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4/16/09
12:36 AM
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SHORT
STORY
Salmo Creston, Creston Salmo J. JILL ROBINSON I L L U S T R AT I O N BY G AV I N D E L I N T
She wanted to have it both ways, feed her head and her cunt, so she hit up her father for money to study drama in Nelson. Every weekend she drove back to Paul, from the West Kootenays to the East, along the Salmo Creston highway in her blue 63 VW beetle, through the reknowned and difficult pass, saw dear asshole Paul, and then drove back on Sunday. She needed tires as well as brakes, which were failing, were going and gone and going as she drove the Salmo Creston, Creston Salmo. Still she went. Couldn’t stop, wouldn’t stop. Up, down, bleed the brakes. Gain an hour, lose an hour. School and Paul; grow and die; up and down, in and out, bend over to check the oil. Wired, and smoking and drinking. Brave girl for driving brakeless through the pass. Hit me, heal me, open me, close me. Brave girl for loving Paul. Now, this Sunday, she also needs her front bumper straightened and her fenders welded: they are still attached to the running boards but not the body of the bug and they are swaying and pulling like wings and oh how she’d fly instead of drive, soar along the valley one end to the other following the cold ribbon of the Kootenay River, start at Golden, head down over Spillamacheen, Edgewater, Radium, Invermere, Fairmont, Skookumchuk. Down to Cranbrook and touch down. And then face the pass. The slow, slow climb up one side, the brief summit, the careen down the other side. To save money for us, he had said, his pig eyes sincere, he would move in with Lynne at her beach house in Invermere. For us, he said, pinching her nipple. She’s just a friend, he said. So okay, she said. Then this weekend Gordine says, He’s fucking her, you know. He’s fucking Lynne, who fucks everybody. Lynne, who doesn’t say
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no to three men in a row because she doesn’t want to hurt their feelings. Gordine laughs as if it’s no big deal because everyone knows. Then she adds, except you. So she gets drunk and drives and hits the ditch and smashes her head against the windshield on the way back to Lynne’s—where the hell else could she go? Now, on this last drive back to Nelson, her windshield smashed in a star the size of her skull and she can barely see through it and the rain, pissing down rain, and the windshield wipers on the blue bug have crapped out so the arm of her army coat is soaked from her reaching outside to grab the hay rope strung through both windows, tied to the blades to pull the wipers back, then forth, back and forth. Glancing down through the rusted-out floorboards she can see the wet road rush by. And she can hear it, too, since the radio has also called it quits. She sighs. Quits. Her car is smashed up and her head is sore and it takes all fucking this to make her see. The old beetle strains to make the final push toward the summit and slows down to fifteen. She’s caught between first and second gears. Come on. Come on. She lights a smoke. Exhales. The engine labours, climbing. »
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