Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter: A Novel

by Tom Franklin

  “If you so much as get a finger in her,” Cecil hissed, “I’ll cut your little pecker off myself.” And now the grip at his neck was gone, but before Larry could move the hand had grabbed his testicles.

  Larry’s knees gave way but the hand was back at his neck, pressing him into the wall.

  “You get me, sissy boy?”

  Larry thought he might vomit. When Cecil moved his hand Larry collapsed. He heard shoes on the porch boards and tried to move.

  “I said you get me? And if you say one word to your daddy—”

  “Cecil!” It was Cindy, between them, pushing at her stepfather.

  He laughed, stepped over Larry on his way to the door. “Go on out with that one,” he said. “He ain’t gone do you no good tonight, you little whore.”

  The screen door slammed.

  Cindy tried to help him up but he shook his head and lay breathing.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said.

  His eyes were closed but he felt water—not even tears, just water—spilling over his cheekbones, dripping off his jaw and chin. He burped several times, the hot roast, it was everything he could do not to throw up. He heard them yelling inside.

  Then the screen door screaked and slammed and she was back, pulling him to his feet. He was aware of her against him, her sweaty perfume and cigarettes.

  “Can you walk?”

  “Yeah.”

  They went toward the car.

  “He’s a son of a bitch,” Cindy said. “I hate his guts.”

  He opened the door for her. She slipped in without saying thanks and he closed it and limped around the back of the car watching the house. He got in. She was looking out the window, across the road.

  “It’s half a hour,” he said, “fore it gets dark.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “What you want to do first?”

  “This,” Cindy said. “Scootch over.”

  He slid toward her on the seat, surprised they’d kiss here and not at the drive-in, but instead she opened her door, got out, and ran around the car and climbed in the driver’s side.

  Cecil came back out, lighting a cigarette.

  “You get the beer?”

  “Just two.”

  “Shit. Well?”

  He reached under the seat and handed her the first.

  She took it and glanced at him. “It’s warm.”

  “Sorry.”

  When she popped the tab it spewed foam on her. “Shit,” she said, flinging beer off her fingers.

  She cranked up the Buick and spun off, flipping out her middle finger to her stepfather, and Larry looked back to where Cecil had left his porch and was walking quickly toward them, even as they peeled away throwing gravel.

  Cindy sipped the beer and grimaced. She clicked on the radio and began turning the dial, settling on a station playing the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive.” She lowered her window and had trouble lighting her cigarette and then rolled it back up and lit the smoke and lowered the window again, accelerating over the dirt road, holding the beer in one hand and the cigarette in the other. She had on a short skirt that lifted in the wind and he could see far up her legs, her thighs slightly apart and brown from all her lying out. If Carl found out somebody else drove the car, Larry would be in trouble. Would Cecil tell? Was he right now walking over to their house?

  “I better drive,” Larry said. “Do you even have your license?”

  “Listen,” she said, “you got to do me a favor.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  She drove without looking at him, sipping the beer. “I need to get someplace else tonight,” she said. “Other than the movie.”

  “What you mean? Where?”

  She glanced at him, smoke from her lips pulled out the window. “That bastard’ll only let me out of the house with you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah. He thinks I’m safe with you.”

  “You are,” Larry said.

  “I know. That’s why I need to go to Fulsom. I got to go see him.”

  “Who?”

  “My boyfriend.”

  He moved his legs carefully, his balls still tender. “But—”

  “Listen,” she said. “You have to help me. Nobody else will. That Cecil’s after me, and if I can’t go see my boyfriend, I’ll never get away from him.”

  “But,” he said.

  She slowed as they approached the highway and turned without looking or using her blinker. She was going the opposite way from the drive-in.

  He didn’t know what to say. The nausea was subsiding but another thing was taking its place.

  “Cindy,” he said. “Can’t we just have our date?”

  “I’m gonna tell you something,” she said. “Something nobody else knows.”

  “Okay.”

  “Something you got to swear to God you won’t ever tell nobody. Okay?”

  “Swear.”

  “I swear.”

  “To God.”

  “To God.”

  She threw her cigarette out the window.

  “I’m gonna have a baby,” she said, drinking more beer.

  He didn’t know what to say. “A what?”

  “Baby. An itty-bitty baby. And if Cecil finds out, he’ll kill me.”

  “Who’s the, you know, daddy?” he asked. “Your boyfriend?”

  She looked at him. “I can’t say. If Cecil finds that out, he’ll kill him, too.”

  “What you need me to do?”

  “I’m going to meet him so we can talk. We got to make us a plan. You just ride around awhile, but don’t let nobody see you. Go on to the movie, but not till the second one starts. They stop taking admission then and you can drive on in and won’t nobody see I ain’t in the car with you. Park in the back. My boyfriend’ll drop me off at the road to my house. You can pick me up there at eleven and drive me home. That way Cecil won’t never know.”

  He’d imagined their date dozens of times. Pulling into the drive-in, paying five dollars for the car, rolling over the grounds, past the other people in their cars and trucks, past the posts where the speakers hung. David had told him you drove to the back two rows where you had the most privacy and detached your speaker and hung it on your window and climbed over the seat with your girl and got under a blanket—his brother had one, hidden under the seat with the beer—and you began to make out. When the time was right, when the girl was hot, her legs opening, you put your rubber on and…

  Now that was all flying away, passing him by at sixty miles an hour on the highway toward Fulsom. She threw her empty can out the window and said, “You got the other one?”

  “Cindy,” he said, giving her the beer. “I don’t want to do this. Can’t we just go to the movie?”

  “Didn’t you hear me? Shit—” The beer exploded when she opened it. “Didn’t you hear what I said?”

  “Yeah.”

  Wiping her hand on the car seat. “Fuck a movie. You the only person in the world who can help me, Larry. God damn it. Please?”

  “CAN YOU FIND your way back?” she asked, out of the car, bent to see him through the passenger window.

  She’d driven past Fulsom, the four-lane back to a two, then turned down an unmarked county road and then onto a dirt road. A blacksnake had been crossing the gravel and she veered to run over it. He didn’t even try to stop her. She’d parked by another dirt road, no houses in sight. The trees high and green and filled with birds.

  “I said, ‘Can you find your way back?’ ”

  “Yeah.” Not looking at her.

  “Just be at the road to my house at eleven o’clock, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Will you come?”

  He nodded.

  “Swear?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Swear to God, Larry.”

  The steering wheel was still warm from her hands and the car stank of cigarette smoke and the seat was wet with beer. He’d have to leave the windows down so his mother wouldn’t
smell it.

  “I swear to God,” he said.

  He pulled the car up and she stepped out of the way as he backed into the dirt road and turned around. She waved at him but he didn’t wave back, just clenched the steering wheel and nudged the gas pedal, the Buick bumping over the road, passing the blacksnake where it lay, leaving her in the woods in the gathering dark, watching her in the mirror as he drove away, watching her turn and begin to run—run—toward her boyfriend, waiting somewhere down that road.

  LATER HE WOULD do as she told him. Ride around alone. Take the Buick to the drive-in, park out of sight, and watch through tree limbs as the first feature ended, the movie family fleeing the house in Amityville and its devils, wait through the intermission, food advertisements, coming attractions, the radio playing songs he didn’t hear and describing weather he didn’t feel. He waited until the second feature began and then pulled with his lights off past the ticket booth, which, as she’d said, was empty. With the screen flickering over him, he eased the Buick past cars and trucks filled with men and women and boys and girls and past the metal poles with their speakers blaring and squawking, past popcorn boxes pushed by the wind, empty Coke cups rolling in his wake. He parked on the row second from the back, near the corner, shadowed from the moon by trees, lowered his window and unhooked his speaker and watched the people move on the screen.

  The movie was half an hour in when a car backed out a row up and several slots down. In the light from the movie, he watched it become Ken’s father’s Ford Fairmont and realized they must have seen him drive in. Its parking lights on, the car rode to the end of the row and turned and began coming back toward him. As it neared the Buick, it slowed, then stopped and backed into the spot behind Larry. Its parking lights snapped off. From there, Ken and David, or Ken and his date, would be able to see that Larry was alone.

  He reached beneath the seat for the blanket he’d brought. Quickly, he covered his open hand with it and held it up beside his shoulder as if it were a girl’s head, Cindy sitting very close. He watched his rearview mirror, unable to see the Ford’s interior. Maybe it wasn’t even them. But he knew it was. He sat, hoping they wouldn’t get out, even bent his arm as if she were leaning to whisper something in his ear. Maybe kiss him. When his biceps began to tire a few minutes later, he reached and pulled the armrest from the seat and rested his elbow there, barely aware of the movement on the screen.

  In his mirror the Ford’s interior lit Ken and David’s faces as Ken opened the driver’s side door. He got out and stood. Maybe he was just going for popcorn. Still, Larry reached around, under the steering column, his wrist at a painful angle, and started the car. Ken was coming forward now, getting close, angling his head to see. Larry pulled the shifter down to drive and lurched away, steering with his left hand, straining to keep his right up, the blanket steady, as if he and Cindy had decided they’d had enough of the movie, leaving Ken standing in his empty spot.

  HE ARRIVED AT the road fifteen minutes before eleven, hoping to see the boyfriend. Maybe recognize his car. He had an idea it was an older fellow. Her mother worked a late shift in the tie factory on Fridays and wouldn’t be home until midnight, but, in case Miss Shelia got off early, he rode past their mailboxes and parked farther on, out of sight. He sat with the windows down, hoping the cigarette and beer smell had dissipated, watching for lights.

  At eleven, he sat straight in his seat. They’d be along any minute now.

  But at eleven-fifteen, no car. The half moon blackened the trees in front of it and rose yellow and cocked in the sky. No car at eleven-thirty. Maybe the boyfriend had dropped her off early. But wouldn’t Cindy want to sustain the illusion of her date with Larry? He cranked the car and, lights on low, drove slowly by the turnoff, expecting to see her standing by the mailboxes with her purse.

  She wasn’t there. He drove by again and parked in his same spot, growing more worried.

  At ten to midnight he got out of the car and stood at the edge of the highway and listened, trying to hear over the crickets and frogs. Looked in one direction, the other. Overhead, an airplane winked across the sky, the moon’s high cratered cheek centered in its spackling of stars. He stepped into the road to better see. Maybe they’d had an accident. How would he explain that to Cecil? To his father? Maybe, a dreadful thought, they already knew, the police having called.

  At ten past twelve he began to hope he’d missed them somehow. Maybe the boyfriend had snuck in with his lights off, afraid Cecil might be lurking about. Larry cranked the Buick and clicked the headlights on low beam again and eased onto the pavement and turned off at the familiar dirt road that snaked past the Walker house and ended up, a mile farther, at Larry’s house. He drove, hoping Cindy might pop out of the trees, angry at him, Where the hell you been? I said eleven! Cecil’s gone kick my ass and yours, too. But no mad girl in his lights. Just the dusty diorama of trees hung with vines and slashed with leaves and the bobwire fence casing off the woods from the ditch.

  He sat for five more minutes, fingers drumming the steering wheel. His own parents would likely be worried, too. He was more than an hour late. Because he’d never had a date, he didn’t know if they’d sit up and wait or what. He imagined his mother’s strained face. How had the date been? He turned the lights off and began to crunch over the gravel, the crickets as he passed silencing and then starting up after he’d gone. Maybe Cindy was someplace between the road and house. Maybe drunk and passed out. He slowed again, barely moving now, afraid of running her over.

  Afraid of alerting Cecil, too. Maybe he’d have already passed out. Likely they were both there, him and Cindy, and Larry was working himself up for nothing. Certainly there was an explanation. Why did he have to make such a commotion out of this? He eased, lights off, closer to the house.

  Finally, the last turn before the yard would open out. Fingers still drumming. He knew what he had to do. He had to go up and see if she was home safe.

  When he rounded the curve the house was dark. He slowed, thinking about that. Were they all asleep? Wouldn’t they leave a light on for Cindy’s mother? She wasn’t home yet because he didn’t see her car. He touched the brakes and reached for the gear, about to shift into reverse, when Cecil appeared from the darkness like a torch ignited, filling his window with hot boozy breath and anger and sweaty arms.

  “Where you been, you little fuck?”

  His hands grabbing Larry’s neck, his shirt collar, Larry fighting the arms, the car lurching forward, his feet stabbing at the brakes. Cecil held on to him and he slammed the gear up into park just as he felt himself pulled out the window, the door lock caught in his belt loop, snapping off.

  Cecil had him by the shirtfront, against the car.

  “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know,” Larry said, “I thought she was home.”

  “Thought she was home?” He slung Larry around, into the dirt. “Why the fuck would she be home?”

  “I let her out,” Larry said, scrabbling away.

  But here Cecil came, straddling him now, both on the ground, Cecil growling, “Dropped her off where?” and Larry trying to speak but the man’s hands were around his neck and he might, he thought later, have been strangled if car lights—Miss Shelia, home from work—hadn’t suddenly found them there, wrestling in the dirt.

  HALF AN HOUR later the sheriff arrived.

  Before that, before Larry’s parents drove up in Carl’s truck, Miss Shelia, her hands shaking, had put on coffee. Larry sat centered on their threadbare sofa, his first time, some part of him realized, inside this house. It was low and dark, uneven floors. A small television with a rabbit ear antenna and the channel knob missing. Ashtrays with mounds of cigarette butts and a few framed class photos of Cindy on the wall. He tried not to look at them. Waiting for the Otts, Miss Shelia had busied herself sweeping the floor and collecting empty beer cans while Cecil sat across from Larry in a kitchen chair, glaring at him and smoking one cigarette after another. He’d switched from beer t
o coffee, Miss Shelia hissing, “You don’t want to be drunk when the law gets here.”

  The sheriff, with an air of getting to the bottom of things, out of uniform and wearing no socks under his house shoes, sat by Larry, ignoring the parents, asking him, patiently, exactly what had happened. Said don’t leave nothing out. Larry told how she’d wanted to be dropped off in the woods, aware of the adults watching him. When he got to the part about the drive-in, he skipped using the blanket as her head and said he’d decided to leave during the second movie. Because he’d sworn not to, he didn’t mention her being pregnant. The sheriff put his hands on his knees and sat back. Teenagers, he said. Wasn’t no point in getting all worked up. She was probably out with some boy and would show up later that night. Was such behavior beyond the girl? No, her mother admitted, it wasn’t. Teenagers, the sheriff repeated. Well, why didn’t everybody just go on home. If she hadn’t come back by morning, give him a call, he’d look into it.

  That seemed to satisfy everyone but Cecil, who stormed outside cursing, but when Larry stood to go the sheriff said, “What a minute, buddy.”

  Larry stopped and felt the man reach into his back pocket and pull out his lockblade knife.

  “All boys carry em,” Larry said.

  “Well,” said the sheriff. “Let’s see what tomorrow brings.” He put the knife in his pocket.

  Tomorrow did not bring Cindy home. Nor the next day or the one after that. Word got out that she had disappeared on a date with Larry, and then, Monday at school, Ken and David told about seeing Larry and Cindy screeching off. The sheriff was notified. Because Larry hadn’t told that part, his story seemed flawed, revised, and on Tuesday he found himself, along with his father, riding to the sheriff’s department for the first of many “talks.” Here, the sheriff growing stern, Carl angry, Larry confessed to how she said she’d been pregnant. Why hadn’t he said this the other night, the sheriff wanted to know. Because I swore I wouldn’t, he said.