Armadillos

by P. K. Lynch

  Guess there’s some things you can’t run away from. Some things sit inside and all the time you’re trying to run away, you’re carrying them yourself. You’re hiding them that bit deeper inside yourself. Your head plays tricks. Your body plays tricks. People had been slowly killing me for a long time and getting away with it. Maybe it was time I got away with it, too.

  Marj was in a good mood when she came back. I swallowed two Advil and drank her strawberry milk and tried to listen as she prattled on about the future. She’d paint her new apartment lilac, and have a workstation set up so she could see the street below while she worked. Her bed would go opposite the window, and her bookcase in the living room. (The fucking living room, Aggie – did you hear that?) She’d need to find a sofa but Hank knew someone could get it for free – about time that old bastard came in useful for something. None of it was fancy, but fancy didn’t suit her anyway. She cracked open a beer and leaned back in her deckchair. I’d never seen a person look more content. There wouldn’t be a better time to ask.

  ‘Marj, I been thinking.’

  ‘I wouldn’t do that, kid,’ she chuckled.

  There’s an old saying that everybody seems normal until you get to know them, but with Marj it was the other way around. She’d gone from Beast Woman to the closest thing I had to family. Except she wasn’t.

  ‘Yeah, guess thinking leads to trouble, don’t it,’ I forced myself to laugh with her.

  ‘What you been thinking, child?’

  She looked at me and I don’t know what she saw, but her face landed dead serious. She pinned a stare on me and waited for my reply.

  I was caught in the space between here and there. The words wouldn’t come. I had to drag them out. It was the obvious thing, the only thing to do. It was the right thing.

  ‘I think I gotta go home, Marj.’

  We set off early next morning. Marjorie reckoned it would be a twelve-hour drive. I reckoned if Marj thought twelve, it would be more like sixteen. But the car was light and Marj was happy and we licked along at a good pace for a few hours until she pulled off the road and wheeled into the car park of a Waffle House.

  ‘Lunchtime,’ she said. ‘This do you?’

  We sat at the counter to eat. You don’t get much talking done that way. We made the effort but there was so much shouting between the staff we soon gave up and just watched how they ran things there.

  One guy operated the waffle machine. This seemed like the best job to have. He just got on with his business, ignoring the mayhem around him. Every order that came in from a waitress was handed over to the floor manager and got shouted out so everyone knew what to do. Someone’s sole job was to pour coffee and tea, and through the hatch, the kitchen was manic with sausage and grits.

  ‘One and a half sausage and two eggs sunny-side up!’

  ‘Short stack cinnamon pancake, bacon and syrup, table number four!’

  And out front with every new customer: ‘Welcome to the Waffle House, sir!’

  All through the chaos, everything hung together. It worked. I found it strangely relaxing.

  Marjorie was in the restroom when a guy took her seat.

  ‘Uh, I’m sorry, sir. That there’s my friend’s seat.’

  He smiled at me. ‘Don’t remember me, do you?’

  The guy took off his baseball hat and scratched his beard.

  ‘Do I know you?’

  ‘I’d say so. Your name’s Aggie, right? I’ll never forget a little lady hitching a ride in my truck a year or so back. Threatened me with some nasty stuff too, I recall.’

  I flicked through all the faces in my head and located him. Jesus, it was old Grizzly. My very first customer, so to speak.

  ‘Sorry, sir. Think you got the wrong person.’ I looked around in a panic for Marjorie.

  He gave a little laugh. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘I thought about you a lot, you know. I hoped you landed up okay. You seem okay, I guess. You ever make it back to where you were running from?’

  ‘Sir, I’m sorry, sir. I already said you have the wrong person.’

  ‘Hey, Aggie,’ called Marjorie from the door. ‘You set?’

  Grizzly popped his hat back on. ‘Well, I just wanted to say hi. I’ll take some coffee,’ he said, as the server passed. ‘Take it easy, Aggie.’

  My eyes burned with tears as I slipped down off the stool.

  ‘Thanks, mister,’ I whispered. ‘You too.’

  I checked the side mirror for miles and miles, but that was the last time I ever saw Grizzly. I wondered why he’d shown up then. It was a sign, but I didn’t know if it was good or bad.

  ‘What you so agitated for? You sure this is a good idea? We can turn round right now if you want. You don’t have to do nothing, you know that, don’t you?’

  I didn’t know that. Felt like I was doing the only thing possible.

  ‘I gotta see Jojo, Marj.’

  ‘If you say so. What’s that short for anyway?’ she asked.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Well, nobody christens a baby Jojo, do they? What is she – a Joanne, Joanna, or what?’

  She used to just be Josephine, Ash said. Don’t you remember?

  I thought hard. Nope, I replied. I was keeping him company while he tinkered with the engine of Jack King. Cy said it was a waste of time and that she was only good for firewood, but Ash loved fixing things up almost as much as Cy loved cattle. He was sure in time he’d make her seaworthy, but for now he just looked at me in disbelief.

  She used to talk real funny. A stammer. You must remember that? Pass me that rag.

  I threw it over and gazed back at the house as though I could make the memory come alive just by looking. This was the first I’d heard anything about a stammer.

  Nope, I said again, leaning on the wheel to steer her through imaginary seas. Don’t remember. The rag reappeared on the ground beside me.

  Well, she did. She spoke as normal as you or me until one day she didn’t. Just woke up and couldn’t say a word without she tripped over it. I guess you were only little. Pass me the wrench, will you?

  I passed it over.

  Anyway, Pop hated it. Thought she was putting it on. He lined us up along the wall, made us be the audience while he set about curing her.

  But she don’t talk like that now, I’d said. She got better.

  Yeah, she did. She got better. But she was Jojo by then.

  ‘Well, your pop sounds sweet as sugar,’ Marj said, when I’d done talking. Seemed I was in the mood for it.

  ‘My pop’s got a whole lot to answer for. My brother, too. I aint carrying no olive branch. And I got my sister to think about.’

  I could see Marj was impressed with me. Could feel it without even looking at her. Felt like the whole world was impressed with me. I was on the righteous path. And Duke’s gun was in my pocket.

  27

  The world had changed from yellow to red. We were back in the land of endless skies and shanty towns. We were getting closer. The sun was sitting low. Soon it would be dark. I didn’t want to go back in the dark. I wanted the sun to shine its full light on what I was about to do. Marjorie offered to stop for the night, but we were so close now. I shook my head and she went faster.

  The land was carved in rust and dust. Jojo had said it took millions of years to get it looking like that. Millions of years of rain and wind and desert storms to make something that could take a person’s breath away in an instant. A tourist sign said Erosion: Sculptor of Landscapes. It occurred to me that if the planet we live on gets worn down, it’s no wonder that people do, too.

  ‘How long since we seen a town?’ Marjorie asked, tapping the fuel gauge.

  ‘There’s a gas station ahead,’ I replied. We couldn’t see it yet. I just knew.

  Marjorie said town was too fancy a word for it. She filled up while I lay low in the front seat, spying on the street I’d spent long summers cycling up and down in. Still no one to play with and only old men with their one-stop shops t
o talk to.

  And then we were at the gates that marked the way in to the farm. Marjorie switched off the engine and lit up a smoke.

  ‘You aint leaving, are you, Marj?’ I had one foot on the ground and my hand on the roof of the car, ready to spring back in if she looked like taking off.

  She leaned her seat back and stuck her crossed legs out the window. She shrugged and sniffed and took a little look around. ‘I plan on finishing my smoke and laying right back to have a little think here. You go on now. I’ll be waiting.’

  I looked up the track to the brow of the hill that led back to Jojo. My little sub family.

  It was real quiet on the walk back up. The grass had been hacked and was too short to move with the wind. No sheep cried. No engine noise either. They must be on the far side of the farm, I reckoned. I came upon what was left of old Jack King. Someone had finally broken him down for firewood. I felt the weight of Duke’s gun. I wrapped my hand around it for comfort.

  The house made me stop. Even though I knew it would be there, the sight of it surprised me. It stood exactly as it always had. White walls, burnt orange shutters. I waited for Jojo to appear at the upstairs window. I half thought she might never have left it, just waited at the same spot day after day wishing for me to come back. But she didn’t come. It was down to me.

  I listened for the groan of a bull. I expected one of the cats to come running, trying to trip me up with friendliness. I thought I’d hear pots clang on the stove, or the radio, or Pop and Cy shouting across a field. But nothing.

  Through the door there was only her. Tucked up on the blue armchair with the golden fringe, she stared into nothing, a cigarette burning down between her fingers. Her nails needed cut.

  I stood unnoticed in the doorway. Nothing had changed. The sofa in front of the portable. The empty fire. But for some reason, the wooden table had just two rickety chairs tucked beneath it. The stain beneath the table stood out more than ever. Dishes piled up in the sink, crumbs spread all over the worktops, clothes and overalls lay where they’d been dropped. I’d never seen it like that before.

  The whisper of a wind drifted in from the porch. The whole world was lying open behind me. Jojo lifted the smoke to her lips. She still didn’t know I was there.

  Dark circles framed eyes that were so much darker than I remembered. Dead pools reflecting nothing until she focused on my face. Then I thought I saw something of the old Jojo in there. I wanted to reach out and touch her but I couldn’t do it. It felt like I was invading some private moment, some private moment that had lasted maybe since the day I left.

  ‘Aggie?’ Her voice crackled like an old radio. ‘Aggie, that you?’

  And then like rain washing away mud, her tears rushed out and cleared the dark from her eyes. She opened her arms and leaned forward to catch me as I tumbled into her arms. I didn’t want ever to let go.

  Eventually she pushed me back and turned me around so she could look at me. She was scrawnier than before but her grip was still strong. She held me by my shoulders and asked where I’d been.

  I opened my mouth to speak but nothing came. I pushed through the darkness and reached for the first memory beyond it.

  ‘I been on a boat,’ I said, and for some reason it made me laugh.

  ‘A boat? Oh, sweet Jesus.’

  ‘Yeah, Jojo. I been in a car on a boat. An actual floating one. It was wild.’

  ‘No way, an actual floating one, huh? Yeah, I guess that is pretty wild.’

  We looked away from each other, like the formalities had been dealt with and now all we had left was the nitty-gritty.

  ‘You been okay?’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, guess I been okay.’ She shrugged and looked at the floor around her feet, as though down there she’d find some proof about how okay she’d been. ‘I missed you, little Aggie,’ she said, as she reached for a fresh smoke.

  ‘You should have come with me.’

  She tapped the cigarette on the packet. Raised her shoulders to her ears. When they realized they’d nowhere else to go, they collapsed back down again. Most defeated shrug I ever saw. Made my heart ache.

  ‘This here is my place, Aggie.’

  All the times Pop slapped her, prodded her, pulled her hair. All the time pretending to me like it was a game. Yet this was her place.

  She sat quiet, like she was a little hunted mouse and I the big bad cat. I felt guilt, but looking at her made me feel huge too. Over her shoulder, down the side of the chair, was the bookcase Pop had made for Momma, and there on the top shelf, sitting all on its own, was the Bible we’d read from so many times.

  ‘Pop keeps the Bible real nice, huh?’

  Her eyes flew to the big brown book and her face flashed scarlet.

  ‘You done any reading from it lately?’ I asked. For some fucked up reason my face was smiling enough to make my jaw ache, or maybe it was just the way I gritted my teeth.

  ‘You hungry? Want a sandwich?’ She was out of the chair and cleaning the counter before I’d hardly finished speaking.

  ‘I aint hungry and don’t you walk away from me anymore. Don’t you do it.’

  She banged the bread knife on the counter, the exact same way she’d done it with Cy all those times he harrassed her, and turned around. Light didn’t sparkle in her eyes the way it used to but the fighter was still there.

  ‘I did my best for you, girl. You best believe it.’

  I did believe it then. The faked maxi pads, her flirting with Pop to keep him distracted, picking fights with Cy to get him sent away from us. But none of that changed the fact she let it all happen.

  ‘Where is Pop anyway?’ I spat. ‘He miss me? On any day apart from Friday, I mean.’

  ‘Pop aint here no more.’

  Of all the things I’d thought of, this was the one thing I wasn’t ready for.

  ‘What? Where is he?’

  Her face took on a sly kind of grin as she said, ‘Old bastard’s slam dunk in jail where he belongs.’

  I felt a sickening kind of disappointment. Bastard man, bastard father. She misread the look on my face.

  ‘Don’t you go feeling sorry for him, Aggie.’

  ‘I aint sorry for him, Jojo. I’m sorry for me. I had something to say to him.’

  I took the gun out and put it on the table. Her eyes locked on to it.

  ‘I’d do it, too,’ I said.

  She looked at me like I was a question needing answered. Then she shrugged and turned away.

  ‘What’s he in for?’ I asked.

  ‘You want this sandwich or not?’ she replied.

  ‘Fuck your sandwich, Jojo. I didn’t come all this way for a frikkin sandwich.’

  She sat down at the table and picked up the gun. She flicked the safety on. ‘You gotta keep the safety on, Aggie. Aint I taught you nothing? It loaded?’ She opened the magazine and found the last two bullets. She put the gun back on the table. ‘You still a good shot?’

  ‘Hell, yes,’ I replied. ‘Good enough to drill a man. If I had to.’

  ‘Guess all that tin-can shooting paid off then, didn’t it?’ She put her finger in the trigger hole and spun the gun around on the table.

  ‘And the hog shooting, and the cat shooting, and the lamb shooting, Jojo. Guess it all paid off in the end.’

  She nodded. ‘Yeah. Maybe it did, Aggie.’

  ‘So you gonna tell me what he’s in for?’

  She slid the gun towards me and I put it back in my pocket. ‘He shouldn’t be in there,’ she said. ‘Didn’t do nothing. Not this time, leastways. It was Cy’s doing. Remember the ranch we went to that time I shot the pig? Cy took some work on the side with them. Shady work. Smuggled some whitetail deer over the state line just so more rich folks could go hunting. Stupid. He was making money to start his own ranch. You know what he’s like, Aggie. He wanted out of here real bad. Almost as much as you, I bet.’

  For some reason I thought she was making a dig at me but I couldn’t figure it out.

  ‘
Pop took the rap for it,’ she continued. ‘Don’t think he was expecting jail time, mind you.’

  ‘Pop took heat for Cy?’ All the fighting and bitching between them all those years, I couldn’t believe it.

  Jojo frowned at me. ‘Aint that what family’s for, Aggie?’

  I was staring at the dark patch on the floor by the table. Something about it nagged me, but Jojo’s voice pulled me back.

  ‘Loyalty, Aggie. That’s what family’s for.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘Watch your language, young lady.’

  And with that one sentence I was eight years old again. I dropped my head, unable to face her.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  ‘I aint putting nothing on you, Aggie. If you’re feeling bad then maybe you want to ask yourself why. What you come back for anyway?’ That made me look up. I was hurt she didn’t understand. With the one hand she pulled me in, with the other she pushed away.

  ‘I came back to kill him, Jojo.’ Always the honest child. She laughed at me. ‘I came back to kill him and kill Cy and to take you away from here. You don’t have to be here no more, Jojo. You don’t have to do it. Momma aint coming back, you know she aint. There’s a whole world out there. A world with malls and everything. People playing guitars for the hell of it. Folks who make investigations and rubber ornaments and watch each other’s backs. We could do that for each other, you and me.’ I was running out of reasons for her to come, even though in the car on the way up I’d counted up over a hundred. ‘Jesus, Jojo. There’s cars on frikkin boats out there. And I think you should come with me. You should come with me because – ’

  ‘Shut up about it. I aint coming with you.’

  ‘Please, Jojo! You’ve got to.’

  ‘Why?’

  Because now he’s in jail, I can’t kill him.

  Because now he’s in jail, I can’t end it.

  Because if you don’t, I got no reason to leave.

  ‘Because she said she aint. Didn’t you hear her?’

  I remembered that voice like I’d heard it only yesterday. He stood against the doorframe: yellow-tasseled blue-jean shirt, ten-dollar hat. He hung the hat on a hook in the wall, and stepped into the room.