7-Eleven smells sweet and slick, syrup and grease. Ray raises his finger to his lips.
An overweight older woman, under a gray bob haircut, holds a small computer, doing inventory for the store.
As Ray draws nearer the woman, Smith inches closer.
He steals from behind and taps the woman’s shoulder.
“One second. I’m counting.” She types a number. “Then yous can have my undivided attention.” Her wrinkles say too much sun at the shore, the red webs over her nose tell of too much booze in the sun—but Smith sees she was beautiful, and maybe stunningly so. Under her smock, her torso’s all chest.
Smith has an urge to walk right up and rest her head on that soft sprawl. She resists. As she does, an image of Smith’s momma flashes before her open eyes gone fuzzy—all emaciated angles, a woman like a heap of burnt sticks, a fire pit gone cold.
Not turning, the woman says, “What do you want,” her voice hard-edged, tired.
Ray leans over her shoulder and sniffs.
His mother swats at him but still doesn’t turn from her work.
“You still smell like a Slurpee,” Ray says.
Her neck straightens, her shoulders fall. She doesn’t turn.
“What, not happy to see your eldest son?”
“I…” Her voice—it’s shattered.
“You what, Ma?” The tenderness in Ray’s response, and the tears of his mother, infectious, fill Smith’s eyes.
His mother shakes her head.
“What, think I was dead?”
Her shoulders shudder, and she nods. Her face is frighteningly white, bloodless, no color in her lips. “I … I can’t.”
“Can’t what, Ma? Come on. Look at me. Might not recognize me. I shaved.”
She again shakes her head, forcefully. She inhales and says, “Go away.”
Ray looks at Smith; she sees the hurt in him, an old wound torn open. He turns back to his mother, his anger evident in the cock of his head, the clench of his jaw. “That’s the hello I get? Go away?”
“Please,” she says, “just go. I can’t, Ray, not now. I’m at work.”
“Fine, Ma. Be like that.” He jams his hands in his pockets, and Smith feels terror like a stitch in the side, nearly doubling her over. He’s going to hurt his mother. He takes a step to her, his chest against the back of the old woman. He reaches his arms to her, his hands open, empty, and wraps them around her. He smells her hair, shuts his eyes, and holds her like that, in an awkward embrace, unreciprocated, for a moment.
Held, his mother leans her head against her son’s arm. She too closes her eyes, and two tears land on her red smock.
Ray lets go, steps away. He looks at Smith, tips his head toward the door. “This is Bellum, Ma. Brought her by to meet you. But you’re not ready. That’s okay. We’re taking a ride up to Alaska anyway. Maybe after you’ll be ready.” Ray holds out his hand to Smith, saying, “Love you, Ma.”
Smith takes Ray’s hand for fear she’ll drift away, holds hard, guilt overcoming her, for the violence she imagined in him, for the hate she felt for him in the moment.
She cries and, starting, she can’t stop as Ray leads her to the exit.
His mother says, “Ray.”
They stop but he doesn’t turn.
“I got a check for you.”
“Keep it, Ma.”
“It’s for you not from you.”
“Don’t want it. You can’t use it, send it to Shane for his commissary. I’ll call you, Ma.” He pulls Smith out the door, and she offers Ray’s mother a stupid wave.
With Smith in the sidecar, he’s saying, “It’s my fault. Didn’t occur to me she’d be … old. Look like I nearly killed her. Hey, it’ll be okay.”
“That’s not it.”
“What then?”
“I thought you might hurt her in there.”
“Hurt my ma?” He smiled weakly. “Nothing I could do to hurt her more than I already done.”
* * *
For most of the rest of the ride, Smith’s uncomfortable—sweaty or shivering, rained on or sunburned, her crotch itching or her saddle sore—but even in discomfort she’s giddy. The late-winter air is cool but the sun is warm, and they’ve brought along an alpaca hide, E. Prince, to use as a throw. When she gets cramped or cold riding in the chubby torpedo of the Steib sidecar, Ray takes a turn, folding himself inside to nap.
The looks they’re shot, at gas stations in southern Jersey and outside diners in Maryland, she parking him, astound her. Monstrous, burly bikers—like the ones she grew up with, anarchic teddy-men with ten-year-old beards and taut, globe bellies—these mean men give them thumbs-ups, bouncing unhelmetted nods, peace signs angled low to the road. Their diabetic women let go of the great livers of these men to clap and whoop.
When her hand’s on the throttle, her mind is the landscape winging by. But in the sidecar, she’s merely herself, antsy but not panicked, and she finds herself—despite herself—thinking: Are we in love?
At the empty Rocky Knob observation area, Ray pulls her over to a picnic table. And when she says, “At the lookout? Are you kidding?” he shakes his head and says, “From behind, so we can both look out.”
In the gray light before it’s over, she says, over her shoulder, she always liked the name Shenandoah. “Shenandoah—Smith—Tyro.” When he doesn’t answer, or when his answer comes as harder fucking, she thinks she’s angered him. Then he’s coming, cooing like a raccoon pup, and instead of pulling out to come, for the first time, he pushes farther in. When it’s over, the sun nudges up over Rock Castle Gorge. He says, “Shenandoah. Any idea what it means?” In the low-angle, early light, she doesn’t answer, doesn’t need to. There’s plenty of time.
Tucked in the sidecar, she yells over the rush of air, “Ready to turn myself in!”
* * *
They’ll enjoy the Keys first. When they cross Seven Mile Bridge and are on Little Duck, Ray knocks on her helmet leaning against the padding of the sidecar wall. She opens her dreamy eyes to the half-moon shining over otherworldly water, a sea of warm darkness. Heat lightning fills the luminous bellies of thunderheads in the distance, like zeppelins on fire. Here is heaven, she thinks, now I can die.
In Key West, they find a little B&B on Elizabeth Street. Ray and Smith intend to see the sights in the bright brochures, and you’d think having spent the most intimate winter of their lives together, in close furry quarters, that they’d have lost some of their need, but the opposite is true. They attribute this to the tropical heat, the outside air an atmosphere of sopping sex, and in the wet warmth they can stand naked before each other and not freeze. They bask in the sight of one another uncovered by fur or filth. They spend two full days in bed—some love made soft, some hard, some dreamily in between.
Raw, sore, and besotted, but not tired, not sated, they check out and get back on the road, heading north.
Takes Smith all the way to Key Largo before she can holler over the rushing air, “You still want to drop in on my daddy!”
“Depends!” he shouts back.
“On what!”
“Our aims!”
“You mean’re we aiming to kill him!”
“Here in the homeland, I don’t approve of killing a man I don’t know!”
“Maybe just to introduce you! After, you can decide if you want to kill him!”
“Sounds like a plan!”
* * *
In Carnestown they turn north, between the Big Cypress and the Fakahatchee Strand preserves. Five miles from her daddy’s, she makes Ray turn off and stop so she can pee and breathe. She doesn’t want to arrive empty-handed so she buys a twelve-pack of Daddy’s beer, Miller High Life. When she comes out, Ray insists she take them the last leg home.
North of Bithlo, they pass a few Orlando exurbs in the making. “Daddy’s just up ahead. He don’t like nobody on his property. We’re risking getting peppered with rock salt by showing up unannounced.”
“So you’re saying I need to
be on my guard.”
Just off the road stands a ranch archway, a post-and-lintel entrance built of three telephone poles at the head of a dirt drive, its cattle gate padlocked. Hanging from the lintel by two chains is an old stinger plow blade, rusted, scooped, and sharp. She tells Ray that Daddy was Army Corps of Engineers. Drove a Cat D7 dozer in Nam, outfitted with a Rome plow built in Rome, Georgia. Thing must weigh a ton. Two flagpoles stand atop the archway at either end. One pole flies two flags: the black POW/MIA flag over a sun-bleached Jolly Roger. On the other side, at the top of the other pole, perches a mailbox, its red flag up. On its side, stenciled in red, it reads, TAXES.
“Your daddy Tea Party?”
“Daddy’s an anarchist. Doesn’t believe in parties.”
There’s just enough clearance for the Indian with its sidecar. Cicadas tick madly, like telegraph operators on methamphetamines. A mangy tabby sleeps in the middle of the sandy drive and refuses to move. They ride around it, more cats lazing in the sun.
The trailer stands on cinderblocks, cinderblock stoop, the frame of an old Chevy pickup on blocks, blocks weighing down a blue plastic tarp over a heap of who-knows-what, blocks holding up the two listing poles of a clothesline—boxers, jeans, tees big and small, one tiny pair of shorts, a few pairs of wide-waist thong panties, and two bras.
“Less your daddy’s become a cross-dresser, he’s got intimate company.”
She parks and revs the motor, the tailpipes trembling. When no one comes to greet them, she cuts it, dismounts, and knocks hard on the flimsy screen door.
A young Hispanic woman answers but doesn’t open. She stands squat in a too-small tube top and teal spandex shorts. Sweaty, she’s all curves and cleavage. “¿Eres tú la puta que ha estado llamando?”
Smith turns and shoots a look at Ray, who says from the sidecar, “Got a tiny bit of Arabic and Dari, but zero Spanish.”
“I don’t have much, but I know bitch when I hear it.” She turns back to the door. “I’m looking for my daddy, Increase Smith. Mi padre.” She points to the clothesline. “Those’re his underwear. All these years and you’d think he’d get a few new pairs. I’m Antebellum Smith.” She points to herself. “Ant.”
Ray says, “Ant?” climbing out of the sidecar.
The woman has a few years on Smith, at most, but her scowl is older than anger. The woman tries to open the door. “Con permiso,” she says, and Smith backs off the blocks.
From inside the trailer, through the open door, the woman screams, “Poquito!”
Smith flinches.
“Poquito!”
Smith can’t help but laugh. Unless she’s misunderstanding, the small sexpot is calling Smith’s six-foot-tall daddy Little One.
“Poquito! Sal de ahí. Encuentra tu papá.”
From out of a doorless, hoodless, trunkless Buick Skylark, a boy climbs, barefoot, wearing only a bathing suit.
Smith looks at the mamasita, back at the boy. He’s maybe four years old. Skin darker than his mother’s but he surely spends all his time outdoors, same way Smith did twenty years ago. She tries to see her daddy’s resemblance, hints of herself.
The woman holds up her tube top with one hand and points into the distance. “Llévelos a tu papá.”
Smith says, “Papa?”
The woman shrugs.
The boy walks to Smith, smiles a forced smile that’s more endearing than anything genuine coming from an adult. He blinks and holds out his hand.
Smith squats, reaches to shake. “Hi, what’s your name? Nombre?”
“Carlos.” He takes her hand and pulls. “This way, please.” The boy has no accent.
Ray points to himself, and Smith nods. The three of them walk along a swath of close-cropped crabgrass.
The mosquitoes are fat and loud as hummingbirds but they’re not bothering the boy, who releases Smith’s hand and runs ahead, disappearing over a grassy ridge. The peak of a pole barn new to her rears over the sharp palmetto fronds. Clacking comes from the barn. They top the ridge and there in the shade of the open roll-up doorway sits Increase, hatted, hunched over an antique Singer treadle sewing-machine cabinet, his dirty bare feet resting motionless on the wide cast-iron pedal. His toenails curl over the ends of his toes like snail shells. The machine, tucked under the cabinet, is the same he used to patch her pants and hem her skirts. On the cabinet sits an old typewriter she’s never seen. He drips sweat on the keys, grunts, hammering away with two middle fingers.
Sitting high on Daddy’s head is a grimy, floppy straw hat, wide brimmed, the sort worn by middle-aged women weeding gardens. A turkey feather pokes from the loose weave. She can see some of the sunblock slathering he’s given himself. He wears a wild, unfamiliar look. The sight is crazy and it hits her—he’s lost his intimidating mind.
The boy stands at Increase’s side, careful not to interrupt.
Smith and Ray wait. She reaches and takes Ray’s hand. Not five feet away, Increase doesn’t look up from his maniacal typing.
“Ah, Daddy?”
His middle fingers freeze over the keys. “Yeah?” One hand fumbles to the surface of the sewing machine cabinet, finds a pair of eyeglasses. He pushes them up the bridge of his nose with one of his typing fingers and then pushes back the hat brim. “Ant, that you?”
“Glasses, Daddy?”
“Getting old, darlin.”
“Sunblock, Daddy?”
“Getting cancer’s part a getting old.”
“Typing, Daddy?”
“Guy told me, Increase, you ought’ve wrote a book, so I did. Wrote my life story. Now I’m writing the sequel.”
“That make it the story of your afterlife?”
“Comfort to see you still got that smart-ass mouth. But look at you. Standing before me a woman.” He strikes a key. “Done finished the first volume. Published it my own self.”
“And him?”
“This here, this’s Charlie.”
“He my half-brother?”
“Charles aint mine but ought well as be. Right, Charles? Charlie, say hi.”
Carlos waves.
“He’s my interpreter. His mother don’t speak a wet lick of English but she keeps good trailer, cooks a mean barbacoa. Can be a downright banshee in the bunk. Viagra, best thing since the invention of the electric starter.”
“Daddy, please.”
“Aint never filtered my talk around you, grrl.”
“We brought your beer.”
“Yall hungry? You staying for dinner?”
“That my stepmom? A Mexican?”
He nods, tips his hat. “Never expected to live this long, see this much. Black President? Hot damn. Only in America. You know we got Neanderthal genes? Took Esperanza and little Victor Charlie here—they’re El Salvadorian, by the way—they come here, they just want to fit in. Work mighty damn hard. Espy was juggling three jobs fore she shacked up with your old man. For a country, in the space of 200 years? Go from a civil war fought over slavery to electing a mulatto? To live in the White House with his wife and their two niglet daughters—”
“Now there’s the daddy I know.”
“Like him or not—and I sure as shrimp don’t—world’s crazier now than it ever was, Ant. Must say, I love it all the more for the craziness. So, barbacoa?”
“I don’t know, Daddy, I just wanted to introduce yall.”
“You aint the Missourian.”
Ray steps forward. “No, sir. Name’s Ray. New Jersian.” He offers his hand.
“Yankee, huh?” Increase climbs creakily out from behind his sewing cabinet and takes Ray’s hand. “Call me Crease.”
Ray squats to Carlos’s level and the two wordlessly shake hands, smiling at each other. Ray rises and says to Increase, “You and your daughter got a pair of names. How’d you settle on Antebellum?”
“Ant here’s lucky she didn’t get saddled with my momma’s name, Sookie. Maiden name of Pettipice. No middle name, just like Ant. My middle name’s Swerc. Always hated it. Sound a cat makes
coughing up a hairball. Promised I wouldn’t do that to Ant.”
Ray turns to Smith. “Never said your dad calls you Ant.”
“All I’ve ever called her.”
“Might have to join in, Ant.”
“You gonna tell the story now, Daddy?”
“Don’t got to. Yall can read it in my book. Get it off Amazon.”
“Daddy, you hear from Travis?”
“Your Missourian talked me into fronting him three thousand dollars worth of mixed meds. I scored em from a croaker in Ruskin. Missourian won’t return my calls. Tracked him down on Facebook, made an alias, been hounding him that a way.”
“You’re on Facebook?”
“I’m old but I aint dead. I was five years younger, didn’t have me a hemorrhoid the size of a French cruller, I’d—”
“Daddy, for the love of Pete.”
“Peter’s a pussy. Always favored me Paul. Late to the party Paul. And a hemorrhoid’s no joke now.” He points at the rusty folding chair behind the sewing machine. “Been sitting on that inflatable donut for months. Had it to do all over, I’d a straddled me a bike with a little less rumble in the ride.”
“We rode up on an Indian.”
“Well now, dear daughter, few years back I’d a run you O-F-T, but now? Hell, I’d trade in my knife-and-fork arrangement for an overstuffed Indian seat with some spring. Yours a bagger? Got all kinds of tassels dangling off?”
“No sir,” Ray says, “I’m anti-tassel.”
“Attaboy. Her other one, he’s all tassel. Tassels surely hanging off his testicles. I was a little younger, I’d stove in his head with the heel a my boot. Sure pills’d spill out.”
“We’re headed up to see him, Daddy. Serve some papers.”
“First divorce.”
“Like father like daughter.”
“Let’s hope not. You give your soon-to-be ex a message?”
“Depends.”
“You tell him those pills are my gift.”
“You have changed.”
“Some.” He sits, wincing as he gets centered. “But this gift’s a curse, cause he’s headed for an overdose or worse. Seen it happen a thousand and one times. He’ll hit headfirst and someone’ll get hurt. Hopefully just him. You’re right to get on out. You need some gas money?”
The Standard Grand Page 25
