Tender as Hellfire

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Tender as Hellfire Page 12

by Joe Meno

“Dough.”

  “Very wonderful name, my friend. Let us retire to the mansion, Dough, to secure some soda, eh?”

  “All right.”

  He opened up the screen door and held it for me as I stepped inside. El Rey’s motor home was mostly empty. There was a small record player in one corner, a cardboard box full of records beside it, an old gray refrigerator at the opposite end of the place, some pillows and blankets thrown in the middle of the floor. El Rey opened up the refrigerator and pulled out a cold can of soda and placed it in my hand.

  “Hey, who’s that?” I asked. There was a black-and-white picture of a dark-eyed woman with long hair that was decorated with a number of jeweled combs. The photo sat right on the floor beside the old man’s makeshift bed. In it, the woman’s dress was a tight corset, sparkling with more jewels around her shoulders. I picked up the picture and stared at her round face.

  “That was my wife. Dolcita. The Tango Queen of Santa Ana,” he said, staring up at the ceiling. “Her feet were hummingbird wings. The way she moved when she danced, it was like flying.”

  El Rey made a little dance move, holding one hand to his hips, while his other gripped the hand of some imaginary dance partner. He began to turn in time to the rhythm in his head. Da-da-da, da-da-da.” He turned and stopped and stared down at me.

  “She died last April. Cancer. In her stomach. There was nothing we could do to save her.” He stared down at the picture and smiled. “Sometimes I feel like I am caught in the worst nightmare of my entire life and there’s no way to escape it. Sometimes I think I don’t ever want to sleep again. Did you ever lay in your bed too scared to fall asleep? You feel like the whole world is on your head and you’ll never be able to rest again?”

  I shrugged my shoulders and then nodded.

  “That’s the time I dance, my friend. That’s the perfect time right there.” He strode over to the tiny black-and-gold record player and pulled a record from its sleeve, then set it in place. He dropped the black arm and needle into the proper plastic groove. “That is the best time in the world to let all that agony out right through your feet.”

  The tango music boomed on. His bare gray chest began to get sweaty as he moved.

  “C’mon, Dough, dance. Dance with me, no?”

  He grabbed my hand and set me into motion, swinging me about. He was old and thin but still kind of strong. He danced beside me, then spun me across the room.

  “That’s it, my friend. Now you’ve got it. This is the only way to keep her alive. The dance!” he shouted over the music. He gave a little hop, then did a quick turn and bowed just as the music ended. He held his position and blew a kiss to an imaginary audience. “Bravo!” he shouted, taking another bow. He picked up the tiny white towel and began to wipe his forehead and bare chest. “Bien. Muy bien. You’re well on your way to becoming a great dancer.”

  He patted me on the back.

  “Hey, listen, Mr. Rey, I was wondering, well, do you think you can cut that music out at night? My mother …”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s just too noisy for her.”

  He studied my face and then said, “I see. Well, I will do my best to keep it down. How is that?”

  I nodded, looking around the empty trailer.

  “Well, I must go and finish my fence. And also I must practice the cha-cha-cha. If you don’t practice, you forget everything, I’m afraid.” El Rey closed the door behind me and I cringed as I heard the needle strike the record, the sound of the cha-cha-cha reverberating from within the empty motor home.

  I opened up the screen door and stepped inside our own trailer. My mother and French were at the kitchen table with the old lady that lived in the lot behind us, Mrs. Garnier. She was the one who lived with at least three million cats, all of them ugly, underfed, scrawny animals with rotten faces and worms that bled from their rectums, cats that scratched at her screen door all night and hissed and left dead birds on her front door and fought each other in the gray gravel dirt of the trailer park. I guess Shilo had nearly torn one of those cats apart a few weeks before, catching the poor thing in its gray jaws before me and my brother could pull the damn thing loose. Shilo had pulled a hunk of fur and skin from its mangy neck. When it happened, Mrs. Garnier had come stomping over, threatening to sue unless we kept poor Shilo chained up. That dumb dog was not happy about sitting at the end of a length of chain. But now the dog hopped around in front of the trailer during the day on his three legs howling and snarling like a deformed puppet because there was nothing else we could do.

  I looked over at my mother, who smiled at me as I slumped onto the sofa. Shilo came up and dropped his head into my lap. Mrs. Garnier had a piece of paper all knotted up in her gray fists and was talking so excitedly that it was hard to understand what she was saying.

  “It’s indecent is what I think,” Mrs. Garnier said with a frown. “An old man acting like that, it’s indecent. There’s children running around all night and day, what would happen if they saw what was going on over there?”

  About a month before, Mrs. Garnier had caught me and my brother smashing bluebird eggs against the side of our trailer. They were from a nest we had found in a small tree in the field behind the trailer park. She had grabbed me by my ear and my brother by his hair and led us around the front of our trailer and told our mother exactly what we’d been doing. “Heathens!” is what she had called us. “Heathens!” Of course, I had seen at least a thousand of her cats murder, maim, and mutilate a million robins, sparrows, cardinals, any unlucky bird that landed anywhere near the shadow of that old lady’s trailer. Once, I had even seen two or three of her cats tear a rabbit apart, strewing its remains all across her front steps. Before El Rey had moved in next door, the only sound at night would be the awful scream of her cats killing poor woodland creatures.

  “Now wait a minute.” My mother frowned. “No one said you had to watch what that man does at night. You can just close your curtains if you want.”

  “What about the noise? That horrible music blaring. Him banging around all night. It’s inconsiderate, to say the least. Don’t you agree?” Mrs. Garnier turned to French this time for support.

  “I guess,” he said. His face was long. It looked like the old lady was wearing him out.

  “I’m an old woman, and all I have left is my sleep. We pay too much to live in this park to be disturbed by someone so inconsiderate. When it comes down to it, it’s a question of morals. I’m sure you wouldn’t want your boys to see the things going on over there, would you?”

  “No,” my mother said. “But—”

  “But nothing. Are you going to sign the petition or not?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” my mother said with a frown.

  “It’s a shame your boys don’t have better role models to look up to. Bad apples don’t fall far from the tree.”

  “Good day, Mrs. Garnier,” my mother announced, opening the screen door for her.

  “Hmphh,” the old lady grunted, wobbling down the front steps.

  French shook his head, taking a swig from his silver can of beer.

  “Who does that old bag think she is to go around bothering people like that?” my mother asked.

  “Doesn’t look like it matters. There were enough names on that petition without us.” He sat the beer can down and stared out the kitchen window. Mrs. Garnier pounded on El Rey’s screen just once, then slipped the petition between the door and the frame and waddled away.

  “I guess I’ll go work on the car,” French said. I didn’t think that his black Impala was ever going to get off those four concrete blocks. He opened another can of cold beer and patted me on the back. “Feel like giving me a hand there, pal?”

  I saw my mother smiling at me hopefully.

  “I guess,” I grunted, digging my fists into my pockets. French pulled the rest of his six-pack out of the fridge and stepped outside. I followed, helping him yank the dirty white tarp off the useless black car. We folded it between the two
of us and set it down beside the rear blocks.

  There it was. Oh, ’72 Impala. What a waste. Even the red rust on the wheel wells looked like it had given up hope. We stood there before it, me shaking my head with a frown, French grinning, patting his belly.

  “She’s a real beauty, isn’t she?” French sighed, taking a sip of beer. “Let’s see if she’ll turn over.” He propped open the driver’s door. Turn over? Turn over? That car had never once started before. I leaned against the side of it, shaking my goddamn head.

  French slid the silver key into the ignition, closed his eyes, and gave the ignition a quick turn. I don’t know how, but there was a sputter somewhere deep inside. Ol’ French gave it another mean crank.

  “Give up,” I mumbled, as French let out a sigh and leaned back in the lush vinyl seat, then took a swig from his silver can.

  “Doesn’t look like it’s our day, does it, pal?”

  He finished off the beer and crushed the can in one hand, which seemed kind of impressive to me. He yanked another can off the plastic ring and tapped the top three times, staring at me with a wide grin.

  “You ever split a beer with your old man?” he asked.

  I suddenly felt embarrassed for some reason. I don’t why. I guess I just didn’t like him mentioning my dad.

  “Do you feel like tasting a sip?”

  I stared at him hard and shook my head.

  “C’mon, it’ll put a little hair on your chest.”

  I shook my head again and spat into the dirt. French shrugged his shoulders and heaved himself out of the car, then propped up the hood and started poking about. I leaned against the back of the car, staring over at El Rey’s mobile home, watching as the old man hunched over, applying a second coat of paint to his new picket fence. There was sweat all along his bare chest and back. His face looked happy as he moved the thick black brush over the slats of wood, singing to himself some tango or cha-cha-cha. I smiled to myself, then turned and watched French tear out some slinky mechanical device from under the hood.

  “Here’s our problem all right.” French smiled through a face full of grease. I shook my head and turned back to watch El Rey running the brush against the wood. His greasy pompadour seemed to glow. Just then, a tall man walked up to the white fence, staring down at El Rey with a frown.

  “Yer the man that lives here then?” the tall man asked. His voice was loud and sounded angry. There was a glare off the tall man’s large forehead. He wore a dark blue pair of overalls and had a wide frown on his face. It was Mr. Deebs, the man who worked at the cemetery, the man from the trailer two lots down. He was the person who dug the ditch they dropped you in when you were a goner. He lived alone in a blue trailer, just on the other side of the tiny gravel road. I did not like the looks of him. He used to stand behind his screen door, cleaning his gun, while he watched me and my brother sitting behind our trailer smoking our cigarettes or shooting the bull. He’d just stand there behind his screen with a thin little smile, swabbing out his rifle’s firing mechanism, maybe wondering exactly how long it might take to entirely dissect me and my brother limb from limb.

  “I come here to ask you when you plan on leaving.”

  I watched El Rey as he put down his paintbrush and smiled. He wiped some white enamel on his pants and stood up. Mr. Deebs just kept frowning, tightening his fists.

  “I said, when do you plan on leaving?”

  “I don’t think I understand.” El Rey grinned. “I just moved in. I just put up this fence. I don’t plan on leaving for some time, my friend.”

  “I don’t think you understand what I mean.”

  “No, I think I do.”

  “Well, you might consider being gone real soon is all I’m gonna say.”

  “I am going to have to ask you to please leave now.”

  Mr. Deebs clenched his jaw and shifted his weight, tightening his shoulders in place. He twitched his lips a little, then looked down at the tiny white fence. “I don’t think I will,” he said.

  I looked back and saw that French was watching what was happening too, from around the hood of the Impala. “You all right over there?” French called out.

  “Yes, yes,” old El Rey replied. His face looked tired and gray. French set down his wrench and grabbed an oily rag, wiping off his hands. He strolled slowly over to El Rey’s fence, nodding with a big smile.

  “Is there something I can help you with?” he asked Mr. Deebs.

  “Nope. It ain’t got nothing to do with you,” the tall man answered.

  “I think it might be a good idea if you go on back home there, pal,” French said, and then, misjudging the situation, he reached up and put his hand on Mr. Deebs’s shoulder. From where I was standing, I saw at once it was the wrong thing to do. Mr. Deebs knocked French’s hand off his shoulder and then gave him a shove. French was still smiling, lifting his hands up, trying to make it clear that he didn’t want any trouble, but Mr. Deebs took a wild swing, catching French in the corner of his left eye with a sharp knuckle.

  At that point, French stopped smiling and lunged forward, wrapping his arm around the other man’s neck, wrestling him to the ground, getting him in a headlock.

  “Go on, be still!” French shouted. “Be still.” He kept squeezing hard until Mr. Deebs gave in and just laid there, kicking his foot in little circles. “Don’t come around here again, do you understand? We don’t want trouble, okay? Stay on your side of the road and we won’t have any more of this.”

  Breathing hard, Mr. Deebs grunted something through the dust. French let him up, and the thin man took off down the little street, back into his blue trailer, leaving some of his pride there outside El Rey’s house.

  “You okay?” French asked El Rey.

  The old man smiled, his face wrinkled with worry. “I’m going to go inside now. It’s too much for me.” His face looked empty and old. The tattoos on his arms suddenly seemed dull, the grace in his step gone.

  “I think that’s maybe a good idea,” French said. He turned, holding his shoulder, and looked me right in the face. Me, I didn’t move. I didn’t say a word.

  He kind of stumbled toward our trailer, clenching his shoulder and gritting his teeth. “C’mere,” he whispered, tightening his face in pain. I wiped the sweat off my forehead and wandered over to where he stood in front of our trailer door. His long thin face was covered in sweat too. His eyes were small and dull like was about to fall asleep.

  “Be a sport and go get me my beer.”

  I ran over and pulled the rest of the six-pack off the roof of the black car and placed the plastic ring in his hand. He sat down on our porch with a groan, then took the four cold metal cans and placed them against his neck, rubbing his shoulder with a frown.

  “I think I threw out my shoulder. Jesus.”

  I stared at him, watching as his left eye began to swell up.

  “Don’t think this is the way you’re supposed to handle things, pal,” French mumbled, wiping some blood from his neck with the palm of his hand. “Because it’s not. You should always try to talk things out. But sometimes it’s not so easy. Sometimes, well, people won’t let you talk, but you got to try at least.”

  French was still breathing hard. I guess he was as stunned as me.

  “Let’s go inside now and tell your mother what happened.” He stood and spat hard into the gravel. That was maybe the first time I realized that he wasn’t planning on skipping out on us anytime soon. I mean, he put up with me and my crazy brother and my mother crying by herself at night. He was in for the long haul, and maybe the best thing I could do was just get used to it.

  I opened up the screen door for him, watching as he stumbled inside. My mother was on the sofa and turned to smile, but then caught sight of French’s swollen eye.

  “June,” he mumbled. “Don’t get excited. But there was some sort of fight.”

  “What happened to your eye?”

  Of course, my mother broke into tears right away, hurrying to get some ice to pu
t on his face. French let out a little groan as he took a seat on the couch, adding a little sigh for some sympathy. And sure enough, that night I heard my mother laughing, the sound of them doing it echoing through the walls and their bedroom door.

  After school the very next day, El Rey’s mobile home was gone.

  And no one said a word about it.

  For about a week after he left, I stared out the window at night to try to see if he maybe might come back. I pushed the red curtains aside and pressed my nose against the dirty glass. But he had really disappeared. His mobile home was gone. The echo of his records, of his singing, had vanished too. It was as if he had never been there at all. I laid in bed and wondered what happens to people when they go, if they become like shadows, if they fade away when they disappear from your life. The only thing I could see was the broken picket fence. The only sound I could hear was the cry of birds being killed in the night.

  the devil lives in texas

  On that Halloween, which was the worst Halloween ever, because I dressed up as the Wolfman and Pill refused to dress up at all, my mother and French let us watch The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and about a day or so later I started wetting the bed like a little cry-baby. It happened almost every night afterwards. In the morning, my brother would look at me and shake his head, then my mom would come in and pull off the sheets, trying not to look embarrassed for me. What I had been afraid of at first, leopards and tigers, had become something different in my dreams, something so frightening that I’d wet myself before I could even wake up. It was the Devil, the one I had seen in that lonely barn; he would appear in my dreams every night and my father would be there too. They would both meet somewhere on a lonely road in Texas, one black strip of tar, brilliant with blue and gray stones, the whispers of wild animals growling in the dark. There was no beginning to my dream. There was only an end.

  Shadows would surround my old man, three of them. My dad would turn to face them, unafraid to meet his maker, which was the way he was, and then they’d come down on him with their crowbars and knives.

 

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