I'm looking up at the night sky, trying to pick out the North Star. I just realized, standing here in the dark the way I am and not being able to see much of anything, why I never seem to have my bearings around Chowchilla, why I never know which way I'm headed. The roads are all screwed up. In the country they're all laid out north-south, east-west, so that helps some, but Robertson Boulevard is off at an angle and doesn't quite fit. When Orlando A. Robertson first took his tractor into the empty field and broke the ground for the main street of Chowchilla, back in 1912, he plowed it perpendicular to Highway 99. But the 99 doesn't run north-south either. It's off at an angle. So the Boulevard runs in some strange direction, and that's the way the town lays, off at an angle. And then he lined all eleven miles of the Boulevard with palm trees like it's in Hawaii or something. But when I am driving home, coming out of town, as soon as I hit the city limits and start into the country, the Boulevard turns even more south, and there's just no reason for that. It's as if they didn't even think when they laid it out, or maybe they miss-figured it. They put another crook in it. Three miles out of town, the Boulevard hits Highway 152 at another strange angle because the 152, which goes to the coast, runs due east and west.
I'm listening to water gurgle from the valve at my feet, feel cold seep through these old rubber boots, and I find the north star just about the same time I hear something off in the weeds, probably an animal. I'm a little concerned about noises when I'm in the field alone at night because I think they might be somebody, but still I'm thinking about the other day when I got out my globe that Aunt Loretta gave me for my twelfth birthday. I spun that globe a few times and tried to figure some of this out. I couldn't then, but now I think I have it. The 99 is one of what they call the arteries of California, the artery that runs through the middle of the state, just following the lay of the land. And it's off at that strange angle, top turned toward the west. But that's not all of it. The state of California is turned at that same angle from the southern tip all the way up to Sacramento where it twists and goes north. When I turned the world about its axis so that Alaska was at the top of the earth, everything lined up vertical. From Alaska to California, even Mexico, down through Central and South America, they all lined up vertical. Then the 99 ran vertical and Robertson Boulevard ran horizontal. So what seems like is the real problem is that north and south are off. The earth is tilted on its axis and that puts Chowchilla out of whack. If there's something wrong with Chowchilla, there's something wrong with the rest of the world too. And here I was, hoping to find some place, some other town, where I would fit in better. Since other people seem to fit in wherever they are, seems more and more like what I thought at first is true. The problem is me.
That animal in the weeds growls again and I jump. I don't get along very well in the dark when I'm alone.
There's not anybody reliable I can talk to to get some of these things straight. Everybody is chewing on their own stuff and can't understand my problems. And now I'm thinking about a few days ago when I slipped and told Papa I've seen Charles. I was trying to talk to him about me working over on the coast after I get out of school, thinking maybe I could get a job like Charles had painting houses. Papa said you couldn't find steady work on the coast.
"Charles was over there for four years," I told him. "He had steady work." Then I felt my face flush. I knew I shouldn't have said it. I just don't always know what's coming out of my mouth. But lately I was thinking that maybe Papa had got over being mad at Charles.
"Charles? Charles who?" is how he answered. And all at once he was lit up.
"Charles Kunze."
"Godalmighty. That sonofabitch back? When you been talking to him?"
"I've just seen him around town."
Papa got up from his chair. "I ought to kill that sonofabitch," he said. "Him messing around with you." Then sat down. He got up twice more. Like he was going to get Charles. Sat down twice. Looked like he was even a little afraid.
"What's he done, Papa?" I asked.
Papa looked off and didn't say anything for a long time.
"That cock-sucking sonofabitch," he said. "I haven't ever got on to you about your friends, and you know that." Papa's face had turned red as a beet, and he even had a little spit flying. "But I'm telling you this and I mean it. Stay away from that asshole. He's nothing but trouble. Big trouble." Papa was so mad at me, he got up and walked out. Now if I want to see Charles, I'll have to go behind Papa's back. Good thing I didn't tell him and Mama that that was Charles' jeep I fell out of and got all skinned up. They were upset enough as it was. There won't be anymore hunting rabbits at night for me. Mama just screamed the next morning when I walked into the kitchen. She thought I had been in another fight.
Behind me in the dark, I hear the growl again. I turn on my flashlight and shine the beam in the weeds along the fence. Two red eyes shine back at me, eyes like the rabbit I gut-shot that night with Charles. Then it stands and I see that it's a dog or maybe a coyote. We stare at each other for a couple of minutes and it hobbles off slow into the dark. It's holding up a back leg that's hurt real bad and looks like it has other places where hair is missing. Probably got hit by a car on the 152. When it's gone, I stick my hand in the cold water and twist the valve handle until the water stops running. I've been having a bad dream, the same bad dream over and over. I dream that I've killed someone and buried the body out back of the house. When I have that dream, I keep the feeling all the next day. I know the police are still looking for me. It just bothers me. Chowchilla bothers me too. I never know which way is up. I've never heard anyone else talk about it, but it bothers me. Just like this whole area does. It bothers me and I was raised here. Born and raised here.
I'm walking back to the house now feeling a little guilty about seeing that injured dog and not doing anything for it. Feel a little like I felt about Tangi when the hay mower got her. I wanted to help her. I swear I did. But, you know, sometimes when you try to help an animal that's hurt, it'll turn on you. So Papa had to shoot her.
I don't know what to think about Charles after being out with him. It seems like he does a lot a bad things. But most kids out at night do things like that, maybe not so extreme. At least Charles is interested in what I want to do after graduation. He doesn't think anybody should run my life for me. Papa and Mama act like they know what I should do regardless of how I feel about. I know I shouldn't go out with Charles again, but I also know I am. I can't resist the felling of freedom I had when I was with him.
Off in the distance toward Merced, in the faint glow of the night sky, I see the beams of two searchlights cross.
CHAPTER 13: Aunt Loretta Has a Story to Tell
The scraper's making a low growling noise on the hard ground behind the tractor. I'm scraping turkey manure into a pile for Aunt Loretta, and she's all over my ass for how I'm doing it. I'm wondering why Papa keeps sending me over here. Doesn't seem like I can ever please her. Maybe he can't either, but she's his sister. She lives alone out toward Dixieland on a piece of dry riverbed. When her no-account husband ran out on her seventeen years ago, she stayed on and took care of the turkey ranch. Some say she's pretty good with turkeys, some say she's not.
First she wants the manure scraped to this side of the pen, then that, and now I think she wants me to put it in the middle of her driveway. She's trying to scream over the noise of the tractor, and she's doing a pretty good job, the flashes of gold and spaces in her teeth showing with her jaw flapping, but I shut the tractor down to an idle, get off and stand so I can try to make some sense out of her. She pulls off that old orange duck-billed cap and uses it to point at the ground while she acts out what she wants done. She's squinting because now the sun is in her eyes. I feel sorry for her, that mind of hers trying so hard to come to some firm decision, but it's just not going to happen.
"Ray. Now wait a minute, Ray. If you put it over here..." She always calls me Ray because her husband was named Bobby, and she just won't call me that. "No, that won't do... Ray, cause when
they come to pick it up... Did I tell you what they're picking it up in? Well, it doesn't matter anyway. They'll probably shovel it in. But they'll have to be able to swing the truck around, like this..." And she puts her cap back on, and using her palms about a foot a part, like that's how wide the truck is going to be, she traces an S-curve with them, like that's the motion of the truck as it backs in. "Or is it going to be like this..." And she comes at it from another angle, this time putting a little hip into it as she backs up, tracing her S-curve and moving her tiny feet in small rapid steps, almost like it's some strange dance and then she stops, bewildered.
"I just can't get it right, Ray. And it has to be right or they won't pick it up. They left it last year." She's starting to cry now like this is a matter of life and death. "They beat me up last year, Ray. They beat me up. I just can't stand to get beat up again."
Every time she says a loud word, the turkeys gobble, just adding their amen to her sermon. But her situation is serious. That's what makes it so pitiful. She'll get twenty, maybe thirty dollars for this pile of turkey shit, and Papa says that's half what it costs him in time and money for me to come over here. But she scrimps and saves every dime she can get and won't take money from anyone.
I get on my tractor and go to work. I put it where I think it belongs. I rev the motor as loud as it'll go, and I'm zipping around the yard boiling dust, and she's yelling at me sometimes and screaming at others, and I hear the gobble-gobble of those turkeys behind me and her old damn-near-dead dog leaves that piece of leathery cow afterbirth he's been chewing on, comes out to bark at me too. I don't pay her or him any mind even to the point of almost running over them, but I get to thinking that she doesn't have the brains to be boss, so before she knows it, I'm done.
Now. The only thing harder than working for her is trying to get away, and I'm trying to just drive on out of her yard and go home, but she's standing in front of the tractor with both arms up, and her palms pointing at me, knowing my mind and shaking her head no. She has a serious look on her face like sure enough, she's the boss. She's the only woman I know that always wears pants and long sleeve shirts.
"Ray. You're not getting away from me now. Come on in, Ray. I've got something for you in the kitchen."
Well, I think, if it's a piece of cake or pie or something good like that, maybe I could eat a little. As long as it's clean. I don't know why, but every time I'm alone with her in her house, my heart starts pounding real hard.
"Walk this way," she says, so I try.
On the other hand, I like to go into her house because she has this spare bedroom that she always keeps locked. Everybody wants to know what she has in there. The night Lenny got killed, Mama and Papa left Trish and Curt over here while they went to see what the trouble was. They didn't know Lenny was dead then, but they had a suspicion. Trish told me later that Aunt Loretta had death on her mind, so she must have known something. Trish said Aunt Loretta went into that spare bedroom and got out some coloring books. Trish followed her and got a peek inside. She said Aunt Loretta had it all set up like she still had a baby and it had been thirteen years since he died. They sat at the kitchen table and colored like they were little kids. Aunt Loretta couldn't stay in the lines.
*
Now I'm taking a pipe wrench from her, and her hand is dirty like it's never been washed but has bright red fingernails, and I'm bending down under the sink where there's been bad things happening for a long time. Then that mangy dog of hers comes lazing in the kitchen wanting to lick on me, and I stop. This is it. I've had it. "The dog's got to go," I tell her. "That afterbirth he's been chewing on smells like it came from an outhouse. It's me or him." And I am hoping she picks the dog.
"Come on, Twinkles," she says, taking him by the collar. "Ray's right. You're so old, I think you've already died on the inside, and it's coming out in your breath. But if you don't leave that fetal membrane alone, it'll cost you what little life you have left."
First, it's just the rot in the wall, and that's something I can't do anything about right now. But nothing seems to be leaking. Then here comes Loretta in with me where there's not even room for me. She's coming in under me and then over to the side with a screwdriver, and I'm wondering what she's going to do to a pipe with a screwdriver, and I can't help but laugh a little and feel ashamed of myself, and her turning that rotting-rabbit breath and skunk-armpits on me and then I see she also has a butcher knife, which I've got to be afraid of in her hand, and I squeeze over in the corner, try not to feel her warm body, but she has it all over me. I can't believe how much I sweat sometimes when I get in tight places. Strange thing is, she doesn't feel old or decrepit or weak like I imagined. She feels healthy, strong, probably stronger and more muscles than a sixteen year old girl. I can feel her little tits through that man's shirt she has on and then I think I hear something. Then I don't. It is almost like I hear thunder. I know one thing. I want out from under this sink. I feel like I can't get enough air, like there's something choking me. She has me hemmed in.
She runs that screwdriver in the round basket handle to the water shutoff valve, then turns it. First there's a screech as the handle turns, then water comes out in huge flat sprays through joints in the pipe and I'm fighting her to get it off again, and then she's on the hot water handle and the shit is coming at me so fast I'm going to be scalded. She goes to work with that butcher knife, trying to get the rotting wood out, and I guess she does accomplish something but very little, so she just quits, backs out from under there and lights a cigarette, starts talking and coughing.
I take a deep breath. And while she's smoking, I try to fix the leaks. She smokes cigarettes, one after another. Sometimes I think she's the reason I try it. The way she lips that cigarette, you would think it was candy.
But I don't know why she wants me over here all the time. She's always calling Mama and asking her to send me. She must have it in for me. The other day I came in from the field about eight o'clock at night and there was Aunt Loretta standing in the doorway to our kitchen talking to Mama. She turned around to see who it was and got a big ugly smile on her face.
"Oh, Ray, you're just in time," she said. "Come on in here. You've just got to hear what we've been talking about." She got me by the arm, led me into the kitchen, sat me down in the corner on the far side of the table when I really wanted to go wash up, pulled a chair right up in front of me, so she had me boxed in, started talking. She had on these faded blue shorts that were too big for her, her old varicose veins standing out like small rubber hoses, and long sleeves.
Mama was laughing so hard she had to leave the kitchen.
Loretta started in telling me a story. "When you were a baby," and she had her two hands in front of her, as if she was measuring how long I was then, and I was about six inches, "you were the orneriest little Billy goat that'd ever been born to two human beings. And with that bald head, you looked so innocent that everybody..." I could smell turkey shit all over her hands.
She just went on and on and on. She never shuts up about me. I guess she doesn't hurt anything. But jees. Enough is enough. And why me? Why not Trish? You would think she would want to talk about a girl.
After she left, I was talking to Mama and I asked her why Aunt Loretta had it in for me.
"Aunt Loretta had a lot of trouble when you were born, Bobby Ray," she said, like that had something to do with it. "Her baby died. The two of you were born a month apart. And she was really nervous. Her husband ran off and left her all alone."
But Mama fell silent after that and walked on in the other room like she forgot we were even talking.
Aunt Loretta puts her cigarette out before it's half smoked, then lights another, and I smell the lighter fluid down here, all the way under the sink.
"I hope you've been thinking about what we've been talking about for the last two years. You got to get to college, Ray. A bright boy like you can't let his life go to waste. Get an education, Ray. Nobody can take that away from you. Don't get yourse
lf a girl here either. You do and you'll be stuck here for life. Wait till you get to college. You've only got one more year. Wait until then. You get a girl from somewhere else, you'll never come back. Least ways, not to stay."
She's too late for that. I've already asked Brenda out.
Damn if she doesn't start crying again. "You got to get out of here. You got to get out of here and tell people what's going on so somebody can stop it. We're dying, Ray. Do you know that? We're all dying."
I'm working on these pipes as fast as I can. Seems like all the joints are leaking. "Go outside and shut off the water at the main valve," I tell her, figuring I'll get some static about that for sure, but she jumps up and runs outside like God himself just pronounced a commandment. She lets the back screen door slap shut on the way out, and I hear it slap again on her way in and she's walking and talking.
"Ray, you're a pleasure to work with, Ray. I like working with you better than that brother of yours," she tells me.
"You mean Curt?"
"No! I don't mean Curt. I mean Lenny. Lenny was so sullen. Oh, good Lord, here I go talking about him to you and I promised Louise I wouldn't. Sometimes I think my mind is just completely gone."
"That's okay. I don't mind talking about Lenny."
"I bet you don't. Louise won't hear of it though. She's got her own idea about things. Don't get me wrong. I love Louise, Ray. If it wasn't for Louise I wouldn't be alive today. Hershel might even have me committed now. But Louise stands by me. She has to be the best woman God ever made. She's just so bullheaded about some things. And talking about Lenny's one of them."
"Well I been meaning to talk to you about Lenny. Me and Curt have been talking some about him. I need to know what happened to my brother. I don't think I know the truth."
"Oh, Lord of Mercy. Now you want to talk. This is just so hard on me, you coming over here."
"If you don't want me here, I can go. Papa's the one that asked me to come over."
"Oh, no, no, no. Hell no! That's not what I mean. No. Sometimes I can't wait until you come to see me again. And I want to talk to you about Lenny. There's so many things I need to talk to you about. Everybody tells me to keep my mouth shut. And I just can't do that. My mouth is just going all the time."