You can see him there as the barrel of the pistol enters the frame. And you wait with deep longing, with envy and delight.
Wheels
Harman and Charlene Parnell
Harman Parnell had been out of work for nine months when he took the job selling mobile homes. He told the mall store manager at Sears, where he'd sold tires before that, to kiss his ass. It had been coming for a long time. He felt good saying it.
Everything since then had been downhill.
If his wife, Charlene, hadn't pressured him, he would have given up after so many months of looking. Just get something temporary, she said. It doesn't have to be much. Think of it as insulation she said. His wife, who worked at Faith Bread Nursing Home, said he should be glad he had work again selling trailers, said he didn't know how hard it had been for her to support them both. Everything's temporary, she'd say. Harman didn't think of it that way. After nearly a year at Winner's World Mobile Homes, he still found that the first thing he looked at when a semi pulled into the lot was its tires.
Charlene had peeled down her pantyhose to her ankles when Harman walked in from work. She sat on the very edge of the sofa leaning toward the TV screen, as if it sucked her forward. “Things keep getting more and more miserable,” she said, not looking up at Harman. She lifted her feet and peeled off the hose one foot at a time. Harman went into the kitchen and came back with two tall Budweisers. He handed her one.
On the screen a woman with a face like a man's mopped her tears with a Kleenex. The camera cut to Jerry Springer, who stood solemnly, head down.
“What's this about?” Harman said, opening his beer.
“I don't know,” Charlene said, slowly nodding. “I just don't know.” A commercial featuring an infant cradled in a car tire appeared on the screen. They watched.
Charlene took a long drink. “These pantyhose cut off my circulation,” she said, not taking her eyes from the set. “I'm getting fat.”
“What's that?” Harman said, nodding toward the set.
On the screen, Jerry squinted one eye, tilting his head away from the man who sat beside the crying woman, the woman with the face of a man. Everybody in the audience was waiting, waiting for him to say something, waiting like a lynch mob. You could see it on their faces.
Later Harman and Charlene sat at the kitchen table. It was dark outside. Somehow a cricket had got in the house. They sat listening. Harman couldn't see where the noise was coming from. He looked over at the heap of dishes in the sink.
“Let's not cook tonight,” he said.
“Okay,” she said. “We'll go out.”
“Let's go out someplace nice. I finally got commission today.”
“We've got bills,” she said.
“It's up to you,” he said.
“Let's think,” she said, getting beers. She sat down again, and they opened the beers. “Oh, where do you want to go?”
“Do you want to just do this,” he said, lifting his beer, “or not?” He looked over at her. She seemed to be looking at something far away. “Do you want to go out or not?”
“I'll have to get dressed,” she said.
Entertainment World was the name of the show Harman was watching.
“What should I wear?” Charlene called from the other room.
“Whatever,” Harman called back. The portion of the show he was watching was about an old movie, one about a murderer who ate his victims after killing them. Ate them down to their bones.
Charlene shouted over the TV from the other room. “I've got this blue one, or this red jumper. Where are we going, anyway?” She waited a second. “How fancy do you want to go?”
Harman tried hard to hear the set. The character in the movie, Hannibal the Cannibal, was leaning into the camera, close up, whispering. Harman couldn't make out the secret in the guy's voice.
Again, from the other room: “I look good in this black one, but you'll have to take me someplace nice or I'll definitely be overdressed. People will stare.”
Harman moved closer to the set.
“You're not even listening, are you?” she said from the other room. “Are you?”
“Just wear your panties and bra,” Harman shouted. He'd missed it. The baby-in-the-tire commercial came on again. He hit the power button. Hannibal was sucked into the darkness. “Just let's get going.”
Charlene appeared in the doorway in her black bra and panties, smiling past him with distant, shiny eyes. She lifted her beer, rested her shoulder against the doorframe. She was thinking of herself in a sexy movie. Harman could see the leftover line of the pantyhose that divided her in half.
“On second thought,” he said, “wear the blue one.”
Her eyes returned from wherever they had been. She looked down at herself.
“Only don't wear any underwear,” Harman said quickly, attempting to reverse gravity. He was sorry for what he'd said. Sorry the second he heard it come out.
She turned.
“You fuck, you,” she said.
When they sat in the Mustang to leave, Harman told her he'd like to take her kids to the beach on Sunday. He meant it this time. Charlene, seven years older than Harman, had had the first one when she was nineteen. She’d given up the kids to get the divorce the quickest way. Both the boy and the girl were in high school now. Both hated Harman. They lived with their father. We'll take a picnic, Harman said. That would be nice, Charlene said, moving close beside him. He felt in his jacket, but his keys weren't there.
“I ought to turn the porch light on,” she said.
“Unless you want to eat pancakes, we better get going.” He patted his trouser pocket.
“I hate coming home to a dark house.”
“I'll get it,” Harman said, agitated at not finding the keys.
“No, I'll get it,” she said, taking out her keys. “I'll get the light.”
“No,” he said. “Give me the keys. I'll get the light. It's too damp for you to be walking out here in heels. You might break something.”
“Really, I don't mind,” she said, opening her door.
He just looked at her. “Give me the damn keys.” Then he got out of the car and started toward the house.
Charlene’s eyes were drawn to the wrecked and abandoned cars that surrounded the old garage behind their house. The car’s dead headlights reflected the moonlight like crowded marble headstones.
Harman unlocked the door, reached inside, and found the light switch. Walking back, he glanced over his shoulder. The house wasn't much, but at least it hadn't arrived on wheels. He'd seen what fire could do. Sometimes the only thing left were the tires, and the disclaimers.
“Disclaimers,” he could hear Ransom Fields, his boss at Winner's World, say. “A contract is only as good as its disclaimers. In this business disclaimers mean everything”—he'd pause to let it soak in—”if you want to survive.” When you come to know things, Harman thought, you can't not know them.
“I would have done it,” Charlene said when he got back in the car. “I would have cut on the light.” She opened beers and began pouring them into Atlanta Braves beer cups. “It's just spooky without a light at night.”
Harman always took the back way to Hartsville when he was drinking. The last time he got caught, the judge was very explicit.
They drove past hundred acre fields of cotton that looked like ragged snow under the fall moon, took the split at the furniture stripping shop, and passed the church that had been spray painted with black swastikas and fuck you's in the spring. The paint had been removed, but you could still see everything.
Ransom, the owner of Winner's World, had a saying. Born for the business. Harman, Ransom said the day he hired him, was born for the business. He told Harman not to worry. There was no such thing as bad times in the mobile home business. Insulation, he called it. “It's on account of the economy,” he'd said. “When times are like they are now, people can't afford anything else. When times turn good, you always got the Hornymoaners.” Hornymoa
ners were young kids, high school or just out, whose parents couldn't convince them not to get married, who couldn't get across that they had no future. He said Harman was born for the business. Today he'd made commission.
“If we were driving to California, I wonder how many states we'd cross before you'd talk to me,” Charlene said.
“You're some conversationalist,” Harman said. He looked in his mirror. He saw headlights. He looked down, concentrating, holding the speedometer at 57.
“You're right,” Charlene said. “That's not much of an invitation to talk, is it?” She pressed herself against him, lit a cigarette, and held it up to his lips. “Wanna share?” she said in her sexy voice. “I do.” She rested a hand on the inside of his thigh.
The car behind him was closer now, its highbeams like lasers. They close in on you, Harman thought, get dangerously close, make you drive too fast or too slow or cross the line. Then they nail you.
Charlene waited. The smoke mushroomed around Harman. Finally, she reached over and took the cigarette from Harman's lips, sighed audibly, then brought it to her own lips, taking a long slow pull, looking straight ahead. “You're some salesman,” Charlene said, looking away from him, out at the dead, black tobacco stalks, blowing out the smoke with every word, “some salesman all right.”
Born for the business, Ransom said, was hustling. You got to hustle, he'd say, leaning in, letting his glasses slide down, aiming his good eye over the designer frames, pausing for the effect to take hold. The Big Guy always wore pink tinted glasses when he dealt with customers or did the TV commercials, but he took them off around the salesmen, especially when he was saying more than he was saying. The blind eye was sky blue and looked like it’d just come out of a freezer.
Harman glanced into his mirror, into blinding fog lights at his bumper. He could feel the hard light pressing against the back of his head. The car took the other lane. He gripped the wheel. Music preceded it as the driver pulled up beside him. A kind of chant and booming thud thumped against his window. The car cut over into the lane in front of him. Harman hit the high beams. But the car, a Firebird with black windows and a Show House bumper sticker, raced out of sight, its taillights dissolving red eyes.
“Remember when you used to sing to me?” she said.
“That what you want? Me to sing for it?”
“Married people play games,” she said. “That's how they keep it interesting.”
When they pulled into the parking lot of The Dragon Inn, there was only a white ragtop Cadillac and a dirty station wagon in the lot. Everything inside was red, except the black booths and the enormous gold dragon that stretched the length of the wall. It had pointed, flickering electric light bulbs for eyes. There were red candles in red glasses on every table.
A teenage couple sat in the back booth facing them. The guy had a long tooth earring that Harman could see from the door. At a booth on the other side were the tops of four heads under a cloud of cigarette smoke. There was nobody at the cash register.
“Don't tell me they're closed already,” Charlene said in a little girl's voice.
Harman looked over into a dark corner at the waiter who was talking on the pay telephone. The waiter, a lanky, sandy haired kid in a red jacket, turned his back when Harman spotted him.
“It's not ten o'clock yet, is it? Look at your watch, Harman. The sign said open till ten. It can't be ten yet.”
The waiter crushed out his cigarette on the telephone box, then stuffed the butt into the change return. He hung up and trudged past Harman and Charlene, scooping up two menus.
Charlene slid into the booth, smiled and patted the seat beside her. Harman waited for the four men who had been in the far booth to pass. Two of them had their wallets out. Then he sat beside Charlene. The waiter brought water and took out a small, white pad. Looking back at the teenagers, he reached in his red jacket for a pen. Charlene held the wine list. “Let's have a drink before dinner,” she said.
From the register, the fat one with his wallet out called to the waiter in a singsongy voice. “Your tip is shrinking,” he said.
“Yours is too, hotshot,” said the thin one with the diamond on his index finger to the fat one. The other men laughed in collusion. Charlene was still studying the wine list.
Squeezing the white pad in his palm, the waiter looked down at Charlene. “I'll be back in a minute,” he said.
“What's a kamikaze?” Charlene said to Harman.
“It's different liquors. It's strong.”
“Can we have one?”
Before they'd finished their drink, the two teenagers got up from the far booth. Watching them walking, Harman could feel the drink working on him, making the couple a little fuzzy in his eyes. They were dressed identically, black boots and jeans, black tee shirt and a faded denim jacket. When they got close Harman could see the girl's nipples.
“Hornymoaners,” Charlene said, a little too loud, smiling at Harman.
The waiter came back to the table. “Ready now?” he said. Charlene put her arm around Harman, kissed his ear with her tongue, and looked up at the waiter.
“Give us a minute,” Harman said, picking up a menu and moving away from Charlene.
“May take longer than a minute, darlin',” Charlene said to the waiter.
When the waiter passed through the kitchen door, he pushed it hard enough to bang the back wall.
“What do you want,” Harman said. “We ought to eat something now.”
“What I want ain't on the menu,” Charlene purred.
“Knock it off,” said Harman. “It's late. What do you want?”
Charlene took the menu from him and pushed it across the table. “Kiss me,” she said. “Come on. Nobody's here. Come on. Even if you don't mean it. You didn't love every girl you ever kissed, did ya?”
The kitchen door swung open, and the waiter marched out. Behind him a short, bulldog-faced cook wrung his hands in his dirty apron.
“Kitchen closes in fifteen minutes,” the young waiter said, not looking up from the pad in his hand. “What'll it be?”
“Hornymoaners,” Charlene said looking at Harman, smiling but not smiling.
Looking at the menu, Harman lifted his hand and stroked her hair. “What would you like?” he said.
“I don't know. Sell me something.”
“We'll get two things and share,” he said.
“That would be nice,” she said, smiling. “I'll eat some of yours and you can eat some of mine.”
The waiter sighed and rolled his eyes. Harman looked up at him hard. “Buzz off, asshole,” he said. Charlene put her hand on his leg.
“Okay,” he said after the waiter had left. He wouldn’t look up from the menu. “What will it be?”
“You could order for us, if you wanted to.” She moved her hand up, watching his reaction.
“This is our goddamn night out,” he said, pushing her away harder than he had intended. “This is our goddamn night out. What do you want?”
“Hornymoaners,” she said again.
“I'm ordering,” he said.
“Let's pretend we're someplace else. Some other planet. We just met.” She finished her drink. “You're like a salesman, and we just left some Martian hotel bar.”
“I'm ordering now.”
“Martian man of action.”
The waiter pretended he didn't see Harman signal for him, then stood four feet away holding his pad, looking up at the yellow acoustic tile.
“We'll have the chicken and the beef,” Harman said, pointing at the menu.
“No, not the chicken. I don't like the chicken.”
“What do you want then?”
Charlene began to study the menu. The waiter walked over to the head of the dragon. He screwed the flickering eyes in and out.
“Try to sell me the chicken.”
Harman jerked the menu from her hands.
“Maybe some pork and seafood,” Charlene said.
“You don't want the beef?”
>
“I love the beef, Mr. Sales Commission. The more beef the better. Definitely the beef.”
“But not the chicken.”
“No, the pork or seafood or whatever.”
“You want the pork and seafood?”
“Pork, beef, seafood, whatever.”
“Name it.”
“It doesn't matter.”
“Name it.”
“Some salesman you are.”
“Name it.”
“Hornymoaners.”
Everything shrill. Everything white. Charlene felt the back of her head slam against the wall. Harman's fingers pulled at the back of her hair until her eyes looked like a marble statue's. He pressed his body against her. She tried to scream, but it came out as only hot breath on his face.
“I'm calling the police, I'm calling the police!” the young waiter shouted. The bulldog face of the cook hung open in disbelief. Harman was pressing hard against her. He felt Charlene's breasts rising and falling. He could feel the contracting heart squeezing blood through her.
They were in the Mustang driving, Charlene sobbing and moaning. He reached over for her, but she squeezed her fists into balls. She looked away out the window. He tuned the radio to soft music.
After a time he reached for her again. She moved beside him, laying her head on his shoulder, crying softly. At a stoplight, Harman turned to see a couple, the girl in a cheerleader dress, looking over at him and Charlene, whose head still lay on his shoulder. Both kids smiled.
Harman drove to the edge of town. At the last street light he turned the car around. He drove back in the direction of the square, the block around the courthouse where the kids circled with their dates. Charlene wasn't crying. Harman thought she was sleeping.
Across the bridge Harman spotted the circle of light that was the high school football stadium.
“What is it?” Charlene said. “What is it?”
“Looks like a spaceship or something, doesn't it?”
“I wish it was.” She sat up, looking away from him out her window at the receding bed of white light. “I wish it was.”
They didn't talk.
Harman signaled, then turned onto the square and fell in the procession of kids from the game whose cars formed a chain that crept around and around the center of town. They followed the kids.
Someone To Crawl Back To Page 9