Never Smile at Strangers (2 page)

HE WAS A liar. Lying was what kept him safe, alive, and relatively sane when he was little and his mother would crawl into his bed. . . when he became older and she continued to crawl in.

He lied about everything and to everyone: his wearisome, red-faced manager at the Winn Dixie, the employer at his second job, the filthy sister he’d been forced to care for. Anyone he encountered while he was outside the house, anyone he’d ever met. Sometimes, when he was lucky, he even managed to lie to himself.

He was sure that people liked him because of the person he pretended to be, and that if they knew who he really was, they’d be terrified. They’d fear for their lives. They’d hurt him. The thought unsettled him almost as much as the terror trapped inside his head.

Some people thought they were close to him. They weren’t. He made sure of it. If. . . they only knew.

It was dark now in the woods. Very still. A sharp contrast to what was transpiring inside his head. A slew of horrid, dangerous thoughts like fireworks exploding, overcrowding his skull.

He felt far from at peace and always had. But something about this summer in particular stirred him. His mind was a pressure cooker that desperately needed release. Screaming at the pond wasn’t enough anymore. They’d begun to scream back.

Brushing away a low-slung limb, he trudged forward. A pair of yellow eyes studied him from within the tall grass and his heart skipped a beat.

It was the sickly stray cat that he’d named Ian. It followed him everywhere these days: to the pond, through the woods. Its heinous face even peered through his tiny bedroom window at the worst of moments. Over the months, Ian’s eyes had turned evil and he wanted nothing to do with the revolting animal. “Leave me the fuck alone, Ian,” he seethed. But the cat didn’t budge. It just stood there, intimidating him. “Fuck off, I said!” He lunged at it. It shrieked and shot into the darkness.

He headed back to the small house he shared with his sister. But he knew he wouldn’t be able to stay there for long. He avoided it as much as possible. It’d been hers, his mother’s. Inside it, he was still a terrified, angry little boy.

Outside of it, he could usually fake who he was and become almost normal. The lies were his salvation. But not in the house, a place that would remain a cruel part of his life until his sister graduated high school. Either then, or until he was forced to destroy her.

But when he neared the house, he couldn’t bear to go in. The light in his sister’s room was switched off, which could only mean that she was out. But she wasn’t the only one he had to worry about. Some nights his dead mother’s presence just felt too strong.

He decided to take a drive.

FIFTEEN, MAYBE TWENTY minutes passed before Haley left the bathroom at Provost’s. She glanced around the bar. Tiffany and Charles hadn’t returned. The cheese sticks and sodas were still on the table, untouched. She left a five dollar bill and headed to the back door.

She swung it open and stepped out into the warm, sticky night. The putrid odor of Trespass Bayou hung in the air. “Tiff?” she shouted into the parking lot. “Charles?” She waited. No one answered. She walked deeper into the lot and swatted at a cloud of gnats that darted toward her from a flickering light post.

Trucks of all sizes, and a few cars, including Tiffany’s black Ford Mustang, were parked in the gravel lot. There were so many trucks that resembled Charles’s, it was difficult to decide which was his. Wandering up and down the gravel rows, she peered into each large truck, thinking maybe she’d see them arguing inside one of the cabs. They were all empty.

Heat lightening rippled in the night sky. Glancing out at the line of woods on the east side of the lot, she thought she saw something move. “Tiffany?” she called. The night was still, silent. She shouted louder. “Tiffany! Charles!” She heard nothing, just the sound of her own voice and an owl screeching in the distance.

SUNDAY MORNING, THE aroma of sautéed andouille sausage, garlic, and onions clung to the air as Haley chopped scallions in the kitchen, careful to make them fine, as fine as Nana used to chop them.

She was afraid. Afraid for her mother who looked more and more like death every day. Afraid for her sister who’d never openly mourned her father. Afraid for her life which had unraveled nearly a year ago, and might never get back on track.

She wished Nana was still around to tell her what to do. When her maternal grandmother was alive, she had been the centerpiece of the family. Daddy was the voice of reason, but Nana was the voice that spoke of reasons, deeds, and beliefs no one wanted to think about, much less believe. Haley’s mother always said to pay her no mind. That Nana was growing senile. But Nana didn’t
seem
senile. She was alert and full of life. More so than most of the kids Haley’s age. Haley knew if Nana was alive now, she’d know how to fix everything. How to whip her family back into shape. Make them happy and healthy again.

Haley’s boyfriend, Mac, had just shown up. He sat at the kitchen counter, his nose buried in a fishing magazine. He was a vision of health. Tall, tanned, athletic, confident and always relaxed. Nothing seemed to ever bother him. She’d become the opposite of him over the long months: Pale, puffy, stressed, and unconfident. Certain she’d become a downer, Haley wasn’t even sure why he still wanted to be around her.

Her life had become difficult, but she knew she didn’t have the luxury of drowning in a depression. Her mother had claimed that path before anyone else had the chance. Someone had to care for her mother, Becky, and the house. There was no one else.

“You have a good fishing trip?”

“Yeah,” Mac said, not looking up. “Relaxing.”

“Get back last night?”

“Yesterday afternoon. Put in a couple of hours for Lloyd. Would’ve called, but couldn’t get a damn signal at the site. By the time I got home, it was pretty late.”

Mac worked for Lloyd’s Towing, a tow truck company in Weston. He put in odd on-call hours, working any chance he could. He also worked other part-time jobs on occasion, including cutting lawns. Something he’d done since he was fifteen.

Haley wiped beads of sweat from her temples with the heel of her hand. The wall-mounted air conditioning unit in the living room barely cooled both rooms, and lately the unit in Becky’s bedroom had been on the brink. She needed to call a repairman, but the bill would run her a couple hundred dollars. Money she didn’t want to part with.

She dropped a handful of chopped scallions into the skillet, then gently stirred them into a crackling mixture of flour and oil. Her attention fell to the refrigerator door. Along with old report cards, her high school graduation photo, and an old “To Do” list, was a note from her father, telling them he went out to buy sheet rock. It was a note he’d left on the refrigerator just hours before he died, held by one of the magnets he used to pass out at parish fairs. “Education Is Forever,” it read.
How about when you’re dead
, she wondered, bitterly. She’d wanted to take the note down several times over the past few months but couldn’t bring herself to. Apparently, Becky and her mother hadn’t been able to either because it was still there.

Mac set his magazine down, then pulled off his LSU ball cap and began working the bill between his thick, strong hands. His forehead and cheeks were sun burnt, and just above the collar of his t-shirt, along his neck, were three jagged, red lines.

“What happened?” Haley asked, concerned.

“Ah, nothin’.” Mac quickly pulled his cap back on, then lightly fingered the scratches. “A branch got me while I was fishing is all. Wasn’t payin’ attention.” The skin at the corners of his eyes crinkled as he flashed her a tired smile.

“They look pretty bad. You put anything on them?”

“It’s nothing, Hale. Believe me, looks worse than it is.”

Haley decided to take him at his word. Men didn’t like women who nagged, besides she had enough to worry about.

Lowering the fire on the stove, she continued to stir. She’d only eat a cup of the gumbo. As always, she had an extra five pounds around her middle that she was determined to get rid of. If she couldn’t control anything else in her life, she’d control that.

Mac got up and walked around the counter. He kissed her cheek. “I’m goin’ to go lie on the couch and have me a little nap. After that, I’ll take you for a sno’ cone. How’s that sound?”

***

HALEY WAS FOLDING towels when the phone rang half an hour later. She picked it up, expecting it to be Tiffany. But it wasn’t. It was Julia Perron, Tiffany’s mother.

“Weren’t you with her last night?” Mrs. Perron snapped when Haley told her Tiffany wasn’t there.

“Yes, Mrs. Perron, I was. We went to Provost’s.”

“And she’s not there?” the older woman asked again, skeptically, as though Haley would now say yes.

“No ma’am.”

There was a brief silence on the other end of the line. “Haley, this wouldn’t have anything to do with the little argument she and I had yesterday morning, would it?”

Mac stirred from where he lay on the couch.

Haley lowered her voice, not wanting to wake him. “I. . . I don’t know.”

“Could you tell me who I should call then? She wouldn’t be with that
Charles
boy, would she?” She made the name Charles sound like a cuss word.

Months earlier, Mrs. Perron forbade Tiffany from dating Charles, one of only a handful of blacks in Grand Trespass and the surrounding towns. Families like the Perrons; white, working class, and sometimes narrow in their views of what and who were acceptable, didn’t look kindly on minorities. When Mrs. Perron found out that Tiffany was secretly seeing Charles, the two fought like a pair of rabid bobcats and she demanded that Tiffany not see him any longer. She hadn't told Mr. Perron for the sake of his bad heart, but she’d threatened to disown Tiffany if she found out she was seeing Charles behind her back.

“No ma’am, I wouldn’t think so,” Haley said, cradling the phone between her shoulder and ear and folding a blanket her sister, Becky, had left in the middle of the floor.

After hanging up with Tiffany’s mother, Haley tried Tiffany’s cell phone, but got her voice mail. After leaving a message, she walked to the kitchen. Mac had already awoken and was placing a new bottle on the Culligan cooler.

“Sounds like Tiffany’s going to be in hot water the rest of the summer,” she sighed. “That’s if she’s not disowned.”

“She stay out last night?” Mac mumbled.

“Yeah, guess so. And her mother’s pissed.”

Mac grabbed a dish towel and wiped his hands. “She with Charles?”

“I guess. I can’t think of anyone else she’d be with.”

But she could
, she thought. Tiffany could be with the guy she’d begun to tell her about.

MAC EASED THE truck to the side of Main Street and killed the ignition. The Ford shook for a few seconds, then became quiet. Wondering if Tiffany had made it home yet, Haley pushed open the passenger side door and climbed out into the oppressive sun.

Her bare feet burned against the sun-beaten asphalt. She took slow, deliberate steps, because while she concentrated on the blistering heat, she couldn’t think of anything else. Her father, her mother, the insomnia, her future. . . The asphalt was agonizing but also therapeutic in a way. A Southern antidepressant.

Dead, dried up worms, some in L-shapes, some in the shape of C’s, were glued to the blacktop. She slowly made her way across the road, trying to avoid stepping on their mangled bodies.

“The tar’s gotta be blazin’. Shit, I can feel the heat clear up to my ankles,” Mac said, waiting on the other side of the road. “Why you walkin’ so slow?”

“It’s not that hot,” she said, and tried not to wince. “Really.”

As they stood in front of Bob’s sno cone stand, an old run down trailer that had been parked on the side of Main Street for as long as she could remember, Haley noticed a girl her age standing on the side of the road several yards away. Erica Duvall. She was staring into the woods, a backpack hanging low on her back.

“What do you reckon she’s doin’?” Mac asked, squinting against the sunlight. He handed a blue sno cone to Haley.

“Don’t know.”

“She hangs out in the woods an awful lot,” he said, taking another cone from the pimply-faced kid who was working the counter. “You’d figure a girl our age would’ve grown out of that type of play. Moved on and become a young lady.”

“She doesn’t have any friends,” Haley muttered, watching Erica disappear into the woods. Haley found Erica beautiful and mysterious. Tiffany only found the girl creepy.

“You two get along okay at Luke’s?”

Haley bit into the ice, barely tasting the sweet syrup on the tip of her tongue. She nodded. “Yeah, she’s quiet, but nice enough.”

Haley had taken a job as a waitress at Luke’s Diner a few weeks earlier to help her family with the bills. Since taking it, she found herself mesmerized with the quiet, petite girl who was also a waitress there. She was much different than the others, always reading, always writing, always in a different world than everyone else. Tiffany, who also worked at Luke’s, had a much different impression of Erica. She only found her weird and a bit freaky and like she did with so many other people, looked down on her.

Erica’s family moved to Grand Trespass from San Francisco when she was in the first grade. Haley remembered when she first saw her at school. She was small and skinny and had the same long, brunette hair framing her tiny face. Her clothes and eyes had both looked way too big for her.

Sadly, she had the same number of friends walking into the classroom that day as she’d had the day she graduated from high school. None.

***

FOUR O’CLOCK that afternoon, Haley carefully skimmed the greasy scum that had settled at the top of the gumbo pot. Setting the big wooden spoon back on the stove, she went to her mother’s bedroom and quietly opened the door. The woman appeared to still be sleeping. The only part of her body Haley could make out in the bedcovers was the crown of her head. She hadn’t come out all day. It was as though she was attempting to sleep away the reality of her husband’s death.

Haley closed the door and walked to the recliner. Mac’s six-foot-one frame was sprawled out on the large couch against the wall. His empty sno cone cup was on the floor by his side, next to two crumpled cans of Coors Light.

“You think you should call Dr. Broussard?” he asked. “This has been going on for far too long. It’s not healthy for her to stay holed up like that.”

Haley sighed. “He was just here a couple of weeks ago. She wanted some pills to help her sleep. Now she stays in there and sleeps more than she did before.” Haley sighed. “I don’t know what to do.”

The phone rang. Haley sprang up and hurried into the kitchen. “That’s gotta be Tiffany.”

When she picked it up, she immediately heard terror in the voice on the other end of the line. “Please tell me Tiffany’s there,” Mrs. Perron croaked.

Haley glanced at her watch, and her heart skipped a beat. It was already five past four.