Someone To Crawl Back To

by Phillip Gardner

  I ran as hard as I could through the thick, soggy grass. She wasn't moving. I fell to my knees beside her. She was crying like a little girl. I reached down for her. But she pushed my hand away and tried to kick me in the shin when I stood.

  At second base, I put my hand around her waist, and she put one hand on my shoulder. She was crying again, giving it up in little lurches. And I was crying too, but I turned away so she wouldn't see.

  By the time we got to the mound, a thick mist covered everything. We were both soaked. I took her hand at home plate. She waited as I opened the truck door for her and didn't say a word as she slid onto the seat.

  The cab windows were already foggy from the heat of Rita's body by the time I shut the door behind me. The rain had begun again.

  I dug for my keys.

  We sat without a word; then I reached for my wallet. It was sopping wet.

  “Here,” Rita said, offering me a dry five dollars from her straw bag.

  When old Miss Brantley came to the screen door, I'm sure she didn't recognize me. I held up the five and asked if she'd mind leaving the lights on for a while. She smiled, then slowly nodded as if there was something pleasing playing in her head, turned and walked back down the long hall.

  The rain was really coming down now, and I had to rely on memory to make my way across the darkness that was Miss Brantley's backyard, past the canopy grapevine to the narrow bridge that crossed the wide, deep, rushing ditch, over to the lighted diamond. I turned my head against the rain and followed my own steps back toward the field. I'd crossed the third base foul line before I looked up to see Rita, sitting on the bench alone, in the bright light with the rain pouring down, waiting for me. She turned and I saw her wet face, her eyes in that light. Twenty years disappeared.

  We'd have another hour or more to search for the keys, I thought. There was a chance that we'd find them, both of us really looking with all we had, taking our time. We might find them.

  But the odds were against it.

  Sunspots

  Robyn Couch

  I'm supposed to get off at three a.m., but the other girl who works the drive-thru hardly ever gets here on time. I've quit asking her why. The fact is I can use the overtime, and it's hard for me to sleep anyway. The exit I take is only about twelve miles down, so I don't really mind the extra wait. It's always a quiet drive, especially after listening to the squawking of those little speakers for nine or ten hours, and I like it. I don't even turn on the radio, usually. And of course it's real dark, and there's nothing to take my eyes away from my headlights. Except on those nights when there's a breakdown. Strange thing is, some nights you'll see three, maybe even four vehicles pulled over. Sometimes they have their blinkers on—which is kind of spooky—sometimes not. I look for people who may be stranded, but there's never anybody there. I can't figure out why, on just certain nights, there would be so many breakdowns. It's not something you can blame on the weather.

  My daddy says it's sunspots. He quit selling CBs a couple of years ago because he said there was going to be a fit of sunspots that would ruin everybody's reception. Sunspots, he says. I think it's something else.

  Hardly anybody likes working the drive-thru, especially the graveyard shift. You have to listen with concentration, and sometimes you have to figure out what people want. Sometimes they don't speak toward the speaker, sometimes they don't talk like people from around here, sometimes they just don't know what they want. It's important to get it right. The drive-thrus get madder than the walk-ins if you make a mistake. The owner—Cale Yarborough, the race car driver—says the front office don't care all that much that people love the food. It's making them mad you don't want to do. So some people don't last long at the drive-thru. I've been on it for two years though.

  My trick is to learn everything on the menu. Not just what it is, but how it sounds. Then you try to think of all the possible ways to say a thing. It keeps your mind alert to try to hear all the possible ways people end up saying things. That's my secret anyway.

  I like it too because I don't have to look busy when I'm not. I don't have to wipe down the counters, or change the oil for the fries, or mop the floors till the end of my shift. My window faces out at Interstate 95, and sometimes I sit for long stretches and watch the headlights of people on their way somewhere. Sometimes I daydream.

  Another reason why the other girls don't like working the drive-thru is because of the customers we get real late—tired old folks from New York or Florida or spoiled teenagers, or drunks who talk in Donald Duck voices. They don't get to me though. Sometimes I meet some pretty interesting people, really. You would be surprised how much you can tell about a person in the time it takes them to dig up correct change. You can look down in their car and tell all sorts of things about them. Whether they like things neat and clean, what kind of music they like by their tapes, what they smoke if they smoke. Where they have been or where they are going.

  All of life passes by the drive-thru. I've had newly-weds with shaving cream all over their car order Cherry Cokes, and couples on their way home with a new baby order milkshakes. Once a hearse came to the window, fully loaded, and another time I saw a pistol under a grocery bag on the seat of a Cadillac with New Jersey tags. People who have been crying always order coffee.

  Some days I'll decide I'm going to look every customer square in the eye. It's like a project. Some don't like it and look away. But others smile or say hello. I don't stare, you know. I just say to myself, you got eyes, look at somebody's eyes. And it is like that message travels down to people in their cars. There's something about looking at people. There's something to it.

  Sometimes, more often than you'd think, you can tell if they are happy people or not. You'd be surprised how easy it is. You can tell how a man and woman look at each other. Or don't. How they talk to their kids, if they do. Most times it's like being invisible when you stand at that window and look down into people's cars. You can tell a lot about them, you really can. Some you like instantly. You don't know why, but you do. A young man will sit there unfolding money—he might be going north or going south—and I know I'd like him and I say, “Traveling?” And he'll smile and tell me where he's going to or coming from. Usually, that's all there is to it. But other times I'll still be thinking about him when he leaves the access ramp and joins the traffic. Sometimes longer.

  I took the job after Houston left. He sent money for a while. But not long. And Momma finally agreed to keep April for me so long as it was when she was sleeping. So this is really perfect. I've got my high school diploma. I could probably do better, but for now I'm doing okay.

  Houston used to say there were things he wished he could say to me but he just couldn't. That didn't make sense to me. I don't know why it should be so hard. Either you love somebody or you don't. And if you love somebody you just open your mouth and say so, and if you don't you got the same mouth to say it with. He never said he didn't love me. He just left. Some say it was having April. I think it was something else.

  People up North are surprised that it gets really cold this far south. But it does. I don't look forward to working then. I never seem to get warm at the window. When I first started, I'd go out a few minutes before getting off work and warm up the car. But it really is a waste of gas money. I only live twelve miles away. But those are some cold nights, when you are cold all the way through and your teeth clack. I still think the heater will someday warm up, but for now the blower just blows cold air.

  It's the bridges that ice over first. Funny, it's warm here most of the time, but those signs, Bridge Ices Before Road, are always up as reminders. True, we don't get much snow. What we get is ice. Ice is worse. Ice is more dangerous. It's ice what does the damage. What you have to look out for.

  It's on these nights that I ought to stop when I see a car pulled over. Somebody could freeze to death. It's happened before. But I don't. It's not that I'm really afraid. Sure it's spooky. But I'm not really scared of much. I wish I'd stop
. But I don't. I can't say why.

  I try to decide what I'm going to think about on the drive home before I clock out, button up my car coat, pump the accelerator twice and hit the starter. It helps to have that in my head before I go to the car. Then when the cold gets to my bones, I steer my mind back to that thought. I used to think about Houston and me a lot the first winter I worked here, and about how things were when we very first got married.

  But I hardly ever think about him now. Really. But sometimes I do think that if I met a guy and if I came to fall in love with him, I would sure say so. It just don't seem that complicated to me. Maybe it's where I come from. But to me, saying I love you just isn't that hard to say. I think it makes me a happier person.

  Flat-Out

  Evander Baker, Robyn Couch, and Marion Walker

  Iwalked out of church after Wednesday night prayer meeting and saw that somebody had slashed the tires on my Corvette. I'd parked it off a ways under the bare branches of a ragged water oak, out near the road, safely away from the other cars. When the prayer service was done, I stepped out on the landing to have a cigarette. That's when I saw the 'vette all hunkered down on the ground, moon shadows falling across the car like a hungry spider clutching and sucking the life from it. I wanted to kill somebody.

  The next day, I called my sister Maurine and told her about the tires. Her TV was up, and I could tell by her end of the conversation that she wasn't paying me any mind. At one point, I just listened to her TV. Neither of us spoke for what must have been five minutes. Then she started crying and I hung up.

  After I reported the crime to my boss at HAPPY VIDEO, I went outside and sat on the trailer steps with a glass of tea. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. It would have been a good day for riding around. I slid my fat ass over to the corner of the steps out of the wind and leaned back into the light and fell asleep.

  Everything was gray when I woke. My face was cold and the step I'd been laying against had left a deep cleft in the small of my back. I grabbed the rail to raise myself up. Before I could get to my feet, my sister pulled into the drive. She brought chocolate chip cookies, and we buried them in the backyard.

  Maurine put me in a bad mood right off by insisting I dig the hole as near the septic line as possible. The ground was damp and warm from the sewer water, and I dug in big chunks. When I lifted the shovel, it made sucking sounds and sent the smell straight up my nose. Then to make things worse, Maurine tossed her cigarette butt in the hole, which sort of pissed me off. It just didn't seem right. I dished the cigarette filter from the bottom of the hole and gave Maurine a wicked look.

  “Goddammit, Evander, I'm making a statement here,” she said.

  From habit I looked for fishing worms, but this was February.

  When I was done, Maurine laid her head way back slowly and spoke to the gray sky with her eyes shut. “Valentines Day,” she said, dragging out each letter, their sounds rising and falling exactly as if she were saying, Oh Mighty One. “Valentines Day,” she said again in that sweating and crying voice.

  The hole was almost two feet deep, more than enough grave for a bag of cookies, so I speared the shovel into the ground. She was still communicating with the spirits, head back, eyes closed, the cookies clutched against her tits. It was getting to be just a little bit too much show. “Hand'em here,” I said, reaching for the bag. She looked down at the chocolate chip cookies like they were a puppy or something and kind of shied away from me.

  “Suit yourself,” I said. I turned and slapped the handle of the shovel, sending it to the ground, and started back toward the trailer. “Evander!” she cried out. She was holding the cookies at arm's length. I snatched the bag, slam-dunked it into the hole, and in three scoops had the stinky dirt back where it belonged. Maurine stood with her back to me.

  “There,” I said, dragging the shovel behind me as I passed her. She was looking down at her feet like somebody had just pissed on her shoes, her lip all poked out.

  It was a sad sight.

  “Come on, honey,” I said softly to Maurine. “Let's have a liquor drink.” She squeezed up her cheeks and big tears bubbled out. “I never even opened the bag,” she said, choking out every word. I put my arm around her shoulder and we started inside.

  Maurine sat at the kitchen table mopping her eyes with a wad of toilet paper as I poured. “Look,” I said, “why don't I come over to your trailer before it gets dark and help you get the Christmas lights down from the satellite dish?”

  “Thank you, honey,” she said, taking the drink from me. “I just don't think I'm ready yet, though. Steve and me, we put those up together.”

  “We just buried his cookies, for Christ's sake,” I said.

  “I know, I know,” she said after taking a long drink. “But I'm just not ready yet.” She handed me her glass for a refill, and I carried it over to the refrigerator and took out another ice tray.

  Full coverage—that's comprehensive and collision—$900 every six months, $1800 a year. Tack on a $250 deductible for each claim. Make a claim and watch your rates go up. And what you don't get is towing. Towing is extra. I called, asked to speak with the head guy at the office. He told me the same thing as my agent. You have to pay extra for towing. So the black 'vette sits in the church yard, flat on its belly all day Thursday while I talk to insurance criminals and the Sheriff's office on the phone.

  “Probably some kids,” says the deputy, like I ought to just expect a dose of vandalism in my ordinary day. When I ask what he's going to do about it, he says, “We can't be everywhere at once, you know,” like I'm supposed to just nod and sigh and pat the son-of-a-bitch on the back and feel sorry for the overworked old turd. Then he says he'll have to fill out a report, wants to know when I can meet him at the church. Those shitheads.

  When I reminded him that I had no wheels, he said he didn't like my tone of voice.

  “You're an Earnhart fan, aren't you?” he said.

  “You damned right I am,” I said. He was getting personal now, which really pissed me off.

  “Well, I suggest you get that hunk-O-junk outta there,” he said, “before somebody steals your rims.” He was laughing when I hung up.

  The deputy's voice kept running through my head, and by Thursday night, I was wanting to wring somebody's neck. About that time, the preacher, who talks a good sermon but is a squirrelly loser, calls to tell me that the 'vette is a blemish on the church grounds and wants to know what I'm going to do about it. Just the way he says it sets me on fire. I'm about one second from unloading on that piss-ant when I see headlights coming up the drive.

  Maurine rolls down her window and sticks her head way out and yells over the music. “Lock the door,” she says, “and ride to town with me.” She's wearing a red sweater she's had since junior high and so much perfume my eyes water. Still, I can smell the dope in her hair. But I don't say anything. She slows down as we coast past the church and our eyes follow the sleeping 'vette as we go by.

  “I have something for you,” Maurine says, “in a bag in the back seat.” She gives me a stoned but sweet smile. “For helping me bury my past yesterday,” she says. I'm thinking it's probably a bag of cookies, so I don't make the effort.

  Maurine smiles again and begins to sing to the radio. At the first stoplight she looks in the mirror and watches her lips move to the lyrics. She pulls into a space in front of The Paradise Lounge, where we all drink, and shuts off the engine. Steve, her X, has parked his pickup a few spaces over. I reach for the door handle. “Uuh, uuh,” she says, digging in her purse with one hand and motioning toward the back seat with the other. She's putting on a double dose of lipstick when I open the bag. “They're for you,” she says. “For the dash of your car, for when you get it fixed.”

  There are twelve heads in the bag, her whole collection of Baby Alive baby doll heads.

  “I wanted to find a way to say I was sorry about your car. I was only thinking about me yesterday. I know how much your car means to you, Evander.” Maurine
felt around in the bag. “Look at that happy smile,” she said, holding up one of the heads. “You can glue them someplace and you'll never be alone or unhappy in your car. Now come inside and dance with me.”

  I take a seat beside Timmy Couch, the produce guy, at the bar. His sister, Robyn Couch, went with me to the junior-senior seven or eight years ago. She was the first girl I felt up. I've always been a little on the heavy side.

  Timmy and I watched Clemson basketball on the TV behind the bar, and laughed at George Miles, the bartender, who pushed his eyelids up into his sockets so that his eyeballs bulged like a fish. I heard Maurine's voice behind me.

  “Hey, George, I'll show you my titty if you'll bring my brother here a pitcher of beer before sometime next week.” I could tell from her tone that she was one mad woman. George sprang to attention and saluted grandly, his stiff fingers pressed beside his lidless bug eyes.

  One night at this very bar a little cheerleader type had spilled beer on Maurine twice and then asked my sister what she planned to do about it. Everybody expected Maurine to baptize the girl. But instead, she tilted the girl's glass so that the beer ran out like wax on a floor, and in half a second she'd snatched the girl by the back of her head and slammed her face into the bar, bam bam.

  “What's wrong?” I said to Maurine. Her eyes were darting all around the bar and her hands and feet were treading water. George put the pitcher and a mug in front of me. She pushed the pitcher in toward me, slid the mug back toward George.