I'm Your Girl (10 page)
Authors: J. J. Murray
Oh, he’s coming this way. Dag, he’s skinny. And tall, maybe six feet. Tall people should not be skinny. There’s just so much more “skinny” to see. That red and green shirt he’s wearing is nice and colorful, and the green matches the pants, but those wrinkles, and is that a price tag? Tacky!
He’s stopped at another shelf, a thick stack of books under one arm. Only five of those books are leaving the building, Mr. Shaggy. I guess you didn’t read the sign posted right in front of me on the counter.
He’s moving away. He’s still not done? I look back at my book.
We hear Grandpa Joe-Joe laughing, more cackling than laughing really
.
“Hey, Grandpa!” I yell out. “It’s me, Robbie!”
More cackling. “Nice ankles!” he yells, and he cackles some more.
I smile. “He likes your ankles.”
I look at my ankles and see nothing special. J. Johnson has some strange fetishes.
Chloe looks down at her ankles. “Oh.”
More cackling. “They smell like shit, though!”
Ouch. “I’ll, uh, I’ll clean up your sandals for you.”
She looks down again. “They’re ruined.”
“I’ll, uh, buy you some new ones, then.”
More cackling, this time from somewhere over to our left. Grandpa Joe-Joe hasn’t lost a step at all, and he’s pushing sixty-five.
“What’s her name?” Grandpa Joe-Joe yells.
“Chloe!” I shout.
More cackling. “Chloe? What the hell kinda name is that?”
It’s a perfume.
I look at Chloe. “You want to answer him?”
“No.” Chloe looks pissed. “What kind of name is Joe-Joe, anyway?”
No cackling this time. “Name my mama give me,” Grandpa Joe-Joe says, standing just three feet behind us, wearing his usual overalls, red flannel shirt, and shit-kicker boots. I wish he would shave and get a haircut or wear a hat. He’s looking more like Moses every day.
Chloe turns her head slowly. “Oh, I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“I
did,” Grandpa Joe-Joe says, wiping his forehead with a blue bandanna. “What kinda name is Chloe? Sounds like a name you’d give to a cow. Here, Chloe, Chloe, Chloe, here, girl, let’s get you milked, now, Chloe.”
For some strange reason, I like Grandpa Joe-Joe. He is, in his own odd way, calling Chloe a “heifer.”
Chloe’s little back stiffens.
“My
mama gave me that name.” Nice comeback.
Grandpa Joe-Joe chews on his moustache. “What’s ya mama’s name?”
“Violet,” Chloe says.
“Better name.” He nods at me. “Robbie.”
“Grandpa.”
“Well, you seen me, now get on. I got things to do,” he says.
I can’t imagine what. “You need anything?” I reach into my back pocket for my wallet.
“Did I
ask
if I needed anything?” He spits out a hair. “Did you hear me
say
I needed somethin’?”
I take out two twenties and put them in his hand. He folds them twice and shoves them into his pocket. “Have you called anyone about the septic?”
Grandpa Joe-Joe grins. “Yeah.”
This is a surprise. The last time he waited until the stream of filth backed up to the front porch. “Who do you have working on it this time? It can’t be Roto-Rooter. They refuse to come back out here.”
“Nah. Jes’ me.” He plucks a strand of crinkly gray hair from his chin and stares at it. “An’ Jimmy.”
Not Jimmy! Anyone but Uncle Jimmy! “He’s out?”
“He
been
out.”
“Oh.”
Damn. Now I’m going to have to weed-whack Grandpa Joe-Joe’s hundred acres looking for Jimmy’s “medicinal” plants. The Franklin County sheriff found Jimmy’s last crop growing in the bed of an old Ford Ranger pickup a couple years back, just under the kudzu. The plants weren’t that big, but those fifteen marijuana plants got Jimmy fifteen months, and all Grandpa Joe-Joe cared about was getting his truck back after the trial.
“He’s a good boy, Jimmy is. He visits an’ stays.”
Until he gets arrested. “Is, uh, is Jimmy here?” I look up at the house.
“He’s around.”
Which means he isn’t here. “Where, uh, where are you pumping the septic to?”
Grandpa Joe-Joe winks at Chloe. “It’s a secret.”
As hot as it is, all I’d have to do is follow my nose…to more of Jimmy’s plants. “Grandpa Joe-Joe, you know what happened last time.”
He spits out another hair. “Won’t happen this time, I guarantee it. We got us a good hidin’ place this time.” He plucks a hair from his moustache and looks at it. “Where’d you find Miss Chloe, Robbie? She’s cute.”
I watch Chloe blush, or at least I think she’s blushing. “We met at Bensons.”
He cackles. “Miss Chloe’s an alcoholic, then?”
Here we go. “No. She was drinking ice water.”
Grandpa Joe-Joe rolls his eyes. “Bet it was some corn liquor.” He wraps the bandanna around his head, looking every bit like an old gangbanger. “Has to be corn liquor to hook up with you.” He steps next to Chloe. “You a rabbit, girl?”
“What?” Chloe asks.
“I said, are you a rabbit?”
“No,” she says. “Are you?”
Grandpa Joe-Joe smiles. “I ain’t no rabbit, but you are. You’re scared as a rabbit. You shoulda seen yourself jump out there.”
“It’s not every day a skinny old man grabs your ankle for no good reason,” Chloe says
.
“That’s right, girl,” I whisper. “You tell the old moustacheeating gangbanger a thing or two.”
I look up again. I’ll bet Mr. Shaggy White Man could eat his own moustache. He’s
still
looking? He has only gotten to the
R
s. At least he’s methodical, though it would have been easier for him to run a simple search on the computer to spit out some titles.
“Who said I didn’t have a good reason?” He cackles once, then gives Chloe the evil eye. “Now what you doin’ with Robbie?”
“I, uh—” Chloe starts to say.
“He ain’t nothin’ special. Just cuz he’s college educated don’t make him special. Just cuz he got a good job over in Roanoke sellin’ houses to uppity colored folks don’t make him special.
Two books
in a row?
What is so special about this place? As far as I can tell from working at this library, Roanoke is where literature went to die!
Just cuz he got himself a nice house and two bathrooms don’t make him special. Just cuz he’s thirty and don’t have no wife and kid don’t make him special. He ain’t nothin’ much to look at neither. Takes after his daddy, who was the ugliest man who ever lived, and I oughta know cuz I’m his daddy’s daddy.”
Chloe looks at me as if to say, “Is any of this true?”
It is, sort of. Daddy isn’t a pretty man, but he isn’t ugly. To me. And anyway, I think I take more after my mama than him.
“I tried to leave Robbie’s daddy outside in the snow one day, but damn if he didn’t keep on comin’ back into the house. I even drove him down the road aways.” He plucks hair from his chin and looks at it. “He come back the very next day, can you believe it? Then I kept him in the house, made him stay in his room till he was…eighteen, I think. Didn’t want him to scare the neighbors, don’t you know.”
Chloe only blinks rapidly. What she must be thinking.
“Run, girl, run!” I whisper, a little too loudly. I look up and see Mr. Shaggy White Man juggling several more books between the
R
and
W
stacks near the window. He won’t be long now, and just when this book was pulling me in. As ludicrous as this novel is, it’s growing on me…like kudzu!
“How is your ugly-ass daddy anyway, Robbie?”
“Daddy’s fine,” I say.
“He still got that fool worm farm?”
“Yes.”
Grandpa Joe-Joe cackles and gets right up in Chloe’s face. “Robbie’s ugly daddy has a worm farm, and everybody thinks that
I’m
the crazy one. He got a couple million of ’em copulatin’ and fornicatin’ down near the lake. You wanna meet crazy and ugly, you go on down there.”
Chloe is looking very much like a scared rabbit now. Time to rescue her. “Uh, yeah, Grandpa Joe-Joe, we’d better be going.” I turn Chloe toward the car. “It was good seeing you again, Grandpa Joe-Joe.”
“No the hell it wasn’t,” he says, and he cackles. “You got nice ankles, Chloe. Get yourself a new name, and you’ll be all right.”
Chloe turns and stops. “What name should I get?”
Grandpa Joe-Joe blinks. He’s not used to someone talking back. “Bess. Bess is a good name, a good solid name for a woman. Change your name to Bess, and you’ll be all right.”
Then Chloe cackles, and it’s almost a perfect mimic of Grandpa Joe-Joe. “Now that’s a name you’d give to a cow.”
Oh…no! Bess was my grandma, Grandpa Joe-Joe’s wife! “Uh, Chloe, um, please don’t—”
“Here, Bess Bess Bess, here Bess Bess Bess, come get yourself milked, Bess Bess Bess,” Chloe says, still mimicking Grandpa Joe-Joe.
Grandpa Joe-Joe’s face drops, and he shoves his hands into his pockets. “Bess was my wife’s name.”
Chloe sucks a sigh through her teeth. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”
“She weren’t no cow.”
Chloe leaves me and takes a few small steps toward Grandpa Joe-Joe. “I’m really, really sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
Grandpa Joe-Joe turns away. “She was as big as one, yeah, kinda spotted like one, had these big brown eyes, even had herself a cute tail, but…”
“I’m so sor—”
Grandpa Joe-Joe’s cackle cuts her off. “Robbie, I like this one. She got spunk. I like her a lot. She ain’t no rabbit. You can bring her around here anytime.” He points at the ground at my feet. “And what you doin’ standin’ on my daddy?”
I look down. The ground at my feet doesn’t look any different, but I step back anyway. “I thought he and Grandma were buried under the oak tree out back.”
“I moved ’em,” he says, with a scowl. “If you came around more often, you’d know that.”
Chloe steps quickly back to me. “Let’s go,” she whispers.
“Why’d you move them, Grandpa Joe-Joe?”
He folds his arms to his chest. “So the shit wouldn’t get to them is why. Damn. That’d be a fine howdy-do, wouldn’t it? You’re pushin’ up daisies and then you’re pushin’ up shit. That ain’t no way to spend eternity.”
“Please, Rob,” Chloe whispers.
“Uh, see you later, Grandpa Joe-Joe.”
We turn toward the car and walk quickly through the heavy grass. “Shouldn’t he be in a home?” Chloe asks.
“He is in his home.”
“No, I mean—”
I squeeze her hand. “I know what you meant, and don’t think we haven’t tried. He lasted six hours in a home I had all lined up for him, and I still had to pay for the whole month.”
“What happened?”
We get into the car, and I crank up the air-conditioning. “At first, he seemed okay, you know, flirting with all the ladies, shaking hands with all the men. I took him to his room, got him settled in, and gave him a hug. A few hours later, I get this call. ‘Come get your grandfather,’ they said. ‘He’s hanging outside his window on a sheet.’” I turn to her and pull away from Grandpa Joe-Joe’s. “He tried to escape by knotting sheets into a rope, but he didn’t have enough sheets to reach the ground.”
“They kicked him out for that?”
“Well, he did, um, leave a mess on his mattress.” I stare at her, so she knows what kind of mess I mean without me saying it.
“Oh.” She slips off her sandals and puts them on the floor in the back.
“I’ll buy you some news ones, I promise,” I say.
“Don’t worry about it.” I check out her feet and her short toes, each one the same length as the other. “Don’t stare,” she says. “I know they’re deformed.”
“They’re not. They’re…unique.”
Let’s evaluate our author, J. Johnson. We know the author is fixated on titties, “shelves,” ankles, and feet. This is definitely TMI—too much information.
“Uh-huh.” She rolls down the window, letting the wind ruffle some stray hairs above her cornrows. “Doesn’t he get lonely out there all by himself?”
I can’t say that he has Jimmy now. Jimmy will only show up to tend to his plants, wherever they are. “Grandpa Joe-Joe’s where he wants to be, I guess. He never complains about being lonely. And I visit as often as I can, just about every weekend.”
“You ought to visit him more often, even help him keep his place up.”
“I just don’t have the time.”
“Make the time.”
“Why are you so concerned about my crazy grandpa anyway?”
She laughs. “That man isn’t crazy.”
“You said he was.”
“Well, I was wrong. He’s not crazy at all, Rob. I know crazy, and he isn’t crazy.”
I glance at Chloe. The only people I know who truly know crazy are either psychologists or crazy themselves. Is the crazy pretty girl sitting next to me a
crazy
crazy pretty girl?
“I was a psychology major at Tech,” she says.
Whew. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. And your grandfather is smart.”
“Even if he thinks you have cute ankles?”
She slaps my thigh. “I do have cute ankles. Anyway, he was just testing me, and I know I passed the test.”
“What test?”
She rolls her eyes. “Where are we going?”
“Huh?”
“Where are you taking me?”
I haven’t been paying attention. I’ve just been driving and thinking about Chloe’s toes and cute ankles and Grandpa Joe-Joe being smart under all that crazy. “Uh, I don’t know. I don’t even know where you live.”
“I live in Roanoke, near Roanoke Memorial. I’m a nurse there.”