by Tom Franklin
Grandma Oliver was very aware of me from then on. I never slept anymore. I’d stand in the kitchen and bounce a rubber ball off the wall. One night she put her hand on me like I was a dog she was done taking care of, a Pyramid hanging from her mouth, her oxygen tank rattling at her hip. It’s not hard to make someone who smokes on oxygen go away. Jefferson was passed out drunk when the fire ate them up.
These days I wake in a wormy sleeping bag and gnarl my way into unsteadiness. I’m etched with loss like some kind of crippled king. I’m twenty-four but I look twice that age. Miss Mary was it for me, with her smile and bright promise. My one shot. The hours I spent with her I knew all of life. Now I’m dirt. I ghost the town. Break in places for food. Steal from sheds and gardens. Cop cars spit gravel at me when I’m out walking. I’m the freak at the gas station missing a finger, the one who scrapes change for a short dog of wine, the one they say kills pets for food, the one whose eyes linger on your clean high school girl in her cheerleader skirt. Dirt. Even the Nation of Islam guys by the post office ignore me. I stay in a tent out in the woods near the slave cemetery. Sometimes I walk over there and I can hear the old bones singing about the meanness of the new bones and I know that’s the same meanness that chased Miss Mary through life. Me, I got broken by being so close to kindness.
PART II
Wayward Youth
UPHILL
by Mary Miller
Biloxi
The RV park is nice and shady. The residents are mostly older and quiet, but the bugs are loud. There are all sorts of bugs and they are all so loud.
I’m sitting at the picnic table next to the trailer Jimmy has just bought, carefully avoiding the piles of bird crap while watching him fashion a wooden chute for the sewer hook-up. He’s impressed with himself, using nails he’s found on the ground and wood from a scrap pile. Every few minutes he stops to regard his work.
“Our shit travels uphill,” he says, looking at it admiringly.
“That’s amazing.”
He sits across from me and I watch him dig around in his box full of small tools.
Before the trailer he lived on his uncle’s boat, but he sunk it, and before that he lived in a van in his boss’s garage. When I get drunk, I yell at him and call him homeless and we don’t talk for weeks but then I find myself with him again—just a cup of coffee, just as friends—and the cycle repeats itself. We’re at the beginning of the cycle now.
“So I got this call earlier,” Jimmy says. His voice has the high, strained quality it takes on when he’s lying or asking to borrow money. “This friend who lives in Hawaii wants me to drive to Biloxi to take a picture of a lady.”
“A picture of a lady?”
“I haven’t talked to this guy in a long time.”
“Who is he?”
“He sells dope,” he says. “He’s a bad guy.”
A lot of his friends sell dope, but I’ve never heard him call any of them bad guys before. “He sells weed?” I ask.
“Huge quantities of high-grade stuff. Mostly legal.”
“That sounds like a bad idea.”
“Yeah, it’s probably a bad idea,” he says.
I’m surprised to hear him agree with me. He stops digging around in his box. I turn a page in my magazine. “How much did he offer to pay you?”
“He said to name my price. I was thinking a thousand.”
“A thousand? If someone tells you to name your price, you don’t say a thousand. Did you tell him you couldn’t do it?”
“I said I’d call him back.”
“Why didn’t you tell him you couldn’t do it?” If I wasn’t here, or we were in a fight, he would already be on his way down there.
“I’m not gonna do it.”
“They’re going to kill that woman,” I say, because I want to hear what it sounds like. I want him to say, No, they’re not, but he doesn’t. There she is—eating a tuna fish sandwich or watching a game show on TV, not knowing she will soon be dead. It’s kind of thrilling. I wonder what she looks like, if she’s pretty.
“I’ll call him right now with you sitting there and tell him I can’t do it. I’m going to have to make some stuff up.”
“Of course, make some stuff up. I don’t care.” I flip another page in my magazine, a Cosmopolitan from November 2002. I found a whole stack of them in his laundromat. “Wait,” I say. “Hold on a second.”
“What?”
“Let’s think about this for another minute.” This is not my life, or it is not the life I’m supposed to be living, and so I can pretend that it is. I don’t consider the actuality of my situation, which is that every day I live this life it becomes more and more mine, the real one, and the one I’m supposed to be living falls further away; eventually it will be gone forever. “Whether or not you take the picture, somebody’s going to do it and the woman’ll be dead, right?”
“That’s right,” he says.
“So either way she’s dead and all he wants you to do is take a picture. And you’re broke.”
“I’m not broke.”
He takes a sip of his beer, the beer I bought. I know exactly how much money he has because he empties his pockets out on the counter as soon as he gets home, balled-up ones and fives, sometimes a couple of twenties. He never has more than fifty dollars on him.
“People take my picture all the time,” I say. “Every time I go through a toll road my picture gets taken.”
“Not really the same thing. And when are you going through toll roads?”
“Are you sure he doesn’t want you to do anything else?”
“No, just the picture.”
“Your child support’s late,” I say, though we don’t talk about his children, who live in Oregon—a state he is not allowed to enter for a reason that remains unclear—or his child support. I can just assume he hasn’t paid it. He has no bank account. When someone writes him a check, I have to cash it for him because he lost his ID, sunk to the bottom of the lake along with the boat.
“You think I should do it?” he says. “I can’t believe you think I should do it.”
“For two thousand.”
“Are you serious?”
“You’d do it if I wasn’t here.”
“No I wouldn’t.”
“Then why didn’t you tell him no right off?”
“Because he’s my friend—I was going to think about it first. I owe him that much.”
“Well, call him back and tell him you’ll do it. And I get to come.”
“No, babe. I’m not involving you in that kind of stuff.”
“I’m coming,” I say, “and that’s final.” He seems pleased and I wonder if this is what he wanted all along, if I’m stupid. We stay together, I tell myself, because the sex is so good; if the sex weren’t so good, I would have broken this cycle a long time ago.
He calls the guy back and makes affirmative-sounding noises while I watch him pace. So many of my boyfriends have been pacers—it must make them feel important. He says, “Fifteen,” and gestures for a pen. I hand him one and he scrawls an upside-down address on my magazine, a phone number, and the name Susan Lacey. I went to school with some identical twins named Lacey. They were of average intelligence and attractiveness so no one seemed to know what to do with them.
I gather my stuff and climb the two steps into the trailer. I’m still not used to the dimensions—the narrowness of the doors, how small everything is. There are booby traps everywhere, sharp edges that need to be filed down, cabinets that fall open when you walk by. Only in the bed do I feel my normal size.
I open the closet and a light comes on; it’s his favorite feature. I shove my clothes back into my overnight bag, my toothbrush and toothpaste and foaming facial cleanser. We’ll have to go by my apartment to get my camera because he doesn’t have one. I wish he had his own damn camera and find myself getting angry about all the things he doesn’t have and how he assumes I will provide them. I sit on the bed with its ugly pilled comforter that pro
bably came with the trailer and look at my arms, the finger-shaped bruises. I’m going to be involved in a murder, I think. There is no voice that tells me to stop, that says what I am doing is wrong. I can’t remember if there ever was a voice. I don’t remember a voice.
* * *
I refuse to let him take my car so we clean out the truck he uses for work, which belongs to his boss. There’s a situation with a headlight that is an illegal blue color; the cops have already pulled him over twice and told him to get it fixed. We pour two beers into giant McDonald’s cups and he rolls a joint for the road. All of this is worrisome but he says he would die before he went back to prison and I believe him—he says it with such conviction—and he’s been out for five or six years and has never been back for even a night.
We pass a group of men near the entrance and Jimmy rolls down his window. They are born-again bikers, men with lots of tattoos and angry faces, but they don’t drink or do drugs or get into fights; they show up at trials to support children who have been abused, stand in the back of the courtroom with their arms crossed. They’re biker angels, he tells me, making fun of them, but I think it’s what they call themselves.
At my apartment, he waits in the truck while I walk the three flights upstairs. I get my camera and a pair of shorts and a bikini; the bottoms can double as panties. I wander the rooms wondering what else I might need, if I should just lock the door, put on my pajamas, and get in bed. It looks so comfortable, the sheets newly changed, sage green—such a pleasant color. I grab a pack of cigarettes and a Clif bar and then we’re on the highway, headed south. I haven’t been to Biloxi since I broke up with Richard. I have so many old boyfriends now, spread out all over, and so many things remind me of them. I’ll pass a Wendy’s and remember the one who would only eat plain hamburgers. There we are, sitting under the yellow light with our trays in front of us, eating one french fry at a time. Nearly every movie, every song and TV show and food item, reminds me of someone and it is a horrible way to live.
I flip down the visor to look at myself. My hair’s in a ratty ponytail and I don’t have any makeup on and I’m too old to be going around barefaced, my mother says. I wish I’d showered before we left his trailer but it’s so small and the water runs everywhere and I can’t turn around without the curtain touching my arms or legs, which is the same curtain that touched the arms and legs of some stranger.
“I brought my swimsuit in case there’s a pool at our hotel,” I say. He puts a hand on my knee. “I need a new one—this one’s from three summers ago and it’s all worn on the butt.”
“I’ll get you a new one,” he says. “I’ll get you a white bikini so I can see your nipples.” The word bikini doesn’t sound right in his mouth. He hardly ever buys me anything, though it is always his pot we smoke and I’ve never once bought condoms. Condoms are expensive, he tells me, especially the way we go through them. He has never suggested we don’t use them, though, which is nice of him.
“Do you want me to drive?” I ask.
“I’m fine.”
“I haven’t had as much to drink.”
“I’m fine,” he says again.
“Did the guy say what he wanted the pictures for?”
“We know why he wants them.”
“I know, but did he say it?”
“No.”
“’Cause that’s not how it works.”
“Right,” he says. He turns the radio up. We both like country music. We also like rap. No one knows where I am. When I’m with Jimmy, I don’t return my friends’ text messages or answer my mother’s phone calls unless she calls twice in a row. I fall down a Jimmy rabbit hole.
It’s not a bad drive down 49. There are plenty of places to stop, which I appreciate, and lots of antique malls made out of connecting storage units. My mother used to make me go to them with her back when I was too young to refuse, but I don’t remember her ever buying anything. I wonder what she was looking for. There’s a catfish house shaped like an igloo and another one in a massive barn, only about five miles apart. I like the men on the side of the highway selling sweet potatoes, nice-looking men in overalls, real country people. We live in Mississippi and almost everyone we know is from Mississippi but we don’t know any real country people.
“I have to pee,” I say, “just stop wherever, whenever it’s convenient.” He tells me I pee too much, and it’s true, I do pee a lot. I close my eyes and think about the woman, Susan Lacey. I imagine her in a shapeless housedress and heavy shoes with rubber soles like a nurse, eating ice cream from a gallon container. And then I imagine a younger Susan Lacey, her hair long and dark, eyes full of life. She’s on the street, carrying a recyclable bag full of organic fruits and vegetables, flowers sticking out the top of it. The picture will capture her midstride, head turning to look for cars as she crosses the street. It’s a picture I’ve seen so many times on the crime shows I watch, the photograph snapping the color out of everything.
“Can I smoke?” I ask.
“I don’t care.”
“No, the joint.”
“Let’s wait till after,” he says.
I say okay but after feels like forever. I wish I’d grabbed a book from my apartment; all I have is the Cosmo with the address and number on it and I’ve already read it from cover to cover. I reread an interview with Cameron Diaz. Cosmo asks her what the secret is to being an effective flirt: “Is it ‘flipping your goddamn hair,’ like Lucy Liu advised you to do in Angels?” And Cameron Diaz says, “Yes, flip the goddamn hair [laughs]. I think the secret is trying to be charming. I always try to make a man laugh, and usually, it’s by making fun of myself.” I wonder if her answer would be different in 2013, if she would say something so embarrassing and unfeminist-like. I light a cigarette and try to focus on the trees, the way the light filters through them, but there’s Susan Lacey again—she is definitely the younger, dark-haired one. Perhaps she’s even beautiful, but that isn’t going to save her.
* * *
Three hours later, we’re in Biloxi. Jimmy pulls into a gas station and I slip my card into the slot before he can ask and then I go inside, buy a sixteen-ounce beer and a king-size Twix.
He’s still pumping when I come back out, talking on his cell phone. I get in the truck and take off my flip-flops—my toenails bright red, so pretty.
He hands me a receipt, which I let fall to the floor without looking at it. I type the address into my phone, direct him through the city. For some reason the sound isn’t working and I can’t get it to work even though the volume is turned all the way up.
“Don’t you have a boyfriend that lives here?” he asks. He knows I have an ex-boyfriend that lives here. He lives in a high-rise apartment and drives a black Mercedes with a personalized license plate that means supreme ruler in some Asian language. He is a horrible person who made me go to church with him on Sundays, a pretentious guy full of pretensions, a Californian, a former Marine, a drunk. I have no idea where I find these people.
“No,” I say.
He looks at me.
“That was like three years ago.”
“When’s the last time you talked to him?”
“Not since we broke up,” I say. “Richard.”
“Dick,” he says, “that’s right, good old Dick.”
“Let’s talk about your ex-girlfriends. Were they all ugly? Make a left at the next light.”
“I don’t date ugly chicks.”
“You know I’ve met a lot of the girls you dated, right?”
He sighs because I’m right—they were all weirdly tall or hook-nosed or something. One of them had so many tattoos she looked deranged. “How much further?” he asks.
“Farther.”
“Okay,” he says, “Jesus Christ. How much farther?”
“Three miles. If he has her address, why’s he need a picture? Why doesn’t he just send somebody there to kill her?”
“We’re going to her job,” he says, and then, “Hey, babe? Could you just stop t
alking for a minute?”
We pull into the parking lot of an Office Depot. “Is this it?” he asks.
“This is the address you wrote down.”
Office Depots depress me and I refuse to get out. I open my bag and hand him the camera, turn it on and off. “This button here,” I say. “I hope she’s in there and we can get this over with. I want to go swimming, and maybe gamble. I love to gamble.” I’ve decided I’ll definitely rent a room at a casino, a nice one, and order room service and drink overpriced drinks at the hotel bar and fuck him in a huge bed with too many pillows.
I watch his back as he walks into the store: stocky and bald-headed, tattoos covering his thick arms. He’s not attractive in the conventional way but he makes beautiful babies. I’ll never have a baby with him but I like the idea of it, having a small version of him that I could control, who would listen to me and obey me and tell me every thought that popped into his head. The doors slide open and he’s gone, disappeared into the sadness of Office Depot forever. The turn of events deflates me.
* * *
Ten minutes later, he gets back in the truck.
“So?”
“No Suzie.”
“What took you so long?”
“I bought some envelopes,” he says, and tosses the bag to the floor. He hands me the camera and I immediately check to see if he took any pictures; he didn’t. I turn it off.
“What now?”
“I don’t know. Let me think for a minute.”
“Drive us to a nice hotel and I’ll rent a room and we can pretend we’re on a stakeout. Set up a command center.”
“This isn’t a game,” he says, pulling out of the lot. “It’s not a game.”
He drives in an angry silence. When someone is mad at me, I don’t know what to do except be mad back. He drives fast, like he knows where he’s going, and I don’t ask. When he decides to talk to me, I won’t be ready to talk to him, I tell myself, and it makes me feel better, but then I start thinking about all the things I want to say. Every one of them is a question. I look out the window as he drives and I have no idea where he’s going or what we’re doing. I want to be inside his head for one minute, just one minute so I can get ahead of him, or at least not feel so behind. We could be here to kill Susan Lacey, for all I know, though I don’t think he would do that for fifteen hundred dollars, but maybe it’s fifteen thousand and then I’d go to prison as an accessory because they wouldn’t believe me, they never do. I’d get five years, at least, even if all my people pooled their money to get me the best lawyer.