Ain't Nobody Nobody

by Heather Harper Ellett

  This happened every year on the local news, as if it were a national holiday. A giant of a man about Bradley’s age stood over his tiny mother, them both wearing expensive wool baseball caps with the team logo, the jersey much too large on the mother. Them both crying that she deserved it. She had taken him to practices since he was this high and went to every game in the rain and whatnot. Bradley felt a quiver of guilt every time he saw the scenario play out because Bradley only wanted to be a good man—that’s all he’d ever wanted! Still, he knew that if the Dallas Cowboys signed him tomorrow, he would under no circumstances buy his mother a house. He probably wouldn’t even buy her the oversized jersey.

  “I mean,” Bradley said to Jason, emotional all of a sudden. “What kind of man wouldn’t buy his mother sportswear?”

  But Jason wasn’t listening anymore. Somewhere in the midst of Bradley’s monologue, Jason had grown bored. He had taken the camp lantern, laid it across his lap, and was now carving something in the bottom with his pocketknife. The light flickered like a horror movie motel as he worked. Even though Jason had only half listened, Bradley felt appreciative of him in that moment. He felt an unexpected closeness to him because he had shared something about himself, which is probably why he felt emboldened enough to learn forward in his chair and say: “Jason…that truck…it belonged to someone. I need to know who. I need to know what happened to him, and I think you know.”

  “Jesus! Why do you care so much about a Datsun?” Jason squinted one eye and scraped at the bottom of the lantern. His lip was still swollen. “I’ll find you a goddamn truck.”

  “I don’t need a truck.” Bradley chose his words carefully. Was it a mistake to talk to Jason about this? “I think something happened to the owner.”

  “Why does everybody care about that truck so much? I mean, shit!” Jason spit, red-faced and mad, and Bradley braced himself, not sure why Jason was so agitated. Who else had cared about the truck? Dale didn’t seem to care. Bradley watched him closely. Jason gripped the knife handle and pulled it hard against the lantern. He turned the lantern upside down, the light bouncing in an eerie shower on the tent, then he blew the paint flakes away. Jason, satisfied, hung the lantern up again, then pulled another cigarette from his front pocket and lit it.

  “Why you think something happened to him?” Jason asked.

  “You know what happened…” Bradley was testing him. “I mean, you have his keys, you took his truck.”

  “I ain’t a liar.” Jason took a drag off his cigarette. “Okay, maybe I am a liar, but no lie about this. Why you think something happened to him?” Jason cocked his head curiously, and Bradley understood that Jason really didn’t know anything. Was it possible that Jason’s world was so simple that you see a truck on the side of a road and it’s yours, like an unclaimed ball on a playground?

  Bradley tried to keep his face steady, to not give anything away. He stared into the dirt, but his brain kept seeing the dead man. Three little shrikes poking away at dark hair. The slumped body, the plaid shirt. He tried to think about the money. Tomorrow, tomorrow.

  “Hey!” Jason punched him in the arm, and Bradley flinched. Jason’s gaze was urgent almost; he was now looking to Bradley to tell him something. He needed assurance. “What are you talking about? Why you think something bad happened? Just because some idiot left a truck in the woods?”

  “Nothing,” Bradley said, shaking his head. “It’s nothing. Guy was an idiot.” He tried to change the subject. “Has Dale seemed sick to you lately? I mean, he looks bad…peeing all the time, hands are shaking like he’s…”

  Jason ignored this and sucked hard on his cigarette as if he were getting the last few drags before class. “Why you think something bad happened?”

  Bradley had never seen him think more than a second about anything; he looked worried. Jason’s face appeared yellow and aged in the golden light of the lantern, even though he was just eighteen, a year younger than Bradley. He could see just how dirty Jason was now: white oozing pimples popping up around his temples, his nose red and porous, his face still roughed up for a reason Jason wouldn’t tell. For a moment, Bradley felt sorry for him, the way you do when you think you’re smarter or luckier than somebody else. Looking at Jason, he wanted a shower more desperately than anything he’d ever wanted in his life.

  Jason stubbed the cigarette out in the dirt, then grabbed the lantern off the tree branch and handed the flashlight to Bradley. “Come on,” he said. “I gotta show you this.”

  ***

  They moved through the thicket like an unfortunate Lewis and Clark.

  Bradley scanned his flashlight along the ground for snakes, despite Van having told him that they never came out at night. Jason, forever naive and trusting, seemed unfazed by the possibility of snakes, and he held his lantern high. The light bounced off of the low tree limbs. They could hear hogs off in the distance, a sound in the dark that oddly comforted Bradley because it was a sound he could recognize definitively. Even as they marched, flies pestered Bradley’s entire body. He smelled like a corpse.

  They were on the edge of the thicket when Jason stopped. “There,” he said. He pointed with his cigarette and lifted his lantern higher. Bradley shined his flashlight ahead of him, a single beam of white light quivering in the darkness. Bradley squinted and waited for his eyes to adjust. Then he saw what Jason was pointing at: a large mound of dirt, covered haphazardly with sticks and pine needles.

  “What is it?” Bradley asked.

  Jason motioned for him to follow. They moved closer, and Bradley became quite aware of what Jason was seeing. His stomach dropped.

  “Who did that?” Bradley asked.

  “Saw Dale working back here the other morning after you went to the dump,” Jason said.

  Bradley thought back to that morning, when Dale said he was headed home but still lurked in the woods.

  “I mean,” Jason said, “it looks like a grave, don’t it?”

  Bradley said nothing, but it did, it looked just like a grave, a long pile of dirt that someone had tried to obscure. It probably had been well covered by the underbrush but last night’s thunderstorms had beaten it all down again. Did Jason even know about the dead man? Had Jason seen him too? From where they were now, the man had been on a fence not too far away. Bradley wondered then if he should tell Jason what he had seen. They could make a plan to escape it all together…head straight up I-45…

  “Yesterday,” Bradley said, “when I was working at the Woodses—”

  “I lied,” Jason blurted. He looked away from Bradley into the trees now. “I didn’t find the keys in the glove box. Dale gave them to me. Said to ditch the plates, take the truck to my house. You know…just keep the truck off the main road.”

  Bradley felt sick. He couldn’t run away. Dale would know. Bradley tried to imagine a life where he didn’t know anything about anyone.

  “Let’s go back,” Jason said. “Spooky shit, right?”

  Back at the campsite, Jason grabbed another beer from the cooler and handed Bradley one without asking. The two sat in silence for a long while, chugging their beers as if trying to chase something away. Jason pinched his beer can between his knees and carved again at the bottom of the lantern in between nervous drags off of a fresh cigarette. All of the illusions about their situation were crumbling.

  “What are you thinking?” Bradley was desperate again to talk. He wanted his therapist back. He wasn’t sure how to get through the next few seconds, much less the next day.

  “What are you, my girlfriend? What the fuck you care what I’m thinking?”

  “Nothin’,” Bradley said. “Just talking.” He did sound like Jason’s girlfriend.

  “Well, Oprah, I was thinking about the money.” Jason rehung the lantern, done with his scratching, and got another beer. “A lot of goddamn money.”

  “Well, what are you gonna do with it?” Bradley asked.

  “I’m gonna buy my mama a house.�
�

  “Your mama’s in jail.”

  “When she gets out, I mean.” Jason chugged the beer. “Five to ten.” He snapped his fingers. “Flies by like that.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Saturday morning. Bradley always worked Wednesdays and Saturdays, but he wasn’t here to work.

  Hummingbirds flittered near a tube of red syrup that dangled outside of Birdie and Onie’s window. One hummingbird rammed its tiny head into the window, a loud glass-rattling thud. It fell a bit, but caught itself, and then rose up again only to hover some more.

  Bradley stared at the bird and admired its tenacity—he would never have such resilience—and then he turned his gaze back to Birdie’s door, only to find that he couldn’t lift his hand to knock.

  The grave had been the tipping point. The grave was the final straw that sent Bradley Polk, three days late, back to Birdie and Onie’s first thing in the morning, ready to confess, to tell Birdie everything, to beg for her help in extricating himself from this un-extricat-able situation. The riddle of Dale had been solved, and all of it had gotten too much for him to take. His future land, be damned. His future, period, be damned. He looked at his gnarled hands, a mosaic of tiny cuts and dried blood, and he willed his right one to lift and curl into a fist and knock on their door like a strong, competent man would do. His hand politely declined.

  Walking over from the garden, he knew exactly what he would say: not in sentences necessarily but in concepts. He would come clean. He just needed the cloud of regret to distill into actual words that Birdie would understand. He was not a bad man, the right words would say. He was a man who had made a mistake, who was trying to follow a dream not unlike the one Van had. His bad choices—without him knowing!—had bumped up against her world, and he was a thousand kinds of sorry for that. He would swear on a stack of Playboys he hadn’t known it was her land until recently. Did those words even exist? The right words needed more time to bake.

  He turned to leave.

  Birdie flung open the door.

  She stood there a moment and eyed him steadily as if to be sure it was really him. Then she reared back with both arms and shoved his chest as hard as she could. She pushed him so hard that Bradley—a good head taller than her and body like a linebacker—stumbled backward and grabbed the porch rail so he didn’t fall to the ground. Her eyes were wide, the whites around them showing, and her dark brown hair pounced like an animal atop her head.

  “Where…” She breathed heavy, seething. “Where…have you been?”

  He hugged close to the porch railing, unsure what to say, and touched his chest where she had shoved him. He felt himself cower, his shoulders curve. Birdie looked pale, her eyes dark and sleepless, the familiar kind of face he saw when he looked in the mirror, except hers was washed and beautiful.

  “I thought something happened to you,” she said. She visibly softened, like clothes going limp. Her face had turned from pale to pink.

  Bradley’s heart clenched. She had feared for his safety! She had worried about him! His own mother didn’t even care where he was. As sad as it was, the possibility that anyone might be concerned about him had never entered his brain. (Naiveté works in all ways, doesn’t it?) He couldn’t breathe and his chest tightened in the confusion of it all—a baking-soda-and-vinegar mix of shame and redemption that threatened to erupt in him. Bradley looked at Birdie as serious as he had ever looked at anyone. He looked her in the eye the way a man—that’s right, a man!—looked people in the eye. And Bradley Polk was a man! He would be brave. He would own up to his transgressions. He would bow to the consequences and do right by her and Van and Onie. He cleared his voice and with no hint of shame, he said so boldly that the hummingbirds shot like torpedoes away from the porch: “Birdie! Could I please have a shower!”

  ***

  Bradley had not found the right words.

  Nor did he have clean clothes with him. He was thoroughly unprepared for life, as usual. At school without a pencil. He had not thought it through when he asked for such an intrusive thing, and was now standing in the stall of Birdie’s shower, washing off weeks of grime, shocked at himself that he could dare ask Birdie to clean his body in her home. Perhaps he was a man after all. The water snaked down his tree-trunk legs and pooled brown at the drain. He marveled at the ribbon of bright pink soap in his hands, perfume-sweet like fake raspberries and flowers. Small rashes had formed under his arms and around his groin from the sweat and filth, and the soap and hot water happily stung at his wounds like antiseptic.

  Standing in the hot shower, it was worth all the awkwardness, he decided. For a second, he could almost forget about Dale and Jason and the dead man and this out-of-control thing he found himself tangled up in. He imagined living out the rest of his life in this shower, his castle of a beige plastic stall purchased at Sam’s Club. He wouldn’t need food. He would subsist instead on bliss and berry-scented suds. He would subsist on Birdie’s grace. The marvel of soap foaming under Bradley’s armpits. He imagined his ashes spread in this shower, swirling down the drain in a winding gray river. And there goes Bradley Polk…well, folks, he tried.

  When he got out, he saw that Birdie had left two—count 'em, two!—towels, thick as mattresses, as well as a pair of jeans, underwear, a blue plaid shirt, and a fresh pair of tube socks. He dressed and emerged from the bathroom, steam bellowing from behind him like Axl Rose bursting onto stage. The shirt was too tight on him. The buttons threatened to pop, and the pants were a bit short, but he was clean—the miracle of hygiene having descended like a dove and alighted on him and whatnot. He wiggled his toes in the tight hug of the socks.

  Onie had moved to the front porch. As she rocked in the high heat of the day, her head bobbed in and out of the kitchen window. The hummingbirds flittered at the ruby feeder above her head.

  Birdie sat at the kitchen table with two cups of coffee. She smiled softly when she saw him, but Bradley still didn’t have the words. “You can sit if you want.” She slid a cup of coffee across the table. “I put your clothes in the wash.”

  He rubbed the sleeve of his shirt. It was soft and worn. “Are these Van’s?” It was the first time he said his name in months.

  “Is that weird?” Birdie asked.

  “No, no, I don’t think so.” In fact, I feel oddly moved.

  “I don’t think so either.” She took a sip of coffee, her gaze still on him. She was exhausted, her eyes dark like her hair. Still, she looked somehow lighter today, happier, but he couldn’t imagine why. It couldn’t possibly be him. “You can keep the clothes,” she said. “It’s silly for us to have them. Onie said so. She’s not too sentimental.” But Bradley noticed that Birdie wore an almost identical shirt to the one he was now wearing. It swallowed her like a cloak. She tucked a wisp of hair behind her ear, a bizarre mixture of flirtation and steeliness. He wanted to talk about the dead man, the truck, all of it.

  “What do you do here all day?” he asked instead. A dumb question.

  She gestured her head toward Onie on the porch. “Dad would have wanted me here. You know, to take care of Onie…with her problems now.” Birdie pointed to her ear. “I read all day. I mean, I take care of Onie, and I read all day.”

  “It’s good to read,” he lied, and they nodded in unison. “Thank you for washing my clothes. I’m sorry you had to touch them.”

  She laughed lightly, a breathiness to her voice. He had made her laugh! But then the laughter stopped, and a silence took over. He could feel it in his belly, he could feel it coming. The winds changing. The way cattle stirred up long before a storm cloud formed.

  “Where’s your truck?” Birdie asked.

  There it was.

  Birdie put down her coffee and crossed her arms across her chest. She didn’t even look out the window for his truck.

  “I walked.”

  “You walked? You live in town,” Birdie said. “Your truck break down?”

  A pause. They studied each
other’s faces. A stand-off of who was going to say it. Then it all came out in a desperate flood: “I swear to God I didn’t know where we were, Birdie. I swear to God. I thought we were on Dale’s place, and then I realized too late…” Bradley couldn’t help it; his eyes were beginning to tear. The shame was suffocating. These were not the right words either.

  “It is Dale,” Birdie said.

  “It wasn’t supposed to be like this…I don’t know how to explain it but—”

  She held up a hand to silence him. They sat quietly for a moment and watched Onie rock back and forth, her head appearing and then disappearing in and out of the window, ticking like a hypnotist’s watch.

  “Dad did it too,” she said quietly. “Desperate men don’t think straight.”

  She looked impossibly sad, like these were words she had rehearsed in her head a thousand times, resigned to this fact about the men in her life, that they had all disappointed her so thoroughly. It was a merciful absolution.

  “You know what happened to the man,” Birdie said.

  Bradley wanted to be back in the shower where the world made sense. There would be showers in prison, he consoled himself. He took a deep breath. “I honest-to-God don’t know who he is. I mean…I recognize him. I know we saw him with Van that time. Remember that?”

  “Mayhill thinks he’s a hitman.”

  “A hitman?”

  “Why would he be here though?” Birdie asked. “Why would a man named Tommy Jones be dead on my land?”

  “All I know…there’s a truck. I know it belongs to him. And Dale…he’s paranoid…and I think he might have…” He still didn’t have the words, now flummoxed by a new twist. “A hitman?” Bradley looked out the window. His panic was taking flight. Frantic hummingbirds with nowhere to go.

  “He had a truck?” Birdie asked.

  “A Datsun. It was parked off that logging trail where Van—”