by Tim Sandlin
“I’m thinking seriously about quitting alcohol, but I’m afraid interesting men won’t like me anymore.”
“To be strictly frank, women have always found me irresistible. However, after I stopped drinking, the quality of woman who did so rose several meaningful notches.”
“I wonder if I could find higher-quality men.”
“My child, you could search the world over and never find lower-quality men than the ones you’ve chosen recently.”
The bedroom light went off. Armand was probably up there at the window, with his rifle, waiting for us to leave the barn. Let him wait—we had nowhere to go, and he was losing blood too fast to stay.
“Armand was nice at first. How was I to know he was a paranoid, sadistic psychopath?” I asked.
“If you’d been sober, you would have known.”
As I knelt on the concrete to dry Shane’s feet, the adrenaline high suddenly crashed and everything that had happened the last few weeks came down on me at once. Dothan, Auburn, Lloyd, Shane, Yukon Jack—the weight was unbearable.
I started to whimper. “Shane, life isn’t turning out right.”
He touched the top of my head. “It never does.”
“I try to keep going and act happy, but nothing I do works. I’m helpless.”
“You are only helpless if you refuse to ask for help.”
“Jesus”—I rested my head on his knees—“another bumper snicker to live by.”
I cried while Shane ran his fingers through my hair. Shane’s touch brought back a feeling of Dad when I was real little. Had Dad ever brushed hair out of my face while I cried in his lap, or is that one of those memories you want so much you make it real?
“Why did you come back?” I asked.
“You are worth saving.”
“Oh.” I felt the horse blanket on my face. It reminded me of Frostbite and the ranch.
“I don’t think I’ll listen to Paul Harvey anymore,” I said.
Shane did his chuckle sound where all three chins seem to contract at once. “The postcards to Papa have to go, too,” he said.
“They do?”
“Let him die, Maurey.”
***
We were both quiet a long time, until Shane exhaled one of his freight-train snores. He slid down on his back, and I was afraid he would fall out of the chair, so I eased him onto the Australian rug pallet. His face seemed waxy and melting, like a red candle in an oven.
I thought about what he’d said about asking for help. Life must be pretty desperate for me to be listening to Shane Rinesfoos’s advice, but, let’s face it, my life had been pretty desperate lately. At the moment, I had more faith in other people’s judgment than my own. Which is a frightening moment to find yourself in. The time had come to stop dicking around and admit the way I’d done things so far didn’t work.
I seized on the idea of changing every element of my life. I would start over at the last point where I’d liked myself, which was before I lost my virginity and before I took my first drink. Then I would do every single detail differently; I’d get up on the other side of the bed, brush my teeth sideways instead of up and down, only sleep with nice guys who liked me—that would be a switch—stay sober, and stay on the ranch.
Armand’s truck sputtered and kicked on. In my new-life rapture I’d forgotten to watch the front door. It was just dumb luck he didn’t crawl in the barn doors and shoot us both dead. When he shifted into first, the truck jerked forward and died. The engine rumbled again, and, delicately, Armand turned it around and headed up the hill.
Shane came awake with a wheeze. “Tell him to clutch with his heel, not his toes.”
“He’ll learn,” I said.
“Holy Hannah, I’m freezing.” He was in bad shape, shivering and coughing. His face felt clammy cold and hot at the same time.
I talked as I wrapped blankets around his arms. “Shane, I’ve decided to start all over at the beginning.”
“I wish I could do that.”
“I’ll stop drinking by pretending I never started. I’ll stay home on the ranch and won’t go to college. I’ll wear too much makeup instead of none, I’ll die my hair blond. If I’m blond, I won’t have to drink to attract men.”
Shane made a weak smile. “Do you know why gentlemen prefer blondes?” he asked.
“All I know is they do.”
“Because they’re tired of squeezing blackheads.”
We both laughed way out of proportion to the worth of the joke. I lay on my back, next to him on the pallet, and laughed, looking up at the corrugated metal ceiling. Shane turned his radish color and went into a coughing fit that ended in a choking sound and loads of bloody drool.
“Don’t tell any more jokes,” I said. I tried to play it blasé, but coughing up blood was scary. Shane looked real sick, and I was helpless to make him better. Helpless seemed to be today’s theme word. Maybe I’d been helpless all my life but too stupid to know it.
“In Alaska, while I was serving on the Antarctic Rescue Squad, we used to find victims of hypothermia, and the only way to warm them was to wrap them in blankets with a naked person. The body heat transferred to the victim and often saved them,” Shane said.
I didn’t for a minute believe that Antarctic Rescue Squad jive—for one thing, it’s Arctic in Alaska, not Antarctic—but the naked-body-in-the-blankets trick works. You read about it in a Wyoming newspaper once or twice a winter.
“Only a suggestion,” Shane said.
I stood up. “The panties stay on. And one lewd move from you and I throw you out in the rain.”
“When have I been lewd on this trip?”
“About as often as I’ve been drunk.”
“I have one other problem. In the ditch, while I was risking my precious health to save your pretty skin, my catheter sprung a leak. There’s tape in my pants, the pocket with the harmonica.”
Shane looked like a plaid caterpillar with a fat, human head. He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “This entire escapade is a trick,” I said. “You’ve been scheming to get my hands on your penis since the moment we met.”
Shane’s chest made a rattle sound. “Would I go so far as to die for a hand job from you?”
I dropped my jeans. “Yes.”
45
The next afternoon I drove Moby Dick between a double set of railroad tracks and endless green fields of something southern—tobacco or cotton, maybe. The day was a beautiful blue, and room temperature, a warm room, anyway, and the trees hovering over the farmhouses were covered with pink and white flowers. Brad sat next to me in the front seat, although we hadn’t made up yet. He answered my statements or questions with moody monosyllables—yep, nope, uh.
Lloyd was in back helping Marcella take care of Shane. There wasn’t much taking care they could do besides wiping his forehead with a wet rag and turning him sideways when he coughed blood. Andrew made a Popular Mechanics into a fan and stood at Shane’s feet stirring the air around until he got bored. Then he read Spider-Man out loud.
Shane had been delirious for several hours. At least I think he was delirious. He seemed to be reliving amorous escapades from his youth. “Try some butter, Jeanie.’’ “That’s not my finger.” “Let me on top, I never get to be on top.”
Knowing Shane, he may have been faking delirium as an excuse to show off.
“I think that’s it.” Brad pointed up ahead at a two-story yellow house with white trim. The house fit what Granma had told us when we called from Brevard—full-length porch, twin magnolias out front, field out back. That description matched every farmhouse we’d passed for miles, but this was the only one next to a burned barn.
“Uncle Shane keeps talking dirty,” Andrew whined. “Make him stop.”
“Uncle Shane doesn’t know what he’s saying. He’s having a dream,” Marcella said. She’d been trying
to coax Shane into drinking water. Loved ones are always trying to strong-arm food, drink, or medicine into sick people. When I’m sick all I want is stuff out.
“We’ll get you a Coca-Cola at Granma’s,” Lloyd said to Shane. “Coca-Cola made you feel better that time in Mexico City.”
Brad turned to look back at the others. “I hope his granma has Coca-Cola, I’m thirsty.”
Shane raised up on his elbows. “Miss Hepburn wants me on a horse!”
I hit a big pothole in the road that bounced first Moby Dick, then the trailer. Yes, it’s true. We’d rescued my trailer from the evil rat Armand. Got back what was left of my beer, too.
Lloyd snapped, “Take it easy, you’re shaking him.”
Normally when I’m criticized like that I snap right back, but today I eased up on the accelerator. “I hope Granma has an extra bed. I could sleep for a week,” I said.
I pulled Moby Dick and the trailer into Granma’s red dirt driveway. She had a pink stone birdbath next to one of the magnolias and flagstone steps from the driveway to the front door.
“Don’t stomp the brakes,” Lloyd said.
“Yeah, right.”
A tall woman in a baseball cap, long-sleeved plaid shirt, and green pants came around the house, pulling off her cotton gloves. Her complexion matched the off-red dirt on the driveway, and she had eyes could drill holes in sheet metal.
“You get lost?” she demanded.
When you’ve been trying to get somewhere a long time, and suddenly you’re there, it’s like a tension collapse. The pressure you didn’t know was so heavy is released, but it leaves a vague emptiness. High school graduation gave me the same depression as switching off Moby Dick in that yard.
“We took it slow for Shane,” I said. “Will you tell Granma we’re here?”
She drew up ever taller. “I am Granma.”
That was a surprise. I figured Shane in his mid-fifties, which put Granma at late eighties, at least. Gravity is supposed to wear a body down after eighty years or so, but this woman had the posture of a dancer.
“Is Lloyd Carbonneau in this vehicle?” she demanded.
“Yes, ma’am.” I’d never called anyone “ma’am” in my life.
“Andrew always said I could trust Lloyd Carbonneau.”
“Andrew said that?”
Lloyd opened the side doors and asked, “Where should I put him?”
“The downstairs bedroom is made up. You and Marcella help me bring Andrew inside.”
“Hello, Granma,” Marcella said.
I figured it out. Shane was Andrew. He’d lied through his teeth about Shane being his real name. That explained why Hugo Jr. was the second kid.
“You.” Granma addressed Andrew, the child. “Go in and wash your face. This isn’t Texas, we do not behave like Indians in the South.”
All right. A take-charge person. That’s exactly what I’d hoped to find at the end of the road—someone with the strength left to know what to do.
“You two, start picking,” Granma ordered.
Brad looked at me. “Does she mean us?”
“Picking what?” I asked.
“Strawberries!” Granma glowered with her hawk eyes. “I’m coming off the line, someone has to go on.”
I stepped out of Moby Dick into the sunlight, thinking maybe the old lady had cataracts in her eyes and hadn’t noticed my bruises. “I’m not in very good shape to be picking crops,” I said.
Granma was clearly disgusted. “You’re at least sixty years younger than I am. If I can pick, you can pick.”
“But—”
“Don’t but me, little missy.”
From the ambulance, Shane’s voice rose in an erotic fever. “Mount it, little missy. My rod’s hot as a firecracker.”
***
A very black man named Patrick gave us each a wooden frame that held six quart baskets. He looked at my face and sort of recoiled. “What happened to you?”
“I fell down.”
Patrick studied me a moment, then nodded, either satisfied with the explanation or figuring it was none of his business. “We pay twenty-five cents a quart. Fill them to overflowing. If I find any rocks or soft strawberries, you don’t get paid for that quart.”
“How do we pick them?” Brad asked.
Patrick spit. “The row on the end is yours. You’ll have to hurry to catch up.”
Just like that—Zip—I became a farmer. What would my father do if he knew I was picking fruit off bushes? He’d laugh so hard he would fall off his horse, that’s what he would do. Hank Elkrunner would adopt that sly Blackfoot smirk and innocently say, “Farming suits you, Maurey. Puts color in your cheeks.” Then he would fall off his horse. Lydia Callahan would throw some ironic twist on the deal, like “We all end up being what we fear most,” and Sam Callahan would ask, “What’s the difference between ranching and farming?” The cluck.
Me, I was almost too tired to be embarrassed. Brad and I stood over our first strawberry plant, staring down at it the way you stare at fairly exotic and smelly food your mom is making you eat. Four little black kids—who I was later to learn were all sons and daughters of Patrick—were forty or fifty feet ahead of us, picking their way across the field. Since Brad and I shared a row, theoretically anyway, we should be able to catch them somewhere along the horizon.
“You think they’re good to eat?” Brad asked.
“Try one.”
He bent over and tasted a strawberry. “They’re just like the strawberries in the stores.”
“What’d you expect?” I still hadn’t moved on my first berry.
“I don’t know, I thought they treated them with chemicals or something.”
I looked over at the yellow house. In the backyard, sheets and pillowcases hung limply from a clothesline that was looped around these pulley deals so a person standing on the screened-in porch could reel in the wash. I don’t know how Wyoming women dried clothes in the olden days before electricity. Some years we’ll go four months without cracking thirty-two degrees.
“So, what’d I say the other night to piss you off so bad?” I asked.
“We better pick. I don’t want that lady mad at me.”
Getting the strawberries off the plants was easy—you pinch the stem and pull—but the bending over, straightening up, moving the quart baskets, and bending over again was agony-on-parade for my back and ribs. Let’s not forget I’d been stomped recently.
Brad was picking two or three plants ahead, with his back to me, when he said, “You told me my drawings stunk and I was no better than my father.”
I stopped work. “I was drunk, Brad. I’m sorry, sometimes when I’m drunk I say mean things that aren’t true. You are a very talented artist and you’re nothing at all like your father. Maybe I was talking about me and my father. Whatever I said was a lie.”
He turned profile, still not looking at me. “That’s not what you said the other night. You said when you drink you tell the truth, and when you’re sober you’re afraid to be honest.”
Had I said that? I looked at the strawberry in my hand. “It’s the other way around, Brad.”
“I don’t get it. Freedom was a bastard all the time, but you’re nice to me when you haven’t been drinking and a real stoolhead when you have. Which is the real you?”
“They’re both the real me.” I made it to my feet. “Sometimes when I love people I treat them badly so they’ll have an excuse to go away.”
At the word love, a strange look crossed his angel face. He glanced at me, then back at the red dirt. “Why?”
I shrugged. “I guess I’d rather drive them off than get left. Hell, I don’t know. I don’t analyze why I do the crap I do.”
Brad didn’t say anything for a while. Grown-up approach-and-flee behavior must be confusing to a kid. I know it’s confusing t
o me. Finally Brad asked, “Does that mean you love me?”
I took a deep breath. “Sure, I love you.”
Brad turned to look at me. Lord knows what he thought. He probably hadn’t run into much love before and hadn’t realized how people who feel it hurt each other. He shook his head side to side. “Beats me,” he said.
“Beats me, too.”
He gave me an uncertain smile. “Whichever is the real you, I’m not buying her any more Yukon Jack.”
***
“How’d you enjoy picking strawberries?” Lloyd asked that evening at supper.
I glared with all the venom I could muster, but it wasn’t enough for him to notice. He kept buttering his corn and salting his okra. Delilah Talbot was right about the South and vegetables. Outside of Thanksgiving and Christmas, I never sat at a western table with more than one non-potato vegetable. Down south they eat more vegetables than beef. The part of meals I don’t approve of in North Carolina is the pre-sugared iced tea. I think people deserve a choice, but southerners say sugar won’t dissolve right unless you dump it in when the tea’s hot. Dothan Talbot and I used to go round and round on the subject and, other than one more excuse to hate each other, nothing was ever decided.
“You make much money this afternoon?” Lloyd asked.
“I made seven dollars, and Maurey came in with three fifty,” Brad said. “She had three quarts disqualified for soft strawberries.”
Nobody had noticed I was giving them the silent treatment, so I blew it off. I said, “That’s for five hours’ work. Three dollars fifty cents for five hours is cheaper than slavery.”
“Amos made thirty-six dollars,” Brad said. Amos was eleven years old and a show-off. The only good thing about him was he sang Stevie Wonder songs while he worked.
Marcella brought in a bowl of field peas, which you have to be from the South to tell from black-eyed peas. Andrew had been fed earlier and sent outside to play. Hugo Jr. was asleep in the same crib Shane used to sleep in. Isn’t that amazing?
“Where were you hiding all day?” I asked Lloyd. “We could have used another hand in the field of hell.”
Lloyd’s eyes were worn out. It must be rough when the person who saved you goes down. Even though Shane seemed dependent on Lloyd, my guess is that need stuff flowed both ways. “Granma sent me out to inventory the barn.”
