Tats

by Layce Gardner

  Vivian stops in her tracks and points off to our left. “Look. It’s a midget farm.”

  I follow her finger and see what she means. There’s an old ramshackle farmhouse set back from the road and it’s surrounded by a dozen or more little plaster people with pointy hats, peeking over the tall weeds.

  “Gnomes,” I say, “not midgets. Those’re decorative yard art.”

  Vivian picks her way through the yard and up to where most of the gnomes are gathered.

  “I feel so tall,” she remarks.

  “Have you been taking some of your pills when I wasn’t looking?”

  “Just a couple of blue ones,” she says reassuringly.

  “I’m going to knock on the door. Maybe they have a phone or something.”

  “Be careful,” she warns, “I saw this once in a movie and it didn’t turn out so good.”

  “What movie was it?”

  “I don’t remember the name of it but there was this really pretty woman who could sing and these seven little men held her hostage.”

  “Snow White,” I say. “It’s a cartoon movie.”

  “It’s still scary.”

  She perches her butt on top of an old camper shell sitting in the middle of the yard and takes off her heels. Rubbing her feet, she looks up at me and asks, “Can you look in the red bag and hand me some of my La Prairie age management balance lotion?”

  “You’re kidding,” is all I say.

  “No, it’s really good on feet. It says for the face, but it works wonders on your feet too.”

  “Do you think right now is really the best time to be rubbing lotion on your feet?” I ask way too loudly.

  “When should I do it?!” Vivian shouts back. “When my feet look really old? Then it’s a little late, don’t you think?”

  I have my mouth open to yell back, but at that precise moment the porch light blazes on. I jerk my head to look and freeze with my mouth still wide open. Silhouetted against the harsh light is the strangest looking human-like creature I’ve ever seen. She’s maybe four feet tall with a ginormous head and lopsided shoulders. I look a little closer and realize it’s not that she’s so short, it’s that she’s missing her legs from the knees down and is balancing precariously on her stumps. The next thing I notice is that she’s got a double-barrel 12 gauge shotgun aimed right at me.

  “Wrong movie,” I whisper to Viv out of the side of my mouth. “This is more like Deliverance.”

  Vivian bounces to her bare feet, exclaiming, “Sandy? Is that you?”

  Sandy swings the shotgun toward Vivian. “Who are you?” she snarls. “Did Bongo send you?”

  “It’s me! Vivian Baxter! From high school?”

  Sandy’s tough-gal exterior cracks a little. “The cheerleader Vivian Baxter?”

  “Yes! Remember we sat next to each other in home ec? We made a chocolate cake together and we cheated and used canned icing from Walmart.”

  “I remember.” Sandy laughs a little, then swings the gun back at me. “Who’s that you got with you?”

  “It’s Lee Anne. From high school. Remember her?”

  “Swallowed the guppy?” Sandy asks.

  “Goldfish,” I correct softly.

  “That’s her.” Vivian laughs.

  Sandy pulls her gun up into a tighter grip and asks, “What the hell happened to your hair?”

  “I...um...I dreaded it,” I explain.

  “On purpose?” she asks.

  “Yeah...”

  “Looks like a cat sucked on it.” Sandy laughs.

  I don’t think it’s particularly funny, but I figure the best thing to do in this situation is to laugh along with her.

  Appeased, Sandy sets the shotgun down inside the door and flips on the inside lights. “I’d invite you all in but the cats don’t like people. Let me get my legs on and I’ll come out to you.”

  She disappears back inside the house and as soon as she shuts the door, I shut my mouth and look at Vivian. “She’s going to get her legs on.”

  “Thank God,” Vivian says. “I was sure I was getting taller this time.”

  I’m still a little afraid she’s going to pop back out with the shotgun, so I keep my feet planted where they are, lean a little to my left and peer through her front window. It looks like a pretty ordinary house from what I can see. Except for...is that a Christmas tree hanging upside down from her living room ceiling?

  “Viv, I think she’s got an upside down Christmas tree hanging from her ceiling fan.”

  “So the cats won’t get in it,” she says matter-of-factly.

  “Oh.” As an afterthought I add, “But it’s nowhere near Christmastime.”

  Exasperated with my stupidity, Vivian says, “How the hell is she going to take it down when she doesn’t even have legs?”

  “Oh.”

  Vivian handles all this like it’s a normal turn of events. Like seeing a half-legless woman aim a gun at her is just within the realm of usual. Me, myself, I’m a little weirded out. Like I just walked into a horror movie and even though there’s scary music coming from the dark basement, I go down the steps anyway.

  I hear Sandy before I see her. Eek, eek, eek, eek, her metal prosthetic legs squeak with each step. She eeks out onto the porch, holds up a bottle of Wild Turkey and announces, “Git your butts on up here. I haven’t had company in so long, I’m gonna make this a party.”

  I follow Vivian on up to the porch and situate myself on the steps while Vivian sits on the swing next to Sandy. We all take turns taking long pulls off the whiskey bottle and relax to the cricket music.

  “Our car broke down several miles back,” I offer even though she hasn’t ever asked.

  “I figured,” Sandy says. “That’s all that ever comes out this way. Lost or broken-down people. I’d offer you a phone if I had one.”

  “I don’t know who I’d call anyway,” I say.

  Sandy continues, “I’d offer you a bed but the cats have taken over everything inside. You’re more than welcome to sleep in the camper shell, though.”

  I’d rather die than sleep in a camper shell that’s just lying on the cold hard ground, but I tell her thank you anyway.

  “Nice peaceful place you got here,” I venture.

  Sandy takes another drink and replies, “Yep. Got a couple hundred acres. My son, Bongo, lives next door on the other side of that there windbreak. Good thing you found my place before you found his.”

  Vivian asks the same question I’m thinking, “Why’d you name him Bongo?”

  “On account of his head shape. He’s not quite all there. Prolly ’cause I gave birth to him during my first psychotic break. He fancies himself an international spy or something like that. Says he works undercover for the CIA. He’s not a bad sort, just a little off. He sure helps me out, though. Ever since the threshing accident.” Sandy raises her fake legs up for us to see, just in case we had missed them the first time.

  “I can fix that squeak for you,” I offer.

  She smiles real big, “That’d be nice. All this noise drives the cats crazy. They’re always trying to pounce on me just to catch the mouse.”

  I jump up off the steps and grab Viv’s lotion from the top of the camper shell where she left it. Just to be extra safe I push all the bags inside the shell. I sit back down by Sandy’s metal legs and dab the lotion in every joint.

  “So what happened after high school?” Vivian asks. “I heard you and Larry Dale got married.”

  Sandy nods. “Had a baby first. Then got hitched. Then got divorced. Boom boom boom. All in three years time. Don’t feel sorry for me, though. Divorcing Larry Dale was the best thing I ever did. Don’t know why I married him in the first place. He caught me in one of my low spells and popped the question so I said yes.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean,” Vivian agrees. “I married my first husband out of stupidity. My second and third was just plain ol’ low self-esteem.”

  “Three?” I gulp. “You been married three times?”r />
  Vivian ignores me.

  “You had low self-esteem? You were always the prettiest girl in school. If not in the whole county,” Sandy says.

  “I didn’t know that then. I was always trying to live up to my mother’s expectations. To her I was always too fat. Or too stupid. Or too whatever. I think she always viewed me as competition for my daddy’s attention.”

  I interject. “Where’s he at now? Larry Dale, I mean.”

  “Six feet under. He was tearing down a big brick silo with a rented backhoe. Stupid little man. Silo fell one way ’stead of the other and he got himself crushed. I always knew something like that would happen to him. He walked through life like he was walking through a minefield, just waiting for one to go off. I think that’s the main reason I divorced him. He was like that ol’ cow out in the corner of the pasture. You don’t wanna get too attached ’cause you know he’s just gonna get et.”

  I screw the lid back on the lotion jar. “Test them out,” I say.

  Sandy works her legs back and forth and not a squeak comes from them. “I’ll be damned,” she says by way of a thank-you. She offers me the whiskey bottle and says, “I hope I’m not being too nosy, but I heard that you was sent to prison.”

  I take a long swig before I nod.

  “I bet you saw some things in there you’d rather forget.”

  I don’t know how to respond. Vivian studies my face, looking for a clue and I’m suddenly thankful for the darkness. “Most of the stuff I want to forget...” I begin, “happened out here. Not in there.”

  “What was prison like if you don’t mind me asking?”

  I think for a moment before answering. “You get used to it pretty quick. There’s some good things. You always know what you’re going to wear. You always know what you’re going to do. What you’re going to eat. You get to read a lot. I learned how to make eyeliner out of cigarette ashes and Christmas decorations out of sanitary napkins.”

  “Martha Stewart should do a program about that. Useful things. Not how to fold napkins into duck shapes,” says Sandy.

  “Maybe she could do a whole show about a thousand and one uses for face lotion,” I joke.

  That cracks them both up and I rest easier knowing the conversation is going in another direction. Vivian takes the lotion out of my hand and without asking begins to rub it on Sandy’s leg stumps. She seems agreeable enough to the pampering.

  “I can’t help but admire your shoes, Vivian. Are those Jimmy Choos?” Sandy asks.

  “Why, yes they are. Thank you for noticing.”

  “I pay pretty close attention to shoes,” Sandy explains. “Never gave them a thought until I couldn’t have them no more.”

  “I’ve always been addicted to shoes,” Vivian explains. “I’ll take a good pair of shoes over love any day. You don’t have to feed them, they don’t go out and fuck around on you, and they don’t leave the toilet seat up.”

  “I like that philosophy.” Sandy laughs.

  “What’s that over there?” I ask Sandy. “Over there by the big satellite dish. It’s looks like a motorcycle under that tarp.”

  “It is.”

  “It’s broke down?” I ask.

  Sandy shakes her head. “No, the damn thing runs just fine. Loud as hell, though. That’s the only thing Larry Dale left me when he went. A damn two-wheeled thing I can’t never drive. Maybe he thought that was funny, I dunno.”

  “You ever thought about selling it?” I ask.

  Sandy peers at me through the shadows, then asks, “Why? You want it?”

  “I’d pay you the going price for it.”

  “It’s not worth much to me,” she says. “And I hate looking at it.”

  “I’ll give you my shoes for it,” Vivian pipes up.

  Sandy laughs long and hard, swinging her metal legs up in the arm with each guffaw. “Now why on earth would I need shoes?” she chortles.

  Vivian looks at her seriously for a long moment before saying, “Every woman needs a little hope, don’t you think?”

  “Hope for what?” Sandy chortles. “For my legs to grow back? Like my mama always said, ‘Hope in one hand and shit in the other. See which gets full the quickest.’”

  Vivian shakes her head and says quietly, “I’d rather be holding a handful of dreams than a handful of shit.”

  “I know what Viv means,” I tell Sandy. “In prison I had a magazine picture of a countryside, just green grass covered hills and a road cutting through. I taped it by my cot and stared at it all the time. And dreamed. It got me through.”

  That makes Sandy stop and think. The bottle makes a full circle and when it comes back to her, she raises it in the air to Vivian and says, “It’s a done deal. I’d rather look at those shoes than that damn motorcycle any day.”

  And we sit like that until well after the whiskey’s gone. Just chatting and inhaling the sweet Oklahoma night air. It’s like we’re in the eye of the tornado, calm and peaceful, with all kinds of crazy shit whirling around us.

  A couple of hours later Viv and I are drunk and sleeping it off on the hard ground inside the camper shell with nothing but an empty bottle of whiskey and an empty jar of lotion, using the bags of money as pillows.

  I wake up at some point in the middle of the night, still half-drunk, all spooned up behind Vivian. I’ve been sleeping with my right arm wrapped around her and my tittie-dominant hand cupping one of her tits. I guess she’s really drunk too, because she doesn’t seem to know or care. I start to carefully remove my hand when I see a big white face peering at us through the camper shell window.

  I freeze. For half a second, I think it’s Prince Charles or one of his goons. Then I see the head shape. It’s Bongo.

  A mouthful of big white teeth grin at me through the darkness and I hear the face say, “You ain’t gotta worry. I’m a secret agent. Them three British spies chasing you won’t give you no more trouble.” Then as quick as he appeared, he’s gone.

  I spend the rest of the night awake, blinking in the darkness, clutching Viv’s tit for security. I don’t fall asleep until dawn.

  I’ve been up and about for maybe an hour checking out my new motorcycle. It looks to be in perfect working order once I brush off the cobwebs and kitty paw prints. It’s a beautiful Harley. Scarlet Red and chrome with aferings and floorboards. I figure this bike cost a good twenty grand brand new. Even the tires still have all the tread on them. All that’s left to do is get it on the road and blow the pipes out real good. I sit on it, testing out the balance and the shocks and daydream about the open road.

  Vivian finally wakes up and crawls on her belly out of the shell. She stumbles her way over to the windbreak and crouches down in some tall weeds to pee. She squats in between a couple of gnomes and reaches out and turns their little faces away from her so she can pee in privacy.

  “Question,” Viv says, still bent down. “Do all girlie parts look the same?”

  The stuff that comes out of her mouth never ceases to amaze me. “Good morning to you, too.”

  “Do they?” she asks again.

  “I dunno,” I say, half-embarrassed. “I’m no expert.”

  “Well, I’ve only seen my own. How many have you seen?”

  “Viv, seriously, it’s early.”

  She pushes, “How many?”

  “Too many.”

  “Do they all look the same?”

  She’s not going to give up, so I play along. “Does all male genitalia look the same to you?” I throw back.

  “God, no,” she answers. “English men aren’t even circumcised.”

  “Gross.”

  She hitches up her panties and takes her time scratching her butt. “Answer me this. Do Chinese women have slanted ones?”

  I roll my eyes. I don’t know why exactly but this conversation is starting to piss me off. I answer her in my exasperated voice, “Yes, Vivian, Chinese women have slanted ones. And white women have white ones. And black women have black ones. And Jewish women have cold o
nes.”

  She high-steps her way through the weeds and over toward me. “What about Indians?”

  “Indian dot or Indian feather?”

  “Indian feather.”

  Once I get a good look at her I know exactly what it is that’s pissing me off and it has nothing to do with this topic of conversation. It has to do with her tits. Which right now are halfway spilling out of her bra and she doesn’t even care if I see. Or maybe she does care. Maybe she’s planned it that way and wants me to see them. Maybe she wasn’t too drunk or asleep last night and she was fully aware I was latched on to her tits. She either really wants me, or she’s teasing me just for kicks, or she’s oblivious. And if that’s the case, I’m tired of acting like I’m oblivious to her being oblivious.

  “I asked you a question. What about Indian ones.”

  “Don’t know and don’t care,” I reply sharply.

  She turns her back to me and buttons up her shirt. “What’s wrong with Indians?” she asks.

  “What’s right with them?”

  When she turns back around her shirt is buttoned up higher than I’ve ever seen it before and she has a tone in her voice when she asks, “What’d they ever do to you?”

  I don’t understand where this line of questioning is coming from and I certainly don’t understand where it’s going. All I know is I’m hungry and cranky and hungover and she just buttoned her shirt up on me. “Free medical care. That’s what they did to me. They get free fuckin’ medical care and I don’t get squat because I’m white or my grandma wasn’t on their rolls. And they get free land and free houses built on them. Or if they rent a house they get most of their rent paid for. And they hire each other to work in the casinos but not white people. And butter and cheese. All the free fuckin’ butter and cheese they can eat. All because five generations ago some white people gave them firewater and smallpox and made their soft little feet walk barefoot in the snow which means three generations later they get free cheese and don’t have to pay taxes on cigarettes. And most of them don’t even look like an Indian’s supposed to look. But the thing that pisses me off the most is the cheese.”

  She sticks out her bottom lip and glares at me long and hard. “I’m Indian,” she says flatly.