Eat, Drink, and Be From Mississippi

by Nanci Kincaid

  “To Gordo.” Truely raised his glass.

  “Hell, yes.” Jerry tapped his glass. “To the best son a man could ever have.” They both drank to that and then offered up a moment of silence while Jerry composed himself, wiping his eyes with his paper napkin. “The others have gone to bed,” Jerry said, clearing his throat. “They took those Ambien pills Suleeta got when she had her hysterectomy. But not me. I can’t sleep. I don’t want to sleep.”

  “I understand,” Truely said.

  “This is hell. Waiting.”

  “I can imagine.” Truely shook his head. “It’s tough. How’s Shauna doing?”

  “This thing has torn her up,” Jerry said. “You know how she dotes on Gordo. She helped raise him — about like a second mother. She got her crying done early on — her sisters, you know, they can’t see straight they’re still crying so bad. You can’t hardly say anything to them without them starting up again. But you know, Shauna, she was on the phone to DC, getting information and making travel plans. We got a flight out to Germany tomorrow night. Shauna is going with me. Suleeta hates flying and she wouldn’t do Gordo much good as upset as she is. She wants to stay here and light candles and pray. It’s her way and I respect that. But Shauna, no way to keep Shauna from going. I need her too,” he said. “I don’t mind admitting it.”

  For a second Truely thought he heard a subtle accusation. I don’t mind admitting that I need Shauna, unlike you, you asshole, who can’t or won’t admit it. But Truely was being too sensitive. He and his deficient ways were the last thing on Jerry’s mind. “Yes,” he said. “Shauna is strong.”

  “In a time of trouble, you want Shauna on your team,” Jerry said. “Becca and Shelly, they’re more like their mother. I told their husbands to take them back home, but they wouldn’t go. They want to do their crying here, all together. Shauna is more like me. We got to see things through. We got to know how things stand.”

  “Anything I can do?” Truely asked. “I’d like to help out some way, Jerry.”

  “Thanks,” Jerry said. “I appreciate that.”

  The two of them stood there a minute looking out over the dimly lit neighborhood, a nervous dog yapping somewhere in the distance, the thumping sound of too loud music a few streets over. “Gordo has got to live,” Jerry said mostly to himself. He closed his eyes and took a long drink of liquor and shook his glass, rattling the ice. “We can find a way to deal with … the rest.”

  “That’s right,” Truely said.

  “We can deal with whatever we have to deal with.”

  “You can.” Truely nodded.

  Then the men went silent again, just the ice melting in their glasses and the doves in the treetops cooing brokenheartedly. “You don’t have kids,” Jerry said.

  “No.”

  “If you ever do, you’ll know.”

  “I guess so.”

  “I was too hard on Gordo. I see that now.” Jerry shook his glass again as if he were sounding an alarm. “Like every kid, Gordo got in his share of trouble, you know, did some stupid things. But he was a kid, right? I bet you did some stupid shit when you were a kid.”

  “For sure,” Truely agreed.

  “I came down on Gordo too hard. I just didn’t want him to go in the wrong direction, see? One wrong move and you can lose a kid to the streets. I’ve seen it happen. I didn’t want Gordo to get started down the wrong path. Right? Suleeta told me I was too hard on Gordo. She warned me he’d rebel if I didn’t back off.”

  “He became an American soldier,” Truely reminded him. “Takes a lot of courage to enlist — especially these days. You got to be proud of that, Jerry.”

  “I pushed him,” he said. “Made him feel like he had something to prove — you know. But I never meant for him to join the military. The army was his idea. Still, I should have tried to talk him out of it, made him wait a few years.”

  “Easy to blame yourself,” Truely said. “But Gordo wouldn’t want that. Gordo has a mind of his own. Makes his own decisions.”

  Jerry finished his drink and walked over to pour himself another one. “I feel so damn helpless.”

  Truely wondered if his dad had suffered this way over every heartache he and Courtney had endured, but he doubted it because, looking back, he thought they hadn’t really endured much heartache — certainly nothing close to this. Maybe that was some small part of Truely’s passivity now, the fact that as a boy he was not sufficiently strengthened by catastrophe or disaster of any kind. Maybe a too easy life was not always the blessing it was perceived to be. Maybe the good life could never really be appreciated without the contrast of crisis to make you grateful.

  “What time you leave for Germany tomorrow?” Truely asked. “I want to see Shauna before she goes.”

  “I’ll wake her up now if you like. You want me to?”

  “No,” Truely said. “I guess not. Let her sleep if she can. I’ll come back in the morning.”

  “I’ll tell her,” Jerry said.

  “I can stay a while longer, Jerry, you know, if you need some company, but I don’t want to intrude.”

  “I’m okay,” he said. “Just because I can’t sleep doesn’t mean you shouldn’t.”

  Truely patted him on the shoulder and briefly considered hugging him, but only completed a portion of the gesture before pulling away. “Night then.”

  Jerry nodded. Truely put his barely touched drink down on the table and swung his legs over the terrace wall, jumped to the damp ground and started toward his car. For some reason he thought of crickets, the absence of them here, the hollowness of dark nights without their pulsating chorus.

  He was in his car, ready to start the engine, when a light came on inside the house and he paused and tried to see who might be stirring. Seconds later the front door flung open and he saw Shauna bound down the stone steps, leap the lighted path and run across the grassy yard toward his car. She was wearing white cotton pajamas and her brown hair was in a ponytail on top of her head. His heart pounded at the sight of her hurrying toward him. He got out, called her name, and met her in an awkward embrace. They both wavered on the edge of the unspoken. Truely buried his face in Shauna’s neck. “God, Shauna,” he said. “You didn’t call me.”

  “I know,” she whispered.

  “Doug told me. I came as soon as I could.”

  “It’s awful,” she said.

  “I’m so sorry, Shauna.” He kissed the top of her head. “What can I do?”

  “You came,” she said.

  It bothered Truely that she sounded surprised. “Let’s talk in the car.” He led her across the small space of wet grass.

  Truely wanted to take her inside the house, lie down with her on the single bed in her girlhood room with the shelf of soccer trophies and the photos of her dressed for proms wearing corsages on her wrists. He would like to have held her through the night and to have watched her sleep. He wanted his to be the first face she saw when she awoke. But Shauna’s parents were what Shauna referred to as from the old country. There was no old country actually. Her mom was a good Catholic who did not allow her daughters any sleeping together — literally or figuratively — under her Catholic roof without that permission slip from God known as the marriage license. Shauna had made that clear to him on his first visit to her family, never mind that she was not a girl anymore, but a grown woman with a very real, very adult history. He had booked them a random room in Hotel Circle then and every time since. It was not something that could be negotiated — especially tonight with Gordo air-vaced to the army hospital in Germany, his future reduced to a series of unanswered questions.

  They sat in the car facing each other with the aid of a fog-shrouded moon. Truely liked the night-look of Shauna — her wrinkled pajamas that he had never seen her wear before. But he felt the tension too, the worry that flickered in her swollen eyes and her nervous hands that she busied touching first the buttons on his shirt, then those on her pajamas, at a loss for words — or for the energy it would have t
aken to speak them. “We leave for Germany tomorrow,” she finally said.

  “Jerry told me.”

  “I called and told them to tell Gordo that we’re coming. I think if he knows we’re on our way, you know, he can hold on. I don’t want him to wonder.”

  “Gordo is a strong guy, Shauna.” She nodded and fell silent. Truely reached for her hand. It was sweaty. “I’m putting my money on Gordo,” he said.

  “These are his pajamas.” Shauna tugged at them. “Becca gave them to him for Christmas a couple of years ago. He was horrified, you know. Not a pajama man. ‘I’ll save them for my next trip to the hospital,’ he joked. He never even put them on. I found them in his drawer and got them out to wear tonight.”

  “That’s good,” Truely said. “I like that.”

  “Mother has candles lit all over the house. Gordo’s room. Her bedroom. She’s got their bedroom so lit up back there Daddy can’t sleep. It’s spooky.”

  “Listen. What if I came with you to Germany? I could arrange it.”

  “No,” she said. “Thanks. But it’s better if it’s just Daddy and me.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes. No offense, Truely. Okay?”

  “None taken,” he said. But he was not sure he meant it. He wanted to help Shauna through this. He wanted her to need him to.

  Shauna leaned against Truely, her face next to his. “I hate this stupid war.”

  Truely put his arms around her and pulled her closer. He could feel her heartbeat, the sweatiness of her skin. He felt like a teenager again, parked late at night with a girl whom he longed for and feared.

  “Pray for Gordo,” Shauna whispered.

  LESS THAN AN HOUR LATER Shauna went back into the house to lie in Gordo’s bed and try again to sleep in the candlelight. Truely drove over to the Town and Country and got a room. He was asleep as soon as he hit the bed, but it was not the good kind of sleep. He kept waking with a sudden jolt and having to remind himself where he was. The next morning he awoke to find the day had started without him. It was after ten a.m. He almost never slept late. He was immediately irritated with himself. He forced himself up and into the shower and plied himself with black coffee to shake off his drowsiness.

  On the way to Shauna’s parents’ house he stopped for corn tamales and beans and rice at a little homegrown restaurant he knew Shauna’s family liked. He bought enough for them to freeze some for later. It was pretty hard to spend a hundred and fifty bucks on tamales and beans and rice. Next he stopped at a Circle K for a case of cold beer and a couple of gallons of diet green tea, Shauna’s favorite. When he pulled up in front of the house this time there were cars parked everywhere. He was glad he had the food to carry in — two trips at least. He liked having a self-assigned chore, a good deed even. He read once that love was an action verb and he meant to try to prove it today if he could — partly to himself, but mostly to Shauna.

  A man he didn’t know answered the door. “Hey,” Truely said. The room was full of people he had never seen before.

  “How’s it going?” the man said.

  “Shauna around?” Truely asked stupidly, carrying sacks of hot Styrofoam-encased food.

  “The kitchen.” The man nodded in the direction of the kitchen, but Truely didn’t need the clue. He had spent many hours in the Mackey kitchen.

  When Shauna saw him she hurried over. “Truely, what’s all this?”

  “Nourishment,” he said. “Got to keep your strength up.”

  “Let me help you.” She took one of the sacks from his arms. “Mother,” Shauna called to Suleeta. “Truely’s here. He brought tamales.”

  Suleeta came toward him. He struggled to set all the food on the kitchen table and free his arms to hug her. “Gracias for coming.” Suleeta’s face was swollen. There were dark circles under her eyes. Her chin quivered when she spoke.

  “Gordo was my man, Suleeta. You know that. Mi hombre.” Was? Why the hell did he say was?

  Suleeta patted Truely’s arm. “You bring too much food.”

  “Gordo’s friends like to eat,” he said. “I know that.”

  “Yes.” She laughed a flat laugh.

  “We’ll put this food out,” Shauna told him. “Gordo’s buddies are out on the terrace, Truely. You should join them.”

  “Got one more load in the car,” he said. “I’ll be right back.” He took his time going out to the car, grabbing the rest of the stuff and bringing it inside. He felt nervous. Probably just the grief of the occasion at work, he told himself. He brought in the rest of the food and lingered around the crowded kitchen watching Shauna and Suleeta put the tamales on a platter and scoop the rice and beans into bowls. The dining room table was already full. Someone had brought a couple of rotisserie chickens and a wok of tofu fried rice and a coconut cake and a huge platter of raw vegetables and hunks of ripe cheeses and crackers and a tray of sushi. And now the tamales. Already they had a deluxe buffet shaping up in honor of Gordo.

  Truely thought of his father’s funeral, when the kitchen table was covered with fried chicken, glazed ham, potato salad, baked beans, green beans, butter beans, Jell-O salads of every color with fruit cocktail, nuts, Cool Whip, cream cheese and who knows what else suspended in them, quivering, and cornbread and hot buttered biscuits — everything good. But that was totally different. His father had died. Gordo had lived — was living. His life was something to celebrate. Truely helped himself to a soft drink out of the cooler on the kitchen floor. He was thinking of asking Shauna for a couple of aspirin to ward off the headache he felt coming on. But before he said anything, she called to him, “True, wait a minute. I need to talk to you about something.” He saw Shauna look at her mother. He saw Suleeta raise her eyebrows in something less than an approving gesture.

  “Sure.” Truely popped the top off his soda.

  Shauna walked down the back hall toward her room and he followed her. Shauna’s room was a reminder of the young girl she had once been. Truely would have liked to have known her then. In pictures she had short, unruly curls everywhere, but since Truely had known her her hair was straight and thoroughly tamed. She had bordered on being plump in high school, despite having been an athlete. Now she was thinner — what he sometimes thought of as slightly shrunken, but in a very nice way. “Sit down.” She patted the bed beside her. Suleeta had not changed the room’s bedspread since Shauna left home. Shauna had told him so, but he would have guessed it anyway. It was a room frozen in time, Suleeta’s attempt to honor and hang on to her children, who grew up in spite of her best resistance.

  “What’s up?” Truely sat beside Shauna.

  “Look,” she said. “Pablo is here.”

  “Pablo?” he asked. “The Pablo?”

  “I thought you should know.”

  “Did you call him?” It was a terrible question because at the heart of it was his own insecurity, Did you call Pablo, but not me?

  “I guess I did. Maybe.”

  “Maybe?”

  “Look, Truely, Pablo was close to Gordo. When we were together he took Gordo to ball games and fishing trips — all sorts of things. He wanted Gordo to be his best man in our wedding — you know, when we were planning the wedding. Gordo looked up to Pablo.”

  “The guy who broke his sister’s heart? The guy who nearly bankrupted her with lies?”

  “Gordo doesn’t know exactly what happened. What was the point? Besides, Pablo has changed. He’s not the same way he used to be. He’s maturing, Truely.”

  “Better late than never, I guess.”

  “That’s all in the past anyway,” Shauna said. “I’m over it.”

  “That’s a new verse to an old song, isn’t it?” Why was he sounding so annoyed?

  “I don’t want to rehash what happened with Pablo. I just want you to know he’s here. I’ll introduce you. It would be strange not to.”

  “Sure,” Truely said. “Introduce away.”

  “If it’s any consolation, Truely, it was Daddy’s idea. He wanted me to
call Gordo’s friends. ‘What about Pablo?’ he said. ‘You should call him.’ ”

  “And so you called. I get it. No problem.”

  “Really?”

  “I’m glad he’s here. He should be.”

  “He lives near here now. He’s practically a neighbor. You live hundreds of miles away in San Francisco, True.”

  “I know where I live, Shauna.”

  “He could jump in the car and come right over — right away. You were visiting your sister in Saratoga. I hated to …”

  “So it was a purely geographically based decision. I understand.”

  “Truely, don’t.”

  He kissed Shauna’s forehead. “Come on,” he said. “Pablo is a friend of the family. Of course you should call him. Of course he would come immediately. You don’t need to explain, Shauna.”

  “I did it for Gordo.”

  “And it was the right thing to do too. I’d like to meet the guy. Really.”

  “Mother was worried. She thought I should give you a heads-up.”

  “The last thing you and Suleeta need to worry about is me, God knows. I’m a big boy, Shauna.”

  Before they left the room she whispered, “Thanks.”

  “You’re something.” He kissed her forehead. “You know that?”

  SHAUNA RETURNED to phone duty in the kitchen. Truely headed out to the terrace, partly for fresh air, partly because it seemed to be the location of choice for Gordo’s single buddies, a few of whom Truely knew. They were huddled around the outdoor grill in relative silence. He saw Marcel and Marcus immediately, two brothers he and Gordo had played basketball with on a half-dozen occasions, and a couple of other guys whose faces he remembered but whose names he did not. They were mostly Gordo’s age. Young. Too young to confront the reality of the occasion. The possibility of death engulfed them like a collective hangover. If Gordo could look death in the face before he was even twenty-one years old, then God knows — they could too. Shit happens. It happens to good people same as bad. They don’t tell you that when they’re trying to convince you to be good.