Black Heart on the Appalachian Trail (2 page)

One Saturday—this was one of those times when Pop was off the dope—he drove me into the desert to see wild horses. He knew a spring where the herd watered twice a day. Once in the morning. Once in the evening. We went in the evening because Pop liked to sleep late when he wasn't chasing dogs. We stood on the downwind side, in a sandy patch behind waist-high mesquite. Pop whispered.

“Watch when they come in,” he said. “The stallions, watch the stallions. Always keep your nose in the wind, boy. Always be on the lookout.”

I nodded, but I wasn't much interested in horses. I wanted a puppy, something I could pet and feed and let lick my face if it wanted.

After what seemed like forever, the herd browsed up and over a rise while two stallions circled toward the spring. One stallion was black, the other was chestnut. They stomped sand and tossed their heads up and down.

“Watch,” my father said. “See how they've got their noses to the wind. See that? They're looking for danger.”

“Stupid horses.”

“Shush, you'll scare them away.”

“I want a puppy!”

My father's hand, a backhanded blur, connected with my cheek and I tumbled onto the sand. I got up but stood off to the side. Later, on the way home, he bought me a soda and I put my head on his shoulder. He tousled my hair and called me a good boy.

Looking back, I suppose he was explaining his troubles. But then, he might have been telling about horses.

*   *   *

“Can you believe this?” I say, and show Maria the check. We're outside the lawyer's office, and she sits on the curb with her leg extended like she dares someone to run over it. An ice cream truck turns the corner and comes up the opposite lane. The dog squats ten feet away, gaze on my face.

“That's a ton of money,” Maria says. “With money like that we could buy a car and drive to California. We could open an orange juice stand and sell fresh-squeezed orange juice. All you can drink. We'd make a million, I bet.”

“That dog's watching me.”

“Scat!” she says.

A ratty tail beats the sidewalk.

“It's like he knows what I'm thinking.”

“They're smarter than people.”

“Dogs,” I say.

“This leg, it gets so heavy sometimes I wish I had a grocery cart. I'd put it in there and hop around behind it. Everyone would say, ‘Here comes Maria the bunny hopper.' You never know what people will say. I'm on disability, did I tell you? Nine hundred a month. I got a room up on Roundtree Avenue, but the landlady, she don't allow any male visitors.”

A man in a suit comes out of the lawyer's office and gets into a pickup. He drives off, hood ornament flashing like a mirror turned toward the sun. Down the way, a Mexican comes out of a clapboard shack and sits on the sidewalk. It's unusually warm for February, and it feels like spring is coming early this year. Whatever snow fell at this elevation is long gone.

“The lawyer gave me a letter,” I say. “From my father.”

“Open it.”

“I did already.”

“Oh.”

“It says,” and I skim the letter. “It says. . . . This is what he wrote—it says if he could do it over again, he'd never touch a single pill—he says he hoped I turned out all right—he says to do something good with the money.”

“You look to me like you turned out all right.”

“I'm all right,” I say. “I'm doing all right. Got money I didn't have an hour ago.”

“We're stinking rich.”

I stare at her leg, nudge it with my foot. No way in hell she's getting any of this money.

“You're the first one-legged woman I've seen,” I say. “There
was a one-armed Mexican back in Atlanta but I didn't know her very well.”

“Give it a rest, sweetie.”

I stuff the letter in my pocket. “My father would have killed that dog.”

“He hated dogs?”

“I'm not sure,” I say. “I really don't know.”

“You're not an ax murderer or anything like that? You wouldn't rape me and chop me into little bits?”

“That's a stupid question.”

“Never mind,” she says. . . . “You can carve your initials into my leg if you want.”

We walk down the sidewalk. My duffel bag is gone, and I can't remember where I left it. Maria asks if she can lean on my shoulder, and I tell her okay long as she doesn't step on my feet. The dog walks a foot behind my heels, close enough for me to smell his road-kill odor.

“Einstein,” I say.

“Pardon me?”

“That's his name.”

“Einstein?” she says.

“That dog's one smart dog.”

“I think he likes you.”

“You think so?”

Her eyes are big and round and soft. “I think he'd follow you anywhere.”

*   *   *

In eighth grade, I started huffing shoe polish. No big thing. I did it three times a day: on the way to school, during lunch break, and later behind the gym while the other kids played sports in
the grassy field. When my grades dropped, the counselor called me and Pop for a meeting. Pop was still high from the pills I'd seen him swallow that morning, and his eyes were so droopy it was all he could do to force them open. The counselor, this creep who wore bow ties every Monday, suggested therapy. I stared at a bobble-head Elvis on his desk. Then pushed the head and watched it bobble. I giggled like crazy. Like I couldn't stop. I giggled until my stomach hurt, and my throat burned.

On the way home, my father drove the pickup harder than normal. On the bed, the cage slid toward the cab when he braked, slid toward the tailgate when he accelerated. He had his hat off, and the pink spot where his hair was thinning gleamed with sweat.

“The counselor said we needed to spend more time together. Said your mother leaving and all that screwed you up in the head.”

“NA meets every Wednesday,” I said. “Down at the Methodist church. We could sit together and cry big fat tears.”

“Don't be a smart ass.”

He braked at a stop sign and waved an old woman across. She had her head down, and she pushed a cart filled with grocery bags.

“Paper or plastic,” I said.

“Huh?”

“I'm thinking of getting a job. Down at Green's Grocery, maybe bagging—”

“Nope,” he said. “I already got you a job. Come Monday, you get out of school you walk your sorry ass down to the pound.”

From that point on, Monday through Friday I fed and watered dogs, cleaned the cages with a hose I coiled in the corner when I was done. Every other Friday I herded dogs down a hallway and into the gas chamber. Some dogs went with tails between
their legs, others growled and snapped. My father shut the door, turned knobs, and stood in front of the porthole. I stood to the side and watched him reflect the struggle behind the glass. It was like watching a slideshow where one picture fades into the next. The first few seconds he was the man who left the house after eating cereal for breakfast, a man in a hat and untied shoes headed for his everyday job. As time progressed—time that felt like hours but was only a few stretched-out minutes—his body stiffened like he was resisting a strong wind. The skin on his face stretched and his jaw melded into something cold, hard, and immovable. I looked at him for as long as I could, then looked away, understanding that no amount of narcotics could blur what he was watching. When it was over, I saw another man altogether. But this was someone I recognized. His voice was brittle, his eyes held defiant shame. His movement, when he lifted carcasses and dropped them into the wheelbarrow, was slow and shaky. Someone needed to put their arm around him and tell him it was okay, but we didn't have that kind of relationship.

One Friday, he walked up while I huffed paint out of a paper bag during my break. It was a hot, clear day and I was sitting on the picnic table behind the pound and dreaming about anywhere but there. Mostly I thought about jumping a freight car and going wherever it took me. I never dreamed about what I would do when I got to where I was going. My dreams were leaving dreams.

“I need you inside,” he said.

“I hate this.”

He sat across from me and took off his hat, ran a finger around the brim. “They're just dogs, better off dead than running the streets.”

“You hate it Pop, I can tell. You hate the living hell out of this job.”

He went inside, and I huffed until that weightless feeling rushed over me and my mind felt like a cloud in the jet stream—fast moving and light—vapor held together by the weakest of bonds. The door to the pound swung open and smacked into the wall, a crack that made me jump, and Pop appeared in the opening and crossed his arms. His hat was squished down on his head, a look that would have been comical if it hadn't reflected his frustration. I got up and spoke in a voice too boyish for the moment.

“I'm outta here.”

“Put that shit away and get your ass back to work.”

I stared him down—took in his gray pants, the blood-stained gloves, how his collar was turned up to keep the sun off his neck, the firmness he always had above his eyes when he ordered me around—tried to think of a reason to stay. My gaze met his, and his forehead softened, a fluidity that seemed to slide down his cheeks toward his chin, and I think that's when he realized this might be the last time we would see each other. When he spoke, his voice held a fuzziness I had not heard since I was a child.

“Do you have any money?” he said. “Do you have enough to get by?”

I nodded and he took off his gloves and we shook hands. He tried to say something and the words caught in his throat. I turned and walked away, spoke over my shoulder when I got to the street.

“See ya, Pop.”

I headed to Piper's Truck Stop, where I caught a ride with a trucker headed east. Those were the last words I spoke to my father. There was nothing left to say.

*   *   *

“There's a whole lot we could do with the money,” Maria says. “It wouldn't hurt to dream a little. We could go on a cruise to Alaska, see some whales, maybe feed some sea lions.”

The motel room is exactly as she described. Vibrating mattress and pink wallpaper. Her leg is propped against the wall within easy reach of the bed. She's showered, and her wet hair fans across the pillow. She wears bra and panties, both green, a floral pattern of tiny roses embedded in cotton. Einstein, outside on the sidewalk, scratches the door. I look from her to the door, at her, at the door. We pass a whiskey bottle back and forth.

“Listen to that retard,” I say.

“We could fly out to Seattle and get on a ship. That's where those Alaska cruises start, right there in Seattle.”

“I'm thinking about going for a long hike, maybe walk the Appalachian Trail end to—”

“Or we could go to the Bahamas. I happen to know they have some great cruising down that way.”

I look at her stump, then stare at the wooden leg, tilt my head so I see it from different angles. Disconnected, the leg looks lonely.

“Hey,” I say.

“What?”

“If we had a shipwreck we could use your leg as a life preserver.”

“That's my sweetie,” she says. “Now you're thinking.”

“I think I'm going to give Einstein a bath. Buy some flea powder and give him a good dusting.” I take my shirt off and sling it over a chair.

“We need us some meth. Something to get us revved up. I can fuck all night long on meth.”

“Shut up about the meth,” I say.

“Quarter's only forty—”

“Shut up!” I raise my hand like I'm going to backhand her. It's a bluff. I never hit a woman who didn't hit me first.

“You smack me around and you'll wake up tomorrow without a dick.”

Taz Chavis walking around without a dick strikes us as funny and we laugh. When we settle down I tell her dope put me in jail and damned if I was going back.

“No dope. Got it?”

The softness leaves her eyes and annoyance takes its place. I'm no idiot. She offered love hoping I'd get her high, and now she's mad for wasting her time.
Tough luck
is what I think.

We lie on the bed without talking, then I remember about giving Einstein a bath. I coax him and his road-kill odor inside, to the bathroom, where I set him in the tub, wet him down, and work motel shampoo into his fur. He's angles and knobs, skin stretched over backbone and shoulders.

“Hold still,” I say.

He quivers but his legs are stiff like he wants to run but has made up his mind to endure. I ask him if he wants some Wild Turkey, we have half a bottle in the other room, tell him to stay clear of the meth-head with the wooden leg. I tell him today is my last fling and tomorrow I'm flying straight. I tell him I have the money to fulfill a dream, and I'm not going to fuck up and go back to prison. I tell him Pop never dreamed, that he was an addict who killed dogs. I tell him the lawyer said Pop was high when he hid in his closet and shot himself in the head. I tell him Pop's better off, wherever he is. The dog cocks his head and lifts his ears. His eyes are wary, and I wonder if he feels like he's looking
in a mirror. I scrub until the water swirling the drain turns clear. He shakes and droplets fly. I call into the other room.

“I think I'm going to order a pizza, something with meat on it. I bet he likes hamburger.”

I look around the door. Maria's eyes are shut, and a rhythmic hum comes from her nose. I wipe off my hands, walk to the TV and turn it on loud enough to drown her out. The dog, smelling like fresh-picked blackberries, sidles to my side of the bed, curls around three times, and settles on the carpet. I call the front desk and ask if anyone still delivers pizza in this town, write down the number, make the call, and order a large with extra hamburger. I can afford the extravagance.

*   *   *

It's morning and my head hurts. I don't remember much about last night. Maria's gone and so is her leg. She took fifty bucks out of my wallet. That leaves me with change and the check. I suppose, if she thought she could get away with it, she would have stolen
it
too.