Desperation Road

by Michael Farris Smith

  He watched his boy stroll along, looking around at the house and the shed and the barn and out toward the pond as if it were the first time he had seen the place. Russell had always been tall and thin but Mitchell noticed that his shirt hung on him as if it had been borrowed from an older brother. Russell walked along the worn path between the house and pond and when he was halfway Mitchell stood. Russell came across the pond bank and said how you doing old man and the old man grinned with his lips held tight to keep it from getting away from him and he gave Russell a solid handshake as if he’d just sold him a calf. Then Russell looked at the darkhaired woman who looked back at him with brown eyes.

  “This here is Consuela,” Mitchell said. Russell nodded to her.

  “Es mi hijo,” Mitchell said and he waved his hand toward Russell.

  “Yo se,” she said.

  Russell looked at his father as if he were an impostor. His father scanned him from head to toe. “You look all right,” he said.

  “I feel all right.”

  The woman dropped the peas into a pail. Russell pointed at her.

  “That’s Consuela.”

  “You said that.”

  “She helps out some. Come on and sit down.”

  They sat down in the chairs and Mitchell opened the cooler and took out Cokes for both of them and he set the halfpint in his lap. He handed Russell the can.

  “Nice day,” Russell said.

  “Hot, though,” his father answered.

  They sipped their Cokes and stared across the pond. Not speaking for several minutes with the years having separated them from the things they used to talk about. Things like the rental houses that Mitchell owned or the cows that he bought and sold or the dinner Russell’s mother had just made. The dropped peas tapping the bottom of the pail was the only sound.

  “She speak any English?” Russell asked.

  “Sí,” she said.

  “She picks it up here and there.”

  “You too, sounds like.”

  “Got to, I reckon.”

  “I reckon,” Russell said and he grinned. “You’re a sly damn dog.”

  “What you mean?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “It ain’t like that.”

  “Where does she live?”

  Mitchell didn’t answer. Sipped at his Coke.

  “You’re a dog,” Russell said.

  “She lives in your old room out there over the barn.”

  “I bet.”

  “Consuela,” Mitchell said. “Duermes donde?”

  She turned and pointed at the barn.

  “Okay,” Russell said. “You coulda told me.”

  Mitchell shrugged his shoulders. “I coulda.”

  “How long she been out here?”

  “About a year or so.”

  “She just walked up the road one day?”

  “Maybe she did.”

  “Maybe she didn’t.”

  Mitchell shifted in his chair. “If I tell you got to promise you can’t tell nobody.”

  “Who am I gonna tell?”

  “I don’t know. That’s something I had to say.”

  “Fine. I won’t tell anybody.”

  “She came from your uncle Clive’s sugarcane farm down in Bogalusa. He’s got a ton of them. Living in shacks and shit. Kinda rotten if you ask me. A modern-day plantation. I went down there to see him and we was looking around and I saw her. I asked her if she wanted to come up here and she said yeah.”

  “You asked her?”

  “In a manner of damn speaking. You know what I mean. I told somebody to ask her and they did and she came on with me.”

  “So she’s a slave,” Russell said.

  “No. She was a slave. You should see how Clive has got them piled on top of one another. And pays change from his couch, seems like.”

  “You pay her?”

  “Some.”

  “So you pay her to work and whatnot and she lives in the barn and I’m guessing she’s not exactly a voter but she’s not a slave.”

  “If you don’t shut the hell up I’m gonna call the damn sheriff and tell him to take you back.”

  Consuela finished with the peas and she set down the basket and wiped her hands on her long denim skirt. She then stood up and said something quick and Mitchell nodded and she walked toward the house.

  “It got quiet out here,” Mitchell said when she was out of earshot. “I don’t know what else to say about it. Your momma gone and all.”

  “I know. You don’t have to explain anything.”

  “Some nights I’d sit out back and sounded like it might sound if the world came to end and there was nobody else walking around.”

  Mitchell reached down and picked up the fishing rod and sent the hook across the pond. “I didn’t figure I’d have to explain it much to you. I tried to quit feeling bad about it. I don’t know if your momma understands.”

  “Mom’s been gone awhile. I think she’d get it.”

  “I hope so.”

  “She would.”

  “Cause Consuela sleeps in the house sometimes.”

  “It’s okay. You damn dog.”

  A fish took the hook and the sinker bobbed and Mitchell let the fish run a little and then he reeled it in. This one was plenty big and he stood up to bring it on in and he unhooked it and Russell made room in the cooler. They sat back down and Mitchell handed his son the rod and told him to have a turn but Russell said no thanks. Mitchell set the rod on the ground.

  Russell leaned back in his chair and said, “I appreciate the truck.”

  “I figured you could use her. Needs a tune-up, though,” Mitchell said and he opened the whiskey and took a sip and then he chased it with the cold Coke. He handed the bottle to his son.

  “And the house,” Russell said and he took the bottle. “You sure you don’t need somebody living there who pays for it?”

  “That little house has been bought and paid for twice. I don’t need it.”

  “Well. All right.”

  Mitchell looked at him sideways. “You growing a beard?”

  “Yes sir.”

  Mitchell felt at his own smooth face. The sun hung above the trees and he squinted as he looked across the water.

  “Looks like it’s still some big ones in here,” Russell said.

  “Pretty big. Thought we’d get us a few and fry them up tomorrow evening. If that’s all right with you.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “What happened to your eye?” Mitchell asked and he pointed at Russell’s head.

  Russell touched his fingertips to the redness and twisted his mouth. “A going-away present from one of the boys.”

  “Hope that’s all you got.”

  “It was. It’s okay. Got worse than that a hundred times working on one of your houses.”

  “Yeah. You didn’t believe much in staying on ladders.”

  Russell drank the Coke and then the whiskey and the Coke again and handed the bottle back to his father. But he felt better once it was down so he waved his hand and his father gave the bottle back to him. He drank again and then passed the bottle over and his dad put the top on and dropped it back into the cooler.

  “It was them boys, wasn’t it?” Mitchell said.

  “Them boys what?”

  “That smack on your eye. It was them boys.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Don’t guess they believe in waiting around.”

  “Guess they figure they been waiting long enough. How’d you know?”

  “There’s a bunch of new buildings around here but that don’t mean it ain’t the same place. People talk like always. I was sitting at the café downtown and heard one of them old friends of their daddy running his mouth about coming to see you.”

  “Their daddy there, too?”

  “Naw. He’s been dead a pretty good while. Since before your mother.”

  Russell took a piece of ice out of the cooler. He rubbed it across the swelling eye and the
n tossed it into the pond. A mouth opened and closed around it and sank below.

  “Were they at the house?” Mitchell asked.

  “Better than that. In the parking lot when the bus rolled in.”

  “I thought that eye looked like today’s business. Anything else?”

  “Nah.”

  “What else you reckon they gonna do?” Mitchell asked.

  “I’m not sure.”

  Mitchell sat his can on the ground and he picked up the rod and reel and he took a cricket from the bucket. “Come on out here and stay,” he said as he stuck the hook through the cricket. “Long road. It’s easier to see somebody coming.”

  “I’m not bringing this out here to you. It’ll be okay.”

  Mitchell tossed the rod lightly this time, dropping the hook in the shallow water of the pond. The men watched the line until it ran and then Mitchell brought in a five-pounder.

  “That’s another good one,” Russell said.

  “Won’t take long like this,” Mitchell said. Russell opened the cooler and took out the whiskey bottle and two more Cokes. Mitchell took the hook from its mouth and laid it next to the other fish on top of the ice. The fish waved its body in its last attempts to be and then it fell still and Russell put the top back on the cooler.

  The men returned to their chairs and they sat for a while. The sun falling. They kept the line in the water, holding on to a couple more fish, drinking from the bottle in small sips, talking in small bits about nothing. They got up and walked to the house where Mitchell sat on the back porch with a bucket and gutted the fish while Russell milled around in the shed and looked for the things he’d need to paint a house. Figured that was as good a task as any. It was all there. The ladders. Drop cloths. Brushes and scrapers. In the same spots he remembered them being in. He came out of the shed and over to the porch. Mitchell shook his head with his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth. Focused on the fish and his hands bloodied to the wrists.

  “I’m gonna run on back to town,” Russell said. “Feel weird being still.”

  “That sounds right.”

  “Seems I saw a café downtown. It any good?”

  “Mostly. If you hit it right.”

  “Well. I’m gonna try to hit it right.”

  “And tomorrow night we’ll fill you full of fish. Get some pounds back on you.”

  “I’ll come out tomorrow afternoon then.”

  Mitchell looked up at Russell and nodded then said hold on a second. He wiped his hands on a towel and then he walked in the back door and closed it behind him. Russell stood and waited and looked around the place. Just like he had done in a thousand dreams of home. He would go inside but he was saving that for later, not ready to see it all the same save for his mother in her apron with flour on her hands. The door opened again and his father came out with a shotgun tucked under his arm. He held a box of shells and he wiped the barrel of the gun with the end of his shirt and he walked over to his son and he held the shotgun out to him. Russell recognized it as his own 20-gauge, the one he used to walk the woods with looking for something to kill.

  “What’s that for?” Russell said and he hesitated to take the gun from his father.

  “You know what it’s for,” Mitchell said. “Take it.”

  Russell took the gun by the barrel and then he took the box of shells.

  “I’m breaking about two dozen laws by having it.”

  “I know it. I can’t force it on you.”

  “You’re trying.”

  “No. I ain’t. But there’s choices you gotta make.”

  “It’s not gonna be this bad,” Russell said and he tucked the barrel under his arm.

  “You don’t know how it’s gonna be. I hope it ain’t bad but you don’t know.”

  Russell nodded. Mitchell nodded. Then Russell said again that he’d be back tomorrow and he walked to the truck and drove off as Consuela watched from the kitchen window, standing at the sink where his mother used to be.

  10

  A GRAY LIGHT AS HE DROVE BACK TO TOWN. WHEN HE REACHED the house three boys were tossing around a football in the front yard of the house next door and a woman was on the front porch swing. He waved to her and she half waved back and then he went inside. He locked the door behind him and walked to the bedroom. It didn’t take long to unpack as there were only the essentials—a handful of T-shirts and socks, a toothbrush and deodorant, and the folder filled with the supposedly helpful documents provided by Mildred Day. At the bottom of the bag was a wooden picture frame holding a photograph of Sarah. He took the frame and went to the living room mantel and placed her in the center. She sat on a bench in Jackson Square in the French Quarter, her hair pulled back, a pleasant smile on her face as if some reassuring memory had crossed her mind the moment the camera clicked. She had rested on a short bookshelf at the foot of his skinny, noisy bed for the last eleven years and as he set her on the mantel and stepped back he thought that somehow she looked younger removed from the confines of the square cell.

  He spent another hour drinking and smoking on the back porch and then he was hungry and he remembered seeing the café on the ride from the bus station at the corner of Main Street. He decided to leave the truck and walk. It took twenty minutes and he broke a solid sweat in the humid evening. He walked past houses with their television screens shining through the living room windows and three little girls, probably sisters, played hopscotch by the carport light in a driveway lined with rows of petunias. He crossed into downtown and spoke to a handful of men in suits standing together in front of a law office. They nodded and waved in the direction of the café when he asked.

  When he got there the café was getting ready to close. But he looked tired enough for the waitress to stop wiping tables and stacking chairs and ask the cook if he had time for one more. Russell heard the cook swear but then agree and she told him it’d have to be something simple.

  Russell sat down in a red vinyl booth and the front of the menu advertised a Big Breakfast. “Is that simple enough?” he asked.

  “Probably. Minus the grits,” she said. She took a pad out of her back pocket and reached for a pen that was supposed to be behind her ear. She felt her pockets and looked aggravated and he figured she had kids somewhere waiting on her. Hungry like he was.

  “What to drink?”

  “Still got coffee?”

  She turned and looked behind the counter and half a pot remained. “Probably ain’t no good but we got it.”

  “That’s fine.”

  She went into the kitchen and Russell heard the cook swear again and then she returned to his table with the coffee. He took a sip and it tasted like a slap in the face. The waitress went back to stacking and wiping and Russell fought with the coffee. The cook hollered for her and she returned to Russell with a plate loaded with scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, hash browns, and toast. She went about her work and kept one eye on Russell, amazed at how fast he made the Big Breakfast disappear. When he was done he wiped his mouth and asked her how much. He left the money on the table and told her thanks and she followed him to the door and locked it behind him.

  He spotted a gas station about a quarter of a mile away and he walked that way. He was still hungry so at the store he picked up some beef jerky and a couple of Honey Buns and a family-size bag of potato chips. He filled a giant Styrofoam cup with Coke and then walked to the cash register and motioned for the man with the ponytail to include a Playboy from the wire rack that sat tucked in the corner behind the counter. This is a good one the man said as he put the items into a bag and Russell said I never seen a bad one. He took the bag from the counter and then he walked back to the house, finishing the jerky and one of the Honey Buns before he got there.

  He sat down on the living room floor and ate everything then felt sick. He thumbed through the Playboy, looking closely at the curves in the hips and breasts of the young, perfect women, trying to remember what one felt like. What one smelled like. He had long since forg
otten and he had hoped that the fresh air would bring back the scent but he tossed the magazine aside and realized that only the real thing would make him remember. He kicked off his boots and walked through the house and turned off all the lights. Then he removed his clothes and lay on top of the bare mattress with the folded duffel bag serving as his pillow.

  And that wasn’t going to work.

  He got up and put his clothes back on and he walked out in the backyard and lit a cigarette. He felt the tender spot over his eye and the tender spot in his ribs. Might as well call them up and get it over with. Come on over and let’s finish it. Come on over here with whatever you got cause he’s still dead and I’m not so come on over. I can take it. Took it all for eleven years. Wasn’t enough that I got held down and wasn’t enough that I lost a couple of teeth. Then I gotta come home and they sit waiting on me. Come on over cause it can’t be no worse. Hell no not any worse. Just come on and let me pay some more. Fuck. Damn near cut your head off, they said. Another inch that way and you’d have bled to death, they said. Another inch. Jesus.

  He ran his fingers along the scar that stretched from ear to ear underneath his chin, camouflaged beneath the growing beard. Ripped wide open but alive. Ripped wide open but recovered. Ripped wide open but not wide enough. Lucky, they’d said. A miracle, they’d said. Bullshit, he’d said. The first week in prison he’d been beaten so badly that his eyes had swollen shut and as he lay on the nurse’s table blind and throbbing he had called out for that extra inch. Give it to me now please God. You son of a bitch. Go ahead and give it to me. The nurse stuck him with a shot when he wouldn’t shut up and then everything went black. When he woke he had picked up where he left off. Calling out for one more inch and then beginning to wonder about that one more inch and that was only the beginning of thinking about it. Of thinking about it and thinking about it. He had wondered about it a thousand times. A thousand times a year times eleven years came out to a lot of fucking wondering and it seemed to him now that there would be no end to it. Come on over. Bring whoever and whatever and come on over cause I ain’t going nowhere. He imagined the brothers sitting in somebody’s living room, drinking from cans, bragging about what they’d done. Got his ass right off the bus, they were saying. Stomped his ass, they were saying. Gonna do it again, they were saying. They don’t know shit, Russell thought. They don’t know.