The Alumni Grill, Volume 2

by Tom Franklin

  “I can’t find her jewelry,” Jesse said. He opened the refrigerator behind me, throwing a triangle of light over the table and pictures. “But I packed a bag of her clothes. And he’s set with guns and knives. We could pawn them in Corpus.”

  “We’re too young. They wouldn’t let us.”

  Jesse closed the refrigerator and the light over the pictures vanished. He pressed a beer can to his forehead, rolled it across his brow then back again. He said, “You know all the impossibilities.”

  “Maybe she hides the jewelry from her husband,” I said.

  “Maybe he hid it from us.”

  Jesse opened the beer and the snap of the tab cracked through the house. The small bag he’d stuffed with Fancy’s clothes lay inside the hall and after a swallow of beer, he unzipped it and removed a pink negligee. He pinched it by the lacy straps, as if it disgusted him. “How’s this?”

  “It smells like strawberries,” I said. Seeing the teddy made me feel like a child, and I wanted to leave. “We should get going.”

  “It suits her,” he said. Jesse wiped his face on the satin, then crammed it back in the duffel. “She’s fruity.”

  He leaned close to the table, peering at the picture showing the woman’s nipples. I smelled the beer and his sweat.

  “That’s her,” he said. Then after another pull from the can, he added, “More or less.”

  I didn’t know what that meant, but didn’t care to ask, and Jesse disappeared into the back of the house again. I thought he was getting a little drunk, that maybe he’d been drinking earlier that morning, and that we would not go to the beach. I studied the picture again. I wondered what Fancy had been thinking right then, if she knew Luis yet or if this was a happier time in the life with her husband. She wasn’t smiling in the photo, which made me believe she hadn’t wanted the picture snapped at all.

  Ten minutes passed before Jesse stepped from the hall with Fancy’s jewelry box, a little black hutch with an Oriental dragon slithering across its lid. Something made me believe he’d found it earlier, though I couldn’t say what that was. “Let’s go see Luis,” he said. “We’ll bring this back early and collect a reward.”

  “Okay,” I said, maybe too quickly, and stood up. “What about the beach?”

  “We’ll go later. I want you to see her. She cooks naked.”

  I shut the scrapbook and thought I wouldn’t mind seeing Fancy’s body, but I supposed she never cooked that way and Jesse was only saying words.

  “She brought some shark meat over yesterday. They’re grilling it tonight. You’re invited.” Jesse placed the jewelry box on the counter and surveyed the kitchen, as if he’d lost something. He leaned against the wall. A car passed outside, then when its noise died away, I heard the din of the refrigerator and crickets trilling in the yard. I thought we would have left by then.

  “I could run away today,” Jesse said. He made a fist, then fanned his fingers. “I’ve thought about it.”

  “Everyone has.”

  “The world is different than we think,” he said. His eyes caught something behind me—maybe his reflection in the brass mirror—and he asked, “How old do I look?”

  “Seventeen,” I said. “You’re seventeen.”

  “If you didn’t know me, how old would I be?” He puffed out his chest, straightened his posture.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not good at this.”

  “I could pass for twenty or twenty-one and enlist right now.” Jesse’s chin and cheeks were smooth, so he looked like a boy, not even a young man of his age, and I thought the recruiters would laugh if he tried fooling them. “When I get a pilot’s license,” he said, “I’ll fly my jet under bridges.”

  “I’ve heard of that,” I lied.

  “Luis is 4-F,” he said. “It means he’s more harm than good.” Saying that seemed to satisfy him, and I sensed we were about to head out when he added, “I hate the fucking beach. I never want to go again.”

  A quality I’d not heard before, a rawness, weighted Jesse’s voice. “Okay,” I said. “That’s fine.”

  “If I ran away, I’d go somewhere without water.” Jesse raised his eyes to me, then gazed into the front room with its few pieces of furniture. “Somewhere where the earth is solid.” And I realized Jesse wasn’t drunk at all, but that he hated Fancy for staying in his house and hated his father for being his father and that maybe he hated me because he knew I saw that. I was glad not to be Jesse then, and it relieved me when he pressed himself from the wall and started outside.

  We drove with our windows down and the landscape inched by without change, dry, yellow fields running alongside the two-lane road. To the east, smoke from a scorched crop lingered against the rock-white horizon. We were heading north. Neither of us spoke much during the drive, though eventually I said, “I’d go somewhere with snow.”

  *

  Phillip Bundick’s red Chevy sat in Jesse’s driveway, the driver’s door yawning open. When I saw it, I swallowed, heard the muscles roll and contract in my throat. Jesse muttered something in Spanish that I couldn’t understand. He braked—I remember how softly he pressed the pedal—but let the truck roll forward and parked on the road a short distance behind the Chevy. His eyes stayed on the house. A window fan propped open the front door, but from our view it was impossible to see inside.

  “We should call someone,” I said.

  Jesse rubbed the back of his neck, something he did when he got nervous, and cut the ignition. He stashed Fancy’s jewelry box under his seat, something I wouldn’t have thought to do, and pushed the duffel behind my heels. “Go call someone,” Jesse said. “Maybe your mother or the cavalry or the president.” Then he was hopping the ditch and crossing his yard. He stepped onto his porch without hesitating and went inside the house and out of my vision.

  The engine pinged and clicked as it cooled. A boy and girl who lived next door to Jesse rode past on bicycles, locks of sweaty hair clinging to their foreheads. They had grown since I last saw them. The girl stood and started peddling hard, then the boy raced after her and they were gone. I tried to recall when I’d last ridden a bicycle, but couldn’t, could hardly remember learning to ride one. I thought of my mother, wondered if she’d woken yet. If she was awake, I hoped she was visiting with one of her friends or watching her soap operas and not worrying about me. Then I climbed from the truck, eased my door closed, and started for the house.

  “Who the Jesus are you?” Phillip Bundick said when I appeared in the door. He was holding Luis against the wall with a black snub-nosed pistol pressed into his throat. For a moment the only part of my body was my heart, pumping so hard I felt it inside my head. Jesse stood just inside the threshold facing his father and Phillip Bundick, while Fancy sat on the couch, her knees bent to tuck her feet beside her. Her hair was blonde now, unbrushed, and her hands covered her eyes. She wore a red silk kimono with a yellow dragon embroidered on the lapel. Fancy looked recently woken; she and Luis both did; he wasn’t wearing a shirt. Phillip Bundick stomped his boot and the house rattled—the framed needlepoints on the wall, the table in front of Fancy and the empty bottles on it, the windows. A bird screeched in another room.

  Phillip Bundick pushed the gun deeper into the fat under Luis’s jaw, which made him flatten his palms against the paneling. “Well,” he said and cut his eyes at me again.

  “He’s my friend,” Jesse said. “He’s meeting me here to go crabbing.”

  “Have you been in my house, too?” Phillip Bundick leaned his weight into Luis and stomped again, twice.

  I opened my mouth to speak, without any idea how to answer, but Fancy said, “What difference does that make now, Bunny?” She raised her head from her hands, wiped her eyes, and momentarily the only sounds were her sniffling and the fan in the front door.

  “Because I’m not accustomed to men gallivanting through my house unless I’ve invited them,” he said. He twisted his neck then focused on Luis’s chest, pale and hairless like another stoma
ch. Luis tiptoed to try and gain some leverage, but soon he relaxed. Then, without turning his head, Phillip Bundick found me with his eyes. “Do you know your friend’s father makes a habit of putting his pecker in places it doesn’t belong?”

  “Oh Christ, Bunny,” Fancy said. Jesse glanced at her as if she’d spoken out of turn. My hands felt heavy at my sides, as awkward as boxing gloves, and I wanted to cross them behind my back, but stayed still.

  “Well,” Phillip Bundick said in a defeated tone, “You should know that about him. And my wife is recently one of those places.”

  “They’re just babies,” Fancy said. At another time, I thought she would have made a scene storming from the room, but Phillip Bundick twisted his fist and turned his knuckles against Luis’s throat and Fancy did not move. He didn’t look violent. His arm shook from the pressure it took to hold Luis that way, and I thought he probably enjoyed his wife calling him Bunny, that maybe she was the only person in the world who called him that. Phillip and Fancy Bundick, it occurred to me, were much older than I’d imagined, and the pictures on their table were from years before; I did not know who the little girl might be. Phillip Bundick seemed about to say something then, maybe to Luis or Fancy or to himself, but he just clenched his jaw and squinted his eyes. His face flushed. Then he rammed Luis between the legs with his knee. It was a short, solid blow, and Luis buckled.

  “Why don’t we stop this now?” Jesse said. He took a step forward and sounded more angry than afraid, which surprised me, because it seemed everyone was afraid then, even Phillip Bundick.

  “What a beautiful idea,” Fancy said. “Doesn’t that sound just beautiful, Bunny?”

  “I wish to God this would’ve never gotten started on me,” he said in a loud, wild voice. Phillip Bundick heaved his shoulder and body against Luis to keep him standing. “I wish I hadn’t learned about this.”

  Luis was clutching his stomach and gasping as though there wasn’t enough air in the room. Phillip Bundick seemed about to kick him again, but said, “I feel like I’ve already died.”

  Luis groaned. Sweat had beaded on his face and forehead, and when he squirmed against the wall, Jesse raised his hands and laced his fingers behind his neck. “Okay. Okay. That’s good now. Why don’t we let him rest a while? He could use some water.”

  Phillip Bundick turned to Jesse then, studying him in a slow and measured way. I could hear him breathing through his nose with his mouth shut, but he was regaining his composure. “Your old man takes a good punch. He’ll come out of this fine. That’s what he’s thinking right now. Isn’t it?” His eyes moved from Jesse to Luis. He leaned within an inch of Luis’s face. “You’re thinking this will all end soon and you’ll just find another lady to work your magic on. This is just a regular day for you, right?”

  “This isn’t regular for anyone, Bunny,” Fancy said. “Not even us. Let’s get in the car and drive home. Okay? We can talk tonight. I’ll grill your shark for you.” It sounded as though she might continue, maybe add that things between them would work out or that she loved him and didn’t love Luis, but Fancy just closed her mouth. She shook her head and scanned the room without letting her eyes rest on any one thing.

  And what Phillip Bundick did then was take a step back, then another and another, and simply walk away. He glanced at Fancy and Luis as if he were lost, but then turned and shouldered past Jesse and me. I expected something to happen, for Luis or even Jesse to tackle Phillip Bundick or hit him from behind. Maybe he wanted to be hurt, so he left himself open, but we watched him step down the porch without harm. Before he climbed into the Chevy, Phillip Bundick looked at the sky—it was a hard blue then—then he lowered his eyes to the house. I felt he would make some statement, and was waiting to hear his voice when he lifted his arm and fired the pistol three times into the air. And after that, he was gone.

  *

  Loneliness can lead people the same way that love can, and sometimes to the same places, so that inside the cheerless situation where you never wanted to find yourself, it can seem impossible to distinguish one from the other. Maybe Luis felt that in Jesse’s room the night before, and maybe Phillip Bundick felt it as his Chevy topped the hill that afternoon and he disappeared from our sight. Such feelings have surfaced in my life since then, but at sixteen being in love and being alone existed as opposites in my mind. Though that, of course, is dead wrong.

  The officer who came to Jesse’s house that afternoon was short and young, and despite the muscles bulging under his uniform, he seemed jittery talking with Luis in the driveway. Jesse and I had carted the birds and their cages to the storage shed behind the house because Luis suspected the neighbors would call the police about the gunshots. He had splashed water on his face and hair, and now wore a tank top and boots. Fancy had changed into a yellow sundress, and as she spoke with the officer, Luis tucked in his shirt.

  “Son,” Luis called. “Son, let’s talk with the police now.” Jesse jogged across the yard. The afternoon heat was coming on then, but a breeze was blowing and I found some shade on the porch. Fancy eventually shook the officer’s hand and came to sit on the bench beside me. She had brushed her hair and put on makeup, and a thin, gold chain with a little cross pendant hung around her neck.

  “What is today?” she asked.

  “Saturday,” I said. The officer jotted down something Jesse had told him. Luis shot a glance at us on the porch.

  “Then I hate Saturdays,” Fancy said. We were on a swing made for two people. I wondered if I stank from riding in the hot truck. “Southport,” she said, as though contemplating the name. “Where you’re either drunk or fishing.”

  “We’re moving,” I said. The words sounded strange in my voice. “My aunt lives in California. We’ll stay with her and I’ll go to a private school.”

  “I acted in a movie once.” Fancy started peeling flakes of paint from her armrest, watching her hands. Stubble peppered her calves, though that didn’t bother me. “Actually, I was an extra in a crowd scene, but we filmed for three days. At the time I had red hair, like an orange, but on the last day of shooting I overslept, so they had to redo the whole scene without me because the director couldn’t match my hair color. Something like that. He said I’d cost him twenty-eight thousand dollars, so I guess that’s what I’m worth. At least I’m not cheap.”

  I recalled Fancy’s pictures and realized she had been wading in the Pacific Ocean, not the Gulf. She seemed mysterious then, like someone who knew things I would never know. I said, “I saw your photo album on the table.”

  “Did you?” She smiled at me and seemed flattered. “Pictures worth a thousand words I’ll never say, right?”

  I shrugged, and though it surprised me as much anyone, I said, “I’d like to be a photographer. I’d like to take pictures of people doing interesting things.” I’d hoped Fancy would respond, encourage me or say something else to make me feel good, but a voice crackled through the cruiser’s radio and we stayed quiet while the officer reached for his CB.

  “They’ve caught poor Bunny,” she said.

  “I didn’t hear that.”

  “Neither did I, but that’s what happened. I’m his wife, I know.” Fancy dropped a sliver of paint and ran her thumb over her short fingernails.

  “Is that your real name? Fancy?”

  She squinted at me, not angrily but as if she was assessing a fault in my character. I only held her eyes for a second, though it felt like a long time before she turned away. Jesse and Luis stood beside each other, with their backs against the cruiser, while the officer sat inside talking on the radio. A wind blew and I heard branches scratching against the side of the house. I wished I’d kept quiet about Fancy’s name. She said, “He intended to be a priest, Luis did. You wouldn’t know that now, I guess.”

  Luis and Jesse chuckled about something, and seeing them that way made me think of Luis sitting on Jesse’s bed the night before. I wondered if Jesse knew about Luis wanting to be a priest.

  “He
wants to start a legitimate bird business. Birds of Paradise he would call it. And those needlepoints on the walls, the sand dollars and clowns and that woman walking in the garden, he knits those when he can’t sleep. He’s proud of them.”

  “They’re nice,” I said, though I’d never really examined them or considered Luis being proud of anything.

  “The officer is a friend of mine’s son. He doesn’t know me, though. His mother is older and has cancer. He’ll see a lot worse than this in his life.”

  And because it seemed right, I said, “We all will.”

  “Or have,” Fancy said. Then after a moment, “Do you want to hear the saddest thing I’ve ever seen?”

  “Yes,” I said. I liked Fancy’s voice.

  “I took a cruise in the Caribbean, off the coast of St. Lucia, and I watched all these rich people throw change to the natives. Maybe a hundred of them floated out on little boats and old surfboards. It’s a tradition there.”

  Fancy stood and smoothed her dress against the backs of her thighs. “After the money ran out, they started yelling for fruit. ‘Fruit! Give us fruit!’” She quieted her voice, but raised her eyes and waved her arms as if she were far below, in the ocean. “And sure enough they started throwing fruit to them. Bananas, oranges, lemons, but away from the boat to watch them fetch it. Some kids climbed to the higher decks and tried to bean them with apples. They hit one man, an old bald man with skinny, skinny arms, and he went under.” She touched her hair, rolled strands between her thumb and fingers. “I just stayed in my cabin after that, crying.”