The Last Studebaker. Robin Hemley
in the harshest desert, life abounds.”
“I'm not going to miss those at all,” Lois told Willy, pointing to the row of cars that looked like a line of hippos along a riverbank. She'd never made a secret of her feelings toward them. She hated not only these particular cars, but all Studebakers. She hated the name. She hated the family.
A couple of Larks sat side by side like the Doublemint twins, their wide grilles sparkling as the light from the porch bounced off the chrome.
“They're just cars,” Willy said, his voice harsher than before, and slurred with whiskey. “I can't see why you've always been so stubborn about them. Your old man worked for Stude's. These cars are part of your heritage, your family. They're like your children.”
She shivered at that one. How could he compare Gail and Meg to a pack of rusted heaps with deceitful names like Lark and Champion?
“You're a sucker, Willy. Just like everyone else around South Bend.” Here she spoke with a mock Southern accent. “They're part of mah heritage, mah family, mah little babies.”
Willy took a sip of whiskey. “Yeah, well it's been thirty years.” He shook his head and smiled.
“I'm telling you,” she warned.
Willy leaned toward her. She nearly suffocated from the fumes he emitted.
She waved her hand in front of her nose. “You sure you haven't been drinking ethanol?” That was supposed to be a dig, but it went right past him. Willy worked at the new ethanol plant in South Bend, and she liked to blame him for the smell of it. South Bend had been a good place to live before the ethanol plant was built. Now a sweet yeasty odor permeated the air from one end of the city to the other. When the plant opened, the ethanol people said they'd get rid of the smell in six months. That was three years ago. What really happened was that no one noticed it anymore.
“I've been drinking the same fine Kentucky mash that you've been drinking, my dear,” Willy said, and he took a sip to prove it.
“And these cars,” he said, waving his hand at the junk heap.
“Keep it down,” Lois said. “You're going to wake Gail and Meg.”
“These cars,” he said louder, “are goddamn classics of design. I wish you could appreciate that. No one designs them like Raymond Loewy anymore. Nothing less than a goddamn genius. There's nothing ugly about them. The girls don't think they're ugly, and Alice doesn't either.”
“Then I guess I'm just goddamn wrong,” she said. This was the first time he'd mentioned Alice by name. He'd always called her “my girl.” Lois hadn't even seen her before. If she ever visited him, he must have smuggled her in late at night or at dawn. Lois didn't see why he acted so secretive about this Alice. As though she cared. But maybe “his girl” embarrassed him. Maybe she was some gawky schoolgirl, some jailbait the same age as Gail. No, he would have been proud of that. After all, Lois had been only sixteen. More likely, Alice feared Lois, feared the Vengeful Wife, the Resentful Daughters, or at least felt awkward about stepping into enemy territory. Maybe she was just the prissy type, and didn't fancy the idea of spending the night with someone in a barn.
Lois felt something in her hair. She reached up and tried to pull out whatever it was. But she couldn't find it. Lois had a nest of red hair that tumbled over her shoulders. A bug, finding its way in there, could be lost for days.
“Here, Willy,” she said, showing him her profile. “See what's in my hair.”
Willy felt his beard as though something might have found its way in there as well. He took a glance and said, “I don't see anything.” That didn't surprise her. He wouldn't have noticed it unless it had been a foot long.
“Look,” she said.
Willy took a second glance. “Nope,” he said.
Her scalp itched right about her ear. She made pincers of her fingers, then plucked the bug from her hair, and inspected it. Good. It wasn't some foul armored thing with feelers. Just a firefly, pillshaped, glowing in her palm. The firefly made a graceful circuit of her palm, and its wings lifted. Lois blew to urge it off, but too hard. An updraft carried the bug off her palm, and it dropped onto the pine planks of the porch. The bug's ember flared for a second, died, then sparked again. Slowly, it made a zigzag getaway toward the edge of the porch.
“You know what our problem was?” Willy said after polishing off the last finger of whiskey in his cup.
“Enlighten me,” she said.
“We've never enjoyed doing the same things. You're so stubborn. You don't take pleasure in anything I do.”
Willy stood up and the dogs rose, too. “It's been real,” he said and stretched. “You know, this is the most fun I've had with you in a year.”
“I wouldn't call this fun,” Lois said.
“No, you wouldn't,” he said, holding the chain of the swing. “You don't think it's fun now that I've called your bluff.” He used his “facts are facts” voice, not an angry tone, but incontrovertible all the same.
“I haven't been bluffing you,” she said. “I've just been waiting for the right moment.”
“Waiting,” Willy said, and laughed. “You've been holding us hostage.”
“Yes, Willy,” she said wearily. “You're right.”
She waited for Willy to tell her more, to show her where she had failed, but he just looked out into the open field. He balanced his cup in the middle of the swing. “Most fun I've had in a year. I'm just about out of control with ecstasy right now.”
Willy trudged off to the barn. The dogs loped behind him, following their master's whiskied trail.
Lois stared at the empty paper cup on the swing beside her. She kicked off with her feet and swung lightly, and still the cup stayed balanced. Stubborn cup, she thought.
The cup tumbled off the porch swing, and Lois took that as her signal to go inside. She woke Gail, who led Meg to bed, and then she came out again and freed the jar of fireflies Meg had collected in the fields earlier, between favorite television programs. The jar sat on the edge of the porch with three holes poked in the lid for air, the fireflies crawling up the glass and falling to the bottom again, refusing to beam their phosphorescent dots and dashes that Lois had once read were love calls.
She felt too exhausted to sleep, so she drew a bath, kneeling with her hand under the faucet, testing the temperature and letting the water guide her thoughts. Really, she was too tired to think, and as the water spouted down, she couldn't even register if it was too hot or too cold or just right. She couldn't imagine making a decision about it. She just felt like staying in that same position all night with the water splaying her fingers.
She heard Willy's voice behind her. “You cooking a lobster or taking a bath?” he said.
She turned and saw him standing in the doorway, and she wasn't sure what he was talking about or why he-was here. They had said goodnight. She had seen him trudge off to his tiny apartment in the barn, his dogs loping behind him. Now he'd returned, looking like he'd forgotten something. Her clothes lay in a heap beside the door: jeans, the `workshirt she'd been wearing, her tapestry vest, her silver locket, her wind-chime earrings.
She looked at her fingers and saw how red they were. Steam puffed out of the tub around her. Pulling back her hand, she drooped her head like a penitent in front of an altar.
“If you put in a little cold, maybe I'll join you,” Willy said, his voice a purr of gravel, the sound of a car taking a turn on a back road.
Sometimes she marveled at how slight a gesture or word from Willy could turn her around, could spin her feelings into tenderness again. Maybe that was because he rarely said anything nice to her. When he did, he caught her off guard and her resentment snapped away like a window shade that's been pulled too taut. If Willy were the cunning type, she might have thought he planned it that way. Partial reinforcement,