Page 29

He’s walking along the shoulder of a dirt road that’s been packed and oiled to keep the dust down. It’s night. A quarter moon has just risen. To Danny it looks like a sideways grin. Or a sneer. He passes a sign reading COUNTY ROAD F, only the O and the Y have been spraypainted over, and UCK has been crammed in to the right of the F, so the sign now reads CUNT ROAD FUCK. There are a couple of bullet holes for good measure.

There’s corn on both sides of the road, not as high as an elephant’s eye but maybe four feet, suggesting it’s early summer. County Road F runs dead straight up a mild rise (in Kansas most rises are mild). At the top is a black bulk of a building that fills Danny with unreasoning horror. Some tin thing is going tinka-tinka-tinka. He wants to stop, wants nothing to do with that square black bulk, but his legs carry him on. There’s no stopping them. He’s not in control. A breeze gives the corn a bonelike rattle. It’s chilly on his cheeks and forehead and he realizes he’s sweating. Sweating in a dream!

When he gets to the top of the rise (calling it “a crest” would just be stupid), there’s enough light to see the sign on the cinderblock building reads HILLTOP TEXACO. In front are two cracked concrete islands where gasoline pumps once stood. The tinka-tinka-tinka sound is coming from rusty signs on a pole out front. One reads REG $1.99, one reads MID $2.19, and the one on the bottom reads HI-TEST $2.49.

Nothing here to worry about, Danny thinks, nothing here to be afraid of. And he’s not worried. He’s not afraid. Terrified is what he is.

Tinka-tinka-tinka go the signs advertising long-gone gas prices. The big office window is broken, ditto the glass in the door, but Danny can see weeds growing up around the shards reflecting the moonlight and knows that it’s been awhile since they were broken. The vandals—bored country kids, most likely—have had their fun and moved on.

Danny moves on, too. Around the side of the abandoned station. Doesn’t want to; has to. He’s not in control. Now he hears something else: scratching and panting.

I don’t want to see this, he thinks. If spoken aloud, the thought would have come out as a moan.

He goes around the side, kicking a couple of empty motor oil cans (Havoline, the Texaco brand) out of his way. There’s a rusty metal trash barrel, overturned and spilling more cans and Coors bottles and whatever paper trash hasn’t blown away. Behind the station there’s a mangy mongrel dog digging at the oil-stained earth. It hears Danny and looks around, its eyes silver circles in the moonlight. It wrinkles back its snout and gives a growl that can mean only one thing: mine, mine.

“That’s not for you,” Danny says, thinking I wish it wasn’t for me, either, but I think it is.

The dog lowers its haunches as if to spring, but Danny’s not afraid (not of the mutt, anyway). He’s a town man these days, but he grew up in rural Colorado where there were dogs everywhere and he knows an empty threat when he faces one. He bends and picks up an empty oil can, the dream so real, so detailed, he can feel the scrim of leftover grease down the side. He doesn’t even have to throw it; raising it is enough. The dog turns tail and leaves at a limping run—either something wrong with one of its back legs or a split pad on one of its paws.

Danny’s feet carry him forward. He sees that the dog has scratched a hand and part of a forearm out of the ground. Two of the fingers have been stripped to the bone. The fleshy part of the palm is also gone, now in the dog’s belly. Around the wrist—inedible, and thus of no use to a hungry dog—is a charm bracelet.

Danny draws in a breath and opens his mouth and

2

screams himself awake sitting bolt upright in bed, a thing he’s never done before. Thank God he lives alone so there’s no one to hear it. At first he doesn’t even know where he is—that derelict gas station seems like the reality, the morning light coming in through the curtains the dream. He’s even rubbing his hand on the Royals tee-shirt he went to bed still wearing, to wipe off the oil that was on the side of the Havoline can he picked up. There’s gooseflesh from one end of his body to the other. His balls are drawn up, tight as walnuts. Then he registers his bedroom, and realizes none of that was real, no matter how real it seemed.

He strips off the tee-shirt, drops his boxers, and heads into the trailer’s tiny bathroom to shave and shower off the dream. The good thing about the bad ones, he thinks as he lathers his face, is that they never last long. Dreams are like cotton candy: they just melt away.

3

Only this one doesn’t melt. It retains its clarity in the shower, and while he dresses in a clean set of Dickies and attaches his keyring to his belt loop, and while he drives to the high school in his old Toyota pickup, which still runs good even though it’s going to turn back to all zeroes again pretty soon. Maybe by this fall.

The student and faculty parking lots of Wilder High are almost completely empty because school let out some weeks earlier. Danny goes around back and parks in the usual place, at the end of the school bus line. There’s no sign saying it’s reserved for the head custodian, but everyone knows it’s his.

This is his favorite time of year, when you can do work and it stays done… at least for awhile. A waxed hallway floor will still shine a week from now, even two weeks. You can scrape the gum off the floors in the boys’ and girls’ locker rooms (the girls are the worst offenders when it comes to gum, he doesn’t know why) and not have to do it again until August. Freshly washed windows don’t pick up adolescent fingerprints. As far as Danny’s concerned, summer vacation is a beautiful thing.

There are summer classes at Hinkle High one county over, where there are three full-time janitors. They can have it, as far as Danny’s concerned. He has a couple of summer employment kids. The good one, Jesse Jackson, is just punching in when Danny enters the supply room. There’s no sign of the other one—who, in Danny’s opinion, isn’t worth a hill of beans.

Hill, he thinks. Hilltop Texaco.

“Where’s Pat?”

Jesse shrugs. He’s a Black kid, tall and slim, moves well. Built for baseball and basketball, not football. “Dunno. His car’s not here yet. Maybe he decided to start the weekend a day early.”

That would be a bad idea, Danny thinks, but guesses Pat Grady’s the kind of boy who might have all sorts of bad ideas.

“We’re going to wax the rooms in the new wing. Start with Room 12. Move all the desks to one side. Stack em up two by two. Then go to 10 and repeat. I’ll follow along with the buffer. If Pat decides to show up, have him help you.”

“Yes, Mr. Coughlin.”

“No mister needed, kiddo. I’m just Danny. Think you can remember that?”

Jesse grins. “Yes, sir.”

“No sir, either. Off you go. Unless you want a coffee first to get you cranking.”

“Had one at the Total coming in.”