by Billie Letts
“No, it’s here.” He went into the closet, reached behind a stack of blankets, and retrieved her purse. When he handed it to her, she was practically bouncing on the bed.
“Why’d you put it there?”
“You were so worried about it, I thought maybe I should hide it.”
Lutie checked the billfold. Empty. She shook out some loose tissues, which yielded a dime. She removed her cosmetics, a plastic claw for her hair, a broken comb, and a half stick of gum. When the purse finally looked empty, she upended it on the bed. No fake tube of lipstick filled with rolling papers; no sunglass case with a rolled-up plastic bag of pot concealed behind the cheap leather lining; no silver compact with a hidden compartment of coke.
Nothing.
“You took my stuff, didn’t you, Fate?” He could hear the familiar tone of anger building in her voice, but this time he was determined not to back down.
“If you’re talking about the marijuana, the coke, and the pills, yes. I threw them away.”
“Where?!” Now her anger was moving into rage territory.
“I threw them in a trash barrel at a QuikTrip in Arizona while Juan was inside paying for gas.”
“You had no fucking right to do that, you stupid little prick. It was mine!”
“Well, it’s not yours now, and you might have a hard time hooking up with a pusher out here.”
“Don’t bet on it, asshole.”
“Lutie, this is the time, the perfect time, for you to get yourself straightened out. You’ve been off that crap for days now.”
“No, you fool, I’ve just been taking a different kind of dope that you and Juan gave me all the way from Vegas to right here in Boondock, America. And then Mama Simple took up where you left off. Can’t say they’d be my drugs of choice, but they gave me a nice buzz before they knocked me out.”
Lutie shifted into a different position on the bed, pushed the whole mess she’d taken from her purse into a pile, and began to conduct one more thorough examination with the thought that she’d missed something. Something important. And she had.
“Where are Floy’s keys?”
“In her car.”
“And where the hell is her car?”
“Juan left it in Las Vegas. Said he was afraid it wouldn’t hold up for the trip.”
“So you just let him walk away from our car?”
“It wasn’t ours anyway. It was Floy’s.”
“Yeah, and she probably needs it about now, huh?”
“Lutie, I didn’t know what to do. You were hurt. Hurt bad. I thought you might die. But here was a man who offered to help us, so . . .”
Fate sat down in the rocker and ran his hands through his hair as she’d seen him do hundreds of times before.
“Well, what’s done is done,” she said. “We can’t change that. And by now, Floy’s car’s been stripped or stolen or hauled off to the junkyard or a police compound. So we’re going to have to figure out another way to get around.”
“To get around where?”
“Vegas, stupid. Las Vegas. We’ve got to stay on the move or—”
“Lutie, maybe going back there, back to Vegas, isn’t our only choice. Have you thought of that?”
“Where do you want to go?”
“I don’t know. But why can’t we stay here for a while? We’re not in any special danger here, are we?”
“Fate, by now we’ve broken so many laws, they can send us to prison if they find out who we are.”
“They? You mean these circus people?”
“No. The law.”
“But we’re not even sure the law is looking for us. And if they are, why would they be looking down here in Oklahoma?”
“Fate, I hope you don’t think I’m going to make my home here in Circusville, U.S.A.”
“But it wouldn’t hurt for us to stick around here for a while, would it? Just until we decide where we want to go. Besides, it’s better than living in a car or staying in a motel like the Gold Digger. We’re clean, we get three meals a day. And we’re safe, Lutie. We’re safe.”
“Fate, I’m not going to settle for being safe. I’m going to be somebody. And that damn sure ain’t gonna happen here in Dorktown.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Though Fate’s day had started off badly—a confrontation with Lutie was never a good beginning—he decided to let it go. To dwell on the ugly, hurtful words she’d spat at him would change nothing between them, but it could spoil his time with Johnny if he kept thinking about what she’d said.
After Dub learned that Fate had never fished before, he decided to go out with the boys to anchor his old johnboat over the hole he baited every New Year’s Day with their Christmas tree. Both he and Johnny had taken some monster crappie from the spot, and the occasional bass or catfish, too.
Knowing that Fate would be unfamiliar with the awkward feel and sometimes stubbornness of a rod and reel, he tied a couple of cane poles to the side of the boat. After they gathered up the minnows they’d captured yesterday, and a can of worms they’d dug when Fate arrived, they set out with the lunch Katy had packed them and had their lines in the water ten minutes later.
For the first hour or so, Johnny caught a couple of crappie and Dub caught three, plus a two-pound bass. Fate lost six hooks, broke his line four times in the brush beneath the boat, and cast twice into a weeping willow tree at the edge of the bank.
His first catch of the day was the jeans he was wearing; his second was Johnny’s cap, which caused Dub to exchange Fate’s rod and reel for one of the cane poles he’d been wise enough to bring along.
Fishing now with live bait was a different ball game. Fate was so squeamish about baiting his hook with a worm that he tried several times to do it with his eyes closed. The result? Some punctured fingers. But after he landed his first fish, a perch about five inches long, he learned to thread a worm onto a hook with more ease and less pity. The trick, he decided, was not to think of the worm’s mom.
Once, at Dub’s suggestion, he tried to bait a minnow, but it slipped from his fingers into the water. He held a firmer grip on the next one he grabbed from the minnow bucket, but when he realized that he’d hooked the tiny fish in the eye, he went back to worms. Unfortunately, the image of a blind minnow swimming helplessly somewhere in the lake came to his mind several times during the day.
They started in on the lunch Katy had prepared for them a little early, so by ten o’clock not even a crumb of angel food cake was left in the basket.
They fished through the afternoon; their stringers grew heavy with fresh fish, but it was thirst that finally forced them to head in. They’d been as greedy with their bottled drinks as they had been with the sandwiches, pickles, potato salad, chips, and cake.
Dub cleaned the fish at a makeshift sink with a garden hose hooked to it behind the house, performing a special kind of postmortem procedure that Fate didn’t care to watch.
So while they had time, before the sun set, Johnny took Fate to his secret spot, a tree house he’d built himself. The steps were sturdy lengths of scrap wood Mr. Wooten had given him at the lumberyard. Each piece, about sixteen inches long, had been nailed every foot or so from the bottom of an ancient misshapen tree to nearly the top, a sixty-foot wild oak that Johnny claimed to be a hundred years old.
The “house” he’d built near the top felt secure, but Fate, not crazy about heights, didn’t spend much time looking down.
The room—the only room—wasn’t tall enough for either boy to stand in, but Johnny had bought two old beanbag chairs at a garage sale for a dollar each, so the “accommodations,” as Johnny liked to say, “were pretty danged comfortable.”
He’d tacked up three pictures of Playboy Bunnies on the walls and a newspaper clipping of his T-ball team. He had an orange crate turned on its side to serve as a library for his books—all sci-fi—and from behind the crate he took out his collection of treasures, which he kept in a lidded tin box that had once held cookies, according to
the logo stamped on the lid.
But now it held unique marbles, rusted keys, a packaged condom, a robin’s egg, an empty brown medicine bottle, an antique glass doorknob, a girl’s pair of pink underpants, a broken pocket watch, a school picture of a girl with a ponytail, and a letter he’d written her but never sent.
“Do you love her, Johnny?”
“I saw her feet once. She was barefoot, playing in mud with her little brother. Mud squishing between her toes, her nails painted pink. She has the prettiest feet I’ve ever seen, so yeah, I guess I might love her.”
“Did you tell her?”
“Heck, no! And you’re the only person I’ve ever told, so if anyone finds out . . .”
“Sure. It’s our secret, then. Forever.”
They fumbled a handshake they’d seen basketball players use on TV, but they messed it up so badly that they fell back on their beanbags, laughing. Fate laughed so hard, he had to work to regain his breath. But he didn’t care.
He had a friend, his first—a best friend who took him to his tree house and showed him his secret love letter.
He couldn’t remember ever feeling so happy before in all his life.
“Now, let me show you the best of all.” From beneath the treasure box, he removed a magazine called Sizzle, which was full of girls advertising themselves as dates. Some wore panties and bras, some just panties, and some were entirely naked—one with gigantic breasts, both held to her mouth so she could kiss the nipples.
“I didn’t know girls did that,” Fate said.
“Well, there’s the proof.”
As Johnny turned the pages and the boys pored over the photos, several crowded onto each page, Fate saw a naked girl with small breasts posed on a chair with her head tilted back, her mouth open as she touched herself “down there.” The girl in the picture was Lutie.
Since Johnny paid more attention to one of the girls with her butt pointed to the camera, Fate hoped he wouldn’t recognize Lutie when he finally met her. But just to be sure, when they heard Dub call to them from the house, Fate lagged behind his new, best friend and carefully tore out the page with Lutie’s picture and folded it into his pocket.
The happiness he’d felt moments earlier was replaced now by dread.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
AFTER DINNER WITH the Conner family, Dub helped the kids put up the tent in the backyard while Katy brought out sleeping bags and pillows. Johnny found two flashlights and sent Fate to the shed for insect spray.
The boys said good night and headed outside with Boggle, Scrabble, a stack of comic books, chips, cans of sodas, and what was left of Katy’s pie.
“Hey, are you all moving out or just planning on spending the night?” Dub asked.
“Just one night, Dad.”
“Well, don’t stay awake all night. You can help me fix some fence early tomorrow. I’ve got to go to Ardmore in the afternoon.”
“Okay.”
“Maybe I can help you,” Fate said.
“You don’t want to do that,” Johnny said. “He only pays two dollars an hour. Not even minimum wage.”
“Oh, you don’t have to pay me. I don’t have anything else to do.”
“Then you’re hired. Good night.”
As soon as the boys got settled in the tent, Fate said, “Listen. Just listen to that.”
“What? I don’t hear anything.”
“Night sounds. It’s so quiet out here you can hear the tree frogs, crickets, locusts.”
“My dad loves those sounds, too.” A minute later, Johnny said, “Tell me about your dad. What’s he like?”
“Oh.” Fate took some time here; he had a decision to make. Finally, he said, “He’s quiet. Real quiet.”
“And your mom?”
“She’s a lot like yours. She’s pretty, she likes to cook, I think, and she’s crazy about my dad. She worries too much, though, about me and Lutie.”
“Mothers are funny that way, aren’t they? The first time I rode an elephant, my mom went ballistic.”
“You rode an elephant? Wow. I’d like to do that.”
“If you come with the circus next season, chances are you might get to if your mom’ll let you.”
“What do you do in the circus, Johnny?”
“Once the tent is up, I help with the bleachers, the seats, the ring curbs, then I sell big top novelties before and after the show. I ride a horse in the spec and I—”
“What’s a spec?”
“Spectacular. It’s the introduction when all the performers and all the animals except the cats parade around the rings. I’ve gotten to do some clowning when they need me, and I help break down when the show is over. My mom does stunts on horseback. She’s really good, too. Seems like she communicates with the horses. My dad, he’s the troubleshooter. If anything goes wrong in traveling, setting up, the performance, or breaking down and reloading, it’s his responsibility to get the problem fixed. And fast.”
Johnny paused just long enough to catch his breath. “Hey, you want to play some Scrabble?”
“Okay, but I’m warning you, I’m really hard to beat.”
“Yeah, we’ll just see about that.”
Fate won both games before Johnny said, “I’m not sure you’re that good. Could be you’re just lucky. Luckier than a three- peckered billy goat. That’s what my dad would say. I’ve got to take a leak.”
“Me, too.”
“Come on.”
Fate followed Johnny to a rock ledge about twenty feet away from the tent. Then Johnny said, “Hold on.” He went back, grabbed two of their empty soda cans, scrambled down the ledge, and set the cans up on wooden fence posts about three yards away, then went back to where Fate waited.
“Here’s the rules: The one that pisses closest to his can wins. And if you knock it down, you get a prize. Ready?” Johnny asked.
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” Both boys pulled their penises out of the flies of their pajamas as Johnny counted, “One—two—three—go!”
Fate was the fastest starter, but the best he could manage was about two feet short of his can. Johnny, with more pressure, hit his can and knocked it over.
“Yes!” he yelled, pumping his fist in the air like a pro athlete.
“You win,” Fate said.
“Then that makes us even.”
“Huh-uh. I won two Scrabble games, you won only one pissing contest.”
“Yeah, but the night’s not over. We might have to pee again. But we have to do it before my mom gets up. My dad wouldn’t care. Hell, he’d probably try to beat us both, but my mom would think it was sinful.”
“Do you believe that, Johnny?” Fate asked as they crawled back into the tent. “That it’s a sin?”
“Peeing to hit a can? No way. But there’s other things I think are sinful. Like killing someone or committing adultery, but I don’t think I have to worry about that till I get married.”
“What about telling a lie?”
“A fib or a really big lie you’d tell your folks or your best friend?”
Fate was quiet for a while, then he said, “Johnny, I’ve got a confession to make.”
“I hope you haven’t killed anyone.”
“No. But I lied to you about my mom and dad.”
“What? Are they divorced?”
“No. They’re both dead.”
Johnny sucked in his breath. “You mean you and your sister are orphans?”
Fate paused, looked away, then nodded.
“Is that why you’re with Juan Vargas?”
“Yeah.”
“So he brought you here because of his grandma? Mama Sim?”
“Because of his whole family, I guess, except for his father.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Some trouble he had with his dad a long time ago. So he plans to leave before the circus comes back. Before he has to see his dad again.”
“Then where will you go when Raynoldo comes back?”
&n
bsp; “I don’t know. If I had my way, I’d stay here. I think with a little practice I could take you in a pissing contest.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
LUTIE HAD JUST finished her shower, put on her pajamas, and gotten into bed with one of the books Essie had left with her. At first, Lutie had put them in a drawer in the nightstand, never intending to open the drawer or the books, but today, sleepless and bored, she’d pulled one out and started to read.
By the time she quit reading that night, she’d read almost a hundred pages. She’d lost herself in the story, a kind of magic to become someone else, to be living a life not her own, to be in a place she’d never been before.
An escape.
She’d also discovered that she didn’t have to read about a princess or a famous singer or a spoiled rich girl. For instance, in Plainsong, the main character was seventeen-year-old Victoria Roubideaux, who was pregnant, broke, and alone. A girl even worse off than Lutie herself.
In many ways, Lutie found that Victoria was not so different from herself, except for the pregnancy. At least Lutie didn’t have that to worry about. She hoped.
She was so charmed by the girl’s name that she said it out loud just to hear the sound, though she might have liked it even more if she had not pronounced the last name “Rowbeedux.”
After she’d readjusted the pillows and turned off the bed light, she didn’t hear the faint raindrops fall because Mama Sim had been running her bathwater.
Mama Sim closed the shade in the bathroom, took off her blouse and bra, then bent over the sink to wash her face. As she reached across the mirror for a hand towel, she glimpsed her reflection and wondered, as she often did, who that old woman was staring back at her.
If Gilberato were still alive, but hadn’t seen her since 1979, the year he died, would he recognize her should they cross paths? If she were paying her check for the dinner she’d eaten alone at El Tequila’s, their favorite restaurant in Austin, and if she’d dropped some coins he would pick up and put in her palm, would he know who she was, would he say her name, whisper, “Simona,” over and over the way he had each time they’d made love?