You Believers (18 page)

As if the Words Could Make It True

The sound of the wood chipper grinding branches made Jesse’s teeth hurt. He stopped raking the matted leaves and sticks onto the tarp and looked back at his dad. Jesse could see the grinning pleasure of destruction in the man with the hat and goggles hiding most of his face. He glanced up at Jesse, turned the machine off with only about half the branch chewed. “You get those leaves under the live oak?”

Jesse nodded, kept raking. Jesse had gotten the ground clean enough for the workers to come in and start digging the foundation for the cabin his dad wanted built. His dad called it their “getaway place.” Jesse heard the bullshit: his dad standing at the backyard grill, looking at the other houses all around them and telling his wife he was feeling closed in by too many neighbors. Jesse knew his dad’s real plan. He wanted to build a place so he and his girlfriend could take the boat out, run up here, and screw their brains out all weekend while Jesse’s mom believed his dad was away doing manly things in the woods with other men—things like fishing, chopping wood, playing cards. His poor mom. She’d believe anything.

Jesse had seen his dad at the marina. Jesse had gone there to bring Jenny some pot, get a little massage. They’d screw on her daddy’s
houseboat. Jesse knew all about boats and men and screwing around. He and Jenny were just getting ready to head back to the marina so she could get to her shift waiting tables. Jesse looked out the window and saw them: his dad in khaki shorts and that pink polo shirt and those deck shoes he’d buy new each summer just because, as he said, he liked things clean. And this chick, not much older than Jesse, blond hair all caught up in a high ponytail, a halter top, and short shorts that looked something like a skirt. Long, muscled legs and spiky shoes. Everything about her kind of jiggled and swayed, from the bouncy ponytail to the boobs and the ass. Jesse had to sit back and laugh. Jenny had a way of making him go easy about things with the way she could loosen the muscles in his back. Jenny asked what was funny, and he pointed to his dad. “That old man,” he said. “That chick, what you think, she a stripper or a whore?”

Jenny grinned, took a hit from the one-hitter. “‘Entertainment,’” she said. “That’s what management calls her. Stripper is what she is. Works private parties in the back room.”

Jesse watched his dad put his hand on the girl’s back like it was used to being there. “Bitch,” he said.

Jenny laughed. “She’s actually not so bad. Just making a living.”

Jesse watched his dad, a perfect gentleman as he unlocked the gate that led to the private docks, let the girl walk through, then turned to make sure the door locked behind him. He offered his arm to steady the girl so she wouldn’t trip walking around in those shoes. Jesse thought of his mother, picking up the old man’s laundry, making his low-carb meals.

Jenny offered him a hit.

“Nah, I don’t need that,” Jesse said. He kept his eyes on the boat. His dad leaned close to the girl, said something that made her laugh. He could hear the high, ringing sound. He’d never heard his mom laugh like that. He watched them disappear inside the boat.
He turned to Jenny. “Could you rub my neck a little?” She pressed her fingers into his neck. He closed his eyes, tried to ease up under the touch of Jenny’s hands. But he couldn’t shake the sight of his blood momma taking men back into her room with a crack pipe and a laugh.

He flinched, felt the cold touch of a bottle of Coke against his arm, and saw his dad standing there. “You look like you need a break, Jesse.” Jesse took the Coke, chugged half of it down. “Let’s just sit and cool down a while.” His dad sat on a stump, motioned to Jesse to sit on another one. But Jesse just stood there. He wasn’t in the mood for this old father-son bullshit. “Come on, Jesse, stop and take a look at this place.” His dad waved his hand toward the river. “I’m seeing the boat dock right there. Build it a good fifty feet.” He pointed up the bank a ways. “A boathouse there. Get a couple canoes. Kayaks, maybe.” He got up and took a couple of steps toward Jesse, that smile beaming. “You and me, we can fish off that dock.” He squeezed Jesse’s shoulder. Jesse stepped away.

“You all right, Jesse?”

“Just hot.” Jesse pulled his cap off, wanted to yell,
You’re such a liar
. But his dad was the man who paid the lawyers, and the right lawyer made all the difference in front of a judge. Jesse fanned himself. “It’s a damned hot day to be burning leaves.”

“Yeah, but it’s humid. Less likely to start a fire we can’t keep under control.” He looked Jesse up and down. “You can always cool off in the river.”

“I’m all right.” He finished the Coke, put his cap back on, and tossed the bottle on the ground. He picked up the edges of the tarp and pulled it down toward the fire pit by the river.

His dad moved toward him. “Need help?”

“I got it,” Jesse said. His dad watched as he dragged the tarp to
the pit. He tossed the branches on and, with a couple of hard shakes, dumped the leaves and branches on the heap.

He walked down to the river’s edge and looked into the shadows in the water, the black mud beneath. He heard his dad go to the truck and rummage in the cooler. He crouched for a closer look at the water, figured if he sat real still, he’d see some minnows darting around in the light spots. He waited for some kind of movement. Nothing. All the noise had scared them off, and they’d take their time coming back. Fish. They had a simple life, just floating, darting up and down and around. They’d take their own sweet time before they swam from the shadows. They had such patience, such caution that Jesse wondered how a fish could be so stupid as to get caught by some fake lure. “Always hungry,” he said out loud. He heard his dad coming up behind him.

“I knew you were hungry. And I know how that temper can stir up when you don’t have something in your belly to hold it down.”

Jesse dropped from his crouch and sat on the dirt, kept his eyes on the water. “That’s what Mom says.”

“She’s a smart woman,” his dad said. “A good woman.” He offered Jesse another Coke and a tube of Ritz crackers. He knew what Jesse liked. Jesse ripped the wax paper open, took a few crackers, offered the rest to his dad, who waved them away. “I packed those for you. Too much salt and fat for this old man.”

“Since when did you start worrying about salt and fat?” Jesse kept his eyes on the water, stuffed a couple of crackers into his mouth.

“Can’t stay young forever, Jesse. It’s all about maintenance. Won’t be long before you’ll come to understand the need for a plan to make your life what you want.”

“I know all about plans,” Jesse said. He could feel it coming, one of those long talks about his future. If the man asked him one
more time,
Where do you see yourself in five years
?, Jesse would tell him prison, maybe death row. Or hell. That was where he really knew he’d be in the end.

He glanced at his dad, a man so busy chugging his bottled water that he couldn’t have a clue as to the kinds of plans that were stirring up in Jesse’s head. When his dad finished the water and looked out at the river, Jesse saw a sagging under the jawbone. He was looking old. Jesse’s mom was still looking smooth and fine. Probably because she didn’t drink. And she didn’t wear herself down with the worry of lying and scheming like the old man. His mom, she liked to keep her mind on higher things. “You ought to be nicer to mom,” Jesse said.

His dad stood went to the river, straightened his shoulders, and took a breath.
Here we go
, Jesse thought,
the old tactic: Change the topic fast, get the ball in your court
.

“Your mother told me about the incident at the day care center.”

Jesse stood, walked over, and looked into his dad’s eyes. He was taller than his dad now. “‘Incident’?”

“You hanging around outside that fence, staring at the children. Hell, Jesse, any grown man knows better than to stand around and stare at kids.”

Jesse smiled the smile that he liked to think could charm a pit bull into backing down. He looked down at his workboots and thought of Zeke and that Rottweiler.

“I’m talking to you, Jesse.”

Jesse smiled again and shook his head. “I took the books Mom used to read to me when I was a kid. I liked seeing them happy out there. So when did it get wrong to watch kids playing? What the hell is wrong with this world?”

His dad shook his head. “You’ve got a point there.”

“I know I’ve done a lot of shit, but I never was a perv.”

“I know. It’s just, there are rules.” He crouched down, studied
the ground at the shoreline. He fingered the rocks. Jesse knew he was looking for the smooth, round, flat ones. He watched as his dad found one, stood, and leaned a little to get good aim. They stood in silence, watched the stone skip four times, then sink. His dad smiled back at Jesse. “Remember when I taught you that?”

Jesse nodded. His dad picked up more stones, offered them to Jesse. Jesse studied them and in one quick move picked one and sent it out. He smiled, watching it skip, one, two, and finally six times before it dropped.

“That’s my boy,” his dad said. “I can teach you something, and you take it and run with it. It’s nothing for you to outdo your old man.”

Jesse kept his eye on the spot in the water where the rock had sunk. He heard his dad sigh. The old speech was coming.

“You know you can be anything you want to be, Jesse.”

“I know.”

“You know you’ve got our support to the ends of the earth.” Jesse nodded.

“Jesse.” His dad squeezed his shoulder. Jesse flinched. His dad took a step back.

“Sorry, I was just thinking.” Jesse patted the old man’s shoulder. “You know how jumpy I can be.”

“What’s on your mind, Jesse?”

Jesse shook his head, looked out at the river. “You ever feel like you were too big for a town?”

His dad nodded, gave a little laugh. “That’s called ambition. You know the answer to that question. When I was a ten-year-old boy, I told my momma back in Pembroke, Georgia, ‘I’m gonna grow up and be too rich for this town. They don’t have a house big enough for what I want here.’ And you know what she said?”

Jesse nodded. “She laughed.”

“Damn right.” His dad stepped closer, put his hand on Jesse’s shoulder. “Believe in yourself, Jesse. That’s how you start. You just gotta believe.”

“Oh, believe,” Jesse said. He made his muscles stay easy under the little squeeze of the man’s hand. “Right now I believe it’s time to burn this shit.”

“Sounds right to me.” His dad went to the truck, brought back a can of charcoal-lighter fluid. He started to pour it on the heap of sticks and leaves, but Jesse stepped forward and took the can. “Come on, let me do it. I did the work of dragging it all down here. You know how I like to burn things.”

His dad stepped back, gave a little laugh, and Jesse could hear the nervousness in it. Jesse poured the fluid on the pile, breathing in the sweet, hot smell. He capped the can and offered it back to his dad. “It’s a guy thing, I guess.” His dad nodded and gave him the matches from his pocket. “You let me take care of this and get on back to your wood chipper. I could see you were into that. It’s a guy thing. We get a kick out of building things up, tearing them down.” Jesse shook the matchbox in his hand. “We all like our different ways of destroying things.”

A flicker of something moved across the man’s face. Jesse hoped it was guilt. “There’s a right way and a wrong way to destroy things, Jesse.”

“Yeah and Mom’s probably the only one of us who really cares about right and wrong.” Jesse gave his dad a sneaky smile. “But she don’t know everything, does she?”

His dad dropped his head. “Damn it, Jesse, just when I think I’ve made some connection with you.”

Jesse laughed. “Come on, Dad, I’m just yanking your chain. We know sometimes a man’s just got to do what a man’s got to do.”

His dad shook his head and looked out at the river.

Jesse stepped nearer to him. “I’m not some kid anymore. I know there’s no man perfect.” Jesse felt the stillness in the air. “I’m just calling what I see.”

“And what do you see?’

Jesse looked at him. “You want me to tell the truth?”

His dad sighed. “Yeah, let’s try the truth.”

Jesse reopened the can and sprayed more fuel on the heap of branches. Capped the can again and gave it to his dad, then bent, struck a match, and lit a clump of leaves. He moved to the other side of the brush, lit another clump of leaves. He stood and watched the burning spread. “Truth is, I see a world where there ain’t no right and wrong, really. That line is always shifting. It all depends on things. You ask me, it’s all about consequences. You want to do something, weigh the consequences. Do what you gotta do, but take what comes of it like a man.”

“Yep.” His dad kept his eyes on the fire. “Don’t go at it blind, I guess, and you’ll be all right.”

“Right,” Jesse said. He squeezed the old man’s shoulder. “Now, you get on back to the wood chipper. You tear up shit your way, and I’ll do it mine.”

“I’m making mulch for the lawn, Jesse. It’s not always about tearing shit up.”

“Right,” Jesse said, keeping his eyes on the growing flames. His dad stood there as if he might say something, then just headed back to keep building that pile of mulch under the trees.

Heaven Beguiles the Tired

Livy sat at Katy’s table, with her coffee going cold in Katy’s favorite cup. It was Royal Doulton bone china from England.
Probably older than I am
, Livy thought as she ran her fingertip along the rim, where the gold was fading, then traced the outline of the hand-painted clutch of violets. Katy had found the cup at a yard sale, no saucer, but she made it work with a green saucer. Livy tried to imagine how Katy was waking now. Katy had run off before, but she’d always called the next day. She was eighteen, and in those bad years with Frank you could never be sure where she was and when she might come home. But she was older now. Steady. At least that’s what Livy thought. She reached for Katy’s scrapbook and flipped through the pages. She’d already gone through it a dozen times. Katy had always loved scrapbooks, saved birthday cards, postcards, pressed flowers, concert tickets, and Valentines. This one was more like a journal, with some of the poetry she liked, sketches, doodles, quotes from scripture, and little bits of writing in her own words. Livy had read and reread those pages. Billy wouldn’t let Livy see the journal. Livy knew the worst of Katy would be in those pages. Katy only wrote when she was feeling lost, confused.