Growing Up Dead in Texas
Page 19
That second part’s true anyway.
***
This is what Larry Monahans will tell you in the drive-in in Lamesa one day over Chihuahuas, the Sky-Vue’s specialty, the humped parking lot in front of the screen baking in the heat, the swings on the old playground up front sighing back and forth, you looking anywhere but at Larry:
• that he doesn’t have to call you Doctor now, does he? Like Indiana? Good
• that he heard you could really shoot the ball before your ankle, yeah
• that—Robert ever tell you about that guy with the two teeth up in—?
• that yeah, he’s the same age as Robert, give or take some months. That he never called him Uncle
• that—it’s just beans, mostly. Nothing to worry about— or, something for everybody else to worry about, right?
• that yeah, if it’s so important, his dad did sire him at sixteen, just taking his dad’s lead, who’d had Sterling at seventeen, young enough to scare his ass off diapers for, what, fifteen years? Robert and Parker and the little one, Jackson? Sixteen years? Shit, man
• that—was Arthur King a Civil War buff or what?
• that he never thought about that before
• that you did your homework, sounds like. He was fifteen when Stace was born, sure. Family tradition. A freshman. But her mom was a junior then already, and a varsity cheerleader at that
• that—put that in your book, yeah
• that—are you going to finish that or just push it the fuck around?
• that he hadn’t heard Pete was working the tables nowadays. But it makes sense. Every season’s a crapshoot
• that no, he never knew any of the Ledbetter girls
• that no, he didn’t know Rooster either. He a cartoon or something?
• that, okay: a dead cartoon?
• that the funnel cakes are good if you eat them fast enough, yeah
• that “Macinaw” is how it is on the birth certificate, as far as he knows. That you can check yourself. Just put it on your little list there
• that, last he heard, Sissy was off in Dallas somewhere. That maybe she’ll be in one of your classes one day, wouldn’t that be a hoot?
• that that field’s never done lower than two bales an acre since then, no
• that—your mother, she had you when she was what? Fifteen?
• that she was a cheerleader too, no offense
• that you wouldn’t even be here if he hadn’t made some certain introductions, did you know that?
• that—was there any famous Larry in the Civil War?
• that he just thought you might know, being a doctor and all
• that, speaking of, he’s got a pain right—oh, right across the table here, looking back at him, writing everything down like it matters
• that he heard you can only hunt in certain sections up there, like a lottery or something
• that when he was seventeen, he drove through that fence by the drive-in screen, on that side, going about sixty
• that they had to stop the projector and everything
• that it was that Billy the Kid movie. Right at the end of summer, almost
• that—Dylan who?
• that he’s got other rats to kill today, yeah
• that no, it’s on him
• that he doesn’t know what the song was, sorry
• that he hardly ever thinks about all that anymore
• that—was there something else you wanted to ask here?
• that he didn’t think so
• that you should tell your mom hey
• that—could you maybe write him a doctor’s note, so he could go home, read books all day or something?
• that it’s on him, really.
What Larry Monahans won’t tell you, even though both of you pretty much know this is the last time either of you will ever sit across a table from each other:
• that Stacy was five before he really became her father
• that he spent the next ten years trying to make up for that
• that she was named after his dad, kind of
• that she never knew that.
What you say to yourself, sitting at that table after he leaves, racking his pipes up on 349, announcing to all of Lamesa that he’s still here, that he’s not going anywhere:
• that you’re going to have to use a list or something for him
• that you don’t trust yourself with a scene
• that he doesn’t deserve it
• that you don’t owe him anything
• that, “bullet points”—is that a joke?
• that you’ll call him Larry anyway
• that he’ll never read it
• that—“sire?”
• that it was probably a Ford Sterling did it in
• that you know it wasn’t
• that you can make it be a Ford anyway
• that you’re not doing that this time
• that it would be perfect, though
• that nobody would know
• that nobody would say anything anyway
• that Parker isn’t a Civil War name
• that Dylan isn’t either
• that Geoff might be
• that your ankle’s fine, thank you
• that that doesn’t mean that tooth story’s real
• that you could read aloud better than anybody in your graduating class— the class you should have graduated with
• that his yearbook photo, when you turn one page back—it was all right there
• that nobody saw it
• that you’ll write him a note, sure. One about three hundred pages long, say?
• that—does he know he was almost a clown?
• that—“bullet points.” It’s not a joke at all
• that Gwen’s still waiting.
***
Walking back through Arthur King’s abandoned trucks and tractors one day before all this—1983, say—Rob King points to a truck for Jonas, says to count the faded cans on the dash, there through the windshield.
Jonas does: nineteen.
Rob King nods, doesn’t stop walking.
“Why?” Jonas finally says, stepping over the tongue of a long-dead trailer.
Rob King shrugs, says, “I don’t want you drinking, you know?”
Jonas keeps walking too.
“They’re yours, aren’t they?” he says.
“Forget it,” Rob King says, and for a while Jonas does.
But then he gets a .22 a year or two later, and a .22’s not even a gun with no cans to plink, right?
When the doors of the old truck—a Chevy stepside, 1967— are jammed shut, either locked or rusted, it doesn’t matter: the back window’s gone, cleaned out.
Jonas climbs in, takes the cans out four at a time.
He doesn’t know the whole story yet, though.
And, if he doesn’t take those cans, he never will.
***
Non-fiction, man.
Right now, and forever, Jonas is behind Arthur King’s house, smuggling the past into his present like only a twelve-year-old can, and there’s something else I know happened too, right around then. Something that had to have happened for any of this to make sense, except I don’t know the when of it, exactly.
In a real live novel, in fiction, it would be at the exact same time, wouldn’t it?
Jonas would be planting one hand on the side of that 67 Chevy’s bed, vaulting down, trying not to let all those cans rattle, his mouth set in a thin, determined line, while just fifty yards directly to the south, in Arthur King’s house, his wife Cecilia would be laying into him with her fists and arms, her feet and teeth, whatever she could reach, swing, throw.
This is sixteen years after the last time she went after him. When Sterling died.
It’s easy to let all the years and people mix together, I know.
Mouse d
ied in World War II, a hero.
Sterling shot himself the year Hot Wheels hit the shelves.
His granddaughter Stacy would hit her sheet of water in 1986, ride it like glass for maybe the length of a football field, roll to a stop in the turnrow of a cotton field, her hands still on the steering wheel, the car off, dead, the sun coming up for her through what had been a windshield, was just air now, nothing between her and the morning anymore. Or ever again.
And, in this summer of 1984 I’m reaching back for, Belinda King is in the big house, her in-laws’ house. Not to visit, but because Rob’s asked her to check on his mom.
You dress it up as coffee, though, of course.
What you’re doing is keeping an old woman from doddering off into her head, never coming back.
And what Belinda King’s thinking, sitting across the table from Cecilia King, is that it’s too late.
I think this did all happen at the same time, the same day, that one morning. It had to have.
Sometimes life, it is a story.
“Rob doesn’t even have any pictures of him,” Belinda is saying, just casual, another thing to talk about since they’re just sitting there.
Cecilia looks up her about this and there are cards shuffling in her head, photo albums spilled all over the floor, the dust still rising from them.
But she comes up with the right snapshot, the right name: “I named him that to protect him, did you know that?”
“Sterling,” Belinda says, trying to track this.
“Your silver,” Cecilia says, reaching across to pat the top of Belinda’s hand like a woman should know this, “you only take it out for special occasions. And then you put it back where it goes.”
Belinda nods like this makes perfect sense, sips some heat from her cup and becomes aware of her father-in-law standing in the doorway in his boots, like he’s just going out to the shop, or the field. To do something with his day, something small and unimportant.
But this little scene had stopped him.
He’s just standing there, studying his wife.
Slowly, she looks up to him.
“Cecilia,” Arthur King says, and it sounds for all the world to Belinda like a warning.
Cecilia doesn’t look away from him for even an instant.
“It was supposed to keep him safe,” she repeats, right to Arthur King, and he shapes his mouth around some word, some series of words to pat her down, but it’s too late.
Cecilia King comes across the table at him, finds him, driving both of them back into the wall so that Belinda is sitting there at an overturned kitchen table, her coffee saved at the last instant.
She breathes in, out, then sets her coffee on the counter behind her, lifts Cecilia King’s ninety pounds from Arthur King, who isn’t even fighting back.
The two of them—Cecilia, Lindy—fall back into the kitchen, Belinda turning to take the brunt of the impact, keep Cecilia from cracking a hip.
And still she has to hold her until the thrashing is done, shifts down to crying. To giving up. Again.
Before she leaves, Belinda rights the table. Closes the front door Arthur King left open behind him. Settles Cecilia into her bed.
“I’m sorry,” she says, because there’s nothing else.
She crosses back to her and Rob’s little house, and his truck’s pulled up to it, the door open, meaning he just forgot something, isn’t there for long.
She quickens her pace, catches him in the kitchen, his thermos in his hand.
“Tell me about Sterling,” she tells him.
Rob King stops by the dryer, sets his thermos deliberately down on it. His eyes looking hard through the rusted screen door. Where he almost was.
“He just, you know,” he says.
Belinda turns him around, holds him by the arms.
“He killed himself,” she says. “But why?”
“Lin—some people just—”
“He’s your brother, goddammit,” she says. “You know.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m part of this now. I’m a King, aren’t I? Aren’t our kids Kings? Isn’t this a King house? King land?”
Rob laughs a nervous laugh, his lips exactly like Cecilia’s in her weaker, most lost moments.
He covers it with his hand, flashes his eyes at Belinda then turns away. Is reaching for his thermos already.
“It was your dad,” Belinda says then, behind him.
Rob stops again, his back to her.
He swallows, presses his eyes closed.
Belinda lays her face alongside his back, is blinking fast to have to know this.
“It wasn’t his fault,” Rob says, his voice miles away. “His dad, my granddad, he, he—”
“And Sterling was his—he was the one he, he …?” Belinda says, bringing her hands up to her husband’s shoulders.
“Sterling told him if he ever touched us, he’d burn the whole place down,” Rob says, his voice breaking so that Belinda knows better than to turn him around, make him face her. “He—he traded himself for us, Lin, he thought he could carry it all, could forget it, that it would stop with—”
“I can’t stay here,” Belinda says, closing her eyes against the smoky fabric of Rob King’s jacket. “I don’t care where we go this time, but I can’t, Rob.”
They stand there. They breathe.
“I’ll build a house,” Rob King says at last. “It’ll be perfect, it won’t be like this at all. And he’ll never—”
But now Belinda’s pushing away from him. Turning her head like to look through the walls of the little house. Out to all the derelict equipment. All the history rusting into the weeds. To the horses, watching her back.
“Jonas,” she says. “Rob, your—Arthur. He left the house a few minutes ago, he, he,” and she’s already at the door now, slamming it open, letting the wind slap it against the side of the house, stepping out onto the concrete block of a porch.
“Jonas Allen King!” she screams, loud enough that she has to lean forward to do it, “Jonas Allen King, if you can hear my voice—”
He still can.
***
A field, some beer, a truckful of kids on a Saturday afternoon. This isn’t a book about Hot Wheels anymore, isn’t a book about phones.
This is about those kids.
Pete Manson’s little brother was Tray.
It starts in Lamesa, though.
Larry Monahans, nearly sixteen, able to pass for eighteen, crunches the emergency brake down on his dad’s old green Ford and leans forward, shuts his eyes against the cloud of dust he’s been pulling for the last few miles.
After it passes, Kenneth Brown is standing there against the cattle guard, his little sister Belinda with him. She’s squinting.
“What about Earlybird?” Larry calls out through the window.
“I look like his mother?” Kenneth says back, bringing his shoulders up, offended but not really.
“Like somebody’s,” Larry says back, nodding down to Belinda.
She’s fourteen here.
Like with Tray, later, what Belinda is for Larry and Kenneth is assurance that they won’t be drinking and carrying on.
Not two miles out of town, she looks to either side of her, Larry and Kenneth, and threads a cigarette up from her handed-down purse, punches Larry’s lighter in, just looks straight ahead until it pops back out.
“Mind?” she says, applying the cigarette to her lips like lipstick, so adult.
Larry smiles and shakes his head in wonder, drapes his arm behind her to kick the split rear window open.
Kenneth doesn’t say anything, is letting her smoke all she wants—more, even; this way, there’s no chance of her saying anything about the beer Larry’s already slowing down for, his pipes popping, his jaw set like a twenty-year-old.
Another Saturday in West Texas.
Two blinks, the sound of cans ripping open, and they’re in Stanton, ducking under the interstate, meeting up with Pete Manson.
“There even enough seatbelts?” Mrs. Manson says, leaning up from her station wagon.
On the bench seat, they’re three across, Belinda a feather on Pete Manson’s lap, his hand on the side of her thigh to keep her from sliding off.
When Mrs. Manson had crested the cattle-guard four seconds ago, her chrome bumper blinding them all for a flash, Belinda had taken his beer as calmly as if it were the offering plate at church, done something floorboard-ish with it.
Is he in love here, a little?
Who wouldn’t be.
In the months to come, the years, he’ll look back to her taking his beer with her perfect hands that day as a sign that this was their first date. That this is how things happen. How they should have happened. To prove it to her, he’ll even filch a twisted piece of lead up from the shoulder of a fast road one day, a piece of lead that could be the balance weight for a tire, could be a flattened battery terminal connector, could be a hundred things, but isn’t.
What it is, for him, is a clutch of roses, fifteen years too late.
Her son, delivered back to her. By him. To show her.
Except.
Except that piece of lead, that slug, it finally won’t be from a rimfire gun. Will be much higher velocity. The kind juries can hear. The kind they have to hear. The kind that makes everything true, never mind the blonde woman screaming in the courtroom, reaching out to touch her husband’s hand again, like they used to at basketball games, on weeknights.
But that’s all later, doesn’t matter here.
What matters here is a twelve-year-old in the backseat of a station wagon, asking if he can go with, Mom? Please?
Mrs. Manson turns her severe, insurance-receptionist face to the truck rumbling beside her, says, “You’re not going anywhere Tray can’t go, are you?”
The only answer here is no. Of course not.
Moms have been playing this game forever.
So, shuffle one kid out a back door, and then, because the station wagon’s still there waiting, let him in front, strap him into the place his big brother just volunteered.