by Jane Bradley
“Nothing.” They both sipped their beers. Billy could feel the others in the room watching them. Somehow they all knew the story, and not one would come sit at the bar. Just Gator. But he was like Katy’s little brother even though he was an old man.
“Your laundry is behind the bar in a duffel bag. Katy even bought you a couple packs of new boxers. She said no man as sweet as you should have to wear rags like the ones you had.”
Gator smiled. “The only woman in the world who’s ever called me sweet.”
Pete was already digging around behind the bar. He plopped the duffel bag in front of Gator. Gator reached, unzipped it, and pulled out the packs of boxers. “Blue. She remembered my favorite color.” He leaned into the open bag, breathed the fresh smell. “Clean,” he said. “She always sends it back smelling so clean.”
Billy raised his beer. “ ‘Let there be laundry for the backs of thieves.’ ”
Pete gave him a little pissed-off look and walked away.
Gator turned to him. “What you talking about, man? I ain’t no thief.”
“It’s just that line from a poem Katy liked,” Billy said. “It’s something she called a metaphor, I think.” He remembered it was supposed to be “fresh linen,” but it was laundry sitting there on the bar.
Gator tucked the boxers into the bag, zipped it closed. He grinned at Billy. “Guess I’ll have to say it’s been quite a few years since I was a thief. Just little shit when I needed it. Like a couple steaks at the Bi-Lo. Spent a night locked up for those steaks. Could’ve kicked myself in the ass all night long. I spent too much time in ‘Nam to get stuck one more night in a place I didn’t want to be.”
“I hear you,” Billy said. He thought of his mother’s trailer in a park just outside Daytona Beach. When he was a boy, she’d said they were moving from Shithole, Florida, to Daytona Beach, and he’d thought how good it would be to live on a beach. But when you live in a trailer park, you don’t get much chance to go to the beach. About the only sand he saw was in the trailer-park driveways, and it was nasty with car oil and cigarette butts and beer-can tabs. He told himself he would get out of that trailer park as soon as he was old enough to know there was such a thing as getting out. He got a job as a laborer with a bricklayer, and bucket by bucket and then brick by brick, he paved his way free. And now his mom was still sitting in that trailer, smoking her Dorals and sipping Natty Lites and pissed off at the world for not giving her what she thought she deserved. She didn’t want out. She’d rather stay in that trailer park and complain about how Billy’s daddy wasn’t ever a daddy, and now her own son couldn’t be a son when she’d spent so much time … Doing what? Billy thought. Nothing. He looked at his beer. Doing shit, he thought; you never did more than the minimum for me.
Gator leaned toward him. “You all right, dude?”
“No. Hell, no,” Billy said.
“Want to go around to the alley and fire one up?”
“No,” Billy said. “No, thank you, Gator. I’m giving that up for a while.”
Gator nodded. “That’s cool. Whatever you need.” He drained his mug. “Thanks for the beer. I’m gonna meet up with some dudes. I’ll be back for that laundry.” He patted Billy’s shoulder, slipped off the bar stool. Just when he got to the door, Shelby walked in. Tight jeans and a tank top. Pete was right. She did look like a hellion. He hadn’t noticed that before. She was definitely the kind of woman you wanted on your team. She gave Billy a nod as she held the door open for Livy. Gator stood there looking at Livy. His mouth dropped a little as he stared. Billy knew what he was looking at: Katy, what Katy would be in twenty-five years. Billy saw it. And when he glanced at Pete behind the bar, he knew Pete saw it too. Everybody in the place was staring. Pretty much everyone in town knew who Shelby Waters was these days, and probably everyone in the bar had seen Livy on the news. Gator glanced back to Billy and shook his head. He gave Shelby a little nod and looked to Livy. He said, “I’m sorry for your troubles, ma’am,” and he was out the door.
Billy caught Livy’s eyes. She looked terrified. He got off his stool to go to her. He realized she’d never been to the bar, had probably never even been to this part of town. Wilmington was a whole different place at night, especially this part of town. The bar was set back a few blocks from where tourists liked to go. There was a porn shop down the street. And she’d probably seen the little park where the homeless liked to hang at night. Billy stood looking at her: Katy in twenty-five years. Shelby was leading her over, and Pete was already out from behind the bar and heading her way. Billy sat back down and leaned his head down, trying to find his breath. This was happening. It was really happening. Katy was gone, and her mother was there.
“You doing all right, Billy?” Allison touched the back of his hand. He flinched, and his arm flew up so hard he would have hit her in the face if she hadn’t jumped back.
“Am I all right?” he said. He said it quietly. He had to keep his voice quiet or he would yell. “No, I am not all right. That’s my fiancée on that flyer there. She’s missing. Remember Katy?”
She nodded. “I’m just saying I’m sorry, Billy.” He didn’t even like her saying his name. She was only flirting again, making it look like concern because Katy had disappeared. He looked at her face, too round, that straight blond hair, her fake tits rising up in her shirt like a couple of things trapped there and trying to get out. He heard Pete getting Shelby and Livy settled at a table. He knew he should get over there. She touched his hand again. “You need another beer, Billy?”
“No,” he said. She kept her hand on his, kept looking at him in that pitying way. He pulled his hand away and leaned close to her like he was going to tell her a secret. “I saw hundreds of girls just like you back in Daytona Beach. Beach bunnies. Fake tits, fake smiles, fake hair. All so blond. I think of girls like you as something like corn. Everybody likes corn. Tasty. Goes with anything. There’s rows and rows of girls like you. I don’t like corn. I ate too much of it out of a can when I was a kid. Please don’t touch me anymore.”
She jumped back and stood there. He could see tears starting at her eyes, knew he should say he was sorry, wanted to say he was sorry, but he wasn’t. She glanced toward the table where Pete was rambling on about how happy he was to meet Livy, how Katy had said so many nice things about Livy, how he was sure she’d be back soon, saying all the happy-host shit. Shelby was sitting still as a stone, her eyes locked on Billy. She’d heard him. Billy found the words, turned toward Allison but wouldn’t look at her. He said the word, but he barely made a sound: “Sorry.”
She leaned over the bar. “I didn’t know you were an asshole.”
He nodded. He would accept that. He turned and went toward the table where Livy was looking around the room with that polite smile on her face. “How pleasant this place is. It’s Irish. Katy never told me it was Irish. It’s more like a pub than a bar.”
Billy nodded and sat with them, thinking, Poor Livy. Katy had told him how she always strained to put the best picture on things. And now she was sitting there with Katy gone for over three weeks now, and all she could do was make what was just another bar into a place where she wouldn’t mind her daughter working. A pub. Only happy drunks went to pubs, right? At a pub the worst thing that could happen was maybe an argument over a soccer game.
Pete leaned toward her, charmed. Billy watched the way he reached across the table and patted the back of her hand. He saw Shelby watching this too. “So glad you like my place,” he said. “But I’ve gotta admit, it’s fake Irish. I’m Polish, actually, but Irish sells.
Everybody wants to be a little Irish these days. Justifies drinking as a national pastime.”
Livy kept that smile on. “But I’m Irish,” she said, “and I hardly drink at all.”
“Just joking,” Pete said. “How about a round of Guinness? I keep the temperature the way it’s supposed to be.”
She looked over to the bar, saw rows of bottles. Billy could see it; her gaze was snagged by tha
t picture of Katy. She turned to Pete. “To tell you the truth, I think I’d like a whiskey. An Irish whiskey, please.”
“Attagirl,” Shelby said. “Sounds good to me.”
Pete patted Livy’s hand. “I see you’re Katy’s mom all right. She likes a shot of Jameson at closing time.” He turned toward the bar and called to Allison to bring a round of whiskeys. Told her to bring a round of water too. He was good, Billy thought. He knew most women liked to sip water alongside their drinks. And his hand, it stayed there on the table, close to Livy’s, as if they were long-lost friends who had just happened to meet in a bar. Yep, Pete was charmed all right. Billy wondered if there was something about grief that was sexy to some people. Was it the weakness that made people think you wanted touching? Since Katy had disappeared, women were doing everything but inviting themselves to stay at his house. Kept showing up with casseroles, ribs, baked chickens. And Billy had seen the men doing it to Livy, standing too close to her as if they were at the ready in case she weakened, had some kind of fainting spell. He felt Shelby watching him. He looked up at her, shrugged, shook his head. She shook her head too, gave a little grin. God knew she’d seen plenty of this kind of thing, worry and fear making people flat-out goofy. Or mean.
He saw Allison coming toward them with the tray of drinks, her face tight. When she set the drinks on the table, he could smell her perfume, like some kind of candy. He held his breath not to breathe it. Katy hardly ever wore perfume. She just always smelled like Katy, a smell like bread and something clean. He felt tears pressing somewhere in the back of his eyes. He grabbed his whiskey, wanted to chug it down, but he sipped it, put the glass down, tried to listen to the conversation at the table. Livy was saying something about how generous it was for Pete to offer his condo. And Pete was saying something about how he really only used it when his daughter was in town with his grandkids for a visit. He went on about how with the way he worked, it was more convenient to stay in his apartment in town.
They were all being so polite, no mention of Katy, no talk of why they were all really sitting at that table in a bar where Katy should be laughing, serving the drinks. He remembered how when his granny died, people gathered in the front parlor of the funeral home. They talked of the quilts she made, her peach pies and pepper plants. They talked about the weather, and there was always a coming back around to something like how his granny would have wanted something that way. But Katy wouldn’t want it this way. Katy would want them out there looking for her. Katy would want to be tending her own tomato and basil plants that were going to hell in the backyard because he couldn’t stand it and doing anything in that garden made Livy have to sit in a lawn chair and cry. They were saying something about time. Oh, God, Livy was saying something about in the Lord’s own time. She was trying to climb back into her religion, like religion was a tree you could climb into to keep you safe from a flood. Billy couldn’t stand any more of anyone’s words that kept trying to say everything was going to be all right.
Pete was touching Livy’s hand again, patting it. He was saying something about how they’d take care of her, something about how he’d show her the best place to buy groceries out there on the beach so she wouldn’t have to pay tourist prices. Billy focused on the words when Pete said, “We can get you in there tomorrow, if you like.”
He leaned forward, felt them all looking at him. He looked at Shelby, the only sign of real comfort in the place. He tried to make the words sound light. “She in that big a hurry to get away from me?”
“No,” Livy said. He saw the strain in her face. Katy got that same look—he’d seen that effort of searching for words that sounded safe, that sounded honest and harmless, whenever he asked her about Frank. Livy touched his arm. “I just thought you’d be wanting some privacy.” She looked to Shelby for help. He wondered if Shelby Waters ever got sick and tired of people looking to her for some kind of relief.
Shelby nodded, knew better than to touch him. “It’s just that this could take some time, Billy.” The room went still. Nothing like a pub or a bar. It was more like a funeral home, where everybody sits in the front parlor and hangs on to talking about anything but the dead thing in the casket in the other room.
He picked up his whiskey, said, “I know this is going to take time, but it’s already taken too much time. And we walk around and try to talk like it’s something normal, like it’s just some kind of bad storm. It’s not a storm.” He was thinking it was the end of the world, but he wouldn’t say that. It felt too true. He drained his whiskey and looked at them staring up. Livy was already crying, and Shelby was looking pissed, so he looked at Pete, who just looked like What the hell you doing now? “What’s wrong with you?” Billy said. “Everybody acting like something normal when we know it’s fucked. Whatever this is, whatever it’s gonna be, I want it to be over.” He slammed his glass to the table and headed out the door.
Outside, he sucked in the humid air. It was warm and thick, and it calmed him. He saw Gator crouching on the sidewalk, his back leaning against the building as if he could sit all night like that.
He sat smoking a cigarette, just watching the street, waiting for nothing while now and then a car rolled by. Billy stood there. He wanted to go around back and get high, but he couldn’t say that. Not with Livy back in the bar, and probably crying. Because of him. Well, really because of Katy. But at this moment she was probably crying because of him. He couldn’t say, Let’s go fire one up now, Gator, because it would sound too much like he wanted to kick back and party when all he really wanted was something to turn the pain down in his head, just a notch or two, just enough so that being awake was something he could stand.
Gator shook his head, just kept staring out at the pavement. “This is worse than Khe Sanh, man.”
“That bad,” Billy said. It wasn’t a question. Gator never talked about Vietnam. Never wanted to. Just said he had done two tours. He’d asked for it. At least ’Nam had given him something to do.
Gator stood, his movement quiet and smooth as a cat. Billy had never seen an old man who could move like Gator. Gator looked straight into him, as if he could read Billy with his eyes. Billy just looked back at him, seeing that Gator’s eyes looked flat and gray in the darkness, set in a face like leather, it was so creased and etched with lines. Like an alligator, Billy thought, like something strong and silent and brutal, like something wild from nature on that city street. “I’m glad you’re my friend,” Billy said.
“Let’s go fire one up,” Gator said. “Booze ain’t gonna touch what you’re feeling.”
Billy nodded and followed Gator around the corner to the alley. It felt good. It already felt something like a comfort to let Gator lead the way.
There’s Often Much Comfort in Useless Things
Some nights I crave the darkness. Some nights I ache to push everyone away. Just being with myself can be crowded. Some nights I hear all the voices of those missing ones calling, and I want to tear all those pictures of their faces off the wall, yank out the phones, burn all the files, and just have my house, and me, not a woman like a refugee camped out in the REV center. Some nights I just want my mind clear of all the awful. I want my home to be my home. So that night I sent Bitsy home early, locked the doors, clicked off the landline ringer, turned off all the lights. I sat in the wicker rocker on the back porch and pushed my foot against the rail to get the soothing movement I needed, but even something as simple as rocking felt like too much work. So I sat still, leaned back, and closed my eyes, thinking about Livy Baines and wishing I could reach down into a well and bring up the solutions to what everybody wanted. I was wondering where we’d ever gotten the idea that wishes came from wishing wells and shooting stars, or that a caught fish could grant a wish if you just released it back into water. I was wondering where we’d ever gotten the idea of lucky things. Humans had to be the only creatures on the planet that thought about things like luck. I caught the scent of my honeysuckle on the night breeze, and everything started to
seem a little all right. It’s not the mind so much as nature that ever really brings me peace.
I was glad I’d gone to the trouble of bringing that honeysuckle bush from back home. People thought I was a fool for going to the bother, all that sweat and heat just to dig up honeysuckle that grew all thick and tangled with the fence, vines gone crazy the way vines do, able to take over any fence or hedge or even a car if you let it sit still long enough. They laughed back home, saying, Who transplants honeysuckle that spreads like kudzu? All you have to do is give it a thought to make it grow. But I wanted that honeysuckle, my family’s honeysuckle vines that reached back to my grandmother’s time and probably even further back. It’s a comfort to know how a green and growing thing can outlast generations of family that think they can really own anything in this world. The blooms were thicker, sweeter than anything you could find at a greenhouse. Pondering the reaches of green and growing things, that was about all I was up for that night. I leaned back, closed my eyes, and breathed that thick, sweet scent of the air. That honeysuckle is pretty much all I have left from back home. I let the land go wild after momma died, and some kids burned down the house. I couldn’t sell it, and I couldn’t live there because just looking at the thick woods all around makes me ache for Darly. So there it sits, meaning nothing to me but the taxes I pay every year. I took all I wanted after Momma died: her bedroom set and the antique pie safe. I can still remember the pies sitting in there. Muscadine, pecan, blackberry, and peach. Simple times. I also took my momma’s Fiestaware. That was her wedding present. She didn’t want fancy china. What was the use of good china for serving fried chicken and biscuits and beans in Suck Creek? My momma, she kept pretty plain, but she liked to look at colorful things. She liked to serve pinto beans in the pale blue bowl. And cornbread on the dark blue plates. She liked to serve the bacon on the yellow platter. I never knew that old Fiestaware was worth anything. I just wanted it because my momma loved it. Now I could just about buy a car with what I could get for that Fiestaware. Makes you wonder how we decide what’s of value from the old stuff, what’s worth keeping and what should go to the Goodwill, the county dump. Who decides the Barbie doll is worth collecting and not the lesser-known Babette?
