Copy Boy

by Shelley Blanton-Stroud

  “Give us a minute, Uno.” Momma tilted her head toward the levee, and he put down two stools and walked off in the dark, lighting a cigarette. She waited until the glowing tip was a distance off. “I won’t drop this baby on dirt. Daddy’ll risk it, but I won’t.”

  Jane looked toward a rustling in the bushes. Must have been the collie dog.

  “You owe me,” Momma said, for the millionth time, rolling both fists into her lower back. “We’re moving to Tumbleweed, the doctor’ll come, and he’ll get this baby out of me, live. Uno —Mister Jeffers—fixed it.”

  Maybe this would make up for her brother Benjamin. Maybe this was something. But still, people would talk if this happened. And Jane was too low around here already to get the things she wanted. And Uno. They couldn’t go through all this for the prize of Uno.

  Momma wiped the palms of both hands against the feed-sack dress stretched over her middle. “Moving back to Tumbleweed’ll put us ahead.”

  “Won’t put Daddy ahead.” She didn’t mention herself.

  “He won’t be around forever, Jane.”

  This was something she said when it would further her argument, when it was more useful to be alone than leashed to Daddy, who did lurch after every fresh scent. It was true he wandered in and out, but he’d never crossed the line to hurt Jane in a way she wouldn’t forgive. She was a practical girl, knew what mattered and what didn’t. He wasn’t good, but he was good enough.

  The bushes parted on the other side of the car, and Daddy came around it into the light—thatch of blond hair, tiny-lined, sunburnt face with a scar on his left upper cheek matching the curve of another guy’s shovel. The air buzzed when he stepped into their circle, the smell of beer steaming all around him.

  “Don’t act like I wouldn’t give you no license. You never wanted it. Not from day one. Day one! It’d interfere with your plans.”

  Momma’s face brightened. “You wanna be tied down? Ha!” Her belly jutted between them. “If you won’t provide, I’ll find a way.” Her eyes sparkled.

  “What way is that?”

  “I got us another cabin.”

  “How’d you get it? What’d you have to sell?” His mouth twisted up, contemptuous.

  Jane’s hands opened and closed, blood flooding her extremities.

  “Well, it wasn’t the car. I believe you sold that cheap for town tail.”

  “Got yourself a scheme? Working with Uno?”

  “Least he works. Like a man.”

  “You ain’t too big to slap.”

  Jane’s head rattled, thoughts boiling. She’d heard this talk before but never heard it escalate so quickly. She scanned the campsite for options.

  Momma laughed, like she didn’t know how he’d react, or like she was ignoring that knowledge. Or counting on it.

  “You’re a disrespectful woman.”

  “Man’s got to earn respect.”

  Earn money is what she means, Jane thought.

  Uno stepped back from the dark, into the headlights, next to Momma.

  “Get back to town, Abraham.” Time slowed, Uno’s words drawn out— towwwwwn, Abrahaaaaaam. He inched up taller. “I’m driving their things to Tumbleweed.”

  She couldn’t believe he’d step up against Daddy. Stupid. Momma didn’t need him.

  Daddy pointed his long arm at her. “You think I’ll let you steal from me? My woman? My girl?”

  “They don’t belong to you—you ain’t got the papers. Kate wants someone who can provide. I’ll give her the papers.” He said it like papers were cash.

  “You?”

  Uno puffed up, a barrel-chested Chihuahua. “You think you’re a musician? Haw! Show me two dimes you ever earned by music!”

  That did it.

  Both Daddy’s clenched fists exploded, punching right, straight at Uno’s head, left and right again, knocking him to the ground, silent, bleeding, like a dog dead in the road, though he wasn’t dead—his chest shivered up and down.

  Later, some people would claim about this night that Jane hadn’t any heart. But that wasn’t true. At the sight of a man her daddy felled, even though it was Uno Jeffers, her heart rose in her throat, blocking her breath, threatening to jump out her mouth before she swallowed it back down again. She thought, It’s okay. We’ll get him to a doctor. I can fix this.

  But that wasn’t how it would go.

  Momma, in her eighth month, came at Daddy with a stool —lifted it up and cracked it on his back, like in the movies, brought it down hard enough to burst it into tinder all around him.

  Daddy turned, roaring, and shoved Momma to the ground with two hands.

  Everything stopped, Jane’s feet, hands, and head still. She’d worked hard for so long to keep something like this from happening, but now she couldn’t see a path.

  “Come on then! Finish us off! Don’t starve us to death. Do it fast, like a man!”

  “Momma, stop!” She had to pull things back.

  “Shut up, Kate! Have you got to always push?”

  “Do it! Such a man! If you’re such a man, do it!”

  He unbuckled his belt, removed it.

  “Daddy, no!” Jane yelled, but he didn’t seem to hear her.

  Momma was still on the ground, propped up on her hands, her knees wide, yelling.

  Jane cried, “Momma! Why?”

  He flicked his belt back and forth, walking circles around her.

  Jane reached in the Ford’s open door and grabbed the crowbar.

  Then he did it. He swung that belt at Momma, so it made a wide, whooshing arc, slowed-down, like he was pitching side-armed, slapping her skin with a crack, releasing her scream.

  His face was lit up, his arm muscles popping like a cartoon bully.

  She knew he wasn’t finished.

  Momma looked straight at Jane and yelled, “Come on!”

  “Come on” wasn’t enough to make her do what she did next. It was something new inside her own head that did it. Not a voice exactly, but a force, a great surge, a sparking, an ignition—a loud, crackling static—shocking her to action.

  She swung the crowbar the way Daddy taught her to swing a bat, loose in her hands, stepping into it, aiming for his shoulder, connecting, maybe with his shoulder, maybe higher.

  He fell in stages to his knees, his bloody hands and then his face to the dirt.

  She felt a horrible amazement, like she’d chopped down a tree.

  She dropped the crowbar and looked at Momma, thinking, Oh my God.

  The inside of her head was quiet again.

  Then she thought, Is this it? Is this the something?

  She was washed with shame at thinking that now.

  “We ain’t got much time,” Momma said. “Let’s get rid of him.”

  Not get him to a doctor to fix him up, when his breath was so ragged Jane was sure it would stop. Momma’d moved to next steps.

  “Take him up Jiboom, to I Street, down 99.” She waved her arm toward the Golden State Highway, half the north-south double barrier, along with the Southern Pacific tracks, separating them from the nice people. “Go south of Galt. Leave him on the shoulder. We’ll say he’s gone for a gig.”

  Her idea was so complete.

  “Let’s go, before the sheriff gets here.”

  He’d be coming for Jane and Daddy, the criminals in this situation.

  Momma got a rope from the car and tied his hands in back. She was good at knots. She grabbed a quilt from the pile and spread it next to Daddy—“C’mon!”

  Uno lay behind them, his chest rising irregularly, each breath a plea—Save me.

  Jane had to choose right then, so she did. She chose Momma.

  She bent with her to roll Daddy onto the quilt, grabbing its short end so they could drag him to the car. She knew the system. They’d done this before, getting Daddy, passed out, from where he shouldn’t be to where he was supposed to be. Still, he was heavy and Momma was huge and they struggled. They had to stop and rest repeatedly, laying the blanket down i
n the dirt, watching it rise and fall with his breath, and then picking it up again.

  When they got to the Ford, Momma unwrapped him and told Jane to sit him up, reach under his armpits, and grab his wrists, which she did. Momma crossed his ankles and put both legs over her shoulder, dangling over her belly. “One, two, three,” she said, and they stood and lifted him at once into the back seat, their joined breath making the car’s air thick. They draped him over Jane’s hope chest, an Arkie Boys chorus loud on the radio—“This game, ain’t for losin’. I’m fix-in’ to win the next hand.”

  Momma got out and pointed at the wheel, panting.

  “You’re coming with me, right?” Jane asked.

  Momma rolled her fist on the side of her belly. “I’ll handle things here. You go on.”

  SHE’D only ever driven a car for an hour, two years before, when she was fifteen, when they still had the Studebaker, Daddy narrating instructions the whole way. He didn’t repeat that driving lesson after she ran off the road into a tree stump outside Marysville, requiring a week’s labor to fix the front end. He said she drove like a girl, like he forgot what she was. She could kill him this night just by putting him in the back seat of a car she was driving. But she got into the driver’s seat and laid her hands on the wheel.

  Momma came around to her window and passed her the bloody crowbar.

  “In case he wakes up,” she said.

  Jane dropped it on the floorboard. She wasn’t going to use it again.

  She closed her eyes and then opened them before doing what Daddy said back then—“Pull back on the emergency brake, Jujee. Now push the spark control all the way up, all the way. Pull the hand throttle halfway down. That’s it. Now turn the gas valve open. Turn the choke control valve full clockwise, wait! Now back off a quarter turn. Okay, turn the ignition switch on. Push in the clutch and put the transmission in neutral. Now pull the choke control out. Almost there. Turn the engine over three revolutions—choke in on the third.”

  The engine started.

  “Push the throttle lever up and the left lever all the way down. Push the accelerator pedal. Now turn the choke control.”

  A hot breeze blew through the window, sprinkling ragweed pollen on the front seat, making Jane cough.

  She backed up in a jerk, stalling.

  She started over, did it all again, finally turning Uno’s car around, off the levee, onto Jiboom, to I Street, to the two-lane highway, gripping hard when a truck passed, headlights shining on roadside trees, branches reaching overhead to grab at each other, Daddy’s gargly breath behind her.

  “Thirty miles. Pull him out of the car. Untie his hands. Drive home.” She whispered it over and over as she drove past vinegar-smelling canneries, tomato fields, ripe, tangy cattle, orchard stumps like headstones. “Thirty miles. Pull him out of the car. Untie his hands. Drive home.”

  When they were nearly to Galt, his face rose up into the rearview mirror like a ghost, causing her to jump. The car swerved off the road onto gravel before she could straighten it out again, back onto the asphalt. Her ribs ached with fear.

  “Stop the car. I gotta throw up.” His voice was rough and slurry, the ends of his words chopped off.

  Should she? No. She couldn’t stop.

  “Go ahead, Daddy. It’s okay.”

  He doubled over, gagging onto the floorboard.

  “Stop the car,” he repeated, craning to wipe his mouth on the seat back. “I’ll drive.”

  “I’ll stop soon.”

  “Come on! I don’t blame you, what happened back there.”

  Was that true? Did he blame her?

  In the rearview she saw the blood all over his neck and face and shoulders. Under the blood, his skin was chalk white. Looked like he was missing a tooth on the bottom.

  She felt something strong but didn’t know what to call it.

  “You was acting on instinct. I know. But we gotta get back there now. ’Fore Uno steals everything’.”

  His eyes looked loose, like each one saw something different.

  “I don’t think we’d better.”

  “Girl, I got this. I’m in my right mind now. I can fix things up. Your momma shouldn’ta put this on your shoulders.”

  Everything was always on her shoulders.

  “Let’s get back, fix it up.”

  His whole face looked wrong, his flexing jaw muscles, his flaring nostrils. A melted mask of a face.

  The skin near Jane’s ear pulsed. “I don’t think so.”

  “Whassat?”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  He waited before answering. “You talking like that to your daddy?”

  He wasn’t acting like a daddy. What kind of family would they be if she took him back? She couldn’t fake that hard now.

  “If you’re my girl, you bes’ untie me now.”

  His girl.

  “I ain’t going back,” she said, “and neither are you.”

  He was quiet for a minute.

  “You ain’t goin’ back to Momma?”

  When she didn’t say anything, he went on. “She thinks she got us under her thumb, makin’ out like money’s everything.”

  “This ain’t about money.”

  “It’s always about money! No appreciation. She don’ understand what I do, though I’ve stayed with her all those years . . . all those fields and tents.”

  “This is about a cabin.”

  But she knew he was right. It was about money. A cabin was about money. Momma always talked about climbing up off the bottom rung, where they’d been stuck for years, living in that tent, cordoned off by river, tomato fields, train tracks, and highway. Momma told everybody how she got them out from under a Texas bank’s bootheel, all the way to Sacramento. If Momma wanted power over her fate, she needed money for leverage. She’d do what it took.

  “You think this is ’bout us? You think that baby’s mine?”

  She didn’t answer, wondering if it mattered who the daddy was. In her experience, it was the momma that mattered.

  “Okay, then. You’re right,” he said. “We’ll head down to San Luis. Get us some pea work. There’s some nice little bars there that like a good singer. You untie me, and I’ll drive us there.”

  She understood he was trying to trick her.

  “I’m not going with you.”

  Her eyes blurred. Her cheeks were wet.

  “What are you sayin’?”

  “Momma’s moving to Tumbleweed, you can go to San Luis, and I’ll . . .”

  What would she do?

  She thought of a poster at the theater downtown, for the movie San Francisco. It reminded her of Uno’s daughter Sweetie, who’d run off to the city some time ago. The name of that movie rose up before her now, as a place you run off to.

  “I’ll go to San Francisco.”

  He was quiet at first. Then he exploded in laughter, a mean look on his face. “Sounds like you got a bona fide plan. Yes, ma’am! Whole lot of pickin’ work in Frisco, acres and acres of tomatoes. Yes, ma’am. Who’m I to interfere with a girl’s bona fide plan?”

  He thought she was stupid. She hadn’t known that.

  She slowed for the Galt stop sign—dark Texaco station, butcher, feed store, depot. A spotted dog ran across the road. Daddy looked left and right. She shifted and pushed her foot on the pedal, and the car lurched forward.

  Galt was in the rearview now, nothing but road and sky and the SP tracks and Tokay grapes near harvest, glowing on the vine.

  “You can’t leave a person on the side of the road,” he said, a jagged edge to his voice.

  She thought of Uno, wondering at the limits of that code.

  “I’ll untie you. You can catch a ride to Stockton.”

  She pulled the car over, crunching onto gravel, its front wheels stopping just at the shoulder before it dropped into an irrigation ditch. She got out and opened the back door.

  He stood, five inches taller than her.

  She saw his black
blood, and the skin on her face felt cold.

  He turned his back so she could untie him. It took a while, as her hands were shaking and Momma’s knot was good.

  The rope dropped and he turned back around.

  They stood there a minute, his face scrambled. Was one eye higher than the other? Had it always been? He wasn’t right.

  Water rushed in the ditch behind him.

  He grabbed her right wrist, twisting it, making her drop to her knees.

  “Wrong choice, girl.”

  Her face contorted in pain from his twisting, but she didn’t drop the key on its chain. He wouldn’t go any further. He couldn’t do that to her. He didn’t have any other people— Granny was buried next to Benjamin back in Amarillo. He wasn’t going to cut the last real connection he had.

  This is what Jane thought.

  He twisted harder.

  “Disloyal,” he said. “You ain’t so good’s I thought. You turned out a disappointment. Not so special after all.”

  Her head burst into noise again, like an out-of-tune, full-volume radio show in her head, music and static and a screaming voice, too, and her skull nearly split, like something new had entered her, or something old wanted out. Then a husky radio voice yelled, Hit him!

  So she did.

  She punched Daddy in his groin with her left fist, felling him for the second time. She’d always been good with both hands, like he was.

  He lay there moaning and clutching himself.

  Scrambling up to get away, she dropped the key.

  Though he was doubled over, he rolled and grabbed it.

  She snatched the blood-sticky crowbar off the floorboard—“I’ll do it again!”

  He threw the key in the dark, and she could see it flipping through the air. It took so long before she heard the clank, metal on metal, up near the car’s front end.

  Why’d he do that? Throwing that key seemed like the worst thing he did that night, the worst thing any of them did that night.

  Cain’t trust neither of ’em! the radio voice in her head yelled. They ain’t for you!

  She saw it was true.

  Better off on your own!

  Hearing those thoughts as that river of anger rushed through her, she brought the crowbar down on his hip, this time like a pick, not a bat, releasing some essential Jane that had never gotten out before, almost like this had nothing to do with him or with her.