Jane Two (24 page)

“Almost there son, tell him we're almost there.”

And that was the first time I looked up from Steve. I left his eyes and caught my dad's in the rearview mirror as he drove. He was still talking to me with the strength of a real man, but I saw that his eyes felt the same thing I felt. I saw his cheek twitching, the same way mine did as tears fell from his red eyes. And I could see him collect his heaving breaths before stoically throwing a sentence of strength back in my direction. I saw my dad that night, and he was no different than me. I saw his hand occasionally come up and wipe away the flood of tears, but his voice never once acknowledged their presence. My Grandaddy was right about us all being the same. But he was wrong about there being no rattlesnake. There wasn't no rattlesnake in either of them, there was maybe a couple scales and a fang in each. They cried, too, and they were the realest men I've ever known. I wasn't a rattlesnake, because my mom and dad were not rattlesnakes. That was the first time I'd ever seen my dad cry, and it shook my core. He was not sure my dog would live, and it tore him to pieces that matched my pieces. He was my pillar of strength. We made it to the vet but Steve was already gone. As a courtesy, the vet pronounced him dead and ceremoniously removed Steve McQueen's collar and prepared his body for burial, but I did not want to let go of him. My whole body could not stop crying and I remember clenching his collar to my face and inhaling my friend for the last time. My dad told me that all the years of loving him would speak far more eloquently than anything I could try and tell him now.

“He knows, son.”

And I let go of my best friend. It was well after midnight when we finally drove home with Steve McQueen's empty body wrapped up in the backseat.

And I remember there was a tall building just off the freeway whose top floors were completely engulfed in flames. My dad pulled off the freeway about a block from that blazing building as fire trucks screamed by. There was a police car sitting sideways in the middle of the street right in front of a House of Pies deflecting what little traffic there was at that hour. My dad pulled into the lot, told me to stay in the car, and walked over to talk to the cop. I wondered if any people had died in that building on the same night that Steve did. And I wondered what my dad was saying to that cop. When he came back, he reparked the car, backing it into a space in that empty parking lot facing that flaming building, and just said, “It ain't time ta go home yet, you hungry?” I waited in the car until he came out of that House of Pies holding a large box. I climbed out and onto the hood as my dad reclined on the windshield right next to me.

He opened that box to reveal a large orange pie and said, “No chocolate, pumpkin's all they had left.” That night, we sat on the hood of his car and ate an entire pumpkin pie as we had one of the longest conversations I've ever had in my life with the fewest words. Around three in the morning, long after House of Pies had closed and the firefighters had rolled up hoses to go home to their families, I was slowly drifting off to sleep from the emotional exhaustion of Steve's departing. I heard my dad say, “It goes by so quick, son…please tell me you'll take care of it.” I took a minute to think about what he meant, although I knew I already got it. And as we pulled out of that parking lot, that same officer whose cruiser had been sideways in the street waved our car over and stuck his head next to my dad's open window.

“You know, I spent the last three hours over here just watching you and your boy, and I seen his tears. I think you already know you got a good one there, sir. But sometimes the young'ns don't know till too late who their daddy is. All night long, only one car stop'n ask if they's somethin' they can do. That your daddy, son.” And then he offered his hand out to my dad, who shook it in kind. “Pleasure to meet another who don't just keep driving by in a time of need. Y'all have a good night and God bless.”

“God bless.” And we drove. He knew exactly who my daddy was…and so did I.

“I will, Dad.”

My dad and I watched the sun come up in the front yard, because it had taken us another couple hours to bury Steve. We put him right at the foot of the bean tree where he had always waited for me to come down. There was a Steve-sized circle of dead grass where he had been lying beneath me in that tree for years and that is where he lies still. Before I finally fell asleep that morning, I vomited up every ounce of pumpkin pie that I consumed.

When I woke up later in the day, I found that Lilyth had already found a way to punctuate my grief in her own uniquely sociopathic way. Every bit of Steve McQueen was in the trash: his bowl, his chew bone, his blanket from my bed, his brush.

“What, y'retard, don't look at me that way, y'ingrate, I was being helpful. Mom!”

“Oh, darlin'!” Mom came in from the garage followed by Dad. Lilyth burst into tears crying loudly, so Mom hugged her instead of me. “Aw, Sug, it's
fine
, Lilyth didn't mean it bad.” Dad looked bewildered and fatigued. I headed for my room.

“Paul, fish the dog's things out the trash, darlin', will y'?”

“Mickey blames me for everything! I didn't kill his dog!” Lilyth wailed, tearing away dramatically to rush off to her room in hysterics as if she had been misunderstood. As she stomped past my room I saw her through the crack in the door. The hair on the back of my neck stands up even today as I recall the look of hatred in her eyes as she winked at me, dry eyed, and whispered with a smirk, “Your dog stunk up the house. I'm glad it's dead.”

I was powerless, immobilized by fury. She had been gone for months and home had felt safe and easy. Now I was right back to where I had been all my life, on guard, waiting for Lilyth's proverbial shoe to drop.

Steve McQueen had been my companion and guardian since I was a toddler. It had been this gargantuan Weimaraner who buffered the mail truck's blow when I chased my toy fire truck that Lilyth had deliberately rolled into traffic for me to chase. Though I did end up in the emergency room that day, it was Steve McQueen who had taken the majority of the blow by putting himself between me and the oncoming vehicle. When Mom had left Lilyth alone with me in the hospital room that day to “keep me company” while she was out in the hall with the doctor, Lilyth had leaned in real close with that look in her eye, hissing the four most terrifying words a toddler could try and wrap his little brain around: “You stole my mother.” Lilyth, then age six, punctuated with, “Steve McQueen's gon' die, y'know, y'lil retard, all 'cause'a you.” Steve lived to protect me and never left my side. It was Steve who first revealed Lilyth for what she was. He knew. I don't have a single memory from my childhood that Steve McQueen is not in. And it was Steve McQueen who helped me see other truths, like my true lineage displayed that night in that rearview mirror.

Each time Lilyth elected to rend the fabric of my childhood with her fine-tuned sociopathy, I took a step back before going forward without her. I retreated further from my sister, learning to deploy strategic forethought before I would tell her anything at all, and I became more covert in my actions whenever she was watching me. Lilyth was the opposite of Jane, but truly a motivator to me. I credit Lilyth with my keen ability to spot a con-artist or a freeloader. Thanks to Lilyth I never did rely on a bully's charity to not get my lunch money stolen, but I had also learned to behave as though absolutely anyone could potentially kick the shit out of me. Except that day at hole seventeen. That fight with Andy I wanted to neither finish nor start. That fight I have always been ashamed to tell you about. But here, you know, I had to tell you. And I've adjusted. I hope I've made my Grandaddy proud that he taught me right. Grandaddy's
Right
, that is, according to The Law. And that he'd recognized ten corrections. Still, I could not hit my sister, though at times I wanted to hit her more than anyone else.

Lilyth was my point of departure for understanding women, and because of that, maybe I was gun-shy and misunderstood the signals from other girls in high school, including Jane. Where Lilyth was lawless, Jane was flawless. Flawless, but a misunderstanding left unchallenged, nonetheless. Misunderstandings left unchallenged have wrought isolation between me and the people I care for on more than one occasion. And I hated that. When I was sixteen and my pal Eduardo was seventeen, he had me meet him at the Utotem to show me something “really cool” before heading off to college. He had been on every one of my sports teams. And although we were not best friends, we had each other's back. I liked and respected him. He pulled up in a badass primered '68 Chevy Nova SS and got out beaming, as I circled the car in awe. Man, I knew more about that car than he did. I saw that it had the highly revered 396-cubic-inch engine rated at 375 horsepower under the hood attached to the rare M-21 close ratio four-speed manual. We spoke about our dream cars just about every day in school, and this one was a fast and very rare bird for some small-town Texas boys. He told me that his dad had bought him two Pioneer #6905 6X9s for the back, a couple smaller Pioneer five-inch door speakers and a “blue light” Alpine in-dash stereo with a cassette player, and he wondered if I would help him install it in my driveway.

“Hell, yeah!” I said. I knew that the angle of the rear window in that Nova would produce some killer acoustics. I circled the car, taking in every inch, and he finally said with a smile, “So what do you think?” I just looked at him and shook my smiling face back and forth knowing that he already knew the answer to that. I could see him crushing that four-hour freeway drive all the way to his college in Kingsville with that Alpine deck throwing out Zeppelin all over the I-59 South. I finally stopped gawking and pulled away from that gem, looked up at him.

“How much?” I asked.

Eduardo took a moment before his face just went blank.

And he climbed into that beautiful Nova and slowly drove away from the Utotem—and me. I never heard from him again until I saw him at Firefly's bachelor party years later. I asked him why he had left that day, and why he had never spoken to me since. He said, “Shit, Mickey, you just really hurt my feelings, man. I asked you what you thought about it, and goddamn, man, no one knew cars like you did, and you took a long time to answer, and when you did, you just said…‘It's not much.'”

“Holy shit, Eduardo. You're wrong. I've run that scene in my head a thousand times wondering what happened that day, and I can even tell you how I'd planned to mount those 6905s on your back deck to project directly to the driver's seat, or how that cam made that 396 lope. No, goddammit. I asked ‘How much?'” And I did. I really did. I figured his silence was just compassion for my Toaster next to his SS. Some lessons come early, and some come late. More compassion. Fewer misunderstandings left unchallenged.

Friday mornings in high school, I'd see Baxter, for whom I had absolutely none—compassion, that is—until after the Chevy Nova conversation with Eduardo. Baxter sightings were rare and mostly on the school bus, which I only took on Fridays when we didn't have swim practice. I'd get on and Baxter would acknowledge my presence but I'd overlook him, Jane and disdain flooding my mind as I'd aim for the back row. Over time, Baxter had grown even fatter until he pretty much took up an entire seat, his butt hanging over the edge into the aisle. And every Friday, on fish stick day, Baxter reeked of what he ate that day, so I'd hold my breath until I got past him to my seat in the back row. The very last time I rode the bus before Firefly and I finished building our VW was also one of the days that I wore my favorite Britannia shirt, and I recall it because it was also the time that Baxter vomited in the aisle of the school bus. To this day, everyone who was on that bus ride refers to it as The Poseidon Adventure.

It was a smell I'll never forget, and kids all hung their head out the windows, gasping. Much as Baxter himself always made me feel like throwing up, I did not want to humiliate him by covering my face with my shirt, so I just sat there focusing on the feel of its soft terry cloth slit-neck collar, and looking down at the mix of green and brown horizontal panels on the torso with white sleeves and white band at the waist. As Baxter's puke sloshed back and forth each time the bus slowed down or sped up, eventually Baxter's river of fishy spew reached the 95s that I had bought with my own money, and a perplexing feeling of almost-compassion for Baxter arose in my heart. And that surprised me. Hell, I even considered offering Baxter my second Reese's but decided that would be a waste.

The next time I saw Baxter, it was just his fat head above a crowd outside the country club waiting to go in for some event. I scouted for Jane as I headed to swim practice after mowing their neighbor's lawn by hole eighteen, but none of Jane's family members were around. My Fonzi T-shirt that mom had appliqued was soaked in sweat and clung to me. I had four days' worth of clothes and I looked well cared for, though maybe a little disheveled at times. But Baxter, fat as he was, always looked like his mother had spit-polished him into the latest brand-name attire. He was a walking catalogue in XXL.

Baxter's mother waved and came at me, scoped me up and down, put her hyper-red manicured meat hooks on my shoulder, and slithered down to my bicep where her touch lingered an uncomfortable moment too long.

“You!” she said, gushing like I was her very own Baxter. “I just have to thank ya for inspiring my Baxter to be a fashion maven.” She released my arm only to pull Baxter out of the cluster of club members to place his lump in front of me. There it was, the twin of my Britannia shirt I so loved, stretched beyond recognition across Baxter's girth. He looked ashamed. I felt sorry for him. “You musta paid a fortune for yours, boy. I had the darndest time findin' Baxter one just like yours…boy.” Mrs. Parsifal never bothered to remember my name, and I never wore my Britannia again. Sadly, the fact was, Baxter had no inspiration, none, everything was handed to him, and he had no desire to try, trapped as he had chosen to remain in his fat suit. “Why don't y'all come
dahn
with us at the country club. Special event! C'mon, er…what was your name again, boy?”