If You Want Me to Stay

by Michael Parker

  Angie turned and looked down at him. For a second she tried to look like her usual disconnected self. Then she scooped him up in her skinny arms and hugged him so hard he choked.

  “Put me down, put me down,” said Tank.

  But she kept squeezing him. He must have felt her tears because he melted into her bony-shouldered self. I saw what I needed to see. I reached out and rubbed Tank’s head. There is a photograph of my mama holding Carter when he was about the age Tank was on the beach that afternoon. Carter had his head burrowed into my mother’s shoulder though you could see his eyes peeking out at the photographer, just like Tank was peeking at me. He looked puzzled but not uncomfortable. Glenn came striding out of the water. He looked at the three of us, shrugged, and headed up the beach. “Stupid fucker,” Angie said under her breath. Tank laughed. I thought, I’ll just run and get Carter. We don’t need any mama and daddy. We got the ocean, the pier.

  But then I remembered why I came here.

  “Where is she?” I asked.

  “Who?” said Tank. “Who, who?”

  “Goddamn all y’all,” said Angie. She was more like me then than I ever would have thought, and I was going to get in there while the window was open.

  “Where?”

  “She don’t want to see us,” Angie said.

  “Who?” said Tank.

  “Tell me where.”

  “She’s living in Bulkhead. Some place called the Promise Land.”

  “Who is? Who is living in that place?” said Tank.

  “No d on Promise,” said Angie. She looked at me and laughed. “No fucking d.”

  “I’ll be back,” I said.

  “Where you going?” said Tank.

  “To the truck to get something.”

  “Hurry the fuck up,” said Angie. “I’ve got shit to do today.”

  I said, “I’ll be back.”

  “Joel Junior, Joel Junior,” said Tank as I started up to the beach road.

  “Ssssh,” I heard Angie said. “Don’t call him that.”

  “What do I supposed to call him?” asked Tank.

  “Call him Mario,” she said. “That’s what his shirt says.”

  “Hey Mario,” Tank called.

  “Hey Ed,” I said to Tank.

  “Bye Mario,” Tank said.

  “Bye Ed,” I told Tank.

  FIVE

  MY MAMA LOVED ARETHA. She had all her records. They were the only ones she owned. Like a lot of girls, she would listen to whatever you happened to be playing, but she wasn’t big on spending her money on records like my daddy was. He had his albums lined up along one wall of the living room in alphabetical order. They stretched the length of the room. Me and Tank and Carter would spend hours looking at the covers, reading the liner notes, imagining ourselves somewhere in the montage on the front of Sgt. Pepper’s or, I’m speaking for myself here, in the arms of that naked black woman on the cover of Santana’s Abraxas. Since my daddy was out of work a lot and unable to do much past assist people when he was gainfully employed, we could have used that record money for other things surely. Shoes. Potatoes. I believe my mama let him spend all the money he wanted on his music because it gave him such pleasure. Also it pacified us boys who could make some noise at times, not to mention trash some square footage, accidentally knock stuff over, etc.

  Most of the time my mama let my daddy play DJ and if she did not like something—which, she had her dislikes, for instance, Laura Nyro who reminded her of her least favorite and extremely whiny sister—she just did not listen to it. The exception was when she was cooking. Then it was her turn to choose the music. She nearly always chose Aretha.

  The Queen of Soul. Everyone in our house worshipped Aretha. A hush would come over the house when my mother would play Lady Soul. Her voice blew through the rooms like the first stirrings of an approaching storm. Curtains lifted, blinds chattered, dogs lifted their muddy ears from the cool-down holes they dug beneath bushes. In the kitchen, onions sizzled in percussive accompaniment to that blue gospel Muscle Shoals sound. When she hit those highest notes it felt like the whole house was rising up off its foundations, about to float off to some place where lovers came back to you and men did right by their women and everybody, whether they believed in Jesus or not, said—each morning they woke up, before they even put on their makeup—a little prayer for you.

  The songs my mama loved best were the ones written by Aretha’s sister Carolyn, especially “Ain’t No Way.” I cannot listen to “Ain’t No Way” without thinking that Aretha’s sister Carolyn had my mama and daddy in mind when she was writing it. The woman in that song is trying to love her man but something in him (or not in him) just won’t let her. It made me think my mama loved my daddy but loving him the way he was just tired her out so much she had to get away and rest from it all. How could she take us with her and ever get the rest she needed?

  I had “Ain’t No Way” in my head as I left Tank on the beach with Angie. I was giving my mama the benefit of the doubt even though it turned out she was in Bulkhead which was only an hour or so north of Bottomsail. We might have even gone to Bulkhead fishing with my daddy and run into her at the Sanitary which she loved their hush puppies. If I could keep “Ain’t No Way” in my head I could not fault her for leaving us. My mama was devoted to my daddy though she wasn’t anybody’s fool. She just could not help him when he was off. About all she could do was load us in the pickup and haul us over to her parents. My grandmother smelled like a pickle. I missed Tank already so I sang out loud some Aretha to drown out my desire to turn around and go fetch him and take him with me to see our mama. This got me up to the pier where the pickup sat alone in the parking lot, the pier fisherman having cleared out during daylight. I did not want to be seen around my daddy’s vehicle but I needed a clean shirt out of there and also I thought if I left the keys in it, someone would surely steal it and I therefore could not be hauled up for theft of a car that someone else had stolen. It occurred to me that Frosty might not have turned me in after all, given his feelings toward my daddy. What it was, when he was assisting a roofer, my daddy had done some work on Frosty’s house and then because he was out of work he had patched a hole in the store for no money. Of course Frosty extended credit to our family and my father hated dearly the idea that he had to buy on credit but he knew he could not work steady and that my mother’s wages would not support the six of us without some credit. That’s about the only way Frosty would find you likable, if you give him something for nothing.

  I fetched the shirt from the floorboard, the bag with the peanut butter and the loaf of Merita, some tapes of my daddy’s including the Persuasions, the Barkays, Joe Tex, Rufus and Carla and Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, and stuck the key in the ignition. I rolled down the windows to make it easier for the no-good thieving bastard who happened to stroll by and see the dangling keys. On the one hand there was a good chance I could have made it to Bulkhead as the truck would have already been discovered if Frosty had called the cops, but on the other there I was fourteen years old and driving around like I had my license. I had everything in the grocery bag old Frosty made such a production of flapping open for me. I tucked in my work shirt to make it appear that I had just gotten off work.

  Everybody that passed me was just riding around, driving with their hands out the window and in slow motion beach time, so I walked a good two miles in the boiling sun, exhausted, missing Tank. Now it was two little brothers I had left behind. I would come back for them both, I told myself. First Carter, then Tank. I wasn’t so worried about Tank with Angie, for I’d seen what I needed to see to know she’d take good care of him. Anyway I’d be back in a couple of days. It just got to be too much, carting Tank around, having to ask him did he need to go to the bathroom all the time, listening to that strange little alien off-kilter hum he kept up when he was playing, dealing with his million questions, why do they call it a sound, who lives at Bulkhead, who, why, where? It got to where I was smacking him liberally. That
boy did not need smacking, he needed holding. Angie would bygod have to step up to the plate.

  Walking over the humped drawbridge, watching the sun glint off the yachts in the distance, I wondered why there was no d in Promise Land. Angie thought this was funny but to me it was a real bad sign. As if there were nothing promised but the people who lived there were filled with unfulfilled or empty promises, about which I knew a little something.

  At the highest hump of the bridge, I looked back over my shoulder at the ocean. The girls in the family fled to the beach, but where would I go if I could go? Well, no matter how I looked at it I was still fourteen years old which this limited my options considerably despite the amount of junk I’d had to take on prematurely. My daddy going off, then my mama leaving, then my sister. And now me, leaving Carter on the porch screaming not because of his earlobe which, what could he do about that, wasn’t as if they were going to sew it back on, it was the loss of his long blond curls upsetting him. Now me, leaving him and Tank too behind. I figured a city would be better than any beach. In a city they say nobody gets up in your business. A fourteen-year-old boy would attract no more notice than an alley cat or a no-name dog in a city as opposed to Bulkhead, which was small enough so that I’d stick out on those three or four streets.

  I reached the beach highway and stuck out my thumb. I had never hitched before, having nowhere to hitch to, plus I always had my little tagass brothers along, our beat up bikes to ride, but I knew enough to know that you stood less of a chance catching a ride if you were carrying a paper bag which made you look homeless or escaped-prisoner. I made two sandwiches, stood on the shoulder gumming peanut butter, wrapped a spare shirt around my waist and ditched the bag. He left with only the clothes on his back, I said about myself. This made me laugh, which was not at all a good thing, yukking it up to yourself with your thumb stuck out, who would pick up such a maniac, ain’t no way. Wipe that grin off your face, I said aloud, and this too made me laugh. It was hopeless. I’d have to walk the forty-seven miles to Bulkhead if I did not get ahold of myself. It was that dying time of day downeast when the big sky and flat fields turned golden and a haze rose from the fields and the pines turned from sharply needled and ominous to a muted blue-green smear. Marshland on either side of the road, tall grass swaying in the truck gusts. A crooked-legged crane stood in a channel ignoring the beach traffic which within seconds turned from individual cars and trucks to a stream of illumination. My chances of catching a ride were growing slimmer by the second. Still I had to force myself to take my situation seriously, to tune out the Aretha soaring somewhere in the background, which I tried but quickly failed to do.

  A ratty Datsun pulled over five minutes later. A Mexican with a kindly smile. He smelled of gas and his hat and jeans were black with grease but when I told him I was going to Bulkhead he nodded wildly and said, “Bulkhead, sí, yo tambien,” and I relaxed into the sprung bucket seat. He only knew enough English to let me know we would not be trading life stories which was fine by me. We listened to mariachi music which may have been the first time I’d heard it except for snatches in the fields when me, Tank, and Carter would ride up to town on our bikes. It put me in the mind of a carnival. The accordion made me miss Tank, who would have hummed crazily along with the song had he been in that car. He would have poked his head between the bucket seats and asked, What’s he singing about, what’s the name of that record, how old are you, what’s your name? Tank and his crazy-ass questions. The accordion and the syncopated standup bass and the plaintive two-part harmonies washed over me like waves of salt water. Music was to blame for taking me places so far back in time. If there was no music I would not have a thing to do with my daddy. He would be a pitiful figure thrashing like a banked salamander in the gravel drive. Without Aretha my mother would not exist either. A selfish run-off-because-she-could-not-take-it bitch. Carter in the yard wrapped head to toe in a garden hose screaming the words to “Susie-Q.” Tank begging peanut butter and raisins upon celery—ants on a log—and some dang Curtis. Never mind we’re out of celery and the raisins are hard as pebbles, just play that boy some Curtis and he’s pig blissful. Let’s say we’d grown up like so many in a house where instead of music there was a television. I just don’t see how you’re supposed to survive on the fumes of, say, Gilligan’s Island.

  Que bonito es querer, sang the Mariachitos.

  What’s he saying what’s he saying? said Tank from the backseat.

  Love is wonderful, said the Mexican. Wide and kind was his smile.

  About once a week my daddy took us to Dusselbach’s which sold couches, tables, chairs, record players, records. We wandered about the showroom while he stood studiously in front of the rows of albums, flipping them back and forth in their bins. Way in the back of the store, lounging on the wings of a sectional sofa, we heard the slap of the covers. He was looking for that song which would lift him soaring above the access road of his life, the assisting of pipe fitters and church steeple builders, the changing of diapers, the trying so hard not to go damn off. Maybe sometimes his song drowned out those voices in his head. Slip away, sang Clarence Carter instead of some combination of God on High (which I’m not even sure when he was on my daddy even believed in) and, say, Neil Armstrong, moonwalker, telling him to to go outside and call the neighbor’s dead dog back from the dark grave wherein he lay. I don’t know what qualifies me to go around saying what goes on in anybody’s head, especially my daddy’s which as heads go is a complicated one with a lot of static and buzz and humming and interference from other planets and to hear him talk occasional contact from the Parliament/Funkadelic mothership. On the other hand, who is better qualified than me? My mama who ran away to of all places bygod Bulkhead?

  What’s the name of that song? said Tank.

  Declarate inocente, said the Mexican.

  Plead innocent, I said before Tank could ask him to translate.

  Armed with his records my daddy would come collect us from the mock bedrooms of the nether corners of Dusselbach’s.

  I like that song right there, said Tank to the Mexican, his new best friend.

  Daddy, daddy, what’d you get? He’d show us his purchase: an Al Green album upon which the Reverend covered Hank Williams (“I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” one of my daddy’s all time favorites) and the Bee Gees (“How Can You Mend a Broken Heart”). We all three knew the story about Al Green’s girlfriend dumping a pot of boiling grits in his lap. We knew he survived and found Jesus in his heart. We knew about Sam Cooke getting shot in a motel by the woman worked behind the counter who he thought was hiding some girl he wanted to get with who had run off from his room when he’d tried to pull her dress off, taking his pants with her. My daddy didn’t spare any details. We knew that Marvin Gaye had been shot by his very own daddy, and that he, like our own daddy, was prone to going off. (That one got away with me the worst, a gone-off genius getting shot by someone who like as not took care of him and protected him and loved him when nobody else would. It got away with me so bad I almost could not listen to Marvin though when he was singing with Tammi Terrell he seemed so young and innocent and committed to love instead of on his later stuff when he got all political, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but those duets with Tammi did not bring me down like, say, “Mercy Mercy Me” or “What’s Going On” could, knowing how he met his end.) We all knew about Otis because my daddy dove to the bottom of that Wisconsin lake and held Otis’s head up off his chest while his last song ticked out of him and green water filled his lungs. We knew just what the price was for singing your ass off night after night. My daddy didn’t even really need to share these horrible facts for me to understand. I heard it in their very voices as they spilled out of our boxy console stereo, drifted from the busted and staticky speakers of the pickup. Heartache, shame, regret, devil telling you turn this way, whiskey, everybody’s woman but your own, poverty, betrayal, belt-wielding, scripture-quoting daddys, people telling you over and over how you’re nothing
but sorry, or maybe even worse, telling you you’re the greatest thing who ever walked, I heard all that and I knew where it would take you. I knew that their pain was somehow setting me free. I knew their hard lives were allowing me to live with my daddy and not blame my run-off mama and even better than just living with them it was letting me love them in all their sorriness, waste, and neglect.

  Then we would get in the pickup and on the way home my daddy would let us rip the plastic off the albums and look at the covers. All three of us boys riding up front, Tank in the middle. We would unfold the album and read aloud all the song titles, who wrote them, even how long they were. We would memorize the order. We would look at who played what instrument on which track. (We knew, for instance, every Stones song featuring Billy Preston, had got to where we could pick out his swirling organ up under the noise of a train-coming-down-the-track tornado.)

  How about that one, that one’s right pretty too, said Tank.

  La llorna loca, said our driver.

  Crazy woman, I whispered to Tank.

  At home we would be out of the house even before the pickup cranked off or rocked to a stop. We would crowd up under the speakers of the stereo waiting on our daddy who was the first always to drop the needle on the virgin vinyl. He’d fuss with the stylus first, blowing away the dust, his breath amplified by the speakers, a sibilant boom. We’d smell the plastic as the album heated up. By the time we’d played the album all afternoon (which we always did even if it didn’t send us immediately, we’d play it till we knew every guitar and organ solo, every bass line, every word. The words we could not make out didn’t bother us because we just made up our own) it would smell like it was about to melt.

  Como un amanecer! announced the Mexican to Tank without having been asked.

  Like a new day! I said, nodding.

  But Tank was not there and I do not know Spanish.