by Robert Inman
Joe Pike ran his hand across his head. “Yeah. I reckon I did.”
“It’s not safe, riding without a helmet. You said so.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“You get hurt, and I’m up a creek.”
Joe Pike shrugged.
“I’m sorry,” Trout said.
Joe Pike nodded. “It ain’t easy.”
“No sir. It ain’t.”
Joe Pike dropped the motorcycle down into first gear and eased off toward the back yard. Trout could almost see the rider on the back behind Joe Pike. Almost, but not quite. But he could see enough to realize that it wasn’t the Holy Ghost at all. It was a tiny, quiet woman who used to love to dance.
* * * * *
At mid-morning, Keats called. “Come get me,” she said.
“What?”
“I need a ride to work.”
“Call a cab.”
“In Moseley? Are you kidding?”
“Call a friend.”
“I just did.”
“Oh? I’m your friend?”
“Not if you don’t come get me and take me to work. And hurry up. I’m late.”
“Look,” he said, “you were truly shitty to me yesterday. And I could care less if you get to work or not.”
“I’m sorry about that,” she said quietly, sounding quite contrite.
“Oh?”
“Yes. I am. Really. I apologize.”
“Okay.”
“Now get your ass in gear, Trout. I’m gonna be late.”
He went on the motorcycle. He didn’t ask Joe Pike, he just went to the shed and cranked it up and took off. Joe Pike must have heard, but he didn’t make an appearance at the door of his church office.
He found Keats fidgeting on her crutches next to the dirt street in front of her house, dressed in her Dairy Queen uniform. It was freshly starched and the heat of the morning hadn’t taken the creases out of it yet. Very snappy, he thought. The yard was full of cars. One of them had an Alamo Rental sticker on the back bumper. The front door of the house was open and he could see people milling about inside.
“Why can’t your Daddy take you to work?”
“He’s busy,” she said, eyeing the motorcycle.
“Doing what?”
“I don’t know. I thought you’d bring the car.”
“Well, I didn’t.”
“I’ve never ridden a motorcycle before.”
“Can you get on by yourself?”
“Of course,” she said. “You think I need a crane or something?”
It might have helped, he thought. It took her awhile, much heaving of limbs, snorting and grunting, banging of crutches. “Don’t look,” she ordered. He held the bike steady, feet splayed, until she finally settled in behind him, tucked the crutches underneath his arm with the tips sticking out over the handlebars like twin machine guns. She held the crutches with one hand, put the other arm around his midsection and snuggled against him. “Giddy-up,” she said.
Trout sniffed the air. “What’s that smell?”
“White Shoulders,” she answered.
“You’re wearing perfume?”
She didn’t answer. It smelled very nice.
Herschel Bender was a retired Army sergeant. Keats said he had finished his military career running a mess hall at Fort Gordon in Augusta and used his savings to open the Dairy Queen. He was pasty-faced and paunch-bellied with thick arms and neck, dressed in short-sleeved white shirt and narrow plain black tie with a Dairy Queen cap covering his graying crew cut. He spoke in staccato, like a machine gun.
“Don’t touch nothing,” Herschel said. They were inside behind the counter, in the chrome and air-conditioned coolness. The Dairy Queen was spotless -- machinery gleaming, counters scrubbed, floor pristine.
“Herschel hates dirt,” Keats said. “He says if you gotta break wind, stick your fanny out the back door.”
“You want a job?” Herschel asked Trout.
“I’ve never done anything like this…” Trout waved his hand.
“He’s a Moseley,” Keats said.
Herschel ignored her. “Not in here. Out there.”
Trout looked out through the plate glass. The parking lot baked in late-morning emptiness. Too early for the lunch crowd.
“The tables need painting,” Herschel said. There were three concrete picnic tables at the side of the building.
“I know a kid down the street that’ll paint the tables,” Keats said, her voice rising.
Herschel turned on her. “Keats, you got a problem?”
“He doesn’t need a job,” she said. “He’s…”
“A Moseley,” he finished.
“Yeah.”
Herschel nodded slowly, thinking it over. “Okay, so I don’t hire anybody named Moseley. And maybe I don’t hire anybody on crutches.”
She glowered at him and Herschel raised his eyebrows, waiting for her to say something else. She kept her mouth shut. Trout felt incredibly awkward. “Look, I’ll…”
“You want the job?” Herschel asked.
Trout glanced at Keats. She wouldn’t look at him. “Yes sir,” he said finally. “I sure do.”
Herschel crooked his finger. “Come with me.”
The tables were bare concrete, stained with grease and spilled food. Herschel gave them a disgusted wave. “I come out here every day, wash the damn things off, customers come right back and mess ’em up. Grownups as bad as the kids. If this place was a mess hall, I’d kick their butts. But you can’t do that with a civilian establishment.”
“Yes sir,” Trout agreed.
“Word gets around you’re kicking butts, it’s bad for business.”
“I guess so.”
“So, we’ll paint ‘em. Won’t stop people from making a mess, but it’ll be easier to clean up. Capiche?”
“What?”
“It’s Italian for ‘you readin’ me?’”
“Yes sir.”
“Had a lieutenant in Korea, little sawed-off guinea, used to say that all the time. Capiche? Capiche? He’d roust me outta my fartsack all hours of the night, give me some stupid order. Capiche? Capiche? Hated his guts.”
“Why do you say it, then?”
“Bad habit. Like standing over a hot griddle, cookin’ food for people to feed their greedy faces. Shoulda taken my money and bought a boat and gone deep sea fishing every day.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I hate fishing.”
Trout nodded, not at all sure he understood.
“Well, get to work,” Herschel said.
From the storeroom around back, Trout had fetched, at Herschel’s direction, a gallon plastic jug marked “Muratic Acid,” a bucket, a stiff-bristled scrub brush and a pair of rubber gloves.
“What…how do you want me to do it?”
“Get the hose,” Herschel pointed to a length of green garden hose, coiled and hung from a spigot on the side of the building. “Mix the muratic half-and-half. Scrub the tables with the mixture, then hose ’em down real good. By the time you finish the third one, the first one’ll be dry. Then paint. Gallon of green enamel and a brush on the shelf in the storage room. Then clean up. Leave the brushes soaking in turpentine. Capiche?”
“Yes sir. Capiche.”
Herschel turned to go. Then… “What’d you say your name is?”
“Trout.”
“Like the fish.”
“Yes sir.”
“Who the hell named you after a fish?”
“It’s short for Troutman. That’s my mother’s family name.”
Herschel grunted, started away again, turned back. “Keats. It’s amazing how she gets around like that.”
“I guess so.”
Herschel shook his head. “Sometimes you just wanna smack her in the mouth.”
It took a good bit of the day. The first mistake he made was not using the rubber gloves. He put them on and worked for awhile, but his hands got hot and sweaty so he took them off . By the time he h
ad finished scrubbing down the tables, his hands were burning, splotched with angry patches of red, the outer layer of skin peeling off his fingertips.
Herschel brought him a footlong hotdog and a coke for lunch. “You ever take chemistry in school?” he asked.
“Yes sir.”
“You study anything about acid?”
“Yes sir.”
“Well, you’ll probably die,” Herschel said. “If you don’t, you’ll be disfigured for life and your children will be born deformed.”
Trout’s mouth dropped open.
“Not really,” Herschel said. “Muratic ain’t powerful stuff, but it’s acid. Hose your hands down real good and put some ointment on ’em tonight.”
“I shoulda kept the gloves on,” Trout said.
Herschel left him there to eat his footlong and drink his coke.
The second mistake he made was taking off his tee-shirt when he finished lunch. He thought he’d get a little sun while he painted the tables. When he finished at mid-afternoon, he tried to put his shirt back on, but he couldn’t. His shoulders and back were scorched.
Herschel came out again and looked over the tables. Trout had done a neat job, taking care not to splatter paint on the concrete apron under the tables. They were a nice bright green, drying quickly in the sun. “Looks pretty good,” Herschel said.
“Thanks.”
“How much I owe you?”
Trout shrugged. “I don’t know.” He thought for a moment. “Ten dollars?”
Herschel fished in his pants pocket, pulled out a wad of bills and handed Trout a twenty. “Don’t sell yourself short.”
“Yes sir.”
“You looking for summer work? Or are you spending full time developing your tan?”
Trout looked at his shoulder. It was beet red and it left a little yellow indention when he touched it with his finger. “I think I overdid it,” he said. “And yes, I’m looking for a job.”
Trout felt like his whole body was on fire. Hands burning from the acid, back and shoulders feeling like somebody was sticking him with a million pinpricks at once. Even the wind on his bare skin made him twitch. Keats sat well back on the seat, trying not to bump against him, holding onto the belt loops of his jeans. She didn’t say much until they got back into town and stopped at the traffic light on Broadus Street. Then she said, “He offered you a job, didn’t he.”
“He told me to come back when I get out of the burn ward.”
She didn’t say anything else until they made a turn at the high school and started toward the mill village. Then she said, “Let me off.”
“What?”
“I said let me off.”
He rode on for several yards, and then she smacked him flat-handed in the middle of the back. “Owww! God DAMN!” he bellowed, and almost lost control of the motorcycle. It wobbled, jumped the curb, crossed the sidewalk, came to a stop on the lawn of the school just short of the flag pole. He kicked down the kickstand with a vicious swipe of his foot, jumped off the cycle, grabbed Keats around the waist, hauled her off and dropped her on the grass with a thump. Then he picked up her crutches where they had fallen beside the motorcycle and shoved them at her.
“What in the hell is wrong with you? What in the living name of mother-of-God hell is the goddamn matter?” He was aware that he was screaming, that his eyes were bulging, but he couldn’t stop. Sunburn and acid burn and tennis burn and general cruddy situation burn took utter control of his brain. “The man offered me a job! What’s wrong with that? I need the money and I don’t have a goddamn thing to do in this goddamn piss-ass town and I think I’m about to go fucking nuts! I can’t help it if my name is Moseley! I didn’t choose it!” He screamed at her like a madman, stomping around the spot where she sat on the grass, flailing his arms even though every movement hurt like hell. “I don’t want to be a Moseley and I don’t want to live here and I am tired of your smart-ass shitty attitude and your ragging on me and cutting my balls off for something I can’t do a goddamn thing about! Do you hear? Do you hear? Go home and pick the wings offa flies or something. Just fucking leave me alone!”
The motorcycle was still idling. He turned and aimed a kick at the cycle, caught it in the gas tank, toppled it over. The engine died with a cough. “Shit!” he yelled. “Shit, shit, shit!” Then he picked up the motorcycle and climbed back on it and fired it up again.
“I’m sorry,” Keats said. It was almost inaudible.
He looked down at her. “What?” he screamed.
“I said I’m sorry.”
He sat there on the motorcycle for a moment staring at her. Then she made a little pained face, scrunched up her nose, looked down at the grass. They didn’t say anything for a long time. Trout could feel the wrath draining out of his head, seeping down through his neck and chest and puddling in his stomach. He felt incredibly tired and a little lightheaded. It had taken a lot out of him.
Finally she said, “Let’s get out of the sun.”
The school auditorium was dim and musty, with a storm of dust motes swirling in the late afternoon sunlight streaming through the tall windows, splashing across the rows of battered wooden seats. Trout hunched miserably, elbows on knees, in a seat down in front of the stage while Keats went looking for the first aid kit in the sickroom. She came back after awhile with a can of spray something with a big red cross on it. She sprayed it on his back and shoulders and it felt wonderfully cool, taking the sting out of his flesh. Then she sat down in the seat next to him and propped her crutches against the armrest.
“Why?” he asked after awhile. She didn’t answer. “Why do you do that? Why don’t you just leave me alone if you’re so mad? I’ve never been around anybody who’s as mad as you are. And you just turn it on and turn it off. It’s like a damned ambush.”
They heard the front door of the school building open then and Trout froze. It was Mr. Blaylock. He could have looked through the open back door of the auditorium and seen them. Hey! What the hell you young’uns doing down there? You with your shirt off… But he passed by in the hallway without looking. They heard the door the principal’s office close and the drone of his window air conditioner as it started up. Trout eased his tee-shirt on. It still stung, but the burn was better.
They sat there awhile longer and finally Keats said, “I got run over by a truck.”
“What?”
“That’s how…” she indicated the crutches. “The guy in the house next door got fired -- drinking, I think -- so the mill sent a truck and loaded up all their stuff to take it off. Joe and I were playing in the dirt behind the truck. Something slipped. It rolled back. And…” she shrugged.
He sat there for a long time, stunned. He had no idea what to say. He had assumed it was polio or something like that. There was still such a thing as polio, wasn’t there? But no, it was a stupid truck. A Moseley truck. “Did anybody do anything?” he gestured at her legs, “I mean, to help?”
“I had a bunch of operations. The mill paid for all of it. The Moseleys.”
“But…”
“Yeah.”
Then he remembered something she had said just now. “Who’s Joe?”
“My little brother.”
“I didn’t know you had a little brother.”
“I don’t.” She blanched, and then her face went all dull and lifeless. “The truck…”
“My God,” he said softly. And for the first time, he truly felt the great crushing weight of being who he was. Don’t forget who you are, Aunt Alma had said. It sounded so easy, so proud, so comfortable when she said it. But since she had said it to him that first afternoon in the mill, it had been mostly an irritation. People didn’t speak to you at school, the principal was still upset because Joe Pike fell down in a football game. Everybody watched you, took careful note of everything you said and did, compounding the burden of being a preacher’s kid. All that was a pain in the ass. And now this… Sweet Jesus. He could see that he was a product of a great aching history that
stretched back farther than he could ever see. People with mills and trucks and money and power over other people’s lives.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m really sorry.” And he truly was. About more than the truck running over Keats and Joe Dubarry. He felt an overwhelming hollowness, expanding and filling the empty space of the high-ceilinged auditorium and oozing out the doors and windows, sucking in an entire town and everything in it.
“It makes Daddy crazy,” Keats said. “Every time he looks at me. Every time he sees these.” She picked up the crutches with a clatter that echoed like gunfire in the auditorium’s stillness, making the dust motes dance. “It’s all I’ve ever heard. The damn Moseleys.”
“I guess I understand…”
“No you don’t,” she snapped, suddenly angry again. “He named Joe for your father.”
“Oh.”
She picked up her crutches, planted them solidly on the floor and vaulted up out of her seat. She had powerful hands and arms. She stood there for awhile with her back to him, and then she turned around. Her face was hard and sharp. He had seen it yield a little, every great once in awhile. This morning when he picked her up, wearing her White Shoulders. But not now. It was a thing she allowed only in tiny pieces, like sloughing off old skin. Underneath, there seemed to be only the hardness.
“Yeah,” she said. “Oh.”
“Keats,” he said quietly, “I didn’t do it.”
She just stared at him. Again, unyielding.
“I’ve got enough shit to tote around without all that.”
She stared some more. Then she said, “You sure have a foul mouth for a preacher’s kid.”
“I don’t…I try to be careful.”
“Except with me?”
Trout heaved himself up out of his seat. Sometimes you just want to smack her, Herschel had said. Instead, he walked past her and started up the middle aisle toward the door.
“Aren’t you gonna take me home?”
“I guess.”
“One thing,” she said.
He stopped, turned back to her.
“You finally got pissed off. Feel better?”
“No.” He truly didn’t. He felt as rotten as he had ever felt in his life. He wanted to go home and close the door and be by himself. Be very still. Not move a muscle. Not let a single sound intrude. He wouldn’t even have to wait until dark because he thought you could probably create your own darkness if you let go of yourself. Then suddenly he thought, Like Mama. Was that it? Was that how it started? And what did she find when she got deep down inside herself -- still and quiet and dark? It must be okay, because she had gotten very, very good at it.