Juneau
Passing by an Indian mound again I think I might be going in circles if I hadn't known I was going straight South the whole time. 7:30 and the bright sky is clear in Iowa. Buzzards going down I-35 same way as me. Left Saint Paul around 5:30, so the timing ain’t that bad. The Oldsmobile has 185,00 on her but she pushes. Juneau in the back, whining and whimpering. I gotta find something for her. And why didn't she answer when I stopped at that payphone this morning on my way out she said she would she said she’d be back.
The Oldsmobile was stuffed full to the brim, from the outside you can see the rusty scarlet metal box tilted backward on its worn axle. Office boxes with letters and free weights and books and a dresser that barely squeezes in. 12-gauge locked snug in her case. Fuck I gotta stop at another payphone. Troopers lined the slaloming highway every 20 miles like cougars in a tree line. Juneau is old. Doctors said something wrong with her kidney. She's a mutt but she has some hound in her, her ears and eyes droop like they are being pulled down. I dont know whats wrong with her kidney. I can't afford to go the vet but if she can make it to Fort Worth-
Bruce Springsteen coming on 88.5. I drove to see him in Salt Lake City all that way and he canceled the show. we drove 14 hours straight through the night me and Steve and we stayed up all night in this same Olds and we drank gas station coffee like the fountain of youth and he slept while the dim yellow headlights lit up Nebraskan fields. She better answer next time I call.
I dont really have nothing lined up down there but her daddy said I could work in the factory molding steel if I wanted. And I think I will- she needs a man now and she needs a provider and I got that ring in that strip mall in Champlin three months ago she ain't know but I got her ring size while we slept with the August breeze coming in the window, bristling through that apartment complex. It was all behind me now. I can enroll at UT it's only $18 per credit for the Fall. Juneau whimpering again. Poor thing. She said she's done with him and its only me now. That's why I had to get down there so fast see! She said she's done seeing him and If I come down then its over and she just needed to close that distance between us. That's when I went up to the manager and told him, I'm outta here boss I gotta go- I gotta go south and he told me to fuck off and he ain't need my two weeks anyways. These people never made sense to me. They polite in your face but snakes anyways. Further South I go the more I recognize myself. Pushing 90 on accident going through the inventory again in my head. If I left anything behind it's because I ain't need it. I dropped last month's rent in the mailbox and I left. I barely told Steve I said man I gotta go you know and Steve told to call him in Oklahoma City because he has an aunt there but he didn't tell me to stop and he didn't even plead with me once.
That first night we met. That first night. She was having vodka sodas at the bar with her friends laughing at something and she had had that purple blouse and it matched her deep brown eyes and wavy brown hair with two braids that weaved toward the back of her head. Her nose was small and round and it turned up a little bit like a drawing and I thought that was cute. I could tell by the way she put the cherry from the drink in her mouth and the way her red lipstick stuck to the glass she was trouble but good kind the kind I wanted. It was smoky in there but I could see her from behind our pitcher and I got up and they slapped me on the back and they told me do your thing Dave, so I went up and I said I dont think I’ve seen you here before I’m Dave. Ive seen you here before she said. Plenty of times she said. I straightened and I told her I dont think so and I said Where you from? She said Central Texas where there aint nothing but oil fields but I’m here at Augsburg doing pre-med. And I said so what are you a doctor or something? She told me not yet and she opened her cherry lips into a smile at me and maybe I looked a little too long but I told her I was born in her fair state and moved when I was kid but that means I still got a little cowboy in me. She looked up and down as if she could really tell whether I had a little cowboy in me and I had those light wash Levi's on with my boots so if she looked long enough maybe I’d manifest right into that cowboy right there next to the pool table in the bar. She laughed again and did that thing with her cherry lips again and told me her boyfriend was down there waiting for her to finish up. I told her that's a shame he ain't here because I’d love to meet him too she said I wish he was too but his daddy got him on track to be a partner and he’s gonna be rich one day but when she told me that she looked down like she couldn’t see it. She told me her name Kristy and it was nice to meet me too and that I’m sure I’d see her around.
Needed gas again so I gotta pull off here. Southern Iowa. Little creeks split the flatlands where brown trout lie asleep in cold, clear streams. Lutheran churches dotted off the road like daddy used to preach in. Corn and low green hills. It was a Dakota in the gas station and he looked at me off as I told him 20 on 6 and Marlboro Reds please. He looked at me funny still and didn't say anything. Like he knew something about me I didn’t. Say myself in the reflection of the payphone box and thought about it, but if she was out last night she still sleeping. Funny ain’t it. She used to tell me I hit the cans hard but when she gets into her groove she likes a drink just as much as me. She and those friends they go out on the town they go wild hooking drinks off sorry saps and bullriding in bars and she’d come home drunk again and she know my shift start at damn 6 and I can’t be dealing with this shit no more Kristy. Coffee was dirt but it was hitting quickly like I got a full tank now too. I left the window open for Juneau but she was lying in the passenger seat still in that same position on the side of her belly looking at the inside of the car door. I touched her belly and she ain’t move so I leaned over to make sure she still had her eyes open. She did and they were glossy but they were.
Well after noon now in Oklahoma and the sun blasting through the sunroof giving my scalp a tan. I could stop at Steves aunts but fuck that I just gotta see her so I'm driving straight through the middle of this country, splitting it down the middle like firewood- racing south. That next time I saw her I told her I’d give her a ride home and she smiled and looked down and her friends looked at me disapprovingly, but I told her I only had a few even though I had some more than a few and my Olds aint have a seatbelt but it was all good because I was a good driver I learned on country roads going in and out ditches just barely scratching edges of cornfields with my left mirror.
She asked me in and asked if I wanted a Jack & Coke and I told her you know ive been watching my sugar and she laughed as she led my by the hand under yellow porch light into her duplex and she told me her roommates were home so we had to be quiet. I didn’t say anything back but I thought to myself I can be quiet. She went into the bathroom and came out and had white panties and no bra but a ring t-shirt that looked like it might belong to high school football player and I ain’t recognize that high school but I wasnt in the position to be asking questions. I woke up to piss and she was awake staring at the ceiling not moving and she looked over to me and I couldn't tell if it was guilt or satisfaction or both or a third thing that I ain’t know about but I saw the brown in them from the streetlight coming in and she told me again to be quiet when leaving her room.
Late afternoon orange and a little purple from the coming evening poured into the windshield and Juneau's shallow breaths grew shallower. She was lying funny like she never lay before. Almost like on her back when she was happy in the dog park but she wasnt smiling like she did when rolling in the grass. She looked resigned she looked tired. Oklahoma is boring but the radio stations get better further down we go and Townes Van Zandt is crooning Juneau back to sleep I can see her lids drooping like the rest of her face. I dropped a quarter in the deposit box like a janky wishing well and I was wishing she'd pick up that phone so I left a message Kristy you gotta call me back at some point im not too far out now and I got everything on me and can you look for a vet in the phonebook because Juneau ain't doing so well now okay love you. Slammed that plastic piece back into the glass wall of the payphone box and jogged back to the Olds looking both ways a few time back and forth the county road because they go fast around here, especially at nighttime.
Juneau really going through it now. My daddy told me you never let an animal suffer but my daddy told me Noah brought two of everything on his ark. Here was the ark. The 12-gauge started whispering to me from behind my head, buried under my whole life in the back seat.
I kept looking at Juneau every 5 seconds talking her through it telling her I'm sorry and I loved her. We left Iowa 9 years ago together and we blasted out that country town like we had a jetpack on and we hit the Mississippi together in the driftless and followed that stream like Lewis and Clarke all the way to the Twin Cities, where I had that apartment on Cedar it was so small the two of us like an old married couple but we was happy, weren't we. Weren't we Juneau? Juneau? She's fading. We were all alone on that county road but I nervously checked the mirror 5 times before I finally halted the Old’s. Dust rose around me, shielding me from onlookers flying by. I went around the car and grabbed Juneau gently with both hands under her warm body and laid her down on a grassy oasis in the otherwise clay dirt. I stood hands on hip and watched for 5 minutes and I saw her belly go in and out and it wasnt right she wasnt breathing right so I cried and I screamed and I asked God why and I sobered up to what had to be done but not before cursing him and his son and his sons Mother the Virgin and the Holy Spirit who is all around us but not now. Not in the middle of fucking Oklahoma with a dying dog and Kristy who won't answer the phone and me who ain't got nothing on him besides $40 in cash two 10s and a 20.
I put my in code for the lock box behind tears and trembles and I didnt get it right the first few times because my vision got all watery and I kept trying hoping it would never open and old Juneau would perk right up and start barking at me like she did when I found a stick she liked or a trout from a clear stream and I’d have to make sure she aint bite through the neck of them things because shes always been an angler.
I approached her slow like a hunter would. My boots churned gravel underneath me. She was practically begging for it now she looked at me with glassy eyes and they showed acceptance in her heart as if she said Dave if you love me, you'll do it. Dave if you love me, you'll do it. After she graduated she told me Dave if you love me you'll do it. So I said I’d do it. She said I got my place in Fort Worth now and Med school is 6 more years so we can move in and have a happy apartment and she’d make cobbler like Grandma Ruth did and hug me like Grandma Ruth did. I said I’d do it and thats what I’m doing! Shit! It's what I'm trying to do right now! She whined again but in a pleading way in a way that she knew was one of her last and again I cried at her feet kneeling on the clay making my khakis red. I know I gotta do it but I just couldn’t. The 12-gauge was loaded now and ready and its cold black sternness made me uneasy. It was almost dark now and the red of the brake lights just barely lit up Juneaus face and her eyes looked black now so I took a step back and told her I loved her one more time and the blast sent crows flying they looked like black dots against navy sky and I didn’t cry no more I didn’t scream no more I wrapped her up in my one pair of bed sheets I had since we had that apartment on Cedar where she’d sit on her feet underneath the gas stove hoping to catch some scrambled eggs as they fell from the pan. I grabbed my little shovel and without making a sound I breached ground 50 yards from the side of the road. I dug 4 or 5 feet down and silently filled the ground back where I had disturbed it.
I drove slower now and didn’t want the radio so I just listened to the pistons working dulled through the layers of metal. It was real late now and I know Kristy was awake and I just wanted to be in her arms like we had and I wanted to cry. I kept driving. WELCOME TO TEXAS. Wasn’t more than two hours out now but I was gonna be a day behind what I told Kristy.
1433 Applemore St. It was a small building, a couple of units. I walked up to the brick facade tired as a horse and I rang her the bell where her name KRISTY THOMPSON was written in her nice girly handwriting that I liked so much. I kept all her notes to me that wrote my name DAVE in that girly handwriting. I rang the bell and I rang and I rang but the lights weren't on and so I started getting pissed and I started banging and then the lights came on but not in her apartment 3B but in 3A and so I withdrew a bit from the door when the figure came out the screen door.
Who is you looking for boy? Why you making all that damn noise? Its 4 in the morning I outta call the damn cops on you. We ain't have no damn H if you a junky or something. I said No ma'am I ain't no junky I apologize I lost my dog and I need to meet my girl Kristy I just moved down from Minnesota to be with her. She paused for a moment and said Kristy already had her man. She had her man over just the other night. I said no ma’am that can't be I just got here right now I came straight from the road. She said no Kristy had her man over just last week and she ain’t come home tonight so she must be with him. I said how you know she ain't come home tonight? I hear everything she told me these old buildings got thin walls boy I hear everything I know everything. I just stood staring at her. I ain't know what to do. I thought about the payphone. I thought about her staring at that damn ceiling in her old room her pink duvet cover wrestled, pillows slept on and the cups on her nightstand. I melted and froze on the spot and turned to ash and she closed the door and said don’t bother us no more. I turned into chalk on the sidewalk. I thought of her cherry lips in the smokey bar and all the promises I made and how in the winter we’d walk around in the snow with a fifth of bourbon and talk about getting out of that hole maybe a fence and a sister for Juneau. My daddy told me in your life you’ll have to forgive your own Eve. But Mama never came back and I never understood what he meant and I never understood why he ain’t try to find her.
Dawn now- I sat hands on the steering wheel keys in the ignition just staring at the buttons. I turned the key and made my way back to I-35, following the sign that said North.