Weedeater

by Robert Gipe

  Willett asked me where I was and I said, “Don’t even ask,” and he said he needed to talk to me and he said it was kind of serious and I said, “What is it?” and he said, “I don’t want to work at the plant. I want to go back to school.”

  Hubert came down the steps, said, “Where’s your mother?”

  I pointed the way she’d gone.

  Hubert said, “You were supposed to watch her.”

  I said, “Willett, you got fired, didn’t you?”

  There was a long quiet on the line, and then Willett said, “Yeah. I did.”

  Hubert took off through the playground. I walked after him. I said to Willett, “How could you do that?”

  Evie and Albert came down the steps, crossed the road to the store, got in Evie’s Cavalier, and went in the same general direction as Hubert and Momma. I sat down on the swing set in the park and said, “Willett, why can’t you do anything?

  Willett said, “Don’t be mad at me.”

  I said, “Who do you want me to be mad at, Willett? Tell me who I’m supposed to be mad at, and I swear, that’s who I’ll be mad at.”

  He made some noise like he was about to cry, and I cut the phone off. There was a dip down to where the floodwall was and a little gate through it down to the river. I seen Hubert go through the door to the other side of the floodwall. To the river side.

  * * *

  I SAT there in the swing set, in the butt stirrup, in the park above the floodwall, and rocked back and forth from my toes to my heels. I was too big for the swing. Way too big, but I had Mamaw’s pipe and a bag of her tobacco in my pants pocket. I had her lighter too, so I scooped out a bowl and lit it and smoked Mamaw’s pipe and waited for some neighborhood watcher to call the police and send Chucky over to ruin my day some more.

  A red-and-gray Astrovan went past and stopped and backed up. The van belonged to Evie’s mother Hazel, and she backed onto the sidewalk between the park and the road and she came bowlegged, hobbling over to me.

  She said, “What do you say, old girl?”

  I drew on the pipe and said, “Not much.”

  She said, “Sorry about your grandma.”

  I said thanks. She leaned in over me and breathed deeply through her nose. She took a second to make sense of what she smelled. Hazel said, “You aint seen Evie, have you?”

  I said, “No, not for about fifteen minutes.”

  Hazel said, “Where did you see her?”

  I said, “Up there raising hell with Momma and Belinda.”

  Hazel said, “What kind of hell?”

  I said, “Pretty much the standard kind.”

  Hazel leaned against the swing set, said, “Where you reckon she is now?”

  I said, “Well, last time I seen her, she was heading that way.” I pointed the way Evie and Albert had gone.

  Hazel looked the way my finger pointed across the bridge, over to Railroad Street, looked so sad and give up as if I’d pointed down a rathole or off down the China Road.

  I said, “I’d say she’ll turn up, Hazel.”

  Hazel said, “The fragile promise of tomorrow.”

  I said, “Aint that the damn truth.”

  Hazel looked like she wanted to sit down in a swing with me, but she didn’t. Hazel had three or four different limps and she grimaced and groaned a fair amount, not looking for attention, but I think because she really hurt. I’d heard her say she used to run with bikers, and that she’d had any number of motorcycle crashes and car wrecks and domestic incidents, and all told, I’d heard her say, that all she had was a limp was a blessing.

  Hazel said, “Dawn, you say she was up there in them apartments?”

  I said yes and she said, “Was you up there too?” and I said I was and she said, “Well, you reckon you could walk over there with me, see if we can find out where she might be?”

  I wasn’t much interested in that, for all the reasons you might imagine, but Hazel had never done nothing to me. In fact, Hazel had always been pretty good to me, so I flung myself out of the swing and said, “Yeah, let’s go.”

  When we got around front of the apartment house, the one where Belinda Coates stayed, there was Belinda Coates, sitting on the stairs, a milk crate filled with the stuff that had been all over the parking lot between her legs. She sat with her head in her hands, and it was obvious she had been crying. In fact, she still was crying when we come up on her. I aint one much for pity, especially in the case of Belinda “Asshole” Coates, but with her knuckles rough and red covering her face, and her stressed-out hair pulled back in a ponytail, and her tanktop and her pajama pants as sour and house-dirty as could be, she was about as far from beautiful as I’d ever seen her and fairly pitiful looking.

  I said, “What are you crying about?”

  Hazel said, “Belinda, you seen Evie?”

  Belinda Coates looked up at Hazel and said, “She went out to shit and the hogs ate her.”

  Hazel said, “Belinda, honey, are you all right?”

  Belinda Coates said no.

  Hazel set down on the steps, a couple down from Belinda, said, “I always wanted to be a lady astronaut. I always wanted to experience weightlessness. Especially after that wreck got me all this metal in my leg.” Hazel rubbed her thigh, said, “You know what else?”

  Belinda Coates looked up from where she had her head on her knees and said, “What?”

  Hazel said, “I always wanted to be the first person to smoke in space.”

  Belinda Coates said, “Weed?”

  Hazel said, “Well, yeah, weed would be good, but I was thinking even a cigarette would be way cool.”

  I said, “It would be cool,” because I always had a thing for astronauts and spaceships.

  Belinda Coates said, “I’d quit smoking if they’d put me on a rocket ship out of this damn place.”

  Hazel said, “You still seeing Courtney?”

  Belinda said, “When she’s not totally hateful.”

  That surprised me. I didn’t know Belinda Coates went with girls.

  Hazel said, “So was Albert with Evie?”

  Belinda Coates said, “Yeah,” said, “I think they said they were going up Drop Creek.”

  Hazel said, “I always did like that Courtney. Many a night I seen her pack a drunk man out on her back to his wife when she was bouncer at the Overhang Club.”

  “Yeah,” Belinda said, “she is broad-backed.”

  Hazel said, “Dawn, how did you get here?”

  I said, “Rode with Hubert.”

  Hazel said, “Where is he?”

  I said, “Down there by the river trying to get ahold of Momma.”

  Hazel said, “What’s she doing down by the river?”

  Belinda Coates stood up, said, “I’m going in.”

  Hazel said, “Well, honey, I hope you feel better.”

  Belinda Coates nodded, went up the steps and in her apartment.

  Hazel said, “You want to go look for Hubert and your momma?”

  I said, “Not really.”

  Hazel said, “You want me to take you somewhere?”

  I said, “Canada.”

  Hazel said, “You know why I’m wanting to find Evie so bad?”

  I said, “No.”

  Hazel said, “I had a dream of a white buffalo.”

  I said, “That’s cool.”

  Hazel said, “It came up and snorted on me in my sleep. Snorted out death.”

  I said, “Hunh.”

  Hazel said, “I woke up knowing it was Evie’s death.”

  I looked in Hazel’s eyes, knowing she was high, and thought to myself it was a dark-ass time of life. I said, “You don’t want to take me to Mamaw’s, do you?”

  She said, “Could you help a little on the gas.”

  We got Belinda to loan us a few dollars for gas and Hazel took me up to Mamaw’s and not much happened on the way except Hazel told me she also was hoping one day to have sex in outer space and I laughed and told her I’d be glad to go on a space mission wi
th her some time and she laughed and put me out at Mamaw’s and it felt good to have something like a normal conversation with somebody for once in my life.

  GENE

  The next morning I had fifty dollars in my pocket and I shouldn’t have. I should keep my money somewhere safe, somewhere I aint so likely to lose it. And generally I do. But I can tell you why I had it. I can tell you exactly why. That hand-holding thing That Woman did with me threw me into a swirl of emotion. I knew better than to get caught up feeling like that. Hadn’t never any good come from me feeling a bunch of stuff and that fifty dollars was a perfect example of what I’m talking about.

  After she took off for West Virginia, the time where she caught me about to touch her face, I’d given myself a serious talking to. I’d told myself I’d better straighten up, that there wasn’t no love to be had between me and That Woman, at least not no passion nor matrimony or anything like that. She wadn’t going to be fixing my coffee every morning and I wadn’t going to be asking her “how was your day” every evening. I had to tell myself to get ahold of myself and for the most part I had.

  But then when she took my hand when we were talking about her momma and the purpose of life and all that stuff before she went to West Virginia the next time,

  Which brings me to that fifty dollars.

  I’d got fifty dollars off this doctor’s wife lived over in Falstaff Acres where a deer had come in her backyard and died and she needed somebody to get rid of the deer and all the kudzu where it had fallen. I did that and she paid me and I got to looking at that fifty-dollar bill and I let myself imagine me and That Woman going out on a date, maybe us going down to Middlesboro and that steakhouse buffet they had, and then after, maybe there’d be a concert out in some gazebo, us sitting on the grass, happy and full of steak and baked potato and jello salad, talking about how pretty each other’s eyes are.

  So me packing that fifty dollars in my pocket when me and Brother went to do our biggest weedeating job, which was the whole riverbank behind the floodwall in Canard—took us all day to do it—that was so I could pretend it was Friday and when we was done weedeating I was going to go pick up my girl, which was That Woman. And I was going to spend that fifty on her like I was a normal person, out on a date with someone I loved, someone who loved me.

  Back in reality of course what happened was at the end of the day not only did I not have a date with That Woman, I’d lost my fifty dollars somewhere, which I needed to pay down my debt to not only the payday loan place, but also Sister’s husband. And of course, the craziest part of the whole thing was it wasn’t Friday when it happened. It was, if I’m not mistaken, a Tuesday.

  Me and Brother went looking, back over where we’d been working. I walked through the mown grass that run all the way down to the river. The river curved, the grass ended, and weeds stood waist-high above a bed of rick-rack, big chunks of limestone like they use in retaining walls and below sludge ponds. I knocked through the cut grass looking for that money. I peered down in the dark between the rick-rack chunks. Knocked over a vienny can, wished I had me a can of viennies, wished I had my fifty dollars. I sat down on a limestone slab. We had just been there. Grass blades was still floating in the puddles. But my fifty was gone.

  I kept walking, kept looking, where I’d been working down the bank where there wasn’t no rick-rack, where it was green and soft and looked like rich people. An oak tree rose like a giant hand and spread over the river. I had worked in its shade.

  Tricia was rolled over on her side, curled up in the tree shadow. It looked a nice place to take a nap and when I when I first saw her, I wished I was her. I wished it was me lying there sleeping a little bit in the warm of the day. I wished I could leave her curled up.

  Thing was, Tricia was dead. I should’ve known before I lay my hand on her shoulder. But I didn’t. I didn’t roll her over or anything like that. I didn’t need to see her all sprawled out, staring blank at the sky. I left her on her side, her hands out in front of her like somebody was about to give her something.

  A tree limb cracked. Belinda Coates sat, her legs crossed, on a stone slab bench further down the river. She broke a twig into pieces, first long as a pencil, then half as long, then half as long as that until she had a double handful of wood pebbles. She threw the wood at the water. The pebbles landed in a crowd.

  Belinda Coates stood up and walked off.

  Brother was beside me, said, “She dead?”

  I said I believed she was.

  Brother got in the truck and set for a minute and then blowed the truck horn. I didn’t do nothing, just set there. Brother pulled the truck around to where I was sitting, put it in park. Brother said, “I’ll be back.” He put the truck in gear, said, “Don’t touch her.” Then he said, “You hear me?”

  I said I did.

  Brother drove off, left me down there with Tricia’s body. I set with her a long time. Before I knew it, I was talking to her. I started off of course telling her I was sorry she had to die. I said I wish I knew how it happened. I told her what a strong youngun I thought Dawn was and how I’d try and help her and her brother Albert all I could. I set there some more, kept thinking Brother would be back, kept thinking I was going to get to stop keeping that dead woman company. But Brother didn’t come and didn’t come.

  And it got dark. And I started talking to Tricia’s body about her sister and how much I cared for her. I told Tricia about how I liked the way That Woman’s hair fell. How I liked how tender she was with people. How I liked the colors she picked out and how she made the places she lived in so calm and gentle. And I called her by her name. I said, “Tricia, I love your sister June.”

  It was good and dark by then, and a truck came down through there and I thought, well, finally this is Brother. He’s brought somebody to help us. The truck kept coming, all headlights and lack of concern, and I got a little afraid it wouldn’t see us and that it would run over Tricia’s body. So I started walking towards the headlights, and when the truck stopped, it wadn’t Brother nor anybody that had talked to Brother.

  It was Sister’s husband. And he was higher than a Georgia pine.

  He said, “Where the hell you been?” and before I could say a thing he said, “And where is my money, you worthless sack of shit?”

  I said, “They’s something we need to tend to . . .”

  And before I could finish he come up and pushed me and said, “Your sister was right about you. They should have drowned you when you was a baby. You are too stupid and too sorry to live.”

  He knocked me down when he said it, but I got up and said, “Sister never said that.”

  He said, “She sure as hell did. And I tell you what else she said. She said she was glad she wasn’t your real sister. Said she was glad yall had different daddies, that she didn’t have a monster daddy like the one bred you and your brother. She said she was glad not to have that garbage blood of yours.”

  And I said, “She never said that. Sister was too good to say such.”

  And that animal said, and it kills me to repeat it, “She was good at sucking my dick. That’s all she was ever good at.” And then he said, “Now where’s my goddamn money?”

  I threw my hands around his throat and I thought I’d snapped his neck in that first grab. I didn’t, but he went down backwards trying to get away from me, and all my hurt came pouring down through my hands, like hot black asphalt, all the hurt of Sister’s shooting herself, and never having no mother nor father, and Granny dying, and never getting ahead and never having no one to love, it all came out and I was dead sure I was gonna kill that man,

  DAWN

  It was late at night when Belinda Coates called me, said Momma was messed up. Said I needed to come get her. Said she was down by the riverbank in downtown Canard. Right near where the bypass went over the river. So I went down there, and when I got there, Weedeater had a man down on the ground, had both hands around his throat trying to strangle him to death.

  The man Weede
ater was strangling thrashed his legs and squeezed Weedeater’s face. It was dark by the river, the only light the gray pitched by streetlights on the other side of the floodwall. Weedeater gasped like it was him getting choked, and then he started moaning. The guy getting strangled hammered Weedeater in the side of the head with his fist, and Weedeater tried to swat away the hammering hand. When Weedeater did that, the getting-strangled man rolled over on top of Weedeater, but Weedeater flung him off, even though Weedeater was a hundred pounds littler than the man he was strangling.

  I walked off down the riverbank. I found a chunk of pallet four feet long and solid, hefty but easy to handle. When I got back, the mud under them two made sucking sounds as they wrestled. I waited for a minute to see if they would wear each other out. Weedeater pinned the other guy’s arms down with his elbows. He went back to strangling. Daylight popped the ridge and I could see Weedeater’s thumb gouging down into the other man’s Adam’s apple.

  I said, “Gene. Stop.”

  Weedeater shook his head like I was a bad memory. The getting-strangled guy’s eyes showed all white. His arms and legs flailed slower. I raised the pallet chunk and brought it down on Weedeater’s head. The first lick dazed him but he only turned loose of that man’s neck for a second and then went back to strangling.

  I popped him again. Weedeater went over into the mud on his side. The getting-strangled man was on his back and rose up on his elbows, breathing like a freight train, eyes nightmare wide. He was a big old dude. He had on khaki clothes, looked like something some old papaw would wear. But this guy had plenty of hair, mostly gray and wiry. Some might have thought him nice-looking, like a guy in an Old Spice commercial. But he didn’t look like no Old Spice man lying there beside the river. He looked spit out of the front crack of some wild-haired mud momma.