Wire Mesh Mothers (3 page)

“Gotta shut your mouth hole,
DeeWee
.” Tony leaned over the back of the seat and put her teeth at Buddy’s ear. She said slowly, “Stop…the…fucking…car.”
  

“Back off, Tony,” said Leroy. But then he said, “Pull it over, Buddy.”

Buddy cursed and pulled the car over. It bit the gravel and then a baby rabbit that didn’t move fast enough into the poison ivy by the fencing. The car engine died.

Leroy turned and his knee came up on the seat, ramming into
DeeWee’s
side.
DeeWee
squawked. "What the hell’s wrong with you, Tony?" Tony could see his nose twitching. That was good. He was nervous. Tony liked it when he was nervous like that.

“I had enough of this shit,” she said.

“What shit?”
  

“Us. You see us? You know what you’re seeing? Don’t you want to just puke when you see us?”

Whitey sneezed.

“What you talking about?” said Leroy.
 

“Just what I said. We’re shit. We’re fucking babies, all this baby trash we do.”

Leroy’s eye hitched, but he held his ground. “What trash you talking about? Think them cows thought we was just a bunch of
bitin
' flies when we hit their butts with them bb’s? We drew blood! Think them folks thought the tooth fairy took their mail to Never-Never Land?"

"
Bitin
’ flies!" giggled
DeeWee
. “Cows thought we was
bitin
’ flies!”

Tony scoffed, “Think Little Joe's boots is baby? Huh? I’ll give you baby. That
b.b
. gun. Like that little kid in that movie they been
showin
’ over and over on channel 45. He wanted a bb gun for Christmas. Oh, ain’t he just so bad, now? Asked Santa for the gun."

"You saying I got this gun from Santa?" said Leroy. He pulled off his sunglasses. His dark, snowman eyes looked even darker.

“You ain't making sense," said Whitey tentatively.

"And you
pissin
' me off," said Leroy. "Ain't nothing I can't hit with my bb gun. I can take off your pimply nose with it. I can take out your whole face if I wanted to, whiny baby. Bang-bang-bang, out like a star at the carnival shooting gallery. Nothing left but that shitty haircut on top your scalp."

"Don't ever call me whiny baby," Tony said.

Leroy popped open the door. A tiny piece of cotton blew in on a breeze. "You want out right now, Tony? I’ll pull your ass over the seat and throw you out. Thought you was cool like a guy, Tony. You just whiny like a brat."

“Whiny little brat,” said Buddy.

"Who asked you into this?" Tony knocked Buddy's cap off and yanked a fistful of hair from his scalp. Blood beaded on the raw flesh. Buddy yelped and grabbed his head.

"Hold your tongue," Tony said. "Or I’ll pull that out, too!” She threw the hair into Buddy’s lap. Some still clung to her fingers and she wiped it off on Buddy’s headrest. Whimpering, Buddy held the wad of hair to his head as if he might be able to put it back.

“Listen to me, everybody,” said Tony. “We should be
doin
’ big stuff. Real stuff. Or we should just go back to
suckin
’ Mama’s titties for all the good we are.”

“Like what stuff?"

“I been
thinkin
’ about a robbery.”

Leroy blew air through his teeth. “Big deal, Tony. We steal stuff all the time.”

“Not like that. Not stealing.
Robbin
’. There’s a difference, case you didn’t know. Show the firepower. Rob ‘em blind. Leave our mark on something besides cow asses."

“Arm robbery! Steal a arm!” laughed
DeeWee
.

“Who we gonna rob?” said Whitey. “There ain’t
nothin
’ around here. And we ain’t got no cars that could make it all the way to Richmond or over to Portsmouth."

Tony felt the blood stir in the backs of her hands. Hot, cold. Hot, cold. That new nigger at the Exxon would shit her lacy little drawers. Out the dirty window dry grasses strummed the air and the clouds boiled in the white sky; Tony could smell the shit and the sweat. “It’ll be the best,” she said. “Stick 'em up! Hand it over! Money in the bag, now, you stupid bitch!”

“What bitch?” said Leroy.

"’Possum!" shouted
DeeWee
.

A scraggly opossum had appeared on the roadside gravel. It waddled into some brush near the car.

Tony’s head was itching again, and she fought to keep her hand from scratching. “Bitch at a bank,” she said with a shrug, not caring to share her personal vendetta with the other Hot Heads because it didn’t matter. She’d kill two birds with one stone with the robbery she had planned. “Bitch at the store, the gas station, whatever, crying, ‘Oh, help me help me! Lord save me! Take what you want and leave me alone!’ Fucking pussies.”

Little Joe's booted foot slipped down onto Tony's and she slammed it back with a kick so hard to his shin she could hear the denim rip. Little Joe grimaced but made no sound.

“Well,” said Buddy. He looked at Leroy for direction.

“Well, well, well,” giggled
DeeWee
.

Leroy pulled the passenger door shut. He rubbed his mouth. “You know,” he said. “Ain’t too bad a idea, even if I didn’t come up with it myself.”

“A good idea?” said Buddy. “Sure, we just get our asses
blowed
off and for what? Some packs of cigarettes?”

“Back on the road, Buddy,” said Leroy.

“Leroy…,” said Buddy.

“Drive!”

The car pulled back onto the road. Nobody said anything for a few minutes. They passed a row of small signs, sitting deep in weeds. Each one bore a single word.

"Jesus."

"Loves."

"You."

"Repent."

"Or”

“Burn."

"In."

"Hell."

“Hell!” giggled
DeeWee
, pointing at the final sign.

Another minute of silence. Tony sat back against the seat and grabbed her elbows with her hands. She pulled her arms tightly into her stomach until she couldn’t catch her breath. Let Leroy think it over. He was as bored as she was. He hated things as much as she did.
 

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven….

Then Leroy said, “Tony’s right. We gotta do something to show we got balls.”

“Tony ain’t got balls,” said
DeeWee
. “Girls got holes!”

"What we gonna rob?" asked Little Joe. "Pippins ain't got nothing but the grocery, the Exxon, churches, and the old engine shop. And Capron ain't got more than Pippins."

Something crawled from Tony’s ear to the nape of her neck. Maybe it was lice after all. She pinched her elbows to keep from scratching. "Exxon's got a money machine we could whack off the wall. Got a cash register, too, and only Mrs. Martin works there in the day. We know the place. Ain't no surprises. She don’t have a gun. We’d hold all the cards."

DeeWee
picked something out of his nose and rubbed it on his sleeve.

“We’ll make the news,” said Tony. “Be on T.V. Kids other places always making news for stuff they do. And their mamas, oh, shit, there they stand with their head up their asses lookin’ all surprised. They stand there lookin’ at the T.V. camera, wiping their eyes, crying, ‘I had no idea she would do that! Oh! It’s so terrible!’ Fuck it, it’d be great!” Ecstatic laughter bubbled up in the back of Tony’s throat; she swallowed it back.

In the rearview outside the passenger window, Tony saw Leroy's jaw clench in and out and in and out. “Yeah, this is good, man, this is good. But we gotta wear something they can't know who we is."

"No shit," said Tony. “I
coulda
told you that. You gave me time I woulda told you that.”

“Gotta get real guns.”

“That we do.”

“What if we get caught?” said Buddy.

“Stay home, that the way you feel. We don’t need you.”

The car reached an intersection and Buddy, for once, stopped at the stop sign. Straight ahead was more countryside, leading to the town of Pippins. To the right, down a couple tenths of a mile, were the Presbyterian Church and the Riverside Holiness Church, side by side as if they really got along, which they didn't since the Presbyterians had Halloween parties for their kids and the Holiness folks believed it to be of the devil. To the left was a field with cattle and the road leading to the row of houses where Tony lived.

"Who's got a real gun?" asked Leroy.

"My great-uncle Henry does," said Little Joe. "Under his mattress. Got some kinda pistol."

"Ammo?" asked Tony.

"Who has a pistol and no ammo? Morons, that’s who!"

"He home now, your great-uncle?"

Little Joe sat up straight, like he finally felt he had something worth offering. "He don't go to work 'til two o'clock. But then ain't nobody home 'til after five."

“I got a gun at home, too,” said Tony. “Revolver. Was my dad’s.”

"Well, then," said Leroy.

DeeWee
said, "Well, then!" He giggled.

"Buddy, drop us all off at our places," said Leroy.
 
"Everybody find a disguise to wear. Then
Buddy'll
pick everybody back up ‘bout four o’clock. We'll go do us the Exxon store. We won’t let nobody know who we are, but we gonna show ‘em what we are!"

"But we didn’t get our doughnut sticks yet," said Whitey.

Tony grabbed Whitey's ear across Little Joe’s lap and pulled it until he shrieked.
 

"Shut your mouth about the doughnuts, don’t you care about important things?" Tony said. "And find a good disguise. Make yourself look like a white boy or Mexican boy or Chinese boy or something."

Tony let go of Whitey's ear, gave Little Joe's boots another kick, sat back, and looked out at the world through the snotty-slicked window. Her heart raced; the blood in her fingers was fiery. She counted the pulses and got to nearly two hundred before the car slowed down in front of her little house and it was time to get out.

Gonna do. For once in our lives, we're gonna do! Won’t Mam just love this? Won’t the Martin bitch just dump in her prissy little drawers?

Tony’s pants tugged and her head itched but this time, they felt good.

I
t was the urine on the floor that threw everything over the edge, a small puddle, intentionally leaked there by Willie Harrold, a fine, upstanding student in the fourth grade. Willie was short, with black hair, blue eyes and groping hands. He had quite the history, little Willie. He explored the forms beneath the shirts of every fourth grade female who happened to wander within his reach. Willie bit kindergarteners on the playground then said he didn’t. He cussed and stole anything small enough to fit into his book bag or pockets. And to keep Willie free to continue his antics, his father swore a lawsuit every time Willie was removed from the mainstream of the classroom and put into a study carrel or seated on the bench outside the principal's office.

"Look what Willie did!" Marion
Kiddel
shouted from her desk. Kate McDolen, who had been standing at the front of the room in her peach sweater and gray wool skirt, writing on the chalk board, fine, yellow chalk dust coating her hands, showing once again that adjectives described things, adjectives like "happy" and "sunny" and "snowy" and "soft" made writing stories much more
FUN!
spun about on her toe. She stared where Marion was pointing.
 

Some of the students were in their seats, also staring. Most of the students were up and giggling, glancing between the teacher and culprit. Jenny Wise, slumped in her desk near the door, had actually looked up from the fingernail polish she'd been picking at and was paying attention.

"He went on the floor, just standing there like a dog and went on the floor!" This was Christopher May. He was Willie's best friend. His prime pleasure in life was heralding Willie's accomplishments.

Willie himself had his arms crossed and his mouth open in a wide grin, revealing the crooked teeth his daddy didn't have time to have fixed at the free dental clinic because he was too busy with lawyers, working up law suits against the school system.

Happy. Sunny.
  

Insane.

Kate felt her fingers crush around the stub of yellow chalk.
 

Impotent.

The arthritic spot in her jaw clicked. She said, "Sit down, everyone. Right now."

Most everyone slid into seats. A few students on the periphery of the classroom remained standing. They didn't want to miss the view. Christopher dropped into his seat, not taking his gaze off Willie.

Standard question, coming up. Standard, worthless teacher question. "Willie," Kate asked. "Why did you do that?"

And Willie's standard, broken-record response. "Do what?"

Jaws clenched, as tightly as her fingers on the chalk.
 
Fuzzy, furious stars rising in the corner of her vision. Her sweater no longer keeping out the chill of the classroom air in December. "I asked you a question."