Trampoline: An Illustrated Novel

by Robert Gipe

  I tried to pull my hand away, but Pickle held on tight. I said, “I don’t know.”

  Pickle said, “You play basketball?”

  “Not really.”

  “You ought to.”

  “What are yall doing,” Decent said, blasting into the room on a wave of cold air, “playing patty-cake?”

  “I’se looking at this woman’s monster hands.”

  “Turn her loose, Pickle,” Decent said. “You aint got no business handling her like that.”

  Pickle reminded me of Cinderella, which I wish he hadn’t cause soon as I thought of Cinderella, soon as the idea of him come on my mind, here come the real Cinderella tramping through the door.

  Decent said, “We found this here going through your garbage cans, Crater.”

  “Shoulda shot him,” Crater said.

  “I wadn’t going through nobody’s garbage cans,” Cinderella said.

  “Look who’s here,” Pickle said. “Your old chauffeur.”

  “Well, I’ll be goddamned,” Cinderella said, “I ought to beat your ass or kiss you one, Dawn Jewell.”

  “Why you gonna kiss her? I heard she got you throwed in jail.”

  “She did,” Cinderella said, sniffing down in the chili pan. “If I’d been home that night instead of in jail? I’d of still been in jail and not for no drunk and disorderly. They’d a jacked that jail up and throwed me under it.”

  Cinderella come sit between me and that other girl. Keith Kelly stood facing me. He must have come in with Cinderella. He shook his head looking at us. Keith Kelly and his wavy brown hair. He could barely keep it under his hat. When I looked at Keith Kelly my stomach tightened, like there was somebody standing on a tire iron screwing down the lug nuts of my guts. I tried not to look at Keith Kelly, but when I did, my eyes locked down on him like a ray gun.

  He didn’t say nothing to me, but I could tell he was feeling his power over me. Him and his wavy brown hair was feeling their power over me same way every square-ass schoolteacher, every girl knew exactly what everybody else is wearing to school that day soon as her precious feet hit the floor in the morning, every kid who had both parents at home, got what was on his Christmas list, slept in the same bed in the same house every goddam night of his goddam life felt their power over me. I narrowed my eyes at Keith Kelly, and he didn’t do anything, sat there like a stone, like a clock, like a face on a campaign billboard.

  “Hi, Keith,” said that girl with the black-ring eyes, “How you doing, baby?”

  Keith Kelly didn’t say a thing, took in what that girl said like it was money somebody owed him. That girl settled back in the sofa and knocked Cinderella’s hand off her leg when he tried to pet her with it. She hadn’t quit on pretty Keith Kelly. She set looking at him like she would be making another run at him before the night was out, like he best not turn his head. Pickle Peters asked Keith Kelly for a cigarette. Keith Kelly said he didn’t have one.

  “Pickle, you don’t smoke,” said the black-ring girl.

  That house was dark, too dark. Nobody could see I still had mud from jumping off the mountain on my pants, still smelled of gas from the four-wheeler ride back to Denny’s, still had the smell of gauze in my nose from taking Momma to the hospital.

  “All is well. All is well.” Priscilla was trying to quiet somebody down in the kitchen who was going, “All is well. All is well.” There was a wood box yawning open like a drunk in church on the coffee table. Box was black-lacquered with brass hinges, red velvet inside, somebody’s dope box, a baggie full hanging out of it.

  “Want to burn one?” bleary Pickle said to me.

  I twinkled my fingers in front of Pickle’s eyes, told him to get back in his box. He raised his hands up in my face, hands like wood, and I got hold of his mother-trimmed bangs, a fistful of his hair, and I slapped his grizzly cheek with my other hand.

  “You don’t know what I’m feeling,” I said to Pickle Peters’s gape-mouthed face.

  They all laughed and the lugnuts tightened again in my belly. I turned loose of the front shank of Pickle Peters’s hair. Nasty thick three-colored stuff like straw. Not like hair. Not thing one.

  My mother’s hair was getting like Pickle Peters’s hair. It wasn’t soft like it was even two years before. I’d noticed that giving her a bath. There wasn’t much softness in my life, wasn’t much softness in life in that fuckpot county of mine, and it seemed then like the softness was going from it, fast and furious like smart kids leaving after high school graduation. Someone let a long wet fart, and they all laughed. They was wanting to laugh. They didn’t care what at. Keith Kelly lit a cigarette. Pickle Peters set up like he remembered where he left a hundred-dollar lottery ticket.

  “You told me you didn’t have no cigarettes,” he said.

  “Hush, Pickle,” Priscilla said.

  Pickle said, “Boy, don’t you remember?”

  Keith Kelly blew out, waved the smoke and fart smell from in front of him.

  “Boy,” Pickle stood up, “tell me I caint have a cigarette now.”

  “God Almighty,” Priscilla said, and hit Pickle in the eye with a cigarette. “Shut the fuck up.”

  “YOU DON’T SMOKE, PICKLE,” that black-eyed girl said again.

  I wished hard for my momma’s soft hair.

  “How’d you get mud all over you?” Cinderella whispered in my ear.

  “Jumping off a mountain trying to kill myself.”

  “Why’d you do that?” Cinderella said.

  “So I wouldn’t be here having this talk with you.”

  “Boy,” Pickle was still standing, “what’s the matter with you? Can’t you hear what I’m saying?”

  They all knew then Pickle was going to go ahead and get redneck. Didn’t matter if I’d just announced I’d tried to commit suicide or told them I was carrying Dale Earnhardt’s baby. Pickle was out and gone.

  “It’s a Friday night.” Pickle was rocking back and forth now. “And you don’t need to be lying at no nice get-together like this.”

  “Pickle,” Priscilla said, “that’s the last time I’m telling you to shut up. You don’t need to be a total asshole. Not every weekend.”

  “It aint me being assholish,” Pickle said. “It’s this Barbie doll motherfucker.”

  Keith Kelly gave Pickle a cigarette. Pickle tore it open and blew the tobacco back at Keith Kelly.

  “God Almighty,” Priscilla said.

  “I been following you,” Cinderella said to me. He thought he was talking low, but everybody heard.

  “No, you aint,” I said.

  A pointy-eared dog, white with chocolate spots, come hopping out of somewhere.

  “Yeah I have,” Cinderella said. “Soon as I got out of jail I come right straight looking for you.”

  “What for?”

  “Cause I wanted to see you again.”

  “How old are you, Dawn?” The room went quiet when Decent asked. Her eyes were two humming outboard motors pushing a boat across summer waters. I water-skiied behind her outboard motor eyes, rope tight pulling me across a rough glass lake under a paste-gray sky.

  “Cinderella, you filthy pervert,” Decent said.

  “She’s older than that,” Cinderella said. “Look at her. She’s a giant.”

  I looked at Albert. He grinned. Decent pulled me up and away from Cinderella. She put her arm around me. “Cinderella, you can’t tell time. How you know how old she is?”

  They all laughed. Decent turned me loose. I sat down on the far end of the sectional. Decent poured drinks all around, put beers in people’s hands, sat down beside me. She kicked Cinderella’s feet off the coffee table. “Play something, Pickle,” she said.

  Pickle strummed his guitar, warmed up his low voice. He sang that prison song about being tortured thinking about people moving on. Then he sang that one about falling in the burning ring of fire, and then Decent sang “Make me an angel that flies from Montgomery.” The blonde girl got down off the sectional and curled up on the strandboard
floor. Keith Kelly sang “Sam Stone.” I glanced over at him out of the corner of my eyes. No hat on, brown hair wavy and full there on the couch with them other men.

  “You act like you’re her lawyer, Decent,” Keith Kelly said.

  “Who?”

  “That one,” Keith Kelly said pointing at me.

  “I aint her lawyer,” Decent said. “I’m the judge.”

  The blondie girl woke up off the floor, laughed—“HA!”—and fell back to the floor.

  “That’s what I say,” Crater said. “Ha.”

  “You laugh,” Decent said, “but I know them girls got Cinderella put in jail. Dawn was right to get out of there. Them women diseased.”

  “We didn’t catch no diseases,” Cinderella said. “They wouldn’t have nothing to do with us. They was trying to kill us.”

  “That’s what I’m saying,” Decent said, beer bottle bobbing on her knee, “no point waiting on yall.”

  Everybody laughed. Pickle Peters elbowed Cinderella, made him spill his beer into the sectional.

  “Goddam yall,” Priscilla said.

  “That don’t make it right to steal a man’s car, nor another man’s truck,” Keith Kelly said.

  “She was just having her a Thelma and Louise moment,” Decent laughed.

  “Decent, what are you,” Keith Kelly said, “some kind of lezzie?”

  “Do what?”

  “You heard.” Keith Kelly rose up. “You aint her momma. You aint her friend. And it’s obvious she aint normal. I think you’re doing her your own self.”

  I had heard all this before.

  “Why don’t you shut your mouth.” Oh, dear lord. Albert speaks.

  “Where’s your man, Decent Ferguson?” Keith Kelly said. The sleeping girl sat up again, big grin on her face, eyes dancing to see what happened next.

  “Strong woman,” Keith said. “I’ll show you strong.” Keith Kelly was drunker than I’d thought.

  “Will you?” Decent said.

  “Decent, don’t,” Priscilla said.

  “Yall need to settle down,” Crater said.

  “I don’t care to show you,” Keith Kelly said, “not one bit.”

  Pickle Peters dropped his guitar. The strings went “bonnnng” through the hollow wood body. I leaned forward.

  “Dawn,” a voice came from behind me. “Dawn don’t look right.”

  My vomit splattered on the pointy-eared dog, rained all over Keith Kelly. I threw up again. Everybody scattered, except for Decent and Priscilla.

  “Here, honey.” The bottle blonde put a bucket in front of me. “Aim for that, doll baby,” she said.

  “How much had she had?”

  “I aint seen her drink nothing.”

  “That girl aint right.”

  I heaved again. The vomit came in strings. I don’t know what it was or where it came from, but it sure felt good.

  “I aint never seen nobody throw up smiling like that.”

  ***

  I woke up at Decent Ferguson’s place, in her quilt-thick bed at the back of her little house dwarfed by its big-ass garden plot. She sat beside me on the bed, looked right at me.

  “Why don’t you talk to somebody about what’s going on?”

  “And say what?” I said.

  “Well,” Decent said, “You don’t think you need to talk about car stealing and jumping off mountains to somebody?”

  “That don’t mean nothing,” I said. “Bad day.”

  Decent’s lips flatlined. “You reckon?”

  Decent’s eyes was brown. Her lips was great big. Her hands was meaty, red rough and raw. She sat with one foot propped on the other. I looked around Decent Ferguson’s place. I could smell her bad sulphur water. It was in the clothes piled at the end of the bed and in every chair. She had animals made out of painted gourds on shelves near the ceiling looking down at me. Folded quilts heaped up in every corner, and Loretta Lynn album covers were tacked all over the walls. Fist City. Don’t cat around with the kitty.

  “So who would I talk to anyway?” I asked Decent Ferguson.

  “Well,” she said, “Let me think about it.”

  “Can I talk to you?”

  “You can talk to me,” she said. She didn’t mean it. I could tell.

  “Why won’t my mamaw tell me what she’s thinking?”

  “Have you asked her?”

  “Why do I have to ask her? I’m supposed to be the kid. Why do I have to ask to be raised?”

  Decent Ferguson said she didn’t know.

  “You just need to do what is best for you,” Decent Ferguson said. “There aint no heroes, no oracles.”

  “What’s an oracle?”

  “Like a fortune teller.”

  The space behind my eyes hurt. I said, “You’re not helping me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  The clock clicked over to twelve, over to Sunday morning. I started to cry.

  “It’s crazy,” Decent said, “that anybody would ask me for advice.” Decent got up and dug through drawers, ran her hand behind the stuff on top of her refrigerator. “Shit,” she said, going through the pockets of coats and sweaters on hooks behind the kitchen door.

  “What are you looking for?” I said.

  “Cigarettes.” She found a pack in a sweater pocket. Two left. She lit one and said on the inhale, “Maybe your aunt June, maybe that’s where you need to go.” Decent exhaled. “You remind me of her.”

  “How?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” Decent said. She drew again on the cigarette, looking at me. “Around the eyes.” I had my glasses off. “You’re dark. Your eyes are always moving too. June’s eyes were like that. Are, I guess.” Decent drew again. The smoke swirled again. Always smoke in the air. Always forest fire season. Decent wiped her nose on the back of her hand. “So you seeing anybody?”

  My heart dropped when Decent asked that. Decent was freedom to me. Not chained by man nor kid. She rode her own personality like it was a horse. She wasn’t good looking. Lumpy face, crooked smile. But in that moment I saw I had to have a boy to have something to talk about. I didn’t want a boy.

  Decent took the last cigarette out of the pack and looked at it. She lay it on the table, rolled her fingers back and forth over top of it. “That’s all right,” she said. “I don’t blame you. Not one bit.” Decent Ferguson coughed, waved her hand in front of her face like she was waving away smoke, or bugs, but there wasn’t neither one in the air in front of Decent Ferguson’s face.

  Decent Ferguson sat up that night and talked to me. She showed me where her arm was burned pulling records and quilts out of her last trailer fire. She explained to me who was in the pictures on her walls. There were black men with guitars and tambourines and groups of people wearing baseball gloves and shirts that said SPAM on them. There were always men in the pictures. Decent Ferguson pulled out a sweater she had made. It was a great big sweater and a blue I didn’t like. But it was homemade and I liked that, and she put the sweater in a plastic bag and gave it to me which I liked too. I thanked her and set out for Mamaw’s.

  The snow turned to rain. Plain old rain. I walked through it in Decent’s sweater, which felt like it could hold it all, every drop. The road was slick but not shiny, the only light shot out as usual. The rain came so hard I knew nobody was going to look out their windows, much less come out. It was going to rain on me and nobody else. No vehicles, only rain coming down like bucket after bucket of cat guts.

  My clothes got so full of water, and I was so tired I felt like maybe I had turned to water, that I should just lie down like water, stretch out on that cracked black asphalt and drain away to the creek, to the bottom of the mountain. If it had been one degree warmer, that is what I would have done—just laid right down and turned to water and flowed right off that mountain. But as it was, it was too cold.

  6: Waterlight

  I stripped off my wet clothes on Mamaw’s patio, stepped through the storm door, and stood on the mat in my underwear. Goose pi
mples popped up all down my arms, jumped to my legs, covered me up. I stood by Mamaw’s bed, watched her sleep. Her mouth gaped in the lamplight like a dead woman’s. Her breath was wind through the trees, rain picking up, drawing back, picking up again. I watched her breathe til I was satisfied she’d be there in the morning and went to my room. I turned on the radio, and Willett Bilson played a hippie song, a man singing about his heart’s delight and how the thought of her made him cry. I had a heart’s delight, which was Willett Bilson, which I wasn’t likely to attain, and which wasn’t going to make me cry. Not a drop.

  Willett Bilson said he wanted contact. Said people should call him on the air. Said he had an e-mail address and people could e-mail him. I didn’t know what e-mail was then. He gave the radio station post office address, and I wrote it down in my book where I stuck my pictures. Willett Bilson talked about the winter night, about the stars, about the beauty of every season, about the reasons he liked the bands he liked. His voice whistled through his nose, and I could tell he’d taken beatings. I could also tell he felt safe on the air. The sound of his voice come close on my ear like we were locked in the trunk of somebody’s vehicle together. I looked at a page in my book where I had pasted a picture of a truck in India had three hundred suitcases strapped on top of it. I drew a picture of myself next to it saying “Too much baggage,” and next to that I taped a picture of schoolgirls with AK-47s, a hawk with a rat in its mouth flying off a cathedral, and three women gold miners from back in the San Francisco gold rush days. Willett Bilson said, “My musical pleasure has no measure.” I wrote that out next to the pictures, and drew a picture of me saying “More punk rock. Not so many hippie bands.” I folded the page up in the shape of an envelope and addressed it to Willett Bilson. I went to sleep with his music playing in my head. And that is how I survived the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend.

  ***

  Sunday morning Mamaw was gone. Bed made. Dishes rinsed off. Counter wiped down. Stacks made plumb. Generally Mamaw kept things pretty junked up. Heaps of paper grew like spring flowers beside her bed, on the couch, everywhere. Her mind ran hot, buzzed like a blow-dryer, taking in information, calculating, talking on the telephone. Slow down to clean the house and the assholes would run roughshod over America. There wouldn’t be nothing left. That’s what she said. But a day of pulling her daughter out of a tree and a night of waiting for me to get back from first Crater and Priscilla’s and then Decent Ferguson’s must have took it out of her. She’d struck a lick getting the house shipshape and then lit out through a cloud of dollar store pine scent.