If You Want Me to Stay (2 page)

“Un-unh,” I said. “You're a lie.”

“What do you think it is then?”

“I think he was born that way.”

“You better hope not,” said my sister, and I asked her what she meant but she was through talking to me about Daddy's problems and pretty soon she was through with all of us.

Up in the cab of the pickup some Pop Rocks Carter had stashed in the seat cushion and half a crumbly pack of Nabs were all we had for lunch and supper too. Thank goodness for the empty Coke bottle and the empty quart of oil in the floorboards. Already Tank was twisting and grabbing his mess and after a little bit of this he squealed
I got to go
and I made Carter hold the quart of oil while Tank filled it with his bubbly pee. Carter wasn't happy with this assignment. He said he won't holding no pee bottle. I told him if he didn't he could go back inside, hang with Daddy. Sometimes I talked awful to Carter but not really to Carter, he was just standing in. But he didn't know that. He turned his head and held the god-durn bottle. I told Tank stick his skinny thing up to the mouth but don't go down in it. Don't get stuck now, I told Tank. Carter's head was turned but I heard his smile. Flies buzzed. Plastic thundered as he let rip.

Tank fell asleep with his mouth open. His pee quart frothing on the floorboard. Carter caught me mumbling.

“Who you talking to?”

I screwed up bad. I said: “Mom.”

“Mama?”

“Babies say
mama.”

“Where's she at?”

My eyes went lazy-slack. I came close to saying, “Y'all go outside and play.”

But I said nothing because soon it would be dark down at the edge of the lawn and the woods would creep up the grass in bushy shadows. When the darkness reached the hood of
the truck, no lights on in the house and two little boys both scared of the dark, what was I going to do? I thought about this and how I could not be talking to my mama, day or night dreaming about basement, attic, up-under-the-eaves, sump pump, cave cricket, crawl space. But have you ever tried to stop your mind from going where it believes it ought to be? Like a dog digging a sleeping hole up under a shade bush, my mind kept seeking out that cold secret sand.

C
ARTER FELL ASLEEP TOO
, then Tank drooled his arm awake and the two of them, sweaty and sleep-drunk, started to sing. Tank's squeaky soprano climbed up on some Curtis. He sang about you don't need no baggage, just climb on board that train. He winged up high and sweet just like Curtis, copied right off Daddy's favorite album,
The Very Best of Curtis Mayfield,
the one record he won't mind if we play three times in a row even though once he brought his friend home from a job he had making church steeples and him and his friend were drinking beer and we were blasting Curtis and his friend said, You like that soul music?

My daddy laughed and laughed. He didn't care if he wasn't supposed to be liking Curtis. He didn't care that we were white and that all the singers of songs we favored were black. He used to say black people had got it all over white people and he even preferred their company. But when it came right down to it my daddy didn't hang with anybody except us whether he was gone off or All Clear. He had a few
buddies used to come by the house but they never stayed long. You'd see them once or twice and then never again. He had some brothers but they never came by the house either or called him up to wish him happy birthday and we never went and visited them on Sundays or Christmas. I don't believe I could even tell you their names, which I cannot imagine the offspring of, say, Tank, not knowing my name.

Tank got “People Get Ready” taken right out from under him when Carter dropped us right down into “Superfly.” We did a few verses of “Superfly,” then Carter made that guitar chug with his tongue, announcing Mr. Hot Buttered Soul himself. He said, Shaft he a bad mother hush your mouth I said then here came Tank: I'm talking about Shaft.

All three of us said it together so loud I would not doubt Daddy could hear us:
John
Shaft.

T
HE WINDSHIELD WAS
a movie screen. I described everything to my brothers: mountains and a castle and spotted horses and maidens in a hay field wearing dresses that lace up at the chest like my Chuck Taylors. There goes Grandpa on the
Beverly Hillbillies
chasing after Lady Godiva, there's Mama and Daddy watering a garden and then sitting up on the porch stairs, her one step down, his knees pinching her tight to where she can't go anywhere.

I
N THE GLOVE
compartment Carter found two of Daddy's wobbly old water-stained cigarettes. Because Carter's
an old root hog he knew there were matches on the dash under the drift of receipts, napkins, newspaper circulars listing what's on sale.

He held the matchbook up to the cigarette and looked at me.

“Go ahead light it up, be just like him see do I care.”

Carter held the cigarette in his hand, twisting it.

“Dragons if you ask me have smoke coming out of their mouths, not people.”

Carter twisted off the filter and the brown leaves pelted the floorboard.

I
HAD AN OLDER SISTER
, she left, she couldn't take it. She said, If this is love I'm joining the motherfucking carnival.

Tank and Carter missed her but I tried to act like she was ill at everybody all the time which she wasn't. She could make somebody laugh. Once when she was about Carter's age she got mad at Mama and Daddy and ran away and when they caught up to her at the Family Mart playing pinball and asked her where she was headed anyway, she said, On a goddamn diet, and smacked the gum some old boy had bought her.

I
N
D
ADDY'S TRUCK
: duct tape from when he used to go to work as an assistant. He assisted: carpenters, plumbers, pipe fitters, surveyors, farmers, roofers, ditch diggers, pulp wooders. He could assist near about anyone doing near
about anything. I believe he could have done most of it himself, could have hired him some assistants, but there was the pressure in his head.

Plastic curly rings from when you open a thing of milk.

All these receipts. What's he doing, fixing to file his taxes?

A couple of tapes: Creedence which don't work anymore or I'd have it blasting and the Sound of Philadelphia featuring Teddy Pendergrass and Gamble and Huff. Miles Davis's
Sketches of Spain
which he used to put on whenever either Tank or Carter would not go down and he'd put one or both of them in the pickup, ride them around listening to some Trumpet Jazz, which always worked. Mama claimed it was a miracle. According to her I never had problems going to sleep, never fought it. She said I must have been born tired. What it was: I'd close my eyes and a whole other world would start to spin and I'd hang on and dearly hope.

I'
M NOT THINKING
I'm going to go to college. I might get me a job counting stuff like nail clippers in bins. Dip your hands in a sink of cool metal. You will probably find me living out in the middle of some field or in some trees on the backside of a hill or near a train-track trestle or some broken-windowed warehouses. I will be up in there all alone. People might ask are you lonely? They might stick their head in my window. Might chuck dirt clods at signs out on the road in front of my house. I'll be behind the curtain smiling.

T
ANK AND
C
ARTER
were hot, hungry, tired, aggravated, smelly. I could not distract them. They wanted out of that pickup.

“We haven't seen him in an hour,” said Carter. “He's sleep.”

But there was no telling. When it ran its course he drifted off from the awful strain of it. Like running a marathon, I heard him tell Mama once. Slept like he was dead for twelve hours and when he woke up he did not know squat. Blacked out like a drunk man.

Except he was not a drunk. With his work friends he'd drink a beer to be polite but you could tell he didn't like the taste of it, sipping it, holding it finicky up against his chest. He's a good man, my daddy. Did you know that in the fall he'd sign us out of school and load us up in the pickup and drive us to Raleigh for the state fair? And in the winter he'd turn right around drive us back up there for the circus? Sometimes we'd all ride over to Wilmington to attend SuperFlea and my daddy would know nearly all the people running the booths, whatever it was they were selling, old Coke signs or cassette tapes or Depression glass, he'd have them talking about favorite breakfast meat. I knew my mama loved my daddy. She must not of been feeling too good about herself right along the time of that broken up day, her one girl set up any place will tolerate her foul mouth and her three boys locked in a boiling pickup out in the no-tree-plantedest yard in the whole state and her high up in some hotel talking on the phone to some girl from work about I don't know shoes or what kind of food you ought to order on a first date with a stranger.

I knew she knew we were out there. If people loved you and you were in trouble that trouble rumbled in their stomach. They'd be driving along and get a ice-cream headache telling them you were in need. Happened to me whenever Tank or Carter ran off in the woods and Carter came up on a bee's nest which, he was violently allergic, or Tank got chased by some wild I'll-eat-any-damn-thing dog. People if they loved you, they had to leave though. Don't ask me why, it don't make sense to me, it's just something that happens. But see, I must not could love right. I would not leave my little brothers there with him and I was for damn sure not about to let Sheriff Deputy Rex take them.

Tank said, “He's sleep.”

Carter pried up the door lock and put his hand down to open the door. Myself I slapped the merciful Jesus out of that boy. About Jesus and all, I don't think so, but what I like is prayer, even if it's just singing or moaning while chewing the edge of your pillowcase when you're fixing to flood the sheets with tears.

Tank went to thrashing so I slapped his mess too. Then it was a tangle and crisp hot slaps on sweaty skin and grunted cussing of boys too young to know how to cuss and Carter pulling up the lock and me locking it back down. Finally he got it up and opened the door and flew out across the sandy yard up the steps into the dark-mouthed house.

“Holy moly,” I said.

Tank went to wailing. I hugged him quiet. He was shaking so hard the springs in the seat were singing.

I had to crack the window wider because me and Tank, waiting to see what was going to happen, breathed up all the oxygen. It was straight nervous fumes up in there. Tank's quart had gone to really humming. Neither of us could breathe good.

Then Carter came strolling out on the porch. Screen door slapped his leisurely ass like it'll do a slow old back-leg-dragging dog. He held his hands up All Clear.

“He ain't even in there,” he hollered.

Tank made a noise in his throat, a half-strangled hiccup, when we seen the shadow darken the rusty screen. Carter was shrugging and fixing I could tell to strut his cocky stuff,
I told you so, son, us sweating away in that pickup all day and he ain't even in here.

Daddy had Carter in a headlock before the screen door popped closed. Carter stared sadly at the bunch of bananas Daddy was carrying. With his free hand Daddy put the whole bunch up to Carter's mouth. “Eat, monkey,” he told Carter.

Tank was up in my lap, wedged hard against the steering wheel. He had his arms around my neck and I could feel the laughter welling up in his slight little chest. It vibrated and spilled out across the cab.

“Eat monkey, eat monkey.” Carter opened up his mouth, took a peel-and-all bite.

“Let me hold one of them bananas, Cart, I'm starving,” said Tank. He laughed and laughed.

“Shut up now,” I told Tank. “That ain't funny.”

Daddy crammed the banana stem in Carter's mouth. Carter's face was wrinkly red. Tank's crazy laugh sucked continuous into sobbing.

“What's he doing what's he doing what's Daddy—”

“Hush,” I told Tank. But he wouldn't so I squeezed so hard he choked. I don't know why. I guess because I knew I had to get out of the truck and stop Daddy and let me ask a question: What about those people who leave you with some sweet, ancient, set-in-their-ways, been-years-since-they-even-thought-about-children grandparents and claim they're going to come back for you and you don't hear jack from them for going on, what's it been, eight or nine months? What about somebody who would drop you off one Friday at dusk and act like they'll see you in a matter of days and then don't even write or call or nothing? Who do they think they are? I felt Tank choking under my squeeze, looked over at Carter choking on bananas not ten feet away and I wondered why in the hell she ever named me after my daddy.

Daddy had somehow one-handedly wrenched off his belt. He snapped the fat buckle against the porch boards. I let go of Tank and for a few seconds he was quiet, too stunned to know I'd hurt him. I was big-time wishing his silence would linger.

Daddy had Carter up against the porch column, tightening his arms to his sides with the belt. Daddy was singing a loud tuneless something out of his head. I did not recognize it. I had not a clue about that song out of my daddy's head.

My lap grew warm and wet. Tank said, “He's got some
scissors,” and I looked up into Carter's eyes, wild, trying to search out mine. I wanted to roll down the window, say,
I told you to stay in here with us,
but I could not say a word even to Tank who was crying all out of breath, “Joel Junior, Joel Junior.”

Carter's yellow hair, wavy down to his shoulders, turned porch boards into carpet. Daddy's singing got louder. I did not understand note one.

Carter's eyes switched off. Any hope I would save him leaked right out of him. I could see it, hope sifting off the porch like cigarette smoke while I sat in warm stinking pee. Tank took to shivering. I palmed his forehead to see did he have a fever. Then he said the word “mama.” I said: “Babies say ‘mama.'” I said, “Anyway, that's only a word.” He wailed, not like a seven-year-old, but in that desperate hilly way toddlers cry when something gets taken away from them. Blood dripped down Carter's neck. Train's brakes sighed and sighed as it slung right into the station. I said, “Let's sing some Curtis, Tank. I ain't going nowhere. I ain't leaving on that train. It's
been
decided, everybody knows it, I was born this way, I'm awful at love.”