Journeyman Read online

  He hears the vehicle accelerate. The first shadows of the bridge’s truss work appear at the back of his trailer with the approaching headlights. It’s almost dark down by the river, and the strength of the smell of the sealant has him thinking he’ll continue on down past his truck and trailer to the river. Shadows grow tall along the back of the Airstream, but differently than before, Nolan notices, when tires screech and a convertible two-door coupe, nose-heavy and wheels spinning, launches off the road bank and slams down on the roof of his trailer. The impact drives the Ranger forward several feet into the trunk of a cottonwood, and propane immediately hisses from the tank at the front of the Airstream. A sizable widow-maker falls from the cottonwood canopy and shatters the Ranger’s windshield.

  —Holy shit, he hears the campground manager yell from the porch of his trailer. Did you see that?

  Nolan runs to the wreck. The first thing he notices is gasoline seeping from the convertible’s undercarriage and slipping down shiny crimps in the trailer’s crumpled side. That, and the engine, running at high RPMs, isn’t shutting off.

  As he reaches the convertible, the driver’s-side door opens and a man steps out and falls to the mowed grass. A woman in the passenger seat collapses over the middle console, laughing, her face contorted and her hair disheveled.

  —He fell, she says to Nolan but points at the man.

  The engine noise seems to be getting louder, and although Nolan thinks about trying to find a way into his trailer to grab his photographs and his bankroll, he leaves the man on the ground and scrambles up on the roof of the trailer and into the convertible. He tries the ignition key but it won’t budge. The woman looks at Nolan through glassy eyes, astonished that he’s suddenly standing there. Her cheeks are flushed and blood runs from a laceration across the bridge of her nose.

  —He fell, she states, her smile gone, her voice almost lost to the engine noise.

  Nolan presses his handkerchief to the laceration and places her hand on it.

  —Hold this, he says.

  He tries to unclasp her seatbelt but it won’t budge, so he takes his knife from his front-right pants’ pocket, flicks it open with his thumb, and quickly saws the belt free with the serrated hilt of the blade, the woman’s eyes wide at the sight of it. On the ground, the campground manager stands with his hand on the man’s shoulder.

  —We missed the turn, the woman says as Nolan lifts and pushes her from the wreckage of his home toward the manager.

  Back on the ground, Nolan leaves the manager with the couple and hurries toward the door to the Airstream, but the weight of the convertible has jarred it shut. He runs around to the front window, but in passing he notices flies gathering where propane spews. He can get through the window and reach at least his photos but the sound of the engine and the smell of the propane turns him back toward the manager and the couple.

  —Let’s get them back up from here, he says.

  The campground manager grabs the woman by the arm and pulls her uphill while Nolan hauls the man to his feet and they stumble to the clearing where the picnic tables are arranged. The man sits on one of the benches.

  —It’s wet, he says, all child-like, but Nolan’s already turning back toward his truck and trailer when the convertible’s battery arcs, and a tremendous explosion of fire swells into the trees, obscuring the night’s first stars.

  Smaller fires settle in throughout the truck and Airstream and flames flicker in the grass at the base of the trailer where the gasoline has pooled. The tips of the low-lying limbs of the surrounding trees burn like tiny candles and uphill, where Nolan and the manager stand with the man and the woman, Nolan can feel the heat of the fire settle in among his possessions. He can feel it on his face and in the fabric and the pearl buttons of his flannel shirt.

  —I’m going to call the fire department, the manager says, turning for his double-wide.

  With the man and woman beside him, Nolan watches flames gust over shards of a stained-glass window he purchased in East Carbon, Utah. He installed the custom window to replace the broken, louvered original. Through the opening, he can see his dun-colored work hat, surrounded by flames.

  Nolan takes a step toward the flames, but the woman places her hand on his forearm and stops him.

  —No, she says. Don’t.

  4

  Dawn, smelling of wood smoke and the sweet acridity of burnt synthetics. Nolan knocks a cabinet door free of its hinges with a spade shovel and a coffee can rolls down from the interior. The plastic lid has melted in on the can and fire has burned through most of Nolan’s bankroll. He thumbs the flaking paper – twenties, fifties, hundreds – and then looks at the soot marks left on his hands. He throws the can, and when it doesn’t break anything he picks up a brass bookend and throws it into a cabinet and smashes his dishware and drinking glasses. After the sound of breaking glass, the quiet of the river campground pervades.

  Nolan prided himself on being a man free of possessions, but this was before he’d been freed of them. He stands there, looking over what’s become of his belongings.

  So smart you kept your savings in a coffee can. He shakes his head in disgust. Who did you think you were fooling?

  He spends the better part of the morning prying and rooting with the shovel around what he can access of the trailer until he finds a flat, fireproof box. He brings the box out in the pan of the shovel and sets it on the ground and kneels beside it and checks uphill toward the manager’s trailer before he lifts the lid to reveal a snub-nosed .38 revolver and six shiny brass cartridges. The revolver has survived the fire intact, the bullets still usable. Nolan wraps some sooty clothing around the box and places it in a black plastic trash sack.

  Robins, picking at the grass, scatter suddenly as a ’69 Valiant pulls into the campground and slowly makes its way down to the clearing.

  —Shit, Nolan mutters, recognizing the vehicle immediately.

  Resting against the handle of the shovel, he nudges up the brim of his Western hat and the soot on his fingertips smudges the clean white brim. The car parks and Chance, dressed in brown corduroys, a rumpled white dress shirt, and a thin red-and-blue striped tie, loosely knotted at the neck, climbs out. He is tall and slender and in need of a shave. His hair is disheveled and he wears thick black-rimmed prescription glasses. From atop the Valiant’s dash he retrieves a digital camera and a spiral notepad. He closes the door to the vehicle with a screech and a thud and while he saunters downhill, he rolls back the cuffs on his shirt with a pen in his hand. He rolls the cuffs of his shirt out, not in, as Nolan does, as their father did.

  —This where the accident took place? he says with a wry smile.

  —If you want to call it that.

  —What would you call it?

  —Carelessness.

  This was something their father used to say to them as children. Chance adjusts his glasses, and smiles more freely.

  —I came out as soon as I saw your name in the police blotter this morning. You all right?

  —This what passes for news around these parts?

  —Yeah, I’d say it stands a pretty good chance of making it above this week’s fold. What are you doing here?

  —Mom asked me to swing through.

  —And you agreed?

  —She said you and Dawn split up.

  Chance runs his tongue over a molar.

  —What I want to know is why didn’t you punch the guy out?

  —It wasn’t worth it.

  —Some drunk and his mistress destroy all your shit and you just stand there?

  —I didn’t know she was his mistress.

  —Neither did his wife. But that’s beside the point. You should have clocked him.

  —I guess I’m not as emotional as you are, Chance.

  —I go by Cosmo, Nolan. Don’t provoke.

  —Must’ve slipped my mind.

  —Nothing slips your mind. You’re just being a butthead.

 
—Look who’s provoking.

  —I’m on deadline.

  Chance steps forward and pushes a button on the top of his camera and the lens extends from the tiny plastic box.

  —I thought you were a scribbler, Nolan says.

  —Picture’s worth a thousand words.

  —Depends on who’s stringing them together, I reckon.

  Dust motes swirl through canted bars of sunlight surrounding the men. Cosmo tilts his head, squints through his glasses, and smiles at Nolan with a condescending air he knows will irritate his brother. In the distance, a robin sings.

  —You reckon? Cosmo says.

  —That’s right.

  —Well, I reckon that unless this is your property we’re standing on, I can take all the pictures I want.

  —You know I’d rather you didn’t.

  —Why? You running from the law, cowboy?

  —I look like a bad guy to you, egghead?

  Cosmo steps forward and rights a reading lamp, positions it near a mirror, and then squats to shoot them from a low angle, having positioned the lamp and the mirror as if they were the only things that didn’t get blown over or destroyed by the explosion and the fire. Nolan steps forward and shoves the tip of the shovel pan in the ground directly before Cosmo and sets his boot on the tang so it obscures the reporter’s shot.

  —Don’t misrepresent this.

  —What, the lamp?

  —Yes, the lamp and the mirror.

  —It looks better this way.

  —But that ain’t how it was.

  Cosmo presses the button on the top of the camera and the lens retracts, the tiny sounds of gears grating in that small plastic skull. He stands and crosses his arms and then brings his hand to his mouth for a second before gesturing away from it as he speaks:

  —How is it that we both attended the same grammar, middle, and high school, both grew up in the same house, with the same parents, and yet you end up using reckon and ain’t? Talk about misrepresentation.

  Nolan doesn’t respond. Cosmo adjusts his eyeglasses and the two brothers stare one another down for a second or two before Cosmo says:

  —You need a ride into town.

  —I’m all right, but thanks for the offer.

  —I wasn’t offering. It was a simple declarative sentence.

  —I’d rather walk.

  —You do that.

  —I will.

  —All right then.

  —OK.

  An air of cultivated leisure pervades the Burnridge Plaza. Laughter peals from the patio seating areas of several restaurants around the square. Between the restaurants, storefronts with glittering window displays offer high-end furniture, cooking utensils, jewelry, geodes, indigenous artifacts, bamboo-fiber men’s shirts, women’s silk scarves and exotic leather shoes, antiques, and objects fashioned to resemble antiques. Very few of the items for sale on the plaza have been mass-produced, and even those that have are of high quality and few in number.

  Nolan looks around the Spanish-style plaza. Two broad walkways run diagonally from each corner of the square. Where the walkways intersect, a fountain burbles at the center of a shallow rectangular pool. The plaza grass is freshly cut and water lingers in the cuts of the recently hosed-off concrete walkways. Harp music emanates daintily from the chandelier-lit, open-air lobby of a hotel across the plaza from where Nolan stands, and the aromatics of brick-oven wood smoke, caramelizing onions, baking bread, and roasting coffee beans infuse the evening with a richness he’s experienced when passing through other premier tourist destinations.

  Nolan scans the storefronts for the office of the Burnridge Observer. When he finds it, he reaches down for his sack and notices, at the foot of the bench, several unfiltered cigarettes that have been smoked down to nubs. Nolan shoulders the sack and moves on.

  The newspaper office is flanked by a bookstore and a lingerie boutique. A black-and-white notice posted in the front window reads: $1,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the individual(s) responsible for arsons set in Burnridge since Feb. 29. Alongside this notice, a glossy bulletin advertises for locals to be cast as extras in a major motion picture that will begin filming in a little more than two months’ time.

  Nolan removes his hat as he steps inside the office and greets a female secretary. Two rows of desks line the walls behind her, separated by a walkway that leads to a door at the back of the room.

  —Evening, Nolan says. I’m looking for Chance Jackson.

  —There’s no one here by that name.

  —Cosmo, Nolan says a bit impatiently. I’m looking for Cosmo Swift.

  —He’s in his office.

  Nolan looks over the room of empty desks.

  —Which one’s that?

  Pointing out the front door, the secretary says:

  —Three doors down.

  In the dim light of The Bull and The Bear, Cosmo sits with a confusion of pages spread out over the dead center of the empty bar. He has a red pencil in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other. A copper Zippo lighter that belonged to their father stands upright on the bar, a paper weight to his notes.

  Nolan takes a seat two down from Cosmo, and Cosmo speaks to him without looking up from the pages:

  —Thirsty?

  —That a question or a simple declarative sentence?

  —No, that was a question.

  —Then, yes, I am.

  —Dave, Cosmo yells to the bartender, who was on a stool at the end of the bar doing the crossword but is now standing before the two brothers.

  —What can I get you? the bartender asks Nolan.

  —Whiskey and a half draft back.

  —This one’s on me, Dave.

  —Stop the press.

  —Friend-o here’s had a stroke of bad luck.

  —Since when do you have any friends, Cosmo?

  The bartender turns to the plastic draft handles, shiny and bright and perpendicular to the bar, and Cosmo leans over the stool between him and Nolan, nods toward Dave, and whispers hoarsely:

  —Absolutely hates it when you order anything he can’t twist the cap off of. Some nights, I come in here and order nothing but Mojitos.

  —Good to know you’re still in the habit of making things easy on folks.

  Cosmo sits back and looks Nolan in the eye and they stay locked like that until Cosmo hikes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. He picks up the Zippo, snaps it open, and deftly strikes the flint. Holding the flame between them, he says:

  —Everyone thought our firebug got you.

  Nolan nods toward Cosmo’s beer.

  —How many of those you had already?

  —We don’t keep count around here.

  Cosmo snaps the lighter shut and palms it flat on the bar just as the bartender sets the beer and a shot glass on a napkin before Nolan. Pulling an unlabeled fifth from the well before him, the bartender pours the shot as Cosmo speaks:

  —See, what the denizens of our fair and wealthy hamlet fail to recognize in this era of lucrative expansion is that this arsonist of ours is a long time in coming. We’ve lost track of all that is right and good because we’ve been so busying fleecing the tourists. We’ve lost sight of who we were and we’ve accepted that it’s convenient to ignore who we are. We deserve this hero’s indignation. We’ve earned it. You buy that, Dave?

  —I stopped listening to you beers ago, Cosmo.

  —You still read my articles, though, right?

  —Only when I’m cleaning the bird cage.

  Cosmo waves the bartender off as the man returns to his stool and lifts his pencil and crossword. Nolan raises the shot glass, shoots it, and chases it down with a good long slug of the cold beer.

  —So, Cosmo says.

  —So, Nolan responds.

  —You’ve done your mother’s bidding. Here I am. What now?

  —What now?

  —What’s your fall back plan?

&nbs
p; —It went up in flames.

  —Well, you’re welcome to stay with me until you get back on your feet.

  —Thanks, but I’m just passing through.

  Cosmo nods.

  —My offer stands.

  —Thank you.

  A quiet moment passes between the brothers until a song plays on the jukebox to remind patrons it’s standing in a far corner, illuminated. Nolan scans the bar.

  —They serve any food here?

  —Hot nuts and cocks of salami.

  —Very funny.

  —I wasn’t trying to be funny. Those are your food options.

  Nolan nods in the direction of the papers spread out before Cosmo.

  —What’s new?

  —This? Same old, same old. Retirees don’t want to pay taxes for schools their kids are too old to attend, and locals are angry there’s no place to park downtown. Did you know scientists discovered a new species of hummingbird in Colombia?

  —Can’t say that I did.

  —And, they may have identified the genetic sequence for bipolar disorder.

  —OK.

  Cosmo squints through his eyeglasses as he speaks:

  —What’s any of this have to do with the price of crude in China?

  —I don’t follow.

  —Yes, you do, but that’s beside the point. The bajillion-dollar question is, or, rather, questions are: what happened to my marriage, and is Cosmo née Chance all right in the head?

  —You expect her to be OK, way you rattle on?

  —Mom frets.

  —Maybe because you’ve given her ample reason to.

  —And you haven’t?

  —I at least make some attempt to conceal my eccentricities.

  Cosmo spews beer spittle over the pages before him. Wiping off his mouth, he says:

  —Who knew you even knew the word, let alone how to use it in a sentence?

  —What happened to your marriage, Chance?

  —Dawn left me for our real-estate agent.

  —Why?

  —He’s got a tremendous schlong. I don’t fucking know.

  —You don’t know?