Betty

by Tiffany McDaniel

  Years later, Cinderblock John would take that cinder block and jump into the river with it. I suppose he had carried it for as long and for as far as he could. When they fished his body out, they said he had floated a mile downstream from the cinder block, finally free of it. I’d like that to be true, for ol’ John was a good man. At least he was good to us Carpenters. Dad and John had grown up together. They had started as friends for the simple reason Dad never laughed at John. That means a great deal to a man who is always laughed at.

  It wasn’t only his cinder block that made John a target. There was also the way the toes of his boots curled up. The curling always scared me, even though I knew it wasn’t anything to be afraid of. It was frostbite that had taken his toes one night as he lay passed out drunk in a field. But if you were to ask him what happened, he’d tell you it was the peppermint rattlers that came and ate his toes like potato chips.

  I’d never seen a Breathed peppermint rattler and never knew anybody who had except for Cinderblock John and Dad.

  “They call ’em peppermint rattlers,” Dad would say, “ ’cause they’re striped red and white as if they’re peppermint candy. They smell like it, too.”

  The snakes existed nowhere else in the world and they barely existed in Breathed beyond the tall tales of men like my father and Cinderblock John, the latter of whom would carry around a small tin of crushed peppermint, swearing it was not candy bought at Papa Juniper’s but was instead the shed skin of a peppermint rattler. I suppose that’s why Cinderblock John and my father got along so well. While other men spoke of reality, they spoke of the things they believed.

  I leaned down to pet Cinderblock John’s hound that he had named Two Ears. When folks asked him why the name, Cinderblock John always replied, “Well, he’s got two ears, ain’t he?”

  I gave Two Ears a good rub under the chin as Dad told me I had just missed a hawk trying to grasp Cotton’s balloon.

  “The hawk’s talons popped it,” Dad said. “The letter fell somewheres over there.” He pointed to a hill on the far side.

  Cinderblock John had a box of dog biscuits in his lap. He got two out. He fed one to Two Ears and ate the other himself.

  “What’s that you got, Little Landon?” Cinderblock John nodded to the pages in my hand.

  “Illustrations of a story of mine,” I replied.

  “I’d like to hear your story,” Cinderblock John said.

  “It’s called ‘The Inheritance of Sin.’ It’s about a man who’s a thief who one day becomes a murderer when the woman he’s tryin’ to rob does not give up her purse. He’d only brought the knife to scare her, but in the struggle, he accidentally plunges it into her stomach. Just before she collapses, she pulls him close and kisses him on the side of his neck, leavin’ behind the print of her red lipstick.”

  I handed the illustrations to Cinderblock John and Dad so they could see each scene.

  “Thinkin’ nothin’ of a dying woman’s gesture,” I continued the story, “the thief grabs her purse and steps over her dead body. As he’s countin’ the money, the man feels a strange heat pulsating on the side of his neck. When he looks into a mirror, he sees the print of the woman’s red lipstick. He tries to wash her lips off, but they won’t budge. Desperate, the man uses bleach and a wire brush, scrubbin’ until he takes his skin off. He bandages his wound and spends the dead woman’s money. But once the wound heals and the scab drops off, the woman’s lips are there as fresh as when she had first kissed him.

  “The man goes mad, buyin’ every kind of soap. Still the lips remain like a tattoo. Every time he sees them, he’s reminded of the woman. The man can’t stand it. He takes to wearin’ turtlenecks every day, but even though the lips are hidden, he can feel them, burnin’ his flesh. Then, the child his wife had been expectin’ is born. A healthy baby boy. But there, on the son’s neck, is a lipstick stain, just like his daddy’s. The son has inherited his father’s sins. Unable to cope with the knowledge he’s passed his sins on, the father confesses his crimes before slicing the lips open. He bleeds out before he can be saved.”

  I stared at the drawing Trustin had made for this. It was nothing more than a bright red square.

  “Knowin’ his father’s crimes,” I said, “the son comes of age while the lips persist on his neck. Then one day, the son witnesses a woman gettin’ mugged. The thief pulls a knife on her.”

  I paused at Trustin’s illustration of the woman screaming.

  “Just before the blade is about to rip through her stomach, the son steps in to take it for her. The thief runs away while the son collapses. The woman he saved kneels beside him.

  “ ‘Do you see the lips on my neck?’ he asks her.

  “ ‘What lips?’ she says. ‘There is nothin’ there.’

  “She thanks him for savin’ her life before he dies with the inheritance of sin no longer his burden to bear.”

  Both Cinderblock John and Dad leaned back in their chairs, the illustrations spread between them on the table.

  “I don’t know what I’d do if my children inherited my sins,” Dad said, his brows drawn tightly together.

  “Oh, you ain’t got no sins to worry ya,” Cinderblock John told him. “Hey, Little Landon.” Cinderblock John turned to me as he excitedly sat up. “You know The Breathanian’s annual poetry contest?”

  “I already entered it.” I looked down. “I didn’t win.”

  “Oh, that’s just ’cause they don’t know a real poet,” Cinderblock John said. “You know, if you ever wanna make a career out of alien stories, I got lots I could share with ya.”

  “Ah, John, don’t go talkin’ about them aliens again.” Dad sighed.

  “Well, if I don’t talk about ’em, who will?” he asked. “With that fella leadin’ ’em.”

  “Don’t say ‘fella’ like he was a nobody.” Dad frowned. “He was the president.”

  “He was an alien.”

  “How do you know, Cinderblock John?” I asked.

  “ ’Cause when they came to take me away,” he said, “they all looked like JFK.”

  “The man’s been dead almost two years now,” Dad reminded him. “When a man is buried, that should be the end of his sins. Don’t you think?”

  As Dad picked up the illustrations, Cinderblock John talked more about aliens. I walked down the porch steps, leaving the two men.

  I kicked gravel in the drive on my way out to Shady Lane. Ruthis was in her yard, practicing for cheerleading tryouts. She shook a pom-pom toward me and said she could see my tail sticking out of my shorts. I walked to the other side of the lane.

  I ended up outside of town and on a dirt lane that led to farming acreage. There were no cars in sight, but still I held my thumb out and waited.

  The hood of a car heading my way shone in the sunlight. The car swerved before correcting itself and stopping beside me. A boy opened the door from the inside. I slid onto the car’s leather seat, which was cracked and pinching the backs of my legs like little things trying to guzzle my skin.

  The boy drove with both hands on the wheel. He had a light blue cotton sheet on his back. It was tied at his neck with a piece of string.

  “Are you even old enough to drive?” I asked.

  “I’m thirteen,” he said.

  “Your mom lets you drive the car?”

  “She always sends me to get sweet corn.”

  He caught fire in the light. I was not prepared for all that copper-colored hair.

  “Why are you wearin’ a sheet?” I asked.

  “It’s a cape,” he said. “I save people, like Superman. I can save you if you want.”

  I remembered back to what Fraya had said about boys thinking they’re saving the world.

  I looked in the backseat, where I saw he had football pads and a change of clothes.

  “I play,” he said
before I could ask.

  “I don’t like football.” I turned back around.

  “Me, neither.”

  He studied me out of the corner of his eye.

  “How old are you?” he asked.

  “Eleven.” I put my legs up on the dash.

  He reached his arm over and held it against the side of my leg.

  “You sure do make me look pale,” he said.

  I lowered my legs and looked out the window.

  We rode in silence for a couple of minutes before he asked, “Y’all ever find out who the shooter is in Breathed?”

  “It could be someone from your town.” I leaned across the seat and showed him my ears. “I got ’em pierced today. These earrings used to be my mother’s. See?”

  He slowed the car and pulled off to the side where the farm stand was.

  “Breathed’s got the best sweet corn.” He pulled his wallet out. “A good for nothin’ football team, but really great corn.”

  “It’s ’cause it’s ancient sweet corn.” I said “sweet” the way I thought Flossie might.

  “You want anything?” he asked, counting his money.

  “Get me a peach, will ya?”

  He got out of the car, pushing his hair back as he headed toward the stand. While the old farmer gathered the corn in a basket, the boy looked back at me as if to see if I was still in the car. I kept my eyes on him as he carried the basket over. The corn’s dirty silks were stuck together on the ends and there were clusters of small black beetles hitching a ride on the leaves. On top of it all was my peach, balancing and about to roll off. I grabbed it before he set the basket on the backseat.

  He slid behind the steering wheel and tapped his fingers on it.

  “Where you goin’ again?” he asked.

  I took a bite of the peach. He watched the juice drip down my chin.

  “We could go to the lane no one drives down,” I said. “Lay in the middle of it.”

  “If no one drives down it, how come it’s there at all?”

  “Uh…” I hesitated with the peach between my lips. “I don’t know.”

  We laughed.

  I gave him directions to the lane. Along the way I finished the peach, its pit something I laid on the seat between us.

  The lane nobody drove down was dusty and narrow, overgrown in patches and bordered by wildflowers and a wire fence. It opened to unplowed fields, the sun there a closer heat, almost desertlike, as if the weeds and wildflowers would one day become cactuses. I got out of his car and laid on my back in the middle of the lane. He looked around us, then laid beside me. He flipped the cape out above his head.

  “How come you play football if you don’t like it?” I asked as I felt my earlobes. What little blood there had been had already crusted.

  “I used to play baseball.” He folded his arms behind his head. “Then the summer Dad left with his girlfriend, Mom hung all his white socks on the clothesline. She handed me my baseball bat and told me to boom.” He raised up and made the gesture of swinging a bat. “Hit Dad’s socks to the stratosphere and beyond. I didn’t much care for baseball after that. I figured football was somethin’ else to do.”

  He would figure the army was something else to do, too. This boy, who got sweet corn for his mother and who hit his father’s socks out of the stratosphere and beyond, would enlist in the army and die in Vietnam, unable to save even himself.

  “No one drives down this lane, you say?” He propped up on his elbow.

  “Do you come to Breathed often?” I asked.

  “I came into the hills to hunt one time, but never again.”

  “What happened?”

  “I was up there in the snow one winter. Out of the white, I see these antlers and the most beautiful deer. I guess I thought huntin’ would be different. That I wouldn’t have a problem pullin’ the trigger, but I could only stand there stunned with my gun. God has never come nearer to me. I really believe that.”

  I leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. He looked embarrassed at first, then kissed me on mine.

  “We could kiss on the lips,” I said. “If you want.”

  “Okay.”

  We both leaned toward one another and awkwardly turned our faces, trying to avoid the other’s nose. With our lips touching, I could feel how chapped his were. I pulled back.

  “Don’tcha like it?” he asked.

  “I thought it’d be like how it is in books. We can try it again. See if it gets better.”

  Leaning in and closing my eyes, I could feel the tip of something wet and warm trying to get inside my mouth.

  “Ew.” I pulled back. “What was that?”

  “My tongue,” he said.

  “Gross.”

  “It’s how you’re supposed to do it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know this guy at school.”

  “You kiss him?” I asked.

  “No, man. He kisses girls, then tells me all the stuff.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like all the things you girls like.”

  “What do we like?” I asked.

  “You like gettin’ flowers and candy and gettin’ your boobies touched. Stuff like that.”

  I stared back at him.

  “Oh, gee,” I said. “You know us girls too well. All we want is flowers and candy and gettin’ our boobs touched. What more is there to life than that? Never mind if we can pick our own flowers for ourselves, or eat candy whenever we want to. Gee, I sure am glad that you know what us girls want because we might not be able to figure that out on our own.”

  He started kissing me again until his chest was pressing against mine on the lane nobody drove down. His hands started moving over my shirt. It took some effort, but I was able to get my lips out from beneath his.

  “No,” I said.

  I prepared to push him off, but I didn’t have to.

  “All right.” He backed away.

  We laid there for a few more minutes, staring up at the sky.

  “I gotta get home,” he said.

  Before he dropped me off where he had picked me up, he took a permanent marker out from the glove compartment.

  “Sign my cape.” He handed the marker to me. “I want the autograph of the first girl I ever kissed.”

  I waited until he decided which spot on the cape he wanted me to sign.

  “Right here,” he said, pointing to the middle back of the fabric.

  I signed my name, taking my time with the cursive so the marker wouldn’t bleed too much into the cotton.

  “Betty Carpenter.” He said my name aloud as he read it on the cape.

  Once I closed the car door, he leaned across the seat to ask out the open window, “What exactly were you doin’ today, Betty Carpenter? Back there on the lane no one drives down?”

  I reached into my pocket and squeezed Flossie’s story.

  “I wanted to see if no still meant somethin’.”

  I turned and walked home slowly. When I got there, I went to A Faraway Place and crawled in under the stage. Next to Fraya’s and Mom’s stories, I dug another grave. I took Flossie’s story from out of my pocket and laid it in the hole. I didn’t have a jar with me, so the dirt touched the paper as I buried it alive.

  THE BREATHANIAN

  Crying Heard at Site of Recent Gunfire

  Gunfire has been reported near the little stream known as Bloody Run.

  A local hiker stated he ducked behind a tree until the shooting ended. The hiker believed he heard crying afterward.

  When he went to investigate, there was only a pile of rocks. The hiker reported he thought the arranged rocks looked like a grave marker. When he did a little digging with his pick, he discovered bird bones in a shallow grave beneath the rocks.

 
“There were white feathers arranged by the skull,” he said. “And dark brown feathers around the bones of the body. The feathers looked to be that of an eagle’s. It was almost as though someone loved the bird and wanted to give it funerary rites.”

  The hiker noted a persistent wind that chilled his bones. The sheriff does not yet know whether the bird bones and the gunfire are related.

  28

  And thou hast filled me with wrinkles, which is a witness against me.

  —JOB 16:8

  We called her Old Woman Slipperwort as if for all of her life, she had been some old, hunched woman who lived in a shotgun shack full of ants. A shotgun shack is a narrow house built with each room joined to the next by interior doors. If you were to fire a shotgun through the front door, the blast would shoot through to the back, and all the doors in between. Old Woman Slipperwort’s shotgun shack was old, but she was older. She still got around by herself, but would sometimes hire girls to help her.

  That summer I was paid to work and stay at her place. The first night I was there, I woke during a heavy rainstorm. I had to pee, but the bathroom was at the rear of the house. I would have to pass through Old Woman Slipperwort’s bedroom.

  Her door was open and her light was off, but the moonlight was shining on her naked body as she sat on the edge of her bed. I had only ever seen her white hair tied up into a bun, but it was now loose. It fell the length of her backside and was thin enough, I could see her body through it.

  I’d never seen such an aged naked body before. There was something scary to me in the way her skin draped and fell. I worried it would fall completely off, revealing her skeleton beneath. I imagined the black sockets of her skull, the curvature of her rib bones caging her beating heart. Quietly, I walked backward until I was in the living room again. It was raining even heavier outside. I might have still gone out, but having just seen Slipperwort the way I had, I found myself feeling unsettled, if not disoriented. I went to the corner of the room and squatted, the pee soaking the green carpeting beneath me.