If You Want Me to Stay

by Michael Parker

  “My daddy’s a good man,” I said.

  “Your daddy’s crazier than a goddamn bedbug. Where’s your mama at?”

  I said, “All I’m saying is, he’ll pay you back in a few days. He always pays up.”

  “She run off, that’s right, I believe I heard that back here.”

  “The truck’s almost out of gas.”

  “You best leave that truck here. Don’t, the law will be looking you and your daddy.”

  “If you can just spot me a loaf of bread and some peanut butter and a couple Co-colas and a tank of gas so I can take Tank up to town to my daddy’s sister’s house I tell you what I’ll come back down here and work it off.”

  My daddy doesn’t have a sister. I wouldn’t accept employment at Frosty’s if I was dead starving. I’d rather steal cukes out of the fields. Bad cukes, ravine cukes, ones not even Mexicans would eat.

  “I don’t need no help.”

  “I’ll sweep and mop this floor.”

  “My place don’t need cleaning.”

  I questioned his standards. But, you know, everyone has their priorities.

  “What about the outside?”

  “What about it?”

  “You need more gravel in that parking lot. It ain’t nothing but mud puddle.”

  “You ain’t strong enough to sling gravel.”

  “You order up a half ton and I’ll have that parking lot level as a landing strip.”

  “If I agree to this, it’s because as crazy as he is I like your daddy.”

  “He’s a loyal customer.”

  “Hell, there’s no such thing. They come by here when they run out of milk, but let a Food Lion open up in town and they act like they don’t know my country ass.”

  “Maybe you ought to knock down your prices a little bit, Frosty.”

  “My name ain’t Frosty. You get what you need and I’ll order up that gravel. If your ass ain’t back down here by six o’clock I’m calling the law on you, your daddy, and your foul-smelling little brother.”

  I didn’t tell him this is exactly what I wanted him to do. I couldn’t very well bring myself to call the law on my daddy but somebody needed to. I went around collecting my goods: a loaf of Merita, a jar of crunchy, some Ruffles, two big cold bottles of Co-cola. Back behind the counter, Frosty frowned and wrote it all down on his tab pad, which he kept chained to the counter. He went to lick his bag finger and I suffered through the bagging process, which lasted about three days.

  “Ten dollars on number one,” said Frosty.

  Cheap sapsucker. Ten dollars was three-quarters of a tank.

  I found Tank outside sitting on a bench sucking on a bottle of Mountain Dew. No-thumbed Sam had sprung for it. “They’s cheaper out here than in yonder,” Sam twanged. He had a voice like a flapping loose guitar string. Frosty was right, there’s no such thing as loyalty. I thought of Carter. He ought not to of gotten out of that truck. I told him, I told him. We were just going to sing some Curtis. I had a whole repertoire lined up, had filed the order in my head like any good DJ. Up next was “Freddie’s Dead,” then “Move on Up.” We’d end our Curtis set with “(Don’t Worry) If There’s a Hell below We’re All Going to Go.” Then I thought we’d get into some Sly. Maybe “Everybody Is a Star,” “Hot Fun in the Summertime,” “Dance to the Music.” Those were Carter’s and Tank’s favorites. Myself I preferred the ones with the thumpy bass lines: “Family Affair” and especially “If You Want Me to Stay.”

  “If You Want Me to Stay” snaked up in my head while I was pumping the gas. I didn’t realize I was singing until I looked up and saw Sam and the rest of the semicircle staring at me. They had moved out to the benches, I suspected because Frosty was in a less than stellar mood now that he had accepted credit from the son of a man who may or may not have just bodily harmed his own blood kin. He knew he wasn’t going to get his money back. He must have known I wasn’t coming back. “If You Want Me to Stay” was about a man and a woman but if you just let the bass line enter your spinal cord it worked for near about any situation which is why me and Carter and Tank loved some Sly Stone better than, say, Star-Spangled Banner or the hymns they played the few times our grandmother had carried us to church. I especially liked the part where Sly swears he’ll be good and then gets all impatient with the woman, saying he wished he could get his message over to her right damn now which I understood completely how awful it is to want to talk to someone and you’re not allowed to talk to them I guess because they don’t want to talk to you.

  Tank was already into the Ruffles when I got in the car. He’d dropped half of them on the seat, between the seat, on the floorboard, all down his shirt. He was cramming them in his mouth and crunching like he was being timed. I snatched the bag out of his hand and said, “Don’t you know this has got to last us?”

  He went to wailing. I slapped him to shut him up. All this in plain view of the semicircle, who watched us without expression or, that I could see, any exchanged words. I’m sure we were a whole lot more interesting than Frosty.

  I dug another rut in the lot I won’t about to fill with gravel leaving Frosty’s. I was telling myself I’d see this place again even though I knew it wasn’t likely. Tank was wailing still. He was so tired. The sun was going down. I pulled over by a Dumpster to make him a peanut butter sandwich. There was hardly any trash in the Dumpster, the locals favoring ravines.

  He refused the sandwich. He wouldn’t look at me. He was balled up by the door, arms over his head, as if I was about to pop him again.

  I tried talking to him. Just sniffles in return.

  Finally I tried our favorite joke. “What do McDonald’s coffee and Eric Clapton have in common?”

  From beneath those arms came a faint monotone and I knew he was with me for as long as I could stay. “They both of them suck without cream.”

  THREE

  WE HAD SOME STOPS to make in town. It was a risk, me driving my daddy’s pickup up and down those three or four main streets. People knew him, knew his ride. When he was up he was the uppest man around. He smiled like a television preacher. People wanted to be around him, they wanted to hear him talk his trash. They liked to hear him sing his soul music hits like “Mr. Big Stuff” which he liked to sing to all of us whenever we got too big for our britches. When I was little I used to spy on my mama and daddy when they were sitting out on the porch after supper, rocking in the porch swing, my mama’s legs in my daddy’s lap, my daddy pushing off the porch boards now carpeted by Carter’s favorite blond hair with his mud-stained work boots or sometimes his bony white feet. It looked like an advertisement the way they laughed and talked and rubbed each other’s shoulders.

  Of course when he went off it was the offest off, and the advertisements for sweet porch-swing love between two people who had known each other since high school were hard to remember. Sometimes he was just snake-on-the-ground down. He moved and spoke like he was fighting his way up from a river of mud. He had come unplugged. Any room he walked in, shadows and cobwebs would drape the corners. I’d see him dragging ass and my own lights would dim and I’d hate him a little even though I loved my daddy, he was a good man.

  They were fixing to close when we reached Hargrove’s. It was ten till six and when I pulled up in front of the racks of work shirts out front I could see that skinny blue-smocked woman look at me like, don’t you even think about coming in here at no ten till. It is my personal opinion that the very skinny are much meaner than the grossly overweight. Meanness is what has burned the fat off their bones. In my hometown of Trent, North Carolina, it seemed everyone was either too big or skinny-mean. There wasn’t any in between now that my mama had left. High up in some hotel, lighting cigarettes off emergency-only candles.

  I said to Tank, “Go in there and tell that woman you got to go.”

  “Naw, I just went.”

  “I’ll give you this Coke if you go again.”

  Tank discovered a Ruffle in a fold of his camping britches. He favored tho
se pants because they had zippers on the pockets and a hammer hook. You could not take them off of him. He popped the chip in his mouth quick and looked at me to see if I’d say anything.

  “I ain’t got to go.”

  “Yes you do. See that woman?”

  “That blue woman? She’s mean as hell.”

  “No, she’s not. She’s a blue angel. Go in there and tell her you need to use her bathroom. Get her to take you to it. It’s all the way in the back. Don’t get your hand caught in one of those shirt-hauling machines.”

  His eyes bugged. He raised up in the seat, tucked his knees beneath him to get some elevation.

  “They got shirt haulers in there?” Tank loved a conveyor belt.

  “Get in there, you can see it up close.”

  Tank stared. Then he unfolded his legs out from under him.

  “Naw,” he said. “I ain’t got to go.”

  I guess I’d had enough. I leaned across and opened his door and pushed him the hell out. A black woman with blue high heels and a church hat saw the whole thing. She shook her head at me and came over to see was Tank okay.

  “Is that your daddy?” I heard her ask him.

  “Hell no,” said Tank. He was brushing himself off. Ruffle dust sifting off him in the dusky light.

  “Who is that then?”

  “Tell Miss Big Stuff none of her bidness, she’s never gonna win my love,” I said to the dash of my daddy’s truck.

  I heard Tank say, “I’m okay, it’s okay.”

  “Tell her thank you,” I said a little louder. She looked over to see me mouthing something. I knew she thought I was talking some kind of racist trash. She shook her head like I done tried my best, I could of kept on walking and went on up the street.

  I watched Tank tell the blue-smocked lady he had to go. I saw the disgust in her face. She looked at me and asked him a question. He didn’t even turn around. He palmed his mess and did his I-got-to-go dance. She had to lead him back there or else he was liable to get caught up in all that machinery. While they were gone I went through the shirts. I got six, a change for each of us. An Ed, a Larry, a Roman, a Mario, a James, a Cliff. Williams Grading, PCE Industries, Merita, Maola Milk, Johnson Distributing, Exxon. They were all too big and stiff with starch but I didn’t have time to be trying mess on.

  The blue-smocked woman brought Tank out to the truck. I saw her coming just in time to push the shirts up under the seat.

  “This ain’t no public restroom, you know.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just he had to go and there wasn’t anywhere else to stop.”

  She looked up and down the street, then back to me. “Does this look like the only store on this street to you?”

  I said, “We really do appreciate it.”

  “Y’all’ve been in here before asking to use the facilities, I recognize y’all.”

  Tank was in the truck now. He was rooting around on the floorboard. He bent over and pulled up Ed from PCE Industries.

  “Hey, what’s this?” he said.

  I shoved my daddy’s pickup in gear and stomped on it. In the rearview the blue-smocked woman pointed a finger at the truck. I could see her bony face tighten, could see her mouth open and mean skinny words spill out.

  “Goddamn, Tank, what’d you do that for?”

  “What?” said Tank. He was pulling out all the shirts and looking them over.

  “We needed some clothes.”

  “You stold these?”

  “I borrowed them.”

  “You’re going to bring them back?”

  “Once I wash them.”

  “They ain’t clean?”

  “Shut up, will you?”

  “Give me my Coke and I will.”

  I reached under the seat and pulled out the Coke. It was shook up from my wild driving. Coke shot all over the cab when he opened it. I could not keep the boy. I knew it then, tearing through the streets of town, half-stopping at lights and signs, pulling all the bad traffic moves will get you caught and it all just common sense, I’d never taken a driving lesson in my life but I’d been riding in a car since I could remember. Same with taking care of my little brothers. Wasn’t like I took lessons or read books on the subject. Some things I was born okay at. Other things came so slow or not at all. Other people. Either I’m like, Mr. Big Stuff, who do you think you are, or I’m at your mercy.

  “Are some policemen after us?” asked Tank.

  We were on backstreets by then, behind the armory.

  “No.”

  “Shoot,” said Tank.

  “You better hope they don’t come after us.”

  “Will they put us in the jailhouse?”

  “Worse.”

  “What’s worse than jail?”

  “You know what a foster home is?”

  “Yes,” he mumbled.

  “What is it then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I figured. It’s when they take you away from your family and put you with some complete strangers and they pay those strangers to keep you.”

  “How’s that worse than jail? Are there bars on the windows?”

  “The strangers just keep the money and you don’t get squat.”

  “How do you know so much about it?”

  “I just know things.”

  “You don’t know about jail. You never been in jail.”

  “I ain’t planning on finding out either. Which means we got to get out of here.”

  “How about Cart? Can’t he come?”

  I looked over at Tank. His camping britches had dried Coke stains all over them. He was so sweetly dumb to this world.

  “Carter’s going to stay with Daddy awhile, Tank.”

  “I want to stay with Daddy.”

  “Sorry, buddy.”

  “Daddy cut Cart.”

  “That was a accident.”

  “He pushed bananas in his mouth.”

  “Daddy’s sick.”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  I had come to the house I was searching for. It belonged to the parents of this girl named Carla, the only known close personal friend of our sister, Angela. Carla was this pouty, slutty eye-shadowed girl who never seemed to notice me because I was three years younger, without a car or anything else to offer her. She would know, if anyone knew, where my sister was. I wasn’t looking for my sister. I was looking for my mama, and I wanted my sister to tell me where she was.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Tank said again.

  “He’s sick,” I said again. I pulled onto the shoulder a little past Carla’s parent’s place. Carla stayed around back in a converted garage. She was too wild to stay in the house. I knew all this because Angie used to tell me stories about Carla all the time. She’d figured out I was interested. One day she would go on and on about Carla and her wildness and the next day if I asked about Carla she would say, What do you care, Carla don’t even know who you are, if she does know it’s only because of me, you’re out of your league, Junior, on and on until Carter, who always stuck close to Angie when she was around the house, would start laughing at me.

  “What kind of sick?”

  I was about to smack his broken-record ass. I said, “Do you want to see your mama?” I never should have asked him if he wanted to see his mama. But I just wanted him to shut the hell up.

  “Yes,” came his little up-under-a-blanket, about-to-cry voice.

  “Well, shut the hell up then and come with me and don’t say nothing.”

  I figured Carla would be more likely to tell the truth if she saw Tank in his Coke-stained camping britches.

  “I’m about frozen,” he said, so I wrapped him up in Ed from PCE Industries. It came down to his knees. He ran his fingers over the red-threaded letters and said, “What does this say?”

  I shook my finger in his face. “What did I tell you?”

  He reached for my hand while we waited at the door. A boy answered it. I’d seen him around school. He was weaving
and squinting. Big clouds of cigarette smoke sucked out of the slivered door.

  “What?”

  “Is Carla here?”

  “What do you want with her?”

  “To ask her a question.”

  This set him off. He had a machine-gun laugh. I knew he was high, laughing semiautomatically at nothing at all.

  Carla came to the door. She stared at me like I was out of place in time. Her shirt was hanging off her shoulder, exposing a sadly white and raggedy bra strap. She was carrying a beach ball on her hip like it was her baby.

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m Angela’s brother.”

  “Me too,” said Tank. He was eyeing that beach ball.

  “Oh hey, Tank,” she said. My sister’s friends loved Tank. They used to follow him around and listen to him say crazy-to-them-but-normal-to-him Tank things. He’d rub dirt on the back of a dog and when they asked him why he’d say, They like to roll in it, I’m only helping, which made sense to them because they were high and sense to Tank because he was Tank.

  “Well, what?”

  “I need to find Angela.”

  “Why you asking me?”

  “You’re the only one I can ask.”

  “Well, you asked,” she said, tossing the ball over our heads and pushing the door closed.

  Tank started wailing. I was about to smack him but the door slivered open again and she said, “Jesus Christ, what did I say? Did you want the ball?”

  “I don’t want any dumb ball, I want Angie,” wailed Tank.

  Good work, Tank, I nearly said.

  Carla kneeled down and hugged him. She nearly fell over, she was so wacked. Tank held on to her neck but I could tell he wasn’t happy. Crafty little fucker.

  “I’m so sorry, Tank,” said Carla. She was crying on his shoulder. Her eye shadow was melting. Suddenly some other mood hit her and she sniffled and rubbed her eyes dry and straightened Tank’s shirt and said, “Hey, cool shirt, Tank.”

  “Will you tell us where she is?” said Tank.

  Carla stood up. She looked at me and said, “If you fucking tell her I told you, man, I’ll have you killed.”