A Place Called Wiregrass

by Michael Morris

  “Working yourself over that Negra house, I reckon.” Another moan and a drawn-out slurp of coffee followed.

  I looked down at the once white floor. A dead roach rested in the corner. “I best be going.”

  She coughed and played with the white sailor collar of her duster. “What you got there?”

  The bright golden flowers seemed out of place in the brown-paneled office. “Here. These are for you.” I handed over the flowers, tied together with a stray piece of ribbon left over from Cher’s birthday party.

  “Well, I do know. For me?” She widened her tiny eyes, making them appear normal-sized. Anyone who walked in would’ve guessed she had just won a sweepstakes. “Ain’t none my tenants brung me flowers before.”

  I watched from my parked car while she sniffed the flowers. My neighbors lined their vehicles up next to her office and waited to exit Westgate. I cranked my car and added the faded Monte Carlo to the lineup. Ready to face the bright world.

  The car-wash business was Cher’s idea, and soon she and Laurel had all the business they could handle. They started with Patricia’s and Miss Claudia’s cars, and before long vehicles were lined up on the cracked asphalt in front of our trailer.

  “Miss Trellis is going to have a fit,” I said and counted seven cars.

  “I’ve already thought of that,” Cher said. She smiled and pulled the green wad of cash from the back pocket of her cut-off jeans. “I told her we’ll wash her minivan for free once a week.”

  I didn’t say it, but I wished I was as bold as Cher. She pulled in good money with that business. Only thing was I had to make her split the revenue evenly with Laurel. At first Cher put in to pay Laurel a percentage of the business, arguing that it was her idea to start with.

  Since Kasi worked the night shift at Graton Electronics, she was around to keep an eye on the girls. The summer routine became standard. Kasi would supervise the girls from sunup to one in the afternoon and then drop them off at the public swimming pool, five blocks from Miss Claudia’s. At five I’d pick them up.

  Fearing someone might actually witness her getting into my paint-starved car, Cher insisted that I pick them up at the softball field next to the swimming pool. “You’re late the first time and I’m pulling right up to the front gate,” I warned. But every day she and Laurel would appear around the corner of the metal porta-potties right at five, their hair slicked back and their tanned feet protected by plastic flip-flops.

  One afternoon during late June, while Miss Claudia napped, I slipped away to make my credit record clean again. The twenty-five dollars I owed the skating rink for Cher’s birthday game was one worry I’d be glad to have off my shoulders.

  The red-and-white metal building looked so different during the daylight hours. Rust collected on the grooves around the glassed front doors, and the dirt parking lot was littered with crushed soda cans, cigarette butts, and a beer bottle or two.

  Hoping to prevent future customers from ending up with a flat tire, I kicked a brown beer bottle towards the woods. A loud thud rang out from the rows of pine trees. But my eyes remained on the spot of sand my shoe had dug up. Shimmering against the sunshine was the edge of a photograph. A clump of brown sand and two crushed cigarette butts hid the rest of the picture.

  Thinking some poor child had used his drink and candy money to sit inside that overpriced picture booth and then lost his purchase, I pulled the edge of the photo out of the sand. I fanned the strip of paper, and specks of sand soared in the air. I kept walking towards the glass door, shaking the photograph, and wondering if the boy-looking woman inside the rink would even bother to find the celluloid’s proper owner.

  My hand was on the glassed entrance door when I looked down to inspect my find. Staring up at me in Technicolor was Cher and the face I had cursed thirteen years earlier. The four-strip of pictures showed different expressions, but there was no denying the smirk that connected to the darkest period of my life.

  His hair was cut short, and if I hadn’t known better I would have guessed he was somebody respectable, like a salesman or a banker. Not a convict who peddled drugs, pushed his own wife into prostitution, and abandoned his baby daughter in a crack house. The same baby daughter who looked up at me from the piece of faded film.

  The muscles in my calves tightened, and I leaned against the rusty metal siding. He’s here, I kept repeating to myself, staring into his face. My mouth opened, and soon a mist of spit covered LaRue’s smile.

  Nineteen

  The little woman with purple glasses had already thanked me for paying the twenty-five-dollar debt. Suddenly I realized that in the stillness of the empty skating rink I could not use noise as an excuse for my loss of words. The only noise I heard was a man advertising new microwaves on her portable radio. She stood still looking at me like she thought I might ask for change.

  “Oh, yeah, thanks,” I said and turned to go. When I reached the glass door, I pulled the picture out of my jeans pocket. I held the frayed edge up to the little woman. “Umm. Does this man come in here a lot?”

  The little woman ran her hand through her short hair, and it showed no aftereffects from her jostling. “He came in here maybe once or twice. Kinda hard to keep tabs on everybody and be the deejay at the same time.”

  “Yeah, I bet,” I said, thinking that I sounded like a detective. “Can you think of the last time he was here?”

  She turned and began pulling compact discs out of a wooden drawer. “Maybe a week or so. Listen, we just can’t police every little nitpicking thing. People expect us to be full-time baby-sitters.”

  “No, I’m not saying that. Just wondering is all. So thanks, hear?”

  Before I got to the edge of the black foyer mat, I heard her. “Then I guess he’s really not her brother.”

  I glared at this little woman who was wearing the same red T-shirt she had worn during Cher’s party. “No, he’s not. And I’ll give you another twenty-five dollars if you call me the next time he walks in here.”

  The next week the photo of Cher and LaRue stayed in the forefront of my mind. Each night I would torture myself with the truth. It became a ritual. I’d lock my bedroom door, cradle the gray shoebox, and pull the faded photo from the left black shoe. And then looking into his energetic eyes, the ugliness of LaRue’s world would pound me again with a fist full of hopelessness and fear.

  Nothing seemed to pull me out of my misery. Gerald’s calls were met with an I’m-too-busy tone of voice, and Miss Claudia’s rescue home was nothing more to me than a rich woman’s fantasy.

  Even when Miss Claudia held up the newspaper with the photo of her standing before the city council, I only said, “That’s nice,” and continued dusting the porcelain dogs in the living room.

  “Well, my land, Erma Lee,” she said, creasing the paper for clipping, “you could crack a smile for me.”

  I never told Gerald or Miss Claudia anything about my discovery at the skating rink. They could never understand all I had to lose, I convinced myself. Repairing automobiles and planning rescue homes were top items on their agendas. “Just stop worrying about it and pray,” they would most likely tell me. And I did pray. But another part of me wanted to prepare a battle plan. Just like those blasts I had read about on the computer, the ones I worried would take over Miss Claudia’s body, LaRue was a blast on my peace of mind.

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you had a man on the side,” Gerald said with a chuckle.

  I managed to hold the phone receiver and turn up Cher’s radio louder so she would not hear my words. “Now, you know that’s a lie,” I said, stretching the phone cord to the fullest length. “Miss Claudia needs me to help stuff some fliers she’s sending out. Something about a fund-raiser for the home.”

  “Umm.” He sighed and then was silent. If he was trying to make me uncomfortable, it worked.

  “Maybe tomorrow night?”

  “I’ve done promised Marcie I’d go eat with her. You want to go?”

  �
�No, no. I think you need to spend time with them on your own. It’s fine. Really.”

  “Hey, maybe Cher and you can stop by tomorrow. Maybe I can talk Donnie into letting Cher ride.”

  I never made any promises before hanging up the phone. My mind and stomach were churning in anticipation of the butt-chewing I was fixing to give.

  My life was beginning to close up again just like it had before I moved to Wiregrass. Secrets and half-truths. Gerald would never know that the little woman from the skating rink had called just before him. He did not know that I was about to see for myself the spell LaRue cast upon my Cher. The sharp labor-intensive pains knotted my insides into a ball, and my heart beat so fast I thought it might rip wide open. A birth of deep-seated bitterness was soon to be delivered.

  Slamming car doors, giggles, and the occasional wave of music from the skating-rink doors were my only company while waiting for LaRue. Crouching in the piney woods next to the metal building, I felt my breathing became deep and burdensome. On bended knee, I watched the red brake lights of various trucks and cars as peaceful parents dropped off their children into the safety of the metal building. Am I out of my mind to be doing this? I wondered.

  Then the horror of getting caught hiding next to the skating rink popped into my head. A child molester, any observer would think. Me, a grown woman, sitting in the woods leering at unsuspecting children as they entered the glass door sticking dollar bills into their pockets and carrying skates over their shoulders.

  As easy as a movie runs across a drive-in screen, the words in Suzette’s letter inched along the ridges of the skating-rink wall. My breathing slowed, and I pictured myself as a lioness I had seen on the Discovery channel, still and cautious. I had no choice but to take it slow. Cher would rebel for sure if I stormed out and chewed into LaRue for everything under the sun.

  A cramp formed in my right calf. When I stood to shake my leg, they walked out. He had the same cocky strut I remembered when Suzette first brought him to the house. His shoulders were pulled tightly back, and his arms slightly bowed. And he was swinging his keys on his thumb like he had no care in the world. Prison had made him bigger. He was more muscled than the lanky young man I remembered. His tight black T-shirt and jeans made every muscle look rock-hard. The black work boots seemed strange on him. I had never known him to work a full-time job longer than eight months.

  When Cher put her arm around his waist and he said something I couldn’t understand, I wanted to jump out and scream. But I just froze as they walked closer to me. What would he do if I made myself known?

  All he knew about me was what Suzette told him and what he witnessed during the fewer than five meals he shared at my table in Cross City. The part of my life he knew were the chapters I hated. The one-time Edith Bunker clone who took it on the chin more than a few times. All LaRue knew about me was that I never had the courage to risk facing anything other than the misery, which was too convenient to depart.

  He paused to light a cigarette and blew the smoke into the heavy night air. The red tip glowed as hot as the fiery hell I pictured him facing. They stopped by a white van with a paint-spotted ladder attached to the top. Most likely living meal to meal by ripping off unsuspecting widows. Promising to paint their home and then, after getting a down payment for supplies, fleeing to the next town. Empty promises that Cher would now face.

  His van engine was turning over for the second time when I fled the piney woods, heading back towards my car parked on the other side at the 7-11 store. Briar bushes pulled hard to hold the legs of my jeans, but I fought back and managed not to lose much time. My feet did not stop until I found the black asphalt of the 7-11. With the exception of a little tow-headed boy hanging out of a car window holding a robot soldier, no one even noticed me.

  I quickly cranked my car and, when I stomped down hard on the gas pedal, noticed the green sticker weeds that dotted my jeans. The squealing of my tires was an accident, but I knew as soon as I pulled onto the highway I would have to gas it to catch them. Soon the white van with the ladder and the dent on the driver’s side was in my sight. I squinted my eyes for a license plate, not knowing what I would do with the number. But I felt obligated to gather the information all the same. Typical, LaRue placed a “Lost Tag” notice in the back of the van window. The black childlike letters placed on brown cardboard made him seem all the more trashy.

  The window they sat next to at McDonald’s had a film on the bottom portion. In the parking lot of a strip mall next door, I sat in my Monte Carlo and mentally scripted out their conversation. “I’m making good money now. I want you to come live with me. You belong with your real daddy. Wouldn’t you rather live with me in my big nice home?” Lies LaRue shared that clouded Cher’s mind just like the window film that blocked my view of them.

  The white van pulled up to the skating rink thirty minutes before I usually picked up Cher and Laurel. I circled the 7-11 store parking lot to give him enough time to drop her off. When I pulled out onto the highway, LaRue was stopped at the edge of the skating rink waiting to get back on the highway. I slowed my car and let him pull out before me. The white van bounced when he directed it onto the road and then sped off. My rubber-soled work shoes slammed down on the gas pedal. I swerved in and around truckers to keep the swaying ladder in my view. At the next intersection I saw him in the turning lane and followed.

  The Garland Motel was as dreary of a place as anyone could imagine. The long row of rooms connected to a main glass office. The buildings were painted a strawberry pink color and made me wish for a bottle of Pepto-Bismol. A couple of the doors were open, and I could see TV sets glowing in the darkness. While I watched from my car, parked in front of the office, LaRue got out of his van and went inside his rented room. Room 107. I repeated the number three times.

  With the car engine running, I thought of what it would take to make him leave. To get him completely out of Cher’s life. If I had money, I would’ve confidently walked to the door and lightly tapped. Being too good to step inside, I would’ve been careful not to touch the dead-insect-spotted door and made him kneel before me while I propped my checkbook on his head and scratched out his price. A payment to ensure he would stay away from Cher for good. But before the red light could come on my dashboard telling me I had overheated my car, I retreated back to the skating rink. At each stoplight, the old bug of worthlessness settled deeper. I envisioned the fever transforming me more into the dingbat clone LaRue associated me with.

  “Did you see Diana Jarvis trying to skate with Tad? And I’m like, hello, do you think he’s even interested?” Laurel leaned over and climbed into the backseat.

  “No way. She did not,” Cher said, fastening her seat belt.

  If you’d kept your butt where you belong, you’d seen it too, I wanted to yell. But I drove in silence listening to them discuss skating-rink gossip like two Junior Leaguers in training.

  Why bother helping Cher? Why try to lead her in the right direction? She’s going to turn out just like all the trashy genes running through her veins. Soon the words that I received from Suzette danced around my mind. A reminder of the cost I paid the last time I had given up on my offspring. And now the Louisiana prison system had the pieces of the person I let break apart.

  “What did you do all night?” She opened the refrigerator door and took out a liter of Coke.

  “Nothing much. Watched a little TV. Talked to Gerald. You know, stuff like that,” I said, locking the front door and reminding myself to talk to Miss Trellis about a chain lock. LaRue had probably been in the same cell with a convicted kidnapper and learned many new tricks.

  “I am tired,” she said between sips of brown fizz. “We washed fifteen vehicles today. Fifteen.”

  I wanted to slap the orange plastic cup right out of her hands. You think I don’t know anything, I wanted to scream into her face. I wanted to pin her down on the couch and scream into her ears. To make her know about the level of danger she was putting herself in. “Why
don’t you just get a shower and go on to bed,” I politely said. And then I placed the cap back on the Coke bottle and returned it to the refrigerator shelf.

  The running water and the whining pipes echoed in my bedroom. I could hear Cher’s radio playing behind the bathroom door. I stood at my bedroom dresser and looked at the photo taken of us at Miss Claudia’s home during Easter. She was only a young ’un, I thought, caressing the photo of us with Cher’s arm around my waist. But then again, Suzette was only two years older when she brought LaRue into our lives.

  Roxi was the one who told me Suzette was planning on marrying LaRue. It was right by the snack machine in the Haggar factory break room.

  “My baby girl, Alberta, say she’s up at that school flashing around a ring and everything. I said to myself, now I know Erma Lee don’t know nothing about this here.” Roxi lifted the metal flap and scooped up a package of cheese crackers.

  “Because that child needs to go on and graduate first, you know what I’m saying?”

  After work I drove deep into the woods to find Bozo and his logging crew cutting down money, as he called his work. I spotted him in the yellow skidder. His face was scrunched up behind the glassed driver’s box. He paused only to wipe sweat off his forehead with the base of his arm. The skidder clamped the freshly cut pine trees in its mechanical claw as tight as the hold I worried LaRue now had on Suzette.

  His face was redder than usual, and when he reached me, he mumbled something that sounded like, “What?” Bozo had ordered me never to interrupt his work except in dire emergency. The loss of my daughter to a boy I heard had served time in juvenile detention for breaking and entering was worth the risk of interrupting him. Bozo bit his lip and shook his head when I told him the details Roxi shared. “That sorry…What you reckon we oughta do?” he asked and leaned lower inside my car window. At first I stuttered, not thinking I would be the one to come up with a solution.