“Talkin’ like what?”
“I don’t know. Like a fancy pants,” she said.
“I don’t talk like—”
And she suddenly did a U-turn.
I fell against the door and said, “Whoa! What in the dang hell!”
“It’s a good time to get the van warshed. Everyone’s out drinkin’.”
And then I saw, above a row of oak trees, the yellow-suited cowboy laughing, spinning away now to show the rest of the town. Mom smirked proud and turned into Brother and Son’s Carwash.
I used to run the register, and once I ran the buttons for a month, and once they had me on dry duty for about a year. They let me read while I worked, and I had my own shelf in the fridge in the break room, so I liked that job very much.
We pulled up and waited in line. I was like, “Ha! Alright.”
A maroon sedan was in front of us and it had little kids slapping the windows screaming about how fun it was to be in a carwash. When the soap valves squirted, the kids screamed and pointed, smiling so hard they gagged. When my mother and I took their spot, we too tried pointing appreciatively at those squiggle squirts, but it felt like we were trying to be hippy-dippy, so we kept quiet until the light dinged green. We advanced into the dark where barrel-sized brushes came down to buff—it made the van rock, and out of the corner of my eye I saw my mom jiggling like jello, so I pretended to look out my window. Then the rinse jets came on and I said, “Is there a phonebook back at home?” My mom said, “Well yeah, but I don’t know how current it is.” The stomach ladies winked, whispering, Carol! I would get home and start calling every Mathers there was.
The light dinged Done! and we drove through long black flaps that parted lazily off the face of the van like we were a Goth whose mom was introducing us to someone. Someone sauntered out of a door by my side of the van with a rag. Dry Duty. She came around front so we could see her. “Would you like a dry-down?” said Carol.
It was Carol.
I went, “Whoa!”
I rolled my window down and stuck my head out, “Carol!”
Mist dazzled in the lot lights and made rainbows on the concrete, oiled ground.
She said, “Who’s that?” and when I got out of the van and “jogged” to her she screamed, “John!”
She hugged me and we held it.
Carol’s blond head seeped a dolly smell up to me until she took it away.
“You work here?”
My mom turned the van until the headlights shone on us. She rolled her window down, “Who’s that?”
“Carol Mary Mathers!” I yelled, belligerently. “I was just lookin’ for you over at Blue Bear and here you are!”
“Oh, Blue Bear!” Carol said.
“There’s Shane!” I said.
I saw Shane, one of the sons from Brother and Son’s, hanging air freshener trees on the wall inside the shop.
“I’m gonna stay here and talk to Shane and Carol, k?” I yelled to my mom.
Carol wore coveralls and her hair was in a braid with baby hairs for the wind.
We walked down the cement hall that led past the old break room I loved. Carol was ahead of me, her figure hidden beneath the coveralls.
She spun around and grabbed my wrist, “I’m sorry I ran off that day. I’ve felt bad about it since.”
I hoped she wasn’t thinking about how fat my wrist felt in her little hand.
“It’s okay!” I said.
“Right away I just thought Emergency Room. You know? So I just ran to my car and you didn’t come and I was all bleedin’ and stuff so’s I just took off. And then my mom was all up in my face takin’ care of me so I didn’t call you till a ways after when your dad said you moved to New York, so I’ve got to hear about that because I love New York even if I’ve never been.”
I said, “How’s your leg?”
“Oh!” She pulled up a pant of the coverall to show two puffy scars looking like pink caterpillars stuck on her leg. She shrugged, “It’s fine.”
“Your leg dudn’t deserve that,” I said.
“Who cares!” she said.
I sensed her wanting to give me a hug, but she kept on walking like who cares. She never asked about how Jenny had responded to getting stabbed.
We entered the store part of the carwash. It had the same sag ceiling with the same bugs dying in clumps in the sizzling light fixtures. Shane looked at me with a stack of pine trees in his hand.
I said, “Shane, nice to see you. How’s your dad, huh?”
“Uh, he’s good,” Shane said with acne so hard it looked like he was rotting.
“Tell him sorry for leavin’ without notice. I got abducted pretty much,” I said.
“What, like aliens?” Shane said.
“By my own father actually, but one time his face turned green, so hell. Maybe.”
“Whoa,” Shane said, interested.
I ate a candy-caramel and leaned on the counter while Carol spun on a stool behind it asking me about New York and flicking her eyes around my face.
“I actually came out here to release a wolf,” I said.
“Now that’s gonna need an explanation.”
I spread my arms wider on the counter and drawled, “It’s an underground favor for a rich acquaintance.”
“Dang!”
I heard my subconscious say, “That posture ain’t right,” so I clapped above my head and relaxed into a different fake pose where the candy-caramel was sticking out of my cheek like a tumor. I said, “But I wanna know what you’ve been up to, Girly.”
“Aww, I went to, Oh! I student-taught for a year, then I got my own class, and I quit after the first year. I didn’t know I hate kids! Honestly that’s the worst job anyone could ever have, a teacher. Then, shit. Tendin’ bar cause’a student loans. Then I went to nursin’ school for a little bit and had to quit cause I can’t do blood. Then, shit, more tendin’—the whole time actually. Then I started workin’ here pretty much like two years ago now? And it’s good cause I pick my own hours, so that’s cool. I work all the time—I’m serious. Cause I live with my mom and everyone at the bars are in college, so hell, why not. Hey, I’m writin’ a novel like you said I should!”
Her top teeth were long and they slanted invitingly into her mouth. When she smiled it showed her pink gums above them. Her cheeks bunched up ruby. Rabbit-like.
“I’m off now, actually,” she said. “Do you want a ride home or wherever you was goin’?”
“Well hell yeah!” I said. “Then we could keep talkin’.”
“Yeah,” she said, grooving like a ferret. And when you’re in the middle of scenes like that, you’re like: I’m alive.
We drove down the same road that my mother and I had just taken. I was breathing Carol’s special car air. I watched her pay attention to the road, pressing her turn signal to sound out its prissy ticks. She had peach fuzz covering her entire face and it sparkled in the passing streetlights. Her eyes flicked over at me.
“I was always wondering what happened to you,” she said.
I swelled up lusty, “I couldn’t wait to see you. I thought about you all these eight years.”
“No you didn’t!” she flirted. “You live in New York.”
“I did. You’re Carol Mary Mathers. I ain’t never talked to someone so much as I talked to you. And you’re the only girl where I ever thought, Now here’s a girl …”
She smiled hard, showing me the new wrinkles she’d gotten.
“It’s why I came out to find you. And now I’m sittin’ here thinkin’, there’s Carol, pretty as hell, just more wrinkles,” I said.
“Hey!” She slapped my arm.
“It’s like an old queen but better.”
“Hey I could be mad at you for that!” she twitted.
I chuckled hard.
“I bet I look so old, you’re right. Eight years? Yeah I was twenty-two! Oh god, I must look like a hag,” Carol said.
“You look damn fine to me, Girly.”
She slapped my arm again, “Shut up,” which made me laugh.
We came to a red light and stopped.
She sighed, jiggling the gearstick, smiling.
I said, “So you got a boyfriend I’m assuming?”
I kept breathing slowly, and I regret, loudly.
“No,” she said.
The light bled onto her face heart-red.
“Haha, why?” she said.
I said, “Cause that’s the right answer.”
I picked her hand up off the gearstick and kissed it.
Her smile faded and her eyes went wide. She wrapped a single hair around her tongue and strangled it.
“That looks like a sausage,” I said.
She spat the hair out.
We leaned in and met lips.
And before they knew it, H.C. and Carol were parked in a slot at a Taco Bell restaurant and she was climbing over her seat to sit next to him. Two kids making mouth love. Two adults with hearts beating wildly being honest about the way they felt.
Sweat spurted from my pores; my legs went numb. My pants set up tent for the night. My seat disappeared from under me and I hovered in a void where the portal to everything was in Carol’s little mouth. My lips were trembling so hard I had to stop kissing to bite them still. I held her face and it felt covered in hot velvet.
She pulled away, “Wait, stop! I got lopsided titties, before you see! One’s for an A cup and one’s a B.”
I felt them to see.
I was feeling more than I’d ever felt before in my life.
The cars on the road said, “Yes. YES. yes. YeSSS.”
We took a break, our tongues hanging limp from our mouths, absolutely abused. I told her about the wolf job.
“I wanna come release it too!” she said, yanking my chest hairs.
“Okay! Are you an early riser?”
“No, but whatever you want! I’ll wake up right now if you want it!”
I said, “Well, let’s mosey then. It’s midnight. I say we leave around five.”
She whimpered, “But what happens after five? I gotta say goodbye once we drop the wolf?”
I reached down my jeans to squeeze my boner and said, “Well I thought either I’m staying in Ten Sleep or you’re comin’ back with me is how it’s gonna work, Girly.”
She screamed. That animal scream for her rabbit-like features—like a bunny getting slaughtered is what I would come to think of it as.
“I COULD COME WITH YOU?!” she said.
“Well hell yeah! I got a big truck and a big apartment all ready for you.” I was quick to say, “Well, I don’t know about all ready. I bet the apartment could use a major clean, but …”
Then she was like a bunny that got injected with a test medicine. Flapping her body around, making scary noises.
She dropped me off at home and said, “Is that your flippin’ truck?!”
I said, “There’s a wolf in back.”
“Fuck!” She gripped the steering wheel and looked at me with stars in her irises. “I always knew I’d catch my big break! I’ve just always wanted to get out there! I ain’t got nothin’ here holdin’ me down!”
After I kissed Carol goodnight, I floated inside. I went straight to get my dick out and came in one stroke.
I laid with my eyes pinned open in my childhood bed. A bomb of vitality had exploded in me. I fell asleep with my hands placed beat-heavy over my new heart.
When the alarm clock rang it went, “Girlfriend! You have a girlfriend now!” Yow! I showered and it was over before I realized I was showering.
I went downstairs and my mom was in the kitchen wearing a pink bathrobe. We watched the coffee maker with our arms crossed. It was dark out. A cold wind sucked the curtains against the window screens, then billowed them halfway across the room like they were spirits trying to tap our shoulders.
I said, “Well,” and turned for a hug.
She said, “Gol dang it, so that’s it huh?”
“It unfortunately is. I didn’t take Monday off, so.”
“What’re you doin’ for work,” she said more than asked.
I told her, “I work in a law office.”
“Well that sounds major,” she said sincerely.
I saw the old familiar sight of Father John’s stocking feet bobbing in the doorway to the den—he was kicked back in his La-Z-Boy.
The coffee maker made its last hiss and Mom poured me a thermos. “This is my good thermos. But I want you to take it.”
I said, “No Ma, I couldn’t do that.”
She smoothed her robe and said, “Well, you missed all those Christmases anyways, so.”
I went upstairs and tapped on Darron’s door.
I opened it and said, “Bro, I’m leavin’.”
He sat up in bed wearing an undertank, “What?! What the?”
I went and stood above him and he smelled like an infected dick that had dropped off a body.
“I seriously have work that I have to get back for,” I said.
He stood up out of bed and hugged me, saying, “Well try to come back again soon, for hell’s sake.” And when he pulled away from me he was crying.
I said, “Geez, Darron. Don’t cry.”
“Aw, shut the hell up!”
He flopped back into bed and pulled the covers up to his red, glistening eyes. I stood at the door slowly closing it, seeing his eyes just watching. I mouthed, “Bye,” and he brought out his frowning, quivering lips to say, “Bye, Brother John.”
I went back downstairs and stood in the lamplight by Father John’s La-Z-Boy. He looked up over his glasses, over the paper, and waited for me to say something. I acted out of breath and said, “Hittin’ the road.” He folded the paper and stood up, grunting minimally. My mom handed me a rip of paper, saying, “Write your address down so’s we can send letters.” I was proud to write New York City, New York in front of my father but I didn’t look to see if he was seeing. I wished I had a hat to put on to signal my departure in a mature way.
Instead I just held out my hand, scared as hell that Father John would laugh at it, but he shook it and said, “Still could sell that wolf. I got a guy in Rainer who might be interested.”
“I can’t. I can’t,” I said, “Good idea, though.”
I hugged my mother and she walked with me to the door pulling tight on her shoulder blanket (which was over her pink robe) saying, “Alrighty, watch the road then. There’s wrecks a lot on I-80. Evidently. Come back soon if you can, it’d be nice to have you for longer. Alright, Junior. This is too bad you’re leavin’ so soon.”
I cut across the dew-wet grass. Disbanded birdsong. I pulled on the cold moist handle of the door to my truck and hoisted my fatass in. I put Mom’s good thermos in the space between me and where Carol would sit. I went in back and unstopped the peephole and funneled a last meal in to the wolf. I said, “Today’s the day, by the way. You’re about to get along little doggy.” I couldn’t see his body, but his eyes gleamed and his claws ticked over to get the grub. I rolled the top of the food bag closed and, for the first time, saw a picture of a Cocker Spaniel on it. I sat there about ready to cry, hearing the wolf crunch on Cocker Spaniel’s pellets, until I heard Mom open the screen door. She came out to wave again. I crawled in front and looked up at Darron’s window and saw his curtain peeled in one corner. I waved. I started up the truck with its big-dick sound. My wilted mother stood in the yard as I drove away, her shawl fringes blowing in the wind. My father, I guess, had gone back to the paper.
I pulled up in front of Carol’s address and she was yawning at the curb with suitcases and her mom.
“We just seen a raccoon,” Carol said when I got out of the truck.
“Hi, I’m John Reilly Junior,” I said, and Carol’s mom Trish had a hairstyle so high and blond you could see right through it, so if you squinted it looked like she didn’t have any hair whatsoever. She was crying so hard she couldn’t say one intelligible thing. She gave me the limpest hug in the world and tried to co
mmunicate how low-strength she was out of rapture that I was giving her daughter a big break. Carol looked asleep. I didn’t try to kiss her—I just moved her stuff to the back bench of the truck.
“I know it!” Carol said when she hugged her mom goodbye.
Trish broke through the blubber to bellow a crackling, ominous-sounding, “I love you two!” as we pulled away.
Carol made a nest on her side of the bench with pillows and afghans and slept as I drove toward the Bighorn Mountains. The wolf truck headlights casted orange as road-life darted out of their way. I quietly opened the thermos and got some coffee down my neck. I looked over at the blanket bundle next to me and thought, well this ain’t bad. I don’t mind having to get used to this.
When we reached Casey Canyon, the sun had risen palely all around us. When I cracked my window, mountain air tingled on my nose hairs. Carol stirred and I looked and said, “You all right there, gorgeous?”
She came out from the blankets and pushed her hair off her face. “My ears are poppin’.”
She looked around at where we were. We rode like that for a while, me thinking, Okay, that’s fine, we’ll take it slow.
“I can’t believe it but I’m tryin’,” I heard. “Do I smell coffee?”
I said, “Yeah!” and handed her the thermos.
After she drank, I said, “You wanna see the wolf?”
She smiled. Finally.
She said, “Do you wanna see the wolf, he says.”
“Climb in back and unstop that peephole.”
Carol climbed in back and looked in.
“Eew! What’s all them piles?”
“His poop!” I said.
She plugged the hole right back up again.
“Did you see its eyes flash?” I said.
“No.”
“You coulda waited till you seen its eyes flash!”
“I’ll take your word for it,” she said.
And as she was climbing back to her seat, she kissed me on my cheek. Euphoria sang a high note down to my pelvis and rang my dick like a bell. Yes!, I said to myself.
Once the sun was bright as sin, it hailed for about three minutes. Carol squealed and clapped, and the wolf more than likely lifted his head, thinking, “Now what the hell’s this?”
The Haircutter Page 5