.
roaring in his head.
Lawnmowers buzzing, children shouting and laughing, garden shears snapping, an adult voice calling out, the echoing, plastic sound of a ball bouncing on a hard surface. All these sounds were being made by a ghostly and invisible army of people cruelly hidden from view. And ever present, weaving in and out of these taunting, nightmarish sounds was the whea eee, whea eee of the Tanner ice cream sign. Josh had been paralysed by a sense of desolation that made his bones cold in the thick heat.
The wall of expensive stone that was separating him from these invisible, comfortable, happy people was suddenly grotesque instead of glamorous, an obstacle that could never be negotiated if you were Josh Spiller from Hove Avenue. He had slapped his hands uselessly to his ears, turned and run back the way he had come, fuelling, no doubt, the fears of the man by his car that this was a Hove boy up to no good. Every hot step of the way home the ice cream sign’s wail followed him like a lost spirit, as though it were an alarm he had tripped when he stepped from his world into the forbidden one of his betters.
His mother had welcomed him back with a silent supper of fries and ham, but he could tell by the softness in her eyes she was relieved to see him. Josh knew then how much he loved her. He also knew that no matter how agreeable a house he might eventually buy as an adult, how comfortable an existence he might make for himself, he would always butt up against the corner of a forbidden street, the edge of something better to which he had no access. Maybe that was why he had turned trucker. No one can judge what a man does or doesn’t have if he’s always on the move. The eighteen wheels you lived on were the ultimate democracy. An owner-operator might be up to his neck in debt with his one rig, or it might be one rig out of a fleet of twenty. No one knows if the guy’s rich or poor and no one cares. The questions one trucker asks another are: where you going, where you from, what you hauling, how many cents per mile you get on that load?
No one would ever ask what street you lived on and give you a sidelong glance if it happened to be the wrong one. Josh hadn’t thought about that dumb incident for years, but here, faced with these attractive houses in this small mountain town, he could almost hear the ice cream sign howling forlornly again. It was crazy. He’d grown into a man to whom material possessions meant little or nothing, and yet here he was being infected by that old feeling of desire and denial that he thought he’d shaken off before he’d even grown a pubic hair. And all because a town looked a little neater, a little smugger, a little more affluent than he’d expected. Okay. A lot more affluent.
Josh shook his shoulders, suppressed his discomfort at the memory as he approached the town’s first set of lights, and scanned the side streets for a sign of something that might suggest food. The truck’s brakes hissed, he leaned forward on the wheel and looked around.
If Furnace had a commercial centre then this was probably it. The wide street that cut across this one was lined on both sides with small shops and offices, buildings that were as well presented as those belonging to their potential customers. There was a cheerful bar on one corner, featuring long, plant-filled windows onto the street, far removed from the darkly terrifying drinking-holes a man could expect in the mountains, and an antique shop on the other that suggested Furnace did a fair piece of business from tourism. A complex metal tree of signs told him where the best Appalachian wine could be bought, provided directions to a children’s farm where the animals could be petted, and reminded you that the world-famous sulphur caves were now a mere fourteen miles away. Josh conceded that bored families in camper vans might tip a few dimes into the town’s economy every summer, but even if they loaded up with Appalachian wine till it broke their axles and petted the farm animals bald, it still wouldn’t account for the prosperity of the town. He mused on the mystery of it, and settled with reckoning there must be a whole heap of prime farmland groaning with fat cattle hiding way back here that was keeping these people in new cars and white colonnaded porches. But if that was the case, they were keeping it well hidden. And although the mountain forest came so close to the edge of the town it made Furnace look little more than a fire-break, what the hell: it was a theory. It made Josh more comfortable to invent a logical and soil-based reason, stalling that tiny and rare niggle of envy he was feeling. He never envied farmers. Being tied to the land was just about the worst thing you could be.
Far down the road to his right, Josh could make out the entrance to a mini-mall, fronted by an open foodstore. That’s where he would head and take his chance, since the parking in front of the store looked sufficiently generous to accommodate the truck.
As he gazed along the long wide road, waiting for the lights to change, the vibration of the idling engine combined with the pale early morning sun shining into his face suddenly made Josh ache to close his heavy eyes. He fought it, but his eyes won.
It must have been only seconds, but when he awoke with a neck-wrenching upward jerk of the head, the fact he’d fallen asleep made Josh pant with momentary panic. He ran a hand over his face. This wasn’t like him. It had been years since he’d allowed himself to become so tired while driving that he could lose it like that. In the past, sure, he’d pushed it. But not now. Once, back in those days when he’d try anything once, he’d driven so long he’d done what every trucker dreads. He’d fallen asleep with his eyes open. After a split-second dream, something crazy about shining golden dogs, Josh had woken suddenly to find the truck already bouncing over the grass verge. He vowed then he’d never do it again. Yet here he was, thirty-six hours since sleep, still driving. He had to stop and get some rest. No question. But first he wanted to eat.
Above him, the bobbing lights had been giving their green permission for several seconds, and he shook his head vigorously to rid himself of fatigue while he turned Jezebel into the street at a stately ten miles an hour. As he straightened up and moved down the road, a car trying unsuccessfully to park pushed its backside out into the road at a crazy angle and forced him to stop. He sighed and leaned forward on the wheel again while the jerk took his time shifting back and forward as if the space was a ball-hair’s width instead of being at least a car-and-a-half-length long. The old fool behind the wheel stuck an appreciative liver-spotted hand out the window to thank Josh for his patience, and continued to manoeuvre his car in and out at such ridiculously tortuous angles it was as though he was attempting to draw some complex, imaginary picture on the asphalt. Josh raised a weary hand in response and muttered through a phoney smile, ‘Come on, you donkey’s tit.’
He sighed and let his eye wander ahead to the foodstore, allowing himself to visualize a hot blueberry muffin and steaming coffee.
Across the street, a woman was walking towards the mall, struggling with a toddler and pushing a stroller in front of her that contained a tiny baby. It must have been only days old. Josh swallowed. He could see the little creature’s bald head propped forward in the stroller, a striped canvas affair, presumably the property of its sibling and way too large for its new occupant. The baby was held level in this unsuitable vehicle with a piece of sheepskin which framed its tiny round face like some outlandish wig.
With the sight of that impossibly small creature, it was back; the longing, the hurt, the confusion that Elizabeth had detonated in him.
He found himself watching like some hungry lion from long grass as the woman kicked on the brakes of the stroller, abandoned the baby on the sunny sidewalk and dragged her toddler into the store. The tiny bundle moved like an inexpertly handled puppet in its upright canvas seat, its little arms flailing and thrashing as two stick-thin legs paddled in an invisible current. Josh ran a hand over his unshaved chin, and covered his mouth with his hand.
Would his baby be kicking like that little thing, right now, inside Elizabeth? When did all that stuff happen? A month? Two months? Six? He knew nothing about it.
Elizabeth. His mouth dried. Elizabeth, his love. Where the hell was she?
He closed his gritty eyes for a moment and the shame of what he had done overwhelmed him, making him light-headed with the sudden panic of regret. Opening his eyes again, he looked towards the infant. There was now a different woman standing behind it, both hands on the plastic grips of the stroller.
Older than the mother, possibly in her fifties, she was dressed in a garish pink linen suit that, although formal and angular in its cut, seemed designed for a far younger woman.