Weedeater

by Robert Gipe

  There was a shorter way than the way he was going, so I went the shorter way and just about caught up with him without having to even act like I was in a hurry. I was afraid them Secret Service guys might be watching me, but when he looked back and seen me and ducked around the far corner of the Kolonel Krispy I couldn’t help it no more and took off running.

  I ran across the highway without looking. A paint-flaking pickup truck full of rusted-wire tumbleweeds, bedsprings, and bent sheets of metal screeched its brakes. It about hit me and the boy in the back of the truck lost hold of the bucket of paint in his lap. The bucket of paint sailed out of the back of the truck and hit the pavement and the lid come flying off and the swimming-pool blue paint inside jumped out of the bucket, and when it did it was like my head flooded with water and I went to my hands and knees on the road.

  The woman driving the truck jumped out to check on the boy and the paint. A coal truck stopped behind the woman and a little white car with mold all over it come the other way run straight through the paint on the highway and splattered it all over itself and the road and kept on going and I could hear the man and the woman inside the moldy white car arguing with each other like they were going to live forever. The woman driving the truck come over to me said, “Are you hurt?”

  I had gone from being on my hands and knees to also having put my forehead down on the road and before I got her answered, I looked up enough to see two dull black boots worn by a city police and he squatted down said, “Ma’am, do you need an ambulance?”

  I looked up at him and the idea of riding in an ambulance and laying up in the hospital and eating Jello and scrambled eggs in a gown with no back to it sounded pretty good, but I said, “I don’t need no ambulance.” I stood up and he stood up and I said, “Am I in trouble?”

  He looked at me, trying to decide if I was high. A big round of applause went up from over where the president was talking and the cop squinted like he was smelling a cat-pissy house and he shook his head, and so I turned and went over to Kolonel Krispy where Calvin was.

  I should have got that cop to arrest Calvin but I didn’t. And when I didn’t, it felt like I planted a seed of stupid in me, like I’d done a stupid thing and it turned into a stupid seed and it stupid sprouted and stupid grew, and before I knew it, my whole life had petered out for lack of light under

  Calvin set on the railroad track on the far side of Kolonel Krispy. He had on short pants and flip-flops. He had a new tattoo of a red woman with devil horns and a pointy tail riding an anchor. It was so new, there was a shaved spot on his skinny white leg with its black hairs, and the tattoo still had Saran Wrap on it. Calvin had on a tight little tangerine T-shirt had “HOTTIE” written on it in cursive. He was smoking a cigarette in green wraparound sunglasses with yellow lenses. He looked like a pawpaw, turning brown, ripe for getting stomped.

  Calvin threw his cigarette into the railroad gravel and stood up. He stubbed his butt out against the sole of his flip-flop and stood there like him and me had an appointment, like some secretary had set it up for us to meet at whatever time it was on the railroad tracks behind the Canard Kolonel Krispy.

  When I got up close to Calvin, I put my nose close enough to smell him good. He smelled like stale beer and raw onions, like sawdust soaking up vomit, like horse manure and Dr. Pepper. Like Tennessee.

  He said, “I’m right here,” said, “Do what you got to do.” Like I wouldn’t anyway.

  I said, “I don’t need your permission to do.”

  He said, “I know it. You just need to know I aint going to fight you.”

  I said, “Now you going to tell me what I need?”

  He didn’t say nothing to that.

  I said, “You fucking dumbass.”

  He didn’t say nothing to that either.

  I said, “Why didn’t you turn yourself in like you said you would? Plenty of cops here today.”

  When he didn’t say nothing to that, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I’d promised him to beat his ass, but I stood there, looking at two of myself in Calvin’s sunglasses, wishing hard I was somebody else, wishing hard Calvin was somebody else. Cause I didn’t know whether I was glad Momma was dead or not.

  About that time, a big train horn blew and train bells started clanging. A coal train came groaning and grunting down from Drop Creek like a gang of elephants. Me and Calvin had to step off the tracks and the train stopped. The wind gusted like it don’t hardly ever do in July, and even though it was clear and hot you knew it was gonna rain that night, and it was chilly and Calvin asked did I want me some of them chili cheese fries they got at Kolonel Krispy.

  Before I could say, that train started backing up, wheezing and making a metally echo-y sound. The coal cars were empty. And before I knew, the train had backed up out of sight. Me and Calvin looked to where the train would have been going and we seen a bunch of cars out on the bypass, a motorcade, the president in it I reckon, red lights spinning, cop car lights spinning, and it all silent and quick. They got gone fast, like something had gone wrong.

  Everything had gone quiet in the direction of the bandstand. Where there had been all kind of racket, band playing, different full-of-themselves politicians getting the crowd all fluffed up for the president, little kids singing in their screechy voices “You are my sunshine” and some girl from Mallet singing “Oh Say Can You See” straight through her nose, everybody hand over their heart, people clapping, people whistling—then there wasn’t nothing but the sound of metal foldup chairs getting stacked up.

  Calvin said, “Well. I’m going to the house.”

  And I just let him go. I couldn’t do it. I don’t for the life of me know why. I went back across the highway. There were all kinds of people coming towards me, some people shaking their heads, other people acting like everything was just the same as always. I waded through them to where the president had been, looking for June.

  June was on the bandstand with two local politician dudes. One was young and short in a shirt the color of an orange push-up pop, had on a baby-blue tie and a bunch of product in his hair. He stood there with his hands on his hips while a tall man with a silver hair combover and the back of his hair brushing his shirt collar and a belly big as a truck tire. His mouth flapped open and closed yelling at June, yelling at her like a mad hog, yelling at her way too much, way too rough.

  All them Secret Service guys were gone by then, and so were all but a few of the crowd. Dudes in blue county work shirts folded up chairs and stacked them with a clatter. Nobody was looking up at the mountainside. Nobody was looking at June’s COALTOWN! sign she worked so hard on all summer. I know I wasn’t looking at it. I was looking at that silver combover, moving toward him, trying to hear what he was saying. I couldn’t understand his words, and I was about to holler at him that he better tone his self the fuck down, talking to my aunt like that.

  He raised his arm, pointed back behind him, back at the mountain where June’s COALTOWN sign was, never stopped hollering, never missed a beat being pissed off. When June looked up, I looked up, too. June’s COALTOWN! sign didn’t say COALTOWN! It said, “COAL = OXY.”

  I stood there in the parking lot and looked up at the words and thought how big and real they looked, how much bigger and realer they looked saying something like COAL = OXY, something that said something, than they did saying something stupid and nothing like COALTOWN!

  The empty coal train, the one that backed up for the president, started through town. It clang-clang-clanged across the bypass and through the gap in the floodwall, clang-clang-clang, a hundred empty coal cars. The train blew its horn long and flat and I waited, thinking something was about to change in me, thinking that if I took that moment to let everything sink in, let myself be aware of everything, things would come clear, like city tap water coming out milky and settling clear.

  So I waited and waited some more, thinking love would wash over me, or my hate would turn solid, or there would be a direction lit up, obvious for me to g
o, and I would become either a superhero or a villain. I breathed, and I held my breath, but you know what happened?

  I sat down in a folding chair and listened to that man yell at my aunt June, and I could finally understand what he was saying. He was winding down, running out of gas, even though he didn’t want to, running out of gas cause he didn’t take care of himself, cause he thought his man machine would run on attitude. But he wasn’t no Daniel Boone. He wasn’t no old school coal miner. He wasn’t no real-life mountain man. He was just an out-of-shape courthouse doofus.

  He said, “You think this is a joke? You think you can pull a smartass trick like this on us in front of the president of the United States? You don’t have no ideal what you done. You don’t have the foggiest notion.”

  A big white Ford pickup truck pulled up down below the stage. The man with the orange shirt and the product in his hair put his hands back in his pockets and walked down the steps at the end of the stage, not like he was big as the president of the United States, but big enough, big enough that everybody in Canard County thought they could tell him what he needed to do. He climbed in that white pickup and it sat there rumbling for a minute, windows all blacked out, rest of it white as a marshmallow. The horn blew and Combover come down off the stage, landing hard with every step, and the Hair Product Judge got out and let Combover get in the back, and they drove off.

  June stood alone on the stage. She looked around at the chairs where the president and the rest of them had been. Then she looked up at her mountain at the trucks on the way to take down her sign. Then she looked at me and smiled like she’d just swallowed the sweetest thing she ever put in her mouth. And then for the first time in the longest time, I smiled at my Aunt June.

  GENE

  I didn’t want to be the one put an end to coal mining. But I had to show That Woman I was more than grass stains and broke-off teeth. The president of the United States stood at the microphone, had coal miners lined up behind him. Orange stripes across the fronts of their shirts run together like they was one long piece of taffy, kind you get at the beach, every piece looking like the suits of a different ball team. I only had such taffy once, but it was good taffy, and I ate it all. And the whipping I took when I threw it up all over the Chrysler New Yorker of the man keeping me and Brother didn’t hurt a bit, but the churn in my belly right before I blew was the exact same churn I felt when the president of the United States turned, looked over his shoulder, and seen what I done.

  * * *

  I CHANGED the letters in that sign around a week before the president come. I was walking back to Sister’s house from a job Brother had got on That Woman’s street, another house with a bunch of steps. We’d been packing coal out of the basement of this other place. They’d had a coal furnace years ago, and even though they’d hadn’t heated that way in a long time, they still had that coal in there, and they decided to get shed of it, and said they’d give it to whoever would pack it off. So me and Brother packed coal out of that house, two five-gallon buckets at a time, walking up and down fifty steps, that whole day.

  I was killed, and tired of Brother. He’d been talking about women and how he was trying to teach himself to be a taxidermist, telling me about a squirrel he’d skinned himself and stuffed with Megamart bags, and I’d wearied of him, so when he asked me if I wanted a ride back to Sister’s, I told him I was walking. When I set out walking, I said to myself, “Well, long as I’m walking on her street, I might as well check on That Woman.”

  I come up on her without her noticing. She was sitting on the porch and hollering into her telephone. I hadn’t ever seen her that stirred up before. She said, “All they want to talk about anymore is drugs. You can’t get anybody to come to a meeting about mining because they got to go to a funeral or they got to drive somebody to rehab or they got to go to court for somebody or they cant leave the house without nobody in it cause so-and-so will come rob them blind.”

  That Woman was smoking a cigarette, had a ashtray full of butts in front of her. She said, “I know it’s bad. But God Almighty they are tearing this place up.”

  That Woman ran her fingers through her hair. She let out her breath like she didn’t need the person on the other end of the line to tell her what they was telling her. She said, “I know. Didn’t I just bury my sister over it?”

  She took a drag on her cigarette, said, “You know what people should be talking about? I tell you what. They should be talking about why. They should be talking about why it’s so easy to get all these people hooked on pills.”

  That Woman went quiet. I sat down on the steps leading up to the porch. She said, “Yeah. I know they’re hurting. I know they’re poor. I know they aint got nothing else to do. But what about what’s going on out their window? What’s going on up above their heads? What about the fact that they’re living in the middle of bombs going off all day long? You go up on any strip job you want and tell me it doesn’t look like Nagasaki.”

  She paused and I could hear the evening birds trilling. Then That Woman said, “I know you know. But nobody talks about that. Nobody connects the dots. Nobody . . . I don’t want to calm down. You calm down. I have to be calm all day long. What? No. Kenny, that aint right.”

  That Woman said, “It is the same thing. It is exactly the same thing. Coal started off something people needed. Something put people to work. Coal made factories run. People didn’t know how bad it was going to be.”

  That Woman narrowed her eyes, kind of stamped her foot. “That’s what I’m saying. Oxy started off the same. People needed painkillers cause they had pain. And Oxy kills pain.”

  That Woman’s hand was shaking. She mopped her forehead with the back of her smoking hand, said, “The money was too good. Thing too addictive. Coal addictive. Pills addictive. You hook anybody, anybody, up to a lie detector, they’d tell you. Coal is bad. Oxy is bad. We’d all been better off had neither one ever come in the world.”

  That Woman stood still, held the phone to the side of her head, hands at her side. I thought sure she would turn and see me. “Well,” she said, “that’s what I think.” She put her cigarette to her lips, her other hand in her front pocket, said, “You gonna try to talk me out of it? I don’t reckon you should, either. Well,” she said, stubbing out her cigarette, “call me tonight. Will you? All right. Talk to you tonight.”

  That Woman hung up her phone, fell in her rocker, her back to me. She didn’t feel me there at all. I went down the green steps of the porch, started up the rock steps out her backyard, up the hill to Lovers Lane, then over back of the hill to the little house behind Sister’s.

  When I got there, I hated to go in. The evening was cooling off nice. Picture of That Woman’s sweet fleshy arms in her cream coffee tank top come on my mind. So did her kinky curly hair pulled up off her neck, her eyes slit narrow, all stirred up talking to Kenny Bilson. I set on the swing on my bitty porch at my bitty cottage, cottage set up by my bitty stout sister. Sister’s old man on them pills holding down his mine boss job wanting to charge me all that rent, dealers sucking up his boss money, so he had to wring me out, wring a pill out of me every week till I whipped his butt.

  I paced that bitty porch, back and forth, felt like I was about to pop out my skin, so much dang energy, huffing and puffing like I’d run up the mountain and down. I left the porch, halfway down the driveway when I lifted my chin to the hillside rearing up across the road from Sister’s mailbox, and the idea to fix that sign like I did come on me full and fine as Christmas turkey. So I went over there where them letters was at.

  * * *

  EVEN IN the dark, I could see them letters good. They’d hung a curtain of used vinyl billboards over the fronts of them letters, the side that showed out. Out front, two stories of scaffolds, big bunch of scaffold, so’s a gang could work on them, so they could get done quick. That’s how it was set up. I climbed up the first set of scaffolds to think it out.

  I figured if I was to change the sign to what might be bette
r for That Woman, I’d have to change the T in “COALTOWN” to an equal sign. Then change the W to an X. Then the N to a Y. Then I’d be done. The letters was made of plywood four-by-eights. Not that hard to handle. The way the scaffolds was set up made everything easy. Them men That Woman found knew what they was doing. Brother’d got them to leave the painting of the letters to us, so we was the last ones out there, the rest of them done and gone. I had a key to the toolbox where the drills and stuff were. I could do it. By myself. All in one go. But I figured I’d do it the next night, so I climbed down off the scaffold. I was about to the ground when a voice said, “Hey” from up under a dropcloth. It was That Woman’s sister, eyes sparkling like car lights off a beer bottle by the side of the road.

  That Woman’s sister was blue-looking peering out from under that dropcloth, which was a billboard advertising GED classes. She said, “What are you doing up here?”

  I said, “I work up here.”

  She said, “Not now you don’t.” She sat up, lit a cigarette. Her eyes was the color of a storm cloud. She’d been crying.

  I said, “How much you been up here?”

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  I didn’t want That Woman’s sister up there, for about a hundred reasons.

  I said,

  She said she was, said “Yeah, I’m dead.”

  I said, “So why you here?”

  She said, “Where am I supposed to be?”

  I didn’t know. I didn’t know her that well. I said, “What’s it like to be dead?”

  She said, “Boring. And you’re hungry all the time.” She pulled on the cigarette. The smoke didn’t go away. She said, “God. I’m starving.”

  I said, “Are you still on pills?”

  She took another cigarette pull. “No,” she said. “At least that’s better.”