Sweet and Low

by Nick White

  Before cranking up the four-wheelers, Forney said, “Regan’s gonna leave me soon.”

  This was the first time he’d ever talked about their relationship to me. Felt as if I were eavesdropping. I told him that we were all tired and had drunk too much the night before.

  “No,” he said. “I feel it in her body when she lies next to me. Has a way of freezing you out when she wants to.”

  “For fuck’s sake,” I said, and turned the key to my Grizzly. The engine roared to life. “You don’t know what you don’t know.”

  * * *

  —

  “AND WHAT BOUNTY did my men bring me?” Regan said to us when we pulled up. She lay on the porch couch. Her hair was tousled, and she wore a fluffy cotton bathrobe. “Ah,” she said as we neared. “They came back with empty hands. What are we going to do with them?” When we made it to the steps, the dog stood and began to growl, a low throaty rumble. Like falling gravel. “Shh,” she said, and touched the dog’s back. It had been cleaned; its fur, while still dingy, had been combed and was fluffy; all the debris had been washed away.

  “See you’ve been busy,” I said.

  “Hooch, is that you?” Forney was blinking slowly. “He looks—”

  “Isn’t he precious,” Regan said. The dog was weary of us and backed up against Regan’s knees. Forney sighed and went inside. But I lingered behind.

  “What’s his problem?” asked Regan.

  I wanted to tell her what he’d told me, ask her if it was true. Ask her if she was leaving him. Ultimately, I shrugged. The sky was clear tonight, and a few stars were starting to blink on, looking fragile and pink, hanging so close that I felt as if I could thump them away if I wanted.

  I showered downstairs. The water pressure was much stronger than it had been upstairs, and when I finished, my skin felt clean and new. I put on a pair of dorm pants and a gray T-shirt, the last of my clean clothes. When I joined the other two in the living room, they were quiet and not looking at each other. Both of them seemed genuinely relieved to have me there. I felt like a child who had walked in on his parents arguing and wished, suddenly, that we were leaving tonight, not the following morning. Something was slipping away from us, and I thought at the time that if we left then we might have a chance to go back to the way we were before we left.

  Regan smiled. “Feel better?”

  “Spick-and-span,” I said, trying to lighten the mood, but the silence persisted.

  Forney cooked burger patties in the oven, baking them in tinfoil with onions and butter. We ate them without buns on paper plates. Regan had made a crunchy salad with diced pecans and toasted ramen noodles and a sweet vinaigrette. The mismatched meal was good. I didn’t realize how hungry I had become. The quiet was broken when Regan said, coyly, “This would have been better with fish.” Forney let her words disappear into the air without comment.

  “Let’s be nice,” I said.

  “Forney,” Regan said. She threw her fork at him, and he dodged it. “You, Forney.”

  I gathered the plates and took them to the trash in the kitchen. I wanted them to fix things while I was gone; I wanted to go back in the room and find them all right again. As I was placing the forks in the sink, Regan’s thin arms slipped around my waist. She had snuck into the kitchen without my hearing her. “Cut it out.” I shoved her away and went to the refrigerator. I kept my back to her. Her touch made me crazy, made my thoughts turn gooey and unformed. I put the rest of salad into the icebox, and when I turned around, she was grinning in such a way that made me, all two hundred and something pounds of me, afraid of her.

  “What are you doing?” I realized what a fierce creature she was. Saw the fierceness prickling off her skin. She put her hand behind my neck and pulled me to her. And then we were kissing. Her mouth was warm and soft, and I lost myself to the feel of it. Behind her, I saw Forney standing in the doorway. Maybe he had been there all along. I don’t know. I pushed her off of me, and she fell away, laughing, wiping her lips.

  “Don’t this make a pretty picture,” he said. Regan stretched out her arm toward him, and he went to her, as if she were some kind of goddess that he’d come to pay tribute to. She kissed him just as she had kissed me, and I went hard. I felt drugged, drunk again, as if my kneecaps had been replaced by balloons. Arm in arm, they moved closer to me, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. My chest tightened when she grabbed my shirt and brought me to them. The three of us stood in the kitchen in a kind of awkward dance. Regan leaned her head on Forney’s shoulder and sighed, becoming soft. It was easy then, or maybe it just seemed easy, being with them like this. Something that was started months ago, the night we first met in the dorm, had finally opened up and lay exposed. There was nothing to be done but to follow through with what we were doing.

  Regan led us to the master bedroom, and sometime later in the night, my body still wrapped in theirs, I thought I heard barking.

  * * *

  —

  I WOKE UP ALONE, my legs tangled in the sheets. The glint of the sun told me it was late, possibly the afternoon. The mattress sat crookedly on the bed frame, and the square room, his mother’s room, shimmered with gold wallpaper. Like waking up in a jewelry box. I could hear Forney on the front porch, pecking away on the typewriter at a furious pace. When I leaned up to look out the window, I saw Regan playing with Hooch. She had found a Frisbee and was tossing it into the air, and the dog, a dutiful playmate, lumbered after it each time.

  I put on my shirt and boxers, and ambled into the kitchen, scratching my head. I went to the sink and turned on the faucet. Splashed my face with the cold well water and patted it dry with a paper towel. When I stepped outside, Forney stopped typing and turned.

  “How you feel?” he said. There was a slight quiver in his voice. So much depended on what I said next. I knew it; he knew it.

  “I feel,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “I feel very European.” Both of us howled with laughter. I stepped out into the sunlight, felt invigorated. There wasn’t a book propped up in front of his typewriter; he was either writing a poem from memory or this was something original.

  Forney smiled, seeing me realize this. “It started this morning. New stuff. My stuff.”

  I leaned in to read what he had written, but he covered the page with his hand. “No, no,” he said. “Not ready yet, sport.” He slapped a stack of papers beside him. “Been through some drafts this morning but still rusty as hell.”

  “This is great.”

  “Listen, I think Regan’s back. I mean, whatever happened last night, it worked. It helped us. All of us. We’re better now. Right?”

  I told him the world felt right to me. I leaped off the porch in my bare feet, and Regan never saw me coming. I swiped the Frisbee from her hand, throwing it hard into the horizon. The dog, ears cocked, was unable to resist and took after the disk not long after it left my hand.

  “Well,” she said. “Someone slept well.”

  “Wish we could stay like this forever—just the three of us, away from everybody.”

  She put her hands in her pockets and stepped away from me, as if we were strangers. “We leave today.”

  I smiled. “There will be more breaks.”

  She clicked her tongue like an offended librarian. “About that. I think Forney and I need to be alone for a while when we get back. Work on us, you know.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  I closed the space between us in one step and picked her up by the hips, spinning her in the air. “Put me down,” she said, and she began to hit my shoulders. “Put me down right now.” But I didn’t want to hear what she was saying and pressed her body close to mine, wanting to feel what I felt the night before. She had changed. I stopped spinning and looked up into her face. Thought I could find some trace of the woman who was there the night before.

  “What about—?” I said, and
she started to laugh.

  Her nails scraped along my neck. “What? You think because we suck your dick,” she said, laughing a little more, “that we want you around all the time?”

  I let her go, and she tumbled to the ground, landing on her elbows. She threw a clod of dirt at me. I kicked it away and was too late in seeing the dog coming toward me, as quick as a panther. Hooch had me pinned beneath him, his claws piercing my chest, before I could react. The breath was knocked out of me, and I had just enough time to brace the dog around the neck with my arms to keep its snapping mouth from mangling my face.

  “Call him off,” I said to Regan, but she backed away from us, her face pinched and uncertain. My arms were getting tired, and Hooch, impatient, was becoming more and more vicious. I almost felt sorry for the dog, for what we had done to it, intruding into its territory. After all, the dog was trembling with the same love I had felt; like me, it was trying desperately to protect the few specks of happiness it had probably ever felt in its whole miserable life. My arms gave out, and I shut my eyes, waiting for it to make ground chuck out of my face and neck. I hoped it would be fast. The dog, however, was stopped. Forney had snatched it from behind, and when I opened my eyes, he had the frenzied animal in a headlock, its paws slashing at air. In one quick movement, before I knew what was happening, Forney twisted the dog’s head all the way back. There was a sharp snap. The dog’s paws went limp. Forney didn’t seem to realize what he had done at first, and when he did, he let out a long cry.

  When Regan touched his arm, he jumped. “Let it go,” she said. He looked relieved to have someone to tell him what to do and, all at once, dropped the dog. Hooch fell beside me, a pile of fur and teeth and claws.

  Forney rushed inside the house, and Regan and I gazed at the dog, then at each other. Neither of us knew what to say, I think. When Forney came back, he was carrying a tarp. Without speaking, Forney and Regan wrapped up the dog and carried him to the back of one of the four-wheelers we had left parked in the front yard yesterday. I followed them and was about to get on the other four-wheeler, but Forney, seeing where I was headed, stepped in my way and pushed me back with both hands, almost knocking me back to the ground.

  “You coming?” he said, and he was speaking to Regan, who nodded and got on the four-wheeler. “Hold on to him, okay?” She put an arm behind her, around the large mass they’d hooked onto the back grille. The four-wheeler roared to life. I didn’t watch them leave. I walked back to the porch and saw that the typewriter was empty. I didn’t have the heart to look in the trash. I went on inside to pack my clothes, but I didn’t have enough energy to gather them up, so I went back outside and sat on the porch couch, and in the distance, the sound of the four-wheeler went abruptly silent, which meant they’d found a spot to bury the dog. They would be quick. It was getting dark, and we still had the long drive back to our old lives.

  LADY TIGERS

  Rusty sat behind the wheel of the bus and watched the sky turn sour. A year ago, when his father had coached the Lady Tigers, he’d been expected to serve as the team’s water boy in addition to his regular duties as their bus driver. But Coach Culpepper, bless him, had no such expectations. He told Rusty he could stay on board. After all, Rusty was a senior and probably had important tests to study for. He didn’t.

  Last night, after her shift at the Piggly Wiggly, his mom had brought him home the latest Catwoman to help him pass the time during the ball game, but his attention had been sidetracked by the onslaught of sky bracketed within the bus’s windshield. Skies were bigger in the Delta than in the hilly country he was used to. He knew that—everyone did—and yet its bigness still surprised him. The sky pushed on and on. Great swaths of blue every which way. It was a marvel the Lady Tigers could hobble bases and throw balls with so much vastness bearing down on them. Eventually, he spotted in the distance a blue so deep it was purple. Only not purple, no. A sootiness inching toward the ballpark. An infection.

  For two innings, the thundercloud spread, billowing out of itself like smoke, soaking up light as it grew. The bus didn’t face the diamond, but Rusty could make out the sounds of the game, the clink of metal bats, the random chants from the opposing team, the Lady Stars. Now hush, you don’t want none of us! Before he realized it, late morning looked more like early evening, and a vein of lightning cracked through the cloud mass. Fat raindrops followed, slapping hard against the windshield, warping the world liquid.

  Then he heard them: the Lady Tigers, as they slammed against the side of the bus like blind cows, hollering to be let inside. He pulled the lever above the stick, and the accordion-like door squeezed open. In they hurtled, one by one, smelling of sweat and hair spray, popping Bubble Yum, clad in their black and gold uniforms. Number 12 lumbered up first. Eyeblack smeared down her rosy cheeks, her topknot all but destroyed. The bat bag strapped to her shoulders nearly clocked him in the side of the head as she plodded by. More of them were close behind, pushing to get in out of the rain: Numbers 45 and 62 and 33 and 8. They were yammering on about a female ref’s bad calls and possible “dykeyness.” “Licky, Licky,” said Number 16, the only black Lady Tiger, causing her teammates to squeal.

  By the time the coach shoved on, he was soaked. His black polo clung to his torso, his nipples poking through. He held a clipboard in one hand and toted an orange Gatorade cooler with the other.

  “Naw, your poor coach don’t need any help,” he said, fake mad and huffing.

  The Lady Tigers tittered.

  “You’ll melt in the water, Coachie,” Number 36 said. “You so sweet.”

  Rusty tried to grab the cooler, but the coach waved him away with his clipboard, dousing Rusty’s glasses with rainwater.

  “Crank us up.” The coach threw the clipboard onto the seat behind Rusty and slung the cooler down the aisle, colliding it with Number 8’s hindquarters.

  “Hey!” she said. “That’s my caboose!”

  He told her he knew good and goddamn well what it was and to shut up about it and set the cooler on top of the spare tire while she was at it.

  Turning back to Rusty, he said, “Why ain’t we movin’?”

  The bus door was still open, and rain spat in.

  “Looks kind of bad, don’t it?” he said. “Shouldn’t we, um, wait it out?”

  The coach leaned forward and removed Rusty’s glasses. He called over Number 2, who was somehow remarkably drier than the others, and used her jersey to wipe off the lenses. As he placed them back onto Rusty’s face, his fingers grazed Rusty’s ears, sending a shock of gooseflesh down his back.

  “You get us on home now,” the coach said, using the same steady voice he’d used the week before when reciting a Miller Williams poem to Rusty’s AP English class.

  “Well,” Rusty said. “Sure thing, Coach.”

  He woke up the engine, balancing his feet between the clutch and brake. The bus roared alive, two parts diesel, one part magic. He could feel it in his groin, the energy all throttled up. Before he let off the brake, the coach yelled, “Hey, Rus, you may want to close the damn door.”

  Door, yes. After it had been snapped shut, he shifted to first and guided the massive enterprise toward the road. The exhaust pipe popped off like a shotgun blast, the noise so deep he felt it in his molars. He was already on the interstate before he realized the sound had not been the bus backfiring at all, but thunder.

  * * *

  —

  ONLY ABOUT FIVE FEET of road showed itself to Rusty at a time even with the headlights on bright. The rest was coated in murk. They were going along at forty, sometimes slower when approaching pockets of muddy water pooled in dips in the road. It was a solid two hours from home at a normal pace, but at this rate, it would be dinnertime before they rolled up to the high school.

  Not that anyone on board seemed to mind. The Lady Tigers he eyed in the big circle mirror had donned headphones. Bone Thugs-N-Harmony’s latest CD E. 19
99 Eternal had been making the rounds on some of their Walkmans. To Rusty, their music was softer than what the girls normally listened to. Eerie lullabies more spirit than music, as if the singers were performing their melodies somewhere between the here and the hereafter. Two seats back, Numbers 12 and 8 sang along to parts of “Tha Crossroads,” their voices not as ethereal as the original but just as mournful and loud enough for him to make out over the kerplunking rain and almost, almost, enjoy.

  The coach lay on the seat behind him. Prime viewing in the rectangular mirror directly above Rusty when he leaned forward a little and cocked his head. A dangerous position, he knew, since it took his focus off the road, but he allowed himself a few glances anyhow. Not likely to have another chance like this one anytime soon: The coach had stripped down to his khaki shorts. He was dozing with his legs bridged across the aisle, his bare feet resting on the seat where his polo and socks had been draped to dry. He’d peeled his clothes from his pink and hairless body with a slowness Rusty had thought impossible in real time.

  Lord, he said to himself, remembering it, and put his eyes back on the road. Wind was batting harder against the bus now. An invisible hand nudging them sideways. The coach had claimed the rain would slack up once they’d put some distance between themselves and the Delta. The god-awful Delta, he called it. Like with so many things, the coach had been wrong. The bus seemed bound for perdition, not away from it. Rusty believed in two versions of the coach: the one who taught literature to seniors and wrote poems for the school newspaper, The Growl, and the other one who was desperately over his head and had led the Lady Tigers to the end of a thankless season with no wins. During the era of Rusty’s dad as coach, there had been trophies, special segments devoted to him and “his rowdy girls” on the local news channel, interested recruiters from as far away as Nashville and Hattiesburg. The Lady Tigers had been unbeatable their last season, state champions.