Hick (2 page)

“Look at yourselves. Jesus.”

Tammy and Dad stand there like two kids caught smoking. They stand there, side by side, waiting for the next line, cooling down. But somehow the shame thrown down missed them and hit me direct. They’re just trying to straighten their shirts. They’re just
trying to figure out the most perfect closing line to get them the fuck offstage.

“C’mon, Luli,” Ray says. “I’ll give you a ride home. I’m sorry. I am truly sorry.”

He puts his hand on my shoulder and takes me with him while he tells the bar-back to cover, quick. He doesn’t want nothing to do with this show no more. He’s had it. There’s nothing grand or loud or pretty about the way he steers me across the gravel. There’s nothing flashy about the way he hoists me up into the truck, deep red, with giant wheels for winter. He just sets me up top the seat, simple, before strutting around and getting in the driver’s side. He starts the engine and pulls out the lot, with not even a wink back to remind us he’s the hero.

When we’re pulling out onto Highway 34, I look back and see my dad leaning on the hood of the Nova. You could practice for years and never lean with that picture perfect cowboy slunk.

And you would think that would be it and call it a night, I bet. But just wait cause two fence-posts past our drive Ray stops the truck and next thing you know I’m staring into the big black night with just two headlights, that’s it for miles. He starts mumbling something about there’s a funny noise he’s gotta check up on and there I am, feet up on the dash, thumb-twiddling.

If you’re wondering what I look like, just throw two giant eyes and one big mouth at a face too small to hold them. There must’ve been a mix-up that day on the assembly line, cause they got the proportions all wrong. I got made fun of for my big mouth before I even made it to day-care. Fish-face. Quacky-duck. Put it on my bill.

Seems like Ray’s doing a whole lot of nothing, tinkering with the engine and grunt grunt grunt but then, next thing you know,
he’s got his head in my window like he’s the weatherman on the nightly news.

“Wull. I can’t figure it.”

“Figure what?”

“The noise. I can’t figure the noise.”

“Huh.”

“Look, Luli.”

Now he starts scratching the back of his neck, shifting leg to leg.

“I wanna show you something.”

Boy, he sure knows how to be boring.

Shift. Shift.

“Wull, what?”

Shift.

“Um, wull, how bout you close your eyes and open your mouth.”

“Wull, why would I wanna do that?”

“Just trust me. Trust me. You’ll like it. I promise.”

And now something in the air around me starts to vibrate and I get the feeling that funny noise was pure make-up and my thumbs stop mid-twiddle.

But there’s also a side of me that won’t ever look away from a dead bird or a car chase or a hold-up at the Alibi at 2 a.m. There’s this side that wants to grab that buzzing thing and pull it close and twirl it around and inspect it, like dissecting a frog, belly-splayed.

So I do it.

I do what he says and I close my eyes and open my mouth and the next thing I know he’s got his twenty-eight-year-old tongue in my thirteen-year-old mouth and all I can think is that I don’t think the hero is supposed to be doing this.

He was supposed to grab me out the hullabaloo and gallop me off on a palomino horse, straight up into Orion’s Belt and up up up into the stars. Just leave out the step about making up truck noises and grumbling round the tires and then he’s got his tongue down my throat. Don’t tell that part. That part’s double-secret.

I squirm away and look at him like his marbles got lost. He looks at me, eyes swirling, and get this.

That thing swirling in his eyes, that thing, like he wants to jump into my body and devour me from the inside out, makes it like I could ask for whatever my little heart desired in this second and he would have to do it. He wouldn’t have a choice. Right here, in this second in the dead black night with nothing but two white beams and a fence-post waning, I could ask him to climb Chimney Rock or go rob a bank or take me to Lincoln, no, Omaha, no, Dallas. I could ask him, in this little speck of a moment, to jump off a cliff or spit on his mama or crash his truck into the Missouri and he’d do it. He’d have to do it.

And I don’t know if it’s the way I open my eyes or the way I gawk at his eyes swirling, but he steps back and looks at the ground and shuffles his feet and shakes his head. Then he gets back over to the driver’s seat, real quick.

Silent. Silent.

Two fence-posts back.

Silent.

Down the drive.

Silent.

Slam the door.

Silent.

Not even a good-bye. No sir. Not now.

And as I watch him crunching over the gravel, kicking up dust down the drive and into the nothing black night, I could jump for joy.

I could jump for joy, cause now I know I’ve got something. Fish-face. Quacky-duck’s got something. I’ve got something that cancels out too-broke Dad and cancels out dirt-lot brawls and cancels out that leaning, falling house I’m about to walk into. I got something that’s gonna throw me straight into the sun and leave this shitty little dust-bin behind and you just wait, you just wait, to see how I make it go boom.

Did you know I have a baby brother? Had one. it’s cause Tammy had a blue dress. Tammy had a baby-blue dress that came down not far enough and my dad liked her in that blue dress and then, the next thing you know, that blue dress started fitting tighter and tighter around her belly and, next thing you know, it looked like she swallowed a basketball and, next thing you know, my dad was skipping around talking about, “Luli, you’re gonna have a little baby brother, now, you’re gonna have to help your mama now, see.”

And even though I was only seven and didn’t know why Tammy swallowed a basketball or how that made a baby brother, you couldn’t help but smile when you saw my dad floating through the door and through the next, sashaying around Mama in her too-tight blue dress. And she’d say, “Now, c’mon, now, you don’t know it’s gonna be a boy, you just don’t know that, just shush.” And he’d say, “Yes, I do. I do sure know it like I know the sky is blue and I know the world is round and I know I married the most beautiful
girl in the county, the state, the whole wide world, darlin, the whole big wide world.”

And this is the part where he’d sidle up behind her and start rocking back and forth and making her blush and play-swat him away, but she’s swaying, too, swaying there in that baby-blue dress, too.

And they had a Sunday with everyone coming over and bringing gifts and a cake and a little baby crib from Aunt Gina and Uncle Nipper, white with gold trim, like something you pulled out of a dollhouse and blew up life-size. And they were laughing and giggling and smiling thirty ways till sundown. And you would have been smiling, too, cause it was like all the good-mornings and all the hi-how-are-yas and all the well-hello-sunshines in the county had taken lunch all at once and decided to march down the dirt road and alight, just this once, just this one Sunday afternoon, and arrange themselves in a circle around my basketball-swallowing mama, sitting proud and pretty in that blue dress that started it all.

And maybe God and the angels took note of that blue dress, too, because when that baby came out the color of moonlight, we all knew something was wrong.

And he was a boy, all right, Dad got that part right, but he wasn’t the kind of boy you could take out front and throw a football to in four years or five or even six. No, sir, he was just born the color coming off the moon and sickly and sniffling and stiff. He was just born with a frown on his face, like he got dropped off at the wrong planet or maybe the angels left out a step or maybe he didn’t want nothing to do with it in the first place.

And he had to set in that incubator like some kind of other-world baby chick while my dad and Aunt Gina and Uncle Nipper
just waited and waited and whispered and whispered and spent more and more money they didn’t have in the first place, just to keep him down on this here planet.

And there was a doctor came in from Omaha and he took one look at that baby and said we best be bringing him up there, cause that’s where they’ve got the best doctors and the best treatment money can buy, and my dad smiled and nodded and said oh-yes-Doctor, and that baby stayed right there in that incubator for three days straight before deciding that maybe this wasn’t the place for him after all. Maybe this wasn’t the right planet or the right county or the right too-broke family from somewhere out in the sticks, anyways, and so he just upped and took to floating back up into the blue sky from whence he came, back up to wherever planet you get to go to when you get born the color of moonlight and your too-poor daddy can’t afford to send you up to Omaha, where they’ve got the best white-coated smiling doctors that know what the fuck to do anyways.

You see, it’s one thing to pretend you’re James Dean and pump gas in the summer and make the girls blush before heading back to your double-wide. it’s one thing to pack mules in the fall and live in a log cabin and dip your hat down before riding off into the setting sun. But when not being able to scrape two dimes together makes it so your baby boy, born the color of the night sky, has to stay put in that glowing tin-cup incubator instead of up with the experts in Omaha, well, then, there’s nothing glamorous about that, now, is there?

And she didn’t have to say it, my mama, when the bones fell out her body all at once and Aunt Gina and Uncle Nipper tried to hold her rag-doll body up by the elbows. She didn’t have to say it, my
mama, when it was like God himself had his heel into her back, holding her head down into the linoleum. She didn’t have to say it, my mama, when my dad tried to shush her sobbing into the tile, when she pulled back, recoiled at just even the inkling, the beginning, the thought of his hand on her arm. She didn’t have to say it. None of it. We all knew. We all knew.

And Uncle Nipper knew to go to the house and get rid of that white crib with gold trim, before Mama could set eyes on it, please Lord, just do it. And Aunt Gina knew to take that baby-blue dress and just bury it, bury it deep in the back of her closet far, far away, before Sunday visits and swallowing basketballs and boys born the color coming off the moon. And I knew, this is when I first knew, this is when I learned how to throw myself over to the other side of the room and watch my dumb little life like I was watching a movie and you get the popcorn and we’ll sit a spell and see what else goes by.

And there goes Dad, he’s been slumping around for three weeks straight with his head hanging off his shoulders. And there goes Mama, she still can’t eat but bring her this macaroni salad, just in case. And there goes most of my little-kid playmates, cause no one wants a fucking thing to do with this house anymore, that’s for damn sure. And here comes Aunt Gina and Uncle Nipper with a few kind words and making sure I got at least some Malt-O-Meal and Chef Boyardee to tide me over, they’ll be back tomorrow. And there goes my baby blue brother, somewhere into the night sky above me, and I wonder if I get to see him someday and tell him about the white crib he missed out on and that I know it wasn’t much but we were real proud to have him and wanted him to stay, just wanted him to stay a spell, and I would have played whatever
silly little dumb game he had in mind, really, I was just happy to have him, my baby brother born the color of dusk.

And you better just learn to throw yourself twenty feet across the room and let it play, just let it play. You better just learn to put each day and night up onto that screen and just keep on watching. Here’s what you’ll see. You get to see the incredible shrinking man. You get to see a man six foot tall turn in on himself and slump forward into nothing and then gone. Poof. You get to see a great tale of revenge and lust with a beautiful blond with flip-up hair. You get to see her get gussyed up each evening and put on lipstick and giggle loud and bat her eyelashes at strangers, straying a little bit behind the Alibi on a Saturday night, no, better, make that Sunday. Hell, she might run off with the devil himself if he walked in, leaned his elbow on the jukebox and tipped his hat just so.

You get to see all these attractions and then some. You get to see Elvis-style dreamboats and slutted-up little girls and eyes swirling wild by the side of the road. You get to see naughty pink parts and coming attractions and wait, just wait, there’s more, keep watching, keep watching, let it play, let it play.

People think we’re poor but I made a list of things we have, just to set them straight.

We have one seventy-year-old farmhouse, complete with barn, shack and an acre of tall wheat with weeds sticking up. We have all this luxury thanks to my grandpa who gave it to my mama when he died, on account of she was marrying a no good, ne’ergonna-make-nothing-out-of-his-skinny-bone-self like my dad. Despite the fact that it is, at first glance, a farmhouse, we don’t farm it or anything like that. We wouldn’t even know where to start. Tammy’s been trying to grow an avocado tree out of a pit for three years.

All told, we got a yellow farmhouse and a green barn and a blue shack but they’re all faded to about the same color anyways. The paint’s cracked and the wood on each of these little monuments that make up our own private village is washed out to gray, light gray, gray-blue or dark gray. The barn has a huge loft in it full of hay and smelling like horses, even though there haven’t been horses
here for twenty years. Just about the only animal life in there are the bats that flutter around thirty feet up top the loft making it Halloween all year round.

It’s so thick with cobwebs up there I’m surprised the bats don’t get caught and eaten up by some imaginary spider of hideous proportion with sinister, darting eyes. On the other side of the cobwebs, facing out into the wheat dusk air, is a white-circle silhouette of a horse centered on each side of the barn, staring proud off into the setting sun.

In front of the barn is our humble abode, which is faded yellow inside and out, with tiny-blue-flower wallpaper on a white-and-gold background in both the entry, which we never use, and the dining room, which we use even less. Everything in our rickety faded buttercup house, dead straight across from the biggest cemetery in Lancaster County, built around 1910, for the gravedigger and his wife, actually still runs properly, with the one exception of some hullabaloo about the water.