Gods in Alabama

  “I didn’t mean to make you mad. I thought—”

  “No, you did not. You didn’t think. You gossiped.” But her tone had softened. She turned onto her side and curled up, cupping her cheek in the palm of her hand, looking at me. “I’m sorry I got tempery, but I hope you haven’t been spreading that around.”

  “No,” I said. “I only told you.”

  “I’m sorry I snapped at you. I didn’t want you to say that, because I have my own way of thinking about him. I mean, in my head, a little bit, I think of him as someone really good. Maybe even like some sort of hero.”

  I stared at her. “Oh my God,” I said. “You like him!”

  “Hush,” she said, but she sat up, too, and tucked her knees into her nightgown and wrapped her arms around herself. “I’m going to tell you something. It’s gossip, but oh well, I’m telling you anyway, but don’t you spread it, okay?” She stared me down with fierce eyes until I nodded. “Okay, last year Jim Beverly and Rose’s daddy got in a fistfight.”

  “Like a real fight?”

  “Yes, a real one. Jim dropped her off from a date, and her daddy was drunk in the yard and tried to beat on her. Jim wouldn’t let him hit her. Rose’s daddy sprained Jim’s arm so bad, Jim had to sit out two games! Of course, last year Jim was only junior varsity, but still.”

  “You completely have a crush on him!” I said. “And you kept it a secret from me.”

  “I do not,” she said, and then we sat there very quietly, both of us, because I don’t think until that moment, Clarice had ever lied to me. “Well, if I do, I didn’t tell you because it crept up so gradual I didn’t see it. And then it was embarrassing. Everyone has a crush on him for all these dumb football reasons. But that’s not why I like him. I like him because he isn’t like those other football boys. He sticks with one girl, and he tries to protect her, even from her daddy. And he doesn’t drink like the rest of them do. Or he hardly ever drinks, anyway, because she doesn’t like it. Maybe it isn’t so much I like him in particular as I think I could really love a boy like that, who treated me that way.”

  “He does too drink,” I said. “Don’t you remember that Halloween party at Missy Carver’s? He got so blind drunk he put his fist through her mama’s picture window and ripped out a hunk of the rhododendrons.”

  “I know what he did. I was there,” she said, irritated again.

  “So that isn’t gossip. We both saw it.”

  She shrugged. “You know how boys are. So, okay, sometimes he does drink, but like only twice a year. And it’s poison to him. He gets crazy. After we left Missy’s, I heard he got in a fight with Rob Shay and Chuck and roared off and smashed up his dad’s Corolla so bad you couldn’t hardly see it was a car. Rose broke up with him over it, remember? He started dating that Dawna just after. Whenever he drinks, if Rose even hears about it, that’s when they break up. Then he’s so sad he stays drunk until she takes him back. And she always does, and then he stops. Don’t you see, that’s something else he does for her, even though all the other football boys drink all the time and cut up like mad.”

  “I can’t believe you are this in love with him and you didn’t tell me.”

  Silence from the other bed. Finally she said, “I admire him a little, is all. And anyway, we shouldn’t gossip. Now go to sleep.”

  So I did. Slept like a baby, too, now that I had my fantasy back to settle myself down. Now I knew how to play it. My new body was bruised, but the evil man who had given me those bruises died in the crash.

  But after my conversation with Clarice, the fantasy started to change. I got less interested in the car crash and more interested in being Jim Beverly’s Rose-Pop. Or not even Rose-Pop, exactly, but a girl like that. A pretty girl a boy like him would love enough to fight for.

  At school I didn’t follow or watch Rose Mae Lolley so much as I watched how Rose Mae and Jim Beverly were together. I watched Clarice watch them, too. She drank them in, in barely noticeable glances. She was subtle. A person not watching for it would easily miss how constantly she kept an eye on them. A person who knew Clarice less would never pick up on how aware she was whenever Jim Beverly was in the room.

  I noticed he was never cruel to the school goats like some of the other football boys were. In fact, if he was around, they didn’t seem to act that way. It was as if his presence was enough to hold them back. I noticed how careful he was with Rose Mae, his arm always draped cautiously along her frail shoulders, never roughhousing with her.

  I noticed these things because Clarice noticed them. Clarice changed him for me, and I couldn’t see him as the fictional character the other freshman girls made up to love. That cocky football boy they had invented was repugnant to me. The one Clarice was making up, though, him I could love.

  In my dreams I saw him as the boy he would be without the astounding talent for landing a pass in the loving arms of his receivers. He wasn’t good-looking enough or smart enough or funny enough to be popular if it wasn’t for that arm. He’d just be sweet, a sweet boy with a slow Alabama smile that could melt a girl. A plain talker who told my mother to get over herself and quit banging her head on the floor if she had a bad day. A fighter when words did him no good. I started to look less like Rose-Pop in the fantasy, and more like regular me. Especially since I was slowly losing the puppy tummy; I could see the beginnings of what might someday be a waist. My nipples stopped being flat pink spots and started pushing themselves outward, dragging breasts out of my unwilling body.

  That spring, in May, Jim Beverly got roaring drunk at a gulch party, blacked his friend Barry’s eye, and used a tire iron to smash out the back window of Barry’s truck when Barry wouldn’t fight him. Rose-Pop ditched him again. This time, she vowed, it was really over and done. I heard her tell her friends as I crouched silently on top of the toilet in the girls’ bathroom. Her eyes were red from weeping, but her shoulders were set and her mouth was screwed up into a determined wad.

  Jim Beverly was free.

  He was up for grabs for any girl who could get him, and Lordy but they were all trying.

  The day after Rose-Pop dumped Jim Beverly, I woke up feeling grumpy and oddly out of sorts. I’d dreamed my old fantasy. I had been in Rose’s body, looking at my face in a mirror. Rose’s spirit had looked back at me, laughing at me for taking over the day after she had ditched him for good, knowing I would never have him.

  I stared bleakly into my half of the closet. I never had problems picking out clothes. I just reached in and pulled out something that fit. But that day I gazed with distaste at everything I owned, shifting my weight from one foot to the other. Clarice finally moved me gently out of the way and pulled out my khaki pants with a braided belt and my loafers. She fished a chocolate-brown and gold pullover out of the drawer and handed me that. Then she stood staring moodily into her own half of the closet for so long that I was groomed, dressed, and eating breakfast before she made it into the bathroom.

  All morning I knew exactly where Jim Beverly was in the school, although I never saw him. I didn’t even pass him in the halls. It was as if the radar map in my head that had been used to track Rose-Pop for so long had switched to another channel. Now he was the red blip of heat cruising down the south hallway while I was staring into my locker, irradiating the bio lab while I mooned through math, dressing out in the gym while I moped around the library.

  At lunch, wending my way through our garish turquoise cafeteria, I saw Clarice sitting with her borderline-slutty friend Janey. Clarice usually got to sit up on the stage with the seniors because she was dating that baseball boy, but today she and Janey were down below at one of the long tables. With Clarice gracing it, the table would fill up fast, so I took my tray of congealed lasagna and Jell-O and hurried over to her.

  “I broke up with Justin,” she said as I sat down next to her, and then she gave a slight shrug. Her cheeks were very pink, and I noticed she was wearing a clingy lightweight sweater set she usually saved for church.

  Jane
y said, “Oh yeah, Clarice is on the loose!” Then her eyes narrowed and she said, “Guess who else is on the loose, and oh my God, guess who else is coming over here.” She was looking over Clarice’s shoulder, and I knew he was coming, could feel him approaching our table on my imaginary radar map. The heat of him was toasting the skin right off my back. Clarice shrugged again, calm and casual, but her eyes were very bright.

  I could not stand it and turned to look. I saw him weaving his way through herds of girls who set themselves like snares in his path. He avoided them all, a guided missile locked on Clarice.

  Janey was sitting on Clarice’s far side, so Jim Beverly sat down by me, straddling the table’s bench as if it were a horse, facing me.

  “Ladies,” he said. “Got room for a refugee?”

  “Of course we do, Jim,” burbled Janey, preening. But Jim Beverly wasn’t looking at her. He was looking through me and speaking directly to Clarice.

  Clarice smiled at him and started poodling around with her hair, twirling one finger in it. “Refugee?” she said.

  “Yup,” said Jim Beverly. “I’m a refugee in the dating wars. Maybe even a casualty.”

  “Have you been wounded?” said Clarice. “Should I get you a Purple Heart?”

  Janey leaned desperately around Clarice and said, in a voice that left the borderline and teleported her miles into slutty territory, “Poor baby, show me where it hurts. Maybe I can kiss it for you.”

  Jim Beverly barely spared her a glance and a half-smile. “Yeah. Me and Rose-Pop went boom.” He grinned ruefully. I sat between them, feeling like the wall that separated Pyramus and Thisbe.

  “I heard,” said Clarice. “Me and Justin broke up, too, so I know how you feel.”

  “I heard,” said Jim Beverly. “I was thinking maybe we could get together. Tend each other’s wounds. Cry in each other’s beer. That kind of thing.”

  Clarice was going to wear her shoulders out what with all the shrugs she was throwing, I thought bitterly.

  “I’m not one for crying over spilled milk,” she said, and I stood up abruptly, cutting off their view of each other.

  “Let me get out of your way,” I snapped.

  Clarice looked up at me, stricken. “Excuse me, Arlene, I wasn’t trying to be rude!”

  But I was already struggling out of the small space, trying to swing my legs out from between the attached bench and the table without touching Jim Beverly. I got free of the bench and was reaching for my lunch tray when Jim Beverly snaked one arm around my waist and pulled me down again. I was suddenly perched on his knee. I went immediately still, shocked into silence.

  “Hold up there, speedy,” said Jim Beverly. “Didn’t mean to be an asshole.”

  “Yes, really, it was rude of us to talk around you,” said Clarice.

  “I’m not mad,” I managed to say. My throat was caked with glue. His hot hand was on my waist, steadying me, and the heat of his leg was soaking up through my pants. I felt something in my belly, down low. It was a muted cracking feeling, as if something glass that was muffled in a towel had been stamped upon and broken, followed by an odd gush of warmth between my legs.

  “Maybe you can give me a hand, Arlene,” said Jim Beverly. The warm hand at my waist moved. He slid it up my back, under my hair, and I felt his callused palm cupping the prickling flesh at the base of my neck. “Your sister here says she won’t come cry over milk with me, so what do you think I should do?”

  “Cousin,” I squeaked, but he wasn’t listening.

  He reached up with his other hand and put one finger on my chin, pulling down and then pushing up, making my slack mouth open and close like a puppet’s. He spoke for me in a high-pitched voice. “Gosh golly, Clarice, Jim Beverly is totally flirting with you, and you are shooting him down! Poor, poor Jim!”

  Clarice laughed, and I pushed his hand away, blushing and confused. The spot of warmth at my core was on the move, running like a trickle of wet heat from belly to crotch.

  Clarice said, “I didn’t say I didn’t want to go somewhere with you. I said I didn’t want to go somewhere with you and cry.” Janey could have made that sound filthy, but coming from Clarice, it sounded at worst mildly naughty and flirty as all hell.

  I stood up abruptly, meaning to make some sort of excuse and flee, but as I leaned over to pick up my lunch tray, I happened to glance down. There, on Jim Beverly’s knee, stark against the almost-white of his super-faded Levi’s, was a spot of dark blood as big as a half-dollar. I froze, appalled, staring. In that moment I felt myself catch fire and spontaneously combust, burning up in half a heartbeat to nothing but a crisp cinder. When the burning passed, I was still standing there.

  Jim Beverly saw the blood on his leg, and then Clarice saw it. The three of us froze in a tableau of horror.

  I did not know what to do. There was nothing to be done. The period I had begged God to send me had finally arrived, and there I was bending over to get a lunch tray with my bloody ass in khaki pants facing the rest of the cafeteria.

  My eyes met Jim Beverly’s, and I don’t know what he saw there, but before I could sprint to the nearest ocean and drown myself in it, he jumped to his feet, whipped off his letterman’s jacket, and draped it over my shoulders. It covered me to mid-thigh. He put his arm around me, anchoring the jacket and holding me in place.

  “Maybe I can call you about this later, eh, Clarice? Me and Arlene here need to go down to the office.”

  Janey looked up at us, blank and uncomprehending. She couldn’t take in the fact that Jim Beverly was leaving the table with me, so I knew she hadn’t seen. I did a quick scan of the cafeteria. No one was screaming with laughter or pointing at me.

  Clarice said, “Do you want me to . . .” and then trailed off, uncertain how to finish.

  Jim Beverly, perfectly at ease again, acting like this was the most natural thing in the world, gave Clarice one of his slow grins and said, “Nah. We got it, don’t we, Arlene?”

  I nodded dumbly, and he pivoted, pulling me with him. He walked me out of the cafeteria, his arm still over my shoulder. People were staring now, but I was pretty sure it was only because they couldn’t figure why a scrub like Arlene Fleet would be draped in Jim Beverly’s holy jacket and cuddled up under the shelter of Jim Beverly’s immaculate passing arm.

  We headed down the hall towards the office. The horror and mortification were slowly morphing into almost weepy gratitude.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know that would happen.”

  “Pfft,” he said. “Forget it. Let’s go call your mom to come get you.”

  “You don’t have to walk me down to the office,” I said.

  “Yeah, I do,” he said. “I gotta call my mom and have her bring me some new pants.”

  I felt dark red heat flush my face and started apologizing again. “I am so sorry, I really did not know. I never, I mean, I didn’t know that would happen today.”

  He gave my shoulder a squeeze and said, “Hey, kiddo, don’t sweat it, really. Chalk it up to what Coach calls a PPD—poor planning day.”

  “But I couldn’t plan, I mean, I never had to plan before.” I realized what I was telling him and flushed even harder.

  “Well, hey, cool for you, then, huh? No need to be embarrassed.” He grinned like a devil and added, soft and dirty, “I’ll tell you a secret. You ain’t the first female to change from a girl to a woman while sitting in my lap.”

  I laughed, startled, and then looked down, suddenly feeling okay. In that moment I loved Jim Beverly so fiercely I would have dropped on top of a mud puddle and let him walk over me to save his shoes.

  When I killed the rapist, the foul-mouthed drunk, I killed this boy, too. And this boy had a mama who thought he hung the earth, and a proud dad. He had two older brothers, and he had Rose-Pop. He had friends. Before Burr could defend me, he had to know this part. Arlene the monster killer was a lie, because this other boy existed, too. Burr had to know I understood what I had
done. I knew you couldn’t kill only the pieces that needed killing, and leave the pretty parts whole.

  CHAPTER 9

  WHEN I SAW the WELCOME TO ALABAMA THE BEAUTIFUL sign looming up ahead of us on the highway, I clutched Burr’s arm. “It isn’t too late to turn around and go home.”

  Burr goggled at me and then started chuckling. “Yes, it is,” he said. He lifted his hand, still laughing. “Goodbye, Tennessee,” he called.

  I echoed him: “Goodbye, Tennessee.”

  He faced forward, and the Blazer crossed the line. “Hello, Alabama.”

  “Yes, hello, Alabama, you big green whore,” I said sourly, not waving.

  That hit Burr just right, and he lost it. “You big green whore? Green whore?” He was laughing so hard, tears were starting in his eyes. He thumbed the button, and his window scrolled down. He yelled out the window: “Hail to thee, Alabama, thou Verdant Trollop!” He laughed and laughed, sticking one hand out the window and waving. His laughter was contagious, and I found myself giggling, too. “Greetings, Emerald State of Tarts! Lo! I am here to fuck your white women!”

  “With my big black dick,” I said, sotto voce.

  “With my big black dick,” he bellowed. He was laughing so hard between yelling at the state that he was practically choking. I lost it, too, and both of us were hooting with tears streaming down our faces.

  “Blind,” Burr choked out, and he slowed and pulled off the highway onto the shoulder. A few cars whizzed past us as I leaned against the dash and laughed and laughed until my stomach ached with it. Burr was clutching dizzily at the steering wheel, trying to breathe. I closed my eyes, pulling in oxygen, until Burr and I had ourselves mostly under control.

  It was quiet for a moment, and then Burr said, “What the hell is that?” I opened my eyes. He was staring past me out my window. I followed his line of sight.