Gods in Alabama

by Joshilyn Jackson

  “Then why is your cock so hard,” I said, in a voice so low and dark I didn’t recognize it.

  “That’s it,” he said. He shoved himself up, bending at the waist to sit with me in his lap. My legs were still wrapped around him, and he grasped my wrists between us again. He was long in the torso, so I had to look up at him. For a moment I was afraid, afraid of him, of Burr, and my control trembled. He was so much stronger than me. It was like waking up. This was not some frightened boy I could own so easily with testosterone and dirty talk.

  It was like falling a long way and landing in myself. I stared at him, and then I said, my voice as soft as his had been, “I’m sorry. I don’t know what that was.” We sat looking at each other. The night was quiet around us. Whatever it had been, he felt it leave me. We both did. His grip on me loosened, and I took my hands away from him. I reached up and touched my lip. It was bleeding from where his teeth had banged into it. I looked at my fingers, and the blood looked black in the faint light.

  “Baby,” he said. “Don’t you think it’s time to talk to me?”

  I leaned over and gently shut the door to the Blazer. It clicked shut, and the dome light went out. The sun had gone all the way down, and the moon had not yet risen; we were blanketed in a darkness almost absolute. I shifted off of him and sat on the dead grass beside him. I leaned against his shoulder, and he put one arm around me.

  Burr said, “If it helps, I think I know where you’re going, baby. I want you to talk to me. I don’t think you’re going to surprise me.”

  My opening sentence was running through my head. I knew exactly what to say, but I could not begin because Burr, the man who had helped me invent What Have I Got in My Pocketses, was leaping pell-mell to the endgame.

  “Baby, say it,” he said. “It isn’t so bad. I won’t stop loving you. It’s not your fault.”

  “It’s so bad,” I said.

  “No, it isn’t. It’s not bad. You’re not bad. It’s not like you killed someone.”

  I felt my silence change then, as my body went so still that a single beat of my heart shook me like an earthquake. In the pause after that heartbeat, the world was without sound. Burr felt it, too, that everything around us was holding its breath. I felt light break in him in the absolute darkness, and then he knew. “Oh. Shit,” he said quietly. “Yeah, you should talk to me.”

  And finally I found that I could. “There are gods,” I said. “There are gods in Alabama.” And I told him almost everything.

  It came spilling out of me in a great wash, breathy and fast. I talked and talked until my voice was cracking with the strain of constant use. I took him up Lipsmack Hill with me to be my witness. He saw me heft the bottle. Swing. Connect. Then I told him about Clarice, how she rescued me when I came to Alabama with the burnt shell of my mother.

  I could not stop after that, could not let him take over. I told him about Rose-Pop. About Jim Beverly’s kindness to me. I told him how I had loved Jim Beverly with a secret, hopeless love. I told him about the aftermath, when Clarice found me in the hydrangea bushes. I spilled out my fears and prayers as I begged God to hide me like He had hidden Cain, to mark me as safe from the repercussions of the world.

  I told him everything but why I did it. And the why of it was crafted so deep into the story that I did not have to say it. The story itself was designed to make him say it for me.

  But when I wound down, he sat silent for a long time. I waited for him to speak for me, but he did not. He sat digesting, and then he asked the wrong question. “What happened in the winter when the kudzu went to bones?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Something had to happen,” he said.

  I did not want to lie to him, would not lie, but while I could confess my own sins to him, I had no right to give him Florence’s. I said, “Nothing happened. All fall no one complained about any smell. No one went looking. Everyone assumed he had run away. And in winter I went back up there and looked. The body was gone.”

  “How is that possible?” Burr said.

  “I think—or I should say I thought, at the time, that God had moved him.”

  Burr stirred against me in the dark. “God moved him?”

  “Yes,” I said. “That’s what I thought. It was what I had prayed for, after all. I thought it was a miracle. Like maybe God had sent a bear to drag him off, or—”

  “God sent a bear? God sent a bear to lower Alabama,” Burr said.

  “Will you stop repeating everything I say in that skeptical tone! I told you what I saw. I thought God took it, or a bear took it. I didn’t know. That’s not the point. That was never the point. The point is that I killed a man. I killed Jim Beverly. And you have to hate me now or you have to forgive me, and how can you decide?” I had talked for so long, my voice was a raw whisper.

  Burr seemed distracted by his own thoughts. I could almost hear his brain charging up, humming and whirring as it ticked over into lawyer mode, picking through facts.

  I said, “How can you decide what to do if you don’t even know why I did it? If you won’t even say why?”

  “I’m not done with the bear yet, Lena. You say you killed a man. And God took the body. I can’t get it processed.” He stood up abruptly, and I was instantly chilled.

  “Burr,” I said.

  “Just wait.” He was pacing up and down a few steps in front of the Blazer. “I have to think it through. Wait. Did you say? Oh Christ Almighty. Did you say you killed him? You killed this boy, this Jim Beverly?”

  “Yes,” I said miserably.

  “With a bottle?” he said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Did you ask me a minute ago how I could decide what to do if I didn’t say why you killed him?”

  “I think so,” I said.

  “If I, Wilson Burroughs, didn’t say why?” he said. His voice was rising, angry in the darkness. “If I didn’t? Oh, Christ, you have to be kidding me.”

  He pushed past where I was huddled on the ground, and opened the driver’s-side door. He leaned in, and I heard a click, and then the path up the hill was flooded with light. He had turned on the headlights. He came to me, grabbed me by the arm, and hauled me to my feet. I stumbled after him as he dragged me into the light, staring down at me so he could see my face.

  “I’m supposed to tell you why? This is What Have I Got in My Pocketses, isn’t it? And now I’m supposed to say why? I have to tell you the motive? What are you pulling, Lena? What’s true here? Look me in my eye, because I know you never lie. Tell me. Did you do it?”

  I thought I was crying, but I couldn’t tell. I stared up at him. “Yes,” I said.

  “Why?” he said, practically yelling.

  “You’re hurting my arm,” I said miserably.

  “Why?” he said, undeterred.

  “Burr, please,” I said. “Please. Let me go, you’re hurting me.”

  But he did not move or release me. “Why, Lena?” he said.

  I said, “It happened, I swear it happened. But then I stole it.”

  “Stop dancing,” he said. “Tell me. Tell me why.”

  I opened my mouth to tell him, and Rose Mae Lolley came pounding down the last few steps of the path up Lipsmack Hill. Burr still had my arm, but he half turned towards her when he heard her coming. She grabbed his shoulders and jerked her leg up. Her knee rammed into him between his legs. Burr let go of me and doubled over. Rose twisted at the waist and brought her elbow down hard on Burr’s head, and he fell to the ground.

  “Run like hell! Run like hell!” Rose screeched at me and took off like a deer.

  I dropped to my knees beside Burr. “Oh, honey,” I said. “Oh, baby, are you okay?” He groaned in answer, curled up on the ground.

  I glanced over my shoulder. Rose had stopped a few yards away, her white T-shirt glowing in the darkness. “Arlene,” she said urgently. “You have to run while he’s down.”

  “Shut up, you head case,” I said. “He’s not going to hurt me.” Burr
managed to sit up, and I put an arm around him, supporting him. “He would never hurt me.”

  “Shit, shit,” said Burr, still bent at the waist, hunched over himself.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I yelled at Rose.

  Rose took a hesitant step back towards us. “Meditating. Until I heard him bellowing at you. I came creeping down, and I heard you say he was hurting you. I saw you in the headlights. He was shaking you.”

  I rubbed Burr’s shoulder. “He was just angry, Rose.”

  She took another step towards us. “That’s what they all say. They’re all angry, and being sorry later doesn’t mean shit, Arlene.”

  “Not every man hits girls,” I said. “Burr, baby, are you okay?”

  He nodded. “I think I’m going to live,” he rasped out and got a deep breath in.

  I said to Rose, “What the fuck were you doing meditating up on Lipsmack?”

  Rose crossed her arms and said, “What are you doing in Alabama?”

  “I came down here to meet you,” I said. “I’ve called the hotel over and over.”

  “I haven’t checked in yet,” said Rose. “I came here first. This was a special place for us. It was . . . Let’s just say it was very special for me and Jim.”

  I rolled my eyes. “This was a ‘special place’ for everyone, you numb fuck.” I was rubbing Burr’s shoulders. “I think you owe him an apology.”

  Rose shrugged defensively. She came a step or two closer. “I’m sorry if I misinterpreted what was happening. But it sure as hell looked to me like you were hurting her,” she said to Burr.

  “There is such a thing as a good man, Rose,” I said.

  Burr had his head down, taking in long slow breaths.

  “I know that,” she said. “I had one once. I told my therapist, and that’s why I’m looking for him. That’s what I came here to prove.”

  Burr shook his head, and I said, “If you’re trying to use Jim Beverly to prove you know how to pick a good boyfriend, you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

  “What does that mean?” said Rose. “You don’t know anything about him.”

  “Tell her,” said Burr. “Tell both of us. Finish this.”

  He nodded at me, and I realized there had never been a need to craft a lie for Rose Mae. The truth would do everything I had wanted the lie to do. I could stop Rose and send her home, away from Clarice, but only if I at last told the entire truth. I stood up and walked a few paces away from Burr, into the darkness. “Sit down, Rose, and don’t look at me.”

  She hesitated, and then she sidled over and joined Burr on the dead grass, sitting with him next to the spill of light from the Blazer’s headlights. Burr was sitting up straight now, breathing normally.

  I said, “The Jim Beverly you are looking for, Rose? He doesn’t exist. Your therapist is right. It isn’t men. It’s you. You pick bad men. You can’t even see a good one when he’s right in front of you and you’re beating the crap out of him. Jim Beverly wasn’t any good. He was a rapist, Rose.”

  To Burr I said, “I think you figured out it wasn’t me. That’s why you wouldn’t say it for me. And you’re right, Jim Beverly never touched me. It happened, though, Burr. It did happen. But it wasn’t ever mine. I stole it from her. I stole it from Clarice, and I never knew how to give it back.”

  CHAPTER 14

  SINCE CLARICE AND I could date only if we doubled with each other, Jim Beverly’s friend Rob Shay was coming along. I knew Rob was about as interested in me as he was in macramé. He was a baseball boy, tall and cleanly handsome with dark hair and an all-American jawline. He had his pick of cheerleaders, but he was Jim Beverly’s wingman. He swung by my lunch table one day after Jim Beverly had officially asked out Clarice and said, “Hey, Arlene, you and me Friday, with Jim and your sister, okay?”

  “Cousin,” I said.

  “Whatever. You in?”

  I shrugged, and he took it for a yes. He made a gun out of his fingers and tipped me a wink as he shot me with it. “Great, see ya then.” He cruised on past to his regular table.

  That was fine with me. I was, if possible, even less interested in Rob than he was in me. Even though I knew the score, I kept catching myself accidentally thinking of the evening as “our” date with Jim Beverly, mine and Clarice’s.

  Getting ready on Friday afternoon, I had herds of jungle cats prowling through my stomach, and even Clarice seemed uncharacteristically jittery. We fussed our way through our pre-date preparations in a round-robin of nerve-racked primping. I started at my dresser drawer, wishing I needed a bra or at least owned a bra that made me look like I needed one, while Clarice chastised her hair. After I had dressed in a T-shirt and a pair of jeans that mercifully hid my skinny legs, I moved into the “yelling at my hair” slot, while Clarice shifted to rummaging through her makeup. Then we switched again, and she busied herself with hating all her clothes while I cursed my inability to understand eye shadow.

  I foolishly got into Clarice’s makeup bag and test-drove some robin’s-egg blue. I ended up looking like a disco raccoon. Clarice had put on a short flippy skirt, pale pink with darker pink tulips growing up from the hem. She had on a short-sleeved sweater the same color as the tulips. The sweater clung to her curves. The skirt came down almost to her knees but was so light and full-cut that it swirled and floated as she walked, showing off her long legs. She put on a pair of flat strappy sandals, and I noticed her toenails were painted a pale pink, like the insides of seashells. Even Clarice’s feet were pretty.

  I took one look at her and felt my heart drop out of my chest and roll across the floor, collecting grit. She looked like Ken’s Dream Date Barbie. She took one look at me and said, “Oh, wow. Arlene, what were you trying to do with the, um . . .” She pointed at her eyes.

  I shrugged and drooped pathetically in the chair. “I don’t want to go,” I said.

  “Don’t be silly. We still have twenty minutes, and you know they’ll be late. Boys think girls can’t be ready on time.”

  She grabbed her makeup bag and pulled me to my feet, dragging me down the hall to the bathroom. We passed Aunt Florence coming the other way. Florence stopped dead when she saw me, her eyes widening. Clarice held up a hand to stop her before she could speak. “She’s washing her face right now, Mama.”

  In the bathroom, Clarice handed me some cold cream and said, “Take everything off and let’s start fresh.”

  I did as she asked, scrubbing my face clean, soaking my T-shirt and dampening the front pieces of my hair in the process. Then I slumped in despair on the closed toilet. With my long damp hair stringing around my bare face, I looked about ten years old.

  “Perk up,” said Clarice. “It’s all fixable. I swear, Arlene, I have never seen you fuss around so much before a date. Close your eyes and tilt your face up thisaway.” She turned my face from side to side, and I kept my eyes closed while she messed around putting things on with sponges and Q-tips and all her makeup brushes. “What’s with all the nerves and the eye shadow, anyway?” she asked. “Arlene? Do you kinda like Rob Shay?”

  “No!” I said. “It would be dumb if I did like Rob Shay. Or any boy like that, a sports boy who’s all-popular and every other girl in school goes to mush when he walks past. You know he’s only taking me tonight because of your mama’s rule. No boy has ever asked me out except ones who have friends that want to date you.”

  “Stop talking. I want to do your lips,” said Clarice. I felt the cool tip of a liner tracing the outline of my mouth, and then one of her brushes painting inside the lines. “You’re too hard on yourself. I think boys just don’t ask you out because you don’t flirt. You have to talk to them like you think they’re the very best one. They won’t ask you unless you practically send up a big firework that will explode right over their heads saying, ‘Yes, yes, I totally like you!’ Boys live every second scared to death a girl is going to say no when they ask her out.”

  “No, boys live scared that you’ll say no when they ask you
out,” I said when the brush left my mouth.

  But Clarice only said, “Turn sideways on the toilet, and I’ll French-braid your hair.”

  After she braided it, she picked fronds out of the front and left them to wisp around my face. Then she dragged me back to our room and re-dressed me from the skin out. She pulled a long black knit skirt out of the back of my closet. It had been part of an outfit I wore to church the year before. It was tighter this year, and Clarice gave a nod of satisfaction. She handed me a cranberry-red tank top that Aunt Florence had told me suited my coloring, and made me put that on with my black flats. When I looked in the mirror, I was surprised to see I didn’t look ten years old anymore. I looked like a teenager.

  The tight skirt showed off the dipped-in waist I had recently acquired, giving me the illusion of hips. The tank top would have been risky on a bustier girl, but on me it looked nice, showing off my pretty collarbones. Clarice had not done much to my eyes at all, just mascara and liner. But she’d put blush lower than I usually put it, and all of a sudden I had noticeable cheekbones. She’d also done my mouth darker than I ever would, a red as deep as the color of the tank top. I was surprised to see I had a pretty mouth, full and heart-shaped like my mother’s in pictures I had seen of her when she was younger. I had a girl mouth. A kissing mouth. I couldn’t help but smile at myself. Clarice hadn’t transformed me into some sort of teen school beauty queen, but I looked nice.

  Clarice and I headed into the den where Aunt Florence and Uncle Bruster were watching TV. Mama was in her recliner at the back of the room, holding her hands up flat and stiff, about six inches apart. She was staring intently at the space between her hands.

  Uncle Bruster smiled at us and said, “My girlies are looking real pretty.” He dug into his pockets and pulled out two quarters and two ten-dollar bills. This was a standard pre-date ritual. He handed us each a ten-dollar bill and said, “If something happens with your date, and he gets fresh or takes to drinking or runs off, you go someplace public and get yourself a Coke while you wait for me to come get you.”