“The fuck?” I said into the phone.
“I had to make some transfers, but they don’t go through till tomorrow. I wanted to tell you but you didn’t leave me no number.”
“The packages are bundled and stamped, addresses on.”
“Cut the drama shit, please. You want it, it’ll be there tomorrow. That’s all I can tell you.”
I hung up. The Mexes eyed me as I bought a pint in the bodega and took a quick hit on the sidewalk. They met my eyes, which isn’t ordinary, and their silent, unsympathetic stares seemed to carry judgment on me, like the gaze of that girl in Amarillo, and they kept watching as I climbed back into the truck.
I came closest to making a run for it then.
Rocky had done some shopping, I guess. She wore a nice little outfit, a long light skirt with cornflowers on it and a sleeveless top with a high neckline, and the discretion it afforded seemed meant to please me, but I didn’t want to think about how she’d gotten the money for it.
She looked excited, like this was enough of a normal thing to prod her back to that state of endurance where she strove to be earnest and tell the truth. She’d even gotten the mascara right, a light, fine brushing that made dark feathers of her lashes, and I thought these might be the eyes of the woman she would one day become.
Lance had set up the VCR in the sisters’ room, and I watched them lead Tiffany away as she hopped and studied the two videos I’d rented.
On the way out we passed the office and Lance was standing in front of the desk. He peeped at us, then returned to making some kind of fervent plea to Nancy, who had her arms folded, and also glanced our way.
“Where’d you like?” I said. “Downtown? One of those nice places?”
She thought and shook her head. “Somewhere like that place we first drank at. When we just met, you know? In Lake Charles. That was kind of cool. A country bar or something.”
“I’m pretty sure we can find one of those.”
The end of the sun washed over us, and she talked about how much she liked the ocean here, and the music on the radio. She was putting me in a good mood, and I felt a little ridiculous for it, to feel some illusion of freedom in that sea air through the windows, the bonfires and the waves. I tried talking about what sorts of things she might see herself doing one day, but she kept turning the subject back to the weather, the ocean.
I took us west a ways to Angleton, where there was no shortage of roadside taverns. We decided on a larger one called Longhorn’s, a good-looking place built of long cypress logs, just a little too upscale for people looking to fight, an oyster-shell lot and several trucks parked at odd angles to its front.
Heavily varnished tables arranged around a hardwood dance floor, and a small, raised platform for a DJ and band. A few dim lanterns gave sepia glow to frames of Western films hung on post beams. Rounding one side of the tables, a bar occupied the entire wall, and I bought us a pitcher of Lone Star.
She waited for me with her hands crossed primly on the table, her back straight. I poured and she thanked me, this kind of formality to her that was endearing, like she was trying to make up to me.
A waitress whose nose crinkled when she spoke left us two menus and told me she’d be happy to fetch the beers from now on. Rocky started looking over the food list. It was all burgers and steak, and we asked the waitress to give us a minute.
We drank on the pitcher and talked some.
“A lot of these waitresses, they make good money. They raise kids on it.”
She nodded.
“Or if you can answer phones and smile.”
“I get it, I get it.” She filled up my glass. I lit her a cigarette, and we sat there and didn’t say much till the pitcher was nearly gone. People had started coming in, old cowboy couples mostly, women in jeans, men in Stetsons.
“Look,” I said. “The other night. I don’t want us to have to go through something like that again. You won’t make it.”
“No.” Her eyes immediately took on a wet sheen. “No. Don’t worry. I’m—” She shook her head and scowled at her beer, squeezed the mug with both hands. “I don’t know what it is. There’s something not right with the way I think sometimes. Something like—I’ll get an idea. And it’s just an idea. But I’ll believe it. I’ll just get an idea and act like it’s real. And, I don’t—it scares me, man. It makes me scared because of the way I act. Things where I’d normally say, ‘What are you doing, girl?’ But I’ll think I’m right. Like, that’s the place where I think the idea is real, and I’m right, and I do crazy things.”
Her mouth was unsteady, eyes down to her glass, where she traced a circle around its rim. “Like I just go off somewhere.”
I nodded. “I know something about that.”
She kept scowling, twisted the mug in her hands, her knuckles whitening against it. I did something weird. I reached out and took one of her hands in mine, and I laid them on the table. Her whole hand could fit in my palm and she turned it over, gripped mine back.
“I thought you’d left,” she said.
“I didn’t. Really.”
“I know. Now.”
The waitress refilled our pitcher and didn’t ask about the menu. The lights went down over the dance floor and George Strait started singing, that rich sober drawl, and people rose to step onto the floor, the old couples out early, men with belt buckles the size of human hearts.
“It can’t go on though, Rocky. Whether I’m here or not.”
“I know it. I know.”
“You got that little one now. It’s over. Forever.”
“I get confused.”
We drank on the new pitcher and watched the couples turn slowly and two-step across the floor, and by the fourth or fifth song pale green and purple lights from the stage started gliding over them and the smooth glossy boards like ghostly fish, and the next song was quiet and sad in a prideful sort of way. Women with puffy hair and big asses in tight jeans, love all over their faces. A fog of tobacco smoke lingered above us and held the light.
“I get scared about it,” she said. “About Tiff. I worry about what I done. And bringing her, I mean. What I done. Man. What I’ve done.”
I leaned over and got her to look up at me.
“The past isn’t real.”
“What?”
“Tell yourself that. The past isn’t real. It’s just one of those ideas you get that you think is real. It doesn’t exist, baby.”
Her brow furrowed and her little mouth hung open, muted.
“Everything starts now. That’s it. Right now.”
She wiped her eyes and turned to the people on the floor.
I said, “And don’t get excited, but I got something going. It could take care of you all awhile.”
“What do you mean?”
“Say you had some money. What would you do?”
“How much money?”
“Enough. Rent’s paid. Food and bills are paid. For a good while.”
Her eyes drifted and she seemed to think, absently traced a fingernail in the condensation ring on the table.
“Okay. I’ll tell you what you do. You get yourself to take one of those high school degree tests.” She scoffed, and I said, “I’m serious. For real. You hire somebody to help you watch that little girl. And you go to school for something.”
“School?”
“That’s right.”
“But how’d—”
“Say you could afford it. That is what you do. I just told you. Doesn’t matter what you go for. But you learn something. You’re quick. Learn to do something.” I took hold of both her hands. “You do it for yourself or you do it for her, but you do it.” She stared at me until most of the fear had left her eyes. “You’re strong enough to live the one way, now live the other,” I said. “All that starts now.”
“Okay, Roy. Okay.”
We listened to the song conclude and watched the couples exhaust their orbits. I noticed I still held her hands and let them go, curling my
fingers back.
“When do you know about it?”
“What?”
“The money. You know.”
“Tomorrow.”
“What if it doesn’t happen?”
I shrugged and finished my glass. “I think of something else.”
Her gaze seemed a little bleary from the beer, and she finished her drink, wiped her mouth. “Did you—?” She let the question die on her tongue.
“What?”
She swallowed hard and folded her fingers together. “Did you do something, to that Tray guy?”
“No.” I smiled. “Just scared him probably. Told him to stay away from you and get the hell outta here. He’s probably ripping off drugstores in Corpus by now, trying to get himself shot.”
“Oh.” She watched my face a moment, but there was nothing in it for her to read, and we both looked out at the revolving lights on the empty dance floor. Glen Campbell now.
“Well.” Her beer-glazed eyes twinkled, and her smile opened her whole face, like parting shutters onto summer. “You gonna dance with me or what?”
I shook my head, chuckled, and she made a face of mock terror. She led me out to the floor with that same gentle determination as when she’d walk Tiffany to the ocean, and I was drunk enough to not feel totally foolish.
A few people gave us looks from their tables, but they didn’t stare long. I towered over her, and had to hunch and watch my feet against hers.
She held herself to me with her face against my sternum, and we rocked back and forth as a few cowboys and ladies revolved around us in the cool gloom with the ghost fish swimming over us all, and her hair smelled like salt water and the sun.
I don’t know how many songs played, but we ended up not eating. We drank some more beer and she told me a couple jokes that were really good, and I remember laughing hard.
She told me stories. She told me about riding around in the backseat of a car when her mother went on this strange date to a group of trailers in the woods. She talked about her school dance team, and how she had to drop out of it when she got pregnant. She told me about leaving school and spending every day, day after day, in that little cabin in the fields.
We danced some more.
It was late when we left, and she walked lightly, bouncing and swaying a little. She kept thanking me. The night was blue at the edges of the lot and shaded darker under the trees where I’d parked.
As we neared the truck, something in its stance struck me as wrong. I fumbled with my keys and noticed the left back tire was totally flat, pancaked, and I looked over the hood at her and said, “Hey—”
Men stood behind her. They’d just appeared. I heard the oyster shells crunch.
Then the pipe struck across my eyes.
Somebody had my arms. I started bucking and the back of my head exploded. Nauseous, skull-cracking pain.
I knew something had broken in me, in my head.
Then I was tasting the dust in my blood, looking at the oyster shells on the ground as they dragged and scraped against my face. I was dripping a lot of blood onto the shells. My arms pulled ahead. My vision had cracked down the middle, and the two sides wouldn’t align. I heard muffled screaming.
I heard the van’s door slide open, and then they hit me again.
Sharp pains at my shoulders. They were tugging me by my arms and my feet dragged across gravel. They’d taken off my boots. Footsteps crunching, hard breathing. I tried to move my arms but they didn’t work. I could see the backs of their knees and their shoes. Stars lined the horizon. I twisted my face up and saw the crusty brown bricks and the sign that said STAN’S PLACE. I screamed.
I couldn’t see Rocky. I couldn’t hear her, but I was screaming.
They dropped my arms to kick me until I went out again.
I woke with my face on cold concrete, inside tight, dark walls, a small room. I could feel the boys standing around me, in shadows. I wondered who it was, if Lou or Jay was there. Only one of my eyes worked and my vision was doubled in it.
I recognized the storage room. I could see the steel freezer door at the back and the door to the supply room off to the side. I knew there was a hallway out to the right and a set of rooms along it.
I heard Rocky again, just for a second, from somewhere down that hallway—a short, strangled sound.
Somebody nearby laughed at me. Somebody tossed down the folder of papers on the floor by my face. I hacked blood clots onto it.
One of them said, “Stay with us, Big Country. We’re waiting on Stan. You gotta have something left for him.”
I tried moving but could only sort of wriggle. My hands weren’t operational. The pain had layers, and it was deep—you just kept discovering new and greater depths. The men’s legs congealed out of the dark, shiny jogging pants and slacks, boots and sneakers surrounding me.
One said, “You supposed to be sick or something, Big Country?”
“You scared the shit out that doctor.”
“You scared him so much he lit out. Spent a few days doping in Bay St. Louis.”
“Then he comes and sees Stan to get him to make you lay off. So Stan calls his girl at the phone company. And she goes and finds out your number.”
That was the first time I remembered calling the doctor.
“Stupid, man. That’s really fucking stupid, Big Country. You redneck shit heel.”
I thought I heard Rocky’s muffled voice raise again, behind the door, furious, gaining in pitch, then choked out, silent.
The shoes closed in on me, and a baseball bat and a long pipe hung beside their knees. I pissed myself. I tried to rise and either the bat or the pipe swung out and cracked my jaw.
I spat teeth. My tongue had ripped. They started in on me again.
The next time I woke up I was tied to a chair and could hardly breathe. My chest burned and my smashed nose gurgled. I’d vomited into my lap, and the concrete under me glistened with blood. I knew this was still the storage room. An air vent dripped in the corner, where just a little light was cast by a mechanic’s lamp hung high up there, and it reminded me of the single orange lamp in the foyer of Frank Sienkiewicz’s house. It occurred to me that I’d never left that foyer. I was still there and had only dreamed I escaped.
My vision was shoddy out the one eye, but I could see on its periphery all these lumps and strange shapes on my face.
The chair was heavy, a solid hardwood job, and my arms were cinched so tight my back spasmed in pain from the angle. My chest was tied too tightly to the chair back, my ankles to its legs. It smelled like I’d shit myself. Even with my crushed nose packed with blood, I could still smell it.
I knew they were going to take a long time with me. I’d heard those stories about Stan handling an acetylene torch.
I started crying.
I wasn’t thinking about Rocky or her sister. I just didn’t want to be hurt anymore. I cried hard, and every time my chest heaved it slid knives into my shoulders and ribs. There was nothing I wouldn’t have done to survive. I was going to beg. I’d do anything.
The vent continued dripping in the corner and I could barely make out dim voices behind me, which would be the main bar area, and a steady, subaudible murmur beneath. I realized they were watching TV up there.
Sitting around drinking beer, watching TV, waiting for Stan.
I started crying louder.
A door sounded behind me, a soft, hinged squeak, and then I heard it hush shut. I could feel another person here, in back of me, like the air had gone thicker with presence.
I couldn’t catch my breath and the tears crawled down my face and stuck to the blood. Quiet footsteps clicked on the concrete. I think I was trying to say Please. Or Wait.
Wait.
Then a scent or character cohered out of the dark, air like Camel menthols and gin and powder and Charlie perfume. It doesn’t seem likely that I could smell that in my condition, but I felt it, the air taking that shape, and I knew who was in the room with me.
&
nbsp; She whispered, Shhhh. “Be quiet. Don’t make a sound.”
Carmen’s shushed voice warm on the back of my neck. My wrists tugged and it killed my shoulders. I whimpered and she hissed, “Shut up.” The electrical cords binding my wrists fell away, slapped against the floor, left my arms limp at my sides. The rope that bound my torso slipped off.
I could see her then, as she came around to my front. She kneeled before me and glanced up, those hard, conniving eyes registering fear and even pity, rushed, but still pausing on my face and wincing at it. In that sparse gray light Carmen crouched on the bloody concrete, and my chin sat on my chest as she used a small knife to cut through the tape around my ankles.
She stood up. Her eyes flinched and her mouth curled in a shamed sort of disgust. Her mascara had run and black rivulets stained her cheeks like her eyes had squirted ink. She glanced over her shoulder at the far door and put the knife in my wet hand.
She closed the fingers of my hand around the knife for me. I whimpered, it hurt so badly to move my fingers. She held my hand closed and whispered, “Stand up, Roy. Stand up.”
I think I asked about Rocky, because her eyes trembled and she just shook her head. She helped me stand and then let go, and I almost fell over. But my legs weren’t too bad. It was everything else.
She said, “Get out of here. Run, Roy. Don’t look back. Run out of here.” Her husky speech soaked from tears, her voice almost sounded angry somehow, like I’d wronged her.
I wanted to say something, but my jaw didn’t work, and my tongue was so swollen it filled my mouth. Carmen slid away, and I heard the muffled click of her heels on the floor and the door’s hinge squealed and opened.
The wall was cold and I leaned against it, my face sticking to the cinder block. My limp hand cradled the knife. My other was useless. The fingers were all crooked.
Stunning, bone-deep aches shot through my feet and shins when I tried to walk. The doorway to the hall seemed a long way off, and little things crackled in me every time I took a step.
I’d blink and be on my knees, see the mechanic’s light in the corner, the drips echoing.
Galveston Page 17
