More of This World or Maybe Another

by Barb Johnson

  Emerald City. Anything could be out there. Things Delia doesn’t want. Or the things she does want but isn’t sure she’ll recognize if she sees them. “What about the meat?” she says, hedging.

  “What about him?” Chuck yells over the monster truck sound of the broken muffler as they peel out onto the highway.

  About a month ago, they’d all been riding horses in the Higginbothams’ pasture. Calvin and his friends and Chuck and Delia and Renée. There’s a sweet mare they call Pollyanna, and a little monkey-see-monkey-do broke out when Calvin vaulted neatly onto the animal’s bare back. And then Chuck and then everyone else except Delia and Renée.

  “Oh, I could never do that,” Renée said in the pouty, dumb-girl voice she’d recently started using. Delia hated how Renée flirted with boys by going all wiggly and dense.

  The horses didn’t belong to them, so they’d given them whatever names seemed to fit. One, Jack the Ripper, a stallion who none of them had ever been able to ride, sneered at the group from the edge of the activity. While everyone else was busy with Polyanna, Delia crept around the edge of the pasture until she was standing behind Jack. Closing her mind to the many reasons not to, she took off running straight at his hindquarters. Miraculously, she landed on his back, a brief victory before he tore out into the middle of the pasture and tried to scrape her off with a low tree branch. When that didn’t work, he sprinted straight at the barbed-wire fence and stopped short of it, pitching Delia over into the blackberry bushes on the other side.

  Renée got to her first, but Chuck was right behind.

  “You’re just showing off for Calvin,” Renée said, hand turned backward on her hip. Hip jutting out. A rich-girl pose she copied from the Miss Everythings at school. “Why can’t you flirt like a normal girl?”

  Something about that made Chuck smile. And there were the dimples.

  As soon as Renée was sure that Delia wasn’t actually hurt, she turned toward the barbed-wire fence and made a big production of getting not one, but two, of the boys to help her back over into the pasture.

  Chuck sat down next to Delia, who really was hurt but wasn’t about to give Renée the satisfaction of seeing it. They picked blackberries right where they sat and ate them, the ka-thunk of nearby oil wells giving a rhythm to their conversation.

  “If you asked Calvin to the Sadie Hawkins dance,” Chuck said, popping a berry into her mouth and licking her purpled fingers, “we could all ride together.”

  The other girls in Delia’s class were excited because a Sadie Hawkins dance, their teacher explained, meant that the girls got to do the inviting instead of the boys. Like everything else about this school year, Delia couldn’t understand what the big deal was. She wasn’t going.

  “I’m going stag,” Chuck added.

  Delia picked a few blackberries and ate them. “I’ll go stag, too,” she said, deciding she wanted more of the feeling she had sitting there with Chuck among the stickers and the berries. “But I’m going to take my daddy’s truck,” she added, “in case it’s boring.” In case the feeling she was having couldn’t be had anywhere but there among the blackberries, where everything boring had gone back to the other side of the barbed-wire fence.

  When Chuck steers the Valiant out onto the dark highway, Delia stares into the nothingness. She thinks of cities where there must be stoplights at least. Buildings lit up at night with people in them making the city go. She dreams of roads that aren’t bordered by ditches, by the segmented crescents of dead armadillos. Places where the night doesn’t press down on you the way it’s pressing down on her now, like it’s water she might drown in if she doesn’t pay attention. Up ahead, a blue light marks the location of a firebox. It’s hitched to the pole where the highway turns onto the parish road. They fishtail around the corner, swimming through the faint blue glow, and drive all the way to the bridge with the lights off.

  Except for the flashing red beacon at the top, the steep, two-lane bridge is unlit, its downside all but invisible, a matter of faith. As a child, Delia used to hide in the car’s foot well when her family drove to visit her cousins who live on the other side of the river. “There’re two sides to a bridge, Delia,” her mother used to tell her when Delia scrambled for the foot well. “That’s what a bridge is.”

  Maybe so, Delia thought, but things can change with no warning and still look exactly the same. Delia’s oldest brother went off to fight in the war. A crazy man who screams and cries when you drop a pot in the kitchen came back in his place. He looks like Delia’s brother, but he’s not. It looks like a bridge, but maybe it isn’t.

  From the top of the bridge, Delia can see the tanks of Emerald City lined up like a marching band behind the drum major of the natural gas refinery whose signal baton is a forty-foot torch that burns off the flare emissions. The flame goes up and then shrinks, all the while bending with the wind. Delia slouches in her seat and closes one eye. It looks like the flame is coming out of the stump of Chuck’s index finger, which is resting against the steering wheel. When Delia switches eyes, the flame jumps out of the car’s window. If it ever goes out, Delia’s been told, the whole town will be blown sky high. It could go out. It could go out right this minute with her and Chuck in the car at the top of the bridge. It could go out now. Or now. There’s no way to know ahead of time.

  When they get to the tank farm, they slip through a loose corner of the chain-link fence that surrounds it. Everyone knows about the loose spot except the refinery people. The tank farm is the closest Delia’s ever been to a city with big buildings. Walking in the shadows of the giant tanks makes Delia’s heart squeeze too much blood up to her head, so that it feels like her brain is going to come blasting out of her ears.

  She and Chuck are both stoned, and Chuck keeps tripping and grabbing Delia’s shoulder as they make their way down the rough oyster-shell lane. Delia fakes a near fall to see what it feels like to touch Chuck back. When she does, her hand lands on Chuck’s wrist, which feels solid but much smaller than Delia imagined.

  It’s windy there among the tanks and quiet, except for the sound of the refineries, a clanking, hissing sound, a sound like a big brain working. In the sky, a yellow cloud of sulfur is backlit and hangs in the air like a ghost above the bridge, whose massive underside is straight out of a nightmare. Delia cannot begin to guess what it is that’s keeping that bridge from collapsing under its own weight.

  “How can you tell which tank’s empty?” Chuck asks. She’s stopped in the middle of the shell lane, and Delia stops beside her. Like all of Chuck’s questions, this one could mean a lot of things. Maybe she’s giving Delia the chance to show off. Or she might be trying to catch Delia in a lie.

  Delia has lied. She has no idea how to tell which tank is empty. She thought that saying she did would make her seem more experienced than she is, would make the plan sound more exciting to Chuck. Delia jerks her head in the direction of the tank to their left. “Watch this,” she says. Plucking the Clackers from around Chuck’s neck, she uses them to give the tank a few knocks. “Hear that? That’s how they sound when they’re full.” Delia’s not ready to stop yet. It’s like she and Chuck are in some magic world that might actually have a perfect tank in it. One they won’t find if they stop too soon. “The empty one’s farther down the road.”

  After passing twenty or so of the giant round tanks, Delia stops in front of one whose seams are smooth, new enough not to have grown any rust. Fresh shells around the base. Maybe full, maybe empty. It’s not like she can really tell the difference. She wants to confess the stupid lie. But a lie is just words, she guesses, and so is a confession. “This is it,” Delia says, and just saying it makes it so.

  Chuck gives the tank a drum roll with the Clackers, pulls her hair over one shoulder and braids it. “Hold this a minute,” she says, and hands Delia the braid while she secures the end with a twist tie, the kind that comes on a bread wrapper. Something about the feel of the silky plait embarrasses Delia, and she looks back down the ro
ad. Shifts nervously from side to side.

  “What?” Chuck asks about the shifting.

  Delia flips the fastened braid over Chuck’s shoulder. “What what?” Delia asks and it sounds funny, the way everything does when she’s stoned. “What what,” she says again, and it’s even funnier.

  Chuck shrugs and starts up the metal stairs that curve around the huge tank. Delia falls in behind her. Halfway up, there’s the crunch of tires on oyster shells. Theron Higginbotham—A.J.’s uncle—works security for the refinery. “There’s just no getting away from those peckers,” Delia says.

  Chuck keeps climbing. “Which peckers?”

  Delia presses her back against the tank, grabs the hem of Chuck’s skirt to stop her. “Hold up.” The sight of Chuck’s bare thighs gives Delia a feeling like lying, a blast of adrenaline that dissolves in a pool of guilt.

  Theron’s headlights bounce along the shell road. “Lights on,” Chuck says, “but nobody’s home.”

  Delia looks down, and already that world seems small and strange. The world of the tank is the real world now. She’s queasy with excitement.

  “We’re up here, igmo!” Chuck hollers at the back of Theron’s truck as it disappears around a corner. “Come on up and let’s make out!”

  “If that idiot comes back,” Delia warns, “I’m leaving your ass right here and taking your car.”

  “They made Theron register at the post office, Delia. That old boy’s not allowed anywhere near minors.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Delia says, like she’s remembering this detail, though she has no idea what Chuck is talking about. She lets go of Chuck’s hem, which she may have been holding on to longer than necessary.

  When they reach the top of the stairs, three stories up, they stand on a small platform, their shoulders nearly touching. Delia squints at the view. Everything’s out of proportion, and it makes her feel big and small at the same time. Chuck starts the Clackers going, click-clack, click-clack, click-clack, a noise like a train coming or an idea.

  A red light flashes on the top of each storage tank to keep the crop dusters from running into them, long strings of red marking some higher road. Delia imagines stepping out onto it, following it to see where it goes.

  Across the river a scatter of lights. The high school’s over there, and beyond that, Delia’s house, which, if she could see it, would be in a dark field, surrounded by other dark fields, lit only by the pale fruit of egrets sleeping in the trees along the bayou. Everything is so small and far away. If she went into her house right now, she imagines it would be like when she tried to put a regular-sized doll in the dollhouse her father made for her. If she went in her house right now, she couldn’t tuck her own long legs under the dinner table without flipping the thing over, the tiny plates spilling the food that will never be enough again. She imagines the clothes in her closet and sees doll clothes, her bed, a shoebox that would collapse beneath her.

  In the other direction, night is rolled out as far as Delia can see. There’s a swamp out there, she knows, and the Gulf of Mexico. Beyond that, there could be anything. More of this world or maybe another.

  When the Clackers go quiet, Delia turns and faces Chuck. She reaches over and wraps her fingers around the brass handle of the tank’s door, composes an explanation in case the tank isn’t empty. In case that matters to Chuck. But then she thinks about the darkness and the echo behind the door, a door to a place she’s already been, and lets go of the handle. Like a small bird flying into the wind, Delia’s hand migrates toward Chuck, skittering to a stop on the slope of Chuck’s waist, shaky from the trip.

  Seconds unwind in slow motion while Delia’s heart does a bangity-bang against her ribs, Clackers going too fast, too hard.

  Chuck lifts her right hand with its half finger and moves it toward her own waist, toward Delia’s hand there. Chuck will hold it, or she will move it aside.

  Delia will lean in for a kiss or turn away.

  Now.

  Or now.

  Keeping Her Difficult Balance

  Everything floats down to this place, the very end of Bayou St. John where Delia sits, her feet dangling just above the tepid water. An egret pecks at a bread wrapper that’s washed ashore. Delia is comforted by the filth of the city. She loves the fact of this bayou, which is right smack in the middle of New Orleans, surrounded by streets and houses. Not at all like the one from her childhood in the boonies of East Jesus. She tilts her head against her boyfriend—her fiancé—Calvin’s thick, bare triceps, which he flexes just a little any time he thinks someone will notice. Like now. The muscle rises where Delia’s cheek is resting on it, tugging her face into a half smile. She pulls away.

  “What you so grumpy about?” Calvin asks.

  Delia looks across the water to a group of trailers huddled along the edge of the bayou. “I hate that word,” she says. “Grumpy.” She draws out the g-r-r part of it. It’s true. She is grumpy. Who knows why.

  Calvin works at Spanky’s Automotive, right here on the bayou, and most Fridays, Delia walks down to meet him after work. Now he unbuttons the navy blue shirt of his uniform, which he has customized by cutting off the sleeves. He wipes his pits with it and sets it aside. “Better?” he asks.

  When Delia doesn’t say anything, he digs through his box of catalpa worms and baits his hook, casts his line. He knows something’s up. It seems to Delia that every time they get to a place where she might say what it is, might even say, “That’s it. We’re done,” Calvin lapses into Caveman. Mr. Twitching Muscles. Mr. Cloudy Perception.

  “Something happen at the Laundromat?” Calvin asks. A safe question. Delia has started her own Laundromat right here in Mid-City. Every day something crazy happens.

  “It’s the bridal shower,” she sighs. Her mother and aunts are throwing Delia a shower in Gremillion, where she and Calvin grew up. It’s a month off, still, but once she accepts the presents, the wedding’s a done deal. Delia’s not sure it’s a deal she wants to make. “I wish I didn’t have to go.”

  “Because of the dizziness, you mean?” Calvin asks.

  “Yeah, that’s it,” Delia says and closes her eyes against Mr. Cloudy Perception. “I don’t want to go home because of the dizziness.” A few weeks ago, while Delia was changing a fluorescent tube in the Laundromat, she fell off a ladder and hit her head. She’s been having bouts of vertigo ever since. “Calvin?”

  “You got to keep your eyes on the prize, baby,” Calvin says, cutting Delia off. “You got to stay focused on the booty, the take, the haul.”

  Delia can tell that Calvin doesn’t want to get into whatever it is that’s bothering her. “Right,” she says. “Because I’m all about the haul.”

  “That’s my girl,” Caveman says. He puts his heavy arm around Delia and pulls her to him.

  Every time Delia complains about the shower, her mother says the same thing: You and Calvin deserve a good start. Delia and Calvin have been living together for almost two years. What could they possibly need? Matching towels and kitchen appliances Delia will never use? If people want to give them a prize for fucking, Delia would rather have a stack of cash to take on their honeymoon to San Francisco. They’re going to spend a week with Calvin’s twin sister, Charlene, who everyone calls Chuck. Back in high school, Chuck and Delia were pretty close.

  Chuck and her roommate, Jin, a Chinese girl Chuck met at her job, actually live in Oakland. San Francisco is right there across the bridge, is what Chuck said. She sent a letter with pictures of her and Jin in front of places Delia can’t wait to see. Y’all come stay with us, Chuck wrote in neat square letters. We’ll tear this place up! Neither Calvin nor Delia has laid eyes on Chuck since they graduated high school two years ago. In the pictures, Chuck looks different than Delia remembers. Happier, she guesses. She signed her letter, Love, Chuck and Jin.

  Delia watches Calvin cast his line again. He swings his legs out and lets his heels smack against the cement bulkhead and then sings along with their bounce. Bow, chicka-bo
w, chicka-bow-bowww. Thinking of Chuck and the trip to San Francisco puts Delia’s mood on the upswing. She takes a deep breath and vows again to quit being so cranky with Calvin and to let his happy-man-fishing mood seep into her. She rests her cheek against his flexing triceps and follows the rising curve of his fishing pole from its base in his big hands, whose nails are never clean, to the very tip, which, from Delia’s perspective, seems to be resting among the trailers on the opposite shore. Big Luce, the woman she rents the Laundromat from, lives over there. It’s a single city block of bohemia on the water. Seven trailers curve along the bayou in a bright, white toothy smile with a single silver cap, a tiny Airstream, right in the front.

  If Delia were a quarter inch tall, she could walk up the long slope of Calvin’s fishing pole and down to the fine tip, a springboard that would bounce her right into the center of those trailers. Just like that, she could walk into some other life. In her mind, Delia descends from the fishing-pole bridge and steps into the middle of the trailers, where she takes a seat on one of the cypress stumps and waits for the artists to come out and join her. She imagines the artists telling her how they all found each other. Whether all the trailers arrived together or if maybe, one at a time, people realized they belonged there and got themselves a trailer and moved it into the circle.

  Suddenly Calvin’s arm tightens under Delia’s cheek, and he pulls back on the pole, winding in line. “I got you now, hoss!” he says, his voice going suddenly high with excitement. Scratch Calvin, and you’ll find a rosy-cheeked little boy just below the surface, one of the many things that Delia admires about him. Whenever she’s around Calvin, all the wobble goes out of the world’s orbit, and everything seems clear and easy. “It’s only as complicated as you make it, baby,” he often tells her.