by Haven Kimmel
“Cassie, can I ask?” he had said, his voice low.
“I’ve gone blind.”
“Ah,” he said, as if that often happened to sleeping people. “Want a root beer?”
In the bed of the truck Cassie dozed, flew higher, came down.
“Lot of lights on at your house,” Gary said, pulling in to her driveway. And there were, especially for one o’clock in the morning. Laura and Belle weren’t in the habit of waiting up if they were tired, and when they were awake, they stayed in the kitchen, at the back of the house. Edwin’s car was there, too. Gary had barely slowed the truck before Cassie was out and running toward the porch. She stopped midway, then turned around and ran back. “Thank you,” she said.
Gary nodded. “My pleasure.”
She ran past the glass cases with Buena Vista’s figurines, she ran through the living room, where one of Belle’s old radio-drama cassettes was playing. Cassie vaguely heard, And then he turned the corner and discovered …! The actor’s voice was deep and tinged with hysteria. Belle and Laura both loved that sort of thing. In the kitchen all the lights were on, even the one over the stove. Belle and Laura were at the table with Edwin and Poppy, surrounded by cold teacups and the butt ends of a hundred of Laura’s cigarettes.
“Is he dead?” Cassie asked, breathless.
Belle made a pffft sound and rolled her eyes.
“Sweetheart,” Laura said, “sit down.”
Cassie sat down next to her mother. Poppy was holding one of his old red handkerchiefs, the kind some of her friends rolled up and tied around their foreheads, as if they were in the original cast of Hair. Poppy’s eyes were swollen, he sniffed repeatedly, and one of his suspenders had fallen down.
“Cassie,” Edwin said, leaning toward her from across the table. “I’ve had a disturbing phone call from your father, and also from the sheriff.”
Cassie swallowed.
“Six months ago your father changed his legal residence to Barbara Thompson’s house, her mobile home, you know where I mean.”
The room was silent.
“Today he filed for divorce from your mother, and additionally, he filed other motions with the court.”
Cassie looked at Laura, whose face betrayed nothing.
“He is seeking to emancipate you and Belle, to have you declared emancipated, and also to sever all parental obligations and rights. He wants to have you removed from the health-insurance policy he’s carried for years through Farm Bureau. He is filing a lawsuit to accomplish these things.”
Poppy gave a sob and covered his face with his handkerchief.
“Your grandfather feels very ashamed.” Laura reached over and squeezed Poppy’s shoulder, which she had probably done dozens of times over the course of the evening, and which was an indication of the gravity of the matter at hand. Laura didn’t touch; she wasn’t touched.
Cassie could barely breathe. She sat up very straight and took in as much oxygen as she could, then blew it out slowly, like a woman in labor.
“If you don’t fight these proceedings, Cassie,” Edwin continued, “Jimmy and Barbara won’t prosecute you for willful destruction of property. They claim you stood outside Barbara’s trailer, one week ago today, while they were inside, and threw large rocks, breaking three windows and leaving thirteen very noticeable dents in the trailer’s aluminum siding.”
“Fourteen,” Cassie said.
“Fourteen, then,” Edwin said, nodding. “They must have missed one. Jimmy also claims that when Barbara emerged from the trailer to stop you, and she has admitted to carrying a cast-iron frying pan into the argument, you delivered a single blow to her face, breaking both her nose and her eyeglasses. They won’t press assault charges, either.”
Poppy sobbed. His dogs whined at the door. Belle said, “Barbara Thompson is a white-trash cow.”
Laura said, “Belle, you’re not helping.”
“I wish Cassie had killed her. Cassie could have killed her if she wanted to, I’ve seen her working out in the backyard with that punching bag, I’ve seen how hard she can kick, why didn’t you kill her, Cassie, while you had the chance? And also, Edwin Meyer, and I won’t say this again, tell Jimmy that I would be honored to be free of the disgrace of being his daughter, I would have jumped at the chance any time in the past eighteen years.”
“Belle,” Laura said.
“Cassie, your father also wants you to return his pool cue to him, which he says you are unlawfully holding.”
“She won that cue fair and square!” Poppy shouted, his face a trembling mess. “I know she did, Bud told me, and everybody in Roseville heard about it, she whooped him! He didn’t have to bet that cue, he could have stopped!”
Cassie placed her hands flat on the table’s scarred surface. “I’ll agree to anything he wants, but he can’t have the cue back.”
Edwin nodded. “I told him that’s what you’d say. Cassie, we can fight this if you want. I’ll help you.”
She smiled at Edwin, at Poppy, her mother and sister, something gave way in her chest, she could actually feel it, she shook her head no. Fight what? What was there to fight?
She sat on the porch rocking, with Poppy’s two remaining dogs. Roger had died of a seizure two years before. He had been fine one moment and gone the next. Cassie was no longer high or a little drunk, nothing. Steady on her feet. Laura went to bed, Belle went to bed, Edwin and Poppy had been washing the dishes when Cassie left the kitchen.
“Cass? Can we join you out here?” Poppy said from the doorway.
“Sure you can.”
Edwin and Poppy came out, took chairs, rocked awhile without saying anything.
“I’m worried,” Cassie began, “about Belle going to Bloomington.”
“Well, yes,” Edwin said.
“I don’t want to hear anything about Belle!” Poppy said, his voice still shaky. “People are odd, they’ve always been odd!”
“Pop, I didn’t mean—”
“What about old Luke Foster who didn’t believe the right side of his body belonged to him?” he cried, now taking up gestures.
“He was kicked in the head by a horse,” Edwin replied.
“What about that young fella who wore a muskrat skull around his neck? Charlie Something?”
“Charlie Something is in prison, Poppy.”
“Your very own grandmother Buena Vista! looked to weigh two hundred pounds when she died, but when they took off her dress in the hospital, she weren’t but skin and bones! She’d been carrying most of her belongings in bags tied around her middle with bailing twine, afraid the government would try to take her daddy’s signet ring!”
Cassie had to admit it was all true. Poppy was silent a moment.
“And what about that woman Virginia Ludebecker, drives by in her old Cadillac. She didn’t want to keep working at Holzinger’s, so she gave up food but for German chocolate cake, and now she’s got diabetes, sores all over her body, lives on disability.”
“Cassie, I called the dean of students,” Edwin said, directing his comments away from Poppy. “I explained the situation, and they’re putting her in a single dorm room. She won’t have to eat anywhere there’s upholstery, and they’ll make sure there’s nothing blue in her room. I called Health Services, too, and they’ll monitor her medication and keep salve on her arms.”
“I, myself!” Poppy said, pointing at his chest, “am afraid of the dentist and have been known to pull my own teeth out with pliers. I would never swim in the ocean, even though folks do it every day, and I won’t step into a place that ever held a goat.”
“I’m worried is all,” Cassie said.
“I know.” Edwin rocked a moment. “I think she needs to go, I think she should at least try.”
“I bury my fingernails after I cut ’em off,” Poppy said.
“I wish this hadn’t happened right before she’s supposed to leave.”
“Me, too. I’m so sorry, Cassie.”
“They’ll take her away! You’re
going to do or say something, and they’ll take Belle away!” Her grandfather had begun to cry again.
“Lord above, Poppy, I’m not selling Tara.”
Edwin patted Poppy on the knee, and he calmed down. Marleybone lay his head in Poppy’s lap. The three rocked awhile longer; the hour grew very late. The black dog shook.
Part Two
A PRIVATE LANGUAGE
SAMHAIN, 1987
At eight in the evening Cassie carried in the mail. It had surely been there all day, but Laura would never bring it in, left to her own devices. They got coupons for pizza, a Have You Seen This Child?, the electric bill, a letter from Belle. The sky was fully dark, but no wind. Cassie could see her breath. She studied the bare trees against the sky; this was her favorite time of year, a lull between two punishing seasons.
She carried the mail in to Laura, who was in the living room writing. The room was dim outside the circle of light from the reading lamp; Cassie didn’t know what Laura wrote, had written all these years. Ten, eleven notebooks were stacked next to her rocking chair. Who would dare read them? Cassie handed all the mail but the electric bill to Laura.
“Ah,” Laura said, tilting her head to see through the bottom of her reading glasses. “I see our Belle is one step closer to a degree in Letter Writing.”
They owed the electric company $126.37. Cassie took out her wallet and slipped $130 into the envelope. She would pay the bills in Hopwood tomorrow, the phone, the propane, her truck insurance.
“Belle says—hmm, let me find something we don’t already know—we know she’s in a different dorm. Oh, here: she got an A on her paper entitled ‘Treacherous Women at the Crossroads: Aspects of Hecate in the Delta Blues.’”
Cassie nodded. “A good one.”
“Indeed. She says to tell you thank you for the letter and the explanation; you helped her pass the physics test.”
To get in three hours of practice in the morning and take the job putting up siding in Haddington, Cassie would have to leave the house at four in the morning. And then after work she’d pay the bills.
“What was the problem?” Laura asked.
“Excuse me?”
“What didn’t Belle understand?”
“Oh. She had to write a three-page paper on how physics can be applied to a practical problem. Just conceptually. She didn’t have to do any math.”
“She couldn’t think of anything?”
“You know Belle. She panicked.” Cassie had forgotten to put on a belt. “Have you seen my knife?”
Laura glanced at the coffee table, the couch, the floor. “Not today. What did you tell her?”
Cassie slipped her hand down between the couch cushions. “I told her to look up the formula Thomas Jefferson used to design a plow.” The knife wasn’t there. “Maybe it’s in the truck.”
Laura went back to reading the letter. Belle wrote almost every day. She had settled on an area for her senior project: women in antiquity, with an emphasis on ritual. At home over her spring break, she’d been reading a book called Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves.
“Do you need anything before I go?” Cassie asked.
Laura folded the letter, ran her finger along the crease. “No, thank you, sweetheart.”
“Want the stereo on? You could maybe pick up Mama Jazz out of Chillicothe.”
“That’s okay. You’re going out?”
Cassie nodded. “Puck and Emmy.”
“Will you trick-or-treat?”
“I’m a little old to start.” Cassie leaned back into the couch; the room felt like warm twilight. “Do I need to go to Bloomington? Is she worse?”
Laura lit a cigarette, blew the smoke up toward the lamplight. “I’ll let you know. Edwin saw her two weeks ago on his way back from Cincinnati, described her as ‘thriving.’”
But things could change quickly; Belle might suddenly become afraid of telephone poles or the feeling of grass beneath her feet. It could happen overnight. Cassie didn’t say this.
“She’s halfway through,” Laura said. “Just two years to go.”
They sat in silence. Laura smoked, Cassie let her head fall back against the couch. She wanted to say to Laura, Please, explain to me how you withstand this diminishing. Their house had become dense with absences. Buena Vista in her casket—Cassie could still see her so clearly, with her thin white hair combed out against the satin pillow. Poppy had put on her reading glasses because they made her look dignified. And there was a moment when Buena’s toothbrush went missing from the bathroom, and her denture cream, the special comb she used because she was tender-headed. Then Jimmy, his breath mints, his razor, his dancing glide through the kitchen on the way to the refrigerator. He’d grown up in this house. Gone. Belle. Cassie massaged her temples. And now, of all things, Juanita, the black dog. An inoperable tumor had grown into her jaw. Cassie had taken her that morning to be put down, then brought her back and buried her behind Poppy’s trailer, next to Roger. Poppy was inconsolable and wouldn’t leave the Airstream. Only Marleybone remained, a dog as tough as whit leather, but old himself, and there was nothing Cassie could do. Nothing would slow down the arrow shot through their lives. “I should change clothes and head on,” Cassie said, standing.
Laura looked up over the top of her glasses, smiled at Cassie. “Be careful. There are haints abroad tonight.”
The odometer in Emmy’s battered station wagon was ticking toward two hundred thousand miles. As often happens, the car was kept and driven for no other reason than the goal of reaching an arbitrary number. Cassie sat in the backseat, behind Puck on the passenger’s side. She could see the road through a hole in the floorboard, a hole that had begun when Emmy spilled a quart of Clorox on the carpet; the rough tan carpeting had first faded, then faded away, as had the floor itself. From the remains, Cassie guessed the floor had been either made of plywood or covered in plywood, a no-good situation. The asphalt was first charcoal gray and bumpy, then lighter and smooth as they drove faster, and finally a colorless blur. In the front Emmy and Puck smoked the joint Emmy found in her ashtray.
“Where are we going first?” Cassie asked. They were flying down an old back road, the Laramie Pike. Most drivers became greatly cautious when stoned, but Emmy sped up; it was one of her joys. They passed a crumbling family cemetery, unnamed, and the house of the veterinarian, Jay Thomas, who specialized in large animals. His own quarter horses grazed in the flat five acres next to his ranch house. They, too, were a blur, but Cassie loved them, loved all horses. Jimmy had taught her as a child to spit on her thumb and press it to her elbow when they passed the snow-white mare who lived next to a tumbledown farmhouse between Roseville and Jonah. He’d said, Wish. She wished and wished on that horse. She wished for that horse, for her own dog, for the school to burn down, for hard rains and hot chocolate with tiny marshmallows, for a real Jeep she could drive whenever she wanted. Some of Cassie’s desires were vague and unexpressed. Trains that blew the blues from their whistles; effigies in the trees around her house. Flight, a time machine, medicine that would make her older and taller and bound with muscle. Like all children, she wished that life might be better for her mother, that the world and all its inhabitants would change, and change again.
“Where are we going first, Emmy?” On her right was the barn where the high school built floats for the summer parade—closed up now, dark.
“You already asked that,” Emmy said, rolling down her window, blowing out smoke.
“Did you answer?”
“Not yet.”
They passed the Lampwell house, a disaster in the making. Ernie Lampwell hadn’t had a job since he came home from Vietnam, had lived all the intervening years on government disability and his take from bathtub LSD. He used a recipe from The Anarchist Cookbook. Someone was bound to die, maybe already had. It was hard to keep track of people out here. And there were guns in the house, Ernie was loaded for bear, as Jimmy would have said. Cassie turned away. There was no future in looking at Ernie’s ho
use, in the mood she was in.
“Puck’s looking for Dante,” Emmy said in answer to the long-ago question.
“Where?” Cassie leaned forward.
“Dante is so gone,” Emmy said, flipping her ashes out the window.
“He’s not entirely gone.” Puck sat like a Buddha, his arms resting on his thighs. “He’s around some. I heard he might be out in that trailer at the Conway place.”
So that was where they went first, Halloween night. A squatter’s trailer at the edge of a cow pond thick with slime and mosquito eggs. A path from the pond led straight to the barn where the livestock was kept when the Conways still owned the place. Cassie had been to parties in the barn; she’d found a cat’s skull there, and had stood in the shadows cast by kerosene lamps, listening to the boasts of boys who were lean and hard, and smelled like the interior of trucks. Their hair was perpetually flattened from seed caps; they kissed so hard they split the lips of relatively innocent girls, and later turned them into ruined brides. Their mouths and their minds were black holes. Nothing with those boys lasted long, not tenderness or conversation or a bruise. In later life, after their particular brand of rage had ceased to be interesting, or after they had flown drunk through the windshield of a car, they took up religion and found pleasure in smaller ways, like kicking their sons for firing the losing shot in a county basketball game. Cassie knew just where they were going.