Hick

by Andrea Portes

  I swallow hard and find my resolve, turning back to the station for a moment.

  I stand paralyzed. But then I remember Glenda watching me from her bubble, my new way out, and, like a magnet, she pulls my head up. Like a magnet, she pulls my head up and tells me to forget about Elvis-style cowboys and getting swept off my feet and waiting for a hero on a palomino horse cause he’s not coming, no way, no how, it’s all on you now, kid, don’t forget it.

  I walk up to the station and there’s too much hullabaloo to know your way round and you could just run right back out and run into the street and that’d be that. Everything here is gray and big and stone and crowded but I make my way through to the tickets and wait wait wait until there’s a big pink face in front of me talking.

  “Where to?”

  “Omaha.”

  “What?”

  “Lincoln?”

  “Well, which is it?”

  “Well, do you got a bus that goes to Lincoln?”

  “There’s a three-fifteen to Omaha, drops you off in Lincoln seven a.m.”

  “Leaves right now?”

  “Three-fifteen.”

  “Oh, okay. Well, okay. I’ll take that.”

  She sighs and I feel like everybody heard me say Lincoln and now I’m just a hayseed from the sticks shuffling. Put your head back up, Luli. Glenda’d have this place cased by now. Stop sulking.

  I count out the money, low, keeping it out of sight. You never can tell. Be like Glenda. Keep it hush. Keep it secret.

  The lady hands me the ticket and I go searching through the crowd for a payphone. I find one in the back and dial the Alibi. It rings and rings and I’m just about to give up but then Ray answers the phone and it’s like the Lord himself just dialed them up to say grace.

  “Oh, Luli, Jesus!”

  Oh, boy, here we go.

  “Tammy! Tam! it’s Luli. it’s Luli on the phone!”

  Now there’s a scuffle and too much noise and glasses clanking.

  “Oh my God, Luli! We been worried sick. Just sick with this. When you coming home? Where’s your daddy?”

  “Um, Mama, I don’t know where Daddy is but I’m coming home soon. I’ll be there tomorrow. Tomorrow morning at seven.”

  “Oh, that’s great. That is the best thing ever. Oh my God, Luli, you are never gonna believe this. . . . I sold it! I sold it all to Lux! And now they’re gonna build a Wal-Mart! Can you believe it? They’re gonna build a Wal-Mart, right here in Palmyra!”

  “But what about—”

  “I’ve got money now, Luli. Hey, maybe you could even work at the Wal-Mart! They got real good jobs there. And when your dad gets home maybe he could work there, too. Hell, we could all work there! Cept me. I ain’t working there.”

  “Mama, can you get me at seven?”

  “Huh?”

  “Seven a.m. The bus leaves me off in Lincoln.”

  “Oh, well that’s a little early, honey . . .”

  “Okay.”

  “Speak up, Luli, I can’t hear you—”

  “I gotta go, Mama. The bus is leaving—”

  “We’re having a little bit of a celebration here, Luli, so—”

  “I love you.”

  “What?”

  “I said, will you pick me up?”

  “Ray!” Tammy laughs. “You are such a stitch—”

  “Mama?”

  The phone goes click and that’s that I guess.

  If I could make Tammy young again, if I could make her not hate me, if I could make us like the people on TV, if I could bring my dad home, if I could bring her baby boy back, if I could hold her in the palm of my hand, gently, gently . . . I would.

  But that would be like pulling the sun out of the sky and begging it to leave the moon.

  I walk down the station to the bus, idling. it’s a simple gray bus, just like the station, just like just about everything in Denver. I get in and it’s like everybody’s been in there for a thousand years and plans to be there for a thousand more. We sit there, idling, getting hot, restless, until finally we pull out the station and out the city, you can watch this patch and that patch and that one, too. This place is just spreading out. New signs. New stores. New concrete.

  And then it hits me, it hits me like someone screwed the top of my head off and placed a diamond pristine in the center of my brain . . . and I know, I know right then and there, that now comes the end of the West. Now comes the end of dusty roads and creaky woodsheds and leaning old farms turning gray. Now comes the end of gravel and hay bales and used-up barns smelling of horses.

  And I think about that big blue whale of a Wal-Mart with Corn Pops and Crisco and aisles and aisles of new and improved soap.

  And I see every moment of my stupid life, from the jingle-jangle of the wind-chimes to the other fella grinning to the click click click of Mama’s heels down the stairs and my dad laughing tipsy up the porch. I see every moment of my cracker-eating, stomach-grumbling, feet-swinging-out-the-barn days and I want to hurl myself onto the ground and kiss the floorboards. I want to wrap my arms around my house and kick off time. I want to throw myself onto the backyard soil and stop the earth from turning. I want to grab each day I burned to the ground up in handfuls. I want to kiss the dirt and beg it to come back to me, come back to me, before that dull machine comes crushing over our house, turning walls into scraps and scraps into dust. Come back to me before the concrete comes bleeding out from the city, past this house and the next, tumbling out, ruthlessly, inevitably, past the plains and into the horizon.

  Come back to me.

  FORTY–TWO

  Somewhere between old Denver and new Denver, I get up from my seat and hurl myself forward past the fat calves and the Frito-Lay wrappers and the chocolate pudding kids. Somewhere outside of Denver I plant myself square next to the driver until he looks up, can’t help it.

  “I gotta go back.”

  “Look, kiddo, why don’t you—”

  “I gotta go back. I left my medicine in the station and if I don’t take it within fifteen minutes I’ll die.”

  “Look, kid, you don’t—”

  “I am not kidding. I am an epileptic and if I don’t take my medicine I am gonna have a seizure and oh my God, I think I’m having one now . . .”

  Before they know it I am on the ground, flopping around like a dead fish, just like Glenda taught me. Think of a lemon. Think of a lemon. Flop. Flop. Flop.

  They are swarming round me now, screaming, hollering, praying to the good Lord oh Jesus Christ almighty. I even got a preacher leaning over me, saying the Lord’s Prayer over and over, add in some Hail Mary’s. Pandemonium. Anarchy. Cats are marrying dogs right there in the aisle.

  We get to Denver in ten minutes flat and the preacher walks me out to the station. He’s not saying much but I’m still shaking it off. Pretend recover. Pretend recover.

  “Okay, Father. I think the worst has passed.”

  “That so?”

  “Father. The Lord is with me. I thank you for your assistance but . . . God is my copilot. You go back to your . . . flock. And I’ll be safe. I’ll be safe here in the hands of Jesus.”

  “Yeah, I imagine you will.” He nods, turns towards the bus. And I’ll be damned cause he starts to chuckle and shake his head. He chuckles himself all the way back to the bus, none too churchy.

  Well, don’t that just beat all.

  There’s a pitch-black bus that says Los Angeles in bright pink letters, like the letters themselves are having the time of their life and you can come to the party too, just get on. The air’s blowing out the bus, ice cold. I step on board and don’t even have a ticket. Hell, Glenda’d probably just ride the bumper.

  “You got a ticket, Miss?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, you need to have a ticket.”

  “How much is the ticket?”

  “Seventy-five dollars. But it’s too late.”

  “How bout eighty dollars?”

  “Too late.”

 
“How bout eighty-five and a six-pack of Coors?”

  “Deal.”

  “Thanks.”

  I grab a seat right up front and take out the name Beau gave me. it’s a funny name, too. Bryn Kluck. 2312 Rhonda Vista. 363-821-1539. He even drew a little map, added cab fare from the station and a note of introduction. He put smiley-faces and arrows all over the map and drew a giant picture of the sun with sunglasses. He drew orange groves and a Hollywood sign and a few stars. He even drew that little school with the hobbit huts and a little girl in a beret.

  See, here’s how it is:

  There’s the look-back way where you could think about that old house in Palmyra and want to pull the planks out the floorboards or rip your hair out in clumps, fist by fist. You could stare backwards and want to tear your eyes out their sockets and the skin off your bones, inch by inch. You could shake your knuckles at the sky. You could get mad and say, I don’t got nothing. You could get stuck. Watch yourself. Watch yourself. Be careful. Just watch.

  You could get mad and say why me why me, you could play that song over and over till you’re blue in the face. You could scream at the sun to give you your dad back. You could plant yourself square in the mud and drop your head down and never ever ever come back again. Or you could do like Glenda. You could do like Glenda and put a quarter in the jukebox and say, I’m gonna get myself a new song. I’m not looking back playing that same old song no more. I ain’t gonna spend my life staring at my socks, slouching to a chorus of mighta coulda shoulda woulda. No sir. I’m gonna get myself a new song called I’m gonna make something. it’s gonna be a hit. I’m gonna grab the dirt and make something and you just wait, you just wait. I’m gonna grab the dirt and make something and make it go boom.

  Boom.

  Acknowledgments

  I must thank my brother, Charles de Portes, more than anyone, as he’s the only one who actually believed in me and supported me all of these years, when most people had written me off as a sort of glorified degenerate. Of course, a close second is my amazing mom, Nancy Brazie-Kuhnel, who succeeded in giving me, somehow, one of these so-called “hearts.” If it hadn’t been for you, mom, I would’ve taken my rightful place as the second female serial killer of all time. Third runner-up thank you goes to Brad Kluck, who has essentially been feeding and watering me for the past decade. I wouldn’t have made it without the gourmet meals, the dumb skits and the vodka I have forever been stealing from you. Now, very special thanks to Sally Van Haitsma and Fred Ramey. You two made this novel happen, undeniably. Also, I must thank my father, Alejandro Portes, Eulalia Portes, Arlene and Chuck Brazie, Lisa Portes, Patricia Portes, Doug Kuhnel, Nancy and Bobby Kuhnel, Carlos Murillo, Jenna Curtis, Jane King, Super A, Mira Crisp, Melinda Hill, Natasha Leggero, Trevor Kaufman, Stuart Gibson, Virginia Savage, Mac Talkington, Julie Castiglia, Caitlin Hamilton Summie, Megan U. Beatie, Michael Faella, Jim Thomas, Michael Solano, Courtney Holt and Mitchell Frank. Ok, there’s some nice couples who’ve taken care of me in my time of woe: Eliot and Alessa Angle, Eric and Abigail Wald. Life-savers. God bless you. And, of course, Simon Eldon-Edington, Carty Talkington, Duncan Trussell, Niels Alpert, Alex Vendler and Silas Weir Mitchell. Thank you.