Sorrow Floats (28 page)

I shifted my weight forward onto Frostbite’s shoulders as he waded through deep snow up Red Rock Peak. It was a warm day in early April, and the snow was softening into a pudding texture that made rough going for a horse—no going for a person on foot, snowshoes, or probably even skis. Frostbite progressed up the hill in thrusts, gathering his back legs and springing into the snow. I wore a penstemon in my hair, which was long again, the length it had been when Shannon was born. A pair of bluebirds hop-scotched from fence post to fence post ahead of us. The posts didn’t look connected because snow covered the top line of barbwire. I was watching a mouse skim across the snow when I heard a quiet
Thock
and the snow started to move. Frostbite screamed and went over. I clutched the reins with both hands as the avalanche swept us down the mountain. Frostbite hit a tree and screamed again, then he was lost. I cupped my hands over my nose to give myself an inch of breathing space as the snow rolled over me deeper and deeper, then everything was still, dark, and heavy. To find which direction was up, I spit in my hand, although, buried alive, up doesn’t matter from down and snow doesn’t matter from earth.

***

I gasped awake, struggling for air. There was pain in my head, a very specific pain in a very specific spot, as if a bolt had been screwed into my forehead, right over the bridge of my nose. I squeezed my eyes shut and listened to the rain and fought both for and against remembering. Nothing came at first, then Memphis, then a police car chasing an ambulance. Armand shifted an arm across my breasts, and several more pieces fell into place.

Jesus—another social blunder. Where was Lloyd? I’d woken up bare-assed and dry-mouthed before, but not in a long, long time. Had we fucked? Did it matter? Armand lay on his stomach, facing away, with one arm over my body. The hair on his back was a furry shawl across his shoulders with two thinning lines running down either side of his spine. He seemed clinched and asleep at the same time.

In the bathroom, I held my hand under the tap and drank, then I splashed water on my face. When I peed I lowered my head between my knees and stared at the floor tile. Spotless. Nothing snotty dribbled down my thighs, but that didn’t prove anything. He could have nailed me and not come. Or, for all I knew, he nailed me and I got up afterward and danced on the tables. God, I hate blackouts. What had I done to Brad? I can’t stand questions everyone but me knows the answers to.

Hangovers are best handled by three aspirin, a gallon of water, and twelve extra hours’ sleep, but this didn’t feel like your everyday puking-shivering hangover. This hangover was unique in my experience. I fought to remember—Injun Joe, moonshine, the little green pill. I’d mixed whiskey with pills. The woman who’d lost her baby had sunk to an all-new low.

***

Still avoiding the mirror, I fumbled open the medicine cabinet in search of aspirin. The bottles were lined up in alphabetized categories with each category marked on a piece of plastic embossing tape—
Amphetamines, Amyl-nitrate, Antidepressants, Antipsychotics, Barbiturates
. My green pills from the night before were down at the bottom under
Quaaludes
. I pride myself on self-abuse sophistication, but I’d never heard of half Armand’s pharmaceuticals.

“Don’t touch my property.” He was behind me, angry.

“I was looking for aspirin.”

“If you need aspirin, ask for it. Don’t snoop.”

“This is an amazing collection, Armand. My mother would marry you to get at this drugstore.”

Armand stood with his hands on his hips, glaring at me. He’d passed out wearing a rubber—a third explanation for the lack of dribble. I hate being glared at by a man in a rubber.

“I’m sorry, Armand. May I please have three aspirin?”

Careful not to touch his body, I moved aside while he yanked open a drawer next to the sink. The drawer was full of stuff regular people stock in bathrooms—toothpaste, deodorant, aspirin. Down south they’re big on ground-up aspirin. Armand gave me three packets of Goody’s Headache Powder.

As Dad used to say, his breath could have knocked a coyote off a flyblown calf. “Your friends are outside behaving strangely.”

“What’s that mean?”

“I think they’re leaving.”

Back in the bedroom, I looked out the third-floor window at Moby Dick and Dad’s trailer. Lloyd and Brad stood in the rain with their hands in their pockets. Through the open loading doors I could see Shane in his chair, playing his harmonica.

“What makes you think they’re leaving?” I asked.

Armand appeared at the bathroom door with a glass of water in one hand and three different-colored capsules in the other. Condoms look silly on limp dicks. “They turned the rig around.”

“That doesn’t mean they’re leaving.”

“Last night the skinny one said y’all would clear out as soon as you could travel.”

***

Only two days ago I’d been proud of myself for never having stooped so low as to wear dirty underwear, and now I was faced with a choice between dirty and none. I put the question in Mom’s terms: If I got hit by a truck and rushed to the hospital on the verge of death, which would be least mortifying? Dirty. There goes another standard.

Downstairs as I crossed to the front door I noticed a large burn hole in one of the black couches and broken glass on the marble floor under a topless table. Must have been a hell of a party. Too bad I couldn’t remember it.

Lloyd stood in the slow rain looking up the hill away from the river. I followed his line of sight up to Hugo Sr.’s Oldsmobile. Hugo got out and waved, so I waved back. He was proving to be a tough little sucker, a lot tougher than he’d come off in Amarillo.

Marcella’s and Andrew’s faces peeked from the ambulance, behind Shane. I smiled at the gang. “What’s going on, guys?”

Brad turned away. Andrew and Lloyd were the only ones who would look at me. “It’s time to go,” Lloyd said. “Get in the ambulance.”

Behind me, Armand said, “She’s staying here.”

Shane snapped. “Don’t be a fool, Maurey. Get in the ambulance.”

“Whoa,” I said. If everyone was in the mood for ugliness, hung over or not, I’d take them on. “I will do whatever I want.”

Lloyd’s eyes weren’t Jesus now—they were black ice. “No, you won’t. You’ll come with us.”

“You’re not my father.”

Shane spit a laugh. “Neither is he.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Come off it,” Shane said. “You’ve wanted to fuck your father all your life, and now you have.”

“To hell with you, Shane.” I’d expected ugly, but this was terminal. Marcella looked frightened. Brad glanced at me, then down at the mud by his feet.

Shane kept coming. “What else could you see in this pretentious drip? He’s your father.”

“Be careful, old-timer,” Armand said. In his gray slacks and no shirt or shoes, he did look a tiny bit like Dad, at least in hairiness and size, but that wasn’t why I’d slept with him.

No one likes being accused of having the hots for a parent. I advanced on Shane until I was about six inches off his face. “What a sick, perverted, slime-ball thing to say.” I almost had my one chin against his three. “I wouldn’t leave here now if you paid me.”

“Paid you for what, father-fucker?”

Marcella grabbed the wheelchair and pulled him away from the edge. “Shane doesn’t mean it,” she said. “We’re just all tired and tense.”

I stared into his purple eyes and saw no trace of humor. “He did too mean it, he’s a pig.”

Andrew burst into tears and kicked the hell out of Shane’s ankle. “Ouch,” Shane yelped. He tried to backhand Andrew, but Marcella caught his wrist. If he’d hit Andrew, I think I’d have plastered the son of a bitch, wheelchair or no wheelchair.

Lloyd touched my arm and I jumped like I’d been cattle-prodded. “Will you get in the ambulance?” he asked.

The ice was gone from Lloyd’s eyes, and he was back to vulnerable—which is a stronger weapon. The cracks on his face were like a relief map demarking grief. Lloyd had been my friend, he deserved a better explanation than “Fuck you,” but I didn’t know how to explain to him something I couldn’t explain to myself.

“What’s the point?” I said. “Granma is two-hundred-something miles away. What then? You dump me and rush off to Florida in search of your precious Sharon, who almost surely isn’t even in Florida. I’m sick of getting dumped. What’s the difference if we break up the gang here or tomorrow?”

Brad walked up behind me. “Please come with us, Miss Pierce.”

I turned to him. Even without hair, he had the face of an angel. He reminded me of the Little Prince from the Saint-Exupéry book. I touched his jawline. “I can’t.”

Rain ran down his forehead into his eyes. “You’re the first person I ever trusted. Don’t leave me.”

Jesus, this was too much. “I can’t.”

Lloyd walked past me to the back of Moby Dick, where he bent down and disconnected the wiring and safety chains from the trailer.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“It’s your trailer.”

“If you guys need it, take it. How will you haul the beer?”

He flipped the doobie that released the trailer from the ball. “There’s only fifteen cases and a six-pack left. We’ll leave five cases and two bottles with you. The rest will fit in back.”

“Lloyd, there’s no reason to be a dick about it. Take the beer and the trailer. What am I going to do with a horse trailer and no way to pull it?”

He turned a crank that made the trailer tongue rise off the hitch. “What were you planning to do with the trailer once we reached North Carolina?”

“I hadn’t thought about that. I’ve been afraid to think past Shane’s grandmother’s house.”

Lloyd straightened up. “Well, now you don’t have to.”

***

I walked back over to Armand and stood watching Lloyd and Brad unload the trailer. After stacking my cases and two bottles by the barn, they opened Moby Dick’s rear doors and crammed in the spare tires, Marcella’s suitcase, and the beer. They left my stuff and Sam Callahan’s tent on the dry porch. Neither one looked my direction. They just sloshed back and forth, being efficient and non-emotional.

I could hear Andrew crying inside Moby Dick. For a six-year-old he sure did cry a lot. Seemed like that’s all he’d done since the moment I saw him. Marcella was next to Shane, holding Hugo Jr. and staring across the yard at me. She was wearing a green print dress my grandmother would have bought at J.C. Penney’s. Her hair was in a perfect bun.

Armand put his hand on my arm. “Come inside, Maurey. You’re getting wet.”

I shrugged off his hand. I felt manipulated, but I didn’t know who’d manipulated me. I didn’t want to stay in this rain forest with a hairy pill popper. I wanted to hold Hugo Jr. I wanted to sit in the front seat beside Lloyd. The two-bottles thing seemed especially petty—a crappy note to end on. From somewhere in Moby Dick I heard Merle
mew
ing. How had I managed to fence myself into this stupid situation?

I was all set to swallow my pride and say “Forget it, guys, I was only joking,” when Shane spoke.

“Maurey, you’ve been nothing but a bitch and a drunk since we allowed you to join us. I am glad to abandon you with this psychotic thug.”

Slam
—last door shut. Last bridge burned. I stood in the rain and watched Moby Dick climb the hill and roll out of sight. Hugo Sr. drove across the road, then backed, then turned and followed. I stared at the spot where they’d disappeared, wishing my headache would go away. It felt like Dad’s funeral.

Armand draped his arm around my shoulders. “How on Earth did you ever get mixed up with that bunch of losers?”

I stayed in the shower until the water turned cold, which must have been over an hour. I imagined a huge, two-hundred-gallon water heater hidden somewhere in the house, heating water as fast as house inhabitants could use it. The shower stall itself was the opposite end of the scale from the Calhoun Arms. Two spigots gave the option of rinsing your front and back at the same time or separately without having to turn around. The walls and floor were covered by heavy, dark tile with no gunk in the grout. I sat on the floor, leaning back against the wall, holding Armand’s soap-on-a-rope with both hands and letting the twin streams of water rain down on my body.

My God, I was tired. And hollow. I didn’t care if I ever saw alcohol again. At that moment I didn’t care if I ever saw anything again. Once I left Armand’s shower, life would resume itself. People would come at me and people would go away. I would drink and pee, eat and shit. Getting by would take every drop of energy I would ever have, then someday I would stop getting by and be dead.

Big deal.

Armand came in the bathroom and opened and closed the medicine cabinet. “You alive in there?” he asked.

“Compared to what?”

“I’ll be working in the barn. Find whatever you can to eat.”

Guess he didn’t mind my touching his property in the refrigerator. “I’ll probably take a nap.”

The bathroom door closed and he was gone.

***

I slept most of the day, dreaming variations on the smother motif—snakes wound around my neck; my tongue swelled up and closed my throat; Dothan Talbot tied a plastic dry-cleaning bag over my head; I drowned a dozen deaths. Some dreams take all the rest out of sleep.

Every few hours I awoke to find Armand in the bathroom mix-and-matching his pills. I’m not sure if he was inbibing primarily in ups or downs, but whatever they were made him sweat.

Once he saw me awake and asked, “You want medication? I can make you feel any way you want to feel.”

“No, thanks, I feel like sleeping.”

“How about a drink? After last night you must need a drink.”

“No, thanks.”

Late in the afternoon I stood at the window and watched him work. He had the double barn doors thrown open and he stood before a misshapen mass of metal in the full welding mask and no shirt. With his hair, muscles, and sweat, and his torch spitting a white-blue flame, Armand took on an unsavory Greek god look—Vulcan, maybe, or Hades.

***

The kitchen downstairs had ivory-colored walls and pastel green appliances. I found an unopened jar of peanut butter and a spoon and poked around while I ate. The upright freezer contained about fifty steaks and a gallon of Scotch. I’d seen two or three microwave ovens before and heard pros and cons about them, mostly cons, but I’d never been in a spot where I could try one out. I put the spoon globbed with peanut butter in and turned the dial. The microwave made a popping sound and tiny lightning bolts flashed inside; I didn’t eat the peanut butter.

Outside the rain had let up temporarily, so I walked past the barn down to the cliff overlooking the river. The rocks were wet, but I sat on one anyway. I always think best when I can hear running water. Dad taught me that. I told Sam Callahan and he fixed Lydia’s toilet so it ran all night. He said Shannon slept better that way and she would grow up to be a calmer person. I don’t see how anyone could grow up calm being raised by Sam and Lydia.

The river shot through the gorge gray-green with sprays of whitewater. I was surprised to find Whitewater in the East. Stephen Foster Sewanee River-type songs gave me the impression eastern rivers were lazy. High up on the other side a wooden flume ran parallel to the river. I’d seen a flume over near Dubois, but it ran straight down the side of the mountain. Old-timey timberjacks sent logs to the river that way. I couldn’t figure out why anyone would build a flume parallel to a river. Growing up in Wyoming is great, but it leaves certain holes in your education.

***

Our senior year at GroVont High Sam Callahan’s grandfather, Caspar, started having little strokes. I guess they’re like alcohol blackouts. He was driving down the highway and suddenly woke up high-centered on the median fifteen miles away. As a bribe, he offered to pay for Sam’s college if Sam would move to North Carolina and live in what Lydia called the manor house. Anybody with eyes and brains could tell Sam would never move anywhere without Shannon. They were inseparable. He took her on dates and everything, which tended to put off local girls. Teenagers don’t like the guy showing up with a toddler.

I knew Sam would want to take her, but I didn’t think about it. My mind was on more important things—senior play, the prom, graduation. I was enrolled in UW next fall, mostly to escape Dothan Talbot, and I just figured Shannon would be taken care of the same as she had been all her life.

Sam brought her over the Saturday afternoon before the prom. He knew I’d be too busy with my hair and formal and all to put up much of a fight. Sam’s sneaky that way. Everyone thinks he’s all intellectual and spacey, but a lot of that oblivious doo-dah stuff is an act.

I was sitting in front of my vanity mirror, performing damage control on a zit. Shannon squealed and ran across the room, hugged me, and crawled in my lap. “How’s my little girl today?” I asked.

“She has a new tooth,” Sam said. “Show Mama your new tooth.”

Proudly, Shannon opened her mouth wide for me to inspect the little rows of teeth. I couldn’t tell which one was new, but I
oohed
anyway. “Will the tooth fairy bring you a dime now?”

“That’s when she loses teeth, not grows them,” Sam said. Shannon looked disappointed in me. What kind of mother doesn’t know tooth fairy protocol?

“Do me,” she said. She pointed to her eyes. Our favorite—in fact, our only—mother-daughter game was putting on makeup.

“I like your hair better down,” Sam said.

“I just spent two hours putting it up. What do you think of my dress?” This pink satin number with a dipping neckline, low back, and spaghetti straps hung on a hanger on the closet door. I was doing the vanity thing in my bra and panties. Ever since seventh grade Sam and I have walked in on each other in underwear or the bathtub or wherever the one being walked in on happens to be. Mom didn’t like it at first. To me, it’s nice being able to talk to a guy without sexual tension.

Sam didn’t compliment my taste in dresses. Instead, he sat on my bed. “I’m starting writing school in Chapel Hill next fall,” he said.

With my right-hand little finger, I rubbed shadow on Shannon’s lids. “You’re going to hate North Carolina,” I said. “The humidity will kill you.”

“Shannon is going with me.”

I stopped to look at him. Sam had that false casualness he assumes when he’s tense. “But she’s my daughter.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

I tried to remember. I’d been awfully busy lately, but I seemed to recall sometime the end of last week.

Shannon stirred on my lap. “Mama?”

“Okay, eyeliner next, honey.” I looked in the mirror at her face below my own. We look amazingly alike, except she has brown eyes and I have blue. “Sam, that’s not fair. You can’t make a decision like this on your own.”

“They won’t let you keep a child in the freshman dorms.”

“I thought she’d stay with Lydia.” Which wasn’t exactly true, I hadn’t thought anything till that moment. “That way we can both see her when we come home for holidays and summers.”

Sam’s nose wrinkled. “My mother can’t raise a child.”

He had a point there—just look at Sam. I drew a dark line across her lower lids, then applied mascara to her lashes. They were dark and beautiful even without mascara. Shannon was an extraordinarily beautiful child, and I’m not saying that because I gave birth to her. Solid cheekbones, long neck, thick hair—she was much cuter than that prissy little girl in the Breck ads. I’d always pictured Shannon and me growing up together. I’d teach her horsemanship and how to control boys. She’d brush my hair while I explained the facts of life. Sam couldn’t explain the facts of life to a little girl. The only facts of life he’d ever known got me pregnant.

“Listen, Sam, can we talk about this later? Dothan’s coming any minute.”

“I thought you deserved to know.”

“We’ll talk later. Are you going to the prom stag?”

Sam stood up. “I promised Shannon I’d read her William Blake’s ‘Visions of the Daughters of Albion.’ She gets a kick out of de-flowerment scenes.” Shannon leaned her head back, looked up in my face with her beautiful eyes, and laughed.

Of course, we never talked later. That August I waved good-bye from the terminal building as my best friend and my daughter boarded a plane and flew away, and child number one slipped through my fingers.

***

When you drink it’s easy to lose track of the point of what you’ve been doing. The point of this damn journey was not some fat sicko’s grandmother’s farm. I didn’t come all this way to bond with a band of roving vagrants, and I sure didn’t come all this way to wind up mistress to a pharmaceutical welder. I came to see Sam Callahan and Shannon. By seeking out two of the three most important people in my world, I’d hoped to gain strength for the battle to get back the most important person—Auburn. Instead of gaining strength I’d wallowed in alcoholic self-pity and lost track of my point.

Okay, now—find the track and get back on it. Sam and Shannon were in Greensboro, North Carolina, so I had no business sitting on a wet rock in Tennessee.

***

Back upstairs, I dumped the contents of my suitcase and day pack on the bed and took stock. Wasn’t that much, really, as the two pairs of boots I hadn’t worn yet filled most of the suitcase space. I gathered panties, socks, shirts, and the spare Wrangler’s into a pile and went in search of this laundry room where Armand found Shane’s tape. The washer and dryer were the same pastel green as the refrigerator and stove. Everything must have arrived at once, which is the rich-person way of decorating.

After starting the washer, I took another shower—a real one this time, where cleanliness counted more than psychological collapse. I washed and conditioned my hair, shaved my legs, and sudsed up my crotch to root out any residual weirdness from last night. Just because Armand woke up in a rubber doesn’t mean he penetrated with one.

The clothes dried in a half hour or so, then I brought them back up to repack. For some reason, when I dressed I put on a bra and my town cowboy boots. I think the reason had to do with Armand. I was fixing to walk out there into the barn and say “Gee, Armand, it was swell, but do you mind running me into town now?” and I wasn’t totally comfortable about his reaction. You never know, he might have interpreted last night’s whatever-it-was as romance.

Armand being a southern gentleman, I figured if I dressed properly, he would behave properly. More than once I’ve heard men say any woman not wearing a bra “wants it.”

***

Because I was a little nervous, and a little queasy, I circled through the kitchen and poured myself a juice glass of Scotch. One snort wouldn’t knock me off track.

The rain had picked up again into a steady downpour. I stood outside in the gathering darkness watching Armand work. Rivulets of sweat ran down his back, staining the butt of his gray slacks. He moved in quick jerks and metallic clangings. Empty Coors bottles littered the concrete floor beneath his work area, which I took as a bad sign. No matter what disgusting depths I’d sunk to the last couple of weeks, I’d never stooped so low as to drink Coors.

Armand turned and faced me straight on. He held the flaming torch in his right hand and a piece of angle iron in his left. The structure he was cutting on reminded me of those molecule models we made in high school, only this one had been run over by a bus. With his hooded mask pulled down and his body slick with sweat, Armand produced a threatening, alien effect. Everyone says don’t look at the welder’s flame or you’ll go blind, and like anything else people tell you not to look at or you’ll go blind, the overpowering urge was to look.

“You mind shutting that thing off?” I asked.

He didn’t move a few seconds, then he bent over a tank and turned a valve, and the flame sputtered out. I hadn’t realized until it was silent how loud the hiss had been.

“I was hoping to talk to you a minute,” I said. “If you have time.”

More seconds ticked by. The rain drizzled on the roof and wet ground behind me. This wasn’t going well. I couldn’t see his face. All I saw was my own face, blurry in his mask, and talking to a mirror with someone behind it is intimidating.

“I need to be getting on to my daughter’s place,” I said, “in Greensboro. That’s North Carolina. And I was wondering if you’d loan me some money for a bus ticket and a motel room tonight. I can leave the beer and horse trailer to cover the loan.”

Armand didn’t move. I was afraid the pills had blown his hearing.

“Or maybe you’d rather buy the trailer. However we do it I’d like to thank you for your help with the police and all, but I really need to be going now.”

The sucker had turned statue. Made me nervous.

“Or if a motel room is too much, you might just drop me off at the bus station.”

This was getting ridiculous.

“I don’t even have to borrow the money. If you can give me a lift into town, I’ll call my daughter’s father and have him wire enough for a ticket.”

Now he was pissing me off. The only way to fight intimidation is with intimidation. I walked right up to him and knocked on his hood like it was a door.

“Anybody in there?”

Slowly, Armand’s hand rose and he lifted the mask off his face. “You’re not going anywhere.”

“Come on, Armand. Get real. You can’t kidnap me, my friends know where I am.”

“No woman cock teases Armand Castle.”

I should have known. If you’re not friendly, it’s cunt; friendly but not friendly enough, cock tease; friendly as can be, slut. Those are the categories—take your pick.

“What cock tease, Armand? You got your action last night, now take me to town.”

His chin stuck out like Andrew’s when you don’t feed him. “No woman cock teases Armand Castle.”