Austin and Emily Read online

  There was silence on the line. No quick come back. No sigh of exasperation. Lila McAdoo recognized the silence.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  Austin started, “You told me my father was buried in Las Vegas. I assumed it was Las Vegas, Nevada. On the map there’s a Las Vegas, New Mexico. Before I drive a thousand more miles, I thought I’d make sure which one it is.”

  There was silence again. “You’re serious, aren’t you?

  “Yes, Mother, I am.”

  “Don’t be too serious, Austin. It’s not good. Hold on a minute.”

  Lila pulled the old cardboard box from the closet. She shuffled through papers, photographs, and newspaper clippings until she found what she was looking for.

  “Well, it’s a good thing you called. The crazy old bastard is buried in Pinewood Grove Cemetery in Las Vegas, New Mexico.”

  Austin reduced the information to memory. Outside the bathroom door, the snore began to rise again.

  “Honey,” Lila said, “don’t expect too much.”

  For no apparent reason, Austin felt emotion rise up inside him. The idea of his father had taken many shapes. As a boy he would spend hours upon hours wondering.

  “It’s all about expectations, honey,” Lila said.

  “That’s exactly what the chicken man said, Mom. It’s all about expectations. Is it best to have none at all? Is it best to refuse to plan for an uncertain future like little Kenny Mint?”

  Lila reached for the pack of cigarettes. “Little Kenny Mint? I remember that kid. I thought he was dead.”

  “Oh, he’s not dead. He’s alive and well, bathing nude downstairs in the motel pool. He lives in the backseat of my car, along with two cats and a coat made of human hair.”

  Lila McAdoo laughed. “Are you on peyote?”

  Austin heard the flick of the cigarette lighter.

  “Mother, you told me you were going to stop smoking.”

  “That was twenty years ago, Austin. I said it one time in a moment of weakness and you’ve mentioned it three or four thousand times since then. I will not quit smoking. Now, you go to sleep, wake up tomorrow when the peyote wears off, drive to Las Vegas, New Mexico, with your girlfriend and see your father’s grave. Get it behind you, move along, and call me when something good happens. I love you.”

  After he hung up, Austin sat in the bathroom a long time.

  The next day, before they left the state of Texas, Emily bought a souvenir snow shaker. Inside, two long-horned steers stood with white flakes of synthetic snow falling and gathering at their hooves.

  Austin stopped at a gas station outside of Las Vegas, New Mexico and asked for directions to the Pinewood Grove Cemetery. Kenneth was asleep in the back when they drove through the wrought-iron entrance. Austin went inside the tiny office and found an ancient woman sitting at a desk.

  “I would like a map of graves so I can locate one particular person.”

  The old lady was wrinkled and suspicious. “Who might that be, young man?”

  “It doesn’t concern you. Map, please?” he said, and stuck out his enormous hand.

  The lady stared at Austin long and hard with her beady blue eyes. Finally she said, “I don’t like you young man. I don’t like you at all.”

  The standoff continued. After a full minute, the old wrinkled lady handed over the map.

  They drove through the cemetery around the snakelike, one-lane paved road and stopped near the back corner. Austin studied the map, and Emily stayed quiet. She waited to see if he would ask her to walk with him.

  “O.K.,” Austin said, “it’s about a hundred yards over by the fence.”

  He climbed out of the car. Emily sat still. Austin walked around to the passenger side and opened her door. Emily tried not to smile. They held hands and walked slowly through the graveyard. Some of the headstones had flowers and other items around their bases. Emily wondered who put them there. Wives, lonely mothers, children, people who love the people buried beneath the ground in fancy caskets. People who watched them die, or got calls in the middle of the night, or prayed unanswered prayers alone at hospitals. People who themselves would be buried in the earth and have others, hopefully, lay flowers and notes at the base of a headstone on a Sunday after church.

  Austin stopped and looked at the map one more time. He pointed to a headstone standing alone to the left next to a chain-link fence. He took a big deep breath and walked slowly with Emily by his side to his father’s grave.

  They both stood quietly, the heat from the sun ever-present. The silence was heavy.

  On the engraved gray marble headstone were the words:

  LUCUS FONTANA McADOO

  BORN 1945 - DIED 1988

  “LOVIN’ MUSTARD MAN”

  Minutes passed. Kenneth Mint appeared behind them holding Ulysses. He squinted in the bright sunlight to read the words.

  “What does that mean?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Austin answered. “I don’t know what it means,” he repeated. “Does it say ‘Lovin’ Mustard Man’?”

  Instead of flowers at the base of the headstone, there was a blank white envelope. Reverently, Emily walked around the place the body would be buried and picked up the envelope. She gave it to Austin, who was standing in the same place.

  The envelope was sealed, slightly weathered, and had a stamp in the right-hand corner. Austin opened it.

  On a small piece of white paper, written in blue ink, were the words:

  “Don’t make the same mistakes I made.”

  Emily and Kenneth leaned in from opposite sides to read the note.

  “What does that mean?” Kenneth asked.

  Austin turned on him. “I don’t know. I don’t know what any of it means. Why would anyone put ‘Lovin’ Mustard Man’ as the summation of their life?

  “If it’s all right with you, I’d very much like to get in the car and drive to the Grand Canyon. Is that O.K. with you? Is it?” he demanded.

  Kenneth stepped back. He took one last look at the headstone.

  “It’s O.K. with me,” Kenneth said. “I’ve been wantin’ to go to the Grand Canyon all my life.”

  CHAPTER 7

  It started to rain. Since the unfortunate encounter with the rock, Austin had been unable to see very well in the rearview mirror through the cracked glass of the back window. The wipers pushed the wet dust to the side and left streaks of yellow-brown on the front windshield.

  Austin was weary of thinking about his father’s headstone message and the mysterious note. He set out on a diatribe.

  “The world’s population teeters on the balance. Forty-nine percent are drug addicts, prostitutes, liars, tricksters, schizophrenics, and hooligans. The other fifty-one percent are not. It’s just a matter of time before the balance tips in their favor. And then what?

  “They can outvote us. Granted, many of these malcontents aren’t registered voters, but they will be. Pornography will become mandatory. Prescription medication will be added to food products so we stay stoned all day long. Who will pay taxes?”

  The final question hung inside the stuffy car.

  “Turn on the air conditioner,” Kenneth begged.

  “I’ve told you,” Austin said, “the air conditioner is out of Freon.”

  Kenneth asked, “Is the radio out of Freon?”

  Emily tried to turn on the radio for the fifteenth time.

  “It doesn’t work,” she said again, “but we don’t need it.”

  Since leaving the cemetery, Emily had sensed Austin’s mood change. She’d never been in love before, but she believed love was one hundred percent. It wasn’t just fifty-fifty. Each person had to be prepared every minute to cover the entire one hundred percent when the other person couldn’t carry their share of the load.

  Emily reached her hand across the console and let it rest on Austin’s thigh. Kenneth saw the gesture. Hunched down in the backseat, with Glenn napping on his chest, Kenneth said, “You know what I think? I think love has a li
fe span. You know, like a mosquito only lives a certain number of days. Love has an incubation period, a life span, and that’s it. Afterwards, it’s just two people trying to get along, mimicking love, like actors in a Broadway play. But you can’t keep it alive, it’s like pounding the chest of a dead body, it just won’t breathe.”

  The rain fell harder. Emily’s forehead wrinkled in thought. She said to Kenneth, “You’re like the tin man in The Wizard of Oz. You don’t have a heart.”

  Glenn raised his head, looked slowly around the cramped car, and settled back to sleep.

  Kenneth asked, “I forget, what were the other two missing? The scarecrow and the big lion?”

  Emily answered, “The scarecrow was missing a brain, and the lion was missing courage.”

  Kenneth asked, “Did they have a red car and two cats on the way to California?”

  Emily shook her head, “No, stupid. They walked on the yellow brick road and had a little dog named Toto on the way to the land of Oz.”

  Glenn yawned.

  A loud, knocking sound came from the engine. The car began to decelerate in the rain.

  “What was that?” Emily asked.

  “Big trouble,” Austin answered. The internal workings of an automobile held the same mystery to Austin McAdoo as outer space. He knew what holes to put gasoline and oil. After that, it was all elliptical. Austin felt fear at the prospect of being stationary.

  The car came to rest on the side of Interstate 40 outside of Bluewater, New Mexico. Just a few seconds earlier they had all been flying across the surface of the planet at seventy-one miles per hour. Now, with the windows rolled up, they sat listening to cars and trucks whizzing past on the wet highway.

  Emily said, “Maybe it’ll start working in a few minutes.”

  Kenneth responded, “It must be interesting to believe things like that.”

  Luckily, inertia led the vehicle to a stop only yards from the exit ramp. Kenneth sat up in his seat, disturbing Glenn. He rubbed a spot on the window and peered outside in the mist at a sign for Winslow’s Automotive Repair.

  “I guess we’re pushin’,” he said.

  Emily climbed in the driver’s seat after the men got out of the car. She did as Kenneth said and put the car in neutral after turning the key to unlock the steering wheel. Austin had seen a video clip on television depicting a truck losing control on a wet roadway and slamming into a police car on the side of the road. He pushed the car with half-strength, his eyes over his shoulder.

  “Put your weight behind it, big boy,” Kenneth said. And when Austin did, the car picked up speed, reached the top of the incline, and headed down the hill of the exit ramp, leaving the two men standing behind in the drizzling rain. They walked. The butt whistle sang twice before they reached the garage. The rain stopped.

  The mechanic, Billy Winslow, only had one normal arm. The other arm never grew properly in the womb and was the size of a G.I. Joe arm, perfectly formed, but useless. Billy kept it covered to protect the small fingers and avoid the stares. Sometimes, at home, alone, he would pay attention to the appendage, but never at the garage.

  After the initial introductions, Kenneth took Billy off to the side.

  “You seem like a good guy. Got your own place here. Overcome a disability.”

  Kenneth faked hesitation. “I shouldn’t be telling you this. We’re with a TV news show. That big fella is the producer. The girl is an actress. We travel around the country and catch mechanics overcharging folks for car repair. They’ve got eleven tiny hidden cameras in the engine.”

  Billy Winslow listened. “You wouldn’t believe how many times we’ve busted guys replacin’ parts that don’t need replacin’ or chargin’ for work they hadn’t even done.”

  Kenneth glanced over his shoulder, pretending to be secretive.

  “Now, I know you wouldn’t do nothin’ like that, but I just thought you might be extra careful. One old boy we got in Oklahoma just made a simple mistake, but by the time it got on television, hell, he done lost his shop, his license, everything.”

  Billy rubbed his good hand on his pants leg.

  “And by the way, Billy, why don’t you go ahead and fix the A/C and the radio. The actress has plenty of money.”

  Kenneth winked and held up his thumb. Billy Winslow didn’t know what to think about the things Kenneth said, so he didn’t think about them at all. He just did what he did, fix cars.

  •

  The sun began to shine. Austin found the pay phone and called his mother.

  “Hello.”

  “Mother, I went to the cemetery and found Dad’s grave. It says ‘Lovin’ Mustard Man’. What does that mean? What could that possibly mean?”

  Lila laughed hard. She began to cough midway through the laugh until she was coughing like a smoker. Austin held the phone away from his ear. When the cough ended, Lila laughed again.

  “I’d like to know what’s so funny? Is it some type of code? Is it a message only certain people understand?”

  Lila smiled. “It’s no code. It’s just what it says. The man loved mustard. He loved it. Everybody’s got to have something.”

  Austin stood soaking wet in the new sunshine. He felt the heat begin to rise from the pavement. He said, “That’s the best he could do? That’s what he puts on his gravestone, ‘Lovin’ Mustard Man’? I don’t believe it. I just don’t believe it.”

  Lila said, “That’s all right. You don’t have to believe it. You can believe whatever you want, Austin, but who’s to say mustard is less important than anything else? When you find what’s important to you in this world, it becomes part of you. Life is messy, boy. You’ve got to get your hands dirty. Get down in it.”

  She coughed again.

  “I found a note on his grave. A little note inside an envelope. It wasn’t addressed to anybody. It said, ‘Don’t make the same mistakes I made.’“

  Lila caught her breath on the backside of the last cough.

  “That’s horseshit, Austin. The mistakes are the best part. If you took all the perfect moments in your life and strung them together, the movie would last about fifteen minutes, and everybody in the theater would be bored out of their gourds.”

  Austin raised his voice. “I don’t even know why I call you.”

  “I’m your mother, Austin. I’m your mother. That’s why you call me. You climbed out of my vagina. We were connected by a cord. You sucked at my breast. That’s why you chose to call me instead of a random person in the phonebook. And besides that, you know I’m right.

  “You need to get laid, Austin. You need to get laid, and you need to float in the Pacific Ocean, and you need to stretch out in the desert all night with Emily under the stars.”

  Austin watched Emily walk across the street to a small store. She practically skipped.

  “I shot fireworks, Mom.”

  “What?”

  “I shot fireworks.”

  “It’s about time. Maybe everything will be O.K. after all, Honey. Now let me go. I’ve got cigarettes to smoke.”

  Winslow’s Automotive Repair sat next to the Bluewater Little League Baseball Park. Since the beginning of Kenneth Mint’s memory, baseball had been a part of his life. Through the upheaval, baseball remained, steady, unchanging, dependable, waiting patiently from the last pitch of the World Series to the first pitch of spring.

  Austin took off his wet shirt and put on a fresh one from his suitcase. Unfortunately, it wasn’t so fresh. Cat urine surrounded Austin McAdoo like an invisible cloud of radiation.

  They all three sat at a wooden picnic table down the third-base line of the field. A canned ham was opened for the occasion, and Emily delivered three cold Coca-Colas.

  “I’ve got another souvenir to go with the long-horns,” Emily announced.

  It was a miniature pueblo, brown, made of sand from the desert. At the base, in red letters, it said, ‘New Mexico.’

  “One day, when I’m older, I’ll have all the souvenirs from this trip on a glass she
lf in my living room. I can look at them anytime I want and remember all the stuff we did.”

  “You ever play wiffle ball?” Kenneth asked.

  Emily sipped her cold Coke. “No, what’s that? “

  “It’s like baseball, only the ball has holes on one side. You can make it dance. We played every day when I was a kid. We kept stats. There’s a notebook somewhere in this world with wins and losses, home runs, errors, all of it. You ever play wiffle ball, Austin?”

  He knew the game. He remembered, as a young boy, sitting at the window watching the kids from the neighborhood play in Brandon Crawford’s yard across the street. He remembered sitting inside the classroom during recess and watching little Kenny Mint and the others throw the white plastic ball.

  “No,” Austin said.

  “I bet if you got hold of one, you’d send it for a ride. There’s lots of big guys in baseball. Babe Ruth was a big guy. Greg Luzinski.”

  Kenneth stopped for a moment, looked over at the baseball field, and said, “We should play. Right now, on that field, while we wait for the car.”

  Austin said, “I don’t believe you’ll find a wiffle ball around here.”

  “Sure I will,” Kenneth answered. “I’ve got one in my bag.”

  Fifteen minutes later they stood in the dirt at home plate.

  “Where’d you get this bat?” Austin asked.

  “Don’t worry about that,” Kenneth replied.

  It was a yellow plastic bat. Emily gripped it and took a few swings in the air. Her form was poor, but the enthusiasm more than compensated. Kenneth tried not to look at the miniskirt.

  Kenneth was like a kid again. “I used to throw a wicked little curve ball. It came in at the batter, twelve o’clock, and dropped to six o’clock by the time it crossed the plate. I’ll pitch.”

  Emily batted first. Kenneth’s arm was rusty, and his pitches sailed. Emily swung like she couldn’t wait but never touched the ball. After he warmed up, Kenneth’s pitches began to work as he’d remembered. The outside fastball set up the curve. The change-up made the fastball seem unhittable.