by Larry Brown
The top was down on the Mustang and the seats were burning her legs. She had a little buzz starting. Traffic was bad. At the red light she had the radio going loud, tapping her fingers on the wheel to the beat of the tunes. She liked oldies stuff best, mostly hits from the sixties. Some boys in a pickup of mixed colors pulled up beside her and gave her a lookover, and she gave them back a blank face behind sunglasses.
She drove past used car lots with bright plastic pennants fluttering and snapping in the wind and by furniture stores and fast food joints sitting shoulder to shoulder, all of them so packed with cars it made you wonder how so many people could be off work at one time.
She went to the liquor store first, same one she always used. She only said what was necessary in there to get her little bottles, one from the cooler. She stashed the bottles in the car and walked over to the Winn-Dixie and was soon pushing a cart, getting things quickly, dropping them in, hurrying on down another aisle. Sam wasn’t getting off until six and she and Fay would have plenty of time to lie out on the sand and talk. She got a cold six-pack of Bud tallboys and then backed up and grabbed a four-pack of strawberry wine coolers and put them in the cart. Then she reached back and got another one.
At the seafood counter she looked down at pale gray shrimp clustered on their beds of chipped ice and rang the bell and got the young woman back there to weigh up two pounds of them. She waited and then saw the shrimp boil stacked in a display a few feet away and got a box of that, too. The girl handed over the white wrapped package and said Thank you ma’am and Amy went on down the floor, getting bacon, eggs and bread, lemons and cocktail sauce and mayonnaise and crackers. She got some pork chops and a bag of flour. She got a gallon of chocolate ice cream. The line wasn’t long at the checkout counter and she had already begun writing her check when the cashier started ringing her things up. In just a few minutes she was out the door, walking fast, a tall boy behind her with a green apron carrying two bags. He leaned over into the backseat and set them down and she gave him a five-dollar bill just because she could.
“Thanks a lot, ma’am,” he said, and grinned.
She gave him a smile and got back into the car. There wasn’t any reason she couldn’t take off for an afternoon every once in a while. There was plenty of money in the bank and the house was almost paid for. And it didn’t hurt to buy the things she’d been buying for Fay. The clothes were things she needed, the glasses, too.
She pulled back out into the street and turned east at an intersection beside monster trucks with loads of new lumber chained down tight or Low Boys with dozers sitting on their flat beds, mud crusted on them like mortar. The convertible wasn’t good in town in the summer. But it was good out on the road. That was when she could turn the music way up and sing along with it, let the wind make a mess of her hair if it wanted to.
The traffic stopped and balked and went along and she went along with it, her arm hanging over the side of the door. She wished they’d all just get out of her way. But people kept turning off, and changing lanes, and she had to watch everything and be careful. In a little bit more she’d be out of it for good, could take a nip. Then she could open a beer and get on home. Ice down those wine coolers and walk down to the beach with Fay.
She got to the city limits and into a fifty miles per hour zone and reached down for one of the sacks. She held the wheel with her elbow long enough to push down the paper and twist off the top and get a sip. She reached into a grocery sack between the seats and got a beer, leaving town behind her, trucks and cars in the rearview, the cracked concrete road open and sunny and coming under her as she sped up.
She had a sudden craving for a cigarette and just pushed it to the back of her mind. She’d been quit four years now and it had been very hard for her. She always kept a pack in her purse, and a lighter, to remind herself that she could have one if she wanted it bad enough. But then she would think about how hard it had been to quit and what she would have to go through again if she started back, and that made it easier to try and push the craving away. But going down the road like this, the music playing, just having one between her fingers to trail smoke out … it would have been nice.
She went under the Highway 55 bridge and hit the sixty-five zone and pushed it up to seventy-five and held it there, passing what was coming off the ramp, swinging wide into the other lane. Trucks and more trucks, she didn’t know how there could be so many. And all of them bound for different places, cities she’d never heard of up north and far south, too. Sam said he got sick of driving. She imagined truckers did too. But she didn’t. She loved to drive and always had.
A tractor far up ahead was towing a hay baler, yellow lights flashing. She went around it and saw a man up on the seat in a felt hat, overalls, smoking the nub of a cigarette. What a hot job he had, turning and turning the wheel again in some dry green field, the chaff of the cut hay blowing over him, going down the neck of his shirt, getting into his eyes. That’s what she thought as she passed him. An old man, had probably been at farming all his life.
The sky up above was clear and blue with scattered white clouds rolling high and far away. Such a good day to lay out on a blanket. She glanced at her watch. She’d be home soon.
The road was patched with black tar in wide melting ribbons and she went by some orange trucks with barricades set out for the guys. Somebody would come blasting along once in a while somewhere and run over somebody out working on the road. Sometimes they even ran over troopers who had somebody pulled over. Sam had seen it happen. She knew there was a lot of bad stuff he saw. She could tell it in the way he came in on some days that something bad had happened. He wouldn’t have that happiness in his step like when he was going fishing. He’d just change clothes and get a beer and go sit out on the deck. She’d stand there at the door and look at him and wonder what smashed body he had seen or how many of them and if any of them had been children. That always tore him up worse than anything. Sometimes he would take the boat and go out and be gone for hours and wouldn’t come in until dark or after. She tried to let herself think she didn’t know what he could be doing out there on that water all by himself for so long at a time, but really, she knew he wasn’t by himself, and what he was doing. It was okay. He evidently had to have somebody to do it to. Just as long as she didn’t have to do it anymore. It wasn’t fun anymore. So she didn’t worry about it. And didn’t think about him touching the bare skin of her breast inside her blouse in the backseat of his daddy’s Impala. That was a long time ago. You couldn’t bring that back.
Up ahead buzzards were sailing the sky in lowering circles, a big black whirling mass of them erupted from some dense cedar roost in a dim and hidden forest. Nasty things and she hated to even look at them. Always eating something dead and so many of them they must have found a horse or a cow.
She kept her eyes on the road until she got to a place where she couldn’t see them anymore. She passed the cemetery where Karen was buried, glancing out that way, knowing exactly where that little plot of ground lay behind a thin line of young trees. Sometimes she still wished that Karen was over at Verona, at her family’s graveyard. But Sam had convinced her that it would be too far to go visit, and she guessed he’d been right. She was closer to them here and they could come more often to put down flowers and just sit. And weep. And weep and weep and weep. That had gotten old too. Now she didn’t visit as much.
She wondered if Karen could see what was going on wherever she was, wondered if she knew about Fay taking her place kind of and if she would approve. She thought maybe she would. They’d just kept her in too tight, hadn’t let her date, hadn’t wanted anything to happen to her, and look where she wound up. Wasn’t that the worst thing to fear, that your child would die? Wasn’t it probably like that the world over? Now look where she was. Lying in a hole in the ground. She couldn’t stop thinking about it. Awful things and awful thoughts like that all day long and even at night and sometimes especially at night. It was so much easier to go to slee
p when you were drunk, and if you could function drunk and get yourself from place to place it was even better.
She really wanted a cigarette. They were right in there, too, a whole fresh pack of Salem 100s, and a lighter. He couldn’t raise hell with her if she started back. He’d seemed glad she’d quit, had said he wished he could. And she said Well you can quit if you want to bad enough. She’d been proud of herself, and that pride would be seriously wounded if she finally broke down whizzing up the road like this and opened the pack and took one out and lit it.
She thought maybe it would pass if she just kept on driving, so that’s what she did. For a while it worked. She looked at the houses set back from the road and admired the flowers the people had planted and listened to the music on the radio. She thought of what she needed to do in her own yard, trim the flower beds and prune some of the young trees she had planted, rake up some more of the pine needles. There wasn’t much grass to cut and she was glad of that. Sam never had liked cutting grass. It was one of the few things he’d ever complained about. He always said it seemed like such a waste of time. But it wasn’t, not if you wanted your place to look nice. Still she was glad their yard was mostly woods. It was one less thing for them to fuss about.
Once in a while she passed a solitary car. There wasn’t much traffic on the road right now. She kept thinking about the cigarette and it wouldn’t leave her alone. Just one or two puffs would do, then she could throw it over the top of the door.
She got her little bottle over in her lap again next to the beer and bobbled across the center line just a bit getting the top off. But there was nothing behind her and she took a good long drink, then capped it and put it in the other bucket seat within easy reach. She was about done with the first beer and she finished it just as a car topped the hill in her rearview mirror. She watched that mirror constantly when she was driving and drinking because she knew how easy they could slip up behind you if you weren’t paying attention. She dropped the can into the floorboard behind her and wrenched another one loose from the sack.
And Fay smoked too. It wasn’t easy being around them when they smoked all the time and all they wanted to. Fay would be smoking this afternoon while they were down on the beach and she’d have to lie there and smell it. And she could smell so good now. Before, when she’d smoked, she hadn’t been able to smell hardly anything. That had come back, and her taste for food had come back. Sitting out on the deck now she could smell the trees and her flowers and sometimes even the fish that had washed up on the sand. Everything tasted so good.
She just didn’t think she could wait any longer for one. She hated to go back to smoking. But she wanted one real bad. Worse than ever.
“Fuck it,” she said, and reached into her purse and found the slim package and pulled it out, her fingers almost shaking. She didn’t let herself think about what she was doing. She pulled off the cellophane strip and tore the clear stuff off the top and flipped the box open. The car got closer behind her and started around to pass. She held the wheel steady with both hands on it and took out one cigarette. The car went around and pulled over in front of her and started drawing away. She took another sip of her beer and then put the pack down on the console and stuck the cigarette between her lips. She pushed in the lighter.
God it was good going down. She wasn’t used to it and so she coughed a little at first, but oh it was good. Yeah, it was fine. How in the hell had she made it this long? And why in the hell would she have to hide it from him anyway? Didn’t he do what he wanted to? Why couldn’t she do the same?
Smoking again. Having one between her fingers. All the gum and the candy she’d put in her mouth and getting hypnotized in Tupelo and quitting over and over and for what? Just to wind up with one in her hand again anyway. If quitting made you unhappy then why in the hell quit? As far as it killing you, hell, she could get killed out on the road this afternoon but that didn’t mean she was going to. You could get killed walking across the street in town. My God, a three hundred pound chunk of frozen shit could fall out of an airplane and come right down on you in your easy chair while you were reading the new Danielle Steel. Shit, you could get killed going to church. Heart attack. Bam. Something was going to get you.
She turned the radio up a bit more. Some more cars were coming around her now because she’d slowed down some. There wasn’t any need in being in a hurry. That ice cream and stuff was back there, true, but it was wrapped up good and it probably wouldn’t melt even if she did ride around a little before she went home. Get a buzz and then go home, that was the deal. And there wasn’t any need in making a big deal out of her going back to smoking. Wasn’t any need to try and hide it from him.
She thought about getting off Highway 6, maybe take a side road down through the country somewhere. There were roads she used just for that sometimes. Until Fay had come, there hadn’t been any real reason to hurry home after work. Half the time or most of the time Sam wasn’t there anyway, and even if he was, there wasn’t much for them to talk about. She knew what being a state trooper was like by now and he knew what being a hairdresser was like by now. He stopped people and wrote tickets and she stood on her feet all day and fixed women’s hair and in between customers went back to her office and took little drinks of this or that. The restaurant next door had a bar and it was always good for a couple at lunch. Nobody complained or stopped coming into her shop. She was careful. She never had messed up anybody’s hair. But she remembered how nice and embarrassed that boy had been who’d pulled her over that time, that one who worked for the sheriff’s department, what was his name? Tim? Tom? Tony. Tony McCollum. And he didn’t do anything but make her sit there while he called Sam. She watched for cops behind her now. She wasn’t going to get slipped up on again.
And it might be better to get off this road anyway. Everybody was going to get off work before long and they’d all be on this highway. You had to watch what you were doing. You just had to keep up with what was going on around you.
Up there she thought was the road she wanted. It looked like the turnoff for that little crooked road that went up by that pretty church and that man’s big silo and that garden he raised every year with those big watermelons. She put on her blinker a little too soon and started to turn it off and kept it on and noticed somebody pretty close behind her, not acting like they were going to pass. It wasn’t a cop, it was just somebody. She hoped they weren’t going up the same road she was going to turn onto. Because that would mess everything up. The whole idea was to get off on a pretty road where you could drive slow and look at everything while you drank and thought everything over and if somebody was right on your bumper then you couldn’t even drink because then they’d be seeing what you were doing, riding around drinking.
The turnoff came up and she moved toward it and the other car behind her moved with her. Well shit. Goddamn it. Now everything was going to get messed up because of this person whoever it was following her. Not too close but close enough, too close for comfort because they could see her drinking from her can if she did and she didn’t want anybody to see her drinking if she wasn’t in a bar except Fay and Sam.
She got a drink anyway, shit, maybe the person couldn’t tell what it was. Usually she had one of those foam deals, a coolie or whatever they called it, to put it in, and then nobody could tell what you were drinking, might be drinking a Coke for all they knew, and you could drink pretty openly like that. A cop would have to be driving right beside your window just as you took a drink to see that red-and-white Budweiser top, and that wasn’t going to happen. But she’d lost her coolie somewhere.
She didn’t take a drink when she was in a curve.
She didn’t speed.
She kept her eye on the rearview mirror.
The person following her didn’t follow too close but the person followed her all the way down to the stop sign. And here was a good place for the person to turn off and go to the right or the left and then not be behind her at all.
&n
bsp; She came to a complete stop and looked both ways. The road was dead empty but she could hear the chug chug chug of a tractor and in looking up the other way to check for traffic she saw a boy working an old green John Deere slowly through a stand of young corn, the scratchers pulling at the dirt and dragging out the grass. She took off, glancing up at the driver behind her. The other car took off from the stop sign and didn’t turn, just stayed right behind her. She took another drink of her beer and started to get a little pissed off. What were the chances of this shit happening? Of somebody just coming along, the exact same time she came along, maybe somebody who lived on this road and had been in Memphis shopping all day long or something, just coming in at the exact right time to get behind her and mess up her drinking and riding around?
And it wasn’t like she did it all the time. But once in a while she liked to do it. It made her feel like back in the old days, when they rode around all the time in his daddy’s car. And finally did it in there too. And pretty soon were doing it all the time in there. But Lord all that was a long time ago. She had been a girl then. It had been a long time since she’d been a girl. And once you lost that it was just lost forever. You didn’t even know when it happened. One day it just was. You were a grown woman. And getting old was nothing but a drag. She wondered if Sam’s woman was young, and if she was pretty. She bet she was. She wondered, idly, where they met when they did, how long they stayed together, what kind of things they might say to each other.
She didn’t even need to be riding around, Fay was looking for her to be home. But Fay could always lie on the beach by herself. She wasn’t ready to go home just yet. In a little while, sure, just not right now. There was too much to think about right now. Sometimes when you got out and rode around you could get in the right frame of mind to think about things and this felt like one of those times. You couldn’t just call them up. They just arrived sometimes and you had to go with the flow of them.