mountain blend

Dad followed them inside, but instantly stepped back out.  “Damn girls, you got a cat in there?” he said.  I heard the closing of a door and peeked inside.   Strewn across the floor were a couple of sleeping bags, flattened beer cans and a rain soaked phonebook lying face down in a corner.  The only piece of furniture was a cushion-less sofa covered with a bed sheet.  In front of the sofa, acting as a table, was a large speaker-case.  On top of it were a spoon, a box of generic Sudafed and a hot plate.  Sitting on the hot plate was a Folger’s coffee can.  Mountain Blend.  The place didn’t smell like cat as much as it did unflushed pee.  “This is what your sister ran away to?” Dad asked me.

the produce department

I steered the cart into the soda and chips aisle and grabbed a six-pack of root beer and a family size bag of Lays – swimming pool food.  I couldn’t think of anything else I wanted.  Eventually, I found myself in front of the greeting cards.  I was looking at a get-well card that read: I thought the only sick thing about you was your love life when Dad came up behind me and said, “This is all you want?  Soda and chips?  I thought you would’ve had a full cart by now.”

I turned and faced him.  He didn’t look any more tan than he had when he dropped me off, but there was this funny odor coming off him.  I leaned in for a sniff.  It was the opposite of Cathy Pater’s smell.  This smell was chemical.

“It’s this special oil they give you,” he said, smiling down at his forearms.  “Helps you tan faster.  It’s all natural.”  He took control of the cart.  “Okay, let’s fill this thing up, huh?”

Steering us into the produce department, he directed me to place a couple of watermelon halves under the cart.  He picked up a plastic container in the shape of a lemon and showed it to me.  “Can you think of anything we might need this for?” he asked.  I nodded that I didn’t.  He dropped it in the cart anyway.  In the meat department, he selected, very carefully, a half-dozen cube steaks.  He got a box of hamburger patties and a huge “family size” bottle of Bar-B-Q sauce.  As we stood over the various cuts of pork chop I asked him, “Is Billie okay, Dad?  I mean, what has she been doing all this time?”

“With or without bone?” he asked me, not taking his eyes off the pork chops. “Because the bone gives it more flavor, you know?”

“Dad?”

“Give me a minute here, son.  I’m trying to feed the family.”

Strolling into the bakery department he struck up a conversation with a girl behind the counter.  She was a young black girl around Billie’s age.  Her hair was tucked inside of a pink hairnet.  Her hands were coated white with flour.  Dad read her nametag like he’d known her for years.  “How are you, Laura?  I’m Roy.  And I was thinking of sandwiches.  A little turkey, a little bacon, some mayo?  Tomatoes?”

“I’m sorry,” she said.  “But this is the bakery department?  We don’t make sandwiches.”

“You have bread, don’t you?” Dad said.  “Sandwiches are made with bread.”

She motioned to the display case between them.  “Yes, but as you can see.  We have cakes and donuts . . . some cookies and some danish.”

Dad pulled our cart back to show her what we had gotten so far.  “Laura,” he said. “What do you think would go well with all of this stuff?  What are we missing here?  I feel we have everything but it here, know what I mean?”

She peered over the display case.  Her lips moved like she was counting.  “You don’t have anything for dessert,” she said.  “We have a nice variety of cakes and pies.”

Dad looked at me.  “Does Billie like cake?”

“Everybody likes cake,” the girl said.

“I don’t know,” Dad said.  “I mean, I just don’t know.”  He gave the display case a soft kick like he was checking the air pressure of a tire.  “Okay, that’s a no on the cake then, Laura.  How about some donuts?  How are the donuts here?  Pretty good?”

The phone rang and the girl turned to pick it up.  A black phone, its receiver was fingerprinted with flour.  Dad peered over the display case like he wanted to see what kind of shoes she was wearing.  “That’s what I’m talking about,” he said.  “Not too dark, not too light.  A nice milky coffee.  Here son take a look for yourself.”

I was too short to see over the case so I crouched down and looked past the donut trays.  Before I could begin to wonder what he was talking about, she had hung up the phone.  “What’s he liking down there?” she asked Dad.  “The tiger-tails?”

I stood up to her snapping a pair of silver tongs in my direction.  “You look like a tiger-tailer,” she said to me.  “How many would you like?”

Besides for Swan’s mom, this girl was the first face to smile back at me in ten days that either wasn’t on a television screen or in the page of magazine.  All I could say was, “Yes, I’m a tiger-tailer . . .”

“Say, Laura?” Dad said.  “I was wondering if you could do me a favor.”

Her smile turned to him.  “What’s that?” she said.

He rested his right forearm on top of the display case.  “It’ll just take a second of you time.  If you could put your arm up to mine, I would like to check something.”

“Dad?”

“Hold on, son.  Laura?  Could you just put your arm up here?  There you go.  That’s it.”

The two of them inspected their forearms together though I could see that she didn’t know why.

“What’s that smell?” she asked him.

“That’s me,” Dad said.  “Don’t worry.  It’s all natural.  You know that Lincoln Tanning Center on the corner of Main and Rogers?  Great place.  Real nice people there.  You ever been there, Laura?”

The girl stepped back, taking her arm with her.  “Why would I go to a tanning center?” she said.

“Exactly,” Dad said and pointed down to his forearm that was still lying across the display case.  “Did you know that lack of sunlight is one of the leading factors of depression?  Did you know that?  Because I didn’t know that . . . ”

She stood back, arms crossed.  She didn’t seem upset or insulted.  Like anyone else talking to Dad for the first time, she only wondered if he was serious or not.

“You’ve got a really nice tonal value there,” Dad told her.  “I mean it.  People are lining up to get what you’ve got.”

“Is he for real?” she asked me.

I nodded that he was.

“Sure, I’m for real, Laura,” he said.  “And thanks for doing that for me.  It tells me a lot.  Thanks so much.”

“What does it tell you?”

“That I need to get serious about my tan if I’m going to get anywhere near your tonal value.  You see, I’ve been out of commission for the last few days – over a week actually.  It got me thinking though.  And one more favor before the donuts.  Could I ask you a question?”

“Sure,” she said.  “But how about a dozen tiger-tails and a dozen cherry?”

“That’s fine, Laura,” he said, with a wave of his hand.  “But this question I have is about my daughter.  She’s what I wanted to ask you about.  She’s nineteen and, well, this is the deal.  My daughter has been paying me rent to sleep in her own room.  It’s not much, the rent.  In fact, what she pays hardly makes a quarter of my car payment.  But what I’m getting at here is . . .”

“I don’t get it,” she said, handing over the first box of donuts.  “Why would you make your own daughter pay rent?”

Dad ran his hands through his hair, bringing it back into a ponytail and then letting it go.  “She tried to leave when she first graduated from high school,” he said.  “She came back.  She got this job working out in the fields.  Back breaking work.  Then out of the blue she tells me she’s paying rent now.  So it was all her idea, see?  I’ve been playing along.  You know how kids go through phases.  You play their games.  Now, my question to you is this.  Do you think I made a mistake in doing this?  Did I do the wrong thing?”

That’s my dad to a tee.  Open up to total strangers but won’t crack the door an inch to the people closest to him.

“I still can’t imagine someone wanting to pay rent when they don’t have to,” she said.

I stepped up, took the second box of donuts and placed it on top of the other box.

Dad looked up from studying his forearms again.  “Yeah, I guess . . . I mean, if I didn’t butt into her life every once in a while then she’d say I was guilty of not caring about her.”  He put his hands on the display case and leaned in closer.  “It sure is nice talking with someone about this stuff.”

The phone rang again and she answered.  “Bakery Department.  Jamilla speaking.”

“Jamilla?” Dad said.  He knocked on the display case.  “Hey, Laura . . .”

She put the phone to her shoulder.  “Yes?”

“I thought your name was Laura.”

“Oh, I just grabbed the first smock I saw this morning.  You guys have a nice day, okay?”

“Well, what kind of way is that to show customer appreciation?”

“Well, what kind of father charges his daughter to rent?”

Dad pulled a slip of paper from his wallet and waved it at her.  It was the first postal money order Billie had given to him when she first told him she wanted to be treated as a tenant instead of a daughter.  “I haven’t cashed a single one of these fuckers yet!” he hollered.  “What kind of person do you think I am anyway?”

“Sir, do you want me to call security?”

“Sure, do that.  Call security!  And when they get over here I’ll tell them that all I wanted was a couple of sandwiches to feed my family but instead all I got was a liar in the bakery department!  Come on, son!”

Dad stormed off as I pushed the cart behind him.  Once he had walked up and down a couple of aisles and didn’t seem as upset anymore he began to randomly pluck items from the shelves and drop them into the cart.  Canned yams.  Canned pears.  A can of something called Spotted Dick.  He didn’t stop until we had a mountain of food in our cart and he was face to face with a single lobster sitting at the bottom of a large glass tank.

The lobster’s claws were strapped shut with rubber bands and the walls of the tank were bristle-marked by the brush that had last cleaned it.  A sign nearby read:  Don’t Bother the Lobsters.  Dad put his hands to the glass and stared into the tank.  He started kneading the tanning oil deeper into his arms, and told me, “Your sister’s pregnant by the way.”

family values

The first thing we did after Billie had called to tell us she was “fine and dandy” and needed to be picked up was stop in at the dry cleaners.  Dad made a whole affair out of it.  For ten minutes he stood there explaining to the lady behind the counter how the company that made Armor-All, Dad’s dashboard cleaner of choice, should inform its customers that the cleaner also ate through men’s slacks. “High-end Cotton blends are especially sensitive to Armor-All,” he said. “People don’t order slacks from International Male just to see them turn to Swiss cheese, do they?” The lady behind the counter didn’t know if he was kidding or serious. When she tried to give him a coupon, he waved it away. “No, it’s okay,” he said. “It’s not your fault. It’s Armor-All’s. I just thought you should know is all . . .”

running water

Swan’s mom brought dinner over a few times. Lasagna and salad. Tuna casserole. Meatloaf. She would sit with us at the dining room table and watch us eat her food. She’d tell us about her day, about her job as the athletic director at the YMCA. It was nice to hear about life outside of the house. She asked us to come over for a swim in her above-ground pool sometime, but Dad said we better not. “How about Sean then?” she said. Dad told her that he needed me at home to answer the phone if the police were to call while he was in the shower or something.

Dad was in the shower a lot. He’d take his first shower in the morning, then his second around lunchtime, then again before he’d go to bed. I’d wake up in the middle of the night sometimes and hear the water running. I’d lie there in bed and listen. If I listened long enough, I’d hear him crying. But I could never be sure. I’d take my blankets and pillows downstairs and try to find a movie, fall asleep on the couch.

still just a kid

This is the description Dad gave to the sheriff’s department when he finally got through to someone on the phone.  “Pretty girl.  Built.  Brown hair.  Feathered.  Real good tan.  No scars.  No tattoos . . . well, none that I know of.  Her left pupil is kind of funny.  Makes her look a little foreign, I guess.  Got a mouth on her, too.  Not afraid to bite the hand that feeds her, know what I mean, officer?  Real pretty girl though.”

Dad came up to my room after making the call.  He sat down at the end of my bed where I was looking through a BMX catalog my buddy Swan had picked up at the Schwinn shop in town.  Like me, Swan was hoping for a new bike, too.

“I hope you know how serious this is that your sister has disappeared,” Dad said.  “Louisville isn’t exactly next door.  It’s a good four hours away.  Plus, who the hell does she know there?  Who’s there to watch over her?  Nobody, that’s who.  Shit.  Your sister thinks she’s all grown up but she’s not.  She’s still just a kid . . .”  This was real worry I was seeing in Dad’s eyes.  Not the kind of worry I saw with him standing in K-mart watching the price of his favorite mousse go up again.

“Come on,” he said, standing me up.  “There’s nothing we can do about it now.  You hungry?”  He led me downstairs and put me in front of the television.  “Find us a movie,” he said.  “We’ll eat our turkey pot-pies in here tonight . . .”

I flipped through the channels until I found Cleopatra starring Elizabeth Taylor.  Cleopatra’s library was on fire and she was begging the Romans to do something about it.  The Romans didn’t care though.  They had their own problems and just looked at her like she was crazy.

wishbook

From under the living room sofa I pulled out the Wishbook catalog and took it out to the porch swing with my root beer float. For Christmas that year, Billie complained that there hadn’t been enough presents under the tree and so Dad promised us that he would turn our basement into a game room. He had described a room to us where we’d soon be shooting pool in, playing a quarter-free pinball machine, drinking soda and eating chips from a wet bar. “We’ll move the stereo down there, too,” he had said, “So you kids can have some parties . . .” But all he had done for the game room was coat the cinder-block walls with sheets of plywood and tacked up some posters of Lamborgini, Ferrari, Porsche – that sort of thing. This is how I got into the routine of the Wishbook catalog. I had every corner of what of my dream game room should consist of circled with a red pen: air hockey, Atari, bubble gum machine, beanbag chairs, etc. Plus there was one girl I really liked in the lingerie section. She had a round shell of black hair and was dressed in pair of white panties with a large baby-blue robe pouring over her shoulders. Not that I thought she belonged in our game room. I didn’t know where she belonged.

dad’s look

With a mix of resentment and respect, Dad explained, “There’s this guy at Taco Night. He’s not exactly a good looking guy. But he’s this ear and eye doctor in town so the women love him, right? I don’t see it though. I mean, okay, he drives a Saab. So what?” Dad’s eyes closed and his face filled with pleasure. “But you should see his ponytail though. Just perfect. His hair’s all one length and he does it so a couple of strands fall down the side of his face. Can you see what I’m saying here?” His eyes opened again and he studied his own profile. “That’s what I want . . .”

edisto

When my sister Billie graduated from high school she asked for a set of luggage to take with her to a new life in this place called Edisto. I’m not sure if Edisto ever existed but some trucker passing through Fast Jack’s had told her it was one of the best little vacation spots on the shores of South Carolina. The idea was that Billie and a friend of hers were to move down there, share an apartment, waitress at one of the hotels and then spend their free time on the beach. Graduation night came and went and the next day Billie started packing everything she could into the luggage Dad had given her. But then the friend she was to leave with called and told her that she was going to community college instead. Billie’s the kind of person that when she wants something then she doesn’t want anything else. Once she threw the phone down, she went right back to packing.

I helped her take the luggage out to her car – a Dodge Dynasty with a saggy felt ceiling filled with cigarette burns, a floor of Little King bottle caps and the weathered remains of scratch-off lottery tickets. The beach towels draped over the front seats, having absorbed Billie’s suntan oil over the years, gave the Dynasty its permanent smell of coconut and banana. When Dad asked her what her plan was now, she gave us each a half-hug goodbye and said she’d call us when she found out.

As the Dynasty turned out of the driveway, it wasn’t as if Dad and I turned away and had one of those moments where we wondered if we were ever going to see her again or not. It wasn’t one of those kind of goodbyes. Neither of us would admit it, but we were sort of relieved to finally see her go.  You don’t realize how much you care about a place until someone starts shitting on it.  All Billie had talked about for the last couple of months was how she couldn’t wait to get out of Bicknell.  The last thing Dad told her before she cranked up the radio before backing out of the driveway was, “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do . . .”

Billie returned home four days later, the luggage gone, her clothes piled in the backseat of the Dynasty, and wearing a t-shirt that read Southern Chicks with little yellow chicks poking their heads out of eggs painted in the Confederate flag. Dad asked her what happened to the luggage and Billie explained that the closest she had come to finding someone else to go with were a couple of girls who were only willing to go as south as Gatlinburg so they could get a job at Dollywood. But Billie didn’t want Dollywood. She wanted Edisto – even if she had never been there.

international male

I was just a kid, but I could tell those early days of Taco Night were tough on Dad. He’d come home with the bouncer’s stamp smeared across his hand and Billie would ask how it went. Dad could only reach for his box of Cheese Nips at the top of the fridge and sigh, “All I want is somebody to do stuff with on the weekends. All I want is somebody to love.”

A quiet tension would settle over the house and for the next several days Dad would isolate himself by taking marathon showers and going to bed before nine o’clock until he’d find the nerve to crack open the new International Male catalog and invite us back into his world again. Getting ready for another Taco Night, he’d hit us with questions like: “Think these pleats are too wide? Can you tell I had the cuffs of my jeans redone or do they look natural? Do these loafers look better with or without socks? Which mousse is best for my hair? I heard tanning booths cause cancer. Is that true, guys?”

love is a battlefield

Once the boys are fed and entertained and put to bed, Billie and I will head out to the front porch. If anything can make me feel halfway human again after spending two days in the Peterbilt and then spending time with the boys it’s one of Billie’s Crown and Cokes. She squeezes like a whole lime into each one and there’s always plenty of ice.

We’ll sit there on in our separate lawn-chairs on the porch and she’ll go on about her bartending job at the Corral Club.  “I’m a one woman show,” Billie tells me. “If it weren’t for me that place would go up in smoke. I’m the waitress, the bartender, the dishwasher. I bus the tables. The men love me there because they know I’m not going to take their shit. They know they’ll be pulling back a stump if they get it in their head to pinch my ass. You know what they did today though? I was telling them how I haven’t been to the dentist in years and they got together and collected enough money to pay to get my teeth cleaned. You believe that shit? That’s really cool, you know? To have a little insurance like that?”

My sister was born with a leaky pupil in her left eye. Dad always said the leak made her look like a cat. Stone says it makes her look French. But to me, her leaky pupil always reminded me of a lock to something simple like a little girl’s jewelry box or a pair of plastic handcuffs.
“You’re lucky,” I told her, knowing she needed to hear it. “To have a little insurance like that is really good, Billie . . . Yeah, that’s good, Billie . . .”

The week before that she told me how Dan Quayle’s cousin came into the bar and gave her a fifty-dollar tip because she did such a good job of programming songs into the jukebox for him. And the week before that, it was some guy that said he knew one of the talent scouts for Rod Stewart and that Rod was looking for some back-up singers.

“So, I got the karaoke machine up and running and sang Love is a Battlefield for him and you know what he said, Sean? He said I was way above average. He said that I had a lot of heart. Can you imagine that? Just imagine . . . your sister singing for Rod Stewart. Imagine that.”

These are the good times.  Out on the porch with a Crown and Coke, sitting under the stars of Pearl City, with Billie dreaming of a bigger and brighter future, while the boys are sound asleep in their beds.