Hick (9 page)

The square tiles are cold under my back and I’m hitting them hard with my shoulder blades and elbows, getting carried away. I got to remember not to crack my own skull. You should see it, I am dedicated tooth and nail to this here show. I try to make spit come out the corner of my mouth. Think of a lemon. Think of a lemon, switching from a lemon to a sour-tart to a rhubarb pie and then back again. Finally my mouth starts to spill over with drool and I almost burst out giddy with my latest talent. This is really something. Boy, I am drooling now and I could not be more proud. I wish Glenda could see this. she’d be proud as punch. Tammy, too, she’d say, “Look at her go, I taught her everything she knows.”

In the corner of my spastic eye, I see the old man waddling towards me, just as fast as a waddler can waddle. I see him in flashes through my strobe-light vision. He struggles down to his knees beside me, a Herculean effort, whispering something I can’t understand. I see the fear in his eyes in bits and pieces. His shock is weird and contagious and makes my eyes pop open a second and then
spaz around even more. He tries to grab me, but his toothpick arms are just too weak for a young epileptic like me. My cheeks and chin are covered in drool. I wiggle harder.

And then something strange happens. The whispering stops. The grabbing stops. The earth stops.

I sneak open my eyes to see what’s the problem and nearly faint as I witness the last breath exhaled by this ancient creature, born before time and raised before television, as he covers his heart with his hand and keels over smack-bang on top of me.

Not exactly what I had in mind, kid.”

She towers over me, staring at the picture I made for her. The old man slumps on top of me like a white rag doll.

“Get him off me.” I grunt out, trying to lift off his flailing limbs but failing.

Glenda sighs and shoves him over, grabbing my hand and pulling me up towards the door.

“Nice work, kid. Now we’re murderers.”

“Is he dead?”

“I dunno. Fuck. This is not good.”

She grabs me by the wrists and throws me out the door.

“Wull, maybe we better call someone or something . . .”

She’s pulling me along the gravel, about as fast as heels can race-walk, dust flying up around our feet, like an angry steam engine churning. My arm feels like it’s four feet in front of its socket and I look back to see if there happen to be any witnesses to our little travesty.

“Don’t look back, kid. Just keep moving.”

We turn the corner into the brush where the car’s hidden between two side-by-side weeping willows, the rabbit waiting for us, impatient. Glenda hurls me into the back and jumps in the driver’s seat. She fumbles around for the car keys, hands shaking, swearing little half words to herself, like she doesn’t have time enough to finish them.

“We can’t just leave him there.” I say it.

“Oh yes we can.”

“No we can’t, Glenda.”

“Amateur.”

“Listen. Listen to me. You took money from that place, didn’t you?”

“How’d you guess?”

“Wull, think about it. What looks weirder . . . two girls call an ambulance for some old guy who just dropped dead and oh they’re so upset they called the cops right away, and then maybe two months later someone figures out some money happens to be missing . . . or . . . or . . . some old guy is dead behind the counter with no one in sight and there’s some fucking money missing.”

She stops fumbling.

I catch her eyes and say quiet, “Get it? it’s better to just call the cops and play dumb.”

She starts to work it over in her head. You might think this is me being good, but really this is me not wanting that old geezer knocking down the door to my peaceful slumbers trying to turn all my late-night dreaming into nightmares.

“You’re right.”

I breathe a sigh of relief. I do not want to take that old man with me to bed every night.

“You’re right.”

“Do you think he’s dead?”

“I dunno. I dunno. Just shush. I gotta get organized here.”

She hops out the car and hustles back into the store, searching behind the counter for the phone. I keep one step behind her, trying to pick up a few pointers. She finds the phone, stops herself, lets out a breath like she’s communing with the gods and dials 911.

“Hello, hello . . . yes, um . . . we have an emergency here . . . we’ve got a, well, a dead or sick gentleman, here. I mean, he just sorta fell over mid-sentence down here at Custer’s Last Stand . . . yep, down on Highway 92 . . . I swear to God you better hurry, maybe there’s still hope. My name? My name is Cheryl. Cheryl Tarkington. Please do hurry. I just don’t know what to do . . . I’ve got my daughter here and all, probably traumatized for life.” She hangs up the phone and looks at me. “This better fucking work.”

I look up at her, starting to question my decision. Maybe I’m wrong and am gonna spend the rest of my life in the slammer with girls named Lakeisha and Irma and Jean. I resign myself to live a life of study behind bars, like Malcolm X, emerging a prophet with the wisdom of my redemption.

Glenda clasps her hands. “Let’s pray.”

She and I stand side-by-side, heads down, and here’s her prayer:

“Dear God, don’t let that man die. Amen.”

We wait a thousand years before two officers of the law come swaggering through the door, one white bread, one Mexican. The white bread one has hair the color of dishwater and blue eyes and a
gait like he’s about to fight off a bull. He looks Glenda over, up and down, and I can tell he likes what he sees. The Mexican cop stands by the front door, waiting for the ambulance, posing like there’s a photographer in the bushes taking pictures for some hero calendar.

“Ma’am, you here when it happened?”

He’s got a voice like a bass drum, like his throat got cut in two and now all that’s coming out is pure man.

“Why, yes I was, and so was my daughter here, Isabel, and I am just so worried she’ll be traumatized for life because of this, oh, you should have seen it, poor girl.”

He looks down at me, some TV cop sent from Hollywood to play the role of gallant hunk.

“it’s okay, darlin, these things happen, it’s all part of the natural ebb and flow of life.”

I nod, pretending to hide my lost innocence. Really I’m thinking he’s damn good-looking for a cop. Glenda interrupts, laying on the honey.

“Are you sure you’re old enough to be a cop? You look awful young to me.”

He flushes a bit and takes off his hat, cowboy-style with a little police thrown in.

“I most assuredly am. And if I dare say, you don’t look old enough to be her mother.”

“Oh now.” She fake-swats him and tilts her head to the side, blushing like a schoolgirl.

The Mexican cop gives a look over to his partner and turns back, shaking his head. I am taken aback at seeing Glenda in action. she’s a pro, all right, and he is buying it wholesale. The ambulance pulls up to the front and a man and a woman come tumbling
out, rushing to the old man, taking his pulse and stretching back his eyelids.

“Looks like there’s life in him yet.”

“No shit.” White Bread scratches his head.

Glenda and I crane in, looking for some hope, any hope, that’ll slow our too-quick drop to hell. Please God, don’t kill him. Not on our watch. Please, not today.

They start buzzing around him, flashing a light in his eyes, taking his pulse. Boy oh boy, he sure knows how to be old, this one. it’s like you could snap him in two just by looking at him. Right now they’re trying to blow life into him but he sure is taking his time.

White Bread doesn’t care, though, his eyes stay glued on Glenda and she keeps batting hers back at him. You’d think they were at the homecoming bonfire instead of standing in front of the counter with a half-dead old gummer square on the tiles between.

The ambulance paragons lift the man onto the gurney, shaking their heads and conferring.

“Looks like you best be headed straight to Campbell ER,” the Mexican cop chimes in, not sounding Mexican at all.

“That’s your best bet. Best ER in the state,” he adds, matter-of-fact.

But White Bread ain’t listening. He’s just leaning into Glenda, eyes swirling. He turns his back to the Mexican cop and whispers in, “Hey, listen, you got a phone number or something? Maybe I could call you and we could go have a drink somewhere, when I’m off duty, just talk.”

“Just talk, eh?”

Glenda gives him a sideways smile and you can feel his temperature rise inside his body.

The ambulance doors slam and the Mexican cop waves back, giving them a thumbs-up sign, TV-ready. They drive off into the distance, siren singing them off into greener pastures. The Mexican cop turns to his partner, looking none too pleased.

“Well, Mike, we better shut this place down and get a move on. Your
wife
might be mighty angry with you if you’re late for dinner two nights in a row.”

White Bread looks down at the floor, sure annoyed, but keeping his cool. Glenda picks all this up, mulls it around and runs with it.

“Your
wife?
Well, maybe I won’t be giving you my number after all, you naughty boy, leading me on like that.”

She gives White Bread a little pout. He gives his partner a look like he’s gonna take him straight out back and kick his ass right there in the brambles. Then he turns back to Glenda, giving a little shrug.

“Well, ma’am, maybe next lifetime.”

Glenda smiles back, coy and twinkling. “Maybe so.”

She grabs my hand and marches out the door. Before we round the bend she looks back and blows a kiss, can you believe it, blows a kiss, and sways her way back into the car.

I climb into the back seat, behind the bunny rabbit. Glenda shuts the door gently, picks up the keys, starts the car and drives off real slow and smooth, like some shark swimming casual away from its kill. Two miles down the blacktop she looks straight ahead and decides to speak.

“I’d say that went well.”

Somewhere between Oshkosh and Lisco the old man starts knocking. I try not to let him in, but his skinny little fingers keep wrapping themselves round the door. Glenda seems to be coming down from her drugstore triumph. Something in her starts sinking fast and her knuckles stay white on the wheel. I wonder if he’s knocking on her door, too.

“Glenda, do you think that—”

“No talking till we get to Wyoming.”

She shoots me a look like she means it and catches the doubt written all over my forehead in little lines. She softens up a bit and pats the front of my seat.

“You did good, kid. All except the stroke part.”

“Do you think he’s gonna make it?”

“Sure he is.”

“I mean, it wasn’t my fault. He just had like a temporary stroke or something and went into a coma and he’ll be fine in an hour maybe, right, don’t you think—”

“Look, there’s no use dwelling on it. Okay? He’ll be fine. Just fine.”

Silence.

“You heard the man. Campbell’s got the best ER in the state. Hell, I even heard of Campbell. it’s a famous establishment. Very famous.”

Yup. He’s been knocking on her door, too.

“But, what about—”

“Drop it.”

“I mean, what if—”

“I said drop it.”

I get the picture and slump down into my seat.

“Look, make me a cigarette, kid, and quit dwelling”

She nods towards the row of cigarettes on the dash. I lean up and reach across the seat. I pick one out, light it and slip it between her fingers. She nods her acceptance, takes it and keeps looking forward, furrowing her brow, somewhere between determination and fear.

I fumble with the radio.

“No music.”

She checks the rearview and checks again, her hands glued to the wheel. Her dread is starting to seep over into the back seat. I look back at the blacktop. The sun is starting to go down and the sky is turning orange behind us, as if we set that world on fire and can barely make it down the road before getting burned ourselves. We drive through the stillness like there’s a spell cast on everything except us, some frozen thing, waiting and watching from the fields. I stare silent into the turning light, trying to slam
the door on that old man’s fingers, creeping up, slamming and creeping up again.

I don’t feel struck or sad or sinful. I just feel numb, thinking about that purple rag-doll stare above me, crushing my shoulder blades down into the cold tile floor. It doesn’t seem real. It seems like some made-up schoolyard fantasy you’d try to dazzle your friends with before the bell. But when I look at Glenda’s knuckles clenching the steering wheel, I know it’s real. I know it’s real and I know I can’t go back. And if that old man don’t make it, well, there’s a piece of me that’ll be left in that little store, too. There’ll be this piece of me that no matter what I do, even if I return, even if I inspect every inch of every corner of that tile floor on my hands and knees for days, I will never, ever, get back.

I stare out the window as the stars come on one by one. I can’t sleep. I beg Glenda to play music but she won’t budge. She is hunched over the steering wheel like a vulture, peering into the big black night.

“What about if—”

“Okay, look, kid, I’m gonna let you in on a little secret and listen up cause this one’ll get you through. You listening?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Okay, there’s a trick you can do, okay? There’s a trick you do when you start doing what you’re doing now, which is dwelling. You’re dwelling. You’re stuck. Feel it? You’re stuck. You’re playing that same song over and over again about how he’s gonna die and why me why me and you’ve got that song playing on repeat, am I right or am I right?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, now, I want you to put a quarter in the jukebox and change the record. Got it? You just change that record you got playing to a new song, okay? Find a different song. Something bright. Make it a good one and play that. Just change the record.”

She looks my way and I try to pretend to get it. I try to, but honest, I ain’t sure.

“That’s lesson three.”

“Can we turn on the radio?”