“You said some pretty damaging things to me as well. On the plane you told me that you wished that we never…” Hurt halts my words. “Never mind. Not now. We’re here for a funeral.”
“You pushed me. You know you push me. You push me until I snap. And I say things that I know I shouldn’t say. About your… that relationship… I’d been holding that in for a while.”
Her face overflows with distress. She takes a few breaths, centers herself.
Once again I ask, “You okay?”
She shakes her head. “Tell Bubba Smith that I’m ready to leave.”
“What about the wake?”
“I’m ready to leave. There is too much mental static here. I’ll… I’ll have another attack if I stay here, I feel it. I have to get away from here, from all of this madness. And these memories.”
Kenya’s gravitational pull, it slows me, misdirects me.
Obsession rises.
I don’t want to be here with her, yet I do not want to go away. If I leave her, I know that we will part and I’ll never see her again, not in the unrighteous way I’ve selfishly enjoyed her.
I tell Genevieve, “You flew a long way not to go the last few feet with your family.”
“If I go with them where will you be?”
“Bubba Smith can drive you over. I can wait in the trailer.”
Her eyes go toward her sister. She clears uneasiness from her throat.
Kenya is the gun I hold to my head, finger on trigger.
“No.” Genevieve says and scowls. “I only need to see Willie Esther’s dead face once.”
“We’re already here, wherever here is, we’re here.”
She tells me, “Stop transmitting. Receive what I’m telling you.”
“You’re right. I’m listening.”
“I can’t handle this. Maybe I’ll do better with the funeral tomorrow.”
She wobbles where she stands. My heart splinters as I take her arm.
I ask, “You okay?”
“Migraine. Can’t take much more of this noise. I need… I need some space.”
I nod, knowing what she needs. “I’ll tell Bubba Smith we have changed the plans.”
“Let me say a polite good-bye to a few of the elders and go back to Birmingham.”
“Want me to go with you?”
Genevieve shakes her head. “Old people are so depressing.”
“Why do you say that?”
“All they talk about is who’s sick, who might be sick, who died, how long it took them to die. All they talk about is bad news and death. ”Your uncle just died, Bae Bae got cirrhosis, “member Sonny Boy? Yeah you do—you met him when you was two. Anyway, he just had a stroke.” I want to scream, “Can’t you at least start the conversation off with something happy?”“
As she walks away, Velma and her still-crying children come out of the trailer.
Velma yells, “I cain’t go in church with my mouth all messed up like this. And these chirren… Lord give me my strength. I’mma stay here and y’all tell Jimmy Lee to come get his chirren.”
The trailer door creaks and slams hard behind her and her wailing tribe.
The sound of that Harley-Davidson draws closer. Then it idles, can hear the one-of-a-kind pop-pop sound followed by a pause. Nothing sings like the unique song of a Harley. This one is louder than most, very distinctive. It’s been customized, mufflers removed.
Driven by the abrupt sound, Kenya looks to her left, sees the Harley approaching, moving slow, the rider searching the faces of everyone he passes, looking for someone in particular.
The rider sees Kenya and speeds up, Harley-Davidson resounding like a god’s thunder.
She curses, then her eyes go toward Odenville Library, toward a barely visible U-Haul.
She doesn’t have to say that the rider in the black leather jacket, the white man with the frown plastered on his face, is Deuce. She has been found.
SEVENTEEN
DEUCE POSSESSES A CHISELED BODY, A GIFT FROM THE GOD OF steroids.
But he owns a face that makes Ernest Borgnine look like Brad Pitt.
Many colorful tattoos cover his neck. My first thought is that hopefully he has a nice personality. But the hard-core expression he has as he shuts his bike down speaks otherwise.
He unsnaps his cruiser helmet, takes off his goggles, dusts down his leather jacket.
Kenya says, “How did you know I was up here?”
“Is that any kind of way to tell your husband-to-be hello?”
“You’re not my husband-to-be.”
“Guessed you might hide out here.”
“Good guess. Now what do you want?”
“Look, no time to mess around. I’m in trouble.”
Kenya says, “I want my charge cards reactivated.”
He nods. “Those breasts are looking pretty good.”
“Don’t start.”
“I paid for them but I can’t compliment them?”
“Deuce, I told you, soon as I’m able I’ll reimburse you.”
“Drives me crazy imagining another man holding onto my breasts.”
“These are not your breasts.”
“I’ll repossess them if I have to.”
“Quit talking crazy.”
“Six thousand of my hard-earned money says those tits belong to me. Unless some man is going to give me my money back, all my money plus interest, those tits are mine.”
“Possession is nine-tenths the law.”
“Oh, I can fix that real fast with a steak knife. I’ll leave you the way I found you.”
He looks at me. Reads me. Sizes me up. His eyes daring me.
Kenya says, “He’s family. LaKeisha’s husband. My sister that lives in California.”
“Didn’t know you had a sister, let alone one in California.”
“Well now you do. This is her husband.”
He ignores me, asks Kenya, “How did you get out here?”
“I flew.”
“Now that’s funny. I called the airport. Hartsfield was shut down last night.”
“Obviously not.”
Her lies are served warm with the texture of heated butter.
I interrupt, say, “Nice Fat Boy. One down, four up?”
His eyes cut me up and down. “You ride?”
“A Ducati. Liter.”
He huffs. He rides a cruiser. I ride high-end Italian. We’re in two different classes.
I want him to see me as Rambo but he stares at me like I’m Seinfeld’s sidekick.
With that he is no longer concerned with me. A few of the veins in his neck subside, but not many. He walks by me like I don’t exist. I’m a speck of snow in a blizzard.
He walks toward Kenya. She moves away. Then they freeze and stare at each other. Tension flares. He’s shorter than me, taller than Kenya. His mass looks to be twice mine.
“It seems as if I’ve lost a U-Haul.”
She acts like she’s looking in her pockets. “Sorry.”
He’s not amused. “Don’t play with me, Kenya. Seems like I packed up my home and my business in this U-Haul. Seems like I had a falling out with you over the phone. Since then crazy things have been happening. Slashed tires on both my cars. Windows broken in the house.”
“Damn, Boo. Somebody done put a mojo on you.”
“Two nights ago I went to bed and when I woke up everything I owned was gone.”
“Damn shame. Guess somebody took a Slim Jim and hotwired your truck.”
“The key is missing too.”
“How did that happen?”
“First I was thinking that whoever did it came in through my garage while I was sleeping.”
“Did you ask that ugly shit I caught you sleeping with?”
“But the house alarm was on. I think I must’ve left the key in the truck.”
“Well, that was smart. Anybody could have your truck. Instead of blowing up my phone and riding out here to harass me, maybe you should’ve been looking around College
Park. Two days ago? That truck could be in Canada or California by now. Maybe down in Mexico.”
Deuce sucks on his teeth, nods his head, thinks for a moment.
He says, “Right now I need to find that U-Haul and get it back out to Bankhead.”
“Call the police.”
“Call the police?”
“Yeah. If somebody stole it, report it stolen. And while you’re on the phone, get my charge cards reactivated.”
Kenya walks away, dress swaying as she heads away from the trailer.
Deuce hesitates, grits his teeth, and follows. He’s confused, not sure if she’s lying. If I wasn’t acquainted with the truth, I’d believe her. This is her lover. I imagine them together.
Seeing him angers me. Again heat rises.
Then I look toward the beauty and brilliance of my pot-smoking and enigmatic wife.
I go inside the trailer. On the counter is a brown purse, the designer kind with golden Ls and Vs overlapping each other. The bag feels heavy. I open it up and look inside. Makeup. Other womanly effects. Condoms. I find what I’m looking for, the keys to the U-Haul.
And I find what is giving her purse its weight. A snub-nose revolver, Smith & Wesson.
I swallow. I own fear for Kenya.
Then I go to Bubba Smith. I tell him that I’m taking a short walk to the highway, going to clear my head with a stroll to the gas station, might get something to drink.
He says, “Rain coming. I can run you up there.”
“Wait on my wife.”
“It won’t be a problem. Daddy asked me to run up there anyway. Wanted to fill up those three gas cans.” He motions at three big red canisters on the side of Grandpa Fred’s home. “Daddy likes to keep extra gas around in case he needs it for his truck or his boat.”
“Bubba Smith, just wait on my wife. When she’s done, come pick me up at the gas station. I know this is your family, but you’re on the clock. We’re paying you, understand?”
“Yessir.”
“Do that on your own time.”
“Yessir.”
Rain starts to fall as I hurry down the road and stop at Alabama Street. Under the darkening skies I pause between the library and the defunct bank, sky crying a little harder, as I stare over the civic center toward the row of trailer homes. No one is looking my way.I spy toward St. Clair High School. Then I notice an elementary school nestled in what looks like a cul-de-sac, almost concealed from the rest of the community. I continue up the street, my pace quick and steady. The fourteen-foot U-Haul rests on a narrow street in front of a trailer home.
A dog barks. I jump, break into a run. A rottweiler is charging at me. But he is chained to a pole in the ground. Over and over he tests his chain, wishing I’d come toward him.
I rush to the truck.
I’m no longer an educated man. I’m a fourteen-year-old boy in Fresno about to steal the battery out of a car. My old life crawls over my mind as I get inside, looking around for trouble.
I am unraveling. The moral part of me spiraling and dissipating into nothingness.
I drive Kenya’s crime toward the elementary school.
That is where I leave the truck.
The sky cries harder by the time the Town Car pulls up in front of I the Exxon. I come out, Gatorade and Fig Newtons in hand. Customers in pickup trucks stare as Bubba Smith hops out to let me in the backseat. He opens the door. Genevieve is in the backseat. So is Kenya.
The pop-pop-pop of the Harley comes right behind them.
Genevieve gets out, once again elegant, looking soigne and sophisticated. She is a beautiful swan. Getting away from the trailer homes, only a few feet, has changed her.
She smiles at me. I smile in return. She owns the gravity of my emotions.
Then Kenya gets out, heads inside the mini-mart, wild hair dancing.
Her lips are turned down, gray eyes tight, pace that of annoyance.
Deuce turns off his Harley.
Before I can ask what’s going on, Genevieve tells me, “Kenya needed a ride back.”
I nod. I figured she would. Her options are few. I ask, “How did she get here?”
“Probably rode one of her lies.”
I ask, “What’s up with her friend? You meet him?”
“Said hi. Outside of that, they’re not saying.”
“He heading back to Atlanta or staying with her?”
Her eyes frown and her lips smile.
Genevieve says, “You were inside the trailer a long time.”
I wonder why she is saying that now. She smiles but now I see that her smile is illusory, insincere and baiting. I shrug and respond, “Didn’t seem like you wanted me with you.”
“I take it that you spoke with Kenya?”
“Is that what she told you?”
“That’s what I’m asking you.”
“Some. She was cleaning up. Other people were in and out.”
Genevieve pulls her lips in. “What’s going on, Sweetie?”
“What do you mean?”
She takes a sharp breath. “What did you and Kenya talk about?”
“She talked about her dad. His cancer. She broke down crying.”
Silence.
I say, “She told me that Willie Esther was raped. And her mother before her.”
Genevieve pulls her lips in, nods.
Then I speak the obvious. “Looks like it’s about to storm.”
“Yes, it is about to storm on us.” Her tone is slick and metaphorical. She looks to me, reads my eyes, then looks away, tense and sad. “Willie Esther is trying to run us out of town.”
She stares at the highway. Her road to emancipation. In that instant she looks thirteen. I can’t shake what she has told me. I can’t say it does not matter. I can’t erase this memory.
Genevieve says, “You probably have more questions.”
I nod. “Probably.”
Kenya comes back, pack of cigarettes in one hand, bag of pork rinds and a bottled Coca-Cola in the other. Nicotine, swine, and caffeine. She gets in the backseat, the passenger side.
Genevieve asks, “Have I not been a good wife?”
“Why do you keep asking me something like that?”
“Because.” Genevieve nods. “I am very uneasy with something myself.”
“Since when?”
“Since this morning.” She pauses. “I pray and hope that I’m imagining things.”
“What things?”
“That Willie Esther’s evil is reaching up from hell and giving me hallucinations.”
Bubba Smith hurries and opens the door on our side. Genevieve doesn’t want to sit next to Kenya. Despite my height, I take the middle seat, my right leg up against Kenya. My left leg rests against Genevieve. My guilt squirms between love and lust.
Quietly, deep inside myself, in the corner of a distant nether region, I almost smile.
Kenya moves the softness of her leg against mine, sighs like a soft poem.
Genevieve holds my hand, holds me tight, her palm as wet as a river.
I don’t ask any more questions, but I can figure out what has happened, how we all ended up in this car together. This is our momentary prison. Thanks to Jimmy Lee, The Matrix, and a strong backhand, Velma isn’t going to the wake, so she and her wailing kids will be at the trailer, wiping blood from her moustache as she keeps all burglars away. With Deuce in Odenville, Kenya is rattled, now ready to flee. He is a hawk, watching her, following her wherever she goes, so she has to make her lies seem true, she has to leave with Genevieve.
The radio is on. News. They talk about the storm that’s coming back this way. In between that they give sound bites: Inmate was struck and killed while picking up trash on 1-65.
Bubba Smith repeats, “Inmate got hit and killed while picking up trash on 65.”
I say, “Guess that was God’s will.”
“No sir. It was an accident.”
Genevieve Page 23