by Jesmyn Ward
“Well, then, what y’all going to do?”
Christophe scooped potato salad onto a piece of white bread in spoonfuls so big they threatened to break the plastic spoon in half. He folded the bread and then took a large bite of his potato salad sandwich before chasing it with a swallow of his own beer: the rim of the can was flecked with bits of barbecue sauce and meat, and smeared with grease.
“We going to get a job. We got a whole bunch of places we can go put applications in at. We going to make some money.”
Eze paused to wipe his hands on his napkin, and leaned back in his own chair. He’d sucked the bones on his plate clean. His voice was lower when he spoke.
“Y’all thought about what y’all going to do about a car?”
Christophe took another bite of his sandwich and frowned.
“We was gonna borrow Dunny’s car while he was at work to fill out applications until we could save up enough money to buy one. Somebody got to be selling one for cheap sometime soon. People always trying to get rid of old Cutlasses; it shouldn’t take too much money to buy one and get it running good.”
Joshua noticed Aunt Rita had closed the top of the grill and was standing behind Eze. Her arms were folded across her chest, and her head was cocked to the side. He realized she was looking at him, that she was blinking at him solemnly. Her eyes were large and dark in her face and the liquid eyeliner she’d worn at the graduation was smudged below her eyes; it made them appear bruised. Dunny picked up a beer and paused with the rim of the can to his mouth and found Joshua watching him. Dunny winked, grinned around the can, and tipped the beer back so that it hid his face.
Eze tapped his finger on the table once, twice, and then stood. He dropped his napkin so that it fell as slowly as snow to the paper tablecloth. Christophe looked at Ma-mee. She was chewing thoughtfully on the shrimp and had a small grin on her face. Shrimp were her favorite food. Away from the citronella candles and electric bulbs illuminating the trees into the surrounding darkness, Eze walked into the ascending crescendo of the raucous night, calling back over his shoulder, “Well, come on, I got something to show you.”
Christophe glanced at Joshua and widened his eyes. Joshua shrugged and stood to follow Eze. Christophe stabbed a hot link with a fork and took it with him when he pushed away from the table. Joshua waited for him to catch up. Eze disappeared around the side of the trailer where he and Aunt Rita parked their cars. Once Christophe rounded the corner, he stopped alongside his brother, who stood at the tailgate of Eze’s Ford pickup. Joshua was still. He stared past Eze’s trunk and Aunt Rita’s small red Toyota and noticed that there was another car in the hard-packed dirt driveway, a four-door, gray-blue Caprice. Eze was leaning against the hood. Joshua heard Dunny’s dog, chained to a post in the woods at the side of the house, growl and bark once, high and sharp.
“What do y’all think?” Eze placed one hand on the body and patted it twice, softly. “Your mama Cille sent me the money for it, told me to find something for y’all so that y’all could have something to drive once y’all got out of school. Bookie from over in St. Cats was selling the body for five hundred: I got a motor for six hundred, and then parts came to a little less than four. Used up all the money she sent. She said she’d been saving up for a little bit and she wanted y’all to have something dependable. I got it running pretty good, and it should get y’all to work and back.” He smiled, a glimpse of his teeth in the dark, then walked toward them and held out a key ring with four bright metal keys on it before them. “It’s a good car.”
Joshua stared at the ring that gleamed from the faint reach of the porch light. Christophe was the first to react: he plucked the key ring from Eze’s hand. Neither twin spoke until Eze cleared his throat, nodded to them almost awkwardly, and then walked away and around the trailer.
“Well,” Christophe said low, out of the side of his mouth, “I guess we know why she didn’t come.” He tossed the keys in the air; they glittered in the dim light and fell with a dull metal crush into Christophe’s palm.
“Why show up when you give us a car? Guess she’s really done, now.”
“Yeah, I guess she is.”
Joshua blinked, felt his eyelids slide heavily down, then open. He let the feeling of her absence sink to his throat, skirt his collarbone to settle in his chest, to throb stronger than it had when he had seen her dedication to them in the program. He looked away from the car. He was glad that Christophe had grabbed the keys; he would let his brother do all the driving. He knew that if he reached out to touch the metal of the hood, it would be warm as the night, insect-ridden air, warm as skin, but not so soft. Joshua spoke in a voice lower than his brother’s.
Christophe slid the key ring into his pocket. He moved to nudge Joshua with his other hand, but then seemed to remember the sausage on the fork.
“Shit.” He plucked the sausage away from the metal and then wound his arm back and threw it in the direction of the dog in the woods. It flew through the air, a dark blur, and hit the leaves of the trees with a falling rustle. The dog barked again, sharply, once. Christophe sucked the sauce from his thumb and forefinger and bumped his brother with his shoulder. He was still hungry, and while there was nothing but them and the silence and this car here, there was more potato salad and hot, spicy meat in the front, and Ma-mee was waiting for them. So, Cille hadn’t shown up, and she’d gotten them this car instead. It felt like a bribe. From the front, Christophe heard Dunny shout at one of the little kids, and an answering giggle. Christophe gnawed at a piece of jagged skin on his thumb, and thought of Ma-mee, smiling and expectant in her pressed dress waiting for them out front. This would make it easier for them. He would be grateful. “Well, we did need a car. Come on.”
Christophe turned, and Joshua followed him into the dark brush at the side of the trailer. Joshua was an inverse shadow: full where Christophe was thin. Christophe seemed more of the darkness. The dog was quiet, and Christophe hoped he had been able to find and reach the food. Under the night sounds, Christophe heard the links of its chain clink.
2
THE FLUORESCENT LIGHTS IN THE ceiling popped and sizzled: Christophe flinched and stabbed the tip of his pin into the McDonald’s application. Joshua frowned, and looked over to find the ink bled black in a smudge that vaguely resembled a tiny heart. Through the window, the dawn washed the water and the sky of the beach a pale, milky blue: the sun was a small, bright light on the horizon. Joshua loved the coastline in the morning: a small part of him always thought that God had just dipped his hand in the water and cleansed it. Ma-mee had woken them while it was still dark outside: she woke them to the tepid morning, to grits and bacon on the stove. Christophe scrawled his name across the paper in a nearly illegible sweep: Joshua knew he hated the smell of fried fat and antiseptic that suffused the air in places like this. Christophe told him that he didn’t really want to work there, but they needed something. They’d done yard work sometimes with Uncle Paul when they were in high school, but they couldn’t depend on it: the work was too sporadic. Christophe covered his mouth and nose with his left hand and scribbled with his right.
Across the table, Joshua squinted inches above the application and printed his name, their telephone number, and their address in careful, even cursive. Christophe always told him he wrote like a girl. As for work history, he placed a terse line through each open space. They had pooled the money their mother sent Ma-mee every month with what they earned doing yard work with Uncle Paul and it had satisfied them; they grew up tailoring their needs to fit the amount of expendable cash they had available. They’d coped in different ways: while Joshua would forgo Nikes and buy Reebok so he could have shoes and a new shirt, Christophe would wait and hoard his money so he could spend his portion on the latest Jordans—damn clothes.
The night before, they’d lain on their beds in their rooms and discussed their options. Both twins lay on their backs, clothed only in boxer shorts, and stared at the ceiling fan slowly revolving in circles above
their heads. The night insects had poured their insistent calling and wailing into the open screen of the window, but still the boys pitched their voices low. Their list was a dull litany of choices: McDonald’s, Burger King, Sonic, Dairy Queen, Piggly Wiggly, Circle K, Chevron, Wal-Mart, K-Mart, the dockyard and the shipyard. None of their options were in Bois Sauvage. There wasn’t much in Bois Sauvage: three convenience stores (none of which offered gas for sale), an elementary school, three Catholic churches, a park that consisted of a baseball field, an asphalt basketball court, rusty slides, swings, monkey bars and park benches, and a couple of hole-in-the-wall nightclubs that their uncle Paul frequented that served moonshine under the counter and specialized in playing dirty modern delta blues. (The twins’ personal favorite was a song called “It’s Cheaper to Keep Her.”) They needed a car to get to all of the places they were putting in applications, because they were all at least two towns over in each direction along the coast, in Germaine or Ocean Point or Lausianne, beyond the reach of Bois Sauvage and St. Catherine. In the hot air of the room, Christophe had breathed out, “Thank God Cille got us a fucking car,” then threw his arm over his head so that his armpit would cool and the sweat would dry along the elongated rigid expanse of his chest, his ribs, the hollow of his stomach and belly button. He’d started breathing hard within seconds: he was asleep.
Joshua was envious of Christophe’s ability to fall asleep like that, instantly dead to the world, free from the weight of waking life, anywhere, anytime. Once he’d fallen asleep during the eye of a hurricane that hit the year they were eight, and he hadn’t woken up until after the storm had passed. While he had slept, Joshua had stayed awake, transfixed, staring out the window at the hundred-mile-per-hour winds uprooting pecan trees from the field next to the house. Joshua stared at the ceiling, felt the fine puffs of heat from the sluggish fan, and wondered about the days to come. He didn’t really want to work at any of those places, yet he didn’t know where he did want to work. Would every night of the rest of his life be like this one: dreading the morning, the endless monotony of the repetition of days, of work that he hated, spiraling off into old age? He’d sighed and wiped a slick hand across his chest. He didn’t know, but he was tired, and the dread of these new thoughts seemed as heavy and oppressive as the heat. He had lain staring at the circling fan until he glanced at the alarm clock and saw it read three, and had blinked, all the while listening to his brother’s breath stutter into snoring in the next bed. He only realized he’d fallen asleep when he opened his eyes and saw Ma-mee standing over him. He heard the cock crowing from the chicken coop in the backyard, and felt Ma-mee’s touching his scalp as she muttered, “Wake up.”
Joshua leaned closer into the form, marked the boxes indicating he hadn’t been convicted of a felony, provided three references (Uncle Paul, Ma-mee, and his auto mechanic teacher from vo-tech), and signed his signature. He looked over at Christophe’s paper and found it wrecked. Christophe’s sprawling, furious scribble spilled across the page in wide arcs, and his words tumbled down the margin of the application at the end of each line. Joshua smiled. Christophe never could color entirely within a line. Christophe pocketed the pen and looked up and grimaced at his brother. His fingertips were stained with ink. Joshua followed Christophe to the counter, where they both slid the applications as a pair to the assistant manager, some kid with thick-lensed glasses and a large nose and broad, bony black shoulders who had graduated from St. Catherine’s High School a year before them. He palmed them and nodded at the twins. Christophe rolled his eyes. Joshua knew he had absolutely no patience for people he considered “lames.”
“We got to work at the same time because we got to share a ride. That’s why we put down the same hours for availability.”
The boy bit his lower lip and nodded. He bent to slide the completed applications in a small bin beside the cash register before speaking in a deep, gravelly voice. It surprised Joshua: he sounded like a croaking frog, like a ditch frog that called loudest after a summer storm, bloated with rain.
“I understand. I don’t know if we going to be hiring anytime soon. Most of the people we just hired on full-time been working here since before graduation.”
Joshua turned to the door and saw Christophe pursing his lips as he followed. Joshua walked to the car and leaned his forearms against it. The sun had not yet seeped in enough to make the metal burn; for that he was grateful. He kicked the door. He was anxious, and this was the first place they had visited.
Christophe narrowed his eyes as he walked to the driver’s-side door of the car and fumbled in his pocket for the keys. Here it was seven in the morning and he already felt like a smoke: he was nervous. He felt like he’d fumbled and dropped his usual charm and sense of humor as soon as he stepped into the building. The metal bar of the door handle was cool in his grip: his fingers faltered on it and slipped away as he heard a high pierced whistle. At the side of the building, a dark, slim figure lounged against the brick wall, pulled hard on a cigarette, and waved. Christophe recognized him: Charles, who’d graduated with their class on Friday, was taking a break at the side of the dumpsters. He’d twisted his visor to the side and flipped it upside down so that his afro swelled out of the top like a small balloon. Christophe walked over to him, and Charles handed him the cigarette. Christophe took a quick puff and passed it back to Charles, holding the smoke in his lungs until he could feel the nicotine lap at his chest like a small wave and settle like foam over his skin. Joshua ambled over slowly, crouched on his haunches at their side, and shook his head no at the proffered smoke.
“Y’all come up here looking for a job, huh?”
Christophe nodded.
“Man, they ain’t hiring for shit. They upped me to full-time. We been having people come by here all day. They don’t want to hire no more staff—they working the shit out of us.” The tip of the cigarette sparkled red.
“We got all day to go.” Christophe held out his hand. “It’s probably the same at all the fast-food places. Might have some luck at the dock ’cause Dunny stepdaddy said they was hiring. They don’t accept applications until Wednesday, though.”
The heat of the day was slithering across the half-empty parking lot with the ascending sun, and the smell of the warming asphalt filled Christophe’s nose along with the smoke. Joshua watched a blue station wagon and an old beaten-up red pickup truck swerve past them into the drive-through lane. Christophe passed the cigarette back to Charles and nodded at the cars.
“Breakfast crowd. It ain’t really going to let up until after lunch.” Charles’s nose widened as he smiled and laughed so that the smoke drifted out over his teeth grayish white. He had an overbite. “By that time, I done probably smoked at least two blunts.” He tossed the cigarette to the sidewalk and crushed it beneath the toe of his sneaker. “Otherwise I’d kill somebody.”
Joshua shook his head and pressed his forehead into his forearms, which were crossed over his knees.
“I hear you on that one,” Christophe said.
At Charles’s side, the door opened. The gangly assistant manager poked his head out, then a shoulder. He blinked at the three boys standing and crouching silently in the shade of the wall. He looked down at the ground and spoke.
“Charles?”
Charles crossed one leg over the other and made a point not to look at the boy when he replied.
“What, Larry?”
“We need you to finish break. Breakfast crowd coming in.” He mumbled his last bit before the door clicked shut. “It’s getting busy.”
Charles rubbed his knuckles into his eyes. Next to him on the sidewalk, Christophe heard Charles whisper beneath his breath, “Tired of this shit.”
“You know that if I had a blunt already rolled up I’d smoke with you. But I ain’t got nothing today,” Christophe said.
“It’s alright. I’m going to roll up one when I take a bathroom break in about an hour.” He swung the door open. “If y’all really want to work here, y’all s
hould call and ask to speak to Gary in about a week. He the manager that do all the hiring. Something might open up. See y’all later.”
From inside the restaurant, Christophe heard the boy with the frog’s voice intoning orders in an endless procession. Charles flipped his hat over, jammed it down on his head so that his afro parted and fell in wilted tufts like dehydrated vegetation. The door closed and Joshua raised his head.
“That’s what we got to look forward to,” he said.
“If we get hired here and Kermit the Frog’s our boss, I just might have to hit him,” Christophe said.
“Yeah, so we can get fired . . . ’cause you know I’m going to have to jump in and save your no-fighting ass.” Joshua laughed.
Christophe pulled Joshua to his feet, and Joshua walked to the car while Christophe began patting his pockets for the keys again. Joshua was staring at the pavement. Christophe spoke to the taut skin at the back of his brother’s head, his meaty, sloping shoulders.
“We’ll find something.”
“I know.”
The air was already difficult to breathe. The sun had boiled it dense so that it smelled strongly of salt and tar, and had burned the water of the gulf a dirty brownish blue. Unlocking the door and looking over the car and past his brother, Christophe studied the beach. He could see the barrier islands floating on the horizon of the water, appearing like bristling shadows of elongated reeds as they siphoned the current and blocked the clean blue-green wash of the Gulf of Mexico, blocked the water that swept up from the Caribbean, and impacted the beach that he saw with silt, with mud, with runty, dirty waves. He was calm; he was ready. As Joshua slumped and played with the stereo, Christophe turned the ignition. He hated those islands.
They visited four more places that morning: Burger King, Dairy Queen, Circle K, and Sonic. Burger King smelled like McDonald’s. The orange of the décor made the interior of the restaurant darker than McDonald’s. The boys didn’t know anyone who worked there. After they left Burger King, they rode around and ate Whoppers, shoving the napkins they hadn’t used in the glove compartment. Joshua said with a smirk, “Well, I guess the car is really ours now.” They submitted applications at Sonic and Dairy Queen. They filled half the tank at Circle K, and completed their forms on the dashboard of the car, hunched over, itching wetly against the crushed cloth of the seats. Christophe had signed his name with a flourish, tossed the pen on the seat between them, and insisted that it was too hot to ride around in the car with no air-conditioning on the job search. They’d gone home then, hiding from the hottest part of the afternoon in the living room with Ma-mee, catching the tail end of her daytime soaps and watching Jeopardy! They’d asked her to wake them up early the next morning and gone to bed after watching reruns of The Cosby Show at nine because Ma-mee loved Clair Huxtable. The twins had fallen asleep without talking.