Hick (8 page)

She doesn’t hear me, or maybe she does and chooses to ignore it.

“You know one thing about a man, if you ever find one that you like, is, he’s gotta know how to fuck you. Rich. Poor. Cute. It don’t
matter. He’s gotta know how to lay you down on your back, spread your legs and fuck you.”

I stare at the corn.

“I know, I know, maybe I shouldn’t talk like that in front of you. But It’s good you learn it now. Lotta girls just go with any old boring suit or some fatso with a job sending her flowers, then they wonder why they’re so miserable and why they get so ugly and sad and old. They say to themselves, staring at the ceiling, husband snoring away beside them, ‘What the hell happened? Where’d all the time go? When did I get so old and sad and wrinkly?Ù I’ll tell you when, when you were lying underneath that fat shitbag who couldn’t fuck a woman if he had a step-by-step guide. And they never say, ‘This is not enough. Laying here, yawning, while this fat fuck pokes at me until he rolls over and starts snoring.’ Because if you don’t say that, listen to me, here, if you don’t say that, they’ll reel you in. They’ll play nice and buy flowers and reel you into their pathetic little life and the next thing you know, you don’t even remember your own name. It’s just Mrs. Something-or-Other. Mrs. Shitbag. See what I mean? No way. Not me. Not fucking me.”

“Wull, um, do you even like guys?”

“Phumph.” I feel like I said something stupid but then she smiles to herself. “I like em when I first meet em. When they’re putting on the Ritz. But, you know, It’s all downhill from there.”

She takes the vial from between her thighs, opens it up and snorts again. she’s starting to lose that halo around her. In the morning light, she’s not all glamour. she’s starting to look a little less heaven-sent and a little more like someone you might see down at the track. In the mirror, I see now about how she has tiny
wrinkles threatening to spread across her forehead. I’m watching her and I’m thinking to myself that I can’t tell if she’s good or bad. she’s one of those people you don’t know about until something happens, something big. And I’m wondering, as I look at her wheat-spun hair in the golden light, what, exactly, that something will be.

Now, I am not a lesbo, and I do not intend on signing up, but it just so happens that when I look at Glenda, when I listen to Glenda, I get this feeling in my gut like I want to jump inside her, like the space between me and her is too great, too distant, and if I could just smash up against her maybe I could see the world through her eyes.

She catches me looking at her.

“Do you know where we’re going, kid?”

“Nope.”

Nothing I say comes out natural because I’m too busy trying to sound natural.

The sun is straight up in the sky now, blazing down in a line, boring a hole through the top of the roof. The bunny rabbit sits listless in the front, tired of this new back-seat tag-along. The flatlands spread out in beige and green square patches sprawled out into the horizon for miles and nothing there. None too colorful, not like the McDonald’s commercials where the sun comes up against a
farmhouse and someone’s rooster starts to cock-a-doodle-doo into the golden light, ringing in the arrival of hash browns and sausage. Not here, this is mostly shades of drab and drabber, stretching out to eternity and no promise in it.

I saw pictures of the East Coast in school. It was green and everything was scrunched up together, like they had no idea everyone was coming, so they just make-shift stuck everything together and hoped it’d work out. And I read that sixty-two percent of everybody in America is just sitting there between Boston and Washington, D.C., waiting for something to happen, piled on top of each other, like a beehive, this box inside that box inside that box.

The East Coast is where you get to go when you’re out of school, if you’re from Lincoln and a member of the Knolls Country Club and live on Sheridan. You get to come back all chuffed up on Thanksgiving and make a circle with all the other older brother Chads and cousin Jennys about this game and that class and how you had to stay up till five last week just to get three papers done and then about fell asleep in class and ha ha ha you sure felt silly.

And you could be like me and sit there dripping in your towel at the Knolls, like some wet rat, out of place, invited on a lark, practically by mistake, out of politeness to Becky’s cousin Cindy, but ending up there regardless and listening. And you might think to yourself, What kind of world is this that lies somewhere outside the drip-drab horizon with rolling hills and halls of granite, green and books? What kind of world is this that nobody told me about that extends its hands out to nowheresville and plucks lovingly, exclusively, the cream of the crop? Who the hell gets to go there and why and if it’s Cindy then she ain’t near smart enough and why her not me?

You might think that. And it might tear you up for a second and make you run inside the locker room before anyone catches on that that’s not just swimming-pool water running down your face and before everybody starts whispering, Who the hell invited that girl? Well, you might as well just hold up a sign that says, “I don’t belong here just take me back to shitsville.”

But if you’re smart, you’ll just bite down and forget you ever heard it. Just pretend that was some black-and-white movie and that whole snooty universe doesn’t exist or it might as well not cause it sure as hell doesn’t exist for you.

And never will.

You don’t want to be squeezed in between sixty-two percent of snootsville, anyways. Bunch of limp city folk that couldn’t figure out how to pour whiskey out of a boot with directions on the heel.

I stare out at the fields in green and yellow patches rolling by into the dusk coming up from behind. Glenda sits in the front, knuckles turning white on the wheel, shoulders hunched and leaning forward, heading west.

Out west everything has its own space. Every little ramshackle cabin, shack, hut sits perched atop its own little piece of destiny with room to breathe, room to live, room to die. You’ll see them, the dead ones, sitting by the side of the road like some faded gray and rotting mystery, thinking about the good ol days before trains and cars and wanting more.

And you’d best be prepared for heading west. Otherwise, you might just end up eating your best friend’s ankle, hunkered up under a snowdrift somewhere, like the Donners . . . marking the bodies so you don’t eat your own uncle, watching your pastor starve to death, calculating his weight versus the rest of winter. And you
might look over at that one nutso German and have the sneaking suspicion he’s just killing people and eating them before they die, on a whim, for fun.

But that was out by Reno. Here, before Chimney Rock, it wasn’t quite that dramatic. Mostly, in the panhandle, folks just froze to death, uneventful. You’d be wandering around after your dream and you’d come across some half-thawed Swede in the slush. And you’d look at him, shrug your shoulders and say a prayer, but you weren’t about to stop.

I look out past the corn and the wheat and wonder how many sets of bones are buried, unspoken, keeping their stories to themselves in the dirt. I wonder if they know the sky is bright blue today and the air smells sweet. I wonder if they still listen in. I wonder if the caterpillar trucks will roll over them, too.

Glenda pipes up from the front seat.

“Okay, kid, here’s how it’s gonna be. And no naysaying. If you naysay even once, I’m gonna kick that door open and throw you out after. I mean it. Nobody likes a naysayer. Nobody, got it? So, we gotta get to Jackson. Never mind why. Just that we’re headed to Jackson for some very specific reasons that I’ll tell you later. On the way, we’re gonna have to make a few stops, see, for provisions. Now, on these stops, you’re gonna have to do a little acting. You ever acted before?”

“Only my whole life.”

“Okay, good. that’s good. Now, did you ever see, on TV or in the movies or something, somebody having an epileptic seizure?”

“A what?”

“Like, somebody’s in, like an airport, say, and all the sudden they just fall to the ground and start shaking. Like this.”

She shakes her body around like she just stuck her finger in a light-bulb socket. I try not to laugh.

“Don’t laugh. This is important. Okay, now. Do what I just did.”

I hesitate.

“Member what I said. No naysaying.”

“I feel stupid.”

“Well, you’re gonna feel real stupid by the side of the road, how’s that?”

I do it real fast and keep doing it and don’t stop till she’s convinced, shaking my body this way and that, flopping round like a fish out of water.

“All right. All right, kid, I get the point. Now, what you’re gonna do is, you’re gonna look real sweet, act real nice and go into this little store. Alone. Now, while you’re in front, I’m gonna be in the back, never mind why. Now, you have to do that, like shake like that and fall to the ground and keep shaking, for about two minutes. No more, no less. Got it? Count in your head if you have to.”

I nod back, serious, not wanting to naysay my way out the car.

“Then, when two minutes are up, get off the floor, wipe yourself off like you’re kinda still in a daze, smile sweet and say something like, ‘Oh my goodness, what a scare, but I’m okay now, I’ll be all right.’ That kinda thing. And then you just put yourself together, walk right out, take a right and I’ll be round the corner. Just get in real normal-like, and we’ll drive off. Simple. Got it?”

“So, um, when’re we gonna be doing this?”

“In about ten minutes.”

“What?”

“What yourself. Is there a problem?”

“Um, just seems a little soon is all.”

“Lookit, are you in or what?”

“Yeah, but . . . um, wull, where do you want me to do it?”

“Right in front of the counter. Just go up. Smile real sweet. Maybe ask for some bubble gum. And then, when he turns to get it, drop and shake. If you can drool from your mouth that’d be good, but I know it’s hard to drool on command, maybe think of a lemon. Just remember, two minutes. Don’t forget.”

“Okay.”

I’m starting to get nervous. If I blow it, she’ll hate me, or worse, leave me behind. I bite my lip. The last thing I want is to get dumped by the side of the road.

“All right, so you got about five minutes to turn into little Miss Muffett. I got a comb and some barrettes back there somewhere, maybe in that yellow bag. So get to work.”

I take out the yellow bag and start combing while I pick out two little pink barrettes with circus animals on top. Perfect. I put those in, pinch my cheeks till they’re rosy, primp and preen some more. I’m starting to get terrified I won’t live up. All my nervousness is turning into fussiness about my hair and my cheeks and my practice smile. My heart is pounding. Glenda just keeps smoking, cigarette after cigarette. She hunches into the steering wheel, bearing down into the road.

“You nervous, Glenda?”

She looks at me, in the mirror, caught.

“Hell no.”

“Me neither.”

“Course not.”

But if you asked the air, it would tell you different. The back of the car swishes to a halt as we pull up onto the gravel next to a little yellow store with a wooden sign across the top saying, “Custer’s Last Stand.”

I see myself in the store window as I walk across the gravel. You might as well put lipstick on a duck. Looks like I’m trying just a little too hard in my circus animal barrettes and Fruit Loop smile, just pink and goofy. You could dip me in plastic and sell me at the Toys-R-Us.

But I have a self-protection clause that says when I’m feeling down on my luck or sorry for myself or goofy or ugly or hopeless, I better just think about those bubble-bellied kids in Africa with nothing to eat but dirt for breakfast and flies buzzing around their faces, so used to it that they’re just landing swat-free, cause what’s the point in swatting, anyways, let alone living? If you start thinking about that, then you might as well be a superstar by comparison.

And now I remember to pretend that this is all just a movie and I am the number one star. There’s nothing to be afraid of. it’s not real. it’s an act. it’s a story. it’s a dream of a life of some precocious
teenage passion bomb, played by yours truly. Just watch how I giggle and wiggle and smile and nod.

The glass door crashes behind me and rattles me back to my next thought, which is, How the hell am I gonna pull this off? But I will not naysay myself into inaction. I will proceed as planned, by hook or by crook, more like crook, in my own private movie.

I clench my jaw and walk up to the counter, where an elbow-faced man of about one hundred and sixty years stands squinting at me. I flash my piggy smile and tilt my head like I’m an idiot.

“Hey there.”

He smiles back. He is missing not one but two of his front teeth. There’s a twinkle in his eye, though, like he’s been standing there for fifty years without a customer, like he’s used to being invisible and maybe doesn’t exist at all.

“Do you have Hubba-Bubba?”

I hear myself talking like Minnie Mouse, like a cartoon version of myself. This is the way girls talk in movies, like they need help tying their shoelaces.

“Sure thing, pumpkin.”

He winks and I turn my wince into a smile. I feel guilty. He seems like a nice man, pure kinda. Not like the sort of bad egg you want to pull a fast one on. I am starting to have second thoughts. The music to my movie is getting warbled and now the record is just about to scratch.

I steel myself. No naysaying. I can’t hold out much longer so I make up my mind to just get it over with. I feel like rotten cotton candy.

“What flavor, Missy?”

“Watermelon,” I say, too quick.

He fumbles around with his hands, using the counter for support, trying to rouse his ancient bones to turn and inspect the Hubba Bubba display. He looks like a man who’s forgotten something. Puzzled. I wait for what seems like an eternity. With every millimeter he moves, my heart beats louder. By the time his back is to me it’s not that hard to hit the deck and start shaking. I’m skittish on the inside so I just turn myself inside out and Bob’s your uncle. My epileptic starring role comes perfectly natural. My heart feels like it’s gonna pop right out of my chest smack-dab into the middle of the white tile floor.