Karen G. Berry - Mayhem 01 - Love and Mayhem (35 page)

The open window let in the usual Trailer Park night noise; radios and televisions turned up too loud, alarmed dogs, mating cats, the squealing of truck tires, the harping undertone of domestic disputes. Next door, there was thumping, crashing. “WHERE IS SHE!” Raven’s cry was one of pure motherly anguish. Melveena could hear Rhondalee’s tired, shrieky voice making replies, making excuses. “Where’s my DAUGHTER! WHERE IS MY DAUGHTER!”

There were limits as to what a woman could take. Melveena had officially reached hers. She reached over and shut the window. The Park would awaken and go out looking for the lost one. Melveena would keep watch beside Fossetta, stroking those blonde curls, watching those closed eyes. Touching her. Touching a person was such a relief, such a rare pleasure. Such an exquisite risk. It wasn’t memory that flowed from the sweetness of warm, living flesh, not action or smell or image. It was the essence.

She traced the battered cheeks, trailed her fingertips against those sweet, swollen lips. Such a placid sacrifice. “You’re so beautiful. So very beautiful.” She said it like a prayer. “You’re the most perfect thing I’ve ever seen.” Fossetta opened her eyes, then. One green, one brown. Melveena studied the fundamental depletion in those eyes. It might have been a trick of the light, a shadow cast by the scarves that lay across the shade of the bedside lamp. But as two tears welled up and fell from those bruised sockets, she swore she saw it.

One tear was green as emerald, the other gold as topaz.

HE WAS GLAD
to be leaving the two lane, hitting the freeway. He would open it up and hit it hard, then. Slam this rig home for all it was worth. All he had to do was get past the rest stop where the Patrol hid out, the rest stop that would always smell like coffee and piss, the rest stop that haunted him with disappointed silver eyes.

Her little brat of a daughter had those same eyes.

She’d been walking out alone in bare feet, trying to find a private place to practice her guitar. Just like she was almost every night when he followed her, learning her ways, biding his time. He’d watched her every night. Her nightgown showed her to him as clearly as if he were scoping her in infrared.

He’d followed her as she headed up Sweetly Dreaming Lane for the highway. She’d stopped to pat an old dog and talked to it like it could talk back. That gave him a chance to grab the guitar, which was what he wanted, not this skinny little girl. She hadn’t made a sound. She just twisted around that guitar case like a kudzu vine.

Lights were starting to come on in the trailers, and it was only a matter of time until someone stepped outside to see what the racket was. “This guitar is mine, little girl, and I’m not leaving without it.” She’d bared her teeth in an animal growl, and he hadn’t been able to pry her loose of it. It wasn’t her strength so much as her damn slipperiness, dodging the grip that would give him the necessary purchase to peel her away from the case. “I’ll peel you off, little girl. I’ll peel you just like a banana.” He’d fought her all the way to the truck with blows and his obviously superior strength. He’d made a science of overpowering women, so why couldn’t he separate this skinny little imp from the guitar?

He hadn’t been able to pry her loose of it. So he took her, too.

Which left him in a position he hadn’t quite anticipated. The brat sat beside him, holding that guitar case. Oh, he knew what was in there, and he wanted it. “That guitar is mine, little girl, and I’m taking it with me.”

She wrapped herself even tighter around it. “It won’t let you play it.” She had a strange voice for a girl. Dark and husky, but with fiddle notes singing out behind it. A strange voice for a strange girl.

“I have history with that guitar.” He’d heard that guitar once in his life. He’d picked up an old man by the side of the road, a sorry ass bum who had nothing but a paper bag and that guitar case. That old man had the bleached transparency of a shed snakeskin, and much of the same papery delicacy. Gator had looked him over, not sure just what it was he had in his cab.
Are you some kinda Chinaman?

He’d smiled, revealing intact teeth as long and yellow as old piano keys.
I’m some kinda everything
, the man had answered, the sound of his voice like the gurgle of a spring deep in a limestone cavern. He’d asked the old guy to play a little, trying to stay awake. Gator Rollins drove more miles per month than any sane man would attempt. And a little music from an old man might help his eyes stay open, since he didn’t drink coffee.

Words didn’t exist to describe what that man had pulled from those strings. His hands that looked old and skinny as garden tools had worked the strings and frets with an unheard of mastery, drawing forth a drone like a bagpipe, a drone like a hurricane. It had to be some special kind of open tuning, a guitar playing that full scale, that strong bass. He didn’t know the songs, but they were long and familiar. They twisted and hung and cried out and broke, wracked to death and brought back to life by the long yellow fingers of the stranger beside him.

The man had played for a hundred miles. He stopped. He placed the guitar in that case as if he were placing a body in a coffin for its eternal rest. He’d snapped that case shut and trailed one of his long yellow hands on it protectively.

He’d pulled over at that same rest stop, and they sat at idle. Gator looked out at the Free Coffee booth, considering his options. He’s decided to give the old man one chance to surrender.
I’ll buy it. Name your price.

There is no price. This one came to me after a hard fall from a high place. Helped me get back on my feet. I might give it away, but I’ll never sell it.

The old man had blown his one chance. Gator smiled.
I’ll sell my soul.

The old man smiled back.
Your soul is already mine
.

And Gator had put his hands around that man’s neck. He’d squeezed tighter and tighter, waiting for the stillness under his hands. That satisfying stillness. But the old man’s stillness was that of patience, not death. The second Gator let go, he’d arranged his collar, kicked open the door and dropped his hellish instrument to the asphalt.

I’ll see you again
. That long-toothed smile, those hellish eyes. The old man had taken his case by the handle and headed off to the coffee kiosk. What was a man to do? He’d driven away. Figured he’d forget that man and that sound, that aching wail of strings and pain, the drone of eternity that issued forth from the hole of that old black guitar.

He’d never forgotten, never.

He’d followed rumors, false leads, dead ends. Finally, he’d sat up at the Blue Moon Tap Room and heard about a giant black guitar from the Right Reverend Henry Heaven. How he’d been hearing talk of a little girl roaming the streets of the park at night, looking for a place to play the guitar inside.
I can help you get that guitar if you can help me with something else
, the Reverend had offered.
I’ve gotten myself into something of a situation here, and I have a little package that needs to go north. I hear you can help me get set up in a place where such arrangements are not unheard of. And in return, that guitar will be yours
.

Finally, Gator had it. The need to finger those frets was like electricity through his fingertips. But that nasty little girl was attached. She held onto that guitar like that old yellow man held on to it, like she’d grown around it and couldn’t be torn away.

“That guitar’s too big for you. Way too big for you.” She said nothing. “Tell you what, I got a guitar right back there in my sleeper cab that’s ten times nicer than what you got in that case. I’ll trade you, how’s that.”

She looked straight ahead.

He wanted her to look at him, he wanted her to be afraid. “You’re not even afraid, are you. Well you know what? I’m not afraid of anything either. Every bad thing in the world that can happen has already happened to me at least once. I have nothing left to fear. But you have plenty to fear, little girl. Unless you give me that guitar. I’ll take you home if you give it to me.”

“I’ll get home just fine on my own, thank you.”

What a mouthy little brat. He looked at the guitar case. He craved to open it, to make sure it was the one. It had to be. “Why don’t you open it up and let me hear you play it. I could teach you some things.”

“I don’t want,” she said firmly, “to know anything you might teach me. If I wanted someone to teach me something, I’d ask my mother.”

He saw the sign.

Free Coffee

There were curves ahead, and he had to slow. Those curves that nearly got him, every time, that unaccustomed swerve for which he was never prepared.

He looked in his mirrors. Saw the lights coming on too fast.

He tried to laugh. “See, it’s all about communication, Babygirl.” He picked up the radio, holding it tenderly in his hand like a snake-handler caresses the head of a rattler. He depressed the switch. “Say something to your mama, now.”

Her mother’s voice came over. “Tadpole, you there?”

But she didn’t answer. She was at the door with that guitar case in her arms, and she was ready to go. But he was steadily accelerating, and at this speed, he could barely manage the radio and the wheel. “Where do you think you’re going?” She said nothing, just stood there, waiting to fly. “Don’t even think about it, girl.” She wasn’t just thinking about it. She was doing it. He felt the pull and suck of the wind from the open door. His load began to swing. His voice was finally angry. “You hear me, kid? I’m going so fast right now that you’ll be a red smear when you land.” What a fool she was. One arm around the guitar case and one hand holding the passenger strap, she was ready to walk out on the night air on the thin wire of her own foolishness.

He depressed the button, his voice was a high-pitched, angry buzz. “I don’t want her, I just want the guitar!”

Her mother’s voice came from the receiver. “Tadpole, don’t be foolish, now. I see that door swinging out beside you. I’m right back here. Give that man the guitar and he’ll slow down and let you out. I’ll be there to get you in a second. Uncle Memphis is on the way too, Tadpole. We’re coming to get you.”

“This guitar is NOT HIS!”

“Tadpole…”

“NO!”

The headlights behind him reflected in his mirrors, filled the cab with a warm radiance like the ghostly light of dawn. He dropped the radio and put both hands on the wheel. The load was going crazy behind him as he tried to find the magical physics of centrifugal force that would keep him on the road. They were going to jackknife.

He turned to curse the child. She hung there beside him, one arm around the neck of that guitar case, her hair snaking around her pale face. Her cotton nightgown snapped and billowed like wings.

She flew.

FISHTAILING HAS AN
awkward grace. Time slows, and it seems that all is not necessarily lost. There seems to be a possibility that steering will be possible, that the strong arms of a trucker will wrestle the treacherous wheel and win.

But what’s twisted will not right itself. Torsion takes hold.

There are few sights in this world as awe-inspiring as the torque of a big rig as it strains, folds, gathers itself up to spring. That midnight blue rig lifted from the earth and headed for heaven, there to hang, all metalline grace and captured momentum. The fall is not nearly so beautiful. Just a drop, a slam, an ugly end-over-end that seems as if it will never be over.

The bittersweet smell of crushed grass and torn earth lifted in the eerie quiet that followed. He couldn’t move, but there was not a mark on him. The cab had come to rest amid a field of alfalfa.

Gator’s nostrils filled with the sweet odor of the grave he’d escaped.