Between Wrecks Read online

  “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 half-sunken 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 midsentence, 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 Pri
son 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 lawnmowers. 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.

  WHICH ROOKS WE CHOOSE

  Luckily for everyone in the family on down, the mule spoke English to my grandfather. Up until this seminal point in the development of what became Carolina Rocks, a few generations of Loopers had tried to farm worthless land that sloped from mountainside down to all branches and tributaries of the Saluda River. From what I understood, my great-great-grandfather and then his son barely grew enough corn to feed their families, much less take to market. Our land stood so desolate back then that no Looper joined the troops in the 1860s; no Looper even understood that the country underwent some type of a conflict. What I’m saying is, our stretch of sterile soil kept Loopers from needing slaves, which pretty much caused locals to label them everything from uppity to unpatriotic, from hex-ridden to slow-witted. Until the mule spoke English to my grandfather, our family crest might’ve portrayed a chipped plow blade, wilted sprigs, a man with a giant question mark above his head.

  “Don’t drown the rocks,” the harnessed mule said, according to legend. It turned its head around to my teenaged grandfather, looked him in the eye just like any of the famous solid-hoofed talking equines of Hollywood. “Do not throw rocks in the river. Keep them in a pile. They shall be bought in time by those concerned with decorative landscaping, for walls and paths and flower beds.”

  That’s what my grandfather came back from the field to tell everybody. Maybe they grew enough corn for moonshine, I don’t know. My own father told me this story when I complained mightily from the age of seven on for having to work for Carolina Rocks, whether lugging, sorting, piling, or using the backhoe later. The mule’s name wasn’t Sisyphus, I doubt, but that’s what I came to call it when I thought it necessary to explain the situation to my common law wife, Abby. I said, “If it weren’t for Sisyphus, you and I would still be trying to find a crop that likes plenty of rain but no real soil to take root. We’d be experimenting every year with tobacco, rice, coffee, and cranberry farming.”

  Abby stared at me a good minute. She said, “What? I wasn’t listening. Did you say we can’t have children?”

  I said, “A good mule told my grandfather to quit trying to farm, and to sell off both river rocks and field stone. That’s how come we do what we do. Or at least what my grandfather and dad did what they did.” This little speech occurred on the day I turned thirty-three, the day I became the same age as Jesus, the day I finally decided to go back to college. Up until this point Abby and I had lived in the Looper family house. My dad had been dead eleven years, my mom twenty. I said, “Anyway, I think the Caterpillar down on the banks is rusted up enough now for both of us to admit we’re not going to continue with the business once we sell off the remaining stock.”

  When I took over Carolina Rocks we already had about two hundred tons of beautiful black one- to three-inch skippers dug out of the river stockpiled. I probably scooped out another few hundred tons over the next eight years. But with land developers razing both sides of the border for gated mountain golf course communities, in need of something other than mulch, there was no way I could keep up. A ton of rocks isn’t the size of half a French car. Sooner or later, too, I predicted, the geniuses at the EPA would figure out that haphazardly digging out riverbeds and shorelines wouldn’t be beneficial downstream. Off in other corners of our land we had giant piles of round rocks, pebbles, chunks, flagstones, and chips used for walkways, driveways, walls, and artificial spring houses. Until my thirty-third birthday, when I would make that final decision to enroll in a low-residency master’s program in Southern culture studies, I would sell off what rocks we had quarried, graded, and—according to my mood—either divided into color, shape, or size.

  I never really felt that the Loopers’ ways of going about the river rock and field stone business incorporated what our competitors might’ve known in regards to supply and demand, or using time wisely.

  “Can we go back to trying our chosen field?” Abby asked. She wore a pair of gray sweatpants and a Moonpie T-shirt. Both of us wore paper birthday cones on our heads. “Please say that we can send out our resumes to TV stations around the country. Hell, I’d give the news in Mississippi if it got my foot in the door.”

  She pronounced it “Mishishippi.” She wasn’t drunk. One of our professors should’ve taken her aside right about Journalism 101 and told her to find a new field of study, or concentrate in print media. I didn’t have it in me to tell Abby that my grandfather’s mule enunciated better than she did. When she wasn’t helping out with the Carolina Rocks bookkeeping chores, she drove down to Greenville and led aerobics classes. I never saw her conducting a class in person, but I imagined her saying “Shtep, shtep, shtep,” over and over.

  “It’s funny that you should mention Mississippi,” I said. I thought of the term “segue,” from when I underwent communications studies classes as an undergraduate, usually seated right next to Abby. “I’m going to go ahead and enroll in that Southern studies program. It’ll all be done by email and telephone, pretty much, and then I have to go to Mississippi for ten days in the summer and winter. Then, in a couple years, maybe I can go teach college somewhere. We can sell off this land and move to an actual city. It’ll be easier for you to maybe find a job that you’re interested in.”

  I loved my wife more than I loved finding and digging up a truckload of schist. Abby got up from the table, smiled, walked into the den and picked up a gift-wrapped box. She said, “You cannot believe how afraid I was you’d change your mind. Open it up.”

  I kind of hoped it was a big bottle of bourbon so we could celebrate there at the kitchen table as the sun
rose. I shook it. I said, “It’s as heavy as a prize-winning geode,” for I compared everything to rocks. When it hailed, those ice crystals hitting the ground were either pea gravel or riprap, never golf balls like the meteorologists said.

  “I’m hoping this will help you in the future. In our future.” Abby leaned back and put her palms on the floor like some kind of contortionist. “I don’t mind teaching aerobics, but I can’t do that when I’m sixty. I can still report the news when I’m sixty.”

  Sixschtee.

  I opened the box to uncover volumes one, two, and three of The South: What Happened, How, When, and Why. Abby said, “I don’t know what else you’re going to learn in a graduate course that’s not already in here, but maybe it’ll give you ideas.”

  I might’ve actually felt tears well up. I opened the first chapter of the third volume to find the heading “BBQ, Ticks, Cotton-mouths, and Moonshine.” I said, “You might be right. What’s left to learn?”

  I’m not sure how other low-residency programs in Southern culture studies work, but immediately after I sent off the online application—which only included names of references, not actual letters of recommendation—I got accepted. An hour later I paid for the first half-year with a credit card. I emailed the “registrar” asking if I needed to send copies of my undergraduate transcripts and she said that they were a trusting lot at the University of Mississippi-Taylor. She wrote back that she and the professors all believed in a person’s word being his bond, and so on, and that the program probably wouldn’t work out for me if I was the sort who needed everything in writing.