Break the Skin (14 page)

I just looked out the window, watching the twilight come on while we moved deeper into the river bottoms. Pole lights were coming on in farmyards, and I thought about that Lucinda song, “Side of the Road,” where the woman tells her man she wants out of the car. She walks out into a field and looks at a farmhouse far away and wonders whether a husband and wife live there and whether they’re happy. She wants to know what it’s like to be away from her man, to be by herself. I wondered sometimes if that’s what I should want, to be separate from Delilah, to know what my life might be like without her, but like the woman in the song, I was scared to find out. So there I was on my way to Dark Bend, where I knew Delilah would want me to stand as witness so she’d have someone to crow to about the night and how wonderful Tweet was and how much they were in love, and my-oh-my, all the drive home.

“Meow,” she said, and she curled her fingers into a claw and scraped her nails over my bare arm. “Look out,” she said, “I’m on the prowl.”

When we walked into the Boar’s Nest, Helmets on the Short Bus were finishing their first set. The last licks of that old Creedence song “Fortunate Son.” I remembered my daddy singing that song around the house, a song about those who had and those who didn’t, and guess which ones went off and fought the wars, he said. Sure as hell weren’t the ones with the silver spoons. “It ain’t me, it ain’t me,” Tweet sang into the microphone. “I ain’t no fortunate son, no, no, no.”

“That’s for all you vets who got out of Vietnam,” he said as the last chords faded away, and the men in the Boar’s Nest gave a shout and raised their glasses high in the air. “We’re Helmets on the Short Bus,” Tweet said. “We’re taking a little break now, but we’ll be back before you know it.” He lifted his guitar over his head, turned his back to us, and leaned the guitar into its stand on the low pallets covered with plywood that, pushed together, served as a stage.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Delilah raise her arm to wave at him. I even heard the little push of air at her lips as she started to say his name. Then she stopped. I heard that catch of breath, and I turned to
look at her full on. She still had her arm in the air, but her hand flopped forward, the wave she intended wilting. Little by little, the arm drooped to her side. Then she said, “There she is. There’s that tramp.”

She was talking about Rose, who was standing by the stage, offering a bottle of Corona to Tweet. He took it by the neck and swung it up to his lips.

“Bitch,” Delilah said, and then she was on the move.

I didn’t know what to do but to follow, so there I was, ’Lil Sis tagging along, weaving my way through the tables where the men and women were starting to catch the scent of trouble. They were putting down their beers, stopping their gab, elbowing one another in the ribs, and gesturing with their heads toward Delilah, who was on the march.

“Hey, baby,” Tweet said to her when they were finally face-to-face. She stepped right up on that stage and snatched the Corona from his hand. She put her mouth around the bottle and took a good long drink. Then without even looking, she handed the bottle back to Rose, who had no choice but to take it.

“Get on out of here,” Delilah said to Rose. She still wouldn’t look at her, and her voice was husky and low.

“We were just talking,” Rose said. “Jesus, Dee, don’t get your panties in a twist.”

Delilah just kept looking right at Tweet. “What makes you think I’m wearing any?” She put her arms around his neck and kissed him, one of those long, openmouthed kisses usually saved—I’d never had one, but even I knew this—for those alone times in the dark. I was more than a little embarrassed to see it, and yet I couldn’t stop myself from watching. Delilah pressed against Tweet, and her hips did a little grind. What must it be like, I wondered, to feel so comfortable with who you were that you could do something like that on a stage at the Boar’s Nest with everyone watching and whistling and hooting?

“Jeez, Delilah.” Tweet tried to pull away from her, but she held on. “What’s people going to think?”

“They’re going to think you’re lucky,” Delilah said, and she ground herself against him again.

Rose was wearing a pair of jeans with glittery gold stars painted on the hip pockets. Her white button-up shirt was tucked neatly into her jeans, and I could tell she’d taken extra-special care with her hair and makeup. Her lips were shiny with gloss, and she’d used mascara and liner. Her long lashes swept up from her eyes.

The air was thick inside the Boar’s Nest. It didn’t matter that the windows were wide open, and we could hear the river moving outside and the sounds of peepers and tree frogs. Under the lights, and with so many people crowded together, it was hotter than hot. Rose had a few strands of hair stuck to her sweaty neck. That made me feel sorry for her. I can’t really explain why, just that it was something about the fact that she’d gone to so much trouble to get herself fancied up and what was she doing but having a little chat with Tweet, and then there was Delilah making a fool of her in front of all those people. Of course, I knew the offer of that Corona was something more selfish than a kindness. It was clear to Delilah and everyone else that Rose intended to make a play for Tweet. A part of me thought, Good for her, good for going after what she wanted. Maybe I secretly wished that something might happen to mess up what Delilah and Tweet had going so she’d be mine again, and mine alone.

She pulled away from him, and she turned to look at Rose for the first time. “Maybe someday,” Delilah said, “you’ll know how to get a man of your own. In the meantime, stay the hell away from Tweet. I mean it, Rose. I’m not going to say this again. If there’s a next time, it’ll be the last time. You can count on that.”

“I can talk to whoever I want to.” Rose lifted the Corona up to Tweet again. “Tell her, Tweet.”

I knew how much Delilah needed him after what she went through with Bobby May. She and Tweet were just at the beginning of things, but I knew she was hoping he’d be the one to stick, the good-hearted man she’d been dreaming of all her life.

But there he was reaching for that Corona. As soon as I saw his hand open to take it, I wanted to tell him he was making a mistake, but I didn’t know that it would make any difference at all. He took the Corona, and he said in that soft voice of his, “Jeez, Delilah. People are watching.”

“You think they’re watching now?” Delilah said. “You just wait.”

She reached her hand into her purse and brought out that .38. She leveled it at Rose. “I told you to leave him alone.”

Some of the people in the crowd saw that gun. I heard a woman scream, a man say, “Jesus Christ.”

“Good God, Delilah,” Tweet said. “Get some sense.”

Rose said, “She’s crazy. She’s always been that way.”

I saw Delilah’s finger move the safety off.

“Delilah, listen to me,” I said. “It’s Laney. You don’t want to do this. We need to go.”

She looked at me, and I could see in her eyes how afraid she was. She’d gone too far, and maybe she could see how little it would take for her to go the rest of the way.

“Laney,” she said, like a plea, and I knew I’d be able to get her out of there. I knew there wouldn’t be any more trouble, at least not that night.

She let me take the .38. I put the safety back on. “Come on,” I told her. “Let’s go.”

We made our way through the crowd. I didn’t look at anyone, just set my sights on the door and shoved my way through. A man bumped into Delilah, and her hat fell to the floor. I didn’t stop to pick it up. We had to go before she changed her mind about doing harm to Rose. That hat was gone.

When we were outside and at the Malibu, I took the .38 and put it in the glove compartment. Then I wrapped my arms around Delilah’s waist. She let me, and there we were just holding on. I could smell the cigarette smoke in her hair and the Euphoria cologne on her skin and the salt of her sweat. I let the moment go on and on, afraid to say a single word, afraid of what might happen next.

Then she said, “Oh, Laney. Oh, Jesus God. I’m going to lose him.”

I didn’t know what to say. Right then, I didn’t know how anything would turn out. A couple walked by in the dark, their boots scuffing over the gravel. The woman, either not knowing we could hear her or else not giving a squat, said, “That was Delilah Dade in there. She used to run with that Bobby May. She’s got a way of finding trouble.”

I wanted to say something to that woman, tell her to mind her own damn business, tell her she didn’t know Delilah at all, but before I could open my mouth, Delilah said, “Let it go, Laney. She’s right. I haven’t had much of anything but trouble all my life.”

It was true that she’d had more than her share of rough spots—some of them, like her time with Bobby May, the result of her own poor choices—but that woman and others like her who wanted to stand all high and mighty above Delilah could go to hell for all I cared. They’d heard the stories of how Delilah’s father left and then her mother sat in her Impala on those railroad tracks and waited for the train.
You
try finding a way of loving yourself after all that. That’s what I wanted to tell all those people.

“Nothing bad’s going to happen.” I kissed Delilah’s hair. “I won’t let it.”

“You’ve always stuck by me, Laney.”

No one knew—not that woman, not anyone except Rose and me—how it was for Delilah sometimes. No one knew how she couldn’t go to sleep at night unless I got into bed and held her in my arms. No one knew how she’d wake up screaming from the bad dreams. I’d tell that woman—even now I want to tell them all—but the truth was she didn’t deserve to know any of it. It was all mine and Delilah’s, still is, ours alone, this story of how in a snap the world can fall down around you and leave you, for years and years, trying to get back to a place where once upon a time you were happy.

“I’ve always loved you,” I said to her. A chill passed over me, and I shivered. When I think of it now, I wonder if Lester felt it, too, wherever
he was that night, the chill of all our lives beginning to change, all because I made a vow. “I’ll take care of you,” I whispered, holding tight to Delilah. “Forever and always. I promise.”

“Do you mean it, Laney?”

“I do.”

WE HAD TO WORK
the next night, our usual eleven-to-seven shift. “Hoot owl,” Delilah called it, or sometimes, “the gravedigger.” Bobby May, when he was still around, worked nights at the oil refinery in Phillipsport, and she’d picked up those words from him. That was before everything went to pieces.

Lester was already in the break room, clocking in when we got to the store. Delilah said to him, “Another gravedigger shift.” She punched her time card. “Enough to bury me. Enough to bury us all.”

It was Lester’s job to stock shelves when he wasn’t corralling carts from the lot. It was a job meant for a high-school kid and not a man Lester’s age. It might have even embarrassed him to have to do work like that, but it kept him in groceries and gave him a place to be.

He lived in an old house he rented out on Highway 130, a simple frame house, the paint peeling from the clapboards. I’d been there a couple of times to watch movies. He loved all the
Harry Potter
ones.

One night he said, “You ever think it might be possible? All this magic?”

I told him about Rose’s spell that brought Tweet to Delilah and also him to me. “We were just fooling around,” I said, “but look what we got for it. We put that wish out into the world.”

He didn’t laugh the way I feared he might. He just nodded, a very serious look on his face. “Do you ever wish you were better looking?” he asked me. I told him that was no way to sweet-talk a girl. “Sorry,” he said. “I just meant … Well, gee, Laney, I thought maybe you were like me.” I told him not to worry about it. I knew exactly what he meant,
and the answer was yes. Yes, sometimes—hell, who was I kidding, a lot of times—I wished for things I didn’t have. “Some people,” he said, “they have whatever they want. Why is that, Laney?” Well, that was a million-dollar question. Find the answer to that one, I told him, and you’d really know something. “Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to know magic spells,” he said. “I could have more money. I could look like a movie star. I could make people like me.”

When Delilah said what she did that night about the gravedigger, he just started rattling about how he was out driving before he came to work and he went down Whittle Avenue, past the South End, and who should he see coming out the door but Tweet. Lester was shy about it, but he had a little grin on his face, and I got the idea that he was telling Delilah this because he hoped she might put in a word for him and get him back on Tweet’s good side, get him back in with the band.

Then Lester said, “At first I thought it was you he had with him. Then I saw I was wrong.” I think he knew right away the mistake he’d made. He’d been so excited and he’d said too much. Then he got all flustered. He took off his derby hat and tried to twirl it on his finger, but it spun off and fell to the floor right at Delilah’s feet. She gave it a little kick, and Lester had to chase after it. He stooped to pick it up. “I’m sorry,” he said. Then he turned and walked out of the break room, and there was Delilah, who had too many hours ahead of her to imagine the worst.

“Ain’t that dandy?” she said to me. Already, the tears were starting to come. She dabbed at her eyes with the heel of her palm.

“Maybe it doesn’t mean a thing.” I handed her a tissue. “You don’t know.”

“I know enough to be afraid.” She blew her nose on the tissue and threw it in the trash. “Hell of a way to start a shift,” she said. Then she went out into the store.

I worked checkout twelve that night, right across from the Vision Center. Delilah was on the floor, setting up displays in Women’s Wear. I caught a glimpse of her from time to time, and I could tell from the look
on her face that she was mulling it over, this news that Tweet was coming out of the South End with another woman. Lester hadn’t said who that woman was, and neither Delilah nor I had said the name, Rose, for fear that saying it would make it true.