Tender as Hellfire (13 page)

“I hate to say it, but this is the most repulsive dress I’ve ever seen,” Val muttered, turning once more before the full-length mirror. “I pray this is my sister’s idea of some kind of bad joke.”

I turned away, taking a seat on the edge of the tub, and that was when I saw it:
them
. I looked up and noticed Val’s lacy black panties and brassiere drying along the shower curtain rod. I felt my heart pounding in my chest as I stared at them hanging there. Pill noticed them too, his face already turning red. He looked at them for a few moments, then hurried out of the bathroom to go sit on the porch and smoke a cigarette with his shaky hands.

“It feels like I’m wearing some sort of punishment,” Val said. She turned and glanced over her shoulder at the monstrous pink bow that rippled at the base of her spine. “What in God’s sweet name is that supposed to be?” The bow was huge, puffy, and knotted.

I sat on the edge of the tub, trying to smile, but my Val was right: It looked like some kind of pink curse.

“I look hideous. Hideous. I look like a hooker, don’t I? I look like trailer trash.”

And then Val began to cry. Sweet Jesus, help me, she began to cry. I didn’t know what to say or do. I looked up at her, trying to smile.

“I guess it can’t be that bad,” she muttered, holding her hand over her mouth. And then she started crying even harder, sitting down on the bathroom floor, sobbing into the folds of her awful gown. “I look horrible. Horrible … like a …”

I watched as tears ran down her smooth white cheeks, turning the pink gown darker where her teardrops landed. I fought to think of some words I could use, something I could say that would make her stop crying, but nothing came. I guess Val did look horrible in that dress. I was afraid there were no words in the world that would change that. Somehow, dressed up in that chiffon gown, she did look cheap. I began to wonder if that was the way she always looked and maybe I had just never noticed. Under the fabric of that awful pink dress, the truth was now as bare and stunning as the black mole on her white shoulder. I began to think that maybe Val, with her dingy little job at the diner, and all her men, maybe she was exactly like the rest of us.

“I heard Mrs. Heget in the supermarket whispering to that Mrs. Groves,” Val whispered. “She called me a tramp. She said, ‘There goes that little whore!’ I hate it here. I hate people thinking I’m a whore. Why can’t I find a nice man? Why can’t I meet someone who is nice to me for more than a week?”

I felt my teeth begin to ache as she kept on talking.

“I wish I could just pack up all my things and leave. Go somewhere where no one knows me. Where no one thinks bad things about me.”

“I don’t think bad things about you,” I whispered.

“I know you don’t, sweetie,” she said. “I know.” Her big black eyelashes flashed with tears and dripped mascara down her cheeks.

She pulled my hand to her face, holding it beside her lips. Then she kissed each finger, each of my fingers just once, still crying, still dripping makeup from her puffy pink eyes.

“I’m sorry, Dough. I’m sorry to make a fuss.”

She kissed each of my knuckles and tried to smile, then pulled herself to her feet and began to take the dress off. Her fingers fought around behind her back.

“Do you think you can unzip me?”

I felt my heart stop and my mouth went dry. Both my ears felt red hot.

“Sure,” I mumbled, trying not to collapse.

At the base of her back, above that ungodly pink bow, was a thin silver zipper. I held my breath and pulled the zipper to its lowest point, nearly fainting as the two folds of fabric fell open and showed the top of her bare behind.

“I’m going to take a bath,” she said over her shoulder, holding the pink dress up against her naked flesh. I could honestly say that there, right there, more than anything in my life, I wanted to touch her and tell her all the things I thought I felt—that she was more beautiful than anyone or anything I had ever seen, that no dress could make her look cheap, that beneath it all there was a kind of beauty that no pink dress could ever disguise. But I guess I felt that saying those things would be a lie, and a lie that I didn’t want to ever have to admit. I backed out of the bathroom, holding my fingers in a tight fist against my side.

I did not stare through the keyhole to watch Val take her bath. I did not try to marvel at the sight of her bare white thighs or shiny blond hair. I held my face against the fabric of her red velvet sofa, feeling lousy.

A little while later, my older brother went out and picked up a few bags of greasy fried chicken and we all sat down and ate, but I swear it was like nothing had a taste.

“Don’t you like your fried chicken?” Val asked with a smile. Her blue eyes were still swollen from crying.

“I don’t know, I’m not hungry tonight,” I said with a frown. We all cleaned up the plates and silverware and set them in the sink. After dinner, it was time to sit out on the porch and tell jokes and take sips of Val’s gin and soda, but for some reason I just couldn’t look at the way she pretended to cross her eyes, making funny faces. I just didn’t think it was so hilarious when she snorted a song through her nose. I thought all the jokes she told were corny and the way her hair was done up in a ponytail looked ugly. I finally decided to fake a stomachache and wander off to bed.

“Do you want some medicine?” Val asked, kissing my forehead so sweetly. “A cup of tea?”

“No thanks.” I frowned and closed the spare bedroom door. I climbed into bed and held my fists to my eyes and felt like crying. I was sure they were both listening to hear if I was going to throw up or be sick. So I laid there quiet in her soft spare bed, watching the shadows on the wall making strange shapes.

Pill came in later, opening the bedroom door slowly to see if I was asleep. I looked him in his eyes and he shook his head to himself.

“You ain’t really sick, are ya?” he asked, undressing in the dark.

“No, I’m okay.”

“What’s wrong with you?”

“It’s that dress,” I said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know.”

I watched as my older brother settled into bed. We both waited there, under the covers, listening for some cowboy to arrive with flowers or wine. Beside my dumb older brother, there in the dark, lying in Val’s soft white bed, I felt betrayed. I didn’t even know why. It wasn’t Val or that awful pink dress, really, not even the cowboy or the trucker who would soon arrive. I felt like I had been a dumb kid, thinking Val was better than the rest of us, when really she was just as doomed, just as lousy maybe. I pulled her soft comforter up over my head, mumbling to myself through her white pillows and sheets, hoping it was all a kind of dream I would somehow forget.

But then I couldn’t sleep.

I held my breath and listened, waiting for one of her men to arrive. I heard the sound of a couple of big tires crunching against the gravel and then the mutter of an engine shutting off outside.

I gritted my teeth, rolling on my stomach, staring at the way the headlights seemed to flicker then dim, in time to the beating of the blood in my head. I let go of my breath and waited for the knock, then the muffled laughter, then the silence, the silence which would be worse than anything.

There was the knock, the sound of knuckles against the door-frame.

But no reply.

No reply.

The knock came louder, a full-knuckled fist against the closed screen door. But there was no answer, no tiny laugh or any noise at all. I sat up in bed, staring at the bottom of the closed door. There were no lights on. The whole place was dark. I squinted a little as a third knock rattled the frame. There was no response, nothing, not a single sound.

I looked down at Pill. He was lying on his back, wide awake, listening to the silence too. “Maybe she’s passed out,” Pill muttered.

“Let’s find out,” I whispered, hopping out of the bed. My bare feet struck her cold tile floor. I opened the door slowly and stepped into that soft, lurid light.

I didn’t hear anything in the darkness—no sounds, no movement, no drinks or records being played, no one laughing. By then the pickup outside and its driver had already begun to pull away. Pill and I stepped quietly across her trailer, staring at the soft lump on the couch. I could see, there in the darkness, her bare white toes. I smiled a little, holding my breath, listening to her sigh in her sleep. Her golden hair was shiny as her chest rose and fell. Her breasts moved with each breath. I could see something terrible in her arms. I could see she was not sleeping on the sofa alone. There she was, fast asleep, holding her white face to the billowy bridesmaid dress, right at the seam of that awful pink bow. I stood above her, watching as her eyes moved beneath their lids. A little snore whispered like a tiny bell. My hands began to ache. I don’t know why, but I bent over and kissed one of her bare white toes. I held a breath in and started to creep back to bed, unable to keep the taste of her skin from swimming around in my head.

Pill just kept staring down at her with a frown, watching as her breasts rose and moved. He held his breath in his lungs tight, moving his hand over his eyes. Then he followed me back toward her spare room, but stopped at the bathroom door.

I could still see Val’s precious underthings hanging there in the darkness. The dark blue light from outside shone upon the thin lace bra, showing the identical curves and gaps where it would lie against Val’s skin. On that silver shower rod was an ungodly, awful mystery. I blinked as Pill stepped inside the bathroom and raised his hand to her black brassiere, touching the silk with one of his dirty fingertips. His face was red, his mouth dropped open, as he ran his fingers along its soft, smooth fabric. In a single beat, he turned and snatched it from its clothespins and shoved it under his shirt.

“The worse kind of person is a goddamn snitch,” he warned, glaring at my dumbfounded stare. “Keep your damn mouth closed.”

So I did.

We climbed back into her bed and I looked at him as he folded the black brassiere up tightly. His face looked long and mean. His eyes darted into mine and he sneered a little and laid back down onto bed. I didn’t say a word about it. Not then, not ever. He was my older brother, he was my only older brother, and I was sure I would never say a word against him if I could. Maybe he had felt the same way, staring at Val all lonely and passed out on that red sofa, sleeping so close to that awful pink gown. Maybe seeing her asleep made him think she was just like us too, that she wasn’t some far-off and mysterious thing, that she was just some other girl. He tucked her brassiere up under his shirt again and rolled over, turning away in the darkness with a snarl.

I shut my eyes and gave in to the darkness, letting myself fall into a deep, hollow sleep. I slept like the dead with no nightmares for the first time in a long while. I did not dream of my leopards or tigers. I didn’t dream about my father or the Devil or anything.

Just before dawn, I woke up and found I had wet poor Val’s bed.

I laid there under her white sheets, too embarrassed to move. And so then I began to cry. I don’t know why, but my eyes filled up with tears and my brother rolled over and woke up and shook his head when he saw my awful goddamn mess. My pajamas were soaked all the way through and so were parts of her nice white sheets.

“Don’t tell her,” I prayed to him. “Don’t tell her, please.”

His face was the worst look of disappointment I had ever seen. He cinched his lips together like he was about scream, but he didn’t. He pointed at the foot of the bed and said: “Change into yesterday’s clothes.”

I nodded, still crying.

“Hurry up. And stop making so much damn noise crying like a little baby.”

I nodded again and climbed out of the soiled bed. My face was hot with shame and my pants were all wet, and I was sure my Val was going to just happen to walk in while I was changing, but she didn’t. I felt my heart beating hard in my throat until I had on my dry clothes from the day before. I stood staring at the stain on the one side of her square bed.

“What’ll we do?” I kind of mumbled, trying not to sound terrified.

My brother let out a sigh. Quietly, he helped me strip the sheets off her bed and we sneaked it all out through her window and down into one of her garbage cans, then he helped me make the bed real nice.

After some breakfast, heck, Pill-Bug was the one who offered to take out the trash, and Val said, “That sure is nice,” and he tossed it all out in the big metal dumpster five trailers away, not letting her know. I think it was then that I remembered why I was happy he was my older brother; he never told anyone, not a soul, that I was a bed-wetter, an eleven-year-old flat tire who cried in his sleep.

the star of silver is just plain lousy

About two months after we had moved to Tenderloin, Pill-Bug fell in love with a knife. In the end, it would be the thing that finally tore us apart, but of course neither one of us knew that, and to be fair, I guess it wasn’t just any stupid old knife. Really, the knife was neat as hell: a brand-new Swiss Army Knife model 109, red and trimmed in silver, with a miniature scissors, fork, spoon, saw, and magnifying glass. They had taken Pill’s other knife away a few days after he set fire to Rudy LaDell’s house. The principal had found it in his locker, and even though my dad had been the one who had given it to him, Pill had to wait until the end of the year to get it back. This new knife, which we had come across at the hardware store, was some sort of weapon sent to him from God or the Devil or both, whatever, it didn’t really matter, it was meant for him and him alone. It was kept behind a pane of smudged glass in the hardware store, right beside the register, impossible to steal, guarded by the clerk’s steely gaze. But my brother and that knife was just like every other love affair I ever came across, doomed, unlucky, and sure not meant to be.

(People might say there ought to be some respect for the law and its officials, and maybe there should be, but there’s no way anyone could respect a man like Deputy Lubbock, who would bust your older brother’s nose over a stupid knife, a knife that, paid for or not, ought to have been his anyway.)

* * *

Thirty-six dollars: That’s how much the knife cost. I didn’t have thirty-six dollars. My brother didn’t have thirty-six dollars. He didn’t even have a job. Back in Duluth, he had been a paper boy and had lit our neighbor’s hedge on fire the day before we left on account of the old bastard holding out on paying for his subscription. Pill had gotten stiffed out of twelve dollars, twelve dollars he was sure to never see again, twelve dollars that might have inched him a little closer to that knife. Heck, he was not about to get a job at the lousy Pig Pen, the supermarket where every other pimple-faced teenager in town worked, and so he devised a plan: “We’re gonna steal that knife.”

It was the dumbest thing I think I’d ever heard him say. But it was so full of hope that there was no way I could tell him any different. Which is how we first met Deputy Mort Lubbock.

Deputy Lubbock was an a-hole: There are some things you can tell about a person just by the way he looks. He was supposed to be handsome, in the way your mother or sister might call handsome, but for some reason, if you happened to see him, you knew he was a goddamn snake. I could see it in his smile. His smile was hard around the edges, like it was something he had practiced. He looked like he had spent a lot of time squinting and smiling at himself in a mirror in the dark, all alone in his lousy squad car, maybe listening to George Jones or Johnny Cash, looking in the rearview mirror like he was trying to convince himself of something. But there was nothing in that rearview mirror. I guess this deputy had a thing or two to hide, or that’s what we heard. He had been an all-state linebacker back in high school, a real star, with scouts coming out to the games and making offers for scholarships, but this here deputy had lost it all just when that golden trophy had been so close and nearly right in his hands. I guess the deputy had knocked up a girl during his senior year of high school, a half-Chickasaw, half-white girl named Tiger-Lil, the daughter of a man who owned the town’s only tow truck company. Apparently, under threat from his parents and hers, he married the girl, having to forget about going to state school and instead taking a lousy job in town as a tow truck operator for two years, until the baby was walking and his wife was settled in a nice duplex by the meat-packing plant. And then he got the phone girl at the towing service, Jurlene, knocked up. He planned to take her to Wisconsin for an abortion but she split town, without a forwarding address and with most of the tow truck service’s cash. Those were probably the things that kept him looking in his rearview mirror all the time, a kind of desperate searching and waiting, a kind of squinting into the dark. There was something in his lousy face that showed his fear—no matter how many teeth he flashed, there was something waiting out there in the dark, hoping for the chance to catch up with him at last.

I guess the deputy sheriff was still something of a ladies’ man. Rumor was that he would swing by other men’s houses while they were hard at work at the meat-packing plant, up to their elbows in raw red flesh, heavy with sweat as they labored through the night, and this deputy would be sweaty and laboring through the night too, right in their soft, clean beds, right with their soft, clean wives, maybe searching for that lost sparkle somewhere between those ladies’ thighs.

We would sometimes see him practicing shooting his revolver out near the haunted red barn, wearing a look on his face that warned us to keep our distance. He would smile like a snake, squeezing the trigger again and again, blowing holes through the wilted red boards. We would watch him and then stay away.

Besides deciding that he would to steal that prized knife, my brother didn’t have any real plan. He wanted something, something he knew he’d never be able to afford on his own, and so he just decided that it should be his. I kind of thought the whole idea was pretty dumb, and sure not worth getting caught for, but the knife itself was something spectacular, and if he wanted to risk it, I figured I should just let him go ahead and at least try.

We picked a Saturday to pull the crime. We stepped out of the trailer late that morning, sneaking past French, who was watching TV on the sofa in his underwear with an open can of Pabst Blue Ribbon cooling in his hand. That dumb dog, Shilo, was lying right beside him, with its big head lying in French’s lap. Those two were a real picture of happiness just sitting there, dazed as all hell. I followed Pill outside, watching the sun push its way west in the sky, some time close to noon maybe. We stepped through the gray gravel and the dark shadows cast by the looming mobile homes, not really saying a word to each other until we were out on the unpaved road that led into town.

“How you gonna do it?” I asked.

Pill shifted his blue stocking cap down over his scabby eyebrow. “I dunno. Stick it in my pocket, I imagine.”

“How you gonna get it in your pocket?”

“I dunno.”

“What happens if we get caught?” I whimpered.

“We ain’t gonna get caught.”

“Well, what if we do?”

“If it looks like we might get caught, I’ll grab a hammer from the tool aisle and kill everybody in the store. Then we’ll steal a car and drive to Texas.”

That sounded like a real stupid plan, all right. I could tell even Pill wasn’t so sure. He kept flipping his silver lighter open, lighting it, then slamming it closed. I had no idea where he had gotten that dandy lighter from. Stolen, for sure. I looked at him and thought once more about how nothing had really worked out for either of us since we moved. The only thing Tenderloin had given either me or my brother were feelings of recklessness and anger. We had learned we didn’t have a damn thing to lose, and no matter what we were caught doing, nothing could bring us down any lower than the sad state we were already in. I guess that was where we were wrong maybe.

We walked into town that afternoon and down Main Street, where all the businesses and stores sat along the road in square buildings right beside one another. The hardware store was on the corner. It was a kind of red brick building with a green metal awning out front. There were some lawn mowers and tilling equipment sitting there beside a gumball machine. There were some big push brooms on sale, arranged beside the front door. The Saturday afternoon traffic was kind of slow. Most people must have been at the plant working overtime or at the football game at the high school or sitting at home like French with their dogs on their sofas. I watched as my brother pulled his blue stocking cap down again and stepped through the open glass door. I followed. I had never known my brother to steal anything real before, not anything expensive, I mean. Sure, we used to take candy from this store by our house back in Duluth, but that was nickel-and-dime stuff that could fit in your palm, the kind of stuff that could disappear down the front of your shirt sleeve or into your sock. Heck, both of us had taken cash out of French’s wallet and my mother’s purse, and even him taking Val’s brassiere and that silver lighter didn’t strike me as anything of real value, but this moron was going to steal a knife, a knife worth thirty-six dollars, and from right under the clerk’s nose. No matter how bad either of us wanted the damn thing, I just didn’t think he had the guts or the sense to do it.

I looked through the store window and saw the clerk behind the big silver register, a bald-headed man named Pete. People used to come in and say, “Morning, Pete.” Then he’d nod. He didn’t ever say their names back. He didn’t ever say hello. All I knew was Pete sure hated me and my brother. We had been in there once before to buy mercuric acid. If you mix that stuff with some tinfoil and put it all inside a plastic soda bottle, you can make a bomb. Pill taught me that one. We used it to blow that kid Dan Goosehert’s barn-shaped mailbox completely off its post. You should have seen that thing fly.
Bloom!
Then it was gone. Pieces of plastic everywhere. I guess I understood how my brother felt after he had set fire to that other kid’s porch, and it wasn’t good. It was like you were always one step away from being found out.

Anyway, Pill walked inside the hardware store with his hands dug deep into his pockets. He was wearing his hooded sweatshirt and some jeans. He headed down the last aisle, not making any kind of eye contact with Pete. Me, I stopped by the front to pretend to be looking at a big rack of plumbing equipment; septic tank cleaner, pipes, and hoses; I could feel Pete’s stare burning through the back of my neck. I kind of squealed and turned, watching my brother circle down the aisle and walk back up to the big glass counter by the register. The store was almost completely empty. There were two big-gutted cowboys in the automotive aisle, telling each other jokes in their black-and-white snakeskin boots.

My brother edged up to the glass counter and stared down at the beautiful red knife inside. You could do anything you wanted with a knife like that. With a knife like that, you could maybe carve your name in a tree or something. You could cut something right in half. My brother’s breath fogged up the glass where his nose nearly touched it. The clerk, Pete, stood over him, black eyes glaring.

“Think I can see that knife there?” Pill kind of mumbled. He held his breath, staring at Pete’s steer-shaped belt buckle. “Just for a second?”

Pete finally nodded, sliding open the case door; his big white hand gripped the knife and planted it in Pill’s near trembling palms. My brother’s blue eyes lit up as the knife touched his skin, glowing with reflected light from the fluorescent lamps overhead. He clutched the prize tightly, flicking open its folding saw and detachable toothpick. This was the greatest knife in the world. This was the greatest knife ever. I couldn’t really breathe. I stared down the first aisle, peeking around the corner, feeling my own hands trembling at my sides. This was never going to work. My brother still had no idea what he was going to do. Pete would catch us both and we would get in trouble once again. My brother tugged down his cap, still holding the knife.

“How much is it?” I could tell he was standing there thinking, wanting to just take the knife and run.

“That knife there is thirty-six dollars,” Pete said. “Same as it was last week and the one before that. Hand it back now.” He opened his white palm for Pill to return it. My brother kind of panicked and looked over his shoulder at me. His eyes flashed with fury and hope.

He needed to do something. He held the knife in his sweaty palm, staring down at its shiny metal blades.

“All right now, son, hand it back.”

Pill looked back over his shoulder at me again. His face was all white. He was truly panicked. Pete leaned closer, his gray shadow looming across my brother’s sweaty face. I kept waiting for Pill to flick the knife open and then run off, but he didn’t do a thing. He just sort of sighed and handed the knife back, then slunk right out of the store. I followed, shaking my head.

“Whadya give it back for?” I asked, still kind of trembling myself.

“Shut your trap.” He turned and stared back at the store.

He was just standing there, his face looking all serious. His cheeks were just beginning to get tiny black whiskers, loose and wild; he glanced out into the street, holding in his breath like he was about to cry. There was something behind his eyes that was stormy-blue and gray. They got real thin as he clenched his fists at his side. He looked me right in the face, not saying a word. He turned and faced the display of brown push brooms there on sale, nodding slowly.

I could hear that sound of the Zippo flicking open, metal against metal, and then:
Snapppppp!!!!!!!!!

Without another word, he lit the brooms on fire. Their shiny bristles lit up like grass, sizzling and shrinking until they were all aflame, crackling orange and yellow in the silver garbage can they were standing in.

“What in the hell?!” I could hear Pete holler from inside, as the fire began eating up the broom heads and handles. My brother took off, skidding down the sidewalk and out into the street. In the only sign of camaraderie I would show, I kicked over one of the lawn mowers and started running too. He was a lot faster than me. Heck, he was older and taller. My breath hurt in my chest as I ran, trying not to let out a cry.

“Hey!” I heard someone yell from behind. “Hey you, come back here!” Maybe it was Pete from the hardware store or maybe it was someone else. I didn’t know. I wasn’t about to turn and look. My breath was barely coming and my belly was hurting and my lungs felt like they were on fire, and I guess I felt like bawling right there. My brother turned down an alley and grabbed me by my sweatshirt. We dodged down another alley and over a wire fence and ran toward home, covered in sweat. We didn’t say a goddamn word, even when we made it to the yellow field that led back toward the trailer park. Pill stopped running, huffing hard; he hunched over and dropped his hands to his knees to breathe. His forehead was all covered in sweat and his lips were full of spit. His face was all red. He wiped his mouth and stood up, coughing a little. His eyes were nearly running with tears.