by Jim Kokoris
“It’s at Cezzaro’s, being worked on. Well,” he said again, turning to face the car, hesitant and proud. “I think it’s practical. It will help us get around. Oh, Mr. Jackson, what do you think of it?”
Maurice walked up the driveway and studied the car, before nodding his head. “I think it’s very nice, Mr. Pappas,” he said. “You’ll enjoy it, I’m sure.” Then he turned to me, “Are you ready to go to your friend’s?”
“Yes.”
My father cleared his throat. “You’ll be here at the meeting tonight?”
Maurice nodded. Despite his lawyer’s objections, my father had agreed to let Bobby Lee come to our house to tell me personally how he had forgotten about the paper he had signed ten years ago. Afterward, he was going home to Tennessee for awhile, though the judge said he was allowed to visit me.
“Well, then,” my father said. “Would you like me to drop you off at Charlie’s house?”
“We’ll walk,” I said. “It’s only three blocks.”
“I better put the car into the garage then. They say it’s going to rain hard tonight. Possibly snow.”
Maurice and I walked quickly, our heads bowed into the wind. It was late afternoon, already getting dark and the street lights were beginning to flicker. I jammed my hands deeper into my pockets, regretting not having accepted my father’s offer of a ride.
“So, how you doing there, Teddy Pappas?” Maurice asked. Since the judge had made his decision, Maurice had changed. He was lighter and looser in his walk and talk and sometimes hummed low tunes. The day before, my father had offered him a permanent job with us, though Maurice had seemed reluctant.
“Are you going to stay with us?” I asked as we crossed a street.
“Well, I’m considering it,” he said. “Originally I was to stay on for just a few months. I’d like to stay on past Christmas. Want to make sure I’m around for that soccer awards banquet for Tommy. You know about that award, don’t you?”
“Yes. Tommy told me. He’s excited.”
Maurice shook his head in wonderment. “Most Valuable Player and he didn’t join the team till midseason. Missed half the games. That’s something to be proud of. He seems happy too. He liked having your father read to him. Said he enjoyed it. He’s talking more now too, you noticed that?”
“Yes.” The past few days in particular, Tommy was happier than I had seen him since my mother’s accident, talking excitedly about his award and wearing his uniform around the house and to bed.
“After the awards banquet, though, we’ll have to see about me staying on,” Maurice said. He looked down at me and smiled. “Boys your age don’t need to be walked to school every day. Anyway, I think all of this will be forgotten soon and your family will go on with things and so will I. But I am considering it.”
“I hope you stay,” I said. Maurice looked at me again and patted me on the back. “Why, thank you, Teddy Pappas.” We stopped at another block and waited for a car to pass. The wind died down for a moment and I felt my cheeks relax.
“How are things going with that Wilcott boy?” Maurice asked. He was looking straight ahead, down the block.
“Fine,” I said. I was surprised by the question. I had never talked to Maurice about Benjamin. Lately, there hadn’t been much to talk about though. He pretty much ignored me now. “He leaves me alone,” I said. “My father isn’t that friendly with Mrs. Wilcott anymore.”
“I haven’t seen her around much, now that you mention it.”
“She doesn’t stop by anymore,” I said.
We turned down Charlie’s block, and the wind picked up. I bent down farther, leaning into it, trying to stay low.
“So, are you looking forward to seeing Bobby Lee tonight?” Maurice asked.
“No,” I said. “But it’s only for a little while.”
“Well, I’ll be there with you,” Maurice said as we walked up Charlie’s driveway.
“I know,” I said.
CHARLIE AND I spent the rest of the afternoon working on his computer, doing research on fire ants. I wanted to help Uncle Frank finish his novel, or at least the second page, and thought the more information I could provide the better. We didn’t accomplish much though, because our efforts were constantly interrupted by Charlie’s mother who kept coming into his room for different reasons, laundry, snacks, and drinks in her hands. She was a small quick woman who seemed to be in constant motion.
“She wants to make sure we’re not looking at pornography,” Charlie said after she left the last time. “She caught me a few weeks ago.”
“I thought you said she got Kid Check.”
Charlie looked at me, his face expressionless. He then closed out of the Department of Agriculture Web page. In a few seconds, there was a picture of a naked woman riding a motorcycle holding her underwear high over her head.
“I can get around all the checks,” he said.
I stared at the picture. The woman was joyously naked. “That’s good,” I said.
We spent the next half hour searching and finding pictures of naked women in various poses, until my cheeks started to burn.
“When I get married, I’m going to make my wife walk around naked all the time,” Charlie said, switching back to the Department of Agriculture website. After I agreed that was a good idea, we returned to our research on fire ants.
After awhile though, the lure of having naked women at our fingertips proved too strong so we decided to take one last stroll through the Forbidden Delights website. We didn’t get far though. While the images of our favorites, Lisa and Laura, began appearing on screen, Mrs. Governs sprang into the room like an hysterical cat, screaming.
“You’re disgusting!” she yelled. “Is this how you utilize technology?”
When she started pulling on Charlie’s ears, I backed up into a corner and thought frantically of an explanation. Other than possibly yelling, “It was Charlie’s idea,” I could think of no excuse and covered my ears with my hands, my fate accepted. Mrs. Governs’s full attention, however, remained on Charlie and sensing my opportunity, I slipped out of the room, down the stairs, and out of the house.
I started running. It was raining hard and I had left without my coat. I tried to cover my head with my arms, but soon gave up and let the rain soak me. I knew that Maurice and my father would be upset for my leaving without calling, but my options were limited. I would think of an excuse when I got home. I ran faster, running straight through puddles.
When I got to a corner and tried to cross the street, a dark van pulled up in front of me, cutting me off. Despite the rain, the window was down.
“Hey, there. Hey, Teddy. It’s me.” It was Bobby Lee.
“Oh, hi,” I hadn’t seen him since the outburst at Will’s.
“Jump on in. I’ll give you a ride. I’ll take you home. Hey,” he said. “I got that picture I told you about, the one your mom drew, the one with the stars and everything. ‘The Galaxy at Night.’ I got it back here.”
“It’s only another block,” I said.
“Come on, boy. This is stupid. It’s raining. Everyone will be mad at me if I said I just drove by and left you.” He leaned over and opened the door. “Get in now. Come on.”
I hesitated, standing in the rain for a moment longer. Then I got inside.
“Buckle up,” he said.
“It’s only another block.”
“Do as your daddy says,” he said. “We got a long drive ahead of us.”
“Where are we going?”
“I told you,” lie said. “Home.”
HE DROVE RICHT past our house without slowing down. When I asked him where we were going, he said, “Taking a little ride, that’s all.” When we got on the expressway, I asked again but this time he didn’t answer. He just pulled out a bottle from under his seat and started taking long, hard swallows. When we approached, then passed downtown Chicago, the skyline receding in the rain and fog, I asked one last time, trying not to sound scared.
“Just
close your eyes and when you wake up we’ll almost be there. I ain’t gonna hurt you. Just relax now and leave the driving to me.”
“My father is going to be worried,” I said, then immediately regretted it. Bobby Lee turned and looked at me, his hawk eyes moist and burning in the darkness. I heard the rain pounding on the roof, a million drumbeats. “I’m your daddy,” he said. “Now get some sleep.”
I closed my eyes and tried to fight off the feeling that I was drowning, circling in a whirlpool. I was scared, wet, and cold, knew my family must be frantic, knew they would be soon looking for me.
I sat there with my eyes closed for some time, pretending to be asleep, feeling the highway, seeing my family. I must have finally fallen into a little crack of sleep, because the next thing I remember, it was getting light out and I could see streaks of dirt on the windshield. It had stopped raining. I closed my eyes again.
“You gotta take a piss or anything?” Bobby Lee asked me. “Go to the bathroom? I know you’re up. I can see your eyeballs moving.”
“I’m okay,” I said. “Where are we going?”
“Hell, I don’t know,” he said quietly, letting out a deep breath. “Hell, I don’t know.”
WE FINALLY STOPPED at a motel inches off the highway, a low one-story building with a drained swimming pool and a yellow sign that said free HBO. I waited inside the van while Bobby Lee got the key. I was starting to feel strange, lightheaded in a dangerous, crazy way. My clothes were still wet and my shoes sloshed when I moved my feet. I knew I was getting sick. I thought of Aunt Bess’s cough suppressants that were light years away and sneezed.
“Room seventeen,” Bobby Lee said, opening my door. He held the key up like a prize. “Let’s go now.”
Once we got in the room, I went into the bathroom and sat on the toilet, thinking that I might throw up. On the other side of the door, I could hear Bobby Lee pacing, turning the TV on and off, coughing.
“You all right in there?” Bobby Lee asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m going to go across the street to that little store and get some more food. I’ll be right back.”
When I heard the door shut, I quickly walked out of the bathroom and picked up the phone but there was no dial tone, just a cut-off emptiness. I hung up and sat on the bed. The room was small and dingy. Cracks in the walls branched out like tiny veins and the carpet was spotted and thin. I considered escape, but I had no idea where we were, and no idea where to run. I suspected we were in Tennessee, Bobby Lee country, but I couldn’t even be sure of that.
Despite everything, I was exhausted and was about to lie down on the bed when Bobby Lee came back to the room in a rush.
“Let’s go,” was all he said.
When we walked outside, I saw a police car parked across the highway at a convenience store. I thought about calling out for help, but Bobby Lee grabbed my hand and roughly pulled me along to the van.
We drove again for a long time. I sat in the back seat, my eyes pinched tight. I began to accept that we would always be driving, that Bobby Lee and I would circle the globe, a lost spinning top, forever in motion. After a while, I felt I was losing my weight, felt myself disappear and start to float. I left the van, rushed into the sky and saw things laid out beneath me: my family, my mother, my home, everything neat and safe, for one last time. Then I saw the comets collide, saw the sparks and flames dip and dance and felt everything move and change. I opened my eyes, saw burnt hills and barren trees, saw crosses on fire, vampires walking, fire ants marching, dead rebel soldiers, their eyes wide and glassy. On a hilltop I saw a solitary soldier sitting on a horse, his hands outstretched, his face up toward heaven. I hovered over him, saw Stonewall Jackson’s dead eyes, his lips moving in silent prayer. Then I felt heat, and saw flames, all around me.
From far down below I heard Bobby Lee’s voice say, “We’re getting there. Only a few more miles.”
I was quiet. I was so warm and floating so high now that I no longer cared where we were going. I closed my eyes and disappeared into the fire.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
WE WEREN’T IN THE van anymore, that much I knew. “You got to get that boy to a doctor,” Carl the Bear was saying.
“Hell, I can’t do that now.”
“He’s burning up. Boy, you have done it up good this time. You have done it up, special.”
I opened my eyes. I was lying on a couch in a small room that had a bear’s head on the wall. I stared at the bear and wondered who had killed it, how long it had been dead, then closed my eyes again and started to shiver. After I shook for awhile, I felt someone covering me with a blanket, then saw a thick, bearded face with worried eyes.
“Hey, Carl, you got any aspirin?”
“Hell, no. I don’t have any aspirin. What do you think I am, a pharmacy?”
“Hell, everyone’s got aspirin,” Bobby Lee said.
“Shut up.” A deep breath. “I’ll go get some. And by any chance, if you were gone by the time I got back, that would be okay by me, little brother.”
“We’ll be here.”
“I was afraid of that.”
THE BEAR ON the wall had a shadow over its face. Specks of dust danced around its nose and in and out of its open mouth. I wondered where the rest of the bear was, wondered what they did with his legs and tail.
“This ain’t aspirin,” I heard Bobby Lee say. “It’s Tylenol. You can’t give a kid that. His stomach ain’t mature. Why didn’t you get the aspirin?”
“I grabbed the first thing I could. Next time, I’ll phone ahead and ask what they recommend for a kidnapped boy with a fever.”
“He ain’t kidnapped,” Bobby Lee said. “He’s my son.”
“Your son, bullshit,” Carl the Bear said. “You never were a father to this boy.”
I closed my eyes and let sleep surround me.
“OKAY”. I SAID even though I wasn’t.
Carl the Bear had just asked me how I felt. Fie was sitting close to me, trying to feed me some chicken noodle soup. I had trouble swallowing the slippery noodles because my throat was on fire.
“I want you to know that I had nothing to do with you coming here,” he said. “I’m just going to help you get better, then you’re going to go. Sooner the better. Gonna get you back home. Your family probably’s worried sick.”
“Okay,” I said again.
“Okay, then,” Carl said. He fed me a few more spoonfuls of soup, then stood up and ran his hands through his long black hair and smoothed his beard. “You look like your mother,” he said. “Just like her.”
IT WAS ALMOST dark and I laid with the blanket over my face, listening to the voices floating over my head.
“Hell, I just thought that, that’s all. I thought I had it planned out. But it didn’t work out. I only wanted a little something to get me back on my feet. But they didn’t give me a dime. Hell, he’s my son. Then I figured I’d raise him and they’d probably support him. Trust fund and everything, I figured.”
“What the hell do you know about trust funds?” Carl the Bear said. “It was pretty ill-conceived. And now you kidnapped him.”
“Quit using that word. I didn’t kidnap no one. I’m entitled to see him, so I just took him to visit my family. His family. See his roots.”
“And you didn’t leave any ransom note?”
Bobby Lee was quiet for a moment before saying, “I never sent any note.”
“You are one sick man.”
“Hey, Bear, cut the shit,” Bobby Lee said. “You going to help me?”
“Hell, no. And you cut the shit and take this boy home tomorrow ‘fore he starts showing up on the back of milk cartons. Say it was a misunderstanding. Goddamn, I’m glad your mother ain’t alive to see this.”
I didn’t hear anything for awhile and was starting to fall back asleep when Carl’s voice pulled me back.
“This is more than just about the boy and money, though, ain’t it? It’s about Amy. Ain’t it?”
Bobby Le
e was quiet.
“It’s about her leaving you for another man, ain’t it? I know you, boy. You’re always looking to even the score. No one gets one over on Bobby Lee Anderson. Let me tell you something, that old man had nothing to do with what happened to you and Amy.”
“That old man took my wife,” Bobby Lee said. “Goddamn stole her away.”
“Your wife?” Carl said. “Hell, from what I remember, you weren’t there half the time. And when you were, you were knocking her around. Forced her to work in those clubs, taking her clothes off for a living while you and your buddies shot pool and drank yourself blind.”
The bear was covered in deep shadows now and I fell back asleep.
WHEN I WOKE UP, dogs were barking close by. My blanket was wet but I wasn’t shivering much anymore. I opened my eyes, pulled the blanket off my head, and looked around for Bobby Lee and Carl the Bear. I couldn’t see them but I could hear their voices outside.
“Damn dogs don’t shut up,” Carl the Bear said. “Bark at every damn squirrel.”
“You still working at the distillery?” Bobby Lee asked.
“Hell, yes. After Heaven Hill burned down, I got on with Beam. Got lucky, they’re probably the best.”
“You get me a job there?”
“Right now they ain’t exactly looking for extortionists and kidnappers.”
“I’m serious, Bear. I might be ready for a change.”
“What do you know about making bourbon?”
“Hell, I like to drink it, that’s a start. Got a natural interest.”
Carl the Bear let out a laugh. “I haven’t seen you in ten years but you haven’t changed. In all your traveling, have you even been to your wife’s grave, paid your respects?”
“No, not yet. Been busy. I’m going though. Probably after I leave here. Gonna plant something. A flower or something.”
“Flower, hell. It’s almost winter. I’ll give you something. I got some bulbs in back I was gonna put in. I’ll give you some tulips.”
