Round Rock - Michelle Huneven [121]
The heated-up cab smelled strongly of old oil, hot dust, and decomposing rubber, the smells Lewis remembered from that first ride he took with Red Ray from detox. His fingers went numb around the glove-compartment clasp, his vision suddenly darkened. A cardboard coffee cup lolled on the floorboards. The glove compartment contained maps, a half-full bottle of Excedrin. Lewis’s lips tingled, as if charged with electrical current: the smears on the steering wheel and floor that looked like dried chocolate ice cream were Red’s blood.
Lewis curled up on the front seat. It seemed unfair, cruelly ironic, and unspeakably sad that Red, who devoted so much of his life to chiseling away at human desperation and loneliness, was alone when his heart exploded, when his truck sprang for the trees.
Lewis had the Ford towed to a body shop in Rito. Once it was repaired, he and David caravaned south and sold it to a prop house in Burbank.
CLEO BARKIN, as president of Round Rock’s board of directors, served as the temporary director; that is, she signed the checks. Lewis took over the supply runs and helped Libby with the secretarial tasks. David coordinated the staff and volunteers and split the intake and exit interviews with the psychologist. By each taking a few of Red’s duties, they kept the place operating, but any long-range planning was put on hold. For Red, Round Rock had been an ongoing, dynamic picture in his head, and he knew instinctively and absolutely what should come into that picture and what should go out. Countless small decisions were made against his sense of the larger whole: when to call a repairman, arborist, or psychiatrist, when to just fix the problem himself. Nobody else had Red’s overview, not yet, and slowly a sprung or fractured quality crept into farm life. No single thing faltered, but on some days it felt as if a good gust of wind could sweep the entire enterprise off the map.
LIBBY was confined to bed. She stretched this to mean sitting on pillows on the back stoop, sunning her legs. Barbara and Lewis moved bookshelves and a large bow-front dresser out of the bedroom to make way for a white wicker bassinet. The top of a small, low dresser became a padded changing table. Red’s closet was emptied and refurnished with Formica shelves filled with cloth diapers, receiving blankets, and stacks of doll-sized clothes. Red’s wardrobe was heaped in the living room in languorous bales of lightly starched dress shirts, plastic-wrapped, custom-made suits. Given his choice, Lewis took two cashmere sweaters and three silk ties.
When Barbara left, David arranged for his aunt Gloria to come in mornings and evenings, prepare meals, and sit with Libby. During the days Libby read books, tried to do office work. She called Lewis at all hours, at his bungalow or in the kitchen. “I hate to bother you,” she said. “Can you talk?”
“Sure.” Holding the phone to his ear with his shoulder, Lewis would chop onions, flip turkey burgers.
“I was thinking,” Libby said. “Maybe Billie really was in love with Red all these years. She showed up for his funeral, after all. Have you heard anything about her moving?”
“Maybe you should write about this in your journal,” said Lewis.
“I wouldn’t know where to start,” she said.
“Pretend it’s a letter. Pretend you’re talking.”
Sometimes, after Gloria went home at night, Lewis came over, and they read or discussed farm business. She didn’t know what to do about the new house on the hill, which was being painted, tiled, and carpeted according to schedule. “I say I want to stay in this valley, because that’s where my friends are, but when I actually look at what I mean by that, I see that Red is dead and Billie won’t talk to me, and you’re going away to teach soon and