Stones in the Road (3 page)

I resisted the urge to point out that it might actually be an improvement.

Jackson turned away and disappeared down the escalator.

What is she saying
? Noah asked.

I shook my head to indicate I couldn’t possibly explain.

She looks really nice
, he said, excited.

I snorted.

“W
HAT
ABOUT
your parents, Wiley?” Mr. Ledbetter—Stephen, he insisted on being called—asked as we sat in the cramped backseat of Jackson’s Jeep on the two-hour drive home to Tupelo, Mississippi. Noah was scrunched between us, distracted by a graphic novel about zombies. He wasn’t much for reading, but it wasn’t much of a story.

“My mom lives in New Albany,” I said.

“And your father?”

“He died a while back.”

“Ah,” Stephen said, smiling.

“Ah, what?” I asked.

“Whenever I meet a homosexual, there’s always something about the father.”

“Is that right?” I asked, bristling at the use of the clinical word
homosexual
, as if I were a butterfly pinned to a display board and he was a scientist inspecting my sexual organs.

“It is,” he said, nodding. “The father is missing. Absent. Dead. The father has abandoned them, was abusive. Perhaps an alcoholic. Perhaps emotionally absent. There’s always… something.”

I pursed my lips, wondering where this would lead, knowing I would not like it. As indeed I did not.

“So what are you getting at?” I asked at length, taking the bait.

“You don’t see the connection?” he asked.

“No,” I admitted.

“Perhaps these homosexual feelings… perhaps they indicate the absence of the male presence in your life?”

“I’m gay because I miss my daddy?”

“Something like that. I realize it’s controversial.”

“It’s a crock of hot stinking crap,” I said, rather ungracefully.

“Some of the things closest to us are the hardest to see,” he pointed out.

“There’s not a lot of data to support that point of view,” I said.

“But there are
some
,” he said, putting a lot of emphasis on the word “some” and making his verb agree with his subject. “It’s hard to be utterly conclusive in matters of the mind.”

“So your own son is gay because… you abandoned him?” I asked.

“There’s always been a distance between us,” he said simply.

“So he’s gay because you weren’t there for his baseball games?”

“I was there as much as I could be, but my work kept me busy.”

“And what do you do, sir?”

“I’m a psychiatrist. Didn’t Jackson tell you?”

No, he did not.

“Anyway,” he said grandly, “there will be plenty of time for talk later once we’ve become acquainted. I must say I’m very curious about Mississippi. It’s a solid red state—and we need all the solid red states we can get.”

“We do?” I asked, incredulous.

“Of course we do. We need people who believe in the American dream and the American values of hard work and self-reliance, not a bunch of moochers on food stamps drowning us in debt.”

My jaw fell open.

“I don’t know if we can take much more of Obama,” he went on. “The man’s not even American.”

I closed my mouth, felt something tighten in my belly. I looked in the rearview mirror and tried to catch Jackson’s eye, but he was busy talking to his mother.

“Not even American?” I repeated in disbelief.

“The man was born in Kenya,” he said dismissively. “His father was a Marxist. What could such a man possibly know about Americans?”

“Kenya didn’t exist at the time of Obama’s birth,” I pointed out.

“Say what?”

“There was no country called ‘Kenya’ when the president was born,” I said.

“Well, wherever he was born. What difference does it make? Kenya. Jamaica. China. Florida. It’s all the same damned thing. He’s not one of us and never has been. He’s a product of his Marxist upbringing. And at the end of the day, that’s all any of us are—products of our upbringing. People don’t change. Not really.”

“So you think he’s a Marxist?”

“Of course he is. Giving away other people’s money—what do you think a Marxist is? I believe in hard work, making your own way in the world. I
do not
believe in the president of the United States giving away the hard-earned rewards of my efforts. I’m sorry, but I don’t.”

“People on food stamps must really burn your ass.”

“We are the fattest country on the face of the earth. We have obese people coming out of our ears. What on earth do people need food stamps for? Don’t they have enough to eat already? And then they use their food stamps to buy candy bars and pizza so they can make themselves fatter. What’s the point of it? Why not do them all a favor and scrap food stamps and let them go out and get jobs like the rest of us?”

“Most of the people on food stamps are kids,” I pointed out, glancing down at Noah, who was one of those kids, since we were so far below the poverty line we’d never have so much as a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of, not to mention anything else.

“Look at the obesity epidemic,” he retorted. “There’s Michelle Obama in the White House trying to get our fat kids off their fat bottoms and do some exercise once in a while. The best way to get these fatsos to lose weight is to get them off the food stamps and make them find jobs.”

“Even the children?”

“Why not? I worked as a child. I had two paper routes.
Two
of them. I got up at five o’clock every morning and rode my bicycle all over town delivering newspapers. It was good for me. During the summer I worked at a bait shop. I stayed out late at night at the golf course and harvested night crawlers. I got twenty-five cents a dozen when I sold them the next day to the shop. I didn’t sit around and wait for the government to give me an Obamaphone or whatever the latest thing is. I worked for a living and I’m proud of it, and I don’t want my tax dollars going to pay for those who don’t want to work, who think we owe them something.”

“Well, all right then!” I exclaimed.

I sat back in my seat and frowned.

“W
HAT
IN
the name of all that’s holy and good?” I demanded after we had dropped Jackson’s parents at the Hilton Garden Inn on East Main in Tupelo and returned to the Jeep. “Oh. My. God. Do you really think I’m going to keep my mouth shut for an entire frikkin’ month listening to that? Are you out of your mind? Why couldn’t they just visit for a week or something? Why a whole month? Why, Jack? Why? Jesus H. Christ in a jumped-up Batmobile!”

I buckled myself in and turned an angry glare on him.

“They have strong beliefs,” he said. “Remind you of anyone?”

“No,” I said.

He chuckled.

“I’m failing to find the humor here,
Jackie
.”

“They’re a little kooky,” he admitted. “And don’t call me Jackie.”

“A little kooky, Jackie?”

“They’re a bit much.”

“A bit much, Jackie?”

“But they’re passionate about what they believe in.”

“Passionate, Jackie?”

“Are you going to repeat everything I say?”

“Right now you ought to consider yourself lucky if that’s all I do, because I want to kill you. And I mean that in the nicest way. You expect me to listen to that nonsense for a month? You could have warned me!”

“Didn’t it occur to you there’s a reason why I moved so far away from home?”

“Because your father is the Antichrist?”

“He’s not that bad.”

“He’s a nightmare,” I said. “He’s a birther! In my house! He doesn’t believe the president of the United States is an American citizen. What an idiot!”

“He watches Fox News a lot,” he admitted.

“And your mother… what the hell?”

“She gave you a run for your money, didn’t she?”

“Excuse me?”

“You know, Wiley, don’t let me be the one to say it, but you can come across really strong too. Just waltz right over people and you don’t even know it.”

“You’re saying I’m like your mother?”

“Kind of, yeah,” he said.

“I am not at all like your mother,” I said crossly.

“But you are,” he said, smiling.

“I don’t insult people the first time I meet them.”

“Really? I believe you called me a moron when you found out that I didn’t vote. That was one of the first words out of your mouth.
You’re the reason we’re drowning in these ideologically inebriated mad dog Tea Party types
! Remember?”

“I said it because it’s true. That’s not the same as insulting somebody.”

“My mom didn’t insult you.”

“She thought Noah was a girl!”

“She was just playing with you.”

“Playing?”

“That’s how she is. She’s going to get on really well with your grandfather.”

“We’re
not
taking her to Mama’s house. They will kill her. They will get shotguns out of the safe and gun her down. They will tie her to the back of a four-wheeler and drag her sad, bony carcass all over Union County. They will put her in the bathtub and drown her.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“I can’t imagine what she’d say about my family,” I said, horrified at the thought. “Your mom is a snob.”

“She has a very particular sense of humor, that’s all. She’s actually a very nice person.”

“They say that about most serial killers.”

“She’s never killed anyone, I can assure you.”

“She just crushes their soul and destroys their spirit.”

“I think you’re overreacting.”

“I am not overreacting!” Since I practically shouted this, I was perhaps not being very truthful.

Jackson laughed.

“You think it’s funny, Jackie?”

“I think you’re mad because she’s funnier than you are. And that’s your thing, isn’t it? You’re the funny one. You’re always the center of attention, always getting a laugh. And she stole your thunder right out from under you. Yeah, I’d say that was pretty funny. Priceless, actually.”

“I don’t believe what I’m hearing!”

“How does it feel?” Jackson asked with a wicked grin.

“How does what feel?”

“She totally showed you up!”

“Showed me up?”

“When you start repeating what I say, it’s because you can’t think of some smart remark. For once you weren’t the center of attention, and you hate that, don’t you? You really, really hate that.”

I eased myself back in the seat and looked out the window.

“Baby’s mad now,” Jackson observed as he pulled into traffic.

I wasn’t mad. I was seething. I hadn’t felt such bright, hot hatred in a coon’s age.

“Don’t start none, won’t be none,” Jackson said, using a Southernism that sounded foreign on his lips.

I turned to glare at him, but he merely smiled his devil-may-care smile, reminding me that he was just about the most handsome man I’d ever met, that we were engaged to be married, that he was Noah’s “Papa” while I was Noah’s daddy, that he had my heart and soul in his back pocket and always would.

And worse, he knew it.

“I hate you,” I said quietly. “
Jackie
.”

“It’s all good. And if you call me Jackie one more time, I’m going to start calling you Clarence. That is your middle name, isn’t it, Wiley
Clarence
Cantrell? How’s it hanging,
Clarence
?”

“Who told you my middle name?”

“For me to know and you to find out.”

“Fine. It doesn’t bother me.”

“That’s not what your mom said….
Clarence
.”

“You are so childish!”

“At least my middle name isn’t
Clarence
.”

“I hate you.”

“Don’t start none, won’t be none….
Clarence
.”

In the backseat, Noah starting singing again: “Hoo hoo awk! Hoo hoo awk! Hoo hoo awk!”

O
N
THE
way to our “consultation” with the assistant principal of Noah’s school, I called my brother, Bill.

“Hey, bro,” I said.

“Hey ho.” He sounded distracted or annoyed or both.

“We picked up Jack’s parents at the airport,” I said.

“Oh.”

“I’m thinking about inviting them to Mama’s house for Sunday dinner. Thought y’all would like to meet them.”

“Oh.”

I waited for Bill to decide if he was going to talk or not. It took him at least a minute to warm up to the idea of having a conversation over the phone. Forget about e-mail, or texting, or Facebook updates. Answering the phone once in a while was the extent of his infatuation with modern technology.

“So, what do you think?” I asked after the silence grew.

“You sure it’s a good idea?”

“Not sure what you mean.”

“Wiley, I know you talk about getting married and stuff, but you know that’s never going to happen.”

“Why do you say that?”

“It’s illegal in the state of Mississippi, to start with. And it’s just, you know….”

“It’s just what?”

“It’s not right, Wiley. You know how I feel. I’ve gotten used to the idea of you having yourself a little boyfriend, but don’t ask me to go any further. It’s your life. Do what you want. Just don’t rub our noses in it.”

“It’s just a Sunday dinner,” I pointed out.

“Did you ask Mama how she feels about it?”

“I thought I would ask you first.”

“She’s not a big fan of your little boyfriend, you know.”

“Why do you always refer to him as my ‘little’ boyfriend? It’s not like we’re in grade school!”

“Whatever.”

“We’re engaged, Bill.”

“So you say.”

“We are!”

“Since two guys can’t get married, I’m not sure that means a whole hell of a lot, but I guess you can call it whatever you like.”

“What is it with you?”

“I know you don’t like my ‘Baptist gasbag bullshit,’ but my beliefs are important to me, and one of those beliefs is that marriage is between a man and a woman, the way God intended it, like the Bible says. I’m never going to change my mind on that. I’m trying to be polite to you and keep my mouth shut, but I feel like you’re always mocking me and mocking my religion and making fun of everything I believe in. Especially after what you wrote about me in that goddamn book of yours.”