What Comes After (8 page)

I thought about taking Tiny’s truck and just leaving, but I was in enough trouble with Aunt Sue as it was, and knew I couldn’t actually abandon them. I climbed out of the cab and tried getting Book and Tiny up, but they were both passed out now and wouldn’t budge. They were too heavy for me to drag. “Just come on!” I said, gritting my teeth and pulling on Book’s heavy arm. “Just come on.” But they were too drunk. It was useless.

Finally I realized that if I wanted to get us home before morning, I had no choice but to ask for help. I chose two guys who seemed to be stumbling less than most — a couple of football players in Confederate caps and practice jerseys.

“Hey, baby,” the first one said when I walked up, before I could calm my nerves enough to say anything myself. “I’m Dennis. Like Dennis the Menace.”

The second one laughed, as if that was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. “Yeah,” he said. “And I’m horny.”

Now it was Dennis’s turn to laugh. “Nah,” he said. “His real name’s Donny.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” I said. I pointed to Tiny and Book. “My cousin and his friend are passed out. Could you guys help me lift them into the back of the truck?”

Dennis and Donny looked down. “Is that Book Allen?” Dennis asked. “And Tiny Tankersley?”

“Hell, yeah, it is,” said Donny. “Couple of lightweights.” He nudged Tiny’s head with his boot.

“So can you help?” I asked.

Dennis shrugged. “Yeah, sure.” They dragged Tiny through the dirt to the back of the truck while I lowered the tailgate. It took all three of us to lift him in. Then we went back for Book and lifted him in, too.

“OK, then,” Donny said when we finished, and he stumbled off.

The other one, Dennis the Menace, hesitated. He wasn’t big like Book and Tiny, but he was bigger than me, and drunk. It made me nervous to suddenly be alone with him, but he still caught me off guard when he lurched forward and mashed his face into mine. His hands locked around my waist, and I felt his swollen tongue against my lips, and the raw scrape of his stubble against my chin.

I tried to pull away but couldn’t, so out of instinct or desperation or fear — or all three — I grabbed both his ears and twisted.

“Ow,” he whined, breaking his hold to rub them. “That hurt.”

I held his face away from mine, my palms pressed hard against his cheeks so his lips pooched out. My heart was pounding, and I struggled to keep my voice from quavering. “Hey,” I said. “Hey, Dennis.” I was scrambling to come up with something to distract him.

He pried my hands off his face and said, “What?” His breath was so bad it made me tear up. He must have eaten manure.

“Dennis,” I repeated. “Hey, Dennis, can you find me a beer? Can you go over there and get me a beer? I’ll come over there in a second.”

He grabbed my arms, and my panic rose higher. “Come now, baby,” he said.

“I will,” I said, my heart jackhammering. “I have to pee first, but I’ll be right there. Give me a second. We need beers. You let me go pee.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Beers.” And he let go. “Beers,” he repeated. He shuffled off toward the keg, and when he did, I jumped into the back of Tiny’s truck and fumbled through his pockets until I found the key. It took me three tries to fit the key into the ignition, my hands were shaking so bad. But once I did, I shoved the truck in gear and hit the gas, tearing up a chunk of field as I spun out of there.

I never thought I’d be happy to find myself back at Aunt Sue’s, but tonight I was. The yard light shone a dull yellow, the house itself was dark, and Aunt Sue’s truck was the only vehicle in the driveway. Whoever had come over earlier — the company Book wailed about to Tiny — was long gone.

I left the boys passed out in the open truck bed for what was left of the night, at the mercy of the mosquitoes and the pinecone-throwing squirrels. Gnarly came over and nuzzled my hand but didn’t bark, because Aunt Sue was home.

I went inside and used the bathroom and got a glass of water, wishing I could take a shower but afraid that would wake Aunt Sue. I was drenched in sweat from lifting Book and Tiny, and from my encounter with Drunk Dennis.

Just then the phone rang, making me jump. Nobody called that late at Aunt Sue’s. I snatched it up before it could ring a second time. “Hello?” I whispered.

It was Beatrice.

“Hey, Iris,” she said. “Hey. Are you awake?”

She sounded drunk.

A bedroom door opened in the back of the house. Footsteps padded down the hall. Aunt Sue stepped out of the shadows. She had on her Harley T-shirt and gray sweatpants.

“I have to go, B.,” I said nervously. “It’s too late for you to be calling. You woke up my aunt.”

Aunt Sue glared at me with bloodshot eyes.

“Just tell her you’ll get off in a minute,” Beatrice said. “You have a right to talk on the phone.”

“I can’t, B.,” I said. “I’ve gotta go. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

Aunt Sue grabbed my wrist and twisted until it burned. She said, “No, hell, you won’t.” Then she slammed the phone down so hard that something cracked.

I sat on my bed in the dark for a long time after that, not able to sleep, not wanting to lie down — afraid that if I did, I’d never get back up. My stomach hurt, and I realized I’d hardly eaten in days, so once I felt certain Aunt Sue must be asleep again, I slipped downstairs and rummaged through the cupboards until I found the bread and some peanut butter and honey. I brought the sandwich back up to my room, but chewing it seemed impossible. My mouth was dry, and I could barely swallow. Each bite I did manage to get down felt like a stone dropping inside me. I quit halfway through and pulled out my notebook.

Aunt Sue banged on my door first thing the next morning. I felt as if I’d just fallen asleep.

She shoved the stainless-steel bucket in my hands and said, “Goats.” Then she went back downstairs to her bedroom.

Tiny and Book still lay in the back of the truck, though Aunt Sue must have brought out a blanket, because they had one tangled around their legs, roping them together. Book lay on his side behind Tiny, who lay on his side, too. Book snored on the back of Tiny’s neck. They were practically spooning.

Gnarly jumped on me as soon as I got to the bottom step and knocked me down, but I didn’t care. I was hungry for any kind of affection, even the rough kind. I let him lick my face until he tired of it, then I scratched his belly and his ears for a while, and then we went in together to milk the goats.

The chickens flapped their wings and hopped up on the fence in the barn to stay clear of Gnarly. I never let him in there, but today I didn’t care. I wanted to be around whoever liked me, and Gnarly liked me. I let the pregnant goats in first so I could hug them and mother them. I poured grain in a couple of buckets so they could eat and wouldn’t get in the way, and I sang a Joni Mitchell song: “Both Sides Now.” Dad told me Mom used to sing Joni Mitchell songs to me when I was a baby, and I had a vague memory of her doing that when I was a little kid, too, before she left. I hated that I didn’t remember much more than that.

Patsy ignored me when I held out a handful of grain to her. She shifted her gaze over to Reba and Jo Dee, and I caught on right away. “Sorry,” I said. “I know I should have fed you first, but they’re pregnant. And they’re nicer to me than you are, to be honest about it. I just needed somebody to be nice to me this morning.”

I reached closer to Patsy with the feed. “Want this? You still get to be first on the milking stand.” She licked my hand clean, acting as if she were doing me a favor, and took her time stepping onto the stand. She gave me a long look, just to make sure I’d gotten her point, before lowering her head into the feed trough.

I aimed the first squirt from each of the goats at Gnarly, and he did somersaults trying to lick the milk off his face. One by one, once I was done with the goats, I scratched them under their chins, and hugged them, and let them out in their field.

Aunt Sue had already laid out the strainer and thermometer and timer in the kitchen. I pulled out the big pots and set them on the stove to pasteurize the new milk and start the cheese process all over again. After that, I went back out to the barn to collect the eggs, feed the chickens, and look for anything else to do to keep me distracted. When I finally emerged from the barn, Book and Tiny were staggering toward the house. Their faces had been chewed raw by mosquitoes. The next time I saw them, their skin was entirely pink, as though they’d poured a whole bottle of calamine lotion on their heads.

I spent the day in the barn cleaning everything I could find to clean that I hadn’t gotten to before. The goats all crowded around to watch me, or more likely to see if I’d brought them anything to eat. Once it was clear that I hadn’t, they wandered back off into the field. They needed their hooves trimmed, but I figured it would be a battle with Tammy, and maybe all of them, so I’d wait awhile before taking that on. I’d helped Dad trim the hooves of plenty of horses and cows over the years, but they were usually docile, especially compared to goats. Plus Dad was Dad — he could handle any animal, no matter how frightened or hostile. He always knew how to talk to them, how to calm them, how to get them to cooperate. I was just the helper. The sidekick. The daughter who everybody thought was so cute to be tagging along with her dad on his vet rounds. I wished I was still that girl.

Aunt Sue went into town that afternoon — it was Sunday — and she was in a good mood when she came home.

She’d bought a new flat-screen TV. I watched her as she carried it in from the truck.

“They had one of those employee discount sales at the Walmart,” she said, though I hadn’t asked.

She and Book spent the rest of the afternoon hooking it up, while I stayed outside with the goats and Gnarly.

That evening Aunt Sue cooked greens. Someone had given them to her at the farmers’ market the day before. She also heated leftover chicken potpie for herself and Book. It was the second night in a row we didn’t have sandwiches, but she hadn’t forgotten about my being a vegetarian, because after I ate all my greens, she said, “Ha! I cooked them with fatback. That’s what you get for not eating what you’re served. And for leaving your cousin out there in the truck like you did last night to get chewed up by mosquitoes.”

I pushed myself away from the table and walked quickly to the bathroom, where I brushed my teeth for ten minutes before I felt like I got the taste out.

Aunt Sue kept at it the next couple of nights, too. She made canned vegetable soup to go with our sandwiches. She said it was vegetarian, but I didn’t believe her. I tasted it, then put down my spoon.

Aunt Sue cackled.

“Oh, wait. I didn’t mention there was chicken broth in there?”

Then she served some nasty gray stuff. “That’s called wheat gluten,” she said. “It’s for vegetarians. It’s like a meat substitute. Honest. I got it at the health store. They got one in town.”

Book grinned, and I knew something was up.

I poked at it with my fork and smelled it. I shoved my plate away and stood up from the table. It was fried liver.

So I stopped sitting down to dinner with Aunt Sue and Book altogether after that and pretty much lived on peanut-butter sandwiches, which I fixed when Aunt Sue wasn’t around, and on whatever canned vegetables and fruit they served at school.

Meanwhile Aunt Sue kept buying stuff. She bought a new CD player, and a microwave oven, and had a satellite dish installed for the big-screen TV.

“How’d we get all this?” Book asked as they pored over the operation manual.

Aunt Sue shrugged. “Raise at work.”

I fumed about the tricks Aunt Sue had played on me with the food, and I fumed about the purchases. I knew she had to be using money from Dad’s estate — money meant for me. But I kept quiet and kept my head down and just tried to get through each day. I did my homework and went quietly to school. I listened to Shirelle and the others discuss
Huckleberry Finn,
and I kept my mouth shut no matter how much I wanted to join in. I did my chores. I went for long walks in the woods with Gnarly. I petted him until even Gnarly, who needed love as badly as any dog I’d ever known, decided he’d had enough. I wrestled with the goats until half my body felt bruised from their butting and their horns. I caught myself talking to them — Patsy most of all. I wrote letters to Dad. I told him about the Devil’s Stomping Ground, Reba’s growing pregnancy, how well I’d cleaned up the barn — anything positive I could think of.