A Dead Man Speaks

by Lisa Jones Johnson

  Shit, the prom. With everything that had happened, I’d completely forgotten about it.

  Miss Davenport was trying to be cool, but she couldn’t pull it off this time. Her hands trembled slightly as she opened the door wider. “Is there a problem, Sheriff?”

  “Well, Miss, there is. I suggest you let us in, we know Clive January’s in there. He stole his mama’s car. It’s parked outside your door.”

  Shit, that’s all I could think, now I’m really fucked.

  “I don’t think you know what you’re talking about, Sheriff—”

  “Now, Miss, don’t make it harder on yourself. We know he’s there. He was supposed to take this little lady to the prom. Instead, he stole his mama’s car and came over here. We talked to his mama and she tol’ us she expressly tol’ him he couldn’t take her car.”

  Laurel didn’t move. “Sheriff, you don’t have a warrant to search my house, and even if Clive January were here, borrowing his mother’s car would hardly qualify him as a fugitive from justice.”

  Verna, who had been sniffling loudly, spit out viciously, “You bitch!”

  Before I knew what had happened, Verna Smith had lunged for Laurel. Her pa tried to pull her off, but Verna was kicking and screaming, in between loud angry sobs. “He was supposed to take me to the prom, and he embarrassed me in front of everybody, and it’s all your fault!”

  At this point I realized that things had gotten a little out of hand, so I walked out. “Okay e-nuf! Shit, Verna, I’m sorry. I know I was supposed to take you to the prom, but…” A pregnant silence as all eyes turned to me. “I forgot.” Now what did I go and say that for?

  “You forgot!” Her pa looked like he wanted to strangle me with his bare hands, and he was not a small man. In fact, me and my partners used to joke about him behind his back, saying that we never wanted to piss him off ’cause he could probably kill any of us with one hand tied behind his back. He got right up in my face. He was so close that I could smell what he had for dinner .

  “Nobody, and especially not some two bit punk like you stands up my little girl!”

  “Mr. Smith, I think there’s something you should know.”

  God bless Laurel, she tried. But Mr. Smith turned to her angrily shouting. “And you! Why you’re nothing but a—”

  “Slut!” Verna finished the sentence for him.

  Now I really expected Laurel to say something or do something. She wasn’t the type who’d normally put up with anybody’s mess, but she didn’t. Except for moving aside to dodge Verna’s slap, she just stood there not saying anything. Her eyes were glazed over, and she seemed distant, almost as if she’d gone somewhere where she was kind of there, but not really. Almost like she was looking at a play that she wasn’t in anymore.

  The sheriff must’ve realized that things were starting to get out of hand because he finally jumped in. “Okay, okay, folks. I think we needs to jus’ go on down to the station and figure this whole thing out. Seems as if Clive here not only stood up this young lady, stole his mama’s car and…” The sheriff scratched his head as if weighing how he was going to say it. “Well, anyway, never mind. Let’s just all go on down there.”

  And my last night in Hendersonville was strangely symbolic of my whole life in that town. Me against everybody else. Except this time there was no Daddy to bail me out. Laurel tried, but there wasn’t really much she could do. I was actually glad it ended like this. It was easier for me to make a clean break. Ma came down to the station. After she took one look at my face, she immediately dropped the car theft charges. Standing up your date wasn’t hardly a crime, so other than a lot of icy looks from Verna’s pa, there was really nothing they could do.

  And the thing with Laurel, we didn’t talk much about it afterwards, in fact, really not at all. Although you’d think that after all this, we would’ve had a lot to say. But I think that we both knew that something had happened between us, something bigger than Verna and her stupid pa finding out or the sheriff or even Ma. And I think maybe it scared us both a little, because it felt so good, almost too good, that we both thought that maybe we didn’t deserve to feel that good, so we tried to push it away, even though we really knew it wasn’t going to change anything.

  ’Cause after I left the station, she was there waiting for me. She walked up to me slowly, she was trembling, and I could see “It” pulling at her. She was fighting “It,” trying to be the old Laurel, but that person was gone, and this new Laurel was standing in front of me. I could tell she wanted to kiss me, but she didn’t. She started to say something. But the words wouldn’t come out at first, and then when they did, her voice was low and soft, and I could barely hear her say, “We’ll have our time. I know it.” I knew that she’d had the same feelings that I had, and it took one hellish night to bring them out. I held her tightly, kissing her hair, and trying to fight the fear that was starting to edge in. A fear that seemed to be getting bigger and bigger with every touch and every kiss, until I almost couldn’t breathe. I looked at her and saw “It” in her eyes, too. And then she pulled away, untangling herself from me. The words pulled from somewhere deep in her.

  “I love you, Clive January.” She kissed my forehead, and then turned quickly and walked into the night.

  “Laurel…wait…” I started to go after her, but then I stopped myself. And it was probably the hardest thing I’d ever done, but I did it anyway. I’d made up my mind on the way to the station that I was getting out of Hendersonville that night, and I didn’t want anybody, even her, trying to convince me to stay. I knew what she’d say, there’s only a few more weeks left, and you’ll get your diploma, at least stay until that.

  But if I was honest with myself, I knew it was more than that. The truth is I’d never experienced what I’d felt with her before. I mean I’d had women, but this was more, this was a feeling that reached to the bottom of my soul, filling up all the empty places that had been crying out for all those years. And I knew that if I didn’t get away from her, I never would.

  It would keep me in Hendersonville, trapped like a dog that wants to run away, but he still keeps coming back to the same old place every time. I knew I was hooked as sure as I knew my name, and I had to go cold turkey. I had plans, a future and nobody, not even Laurel, could get in the way.

  Later that night, I stuffed my few things in an old army duffle bag. Shirts, jeans, a couple of books. My SAT scores, they’d come that morning. I’d planned to open them on Sunday, I was superstitious, but I chucked them in the bag, unopened. And one other thing, a letter that had come from Missus Foster. I’d opened it, and there was another letter in it, sealed. On the outside it said, open on your eighteenth birthday. In her note to me, she said that Daddy had given it to her about a week before he died, but that he’d made her promise that if anything ever happened to him she wouldn’t send it to me until I was eighteen.

  She’d got my birthday wrong, it wasn’t till October. I’d started to open it right away, but each time, I stopped myself. In a way it seemed that by opening it before Daddy wanted me to, I’d be breaking a promise to him. But now with everything that had happened, the thought that Daddy had wanted me to know something, made me want to know even more. I had to know. I started to rip it open when I heard the door knob turn. I stuffed the letter back into my duffle bag.

  “Where you goin’, boy?”

  I didn’t turn. I knew if I did, I’d probably smack her.

  “I said, where is you goin?”

  “Fuck you, Ma!”

  She didn’t look scared. It was as if she expected it. She just spit out. “You ain’t goin’ nowhere, and you ain’t gonna be nothin!”

  I shoved her down on the bed. I wanted to take her skinny neck and crush it, but I stopped myself. I just stood over her, my heart ready to jump out of my chest.

  “Why’d you do it?” Silence. Nothing but the sound of the steady rain beating against the slate roof. “Why’d you take my college applications out of the mailbox?”

>   She laughed. I was sure my hatred for her at that moment would overwhelm me. Her narrow hard eyes stared up at me. “I did it ’cause you don’t deserve to go to college. What makes you thinks you gots the right to git outta here? You ain’t got the right. You ain’t goin’ nowhere, and you ain’t gonna be nothin’.”

  I shouted at the top of my lungs. Yelling over the rain, over her. I wanted everybody to hear. I wanted God to hear me. “You’re wrong! I am gonna be something. I’m gonna be rich, and I’m gonna be famous, and I’m gonna be happy, and you’re gonna wish that you could say that I was your son, but it’ll be too late ’cause from this point on, I don’t fuckin’ know you!”

  I grabbed my duffle bag and ran into the rain. Free for the first time in my life, I kept running. The rain was absolving me, washing away my doubts, my fears. I remembered a secret place that I used to go when I was a kid, on the edge of town, where huge trees twined around each other. Three of those trees had grown up so much on each other that there was a little space in between them. I crawled in the damp place where the trees curled together, and I lay my head down on the ground. And I slept better than I had since the night Daddy took me away from there.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Town With No Name

  I planned to hitch as far north as I could. I didn’t give a shit where I went as long as it was far away from Hendersonville. I got rides with all kinds of people, hippies, traveling salesmen, truck drivers, just about anybody who was brave enough to pick up a black man with a duffle bag, a wild looking Afro, and an even wilder look in his eyes.

  When I saw myself in a cracked gas station mirror, I got a sick feeling that started in my gut and reached up to my temples. For the first time I realized how much I resembled Ma. Like some fucked up joke from God for my hating her so much. I’d have to see her face whenever I looked at mine. I’d never get away from her, no matter how much I tried. I stumbled out of the bathroom and leaned against a post, sticking out my thumb, headed wherever the next car would take me.

  That’s how I ended up in the town with no name. I just kept hitching until I couldn’t go any further. Maine. The last ride let me off in the town with no name. Actually, the town had a name, but it was a long Indian name so complicated that everybody just called it the town with no name.

  “Hi!”

  I whirled around. I had only been in the town a few hours, and I was wandering around wondering where I could find something to eat for fifty cents. I didn’t have much extra money, just the cash I’d saved from my factory job. I’d planned to use it for college, and I didn’t want to piss it away just on getting by ’cause I was determined that somehow, in spite of Ma, I was getting to some college somewhere. But right now, I’d just have to get a gig somewhere until I figured out how I’d get things back together again.

  “You look lost.”

  I squinted in the sun, surveying a tall kind of moony-looking girl, smiling at me. I smiled back, not sure what else I could do.

  “Hey…”

  She circled me, with that dippy look on her face. She had a flower in her dark hair and her boobs were bursting out of her tie-dyed vest. She had a handful of wilted daisies stuck in her cleavage. I couldn’t really tell if she was black or white. She had light brown skin with straight black hair almost to her waist, and her nose was long and thin. I was thinking that maybe she was an Indian or something. She did have that kinda Pocahontas look, but before I could think anything else, she burst into my thoughts grinning, “My name’s Poppy, and you?”

  “Clive.”

  She handed me a daisy. “Well it’s really nice to meet you, Clive.”

  “You too.”

  “So, Clive, are you running from the law?”

  I gulped, did I look that bad. “Fuck, no!”

  “Well I mean, why else would anybody come all the way up here, ’cause you’re not from here, right?”

  Before I could answer what was becoming an increasingly whacked conversation, a voice rung out from across the street.

  “Poppy!” A white chick hopped out of a VW van and ran over to us. “Where have you been? Doug’s been waiting for you!”

  Poppy looked totally unmoved. She just kept tearing off petals from another daisy, tossing them absentmindedly into the street. “Well, if you must know, I was talking to Clive. He said he wants to be our roommate.”

  I looked at her like she was fuckin’ out of her mind, but before I could say anything, the white girl broke into a huge grin and looped her arm through mine. “Far out!”

  I knew I needed to nip this in the bud before it got totally out of hand. “Whoaaaa, ladies. I’m not looking to be your roommate. I’m just passing through.”

  Poppy looked up at me with the most childlike brown eyes I’d ever seen. “Now, Clive, really, where are you going, Canada?” Cause I mean that’s about the only place else to go from here. You know you need a place to stay, and…” she had picked up my duffle bag and was tooling lazily toward the VW van, “we’ve got the perfect place.”

  “But wait. I don’t have any money to share a place!” I started to protest more, but, the truth is, she was right. Other than what I’d saved for college, I didn’t have jack shit to my name and not a clue where I was going next.

  The white chick tossed her long, stringy, red hair back, wrinkling her nose in that broad smile. “Oh, that’s not a problem, neither do we. We stay upstairs at the no name café. We all work there. They need another waiter, so you can work there, too.”

  That’s how I ended up living on top of the no name café with an Indian chick, a wacky white girl, and this Asian girl named Raisin. The white girl’s name was Amber. She had thin red hair, green eyes, and was definitely the most adventurous of the three. Poppy was usually in her own world, and she rarely if ever seemed to come down completely into the one that the rest of us were in.

  And Raisin, well, it took a while to figure her out. She didn’t say a whole lot, but her small narrow eyes, which actually looked like raisins, were constantly on me, that is until I looked her way. Sometimes I thought I might give her one of my best Looks, but frankly, I don’t think the chick could’ve handled it. Maybe she’d never been around a brother. Who the fuck knew? I wasn’t gonna trip about it. I was just glad to have found someplace to hang for the moment.

  The place was big, more like a huge loft with two small rooms and a large living dining area with an alcove where I slept. The whole place looked as if it had been decorated by somebody on a bad acid trip. Everything was tie-dyed prints and psychedelic colors. It reminded me of pictures I’d seen of the hippie scene in San Francisco. But hey, it was clean. I had a bed, or sort of one, at least it wasn’t somebody’s doorway or a smelly bus station. It was kind of peaceful, with the trees and everything, definitely made a man forget what he was running from.

  Amber strolled into the living room as I was flipping through an old magazine. She grinned and then tossed something in my lap. “Ever smoke pot?”

  I picked up the joint, turning it over in my fingers. I wondered what new world it could open up for me. I took out a match, put the joint between my teeth and lit it. “Nope.” I took a long drag. It was harsh, harsher than a cigarette. I almost gagged, but I caught myself. The insides of my nose burned. “I’m always willing…” my eyes teared up, and I barely choked out the words, “to try something new.”

  Amber smiled mischievously, her green eyes lighting up. “Far out, man.” One thing about Amber, she usually didn’t say a whole lot more than that. But sometimes, you didn’t really need to. She plopped next to me on the bean bag hassock, deftly rolling another joint while she sucked on one already in her mouth. “Ever wonder why we’re here…on earth I mean?”

  I tried another toke of the joint. This time it went down a little easier. I coughed, letting out a roll of smoke. A glass of water would’ve done pretty damn good now, but I didn’t ask, wouldn’t be cool. Other than my scratchy throat and burning eyes, I didn’t notice any difference yet, but
I figured it would come. “Naw, not really…never really thought about it.”

  “Well see, I read this book that was talking about reincarnation and stuff. It was saying that we were all on this earth for a certain purpose. You know, like to fulfill some divine plan or something.” Pot definitely made Amber talkative. “And I wondered what my purpose is. I mean, like maybe I’m supposed to invent somethin’ or be a great world leader. You know, something really wild like that.”

  “Yeah…right, maybe…” I couldn’t really think of much else to say. If the chick wanted to think she had some divine destiny or whatever, what could I say?

  “Or then other times I think, well maybe my destiny is just here in no name, living in a commune or something with Doug.”

  Doug. All three of these women seemed to have a thing for Doug. He was the owner of the no name café. A real hippie spiritual leader type. Long, white hair, he must’ve been at least fifty, but had a twenty-year-old’s body. Seriously pumped up. And he wore all this hippie shit, too: headbands, sandals, and walked around with this holier than thou look on his face. I usually tried to stay away from him. Something about him made my skin crawl. My first day on the job at no name, he handed me the apron, and his hand lingered a little too long.

  Then, he just gave me this spooky look and asked, “How old are you?”

  “Eighteen. Why?” Actually, I was only seventeen. I’d be eighteen in October, but he’d never know.

  “Hmmmm.”And then he just looked at me almost hungrily.

  I figured it was time to end this conversation, so I jumped in quickly. “So, which tables are mine?” I wanted to get away from his stare.

  “Oh, how about tables 5, 6, and 7. Those three. Yes.” He paused. “Three’s a nice number, don’t you think?”