by Kevin Wilson
We were doing Tennessee history, since I wanted their learning to be connected to their lives, to feel like we weren’t rigidly adhering to whatever “the man” said we needed to learn. But now, I kind of missed “the man.” He was always so confident, even when—especially when—he was fucking things up left and right.
“So,” I said, tapping the cool little chalkboard, like something from a one-room schoolhouse on the prairie, “let’s think of famous Tennesseans and then we can go to the library and find out more about them.” I want to say that, yes, the Internet existed. Madison had it in the mansion. But I didn’t really know anything about it. The one time I’d been on it, at the house of a guy who sometimes invited me over to smoke weed, I’d waited for, like, thirty minutes to print off Wu-Tang Clan lyrics. I honestly had no idea what else the Internet might be used for.
So what we had was the library, and I used that, a trip out in public, as a way to get them to focus. “Who are famous people from Tennessee?” I asked them. They just shrugged.
“You don’t know anyone famous who was born in Tennessee?” I asked again, then I tried to think if I knew anyone famous from Tennessee. I knew the professional wrestler Jimmy Valiant was from a town near my own, because some guy at the Save-A-Lot talked about it all the time. But he didn’t seem famous enough.
“Our dad, I guess,” Roland offered.
I blanched, visibly. “Somebody else,” I said.
“We don’t know,” Bessie said, again frustrated to have to admit what she didn’t know. I watched her stop, take deep breaths. I was proud of her. She looked at her notebook, thinking. “Ooh,” she suddenly exclaimed. “I know!”
“Who?” Roland asked, genuinely curious.
“Dolly Parton!” she said.
“Holy shit,” I said. “Oops, okay, sorry, but, yeah, that’s perfect. Dolly Parton is perfect.”
“Mom played some of her records for us,” Roland admitted. “Jolene.”
“Nine to Five,” Bessie said.
I thought it over. Dollywood. “Islands in the Stream.” That body. She was the best thing that had ever come out of Tennessee. Jesus Christ, it wasn’t even close. Bessie had got it on the first try.
“She’s the greatest,” I said. “So let’s write that down. We’ll see if we can find a biography of her at the library.”
“Who else?” Roland said, now excited, like it was a game.
“Well,” I said, “Daniel Boone, maybe? No, wait, Davy Crockett.”
“With the coonskin cap?” Bessie asked. “Our mom had a record about him, too.”
“That’s him. I think he’s from Tennessee. We’ll look it up.” There was a row of encyclopedias, so I grabbed the third volume (Ceara through Deluc) and looked it up. “Okay, yes, he was born in Greene County, Tennessee,” I told them. “Add that to the list.”
“Who else?” Roland asked, a black hole, wanting everything. But I was confident now. I was rolling.
“Oh, I think, um, Alvin York?” I offered. I knew he had a hospital or something named after him near Nashville. There was a movie one of my mom’s boyfriends made us watch that starred Jimmy Stewart or Gary Cooper, someone handsome like a dad should be. “He was in one of the world wars, maybe World War Two. He killed, like, a lot of Germans. I think that’s right. He killed a ridiculous amount all by himself.”
“Ooh, I’ll do my report on him,” Roland said.
“Okay, that’s perfect,” I told them. “Bessie, you’ll write a report on Dolly Parton, I’ll do some research on Davy Crockett, and, Roland, you’ll do Sergeant York. Is that cool?”
“Super cool,” Bessie said. It was weird to realize that, for all the ways that they’d been neglected, they were intelligent, so quick to figure things out. You only had to tell them once, and then they knew what to do.
“So can we go to the library?” Roland asked.
“And get ice cream?” Bessie asked.
“Well, let me check with Carl,” I said, and both kids groaned, fell dramatically across the sofa.
I went over to the phone and dialed his number. He answered before the first ring had ended.
“Yes?” he said.
“It’s Lillian,” I said.
“Yes, I know. What’s going on?”
“Oh, not much. Just wanted to hear the sound of your voice,” I said, just to fuck with him.
“Lillian, what do you need?”
“Are you busy?” I asked.
“Obviously this isn’t an emergency, so I’m going to hang—”
“We need to go into town,” I finally told him. “To the library.”
“I don’t think that’s a great idea,” he replied.
“So we’ll never leave the estate?” I asked. “We can’t live like this, okay?”
“Jesus,” he said, his voice rising and then, with crazy self-control, lowering before he finished the sentence, “they haven’t even been there a week. You act like it’s the Iran hostage crisis or something.”
“Well, to them it is,” I replied, keeping my voice low so the kids wouldn’t hear. “The more we keep them cooped up in here, the more they feel like freaks, like we’re hiding them.”
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” he said.
“I’ll be with them the whole time,” I told him.
“If they go,” he said, “if they go, then we’ll both be with them.”
“That’s fine,” I said.
“Let me talk to Senator Roberts,” he finally said.
“Isn’t he busy?” I asked.
“He is,” he said. “He’s incredibly busy, and he’s not going to be happy to be disturbed.”
“Then just ask Madison,” I told him, and he paused for a long time. “You know I’m right,” I continued. “You know it, Carl.”
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll call you back.”
I turned to the kids. “Maybe!” I said, but I said it in this really hyperpositive way, like the power of my good cheer would make it happen.
“Yes!” they shouted. “We’re going to the library!”
“Maybe!” I said, this time with my teeth showing too much, like I was being held at gunpoint but couldn’t let anyone know.
Ten minutes later, while the kids were kind of shimmying around the room, like maybe moonwalking poorly, the phone rang and it was Carl.
“Okay,” he said. “We can go. I’m coming over there. I have something that I want to try.”
“Come on over,” I said, so excited. With the chance to leave the place, I finally realized how long I’d been at the estate, how stir-crazy I’d become. I’d still have the kids with me, and they still might catch on fire, but if they did, there’d be so much open space for me to run away and hide from the consequences.
“We’re going to the library!” I said, and the kids did their weird shimmy dance, and I wondered if that’s what they’d been taught was dancing.
When Carl showed up, we were all dressed and ready, the kids’ awful hair slicked down and styled like they were in a Duran Duran cover band. I had tried to put makeup on the bruise, but it made it look worse somehow, almost like I was faking an injury, so I rubbed it off, which hurt like hell.
“Dear lord,” Carl said when he looked at me. “What happened to you?” He immediately looked at the kids. “What happened to her?” He suspected them entirely.
“Madison hit her!” Roland said.
“Basketball,” I told him. “It’s fine.”
“Mrs. Roberts plays to win,” Carl admitted, as if my face getting smashed made perfect sense to him now.
“Did you put ice on it?” he asked, and I just made a face.
Carl was holding this giant black bucket.
“What’s that?” I asked, changing the subject, and Bessie shouted, “It’s ice cream!”
“No—” Carl replied, his face so pained, like these feral kids actively caused him real and lasting trauma. “It’s not ice cream. Why would you think it was ice cream?”
�
��It’s in a big bucket,” Roland offered.
“I kind of promised them that we could have ice cream,” I told him.
“Well, it’s not ice cream. Sorry.”
“What is it then?” I asked.
“It’s stunt gel,” he said. “Remember? What we talked about?”
“Oh,” I said, remembering. “That’s a big bucket.”
“I had to buy it in bulk,” he said. “I have six more buckets, five gallons each, in the garage. So it’d better work.” He pried open the bucket and we all looked inside like it might hold the soul of an ancient king. But it wasn’t exciting. It was just a big bucket of gel. It looked, honestly, like semen. It looked like a big bucket of, I don’t know, drool. The point is, it looked gross. And we were supposed to slather the kids in it.
Carl rubbed a little on his index finger and then clicked open a lighter, the flame nearly an inch high. He held his finger right over the flame, then directly in the flame, for about three seconds. “Nothing,” he said. “It’s good.”
“It smells funny,” Bessie said, holding her nose. It actually smelled kind of like eucalyptus, but it was overpowering, so much so that it seemed unsafe.
“Okay,” Carl said. “So I talked to my buddy, and he said we just apply it directly to their skin—and, yes, he says that it’s safe—and that should do it. And we just reapply it throughout the day, I guess.”
“You guess?” I said. “You don’t know?”
“Well,” he said, “I couldn’t tell him the real reason for why we were getting it, could I? And stuntmen don’t just walk around all day with it on. They do it for a specific scene, a single shot. But, yes, it’s mostly just water and tea tree oil with some scientific stuff added to it. It’s safe, I think.”
“Why are we talking about this?” Bessie asked, slowly backing away from the bucket.
“It’s for you guys,” I said, “to help keep you from catching.” At this point, I didn’t want to say fire around them if I could avoid it. I just called it catching.
“Why can’t we just keep doing the breathing stuff?” she asked.
“This is an extra level of security,” Carl said, and I so badly wanted Carl, that square, to shut up. He wasn’t helping. “It’s kind of a plan B, okay?”
“I don’t want to put that on,” she said.
“What about the fireman stuff?” I asked Carl.
“The Nomex?” he replied. “I’m still waiting for it.”
“Why is it taking so long?” I asked.
“First of all, it’s only been a few days, okay, Lillian? And how easy do you think it is to obtain it? Like, do you think I can just find child sizes of Nomex clothing at Walmart? Like, for tiny firefighters? I’m having to get it altered. It’s complicated. I’m being pushed to my limits in terms of thinking creatively about our situation.”
He looked a little frazzled, actually, his hair not perfectly combed, and so I put up my hands. “Fine,” I said. “I’m sorry. Thank you for all that you’re doing.”
“Thank you,” he replied.
“Okay, kiddos,” I said. “Let’s just try it, okay? It’s like a science experiment. This will be our science lesson for today.”
“You first,” Bessie said.
“Of—of course,” I said, angry at the reversal but acting like I’d already thought of it, “of course I’ll go first.” I looked at Carl, and he blushed a little. Then he dipped his hand into the bucket and took a sharp breath. “Cold,” he grunted. The gel was weird and viscous, and he started to apply it to my bare arm. It was so cold, just so weirdly cold that it kind of felt good. He rubbed up and down my arm, coating it. Then he did the other.
“Do you want to do your legs?” he asked, and I shook my head. “That’s good for me,” I told him. He held up the lighter and flicked the flame back into existence. “Don’t flinch or anything,” he said. “It doesn’t hurt.” He held the flame directly under my arm, and there was this weird moment where I was certain that my skin was burning, that I was on fire, but I just gritted my teeth and realized that, no, I was fine. I wasn’t burning. And even for a few seconds, it felt amazing, like nothing could ever hurt me. Was this what the children felt when they were burning? I had no idea, but I wished it would last forever.
Once Carl turned off the lighter, I looked at the kids, showing them that I was fine. “See, it’s awesome. God, it’s really neat. And it’s cooling. It feels good in this hot weather.”
Roland put out his arms. “It’s like slime,” he said, excited. “It’s so gross.”
Carl kind of grinned, just a little, and then dipped his hands into the bucket. He did Roland, and I did Bessie, their arms and legs. “It’s so cold!” Roland shouted. When we were finished, we stared at them, appraising how strange they looked, like a ghost had run right through them and left them traumatized.
“It’s not . . . it’s not great,” Carl admitted.
“Maybe it’ll dry a little?” I said. “It’ll get a little less . . . shimmery?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “But let’s go. Let’s just get it over with.”
I sat in the back of the van with the kids, towels on the upholstery to protect it from the gel, while Carl drove us to the public library. Even though they’d been chattering about getting off the estate, the kids were eerily silent on the drive, like they’d been drugged, their faces pressed against the windows.
When we pulled into the parking lot, Bessie said, “What if they don’t have the book that we want?”
“They’ll have it,” I said.
“Maybe you should go in and check them out for us,” she said, leaning back in her seat.
“That’s fine with me,” Carl said. “Tell me the books that you want, and I’ll get them.”
“No,” I said. “That defeats the whole purpose of coming.”
“I don’t want to go in there,” Bessie said. “Everyone is going to stare at us.”
“No one is going to stare at you, Bessie,” I told her.
“They will. They’ll think we’re weirdos.”
“Honestly, Bessie? People don’t care about anyone but themselves. They don’t notice anything. They are never looking at what’s interesting. They’re always looking at themselves.”
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“I promise,” I told her, hoping that I was right.
“C’mon,” Carl said. “Let’s move.”
We walked into the library, air conditioner humming, not much activity on a weekday morning. The librarian, an old man with thick glasses and a really lovely smile that showed crooked teeth, waved to us. Bessie frowned, suspicious, but Roland said, “Hi!” A few seconds later, we passed an old lady with a stack of books in her arms. “Hi!” Roland said, and she nodded. There was a toddler in the kids’ area with her mother, and Roland said, “Hi!” and the toddler looked confused, but the mother replied with her own greeting.
Carl said, “Roland, you don’t have to say hi to everyone, okay?”
“Don’t make it weird, Carl,” I said. “It’s fine, Roland. Say hi to anyone you want.”
“I will,” Roland said, looking over his shoulder at Carl and making a face.
We walked over to a computer and did a quick search. Carl went with Roland to one section of the library, and Bessie and I walked over to another stack. “I feel funny,” Bessie said. “This stuff feels funny on my skin. I don’t like it.”
“I kind of like it,” I said, looking at my arms.
“Let’s just go,” she said, but I directed her to the aisle of books and we searched the call numbers until we found it: Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business. Dolly looked like a good witch, like someone who just absolutely fucked up evil queens with her kindness.
“This looks good,” Bessie said, flipping through the pages, calming herself. But as soon as she looked up at me, the anxiety returned. “Can we please go now?” she asked.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “Let’s find Carl and your brother.
”
As soon as I said it, Carl was there with his hand firmly attached to Roland’s shoulder. Roland was holding two books on Sergeant York. “I think we’re good,” Carl said.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go check them out.”
“Wait,” Carl said. “Do you have a library card?”
“What?” I asked. “No. I don’t have one. I don’t even live here.”
“Well, I don’t have one,” Carl said. “I don’t have a library card.”
“Carl, why don’t you have a library card?” I asked him.
“Because,” he said, staying calm, “I do not like to borrow things. I like to have them. I like to keep them. So I don’t use the library. I just buy what I want.”
“Well, go get a card. Go sign up for one.”
“You need a proof of address,” he said, “like a piece of mail.”
“Do you have that?” I asked.
“Do I have a piece of mail with my address on it? On my person?” he replied. “Are you serious?”
“Well, why didn’t you think about this before we drove here?” I asked.
“Stop fighting,” Roland said. “Just ask the librarian if we can borrow them.”
“We need a card,” I said, and now it felt like we were stuck behind enemy lines with sensitive documents. It felt like a movie. Why was I doing this? Why didn’t we just put the books away and come back another time? Why didn’t we act like normal people instead of huddling up in the stacks, our bodies shiny with fire gel?
“I knew we shouldn’t have come,” Bessie said. It was weird to watch her, a kid who bit strangers, who seemed so angry, turn into this person, someone who was scared of the world. I wanted her to catch on fire, to jump out a window. That, I thought, I could handle. I could mitigate damage. I could not make people feel better.
“Do you want the book?” I asked Bessie.
“Yeah,” she said, looking at the Dolly Parton book. “I mean, she seems like a cool lady.”
I grabbed a book off the shelf, something about a monastery in Germany. “Give me that Dolly Parton book.”