The Last Exit to Normal (9 page)

I moved behind Morgan and hooked my arms under his to try again. My boots slid and sunk into the field
as I dragged him toward the truck. My back wrenched painfully, and I felt the muscles popping in my legs. It seemed like
it took forever, but I finally got there and opened the passenger door. I reclined the seat as far as it would go and bent
over him, feeling his breath on my cheek as I lifted, shoving and pulling and pushing and sliding him up the side of the
seat and rolling him into it.

Once he was in the seat, I shut the door, ran around to the driver’s side, and jumped in, putting
the truck in gear. The four-wheel-drive light glowed on the dash, and I slammed the truck into the lowest gear and eased
it down the hill to the track. Then we were going.

I couldn’t go too fast, and I felt like an idiot trying to keep the tires on the track, but every side
slope brought the truck sliding toward the edge. I did what I’d seen Kimberly do on the way in, steering upslope
from my slide and giving the engine gas, and in a few minutes I had things somewhat under control.

Morgan groaned when I accidentally slid into a gully and had to gun the engine, mud flying everywhere
as I tore out of it. He opened his eyes. “That hurt like a sonofabitch.”

“Sorry.”

He looked down at his busted body. “Funny-lookin’ legs, that’s for sure.
Ain’t supposed to be bent that way.”

“You’ll go over like a fart in church.”

He looked at me.

“Kimberly told me you say that all the time.”

He smiled weakly. “I suppose I do.” He lay silent for a minute. “You never
answered me.”

I gave it gas and spun up a hill, closer to the farmhouse. “What?”

“You like my niece?”

I nodded.

“Gonna have to switch hats. Doesn’t suit you.”

“I’ve heard that already. Thanks.”

He leaned back and sighed, closing his eyes. “You’ll do.”

“Don’t fall asleep. You hear me?” I reached over and nudged his shoulder.

He nodded. “Just resting.”

By the time I reached the farmhouse, the rain had lessened some, and three trucks, one of them the
sheriff’s, had converged on the place. I recognized Mr. Johan’s truck next to Kimberly’s, and
when he got out, my dad was with him. Another man in Kimberly’s truck got out, too, along with Kimberly and
her brother, Dirk.

As they ran toward me, it took them a second to realize Morgan was in the truck. The man I
didn’t recognize ran back to Kimberly’s truck and brought back a bag, rummaging through it and taking
out a syringe. I glanced at the horizon as the doctor gave Morgan a shot, and I saw clear skies breaking. Kimberly came
up to me. “You got him out.”

I nodded.

Tears ran down her face. “Thank you.”

I shrugged. “No prob. Do it all the time.”

She sobbed, then threw her arms around me and kissed my cheek. A kiss was a kiss, sure, but under these
circumstances it wasn’t the romantic interlude I thought it would be. She whispered that she wouldn’t
know what to do if he died.

“He’ll be okay. The doctor will patch him up, right?”

She looked toward the others. “Yeah. Sure. He’ll be fine.”

“You country people are different, right? All tough and stuff.” I squeezed her shoulder,
my eyes flicking to her dad, Edward’s words about shotguns flashing through me. “He will be fine,
Kim.”

I heard the sheriff talking about a helicopter coming in to take Morgan to some hospital, and then my dad
was in front of me. His face was lit with panic, and he began to wrap his arms around my rain-soaked and mud-caked
body, but stopped, glancing at Kimberly. He backed up a step, nodded, cleared his throat, and looked me up and down.
“You okay, son?”

I wiped the mud from my arms. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

CHAPTER 12

M
organ Johan had two broken legs; five broken ribs, two having punctured
his lungs; and a broken pelvis. He almost died in surgery that night. I didn’t see Kimberly for two days, but her
father stopped by to thank me. That evening, I shook his hand, Dad and Edward invited him in for a beer, and they talked
for an hour or so about Morgan, life, and Rough Butte.

Two days after that, the town of Rough Butte did something that taught me a lot about this place. They
went out to Morgan’s farm and cleared his fields for him. A total of seventeen combines, twenty flatbeds, and
over one hundred men, their wives and kids, showed up and got three weeks of work done in two days.
Morgan’s wife, Helen, cooked for every one of them. Miss Mae and several other widows helped her with the
food assembly line.

Kimberly invited me on our second date. We spent two days baling hay and doing a bunch of other farm
stuff at Morgan’s place with the rest of the town. It sucked, but I kissed her on her porch the second day and she
liked it. Oh, yeah—I ditched the hat, too, keeping the jeans and boots but settling on my spikes. The bad news was
that Dirk was staying at Uncle Morgan’s for a while. The dude scared me.

Mr. Hinks didn’t participate in helping the Johans. He complained loudly of a sore back, and
Miss Mae, ever the opinionated old woman, told him he could help the women.

An odd thing happened to Mr. Hinks about a week after the whole
me-saving-Kimberly’s-uncle-from-certain-death thing. It seems that somebody, gosh knows who, took all the
antlers off his garage wall. I stood at my window, watching him file a report with the sheriff. Billy stood by his
father’s side with his hands in his pockets, staring at the de-antlered wall.

I closed my closet door, careful not to disturb the fifteen pairs of antlers I’d spent all night
cutting off the wall. Norman Hinks could take his pile of bricks and shove them up his ass.

A few minutes later, Miss Mae yelled at me from downstairs. I walked down and the sheriff stood at the
front door. Miss Mae stood resolute, her face stony as she stared at me. “Sheriff wants to talk to you.”
Then she barged out, leaving me with him.

Sheriff Wilkins hooked his thumb in his gun belt. “Miss Mae says your daddy and Edward are
out.”

“I just woke up.”

He eyed me. “Late night?”

I nodded.

“Mr. Hinks is mighty upset about his property being stolen. Says it’s twenty
years’ worth of hunting down the drain.”

I shrugged. “Somebody around here must not like him very much.”

“Says you did it.”

I didn’t say anything.

Sheriff Wilkins studied me for a moment. “You’re treading a fine line here,
Ben.”

“With who?”

He tipped his hat up, adjusting it. “Well, with Mr. Hinks for sure. And me. You know if I find
out you did it, I have to charge you.”

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

He raised his eyebrows, paused, then went on. “You be careful around him, you
hear?”

“Maybe you should tell that to Billy.”

“I’m not here to discuss Billy. I’m here to warn you. Norman Hinks should be
left alone.”

After pondering my possible death at the hands of a crazy ex–Pentecostal preacher, I put my
gloves on and walked over to the Hinks house, knocking on the screen door. I don’t know why I did these
things, because the pit of my stomach always contracted and my back tightened, but something inside just compelled me
to be an asshole sometimes.

Billy answered, didn’t say anything, and ran into the kitchen. A few seconds later, Mr. Hinks
came to the door. He stared at me, the vein in his skinny neck throbbing. “You got something to say to
me?”

I smiled. “I need Miss Mae’s wheelbarrow. Is Billy done with it?”

His eyes were chipped flint, and the skin around that neck vein turned red. “You baiting me,
boy?”

“No, sir. Just asking for the wheelbarrow.”

His mouth turned into an ugly smear, and I was sure he was about to erupt. But he didn’t. He
growled that it was in the back, then slammed the door on me.

An hour later, I’d dug the first posthole and had the concrete mixed to set it when Mr. Hinks
came out the back door with his keys in his hands. He stared at me over the fence the entire way to his car, got in, and
backed out. I smiled and waved as he drove away.

“You are one smart-alecky young man, and I should have your hide for the torment you cause
around here.”

I turned around, and Miss Mae was standing there. She’d come out every fifteen minutes or so to
tell me what to do next, since I’d never fixed a fence before, and now she stood with her hands on her hips,
looking at me. I smiled. “I’m good at torment.”

She narrowed her eyes, studied my work, then turned back toward the house. “You get those
antlers out of my house by tomorrow or I’ll strap your backside raw.”

I watched her go, my jaw slack in amazement. I should have figured she would snoop in my room, and
that didn’t weird me out so much. What she’d just said had. She knew, and she wasn’t
telling.

I went back to mixing the concrete, set a four-foot post in a hole, and poured some concrete into it. Billy
came out the back door and grabbed a rake. “Hey, Billy.”

He didn’t answer, so I bent to my work again, grabbing another post and throwing it to the next
hole. As I wheeled the cement over, I looked up and he was standing there, staring at me, his big eyes and big shaved
head looking oversized on his skinny body. I ignored him, taking up the shovel and clearing dirt from the hole.

“How’d you do that trick?”

I straightened. “What trick?”

“That one where you spin the board over and land on it.”

“A kick spin?”

He nodded.

I glanced to the street. “Where’d your dad go?”

He looked at the driveway. “Car auction in Big Springs.”

“Get your board and I’ll show you. Meet me.” I took my gloves off and watched
as he ran over to his house, moved a piece of lattice from the side, and scurried into the crawl space under the porch. I
went into Miss Mae’s house, grabbed my own board, traded my work boots for the worn-out and faded skate
kicks I’d had for a year, and came out to the porch. Billy stood in his driveway, his knees dusty from crawling. I
laced up my All Stars and met him. I dropped my board. “Your dad going to be mad if he catches
us?”

He nodded.

“You sure you want to do this?”

He looked at the board in his hands. “I want to do a trick.”

“Okay.” I hopped on my board, gesturing for him to do the same. He set it down and
stepped on it, wobbly as he tried to gain his balance. I smiled. “You can’t learn a kick flip until you
learn other things first. It’s too hard.”

“I can do it. I saw you.”

“Okay. Try.”

“Do it again so I can see.”

I did, pushing off and kicking up the board, spinning it with my toe, and landing on the deck.

Billy pushed off, tried to kick up his board, and fell back flat on his butt, grunting when he hit the
pavement.

I smiled. “Hurts, doesn’t it?”

He scrambled up, shaking his head no.

“Here, just try doing the kick. Almost like a wheelie on a bike, and you don’t have to be
moving. Like this.” I showed him, and then he tried. He didn’t fall on the third try. “Good job.
You can turn when you’re doing the wheelie.” I did a one-eighty. “See?”

He tried it and the rear wheels slid out. Down he went, this time saying “Ouch!” as his
hip hit the driveway.

I laughed. “Get used to it. I’ve burned about a billion times. Everybody
does.”

He smiled, embarrassed. “I can do it. Watch.” He did, then, and stepped the nose of the
board over a foot or so.

“Awesome. Just keep doing that and things will start coming. It gets easier.” I showed
him a couple of other tricks that involved kicking the board and he practiced doing them himself, each time pausing to
stare intently at what I did. I stopped for a while, lighting a cigarette and watching him. Then I nodded to the lattice.
“Is that the secret place you were talking about? Where you put the stuffed animal?”

He shook his head.

I knew he was lying. “You ever see your mom?”

He didn’t answer, but turned his back to me and tried a one-eighty.

“Never?”

“She’s gone.”

I inhaled. “Mine is, too.”

“You got a mom?”

I hopped on my board and did a three-sixty. “Yeah. Everybody does.”

He didn’t answer for a minute. “Your daddy’s a faggot. That means he likes
other guys. How’d you get a mom that way?”

Whoa. I wasn’t about to give him the birds-and-bees talk. “He wasn’t always
that way. He had a wife, and they had me.”

“Pa says he’ll go to hell for it.”

“Maybe so. You think so?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Bible says so, though.”

“I heard the Bible says you go to hell for killing cats.”

He picked up his board. “Ain’t so.”

“You like killing them?”

“No.”

“Then why do you?”

“Pa says so. Calls ’em a nuisance.” He stood there, holding his board.
“Pa thinks you took his antlers.”

“Oh.”

“Says if he’d a caught you, there’d be hell to pay.”

“Too bad he didn’t catch the guy.”

Billy smiled. “I ain’t gonna say nothing.”

I stared at him. “About what?”

“That I saw you do it.”

Later that afternoon, I changed into my street clothes and grabbed my board. All work and no play made
a boring person leading a life of drudgery, and I figured I had enough time in the future to be a miserable drone. I skated
down the street, and as I passed Kimberly’s house, she came out the door with her keys jangling in her hand. We
were at the in-between stage, I guessed, not knowing if we were really dating or just work-dating. She smiled, looking
me up and down. “Hey, you’re back to normal.”

“I’m a complex and multifaceted person. You wouldn’t
understand.”

She opened her truck door. “Well, Mr. Complex Person, would you like to join me for a ride?
Mom needs eggs.”

“You buy eggs?”

She squinted her eyes. “Well, we don’t lay them ourselves.”

“Oh. I thought everybody around here bartered and traded. You know, a dozen eggs for some
gingham or something.”

She grinned. “You are so ignorant sometimes. I swear.” Her eyes sparkled. “You
coming?”

I threw my board in the bed of the truck and hopped in, sighing. “Remember our first date? The
storm and lightning and sliding farm equipment? God, it was so romantic.”

She laughed. “Uncle Morgan is doing fine.”

“Good.”

She slid me a glance. “So, why haven’t you come over?”

I took a moment, watching the neighborhood slide by. “Well, there’s this certain person
that makes me want to pee my pants every time I see him.”

“Dirk?”

“That might be his name.”

“Why?”

“Well, because the whole time we were working out at your uncle’s place, he never said
a word to me. He’s got quite a nice glare, though. Very professional. He’ll make a great
WWF
SmackDown
wrestler someday.”

She sighed. “Okay. I’ll talk to him. He’s really nice once you get to know
him.” She glanced at me, noticing the skepticism on my face. “Really. He is. I think he’d like
you.”

“ ‘Like me’ in the sense of adding salt and pepper before dining on my flesh, or
‘like me’ in the sense of ‘Hey, Ben, how’s it going?’ ”

She laughed. “He’s not going to hurt you, Ben. I promise. He’s a kitten
inside.”

“Okay. I’ll believe you, but don’t talk to him, huh? That would be
weird.”

“Deal.”

I tapped my knee. “So does this mean we’re dating? Like boyfriend-girlfriend kind of
stuff?”

She smiled. “I guess it does.”

“Cool.”

We reached the store, this one on the far side of town, and Ron Jamison was coming out with a can of
chew in his hand as we went in. He looked me up and down, took in the spikes, smiled thinly, then glanced at Kimberly.
“Got a new pet, Kim?” Those white teeth flashed, and he winked.

I stuck my hand out, giving him as insincere a smile as I could muster. “You must be Ronald.
Ronald, my name is Benald. I saw you bullying that little boy the other day. Pleasure meeting you.”

His eyes darkened for just a moment; then he smiled as he shook my hand. “Yeah, sure.”
He stuffed his lip full of chew, then spit a brown stream at my feet in clear and undisputable aggression. “You
coming to the potluck, Kim?”

“Yes.”

He smiled. “Good deal.” His eyes flicked to me. “Greg’ll be there, you
know.”

She looked uncomfortable. “Yeah, I know.”

He nodded, hooking his thumbs in his back pockets. “Bring your friend here, huh? Maybe he can
show me a few moves on his little skateboard.”

After Ronald left, Kimberly didn’t say anything. We went in the store. She bent down to pick up
some eggs, started giggling, then laughing outright.

I stuffed my hands in my pockets. “What?”

She shook her head. “Benald?”

I smiled. “I guess I got mixed up. Ronald, Benald. I get that way around assholes.”