I went back to a place I swore I’d never go again, to lay eyes on a woman I hated more than anybody.
That day, a bank of storm clouds collected dark on the ridge behind her trailer when I come up on it. The wind collected twigs and dead leaves and trash, and whipped em into little twisters that lifted up for a few seconds, then let loose. The place looked empty. A corner of the cinder-block foundation was sunk in the mud, and the metal front door held on by one hinge and banged in the gusts of wind. The smell of rot met me by the beat-up mailbox.
I crossed the dirt yard, and dust blew in my eyes and made em tear up. I wiped em with the back a my hand, but no amount of strong breeze chased the rank away. I almost turned round right then and there cause of what I’d find inside, but death turns me curious. I seen my share.
Mama was on the floor in the narrow hallway, half naked. Black and purple showed through stretched skin bloated like the bullfrogs I gig at Peddler Pond when I get a hankering for frog legs. I guess she died three or four days ago, bout the time the thought of her started pestering me and won’t leave.
From the look of her, she got beat up one time too much. Her bleached hair with dark roots got bloodied and stuck to her skull on one side. More dried blood on the carpet spread out as big as a platter.
With her sass gone and death being a bitch, the only thing that looked like Mama was the rhinestone earrings she wore cause they looked almost real. She liked to say one of her boyfriends give em to her, but she stole em from the pharmacy rack and forgot I was there when she done it. She liked sparklers on the Fourth of July that blazed up and made her eyes get big before they sputtered out. Mama liked cheap, sparkly stuff.
One look round her place that day told me everything that could be took, was. The clock which don’t keep time but always hung on the wall by the sink was broke in pieces beside her head. The faucet from the kitchen sink was gone, and it don’t make sense why somebody’d take a rusty faucet, but they did.
In the tin ashtray full of cigarette butts smoked down to the last, I saw my toy fire truck with the wheels off and red paint dotted with cigarette burns. I got that little truck when I was five. It was the only Christmas present I remember, and Mama likely stole that, too.
I blew off the ashes and slipped it in my pocket, then walked back to the truck to fetch the gas can. I stepped over the body and started in the bedroom. I poured gasoline on the stained mattress and on the pile of clothes in the corner, on the sofa with the broke leg, and doused more gas on the rug and bloated body and stack of dog-eared magazines by the toilet.
Then, I stepped outside, lit a cigarette, took a long, deep drag, and held in the smoke till my lungs ached. Then I held it a second more before I exhaled slow. I flicked the cigarette through the open door. It only took a minute for the flames to grow wild and turn hungry.
I stepped away from the heat and listened to the hiss and creak and shuffle of cheap turned to ash. The fire sent cinders into the air like the sparklers Mama woulda liked at her leaving.
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That memory of Mama brought back the thought when Billy and me was teenagers and we fished at the riverbank. The summer heat was so sluggish and heavy that day the fish stayed deep in the cool and won’t bite.
Cause we was bored, we played a game we made up called The Biggest. What’s the biggest hungry you ever been? The biggest surprise, shit, pissed off, happy, or tired you been. We took turns asking and saying, and some of it was funny, a little bit was true, and a lot of it won’t.
Now, it won’t no surprise when Billy said the biggest scared for him was them sneaky, bastard revenuers who hide out in shadows and wait like the boogeyman to pounce on delivery boys. Billy was green to the moonshine business back then at thirteen and as likely to pee his pants as he was to do the job. He won’t much good those early years cept as a bottle washer or woodchopper, as he was on the sickly side. Nobody woulda hired him if I won’t part of the deal cause I was the muscle and the brains. Billy’s nobody without me.
What did surprise me that night on the riverbank was the ass-whopper of a lie Billy told that still sits hard in my gut. He said the biggest happy day he remembered was when he was three, and his mama won’t drunk, and no man woke up in the trailer and beat on him. He said his mama called out for him cause she don’t see him, then found him crawled up under a mountain holly back of the trailer, snagged, and can’t get out.
He said she got down on her knees in the dirt and pulled him out by his britches, careful not to hurt him. She talked tender and got cuts on her arms when she pulled him out from under them holly stickers. Then she picked him up by his hands and sang, “Where have you been, Billy boy, Billy boy,” and swung him round and round in the yard, and held tight to his little boy arms and made him smile and laugh. She don’t let him go. Said he felt like he was flying away from all the bad stuff.
I stood up fast back then and said over and over that long-ago evening, “No, no, no.” I was pissed at his lie bout him being happy with his mama. I said, “You made that up cause you want it to be true but it’s a lie. A goddamn lie, cause nobody cares bout a little piece a shit like you. Nobody.”
On the riverbank, Billy held his bamboo fishing pole and looked away quick so I don’t see him turn sissy and cry. But he lied. He had to lie, cause no mama ever looked out for boys like him and me, and took us by the hands, and swung us round and round, singing our name, making us smile.
Billy don’t deserve a made-up memory like that.
What’s funny now is why I remember it like I do.
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I hear more dead branches fall or rocks tumble, but I don’t jump so bad like I done before. Billy keeps needling into my daydreaming like he’s got somewhere to be when I know there’s nothing in his life cept me and my doings.
“Roy, want me to take the front? We gonna make this a all-day job?”
I don’t answer, just climb, and he goes quiet on me again.
In life, Darlene don’t weigh more than a hundred pounds. In death, she turned heavy after two miles. Or, maybe for me, a couple a nights without sleep, and a killing in between, turned me tired.
The sulfur smell grows stronger and stings my eyes and burns my throat. It’s real steep now, and Billy and me got to watch out cause one wrong step could break a leg or snuff out a life. That’s what we count on to keep folks away. Darlene’s final resting place won’t pretty, but she won’t pretty no more neither.
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