Hick (17 page)

Clement stands up and starts to follow. His friends stare frozen from the pool. He tries to make a beeline in front of Eddie, but Eddie cuts him off, wheels around and socks Clement in the eye, dropping him to the ground before he knew he’d been clocked. They are two different species. Someone like Eddie is raised on slamming doors and whiskey till four in the morning. Someone like Clement is raised on apple pie and trips to Crested Butte before the snow thaws. Clement’s head makes a loud thud on the pavement, sending shivers down my spine and all the sorrys in the world that I had ever stopped to think my life could be better and that I dragged something clear and kind into a world of dirty trick poker.

I trip over myself, trying to look back, but Eddie’s pushing me forward, up the stairs and towards the room. I hear voices yelling behind us, splashing and calling for help. Eddie hurls me into the room, grabs the keys and throws my bag at my chest.

“Get in the truck.”

“But we already paid for the room.”

“I said get in the goddamn truck!”

This is the side that I knew was coming. Drink number eight through ten. This is the side that was the reason I stayed put down by the pool in the first place. Eddie’s got me tight around the arm, making a bruise right above the elbow, finding the last of the cash and the whiskey, hurtling the both of us down the stairs and barreling forward into the truck. Clement and his friends are nowhere in sight, but I can hear the commotion coming round the corner, the boys’ yell echoing across the white plaster walls, crying for help.

The last thing I want to do is get in that truck with Eddie piss drunk and liable to crash into the nearest tree. But he charges across
the front bumper and shoves me in, cursing and turning red, mumbling to himself about little sluts and being loyal and you never know who to trust. He darts back over, hops inside, starts the engine and tears away.

I look straight ahead, silent, trying to duck under the radar. In the wing mirror, I’m looking for Clement and his friends and Mr. Comfort or even Horsemouth to appear and save the day. But the hotel is dead quiet, as if none of this ever happened or maybe the world just ended.

Because to me it just did.

Eddie is quiet now, looking out into the darkness with a fake kind of calm.

He ruined my chance. I had one chance at clean sheets and kind words before bedtime. I had this one opportunity. I had this moment where I could say something stupid and laugh and feel something sparkly and look across the table at someone young and awkward like myself. Somehow, from out of nowhere, from out of the blue, I had one second to see what it could be like to be a normal girl with a schoolgirl crush and maybe a future with wingback chairs, willow-wear and Wedgewood. I could have crinkled my forehead and studied for the SAT and had high hopes for heading back East to a school with green rolling hills and gargoyles on the library.

I could have had that.

I say his name to myself. Clement. I think of him curled up into a ball on the pavement, knocked out cold. Clement. Clemency. Clement. I make a pact with myself. I make a point of it. I make a date down deep, past my skin and my bones and deep into my blood, into my soul.

See you in 2090. See you in 2090, when flying cars are whizzing by and you can get from here to China and back in the blink of an eye. See you in 3060, when people are made of metal and you don’t even need a flying car anyways and you can look up fighting in the history books. See you in 4070, when there’s smoke billowing up from the red-crater horizon and it’s hotter than Mexico with dust and dirt and a few scavengers holding on, scraping by. And on and on till the moon gives way and the sun kills itself and the stars fall from the sky.

I guess I’ll see you then.

Cheapest motherfuckers in the world. Rich people.”

We’re barreling west on I-70, cutting a swath through the night, with rocks popping up at our sides, red and mysterious, like somewhere in the night we landed on Mars and just kept going.

“They count their pennies, Luli. Don’t think that they don’t. I know. I used to work as a busboy back at Kirby’s in Omaha. You’d never get a good tip from a rich person. Never. They’d stiff ya every time. Hell, they’d skip out on the check if they didn’t think they’d get caught and all their friends’d find out and they’d get kicked outta the country club. One guy left two pennies. Two pennies! They don’t know what it’s like. They don’t. They wanna think it’s your fault you’re poor. Cause that way they don’t have to feel guilty for being rich.”

I grab a cigarette off the dashboard and light it, peering out into the red rocks of Mars.

“Well, then, I guess you know just about everything.”

“Just about.” Eddie sneers at me through the side of his mouth, waiting for my reply. “I know a helluva lot more than you, anyways.”

I don’t give him the benefit of an answer. I start humming to myself instead, looking out the window, trying to break through the mystery of all those red rocks beyond the darkness, casually observing us flying by in our light ship down the road. The sky has a burning to it. There’s a crispness here, like it’s fall all year round and the stars are made of glass.

I open the window and put my face into the wind, thinking about 2090 and what it’ll be like a hundred years from now with spaceships zipping by and folks never getting old and robot slaves. I think about Clement and what it takes to get skin the color of olives, glowing from underneath, like there’s a light-bulb tucked behind your earlobes.

“Close that goddamn window.”

I open it wider.

“I said close that goddamn window.”

“Why don’t you just drop me off and then you can close the window to your heart’s delight.”

“What was that?”

“I said, why don’t you just drop me off.”

“Why? So you can go back to your rich friends?”

“it’s better than being with a drunk cripple.”

Eddie slams on the brake, nearly taking off my head. I don’t know why I said that. I should not have said that. Not after drink number nine. Before I know it, he is on my side of the truck, opening the door and dragging me out. I am mustering all my courage, plotting my getaway and how far it is to the next town and if I can
walk it. He grabs me by the hair and finally I don’t care anymore if I die of starvation on the red rocks of Mars. I am done with this date.

I kick him hard in the shin and start to run into the darkness, away from the headlights. He buckles over and then gives chase, limping and running, taller than me, faster. it’s black out and craggy and next thing I know, he’s coming up behind me. He grabs me by the hair and slams me to the ground.

By this point I am just kicking and clawing and scratching and kicking again, wishing I had just kept quiet, wishing I had just stayed back in Jackson, wishing Glenda would show up in a bubble, wave her magic wand and make all of this, all of this, go away.

Eddie pushes me down and pins me to the ground. I struggle and wrestle and try to squirm free, flailing my arms against him, anything. He grabs one wrist and then the other, pinning my arms above my head with one hand. I keep bucking, trying to get out from underneath him, anything, anything. I see him go for his belt buckle and start bucking harder, anything, please, anything.

He’s not even making noises now. And neither am I. Not like they do in the movies. Not like screaming and calling names. I’m just breathing hard and bucking and breathing harder. He’s straddling me but before I know it he’s got his knees between my knees. I thrash my body from side to side. He looks down at me, amused, like he’s getting off at my last-ditch effort to save myself from seeing him every night before dreaming. He shoves my legs apart with his knees.

But I’m not here anymore. I am long gone. I am back in the Motel 6 outside Devil’s Slide playing the category game with Clement.
Things you can find in a hardware store. A. Ajax. B. Buzzsaw. C. Crate. D. Dustmop.

I feel a sharp pain beneath my stomach.

E. Electrical tape. F. Flooring. G. Grout.

I feel his breath on my cheek, cigarettes and whiskey, sweat.

H. Hardware. I. Insulation. J. Jack-knife.

He’s breathing hard now. His shoulder moving up and down against the night sky.

J. Jack-knife. K. Krazy Glue. L. Lumber.

He’s breathing harder.

M. Metal. N. Nails. O. Oil can.

The corner of his shoulder darting up and down. The stars swirling above.

P. Paint. Q. Q. Q.

Now’s the worst part. Q.

The worst. Skip.

Skip Q.

R.

R. Rope.

Razor.

He’s done now.

Razor.

Ratchet.

Done.

He rolls off me and onto his back. He lays beside me breathing hard, staring up at the moon, waning.

S.

Soap.

Did you know that God lives in Utah?

God made Utah and the Mormons came and snatched it up and called it their own. And now no one knows that God lives in Utah because no one wants to be around a bunch of Mormons.

And I’m not talking about the kind of God who’s got dimples and a white beard, like Santa Claus dressed up in a robe. I’m talking about the kind of God who makes rain and moves mountains and lives in the mist. I’m talking about the kind of God who wakes you up at daybreak and says, Looky here what I made three-hundred-sixty-five days out the year.

They got buttes here with horizontal stripes on them going red, pink, beige, amber and then red again. They got rocks shaped like robot giants, with the same stripes, red, pink, beige, amber, standing off in the distance, watching you down the road. They got a blue-sky backdrop with no clouds for miles and a cactus thrown out in front.

They got mist hanging off the top of the buttes, mysterious and eternal, telling you it doesn’t matter what happened to you last night, or the night before that or forever back and forever forward, because God exists in red rocks and he lives in Utah.

I wake up later in a four-poster bed, in a wooden cabin, in a place called Beaumont Kluck’s Cabin Retreat. There’s nobody in the room with me and I figure out my whereabouts by three pamphlets on the bedside table. The first is a comprehensive guide called “Beaumont Kluck’s Cabin Retreat: Don’t Tell the Government.” The second is a pamphlet called “How to Kill Your Own Chickens.” The third is a pamphlet with a flag on it called “Libertarianism: Keep Your Hands off My Freedom.”

I leaf through the chicken-killing pamphlet, wondering if people give names to their poultry before they get the ax, but then see somebody staring at me from the other side of the room. It ain’t till I clock that this person is imitating me exactly that I recognize that I am this person, staring back at me from the mirror on the wall across.

My appearance is altered, that’s for sure. My hair’s shorn off to next to nothing and dyed deep black, almost blue. My skin looks porcelain pale and there’s some bruises here and there from
whatever night it was by the side of the road, all coming back now. I look like some species of alien monkey that alit in the wrong place at the wrong time and got tumbled beneath the wheels of an eighteen-wheeler before a proper greeting.

Well, I set out to make Eddie’s eyes swirl, now, didn’t I?

I start to get up to make my way to the mirror for further inspection but now there’s a new problem. Looks like I got a set of makeshift ropes going up and down the length of my legs and over my body. The whole apparatus is fixed just so my arms can flail around and wave and grab, but getting up is not an option. I go to work trying to wriggle myself out of the knots but then realize that the whole contraption is fastened with a padlock and that the key to that padlock is the one thing separating me from the rest of humanity.

I guess I made his eyes swirl good.

I’m gonna trap this day like a firefly in a jam jar, keep it shut and wait to unscrew the golden lid until all that’s left outside is laughter and can-you-believe-its and I’ll-be-darned. Otherwise, I’ll just be bumping my head into the glass, over and over, useless. I take the day and screw the lid on. Better screw it on tight.

Looking around the room, there’s not a trace of Eddie. I wonder if he’s gone for good. From my little piece of rodeo heaven, looks like he pulled a disappearing act. My heart skips a beat cause I realize there’s nothing in this room to suggest that I’ll ever be leaving it. There’s no sign of outside life, only the birds chirping and the distant sound of a barking dog.

And now something weird happens in my head where, despite the fact that I got dried blood between my legs and I wish Eddie would fall off the top of Chimney Rock, I’m scared he’s over with.
I got this feeling like I need him to come back and make sure I don’t shrivel up and die silent somewhere in the woods of Beaumont Kluck’s Cabin Retreat. I got this feeling like I can’t be the star of this show all by myself. This is a two person cast, and without him, well, might as well just close down the set. And when I have that feeling, that feeling like I need a handout, desperate, I want to pull my skin off and turn into dust. I want to throw myself back to the angels and tell them to start over, start over without me cause you put the screws in loose, you put the hinges in all wrong. But then I remember that I put this day into the jam jar and know better than to just open it up reckless.

I pull the covers to my neck and start reading up on Libertarianism.

I wake up with Eddie standing over me, carrying a bouquet of wildflowers and smiling like a preacher’s son. He leans over, kisses me on the cheek and lays the wildflowers across my lap, careful. He’s looking into my eyes, gentle, like Jesus Christ himself come down to forgive the Romans for nailing him to the cross. I stare back at him, blank, trying to figure out this new angle.

He strokes my hair. “You like your new haircut?”

“No.”