A Ford in the River Page 3

  “What kind of disaster are we talking about? Hurricane hit you? Tornado?”

  “It’s Lou Ann. She’s the disaster.” Danny heard something crash inside. Billy Hudmon pulled out another Budweiser from a cooler without a top to it. He opened it and drank deep. “Lou Ann’s mightily pissed off at me.”

  “Then why doesn’t she leave?”

  “She thinks I’m the one who’s going to leave. And that I am, for two hours. Soon as I clean this shotgun, I’m going to put this mother in my truck and drive down to my watering hole.”

  “You got another gun you could sell me?”

  “I have a Colt .45 I can sell you.”

  “How much?”

  “How much you willing to pay?”

  “How big a thirst you got, Billy?”

  Case of Jim Beam worth, but Danny didn’t have the money for that. Ninety-nine fifty was the least Billy Hudmon would take.

  “You can have it for ninety-nine fifty. You come back I’ll have it for you.”

  Danny moved on up the road, toward the plastic pink flamingo in the front yard of their trailer. His brother Ben’s dirt bike was missing. Lorraine was in the bedroom with Slade. She must not have known he was around because he didn’t advertise it anymore, his comings and goings, not with Slade there. Danny’s guitar case was missing. His Penthouse Forums were missing. Where was little Ben, little Ben’s dirt bike? Danny picked up the Yamaha, cheapest guitar you can buy, man. The steel strings resisted his efforts to chord. He laid the guitar on the bunk bed, twanged the E string, out of tune. Through the dusty slats of the venetian blinds, he watched a squirrel make a leap for the bird feeder. Lorraine kept on trying to feed the birds, but the squirrels got most of the action. Danny was out in a flash with his BB pistol, in the heat sifting off the pines. He took aim for the left eye, pumped BB’s into the eyeball. One spattered, jellied squirrel eye for your dinner tonight, big Slade. Here let me put some on your plate.

  Danny dropped the dead squirrel in the garbage can. Its good eye stayed in his mind for a little while. The sparrows were back on the feeder. Cardinals and jays would succeed the sparrows. The big boys, grackles and cow birds, would come later, take over for awhile.

  Slade’s supersensitive radar had picked up on where the dead squirrel was. Slade paid him a little visit. First thing, Slade picked up the Yamaha and put a boot into the sound box.

  “How many times have I told you, you take them squirrels out to the woods?” Slade cuffed him, rattled his jaw. “Your mama she don’t want to see dead squirrels. She don’t want to know about dead squirrels.”

  Slade told you how much he hated a goddamned stinking garbage can—bits of slithering fat, spoiled meat, dead putrefying tomcats. The BB pistol was no longer yours. From now on Slade would take care of the squirrels. In two more hours, in two days tops, Slade would be ancient history.

  Danny took the squirrel to the woods in a Kmart bag. He followed a path that led to the creek where his father would take him when he was five. They were living in a house then, on the other side of the woods. His father would sit down with him. His father would play the harmonica awhile. They’d sit on one of the rotting logs and look down at the creek awhile. There was a log bridge and they would sit on it, let their feet hang towards the water. His father would play the harmonica, one song, “The Streets of Laredo.” That was the song his father liked most. Danny wanted to learn the song on the guitar, but now he didn’t have a guitar. He had learned it on the harmonica.

  The weight of the squirrel, a dead thing now, made him consider dropping it anywhere. But he thought if he dropped it in the creek it would foul the creek for others. That way they would be kept away. He wished his father had been put in the creek. He would have liked to have had his father cremated. He’d have taken the ashes to the creek, in the helmet his father wore on the line trucks. The bright yellow helmet would be in the garage, with his father’s power tools, shotguns, and fishing rods. You ever get hold of a hot line, Danny, you will be blown to kingdom come. Slade had gotten rid of the helmet.

  Little Ben was already there. Dirt bikes lay on their sides like some sort of parody of languor. Little Ben sat on the log bridge. His pants were around his ankles. Little Ben’s little friends were jerking off. Penthouse Forums were still in the guitar case. Jerk-offs! Danny was swinging the squirrel. He heaved the squirrel after the dirt bikes. He groped for the C harmonica. It was buried under a crumbling log, lichened, almost a part of the soil. Light slanted through the tall pines; bright pennies peppered the creek. He had to open his knife and pry loose the dirt that had collected inside the mouth holes. He held it, the harmonica, put it slowly to his mouth. In and out, blow notes and draw notes, bending the draw notes, good sound. He imagined he was his father. His father was playing for him. He was playing “The Streets of Laredo,” a certain young cowboy I happened to see.

  Uncle Walton hadn’t finished repairing the car, but Billy Hudmon had a gun for him. disaster area had been replaced with a sign that said a man’s home is his castle.

  Colt .45 automatic—you can have it for ninety-nine fifty. The door to the trailer was open once he counted out the money. The welcome mat draped on the concrete block welcomed Danny, a paying guest. Inside, Lou Ann was sprawled on the couch. Billy opened a Budweiser before he showed him the gun.

  “This piece weighs a ton when you fire it.”

  There was another path from Billy’s trailer, through the woods to the creek. Danny wasn’t willing to go that far and Billy Hudmon wasn’t able to. Billy Hudmon handed Danny a clip and showed him how to load the clip. With the heel of his left hand, he shot the bolt, flicked the safety off with the flange of his thumb.

  He put the beer bottle in the fork of a tree. Danny gripped the .45 with a two-handed grip. He put pressure on the trigger, but the trigger wouldn’t give. He had to use both forefingers to pull the trigger. The kick knocked his hands up, deafening.

  “Let me show you how it’s done.”

  Beer breath, Billy’s sweat in his face, Billy stepping around behind you, leaning around you to grip your left hand, goat beard scratching the back of your neck, but you could take that, his body, the smell of him, his hands cupping yours like a slimy toad. “You got to keep putting on pressure slow. Keep your elbows locked. Let the recoil bring the weapon back.”

  Bark spattered off the fork of the tree.

  Billy stepped back, let Billy take the .45, let Billy demonstrate his marksmanship. The third shot shattered the bottle.

  “Now you see how it’s done.” Billy held out the .45; he had to get close to take it from him. The box of cartridge clips, he took that too.

  After Billy went back to his trailer, Danny followed the path to the creek. He pushed back the log and laid the .45 down without looking at the harmonica. He set the box of clips beside the .45.

  He picked up the car a little later. Uncle Walton had done the best he could do. The front end had half a header, the other half twisted metal like someone with half of his face gouged out. The right headlight stared back at him, the signal lights hanging down like an ear. You could put your hand on the radiator. His car was parked all by itself, in back of Uncle Walton’s paint and body shop. He had walked all the way from the trailer.

  Uncle Walton was on the telephone. He was talking to Dee, yes I’ll be there Dee, looking off at the paint on the wall.

  How many times do I have to tell you get rid of that goddamned piece of junk? I don’t want to see it anymore, Slade had said to him. And you take them dead squirrels out to the woods. He saw Slade coming out of Knott’s Tavern. Wait till he’s about to get in his car. Put the pressure on slow, squeeze the trigger. Head shot, blow out his goddamned brains. Uncle Walton, still talking to Dee.

  Uncle Walton wouldn’t have anything to say to him because he wouldn’t know he had a gun. Watch where you’re driving next time. Don’t head south to Florida
yet. Don’t do it, Danny, I’m telling you! Keep talking, you’re just wasting your breath. Danny stared at the blood in the water cooler, blood squirting out into paper cups, Slade’s blood, his goddamned stepfather’s. Pipe blood in from the bathtub, from Slade’s body, knees up, throat slashed big. Little snort out of the cooler, Slade. Count Dracula’s premium brew for you.

  Danny was parked outside of Knott’s Tavern. He watched a line crew moving a hot line. There were two bucket trucks, a bucket for each lineman. Rubber hoses sheathed the secondaries, clothespinned rubber blankets encased the insulators. Knock you to kingdom come. The linemen worked deliberately, aloft, aloof in their buckets. They were moving the line to a new pole, numeral plates flush with the secondaries catching bits of unapproachable light.

  He waited another hour. The linemen tied in the primaries, came down, the elbowed lifts folding in on themselves, setting the linemen on the pavement again. They peeled off their tool belts and hung them up on a rack in the back of the truck. The ground man taped up a coil of copper wire, rolled up the rubber blankets, stashed the hoses, gathered up pulley lines. One lineman went to the water cooler embedded in one side of the truck. Clear cold water for this good man, for all the good men in the line crew.

  That night they got into it about the goddamned squirrel with its throat slit with his mother’s carving knife. All they could do now was drink and fight. His mother burned the frozen pizza. Dragging it charred from the oven, she stepped on little Ben’s skateboard. She skidded across the linoleum. The pizza sailed up off the cookie sheet, splattered in Slade’s pig face, his ape hands thickened with cheese, blackened anchovies, tomato splotches, then Slade’s pig face behind the network of hands. Danny was swinging the frying pan, trying to get to Slade’s pig face. He felt it wrenched away in Slade’s big hands. He heard the frying pan clang against the stove. Something crashed in his head and he went down.

  When he came to Slade wasn’t there anymore. His mother couldn’t get up. Bits of cheese were stuck to his mother’s face. She put her hands on pink rollers. Danny breathed in the acrid smoke. He went to the door and opened it, letting warm air in to thin out the smoke. He was running now, down the path to the creek. The creek was overlaid with shadow. He couldn’t help his mother anymore. He pushed the log back, picked up the harmonica, puckered his lips on a mouth hole, blowing a sustained, soothing note. The .45 and the box of cartridges were where he’d left them, beside the harmonica now. His fingers touched metal. He would leave the harmonica under the log, where he had kept it all these years.

  It was dark when he left the creek. He went to his car first and put the .45 in the glove compartment. Then he went to his room in the trailer. He got a suitcase out of the closet. He emptied his dresser drawers on the bunk, picked out some things to take with him, left other things, including his baseball cards. He was on his way out when his mother came in. She was holding an ice pack against her jaw. She held a bottle of sherry pressed to one of her breasts, about half-full, with a cork in it. She still wore rollers in her hair.

  “You’re leaving me.”

  “You can come with me.”

  “I have to take care of little Ben.”

  “I’ll take both of you to Uncle Walton’s. Tonight. He’s willing to have you.”

  “Dee isn’t willing, you know that.”

  “You stop drinking she might have you.”

  “I can’t do that, Danny.”

  “All right, don’t do it. You can stay here, but I’m going.”

  Her face leaned into the ice pack. She set the ice pack down on Danny’s bed. She uncorked the bottle of sherry. “You can’t go. You’re all I have. I lost your father. Now I’m losing you.”

  He had lost his mother a long time ago. He remembered her, how she was before Slade, with her hair in rollers then like now. It was that way when the telephone rang, while she put on her uniform, fixed her face. She asked Danny to answer the telephone please. He remembered the telephone on the wall, something brown and thick then, a blotch on the wall like a silverfish against the blistered paint and loose plaster, yet thinking maybe he’d hear something good like winning the lottery, like getting rich, like his mother not having to work anymore but his father maybe he should work, be a lineman, but not in bad weather, he thought, work part-time, not on a hot line, he thought, just be up there in your chariot looking proud and tall and good.

  It was Tom Brown, his father’s foreman. I would like to speak to your mother, please.

  Not his mother but Tom Brown in his mind. A tall man who kept his back straight. His father used to do him but not to his face. Striding in from the kitchen, his father stuck out his Tom Brown jaw. He looked up at the ceiling fixture, the way Tom Brown looked up at a spot where a transformer would be hoisted up, or up at the crossbeam not yet in place, the bright wire not yet tied in to the glossy new spool insulators, or looked down to the spot on the ground where the new pole would go, the hole not dug, the posthole diggers unused yet, the cant hooks not yet clawing the pine, the pikes not biting wood yet. His father would stretch his lips in imitation of Tom Brown’s distended grin. Here’s where the work is boys, his father would say Tom Brown would say. That’s all Tom Brown ever says, his father would say.

  His mother was standing close to him. “You’ll be hearing from me. I’ll be all right,” he said.

  He leaned out to kiss his mother’s lips. She kissed him goodbye, she held him close. This is goodbye, this is it.

  Little Ben in the passenger seat, his white face set, was waiting for him in the car. “I’m coming with you, Danny.”

  “You can’t come with me,” Danny said. He was going where Ben couldn’t follow him, already knowing he would have to pay, already seeing the time he would do like a long road without an end.

  The View from My Father’s Window

  My father, Paul Creel, isn’t the man he used to be, hasn’t been since he’s had the brain tumor. Mama says he’s deteriorated, and I have to say I agree with her. In the photograph on their dresser they’re in their church clothes, holding hands. He’s wearing the double-breasted dark blue suit he used to wear to church. Mama’s wearing her favorite church dress, sky-blue silk with white polka dots—a little tight on her now. Too many pounds in the wrong places, she says, but she still wears that dress to church.

  Mama’s feeding him Gerber’s baby food. She dips a spoon into the jar, concentrating her gaze without changing her smile on the spoon sliding over to his open mouth. She wraps the jar in aluminum foil so he won’t know it’s baby food. One time my wife, Sandy, made the mistake of telling him what he was eating. He wouldn’t let Mama feed him that night; he wasn’t having any baby food. Mama spoons out chicken and dumplings, coaxing the stuff past his lower lip. We’re having chicken and dumplings for dinner, Pauley. That used to be one of his favorite meals. Chicken and dumplings, collard greens, corn on the cob, a quart of iced tea to wash it down, you better believe he could put it away.

  Mama has him in a diaper when the Reverend Hatcher comes to pray for him. We can’t keep him from pulling the blanket off. The Reverend Hatcher is sitting beside the bed. He takes my father’s right hand in his big ham hands patting it like he was patting a dog if he had one but he doesn’t. He won’t look at the diaper.

  My father turns over on one side, that he’s able to do. He cups his chin in his hand, stretching toes out on one stretched out foot, his toenails so long they’re hooking. Pay no attention, Mama whispers, he’s deteriorating, so I try not to. The Reverend Hatcher can’t get up out of his chair. The Reverend Hatcher’s white shirt, it’s stuck to the ladder-back chair.

  My father was an enlisted man in World War Two. On the living room wall we have a map of France and western Germany showing his unit’s movements, in dotted red ink, a Third Army patch and his unit insignia superimposed, and a photograph of him in summer khakis and garrison cap.

  He told me this story abo
ut the war, just after I turned sixteen. He had me learning to drive; he took me down the road a ways and made me keep at it until the gears stopped grinding and I got the hang of it. Then we went to the Dairy Delight in town and he bought me a banana split. I saw him filling up his side of the booth and remembered the photograph of him in the living room, a skinny kid like myself then, and that made me ask him about the war. He said you wouldn’t want to know about it. Then he said—here’s something I think you should know about—and lit up a Camel and started in.

  He had a buddy, Denny Maxwell. He told me what had happened to Denny Maxwell. That was in November of 1944, in the fighting in the Hurtgen Forest. It was cold in the Hurtgen Forest. In the mornings they’d have to thaw out their socks, try doing that in a foxhole. He and Denny were on patrol one morning and up ahead they saw a farm house. There weren’t any Germans around. Denny Maxwell was freezing his tail off so he decided he was going to go to that farm house and get warm no matter what. The farm house sat in an open field edged with woods, but that didn’t bother Denny Maxwell. “He told me the bullet that had his name on it hadn’t been made yet.” Denny Maxwell wanted my father to go with him, but my father wasn’t about to do that. He said he didn’t want to be a target. So Denny Maxwell went out there himself and the Germans opened up on him from the woods. He must have had a dozen bullets in him and every one had his name on it.

  “You remember Denny Maxwell, Wayne,” my father said to me, grinding his Camel out in a Dairy Delight ashtray, “when you’re about to do something stupid.”

  I’ve been married to Sandy for seventeen years. We’ve had a pretty good life together. We have a teenage son, Wayne Jr., who so far has stayed out of trouble. We have good jobs, a good income between us. I’m still parts manager at Fuller Ford and Sandy’s still teaching English at Beauregard High.

  My father worked at Uniroyal for thirty years. Before that he worked at the mill hauling cotton bales on a fork lift. He got laid off when the mill closed down, but lucky for him—lucky for me he’d say—he got on at Uniroyal. At Uniroyal, he had job security, and benefits, a pension, a group medical plan, the only bad thing about his job was, toward the end anyway, before he retired, they kept changing shifts on him. He’d work day shift part of the week, then they’d switch him over to the swing shift. That, he used to tell us, can get old pretty quick. He’d tell Mama he ought to quit, take a little less in his retirement package.