Lyla, page 15
A curly-haired nurse emerged from the door.
Every man looked at her with a half-smile and stood to his feet. The girl had more curves than a billiard ball. It didn't matter though, we were almost too nervous to notice such things.
Almost.
She glanced at her clipboard and called my name. I rose from my seat drawing the eyes of the entire room. I couldn't shake the feeling that I was a head of livestock. A longhorn, getting ready to have a visit with the butcher.
“Hey, good luck, Quinn,” Dirk said.
“Thanks, you too.”
Dirk smiled, and I noticed his eyes were bloodshot.
Even more than mine.
I followed the nurse back through the corridor. She took me past the hallway of exam rooms. I trailed three feet behind her like a lost puppy. The curly-haired girl turned and smiled at me before opening a door that led me into a small room. In the room was the physician, seated on a chair, reading through his notes.
The physician introduced himself to me and I pumped his slender hand. He was a pale man with a shiny head trimmed in a wreath of white hair. He didn't have the hand strength to open a jar of jam.
“Okay, let's get to it,” the physician said. “Remove your clothing, please, and put these on.”
The nurse handed me a pair of white shorts that looked a few sizes too small for a four-year-old.
“Right here?” I asked. “Right now?”
He nodded and looked down at his notes.
The nurse turned her back while I gave the doc a free show.
When I finished changing into my lingerie, the doc inspected me like a mechanic. It was as if he were searching for leaks on an old Ford. He weighed me, measured me, looked at my tongue, and patted my elbows. He even investigated my head of hair. Then, he sat me on the tall, cold, metal table. He shined lights in my eyes and made me read large letters on the white sign.
“Can you read those letters?” he asked.
After all my studying with Sonnet, I could've read the Declaration of Independence.
He struck my knees with a little hammer and watched my legs bounce with delight. The whole thing reminded me of how Daddy used to inspect a hound puppy. He'd inspect their hips and then check the roofs of their mouths to see if they were black or not. Black-mouthed dogs were guaranteed good animals. Pink mouthed animals were only good for companionship, nothing more.
I had a pink mouth.
“Do you have depression?” the doc asked.
“No sir, I don't think so.”
“Good, good.”
He wrote on his board and then looked up at me. “Okay, remove those shorts.”
“My shorts?” I glanced at the curly-haired nurse. “But you just had me put them on, Doc.”
He smiled. “Yes. Now please take them off.”
I dropped my shorts and showed the old man everything I had to offer this world. Then, he surprised me. He inspected my vulnerable regions with his cold rubber gloves. The curly-haired nurse did not turn her head this time. She intended to get her money's worth.
The old man groped my genitals in his palms, and was not gentle about it, not in the least. I looked over at the nurse in the corner of the room again.
She was smiling at me.
“Mister Applewhite, I'm looking for the Great Impostor,” he said fondling me. “Have you heard of that before?”
“Sir?”
“The Great Impostor.” The doc stood up and removed his rubber gloves with a snap. “It's another name for syphilis. You can pull your drawers up now.”
“Sir?” I said again, pointing my good ear toward him.
“Syphilis.” He cocked his head. “Do you know what that is?”
“No, sir.”
He looked at me, taking his glasses off.
“Son, why do you keep turning your ear to me like that?”
“This is my good ear.” I slid up my shorts.
“Your good ear?” The doc pulled a little tool out of his pocket and inserted it into my ear. “Which ear is your good ear?”
I tapped my right ear. “This one.”
“Carol,” he said. “Bring me the fork.”
The nurse rose from her chair and burrowed through the drawer. She handed him a silver wishbone-shaped object.
The physician tapped the metal fork and then pressed the stem of it into my forehead. It tickled, vibrating above my eyebrows.
“What do you hear when I do this?” he asked me.
“Ringing.”
“In which ear?”
I touched my right ear.
“What about now?” He tapped the fork again and pressed the stem near my left ear. “Do you hear anything in the left ear?”
“Sir?”
He furrowed his brow. “Hmm, I see.”
The doctor looked down at his clipboard and scribbled out a paragraph. Finally, he sighed, then handed me the clipboard.
“Okay, Quinlan, sign this please,” he said.
I wrote my name down on the line in my neatest handwriting.
“I'm sorry, son, but I'm classifying you as Four F. Do you know what that means?”
“No sir, I don't.”
He put his hand on my shoulder. “Look, I know you want to serve your country, Mister Applewhite. But I can't let you into the US Army. Not with that.” He pointed to my ear. “That thing would get you killed in a jiffy.”
The world started spinning around me all of a sudden. I felt like I was on one of those merry-go-rounds. The kind the traveling carnival folks brought to Saint Joe several years ago. They called it the Magic Wheel of Fun. I paid a nickel to get sick as a dog on that thing.
“Sir? I don't understand.”
“Now, don't lose heart son,” he said. “You can still help your country in other ways.” He patted my leg. “But Four F means that you're going back home. I'm sorry, but you'll have to sit this war out.”
He tore a sheet from his clipboard and handed it to me.
“Finish getting dressed, and Carol will see you out.”
I stood up, staring at the paper in my hands.
“Mister Applewhite,” said the doctor, looking over his glasses at me. “Try not to look so relieved, please. It's bad for business.”
11.
Over the next few summers, I watched my favorite pine tree die. It didn't happen right away. Trees don't die right away. Only if lightning strikes them. Even then, they can go right on living, scarred in unusual ways.
No, my favorite tree died a little each day. It was pine beetles that killed it. They did it in a torturous manner, gobbling up the tree up one mouthful at a time.
I hated those little bugs worse than taxes.
The tree wasn't an exceptional climbing tree. None of its limbs were near enough to the ground for that. It wasn't a shade tree, either; it didn't have enough greenery to be one of those. But that's not why I liked the tree.
I liked the big tree because it was a gracious, ancient pine, with a trunk as thick as a wagon wheel. It had held its place in our front yard for a few hundred years. It was a piece of our world, and it was part of my permanent memory. It was an object we looked at every day. It had been here when the Apalachee had. The tree had endured storms, floods, fires, and the hateful Spanish. Such things had made its skin rough and thick.
All of that would've made my skin thick, too.
Long ago, when my granddaddy won the land, the pine would have been a few inches skinnier. Maybe only as big around as a soup kettle back then. The older it got, the fatter its base became.
Daddy told me most of the pines on our property were a few hundred years old. The thicker ones, like my favorite, were likely three hundred years old. Three hundred. I couldn't comprehend numbers that big. Sonnet explained the arithmetic to me once. She said that a tree three hundred years old would've dated all the way back to the days of Columbus.
I had no idea Columbus, Georgia was so old.
At first, I noticed the black pock marks multiplying all over the body of the pine. Then, the tree's bark began to shed in huge chunks, shattering on the ground below.
God, it made me sad. It was like watching an animal die.
After a few summers, most of the bark had fallen off the tree. The pine became faded, gray, and naked. Its soul left it. It escaped like a ghost through the bullet holes the beetles bored into it.
Soon, the lifeless top limbs looked like stone snakes. They became dry, and there was no foliage left on them. They released their needles into the breeze and gave up the last ounce of their life.
And so it went one summer, that my tree finally died.
I had to cut it down with an axe.
͠
Emma Claire's new male friend and I stood on the porch together. We waited for her like obedient labradors. He was a stocky boy with a tuft of coal black hair and pale skin. I eyed him up and down, examining his build.
His shoes were new and un-scuffed.
So were his face and hands.
“That looks like it must've been a big tree.” He directed his gaze to the big stump in the front yard.
I shrugged. “It was.”
“Must've been, what, a hundred years old?”
“Try three.”
He whistled.
The boy on the porch rocked on his heels, with his arms folded. He carried himself with a stiff neck and an easy walk. His face had a permanent smirk on it. His clothes looked like they were fresh off the department store shelf.
“Mind if I bum a smoke?” he asked.
I removed a cigarette from my shirt pocket and handed it to him.
He jammed the cigarette between his lips and looked at the tree stump again.
“I'm Quinn,” I said, extending my hand.
“My name's Shelby, but everyone calls me Scrubs.” He shut his lighter and did not offer his hand.
“What do you do, Scrubs?”
“Nothing right now, I just graduated last year.”
Just as I thought.
Young and lazy.
He sucked a chestful of smoke from the cigarette. “My father wants me to go to work for him, but I want to join up. I'd love to go kill Germans.”
Young, lazy, and rich.
In the driveway was Scrubs' fanciful green car, sparkling like a glossy advertisement. The chrome on it looked like a mirror reflecting the full power of the sun. He was too young for such a car.
“So, how do you know Emma Claire?” I asked.
“Oh, she's a friend of Jesse's.”
“So you're Jesse's brother?”
“Yep, Jesse's my baby sister. Only she's not a baby anymore.”
“Nope, she's not.”
He laughed. “Jesse's a full blown woman now.”
She was a rich brat is what she was.
Jesse was my least favorite of Emma Claire's friends. Snotty and patronizing. But Scrubs was right about one thing, Jesse was a young woman. So was Emma Claire. She'd become a woman overnight. She was long and lean like a lamp pole.
“All the boys in town want Jesse.” He smiled. It was a knowing smile, too old for him to be wearing. A flat-faced, privileged grin. One that crawled up his cheeks and settled into his affluent blue eyes.
“So, what about you, Quinn?” he asked. “What do you do?”
“How's that?”
I turned my ear toward him.
“I mean, for a living, what do you do?”
“Oh, I'm a hambone.”
“A what?”
“An oysterman.”
He nodded like he understood.
I sighed. “I'm afraid that I'm a cracker, just like my sister is.”
He tilted his head back a little.
There was that look of his again.
I stared again at his shining vehicle in the driveway. Its fat white tires were covered in the red dust from our little dirt road.
I realized I was behaving rude toward him. He couldn't help being so rich. I resolved to try to give this boy a chance, to try to accept him with open arms. Maybe he really was a nice boy.
“That's a fine looking horse.” I glanced at his car.
“Yeah, my father just bought it for me, I don't like the ugly color. I really wanted red, but it would've taken two months to order that color. I'm still mad about that.”
I flicked my cigarette into the woods.
To hell with it.
No more chances for this boy.
“Hey, you want me to show you the air conditioner?” He tapped the ash from his cigarette. “I've only used it twice.”
Scrubs hopped off the steps, walked up to the vehicle. He opened the door with a broad sweep of his arm.
But I was already gone.
͠
“This ain't going to be a bad house when it's done,” Brother said.
I would've answered Brother, but I was holding too many nails between my lips. I pounded one into the wood with a hammer.
“Nicest house in the whole damn county, if I do say so myself.” Brother patted the side of the structure.
Brother was Sonnet's daddy.
He was all freckles and sass.
I don't know why people called him Brother. No one could seem to agree on how the nickname came about. Someone told me it was because he followed his older brother around like a shadow when he was younger. Someone else said it was from growing up in the Baptist church. Everyone in the Baptist church called each other Brother-So-And-So, or Sister-such-and-such.
Brother's real name was Reginald, but he hated the name Reginald. No one ever called him by it unless they were fixing to lay a walloping on him. To me, he was either Brother or sir. And he hated the name sir more than he hated the name Reginald.
So he went by Brother.
“Nicest house in the county, my ass.” Mullet swatted his hammer at the clapboard. “Quinn's terrible at framing a house, and you can quote me on that.”
“Is he that bad?” Emma Claire asked.
“Lord Almighty,” Mullet said. “Before we came along, this house was as catty wampus as a bag of snakes.”
“It wasn't that bad,” I defended myself.
“The hell it wasn't, this thing was as crooked as a politician.”
“Well it wasn't all my fault, it's horrible bowed wood.”
Mullet laughed.
He wasn't about to ease up on me.
Brother and I held the strip of wood siding against the framed house. I beat the nails into it one at a time. The wood was uneven, and scrubby, you could get a splinter just by staring at it. It was going to be a small home. A little wobbly, but by God it would be ours.
Almost all the wood we used for the house was scrap lumber. Things Sonnet's Daddy brought home from the mill where he worked. Most of the rough timber had to be squared with a hand plane before it was ready for use. Some boards were too short, some were too bowed, but most were just knotty as hell.
“Crooked or not,” Brother stepped in. “Quinn's going to be living right here on the water. That's fine living in anyone's book.”
“Reckon you're right,” Mullet said.
Brother wiped his wet face. “Shoot, I ain't never lived on land this nice before. Hell, I've been paying landlords since I was fourteen years old. Renting any house I could find. Just to live in squaller.”
Mullet shook his head.
They belonged to the same fraternity in that regard.
Brother laughed, then said, “I've paid landlords since I was a boy. Hell, I pays'em now. I reckon I'll pays'em when I can't stand up straight all the way. When I'm so old, I'm messing all over myself.”
“Don't matter one way or the other.” Mullet spit onto the ground. “Long as your bills get paid, that's all that counts.”
Brother tucked the hammer in his belt. “I throws all my bills in one big drawer. Then, once a month I reach down in the drawer with my eyes closed and pick one out. When the collectors calls me, I tell them they'll have to wait for their month. Same as everyone else in the drawer.”
We all laughed at that.
Partially because it wasn't a bad idea.
Hearing Brother talk about rent made me glad to know that our house was ours. No bank or landlord would ever have a damn thing to do with it, not if I had my say in the matter.
I was a cracker.
Crackers don't trust banks, teacher, or doctors. Some trust preachers, but not me. I trusted them least of all. You could call us hillbillies, and we were, but we were self-sufficient ones. I'd rather live under a thatch roof than let a bank into my life.
And you can quote me on that.
The new home was right on the crest of the bay. If you stood in just the right spot, you could see Mother's clapboard house to the east. Her house was about a quarter mile away through the woods. Both houses were on the same plot of acreage my granddaddy gave my daddy long ago.
Granddaddy was a hopeless gambler. The old man won everything from pocket-watches to people's daughters during in his time. I had a pocket-watch he'd won, but it didn't work. I kept it hidden, with my stash of money and other valuables. I also kept Daddy's old pipe in the box. The watch and the pipe both reminded me of the men who'd come before me. To me, the men were characters from fairytales. The pipe and watch made them seem real.
Even though they weren't.
Not anymore.
Daddy said that Granddaddy won our land from a Spanish gentleman in Quincy. He'd won it in a game of cards, the whole thing. My Daddy loved the land. This acreage was his crowning glory. It was one of the few things he was proud of–except for his coon stew.
“It's going to be a fine house.” Brother stood back and looked at the structure. “It took some doing, but we got it all square.”
“I couldn't have done it without your help,” I said.
“Naw.” Brother sniffed. “You could've. It'd just be ugly as hell.”
“Well, I much appreciate it, just the same.”
“Don't mention it, I'd do anything for my daughter. And since I can't kill you for stealing her, I might as well help you build a house.”
I patted him on the back. “It's as much your house as it is mine Brother. I mean it.”
