Calloustown (19 page)

Monica wasn't accustomed to drinking either.

I went outside to smoke, and Lee Wayne followed me. Listen, I don't think they had any of this planned. You'd think Monica called up her brother, said, “I'm going to leave Clewis, and I want you over here in case he gets violent,” and had her bags all packed to take off. As far as I could tell—I went back and looked at phone records and never saw a number that was Lee Wayne's, or the county jail down where he lived—Monica's epiphany and actions were spontaneous. “Epiphany” is a word we do use down at the city shop, seeing as there's a guy working for me named LeCrank who has a girlfriend named Epiphany who's always causing him to show up late for work.

I took my beer outside. The neighbors sat at two picnic tables, all of them sitting on the same side, staring at their own vinyl siding, their backs to my yard. I said to Lee Wayne, “What the hell just happened in there?”

He stretched backward, which caused his T-shirt to rise, which exposed a tattoo that surrounded his navel. It was that famous “Born to Lose” statement, and his belly button doubled as the “O” in “Born.” He said to me, “I thought maybe this was one of those Candid Camera deals. One of those ‘You've been punked' things, you know. They let us watch TV in prison, pretty much anytime we wanted. We could watch TV, but we couldn't smoke. If you ask me, it's healthier to smoke than to watch what they got on TV these days.”

One of the neighbors stood from the picnic table, walked to a boom box, and turned up the volume. They listened to Lynyrd Skynyrd. Imagine that. They listened to that song that goes, “Ooh that smell/Can't you smell that smell.” I guess it was all a joke to them, how we'd been yelling shit over there about their grilling earlier.

“We couldn't listen to that band in prison either. They got a song about a Saturday night special, you know, and I guess the higher-ups thought it would get all of us to thinking.”

I looked toward the sliding-glass door and saw Monica pulling a suitcase behind her. “What could y'all listen to?”

“I know every lyric to Johnny Mathis,” Lee Wayne said. He began singing “Chances Are,” but in a rockabilly kind of way. He stopped after the “I'm in love with you” part and said, “Monica Marie's always been a little bit of a hothead. I haven't been the best brother when it comes to staying in touch, so I don't know all the ins and outs of y'all's matrimony. Has she been threatening to leave?”

I shook my head. I said, “I guess I better go back inside and talk to her about this.” I stomped on my cigarette and didn't pick it up. I said, “Give me a couple minutes. Hey, if you want, you can go over there and pick some of those habaneros.” I pointed. “If they're mostly orange, and about the size of a modern human testicle, then they're ready to be picked.”

Monica had filled six boxes and that one suitcase that rolled on wheels. She didn't pack up things that we'd gotten for our wedding—I'll give her that—like the lava lamp, the matching set of Atlanta Braves shot glasses, the George Foreman grill, a great painting of Young Elvis on velvet, the microwave cookbooks. No, she only packed up her clothes, some school supplies, scrapbooks, the ashtrays she'd bought herself, and a set of knives she'd received for being Teacher of the Year at Calloustown Elementary.

Monica said, “I'm sorry, Clewis. I know this probably seems like a shock to you. And I didn't mean it to happen like this. Maybe I'm just embarrassed that you're embarrassed to have a brother-in-law like Lee Wayne.”

“I like Lee Wayne,” I said. “I've always liked Lee Wayne. Who doesn't like Lee Wayne? He's one of those people you can't hate, no matter what he does.”

“I can't have him living with us,” she said. “It won't be good for me, and it won't be good for you. What I'm saying is, it'll be bad.”

Here's that thing I do all the time that isn't particularly beneficial: I began considering what Monica's kindergartners would be like twelve years hence, when they could only come up with monosyllabic arguments. I thought of a documentary film I could make that involved showing Monica saying “Good” and “Bad” to her students over and over, then following their lives, maybe splicing some Frankenstein in between.

I said, “Who invited him to stay with us until he got his life straightened out? I didn't. Give me a break, Monica. Come on.”

She said, “Well it must have been for a reason. That's all I can say. It must've been the way things were meant to work out. I'm betting that things will change. I'll call you up.”

And then she left, driving away in her Ford Taurus that she had use of for twelve months, what with the Teacher of the Year award.

I am not too proud to say that I sat down at the dining-room table, in front of three half-empty plates of fish taco remains, and nearly openly wept. Nearly wept. Nearly caught myself thinking about how I'd been a bad husband, et cetera. But I got all sidetracked thinking of how I should aim my handheld toward the neighbors for a few hours each night and call the documentary something like
They Turn Their Backs
, or
Someone Go Get the Paper Towels
.

“Everyone's always talking about hiding their money down in one of those Bermuda or Switzerland bank accounts,” Lee Wayne came in the sliding-glass door saying. “Big waste of time when it comes to doing small time incarcerated, you know what I mean?”

I said, “Give me a minute, man.” It wasn't, again, like I was crying. I needed to write down some ideas on the closest thing I could find, which meant one of the paper plates in front of me.

He dropped a dozen habaneros down on the table. “Man, I thought about hiding my money with my sister. Glad I didn't do that. No telling where it would be now. You kind of owe me, now that I think about it. If I'd've hid my money with Monica, she'd've left here a long time ago.”

I thought about punching Lee Wayne, but he was bigger than me and there's no telling what kinds of mixed martial arts maneuvers he learned in the county jail. I said, “There's another twelve-pack in the refrigerator. She didn't take the refrigerator.”

Lee Wayne didn't walk into the kitchen. He stood upright, with his chest poked out. “I need to go get my bags out of the car,” he said.

I didn't respond.

“Am I staying in the guest room?”

I didn't say anything.

“You want to pitch some pennies up against the fireplace, just for fun?”

My crew needed to finish planting day lilies the next day, near what would become a walking path that went straight through the middle of town. According to city council, we would be paving over a set of railroad tracks presently—as soon as CSX freight trains quit coming through—for that “Rails to Trails” program that all the renovating towns had done already, after talking high and mighty about revitalization and quality of living so that
Time
and
Newsweek
and
U.S. News & World Report
could tell retirees where to retire and the health-conscious young where to relocate if they subscribed to a cardiovascular lifestyle.

What else could I say but, “You want a job, Lee Wayne? Listen, you come work for me. We'll get you all the pennies you want, and you do what you know what to do, and we'll split the profits. I don't have it all worked out in my mind yet, but I will. Can you pretend to run a leaf blower, or an edger?”

He said, “Well, I don't know.”

I said, “Listen, you can bring all the pennies you want, and I'll set you out where there's that track, while there's that track.”

“I don't know. Well,” he said.

Like I said, I normally didn't drink that much. Maybe I wasn't thinking correctly. It seemed like a good idea—normally I told half-hearted workers what to do, and then I sat around waiting for everyday citizens to call up complaining about something. My day went like this, mostly: “Hey, guys, today you need to go cut the grass around the fountain, corner of McDaniel and Lanneau.” Ring-ring-ring: “Your men are cutting the grass on the corner of McDaniel and Lanneau, and they're not wearing shirts,” or “One of them's cutting the grass while sitting down,” or “My tax dollars shouldn't be spent on two men eating hot dogs out in the open.” Stuff like that, which didn't get addressed in nine semesters of college horticulture classes.

I said to Lee Wayne, “How is this a bad thing? You'll have a regular income, and you'll have time to conduct your copper recycling business.”

Lee Wayne drank from his beer. He shook his head side to side. “I don't know. I've been thinking hard about some other options I have.” What options could my evidently new-ex-wife's brother have? What was on the horizon for a man driving a half-electric car with an oogah-oogah-oogah horn? He said, “I was supposed to show up earlier. I was supposed to show up a couple weeks ago. I've been out of prison for a month, and Monica Marie wanted me to show up a lot earlier to beat you up or something.”

I said, “Why? Why in the world?”

“That's exactly what I said. I said, ‘Has he hit you?' I said, ‘Is he cheating on you?' I said, ‘Has he taken y'all's nest egg and turned it into pennies just so he could take them down to a railroad track and flatten them, then turn the things in to the nearest copper recycling center?' Well, she didn't have an answer. I know that I'm supposed to be on my blood kin's side, Clewis, but I'd be willing to bet she's seeing somebody else, I hate to say. When I was in prison, which was really just the county jail, people were always asking me to go beat up somebody just because they had a new boyfriend. And just because I had fighting arms, what with lugging pounds of pennies for so long. Weird place, prison.”

We sat there at the dining-room table. When Lee Wayne had come back in the house with two duffel bags he hadn't closed the sliding-glass door all the way, so through the crack came strains of the neighbors talking, and yelling at one another in a friendly manner. They had traded playing music for a game of charades, it appeared. I went outside to smoke what ended up being my last five cigarettes ever—who knew this was all it would take to quit?—and my brother-in-law followed me out. We took chairs to the backyard, sat down facing the neighbors, and watched. I hadn't played the game in years, but remembered quickly the signs for “movie,” “book,” and “song” title. Like I said, they weren't a half acre away, pantomiming out prompts they'd pulled from an empty charcoal briquette bag. This was a mother and father, their son and daughter, and some other man and woman with a son and daughter. The more they reached in and played, the more they got charcoal on their arms and faces, what with the bag's residual soot. I found myself in love with these people, I'll admit.

“I don't want to impose on you none, Clewis, but I kind of do really need a place to stay. I mean, I got out, I got my money, and I bought that car. I wasn't thinking! I got that car, not considering that I needed to rent an apartment or trailer or something.”

I yelled out at my neighbors,
“Gone with the Wind
!” I yelled out, “Wait—‘Blowin' in the Wind' by Bob Dylan.” One of the young daughters looked like she tried to portray “wind.” She kept waving her arms from left to right, floating-like. I thought, maybe she's doing one of those hula dances. I yelled out, “‘Tiny Bubbles' by Don Ho.”

My neighbor smiled at me and waved. The husband waved, that is. I realized it might take time to win his wife over, especially if she'd somehow met Monica and they'd had a conversation that went something like, “I'm your new neighbor,” and Monica said, “I'm planning to leave my husband.”

Lee Wayne said, “This is what it should be all about. Minus my sister taking off. And having tacos that didn't include real meat. This is what it should all be about. Hey, Clewis, give me a cigarette.”

I said, “No.” I watched the neighbors. I stood up and yelled, “Air! The Clean Air Act! ‘You are the wind beneath my wings'!” How come I wasn't more distressed about Monica leaving? I thought. How come I didn't get all upset and try to track her down? “‘Pennies from Heaven'!”

I turned to Lee Wayne and said, “What about wheat pennies? You didn't put wheat pennies down on the railroad tracks, did you?”

“There aren't that many wheat pennies. Most of them are worth two cents, though, if you wanted to sell them at the flea market. Maybe a nickel. It's not right.”

I stood up and, as if on automatic pilot, walked over to my neighbors' house. The smell of steak still hung in our humid air. They didn't seem fearful of my approach. The young girl said, “It was
Grapes of Wrath
. It's a book.”

I got it. She tried to portray the Dust Bowl. I nodded and laughed. I pulled my arm for Lee Wayne to follow me over and said to the neighbors, “Hey, my name's Clewis. That's either my brother-in-law or my ex-brother-in-law.”

The man said, “That's an unusual name.”

I told him how my wife couldn't take it either. I asked if Lee Wayne and I could join in. They said okay, and I took their turning their backs on us earlier as coincidence. As it ended up, these people weren't members of an offshoot religion. They were normal. They explained how they believed in the extended family, and how playing games kept them closer, and how it's what they did back in Michigan before it became apparent that they'd never work there again.

I stuck my arm in the charcoal bag and pulled out a song I'd never known. Or maybe I couldn't concentrate, thinking about how I needed to drop by the bank the next day.

Fresh Meat on Wheels

Before ceremonially burning down a life-sized replica of the Calloustown Courthouse—which never existed in the first place—built over the previous year in a field adjacent to Mr. Morse's tree farm and nursery, it was tradition to take every sixth grader to the various attractions nearby. This included the Finger Museum, where a man had severed digits floating in formaldehyde from all the pulpwood men who had chainsaw accidents over the years. Then we would all go, via minibus, to a taxidermist's place where he'd set up The Safest Petting Zoo Ever. Our sixth-grade teacher, Ms. Whalen, said we were to understand what there is to appreciate about our hometown before viewing what General Sherman could've done if he'd understood Calloustown's meaningfulness, and not veered away on his march between Savannah and Columbia. My heart wasn't into this bastardized field trip because—and it's not like I had ESP back then—I foresaw the possible arguments, fistfights, and one-upmanship that would occur. If I had extrasensory perception back then I would've found my mother in the organic berry field she and my father operated and said something like, “Please tell me the sexual intercourse y'all have told me about is not like sticking your penis in an armpit filled with deep-cleansing moisturizer.”