Eat, Drink, and Be From Mississippi

by Nanci Kincaid

  Truely stabbed his shovel into the dirt. Anger crept over him like a swarm of fire ants.

  UNLIKE SOME OF HIS BUDDIES, Truely had never been afraid of books. Following his daddy’s example, he had read the newspaper every day of his life since sixth grade, starting with the sports page. He had a vague idea what was going on in the world. It was true that Truely could generally nail a test, took a certain pride in it, but he was also a guy who liked to dance all night to throbbing music in makeshift clubs off unlit country roads. He liked to drink a cold beer on a hot day, maybe a flask of Jack Daniel’s on special occasions. He wore his baseball cap backwards, his jeans ripped and torn — because they were old and practically worn-out, not because he bought them that way. His hair was a little too long, his boots a little too big, his aspirations modest. He preferred listening to talking — and wasn’t all that great at either. He liked barbecue joints more than restaurants. Catfish and hush puppies or hot dogs burned black over a campfire were his favorites. He preferred simple food dished out in large helpings. He liked to serve himself and go for seconds.

  Truely got a rush out of seeing geese flying in V formation, every kind of dog — but especially a hound on a scent — hard-hitting defensive football, explosive tackles, athletes with suddenness, tan-legged girls in bare feet, girls with guts and gumption who spoke up and got heard, guys who didn’t talk too much, who only lied when it was the right thing to do, great teachers who made you rethink things, and true stories of every kind. He was partial to old people, old trucks and old stories he’d heard a thousand times. None of this was going to change because he went off to college. Not if he could help it. He’d gone to church nearly all his life, but had never considered himself religious. If he’d actually had a religion he guessed it would have been familiarity — he worshipped the familiar.

  He was exactly like his daddy that way, wasn’t he? They both liked things that actually were what they appeared to be. People especially. Truely liked mothers who looked like mothers and fathers who looked like fathers. He cringed when he saw those too-thin mothers trying to pour themselves into tight-fitting jeans and wearing their hair like a teenager. He’d felt bad for guys with mothers like that. Truely generally felt lucky to have his own mother with her dated hairstyle, which she referred to as “a body wave.” Truely liked his mother’s sensible shoes just fine, her pear shape in her polyester JCPenney’s pantsuits, all the little lines around her eyes, and the way she insisted on putting powder on whenever she left the house so her face didn’t shine with heat. He could tell from the wedding photo that sat on her bedroom dresser that she had once been young and pretty. It was okay with him if she didn’t stay that way forever. He didn’t notice his daddy complaining either — not exactly. He loved the way she insisted on hanging wet clothes outside on the line, letting them bake in the fresh air, even though she had a clothes dryer out in the carport that worked just fine. He admired the way most of the messages put out by the modern world were wasted on his mother. He counted on that.

  His daddy too. Every morning his daddy was up early, dressed in his work coveralls, drinking his black coffee when Truely came stumbling to the table for breakfast. His daddy worked repairing large household appliances, refrigerators, washing machines, stoves, for Jackson Home Appliance and he was good at it — was made manager of the repair department a few years earlier. Sometimes he brought home an abandoned appliance and repaired it in his spare time and then sold it on the side. Or sometimes he just gave it away to somebody he thought might need it.

  Truely liked the way he’d come to know what his daddy would say before he said it — like he had memorized the short script that constituted the basic dialogue of his daddy’s small life. It comforted Truely in its predictability.

  To this day there was not much he loved more than hunting with his daddy, sitting silently for hours cramped in the deer stand in the dark, damp, early morning listening to each other breathe and shiver — never speaking a word. They had gotten a buck the last three years he was home, the third one six points. All three bucks still hung on the garage wall, two looking left and one looking right. He was proud of them too, even though his mother had refused to allow them to hang over the fireplace in their den where he thought they actually belonged.

  When he was a kid he had loved to sit out by the pond and fish with his daddy too. For hours on end the two of them sat in the shadiest spot they could find, eating sandwiches they’d made themselves, sharing an RC Cola and believing they had all the time in the world ahead of them. Even though he didn’t get around to it much anymore, he still liked to fish. You could think when you fished. That was the thing. It was like doing something and doing nothing all at the same time. If more people fished, then fewer people would need to pay psychiatrists. He believed that. If he was part redneck, the way Courtney had lovingly introduced him to her California friends on occasion, then he was okay with that. Maybe he was even proud of it.

  Maybe some of Truely’s Mississippi buddies spent their days wired to sound systems or watching the mind-numbing tube, but not Truely. He liked to wander down to Snake Creek by himself and throw his line in the slow current. Sometimes he took a tattered notepad with him in case something came to mind that he thought he needed to jot down. It wasn’t a journal. Girls kept journals. It was just a notebook that helped him keep track of his thoughts. He hid it from his mother the same way he used to hide dirty magazines when he was a kid — in the same place too, inside an old sleeping bag rolled up on the floor of his closet.

  Truely Noonan knew who he was. Hell yes. He knew who he was and where he came from — and he was mostly at peace with all of it. He’d swear he’d never spent a minute of his life trying to be somebody he wasn’t.

  EVENTUALLY they sent photos, of course, the two of them on the windy beach in Santa Cruz, on a cold day, surrounded by smiling friends, jackets slung over their shoulders, lifting glasses of champagne. Courtney’s newly blackened hair was flying across her porcelain face like dark, wet seaweed. Hastings’ hair was slicked back in a tight ponytail, his lone earring almost indiscernible to the naked eye. The expression of pure adoration on his face was more than endearing to Truely’s parents. And there was no mistaking the certainty in Courtney’s eyes. She looked perfectly beautiful to them, in that pale, half-starved way of hers. His parents wept when the photos arrived in the mail. Their daughter was married. A legal wife. Her virtue was restored.

  Truely always wondered how, of all the guys in California, Courtney had known that Hastings was the one most likely to transform her life into the masterpiece she had always imagined.

  TRUELY HAD BEEN going out with Tay-Ann Rogers for nearly two years. She was a pretty girl, dark-haired, book smart and ambitious. She dreamed of being a doctor someday, maybe doing mission work in Africa or South America as a testament to her love for Jesus Christ. He didn’t know a single person who didn’t like her. His mother and daddy, for example, claimed they loved her and he believed they did.

  Tay-Ann was a great dancer — which was how things had got started in the first place that night out at Lester’s off Highway 18. The girl might have Jesus in her heart, but she had music in her blood. He really loved a girl who could dance — and would. Truely had seen Tay-Ann at school a thousand times and never really noticed her. It wasn’t until two summers ago, when he had gone out to Lester’s with some football buddies and Tay-Ann was there, sweat drenched, wet-haired and dancing barefoot, that he had not been able to take his eyes off her. She wore a short white sundress pasted to her tanned skin. Her dark hair was curled around her damp face and her mascara was smeared. The movement of her hips was hypnotic. She bit her bottom lip as she danced, concentrating on the pulsing music with her eyes closed. Truely was done. It was over.

  He never technically asked her to dance. He just made his way through the crowd to where she was swaying with some half-coordinated guy, caught her eye and began to dance beside her. She smiled. The place caught fire. That’s t
he way Truely remembered it.

  Lots of nights now, he picked up Tay-Ann in his daddy’s truck and they drove the back roads of Hinds County. She was easy to talk to. She had plenty to say even when Truely was at a loss for words. Her daddy owned some significant tracts of land and Tay-Ann had keys to all the locked gates on his property. Some nights they parked on dark dead-end roads in the woods and made each other promises, whispering their way to perfect silence. He lost his virginity to her on a blanket laid out in the back of the truck, the two of them stark naked under a pale fingernail moon.

  TRUELY AND HIS DADDY were sitting in tattered lawn chairs in the yard, facing the pond, watching a pair of bullfrogs leap at the water’s edge, finishing up bowls of chili and saltines, when Truely handed his daddy his acceptance letter to San Jose State. “This came,” he said.

  His daddy read the letter with anything but enthusiasm. Afterward he folded it carefully and dropped it into his lap. “Why?” he asked.

  “I’m not trying to follow in Courtney’s footsteps if that’s what you think.”

  “What’s right for your sister is not necessarily right for you.”

  “I know that, Daddy.” Truely leaned forward in his chair, annoyed. “This is not about Courtney.”

  “What’s this about then?”

  “I’ve been in Hinds County all my life. Maybe I want to try something else for a while. I like California. I got this scholarship out there.”

  “Is that some kind of Mexican college?”

  “San Jose State? No. It’s not Mexican, Daddy.”

  “Sounds Mexican.”

  “It’s a good school. Maybe you’ll come west and see it sometime. Bring Mama. Do some sightseeing out there.”

  “They got a football team?”

  “Yes.”

  “Any good?”

  “They beat Stanford practically every year.”

  “Stanford?”

  “Pac-10 team.”

  His daddy shook his head. “You’re going to break your mama’s heart with this news.”

  Truely had to swallow hard to keep from saying something he might regret. In matters of breaking his mother’s heart he didn’t think he was in danger of being the primary offender. He bit his tongue. “I’ll write y’all,” he said. “I’ll call.”

  “It’s not the same.”

  “I’ll come home at Christmas, Daddy. It’ll be like old times. The four of us — well, the five now. We’ll decorate the house and everything like always.”

  “Courtney wants your mama and me to fly out to her place for Christmas this year,” he said. “She’s sending us tickets.”

  “Okay then,” Truely said. “Good. Even better.”

  “I don’t understand why you’re doing this, son.” His daddy looked away from him then. He cleared his throat. “Is it because —”

  “No.” Truely didn’t want the conversation to take the turn his daddy was hinting at. He’d promised himself never to allow it.

  “Anything you might need to ask me?”

  “No.” Truely’s tone was abrupt.

  His daddy looked at him then, saw that the subject was closed. He looked away a minute, as if rethinking something. “This is not how your mama and me thought things would go, you know? Courtney out there with …”

  “Hastings?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s real happy, Daddy.”

  “That’s what your mama says.”

  “You don’t believe it?”

  “I don’t like it — that’s all. My daughter so far off. Now you leaving too. Makes me wonder what we should have done that we didn’t.”

  “Nothing,” Truely said.

  “Look.” His daddy pointed across the pond. “There’s that doe again. See her over there?” In the thick brush on the bank of the pond where his daddy had put out a salt lick stood a fearless doe. His daddy made his hand into an imaginary gun, aimed it and pretended to pull the trigger. “Bam,” he whispered.

  The doe looked up momentarily then went back to grazing.

  His daddy sat still a minute, then swatted a gnat on his forearm. “Okay then.” He returned Truely’s letter. “Congratulations are in order, I guess.”

  Truely took the letter, folded it and put it in his pocket.

  “How about let’s get these chili bowls washed up and put away before your mama gets home. You know how much she likes to come home to a clean kitchen.”

  Truely grabbed his empty bowl and followed his daddy to the kitchen.

  “When you planning to tell your mama what you’ve decided?”

  “Not yet,” Truely said.

  “You told Tay-Ann yet?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’d she say?”

  “She thinks she can change my mind.”

  “Can she?”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  His daddy held the screen door open for Truely, nodding for him to step into the kitchen. “It’s decided then,” his daddy said mostly to himself.

  Four

  THE SUMMER AFTER GRADUATION Truely loaded his primitive, outdated home computer, hopped-up stereo equipment and goldmine of CDs and old LPs, along with his clothes — three pairs of jeans, some T-shirts, sweatpants, shorts and one brand-new pair of khakis his mother had bought him, along with a basic navy sport coat with brass buttons exactly like every one he had ever owned and two less-than-notable neckties his mother had chosen for events unknown — into the used pickup truck he and his daddy had negotiated for as a graduation present. It wasn’t a bribe exactly, more like an unspoken thank-you for Truely’s maturity in exercising restraint and demonstrating loyalty to his daddy in ways that would remain unmentioned by both of them all the rest of their lives.

  Truely didn’t like secrets — knowing them or keeping them. The fact that he had found himself an involuntary steward to a handful of secrets belonging mostly to other people was no small part of his decision to leave Mississippi and the weight of such knowing. He hoped distance would free him. California seemed like a place that would let him forgive and forget, which was nearly always his instinct.

  He drove himself across country to California, taking back roads, listening to Al Green, Percy Sledge and the Temptations — pretty much the same stuff his daddy and most everybody else in Mississippi listened to. He had come to like Willie, old Hank Williams stuff and Don Williams too. All the mellow country guys. When it came to music Truely liked his vocals strong and his instrumentation simple. Driving along with a sack of sandwiches and peanut butter cookies his mother had packed him, an old map of his daddy’s, the open road and the freedom to take his own sweet time, he was pretty close to perfectly happy. At the time, he was convinced that happiness had something to do with freedom.

  Back in Hinds County he had left Tay-Ann Rogers if not heartbroken then at least heart-bruised. He felt bad about that. As far as he knew he had never made a girl cry before. Tay-Ann Rogers was a special girl by all accounts. Saying good-bye to her had been harder than saying good-bye to his mother. A few months earlier he had even found a way to tell Tay-Ann he loved her, which he believed he did. Just not enough to give up his California dream. He had imagined he could house her in some pleasant waiting room in the back of his mind until the time was right to merge her life with his — if the time ever was actually right. He hadn’t expected her to refuse to cooperate. Once it was clear to her that he was leaving Mississippi she turned to someone who was staying — some guy she had met at Ole Miss, where she was headed in the fall.

  The irony wasn’t wasted on Truely when at one point his daddy took him aside and said, “Son, sometimes the thing you go searching everywhere for is sitting right under your nose. You need to think twice before you let Tay-Ann get away.”

  But he had already let her get away. Their last night together they had parked under a stand of old oaks in the middle of a sloping cow pasture. You could see the glow from Jackson city lights from there. “Nothing has to change,” he said.
<
br />   “Don’t lie to me,” Tay-Ann said angrily. “I’m as smart as you are, True. I know whether or not things have to change.”

  “Maybe you can come to California sometime,” he offered.

  “I don’t want to come to California,” she said. “That’s your dream — not mine.”

  She looked so pretty sitting beside him in the dark, wearing a tight white T-shirt and a pair of white jeans. She had kicked her shoes off in the floor of the truck. Her dark hair was curling in the humidity, her skin smelled sweet. How could he think of actually leaving her?

  “Once you leave Hinds County, True,” she said, “I don’t want to hear from you again. No letters, no phone calls.”

  “You don’t mean that,” he said.

  “Yes I do,” she insisted. “Why prolong the inevitable? What would be the point?”

  And because Truely couldn’t think of a response to that — he agreed.

  TRUELY FOUND a way to ignore the heartbreak his parents seemed to suffer at his too going so far away. “I don’t see why you need to go out to California for college,” his mother said more than once. “What’s wrong with Ole Miss? A lot of smart people go to Ole Miss.” He hadn’t argued the point.

  On the night before he left Mississippi his mother came to his bedroom and slipped him an envelope of money. “I don’t need it,” he’d told her, which was a lie. “You keep it.”

  “Take it,” she insisted. “I’ll worry if you don’t.”

  He thanked her and put the envelope in his notebook with his scholarship information and his road maps.

  “You know I love your sister with all my heart,” his mother said. “I always will.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “But you” — she touched his face — “you’ll always be my baby.”

  HE TOLD HIMSELF that his parents’ slumped posture and sudden pallor was the traditional demeanor of parents parting with their youngest — and easiest — child and facing the impending silence of the empty nest. He didn’t feel guilty.

  TRUELY FELT at home in San Jose almost from the start. It wasn’t San Francisco, but San Francisco belonged to Courtney and he wanted a place of his own. San Jose was perfect. Close, but not too close. He liked being a stranger among strangers. In Hinds County he felt he had known and been known by nearly everybody. This was better. He had slept in his truck the first few nights after he arrived. But eventually he bought a copy of the San Jose Mercury News, scanned the classifieds like his daddy told him to, and rented the cheapest place he could find. It was a modest one-room apartment with a small closet converted into a substandard bathroom. It was located downtown in San Pedro Square over a low-budget Mexican restaurant with no name, just a sign that read MEXICAN FOOD. His landlord was a guy named Ernesto Pena. He and his wife, Maria, ran the small restaurant with the help of a constantly changing assortment of non-English-speaking relatives passing through San Jose on their way to destinations elsewhere. Besides selling tacos three for a dollar, Ernesto was also known for offering unsolicited advice to his regular customers at no extra charge. He was the first to warn Truely, “Not the safe neighborhood. You lock your truck. Don’t cause nobody the trouble.”