by Tim Sandlin
“Did that rolling around make you spring a leak?” Marcella asked.
He retightened his clamp. “I would appreciate the use of strong tape, electrical tape might be best.”
Armand started up the steps. “I imagine we can find you some electrical tape, old-timer.”
“Call me old-timer again and I shall leap from this chair and flail you.”
Armand stopped and his eyes jerked back around to Shane. He seemed about to say one thing, then switched to something else. “It was only a term of respect.”
Shane’s hands went white on the sides of his wheelchair. “I don’t need your respect.”
“You’re just mad ’cause you peed on yourself”—I smiled at Shane—“again.”
***
Armand’s house was a three-story brick box at the bottom of a long hill. In the dark, you couldn’t see the Hiwassee River, but I knew it had to be close by because I could smell it. Smelled like Dothan Talbot’s crotch.
The inside of his house was the cleanest inside of a house I’ve ever seen, which is saying a mouthful considering my mother dusted her light bulbs daily. Mom at least left two Reader’s Digests on the lazy Susan so people would think our family kept up on current trends. Armand’s house didn’t have a magazine, not a plant, not a family photograph. The front room was mostly black couches and glass-topped tables with a few pole lamps. A foot-high statue of an armless woman with her robe around her hips stood on a lapis lazuli column. The coolest thing about the room was the marble floor. Houses in Fred Astaire movies had marble floors, but I’d never seen one in person.
“I believe the tape is stored in the laundry,” Armand said.
The statue had polished tits. I said, “Your maid must have known when you’d be back.”
He stood with his hairy arms crossed next to a door leading off into the rest of the house. “I have no maid. Domestics gossip, and more than anything, I cannot stand gossip.”
Marcella’s face took on a lost puppy eagerness. “You’re rich, aren’t you, Mr. Castle?”
He smiled that urbane look. “I’m comfortable.”
While Armand was off digging up tape I circled the room, inspecting his tastes in art. I couldn’t figure this guy out, which frustrated me because I can almost always figure guys out. He talked too polite for a man with a full, untrimmed beard. The art on the walls was primarily Impressionist landscapes with some Picasso-like fragmented animals thrown in—no people pictures. Maybe he was gay. Sometimes gay guys live alone in clean houses.
Marcella wallowed in embarrassment. “I can’t believe I asked him if he was rich. What got over me? This is a room out of House and Garden.”
“I can’t stand up anymore, Marcella. You think an alarm would go off if I sat on one of these couches?”
“No, that’s not likely. Why would an alarm go off?”
“I was joking, Marcella.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I’m sorry, I missed it.”
***
Armand returned wearing a different Hawaiian shirt and rubber flip-flops. You could see hair on the tops of his big toes. He carried a silver tray with a role of electrical tape, a decanter of dun-colored liquid, three cut-glass glasses, and a covered candy dish. “Your friends do not approve of my company,” he said.
“They’re jealous because you’re a gentleman and they’re not,” I said.
Marcella stepped toward him. “We don’t have gentlemen in Texas.”
“Come now, I’m certain a few gentlemen dwell in Texas, perhaps around Beaumont.”
“I don’t know Beaumont, but there’s not a one in the Panhandle.” Her hands were wringing each other like wash rags. “I’m truly sorry I asked if you’re rich. You must think I’m gauche. It’s just this house is so clean, no one but a rich person would have a house this clean.”
He filled the bottom of a glass and handed it to her. “I thought your question showed both rare candor and grace. Here, drink this, it’ll help you relax.”
“Only one, though. I’m nursing.” Marcella took a sip. “Jesus in heaven, what is it?”
Armand poured three fingers in each of the other two glasses. “Something my neighbor cooks up. The recipe has been in his family for generations. I shall explain the process after I give Mr. Rinesfoos his tape.”
“You better let me do that. I need to check on the boys—they’re asleep. Besides, Shane doesn’t like men seeing his tally-whacker.” Marcella carried her glass and tape out the door.
“Charming woman,” Armand said, sitting next to me on the couch.
“Her husband’s followed us a thousand miles so far. I think we lost him this time.”
The hand that held a glass out to me had a big diamond ring on the fourth finger. “Moonshine, my dear?”
“I’ve heard of this stuff all my life but never tasted any. Isn’t it amazing the stuff you hear about all your life but never come in contact with? Take hookers and Communists. I met my first hooker yesterday, I think it was yesterday, but I’ve heard stories about evil Communists since the day I was born and I’ve never yet met one.” The moonshine tasted sweet, like Yukon Jack, only it had a touch of cough syrup-kickback.
“I’m sorry my friends are being turds,” I said.
He drank from his glass. “You are a beautiful woman. I cannot blame them for not wanting to share.”
The beard was animalistic, but the fingers were delicate. I didn’t know what to think, and my stomach was showing signs of whirlies. “If I was sober I wouldn’t trust you, Armie. I don’t think I trust you anyway.”
With a small flourish, he opened the candy dish. “Try one of these, they’ll help you appreciate my finer traits.”
“Those are green pills.”
“How right you are.” He tossed two in his mouth.
“I’ve got enough problems, I don’t need pills. What are they?”
“Something else my neighbor whips up in his bathtub.”
“You’ve got quite a neighbor.”
“I have him on retainer. They’re weak relaxants, the Appalachian home-remedy version of a tranquilizer.”
“I could use a relaxant.”
“You’ve had a hard day, little lady. You deserve to relax.”
The moonshine was smoother on the second sip. “I get real angry when Shane calls me ‘little lady.’”
He touched my hair with his hand. “I mean it only as a term of respect.”
I popped a pill in my mouth and slugged it down with moonshine. Washing tranquilizers down with whiskey is hard core. Made me feel like Judy Garland.
***
Time lost sequentially. Which is to say I got fucked up and made a horse’s ass out of myself. Most of the night is lost in blackout, thank God, but I remember Marcella throwing up after one drink. I had a loud fight with Shane in which we called each other names you can’t take back; Lloyd’s face floated somewhere away from his body, judging me with the sad, Jesus eyes; I must have set a personal record for banging shins on furniture.
I broke some glass, and something I did or said made Brad cry.
Then I was alone, lost in Armand’s hair. I was clutching at him, trying to tear the hair out or get back through it or something. I wanted Auburn. I thought if I found my way through the hair into skin, I could breathe, I could be with my baby. The last thing I remember is holding Armand’s chest and screaming, “Daddy!”
41
I shifted my weight forward onto Frostbite’s shoulders as he waded through deep snow up Red Rock Peak. It was a warm day in early April, and the snow was softening into a pudding texture that made rough going for a horse—no going for a person on foot, snowshoes, or probably even skis. Frostbite progressed up the hill in thrusts, gathering his back legs and springing into the snow. I wore a penstemon in my hair, which was long again, the length it had been when Shannon
was born. A pair of bluebirds hop-scotched from fence post to fence post ahead of us. The posts didn’t look connected because snow covered the top line of barbwire. I was watching a mouse skim across the snow when I heard a quiet Thock and the snow started to move. Frostbite screamed and went over. I clutched the reins with both hands as the avalanche swept us down the mountain. Frostbite hit a tree and screamed again, then he was lost. I cupped my hands over my nose to give myself an inch of breathing space as the snow rolled over me deeper and deeper, then everything was still, dark, and heavy. To find which direction was up, I spit in my hand, although, buried alive, up doesn’t matter from down and snow doesn’t matter from earth.
***
I gasped awake, struggling for air. There was pain in my head, a very specific pain in a very specific spot, as if a bolt had been screwed into my forehead, right over the bridge of my nose. I squeezed my eyes shut and listened to the rain and fought both for and against remembering. Nothing came at first, then Memphis, then a police car chasing an ambulance. Armand shifted an arm across my breasts, and several more pieces fell into place.
Jesus—another social blunder. Where was Lloyd? I’d woken up bare-assed and dry-mouthed before, but not in a long, long time. Had we fucked? Did it matter? Armand lay on his stomach, facing away, with one arm over my body. The hair on his back was a furry shawl across his shoulders with two thinning lines running down either side of his spine. He seemed clinched and asleep at the same time.
In the bathroom, I held my hand under the tap and drank, then I splashed water on my face. When I peed I lowered my head between my knees and stared at the floor tile. Spotless. Nothing snotty dribbled down my thighs, but that didn’t prove anything. He could have nailed me and not come. Or, for all I knew, he nailed me and I got up afterward and danced on the tables. God, I hate blackouts. What had I done to Brad? I can’t stand questions everyone but me knows the answers to.
Hangovers are best handled by three aspirin, a gallon of water, and twelve extra hours’ sleep, but this didn’t feel like your everyday puking-shivering hangover. This hangover was unique in my experience. I fought to remember—Injun Joe, moonshine, the little green pill. I’d mixed whiskey with pills. The woman who’d lost her baby had sunk to an all-new low.
***
Still avoiding the mirror, I fumbled open the medicine cabinet in search of aspirin. The bottles were lined up in alphabetized categories with each category marked on a piece of plastic embossing tape—Amphetamines, Amyl-nitrate, Antidepressants, Antipsychotics, Barbiturates. My green pills from the night before were down at the bottom under Quaaludes. I pride myself on self-abuse sophistication, but I’d never heard of half Armand’s pharmaceuticals.
“Don’t touch my property.” He was behind me, angry.
“I was looking for aspirin.”
“If you need aspirin, ask for it. Don’t snoop.”
“This is an amazing collection, Armand. My mother would marry you to get at this drugstore.”
Armand stood with his hands on his hips, glaring at me. He’d passed out wearing a rubber—a third explanation for the lack of dribble. I hate being glared at by a man in a rubber.
“I’m sorry, Armand. May I please have three aspirin?”
Careful not to touch his body, I moved aside while he yanked open a drawer next to the sink. The drawer was full of stuff regular people stock in bathrooms—toothpaste, deodorant, aspirin. Down south they’re big on ground-up aspirin. Armand gave me three packets of Goody’s Headache Powder.
As Dad used to say, his breath could have knocked a coyote off a flyblown calf. “Your friends are outside behaving strangely.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I think they’re leaving.”
Back in the bedroom, I looked out the third-floor window at Moby Dick and Dad’s trailer. Lloyd and Brad stood in the rain with their hands in their pockets. Through the open loading doors I could see Shane in his chair, playing his harmonica.
“What makes you think they’re leaving?” I asked.
Armand appeared at the bathroom door with a glass of water in one hand and three different-colored capsules in the other. Condoms look silly on limp dicks. “They turned the rig around.”
“That doesn’t mean they’re leaving.”
“Last night the skinny one said y’all would clear out as soon as you could travel.”
***
Only two days ago I’d been proud of myself for never having stooped so low as to wear dirty underwear, and now I was faced with a choice between dirty and none. I put the question in Mom’s terms: If I got hit by a truck and rushed to the hospital on the verge of death, which would be least mortifying? Dirty. There goes another standard.
Downstairs as I crossed to the front door I noticed a large burn hole in one of the black couches and broken glass on the marble floor under a topless table. Must have been a hell of a party. Too bad I couldn’t remember it.
Lloyd stood in the slow rain looking up the hill away from the river. I followed his line of sight up to Hugo Sr.’s Oldsmobile. Hugo got out and waved, so I waved back. He was proving to be a tough little sucker, a lot tougher than he’d come off in Amarillo.
Marcella’s and Andrew’s faces peeked from the ambulance, behind Shane. I smiled at the gang. “What’s going on, guys?”
Brad turned away. Andrew and Lloyd were the only ones who would look at me. “It’s time to go,” Lloyd said. “Get in the ambulance.”
Behind me, Armand said, “She’s staying here.”
Shane snapped. “Don’t be a fool, Maurey. Get in the ambulance.”
“Whoa,” I said. If everyone was in the mood for ugliness, hung over or not, I’d take them on. “I will do whatever I want.”
Lloyd’s eyes weren’t Jesus now—they were black ice. “No, you won’t. You’ll come with us.”
“You’re not my father.”
Shane spit a laugh. “Neither is he.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Come off it,” Shane said. “You’ve wanted to fuck your father all your life, and now you have.”
“To hell with you, Shane.” I’d expected ugly, but this was terminal. Marcella looked frightened. Brad glanced at me, then down at the mud by his feet.
Shane kept coming. “What else could you see in this pretentious drip? He’s your father.”
“Be careful, old-timer,” Armand said. In his gray slacks and no shirt or shoes, he did look a tiny bit like Dad, at least in hairiness and size, but that wasn’t why I’d slept with him.
No one likes being accused of having the hots for a parent. I advanced on Shane until I was about six inches off his face. “What a sick, perverted, slime-ball thing to say.” I almost had my one chin against his three. “I wouldn’t leave here now if you paid me.”
“Paid you for what, father-fucker?”
Marcella grabbed the wheelchair and pulled him away from the edge. “Shane doesn’t mean it,” she said. “We’re just all tired and tense.”
I stared into his purple eyes and saw no trace of humor. “He did too mean it, he’s a pig.”
Andrew burst into tears and kicked the hell out of Shane’s ankle. “Ouch,” Shane yelped. He tried to backhand Andrew, but Marcella caught his wrist. If he’d hit Andrew, I think I’d have plastered the son of a bitch, wheelchair or no wheelchair.
Lloyd touched my arm and I jumped like I’d been cattle-prodded. “Will you get in the ambulance?” he asked.
The ice was gone from Lloyd’s eyes, and he was back to vulnerable—which is a stronger weapon. The cracks on his face were like a relief map demarking grief. Lloyd had been my friend, he deserved a better explanation than “Fuck you,” but I didn’t know how to explain to him something I couldn’t explain to myself.
“What’s the point?” I said. “Granma is two-hundred-something miles away. What
then? You dump me and rush off to Florida in search of your precious Sharon, who almost surely isn’t even in Florida. I’m sick of getting dumped. What’s the difference if we break up the gang here or tomorrow?”
Brad walked up behind me. “Please come with us, Miss Pierce.”
I turned to him. Even without hair, he had the face of an angel. He reminded me of the Little Prince from the Saint-Exupéry book. I touched his jawline. “I can’t.”
Rain ran down his forehead into his eyes. “You’re the first person I ever trusted. Don’t leave me.”
Jesus, this was too much. “I can’t.”
Lloyd walked past me to the back of Moby Dick, where he bent down and disconnected the wiring and safety chains from the trailer.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“It’s your trailer.”
“If you guys need it, take it. How will you haul the beer?”
He flipped the doobie that released the trailer from the ball. “There’s only fifteen cases and a six-pack left. We’ll leave five cases and two bottles with you. The rest will fit in back.”
“Lloyd, there’s no reason to be a dick about it. Take the beer and the trailer. What am I going to do with a horse trailer and no way to pull it?”
He turned a crank that made the trailer tongue rise off the hitch. “What were you planning to do with the trailer once we reached North Carolina?”
“I hadn’t thought about that. I’ve been afraid to think past Shane’s grandmother’s house.”
Lloyd straightened up. “Well, now you don’t have to.”
***
I walked back over to Armand and stood watching Lloyd and Brad unload the trailer. After stacking my cases and two bottles by the barn, they opened Moby Dick’s rear doors and crammed in the spare tires, Marcella’s suitcase, and the beer. They left my stuff and Sam Callahan’s tent on the dry porch. Neither one looked my direction. They just sloshed back and forth, being efficient and non-emotional.
I could hear Andrew crying inside Moby Dick. For a six-year-old he sure did cry a lot. Seemed like that’s all he’d done since the moment I saw him. Marcella was next to Shane, holding Hugo Jr. and staring across the yard at me. She was wearing a green print dress my grandmother would have bought at J.C. Penney’s. Her hair was in a perfect bun.
