by Trey Holt
My mother was picking up the dishes, banging and clanging, washing, rinsing. Jean was off her ass, doing the only thing she was prone to do regularly: rinsing out the glasses for our tea and wiping the table down with a wet clothe. As I stared at Lucky’s back, I wondered if he was thinking about what I figured he was…the only thing any of us thought of anymore when we looked into our neighbor’s yard.
“Henry Boy?” Lucky saidas he turned around.
“Yessir?” I said.
“Would you mind doin’me a favor?” he asked, turning back to the window after he spoke.
“What?” I said.
As he started to explain, I quickly remembered how I usually hated the things Lucky asked me to do. The things he himself avoided.
Chapter Ten
Death didn’t look near as much like itself by the time George Preston got through with it. It was part of the deal Lucky had made with him, I assume. I had heard Lucky on the phone after I myself had reticently agreed to what he had asked of me and George Preston had called. Much like the conversations had often been concerning my uncle Percy, Lucky had said more“uh-huh’s”than anything else. Between them, though, I had heard him utter that he thought George Preston could“work his magic”on the lady, use whatever he used to make her appear her most presentable. To put a smile on the face of death.
I knocked on the thick oak door after I had pushed through the double front doors and crossed the seventy-five feet of perfect paint and carpet before Celestial Gardens and the Zion Room. I had passed those doors without looking in them. I felt my eyes wanting to wander back, wondering where I would find her today. I knocked again louder, still waiting on the bastard. He usually gave me the creeps; but him on top of her in here somewhere, on top of being the only two in the building itself, made me feel like my head might explode. I forced the breath down into my chest. Told myself to quit being stupid.
What seemed like half an hour later, George Preston, in all his milky whiteness, appeared at his office door. Tears in his eyes, they spilled in two thin streams over his gaunt cheeks. His hands shook a little as he pulled a cigarette to his mouth with one and motioned me in with the other. I focused on a diamond set in yellow gold on his right hand as he lowered his cigarette.
“The solution we use back there often makes my eyes water,”he told me as he wiped the streams away with an ironed handkerchief.“Although, I guess it’s not really‘we’anymore. Have a seat, young Hall.” He blew a cloud of smoke toward an opening in his office window and straightened some things on his desk. He asked me to sit again. A third time, I would remember later. I came back to consciousness with him looking me up and down, running his eyes from my face to my ankles, even craning his neck a little so he could see around the edge of his desk.
“Would you like to sit, Henry?” he said, once more.
No, I’d rather fucking stand here in this monkey suit my mother had talked me into wearing. Told me it was the right, the respectful thing to do. I thought about how Sharon and I had shown respect to her the day before, doing what we did not fifty feet from her body, then leaving her there on the cold slab of asphalt.
“Henry Hall?” Mr. Preston said.“Are you in there, Henry Hall?”
“Yessir,”I told him.“Yessir, that’ll be fine.”
I moved the chair across from his desk until it screamed from being dragged across the floor.
“Careful,”he told me, breaking his wrist back and holding his cigarette over his shoulder like women did.“That chair came from England. It’s early nineteenth century.”
“Okay...yessir,”I told him.
“You look a little pale, Henry. Are you all right?”
Not as fucking pale as you.
“Yessir. I’m fine. I mean, I’m just not looking forward to doing this.”
It felt good to admit it. Like somebody pulled something off me. George Preston moved his head up and down like he understood.
“Yes, to be here is never pleasant for anybody.”
His eyes were burning holes in me, made me flush with my own sweat, my heart pound in my ears. His voice was strangely rhythmic, though, soft enough to put me to sleep. The spell he’s cast over his“helpers,”I thought. His charity cases.
“When have you been here before?” he asked me.
“A few times,”I told him.
“Who specif–”he said, but didn’t finish when the phone on his desk rang.
“Franklin Memorial Chapel,”he sang.“Two o’clock. Yes. That’s correct. Thank you.”
He put the phone back on its base and sighed deeply.“I’m afraid this is going to turn into a circus,”he said.“I told your father that was my gravest fear.”
And my gravest fear was realized five minutes later. George Preston, having told me that the phone call was about the twentieth one he had gotten—an exaggeration, I imagined—and that he had developed“a splitting headache,”excused himself through one of the lounges and into the back work area. A place I couldn’t even begin to imagine and knew I never, ever wanted to see, I decided as I stood at the entrance to Celestial Gardens, where he had left me.
+ + +
The suit I wore had been too big to begin with, Lucky assuring me I’d grow into as Billy Biggs stood measuring me, trying to figure out how to cut down a suit that was three sizes too big. It had been the only clothes I could remember them buying for me since I had started throwing papers when I was nine. Lucky had held the same premise about clothes-buying that he did about working. The earlier you started doing it for yourself, the better off you were. The more likely you were to make it across the invisible line of“manhood.” I stood there, still as a statue, looking at the stupid thing hanging off me in a distant mirror, remembering the places I had worn it. Sharon’s prom. Edward. Sheila. Percy. How could that bastard Preston not remember? Maybe he was just nervous, too.
From a distance, she looked just like anybody else. Or at least anybody else I’d ever seen in a coffin. A body...something that carried a soul, if we have one. Empty now, void of the energy that had propelled it forward. She was dressed in a high-neck blouse that George had obviously picked out to be color-coordinated with the burgundy and tan pattern on the wall paper. I found myself making slow, quiet steps across the carpet, so not to disturb her or anybody else, I guess. At fifteen feet away, about the time she became other than just another person, I could move no further. Her hair, even though it was fixed now, her hands, the structure of her bloated face, they rushed back to me like the train’s whistle cut through stillness of the south end of Franklin at night. I sat on the first row of chairs and put my elbows on my knees, my fists under my chin. I stared at the ugly-ass shoes Lucky had given me to go with my suit. Old scuffed wingtips that he hadn’t worn in years. So scuffed up that all the polish in the world wouldn’t have made them look new again. And I waited.
+ + +
Two weeks after I had seen Sharon on Main Street and she had asked me to go to the dance with her, I did in fact go to the 1953 prom, at the gymnasium of Franklin High School. But on this night, troubles, both past and present, huddled together in a dark corner of that gym and hid themselves. Didn’t make a sound. It was easy to pretend there was nothing else in the world but the night itself; no days that had come before it, none that would follow in its footsteps.
Somewhere between white and pink, the dress that she had bought at the department store where she worked was beautiful on her, dragging the floor just a little as we walked into the gym after we had parked. Her hair, black as coal, fell loose around her shoulders. When she smiled, her face lit like the sun rises in the eastern sky and throws light to a dark morning. Made me smile. For awhile I tried to fight it, to keep up the perpetual frown I wore on my face. I was trying to abide by the advice Van had always given me:“Never let‘em know that you like‘em. Women always want something they can’t have. If you always keep a little slack in the rope, then you can snap it any time you want to.”
But his ass wasn’t
there on this night, at least not sitting at our table. He had opted to sit with Raymond Collins and some girl he was dating at Franklin High School. He only flitted by our table occasionally, to sip from the bottle Tully had tucked away in his coat pocket. He claimed it was moonshine he had come by it in a town six or seven miles south of Franklin, and that he could get some more if we needed it. Peytonsville, just a wide place in the road besides the bootlegging that went on there and the one beer joint,“The Rendevous.” We could be there in ten minutes.
“Goddam! This is good stuff,”he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his coat sleeve and then taking another drink for good measure.“Fuckin’hundred proof,”he said almost every time he took a swallow.
“I thought a hundred proof would kill ya, or make ya go blind…or somethin’like that,”his date and part-time girlfriend Darlene would say.
“Nah,”said Tully.“Nothin’kills ya unless it’s supposed to. We all got our time and place. Ask Henry…he’ll tell ya.”
I nodded my head up and down in rote, still spinning from the couple of slugs I’d taken out of Tully’s bottle. He pushed it at me again; I shook my head as he pulled it back and took another swig.
“I wish he wouldn’t do that here,”said Darlene, trying to bring a stern look to her round face.
“What’re they gonna do?” said Tully.“Kick my ass out? Let‘em. Then I’ll get to go back to Nashville or wherever he is to live with my Daddy and that’ll last about two fucking weeks and then he’ll be lookin’to send me somewhere else…and maybe my Mama’ll finally take me back. I heard she’s doin’better.”
He had been telling me that, us that, anybody who would listen that, as long as I had known him. A month after he had moved in with his grandfather, according to him, his mother was better and he would be going back soon. Last thing I had heard Mr. Shafer had told Lucky—that his mother had moved down in Georgia somewhere and nobody had heard from her in six months. According to Tully, it was Mr. Shafer, not his mother, who kept him from going back. Mr. Shafer liked having a yardboy and go-for, he often told me. I could only imagine Tully a lot more trouble than he was help. A lot more worry than joy for an old man.
“Hey,”Van said from behind us, like he hadn’t seen us all night.
“Yeah?” said Tully.
“Are y’all gonna dance? These two girls we’re with are wantin’to get out there. Y’all wanna go out there with us?”
The truth was, I didn’t, and we had. We had been there when the doors opened. Thirty minutes before it started. I’d already made a fool out of myself before most everybody got there. When Sharon had mentioned that she was on the one of the committees that was working on the backdrop for the pictures and wanted to go a little early, I had seized the opportunity to get there, get a seat where you could go to and from the dance floor inconspicuously.
“We’ve already been out there awhile,”I told him over the growing noise, chatter and the band playing“Rags to Riches,”the singer trying to imitate Tony Bennett’s voice.
“When?” he said.
“Before your late ass got here,”I told him. I swiped the bottle out of Tully’s hand and turned up a drink.
Sometimes Van wouldn’t swing back. Let you think you won. His stare was like a vacuum, drawing in everything about you. He’d let just enough time pass that you relaxed, breathed in and out a little. He’d smile just enough to ease you, and speak in a tone, its intent indiscernible.
“Nice suit,”he told me.“Is that the one Lucky got for ya?”
He ran his hand down the lapel of his own suit, straightened his tie. Ran his hands over his wavy, blonde hair.
“Yeah,”I answered.
His, I knew, was brand new. Scoot had bought it for him just a couple of weeks before. At the same store Lucky had bought mine, just not off the damn sale rack, marked down five times because it had been there three seasons already.
“Spare no expense,”he said, averting his eyes, never letting them touch mine.“You got his shoes on, too?”
“None other,”I said. I withdrew a foot from under the table and showed it to him.
“That’s them,”he said.“Still around from the Great Depression!”
“Fuckin’A,”I told him.
Then it was like he saw Sharon for the first time, just noticed that she was sitting at the table with us. Keep a little slack in the rope. Women always want what they can’t have.
“Hey,”he said, showing all his hundred and two teeth to her.“How are you?” He made a couple of smooth steps toward her and patted her shoulder.
“Fine,”she said.“How about you?”
“Fine as wine,”he said, reaching to take the bottle from Tully again. Looking around before he took a secret swig.“Good dance, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,”she said.“Really good.”
“Good fuckin’dance,”echoed Tully. He held his bottle up, examined it. Shook it a little. I could see the flecks not filtered out dancing in the bottom in the strange light.
Darlene reached and patted his hand.
“Who’d you come with?” Sharon asked him.
His suit, the light made him look paler, his eyes bluer.“Marla Watkins. Collins is with her sister, Rose.”
“She doesn’t know who Collins is, asshole,”I muttered under my breath.
He looked back at his table, I guess to check their welfare in his absence. The band set into“Where is Your Heart?” by Percy Faith. He waited till Collins looked back, threw up his hand. Marla Watkins and her sister Rose both waved and smiled. Marla made a dancing kind of gesture; he made the same gesture back.
“Good to see y’all,”he said. Looked at Sharon.“Maybe we can dance after while.”
“Yeah, come back. I’ll dance with ya,”said Tully.“We’ll tear this place down.”
He looked at me as he was walking away. A parting blow.“Get those wingtips on out on the floor now. Cut a rug. You know they still got the moves from when Lucky danced in‘em.”
I hoped in the strange light still flickering, the redness of my face did not show. I manufactured another sound like a laugh and reached for Tully’s bottle.
+ + +
It had been long enough that the major part of the few mostly feigned drinks of Tully’s moonshine had exited my body. My head had stopped spinning. Perhaps it had just been seeing Percy—stranger than that flashing light in the dance that made everybody’s color a couple of shades different—that had sobered me up. I had rinsed my mouth out three, four times at the bathroom filling station, eaten the peppermints Sharon had given me. Then realized it was all for naught, because I could see Lucky through the window at Pruitt’s, shooting craps on the floor, his car parked just around the edge of the building.
I had pulled Lucky’s car in as careful as I could, because I figured he could probably tell you who's still it was just by smelling my breath. As I sat in the car, staring at the way the silver flecks danced on the garage wall in the darkness, I could still smell her on me. I could still feel the touch of her skin under my fingertips. See her green eyes as that light made them greener. I laughed, thinking about her telling me not to worry about kissing her in front of her house, because her father was old. She, Sheila, Suzy, they were his second set of children, she had explained to me. He’d had a truckload in his first marriage, she had laughed, before their mother had died. He didn’t get too excited about anything anymore.
Of course, I had been only half-listening to her. The way you do when you have something else on your mind…when your body has taken over your brain.
“Sharon is a year older than me, I mean than I am…and Suzy is two years younger than I am. Bobby is four years older than I am and we don’t have the same father. His father was my mother’s first husband. Well, I guess it’s really debatable whether or not she was married to him. She said she was. Other people tell me she wasn’t. Anyway, Bobby’s my half-brother. You know Bobby, don’t you?”
I nodded my head. Didn’t tell her I knew Bobb
y because Lucky had hauled him a couple of times, when the moral pressure from people around town won out, and Lucky would arrest a few guys who were hauling shine out of“Little Texas”or even North Alabama. Bobby had dropped out of Franklin High School a couple of years before and was usually just a couple of steps ahead of trouble. I knew he was Tully’s connection for the moonshine he came by sometimes.
“Yeah, I know Bobby,”I said. I kissed her again, the way we had done in the country church parking lot after we’d left the dance early. Pulled her to me tightly enough I was afraid I was going to hurt her. She moved her face away from mine, reached and stroked my cheek with her thin fingers then smiled. It was like I had known her forever. Been with her in another place and time…something.
“I really like your car,”she told me.“It’s real nice.”
“It’s fuc- Lucky’s,”I said, catching myself.
“Your father?”
I nodded.
“What’d you call him?”
“I started to call him fuckin’Lucky,”I told her,“but I caught myself before I cussed in front of ya.”
“You cussed in front of me at the gym,”she said.
“Yeah, I probably shouldn’t have,”I said.
“It’s all right,”she assured me.“I’m used to it. Bobby curses like a sailor.”
I brushed her hair back from her shoulders, started to rub her neck just behind and below her ear. Was an inch from the taste of her lips again.
“Your Uncle Percy that we saw—he’s your daddy…Lucky’s brother, right?”
“His one and only,”I told her.
