Weedeater

by Robert Gipe

  Momma said, “Was it nice?”

  I said, “What?”

  She said, “The funeral.”

  “I reckon,” I said. “It was a funeral.”

  Momma said, “There aint no need to be hateful, Dawn.”

  “What do you want, Momma? Why don’t you just get whatever it is and go? Get you something you can get your money for and go.”

  Momma said, “I don’t need nothing here,” but her eyes couldn’t help but cut around the room, make a list of what was to hand.

  I said, “Momma, you make me sick.” I got out of the tub and shouldered past her.

  She said, “Be nice if you could think one minute about what this day must be like for me. Course that would mean you’d have to think about somebody other than yourself for a second.” Momma put her hands in front of her face like she was crying. Then she said, “I wish Calvin was here.” Then she made a bunch of big wet sobs.

  I stomped up the stairs still with that towel around me and got in the bottom dresser drawer in the upstairs bedroom and got out the turquoise Chinese box with the dragons stitched in gold on it, and got out Mamaw’s rings, gold bands plain and with chips of ruby in them and one little diamond ring that was supposed to be mine, and I took them back down to Momma and said, “Here you go,” and I threw them rings right off her face. “Stick that right there up your nose.”

  We stood there glowering at each other. I could see her twitching to pick them rings up. I went in my room and slammed the door behind. Pink light filled the room. The kitchen door opened. Then the storm door snapped back in place. I let the towel fall from me. My skin lit up the color of bubble gum. I didn’t cry.

  * * *

  I WAS dressed and dry by the time Evie come in Mamaw’s.

  I said, “Knock, why don’t you?”

  Evie said, “Where’s June?”

  I said, “You tell me. She’s your teacher.”

  Evie said, “Well, she’s your aunt.”

  I wanted to pinch off her peapod head. I said, “Leave me alone, Evie.”

  Evie turned on the TV set on the counter and watched the closed circuit from the courthouse like it was her own personal soap opera. Which it pretty much was. She said, “Watch him lie” when this cousin of hers from Gilders Branch told where he was when a swimming pool got stolen out of a man’s yard in Fulby. “He tried to steal it with the water in it,” Evie said. “They should shoot him. Just for that. At least tie his tubes.”

  I said, “Evie, I got to go.”

  “Well,” she said, “go on, then.” She put her feet on the kitchen counter.

  A new man stood in front of the judge on TV. “Look at him,” Evie said. “He’s purty.”

  Evie also watched the court channel like it was Match.com.

  I said, “Evie, get out of here.”

  “I can stay here much as you,” she said. “I’d come see Cora all the time while you was in Tennessee.”

  When I wrapped my arm around Evie’s head, her ear was right in the crook of my elbow. When I threw the storm door open and flung her out on the patio, she went skating across the concrete like a water bug on a creek eddy.

  “You got mean down there in Tennessee,” she said, jumping up. “You didn’t use to be like this,” she said.

  I thought marrying Willett would calm me down. I never seen him mad. He always had an open-mouth smile on, like in an old magazine ad where somebody’s trying to talk you into how good their cough syrup tastes. Bullshit smile. Willett wasn’t bullshit exactly. He really was sweet. I thought Willett being so different from what I’d known he’d knock down some of that wanting to fight in me, that wanting to get redneck on everything.

  Evie popped me in the shoulder with the flat of her hand. “Say,” she said. “Why you acting like I aint even here?”

  I popped Evie in her shoulder with the flat of my hand.

  Evie said, “You think you can just walk off. Move to Tennessee and nobody say nothing. Well, you can’t.”

  I said, “How much pill you take, Evie?”

  Evie said, “You think can move away and won’t nobody notice? Don’t work that way, Dawn.”

  I said, “You want me to stay here till I’m crazy as you? That what you want, Evie?”

  Evie stood there long enough for me to actually look at her face. Her nose was pretty. It’s a thin nose. Long. Her eyes are nice, the color of fresh motor oil, golden brown with a blue and green glow when the light caught em right.

  I said, “Do what?”

  “Too much medicine,” Evie said. “I’m quitting.”

  “Well,” I said, “you should.”

  Evie said, “Tricia’s the one you need to worry about. Not me. June too. All yall are the type.”

  I said, “Type of what?”

  Evie said, “Type to take things too serious. Type to let things get ahold of you.”

  My phone rang. When I answered, Willett said, “Hey, baby.”

  I said, “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Just wanted to tell you we made it home. And that I love you.”

  “OK,” I said. “I love you too.”

  Then he told me the baby was fine.

  “I know,” I said. “That all?” I said. “I’m doing something.”

  Willett said bye, and that he loved me, which he’d already told me.

  “Was that Willett?” Evie said.

  I looked at her like she was stupid.

  She said, “He got fired from his job.”

  I said, “No, he didn’t.”

  “Yes, he did,” Evie said.

  “Aint no way,” I said. “He just started.”

  Evie said Hubert said Willett made such a mess the first day—tore up a piece of equipment, almost killed a guy—that they had to send him home.

  “Shut up, Evie,” I said. “You don’t know and neither does Hubert.”

  “Call out there to where he worked,” Evie said. “They’ll tell you.”

  I went back in Mamaw’s house, closed the door and locked it. Evie stood out there and cussed me a while. Which to tell you the truth, I didn’t mind. Least with Evie, jacked up as she was, I knew what was what.

  9

  ALREADY DEAD

  GENE

  The place where they decided to put That Woman’s letters was on the hillside behind Beautyspot. Beautyspot was a couple rows of houses against the bottom of the hillside on the other side of the railroad tracks. New 38 cut Beautyspot off from the rest of town. They was one house way up on the hill, right next to where they was wanting the letters to go, and it was owned by a man named B. C. Fowler. When we was kids, we used to call him B. C. Powder.

  The original plan was for the words to be “THIS IS A COALTOWN!” and the part said “COALTOWN!” was spose to be on BC’s hill up above the right side of Beautyspot. Beauty Branch ran down into Beautyspot, cut it into two parts, and on the hillside on the other side of Beauty Branch, that’s where the words “THIS IS A” were spose to go. And when it got clear that the county, which had lined up a contractor to build the supports—the phone poles and 6 × 6 crosspieces we were going to hang the letters on—wasn’t going to have time to get all that support stuff built before the president got there, the decision got made to just do the COALTOWN! letters there on the west side of Beauty Branch.

  The contracting outfit the county hired with June’s grant money cleared trees and brush and planted the posts and put the crosspieces in place so when those younguns finished with the cutting out and painting them letters, all that would be left to be done was to screw the plywood sections onto the frame.

  That Woman laid Brother off when she did me, and he didn’t like that not a bit. So he went up to the contractor building the frame at Beautyspot and said me and Brother would be willing to work on that frame, and be willing to work cheap. We didn’t say nothing to that contractor about how we had been working for That Woman down in town, and we didn’t say nothing to That Woman about how we was up there
on the hillside above Beautyspot working for that contractor. That Woman, she didn’t much come up on that hillside, and if she did, it was usually after that contractor’s workers was done working for the day. I know because a lot of times on them after-hours trips, I would go up there with her, cause I was still her yard man and she didn’t mind having somebody with her on that mountainside with a broad snake-killing background like myself.

  So it was that when they were near finished with getting the letters together, I was up there looking at the frame the letters was going to get hung on, and I was there to hear That Woman say she was going to tell that contractor the next day that what she was going to be needing next was some way of covering up them letters so that when the day come of the big ceremony, they could give a sign down at the podium where the bigshots were, and the cover would fall away and reveal the fine job we had all done to make this monstrous sign.

  That’s when I told her how Brother knew a man had a billboard business down in Corbin and anymore them billboards is printed on vinyl and when they get done with them, Brother would buy them cheap and sell them for boat covers or truck covers or covers for people’s woodpiles and stuff and that’s why sometimes when you was driving you’d see a doglot tarped with some man’s face asking you to vote for him for sheriff or a bass boat covered with a dentist talking about cheap dentures or a knocked-down wall covered by a special on some kind of biscuit at Hardee’s. And I told That Woman we could probably get some of them old billboards to cover her letters.

  That Woman said that sounded perfect and then after a second said oh wait, we can’t have a bunch of advertising hanging over our letters and I told her we could put the back side facing out and so that next day That Woman told the construction foreman about her billboard plan and then me and Brother sold them his whole billboard collection.

  DAWN

  I was sitting in Hubert’s big green truck in Mamaw’s driveway the morning after the funeral when he told me he knew where Momma would be and that we had to go get her.

  I said to Hubert, “And do what with her?”

  Hubert said, “Get her out of here.”

  So we went to Causey. Causey was where railroad people used to live. The houses in Causey were packed tight, block after block. Cinderella told Hubert Momma was coming to Causey to have it out with Belinda. He told Hubert Momma said she was tired of being scared of the Coateses. Belinda had an apartment in Causey across from a gas station where you could get breakfast. Hubert said we would wait there for Momma to come get after Belinda.

  I was going to ask Hubert about Willett being fired when we got to the breakfast place, but when we walked in Evie and Albert were already sitting side by side in a hard-back booth, Evie trying to get Albert to stop popping open ketchup packets with a plastic pepper shaker. I would have sat somewhere else, but Hubert sat down with them, so I did too.

  I stared out the window while Albert spun the ash out of the stamped aluminum ash tray, took apart the card advertising meatloaf sandwiches, and started tearing it into pieces.

  The waitress brought Hubert a foam clamshell box. All three compartments were filled with potato wedges. She set a bottle of hot sauce and packets of mayonnaise down next to the potatoes.

  As soon as the waitress was gone, Hubert said, “Dawn, go get me some coffee.”

  I got up, went to the counter where the coffeepot set on an eye next to the cash register, brought it back, poured Hubert some.

  Evie said to Hubert, “I can’t believe you let that man get away with all that money, Hubert. That’s fucked up.”

  “Yeah,” Albert said, “That don’t seem like you at all.”

  I said, “Shut the fuck up, Albert.”

  Two men talking about lawnmowers at the next table stopped talking, stopped laughing.

  Evie said, “Leave him alone, Dawn. God Amighty.”

  I said, “I don’t know why you two are here. Didn’t nobody invite you. Don’t nobody enjoy your company.”

  Albert said, “Dawn, why are you such an asshole?”

  I said, “Why are you?”

  Them two made me so much dumber. God, I wished I was a witch. I’d have witched them into tiny chunks of meat in some old man’s gravy. Him sop them up and eat them on a biscuit and them be gone.

  Hubert slid out of the booth. He said, “There she is.”

  Across the way Momma got out of a shit Bonneville. Her and that Calvin.

  * * *

  PAINT PEELED off the steps up to Belinda Coates’s apartment. Greenish mold climbed up the front of the building. Weeds stuck up through the broken pavement. There were paintball splatters and stains could be blood, could be chocolate on the tongue-pink walls. Syringes on the ground. Tampons. You wanted a nuclear waste cleanup suit just to walk over there. Nasty.

  Momma was inside by the time we got across the road. The bony store woman hollered after us to pay for our biscuits. There was already yelling coming out of the apartment.

  “Go back and pay,” Hubert said. I went without saying anything, but two steps away said, “I aint got no money.”

  He give me ten dollars, said, “Go on,” when I kept standing there. The yelling kept on, both Momma and Belinda going at once. Puke come up in my mouth. I bent over and spit it out.

  Evie and Albert were gone when I got in the store. Hadn’t paid. I didn’t have enough money. I gave the woman the ten dollars, told her I’d go get some more and before I could get out of the store, a basket of laundry come flying out the door of Belinda Coates’s apartment, T-shirts and panties all over the parking lot. The store woman sparked her lighter and lit a cigarette said, “Better hurry.”

  I run across the road, had to duck a red coffee tub come flying off the steps. When I got to the top, Hubert came out with Momma wrapped up in his arms. I backed up and they come down, Momma’s feet not touching the ground, her knees thrashing, her hands opening and closing, her arms pinned to her sides by Hubert’s come-along strap arms.

  Momma said, “I aint scared of her. Let me go.” She was screeching, a bird caught in barb wire, bloody feathers, beak broke off.

  Hubert’s face was a nothing. His hat was knocked almost off his head. There was pain in his eyes, in how straight he held his lips through Momma’s kicking and flailing. Belinda came out, flung a no-stick skillet, hit Hubert in the small of the back, and his eyes went cold and hard. He threw Momma into my arms and picked the skillet up and headed back up to Belinda’s. Momma almost slipped away from me, but I got her around the hips. Evie and Albert ran past us up the steps, and Momma started trying to reach around behind herself, trying to claw me. I pinned her arms to her sides, but I tired out quick.

  “Momma, stop,” I whispered in her ear. “Please stop, Momma.”

  And she didn’t. Didn’t stop for a minute. I held her as long as I could. I couldn’t keep her. It was like a dream where you don’t have all your strength. I let go of her.

  Momma ran in the apartment. I went after her, and when I got to the top of the steps, Momma had her face up in Hubert’s face, up in Belinda’s face. There were couch cushions on the floor, covered by a sheet. Momma was bouncing on them. She said, “Aint none of yall got no say over me. Aint none of yall gonna boss me. I’m tired of it. I’m done with it. Hell with every one of you.”

  I wanted to put her down, like they do a mad dog.

  She said, “I got me somebody I can count on now.”

  I looked around for Calvin, Momma’s new rock and redeemer, but he was nowhere to be seen.

  Belinda Coates put her finger up in Momma’s face, said, “I don’t give a fuck what you do cause you’re already dead anyway, Tricia. You’re dead. You hear me?” Belinda squeezed Momma around the throat. Momma put her fingernails into Belinda’s face and started clawing.

  About that time the police pulled up, not the sheriff but the Causey police, a young cop, said, “Hold on now, everybody. Just slow down here. Let’s stop a minute.”

  I was so pissed I had got caught up
in this.

  Evie said, “Chucky, this aint nothing. Just playing cards. She tried to cheat me. I got hot about it, but it aint no thing.”

  Chucky looked around for cards. There weren’t any. Everybody stood there looking like the bullshit lie they were, Momma’s shirt collar stretched, her neck red. Hubert’s combover was blown all over his head, up in the air.

  Chucky said, “Whose stuff is that all over the parking lot?”

  Belinda said it was hers.

  Chucky said, “It better be gone when we come back around.”

  Evie said, “It will be.”

  Chucky took another look around and said to nobody in particular, “Don’t make me come back here. Cause if I do, everybody here’s going straight to Big Violet.”

  Which is where the jail is.

  Nobody said a thing, nobody moved. Chucky left, and Momma stomped through the apartment hollering for Calvin. She found him back in the back bedroom in his sock feet, sitting up on Belinda’s bed watching some kind of dirty movie. She hollered at him to come out, but he didn’t move.

  Hubert said, “Tricia, let’s go. You don’t need to be here.”

  Momma ran to the end of the hall and locked herself in the bathroom. She hollered at us to leave. She said she didn’t need us anymore. She said we were ruining her life.

  Hubert told me to go outside and make sure Momma didn’t jump out the window and run away. I went down the steps to the end of the building. I turned the corner to the back of the building and Momma’s legs were hanging out the second-story bathroom window. She pushed herself out, all the time yelling at Hubert how worthless he was and that she never loved him and he wasn’t half the man my father was, and not a quarter of the man Calvin was, until she dropped out the window and landed on top of the dumpster in the parking lot. She climbed down off that and took off running, crooked and clumsy towards me, not my mother at all. I pushed back around the corner and let her run right past me. My phone rang and it was Willett. Momma didn’t turn around when the phone rang. She cut across a backyard and went running through the slides and swing sets at the little park there, and headed down towards the river. My phone kept ringing. I pushed the button to answer and Calvin walked down the steps, calm as ice, and got in his Bonneville and drove off in the opposite direction from the way Momma ran.