Halfway

by Tom Macher

  * * *

  AS MUCH AS I LIKE to claim perspective, this whole streetwise knockaround thing, and as much as I have been around and seen shit in my day, I am an absolute greenhorn when it comes to the dinner or wine-and-cheese party, the glad-handing, the lunch with your board of trustees. I just ain’t that sophisticated. This scene is above and beyond me. I’m a rube. I don’t know what things to omit, have no clue what not to say, and most important—can’t stop myself. I know, as I’m joking about these dumb things—the shits and giggles and fuckaround-fuckaround—I’m not telling the story, and instead just giving culture, background, exposition for something darker. I don’t want to continue. That’s the thing. I don’t want to tell the story. But I have to. Because it is there now, heavy on my chest, the memory of it.

  The morning after the dinner party, I called Wood. It’d been thirteen years since I saw him, and by now we only spoke when someone died. I could hear a silent question linger after he said my name: Who?

  I was at a—I could barely say it—dinner party last night, I told him.

  Uh-huh, he said.

  Started telling some of the trailer crew stories.

  No doubt. Get the Cockwork Orange in?

  Yup.

  Pocket Pal?

  Yeah, that, too.

  This was in Provincetown, where I was in residence for seven months at the Fine Arts Work Center, and I was standing in the parking lot of a resort that had been boarded up for the season. In front of me was a pier with boatlifts. Gray seals rolled in the water. I heard Wood’s breathing change. A Zippo clicked, tobacco crackled in a flame. He inhaled deeply, then exhaled.

  Anything else?

  Yes, I said, expecting he’d laugh over how stupid I am, but he didn’t.

  Well, he said.

  And he was right. Well. That one word said it all.

  * * *

  HER NAME WAS TAMMY Z. and she had a reputation. Burt had banged her and so had Dorn, but a lot of guys had. We knew she’d been double-teamed at a frat party and banged over the hotline by the GM at Olive Garden, where she worked, and by the bartender in dry storage and a busboy on the loading dock—even the dishwasher got his turn one Tuesday afternoon. She’d been banged by Alabama Bill outside the Step Study and by Recidivist Pete at the library. She’d been banged in her car and in strangers’ cars and in more than a dozen apartment complexes and on the side of the road and on top of the levee and on the deck of the Argosy casino overlooking the swirling brown Mississippi and the refinery and the state capitol and in New Orleans and Gulf Shores and all over the Florida Panhandle. She was eighteen years old.

  She had an elongated neck, slender legs, smooth thighs, a calm, somewhat maternal sense, was partial to mysteries, liked art, wanted to study psychology, showed affection to children, old people, stray animals, and despite her many encounters, still viewed the world with compassion and curiosity and kindness.

  As much as we were bragging about anything close to sexual conquest in those days, about girls from back home, back in the day, and the supermarket we only thought we had a chance with, bragging about how often and how much and how quickly we beat off, even, there came a point when no one could brag on Tammy Z. anymore. She was just now something guys did after getting out of the House, quietly and with compunction, because they could. Later, after what I’m going to tell you about happened, Hymen drilled her in the back bedroom of his ten-wide and then even later, sometime that summer, after she promised everyone things wouldn’t be so free and easy anymore, that those days were over and she had no more left to give, Wood convinced her to fall in love with him and then quick-hit her in that same ten-wide and never spoke to her again.

  She’d come from nearby Mandeville with one of those hard-to-believe stories—she’d been the prosecution’s star witness in a murder trial, her mother the deceased, her father the defendant—that left me feeling both awe and pity when I’d see her around A.A. And then she’d say something—her humble accent missing G’s and D’s—and lean forward, her fingers grasping unsaid points, for she couldn’t speak directly about the case or what happened or the aftermath and her eventual recanting, a recanting which led to an appeal which led to a dismissal which led to freedom and a bank robbery and a dead security guard and her father’s eventual lethal injection in Angola, and instead could only talk about how she felt, which was often lonely and confused, as everyone she understood was equally protector and predator, and she’d say something like: It ain’t like you think, before leaning back and lifting her short black hair off that straight-edged nape, and dropping one of those Tammy Z. gazes, which always seemed to say, I’m right here, same place I’ve always been.

  And I did know where she was. We all knew. She lived in a three-bedroom apartment off Siegen Lane in South Baton Rouge with four girls who’d just been released from the women’s facility—each of them some variation of the usual liar and paper hanger, tweaker, lush, petty whore, thieves, all, needing dual diagnosis, suffering from ADHD, bipolar and hypertension disorder, schizophrenia, borderline, bulimia, and low self-esteem—and whichever guy from the House they were currently screwing.

  * * *

  FOR A WHILE, I struggled with the idea of them—what I wanted, what I didn’t want, how it fit with the image I’d constructed of myself at that point in my sobriety. It was, in many ways, the most honest part of my life, and I was happy then, but at eighteen months sober, I pulled a waitress out of a Waffle House on Highway 30 and banged her in Hair-pie’s car. All of us got laid. Well. Hair-pie didn’t. But everyone else. And you know how that goes—getting wool didn’t keep me from wanting more. I was willing to go to any lengths. If you told me they were having a cotton sale in Bayou Boutte, I’d have risked my shitty El Camino dying on the road to check it out. As with most twenty-one-year-old males with all their parts in working order, I was clueless and desperate, in full-on wolf mode, and ignorant.

  But then Tammy called the trailer, left a message like Let’s kick it. Boom, she said. You’re it this week. Want to take me to the Twelve and Twelve?

  So there was that—a sure thing!

  My sponsor, like so many local old-timers, was not impressed. You’re not fucking that girl, he said, please, oh, God, don’t fuck her. He leaned over his coffee and cigarette. But if you do, he said, just remember what a drugstore is for.

  In those days, he and I talked about everything. Always motives, my deepest and truest reason for my actions. Did I want to buy new underwear and socks because I needed them, or because the gal working the register at Walmart was banging Jim C. and I thought she’d cut me off a slab, too? Was I taking Tammy to the Twelve and Twelve—a barely attended meeting—because I cared about her sobriety, or because I hoped she might slide across the El Camino’s bench seats and jack me off? It’s impossible to explain my old sponsor’s level of service—he was like a father, big brother, zero-interest loan officer, and best friend. He’d become the first person to know exactly who I am and yet trust me in full. I called him daily, often more. He fed me and read the Big Book with me and, in the end, gave me more self-esteem than anything else ever has. He had the patience of Christ. Go on, he said, go on. I know you’ll do what’s right.

  But I told her I’d pick her up at seven-thirty, which was already wrong. The meeting began at eight, and she lived forty minutes away. I showered, gelled my hair, pocketed two packs of cigarettes and twenty dollars spending money, and I brought along a runaway from the woman’s facility who was fucking Nob and living with us in the trailers now, a beautiful maybe-eighteen-year-old girl.

  * * *

  IN THOSE DAYS, I drove a 1977 El Camino Classic. It had a shift kit, a big engine, the panty-dropping bench seats. I could never keep it on the road. That’s the thing about an El Camino. It’s like a mustache, nice to look at, twat-bait, sure, but hell to maintain. The gas and oil gauges didn’t work. There was no check-engine light. Most days, I had to hammer the starter or cold-wire the ignition just to get it running. An
d here now, on the way to Baton Rouge, in a corridor of cypress and swamp between the prairie and river in the darkest stretch of I-10 that exists, where, for miles on end, there is nothing but trees, no moon or stars, just darkness, smoke began pouring through the dash.

  What is that smell? the runaway asked.

  My cigarette, I said, not wanting to alarm her. It was clear the engine had caught fire and would soon lock up. I stepped on the gas and nothing happened.

  Throw your cigarette out.

  But I didn’t want to open my window, afraid the incoming wind might slow us down. I flicked my Zippo at the dash, MPH steadily fell, smoke gushed from the vents.

  Am I right? she said.

  It’s hard to say, I said, though it wasn’t. The steering wheel locked up and I coasted into the breakdown lane, where the car died. We got out.

  What do you think now? she asked.

  Oh, it’ll never drive again, I assured her. Shit’s toast.

  I see, she said.

  This girl would one day become a sort of infamous New Orleans stripper, pose nude in magazines, marry well, become a mother and college graduate, but at the time she was still saucy, kind of dirty, and practical: she stuck her maybe-eighteen-year-old thigh out at passing cars while I waited in the darkness.

  It didn’t take long for some old codger to pull over. He hopped from his truck, appraising both her and the situation. From the shadows, I could hear this quality to his voice. He really believed she was alone. And then, you know, something shifted, his voice stiffened, when he saw me.

  * * *

  I DON’T REMEMBER what Tammy Z. wore. It wouldn’t have mattered. You could’ve wrapped her body in paper towels and newspaper, padded it with strips of papier-mâché, turned her formless or into an egg, a pear, a fucking donkey, and I still would’ve been aroused. That’s how acute my sense of smell was in those days. We weren’t going to any Twelve and Twelve. Hair-pie picked us all up from her place, brought us back to the trailers. He’d memorized an entire season of The Simpsons and turned the volume off on the TV and acted out each episode. Read us some of your poetry, man, I begged. Read us that Wordsworth. He donned a satin robe and stood in front of us, reading from a thin volume of poetry. His words were clever, economical, full of grace. They spoke of both the minute and the universal. The night grew incantatory, a feeling crept over us. Tammy’s leg kept brushing mine. She twitched every time I lit a smoke.

  Hair-pie tried to sit down, but I told him no. Sing us a song, I begged. Sing us something like that Elvis number you did that time before. He was big on show tunes.

  But there was something beautiful about Tammy, something sterling and strong, and I knew she wasn’t going to sleep with me. Ever.

  Leave him alone, she said, placing a protective hand on his thigh.

  The runaway shifted her eyes from Tammy Z.’s hand and Hair-pie’s thigh to me. She had this look on her face, as if to say, Have you got the message?

  It’s okay, Hair-pie said.

  Go on, I told him, do it.

  You’re such a dick, Tammy said, and her tone held so much truth.

  I’m going to bed, the runaway said pointedly, and so I did, too. Hair-pie was fixing to get laid.

  In the morning, I made Hair-pie give me a ride to work. I said, Pony up, bitch. We were halfway to Baker Tanks, out by the river, where I was forming up a slab that would one day be a refueling dock for the big rigs that whistled down Highway 30. I wanted to know what had happened.

  Nothing, he said.

  His cool enraged me. Ask anyone, I said. Call around. Now. Shoot me straight. What happened?

  Nothing, he said.

  Say it one more time, I warned. I’ll slap you. And I might’ve—I’d certainly done it before—but he got a tone then.

  He shook his head sadly at the road. I’m not sure what you want—

  Pull over, I told him. Pull the fuck over. I’m fixing to shit my pants. And I thought I’d punctuate my threat with some flatulence that had been bubbling inside me, but when I held my breath to fart, nothing happened, and so I pushed harder. A turd slid out. Christ, I said. Seriously. Pull over. Hurry.

  He jerked to the side of the road and I got out. Beyond the gully on the side of the road was a small patch of wet grass, a clump of trees. I walked into the gully and removed my shorts and underwear. When I got back to Hair-pie’s car, he was holding his face very close to the steering wheel.

  I’m sorry, he said, if I’ve disappointed you. I can leave you here if you don’t want a ride anymore. I understand.

  Don’t be crazy, I told him. Of course I want a ride. And I’ll need a change of drawers if you have time.

  After dropping me off, he drove around awhile, to the call center and then the Gazebo Grill. Neither place offered any ideas. He stopped at the House, where the Silver Fox and Hymen offered similar counsel. After that I guess he drove around a little while longer, stopping at the Circle K for a cappuccino, and then, having forgotten my fresh underwear, went home, crawled in bed with Tammy, and raped her.

  Or so we were told, anyway.

  * * *

  WHEN I CAME HOME FROM WORK, the runaway was sitting on the trailer’s front steps. I didn’t like talking to her much. It was one thing, I figured, to offer refuge to a brother who was clean and doing it. A runaway girl was another matter. No spin would change her function. Normally, Nob and I communicated about everything, but we sidestepped her. For me, this meant ignoring her. It was okay to drive her to Baton Rouge, ostensibly, in a roundabout way, to a meeting, but not okay to talk on that ride. Any other day, I would’ve shoveled past her without a word, but her shoulders sagged, her hair hung loose about her face. She raised her chin as I approached, and stared bleakly through the pines. All I saw was someone in pain.

  I set my tools on the steps and lit a cigarette and looked beyond the pines at whatever she saw. I asked her where everyone was, but she didn’t know, and then I asked if she was okay, and she said she wasn’t, and then I asked if she wanted to talk about it and she told me the story of what had happened, or Tammy’s version of it, anyway, which was not a good story. There wasn’t much for me to say. I wanted to hug her, but it seemed inappropriate, so instead I asked who knew. Where had Tammy gone? Where was Hair-pie? Or the guys?

  She began crying. It’s your fault, she said. Y’all bully him.

  * * *

  I COULD FEEL MYSELF LOSE CONTROL, telling this story. You have to imagine. A dinner party. A happy time. Everyone fat from good food and smart from good conversation. Everyone sitting around the living room holding their bellies. People had hot tea, espresso, red wine, digestifs. There was a cheese board on the coffee table, little plates with mostly eaten cake. I thought I was telling a story—a ridiculous one, innocent but not, complicated but simple, absurd, gross, stupid—and yet as I came to the end, where I contemplated the runaway’s words on the front porch, I looked about the table and saw only disgust. I can imagine their feelings—How did we get from your shits and giggles, your tomfoolery, to here? And second, as someone said: What exactly are you telling us? I was stuck, and everyone knew it.

  What happened? someone asked.

  I shook my head.

  Was he prosecuted?

  Prosecuted, I said, as if I had no idea what the word even meant.

  Yes, they said. Prosecuted.

  I began retracing the story. Yes, you see, I said, but couldn’t finish. All I could think about was the result of this event.

  We moved out, I said. We all just moved out. We were so heartbroken by the event that we couldn’t even beat Hair-pie’s ass. That was our collective imagination. Beating his ass, we decided, had gotten us here. And now it was over for us.

  * * *

  OF COURSE, there’s always more to a story, and we did not understand the version of events we’d been presented. No one did. It didn’t seem like he’d fucked her. It didn’t seem like there’d been much of anything. We asked Hair-pie again and again for the truth.
This was later that night, in some roughshod tribunal organized in our living room. We used diagrams and maps, each adding his own take. It was just the boys now. The runaway had moved on. And later—I’m talking months and years—we’d still be going over this story, still trying to make sense of what exactly had happened, how it had gone down, the exact nature of his assault; I’m talking about kicking gravel in parking lots outside meetings, long after the coffeepot had been emptied and cleaned and the chairs stacked and the floor swept and mopped, and on johnboats in the Atchafalaya and spillway, on endlessly long drives to Grand Isle, legs dangling over a pier, our lines in the water, or sipping DCs and flipping dollar bills at strippers, or in Coffee Call and Waffle House, again and again and again, if only to get it off our chests once more, each time hoping something new might come to light, as new things often do when you tell the same story over and over—someone dies, someone recants—as if we will ever make sense of it, as if there can ever be anything final, until there’s no more story to tell, no more facts, no more what really happened, other than what became of us.

  Did you fuck her?

  He said, I thought she was awake. He said, I thought she was into it.

  We said, What do you mean, you thought she was awake? Did you fuck her?

  I asked her, he said.

  You said what? We were furious.

  I said, Are you awake. She seemed like she was in a trance, Hair-pie offered. She was moaning.

  Moaning, someone said.

  Moaning, he said.

  And is that when you did it, you little snake in the grass? Is that when you fucked her?