The Hair of Harold Roux Page 25

  But this warm evening a friend came into my dormitory room and said that he’d heard two guys saying that a dealer in Sanford, Maine, had two of these tires, and they were going up to buy them. At the moment, however, they were in a poker game, so I’d have a head start. It was a Friday night. I’d thought of going home for the weekend only because I hadn’t been home for months and knew my parents would feel the world more in order if they could lay their eyes on me once in a while. Not that they were insistent at all; their child, though in their eyes in inevitable ways still a child, was a veteran who had been on the other side of the world in the aftermath of a great war. Within ten minutes I’d strapped my gear on the Indian Pony and taken off for Sanford.

  It was one of those evenings when the air is so balmy, so benevolent, especially after a New Hampshire winter, that one feels perhaps the human metabolism evolved correctly for this planet after all. And yet this benevolence of nature usually presages some violent reminder—a “weather breeder,” it’s called. Huge altocumulus clouds rose up along the horizon against the warm blue, and in the distance what looked like a continuation of clear sky would flash pink, all in ominous silence, and that deceptive blue would turn out to be the vast canyon side of another cloud.

  I had thirty miles to go, with stops to reshape my front tire. I wasn’t at all sure that the dealer in Sanford would sell me the tires—if he really had them—or if my sick tire would get me there in the first place. I had enough money to buy the tires, but very little more.

  So I headed for Dover, five miles away, past the new green of the maples alongside the blacktop road, then to Rochester, nine more miles, and then into Maine, being very attentive to my front tire, riding carefully, with a brittle, nervous attention to bumps in the road. Sixteen miles on Maine 202, and I came into Sanford just at dusk. Before I’d even stopped to ask for directions, there was the place—a small shop attached to the owner’s house. He was there in his shop, even at this hour, and yes, he did have the tires. He even helped me change the front one, a terrible job which took us over an hour. The old tire came apart along the bead when we pried it off. We marveled. “Must have been going on habit,” the dealer said. He was a young man, skinny, a motorcycle lover. He charged me nothing for helping me change the tire.

  And since everything here is true, I have to say that the two poker players did turn up, before I left, just as we were roping the other new tire over my saddlebags. They were disappointed, but knew of no collusion. “First come, first served,” said the skinny mechanic. And then I was off, the new front tire crisp and solid. It was ten o’clock, and I was headed for my home in Leah, New Hampshire, about a hundred miles away, all on winding blacktop roads, through valleys and wild places, through towns that would soon be going dark, heat lightning and the balmy spring night. The danger of my machine had suddenly lessened a degree, so I could play with a little speed, lean like a flier into the long turns and let the earth tilt. I don’t remember sound except for the hiss of the wind, and even that was gentle, controllable by a movement of my left wrist.

  I passed through the country towns of Northwood, Epsom, Gossville, Chichester, and then on the heights above Concord I came upon a scene in the road that worked perversely toward that night’s pleasure—I don’t know how. Several people stood in the road, and a policeman swung a red flashlight. I’d slowed down, and was directed on past. But not before I’d seen beneath the weak headlights of an old car—a Hudson Terraplane with pre-Sealed Beam headlights—an old woman, flat on her back on the road as if laid out for her funeral. Her hair and face were gray as stone, and her hat, a round black thing, sat as solid as a pot beside her head. Then I had passed, on down the long hill into Concord, across the treacherous bridge over the Merrimack River. That was a bridge to make any rider shudder; if you fell on the metal gridwork of its roadway it would shred you like a carrot on a cheese grater.

  In Concord I stopped at the all-night diner for coffee and a hamburger. No, I had a fried egg sandwich, which reveals itself into memory because of the big black grains in the pepper shaker; I see them scattered across the white.

  In Penacook I found an all-night gas station and filled my tank. The old man who ran it at night turned out to be another motorcycle lover, who told me how he rode belt-driven Indians in 1926, on roads that were mostly gravel. “How far you riding tonight?” he asked. It was past midnight. “Leah,” I said, conscious of envy. “That’s a long ride. Hope the rain don’t catch you,” he said. Still those thunderheads moved along the horizon, flashing with no sound. I did have an army poncho in my duffel bag, but that wouldn’t help much. “You got a chance,” he said, and I kicked down the starter, set the spark to its smoothest rumble and went on north.

  In Boscawen, by the big white church, I bore left, following Route 4 into the hills below Kearsarge, through Salisbury and Salisbury Heights—towns of a few old houses, dark now. Few cars were out. Then Andover and Potter Place, small settlements along what was mostly woods, with the branches of the trees flicking, mile after mile, over my head. The emptiness of the woods is always close on a motorcycle, because if you slow or stop you are alone and naked, already in the dark and part of it. Not like in a car, which is a room. Only your speed and the wavery hole your headlight cuts ahead of you gives some slight edge of independence from the night. It’s risky; the trees seem to reach toward you as you pass.

  Between South Danbury and Danbury a car followed me for several miles, and with this audience I was more conscious of my graceful lean into the curves, what a daring figure I must seem as I pierced the darkness. At that age everything is referential; all lights are eyes. Perhaps a lovely girl drove that car, and measured the breadth of my shoulders. But at Danbury the car turned off toward Bristol, to the east, and I was alone again, at speed. Grafton, Canaan, Enfield, the long, curving descent into Mascoma by the lake, then the long hills above Leah.

  Sometime in the morning I pulled up, stiffened by the wind but still hearing its rhythms in my ears, at the Welkum Diner in Leah, no more than a few blocks from my home. Home was a place I didn’t especially want to be—a destination too much like a starting place, unworthy of my journey. As I had a cup of coffee in the diner, my Indian Pony waited upon its kickstand at the curb. Dark red, oily and warm, it had freed for me all those deserted miles, and carried me across a whole state. I didn’t want to stop, but I had nowhere else to go that night.

  And of course I thought then that my real life hadn’t yet begun—if there ever was to be such a beginning. GI Bill bum that I was, I wasn’t sure at all, then. But there is that one spring night my Indian Pony, imperfect yet faithful, carried me past certain borders I cannot forget—small triumphs and real dangers. If all the going of one’s life could reverberate like that down through the years.

  Aaron has just frightened himself badly. On loose gravel he approached a turn and found that he was not going to make it. First he moved into his lean with dreamy assurance, the machine sliding out, drifting out under the illusion of control, but then it went too far and he knew all at once, his mind calculating forces and vectors and coming to the bad conclusion that this was all real and final. He is now lying in a ditch, a tarnished beer can beneath his shoulder, another between his legs, taking stock of his wounds. His left knee will be heard from later. He nearly vomits from pain and shock, then slowly organizes his legs and arms. He has plenty of time, so he moves slowly, taking stock of synapses, the roots of muscles, the articulations of bones. He has just missed a small white maple, which would have been the end of him. Someday, he knows very well, the small maple in whatever final form it takes will not be avoidable, but as for now he has again missed the immovable object and must continue. He gets up, his knee causing some nausea still, and examines his Honda.

  Gasoline is leaking from the tank, but he turns off the ignition and somehow manages to drag the machine around to a more vertical position and the gas stops leaking. The clutch cable is broken, torn out probably by the rock that kisse
d his knee, but since all the gears are synchromesh that doesn’t matter too much, and he won’t be stranded out here in the country somewhere north of town, on this gravel road among grown-up fields and woods. He limps up and down for a while, speaking to his knee and to his wrist in familiar terms, gruffly but with the familiarity one has toward old friends, old fellow campaigners. It seems that he had some idea of where he was going and the accident should somehow change that murky intention. The road does seem familiar. For the moment he hasn’t the strength to drag his Honda out of the ditch, but that will come back as soon as the shock lessens. At least he is certain that none of his bones are broken this time. It is hard to light a cigarette with his trembling hands, but he manages, then sits with his back against the small maple God has fortunately commanded to have grown two feet south of Aaron Benham’s appointment with death.

  He can hear a car coming along the road, so he removes his white helmet and moves a few feet into the brush, becoming invisible. The Honda is deep enough in the ditch to be mostly out of sight. He’ll lick his wounds in private.

  The car is an old pickup truck, its springs weak, the bulbous metal of its front bumper and hood shimmying relax-edly over the bumps. Though it is several years older than when he last saw it he recognizes it as Forneau’s old truck, and now he knows exactly where he is. Therese is driving it, alone in the faded cab, her face stern at the task of driving. She too is older. There is the same drabness of skin, the same good facial bones beneath, but several years have laid themselves upon her in their tiring ways. He thinks that as she is now, given himself then, he would think it strange to want to make love to her.

  Fifty yards down the road she turns into her driveway. He hears the last rattle and squeak of the truck, then the cab door slamming, then slamming twice again, the last more solidly. So. He may have intended to come by here. At least this is where he is. With some wonder in his mind he walks, limping, down the road to the old house, his helmet swinging from his hand.

  THERESE’S BEAUTY SHOP

  says the old sign, more faintly now, muffled by the rains and winds of the last six years. No, it is more like seven years since he’s been by this way. What should his welcome be? He limps to the door and knocks, noticing that the knob and lock have been replaced. The door opens and she is looking at him. She has to look through time, down through the tunnel of all those years. Then her face turns strange.

  “You’ve hurt yourself,” she says, and takes his arm. He lets her pull him inside the kitchen and sit him down at a chrome and Formica table that is also new. The room has changed. It is less cluttered, more colorful with orange-red curtains and frills over the cupboards. The battered old hair drier is nowhere in sight. A white-enameled gas range has replaced the wood-kerosene stove. Therese looks at him once, her expression nothing he can decipher, goes into what must be a bathroom, also new, and returns with a washcloth and towel. At the sink she fills a basin with warm water. Her body is still slim beneath the remorseless gravity of the years. Perhaps her neck has bowed almost imperceptibly. She must be thirty-five or thirty-six now. There is a certain graininess about the skin of her elbows, but again he is impressed by the good bones; the girl and this woman come together so clearly that it might be another time. But then she turns, and her face is more powerful than it once was. It has lived with itself for a long time now. She is no longer shy, or pretty in a young animal way. She is not about to smile at him, but firmly moves his chin so she can wash his face.

  “It’s been a long time, Therese. Are you mad at me?”

  She squeezes the washcloth over the basin, the water turning pink. “I don’t know what I am,” she says. Her voice is louder than it once was, but not through anger. “You’re too old to ride a motorcycle. Lean forward.” She unzips his wind-breaker and unbuttons his shirt, then follows the blood with the warm cloth.

  “Have you got a drink in the house?” he asks.

  “So that’s it,” she says. “You a drunkard now? All there is is some home-brew Forneau left down cellar. You want some of that?”

  “Sure,” he says.

  Her hands move competently over his chest, doing nothing but wash him, as if he is a piece of furniture. “What’d you do, run off the road? Did you mean to come here or was it just accidental?”

  “I don’t know. I think I meant to ride on by, but I guess I did mean to ride on by here.”

  “Been a long time.” There is grimness in her voice. Her brown eyes are harder, glittery where they were not glittery at all before, but soft and almost furry in their depths. “You never showed yourself around here.”

  “You’ve changed your hair,” he says. “It used to be browner.”

  “It’s been like this for three years.” There are streaks of gold, or maybe platinum in it, and he prefers it the way it once was, drab and innocent. It’s none of his business, her face declares. She has a vertical wrinkle between her brows, caused, he supposes, by many frowns. Life has gone on without him, which makes him sad. But it has to, after all, if he isn’t there. If he never shows up.

  “How’s your family?” she asks. She removes the basin and wipes him dry.

  “Okay, I guess,” he says.

  She looks at him wryly, quizzically, as she applies a Band-Aid to his jaw. “You guess?”

  “They’re away. They’re down in Wellesley with Agnes’ folks.”

  “Humph. When the cat’s away the mice will play. That why you’re half drunk, running around on your motorcycle?”

  “May be.”

  “You still want some home-brew?”

  “Will you have a glass with me, Therese?”

  “I hate it. I don’t know why I never threw it out.” She goes down cellar and returns with a dusty brown bottle, then carefully, seeming to resent the necessary carefulness, decants it into a glass pitcher. Her resentfulness is probably from having to do this for Forneau so many times in the past, under pain of violence if she stirred up the yeast in the bottom of the bottle. She brings the pitcher and two tumblers to the table.

  “Button your shirt up,” she says, pouring him a full glass and herself two inches of the amber beer. His left hand, it becomes obvious, is still stiff, so she comes over him and buttons his shirt, her warmth over him, her breasts that are larger, softer now, close to him. She smells of the cellar, of potato peels, and of the warm soapy water.

  “Oh, I’m not angry,” she says. “I never was, much. By the time I thought to get angry too much time went by. I ended up maybe thinking you were some kind of a coward.”

  “How true,” he says, his nose full of the effervescent ticks of the beer, its familiar acid and molasses on his tongue.

  “You weren’t scared of Forneau. You were mainly scared of your wife.”

  “That may be a simple way to put it, but you’re mainly right.”

  She is her own property now. Her dress is in the current style, almost. She is wearing nylon stockings and red shoes. She takes a sip of the beer, grimaces, and gets up to put away the groceries she brought from town. “Life goes on,” she says, with a sigh.

  “I never see you around town,” he says.

  “I work in the shoeshop in Litchwood, so I do about everything there.”

  “I’m in a weird mood,” he says.

  “You must be if you come out here after all these years.”

  “You’ve fixed the place up. You going to stay here now?”

  “I don’t know. It’s easy. I mean it’s cheap. That old truck’s about rusted out and the doors are falling off of it. I don’t know much about things but I make eighty-five dollars a week as a stitcher and maybe I can get a real car if I don’t go spending all my money on rent. I make maybe ten dollars Saturdays and Sundays out of the beauty shop. Got my regular customers.”

  “Do you have a boyfriend?”

  “Maybe that used to be your business.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I don’t harbor no hard feelings, Aaron. I was such a dumb goose in those days
, though. I should of left Forneau and found a boy my own age. I was scared half to death Forneau would catch us but as long as you were around it was the only sweetness in my life.”

  She has turned softer. She has come back to sit across from him at the table, and toys with her glass, turning it around on the blue Formica. “You meant a lot to me, Aaron.” Her use of his name means that she is remembering without resentment. “It sure didn’t last long, though, did it.”

  “No,” he says.

  “Well, it’s water over the dam. Life goes on. I got a boyfriend, all right, but he’s married. They all are, the ones that want to keep a girl company. Get to be my age and they’re all married with six kids. Fred, he works in the office. His wife’s a real ugly bitch he can’t even talk to her, he says. I seen her in the Stop and Shop yelling at her youngest kid you’d think the kid was a criminal or something. Poor Fred. He’s overweight, he’s got a heart condition and he has to take little white pills. He’s a nice, nice man.” She shakes her head, the chromatic hair flying on its tethers with an abandon that seems for a moment youthful. “I put the beauty shop in the other room there. It looks real good. Professional. You want to see it?”

  “Sure,” he says, carefully testing his knee as he rises. It works, though the joint seems to be packed with sludge.

  “I got a new Sears drier so now I can have two customers at a time. They like that better, some of them. They can gossip better, you know.”

  The gluey smell of the hair-setting chemicals brings him back to those other times. He remembers her drab brown hair with sadness and affection. In those days he thought her neither young nor old. She was such a tender animal, unused to receiving tenderness.