jack’s bumper. “It’d hook on,” he says. “You need it?”

“How about I give you forty yards at forty-five, and borrow your trailer for the morning? After you get the bulldozer off it down at the church?”

Kenny looks at the rest of the NCDOT guys, and there’s a round of shrugging. Butner says, “We were fine at fifty, I think, boss man.”

“I need the trailer,” Jack tells him.

“What for?”

“For the undersea creatures,” Hendrick says, from the cab of the bulldozer. Jack looks up there, at his son, who’s cataloguing the world.

“Oh, shit,” Butner says. “I got a trailer for that.”

“What’s it for?” Kenny wants to know.

“Oversized animals,” Jack says. “Fiberglass. Big.”

“How big?” Butner asks.

“Big,” Jack says. “Like that trailer big. They’re like putt-putt elephants, only they’re fish. There’s an octopus, too. And a shrimp. I bought them yesterday,” he tells Kenny. “Or I agreed to, anyway.”

“OK,” Kenny says, looking at him like he might need medication.

“You really think we need a trailer this big?” Butner asks.

“I’m gonna put them in my back yard,” Jack tells Kenny. “Around a racetrack. A sidewalk. For my son.” He points up at Hen in the bulldozer. As he explains this to Kenny Trimble of the NCDOT, he starts to get an idea of what it’ll be like to explain it to Beth. Or anybody who’s not Butner or Ernesto. Or Rena.

“I got it,” Kenny Trimble says. “You want a putt-putt in your yard.”

“Kind of,” Jack says.

“That’s cool,” says Kenny. “I got a daughter. I bet she’d like something like that.”

“Bring her by,” Jack says, feeling friendly. “You guys going to be out here tomorrow?”

“She lives in Wilmington. With her mom.”

“Oh,” he says. “Well, if she’s ever in town—”

Butner pulls them back toward the deal. “OK, fellas. Forty-five and the trailer and we’re all good, right? We’re agreed?”

Kenny nods, picks at his palm. “If we take it back up to fifty,” he says, “could we use one of your small skids to get into the corners, up around the building, places like that?”

“Absolutely,” Butner says. He’s got his deal back.

Jack says, “Let me call my guy before we go too much further. We might be able to get you forty yards dropped down there this morning. That way you could get the whole thing at once.”

“Sounds good,” Kenny says.

“Great.” Jack walks over to the office, and Butner follows him. The NCDOT guys huddle around the front of their dump truck. Ernesto gets Hen down out of the bulldozer and they head for the office, too.

“Is all this above-board?” Jack asks Butner, once they’re inside.

“Sure, man. They pocket three grand and we get one. They’d just be sitting on their asses all morning otherwise. Everybody wins.”

“But you’re sure it’s not illegal?”

“I mean, it’s probably not legal. But I wouldn’t call it illegal. They do a job, they get paid. And we get paid. Your tax dollars at work for you. Think of it like a refund.”

“A refund,” Jack says.

“Yeah,” Butner says. He tosses the phone to Ernesto, so he can call the soil guy. “See if he can bring us a full truck,” he tells him. “That way he can dump forty down there for the government, and fill us up here while he’s at it.” Ernesto starts punching numbers in, steps outside to make the call. Butner opens the fridge, gets himself a beer. “You want one?” he asks Jack.

“It’s nine in the morning.”

“Five o’clock somewhere. You want one?”

“No,” Jack says. Then he says, “Sure.” Why the hell not: This has got to be the day for it.

Butner grins, hands his over, gets himself another. He makes a little show out of sitting up on the desk and popping it open. “So,” he says.

“So.”

“What is it that’s going on in your life, boss man, where you’ve ended up with a giant mini-golf catfish?”

“Nothing,” he tells him. “We were just at this putt-putt yesterday—”

“You and Fucknut’s girlfriend.”

“Fucknut,” Hen says.

“—and I saw them, and I liked them.”

Butner takes a long swallow, says, “You belong on TV or something, don’t you?”

“Probably,” Jack says. He drinks his beer. It tastes like he’s drinking beer at nine in the morning.

“I’m impressed.”

“Thanks.”

“This racetrack, though,” Butner says. “That’s good. That’s the best of all of it.”

Jack says, “You’re going to help, right?”

“I’m your fucking project manager, my man. I called my guy. He’ll be ready about noon. We’ll go get your figurines, come back and pick up the other skid to carve the sidewalk in with, close up shop for the afternoon, and we’ll have the whole thing in by tonight.”

“Really?”

“Really. These guys drop in sidewalks in their sleep.”

“OK,” Jack says.

“Just make sure you really do want to do it before we do it. Easier to put a sidewalk in than take one out. Those fuckers get heavy.”

“Right.”

Ernesto comes back in, says their farmer can bring them the soil. “By ten-thirty,” he says. He gives the phone to Hendrick, who begins pressing each number, counting in Spanish. “
Ocho,
” he says. “
Siete.
”

“Kid’s getting to where he can talk about as good as you, Paco,” Butner says.

Jack picks up stacks of paper on the desk, sets them back down. It’s Tuesday in his life. Hen’s on the sofa, calling Guatemala. Beth’s been gone however many days. Seventeen. He sips his beer. “The catfish is smoking,” Jack says. Maybe if he explains it one small piece at a time, that’ll work. He says, “He’s smoking a cigarette.”

Butner says, “He’s doing what?”

“He’s smoking. He’s got a cigarette in one flipper.”

“But he’s a catfish, right?”

“Right.”

Butner rubs at his hand, the one that got bitten. He’s got it bandaged up. “OK. How’s he smoking under water?”

Jack hadn’t thought of that. “I don’t know.”

“That’s a problem,” Butner says.

“The cigarette is supposed to light up on the end.”

“I mean, I get it,” Butner says. “But the whole underwater thing is still there.”

“You’ll like it,” Jack tells him. “You’ll still like it.”

“Yeah, I probably will,” he says. He walks out the door, onto the lot, turns around, looks back in at Jack. He says, “You know what? I like it well enough so far.”

“Thanks,” Jack says.

Butner raises his beer at him. “You’re welcome,” he says.

If there’s an eight-foot catfish standing over a sidewalk racetrack by the end of the day, then that’s one kind of success. Jack works on that idea while Ernesto takes Hendrick through the subtleties of verb tense. The three of them are in the cab, plus Yul Brynner. Butner’s riding the trailer. He couldn’t be talked out of it.
I’ll be fine, boss man, I’ll be fine.
He’s got one of the lawn chairs strapped down to it, and he’s strapped himself into the lawn chair. He’d be crushed to death if Jack flipped the thing, but other than that, all this seems about as safe as anybody could hope for. Ernesto keeps turning around in his seat, looking through the little metal rectangle of mesh holes in the dump bed right behind the back window, checking on Butner. In the rearview, Butner’s hair blows in the wind.

It’s ten in the morning and with the windows down, with Hen and Ernesto and Butner and Yul Brynner with him, Jack feels like he’s on some kind of mission. He almost feels good. He thinks of Rena, checking her mail, maybe watering a few plants. He thinks of Bethany. What he feels like he knows, now: Rena will have to go back to her house, whichever house that ends up being, and Beth’s got to live in hers, whichever one
that
ends up being. What happens to Canavan, or to him, after that, Jack doesn’t know, but it’s Canavan who’s had the worst of it, Jack decides, changing lanes, letting himself smile at that. Canavan’s got fifty-four staples in his leg, the fucker. Fifty-four. Jack imagines the gleam of the stainless steel. He thinks about the chainsaw finding bone, the luck of it kicking back out instead of digging the rest of the way through.

He knows there’s more to it, of course. He knows they don’t just get to rinse this clean. There’s the easy picture of Bethany in bed with Canavan, for one thing, and the just-as-easy picture of Rena in his plastic chairs, unraveling the universe for him. But he aims, for now, at least, toward the better feeling, tries to choose it, tries to do not much more than listen to the hum of the truck tires on the macadam, a word the NCDOT guys would use.
Macadam.
He listens to Ernesto and Hen.
En Español, claro.
Which way to the train station, the language lab voice would ask Jack.
¿Donde está la estación de tren?
Over and over in those headphones.
¿Listo?
Ernesto’s asking Hendrick now, and Hen’s saying
listo
back to him.
Listo.
Ready. They pass a cop sitting in the median and Jack keeps checking his mirrors, waiting for the blue lights, for him to pull them over, walk up to the window, eye the dog, Butner, say
Sir, could you please step away from the vehicle?
But the cop doesn’t move. The cruiser looks like a giant bug there in the grass. He’s getting away with it. Jack almost feels good.