“Right over there. That blue and white one. Which one you with?” the woman said.
“You mean …which one of them boys?”
The woman glared at her and pulled hard on her cigarette. Fay didn’t like the look in her eyes.
“Well I know you ain’t with Charles. You by God better not be. If that son of a bitch has picked you up and brought you over here I’ll snatch him baldheaded. I’ve done missed two ball games cause of this fishin trip.”
“I was kind of talkin to Jerry,” Fay said. “He set with me on the way up here.”
“Huh,” she said. “You better be glad Brenda ain’t over here.”
“Who’s Brenda?”
“His wife. She’s on my ball team. She plays shortstop and I play second base. You ever go to the ball games?”
“I don’t guess so,” Fay said. The woman had turned in her seat and she wasn’t watching the baby. It was trying to take a step or two, coming out from between her legs.
“We play for Rent-All,” the woman said. “We’re the Rent-All Lady Rambos, me, Brenda, Jo Ann, Rachel, Heather Patterson, and Kuwanda Starr, she’s a black girl but she’s got a good arm on her but she can’t run too good cause she got run over by a car when her boyfriend was tryin to kill her. Now last Thursday we was in a game with Handy Andy and Rachel was on second and I was on third and Kuwanda popped one over center field that went almost all the way to the fence and I come home but Rachel didn’t.”
The baby had lifted its arms, maybe for balance, and was swaying on its feet as if it moved to some private melody, its feet turned in toward each other. It looked up at Fay and tried to move toward her.
“They asked me to coach next year,” the woman said. “I told em I’d do it but they was gonna have to get us some better uniforms.” She took the last drag from her smoke and flung it across the yard. She gazed up at the sky for a moment and leaned back in the chair. The baby had gone past the safety of her knee.
“I used to play for Northeast,” she said. “But I didn’t like the league we was in cause we didn’t play nothin but niggers and had to go play tournaments in Holly Springs and there was always trouble. I told Ken, I said Ken, I ain’t got nothin against a nigger if he’ll act right. I ain’t prejudice and I’ve been to lots of company picnics and stuff with Kuwanda and I run into her all the time at Wal-Mart. But I told Ken, If you think I’m gonna get my throat cut in Holly Springs by a bunch of spearchuckers over a damn ball trophy fuck you and the horse you rode in on. Are they not through back there yet?”
She turned in the chair to look over her shoulder and when the baby fell Fay could hear the ugly sound its head made when it landed on the wooden border. She got up.
“Can I hold it?” she said.
The woman turned back around in the chair and looked at her. She seemed to be sizing her up. Then she leaned up and lifted the child and handed it over.
“I guess so,” she said. “Just don’t drop it.”
“I wouldn’t drop your baby,” Fay said, and then the baby was on her leg and she had her hands around its stomach and she was looking down into its pale face. It was chewing something.
“I’m gonna go around here and see whatall they caught,” the woman said, and got out of the chair. She went up the path and beside the pickup and her wide ass faded into the darkness on the other side of the trailer.
Fay put her finger into the baby’s mouth and ran it along the soft and wet lower lip and hooked the tiny rock, but it slid into the smooth crevice in front of the gum and she peered down in there, pushing the mouth open with her finger, pulled it out, dropped it on the ground.
“You better not be eatin rocks,” she told the baby. She had decided now that it was a girl. She jiggled it on her knee a little and the baby laughed in a happily surprised way and swayed. The small chubby hands with the dimples just back of the knuckles, she remembered that from a long time ago. How good their hair smelled after a bath. The hair on this baby was a light wispy brown and she kissed it on the side of its face.
“I wish you’s mine,” she said. “I wouldn’t let you fall down.” She thought for a moment. “Or trade you for a car neither.”
The woman stayed gone for a long time. She heard some arguing one time, voices raised in protest, and she could sometimes see the beam of a flashlight shining on the ground past the corner of the trailer where masonry blocks held the frame aloft. They never had taken the wheels off and she wondered at how they had gotten it down in here. The baby started to fuss but she hugged it tighter and then when it started to cry she held it up to her chest and patted it on the back until it settled down and after a long while she could tell that it was asleep. There was laughter coming from the darkness now and she wondered if this Brenda would come over and if she had anything to fear from her if she did. Tomorrow was still too far away to think about how it would be or what she would eat. And no money much. She looked down at the torn tennis shoes on her feet, the laces broken and reknotted.
She shifted the baby in her arms and without waking it lowered it gently onto her lap and turned it on its side, rested its head on her thigh. The fat hands in her fingers were cool and unwrinkled. She looked at the tiny nails and the eyelids closed now, a thin trail of drool shining down its chin that she wiped away with the ball of her thumb.
“Wouldn’t let nothin happen to you,” she said in a whisper. Out there beyond the pine trees there was nothing but the night.
There was a single lamp burning now in the living room and the music was a live thing that moved through the air and touched Fay’s skin. She’d never before been able to hear the individual notes so clearly, the strings and the drums and the horns and the piano keys. She was sitting cross-legged beside the coffee table, laughing easily, the beer at her fingertips still holding bits of ice on the sides of the can. They kept passing the pipe to her and she knew now that she was right to leave what she’d left behind her. It seemed almost like nothing more than a bad dream now, another life, one she’d had for a time before she found this one, and she’d never known that it was possible for a person to feel this good, to feel this loved and protected and happy. Last night she’d been sitting in that rotting black cabin in the woods. Now she was here, with music, and friends, and she was safe.
There was plenty to eat on the table: chips and dip and pretzels, and the blond boy and the middle boy had fileted some of the catfish and were frying them on the stove. She could smell the fish cooking and she could hear the oil sizzling and whenever she looked over at the blond boy he winked at her. She watched the muscles in his arms and the shapes of his legs in the blue jeans as he moved at the stove. But she needed to ask him about this Brenda. There was plenty of time to get to that. He’d already said she could spend the night. There would be plenty of time to talk. Right now all she wanted to do was keep drinking cold beer and listening to the music and feeling it in the marrow of her bones, the way it floated over the room and spoke from the corners.
“You want another bowl?” the driver said. He was on the floor sitting next to her with his back against the couch and Linda was in a chair by the door, singing along with the music, her eyes closed. At some point she’d taken the baby back to a bedroom and stayed with it for a while. And at some other point she had reappeared in the living room and had been there ever since.
“Sure,” Fay said. He handed her the bag and the pipe and set them down in front of her and took another drink of the beer. There was a bottle of whiskey on the table, too.
“You want a shot?” The driver picked up the bottle and held it out to her.
“Might as well,” she said. She took it and turned it up to her mouth, took a big drink. It was hot and it burned her mouth and then her stomach as she swallowed and she made a face and handed it back. It seemed to jolt something inside her and she let out a big breath, fanned her hand in front of her mouth.
“Rough, huh?” he said. He laughed at her and set the bottle back on the table. There was something pla
ying on the television but she couldn’t keep up with it. She reached into the bag and pinched up some of the grass and put it into the bowl. The driver was watching her. Some of the stuff fell off the edge of the bowl and landed on her skirt. She looked down at it. She reached and brushed it off onto the carpet.
“God damn,” he said over the music. “That shit’s fifty dollars a lid. Don’t throw it on the fuckin floor.”
She looked up at him and saw real anger on his face.
“Sorry,” she said. “You got a light?”
He slapped a lighter down in front of her and glared at the television screen. Linda rocked on in her recliner.
She got the pipe up to her mouth just as the blond boy sat down beside her. She half turned to him and struck the lighter and held the flame to the bowl, sucked on the mouthpiece, felt the sharp smoke going into her lungs and held it like they’d told her to.
“Let me have a hit,” he said, and took the pipe and the lighter from her.
Fay made a small hole with her lips and blew the smoke out in a thin stream the way she’d seen them do. She turned to watch the blond boy and saw the red seed of fire growing in the bowl of the pipe. After he sucked it all in and it went out he laid it down. He went into a fit of coughing and ducked his head, leaning back against the couch. He put his arm around her, coughing still.
“Damn,” he said. “That old skunkweed is rough. Did you catch a buzz?”
“I feel fine,” she said. “I ain’t never felt this good. It sure is nice of y’all to let me stay with you.”
He turned her face to him and when she leaned closer he put his hands on the sides of her face and she could smell the fish on him again. The music was still loud and the smoke had begun to get heavy in the room and her stomach was rolling just a bit, the bass in the speakers just beginning to make a small hurtful pounding inside her eardrums. His hand casually cupped her and he kissed her, his breath hot and kind of sour and then he pushed his tongue into her mouth. She drew back and pulled his hand down and held it in her own and he twined his fingers in hers. She could feel her face getting red. His hand came up again and again she pulled back from him. When she turned to look at the driver he was staring at them. The middle boy was still cooking and hadn’t noticed. Linda was in her chair with her eyes closed. Maybe she was asleep.
“Let’s don’t in front of them,” Fay said.
“Come on, then,” he said, and stood up.
She turned her face up to him and suddenly she was dizzy. His face seemed to whirl against the ceiling, the strands of his hair sticking out from the sides of his head.
“I thought we was gonna eat,” she said, but she suddenly had no desire to eat at all, and it was only something to say, to put things off, to stay sitting where she was, and his hand came down and caught her wrist and began to pull her up.
“Eat later,” she heard him say over the music. And then he was leading her around the coffee table and across the living room and the middle boy raised his face to watch her as they went past. The smell of the splattering oil hit her full in the face, a waft of steam rising toward the vent hood. Her stomach rolled again. She looked into the pan and saw the slabs of dead fish dusted with scorched cornmeal and saw the thin cracks of blood rising up through the meat and cold sweat leaped out on her forehead.
“I don’t feel so good,” she said, but the blond boy didn’t seem to hear her. He still had her by the hand and they were going down through the hall where she had first run into Linda but now it was dark and she bumped the walls with her shoulder as he led her back. Clothes were on the floor. They passed the open door of the bathroom. She hadn’t known the hall was that long. Her bladder was full again from all the beer she’d drunk and she pulled back and tried to tell him to let her stop, but he was strong and he just kept pulling her. He pushed open a door at the end of the hall and turned on a lamp and as he passed by the unmade bed he kind of flung her toward it and closed the door. She landed sitting on the edge of the bed with her skirt high up on her legs and her mind dazed. She could see fishing tackle on the dresser, lures and spools of line, a snarled reel and behind it color posters of naked women thumb-tacked to the walls.
“Oh,” she said, and moved her hands to her stomach to quiet the rebellion growing there. She lurched up to try and make it to the door but toppled over onto one of the pillows and tried to push herself upright with one shaky arm and hand. He was pulling his T-shirt up over his head.
A knock came at the door and a voice said, “Are y’all gonna eat or what?” She tried to rise again.
Things seemed to have shifted inside her somehow and her right side felt heavier than her left. She couldn’t get one of her legs to work and she was afraid she was going to wet herself. And then he was on her, his hot hungry mouth pressing down on hers and her hair in her face as the knocking and the voice came to the door again: “Hey. How many hushpuppies can y’all eat?”
His hand was up inside her skirt and she could feel his fingers pushing the elastic of her panties aside, probing, the nails scratching at her skin. She drew back and tried to form some words to tell him she didn’t feel like this and it was hot in the tiny room and she could smell the sweat of his body on the sheets and the next thing she knew he had stood up and unbuckled his pants and had caught her by the ears and was guiding her toward him. She put her hands out to push herself back from this, could see it coming toward her face. But he had her head in a steel grip and she could feel his hard fingers pressing against the bone of her skull and she saw that he was trying to get it in her mouth so she puked on him.
That was enough to make him stop. He gave out a short cry and backed up and she tried to make it off the bed before the next spasm churned her guts, but it went down the front of her and landed in the floor between them. She was trying to tell him to help her, but he had already turned to the door and opened it and run down the hall to the bathroom and slammed that door before she could get off the bed. And it wasn’t over yet. She looked for a quick place to put it and saw a small plastic garbage can half filled with fast food wrappers and newspapers, and she lurched out for it and went to her knees and then to her hands and knees and knelt next to it with salty tears running into her mouth. She heaved the contents of her stomach out until the bile came up and forced another fit of gagging on her. Her mouth was stretched wide open, trying to take in air, and she’d even gotten some of it in her hair.
Then he was standing over her, screaming at her, and the rest of them were coming down the hall, one carrying a spatula. She saw them briefly, but they didn’t seem real, and then she felt herself rapidly sinking down into a place she had never been before, heard more than felt her head when it hit the floor.
MUSIC WAS PLAYING somewhere. Fay opened her eyes when she came awake but she did not move, just stayed where she was and tried to remember it and then did remember it, hands pulling at her, lifting, turning her, being dragged down the hall and then blackness again and then coming awake in the tub with the cold water spraying down on her from the showerhead and all of them next to the tub and her in her underwear, her hair hanging in wet strings from her head, slipping in the tub as she tried to get up and the woman Linda pushing her back into the water, saying, “Goddamn, what a mess.” And sitting shivering on the commode lid wrapped in a rough towel and all her undergarments hung on a shower rod and water dripping from her panties and her cold naked feet on the linoleum.
Now she raised her head and bumped it against something, hard. She almost cried out but instead sent her hand searching to see what she’d hit, found a smooth cool rim of something and then leaned over the edge of the seat to see the gas and brake pedals, some cassette tapes on the floorboards. She moved her head out from under the steering wheel and pulled herself up in the seat. She looked around. The boat was still in the back of the truck. She could see it darkly through the rear window, and the shape of the trailer out there in the yard, the droplight on the tree cut off now. The window was down on the driver’
s side and there was a full pack of cigarettes on the dash, a lighter next to it. She opened the pack and lit one and sat there smoking. Her stomach felt better now but there was no way to tell how much time had passed. She figured it was late. She was fully dressed except for her shoes, but her clothes were all damp. Somebody had evidently wrapped her in a musty quilt but she must have pushed it off in her sleep because it was piled up on her legs. She pulled it up around her shoulders and sat huddled, the tip of the cigarette glowing against the dash when she puffed on it. Where was her purse? She felt around on the seat and pulled the quilt off and hunted for it with her hands, but it was not there. And her shoes, she needed them. Would they have locked the door and would she have to wait for morning to retrieve her purse and her shoes and face at least some of them again?
She put a finger down between her legs to see if anything had happened to her while she was asleep. She couldn’t tell. And could she have fought him off if it had come to that? The old man had crept up on her twice and twice she had fought him off, but she had been afraid that it would happen sometime while she was asleep. So she had left. She wished she’d told Gary to leave, too. He could have been with her now. But she knew he’d never leave them, that he’d always stay to try and take care of them. At least until their little sister could leave, too. Maybe she’d done the wrong thing by leaving. But staying was wrong too.
She thought about Biloxi again. A day’s travel, he’d said.
The cigarette was almost gone and with it she lit another one from the pack. Putting off trying to get back in there. But she needed her purse, and she had to have her shoes for the walking she had to do. She felt inside her bra quickly. The dollar was gone.
She pushed the quilt down in the floor and opened the driver’s door quietly. She pushed against it. It yawned open with a scream of metal on metal and she climbed down and left it open. Her feet were tender on the gravel. A few stars were still shining when she raised her face up to see past the tall pines. Across the whole state, he’d said. She wondered how big the whole state was. She hoped it wasn’t as big as Texas.