All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

  I didn’t know, but I shook my head, so he would stop looking worried.

  The next day when I came out of school, Kellen was waiting for me, but he’d put the Panhead on its kickstand.

  “I wanna talk to that teacher of yours,” he said.

  Mama walking through the halls had been scary, her high heels clicking on the tiles, quick quick quick, going to tear somebody a new asshole. Kellen took long, slow steps that I could keep up with.

  In the classroom, Mrs. Norton kept writing while Kellen waited, but she couldn’t trick him into talking first. He could wait all day.

  “May I help you?” she said.

  “I’m here about Wavy’s report card.”

  “I know you.” Mrs. Norton squinted and made her mouth small. Kellen shrugged, but she nodded. “You’re one of those Barfoot boys.”

  “What about it?”

  “I had your brother in my class. What are you doing here?”

  “I told you, I came to talk to you about Wavy’s report card,” Kellen said.

  “I don’t see how it’s any of your business. If the Quinns are concerned, they’re certainly welcome to come see me.”

  “I’m responsible for Wavy, and I wanna know what this report card means.” Kellen’s voice got louder, and Mrs. Norton gave him her meanest look. When she looked at me like that, I knew she wanted to do a lot worse than write my name on the board.

  “It means that we have a serious behavioral problem with Wavy.”

  “I don’t know what you mean when you write being disrespectful. She doesn’t smart off.”

  “What am I to call it when she disobeys me every single day? I know the sort of young man you are. The sort of boy your brother was. You think defying authority is cool. I don’t see that it’s gotten you very far. I know it didn’t get your brother very far. How long has he been in prison?”

  “A while now.” Kellen’s jaw got tight and he wasn’t looking at Mrs. Norton anymore.

  Seeing how her eyes burned when she looked at his lucky tattoo, I put my hand on his arm to cover up as much of it as I could. I wanted to protect him, but he frowned.

  “This ain’t got nothin’ to do with my brother,” he said.

  “Ain’t got nothin’? Obviously you were never in my class, Mr. Barfoot. I would have cured you of that lamentable turn of phrase. One way or another.”

  “I just don’t see why you made this whole list. You wrote down, Didn’t eat lunch like fifty times. She’s not doing it to disobey you. She just don’t like eating in front of folks.”

  “She doesn’t eat lunch because she’s allowed to do as she pleases. She’s eleven years old and, from her behavior in my class, I suspect she’s allowed to rule the roost. Does anyone ever say no to her?”

  “How can eating lunch get graded?”

  “Because it represents a serious behavioral problem that you are indulging.”

  Kellen’s voice got too big for the classroom. “Goddamn, that’s fucking bullshit.”

  “Mr. Barfoot! Are you in the habit of speaking that way in front of Wavy?”

  “It’s not like she’s gonna repeat it.”

  “That is exactly what I mean. Perhaps she doesn’t talk because you think it’s funny.”

  Kellen hauled himself up and I wished for him to smack Mrs. Norton, the way he once smacked Danny for smoking a joint in the shop bay. Kellen slapped the side of his head, knocking the joint on the floor. Then he ground it into the greasy concrete. I wanted to see Mrs. Norton ground into the concrete.

  “It’s no use talking to you. You’re like every teacher I ever had,” Kellen said.

  “Do you think Wavy will make anything of herself if you plant a hatred of school in her?”

  “She doesn’t hate school. She just hates you. I don’t blame her.”

  Mrs. Norton tsk-tsked at us while we walked away. Outside, Kellen swung his leg over the bike and sat down hard.

  “I’m sorry I embarrassed you. I didn’t even think about that stupid tattoo. I should’ve covered it up like I did when I went to court. I was trying to make things better and all I did was make it worse.”

  I shrugged. If I was already failing sixth grade, it couldn’t get much worse.

  5

  MISS DEGRASSI

  December 1980

  Lisa DeGrassi only went to the party because John Lennon was dead, and she was out of wine. Powell County was dry and she couldn’t face the night sober. The party was in a double-wide trailer out in the country, where Stacy’s Pinto rattled over ruts in the dirt road until Lisa thought her teeth would fall out.

  Inside, the trailer was decorated like a penthouse: leather couches, glass coffee tables, and chandeliers. A trailer with chandeliers.

  Walking into the party, Lisa expected the worst—bad music and people she knew. The Rolling Stones played at high volume, while people danced awkwardly. Stacy had been right about the refreshments on offer, though. There was a bar full of booze, free for the taking, and a coffee table cluttered with bongs and pipes and pills. The kind of party Lisa never went to, because she was always afraid of running into a student’s parents.

  “It’s not even in Powell County. It’s in Belton County,” Stacy had said, like that made all the difference in the world. She came from a nearby town even smaller than Powell.

  Lisa stood in the middle of the pounding music, downing free drinks, and when someone offered her a lit joint, she accepted. Later, when someone offered her a line of coke to snort, she thought, Who cares if someone sees me? Who fucking cares?

  “Oops, watch that sleeve or you’ll make a mess,” said the man who’d cut the line of coke. He leaned over her, catching the loose sleeve of her peasant blouse so she wouldn’t drag it through the fine white dust. Then he said, “You wanna go easy. That’s meth, not coke.”

  Lisa hesitated, and instead of snorting the line, she let the rolled bill slip out of her hand onto the coffee table. She stood up, confused, to find the man smiling at her. He was blond and tanned, with bright blue eyes and perfect white teeth. Powell County’s own Bo Duke. Or Belton County’s?

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi. I don’t think I’ve seen you around before.”

  “No, I don’t go out much.”

  “You should.” He slipped his hand inside her sleeve to touch her bare arm. His fingers were warm, tracing hypnotic patterns.

  She felt dizzy and nauseated. The bass line thundered in the bottom of her stomach.

  “Excuse me, is there—where’s the powder room?”

  “Just right on down that hallway, second door on the left.”

  “Thank you.”

  Lisa was already turning to go, but the man bent over and kissed her hand with a grin. Although she never trusted those kinds of men, there was something tempting about him. A handsome stranger on a lonely night. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

  Wobbling in her strappy sandals, Lisa worked her way through the party to the bathroom, where she broke down crying again. Mascara dribbled down her cheeks and left gray splotches on her pale blue blouse. She had to stop thinking about John Lennon bleeding to death on the sidewalk. If she’d been in Hartford, she could have taken the train into New York and laid flowers at the Dakota, or gone to the vigil in Central Park. She could have shared her grief, instead of tamping it down in some hillbilly drug dealer’s bathroom. When someone rattled the door, Lisa tore off some toilet paper and cleaned up her mascara as best she could.

  After giving up the bathroom to a woman in a fringed cowgirl shirt and a raccoon’s mask of eye makeup, Lisa couldn’t face the party again. She worked her way down the hall, using the wall as support, and ducked into the kitchen.

  In the middle of the room, stood a blond woman wearing short shorts and a halter top. She looked like nothing so much as a redneck Marilyn Monroe. In her hands she held a Rubik’s Cube that she was twisting furiously. Not trying to solve it, but scrambling it.

  Liam Quinn sat at the kitchen table, taki
ng a drag off a joint. So much for not running into any students’ parents. If anything, he was bigger, uglier, and greasier than he had been the day Lisa met him.

  “Okay, okay,” the blonde said. She held out the cube and Mr. Quinn traded her the joint for it. Since he hadn’t seen her yet, Lisa was about to turn around and leave but the blonde caught her by the arm and said, “Have you seen this? You have to see this. It’s crazy.”

  The Rubik’s Cube, Lisa assumed.

  “My brother has one,” she said. “He had to take it apart and put it back together to solve it.”

  “No, no, look. He can totally do it. Look!” The blonde pointed excitedly.

  Lisa looked. The first thing that struck her was how ridiculously small the Rubik’s Cube was in Mr. Quinn’s hands. Then she realized he was actually solving the stupid thing. He had two sides done and was gaining on a third. Lisa and the blonde stood in rapt attention as he worked through it.

  When he finished, he raised his head and blushed.

  “Hey, Miss DeGrassi,” he mumbled.

  “Hi.”

  “Oh, you guys know each other?” the blonde said.

  Lisa still hoped she could escape without being identified, but Mr. Quinn said, “This is Miss DeGrassi. She was Wavy’s teacher in third grade.”

  “You can just call me Lisa. Since we’re not in school.”

  The blonde giggled and said, “Oh how fun! I’m glad you came. Too bad Wavy’s not here.”

  Presented with that horrific idea, Lisa stared at the blonde, trying to figure out if she should know her. There was no way she was Wavy’s mother. All the hair bleach in the world couldn’t bring about that kind of transformation.

  “Okay, okay, you try it now,” the blonde said. She took the cube out of Mr. Quinn’s hand and gave it to Lisa.

  For a moment, Lisa stared at it, feeling strangely disconnected from her own hands. Was that the marijuana? Because the blonde looked at her expectantly, Lisa turned the cube’s squares into random order. When she had it as mixed up as much as she could, she put it back in Mr. Quinn’s hands. It wasn’t a fluke. He solved the puzzle again in just a few minutes.

  “Oh my god,” the blonde said. “I can’t believe how you do that.”

  Against her natural instincts, Lisa was impressed, too. She’d spent hours on her brother’s at Thanksgiving and never managed to solve more than one side at a time. Just as she reached for the Rubik’s Cube, wanting to see Mr. Quinn solve it again, she heard the opening bars of “Bungalow Bill.”

  A second later she was crying in a stranger’s kitchen.

  She turned to leave, but bumped into someone in the doorway. Whoever he was caught her by the arms and said, “Hey, are you okay?”

  “I just want to go home. I want to go home,” she said.

  Abruptly, “Bungalow Bill” cut out and was replaced by the opening bars of “Another One Bites the Dust” at full volume, for the tenth time that night.

  She plunged into the party, tears pouring down her face. If Stacy was there, Lisa couldn’t see her or her zebra-patterned off-the-shoulder blouse. It seemed like everyone had the same tall, frosted hair. Lisa turned a slow circle, scanning the room, until Mr. Quinn touched her elbow and said, “I’ll take you home.”

  He held her arm all the way across the gravel drive. Two hours before, the tall strappy sandals had just been silly. Now that Lisa was drunk, high, and crying again, they were dangerous. The car he took her to was boxed in on all sides by other cars. She squeezed the bridge of her nose hard to cut off more tears.

  “Damn it. I just want to go home,” she whispered.

  “I guess we’re on the bike then.”

  He led her out of the maze of cars to a metal garage, where half a dozen motorcycles were parked. Lisa hesitated. She’d ridden on the back of her brother’s cheap little Honda a few times, but this was something else entirely.

  “Here.” Mr. Quinn pulled a leather jacket off the back of the bike and held it out for her. “If you really wanna go home, this is it.”

  “I do.” She let him help her into the jacket and zip it up to her neck. It was an unexpectedly intimate act from a near stranger, and it hinted at what it might be like putting on a bearskin coat. Heavy, warm, and permeated by a wild, musky smell.

  The cold was brutal, but exhilarating, too. She clasped her hands around his waist and curled her fingers against the warmth of his belly, which was only protected from the cold by a thin layer of cotton.

  “Where am I taking you?” he said over his shoulder.

  “I’m on Grove and Sixth in Powell.”

  After that, they rode in silence. Maybe that was typical on a motorcycle, but it unnerved Lisa. She had forgotten about his impenetrable silence. He and his daughter both. Silence and worse was waiting for her at home.

  “Can we stop and get a drink or something?” she said, raising her voice to be sure he could hear.

  “You haven’t had enough?”

  “No, I’m sorry, Mr. Quinn. Just take me home.”

  “You know, I’m not really Liam Quinn.”

  Lisa stared at the white line whizzing by. Was it a joke?

  “Who are you if you’re not Liam Quinn?” she shouted into the rushing wind.

  “I’m Jesse Joe Kellen. I work for Liam.”

  “Wait. What? What does that mean?”

  “I do some work for him. I’m not him. You saw him there. He’s the blond guy. Looks like a movie star. Wears them pointy-toed cowboy boots.”

  The hand-kisser who’d offered Lisa a line of meth to snort.

  “Do you still want another drink? Last one, this side of Powell.” He slowed the bike as a roadside tavern came into view.

  “Yes,” Lisa said. There was probably never going to be enough liquor, but she was willing to try.

  The bar was the party once removed. The same people, the same music. As they walked in, the bouncer at the door said, “Hey, Junior. I don’t want no trouble tonight.”

  “Just here for a drink,” Mr. Quinn said. Not Mr. Quinn. Lisa didn’t know what to call him.

  They sat at the bar and drank old-fashioneds that were long on whiskey and short on sugar. She didn’t care as long as they kept her drunk.

  “So, Junior? Jesse Joe?”

  “You can call me Kellen.”

  “Okay, Kellen. Why would you pretend to be Mr. Quinn?” At least it was something to take her mind off John.

  “Somebody has to. Not like Liam or Val is gonna go talk to Wavy’s teacher.”

  “But why you?”

  It was apparently a much larger question than Lisa realized, because he had to empty his drink and order another one before he could answer.

  “Because Wavy’s my responsibility. I take care of her. We take care of each other.”

  “Even though you’re not related to her?”

  He laughed and drained his drink. “We’re friends is all.”

  Lisa looked at him more closely, squinting against the pall of smoke that hung in the bar.

  “How old are you?”

  “I just turned twenty-four,” he said.

  She stared at him, feeling stupid. He wasn’t old enough to be Wavy’s father. He was younger than Lisa. How had she mistaken him for an adult?

  They drank another round without talking. He gestured for the bartender to keep them coming.

  “What got you so upset tonight?” he said when the next drink came.

  “John Lennon was killed on Monday. They shot him out in front of his apartment.” Lisa thought she might finally be drunk enough, because for the first time in days, thinking about it didn’t make her want to bawl her head off.

  “Who’s that?”

  “John Lennon? The Beatles?”

  “Oh. Did you know him?”

  “No, but—well, sort of. As a fan. I…”

  He didn’t get it, and Lisa was too drunk to explain how John had narrated her whole childhood and most of her adulthood so far. No matter where she went, John ha
d gone with her, even to this horrible little town. Now he was dead and she was alone.

  “I’m sorry,” Kellen said.

  To his left, a guy in a cowboy hat laid a hand on Kellen’s shoulder and said, “Can I squeeze in here for a sec, Cochise?”

  Kellen knocked back the rest of his drink, set the glass on the bar, and said, “You know what? Seeing as how you don’t know me, why don’t you just call me sir?”

  Until then, Lisa had only considered him a curiosity: some previously undiscovered species of redneck biker Indian. At that moment, there was a menacing quality to the way he said sir, with the whiskey still wet on his lower lip, that also made her consider him a possible solution to one night of loneliness.

  The cowboy tipped his hat with a smirk. “Whatever you say, Chief.”

  Kellen swung so fast that his fist whiffled the air beside Lisa’s ear. When the blow landed on the cowboy’s face, it was like a bomb going off. People jumped into the fight from all sides. Lisa was too stunned to do anything but put her head down over her drink and cover the back of her head with her hands.

  “Goddamn it! Knock it off, you assholes!” somebody yelled, and then from that same corner of the bar came the sound of a pump shotgun being racked. The scuffle came to an immediate halt. When Lisa looked up, she saw half a dozen men clustered around Kellen. They were all bloodied and at their feet lay the cowboy, his hat trampled underfoot. Kellen’s hair was mussed and someone had torn his shirt and popped open half the snaps down the front, revealing a solid-looking gut and a giant tattoo on his chest.

  The man with the shotgun waded through the crowd.

  “Goddamnit. Junior, what’d I tell you? You gonna get yourself banned again.”

  “Sorry, Glen. I was just trying to teach him some manners,” Kellen said, snapping his shirt up.

  “Manners, my ass. Get outta here before I call the sheriff.”

  “Will do.” Kellen pulled a wad of bills from his pocket and tossed a hundred dollar bill on the bar. He glanced at Lisa and said, “You ready to go?”

  “I think so.”

  She had never witnessed a bar fight, and she walked out on Kellen’s arm unsure whether she had yet. She hadn’t seen anything beyond the first punch, but she felt sure that was permanently imprinted on her brain. Powell in a snapshot: drunk hillbillies beating the crap out of each other.