When Horses Had Wings (5 page)

SIX

N
o one ever knew what might set Daddy off. So it was easy to see why Momma spent the better part of her time steering clear of it. Ricky and I, though, weren’t as shrewd. One day while mowing the yard, we’d managed to cut a swath directly through the full range of Daddy’s wrath.

It must have been a hundred degrees on that Saturday afternoon in early July, the summer before Kenny and I had married. I shooed away a hen from the utility stand inside our garage. When the menacing bird stood, I caught the moist bone-colored egg that wobbled out from underneath her. Chickens would do anything to avoid the sweltering heat, right down to laying their eggs on metal shelving. I lifted an already-opened oil can from the ledge that only minutes before had been occupied by poultry.

I handed Ricky the container. “I’ve got to go get ready for a party, so you have to mow. Daddy said to be sure and add this before you crank the lawnmower.”

“Daddy says you can’t go to the party if there’s going to be dancing,” Ricky warned.

“
I’ll
decide where I’m going.”

“He’s just trying to
steer
you in the right direction.”

I glared at him. “I’m not a horse.”

“Long as he’s driving that plow, you are.” He wiped his forehead with a greasy mechanic’s rag and gave me the stink eye. “It ain’t my turn to mow.”

“Yes, it is. I did it last time. Remember?”

“No, you didn’t.” He snatched away the oil can. “You don’t know. You weren’t even here when I did it.” Squatting next to the motorized contraption we both hated more than Momma’s burnt chocolate pudding, he let the greenish-black liquid flow. “You were off on one of your soldier drills.”

That was Ricky’s way of making fun of my band practices. I hadn’t had one since early May, so I knew he was lying.

Momma opened the door leading from the house to the garage where we were quarreling. Holding a tumbler filled with ice water, she stared at Ricky. “What’s that all over your face?”

Ricky gave her a dumb look. “Sweat.”

Momma wiped his forehead with the hem of her apron, then offered him the glass. “Here. I poured this up for you. It’s too hot to mow without water.”

Ricky took a swig and pushed the tumbler back at her. “I can’t hold it while I’m working. Set it down over there.” He pointed to a case of antifreeze Daddy had found on sale four years earlier. We’d never had a reason to open it.

Momma set the cloudy water on the cardboard box and returned to less hostile surroundings.

“You do the front and side nearest the peas,” I said, helping myself to the remains of Momma’s hospitality. “And I’ll do the back and around the garage. How’s that?”

Ricky positioned himself behind the mower. “If I can go first,” he said, like that made some major difference.

“However you want to do it.” I cut my eyes at him and left.

About the only time Ricky wasn’t first was when he’d been born. I’d beaten him to that one. And he’d spent his limited years searching for a way to overcome that. However, I had a secret phrase, one I used on him anytime he got too full of himself, one that quickly put him in his correct place—a distant second position that might just as well have been dead last.

The high noon rays would soon cook Ricky’s fair skin to extra-crispy, and I knew that. But I didn’t have time to feel sorry for him. An important television program was about to begin. While I sat in what felt like a walk-in freezer by comparison, the sun, straight overhead, baked Ricky’s shoulders to the color of raw salmon.

Soon Ricky returned indoors and fell into Daddy’s recliner, one leg draped over its harvest gold armrest. “I can’t do this no more!” He looked up at the ceiling. “It’s too…” He peeked to see where Momma might be, “
Damn
hot.”

“Damn?” I laughed at his daring vocabulary. “How much did you get done, anyway?” I asked, still watching Dick Clark and mentally perfecting my dance moves.

“Half.”

Glimpsing sideways, I observed Ricky fanning his face with his hands.

“Maybe less,” he admitted.

Ricky chugged about a gallon of ice water before he lit up as though he’d suffered a brain freeze or a brainstorm. I wasn’t sure which. “What happens if you don’t add oil?” he asked. “What’d you say ‘bout that?”

“Burns up the engine.” I shot him an irritated look. “How many times have I got to repeat it?”

Ricky grinned. “If I dumped it all out, would you tell?”

I thought about that for a second. If I didn’t see it happen, then I couldn’t be blamed. And if Ricky was successful, I’d be relieved of mowing duty. “Nope. I watched you put oil in it. That’s all I saw, and that’s all I wanna know about.” I returned to studying something of higher importance than Ricky’s burnt up face: an Herbal Essence shampoo commercial.

What happened after that, I wasn’t clear on. I presumed it had something to do with Ricky and an upside-down piece of landscape equipment.

Daddy spent the next few nights in the garage working on that mower. He cleaned the carburetor and refilled the oil tank, talking first kindly and then hostilely to that resistant engine. It repaid him with an occasional start that sounded like a can full of marbles rattling. Then it blew white smoke in his face. Beyond the overwhelming smell of boiling petroleum, I detected Daddy’s smoldering temper.

Angry and defeated, Daddy finally took the contraption in for repairs. It irked him to admit he wasn’t smart enough to fix that lawnmower himself, which made it all the more enjoyable when Ricky pulled the same prank again three weeks later.

After the Johnson grass in our front yard sprang to knee-high proportion, Daddy brought the newly reconditioned lawn eater home. “Got ya’ll a present. Somethin’ll keep you occupied this weekend.”

I prayed some half-wit farmhand had jack-rigged that mower, but it purred like a tiger on a full belly. You’d have thought it was brand new. Ricky wasn’t threatened, though. After he took his turn with the monster, I saw him zip past the living room window. A few moments later, the lawnmower sputtered and coughed. Out of gas, I hoped. Otherwise, even Daddy might get suspicious. It seemed inconceivable that Ricky would have been brave enough to empty the mower oil
twice
.

But I underestimated Ricky’s hatred for lawn care.

The choking carburetor sounds I’d heard had come from the back yard, so I moved from the TV room to the kitchen window to get a better look at Ricky. Sure enough, there he stood, one hand on his hip and the other animated, as he spoke to Daddy, who’d been standing outside inspecting cantaloupes.

Momma joined me at the sink. “What’s goin’ on?”

“I don’t know. Heard the mower stop, so I came to see.”

Daddy made a couple of attempts to revive what Ricky had obviously killed.

Ricky sauntered back to the house and opened the kitchen door. Looking down at his feet, he passed behind Momma. Then he halted and stood next to me.

“What happened?” I asked.

Ricky shrugged. “I dunno. Bad repairman, I guess.”

“I can’t
be
-lieve after all he’s
spent
, that thing won’t run,” Momma said, still watching Daddy yanking out his guts as he tried to restart that machine.

I turned back toward the window for further entertainment. Daddy had ceased his futile resuscitation efforts and looked as though he’d been beaten by the class wimp; though in reality, it had been his thirteen-year-old son.

Behind Momma’s back, I gave Ricky the thumbs-up signal. At that moment, I was proud to be his sister. Maybe, I considered, I ought to quit telling him that he’d been adopted.

Whack! Wham! Wham! With a sledgehammer, Daddy beat the lawnmower. Over and over he swung at it. I watched until he’d flattened the innocent machinery into something unrecognizable.

“Jesse? Jesse! What are you doing?” Momma screamed through the single-paned glass.

Ricky and I pressed in close to enjoy the view.

Exhausted and near a heat stroke, Daddy had finished the job. He’d put the beast down. Ambling into the garage, he put away his weapon. With no further fanfare, he opened the kitchen door and stared into three anxious faces. As if a sledgehammer might be the standard tool used to regulate lawnmower engines, he passed behind us offering a two-word explanation. “Needed calibrating.”

Ricky’s eyes widened, Momma shook her head, and I made a mental note: when Daddy was provoked, nobody, not even Momma, could guess his limits.

SEVEN

A
fter that lawnmower incident, perhaps Daddy’s sudden shift toward destruction shouldn’t have come as a major surprise. But it took Momma a good half-hour before she thought to inspect the bureau drawer where Daddy kept his gun. I heard her shriek. “Dear Lord, he’s taken the pistol with him! We’ve got to do something!” She wrung her hands and paced. “Ricky, you stay here in case he comes back and wonders where we’ve gone.” Next, she turned to me. “Renee, get up from here, right now.
You
got him into this. The least you can do is help me get him out.”

I
got him into this? Like
I’d
told him to leave or had hired him to shoot my husband. All I’d wanted was for someone to protect
me
. And that wasn’t supposed to have required firearms.

“What do you want me to tell him if he comes back?” Ricky asked. His voice quivered, mouth hung slack. “I want to go with you. Don’t make me stay here. Let me go, too.”

“No. Somebody has to be here if he comes home,” Momma insisted. “I need Renee to help me find Kenny’s momma’s place.”

“Neta Sue’s?” I couldn’t imagine why we’d look for Daddy there.

Momma gave me a curious look. “Why sure. Where else?”

How about over at Kenny’s worthless friends’ houses? Or down by the gravel pits, where Kenny went to shoot snakes and drink beer? I thought those questions, but didn’t offer up the suggestions because Momma seemed hell-bent on heading to Neta Sue’s. I half-hoped Kenny was sitting someplace out of harm’s way. I didn’t want him to get hurt. But I surely didn’t want him to injure me or my daddy either. Right then, I thought of Sean. Thankfully, he was still in the hospital, snuggled in blue flannel, and sleeping in his see-through bed. Despite the drama unfolding, his world remained safe. If only I could have been equally as fortunate.

Momma skittered about, searching for something, before she found her car keys hanging on a hook.

I sank deeper into my chair.

“Get up,” she commanded. “We’ve got to go.”

Ricky sulked and opened a bag of potato chips.

I rose from my seat at half-speed, none too anxious to follow Momma. “Save yourself, now,” I cautioned Ricky. “Get out a dictionary and look up the word ‘condom.’”

~

By the time Momma had driven cross-county, the sun had set. It was going to be a clear night, a cloudless one. Already a full moon had risen. A jackrabbit crossed the road in front of us. Momma swerved to miss it, shouting, “Move! Dern you.” She never ceased to amuse me with her substitute words for ‘damn.’ It seemed as if she thought the heavens might part and brimstone rain down if she ever uttered a curse word.

“Let’s go by the duplex, first,” I said, trying every way I could think of to delay the inevitable catfight between my momma and Kenny’s. Momma was no match for Neta Sue, who’d picked her teeth with women bigger than Momma. She could cuss out the postman, argue with the power company, and threaten her paper boy, all in one day. Before breakfast. Nothing civilized was going to come out of that old sow’s mouth. And I could just hear Momma saying something back to her, like, “Dang it. You can’t talk to me that way.”

“You think Kenny might have come home?” Momma asked. She hooked a left and started down a country road, one that would take us in the right direction—farther away from Neta Sue’s house.

I shrugged. “He might have.”

If he was there, maybe I’d tell Momma to drop me off and I’d take whatever consequences I needed to suffer to protect Daddy from pulling twenty years in Huntsville State Prison. Suddenly, I was no longer my primary concern. One person’s beating seemed but a small price to pay for sparing a whole family from ruin.

I didn’t want to fight. I only wanted to go home, crawl into bed, and pull the covers over my head. Why had I called my parents into the middle of all this? What had I expected them to do? Rescue me from my own stupidity? At that point, I thought if we could all survive the night, that would suit me fine. And if we could manage to avoid Neta Sue’s polecat personality, so much the better.

~

The dirt driveway in front of our duplex sat empty. All the lights in the house remained out. Granny Henderson sat in her porch swing, blissfully waving and no doubt silently wondering why in tarnation we’d driven by without stopping. Momma or I might have asked her if she’d seen Kenny. Certainly she would have told us if she had. That was the whole reason she sat out there in the first place—to see what was going on in other people’s lives, whether or not she knew them. But the way I had it figured, Granny wouldn’t understand why I’d called Momma to escape Kenny, and then asked her to drive me around trying to find him.

Momma made a U-turn in the Rambler. “He’s at his momma’s. I’m sure that’s where he went.” Now we were heading straight for disaster.

“What makes you think he’d run to his momma’s house?” I asked.

“Because he’s a momma’s boy.” She looked like an elementary school teacher conducting class. “He wants to act like a
child
. So he’ll go there. For sympathy.”

“Sympathy? Why would
he
need sympathy?
I’m
the one who’s just had a baby. I’m the one who’s being treated like dirt here.”

Momma hesitated before she answered. “He’s scared, Renee Ann. And he doesn’t know how to show it. He’s frightened by all the responsibilities he’s taken on. He’s not sure he’s man enough to handle ‘em.”

“Hmph. He isn’t.” I stared out the window and into the darkness.

“Then you got to be strong enough for both of you. ‘Cause ready or not, you two have a child now. That means you can’t be children yourselves, anymore.” Momma turned into Neta Sue’s driveway and switched off the headlights.

Neta Sue’s garage door was closed. Normally, she left it open. The lights were on inside her living room, and the blue tint of the television flickered against the windows. She was up all right. More like, lying in wait.

Momma pushed open her door. “You comin’?”

“Where?”

“Up to the door. Where do you think?”

“But he’s not
here,
Momma. Look.” I pointed to the empty driveway. “His car isn’t here.”

Momma wasn’t listening. She climbed out of the station wagon. A hand on one hip, Momma seemed determined to enter the lion’s den. “I got something to say to her, either way. You comin’ or not?”

I couldn’t say I was exactly roaring to join Momma on that stoop. But then I realized I couldn’t let her go alone. The whole episode had been my fault. Though it would have been smart to dodge Neta Sue at any time of day or night, I needed to run interference for my naive parent.

Momma rang Neta Sue’s doorbell while I struggled to catch up to her. The entry door opened, rattling the “This Home Protected by Smith & Wesson” sign Neta Sue had posted beneath the peephole.

“Why, what are you two doing here?” Neta Sue asked.

Wondering the same thing, I looked at Momma and awaited her response.

“I’m here about your son,” Momma began. “It seems he’s caused quite a ruckus tonight.”

Neta Sue stood between her entry and outer storm door and listened, refusing to invite us inside. Not that we would have accepted if she’d offered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “I haven’t seen or talked to Kenny today.
I
been up at the hospital holding my
grandbaby
.” She gave a smug smile. “Noticed none of your people were there. Poor little thing.” She made a sad face. “Nobody but those ol’ nurses to love on ‘im.”

“Well, I don’t know when
you
were there,” Momma said, taking the detour, her tone now defensive. She clutched her handbag tight. “But
we
were there until noon, when we checked Renee out and brought her home. Seems that’s when all the trouble started.”

Neta Sue poked at her up-do, one that appeared permanent. She claimed her beauty parlor reset it each week, but I felt sure it was a hairpiece. No one, not even Kenny, had seen her with her hair down. With all her makeup removed and that teased-up hairstyle of hers, until she opened her mouth she could pass for a Pentecostal. “I’ve been lookin’ at my show…” She gestured to something behind her. “So like I said, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m not here to pick a fight with you,” Momma said. “I came to tell you that, if you care about your son the way I care about Renee, you’ll tell him to settle down before somebody gets hurt.”

“
I beg your pardon!
You don’t threaten
me
… or my son, for that matter! Who do you think you are, coming here, bothering me with your girl’s problems?” Neta Sue’s face turned two shades darker. She blurted her words so fast that a spray of spittle flung onto the glass in front of her. “If she—” She pointed her index finger like a weapon at me. “—can’t keep her husband happy, it ain’t none of my fault.”

Momma gasped. For a second, I thought she might burst into tears. Eventually, she fired back. “This isn’t about keeping Kenny
happy
. It’s about keeping Kenny
alive
and my husband out of jail.” Momma adjusted her eyeglasses and attempted to look mean, but she was no Dirty Harry.

“Jesse’s out there, right now, looking for Kenny. And he’s got a gun,” Momma warned. “All I’m asking is for you to tell Kenny to stop threatening Renee so her daddy won’t lose his temper and do something terrible.”

Neta Sue grinned. “Oh, I assure you there’s nothing to worry about. Kenny can take care of hisself, and Jesse, too, if need be. He’s a Murphy. And us Murphys don’t take shit off
nobody
.” She took a step back. “You two need to get along now and worry about yourselves. Me and Kenny’ll be fine.” She gave out a cackle and shut the door in our faces. From inside the house, I heard what could have been a TV sitcom laugh track, but it sounded more like Kenny’s guffaws.

Steering toward home, Momma cried the kind of tears a hurt toddler might shed. “I can’t
believe
you just stood there and let her talk to me that way.” She said it as though it had been my role to shield her. But I’d been too busy sizing up the odds, wondering whether Kenny’s car was inside Neta Sue’s garage, questioning if Daddy had maybe sought to gun down the wrong person.

“What did you expect me to say?”

“I don’t know. But you could’ve said
something
.”

Up ahead, maybe twenty yards, about where that jackrabbit had crossed our path earlier, I could see the Rambler’s headlamps reflecting off a parked car. “Hey, isn’t that Daddy’s Volkswagen?”

Momma braked to a stop. “It sure is. Why would he be here? There’s nothing out here.”

Momma eased her car in front of the other vehicle, and then we both exited to search for clues: no keys in the ignition, windows up, doors locked. Daddy’s ball cap rested on the passenger seat, next to his Bible. It looked as if he’d abandoned the Bug.

“Sweet Jesus, I hope he’s okay,” Momma said.

“Maybe we should check home before we worry. He could have broken down.” I wanted to believe that, wanted desperately to have the night end peacefully because I’d lost my last nerve on Neta Sue’s doorstep.

First, Kenny had expected me to be a magician. Then Daddy had tried to turn me into a widow. And Momma had wanted me to act as her therapist while running a reconnaissance mission with her. All I wanted was to feel okay for ten seconds. Hard to imagine that, a mere twenty-four hours earlier, I’d been staring at a revolving bank sign, wondering what tomorrow would bring, and expecting something wonderful.

~

We found Daddy in front of an empty fireplace sitting in a chair he’d pulled from the dining room table. A jolt shot through me when I saw him there with a pistol in his lap.

Momma rushed to his side. “Jesse? Jesse? Jesse, please tell me you didn’t fire that gun.” She looked up at the ceiling. “Dear God, I can’t bear this. Jesse?”

Daddy raised his head. “I fired it. Hit a car.”

Momma fanned her face with her hands.

“Engine needed calibrating.” And then, for no apparent reason, he burst into laughter. “By golly, if that old Bug didn’t give me up. I couldn’t get her started to save nothin’. Couldn’t see out there on that dark road, neither. Flashlight batteries had burnt out.”

“So you shot the Bug?” Momma asked, already aware of the answer.

“I didn’t even know you had a pistol—” Ricky chimed.

“And you can forget you ever saw it,” Daddy said.

“You’d have shot him, Daddy?” I was more concerned about his intentions than his temper fit with a Volkswagen. “He’s my husband. I mean…” I snared my purse from the kitchen table. “I’m sorry. I never meant...I shouldn’t have called you.”