by John Brandon
It’s dark still, and I’m in the mason’s pickup. We’re going hunting. It’s a Huck Finn day, and this is a little field trip of sorts—my mom’s idea. The radio plays music like I’ve never heard.
He has a place set up, he tells me, not far into the brush—a hideout. You’re supposed to ramble around the live oaks lugging a pop-up blind, he says, but today we’re going to let the gobblers come to us. “And if they don’t,” he says, “it’s just not our day.” He pulls halfway off the dirt road and stops. It doesn’t seem like there’s enough room for another car to pass. He grabs a shotgun off the rack and I carry the pack. The mason has unevenly cropped hair and he’s wearing a tracksuit that does not look new.
We round a thicket at the base of a beech tree and there’s the hideout. The mason pulls aside a flap and we crouch in and get settled. You can see a lot from the mason’s hideout and nothing can see you. It’s roofless, and roomier inside than it looked from the outside. “Thing about shooting a turkey is then you have to clean a turkey and cook a turkey,” he says. He turns his head and coughs. “I don’t have much energy for chores lately, or much appetite.”
He handles the gun and shows me how it works, and I’m impressed. There’s nothing extra to the gun. It’s beautiful, a little monument to its own function. The mason says we probably won’t have much luck with the turkeys, but he’ll let me practice on some targets later with a different gun. He likes to shoot at textbooks with that one, he tells me. He takes out a little wooden device that reminds me of the pitch pipe I use when I sing at church and he makes turkey noises with it, just a soft clucking for a while, then a series of shrill yelps. I listen hard for a response, for a garbling out in the bracken and the briars, but the mason seems more interested in his instrument than in any quarry it might draw. In the pickup I’d been waiting for the sun, and now somehow I miss it rise. There it is off to the left, an overripe grapefruit pulling clear of the scrub.
The mason keeps sipping off his thermos but his eyes look sharp. Maybe he’s not going to say anything about what’s been going on—the chosen, the incidents—and he doesn’t have to. It’s in the air we’re breathing. We’re due, everyone knows. We’re close to due.
The mason plunges his hand into the sack of shotgun shells and absently kneads them, like he’s petting a dog. He’s ready to talk, ready to lecture. He tells me the history of his pickup truck, which he bought off a man who used to collect debts up in Georgia. The pickup has been in shoot-outs. It has been rolled in a chase, and clipped on the back end by a train. He tells me about Georgia, how there are spots up there hotter and flatter than Florida. The mason is a native here, like I am. He says in the old days a sweet potato that grew right out of this yellow dirt tasted better than anything at those Italian restaurants. His mother was prettier than any of these women around here now.
“Your mom’s the pick of the current litter,” he tells me, “but she wouldn’t have been fit to carry my mother’s lipstick around for her.”
There’s a laugh in his throat, but he clears it. He does something rough but precise to the knuckles of his left hand, producing a roll of cracks, and his demeanor changes. He peers out sternly into the broad, mostly quiet woods. His voice goes even and he explains that recently a tree his greatgrandfather planted died on his watch. Among the biggest sycamores he’s ever seen. It just quit living. He’d had to chainsaw the thing down and limb it and cut it into pieces small enough to carry and burn it. Not a leaf on the thing. A couple days’ work. He wants to know why a tree would up and die like that, but he knows he won’t get an answer. He lost an infield of shade easy, but worse he lost something grand and noble that his forebears had given start to. He’d sat by his nightfire, sweating, feeling watched by black quiet eyes. He doesn’t care about getting taken; something has to take you in time. What he doesn’t like is feeling monitored. He doesn’t deserve it. He looks at me, maybe wondering if I have anything to say about it, but I don’t.
The mason brings out a sleeve of smoked nuts and shares them with me. There’s no water, but I manage to get down a few handfuls. “So,” he says. “What we got right here, where we’re sitting: this is a sanctuary inside the sanctuary. For natives only. Nobody can find you here. And I mean nobody. And you, little friend, can use this place whenever you want.”
I thank him and he nods in an upbeat way. It’s almost regular daytime now. I can see everything. I can see every stitch in the canvas of the hideout, and a black and pink bug bumbling around on a pinecone. A ray of sun is finding its way through the foliage and glinting off the barrel of the shotgun, the heat beginning to thrum in the treetops.
The sisters live together now, the ones who run the restaurants. They told my mom they don’t want to be left behind if one of them is chosen.
Before they get the tarps up the houses look like hungry baby birds. Mouths agape to the sky, like despite everything being taken away they still expect something to be given. That’s how they look to me.
PALATKA
Pauline awoke to Mal’s voice outside her window. Mal was the seventeen-year-old girl who lived by herself in the next apartment. She was always talking on her outdated cordless phone, always helping some far-off person navigate a problem. Pauline went out to their shared back balcony in her bare feet and snuggled into a camping chair. Mal, standing with her weight all on one hip, grasping a big cup of iced tea, winked at her. She was as skinny as a rail; her fingernails were painted in stripes, and her elbows were raw. Pauline never saw her come home with groceries. The girl had a look in her eye sockets like she didn’t get enough red meat, or enough green vegetables. Pauline felt a mothering urge toward Mal. She had never gone through a wild phase herself, and so Mal’s carelessness fascinated her—her carelessness about things such as nutrition and education, but more so her general carelessness with herself. She didn’t seem to realize that a cute young girl shouldn’t treat her body and soul like they were rented.
Mal hung up the phone and chugged enough of her tea that she had to recover her breath afterward. She hoisted herself onto the banister. Pauline asked what the call was about and Mal said she had a friend who, when she met up in person with a guy from online, always felt too guilty to bail if she didn’t like the looks of him.
“She feels bad about wasting the guy’s time, after they got gussied up and used gas in their tank. And she’s like, what if that happened to me? I said, nobody’s going to be walking out on you because of the way you look. She’s like, yeah, they walk out later for other reasons.”
Pauline was only six years older than Mal, yet the dating world Mal inhabited seemed foreign to her, insane. There was no normal dating world anymore, she knew. A guy wasn’t going to approach Pauline with his hat in his hands and ask if that seat was taken, then give her an elegant little compliment and ask if he could have her phone number for the purpose of asking her out on a date that weekend.
“I’m telling you, you gotta try it,” Mal said. “It’s a hoot. Why not put up a profile and see what happens?”
“It just seems dangerous,” said Pauline. “I need to do something, but not that.”
“Dangerous? I’ve stopped keeping track of what’s dangerous. It’s tiring.”
“There’s a bunch of perverts in their underwear leering at your picture, Mal. Thinking God-knows-what.”
“I just want to go on a few dates. A girl used to be able to do that. Anyway, the picture I use is tasteful.”
“I’m sure it is,” Pauline said.
“It’s fun browsing through the guys. You get a bunch of likes and dislikes and hobbies. Then sometimes they’ll brag that they have a job.” She smiled. “Rick couldn’t brag about that. He bragged about his dad’s boat.”
Rick had been Mal’s most recent semi-steady guy, a man easily older than Pauline, way too old for Mal, with a tattoo on his neck and a hairline that had begun to recede. Pauline hadn’t seen him in a week or so. “What ever happened with Rick?”
“Yeah, that.
” Mal ran a palm down her cup, wiping it dry. “His friend called and asked me out and I said no way, then I told Rick about it and he says, ‘I know, I told him to. It was a test.’ I was like, these fuckers are weird.”
“Did you have to lie about your age, for the site?”
Mal spit ice into her cup. “Been doing that all my life. Sometimes I forget how old I actually am.”
Mal pulled her hair back and bound it with a rubber band. It was a light shade of brown and always looked a little greasy. Though Pauline talked to Mal most every day, she still knew almost nothing about the girl’s childhood. She’d been raised a couple counties away, Pauline knew, in a place she’d said was even more raggedy than Palatka, by an old woman she called Granny who wasn’t really her grandmother. The old woman had passed away a couple years back. Pauline didn’t pry; Mal was the type who would tell you everything she wanted you to know.
“What have you eaten today?” Pauline asked her.
“Eaten?” said Mal. She tipped off the banister stiffly toward Pauline, as if falling, then shot her feet down and landed like a gymnast. “I don’t know. I eat biscuits every morning, then I don’t get hungry again.” Mal gave the ice in her cup one sharp shake, then swished inside, the screen door swatting behind her.
Pauline rose and climbed into Mal’s spot on the banister. She pressed her back against the beam and gripped the railing under her legs. The balcony felt solid enough, though its planks were discolored and warped. After several minutes Pauline grew comfortable with her balance, though she knew she didn’t look at ease, like Mal had. She didn’t look like a wise stray kitten.
Pauline hadn’t had sex for over a year now. She was too picky, was the problem. There was a certain type of guy she was comfortable with, and that often liked her in return—guys who were nowhere near handsome but were cocky anyway due to some offbeat talent they possessed, who were gentlemanly without overdoing it—and that type of guy existed in college towns, not in regular Florida. Those were the guys who hadn’t minded entertaining and winning Pauline, guys who spoke useless languages and played outdated musical instruments. Pauline remembered what it was like to be with one of them, how each hour had seemed unique. They’d been so sweet and honest. They’d been boys, she supposed, not men.
The last night Mal had brought Rick home, Pauline had turned her seldom-used TV up as loud as it would go, blaring a news story about a museum burning to the ground. The noises Mal made were like giggling. His were like someone getting burned by a cigarette.
Mal burst back onto the balcony. “Believe it? I’m officially one hundred percent out of tea. How do I let these things happen?”
Pauline lowered herself from the banister and curled back up in her chair. The heat of the day was taking hold. She could feel sweat trickling down her neck. “Mal, how many friends do you have?” she asked.
Mal’s face went blank a moment. “No close ones, I don’t guess. None like when you’re a kid and you’re friends with someone. Friends like me and you, maybe seven or eight. If I have a friend long enough, I get in a fight with her.”
“Why? What do you get in a fight over?”
“Different things. Usually their boyfriends come on to me. This one dude, I threw a candle in his face, then my friend took his side. Says I could have blinded him.”
“A lit candle?”
“Hell yeah, a lit candle. She said I was jealous of her because she had this great guy, so I was trying to ruin it for her. Meanwhile he’s got a crossed eye. He was part-owner of a roller rink.” Mal crossed her arms. She was wearing a tank top that revealed the flat bones of her chest. “She said I was always flirting, even if I wasn’t trying to. The way I bop around and, you know, look at people. Maybe she’s right.” She bit the inside of her cheek. “Do you think she’s right?”
“I don’t know,” Pauline said. “Look straight at me.”
Mal arranged her face over-seriously and rested her eyes on Pauline. It certainly wasn’t flirty. Mal wasn’t blinking; she was waiting for some sort of verdict. And as Pauline looked back at her, thinking of what to say, she began to suspect that the face Mal was making was Pauline’s face, that she was unconsciously mirroring Pauline.
***
Pauline had been so happy, a year ago when she’d finished college, to find a pocket of the Florida peninsula that had not yet been subdivided and sodded, a swampy area with no easy access to a beach or to Disney World. She’d wanted a bold move, a move she wouldn’t have expected of herself. She’d wanted an escape from the familiar, a place where she could find something out about herself. Her friends from school had gone back to their hometowns and were predictably stepping into the molds of their young-adult lives, and Pauline was here, in Palatka, with no one to catch her if she faltered. She was proud of this original little life she’d forged, proud to have a consistent freelance job that paid the bills and then some, but whatever test she’d been hoping for hadn’t arrived. She felt more capable than when she’d moved here, but nothing important about her had changed. She was the person she’d always been—cautious, a judger of character and debunker of myths.
And what of Palatka? It was less a town, more a tangle of numbered roads lined with lethargic trailer parks and dusty farmhouses. The daytime was uneventful, and most people stayed in at night because there was nothing lurking out there but trouble. Pauline’s apartment was one of eight in her building, only two of which were rented—hers and Mal’s. The whole row was on stilts. The apartment, if she looked too closely, was shabby, but it was a big space for one person, and out the windows she could see the sun rising and setting. Out the windows there were mucky cypress bogs, and in the near distance a strip mall that contained a tidy thrift store and a low-rent lawyer’s office. A little farther off was a field of soybeans in perfect rows. And beyond all that was an unlabeled water tower, painted a pale yellow, peeking up over the treetops.
Pauline finished the work her company had sent her around midday, and then began feeling generally anxious for reasons that were hard to narrow down. She put in a hairclip, slipped her flip-flops on, and drove over to the outlet mall. This was another thing that hadn’t changed about her—when she felt anxious, shopping helped. She waded inside with the old women, who all wore sweaters against the pumping chilled air. She passed a shop for kitchen gadgets and a discount store for bras, then wound up walking into a depot for outdoor gear and drifting to a huge bin marked LIQUIDATION. She picked through all variety of backpack, fishing vest, and cozy hat, then turned the price tag on a pair of men’s boots: WAS $230.00 / IS $19.99. The boots were bulky and sleek at once, seasoned-looking yet pristine, rugged yet soft as a cloud. They were from Italy. She could smell the boots’ neutral scent—the odor of a very clean and organized workshop. She hung them over her arm by the laces and started looking around for the registers.
From the mall she followed a two-lane highway in the approximate direction of St. Augustine. Through many forks and hard turns, the road remained the same number. After about fifteen minutes she crossed a short bridge and pulled into the lot of a restaurant with stuffed macaws in the windows and glazed tile on every interior surface. There was a bar in the middle of the room, and Pauline chose a stool and nursed a beer. A television hung from the ceiling on a complicated stand. The sound was off and the man on the screen was reviewing something—horror movies, it seemed—and making a show of being despondent. The bartender, a middle-aged woman wearing big pastel bracelets, had her mixing tools out and was polishing them with vinegar. Pauline had been served by this woman before, had made small talk with her before.
“Would you mind turning that TV off?” Pauline asked.
“They won’t let me. I can turn it around for you, so it’ll face the other way.” The bartender stood on her toes and nudged the TV over and over until Pauline was looking at the back of it, with all its plugs and bolts. “You don’t like that guy who’s on?”
“I’m not used to TV anymore,” Pauline said. “It see
ms aggressive.”
“Where you been that there’s no TV?”
“Just my apartment, I guess.”
The bartender tilted her head, appraising Pauline. “I’ll tell you a secret, honey. You’re never going to fit in around here. You’re not white trash. That’s the main reason your experiment’s going to fail.”
“I’m not running an experiment,” Pauline scoffed. “And who said I didn’t fit in?”
“The world needs white trash. I’m not getting down on them.” The bartender held a shaker up to the light. “This country wouldn’t be what it is without white trash.”
“Okay, since I’m not white trash, what am I?” Pauline asked.
“Best I can tell, you’re a levelheaded gal who likes to sip on a beer in the middle of the day because it makes you feel not so levelheaded. I wouldn’t say you’re happy, but you’ve managed to not have anything bad happen to you yet.”
Pauline was quiet. Then she said, “Damn.”
“Don’t worry, I can do that to anyone. Trick of the trade.” The bartender ate one of Pauline’s chips. “Stale,” she said. She gave the basket a shake, rattling her bracelets, and walked off toward the kitchen with it.
Pauline went out to the balcony and found Mal hanging things. Some shop had gone under and Mal had plundered a birdfeeder and a set of wind chimes. She had neglected to pick up birdseed, so Pauline emptied a can of mixed nuts into the feeder. The two of them sat as still as they could, occasionally making a kissy bird noise. Mal was in her accustomed spot on the banister, a chime dangling inches above her head. From what sounded like a couple miles away, Sunday church bells were tolling.
“I used to go to church,” Pauline said. “I was Catholic for part of college.”
“Because of a guy?” Mal asked.