Hick (12 page)

Glenda grabs me by the back of the neck and turns me towards Mr. Friendly, who’s well over six feet and two feet wide. He picks me up before I can get out of it and gives me a big bear hug like he’s gonna crack my ribs with kindness. I turn my cringe into a squiggly-mouth smile till he relents, finally, putting me down.

“This here’s Lloyd, Luli,” Glenda chimes out round the cigarette she’s squinting into, trying to light up in the afternoon breeze.

“Luli! We-hell, that sure is a funny name for a little filly.”

I stare at his feet, which happen to be wrapped up in beige snakeskin cowboy boots. He’s got on brown pants, a brown cowboy shirt and a tan Stetson hat. He takes up the whole top step.

Glenda nudges me.

“Um, wull, my name was supposed to be Lucy, but I couldn’t say it, I just kept saying Luli, so they just gave up tryin.”

“That so? Well, good thing your name wasn’t Elizabeth.”

He says this like it’s the punch line and neither Glenda or I know quite what to make of it. We stand there, watching him, trying to figure it out. He keeps on smiling, big and stupid.

I try to compensate.

“I like your fishes, Mister.”

“Mister! Look, just call me Lloyd, that’s my name.”

All this affection is making me nervous. In my house we didn’t even hug each other on Christmas, let alone be nice to each other, and we certainly didn’t hug complete strangers fresh off the street. I figure he’s up to something. Either that or he just doesn’t know me well enough to figure out that I’m not worth the trouble.

He invites us in and grabs Glenda by the hand, tugging her towards him. Just as we’re about to reach the threshold, Glenda turns to me and whispers, real serious and mean, “Don’t fuck this up.”

Then she smiles and glides through the door with the greatest of ease.

We walk in and the first person I see is Eddie Kreezer. He meets my surprise with a surly nod, as if he’s seen it all before. I am waiting for Glenda to hit the deck but she doesn’t even give him a second glance. she’s acting like she knew he’d be there all along, or if she didn’t, she’s not about to let on that it bothers her. Lloyd points the bar out to me like a proud parent.

“You see that, Luli? I made it myself. Picked out the wood. Put in the mirrors. Hell, I musta went to every garage sale in Wyoming just to get those signs. Authentic.”

The bar is filled with flashing beer signs, some ancient, some shiny. There’s a blue-and-silver ball hanging from the ceiling with some horses lined up in a circle around the outside. When the ball spins the horses jump up and down. Lloyd sees me looking at it and flips a switch. The ball lights up, revealing its secret: Pabst Blue Ribbon. Behind the ball is the mirrored back wall, with swirls running through the mirror tiles to make it look like marble. The bar and
the stools look like padded leather, but when I sit down they feel more like plastic.

Glenda and Eddie are staring at each other like they’re connected by an invisible string and, if either of them moves, the house is gonna explode. Lloyd winks at me as he mixes the drinks.

“So, Luli, you like whiskey?”

I look at Glenda for a hint. She ignores me. she’s looking through Eddie like he’s made of glass and he’s looking right back. I wonder how long this little staring contest is gonna last.

“No sir, I’m a little too young for that, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“Yes sir.”

Lloyd bursts out laughing and hands me a drink.

“Liar. I was drinking whiskey when I was ten. Drink up. that’s a 7 & 7. You know what that is? 7-Up and Seagram’s 7. that’s why they call it 7 & 7, see. Perfect for starting up. I think I’ll have one myself.” He smiles real big and raises his glass. “Bottoms up.”

He throws his drink back and slams it on the table, fixing to refill. I just sit there, sipping and looking over my glass at the weirdo dynamic on the other side of the room.

Lloyd raises his glass again, topped off, and says, “Skull.” He drinks up and whispers to me, “That’s what they say in Norway.”

I nod, trying to care.

Lloyd motions towards Eddie with his glass. “See there, that’s my son.” He pauses for effect. “Well, not really my son, but like my son. Right, Eddie?”

Eddie stays looking at Glenda, frozen and electric.

“Right.” The corners of his mouth creep into a tight smile. “Dad.”

Glenda storms into the other room like that was a direct insult.

Eddie starts laughing.

“Boy, what’s gotten into her?” He gets up and stands next to me at the bar, facing Lloyd. “Bartender, give me a shot of tequila. On second thought, just give me the whole bottle.”

He grabs the bottle off the bar, unscrews the top and tilts it back. He gulps down and looks at me, over his shoulder, acknowledging me for the first time.

“Sorry I pushed you outta my truck, kid.” He takes another swig. “it’s just . . . you make me nervous.”

Then he heads out the front, bottle in hand.

Lloyd and I stare at the front door, wide open. Outside the sky is bright blue like a postcard for Wyoming. Wish you were here.

But right now I wish I wasn’t here, what with the staring and the midday boozing and the smiling and the too-quick hugging.

Lloyd puts his arm around me, firm. He acts the way the good ol dads act on TV, warm and protective. He leads me through the sliding glass door and into the back. There’s a pool set in concrete, with two lawn chairs and a table off to the side. Other than that, there’s mostly just a couple of weeds and no real boundary between the backyard perimeter and the rest of the world. It just drops off from the pool and concrete into wilderness, which in this case is a burnt grassy plain scooping up into a hill.

“You like swimming, Luli?”

“Yes sir. Yes I do.”

I am just itching to get into that blue sunshine water and wash the day off in one blue splash.

“Well, get in.”

He grabs my drink and pushes me into the pool, clothes and everything. I don’t know whether I’m supposed to laugh or take offense. I come up from the water and turn back to him.

“Thanks, Mister.”

“Oh, now, c’mon. Just playin a little. Look, swim all you want, make yourself at home. I’ll be inside with my sweet honey-bride. Hah, poet and didn’t even know it.”

Boy, he sure knows how to be a jackass.

He turns and walks inside, leaving me to wonder if by bride he meant Glenda and, if so, why she has so plainly neglected to mention the fact that she’s married. And, especially, to this guy.

He looks back, calling out from the sliding door, “Oh, and Luli, there ain’t a soul around here for miles.”

He winks and slides the door closed, waving from inside the glass.

Weirdo.

I stay there, treading water, wondering what the hell Glenda has got me into here. I duck my head underwater and swim to the deep end. When I come up for air, Eddie appears from God knows where. He looks down at me, snide, hovering above. The sun shines bright behind, turning him black.

“Well, you heard what the man said. ‘Nobody for miles.’”

He chuckles to himself, knocking back the tequila, pretending it’s all a big funny joke. I stay there, frozen, squinting up at the sun like some kind of teenage tadpole.

“Not a soul, kid. I guess you could count me, but I think it might be debatable whether or not I count as a soul.” He takes another swig. “You know what? I think you like me.”

Oh Lord, here goes.

“Yeah, right.” I laugh it off.

“I think you find me . . . worthy of note.”

“Worthy of note?”

“You know . . . exciting.”

He smiles, skinny, burning a hole in my eyes.

Iswim to the shallow end and get out, trying to act casual. But I’m stumbling over my feet now, tripping my way over towards the house. Behind me Eddie’s staring straight through me to somewhere beneath my skin. Something like shame is rustling up inside me, blushing and quivering, shaking me into feeling guilt for God knows what. I grab the screen door and try to slide it open. it’s locked.

I turn around, expecting to see Eddie there, caught up and clawing. But instead of fangs and a full moon with lightning, he’s just sitting there on the other side of the pool, Indian-style, not even looking my way. I try the door again, no luck, and make my way over the crabgrass to the front. Halfway there, I hear noises from inside the house, strange and stilted, like someone’s trying to move a dresser. I peek in one of the windows, hiding in the curtain shade.

It’s dark inside and I can barely see her. it’s that late-afternoon light creeping into night, where the outside’s yellow bright but the
inside’s getting ready for dinner. she’s got her back towards me and she’s moving up and down, up and down, not wearing a stitch. I stand there, gawking dumb. Her back looks like one of those lions you see on National Geographic shows, carved out and smooth. The muscles twitch and twitch back again when she moves, up down, up down, over and over.

I keep looking.

I hear something behind me and jump back, startled and embarrassed. You’re not supposed to watch this part. But there’s nothing there. Some trick of the wind or maybe just my guilt creeping up, tapping me on the shoulder. I sneak around the front of the house, shamey, tip-toeing my way through the gleaming frogs and fishponds. The front door is wide open, knocking around in the breeze. I hustle into the kitchen and dry myself off with a dish-towel, too scared and frinkled to go anywhere else. The kitchen is yellow linoleum and quiet, like the eye of the storm. You’d never guess what’s going on in the other room. I sit down at the table and lay my head on the checkered plastic tablecloth.

I miss my room. I miss my bed. I miss being a little punk with no care in the world, giving two fucks about it, just looking for trouble.

I guess I found it.

There’s a darkness here. There’s something you can’t put your finger on that’s creeping in through the edges of the linoleum and the squares between the tiles. it’s something sideways behind the drywall, something dirty and bored and mean.

I want to go home. I want my mama. All this time I thought she and I were just pure hatred. And maybe that’s true a little. But
maybe a little part of her looks at me and remembers about being young and now I get to be and she’s not. Not no more. She traded in her young part to give me mine. I’m this red flag walking around, jarring her into the realization of all the years and all the mistakes and all the could have beens. I’m this constant reminder that she had two babies and only one got to stay.

Lord above, I wish you could have seen her. When she was young, she was like Doris Day, only sexy. She had white hair that flipped up and frosted pink lipstick and white patent-leather boots. She was the only girl in the state of Nebraska, I guarantee, that had the guts to wear knee-high shiny white boots. I have a picture of her in my head, wearing those boots, sitting on a plaid sofa, in a little pale frosty-blue mini-dress. she’s holding a baby up to her shoulder and smiling at the camera.

But there’s something in her smile, some giveaway behind the eyes, something scared, uncomfortable, suffering. And I wonder if that look, that far-off, buried, nervous secret, is because that baby in her arms, that baby that was me, came just a little too soon. Too quick and out of nowhere. Like one day she had hopes and dreams and then the next they were all just shut down, closed for business. When you see that look in her eyes, that sad disappointment buried deep beneath her smile, it can break your heart. The only thing that could break your heart more would be to be the reason for it.

And I wish she wouldn’t have traded her life for me.

See, you never think of your parents as people. You just think of them as the gods who raised you up and poured milk in your cornflakes. They’re just the ones you always looked up to, the ones you
remember always being around, fixing things, holding your hand, making a fuss about don’t do this and don’t do that and look both ways before your cross the street. But you never think of them as someone like you. You never think of them as some human-type person like yourself who fucks up and feels bad and gets pregnant and trades their life for you. You don’t think of them like that.

I wonder if I was worth it.

I wonder how many times she wishes that baby boy had made it and not me.

Eddie comes in the kitchen and leans against the fridge. I turn my head the other way and pretend to inspect the wallpaper, little horses and cowboys riding.

“You wanna go for a drive?”

“No.”

We don’t look at each other. He stares at the floor and I stare at the wallpaper cowboys. There’s one in the middle with blond hair, bucking high off his horse with his hat in the air. If I could just jump in, I would ride off into the sunset on the back of his saddle, into the paper horizon.

“You know how to drive?”

“No.”

“You wanna learn?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll teach ya.”

I look over at him, suspicious of this nice-guy bent. I don’t trust him as far as I could throw him, but he’s playing kind. He looks up at me, slumped against the fridge, sad and leaning.

“Really?”

He nods, setting the tequila down on the counter and motioning towards the door with his head before taking his exit.

I look at the paper cowboys and the bucking broncos and, off in the distance, a cactus set down before an orange paper sun.

I follow.

I could never turn away from a car crash.

Jackson is a place for rich people. it’s a place where the rich people are so rich, they pretend to be poor. They ignore us, noses up, as we stop at the light off Main Street. They look ahead and pretend we don’t exist. They saunter around the rickety walk-ways and Wild West overhangs making everything look old-timey and fake. We’re in the town square, the epicenter of the Old West put-on. The rich people promenade around, wearing shorts and sandals, licking ice-cream cones and looking in the shop windows, anxious to spend. Eddie parks in front of the Million-Dollar Cowboy Bar and tells me to wait in the truck. He grabs his Stetson, slams the door and strolls into the darkness.