As we walked toward the luggage pickup area, I noticed stares from passersby, some I recognized from the flight. Their judging eyes tried to burn through me, tried to look in me, to see what I was all about. When my eyes met theirs, they would look away. I recognized this one guy from the plane. He sat across the aisle from where Grant and I were sitting. He watched us the entire time Grant and I were talking. I noticed him staring at us. I didn't mention anything about it at the time because it wasn't a big deal. But now that I think about it, he was staring his ass off. Don't people's mothers teach them that staring is impolite? I mean, for Christ's sakes, what are you looking at, you fat bastard? What?! Jason noticed the stares I was getting from everybody.
"It must be strange for you, the attention and all. It must be hard being a famous writer. I guess people recognize you, even in Montgomery, Alabama, the illiteracy capital of the United States."
"Surely, they do. It's the price you have to pay and I was willing before this all began and I'm willing now. Generally, my fans are pretty polite and discreet." I didn't want to mention that I recognized the staring fat bastard from the flight. It was irrelevant.
"Have you ever had a fan bother you? You know, stalker-like?" he asked.
"Once, at a writers' convention, a fan followed me in the bathroom and asked for my autograph while I was in the stall. You know, while I was going to the bathroom. He handed me the piece of paper and pen under the door while I was sitting down on the toilet."
"While you were taking a shit? I don't believe it." He was floored. I mean, he really didn't believe it. He had this look on his face like that was the most appalling thing that he'd ever heard.
"Yes, it's true. But that was a rare case."
We arrived at the luggage pick-up as the carousel began to spin. The luggage excreted from the hole in the wall, spilling down the inclined conveyor belt like limp garbage. The other passengers treated the strange luggage like it was garbage until they spotted their own goddamn suitcase or bag. Then the luggage became the valued thing that it really was, containing their conveniences and possessions and trinkets and reminders of home. I looked out for my own suitcase, ignoring the blue vinyl one, then the green cloth one and the black leather one. My suitcase eventually made its way out the hole, sliding down the metal conveyor, slamming into the retainer near my knees. I picked up the dingy, old suitcase and set it on the ground. Jason stared at my old bag. He really gave it good look. It was this nasty shade of milk-of-magnesia blue. I was kind of embarrassed to lug it around. I mean, I should buy some new bags after I get my check from the publisher. There's really no need for me to be lugging around a shitty, milk-of-magnesia blue suitcase, right? But Jason kept staring at it like he wanted it or something. After I buy some new ones, maybe I'll just give it to him. Jason was always a cheap bastard. His whole family were cheap bastards.
"Simon, this may sound a little ridiculous but that kind of looks like the bag you had when you moved away from Montgomery. I remember it like it was yesterday."
"Could be. I don't remember." I really didn't remember. My memory wasn't too good, what, with having a sledgehammer headache and all. Plus, that was a long time ago. It's true.
"Oh, I do. I remember going over to your house to help you pack your things for the move and help your family load the moving truck. I remember everyone in your whole family had one of these bags, like it was from a set or something. But I remember that they all looked old even back then, that the color looked old fashioned and all."
I picked the suitcase up. It was heavy as hell. It didn't have one of those handles. You know, one of those suitcase leashes (is it a leash?) so you could drag it around like it was some kind of disobedient dog. The suitcase was old as dirt, I think.
"Could be," I said. "Which way to your car?"
"Over here. Anyway, I'm pretty sure of it. You know, you should get a new bag, one with wheels and all, that you can pull around like a dog on a leash," he said. What was I just talking about? Jason and I were always on the same wavelength when we were kids. We thought exactly alike. It was nice to know that some things don't change. "I always get a kick out of seeing people pulling their luggage around. You know, like they're walking their dogs or something. You should get one of those bags and travel in style since you're a famous writer and all."
"This one does me just fine," I told him. I didn't want him thinking I would get a new suitcase and give him this one. He really kept staring at it. I bet he liked it or something. I followed him out the exit to the parking garage. "This one does the job."
"I remember the day you moved away. I remember it like it was yesterday. It was one of those defining moments for me. I was really sad that you left. My feelings really were hurt that your father had to get a new job in Texas. I resented him for a long time about that. But I got over it."
Man, he was really making me feel like shit and I had only been in Montgomery for a few minutes. Jason could blab too, just like me. He could talk your fucking head off if you let him. Sometimes, he needed a good slap so he would just shut up.
We took the elevator to the second floor in the garage. When the door opened, there was his car: a beat-up, shit-brown Chevy Chevette. It stuck out from the rest of the cars like a big turd served on fine china. Really, it was ugly as hell, a real piece of crap. Jason popped the trunk and loaded my carry-on bags and then my suitcase. He motioned for me to hand over my backpack. But I wasn't going to put it back there.
"I'll keep this one with me," I told him.
"OK."
Suddenly, my backpack started beeping all over the place. It kind of sounded like a bomb getting ready to go off. Wouldn't that have been killer? The garage exploding and all from a bomb in my backpack? Actually, that was a stupid thought, real childish and shit. Jason was curious about the beeping though.
"Sounds like your pager's going off in your bag."
"Oh, yes." He was right. He was a real fucking genius. It was my pager and not a bomb. "That's probably my accountant. We had an argument earlier about the per diem they gave me. I thought it was too low. He thought it was too high. We never came to an understanding. He probably wants me to call him back. I'll call him from your house."
"Sounds good to me," Jason said.
He unlocked both doors to his car and we got in. As he cranked the ignition, the car howled and screamed, like it wanted to keel over and just die already. It launched a cloud of black smoke from the tailpipe with a ferocious bang. Jason chuckled to hide his embarrassment.
"My Porsche is in the shop," he said, joking his ass off, of course.
"I understand." I didn't care but I grabbed the oh-shit handle above the passenger window and held on tight. I had a feeling he was a shitty driver and I was going to find out in the worst way. "Is this the car your mother used to drive us around in?"
"The very same one. Only it's in better shape now."
Jason pulled out of the garage, followed by the black exhaust cloud, and headed for the highway. He drove like a bat out of hell.
8.
The pine trees surrounding the old neighborhood were taller and more majestic than I even remembered them to be. I rolled the window down and let the fresh Alabama air rush in the car. The air smelled noticeably different than the Texas air, mainly because of the pine trees. But also, for some reason, my allergies didn't exist here like they did in Austin. My clear nasal passages took in the air freely and deeply. My nostrils were so clear that I felt like a different person. It's true. I hated having allergies. They made me fucking miserable, what, with my nose running all over the place and the headaches and the coughing and sneezing. The headaches were the worst part. But I didn't have them here. And the sun was getting ready to set soon. It made for a mesmerizing ride in Jason's crap mobile.
"It smells so good outside," I said.
"Wait till we pass that old, swampy lake behind the neighborhood. You'll change your tune then. Still smells like a toilet back there."
Jason downs
hifted the car into third and pulled into the turning lane for the entrance to our old neighborhood. Another black cloud rose from the back of the Chevette and the cars that were behind us honked and swerved. It was fucking hilarious. It really was. I thought Jason's car was about to kill itself, hari-kari style. It knocked and screamed as much as it possibly could. As the Chevette slowly approached the entrance, the neighborhood sign came into view, a small wood and brick job that appeared to have stood the test of time and the pranks from my childhood buddies. It was an unfortunate target of rotten eggs, stink bombs, spray paint, and toilet paper. There wasn't one weekend that that sign didn't have some kind of shit on it. The kids loved to muck it all up, don't ask me why. They just did. I was guilty too, of course. It's true.
"And here we are... Country Down Estates," Jason said, cranking the steering wheel to the right and pulling into the neighborhood. The street stretched a ways up an incline, just like I remembered, before actually entering the community. It seemed to me that I remembered the street to be a lot longer than it actually was. As a kid, it seemed like it took forever to go up that street. But in reality, it really wasn't long at all. Jason's Chevette screamed up the hill, chugging and clunking as he downshifted to second gear. That car was really on its last leg. I thought the transmission was going to fall out, the way it grinded and clunked and all.
"Come on, baby!" Jason screamed. "You can do it!"
As he pushed the Chevette harder, memories from my childhood came rushing into my head. I remembered riding my bicycle on this street, my ultra cool Diamondback BMX bike. I saved months and months worth of allowances and yard-cutting money to buy that bike. We'd pop wheelies off the curbs and make skid marks on the driveways of all the old men who hated skid marks on their driveways. Those old bastards, they just hated it when we came whizzing down the street. They'd run and get their water hoses and try to act like they were watering their yards. I think maybe they thought we'd leave them alone if they had the hoses but we'd zoom in and skid on their driveways anyway, just because they hated it. They'd scream and yell and squirt the skid marks so they wouldn't set on the hot cement. I always got a kick out of that. We left skid marks everywhere.
We also passed Beth Myers' old house, the first girl I ever kissed. I took a good look at the house as we went by, remembering sitting in her backyard behind the tool shed. We were dared by our so-called friends to kiss each other and we lived up to their dare, clumsily kissing, our eyes closed and our little hands clinched. We were so scared to do it. The sloppy, wet kiss repulsed the two of us, yet it brought us closer together in a rare moment of maturity and adolescent clarity. I kept that moment in a special place within my heart; this was the first time that moment had surfaced in a really long time. I wondered what good ol' Beth was doing these days.
"Isn't that Beth Myers' old house?" I asked, even though I already knew the answer.
"Yep, sure is. She's still around here somewhere. I'm not quite sure where but I know she stayed in Montgomery and went to college and all. I'm sure you could find her if you tried."
"I'm not sure I want to do that."
"Remember when you guys sucked face in her backyard? You guys sure didn't kiss right, not like normal people anyway. That's for sure. You two looked like a couple of catfish attached at the face and all." Jason started laughing like a goddamn hyena. He had this laugh that was a combination of wheezing and coughing and snorting, except that he'd do all those things really fast like he was choking on a hunk of beef jerky. It was annoying and funny to hear at the same time. He hadn't changed one bit. "That dare sure brings a smile to my face whenever I drive by that house. I bet that was the inspiration for a lot of stories you've written, huh?"
"Sure was. This old neighborhood has inspired countless poems and stories and even my new novel, in a way. I've sucked the marrow out of many memories and recollections and created some great literature."
"Did you ever imagine back when you lived here that you would finally get out of Montgomery and become a famous writer and all?"
"I always knew I would be a writer, even when I lived here."
This part of Country Down Estates was like the more upscale part, housing some of the higher ranked officers from Gunter, the nearby Air Force base. The well-manicured lawns were as green and neat as I remembered. My father was a newly promoted major back then and my family fit snuggly in the middle of the other majors and colonels' families and their near-identical houses. It was all a bunch of shit though. It all seemed nice and suburban and perfect but Montgomery was a really fucked up place. I mean, racism was still pretty rampant in this part of the country and Montgomery was no different. They tried to cover the racism with monkey grass and iced tea but it was still there, ugly as ever. But I'll get to that later. The part of the neighborhood where Jason lived was a few notches down the social ladder, houses that were a little older and a little bit rundown compared to the houses my family lived around. It was kind of like the middle class ghetto of the area. The strange thing about Jason's family though was that even though they lived in the rundown part of the neighborhood and their house was rundown and their cars were rundown, they had a lot of rundown things. I mean, they had four cars and a swimming pool and a lake house and a ski boat and they always seemed to have money. Everything they had just looked rundown. I never could figure it out. I never could figure out if they were just messy pigs or something like that. Maybe they just didn't care about all that class stuff. Who cares about that stuff anyway?
Jason put the car in neutral then stopped. We sat in front of another house full of memories for us.
"Remember that house?" he asked, pointing to the brown, one-story home.
"That's Darren Reedy's old house, isn't it?"
"Sure is," he said. He sighed and leaned back in his seat with his arms behind his head. He had this stupid look on his face, this content and happy look. I knew what he was thinking about.
"Whatever happened to that sick little freak?" I asked. Darren was a sick little bastard. It's true. But he was our friend too. Everyone has one of those sick bastard friends in their childhood. Darren was our sick bastard friend. "Remember how he used to torture his pets?"
"Darren's dead."
He couldn't have been any more blunt or direct about it. What a shocker! He just blurted it out, like it was nothing, like it was old news. I didn't know what to say. In a way, it wasn't like it was really surprising or anything like that. Darren was a sick little bastard that did sick things to defenseless animals. But it was just so definite and blunt and direct, the way he said it. Jason was like that, though. He was direct as hell. He got that from his mother. She was direct as hell too. His whole family was direct as hell. It drove me crazy sometimes.
"I just wanted to let you know in case you wanted to stop by or something. His mother is still quite upset about it and if you stopped by and asked her about him, she would probably break down. You know, cry and all. He died a kind of bizarre death."
"What happened?" I asked.
"I'll tell you about it later. No need to put a damper on your visit so early in. You have plenty of time to hear about it. Remind me tonight and I'll tell you."
Jason revved the Chevette into first gear and drove a few houses down. He stopped again and put the car in park. I was still in shock about Darren. I was too shocked to notice anything.
"And here it is. Does it look exactly like you remember?" he asked.
He climbed out and stood there on the curb by my side of the car. We were parked in front of my childhood home. Man, you want to talk about memories? This place was full of them. Still painted white and brown, it looked just like I remembered. Yet it was a little different too. The grass was shaggier and unkempt. The roof looked worn and in need of repair. One of the windows in the front was cracked. But I could picture myself playing in the front yard when I was kid, playing lawn darts or touch football. We'd play late into the evenings, well after dark. The house didn't seem as big as I remembere
d though. Isn't it funny how things are always not as big as you remember?
"It looks pretty close to what I remember. Pretty close," I said. "Who lives there now?"
"Nobody. It's vacant. It was up for sale but it didn't sell. I think the owners are going to do some work on it before trying to sell it again."
"Interesting."
"That's why it looks kind of crappy now. Not like when your dad was here. This lawn looked like a golf course putting green back then. Remember?"
"Of course I remember. I was the one who had to cut it every five days." My dad was a fucking slavedriver when it came to the lawn. It seemed like I was always cutting and trimming it. Raking, watering, weedeating, fertilizing, a huge chunk of my childhood consisted of taking care of this goddamn yard. And for what? Look at it now. Any signs of the hard work I did was gone. Completely gone. Jason noticed that I was still a little sore about the subject. To be honest, I was pretty goddamn sore about it.
"Come on. Get over it. That was a long time ago," he said, walking back to his side of the Chevette. "Betty's waiting for us at the house. She probably made us some cookies or something."
We hopped back in the turd-on-wheels and ventured toward Jason's house. More memories rushed into my mind: the bike races down Smithson Street, trick or treating and the poop-bag pranks, hikes through the woods behind the neighborhood, finding Playboys in the ditch behind the school. As the wind and the pine-tree smell rushed in the window, I felt like I was thirteen again. It's funny what your mind will file away if it's not using it. I hadn't thought about all of these things for a long time and they were coming to life by the dozens.
"Hey, there's Patty Green's house. Right there, the yellow one." Jason pointed to the little yellow house as we drove by. Patty had the unfortunate status of being the seventh grade whore. She quickly turned from prissy little Patty to Patty the hooker one night when a small group of boys and girls convened at her house for her thirteenth birthday party. The party started innocently enough with chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream and party games and presents and pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. But once the uninterested parents moved inside to the bar for scotch on the rocks and cold beers, we kids moved to the garage for a quick game of Spin the Bottle. Patty received two spins since it was her birthday and she kissed two boys. She kissed Jason, who for the rest of his junior high days was in love with Patty, and Justin Moss. The other kids affectionately called him Mossy on account of his dingy teeth, rotten gums, and stinky breath. The combination of kissing two boys and the excitement brought on by all the goddamn sugar the kids ate generated the incessant, hateful chatter. Patty clearly enjoyed being the center of attention, which to our young eyes, meant she enjoyed acting morally irreprehensible, of course. She was labeled a whore that night and was scarred for the rest of junior high.
The Meteoric Rise of Simon Burchwood Page 6
