Hick

by Andrea Portes

  “You like swimming, Luli?”

  “Yes sir. Yes I do.”

  I am just itching to get into that blue sunshine water and wash the day off in one blue splash.

  “Well, get in.”

  He grabs my drink and pushes me into the pool, clothes and everything. I don’t know whether I’m supposed to laugh or take offense. I come up from the water and turn back to him.

  “Thanks, Mister.”

  “Oh, now, c’mon. Just playin a little. Look, swim all you want, make yourself at home. I’ll be inside with my sweet honey-bride. Hah, poet and didn’t even know it.”

  Boy, he sure knows how to be a jackass.

  He turns and walks inside, leaving me to wonder if by bride he meant Glenda and, if so, why she has so plainly neglected to mention the fact that she’s married. And, especially, to this guy.

  He looks back, calling out from the sliding door, “Oh, and Luli, there ain’t a soul around here for miles.”

  He winks and slides the door closed, waving from inside the glass.

  Weirdo.

  I stay there, treading water, wondering what the hell Glenda has got me into here. I duck my head underwater and swim to the deep end. When I come up for air, Eddie appears from God knows where. He looks down at me, snide, hovering above. The sun shines bright behind, turning him black.

  “Well, you heard what the man said. ‘Nobody for miles.’”

  He chuckles to himself, knocking back the tequila, pretending it’s all a big funny joke. I stay there, frozen, squinting up at the sun like some kind of teenage tadpole.

  “Not a soul, kid. I guess you could count me, but I think it might be debatable whether or not I count as a soul.” He takes another swig. “You know what? I think you like me.”

  Oh Lord, here goes.

  “Yeah, right.” I laugh it off.

  “I think you find me . . . worthy of note.”

  “Worthy of note?”

  “You know . . . exciting.”

  He smiles, skinny, burning a hole in my eyes.

  TWENTY

  Iswim to the shallow end and get out, trying to act casual. But I’m stumbling over my feet now, tripping my way over towards the house. Behind me Eddie’s staring straight through me to somewhere beneath my skin. Something like shame is rustling up inside me, blushing and quivering, shaking me into feeling guilt for God knows what. I grab the screen door and try to slide it open. it’s locked.

  I turn around, expecting to see Eddie there, caught up and clawing. But instead of fangs and a full moon with lightning, he’s just sitting there on the other side of the pool, Indian-style, not even looking my way. I try the door again, no luck, and make my way over the crabgrass to the front. Halfway there, I hear noises from inside the house, strange and stilted, like someone’s trying to move a dresser. I peek in one of the windows, hiding in the curtain shade.

  It’s dark inside and I can barely see her. it’s that late-afternoon light creeping into night, where the outside’s yellow bright but the inside’s getting ready for dinner. she’s got her back towards me and she’s moving up and down, up and down, not wearing a stitch. I stand there, gawking dumb. Her back looks like one of those lions you see on National Geographic shows, carved out and smooth. The muscles twitch and twitch back again when she moves, up down, up down, over and over.

  I keep looking.

  I hear something behind me and jump back, startled and embarrassed. You’re not supposed to watch this part. But there’s nothing there. Some trick of the wind or maybe just my guilt creeping up, tapping me on the shoulder. I sneak around the front of the house, shamey, tip-toeing my way through the gleaming frogs and fishponds. The front door is wide open, knocking around in the breeze. I hustle into the kitchen and dry myself off with a dish-towel, too scared and frinkled to go anywhere else. The kitchen is yellow linoleum and quiet, like the eye of the storm. You’d never guess what’s going on in the other room. I sit down at the table and lay my head on the checkered plastic tablecloth.

  I miss my room. I miss my bed. I miss being a little punk with no care in the world, giving two fucks about it, just looking for trouble.

  I guess I found it.

  There’s a darkness here. There’s something you can’t put your finger on that’s creeping in through the edges of the linoleum and the squares between the tiles. it’s something sideways behind the drywall, something dirty and bored and mean.

  I want to go home. I want my mama. All this time I thought she and I were just pure hatred. And maybe that’s true a little. But maybe a little part of her looks at me and remembers about being young and now I get to be and she’s not. Not no more. She traded in her young part to give me mine. I’m this red flag walking around, jarring her into the realization of all the years and all the mistakes and all the could have beens. I’m this constant reminder that she had two babies and only one got to stay.

  Lord above, I wish you could have seen her. When she was young, she was like Doris Day, only sexy. She had white hair that flipped up and frosted pink lipstick and white patent-leather boots. She was the only girl in the state of Nebraska, I guarantee, that had the guts to wear knee-high shiny white boots. I have a picture of her in my head, wearing those boots, sitting on a plaid sofa, in a little pale frosty-blue mini-dress. she’s holding a baby up to her shoulder and smiling at the camera.

  But there’s something in her smile, some giveaway behind the eyes, something scared, uncomfortable, suffering. And I wonder if that look, that far-off, buried, nervous secret, is because that baby in her arms, that baby that was me, came just a little too soon. Too quick and out of nowhere. Like one day she had hopes and dreams and then the next they were all just shut down, closed for business. When you see that look in her eyes, that sad disappointment buried deep beneath her smile, it can break your heart. The only thing that could break your heart more would be to be the reason for it.

  And I wish she wouldn’t have traded her life for me.

  See, you never think of your parents as people. You just think of them as the gods who raised you up and poured milk in your cornflakes. They’re just the ones you always looked up to, the ones you remember always being around, fixing things, holding your hand, making a fuss about don’t do this and don’t do that and look both ways before your cross the street. But you never think of them as someone like you. You never think of them as some human-type person like yourself who fucks up and feels bad and gets pregnant and trades their life for you. You don’t think of them like that.

  I wonder if I was worth it.

  I wonder how many times she wishes that baby boy had made it and not me.

  Eddie comes in the kitchen and leans against the fridge. I turn my head the other way and pretend to inspect the wallpaper, little horses and cowboys riding.

  “You wanna go for a drive?”

  “No.”

  We don’t look at each other. He stares at the floor and I stare at the wallpaper cowboys. There’s one in the middle with blond hair, bucking high off his horse with his hat in the air. If I could just jump in, I would ride off into the sunset on the back of his saddle, into the paper horizon.

  “You know how to drive?”

  “No.”

  “You wanna learn?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll teach ya.”

  I look over at him, suspicious of this nice-guy bent. I don’t trust him as far as I could throw him, but he’s playing kind. He looks up at me, slumped against the fridge, sad and leaning.

  “Really?”

  He nods, setting the tequila down on the counter and motioning towards the door with his head before taking his exit.

  I look at the paper cowboys and the bucking broncos and, off in the distance, a cactus set down before an orange paper sun.

  I follow.

  I could never turn away from a car crash.

  TWENTY–ONE

  Jackson is a place for rich people. it’s a place where the rich people are so ric
h, they pretend to be poor. They ignore us, noses up, as we stop at the light off Main Street. They look ahead and pretend we don’t exist. They saunter around the rickety walk-ways and Wild West overhangs making everything look old-timey and fake. We’re in the town square, the epicenter of the Old West put-on. The rich people promenade around, wearing shorts and sandals, licking ice-cream cones and looking in the shop windows, anxious to spend. Eddie parks in front of the Million-Dollar Cowboy Bar and tells me to wait in the truck. He grabs his Stetson, slams the door and strolls into the darkness.

  I wait in the car for about five minutes before deciding that I’d rather go into the bar and piss off Eddie than stay out here and die of boredom. I’ve been hearing bits and pieces of conversation from the sidewalk: Who’s dating who, Should I have bought that bag, Uncle Ted bought a boat. There’s a kind of ease to it. Comfort.

  People are different here. Beige. The women wear knee-length skirts and flat shoes. The men wear brand-new cowboy hats and don’t swagger.

  Two pale ladies in hats come strolling by. One of them stops to adjust her purse. I guess with so many bags of new-bought stuff to contend with, it’s hard to get it all straight. They chatter on like two birds on a wire about Jenny and the ungodly wake-up hour for the swim team. They think it’s too early. I get sick of listening to the trials and tribulations of whether or not Jenny should’ve joined the swim team and decide to go in. I open the door and sweep past them, but they can’t be bothered to notice. I mean, not with Jenny having to wake up at five on a Saturday and all.

  I walk in and it’s like I just walked into a commercial for forest fires. Everything inside is made of logs, with fake branches and trees like a woodland retreat. I guess rich people like to put the outside inside. There are no seats at the bar, just saddles, one after the other. Sitting on a regular-style barstool is not an option. I take a saddle near Eddie, playing pool by himself. Behind him in a glass case is a stuffed bear, eight feet tall, his mouth froze open and his claws ready to swipe. It looks like if Eddie just took one step back, it’d all be over.

  He looks at me, annoyed.

  “Thought I told you to wait in the car.”

  “You gonna teach me to drive or what?”

  The bartender takes a keen interest, stopping what he’s doing to observe our mismatch. He’s a plump man, pink like a pig. He’s wearing a dapper new-looking denim shirt, pressed and ironed. Looks like his jeans are ironed, too.

  “Not now. Not since you disobeyed a direct order.”

  The bartender chimes in, uneasy with Eddie seeming too much like the real thing in a town full of Disneyland cowboys.

  “Hey, Mister. She can’t be here,” he says, drying a glass.

  “Sure she can.” Eddie shoots. “I can take my niece wherever I want, can’t I, Luli?”

  He winks, sly, as the seven ball drops in the corner pocket. I don’t answer.

  “That true, Missy? That your uncle?”

  I look up. Eddie aims for the five ball, leaning in. There’s a stale smoke hanging over us, sinking into the floorboards. Eddie hovers over the table, waiting for my answer, pretending to set up his shot.

  “I guess, sir.”

  “You guess?”

  “Yup.”

  “Well, then, I guess you should be leaving”

  Eddie freezes mid-shot. I can tell there’s gonna be trouble. Something in the arch of Eddie’s crooked back makes me know that the next step is gonna be a step down and out. The next step is gonna prove we’re too poor and ignorant to be mixing with dignified folk.

  “Um, Eddie, maybe we should go back to Lloyd’s?”

  The bartender perks up at the sound of the name.

  “Lloyd? Lloyd Nash?”

  “Yup.”

  “You two friends of Lloyd’s?”

  “Friends,” Eddie sinks the five ball, “is an understatement.”

  “He said Eddie’s like a son to him,” I blurt out, sounding shrill and desperate.

  “That so?” The bartender starts to look nervous.

  “Yup.” Eddie sinks the three ball, leaving only the eight ball left.

  “Well, um . . . hell! Friend of Lloyd’s is a friend of mine. You wanna drink?” He holds up a bottle of Seagram’s 7.

  “Don’t mind if I do.” Eddie sinks the eight ball, playing it off, casual.

  “Well, well, that’s some pretty sharp shooting.” The voice comes from the front of the bar, some newcomer just snuck in from the sun.

  To say the newcomer is an ugly man is putting it nice. Real nice. He’s got a face that’d make a freight train take a dirt road. He’s got faded everything, not just-bought, like the rest of the town, with gray stubble peppering the bottom of his face and a tooth missing, smack-dab in front. He takes a seat, sideways, leaning against the saddle, looking gritty down the bar.

  And now he is looking at me.

  “Well, it’s hotter then a French whore with two pussies out there, huh?”

  He unbuttons his collar.

  Look, I’m not trying to say I’m some kinda beauty queen or princess priss from Prissonia, but the way he’s looking at me, it’s like he wants to eat me up right there. And there’s something in his look that’s making me nervous and shamey and weak, like my knees are about to wobble out from underneath me. Eddie comes over and stands beside me, protective. I like this new side of Eddie, like I’m his girlfriend.

  “I like your hat,” the stranger says, making nice.

  “it’s not a hat. it’s a Stetson.”

  “Well, then, I like your Stetson.”

  “You play?” Eddie nods towards the pool table.

  “I reckon I can, been a while but—”

  “You a betting man?”

  The bartender hands Eddie a drink, eyeing the stranger, wary.

  “All right. Let’s make it a hundred.”

  The stranger starts to smile crooked, meeting Eddie in the eye.

  “Well, well. All right. You’re on, then.”

  The bartender and I share a look, both of us thinking that this is how all the bad things in the world begin and that there is no doubt these two are the men for the job. The bartender pours me a drink.

  “Shirley Temple, kid. Made it special, just for you.”

  “Thanks, Mister.”

  He leans in, dimming his voice to a whisper,

  “Listen, kid, we don’t want any trouble here, so, you know, if things start looking bad, maybe you could call off your uncle there and tell him you wanna go back to Lloyd’s.”

  I nod back, assuring, squinting my eyes like we have an agreement, man to man.

  Eddie racks up the balls, giving it a little flourish at the end to show he means business. The stranger fumbles with the pool cue.

  I sip my Shirley Temple and try to act casual, but how can you when Eddie shoots in every single ball, each one after the next, missing the eight, on purpose.

  The stranger looks flustered, disappointed. He goes to the table, his only chance a solid damn near the side pocket. Tough shot. He misses off the bank. Eddie shoots in the eight ball and starts to laugh.

  “Well, there, Mister, now maybe you’ll learn some manners.”

  The stranger looks sunken, shaking his head and scratching his neck, stubbly.

  “You got me, Mister.”

  “Well, live and learn, I guess.” Eddie’s being a real pal now.

  “Listen.” The stranger leans in to Eddie, quiet-like. “I can’t go back to my wife a hundred bucks in the hole. she’ll have my head, if you know what I mean.”

  The stranger looks up at Eddie, pleading. “Maybe we could play one more, you know, double or nothing.”

  Eddie looks at the man like he just landed off the moon.

  “You must be one dumb crazy fucker to wanna lose two-hundred bucks.”

  “All right, then. How bout a game for two-hundred straight up? That worth your time?”

  The bartender and I share a look. This is just too pathetic.

  The st
ranger looks at Eddie.

  “Could be.”

  Eddie walks over to the table and starts chalking up his cue.

  The stranger and Eddie shoot to see who goes first. The stranger wins. Eddie comes over and stands beside me at the bar, drinking his drink and watching the man, pathetic in his stance. The stranger makes the first shot. Eddie nods, not thinking much of it. The stranger makes the second shot. Eddie shifts his weight and sips his drink. The stranger makes the third shot, the fourth shot, the fifth shot, all the way to the end when he sinks the eight ball, like it’s nothing much to write home about.

  I look up at the bartender, helpless. The bartender shrugs.

  Eddie stands there, still, blood boiling underneath.

  The stranger meets his gaze, blank, but somewhere behind his eyes there’s a sneer and a twinkling, born bad. He’s proved Eddie’s untrue grit.

  “I believe you owe me a hundred dollars. I’ll take cash, thank you.”

  Eddie stares at the man, sizing him up.

  “I’m not paying.”

  “What? I didn’t hear you?”

  “I’m not paying.”

  “Oh, okay, well then, in that case . . . I’ll make you a deal.”

  The stranger comes up close to Eddie and starts whispering in his ear, looking over, here and there. I catch his eye quick and he looks away, guilty. Eddie listens and listens, asks him a question and listens some more. The bartender wipes off the counter, trying to make-pretend he’s part of the wall. I’m the only one who senses something bubbling, something filthy and unkind.

  Eddie comes sidling over, leaning his elbow on the bar, putting his hand on my shoulder, nice.

  “Now, Luli, we got man stuff to discuss now, so I want you to just go back there and wait a spell.”

  “Back where?”