Free Postcards by Annie Proulx Page A

metal. He stepped on the clutch, shifted the lever toward neutral. It was like shifting a spoon in a pot of mush. He twisted the key and a short weak groan oozed from the starter.
    ‘Son of a bitch, she won’t even turn over.’ Ronnie’d gone an hour ago. He’d have to get a jump start from Trimmer. He turned back to the Comet, now hating the thought of the smoke and liquor stink, the collapsing jukebox music, and noticed that the red of the neon sign blurred into the red of the sky. Flutes of red light, the watery red of ripe watermelon, pulsated over his head. He could see the stars through the redness. Long green rods fanned out from the dome of the sky, the high cold air wavering, stuttering with the electric storm. Mink always claimed he could hear the northern lights crackle or make a sound like a distant wind. Dub opened the door.
    ‘Hey, the northern lights is puttin’ on a show.’
    ‘Shut the damn door. It’s freezin’,’ Howard yelled. He’d starteddrinking around eleven. Trimmer was lying across three chairs, spittle glinting at the side of his mouth.
    Dub shut the door, looked at the quivering air, the snow in the parking lot stained red, the trees and river shining in the lurid night. If Loyal came walking into the parking lot now, he thought suddenly, he would beat him until the bloody water streamed from his ears and blackened the red snow. A pent rage at being stuck with it all rose in his throat like caustic vomit. What the hell. Might as well walk home, burn off the liquor, cool down. He could do it in two hours.

8
The Bat in the Wet Grass

    LOYAL CROSSED the Minnesota state line near Taylor’s Falls, thinking he’d work his way up through the farm country toward the forests. He’d heard there was logging up in the Chippewa National Forest. The money might be poor but he had to get outdoors again. He couldn’t bring himself down to hire onto a farm, but he had to get in the open air. Work his way across, maybe end up in Alaska in the fall, work the fish canneries, anything but the machine shops again, the men pulling down more money than they’d ever made in their lives, their women, too, but not ever getting enough of it after the depression years without work. That little weasel, Taggy Ledbetter from North Carolina, with his deep-kneed walk that madethe cluster of keys on his belt bounce against his groin, socking money away. He lagged slyly at the job during the day so he could put in for overtime. He picked up other men in his car and drove them to the plant, collecting a dollar a week and gas ration coupons from each, stole tools and parts, paper clips, pencils, burrs, calipers, drill bits, dipping them into his pockets, inside his green work pants, under his belt, in his humpbacked lunch box. He made his wife and kids save everything that could be turned in for money, patched bicycle tire tubes, tinfoil, paper bags, nails, used oil, scrap metal, torn envelopes, old tires. Sold a little black market gasoline, pork from his backyard pigs. And kept it out of the banks. He bought house lots. Had a little after-hours repair shop in his backyard.
    ‘Money’s in the lots. Gonna be a lot of servicemen comin’ back, lookin’ to build. Lot of money changin’ hands. I’m gittin’ my share sure as dammit.’
    Tired of getting up in the stench of unwashed clothes and working through the day into darkness again in the stink of burned metal and rank oil, the work never slowing, churning around through three shifts like a bingo tumbler spinning the numbered wooden markers until it slows and a lucky number falls at random. On New Year’s Eve he went to a bar. He went with Elton and Foote who worked the next stations on the line. The bar was jammed with drinkers, War workers with money burning holes, women in slippery rayon dresses, their rolled hair limp in invisible hairnets, powder between their breasts and the black-red lipstick that left soft prints of their lips on the beer glasses and