Hick (3 page)

Some orange-vested worker men from Lincoln came out here a few years back, noodled with the well tap and warned us that we had too much lithium in our water, declaring that it’d be best for everyone if we just relocated. This is something we never did, of course, because we didn’t have nowhere to relocate to, and Mama says, “Shit, wull, if we have lithium in our water we might as well see it as some kinda healing bonus and make the best of it . . . some people might even pay extra for that.”

Sides all that, we got one RCA color TV with wood on the sides and that sky blue Chevy Nova my dad takes pride in scurrying around and underneath on weekends, fixing and tinkering and muttering to himself about trannies, alignment and pistons.

And I know that these things may not seem like much to some la-di-da snooty-pants from Omaha but there are plenty of people in Lancaster County who have less than that, so I know, for a fact, that we’re not poor.

Okay, this is what there is. Sometimes there’s macaroni and cheese, with tuna, for protein, but that’s pretty much as good as it gets. If you’re still hungry you can have blue frosting on graham crackers for dessert. There’s also the option, sometimes, of a sugar sandwich, which involves two slices of white bread, buttered thick and spread with plain white sugar. And then other times, depending on how many days my dad’s been gone, there’s even the possibility of me just stealing our dinner from the Piggly Wiggly in Fremont or Wahoo or Alliance in case it’s a special occasion . . . birthday, Christmas, Easter . . . usually something involving ham. Ham means it’s a holiday and wear a shirt.

Tammy did a fairly reasonable job of teaching me how to steal when I was ten, but the knack I have for it comes mostly from my last three years of experience and has little to do with her slightly naive take on shopkeepers and advantage-taking. You may be thinking, oh my good Lord, what kind of a mother would put her own offspring up to such mischief and certain jeopardy? But, in all actuality, there’s a trick to it.

You see, this way, if I get caught, she can scold me and pretend like she’s so ashamed, she raised me with the Lord Jesus Christ in my heart and how could I betray her, the baby Jesus and the blessed Virgin Mary like that. Believe me, she knows how to showboat.

By the end of it, she’d have the shopkeeper so caught up in his own journey, or lack of journey, towards Jesus Christ our Lord and
Savior that they’d just go ahead and let us go. They’d be too busy feeling sorry for me that I had such a pious mama that was surely going to spend this lifetime and the next dragging me through fire and brimstone before flying up to heaven on a puffy Charmin cloud.

I am proud to say that, with the help of Jesus Christ and the Bible, I’ve stolen our special-occasion family dinner for three years straight and not once had to face up to any power higher than the day clerk at the Piggly Wiggly.

It’s the little things like that I try to think about when I know I’m about to start feeling sorry for myself in my little yellow house with my stupid life and nothing to eat.

Lookit, if you think you can just march out to the kitchen and say a fine howdedoo this morning, you got another thing coming, that’s for damn sure. No sir, here’s how it’s got to be if you know what’s good for you. Peek. Tippy-toe. Tippy-toe. Down the hall. Peek. Tippy-toe. Tippy-toe. Down the kitchen. Peek. Investigate the ashtray. You can read that ashtray like a weather-vane.

You know how most people turn on the TV to figure out the weather and how the day’s gonna turn out? Well, round here the ashtray is gonna tell you who’s three sheets to the wind and if the storm’s rolling in or already passed. You best learn to read it if you know what’s good for you.

Empty ashtray means partly sunny. Empty ashtray means the coast is clear. Go about your day. Nothing to see here.

Full ashtray ain’t bad either. Full ashtray means the storm’s passed. Don’t worry. They’re all in bed now, it’s over. Just hope for full or empty ashtray.

Full ashtray with lit cigarette?

Well, you can’t win em all. That lit cigarette means the storm’s rolling in. Brace yourself.

Now, if you think that’s bad, just wait till you find a full ashtray with
more than one
lit cigarette. That is the last thing you want to see. If there’s more than one lit cigarette in that ashtray, you might as well tippy-toe back down the hall, pull the covers over your head, huddle and wait out the storm. More than three lit cigarettes in that ashtray and you best evacuate. More than three cigarettes means it’s gonna be a doozey. Hold on tight. Category 5.

Look here, it’s bad enough if you get one lit cigarette. That means the night before got piggy-backed over into this morning and the drinks are still going strong. They could be out there carousing with drink number eight to thirteen, for God’s sake. Who’s even counting anymore anyways? Might as well just drink out the bottle.

But if you get more than three lit cigarettes in that thing, that means Dad corralled some barflies over in a fit of generosity, probably somewhere near the third chorus of “That’s Life.” Hey, folks, let’s go to my place, we’re all amigos here.

They’ll be sitting there, round the kitchen table, unwitting, smoke coming up off their fingers, dazzled by my dad. Sitting ducks. He’ll be telling them all about that day he got stuck in the mud down by Wahoo and then this happened and then that happened and can you believe he got out, no one thought he could. They’ll be in love with him just like I am, just like Tammy used to be. They’ll be thinking this guy is the greatest guy since sliced bread, that’s for sure. If there’s a lady in the crowd, she’ll be thinking bout how she can sidle up to him on the way to the bathroom, maybe. she’ll be
checking her lipstick and hiking up her bra every time he looks away. she’s got plans for him. Big plans.

They’ll never see it coming. No sir. I almost feel sorry for them, smiling dumb round that ashtray. They don’t know that drink number eight or nine are gonna be dropping by soon, looking for a brawl. They don’t know they’ve got a date with drink number ten that involves a lot of hollering, throwing bottles and knocking that front door off its hinges. They got no idea. That front door has been slammed off its hinges so many times we haven’t even bothered to put it back since June.

Maybe tomorrow.

But this morning I am breathing a sigh of relief because that ashtray is empty, thank God. Bout time we had a little peace and quiet around here.

There is one little thing wrong with the kitchen, though, at present, which is that there happens to be a man in a gray suit sitting smack-dab in the middle of it. that’s a new one.

It’s not that a beaten-up farmhouse ten minutes outside of Palmyra, Nebraska, is an especially dangerous place to be, but it has happened. Twenty minutes east of here, in Alliance, there was a whole family got shot in cold blood about five years back. Two guys from Dodge sashayed into town, walked in, lined all four of them up on the floor and fired, but not until each of them had taken a turn with their fourteen-year-old daughter who happened to be runner-up Modern Miss Teenage Nebraska.

She was wearing a light-blue nightgown when it happened and in the pictures of the aftermath it looked like it had a flower pattern on it from all the blood, dark-brown and red flowers, abstract and
huge. The blood down the inside of her legs was crackled and dried up into little pieces. Her eyes were wide open and she looked like a shattered doll.

Not me.

I slink back to my room and get something girls aren’t supposed to have but I do. Uncle Nipper gave it to me for my thirteenth birthday, along with a T-shirt that says, “Take Me Drunk I’m Home.” it’s a cockroach colored .45 and just looking at it makes you feel mean. It looks bad and looks like it’ll bring bad with it.

It’s my pride and joy.

I got some hot moves I picked up from Clint Eastwood and here’s my chance. I must have practiced this scene ten times since my birthday. Watch me sidle down the hall, hugging the wall, eyes froze. Make him turn around first. that’s what Clint would do. You gotta wait till they see you and make yourself big. You gotta show them your soul got left back, long ago, before handing them their walking papers from this shiny life to the next.

He’s sitting at the head of the table like he owns the place. His back is towards me and his neck is just waiting there like a baked potato for me to take aim. His head shimmers, bald and stubbly, with a few moles here and there like towns spread out in Oklahoma. He’s got a briefcase on his lap, proper-like. There’s something in the way he’s holding his chin up or maybe it’s the slope of his nose that tells me he’s got money and that this place, my place, might as well be the outhouse outside a cathouse.

I prop myself up in the doorway, leaning slight to the side, making sure to hold the .45 real casual. I turn myself mean inside out, freeze my skin and say, “That’s my dad’s chair.”

His knee knocks up the table and he turns round, flustered and blustery. I could jump for joy, I really could, he looks like such an idiot, but instead I choose to concentrate on my intimidating tactics. Clint wouldn’t jump for joy.

“Well, my oh my, you sure gave me a scare.”

He pretends not to see my .45, reflecting around the room, whirling slowly in little bright circles that can only spell his doom. He nervous smiles but I don’t smile back. I just stare at him and raise my chin a little.

“Is your mother home?”

“Nope.”

“Do you know when she’ll be back?”

“Nope.”

“Do you know where she went?”

“Nope.”

“Do you always carry a gun like that?”

“Yep.”

“That’s a very, um, nice gun.”

“What gun?”

“That gun. it’s . . . interesting.”

“My gun is interesting?”

“Well, I mean, it seems to be very well crafted.”

“it’s not a gun. it’s a .45.”

“Um.”

“Smith and Wesson.”

“Maybe I could give you my card and you could tell her I dropped by . . .”

“Card?”

“Yes. Um. Here.”

He smiles and takes his card out. He reaches his arm towards me and dangles it out for me to grab. I don’t move.

“Who are you, Mister?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. How rude of me. My name’s Lux. Lux Feld. I’m in investments.”

“Investments?”

“You know, land, property, stuff like that.”

He laughs light and shrugs, making nice. I nod and laugh light back, shuffling my feet against the linoleum floor and slapping my thigh like I’m the inbred retard he takes me for.

He stops laughing and puts his card back in his jacket.

“You always break into people’s houses at . . . what time is it?”

“Eight o’clock.”

“At 8 o’clock in the morning?”

“Well, actually, the door was open, er, there was no door, I mean a screen door but . . . you know, well, I’m sorry, I didn’t see a buzzer so I just thought I’d—”

“Do you think I’m pretty?”

“Excuse me?”

“Do you think I’m pretty? Like if you saw me passing by would you want to kiss me or something?”

“Um. I don’t really think that’s—”

“Luli, what the hell are you doing?”

Tammy comes barreling down the staircase, pushing me aside, and I can tell she’s about to do something worse but then she sees Mr. Feld and it’s like she turns from a moth to a butterfly in two seconds flat. She straightens up and tightens her robe around her, fluffing her hair up and smiling pretty.

“Why, Mr. Feld. Whatever in the world are you doing here at this hour of the day, of the morning, I mean? It must be seven-thirty, seven even.”

“it’s actually eight, Mrs. Cutter.”

He looks at her kind of funny when he says her name, like there’s a little joke here they got between them. They’re both smiling now. Tammy starts looking a little red like she’s at the sock-hop. And I have seen this blushing before. It means my dad is on the outs again.

I’m surprised this mister is even talking to her looking like that, sunk-eyed and shabby in her frayed blue robe and last night’s makeup. She keeps adjusting and readjusting herself, like somewhere in the position of her belt lies true happiness.

“I mean, I wouldn’t even have woke up if it wasn’t for Luli and her loud laughing.”

She looks at me for that one. I smile back at her like I’m just as happy as she is and we’re all just one big happy family. She sees my .45 and grabs it out of my hand.

“Oh, Luli, you are just such a little card with that gun.”

She laughs, bashful, swatting her hand at Mr. Feld, covering.

“She don’t mean nothing. She just likes to play.”

“it’s not a gun. it’s a .45.” I repeat it, get it straight.

“Well, that’s nice, dear.”

Tammy smiles and the peeled worm takes a gulp.

“Okay, then, Mr. Feld, if you’ll just let me get dressed, I’ll be right back down.”

She turns my way and smiles like a TV commercial.

“Luli, you better start getting ready for school now.”

All smiles. New and improved soap.

“School don’t start for two weeks.”

She grabs my arm and steers me firm towards my room. I look back at her and she stares right back like she’s daring me to make a move. Tammy’s got a mean backhand. I turn and start getting dressed, careful to stand next to the door so I can keep up. I hear her sigh and giggle, then a little laughing and talking. A guilty little whisper. A sentence, hushed.

Then the screen door slams and just like that they’re gone.

I walk back out to the kitchen and listen to the sound of a smooth kind of car driving off into the distance. Well, that’s that then. If my calculations are correct, he’s not new to her cause there’s already a secret between them. She must have found him at the Hy-Vee or the Kwik-Mart or the Piggly Wiggly. He must have driven his cart into her cart, blushed and feigned an apology, polite. She would have turned round, seen money and they’d be off to the races.

Money.

I open the fridge for something to eat, but there’s nothing but brown peaches and a half-finished jar of relish.

I bet this morning my mama gets bacon and eggs with waffles on the side.