He called Cliff from a pay phone at the bus station, told him he wanted to talk and to come to Avalon alone. He didn’t know exactly what they were gonna do. Rough him up he supposed. Nothing real bad they said. He would do his part and they could do theirs. It sure as hell didn’t bother him if Cliff got a beating after all he got his family caught up in. What was a book by a black man gonna do? Didn’t matter if it was talking about one murder or a hundred as long as it was done to a black man. He could bet on that. He’d had it with Cliff, always calling late at night needing to talk to Sheila. Then she’d be tired in the morning, all back talk and burned toast.
He was surprised to find Cliff at Avalon before him. Sitting up near the bar on a stool with a Dixie cup of liquor. The sun was just going and there was a couple arguing in a booth, but nobody else was there, nobody they knew. The Christmas lights above Cliff’s head made the ripped walls and the posters glow.
He pulled a stool up to Cliff. “How you doing?”
Cliff turned, maybe already drunk. “What’s on your mind, brotherman? I don’t have long. I told my daughter I’d put her to bed tonight.”
“How much longer she down?”
“Just another week. Trying to make the most of it.”
Jerry remembered thinking then that it was good the child was leaving. Wouldn’t be safe for her round here while her daddy was making trouble. “I come to talk to you about Sheila.” He gestured at the bar for a beer. He’d had one before he left home but he needed another.
“Man, don’t be a fool. Whatever you might think is going down between us, it ain’t.”
That burned him up right there. That Cliff would even assume that was what he was thinking. “I trust my wife not to mess with nobody. I ain’t got to worry bout that.”
“Then what is it?” Cliff asked but he was looking across the bar, not looking at nothing, not the signed photograph of some big-tittied actress just behind his head so that whenever he moved Jerry could see her big white smile.
“Listen, I know Sheila seen things. Lord knows we all see’d things we’d like to unsee, but you gonna get her killed, or worse, cause there is worse.”
“Times are changing, man.”
“Not for them it ain’t and they gonna do what they think is necessary. As far they concerned, you’re up to no good.”
“Look, we’re Americans too and things don’t change unless we fight for it.”
“Every black man who ever said that is dead. And as far as I see it, Louis is dead and me and my family ain’t gonna die for his dead ass.”
Cliff looked at him. “It’s up to Sheila what she wants to do, what she’s willing to risk.”
“You been gone too long to have sense.”
“Some of us want to live a life worth living.”
“How you talking bout living when you’re doing shit that’s gonna get you dead? They ain’t no Riders or reporters out here no more. The FBI is long gone.”
“What you want from me, Jerry? If you want Sheila to stop working with me, talk to her.”
“I want you to give up that book.”
Cliff laughed. “That’s not the way art works.”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Oh, I been getting the warnings. But I didn’t come back home to play checkers.”
Cliff looked at him with what the women liked to call his soulful eyes. Foolishness. But there was something about the way Cliff had looked right then. Old eyes Jerry would have said. Old as the dirt in the unmarked graveyard where his granddaddy could tell him where everyone without a headstone was buried.
“I guess if you don’t understand why, then there ain’t no words I can tell you.” Cliff swung back to the bar.
He had come there to do what he had to. The choice had been Cliff’s. Jerry walked outside to where Curtis Roberts and them were waiting in the tilled field behind Avalon. They were sweaty and out of uniform. He could smell the liquor on them. He nodded then went back in.
“Sheila just got here. Waiting outside behind the house to talk to you,” he told Cliff. “You can hear from her own mouth how she don’t want you to write about Louis.”
Cliff looked up at him in disbelief and slammed the empty Dixie cup down. It fell onto its side on the bar and he walked out to where they were waiting to take him.
Billie
IT IS HER BIRTHDAY. SHE IS THIRTY-FIVE, THREE YEARS OLDER THAN her father when he died. She used to worry that she would not make it to thirty-two, that some freak accident would happen, that she would be hit by a car as she crossed the street or an anvil would fall on her head. But she has lived on with the forehead creases and plucked gray hairs to prove it.
The worst part of her mother’s death was waiting for her to die. Those two weeks between morphine and starvation and pain. No more food they said, nothing to prolong the body. It will be quick they said, but it wasn’t.
She doesn’t know what she’s waiting for. The rain to be over, a call about her vandalized house, the fear to die down. Sometimes she is still waiting for her mother not to be dead.
It’s a mistake to leave the motel. But she can’t stand another minute in the dark room, which smells like bleach and the last fifty occupants. She walks along the highway toward the glare of the Dollar General, the gun in her bag slapping against her leg.
He is out of context, standing in the narrow laundry detergent aisle with a little boy at his side. When he turns, he stares at her busted lip, the remains of her black eye. Under the store’s fluorescent lights her bruises look green. They stop in front of each other at the dryer sheets. The little boy follows, sandy haired and blue eyed. He too is fascinated by her lopsided face.
“Hi,” Harlan says. “Tyler, this is Miss Billie, she lives down the road from your granddaddy. This is my son, Tyler.”
“What happened to her face?” Tyler asks.
“Sorry,” Harlan says and bends, turning the boy toward him. “Buddy, we don’t ask those kind of questions, it’s not polite.”
“It’s okay,” she says. But she doesn’t know what to tell the kid. He must be five or six, probably too young to say she got into a fight. It’s too dumb to say she fell.
“Why don’t you go get that bouncy ball you saw, okay?”
The boy skitters away happy and Harlan straightens. Outside, rain starts to sweep across the road. “What happened?”
“I got into a fight.”
“I can see that.”
“I guess the gods were with them.”
“Who attacked you?”
She checks in the aisle behind him for signs of the kid. “Two guys.”
“What in the hell? Where at?”
“The dog park, weirdly enough. They must have been following me.” The candy bar in her hand is starting to melt, the chocolate slipping inside of the wrapper.
“Following you?” He drops his voice; he’s the one looking behind him now. “They do anything else?”
She looks at the dryer sheets. “No. But they shot Rufus.”
“Are you kidding me? That’s crazy.” He runs a hand over his mouth. “Want me to come over and sleep in the living room?”
“No. Thanks. I wouldn’t want to get you involved in whatever this is.” And she doesn’t know to what degree his family may already be involved. It’s not that she blames Harlan. It really doesn’t seem like he knows anything. But he certainly wouldn’t choose her over his family.
“Did you know them? What did the police say?”
“I can’t talk about it here. Your son is coming.”
The little boy pulls at Harlan’s jeans, clutching a purple ball to his chest. “Daddy, look.”
“That’s a good one, honey,” Harlan says without looking.
She walks back to the motel in the rain. Everything is fine except when she gets there she’s not home and can’t hear the rain dripping off the trees. She makes a new pot of coffee, drinking cup after cup until her head hurts. Her cell phone rings. It’s him. Somewhere
in this town he is waiting for her to pick up. So much of her life she has gone without. Can’t she have this if only for a minute? Who needs to know but her and him?
An hour later, she unlocks the door and steps out. It’s cloudy and a few birds are singing in the sad trees around the world’s saddest swimming pool next to the parking lot. She watches him take the spiral steps two at a time.
“It’s my birthday,” she says as he picks her up.
When burning hot, the coffee doesn’t taste too bad. They share a cup sitting on the bed. In lieu of cake, he gets her M&M’s from the vending machine. When she brings him a paper cup of water from the sink, he takes her hand.
“I’m sorry somebody hurt you. I hate it.”
“It’s not your fault,” she says.
“I know, but I can still care.”
She doesn’t know why but that it is right to kneel on the carpet and rest her head in his lap. He puts the water on the bedside table so that he can stroke her hair. She doesn’t know how much time has passed when he helps her climb on his lap and wrap her legs round his waist, thumbs through the loops of her jeans, and presses his mouth to hers.
He has holes in the toes of his socks and freckles over his shoulders. They laugh at this as they undress. If only she were wearing more exciting underwear, but nothing else was clean. She strips back the comforter and he lies back on white sheets raw with bleach. She sits on top of him because of her ribs.
“You’re beautiful,” he says.
Only the bathroom light is on and what sunlight escapes the curtains makes the outline of the window glow. Hopefully the shadows hide her bruises, the ones on her waist that other hands gave and the sick yellow down her legs and back. He is gentle because he has to be. They are careful, but this is reckless. If only she could be inside this moment for a hundred years where they are nobody but them.
For her birthday, he drives her to visit Rufus. They scratch under his ears and stroke his nose. They tell him at the same time that he is a good boy. They both get wet eyes but don’t cry. What is it about a sweet dog? She will not let herself cry when Harlan leaves, but then he doesn’t.
TWO WEEKS LATER, HE SAYS IT GETS EVEN HOTTER, HEAVIER BY JULY. They sit on the porch in the drowsy afternoon listening to invisible four-wheelers whine somewhere across the fields. The air gleams on their skin as the shadows of the trees billow over the grass. Rufus is in the living room with a fan pointed at him as he sleeps on his new dog bed. She leans on Harlan, putting her nose to his shoulder, smelling him. It’s not that he says he will protect her. It’s laughable that she’s living with a man who says that. A man who takes her swimming in a creek he promises doesn’t have too many snakes. A man who fixes her bike and the leaky faucet. A man who has his gun on while she wears hers. Please let this be a clearheaded fever.
That afternoon, in the makeup aisle looking at foundation for the purple ring around her eye, Billie smiles when she catches Harlan carrying a six-pack and carton of ice cream. Not ready to join him at the register, she waves him off and goes down the medicine aisle, searching for antibiotic ointment.
“Fancy date,” Lacey says. Her hair has been dyed brown but left blond on the top. She wears it in a low bun coming loose.
“We drove all the way down here to avoid anyone we know and here you are.”
“He do that?” Lacey nods at her eye.
“Of course not.” Behind her back, Billie slips the foundation on the cold-medicine shelf.
“Use concealer too. You need to brighten it first.”
Lacey walks off wearing a yellow and black varsity-style jacket, but in place of a letter is a big yellow weed leaf. When Billie goes to the front of the store, she doesn’t see either of them. But outside Lacey is waiting, slamming a bottle of chocolate milk into the palm of her hand like a pack of cigarettes.
“Your uncle’s looking for you.” Lacey twists off the top and drinks.
“Your hair looks nice dark.” But she should have dyed it all the way.
“He’s real worried about you.”
Billie puts on her sunglasses. “I’ll call him when I’m ready.”
“Hey, I’m the last person to get caught up in other people’s shit, but you are taking your sweet time.” Lacey lights a cigarette. “I’m trying to be nice.”
“Then be nice to my uncle and don’t say anything.”
Lacey’s big sneakers make her legs look even thinner. “I don’t lie to Dee,” she says.
“Fine, tell my uncle you saw me, but leave out that you saw him.”
“You ought not get mixed up with that family.” Lacey finishes the milk and throws it in the trash.
“It’s between him and me, not them.”
Lacey looks at her. “I could slap you silly.”
Harlan pulls his truck up to the entrance. The window comes down and he nods to Lacey, then says to Billie, “Ready?” His hair curls up beautifully, terribly from under his hat.
“Yeah.” Billie’s face flushes down her neck.
Lacey flicks the ash from her cigarette. “You remember me?” she says to Harlan.
He nods. “You’re one of Debbi’s friends.”
“Used to be. But she’s what my mama calls a bad penny.”
The only fight Billie got in at school was with a girl who shoved her against the sink in the smokers’ bathroom. At fifteen, the girl had tattoos and there were rumors that she’d had two abortions and been in a gang. There was a creamy brightness to her, made starker by the dark lipstick. You think you’re cute, the girl said. Afterward, when Billie saw her in the hall, it was like they were searching for each other. The girl knew about the world in ways Billie only suspected. But then her mother moved them again.
As the truck pulls away, Harlan says, “So you do know her.”
“Not as well as you, I imagine.”
“I don’t know her at all!”
Billie looks out her window. “She’s seeing my uncle.”
“Then why did you lie about it?”
“I didn’t know if I could trust you.”
He brakes at the stoplight and looks at her. “And now?”
“Everything is different now.” She reaches over and takes off his hat, running her unbroken hand through his hair.
Jim McGee
HE DIDN’T KNOW THEN WHY HE THOUGHT OF HER AFTER CHARLOTTE was born, staring at his baby girl through the nursery glass. But in retrospect it seems appropriate. His fine old dad had sped his Plymouth straight from the country club where he had been meeting up with some committee buddies. He arrived still in his golf clothes and stood next to Jim, eyes straining behind his glasses to find the tiny infant under all those tubes and wires. His mother had left her bridge club or some such thing and brought Marlene’s hospital bag stuffed with nightgowns and Pond’s cold cream, which in their rush to get Harlan squared away with his sister-in-law, he and Marlene had forgotten at home. His father was not an affectionate man, but in front of the nursery he put an arm around Jim’s shoulders. Jim thought about toy soldiers, lightning bugs, begging for ice cream from the icebox.
At the hospital, Marlene almost never spoke, lighting up only when they brought Harlan to visit. Gone was her talk of Charlotte being a sweet little majorette or growing up a Cotton Queen like Marlene had been, organizing luncheons and charity events. Marlene thought it important that a woman be civic-minded.
He had thought this kind of thing happened to his grandfather’s generation or great-grandfather’s when the Delta was still being carved out from the swamp and brush and people died from infected wounds and a whole host of fevers, when you were lucky if out of ten kids you kept six. He’d never understood how any parent lived through the death of their child, and yet here he was living out the unimaginable.
Later, his mother came to the nursery carrying Harlan, who had cut-up knees from falling in the playhouse that his father had built. His father was so gentle with his grandson. Not at all like he’d been with him. Harlan adored his Poppaw.
“Is that her, Daddy?” Harlan reached for him and Jim took the boy in his arms, noticing that he was wearing something different from when they had dropped him off that morning.
“Yes, Bubba, that’s Charlotte.”
“Is she sick?”
He wanted to lie, but he shouldn’t because the baby was dying. If he just didn’t think that word dying, he could get through it.
“A little bit, honey. She came kinda early and is having trouble with her breathing.”
“Her lungs Grandma said.” Harlan looked at him in sad triumph.
“That’s right.”
A life in three days. What could that life know? What did he want her to know? Warmth? Safety? Soft voices? Could she feel she was loved in that space of time so soon from the cave of the womb? God’s plan. God’s plan.
Then Harlan laid his head on his shoulder, and Jim got a flash of Billie, who had done the same when he rocked her in the spare room. Was that it? Was it a part of God’s plan to show him what it felt like to have a daughter taken away?
Jim isn’t surprised by the fact of Dee calling him, but by the sound of his voice on the phone. A voice worn with cigarettes and resentment. Cliff used to like to hear his little brother sing. Thought he had the better voice. Mailed him records all the time. The Four Tops, James Brown.
“I ain’t want to call, but felt I had to.”
Jim sits down with the cordless. He spills Diet Coke on the couch and stands up. Nowhere can be comfortable when he is scattered between decades like this.
“What’s on your mind?”
The Gone Dead Page 18