Damaged Goods Read online

  He lumbered down onto the floor, and Stuart slapped his shoulder on his way past. “Good to have you back, boss.” The sentiment rang empty, especially after the glare he had given Hershel the third time he couldn’t articulate the name of the item Stuart had held up.

  “Blender,” Stuart had called out to the crowd with clear annoyance. “It’s a blender, folks.”

  Hershel slept until noon the following day. He woke several times that morning, feeling as though he should get up and head over to the auction barn. People would be returning for items that they couldn’t haul away the night before—unplanned purchases and miscalculated sizes. But Carl would be there. Carl always worked on Wednesday mornings, which Hershel knew only because it was included in the note taped to his refrigerator. A page of yellow legal paper with a tight and slightly backward slanting script. It had random bits of information, like what day the garbageman showed up, when advertisements needed to be submitted to the Hillsboro Argus or the Sunday Oregonian, the combination to his safe. It wasn’t the only note like this, and Hershel was pretty sure he hadn’t written them. But he’d added to the collection, decorating mirrors and doors.

  Hershel briefly wondered if it was a good idea to leave Carl in charge of his business. Had he always done that?

  He moaned as he sat up and held his head gingerly with both hands. He was so tired of the pain. He’d tried to return to work too soon; he wasn’t ready. He was irreversibly altered by the accident. He’d suffered a serious brain injury. Brain damaged, they had called it. The doctors warned him that his cognitive skills might never return to the level where they had once been. Everything felt different and wrong. He thought back on the conversation he’d overheard between Linda and Stuart. Those words people associated with him. And those hostile looks he caught out of the corner of his eye from everyone. This morning he’d had other distractions to keep him from looking at the raw seed in the center of it all. Did people really dislike him that much? He felt vaguely nauseated. What had he done to earn such contempt?

  Hershel had lost the context of his life. He’d returned home with only one recognizable aspect intact: a singular focus on making money. Though he couldn’t remember the names of many of the items he’d sold the previous night, he could still assess their value with a single glance. It had comforted him at first, and made him believe he was ready to return to work. But last night had proved just how much was still missing.

  Nothing came, and Hershel finally got unsteadily to his feet and wandered into the bathroom. He uncapped a bottle of painkillers and swallowed one down. The vanished days preceding his accident were particularly bothersome. The last thing he remembered was calling Georgine McClintock about doing an estate auction out at her mother’s place in Gales Creek. That had been on Tuesday morning. His accident happened the following Saturday evening. He couldn’t recall the sale that he held the evening after he made the call, or any of the days leading up to the wreck. He tried again, as he’d tried so many times in the past several months, to remember some small detail. Leaning both hands on the sink, he rested the crown of his head lightly against the mirror. Why was he traveling that road south of Newberg in the first place? If he could simply grasp one tiny recollection from that night, it would be like getting a fingerhold under the seam of this black shroud, and he could tear it away a little at a time.

  After brewing coffee, he took his mug outside and sat on the front porch where the sun shone brightest. He’d suddenly become prone to cold spells, and this was a newly favored spot of his, especially on these cooling fall days. He gazed out across the field between his home and the Tualatin River, about a half mile to the north. Midway, a pair of buzzards ripped apart a carcass. A raccoon or a coyote. Whatever it was, it was big enough to have been a formidable opponent in life. Now its limbs were unceremoniously being torn from its body, stripped of muscle and skin.

  The oak leaves were turning, but not with the flare of the maples along the river. These did not go bright yellow or red or purple before drifting quietly down, but simply began to brown on the branch. Dead before they’ve hit the ground, he thought.

  As he tried once again to grasp any small detail of that night, he caught sight of the Watchtower magazine sitting at the bottom of the steps, tucked under the mat. He stared at it for a moment, then out at his long and very private driveway. His ears burned hot and he did find a memory, though not the one he sought. They had come here once before, a man and two women. Dressed in their Sunday clothes, with plastic smiles and polite gestures, they introduced themselves. Hershel was standing in the doorway in his boxers and a sleeveless undershirt, deliberately for the benefit of the women. It was what they deserved for dropping in on a stranger unannounced. He jutted his knee forward and his shorts gaped open, causing both women to pink on the spot.

  When the man asked Hershel if he believed in God, he had responded with “I believe in my God-given right to run you off my property for trespassing.”

  That was when they drew out the Watchtower to leave with him in case he had any future questions about the faith. Hershel thanked them and said he’d be pleased to use it for target practice, pointing at the clean-cut young man on the cover. The trio retreated in horror, and Hershel had stood true to his word, taking the magazine out into the filbert orchard behind the house and pumping fourteen rounds into it until all that remained of the face was a ragged hole.

  Today, though, he simply scooted down and picked up the magazine. He thumbed through the glossy pages, annoyed, but not as angry as he knew he would have been before. Perhaps it was that the people who had left it were the only souls to venture down his driveway since he was released from the hospital—a fact that brought a fresh stab of pain to his head.

  2

  Silvie Thorne slumped against the fender of her Volkswagen Rabbit. She gazed out across the field on the other side of Scholls Ferry Road. Golden wheat stubble rolled away from her in finely combed, nearly invisible rows, but for the blaze of evening sun lighting the bristly tips in white-blond. Where the hell am I? She turned back to her car, a battered relic.

  “You piece of shit,” she muttered.

  She opened the passenger door and pulled out her jacket and backpack, then leaned over and locked the driver’s door. She glanced at the backseat, wondering if her things—everything she owned in the world—would be safe. There was no taking them with her. Her eyes skimmed the laundry basket with barely folded sheets and towels waiting for a bed and a bathroom she did not have. Buried down along the floorboards beneath a bursting suitcase and hastily collected knickknacks was a metal lockbox. She stared into the backseat for a long time, her gut telling her to take everything out and bring the lockbox.

  She straightened and surveyed her surroundings. The valley was narrow, and she could see several houses and farms fanned out along the base of the foothills, which were a deep, silky green, even in this late month. Silvie had never been to Oregon before, and the landscape reminded her of something from a fairy tale, with its ferns and mossy creek beds. The contrast of densely wooded hills and sweeping yellow glens. The road sign above her advertised Scholls two miles ahead. Scholls. Not a town she’d ever heard of. She’d been looking for Highway 99 en route to the coast. Now she stood on Scholls Ferry Road, wondering if there really was a ferry and what to do about her dead car.

  “You’re such an idiot, Silvie,” she said. “A map. Why the hell didn’t you bring an effing map?” She felt near tears, but bolstered herself against them. She could hear some long-ago voice. What good will crying do?

  She decided to go for help first, then come back for her things, so she locked the passenger door and rounded the back of the car to make sure the hatchback was secured as well. She’d checked it a hundred times since leaving Wyoming two days ago, but she did so again just to make sure. Then she pulled her jacket tight, slung her backpack over one shoulder, and started up the road in the cool evening light.

  She’d barely gone ten steps when a glis
tening black truck pulled onto the shoulder ahead, blocking her path. It was new. Still had its temporary tags in the window. The tailgate boasted its Hemi engine and four-wheel-drive superiority, and Silvie grimaced, even as she was grateful that someone had stopped. The truck itself felt like Wyoming all over again.

  A man stepped out, but stood with the door open, as if he was still deciding whether to offer help. She tilted her head, smiled very slightly in an attempt to appear friendly without seeming helpless. He nodded a greeting and shut the door. He came toward her and she noticed that he was taller than she’d originally thought, with thick wavy hair the color of his truck.

  “Car trouble?”

  She gazed over her shoulder at the VW and shrugged. Wasn’t that obvious?

  He walked past her to the car, but didn’t hide his sideways glances. “What’s it doing?”

  “Nothing. It’s dead.”

  He looked back as if to see if she was playing with him. She smiled and shrugged again. He nodded, a faint smile of his own.

  “What was it doing before it died?” He took the opportunity to stare at her as he waited for an answer. His eyes were black, and the longer he looked the blacker they appeared.

  “It sounded like a sick lawn mower hacking concrete. Then it died.”

  His eyebrows went up and she slid inside to release the hood. After several minutes of fiddling with things in the engine, he asked her to try to start it. The car made a terrible crunching sound but fell silent again. Silvie joined him and peered down into the dirty engine, her fine gold hair ruffling in the breeze between them.

  “Hate to say it, but you threw a rod.” He turned and surveyed the road ahead where his pickup sat.

  “Is that serious?”

  “Yup. You can kiss this car goodbye.”

  “You’re kidding me.” She twisted in the soft evening air, looking out at the foothills now collecting a cap of menacing gray clouds along the western end. “What am I going to do?”

  “Do you live around here? I can give you a lift home.”

  “Damn it! What am I going to do?” She glared at the ugly car.

  He shoved his hands into his pockets and waited for her to answer.

  “I’m on my way to Lincoln City. I—” She scuffed the sole of her worn-out leather shoe in the gravel. She didn’t need to explain anything, especially to a stranger.

  “Well, is there someone you can stay with?”

  “I just drove out from Wyom—I mean Montana.”

  Her cheeks flushed hot. “I—I was living in Montana, then visited a friend in Wyoming … before I came out here,” she stammered.

  He stared down at the Wyoming license plate but said nothing.

  “It’s kind of a long story.”

  He nodded.

  She tipped her head back and looked at the gray sky, then over at the car, then up the road again.

  “What are you doing on this road if you’re headed to Lincoln City?” His question sounded like an accusation.

  “I got lost. I took a wrong turn coming through Portland and I just … I just figured southwest, go southwest and you’ll find a main road or the beach.”

  “Navigation by dead reckoning, huh?”

  “Works most of the time.”

  He laughed, and she joined in. She noticed how white and straight his teeth were. He was older than her—in his early forties, maybe. She glanced at his hands, but he had them tucked into the pockets of his jeans.

  “Would’ve worked if your car kept running. Scholls Ferry turns into 219 and crosses over 99. There’s a big sign telling you which way to the beach about six miles up the road.”

  They stood in awkward silence. She looked back in the direction she’d come. Portland lay behind a low band of hills, unseen from where they stood.

  “What’s in Lincoln City?” he asked. He tipped his head to the side and waited for her answer as his eyes darted intermittently from the pavement to her and back again.

  “The sea,” she finally answered with a little-girl smile she’d used too many times to know.

  Another silence. The man eyed the oncoming dusk.

  “Do you think I could maybe pay you to drive me there?”

  “I … uh. Not tonight, I expect.”

  She waited. He was a guy, and the one thing she understood about guys was that if you gave one a problem he’d offer a solution. Especially since he’d already stopped to help.

  “That’s a two-hour trip down and another two back,” he said quietly.

  Silvie set her backpack down and returned to the car for her keys. She slammed the door harder than she’d meant to.

  “Look—” he started.

  She noticed that he had a habit of pressing the palm of his hand flat against his forehead, which was carved deep with a scar fresh enough to still have color. The outline of his expensive pickup loomed behind him. It was no indication of his status in her mind. She knew plenty of men who had thirty-thousand-dollar trucks and six-thousand-dollar single-wides, most with a vicious blue heeler chained to the front step.

  “It’s too late to go tonight, and tomorrow I have a sale.” He stared off a moment. “Where did the week go? And Wednesday is always busy with cleanup, but I could take you down there on Thursday. You—” He kicked gravel at her pathetic car. “You don’t have to pay me.”

  Thursday?

  “There’s a motel down in Newberg. You could maybe stay down there for a couple nights.”

  Silvie was already shaking her head. She’d left home with nine hundred dollars and had already burned through nearly a hundred in gas and food. After paying too much for a room at the Motel 6 in Boise, she vowed she’d sleep in her car until she found a place to stay. That money was all she had.

  “I’ll just—” She glanced at her car. She could leave most of her things behind. “I’ll just take what I can carry and hitchhike.”

  “That’s not safe,” he blurted.

  “Well, I can’t really afford a motel.”

  “It’s not the best solution, but—” He drew a breath as if already regretting his next words.

  Silvie felt like a burden, and he hadn’t even made the offer yet.

  “There’s a small apartment on the second floor of my sale barn. It’s not really a barn,” he added quickly. “We just call it that. It’s more like a—” He seemed to search for the right word, pausing to stare down at the road too long. “A warehouse.” The declaration was abrupt, awkward, and laced with an odd sense of victory. “You could stay there for a couple days.” He looked at her apprehensively. “It’s not … well, it’s a bit of a mess. No one’s actually lived there for a long time. But it has a foldout sofa and a bathroom with a shower.”

  Silvie fought the urge to say no. It had been drilled into her never to accept a gift the first time it’s offered. Her mother’s way of imagining they were humble, though the family routinely trawled for handouts. She studied the man’s face. She guessed that he wouldn’t offer a second time.

  “That’s really nice of you,” she finally said.

  “Don’t say that until you’ve seen the place.” He laughed. “I’ll get a rope and we’ll tow your car up there. It’s just a couple miles. You don’t want anyone to break into it during the night. And they will if it’s sitting here on the road.”

  “Thanks.”

  He shrugged and turned toward his truck.

  “I’m Silvie,” she said to his back.

  “Hershel. Hershel Swift.”

  3

  Hershel reclined against the cold sofa in the soft shroud of darkness that encompassed his living room. The outline of his breakfast dishes loomed near his head on the end table. He gazed up at the ceiling, thinking about the girl he’d left at the auction barn. Pretty. Young. Twenty-four, twenty-five maybe? He knew she was lying about Montana. She’d answered the question too quickly, and the first story matched the plates on her car. God, she was young.

  He pressed his hands against both temples, trying to
push back the ever-present pain in his head. Why had he stopped to help her in the first place? That was the question he grappled with now. Before he’d realized what he was doing, he’d already pulled off the road. It wasn’t until he’d gotten out of his truck that he figured he was into something he didn’t want. He didn’t believe he would have stopped before … before the accident. Hershel pressed his fingers in harder, making his vision go dark as he went back over his conversation with the girl. No, he was sure he wouldn’t have.

  What was her name again? Silvie? Is that what she said her name was? He guessed he might have stopped after all. But he wouldn’t have left an attractive young thing like that alone in the apartment down at the sale barn. He’d have brought her home, made her a cheese sandwich or whatever he had in the kitchen, and then fucked her brains out. Hershel was a good-looking man—tall, with a full head of wavy dark hair and black, black eyes. A gift from his Nez Percé grandfather on his mother’s side. Women had fawned over him from the time he was in junior high, and no matter how little effort he put into his relationships there were always plenty more waiting.

  Hershel got to his feet. The pain in his head surged forward, trying to get out through the scar along his hairline. He paused to give it time to recede again. He didn’t find the idea of fucking her brains out repulsive—in fact, quite the opposite. It was the idea that he wouldn’t be able to sustain himself, or that the pain in his head would cause him to black out and crush her. Otherwise, he would have taken advantage. Instinct told him so. Was that who he really was at heart? Or who he had been? There were moments—palpitating moments—when he felt certain he’d lost who he was in the accident.