Daddy's Read online

  IT ALL GO BY

  We almost hit a deer on the way up but we swerved just in time. The sky was a hundred million dilated pupils. Then on the way back down we saw a deer dead on the side of the road with its legs up like it was laying on its back and stretching up its legs in order to admire them better.

  It ain’t the same one, you said.

  I put it out of my mind and watched the lines on the highway. Lines, even though as fast as we were going they looked like one long line, anyone knows it’s a bunch of lines running together. Eyes playing tricks. If that’s true maybe we did hit that deer and just put it out of our minds and let our eyes go abracadabra on us. Either way.

  One thing about night is that it can always get darker on you. There we were in the middle of a country highway, not a car around, and the darkness started getting to us, creeping in under our collars the way a stiff wind sometimes can. I remembered all those times Mother talked about someone walking over her grave, the chill bumps on her arm that stayed for nearly half an hour. You said, We’re almost there and when I looked over you were dark outlined in dark, dark things rushing by outside your window that were probably just trees in the median.

  Pretty soon you pulled off the highway and headed west for a bit. Then you pulled into the parking lot of a pancake house. We’re here, you said. I said, Are we? You laughed to yourself, said, Les’ go inside, get somethin to eat.

  We crossed the parking lot toward the door. The car was settling behind us, a bunch of sighs and clicks. It was thirty-two steps exactly to the door, a shame, since I guessed twenty-seven.

  You picked the table in the corner by the window, fogged the window with your breath and traced a big X into it. You said, X definitely marks the spot.

  The waitress came over, recognized you, said, What can I get ya in a voice flat as a country highway. Oh, you said, I believe I’ll have a cup of Sanka and a piece of cherry pie. My counterpart here will have an iced tea and a grilled cheese. The waitress walked off, her shoes squeaking, or maybe it was just one shoe.

  You said, You know, I’ll bet someone aimed for that deer.

  The only other customer in the restaurant got up, stomping his feet like his legs had been asleep. He paid his ticket, said, Y’all have a good night now on his way out the door. I watched his taillights until they were as small as the deer’s eyes were in our headlights, until they were gone.

  It’s just human nature, you said, to want to kill. Pure instinct.

  Our food came, the waitress dropping your plate in front of you in a clatter, the coffee sloshing around in your cup but settling before going over the side. The tea was cold and sweet and reminded me of antifreeze and I drank it down in three long sips. I pushed my grilled cheese over to you. You dug the cheese out with your forefinger and spread it onto your pie.

  You know what, you said, I feel a lot calmer with you here in front of me. I tried to remember where I’d heard that before but the closest I got was one night when I was twelve or thirteen and I snuck out to go swim in the swimming hole. Some friends were supposed to meet me but never showed, and I forced myself to jump in anyway since I went to all that trouble. My foot touched something slimy and I shot up quick, and did the backstroke for a while, and then I just tried to float for as long as I could. The stars that dotted the sky were as white as little baby teeth and twinkled like diamonds, and it was a queer feeling—and this is the closest I came to remembering where I’d heard what you said before—it was the queerest feeling, what with my front nearly bursting at all that glitter and joy and my back tense and frightened of what swam underneath.

  I excused myself and went to the bathroom, locked myself in a stall. I sat on the toilet seat for a while, just enjoying the quiet, then retaped the knife at my ankle. I had a delicate little cut where its edge got too close but nothing to holler home about. I let myself out and stood in front of the mirror, watched myself draw the gun from inside my shirt and aim. My face looked greenish and strange under the bathroom lights. It only had one bullet in it, but of course I didn’t tell you that.

  I was about ready to come back out when the waitress walked in fluffing at her bangs. I pretended to wash my hands while she pulled lipstick from her apron and smeared it on, took the pins out of her hair and put them back in, blow her nose. On my way out I saw that she had a runner in her stocking right behind the knee.

  You were eating a second piece of pie, bits of cherry sticking to the corners of your mouth like blood under a neon light. My glass was full again, the ice shifting as it melted, a little puddle of sweat in a ring around the base.

  Yep, you said, scraping the plate with the side of your fork, no getting around it. We’re animals, and we have instincts.

  I drank my tea down. You went and paid the ticket, the cash register ding hanging in the air for a good few seconds. I thought of my single bullet, thought of shooting a hole in the night sky, making some kind of light.

  The waitress took my glass, squeaked into the kitchen. I wiped off your X with a napkin, pushed my face into the window and watched it all go by: our car in the parking lot where we’d left it. Those thirty-two steps. The highway, making that rushing sound even when there weren’t any cars on it. All that relative dark, all them dark trees. That deer admiring its legs for all eternity. Us. Me. That swimming hole and that swath of stars. How I’d shoot the bullet directly above the deer so the light would shine right down upon it, how I wasn’t sure why. And you, standing there with your hand inside your shirt, looking like something that was just on the tip of my tongue.

  FOOD LUCK

  You remember that time we entered that contest and I ate 37 pies and you got to 38 and launched a barf-wave over the crowd. You remember how then as a joke I got down on my hands and knees and ate it up, even made slurpy slurp slurp noises as I went for the maximum joke effect. You remember how Mom made me walk home but you remember how I still got that ribbon, boy. I still got that ribbon. Still got it. Blue with gold lettering and a couple flecks of your barf.

  What about that time we entered that hot dog-eating contest and you choked on number 16 and I took my folding chair to your back. A chunk the size of a cocktail wiener shot out your mouth and into the crowd and I’m not sure what happened to it after that, if I knew at the time I’d have gone to get it, you best believe that. By that time Mom was too fat to drive so I drove us home and you bitched the whole way that your back hurt and it hurt to sit back against the car seat and you needed some ice and maybe a doctor, but you got over it. Later I’m saying. Later you got over it. You remember how you wouldn’t let me into your room that night, how I slept on the floor outside your door and then we went down for oatmeal in the morning just like always.

  You remember how we went on that double date and I dared you so hard to drink four large milkshakes in a row because I could do it no problem and you got red in the face when Deandra turned and asked Why, why couldn’t you do the same thing. Deandra ate two burgers and a large fry herself that night, and later on I drove her and her friend home, her friend who was supposed to be with me, but me and Deandra parked in the empty lot behind her house and did it after we dropped her friend off, and Deandra smelled like grease and onions and talcum powder, and remember how you weren’t there to put a stop to it because we left you in the bathroom of the restaurant. Remember how that was the right thing to do because you didn’t want the girls to know how you got the runs down both legs, how you left your jeans in a wad behind the toilet and walked home with your jacket tied around your waist. And all the while Deandra saying Mmm, mmm, all the while me and Deandra feasting in the backseat of Mom’s car.

  Remember how Mom would eat a dozen eggs and a pan of bacon, and remember how that one Christmas she went to stretch and found an old brown napkin wedged in her neckfat, how then we wanted to know what else was hiding in there, a diary, a housekey, a slice of pizza, and hey remember when we joked that Dad was in there somewhere, because that was how we dealt with Dad leaving us and moving
in with the man who ran the movie theater. We made jokes about it. Like how remember that one time I made you laugh when we drove by Dad cutting the man’s grass and I yelled Hey faggot out the window as we passed. At least I think you laughed. Didn’t you? Or like that time we tried to see how many different things we could fit into our mouths, marshmallows, grapes, hunks of sandwich bread, and I said Hey this must be what Dad feels like when he’s got that movie theater man’s testicles in his mouth.

  What about that time when I came home with six gallons of milk from my job at the Circle K and told you I’d believe you were a man if you could drink one whole gallon per hour, and I even unscrewed the tops for you so you wouldn’t have to stress about that, and you made it three quarters of the way through the first gallon before you bent over the kitchen sink and rolphed it all back up, and I said you should just go ahead and move in with Dad, and Mom heard and made a sad walrus sound from the other room and I told her to shut it and said it was time for you to drink the next gallon, but you refused. You with that chunky yellow dribble on your chin, looking up at me from your crouch over the sink, saying, No sir, No sir, over and over again. And me not telling you that I’d tried to get to one gallon an hour and failed, that somewhere on the drive between the Circle K and our house there was a pretty little puddle of just-turned milk that I’d blorted from the car window, and that I’d only gotten through the second gallon, nowhere near six.

  And then there was that day we had a dinner for you because you were leaving and I had the lady in town make you a five-layer fudge cake with a crushed potato chip layer, and on the top in script she wrote Food Luck instead of Good Luck, and I didn’t say anything when I picked it up because Food Luck was goddamn right, you know? And how Dad came over and didn’t bring his friend and Mom took a washrag to her neck and upper arms beforehand to freshen up and put a flower in her hair from the bowl of potpourri on her nightstand, even though she couldn’t leave her bed to greet Dad at the door, and then when he finally showed she called out, So lovely to see you Fred, and Dad said And you, Tee, but they never actually saw each other. And then I told Dad you’d eat the entire cake, crumbs and all, and how proud he’d be when he saw it, but Dad left in a rush after you threw up in your mouth and then swallowed it back down just like I’d shown you, and I yelled Good riddance, Gaywad, which I know he heard before he shut the door behind him, and I told you to stop crying and finish your cake, and you did, and then the next day you left and got your college degree and a wife and a little son you named after Dad.

  And Mom dead a year and buried in two plots to accommodate her size. And Dad living in the city with a different man now. And me here all this while so hungry, eating pies, eating cakes, eating bags of pretzels hot dogs sugar crystals chocolate bars pizza wheels gallons of milk pints of liquor a million beers marshmallow fluff peanut butter loaves your old teddy bear the drapes in the living room Deandra’s panties a collection of river rocks fistsfuls of mud an old tire a rusted padlock a ring of keys a baby tooth an entire pumpkin the nails from my fingers the hair from my head any blood I emit and all those bits of the highway that get kicked up every time someone drives out of this town.

  WOLF RIVER

  Johnson communicated he could go for a lunch. In the corner office our boss had his head in his hands. An orange balloon floated by the window. Johnson whispered, More than anything I’d like a beer, an apple turnover, and some pussy. Right about now. The orange balloon hovered, caught on something. Our boss said, Goddamn it all Jesus Mother of God and the balloon freed itself. Or the wind freed it. It went up and I watched it reflected in the glass building across the way. Tiny bit of orange.

  I’d once gone camping with a girl. She built a fire the way her grandpa had shown her. Or maybe it was an uncle. Teepee of kindling. Match. Puckered lips blowing until the fire could breathe on its own. We burned the weenies and then the marshmallows. Shared an apple instead. The girl told me about this river in her hometown, how its banks were rocky and gray. How the rocks looked like wolf bodies. How she pretended it was a river of wolves. As the fire was dying she howled into it. Like this, she said. Swim in. I put my hands on her, then in her. The fire spit and crackled. A last ditch. The girl quit howling.

  Our boss waved a twenty in the air. Coffee black, he said. Johnson wondered which diner had the least slobby waitresses. The orange balloon was a black dot, a floating period in the sky. Johnson said, Tits. You know? I tried to remember what happened to the girl. Europe maybe. Or some kind of nanny position somewhere else. But anyway, that orange balloon and that orange fire. Stamping out the urge to howl in the elevator. Then me and Johnson hitting the sidewalk, a different kind of river.

  THIS ONE

  You wake up. Put just a T-shirt on because those jeans eat at your ass and it’s too early for that yet. You make what your daddy proudly called hillbilly coffee. That guy in your bed is moaning in his sleep, pointing his toes. His junk’s all shriveled and caught up in that black tangle. You think how if that were you you’d be more modest, even in your sleep. You think, I don’t believe I like this one very much. Then you remember putting your mouth on that thing, just for a second the night before, and how grateful he seemed, how his body instantly went from tense and strong to flop-relaxed and jelly, how that alarmed and disgusted you so you pretended it was just a stop on the way to kissing his lower abdomen. Now you rub your tongue against the roof of your mouth to equalize the bitter taste, a taste close to the one that time your mama boiled the hot dogs in the pot of de-limer your daddy was using, you sick for days after only a couple bites. It was a accident, you tell people. You’d probably say that now, should there be the same people in your house staring with you at this man with the thick rope chain around his neck and the missing molar. It was a accident. I needed a ride. You laugh to yourself, Lord did you ever need a ride.

  And now the man is waking up, doing snow angels in your bed and yawning wide. You think, I should not allow him to see me standing in the doorway watching him. You think, that would give him some kind of wrong idea. But after he is done fisting the sleep from his eyes he sees you anyway. You think, let him. The man smiles, and maybe it’s not a missing molar, maybe it’s closer to the front than that. His hands are at his chest, scratching his nipple area. Girly, he says to you, I got me some morning wood. You see for yourself but it ain’t promising, looking like it’s on the other side of wilting. A lazy type of erection. You remember your daddy warning you about lazy men, saying Check the hands darlin, the uglier the better, your daddy missing the nails on both thumbs and always offering your mama his index finger to use as a nail file. You don’t remember the feel of this man’s hands. You couldn’t pull his hands from a police lineup. You say to the man, nodding toward that mess of a crotch: That ain’t much to write home about, but it is more like you’ve said it to the room and the room has soaked up your quiet tones and anyway the man is yawning again, doing that thing people do when they feel right at home, stretching and yawning something closer to a shout than a yawn.

  There’s coffee, you say to the man in a louder voice. You want to get the ball rolling. You imagine yourself enjoying a quiet morning once the man has left, staying in your T-shirt until the late afternoon, and then who knows. Maybe dinner in front of the TV. Maybe a stop by the bar. It all seems like years in the future. You are pleased at the thought. The man starts playing with himself. The man is left-handed and this fact seems to render the man special somehow. You think the words Handicapped, Disabled, Special. No one in your family is left-handed. You realize that maybe you’ve only ever encountered left-handed people on the TV. Don’t drink coffee, the man says. I drink something else, and there’s that hole in the gums again, he has apparently said something suggestive to you but you’re having trouble picturing exactly what he means. You realize if he closed his mouth and his eyes you’d probably give him another go, due to that left-handedness. And maybe you’ve said that last thing out loud because his eyes snap shut and he purses his
lips, his tongue roving around, but maybe that’s just his usual masturbating face. That hand gets faster, the flesh at his belly shuddering.

  You are having a hard time with this man’s comfort level in a stranger’s house. It seems rude to you to feel so at home in a place that isn’t his home. But despite yourself you are turned on. You feel disgusted but inflamed. You tell yourself it’s that left hand. It’s downright exotic. In you go, your ankles cracking at the first few steps. You straddle the man, yank the crotch of your underwear over because getting them off would take forever and you barely have seconds before the magic of the moment would subside. The man pumps three times before pushing you off. Your underwear snaps to. The man says Hoo-eee. He wipes himself off on your top sheet but misses the dollop just under his chin.