Fay: A Novel

by Larry Brown

  “You had anything to eat?” he said.

  “I had breakfast.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “I’m about to starve,” she said.

  “You like oysters?”

  It seemed like Amy had fried some one night, rolling them in yellow cornmeal like catfish and cooking them in a black iron skillet while the oil sizzled and spattered.

  “I think I had some one time,” she said.

  “Well, I tell you what.” He turned up his beer and finished it and put it in a plastic sack. “Let me see your beer can there.” She handed it. “I was going to go down to this bar down the road and have about a dozen on the half shell after while but since you just made me hungry talking about oysters I might as well go now. Why don’t you go back and change into your clothes and I’ll buy you something to eat?”

  She hesitated. She felt like she had sand all over her. But she thought there was a faucet back there where you could wash your feet and legs off.

  “You sure? I don’t want to put you out none.” She motioned toward all his stuff. “You had a pretty good little nest built there.”

  “I was about ready to go anyway. They got shrimp and steaks and stuff if you don’t like oysters.”

  “Well let me go change, then,” she said, and she got up. He was getting up, too.

  “I’ll be putting this stuff in the van,” he said. He pointed out toward the road. “There’s my van right over there. See that black one there?”

  She looked.

  “I see it.”

  “Just come on over when you get through. I’ll have it cranked up and the air going.”

  “Don’t you want me to help you with this stuff?”

  “I can get it. Won’t take me but two trips.”

  “Okay,” she said, and suddenly it seemed that everything in the world was right again, or at least better than it had been an hour ago. He probably wouldn’t mind going in somewhere and getting her some cigarettes. She turned away and walked quickly through the sand. She looked back once to see him watching her. She waved.

  The restaurant was cool and dark, the paneled walls hung with nets and mounted fish from the deep and shells and old anchors. The waiter led them to a table near the back where there was a glass window that let them look out over the harbor where all the boats were moored. When they were seated less than a minute the waiter reappeared and asked for their drink orders. She looked at Chris and he nodded almost imperceptibly and she ordered a beer. Chris asked for a frozen margarita and the waiter vanished. She looked around.

  “Not crowded, is it?”

  “We’re early,” he said. “About eight o’clock there’ll be a line out to the parking lot.” He picked up his menu and looked at it. She reached for her glasses in the purse and slipped them on.

  “They don’t check to see how old you are in a restaurant?” she said. She picked up her menu and opened it.

  “You’re on the coast now,” was all he said.

  The drinks came and the waiter poised with his pad and pen.

  “How about giving us a few minutes?” Chris said. “And may we have an ashtray, please?”

  “Yes sir, certainly,” he said, and left to fetch it.

  “Well, I know what I’m gonna eat,” Chris told her. “I’m gonna have a dozen or two on the half shell and maybe a cup of the gumbo. They have good gumbo here.”

  “What’s that?”

  He looked up from his menu to a spot somewhere just over her head.

  “Well it’s got rice, and shrimp, okra. It’s kind of like a brown gravy with all this stuff in it.”

  The waiter brought the ashtray and set it down.

  “You think I’d like that?” she asked.

  “It’s real good. If you don’t like it you can order something else.”

  She was nervous about picking up the beer in front of the waiter, was afraid he might ask her how old she was.

  “You want me to order for you?” Chris said.

  “Yeah. Why don’t you? I guess I’ll try that gumbo.”

  “I’ll order you some oysters too.”

  He ordered two dozen on the half shell and a cup and a bowl of the gumbo. He lifted his drink when she picked up hers, clinked his glass softly against her bottle.

  “You like this place?” he said.

  She nodded, smiling slightly. “I like to look out at the water. Reckon who all them boats belong to?”

  He sipped his drink and turned his head to them.

  “Just different people. Some of them are working boats, shrimpers, oysterboats. Some of those tall ones with the platforms are sportfishermen. They take people out in the Gulf for a day of fishing or six hours or however long they want to go. It’s a big business around here. And some people live on some of those sailboats and stuff.”

  “What do you do?” she said.

  He looked down at his drink and stirred it with his straw. He picked it up and sipped it again.

  “I’m a pilot,” he said.

  “Pilot?”

  “Airplane pilot. I work for a company over in Gulf Shores, Alabama.”

  She could only stare at him for a moment, then realized she was staring when the grin started to appear on his lips.

  “What’s the matter?” he said. “You’ve not ever talked to a pilot before?”

  “I’ve seen some of those crop dusters before. What kind of plane you fly?”

  “Well I’ve done some crop dusting before. Right now I’m towing signs.”

  “Signs?”

  “Yeah. You know, those long ones that say Eat at Joe’s or something. You’ve seen those, haven’t you?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, I make about two passes over the beach and then go back and unhook and put on another one. I do that all day long.”

  He didn’t sound happy about it and she wondered why. It sounded exciting to her.

  “Don’t you like it?” she said.

  He took a big drink of his margarita and set it back down. He watched the table for a moment and then looked up.

  “I can think of a hell of a lot of other things I’d rather be doing,” he said. “But, it’s flying.” He moved one of his shoulders as if that explained everything.

  A few more people were coming in the front door now. Some of them settled at the bar up front and she watched them. Mostly they looked like older people and she had seen a lot of them down here already. She sipped at her beer.

  “I’ve got some money,” she said. “Would you get me some cigarettes somewhere later on?”

  “What kind you smoke? Salem Lights? I’ll go get you some.”

  She reached for her purse. “Wait a minute,” she said. “Let me give you some money.”

  “That’s all right.”

  He got up from the table and she watched him walk away and she noticed now that he walked with a slight limp. He disappeared around a corner and then the waiter came down the aisle of booths carrying a little table with their food.

  “Here we are, ma’am,” he said. He set down the oysters and the gumbo and Fay looked at what was in front of her. Strange pale things on shells resting in beds of ice. A wedge of lemon speared with a narrow fork. A dish of red sauce and a paper container of something white and pasty beside it. She looked up at the waiter. He was laying out the silverware wrapped in napkins.

  “All right, ma’am, two dozen on the half shell, cup of gumbo, bowl of gumbo, will there be anything else?”

  “Ah …,” she said.

  “Would you like another beer?”

  She looked at the half-empty one in front of her.

  “I guess so.”

  “And what about the gentleman? Will he be having another margarita do you think? That’s okay, I’ll come back in a few minutes.” And he folded up his table and was gone again.

  She didn’t know what to do with the things in front of her. There was a tray of crackers on the table that had appeared from somewhere. She decided she�
�d better wait for Chris and some instructions on how to eat these things. After a minute he came around the corner slapping a pack of cigarettes against his open palm.

  “Salems were all they had in the machine,” he said. “Hope that’s all right. We can stop at a store later on if it’s not.”

  “Thanks,” she said, and put the smokes in her purse.

  “Boy they look good don’t they,” he said, and unrolled his napkin and put it in his lap. “Yes sir, mighty good.” He took the lemon off the fork and squeezed some of the juice over them, then got some of the crackers. He took the paper cup of the white stuff and dipped some of it into the red sauce. She watched him. He looked up. “Aren’t you going to eat?”

  “I never had this before,” she said.

  He watched her for a moment.

  “Oh, okay,” he said. “Just do like me. Squeeze some of that juice on. Put a little of that horseradish in your cocktail sauce. Open you a pack of crackers.”

  He dug right in. She did the things he’d told her to do. When she thought she had it ready she tried to spear one up with her fork but it kept sliding off.

  “You’ve got to kind of scoop it out of the shell,” he said. “Here. Watch me.” He slid one out, swirled it around in the sauce, popped it into his mouth and bit into a cracker. “Man these things are good,” he said, chewing. He picked up his glass and waved it at the waiter across the room, and kept eating. She could tell he was really enjoying them but she didn’t see how. To her they looked like some guts or something.

  She finally got one out of the shell and dropped it into the sauce and then almost couldn’t get it out. When she did it looked awful to her. She debated on putting something like that into her mouth. He was watching her. She was holding it in front of her mouth, just looking at it.

  “You’ve got to get used to them,” he said.

  She put it back into the shell.

  “I don’t think I can eat that,” she said. “It looks like a worm or somethin.”

  “A worm?”

  “Or somethin. It don’t look like nothin fit to eat.”

  He bent to his plate again. “Well if you don’t eat them I will. Try the gumbo, why don’t you?”

  She slid the saucer and the white china bowl over in front of her and smelled of it. Rich broth and rice and tiny shrimp that she could dip up with her spoon. She took a bite and it was delicious. It had some kind of leaves in it.

  “That’s not going to fill you up,” he said. “You’d better order something else. How’s that gumbo?”

  “It’s great,” she said, tearing open another pack of crackers. “It’s real good.”

  “Why don’t we order some shrimp to go along with this? I’m afraid you’re not going to get enough with just that.”

  “If you want to,” she said.

  He signaled the waiter and handed him his empty tray and picked up hers and set it in front of him, then ordered a pound of boiled shrimp and kept eating. Once in a while he would smile up at her. She ate all the gumbo and the shrimp arrived just as she finished. Outside the window the light began to lessen and the boats in the harbor became less distinct, the masts starting to fade into the coming darkness. When she looked out again the people had started leaving from the beach. He didn’t drink anything else but she had two more beers. At some point the waiter came and lit a candle and cleared the dishes away. He brought the bill and Chris handed him a credit card. The place was starting to fill up with people and it began to get noisier.

  And then at some point he was leading her out and he was holding her hand and she felt like she had whenever Sam took her out and then drove her back home. Almost. The front seats of the van were high-backed and soft and deep and the stereo lulled her with clear string music and the sigh of brushes on cymbals. They drove up the highway and looked at the lights and the houses and Jefferson Davis’s home with its long white fences and the big old trees standing in the yard. He reached back for another beer from the cooler. She had a cigarette going in her hand. The road led smoothly out of town somewhere, a soft sand road and houses set back from it with their mailboxes, horses standing in pastures and the smell of the ocean coming in through the windows. The van riding like a big boat itself and cushioning her from the bumps, him talking and her talking and the night stretching out before her and no worries now, just glad to be with somebody again once more taking care of her and letting her know that everything was going to be all right now, that she could ease up, that she was in good hands. In gratitude she leaned over and kissed him. His eyes glittered where they stared through the windshield at the trees passing by.

  He was already inside her when she woke up. A dim bulb was burning in the ceiling over his head so that she saw first the top of his head thrusting against the backdrop of the light. At first she was scared and then she got mad. She tried to push him off but he threw a hard forearm like a steel bar against her throat and when she tried to push him again he rammed her head back against the armrest and told her to be still, but she could not. He started panting in her ear. And in just a moment it was over for him. He turned his face up and strained against her and she said, “Why you chickenshit.” He lay there for only a moment and then he was coming off her even as she was going for his eyes with her fingernails. He slapped her and knocked her back. He reached for his shorts and underwear. The jack handle was sticking out from under her front seat and she reached and got it and caught him half-turning, a look of surprise coming onto his face, and the lick she gave him slammed his head against the brown pile carpet that lined the walls. Blood came out of his mouth and he spit out a tooth and tried to say something but she hit him again and then he was still, lying there naked curled on his side with one foot almost into the leg hole of his underwear and his tiny dick shrinking as she watched it, glistening, leaking.

  He had pulled only her panties and shorts off. One of her sandals was still on her foot. She found the other one in the floor and put it on and then took it back off and kicked the other one off and slipped on her panties and shorts and slid her feet back into the sandals. How to get out. She saw the handle for the door and pulled up on it but it wouldn’t move. She tugged harder and the whole side of the van moved backward and she didn’t know how he had gotten her back here in the first place. She had no idea where they were.

  She stepped out onto the sand. A cool breeze was blowing and she could see mounds of sand with tall grass growing on them. It had to be open water out past that, it was so dark. The lights on the other side were far far away.

  It took her a minute to find her purse. It was lying in the wheelwell by the front seat and she looked through it by the cab light to see that her money was still in there. He wasn’t a thief evidently. She could feel what he had put into her oozing out. She stuffed everything back into her purse and then noticed that the keys were still in the ignition. She looked back at him. A small trickle of blood had come out over his lower lip and was seeping into the carpet. But he was breathing, little bubbles of blood frothing. Still she almost went ahead and hit him again.

  She ended up dragging him by both feet out into the sand. She left his clothes in the back.

  She slid the side door shut and closed the passenger door and went around and got behind the wheel. One more thing to thank Sam for.

  It cranked at the first turn of the key. She groped for the lights and found the switch and pulled them on. She knew R was reverse and D was drive. Gas on the right, brake on the left. She slipped it into reverse and backed up until the lights were on both him and a clear trail that showed the tracks the tires had made on the way in. For a moment she considered running over him. Instead, she pulled it down into drive and pressed on the gas. She looked at the gauge. It was almost full.

  SHE WOKE IN the van beside the beach. It was not yet daylight but dawn was beginning to break out there at the rim of the water. She left the headlights on just to make sure that he’d have more trouble whenever he found it. And wishing more and more now as
she started walking back up the street that she’d done something more to him. Thinking about him being up in there where her baby was where Sam had put it.

  Only once in a while did a car or a truck come by. She crossed the road without any trouble and went up to the corner and turned up the hill.

  It took her thirty minutes to get back up to the trailer park and when she stepped into the yard the car was there, parked beside a pretty new pickup, and she could see a light burning in the back room where she had slept. It was full light by now and she listened to hear what she could. A thin squeaking.

  She moved around to the end of the trailer where a narrow screened window was cranked open near the roof. The trailer was shaking very gently, and she could hear some man saying, “Oh God, baby, oh fuck, baby.”

  She went back around to the front yard and walked over to the picnic table. It was wet with dew and she reached into her purse for the bottom half of her swimsuit and wiped a place dry to sit on. She sat. She unwrapped the pack of smokes Chris Dodd had bought her and tapped one out, found her lighter, lit it. The main thing she was wondering about was whether or not the children were in there, too.

  After a while she got sick at her stomach and walked out by the street and leaned against a tree and threw up a couple of times. She wiped her mouth and took another drag of the cigarette and headed back toward the picnic table. She didn’t want to sit there and listen to it, but she was tired and she had to sit somewhere. She walked off to one corner of the yard but she could still hear it, the grunting and the panting. And she didn’t want to sit on the ground. She went back to the table, and sat down to wait for the fucking to be over.

  After a while the RV began to shake very gently again. She pulled her cigarettes out of her purse and laid them on the table beside her. The sun started coming up.

  It was almost seven before a man emerged, an older guy in cowboy boots and jeans and a plaid shirt and a Western hat. He tipped this last to her, got into the truck, and spun out. The plates on the rear said Hinds County.