Sugar Run: A Novel

by Mesha Maren

  “Her husband passed away last week,” Jodi said.

  Irene shook her head slowly, a little almost smile playing across her lips. “Looks like you got out of prison and went straight to finding yourself a heap of folks needing your help, huh?”

  Jodi shrugged and turned toward the kitchen.

  It was midmonth, not yet quite into the panic but just past the excess. There was still beer in the fridge and lunch meat on the counter, bread, and deli spreads. Jodi opened a beer and joined Andy by the back door where she could see, on the far side of the yard, the Little League kids milling about the baseball field.

  After a while Miranda came out of the bedroom with a towel wrapped around her head and busied herself fixing a plate of sandwiches and carrying them over in front of the TV. Jodi watched as she and Ricky sat there eating on the living-room couch and she couldn’t help but marvel at the ease with which they made themselves comfortable in this house. Even when she had lived there, during the months between Effie’s death and Paula’s arrival, Jodi had never been able to shake the feeling that this was the place where she wasn’t raised. Andy had tried to care for them all with just his disability check, but what with the way they drank and baby Dennis so sick, Effie had insisted that it was better for her to raise Jodi.

  “So they let you out.” Andy turned toward Jodi and lifted his can of High Life as if to toast her but then brought it to his lips instead.

  Jodi nodded and lifted her own beer. The haze of the night road—no sleep—and nineteen years away grew thicker with each sip.

  “Irene says you’ll be living up at Mama’s place?”

  Jodi glanced at Andy. From his tone she could tell not tell what he thought.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I need to see a lawyer and figure out what’s the taxes owed, and the place needs a new roof too.”

  Andy brought his lighter up to the tip of his cigarette. “Ain’t worth a new roof.”

  “I’ll rig up a tarp for now. Keep us dry, at least,” Jodi said. “I’m gonna get us some chickens, plow up the garden plot in the spring, and then once we’re steady, I’m thinking we can get a couple a heifers from auction, get into raising yearlings. Start off small, you know, but then—”

  “Acreage is grown over mostly,” Andy said. “Ain’t no good for grazing, full up with locusts and greenbrier.”

  Jodi nodded. It was true that in her dreams for the place, the fields had been far less choked but she could not let go of the vision of raising cattle up on the mountain. It was the only part of her future she could imagine succeeding at and so she went on repeating the plan over and over, holding tight to those words like a railing up some shaky flight of stairs.

  She took a drink from her beer and stared at the lunch meat laid out on the counter. The pink folds of pig looked suddenly wicked in their similarity to her own skin.

  “Yeah,” she said, more to herself than anything, “I’ll have to see about clearing the pasture.”

  The kitchen was cooler than the rest of the house, a shadowed blue hemmed in by quilted drapes. Andy cracked a fresh Miller and the sound stayed there, loud in the silence.

  The Andy that Jodi remembered couldn’t wait to tell you a story, didn’t much care if you cared, he needed to tell. But maybe now, Jodi thought, he couldn’t square his stories with the fact of his daughter, just released. Most of his tales were from his prison guard days. He’d worked at the federal women’s penitentiary in Render until he dislocated a disc while restraining some inmate. He could tell you all about the bull dykes with swastikas carved into their shins. And the Manson ladies—he was there when Squeaky Fromme escaped and caught a ride to the bus station with a man from Painter Creek. A man who, depending on who told the tale, either did or did not enjoy a little fellating on the way. On his drive home, though, the man heard a warning report on the radio and pissed his pants before he could pull over to call the cops to say he’d just given a ride to a young lady much like the one they’d described.

  Jodi looked over at Andy. “What are they building up in Jessup’s orchard?”

  “Fracking,” Andy said, stubbing his cigarette out in an ashtray shaped like a miniature frying pan.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Pulling gas up out of the shale. They paid good money for that land. Your cousin Robbie’s working up there now and they pay him good too. I told A.J. he’d be smart to get himself a job with them but fuck me if he ever listens to a thing I say.”

  As the afternoon wore on, Irene made phone calls and devised a slapdash party with neighbors, cousins, brothers, and in-laws, forgetting in her haste to play good host that she and Andy preferred to spend their time getting drunk alone and pinning each other down with arguments that led inevitably into sweaty, early-evening sex.

  As the guests arrived the men gathered out back, taking turns poking a pair of metal tongs into the charcoal grill while the women perched on various surfaces in the kitchen, the air opaque with their cigarette smoke. Ricky sat in the living room watching TV until Irene shooed him out with the other men. Jodi felt strange and uneasy as she watched him standing out there beside her brothers under the walnut tree, their lips moving in a conversation she could not make out.

  Dennis and A.J. had grown heavier around the middle, and their faces were free of teenage acne, but other than that they seemed not to have changed in the years that she’d been gone. They’d both arrived stoned, their eyes distant and shaded. Despite their sameness, there had always been something about Dennis that A.J. could never quite attain, a confidence that Dennis exuded even from a distance. On Dennis, the thick lethargy of weed seemed like a smooth and boundaryless ease. A.J. just looked too high to speak.

  “Be glad you’ve got all boys,” Irene said to Miranda who sat in the middle of the kitchen, bouncing Dennis’s newest baby on her knee. “Boys are easiest, the sweetest, none of that meanness.” Irene looked to the other women for confirmation but multiple conversations were circulating, something about Jell-O molds and that slut who was always sunbathing down by the municipal boat slip.

  The women moved about the kitchen as if they’d rehearsed every step, pushing past one another to grab the Saran wrap, pausing to light a new cigarette. Jodi couldn’t quite place their faces or remember specific names but she knew these women well. They had always been there in the background with coffee and sticky, starchy foods. At the scene of every disaster and celebration they filled out the edges of the room with their pillowy housedresses and clouds of smoke. By the very generosity of their bodies they comforted the children and men. In their midst, Miranda looked fresh and peaceful. Her damp hair hung down over the back of the chair and she wore a white tank top, borrowed from Irene, and cutoff blue jeans. Jodi found herself filling again with a gratefulness for the way Miranda put everyone at ease, giving herself over to each new moment. You couldn’t help but feel that everything you did with her—fixing a macaroni salad or driving to the grocery—was special and exciting.

  It was early evening by the time they were ready to eat and the beer was gone; someone was sent to fetch more but had not come back yet and Jodi was beginning to feel sober. The voices around her grew louder like radio stations coming into range and she edged away from the picnic table spread with orange salad, mayonnaised tomatoes, barbecue, and corn bread. She was relieved to find A.J. hunched over and stupefied under the oak tree, even more relieved when he flashed her a handful of pills.

  “You want some Dex?”

  Jodi nodded, glancing around for Miranda. She was busy, though, carrying stacks of plates out from the kitchen and laughing with Irene. Jodi closed her fingers around the peach-colored tablets. It would be another month before she had to meet with Ballard, almost certainly enough time for the Dex to leave her system, and anyhow Ballard hadn’t seemed like he’d be too intent on drug testing. She swallowed the pills and settled herself on the roots of the oak, listening to the twang and curl of accented voices all around her. It warmed her, the fam
iliar sound of those words, shortened and pulled out at intervals by tongues that had never left these hills. She had never entirely lost her own accent but over the years it had begun to seem to her like a strange leftover burden, something that only made sense here.

  As the sun sank, the evening light glowed around the edges of everything, forming hazy halos, and Jodi looked at A.J.’s profile and wondered how many times she had waited just like this, with him, in the silence and the heat. In her earliest memories, before her parents moved to town, it seemed she was always in the backseat with her brothers on long drives. The three of them tumbling with no seat belts, a jumble of chigger-bit skin and sharp elbows. Where they would have been going, Jodi had no idea. Except for the few relatives who’d gone up to Michigan, everyone her family knew lived in Malonga County. Maybe her parents had just needed to drive, Andy trailing the smoke of his cigarette and Irene’s hair spilling out like red-orange ink.

  Later, for Jodi, the point was definitely the driving. Dennis had tagged along with the boys who gave Jodi rides because even at eleven he’d known how to talk to the old hippie guys and get them to part with their weed for cheap. And A.J. was innocent looking enough to buy a whole case of canned whipped cream. In the backseat everything was much the same as when they were babies, a flurry of wind and sunlight in their laps. And then the sharp rise and tingling warmth of whippets, and the driving. Moving, rolling. A.J. and Dennis had always wanted to get out of the state. They had hopped a freight once but it was the wrong line and the train just wound deeper into the mountains and halted in Anjean, at the mouth of the slope mine.

  “You been this whole time in prison?” A.J. leaned toward Jodi.

  She nodded.

  “They call it a Bible cake,” a woman at the edge of the porch was saying to Ricky. “One cup Proverbs 30:33.” She gestured with her thin arms, the skin transparent with veins, a snarled, blue circuitry. “Two cups Jeremiah 6:20.”

  Ricky’s eyes opened wide. “And the sweet cane from a far country?”

  “I heard you turned queer.” A.J. looked at Jodi.

  She turned away, fingers curled into fists. She should have known it was impossible that none of them would mention it. She let her mind fuzz out from this present moment but she could still smell the stink of her own shame and hear the bitter drawl of that word.

  She pictured A.J. reading the newspaper stories and laughing. Back in ’89 her case had gone a little famous, temporarily. It had all the thrilling elements the newspapers craved: kidnapping, violence, sex. Her first few weeks at Jaxton, she’d received piles of letters from sicko strangers who had read about the trial and wrote her fucked-up fan mail, twisted, dark wet-dream madness, or else letters from lesbians everywhere: San Diego, Boston, New York, all of them acting like they knew her just because she and Paula were lovers. They’d wanted Jodi to be their poster child for an ACLU lawsuit attesting to the homophobia of the Georgia court system. A public awareness campaign. Alone in her cell she’d felt so far from their talk of solidarity, so far outside their supposed community. She’d thrown away their letters. They reeked of privilege, the clean white pages soggy with their “compassion,” perfumed with their need to “understand.” Their willingness to forgive nauseated her.

  As the sun set mosquitoes came out and most of the party guests left. Those who did not reconvened in front of the small TV inside. Dennis wanted to stay but his wife followed him around, repeating her words like a trained bird. We’ve gotta get the girls to bed and you’ve got work tomorrow, Dennis, work tomorrow. Finally Irene told them both to shut up and get out.

  Dennis looked back at Miranda as he got up to leave but she was six beers deep and intent on watching the TV, where someone had put on Trenchknife III. Ricky sat on the couch beside her, and the boys sprawled across the floor.

  “Mom?” Kaleb’s voice snaked up through the darkening air. “Mom, where are we?”

  Behind the couch, Jodi paced, counting and recounting the last four cigarettes in her pack. Tomorrow, she kept thinking, trying to concentrate on “next steps,” but her brain cut back each time and looped to the dwindling cigarettes.

  “You’ll ruin your eyes like that,” Ricky said to Donnie, who’d inched himself up two feet in front of the screen.

  “Move your head, sweetie,” Miranda mumbled.

  The girl on the TV was using a skeleton key to open the creaking door to some abandoned castle.

  “I wouldn’t go in there if I were you,” Ricky told her.

  Ross had found a phone book and he sat inspecting it in the light of the TV.

  From the kitchen Irene and Andy’s staccato whispers echoed out. I told you I never . . . Oh, yeah? Not once never? . . . Then why don’t you just make me wear a fucking chastity belt?

  Through the mesh of the window screen Jodi could see the lights of the baseball field out across the yard. Behind her the TV screamed and Ricky mumbled a told you so.

  Once they had all fallen asleep, Jodi carried the boys into the spare room, nestling them in bed under a framed photo of some gap-toothed ancestor of hers and a giant poster of Jim Morrison’s face. When she came back into the living room Ricky was standing in front of the couch where Miranda lay dozing.

  “There ain’t a lot of room in this house,” he said.

  Jodi stared at him, feeling suddenly defensive. “It’s just for tonight—”

  “I’ll go on out and sleep in the car.”

  “No, no, you and Miranda take the couches.”

  Ricky did not move. “Where’ll you sleep?”

  “There are plenty of blankets.” Jodi turned away and busied herself gathering an armful of crocheted afghans from a wooden trunk and dumping them on the floor by the end of the couch.

  “A.J. says you just got out of prison.”

  Jodi looked up. Ricky stood tall over her, silhouetted by the spastic TV light. She had nearly forgotten that they had not yet spoken of Jaxton.

  “Yeah,” she said. She could not see the expression on Ricky’s face. She looked down and fussed with the blankets, straightening them, and then stood and moved toward the door, her pulse jumping in her throat. “I’m going down the road to buy some cigarettes. You need anything?” she said without looking back.

  Out on the front stoop she stood still and let the screen door close slowly behind her. The broken neck of a beer bottle shone dully on the bottom step, and under the porch she could hear her parents’ dog shuffling in the dirt. After a minute, when she did not hear any reply from Ricky, she took off across the yard, pushing away thoughts of what all he and A.J. and Dennis might have talked about.

  It was cooler out now and the wind had picked up, scudding a pile of papers along the road. Jodi bent and grabbed one. They were little folded “Come to Jesus” tracts, a black-and-white photograph on the front showing a teenage boy in a Hail Satan T-shirt. She stared at the sad-eyed teenager, feeling the tug of Dexedrine and the slurry of beer in her veins.

  When she looked up again something was flashing through the trees, a tall beam of quivering light. She stepped onto Front Street and eyed it. Up on the side of Bethlehem Mountain, a spike of orange gas flame lit up the metal tower and showered light over a patch of scraped ground. And there, at the base of the mountain, the blinking sign announced slattery’s girl.

  The bar was nestled on the riverbank, so close to the water that the first thing Jodi thought was flood. But perhaps the establishment didn’t plan to be around long enough to face disaster. The walls were made of plywood covered over with a collage of beer advertisements. The music was turned high, some wailing saxophone, but the room was almost empty, just three men in dirty work clothes and a girl seated at a bar lit by a series of bare bulbs.

  “The well’s running low now,” one of the men said. “That’s why they’re spiking her, let it flame and finish it, move to a new spot, up the mountain.”

  The girl sat silently, face turned up, intent on the huge TV. None one of them looked at Jodi as she crossed the
room.

  The bartender was a tall brown-haired girl in stonewashed jeans and a tight T-shirt. Jodi ordered a Budweiser and the girl filled a plastic cup from the tap.

  “Five dollars.”

  Jodi froze, hand halfway to her pocket. “I could buy a six-pack for that.”

  “Yeah, not here.”

  “Why the hell’s it so expensive?” Jodi counted out six ones from the fifty dollars she had left.

  “Prices gone up on everything since the frackers come into town.” The bartender nodded toward the men at the end of the bar. “They come from out of state and I think they’re used to paying more.” She lowered her voice. “My boss says he could probably charge ’em twice this much and they’d still keep coming. We’re the only bar around.” She tucked Jodi’s money into her pocket and then resumed inspecting the tips of her hair, lifting sections up toward the light and biting off the dead ends.

  Jodi took a seat halfway down the bar and sipped at the foamy piss-colored beer.

  After a few minutes the back door opened and a girl stumbled into the room wearing only a ratty Mickey Mouse T-shirt that did not quite cover her soft white stomach and ball of brown pubic hair. Behind her the fluorescence of video lottery screens lit the doorway. “So you couldn’t come? Sorry,” she declared. “I don’t care.”

  The bartender looked up, flicking her hair over her shoulder. “Put some clothes on, Sylvie,” she said. “Nobody wants to see that.”

  Though the music pounded loud, there was a silence throbbing through the room too. Something was happening in this place, Jodi thought, something that turned to liquid all accountable space, a furious stop-time boredom that existed only in places so far away and buried that even sex stopped meaning anything. It was something to do with distance from the center of things. Everything that had ever mattered had happened somewhere else. There was that saying about the effects of the single flap of a butterfly’s wing but in places like this time and distance smothered everything.