Tender as Hellfire

by Joe Meno

  I decided to go visit the Chief one afternoon to buy some cigarettes and bother him for some kind of company. I stepped right up to the counter with a big smile, holding some money stolen from my mother’s purse in my greasy palm. I watched carefully as the Chief turned, taking a swig from his silver flask. The filling station was silent as a tomb. There was a thin gray dust coating all the candy bars near the counter and the floor looked like it hadn’t been swept in weeks. There were dry insects stuck to the front windows, married to the cobwebs on the flickering lights overhead. The Chief looked bad. His eyes were deep red with fleshy gray bags. He was teetering a little in his seat, staring off into space with an empty-toothed frown.

  “How are things, Chief?” I asked, not looking at him. He was staring right over my head, twitching his lips at something just out of sight.

  “Fine,” he grunted. The Chief’s eyes turned on me then, cold and deep red.

  “What is it you need?” he asked. His nose twitched a little as he cleared his throat.

  “A pack of Marlboros,” I said with a frown, glancing at the knot of wrinkles at the center of his forehead. The Chief dug behind the counter and placed the smokes on the white linoleum in front of me. I reached for them, but the Chief swatted my hand away and leaned over the counter close to my sweaty face.

  “These things are a curse, boy. But you are too young and dumb to see that, aren’t you?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. I thought he was just drunk, like always, and maybe being ornery and mean. His hot breath hung in the air; he smelled like he had been pickled, like his organs had been embalmed in some kind of gasoline.

  “Do you know what I think? I think I should not sell cigarettes to you anymore, boy. I think I should not add any more misery to your foolish little life.”

  He laughed a little, then uncapped his silver flask and spilled some more liquor into his mouth. It seemed like the only thing that made him laugh was bullshitting dumb kids like me and taking a swig from his flask. He drank deeply, then capped the lid and placed it back beneath his greasy black shirt.

  “Well, what do you think? Don’t you think you are already cursed?” He winked and stared at me hard.

  “I don’t know,” I said in a mumble, looking away.

  “You don’t know?”

  Me, I backed away and shrugged my shoulders. The stolen money felt dull and heavy in my palm, like it might slip and drop to the floor and I’d never be able to pick it up. The Chief leaned further over the counter, his face coming as close to mine as it ever had.

  “It is like carrying a wound. Something that will not go away. Every day, it is always there, the curse. Every night, it is always part of you. The curse is what makes you who you are. It is what makes you who you will be. It is something you cannot escape … even with a good drink.” He laughed, his face seeming old and wooden like the side of a maple tree. He nodded to himself once more, then leaned back. “But like I just said, you are too young and stupid to know anything.”

  He snickered to himself a little, then punched the register with a snarl.

  “One dollar eighty-nine.”

  I placed the wrinkled dollars on the counter and slid them across to his gray hand. He shook his head and unfolded the bills, then hit the Sale button. The register opened with a ring. He slid the cigarettes across the counter without another goddamn word. His black eyes glimmered with light. Then he returned his gaze to the white space above my head, the exact spot where he had been staring before, not making a sound, not moving his eyes or nose, his lips still twitching.

  Hell, I just slipped the cigarettes into my pocket and ran out of that damn place, straightening my collar as I got out onto the road. I left the damn smokes in my pocket and walked home without even lighting one, rubbing the perspiration from my forehead with my sleeve. The Chief was crazy all right. Going around scaring kids like that. I began to wonder why I bothered to go there at all. I began to wonder why the hell I even bought cigarettes in the first place.

  I headed up the gravel road that led to the trailer park, then crossed between Mrs. Garnier’s and Mr. Deebs’s mobile homes, down one row to where Val’s silver trailer stood. I had decided that I would visit her and see if we could maybe watch some TV together. But as I walked around the side of her trailer, I froze in place when I spotted a white squad car parked out front. I felt my heart go blank. Val? Not Val. I made a quick prayer that nothing awful would ever happen to her, that she would be safe. But there was the silver star that read Sheriff along the side of the car’s door. I crept around to see what had happened, my legs shaking with each step. When I made my way around to the front of her trailer, I saw the most awful sight:

  The deputy was holding Val close, kissing her softly, their lips locked together in a long embrace. A bouquet of red flowers was pressed between their bodies tight as they whispered and kept on kissing. And there were his hands on her hips. And there was her mouth moving against his lips. I felt all the spit dry on my tongue. All the blood nearly drained from my head. The sight was enough to make me sick. I picked up a stone and threw it hard against her porch and then turned around and spat into the dust. The sound of them whispering together rang loud in my ears. The quiet murmur of their lips pressed together made me want to find a mailbox of some kind to burn. I ran to our trailer and pulled open our screen door, gritting my teeth to keep from crying, hurrying toward my room.

  Before I made it to the end of the hall, I saw the sorrowful stare of my mother and French, silent at our kitchen table, stopping me where I stood. They looked like a pair of parents from TV, trying to smile, sitting beside one another so quietly. French’s voice spoke up, a sad little choir sealing my doom.

  “Do you think we can talk to you for a minute, Dough?”

  “Huh?”

  French had on a long face behind his black glasses. His lips were curled in a weak smile. Him and my mother were holding hands. Her face looked like a painting of a saint. It was then that I heard the last four words I ever wanted to hear: “Your teacher called today.”

  “She did?”

  I took a seat at the table and glanced at my mother’s face. It was mostly sad-looking, not all lit up or angry. I tried to remember what I’d done in goddamn school that day. I tried to think quick so I could come up with a good lie before I walked into their trap.

  “Your teacher says you haven’t been doing so well with your assignments and tests and everything,” my mother murmured. “She says she’s afraid you might have some sort of learning disability.”

  “Huh?” I mumbled again. Disability? The word fluttered like a sickly bird around my head.

  “You’ve been getting straight F’s. You haven’t passed one single test. She says all you do is draw pictures-and daydream or look out the window and fall asleep. She says she’s afraid you might have some sort of learning disorder.”

  “Huh?” It sounded like someone was trying to call me stupid, which I didn’t even care to argue with. Me being not so bright was something I didn’t think I could ever change.

  “She says there’s other things too.”

  “Huh? What other things?”

  “She says part of the trouble isn’t just your grades. She says you just don’t seem to get along with any of the kids in your class. You don’t talk or play with the other kids so well. And at lunch you just eat and lay your head down. She says it seems like you don’t want to even try and fit in.”

  I didn’t know what to say. My mother stared into my face, her eyes bright with silver tears. I’m sure she could see the truth without me saying another word. Of course Miss Nelson was right. Other than Lottie, I didn’t have a damn friend in class or in town or in the whole world. And as far as I was concerned, the rest of those kids could burn. I didn’t care if they wanted to be friends with me or not.

  “Your teacher she says she wants to give you a test to see if you’ve got learning disabilities or not.”

  “A test? When?”

  “Tw
o days from now. Friday. During school.”

  “Friday? Why do I have to take it during class?”

  “She says it’ll be on all the things you oughta know. All the subjects. Even some listening skills.”

  My face flushed bright red. A goddamn test on Friday during school. Which meant all the kids in my class would know. I suddenly realized that Miss Nelson didn’t give a damn that she was ruining my life.

  “What are you thinking, pal?” French asked, still holding my mother’s hand.

  “Huh?” I looked up into their faces, holding back some tears. “I think I’ll take that test and fail and then all of you can be glad when you finally see how dumb I really am.”

  “Dough!” my mother cried, biting her lips. “We just want you to be happy.”

  “If you wanted me to be happy, we would have never left home.”

  My mother hung her pretty little head low in shame.

  “That’s not a nice thing to say to your mother, Dough,” French said, frowning. “You ought not talk to her like that.”

  I gritted my teeth. “Don’t tell me what I can say.” I didn’t care how nice he treated my mother. He wasn’t my father and never would be. And anyway, it was his fault, everything that happened. He was the one who forced us to move to that lousy town in the first place.

  French squinted a little, making a real stern face. “We’re not trying to blame you, pal. We just want what’s gonna be the best for you.”

  “This is what I say: Nobody cared what was best before we moved to this lousy place. Now I don’t have any friends and now I’m getting crummy marks. Tell me how that’s supposed to be the best.”

  I looked over at my mother as shook her head, muffling a sob with her sleeve. French wiped his glasses off and placed them back on his nose.

  “Don’t think we don’t see you’re hurting here, Dough. But there’s nothing we can do to take it all back. You yourself haven’t given it much of a chance though, pal. Running around like a little maniac, stealing things and starting fires, how did you think you’d make any friends like that?”

  My eyes were wet with tears now too. My hands were clenched, gripping the end of the table. French’s face was a blank white plain. More than anything, I wanted to let out a growl and spit right in his goddamn eye. But something stopped me deep down in my gut. Something in me up and turned and I knew that French might somehow be right. I kicked my chair away from the table and stood, staring into his eyes.

  “Tell my teacher I’ll take that test and pass it just so she can see how dumb everyone else is.”

  French blinked and smiled a little. My mother coughed once and stopped crying, still holding French’s hand. I marched into my room and laid down on my bed and buried my face in the blankets, hoping to suffocate. Tears kept rolling out of my eyes harder and harder until my mother called me for dinner, but I didn’t even move. I heard French tell her to just give me some time alone. I turned over and watched my shadow on the wall until I eventually fell asleep.

  When my lousy older brother came home from work, he turned on the bedroom light since it was too much trouble to let someone suffer in goddamn peace.

  “Turn off the damn light!” I shouted, and then I realized it was the first thing I had said to him in about a week. I didn’t give a damn because all my lousy tears had dried and made the skin around my eyes swell and burn and it was hard to even see. I buried my head back under the pillow to go back to sleep, but I could hear my brother eating dinner by himself and French and my mother talking and watching TV and the dog howling to be taken out. When you were feeling bad, that dingy hellhole of a trailer was about the worst place to be. I gritted my teeth together to keep from shouting. I made my hands into tiny white fists at my sides and kept my eyes shut until my brother climbed in the bunk and went to sleep. I wanted to tell him that he was the worst brother a kid could ever have. I wanted to just give in and cry and tell him I didn’t have a friend in the world and Val was making it with the deputy now and I had to take a goddamn test just to prove I wasn’t dumb and I had made my mother cry again and all of us were definitely cursed, and this town, this whole town, this whole year was the worst thing that had ever happened to me—but I just kept my eyes closed and held it in to myself and stared at my hand above my face until I saw a faint cloud of breath appear against the glass of my bedroom window.

  A breath upon the windowpane.

  A quiet whisper in the night.

  I shot up in bed, terrified, until I saw who it was. I quietly slid open the glass. Of course, it was that crazy girl, Lottie, holding her pink bike, dressed in a winter jacket and an old flannel nightgown, wearing her older brother’s construction boots.

  “Dough, are you still awake?”

  I nearly burst out of my skin. I reached over and pulled on one of my brother’s crooked blue sweatshirts and wrapped it around me good. I climbed on down and followed Lottie around to the back side of our trailer, where we both took seats in the dirt, grinning like mad. My God, seeing her dirty face and one hundred pigtails and stupid pink bike made me want to break down right there and cry again, but I couldn’t stop myself from smiling.

  “Do you know what?” Lottie said quietly. “I got big news. My older sister just had her baby. Just a couple of minutes ago.”

  Her face was all flushed and sweaty. It looked like she had pedaled nonstop from her house to mine. The silver glimmer off the trailer’s siding glowed behind her hair like holy light. There was something in her little smile that made me want to think there was such a thing as hope. Something that made me want to believe it all might be true. But then in a whisper that was gone too.

  “She had it right in her bed at home. But it didn’t make it. It was born blue.”

  “Blue?”

  “It didn’t even get to breathe. It was dead. Her poor baby is dead,” she mumbled.

  “Dead … ?”

  “My sister didn’t get to the hospital in time so she had it right on the bedroom floor.”

  Then I understood what the Chief had meant.

  I was cursed. Not in a usual way, not like my old man or even my brother, but cursed in a way to watch everyone I ever cared for suffer around me. Cursed as my mother or French or Lottie or even the Chief. Cursed to just stand there and watch the awful hand of fate fall upon all the unlucky people I ever held near to my heart. Cursed in the same way everyone else was cursed, I guess.

  “Her poor baby,” Lottie whispered, her eyes wet with tiny tears.

  “Do you think your sister is all right?”

  Lottie nodded. “The doctor says so anyways.” Her eyes were gray and small in the dark. She nodded to herself, squeezing my arm.

  “Do you know what my daddy said?” she asked in a quiet voice. He. Her father. The Devil behind the windows. The man in the dark. “He said that maybe the baby was better off to die now than to be sick and break all our hearts worse.”

  Lottie’s eyes shimmered with more tears.

  “He said that maybe it was too young to have a soul. He said if it had taken a breath and died then it would have been something, but like that it was only skin and bones.”

  I felt my teeth begin to chatter in my head. Maybe Lottie’s old man was right. Maybe it was lucky never to breathe, never to suffer, maybe it had only been skin and bones, but it had been a part of someone else, a part of Lottie too.

  “Did your sister name it?” I asked, looking away.

  “No name,” Lottie mumbled. “That’s what the doctor put on his report. No name, no father, not even a tombstone. My dad is gonna bury it out back behind the fields without a marker to maybe help the crops grow.” Her eyes became wide and dark. “Maybe that’s the only reason it came. To help the plants grow.”

  Her face was lit like a saint and her fingers gripped my hand hard.

  “I oughta go on home.” Lottie frowned. “My father’s probably missing me as it is.”

  I nodded. There was so much I wanted to tell her, so many things I th
ink I wanted to say. But nothing seemed like it made any sense on my lips.

  “Just thought you might wanna know,” she said.

  I saw that her eyes had run dry as she let go of my hand and hopped on her bike. She pedaled back along the dirt road, skidding from shadow to shadow up the path toward her home. I sat behind the trailer awhile longer. My fingers felt tight and stiff. I could still feel the heat of her hand upon mine.

  I pulled myself back inside my window and suddenly felt like I wasn’t there alone. My brother was fast asleep, snoring like a sawmill, clutching his sheets like he was in the midst of some awful dream. I shook my head and looked around. Everyone in our trailer was asleep. But there was still this feeling that someone else was in that room with me. I could feel it moving around my head, making me uneasy and uncomfortable as hell. I stared out the tiny window once more, looking for her breath.

  But the glass was dry and clean.

  I thought for sure that poor girl was home by now, creeping through that horrible house in the dark, trying not to make a sound, moving through the shadows and the night to find the quiet of her lonesome bed. I could see her quiet and alone, hidden under her covers. I could smell her sweet, sugary breath full of spit and fear.

  I quickly pulled on my own drawers and shoes, put on my brother’s stocking hat, then dug into the dark of my dresser for the cold shape of the thing I most needed, placed it in my pocket, and climbed back outside.

  I felt the cold gravel as it moved right under my feet without a sound. I pulled that hat down to my eyes and crept through the dark night, walking along the culvert, but not too deep, ducking if the yellow crossbeams of a truck or car flew by. Then I was there, at the end of the lonely dirt road, hiding behind a thin barren tree. A bulb flickered in Lottie’s house, right behind those blue window shades. I held in my breath, feeling the sweat spread along my back. I moved close to the ground, skipping from dark shadow dark space, holding my body against a tree, then a woodshed that stood a few feet from her big white porch. The lightbulb flickered and I could see a form made in black, a shadow, a man’s tall body as it moved behind the shade.