“Shit!” Dotty groaned, leaning over him with her elbow jabbing his crotch. “Pull harder,” she called out the window.
“It’s locked!” Canny shouted down to them.
“Dammit!” Dotty yelled. “Pull with both hands. Pull harder!” Her head jerked in a vicious nod. “Harder! You can do it!”
“I can’t!” Canny called. “It won’t open.”
“Go!” Dotty said, easing over on her own side. She sat perfectly still. “Go!” At first he thought she was talking to Canny, until she dug her purple nails into his wrist. “Go! Now, dammit! Just go!”
He opened his eyes and looked at her. The sob was deep in his skull. He couldn’t think. He wasn’t even sure who this woman was, yelling at him, shaking his arm, her face long and wavy like a face in a fun-house mirror.
“Don’t just sit there looking at me,” she groaned. “Let’s go! This is our chance!” She banged her fist down on the dashboard. “Start the fuckin’ car!”
Canny had started hesitantly down the steps. She clung to the wrought-iron railing and kept looking back over her shoulder. Just then an elderly priest in a long black cassock and a soft black hat came around the corner of the church. With his hands clasped behind his back and his eyes downcast, his gait was measured and meditative. He had not yet seen the little girl.
“Hey mister!” Canny hollered, waving the envelope as she bounded back up the steps.
“Shit,” Dotty murmured, as Canny crossed over the lawn toward the priest and handed him the envelope. Canny gestured anxiously toward the church and then down at the car. The priest bent low and smiled. His expression sobered as he glanced between the little girl and the battered car below. He stood up and turned over the envelope. Again, he looked down at them.
“Don’t just sit there,” Dotty begged. “Do something!” He smiled miserably. Tears ran down his cheeks. He held his hand to his mouth and sobbed.
“You’re gonna pay for this, you stupid little chicken prick!” she spat. She jumped out of the car and hurried up the steps.
Wallace tilted his head curiously at her cool, easy strut and the way her hand met Canny’s head, like it belonged there, like nothing on God’s earth could possibly be wrong.
The priest nodded as she spoke; then he patted Canny’s head and he laughed. Dotty was also laughing, laughing and waving goodbye with one arm on Canny’s shoulder, steering her back to the car.
Dotty opened the door and threw the envelope onto the seat. “Thanks anyway,” she called over the roof of the car. The priest waved. Canny got in and sat close behind Wallace. “You shouldn’t have changed your mind, Poppy. He was all set to hire you.” She laughed and tweaked his ear. “I told him how we were a disetvanaged family and that we’d do any kinda work to stay off the county.” She winked at him in the mirror and he tried to smile. But all that came was a twitch.
“Start the car!” Dotty ordered as she shredded the envelope. “What else did you tell him?” she asked Canny in a wire-tight voice when they were a block past the church.
“He asked me where we came from and I said, ‘All over,’ and he said, ‘Everybody comes from some one place,’ and I said, ‘Not us. We never stay any one place too long, and …’”
“You’re getting an awful big mouth for such a little girl,” Dotty growled. She grabbed Canny’s tiny wrist and yanked it over the seat. Her face had drained of color and her lips were gray and thin. “You want to get us killed, dammit?”
“You said Poppy wanted a job!”
“You just keep your mouth shut from now on!” Dotty said, flipping her hand away in disgust.
“What’d I do wrong, Poppy? How come she’s mad at me?” Canny lay on the seat and sobbed. “I was just tryna help.…”
NORTH, the sign said under thickening clouds.
“Where now?” he asked. She looked at him. “Keep on going,” she said, her voice a sheet of ice so thin he dared not test it with even a sigh, much less a question.
Dotty wouldn’t speak to him. They were eating pizza in the car. Behind the restaurant was a duck pond. Canny wrapped her pizza crusts in a napkin, then ran down to feed the ducks. “Save me yours,” she called back to Dotty, who was still eating. The pizza had been Wallace’s idea. That was Dotty’s favorite, pepperoni pizza and beer. She was on her second cup now. She tilted her head back against the seat and drained the last of the beer. Without opening her eyes, she flipped the cup out the window, then shivered suddenly with a large fuzzy belch.
“Want some more?” he asked in a high voice.
She shook her head from side to side against the seat and belched again. She sniffled and rubbed her nose. Wallace looked to see if she was crying. She opened one eye, then sank against the door.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I got scared.”
“Just drop it,” she said in that dead tone that always panicked him. “Just forget the whole thing.”
“But …”
“But nothin’.” She sat up and started clearing the dashboard. She flipped the pizza crusts into the barrel, then glanced down at Canny with a little smirk.
“Whatcha wanna do now?” he asked.
With both hands she kneaded her waist. “I’ll tell you what I don’t want to do,” she sighed, arching her back. “I don’t want to have to sleep in this shitbox one more night.”
“We could find a place,” he said hopefully. “Mebbe just for a coupla nights till …”
“No, Aubie,” she said firmly. “All I want’s a motel and one good night’s sleep.” She looked toward the edge of the pond where Canny knelt in a swarm of quacking ducks. “And after that, you’re on your own. You and her.” She drew in her breath. “I’m splitting, Aubie.”
He stared at her. His mouth fell open and he nodded as he tried to expel the words. “I … I …” He shook his head and grunted with frustration.
“Shit!” she groaned. “You make me feel so damn guilty, Aubie.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“You don’t get it, do you? Do you?” she demanded.
He nodded. “You’re mad at me,” he said softly.
“Yah, but you think I’m just a little bullshit, don’t you? You don’t think I mean a damn word of this, do you?”
He nodded; then, thinking better of it, shook his head vigorously.
“What’s that mean?” she asked disgustedly.
He shrugged. She had him all mixed up now. He couldn’t tell if she was mad or not. She sounded like she was talking in her sleep.
“All you ever think about’s right now,” she was saying. “You’re just like her down there, just a little kid. You leave everything up to me. Everything. And then when the time comes to do something, you freeze.”
He had been fiddling with the button on his shirt. Suddenly he looked up and clenched his fist. “I’ll figure something out!” he cried fiercely. “I promise!” His eyes creased to slits and his jaw clamped into the roof of his mouth.
“Aw shit, Aubie,” she said, bursting into bitter, teary laughter. “You couldn’t figure your way out of a fuckin’ phone booth.”
6
He’d show her. His plan was to head back south. Being so far north was giving Dotty the jitters. His shoulders hunched over the wheel. He was praying she wouldn’t wake up and see how lost they were. As soon as she had fallen asleep, he had gotten off the highway and driven like a madman along what he thought was a southerly route. But all he’d done was snarl himself up in a hopeless circle. Ahead now was a little restaurant under a flashing neon sign that said PONDREST PIZZA. He held his breath as they drove past. No, he assured himself, it couldn’t be the same one. Lots of pizza places probably had duck ponds. Hundreds probably.
“Poppy!” warned Canny, for she had seen it too, but the dry red bulge of his eyes through the mirror silenced her.
Dotty’s hair fanned over the back of the seat and her eyes were still closed. Her breathing was raspy and troubled as if she might be having a nightmare. Or worse, not
really asleep. Just pretending, he thought, glancing at her. Just waiting for another foul-up, so she could ditch them for good.
They were approaching a fork in the road. His mind raced with the engine and his own breathing quickened and his hands could barely turn the wheel they were so slick with sweat. Left or right. Left or right. Right … though no sooner had he turned than he had forgotten his way again.
The last strips of twilight sank like cold yellow blades behind the dark pine woods that loomed on both sides of the narrow road. They were passing a boxy little house, its doorway framed with a string of Christmas lights. A few miles after that, on the left, was a tinny, bullet-nosed trailer rooted to the hillside with propane tanks and the metal-runged milk carton that was its front step.
Canny pressed close behind. “We already been by here,” she whispered.
Just then Dotty stirred and murmured something. She shifted down on the seat and drew up her knees against the dashboard. “Find one yet?” she yawned.
“Want the radio on?” he asked, turning it on before she could sit up. She reached over and snapped it off, then peered over the dashboard. “Where the hell’re you going?”
“There’s one!” said Canny, pointing ahead to a hand-lettered cardboard sign that dangled, curled and fading, from a lopsided fence post.
CABIN FOR RENT—BY THE HOUR—THE NIGHT—OR THE WEEK
He turned off the road and bumped along the dirt driveway that looped in front of a starkly weathered farmhouse. The roof sagged between two spiny pine trees like a sodden blanket heavy on a clothesline.
“You gotta be kidding,” Dotty said, sitting up and looking around.
“Where’s the cabins?” asked Canny.
A dog growled deep in the darkness and then a light came on over the squeaking screen door and a tall, wide-shouldered man stepped onto the porch. He came to the top step, where he stood with his hands on his hips and his head angled away from the glare of their headlights.
“What do you want?” he hollered, in more of a challenge than a question.
A big red dog crawled out from under the porch and began frantically to circle the car. Strings of drool leaked from its jaw.
“I don’t like it here,” Canny whispered between them.
“You gonna answer?” the man hollered, coming down another step.
“Let’s go,” Wallace said, shifting into reverse.
“You got cabins to let?” Dotty yelled out her window.
“How the hell many you want?” he hollered back.
“Just one,” she laughed nervously.
“It’s yours,” the man called back.
The cabin perched on cinder blocks on the other side of the driveway, opposite the house. The steps they climbed were also cinder blocks, mortarless and loose underfoot. As the man forced open the door a fetid sourness bellied past them into the night air.
“For five bucks you can’t go wrong,” said the man, hopefully. He switched on the dangling overhead bulb, which was the long room’s only light, filmy and stark. Wallace squinted in the sudden glare. The room contained two narrow iron beds, their rust-webbed mattresses seeming to writhe beneath the swaying glare of the bulb. Between the beds was a wooden chair, its plank seat split and charred with cigarette burns.
The man pointed to a plastic turquoise curtain that hung in a doorway on the farthest wall. “In there’s the can,” he said, lifting the curtain. “Don’t flush till you leave though. We’re on septic.”
Wallace nodded grimly, his hand clenched in his pocket. No way would Dotty stay here, he thought.
“When’s checkout time?” Dotty said from the doorway. She took a long drag on her cigarette, then exhaled in a smoky sigh. The man turned and grinned at her. “Whenever you want.”
“The fuckin’ sign didn’t say chicken coop, mister.” She looked at him. “It said cabin!” She flicked her ashes disgustedly on the floor. The man faced her squarely now. “I’ll tell you what,” he said, his eyes icy blue, his grin just a twinge. “You make believe it’s a real cabin and I’ll make believe you’re a real polite lady.”
Her cigarette fell to the floor and she ground it out slowly, her eyes wide and deliberate on his. Wallace took a step toward the door.
“Give him his lousy five bucks,” Dotty said hoarsely.
After the man left, Dotty flopped dejectedly onto the bed. She lay there staring up at the rafters while Wallace and Canny carried in the pillows and blankets and a bag of clothes. He made up the beds as fast as he could. Never had he wanted sleep so badly.
Canny and Dotty lay in the same bed, the springs creaking as Dotty shifted back and forth. Wallace’s eyes closed heavily. He was asleep.
“I’ll tickle your back,” offered Canny through the darkness. Dotty didn’t reply.
“You crying, Momma?”
“Go to sleep,” Dotty said in a tight voice.
“I love you,” Canny said softly.
Hours later, his eyes opened wide and raw in the darkness. Dotty stood in front of the screen door, her arms crossed, her hair loose on her shoulders. She was smoking. She looked toward the house, where a child was crying. The second-floor lights went on and the crying stopped. When the lights went out, Dotty climbed back into bed.
The next morning, the cabin shimmered white with the new sun flooding through the two small windows. Wallace sat up on one elbow and shaded his eyes. Dotty was gone. Only Canny was in the bed, with the blanket over her head. He stepped into his sneakers and hurried to the door, relieved to see the car still there. He shook Canny awake and told her to hurry. “We gotta find Momma before she gets too far!”
Canny dragged the blankets off both beds and staggered down the steps and into the car. Her eyes kept closing.
“Goddamn … goddamn,” he muttered, starting the car and turning on the loop.
“Hey! Hey, where you going?” a voice called from the house.
“It’s Momma!” Canny cried, pointing up at the porch where Dotty stood, waving them back.
The house was small inside, cluttered and airless. The kitchen was the largest room and the most cluttered. Toys lay everywhere; dolls and cut-out books and broken crayons. Next to the big white gas stove was a rusted red play stove, and next to that, a rusted play sink with a sharp dent in the front as if someone had once given it a vicious kick. A wooden rack with stiffly drying white socks stood on the other side of the stove. In the middle of the room was the metal-topped table and four metal chairs. A jar of grape jelly and a smeared knife were on the table, next to a child’s blue sneaker. On the floor behind one of the chairs was a toaster, its frayed cord plugged into the kitchen’s only outlet. A slice of toast had just popped up, acrid and smoking. A pair of flattened and soiled pink bedroom slippers lay next to the toaster.
From here, Wallace could see into the living room to the long brown couch shored up on tomato cans. A red lamp on a sagging metal TV tray and a large color television set were the only other furnishings. In the window over the couch, a white sheet had been safety-pinned to the shade roll.
“This is Alma Huller,” Dotty said. Wallace nodded. The fat woman smiled, exposing two large gray teeth that cut into her lower lip. She wore red striped pajama bottoms and a man’s dingy undershirt that strained against her pregnant belly. Wallace forced his eyes onto her face.
“And this here’s Krystal,” Dotty said. “With a K.” The little girl didn’t look up. She sat on the floor, eating fistsful of sugar cereal from the box. “She’s four,” Dotty said. “And over there’s Kelly. Kelly’s five.” Kelly looked up sullenly. She had her mother’s limp, thin hair and pasty-white, coarse features. “And this is Kyle,” Dotty laughed, patting the woman’s belly.
“Or maybe Kristen,” Alma said. “With a ‘K’ acourse.”
“I was just telling Alma about the Brandon family that was all Bs,” Dotty said. “’Member them, Aubie? That time in the Keys? Belle and Bobby Brandon? There was Barbie and Bobbanne and Briget and Babette and Billy-Su
e and the boys were Baxter and Brendon and Bart.…” Dotty shook her head. “God, they were a cute family. I said to Belle once—she was expecting again—I said, ‘Belle, what’re you gonna call this one?’ and she says, ‘Bastard.’ And I said, ‘Christ, Belle, that’s a shitty name to pin on a kid.’ And with a straight face, she says, ‘I got to. It ain’t Bobby’s. And besides, that’s what I call them all anyways!’”
Alma shook with laughter. The fat on her arms jiggled and her cheeks blotched redder and redder until tears streamed down her face. “You’re too much!” she gasped.
“Ready to go?” Wallace asked, fingering the rim of his baseball cap.
Canny peeked around him at the box of cereal.
“C’mere,” Dotty said, holding out her hand to Canny. “C’mere and say hi to Kelly. I was just telling Kelly how lucky she is to have a little sister.” Dotty hugged Canny. “I told her how you always wanted a little sister.”
Wallace was cleaning out the car. It was noontime and Dotty was still talking to Alma. They sat on the porch steps watching the three little girls play school. Canny was the teacher. Kelly and Krystal sat on wooden boxes Canny had dragged out of the barn. She waved her stick to their singing cadence of the alphabet. When they were done, Canny pointed her stick at the older girl, Kelly. “What’s A for?”
Kelly shrugged.
“You know,” Canny coaxed. “A big red …”
“Apple!” Krystal shouted and Kelly pinched her.
“Very good!” Canny said, clapping her hands. “What’s B for?”
“Boobs!” Kelly hollered before her younger sister could answer.
On the steps, Alma and Dotty giggled behind their hands. Canny marched up to the girls. “Miss Kelly, you go sit in the hall now on accounta your dirty mouth!”
Kelly looked around. “There’s no hall!”
Canny rolled her eyes. “Make believe there’s one. Over there. The cabin steps’ll be the hall.”
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