IT'S SATURDAY, traveling day at the beach, when one set of tourists moves out and another set moves in. The roads are packed with cars and motorcycles, the worst time in the world for an emergency to happen. J.D. is laying on the siren, but the cars sitting in front of us are doing nothing to get out of the way. He looks at me, can see I'm pissed off at the world. “What do you want me to do?” he asks.
“Hell, I don't know,” I say. “Bump him.”
“What?” J.D. asks, his voice rising with surprise.
“Bump him,” I tell him again. “If he won't move over, hell, let's move him ourselves.”
“Okay Chief.” A smile creeps across J.D.'s face as he lets off the air brake and inches forward.
When he taps the car, I can see a man's head jerk forward. His body jumps in the seat like we just woke him up. “There, that ought to do it,” I say. But it takes another bump and a blast from our air horn for the man to figure it out and get his car to the shoulder of the road. When we move up beside him, I can tell he's pissed off, but I don't say anything. I just look out the window and eyeball him real good to let him know it's the law, move over for emergency vehicles, just get the hell out of the way.
It's like dominoes after that, each car seeing the one behind it slide to the side, and we are able to move to the front of the line where we find the car fire. I spot a Ford station wagon, its engine compartment billowing black smoke and flame. The father's trying to unload the back end, save some of the family's luggage, while his wife and three kids watch from the embankment.
“He shouldn't be doing that,” J.D. says.
“Nope, he needs to get on back,” I say, but before I can yell that, the whole inside of the car ignites, and in one sweet Poof! flames shoot out the back just as this poor fellow is reaching in to pull out a suitcase.
The explosion—flame and smoke, an unbelievably powerful fist of exploding pressure—hits his face. The impact knocks him down and sends his whole family into a fit. Rule one: Never stand near a burning car, not with all the fuel around, inflated tires, plastic upholstery that can explode without warning. It's just best to get the hell away and wait until a fire unit arrives on scene.
We pull the Pirsch pumper on the grass between the car and the family. J.D. looks after the father while Partee pulls and primes the line. He fogs the nozzle while I engage the pumper to send a white wall of water into the car. The temperature inside is probably two thousand degrees or more by the time we hit it, so when our spray touches flame, it turns to steam, white clouds filling the inside to suffocate the fire.
Toxic clouds roll out the windows and mushroom upward. A highway patrol car pulls alongside, sits on the shoulder as traffic builds. He puts on his lights, doesn't even get out. Acts like it's too dangerous for him to do anything else but sit there.
The station wagon is a smoldering wreck by the time J.D. finishes bandaging up the father's hands and face—minor burns that will heal fast, a lucky man. He comes over, and we coordinate how to open the hood so we can get to the engine. We keep our masks on, tighten helmet straps, button collars tight. We make sure there's no crease or a loose buckle that might leak flame onto exposed skin if the fire decides to start up again when the top comes off.
J.D. goes down on his knees to crawl up to the front of the car, gets right up next to the grille, puts his hand on the hood so it won't pop up on its own when he releases the latch. “On three,” he says, and we count together. When he pulls the release, Partee shoves the hose right up under the hood and we shoot that sucker back against the front windshield, drown an already dead engine with what's left of the five hundred gallons of water that we've brought with us.
By the time we're finished, the tank on the pumper is empty. We put out too much water, sort of overkill, but when you drive up to a car fire and the first thing you see is a man being hit by an explosion, it gets your heart pumping. You just want to knock the shit out of it with everything you got.
We get the highway patrolman to help out with finding accommodations for the family. Partee goes through the car with J.D. They look for anything that might be salvageable that they can take with them, clothes or toys, souvenirs from a trip no one's going to forget for a long time. Nothing's left except the burned-out frame of a Ford Country Squire station wagon and a metal bucket full of blackened shells. J.D. walks over shaking his head. “What?” I ask.
“My old man used to say, ‘Can't buy a car, buy a Ford.’ Guess I know why now.”
I look over at Partee. He's trimming the hose, getting it back up on the truck. He's heard what J.D. said. “Better go tell Partee about your daddy's idea there.”
“Why's that?” J.D. asks.
“He's got a Mustang over in Aynor he's been sinking money into for over a year. I think his kids have gone hungry while he stashed away enough cash to hop up that thing. He'd probably like to know that Fords ain't worth a shit before he picks it up next week.”
Now, Partee is big. J.D. is too, but not a size that could compete. We've all watched Partee lift weights back at the station. He puts anything and everything he can find on that bar and still can hold it above his head all day. He's lifted the back end of cars when we've been out on calls, kicked down doors faster than we could go through them with an ax. He tore a phone book in two a few months back, swear to God.
Partee was looking at a Mr. America magazine that day. The picture on the front showed a man built of pure muscle, his hair curly and long, pumping his arms on a beach with women hanging all over him. Partee said, “I'd like to do some of that down on our beach.”
Clay Taylor just happened to be working, or hanging around looking like he was working. He grabbed the magazine and said, “Shit, Partee, that's Frank Zane, Mr. Universe. You ain't Mr. Universe.”
“My wife thinks I am,” Partee said, and we all got a good laugh out of that. But what Clay said got to Partee, I could tell. He didn't say anything else, just got up after a little while and went into the office and asked Lori for the phone book, not Garden City Beach, but the one from Myrtle because it was big and fat, had all the Grand Strand numbers listed in it. He brought the book out and said, “I'm going to tear this thing in half because you said that.”
Clay looked up from the table where he was sitting and said, “Shit you say, Partee.”
“Shit I do,” Partee said back at him and then ripped that son-of- a- bitch right down the middle all the way to its spine, let the two sides dangle there like tassels on a shoe.
I made Clay hoof it back up to Myrtle Beach and get us another phone book that afternoon, told him it was his fault, not Par-tee's, that the book was destroyed. “You don't tell Partee his wife ain't right,” I said. We all got another good laugh out of that, everybody but Clay Taylor. Served him right, if you asked me.
I don't have to remind J.D. about that phone book. I just take my hands and tear the air in two, tell J.D., “Go on, you go tell Partee what your daddy said.” But he'll have none of it.
“Naw, that's all right,” he says. “Wouldn't want him to think his kids went hungry for nothing.” Partee looks at us then, smiles that big old gap- tooth grin, shoots us the bird and says he could use some help with the hose. I just look at J.D., don't have to say another word.
Back at the station, Phil Roddy, the volunteer replacing Clay, walks in. I thank him for coming to relieve me, then take off, head out after thirty- six hours that saw us answer six calls, a new record for this station, one I'm sure we'll break before the season's out.
I'm driving in the same thick traffic that we endured going out on the call. I can still taste the smell of burning car in my mouth, and I'm anxious to get home, the traffic making the wait all the worse. I can't bump them like we did this morning, or use my emergency lights to move the traffic, so I sit letting my anxiety build until it feels like my head might blow off my shoulders like that car did today, one sweet god almighty Poof!
I inch along until I can finally turn left across traffic, accelerate down a road that is more like a sandy path for the last mile. Speed is more dangerous out here, the truck fishtailing in the curves, but I need to get home. After a tight turn to the left, the road runs out in my yard. I kill the engine, look around. No Bel Air is waiting. I'm alone.
The quiet that falls around me is as dead as driftwood. Usually Kelly's playing the stereo too loud, Cassie yelling at her to turn the damn thing down. In the past when Cassie's taken Kelly to Meemaw's, there have been things left undone, clothes drying on the line, trash cans waiting for me to take out to the main road. But the emptiness feels deeper this time. It looks like a house that has been abandoned, empty, hot, and dark, shades drawn on all the windows. Inside I can see Cassie's packed things she wouldn't normally take on a vacation. Her jewelry box is gone, and pictures of her and Kelly. The missing frames have left dusty silhouettes where they used to sit on shelves and tables, more ghosts on the ground, I think. The pictures with me in them are still here.
In our bedroom, Cassie's cleaned out the cedar closet. She's taken all her bras and panties, her skirts that she never wears down here, and a whole pile of sweaters she never takes off in the winter because she complains the house is too damp and cold. Her shoes are cleared out, not just her flip- flops and the pair of hiking boots that she usually takes. Every pair she owns is gone. When I look in Cassie's drawer in the bathroom, her diaphragm is gone. She never took that before because she never needed it until now.
I find a sealed envelope on the kitchen counter with my name written across the front in Cassie's chicken scratch. Inside is a piece of paper that reads, I'll call you later. That's it, nothing more.
I walk back through the house feeling damned depressed. I know in my gut that Clay Taylor's with Cassie, even though no one's told me this. It's no coincidence they left the same day headed pretty much in the same direction. Strachen called earlier to tell me Clay was gone, that I didn't have to worry about him anymore. I wish that were the truth, but I know it's not. Right now, all I want to do is get some sleep and then maybe when I wake up everyone will be back where they belong.
In the living room, I plop down on the couch and watch the television for distraction. It gets three channels, but nothing good. The only one with any reception is Channel 5, NBC, and they're playing golf. I can't watch that, so I turn the set off, lay my head on a pillow, stretch out on the couch to rest my eyes for a minute before figuring out what to do next. When I drop off to sleep, it is deep and silent, dead like this house.
It isn't until I am on the other side of the weekend, Sunday afternoon, that my eyes open again. My body creaks like an old hinged door. It's late afternoon, and I'm hungry and groggy, sore. I need to take a bath, need to regain some bearings, catch up with the world that's already deposited another batch of sunbathers and partyers on the Grand Strand—the exchange completed while I was asleep.
I search the refrigerator for food and find fresh clams from the creeks, saltine crackers in the cupboard. There are pickles and a bowl of leftover mac and cheese that Kelly never finished. It will do for dinner. I don't feel like trying to go somewhere to buy something more. I take my makeshift meal and walk to the dock, a cold beer to wash the whole mess down. I have lost a whole night and the better part of the next day to sleep, but somehow it feels like more. It feels like a life.
When the sun leaves the marsh, the light flattens and dies. It reveals the fractured salt creeks and mudflats in a way that makes it all feel too vulnerable with the heat and drought hurting everything. I cannot imagine something like this great body of water, the marsh and all the life that exists in it, burning up, being lost forever. Or for that matter, that I would voluntarily leave this place, whether Cassie returns or not.
I was born in the low country and this is home, no place better in the whole world, though at times it's hard to make it work the way it should. When Mom died, I wasn't sure Pops would make it on his own. He became frail, seemed lost without her there to do things for him. When I moved him into the rest home, I told him I was sorry, that I didn't know what else to do, that I hated taking him away from his home, away from everything he had known up until that day. Pops just smiled and touched his chest. He said, “A man builds his home in his heart, son. That way it's always safe. You can't take it away. You'll be a rich man for the rest of your days if you come to understand that, a guaranteed deposit in any bank in the world.”
I understand this as truth right now more than ever, standing here eating a crappy dinner, my family gone for good, my heart bankrupt, about to break wide open while I wait for the telephone to ring, for my wife to call.
THE BEER AND MAC and cheese aren't enough to make the hurt go away, and I find myself back on the road heading into Conway to see Pops. I look at my watch. Eight- thirty and I know he will be staring at the TV. He always has it on, likes watching Let's Make a Deal during the week. Pops loves it when the contestant picks the wrong box or curtain and gets a broken- down car or coop full of chickens as a prize. “Serves them right,” he says, chuckling like he's talking to a friend who's always there. On Sundays he won't miss watching Ted Mack's Amateur Hour and Bonanza. I know he's lonely and I don't get over to see him as often as I should. It's just hard to do right now with the season in full swing. It's going to get even harder.
I pull up in the parking lot off Fourth Avenue and Kingston, park near a small building that looks like it's as old as Conway. Kingston Convalescent Home sits on the river, a white brick and clapboard house that has been added on to, a rambling old structure that looks like it's tired of all the extra weight. There are cypress and oak trees shading the place, Spanish moss floating through the limbs like torn gray sailcloth. At night it's all black except where the bug lights feather out into the dark, painting the limbs and overhanging moss a sick yellow. Fireflies blink high up in the trees, but won't come down in this heat. Along the river, it's eerily quiet like winter, hardly any sounds coming from the water. The building's paint is peeling, the white bricks mottled and cracked along the foundation. When I walk up onto the porch, there's a feeling like the whole place is sagging under my weight.
There are only a few residents left in the home, five or six old men including Pops. Every year the people who run the place write me a letter saying they might close the doors, but they never do. The men inside did a lot for Conway in their day so they keep it going out of respect if for no other reason.
After World War II, Pops came here to work in the turpentine industry. He was taught how to tap a tree to harvest the sap and later worked in the mill cooking it down. In the twenty- five years Pops has lived in Conway, he's made turpentine, cut timber, and moved it down the Waccamaw. He went to work at Georgetown Steel because he could make better money than the sawmill offered. He did that until he was injured in an accident. Both his legs were crushed by falling steel, and one never healed right. He could only do odd jobs around Conway after that because of the struggle to get around on a bum leg.
He's been here in the Kingston since Mom died eight years ago. He just couldn't do for himself anymore, and a couple of his buddies were already here. Back when he moved in, the place was better than it is today. The old nurses still take care of him, but his friends are gone. He's got the best room in the house, the only one that has a good view of the river.
When I knock on his door, I don't get a response. Inside, I find him sitting in near- dark, the light from his television keeping him from disappearing. He's asleep in his chair, his head lowered to his chest, arms gathered in his lap. He's covered at his shoulders by a frayed afghan Mom knitted for him years ago. The room smells like camphor, a cold, half- eaten dinner on a tray near his bed. I put my hand on his shoulder and call out his name. “Pops, hey Pops,” I say. “Wake up. You got a visitor.”
I'm not sure he knows who I am, even after I turn on a lamp beside his bed so he can see me. The space is a small square box just big enough for a bed and a bureau with a mirror attached to the wall. There's a worn La- Z- Boy against one side that he's sitting in. The RCA black- and- white is on a rolling rack pushed against the opposite wall. When I open a window to let clean air into the room, he looks up at me through rheumy and unfocused eyes like he's been drinking. He's done his fair share of that, but I don't think he's thought about the bottle for years. He's sick. That's what's doing it to Pops now. His eyes are telling me that he's sick.
“You okay Pops?”
It takes him a minute to figure things out, but then he smiles. “I found a penny,” he says like it's fresh news. He lifts his arm to point toward the small bedside cabinet. On it is his watch, a glass of water, Kleenex, a jar of Vaseline, a tin of Vick's VapoRub. Momma's picture is in a small wooden frame and beside that lies a dull copper penny.
“When did you get that?” I ask.
“Yesterday,” he says. “That might be the one.”
“Might just be,” I say, reaching over to touch his hand. “Can't stay long,” I tell him, “but I was thinking about you and thought I'd come by, maybe watch Bonanza for a while.”
“That don't come on until Sunday,” he says, like that's not what day it is. “Give me that penny, will ya?”
Pops always collected pennies, picked them up off the ground for as long as I can remember. He told me once that a penny was all you needed to start making a million dollars. He'd find one, pick it up off the ground, look at it real good, then spit on it to make it shine. He said, “Rich people know the value of this. How do you think they got rich?” Then he'd put the penny in his shoe, said it would only bring good luck if you walked on it.
When we cleared out the house, I found pennies everywhere, boxes full, jars too. He had a drawer that had nothing but pennies in it. An old ammo box from a World War II army surplus store was fat with them, and one of Mom's old shoe boxes was full to running over. Pops always said that the next penny he found might put him over the top, so he saved every one he picked up, carried them in his shoes until he'd come home on the weekends from over at the Georgetown Steel Mill.
I watched him once shake six or seven copper coins out of each shoe. We read the dates and then put them in an empty cigar box. Cassie collected what she could find after Pops was moved, took it by the bank so it could be counted and cashed. There were more than ten thousand pennies in that house—a hundred dollars and fifty- seven cents’ worth to be exact.
I give Pops the penny and he looks at it in the dull light, squints his eyes but then gives up. “What's the date on this one?”
I pull his hand to me, my eyes not much better than his in this light. “Nineteen fifty- four,” I say.
“Nineteen fifty- four,” he parrots back. “Your momma cried that year,” he says, turning to look at me like it was my fault.
“How's that?” I ask.
“Don't play stupid with me, boy. You got that girl pregnant in nineteen fifty- four. Your momma cried for days over that, she was so worried.”
“Pops, that was Cassie,” I tell him.
“I know who it was,” he says back, his voice agitated. He pushes himself up into his chair, rearranges his body like the thought of my mom crying is too much for him to take, even if she's been dead eight years. “You shouldn't have done that.”
“Done what?” I ask.
“Knocked that girl up like that,” he yells at me.
“Pops,” I say, trying to be patient with him. “It was Cassie who got pregnant. I married her and now you have a beautiful granddaughter because of it.” This pushes hard against his mind. He can't put two and two together.
Pops is dying, his body letting go a little bit more every day and when it does, he speaks his mind, truth in a kind of craziness. His memory gets loose and I find out how he really felt about me at times when I was growing up. Tonight it's Cassie. He's scolding me for something I did that really pissed him off. He never showed it, never let me know how much it hurt, and I've learned over my own years how much pain comes with being a parent. Anger gets swallowed along the way when what you really want to do is knock some teeth out. I appreciate Pops not doing that. I'm better with my own child because of it. He's too old to take a swing at me now, so he just cusses me out and then we watch TV
When the commercials are over, I turn up the volume on Bonanza, try to help Pops let go of his memories. Hoss is riding into town with Little Joe, Ben Cartwright is in trouble with the law and sits in jail. Hoss's jaw is set tight. He's seething at the injustice taking place, but Little Joe calms him down, tells him to believe in the law, that when they get to Virginia City, everything will get figured out. It's early in the show, so I know that won't happen. Little Joe is going to be disappointed, at least for another half hour or so.
We're quiet for a bit until a nurse comes in to get Pops's dinner tray. She's surprised to see me. The nurse is black, one of the older ladies who have been here for a while. She's big, with deep charcoal skin that makes her white uniform and hat glow. Her eyes are lazy, sleepy like she might not care, but she's a friend and knows more about what's going on with Pops than most anyone else here. “Well hey, Mr. Peck. Ya'll doin’ all right in here?” she asks.
“Yes ma'am,” I say.
Daddy looks up, knows who's in front of him. “Margaret, I need to go pee.”
“You do now?” Margaret says, looking at me.
I just shrug my shoulders. “First time I heard that,” I tell her.
“Well, can you wait until the next commercial?” she asks. “Or do you need to go right now?”
“Next commercial,” Pops says. Margaret smiles at me as she goes over to close the blinds. She pulls the window shut even though it's hot enough to sweat a pig thin in the room. I don't say anything about it, don't want to mess up the routine. Even when it seems so much less, it's his life and he has people like Margaret to keep him company, to keep things regular.
She fusses around in the room, fluffing Pops's pillow, straightening his sheets to make sure they aren't soiled, her commentary running along with the action on Bonanza. “Hmmmm, mmmm,” she says. “That Hoss Cotright is sure aimin’ to get hisself in trouble,” she says. “That sheriff won't put up with any of that. Now where's his daddy anyway?” She sits on the bed next to Pops's chair like they're old friends. “What you got in your hand?” she asks him.
He looks at his hands like he has no idea until he sees the penny. “It's my penny,” he says.
“You found that today?” she asks. Her eyes lift up to me, shining in a way that says she's not just humoring Pops. She's keeping his mind going, pushing him to use the brain cells even if many of them no longer want to work.
“Nineteen fifty- four,” he says. He reaches out to let Margaret look at it. “Think it's the one. What do you think?” He watches Margaret as she takes the penny, turns toward the lamp, and examines the piece of copper through glasses perched on the tip of her nose.
“That's a good one, all right,” she says. “Better keep that in a special place.”
“In my shoe,” he says. The comment makes Margaret laugh.
“You don't wear shoes much no more, Mr. Johnson. And those slippers won't do you no good. Better find some other place to keep it safe.”
Margaret's words catch Pops off guard, make him use some more of those dying brain cells. He holds the penny in his shaky palm, closes it into a fist, then reaches over to hold it out in front of me. “Here,” he says.
“What?”
“You can have it,” Pops says. “Put it in your shoe. It'll be lucky then.”
Margaret looks at me, her eyes droopy, a smile breaking up the deep richness of her black skin. “It's a gift from your daddy. You best take it.”
And I do. It's silly, but they both sit there watching, waiting for me to put the damn thing in my boot. I sit on a stool, shove the penny down along my ankle, then shake the boot until I can feel it slide across my arch.
“I'll probably pull up lame walking on that thing,” I say.
Margaret stands then, pushes her tired body up off the bed with hands on her legs. “You never know what a penny might do for you,” she says, her lungs exhausted from the work to get herself up. I stand up next to Margaret, look at Pops, his body swollen, weakening with each labored breath.
Besides the diabetes, the doctor says he's having congestive heart failure now. They give him these diuretics to keep him flushed out, but he's pretty swollen around his ankles and feet. He's wearing slip- on bedroom shoes like Mom used to wear because he can't get his feet into regular shoes anymore. I don't know if he can stand or not. I don't know if he can get to the bathroom on his own.
When Bonanza goes to commercial break, I ask him again if he needs to go. “Where to?” he says like he might be going on a trip.
“You know, Pops—do you have to go to the bathroom?” I say.
He looks at himself, then at me like he can't quite figure out who I am. “Might need to do that,” he says.
I get his crutches and have Margaret hold them while Pops positions himself to stand. From in front his chair, I put both hands under his arms, lift his swollen torso up, steady him until the crutches are firmly planted. “You go on now,” he says. “I can do it from here.”
“No Pops, I'm going to walk you, just in case.”
And then he becomes lucid, his smoky eyes clear, the liver spots on his loose skin quivering when he speaks. “No, boy” he says. “I can get there myself. Now you go on. Come by again when you can.”
We compromise and I stand with Margaret watching Pops hobble down the hallway. “Is he going to be all right?” I ask.
“He's having a good night,” she says, smiling. “He'll be just fine.” I want to wait to make sure he's okay but I trust Margaret's word. “You just go on,” she says, “and don't worry about him. Your daddy is doing just fine.”
Outside, I smell smoke, pungent and full on a hot breeze. I can't see anything in the air, so maybe it's just a small backyard fire, leaves left over from the winter being burned in someone's garden. Still, it worries me, smoke this far inland on a Sunday night in desperate drought conditions.
I pull into Barker's Servicenter, let Goose Hetzel fill the truck up. Goose is an old friend from school, a mechanic who also works the full- service pumps. He's checking my oil and the pressure in my tires when he tells me that there's a fire starting to burn out toward the paper- mill land. He says the sheriff was in talking about it early in the evening, tells me they have it under control. “Got to it quick,” he says like he was there himself. Then Goose walks up to my window, tells me I'm lucky to be on the beach. “Lots of water around you,” he laughs.
I pay with cash, remind him that Horry County's big, lots of dry land on the beach and off. If there's a fire out here, we'll all be fighting it sooner or later. Goose acts all hurt that I don't believe him when I ask again where the fire started, when I tell him I'm going to go take a look. He reminds me that the sheriff told him the fire was small and under control, but I don't buy anything that's more hearsay than truth. I don't care how long I've known Goose.
I leave Barker's and ride a ways out 701 toward the paper- mill land just to see for myself. The breeze kicked up by my truck moving down the road feels like a furnace. I can smell smoke but can't find fire, can't see anything illuminating the sky that would tell me one is burning inland. I start feeling bad about the way I treated Goose. Figure he was telling the truth about it being a small fire, practice for the big one everyone's afraid is coming this summer.
I slow down after taking a sharp curve past a trailer park where kids are shooting fireworks off in the drive. I don't like that, but I don't say anything. It's not my place out here. It's all going up into the air anyway, the embers arcing like a crooked smile out into the dark sky and then dying before they get near ground. It's not wise to let them do it, but no one in authority has yet said you can't shoot fireworks. No one's put a moratorium on anything except burning brush. They're even letting campers have fires still. The politicians are afraid that tourists will stop coming if there are safety regulations put in force, but I question their wisdom. Someone should have shut the whole mess down until we got rain, but they didn't, so we wait, keeping our eyes open and noses turned to the air.
Just past the boys is a shoulder deep enough that I can turn the truck around. I've gone ten miles out and seen no fire, so I'm thinking whatever it was is over with, gone. It's a good feeling accelerating back down 701, the town of Conway the only thing glowing off in the distance. I keep the windows on my truck rolled down, the wind blasting through.
There's a big old full moon over the trees in front of me casting shadows across the road. I'd love to head straight down to the water, get some relief with my board kicking up onto a wave, dropping me down into its trough, a silky smooth ride on a moonlit wave. I need to do that for my own sanity, but I won't go. I'm still exhausted. I need sleep more than I need to ride a wave, so I floor the accelerator trying not to think about Cassie and where she's sleeping tonight.
It's something I've never had to do before, worry about Cassie like this. It's impossible to avoid, so I just tell my truck to do its best to get me the hell out of here. I thank Goose Hetzel for his words of wisdom when I pass back through Conway, Barker's dark and closed up for the night.