by Robert Gipe
“Well,” I said, “We do think Keith’s a dick. But you can’t wish every dick dead. You can’t kill all of them.”
“Lord knows,” one of the men said.
Blondie Kelly’s shoulders fell, the wind died, the clanging metal stopped clanging. A dog barked one bark and quit. “Yall come here,” Blondie said.
I looked at the two dudes. Then I looked at Blondie Kelly. “Take my hand, Dawn Jewell,” she said, “and we’ll pray together.”
The dudes took off their hats and joined hands, and the tall one he took Blondie’s hand, and the other one reached out for my hand. Blondie reached out her free hand for my free hand. I didn’t take hold of them Kellys right off. I stood there and wondered were they fixing to pull my arms out of my sockets and leave me squirting blood out my shoulder holes into the mud. That dog barked another bark and went quiet again. I looked into them Kellys’ eyes. I wanted Mamaw to live.
I took their hands, and in the light of Blondie’s Yukon holding hands in a circle, Blondie said, “Sweet heavenly Father, thank you for bringing us together under the stars of your heaven on this beautiful winter’s night.”
The shorter dude said, “Yes.”
“Thank you for staying our hand,” Blondie went on, “and not allowing us to shed no more blood. You’re the one says, ‘Vengeance is mine,’ and if there is any to be had, we are reminded Your will be done. Til then, Lord, welcome our beloved Keith into Your blessed loving care, and move on the hearts of Hubert and Dawn Jewell to be truthful and mindful of the path You would have them walk. And Lord, please be with the law. Guide them towards the light of Your truth, so that justice might be done in the case of Your precious servant Keith. And Lord, be with Cora Redding. If it be Your will that she might recover from her fall, please let her better serve You. Thank You, Lord God our Father, for hearing our prayer. And keep us in Your loving embrace and grant us traveling grace as we strive to get off this godforsaken mountain. In Your blessed son Jesus’ name, amen.”
“Amen,” said the dudes.
The four of us piled into Blondie’s Yukon and made a long, slow, quiet trip off the mountain. The snow started falling again, and the only thing said was when the shorter dude asked me did I want a piece of bubble gum, which I took, and was still chewing when Blondie and them set me out at the emergency room at the hospital in town.
“I hope your mamaw will forgive us,” Blondie Kelly said before she rolled up the window.
I stood in the salt-melt slush, and said I thought she would.
The short dude said I should come to church with them sometime as he switched to the front seat and gave me some more bubble gum for later.
***
When I found Mamaw’s room, Momma was already there and Mamaw looked at me spry as could be. “What you got in your mouth?” Mamaw said.
“Bubble gum,” I said, and asked Momma how long she’d been there.
“I was here when they brung her in,” Momma said, and showed me the casts on both her feet. “We was in beds next to each other.”
“Jesus,” I said. “What happened to you?”
“I fell off the roof,” Momma said.
“What roof?” I said.
“Mine,” Hubert said from where he was sitting behind the door.
“I was trying to drop a cinder block on him,” Momma said, “and I slipped.”
“Jesus,” I said.
“You all get out of here,” Mamaw said. “I need to talk to Dawn.”
Hubert helped Momma out the door. When they were gone, Mamaw said, “Push the door shut.” When I had, she said, “What are you doing here?”
“What are you talking about, Mamaw?”
“Why didn’t you stay with June?”
“Aint you glad,” I said, “I came back? You’d of been dead if I hadn’t. Lord have mercy,” I said. “Wouldn’t kill a person to thank a person before you crawl up their ass, Mamaw.”
“‘Crawl up your ass?’ Is that what they say now?” Mamaw stared at me. “Come here.” Mamaw raised the back of her hand into the air between us. “Come here,” she said, bending her fingers. I came to her bedside. She grabbed my arm just above my wrist, like it was a hoe handle or a baseball bat. “I will call you,” she said, “or I will get Houston to call you, when it is time for you to go to court. All right?”
“Yes, Mamaw.”
“You don’t have to stay here, do you?”
“No, Mamaw.”
“Well, then don’t. You go to June. You stay with June. June needs taking care of. You want to take care of somebody? Take care of June. You do for her and some good might come of it. Do you understand?
“What about Blue Bear?”
Mamaw looked into my eyes. I was worn out with everybody looking at me so hard. But I looked back at Mamaw just as hard as she looked at me. “If there’s anything about Blue Bear you can help with,” Mamaw said, “I’ll get word to you about that, too.” She held tight to my arm, like she thought I was going to try to get away. “All right?” she said.
I nodded.
“What?” she said.
“All right,” I said.
Mamaw nodded and let go of my arm. “All right,” she said. “Nothing to be afraid of.”
***
From out in the hospital lobby I called Evie and said did she want to drive me to Kingsport.
“I don’t reckon,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Me and Albert’s going to Tennessee.”
“Not that Tennessee,” she said. “We’re going to the lake.”
“You are not,” I said. “It’s too cold to go to the lake.”
“Well, we’re going bowling then.”
“Evie, please.”
“I don’t know, Dawn. Dangerous riding with you.”
“Meet me someplace nobody will see you.”
“Behind the drugstore?”
“Across the highway?”
“By the dumpster.”
“All right. And Evie?”
“What?”
“Don’t bring Albert.”
“All right.”
***
The night had cleared off. The leftover clouds glowed gray against the starry sky. The air felt brittle, like it was about to break. I put my hands in my pockets and pulled down my hat and crossed the bypass. Hubert’s green pickup sat under a light in the drugstore parking lot. There were two heads in the cab—Momma’s long thin one and Hubert’s square one. I didn’t want them to see me and so I snuck up on the cab. When I got to Momma’s window on the passenger side, Hubert’s mouth was hanging open, dead asleep. I was about to tap Momma’s window—she was awake and the light was on in the cab—when she leaned forward and snorted up a line of white powder off the dashboard. It was the first time I ever saw her do something like that.
Evie’s Cavalier turned off the bypass, and I went running towards her. She rolled down her window. “Aint that Hubert?” she said.
“Open the door, Evie.”
“Why don’t you get him to take you to Kingsport?”
“Unlock the door, Evie.”
“It aint locked. It’s broke. Let her in, Albert.”
“Dammit, Evie. I told you not to bring him.”
“You want me riding back from Kingsport by myself? Sides, he says he’ll take us to House of Pancakes.”
“I don’t want to go to House of Pancakes, Evie.”
“Why don’t you get Hubert then?”
“Evie, there aint nobody in there.”
“Yeah there is. Here.” Evie started to blow the horn.
“Evie, stop it. Let me in the car, Albert.”
Albert said, “‘Hello’ would be nice, little sister.”
I put my head on the roof of the car and started to cry. The roof was so cold.
Evie said, “What did you do, Albert?”
He said, “Nothing.”
“You done something,” Evie said, “or she wouldn’t be crying.”
“
Yeah, she would,” Albert said. “She cries all the time.”
“Fuck you, Albert,” I said. “I do not.”
“Yeah you do.”
I busted Albert in the ear through the rolled-down window.
“Albert, open the back door,” Evie said, and Albert reached over the seat and my door creaked open.
They couldn’t get the back window closed. The winter air blew in on me, and it was the worst ride ever. I curled against the door and pulled my coat up over my head. Cold air beat against my back, blew down my crack, but I got enough privacy to feel like I was crying alone, and whether they knew I was crying or not, Evie and Albert didn’t bother me in the back of the icebox Cavalier, and I slept.
***
I woke up in Virginia, about halfway to Kingsport, and Willett was on the radio. Albert was snoring like an old man, and I asked Evie to turn the radio up. Evie must have stopped while I was asleep, because I had a greasy blanket over top of me and the window was up and I was almost comfortable. Willett played lots of live music, guitars guitars guitars, sort of soft and rolling, and when he came on to talk he talked about going to the ball game with his dad, the one he’d gone to while I was at the party down by the river.
“Friday past,” Willett said, “me and my dad went to Knoxville to see the Big Orange play in their holiday tournament. Dad scheduled his radiation treatments for the same day, to save a trip. As most of yall know, Dad has lymphoma. Cancer of the lymph node system. We went down 11W, hurrying because we were late, because Dad had to take a bunch of returns to Belks for Mom because her thirty days were up and the return lady had a big long line because she was also doing gift certificates and catalog orders and a couple other things. The point being Dad wasn’t in too great a mood by the time we got out on the highway.
“My father,” Willett went on, “does not like to be late for anything, not for a doctor’s appointment, but especially not for a ball game. His nostrils were flaring, and he was saying unkind things about what I had on the radio. We were past Bean Station, bearing down on Rutledge, when the car stopped running. Dad got it off the side of the road, cussing hard now. He knew it was something about the alternator running down the battery. I don’t know. I got out with him, and he got his tools out of the trunk, and he wrenched loose the battery and told me to get the towel he uses to wipe his dipstick out of the back, and I did, and he said, ‘Hold it open,’ and he lifted the battery into it, said, ‘Pay attention’ and ‘Don’t drop it,’ and when the battery was wrapped up in the towel, he locked the car and said, ‘Come on,’ and we started walking towards Rutledge, my dad thumbing.
“It wasn’t too long,” Willett said, “til a farmer picked us up and took us to Rutledge to a garage that charged our battery and a man at the garage took us back to Dad’s Tercel and got the battery back in, and we went on down the road and were late for Dad’s radiation—he’d called from the garage and told them we would be—but he had allowed plenty of time, and so really everything was fine and there hadn’t been any reason to be agitated or in a hurry.”
Willett’s voice was soft,
“Later I looked at my father when we were sitting in the arena, watching the first game, which didn’t involve Tennessee, sitting there behind the goal, eating our Arby’s, and I thought if my mother had been there she might have suggested to my father if he had gotten a new alternator when his mechanic in Kingsport told him he needed one, he wouldn’t have been out hitchhiking, nor would her only begotten son have been out hitchhiking either.
“I thought,” Willett said, “to bring these things up to my father, who I enjoy aggravating, but when I looked at him in profile, chewing roast beef, keeping it off the sores in his mouth, sores he got from his treatments, his skin pale, his hands on the edge of cramping, holding his sandwich, watching the Brigham Young Cougars running their offensive set, watching LaSalle’s transition defense take shape, I could not do anything but love him—love his ability to focus on living, to care so deeply about a game, to focus so completely on watching it, analyzing it, noting the degree to which the game was being played well, the degree to which the players were paying attention, were sound in their execution, were tuned in to what one another were doing—and the chance that my father might actually die became so real to me that I put my arm around him, and he cast a glance at me and then looked back at the court and said, ‘That number thirty-four couldn’t guard a post. He’s killing LaSalle.’”
Then without saying anything else, Willett played a song by an Englishman playing an electric guitar by himself, and when it was over there was a caller on the line, a man who had lost his little girl to leukemia, and he was crying, and as Willett started to cry the phone rang again, and Willett said he had to go, that the next DJ was there. And Willett said he was going home, going to his parents’ house to hang out a few days, and so wouldn’t be on the air, not until after Christmas. And then he was gone, disappeared behind a song with an accordion on it.
I sat up in the backseat of Evie’s Cavalier. Light came into the sky. I looked in my bag for the picture of Willett and his long wavy hair, tall like me, tall Willett with his sensitive heart and his brown eyes. I had called June from the hospital, told her I was coming back, but I decided to go to Willett’s house first, and so I told Evie so.
“What about pancakes?” Evie said.
“Yall go on without me,” I said.
“Fine with me,” Albert said.
I looked out the window.
Evie said, “You know what you’re doing.”
I kept looking out the window.
“What kind of name is Willett?” Evie said.
“What kind of name is Evie?” I said without looking at her.
“Shoo,” Evie said. She turned up the radio. The Virginia ridges, the knobtop cemeteries, the cows stepping along the stony hillsides, the farmhouses, the train trestles, the trailers and their trampolines, the angles of shadow, the blocks of colors ran past my window. These sights gave way to the stores and restaurants on the broad street at the edge of the city, the head shop and hamburger stand, the hardware store and the padded-booth restaurant still wrapped in chrome. We came to a stoplight at the end of the road, faced the smokestacks of the city.
“What do I do now?” Evie said.
“Go left.”
Evie huffed and turned left. The Cavalier headed down a wide, busy city street.
“I hate Kingsport,” Evie said.
“Have you ever been here?” I said.
“No,” Evie said.
We came to Willett’s street. It was lined with giant trees. We sat in the car in front of a brick house.
Evie said, “How you know that’s his house?”
“It is,” I said.
“Well,” Evie said,
I got out of the car. I leaned down. Evie rolled the window halfway down.
“You don’t want me to stay?” she said.
I shook my head.
“Well,” Evie said. She started the car. “Bye.” Albert waved.
I waved. Evie drove off. I walked to the door of Willett’s house. I knocked. A woman answered. She had lots of gray in her pushed-up hair and smiled like she practiced. “May I help you?”
I said, “Is Willett here?”
Her eyebrows crashed together. “Yes,” she said, and stood there. “Just a minute.” A wiener dog came yapping up behind her. “Would you like to come in?”
“That’s OK,” I said, and stayed where I was.
A chunky boy with curly thinning hair came to the door. His face was sticky and he had on baggy, shiny shorts. He was not the boy in the pictures. At first he didn’t recognize me. When he did, his face lit up.
“Hey! I know you. How you doing? Come in.”
My mouth fell open and I said, “Who the fuck are you?”
“What? Oh. I’m Willett.” The dumb monkey just stood there grinning. “I can’t believe it’s you.” He spread his arms, I guess for a hug. I stepped back.
&nb
sp; “Get away from me.”
“Come on.”
I closed my eyes, then opened them. “I am so retarded.” I turned to leave.
“Wait.”
I walked away.
“You’re not retarded,” he said.
He run after me, which running isn’t his best thing, and grabbed me by the arm. I wheeled around on him, shook him off.
“Don’t you touch me. Don’t you ever touch me. You liar. You phony. You fake phony . . .” I couldn’t think of what to call him. “ . . . fucker.”
“Dawn.” His soft face got softer. “Give me a chance.”
“I gave you a chance. I . . .” I turned and walked down the hill.
“Dawn.”
I crossed out of Willett’s neighborhood with its big houses to June’s section. I walked up the steps, and there were three beer bottles next to the porch glider. I stood outside the storm door looking into June’s front room. I tried to open the door, but it was locked from the inside. When she heard the door rattle, June looked up from her seat at the desk at the far side of the room. A dozen picture frames sat on the desk, all pictures of me and Albert. June got up and came to the door.
“Hey,” she said. “Come in. What happened?” June said, looking out the door. “How did you get here?”
I paced back and forth in June’s living room, clinching and unclinching my fists. When I ran out of steam, I sat down on the sofa.
“He’s such a liar,” I said.
“Who?” June said.
“He aint no different than none of the rest of them,” I said.
“Who?” June said.
“That Internet boy,” I said.
“Willett?” June said, and I nodded. “You saw him?” June said.
“He sent me fake pictures,” I said. “He’s fat as a hog. And his face was all sticky.” I sat down next to Aunt June and sobbed like I’d never shed a tear in my life.
“Hunh,” June said.
I said, “I don’t know why I didn’t whip him. He’s soft as butter.”