* * *
Friday mornings in high school, I’d see Baxter, for whom I had absolutely none—compassion, that is—until after the Chevy Nova conversation with Eduardo. Baxter sightings were rare and mostly on the school bus, which I only took on Fridays when we didn’t have swim practice. I’d get on and Baxter would acknowledge my presence but I’d overlook him, Jane and disdain flooding my mind as I’d aim for the back row. Over time, Baxter had grown even fatter until he pretty much took up an entire seat, his butt hanging over the edge into the aisle. And every Friday, on fish stick day, Baxter reeked of what he ate that day, so I’d hold my breath until I got past him to my seat in the back row. The very last time I rode the bus before Firefly and I finished building our VW was also one of the days that I wore my favorite Britannia shirt, and I recall it because it was also the time that Baxter vomited in the aisle of the school bus. To this day, everyone who was on that bus ride refers to it as The Poseidon Adventure.
It was a smell I’ll never forget, and kids all hung their head out the windows, gasping. Much as Baxter himself always made me feel like throwing up, I did not want to humiliate him by covering my face with my shirt, so I just sat there focusing on the feel of its soft terry cloth slit-neck collar, and looking down at the mix of green and brown horizontal panels on the torso with white sleeves and white band at the waist. As Baxter’s puke sloshed back and forth each time the bus slowed down or sped up, eventually Baxter’s river of fishy spew reached the 95s that I had bought with my own money, and a perplexing feeling of almost-compassion for Baxter arose in my heart. And that surprised me. Hell, I even considered offering Baxter my second Reese’s but decided that would be a waste.
The next time I saw Baxter, it was just his fat head above a crowd outside the country club waiting to go in for some event. I scouted for Jane as I headed to swim practice after mowing their neighbor’s lawn by hole eighteen, but none of Jane’s family members were around. My Fonzi T-shirt that mom had appliqued was soaked in sweat and clung to me. I had four days’ worth of clothes and I looked well cared for, though maybe a little disheveled at times. But Baxter, fat as he was, always looked like his mother had spit-polished him into the latest brand-name attire. He was a walking catalogue in XXL.
Baxter’s mother waved and came at me, scoped me up and down, put her hyper-red manicured meat hooks on my shoulder, and slithered down to my bicep where her touch lingered an uncomfortable moment too long.
“You!” she said, gushing like I was her very own Baxter. “I just have to thank ya for inspiring my Baxter to be a fashion maven.” She released my arm only to pull Baxter out of the cluster of club members to place his lump in front of me. There it was, the twin of my Britannia shirt I so loved, stretched beyond recognition across Baxter’s girth. He looked ashamed. I felt sorry for him. “You musta paid a fortune for yours, boy. I had the darndest time findin’ Baxter one just like yours…boy.” Mrs. Parsifal never bothered to remember my name, and I never wore my Britannia again. Sadly, the fact was, Baxter had no inspiration, none, everything was handed to him, and he had no desire to try, trapped as he had chosen to remain in his fat suit. “Why don’t y’all come dahn with us at the country club. Special event! C’mon, er…what was your name again, boy?”
I just stared at her. I wanted to ask why she chose to overfeed her son and why Baxter chose to eat fat sticks in front of the TV. He might have told me to fuck off or he might have said he was perfectly happy leading a sedentary life, despite his wheezing and lack of mobility. Maybe if we had all known then what we know now—maybe then, Baxter would have bothered. But back then, we didn’t know. I just knew Baxter was a lazy, cheating turd.
“Y’know I was a teen bride when I had Baxter. That makes me old enough to be your big sister.” I had no idea where Mrs. Parsifal was going. “So you let me know, boy, anytime ya wanna dahn at the country club. Baxter’s so bored there. He’d rather sit home on my bisque suede Henredon eatin’ Velveeta outta them new squirt cans writin’ his college application essays than anything else. So diligent, ain’t ya, baby boy. You look like you’re goldurn diligent, too, boy.” The harpy squeezed my bicep again and let her hand slide down to my waist. I took a step back, and then another. I knew if only Baxter would join swim team, Coach Randall would whip that tub of shit into shape. Coach would make Baxter learn The Oath. But hell, I didn’t really feel it was my place to be preaching the gospel while Mrs. Parsifal was cougaring me outta my Sears layaway jeans, up and down with her false eyelashes lined in bright blue.
“And it gets so frightfully lonely sometimes dahnin’ all alone at the club. Y’know, with Baxter’s daddy an airline pilot and all. He’s gone fer days on end, especially when he flies t’places like Japan. You know they got geishas there in Japan…” I despised this family. So, with all the politeness I could muster, I excused myself. “Unless you’d rather dahn at our home, boy. Right over there by Jane’s house at hole eighteen. Hole in one, boy!” Mrs. Parsifal winked a cluster of mascara talons at me. There was no misunderstanding here, and I certainly did not let it go unchallenged.
“Y’know what, ma’am, I don’t think I belong here, in your company.” I was sickened to hear Jane’s name come out of that harridan’s mouth.
“Well, course y’do, darlin’.” I felt sorry for Baxter, with a mother “like my big sister.” Like Baxter’s malodorous bus vomit, her acrid words clung as I jogged away toward the wrought iron fence to climb through it to the pool.
“No. I don’t,” I hollered over my shoulder.
“Perhaps, y’could mow my lawn, boy? Pay you double overtime.” That unrelenting pig of a woman was Baxter’s fish puke incarnate. I ignored Mrs. Parsifal and waved to Coach Randall in his Speedo talking to the Titly-est waitress at the Snack Shack. The second I was a few strides away from Baxter’s mother, she motioned flirtatiously to Coach Randall.
“Other side of the fence!” I heard someone yell, as I arrived at the barrier.
It was not till I noticed the fat Santa manager of the Green Beans Yard Crew eyeballing me from his red Rolls-Royce golf cart that I felt an odd kind of relief. He was always there, turning up at my swim team meets, and other moments in my life. Maybe I was paranoid? But he was always tracking me with his laser gaze. His lock’n’load look was like an intervention as if I were a drug user. Like I didn’t belong near that crowd going into the country club, and I didn’t belong near those fancy houses, even if I was there mowing lawns. I didn’t belong. But that was fine. I was done there. I was going someplace nice.
* * *
“Seedlin’, out on the porch!” So out I went. “What could be nicer’n here, Seed?” My Grandaddy was sitting in his lawn chair on our porch and looking out over the horizon right next to James when I got home that night after swim practice. “I know you wanna start thinkin’ ’bout college and ya own life, but just know that most folks born the way you was is gonna look out from they porch at all the land and silence and say, man, one’a these days I’m gon’ get outta here and move to the city and make a fortune. But make no mistake, dees same people, when they older, gon’ be lookin’ down from they big office with all they money and say, man, one day I’m gon’ buy me a little place away from it all with a porch, just looking out over God’s green land…and I’m just gon’ sit there and enjoy the silence. So, you know what, son? I’ll meet you right back here.”
“Yer Grandaddy know, boy. Listen up,” said James, without ever taking his eyes off of my Grandaddy’s horizon. My Grandaddy was the first to make me see, even before going out on my own into the world to see it for myself, that most people spend their twenties, thirties and forties trying to make money. And once in their fifties and sixties, these same people inevitably end up spending the majority of their acquired earnings trying to prolong that same life that they exchanged for that money in the first place. My Grandaddy might have never heard the term “rat race,” but damn, did he sure know what it was. And yet, it was Grandaddy and Mamau who drove me to scou
t college campuses because Dad was working so much and Mom was dealing with Lilyth, who had gotten weirder and meaner since she came back from the nuns. Driving to see college campuses, Mamau would jabber and Grandaddy kept saying, “Goldie, woman, you’re dingy, quit flappin’ y’jaws and waggin’ y’tongue.” But she just kept on in the backseat, smiling at me driving and waving at me in the rearview mirror and holding Grandaddy’s hand sitting right beside her. I loved driving Grandaddy’s car. Every three to four years Grandaddy would get a new Cadillac to drive to church, though he and Mamau lived in a shack. The foot pedal to change the radio station was on the floor, right by the dimmer switch, but Mamau didn’t know. So when I was driving them, I’d change the station and pull Mamau’s leg. “I have these special powers,” I’d say as I pointed to the radio while pressing that button with my foot on the floorboard…and the station would change. “Oh my God, Mickey, tell your Mamau, how you done magic, electronifyin’ this vehicle’s radio,” my Mamau would exclaim. And Grandaddy would bellow, “Goddammit woman, it’s the car’s own electronification system. Seedlin’ ain’t got no powers, ’cept his own God-given self. Now, hush it and let him pull over an’ get out. Leave the air on, boy, for y’Mamau so she don’t dampen.” And with that, I pulled over to the curb and met my Grandaddy’s outstretched fist in the blistering heat on the sidewalk where he dropped a small matchbox in my palm.
“Listen, Seedlin’. You see how y’Mamau think you ’lectric and I know you ain’t? I know you always understand me. Hell, even on the football field that day that devil-pussy crack you in tha head with his helmet back when you was a tiny. I also know y’momma hollered at you about the same thing you know I was proud of. Well, they’s some truth in the both of us. I give you this ’cause I want you to put it in my great-great-granbabbies. This is the stuff I want the future to see, so make sure the future hear it. Your wife gonna disagree, and sometime you gonna disagree with her on what a child need to hear to be raised up right, but it’s important that your baby hear both sides. You got a wife who agree with you all the time, then you choose the wrong one. Choose correct, goddammit. Let the mirror tell ya. Look at ya mouth. Where them corners pointin’? You pick tha one that give you a smile you tryin’ ta hide, ’cause the love smile the only one that tryin’ its best not to. All the other smiles don’t give a shit, ’cause they ain’t scary. I seen it on you before and you best go get it. Don’t lead with the trouser worm, least not for a wife. You pick a good momma for my great-granbabbies, and then you fill in all the holes of the stuff she leave out. Can only come from a man. Ain’t no other way. These lessons got a long way to travel, and it’s important that they path don’t get interrupted by somebody that don’t give a goddamn. So, you give a goddamn, and you keep giving a goddamn. I knew someone once who didn’t, and I ain’t cared for him much. My daddy gave me these and I want the future to see ’em, so I gotta hand ’em off to you. Seeds in that little box I wanna keep alive. Daddy was the best man I know. He was James’s daddy, but mine, too. It’s complicated, but someday I’ll ’splain to ya, that Almond Tree. And your daddy’s the best, too, I saw to it. You gonna be next, so pay attention. Sometime ya baby need ta hear that he ’lectric…and sometime he need ta know he ain’t. I love you. You got a tree an’ a nice bowl of gumbo with big chunks’a Boudin, so don’t take a crap in it.”
* * *
And with that nice bowl of gumbo, I prepared to go off to college—a period of intense work punctuated by fewer and fewer Jane sightings, and more than a few returned letters from The Dancing Mailbox. So I set off into a new world with the hope that if I went someplace nicer it would be fine for Jane to join me. The last time I saw Jane before I went off to college was senior year at prom—well, actually, I saw her as she was on her way into the country club where her school’s prom was being held. I was plugged into my Walkman’s earphones, listening to “Only You” by Yaz and skimming the pool for Coach Randall, but all I could hear in my head was a frustrating cacophony of “I’m Not in Love” by 10cc blaring from the country club, mixed with the static AM radio rendition of “Love Hurts” by Nazareth pouring out of what looked like Jonathan’s BMW as he quickly rolled up the tinted window and sharked past. I loved each one of those songs, but they each required their own solar system, and not being able to separate them frustrated the hell out of me.
Jane’s long brown-black hair hung straight down around her bare shoulders, and she wore a flowy purple and gem green paisley-print hippie dress and a new pair of 95s. There she stood, radiating at me, my flower with a tinsel heart. But she was with a Brooks Brothers tuxedo who sounded like he had come down from the North, maybe New England. Christ, besides Mr. Pink Pants, I had only ever heard people talk like that on fuckin’ Masterpiece Theatre. I stared at Jane and Jane stared at me. She took a step back, then forward, but stopped after the first step when that guy—probably the honking, non-door-opening 911 douche—handed her a cup of punch. I really hated Jane’s preppy little escort. But I hadn’t a hope in hell of competing with his social economics. He had a 911 and punch, and I had a dirty pool skimmer in my hands. As the line of gussied-up teenagers gradually filed into the club, Jane glanced back at me a couple times, smiling like always and forever at me, then turned that generous smile and tinkling tinsel-bell laughter to her date. He obviously knew how to make Jane laugh. The entitled asshole turned to see what Jane was smiling at. He looked right at me. Then he turned to Jane with a nod, and I couldn’t tell if he said something to her or not, but she nodded back. Again, the son of a bitch turned toward me, this time looking squarely at me, and he fucking smiled. He didn’t smile wickedly like Jonathan would have. The fucker smiled broadly at me, like there wasn’t a question in the world that I was not a threat to him, because there wasn’t a question in the world as to what side of the fence I belonged. I felt like I was a fire hydrant and he had just lifted his leg. He had simply planted his flag on the moon and I’d always just be a cosmonaut. As they filed in, I forced my attention to skimming the pool. Jane smiled back at me over her shoulder as she was propelled inside the country club by the tide of teenagers in line behind her. “I’m Not in Love” blasted louder from the country club with its open doors, but I could turn up “Only You” on my Walkman even louder, and drown that shit right out. Because, it wasn’t just a silly phase I was going through.
Chapter Nine
After college, I came home for a short time to regroup and pack my dad’s old green Gran Torino he was letting me use for my trip out west. Mandy, my Irish setter, leapt to follow on my bike over to Quail Valley and down the golf course path where I needed to stop by Jane’s one last time before I left town again for good. I’d heard she had moved to another part of Houston, down near the arts district, but I hoped if I went in person she might be visiting her parents, or at least they might tell me where she had gone. As I wheeled past the ninth hole Halfway Food Hut, I noticed the red Rolls-Royce, but that fat man was nowhere to be seen. In a strange way, I missed that man. I inhaled the newly freed chlorophyll. The place I recalled so vividly with gemstone colors was washed out to pastel. My childhood color palette had been through a hyper-realistic lens of a Fuji Velvia, but now it had faded to old-school Kodachrome. Vibrant memories. But it was like a red filter had turned all my blues to black.
When I reached hole eighteen, I rode all the way around to the front of the butter yellow house, but it was quiet. I propped that old Schwinn Sting-Ray against Jane’s forest green mailbox curbside, and I never once looked back to see if it looked impressive. I knew it looked impressive. I still loved that bike. And even having already been out of college, I hadn’t a concern in the world about riding that old Sting-Ray over to Jane’s. I no longer cared about all the things that had nothing to do with who I was. That day was only the second time I had ever rung her doorbell, but this time no one answered. The trampoline was completely rusted. My WD-40 from the card shark’s suitcase in The Ditch was still tucked in between Jane’s springs, with my initials I�
��d scratched into its painted surface still there. I tried to give the springs a squirt but the can was beyond use. I biked home and passed her old house on Sandpiper Drive, with a herd of kids in the yard, and on past the Milans’, overgrown and in need of care, and absent of one aluminum lawn chair. I ran into my dad’s garage and fired up the push mower one last time before I left town for California.
I never did learn what became of Mr. Milan after his wife died, but I never saw him again. I swept up the husks under my giant bean tree so Mom wouldn’t have to do it, busy as she was raising Lilyth’s little one. I was finishing packing the Gran Torino for LA when my sister stumbled by.
“I shoulda killed you when I had the chance,” slurred Lilyth before she passed out in just about the same spot where Lew Hoagie had lost it the night of the yard sale.
I kept right on packing till little Charlotte came out of the house followed by my mom, looking worried and trying to keep Lilyth’s daughter from seeing her own mother that way. I saw the look of desperation on my mom’s face, and I hoisted Lilyth off the lawn and slumped her in her bed. That night, I counted 143 unopened letters stamped RETURN TO SENDER sent to the wrong address and postmarked as early as 1973. I had kept sending letters to the same wrong address, as it had become a sort of therapy for me. The next day I left Houston, car packed to the gills, and drove by the art supply store where I had heard, quite by accident, that Jane worked. And sure enough, I saw her through the art shop plateglass window, way in the back where she was smiling, gorgeous, heart-stopping, helping a customer. I mailed a good-bye letter to her in the freshly painted mailbox right in front of the art store. This box had a dent right in its gut, and a jagged ring of rust bled through the new federal blue paint job. I wondered if that dent, like the leg of The Dancing Mailbox, had been Kevin’s handiwork.
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