JEWEL (48 page)

We were only a few yards past the intersection when I said, “Turn left on Manhattan Beach Boulevard.”

“Left? ” he said, and glanced at me. “You mean right. We got to head out Manhattan Beach and hit ” “I mean turn left, ” I said, surprised at the ease of my own words, how simply they’d come. I hadn’t gritted my teeth, hadn’t the need to swallow hard. I’d only said words, soft and clean.

I knew where it was I wanted to go right then, and knew how to get there. It seemed like the most simple thing I’d ever known in my life, just turn left at Manhattan Beach Boulevard instead of right, head west to the end of the street, and to the pier. It was the ocean I wanted right then, what I wanted to draw into me, hold onto. When we hit the desert later today, and, even later, when we moved into a house on a bayou in Mississippi, I wanted the ocean with me, my last look at it, even if it’d be shrouded in fog. I wanted that look, and Brenda Kay’s voice behind me, singing away to what’d suddenly turned into the saddest song I knew I’d ever hear.

“Ah ahh stop, love you! ” she sang out, and I said to Leston, “Turn left at Manhattan Beach Boulevard, and head on down to the pier.”

“It’s nothing but fog ” “I am your wife, ” I whispered, my eyes never turning to him, only staring out into the fog.

He said nothing, and when a few moments later the gray gave way to a hazy pinpoint of bright red ahead, both of us well aware that that was the stoplight at the intersection of Highland and Manhattan Beach Boulevard, he let out a deep breath to signal how much of a discomfort my last request was to him.

Because that’s what it felt like, my last request, get us to the Pacific, that west as far west as you could get.

There was nothing to see at the end of the street. Leston pulled into a slot in the small parking lot where the city pier went out, and we sat in the car, before us the broad, dull gray of fog. All I could see was a few feet of sand, the first few pylons of the pier like the black ribs of some huge and long dead animal jammed down into the beach, the rest of it all fading into the gray. Now and again a fisherman walked past us out of the fog, started on to the pier, pole over his shoulder, tackle box or bucket of bait in hand. I thought to say to Leston, Look fish here. Fish here, instead of a bayou in Mchenry, but I knew it was no use, and so I kept the words to myself. And in the minute or so we sat there two boys in swimming trunks walked past, hair blond as could be, shirts off, chests bare to the wet air. Each carried, too, one of these Surfboards that’d become all the rage, and just then I heard Brenda Kay sit up behind me, saw shoot between Leston and me in the front seat her arm, her small, pudgy fingers forming a fist, then pointing with the first finger at the boys as they disappeared out onto the sand. “Look! ” she said. “Momma, look! ” I said nothing. Her fist and pointing finger hung there in the air for a minute or so, the arm stiff, fingers so tight I thought they’d turn blue.

She pulled her arm back, and I heard her lean back in the seat, heard her skim through ten or twelve radio stations before settling on one, Elvis Presley singing “Good Luck Charm.”

“That boy’s from Mississippi, ” Leston said. “That Elvis boy.”

“This isn’t Mississippi, ” I said.

I turned in my seat, reached over into Brenda Kay’s lap and took the radio from her, clicked it off.

I tried to smile at her, said, “Let’s leave this off for a few minutes honey, ” handed it back to her.

She smiled at me, whispered, “Quiet, y’all, ” and for the first time in two years I found relief in that sound, in her whisper. Quiet was right, and I reached a hand to her lap, gave a small squeeze to her hand.

I faced front. The car was silent, and only then did I pick up what I realized was the real reason I’d come here, through the fog, fog so thick you’d have thought nothing could make its way through, even through that fog, I heard it, Waves broke out there, somewhere inside the fog that’d eaten us up, somewhere out past the sand before us. I heard waves beating down out there in the gray, beating away, pulverizing the earth with every crash, wearing away the world with each rise and fall of water.

That was what I’d come here to find, the sound of the world being eaten away, the good knowledge that no matter what any of us intended the world still kept giving way.

That would be me, I thought. Me. I’d keep pounding, even with this next life in front of me, a life that wasn’t new at all, just a return to the old.

But I would crash. I would crash and crash and crash, crash until all I knew turned into sand, moved the way I wanted it.

“Let’s go, ” I said, the sound of pounding waves heavy in my ears, a sound that suddenly melted into the roar of my own blood through me.

“Let’s head to where you think we ought to live, ” I said to my husband, and let my words start crashing away.

CHAPTER 33.

WE GOT TO MCHENRY NEAR SUNDOWN FRIDAY NIGHT, PULLED UP IN front of the house on the bayou, lights on inside the windows and coming out through the screen door. Though the light was warm, a soft and smooth yellow, those windows were still empty eyes, the front door only an open mouth.

In front of the house was an old green pickup, no tailgate, the back window cracked and shattered like a spiderweb across one half of it.

We parked next to it, and Leston shut off the engine.

I didn’t move. The car was silent save for the thin hiss of static from Brenda Kay’s transistor behind me. We’d already replaced the batteries twice since we left.

Leston said, “Well, here we are.”

I turned in the seat, looked back at Brenda Kay the same way I had near a week ago. But now she was sweating, single hairs of her bangs plastered to her forehead, the neck of her blouse sweat through, her eyes rimmed with sweat. She had the radio in her lap, her eyes looking all around out her window.

I faced forward, opened my door. I was the first one to step foot on this foreign soil, a place I hated without even giving it a chance.

But that was my right, I figured, if I gave it a chance, I’d lose. And I wasn’t going to lose.

I reached for Brenda Kay’s door handle as Leston climbed out, and here came the front screen door pounding open, Toxie moving fast across the porch, the light from inside silhouetting him for a moment.

“Jewel, ” he cried out like I’d been ever so close to him all my life, when what little I could recall of him involved that first Sunday afternoon supper at Leston’s mother and stepfather’s, the little teenage kid, Leston’s nephew, who’d leaned forward, said “Hey! ” to me, then gone on and eaten while I served up food for myself. Just that moment, and the lost three fingers to a quick fuse, and the picture of him following Leston and all the niggers they were niggers once again, I knew now, always only niggers here in Mississippi to work, me always at the sink inside the house and looking out at them, the children round me and howling out for food. That was all I knew of Toxie.

Now here we were again, right back where we’d started. Toxie gave me a hard hug, his hair at my cheek thick with some sort of hair oil not even pomade and wet on my skin, the two-finger hand on my back patting like some wounded bird trying to take flight.

He pulled away, looked at me in the growing dark. I smiled at him, said, “Toxie, how you doing? ” though I willed myself not to recognize him, not to see in the shape of his mouth and in his eyes any resemblance whatsoever to my husband. It worked, he was a stranger, and I was only exchanging pleasantries with him after a long, hot trip.

He said, “Fine, we fine, ” and I turned from him, opened Brenda Kay’s door.

I said, “Come on out, Brenda Kay, and say hey to Uncle Toxie.”

Toxie put his hands in his pockets. He glanced up and over the roof, nodded at Leston, then ducked down to see inside the car.

Brenda Kay scooted across the seat, let her legs touch ground out here, her white shoes all the whiter for the closing dark.

“Some shoes you got there, ” Toxie said.

I wouldn’t look at him, only reached a hand in to Brenda Kay, helped her out.

Leston came around the front of the car, and Toxie, I could tell, was torn as to what to do, should he hug his uncle, an uncle not but a few years older than himself, and welcome him Back Home where he ought never to have left, or should he stay here, make introductions with his mother’s namesake, this retarded girl?

Leston gave a quick nod at him, then looked at Brenda Kay, who stood now, arms loose at her sides, in one hand the transistor, static hiss still filling the air.

“Let’s us turn that thing off now, ” I said, and reached to take the radio from her.

“No! ” Brenda Kay shouted, and shook my hand away from hers, brought the radio to her chest. She looked at me, then at Toxie, then me again.

“Suit yourself, ” I said, and I turned, smiled at Toxie. I said, “Brenda Kay, this here’s Uncle Toxie. Toxie, Brenda Kay. A little cranky after this trip.”

“I know you, Brenda Kay, ” Toxie said. “I come to see you when you was in the hospital over to Purvis.” He rocked on his heels now, hands still in his pockets, and I couldn’t remember his ever coming to see her after she’d burned her legs, not that I’d necessarily remember.

But it didn’t matter to me, because I was willing myself not to know this man. I was out here and living in Mississippi and this bayou shanty for one reason and one reason only, to break my husband, get us back to California and to the progress our lives’d made, get us back in that line toward fixing our lives.

Brenda Kay smiled, clicked off the radio. She brought her eyes from his, and I could tell she was looking down the length of his arms, stopped when her eyes landed on his pockets, where his hands were hiding.

“Two finger! ” she shouted, then laughed, “Huh huh huh! ” “You remember! ” Toxie laughed. He brought out the maimed hand, reached to beneath her chin, tickled her.

She laughed harder, squeezed up her shoulders with his tickling. “Two finger! ” she shouted out.

“Now that’s enough, ” I said, and I smiled, though the dark’d probably made it difficult for anyone to tell I was. Toxie stopped right away, put his hand back in his pocket.

“He was only tickling the girl, ” came Leston’s voice in the dark, his words quiet, meant to carry extra weight with how soft he’d spoken.

But I wasn’t here to lose, and if I put Toxie down this early on, all the better. It was Leston I was aiming at, if I cut out Toxie, there’d be that much less work to do on him.

I said, “It’s been a long and tiring trip for all of us. She doesn’t need any more winding up.” I paused, looked up at Leston. I wouldn’t let my eyes meet Toxie’s, not now.

Leston stood with his hands in his pockets, too. In the dark I could make out his mouth, a tight thin line, his eyes only shadows.

I said, “Let’s just go on in and see where we’re going to live now, hey?

” Toxie shrugged right away, glanced up at Leston, then to me. “Sounds fine with me. Let’s do it, ” and he turned, took a step for the porch.

Then he stopped, looked to the car like he’d not seen it parked there next to his derelict truck. He took a hand from a pocket the five-fingered hand and slowly ran it across the hood. I could see the windows of the house reflected in the metal, saw his hand interrupt the shine there as he let his fingers trace the line of the fender.

“What the hell kind of car is this? ” he said.

“Your language, please, ” I shot right out, and slammed closed Brenda Kay’s door, took her hand.

“Beg pardon, ma’am, ” Toxie said, and took his hand from the hood.

“Studebaker Lark Regal. Brand-new, ” Leston said, though he wasn’t looking at Toxie. He was looking at me, and as I started for the porch I said to Leston, “Excuse me, ” moved toward him so that he had to stand aside, lean into the car to make room for us.

“Studebaker, ” Toxie whispered. He gave out a low, soft whistle in the dark, and I wondered at how little he could see of what was going on here between Leston and me, marveled, too, at how easy he’d been to put away.

Inside, Toxie skittered round the place, going from room to room, eager to impress upon us just how lavish our accommodations were, the house, owned by an older gentleman in Gulfport, a plumbing contractor Toxie worked for, was partially furnished a sofa in that front room, a bed in both the bedrooms a kitchen table with five chairs had electricity, a dock out back a gas stove and stocked refrigerator, even a washing machine. But what impressed Toxie most, and hence what he spent the most time showing off to us, was the plumbing itself. “No lead pipe in this here little palace, ” Toxie said in the kitchen, him rocking on his heels again while Leston crouched, peered beneath the kitchen sink.

When he pulled his head out, he looked right away to me, and I said, “A palace, ” a word I thought’d been Leston’s a month ago when he’d described what we could afford. Leston only smiled at me.

Toxie made certain, too, I turned the water on and off in the bathroom and kitchen, saw how shiny the stainless steel fixtures were, touched the showerhead above the tub. He even talked me into turning the shower on so I could see how smooth was the flow of water.

When finally he’d shown us every visible inch of pipe in the house, had flipped on and off the light switches in the bedrooms, had even turned on the washing machine for a moment, then flicked it off, we three moved into the front room, where Brenda Kay sat on the blue corduroy sofa, the radio still in her lap, still turned off.

That was when the treefrogs started in. All the windows in the house were open, and the sound whirled right in on us, a dull, thick hum that swelled in an instant to the same deep and sharp-edged drone I’d lived through the first forty-eight years of my life. It wasn’t a welcome sound, certainly, nor was it a surprise, but I knew if I gave myself a second’s chance I’d find that sound ushering in old thoughts on other times, times when we lived back here, times when the children were growing up in the old house and the boys or Annie’d complain at the sound ghosting its way into their rooms.

But I wouldn’t let myself remember that, only went to the sofa, said to Brenda Kay louder than I needed, “Don’t you get worked up about those treefrogs, ” though there was nowhere on her face any evidence she’d even heard them. She’d remembered Toxie’s two fingers from a trip he made to her hospital room ten years before, why couldn’t she remember the sound the comfort, in fact, if I’d let myself feel it of those nights years ago, when she was a child?