Tourists of the Apocalypse

  “What’s the mortgage on your house,” he repeats seemingly unaware of my reaction. “Izzy says you’re paying all the bills. Just tell me what you pay for Casa-del-Dylan?”

  Izzy did come to see my mother once when I was sifting through late payment notices on the kitchen table. When I tried to cover them up she looked away.

  “More than you pay a lawn guy.”

  “You might be surprised. Tell me?”

  “Eight and a half.”

  “Lights and water plus eight and a half,” he mumbles, looking off to one side as if he’s solving a puzzle.

  “You don’t have to—.”

  “Let’s say four a week. That’s sixteen hundred a month tax-free,” he proposes. “Should keep a roof over your head till the Fall.”

  “That’s really nice, but it’s too much,” I reply, wanting to take the words back immediately.

  “Clearly I have not explained the job to you then,” he grins. “All three houses mowed and trimmed like a golf course. I’m going need flower boxes added under the front windows of all three. Not to mention the guys who built the houses were supposed to plant bushes down the sides and along the back”

  I nod, for some reason thinking I don’t want the job now. It’s not that I am lazy, just not particularly industrious. This feeling goes away quickly when the cloud of eviction darkens my thoughts.

  “Are you sure?” I shrug, still feeling like it’s charity, but not wanting to pack up my stuff and move away.

  “You want it or not? Paperboy Jerry already asked me if I needed anything.”

  “I’ll take it.”

  “Good,” he nods sharply. “Let me get something to eat. Come back in an hour and we can sort out the details.”

  I nod and for some reason the only thing that floats across my mind is Violet. I guess it’s not that surprising. I spend a lot of free time thinking about her.

  “So what happened to Violet?” I call out as he puts a hand on the screen door.

  “You might have noticed I have a roommate now,” he reveals, looking over his shoulder.

  This is true. A week after his friends showed up, a short chubby man came in a taxi. There are four guys living in the first house and Graham and the new guy in the middle place. Izzy occupies the third with what I can only assume is her boyfriend, Lance. She’s not wearing a ring, leading me to assume they aren’t married. Lance is a tall, dark haired man of few words. Everyone seems to take direction from him, except Graham. When I have had occasion to observe Graham and Lance together there is tenseness in their body language. I wonder what Lance will think about me being his new lawn guy.

  “Is he relative of yours?”

  “Nope, but babysitting him leaves little time for Violet.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  “You have no idea,” he sighs.

  I watch as he disappears inside. Not seeing Violet is sad news for a young man with no practical experience with women. Her visit was the highlight of every week. I decide to share the good news with my mother. It seems we are spared the hangman’s noose until the Fall at least. By then, her jaw will have healed and who knows. I pause on the porch and try to think of a time when my mother worked? As far back as I can recall she stayed at home with me. Dad passed when I was eight, leading to a string of boyfriends. Jarrod had been here since my tenth birthday. I can’t believe I survived almost four years of Jarrod. I decide to worry about my mother’s employability at a later date.

  As I climb the stairs, I pass a pile of boxes containing Jarrod’s belongings. I find it odd that he didn’t take anything with him. I was instructed to gather them up and put them here, but no further direction was offered. I’ll ask Graham about this later.

  …

  Graham wasn’t exaggerating the time and effort required to manage all three homes. My entire summer is dedicated to building flower boxes and mowing lawns. The outcome is good since I get a month ahead on the mortgage and even manage to keep the cable TV on.

  I get to know most of our new neighbors as well. In the house next door are four guys. None of them use actual names, which makes it feel like a frat house movie. There is a heavyset black guy they call T-Buck, who is obsessed with cars. Many old ones come and go from his house, most arriving on trailers and leaving the same way. It’s not uncommon for an engine revving to startle me awake in the middle of the night. A smallish pale skinned fellow they call Blister follows him around constantly. From what I have observed he is T-Bucks assistant, always handing him tools and running after stuff. His complexion is pasty and he stays out of the sun like a vampire.

  The other two are like Siamese twins. Cain and Abel are frail, almost effeminate looking. Both have shoulder length brown hair worn in either a stubby ponytail or pushed back with a girlish looking headband. They often wander to Lance’s house consulting with him on this or that. Cain carries a clipboard everywhere he goes, never setting it down. They share similar olive complexions and green eyes.

  The middle house is Graham’s, but a chubby man with thick glasses also stays there. He’s balding and on most occasions sweaty. He almost always wears a white dress shirt and khaki slacks. This ensemble is made odder by the high top tennis shoes that never leave his feet. He goes by Mr. Dibble, a title all of them use religiously. He reminds me of Dilbert rather than Dibble, but Graham did not think this was as funny as I did. It almost seemed like he didn’t know who Dilbert was?

  The third house, kiddy corner across the oval turnaround is Lance’s. He and Izzy live there leading me to believe they are a couple. As previously stated, I haven’t seen any wedding rings, but his body language around her is very possessive. Izzy, for her part, appears to defer to him, but they all do so I can’t be sure about that. Lance is tall, well over six-feet, with dark hair pulled back in a man-bun. They all look to be in their late twenties or early thirties, but Lance is probably the oldest.

  I’m just finishing up raking Lance’s yard when Dickie’s silver Mustang sputters down the street. He’s doesn’t turn into his driveway four houses back on the corner, but instead continues down to me. It’s not really his house, but rather his mothers. Dickey’s mom is a recluse, almost never setting foot outside. She’s walks with a walker and last I saw her, Dickey was taking her to a doctor’s appointment several months ago. My own mother is the only person I know who has actually spoken to her, but she won’t comment. My mother won’t say anything if she has nothing nice to say. Jerry, the paperboy, and I often joke that when she dies, Dickie won’t tell anyone so he can keep cashing her government checks. A gruesome image of her body in a basement refrigerator often haunts me at night after these little chats with Jerry.

  Stopping clumsily at an angle in the open circle, the car coughs to a stop, blue smoke huffing out of only one tailpipe. Dickie hops out and leans over the roof staring at me. He’s skinny with an unkempt mullet of dark greasy hair. Sparse hairs on his chin reveal he can’t really grow a beard, but would like one. As per usual, he’s wearing a sleeveless denim jacket with hand sewn patches. One cool patch I recall from an earlier visit reads THRUSH MUFFLERS scrawled across a cartoon bird that resembles Woody Woodpecker. A cigarette dangles from one corner of his mouth as he continues to stare at me. Dickey has to think on what he wants to say awhile before actually saying it. Whatever fell on his head down at the cement plant was just heavy enough to slow down his thought process, without actually killing the poor guy.

  “Yuh, yuh, you seen Jarrod around?” he finally blurts, pointing at me with his smoke.

  “Nope.”

  “Po, po, Police were down at the plant asking questions today.”

  This is interesting. I wonder what mess Jarrod is into now. Dickey had previously revealed that he never came back to work after being shown the door by Graham. Nothing like a good beat down to keep away the riff raff.

  “Maybe he robbed a bank or something,” I suggest, watching Dickey flick ash on the roof of his car without noticing.

  “Wuh,
wuh well they,” he starts, pausing with a hand to his forehead. “Wanted to know if I seen him around here.”

  “Here?”

  “Yuh, yuh, your place, this street, with your mom,” he explains in choppy starts and stops. “Probably be here asking after him soon.”

  “We haven’t seen him.”

  “Aye, aye, I hope they find him,” Dickey grins, hitting his smoke and blowing it out one side of his mouth. “Take him downtown and fry his nuts with a car battery.”

  Jarrod gave him a really hard time, but this statement seems a bit harsh to me. I do chuckle to myself at the visual. Jarrod probably deserves it. Will the cops really ask me questions? My mother’s jaw is no longer wired shut, but since the incident she rarely speaks. It feels like she’s not here anymore. She talks only in whispers and mostly to Izzy, whom she adores. The poor woman seems changed by the experience. I’m unsure if she would speak to the cops if they came.

  “Thuh, thuh, these, weirdos still paying you to mow lawns?”

  I nod.

  “Lah, lah, lucked into,” he suggests, then takes a long pause. “Lucked into the money with that one.”

  “Agreed,” I bob my head and search for something to say. “They won’t take me at the plant till I’m seventeen.”

  “Piss, piss,” he spits, flicking his butt on to the pavement. “Piss on that. Do something, anything else.”

  I nod, unwilling to argue that point. No one really wants to work there. He slips back behind the wheel and starts the engine. Blue smoke blows out of one exhaust pipe, but not the other. The door still open and with one foot on the ground, he cocks his head around to look at the cloud. I walk forward and lean in the passenger window.

  “Smoke’s bad,” I suggest, having watched it get progressively worse over the summer.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he chokes out and then coughs a loogie on the ground. “Gonna put an engine in it this weekend.”

  “New one?”

  “Nah, nah, no, found a rebuilt 289 out of a sixty-seven.”

  “What year is this?”

  “Nine, nine, ninety-seven,” he nods his head and frowns.

  Dickey has a reputation for being a bit of a butcher with cars. He helped Jerry’s brother install a radio in his truck and there were wires hanging down on the floor. It’s hard to imagine him playing with engines.

  “Well, good luck with that.”

  Dickey nods and slams his car door. He has to slam it three times to get it to stay shut. Turning sharply, he narrowly misses Graham’s mailbox, before rambling down the street and turning into his driveway. I’m watching him try to slam the door again so he can go inside when I am startled by a hand on my shoulder.

  “What did Sling Blade want?” T-Buck asks.

  Turning, I find Graham also standing there drinking a cup of coffee. I frown as T-Buck and his crew have dubbed Dickey Sling Blade, after a movie character they find amusing. Seeing my displeasure T-Buck holds up both hands in an, I’m sorry gesture.

  “His car is a health hazard,” Graham remarks, pointing his coffee cup down the road, where a blue cloud still lingers.

  “He’s swapping out the motor,” I offer defensively. “He’s fixing it.”

  “Sling,” T-Buck starts, but then stops. “Dickie is doing a motor swap?”

  I nod.

  “That I can’t wait to see,” he laughs before heading back to his half open garage door.

  “When’s school start?” Graham queries, moving on quickly from car talk.

  “A week or so,” I concede, worried this means no more job.

  “You gonna keep after the yards or should I get somebody else?”

  “I can manage the lawn and stuff, but any more big projects would be a problem,” I admit, recalling a possible coy pond was mentioned last week.

  “That’s fair, but I’d have to pay you less. Say three a week.”

  I nod. This will be a problem eventually, but for now it’s better than losing it all together.

  “How’s Missy?” he asks, referring to my mother by name.

  “She’s good.”

  “Not working though?” he confirms, although it feels like more of a statement, than a question.

  “No,” I admit and pause. “I’m not sure what to suggest to her.”

  “She do laundry?”

  “You mean like ours?”

  He nods and sips his coffee. Graham doesn’t just make conversation like a normal person. If he is asking questions, it’s likely he already knows where the conversation is going. Where is this going?

  “Yeah.”

  “Dry cleaner in town is doing ours,” he reveals, pointing to the left in the direction of town. “They aren’t doing such a great job and we were looking for an alternative.”

  I didn’t realize this. I had not thought about who over there was washing their clothes. I just figured all the houses handled their own. Do they do anything themselves? This conversation reminds me of the one about his lawn mowing guys.

  “You want my mom to wash your clothes?”

  “I’d pay,” he nods, sipping. “Say three hundred a week. There are eight of us so it would keep her busy, but she wouldn’t have to leave the house to work.”

  “I’m not sure our washer and dryer would be up to that,” I admit, recalling that I have to wait an hour after running the dryer to let it cool down.

  “Not a problem. I’ll have the T-Buck pull the new ones out of his place and install them over at yours,” he assures me. “They are brand new, never used. I mean, if she was interested we can do that.”

  “Probably, I’ll ask her.”

  “Good, get back to me by tomorrow.”

  With that he turns and walks across the lawn to Lance’s house. I watch him go, noting that he knocks on the door rather than letting himself in. When he goes to T-Bucks, he just goes in and hollers for them. Once alone on the street, my thoughts drift back to Jarrod. What do the police want with him? Another thought dances around my head. My pay loss to three a week, combined with the possibly that my mother might make three a week means we would actually make two hundred dollars more.

  “Sling Blade was right about me lucking into it,” I smirk then cover my mouth with a hand. “I mean Dickey.”

  …

  The holidays go well for my mother and our little household. Her laundry business has added a food service component. Every Sunday afternoon she puts on a full sit down dinner for Graham and his crew. They supply a wonderful table that’s at least twelve feet long and the chairs to go with it. T-Buck dubs it the Round Table as if they were medieval knights and this was a castle in England.

  I throw out the living room furniture to make room for it. The sofa sits on the lawn for a week before the city comes and hauls it away. In exchange for this once a week family style affair, Graham pays for all our groceries, plus another fifty bucks. My mother passes the extra fifty along to Jerry’s mom, Roberta, who comes over to help prepare and clean up. She’s a concrete factory widow now, her husband killed in an avalanche of ash last summer, and is excited to earn some extra money as well as socialize.

  Roberta, who works at a flower shop in town, takes a liking to T-Buck right off, annoying Jerry to no end. I doubt anything will come of it, but this is a small town and there are no other interracial couples here. Come to think of it, there are darn few black folks. This tidbit had not occurred to me before now, but it is a fact. Other than Ernie and Ron, who both work at the plant, I can’t think of any actual residents who fall under any racial category other than white. This being Texas there are of course some Latinos, but more so in the adjacent county. None of that here, Jarrod used to remark.

  There isn’t much lawn work in January, but I rake and cut the grass regardless. Graham pays me and never mentions the time of year. One January day I am startled when Dickey’s Mustang backs out of his mother’s garage. I had not seen it since the weekend he claimed to be doing an engine swap. It was generally assumed he had botched the job as
he had taken to driving his mother’s station wagon. When was that? Like three or four months ago? Once in the street, he notices me and guns the engine, spinning the tires and leaving a trail of white smoke. Rocketing down to the dead end where I stand, he slides the car to a stop only a few feet from the curb.

  There is no hood, a situation I assume has to do with the new engine and not the lack of the item in question. He revs the engine and grins through the windshield. The car sounds amazing, hitting on all cylinders and running smooth. The body is the same sun faded silver as before. There are still dents on the front and back from his poor parking skills. The driver’s rear fender has a deep groove in it running at least two feet. He kills the ignition and climbs out. Coming around to the front, he bows and waves a hand over the engine like the pretty girls on The Price is Right.

  “Wha, wha wha Laa,” he announces.

  “Nice, how’d you manage it?”

  “I, of course, that,” he stutters and pauses. “I know what I’m doing.”

  “Clearly you do. Sounds sweet.”

  He draws out a pack of cigarettes and lights one, dragging a match down the fender to do so. I’m watching him bask in his glory, when I see T-Buck walking down the street from the direction of Dickey’s house. I get a nod when he sees me looking, but then he puts a finger to his lips indicating I should pretend not to notice. So that’s how he did it.

  “Wah, wah, want, to go for a spin?” he offers, leaning over the engine and pushing a blue plug wire back into the fancy divider.

  I can’t now,” I beg off, not wanting to ride in a car driven by a guy with a closed head injury. “Maybe later.”

  “Too, too, too,” he stutters. “Too bad, so sad.”

  I nod as he slips back behind the wheel. When he pushes in the clutch, the car rolls forward nearly hitting me, before peeling backwards. I get a fake salute from Dickey, before he spins the car around and disappears from the street. Probably going to cruise town like a fifties movie.

  Watching him go, it occurs to me the police never came by and asked about Jarrod. He had mentioned it to me last Fall before the Mustang disappeared into his garage. I wonder why? The cops must have caught up with him themselves. T-Buck reaches the sidewalk in front of his place and I pass by, heading home for lunch.