Something Rising (Light and Swift) (10 page)

Cassie looked straight ahead, thinking of the house. “Whatever.”

Most of the tables were busy at Uncle Bud's. Cassie got three beers out of the refrigerator; Bud was washing glasses in the sink behind the bar. He couldn't abide men with beards, or any other characteristic that made them appear escaped from a cave, but he didn't say anything. Clay had been there before and was widely known. How known he may have been to Bud was not Cassie's business, or any interest of hers. They each chose a house cue, then Cassie unlocked the glass room and turned on the light. She
asked Clay if he wanted a handicap, and he smiled and said no. She said they could play as a team, two against one, but no trick shots on this table.

“Straight, 9-ball, 8? Which one do you want to play?”

Clay said he'd only ever played 8-ball, and would ten dollars a game be too much? Cassie said that would be fine. They lagged for the break, which Cassie took, and as she was racking the balls, she realized that in the truck she'd had a warm feeling for the two men, a sort of camaraderie, and it was gone. The best course of action, she decided, would be to kick their asses and take their money, and they could make it up around the campfire some other night.

She shot so hard on the break that her feet came up off the floor, and the crack of the balls caused Gary to jump. She sank a solid and a stripe and could choose which to take by the layout of the table. She chose highs, moving around the table quickly, sinking the 11 on a slice so thin Clay moaned and slapped his head. When only the 8 was left, Clay whispered to Gary that she couldn't make it. The cue was on the center spot, and the 8 was an inch or so from the side rail. The 2-ball was between the 8 and the pocket. Cassie used her cue to sight the angle to the opposite pocket, called it, and banked it with a medium shot. Clay took a ten-dollar bill out of his pocket and handed it to her; she asked if they'd like to play another.

On the next break Cassie pocketed the 1 and the 9. She could have made a long shot on the 3—if the stakes had been higher, she would have taken it—but took a safety instead. A part of her wanted the two men to enter the game. Clay let Gary shoot first for their team, and a lot was revealed about him, first by his shot, which was bored and imprecise, and later by his choice of songs
on the jukebox. “Box of Rain”; “Don't Think Twice, It's All Right”; “Walkin' After Midnight.” Cassie guessed he had problems with authority that he disguised with laidback affability.

The two men blew every shot Cassie gave them, although Clay played better than she would have guessed. After ten games Cassie had taken a hundred dollars from them, and she decided that was enough. Gary, who hadn't said much all night, asked if they'd like to go back to his house for a nightcap. There was something between the two men that made Cassie think they had nightcaps together on a regular basis. Dependence, commitment. She could vaguely hear Belle's voice, describing the love between men in ancient Greece—not the merely sexual but a love believed to be higher than any other, even that of a mother and a child. Warriors, of a sort.

Gary lived in a plain, small house in an old neighborhood in Hopwood.

“It's quiet,” Cassie said as he unlocked his door.

“Lots of old people.”

“Old people don't make a lot of noise,” Clay said.

Inside, two large tapestries hung from the ceiling. One was Indian and depicted two lovers next to a river. The other was a medieval banquet scene swirling with images; men and women, dogs and dishes, musical instruments. A red carpet covered the floor. There were more tapestries on the wall, and lots of places to sit, pillows and a small couch, a futon in the corner. In the center of the room was a low octagonal table, old dark wood Cassie couldn't name, with lighter inlays forming a six-pointed star. The table held a brass lamp and an elaborate pipe.

“Have a seat,” Gary said, gesturing toward the pillows. Clay had already settled in: he lit incense from a shoe box full of different scents; he took rolling papers and a dime bag out of a drawer in the table. The large new television was a shock amid the tapestries—the television and VCR, the Swiss stereo, the small speakers tucked into the corners of the ceiling. Gary put in a mix tape and poured them all orange juice. The orange juice would taste brilliant and clean after the bitter taste of the joint. Cassie suspected he was also the sort of man who would turn the heat up too high in the winter, just to enjoy the feeling of stepping out into the snow. A lot of people Cassie knew needed to feel the extremes of available sensations.

Clay told her that Gary worked with him on the farm, had for ten years. “Strong as an ox,” he said.

In the background a thin, unnerving voice tunneled through the conversation and reached Cassie.
More than this, you know there's nothing
.

“You're a helluva pool player,” Clay said, shaking his head. “You spanked us.”

“Thanks.”

“My dad always says a horse runs faster against a faster opponent. I'd love to see you play somebody good.”

“Your dad's a shithead,” Gary said, from far away. Cassie turned; he was right next to her. “His dad's a shithead.”

“So you said.”

“Aw, he's all right,” Clay said, coughing. “Old man is all.”

“A fascist is all. Sieg Heil is all.” Gary sat up, rubbed one eye. “Dude? Don't get me started.”

That song ended and another began, and Cassie didn't know
this one, either. The dope was hard, waving and cresting, sometimes so violently Cassie was sure something terrible was about to happen. She could sense it but couldn't locate it, a dark shape at the edge of her vision. She closed her eyes. “Oh, listen to this, I could die when she sings this chorus,” Gary said as the woman's voice soared above them,
Heathcliff, it's me, it's Cathy, I've come home
. When Cassie opened her eyes again, feeling queasy, everything was so close to her, the room, the colors, the incense, the song so gorgeous it was like a spur against bone. Gary was looking at her, his eyes arctic. For a moment Cassie thought she could sense the edge of her own tendencies, the beginning of her pirate days, their eventual end, she could not articulate this. She picked up a large pillow from the floor, said, “Leave me be for a while,” and went outside and lay down in the bed of Gary's truck. She could see plots of sky through the trees; there were lots of stars. Belle and Laura and Cassie all hated that the stars were named, and changed the designations on those rare occasions they were all looking at the sky at once. Laura might say, “Look at that group over there, the one that looks like Marleybone's Back Leg,” or Belle would say, “God, Cassie, pay attention, I'm talking about Poppy's Pipe, the pipe-shaped cluster.” Cassie could see nothing worth naming in these sections, even stoned. She closed her eyes; the night air on her face was like a live thing. Imagine being blind, she thought, all the amazing pleasures still right there. Blind. She remembered, suddenly, a night years ago, she must have been seven or eight, when she had dreamed she was in school, making a log cabin out of pipe cleaners, and her vision began to fade. It faded a piece at a time. First she couldn't see the cabin, and then she couldn't see her teacher, and then her own
hands disappeared. When she woke up in her dark bedroom, she thought it was true and stumbled out of bed with her eyes closed, because to open them would be to confirm the bare facts, then crept down the hallway to her parents' room, touching the walls along the way. She walked first into the linen closet, then backed out, hitting her face on the door. The doorknob to her parents' room was cold, and when she stepped inside, she was doubly certain she was blind because all of her other senses were heightened. She could hear her mom's shallow breathing, her dad's quicker, raspier breaths. She could smell their clothes, their tobacco, the oil from the Yoruba priestess; each scent was discrete, and Cassie could pull one away from another like rose petals, all the way down to the tight, familiar core. This was not how she thought of it at the time but was how it had to be rendered now, by a stoned person. She reached the edge of the bed and felt for her father's feet, then for his bony knees. She climbed up on the bed and lay down next to him. He smelled like her dad, no doubt about it, but to make sure, Cassie leaned over his chest and put both hands on his face, tracing the shape of his brow, his low, straight hairline, his short, straight nose. Under her fingers, his lips, which had been parted, abruptly closed. Jimmy's chin was strong, and stubbly with a day's growth of beard. He had a single dimple in his left cheek, mostly unnoticeable; one of his ears had a bump on the ridge. She had gently rubbed the fringe of his eyelashes, the soft, puffy skin under his eyes. On his right cheek he had three scars: straight lines each about an inch long, running from under his cheekbone to the edge of his mouth. He would never say how he had gotten them.

“Cassie, can I ask?” he had said, his voice low.

“I've gone blind.”

“Ah,” he said, as if that often happened to sleeping people. “Want a root beer?”

In the bed of the truck Cassie dozed, flew higher, came down.

“Lot of lights on at your house,” Gary said, pulling in to her driveway. And there were, especially for one o'clock in the morning. Laura and Belle weren't in the habit of waiting up if they were tired, and when they were awake, they stayed in the kitchen, at the back of the house. Edwin's car was there, too. Gary had barely slowed the truck before Cassie was out and running toward the porch. She stopped midway, then turned around and ran back. “Thank you,” she said.

Gary nodded. “My pleasure.”

She ran past the glass cases with Buena Vista's figurines, she ran through the living room, where one of Belle's old radio-drama cassettes was playing. Cassie vaguely heard,
And then he turned the corner and discovered …!
The actor's voice was deep and tinged with hysteria. Belle and Laura both loved that sort of thing. In the kitchen all the lights were on, even the one over the stove. Belle and Laura were at the table with Edwin and Poppy, surrounded by cold teacups and the butt ends of a hundred of Laura's cigarettes.

“Is he dead?” Cassie asked, breathless.

Belle made a
pffft
sound and rolled her eyes.

“Sweetheart,” Laura said, “sit down.”

Cassie sat down next to her mother. Poppy was holding one of his old red handkerchiefs, the kind some of her friends rolled up
and tied around their foreheads, as if they were in the original cast of
Hair
. Poppy's eyes were swollen, he sniffed repeatedly, and one of his suspenders had fallen down.

“Cassie,” Edwin said, leaning toward her from across the table. “I've had a disturbing phone call from your father, and also from the sheriff.”

Cassie swallowed.

“Six months ago your father changed his legal residence to Barbara Thompson's house, her mobile home, you know where I mean.”

The room was silent.

“Today he filed for divorce from your mother, and additionally, he filed other motions with the court.”

Cassie looked at Laura, whose face betrayed nothing.

“He is seeking to emancipate you and Belle, to have you declared emancipated, and also to sever all parental obligations and rights. He wants to have you removed from the health-insurance policy he's carried for years through Farm Bureau. He is filing a lawsuit to accomplish these things.”

Poppy gave a sob and covered his face with his handkerchief.

“Your grandfather feels very ashamed.” Laura reached over and squeezed Poppy's shoulder, which she had probably done dozens of times over the course of the evening, and which was an indication of the gravity of the matter at hand. Laura didn't touch; she wasn't touched.

Cassie could barely breathe. She sat up very straight and took in as much oxygen as she could, then blew it out slowly, like a woman in labor.

“If you don't fight these proceedings, Cassie,” Edwin continued, “Jimmy and Barbara won't prosecute you for willful destruction
of property. They claim you stood outside Barbara's trailer, one week ago today, while they were inside, and threw large rocks, breaking three windows and leaving thirteen very noticeable dents in the trailer's aluminum siding.”

“Fourteen,” Cassie said.

“Fourteen, then,” Edwin said, nodding. “They must have missed one. Jimmy also claims that when Barbara emerged from the trailer to stop you, and she has admitted to carrying a cast-iron frying pan into the argument, you delivered a single blow to her face, breaking both her nose and her eyeglasses. They won't press assault charges, either.”

Poppy sobbed. His dogs whined at the door. Belle said, “Barbara Thompson is a white-trash cow.”

Laura said, “Belle, you're not helping.”

“I wish Cassie had killed her. Cassie could have killed her if she wanted to, I've seen her working out in the backyard with that punching bag, I've seen how hard she can kick, why didn't you kill her, Cassie, while you had the chance? And also, Edwin Meyer, and I won't say this again, tell Jimmy that I would be honored to be free of the disgrace of being his daughter, I would have jumped at the chance any time in the past eighteen years.”

“Belle,” Laura said.

“Cassie, your father also wants you to return his pool cue to him, which he says you are unlawfully holding.”

“She won that cue fair and square!” Poppy shouted, his face a trembling mess. “I know she did, Bud told me, and everybody in Roseville heard about it, she whooped him! He didn't have to bet that cue, he could have stopped!”

Cassie placed her hands flat on the table's scarred surface. “I'll agree to anything he wants, but he can't have the cue back.”

Edwin nodded. “I told him that's what you'd say. Cassie, we can fight this if you want. I'll help you.”