In the Forest of Light and Dark

by Kasniak, Mark

  After having declined my offer, my mama gave me a big hug and a kiss on the forehead like she usually does and had thanked me for being so thoughtful. I even thought I had seen a little tear creep out from the corner of her eye, but I could’ve been mistaken about that.

  So there we were… Poor, white trash with barely a pot to piss in. I really didn’t think things could have looked any bleaker for us. Well, I shouldn’t say that. Things can always get worse and usually do (recall our family motto) so, of course, they did. Because two days later, my Step Daddy Cade had been out drinking his troubles away down at Dougherty’s—which was a local shithole where the unemployed and the clinically depressed could go and piddle the last of their life away on PBRs, Schlitz, and Wild Turkey—and of course, he did something stupid which got his dumb ass arrested.

  Okay, so here’s how it went down, or at least, here’s how I could piece together it went down.

  My Step Daddy Cade had been in the bar with one of his long-time buddies, Beau Adkinson, and they were doing what everyone does at a bar, bending elbows and knocking back a couple of pilsners. And, guess who comes walking through the door? None other than that walking tub of cholesterol Ray Boone.

  Apparently, Ray takes a seat at the end of the bar and orders himself a shot and a beer. My step daddy’s friend Beau see him sitting there and says to my step daddy, “Hey, isn’t that the fat sumbitch who came on to your little girl?”

  My step daddy then takes a look down at the end of the bar and sees Ray sitting there so he gets up and walks over to confront him.

  Now it’s said, at this point my step daddy allegedly comes up behind Ray and well… He says that he had put two of his fingers into Ray’s back fat and said, “Hey, ain’t you Ray Boone the owner of the Boonies pizzeria?” To which Ray turned around to look at him and said, “Yeah, what’s it to ya, pal?”

  Then, rumor has it, that my step daddy then lit up a cigarette, exhaling the smoke right in Ray’s face and said, “Cera Singers, my daughter, and I don’t take to kindly to whatcha did to her.” I’m told that he does this all while now poking Ray in his chest with the same two fingers. And from what I’d heard from the people who had been there to witness it was that it was some real John Wayne type of bravado, bless his heart.

  Well, Ray then contentiously comes back at my step daddy saying, “Yeah, well… I don’t appreciate what that little bitch did to my eye.” All while given my step daddy a fuck-you stare.

  “You better watch who you’re callin’ a little bitch. And, ya better fuckin’ apologize for whatcha did to her!” My Step Daddy Cade then tells him, and now he’s really getting up in Ray’s face all while continuing to shove his two fingers even deeper into Ray’s chest, which I can imagine his fingers must have sunk pretty deeply into those fat tits of Ray’s.

  At this point, the people who were there to witness the argument said that Ray bolted upright off his stool staring my step daddy right in his face (It couldn’t have been eye-to-eye because Ray is a solid eight inches shorter than my step daddy.) and said, “Why don’t you, and that little whore of yours GO FUCK YOURSELVES!!!”

  It was at that moment that the bartender, Heather Newsom, started shouting at the two of them to knock-it-off or take-it-outside, or else she was going to call the cops.

  My step daddy had told me and my mama that at that moment he had contemplated what it was he was going to do next, but I don’t believe him. I know my step daddy’s temper when it comes to me and my mama, and what Ray Boone had said to him I’m sure had crossed a line. In fact, he probably had his mind made up about just what it was he was going to do the second he’d seen Ray’s fat ass sitting at the end of the bar. So, ultimately, my step daddy ended up slugging him, knocking Ray across the bar counter before tumbling to the ground over his stool.

  Heather then had no choice but to get on the phone with the police while Beau grabbed a hold of my step daddy dragging him out of the bar as my step daddy continued to yell obscenities at Ray.

  In the end, it had taken Ray five minutes to come back to his senses and recover from the punch. By then he had already developed a shiner on his left eye to match the one I’d given him on his right.

  On the law side of things, my step daddy ended up with a first degree assault charge, and a free ride to the police station, where he was later released on his own recognizance and given a court date to appear before the Honorable Judge Calvin Walker.

  Things could have been worse for him though because Calvin Walker ended up being the old man of one of my step daddy’s childhood friends, Frankie Walker. So, with a wink and a nod, my step daddy’s charge became dropped down to a misdemeanor disorderly conduct, and he was ordered to pay the minimum fine of 250 dollars, and do ten hours of community service. All in all, not bad for someone with several arrests in the past, and had a rap sheet stretching all the way back to when he was thirteen.

  My step daddy’s chivalry didn’t do us any favors in the financial department though. It meant that my parents most likely weren’t going to be able to make the mortgage payment for a third month in a row, and by now creditors were calling us day and night. It had rather become a lifestyle to which our phone remained almost permanently off the hook. To add to that, the pile of threatening collection letters arriving in the mail each day had made us all agonize at even going down to the end of the driveway to retrieve them from the box.

  *****

  After a week had passed since my step daddy’s arrest, he and I still hadn’t found any meaningful work yet. And instead of looking for work like I had done every day so far, my step daddy just spent most of his day on the couch drinking beers purchased with what little money we had left in savings. Which I’m sure was already earmarked for keeping the lights on or the water flowing.

  As he self-loathed on the couch while getting drunk, he would sulk to anyone who would lend him a sympathetic ear and gripe about how crummy his life was and how the world conspired against him. I thought it was really quite pathetic to watch a grown man act that way. At least his life wasn’t as bad as those pieces of white trash he’d spend all day binge watching on the Jerry Springer show, which he seemed to not be able to get enough of along with Maury, Montel, and Nancy Grace.

  But having known that my Step Daddy Cade had given up on looking for employment, I had decided that I was going to try again to give the money I had saved up for the Trans AM to my mama just as soon as she had gotten home from work at the salon. And this time I wasn’t going to take no for an answer. At the very least I reckoned it would’ve maybe bought her a little peace of mind if the bank and all the creditors quit calling and just left us alone for a little while.

  That evening when my mama did come home, I was all set to surprise her again with the money, but unfortunately as soon as I saw her getting out of the Family Truckster I could tell now wasn’t the best time to approach her. (And yes, we really do have a Family Truckster just like the Griswolds. It’s a piece-of-shit 1969 Pontiac Safari station wagon; pea green with faded and cracked beige leather interior and complete with rusted-out wheel wells.)

  But, like I’d said my mama was crying again which was shown to me by the handful of used Kleenex she was holding and her puffy, bloodshot eyes. (And yeah, I know, I’m starting to sound like a broken record. But my mama’s really sensitive though. At the time I thought it was just a New York thing because people from Alabama don’t seem all that uptight.)

  She had rushed past paying me no mind what-so-ever as I stood there in the driveway. Of course I had asked her, “What happened?” and then followed that up with, “Are you alright?” to which both questions garnered no response.

  After seeing my mama so upset yet again, I had decided not to follow her into the house. At the time, I really didn’t feel like dealing with whatever it was that happened this time. So, I figured I’d just duck out for a while escaping to Lettie’s house where I could stay in blissful ignorance for at least a bit longer before finding out what had Mama s
o upset.

  It didn’t do me any good though, because once I had gotten to Lettie’s all I could do was think about my mama and how upset she was. It had weighed on my mind so much that I just couldn’t block it out no matter how hard I tried. Not even after I had smoked a joint with Lettie and Tucker after he had showed up a while later with a few already rolled.

  After smoking, we had ended up watching television, and that didn’t help to get my mind off things either.

  Eventually, Gerralyn had stopped by along with another friend of ours, Marzie Kirkland. They had been sunbathing all afternoon down by the wharf where Marzie had received a good sunburn after having fallen asleep on her beach towel and forgetting to re-up her lotion.

  All of us had then ended up hanging out at Lettie’s for a little while longer and as soon as the episode of the Simpsons that we’d been watching had concluded we all then piled into the bed of Tucker’s pickup shooting over to Owen’s house. He by then had already used his brothers ID to pick up the refreshments for the evening in the forms of a bottle of cherry flavored vodka, and a thirty-pack of Keystone. We then set off for the woods not far from Owen’s house, where we knew of a nice little clearing in the trees where we could chill and have a fire without the fear of being busted.

  Having been still worried about my mama and feeling weighed down by all the money troubles my parents were having, I found myself hitting the bottle of cherry vodka pretty hard, and it wasn’t long before I felt my stomach begin to turn and I became nauseous.

  Now it may have just been the alcohol, but I had believed that the spinning world, I was experiencing may have also been aided by my lack of dinner that evening and the joint Tucker, Lettie, and I had shared earlier. Either way, before I knew it, there I was on all fours puking my guts out on a patch of ferns while Tucker held back my hair so I wouldn’t get vomit in it.

  Wow, two guys coming to my rescue in the span of a couple of weeks, what a lucky broad I was.

  Towards the end of the night, Tucker had offered to stay with me after everyone else had gone home because I wasn’t in any mood to go home just yet even though I was still feeling pretty ill. And, I definitely did not want to go home before midnight for fear that my parents might still be awake. The last thing I needed was for them to see me come stumbling into the house completely wrecked and reeking of cigarettes, weed, and cheap vodka.

  We had ended up hanging out by the fire and talking about nothing while we gazed up at the myriad of stars in the night’s sky, eventually ending up snuggled comfortably in each other’s arms. He didn’t even try to hook-up with me, which was nice, and a first, but now that I’m reminiscing about it. I’m pretty sure it was because I might’ve been messed up worse than I thought I was, or maybe it was the smell of vomit still on my breath that had something to do with it?

  Either way, at about two in the morning Tucker had taken me home and by then I had regained enough of my motor skills so that I was able to sneak back into my house without his assistance.

  The next morning I had slept in until almost noon, and when I had finally gotten up, I quickly hopped into the shower to wash the funk of last night off me.

  After getting cleaned, I then made my way to the living room where my Step Daddy Cade was already firmly perched at his usual spot on the couch watching television. He looked dressed for success in a dingy wife-beater and an old pair of ratty boxers and to me; he looked as if he was already half-crocked.

  I watched for a moment unnoticed as his attention appeared intently focused on today’s episode of Maury where newly mothered teens where arguing with their black boyfriends about whether they were the fathers’ of the Mulatto babies whose pictures appeared draped across a screen in the background.

  When I eventually did catch his attention he took one look at me and I then watched as a smirk curled up from around the corners of his mouth right before he had stashed it away behind his bottle of beer, taking a long swig.

  “Late night, I see.” he said sounding unusually jolly. And in that one sententious sentence I knew I’d been busted. There was no point in bullshitting him. He was too smart for that and had been down that road before. Besides, I was sure that the way I must have looked in my enervated hung-over state, I had what I’d been doing last night written all over me.

  “Yeah,” I said in response to his question right before I quickly ducked my head into the refrigerator to see if there was any O.J. left.

  As I searched for the juice the refrigerator’s cool air rapidly encompassed around my aching head and it felt really nice against my flush skin briefly ameliorating my headache. At that moment I had wished I could’ve just stayed in there forever.

  “Don’t worry, kid. Your secrets safe with me,” My step daddy then said to me before letting out a solid burp which he then followed up by lifting his leg so he could scratch his ass.

  “Thanks.” I said cautiously, not knowing if his silence was going to cost me down the road.

  “Don’t mention it.” He responded tipping back his bottle and draining the last of its contents in a series of quick gulps. “I don’t want your mama havin’ anything else to worry about on her plate right now. Things are bad enough as it is with the house bein’ foreclosed on and everythin’.”

  WHAT? I thought as I shot up my head from the refrigerator.

  “What do you mean, with the house bein’ foreclosed on?” I asked quizzically.

  “Yep, your mama didn’t want me tellin’ ya until after she’d come home from work tonight. That way we could break the news to ya together. But, you’re old enough now for us to stop beatin’ around the bush with that sorta thing and just tell ya the truth like an adult.

  “She had gotten a call from the Sheriff’s Office yesterday while she was at work. They told her that the bank had submitted all the proper paperwork needed to begin the foreclosure process on the house, and that we’d have to the end of July to get out.”

  So, that’s why she was crying when she’d come home from work yesterday, I thought.

  “But they can’t do that, can they?” I asked my step daddy pleadingly. But then before he could even open his mouth to say anything I started in again. “Don’t they legally have to give us a chance to pay, or at least a chance to try to set up some sort of payment plan or something?”

  “Just what-in-the-hell do you think a mortgage is?” he snapped back at me with a bite of sarcasm to his tone. “They’re the bank. They own this house. They can do whatever the hell they want. Besides, your mama already tried talkin’ to them about makin’ a payment, and I tried talkin’ to them again earlier this mornin’. But it was no use. They said that the filing process had already begun, and now there was no turnin’ back. The only way we can keep the house is if we pay off the loan completely, and that’s with includin’ the interest, the processin’ fees and whatever else they can find to pad the bill.

  “THE GODDAMN HOUSE IS ONLY WORTH SEVENTY-FIVE THOUSAND FOR CHRIST SAKE, AND WE STILL OWE EIGHTY-TWO!” He then shouted at me before taking another big sip from the new beer that he’d just popped the top off, swishing it around in his mouth before swallowing. “Ah, hell… Let them have the goddamn place.”

  “So where will we live?” I then asked hesitantly, my voice starting to break. And, as I waited for him to answer me, I found myself fighting a sob that was beginning to creep up in my throat.

  My Step Daddy Cade then glanced up at me with an ashen look on his face that I had never seen before. It was one of utter disdain and disgust for life. He then let out a sigh and said, “It’s alright, kid… Everythin’s goin’ to be just fine. Your mama and I will figure out somethin’. Don’tcha goes worrying about it. It’s our problem. Not yours. You just worry about gettin’ that money together for the Trans Am. Summer’s half over already, and Ida figured I’d seen you flyin’ around up and down the Gulf in it by now.”

  “Yeah, it’s comin’. I just got a little sidetracked is all,” I said now noticing the clear shakiness in my voi
ce. I then wiped my nose with my wrist after it had been beginning to run. “I just really didn’t plan on losin’ my job at the pizzeria.” I then told him.

  “Yeah… I know you didn’t, kid.” My step daddy then said to me in a more soothing tone as he sighed once again. “There are alotta crummy people out there.”

  “Look, I gotta go, all right.” I said as I picked up my backpack full of beachwear off of the kitchen table.

  “Sure, kid, sure.” Is all he replied back, and then I watched him pick up the clicker off the coffee table and began going through the channels on the television.

  “Oh, and Cera,”

  “Yeah, Dad,”

  “I mean it. Don’tcha goes worryin’ about any of this. Your mama and I have it under control. You just go about doin’ your thing on findin’ another job so you can get that Trans Am on the road. And, you’ll be needin’ to start thinkin’ about savin’ for college soon too. You only got one more year, ya know.”

  “Yeah, I know.” I said giving him a wan little smile. It was my way of trying to let him know that I would be alright. “I’m gonna head out now and see if I can find somethin’ at Jack’s. I heard they’re hiring.” (Jack’s is a Southern fast-food chain throughout most of Alabama, Mississippi, and I believe possibly in parts of Georgia. They’re your typical burger and fries joint.)