But this time was different because of Baron. She had seen what he was capable of when one of the workers argued about how much he was getting paid and called him a cheap ass or if a fight broke out at the carnival between roughnecks who had drunk a few too many beers in the parking lot. Violent and strong and adept at hurting someone. But he had only shown tenderness to her. A calm between them from the beginning. A calm that had grown with time as they spent nights sitting in lawn chairs and sipping beers once the carnival lights and bells and whistles had disappeared until tomorrow. Sometimes lamenting and sometimes reveling in this life they shared. A life of movement and sometimes danger and sometimes serenity. Baron telling her of his upbringing on the farm in the Arkansas lowlands. Three brothers and two sisters. A momma who never once looked anything but worn slap out. A daddy who repeated the same five or six sentences over and over. Fists in the kitchen on a sweltering starlit night in the middle of a drought and then Baron’s feet on the dusty road and the stars that carried him away from there, never to see that place again. Never a letter or a phone call and wondering when his mother had died and wondering when his father had died and wondering if his brothers and sisters still had their feet in that familiar dirt or if they too had struck out with the same intensity and chalky taste of scorn in their mouths.
And then his years in and out of jailhouses. Stealing and drinking and pushing and shoving. A young man getting old quick. I just decided I was done with it, he had told her. Just like that. So I got whatever job I could get and I didn’t never spend a nickel more than what would keep me alive. Slept in YMCAs and halfway houses. Kept that money in my pocket and I did whatever I could to keep some there. Worked on road crews and loaded freight on the docks. Washed dishes and worked on a damn garbage truck. Didn’t make no difference to me. And I looked up one day and I’ll be a son of a bitch if I didn’t have a little stash and I sure enough emptied it out on this shit show you see now. Bought it with straight up cash money from some old guy who said he’d had enough. He was going home. I didn’t have no home so I gave him half of what he wanted and he tried to tell me how to make it all official but all I said was give me the damn keys. He said what keys and I told him to just go on. It’s mine now. Damn near twenty years ago but it don’t feel like it. I’ve grown old.
You’re not old she would tell him and pat his arm. Just mean. She would smile and hand him another beer from the cooler between their chairs. She would catch him looking at the stars and had many times imagined him walking down that Arkansas road with nothing but the determination he carried. He had talked to her and she liked listening and she had begun to feel something for Baron. Something fatherly or at least like she had always imagined a father to be.
She reached down and scratched the dog behind its limp ear. Sipped the coffee and looked along the empty sidewalk.
The only thing she knew about her own father was that he was a fighter. It was the only sentence her mother had ever used in the handful of times she had mentioned him. Some kind of fighter I met in a bar somewhere in Mississippi. Or maybe it was Louisiana. No it was Mississippi over on the river side. Around Greenville or Greenwood or one of them wore out Delta towns. He was a hard man. I remember that. Not hard like mean but his shoulders and back were like concrete. Spent two nights with him and he wanted me to come watch him fight but I couldn’t handle that. Nine months later and there you were. Said with such a layer of indifference that Annette had grown up asking for this story over and over again, hoping to hear it told in some other way. Maybe with affection or a dash of the sentimental or maybe with the suggestion of gratitude. It was a come-and-go in some forgetful place but look at what it gave me. It gave me you. But instead her mother only repeated the same handful of sentences with the flat unchanged delivery. Did you ever tell him about me? Annette asked once. Ten years old and curious and finally brave enough to say it out loud. Why should I and God knows where the hell he is anyhow. I might could dig up his name if I thought real hard. It was a short name. At least his first name was. Seems like his last name had a little music in it. Or something different from what you’re used to hearing and he kept telling me it meant something. Like that mattered. He was hard as nails but I could tell in the two days I was with him, there were pieces missing inside. Almost like he was waiting for something that was never gonna happen. But don’t ask me nothing like that again, Annette. You’ll understand this shit one day. She had done what her mother said and never asked again and then the debate began in her young mind—am I a beautiful thing on this earth or was I never meant to be at all?
She uncrossed her legs. Traced her finger along the outline of a hawk wing on the outside of her thigh. And then for the rest of the morning she sat at the bistro table and barely moved as if posing for a sculptor. Turned her head only slightly when a car passed or the mutt moved from her to another customer who had more to offer. A pensive expression on her face and twice the little man in the tie-dye asked if she needed anything and twice she shook her head ever so slightly as if her neck had tightened and he believed he was being mocked in some sarcastic way that he didn’t understand. By the time the early lunch customers began to trickle in, she had decided.
Here I am again, she thought. And a dash of adrenaline flowed through her. Standing at the edge and looking out into nothing and a wind at her back that promised to carry her.
She wanted to fly quickly before she changed her mind. In the night she had promised to wait on the money to reveal its answer to her but now she felt unsettled. Unsure. Nervous about this place. She stood from the bistro chair and walked to her truck and opened the door. Felt under the seat to make sure the money was still there though the vehicle was only steps away from where she had been sitting. She adjusted the rearview mirror. Opened and closed the glove compartment. Made a quick inventory of what she needed from the camper but she could only think of things that could be replaced. Clothes and shoes and a toothbrush and magazines and a hairdryer. Nothing that an envelope of money could not supply and in her mind the blood was wiped from it and it was now the vessel into her next life. She had swapped her old Toyota for the truck when she began with the carnival and it belonged to her. She closed her eyes and mentally scanned the camper once more for necessity or anything that might hurt her if left behind. A credit card or important piece of mail or photograph but there was nothing.
Nothing, she said aloud. I have nothing.
No, she answered. You said it wrong. You have no one.
And then she realized it was not uncertainty that she felt and recognized. It was loneliness. You have no one here or there or anywhere.
But you also have no one to slow you down. She rolled down the window and cranked the truck and she thought again of Baron. For the sake of her conscience and to appease the guilt of disappearing from the lawn chair he would set out for her, she wanted to leave half the money with him. But she believed that seeing him would change her mind and by dark she would be on the stage again, waiting for strangers to pay the fee to leer and suggest. She knew she had a narrow window of time to slip in and out, as he would be busy getting the carnival up and running though he was a watchdog with the crew. Little came and went that he did not notice. Go fill up the truck with gas, she thought. And then go by the carnival. Hide half the money in the Suburban. Write a note and leave it on the dashboard and then drive and wherever you end up tonight, maybe you will be able to sleep. She nodded at herself in the rearview mirror and then she shifted into drive and drove fast through the empty streets, feeling the surge of a new beginning. But not driving too fast for the El Camino to keep up.
18
JACK EMERGED FROM THE MOTEL ROOM ON FRIDAY MORNING and into the light of day like a vision of the weak and the damned. A forearm held across his brow. Limping from a tight lower back. Bloodred eyes and parched lips. He drew his shoulders up and grimaced. Opened his fingers and grabbed at the crown of his head and the pain twisted down his spine. He held his breath and waited for it
to recede and then he returned inside. He moved to the sink and drank two cups of water. Then he picked up the bag of pills Big Momma had given him. Only four remained. Three red and one blue.
He set the bag down. Across the room the clock on the nightstand read 10:09 a.m. Ten hours from nightfall and that was when she would want the fight to begin. Ten hours to figure a way out.
What he had found in the lost hours in the motel room was fear. No matter how much he drank or how many pills he took, he could not chase away the idea that he would die in the cage if he had to fight. He feared taking any more blows to the head. He feared how slow his reactions would be if he drugged himself enough to tolerate the blows to the head. He feared where his mind might be if he did make it through the fight and woke up the next morning. Would he even know himself? Big Momma Sweet had not mentioned fixing the fight and this meant she would have someone in the cage with him who would push him to the absolute limits. An opponent who would try to break him. Scar him. Ruin him. Like she wanted to do to him. He had found fear and it had settled beside his every thought and situated itself next to the place inside that wanted to be beside Maryann. The house was gone. There was no way around that. He didn’t have twelve thousand dollars to give Big Momma Sweet and he wasn’t going to have thirty thousand dollars to keep the house from going to sale in five more days. Fear had grabbed him and fear wanted him to live. But how?
He sat on the bed and turned the pages in the notebook until he found the map he had drawn that would lead him to the shack on Maryann’s land where he had taken all the furniture from the house. Furniture that he believed he could load up and then drive around Clarksdale to pawnshops and antiques stores and take what he could get. Maybe he could come up with two or three thousand. Maybe more. Maybe then he could take what he could get for the truck. Somehow scare up six or seven thousand dollars that he could take to Big Momma Sweet and use to ask for a reprieve. Or beg for a reprieve. Somehow buy himself a few more days because that’s all he believed Maryann had left. And after he watched her close her eyes for the last time he would run like hell.
But the truck, he thought. Busted windshield and headlight. Dented and the engine hissing and smoking and God knows what else there is. All the money he had left was wadded on the floor and he eased down from the bed and straightened the bills. He had four hundred dollars separate from the twelve thousand when he left the casino. Now he was down to two hundred and five. He laid the bills in a stack and folded them. Got to his feet and put on a shirt and went out to the truck.
The engine turned in a dry and grinding whine and smoke rose from the spaces around the hood. He quit trying to crank it and walked to the motel office. When he opened the door the woman behind the desk looked over the glasses on the end of her nose and asked if she needed to call a doctor.
“I don’t need a doctor,” he said. “I need a mechanic.”
Her hair was in big curls and held firmly in place by the power of hair spray and the smell made the sick man a little sicker.
“A mechanic,” he said again. “And hurry up if you got an answer cause I’m about to vomit.”
“We warned you about puking on these premises. And you better quit running around naked.”
“Do you know a mechanic or not?”
“My brother. He ain’t no genius, though.”
“Where is he?”
“Probably asleep. He likes to stay up all night.”
“That does not matter,” Jack said and he bent over and dryheaved.
“Lord Almighty,” the woman said. She stood and craned her neck over the top of the desk to see if anything was coming out.
Jack heaved and hacked and then set his elbow on the counter. Wiped at the sides of his mouth with his fingers, his face a bright red as if scorched.
“Where’s your idiot brother?” he said.
“I didn’t say he was an idiot. I said he ain’t no genius.”
“Can he get here quick?”
“I reckon. He’s right down there in number eleven.”
“Then call him for me.”
She sat down and dialed her brother. When he answered she explained there was a man in the office who needed some help with his truck. Yeah, right now, she said and she hung up.
Jack sat on the tailgate and waited half an hour. Every passing minute an anxious fleck of time running out. He smoked a few cigarettes and drank some water and as the sun climbed higher in the late morning he began to sweat. A sour sweat, his body pushing out all the bad. When the door to number 11 opened Jack eased off the tailgate and popped the hood of the truck. A paunchy and paleskinned man crossed the parking lot and he propped one foot on the front fender while he looked over into the engine and didn’t look at or speak to Jack. His hair was wet and unkempt and he wore a loosely tied bathrobe with no shirt underneath and sweatpants.
“I thought that woman in there said you were a mechanic.”
The man reached across the engine and tugged on a plug and pulled at a belt.
“It’s the damn radiator,” Jack said. “It’s cracked and won’t hold water.”
“Then what you need me for?”
“I need you to fix it.”
“Well. You’re gonna need a new radiator.”
“No shit.”
“And I ain’t got one.”
“If you did would you know what to do with it?”
“Yeah. Put it where that one right there is at.”
Jack spit and rubbed his face with his hands. He had taken one of the four remaining pills but it didn’t keep his head from throbbing and he was hungry but too sick to eat and he needed the truck and he needed it right now.
“Where’s the closest parts store?” he asked.
“About a mile that way,” the man said and he nodded north.
Jack then snatched one of his hands. The man said hey and tried to yank it free but Jack held it. Looked at the soft white fingers and clean fingernails and then he let it go.
“If you get my engine tore down and can’t get it put together I’m gonna do something you ain’t gonna like. It’s got to be done right and it’s got to be done fast as you can do it.”
The man drew back his hand. Looked Jack up and down. “You don’t look like much to me,” he said. “But if it’ll make you feel any better, I’ll get it done and I’ll get to it right now if you got some money.”
“I got some money.”
“Good then,” he said. “Now all you need is a radiator.”
By God’s own wonder we got one, the man said at the parts store when he slid the radiator to Jack across the counter. It was used but it would hold water and Jack tucked it under his arm and hurried the mile back along the side of the highway to the motel. The radiator a heavy rectangle and it kept slipping from his grasp until he finally held it with both hands and raised it over his head and began a wheezing jog. His arms tiring and stopping to lower them. Adjusting his grip. Then raising the radiator above his head again and going as fast as he could go. This staggered routine of hurry and recovery until he finally returned to find the motel mechanic standing over the engine with tools in his hands.
He handed off the radiator and left him to work. He sat in the motel room with the door open and watched a soap opera. Beautiful women and beautiful men living their tangled lives in beautiful homes. Shiny hair and flawless skin and sparkling tears on cheeks. When the beautiful people were done for the day he looked over the pages of his notebook. The jigsaw puzzle of his life. He came to the page with the drawing of Maryann’s jewelry box and he took a pen from the bedside table. Underneath NO NO NO and the trace of dates when he had held the box in his hands he wrote This is all that is left. And he felt a small relief in knowing the furniture would keep him from her precious things.
But the red digits of the clock on the nightstand kept changing. He stood in the doorway and walked up and down the row of motel rooms and nothing made the man work as fast as Jack needed him to work. I need to eat, he thought. I ne
ed to be rolling the second he’s done. I need the strength it will take to get the furniture loaded out of the shack and into the back of the truck without another set of hands to help.
He went to the sink and stuck the pill bag in his pocket. Grabbed the foreclosure notice and folded it and then he picked up the dusty hardcover Bible and tucked the notice inside. He took the Bible and the notebook and he went out and set it all on the seat of the truck. He asked the motel mechanic how much longer and from beneath the engine the mechanic began to hum as if the noise would aid his calculation. The man had taken off his cheap digital watch and it set on the car battery. Jack snatched it and didn’t wait for the answer and then he walked across the parking lot to the motel office. He paid what he owed and turned in the room key and then he took another walk alongside the highway. He had passed a Shell station on his walk back and forth between the parts store and the motel and the sign out front promised the coldest beer and cheapest tobacco in town.
It was almost one o’clock when he sat down on the curb outside the store with a Coke and chicken-on-a-stick and a pack of woodtip cigars and a bottle of Tylenol. Fucking hurry up, he thought. Imagining the mechanic asleep beneath the engine. Imagining Big Momma Sweet sharpening her knives. Imagining Ern twirling the branding iron like a baton. He took small bites of the chicken. Swallowed five of the Tylenol, trying to save the pills for later. He then stuck a woodtip cigar between his teeth just as a pickup pulled into the lot and stopped at a gas pump.
He watched as the woman got out. The high shorts and the tattoos. Dark hair trailing down around her shoulders and the sleeves of her t-shirt rolled up. She was unfazed by a truckload of working men who began to applaud as she pumped her gas. Unfazed as a teenage boy filling the tank of his mother’s car stared until his mother called out for him to pay attention to what he was doing. And then an El Camino turned in and parked next to her truck. A slickfaced man got out and said something Jack couldn’t hear but then he heard it when she said get the hell away from me.
The Fighter Page 11
