by Richard Cox
“You’re leaving me by myself?”
“You said you were fine. It’s too hot to stand out here and watch.”
The Turk disappeared into the restaurant, and David looked warily at the pit. He could not understand why his dad was obsessed with this kind of work when there were so many easier ways to make money. It was insane. His dad was insane. And yet David’s desire to please the man was no less for knowing this. He put on a pair of black work gloves, grasped the handle of the top door, and went to work.
Fifteen minutes later, he was black. In the damp strands of his hair. In the potential space under his fingernails. His blue T-shirt and jeans were blue no longer. His shoes . . . Jesus Christ, they were ruined.
The pit was an oven. Sweat poured out of him as he scraped its insides, as black grease disintegrated like mica shavings and stuck to his arms, his face, to every square inch of his body. The gunk was in his eyelashes, and he couldn’t wipe it away. It got into his mouth, onto his tongue. It was in his ears.
David leaned against the scaffold and wiped his black arm on his black forehead. But he didn’t rest long, because he didn’t want to leave any doubt about his performance. He scraped and scraped and scraped some more. Thought about Alicia Ulbrecht for no particular reason. She had been in his Texas History class last semester, and he’d developed a crush on her after they talked a few times. But he’d never summoned the nerve to ask for her phone number, and now it turned out Jonathan was in love with her.
The Turk returned sometime later. David didn’t know if it was minutes or hours.
“Damn, Dave. You about done?”
“Almost. Just trying to be thorough.”
“Let me take a look.”
David stepped down from the scaffold and for a moment thought he heard an approaching train. He imagined there was a kid on that train, the one who had almost burned up inside the pit because they left him there to die.
“You okay, man?”
David looked up. The Turk was staring at him with his head cocked, like a curious dog might.
“I’m fine.”
“Did you get too hot?”
“I’ve been inside a barbecue pit. Who wouldn’t get too hot?”
“You sure you’re okay? Maybe we should go inside and let you cool off.”
“I’m fine,” David said. “Just don’t say anything to my dad, all right? I don’t want him thinking I’m some kind of wimp.”
“All right. If you say so.”
“So did I do a good job?”
The Turk kept looking at him for another moment and then peered into the pit.
“Looks great, Dave. Did you take any breaks or just work all the way through?”
“All the way through. I didn’t want the grease to get cold. You think my dad will like it?”
“He usually doesn’t look at stuff like this. He’s got the whole restaurant to run.”
“Right, right. Well, if he asks, will you tell him it was good?”
“No problem,” said The Turk. “You sure you feel okay?”
“I’m great. So what do I do now? What’s my next job?”
Six hours later David was on the way home, sitting in the passenger seat of his dad’s pickup truck. His shirt was damp, stuck to his abdomen, and the grease on his arms had faded to a ghostly grey. He smelled of stagnant water and body odor and imagined with delight what it would feel like to stand in the shower beneath a curtain of hot water. For a while his dad drove without speaking, without even turning in David’s direction, his eyes watching the road but obviously seeing something much farther away.
Outside the window, the dark city passed by.
“Tough day today?” his father finally asked.
“It was all right.”
His dad was still staring forward, looking at something that wasn’t the road.
“Tired?”
“A little. Cleaning that pit was tough.”
“You said you’d do any job I could find.”
“I know,” David said. “So can I do it again next week?”
“I’m counting on it. I’m down a cook now that Rodney’s gone, so dishwashers are having to pull double duty. I can let you work three nights a week if you want. That’s sixty bucks a week.”
Maybe manual labor wasn’t such a bad gig after all. Sixty bucks a week was actual money. The kind of money that made selling snacks at school sort of pointless.
“What’s a fourteen-year-old kid like you gonna do with sixty bucks a week?”
“I don’t—”
“You’re going to save half of it,” his father interrupted. “That’s what you’re going to do. I’m not rich. You aren’t getting a free ride to college. You put away half the money you make between now and the time you’re eighteen, and I’ll match everything you save. Deal?”
David mourned all the potential purchases he had just made with $240 a month. But he couldn’t exactly say “no” to his father.
“Deal.”
They drove in silence, through the red and white darkness of Wichita Falls, and by the time they made it home David had reached an important conclusion: He hated this town. Probably his father wanted him to take over the restaurant someday, but after this evening there was no chance that would ever happen. David was going to create a different life for himself, figure out how to have fun and see cool places and meet interesting people.
He thought maybe, when he was older, it would be cool to live in California.
15
Adam Altman was sitting on the floor of the living room, in front of the television, trying to beat his high score on Pac-Man. With a redesigned maze, washed-out colors, and blinking ghosts, the Atari version was a poor impersonation of the arcade game, but it was easy to look past these shortcomings because at home he could sit in front of the television and play for hours without having to pump in quarters. By now he had worked out most of a pattern that would allow him to consume maze after maze of pellets without ever being killed by a ghost. Given another hour or two he would likely have the pattern solved, and that meant he could dominate any challenger the next time they were all over at Jonathan’s house.
But he didn’t have another hour or two to play, because it was almost 8:30 and his dad, Jimmy, would be home any minute. The usual time for his dad to arrive was more like 5:30, but lately he’d been working late. Every night his dad talked at length about oil, how each time the price of it dropped the family lost money. He had no kind words to say about the people who ran OPEC (“those money-hungry sand niggers”) and said only slightly less derogatory things about America’s own government. Ronald Reagan drew particular ire, a President who, according to his dad, was trying to ruin the oil industry by artificially lowering prices. But this confused Adam, partly because he knew nothing of the family’s finances, but mostly because he remembered how happy his dad had been the night President Reagan was elected. There had been cheers and beers and derogatory statements about the “liberal peanut farmer,” so it seemed silly that his dad’s opinions had changed so dramatically.
But however upset Jimmy Altman was about the suffering oil business, Corrine, Adam’s mom, was even angrier. Not about the oil business itself but at her husband’s response to it. Every time Jimmy walked in late from work, Corrine was waiting to pounce. She would sit in the kitchen with her black St. James Bible, flipping pages and occasionally underlining passages, and when his dad walked in the front door, his mom would pretend not to notice. Eventually Jimmy would walk into the kitchen, and Corrine would look up at him as if he had interrupted her judicious Bible reading, when in reality she probably hadn’t even seen the verses she was pretending to read. Jimmy would crack some kind of joke, hoping to make her smile.
“So how does it end, my love?” he might ask, gesturing at the Bible. “Same as always?”
It made Adam smile to think of the Bible as a book with a beginning and an end, like any old book you might read. The Bible was much more than a story . . . it was a
book about the world itself.
His mom wouldn’t find this as humorous, however.
“Don’t you joke about God’s Word, Jim. Especially when you’re three hours late. Again.”
His dad might open the refrigerator while he composed a reply, delivering it as he cracked open a Miller Lite.
“I believe the Bible says you should honor me as you honor thy Lord, and there’s nothing honorable about your tone of voice right now.”
At this Corrine would likely shoot him a withering look. “Oh, that’s great. Keep making fun. Like that’s going to help the situation.”
“There’s no situation, Corrine.”
“And if you’re going to quote the Bible, I suggest you consider the seventh commandment.”
This would finally capture his dad’s full attention. He would shut the refrigerator with such authority that Adam would hear glass bottles crashing against each other . . . in fact one might fall to its death on a lower shelf and shatter into jagged pieces.
“You think I’m cheating on you?”
The pitch of Jimmy’s voice might cause Corrine to reconsider, and during that slight pause his dad would surely inject his query again.
“You think I’m cheating on you?”
“You never used to stay late before you moved into that office building downtown! I know you must see a lot of foxy women in tight business suits when you’re riding the elevator in the morning. Or getting coffee. Or whatever. You never used to work late before!”
“I never worked late because money was rolling in, that’s why! You know this! I tell you every night how—”
“That’s right! You don’t ever come home for lunch anymore, and you stay late, and then when you do come home, you only think and talk about work! When are you going to put your family first again like you used to?”
Here his dad would, predictably, lose his cool.
“I am putting my family first! I’m trying to keep us from going bankrupt! You see all the houses going up for sale, people losing everything, and the reason you get to stay home and read Bible verses all day is because you still have a home to live in! Jesus Christ!”
A gasp here from Adam’s mom, also predictable.
“Jimmy Richard Altman! Do not take the Lord’s name in vain! Our only child is in the next room!”
“Our only child,” Jimmy might repeat in a mocking voice. “Our only child. You had to throw that in there, didn’t you? Because it’s all my fault Christi is gone. It’s always my fault. Everything around here is my fault, even though I’m the only one doing anything to save us from ruin.”
“Money is not the only important thing in a marriage!”
“It’s the only thing keeping you off the street, Corrine! You and our only child.”
“And anyway, you’re exaggerating. We’ve made so much money the past few years there’s no way we’re going broke. You’re just using that as an excuse because you don’t want to come home. You hate your life.”
Adam would not be able to watch this confrontation take place, because instinct told him not to venture anywhere near an open battlefield (alternatively known in this case as the kitchen). But by now he was fairly sure his dad would be standing directly over his seated mother, whose neck would be craning to look up at him, and both she and Adam (and possibly Jimmy himself) would wonder if this was the time he would finally lose his cool and hit her.
“And what if I do hate my life? Don’t you think this might be part of the reason why? You never lay off, Corrine. You never have a nice thing to say. Ever.”
“That’s a lie,” his mother might say. “I support you the way a wife should. The way the Lord expects me to. And—”
Here his mother might pause for a short interval and then say the next unsurprising thing.
“No wonder you’re so touchy tonight. You’ve been drinking. I can smell it on you.”
“I am drinking, Corrine. Right this second. Or do you not see this beer in my hand?”
“You think your little tricks can fool me? It’s coming out of your pores, Jim. You smell like whiskey.”
Silence would ensue while his dad considered a response.
“If I’m going to stay at the office this late I deserve a glass of whiskey.”
“How many glasses was it? Three? Five?”
“Get off my case, Corrine. I’m warning you.”
“You mean you’re threatening me. Again. God expects more from us, Jim. We sinned in His eyes and He has punished us. If we don’t honor Him, He will punish us again.”
“How can He punish us worse than taking Christi?” Jimmy would likely say. His voice would lose some of its intensity and all of its volume. “It’s unthinkable God would take more from us. I don’t want to believe in a God who would do that. I won’t.”
Corrine might respond with a much softer tone.
“Maybe you’re having a crisis of faith. Pastor Phelps warned us this might happen. Maybe you don’t want to come home because it reminds you too much of Christi and our failure to protect her from evil.”
“No,” his father would surely answer. “It’s been four years. She’s been dead four years. She was taken from us for some reason neither of us understand—”
“I understand perfectly. We didn’t protect our son from impurity.”
She might whisper the next part, but not low enough for Adam to miss it, because by then curiosity would have overcome fear and he would be standing near the entrance to the kitchen.
“He sinned against the Lord and even though we threw ourselves at God’s mercy and changed our ways and became right with Him, there was still punishment. There was a lesson to learn. We gave our life to His only Son, but then we faltered. We did not live righteously, and He served judgment upon us.”
“Corrine.”
“Come sit with me, Jim. We must pray. You shouldn’t feel the need to work late and drink whiskey when you could be at home playing with your son, sharing an evening with your wife. We must set a good example for Adam. We’re his only chance at a good life. At a righteous life. We both know he has a weakness for lewd impulses. We can’t allow him to fall victim to the dark path.”
At this point in the argument, Adam, as he always did, would shiver at the mention of this unnamed sin he was said to have committed. But he could not remember exactly what he was said to have done. He could only picture a girl in her nightgown, the bellowing voice of his dad and the shrieking cries of his mom.
“Fine,” his father might say. “I’ll pray with you if we can move past this and maybe have some dinner. I’m starving.”
“Adam and I have already eaten. There’s a plate for you in the oven. Put it in the microwave and then come join me at the table.”
Along with the sounds of reheating his meal, Adam would probably hear the crack of another beer being opened. Or maybe two cracks depending on how quickly his mom’s anger cooled.
Then his dad would sit next to her at the table, and soon afterward Adam would hear the murmurs of their prayers. He would go back to his game of Pac-Man and hopefully solve the pattern before his 9:00 bedtime.
Except it was already 8:45 and his dad was nowhere to be—
Then he heard it, for real this time. The sound of a car pulling into the front circular driveway. A few moments later the door burst open, and there was his dad. Adam couldn’t help but smile.
“Hi, buddy. Where’s your mom?”
“In the kitchen, I think.”
His father briefly tousled his hair with one hand as he walked by, headed for the kitchen. He left a sour smell in his wake, the way he always did when he drank alcohol. Adam looked at him and then back at the television. He started a new game and began the process of mindlessly consuming pellets while he waited for the last bit of the pattern to emerge. His father’s voice was loud in the quiet house, full of good humor.
“So how does it end, my love? Same as always?”
16
One of Alicia Ulbrecht’s favor
ite things in the whole world was to look at the stars with her dad, partly because she liked to learn new things about the world, but mainly because she loved listening to his voice, so patient and intelligent and instructive. Its mellifluous sound induced literal tingles on her head and neck and back, especially late at night when he often spoke in a quiet voice, barely more than a whisper. Tonight they were out to see planets like Jupiter and Saturn and Neptune, but Andromeda wouldn’t rise till much later, and her dad said they might not make it home until like four o’clock in the morning.
Typically it thrilled Alicia to know her friends were home asleep while she was out with her dad, looking through his big telescope and sometimes binoculars at the dark sky. On these nights she felt almost grown up. But tonight her heart wasn’t into it and it didn’t take long for her dad to recognize this.
“Something on your mind, Pumpkin?”
“Yeah,” she said. “But I don’t know how to tell you about it.”
“Are you okay? Is it an emergency?”
“No, nothing like that. It’s just . . . you know I spent the night with Brandi on Saturday, right?”
“The little girl who wears too much makeup.”
“I know she’s not your favorite, but she’s really fun and a lot more outgoing than I am.”
“So what happened?”
“It was pretty fun overall. We made these giant chocolate chip pancakes and watched MTV until, like, midnight. But when we went to bed, I couldn’t sleep. It was hot and Brandi was right next to me and I was pretty uncomfortable.”
“It’s hard to sleep in a place that’s not your own bed,” her dad pointed out.
“So, anyway, I got up to use the bathroom and I heard her parents talking. Their room was down the hall. They were talking about me. And you.”
“Oh, yeah? What did they say?”
“That they felt sorry for me because my dad was more interested in chasing storms like a crazy person instead of taking care of his daughter.”
“Excuse me?”
“And they think it’s terrible we don’t go to church. Like it’s not fair to me.”
