by Robert Gipe
The thought of taking revenge on Belinda Coates made me sick to my stomach. I usually wasn’t much into what other people thought was fun, but going to Dollywood that day listening to all them people at Hubert’s store getting their gas and their cigarettes, everybody keyed up just to get out for a day and ride rides and laugh and eat what they wanted, it was so good. Especially all of us being together for it. I didn’t want to do nothing mean. I didn’t want to hate Belinda Coates.
Which was crazy, because I had hated Belinda Coates for such a long time. She accused me one time of trying to steal her boyfriend when I was in sixth grade, which was stupid because her boyfriend told me I was ugly for a boy, much less for a girl, but Belinda wouldn’t get over it, and carried my bicycle down to the river bridge down the road from the Pine Knot School where I went to grade school and she threw my bicycle in the river and when I went down to get it, I laid my foot open on a piece of metal roof down in the river and had to get a tetanus shot, plus I got pneumonia right after that cause it was February, the dead of winter, and I’d fell in the river barefoot and icy. Plus on top of that, I’d also got some kind of eye infection off the nastiness in the river and missed a whole lot of school and almost failed sixth grade and was always kind of behind after that, I swear, all the way through high school. I never really thought about that till now, but yeah, that’s where my troubles began in a way—when shithead Belinda Coates threw my bicycle in the river over stupid jealousy cause she was too much of a retard to realize that her boyfriend really did think I was ugly.
Then all through high school, me and Evie hated her, and we fought her and a bunch of other girls one time, and jacked her up good, and got kicked out of school for three days. And then the kicker to my hating Belinda Coates was her stealing Evie from me as a friend, and then maybe killing my mother to boot. So all that was going through my mind as I went swirling down that tube, and because it was, I didn’t get in no big hurry to get out of the landing pool. I just kind of bobbed there, my chin barely out of the water. People came and went, a whole bunch of them, spitting out of the tube, splashing around for a second, leaving. But I just stayed there relaxing.
Then some asshole kid said, “That’s lady’s pissing in the pool,” which I wasn’t, but the twerpy churchy Dollywood girl said, “Ma’am, you need to clear the pool.”
I did, went to the ladies room, and was sitting there in the stall, weird to be peeing in my bathing suit, and Belinda Coates come in there, said, “Dawn?”
I said, “Yeah?”
She said, “What are you doing?”
I said, “Peeing.”
She said, “Somebody done that to your mother.”
I said, “You.”
She didn’t say nothing. I pulled up my bathing suit, but didn’t leave the stall.
Belinda Coates said, “It wadn’t me.”
I said, “Who was it, then?”
She said, “I don’t know. I wadn’t there.”
I said, “Who was?”
She said she didn’t know and I said,
And some mother come in with her little boy, told him not to touch anything and he took forever peeing and I thought maybe Belinda Coates had left, but when that little boy and his mother finally left, Belinda Coates said, “Sidney said for me to stay away from your mother.”
I said, “Then what was you doing down there where they found her? Why was you the one to call me and tell me she was dead?”
Belinda said, “Evie called me. Evie was there.”
I said, “So what happened?”
Belinda said, “They fucked up partying. It was an accident. That’s what Evie said.”
I know that could be right.
I said, “Who are them girls you’re with?”
Belinda said, “Girls I knew from when I lived in Corbin.”
I said, “When did you live in Corbin?”
She said, “Don’t you remember when I went to Corbin in sixth grade? When my dad broke my arm for making out with Shawna Parke in the basement?”
I said, “Sixth grade?”
She said, “Yeah. I went not long after Christmas and when I come back that summer was when I started living with Sidney.”
“Sixth grade?” I said.
And Belinda said, “What can I say? It’s how I do, Dawn.”
I said, “Is one of them girls Courtney?” I was remembering Hazel asking after Belinda’s girlfriend when we were at Belinda’s apartment in Causey.
Belinda said, “No. Courtney won’t have nothing to do with me.”
Then there was a ruckus, a trash can got knocked over and then loud girl laughing, giggling, cussing, and one girl saying, “Goddamn, Belinda. Did you fall in?”
I peeked through the crack in the door in time to see one of the girls crush up a pill on the stainless steel tray above the sink, not even caring there was somebody they didn’t know who it was in the stall. One of them said, “Get you some, B,” and Belinda Coates did and they jabbered a minute more and then they were all gone.
* * *
WHEN I got back to where Nicolette and Willett were, I was shaken up and never did quite get the easy Dollywood feeling back, even though the people were still running around, still eating, little kids still wanting one more time on this ride or that. And I couldn’t help but smile through my sadness when Denny come up and said, “Yall get over there,” and about thirty Canard people, my baby and my papaw two of them, gathered around me and they got some preacher from Virginia to take a picture of us with every single person’s camera or phone in front of that big butterfly made of flowers, and when we were going home I fell asleep listening to Willett teach Nicolette the words to “Jolene” and in between awake and asleep I went up to Dolly Parton standing in a grocery store where she was giving away weenies stuck on toothpicks of many colors and hugged her and she hugged me back and in my little almost dream I turned around and everyone I had ever seen in Canard County was behind me, and I stepped out of the way and stood there next to Dolly and everybody hugged her, not like she was a celebrity, but like she was a relative, like she was in the receiving line at a funeral, and knew how to do, and about halfway through Dolly Parton took my hand and held it while all those people hugged her and thanked her for doing Dollywood and asked about her family and told her to come see them next time they were on Drop Creek or in Causey or out Tallow Creek or Bowtie or Pine Knot or wherever it was they come from. And Dolly Parton squeezed my hand and I could tell she knew about everything and hadn’t forgotten anything and I could tell that it was hard to be Dolly Parton, but that Dolly Parton had decided to be Dolly Parton anyway. And that helped me.
GENE
I didn’t stay there at Dollywood long.
It’s too big a crowd and too much pavement and too many hollering kids and church people and men in short pants. The food is too high and mostly I just don’t like being inside a fence. Brother worked it out to ride back with Denny Stack and them, so I drove the Sentra back to Canard, got my weedeater at Sister’s, and went out towards Bowtie where Brother had a lawyer paying us to weedeat along where he kept his horses and everything out through there at his luxury home. His house was like a castle, had a gate around it, that man so rich he had his own cell phone tower. They said he was trying to be like them horse people down in Lexington, and maybe he was. Cause far as I was concerned, he might as well been one of them horse people, hard as he was to find when it was time to get paid.
But I was out working part of his property out on the state road, two-lane blacktop, a straightaway hundred and fifty yards long. Hubert’s big green truck come in the other end, jerked to the left. The back end of that truck heaved to the left, and Evie, who was driving for some reason, jerked the steering wheel back to the right. The truck come fishtailing towards me. I stood there staring at it. I thought, “Well, she’s gonna get that thing straightened out before she runs over me.” But the truck kept jerking back and forth across the road, even as the front end began to point back
towards the far end of the straightaway. The truck rocked up on its side on two wheels and the front tire clipped the edge of the road. The truck flipped in midair and landed with a crash, bottom side up in the ditch that ran beside the road.
I walked up to the truck, crouched down and looked in, eyeballed the gas tank and the front end of the truck wondering if the truck was about to explode.
I said, “Hello,” and there was no answer. I said, “Hello,” again. Said it louder.
Coolant ran out of the radiator into the ditch. Hubert’s back pressed against the cracked back window of the cab. He moved and junk clattered in the cab.
A woman in a bathrobe stood at the other end of the straightaway. She said, “I called the police.”
The truck sizzled and the passenger door creaked open. Hubert crawled out, blood on his temple, his clothes twisted. I reached my hand out to him, but he didn’t take it. His brow was bent and he looked aggravated and confused.
I said, “You’re a lucky man,” and Hubert rolled his eyes.
I looked in at the driver’s side. There was blood on Evie’s jeans, soaked into her pink hoodie. Her arm was twisted and her face crushed. Her sweatshirt rode up on her and bared her ribs and stomach. She had some kind of wire on her. At first I thought it was from her mp3 player, but I saw something turning, a little wheel. It was a tape recorder, still recording. I laid my fingers on her neck. Evie was dead.
The woman in the bathrobe was talking to Hubert, drawing the hair back from the cut on his temple. The tape stopped, and when it did, the duct tape holding the recorder to Evie gave way and the recorder fell, bounced off the roof of the truck and fell into the ditch. I snatched it out of the standing water, gathered it and its wires, and put it in my pant pocket.
* * *
THE WAIL of the ambulance bounced off the hillsides on both sides of the straightaway. Hubert smoked with shaking hands. The thin hair on his temples was swept up and he looked like Little Caesar on the pizza box.
The state policeman’s shiny leather shoes clicked across the blacktop towards us. The state police motioned for Hubert to step aside with him. I heard Hubert say that he was talking with Evie and she got distracted and the curve come up on her too quick.
Two cars came down the straightaway. Both asked if anyone was hurt and asked who she was and then they said they sure were sorry. Evie’s body was out of the truck, but the state police were still poking around, taking pictures and measuring.
“Sir,” one of the state policeman said, “what did you see?”
I put my hands in my pockets, wondered if the police would notice the spots of blood at the pocket’s rim. I told the man what I saw, he took my name and address, and went back to talking on his radio.
I asked could I go, and the man said I could.
When I got back to the house, I sat down in my chair and thought what to do with that cassette. It kind of felt hot in my hand. I called That Woman. I knew she was still at Dollywood, but I had her cell phone number and when she answered she couldn’t hear that good for the Dolly Parton music playing and the rollercoasters and such and I’m pretty sure I got it across to her I needed help deciphering something and could I come over in the morning. And I’m pretty sure she said that would be fine but not to come too early where they was getting in from Dollywood so late.
DAWN
I liked Weedeater’s house. It was little, but it was a real house, with a real porch and roof and windows. Not a trailer. I also liked it was a one-person house. I’d seen it from the road when we put him out there the day we picked him up from that wreck, the day we met him.
I went to Weedeater’s the night Evie died, when we got back from Dollywood. I knew Hubert was over there, knew something was jacked up. Knew I needed to be there.
When Willett was letting me out, he said, “You sure you don’t want me to go with you?”
I said, “I’m sure.”
He said, “It could get weird.”
I said, “It already is weird.”
He said, “Are you going to walk home?”
I said, “If I aint, I’ll call you.”
Nicolette said, “Bye, Mommy.”
I said, “Bye, baby.”
I got out of the car, told Willett I loved him through the window. Walking up the hill, I felt like Batman or a movie detective. I felt like a dark avenger. I was glad to be a female dark avenger.
Hubert and Weedeater were sitting on the porch when I got there—Hubert on the steps with his back to the rail, Weedeater on a swing. A cassette tape clicked in Hubert’s hand as he spun it.
I said, “What are yall doing?” and sat down on the low wall.
Hubert smoked.
Weedeater said, “You want a pop?”
I said yeah. Weedeater went inside.
I said, “What the hell, Hubert?”
Hubert shook his head, said, “She was trying to be smart.”
I said, “Decent should never have let her drive.”
Hubert nodded, said, “I’m out, Dawn.”
I said, “Out of what?”
Hubert said, “I’m going over to that store and sit there and sell toilet paper and cigarettes and baloney and nothing else.”
I knew what Hubert was saying. He wasn’t going to sell drugs no more.
I said, “OK.”
Hubert said, “That’s what she wanted.”
I said, “Who?” Weedeater come out with a can of Pepsi. I popped the top, said, “That’s what who wanted?”
Hubert said, “Evie.”
I said, “What happened, yall?”
Hubert said, “She wrecked is all. She was hollering at me to stop selling pills and she wrecked.”
I said, “And that’s all there is to it?”
Hubert said, “What else would there be to it, Dawn?”
Something, I thought.
Weedeater said, “Dawn, you want anything else? You want me to open a can of soup? Make you a grill cheese?”
I said I was all right.
Hubert stood up, said, “I’ll be glad when this damn month is over,” threw his cigarette in the grass, and walked off.
Me and Weedeater sat there, first time we’d ever been alone together.
Weedeater said, “Four people dead in a month.”
I said, “Who’s the fourth?”
Weedeater said, “That man in the Buick.”
I nodded, said, “What the fuck, Gene?”
Weedeater said, “My sister killed herself Easter.”
I said, “Yeah.”
Weedeater said, “It’s a lot.”
I said, “If Evie was here, you know what she’d say?”
Weedeater said, “What?”
I said, “She’d say, ‘How long you gonna feel sorry yourselves?’ She’d say, ‘That was yesterday. That was forever ago.’”
Weedeater said, “Little badass.”
I said, “She was.”
Weedeater said, “She was recording people. Talking about drugs.”
I said, “Do what?”
Weedeater said, “She had a tape recorder going in her pocket when she wrecked.”
I said, “Does the law know?”
Weedeater said, “I don’t reckon. I got the recorder off her before the troopers showed.”
I said, “I’ll be damned.”
Weedeater drank his pop.
I said, “That’s the cassette Hubert had.”
Weedeater said, “Yep.”
Weedeater said, “I reckon.”
I drank my pop.
Weedeater said, “I think I’m gonna need more time with all this. I aint over it.”
I nodded. I went in Weedeater’s little house and got us both another pop.
GENE
I’m glad I told Dawn what Evie done. She cried a little, but I’m still glad I done it. She sat there a long time letting the tears run down her face, not saying a thing. She made a noise in her throat every once in a while, sniffed and wiped her nose. Finally she
settled down, and I asked if she wanted another pop. She shook her head, looked around like she aint never seen the world before, and said, “I got to go.”
I said, “All right. Thank you for coming by.”
She walked down the steps, started across the yard, stopped, and said, “Thanks for telling me.”
I told her just like I told you—
DAWN
I went back to Momma’s house. June and Nicolette sat in the back room watching Hee Haw reruns. I said, “Where’s Willett?”
June said, “He went back. His daddy is having a bad night.”
I said, “Are yall all right?”
Nicolette nodded. June got up, come and hugged me. She said, “What do you need?”
I said, “Nothing.”
She said, “You sure?”
I said, “I’m going to bed.”
June said, “All right, Sweetie.”
I said, “I don’t think I can go to Evie’s funeral.”
June said, “I think that’s OK.”
I went upstairs. Momma’s door was closed. June’s was open. Her pretty quilt, her pretty IKEA lights, the pretty blue paint she’d put on the walls soothed me. I went and lay down on the air mattress in the room at the end of the hall and stared at the walls June had painted pumpkin orange. I tried to think what the point of myself was. I fell asleep before I figured it out.
* * *
FIVE DAYS after Evie died, the doorbell at Momma’s rang and it was Decent Ferguson. Decent Ferguson told me I had to come to her floathouse. Told June she had to come too. She tried to get us to go with her after Mamaw died, and she tried again after Momma died, but when Evie died, she came and got us. June’s sign was finished and her class was over and we were just waiting for the president of the United States to get there, so Decent Ferguson said there was no reason for us not to come with her to the floathouse.
Decent got us each under the arm, and said we didn’t have no choice. Decent tried to put us in her car, but we convinced Decent we’d go if she’d let us take our own vehicle. When Decent left, I said, “June, I got to get us a bathing suit.”