Chowder pushed his plate toward her. “Have some taters.”
CHAPTER SIX
MONDALE
“Hello?”
“Hey Shirl, it’s me.”
“Jim, what is it?”
“It’s about ‘Leen.”
“Oh my god, what is it, Jimmy?”
“Relax, she’s in town.”
“Jesus, Jim, don’t ever start a sentence that way. I thought –”
“I know, I’m sorry, just thought you’d want to know as soon as I did.”
“She’s staying with you?”
“No, I haven’t seen her, but Etta Sanderson spotted her at the diner.”
“That child.”
“Yeah.”
“Thanks for calling, Jim. If you see her, tell her…”
“Will do.” Jimmy hung up the phone and turned on the light to see his daughter better. She sat on his couch flipping the channels on his television and drinking his beer.
“Hi, Daddy. I brought the car back.”
The night before, he’d come home to find his civilian car gone. After Etta Sanderson mentioned seeing her earlier, Eileen, as the thief, made sense. “Hey, hon.” He walked behind her, bent over the couch and kissed the top of her head. It smelled like patchouli and cigarettes. “When’d you get to town?”
“Couple days ago. Was that mom on the phone?”
“Said she’d been expecting you.”
“Huh. You talked to Etta?”
“Most days. You know, if she hadn’t told me she’d seen you, I would’ve put out an APB on my car.”
“Sorry. I needed to borrow it. She’s the best.”
Jimmy went to his bedroom and began to undress. He called to the next room. “You know I don’t mind you borrowing it, but I need a heads-up next time.”
“Sorry, I just figured you had the other, too. Filled the tank before I brought it back.”
“How long you fixin to stay?”
“I just came by to say ‘hey.’ I’m staying with a friend.”
“Etta said you had a boy with you.”
“Maybe, but that’s not my friend.”
“Oh? Who is he?” He was down to his shorts and white t-shirt and picking up his socks from the bedroom floor to deposit in a pile in the bathroom when she came to the door.
“Nice try. Nobody. I’m staying with Julie Sykes.”
“From school?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Nothin, I just didn’t think you kept up with anybody from school.”
“I don’t. I just ran into her and she said I could stay over.”
“Huh. What’s she up to these days?”
Eileen shrugged. “She teaches school. I’m going back tomorrow. Figured I’d come see you.”
“Lemme get cleaned up, we’ll grab some dinner.” Jimmy shut the bathroom door and stripped. He turned on the shower and placed his face into the stream as quickly as possible. He wasn’t crying. Not even close.
Eileen sat across from him in the booth just like she’d done as a young girl when he’d treat her and her sister to milkshakes after a movie or a ride in his cruiser. She sat there looking, for all the world, like her mother and his own flesh, but also something alien. Something he couldn’t begin to guess at. He wondered at her.
She pushed up the sleeves of her shirt and he caught sight of a tattoo on the underside of her forearm. She caught him staring and pushed the sleeve up all the way so he could see it clearly. Some kind of twisting of wire or vine or some such neo-pagan imagery.
“Like it?”
“No.”
She pretended to be hurt. “You probably wouldn’t like the rest either.”
Mondale smiled into his drink. He wouldn’t take the bait that easy. “Think about calling your mom?”
“Not really.”
“She’s concerned, you know.”
Eileen shrugged, then produced a cigarette. She placed it between her lips, and, as an afterthought, offered the pack to her father.
He hesitated, then reached to take one. Share what you can with your daughter, he reasoned. She lit his and then her own and they both pushed their plates toward the middle of the table and regarded each other while tasting the first of their after-dinner smokes.
Etta Sanderson cleared their plates and Eileen called out for her to join them. Etta glanced over her shoulder and said she would in a minute. “How about Elizabeth? Talked to her lately?”
Eileen nodded, exhaling a blue plume, “Yeah, Liz is good. I can’t believe I’m going to be an auntie. I’m gonna teach that kid so many bad habits.” They both smiled and Mondale left his cigarette in the ashtray as Etta returned and sat down next to him across from Eileen. Etta reached for his cigarette, took a quick drag, replaced it and grabbed Eileen’s hand.
“You ready to go back, girl?”
“Uh-huh. Study, study, study.”
“Oh, it makes me so happy to see you doing good. Honey, you make sure to call your momma too. She’ll want to talk to you.” Eileen smiled sadly at Etta. “I know how it is with mothers. And daughters. And granddaughters. You know Cyndi’s about to have her first?”
Eileen lit up and squeezed Etta’s hand. “Really? That’s great. You’re going to be a great-grandmother, that’s so sweet.”
Etta recoiled playfully. “Don’t go calling me great grandmamma. No call for that.” Etta stood and so did Eileen. They hugged and Etta returned to her shift. Eileen watched the woman work.
“Any thoughts about what you’ll do after graduating?”
Eileen looked at her father again. “Not really.”
Mondale reached for the smoldering cigarette in the ashtray. He knocked the ash loose and took a drag. “Ever think of coming back here?”
Eileen gave a low snort. “No.”
“I could get you some work down at the station.”
“Are you serious? You think I wanna monitor a radio or make sandwiches for prisoners? Really?”
Mondale’s turn to shrug. “It’s a thought. It’s a job. Might give you some perspective, some space to make your next move from.”
“No offense, Dad, but that kinda sounds like hell.”
“Think about it.” He ground out the cigarette and reached for the check. “I’ll leave the offer on the table.”
He brought Eileen back to his house and they sat on the front porch, lighting another pair of cigarettes. The dark was thick, as was the sound of nocturnal communities of the wild. Eileen said she had to pee and went inside, leaving him alone. He took a deep drag and hit that light-headed spot he was looking for. He sat absolutely motionless and thoughtless till she returned three minutes later, cracking the seal on a fifth of bourbon. She handed him a coffee mug and filled it to the top before doing the same to her own.
He sipped at it, grimaced to let the liquid shoot to the back of his gums and sting before swallowing. He’d quit smoking years ago for reasons he was having a hard time recalling, and the mixture of alcohol and nicotine was potent, though he was guarded against it in the presence of his child.
“What happened to you, Dad?”
He wasn’t sure she’d actually spoken for a moment. “What do you mean?” He didn’t think he was up for this.
“I mean, when did you get so sad?”
He choked on his drink. “That how you see me?”
“That’s how you are.”
“Well, I’m not so sure about that.” He coughed again, and reached for a new cigarette. “But maybe just having you around is reminding me of sad things.” He waited for a response, but none came. “Like maybe I miss having a family.”
“You really hit mom?”
He nodded. “She tell you that?”
Eileen shook her head. “Didn’t see it coming?”
He shrugged. “I’m not sure. At the time, I would’ve said ‘no,’ but now…” The thought faded and nobody tried to revive it. After some silence he turned to face her. He smiled. “I’m glad you came to see me. I miss yo
u and your sister.” She tried to smile back, but it was a discouraging sight so he looked away toward the tree line. “And your mother. I miss her too.”
The dark shapes of the trees sure were interesting. “I know I wasn’t much good at it, but I enjoyed being a father like you wouldn’t believe.”
Eileen coughed and smiled. “Yeah, maybe I don’t believe it.” She killed her drink and poured another. “But what do I know?”
“So what about you, then?”
“What happened to me?”
He nodded.
“Let’s pretend I don’t know what you mean. You’re going to have to say it.”
“Alright. When did my sweet, bright little girl…” Her face stiffened into half-defiance, half-provocation that way that young children’s and teenagers’ do. That look that says they hate you for pushing so far into them and that they want you to do it all the same. He knew he wasn’t up to it. He looked away again into the night. “Never mind.”
A pair of headlights cut through the yard and aimed at the house. Jimmy shaded his eyes as the car pulled into his driveway. He was aware of Eileen’s unwavering gaze on the back of his head and when the headlights died, he turned to look at his girl. Her eyes were wet just a little, but the rest of her had hardened and set. She collected her cigarettes and their cups. Rising to go inside, under her breath she said, “Fuck you.”
The car door opened as the screen door closed and a young woman Eileen’s age, Julie he guessed, got out. “Sheriff Mondale,” she greeted him.
“That you, Julie?”
“Yeah, it’s been a long time.”
“Sure has.” He was trying to recall her face from the past. All those school-girls had been the same. None so special or noticeable as his own. But now that he looked close, he thought he did remember the way her nose pointed to the right and the lopsided quality it gave her face. Especially when she smiled. Yeah, Julie, she was a cutie, he had to admit.
Eileen came back out of the house with a bag of laundry she’d done while he was at work. She kissed her fingertips and touched the back of his head as she walked by him. “See ya, dad.” She passed her friend and climbed into the passenger’s side of the waiting car.
Julie smiled at him and waved. A dimple appeared in her right cheek and the tilting of her head toward the side with all the distinguishing features made it seem all the weight inside her head had shifted over there. “Good to see you again, Jimmy.”
He smiled back at her and said, “You too, sweetheart.” As the girls drove away he felt a pinch of a disturbing nature in his belly. The way she’d looked at him and the easy, familiar way she’d spoken to him was pleasing, he couldn’t deny.
“Jimmy, huh?” he addressed himself, “You’re a dirty old man.”
TERRY
Terry had done thirty days in County once for a collection of unpaid fines. He figured it was easier to do the time than pay the money. He spent it reading the funny pages, playing hoops and doing lots of push-ups. There was a Mex named Estrada sharing his cell. Terry called him Ponch. Ponch wrote letters non-stop.
“I knew Mex’s had lots of kids, but damn, how much family you got, Ponch?”
His celly shrugged. “This is no family correspondence. I’m a published writer.”
“The fuck out.”
“No shit, gringo. You’ve probably read some of my work before.”
“I look like a reader to you?”
Estrada marked off his accomplishments on the fingers of his right hand. “I’ve been published in Leg Show, Swank, Black Tail and even The Forum.”
“Penthouse?”
“Hot Talk too. You wanna shake my hand now, pendejo?”
Terry was fascinated and urged him to recount each published letter he could remember. Over the next few weeks, Terry and Estrada wrote sixteen letters collaboratively including one eventually placed in an erotic anthology with stories that featured non-traditional participants. Their piece was a first-person account of a teenaged blonde with more natural sex-drive than the men in her town seemed capable of handling. She’d taken a journey across the country from Tucson to Tallahassee, to find fulfillment in the hands and at the feet of other erotic sojourners including a family of midgets and blind co-joined twins. Ponch told him that the American prison system was full of writers like himself and that the Russians didn’t have a corner on the incarcerated author market. Terry had entertained the idea of continuing to write when he was released, but found that the discipline was beyond him.
How had the sheriff, walking around with the broom snapped off up his butt, wound up with such wild offspring? Terry had his suspicions that he was merely playing a role in a carefully constructed ‘get fucked’ lifestyle that she would flaunt anytime the old man tried to have sway in her life, but far from minding, he marveled at the symmetry that their independent plans were so intertwined and reliant upon the other suddenly.
He sat behind his dad’s old typewriter and tried to channel Estrada. He’d written down the bones without changing the truth, but found he lacked the Mexican’s knack for words and was powerfully discouraged until he decided to include his revenge angle. Then he found that the passion flowed effortlessly and that the real erotic charge had been hiding beneath the motive, and not the cold mechanics, of her degradation.
Terry’s home-cooked connection, Earl Sutter, was out of business and probably not going to be seen for years, if ever again. Terry took that personal. Forced him to buy from Chowder Thompson, and Terry didn’t like supporting big business on principal.
So he did his part. Wrote his heart out and defiled the sheriff’s daughter in fiction and in ways at least inspired by the last few days, if not strictly factual. Kicker was, she’d probably dig it if she read it. Mondale’s little girl. Who’d have thought?
By morning he believed it was ready to send out.
Terry pulled up to the house Cal Dotson shared with his great aunt Jeannette all revving engine and squealing brakes. He blared the horn instead of pulling donuts on the lawn like he wanted to. After a ten second blast, Cal’s neighbor opened his door and shouted at him to knock it off.
“Make me,” countered Terry.
The skinny guy with the heavy stubble and stubborn patch of black hair dug in atop his head, where all others had long ago fled, closed his door behind him and started walking toward Terry who turned up the truck’s radio. Rock ‘n roll ain’t noise pollution. He revved the engine and got ready to dance.
The neighbor picked up an abandoned rake, leaning against his front porch and gripped it like a bat. Terry made a show of rolling up his window and slapping down the lock, but when the neighbor was within striking distance of the Chevrolet’s door, Terry whipped it open and caught the man in the kneecap.
The neighbor dropped to the ground clutching his leg to his chest and Terry jumped out of his truck and kicked him in the kidneys.
“Hey asshole, why don’t you make me, huh? Why don’t you fuckin make me, asshole? Make me, faggot.” The man yelled and Terry used his boot to snap his jaw shut, and the sharp click of his teeth excited him. The swallowed yell turned into a groan then into a low sob.
Cal Dotson’s door finally opened and his friend emerged with a rolled up magazine in one hand and a chicken drumstick in the other. He had apparently been in the commode. “Hoah, lookit who it is!”
Terry quit stomping the neighbor and turned to Cal coming outside. The neighbor groaned, tried and failed to stand. “Come on, we’ll hit Darlin’s.”
Cal went back for his good shirt and Terry sat in the car. The neighbor’s door opened again and a small boy wearing a t-shirt of karate turtles came out to their wooden porch and stood looking at Terry who lit a cigarette and winked at him. The boy looked at his father lying on the lawn and back at Terry who raised his eyebrows.
“You gonna do something about it?” he said under his breath from behind the glass.
The boy searched the lawn carefully to take in the whole story before makin
g any rash decisions. His eyes lingered on the rake beside the prone figure of his father. Terry smiled. Go for it. But the kid was smarter than that.
Cal came back out wearing a collared shirt only slightly too small for him and ignoring the objections his great aunt was dishing out while locking up the house. He did pause in front of the car though.
“What?” said Terry.
“Help me out.” He was stooping to grab his neighbor under the arms to support him. “C’mon, Jeanette’ll think it’s me and call an ambulance or something.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake.” But he got out and helped.
Cal continued. “One time she called information for the number of some emergency room rummy who’d glued her skin back together. Remember when she slipped off the toilet and sliced her shin on that metal magazine rack she kept in there? Her skin was so thin, the doc said he couldn’t stitch it, so he glued it shut?”
Terry didn’t remember, but helped Cal drag the man back to his porch where he mussed the little boy’s hair. “Yeah, she ran that phone bill way the fuck up explaining to the Indian lady on the other end that her skin was like tissue paper. So, yeah, that’s when I took the batteries out of the mobile and re-installed that rotary in her room. She can’t keep a train of thought long enough to dial a number with that thing, but I’ll tell you what, that doctor’s saved me a whole lotta bill dodging. I ain’t been to the emergency room with her since. You gotta look for the stuff that says ‘non-toxic’ which means it’s no good for anything else, but it holds old ladies together okay. I bet if you was to make all the glue and duct tape on that old bat suddenly disappear, she’d fall apart a second later.”
The kid glared at Terry after helping his father lower himself gently to a seated position. Terry winked.
When they were on the road, Cal said, “Where the shit you been? You know I nearly got took last week at this mom n pop I hit in Neosho. Son of a bitch come at me with a knife. Surprised the shit outta me. Lookidit.” Cal pulled up his shirt revealing three angry red marks pocking the otherwise immaculate pale, doughy expanse of his torso. Sure enough, there was a clear gel crust covering all three and flaking at the edges. “Stabbed me.”
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