Authors: Lisa Howorth
“
Wooo
,” she twitched her shoulders.
Basta.
Time to lighten up
.
She exhaled loudly. “I’m glad that’s . . . behind us.”
“Me too,” Teever said. “What we gone do now, Mudbird?” She knew he meant without Ernest.
“Man, I don’t know,” she said. “But I can tell you a lot of things we’re
not
going to be doing now,” she said wryly. “Did you score any smokes from those guys?”
“Jus’ that one. Sorry,” Teever shook his head. “I
had
a carton last night,” he lied. “Mexicans cleaned me out. Need to quit, anyway. Clean up my act.”
“Are you serious, Teever?” She thought he wasn’t, but he did have that cough, and maybe even he was worried about it. She hoped it wasn’t contagious. TB cooties would be pinballing around in the car right now. “You’re going to quit smoking and drinking and stuff? ”
“Aw, hell no, Mudbird. Jus’ kiddin’. I’m gone always be a kind of a wretch,” he said. He should have kept his mouth shut. If he said he wasn’t going to straighten up, they’d all be amazed when he
did
. No point in jumping the gun. He wanted to feel the rush of resolve he’d had that night around the bonfire, but daylight always had a way of sapping things, stealing your nature, like you were a vampire. “I might
never
get found,” he said to Mary Byrd, wondering if he could get the good feeling back.
The light was nearly gone. Teever squinted, focusing his eyes on the horizon beyond a vast soybean field.
“Hola!” he suddenly yelled, thinking he saw that unearthly green flash as the fiery disk of sun disappeared. “Thought I saw somethin’. N’mind.” But the flash, or flashback, gave him a surge of confidence and well-being. “I do got options.”
Ignoring what seemed just another Teever non sequitur, Mary Byrd asked him, “Where do you think Ernest is?”
“He somewhere,” Teever said.
“Yeah, but like
where
?”
“Don’t know.” He thought a second. “But I do know that there’s things folks aren’t spozed to know ’til they
need
to know ’em.”
“You think?”
“I
know
. We all knew how things gone turn out, where we gone end up, wouldn’t be nothin’ to keep people from acting the fool twenty-four twenty-four.”
Mary Byrd laughed. “Isn’t that what we do anyway?”
“It would be way, way more worser,” he said. “Trust me.”
“For some stupid reason,” she said. “I pretty much do.”
They drove on in the interstate gloam, not talking, finally exiting onto the last annoying stretch of two-lane between Batesville and their town, where new faux chateaux vied for highway frontage with double-wides, Tool Central, Toyota, the Eureka True Vine Church, and 1950s pretend Taras that made the 1980s pretend Taras almost look good in comparison. Once this had all been the beautiful old Riverdale Cattle Ranch, where velvety Limousin cows had stood posing in the emerald fields as if it were Barbizon and they were waiting for Millet to paint them.
Mary Byrd wanted to take advantage of Teever’s thoughtful, sober mood. It almost never happened. She wanted him to talk seriously about himself, but something told her that his private life was maybe one of those things that he thought “folks aren’t spozed to know.”
Instead she asked, “Well, what about Rod’s funeral? Did his family have trouble getting down here because of the storm?”
“What you
think,
Mudbird?” Teever said. “You dumber’n a box a mud. Course they had trouble—folks got to drive from way up north. You think everybody got the money to fly around like you and Charles? ”
“Take it easy,” said Mary Byrd. “I didn’t mean it like that.” She felt dumb and white. “But what about Angie? What’s going to happen with her, do you think?”
“Hard to say. Hard to say. She do
not
need to be in no jail in Memphis, I know that.”
“Yeah, I know. I hope Evagreen and L. Q. are okay. And Rod’s parents. Jesus.”
“Not
ever
gone be okay for them,” Teever said. “No way.” He coughed wetly into his tweed sleeve. “But I got a feeling
something
gone happen with Angie.”
“What do you mean by
something
? Something good or bad?”
“Don’t know, Mudbird.
Something
. Like I say, there’s shit we ain’t spozed to know. Sometimes, hard to tell when a thing be good and when it be bad.” He shrugged.
“Ha,” she said sarcastically. “Where’s all this coming from? You channeling the Dalai Lama or something?”
“Who she? I’ll channel her anytime,” Teever said, allowing Mary Byrd a second to look over at him to see if he was serious. She couldn’t tell. “No way—I’m channeling the
Tolliver
Lama, Mudbird.”
“Sounds to me like you’re channeling Amos, or Andy.” So much for serious.
He shrugged again. “Shit happens. Maybe up to us to make it turn out one way or the other.”
“I don’t see how any of Angie’s mess could turn out good for anybody. It’s so awful. Think about Desia, her little girl.”
“Maybe so,” he said, heaving a sigh that rattled his throat but didn’t catch. “Why you asking all these questions, anyhow? Can’t we just drive in peace?”
“Okay then,” she mocked him. It made no sense at all, she thought. Someone like Zepf, who’d killed and molested at least one innocent child, might be released from prison, and somebody like Angie, who’d been pushed over some dreadful edge and killed her husband in self-defense, would remain in prison for who knew how long. Was it possible that Angie could get the death sentence? Mary Byrd’s shoulders hunched in disgust. She reached for the radio buttons. “It’s time for NPR. Let’s just listen to that.”
“Not them people with them crazy names—Carl Kasell, Korva Coleman, Calvin Cockamamie.”
“I love NPR.”
“Zo listen to that stuff all day down to the Iko Theater. Them two dudes talk about cars—white folks’ nice cars, like yours. Puh. Don’t know shit. Need to put some black guys, some Mexicans, on that show, talk about some
real
cars and car problems.”
“Well, I’m sure as hell not having
that
kind of conversation now. Why are you being so cranky?” Mary Byrd poked the buttons until she found WEVL out of Memphis, which they could just barely tune in. This was as crazy as driving with Foote.
The deejay’s voice shouted from the dashboard, “Okay, people, some funky stuff comin’ at you, take us back to nineteen fifty-seven. Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid, but if you don’t like the racy stuff, now is the time to
spin your dial.
Here’s Andre Williams doin’ his signature song, ‘Jail Bait.’”
“Okay, here’s my attempt at racial reconciliation,” Mary Byrd laughed.
Teever perked up. “Oowee, I have not heard this song in
too
long. And this not his best song. There’s one that’s
too
nasty; everbody knows it. Cain’t even say it front of a lady. You a lady, Mudbird?” He laughed.
“Shut up, Teever,” she said. “Okay, we’ll listen to this so we can have racial harmony in this car. Where’s
your
attempt to reconcile?”
“Mudbird, I would only be
too
happy to let you get to know the pleasure of a black man’s company, you know,
personally
,” he said, grinning. “
Too
happy. There my attempt to reconciliate.”
Mary Byrd laughed. “That’s
another
conversation we’re not having. You never give up, do you?”
“No ma’am, I never do,” he said. “Not Teever. No way.”
At least he never played the race card like some of those guys did out at Junior’s juke joint—trying to guilt-trip the little white coeds, who were so pleased with themselves for being adventurous enough to be in a black club, into dancing with them: “Oh, you jus’ don’t wanna dance with a
black man
.”
“I don’t give up on
nuthin’
,” he said, “no way, no way, no way.”
Their ramshackle—that word was never going to be the same for Mary Byrd—old house was inviting and a comfort to return to after Ernest’s funeral. Warm, relaxed, full of people and dogs and cats and lower forms of life scuttling through the big rooms, requiring Homer, the vigilant Orkin man, to visit every other month. The ice storm had knocked the power, plumbing, and phone out for a few days, and Eliza and William had hauled ice to melt to flush the toilets and had enjoyed themselves until they began jonesing for TV. Their old gas Chambers stove had become a sort of communal hearth for the mostly electric neighborhood and people had come in and out to make coffee or heat their suppers. Now things had gotten more or less back to normal, except for mud and the thick spatters of wax on the rugs.
When she’d gotten home from Richmond the night before in her stale suit, she’d peeled it off and gone straight to bed. In the morning she’d only had time to doctor on Teever’s foot, empty the fridge and freezer of ruined, smelly food, and zip herself into a short but demure tweed skirt before taking off again with Teever for Ernest’s funeral. There would have to be a big cleanup day tomorrow, a Thursday without poor Evagreen. She needed to remember to get Evagreen’s checks to her as long as she needed to be gone. Was it time for Evagreen to retire?
She and Charles had not really had a chance to talk at all about the events of the past few days. Although Mary Byrd knew they could easily never get around to discussing any of it and could just pick up where they had left off, as if nothing unusual had been going on. That would be absolutely okay with Charles, and very near okay with her. She was talked out.
Charles for some reason had ignored her chili but had kept some stuff cold outside so it was still good, she hoped. Now he had a garlic omelet ready for her, which was one of the four things he cooked really well, the others involving flames, sizzling skillets, or a powerful blender. He liked his omelets runny inside, though, and Mary Byrd didn’t, so she did what she always did: scraped out the runny stuff into a pool on the side of her plate and ate the rest. When Charles wasn’t looking, she’d let the puppies lick her plate. Charles could not bear for the animals, especially the cats, to use people dishes but would occasionally give the Pounder or Puppy Sal a bite of steak or offer them a nub of fat right off his own fork. It was something about the cat’s
fur licking
that especially disturbed him.
Mary Byrd looked down at the floor, where Iggy the fat little cow milled around, hoping for treats. He sniffed at her shoes—her favorite Charles Jourdan pumps with the Pilgrim buckles that were now ruined, crusted with thick red Mississippi clay from standing at Ernest’s graveside, sniffling and drying her eyes with one of Liddie’s old lace hankies, firmly stuck to the earth.
“Well, Iggy, these have about had it, don’t you think?” She kicked them off, a few small clods falling away, which Iggy investigated as well.
“Wow, I’m so exhausted. Aren’t you?”
Charles poured her a little more wine. “Nah. It was actually kind of fun. Life on the frontier. Reading by candlelight. No TV. Melting ice to flush the commodes. I think the boys might have sneaked out one night, according to the Dukes, but I didn’t say anything to William—how could they resist?”
She was too tired to register alarm or be pissed. “I guess that’s why there’s wet spots, mud, and wax everywhere.”
“Yeah, Eliza and William were flailing candles around before I put some in the bathrooms for them,” he said. “There’s probably some pee on the floor, too. William can’t aim in the dark.”
“William can’t aim, period,” she said. “Gee, I’m really sorry I missed all the fun,” she said, rolling her eyes. “
Not
.”
Charles wore his old Washington and Lee sweatshirt and pajama bottoms, which was something of a departure. Normally he stayed in his street clothes until he went to bed. He seemed relaxed and happy, she was surprised to notice, having expected him to be annoyed with her because he’d had to deal with things while she was gone, and because she’d gone to the funeral. Usually, Charles was never around when stuff went wrong. The storm had been good for him, although she felt slightly slighted whenever the three of them were able to get along fine without her. It was funny that Charles seemed to do well in her absence, when the opposite felt true for her. But in the long run, she told herself, things would go down fast without her. Dogs’ and cats’ accidents would go undetected and would accumulate, tape and scissors and tools and kitchen things would become misplaced or lost, dark and white laundry would be mixed together and the whites would become dingy or pink and the darks would have bleached spots. No, if she died, or she was gone, Evagreen would take over and the house would be more efficient and organized and cleaner than ever. They’d all be better off, probably, except the animals, which Evagreen would dispatch immediately. They’d even eat better—all Evagreen’s fried chicken and catfish and
real
mac and cheese and chess pies and meatloaf that they loved, on the rare occasions when Evagreen cooked for them. It bothered her a little to realize that she couldn’t do without Eliza and William, and probably Charles, even if they could do without her.