empty and meaningless as fog, a Love of Man that came down in the end to wanting the whole damn world to itself, an empty diner, sticky places on the counter stools, bolts and old wrenches, sheer pins, cotter-keys, baling wire up to your knees on the floor of the garage. Drunk with muscle and fat and padding around in circles in a grease-stinking lean-to behind a truckerâs diner. So he pounded the counter about the weather or where heâd have gone if heâd ever lit out, or he rattle-assed through the mountains in his â39 Ford.
On a clear night you could make it to the top of Nickel Mountain and back, teetering in the square black Ford, the walls pinning you in like the sides of an upended coffin, bumping down gravel and macadam roads and over the warped planks of narrow bridges that rocked when you hit and echoed brrrack! through the hills and glens. The trees would slide into the headlight beams and the wind whipping through the open window made you feel like Jesus H. Christ charioting to heaven. Nickel Mountain! That was where the real hills were, even when you stayed on the highway. And when you came whamming down around a corner, letting her coast free as a hawk, youâd suddenly see the river hundreds of feet below, on your left. Even by daylight it was beautiful: flat, blue shale ledges, the black river, misty fields, and the cluttered, peeling brick houses of Putnam Settlement. But at night, with the ledges outlined in icy blue like glass, rippling panes of moonlight on the waterâChrist! A trucker had gone off that spot once, poor devil. Bad brakes, probably. That was the funeral that had been up in Utica. It was a long time ago now. Ten years? Well, the man had chosen beautiful scenery for it. Beautiful. That was the big mistake in Henry Soamesâ fatherâs life: to sit, waiting for it, in his bed. Sheâd done a job on him, all right.
He ran his hands over his chest and sides. He was still staring at the door as if to hurl angry apologies at the truckerâs blackened tailpipe. Callie stood leaning on the cutting board, her hands on her hips, looking at him. When he glanced at her, she asked, âDid that man really have a wife, Mr. Soames?â
He nodded. âDiabetes. All she can eat is Jello.â He turned heavily and put the dirty cup and spoon in the sink.
âHeâs got a nerve, then, Iâd say.â
Henry scowled, seeing her again with her hand on her cocked hip, smiling, playing with sex the way little boys play with flares along the railroad tracksâand seeing, too, the trucker, with a wife home dying, but for all that there he stood grinning at Callie like a sly old bullâand seeing himself, Henry Soames, reaching out like a fruit to pat the manâs shoulder. âIâm getting to be a damned old woman,â he said. He pulled at his upper lip.
She didnât dispute it. âWell, youâre a nice old woman,â she said, not smiling. She sounded tired. She turned to look out vacantly at the darkness. He found he couldnât make out her features distinctly. Eyes burning out like the rest of him, he thought. A sharp, brief pain came into his chest then vanished, a little like a mouse peeking out of his hole then ducking back. He heard her words again in his mind, a nice old woman, and he was touched. Touched and depressed. He leaned on the front of the sink and waited for his breathing to calm. He was always waiting, these days. For customers, for the grill to heat, for night, for morning and the tuning-up of the blasted little gray and white speckled birds outside his window. How long? he wondered. Another tentative pain. He cleared his throat.
8
It was four nights after the trucker came that Henry found out exactly how touchy his situation was. A Saturday. George Loomis came in drunk as a lord and said, âHenry Soames, you old somvabitch, I come to take the place of the late Kuzitski.â
Callie knew as well as
The Big Rich: The Rise, Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes