Shoebox Trainwreck

by John Mantooth

  Then the moment was gone and I opened my eyes. The road ahead was clear. Rusty had both hands on the wheel.

  “Just promise me you won’t end up like me, Will.”

  I couldn’t promise. I couldn’t say anything.

  Perhaps I sensed even then that promises are just empty sounds. Maybe I already knew that, eventually, we all slide. And when you hit bottom, there’s nobody there to catch you.

  I watched as Dad disappeared inside my Aunt Gloria’s and Uncle Rusty’s house. I had a sense of what had happened though I didn’t want to admit it to myself. So I sat very still and looked at the shards of glass that hung in the smashed out passenger side window instead.

  “Get down,” Mom said.

  “Huh?”

  “You heard me. Get down in the floorboard.”

  I did as she asked, crouching in the dirty floorboard, my bare knees hot against the rubber floor mats. The engine ticked, cooling. I turned over so I could see the moon through the backseat window. On the way over, I had watched it. Sometimes I felt like we were chasing it and then it was chasing us. I could never tell.

  I can’t say how long Dad was gone exactly. When he came back, he said nothing, only settled in behind the wheel and turned the ignition. The noise from the engine shattered the calm night, made me cringe. I almost called out for him to shut it back off, but then I realized I was being foolish and said nothing.

  We were halfway home before Dad broke the silence. “Was a sledgehammer.”

  Mom sucked in a breath. “Not a gun?”

  Dad shook his head.

  “Thank God.”

  “Rusty decided to take apart Dennis’s motorcycle so he couldn’t drive it anymore.”

  Mom nodded as if this explained everything.

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “Your Uncle Rusty’s an alcoholic, honey,” Mom said.

  “But he said he quit. He’s never going to drink again.”

  The front seat was quiet, as the tires rolled over the road and the moon slipped past us again, and for the first time, it occurred to me adults don’t understand the world any better than their children do.

  The rest of the way home I watched the moon, wondered if there was some heaven behind it, some breathing place that would never change. I thought of Dennis. Of Rusty. Mostly, I thought about Wanda, what she must have been thinking when her father finally stopped drinking and her brother took the sledgehammer and all those bits of glass exploded in the night. Where had she been? Had she covered her ears to block out the sound? Had she pulled her covers up over her head as Dennis yelled over and over that he hated his father and Gloria had begged them to stop? I tried to imagine her, but always came back to the rockslide, an early crescent moon in a blue afternoon sky, three children sliding fast for the bottom, while the adults tried to pretend all was well and the rockslide would always be smooth and gentle and, most of all, solid, a place that would not change.

  Saving Doll

  The day Missy turned sixteen her brother gave her a new pair of track shoes. The old pair, the ones she was wearing when Danny found her out back, running sprints between Momma’s Ford and the apple tree, were coming loose on the bottom, and they didn’t fit right, making it necessary to wear two and sometimes three pairs of socks to avoid blisters.

  Her brother stood, watching her, arms crossed, nodding his head.

  “You’ll take regionals,” he said.

  Missy slowed up. “Not unless I get faster between now and Friday. Jasmine Lopez is running for Cedar Oaks. She’s faster than me. At least she was last year.”

  Danny shrugged. Ten years ago he’d run the 100 meters in Birmingham. Missy had been too young to remember, but she knew the story by heart. He missed winning the championship by three tenths of a second. Changed his life. He never said that, but it was in the lines of his face, the way he held himself, the way his eyes wouldn’t look at her when he talked about it. Then, he’d been a skinny eleventh grader. Now, he was at least seventy-five pounds heavier, and walked with a limp from a wound he’d suffered shortly after dropping out of high school.

  “Don’t you have some work to do or something?” Missy said.

  Danny laughed, shaking his jowls, showing an almost feminine red tongue. He had the smallest eyes, almost like beads, but they were sharp, and always found a way to look at you, no matter how much they might pretend to get buried under all that unshaven flesh. “Momma’s already closed the fruit stand down for the day. I wanted to talk to you about something.”

  Missy turned back to her makeshift track, ready to do another sprint. “I don’t want to sell,” she said.

  “Give me some credit, okay? You got a future. I understand that.”

  “So what, then?” Missy turned to make another sprint.

  Danny opened the door of Momma’s Ford and pulled out a shoebox.

  “Now I’m not asking you to sell. And I’m not asking you to give up your dreams like I did, but—”

  “That was your choice.”

  “Bullshit it was. You don’t know nothing. Sometimes you don’t have a choice.”

  “There’s always a choice.”

  Danny nodded his head, smiling slightly. “You keep on thinking that. One day reality is going to slap you in the face. You wait and see.”

  Missy shrugged and broke into a sprint. When she made it to the apple tree, and rounded for the turn, Danny was still there, holding the shoebox, watching her with what Missy hoped passed for pride.

  She made three more hard sprints from the apple tree to the Ford and back again before slowing to a walk. Hands on her hips, she took in deep lungfuls of the late afternoon air.

  “Like lightning, girl,” Danny said. “Does my heart good to see you run like that. Hell, if you don’t win state, it’ll be a disappointment.”

  He held the shoebox out.

  Missy didn’t reach for it. “What’s the catch?”

  “Catch? No catch. Take them. They’re yours.”

  “I don’t believe you,” she said.

  “The shoes are from me. Call them a sample of the way things could be if you listen and cooperate.”

  “Cooperate?”

  “Yeah. There’s a guy I know. He wants to meet you. He’s harmless and—”

  “Forget it,” she said. “I don’t want the shoes.”

  Danny smiled and dropped the box on the grass. “Nah, you keep them anyway. You’ll come around.”

  Missy watched as he limped back to the house. When he had disappeared inside the storm door, she kneeled beside the box and removed the shoes. They were new and expensive for sure. She tore the tissue paper from the insoles, so she could look under the tongue to see if they fit. Size 9. Perfect.

  Kicking her old shoes off, she quickly tried the new ones on. They felt good. She was about to give them a test sprint when something else in the box caught her eye. It was a receipt. $127.89.

  Grimacing, she wadded the receipt into a little ball and tossed it into the high grass out beyond the apple tree.

  Missy was warming up at track practice Monday afternoon when Coach Hudson called her over.

  He’d been a high jumper in college and still looked the part. He was tall and long and angular, like something made out of toothpicks glued together to resemble a man.

  Coach Hudson wiped sweat from his brow and peered out over the practice field at some of the boys goofing around with the javelin. “Your mother called today.”

  “My mother?”

  “She says there’s been some trouble at home, Missy. That you can’t practice today.” Coach spread out his large hands in a gesture of empathy.

  She felt herself turning bright red. Her mother had no business calling here, interrupting her life.

  Coach put a hand on her shoul
der and squeezed. “Want to talk about it?”

  “No.”

  “You better get going, then.”

  “No. I’m staying. Whatever it is can wait.”

  “Missy, you know how I feel. You take care of your family, your grades, then track. Go home. Take care of the problem. Rest. Regionals aren’t until Friday.”

  She knew he was right. Momma might have fallen or worse. Something might have happened to Danny. Surprisingly, even the thought of Danny getting hurt made Missy sad.

  “You’ve got my number,” Coach said. “Call me if you need anything.”

  “I talked to Danny this morning, Missy. He told me some things.”

  Missy put her hand out to steady herself on the peach table and turned to face Momma. Peaches had been good this year, big and soft and spotted with red the way they get when they’re almost perfect.

  Missy forced her hand to let go of the table. She stood up straight and said, “About what, Momma?”

  Momma wheeled her chair over to the table and ran her hand over the grapefruits, checking them for bruises and nicks. She decided on a dull, yellow one. Turning it in her hand, she gave it a once over, before producing a pocketknife and quartering the fruit in two quick strokes. Pink juice dribbled over her fingers. The knife disappeared as quickly as it had come, and Momma bit into the ripe flesh.

  She spit out a seed and repositioned her wheelchair, making room for a customer to squeeze by. “About you.”

  “Momma, I don’t know what he told you, but . . .”

  “But nothing. Don’t talk. Listen. He told me about the trouble you got in with that Miller boy. He said you came to him and asked him what to do.”

  “He’s a liar. Me and Tommy Miller haven’t had any trouble. He used to call me sometimes. Then he made up some story about what we did, and none of it was true. Danny must be confused. It’s not true.”

  “So you say.” Momma looked Missy over. “I see what you can’t hide underneath them big shirts and baggy jeans.”

  Missy looked at her feet, embarrassed. All she wanted to do was run because running made her feel like her problems couldn’t keep up, like the wind that blew past her was just pushing all of those anxieties further and further away.

  And she was fast too. Real fast.

  “Look at me,” Momma said.

  Missy looked up but not at Momma. Instead, she focused on a table of half-ripe tomatoes near the house.

  “You know how I feel about these things. I had Danny when I wasn’t no more than your age. I don’t want you to work yourself half to death like I did. I had diabetes before I was forty and my legs taken from me before forty-five. But I don’t want that for you, Missy. Now look me in the eye. Are you pregnant?”

  Missy couldn’t look her in the eye. It was all so ridiculous, so unjust. She’d never done more than let Tommy kiss her and put his hands on her breasts. He’d wanted more, and so had she, but she thought about what a baby would do to her life. She thought about Momma and the wheelchair, the dead air beneath her knees where her legs used to be. She thought about these things and told Tommy no. Tommy didn’t listen and kept on, reaching for the waistband of her shorts, pulling them halfway down her thighs, sliding his hand up between her legs.

  “This don’t feel like no,” he said, sliding the flat of his hand over her wet panties.

  She pushed him away from her as hard as she could. They’d been behind his trailer under the makeshift carport. The trailer park was dead, sleeping except for the occasional bark of a dog or screeching of a cat fight. Tommy fell back against his dad’s Chevy and his head struck the windshield.

  He lay there for a second, draped over the hood of the car as blood worked itself through his tangled hair and down the side of his neck.

  “Oh Lord, I’m sorry, Tommy.”

  He staggered to his feet. “Put your clothes on and don’t ever come near me again,” he said.

  As bad as that had been, this was somehow worse, facing Momma like this.

  “I’m not pregnant because we didn’t do anything. He’s lied to Danny. Or maybe Danny just made it all up. He’s trying to get me to go with some guy. He’s behind this.

  He knows I’ll do anything to get to run track.”

  “Danny wouldn’t lie to me. He takes care of me.” Momma pointed to the wheelchair, a fancy, electronic number Danny had bought for her at Christmas. “How many sons would stay on with their Momma like this? How many would work the family business like he does?”

  “The family business is drugs,” Missy said.

  Momma’s eyes got small. She brushed a strand of hair off her forehead. “Come over here,” she said.

  Missy stepped closer.

  “Bend down.”

  Tears dropped on Missy’s new track shoes as she bent over. When Momma’s open hand hit her wet face, it sounded loud, like the pop of a firecracker.

  “Don’t you dare say that. Don’t you dare.” Momma’s voice trembled.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Missy said between sobs.

  “That boy has seen hard times. He’s made mistakes, but don’t you dare make it worse.”

  “I’m sorry,” Missy said. And for some reason she did feel sorry now. Sorry that she’d told the truth. Maybe even sorry she knew it at all. Sometimes she wondered if life would be better if she just played along like Momma did.

  Momma’s voice softened and she reached out and stroked the redness on Missy’s face.

  “We’re not going to think on the past, darling. I’ve been there once and all I want is to make sure you don’t see the same places I’ve seen.”

  It was raining when Missy knocked on the door of the shed.

  “Come on in,” a voice called from inside the shed. “Get out of the rain.”

  Missy stepped inside. Once it had been her father’s workplace, and she dimly remembered the tools that lined the walls, the cutting boards and skill saws. Her father had been a cautious, exact man. In pictures he stood rigidly, as if letting his shoulders slump or his neck bend were a sign of weakness. Her memories of her father were mostly pell mell, cobbled together from stories, pictures, and indefinable snatches of imagery: him holding his hands out for her after getting out of his truck, a boot heel propped up on the coffee table near where she played with her dolls, an elusive smell of aftershave and sweat and something else—perhaps the loamy scent of the earth.

  Now the shed belonged to Danny. His own father had died in a tent in the mountains of North Georgia surrounded by cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Danny had managed to avoid his father’s addiction, but had found a career in feeding everyone else’s. He sold everything imaginable from the shed, which with some help from his friends, he’d extended by half, so they’d have a place in back to make the meth. In the front part, where Missy stood, Danny had set up some couches that smelled of mildew and urine. He’d run the cable from the house into the shed and put up a big screen television. A table with uneven legs leaned to the left between the couches. On top sat a jar filled with cash. On the wall to Missy’s right, Danny had installed a two-way mirror, enabling him to spy on certain customers from the tiny closet on the other side.

  Danny stood in front of her, holding the remote in his hand, flipping through the channels.

  “Sit down,” he said.

  “I’ll stand.”

  “Suit yourself.” Danny turned the television off. “The more channels you get, the less there is to watch.” He tossed the remote on the couch and reached for the money jar. Opening it, he reached inside and pulled a wad of cash out, dropping it on the table in a heap.

  “Count it,” he said.

  “No,” Missy said. “I came to tell you that you can’t stop me from run—”

  “Count the goddamn money, Missy.” His voice sounded low and flat, so unlike the happy-go-lucky v
oice he’d used when he gave her the shoes. Missy went over to the table and began to count.

  The bills were oily as she dropped them one at a time back into the jar.

  “How much?” Danny asked.

  “Ninety-seven dollars.”

  He shook his head. “You never could add. There was ninety-three dollars there. That’s all. How much do you think Momma makes with that fucking peach stand?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Guess.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Of course you don’t know. The thought never crossed your pretty little head, did it? You just go on along running track, never even thinking about chipping in a little, doing your part.”

  “I take care of Momma. Who’s going to bathe her if I don’t? Who’s going to help her sit on the potty and clean up her diaper when she doesn’t make it? Who’s going to make sure she takes her medicine? If it wasn’t for me, she’d be dead by now, Danny.”

  Danny’s hand shot out and shoved the jar off the table. It flew over the couch and landed with a tinkling of broken glass on the other side. “Does any of that shit bring us money?” He bore down on her, gripping her shoulders and squeezing tightly. “Does it?”

  “No,” she managed.

  He let her go. “Hell no.” Muttering to himself, he walked over to the couch and began picking up the money. “Hell no,” he said again.

  She waited, willing herself not to cry.

  After he’d gathered the money, Danny stuffed it in his shirt pocket and turned back to her, his face different now, sad, almost loving.

  “I want you to run track, Missy. I want good things for you. But I’ve got to put food on the table. So all I’m asking is for a little help.”