Gods in Alabama (16 page)

Clarice laughed, and I pushed his hand away, blushing and confused. The spot of warmth at my core was on the move, running like a trickle of wet heat from belly to crotch.

Clarice said, “I didn’t say I didn’t want to go somewhere with you. I said I didn’t want to go somewhere with you and cry.”

Janey could have made that sound filthy, but coming from Clarice, it sounded at worst mildly naughty and flirty as all hell.

I stood up abruptly, meaning to make some sort of excuse and flee, but as I leaned over to pick up my lunch tray, I happened to glance down. There, on Jim Beverly’s knee, stark against the almost-white of his super-faded Levi’s, was a spot of dark blood as big as a half-dollar. I froze, appalled, staring. In that moment I felt myself catch fire and spontaneously combust, burning up in half a heartbeat to nothing but a crisp cinder. When the burning passed, I was still standing there.

Jim Beverly saw the blood on his leg, and then Clarice saw it.

The three of us froze in a tableau of horror.

I did not know what to do. There was nothing to be done.

The period I had begged God to send me had finally arrived, and there I was bending over to get a lunch tray with my bloody ass in khaki pants facing the rest of the cafeteria.

My eyes met Jim Beverly’s, and I don’t know what he saw there, but before I could sprint to the nearest ocean and drown myself in it, he jumped to his feet, whipped off his letterman’s jacket, and draped it over my shoulders. It covered me to midthigh. He put his arm around me, anchoring the jacket and holding me in place.

“Maybe I can call you about this later, eh, Clarice? Me and Arlene here need to go down to the office.”

Janey looked up at us, blank and uncomprehending. She couldn’t take in the fact that Jim Beverly was leaving the table with me, so I knew she hadn’t seen. I did a quick scan of the cafeteria. No one was screaming with laughter or pointing at me.

Clarice said, “Do you want me to . . .” and then trailed off, uncertain how to finish.

Jim Beverly, perfectly at ease again, acting like this was the most natural thing in the world, gave Clarice one of his slow grins and said, “Nah. We got it, don’t we, Arlene?”

I nodded dumbly, and he pivoted, pulling me with him. He walked me out of the cafeteria, his arm still over my shoulder.

People were staring now, but I was pretty sure it was only because they couldn’t figure why a scrub like Arlene Fleet would be draped in Jim Beverly’s holy jacket and cuddled up under the shelter of Jim Beverly’s immaculate passing arm.

We headed down the hall towards the office. The horror and mortification were slowly morphing into almost weepy gratitude.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know that would happen.”

“Pfft,” he said. “Forget it. Let’s go call your mom to come get you.”

“You don’t have to walk me down to the office,” I said.

“Yeah, I do,” he said. “I gotta call my mom and have her bring me some new pants.”

I felt dark red heat flush my face and started apologizing again. “I am so sorry, I really did not know. I never, I mean, I didn’t know that would happen today.”

He gave my shoulder a squeeze and said, “Hey, kiddo, don’t sweat it, really. Chalk it up to what Coach calls a PPD—poor planning day.”

“But I couldn’t plan, I mean, I never had to plan before.” I realized what I was telling him and flushed even harder.

“Well, hey, cool for you, then, huh? No need to be embarrassed.” He grinned like a devil and added, soft and dirty, “I’ll tell you a secret. You ain’t the first female to change from a girl to a woman while sitting in my lap.”

I laughed, startled, and then looked down, suddenly feeling okay. In that moment I loved Jim Beverly so fiercely I would have dropped on top of a mud puddle and let him walk over me to save his shoes.

When I killed the rapist, the foul-mouthed drunk, I killed this boy, too. And this boy had a mama who thought he hung the earth, and a proud dad. He had two older brothers, and he had Rose-Pop. He had friends. Before Burr could defend me, he had to know this part. Arlene the monster killer was a lie, because this other boy existed, too. Burr had to know I understood what I had done. I knew you couldn’t kill only the pieces that needed killing, and leave the pretty parts whole. 

CHAPTER  9

WHEN I SAW the WELCOME TO ALABAMA THE BEAUTIFUL sign looming up ahead of us on the highway, I clutched Burr’s arm. “It isn’t too late to turn around and go home.”

Burr goggled at me and then started chuckling. “Yes, it is,” he said. He lifted his hand, still laughing. “Goodbye, Tennessee,” he called.

I echoed him: “Goodbye, Tennessee.”

He faced forward, and the Blazer crossed the line. “Hello, Alabama.”

“Yes, hello, Alabama, you big green whore,” I said sourly, not waving.

That hit Burr just right, and he lost it. “You big green whore?

Green whore?” He was laughing so hard, tears were starting in his eyes. He thumbed the button, and his window scrolled down. He yelled out the window: “Hail to thee, Alabama, thou Verdant Trollop!” He laughed and laughed, sticking one hand out the window and waving. His laughter was contagious, and I found myself giggling, too. “Greetings, Emerald State of Tarts! Lo! I am here to fuck your white women!”

“With my big black dick,” I said, sotto voce.

“With my big black dick,” he bellowed. He was laughing so hard between yelling at the state that he was practically choking.

I lost it, too, and both of us were hooting with tears streaming down our faces.

“Blind,” Burr choked out, and he slowed and pulled off the highway onto the shoulder. A few cars whizzed past us as I leaned against the dash and laughed and laughed until my stomach ached with it. Burr was clutching dizzily at the steering wheel, trying to breathe. I closed my eyes, pulling in oxygen, until Burr and I had ourselves mostly under control.

It was quiet for a moment, and then Burr said, “What the hell is that?” I opened my eyes. He was staring past me out my window. I followed his line of sight.

“Oh,” I said, sobering. “That’s a heap.”

“A heap?” said Burr.

“It’s kudzu. It’s a plant, like a vine. It’s all over Alabama. It eats anything it touches, just climbs right up it and covers it and kills it.”

The heap outside my window had coated a row of dizzyingly tall pines. I could still see the basic outline of the trees underneath. The heap undulated in a sinister stretch, slowly reaching back towards itself from tree to tree, lacing itself higher, sending grounders out, looking for something else to climb.

“Let’s go,” I said.

Burr wiped his eyes and then put the Blazer back in drive.

There was very little traffic, and he pulled back onto the highway and gunned it.

The speedometer said he was going about seventy, but it felt to me like we were moving at the speed of light, whipping around curves and over hills. Florence and Bruster were ahead of us, and with them my addled, grinning puppet of a mother. The rest of my lunatic family surrounded us, scattered in a fifty-mile radius.

Rose Mae Lolley was aimed at our location, heading at us from Texas on a collision course. And somewhere in the wilds of Alabama, whatever was left of Jim Beverly was waiting for her to find him.

I had promised God I would stop systematically fucking my way through Fruiton High School. In fact, I had promised to stop fornicating completely. But truthfully, up until I fell in love with Burr, cutting sex out of my life had been more of a relief than a sacrifice. I had promised God that I would go into exile and never return to Alabama. But if God had my relatives, He would happily promise to stay out of Alabama, too.

I had always known the heart of the deal was my promise to give up lying. It was as if I had broken the smaller, more self-serving vows as practice, using the plan to go to Alabama as a flimsy excuse to be with Burr, and using the fact that I had been with Burr to push myself across the state line. But in the darkest corner of my mind, in the savage place that shuddered if a black cat crossed my path, I believed that as long as I did not lie, the deal was still intact.

I’d had a chance to lie to Rose Mae in Chicago and had blown it righteously. The pressure of the promise I had made caused me to falter at the most important moment. I could not afford to be caught unprepared again.

It occurred to me that if I broke the vow now, bloodlessly, told some smaller lie, when I met Rose it would all be that much easier. There would be nothing left to break.

Perhaps it was fortunate that I was headed into the clutches of Aunt Florence, the dogmatic grand inquisitor. Florence, who never inferred anything, would be waiting to get me alone. She had ten years’ worth of interrogation on every possible fragment of my life ready in the hopper. If she got her teeth in me, she would worry at me until I broke and gave her the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But perhaps I could use my practice lie, my vow-breaker, to distract her or even defuse her. And if I could get a lie past Flo, Rose Mae would be a piece of cake.

“Baby, where’s that bag of popcorn?” Burr asked. I got it out of the backseat and opened it for him.

“I think I want to tell a lie,” I said, passing him the bag.

“Just a sec, let this moron pass me,” said Burr. A guy in a red Celica hurtled past us on the right. “That’s new. What lie?”

“I think we should tell my aunt Florence and everyone that we got married,” I said.

Burr had the popcorn propped between his thighs, eating it as he drove. His mouth was full, and he coughed a little. Once he got the bite swallowed, he said, “Why would we do that?”

“Because a boyfriend is tenuous. They could launch a pretty good full-scale racist-alert war against a boyfriend. But on the Southern Baptist Church scale of sins, a divorce is probably worse than a black husband,” I said. “If we’re married, then they have to take us both or leave us. I don’t want to give them the option of me and not you.”

Burr shook his head, fishing out another bite of popcorn.

“Should I prepare for pillowcase hats and flying bullets?”

“No, it’s not that they’re Ku Kluxy, Burr. They’re just garden-variety backwoods Alabama racists. But Aunt Florence? She’s ruthless. She has no ruth at all. And assuming she doesn’t flat disown me—big assumption—if she sees any seam between us, she is going to pick at it and do her damnedest to get us apart.”

I racked my brain, trying to sufficiently explain the power of Florence. Finally I said, “Let me tell you a story. Growing up, our closest neighbor was Mrs. Weedy. She was an older lady. A widow with no kids. But she had this pet chicken named Phoebe. And she loved Phoebe insanely. I mean that literally. She was not mentally well on the subject of Phoebe. And whenever my cousins Wayne and Clarice did something great and Aunt Flo would try to brag on them, Mrs. Weedy would interrupt with a long tale of Phoebe’s latest accomplishments.

“According to Mrs. Weedy, Phoebe understood English, liked country music, had political opinions and a passionate personal relationship with Jesus. But all Phoebe ever did really was drop chicken poop and scratch around.

“After Wayne died, Mrs. Weedy came over with a ham-and-green-bean casserole and told my aunt Flo, ‘Honey, I know exactly how you feel. I can’t imagine if I lost Phoebe! Phoebe and I will pray for you.’

“Clarice told me this story. She was only eight when Wayne died, but she remembered Mrs. Weedy coming by with the casserole. She watched Aunt Flo’s fingers get whiter and whiter as she clutched the dish. After Mrs. Weedy left, Clarice watched Florence deliberately open her hands and let the casserole dish fall and smash on the floor.

“About two weeks later, Mrs. Weedy did lose Phoebe. Clarice told me she was playing out on the porch, and she heard Mrs.

Weedy calling until she had no voice left, and Phoebe never came. And the next day my aunt Flo took Mrs. Weedy a chicken chili cheese pie and said how sorry she was.”

Burr was silent for a long time. “Am I to infer that the chicken part of the chicken chili cheese pie was—”

“Infer what you like.”

“And did Mrs. Weedy eat the pie?”

“Licked the platter clean, according to Clarice.”

Burr handed me the half-full popcorn bag. “I think I’m through with eating now,” he said. “Your aunt Florence is hard-core.”

“It’s not that big a lie, is it, Burr?” I said. He was watching the road. “You did ask me to marry you this morning.” I looked down into the depths of the popcorn bag. “Did you mean it?”

In my peripheral vision, I could see Burr’s hands flexing on the wheel. “Yeah, I meant it,” he said slowly. “Are you saying yes?”

“I did say yes,” I said to the popcorn bag. “But you were sleeping.”

There was a pause then, a pleased silence, and Burr said, “So, we’re engaged. How about that?” He took one hand off the wheel and tucked it around my thigh, just above the knee. “I planned to do a better job. I have a ring. I was going to do the restaurant thing. Take you to hear a good blues band, get champagne.”

“The way you asked was pretty good, I thought,” I offered, still shy. I shook it off and added, “Anyway, if we’re engaged, it’s barely even a lie. It’s more like telling a pre-truth.”

Burr laughed out loud at that. “What happens at the wedding if they already think we’re married?”

“Oh God, no, I don’t want a wedding, Burr. I don’t want anyone but us. If I had a wedding, Aunt Flo would mobilize the entire family like the Fifth Infantry. She’d flog them into rented vans and point them at Chicago. And I don’t mean just Uncle Bruster and Mama and Clarice. She’d dredge up my vicious aunt Sukie and her hell spawn. She’d snatch my great-great-aunt Mag out of the nursing home and load the trunk with the ashes of my asshole grampa and Saint Granny. And that’s just the Bents. She’d get Bruster’s whole tribe, Dill Lukey and Uncle Peaches and Luke-John and Fat Agnes and all nine million of my wild boy cousins, and they’d head to Chicago to try and stop the wedding.

It would be like the traveling-freak-show version of
Guess Who’s
Coming to Dinner.
I’d much rather we did it just us, on the quiet.