what I feared,” Dickson said. He started walking again, his short legs moving fast, his shoulders bobbing side to side. Will half jogged to keep up.
The day’s heat settled on them as they moved across the parking lot of the Blue Mountain Service Plaza. Will shifted the shovel in his hand to get a better grip. He and Buddy Dickson both lived on the other side of the mountain in Path Valley, but until this morning, Will had never really spoken to him. Back in high school, when Will rode the bus, a bunch of kids huddled on Dickson’s porch before getting on. They always grumbled about the old man coming out at 6:30 a.m. to make sure they weren’t smoking. They’d hold up those leaflets he handed them, about the end times coming soon. Then they’d drop them on the bus floor or sometimes light them with their matches and watch them burn. That all seemed like a long time ago. Woody had warned him, calling Dickson kooky. But this?
As they walked, Dickson popped his hands together—not a clap but louder, a pop caused by the fingers of one hand curved in an O. The sound echoed from the hillside, like a .22, a pop that never really boomed like a big gun but deadly all the same.
At the curb, Dickson looked up at the mountain behind Will. “I knew your mother, knew her before she married Sam, and I knew him, too. We went to school together, and I always thought she was a fine lady and a good Christian. She went to church faithfully even without your father.” He stared at Will. “She knew the way to heaven.”
Will wanted to spit but held it.
“But I’m worried you don’t, Will Burk. It has bothered me to no end that Sam let you wander into the dark depths of hell. So, I’ll ask you again—are you saved?”
Will kicked his toe on the pavement, the words about his mother sinking in.
Dickson waited a while before muttering, “I heard you had the Devil in you.” He took the shovel and leaned it against the trash can before stepping up on the curb. “I want you to sweep the lot. Start here.” He pointed to the exit ramp; he had to shout as a truck roared past. “And push it to the edge from twenty feet out.”
Will didn’t know how to respond to this demand. At his feet, cigarette butts and gum wrappers mixed with dried mud and gravel. All of it Dickson wanted him to push uphill.
“The trash goes in this can. Be sure to pick it out,” Dickson ordered. “The rest of it, the gravel and dirt, shovel it up on the bank, beyond the grass.”
Dickson checked, making sure Will understood. “And,” Dickson popped his hands, “I want you to go all the way to the other side, over there beyond the truck pumps and incinerator.”
The broad lot felt about the same size as the lower meadow back at Will’s home, at least an acre. The incinerator seemed like a quarter mile away.
Dickson paused while Will took in the task. “While you’re out here, I want you to think about that barn fire that happened yesterday. Hell is a thousand times worse than any fire here on earth.” He waited, but Will kept looking away. He didn’t know anything about any barn fire. “And I want you to think about your mother and the Lord. What would she want for you? And your father, too—who knows where he is now—but think about what he’d want for you. Consider all the good things God has done for you. He can save you, Will Burk, but you have to let him in.”
Dickson stepped down from the curb. “I expect you done with this by lunchtime, so get to it.” He marched back down the slope, his step, somehow, even lighter than before.
Will pushed the broom. “What the fuck do you know about my life, Dickson, you ol’ Dickhead? And to bring my dead mother and father into this. Shit.” With each stroke, the broom made a heavy swish and a swirling cloud. Dust coated the inside of his mouth, while the sun scorched his neck. Five minutes in, sweat stung his eyes and soaked his new shirt. He wished he was swimming at Lake Caledonia.
“So, this is how you pump gas?” Will spoke to the water hydrant. “I bet you could pump it good as ol’ Dickhead himself, don’t you think?” Will leaned on the broom handle, the whole plaza sitting before him. The Esso station and Howard Johnson’s Restaurant shared one long limestone building with a slate roof, all of it surrounded by several acres of parking lot. To his right, cars and trucks zipped along on the pike, heading to Philly or Pittsburgh or who knew where. Beyond the highway, farms filled the wide Cumberland Valley. To his left, the steep slope of Blue Mountain sagged over him, its long spine stretching to the east and west. High above in the cloudless sky, two ravens circled and chortled.
Sometimes he imagined seeing his mother—in the grocery store, out in the garden, or, this morning, in a car pulling out of the plaza. He had stared at her photo so much that her blue eyes and playful grin lived on the backside of his eyelids. “She died at your birth,” Aunt Amanda always said. Yet why only a year on her tombstone? Why no date, his date? And why did his father never speak of her when he asked? Damn him, anyway.
“And damn you, too, ol’ Dickhead,” Will mumbled as he swept. A car accelerated past heading out the exit, and the passenger threw out a cigarette butt. “Are you saved?” he imitated Dickson. “And what the hell are you going to say to him when he asks again, Will Burk?” He picked up the shovel and heaved the first pile of dirt. “What the fuck are you going to say?”
For a while, Hank Williams filled his head. Hear the lonesome whippoorwill. He sounds too blue to fly. Will had heard a whippoorwill last night outside his apartment window, there at the edge of Spring Run. It had surprised and pleased him to listen to that little bird so close.
He’d heard them as a child on his father’s farm, the rocking rhythm putting him to sleep. But his father didn’t like them, their loud calls “an aggravation.” One whippoorwill kept singing from a stump at the edge of their yard, so one evening, his father lit the stove and heated an empty iron skillet. When it got too hot to touch, his father picked it up with his shirttail, loped out of the house, and set the skillet on that stump. A few minutes later, the whippoorwill started to sing, but his song ended after the first whip. Will ran out to find an empty skillet. He was thankful for that, at least. He knew his father would’ve been happier to have a dead bird rather than a scared bird.
The midnight train is whining low. I’m so lonesome I could cry. Will matched his sweeping to the rhythm of the song. Gravel clattered in the shovel. He coughed from the great dust cloud.
Where he worked, Will couldn’t hear Woody or the other men at the pumps. They were too far away, and the cars building up speed as they passed drowned out all other sounds. Most of the travelers ignored him, but some beeped and waved. Will waved to the first one but stopped when he saw the jeering smile. Except for the cars and his swirl of dust, the air didn’t move. He bent to sort out burger wrappers, butts, and other debris. Dickson watched, so Will tried not to rest too often. Best to plow through this chore and be done.
Will’s biceps burned from pushing the damn broom, and the old injury in his right elbow flared with each stroke. The worst, though, were the blisters on his hands. They burst to reveal the rawness of each layer of skin—pink and red and seeping.
When his mother died, Aunt Amanda took over most of Will’s raising, and this included taking him to church. Even when he was only six, he tired of Mrs. Clayborne always having that “I’m so sorry for you, you little orphan boy” look in her old eyes. He hated the hard benches and the boring sermons. He hated everyone else sitting with their mother and father. He hated never getting an answer when he asked why the Lord couldn’t save his mom. And he especially hated the preacher saying the Lord worked in mysterious ways. Even at that age, Will knew it was a lie.
“So,
