Signals

Signals

Craig Barber

“Beautiful country,” I say.

“You said that forty miles back, and forty miles before that.” Dana’s breath briefly fogs the window.

“The country is consistently beautiful.”

“Merely consistent.”

“You always were one for frequent stimulation.”

“I feel a bit overdue.”

I push the scan button on the radio to search for nonexistent signals. Glowing numbers flicker in the tiny space on the front of the radio, occasionally hesitate, but never stop. I watch for three cycles of the dial and snap the radio off.

“You did that forty miles back, and forty miles before that.”

“Something I have in common with the scenery.”

“Consistency,” Dana presses her body tighter against the passenger door.

“Consistency,” I say to an icy hillside.

I turn to look at her. She has situated her shoulder into the slight space between the seat and the door. Her head rests against the window, back turned toward me. The car thrums over a cattle guard and breaks the silence for an instant.

The podcast I occasionally write content for asked me to drive to Ely, Nevada and do an interview, actually more of a human interest story. It is Saturday, and only this morning Dana agreed to go, but she absolutely would have to be back by tomorrow evening.

She had not wanted to come.

Driving through Las Vegas I offer to stop, claim car trouble, forget Ely, spend a wild weekend.

“Keep going,” she says as colored lights strobe across the windshield. “There isn’t anything we can’t do here we can’t do anywhere else.”

Three hours later I steer the car into a graveled lot fronting a boarded-up building. Faint letters painted directly across the weathered shingle roof spell ‘Lucky’s Casino.’ I wonder at the resiliency of letters still visible after years of heavy snow giving way to years of relentless sun, and through it all a constant, dragging wind.

Pulling the paper map from above the sun visor, I open the door, walk around the car,

and lean against the passenger side fender. Using the map as a sunshade I study the distance.

“There’s only one paved road in the entire state and we’re somehow lost?” Dana rolls the window down, but refuses to get out of the car.

“Just stretching my legs.”

“Admiring the beautiful country, no doubt.”

“No doubt.”

“Who do you suppose used to run this place?,” she says.

“Since it says Lucky’s on the roof, I’d say Lucky.”

“You know what I mean,” she cranks the window to a slit.

Gravel from the weedy lot spins beneath the tires and clatters against the underside of the car.

“What do you suppose ever happened to old Lucky, anyhow?” I slide the map into the glove box and rest my hand on her knee as I drive.

“Two drifters came by, a man and a woman, shot Lucky in the back, and stole his money.”

“Then what?”

“Then he died.” Dana draws her knee toward the door, pulling it from beneath my hand. She again faces the window, her eyes hollow in the thin reflection. “The drifters rented a room in the next town; the woman sat on a hard wooden chair watching the man sleep.”

Dana’s voice is bare and unmoving.

“During the night she called his name, but he only rolled to his side, turning his back to her. The woman sat in that chair for a long while, then gathered the money and the car keys, slipped the pistol they murdered Lucky with under the mattress, and drove two hours to the nearest gas station. She called an anonymous tip to 9-1-1, and left the man to face the music. Alone.”

“Swell.” I say.

The sun rises in the morning sky as I pull into a rocky field next to a small, square house. White paint curls from the siding before breaking into fragments and blowing away. A boy opens the door at my knock, but says nothing. The worn sofa in the front room is empty. Although there are people in the kitchen, no one seems to notice us. The house smells of bread and beans, but it is not overpowering. There is also a freshness to this place, a light scent of roses that strengthens and wanes.

Through a doorway I see a young woman seated at the end of a bed that is covered with a brightly colored spread. She wears a sleeveless linen dress out of place for the season. There is a sheen, a glow on her skin I want to touch.

This is the woman I came to interview; the woman who makes oil. Fragrant, sweet oil runs from her like water when you step from the shower. The woman’s house also makes oil. Great slick places on the walls where oil seeps through lavender flowered wallpaper, cutting the glue and causing the paper to bubble and swell. People believe this is holy oil; a gift of healing delivered from the Virgin Mary.

Dana is looking through panes of wavy glass at people waiting in an open area near the front of the house. They have a fire, but the ceaseless wind cuts at them and steals their heat. Women and children make themselves small under patterned blankets. Men stand with hands deep in front pockets, kicking hard dirt, turning front to back trying to manage meager comfort from the flames.

A dented van idles behind the fire, through half-circle dust streaks on the windshield I see a man with a baby held to his shoulder. A woman kneeling on a rock in front of the van holds her palms upward as if expecting something she can gather in.

“Can you believe this?” My lips are close to Dana’s ear.

“I want to.” The force of her words surprises me. I begin to speak, then decide against it.

Meanwhile, the woman makes oil.

Every afternoon, a man takes a small cut-glass vase outside and pours oil on hands, feet, backs, stomachs, heads. They tell me he stops the empty vase with a rolled piece of leather, and places it on a narrow shelf on the bedroom wall. By the next afternoon, the vase is filled. No one touches the vase, or removes the leather stopper, but it fills nonetheless. Small drops form inside and collect into a pool that spreads and deepens.

I enter the bedroom and the woman remains sitting on the bed. She is young, pretty. Black hair gleams in the spare sunlight that filters through the dusty window. She looks up as I enter, her striking white teeth show in a faint smile.

An older man in a long-sleeved shirt, her father maybe, brings a chair for me from the kitchen. It wobbles as I sit, I can’t tell if the rocking is caused by the uneven legs or the slightly buckled floor.

I look into the living room, and see Dana run her fingers over an oil-darkened patch on the wall. Her fingertips glisten as she holds them to her face and breathes in. Dana unbuttons the top button of her blouse, and slips her oil-moistened fingers beneath the fabric. I imagine she is just now touching the leading edge of the scar.

The man clears his throat to get my attention. I nod my apology and turn toward the woman as she absently wipes at a small trickle of oil that collects under her ear. The man leaves the room and I flip open a spiral notebook as a prelude to asking questions I know the answers to - yet I don’t begin.

The woman looks as if she has always been here, in this chair, before this window. There is no sense of turbulence and upheaval. No sense of lives tumbling end for end at the reading of a medical test result. No sense of carefully laid plans uprooting and disappearing in the strong circling wind.

“Does the oil really heal?” This is not a question I planned to ask.

“The oil will help,” I look directly into Dana’s face for the first time in a long time.

“What are you talking about?”

“The oil you put on yourself. It will help.”

“You don’t believe in such things.”

“I’m sorry for the past few months.”

“Sorry,” she agrees.

“I resented you for being sick, for upsetting our lives.”

“I know you do.”

“I did.”

“We’ll see.”

The car’s temperature needle rises from the lower stop. I place my hand on the heat vent.

“Those people,” I say, watching a thin strand of smoke rising from the fire get sucked away by the wind, “where do they get their faith?”

“When things get bad enough, that’s all they have left.”

A faint cloud of dust rises behind the car as I accelerate from the square house. I look down the narrow road. The valley here is flat, featureless. Tall mountains rise abruptly in the distance.

“The oil will help,” I say into the windshield.

Dana turns in her seat, away from the window. She moves her hand toward my shoulder. Her breath releases slowly. Her hand hovers a few inches from me, and then she lowers it to the seat back. Her fingers dig into the vinyl groove between the split seats.

“Maybe that’s what we have left,” she says.