Dispensations

by Randolph Thomas

  Gene doesn’t notice shit like that, and anyway he thinks it’s a big deal—classy—that Easy Street works the auction concessions in the first place.

  There are a few antique buyers, like always. Gene and I watch them pick disappointedly through the lots while Harvey stands behind the podium, talks up and sells each group of items in rapid-fire cadence.

  I sell gourmet hot dogs, drinks, and the special chili, supposedly Gene’s mother’s recipe. At first Gene walks back and forth shaking his head, saying this stuff isn’t worth bidding on right in front of the guy who’s losing it. The whole time the poor guy is in the back of the crowd, watching everything go, his face shrunken like he’s been eating something sour all his life. Then Gene catches sight of a couple sweet young things and starts up a conversation with them, grinning stupidly and working his way up to offering them a toot. It’s sunny and clear, and a nice breeze is blowing through the branches above my head. I feel so good I could throw off my apron and join them, but somebody has to sell the hotdogs.

  I’m loading up chili on some nice lady’s hotdog when I catch a glimpse of them milling around on the other side of the yard. They’re walking between the shabby furniture roped off in lots on the grass, about as bored as you’d expect. I know Kat has seen me because of the way she doesn’t look directly at me and because of the smirk on her face. It’s right when I have a line, and I’m waiting on several people at the same time, which is something I don’t do well.

  I watch them while I work. The three guys with her are tall and lanky. Two of them are white, one black, and they all look better off than she does: clean clothes, baseball caps, hands in their pockets, sucking their bottom lips, glancing around, more or less in step behind her.

  “I said relish,” the woman says, and I apologize. I take the dog back and bend over the condiments, hoping when I’m finished, when I’ve given it back to her and begun with the next in line, they’ll be gone.

  They’re not. She’s left the boys and stepped to the back of the food line.

  I’m wondering where Gene is, hoping he doesn’t see her, and then it comes to me that he’s gone off with the two babes to snort coke.

  “Hey, dog boy,” Kat shouts, her voice quavering at first, then singing out. “You got some weenies for these hungry folks?”

  There’s some grumbling in the line. I hand the dog with the relish to the woman who’s waiting for it and ask the next person, a white-haired old man with a cane, what he wants.

  Kat yells for me to pick up the slack.

  “Mister, you might die before you get your dog,” she says. She stands there shaking out her hands nervously. The man’s order is long, and I write it down, but it’s hard to keep everything in my head long enough to even write it. I keep glancing at Kat back there grinning and at the other people with scowls on their faces. Some of them, muttering, wander off. The guys she brought with her are with her now, still bored, and I hope they’ll drag her off. I can’t hear Harvey anymore, and I guess he’s taken a break, which means even more people will be coming my way.

  My back is turned to the crowd as I’m trying to put the man’s order together, but I hear Kat muttering, cussing me to her friends. There’s a hush over the other people left waiting. When I turn around with the food, the old man who ordered it is leaning against the counter, frail but determined. Kat and her crowd have pushed their way up behind him. After I put down the dogs, I take the man’s drinks from the cooler, and Kat shouts out that she doesn’t know who’s older and slower. “It’s a fucking wheelchair race,” she says, and there’s some pushing in the line.

  “Let me through,” a man is saying to one of the boys with Kat, and the kid shoves the man and calls him a dumb motherfucker.

  “You can wait your turn, fuckface,” Kat says.

  “What is this?” the man says, “I’m just trying to help my father. That man up there is my father.”

  “That old man?” Kat says. “Which one?”

  They step aside and let the man move up. He looks pissed and a little scared. I add up the order and take the money while Kat and her friends snicker. After the old man and his son leave, Kat steps to the table. My voice low, I say, “What the hell do you think you’re doing here? How did you even know I was here?”

  “Relax, dog boy,” Kat says. “I heard you were here so we decided to pick up some food for the trip. You can’t give your daughter any traveling money, so at least give us something to eat for the road.” I glance beyond them, around the yard. I don’t see Gene or Harvey anywhere. I see a small crowd around the auctioneer’s podium.

  “What do you want?” I say.

  She tells me she wants a dozen hotdogs, and a dozen sodas. It’ll be a bite out of my pay, but I’ll gladly buy if she’ll go.

  “Okay,” I say. I start to turn away, but they’re lingering over the table. So I say, “Why don’t you and your friends go stand under that tree?”

  “Ashamed of your own daughter?” she asks.

  They don’t move, and as I’m taking the buns out of the steamer I hear somebody say, “she says she’s his daughter.”

  I collect the dogs and put them in front of Kat and her friends, whose expressions haven’t changed since they’ve been here, and go after their drinks.

  “This tastes like shit,” Kat says, her mouth full. I turn and see her chewing, then spitting a mouthful of dog, a yellow and pink lump, onto the table. Then she takes the rest of the dogs and throws them at me. The carton holding them crashes softly against my chest and falls to the ground.

  Anger swells in me, blackening around my vision, tightening my throat and my chest.

  Kat laughs as I struggle to breathe, and I remember the anger in her eyes before she cussed me last night and when our faces were close on the back deck. I know the faces, the anger, too well, and so does she. She knows that I won’t, I can’t, do anything to her, even when I’m furious. She can do whatever she wants to me.

  Harvey struts up to the table, loud in his suit, asking what’s the problem. He’s followed by several of the boys who work for him, eager for anything out of the ordinary.

  “I said what’s going on?” he says. He’s talking to me, and glancing at Kat, who’s backing away, slipping away. The boys that were with her have already disappeared somewhere.

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  “You don’t know?” he says. “Well, where the hell is Gene?”

  “I don’t know that either,” I say.

  “You don’t know much, do you?” he says. I shake my head, but I’m not disagreeing with him.

  Gene parks behind Easy Street, gets out, and goes inside. I get out and unhook the trailer, pivot and drag it to its place. I open the back gate and take out the cooler with the items that might spoil and carry them down the steps. Gene is already down there opening the wooden door. He lets me in, and I open the coolers in the hallway behind the kitchen, load everything left over into the freezers, and dump the ice into the big back sink. By the time I finish, Gene is talking on the phone in the kitchen. From the polite way he talks, I know his ex-wife, the principle owner of the restaurant, is on the line.

  I walk through the swinging doors that separate the kitchen from the bar and booths. Teresa, a tanned, plump woman in her late thirties, is tending bar.

  “You want something?” she says. “I’ll get it for you, sweetie.”

  “Just give me a beer,” I say.

  I sit at the end of the bar nearest the kitchen, and Teresa brings me a draft in a clear plastic cup. I take a long swallow. It’s only three-thirty, but there are already people in the bar, mostly Gene’s good buddies.

  When Gene finishes talking to his ex-wife, he comes out and sits on the stool next to mine.

  “I know what happened wasn’t your fault,” he says.

  Gene opens his money pouch, thick with bills, and flips through them. He does this when he thinks, when he’s determining something’s worth.

  “Korman don’t want you worki
ng the auctions anymore,” he says, leaning back on his stool, his hand still in the pouch. I watch him say this, his voice low out of respect for me, although nobody is close enough to hear. “I’m going to have to find somebody else, but of course I still need you to work in the restaurant, doing what you’ve been doing. It’s just Korman, and you have to see where he’s coming from.”

  Gene removes a few bills from the pouch, folds and unfolds them. Working the auctions shouldn’t mean all that much to me, it was just a few extra dollars. But it’s on my tongue to tell Gene I don’t want to do any of it anymore, that my stay on Easy Street is up. If I had something else lined up, I’d say it now.

  Gene holds out three bills, all of them twenties.

  “You did more than your share,” he says.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Sure.”

  I reach out and take the money. I fold it and put it in my pocket.

  Gene looks tired. He pushes his hat back, orders a beer, and says I ought to hang out some.

  “Shit, I have a sitter staying with Mom,” I say. “If I don’t watch out, I’ll wind up owing her more than I’m making.”

  Gene laughs and swats my shoulder. As I leave, he’s heading over to one of the booths, offering to refill somebody’s pitcher on his tab.

  I’m tired from the long day in the sun, from working the auction, and from everything that went down there. My arms and legs are shaky like I’d done some of Gene’s cocaine earlier, and I’m glad I didn’t do any. The beer has helped my spirit a little and now I’d like another. I have some at home in the fridge. I’ll open one after Mrs. Teskey leaves, and I’ll sit down with Mom in front of the TV. I’ll try to take it easy, try not to worry about Kat, but I will worry about her and blame myself even though she’s hurt me again.

  Just then I see a car that reminds me of the one from last night, or maybe it is the same rusty gray Celebrity, heavy with riders. No, it isn’t the same car, there are elderly people in this car, but I start to wonder how Kat knew I was at the auction. I walk faster, but like in a dream, my feet are heavier and the sky is duskier, even though it’s only five.

  The TV is on when I open the back door and go in. The kitchen is in shambles. All the dishes, pots, and pans, some of it that hasn’t been used in years, are thrown from the cabinets. Mom’s pills are strewn on the floor. Food has been taken out of the refrigerator and poured out. There’s orange juice everywhere. Mom is in her recliner in front of the TV, her eyes closed. The metal TV table she keeps in front of her is overturned in the middle of the room.

  I go to my mom and put my hand against her cheek. She’s cold but still breathing, and she’s pissed herself. I call out to Mrs. Teskey, but there isn’t any answer. My chest is feeling tight again, pulling me down.

  I close my eyes and take deep breaths and let them out. I walk to the back bedrooms and find the destruction is less there, as if they lost interest after finding nothing. The only money in the house is a checkbook in an old desk, but Kat didn’t think to check there. All of this destruction was for naught, except for the few beers I had in the fridge, which they took.

  Mom wakes, and I help her to the bathroom and clean her up. When she’s settled back in her chair, I take a blanket from her closet and cover her. Someone knocks on the back door. I go open the door, and it’s Mrs. Teskey

  “Your girl Kat was here,” she says. “She said she’d take care of her grandmother today. She said you’d said it was okay.”

  “She took care of her all right,” I say. “Why didn’t you call me?”

  Mrs. Teskey tenses, and I tell her my mother is okay.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m just pissed off, you know, at Kat.” I open the door and let her see what’s happened.

  She comes in, mouth gaping, and I pat her arm. She asks if I’m going to call the police, if I need her to be a witness, and I tell her no.

  “Do you need any help?” Mrs. Teskey asks.

  “I’ll take care of the mess myself,” I say, “but could you sit with my mother while I go to the store?”

  When I come back with bread, juice, TV dinners, and some beer, I give Mrs. Teskey twenty bucks and remind her that I would be lost without her help. I say that letting Kat look after her grandmother would have been understandable under normal circumstances. After Mrs. Teskey leaves, I start in on the mess in the kitchen, picking up pills, and separating them. Fortunately I know them well. Mom has perked up and seems to be watching TV, so this is almost like any other night. When I’ve cleaned up her medicine and most of the mess, I go to the refrigerator, take out a beer, and pop it open. I stand in the cool of the refrigerator and take a long drink.

  It’s time for my mom to take some of her pills. I walk over to the counter remembering what Kat said last night. She was right. It’s a fucking hospital, with too much medicine for all of us, and none of us getting any better.

  I go over by Mom’s chair. In the TV light I can see Kat’s face in Mom’s. I can see Kat shutting her eyes and taking what’s offered, or maybe Kat would keep her eyes open.

  “Why don’t you stay here?” I say, just above a whisper. “Why don’t you work with me rather than against me?”

  I don’t need Kat’s insults to know my questions are absurd. Why would I still want her here? In what clouded recesses of my mind could there still be hope Kat would change for the better?

  Mom swallows her pills like a good girl, chugalugs her juice, and belches. I stroke her hair, lean over and kiss her face. I kiss her again for Kat, and both of them smile up at me like we are all on the mend, flying down the right road home at last.

  ACCORDING TO FOXFIRE

  The fall we slaughtered and rendered hogs, we were living in Pulaski County. Our place had once been a real farm, but the farmland had been sold to people who lived on the other side of the woods. Our one-story brick house, built in the fifties, stood where the old farmhouse had been. My parents bought the place the year before I was born. They’d met through my uncle, who was a guard at the missile propellant plant on New River, where my father worked in the payroll department.

  I was eight, and it would be many years before I understood my father had bought the hogs to prove something to my mother. This gesture, like many others, would fail to show her much, and the day of the slaughter would turn bad for all of us. By sunset, my parents would barely speak to each other. I would be banished to my room, a light punishment for firing a gun in the house and aiming it at my uncle. As my parents grew further apart and we eventually lost our home in Pulaski County, that day would return to haunt me again and again.

  My father was the first to admit he didn’t know much about raising or slaughtering animals, but he said The Foxfire Book showed how to do it right. He didn’t think the hogs would be a problem, and I suppose he was right about the hogs themselves.

  My mother was skeptical. When I listened at my parents’ door, I heard her say her family had kept hogs and slaughtered them every fall when she was a little girl. She argued they were a bigger mess than they were worth, and she’d thought she was through with that kind of life anyway.

  “That kind of life?” my father said. “It doesn’t sound so bad to me. Not the way you talk about it sometimes.”

  “Hogs take up more time than they’re worth,” my mother said.

  “We’ve got lots of spare time,” my father said. “On weekends you’ve got lots of time to mess around the yard.”

  “We don’t need to keep hogs.” My mother’s voice rose in pitch. “Mother and Daddy had a real farm. They knew what they were doing. It was their lives.”

  Already I divided my time between my parents. When my mother tended the flower garden by the driveway and planted hemlock trees along the embankment in her attempt to mute the roar of the nearby highway, she gave me jobs helping her dig or pushing the wheelbarrow. She taught me the names of flowers and warned me what plants I should stay away from. Some Saturdays I went fishing with my father and his friends from work. Out by the lake,
my father encouraged me to tell the other men about whatever I was studying in school or to do my imitations. The other men called me “Little Charley” after my father, even though Charles was only my middle name and not what I went by at home or at school. When I blurted out my right name, with my hands balled into fists, my father said I was taking after my mother. The other men all laughed, and my father said I needed to take it easy or I was going to bust my gut. He swatted my shoulder and showed me how to bait my hook.

  We planned to slaughter and render the hogs around the end of November. It had to be cold, according to my uncle, who was coming to help out in exchange for some of the pork. He would bring along his son Eugene, a boy a year or so younger than I was. They stopped by the day before we were to slaughter the hogs and brought a big metal vat on the back of my uncle’s truck. My father and I had spent the last few evenings building a rock furnace according to The Foxfire Book. It looked strong to us, although my uncle gave it a doubtful look, along with an almost soundless laugh, saying finally he guessed it would pass muster. My uncle was six or seven inches taller than my father, broad and muscular. It took both of them working together to take the vat down from the truck, and my uncle barked orders at my father, telling him to move this way and that way.

  “Come on, try to raise your end up. Watch out, Charley, don’t walk too fast.” He shouted over his shoulder, “You boys stay back now. Keep out of our way in case I lose hold of it.”

  Eugene and I stood back. Watching them was a little like watching someone chop down a tree and not knowing where it was going to fall, but it was impossible not to watch them. Eugene and I had played together, but not often because my uncle was divorced and Eugene spent much of his time with his mother. Eugene was a solemn kid with puffy, freckled cheeks and a crew cut. Both of us liked to play army, but my uncle would order Eugene to settle down if we started making too much noise.