Tender as Hellfire

by Joe Meno

  “Be still, darlin’,” my mother warned, snipping the scissors along, tickling my neck.

  Clip.

  A lock of brown hair curtsied to the tile floor.

  “Well, when I told Danny, my first husband, God rest his soul, that I was pregnant, he said, ‘What if I don’t want a kid?’” Mrs. Larue whispered this from under her green cat’s-eyes glasses, her mouth full of smoke. To me, it seemed like Mrs. Larue had had at least ten million ex-husbands. Heck, I wasn’t even sure if they were all dead or if she had just been divorced half-a-million times, but from all the different stories she had about different men, I kind of guessed her marriages only lasted a week or so. Mrs. Larue sat in a silver salon chair, smoking, her legs up on another vacant seat. Her face was narrow and white and her own hair was like a great blue tuft of cotton candy stuck in place by a thick coat of hairspray. Mrs. Larue wasn’t so much beautiful as she was glamorous. There were big black-and-white photos of her pasted up all around the store from when she was younger and had been a winner of the Miss Teen Minnesota beauty pageant. Her hair looked exactly the same, like she had applied a thick coat of makeup and some styling spray to her face and hair to preserve it for all eternity. Mrs. Larue also wore the tightest pants I ever saw, bright pants too, like polka-dot pink or bright green that showed her wide, divine hips.

  “So I say, ‘Danny, if you don’t want a kid, you better split town now because it is on its way, honey, and there ain’t a damn thing to do about it now.’”

  “Men.”

  “You can’t change ’em and you can’t shoot ’em.”

  “Oh, you can shoot them.”

  All the ladies nodded and laughed and then took drags on their smokes at exactly the same time. There was Mrs. Larue in the silver salon chair, and Mrs. Darve in the chair beside her, and the deacon’s fat wife, Mrs. Heget, who didn’t even work there but stopped by afternoons just to gossip. She was standing next to my mother, admiring the job she was doing.

  “My husband, Lucky, he was the most stubborn man you ever met,” my mom said. I sat up, listening, turning a little in the metal chair. “He’s the one who insisted on their names,” she whispered.

  Mrs. Larue nodded knowingly. “Oh, I can believe it.”

  “We had an awful row about it. Pill-Bug. What type of name is that for a boy?”

  “It’s not a family name?” Mrs. Heget asked. Her fat face was crossed over a frown.

  “That’s what we argued about. I asked him if it was some relative or friend or someone he was naming our boy after, but he said, ‘No, I just like the way it sounds.’ I said, ‘Why do you want to name your first born that?’ And he said, ‘A name like that will make the boy tough.’ I guess he named Dough here for the same reason.”

  “What?” Mrs. Heget said. “I don’t think I understand.”

  “He figured these boys would grow up tough and mean from other kids teasing them about their names all the time. He thought they’d get in plenty of fights and then they’d have to grow up strong and learn exactly how to be men or die trying. He was a fool. My Lucky, oh my, he was a fool all right. He’s been dead for four years now.”

  “Men,” Mrs. Larue mumbled.

  “Do you know what?” Mrs. Darve whispered. She was thin and had a pale white face. She didn’t have eyebrows. Instead, she’d draw them on for herself. Two deep brown smudge marks than ran over her blue eyes. It didn’t make a damn bit of sense to me. Mrs. Darve smiled. Her fingers pulled the cigarette away from her mouth. “Last weekend when I went over to Aubrey to visit my sister for a day, I forgot to make a dinner for Eddie and so he ate half a jar of mayonnaise instead.”

  All the ladies let out horrible, wheezy laughs all at once.

  Mrs. Larue grinned. “Men,” she said again.

  I gripped the silver swiveling chair tightly, squirming under the white plastic apron that fit me like a dress, tied too tight around my neck and too long for the rest of my body. My mother snipped again, leaving a few freshly cut hairs stuck to the sweat on my neck.

  “Don’t squirm, Dough.”

  I guess, watching these other women, and then looking at my mother, I began to think she was okay, even pretty, not pretty like Val but pretty like a mother ought to be, like the Virgin Mary or a mom you might see on TV. She had her black hair nearly cut to her shoulders in a nice bob and she never wore any tight pants or anything embarrassing like that. Most of the time, she was quiet and gentle the way you’d want your mother to act, but sometimes she’d just surprise the hell out of you. I glanced at her in the mirror as she worked on the hair around my left ear, and then the shiny silver door to the beauty salon flashed open, slamming against the frame. Mr. Darve strode in, scaring the whole parlor with the look in his blackened eyes. He wore a blue-and-gray work shirt from his job at the service station. His hair was greasy and black and stood up in the back. His face was all whiskered and red and hard, a look I had seen on a number of my mother’s boyfriends.

  “Okay, I’m just gonna ask once. Where is it, Dolores?” He strode right up to his wife and gripped her by her wrist. Mrs. Darve’s smudged eyebrows seemed to tremble. “Let’s not argue. Just tell me where you put it.” He shook her hard, snapping her head back and forth on her thin shoulders.

  “It’s gone,” she mumbled, trying not to cry, but the tears were already there. “It’s all gone. I poured it out this morning.”

  Mrs. Larue snapped to her feet and forced herself between Mr. Darve and his wife, inching her wide hips in front of him. I looked over at the commotion as my mother stopped trimming my hair.

  “Just a minute, Eddie, you aren’t bursting into my store and starting some trouble.”

  “Can it, Edna. This is between me and my wife.”

  “No,” my mother muttered. “This is Edna’s place. You can’t just come in here drunk and start trouble.”

  Mr. Darve shot my mother a cold, mean look, still gripping his wife by her wrist. “I just want to know what you did with my liquor,” he whispered, turning to his wife again. The deacon’s fat wife, Mrs. Heget, backed away, standing in the shadow of the bulbous hair dryer.

  “You let go of her, Eddie,” Mrs. Larue warned, “before I call the police.”

  “You call the police. ’Cause doing what she did is a crime too.”

  “She didn’t do anything wrong,” my mother said, her hands on her hips. “All she did was pour it out.”

  “Is that right? You really poured it out?” Mr. Darve asked. Tiny blue streams of tears ran down Mrs. Darve’s face as she nodded. “Why did you do that, honey?”

  “I told you. I was scared.”

  “You’re gonna pay me back for what you poured out. Do you understand?”

  Her blue eyelids flickered with tears. “Yes.”

  “Good.” He let go of her wrist. “Go get your purse. I’ll take what you got now.”

  Mrs. Darve trembled to her feet and ran into the back of the store, sobbing. Mrs. Larue followed, pushing open the tiny pink curtain and disappearing into the back room. Mr. Darve’s face was bright red. He sneered at my mother, holding his hands on his hips like a proud fool. Looking at him, I felt a hard black knot in my stomach.

  When Mrs. Larue returned to the room, she was holding her hands behind her back.

  “Well, where the hell is she?” Mr. Darve asked.

  I could not believe my eyes. In Mrs. Larue’s hand was a small, shiny .22, powerful enough to blow a hole right through Mr. Darve’s skull.

  “Don’t move,” Mrs. Larue warned, sticking the muzzle right against his chin. “Don’t move or Dolores is going to be a widow.”

  Mr. Darve let out a little squeak.

  “It’s okay, Dolores. Come on out,” Mrs. Larue said quietly. “Come on out.” Mrs. Darve appeared from the back room, holding herself. Her face was red and puffy from crying. She stepped in front of her husband, staring at his face.

  “Now you tell this poor woman you love her. Go ahead. Tell her, you bum!” Mrs. Larue shouted.
/>
  “I love you,” Mr. Darve said, squinting hard.

  “Tell her she is the only one for you,” Mrs. Larue muttered.

  “You’re the only one for me.”

  “Tell her you’re sorry for ruining her life by making her cry all the time!” the preacher’s wife shouted.

  “I am sorry for ruining your life by making you cry all the time.”

  “Now kiss her hand,” Mrs. Larue said with a smile.

  Mr. Darve reached out and kissed his wife’s hand. Mrs. Larue jabbed him in the eye with the muzzle, backing him toward the door.

  “If you ever lay a hand on poor Dolores again, I swear to God, the last thing you hear will be me laughing, just before I pull this trigger.” Mrs. Larue shoved the gun hard against his cheek. “Now go home and sleep it off.”

  Mr. Darve shot out of the beauty salon and into the street, holding his eye, mumbling to himself. All the ladies let out a breath, Mrs. Darve still crying. Me, I let out a breath too. My mother untied the apron around my neck, squatted beside me, and said, “Tell French it looks like I’ll be home late, okay?” She reached into her jeans and handed me a dollar.

  As I was running out, Mrs. Heget stopped me, touching my shoulder, and said, “We hope to see you again this Sunday, Dough. We missed you last week. Sunday school just isn’t the same without you and your brother.”

  I didn’t utter a word, just nodded.

  “Oh, they’ll be there,” my mom said, patting me on the head. She leaned beside me and whispered, “Stay out of trouble, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, and ran toward the filling station as fast as I could, wondering what I could blow a dollar on, not wanting to think about having to go back to Sunday school.

  Every week Pill and I were supposed to go to Sunday school on account of the both us never being baptized, because at the time our parents weren’t much concerned with things like church. I guess my father dying and the thought of his soul being lost in Purgatory was something I didn’t want to think about. For me, Sunday school was a horror show, the worse way to spend a weekend afternoon. Most of the time we are able to ditch, except when my mom and French went to church, which, thank God, was never that often. Sunday school was held in a tiny classroom in a part of a building that was a recent addition to the church; the roof was sheet metal and it looked like the walls were made of tin.

  “What do you mean, kissing is a sin?” Elroy Viceroy shouted. He was fourteen with all kinds of red pimples across his face. He always tried to be a real smart-ass during Bible Class. “That isn’t one of the Commandments.”

  Mrs. Heget smiled. Her round face blushed. Every Sunday she’d try to get a bunch of teenagers and middle-schoolers to understand the true nature of the human spirit, helping us to contemplate God’s unconditional love, but it wasn’t easy. No one in the class wanted to be there. I knew I’d rather be asleep or at home watching motorcross or out running around with some matches or trying to teach that dumb dog Shilo how to kill.

  “First of all, kissing before marriage can lead to sex and masturbation. And well, sex is sex. And masturbation is not proper behavior for a growing boy. It could lead to damage and injury and even night blindness.”

  Mrs. Heget tolerated our lack of enthusiasm to a certain degree. She was polite and calm and was always telling us what we were and weren’t supposed to do and think and say. Heck, I was eleven. I was having a dirty thought every other minute. Jesus seemed nice to me, so did the rest of all the saints, but I guess I didn’t understand anything more than that.

  “Night blindness?” Elroy muttered. “How long does it take before you go blind?”

  “Not very long.” Mrs. Heget frowned. “It is a sin and something you will either have to confess or pay for in the afterlife. Any other questions about Purgatory?”

  “I got one,” I said, raising my hand.

  “Yes, Dough,” she answered with a smile, crossing her wide white legs beneath her billowy dress.

  “If you’re a good person, right, and you commit some sins, but mostly you’re good, do go to hell or not?”

  Pill rolled his eyes at the desk beside mine. He shook his head and resumed staring at the back of Lula Getty’s neck.

  “Well, Dough, that is an interesting question.” Her round face stiffened as she figured up an answer. “I think if you’re basically a good person, and you’ve accepted Jesus into your life, well, I think then God would surely find a place for you in heaven.”

  “Okay, well, what if you were basically a good person and committed a crime during your life?”

  “What kind of crime?”

  “I dunno. Stealing stuff.”

  Her face tightened even more.

  “I think if you’re truly sorry, then God will forgive you. God will always forgive you. He cared so much about all of you to send his only son to die for your sins. He’d forgive you as long as you really wanted to be forgiven.” She took a breath and nodded to herself. “Any other questions?”

  “Okay, so what if you die in the middle of a crime? Like you’re robbing a bank or something, then you get shot.”

  “You’re probably going to hell then.” Her answer was very curt.

  I nodded, unhappy with her answer. Who else was I going to ask? It didn’t seem to bother Pill. And as for my mother, who was sometimes so filled with the Holy Ghost that it kept her up at night, praying for all of us, well, I guess I was afraid that if I ever asked her about my dad, she’d just begin sobbing and wouldn’t ever stop.

  I raised my hand once again. “Well, what about Purgatory and all that? Doesn’t that count?”

  She let out a little sigh, trying to gather herself. She made a little smile and stared at me.

  “Like I said, Dough, if the person truly wants to be forgiven, then God willing, they will be forgiven and granted a place in heaven.”

  I thought that sounded better. Maybe there was some hope for me and my brother after all.

  “Does anyone else have any other questions now?”

  I looked around the room and saw that the whole tiny classroom was silent. I turned to my brother who was staring at Lula Getty’s neck. You couldn’t help but think dirty thoughts when you looked at that girl. She seemed very bored with everything and I noticed that she was wearing a gold pendant around her neck in the shape of a wolf. About a week before, I had seen her walking home, smoking, with her right hand bent at the wrist, gossiping about something with some other girl, their red lipstick like wounds on their lips. Of course, then a black Camaro drove by, braking to a dusty stop, and Rudy LaDell got out and hollered a thing or two and Lula swore something back. Eventually, she just shrugged her shoulders and hopped into the car and they just sped away, down the old gray road beside the culvert near our trailer park. I decided to follow and it was there, where the apple orchard started, that I saw the two of them necking, her long fifteen-year-old legs flung apart, rocking the car as I watched from down in the culvert, shaking my head.

  I thought this girl, Lula, was as lost as me or my brother. I glanced back at him, his eyes were full of hopelessness and he was making little kisses with his mouth, dreaming of Lula’s lips.

  “Pill? Are you all right?” Mrs. Heget asked. Pill snapped awake. He sat straight up and knocked the silver-bound Bible to the floor and then rubbed the side of his face. Everyone in Bible class looked at him and laughed. Lula turned around and shook her head. Her curly red hair hung over her face as she shot my brother a dirty look.

  “Creep,” she mumbled.

  He reached over and picked up the Bible and started staring at the back of her neck again.

  After about an hour of Mrs. Heget’s talking about Jesus, the class would end with Sunday service in the gray pews of Our Queen of Holy Martyrs Church. I’d spend most of the service staring up at Jesus nailed to the wood cross. Through the kneeling and praying, all I would think about was my dad and his funeral, and how cold and gray his casket had looked, how the flowers had dried up because of the heat
, and how my mother had cried all day until someone gave her some Valium to fall asleep. I would remember how my fat Aunt Marie had wailed as they heaved the coffin out of the church and that forever kind of sound of the box disappearing down, down, down into that shallow bed of dirt. All those kind of memories would make me feel about as unwelcome in church as anything could. I’d walk home beside Pill, wondering how much of what we had just been told was true, or if like my older brother said, it was just some other lie I had fallen for.

  That day I came home from service and stopped outside my new neighbor’s recently erected white picket fence. It surrounded the front of his trailer, making it seem more like a home, which I thought looked nice. My brother had gone to the filling station to try to pick up some smokes so I stood alone beside Mr. del Perdito’s fence and watched as he painted the last remaining slats. I decided I had to say something to him if I ever wanted to try and sleep again.

  “Hey, you live here, right?” I grunted, staring at his bare olive-colored chest. There was a tattoo of a brilliant green snake wrapped around his upper left arm and another one of an angel praying just below the opposite shoulder.

  “Yes, sir. My name is El Rey del Perdito. What can I do for you, my friend?”

  I got right to the point: “Do you think you can cut that noise out at night?”

  “Pardon?” the old man said. He stared at me, a little shocked by my lack of politeness. He rubbed some sweat from his face with a small white towel.

  “All that music. It’s driving my mother crazy.”

  “Oh, lo siento, perdoname. I am sorry. I didn’t think anyone minded my dancing. Let us talk about it over a cold soda, shall we?”

  “I guess.”

  “What’s your name, sir?”