by Paul Flower
Today, Elvis didn’t remember what had happened to his father; he didn’t seem to remember his brother at all. It seemed impossible that someone could forget people like that. But, looking back, Lavern realized he’d started denying what had happened right away. In the weeks after his family broke apart, Elvis’d been louder, crazier—had played harder—than he ever had before. He’d acted like he was doing it because something was bothering him, something he wouldn’t explain. Now he’d buried the memories so deeply they only came out at night. She, well, she had just let it be. Looking back, she wasn’t sure why, but she’d just never brought any of it up. Years had come and gone. The whole strange mess had faded away.
For the rest of the town, well, it was all just a sad old story about a screwed up family; the dad had left, a shadowy, half-remembered brother (or was it a sister?) had moved away, and that moody woman had raised her son in the old house they’d all once shared. Like Lavern, no one else ever spoke to the remaining Icabone boy about his father or sibling; let sleeping dogs lie, they’d figured.
Lavern scowled at the TV. She had tried to get the truth out of Elvis’ mother before she died. The nasty old woman had called the house one day; she’d do that maybe once or twice a year, wanting to talk with Elvis. This time, she had gotten Lavern at home—Elvis would just hang up if he answered—and she’d started in on “how easy it is to hide stuff in this town...” and “boys being rewarded for being good and being punished for being bad.” It had been a very awkward conversation; Mom Icabone had been acting like there was something she wanted to say. Lavern had pried a little. Apparently, she’d pried too hard, too fast, because Mom had hung up.
Not long after that, Mom had called to tell them she was “being forced by her stupid doctor to live in a nursing home up north.” Lavern had wanted to visit Mom before she left; the old woman still lived in the house Elvis had grown up in out on M-140. But, Elvis didn’t want to have anything to do with his mother. Lavern couldn’t blame him, really. She’d put off going to see Mom and had missed her chance. One day, some other doctor had called and told them Mom’d croaked. Elvis had sighed at the news, made a strange face, and had never talked about it, or her, again. He and Lavern had skipped the funeral. They had never even visited the grave.
The years had piled on top of one another, and Lavern had begun to think she’d never understand what had happened. Then, just as Elvis’ dreams had gotten worse, Jesse had shown up.
She pulled the afghan over her head and thought she caught a whiff of Jesse’s cologne. He’d sat here, next to her on the couch, and put the whole story together, saving the last part of it for tonight at the truck stop.
Geeze, she thought, biting her Cheeze Whiz-ed finger until the tears flowed. Jesse said Elvis had killed their father. For the first time, Lavern wondered if it was true. Who knew? With that mother, who knew the truth about anything? Did Elvis do it? Did Mom? Did Jesse? So many questions, she thought, sucking a glob of Cheeze Whiz off her thumb and letting it dissolve.
To make matters worse, despite all that she knew or suspected, Lavern had to admit she was attracted to Jesse. The guy was sexy, sweet, rich and… she paused to find the word. Dangerous. He was dangerous in a way she thought was exciting.
Elvis was no brain surgeon, Lavern thought with a little grin. He was pretty slow, if you wanted to put it bluntly. On top of that, he really didn’t believe in himself. It was one of the reasons he didn’t move up into management at the plant. It was why they couldn’t have nice things. It was why they couldn’t even afford pre-paid cell phones half the time. It was frustrating. But, Lavern thought, he was gentle, tender, sweet and a little crazy. It was Elvis who had brought home the kitten he now referred to as “her cat”; he’d found it abandoned and had surprised her with it one rainy, fall night. She could remember him walking in the door with the thing stuffed inside his shirt, its whiskered nose poking out between two buttons.
Lavern had promised Elvis she would never talk to anyone about his family. But now she’d betrayed that promise. Not long after Jesse had shown up, one night when she was feeling pretty desperate, she’d talked to a friend at the police department. He put her in touch with a detective at the state police post. She told the detective the story—as much of it as she knew. Since then, she’d kicked herself over and over for bringing the police into it. Evidently, some kind of missing person file still existed on Elvis’ dad. Her city cop friend had told her the state cops had now brought in some dude from outside the area to work undercover on this thing.
She’d betrayed Elvis and now she’d sort of lied to Donnel. The police were working on it. Where it would lead, who knew?
She clenched her eyes. “You got to help me find the truth, God. You got to help me know everything that happened. You just got to show me. You got to, you hear me?” she hissed, then stopped herself. That was maybe a little too harsh a prayer, she thought. “Please, God, if you could, it would be cool,” she added. There, she thought with a smile, that was better. Amen.
She knew God didn’t expect her to sit back and watch. “God helps those who help themselves,” they’d chanted in Mr. Melvin McGarr’s sixth grade Sunday school class. The words still echoed in her head when she got into trouble like this.
It was hot under the afghan. Lavern flipped it off and looked down at the orange mess of Cheeze Whiz in the jar. Slowly, she started forming an outline of a plan. It helped that they had a lot of friends. It was times like these when it paid to live in a small town; people would come to your aid whenever you needed them.
She could picture Jesse’s assistant at the hospital, a neat young woman named Emily. Lavern had met her once when she and Donnel had gone to see Jesse. Emily knew something screwy was going on, but she seemed to be a real sweetheart who, Lavern thought, secretly wished Jesse dead.
Emily would be a good person to talk to first.
Lavern sighed heavily. In her gut, she felt the need to shock Elvis. Getting him to open up and talk would take getting him good and mad or something; her gut told her that. There were other things she needed to think through, but she needed some rest first. She was already dreading the idea of getting up and going to work. She knew that if she didn’t get to bed she’d have a hard time answering phones, taking complaints and all the other annoying things that were part of her job. People couldn’t fight city hall, but when it came to fighting the department of public works, they had to go through her.
On TV, the news had changed to sports. Some guy with a fat neck was yammering on about the “local high school basketball scene.” Lavern flipped off the set, stood unsteadily, and carried the jar into the kitchen, where she dropped it in the wastebasket. After brushing her teeth, she scuffed to the bedroom, put on her pajamas, and eased into bed. She watched Elvis sleeping for a moment, then lightly, tenderly kissed her fingertips and brushed them across his forehead.
****
Elvis rolled away from Lavern and peeked at the digital clock on the bed stand. It was 11:23 p.m. He thought he’d smelled beer and cheese under the toothpaste on her breath. He imagined it was Donnel’s beer and Donnel’s freaking cheese, and Elvis’ stomach turned. He listened to her breathing and thought about all the cold nights they’d cupped together like spoons for warmth. Now they were knives in a drawer, he on his side of the bed, Lavern on her side.
When he was sure she was asleep, Elvis got up and walked into the living room. He flicked on the lights and wandered through the house, touching furniture, the walls, trying to feel, to cut through the numbness in his head.
Her purse was on the couch where she’d thrown it. Elvis picked it up and dumped it out on the couch. Some of the junk, a pen and a half-empty box of white Tic Tacs, slid to the floor. He pawed through the rest of the stuff, letting more of it fall. He thought about taking the loose change—something, anything to make her mad.
A piece of white paper stopped him. It was folded, import
ant looking. Elvis, hands trembling, picked it up and sat on the couch. The pile of Lavern’s stuff tumbled, some onto the floor, most into the crack between the cushions.
On the paper, written in ink, in Donnel’s fat, funny handwriting: “M-43 East to Dormill. About 6/10 mi. down, left on M-140. Three miles out 140 to Fire lane 32b, right.”
He sat and stared at the words for a good, long while. The directions were to some place near his old stomping grounds, out near the old house. He hadn’t been there in years. It was their love nest—it had to be. The thought occurred to him as a fact. No doubt came with it. Elvis just knew. Donnel had a place where he and Lavern were going to meet. Elvis scrounged around until he found a stub of a pencil. He scribbled the directions down on a piece of paper from the pad Lavern kept by the phone.
Elvis carefully put the purse back together. Then he turned off the lights and sat on the couch, staring at the pale streak of streetlight cutting through the crack in the curtains.
Silently, he cussed himself out for being so simple-minded; he hadn’t seen what was happening between Lavern and Donnel until a couple months ago. Even then, he hadn’t said anything.
“Tonight, you finally caught on, didn’t you partner?” he whispered angrily, recalling what he’d seen. When Lavern had said a friend was picking her up “down around the corner,” he’d gotten in his car and had driven the other way around the block. He’d watched as Donnel’s truck slid to the curb and Lavern got in. He’d followed them to the truck stop, then he’d come home.
What an idiot, Elvis thought—how stupid and spineless. Even now, he couldn’t find the strength to confront them.
He sat, twisting it in his head, and thought for the millionth time that he didn’t deserve this.
Chapter Seven
Jesse looked down at his PF Flyers. They were so muddy and wet. His legs, well, they were a mess, too. His legs had maybe a zillion mosquito bites on them, some of them he’d scratched open. He felt dirty and exhausted, so he didn’t talk to Mom as they started down the road toward home. He trudged like a beaten dog behind her, eyes on the ground.
Mom had been right about a lot of things, but not about the body. The hiding place was lousy and stupid. Jesse was too tired to know what to do about it. Besides, there were so many other details to worry about. Had she remembered to hide the gun? Had she put it back under the stairs? Should she maybe throw it away or bury it somewhere? Did she have all the details about the alibi worked out? Would they both say the same thing when people asked about the man leaving home? And what about the man, was he in heaven? Was he in hell? Or was he restless and wandering and looking for trouble like a spooky ghost?
Jesse scuffed along in the gravel, trying not to blink. If he did blink, and blinked too long, he thought—he knew—the man’s eyes would be there pleading with him. Please no, they’d say.
Jesse wanted to wash the image away. He wanted to wash himself good, wash every stinking pore until he was clean, until all the dirt was gone. The day had gone muggy again. The air was thick with the smell of rotting leaves and the weight of the unfinished rain. As they neared home, a deer fly buzzed at his sweaty head. Jesse kept walking and flicked at it. The fly retreated for an instant then was on him again. It found his ear. A gagging sound squirted from Jesse’s throat as he slapped at it again. He broke into a jog, passing his mom before turning around and running backwards, looking for the fly. It was on him, buzzing at his face then his ears. It found the back of his neck, sat there and bit, a tingly jab that sent tiny fingers of electricity through his scalp.
Jesse, wild-eyed and sobbing, skidded to a stop in the gravel. He slapped the back of his neck, waited, then brought the hand around slowly and stared at his palm.
Empty.
The fly, black and mean, buzzed at his neck, his cheek, his face.
Mom shuffled along, oblivious, mumble-humming “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.”
Jesse turned and ran toward home, his tired mind quivering with an idea: the stupid fly had been sent by God. He didn’t know where the idea came from, but he didn’t know where the fly had come from either, so yes, yes, God could have sent the fly. Maybe God had even sent the idea that he had sent the fly. Yes. Yes. It was all possible. Jesse knew it. Jesse had been to church. He knew what God was about. To him, to God, nothing was impossible. God could send a fly and could send the idea that he’d sent the fly to the kid being bugged by the fly. Yes. Absolutely. Mom hadn’t cared to go to church, but Dad had made Jesse go with Elvis and him. It was one of the few things Mom hadn’t argued with Dad about.
“No big deal,” she’d said. “Go on, Jesse. Go on. Maybe it’ll do you some good,” she laughed.
Dad had made Jesse learn about God, and now God was sending a fly, and making him, Jesse, think about the fly because why? Why? At first, Jesse didn’t know. He didn’t know. He ran harder, crying like a stupid baby, the fly on him, on him, on him, tears and sweat burning in his eyes, his brain in flames, on fire with wild ideas. God had seen the man’s soul—it had floated into heaven with a note attached to it—and God, well, he’d sent the fly to punish the person whose name was on the note, the boy who’d killed the man. The fly smelled death on Jesse and wanted to get inside. It wanted to get at whatever had gone bad in Jesse Icabone.
It was all so stupid and made no sense. No sense at all. But still, Jesse could imagine that it was absolutely true.
Sweat and tears burned his eyes and he closed them. There they were, his father’s eyes, inside his own. Those eyes, sheeze, pleading with him. Please no. Please no. “Please no,” Jesse screamed the words as he tripped and fell, headlong, onto his weed-riddled yard. He rolled to his back and looked up at the sky. The man’s eyes stared down from a retreating thunderhead. Jesse choked. He scrambled to his feet, ran toward the driveway, and followed it around to the back of the house. He wanted something cool to drink and a bath. A good, long, hot bath would make him feel a whole lot better.
****
Jesse put the martini glass on the edge of the tub and lowered himself into the steaming water. He didn’t hear the groan from his chest. He couldn’t see the red scratches he’d clawed on his skinny legs. He felt only vaguely the burning relief of the water on the screaming itch of his skin. Eyes closed, he took a long drag on the joint and held the smoke in his lungs for five, ten, fifteen seconds. Now he could see the itch. The itch. The itch. It had spread from his hands to his groin and thighs. He could see it in his mind’s eye. It was red and ugly and everywhere. Frankie Valli sang in his head, but the music was lost in the itch.
The alcohol and dope whirled, turning and tilting the room. Time passed. Now his skin was raw from repeated washing, his pajamas, sandpaper. When had he left the tub and come upstairs? He didn’t know. He lay in bed trembling, bathed in sweat, and he was a child again; coming around the house toward the backdoor, passing the rear of the rusty station wagon, glancing inside. His stomach lurched. Through a grimy window, Jesse saw Elvis, a boy as dirty and sweaty as he was, sitting behind the steering wheel. Elvis wasn’t moving. One hand was draped over the top of the wheel. All the windows were closed.
Jesse felt sick. He was hot, so very very hot. The journey back from the smokehouse had been so long and so hard. He put his forehead against a shady spot on the side of the station wagon and tried to catch his breath, then wiped his nose with the disgustingly messy shirt and glanced toward the front yard. No sight of Mom. He peered inside the car again. Elvis’ hand was limp over the wheel. Now the underside of his wrist was gently rocking it back and forth, like he was going for a Sunday ride. Dad had driven the car that way. Jesse and Elvis would ride up there in the front seat next to him, and the man would steer with the bottom part of his wrist while he hummed dumb songs with the radio. The memory made it hard to breathe.
“Hey, Elvis. What’cha doing in the car?” Jesse croaked at him through the glass. The head didn’t move, just the wr
ist; Elvis rocked it back and forth. Jesse pounded on the window with his fists. “Hey addle-brained boy, don’t you know you could die in there?”
Elvis flinched and cocked his head to one side.
That was enough. Jesse took a step and jerked on the handle of the right rear door. It swung open with a groan. Heat and a sick, soggy smell staggered out. Jesse swallowed so he wouldn’t puke. “Get out of the stupid car, you addle-brained faggot,” he said, but Elvis kept his eyes straight ahead.
Jesse slid into the back seat, pushing through oil cans, pop bottles and other junk to find an open spot. He twisted and looked out through the filthy rear windows. Mom was coming around the house, so Jesse reached out and pulled the door until the latch clicked shut. He didn’t want her in on this.
The air inside the car was a thick, sweaty-wool blanket. Jesse, still winded from the walk, felt another quiver of nausea. He swallowed again and tried to soothe his ragged breathing. His head swam a little. Sweat stung his eyes. “Elvis, you okay?” His voice was hoarse.
Elvis, his face flushed and shiny, his one hand still hanging over the wheel, said nothing. Jesse leaned over the seat. On the seat, Elvis’ free hand was curled around the battered barrel of the old .22 rifle their dad had bought them. They’d used it only for target practice; Dad had let them, but only when he supervised, and with the understanding that the BB gun was the only gun they could use in the woods. Jesse’s throat tightened.
“Where’d you find that old thing?” Jesse’s voice came out unexpectedly high pitched and nervous. He wiped a tear of sweat from the tip of his nose.