Dairy Queen Days

by Robert Inman

  “Four.”

  “Do you remember much before?”

  She balanced on the crutches before him. “I used to have a dream all the time. I’d be running across a field with Daddy, both of us holding onto a kite string. Then I’d let go and he would run on, faster and faster with me trying to keep up. And then I’d stop and look up and the kite would be way up in the sky dancing from side to side. And I would start to dance like the kite. I don’t know if it was something that really happened before I got hurt or if I just invented it.”

  “Do you still have the dream?”

  ” I guess I got over it.”

  He took another sip of Pepsi and passed her the can. She drank what was left, then tossed the empty can into a rusted oil drum that served for a garbage can. The clatter rang out in the stillness. “We aren’t gonna get to Atlanta like this,” she said.

  Trout stopped again at a Jiffy Mart in Covington and filled up the gas tank. It took all of his one-dollar bills. Inside, he examined a Georgia road map tacked to the wall and saw that Highway 278 merged with I-20 just outside Covington. The thought of confronting I-20 spooked him. But the clerk showed him a couple of back roads he could take until he could pick up 278 again in Conyers.

  They set out again, following the clerk’s directions until they left the city limits on a narrow farm-to-market road that cut south and west from Covington into the countryside. It seemed that they had fallen off the end of the earth. They went several miles without seeing an inkling of life -- only blackness ahead, pierced by the thin, timid beam of the headlamp, and to either side, trees growing close to the roadway, an occasional flash of fence posts, stretches of sheer emptiness. Keats’ grip on him tightened.

  And then the headlamp went out. They hurtled blindly into the pit of the night and Trout screamed, “Jeezus!” and fought the panic that seized him by the throat and made him want to brake the motorcycle with every ounce of his energy. Keats didn’t utter a sound, but her arms were like a vise around him, squeezing his breath, the metal crutches biting painfully into his sides. He let off on the gas and tried to brake with a steady pressure. The motorcycle began to slow. He had no hint of where the shoulder was until he felt the bike slip suddenly sideways and lurch violently across grass and dirt. He had the sudden impression of a yawning void to his right and he fought to stay away from it, manhandling the motorcycle, almost losing it, summoning a surge of terrified energy and pulling it back to the left until finally it shuddered to a stop and the engine coughed and died.

  They sat there unmoving, Trout’s feet splayed to either side to keep the bike from toppling. Keats’ grip on him eased and his breath came in great gasps. He felt faint. His heart was somewhere up around his ears, pounding like a rock band in heat. After a moment Keats said in a small voice, “That was interesting.”

  After awhile, his eyes began to adjust to the darkness. There was a tiny sliver of moon low in the sky and it provided just enough light to make out their immediate surroundings. He looked to his right. There was a ditch -- not deep, as he had imagined, but deep enough to have caused a nasty spill if the motorcycle had hit it. They might both be dead, or at least badly hurt, lying helplessly in this godforsaken Georgia outback until someone stumbled upon them.

  Trout’s resolve and bravado -- what there had been of it -- deserted him. His shoulders slumped in defeat, his stomach churned, a wave of nausea hit him. “I can’t do this,” he said, his voice quivering.

  Keats didn’t say anything for a long while. Night sounds bubbled up around them -- crickets, an insomniac bird, something small rooting about in the grass along the far edge of the ditch, the faint rustle of a breeze in what appeared to be a field of some kind of low-growing crop beyond the ditch. He felt utterly helpless.

  “I’ve got to go to the bathroom,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Help me off,” she commanded.

  A flash of anger took him. Damn her! It was all her fault, and if she hadn’t said what she said in the first place he would have never thought of taking off in the middle of the night on a motorcycle for Atlanta, much less with a crippled, tart-mouthed woman hanging on behind, goading him on without saying a word and now, when he was about to crap in his own pants, making him crazy with her goddamn bladder. It was a wonder she hadn’t insisted on dragging along her goddamn sketch pad and stopping every now and then to scribble on it. She was maddening.

  He lowered the kickstand with a vicious jab of his foot and climbed off and helped her slide off the back. She tottered off down the roadside without a word and he watched her for a moment and then turned his back and kicked at the grass and heard the rattle of the crutches and then a hissing sound. After a moment she was back.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  He turned on her with a jerk. “Go? Are you out of your mind?” he yelped.

  “Yes,” she said, “I’d have to be out of my mind to be out here in the middle of East Jesus with you in the first place. I can’t believe I let you talk me into this.”

  “Me?” he yelped. “Talk you?”

  “Who knocked on whose door?”

  “Who opened it?”

  “Why didn’t you just take the Interstate?”

  “Because I didn’t want to get us killed.”

  They yelled back and forth in the semi-darkness and whatever it was scratching about in the grass scurried away in fright.

  “Well,” she said with great finality, “I don’t intend to be here a minute longer than I have to.”

  “Well, you’re stuck,” he said flatly.

  “No I’m not,” she shot back, and she clattered away up the road, putting a steady distance between them.

  He stared in utter amazement. “Keats,” he called, “don’t act like an idiot.”

  She was perhaps twenty yards away now. She turned and looked back at him -- a sturdy, if slightly askew figure, held upright by two thin pieces of aluminum. He could see her quite plainly, even in the weak light. “We can wait until daylight,” he offered.

  “No,” she said, and turned again to go.

  He started after her. “All right. Wait up.” They wouldn’t get far. For all her incredible stubborness, she would tire quickly and they would stop and let the rest of the night pass. In the morning he would find a telephone and call Joe Pike. No, Cicero. Somebody would come in a truck and fetch them and they would go back to Moseley and… what? The thought of Moseley made him ill. He had fled in panic and darkness, driven out by the sheer accumulated craziness of the place and everyone in it who mattered to him – trying, as Phinizy had said, to save his own ass. No, Moseley would not do. But Atlanta? It seemed light years away and at the moment, unattainable. And walking along a deserted rural road in the middle of the night seemed sheer folly. But what? He couldn’t let her go off alone.

  He had almost caught up with her when she tossed back over her shoulder, “I’d rather ride.”

  “The damn thing’s broken.”

  “How do you know? Try it.”

  He threw up his hands and stalked back to the motorcycle. “All right!” he yelled. “You’ll see! You’re the most bull-headed, aggravating, two-faced person I’ve ever met, Keats! Just gotta have things your way! Can’t admit for a second you’re wrong! Get your jollies out of jerking people around!”

  He was still yelling when he stomped down on the starter. The motorcycle roared to life and idled pleasantly. “Shit,” he muttered to himself. He flicked the headlamp switch several times. Nothing. But that was all that was wrong. He slipped it into gear and rolled up to where she waited for him in the middle of the road, steadied the bike while he helped her climb on behind him and lay the crutches across the handlebars.

  “I’m not two-faced,” she said.

  “Yes you are. One minute you seem almost normal. And the next, you’re pulling some kind of weird crap.”

  “I just know what I want, Trout. And right now I want to go to Atlanta with you.”

  He sat t
here straddling the motorcycle and fumed for a moment longer, then he calmed down a little. “I’ll have to take it slow,” he said. “I can’t see very far ahead.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Keats, why are you doing this?”

  “I’m not doing anything. You are. I’m just along for the ride.”

  “It’s crazy.”

  “Trout,” she said firmly, as if she were speaking to a knotheaded child, “if you don’t do this, you might as well go home and dig yourself a hole and get in it and pull the dirt in behind you. Now, I believe you can do it. So get your ass in gear.”

  And so they rode on.

  There was, incredibly, a light burning in the small, grimy garage in the tiny crossroads community. He fluttered toward it like a moth, and as the motorcycle drew closer, he could see an automobile inside, its rear hiked up in the air on jacks, and a pair of legs sticking out. The legs became a grease-smeared young man as the motorcycle pulled up to the yawning door of the bay. He sat on the concrete looking up at them, holding a wrench in one hand.

  “Hi,” Trout said tentatively.

  “Evenin’,” the young man said with a little wave.

  “Where are we?”

  “Pacer,” the young man said. “Georgia,” he added. “Where y’all headed this time of night?”

  “Atlanta.”

  “Damn. I wouldn’t go to Atlanta even in broad daylight.”

  Trout glanced up at the sign above the garage bay: GLIDEWELL’S AUTO REPAIR.

  “Are you Mr. Glidewell?”

  “One of ‘em.”

  Keats peered over Trout’s shoulder. “Do you fix motorcycles?”

  The young man grinned. “I can fix anything that don’t eat.”

  His name was Elmer. He was working late because his daddy had torn the transmission out of the car racing on a dirt track near Macon on Sunday afternoon and needed it to go to work on Monday morning. Elmer quickly found the loose wire on the motorcycle and fixed it and sent them on their way, refusing payment, pointing the way to Conyers.

  It was a powerful omen, he decided. But he kept that to himself. And Keats, blessedly, didn’t say a word. As they bore on through the night, she nestled her head against his back and slept, keeping a firm hold on him. In an hour or so, the sky to the west began to glow softly with the lights of Atlanta. It was two o’clock in the morning when they reached Decatur and Trout pulled up to a telephone booth and found Eugene’s number in the book.

  * * * * *

  A shaft of light from overhead woke him. That, and the smell of coffee. He stretched his legs and arms and looked up for the source of the strong light. The condo had a skylight, something he hadn’t noticed when Eugene had ushered them in. He hadn’t noticed much at all, in fact. He was stupid with fatigue, butt gone completely numb. Yet his whole body hummed like a high-voltage transformer with the sensation of riding -- the rush of wind and the vibrating rumble of the engine. Eugene pointed Keats toward the spare bedroom while Trout collapsed on the living room couch. He closed his eyes and rode swiftly off the cliff of consciousness into the bottomless well of sleep, more profound than any he had ever experienced.

  Now he was awake, stiff and sore but alert and remarkably rested. He was covered with a light blanket, his jeans and shirt hanging across a nearby chair, shoes tossed on the floor. He couldn’t remember covering himself with the blanket or taking off his clothes. When? How? My God. Did… He searched his memory frantically. He could remember only utter exhaustion and then nothingness. He lifted the blanket gingerly and looked down at himself. Bare legs, jockey underwear, his usual morning excitement. No sign of…what?

  “Lost something?” Eugene asked, and Trout made an incredibly awkward attempt to cover himself, jerking the blanket up so that it left his feet sticking out. He looked around to see Eugene standing there with a cup of coffee in hand, barefoot, wearing jogging shorts and a MAKE MY DAY, KISS MY DERRIERE tee-shirt, hair tousled, grinning, steam rising from the cup.

  “I, ah…my clothes,” Trout mumbled.

  “Over there,” Eugene said, pointing to the chair.

  “Yeah.”

  “We thought you’d sleep better without them.”

  “We?”

  “Keats helped me take them off. You were zonked.”

  Trout smiled sheepishly. “I guess so.”

  “I called Uncle Joe Pike and told him where you are,” Eugene said.

  “What did he say?”

  “He said, ‘I thought that’s where he might be.’”

  “Did you tell him Keats is with me?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he say about that?”

  Eugene grinned. “Something about a woman with a wild hair up her butt.”

  “Oh. Yeah.”

  “Uncle Joe Pike said he’d call Keats’ folks and tell them she’s okay.” Eugene headed for the kitchen. “Coffee’s on.”

  Trout dressed and followed Eugene, who had a cup waiting for him on the kitchen table. He wasn’t much of a coffee drinker, but he dumped in sugar and milk and found that it had a nice warm lift to it. Eugene poured himself another cup and sat down across the table from Trout.

  “Keats still asleep?” Trout asked.

  “I guess so. We stayed up pretty late talking.”

  “You did?” He tried not to sound too surprised.

  “Keats and I go way back.”

  “You do?” Surprise won.

  Eugene laughed, seeing the look on Trout’s face. “I used to sneak over to the mill village and play with the kids. Until Mom caught me and shipped me off to McCallie.”

  Trout realized how little he truly knew about Eugene. He had spent his junior- and senior-high years at prep school in Chattanooga, summers away at camps of one sort or another. When Trout made his infrequent visits to Moseley, Eugene was rarely there. He had gone to college at Vanderbilt, Trout knew that. But he had no idea what kind of job Eugene had or anything about his life. Or hadn’t, until yesterday’s Constitution.

  Eugene was studying him. “I hear the doo-doo really hit the fan,” he said.

  Trout shrugged uncomfortably, not having the slightest idea where to go with this. It felt incredibly odd, sitting here and knowing what he now knew about Eugene, knowing that he was supposed to recoil in horror at the thought of what Eugene was.

  What on earth was he doing here, anyway? Well, admit it, he had been desperate, wheeling into Atlanta at two o’clock in the morning on a motorcycle with a crippled girl on the back and twenty dollars in his pocket, dead tired, no plan whatsoever. They hadn’t even worn helmets. They could have been killed. Or at the least, arrested and thrown in jail for violating the helmet law. Stupid! Stupid! He should have waited until today, found the keys to Joe Pike’s car and some more money, left Keats at home. Then he could have driven to Atlanta without dragging along baggage and complicating everything to the point of near insanity. But no, he had to bolt like a frightened colt in the night and do it all wrong. He had damn near spent the night sitting in a ditch outside Pacer. And now, here he was drinking coffee with his queer cousin, his asshole tightened up like a prune and just wanting to get the hell out.

  “Okay, let’s talk about it,” Eugene said.

  “What?”

  “Come on, Trout.” Eugene gave him a long look. “Does it make you uncomfortable?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Do you think I’m going to hit on you or something?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, you’re not my type,” Eugene said with a smile. “And I’m not a pedophile, I’m gay. It’s entirely different.”

  “It is?”

  “Yes. So you don’t have anything to worry about. Okay?”

  Trout nodded. Eugene took another sip of his coffee. “So, ask me. Anything.”

  Trout went blank. There were a million questions, of course, but none of them in words. This was something you never, ever talked about, not in any way but a snide joke, for fear that somebody w
ould think you were…that. Talk about football, girls, hunting, zits, the Braves, dumb teachers, even jerking off. Anything but that. He blurted, “Do you have a roomate?”

  Eugene smiled. “Roomate. Well, I had a lover. His name is Jason. But we broke up a month ago and he moved out. It was,” he sighed, “every bit as painful as you breaking up with a girl.”

  “Oh.” Then he added after a moment, “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m getting over it. Jason wouldn’t pick up his underwear. I try to remember that, not the rest of it.”

  Trout laughed, and it made him feel a little better.

  “I am who I am,” Eugene said easily. “I’ve known for a very long time that I’m gay. It’s not something I’d have wished for if I’d known how it can complicate your life. But then, it’s not something you wish or don’t wish. It just is. I am what God made me. And like I heard Uncle Joe Pike say one time, God don’t make no junk.”

  Trout could feel his anxiety easing. This was just Eugene -- not much different, really, from the boy Trout remembered. Just older, more mature, but with the same stubborn streak of independence. The same Eugene who had thrown down his horseshoe and walked away from Grandaddy Leland’s backyard game years before because he could see that it was rigged and dumb. Eugene seemed at peace with himself. Just playing the hand that he had been dealt.

  Trout felt a sudden rush of both envy and self-loathing. He was disgustingly pliable, eager to please, running along behind other people and picking up after them. Especially Joe Pike. He hated that part of himself. And he hated what he believed to be a deep-rooted cowardice that let him simply go with gravity and current. On the one hand, he craved some notion of control over his life, self-determination, self-knowledge. All the things Eugene seemed to have. On the other hand, if and when he truly figured out who he was, it might scare the hell out of him. It may have, he realized, scared the hell out of Eugene at one point in the past. But he had gotten over it.

  “Do Uncle Cicero and Aunt Alma know?”

  “Dad, yes. God bless him. It was a shock when I told him, back when I was at Vandy. But he got over it. We talk. A lot. He’s incredible.” He ran his hand roughly through his hair. “Mom? Not, I’m afraid, until yesterday. I tried to drop hints. I even took Jason home with me last Christmas. But she just wouldn’t see. Didn’t want to see. You know how she is.”