by John Rowell
I should go home and get back into bed, that’s what I should do. I don’t feel like seeing anybody else. I realize now I liked being in that damn bed, and sleeping and not waking up much. I missed the Dirt Devil, but that’s all—I certainly didn’t miss any people, that’s for sure. To hell with them all, I say.
Still, there is somebody, one last person I want to see today before I go home and re-exile myself.
The Dirt Devil and I cross the bridge that takes us from Surf-side Beach back to Duck Island. I head away from the ocean to the Intracoastal Waterway side, down to Squaw Pond Road, to the very end, where Trey and Kelly live in a tiny little cabin in the piney woods. This is the time of day Trey usually comes in from his construction job, about two hours before Kelly gets home from the Savings and Loan.
When I pull up in the yard, I see that Trey’s truck is parked out front, but Kelly’s Toyota is gone. This is what I expected, and what I hoped for, nothing against Kelly.
At the unlatched screen door, even before I knock, I look into the tiny little living room and see Trey asleep on the couch. The TV is tuned to General Hospital and there is a half-empty bottle of Michelob on the coffee table. Trey’s big, lanky frame is stretched out the length of the couch; he is dressed in blue-jean cutoffs and a white workshirt with the sleeves cut off and the front unbuttoned. He is barefoot, his workboots and socks tossed onto the floor next to the couch, and his big feet are hanging over the edge of the sofa, facing the screen door. He looks like big, dark-haired Apollo taking a rest from running errands half-naked all over Athens; just watching his broad, hairy chest lift up and down in his sleep is reason enough to stand here for several minutes, quietly, which is what I do. And then, remembering time constraints, I open the door and gently let myself inside.
“Hey,” I say softly, standing over him, not wanting to frighten him with touch. “Trey. Wake up.”
He opens his eyes, kind of in a flutter, and then into a slow, sleepy stare. He takes me in for a second, and then sits up.
“Tal,” he says, looking at me, waking up. “You’re walking.”
“Yeah, hard to believe, I know.”
“Damn.” He rubs his eyes, and runs his hands through the back of his longish hair. “Thought we’d lost you for a while there, bud.”
“Well, I don’t know … maybe you did, for a while.”
He leans back on the couch, his hands behind his head. “So …” he says.
“So what?”
“So what’s the deal? Are you OK?”
“I think so,” I say. “I just … needed a break …”
“Oh, is that what it was?”
“Something like that.”
He takes a long pause. “OK. If you say so, whatever.”
“Yeah.”
“You want a beer?”
“Uh-huh.” He gets up to go into the kitchen, and, as he passes me, quickly runs his hand over the top of my head, through my hair. His big hand on me like that makes me take a sudden sharp deep breath—it’s been a while since I’ve been touched. I mean by someone other than myself.
“Have you seen Kelly?” he asks from the refrigerator, twisting the screw-top on a Michelob. “She’s been worried about you, fucker.”
“No, I haven’t … I mean, I know she has. I think she came over and cleaned up. I think I remember that.”
“Yep,” he says, returning, handing me the cold, sweating bottle. “She said you were pretty much in a drugged-out haze.”
“Right …” I take a long swig of the beer; it burns cold down the back of my throat.
Trey sits down again, next to me on the couch, but one cushion length away.
“Is the Dirt Devil OK?” he asks.
“Yeah, seems to be. Why?”
“Well, I came over and started it a couple of times so it wouldn’t sit idle for so long. I mean, when it looked like you were planning to stay in bed for a while.”
“Oh, wow, I thought Daddy did that …”
“Nope. Me.”
“Well … thanks. Thanks for … thanks for doing that.”
“Yep.” He swigs from the bottle, and then I do too, again, which makes me feel suddenly stupid, like some monkey-see monkey-do little brother. We sit there for a few minutes not talk-ing; on the TV, an angry blond girl is screaming at her hunky boyfriend, something about money, something about a diaphragm, something about “before it’s too late!” I’m too nervous to really follow it.
“Mind if I turn this off ?” I say, picking up the remote and aiming it.
“Nope,” he says, looking me right in the eyes.
I turn off the TV, and suddenly the room goes quiet, except for our swigging and breathing. I think maybe I shouldn’t have come now, and start to think about how to leave.
But then I think about how good it felt when he ran his hand through my hair a minute ago. I do that to myself sometimes, run my hands through my own hair and pretend that it’s another guy doing it—maybe sometimes, even Trey. But it’s so much better when somebody else actually does it. I’d like to see if I can get some more of that.
I set the bottle down on the table, on one of Kelly’s crocheted drink coasters, and scoot myself over closer to him, causing our knees, both bare in our shorts, to deliberately touch. One time he pushed me hard off the couch for doing that, and told me to get the hell out. Today, he allows it.
“I missed you,” I say, then remember to add “buddy” at the end of it. “I missed you … buddy.”
He snorts, and swigs. “I bet. I’ll just bet you did, fucker.”
I hate that word, but I’m not going to tell him that. Some things you just reserve expressing opinions about. Out in the yard, Trey and Kelly’s dog Buster barks at a truck of loud kids, whooping and hollering down the road, probably just let loose from the school day. I reach over and start to rub his thigh, slowly, because you have to go slow with him so he won’t suddenly freak out (he’s even shoved Kelly a time or two, the way he shoved me. She told me that. All I could do was to sit there and listen and nod my head) and he leans back again, shutting his eyes and he … well, he allows this, too. So far so good—for me.
“I missed you so damn much, Trey,” I say, and I’m afraid I’m going to start to cry.
“Hey, come on, Tal,” he says, suddenly sounding nice again, which I’m grateful for, and he puts his arm around me and pulls me closer to him, and it feels OK just to lean against him, big-brothery, instead of getting horny for him; it’s probably better this way, truthfully. But then he whispers in my ear, all hoarse and sweaty: “Give me a fucking kiss, buddy … you know you want to.”
And he’s right. I do. I want to so bad. I move my mouth up to his, remembering to go slow, slow, don’t get too excited, don’t make him mad, don’t make him hate himself for doing this. And I just kind of turn off everything in my mind, all my thoughts and feelings, and let my body do all the work on its own.
“Are you OK, buddy?” I ask him, whispering back. “Are you OK, Trey?”
“Yeah, fucker. Don’t talk.”
And so I just take the plunge; maybe I’ll be pushed and kicked, maybe I won’t, I’ll risk it. My hands move over his big, muscled body all at once, and it’s as if some crazy puppet master was pulling strings above my head, making my hands go places that they probably shouldn’t. My legs slide all over his, and I’m not even thinking about it now, just feeling it; we’re just two big boys doing it, just doing it, and all we are is legs and arms and muscles and tongues and feet and hair and chests—bumping, rubbing, kicking, thrusting, sliding, and Damn, this feels good, it feels great, it feels like sports, like about the only sport I was ever any good at. It’s hot, and it’s wet, and it hurts, and it feels good too, like beer that burns cold in your throat, and the only sound in the room is our grunt, grunt, and moan like two exhausted football players, or like wild animals, and underneath us, underneath our frenzied movements, the couch creaks loudly, like cicadas freaking out on a hot August night.
And then … it’s over
. Is it over? It’s over when he decides it’s over.
Yes. It’s over.
He just stops, just like that, and chucks me on the chin with a little “gotcha” laugh.
“Whoa, dude,” he says. “You’re too much. You’re just too fuckin’ much, man.”
And he gets up to go to the bathroom, pulling his shorts up, whipping his cut-off, cut-out shirt over his right shoulder like some tennis champ walking off the court, proud and cocky, his back turned arrogantly to the roar of adoring fans.
When he comes back in the room, I am pulled together again too, and though I could use more, what I really want now is just to leave. Usually, afterwards, Trey starts talking about stuff, like football, Kelly, cars, Duck Island, construction work—whatever— in his friendly, good ol’-country-boy tone that doesn’t have much to do with what has just happened between us. Let’s just say afterglow is not in Trey’s repertoire. But now, he just looks at me and shakes his head, not smiling but not frowning either, and saying “Tal … dude!” and going into the kitchen for another beer.
“What?” I ask.
“I don’t know, man … why do you always wanna do that?” He takes a long, measured swig from the bottle, searching me for an answer.
“What? Do what? I don’t know …” He’s never been analytical before, and I can’t decide if this is some kind of enlightened progress on his part or just that old hidden wall of anger and shame about to come crashing down again.
“You know, fucker.”
“I don’t. Why would you ask me a dumb question like that? Because it feels good, I guess. I mean, it does for me.”
He sits across the room from me now in a broken white wicker armchair, propping his feet up and drinking. “Does it? Does it feel good?” he asks.
“Of course. Of course it does. Damn right it does. Doesn’t it?”
He snorts—sort of. “Hell yeah, it feels good. To me. I’m just wondering there, pal … if it feels good to you. Because I ain’t too sure that it does, if you know what I mean.”
I don’t say anything to that, but my heart starts jackhammering.
“Look at me, Tal. Hey, buddy … I’m just a big ignorant country boy. But I’m a big horndog, too. I don’t have to tell you that. I’ve just always been that way. So … it doesn’t mean anything to me one way or the other if we do this or if we don’t do this. I mean, you’re here, you want it, whatever, that’s fine with me. You’re my buddy. The difference between us, bud, is that you really care about it and I don’t.”
I look up at the ceiling, look all around, anywhere but at him. “Gee, are you always this romantic?” I ask, finally. “Do you talk all this sweet-talk to the sheep too, after you finish with them?”
I look at him—he’s glaring at me now; I know I shouldn’t have said that. I pray he won’t hit me, won’t break the beer bottle and come after me. I don’t think he will, but I pray anyway.
He keeps glaring, holding the beer and not drinking. There’s a glint of rage in his eyes, and his jaw is set. Shit, he’s furious. I should have kept my big mouth shut. I glance sideways at the door; I’m pretty sure I could dodge the beer bottle if it came flying, and I think I could make it out of the house if he lunged at me.
He sets the beer bottle down, still glaring … I brace myself, ready to bolt.
“I draw the line at sheep,” he says, finally. “Goats are another story.”
I exhale. He just busts out laughing.
“God, you’re an asshole,” I say, wiping sweat off my forehead.
“Yep. And that’s why you like me so much, little fucker,” he says.
“The hell!” I say, which I know sounds completely dumb. It’s not even a completed thought, and I pride myself on completed thoughts. He’s got me too nervous to be articulate.
He hoists himself out of the chair and comes over to me.
“Come ’ere,” he says, picking me up and pulling me in close to him. He rubs my back, and strokes my hair, and I lean down a little and bury my face into his chest, which is sweaty and hairy, and I hold on to him as though my life depends on it. Maybe it does.
“I’m not nearly as dumb as I look, bud,” he says, whispering in my ear.
“You don’t look dumb to me.”
He claps me on the back, then gently eases himself away from me. He lifts my chin with his thumb and index finger, almost like a dad would. “Don’t get attached, T.J., OK? Don’t make me have to kick you out, man. ’Cause Kelly and I love you, little fucker. You know that.”
“You have a funny way of showing it.”
He laughs. “Big Tal … Big Talbert … you go home and think about it. And you don’t need to get into bed to think about it. Ain’t nobody around here wants to go through waiting on you hand and foot like that all over again, especially me. OK?”
I don’t say anything. I guess this is like being broken up with, but the rules and the players are completely whacked.
And I start for the door and Trey says “Big Tal” again, and slaps me on the butt, like a coach. “Hey,” he says, suddenly. “Did you hear about that kid?”
“What kid?” I say, out the screen door now and standing on the front step, which is nothing but two cinder blocks piled on top of one another.
“That little Tyndall boy. They found him in the woods this afternoon, way the hell up in Dodd County.”
My stomach lurches, and the inside of my head starts to swim …
“What? What happened?”
“I don’t know, something about his daddy came down here looking for him out of the blue and his mama sent him away to her boyfriend’s friend’s house up in Dodd County or something to make it look like kidnapping so the daddy couldn’t have him.”
“And then what?”
“Uh … I don’t … something like he must’ve run away from the friend’s house, something like that, and then he got lost up there in the woods, I don’t know. They didn’t have too many details. Damn, isn’t that fuckin’ pathetic? I’m tellin’ you, T.J., trash will always act like trash.”
“Well … is he … is he hurt, or is he … OK?”
“Nah, man, he’s dead. He’d been mauled by some damn wild animal, a bobcat or something. Sucks, doesn’t it? Just a little kid. Fuckin’ bobcats.”
5:30 P.M.
It’s late afternoon now, and getting dark earlier, this being October. I’ve come home to sit on the beach in front of my house, just to stare out at the big, old, mean, beautiful Atlantic, trying to decide what to do next. All those hopes and plans I had when I started out this morning … I was so excited about everything. None of it matters much to me now.
I knew Donny Tyndall, but just barely. He was my friend, though. Because if you ever met Donny Tyndall, even for just a little while, you’d have felt like you’d known him for a long time. He was just that way.
Two weeks ago, I had just finished showing a condo on Yaupon Boulevard to this rich but nice young couple from Winston-Salem looking for an off-season beach getaway. They liked the condo, and agreed to take it right on the spot, so we went back over to Rollie’s to draw up the papers. On my way home, I stopped at the 7-Eleven because I had a craving for a Cherry Slurpee. But first I went over to the magazine rack and just started looking idly at the magazines, mostly Entertainment Weekly and Us. The only other people in the store were the cashier, a big guy named Larry, and this cheap-looking but kinda pretty blond woman who was clearly flirting with him. Anyway, while I was reading something about Julia Roberts’s latest romance, the woman’s little boy comes over and stands next to me. He was a beautiful child, about six or so, with big blue eyes and a huge mop of bright blond curls. He had on light blue overalls over a white T-shirt, and child-sized construction boots.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey there,” I said back. “How are you doing?”
“The 7-Eleven man gave me a Slim Jim,” he said, and held it up to show me.
“Really? Well, that was nice of him.”
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�Yeah,” he said, and then looked long and hard at his yellowand red-wrapped Slim Jim. “You want some of it?”
“No thanks. It’s yours, you should have it.”
“OK. Okey-dokey.”
And then from over at the counter, his mama called out for him. “Donny?” she said, and he ran back over to her.
She looked down at him, hard. “Didn’t I tell you not to bother people? Stay here!” Then she called out to me in a thick, swampy accent: “Was he botherin’ you, sir?”
“No, not at all. We were just talking. It’s OK.”
She turned back to Larry, who was leaning against the counter, his enormous butt sticking out from under his red and green 7-Eleven apron. “Won’t never do what I tell him,” she told him, though I could hear it too. “Just all the time going up and talking to people he don’t know. He’s just like his daddy—ain’t got no sense.”
Then, in a few minutes, Donny came back around the counter, slyly creeping back toward me, grinning, knowing he was disobeying his mother, but she was so engrossed in redneck-to-redneck conversation with Larry, she didn’t seem to notice. I guess she had figured that, one, I didn’t mind talking to her little boy, and two, that I didn’t look like some crazed kidnapper type, and three, that it got him out of her hair so she could devote all her time and energy to flirting with other like-minded rednecks.
“Hey,” I whispered, like a secret agent.
“Hey,” he whispered back, and laughed. “My mama’s funny, ain’t she?”
“I guess so. Your name’s Donny?”
“Uh-huh. Donny Tyndall. That’s my daddy’s name too, but he don’t live around here. Does your daddy live around here?”
“No, he lives somewhere else too. My name’s Talbert John Moss. Some people call me Talbert, some people call me Tal, and some people call me T.J.”
He looked at me for a second. “I like T.J.”
“OK. Then that’s what you can call me.”
And we started talking about where he went to school (he was in kindergarten), and he said he lived in a trailer park at the end of the beach; he said he loved living there. And while he was talking, he ate his Slim Jim, continuing to offer me some of it, and then he asked me if I liked animals.
