“You’re kidding me.”
“No. They had a film festival there, and he was namechecked as the coordinator.” She gives me the notebook. The address is scrawled across, barely legible. “The weird thing’s that, of everyone you grew up with, he’s probably the one who comes the closest to having seen anything we’ve done. Distribution sells us specifically to places like that. Art house, B-list, indie, whatever. How far is Louisville from here?”
I take the paper from her. “Three hours. Little more.”
She shrugs and goes to town on her other ear, hopping up and down. “Well. Can you think of anything better to do tomorrow?”
THE GIRL WHO SHOWED
THE JURY HER TEETH
I wake at noon dizzy, aching from knees to neck. Mel is on the back deck with coffee and a cigarette, a years-old copy of the Faulkner Gazette in her hands. I get a look at the front page. It is my senior portrait—she’s rereading the story written when I won the Ballister scholarship.
She snaps the paper and sniffs. “You’ll be gratified to know,” she says, “that hog prices have risen two dollars per pound since your high school graduation. However, poultry rates have remained steady.”
“Mom and Kent gone?”
“Yeah. Kent made us coffee before he left. Said there are biscuits in the freezer. Nice guy.”
“I agree. Shame Shauna gives him so much shit.”
“I’m guessing your sister doesn’t change her opinions so easily.”
“That’s a kind way of putting it.”
“She loves you.” Mel hides behind the Gazette.
I shift. “Dude. This chair is really fucking hard.”
“She wouldn’t get so freaked out about the Honus Caudill thing if she didn’t. She was genuinely disturbed by that. That’s what you all were talking about while I was in Walmart. Right?”
“Was it that obvious?”
“Yep.” She rattles the front page. “Get dressed. We got places to go.”
—
I’m not supposed to drive yet, but I offer to take the car down the mountain. Mel stares straight ahead, lips pressed together as I crane my neck and steer us in reverse down the hill to the main road. “Okay,” she says. “Switch back.”
“What, no thank you?”
“Thank you for scaring the bejesus out of me. Now scootch.”
We take U.S. 60 to the interstate. A long line of kids riding ATVs cruise along the road shoulder. A few lift their arms in greeting.
I-64 west winds up and down through the hills, flattening as it passes Lexington. Two bathroom breaks and three carside jogs later, we arrive at 75’s midsouth fork-off—St. Louis in one direction, Nashville in the other, Louisville in the cradle—get turned around taking a downtown exit, then ramble out Muhammad Ali Boulevard through blocks of fried chicken joints and Chinese takeout, houses with single red bulbs by the front door. “Did we just get teleported back to Brooklyn?” Mel says.
We make a turn, find ourselves on a block of Victorians, where we stop to photograph a jockey statue that has been painted pea green. Cut through Cherokee Park, nearly collide with an SUV on a turnabout, and emerge onto a tree-lined thoroughfare. The sidewalks are populated with kids in skinny jeans and square sunglasses. “Holy hell,” Mel says. “Sorry, but if that was East New York back there, then this looks like—”
“Williamsburg. This is it. Bardstown Road.”
“Jesus. Everything’s a microcosm of New York now. It’s ruined America for us.” She rolls her window down and lights a cigarette, checking out two girls in cowboy boots at the light. “I spy with my little eye…an ironic mustache,” she mutters.
And that’s when I see it: a large, spray-painted marquee reading WEIRDO VIDEO. Above that, an R. Crumb–style fiend hovers, tongue lolling out, one eye askew, horny hand grasping at old-school VHS cassettes.
Seeing it makes it real. My insides twist. I feel my armpits. Soaked.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” I say. “Remind me why we’re here. Why did we think this was a good idea?”
“Because it is,” Mel says. “Why not? He’ll be glad to see you. And if he’s not, then we leave.”
“Let’s go home. Let’s get some pie, then go home. There’s a pie kitchen up that way.”
“Okay, Cathy. Let’s all go ACK and shove our faces in some pie. Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Stop it. I don’t like this.”
Mel sticks her cigarette between her teeth and cranks the Mazda into a parking space. “Remember why we’re here. We had to come to Kentucky to see it for ourselves. And we have to go to Teddy to see him, too. Whatever story we’re doing here—it’s incomplete without him. He was there with you in that room.”
The image of Phillips-Stamper Cemetery flickers to mind, but dimmer than last night, weakened by the daylight, sobriety, my rising heart rate. “You know, I haven’t technically given the go-ahead on this thing yet,” I say.
“I didn’t realize a formal go-ahead was required.”