© 2014 by Randolph Thomas
First Edition
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013950946
ISBN: 978-0-89823-304-9
eBook ISBN: 978-0-89823-305-6
Many Voices Project Award #130
Cover and interior design by Andrea Dacar
Cover photo by Kristen Perala
Author photo by Jane Thomas
The publication of Dispensations is made possible by the generous support of The McKnight Foundation, the Dawson Family Endowment, the Lake Region Arts Council, Northern Lights Library Network, and other contributors to New Rivers Press.
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Frederick T. Courtright at 570-839-7477 or [email protected].
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Minnesota State University Moorhead.
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Publishing Interns:
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For Jane, with love and thanks
CONTENTS
DISPENSATIONS
ACCORDING TO FOXFIRE
CHRONOLOGY
MY FATHER’S TOWN
MAY PRESCOTT
THE SHAME OF THE CITY
TO LIVE BY THE LAKE
HOMING
THE OTHER LIFE
THE LOST ARTS
DON’S MOM’S PLACE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ABOUT NEW RIVERS PRESS
DISPENSATIONS
Kat comes to the house after dark asking for money. She says she needs it to get away from here, but she won’t tell me why.
Sitting in her chair in front of the TV, Mom stares at her granddaughter, a scrawny body in a gray T-shirt and ragged jeans, with knotted, uneven hair. Kat says she needs cash for gas, groceries, and rent once she’s down on the coast. She smells like alcohol, like unwashed clothes and smoke.
“It’s been a long time,” I say. “Wish you’d come by more. See your grandma, see me.”
I’m adding it up in my head. This time it’s been at least six months. For all I know, she’s already been living on the coast. Where she lives, how she lives, I have no idea. I know she feels cheated by life, but who the hell doesn’t? Kat’s old enough to know you have to give if you want something in return, but she doesn’t know it.
Kat wrings her dirty hands and hums like she always does when she’s nervous or anxious. In a strange moment, Mom laughs.
“I need to get the fuck away from here,” Kat sings. “I know good people down on the coast that can put me up.” She glances around the room at Mom’s many pill bottles on the counter, and says, “This place always looks like a fucking hospital. It smells like one, too.”
I can’t imagine what Kat would find on the coast besides more trouble, or what good people she could possibly know anywhere. It’s easier to imagine her bumming around Norfolk or Virginia Beach, sniffing gas tanks to catch a buzz. It’s just as easy to imagine she’s not planning on going anywhere. When she first moved out, I was able to keep track of some of her friends, knew some of their names from when she’d bring them by the house for a free meal. These days I don’t know what she’s doing to stay alive. Since I can’t do anything about it, I don’t even like to think about it.
“I can’t spare anything,” I say.
Kat ought to know I don’t have a lot of money, but maybe she can’t think straight enough. Since my lay-off from the Hercules Missile Propellant Plant, I’ve had very little income. From World War II until the Cold War started to wind down, that plant was the number one employer of the New River Valley. Lots of folks were let go when I was, and I’m no worse off than many of them. I live rent-free with my mom, which comes in handy because she needs looking after, and I work for Gene Rainey, an old friend from the army, and do some lawn work as well.
“Daddy, please,” Kat says. “I need this money. Can’t you see it’ll save my life?”
Mom’s watching our every move like she halfway understands what’s going on, which I doubt.
“How?” I say. “Honey, if you’ve got a problem, if somebody’s after you, tell me and I’ll do something about it.”
“What would you do, run and tell Gene Rainey?” Kat rolls her eyes and I see some of her rage building up. She flips fast to the insults. How her daddy’s a pussy. He’s a sad old drunken limp-dicked janitor in a redneck bar. I’ve heard her barrage of insults so often it should bounce right off, but it’s a shock, a numb wound reopened, after months of not hearing a word from her, and after not seeing her face.
I don’t need her to tell me that I’m not perfect, that I’ve made more than my share of parental mistakes, and mistakes in general.
Mom starts to cry, so I say, “Enough Kat, this is going nowhere.”
Before Kat can cuss at me more, I grab her arms, bunching her T-shirt sleeves, and haul her out on the porch overlooking the backyard. The screen door slams behind us, and I hold her against the railing. My face is up against hers, and I taste my daughter’s terrible breath. I want to shake her, shake some sense into her because I could use her help. We stare into each other’s eyes, into each other’s anger, for about thirty seconds. She’s daring me to do something stupid that will bring down the law or bring down somebody she has hidden somewhere.
I let her go, my chest tight, having a hard time keeping a breath.
“Why don’t you stay with us a while?” I manage to say. “Why do you have to go away? Don’t go.”
I step back and glance at shadows in the backyard below us. I don’t see any movement there, but a car up the alley starts. Lights come on and it moves closer.
“At least have some respect for your grandma,” I say. “People didn’t talk that way in her day.”
“That’s just more bullshit,” Kat says. “They tell you that to keep you from expressing yourself.”
“What idiot told you that?” I shake my head. There’s no point in arguing with her. “Why don’t you try sobering up for a couple of hours?”
“Why don’t you?” she says.
“I’m sober,” I say, as conscious as she is that there was a beer in my hand when she knocked on the door. She looks pleased to have put me on the defensive. I look away, thinking if I had the money I’d give it to her just so she’d go away again, although I hate myself for thinking it.
“Gran has some money, doesn’t she?”
“She doesn’t have any money,” I say. “She doesn’t even have her wits.”
“Then you can give me something. Three or four hundred measly fucking dollars? How far back will that set you?”
I shake my head and say she’s not listening, I don’t have it. She stares at me blankly, then her eyes narrow like something has been decided. She turns and starts down the steps. I watch her cross the backyard to meet the car waiting in the alley. A gray, rusty, late eighties Celebrity. Faces I don’t recognize stare through the windows at her an
d at me.
The next morning I buy a Danish and a large coffee at 7-Eleven, eating and drinking as I walk because I don’t want to keep Gene waiting. I walk to work because it’s not far and the walking loosens up my body and my brain. Saturday is my day off from Easy Street, Gene’s hamburger joint and bar, where I do some cooking and cleaning, but there’s an auction today, an opportunity for extra cash working the drink and hotdog concession with Gene. He pays me for the auction work the same way he pays me for the rest, under the table, which makes things easier for both of us. And I enjoy the auction work, being away from the routine, usually out in the open air. Our neighbor, Mrs. Teskey, sits with my mother while I work, and I give her a little money for it. I used to think it would be nice if my daughter would step in and help, and I still find myself thinking it although I’m sure now it’s not only improbable, but a bad idea all around.
The spring morning is warming up as I walk down the sloping driveway to the parking lot at the rear of the building and unlock the gate and the back door. The rooms above the bar are quiet. The big upstairs room is full of extra furniture: dusty chairs and tables, sawed up booths and two big freezers, plus stacks of paper, Styrofoam goods, and remnants of projects Gene is always planning to get back to, but never does. Gene sleeps in a smaller room down the hall. His door is open. He sleeps with a .44 on the floor next to his mattress, which doesn’t make the prospect of waking him any sweeter.
This morning there’s a naked woman face down on the mattress beside Gene, her long hair all over the pillow and all over Gene. For a second or two I stand looking at them, letting myself be jealous of Gene, thinking about hair like that, the way it smells and feels.
“Hey, Gene,” I say softly like I’m talking to the lover I’m still half dreaming about.
Gene rolls over on his back, a pleasant smile on his face, and smacks his lips. Looking at the young woman, I try to figure out who she might be. There are many candidates, all regulars from the bar.
Gene opens his eyes and glances at his watch.
“Looks like you took your sweet time,” he says. “I told you to wake me early.”
While Gene dresses, I go outside and open the concession trailer. I carry cases of buns, hotdogs, chili, chips, and drinks from the restaurant, fill the coolers with ice and load them in the trailer. Gene steps out of the backdoor tugging at his jeans and fixing his belt. He snorts and spits in the gravel.
“My head ain’t right,” he says, eyes bleary. “You’ll have to cover me today.”
Gene smacks me on the shoulder, climbs into the Bronco, and backs it up so I can hitch the concession trailer. I wait while Gene goes back in to move along whoever she is. He’s inside at least fifteen more minutes, and when he comes out he’s with Rhonda Shelor, an old friend of Kat’s. Gene walks Rhonda to the truck. Not wanting to be told to, I go ahead and climb into the back. Rhonda climbs in, grinning.
“You’re Kat Torgeson’s dad, ain’t you?”
I nod, wondering why people ask things they already know. She acts nervous at seeing me, which makes me feel bad because I’m sure she knows some of what’s become of Kat. I’m tempted to say she isn’t any better than my Kat, but who am I kidding? Even as worthless as this girl is, she’s nowhere near as messed up.
Gene drives up the gravel driveway and along the alley. He turns right onto Third Street, crosses North, and drives along the railroad tracks. He drops Rhonda off in front of a paint-stripped two-story house with a bathtub flowerbed in the yard.
“You coming to the bar tonight?” Gene says out the window as I climb into the front seat.
“Jeff’ll probably be back then,” Rhonda says. “So next week sometime.”
I struggle to hook my seatbelt as Gene turns onto North Street, toward Interstate 81.
“You see that?” he says. “Not half bad for a forty-five-year-old man. If you’d spend more time in the bar, you’d get some, too. How long has it been?”
I shake my head and don’t answer. I know for a fact that he’s forty-seven, two years younger than I am. Besides that, I don’t need to be reminded how long it’s been, and he knows that. I’m beginning to feel like I took a vow of celibacy when I moved in with my mom.
“Kat came to the house last night,” I say, after about five long minutes have passed. “Says she’s leaving town. Heading to the coast.”
“Huh?” Gene says, staring at the road. I watch his features for any indication he knows something more about Kat, but of course Gene is the master of holding all information close. I’ve often wondered if Gene has done Kat, not that it would mean much. Gene’s done ’em all, and it doesn’t seem to mean much to him or to them.
“She’s skin and bones,” I say, my voice falling, “and talking a bunch of bullshit.”
Gene nods, seeming to consider this, and turns up his Allman Brothers mix. They are the same songs we’ve heard on countless excursions, the same stories of woe I’ve been hearing since I was a kid. An hour south, he takes the Rural Retreat exit. I’ve been there before, a little town down in a low, flat valley between two mountains, with Patty on one of our mornings of hungover explorations. Kat was just a little thing enjoying the ride in the backseat. All of us were lost, roaring down some backroad, back in the life we had before everything went to shit.
Gene turns abruptly and drives along the bounding two-lane road until he comes to a wide spot, pulls the truck over behind some trees, and cuts off the engine. Gene has a big, out-of-control grin on his face. He reaches under the seat and takes out a metal case with a magnet attached to the bottom. He slides open the case, the kind some people might keep a spare key in, and there’s his stash, the tiny triangular corner of a baggie stuffed with white powder, the tiny spoon that goes with it.
“You feel like a toot?” Gene says.
“No, thanks,” I say, thinking that one of us should be straight for the auction.
Gene gives me a pathetic look that’s supposed to make me feel bad because he’s having to snort coke alone, and of course it’s hard to turn down free coke, especially the good stuff Gene finds. I lean back and close my eyes. Gene loads the tiny spoon, snorts hard, and coughs.
“What’re you thinking about?” Gene says.
“Nothing.”
“I’ll bet I know.”
I open my eyes. Gene’s rubbing his nose against his sleeve.
“I’ll bet you don’t.”
Gene cuts his eyes at me. He has a reputation for calling people out. One time when I’d first gone to work for him three or four years ago, Gene suspected me of stealing a case of beer. He sent me upstairs after something that wasn’t there, followed me, and cornered me in the hallway. He grabbed the lapels of my coat, shoved me back against the paneled wall, and dared me to move. I didn’t. He said he couldn’t have people he didn’t trust working for him. I was fired and barred from Easy Street forever.
I think I said something like, “So what?” I wasn’t as scared of him as I probably should have been. I walked out thinking that was that, and he let me go without taking it any further. The next day he called and apologized. We’re old friends, so I wasn’t too surprised at his offer of dinner and beer on his tab. I didn’t care so much about working there; it was losing out on going to the bar that worried me. Easy Street was important to me back then. It was the center of my pathetic social life. Gene asked me to come back to work, and ever since then I haven’t had any problem with him except the occasional ribbing because I don’t party as much. But that’s mainly because I’m older and feeling it more, because I always have to think about Mom and my only daughter who is who she is, and because money’s so goddamn scarce. Once I start naming reasons, there’s one at every turn.
“Why do you do this to yourself?” Gene says. “Kat’s not right in the head, never has been, and she’s going to do what she’s going to do.”
“It’s not as easy as that,” I say.
Gene shrugs, but early on I had hopes Kat would have a better life, with co
llege and a family. Patty went away when Kat was thirteen, and I tried to keep her focused on school without forcing her to be someone she wasn’t. You can’t force someone as strong-willed as she is, that much I learned fast. But she didn’t even finish high school. When she went to work at Wendy’s, I had some hopes that things might turn around a little, but it wasn’t three months before the police came to see us. Somebody had passed several thousand dollars to an accomplice, turned out to be a boyfriend, through the drive-thru window. That was the beginning of the legal battles and a parade of counselors, psychologists, and theories. One doctor said Kat had nerve damage from snorting animal tranquilizers. Others thought she had brain damage, but I knew her brain worked better than a lot of people’s. No matter what they said, I’ve spent many nights wide awake, feeling like beating my head against the wall because many of Kat’s problems are our fault, mine and Patty’s. Mine. Kat saw me in some rough states. I hate to think how bad, and it’s no wonder she thinks of me the way she does.
Auctions are almost always sad affairs. Somebody either died or hasn’t been able to make a go of life and has been forced to sell everything. I pick a corner of the lot under some shady oaks, and set up the trailer there. I try to focus on the beautiful day, on being outside, but the guy they’re cleaning out today is right there the whole time. Gene says he looks like a damn retard and asks if we might be lost cousins. The guy is at least my age, but skinny and frail. He’s not much bigger than Kat, with heavy glasses, a patch covering a bad eye, and a hat like an English golfer would wear. Gene says he’s lost everything but his hat.
Gene’s all smiles and head nodding, and I’ve worked enough auctions to know what to do to keep us going and cover for him. Mr. Korman, the auctioneer—we call him Harvey behind his back—talks to Gene, who stands with his arms crossed and nods while I dig hotdogs and buns out of the cooler and fire up the steamer. If Harvey can tell how fried Gene’s brain is, he doesn’t let on.
“You brought them Hebrew National dogs?” Harvey says. He wears a checked suit, and sounds more like a country boy when he talks to Gene or me than he does when he talks to the antique buyers.
Dispensations Page 1
