Good Neighbors Page 5

  He managed to get out all right. Only his right leg got seriously burned. But he lost all the money he’d spent the last several months saving, lost everything but the clothes on his back. And he had to leave town. If he didn’t, he’d find himself strung up from a tree.

  But he hung around for two days after the barn burned down, anyway, sleeping in the woods at night. He lurked around during the day, and when he found a chance to get Erin alone he took it, and he asked her to come with him, to leave town with him so that they could be together.

  They headed north that night. Hitchhiking.

  They found out quickly that they had to use Erin as bait, and once the car or truck stopped, Frank would come out of hiding. Even then, the driver would often say something about not giving no nigger a ride, nor no nigger lover, and drive off. But the rest of the time they managed to get down the road a stretch. If they both stood out on the road together, though, no one would stop at all.

  And now, here they are, twenty-one years later, in trouble again – big trouble.

  ‘Are you sure,’ Frank says, ‘that it was a person you hit?’ Erin nods at him, panic in her eyes.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I could . . .’ She stops, closes her eyes as if to replay the event in her head, and then opens them again and looks at Frank. ‘I could see the stroller in my rearview mirror.’

  ‘You hit a baby?’

  Erin nods and immediately starts crying.

  ‘Oh, fuck,’ Frank says.

  Which makes Erin cry harder.

  ‘Calm down,’ Frank says. Then: ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’

  He walks to the window.

  Across the courtyard, he can see a naked man pumping away at a naked woman. The woman is looking out the window, actually seems to be looking at him, her white eyes emotionless.

  He turns away. Paces. Turns to Erin.

  ‘Did anyone see you?’

  Erin looks up at him, wipes her eyes, smudging her mascara and making herself look a bit like a raccoon. She breathes in and out to calm herself, her chest rising and falling.

  Finally, she says, ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Of course someone saw her,’ Frank says to himself. ‘Baby didn’t roll itself out into the street, did it?’

  He looks up at Erin but she doesn’t respond.

  ‘You didn’t see anything but the stroller?’

  ‘No,’ Erin says. ‘I was scared. I just . . . drove away. I’m sorry. I was so scared.’

  ‘So you don’t know for sure the baby got killed.’

  ‘No, but . . .’

  ‘Is there any blood or anything on the grille of the car?’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t look. Jesus, Frank, do you think I killed it?’

  ‘I don’t know, honey,’ Frank says, walking to the window, looking outside, and then turning back to his wife, who he is both furious at and scared for, ‘but I’m going to find out.’

  He walks to the couch and peels his dirty t-shirt from its arm. The t-shirt is stained with car grease, the armpits yellow with sweat. He flips the shirt right-side-out and slips into it.

  ‘What if someone recognizes the car and thinks you did it?’ Erin asks.

  ‘Then I’ll let them think it,’ Frank says. ‘Sometimes people pay for other people’s mistakes. You’re my wife. I’ll pay for yours if I have to.’

  Frank grabs the keys from the hook by the door and then pulls the door open.

  ‘I’ll be back in a while.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Frank says. ‘If no one is around and the baby is dead, or if no one is around and the stroller is gone, then I’ll be back pretty soon. There’s nothing I can do in that case, is there? If someone is around and recognizes the car, maybe I won’t be back for several years. So I don’t know when. What I do know is this. There might be an injured baby on the side of the road right now, and I might be able to save its life. Slim as the chance may be, if I don’t go out there and find out, and it is but dies because I’m afraid of getting in trouble, don’t you think that puts blood on my hands?’

  ‘I don’t know, Frank.’

  Frank nods.

  ‘Well, I do,’ he says. ‘I’ll be back in a while. You said it was on the twenties?’

  Erin nods.

  ‘Okay,’ Frank says.

  Then he steps out through the front door and closes it behind him.

  9

  Behind the wheel of a light blue 1963 Fiat 600 sits Nathan Vacanti, damn near sixty-five, but looking pretty good for his age if he may say so himself, and he may, because he denies himself nothing – almost nothing.

  It’s just past four o’clock in the morning and Nathan is drunk.

  It’s amazing how much teachers drink, as a rule. Every time Nathan goes to a party with a lot of teachers, doesn’t matter what grade level or subject (though primary school teachers seem to really like white wine, history teachers whiskey, and English teachers merlot or cabernet), he is amazed by the sheer volume of alcohol consumed.

  Except for the red taillights of a car about a quarter mile in front of him, he sees no other evidence of active life. The buildings on either side of him are dark. He could be driving through the remains of the apocalypse. Except for the red taillights in front of him.

  He grins at the idea of the apocalypse – it’ll come if the Russians want it to – and pushes his penny loafer against the gas pedal.

  He gains on the taillights.

  He turns up the radio, which is playing Buddy Holly and the Crickets. They’re doing ‘Not Fade Away’, recorded just two years before Mr. Holly’s untimely death according to the late-night DJ, Dean ‘Dino’ Anthony.

  Now the taillights are only thirty yards ahead of him. Now twenty. Now ten. And now he’s passing a Studebaker on the right, and he glances out his side window and looks at a pretty brunette woman, tiny little thing about the size of your average twelve-year-old, and then the only place she exists is in his past because he just left her in his dust.

  You’d never know it to look at him right now, drunk as a skunk and needing a shave, eyes veined, lips wet and purple, but Nathan, or Mr. Vacanti as he is used to being called, is a seventh grade English teacher, and has been for the last thirty-two years. He’s made some mistakes in that time but he reckons he’s done more good than harm. He hopes so, anyway. That’s what he tells himself.

  Up ahead of him is an intersection, a light-box hanging from a pole, swinging back and forth gently in the night breeze, hanging directly over the asphalt. A bird sits perched on a ledge in front of the green light, a back-lit silhouette. Then there is no green light; there’s a yellow light instead. Nathan pushes his penny loafer down to the floorboard, gaining speed.

  Yes, he’s been a pretty good teacher to most of his students; a few mistakes don’t take away from all the good he’s done, do they?

  The light turns red, but Nathan doesn’t even consider stopping. He flies right into the intersection, and he almost makes it across, too, but a large green truck comes at him from the right. Its headlights illuminate the inside of Nathan’s car in the moment before collision like the light from a UFO in a B-movie just before abduction.

  ‘Oh, shit.’

  Then a sound like the world cracking open fills his head and he’s spinning in circles. Everything is a blur of nonsense and lights and pain throbs through his body as it’s slammed around the car’s interior. He’s spinning clockwise and idiotically he thinks if he just turns his steering wheel the other direction he can right himself, but instead the momentum of the spinning and the turn of the tires ends up flipping the car, and suddenly the world is upside down. He can see, momentarily, the single remaining headlight of a green truck shining on him. But then he’s right-side up again, looking at the darkened windows of a building, seeing the reflection of his own car in motion. And then asphalt. He can see it so clearly; he can see every pebble imbedded in it; he can see the black smudges of bubble gum pressed into it; he can
see where it has been stained by leaking oil. And then it’s gone and the world is upside down again. The car rolls three times before finally coming to a stop on the side of the road, down-side up, rocking back and forth ever so slightly. He can hear the whir of his car’s tires spinning but gripping nothing. He can hear the tinkling of glass. Through the shattered windshield he can see the green pickup truck that hit him sitting motionless, though rather cockeyed, in the middle of the road, its single good headlight shining on the trail of damage Nathan left behind. Bits of glass, chunks of metal. His spare tire rolls in smaller and smaller circles on the gray asphalt before falling onto its side, wobbling, then going still.

  ‘Help,’ Nathan tries to say, but it’s only a croak. ‘Help,’ again, and this time he gets it out.

  But the person in the truck doesn’t help. The truck backs up, straightens out on the road, and drives away from there, screeching as it goes.

  Goes.

  Gone.

  Nathan looks at the place where the truck should be for a moment, blood running into his eyes from somewhere, and then he tries to open the door, but it won’t budge. He doesn’t need it to. The windshield is gone; he just needs to get through it.

  He spends some time trying to straighten out his contorted body.

  There is blood everywhere and he thinks it must be his, there’s no one else in here whose blood it could be, but he doesn’t feel any pain, and he can’t really imagine where it could be coming from. It seems like more blood than a single person could hold.

  Finally, he manages to get his body into some sort of human shape, and he crawls out of his car through the shattered windshield, glass digging into the palms of his hands and through his pants into his knees as he goes.

  Once out of the car, Nathan struggles to his feet.

  Blood immediately pours down his face from a deep wound in his forehead. He reaches up to feel where the blood might be coming from and his fingers brush across what must be a shard of glass sticking out of his head. He considers pulling it out, but decides against it. If he’s bleeding this badly with the cork in the wine bottle, it seems the last thing he should do is yank it out.

  A bread truck rolls by on its way to making deliveries to grocery stores and Nathan sees the driver’s face turn toward him and look, and he tries to raise his arms in a wave for assistance, but before he can the truck has passed and made a left and is gone, heading toward Queens Boulevard and beyond. Nathan can hear the light late-night whine of traffic on that busy road maybe three blocks away, but he can’t make it three blocks.

  He looks around at the darkened buildings, all businesses so far as he can tell, but business hours have long passed. He could knock on every door on the street and never get an answer. And he doesn’t have the strength to knock on every door, anyway.

  He stumbles, bleeding, toward a window with bicycles displayed behind it. As he nears the window, he looks for something with which to shatter it. A rock would do, but he doesn’t see a rock. Then he reaches the window and presses his palms against it, smearing blood across its cold, smooth surface. He can see his own reflection looking back at him. He can see several inches of bloody glass jutting from his forehead like a shelf. He wonders if it’s in his brain, and suddenly his head is throbbing with pain. Has it been throbbing this whole time? He thinks so. He thinks every part of him is probably in pain, but the mind simply can’t handle pain everywhere, so it picks focal points, and seeing the shelf of glass jutting from his forehead made his head just such a focal point.

  Suddenly Nathan feels very sick. Dizzy. He has to get inside that store before he passes out. He has to get inside, and he has to call for an ambulance. Or he’s a dead man.

  He looks around again for something to break the window with, and again he finds nothing. He looks out toward the street. Another vehicle passes – this one a Cadillac Fleetwood driven by someone so small Nathan can’t figure out how the guy can see over the dashboard – and the driver looks toward Nathan, and Nathan waves, but the car doesn’t slow down. Nathan is pretty sure the car actually speeds up. And then it’s gone. He’ll just have to punch his way through the glass. He’s already cut to shit; he can’t imagine the damage caused by the store’s window making it much worse.

  He pulls back and punches, and the window bows in and makes a strange saw-like warbling sound, bouncing back, vibrating, shaking the reflections of Nathan and the street behind him like a horse trying to rid its hide of flies.

  Light from the moon bounces off the glass jutting from his forehead; he can see it in the warbling window. How deep is it? Is there another six inches of glass inside his head, deep into his brain? Has he just gotten a car-wreck lobotomy?

  Jesus fuck.

  He falls to his hands and knees, sending sharp pain into his body as small shards of glass already imbedded there are pressed further into him, and he vomits onto the sidewalk. His entire body tightens with each gush, his mouth locking open, and his body evacuates itself in three contractions.

  Then it’s over.

  He breathes hard, spits, blows his nose onto the sidewalk.

  He’s going to die out here. That’s all there is to it.

  But then he sees it. The metal-framed sandwich-board sign sitting out on the sidewalk. Apparently there’s a spring bicycle sale on. Apparently every bike in the store is twenty percent off. Every fucking one of them.

  Nathan struggles to his feet. Limps to the sign.

  Has it been here the entire time? Dumb question. It has to have been.

  He picks it up with his bloody hands, spins his entire body around, toward the window, and lets go. As he lets go, he continues a half spin and falls to the sidewalk a second time.

  He looks up.

  The metal-framed sign fumbles through the air in a weak arc, hits the window, and then simply drops to the sidewalk like Wile E. Coyote after he’s noticed he’s past the cliff’s edge and is walking on air. It clatters a little as it settles, and then goes silent. The window warbles again, but seems to hold together.

  ‘Oh, goddamn it,’ Nathan says. ‘Fuck.’

  He’s going to die out here.

  But then the window splinters – just a small pinpoint crack where the sign made impact at first, but then it splinters – and the splintering spreads, spiderwebbing in every direction, out and out from the point of impact, and pretty soon the entire window is covered with cracks. Pretty soon you can’t even see through it – it’s just frosted with cracks – and pieces, small pieces, start to fall out, tinkling to the ground like snowflakes.

  Nathan grabs chunks of shattered glass and pulls them away, not caring if they cut his hands more than they’re already cut – he wants to live – and then crawls into the darkened store, falling over bicycles, picking himself back up, crawling his way in.

  He sees a telephone hanging on the wall behind the front counter, stumbles to it, picks it up, puts it to his bloody ear and dials an operator.

  ‘Hello,’ he says. ‘Help. I’ve been killed in a car accident. Please. Please.’

  He might even manage to give his location before he’s gone. But then there’s just blackness for him, and the sound of his own body crumpling to the floor.

  Then silence.

  10

  Frank walks from the Hobart Apartments and toward the Long Island Railroad parking lot across the street. He’s thinking about a knocked-over stroller on the side of the road only a few miles from here, thinking about that stroller and what might be strapped inside it, but as he walks he sees a man standing in the shadows, leaning against the trunk of an oak tree, smoking. He sees the orange glow of the cigarette in the night, the whites of the man’s eyes.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Frank says. ‘Sorry to bother you, but do you think I could bum one of them smokes from you?’

  The orange glow of the man’s cigarette bobs up and down and a moment later a pack of cigarettes juts out of the shadows. Frank takes one.

  ‘Thank you,’ he says, loading the cigarett
e between his lips. ‘Think I could get a light?’

  A flame flickers into existence. Frank lights his cigarette on it.

  He also sees the other man’s face for the first time. He’s a black man with bloodshot eyes and a nonexistent chin that looks like someone hacked it off at a forty-five degree angle with a machete and a nose shaped like a tipped-over three. It’s a face you could forget – except there’s something wrong with it. Frank isn’t sure what exactly. There’s nothing to point to – that there’s the problem, sir; I’ll have it fixed in a jiffy – but the combined parts are somehow almost disorienting, like an optical illusion, like something Escher would create.

  Then it’s gone, and the man’s hand is pulling the lighter back into the shadows.

  ‘Thank you,’ Frank says, wondering what this guy is doing standing in front of his apartment complex at four oh something in the morning. But it’s a big complex and for all Frank knows the guy lives here too and just came outside for a breath of fresh air. Besides, he’s got more important things to worry about.

  He takes a drag from his cigarette and crosses the street, heading toward his 1953 Buick Skylark, its white canvas top up, its red paint beginning to oxidize but still managing a little shine beneath the moon’s pale light. The car’s a little rusty around the edges but it’s in pretty good shape nonetheless. Someone brought it into his shop on Fortyseventh Street five years ago to have the transmission worked on and never returned. Frank claimed it.