The Memory Thief (13 page)

Inside the Biscuit ’n’ Gun the walls were lined with dead animals, their chopped-off feet holding up the guns that killed
them. Glass-topped counters were filled with rifles, handguns, and boxes of shells. Pictures of men holding their kills were
framed around the register. In the back was the food counter. A small chalkboard listed the biscuit menu and prices. Men huddled
around a stack of pictures, comparing recent kills.

An older man walked toward me. “You want a biscuit you go to the back, honey. Just gun business up here.”

“Marcy sent me. I’m lookin’ for a few hours’ work.”

He laughed and softly slapped my shoulder like we were old friends. “Send my thanks to Marcy.” He turned to the men. “Boys,
it’s been a month. But this joint will open again tonight. Come at dark for beer, cards, and her.” Someone let out a long
whistle.

“Be back at nine,” he told me. “Pay’s fifteen bucks, but you can keep whatever else you make. If you’re still here in the
mornin’ you can run the biscuit rush.”

I stared at him, hoping for a reason why I should say no. “Will I be in charge?” I asked.

“I’m just payin’ you to be the somethin’ pretty that these boys come to drink and watch. Whatever else you do is up to you.”

“Any cops comin’?”

“None that’ll admit to it the next day.” He laughed.

I shrugged my shoulders and nodded. I hurried to the antique and hardware store, went to the back where the bathroom was.
Closed and locked the door. I stared into a foggy brass mirror. The words
Probably Victorian, $10
, taped to the bottom. I saw my round brown eyes, my pale skin, my hair that glowed. I hadn’t changed. Hair, face, skin, was
all the same. It was what I’d lost. Black Snake trailer. Momma. That green car parked out front. My home was ugly. With it
gone, I looked in the mirror and saw pretty for the first time. Maybe it was instincts. Or maybe it was just hope. But I felt
certain of one thing as I stared in the mirror. Pretty can be very useful.

I walked out of the bathroom and lingered over the antiques. Sifted through a box of old kitchen tools. Tried on old rings,
most of them brassy bands with an empty hole in the center. The original stones had disappeared long ago. I stared at the
shelf lined with blue mason jars. I reached for one, felt the weight of its thick glass. I held it up to the light, looked
through, and watched the room turn blue.

The front door opened and a farmhand walked in. He asked the man up front if he could see the parts catalog, and the two men
started talking about placing an order to fix a broke-down tractor. I walked past the jars, on my way to the general store
to look at magazines, when I saw them in the corner. Velvet banners framed in gold. White tigers and red roses painted across
them. I stepped closer. Ran my hand across the cheap velvet and shivered as I whispered, “Elvis.”

I remembered him, from a little tent inside a Carolina county fair. Momma bought pink cotton candy that day and she gave me
and Janie each a bite. Janie whined for more, and Daddy yelled no, so I didn’t ask. They were counting money. Each of them
digging in their pockets. Momma made me hold a stuffed bear that Daddy had won. The bear was almost as big as me and probably
heavier. I had to lay down my green blanket on the ground so that I could use both hands to hold it. When they counted enough,
they smiled and walked away holding hands. I picked up my blanket and put it in my teeth. Ran behind them carrying that bear.

They stopped in front of a velvet banner booth. There were white tigers and red roses. And the one Momma cried over, it made her so happy. Elvis. With blue velvet eyes and black velvet hair.

“It’s gonna look so good over our couch, baby,” she whispered to Daddy.

He nodded. “Well, git it then. If you want it so bad.”

We walked away with Elvis. And then me and Janie rode the carousel. I chose a pink pony. She chose a purple one. We went round
and round giggling. But when the ride was over, Momma was crying and alone. Elvis was ripped in two, laying in the dirt.

Momma grabbed Janie by the hand and started running toward the gate. I ran behind them. Janie kept turning around, making
sure I followed.

“Wait, Momma!” I yelled.

She stopped and knelt in front of me. “Listen up, girl, when somebody finds you here today, you tell ’em this, ‘I’ve lost
my momma.’ And when they ask you what her name is, you say, ‘It’s Momma.’ And when they ask you what your name is, you say,
‘Angel Ray.’ ”

“But my name’s Angel Mosely.”

She shook her head, as tears streamed down her face. “Oh baby, be a smart girl today. Git yourself lost. Git away from us.”
Then she ran, pulling Janie with one hand. The two-piece Elvis in her other. I dropped the bear I was supposed to carry and
ran as hard as I could. I dove in Daddy’s car the minute I saw the door open. Daddy whipped me good over that lost bear.

From that day on, the sight of Elvis, the sight of black velvet and red roses, would always remind me. I had a chance.

One small chance in the middle of a Carolina county fair. It was handed down like a gift from heaven. That moment that I could
have escaped Black Snake trailer. Escaped all the things I’d later ache to burn down.

Oh baby, be a smart girl today
, Momma begged.

But I wasn’t smart. I was scared. And so I ran. Not to Momma. Not to Daddy. Or even Janie. I ran to that green car. Like it
was the only thing that could save me. Like it was the only thing that mattered. Like somehow I knew the truth about that
car. And how more than anyone else on earth, it belonged to me.

By the time the sun set, the Biscuit ’n’ Gun was nearly full. The old man showed me a back room, where there was a laundry
basket of things left behind by other women. Sequined bras. A tube of red lipstick. A hairbrush. An old bottle of Giorgio
that had been refilled with water to try and soak up leftover scent. Four-inch red heels, size nine.

I flipped my hair upside down and teased it till it piled across my shoulders and down my back in a wild swirl. I took the
lipstick and smeared it across my mouth. Rubbed a bit between my fingers and across my cheekbones. I stood in front of the
mirror and slid my size-seven feet into those heels. Stuffed tissue into the toes to try and make them fit. Then I knotted
my T-shirt in the front, the way Momma always did. So my belly showed as smooth and flat as a high-summer bacca leaf.

“Boys,” the old man called out, as he helped me onto the counter. “I give you Angel.”

Just as I chose not to go to the back corners with farm-hands, I chose to let them stand me up on a biscuit counter. Men were
still swapping pictures. They were passing guns, too. Testing sites as they aimed long barrels at random spots in the room. Sometimes at my swaying hips.

I passed out beers. My heels made little
clink clink
sounds as I walked up and down the counter to hand out cold cans. When I wasn’t serving beer, I was supposed to dance. My
hips slid in circles and the men shouted lust. I thought about how Momma would have loved to be a fifteen-dollar dancer at
the Biscuit ’n’ Gun. The only difference was that she would have done it to feel pretty. I already knew I was. I did it for
money. I did it because I could.

“She really is an angel,” a drunk man yelled. “Look at all that hair.”

White hair that Momma promised, threatened, and hoped would darken as I aged. But it was still as white at seventeen as it
was at three. I wore it long, halfway down my back. People assumed it’s why I was called Angel. I never bothered telling them
the truth.

About how the first time Daddy saw me my arms and legs were twisted and fighting. Momma said I had the worst colic she ever
saw. And the pain of it made me curl my limbs and punch and kick with anger.

“Scrawniest legs I ever seen,” Daddy would laugh. “No more meat on ’em than a chicken bone. You was all curled up and twistin’.
Just like that live oak everyone in Carolina fusses over. The one named Angel Oak.”

When the beer ran out, the music was turned off and the old man helped me off the counter. He paid me, then led me to the
back room where he locked me in,
for my own safety
, since I didn’t want any extra business.

In the morning I served biscuits to the same men I’d danced for the night before.

They grabbed breakfast before heading over to the hardware store to pick up whatever they needed for the coming harvest. A
few of them stopped to talk about their bacca. Held their hands up to show how tall. Behind the counter my own hands ached
to rise in pride.
This tall. A king’s tobacco
.

“Two pork chop biscuits, please,” a man said. “An’ a coke.”

Someone yelled behind him. “Get that truck moved. You swore it’d be gone by dawn. Nobody else can git in to park. They’re
fillin’ up the ditches.”

I handed him biscuits. “Goin’ now,” he said over his shoulder. “Just grabbin’ biscuits. See you in a few weeks.”

“Park better next time.”

He laughed, shrugged his shoulders, turned back to me. “Big trucks get no respect round here. If it ain’t a tractor or a pickup
they got no use for it. Where’s Maude? She usually serves up the biscuits. Don’t know that I trust yours.”

“She cooked ’em,” I said. “Went home and let me serve ’em.”

Through the window I saw two cop cars pull in and park in front
of the general store. After a quick flash of panic, I remembered who I’d been just the night before. They called me an angel.
A sexy Elvis dancer. I remembered the lesson I’d learned staring in the bathroom mirror. I was pretty. And I could use it.

I ran to the man I’d just served biscuits and put my arm through his, like we were old lovers.

“So you drive a big truck? I’d just love to see it.”

It was a rare sight, but sometimes big trucks would drive Route Two when they were breaking freight laws and didn’t want to
pass the weigh-in checkpoint on the interstate. Whenever I saw one I’d stare at it with wonder. Unlike the tractors and pickups,
the big rigs were always in a hurry. On their way to someplace better.

He nodded and tried to pull back, but I tightened my grip.

“Give me a ride, cowboy, please?”

“Where you headed?”

“I need to get to the mountains.”

Two men in uniform stepped out of the cars and walked toward the general store.

“I’ve got money, or maybe you want somethin’ else.”

“You’re right,” he said. “You need to get to the mountains.”

With the police inside the general store, I hurried to the truck.
Pulled and climbed my way inside. There were dozens of knobs and switches and little gauges. It was more like the way a kid
dreams of rockets, or draws his own spaceship. I huddled low in the floor of the truck, and begged the trucker to hurry up
and leave. My heart was pounding. My mind playing tricks and telling me jail was a place worse than biscuit counters. Worse
even than Black Snake trailer.

He laughed softly, but didn’t smile. He was younger than I imagined a truck driver should be. In his early twenties, not much
older than what Janie would have been. He was built smaller than the farmhands. His muscles used to turn a wheel rather than
lift crates of bacca. But even with him sitting, I could see that he was taller than any man at Swarm farm. He dressed differently,
too. Instead of camos or overalls, he wore clean jeans and cowboy boots. A plain black T-shirt.

“You want one of the biscuits?” he asked when we were on the road.

I shook my head. “Where we going?”

“I’m haulin’ pipes outta middle Tennessee into North Carolina.”

I climbed into the seat and looked out. I had never been so high above the bacca. It was several feet below, passing by in
a green blur. It didn’t look big and safe anymore. It looked more like a garden than a crop. More like a row of beans or a
hill of potatoes. Something simple and weak.

I noticed a handwritten note, taped to his steering wheel. As he adjusted his hands, the writing became clear.
I cry out to the Lord, he answers me from his holy mountain. Psalm
.

I turned away and leaned against the window. I was tired from my long night, and after an hour of listening to the roar of
the great truck, I fell asleep.

“Look up,” he said, his hand gently shaking my shoulder.

I opened my eyes, and slid lower in my seat. My hands rose to touch my face and hide whatever I could. Never, not even curled
up on the floor of Daddy’s car, had I felt so small. No matter which direction I turned, land was above me. Land pressed down
on me, like it knew how strong it was. Like it wanted me to know, too.

“Don’t be scared. You were right to come here.”

“How do you know?” I whispered.

“ ‘Show yourself to me, on top of the mountain’. That’s what God said when he wanted to give Moses the ten commandments. When
the Devil wanted to tempt Jesus with the glories of the earth, they stood on a mountain. Big things,
holy
things, happen here.”

Outside my window, the guardrail was all that separated the road from the sky. Clouds were within reach.

“If they’re so great, how come you leave ’em?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “I want it to stay special.”

I nodded and thought of summer nights, with the bacca all around me. I’d look at stars in a black Tennessee sky. Sometimes
they were so warm I almost didn’t need the whiskey.

In eighth-grade science I failed the astronomy unit. Not because I couldn’t do the work or learn the material. But because
I
wouldn’t
. That first day, when the teacher started talking about how stars are just balls of gas that shoot out light, I laid my head
down so I couldn’t see the poster she held up. Of a star sliced in half so we could see the dull insides. I put my hands over
my ears so I couldn’t hear her description of what makes a star shine. And I refused to look at the sky charts. To learn the
names. To trace out the picture of some hunter and his giant belt.

They were
my
stars. They shined to keep
me
warm. Not because a gas made them. I saw whatever picture I wanted, not what someone long ago decided I should see. Sometimes
I saw my own reflection. White hair studded with stars and streaming through a black sky. Sometimes I saw Black Snake trailer.
And I stacked star upon star until I built a cinder-block tower high enough to escape.