Windchill Summer

by Norris Church Mailer

  He let out a moan, like the demon was climbing out of his throat, clawing at his voice. Then he was still. All of a sudden, he leaped up; stood and stared in horror at the girl lying at his feet, a thin trail of red laced across her white leg.

  “Oh my God in heaven. Ida Red . . . what have I done?” It didn’t seem like he was mad anymore. He staggered a few steps away and clutched his stomach, as if he felt sick. He heaved, several dry heaves, then zipped his jeans and leaned over, his hands on his knees, until he could get his breath. His fingers dug into his legs, like he was trying to feel if they were still there. After a long minute, he straightened and came back to where Carlene lay on the ground; reached down to help her up. She shrank from his hand.

  “You don’t never touch me again, Daddy. I’ll kill you if you do. I swear I will.”

  He turned without a word and left her; walked around the side of the trailer, white-faced and numb.

  Carlene lay motionless, dry-eyed, and looked up at the blue sky. It was a perfect fall day, not too cool, but with a little snap in the air. Not one cloud anywhere. A crow flew over, chased by a small purple martin. Its caw was coarse and loud, and echoed off the tops of the pine trees, the caw of a crow in trouble. Crows are bullies, but they don’t have death guts. The little bird was getting the best of the old black one. She watched for a minute more until they flew into the trees, then noticed that the beige siding on the trailer was rusted and stuck out in a curl near the corner, where it was starting to peel off. Everything she looked at was clear and crisp, as if it were under a magnifying glass.

  She felt like she was stuck to the ground, unable to move. She lay like that for a time, waiting for her daddy to come back and say something to her, or try to get her to go into the trailer or do something, but he didn’t. She reached under her back and moved a small rock that was digging into her shoulder. Finally, she sat up, and with a shaky hand wiped her legs with the tail of her dress. She wiped and wiped and still felt like there was more blood seeping from the tender red wound.

  She began to cry, then, fat drops that fell onto her lap, and didn’t notice when the door on the other side of the trailer opened, didn’t see underneath when the feet stepped down and walked across the yard; she was too wrapped up in cleaning herself to hear the truck door shut. She was trying to think of what she would tell Frannie, how she would tell her mother that she didn’t want to live in the trailer with Daddy anymore. She would have to tell her what happened, but in a way that wouldn’t scare her. Frannie would move them out, she knew. They could find a new place for themselves, she was pretty sure. She was only thirteen, but she looked older. Maybe she could say she was sixteen and get a job at the chicken plant with her mother.

  She had lost track somewhat, but figured it was nearly time for Frannie to get off from work. She couldn’t sit in the dirt all afternoon. She had to get up off the ground and do something. She had to clean herself up before her mother got home.

  Carlene didn’t want to go back inside if her daddy was still there. He didn’t seem mad anymore, but you never could tell. If he was still in the trailer, she’d go down to the brook and wash, stay there until Frannie got home.

  She crept around the side of the trailer, holding her dress tail between her legs. The bleeding had pretty much stopped, but it stung when she walked.

  The trailer door stood wide open. There was no sign of Daddy. All she heard was the ticking of the Felix the Cat clock that hung over the stove; its black rhinestone-covered tail swung back and forth, and its big white eyes looked right and left. She leaned against the door frame and peered across the yard.

  The truck was parked under the big oak tree up beside the road. Her daddy was sitting in the driver’s seat, just staring out the window. Carlene stood on the concrete step and watched, waited for him to put the truck in gear and leave.

  But instead of starting the motor, he picked up his hunting rifle and aimed it at his head. He held it there for a long time, then put it down, rolled down the window, and called out to Carlene:

  “Ida Red? Come on over here.”

  “My name’s Carlene, Daddy. If you want me to come over there, you can call me by my name.”

  “Please . . . Carlene. Come over here.” His voice sounded wet.

  She walked over toward the truck. Carefully. She wouldn’t let him see her limp.

  As she came up, he stuck the butt of the rifle out the window.

  “Here. Take this gun. I want you to shoot me. I never have been a daddy to you. I don’t deserve to live after what I done. But before you do it, I just want to say that I’m sorry. I don’t know what got into me. The Devil, I guess, and he can take me now.”

  He held the gun out to her. She didn’t touch it.

  “Why don’t you do it yourself?”

  “I tried to, but I couldn’t. I don’t guess I have the guts. You can do it. And I know it won’t much bother you. You’re stronger than I ever was. Just do it quick, before your mother gets home. I reckon she won’t care much, either, but she might try to stop you.”

  He nudged her with the gun. She took it then, looked at it a minute, and pointed it between his eyes.

  “You’re just playing with me, aren’t you? You think I won’t shoot you, don’t you? I should shoot you. You’re right about that. I could. All I’d have to do is squeeze this trigger . . .”

  She put her finger on the trigger. Lightly. She had never shot the gun before. Daddy would have switched her good if she had ever touched his gun. The trigger was smooth and cool. She looked at her hands as if they belonged to somebody else, noticed that her hands were sticky with blood, ringed dark and red around the nails that were bitten into the quick.

  “Do it, Carlene. Do it quick if you’re going to. It won’t be like murder or nothing. I want you to do it. It ain’t murder if the person wants it.”

  “Do it yourself. I’m not playing your game no more. For once, do one thing for yourself.”

  She started to lower the gun, but he reached his hand out and grabbed at it.

  The gun went off.

  Daddy had a surprised look on his face as the back of his head blew out and his brains hit the roof of the cab and slid down the window. Then he slowly slumped down, what was left of his head coming to gently rest on the steering wheel. There was a hole the size of a silver dollar in the middle of his forehead.

  As the gun fired, Carlene screamed and jumped. She hadn’t meant to do it. She just wanted to scare him, make him pay a little bit. The trigger was so easy to pull. She hadn’t meant to really pull it; in fact, she couldn’t tell for sure if she had pulled it or if it went off by itself.

  The gun fell out of her hands, down onto the ground, but she didn’t see it; she just kept staring at her daddy’s face and his empty, surprised eyes.

  She tried to think of what to do, but her brain was having a hard time working. She felt cold and had trouble catching her breath. It was as if the sun had stopped turning around and everything was clear and still, like in a picture, and nothing could move. A warm stream of urine went down her legs, stinging, but there was no way she could stop it.

  —

  The sound of gears grinding brought her back as a truck strained up the road. There was no place to hide, no way to stop whoever it was from seeing the truck with Carl at the wheel and his brains all over the cab. Carlene faced the road and waited. There was nothing else she could do.

  The truck slowed down, then pulled into the yard, and Walter Tucker got out. He ran over to where she stood, unmoving, beside her dead father.

  “My Lord, Carlene! What happened?”

  “I shot my daddy. He wanted me to, though.”

  “Looks like you sure did. Where’s your mama?”

  “She hadn’t got off work yet.”

  He looked at the bloodstained dress. “What’d your daddy do to you?”

  “Nothing.”

  Walter opened the truck cab and Carl fell over. Walter caught him before he hit the ground;
shoved him back in and shut the door.

  “Are you going to call the sheriff?” Carlene tried to act like she didn’t care one way or the other.

  “I don’t know. What do you reckon the sheriff would say if he saw this mess?”

  Carlene looked down at her shoes and the puddle around her feet. Walter lifted up his cap and ran his hand through his hair several times, like he was trying to start his brain to working. He slapped his leg with the cap, stared out at the pine trees across the road, then at Carl, then at Carlene. He put his cap back on.

  “Naw, I don’t reckon we need to call the law. Go on in the house and get you on a clean dress. Bring that nasty one back out with you.”

  Carlene ran in and did like he said.

  When she came back out, Walter was scraping what he could off the ceiling of the truck cab, slinging gobs of pink and gray brain onto the floor. He took the bloody dress she handed him and wiped his hands, then scrubbed the windshield on the inside. It would pass for clean.

  Then he went into the house and found an old brown cardboard suitcase in the bottom of the closet. He raked a handful of Carl’s clothes off the closet rod, stuffed them in, opened a few drawers, and emptied them into the suitcase. Carlene watched him for a minute, then ran outside and dragged the tin box full of magazines out from under the trailer. They threw it all into the truck cab.

  “Come on, girl. Get in the back. We gotta take care of this before your mama gets home.”

  Carlene climbed in and watched through the back window as Walter shoved her daddy’s body down behind the dashboard.

  He got behind the wheel, turned around, and saw her face in the window.

  “Sit down, Carlene. I don’t need you to fall.” The key was in the ignition. He turned it, and the truck hacked and jerked to life. He leaned out the window and studied Carlene for a minute.

  “Better yet, you drive my truck and follow me. I don’t need to leave my truck out here. You know how to drive, don’t you?”

  “No, sir. I never drove a truck before.”

  “Ain’t nothing to it. Put your left foot on the clutch while you start it, then shove the gear shift up and give it a little gas with your right foot as you ease up on the clutch. You know which one’s the brake and which one’s the clutch, don’t you?”

  “I reckon. I seen my daddy drive.”

  “Good. When you get to going a little faster, step on the clutch and pull the gear shift down into second. Then let the clutch out slow. You probably won’t need more gears than that. Follow me. Here’s the keys.”

  He tossed the keys up to Carlene, who climbed down from the back of the pickup and got into Walter’s truck. It took her a few tries to get it started, but she did, and the caravan of two set off down the road, her truck weaving from side to side while she learned, as she went, how to steer. They didn’t meet a single car, which was a blessing.

  Two miles from the trailer was an old rock quarry, abandoned for years, that had filled up with deep, cold water. Nobody was really sure just how deep it really was. The legend was that it was bottomless. Kids used to sometimes climb down the sheer rock walls and go swimming there in the hot summertime, but there were no ledges to speak of, the water was dark, and one time two of them drowned. The bodies were never recovered. After that, mothers were always warning their kids about the quarry, but the kids wouldn’t have gone swimming there anyhow. They were too afraid the bodies of the drowned boys would pop up. There was never anybody around there.

  And there wasn’t anybody around there when they pulled up in the truck with Carl Moore’s body and parked near the rim.

  It didn’t take much to shove the truck over, with both of them pushing. Carlene and Walter knelt and leaned over the side and watched it make a shadow on the rock wall on its way down, then hit the surface with a splash that sent a spray halfway up to where they were kneeling. It floated for a minute or two, then the cab filled and the dark green water of the quarry sucked it under and it sank out of sight, heading slowly to the bottom. If there was a bottom. It might have kept going all the way to the burning center of the earth.

  Then the two of them, Walter and Carlene, got in his truck and drove back to the trailer together in silence.

  —

  Frannie was more than a little surprised to see Walter sitting in the yard when she got home. He and Carlene were drinking big glasses of ice tea.

  “Well, Walter Tucker. What in the world are you doing here?”

  “Hidey, Frannie. Just thought I’d drop by and visit a little while. Carlene, why don’t you go on in and get your mama a glass of tea? I bet she could use one.”

  “Do you want me to, Mama?”

  “That would hit the spot. Where’s your daddy?”

  “Go on, Carlene. Get your mama that tea.”

  Carlene went into the trailer. The window was open beside the sink, and she cracked the tray open and took out the ice as quietly and slowly as she could, so she could listen.

  “That’s what I need to talk to you about, Frannie. I happened to come by here just as Carl was out in the yard, loading all his clothes in the back of the truck. I thought that was a little strange, and I asked him where he was going. He said he was taking off. Said he hadn’t been much of a husband and less of a father, and you and Carlene would be better off without him.”

  Frannie sat down on an old tire. It seemed like the wind had been knocked out of her.

  “Well. I declare. That don’t sound like Carl. You mean he just up and told you all that?”

  “You’re mighty right. It don’t sound like him, but that’s what happened. He might have had a bit to drink at the time.”

  “That part sounds like Carl.”

  “Men get low sometimes, Frannie. Did Carl seem low to you?”

  “Lord, yes. It had just got worse and worse, come to think about it.”

  “Seemed like he didn’t have a grip, you think?”

  “I guess you could say that. It had got to where I tried to mostly stay out of his way.”

  “Men sometimes lose their grip, Frannie. I reckon that might have happened with Carl. He just lost his grip.”

  Frannie looked hard at Walter. She didn’t really believe him, but Carl and the truck were both gone. What if it was true?

  “You’d think he would have had the decency to at least tell it to me face-to-face.”

  “Naw. He’d never do that. Men like Carl ain’t no good at talking face-to-face. Likely, he just took a notion all of a sudden to light out and start fresh all over again someplace else, where they don’t know him. He’s still a young man.”

  Frannie thought about that for a while. It didn’t make a lot of sense, but Carl did a lot of things that didn’t make much sense. Still, Walter might have misunderstood.

  “Did he say where he was headed?”

  “Not exactly. I think he might have mentioned something about heading out west. He did say for me to tell you he didn’t want you to try to look for him, and not to worry. Just get on with your life. Take care of the girl. And that he was real sorry.”

  “Well, I swan. That don’t sound at all like Carl.” Now she was starting to worry. Walter must have got it wrong. For the life of her, she couldn’t imagine Carl saying that.

  Carlene came back out with a big glass squeezed full of lemons, sugar, and tea, just like Frannie liked it.

  “What did your daddy say to you, Carlene? Were you here when he left?”

  She looked over at Walter, who had taken out his pocketknife and was paring his fingernails.

  “No, ma’am. I hadn’t got home yet. When I got here, Daddy had done gone and Walter was out in the yard waiting for me.”

  “Walter, I just don’t know what to say.” The thought of Carl being gone was beginning to be exciting. She needed some time to think about it.

  “You don’t have to say nothing, Frannie. I think I ought to stay to supper, though, if it’s all right with you. I reckon you might not want to be by yourself tonight.�
��

  “No. You go on. We’ll be all right. I think Carlene and me need to be by ourselves to think this through. Thank you anyway, though. I appreciate all you’ve done.”

  —

  Frannie and Carlene waved as Walter got in his truck and drove off.

  “Well, your daddy will more than likely have a change of heart, so we better enjoy it while we can before he comes rolling back into the yard. What do you want for supper tonight, Carlene? You can have canned spaghetti or anything else you want. Your daddy’s not here to fuss about it.”

  17.Cherry

  Shady Vista Cemetery was set up on a ridge of Nehi Mountain and had been there since before the Civil War. There were tombstones, in fact, that had birthdates in the 1700s, and even before that it was a place where the Indians buried their dead, because people were all the time finding pieces of pottery and arrowheads and bones and things. There were a lot of really tall cedar trees and calycanthus bushes, making the air pungent with their rusty, spicy-smelling flowers, and it seemed like there was always a breeze blowing across the Ridge. You could stand and see across to where the Arkansas River cut through the valley and the lake ballooned off it. It was a peaceful place, like cemeteries are supposed to be.

  We went through the gates right behind the hearse, but the line of cars following us jammed in, filling up the parking lot and then both sides of the road until nobody could pass. I wondered how in the world we would ever get out of there.

  A little ways from the road, the grave had been dug and green artificial grass laid out over the mound of fresh dirt so people wouldn’t be so aware that the loved one was going into a hole in the ground. A few rows of chairs were set up beside the grave, for the family, and Frannie and little Kevin sat down in front.

  Brother Dane waited until most of the people got there, then stood by the grave and read some verses from the Bible and led us in prayer. Then he took a handful of dirt, threw it onto the casket, and said, “Ashes to ashes; dust to dust.” Frannie threw in a handful, along with a few flowers, and Kevin picked up two handfuls and flung them in. He squatted down to get more, but his grandmother pulled him back. Then he started to cry, and it seemed like nothing up to that moment was as heart-wrenching as that redheaded boy standing by his mother’s grave with dirty little hands and howling at the top of his lungs. They were really burying her, then, Patty-nails and all. It was final.