“I suppose,” I said.
“My family is happy,” he said. “A little boring, as I said, but happy. They made me happy. Money helped, I’m sure. But that’s not it. My parents love each other. That’s it. Bottom line.”
“My parents loved each other too, but that didn’t work out,” I said. “Maybe money pressure had something to do with that.”
“Maybe it was pressure of character,” he said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Wait a moment now,” he said. “I’m not trying to make you bristle. What I’m saying is character is what you do when you don’t have to. And though my parents have money, I’ve seen their character tested. They came out all right.”
“Yeah, well, my dad came out on the other side somewhere, and I don’t know if he got the cigarettes or not. But I guess the rest of us are all right.”
Herb grinned at me. “All I’m saying is don’t think everything’s easy for me because I have money. Which is not to say I don’t have some advantages.”
“You’re going to college, I’m studying to take a GED,” I said. “Or, I should be.”
“And you’ll pass it. And you’ll move on.”
My insecurity slipped out. “You think so?”
“Sure. You’re bright. I love talking to you. Everything isn’t about cars and dresses and parties.”
“Because I can’t afford cars and dresses and parties,” I said.
“I don’t think that’s it,” he said.
“I didn’t make you mad earlier?”
“You surprised me,” he said. “Embarrassed me a little.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be, Dot. It’s all right.”
The waitress, a different one than I had before, filled our cups and took away Herb’s empty pie plate. We sat there awhile, and then we went to the bowling alley, and bowled. I was terrible at it. But Herb was worse. I thought once he might not be able to get his fingers out of the ball. It looked like he might go down the alley with it.
When we finished bowling he took me to my car and followed me home. Elbert was sitting in his chair out in the yard. I got out of my car, and climbed into Herb’s car and sat beside him.
“Is that your uncle?”
“Yep, that’s him,” I said. “Hey, I’m sorry I was a jackass.” I reached over and took his hand. “See. I don’t think you’re going to attack me. I like you.”
“I like you too.”
“Enough to see me again?” I asked. “I can bring a straight jacket and you can have me wear it. I won’t mind.”
“You’re fine the way you are,” he said.
I looked through the windshield. Elbert was moving from side to side in his chair to see what was going on in the car.
I said, “I’d love to kiss you. Really. But I don’t want to do it with Elbert watching us. We’re not a movie.”
“I understand. I’ll walk you to the trailer and meet Elbert.”
“Not tonight,” I said. “Next time. I don’t want to have to deal with Elbert. I’ve already embarrassed us both tonight, and I don’t want Elbert to top it off.”
He patted my hand, got out, went around and opened my door. I climbed out and smiled at him. I said, “Call me. Oh. Wait. My cell phone is dead. Or will be.”
“They charge up, you know,” he said.
“If you can afford to pay for the service they work fine.”
“Oh,” he said. “That’s all right, then. I’ll find you. I’ll leave my number for you at the Dairy Bob. You can call me from there or something. I’ll come by sometime.”
“Okay,” I said. “Goodnight, Herb.”
“Goodnight, Dot.”
I strolled away from him then, wishing I had kissed him in spite of Elbert. Behind me I heard his car pull out of the drive.
(21)
I stalked across the yard, heading quickly for the door, trying to only look at Elbert enough to be polite. As I came close to the chair where he was sitting, he said, “No kiss?”
“What?”
“You didn’t kiss him. Date must have sucked.”
“I thought you told me to take my time, or that he was a demon or something.”
“Sit down, visit with me,” Elbert said.
“I really ought to go in. I have to work tomorrow.”
“Just for a minute. I’m lonely out here.”
“Talk to Frank,” I said.
“He’s gone in for the night,” Elbert said.
“Want me to wake him up for you?” I said.
“Earlier, he hit me with a water balloon,” he said. “Just came out of the trailer and hit me with it, and then ran away.”
“He does that,” I said. “It’s nothing personal.”
I saw a curtain in the living room pull back. There was a little light in the trailer and it framed Mom in the window. I lifted a hand and waved. She waved back and pulled the curtain.
“They’ve been waiting for you to get back,” Elbert said.
I wasn’t surprised. They’d want to know about the date, and I didn’t want to tell them all the details. I thought I’d just stall for awhile outside with Elbert.
“Come on, sit,” Elbert said.
I sat. Elbert asked, “Was he okay?”
“He was okay.” And then it started to come out. “Have you ever been on a date and acted like a psycho?”
I hadn’t wanted to say that much, but I decided I’d rather talk to someone I didn’t know well about it, than someone I did.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “I’ve been on some bad dates, but I don’t think I acted like a psycho. A fool, maybe. But a psycho? Nope.”
“Do you mention you’re a bank robber on first dates?” I asked.
“Frankly, dear, I haven’t had that many dates since I was a robber. And I doubt it’s something I’d mention right away. I think it might be considered a conversation stopper.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I can see that. Third date? You’d mention it then?”
“Absolutely,” he said, and grinned at me. “So, did you do something stupid?”
“I kind of flipped out. A little. Herb took hold of my hand, and I decided I’d have a litter of puppies and live in the back room of the trailer with Grandma for the rest of my life, so I jumped out of the car and yelled at him and tried to walk home. Then we had coffee and went bowling and came home. I think he’s going to ask me out again.”
“That’s interesting,” Elbert said. “Especially the part about a litter of puppies.”
“That was symbolic,” I said.
“Yeah,” Elbert said. “I got that.”
“Don’t tell Mom or Grandma about it, will you?”
“Of course not,” he said.
“And it goes without saying, don’t tell Frank.”
“I wouldn’t tell Frank.”
“Good, and that’s all I want to say about the date.”
“All right,” he said.
I reached down and pulled up a weak brown piece of grass and twiddled it between my thumb and forefinger.
“Let me ask you something,” I said. “You said you skated. But how good a skater are you?”
“I am so good I hurt figure skaters’ feelings,” he said.
“Really?”
“Not really. But I am good. I did tricks on the rink when I was a clown. I can skate with wheels, and I can skate with ice skates. I have good balance. My mother claimed it was because my head was empty.”
“I skate pretty good, but what I want to learn is to skate like a roller derby skater.”
“Did that.” he said.
“What?” I said.
“Skated with a roller derby.”
“Get out of town,” I said. “You were a skating girl?”
“Guy, but yeah,” he said. “I did that. Before I was a clown I was in a roller derby league.”
“I thought it was just girls,” I said.
“Seems to be these days, but wasn’t alw
ays. I was part of the Houston Downtown Bombers.”
“Were you a good team?”
Elbert shook his head. “No. Not really. I don’t think we ever won anything. Sometimes we got paid to throw an event since it was mostly entertainment, but to the best of my memory, we never paid anyone else to throw one. So we didn’t ever win anything. We kind of just quit. Our jammer, that’s what they call the main skater, got a can of green beans thrown at him. Good toss. Hit him right upside the head. He was wearing a helmet, but it was still a good lick.”
“Holy cow, people throw green beans?”
“Not as part of the sport, no. Someone who was for the other side brought the can to throw, and she had a good arm.”
“She?” I said.
“Old lady. Former softball player.”
“You’re kidding, right?” I asked.
Elbert held up his hand. “No.”
“Wait, you said you were paid to throw the game?”
“We were,” he said.
“But why would you do that?” I asked.
“Money.”
“You threw a game for money?”
“Honey, I’m a robber,” Elbert said. “Well, attempted bank robber. Throwing a roller derby game for money does kind of fit in with my skill set. Anyway, our jammer that got hit with the can of beans, he quit, decided it was too risky. I got the clown job, and well, it was all over. The Houston Downtown Bombers were done with. We were actually from Cleveland, Texas anyway. Or at least a couple of the skaters were. I can’t remember about the others. Me, I’m a rolling stone, so I wasn’t really from anyplace specific. The team fell apart and we never won anything, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t a good skater. We were just unfortunate and we sold out a lot. But why you want to do roller derby?”
“You said it,” I said. “Money.”
“You’re throwing the match?”
“No. We’re not throwing the match. We get money if we win,” I said.
“What if you don’t win?”
I shrugged. “Then we don’t get any money.”
Me and Elbert talked for a long while, and he tried to explain the rules of roller derby to me, which were few by the way. It mostly had to do with someone going around and around and being protected by the others on the team, and everyone on the other team trying to stop them. And there was this one person, the jammer, who had to get through and make a round or some such to gain a point. Some of it stuck with me, some of it slid off the side of my head like a greasy rag.
Elbert had some skates, and he went inside his van to get them. He came back with them, pushed them at me, said, “These are the best,” he said.
“Not my brand,” I said.
“No, your brand is a cheap brand, and I’m surprised you haven’t turned your ankle.”
“Unless you have another pair my size that’s your brand,” I said. “I’m kind of stuck with them.”
“Where can we skate?” he asked. “I’ll show you how it’s done.”
(22)
That’s how we ended up going to the Dairy Bob. It was open, of course, and we went in and Bob was there. I wondered if he ever slept. Sometimes he would go away for a few hours and come back, so I guess he catnapped. He said something once about the war and how it had changed his sleeping. I didn’t ask for details. I didn’t get the idea he wanted to talk about it anyway.
Inside, Elbert bought me and him a hamburger. I had had a nice meal earlier, but now it was past midnight, and I had the munchies.
A short, stout, blonde girl named Miranda waited on us. She didn’t have any outside traffic, and she had taken off her skates and had on tennis shoes. Sometimes, we did that, just to give our feet a rest. Bob only allowed so much of it, though. He had this whole thing about if you’re on your feet then you’re on the skates. Bob could skate okay himself. He was the one taught me how.
Miranda put our burgers and drinks down, looked at me, smiled, said, “We’ve met. You work here.”
“Yeah,” I said. “We’ve never had a shift together, but I’ve seen you around. This is my uncle, Elbert.”
“Hey, Uncle Elbert,” she said.
“Hey,” he said back.
“I know Gay,” Miranda said, “and she told me about the roller derby thing. I want you to know, you need me, I want in. My mom follows roller derby. We’ve gone to a few events, and she watches some stuff on the internet. My dad likes it too.”
“So you know the game,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said. “Sorta.”
“I never even heard of roller derby,” I said, “and now it seems there’s people all over that know about it.”
“Roller girls,” she said. “There’s a kind of sisterhood of them. We’d be part of it. Gay might not be a big part of it. She’s worried about her nose.”
“I know,” I said. “It is a nice nose.”
“I just wanted to say I’m in,” Miranda said. “I’ll get you some ketchup for the fries.”
We ate and went out back to the big parking lot. It was dead empty, except for my car and Miranda’s and Bob’s. There was a lot of concrete and it was all lit up by overhead lights on poles. There was a metal bar that separated the parking lot from the place where you could go through the drive-through.
Elbert sat on the separating bar and took off his shoes and put on his skates. I sat down beside him and started to put on mine.
“Wait before you do,” he said. “I’ll show you a few moves.”
He went out on his skates and started skating. I could see right away he was smooth. He went left and right in a zig-zag pattern, said, “You’ll need to do this for derby.”
He got low and skated so that his arms swung out. He bobbed his head, like a snake trying to locate a mouse. He slammed a skate forward and spun, and went back in the other direction. It was all very quick and silky, like a dancer.
“I can do that on ice,” he said.
“If we need that,” I said. “We’ll pull you up front.”
He grinned at me. “I love to skate.”
He darted around some more, and it was a pleasure to watch. When he moved, when he skated, I felt as if I was watching something unnatural become natural. As if he had been born with skates on his feet.
He said, “I can take some jumps too.”
Elbert started at the far end of the lot and came toward me, and then he leaped. It was hard to see when he paused to do it. He just did it. He went up and forward, and hit on the skates and swiveled and was suddenly going in the other direction.
“I’ll never learn to do that,” I yelled after him.
When he came back my way, he said, “Probably not.”
“Thanks for the faith,” I said.
“Just that it takes time. A lot of it. You just want to win a derby match. The bar you’re sitting on. I can jump it.”
I looked down at the bar. It was about two foot high. “I believe you,” I said.
“I’ll show you.”
He backed off again and came at it, and I realized he was coming right at me. I started to move, but held my ground, because I didn’t really know what else to do.
He dodged around me and went to my left. It was a very speedy move. He leapt, and went over the bar, landed, sailed around on the concrete there, wheeled back my way, said, “I might go through the drive-through, order a soda.”
I laughed at him. He jumped back over the bar. He skated around the parking lot still talking to me. He wasn’t even breathing hard.
“You know what,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to do a backwards jump. Never tried it. But I’m going to do it.”
“I wouldn’t,” I said.
He wasn’t listening. He came at me again, skating backwards, looking over his shoulder. I decided I would move this time.
Then he was right on the bar, and he leaped.
He went up high and he coiled his legs under him. His left skate was a little low. It caught the back of the bar and Elbert went backwards and hit the c
oncrete hard. His head bounced.
“Oh, hell,” he said.
After I went inside the Dairy Bob and got the phone and called, it took the ambulance about three minutes.
(23)
When we drove up in the yard, it was about four in the morning. I had work later in the afternoon, so it wasn’t so bad for me. Elbert, on the other hand, had to have the back of his head shaved and there was a big bandage taped to it.
I stopped the car. Before I got out, Elbert said, “Don’t tell your people, okay?”
“They’re going to notice you have a bandage about the size of a bed sheet on the back of your head.”
“I guess.”
“No guessing about it, Elbert. They’ll notice.”
“I’ll explain it to them. I think I’ll tell them I fell down in the van.”
“Why not just tell them the truth?” I asked.
“I’m not used to it,” he said.
“Oh,” I said. “Well, look at it this way, you were doing good there for awhile. A lot of smooth moves. I was impressed.”
“Were you?” he asked.
“Oh yeah,” I said.
“I really thought I could make that jump.”
“I bet.”
“I had never tried it backwards before, but I knew I could do it. Just knew it.”
“Maybe next time you try it you could put a mat on the other side, or have some place where there’s some soft dirt.”
“Good idea.”
“You know what surprises me most,” I said.
“What?”
“You had insurance? We don’t even have insurance. Can’t afford it. I mean, something happens to me at the Dairy Bob, Bob has insurance, but I trip out here on the lawn… If you can call it a lawn, I’m on my own.”
“When I had a job I paid up for a year,” Elbert said. “A few months from now, I’m out of insurance. We’ll be in the same club.”
“You really skate well. You want to be our coach?”
“For the derby?”
“No. The annual spelling bee. Yes, the derby.”
“Sure,” he said. “I’d like that.”