“Where are we going?” she asked softly.
“To eat, you mean?”
“You don't know where we're going,” she said. “You don't have a clue. You don't have the slightest idea where we're headed. You don’t know shit.”
Harman didn't say anything. The cars stopped and started. The brake lights lit up in red synchronicity as cars entered or left the circle. The faces of driver and passenger were bathed in the red light.
Harman didn't say anything. They came to a complete stop.
He just waited for her to say it again.
Grits
Charlene and Harman Parnell
Charlene Parnell sits on her sofa dripping hot grits from a spoon into Harman's ear. Harman's head rests on Charlene's lap. The ear canal overflows, and Charlene sees the famous castle at the Magic Kingdom take shape in her mind. The steaming grits are white, not yellow grits. Yellow for corn bread, she thinks, but you want your grits from white corn. The spoon is silver, engraved with a swastika, one her father brought back from Berlin, one her mother fed her with. Over the years, Charlene has polished the spoon and returned it to its crushed, faded paper and brown box, which is as soft as satin from age and smells like the nursing home where she works. She had been saving the spoon for the baby Harman promised before she left her first husband.
Charlene holds the spoon with the steady hand of a surgeon, at a height and angle to create a perfect, thin line of white smoke. Like drawing with a long, sharp, invisible pencil. Harman feels nothing.
An instant panic surges through her. A violent, explosive moment in The Terminator, Harman's favorite video, suddenly blasts from the TV positioned on the bar separating the kitchen from the living room. Harman had counted the number of times he and Charlene had seen the video, but Charlene will never know the exact number. She presses the mute button. Harman can't add this one to his list.
“Really the perfect ending to a perfect evening,” he had boasted earlier, entering the kitchen holding the cassette box like a trophy. The hour before, after five Kamikazes, Harman had reached for the Mustang keys and proclaimed it Terminator Time, leaving Charlene standing at her mirror holding a tube of lipstick.
“A lot was riding on this evening,” Charlene had said, not looking up from the soapy dishwater.
“A lotta riding this evening is right,” Harman answered back, humping the side of her hip.
The muted screen fills with fire and smoke and flying glass; the spoon above Harman's ear floats suspended in space, the creamy grits smoking. Charlene looks again at the tiny volcano rising from what once was Harman's ear and thinks now of the dripping sand castles she built as a child at Myrtle Beach. She can smell the brackish air.
The childhood memory is shattered when Charlene hears an unfamiliar sound outside. It is the sound of metal against concrete, and it comes from out back in Harman's garage. She listens. She looks at the clock. It is nearly eleven. She reaches for the remote and terminates the video.
Taking a patch of his hair in her left hand and sliding her right hand under his heavy jaw, Charlene concentrates on the grits castle and prepares to lift Harman's head from her lap. The head feels as heavy as a bowling ball. She lifts it, careful not to disturb her work, and tries to slide her bottom to the side. But she wears no panties under her black and white polka-dotted mini-skirt. Her thighs and buttocks are glued to the black Naugahyde. Again she hears the scraping sound of metal on concrete outside.
Charlene peels her legs from the sofa. With her left hand, she reaches for the pillow Harman's mother embroidered as a wedding gift. She pauses as the faint smell of her sex rises from the warm, damp place where she sat. She lowers Harman's head onto the pillow without disturbing the grits, steps into her red heels, and eases toward the window. She hears sounds like a corroded metal door.
Her fingers touch the switch to the floodlights. Then she stops. Instead, she flicks off the kitchen lights. Her pupils slowly spiral open.
Charlene grips the long handle of the thin blinds, slowly turns it. Horizontal rays of moonlight slice across her face, neck, and bare shoulders. In the darkness beside the garage, the headlights of wrecked cars flicker like fireflies when the clouds unveil the moonlight. Nothing moves. She trains her eyes on the open garage, then trails back toward the wrecks, raking the darkness.
A spark of light reflects in the headlights of one of the cars. Charlene misreads the flicker for movement. Her eyes stare into the bulbous night eyes of the wrecked car. Only when she hears the soft, distant hum of an engine does she realize the glint as a reflection from a passing car. Still her wide pupils are fixed on the wreck's headlights, its eyes reflecting now in hers. She recalls with instant clarity what she witnessed inside that hollow car, and savors her hot nakedness against the thin dress.
***
She had seen the mystery that could hide out there, inside the shell that held those eyes. Walking back in a daydream after checking the sunflowers behind Harman's garage, Charlene had caught sight of movement inside one of the wrecks. She'd stopped. She'd waited. Something inside her stirred. There were no sounds; everything was still.
She moved quietly, and after entering the rear door of the garage, Charlene slipped off her shoes. Her pulse throbbed in her neck. She opened the aluminum ladder that rested against the side wall and climbed without sound to the top step, where she could see through the opening at the eaves, down into the car just beyond the wall. She didn't know the boy's name. He was one of the neighborhood boys, maybe fourteen. He was shirtless, his dungarees wilted at his ankles. She saw nearly the full length of him. His head lay back, his thin neck taunt as muscle, eyes closed. Sweat coiled down his face. His brown chest and stomach were covered with sweat. She was no more than fifteen feet from him. He was in full view. She watched everything until he finished. This was July fourth.
Charlene sits on the floor inches from her sofa, at eye level with the tower of white grits in Harman's ear, and pulls off her red heels. She presses forward and whispers, “Whore heels, r-e-d whore heels.”
Outside, she moves stealthily through the moonlight to the corner of the small house, looks and listens, eyes wide, ears filled with the thin pitch of acute silence. There is movement inside the garage, somewhere in the shadows. The grass is wet and cool on her bare feet. She kneels beside the Mustang. Suddenly, its metal snaps, contracting in the cool night, sending a surge of fear up the backs of her legs, into her buttocks. Charlene is completely outside herself now, within and without at once. Silent. Motionless. She feels a second wave of cool night air, feels the thin dress against her nipples.
In darkness, she follows the line of nandinas to the giant fig trees at the corner of the garage. She stands and waits; the moon's shadows stamp her cheek the shape of a fig leaf. Charlene passes imperceptibly, furtively, from the shadows to the corner of the garage. She turns, looks behind her, into the darkness. Charlene closes her eyes and listens. Nothing. She reaches for the light just inside the garage, feels the hot metal wall near the switch, finds it. The fluorescent lights flutter and whine.
A fat, black possum freezes, hovering over the cat's dish. Its black, surly eyes are wide and dripping wet. Charlene moves slowly through the heavy odor of sawdust, grease, and gasoline toward it. The eyes of the possum follow her as Charlene lifts a spider-webbed two iron from a dusty black golf bag near the die press.
For a third time, she feels the sensation of being an observer of her own actions. She steps toward the possum. It shrinks in retreat under a wooden tool bench. Charlene raises the two iron, then stops and smiles broadly as the cartoon image of the possum's small head arching like a divot above the garage floor takes shape in her mind.
The possum inches backward, withdrawing into the shadows beneath the cluttered worktable, wedging itself against a bucket of thick, black motor oil. She can see his eyes behind the paint cans and bucket. Charlene prods with the iron. She feels the possum's body give. She lays the two iron on the table and takes a cigarette f
rom a pack Harman left there. She smokes. The possum means nothing to her.
She takes another cigarette, lights it from the first. The possum means nothing to her.
Charlene crosses the garage, glancing back at her kitchen window. To anyone standing there, she would appear to be on stage, here in the florescent garage lights. She turns ever so slowly, eyes half shut, and saunters across the cement floor, smoking, thinking of all those eyes out there, those eyes bathing her. I'll show him, she thinks.
She switches off the lights, pulls hard on her cigarette, waits for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Behind Charlene, she hears paint cans scrape the cement, reaches again for the light switch. The possum is caught in the open. It freezes.
“Play dead,” she whispers.
She backs slowly away from it, pulling the chain that lowers the garage door, never taking her eyes from him. She glances around the garage, finds a galvanized foot tub and a cement block. She takes the handle of the tub, drags it across the cement behind her toward the possum, which cowers in a corner.
“Sounds like a tornado, don't it?” she says.
Back inside her trailer, Charlene takes the hose from the vacuum cleaner, fishes around in the back of the unit for an attachment. She finds her old electric hair clippers and a half roll of duct tape above the washing machine. The keys to the Mustang are in the orange Clemson ashtray. Charlene can't resist touching the volcano of crusty cold grits rising from Harman's ear. “That is something to build on,” she whispers.
She shifts into reverse and backs the Mustang into the garage, duct tapes the vacuum hose to the car’s chrome exhaust pipe, and presses the head of the hose into the knife-shaped attachment. After sliding the cement block to the edge of the foot tub where the possum is trapped, Charlene lifts its handle and inches the vacuum attachment underneath, slides the block back into place, and seals the tub all around with duct tape.
She fires up the Mustang, pumping the exhaust under the foot tub, waits and thinks:
“Something is wrong,” Charlene whispers. She wants it to be in her head. She felt it start in her heart, then lodge in her head. She wants it to be something that can be surgically removed. She wants the thing to go away.
She rests her elbows on the hood, pulls hard on the cigarette, presses her body against the Mustang's warm headlight, feels the engine's heat begin to accumulate in her belly.
Months earlier she had hoped it was not in her head, that instead her body was concealing something from her, something she shouldn't know about. After Doctor Vickers examined her, he said she was as fit as a fiddle.
She reached into her bag and handed him a soft plastic eye she'd bought at South Of The Border. “You can have it,” she said.
“This would look good in a fish bowl,” he said. He sneezed four times in quick succession and said to her, “You're as fit as a fiddle.”
“No I'm not,” Charlene said. “Look again.”
This time Vickers said her tonsils were maybe a little larger than normal.
“I was thinking more along the lines of a tumor,” she'd said.
Charlene didn't tell the doctor what was at stake. She was looking for something to fix things.
When Charlene told Harman she was going to have her tonsils out, he gave her a devilish smile and said, “This could make a world of difference.”
The possum is almost dead from the Mustang's exhaust, but not quite. After she lays it on its thick belly atop the barbecue grill, Charlene can see its lungs slowly rise and fall after. Still she's taking no chances. She pulls a length of duct tape, rips it off the roll, then tears long quarter-inch strips. She pulls the legs outward and securely tapes the possum spread-eagle to the bars of the grill, then tapes its snout. The possum does not resist.
Charlene plugs one end of the heavy, orange extension cord into the wall socket, then plugs the clipping shears into the other end. She turns on the old paint-spattered radio and finds a late night oldies station, turns the volume up so she can hear the music over the humming of the clippers. Starting at the hindquarters, she slowly glides the clippers up one side of the fat possum. She works slowly and purposefully. The hair falls into the grill basin. She sings along with the Righteous Brothers and Percy Sledge. From time to time she touches the head of the clippers to her cheek, making sure it is not too hot. When she has clipped as closely as possible, Charlene stands back and looks at her work.
A two-inch wide Mohawk runs down the possum's spine.
Charlene reaches into a tool cabinet for a wire brush. On a shelf near the radio, she finds a spray can of upholstery glue.
“Are we playing dead?” she says in a voice that frightens her a little.
The possum shows the first signs of life when Charlene runs the steel brush up the Mohawk, forcing the hair to stand up on its back. She sprays glue as she goes. The hair stands up like quills on the possum's back. She must wait for the glue to dry.
Charlene opens the door to her kitchen. She looks over at the sofa and imagines the combined effect of the grits in the ear and Harman's head, Mohawked. She returns to the garage carrying a steaming aluminum pot, a dish towel, and Harman’s razor. The soft voice of Art Garfunkle singing “I Only Have Eyes for You” drifts over the night air. The possum vibrates when Charlene lays the smoking wet rag on the animal's side, its eyes wild and richly black. She applies the shaving cream in small patches and shaves the areas she trimmed while the glue dries on the Mohawk.
When she is nearly finished, Paul McCartney begins “Yesterday” and she cries. She lays Harman's razor on the grill and sits on the foot tub. Charlene bends forward, rocking back and forth, her palms wet with tears. When the sobbing stops, she goes to the Mustang for her cigarettes, returns to the foot tub and smokes. She wipes the last of the tears and sweat on the hem of her black and white polka-dotted dress, exposing her sex to the possum, who stares between her legs.
Charlene completes the shaving, washes the razor, and drops it in the trashcan. It rattles down between discarded oil filters, out of sight. She returns to the grill with a can of red automobile spray paint. She squats eye level beside the possum, then slowly and carefully sprays the Mohawk. She steps back, studies her work, and finishes the cigarette. She circles the possum, then starts back to the Mustang. She sits in the driver's seat and smokes. She catches sight of her face in the mirror, reaches for lipstick—red, the color of her heels. She applies the red glaze, then applies it again, so thick that her lips look like Halloween wax. She takes a deep breath and a bead of sweat races down between her breasts. Charlene unsnaps the top two buttons of her dress. She tilts the mirror, grips the wheel, looks up at herself in the mirror again and smiles.
She walks a slow circle around the possum. She can feel its eyes follow her, although they don't appear to move. She stops at the possum's head, leans forward. The Mohawk is firm and deeply red. Charlene presses her index finger to her lips, scooping red lipstick. She slowly presses the marsupial's neck with her left hand, inching forward, increasing the pressure as she goes. Percy Faith is on the radio. “I could cut off your head, too,” she says. She lays her hand over its head. The possum's skull fits into the palm like a tiny breast. She applies her full weight. The grill slowly gives. Charlene covers the possum’s mouth with red lipstick.
Charlene opens the glove box of the Mustang for tissues. She wipes lipstick from her fingers, and, returning the tissues, finds Harman's toenail clippers. After lifting the grill top and placing it gently on the cement floor, Charlene clips the duct tape that secures the possum. She leaves the lights burning in the garage and walks across the cool, wet grass to her backdoor. She doesn't turn and look.
Inside the kitchen, she reaches for a small, yellow pot her mother used for boiling hypodermic needles. Charlene adds water from the spigot. The gas burner makes a huffing sound at the moment of combustion, its flame more yellow than blue. She turns the knob, forming a small red and violent crown of fire. She centers the small pot on the burner. Sweat ro
lls down into one of her ears. Her dress sticks like cellophane to her thighs when she reaches up to the cabinet for the box of grits. She pours a measured amount into the boiling water, cuts the burner down to a blue halo.
Charlene showers and dries with a beach towel. The words Cherry Grove, South Carolina, are printed in faded red letters across it. She stands naked, looking into the drawer where Harman kept his work shirts, finds one of his Atlanta Braves tee shirts, so worn she can see through it when she holds it up to the light. She pulls the shirt over her head and walks barefoot back to the living room. She goes to the window with the air conditioner—the window that gives her the best view into the garage—and lifts the blinds. She can see him there in the soft light, see the red fin rising from gray skin the color of flesh turned inside out. He has moved away from the grill, but not outside the garage. He is still drunk from the exhaust. She watches his awkward waltz. She waits. Without taking her eyes from her creation, Charlene feels for the controls of the air conditioner, turns the blower up a notch, then leans forward. She looks down at her breasts, inches now from the air conditioner vents. Her nipples harden, ache, then burn. She looks up again, out toward the garage.
On the stove behind her, atop the blue eye of the stove, the thin pot begins to rattle. Charlene's nipples are on fire. She stares without expression through the freshly polished glass window, out across the yard at the primitive animal, its thin, loose skin a waterlogged gray, its Mohawk firm and fiercely red. Its steps are tentatively, like a baby's first steps. Then it freezes, turns and looks back at her as if to speak. She smiles, which suddenly brings her reflection into view. At once Charlene sees Harman's vacant eyes staring from above the pillow on the sofa behind her.
Someone To Crawl Back To Page 10