by Larry Brown
In the closet he couldn’t tell if a suitcase was missing or not. He thought they’d had four. Now there were three.
Out on the deck he looked across the lake and couldn’t see much of anything. He went down the steps calling for her. The only answer was the dying wind whistling past him. The moon was hung high and it showed a beach washed clean by rain.
He went back to the house and got a flashlight and put on some rubber boots and he walked and walked and called for her, even up on the road and as a solitary car came by. He looked until the batteries died in the flashlight and then he went back to the house and got some fresh ones and went out again, climbing up among the pine trees that covered his land and she was not there either.
Toward morning his legs had given out and he sat on the deck and watched dawn light the lake with pale streaks in the sky, and the birds began to fly from tree to tree. Boats moved across the water already, skimming over the surface, white shards of spray coming up from their sides.
BOOK 2
THE TRUCK ROCKED and the transmission made a grinding sound and then the air brakes went off with a loud hiss and the truck was moving away, rolling slowly at first, then picking up speed as it swung back into the road. She stood looking after it, and then she started walking out across the beach. The sun rose higher from the water, and the shrimp boats moved, towing their trawls, the birds lifting and circling over them, singing their rough cries to the morning.
The gulls were everywhere, moving in the air and walking along the white sand. Coke cans and used condoms and cigarette butts littered the beach. Early morning and only a few cars moving up and down the black highway and past the hotels and shell shops set back from the road and the fine old homes, the seafood restaurants, the strip clubs. The sea lapped slowly into the sand and a lone fisherman stood poised to fish on a rickety wooden walkway that ran a few hundred feet out into the water of Biloxi.
Just up the road a small brick building sat dilapidated and forlorn, lights still blazing around a sign where the dark silhouette of a naked woman reared rusting from the roof. An old man with a broom opened a side door and swept a few things out onto the sand and closed it again. Nothing much moved on the beach, just the birds and the light wash of the ocean.
She saw a police cruiser go by and she watched after it fearfully, but it went on down the road and out of sight.
Far out in the water slick black forms arced in and out of the slight swells, wet and shiny, and she recognized them from television shows at Sam’s house. Dolphins. She stood there for a little bit watching them, wondering if they had a certain place they called home.
THE SKY TURNED hazy and overcast with the threat of rain and it began to wear a gray overcoat across its expanse. There was a Denny’s that was open about a mile past the gardened grounds of the Holiday Inn and Fay could see people sitting in there. The suitcase was fairly heavy and the purse was a newer one that Amy had given her months ago, and it held forty dollars, what Amy had said was kind of like an allowance for helping around the house. There was no sidewalk along this stretch of the road and it was hard to walk in the sand. She wasn’t used to it and it was deep and loose. She could see a few dead fish floating in the surf and she wondered if that was where the smell came from. People had dropped trash in the sand and far away she could see the figure of a man spearing things and dropping them into a bag he wore at his side.
More traffic was coming down the highway now and a few cars began to pull into the public parking lots. People got out of them with their swimming suits on, pulling folding chairs and umbrellas and coolers from the trunks, toys for small children, bright plastic rings and beach balls. Fay was glad she had thought to bring a swimming suit, and there seemed to be some public restrooms where a person could change. She needed to eat.
She walked on and she could see people far down the beach going into the water. Some white buildings were clustered off in the distance and there were a great many boats harbored out beyond them. She could see others on the open water. And the water went out to what looked to her like the edge of the world. She stopped and studied it. It looked like it was going uphill and that puzzled her.
The birds were wheeling in the sky and scurrying on their spindly legs along the sand. She almost sat down and rested, but more and more people were moving in around her and she was closer to the Denny’s now so she kept walking across the sand until she stepped onto the asphalt of the parking lot. She was grateful to have some decent clothes, at least, and a little money, but she didn’t know how long the money could last. She’d find a job. She’d get herself a place to stay. That was all she knew.
She walked past the few parked cars in the lot. Sand was everywhere and she could feel it gritting under her leather sandals. Somebody would have found Alesandra by now, lying in the open boat like that. It was too late to go back now.
She tried to make herself stop thinking about it. There was a glass door at the entrance and she opened it and stepped onto tan tiles and saw a few people sitting at a counter. She looked around for a second and then slid into a booth that was close to her. She set her suitcase and purse on the seat beside her and then saw a sign posted on the side of the table that requested customers to reserve the use of the booth for a minimum of two customers. But it wasn’t crowded, what did it matter?
She didn’t want to attract any attention to herself. She just wanted to get something to eat. She picked up her things and moved to a stool at the counter.
A couple of older men sitting together looked at her and she turned away. The menu was right in front of her in a steel stand. She picked it up and heard one of them mutter something and the other one laughed. She looked up and gave them the coldest glare she could manage and they both looked away and they shut up, too. She concentrated on the menu but didn’t know what things ought to cost. The only times she’d been in a restaurant were when Sam and Amy had taken her. The glasses were in her purse and she took them out and slipped them on. She had some cigarettes too and she pulled them out and lit one up, slid a tin ashtray closer from a pile at the rear of the counter.
“Coffee, miss?”
She looked up to see a girl who looked only a bit older than her standing there with a glass pot of coffee.
She nodded.
“Yeah, please.”
The girl reached to a rack of cups and brought one down. She poured the cup full and Fay thanked her and found the sugar and milk and stirred them in.
“You know what you want?”
She glanced up again and the girl was standing there with her little pad, stifling a yawn. She cupped her hand at her mouth and said, “Excuse me. Long night.”
“I know what you mean,” Fay said. Her eyes went back to the menu. All of it looked good. She didn’t know what she wanted yet.
“You want a minute?”
She looked up again.
“What?”
“You want me to give you a minute to decide?”
“Naw, that’s okay. How about givin me two of these eggs like this …” She pointed to the two perfect eggs with the yolks shining. “And some sausage. And some toast. And … uh … some grape jelly.”
“You got it,” the girl said, and turned away, writing. She tore off the sheet and clipped it to a round metal thing stuck in a window at the back of the room and a man with a paper hat reached out and took it. He glanced out at Fay with a tired look on his face. She sipped her coffee and smoked her cigarette. Being inside now felt safer but she didn’t know if she should use her real name. She’d caught three rides altogether and she’d made up names for all of them. One divorced woman with two kids sleeping in the backseat had given her a ride from Highway 6 all the way down to the Carrollton exit. Fay hadn’t said much to her, only told her that her name was Betty and that she was going to see her uncle in Biloxi. She felt that the woman was afraid of her and that she’d regretted picking her up, and wasn’t really going to Carrollton but had only said that to be rid of her. And, truly,
once she was under the bridge by the edge of the interstate and resting some and smoking, she’d been pretty sure that she’d seen the woman’s car come off the exit ramp up ahead and go on south down I-55. But that was okay. She was on down the road thirty or forty more miles from what she’d left behind.
The coffee was really good. She saw the door marked for the rest-rooms and got off the stool and went in there and sat on the commode. There was a machine for tampons. Wouldn’t have to worry about that for a while.
When she went back out her coffee cup had been filled again and her food was there. The girl came over and asked her if she needed anything else but Fay had already started eating and she just shook her head and smiled. The waitress went away and started talking to the two older men down the counter. They didn’t look her way anymore.
It was the best breakfast she’d ever had aside from the ones that Sam had made for her sometimes. He would whip up three eggs in a bowl and pour them into a greased skillet and dump in chopped ham and cheese and green peppers and make a thick omelette that would have her stuffed by the time she finished it. It was hard to think of him and not start crying but she kept sitting there and eating. Trying to calm down. She had to take care of herself now and find a job and she had to get to a doctor somewhere and she had to find a place to live. She ate her breakfast slowly and enjoyed it and even after she’d finished she kept sitting there and drinking coffee. Finally the waitress brought the bill and asked her if there was anything else she needed. She said no and looked at the bill and reached into her purse for the money. The bill was $4.37 and she put down a five-dollar bill and the waitress took it and rung it up and handed back the change. Fay dropped the coins into her purse and sat there finishing her coffee, looking through the windows at the beach. The waitress went down to the other end of the counter, lounging, smoking her own cigarette in a secretive manner, glancing around from time to time. It was still gray and cloudy outside, and she didn’t want to go out there yet.
“Could I have some more coffee, please?”
The waitress looked at her and got up, a trace of annoyance on her face, but she lifted the coffeepot and brought it down.
“I thought you was through,” she said, but she went on and poured Fay another cup. “No charge,” she said, and turned to go back.
“You know where there’s a store around here anywhere?” Fay said.
“There’s a bunch of stores right on up the road here in that mini mall.”
“Which way?”
The girl pointed. “Right up here. It’s a couple of blocks.”
The place was deserted now. Fay could hear a radio playing somewhere in the back. She stirred sugar and milk into her coffee and lit another cigarette.
“You live here?” she said.
“Yeah. Why?”
“I just wondered. You like it down here?”
The girl looked down at her feet. She seemed bored and distracted. Fay thought she was pretty in a scary kind of way, like she wouldn’t do to mess with.
“It’s all right I guess. Sometimes I wish I was somewhere else, but hell, it’s probably that way anywhere you go. Don’t you figure?”
“I hadn’t never thought about it,” Fay said. She sat there for a bit.
“You just got into town, didn’t you?” the girl said.
“How’d you know?”
The girl scratched at her chin.
“Suitcase. You look a little down on your luck. Where you headed?”
“I reckon I’m headed right here.”
“You got a place to stay?”
“Not yet. I thought maybe I’d go lay on the beach for a while.”
“It looks like it’s going to rain,” the girl said.
“Yeah, it kinda does.”
“Depresses the shit out of me when it does.”
“How come?”
“You can’t get out of the house to do anything. You can’t go to the beach. You got a hell of an accent. Where you from, talking like that?”
“Up north.”
“Up north like where? You mean Minnesota or Michigan or somewhere like that?”
She grinned a little and suddenly Fay liked her.
“I mean north of here. Up around Oxford.”
By the time some more customers came in the girl had told her that her name was Reena and that she’d be getting off at eight and that maybe they could drive around and drink a beer or something. She said she could show her where she lived. And like the first day on the levee of Sardis dam with Sam it looked like a better thing and she decided to go with it.
Reena lived in a trailer thing at the end of a long street up from the beach. It was more like a large RV that you could drive to places and stay, hook up the electricity, the water. A rusting Japanese pickup was parked in the yard.
Inside was a man sleeping on a fold-out couch and two children were sleeping in the floor with pillows and sheets and quilts around them. A radio was playing, nobody awake to hear it. Reena snapped it off and reached into a small refrigerator and pulled out two beers. She motioned for them to go back outside but first she reached for Fay’s suitcase and stuffed it into an overhead bed that was chained to the ceiling with hooks. She seemed not to want to wake anybody up.
There was a picnic table that looked homemade under a young catalpa tree and tiny black pellets were lying on top of the table. Reena swept her hand across them and raked them onto the ground and told Fay to have a seat.
“I don’t want to wake em up before I have to,” she said. “Chuck’s good to watch em for me while I work, but I sure like to take a break when I get off.”
She opened her beer and took a drink from it. Fay opened hers and took a small sip. She wondered when the morning sickness would come again. She wondered what Sam could be thinking. The pellets kept dropping onto the table. Fay looked up and saw some strange green striped worms on the undersides of the leaves on the tree. They favored worms she’d seen on the plants in tomato fields.
“It’s good fishbait,” Reena said.
“You don’t know where I could get a job, do you?”
“Well. That depends on what kind of a job you want. You can work in the seafood plants. I did that for a while. You come home smelling like dead fish and shrimp every night. Or work in a restaurant like I do. Clean rooms in a hotel.”
Fay thought about it. She wouldn’t be able to work all that long after she started showing probably.
“What are you on the run from?” Reena said.
“I ain’t on the run from nothin.”
“That’s bullshit. Something’s after you. Somebody.”
“Ain’t nobody after me,” Fay said. “I just had to get away from where I was.”
Reena watched her. After a while she said, “Well I could drive you around and show you what Biloxi looks like if you want to. You could ask around and see about a job somewhere. It ain’t gonna be nothing but minimum wage around here. Unless you want to strip.”
“Strip?” Fay said. “What’s that?”
Reena rolled her eyes up and then closed them while she shook her head. She took another big drink of her beer.
“Damn, you are from back in the sticks, ain’t you?”
“I know it.”
“Well. If you want to make some money that’s where it’s at. You can make three or four hundred a night if you’re good. And you’ve got the body to be good.”
“What do you have to do?” Fay said.
“Nothing much. Just take off your clothes and dance in front of a bunch of perverts. They tip good, though. Unlike you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Girl, don’t you even know what a tip is? Where did you grow up?”
“Just here and there.”
“I believe it,” Reena said. She got up. “Come on and let’s get in the car. We’ll get us a six-pack and cruise the beach. You got a swimming suit?”
“It’s in my suitcase.”
“I’ll slip in here and get it
and grab mine, too. They’ll sleep another couple of hours probably. That’ll be enough time for us to ride around some and talk. You got a lot to learn, honey.”
Thirty minutes later they were lying on the beach under a striped umbrella that Reena had stuck into the sand and there was a beer cooler between them big enough to hold a six-pack. They sipped from their cans and eyed the brown water out in front of them. It moved only a little.
“Is it always flat like that?”
Reena leaned back on her elbows on one of the towels she had brought from the thing she lived in.
“It is unless it comes up a storm.”
“I thought it was supposed to have waves.”
“I don’t know what the reason is. You can go over to Gulf Shores and the waves come in all day. It’s pretty over there but it’s too expensive. It don’t cost me nothing to come down here.”
The sky was still cloudy and far out in the Gulf it was overcast above the waterline.
“It’s gonna rain,” Reena said. “But at least we won’t get blistered.”
“What time you need to get back?”
“I don’t know. After while sometime. I got to get some sleep sometime today so I can work tonight. Tonight’s my night at the club.”
Fay picked up her beer and took a drink.
“You mean to dance?”
“Yeah. I dance on Thursdays and Saturdays. I work my other job three nights a week. But I go over to the club sometimes even if I’m off.”
“Don’t you ever get any time off?”
Reena gave a short bitter laugh.
“Time off? What’s that?” She sat up and found her beer in the sand and poured a long drink down her throat. “You start having babies like I did when you’re sixteen and you’re fucked. You don’t get no time off. Less you’re lucky enough to find you a rich husband. Or a good one. And you ain’t gonna find no good one in a strip joint.”
Fay didn’t say anything for a while. They sat side by side and watched the water and the people on the beach. Once in a while Reena would take a drink of her beer. There was some music playing somewhere near, and Fay turned her head and looked at some fortyish women lying back against webbed chairs. Their skins were dark and they rubbed themselves with oils that glistened. None of them had wedding rings on their fingers. Her mother had said that at one time she’d owned one. And Fay had asked where it had gone to but never had gotten an answer.
