“Are you ready, Roy?” she asked, calling him easily by his first
name.
“Sure.” He nodded.
Pete stood up stiffly and brushed the dirt off his knees. “Let’s
go, then,” he said.
Carl was behind the bar drinking coffee when they walked in.
Roy asked if he’d seen Artie around, almost hoping that Carl
would say no. It was cool and dark in the bar, and Roy didn’t feel
like hunting anyone down in the late-afternoon heat.
“His boys were just in for pops,” Carl said. “They told me he
was out back of his place cleaning snapping turtles. You need
something?” Carl was looking at Pete and Alice.
“These folks had a breakdown about ten miles back. I
thought maybe Artie’d have a fuel pump might work for them.”
“Well, now, he might,” Carl said. “If anyone’d have it, that’d
be Artie.” He glanced at Pete and Alice again. “You folks are
lucky to break down here. Other places aren’t so helpful.”
“Well, then, how about a beer?” Pete said. “Alice? A beer?”
She shook her head.
“Just one, then. Whatever you got on tap.”
Carl raised an eyebrow, and Roy knew he was wondering if
the boy was under age. Roy didn’t know how old Pete was and
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Alice to the East
didn’t really care, although he did wonder briefly how long it
was since Carl had served a customer who was a stranger.
“I’ll be back soon,” Roy said, and left for Artie’s.
There was one sidewalk in town, and he was halfway down it
when Alice caught up to him.
“Hey,” she said. “Mind if I come?”
Roy shook his head.
“This Artie guy have a shop or something?” she asked. “A
garage?”
“No. Just a yard full of engines.”
“What if he doesn’t have it? The fuel pump.”
“Then we’ll have to drive to La Moure.”
“Is that far?”
“Half-hour or so. Forty-five minutes, maybe.”
Roy found himself picking up his pace to match Alice’s,
although it was too hot for anything faster than a stroll.
“That guy shouldn’t’ve given Pete a beer.”
“Carl? Why not?”
“Pete’s only seventeen.”
“Well. It’s his bar.”
“Still, he shouldn’t sell Pete beer. The last thing I need is Pete
drinking at four o’clock.”
They walked, and Alice looked around, although there wasn’t
much to see. There wasn’t a shop on the street that wasn’t
boarded up or closed, with the exception of Carl’s bar and the
post office. They didn’t have a bank in Verona anymore. They
didn’t even have a grocery store.
When they reached Artie’s house and Roy saw the front door
lying across the porch next to a random pile of hubcaps, he
began to wish that Alice had stayed back at Carl’s with Pete. He
didn’t want her to think that everyone in Verona kept their
property like that. One of Artie’s boys ran out of the house and
stopped when he saw Roy and Alice in the yard.
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p i l g r i m s
“Hi, Mr. Menning,” he said. Roy smiled, but couldn’t re-
member the child’s name. There were three of them, all about
the same age, all with homemade crewcuts and the hard, round
bellies of kids who eat a lot but run around more.
“Is your dad around? Cleaning turtles?”
“He finished that this morning,” the boy said. “Now he’s
fixing a chain saw.”
Artie came from around the back, wiping his hands on his
jeans, and, as if the front yard could only hold three at once,
the boy vanished into the house. They were good kids, all three
of them. Everyone said so. Terrified of their father, Roy had
heard.
“I was wondering if you might have a fuel pump for a Chevy,
a three-fifty,” Roy said. “Some folks broke down out of town.”
Artie was looking at Alice with interest. “What can I do
for you?” he asked, as if Roy had not spoken. She seemed to
understand the game, and asked for the fuel pump again. She
didn’t appear to be put off by Artie’s long hair or by the tat-
toos that, like a lady’s gloves, covered him from his hands to
his elbows. Artie had left town as a teenager and returned for
his father’s funeral almost a decade later with the boys, the
hair, the tattoos. Roy didn’t like him, but he was the clos-
est thing to a mechanic in town, now that the gas station was
gone.
“Only Chevy parts I have are for that thing.” Artie pointed at
a small sedan without wheels resting on four pieces of firewood.
The hood looked as if it hadn’t been closed for years.
“You sure?” Roy said, but Artie ignored him, instead asking
Alice where she was from.
“Montana.”
“Where in Montana?”
“Fort Peck. Across the border.”
“I know it,” Artie said. “By the reservation.”
“Yes.”
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Alice to the East
“Shit. You’re no squaw, are you?”
“No.”
“I was gonna say. Better watch out for my scalp if you were,
right?” Artie smiled, but it was an unnatural, almost painful,
expression, as though he’d got a fishhook caught in one corner
of his mouth, and someone was tugging at it.
“If you don’t have the part, we’re going to La Moure,” Alice
said, and Roy admired her for expressing the idea as if it were
her own. As if she had the slightest idea where or what La
Moure was.
“Not today, you ain’t,” Artie said. “Everything’ll be closed by
the time you get there.”
Alice glanced at Roy, seeming to weaken with that piece of
information. He noticed that Pete had cut her jeans unevenly,
and the dingy gray cotton of her right pocket was showing
about an inch below her shorts. It hung heavily, as if she were
carrying a lot of change. Roy didn’t like the idea of Artie being
able to tell what was in Alice’s pockets. He didn’t like the way
Artie watched Alice.
“We’ll go to La Moure tomorrow, then,” Roy said, and before
Alice could answer, Artie said, “You look just like a girl I knew
in Beaumont, Texas.”
She looked at him, silent.
“You don’t play the flute, do you?” he continued.
“No,” she said, “I don’t.”
“Because this girl from Beaumont played the flute, is why I
ask. You could be sisters. I wondered. What’d you say your last
name was?”
“Zysk.”
“Spelled?”
“z-y-s-k.”
“Zysk.” Artie whistled. “There’s a word that’d bring you
about a thousand points in a Scrabble game.”
“Except it’s not a real word,” Alice said.
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p i l g r i m s
“Real enough for me,” Artie said, and Roy decided that it was
time to go right then. He thanked Artie, who asked, as they
were leaving the yard,
“Y ’all up at Carl’s?”
“We won’t be for much longer,” Roy answered.
“I’m gonna clean up and stop by.”
“Like I said, we’ll probably be gone by then.”
“I’ll see you there,” Artie said, and stepped over a hubcap to
enter his house through the screen door that guarded it so
feebly.
Pete cursed at the news and told Roy, “We’ll have to stay with
you tonight.”
“Goddamn it, you’re rude,” Alice said, and Pete walked to the
other end of the bar to read the song list on the jukebox, which
hadn’t been plugged in since Carl bought the microwave.
“You’re welcome to stay with me, you know,” Roy said.
“There’s plenty of room.”
“We’ll stay in the truck. He’s an idiot. He’s a rude idiot.”
Roy ordered a sandwich for Alice and a beer for himself. The
bar was as quiet as a library.
“What do you do?” Alice asked.
“Me? I drive a snowplow in the winter and a combine in the
summer.”
“You’re not a farmer?”
“Not anymore.”
Carl brought Roy his beer and waved away his dollar, but
Roy folded the bill and slid it under the napkin dispenser when
Carl turned his back.
“Do you like those jobs?” Alice asked.
“Sure. I’m always finding people broke down when I’m snow-
plowing.”
Alice laughed. “You rescue them, too?”
“What I do is keep a stack of magazines with me.”
40 ✦
Alice to the East
“Why magazines?”
“I tell them to sit in their cars and read a magazine until help
comes. Gives them something to do. Or else they get restless
and decide to walk, and that’s when they die.”
“From walking.”
“In the snow.”
“From being bored. They die from being bored. Wow. If we’d
started walking today, we just would’ve gotten hot.”
“You’re always better off staying with your car,” Roy said, and
Alice nodded.
“Are you married?” she asked.
“My wife died of a heart attack two years ago this winter.”
Alice did not say that she was sorry, the way people usually
did, so Roy did not have to say that it was okay, as he usually
had to.
“I’m going to be a nurse,” Alice said. “Maybe.”
“That so?”
“Yeah. I’m going to Florida for nursing school. Pete’s coming
along with me to make sure I’m all right, and to work if I need
money.”
“That’s nice.”
“My mom made him go.”
“Oh.”
“You have kids?”
“One girl. She’s thirty-two.”
“She live around here?”
“She works in Minneapolis. She’s a model, for catalogues and
newspapers.”
“She must be pretty.”
“Yes.”
“I’d like to do that, but my nose is too big.”
“I don’t know much about it.”
“She must make a lot of money.”
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p i l g r i m s
“Yes.”
“She visit you a lot?”
“Not so much,” Roy said. “Not since her mom died.”
“I’ll tell you what would be a great job,” Alice said. “Photog-
rapher.”
“I don’t know much about that.”
“Me neither.” Alice looked behind her, at Pete and the juke-
box, at the tall wooden cash register. “That Artie guy’s a real
piece of work,” she said.
“I knew his father.”
“He’s a screw-up, huh?”
“I don’t know.”
“He reminds me of my brother. My oldest brother. With
the tattoos and everything. All of my brothers are dumb, but
this oldest one, I tell you, he’s as good as retarded. Get this.
When he was in the army in Germany, his girlfriend back home
got pregnant. Here he’s been gone five months and she’s sud-
denly pregnant. So what she does is send him a letter saying, ‘I
miss you so much, I want to have your baby.’ She says in the
letter, ‘If I had your baby, it would remind me of you and I
wouldn’t be so lonely.’ What you have to realize here, Roy, is
that my brother’s wanted to marry this girl since forever. So
she sends him a dirty magazine and an empty mustard jar and
tells him to — I don’t know how to say this — to do it in the
jar and send it back to her so she can get pregnant with it.
Understand?”
“Yes,” Roy said.
“So my brother, a complete idiot, does this. And then he
believes her when she writes to him and says she’s having their
baby. Can you believe that?”
“This was your oldest brother?” Roy asked.
“Yes. A fool. Everyone in the world knew about this scam,
and people even told him that it was a scam, but he still believes
her. I even told him that it was a scam, and he still believes her.
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Alice to the East
He still believes that it’s their kid. Like whatever he sent from
Germany to Montana made that baby after however many days
in the mail.”
Roy didn’t know what to say, so he nodded.
“I’m sorry,” Alice said. “That was gross.”
“But it shows how stupid my family is. My brothers, anyway.”
“Well. That’s some story.”
“No kidding.”
Artie walked into the bar. He had pulled his hair into a
ponytail and was wearing a baseball cap, green, with a configu-
ration of initials on it. His shirt had white snaps, and as he
passed through a ray of sun they shone like dim, symmetrical
pearls.
“Looks like you got some new company,” he said to Carl as
he sat down next to Alice. “Visitors from the distant land of
Montana.”
“Your kids were in today,” Carl said.
“They causing trouble?”
“They told me you’d got yourself some snappers, is all.”
“If my boys cause any trouble, you tell me.”
“You better invite me over for soup,” Carl said, and Artie
asked Alice, “You like snappers?”
“Turtles? Never had them.”
“Maybe I’ll invite you over. You might like it.”
Alice turned to Roy and said, “My next-to-oldest brother is
Judd, and he’s no genius, either. He took off, and for three years
we never heard from him at all. Thought he was dead. Then one
afternoon my mother gets a phone call —”
“She telling you her life story already? ” Artie asked Roy, but Alice went on.
“She gets a phone call and it’s from Judd. ‘Hi, Mom,’ he says,
like he’s been gone for just the afternoon. ‘Hi, Mom. I’m in New
Jersey at the recruitment center and the nice lady here says I can
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p i l g r i m s
have three meals a day and new clothes if I sign up for the army.
So, Mom,’ Judd says, ‘what’s my Social Security number?’”
“What was it?” Artie asked.
“So
Judd enlisted,” Alice continued, ignoring him. “My mom
says the army’s the only refuge for dumb people like my broth-
ers. If Pete wasn’t going to Florida with me, he’d probably end
up in the army, too.”
“I been to Florida,” Artie said. “I worked on a fishing boat
there. I lived in a pink house. Right on the ocean.”
“Really,” Alice said.
Carl brought her a sandwich and she ate half of it before she
spoke again. “My wisdom teeth are coming in. You ever get
those?” she asked Roy.
“Yeah,” Artie said. “Hurts like a bitch, but there can be no
wisdom without pain.” He laughed, one harsh burst, like an
engine turning over in the cold, and then he asked Alice, “Why
do you wear your hair short?”
“I like it this way,” she said.
“Girls should have long hair.”
“Boys should have short hair.” She gestured at his ponytail.
“You got salt on your tongue, don’t you?”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“You can be a wise-ass, is what it means,” Artie said, and Pete
was at the bar so fast that Roy realized he must have been
standing behind them the whole time, waiting.
“Don’t talk like that to my sister,” Pete said.
Artie laughed again, that single, mechanical emission. “Billy
the Kid here,” he muttered. “Tough guy.”
“Fuck you, pal,” Pete said. “I said not to talk to my sister.”
Roy heard Alice say, “Jesus Christ.” She slid off her bar stool
and edged out of the way, somehow anticipating what was
coming. Roy’s reflexes were not as swift. When Pete threw his
punch and connected, he pushed Artie into Roy’s shoulder,
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Alice to the East
hard. Then Pete stood quiet and undefended while Artie got up,
shook his head once, and squared his hat. With experienced
precision, he swung and hit Pete in the center of his face and
watched as he fell backward at a perfect diagonal, catching his
head on the corner of the bar. The crack was louder than any
noise heard in that room all afternoon, and then it was over.
To Roy’s surprise, Alice approached him first, actually step-
ping over her brother to touch the sore spot on his shoulder
where Artie had fallen.
“Are you okay?” she asked. Roy nodded.
“I’m sorry,” she told him.
“Your brother should keep his mouth shut,” Artie said.
“I wish you wouldn’t talk to me.” Alice’s voice was low, and
she wasn’t even looking at Artie. “I really wish you would just