Bound South

by Susan Rebecca White

  “He voted for him the first time?” asks Deidre. There is venom in her voice.

  “How old is he, sweetheart?” I ask, trying to defuse the tension. “To have voted in so many elections?”

  Deidre passes the cigarette to Caroline, who inhales and then blows out a puff of smoke. “Thirty-one.”

  “And you’re what, twenty-one?” asks Deidre.

  Caroline passes the marijuana cigarette to me. “About to turn twenty-two,” she says.

  Deidre raises her eyebrows. It occurs to me that she is not a subscriber to the “no judgment” policy of Good Vibrations. Truth be told, it seems to me that many of the people who live in San Francisco are second only to the membership committee at the Driving Club in terms of being judgmental. They just have different qualifications for what they think makes a decent person.

  “So what you are going to do is put the joint in your mouth and just inhale. And then once you have as much as you want, hold the smoke in your lungs for a minute before you exhale. Okay, Mom?”

  I put the cigarette—or joint, I suppose it is—into my mouth, trying to ignore the soggy feel of the paper. I inhale and immediately want to cough out the sweet smoke, but I manage to hold it in my lungs for a few seconds before doing so.

  “Way to go, Louise!” says Deidre, drumming the palms of her hands on the linoleum table.

  I pass her the joint. “May I have a glass of water?” I ask.

  Deidre jumps up. I imagine her bumping her head against the ceiling when she does, and I giggle. “Iced water coming up,” she says. “And how about some chocolate-covered graham crackers.”

  Caroline and I split a piece of cake when we stopped for coffee before heading over to Deidre’s studio, but still, a chocolate-covered graham cracker sounds wonderful. It sounds fabulous in fact, like just what the doctor ordered.

  “Oh yes!” I say and Caroline bursts out laughing.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Nothing,” she says. “Just welcome to the munchies.”

  ONE JOINT AND an entire tin of chocolate-covered graham crackers later, Deidre pulls out the photos for her Box collection. She spreads them on the table so we can compare the different subjects.

  “That one looks like the Grand Canyon,” I say, and start to giggle.

  Caroline starts giggling too and I am reminded of being at school with Tiny when we would both get so tickled over something we couldn’t help but laugh even though our teacher threatened to send us to the principal’s office.

  “I used a close-up lens with that one,” says Deidre. “So you see all of the nooks and crannies.”

  “And grannies,” says Caroline.

  “And nannies,” I say. “Nanny Roses.”

  Caroline and I start giggling again.

  “You are two of a kind, aren’t you?” says Deidre.

  “Hey,” I say, lifting my gaze from the photo and looking right at her. “Are you still interested in me posing for you?”

  Deidre is fishing through the box of photographs, looking for more examples to pull out. She stops and returns my stare. “Did Caroline tell you I was looking for an older woman for the project?”

  “Oh honey,” I say. “Please don’t tell me you just said ‘older woman’!”

  Deidre shakes her head as if she is ridding it of a bad idea. “Did I say older woman? Excuse me, that’s not what I meant to say. What I meant to say is that I’m looking for a sexy, sophisticated southern dame. That’s who I’m looking for.”

  “Well I might just know one of those,” I say.

  “Don’t you think you should wait until the pot wears off to think about doing this?” asks Caroline.

  “No,” I say. “But listen, Deidre, I don’t want my face in it. And I don’t want you to use the Grand Canyon lens.”

  “Mom,” says Caroline. Her voice sounds panicked. “I didn’t agree to that deal you wanted to make. If Davis asks me to marry him, I’m going to say yes.”

  Oh good Lord. Does this child think every decision I make is about her?

  And damn. She is going to marry him. She’s going to marry him and lead a boring life.

  “Darling,” I say. “I’m not doing this to stop you. I’m doing it for the sake of art.”

  And then I don’t know what comes over me, but I can’t stop laughing, my shoulders shaking, my eyes running. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh!

  Oh, it’s all so ridiculous.

  Part Three

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Pilgrims

  (Missy, September 2004)

  Charles picks me up at 8:14 a.m., ten minutes after Mama and RD drove off. He doesn’t even turn off the engine, just waits in the driver’s seat while I lock the front door to my house, walk to his dark green Honda, and place my bag in the trunk, which is popped but which I have to open. First thing I do after I settle into the front seat is start poking at the buttons on his radio so I can figure out how to tune it to the Loaf. The Loaf FM is a Christian station and listening to it might do Charles some good. Now I’m no fool, I know the Loaf won’t bring Charles to Jesus by the time we get to Durham or anything like that, but I figure he ought to at least get some exposure to the kind of contemporary praise music I am sure we will hear at Daddy’s church, the kind of music that Pastor Praise—Daddy—plays with his band on Salt of the Earth.

  Believe me, if Charles’s first experience listening to live praise music isn’t until we are actually at Daddy’s church, surrounded by the faithful, that boy will make a scene. I know it. He’ll laugh and point out the corniest lyrics and then he’ll keep making fun throughout the singing, whispering nasty things in my ear like he did when we watched Daddy’s show and the whole time he was saying, “Is this for fucking real?” and “You can’t make this shit up.”

  He will draw attention to the two of us for sure. And who knows? Maybe an usher will think we are being too disrespectful and will kick us out of church and I won’t even have a chance to see my daddy after having spent six hours trapped in a car with Charles Parker just to do so.

  “Missy,” says Charles, just as soon as I find the station, “don’t you know the golden rule of the road? The driver chooses the music.”

  His engine is still running while he flips through the pages of a black leather CD carrier. He ought to cut the engine off. He’s wasting gas.

  “I only know Jesus’s golden rule,” I say.

  (To anyone but Charles I wouldn’t say something so outright preachy. It’s just that Charles gets downright itchy when I preach at him and—well—I sort of like watching him itch.)

  He pulls a CD out of the carrier and slides it into the player.

  “Sorry, but I’m not driving six hours listening to saccharine ballads to JC coupled with not-so-subtle right-wing propaganda.”

  He puts the car in reverse and backs out of the driveway, barely missing the mailbox on his way out.

  “If that’s the kind of leader you choose to be,” I say, as he turns right on Stevens, “I guess that’s your right as a man.”

  Lately Pastor Finch has been talking up this book called Born to Be Wild. It’s all about man’s true nature. Men are born to be leaders, of course, but Pastor Finch says that they are also born to be adventurers and warriors. That’s why all little boys want to grow up to be firemen or astronauts or soldiers. God implanted the heart of a hero inside all of them, but both secular society and, sadly, the church do their best to rub righteous manliness right out. That’s why it’s hard to find true leaders anymore. We’ve nagged the leader gene right out of our men. Least that’s what Pastor Finch says.

  I wonder if Charles has a warrior hidden deep inside of him. I wonder what would happen if he read Born to Be Wild, if it might wake up some sleeping part of him, the part that likes football and girls.

  Thing is, I know exactly how Charles would react if I told him about the book. He’d make fun of it like he does with everything else. Then he’d say something just to aggravate me, like he thinks a woman s
hould be the next president of the United States and it’s okay for boys to dress up like fairy princesses.

  Knowing Mrs. Parker, when Charles was a little boy she probably let him dress up like a fairy princess, if that’s what he wanted to do. And she probably let him play with whatever toys he wanted, whether or not they were pink or had unicorns on them or were covered in glitter or whatnot.

  That might be what got him so confused about everything in the first place. Maybe Charles grew up thinking he was a little girl and his mama went right along with it, letting him dress in tutus and high heels, and pretty soon Charles started thinking he liked boys the way girls are supposed to.

  Then I realize something that surprises me, something that makes me wonder if maybe I’ve been spending too much time with Charles, if maybe he’s been a bad influence. What I realize is deep down I don’t really care whether or not Charles believes that he has the secret heart of a warrior. I’m just glad to be driving in the car with him, right now.

  Aggravating as he can be, I (mostly) enjoy his company.

  Last night I was so nervous thinking about today, about the trip, about seeing Daddy, I could hardly eat any dinner. But this morning I feel so happy, so excited to be going to Durham, to be getting away from Mama and RD and RD’s smelly dog and our little house and all the problems that go with it: the bills we never get caught up on, the old toilet that overflows at least once a week (it’s always RD who stops it up), the neighbors two doors down who own that mean German shepherd who sometimes sits on our front lawn growling anytime one of us tries to step out the door.

  I don’t even care that Charles has chosen the most depressing music in the world to play, just one man singing whiny lyrics.

  And then I realize something else: with all our fussing over what music we were going to listen to on the drive, I forgot to feel ashamed of my house while Charles was parked in front of it (taking in every last detail, I’m sure). Last night I could not stop thinking about Charles seeing it, about Charles judging it against the one he lives in. I was worried Charles would feel sorry for me, after he saw how run-down our house is, with its patchy roof and peeling paint and broken blinds that you can see from the outside. And you can bet RD hauled all of his outdoor junk over to our front yard once he moved into our house. So now our front yard is filled with statuettes of boys in overalls and girls in dresses, too many pink flamingos to count, and a duck made out of concrete that must weigh a thousand pounds, because believe me, I have tried to move it.

  RD’s nasty old truck is still parked out front, in the same spot it’s been since its engine didn’t turn over two weeks ago. RD says he’ll get around to fixing it soon enough—Mama has been dropping him off at work every day—but for now his Chevy sits. I wouldn’t be surprised if RD never got around to fixing it, if one day he decided to put cinder blocks under the wheels instead. RD says it’s got all kinds of things wrong with it under the hood, not to mention all those dents in the side and the cracked back windshield. On its bumper is a peeling sticker that reads “Durn Tootin’ I’m a Rebel.” I told him he should take the sticker off considering that a black family just moved in across the street and they’re likely to get offended. RD says he doesn’t mean no offense, he’s just got a rebel spirit, and as long as a man’s a Christian, he doesn’t care whether he’s black, white, purple, or whatever.

  I bet a hundred dollars Charles made fun of that bumper sticker the second he pulled into our driveway. I bet he wrote it down in one of those notebooks he’s always recording things in.

  “Neiman’s,” says Charles.

  We’ve been riding in silence and it startles me to hear him talk.

  “What?” I ask.

  “The bag you put in the trunk,” he says. “It’s from Neiman Marcus, right?”

  “It’s not mine. It’s your mama’s. From when she cleaned out her closet last spring and gave us a bunch of her sweaters.”

  “May I just take this moment to apologize for how clueless my mother is?”

  I pretend not to know what he’s talking about, even though I do. He thinks it’s embarrassing for his mama to use a bag from a fancy shop when she’s giving us her old clothes.

  “It’s a good bag,” I say. “It’s got a handle on it.”

  We’re driving on Grayson Highway, about to pass by my church, though I’ll keep that information from Charles. Otherwise he might pull in and try to introduce himself to Pastor Finch, tell him that he “likes guys.” Just before the church there’s a housing development with a sign in front of it that says “Homes from the 400’s.” That’s 400 as in four hundred thousand dollars. I told Mama she ought to drop off flyers advertising her cleaning services in the mailboxes of those new homes. If someone’s willing to pay over four hundred thousand dollars for a house, I bet they’re willing to pay for someone to clean it. There are so many nice new developments going up around here, Mama could probably get all new clients, all within ten miles of our house.

  I wonder if the boy Charles knows who lives out here—the one he told me about who sold him those illegal drugs—I wonder if he lives in that new development.

  “You know where you are?” I ask him.

  “I just keep following GA-Twenty, right?”

  “Yep,” I say. “Just keep going. You’ll hit signs for Eighty-five.”

  We drive for a few miles without either of us saying anything, the only sound in the car the music Charles has chosen, which in this case means a man singing “needle in the hay” over and over again.

  We drive past Big Chuck’s BBQ and all of a sudden I am hungry something fierce. I was too excited to eat any breakfast this morning, not even when Mama offered to fix us eggs. I should have eaten, packed my stomach for later. I’ve only got thirty-two dollars for this whole trip and that includes helping Charles out with our hotel room tonight.

  At least I thought to pack those Lance snack crackers. Peanut butter with cheddar and original flavor.

  “Leather pants will work for church on Sunday, right?” Charles asks.

  I start to say something, like You had better not be planning to wear leather pants to my daddy’s church, but then I decide to try something else for a change. I pretend that Charles is RD’s mutt, Li’l Dog, and he’s jumping all over me and I’m just standing there, my arms wrapped tight around my sides, looking up at the ceiling until he calms down.

  “Yep,” he continues. “They’re called ‘second-skin’ they fit so tight. Especially over the part that really counts. If you know what I mean.”

  He turns his eyes off the road to look at me, moving his eyebrows up and down like some kind of a fool. I can’t help myself—I laugh. He’s relaxed, smiling, one arm on the wheel. It occurs to me that he’s been looking forward to this trip. That he’s been looking forward to spending time with me too. That he likes baiting me almost as much as I like baiting him.

  CALL IT A miracle, but by the time we cross the state line and roar into South Carolina—Charles has a lead foot—we have finally discovered a band that we both find tolerable. The band is called Belle and Sebastian and their songs are real catchy. It ain’t music you’d hear on the Loaf—that’s for sure—but it’s a lot better than that needle-in-the-hay guy.

  Charles says that he once went to a Belle and Sebastian concert and everyone there looked just like him.

  “We were all wearing highly ironic T-shirts,” he said. “You know, ones with big-eyed does on them or a silhouette of a wolf against a mountain backdrop. It was a little disturbing. Made me realize I’m not as original as I thought I was.”

  I want to tell Charles, Don’t worry, you’re an original, but I don’t. Somehow saying that might sound like I am calling him a fag, and even though he’s used that word in front of me before, it doesn’t seem right.

  I wonder: if everyone looked like Charles at the Belle and Sebastian concert, does that mean everyone there was gay? I study Charles, trying to figure out if I would have known he was gay if I was meeting him fo
r the first time. This summer when his hair was bleached and he wore that beaded silver necklace, he sure looked queer, but his hair doesn’t look all that strange anymore. It’s dyed almost black (a little too dark for his pale skin) and it’s grown long enough to cover his ears. To tell the truth, he doesn’t stand out too, too much. Don’t get me wrong, no one would mistake him for the captain of the football team or anything like that. But he doesn’t look any stranger than that group at my school who wear black all of the time and walk around looking like they are trying to figure out a way to blow the place up. And he doesn’t act prissy or squeamish or anything.

  “Play that song about the minister again,” I say.

  “I think you’re missing its point,” says Charles, but he smashes the return button on the car stereo until the song starts up again. When the chorus comes around I sing along:

  But if you are feeling sinister, go off and see a minister, he’ll try in vain to take away the pain of being a hopeless unbeliever. La, la, la, la, la, la, la.

  I know Belle and Sebastian aren’t a Christian band—not if Charles Parker owns a copy of their CD—but nevertheless the song makes good sense. Think about it: If you feel that you are about to commit a sin—to do something sinister—you should go off and find a minister. But there’s nothing a minister can do with someone who’s chosen to turn his back on God, with someone who is a “hopeless unbeliever.” (And aren’t all unbelievers hopeless?) So the minister probably would be trying in vain. But he’d try; you’d bet he’d try. By teaching you about Jesus, he’d try to help with the pain of being a hopeless unbeliever, which, sadly, is what most people in this world are. Or if they’re not hopeless unbelievers then they believe in the wrong things—like Osama bin Laden and the people in Iraq who go around bombing our soldiers.

  Then I think: Charles and me are on our way to find a minister (my daddy), yet what we are doing might be considered sinister, or at least a sin. Lying to Mama. Taking advantage of Mrs. Parker being out of town. Spending tonight together in a hotel room though we are neither related nor married.