The Essay A Novel (13 page)

The 88's 324-cubic-inch V8 engine roared to life as I turned west on Route 50. I drove under a clear September sky and a half moon that climbed in my rearview mirror. Edgel slouched in the passenger seat, his window down and his head resting on the top of the door. His eyes were closed and his head tilted back, as though trying to fill his nostrils with free air, which was dank with the smell of wet leaves that littered the ditch along the road. “You played a good game tonight,” he said. “You were bustin' some heads out there.”

“I like playing football, Edgel. It makes me feel like . . .”

My words trailed off, but Edgel completed the sentence. “Like a somebody?”

“Uh-huh.”

He smiled. “There's nothing wrong with that. It was fun being up in the stands and hearing everyone talkin' good about you.”

We drove in silence for a few minutes, the wind rushing through the open windows and the rumble of the engine bouncing off the steep hills that lined the country road. “You glad to be out of there, Edgel?”

He opened his left eye. “Little brother, do you even need to ask me that?”

“Probably not.”

“You can't imagine how glad I am to be out. No bars, no walls, no guards, no other prisoners trying to fuck with you every hour of the day and night. I'm never going back, I'll tell you that much.”

“What are you going to do about a job?”

“Beats the piss outa me. You know anyone anxious to hire an ex-con?”

I shrugged. “Maybe Mr. Morgan would hire you on down at the sawmill.”

“I can't imagine that a man who owns a sawmill would be all excited to hire a guy who was convicted of arson. The Farnsworth twins offered to give me some work driving a flatbed truck, shuttling cars and parts to other junk yards. It's not much, but it's a start.”

The Rocket 88 got some stares when I pulled it into the lot at Paddy's. I was wearing my East Vinton varsity jacket and two kids from Wellston looked at me and nodded. They knew who I was and for a moment I savored the attention.

Paddy's Drive-In was a McArthur landmark, famous for maintaining its 1950s-era style with car hops on roller skates, juke box kiosks in each booth, homemade ice cream, and hamburgers made from beef that was ground on the premises. I loved their double cheeseburgers, which came with a heaping mound of French fries, onion rings, and breaded, deep-fried pickles, which were served in a plastic basket lined with white paper that quickly became a translucent gray with grease. Paddy's had a variety of faithful customers. A coffee klatch of farmers met on Saturday mornings to grumble about one thing or another. Early Sunday afternoons drew the church crowd for lunch. It did a brisk carry-out business at lunch-time during the week, and truckers floated in at all hours. But on Friday nights in the fall, Paddy's was a post-football game hangout for kids throughout Vinton County, and a myriad of varsity jackets mingled in relative harmony.

We took a corner booth at Paddy's. “I don't have much money,” I told him.

“I got it,” he said, scanning the restaurant full of high school kids. “Tonight was homecoming. Isn't there a homecoming dance?”

“It's tomorrow night.”

“You goin'?”

I shook my head. “Nah. I'm not much for dancing.”

The side of his lip curled. “How come? I figured the star of the football team would have lots of girls after him. That girl back in the parking lot seemed awfully interested.”

“She was just being nice. I'm not exactly a ladies' man.” I ordered a lemonade and a cheeseburger platter. Edgel did the same. “There was one girl I was thinking about asking, but I didn't get around to it.”

“What's that mean? You didn't get around to it?”

“It means I was a chicken shit and didn't ask her.”

“Well, that isn't the first time that's ever happened,” he said. “Who is she?”

Then, as if on cue, Ruth Ann Shellabarger and two other girls walked through the side door near our booth. I waved and nodded. “Hi, Jimmy Lee. Nice game tonight,” Ruth Ann said, smiling, but never breaking stride.

“Thanks.” When they were out of earshot, I said, “That was her.”

Edgel took note of the trio, flicked his cigarette ashes on the linoleum and asked, “Which one?”

“The first one, the one who spoke—Ruth Ann Shellabarger.”

“She's cute.”

“Real cute.”

“Doesn't look like she came with a date.” He started to push himself out of the booth. “I'll go tell her that you'd like to take her to the dance.”

I practically jumped out of the booth, knocking over the ketchup bottle as I reached across the table to grab his forearms. “Noedgelpleasedon't.”

He snorted laughter and cigarette smoke came out his nose and mouth. “Relax. I was just funnin' ya.”

Edgel thought it was big fun; my heart was thumping against my ribs. I ate my burger and fries quickly so we could leave, just in case he wasn't just “funnin'” me. And, with Edgel, you never knew for sure.

He let me drive the Rocket home. Edgel smoked and watched the road, comfortable with the silence. The eleven-year gap in our ages had left little commonality in our memories. I was still in early elementary school when Edgel dropped out of school and began, as my mother described it, “roaming the countryside.” I was only in the third grade when he was arrested for arson. While the collective memories were few, there was one evening in particular that, I was sure, remained etched in both of our minds. “You remember that night?” I asked.

The corners of his mouth curled in a slight grin. He knew exactly which night I was talking about. “It'd be a little hard to forget, don't you think?”

Edgel's nickname in high school had been Slugger. He earned this nickname because it was said that when Edgel Hickam stood naked, it looked like he had a baseball bat hanging between his legs. I became a personal witness to this on a steamy July night the summer before I was to enter second grade.

My mother's Aunt Eunice had died and my parents had driven to Ironton for the weekend, leaving Edgel in charge. That night, he sat me down in front of the television with a bottle of Mountain Dew and a bag of pretzels, and said, “You watch television and don't move your little butt until I get back.”

“Where you goin'?”

“That ain't none of your concern. Just do what I told ya.” He headed out the back door.

Thirty minutes later, I went to the bathroom and peeked out the back screen door. There was an unfamiliar sedan parked behind the shed. The windows of the car were down and I could hear the muffled groans of what sounded like a woman being attacked. She was moaning and crying out in what seemed to be extreme pain.

I slipped out the door, easing it back into the jamb, and crept alongside the shed, inching through the darkness until I was just outside the open back window of the car. In the back seat, Edgel was naked. I could see the top of Edgel's head and his sweat-streaked back hunched over the woman. He was breathing hard and gasping, and I assumed straining to hurt the woman, whose black hair was tousled, her hands digging into Edgel's back. I watched for several minutes before Edgel must have felt my eyes on him. He looked up, his nostrils flaring, and said, “What the fuck are you doing out here?”

Before I could move the woman beneath him twisted her head back toward me, her face contorted, the moist hair matted to her forehead, and said, “Jesus Christ, what's he doing here?”

I ran. I had no idea what was going on in that car, but I was certain that it was not intended for my eyes. As I pulled open the back door, I heard Edgel say, “Goddammit, you better run.” I climbed the stairs on all fours and dove under the covers of my bed, pulling the sheet up over my head in a vain attempt to hide. It was only seconds before I heard the back door slam and stairs creak as Edgel took them two at a time. I curled in a ball and began crying when I heard him enter my room. He stripped off the sheets I was hiding beneath and said, “I thought I told you to stay in the house, goddammit.”

I knew what was coming and began crying in anticipation. “No, Edgel, no, no, no.”

He snatched me up out of the bed by my nose. I flopped onto the floor, squealing and bawling in anticipation of the punishment I was about to receive. Edgel was barefoot and bare-chested, having only slipped on his jeans before beginning his pursuit. His face boiled with anger as he grabbed my shoulders and pulled me to my feet, digging his fingers into the soft flesh around my collar bones until I thought I would faint from the pain. “What the hell did I tell you? Huh?” he yelled. “Didn't I tell you to stay in the house?”

“I heard that lady cryin' and I thought someone was hurtin' her.”

“The only one whose gonna get hurt is you if you ever tell anyone what you saw.” He shook me hard. “Say one word and I'll blister your ass raw, you understand me, boy?”

“I don't even know what I saw, Edgel. I won't say anything, ever. I promise. Stop it, you're hurtin' my bones.”

“I'm gonna hurt more than your bones if you ever tell anyone. Not Mom or Dad or anyone, got it?”

Tears were streaming down both cheeks. My nose felt like it had been rug-burned from Edgel using it as handle to yank me out of the bed. “I won't, I promise.”

Edgel released my collar bones, and then slapped my ears with the flat of his palms, sending echo daggers into my brain. I cried harder. He snatched me up by the waistband of my jeans and threw me onto the bed. “I'm warning you, junior, don't say a word.”

I was too upset to sleep. I sat in the corner of the bed, my knees tucked under my chin, my chest heaving, waiting for the tinnitus to exit my ears when Virgil walked in an hour later. He smelled of beer and funk; a middle finger was jammed into the top of a half- empty Pabst Blue Ribbon longneck that dangled at his side, and the corner of his upper lip was curled in a smirk. “Hey, little man, I heard you got your ears boxed tonight for snooping around where you shouldn't been.”

I said nothing for a while, waiting until he had quit chuckling. He leaned against his chest of drawers, uncorked his finger from the bottle and drained the contents, his Adam's apple rolling up and down with each gulp. “Virgie, what was he doing to that lady?” I asked.

Virgil set the empty bottle on the top of the chest and made a fist with his right hand, jamming it back and forth like the driver on a steam engine. “He was giving her the high hard one.”

“What's that mean?”

“She was riding the bone pony.” He thrust his hips forward twice. “You know, giving her the big nasty.”

I had no earthly idea what he was talking about. It would be years before I discovered a stack of my dad's skin magazines and began piecing together the puzzle, but on this night, I could do nothing but stare at Virgil in bewilderment. “I don't know what you mean,” I confessed.

He gave me a look of disgust, as though he couldn't believe that we were spawned from the same gene pool. “You will someday.” As he grabbed the doorknob to leave, he looked back over his shoulder and said, “But in the meantime, you best be quiet. If you tell anyone what you saw, Edgel will cut off your pecker.”

It had been more than a decade since that night, but the memory of Edgel's footfalls racing up the stairs still sent chills up my spine. “You wouldn't really have cut off my pecker like Virg said, would you?”

He looked at me sideways and shrugged. “You never know.”

As I approached the steep drive leading up to our house, I was careful to run the wheels of the Olds over the humped middle of the road and the berm to avoid scraping the undercarriage. I was focused on this task when Edgel groaned, “Oh, Mother of Christ.” I looked in time to see a kitchen chair crash through the dining room window and tumble down the hillside. Two other first-floor windows were broken. White linen curtains dangled through the openings, hung up on the sharp corners of busted glass. The flow of yellow light coming out of the house gave the curtains the illusion of being on fire. My mother was running across the side yard toward our car, crying and frantically waving her arms in the air. “This is great. I see not much has changed around here in the past nine years,” Edgel said, flicking an orange-tipped cigarette into the weeds as he pushed open the passenger side door.

“Oh, Edgel, thank God you're home. He's out of control,” my mother cried. “He went and lost his job at the sawmill and now he's crazy mad—drunk and crazy mad.” My mom had a knot between her left eye and ear; the right side of her face was swollen and red, and a smear of dried blood covered her upper lip.

“Mr. Morgan fired him?” Edgel asked. “He's been at the sawmill for twenty-some years. What happened?”

“I don't know. When I got home he was sitting at the kitchen table with a beer. All I said was that Jimmy Lee played a good game and it was a shame that he missed it. He blew up and threw a beer bottle at me and started screaming.” She pointed to the knot on the side of her face. “I've never seen him like this.” A frying pan flew out an already broken kitchen window. “He's tearing up the whole house.”

I followed Edgel as he deliberately walked across the yard toward the house. He stopped at the bottom of the back stairs and peered inside. The old man was standing in the living room, chest heaving, eyes glazed, hair hanging in his eyes. “Well, lookie who's here—the convict and the football star, or is it the convict and the writer?” He laughed. “Did your mother send you in here to try to calm me down? Good fuckin' luck. Come on in here and I'll take you both out.”

“You call me a convict again and we'll see who takes who out,” Edgel said, starting up the stairs.

Dad took one step toward the back door, stepped on the leg of his sagging jeans, and tumbled forward, sprawling on the kitchen floor. “Sumbitch,” he muttered, trying to push himself up.