Hick

by Andrea Portes

  Angel is putting the finishing touches on my makeshift bed, preening a bit, making it extra-special. I watch him start to make up his own bed on the floor, far less careful. I guess I get the good quilt.

  “You don’t have to sleep on the floor. I’ll take the floor. I don’t mind.”

  He doesn’t respond and, instead, lays purposeful down on the floor, tucking himself snug under the quilt. He turns away from me, closing his eyes.

  It seems early to go to bed, but I guess when in Rome do whatever. I lay down in my good quilt bed and stare at the ceiling. Glenda’s bar laugh drifts through the wood-panel walls. The crickets keep planning their attack, softer now, getting sneaky. There’s a little breeze, crisp, like fall’s sending its regards from the sidewalk before stepping across the threshold. I close my eyes and try to bury the day.

  I get woke by a weird stillness. There’s a quiet now, a pitch black hovering. Then I realize that Angel has crept up next to me, kneeling beside me on the floor. I pretend not to see him. I make believe I’m still asleep, curious.

  He sits over me, staring underneath the blanket. He’s looking at me like I’m made of crystal, a new invention.

  I half-hearted toss and turn, throwing the quilt over my eyes so I can peek through the yarn without him knowing. His eyes swirl in the moonlight. We stay this way for a long time.

  Finally, just as I’m about to sleep or move or speak, he reaches his hand out and touches my bare skin. I stay still. He looks at me, tentative, wondering if I’ll wake. My stillness is near impossible to maintain. I try not to move a muscle.

  I want to see what comes next.

  He moves his hand down my arm and onto my thigh. Then he stops and looks at me, checking. So far, so good. He traces my leg down towards my ankles. Again, he looks at me. Again, I play dead.

  And I don’t know why I let him, but I do. Maybe I just like watching myself, strange and quiet and real. There’s a suspense to it, like the music just got spooky. Even the crickets outside are hushed up and waiting.

  He moves his hand up the inside of my leg. He stops and looks, making sure. I hold my breath. He moves his hand up over my hipbones and over my chest. His fingers are shaking. His movement is awkward, boy-like, fragile.

  He stops, staring at me. He runs his fingers over the pink part, making an outline, tracing. I hold my breath.

  The bar door slams, outside, breaking the moment in two. Then a fall. Then a cackle. Glenda reels in Blane’s arms, the gravel crunching beneath their feet.

  Angel recoils to his position on the floor, guilty.

  The front door slams shut behind Glenda, tipsy. Blane leads her to his room, quiet, slow, concerned. He closes the door gently behind.

  Angel stares up at the ceiling, bothered.

  I turn away now. Tired. Wondering. Exhausted by my thoughts and the endlessness of the day. The crickets turn back on, lulling me to sleep.

  In the morning, we leave. Just like that. We leave without saying good-bye or coffee cups or anything. Glenda just wakes me up and we’re out in five minutes. And this is what I like about Glenda. This is what makes me want to stand next to her and jump inside her. She always knows when to leave and how. She knows how to read the silence and the pause between words. She knows what happens on the other side of walls and under good quilts in the dark.

  And I know, somehow, she knew. Like clockwork.

  She knew.

  SIXTEEN

  So, tell the truth, kid, and be honest. How’d ya leave it? Am I gonna see you on the back of one of them milk cartons? Cause I wanna be prepared.”

  The Wyoming sky is flying past us, Indian summer setting fire to the sky. Up ahead phantom squiggles billow up in waves off the pavement. I’m tired of driving, tired of moving. I’m still back in that shack with Angel touching me in the quiet, thinking about hands in the dark and pink parts and eyes swirling.

  I want to stop. I want to get a hold of the world and stop it turning. I want to walk into a bar and see my dad. I want him to pull up a chair next to me and tell a dumb joke. I want him to scruff up my hair and make pretend he just pulled off my nose. I want him to look at Glenda, fall for her, forget about Tammy giggling late night behind the bar. I want him to be young again. Happy.

  The truth is, maybe someday I will run into him and maybe he’ll even recognize me, all grown up. Maybe he’ll see me at the end of the bar and remember that long lost girl he ran off from for a little while and then a little longer and then for good.

  But I know he’s drowning. He’s out there somewhere, maybe even not that far away, maybe in the next town, maybe in that honky-tonk two towns back. Staring into his ice clinking. Silent. Brooding. Plotting his revenge, half-hearted. Stumbling out the bar, dazed. And maybe even some lady, some aging beauty queen, will take pity on him. He’ll sleep in her bed and she’ll try to solve the mystery of his silence. she’ll wait, patient, contemplating his stone-faced nature, trying to unlock the key, hoping someday this quiet will, miraculous, transform itself into love, hoping someday he’ll look at her and draw his hand up her dress, pushing her against the kitchen wall. Falling.

  Something in him is letting go, giving up, surrendering.

  I can feel it.

  He won’t go back. I know it. Why would he? She doesn’t want him around anymore. she’d rather push him off a cliff than have him gaze up at her smitten. She doesn’t want to look at him and be reminded that she can’t love him back. She doesn’t want to look at him and think about how she could have done better. She doesn’t want to look at him and think about that baby boy she once had, almost had, born blue.

  I have a secret daydream that I see my dad. I play it over and over and over again. Do you know how long it lasts? How long does love last? How can it be that she gets to go on snickering, chortling through her days and nights, while he sits, sinking slow down into the rocks, seeing the world like looking up from the bottom of a fishbowl. Looking up through the water, the light refracting, unfocused, from somewhere above, a blur of something that used to be.

  I know he’ll never get up.

  “Luli?”

  “Huh?”

  “Do you think your mom’s gonna be looking for you?”

  That’s a new thought. I never looked at it like that. I never imagined Tammy would miss me. I know how she sees me. I make her feel guilty. I remind her that she’s supposed to be in love with my dad. I remind her that she got old. I remind her that I’m the one left. I’m the one that made it.

  “No.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yup.”

  “Cause I don’t want any trouble, not that kind, not like I kidnapped you or something or made you do something against your will . . .”

  The road tumbles by beneath us.

  “Do you have any more of that stuff in that vial or whatever?”

  Glenda looks at me, wary.

  “Sure, kid, have at it.”

  I keep staring at the road, not sure what to make of my new dark mood. Maybe I could just let it pass or pretend it’s not there or sweep it under the rug like my expert mama. Maybe I could just open this door and tumble out underneath the wheels and that would be that, finally, for good.

  It’s not just that he’s stuck somewhere, my dad, or dead in a ditch, covered in dirt, with a sad song playing in the background. it’s not even that I’ll never see him again. it’s that even if I did see him, even if my best dream came true and I walked into some red shoebox bar with Elvis crooning behind and there he was, clinking his 7 & 7, even if he looked up at me, remembered me and even smiled, even if all that happened . . . it would still mean more to me, a thousand times more, than it ever would to him.

  I’m that kid he had, accidental and unimportant, like dropping your keys on the way out the door. I’m something that happened that doesn’t really matter much now, some dwarf version of the woman he loves who can’t love him back. And when he looks at me, he thinks of her, all moonlight and memory. He thinks of the first time s
he saw him, the first time she looked back at him and from somewhere, the corner of her eye or the middle of her mouth, let him see her sparkle. She knows how to make herself sparkle.

  And he’ll think about how in that moment, behind the bar, two blocks over, the train went running over the tracks, hustling to get to the next hick town, and how he felt like the tracks were inside him, running through him, as his heart raced and she tossed her hair and looked over her shoulder and sparkled bright. She liked to let him look at her like that. She liked to twinkle her eyes and watch him swoon.

  But if I did that, if I tried to put a twinkle in my eye and giggle and sprinkle sparkle dust, it would be like yelling in a forest, lost and who cares anyways.

  That’s the difference.

  So it’s not that he’s dead and dramatic and weighty and meaningful. it’s not that. it’s that he doesn’t care, pure and simple. it’s that he made me and watched me grow and taught me how to talk and what to say and don’t say too much, that he did all that, but that to him it was like having a pet, some fuzzy broken thing you found whining through the window in winter and decided to take under your wing.

  Except now that she’s gone, now that that house and that memory and that time and that window, now that all these things are crumpled up like an old newspaper, who cares about some fuzzy broken thing you took a shine to in sparklier days? Back then you would’ve saved a dying rat if it cried pathetic enough, looking up at you with those beady little eyes.

  That’s the difference.

  To me it’s all longing and wishing and knowing in my heart that my impossible dream will never become a reality. To him it’s like picking a piece of lint off your shirt sleeve, something you might look at for a second but then never think twice about.

  “Grab my purse, if you wanna, in the back.” Glenda crashes my personal dirge.

  She reaches into the backseat behind and tosses her purse on my lap, keeping eyes on the road. Now that the bunny’s gone, I’m promoted to front seat. I look at her concentrating on the road, from my newfound shotgun, and wonder if there’s someone she thinks about like this, someone quiet and massive who can change her day if she lets herself think too much.

  Does she have it, too, some lonely, empty space that sits in the hollow of her chest, changing with the weather like some kind of never-say-so condition? And if she had it, if she had that permanent condition of the heart, what would she do with it? Where would she put it? I want to know. I want to know because I want to put it there, too.

  I reach down and start sorting through her purse, bit by bit. I find the white powder vial, untwist the top and lift it up to my nose, breathing in. It burns like metal and creeps down the back of my throat. I shake my head and stare into the visor mirror, feeling better, hoping that the feeling lasts, watching the sun raise itself to the top of the sky.

  I am made of steel now. Metallic. Numb.

  Maybe this is the place you put it.

  SEVENTEEN

  Glenda doesn’t know I have a .45.

  And I’m not gonna tell her. How can I when so much has gone on with me keeping it secret? If I confess now, she’ll wonder why I kept it from her so long and what I’m up to anyways. she’ll think I’m hiding something else.

  No, it’s best not to tell her. it’ll just make her wonder if she should have picked me up in the first place.

  It’ll just be my little secret.

  EIGHTEEN

  By the time we pull into Jackson, I feel a hundred years older and fifty pounds too heavy, like I have rocks in my shoulders. Glenda pulls up to a ranch-style house with a slate-stone sidewalk winding up. You have to walk through an oriental-looking garden, complete with miniature waterfalls spilling out over into little lily-padded fish ponds. it’s real neat and tidy, like they hire a maid each Tuesday to dust off the leaves and polish the ceramic frogs.

  A lumbering ox of a man comes out the front door like he’s walking onstage on one of those late-night shows, expectant and smiley, waiting to bask in thunderous applause. Sensing no takers, he hulks towards us with big outstretched arms. I stop and pretend to look at the shiny green frogs, newly dusted, staring up, while I wait for Glenda to catch up and interact with Mr. Rogers over there. I take note that some of the fish in the little ponds are gold, some are white and gold and some are just see-through sickly white like they’re radioactive and are just about two inbred laps from swimming to that great end-of-the-line fish tank.

  Glenda grabs me by the back of the neck and turns me towards Mr. Friendly, who’s well over six feet and two feet wide. He picks me up before I can get out of it and gives me a big bear hug like he’s gonna crack my ribs with kindness. I turn my cringe into a squiggly-mouth smile till he relents, finally, putting me down.

  “This here’s Lloyd, Luli,” Glenda chimes out round the cigarette she’s squinting into, trying to light up in the afternoon breeze.

  “Luli! We-hell, that sure is a funny name for a little filly.”

  I stare at his feet, which happen to be wrapped up in beige snakeskin cowboy boots. He’s got on brown pants, a brown cowboy shirt and a tan Stetson hat. He takes up the whole top step.

  Glenda nudges me.

  “Um, wull, my name was supposed to be Lucy, but I couldn’t say it, I just kept saying Luli, so they just gave up tryin.”

  “That so? Well, good thing your name wasn’t Elizabeth.”

  He says this like it’s the punch line and neither Glenda or I know quite what to make of it. We stand there, watching him, trying to figure it out. He keeps on smiling, big and stupid.

  I try to compensate.

  “I like your fishes, Mister.”

  “Mister! Look, just call me Lloyd, that’s my name.”

  All this affection is making me nervous. In my house we didn’t even hug each other on Christmas, let alone be nice to each other, and we certainly didn’t hug complete strangers fresh off the street. I figure he’s up to something. Either that or he just doesn’t know me well enough to figure out that I’m not worth the trouble.

  He invites us in and grabs Glenda by the hand, tugging her towards him. Just as we’re about to reach the threshold, Glenda turns to me and whispers, real serious and mean, “Don’t fuck this up.”

  Then she smiles and glides through the door with the greatest of ease.

  NINETEEN

  We walk in and the first person I see is Eddie Kreezer. He meets my surprise with a surly nod, as if he’s seen it all before. I am waiting for Glenda to hit the deck but she doesn’t even give him a second glance. she’s acting like she knew he’d be there all along, or if she didn’t, she’s not about to let on that it bothers her. Lloyd points the bar out to me like a proud parent.

  “You see that, Luli? I made it myself. Picked out the wood. Put in the mirrors. Hell, I musta went to every garage sale in Wyoming just to get those signs. Authentic.”

  The bar is filled with flashing beer signs, some ancient, some shiny. There’s a blue-and-silver ball hanging from the ceiling with some horses lined up in a circle around the outside. When the ball spins the horses jump up and down. Lloyd sees me looking at it and flips a switch. The ball lights up, revealing its secret: Pabst Blue Ribbon. Behind the ball is the mirrored back wall, with swirls running through the mirror tiles to make it look like marble. The bar and the stools look like padded leather, but when I sit down they feel more like plastic.

  Glenda and Eddie are staring at each other like they’re connected by an invisible string and, if either of them moves, the house is gonna explode. Lloyd winks at me as he mixes the drinks.

  “So, Luli, you like whiskey?”

  I look at Glenda for a hint. She ignores me. she’s looking through Eddie like he’s made of glass and he’s looking right back. I wonder how long this little staring contest is gonna last.

  “No sir, I’m a little too young for that, I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  “Yes sir.”

  Lloyd bursts out laughing and hands me
a drink.

  “Liar. I was drinking whiskey when I was ten. Drink up. that’s a 7 & 7. You know what that is? 7-Up and Seagram’s 7. that’s why they call it 7 & 7, see. Perfect for starting up. I think I’ll have one myself.” He smiles real big and raises his glass. “Bottoms up.”

  He throws his drink back and slams it on the table, fixing to refill. I just sit there, sipping and looking over my glass at the weirdo dynamic on the other side of the room.

  Lloyd raises his glass again, topped off, and says, “Skull.” He drinks up and whispers to me, “That’s what they say in Norway.”

  I nod, trying to care.

  Lloyd motions towards Eddie with his glass. “See there, that’s my son.” He pauses for effect. “Well, not really my son, but like my son. Right, Eddie?”

  Eddie stays looking at Glenda, frozen and electric.

  “Right.” The corners of his mouth creep into a tight smile. “Dad.”

  Glenda storms into the other room like that was a direct insult.

  Eddie starts laughing.

  “Boy, what’s gotten into her?” He gets up and stands next to me at the bar, facing Lloyd. “Bartender, give me a shot of tequila. On second thought, just give me the whole bottle.”

  He grabs the bottle off the bar, unscrews the top and tilts it back. He gulps down and looks at me, over his shoulder, acknowledging me for the first time.

  “Sorry I pushed you outta my truck, kid.” He takes another swig. “it’s just . . . you make me nervous.”

  Then he heads out the front, bottle in hand.

  Lloyd and I stare at the front door, wide open. Outside the sky is bright blue like a postcard for Wyoming. Wish you were here.

  But right now I wish I wasn’t here, what with the staring and the midday boozing and the smiling and the too-quick hugging.

  Lloyd puts his arm around me, firm. He acts the way the good ol dads act on TV, warm and protective. He leads me through the sliding glass door and into the back. There’s a pool set in concrete, with two lawn chairs and a table off to the side. Other than that, there’s mostly just a couple of weeds and no real boundary between the backyard perimeter and the rest of the world. It just drops off from the pool and concrete into wilderness, which in this case is a burnt grassy plain scooping up into a hill.