Hick

by Andrea Portes

  I don’t feel struck or sad or sinful. I just feel numb, thinking about that purple rag-doll stare above me, crushing my shoulder blades down into the cold tile floor. It doesn’t seem real. It seems like some made-up schoolyard fantasy you’d try to dazzle your friends with before the bell. But when I look at Glenda’s knuckles clenching the steering wheel, I know it’s real. I know it’s real and I know I can’t go back. And if that old man don’t make it, well, there’s a piece of me that’ll be left in that little store, too. There’ll be this piece of me that no matter what I do, even if I return, even if I inspect every inch of every corner of that tile floor on my hands and knees for days, I will never, ever, get back.

  I stare out the window as the stars come on one by one. I can’t sleep. I beg Glenda to play music but she won’t budge. She is hunched over the steering wheel like a vulture, peering into the big black night.

  “What about if—”

  “Okay, look, kid, I’m gonna let you in on a little secret and listen up cause this one’ll get you through. You listening?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. Okay, there’s a trick you can do, okay? There’s a trick you do when you start doing what you’re doing now, which is dwelling. You’re dwelling. You’re stuck. Feel it? You’re stuck. You’re playing that same song over and over again about how he’s gonna die and why me why me and you’ve got that song playing on repeat, am I right or am I right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, now, I want you to put a quarter in the jukebox and change the record. Got it? You just change that record you got playing to a new song, okay? Find a different song. Something bright. Make it a good one and play that. Just change the record.”

  She looks my way and I try to pretend to get it. I try to, but honest, I ain’t sure.

  “That’s lesson three.”

  “Can we turn on the radio?”

  “Once we get to Wyoming.”

  Great.

  It is the answer to everything. Can we play music? Once we get to Wyoming. Can we count our money? Once we get to Wyoming. Can I talk yet? Once we get to Wyoming.

  It is our salvation, the light at the end of the tunnel, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Wyoming.

  Once we get to Wyoming, then we’ll be happy.

  FOURTEEN

  Somewhere in the middle of the dark night and dreaming, Glenda lets out a squeal of delight and I am awakened from my crumpled daze.

  “Seven lonely days makes one lonely week . . .”

  She is singing at the top of her lungs, speeding along, smiling like she just won the Pillsbury Bake-Off.

  “Seven lonely days makes one lonely—”

  “Ha ha! Hey kid, we made it. We made it! C’mere, kid. I wanna give you a kiss.”

  I lean forward and she grabs me by the arm and kisses my hand, clumsy.

  “Nice work, kid. You deserve an Academy Award from all those jack-offs in Hollywood. Now, I know it’s not much, not an Oscar, mind you, but here’s your cut. One thousand smackers. Don’t spend it all in one place.”

  She winks and I look up at her, rumpled and speechless.

  “That’s right kid, for only $9.95 you, too, can flop all over the ground, have an ol geezer go black on top of you and still make out like a bandit! For not one, not two, but one thousand smackers you, too, can be the pride of your hometown and flip the Joneses the bird.”

  She’s floating above me now, cackling, smiling, singing, smoking. She starts rubbing off on me, too. She was right. We’re safe now.

  We’re in Wyoming.

  “There you go, kid.” She hands me a wad of cash in a rubber band.

  I look down at my cut like someone just dropped a cockroach in the middle of my palm. This is not what I was expecting. I thought I was just the bait. Not the sidekick.

  “One thousand even. Count it. Exactly half. Down the line. You and me. Half and half. The actress and the thief. That sounds like the name of a movie. The actress and the thief. One of us would have to be a boy, though. So we could make out. Nobody wants to see a movie where people don’t make out. Anyway, you did good, kid. I’m proud of you. Next stop, we’ll get something to eat. Maybe drink, too. I could use a drink. Shit. You like whiskey?”

  “No.”

  “Holy shit! How old are you?”

  “Thirteen.”

  “Thirteen!”

  “Yup.”

  “Don’t like whiskey?”

  “Nope.”

  “What are you, some kinda communist?”

  “Nope.”

  “This country’s going to hell in a handbasket.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I mean, that’s downright un-American.”

  I nod my agreement and stash the wad of cash in my fancy stole bag.

  “Tell you what, first things first. We’ll stop. We’ll have one drink and then we’ll go get something to eat. I think it’s appropriate that we celebrate first, don’t you? I mean, we can’t have you pulling heists without a whiskey and Coke toast.”

  “Whiskey and Coke?” Great. I get to be a drunk now, too.

  “Oh, by the way, you’ve got money now. So you’re gonna have people on your ass, hounding you, trying to get it outta you. A fool and his money are easy to part. So you gotta learn. You gotta learn how to read people. You gotta figure out their angle. Cause everybody’s got an angle. Everybody. So from now on I don’t wanna see anymore bending and shuffling and hemming and hawing. Unless it’s an act. Then that’s okay. But otherwise, you gotta stand up straight and look people in the eye. You gotta see what they’re hiding. Lesson four.”

  I nod back at her, taking it in, imagining myself outwitting grifters.

  “You scared?”

  “Nope.”

  “You wanna go back?”

  “Nope.”

  “Good. Who knows? You may be some kinda disguised blessing.”

  We pull into a truck stop that’s got a bowling alley shooting out the back, attached to a bar. it’s got white chip paint with a red stripe going horizontal, all the way around. There’s a neon sign above flashing, “Blane’s Lanes,” with the B flickering on and off from “Blane’s Lanes” to “lane’s Lanes” and then back again.

  I take the circus animal barrettes out of my hair and try to look sophisticated. I am no sucker. Not anymore. I’m a sidekick. You can’t fool me no more. Glenda hands me her lipstick, ruby red. I put it on, smack my lips and tossle up my hair, like that girl on Remington Steele.

  Glenda powders her nose, lights a cigarette and looks my way.

  “Welcome to Lusk, kid.”

  FIFTEEN

  We walk in and they look at us like we’ve got rabies. It looks like the Fifties in here, orange and white with gold sprucing up the place for good measure. The bartender looks up, sees Glenda and starts shaking his head, playful. There are two fat guys sitting side by side at the bar, both in flannels with red noses like they’ve been drinking since breakfast. At the end of the bar, a skinny Mexican boy with big brown eyes sits drinking a Shasta. He peers at us over the counter, his chin resting on the bar, tilted to one side, quizzical.

  “You better fix your B before someone starts calling you Lane.” Glenda says it.

  “They already do.”

  The bartender looks me up and down. He has salt-and-pepper hair and piercing green eyes. I can’t bring myself to look at him. He looks like the kind of guy who could break up a fight, change a tire and spoon-feed his dying mother, all at once. He moves slow and doesn’t bend over himself or hunker down.

  Glenda gives him a side smile and makes a point of perusing the abandoned lanes. There’s a silence between these two. Like no one wants to show his hand.

  “Tell him your name, kid.”

  I try to look up at him but end up looking at the bar.

  “Luli.”

  “What’s that again?”

  “My name’s Luli.”

  “Hmmph. that’s a new one. Well, my name’s Blane. Pleased to m
eet ya.”

  Glenda’s watching me now, taking notes. Later she’ll tell me what I did wrong, where I blew it and not to tell my name to the barstool.

  “Well, Blane, you gonna stand there gawking or you gonna pour us a drink? Me and the kid, here, got some celebrating to do.”

  Blane looks at the little Mexican boy and makes a sign with his hand. The boy laughs. Blane nods and looks back at me. The boy grins and I look away.

  “Cat got your tongue?” I say, real smart.

  “He’s mute, Luli.”

  For the first time, I see something new in Glenda, something like quietness and resignation and wanting to fix the world but feeling helpless.

  “Got a present for ya, kid.” Glenda hands the keys to me. “Go get the you-know-what outta the car, Luli.”

  “The what?”

  “You know.” She leans in and whispers, “The bunny.”

  “Oh! Oh, yeah, okay, gotcha.”

  I go out to the car, open the door and start wrestling with the bunny in the dark. His ear gets trapped in the seatbelt, and I’m feeling pretty stupid playing outsmart with a stuffed rabbit in the middle of the parking lot. Finally I get my grip and start lugging the bunny across the dirt. it’s cumbersome and unwieldy and everything else you don’t want to do after a long day of faking epileptic fits and old men keeling over. His bunny feet are dragging on the ground, getting dusty, and I’ll probably be getting bitched at for that, too.

  I push the door open with my back and hoist the bunny over beside the Mexican boy. Glenda looks on with pride as I prop the thing up next to him, facing him in some button-eyed greeting. Blane starts to chuckle. He and Glenda seem to have some private moment of unspoken meaning that goes back to before I was born.

  I look at the mute Mexican boy. He inspects the bunny, smiles. Then he points to himself, crosses his chest and points back at me. Then he does it again. And again. I pretend not to notice. I pretend to fix my shirt. I pretend not to get it. Glenda looks at my made-up shirt-fixing and then back at the boy.

  “Well, well. Looks like you got yourself an admirer here, Luli.”

  I pretend to inspect the tile floor.

  Blane pours two whiskey Cokes, watches the boy and looks back at me.

  “I believe he’s trying to say he loves you.”

  The two fat flannels take notice and start laughing. One of them sputters out, “Looks like that bunny rabbit sure did the trick. Ha ha ha.”

  The other one slaps him on the back, laughing hard and mean.

  The Mexican boy keeps signing away, harder this time. Point. Cross. Point. Stop. Point. Cross. Point. And then again. Glenda starts chuckling along with the two flannels. Blane grins, joining in. They laugh and look over to me for an answer, expectant.

  I hesitate, mortified. If you could see my cheeks they’d be lobster-colored. I try to think of something clever, something to get the staring off me, something to separate me from the Mexican boy, to keep him and his affliction at bay. I have to swat him away before I catch whatever it is he caught that makes you have to talk with your hands.

  “You know, it’s funny.” I say, starting up. “You may not believe it, but I picked up some sign language myself, here and there, along the way.”

  And here I start my barrage of international hand signals for “Fuck you.” I start with the simple finger, then the flick off the chin, then the thumb to the nose with wavy fingers, then the arm-cross and then back to the finger. I repeat these gestures, going faster each time. I start directing them around the room, sporadic, at Blane, Glenda and the two flannels. Blane starts to laugh and the rest follow suit. I’m in. I’ve won them over. I’ve put myself far, far away from any malady I can catch from that mute.

  But the Mexican boy ain’t laughing. He looks red-eyed and stung. Luckless. He turns away and then bolts out the back.

  There’s a silence now. The flannels shrug, going back to their beer. Glenda lights a cigarette. Blane turns towards me.

  “Go apologize.”

  I look to Glenda for credit. She stares into her whiskey, jingling the ice around like she’s waiting for a train. One of the flannels chuckles silently into his beer.

  “Go apologize.”

  Glenda raises an eyebrow, swivels her seat towards me and says, “it’s your call, kid.”

  “Goddamnit, Glenda!” Blane slams his glass down onto the bar hard and stares at her, looking straight through to the back of her head.

  “That little boy’s got a name. You didn’t even tell her his name. He’s got a name, you know.” He turns to me and says real clear, “His name’s Angel. He’s not deaf. He’s not dumb. He can think like you or me. He has feelings like you or me. He just can’t talk is all. So don’t treat him like a fucking retard.”

  He starts to calm down a little, wiping the sweat off his brow. He turns back to Glenda. “Now I don’t know who your little playmate is, here, but she made quite an impression. And I want you to tell her to go apologize.”

  “Look, Blane, I brought him that fucking bunny all the way from Memphis, now just cool your jets about it—”

  “Tell her.”

  Glenda doesn’t look at me. She stares back through him, blowing smoke in his face, keeping cold.

  “Luli, go apologize.”

  Whatever this spider web is I’ve walked into, it has nothing to do with me. These looks, this staring, goes back. This is part of some unspoken rambling going back to before time. Just another fight and looky-me, thrown in the center. I feel right at home.

  I grab the bunny rabbit round the waist and drag it across the floor and out the back. I can hear the flannels snickering as the screen door slams behind me. Outside, the air smells sweet and the grasshoppers hum so loud it’s like they’re gonna take over. They buzz and buzz like they’re some unseen electric army chuffing themselves up for war.

  There’s a run-down, gray-white, one-room house sitting off to the side of the dirt patch behind the alley. Angel sits on the front porch, leaning sideways on the rail, his body bent into a lower-caser. He sees me come out but doesn’t bother to turn his neck. He looks at the moon glowing orange, low in the sky. Harvest moon. Indian summer. The leaves outside fixing to turn red, orange, yellow and then throw themselves off the trees. They got about a month to meet their maker.

  Here’s the thing I didn’t notice before. He’s tall, more intimidating than I’d clocked inside. He dwarfs me, which ain’t hard to do. But I thought he was younger or smaller or less to contend with.

  I set the rabbit up against the steps and start kicking the gravel around at my feet, playing playful. He doesn’t bite. I lean against the other railing, both of us facing out to the moon. The grass-hoppers hum through the silence, plotting their attack while we sit weak.

  “That’s a harvest moon.”

  He doesn’t say nothing. The grasshoppers buzz and buzz again. He starts dragging his shoes through the gravel, a little at a time and then more, in a pattern. I look down and suss out he’s writing some such. He finishes and it says, spelled out in gravel, “I’m mute. Not dumb.”

  I laugh. He smiles a little bit, not wanting to give in too easy.

  “You know, Angel’s a good name for you. You kinda look like an angel, like a Mexican angel.”

  I don’t have to lie or coddle or butter it up. it’s true. He’s big-eyed and dark, stick skinny, like he’s been working dawn to dusk since you could get work out of him. He’s got muscles but they’re tucked away, twined beneath and around the bone.

  “Look. I’m sorry if I made you mad. I didn’t mean to. I was just trying to make an impression or something back there. I dunno. I mean, I never met anyone who couldn’t talk before and I guess I got a little spooked.”

  He writes again in the dirt, finishes and looks up. It says, “BOO.”

  “Ha ha. Very funny.”

  We both sit there, leaning on our respective railings, looking out into the grasshopper hum and the night air, hay sweet, the moon so close, like you co
uld reach out and freeze your fingers.

  I want to apologize to him for his made-silent life. I want to ask him why. I wonder why some people get to have the world on a string and others come up with a shit sandwich and dirt for dessert. I want to make it better. There’s something about him that reminds me of my dad, helpless and still, like the air around him has to be gentle or he just might break.

  “Luli!”

  Glenda interrupts, swaggering out the back, framing herself mid-circle inside the moon.

  “Hope you don’t mind sleeping on the couch cause we ain’t leaving.”

  She throws my bag at my feet and points inside. She turns to Angel.

  “Blane said for you to make up a bed on the couch. You can sleep on the floor or make Luli sleep on the floor, either way.”

  She struts around, heads back, sensing my hesitation.

  “Well. Git. Git going.”

  “You sure, Glenda? Cause maybe we could—”

  “Is there a problem?”

  “No, it’s just—”

  “Well, good, cause you know I don’t like naysayers.”

  “Yeah, um, me neither.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  Angel heads inside the gray shack. Glenda strides back into the bowling alley. She starts laughing hard, cracking a joke. I sit there a moment, trying to get a fix on this new situation, Glenda’s bag of tricks thrown at me on the fly. I check my money in my fancy bag. Still there. I decide to trust in Glenda and the end of the day and Indian summer, most of all, and make my way over the rickety porch inside.

  I saunter into what looks like the living room and find it immaculate clean. Everything inside looks like it’s been waiting here since the Forties, placed pristine and never moved. There’s white lace doilies on the tables and Old West kerosene lamps. From the middle of the wall a cattle skull stares down in the moonlight. The wooden floor is covered with an old-style rug, trodden and ancient, burgundy battered into gray. That skull looks like it’s just waiting for you to ask for directions.