Tender as Hellfire

by Joe Meno

  For a long time, he stared at the blank silver mailbox, turning the book of matches over in his palm again and again. LaDell the mailbox read. The driveway was empty. No one was home. Their grass glimmered green with the morning light. Pill stood there a long while just thinking and smoking. The smoke hung around his face. The matches became soft with his sweat. He lit another cigarette and took a long drag. He stared at the shiny green grass, seeing how each blade moved like a whisper, like a single sigh, like a curse word spoken over and over again. He flicked the cigarette into the grass, picked up the black plastic bag, slammed the red metal flag down on the mailbox, and walked up to the nice white porch.

  Snap.

  Snappppppp.

  Snappppppppppppp.

  The bell clanged: It was already lunch time.

  Pill nodded to himself and walked inside the high school cafeteria, holding his hands inside his pockets as he marched down the rows and rows of brown tables and chairs, kind of sweating a little along his forehead. His eyes were shiny and black like he was about to cry, but he wasn’t; his blue cap was nearly pulled down over his eyebrow and the hard black scab. He pushed through the line of kids in their dull flannel school clothes, the jocks in blue jeans and yellow-haired girls in denim overalls who were all giggling and pulling on each other’s sweaters. He got his food and walked past them all, right up to the back round table.

  When Rudy LaDell and his buddies walked past, Pill looked up from his lunch and glared.

  “What? You got something to say, pussy?” Rudy asked, but Pill only smiled and looked back down at his awful food.

  After school, Pill waited in the parking lot, watching all the groups of kids hurrying into their beat-up cars or onto the bus. He was waiting for Rudy LaDell. When the older kid appeared, his jean jacket tight against his shoulders, Pill watched as he climbed into his rebuilt black Camaro, the screech of some unidentifiable heavy-metal guitar solo echoing from its speakers. Rudy slipped on a pair of sunglasses, lit a joint, and began laughing with his friends, who all piled into the backseat. When he saw my brother standing there staring, he stopped talking to the bright-eyed girl leaning against the driver’s side door and stared back, flipping him the bird. Pill looked away as Rudy LaDell’s Camaro peeled out, the back end of the car fishtailing a little as it flew over the gravelly road.

  Pill hiked his book bag over his shoulder and began to follow the small groups of kids along the culvert, away from the shadow of the high school, past the wasteland of the supermarket and video store and 7-Eleven, then he turned, walking a couple of feet behind two freshmen girls in tight jean skirts. He watched the shape their legs made they as they walked, laughing, glancing over their shoulders. When they stopped to share a cigarette at the pizza place, one of them pretending to play an arcade machine out front, they rolled their eyes as my brother walked past, and the other one whispered, “Maybe he has a staring problem.” Pill ignored them and headed back toward the culvert, sitting beside an irrigation pipe to have a smoke, throwing a stone at a bird picking apart a beetle.

  By the time he made his way down the rows of small white houses along the east side of Main, he could see two firetrucks parked in the middle of the street, their lights flashing, a cloud of smoke drifting noiselessly in the air. A couple of other kids from the high school were standing around in a circle gawking, although the fire had been put out a few hours ago. With the rest of the small crowd across the street, Pill stood and looked at the dark black spot where a porch had once been, the wood now molted and black, the rest of the house still intact though glistening with water and singed with smoke. Wow,” one girl with bangs muttered, “that’s really awful.” Silently, my brother stared across the street at the ruined porch for a while longer, then turned, walking slowly back toward the culvert, disappearing in the high grass and weeds, dragging his book bag behind him through the murk.

  A few days later, Rudy LaDell became a ghost. His muscle car would just appear from out of nowhere, him smoking a joint in the driver’s seat, watching me and my brother walking home, or every so often it would be waiting in the parking lot of the convenience store when we’d go to try and buy smokes, or it would even show up when I was playing in the ditch all alone; I’d look up and there would be his black Camaro, the same song, the same stupid metal riff blaring from its blown speakers, like a kind of phantom, I guess. I would glare at the him sitting there in the driver’s seat, and sooner or later it would be quiet and the car would be gone. I really don’t know what happened to him except that he didn’t fuck with my brother again. Of that, I’m pretty sure.

  Going back to that night, the night of the fire, I almost forgot that a deputy sheriff came by and asked Pill if he knew anything about who had started it. Of course, Pill said he didn’t know a thing. When the deputy left, unconvinced, my mom began shouting and Pill hurried off to his room. I knew at once what he had done, but I wasn’t mad at him for it, just sad, I guess, sad that he was already in trouble again.

  “Did you light that fire?” I asked him as we were lying in our bunk beds. “Was that you?”

  He turned in the bunk above mine. His breath was short and shallow as he cleared his throat.

  “No,” he whispered. “No, that wasn’t me. I didn’t have nothing to do with it.”

  God, I wanted to believe him. More than anything in the world, I wanted to pretend he was telling me the truth. He was my only brother and he had never lied to me about anything important in my whole life before. He had always been the one person to tell me things everyone else was afraid to say or thought I shouldn’t know, like how my old man had died or how to make it with a girl or how to stand up for myself no matter what bullshit my mother or teachers gave me, but this was all something different, this was something new. Him lying to me right then was so terrible that I thought I ought to forgive him for it right away. Maybe he hadn’t meant for it to happen like it had. Maybe he’d made a mistake. Either way, he didn’t say another word, just rolled over and pulled the covers up over his head.

  But that’s what I meant by what I said.

  Them splitting us up is where all the trouble really began.

  kiss of soft gravel

  The only girl I ever loved was Val. At the time, she was twenty-eight and paid to babysit us every other Friday night. I don’t remember much about her but her legs, which were the long, white reflection of beauty. The shape of her naked form would make me want to break something. I wouldn’t know what else to do. It’s always been like that for me. Didn’t you ever love someone you knew you couldn’t have? People might call you stupid but there’s nothing you can do to help it. My lust for Miss Nelson, my fifth grade teacher, would go on for another few weeks, until she shot me enough dirty looks to make me cringe and shrink in my poor wooden seat, urging me to draw a picture of her being bombarded by a squadron of WWII fighters on a geography exam. But Val. Her blue eyes made me want to set the whole world on fire.

  I don’t think we were supposed to know this, but my mother and her boyfriend, French, liked to party, having cocktails or smoking dope or doing lines of coke with other couples from the plant, and they needed somewhere to send me and my brother every other Friday night. Pill was thirteen and old enough not to need a babysitter, but both of us were prone to getting in trouble, and between us lighting stuff on fire and shouting and running around trying to murder each other and my mother screaming at us and French walking around in his underwear, I don’t think we were much appreciated by our neighbors. No one came right out and said anything, but a dumb, listless stare can tell you a lot of things ignorant people are afraid to say. So my mother and French paid this young truck-stop waitress at the other end of the trailer park to keep us in her spare bedroom every other Friday night and make sure we didn’t burn or steal anything we couldn’t afford to repay ourselves.

  Almost every other Friday night, my mother would give me and Pill a brown grocery bag of our clothes and toothbrushes, then send us down the gravel road
to Val’s silver trailer that was round and looked like a kind of space capsule. Pill was never happy about going. He hated Tenderloin, and being cooped up inside on a Friday night, when he could be out knocking mailboxes over or pissing someone off, must have burned him up pretty bad. He’d kind of sulk behind me with his hands in his pockets as we’d cross the court to her trailer. I’d wipe my nose clean with the back of my hand and then knock on her screen door. Val’s trailer was always lit up with a string of white Christmas lights. I don’t know if she put them up for Christmas or not, but she sure never took them down. Her bare legs would appear there behind the screen. I don’t know what it was about her legs; she was tall, really tall, taller than French. Her legs were just so long that I’d kind of whistle to myself every time I’d see them. I mean, it wasn’t like I’d know what to do with them if I had the chance, but there was something inside my chest that would light up like a match whenever she’d answer the door. Her hair was blond and cut short, and she’d usually be in her work uniform, which was a yellow dress with a white apron, her hair all done up with a white paper crown. She’d lead us inside and pat my head and lick her finger and stick it in Pill’s ear. He liked her too, he really did, but most of the time we were there he was in a mean mood. Her trailer always smelled the way I thought a girl should, like cigarettes and baby powder. Her breath was always hot and musty, moving over a wad of pink bubble gum. Her mouth would leave bright red lipstick marks on the spotted white glasses she drank gin from. There was nothing I wanted more than to touch her and have her kiss my forehead and let me fall asleep in her bed without anyone else, alone sleeping in her golden arms all night.

  And maybe after we got there, she’d pour us some RC Cola in some giveaway glasses that she’d gotten at a fast-food joint, or maybe she’d light a cigarette as she got undressed, but every Friday night we were there, she would strip down to her smooth white skin behind this Oriental screen decorated with a yellow tiger and tie her red Oriental robe around her middle, tucking the edges between her breasts. Seeing her when she appeared in her robe would make my teeth hum in my head.

  After that, she’d take a bath. Honest to God, she’d take a bath right while we were there. She’d close this small wooden door and slip into her pink bathtub and take a goddamn bath. It was as though we didn’t have a choice but to try and look. Pill always got to go first, then me. Our greasy faces would smear against the silver keyhole, unable to breathe as her naked shoulders appeared in our eyes. My face would get all red and hot and once I think I nearly passed out when she suddenly stood and stepped out of the tub and I gazed upon her naked form, her smooth white belly, her wide hips that slipped down to form the most perfect V I’d ever seen. I nearly blacked out right there but Pill grabbed me by the back of the shirt and held me up by my collar. His face wouldn’t get all red or anything, he’d just get kind of quiet and mad. Heck, I knew why, he was three whole years older than me and he thought he shouldn’t even be there. But since I knew this was the closest I was going to get to a naked woman, I didn’t ever complain.

  When her bare white legs appeared from behind the bathroom door, clouded by steam, still a little wet, she’d shout at us for gawking at her. She’d have her hair wrapped up in a pink towel on the top of her head and she’d be wearing that crazy Chinese robe, all black and red and white and flowery; she’d tuck her legs beneath her and take a seat on the sofa. Maybe she’d turn on the radio or something. Maybe she’d put on a nice record by Patsy Cline and stare out the screen windows into the dull blue night. By then, Pill would be getting all kinds of anxious. He was a boy with sex on the brain, and so maybe Val would send him out to go pick up our dinner. That was fine with me, because then it would be just me and Val in the trailer alone. She’d unwrap her hair and let it fall over her white shoulders, or maybe she’d blow dry it a little, then go behind that black screen and pull on a tight gray T-shirt or some overalls. Anything looked good on her, I swear. We’d sit on her sofa and watch the night come up, the blue sky giving way to blackness, me leaning in close to smell the shampoo and soap evaporating off her body; sweet and heavy like perfume, it would just hang like a cloud in the air. Maybe then she’d ask me something nice like, “How many girlfriends do you have?” or, “How come you’re such a heartbreaker?” and then Pill-Bug would return with some fried chicken or hamburgers or something from down the road. We’d all eat, laughing and giggling and throwing food and having the best time of our lives. Well, maybe not Pill. Or Val. But being with the both of them felt all right to me.

  Anyway, later, we’d go out on Val’s porch. She’d pour herself a drink and keep patting me on the head and giving me wet kisses on the cheek. We’d watch the last of the fireflies glowing in the tall brown grass and listen across the courtyard to where our own trailer was ringing with the unfamiliar sounds of laughter. We’d all lie down on her porch and drink gin and water, which isn’t such a strong drink, I guess, but enough to make your head swim if you happen to be lying next to the beauty of your life. “My men,” Val would laugh, hugging us both. Pill would try to ignore her, he’d just keep drinking the booze, kind of frowning, but when a nice lady like that puts her finger wet with spit in your ear, you can’t help but feel a certain way. “My two men, that’s all I need.”

  My face would feel warm against her belly where my head lay just below her breasts.

  “Val, will you marry me when I’m older?” I’d ask.

  “Sure thing, darling.”

  At that moment, I couldn’t figure there was anything better in the world. Maybe Val would give us some firecrackers to light off, or maybe we’d go for a walk down the road and watch the brown toads scurrying from one side to the other. By then it would be dark out and late. Val would make us brush our teeth and wash our faces. She’d let us fall asleep on her sofa, listening to some old records or watching her tiny black-and-white television. Then she’d help us into the big white bed in the spare room, the bed that smelled like the soft, wrinkled part of her neck where there’d always be a greasy dab of perfume. Her head would hang over us as her robe would drop open a little, showing the space just above her heart, the smooth white plain that I knew she shared with truck drivers and cowboys and men who drove pickups. Her mouth would swell as she’d smile and wink us a goodnight, and then I’d reach up and kiss her on the soft side of her red mouth. That moment, right there, is still what I think about when I think about love. The soft side of someone’s mouth.

  Pill would lie on his belly, burying his face in her pillows. I would lie on my back, and then we would hold our breath and listen, because there would always be some cowboy coming over to fuck, because even as young as I was, I knew that’s all they wanted anyway. Pill would flip and flop around, frustrated, I guess. He’d grit his teeth all night and shake his head and then we’d hear a pickup or big block engine Chevy die outside, then the boots, scrape-scrape-scraping over the gravel, the bare-knuckled knock on the door, the screen door would slide open, they would be whispering and giggling, maybe there would be the sharp kiss of glasses striking together, then it would stop, then it would be so quiet that I could hear my brother’s congested chest rising and falling with each shallow breath. Maybe there would be the squeak of furniture, of wood against tile, or metal against metal spring, but sooner of later I’d slip out of bed and stare out the tiny gold keyhole, out into the dimly lit darkness. From only a few feet away, my whole world would come apart.

  Val’s long white legs might be straddled around this cowboy’s middle, his shirt might be unbuttoned, and her mouth might be moving over his mouth, maybe she’d be on her back or bent over the same sofa, but they would be fucking, not gently, not like a whisper, not like a kiss, they would be fucking hard and tearing at each other’s clothes and scratching and pulling and rubbing their bodies together in a way that made me hate her and him and everything about them both. Maybe I’d try to go back to sleep, maybe I’d hide my head under some of her blankets and listen to them fucking all night. These
men, these truckers and cowboys, had some sort of endurance I couldn’t even imagine. Maybe they were just like Pill and me, but older, full of the same frustration and rage, and so they needed to let it out somehow, through someone else’s soft body. Those men I hated more than anything I’ve ever hated in my life.

  Those men would appear every other Friday night as soon as we had been tucked in. Every other Friday night another cowboy or trucker would come over and make time with Val, and only once did I know that she ever got herself in a bind.

  One night a big blond-haired cowboy in tight jeans came knocking on Val’s screen door. He was the one with the sandy-colored cowboy hat, the silver-toed boots, and the blue Western shirt. He was drunk, stumbling as he climbed out of his truck, and so poor Val refused to let him in.

  “Just open the door for a second, Val, honey. Just for a second.” The cowboy’s voice was sweet and cool. His eyes were red and nearly crossed with sincerity.

  “Not tonight, baby,” Val said, pulling her robe tight around her waist. “Go on home.”

  “Just a second,” he groaned. “Please, honey, just fer a single kiss.” He clawed at the thin screen like an animal, kneeling in front of the door.

  “Don’t make a fool outta yourself. Go on home, baby. You’re drunk and ornery. And I’m not in the mood for any of that.”