American Boy - Larry Watson [51]
We went into the locker room, where I set the case of beer on the bench. Johnny was eager to try a wine-beer cocktail, and he had his own notion as to how it should be made. He opened a can of Budweiser and immediately poured half its contents down the shower drain. He refilled his can with wine. “We ought to have a funnel for this,” he said. But amazingly, he spilled very little.
He took two long swallows. “Hey, this is my drink! I’ve never much cared for the taste of beer anyway.” He licked wine from his fingers, then put his gloves back on.
Louisa didn’t mix the two in a single container. She drank from the bottle of wine and then chased that with beer. She held the wine out to me.
“No, thanks.”
“Wine on top beer, never fear,” said Johnny.
“If you say so. I’ll stick with beer.”
Louisa pulled up the collar of her coat. “Christ, it’s as cold in here as it was outside.”
“At least we’re out of the wind,” I suggested.
“You remember how it was howling last fall?” Johnny asked me.
“I remember hitting a five iron into the wind, and it didn’t go a hundred yards.”
“It’s like being inside a goddamn igloo,” said Louisa.
I wondered again why Johnny felt this location was superior to his car, where we at least had a source of heat. This wasn’t what I had in mind when I suggested that we find someplace other than the car to drink. Louisa was right. The locker room’s whitewashed walls could have been blocks of ice.
As if he could read my mind, Johnny asked, “You want to go back out in the car? It’s cramped, but there’s heat.”
It had more than heat. It was the car—and much of the drama, danger, and excitement of our lives occurred in cars. Johnny had been trying to please me when he came up with this location. But what was I thinking? Cars were the realm of possibility, and in them we had power. Things that could never happen anywhere else happened in the front or backseats of cars.
Louisa seemed to read my thoughts. “I’m getting a little old to be drinking beer in a parked car.”
“Should we go back to Frenchman’s Forest?” I offered. “I bet we could get into that place where you lived with Lester. Didn’t it have a wood-burning stove?”
“I’m never going back there.” Her tone was dismissive and resolute.
Always eager to lighten any situation, Johnny said, “If we keep moving, we’ll stay warm!” As if to illustrate his theory, he did a few jumping jacks. Then he ran from one end of the locker room to the other. I don’t know if all that activity really warmed him, but it accomplished his real purpose. By the time he finished his second sprint, Louisa was laughing.
“I lived for a while in this tiny apartment over a hardware store,” she said. “The only heat was what came up from the store, and the owner would turn it way down when the store closed. Nights were so damn cold I swear to God I could have put milk on the kitchen table and it would have stayed as cold as in the icebox.”
“Where was that?” I asked.
“A little town in North Dakota. You’ve never heard of it.”
“Try me.”
“Haugen. It’s south of Fargo.”
“You’re right. I never heard of it. Is that where you’re from?”
“My dad was from Haugen, so I ended up there a few times. There and on the family farm.”
“And now you’re going to live in Denver. Isn’t that the plan?”
“That’s right. Someday. And what’s with the third degree?”
I lit a cigarette from the pack of Pall Malls I’d stolen from my mother’s carton. “Just trying to get to know you a little better.”
“Yeah? Why’s that?”
“I think you and I have a lot in common.”
Her laugh was like a stifled sneeze. She stepped close to me and scissored her fingers in front of my nose. “Here’s something we have in common. I need a cigarette, too.”
I struck a match to light her cigarette, and as she puffed it to life she cut her eyes up at me. It was the kind of look that sends you to the mirror to see what someone else has seen in your face.