No Story to Tell (14 page)

“I’m hungry. You guys hungry? Samson, ya big bugger, ya wanna sandwich or something?”

Victoria turned toward the table hiding her angry, raw hands behind her back. She watched as Sam cast her an apologetic look, his lips moving slightly, but his soft voice unable to find its way over the pollution of noise. Raised on the reservation by his grandmother, he had a heritage of extremely mixed origin and, as if to accentuate this, he’d been born with one brown eye and one blue. Sometimes their eyes would find each other and an understanding would pass between them, an understanding that, no matter how much he felt for her, how much he loved her, he could never desecrate his friend’s marriage. She smiled at him now and he smiled back, quickly returning his attention to his cards. She felt safer with Sam in the trailer. Although he would cross no boundaries for his own pleasure, she also knew nothing could withhold him from protecting her if the verbal abuse were ever to take a physical form.

Opening the refrigerator, she allowed her hands to tarry in its soothing coolness before she pulled out the roast and began slicing it for sandwiches. She slapped mayonnaise across slices of bread, crisscrossed it with mustard and piled on the slabs of beef. To one sandwich, she added an extra slice of meat and sprinkled it liberally with salt and pepper. The other three she sprinkled liberally with ashes. Handing the plates around the table, she became uncomfortably aware of Peter, perched precariously on the edge of his chair, ogling her, prickly sweat shining across his half-bald head. This wasn’t uncommon behavior for him. As the effects of the alcohol dulled his inhibitions, his leering always became more pronounced, his hand sometimes brushing purposely across her derriere when she happened by. But tonight he seemed distracted by something other than his perverted mind.

“Hey, Vic, what’d ya do to your hair?”

“Nothing much,” she answered, hoping to brush him off. Hoping someone would launch in over the top of her, ignore her like they usually did.

“Ya, you did. I can see it,” he chided like a grade six boy teasing the girls at recess. “Come on, what’d ya do? You dyed it, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”

She wished they were in sixth grade again; she’d have no problem settling this score. She’d been tall for her age, and strong. One taunt from a half-size troublemaker like him and she’d have leveled him out across the playground with one punch. But childhood had privileges not taken with one into adulthood, and she could feel behind his hostility a latent desire to cause her real pain.

“Hey, Bobby. Bobby! Over here, numb-nuts, I’m talking to you. You ever noticed your wife’s changing color on you, huh? Changing color on him, hey JJ? Starting to go kookie like her ole auntie did, hey?” He elbowed John Jr. coherent, his laugh rat-a-tat-tat like a machine gun as he pointed out his discovery.

A wave of loathing washed over her as all eyes climbed over her hair, inspecting the red highlights that had been merged with the browns and golds.

Bobby sat lopsided, a look of puzzled confusion adorning his sloppy face. “Hey! Whadda hell ya do to yer hair?”

Fear rammed her, smashed her breath from her. She realized too late she was trapped, the wolves circling into position to devastate their wounded prey. A cellophane-thin smile touched Peter’s face then fled as he pressed forward to start the attack. Her eyes sought out Sam’s, his holding an apology as he sat mute, immovable as the torrent of sarcasm grew around them and above them and over them.

“Hey, JJ. Can you believe that? Dip-shit doesn’t even know if he’s sleeping with a redhead or a brunette, he don’t even know, JJ!”

“Yep, probably could have just as easy chucked the dog in with ya, ya dumb bugger. Hell! Probably did chuck the friggin’ dog in with ya!”

Replying with an oafish, heavy swing, Bobby responded with all the wittiness he could muster.

“Well, shit then, mister . . . that woulda bin one lucky damn potlicker of a dog, I tell ya!”

A belt of laughter sprung up, hit the roof and it was over. Thankful none of them had taken notice of her raw, reddened hands, she cleared the empties off the table, stacked them in the sink and limped back to the sanctuary of the living room. She looked down at the yellow bundle lying beside her chair but didn’t pick it up. Leaving the lamp off she sat down, stared into the nothingness and listened to their lies. Year after year they told the same old stories. Eventually they’d become so stretched and warped and twisted that she could no longer trace them back to the morsels of truth that had inspired them in the first place.

Now, as the stories grew thin, the talk turned to politics, as it always did as the evening wore on into the early dawn. Bobby, being a few drinks ahead started the ranting.

“That damn what’s-his-name, should just shoot that lying bugger. Guy, he ain’t got no chance of making a decent living with those bloody idiots running the country.” He reached for his beer, knocked it over sideways, recovered it and continued on. “Know what I’d do? I’d fire all
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dem useless milksops and prissy faggots. Sure as hell, I’d knock some of their soft heads rolling. Bloody kid could run this here country better!”

“Kid could run it? Hell, Bobby, I’d even let Petey have a whack at it.”

“I could do it, JJ, sure as hell I could. How’s bloody hard kin it be, anyhow? Not hard, jus gotta know what the hell yer doing.”

It was nights like this, when she sat vacantly rocking in the dark waiting for the time to pass, that Auntie May’s distorted advice would sometimes find its way back to her. She’d sift through it, searching for the nuggets of truth she’d occasionally find there. When she’d been no more than five or six years old, her aunt had told her about the masks, the knowledge terrifying her sleepless. Animals didn’t wear masks, Auntie May had patiently explained, didn’t need to because animals don’t lie. You look in their eyes and they’ll tell you their souls. But people, well that was another matter. Some were well and good, but lots were evil as the devil and just as cunning. And it was hard to tell them apart because of the masks. Frantic, Victoria had appealed to her aunt to tell her how she could tell who wore the masks, and she’d been told that although it wasn’t easy, it could be done.

“You smell them, Victoria. Smell ‘em a mile away. Stink like the old outhouse behind the barn. Even worse, the real bad ’uns. But you got to know how to smell for ‘em. Not just anyone can tell the bad ‘uns ‘cause most folks never learnt to smell for ‘em when they were kids, and once you’re an adult it’s too late ‘cause your mind’s too filled up. But you watch and I’ll teach ya.”

And she was true to her word, catching Victoria up short as they were approached on the streets by various of the town’s inhabitants, sniffing the air like a dog searching for scent. Being by no means a respecter of persons, Auntie May had declared her findings unilaterally and loudly, proclaiming to both the pastor and his wife and the entire bingo hall that they stunk to high heaven. It was shortly after this that she’d been removed to a place with a pleasant name, and a reputation that fell far short of it.

Victoria smiled sadly into the dark room. If only the real world could fall so easily into the parameters Auntie May had defined for her own, but it didn’t. So far she’d found no one who was exclusively good or exclusively bad: even John Jr. and Petey, whom she found so easy to vilify, went home to wives and children who loved them. And even Bobby had his reservoirs of decency that spilled over from time to time. A yawn pulled itself from her, and she glanced at the clock, its rigid black fingers pointing with disapproval at the hour. The party was playing out in the next room, the boys having drunk their flimsy backbones out of their bottles, had now almost finished solving the woes of the world with their collective wisdom. Finally, as she waited half asleep in her chair, the booze ran dry and the talk ran out. John Jr., left with nothing to conquer, rummaged for his keys and started for the door, sweeping Peter along behind him.

“See ya Monday, Bobby,” he slurred as he and his tail tottered through the porch and out the door.

Silence answered him as Victoria cut the music, an empty quiet soaking its way through the trailer. Bobby had disintegrated into an inebriated lump across the kitchen table, a half-empty whiskey still in his hand. The old argument started up outside.

“Get outta here, ya stupid bugger. Ya ain’t driving my friggin’ truck.”

“Just let me drive, JJ,” Sam said evenly. “You can hardly even walk.”

“I can bloody walk. Where the hell’s my keys? Give me back my keys or I’ll kick your ass.”

“I don’t have your keys. You put them in your pocket.”

“I know where I put the frickin’ things.”

“Let me drive, JJ. Come on, don’t be—”

“Petey, where the hell are you?”

“I’m taking a piss, whadda ya want?”

“This stupid Injun thinks he can drive better’n me. What the hell you think ‘bout that?”

“Well hell. . . you ain’t got us killed yet, JJ, that’s gotta say something.”

“I’ll tell you what it says. It says I can drive drunk ten times better than he can drive sober. That’s what it says.”

“All right, JJ. You drive then, but go slow. And give me a minute, will you? I want to help Vic get Bobby into bed.”

“Ya, sure, more like ya want to help put ‘toria to bed, ain’t it, huh? Huh, Sam, ain’t it?” Peter’s nasally taunt jabbed into the air but was ignored as Sam slipped off his boots and returned back inside the trailer.

In a ritual that had been performed many times before, Victoria pulled back the sheets as Sam helped Bobby, with a shepherd’s tenderness, onto the bed. Together they silently worked off his jeans and shirt, then Sam turned off the light. Through the semi-darkness he looked down at her.

“Hey. Thanks for the sandwich, Vic.”

He dug deep into his pocket, pulled out a tiny, carved figurine and handed it to her. She felt its smooth patina. It was a wolf, head raised, howling to the moon.

“Thank you, Sam, it’s beautiful,” she whispered. “Thanks for helping me with Bobby again, too.”

Sam looked at her, shrugged, then quietly added, “I . . . uh, I think your hair looks real nice like that.”

Victoria’s smile was sliced short by the angry blast of a horn followed by John Jr.’s loud threats about things she no longer heard. Sam’s mismatched eyes flicked to the door then back to hers, his face struggling to release the words that grasped around his heart. John Jr. and Peter were both bellowing now, joined by the resident coyotes who’d joined in the diatribe. Twice his soft lips parted, but no words would venture forth and he finally just committed to a whispered good-night and left.

Hovering beside the bed she listened as the roar of the truck melted into silence. Placing the wolf figurine on her bedside table, nestled among the other carvings Sam had given her over the years, she wrapped her arms around herself as if to hold the embrace of his kind words. Eventually, the cold laid claim to her, and she shed the skin of her clothing onto the floor and carefully slid into bed. She drew shallow breaths, laid stone still, not wishing to arouse the behemoth snoring beside her.

Luck was not to be hers tonight, however, and a rough sweaty paw groped blindly over her. Her face contorted with disgust as his hand found its way to her breasts. With a heavy grunt, he mustered the energy to hoist his hot, flaccid body on top of her ice-cold one, pressing the breath from her. She was thankful for the warmth, nothing else. His face within inches of hers, stole her breath as it rushed from her lungs, but still he did not look at her. His eyes were drawn into narrow black slits that blocked out his reality while traitorous twitches revealed the fantasy playing in his mind. His thick flesh spread out over her, his labored huffing fouling her air, so she twisted her head aside as far as she could with her body trapped beneath him. She couldn’t breathe, but it didn’t matter. She held her breath. Counting. Counting silently to herself, coaching herself,
36 . . . 37 . . . 38. Hang on, hang on. Count, count. It’ll be over soon.

When they had first married, before she’d understood how things were going to be, she had moved and wriggled to let him know that there was still life left in the corpse beneath him, but she’d soon understood that it was an unnecessary, unwelcome intrusion. Slowly the pulsing faded to a rhythmic snoring, his body draping hers like death. Revolted, she realized he’d not been able to relieve himself but had succumbed to the alcohol poisoning his brain and paralyzing his body. Anger dove out of her as she struggled to roll him off. A rancid rush of putrid air erupted from his gaping mouth as he rolled over, belched, and again began to snore. Sightless hands led her through the black hallway into the bathroom. Flipping on the light, she leaned against the door as the tiny cubicle tilted and spun beneath her. The acrid stench of urine crawled into her nostrils, her knees buckling her onto the floor as a wrenching eruption exhumed the contents of her stomach into the waiting bowl.

Rose arrived early the next afternoon, bearing a plate full of peanut butter cookies and flanked on all sides by her three children freshly starched and pressed from their morning at church. Rose had no religious inclinations, scoffed at half of what was taught there, but still felt it was her moral duty to instill in her children a healthy fear of God. That, and the fact that she found a good two-thirds of her customers there, attributed to her continued attendance even now that Steve, who’d always been a faithful churchgoer, had vaporized, and the children complained as vehemently as they dared each and every Sunday morning.