by Carolee Dean
“I don’t give no interviews.”
The pig raises its snout and snorts as if to emphasize her point.
“Please!” I say, raising my hands in the air. “We’re not reporters.”
“Oh, yeah? If you ain’t reporters, then who are ya?”
“I’m Dylan Dawson.”
“What did you say?” She closes one eye and aims straight for my head.
“I’m Dylan Dawson,” I repeat, shaking so badly I fear I’ll piss on myself.
“Horseshit. Dylan Dawson is in a maximum security prison.”
“I’m his son. I’m Dylan Junior.”
The old woman’s body goes slack. She drops her shoulders, puts the shotgun at her side, and turns pale, as if she’s just seen a ghost. I’m not sure if she’s going to cry, faint, or have a stroke.
“Well, boy, you got timin’. That’s all I can say.” And with that statement, Levida turns around and starts walking back toward the farmhouse. The pig grunts at us, then turns to follow her.
Wade and I look at the tractor the old woman has left in the middle of the road. Look at the Mustang sitting in the ditch. Stare at each other, wondering what to do. It’s clear we aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
“You might as well come on up to the house,” Levida yells, never breaking stride or looking back. “Guess you’ll be expectin’ me to feed you and give you a place to stay.”
“Is that an invitation?” whispers Wade.
“As close as we’re gonna get.”
22
I WOKE UP AND LOOKED AROUND, TRYING TO GET MY BEARings. Heard the sound of the ocean, a dog whine. Realized I was sleeping on the front porch of Jess’s beach house with Baby Face next to me. Looked up and saw Jess standing over me.
“What are you doing out here?” Jess asked. She had the afghan wrapped around her shoulders.
I tried to piece together how I’d ended up there after my talk with Mitch. Had I gotten drunk and blacked out? I could tell from the soft blue light of morning that dawn was just breaking.
“Why didn’t you come back? You said you were going to come back. I’ve been waiting all night for you.”
“I did come back. I’m right here,” I said, sitting up. It suddenly started coming together in my mind. How I’d driven up and down the Pacific Coast Highway till well after midnight, nearly talking myself into buying a case of beer, but getting more and more worried about leaving Jess alone. Finally deciding to spend the night on her front porch so I could keep an eye on her place without the embarrassment of her seeing me cry, which I’d done most of the night.
“Come inside,” she told me.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not somebody you should be hangin’ around with.”
“Why?”
I told her about my father being on death row in Texas; my mother, who wouldn’t talk about it; and my uncle, who had set me up with a job he knew was illegal. Words came gushing out of me. I finally got through to the end of it. “Trouble just seems to follow me. You’d be better off not getting too close.”
“Oh, Dylan,” she said, kneeling down beside me and touching the crude blue cross on my right hand. “I know you’ve been in trouble. I know your family situation is bad.” She took my hand in hers and squeezed it. “But I also know that you are the most decent person I’ve ever met. You’re the only real and genuine person that I know.”
There was a light in her eyes that reached all the way to the corners of my soul, telling me that I could start over. That I could leave my past behind and be worthy of a girl like Jess. It was like a small explosion shaking me all the way down to my roots.
She pulled me to my feet. Tilted her head up toward mine. For a moment I thought she was going to kiss me, but she didn’t. Instead she smiled and said, “Now come inside, silly.”
“I can’t,” I said, looking at my watch. “I gotta go to work.”
“Tonight, then? Promise me you’ll be back tonight.”
“I promise.”
When I got to work, I was surprised to see Wade sitting up front, answering the phones. It made me wonder about his weekend with the BSB. Whatever had happened, it was bad enough to make him come back to the garage.
“You didn’t come home last night,” he said.
I punched my time card. “Won’t be coming home for a while.”
“Your mom left.”
I spun around to face him. “What are you talking about?”
“Your uncle Mitch took her to Texas.”
“What?” I couldn’t believe she would leave the state without even saying good-bye.
“He told me he was bringin’ her to his place so he could take care of her. She didn’t look right. Is somethin’ goin’ on?”
“No,” I hurried back to the garage before he could ask me any more questions.
The day was a roller coaster of emotions. When I thought about my mother, I felt guilt and anger. When I thought about my father, I felt anger and dread. When I thought about Jess, all I wanted was to forget about everybody else.
By the time three o’clock rolled around and I was clocking out, I felt exhausted.
I ended up at the probation office, pacing back and forth in front of Mr. Grey’s desk. “I appreciate the gravity of your circumstances,” he told me. “I can’t promise you anything, but if you’ll get these forms filled out and return them to me as soon as possible, I’ll try to push it through juvenile court so you can get permission to visit your father.”
I picked up the pages and looked them over. I knew I’d never fill them out. He wasn’t going to be able to help me. “Thank you for your time,” I said.
I threw the pages in the trash on the way out.
On the drive from Mr. Grey’s office to Hermosa Beach, I had to admit to myself that the only way I would be able to see my father was if I violated my probation and drove to Texas without permission.
I was not inclined to put myself in jeopardy for a man who had never done anything for me. I had too much to lose. By the time I arrived at Jess’s house, I had convinced myself that seeing my father didn’t matter. What would be the point anyway? He would be dead and gone in a few days. So much the better for me. Maybe then I could finally let go of my past and start over.
I showered at Jess’s house. It was weird, being naked in her bathroom, knowing she was on the other side of the door. When I was done, I put on a pair of khaki shorts and a short-sleeved polo shirt from the sack Jess had given me. “Who are you pretending to be?” I asked the respectable-looking guy in the mirror. I didn’t recognize him, but I sort of liked him.
Half an hour later I was walking down the street with Jess, enjoying how every guy who passed us looked at her in admiration and then me in envy. I could learn to get used to this, I told myself, and stood a little taller.
“Karaoke!” I pointed to a storefront across the street. “Come on.” I was so excited that I started trying to cross in the middle of traffic.
“No,” she said, pulling me back onto the sidewalk and heading off in the opposite direction.
“Jess, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I just don’t sing much anymore.”
“Aren’t you still in chorus?”
“I gave it up my junior year.”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
She gave me a sideways glance and picked up her pace. “To get into a decent university you have to have four years of math, four years of science, four years of language arts, a foreign language, history, government, econ. I don’t have time for singing anymore.”
“Don’t you need extracurriculars?
“I’m in the debate club, and I do DECA.”
“What about your voice?”
“Who cares about my voice? There are more important things going on in the world. I want to make a difference. I’m going to law school. I want to become a public defender.”
I couldn’t believe she’d give up singing to wor
k with scumbags like me. “By the time a guy ends up in front of the judge, it’s too late to make a difference.”
“It’s never too late to make a difference,” she said.
We had arrived back at the beach and we stood there, staring out at the vastness of the ocean. I don’t know why, but it made me think of possibility. Maybe she was right. Maybe it wasn’t too late.
“All I’m saying is that with your music you could have an influence on people before they end up in trouble.”
“Yeah, right,” Jess said, laughing.
“What’s so funny?”
“After West Side Story , my mother thought maybe I should work with a talent agent. I signed with a guy in Beverly Hills, and within two weeks he had gotten me my first job singing on television.”
“Wow.”
“In a chicken suit.” Jess started to sing, “Come on down to Yummy Buckets… . Try our tasty chicken nuggets.”
“That was you? You were the dancing chicken that came on after the late-night news?”
“I confess.”
“I loved that song.”
“Yeah, very funny. I had to wear that stupid chicken suit for hours. That’s what show business is really like. I used to think that words and music could change the world, but look at the people who have made it. You see their faces all over the tabloids talking about their latest stint in rehab. I’m not like that.”
I brushed a strand of hair from her face. “No, you’re not like that. You really could change the world.”
Something shifted then. I wasn’t sure what, but Jess stared up into my eyes long and hard, like she was looking for something she hadn’t even realized she’d lost. Then she cupped my face in her hands. “It’s amazing.”
“What?”
“Your eyes are so clear. I think I can actually see my reflection.”
“Look closer,” I told her.
She edged toward me. I leaned toward her.
“Closer.”
She stepped up on her tiptoes, her lips so close to mine I could feel her breathe.
“Closer …”
She covered my lips with hers, pulled me close, and kissed me like I’d never been kissed before. It was warm and wet and wonderful.
It was better than sex. It was like sinking into a crystal clear sea and coming out new. She opened her mouth to let me in and in that moment, my heart imploded and nothing else mattered.
23
“RISE AND SHINE,” A VOICE BELLOWS, AND I OPENu MY eyes to come face-to-face with Levida’s pig, Charlotte. Levida is standing behind the pig, holding a basket and a pitchfork.
I look around. Realize I’m in Levida’s barn. Know I’ve been dreaming again of the room with the cuckoo clock and the blue curtains.
“If you’re gonna stay with me, you boys will have to earn your keep,” Levida says, prodding Wade with a pitchfork and dropping the basket on the ground. I sit up and rub my aching ribs.
My grandmother lets Charlotte sleep in the house. That stupid pig has her own bedroom, while Wade and I are relegated to the barn. Levida gave us sleeping bags to spread across the hay, but it was too hot to sleep inside them.
I look at my watch. Only six o’clock and already so humid I can feel the sweat beading on my forehead.
Levida stands with her hands on her hips, surveying the barn. “We’ll start with those stalls,” she says, pointing to what I can only imagine used to be pigsties. From what she told us last night, the only pig she has left is Charlotte. Levida started selling off the land when my grandfather died. From the looks of the barn, she’s been taking it apart piece by piece as well. Several of the outer boards are missing, and all the doors are gone.
Levida grabs a sledgehammer and starts hammering away at the old pigsties. “Been wantin’ to tear down this old barn for a long time. Now I got the manpower to do it.”
“Lev—Gram …” I’m not sure what to call her. “Ma’am, with all due respect, I didn’t come all this way to tear down your barn. I came to see my father.” I tense reflexively as I prepare to dodge the sledgehammer, but Levida sets it down and stares at me as cool as a cucumber.
“Well, seein’ as how your car is sittin’ in my ditch with two flat tires, you might be needin’ to borrow my pickup truck.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“So you might try to be a little more amenable to helpin’ out around here. Besides, it’s Sunday. You ain’t goin’ nowhere until after church.”
“Church?” Wade says, perking up, though I know he doesn’t have a religious bone in his body.
“I figure you boys can get in a good two to three hours of demolition before you have to get cleaned up for Sunday services. Oh, and let me know if you find anythin’ interestin’.”
“Like what?” I ask. I can’t imagine finding anything of interest if I searched the entire county.
“There’s biscuits in the basket for your breakfast and some old clothes that belonged to your father in the box,” she says as she kicks a box left beside my sleeping bag. “Come on, Charlotte.”
Charlotte grunts at Baby Face, who cowers in fear of the massive pork chop and tries to hide under my legs.
Wade and I spend the morning tearing apart the stalls in the barn and stacking the old boards outside. Then we get ready for church.
I sort through the box of clothes my father left behind. Old jeans, some dress pants, T-shirts, dress shirts, and even a pair of brown cowboy boots at the bottom. I try on some pants and a shirt and realize my father is much larger than I am. The shoulders hit me halfway down the arm and all the pants sag around my waist, the way I used to wear them when I was a wannabe gangbanger. I have to cinch them up with a belt to look anywhere near respectable. Wade tries on a pair of dress pants and leaves them to sag around his scrawny waist. I toss him a belt. “Better cinch those up if you want to make a good impression on the preacher’s daughter.”
It’s weird, wearing my father’s stuff. Even weirder than wearing the clothes Jess gave me. It’s like D.J. Dawson is suddenly standing somewhere behind me, but every time I try to get a good look at him, he slips away.
It’s while we’re having punch and cookies in the church foyer and waiting for the eleven o’clock service to begin that I realize where all the pieces of Levida’s barn have gone. They’re hanging for sale in the church thrift shop with Bible verses painted on them.
Dorie intercepts Wade at the coffee urn, and before the morning is over he has fallen in love and gotten saved, in that order.
Levida plays the church organ like a bat out of hell. She looks like one too, in her flowing black dress, swaying violently to the music and working the pedals with both legs. Her hands are so gnarled and arthritic, I don’t know how she does it, but she manages to play all morning without missing a beat.
I have never been a religious person, but as I sit there in the sweltering heat of the Texas Hill Country, watching Wade get dunked in a baptistery below a crude wooden cross that looks suspiciously similar to an old barn door, and listening to Pastor Bob talk about mercy and redemption, I am filled with hope. Not the kind of expectation that comes from knowing you can pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, but the trust that comes from utter failure, from knowing you are pathetic and small and you’ve got no place to look but up.
“Jesus died in your place,” the preacher says, after Wade comes up out of the water. “He was put to death like a common criminal to save your eternal soul.” I look at my cross tattoo and a disturbing thought comes to me—I have permanently inscribed my hand with a symbol of execution.
I make another bargain with God. If you will get me out of the trouble I’m in, I’ll never get off track again.
There is a potluck after church, fifty different varieties of food spread out on tables in the church basement, the only semi-cool place in the building.
“You’re D.J. Dawson’s kid, aren’t you?” I hear, just as I finish my fried chicken and zucchini bread. I look up to see Red, t
he boy from the drugstore, standing in front of me with a paper plate full of roast beef and potato salad, his fists clenched so tightly around the rim he’s bending the thing in half. “Aren’t you?” he says again, making no attempt to hide the hostility in his voice.
I don’t know if he’s figured this out on his own or if the church gossip mill has provided him with the information, but there is no use denying it. “Yeah. I’m D.J. Dawson’s kid.”
He starts to shake, and I see he’s fighting hard to contain his rage. “Then you better watch your ass.” He turns and walks away.
I don’t head out for Huntsville until nearly two. My clothes are in the wash, so I’ve sorted through all my father’s old stuff, wondering what a guy should wear when he’s visiting somebody on death row. I keep on the pants I wore to church but exchange the plaid shirt for a short-sleeved white dress shirt and tie. I eventually give up on the tie because I can’t figure out how it works.
I ask Wade to go with me, to help me find the prison, but he won’t because he’s afraid he won’t make it back in time for evening church at six o’clock.
“Plus, Dorie’s dad holds a class for new converts at five,” he tells me.
I can’t imagine there are a lot of new converts in a town this size, but I let it pass.
It’s surprisingly easy for me to find Huntsville, even though the road I’m traveling changes numbers three times before I get there. It’s almost easier not having Wade navigate. The gears on Levida’s old pickup truck grind every time I shift, and the suspension needs to be tightened. I’ll give the truck a tune-up when I get back to Levida’s place.
The town of Huntsville surprises me. I don’t know what I was expecting. Some big industrialized city with factories and lots of barbed wire, maybe. What I find instead is a sleepy college town with green hills and pine trees, on the edge of a national forest. There’s a town square surrounded by brick buildings. There’s even an old opera house. It feels homey in a strange way.