by Lisa Howorth
Sometimes the most off-the-wall plans were the ones that actually ended up working best, or working at all. Mary Byrd felt all right about it: had she planned to go any other way there would have been a snag for sure. She left at the crack, in the dark, before the children got up, without telling them her mode of transportation. What a chickenshit. Eliza would be appalled; William might think it was cool because it was a truck. She’d give them all that: the three of them could have a big laugh and a little contempt-fest at her expense. Fine with her. She didn’t have to worry about anyone else knowing about the trip because Charles and the children would be too embarrassed to mention it to anyone.
So, here she was in the gloomy dawn, eight feet above the road barreling along at eighty miles per hour, eastbound on I-40, enjoying the company of Crofoote Slay VI. It felt a little ridiculous; was she too old to be doing this? During the night, a cold rain had begun falling, but they’d beaten the brutal, frigid front that was expected by taking the northern route; the worst of the storm would be south of them. Foote, so far, was companionable and entertaining. He had been shy at first, but his morning pills—he kept a line of Black Beauties stuck on a piece of two-sided tape along the dashboard, or the control panel or whatever it was—made him an authoritative and talkative captain of his ship. The cab was cozy, if smoky, and curious. She felt like she was in a nuclear sub or at NASA Mission Control, there were so many gauges and knobs and cord things hanging around. Behind the seats was the cool little cabin, with a neatly made up bed, pillows, curtains, and a TV. Some photos were tacked on the wall.
“Do they even still make these?” asked Mary Byrd, reverently touching the Beauties on the dash.
“Have you ever heard of Mexico?” he cracked, and then, with not much encouragement from Mary Byrd, launched into his family’s history. “My hay-ruh-tay-uhdge,” he laughed.
The Slay family was from up in Spanish Trap, where they had had cotton holdings—land purchased from departing Choctaws for a few gold coins and easily accessible to the Mississippi River. They had gradually squandered their money on various postbellum enterprises, most notably a riverboat brothel, saloon, and gambling emporium that, because it was on the water, was exempt from all laws but God’s, or the devil’s. The entire crew, maquerelle, and most of the prostitutes who worked the boat and the riverside brothels had been wiped out in one summer by the great 1878 yellow fever epidemic, but not before spreading their pestilence up and down the river from St. Genevieve to Natchez. From that point on, the Slays had lived from decade to decade, selling off wedges and slices of their valuable land like hoop cheese to get by. On the last parcel was Foote’s house, the family seat, a glorified double dogtrot with modest square columns and a broad front porch—the classic, graceful house type that was a hallmark of Mississippi hill country. Which, Foote added, had been mostly frontier when the house had been built. Mary Byrd recalled that the night she and Mann had visited, the cotton fields came almost up to the walls of the house. Woods and underbrush had barely obscured a Texaco Tiger Mart next door, and the county road ran less than fifty feet from the front door. They could just make out the casinos off in Tunica, a glittering mirage in the soybean and cotton desert.
Foote went on. Jerry Lee Lewis, the Killer, lived not far away and had tried to buy the Slay house but Foote wouldn’t sell for any price, not this final little scrap of his family’s past. He’d gone to some parties at Lewis’s place. Once, on an epic binge, Foote said he’d tried to tell Jerry Lee that he knew the rocker was Hernando de Soto reincarnated because he’d been born in Ferriday, Louisiana, and that’s also where the infamously cruel cocksucker conquistador had died and supposedly been chunked in the river. Foote thought it was more than coincidence that the Killer had settled near Spanish Trap—Foote suspected that he’d come back for his buried gold. Foote looked over at Mary Byrd, eyes bugged out, and laughed, saying, “And then I told him, ‘Your wife got hold of your gold, and that’s why you offed her,’ and I got the heave-ho, which it took three of his goons to do.” Wow, thought Mary Byrd. This will be quite a ride.
Foote talked for about two hundred miles nonstop. He talked about some things Mary Byrd liked hearing about, like the old plantings around his house that he kept going—ancient roses, boxwood, and Cape jasmine—and about the cross-country car race he had won once back in the seventies by driving a van that he’d converted, making the whole interior a giant gas tank so that he never had to stop. He also told her things that fascinated but horrified her, like the dogfights he frequented, which took place in an abandoned academy. Foote had once taken Frank Booth down there to fight, but his bassetness had done him in; he was vicious, but he was too long and low to be quick and a nasty-ass bulldog had torn part of his long left ear off. He’d seen a bobcat and a Plott hound fight there once, and the bobcat, even though chained, had easily won because the deeply gut-bit Plott had kept tripping over its own intestines until it finally gave out. He told Mary Byrd that he suspected that the Chinese, or whatever the fuck they were, who owned the Ha Ha Fresh Café in Tunica, bought and served dog obtained from the dogfights in some of their weird-ass dishes. But was fresh, stir-fried dog meat any worse than ground pig sphincters shipped six weeks earlier as sausage from Iowa, Foote wanted to know. He described his dream of signing up for a refrigerator truck haul up to northern Canada where he’d pick up a polar bear, bring it back to fight at the academy, and make a shit-ton of money. And, he went on, speaking of animal abuse, it seemed like every time he watched any porn lately it involved animals, and it made him ill that dogs and horses were getting more than he was. Mary Byrd couldn’t help but laugh at most of it, hoping none of it was true and it was all to pass the time. God—dogfights. How awful. But how different was that, actually, from treeing a coon, or spotlighting or running deer to ground? Or baiting the poor bears that had existed over in the Delta in the old days?
“Feel this,” he said at one point, reaching over and grabbing Mary Byrd’s hand, scaring her to death. But she let him, with the tiniest twinge of interest, she had to admit, place her hand on his stomach, where she felt a hard, knotty protrusion.
“Hernia,” he laughed.
“Gross,” said Mary Byrd. “But thanks for sharing.”
“Why, you’re welcome. Just tell me when I’ve gone too far.” He smiled half-sheepishly.
“I don’t think I’ll try to tell you anything, Cap’n Slay. I’d probably end up back there with the chicken parts.”
“But enough about me. How about some music? You wanna tune into that idiot preacher show, ‘Healing the Wheeling,’ on American Family Radio, or do you want a tape?” He suddenly straightened in his seat, ran a bandana over his face and hair, and composed his features—which had been pinched and twitchy—into a mask of serenity and normalcy. Mary Byrd sensed with relief that maybe his upper rush was over.
“A tape would be good,” she said.
Foote had great rig-rock: a mix tape he’d made of dozens of car and road songs, everything from the obvious stuff like “Bobby McGee” and “Deadman’s Curve” and “Leader of the Pack” to “Dynaflow Blues,” “East Bound and Down,” “Lost Highway,” and Jimmy Liggins’s “Cadillac Boogie,” the song, Foote maintained, Ike Turner had ripped off for “Rocket 88,” which was on the tape two times. And “Ramblin’ Man.” Was there anything better for driving and cheering you up than Dickey Betts? One of Mary Byrd’s local favorites was on there, too: the old blues singer Fairlane Ford’s “Cement Mixer Blues”:
I want to be a cement mixer, honey,
churnin’ it while we drive.
And if you don’t mix it with me, baby,
you won’t be goin’ home alive …
They listened, Foote and Mary Byrd, without saying a word for a long time.
The Beatles singing “Drive My Car” came on, giving Mary Byrd a little jolt; it had been Stevie’s favorite song on her Rubber Soul album that a boyfriend across the street had brought her back from England.
; “Oh!” she said. “This song!” Foote ignored her.
Stevie must have been seven or eight and Mary Byrd had hauled out their mammoth Norelco tape recorder one day. She had wanted to record Stevie singing the song; she’d been babysitting him and trying to entertain them both, and she’d known her mom and Pop and Nick would be amused. They’d all listened to the tape so many times; it always cracked Nick and Stevie up. She still remembered every word of the tape. The two of them had been sitting on the floor in her room, and Stevie had only wanted to mess with the dials and the rotating tapes. She’d interviewed him first, to warm him up.
“Here we are talking to the famous rock ’n’ roll star Stevie Rhinehart. How are you, Stevie?” she’d asked.
“Can these wheels go faster, so we’ll sound like the Chipmunks?”
“Pay attention! You’re supposed to be one of the Beatles, dopey. If you do this, I’ll take you to Doc’s later for a cherry Coke and a candy bar.”
“O-kay, Mubba,” he’d said, grudgingly.
“And don’t call me that,” Mary Byrd had said. When he’d first come into the family, Mubba had been the best he could do for her name, and he still liked to use it because it annoyed her and got her attention, although he didn’t really get why. To her it sounded too much like “muvva.”
She had tried again. “Mr. Stevie, since you’re a rock ’n’ roll star, lots of girls want to know if you have a girlfriend. Can you tell us who she might be?”
“No-o-o-o,” he’d answered slyly. “But it’s not Sherrie,” he’d said, singsong, naming a girl in his class at school who Mary Byrd had known he had a crush on.
“It’s not Sherrie Finkelstein? Are you sure?”
“It’s … you,” he’d laughed.
Mary Byrd had broken character and laughed, too. “You know your sister can’t be your girlfriend, dummy.”
“Then it’s Mom,” he had said.
“And Mom can’t be your girlfriend either!” He had been sucking up, but it had made her happy that he liked his stepmother enough to even say that.
Switching back into interview mode, she had asked, “Well, Mr. Stevie, how about singing your favorite song, ‘Drive My Car,’ for all your fans?”
“Do I have to?” he’d said.
On the tape you could barely hear Mary Byrd whisper, “Yes. If you want to go to Doc’s. Stand up and do it!” She remembered how great it was to watch him pretending to play the guitar, doing an outstanding imitation of John Lennon’s plié playing style. Baby James could do it, too.
Stevie had begun singing in a desultory, gruff voice: “Baby, you can drive my truck. Yes, I’m going to be a duck.”
“Stevie, STOP!” she had shouted. “Why are you singing the wrong words?”
“Nick sings it that way!” he had said. “And there are some bad words, but if I sing them you’ll tell Mom or Pop.”
Mary Byrd had yelled, “Oh, brother! You’re both hopeless.” The tape ended there with Stevie chuckling goofily. She’d listened to it once after Stevie died, then thrown the old recorder and tape out. Oh, brother.
Foote watched his gauges and the slick road and the traffic and the signs, and Mary Byrd watched the windshield wipers and the low sky and the landscape and thought about Monday. She’d soon be in an office in downtown Richmond with some deadly serious strangers talking about deadly serious things. She guessed that Foote knew from Mann that she had something bad awaiting her, and that he was trying his rough best to distract and entertain her. Which was nice, even if it was dogfights and pig sphincters and hernias; it was still distraction and entertainment.
They stopped to eat at a truck stop. Foote had wanted to stop at a Cracker Barrel because he’d heard they didn’t hire queers. “You don’t need to tell Mann I said that,” he said.
“Gah. That’s a pretty … wrong thing to say.” She was pissed, given that Foote worked for Mann. “And Cracker Barrel learned their lesson. Why don’t you?”
“It’s nothing against them; I’d just as soon they didn’t handle my food. I would think you’d feel the same.”
Taken aback, Mary Byrd asked, “What do you mean?”
“Never mind.”
Jeez. The truck stop café where they finally ended up was good, though. It had a wholesome meat-and-three menu, and she could see that there would be some fruitful trash-shopping in the gift shop. Many of the best presents she ever gave people came out of truck stops and roadside crap-o-toriums. And in the lot next door there was a fireworks store. They went ahead and ordered; Mary Byrd wanted a salad with chicken strips and Foote asked for the country-fried steak and vegetable plate. When the waitress asked him which vegetables he’d like from the list on the menu, he said, “Mac and cheese, grits, and bacon.”
“Bacon,” said the waitress, a pretty girl with too much makeup.
“Pork is a crop, isn’t it?” he asked Mary Byrd.
The waitress went away and Mary Byrd went to the gift area. There was a profusion of junk of all kinds: the usual stuff like Confederate license plates and incense and dream catchers and throat cutters or fish gutters—it was hard to tell what those things were for—and wooden hillbilly joke items, but there were a few finds. In with the wolf Tshirts and Tennessee shot glasses, Mary Byrd found perhaps the sickest thing ever: a shirt emblazoned with 50,000 battered women in america, and i’ve been eating mine plain. Oddly, there was only one, and it had a worn look to it but it didn’t smell. She bought it so no one else could, and because it was so unbelievable. She also bought a pen in the shape of a finger that farted when you pulled it and a tiny Chihuahua that lifted its hind leg. Did the Chinese study us and watch our TV programs and make this stuff up, or did wacky Americans dream it up and go over there and have it made? Mary Byrd was ashamed to be buying the shirt and folded it so the middle-aged lady cashier could only see the price, not the slogan. While she waited in line, she looked over the disgusting generic candy selection: long, ropey jelly snakes, cotton candy in plastic tubs, Nik-L-Nips that looked left over from the fifties, candy barf and snot. Whatever had happened to Bonomo Turkish Taffy, Sky Bars, and BB Bats?
The cashier accepted her items, saying, “Isn’t that the funniest shirt?”
“Unbelievable,” said Mary Byrd.
They ate in silence, except for Mary Byrd trying to get Foote to eat some of her salad, and returned to the truck. Mary Byrd begged Foote to let her just run into the fireworks store and he said okay, but he didn’t turn off the roaring engine. Mary Byrd moved quickly around the fireworks display table and picked up some small ones, a Dragon Fart and a Monkey Drive. She loved the exotic, colorful graphics of the wrappers and boxes. They were gorgeous. William liked fart stuff –who didn’t—and monkeys, and he’d be happy to have a little stash; you couldn’t buy fireworks in the progressive state of Mississippi except around New Year’s and the Fourth of July. Probably she was a bad mother for giving her child fireworks. Big William often said he’d had to fix too many fingers and eyeballs because of them. Little boys adored explosives, though. William and his friends were crazy for them. Nick and Stevie had been, too. Big boys loved them as well, she thought, and that’s why we have war.
Back on the road again, headed across Tennessee toward the mountains, Foote and Mary Byrd rode quietly, a little bored and disappointed with each other and amusing themselves by reading off the weird roadside messages and bumper stickers they saw. It had started raining again, and the clouds were dark behind them. The backs of other trucks seemed to have become the new venue for religion and patriotism: 100% american and on duty for america and jesus: legal in all 50 states. What did that even mean? Foote might be a far-to-the-right kind of guy, but he wasn’t a big fan of Jesus. “Jesus,” he told her, “was just a big ole Socialist.”
Crossing into Virginia they began to see old churches and houses that still dotted the hills, charming as calendar photos, but more common were huge steel structures like airplane hangars or skating rinks. One near Wytheville looked like a flims
y, art deco twelve-plex theater with an electric billboard out front declaring that it was the church in the now. Whatever that meant. As if anything in southwestern Virginia could even remotely be in the now, thought Mary Byrd. More like in the then. There had been so many more old, abandoned farmhouses along this stretch in the old days. She remembered being sad, twenty years earlier, when they had begun to be replaced by new trailers. Now some of the trailers were abandoned and new ranch-style houses stood by them. She guessed that this meant prosperity and better lives for those families, but still. There had to be so many things left behind in the old places; not TVs or recliners or carpeting, but fireplaces and hearths and caned rockers and hooked rugs, and the ways of making them. And not just tangible stuff, but stories and songs. Food. Blah blah. She stopped herself in mid-romantic-hillbilly reverie. She wondered what Foote thought, although she could guess.
“It makes me sad to see these old houses falling down, and all these people living in these crappy prefab things,” she said.
“Sad?” Foote said. “You think they’re sad to have places that are clean and don’t stink of all their ancestors’ fatback grease? You think they’re sad to be free of being cold and breaking their backs chopping wood and hauling water and being isolated and shit?” He turned to her and blew smoke out of a contemptuous smirk. “That’s some folk-ass, Yankee bullshit, right there. Don’t be one of those quaint-hounds, girl.”