And all the way to Bulkhead for a weekend just for some hush puppies?
“Get in here for a second,” she said, patting the seat next to her.
“You take good care of your brothers,” she said when I climbed in.
“Angie last time I checked the birth records was older than me.”
“Angela is Angela,” she said. “She lacks patience. She does not have your heart.”
“She’s got a mouth on her, though.”
My mama laughed. “Don’t pay any attention to her mouth. Just take care of your brothers and hold your shoulders up.”
“When you coming back on Sunday?” I asked her. I wanted to say the word “Sunday” because it had happened before, this dropping us off at my grandparents for a so-called weekend that started out the weekend but dipped big-time into the week. I hated to hear she was leaving us at all, much less for the weekend which she must of gotten mixed up with the week. Sunday Sunday Sunday say it again so she’ll hear you say it Sunday.
Instead she answered a question I never asked her. As she talked she looked out the window at the woods behind the house she grew up in, as if these woods held old, favored shadows, or dreams of someplace wider. I knew she was speaking to me but not to me too.
“I just want a stretch of days where I know exactly what’s going to happen next. He’s worth it, I love him still, I love all y’all but it’s just so hard not knowing whether he’ll be there when I get home from work. And even if he’s there half the time he’s not there. I just need some time. They’ll take good care of ya’ll. Not that he wouldn’t.”
She turned her head away from those woods, toward me. “He’s not going to hurt any of you, you know that. He’s not capable of that. He loves you all just the same whether he’s off or on, it’s just, well, he’s sick’s what it is, baby. You know that. That’s why I brought y’all up here to stay awhile. It’ll be better for everybody, you’ll see.”
“What time on Sunday, though?”
“Go on now,” she said. “Mama said she’s got something she needs y’all’s help with,” she said.
“See you Sunday,” I said.
I got out of the truck and went back to walking broke-string puppet but she slapped that truck in gear and was gone.
Inside my grandmother immediately put us to work making pickles. But then she discovered something wrong with the cukes, I forgot what, but the whole batch was bad. Ceremoniously did she call out for my grandfather. He came out of a back dark bedroom blinking from a deep-down nap.
“Take these children and dump these pickles down a ravine.”
He looked at her like what the hell’s wrong with them. She put her hands on her hips, indignant. Seemed like they’d been married too long to trust words. Or maybe they’d used up their allotment and were down to threadbare gestures. The only word that seemed to matter was “ravine.” My grandfather was wore out from years of baking under the sun in his tobacco and soybean fields but he perked up a little at the mention of the magic word.
“Hot damn, I get to go looking a ravine to dump some pickles in,” said my sister under her foul-mouthed breath. We loaded the smelly half-pickled cukes in the pickup and lit out for the ravine. He made all four of us ride in the cab so we wouldn’t get clobbered by pickle jars. My smart-assed sister kept right on ribbing my granddaddy.
“How come we got to dump them down a ravine? There’s some sweet-looking woods right there,” she said, pointing to the trees flashing by the pickup. My grandfather lit a Lucky Strike and fingered a flake of tobacco on his tongue, his only acknowledgment of her comments. My sister kept right on, though, and I had the idea that this would be her way with the world, with men particularly: She would wear them down with her questions. Slap them around with words. Mostly foul ones. We kept circling the county looking a ravine. “Don’t you even know where one’s at?” said my sister. She spit out the “at.” What she meant was, What kind of laconic, born-and-bred-down No Head Bottom Road old turkey-necked man are you anyway? You’d think he was from Newark, New Jersey, the way he could not put his fingers on the exact location of a ravine.
Turned out he was looking for just the right one. I admit I admired his perseverance. Wouldn’t any ravine do for this batch of spoiled pickles. He had an audience also. What would we think of him if he’d of dragged us to a ravine any fool could find, one strewed with old shirts and bottles and plastic diapers and a couple of stoves half-slid down the mud-slick plummet? I sensed he cared what me and my brothers thought, less so my smart-assed, why-won’t-any-old-woods-do sister.
Finally on a dirt road down near Ivanhoe he slammed on the brakes, jerked his turkey neck around, threw his arm up along the seat behind us, bobbed his Lucky between his teeth, and floored the truck. We fishtailed to the side of the road, fell out to check the ravine. Pure virgin, deep as a well, not one iota of previous trash. I confess it touched that part of me craved basement, attic, crawl space. I wondered did I inherit this from the old ravine locator, who I vowed to pay more attention to from that point on, though I never did imagine myself or my brothers or sisters living with him or my grandmama who I don’t think were ever informed of my mama’s plans to let us stay with them awhile or if they were did not seem to know how to deal with three smelly boys and a foul-mouthed smart-assed girl. It was like Ringling Brothers had detoured down No Head Bottom Road and pulled up in their drive and unleashed half their wildest animals in my grandparents’ front yard with nothing but a tip of some truck driver’s hats.
My granddaddy let us do right much what we wanted. For instance that day at the ravine, we boys got to bomb the pickle jars off the trees. My granddaddy went off to pee and while he was gone my sister stole two of his Luckys, which of course he noticed, being the sort to keep track of what all he’d smoked by a certain time of day. But I can’t claim it was my sister and her mouth and her sticky fingers led my grandparents to let my daddy come pick us up after two weeks—maybe it was how clean and smiley my daddy was when he turned up, how he helped my grandmama with the dishes and changed the oil in my granddaddy’s pickup—I won’t blame any one thing on any one person, much as I would like to single somebody’s guilty ass out and not have to worry about it.
Though I was starting to blame myself big-time for leaving Carter when I parked the truck alongside the ravine. Up in the shade, well out of the boiling. Tank jumped out and ran into the chicken house. You had to watch him out there or he’d climb in a refrigerator to hide and suffocate. That reminds me, he needs to change those wet underpants, I said to myself, so starved on a day’s diet of only some four-cornered Nabs and some Pop Rocks that I was talking with a vengeance to myself in the cab of the truck, just slack sitting there, listening to the tick of the engine and far off Tank banging around some discarded discount appliances, unable to move due to exhaustion, fear, hunger, anger at having to be thinking about someone else’s underwear. Also guilt: a pinkish dollop of flesh floated down from the boiling sky in front of the dust-streaked windshield, bouncing off pine needles, before settling in similarly colored sand. I lost my brother’s earlobe. How come I never slipped the key into the ignition and left when I had the chance? I did not have to sit there all day in that boiling truck waiting on whatever evil you want to call it—for there were many names for what inhabited my father and not one of them made anything easier—to pass. Why did I not leave like my mama and my sister? Who was I to think I could win out over the kind of fate that had doomed my family since before I turned up in somebody’s stomach? If only she had not named me after him.
Then it hit me how I could change my name. Up in town, Hargrove’s Laundry sold work clothes on a rack out front. Stitched in red thread above cigarette pockets were all grades of names. Tank too could alter his identity. We’d even snag one for Carter. No money required as Tank could foray into Hargrove’s to distract the skinny, blue-smock-wearing, bug-eyed woman behind the counter while I generously helped myself and my brothers to new identities. Doors would
then open for us. We could hire ourselves out as a uniformed crew.
“Tank,” I called. “Hole up, Tank, I got a good idea.”
But I hadn’t taken two steps toward the chicken house before I saw again that fluttering lobe. Everywhere and constant in my field of vision, steady floating like gnats or raindrops. Closed my eyes, opened them: still there.
“Tank, Tank, where you at?” I said.
Up inside that chicken house it was cool and bluely shadowed. Sometimes we napped in the sand like dogs despite the previous tenants, the high and likely fact that our sandy bed was well fertilized with their droppings. It was a peaceful place in our lives, the upside-the-ravine, dead-appliance chicken house. But that day it didn’t feel right. It smelled hellish, of decayed chickenshit and pee-stiff underpants. I yelled Tank’s name until it echoed tinny off the half acre of discarded appliances. All I wanted was a shirt declaring my new name stitched over my heart. In the elevator of my mother’s hotel I stood toward the back among the elegantly dressed residents when she entered. She half-turned to look at me as we rose up through the floors. Joel Junior? she asked. The rest of the elevator half-turned too to hear my name. I counted to three, thumped the cursive crowning my heart, and said, No, ma’am, the name is Thaddeus.
“Thaddeus,” I yelled. My stomach and I had come to the end of the Pop Rocks, the four-cornered Nabs. The Fig Newtons and ginger ale my mother had offered had long since been siphoned off by the boiling sun. Also expired: any remaining patience I had as big-brother/mother/father all rolled into one. I would not allow myself to think about what might have actually happened to Carter after we left. If I thought about it with eyes closed I saw Carter still belted to the chair and my daddy wielding still his bloody scissor. I loved my daddy, he was a good man. He just did what the voices told him to. He was just following directions.
I found Tank curled asleep in a bathtub. He had folded himself in there like a shirt tucked clean in a drawer. But then I got close enough to smell him.
I shook him awake. He gave me his cross face and fell right back asleep. I remembered when I was his age, how I hated for anyone to wake me up. I hardly ever cried, my mama told me. Not like Carter and Tank, who were always wailing, still are, Tank anyway, he was fixing to wail when I had to snatch his underpants off him. I didn’t know where I could get him another pair, especially not ones with Scooby-Doo on them, his favorite. I didn’t know where I could wash the ones he had on either. There was a soapsudsy creek called the Cat Tail up 692 in Trent but you could lose your toe to its splash. It stunk up the whole bottom down by the jail, the library and liquor store. Occasionally you’d see the haz-mat crew standing around down there in their space suits. Again I shook him awake and again he shifted and shot me his cross face and fell right back asleep. I didn’t know what to do with him or what to do with me either. We couldn’t go back home. We couldn’t go see Sheriff Deputy Rex. He would put us in foster hell. I imagined he’d dearly love to split us up. I was not about to lose Tank that way. I’d soon leave him side of the road in his dirty underwear or asleep in a tub wearing his cross face.
My grumbling stomach reminded me of how sometimes fat Frosty took pity on us when word reached him that my daddy had gone off again and he’d give us hot dogs apiece and once a Nutty Buddy to split. One thing, when I get old enough I’m not going to share jack shit. I am here to tell you that even if a sweet girl comes up to me and asks me to share her whatever I am going to tell her I’d rather do without.
I shook him awake again and his red face rose up out of the tub, his cheeks creased by the sticks and leaves blanketing the bottom. Not once have I ever mentioned to someone not kin to me by blood and by that I mean brother, sister, or mother my daddy’s troubles. Not even to Sheriff Deputy Rex when he comes to get us and asks me straight questions. I didn’t know what else to do though. We had to eat. Also if I was going to leave Carter behind because I was so good at love then I couldn’t just keep running without telling somebody about that lobe I saw falling whatever I looked at, wherever I went. I was not going to walk through this world seeing eyes shut or closed that severed piece of falling pink.
I picked him up finally and toted him rag doll and sweaty over to the truck. I laid him across the seat. He didn’t even wake when I took off his shorts and then his Scooby-Doos. I put his shorts back on him and stuffed the balled-up underpants under the seat and opened the windows wide and scooted up in the driver’s seat. Tank went right on sleeping, do not disturb.
Old Frosty from behind the counter said when I walked in, “Boy, your daddy know you driving his vehicle?”
Same old semicircle of men sat around gumming tobacco and listening to him bitch. The whole place smelled fried. Usually it made me gag, that trapped odor of a thousand sausage biscuits, but I was so dang hungry that Frosty’s smelled like heaven.
“Mr. Frosty can I talk to you back there?” I said, pointing toward the drink coolers. They were humming and oozing spillage onto the sloping concrete floors. It was dark and smellier in the corner but I did not want the semicircle listening to my business.
“What the hell for?” asked Frosty.
“For about one minute of your time.”
“I’m a busy man,” lied that too-fat-to-push-through-the-slot-behind-the-register, has-to-turn-sideways-and-grunt-to-get-out fool.
“Say what it is you want, ain’t nobody listening to you.”
Standing there in Frosty’s, the semicircle hanging on my silence, I thought college was not such a bad idea after all. I wondered if the full-time study of maps would possibly allow me enough free time to pursue other interests such as kickboxing. In terms of giving back to the community I felt that I would be a decent volunteer fireman.
Tank’s favorite book was Dumbo. He liked to look at the picture where the elephant’s up in the tower and the firemen are urging him to jump onto a tiny trampoline. I believe if I’m not mistaken it’s right before Dumbo discovers his dumbass can fly. We read the same page over and over and every time Tank urges Dumbo to go ahead, go for it, jump!
“Please, Mr. Frosty,” I said, “it won’t take but two minutes.”
“His real name ain’t really Frosty,” said one of the tobacco gummers.
“That boy don’t give a spit what my real name is,” said Frosty. He got up and hoisted the belt on his tuba pants, which had slid down past his gut. He pushed his belly sideways through the slot. We all watched him do it like it was a ball game replayed in slow motion on an un-golf-clubbed TV.
“What?” he said, patting sweat off his forehead. I walked back to the coolers and he followed, asking, “What? What?”
“It’s my daddy.”
“That crazy fucker gone off again?”
The concrete sloped toward a drain. I stood in something sticky. My feet made ripping noises when I tried to lift them. I never knew what I was going to say until I said it. Before I could say anything Frosty said, “Where’s Carter at?”
Then this half-asleep, hoarse dwarf voice goes, “My daddy stuffed bananas down Carter’s throat. He ain’t peeled them. Then he tied him up with belts and cut his ear off.”
“You get back in the truck,” I told Tank. I gave him back his own cross look. He was sweaty red from napping. He was twisting around, palming his mess like he had to pee.
“You need the bathroom, boy?” said Frosty.
“Naw, he pees his pants,” I said.
Tank just stood there staring at me.
“You best not be thinking I’m going to take you,” I told Tank.
“I want you to,” he said in a little girly whine.
“Get your ass in there and do your business.”
“I don’t know where it’s at.”
“Goddamn,” said Frosty. “Sam! Take this boy out back while I talk to his brother and make sure he don’t pee all over my floor.”
An overalled man ambled back shrugging. He held out his hand.
“Where’s your thumb at?” said Tank.
<
br /> We all looked. Sure enough it was missing.
“Don’t be rude to that man. He’s going to help you. Do you have to go or not?” I asked him.
“Number two too.”
“This ain’t math class,” I said.
“Jesus Lord,” said Frosty. When they were gone he said, “What’s this about a banana and a ear?”
“We had to leave right quick. That’s how come I’m driving the truck.”
“You ain’t answered the question.”
“He didn’t cut his ear off. He just sort of nicked it with some scissors while he was giving him a haircut.”
“Well, which the hell is it? First you say you had to leave out of there quick enough to steal your daddy’s vehicle. Then you tell me he was just cutting the boy’s hair.”
Frosty was smarter than I thought. I’d never seen him in action, I guess. Only thing I had seen him do prior was ring stuff up. If you asked him he’d give you a bag but only if you asked him and then he’d make a big deal out of licking his fat finger, reaching below the counter to extract with excruciating slowness a paper bag, flapping the thing open ceremoniously in the fly-crazy airspace above the register, loading your purchases in such a way as to suggest what a tremendous pain in the ass you were to request a bag. The entire process added another five minutes to your overall time in line and has never convinced me that beneath that gruff exterior lies hidden a keen intellect.
I was thinking, however, that perhaps there was a way to get a tank of gas out of this slow-motion fucker.
“He went off early this morning,” I said. “He cut the tip off Carter’s ear. We ain’t had anything to eat or drink since breakfast.”
Frosty let out a fat man’s sigh, as if he’d been punctured and was slow-leaking.
“You wanting me to extend your daddy credit when he’s fixing to be carted off to Dix Hill?”
“It was just a accident.”
“I guess the law’ll have to decide that. I know if I cut the tip off my boy’s ear, they’d have my fat ass up in front of a judge before I could get out from behind that counter.”
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