How the Hula Girl Sings (16 page)

I went outside and walked down the street and hitched on out to La Harpie Road. I stood right there not far from the highway where it all happened about three years ago in the middle of the night. I stood right in the middle of the road below the streetlamp that flickered green then yellow then red then green again in a message I couldn’t quite understand. There was no marking there in the dirt or dust. No space left along the road that showed where that sweet young baby girl lost her life. I walked about a half-mile to Laverne Street and down to the end of the block. There was that baby’s sweet white house. There was where her parents lived and mourned, nestled under a pretty black-tiled roof and white wood porch. I had come out here before the trial. I had stood right in front of the porch and then ran away. There were things in that house I couldn’t face. Things that hung over my head with every breath I managed to take. But now it was all done. All just dirt in a yellow cigar box. I walked up the steps and knocked on the front door. A nice, round-faced lady answered the door.

“Is Mr. or Mrs. Heloise home?” I muttered in a quick breath.

“No, I’m sorry, they don’t live here anymore. They must’ve moved out of here about three years ago or so.”

I nodded, not saying a word.

“Lost their baby in an accident down the road. Terrible thing. They decided it was best to pick up and move. I still get mail for them sometimes. Sweet couple, they were. Sweet as a pea. Hate to see something tragic like that happen to nice people like that.”

I nodded again, staring down at my shoes. The porch beneath my feet was still. The whole world was quiet tonight.

“Thanks.”

“Were you an acquaintance of theirs?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Would you like to leave your name? If I hear from them anytime soon, I can tell them you stopped by.”

“No, that’s all right … I just came by to see how they were. Thanks,” I mumbled. “Thanks again.”

“Surely.”

The nice lady smiled at me and closed the door. I stood out on the porch and held in my breath. I could feel my hands shaking at my side. I could feel my heart shaking inside. I stared at the blue and pink flowers in bloom that rose out of wooden boxes beside the door.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m sorry in a way I hope you might never know.”

The buds remained still in their vase.

“I’d trade my life for yours right know, I swear to God. But I know wishing and dreaming like that doesn’t do you any good. I’m sorry … I’m sorry … I wish I could say it all a better way …”

I stared at those flowers once more, then turned and walked down the porch steps and back out on the road.

lonely driver

Before the engine was even off, Charlene was tugging at her brassiere and had me pinned against the soft vinyl seat in a soft-lipped kiss. This was more than I could have hoped for. These moments between us were better than anything I could have ever wished.

“What happened to your cheek?” she asked, staring at me.

“I got hurt at work,” I said, which was both a lie and not a lie.

“Thank God I don’t like you for your looks,” she joked.

“Thank God,” I said.

“Take my bra in your mouth and pull,” Charlene giggled, pressing her chest to my face. I shrugged my shoulders and removed it with my teeth. There was the smoothest softest plane of flesh I had ever seen. There was something there that lit a fire under all my skin, that made all my past disappear, that made me think I could do just about anything as long as she was close by.

Charlene managed to keep a permanent smile on my old tired face. Even when she wasn’t beside me. Even when her sweet perfume wasn’t in the air and her kiss wasn’t close by.

Then there was a thing or two that felt kind of out of place about the whole blessed thing. Mostly, Earl Peet’s sturdy white fists slamming into my teeth.

The Gas-N-Go gave me a minimal warning sign. I finished stocking the sundries and cookies and crackers shelf and hopped on back behind the counter, when the tiny silver bell above the door gave a little ring. I turned and stared right into Earl Peet’s face.

“You’ve been with Charlene,” Earl grunted, shaking his head. “I told you what would happen if you saw her again.”

“Christ, Earl, she’s a grown woman. She can see whoever the hell she wants to see.”

“Naw, you got her all confused. She don’t know if she’s coming or going.”

“I don’t think Charlene would see it like that. I think she’d say something about you not knowing when something’s over.”

“That so?” Earl grinned, turning his loose fingers into steady white fists.

“Maybe not.” I smiled. “Maybe I don’t know her so well.”

I began looking behind the counter for something to defend myself with. There was the old .22 stashed under the cash register drawer. But shooting him would only create more problems for myself, one of which would be the certain end of the romance between me and Charlene.

“Come on out from around that counter,” Earl muttered, looking me hard in the eyes.

“Christ, Earl, we already seem to know how this is all gonna end. Mostly with more of my teeth on the floor. Don’t you think we can settle this some other way?”

“No,” Earl grunted. “Now come on out from behind there.”

“I’m working here, Earl, I got a gas station to run. Can’t you come back some other time?”

Earl lunged for me and grabbed hold of my blue work shirt, gripping it hard. Then he spat right in my goddamn face. There was something so sad, so pitiful stocked-up there in his eyes. Hurt, I guess.

“Now you come out and around before I tear you and this place all up.”

I nodded, then reached for the pistol and shoved it right in his face. “Get the hell out of my store.”

Earl didn’t move at all. He stared right at me from over the barrel of the gun, looking at me hard with those cold black eyes, shaking his head real slow.

“I ain’t afraid of dying, Luce Lemay. You should know that now. But you oughta be afraid to go anywhere without that goddamn gun.”

“Get the hell out,” I mumbled, still holding the gun to his forehead. “Don’t come on back, either. We don’t appreciate your business.”

He stared at me hard once more, then turned and walked out through the double glass doors. He left behind a notion that this was the beginning of something worse.

It all hit me like a head-on collision as I walked on home alone, humming to calm myself. I saw the headlights coming from down the road.

There was nowhere to run. That road was long and straight and narrow, and as soon as I made for the shoulder I realized it was just as flat and plain as the highway itself.

I closed my eyes and the pickup’s engine roared and then I felt the side of the front fender slam hard into the back of my left knee, knocking me clear off my feet. I rolled along my face and side of my head in the dust. The pickup braked and parked cockeyed along the road, and then sped off. I lay there a long while, holding my sore side, unable to move.

I made it on home and crashed through my door and fell beside my bed, hitting my head on the floor with my face. Then Junior came in right away and stood over me, mumbling something, lifting me up. All I could say was that intolerable name.

“Earl Peet.” I coughed. “Earl Peet.”

Junior helped me into my bed and laid a cold rag on my face and took off my shoes and closed the door and turned out the light. Then he grabbed his tools from his room and took a little walk all alone in the dark.

He was the best friend any man could have.

He placed the claw-hammer against that shiny silver door handle and pried it off, catching it in his huge white palm.

He put the ratchet against the bolt on the door and turned.

It began to come undone right in his own hands.

He went right to work and opened the door and slipped the gear into neutral, then gave that red pickup a push. He pushed it all the way out and down the street, then behind the Fleckens’s woodshed way out in the back of their property, all alone, shaded by the weeping willows in the dark. Then he took it apart. He took the whole fucking thing apart. He worked all night, with the hammer and ratchet and wrench and his tools, then left a message in Earl Peet’s yard using some black rubber hoses and part of the grill and some of the transmission and radiator parts and the muffler and some bent wheel rims. He left a message there in the dark using the oil from Earl Peet’s red pickup truck, left it right along his gray driveway in huge black letters that fucker would be able to read.

HE
WITHOUT
SIN

When that bastard Earl stepped out of his yard to go to work, his whole face sunk right in and he fell to his knees, shaking his head.

“No,” he whispered. His pretty red truck was gone. In the space where it had been parked there was nothing but torn-up truck parts.

I wish I could have seen his slack-jawed face.

It was right then, dreaming of Earl gawking at the truck parts on his lawn, that I was sure Junior Breen was the most loyal, truest man I would ever know. Hell, that big fool was on parole, too. But he hadn’t cared. He had seen me, had done a thing for me without thinking. Without thinking, he had risked being sent back behind bars.

If anyone I knew deserved something sweet and true, it was him.

Three days later, it arrived. I stepped out of the Gas-NGo and smiled, staring at one of the prettiest sights I had ever seen.

There was ol’ Junior behind the wheel of the most beautiful car I could dream.

It was a big black Monte Carlo SS, maybe an ’86 or ’87, with the roaring 305 V8 and glasspacks underneath and huge silver rims, jacked up in the back like a real hot rod, kicking up dust and exhaust where it was parked between the Number 2 and Number 4 pumps.

“Sweet mother of God,” I mumbled over my dry gums. “Now that is a goddamn car.”

Junior just grinned and gunned the engine some more, listening to it growl like a jungle cat.

“How the hell did you afford that?” I asked.

“I didn’t,” he mumbled. “I’m taking it for a test ride.”

“A test ride?”

“Sure, sure. Mr. Dulaire down there at the dealership let me take it for a spin.”

“He let you take it for a spin?” I muttered.

“Told him I was new in town and just bought a farm a few miles away.”

“You thinking of buying a car?”

“Nope.” Junior smiled. “Just saw it sitting there on the lot and it reminded me of a car I wanted when I was seventeen.”

“Hell yeah it does. This is the goddamn car every seventeen-year-old kid would want.” I ran my hand along the smooth black hood, feeling it glisten under my skin.

“This car is prettier than most girls in town.” I grinned.

“Sure is.” Junior smiled. “Hey, do you wanna go for a ride?” he asked, revving the engine again.

“A ride …?” I mumbled. “What about the gas station here?”

“Heck, ol’ Clutch won’t mind if you take a little break. Five minutes in the sweetest ride of your life.”

I gave a little chuckle and pulled down my cap and stared at Junior there. Behind that wheel, he was a changed man. He was free. You could nearly see it in his face. His blue eyes were shining bright and his teeth were stuck together in the biggest smile I’d ever seen him make.

“Guess five minutes won’t hurt,” I said. I went back and locked up the front glass doors. Then I touched that car’s silver handle and got on in and felt myself disappear right there.

Junior took it out on the highway and we tooled along, taking 101, spinning past all the farms and fields and barns out there, blowing past it all.

“This car is hell on wheels,” I howled, holding my head out the passenger window. “It’s a goddamn hell on wheels!”

Junior nodded and smiled warmly to himself. Then his eyes got dark and he mumbled something to himself.

“This is what it must feel like to be free.”

We cut back down the highway and along La Harpie Road past the cemetery gates and those poor sleeping souls and then straight through downtown, the two of us fool ex-cons on parade in the most magnificent car of all time, driving past all the gawkers and needle-eyed gossipers with the biggest smiles either of us ever wore. Then Junior hit the gas and we were off again and back out on La Harpie Road heading toward the Gas-N-Go, and then he blew right past, past that beatific little filling station there like he was blowing right into the future, blowing alongside it all and straight ahead, the both of us moving fast.

This car was fast.

This car was maybe fast enough to outrun all of our pasts. Junior spun the car around and headed back.

“How much does this baby cost?” I shouted, leaping out in front of the Gas-N-Go as soon as Junior came to a stop.

“Too much.” Junior frowned.

“Too much? How much? How much could it cost?”

“Five grand.” He sulked.

“Five grand?! We can get five grand!”

“All I got is three,” Junior mumbled. “I don’t wanna wait another eight months to save up the rest of the cash.”

“What about a loan?” I asked. “Maybe you could get one, huh?”

“Not with my record. Mr. Dulaire’ll take a look at it and have himself a good laugh.”

“Huh,” I muttered. “Huh.”

Then it hit me. “Hell, I’ve got a few hundred bucks. Maybe if we throw in and give him what we got now, he’ll let us pay him the rest as we go.”

Junior stared at me, then smiled.

“This is Charlene’s old man, right?” he asked.

I nodded and spat in the dirt. “What about Clutch? Maybe he can spot us the rest and we can pay him back.”

Junior looked at me and shrugged his shoulders. “Couldn’t hurt to ask.”

“That’s all you’d have to do.”

“You think?” Junior smiled.

“Sure as I’m standing staring at the prettiest car in the world.”

It worked. Clutch lent ol’ Junior and me the rest of the money and the three of us went down there to pick the car up. When goddamn Mr. Dulaire saw me standing there, he nearly dropped the shiny silver keys he was holding.

“What … you taking that car?” he mumbled, rubbing his thick greasy chin.

“Yes, sir.” I smiled. “Maybe I’ll come by and cruise past your house in it tonight.”