Deep in the Heart of Me (40 page)

I've never known my father to lose control of the family, but I see he has now.

Elsie lets out a scream like a cow trying to deliver a breech calf. She picks up her half-eaten plate of breakfast and throws the plate at me. I duck just in time to allow it safe passage to the wall where it breaks apart, and her eggs go sliding down the wallpaper.

This seems to rouse them, and they are all talking at once with Pee-Wee crying over the top of it. I nod to Joseph, and I get my extra gloves and my neck scarf and hat from the lean-to. When Maman calls after, I pretend I don't hear. And I nearly don’t. There’s a roaring in my ears and a sinkhole in my middle. I can’t go down. Not here.

Outside in the cold air, I come to it, and the anger takes over, and I kick through the snow all the way to the barn while I pull on my gloves and wonder aloud, "Did she say that? Did she say any of that?"

I mean Sobe Bell. Where would Elsie get such ideas if she hadn't been talking straight to the source?

I wouldn't ask Elsie if they held my feet in boiling pitch.

And my family…they can go to the devil with her. I got plenty to keep me busy. I got the deliveries with the oil and baseball, and I could sell magazines. And…then I remember Ulie. I have to stay here so he can get out. Damn. Well, not until then.

They ain't gonna be put upon with me until May.

And that girl, that maddening…girl Sobe Bell.

Elsie…is right about her. I only know the girl in the picture it seems, the image of the girl that turned on me in the Ford…soon after, right after we’d…I’d touched her. It was pity. It’s all she’s got for me. I never felt such shame. Not even when we saw the townies at the games and wore their old shoes, not even that touches this.

Joseph comes, and we work in silence. He helps me get the sled in the barn and lead Tibby to harness. She said she wanted to marry me. Did I force her from the start?

I try to remember, and I know because my brain holds things. She said from the first she couldn't leave her dad. But that was because she was scared of him, wasn't she? He was off his rocker from what I knew. But she didn't think she could leave him because he didn't have anyone else.

And he was crazy. He was dragging her all over. He would have taken her again and…maybe I'd never see her…again.

That's what drove me. Was that wrong? Yes, it got fierce, and I was strong, and I pushed her to save her. I pushed like that…but…am I still pushing?

I'm persistent, I'll give that. But that's a notable quality Dad says. He says most people don't have it, and I always did stick to what I put my mind on.

I put my mind on her that first day, first glance of her in that car. I remember how powerful it was, just a second of her passing, she looked at me. Well, I'd never seen anything like her.

I still feel that way.

And I never let her go. I've held tight. Being away, I just held tighter.

"You reckon…I've…with Sobe…what Elsie said. You reckon, there's some truth…?" I say to Joseph as we put Old Sam to harness.

He stops buckling a strap and he is looking at me with trepidation.

And that's all the answer I really need.

Bill got his own truck a couple months back while I was away. Uncle Frank runs the station while Pat and Mike run the other truck or work with Frank. So I ride with Bill on his route because him, and Mike don't get along if they spend too much time together, and it's no better with Pat.

Bill is pretty boastful about it, how Mike just isn't ready for the responsibility of taking this longer, more difficult route so Frank puts him on the easier route that runs closer to Mauman. And comes to ambition, Pat's no better. They'd rather run their dogs and drink whiskey than open a station or increase their territory. Now Bill likes a beer enough, but he doesn't touch that whiskey like they do. So Mike will probably live with Frank for the rest of his life, and Pat, what woman would ever have him with his wild ways? He hopes I learned my lesson. That Shaun getting killed might be best thing could of happened for me.

"How's that?" I say catching myself from opening and closing my fists.

He goes on then how Shaun was only going to lead me further astray and get me, a boy, killed trying to play a man's game and Pat had no business going for that sheriff with me.

"Wasn't like that," I say.

And he goes on how it was just like that, and I already know he ain't talking to me to hear me out, he's talking so I hear him.

In my mind, I call him little BB. Boastful Bill. While he jabbers, I keep my eyes out the window mostly, and I smirk at myself in the glass if I'm in a mean mood and if I'm not I think about playing ball, and I try to decide if I like first base best or third, then I make up that show where Sobe comes and watches me play in the minors and I'm really good, of course, and she's about so proud of me, and real pretty too sitting there, front row in a white dress. And that always leads to that time with her and how warm she was in that place where I put my hand and touched her like I did, and I have to stop it then cause that thought is best saved for when I'm alone.

So while I dream all this, I smoke it down and pretty soon Bill is just like a giant katydid making noise in the background you don't hardly pay attention to.

He also likes to give me advice, even though I don't ask for it except once or twice while I'm learning the ropes. It takes me about two days to figure everything out, but he wants to believe I have a lot to learn, and he loves to finish about every sentence with it, "You've got a lot to learn, boyo."

And he thinks he sings like Jimmie Rodgers and yodels like him too, and I got news for him. I roll the window down when he gets going, no matter how cold it is. I sit up on the door sometimes keeping my head and most of my body outside just to get away from that foul sound he makes when he tries to sing. He tries to laugh at me, then he sings all the more to show me I'm mistaking, he's really good, but if I stay out too long he starts hitting at me, and he gets mad. I come in and say, "Well, shut-up then," and he pouts around for a while and says he's gonna tell his pop I can't ride with him, and I say, "Suits me fine."

He's a blowhard pretty much. Least brightest of my cousins, that's all. I look at the ledger, and it takes him too long to figure the numbers and I say, let me do it, and he says I can't, but then a few days later he says I can and he watches every number I write, and sometimes he tells me I'm wrong, but then he stares at it and mutters and guess what, I'm always right.

I go back some, and I catch three mistakes where he didn't charge enough. He is mad at me for pointing this out, but I figure he should know he can't do multiplication to save his ass. He'd let me know, and he'd grind it into me too. I do the numbers after that.

So we work north of home, high up in farm country, Germans mostly, towns like Millstadt and German Town and Shultzland. I read us the paper every morning, and we get the news on Hitler and then we talk it all over that county pretty much. We carry on about it like we care, when we don't care, hardly a bit because it's no skin on us what goes on over there. Except if Sobe goes over. We live in the best country God ever made so leave us the hell alone, that's what I say. But times are so hard, and we have to collect and if we don't, we can't deliver, and it's a hard business when we have to say no credit and pull off. One time I beg Bill to give them just a few gallons, and he says I have to pay then, so I do because it is a man just lost his wife, and there are children, and they don't look like children should. So Bill puts some in his drum and then I have to hear about it, and I say, "I said I'll pay so shut your yapper." And I think it's coming then, him and me figuring out just who is boss, and who better learn to button his big fat lip.

It's made worse when this girl he fancies at one of the farms pays me attention. I do not ask for her attention, but she barely talks to him and wants to know all about me. I mind my business and fill the drum, but she gives me a biscuit, and I am all right taking it. She tells me her name which I already know from Bill saying it over and over—Froida. He's always telling me how girls fancy him along the route and a couple of them married, letting him know their husbands ain't around, or they can't pay for the oil but they would trade.

I tell him he's full of shit, and he don't like it and tells me to mind my betters, and I say, "Betters?" when I think he means 'elders,' but then I think he does mean, 'betters.'

"You ain't better than me," I remind him. I will fight him on that.

But we are at that one farm with the lady he likes, and I don't welcome it, or encourage it, but I'm telling you she's giving me the eye.

Maybe I just have that slick thing girls like, but I don't know. I'm just meat and potatoes. A mud-grubber with mutt ears and haircut last time by the barber at State School and the few whacks I've since taken at it myself.

My clothes are substantial and nothing fancy. My marrying suit was burned a year ago by my own father and I never got another…suit.

So where the slick comes from I can't guess.

And Bill isn't ugly. No Clannan is ugly, and I say it truthfully, but Sobe says I am the most handsome, and this lady seems to believe it because she says it while I'm filling the drum. "You could be in the movies you're so pretty," she says.

Well, I laugh, but Maman always says that. And women do favor me, I see it now, and I eat well on the route as they love to give me cookies and hunks of cake and biscuits with meat hanging out the sides. I never turn down food.

Maybe they feel sorry for me like I do some of the children I see, but I don't know how I seem pathetic, so it must be that I'm favored.

Little Lord and Master, my sister said. Well, I wouldn't say that exactly as I must work for a living. But it is fun to be so favored, and it makes Bill pretty mad. Ulie, he'd love to hear about it, to see it.

So finally, Bill goes on about it, him being better than me, he says it outright. And I say again, "You ain't better than me."

And he says, "I never been locked up, never took nothing wasn't mine, never killed no one neither."

He's driving the truck, but that don't stop me from punching him in the side of the head. He don't swerve much and his arm swings, and he catches my shoulder, and I grab his fist, and it's a test of strength then, and I've had a rough year and have not filled out big as him with his three years on me, but with all the work I've done in my life I am wiry and strong, and I'm madder than most, and you wouldn't believe how determined that makes me when I give into it. I bend his wrist back. I could break it.

He swerves worse cause he puts on the brakes but most of our load is delivered, and we slide. I let go, and he grabs the wheel with both hands, and he keeps us out of the ditch, and we're both sitting there like what the hell are we doing.

After that Bill quits talking to me, which isn't so bad except when he won't answer a simple question like, "Where's the tank, Bill?" so I know where to park the truck or something like that.

That's fine. I never did pretend we were friends.

There's a second station up in Kinsey, about forty miles from home. I don't know why they bought it, Dad and Uncle John and Frank. Pat said they got a good deal. So what they want to do is put me up there for a spell to get it going. I would run that station and live in back. They said it would be slow maybe until spring.

"I have to go home for Christmas," I say.

"There ain't no vacation," Frank says. "We own this business. That means we do everything. There ain't no time the work is done," he says.

Sounds just like farming.

Then they say how Sanny Claus will find me up there, I'm not to worry, and they burst out laughing.

I know Frank is harder than Dad. He doesn't care who likes him or don't. And he doesn't discuss things. You can come back at Dad later sometimes, but you can't come back at Frank. Bill didn't have to tell me not to tell him about the ledger, but I fixed those mistakes and then we were short money from it. Bill tried to go back and collect but one of those fellas was nowhere to be found, and the other two didn't have it and were mad he thought they owed him anything. One guy got so desperate he put up his fists and yelled, "Come on try to take it out of me. Come on." We left his farm with him still standing there in his long johns with fists raised.

So thirty-four dollars, a near fortune, is missing. When Bill tells Frank, he goes on and on until Bill yells he should ask me about it so he does, and I tell him Bill made some mistakes.

Frank says Bill has to make it up from his pay.

And Frank rewards me with more work at an outpost about on the North Pole. I can't dare tell them I need to go home and see Sobe, that she is counting the days until Christmas vacation and so am I, living for that time pretty much.

But that's not what happens. I try to call her, and it won't go through, so I call home and tell them to tell her if she shows. Then I am driven north, and I spend that first week she would have been off pretty much repeating this picture—me in the backroom with an oil heater eating an old sandwich and reading an old book I find there, a story about a boy who goes to war and loses his leg and other horrible stuff. This bastard is way worse off than me.

Wasn't for Sobe it wouldn't even be so bad because the Christmas before I was in State School. But it is Christmas Eve when someone stops in and asks if I could fix their car. I know some things from working on our tractor. And I know a little bit about trucks. This is a car, though, but an engine is an engine. So I have a few tools, and I get busy, and that helps pass time, but I don't finish that car until ten at night. They are coming for it next morning. So I have all those hours to take off for home, and that's what I plan to do.

I don't take that car, but I think about it. For a second I do. I could take it and be home before morning. There is a wild thing in me, I admit, and something in me wants to take it and go crazy.

Bill already called me a thief. A killer.

He's wrong about me. I guess my time in State School has made me think twice about cars and mules.