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  Mal tried to imagine what she talked about. Rena brought the fifteen extra frames, which he bought without correcting anyone. There would come a time, he knew, when he’d need to fill up the walk-in closet with photographs of the old walk-in closet. I’ll have a head start, he thought. To Maime he said, “Where in the world is ‘Raw Kill’?”

  “Rock Hill’s up by Charlotte. You ain’t ever heard of Rock Hill?”

  He shook his head. He paid in cash and said he didn’t need a bag. “Raw Kill,” he said on his way out of the store. “Raw Kill, Raw Kill, Raw Kill.” He said, “Maim me. Maim me. Maim me. Raw Kill.”

  MAL WAS SURPRISED to not find his wife’s car parked in front of Gus. He walked in to find Rodney Sheets sitting in front of what Mal assumed was his last bourbon ordered. Mal said, “You off not doing chores today, Rodney?”

  “Pretty much. Is this your drink? I been here ten minutes. Where’d everybody go?”

  From where he sat, on the other side of the camcorder, Rodney couldn’t see the river. Mal pointed and said, “We had a little episode earlier. This guy let his RV slip on down into the river.”

  Rodney got up and looked. He said, “Gus won’t mind if I just keep a tally,” and reached across the bar for a plastic cup. Then he walked around the bar and grabbed a quart of bourbon. He said, “No, I don’t have any chores today. Wife’s gone off to spend some time with her old college roommate in Chattanooga.” He grimaced to himself. Rodney didn’t like to let on that his wife went to college or that he taught American literature to ESL students at one of the satellite campuses. As far as Mal or Gus knew, Rodney harvested marijuana on the banks of the Saluda in order to make ends meet, just like everyone else did.

  “If you don’t want strangers knowing your business,” Mal said, “don’t say anything in front of the camera. This old boy wants to make a film of himself for his run-off wife, or something. I might didn’t catch everything he said.”

  Rodney walked back around the counter and turned off the camera. He said, “No problem.” Then he changed barstools in order to look down at the Winnebago. Gus had his arms outstretched. Prison Tat Pat nodded. Then they both looked downstream before trekking uphill.

  “I’m definitely going to need a tow,” Pat Taft said back inside the bar. He looked at Rodney Sheets and said, “Prison Tat Pat,” and stuck out his hand. “You can sit there, I guess. You won’t be in the way.” Pat Taft sat down to the right of Rodney. Mal thought, There are a dozen barstools here and we’re sitting three together like fools.

  Gus came in and said, “If it tears up my land, you’re paying me some money.” He handed over a cocktail napkin that he’d stolen from another bar. “Sign your name here at the bottom and I’m going to fill out an IOU if it costs me money in grass seed and whatnot,” he said to Pat Taft.

  “And you got it on film,” Pat said, pointing his thumb to the camcorder. Mal and Rodney said nothing.

  The door behind them opened, and again Mal inwardly cringed. But it was Maime. She said to Mal, “I figured you’d be here,” and plopped down the two bottles of Cheerwine he’d forgotten to pick up off of the Lazy Susan plastic bag dispenser. “You forgot these. Well, I admit that I forgot them, too.”

  Prison Tat Pat said, “Now we’re talking. Say, do you know the country superstar Jeannie C. Riley? I’m the one who talked her into changing over from bonds into goldmines. See here?” Pat showed off his knuckles.

  “You off work?” Gus asked. “You want you one them rum drinks?”

  Maime said, “I tell you what I want. I want me a new job. Me and Rena ain’t exactly getting along so well. Me and Rena, and me and Cindy, and me and whoever the manager is today. I need me a job either waiting tables or bartending.”

  Mal thought, Me need some attention. Gus said, “Well I’ll keep you in mind.”

  “What’s with the camera?” Maime said. She shook hair out of her eyes and smiled at the lens. “It ain’t on, you know.”

  Prison Tat Pat said, “Damn. What happened?”

  Rodney Sheets said, “The lights flickered in here a few minutes ago. Maybe it turned it off.” No one thought about how the camera wasn’t running on electricity.

  “What happened to Windshield?” Mal said. “Where’s Windshield? His moped’s still out front.”

  Maime said, “Turn it on.”

  “Do you know that ‘Harper Valley PTA’ song? I’ll turn it on if you sing the ‘Harper Valley PTA’ song,” Prison Tat Pat said.

  “I know that one, and I know some more,” Maime said.

  Mal Mardis looked out the window. He watched as Windshield emerged wet from beneath the carriage of the RV. He had a rope in his hands, and Mal knew from experience that the other end held a grappling hook Gus kept nearby in case anyone ever needed to drag the river.

  WHEN BRENDA SHOWED up, covered in grout, paint, caulk, sawdust, and glue, Maime stood in the center of Gus, her legs spread apart unnaturally, belting out “I Fall to Pieces” into Prison Tat Pat’s camcorder. Mal sat at the bar smiling; he lifted his vodka tonic toward his wife. Rodney Sheets kept his back to the spectacle, and Gus looked up from behind the bar as if ready to pull out his pistol.

  Windshield had looped the rope around one of the building’s smooth, round pine pylons that served as supports for the back end of Gus’s establishment. He tied the end to the back of his moped and revved the tiny engine, faced toward the non-submerged end of the Winnebago. Rodney Sheets said, “You might want to go downstairs and tell that old boy he’s going to pull this bar off its foundation, if it works. And it won’t work, by the way.”

  Gus turned around, cursed, and told Mal that he was in charge of the bar for a minute. Brenda arced around Maime and said, “I called up One-Hour Photo and the man said they haven’t had problems with deliveries. He said they were open for business.”

  Mal got up from his barstool and went around to Gus’s side. He said to his wife, “Let me fix you a little something.” He raised his voice. Windshield’s moped sounded like a chainsaw below.

  “Okay. Fix me a triple scotch. Is that the most expensive drink there is?”

  Maime finished up the song, extending the word “pieces” into a trill of about twenty syllables. She said, “I won karaoke one night doing that song.”

  Prison Tat Pat said, “I’mo tell you what. You stay in touch with me, and I’ll get you a Nashville contract. Or at least one in Branson. I know everybody there is to know. Well, to be honest, there’s one record producer we can’t talk to seeing as I had him invest in a mutual fund called GUNK they specialized in Guyana, Uganda, Nigeria, and Kenya. That didn’t quite work out like some people thought it would.” Prison Tat Pat turned to Brenda and said, “Well hello there.”

  Brenda took her triple scotch from Mal and threw it in his face. She said, “That was good. I’ll have another.”

  They all heard Windshield yell, “No!” and gathered at the counter, looked out the window. Either the rope broke or the knot untied, and Windshield rammed into the back of the halfsunken Winnebago at thirty miles an hour. Rodney Sheets said, “If this were a movie, the post would’ve come loose downstairs, and all of us would’ve fallen down to the ground. Rising action, climax, denouement. Traditional development. I guess things don’t work out around this part of the South like they do in movies.”

  Mal poured his wife another scotch. He only poured two shots, though. “You need to pace yourself,” he said, laughing. He shook booze out of his hair. Mal said, “Go ahead and throw it,” but Brenda took a sip and placed the cup down. They all looked down at Windshield. He tested both arms, then felt his face. “When he comes back up here,” Mal said, “let’s all call him Bumper. Tailgate. I bet he won’t even notice.”

  “Traditional development,” Brenda said. “Where’s the film rolls? Give me the film and I’ll go get it done myself.”

  “I’ll do it right now,” Mal said. “I promise. Let me just finish this last drink and I’ll do it myself.” Brenda stuck out her hand
. Mal fished in his pocket and handed her the rolls.

  Prison Tat Pat said, “I need him here to help me get my RV out of the water.”

  Brenda got up. She looked at Maime and said, “You should go to Nashville. From what I hear, there’s a lot more opportunities for karaokeists there.”

  Prison Tat Pat nodded. He said, “Let’s all live dangerously and try to pull my RV out of the water. It’ll be fun. I’ll buy drinks for everyone if it works out right.”

  Brenda didn’t respond. She walked out of the bar, got in her car, sat there a moment, then returned to Mal and his new comrades before they emerged from the bar to dislodge the Winnebago. Maime now sat at the bar next to Prison Tat Pat, the camera turned their way. Mal stood at the end of the counter, and Rodney used the bathroom. Brenda walked slowly so as not to spook her husband and said, “I might as well confess, even though I’m still mad at you for coming here.”

  Mal said, “What now? I’m just going to help these people, Brenda. That’s it.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was going to say, you didn’t need to get the pictures developed anyway. I changed my mind. That gris gray grout would’ve stained too much. I’m going to—”

  Was she going to tear up the tile and re-grout the entire project? Mal wondered. Brenda stopped in mid-sentence, for she overheard Prison Tat Pat’s conversation. Pat was in the middle of saying, “I can’t believe no herbiculturalist ain’t thought of it before. But I know a man in Nashville who’s right at the brink, and I’m investing all my money in him.”

  Brenda said, “Say all that again. Hey, man from Nashville, start your story over.”

  Prison Tat Pat said, “Pat Taft. They call me Prison Tat Pat.” He spoke louder, obviously for the camera. “I got a good acquaintance who has developed bonsai grass. It’ll grow two inches, and that’s it. Never needs cutting, you know. You plant it, you water it, it gets two inches high, and you’re done. It’s going to revolutionize the lawn care business. Hell, once this spreads nationwide, it’ll cause enormous unemployment for people who cut grass for a living. It’ll knock out John Deere lawn mowers. Snapper. Husqvarna. Murray push mowers. There’s already a bonsai grass out on the market, but it ain’t as good as my friend’s will be.”

  Mal Mardis sat down at the nearest barstool and dropped his head on the linoleum. He didn’t bring up how he managed the Garden Center at Home Depot. Mal thought, It’ll knock out miniature golf courses seeing as everyone would have one on their front yard. Eventually, it’ll cause my unemployment, and then I’ll be stuck at home.

  Brenda kissed him on top of his head and spit gravel out of the parking lot, but not in an angry way, Mal understood. No, she left excited. Already he envisioned how her next project would involve taking up entire squares of sod and replacing them. He tried to imagine what his yard would look like with eight-by-ten photographs of the old lawn. Would Brenda nail them to the trees? Would she balance them right on the ground? Would she obtain and blow up one of those satellite photographs of the housetop and surrounding land as it is now, and maybe glue it to the front door, the driveway, the mailbox?

  When Windshield returned muddy-kneed, wet, and bruised, Gus followed holding the grappling hook. Gus checked his bottles behind the bar and asked who’d gotten into the scotch. Mal thought, This is how people end up making what strangers call a rash decision. He thought, If we get that RV out of the water, I’m getting in.

  He asked for water. He said, “I need to lay off the chemicals and sober up.”

  Two weeks later he’d think the same thing, once he figured out that Prison Tat Pat viewed his own videotape, heard what Gus and Mal had to say about their marijuana plot, then snuck back onto the property and down the river—maybe with Maime at his side—in order to harvest their entire crop. Mal would tell Gus that maybe it was for the best. That’s the way things run around here. He’d point out that if he sold off the pot, then he’d have a bunch of money. Soon thereafter he’d spend that on scratch cards, and he’d win. Winning money, as he had learned, wasn’t necessarily good fortune, at least not for people like him.

  HEX KEYS

  THE FOURTH WOMAN STOOD OUTSIDE HER TRAILER, wearing a smudged orange pantsuit, holding a dead three-foot-long rat snake by the tail, near the roadside ditch. The look on her face said something like, “This is nothing, comparatively speaking.” She looked like she might bellow out, “This ain’t as bad as dealing with smoke damage inside the bedroom.” Later on, I couldn’t imagine my father planning a better scenario. What did he expect when we pulled down that clay-rut road? I would’ve bet that he plainly wanted to drive by the single-wide, maybe see the woman out there sweeping her dirt driveway with a cheap rake missing prongs, if anything, then his getting back onto some valid blacktop as soon as possible. He would’ve said, “See?” or, “There you go,” or, “What do you think you’d be doing inside that place, if she’d been your mother?”

  “I almost took that woman to the prom,” my father said. “We were dating, I asked her, and then her daddy said he didn’t like me. Said I wasn’t what his daughter deserved, or something like that. Anyway, she could’ve been your mother.”

  This occurred in June, Father’s Day, 1972. I was twelve. My father had friends in Vietnam. I had a couple older cousins over there, too, plus neighbors with sons and relatives unlucky enough to serve. I’d bought my father a new set of Allen wrenches and had them wrapped up nicely on the kitchen table for when he got up and ate his everyday breakfast of Cream of Wheat with blackstrap molasses. We didn’t eat breakfast on Father’s Day, 1972, as it ended up. He woke me, had my pants and shirt laid out on a chair, and said, “Come on. Hurry up. We got some places to go today I want you to see.”

  Our first stop was a breakfast joint one town over called Mama’s Nook. Somebody had spray-painted an “ie” after the name on the side of the cement-block building. This wasn’t any kind of raised-letter sign, or neon. It wasn’t a nice porcelain sign or even a cut-out piece of plywood attached to the cinderblock. It looked as if the owner hired out someone with a proper stencil set to flat-out paint right onto the exterior. I didn’t know the term “nookie” yet. I knew “poontang” only because, right after my mother took a temporary hiatus from the family in order to “tend to more important tasks in the long run,” my father took grease pencils and wrote P-O-O-N on the labels of Tang that he drank each morning with his Cream of Wheat.

  I said, “I got you a Father’s Day present.”

  My father turned into the narrow lot. He stared straight ahead and, without moving his lips much, said, “Mama’s Nookie’s the place to be.”

  At this point I didn’t know that my father had an established plan for the day, and that he’d been saving it up. I’ll give him this: He didn’t seem to blame my mom for checking herself into some kind of clinic that treated chronic depression and pain. Me, I’d said some bad things about her to friends. When my buddy Clay called up to tell me how his mom made him wear ironed blue jeans, or told him to quit eating Milk Duds, I’d said, “At least your mother doesn’t mind seeing you in the morning” and, “At least you have a mother who doesn’t want you to ruin your teeth.” To be honest, I didn’t quite understand my mother’s alleged predicament. She’d been gone two months, and I doubted that she would return ever.

  We walked in and sat down at a booth. This was a Sunday, so everyone else inside, it seemed, wore church clothes. The men—all fathers—sported boutonnieres, and I felt a certain shame for not thinking to clip a rose from one of our bushes out front.

  The waitress who came to our table wore a name tag. My father said, “Hello, Arlene.”

  “Well, well, well. I heard you might be back to alone. Wondered when you might come crawling over here.” She wore a yellow dress with a stain along the right side. Her hair probably wasn’t formed into tight pin curls naturally, nor platinum. Arlene’s head reminded me of a vegetable scrubber we had under the sink.

  She tossed down two laminated one-sheet menus, front only
. She said, “We out of liver mush, so don’t ask. We had a run on liver mush, and Mama ain’t had time to go to the store.”

  My father said, “This is my son, Preston,” and nodded his head once across the table, my way.

  I said, “Hello.”

  Arlene smiled. She had all of her teeth, which kind of surprised me. She said, “Hey, Varlene, get on over here,” without taking her eyes off me.

  Varlene wasn’t a twin, but the two women looked alike. They wore the same uniform and went to the same hairdresser, at least. Varlene showed up from behind the cash register and said, “Buck Hewitt. Hey, Buck. Is this Buck Jr.?”

  She didn’t look at me. My father said no and introduced me again. For some reason I thought it the perfect opportunity to set these two women straight. I said, “A lot of people call me Presto, like if you took the ‘n’ off my name. I do a lot of magic tricks.” “A lot” was an exaggeration. I knew about four card tricks, and could make a quarter disappear about half the time.

  Varlene said, “Magic. Like father, like son.” Then she returned to the register without saying goodbye.

  My father said, “I’ll just have an egg sandwich.” To me he said, “Hey, Preston, Arlene and Varlene have a sister. Guess what’s her name.”

  On my second try I figured out “Darlene,” and then I ordered a waffle.

  “Waffle,” Arlene said. “I could’ve guessed that one from a Hewitt.” I figured out her allusion years later.

  My father didn’t move his lips much and spoke quietly. He said, “When I get the sandwich, I’m not going to eat it. You eat up your waffle just fine, but I’m going to plain sit here.”

  I leaned across the table. “Say that again?”

  My father looked to his left, at all the people bowed in prayer before their breakfasts showed up. For the first time ever I noticed how his face resembled a half-melted back porch citronella candle. He said, “Never eat food served to you by someone you’ve hurt, Preston. If I can teach you anything, that’s it. Well, it’s one of the things.” Then he went on, quietly, to tell me how he’d dated Arlene and broken up with her, dated Varlene and broken up with her—even took Darlene out to a movie once, but halfway through she stood up and made a scene. My father said that her two sisters paid her five dollars, which was huge money back in the early 1950s, to break up with him. “It’s not like we were going together, you know. But it was kind of embarrassing in front of all those people watching Marlon Brando.”