Kinfolk, page 12
Nub clicked his lighter shut and kept quiet.
“I’ll tell you what you’ll do,” Emily said. “You’ll call me.”
He had to admit this was a distinct possibility.
“You’ll expect me to drop everything and come over to fix your problems. And I’ll have no choice but to come over here and pick up the pieces like Mom’s been doing for forty years.”
He exhaled a cloud and inspected his hands. “Emily, you don’t have to yell.”
“And what about that piece-of-crap truck you’re driving?” she said. “It’s not even yours. Do you even have a license? Does Benny even have that thing registered? What happens when it dies? What if you wreck again?”
“That truck has nothing to do with this.”
“No? How are you going to drive her to school if you don’t have a car? How are you going to take her to band practice? How are you going to carry her to extracurricular activities? How’s she going to get to church?”
“Band practice? Church? I didn’t realize this kid had such an active social calendar.”
Emily mock-laughed. “So what’s she supposed to do? Stay here? Locked in this house? She doesn’t get to have any fun outside of this pigsty, full of fungal dishes? You’re going to teach her how to drink Miller High Life and break wind at the supper table?”
“Well, I’m glad you brought all this up,” he said. “See, I’ve been working on some of those things lately.”
“What things?”
“Well, I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s been a couple weeks since I drank. I’m still working on the smoking part, but I’m taking it slow. I’m down to one pack per day.” And one pack per night, he thought.
Emily scalded him with her fiery gaze. “You’re just telling me what you think I want to hear.”
“I’m telling you the truth, sweetheart.”
“Truth. Right.”
“Go ahead, mock me. But I’m making some big changes. I’m trying to make you proud of me. I want to quit drinking. I really do.”
She squinted, long and hard. It was a look that he knew so well he could have painted a picture. It was the look Loretta gave just before she threw something heavy across the room.
“You’re not drinking?” she said. “Hand to God?”
He held up his hand. “Not drinking.”
“Swear?”
“I swear.”
“Then how come I saw your truck at the Legion last night?”
“Emily, a man has to eat. Leigh Ann feeds me dinner. A man can only eat so many peanut-butter-and-mayo sandwiches.”
“So you’re telling me you didn’t drink anything last night?”
“Right.”
“Nothing at all?”
Nub was quiet.
“Answer me, Dad.”
He drummed his fingers on the table. “Just a social drink.”
She erupted. Emily slid from her chair and stood; she was crying again. “I don’t have time for this!” Then she swore. Emily never swore.
And then something happened. Emily’s tears overtook her in a way Nub had never seen happen before. She doubled over onto her knees and sobbed like a little girl, face to the linoleum floor. He jumped up and wrapped his arms around her, but she pushed him away.
“Get off me! I hate you!”
He stumbled backward but came to her again. This time she hit his midsection with her fists. “I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!”
He did not shy away.
“I know,” he said.
“I hate you so much!”
“I know.”
She shoved him away from herself. And all he could do was stare at the smoldering ashtray on his table, shaped like the great state of Florida. He bought the ashtray in Panama City Beach on his and Loretta’s honeymoon. Just before he joined the navy. Just before Loretta wrote to him and told him she was pregnant. He remembered the cigars the guys gave him aboard the USS Oklahoma as soon as he learned he would be a father. He cried tears of joy that night in his bunk. A child. Heavens. He was having a child.
“I’m sorry, Emily.” Nub was weeping now. “I really am.”
“I’m forty-four years old, Dad.”
“I know, honey.”
“Forty-four. Look at me. It’s not supposed to be like this! I’m supposed to be in the prime of my life. You’ve missed every birthday I ever had. You didn’t even see Charlie Jr. until he was three years old. You are nothing to me.” Then she screamed it. “You are nothing!”
Nub made no reply.
“I’m sorry, Em. God help me, I am.”
She sniffed her nose. “Yes, you’re right about that. You are sorry. Sorry white trash.”
With that, she left his kitchen and slammed the door behind her so hard a framed picture fell from the wall.
Always walk out on an argument before the other person has a chance to speak. That was her rule.
Chapter 18
The time was 11:39 p.m. Deputy Gordon Burke was making his rounds. The weather forecast had said it would be lightly snowing. Although icing would have been the more accurate term. Ice was coming from the sky. The ice lining the roads was a lacquer finish. Ice was so unusual in this town that none of Park’s residents knew how to navigate the conditions. Which meant a lot of disasters. Nine traffic incidents had occurred within the last twenty-four hours. A new record for Ash County.
Burke was on patrol, sipping tepid coffee from the substation Bunn machine, listening to Red Sovine on the Toyota radio. Dispatch chatter was light tonight. Dispatch chatter was light every night. This was Park, not Chicago.
His vehicle cruised at an easy twenty miles per hour. He was making more of a courtesy loop than anything, just to let people see their taxes on parade. Hardly anything ever happened in this city. Hardly anything ever would. Everyone knew it, which was a blessing and a curse. A blessing because Park was safe. A curse because he had spent thirty years doing the most skull-numbing job known to the human race.
He turned off Elwood and onto Andrew Street. Andrew was dotted with newish homes, some currently being constructed. The new designs looked out of place in this old town. They all had flat roofs, with modern brick and square picture windows. The shrubs were geometrically cut. Park was Rockwellian. Split-level ranches had no place on a Saturday Evening Post magazine cover. And yet here they were.
He turned onto Seventh Avenue. On Seventh, they were breaking ground for a new restaurant called Pizza Hut behind the dry cleaners. People expected the joint to be a big hit. Just like the Kentucky Fried Chicken over in Ambassador. The food at the KFC wasn’t even good. It was just commercialization. Plain and simple. The homogenization of the United States. Franchises with preordained color schemes and uniforms. It made him sad.
When he passed the Ash County Waterworks utility station on Eleventh Avenue, he noticed something. A tiny pin light, bobbing around the water tower in the midnight darkness. Burke stopped the Toyota and peered upward through his windshield for several minutes, trying to figure out what he was seeing. He stepped out into the chill air, removed his Stetson, and craned his head back.
The water tower stood high above the world like a sentinel. Like a mama hen, keeping watch over her chicks. He could see a large, dark shape dangling from the scaffolding, and the pin light kept dancing in the air.
A man was up there.
* * *
Patrol cars gathered beneath Nub, lights flashing. He was suspended 140 feet off the ground, like a dead fish on a stringer. He wasn’t sure how he had fallen off the water tower scaffolding, but he was grateful he had worn the suspension harness. He looked at the blinking red lights on the cars below the water tower and marveled at them. Tiny red lights moving in meandrous patterns, the way fireflies do. This made him laugh.
The sound of a bullhorn carried into the night air.
“Just hang on, Mr. Taylor,” the bullhorn voice said. “Help is on the way.”
Nub kept singing.
“Can you hear me, Nub? I said, just hang on.”
This made Nub laugh until he choked on his own saliva. “Hang on to what? My butt?” He laughed again. Then he reached for the half-pint bottle in his coat pocket, unscrewed the cap, and took a big swig.
More people gathered beneath him, like tiny insects. Some came by car, others on foot. But everyone had come to see the show. Whenever he glanced upward at the water tower and laid eyes on his newly completed R, he felt satisfied. No longer did he live in PAPK; now it was PARK once again, just the way God and the Ash County legislature had intended. He had corrected his mistake. Thus, no matter what happened next, no matter what the punishment, no matter what kind of ribbing would follow, Nub had righted at least one wrong within his messed-up life.
He heard another loud siren wailing. A fire truck. He could see the distant lights spinning, cutting between the trees. The truck didn’t belong to Park’s fire department. This truck had a huge ladder. Park’s department didn’t have a ladder that big. They didn’t need one. The tallest building in Ash County was the bank, and it was about the size of a water heater.
The bullhorn spoke again. This time it was a female voice.
“Dad?”
Nub tried to ignore the voice, but he was too drunk. He started to weep. The weeping came from a place deep within his chest. Somewhere far beneath his heart. He was weeping for more than just his daughter. He was weeping for his own life.
“Get her out of here,” Nub mumbled.
“Dad?”
He swore at the top of his voice. “Someone get my daughter out of here!”
It took four hours to get Nub down from the water tower in the ice and snow and driving sleet. When he reached the ground, he was hungry, tired, and severely dehydrated. And his privates hurt badly from the harness straps that had been supporting his 149 pounds for several hours. He was promptly hoisted by fire medics into the back of an ambulance and given an IV drip.
Emily was standing beside him the whole time. She gripped his hand with both of hers. His were like ice. Hers were warm. And soft. He was still crying, of course. Because all drunks cry. It’s part of the deal. They cry for many reasons, but the tears come freely. Sometimes the booze is the only thing that can loosen them.
He looked into his daughter’s eyes and spoke with a slack tongue. “You used to love to fish.”
“Dad. What?”
“You were my little fishing partner.”
“Just try to relax, please, sir,” said a medic.
“What are you talking about, Dad?”
“You. I’m talking about you, Emily. We used to fish together. You were my little fisherwoman. And I loved you for it.”
“Okay, yes. I remember that.”
He held her hand and kissed it. “You do?”
“Yes, we fished in Granny’s lake. All the time. I remember.”
He squeezed her hand and wept onto her knuckles. And as they loaded him into the ambulance—for the second time in thirty days—he said, “I’m sorry, Emily. I am sorry for what I’ve done to you. I’m sorry I hurt you. God help me, I am. I am so sorry.”
The doors shut.
“So am I, Dad,” Emily said. “So am I.”
* * *
Shug arrived at his motel just after midnight. The Scotty’s sign featured an illustration of a little black dog with pointy ears, a beard, and overgrown eyebrows. The sign was outlined in yellow neon light. “Free Color TV.”
Whoopee.
He entered the breezeway, reached into his pocket, and dug around for spare change. He bought a Coke from the vending machine. He started on his way up the stairs and passed some of the other full-time residents who lived at Scotty’s Motor Inn. People living at the Scotty were either on the skids or heading directly for them. The woman from room 29 was smoking in the breezeway. She smiled a weak smile at him. The kind that looked forlorn.
Shug fumbled for the key in his pocket while simultaneously removing the red IGA apron from around his neck. When he got to his room, he slid the key into the door and turned the knob. He opened the door and was momentarily taken aback.
Shug’s room had been trashed.
Lamps were smashed. The mattress was lying on the floor. Sheets were strewn about. The television screen was shattered. Piles of confetti glass shards peppered the floor. The bathroom shower curtain had been yanked from the rod. His rucksack had been emptied. The corpse of a headless chicken was bleeding in the middle of the room. Blood was everywhere. White poultry feathers were everywhere. And a message was written on the bathroom mirror in what looked like red lipstick.
Your daughter is next
Book 2
Chapter 19
It was raining. Nub was sitting alone in his truck. He was parked in the parking lot of an old Methodist church, watching the water pelt his windshield. A crisscross of designs streamed down the glass, making a kaleidoscope of colors. More cars pulled into the parking spaces of Blanchard United Methodist Church, one by one. He watched people jump out of their cars and rush through the rain toward the door.
Tonight would be Nub’s first meeting.
He didn’t want to admit it, but he was nervous. He’d been sober for almost three weeks, since he’d been rescued while painting the water tower. It had been one of many wake-up calls in his life.
He knew tonight would be painful. He knew it would be awful. He knew it meant that he would have to stop drinking forever. He knew it meant that he would have to face the jaggedness of life without alcohol to round its edges.
He kicked open the truck door, then walked through the blinding rain into the church building. He shook off his seed hat and hung his jacket on a hook with several other dripping jackets in the vestibule.
The meeting was in the basement. It was a quintessential church basement. Dank. Stinky. A fellowship hall that smelled like decade-old Folgers and a million spaghetti dinners gone by. Linoleum floors. Popcorn ceiling. Faux-wood paneling. An upright piano sat in the corner. A drinking fountain. A water-closet-sized bathroom barely big enough to sit down in. In the center of the basement were the obligatory gray folding chairs, positioned in a circle. Maybe ten or twelve. Stragglers were still filtering in, plodding down the staircase into the basement. They had wet hair. Wet clothes. They consulted the almighty caffeine machine. They laughed with each other. It was clear that most of these folks knew one another. They’d all been in this basement before. They were genial and lighthearted. Friends even. He did see, however, a few outsiders like him wading on the fringes of the room. He could tell they were outsiders by the way they lingered against the walls. Silent. Cautious. Nervous.
He was startled by a voice.
“Hi there,” said a young guy with a black beard. He was dressed like a cowboy minus the hat. Big belt buckle. Square-toe boots.
Nub pumped his hand. “Hello.”
“I’m Stan.”
“Pleased to meet you, Stan.”
Nub did not give his own name.
It was a lot like the first day at a new school. As a boy, after Nub returned home from the psychiatric hospital, his mother moved him from his old grade school in the country to Park’s city school. She’d hoped there would be fewer questions for Nub to answer in a new school. (“Why’d your daddy shoot his own self?”) Nub would never forget that first day in a new classroom. It was horrifyingly uncomfortable. Turned out, everyone knew. They all looked at him as though he had the plague. On the first day in a new school, you don’t know anyone; you’re a foreigner. The jargon is different. The inside jokes are different. The routines are different. It’s unsettling in every way. When you’re the new guy, and everyone knows your father blew out his own brains, it’s considerably worse. Tonight Nub was an alien all over again. But he pressed onward. He knew he had to save his own life.
Nub approached the circle of chairs and chose a seat. And although he was sober, he stumbled over one of the chairs and nearly fell flat on his Blessed Assurance. The woman who reached out a hand to brace his fall was brunette, and alarmingly familiar. Nub couldn’t have been more taken aback if he’d woken up with his face sewed to the rug.
“What in the name of Job are you doing here?” he asked.
“I was about to ask you the same thing,” said Leigh Ann.
He sat in the seat beside Leigh Ann. “What, you come to these things for occupational training?”
“Not quite.”
“You work in a bar, for heaven’s sake.”
She shrugged. “It’s called cue exposure therapy.”
The meeting started with a prayer and a few traditional readings. Nub looked around the room as one man read the preamble from a blue book about how there were no judgments here, no preconceived notions. As the man read, Nub took stock of everyone in the room. They all had something in common, and it wasn’t just the booze. He’d seen the license plates in the parking lot as the cars were pulling in. They were all from outlying little hamlets. Other counties, even. They met here in Blanchard to remain unknown and nameless.
Anonymous.
The man read about how there were no dues for membership and they weren’t part of any particular denomination or political party. Nub sipped his coffee. It was the color of weak tea. He could see all the way to the bottom of the paper cup. It tasted even worse than it looked. Leigh Ann touched his knee. It was not a romantic gesture but a supportive one. She gave him a reassuring look.
She must have thought he was scared. And she was right. The last thing he wanted to do was to be here with people who had real problems. He knew he had things to deal with in his own life, but he didn’t want to talk about these things in front of strangers. He didn’t want to whine about his daddy issues. Neither did he want to delve into how he started drinking when he was thirteen years old, at Filcher’s dance hall in 1924, during the throes of Prohibition, where the beer was free for musicians. He didn’t want to open his mouth at all.
