The Big Ugly (7 page)

With my peripheral vision, I scanned my distance to the nearest knife on the wall. I could reach it without having to take a step or bend over the couch.

I felt my skin flush when he took a step toward me. I moved to the right and kept the coffee table between us. I pulled a knife off the wall.

He said, "That's my Randall 14."

"You touch me and I'll stick this Randall 14 in between those balls you love so much."

He took a step to the left to get between me and the door. "You ever been in a knife fight?"

I took a step to my left.

"Naw," he said, "you ain't never been in no knife fight. Want some advice? Want to know the secret to winning a knife fight? The secret is, don't be afraid of getting cut."

I stopped moving. His advice wasn't bad.

He took another step toward me. I tossed his Randall 14 on the sofa.

That amused him.

"We're not playing anymore?" he said.

I locked eyes with him and walked between him and the coffee table, our faces maybe two inches away from each other. "I got all I need here," I said.

I got to the door and unlocked it and opened it.

Evan Hastings smiled, supremely satisfied. So satisfied he threw me a bone. "Alexis come back from seeing her momma and decided to get some religion," he said. He picked his teeth with the point of his knife. "Leastways, that's the way she tolt it to me. I didn't say nothing. Let her go find the Holy Ghost—don't mean fuck all to me."

I turned around. "You know that she actually knows Jerry Kingston? You see them together?"

"Naw, but I know she went to meet him. The last night she was here, she said she's going out. And I was like, 'Where you going?' And she said she didn't want to say. And I was like, 'Bull and Shit.' Sleeping in my house, eating my food, shitting in my toilet, and don't want to tell me what you're doing? I was like, 'That's bullshit.' And she said, 'I'm going to see Brother Jerry.' And I said, 'Why?' and she said, ''Cause.' And I said, ''Cause why?' And she said it wasn't none of my business."

He stopped to let me ask what happened next.

I said, "Then what?"

He pointed at me with the knife. "I straightened her out. Not fucking around like just now with you, but for real. I straightened her the fuck out."

"With a knife?"

He smirked. "Nah, I'd never cut up a pretty face. I ain't that kind of man. I just slapped some sense into her."

"No."

"What?"

I felt my face flush again. Something about seeing satisfaction on a face that stupid and gross prompted me to say, "I can see you're not that kind of man."

I stepped back inside and closed the door behind me. I locked it.

Still holding his knife at his side, he suddenly looked confused. "The fuck you doing?"

"I wanted to tell you what a balless sack of shit you are."

It took him a second to process what I said. "What?"

"What I said, dipshit, was that if I wanted to insult you I'd do it to your face and you'd stand there with your knife in your hand and you wouldn't do a goddamn thing about it."

He moved toward me. "You think so?"

"Yeah, motherfucker, I do."

He stopped just in front of me. He stunk—stunk of stupidity and meanness.

I leaned into his stink until I was a couple of inches from his face again and his knife was a couple of inches from my stomach. "Because you know, Evan. You might be dumber than dog shit but you know I'm not twenty years old and ignorant and afraid. I don't love you or need money from you and I'm not even a little afraid of you. And you know that if you try some bullshit with me, you'll have a real fight on your hands."

He glared at me for a moment before his eyes brightened and he let out a boozy laugh. "Whoa, you're one crazy fucking bitch, ain't you?" He laughed some more and dabbed at the corner of his eye with a scarred knuckle. "I didn't see it right off, but you're one of them crazy bitches."

I gave him a smile. "Just had my fill of the ones like you, that's all. Don't take it personally. Just allergic to assholes."

I turned around, unlocked the door and left him standing there.

Driving away, my entire body spasmed with adrenaline.

My hands shook as I tried to grip the wheel.

The car was too quiet.

I yelled, "That's right, motherfucker!"

The next morning, a man came to see me.

I'd had breakfast with the family—sitting there staring at a piece of toast while my brother said grace and thanked God, again, for having me at the table. Then Bethany left to take Felicia to a friend's house, and Nate and I walked down to the shop.

Nate had just unlocked the front office when a Lexis pulled into the drive. A short man wearing a blue suit and a red tie got out.

Nate assumed he was a customer. "Morning."

The man walked toward me. He had dark eyes that didn't blink. "Ellie Bennett."

"Yeah."

"There's a man looking for you."

"That's a relief to hear."

Behind me Nate said, "Who wants to see her?"

Without looking at him, the man with the dark eyes said, "Fuck off, buddy."

Unsteady on his crutch, my brother hobbled toward him. "What?"

I got between them. "Whoa, Nate. Take it easy." I turned back to the man with the dark eyes. "That was rude. You're out of line talking to my brother like that." I turned back to Nate. "It's okay, Nate. Go on, inside. I need to talk to this guy." He didn't want to go in, but I shook him by the arm. "It's fine. Really. I'll explain later. Give me a minute."

Nate glared at me, then turned and walked into the office.

The man with the dark eyes grinned and looked at his watch. "How about you come see us in an hour?"

"Who are you?"

"One hour. Downtown. Morgan building."

"Do I have a choice?"

He smiled again, tickled at the question. "Of course, you do. Free country. But you'll want to see this guy who wants to meet you. Got an opportunity for you."

"What's he want to see me about?"

"I guess you'll find out. The old Morgan building downtown. Ten o'clock."

"Who do I ask for?"

He opened his car door. "Don't ask for anybody. Just show up."

I dressed up like I was going for a job interview as a funeral director. Black skirt and jacket over a white blouse. Black flats, no necklace, some small black hoops. A little make-up to cover the rough spots, and I walked down to the shop and found Nate working.

"I need to borrow the car again," I said.

Crouched low on a work stool beside an old couch, he nodded as he yanked staples out of the frame with a pair of needle-nose pliers.

I asked, "Was that nod a 'Yes, you can borrow the car'?"

He pulled out a staple and dropped it in a bucket by his feet. "Sure."

"You okay, Nate?"

"Yeah."

"You're sure?"

"Yeah."

I stared at the top of his head. He twisted out another staple and dropped it in the bucket.

I said, "I'm sorry that guy was a dick."

He raised his head. His face was blank, which was always a sign that he was mad.

"What do you want me to say?" he asked.

"Nothing, I guess."

"You want me to be silent?"

"You know that's not what I mean."

"Yeah, Ellie. I think it is what you mean. So I'm just here pulling staples out of this couch. Being silent. Not asking questions."

I'd had enough of this conversation already. I didn't want to tell him what was going on because I could think of no good that would come of it. I just wanted to leave. But I was living at his house and working at his business, and plus I loved the bastard, so I took one more swing. "I have to go. It's just a business thing. It's nothing dangerous or illegal or bad. It's just a business thing. I'm about to go get in the car and drive off. I'll be back in a couple of hours. But I don't want to just turn around and leave if there is anything you need to discuss with me."

He pulled out a staple. "Well, thanks for all that information. There's nothing I need to discuss with you now. You cleared it all up." He dropped the staple in the bucket.

I opened my mouth, but everything that I could think to say was defensive and stupid. I just went out to the car and drove off.

I felt like shit, but I'd have to wait to talk to him about it. It worried me, of course. I didn't want him to be mad at me, but it wouldn't do me any good to fret about it right then.

Nate was like our father. In most ways, he was a better, stronger man than our father, but he inherited the old man's basic attitude toward life. He rarely wanted to make his feelings known, and he never wanted to tell you he was angry at you. When Nate was mad, he just went cold, like an engine that died.

Me, I'm like the old woman. Mom's anger went off like a bomb—it was bad, and then it was over. Though the damage could linger, she generally tried to help you recover. What a broad. She was a go-getter and a multi-tasker before those terms had even been coined. If she'd been given more direction when she was younger, she probably could have gone to college and moved up the corporate ladder. She would have made a damn fine captain of industry. As it was, she was an office manager. She worked ten-hour days and spent her smoke breaks bitching about my old man's lack of ambition.

Then, about the time I turned fifteen, one of the broads at her work talked her into going to a revival meeting. And that was it. My mother cooked dinner one Monday night, said goodbye, and four hours later a born again Christian came home in her place. After that, she made us go to church with her three times a week—Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night.

None of us understood it at first. I was embarrassed that my tough old broad of a mother was suddenly a Bible-quoting, teetotaling Jesus freak. She hadn't lost any of her toughness, though—which was a problem once she started telling me I couldn't see R-rated movies or listen to secular music or hang out with my unsaved friends. She'd turned into a regular hardass for Christ, and I wasn't having any of it.

In some ways, I guess our relationship never recovered from that. She was bossy, and I'm just like her, so we were probably always going to have problems when I hit my teens. We were always destined to fight over who got to be the voice of authority. But when she started quoting the Bible at me, it felt like she was cheating. The whole point of quoting the Bible is so you claim to be right about everything. At least that was the whole point for someone like my mom.

Well, maybe not the
whole
point. I guess she'd always been looking for something else in her life. She'd always been insecure about my dad's lack of class, about our ratty house, about the fact she never had a decent car even though her husband was a mechanic. She felt pretty let down by life, I guess. When she got saved, I think it all finally made some kind of sense to her, like she'd finally figured out what she'd been doing wrong all those years.

The old man and Nate went along with her. She got Nate saved pretty quick. It didn't take long for some preacher to convince him that he was going to go to hell. The old man was a longer term project, but when he finally came around to seeing it Mom's way, he came in hard. Pretty soon he was as religious as she was.

I didn't really have an opinion about the religious stuff one way or another. I'd always figured that anyone claiming to speak for God was putting words in God's mouth. What I knew for sure was that my parents had pulled a fast one on me. Their big conversion felt like a betrayal, like they were suddenly switching to a whole new set of rules.

If it had stopped there, maybe we would have been okay. Maybe we could have worked our way back to each other.

Now it was too late to even try.

Downtown, I parked close to the old fire station and walked up the street to the Morgan building. It was six stories of gray brick and dirty windows. I walked up to the door, and the creep I'd seen that morning appeared at my side.

It gave me a start.

"Where the fuck did you come from?"

Without acknowledging that I'd said anything, he opened the front door. He was only an inch or so taller than me and slightly built, but he gave me the creeps, anyway. With wide, hard cheeks that slanted down to a small chin, he looked like a snake. He held the door for me and finally turned to me and did something with his mouth that was like a parody of a smile—like he was mocking the whole idea of smiling and politeness and kindness. "After you."

We walked inside, and as he took me to an elevator at the back of the darkened lobby I noticed brown stains bubbled up from spots in the linoleum. We waited for the elevator next to a dusty plaque on the wall that read: Walter H. Morgan, 1894-1969.

The elevator doors groaned open. I looked at the empty elevator and then back at him.

His face did that smile parody again.

I stepped on, and he followed me. He pushed the button for the sixth floor. I stared at the floor numbers tick upward. He stared at me.

When we stepped into the deserted hallway of the sixth floor, my heart rate spiked. I made fists with both hands.

If he noticed my trepidation, he didn't seem to care. He walked a little ahead of me without glancing back. "Last door," he said.

A light shone from the door at one end of the hall. My new friend stopped just outside of it and leaned against the wall. "Inside," he said, smiling.

I walked past him.

Grimy old shades were pulled down over the windows in the office where an elderly man stood behind a desk with a single lamp.

He motioned me forward. "Miss Bennett," he said.

"Yes."

"My name is Junius Kluge."

I walked over to the desk, and he held out a hand, so I shook it.

Kluge was as thin and hard as a railroad spike. Though he was an old man, he seemed to have aged differently than most people. His skin wasn't loose and saggy—it was tight and red, as if it had shrunk to his skull like melted plastic. His small blue eyes glinted like nails hammered deep into their sockets.