His son didn’t seem to hear the truck, had his head bent and walked along determinedly.
Joey pushed the button to lower the tinted passenger window. As his gaze lit on Larry Joe’s bare upper arms, it came hard to him that his son had grown up.
Larry Joe’s head came up, and his eyes widened. He and Joey gazed at each other for long seconds, while the truck engine idled and a horse banged on the floor of the trailer.
Then Joey said, “Do you want a ride?”
Larry Joe, who had set himself not to take anything from Joey for a long time, shook his head.
Joey saw red.
But then Larry Joe offered quickly, “I’m just goin’ down the road…to that house. My truck’s there,” he added, stuffing his hands in his pockets and averting his gaze. This was as weird a situation as he’d ever been in.
Joey peered out the windshield and saw the truck in the yard—Mason MacCoy’s front yard, which added to his surprise at finding Larry Joe out here.
Then he told Larry Joe, “Get in. I’ll save you the rest.”
Larry Joe gazed at him a second, but then he got in and Joey started off. Larry Joe sat up close to the door and poked his arm out the open window, even though the air-conditioning was going. Joey wondered what he should say, had things all jamming up in his chest. Why was it like this with his own son?
He stole a glance at the boy, seeing his handsome profile. Not a boy anymore. But still, he looked so much like Charlene. He was Charlene’s child.
“What’s your truck doin’ down here at Mason MacCoy’s?” he finally asked, mostly because it seemed so stupid to be afraid to speak to his own son.
Larry Joe looked straight out the windshield. “He borrowed it.”
“He borrowed it?”
“Yeah.” Larry Joe kept his gaze out the windshield and his hands pressed flat on his thighs.
“And you had to walk out here to get it?”
“It just sort of worked out that way.”
“Oh.”
Larry Joe cast him a hot accusing look, as if he could ask a few questions of his own. Joey immediately averted his gaze straight ahead out the windshield.
Then they were at Mason’s, and even as Joey brought the truck to a stop, Larry Joe was taking hold of the door handle, saying, “You don’t need to pull in, you can just stop right here. Thanks for the ride.” And he was out of the truck.
“Larry Joe.”
“Yeah?”
“Anytime you need a ride, I can give you one.”
“Yeah…well, thanks.” Larry Joe slammed the door and jogged off across the dry, shallow ditch and up the yard toward the house.
Joey watched a minute, feeling a confused ache and wondering what was going on with his son. Why did MacCoy have his son’s truck? What did Mason MacCoy have to do with his son?
Then he thought that Larry Joe had definitely not invited him into the business, and he had horses to get unloaded before it got any hotter, so he shifted into gear and headed on down the road.
Mason had heard the truck and gone to the door. Through the screen, he saw the kid coming toward the house and Joey Darnell driving away with a trailer of horses.
The kid stepped up on the porch, and Mason said, “Good mornin’.”
“Hello.” The kid looked at him straight, and Mason liked that.
The scent of dust and sweat came in with the kid. He wore a denim shirt with the sleeves torn out of it—popular with the teens these days, who didn’t know Mason’s generation had done the same thing—revealing the tanned, wiry arms of a young man. Sweat ran down his temples and caused his skin to glisten.
Mason said, “That’s a heck of a truck you’ve built yourself.”
The kid blinked. “How’d you know I built it?”
“I can figure things,” Mason said with some amusement. He moved to the mahogany slant top desk and picked up the keys.
When he turned back to the kid, he saw him glancing curiously around the room. People always did that. The room was an unusual sight, with solid oak bookcases filled with books lining the small walls, and that mahogany desk. People were always struck by the room, and bowled over when they saw the other small rooms, with more books stacked here and there. Many people were surprised that hicks such as his Grandpap and himself would actually read.
“Here’s your keys.”
The kid nodded and started out the door. Mason followed.
On the porch the kid paused. “Uh…thanks. For last night. We appreciate it.”
“You’re welcome. Us old folks didn’t just sprout out forty years old, you know.” He could grin then.
The kid gave a shy, sheepish grin in return, his eyes averted downward as he bobbed his head again. Peering upward, trying hard to be cool, he nodded. “Later…”
Mason followed him out the door and stood on the porch watching him walk away, watching the youthful stride and movement, while something swelled and twisted in his chest.
“Hey, kid!” he called.
The kid stopped like Mason had shot him, then slowly turned.
“I got somethin’ you might like to see. In the barn.” He wouldn’t sound eager, wouldn’t sound like it mattered.
The kid didn’t move. “What is it?”
“An elephant,” Mason said dryly and stepped off the porch into the hot sunshine, counting on the kid to follow.
He crossed the yard and the wide graveled drive to the barn. He unlatched the big double doors. They were bright and burning hot in the sun as he took hold of one to push it open. Suddenly the kid was there, pushing open the opposite door.
The barn was blinding black after the brightness of the sun, and hot as an oven. Perspiration instantly started running down Mason’s back as he walked deep into the barn, over to the far wall, and shoved open the tin windows. The kid remained at the doorway, a silhouette against dusty golden light.
Going to a large object covered by a dusty old tarp, Mason rolled back the tarp, revealing the still shiny chrome of a much dented front bumper, and further, a bright blue hood with lettering and dented fenders of an old stock car. He kept folding back the tarp, and the kid came forward as if drawn by a magnet.
“My Grandpap’s,” Mason said, when the old ’56 Chevy was revealed.
“You’re kiddin’?”
Mason chuckled. He enjoyed the kid’s expression, as, arms folded and hands tucked up under his armpits, he walked around and around the vehicle.
“When was it last driven?” the kid asked.
“Oh, a couple of years ago now. I took it out to see how it was, but I never got around to doin’ anything else, and then it needed tires.”
Mason told him how his grandfather had parked the car in here and covered it up when diabetes began taking his eyesight back in the early seventies. “Except for a few times I rode him around in it, it’s been sittin’ in here like this. I’ve kept mouse poison under the seats to keep them from eatin’ it up.”
He popped the hood, and they both peered at the engine. The kid noted the cracked hoses and corroded battery, then the kid squinted an eye at him and mentioned that the engine could be frozen up. The battery was corroded.
The kid squinted an eye at him. “You could get some good money for this machine.”
“Yeah…I’ve thought about it. But sometimes there’s things worth more than money. Maybe I’ll get her goin’.”
The kid helped Mason cover it once again with the tarp and close the barn doors. Then together they walked toward the kid’s truck.
“Well, thanks again,” the kid said.
“You bet.” Mason stuck out his hand, and the kid took Mason’s hand in a firm shake. It was easy between them now.
“You’ve made a smooth vehicle here.” Mason said, as the kid got into his truck. “She gets up and goes real easy.”
“I like workin’ with cars.”
“You have real talent with it.”
The boy cocked an eye at him.
“That’s
somethin’ to remember, you know,” Mason told him. “Think how much you like doin’ something, and you’ll also think about how you’d miss doin’ it, if you drive drunk and get yourself or someone else killed.”
The kid gazed at him, and a flush came over his face.
“Too much alcohol messes up your mind, and so does hangin’ out with people who aren’t worth your time.” He held the kid’s gaze, and he saw the blue-green eyes jump when he said, “One time I got drunk and I killed someone. It’s with you every day, and it’s a hard mountain to get over. I’d hate to see that happen to you, kid.”
The kid stared at him, then looked away. After a moment his eyes returned to Mason’s. “My name ain’t kid. It’s Larry Joe. I’m Charlene Darnell’s son—the woman you were talkin’ to at your feed store the other day.”
Mason looked into those blue-green eyes and felt as if the kid understood every bit of the real truth of what was going on, much more than Mason did.
“I know that, son,” Mason told him and stepped back. The kid hit the pedal and drove off in a roar of powerful engine.
Nine
The City Hall thermometer reads 99°
They were swarming around the kitchen, laughing and chattering, washing their hands and faces, jerking open the refrigerator and slamming it again, finding drinks to cool them down and snacks to fill them up.
Charlene stepped into their midst and asked, “What do you think?”
The three stopped and stared at her head.
“I just did it. I haven’t fixed it. It’ll curl more when I wash it.”
Rainey started forward. “You cut your hair,” as if Charlene hadn’t known what she’d done.
“What’d you do that for?” Danny J. erupted like a furious volcano. “You’re crazy, you know that? You and him…you’re both crazy!”
He yelled this at the top of his lungs, and then he slammed the refrigerator door shut so hard the refrigerator swayed and the decorative tins on top of it clanged. With a glare hot enough to melt metal, he pushed past Charlene and raced out of the room.
Stunned, Charlene looked at Rainey and Jojo, who were standing there looking back at her in much the same way. The sound of Danny J. slamming his bedroom door reverberated, causing Charlene to jump. The door must have bounced open, or else Danny J. opened it and slammed it again for good measure.
In the silence that followed, Rainey said, “Honey, you’ve just chopped it all off.”
Charlene turned and hurried through the house and down the hall.
All manner of sounds came from Danny J.’s room. It sounded as if he were tearing the room apart, slamming the closet door, breaking things, pounding the wall. She thought of his violence with the Coke machine up at the IGA, and the sound of this now scared her to death.
“Danny J.” She knocked on the door. There came a crash. “Danny J.,” she said more ardently and tried the door handle, but found it locked. “Danny J., please let me in.”
There came more thudding. Rainey and Jojo, who clung to Rainey’s leg, came to the hall and gazed at her.
“Danny J., let me in now.”
“Go away!” Something else broke, and then music blared.
Charlene pounded on the door. “Daniel Joseph, let me in!”
Distorted visions of her son slitting his wrists or choking himself with his bedsheet and the headlines in the newspaper: Preoccupied Mother Allows Son’s Injury, played across her mind.
She threw herself against the door. “Open the damn door now!”
The music stopped. The door handle rattled, and then the door came whipping open with such force that it smacked the wall behind it and swung back at her. Already entering, Charlene caught it before it hit her nose.
Danny J. was jerking clothes up from the floor and throwing them in an empty drawer. All his dresser drawers were empty and cockeyed. One lay on the floor. It looked like he had jerked everything out and thrown it all around the room. He’d torn things from the wall, wiped stuff from the shelves, and even made an attempt to tear off his bed-covers.
Charlene closed the door and then stood there. She wasn’t certain she could cope with this. Oh, Lord, tell me what to say to make it okay. Remembering her hair, she ran a hand regretfully over it.
Then she stepped forward to begin what she knew best. She picked up boots and a pillow directly at her feet. She set the boots neatly together and put the pillow on the bed. She saw he had swept his FFA awards off the shelf. The ones he’d won for his sheep and the two fillies he’d raised.
“Oh, Danny J.”
She sank to her knees and reached for the trophies. They were bent and broken. With a small shock, she found one of Joey’s old rodeo buckles peeking out from beneath a shirt. She picked it up and ran her finger over it. Usually it sat with Joey’s other buckles in the glass case in the living room. Danny J. must have gotten it…and he’d stomped on it pretty good. The loop where a belt went was terribly bent.
She wished she’d pretended not to see it. She wanted to slip it back beneath the shirt, but she had it in her hand, so she stood up and put it on his bedside table.
He was looking at her, but when she looked at him, he turned his head.
Reaching for him, she tried to hug him to her, because that was what she had always done and the best she knew to do. But he jerked away and threw himself on the bed, pulling a pillow to his chest, as if for protection.
She would not cry, please God. She put the trophies, broken though they were, back on the shelf. Then she gazed at her son, trying to figure out what to say.
“I’m sorry I upset you by cutting my hair,” she said finally. “You’re right…I am a little crazy right now.” She felt her hair, the shortness of it sticking out all over. It must have been a shock to him. She had never in her life had her hair so short.
“It’ll look better when I wash it and mousse it up,” she said, trying to sound positive.
He shrugged. “It’s your hair.”
She lowered herself to the bed and sat there for a minute. Finally she told him that she was sorry, that she knew what had happened between herself and his daddy was causing him pain, and that she knew she had let him down lately in regards to providing a stable home environment.
“Honey, I wish it didn’t have to be this way,” she said. “But it is this way. That’s just how things are. I’m doin’ the best I can, Danny J.”
He looked at her. “Are you and Dad gonna get a divorce?”
The question sort of hit her in the face. “I don’t know yet.”
“You could make him come home—if you wanted.”
There it was, the truth in his angry eyes. He knew her and Joey better than she’d had any idea he did.
“No, I can’t,” she said. “Oh, I might be able to get him back here, but I can’t make him come home, and there’s a difference.”
Confusion flickered across his face.
“Honey…your father left by his own decision for his own reasons. If I was to make him come back, things still wouldn’t be right, not how you want them to be. He wouldn’t be happy, Danny J., and if your daddy isn’t happy, none of us around him will be happy. And your daddy hasn’t been happy for some time.”
He flung his pillow aside and sat up.
“It doesn’t have to do with you. Your daddy loves you. He’s sort of mad at me, but it isn’t really something I can explain. I don’t have any easy answers for you. It would be wonderful if people fell in love and got married and always lived happily ever after, but I guess that isn’t true for everyone. People grow and change, and their needs change. There is a happily-ever-after—but it isn’t like people want to think it is. Happily-ever-after sort of comes one day at a time, coming through all the good and the bad parts of life.
“What you have to do is think about the good times and trust that everything will work out and come around to the good times again.”
She was reaching for a lot with that last part. She wasn’t certain it was true,
but sometimes mothers had to pretend to trust, in hope that it would eventually take hold.
Frowning, he said, “He was gonna get me a buckin’ horse, so I could start learnin’ to ride broncs. He said he was gonna talk to you and get me that horse. But now he ain’t gonna talk to you. You two fight every time you talk, and he’s just gone and forgotten all about it.” He pushed himself to his feet and stood gazing out the window.
“And now, because of your daddy and I, what you want gets pushed aside,” Charlene said. Why, he’s turning into a man. Isn’t that sideburns beginning to grow?
“It doesn’t matter.” His voice was thick.
“Yes, it does matter. Every person’s desires matter, and what one of my children desires matters most of all.”
Reaching out, she took his hand in hers. After several seconds, he squeezed her hand in return.
“Oh, Danny J….bronc ridin’?”
“I’ll be okay, Mom. It’s not like it’s ridin’ bulls.”
“Oh, right. Horses aren’t like bulls, even though they buck just as hard and have these hooves that can stomp you to pieces.” She smiled like mothers do, when they really want to cry and scream. “Saddle broncs or bareback?”
“Saddle broncs. Like Dad did,” he said at first eagerly, and then dropping off, as if saying something he shouldn’t.
“I know,” she said. Joey had been a high-school champion and won money to buy his first good horse for training.
“If I can get a bronc, Rick Butler will come give me and Curt lessons. Curt wants to bronc ride, too, but they can’t keep a horse over there.”
“I see.” She saw the gold flecks in his eyes.
“All the big ones started young, and I’m goin’ on fourteen, Mama.”
Mama. Her heart sort of ripped right in two at the name from his lips. She gazed into his face, so eager. Never had she felt less adequate to be what he needed her to be.
“I got to make a start,” he said, “so I can get into the finals at the end of next summer.”
Already he was thinking way ahead to next summer. She wanted to tell him not to hurry. That his future was coming toward him fast enough, that it would just zoom right past, like a car on an interstate, there and gone before you hardly knew it, leaving you wondering what your life was really about.
Driving Lessons Page 9
