by Jim Kokoris
“Bear, you still think you’re a gardener, don’t you? Mr. Green Thumb.”
“Hell, you come out here in spring and summer and look at my garden. I ain’t embarrassed about beauty.”
It was dark out now. I couldn’t see anything but a shadow from a small light on the table in the middle of the room. I knew it was night and even though I didn’t want to, even though I wanted to get up and run far away, back home to Wilton, I fell back asleep and floated away like a falling leaf on a windy day.
THE NEXT MORNING I was hungry and ate the three bowls of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes that Carl the Bear gave me.
“Wish I had something else to make for you,” he said. “Scrambled eggs or something. I can run out to the store if you want. Though it might take awhile. I’m ten miles from town.”
“I’m okay,” I said.
“Hey, you say that word a lot.”
“What word?”
“ ’Okay,’ ” Carl the Bear said.
I nodded my head.
“You want one more bowl?”
“Okay,” I said and Carl the Bear laughed, then smoothed his black beard with his paw of a hand. He was a huge man, much heavier and taller than Bobby Lee, and filled space in a way that took my breath away. His arms were meat and steel, his neck a knot. Despite his size, there was a softness in him, ample room in his wide, smiling eyes, and I could immediately tell that he was nothing like Bobby Lee.
“How do you like Kentucky?” he asked as I started in on another bowl of cereal.
“Kentucky?” I had assumed we were in Tennessee.
“Kentucky,” Carl the Bear said. “Fifteenth state in the union. Home of fast horses and faster women. You’re just outside of Bardstown. It’s a nice place. Quiet and clean. Bourbon capital of the world.”
I kept eating my corn flakes. They needed sugar but I didn’t ask for any. Carl the Bear was being nice enough and I didn’t want to make any unnecessary demands. I knew he was my salvation.
He folded his large hands on the table like he was praying. “Moved here from Memphis a long time ago. Hell, I’d like to go to Chicago sometime, but never have. Maybe I will, I don’t know. Kentucky kind of gets a hold of you. Of course, I’d probably say that if I lived in Iowa. I don’t like to travel, I guess.”
“Are you Bobby Lee’s brother?”
Carl the Bear stood up from the table and walked over to the small kitchen counter where he poured himself a cup of coffee. “Unfortunately, I am. There are two things a man can’t control and who your family is is one of them. The weather is the other in case you’re ever asked.”
He sat back down and blew on his coffee before taking a sip.
“You know your father is misguided,” he said. “I’m talking about Bobby Lee here, not your Chicago father. He’s always been on the wrong side of everything.” He blew again and sipped. “I want you to know something about your blood. We ain’t all trash like him. I went to the army and spent three years at Bowling Green University. The folks over at Jim Beam are high on me, say I got a future. I got to go back and get my degree though, if I’m going to move farther ahead. I pulled myself up, he didn’t. It was his choice. Our sister did okay too. She’s an emergency room nurse in Lexington. She’s the head nurse now, runs the show. Hell, she’s talking about going on to med school. Hell, if anyone can do it, she can. You look a little like her, now that I think about it.”
He got up and walked over to the counter and poured more coffee, then sat back down at the table, the wooden chair creaking. “You know, he shouldn’t have taken you on this little trip, but I figure that if he returns you himself, he’ll get off light. He won’t hurt you. So you just hang in there. You’ll be home soon, probably tomorrow night, depending on traffic. I know I’m taking a risk by not calling the police, but he’s my brother. I’m doing this for my mother.”
Mention of his mother made him fall silent. He sipped his coffee, his mouth a hole in his beard. Glancing through the window over the kitchen sink, I saw slants of sun shining through bare trees. I didn’t see any other houses and sensed that we were deep in the woods. Carl the Bear’s house was small, just two rooms, but it was clean. Books lined one wall and pictures of fish and dogs lined the other. On the table, there was a small vase with dried yellow flowers.
He saw me looking around. “What do you think of my bear?” he asked.
I looked up at the bear. Its mouth was terrifying, but its teeth looked yellow and faded, its eyes glassy marbles.
“It’s okay. It’s big, I mean.”
“In case you’re wondering, I won it in a poker game about twenty years ago, while I was in college. I tell women that I killed it though, it impresses them, especially if they ain’t educated. Uneducated women impress easily. Hell, I don’t bring many women back here now though. I’m getting old. Old as that bear.”
When I finished my cereal, he picked up my bowl and brought it over to the small sink in the corner, where he rinsed it out and carefully dried it using a bright red cloth. He turned around and crossed his huge arms in front of him. “Wish the circumstances were different so you could stay awhile, get to know each other,” he said with a small smile.
Then he shook his head. “But circumstances ain’t different, so you gotta go. Your family’s up north.”
AFTER I FINISHED breakfast, Bobby Lee came back from the gas station and I got in the van, in the backseat, ready to leave. I still wasn’t feeling very well, but my fever was gone and I was riding a wave of hope that I was going home.
“Take care, Mr. Okay,” Carl said, leaning through the window and handing me a piece of paper with a phone number on it. He turned to Bobby Lee and said, “I don’t get a call from this boy’s father in twelve hours saying that he’s safe, I’m calling the cops and they’ll hunt you down like the goddamn dog that you are, little brother. You returning him is your only chance and I’m giving it to you, out of respect for our mother. And once you get back to Chicago, keep driving north into Canada. They ain’t very smart up there and maybe they’ll fall for some of your shit.”
Bobby Lee stared straight ahead, quiet.
“Here,” Carl said. He handed Bobby Lee two brown bags. “Some soda and snacks for the boy in one, and those tulip bulbs in the other, for the cemetery. If you ever get around to goin’, that is. Knew that woman since kindergarten and you still ain’t paid your respects. Kind of man are you?”
“Hell, I just found out where she was and I’m going to see her,” Bobby Lee said. “Going straight there.” He took the bags and put them on the front seat next to him. Then he started the van up and pulled out, shooting gravel and smoke.
We drove through country that any other time I would have thought pretty, past hills that Bobby Lee called knobs. “They’re just like hills but they call them knobs here for some reason.” Bobby Lee talked softly, looked almost peaceful, driving with one arm out the window, his hair blowing back in the breeze. Every so often, he would point something out to me. “Over there’s a buzzard roost, or used to be at least,” he said, pointing to a strand of trees. “Behind the trees, buzzards flocked there, hang out together. Quite a site. I remember coming up this way before with your mom. We were thinking of moving here. Long time ago. Used to come here a lot, she had family in Louisville. A cousin.”
When we passed a bronze historical marker by the side of the road, he slowed down and pointed. “Over there’s Knob Creek,” Bobby Lee said. “Abe Lincoln was born near here.”
“I thought he was born in Illinois,” I asked, honestly interested.
He shook his head. “Nope, Old Abe’s a southern boy.” He smiled. “See what you learn from your daddy?”
We drove for awhile longer on winding roads that weaved and dipped, past more knobs and wide, rolling fields. It was a clear, unseasonably warm day and I could smell the earth through Bobby Lee’s open window, raw and fresh. Soon, the hills flattened out and we passed through a small town of clean, bright storefronts.
“Bard
stown,” Bobby Lee said. “Used to drive up here with my high school buds all the time. Visit the distilleries, see if we could get some samples. It was a long drive up from Memphis, but one of my buddies had a brother who worked at one of the stills, in shipping. Used to give us two, three cases. Made the trip worthwhile. You ever been to a distillery? Where they make bourbon? Hell, we’ll drive by one in a few minutes, I think. Used to be right off the main road.”
We were through the streets of Bardstown and back out on the main road in minutes, Bobby Lee driving leisurely, his eyes at ease, the ride and the countryside calming us both. I opened my window a crack to let the warm air in.
“What are those?” I asked. Up ahead, I saw several large black buildings emerging in the distance. Dozens stood on the hills, watching us in silence like brooding sentries. As we approached them, they looked old and weathered and I was sure they creaked and swayed in the slightest wind.
“Those’re rackhouses,” Bobby Lee said. “Got whiskey aging in them. Open your window more, go on now, all the way down. Now smell that Kentucky air. Take a deep breath. Go on. Smells sweet, don’t it? Lots of the bourbon in those rackhouses goes straight up into the air. The angel’s share, they call it. The angel’s share. Hell,” he said, “hope your mom’s getting her share up there. Old Amy liked her bourbon.”
We passed a final grouping of rackhouses, then the road opened up to a four-lane highway. Bobby Lee shut the window, and ran his hand through his hair. “I miss your mom. I didn’t think I did, but I do.” He looked over at me and started to say something else but stopped short. Then he leaned forward and turned the radio on. “Getting hungry,” was all he said.
I fell asleep after we crossed a large bridge that seemed to stretch on forever. When I woke up, Bobby Lee was studying a map, his face scrunched up. We were in a gas station, parked in back, under a light by the men’s room. He was drinking from a new bottle, taking hard pulls again. A lit cigarette burned in the ashtray. My heart sank.
“Maybe we’ll head out to Utah,” he said. “Ever been to Utah? They got Mormons out there. Might be a nice place to grow up. They got mountains, lakes. Not many people and the Mormons are supposed to be nice enough. They respect privacy.”
“I want to go home,” I said.
“Home?” Bobby Lee said. He put down the map and turned the key in the ignition. “Home is where the heart is. Didn’t you know that? Ain’t your heart with me now? Your blood daddy?” He took another drink from the bottle with one hand, the other still on the steering wheel. “Hell, we got a lot of catching up to do, you and me. You know, we didn’t do much talking at those meetings before. All those blood-sucking lawyers watching us. I never felt comfortable and I know you didn’t either. So I only think it’s right that we spend some unsupervised time together.”
“Then can I go home?”
“We’ll see what happens. Let’s go get something to eat now though. I’m hungry and need some burgers.”
We stopped at a restaurant off the highway and sat in a booth in the very back against the wall. After we ordered, Bobby Lee made me change seats with him so he could look at the door. “I want to see who’s coming and going,” he said. “I’m a people-watcher.”
I tried to eat the pancakes he ordered me, but my stomach started to hurt, so I just ate a little bacon and drank water. Bobby Lee ate his cheeseburgers like a rabbit, sinking his two front teeth into them and swallowing in noisy gulps. The peaceful look was gone now, in its place hard tightness.
“So what you think of my big fat big brother, Carl?”
“He’s okay.”
“Yeah, I think he’s an asshole. Always has been. Don’t know why I wasted my gas to go see him. He’s always putting me down. Never had much of a relationship with him. Brothers supposed to get along. Not us though. He’s difficult. You know what a contrarian is? It’s someone who always does the opposite of everyone else. That’s what Carl calls himself. A contrarian, like it’s a doctor or something. Hell, contrarian is just another word for asshole as far as I’m concerned. He can’t get along with society. That’s why he never married and lives alone in that little house in the middle of nowhere. He’s a misfit.”
The waitress came by with a beer for Bobby Lee. While she was refilling my water glass, a large man, wearing blue overalls and a baseball cap, sat down at the table next to us and picked up a menu.
“So, what’s it like being rich and everything? That old man buy you any thing? Hope he did, he won a hundred and ninety million, shit. I read that he got it all in one check too. One goddamn check. He’s a goddamn greedy bastard. He didn’t do anything to earn that money. It’s taxpayers’ money. He should have spread it around, made other people happy. What’s he do with all that money?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You don’t know, huh? Hell, I know what I do. Spend it, even though I probably couldn’t spend it all. I’d buy a big house though, a ranch or a farm. Pay cash too. No mortgage. ‘Right here, boy,’ I’d say and hand over the money to buy it. Got it right here.”
I drank some more water and looked around the restaurant. A few more people had filtered in, sitting down at the counter and around the small tables with an experienced weariness. Most of them were men wearing baseball caps and smoking cigarettes. They all had a dusty, worn-out look about them. Out in the parking lot, silent trucks threw huge shadows.
Bobby Lee finished his cheeseburger. “So what did you do all that time up there with your mother?” he said.
“We drew pictures sometimes.”
“Hell, I can’t imagine her up there with that old guy. Hell, she never loved him. She just felt safe with him, that’s all. Hell, he’s ancient.”
“He’s not so old,” I said.
“Hell, he’s older than shit. And he knew she didn’t love him too. That’s why he don’t love you. You ain’t his son,” Bobby Lee said, his eyes on fire. I looked down at the table.
He lit a cigarette, waved the match out, then blew smoke up in the air. “Hey, you driving that truck out there?” he asked the large man at the table next to us. “That bourbon truck?”
“Yes, sir, I am,” the man said, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “But that ain’t bourbon. That’s Jack Daniel’s.”
“That’s bourbon,” Bobby Lee said.
“No, it’s not,” the man said and kept eating. “That’s Old Number Seven and that’s Tennessee Whiskey.” He smiled. “Know you Kentuckians don’t hold it in high regard, know you like your Jim Beam.”
“What’s the difference?” Bobby Lee asked.
“Way it’s made.” He took a sip from his coffee. “Run it through some charcoal. I really don’t know how they make it; I just drive the truck and load and unload.”
“You drink a lot of that stuff?”
“I don’t drink any of it. I don’t believe in it.”
“You don’t believe in what? Drinking? Hell, what’s to believe in, you just open your mouth and pour it in.”
“I know a lot of decent people who drink, but I choose not to. I don’t believe it’s God’s way.”
“God’s way,” Bobby Lee repeated. He blew smoke straight up in the air again. “So God don’t like bourbon, huh? What, he a Scotch man then?”
The man laughed. “I doubt that.”
“Oh, that’s right, he probably likes wine.”
The man kept eating his dinner, chewing loudly. Bobby Lee blew some more smoke and coughed a little. Outside, I could hear trucks roaring past on the highway.
“So, you like driving that truck?” Bobby Lee asked.
“Yes, sir. It’s a living and a good one. It provides.”
“Provides what?”
“A living.”
“Oh. You got kids?”
“I got four.”
“Four kids,” Bobby Lee said. “I got just the one here.” The man looked over and smiled at me. “Just the one,” Bobby Lee said. “Hey, they hiring over at Jack Daniel’s?”
“The
y might be. Always looking for good drivers.”
“Hell, I could drive,” Bobby Lee said. “Man, I know how to drive. They pay okay?”
“Yes, sir,” the man said, swallowing. “They pay fine.”
“My brother works down at Beam.”
“Fine place to work, I’ve heard.”
Bobby Lee took another drink from his bottle of beer. “I don’t know, driving a truck all day, must get boring. Monotonous like. Same thing all the time. Same roads.”
“I like the quiet. Good time to reflect,” the man said.
“Reflect on what, like God stuff?”
“Sometimes, I think of the Lord, yes, I do.”
“You really believe in God then?” Bobby Lee said. “I don’t. You can if you want, but I don’t believe in anything invisible.”
“God’s not invisible. He’s everywhere you look.”
“Yeah, well, I guess I need glasses then.”
“You gotta look hard, but if you do, you’ll see Him.”
“Yeah, well, He can come looking for me, if he wants. I ain’t hard to find. How come you’re so sure that He exists?”
“I just know He does. He saved my life once.”
“Saved your life once. You in a war or something?”
“No. But I almost choked to death. On a chicken bone at a barbecue.”
“So, what did God do? Bang you on the back?”
“No. But I almost died and then I felt His presence and then the bone was dislodged from my esophagus.”
Bobby Lee didn’t say anything. He just repeated “esophagus” under his breath and let smoke stream out his nose like an angry bull. “Yeah, well, I don’t like chicken,” he said.
After a little while, the man finished eating and stood up, wiping his hands on the back of his overalls. He winked at me as he walked past and said, “Good night now.”
“Yeah, see you in heaven there, old boy,” Bobby Lee said. “And watch the old esophagus.” Then he grew quiet and lit another cigarette.
“You believe in God?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.