The Essay A Novel (29 page)

Edgel and I walked to the Rocket 88 in silence. Inside, we stared at each other in mutual disbelief. “He wants to get to know us a lot gooder,” I said. Edgel smiled. “One of these days, the old man is going to come wandering home and we're going to have to explain to him that we own his house and that his wife divorced him so she could marry a one-eyed truck driver who they call Cyclops.”

“Maybe he'll never come home,” Edgel offered.

“Oh, he'll come home. He's always found his way back before. He's like some mangy dog that you can't get rid of.”

Edgel put the car in gear and slid into the empty street. “If he comes home, I'll tell him.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

V

irgil called home on the last Sunday afternoon in April while Edgel was painting the living room and when I was working at the truck stop. Barker Brothers & Sons Amusements was going to be in Richmond, Kentucky, the following weekend setting up for a carnival and he wanted us to drive down for a visit. “Did he say how Dad was doing?” I asked.

“No, but that's Virgil. He doesn't give a whip about anyone but Virgil, and I didn't ask. He told me where he was going to be and I said we'd try to get there. I didn't want to start a conversation with him and have him ask, ‘How's Mom?' That's a discussion best had face to face.”

The Vinton County Relays were the next Saturday at McArthur Roosevelt High School. When I had finished my events—we won the 880 relay and finished second in the 440 relay—I pulled on my sweats and jumped into a Ford station wagon that Edgel had borrowed from Luke Farnsworth for the weekend. The Belvedere Dad had left behind had died and been hauled to the salvage yard. Neither the Rocket 88 nor the rattletrap pickup my mother had left behind was fit for such a trip.

We drove south to Route 32—the Appalachian Highway—and headed west toward Cincinnati. It was in the low seventies and we drove with the windows down, filling the car with the sweet smell of spring growth. We hit Interstate 75 in Cincinnati and were in Richmond in just over four hours. The carnival was being set up in the parking lot of the first strip mall we found west of the interstate. We parked alongside of a semitrailer that bore a faded painting of a clown's face and “Barker Brothers & Sons Amusements” on its side. We had barely exited the car when I heard Virgil say, “Hey, them's my brothers over there.”

He came striding hard between the Tilt-A-Whirl and the skeleton of an octopus ride that had yet to be adorned with cars. A cigarette smoldered between the index and middle finger of his right hand and there was hardly a spot on him that wasn't covered in grease. His clothes looked like they hadn't been washed in weeks and Virgil wasn't far behind. Strands of unwashed, grease-stained hair hung nearly to his shoulders and the decay between his front teeth had expanded noticeably. He stuck the cigarette between his lips long enough to pump our hands and leave them covered with a film of grime. “You sons of bitches, it's good to see ya,” Virgil said.

“Good to see you, too,” Edgel said, flicking at Virgil's scraggly hair. “This is a different look for a redneck from Vinton County.”

“The chicks love it long,” Virgil said. I found it implausible that there was a woman breathing air who could find anything appealing about Virgil Hickam, but I kept my mouth shut. “Where's the old man and the old lady? They didn't come down with you?”

Edgel looked up at me but said nothing. “Isn't Dad with you?” I asked.

Virgil sent a stream of cigarette smoke out his nostrils. “Why in hell would he be with me?”

“He left home six or seven months ago and said he was going to hook up with you in Florida and work for the carnival. You mean you haven't seen him?”

“I ain't seen him or heard from him since we went to visit you in prison last summer.” He looked at Edgel and sucked hard on his cigarette. “Why would he do a fool thing like that, anyway?”

“He lost his job at the sawmill,” Edgel said. “I'm sure everything's going to be fine. He was hitchhiking south and probably got distracted along the way. You know how Dad is.”

“Why didn't Mom come?”

Edgel looked at the trucks lined up along the side of the parking lot. “What time do you get off?” he asked Virgil.

“About five or six. We're running ahead of schedule.”

“Jimmy Lee and I are going to go find us a hotel room. You want to come over to the room, clean up, and we'll go to dinner? There's been a lot going on at home. I'll fill you in over a steak dinner.”

“Hell, yes. I could go for a steak,” Virgil said, seeming to immediately forget that he had two parents missing in action.

“Do you have any clean clothes?”

“No, not really. I haven't had much time to do laundry.”

“What size are those jeans?”

Virgil twisted his neck to read the leather tag on his beltless waist. “Thirty-two.”

“We'll get checked in, get you some clean clothes and be back here about six to pick you up. You can shower up at the hotel and we'll go get something to eat.”

When we returned, Virgil was leaning against the tires of the semitrailer, his legs crossed at the ankles, one cigarette between his fingers, another tucked behind his left ear. While we were at a discount store buying Virgil a pair of jeans, packages of T-shirts, underwear and socks, shampoo, and a hand soap that contained pumice, Edgel also bought a roll of brown wrapping paper, which he used to cover the back seat and floor of the station wagon. Virgil frowned when he opened the door and saw the protective paper. “Hell, I ain't that dirty,” he said, flicking his still-burning butt over the roof.

“Virgil, you've got more grease on you than the engine of this car,” Edgel said. “It's not my car and I don't want to take it back all goobered up. Now, get in.”

He was in the shower for better than an hour and when he finished, it looked like the grease-smudged walls of the Farnsworths' garage. Virgil cleaned up pretty well except for the grease that remained embedded under his nails and in the creases of his fingers. There was a locally owned steak house—DeLorreto's—at the far end of the strip mall where they were setting up the carnival and we were seated at a booth near the kitchen.

Virgil cut into a New York strip that lapped over the edges of his plate on three sides. He used the knife to stab a wedge of meat and fat and jam it far into his mouth until his cheek looked like it was hosting a plug of tobacco. Staring hard at Edgel and me, Virgil said, “So, you're telling me that right then and there, right after she divorces the old man, she up and marries this one-eyed mother fucker, Cyclone?”

“Cyclops,” I corrected.

“Whatever the fuck his name is,” Virgil growled. “That's a crock of shit. What was she thinkin', and what the hell's the old man going to do when he finds out? I'll tell you what he's going to do; he's going to lose his shit, that's what.” Doing more talking than chewing, he struggled to swallow his beef, and a trickle of pink juice escaped from the corner of his mouth and rolled under his chin. He swiped it with the back of his hands. “How come you ain't been looking for the old man, or at least called the cops?”

“And tell them what?” Edgel asked. “That our dad ran away from home? He's free, white, and twenty-one, Virgil, and he can do as he pleases. Besides, we didn't know he hadn't shown up in Florida until a couple of hours ago. He left in one of his goddamn huffs, wouldn't listen to any reason, and started hitchhiking. The last time I saw him, he was standing on the side of Route 50 with his thumb out. You know what he's like. What were we supposed to do?”

Virgil grinned for the first time since Edgel began explaining the situation on Red Dog Road. “He's prob'ly holed up with some whore somewheres,” Virgil said. “But, I still think you got to fill out a police report when you get back.”

“Maybe we could call Sheriff McCollough and see what he thinks, but Dad's a grown man and they don't usually take missing persons reports unless they think there's been foul play,” Edgel said. “Just because Nick Hickam got a wild hair up his ass and headed out for Florida might not be a good enough reason.”

“I'll do it,” I said. “I think you should stay as far away from the sheriff as possible.”

“Good point.”

We hadn't yet told Virgil about the sawmill fire and Edgel's incarceration for questioning. We also hadn't told him—and didn't plan to, either —that we were now the proud owners of the Hickam family estate. He would have thrown a royal fit in the middle of DeLorreto's steak house.

Edgel offered to get Virgil a room in the hotel for the night, but he insisted that he needed to be on the grounds of the midway that night because he was some type of low-level supervisor. Edgel and I assumed this had more to do with some type of party than it did any level of supervisory status. In formidable Hickam fashion, Virgil would no doubt drink himself stupid and crash under a semitrailer in his sleeping bag.

The next morning, we took coffee in Styrofoam cups and warm cinnamon rolls from a local bakery to the mall parking lot and spent another thirty minutes with Virgil before pointing the station wagon north, both of us relieved to be putting distance between ourselves and our brother.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

A

t lunchtime on Wednesday in the school auditorium, I signed a letter of intent to attend Ohio Methodist University on a football scholarship. It was about the biggest day of my life. When an athlete at East Vinton High School earned an athletic scholarship, which wasn't often, the athletic director hosted a formal signing ceremony so that the entire school could attend. Coach Battershell gave me a royal-blue ball cap with a white interlocking OM on the front to wear at the signing. Most of the school showed up, even Lindsey Morgan and Abigail Winsetter. Edgel sat in the front row of seats with a camera, having taken his lunch hour so that he could watch me sign. The cooks from the cafeteria rolled out a cake that was decorated with white icing and “Ohio Methodist” written in blue, block letters. My teammates gave me a standing ovation.

I had been recruited by several bigger schools, including Ohio University and Marshall University. However, Coach Battershell really pushed me to go to Ohio Methodist. While he said I was one of the best players he had ever coached, I was a bit small for Division I. “Let's get you to a school where you can get on the field and have some fun,” he said. Ohio Methodist was a Division II school and it had, according to Miss Singletary, an excellent journalism department, which made both of us happy. The scholarship would pay all but about two thousand dollars a year, which was still a huge amount for me. The admission counselors said they would arrange for me to get loans for the remainder.

When I walked through the back door after track practice that night, the phone was ringing; it was Virgil calling collect from a pay phone at the mall in Richmond, Kentucky. “Hey, I was just checking in,” he said. “What did the sheriff say about Dad?”

“Uh, I haven't talked to him yet, Virgil.”

“What the fuck are you waiting for? I thought you were going to do that when you got back on Sunday.”

“Edgel said he wanted to wait a few more days. He said if we filed a missing person report that it would get in the newspapers and that would make Dad furious.”

“Well, that's a crock of shit. Who cares what they put in the goddamn paper? Our dad's been missing for six months and you two fuck wads don't give a shit.”

“Look Virg, I'm sorry if you don't like it, but that's what Edgel said to do. He's in charge. If you've got a bitch . . .”

The phone went dead. I set my books on the kitchen table just as I saw the dust kicking up under the tires of the Rocket 88 as it climbed up the drive toward the house. I walked out front to meet him, but he got out of the car and went right to the shed to retrieve his ladder and a one-gallon can of white paint. Over the past week, Edgel had been using every second of daylight to paint the front and back porches and the trim on the old house. The dried wood sucked up the first two coats of base, but once he got the primer to take, the white trim made an astonishing difference on the house. It still listed to one side, the asphalt shingles that covered the house were faded and thin, but it was by far the best looking house on Red Dog Road.

“Nice ceremony today,” he said, hardly breaking stride as he headed toward the back porch with his painting supplies. “I'm right proud of you.”

“Thanks for coming. I appreciate it.”

“Glad to do it, little brother.” He pried open the paint can with a screwdriver and stirred it with a broken piece of a yardstick. After a minute he looked up and asked, “Got something on your mind?”

“I just got off the phone with Virgil. He's madder than a hornet because I haven't reported Dad missing to the sheriff.”

“Virgil's got a mouth and access to telephones. If he's all that concerned, he can file the report.”

I picked up one of the little trim brushes and began working on the window casing opposite Edgel. I was starving, but not about to disrupt Edgel or his work on the house. After it was too dark to paint, we would scare up something to eat. Edgel dipped his brush and made a clean, neat run along the window casing. His talent for working with his hands continued to amaze me.

“I've been giving some thought to something and I want to bounce it off you,” Edgel said, never taking his eyes off his work.

“Shoot.”

“What would you think about selling the house?”

“Selling the house? Why? Where would we live?”

“You're going to be living at college most of the next four years. I don't need this big a place. If we could sell it, it would help you out for college.”

I was touched that Edgel would sacrifice the house for my education. “What about you? You need a place to live.”