The Essay A Novel

by The Essay (retail) (epub)

  On this Sunday, the first in June, he pitched his cigarette when he saw the rattletrap, red pickup truck begin its ascent from Red Dog Road, groaning and throwing stones as it strained against the steep drive. It was my brother Virgil, who had called collect the previous night to say he was coming home for the day. Virgil had worked through the night tearing down a carnival in Parkersburg, West Virginia, and had a day off before heading to a festival in Huntington.

  I had never gotten along with Virgil. The truth is, I couldn’t stand to be around him. He was very much like my dad, bitter and always angry at the world, and as a brother seven years his junior, I had proved to be the perfect punching bag on which he vented his myriad of frustrations. From what I could tell, Virgil had never made a single mistake in his life. To listen to him talk, you would have thought the entire world was involved in a sinister, conspiratorial plot to make his life a living hell. Virgil had always been my dad’s favorite. He and Virgil got along, in part, because they seemed to share a soured outlook on life and a mutual lust for alcohol and fighting. Dad couldn’t control Edgel and thought I was a momma’s boy because I didn’t like to go looking for a fight.

  Virgil took the back seat behind my dad and immediately bummed a cigarette and the old man’s lighter. The car’s undercarriage scraped on the gravel as it dropped onto Red Dog Road, and Virgil settled back in his seat, his elbow resting on the knee of his filthy jeans. His sinewy forearms and hands were black with grease that was ground deep into the pores and lines of his hands. Beneath the grime on his right forearm, I could see the faint outline of where Virgil had tattooed himself with a needle and ink and had given himself blood poisoning when he was fifteen; the tattoo was of a misshapen skull and crossbones and the words, “Born to Die,” which Virgil always said was his motto. His fingernails were caked with dirt and grease, and a rim of shiny black oil ran around the cuticles, outlining the tiny bit of visible pink beneath the nail. When he saw me staring at his hands, he asked, “What are you lookin’ at, junior?”

  “Nothing.”

  He held up his hands and twisted them so I could see every line of filth. In his heavy, southern Ohio twang, Virgil said, “Them’s the hands of a working man, but you wouldn’t know nothin’ ‘bout that, would ya?”

  “Yes, I would. I’ve got a job this summer.”

  He smiled and chuckled. “Really? Doing what?”

  “Mr. Monihan hired me up at the truck stop. The county’s making him clean up all the truck tires he’s been rolling down over the hill all those years. Must be twenty years’ worth—a couple thousand of them by now, I bet, and he’s going to pay me ten cents for every one I haul up and stack.”

  He dragged on his cigarette. “When you decide to trade in that snatch and get yourself a dick and balls, let me know and I’ll get you a real job.” He blew smoke in my face. “That’s pussy work.”

  “No it’s not.”

  “It ain’t a man’s work.”

  “Well, at least I’m no carnival jockey who looks like he hasn’t had a bath in a month.”

  Virgil’s eyes turned to slits and the skin drew back around his mouth. “You best shut your mouth, boy, or I’ll bust your head, and don’t think I won’t.”

  “Shut the hell up, both of yuns,” my dad yelled. “Jesus Christ, it’s like havin’ a couple of goddamn six-year-olds in the car.”

  I fought back a grin. I was now twice the size of Virgil and the days when he could whip me were long over, and he knew it. Of course, the threat of a good beating never stopped a Hickam from diving into a fight.

  Virgil took a long drag on his cigarette, this time blowing the smoke out the window. “And to think I was going to get you a job on the carnival this summer,” he said. “That ain’t happenin’ now, that’s for damn sure.”

  “He couldn’t go anyways,” Mom interjected. “He’s got football practice starting in July.”

  “Football,” Virgil said, like he had a mouth full of curdled milk. “That don’t put no money in your damn pocket.”

  “Coach Battershell said if I keep improving and keep my grades up I might get a scholarship to play in college.”

  “Yeah, that’ll be the day that you go to college. Barber college, maybe.” Virgil and my dad both laughed aloud. I expected resentment from Virgil as it seemed to be his lot in life to assemble and disassemble Tilt-A-Whirls, but it was hurtful to hear my dad laugh. I don’t think Nick Hickam ever wanted any of his sons to make more of their lives than he had made of his, and he was secretly glad that my brothers were failures. The fact that they had no more education than he had, and one was an inmate and the other a carnie, allowed Dad to maintain his stature within the family.

  We arrived at the reformatory at one-thirty and walked into the large lobby where we had to sign in. Construction on the prison began in 1886 and it looked like a European castle with its ornate architecture and stone walls. Stepping into the building gave me chills as I joined the pathetic lot of human flotsam, black and white, that wandered through the lobby, waiting to be called behind the bars for their visit. Visitation was strictly on the terms of the State of Ohio. The slightest infraction of the state’s rules would keep you from the visitation room. Even the angriest of men, like my dad and brother, understood this and kept their tempers and mouths in check.

  I don’t have much of a memory of Edgel before he went to prison. After he dropped out of high school, he worked odd jobs and was rarely around the house. Edgel and our father had such a tense relationship that I think he found it easier to sleep in his car or at the home of a friend rather than stay at our house. The summer before I entered the sixth grade, I was in the front yard hitting stones with a broom handle when Sheriff McCollough pulled up in his cruiser. He got out of the car before the dust had settled around the tires. He was a big man with shoulders that strained the fabric of his white shirt and hands that could hide a softball. A toothpick was tucked into the corner of his mouth. He nodded and said, “Howdy, buster. Your brother hereabouts?”

  “Which un?”

  “Edgel.”

  “Uh-huh. He’s out back in the shed with my pa.”

  He winked and headed around the house. As soon as he had disappeared beyond the porch, I dropped the broom handle and ran around the other side of the house, creeping up to the back of the old shed with the gambrel roof where I knew there was a gap in the old plank sheeting.

  The sheriff didn’t announce himself but just walked right into the shed and said, “Whoa, would you look at that, an Oldsmobile Rocket 88. Ain’t that somethin’ to behold?” Sheriff McCollough put a massive hand on each fender and leaned down into the hood of the car my dad and Edgel were working on. “Remember that old slogan, Nick? ‘Make a date with a Rocket 88.’ Yes sir, they sure don’t make ’em like this anymore, do they?” Neither my dad nor Edgel responded. Hickam men had enough experience with the law to know that the sheriff never paid them a social call. The sheriff watched them work for a minute, then said, “Edgel, the Radebaugh place over on Township Road 22 got burglarized and torched the other night. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”

  “No, sir. Why would I?”

  “I talked to a couple of people who said they saw someone sitting in a car at the school bus turnaround just west of the Radebaugh place last Tuesday, the same night it burned.” Sheriff McCollough stepped back to the open shed door, rubbed his chin and squinted hard at the Olds. “In fact, I believe it could have been this very car. The witnesses said it was a 1950’s Oldsmobile, maybe a Rocket 88, coupe, white over orange, maybe red, with lots of primer spots. And this car right here is an Olds, Rocket 88 coupe, white over orange with lots of primer spots. What year is this car, Edgel?”

  “It’s a . . .” my dad started.

  “Is your name Edgel?” the sheriff’s tone was suddenly harsh as he cut off my dad. He arched his brows at my brother.

  “It’s a fifty-five,” Edgel said.

  “Well, see, there we go. T
his car matches the one that was seen down by the Radebaugh place the night it burned. And since this is your car, and there aren’t many like it around these parts, I’m going to go out on a limb and say it was you sitting in it that night. What do you think, partner?”

  “You accusing me of something, sheriff?”

  Sheriff McCollough slowly shook his head. “No, Edgel. I’m just wondering if you could help me out. I thought maybe you saw something, since you were sitting out there near her place.”

  “I never said I was out there.”

  “No, you didn’t. So, where were you last Tuesday?”

  “I don’t remember, right off.”

  The sheriff’s face grew cold and he chomped on his toothpick. “You don’t remember? Well, son, you better start thinking real hard.”

  “You got no right to talk to him like that,” my dad said.

  Sheriff McCollough never took his eyes off of Edgel. “It’s been a while since I gave you a good beatin’, Nick. Open your mouth again and I’ll be obliged to bring the score up to date.” He grabbed the shoulder of Edgel’s T-shirt and pulled him out from under the hood. “I think that was you out there, Edgel. Since last April there’ve been five houses burglarized and torched in Vinton County.” He held up a big hand, his thick fingers spread wide. “Five of ’em. I’m an elected official, Edgel. The people of this county elected me to enforce the law and protect them and their property. And now those same people are real upset that I haven’t caught the piece of shit that’s doing this. I don’t like it when voters get upset, ’cause that means I have to work a lot harder to keep my job. Now, if you know anything about this, Edgel, you better come clean. A little guy like you would have a tough go of it in prison. You better keep that in mind.” He released the grip on Edgel’s shirt and walked out. I scampered back around the house and was again hitting stones by the time the sheriff appeared around the corner. “You get yourself an earful back there, buster?” he asked. He stared at me until I nodded. “Keep your nose clean, you hear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  All that summer I’d heard people talking about the rash of burglaries and arson fires. Not until Sheriff McCollough drove on to our property had I even considered that it could have been Edgel. But it made sense. He didn’t work, yet always seemed to have cash. According to the newspaper, the burglar had been stealing coins and jewelry and items that could be easily fenced. The arson fires, it was assumed, were an attempt to destroy any physical evidence.

  At dinner a week after the sheriff’s visit, Edgel slid a black, cloth-covered box across the kitchen table at my mother. “What’s this?” she asked.

  “It’s a present.”

  She put her fingertips to her breast, smiled, and opened the box. Resting atop a patch of cotton was a gold chain, from which hung a sparkling pink sapphire the size of a nickel.

  “Oh my.” My mother rolled the box in her hands, watching the light dance off the stone. “Oh, it’s beautiful, Edgel, but where’d you get the money for this?”

  “Why are you worrying about that? I just picked it up somewhere.”

  “Where?”

  My dad was looking at the gem in disbelief. “Yeah, Edgel, where did you get that?” he asked.

  “What difference does that make? It’s a gift for Mom.”

  “Alice Radebaugh had one just like this,” Mom said. “She used to wear it to work. She had matching earrings.”

  Mrs. Radebaugh was a widow who worked the cash register at the truck stop with Mom. “Alice Radebaugh doesn’t have one like this, ’cause this one’s yours,” Edgel said.

  Mom sat motionless as Edgel took the necklace from her hands and walked behind her.

  “Her husband bought it for her on their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary,” said Mom, still not moving. “Alice said he saved for a year to buy it, and she was so upset when it got stolen.” As Edgel clasped the chain behind her neck, Mom looked as though the hangman were tightening a noose. Dad’s eyes darted back and forth from the necklace to Edgel, who just grinned at my dad with his bulbous lips.

  When Mom got up to clean the dishes she said, “It’s lovely, Edgel. But I’m going to take it off so I don’t get anything on it.” I watched her drop it in her apron pocket and she never wore it again.

  After dinner, my dad and Edgel got into a terrible fight out behind the shed. My dad grabbed a sun-dried two-by-four and busted Edgel over the head and shoulders. Given my dad’s penchant for trouble, I found it a little unusual that he would get upset with Edgel for stealing the widow Radebaugh’s necklace, but there was no predicting the irrational behavior of Nick Hickam.

  Late that summer, Edgel got drunk at the Antler Room Bar in McArthur and ran the Rocket 88 into a ditch off of London-Athens Road. Edgel was arrested for drunken driving and the car was impounded. When Sheriff McCollough searched it, he pulled out the back seat and found matches, a can of jellied fire starter, two pry bars, and a pair of pink sapphire earrings, which Mrs. Radebaugh identified as the ones stolen from her house. Edgel went to prison and the burglaries and arsons stopped.

  A buzz-cut guard with a square jaw and lazy eye came out from behind the nearest barred door and said, “Hickam.” Although we knew the drill, we listened intently as he explained the rules of the visitation room before leading us through the door, which was electronically opened by a guard seated in a nearby room with a two-way mirror. The visitation room was pale blue and the size of a high school basketball court. Square tables were lined up in neat rows across the concrete floor. On a catwalk ringing the room, humorless, armed guards marched their paces, eyes darting for the first signs of trouble.

  A haze of cigarette smoke hung over the room. No one smiled, inmates and their wives argued in hushed tones, and at least once every visit my mother remarked, “It smells so angry in here.”

  Edgel was already seated at a table in the middle of the room. He was only five-foot-five and a hundred thirty-five pounds, and the prison-issue clothes he wore—a denim shirt and blue slacks— were always too baggy and made him appear comically small. As we approached, Edgel glanced up but gave no sign of recognition as he rolled the tip of a cigarette in the aluminum ashtray, sharpening the point of the burning ember.

  Sometimes, I wondered why we bothered to visit with Edgel. One visit was the same as the next. As we took our chairs and crowded in around the table, Edgel just sat there, playing with his cigarette and picking at his cuticles, head down, hands in plain view as required, and saying little.

  “Are they treating you right, sweetheart?” my mom asked.

  “It’s prison, Mama. They don’t treat nobody right.”

  “Them guards give you a hard way to go?” my dad asked.

  He shrugged. “I don’t give ’em any reason to bother me. You mind your own business and toe the line, they leave you alone. Besides, it ain’t the guards you got to be watching out for.”

  “What happened to your eye?” Mom asked, nodding toward the pad of faded purple that stretched beneath Edgel’s right eye.

  “Nothin’. Bumped it on my bunk is all.”

  It was another lie, but my mother knew better than to press the issue. At least twice before, she and dad had pressed Edgel for answers to questions that he didn’t want to answer. Each time he simply stood up and said, “I’ll see you all in a couple of weeks,” and went back to his cell. Frankly, I don’t think Edgel cared if we visited or not. But that was Edgel. He didn’t care much about anything. Of Edgel, my dad liked to say, “He’s a thief and he’s crazy, and that’s a bad combination.” Even by the questionable standards of the Hickams, there was just something wrong with the way Edgel was wired. Frankly, the more I heard my dad talk and the more I witnessed Edgel’s morose, sullen moods, the more I believed that prison might be the ideal place for him.

  From the time I could remember, Edgel was always stealing— from Mom, Dad, teachers, anyone. He didn’t care if he got caught. He stole my dad’s wallet one time and went out for the weekend.
By the time he came dragging in Sunday night, my dad had had about forty-eight hours to build up a good froth and he took to beating Edgel with a belt. He folded the leather strap in half, wrapping the ends around his hand, and he hit him everywhere—on the arms, back, legs, ass, neck. The old man beat him until he was exhausted— red-faced, bending at the waist, and sucking for air. Edgel had welts swelling up everywhere and thin lines of blood seeping through his T-shirt in the back, but he never showed any sign that it hurt. I swear he didn’t feel pain like a normal human being. He had these soft, heavy lips that always seemed pinched up in a perpetual smirk. The more my dad saw that he wasn’t hurting Edgel and that he seemed to be grinning, the madder the old man got and the harder he swung, but Edgel just took it.

  When Dad stopped to catch his breath, Edgel pulled the old man’s empty wallet from his hip pocket and dropped it on the living room floor, then went to his room while my dad hunched in the middle of the living room, hands on his knees, struggling for a breath of air. My mom walked in from the kitchen and asked, “Was it necessary to beat him like that?”

  Between wheezy breaths my dad said, “He’s . . . a thievin’ . . . son of a bitch.”

  “Yes, he is,” my mother said in a calm voice. “And just who, Nick Hickam, do you s’pose he larnt that from?”

  The old man spun on his heel and hit my mother full in the jaw. The blow was so hard that she left her feet, landing hard on her shoulders just before her head snapped back and thudded against the floor. It took her several minutes to roll over and get on all fours. When she was finally able to stand, she had tears streaming down her cheeks and a thin line of blood extending from the corner of her mouth. “You’re quite the man, aren’t you, Nick?” she asked.

  Edgel stopped talking and stared down at his shoes while a prison guard made a slow pass by our table. When the guard cleared earshot, Edgel took a draw on his cigarette and looked at me. “You playin’ football this year?”