Vanished Page 8

  Kelly marched off, momentarily proud to be the outcast. She perched on the cabin steps and threw stones while Canny and Krystal resumed the alphabet names.

  “D!” Canny announced. Krystal thought hard. She bit her lip and closed her eyes. Next to the car, Wallace paused. “Dog,” he whispered. He and Canny had learned a lot of words from “Sesame Street.”

  “Canny’s smart,” Alma said.

  Dotty stretched back on the steps. “She’s like me—she adjusts good.”

  “What’s adjests?” Alma asked, narrowing her vacuous eyes on the gnat that fed on her arm. She squashed it and licked off the blood.

  “Getting along with new people,” Dotty explained. “Like how she is now with your girls, playing like they’re old friends.”

  “Kelly don’t have any friends,” Alma said. “She’s too damn mean like her father.” Alma sighed. “One of them crazy mean tempers.…”

  “What’s K stand for?” Canny shouted happily. So far Krystal had gotten every letter right. The little girl shook her head. Her older sister snickered.

  “That’s easy,” Canny laughed. She bent over Krystal and lifted her chin. “Same as you,” she said kindly. “K stands for …”

  “Cunt,” Kelly shrieked from the steps. “Creepy cow cunt like Krystal!”

  “Ma!” Krystal wailed, and Alma waddled off the porch and thumped Kelly’s back.

  “I hate you!” Kelly screamed and kicked out at her mother, grazing her chest.

  “Little shit!” Alma roared with pain. “You son of a bitch,” she cried, pummeling her fists on the child’s bent head. Kelly screamed and swore back at her mother. The big red dog bounded out from the porch steps, barking and snapping at Wallace’s heels. Upstairs, a window rattled open and a gunshot whizzed through the treetops. Wallace dropped to his knees and flattened his cheek against the car’s hot fender.

  “Now shut the hell up,” Jiggy Huller warned. He leaned out the window, bare-chested, the gun dangling over the windowsill. Alma’s fist slipped from Kelly’s arm. Krystal hugged her scratched legs against the wooden box. Canny’s face was white with shock. The dog slunk back into the dark hairy weeds under the porch. Wallace winced at the explosion of Dotty’s sudden laughter, which beat at the dreadful silence like a blizzard of loosed birds.

  The house was hot and sticky. For supper Alma had cooked spaghetti. The dirty dishes were stacked in the sink. Dotty had insisted on washing them, but it was ten o’clock and she and Alma and Jiggy were still sitting around the table. In the living room, Wallace sat on the couch, next to Canny. The two Huller girls had fallen asleep on the floor. The dog sprawled beside them, its muzzle carefully planted at Wallace’s feet. Every time he moved, the dog looked up at him.

  Wallace’s eyes flickered between the television screen and the scene in the kitchen. It was like watching two shows at once; only in one, he knew the star. Her skin glowed with happiness. Talking was good medicine for Dotty, and being the center of attention was all she ever wanted.

  “One more,” Alma said, going to the refrigerator for a can of beer.

  “Listen to her,” Huller scoffed. “One more!” He leaned in confidence toward Dotty. But his voice was loud and good-humored. “You’re not gonna believe this—but when I first met Alma she was skinnier than you and she couldn’t even stand the smell of beer!”

  “What’d you expect!” Alma laughed. “I was fifteen years old!” She stood behind her husband’s chair and kneaded the ropy muscles in his shoulders.

  Jiggy tilted his head back against her sagging breasts. “Fifteen years old and just as dumb. She thought kissing made babies,” he said, with a wink at Dotty.

  “I did not!” Alma laid her chin on his head.

  “Her father was so glad to get rid of her, he cried the whole wedding day,” Jiggy laughed.

  “Listen who’s talking!” Alma said. “My poor father’s heart was broke because of this crazy man I was getting mixed up with!”

  “Crazy man?” Jiggy snarled and grabbed her wrist. “You wanna talk crazy man? How ’bout your brother Carl practicing to be a vampire, killing chickens and keeping their blood in the fridge.”

  Alma looked hurt. “He just did that once. At least he don’t start shooting just ’cause his kids are acting up!”

  Dotty looked from one to the other.

  “I told you,” Jiggy warned. “I ain’t used to that screaming anymore. And you don’t do anything to keep ’em quiet so I can sleep.”

  The dog’s head lifted. The youngest girl cried out in her sleep and coiled closer to her sister on the flat, musty rug.

  “Why the hell should I?” blurted Alma, her voice thin and rising and quavering with tears. “So you can sleep all day and chase all night?”

  Jiggy reached for her arm and squeezed it close to his clenched jaw. “Fuck off,” he growled, his eyes blazing up at her.

  She pulled away and started to cry.

  Wallace watched curiously as Dotty jumped up with a startled little cry and ran to Alma’s side. She moved back and forth between Alma and her husband, bearing messages, whispering in Jiggy’s ear, then returning to hug Alma. She led her back to the table.

  “The trouble here is,” Dotty was saying as she took her seat on the other side of Jiggy, “Alma’s the type that speaks her mind and Jiggy’s one of them sensitive types.”

  “Yah, real sensitive,” Alma sniffed, popping open her beer.

  “No, he is, really,” Dotty said. “I can always tell by the hands.” She reached for Huller’s hand. She brought it close to her face and traced her finger down his palm.

  “You read hands?” Alma asked eagerly.

  “Palms,” Dotty said softly, her head bent. “This here long one’s the life line and here’s the love line.…” Her eyes lifted to Huller’s. “Jesus Christ, but it’s the biggest one I ever seen!”

  Huller grinned sheepishly, his face reddening.

  Wallace stood over Dotty’s bed. Beside her, Canny was sound asleep. Dotty lay with her arms folded and her eyes closed.

  “I don’t like them Hullers,” he said.

  “You don’t like anybody,” she murmured, turning her back to him.

  “When’re we going?”

  “Shit, Aubie, leave me alone, will ya? I’m beat.”

  He lay down. He felt good inside. He could tell Dotty had other things on her mind than ditching him and Canny. He smiled. Tomorrow early he’d have the car all packed and ready to roll in case she woke up in the mood to go. If Dotty was happy, then Canny was happy, and if they were happy, then he was safe.

  Wallace closed his eyes. He didn’t like being the last one awake.

  “Canny?” he whispered a few minutes later.

  “Jesus Christ! Will you go to sleep?” Dotty groaned.

  He began to breathe deeply, forcing himself into a quick, deep sleep.

  The mid-morning sun was oven-hot. The car had been packed for hours. Wallace sat on the porch steps. Facing him on the dirt path below was the big red dog. His baleful eyes locked on Wallace’s.

  Wallace took off his baseball cap and scratched his head. The dog growled. Ever so slowly, he replaced the cap and inched his hand back onto his knee. The growling ceased. Wallace cleared his throat and the dog’s flabby wet lips lifted, baring stained and pitted fangs. The little man’s eyes widened. He sat perfectly still, frozen.

  This morning they had been awakened by Jiggy and Alma Huller yelling at one another. Then the little girls had screamed and Alma screeched and then moaned with pain and the next thing they heard was Huller’s pickup truck tearing out of the driveway. Dotty ran across the driveway to the house, wearing only her nightie.

  She and Alma were still in the kitchen. There was an angry welt on Alma’s cheek and her eyes were red and swollen. Dotty told Canny to keep the girls busy so she could tend to Alma. Canny got their breakfast and then she took them for a walk in the woods.

  Wallace exhaled slowly against the burning in his groin. He had to g
o to the bathroom, but he didn’t dare move. Dammit, he thought, if it weren’t for the dog, he’d round up Canny and Dotty and take off before Huller got back looking for last night’s five bucks.

  “It’s like we’re two different people,” Alma was saying from the kitchen.

  “That can happen,” Dotty said. “Two and a half years is a long time. I had a friend once, Thelma, that got sixty days. Just sixty days. Me and her were the best friends you’d ever want, but when she got out, she was like a whole new person too.”

  “All we do is fight!” Alma moaned, bursting into tears again. “All the time, over everything.”

  “Same with me and Thelma! One night she broke a bottle over my head. I saw stars like the real thing.”

  “It was wonderful his first night home,” Alma blubbered. “That’s when I got pregnant. But now he don’t want anything to do with me.”

  “What was the fight about?” asked Dotty.

  “I asked him who the slut was and he said there weren’t none and then I said something real bad and that’s when he hit me,” Alma bawled.

  “What’d you say?”

  “I said … I said, ‘Are you turned queer like them gay boys you told me about in jail?’”

  “What was he in for?” Dotty asked.

  “He’ll get mad if I tell.”

  “I won’t say anything. You know I won’t,” Dotty insisted.

  There was a silence. The dog’s tail flicked back and forth, snapping off the hard-packed earth.

  “He killed a guy,” Alma said, her voice rising warily. “But it was a fair-square fight, so they had to call it manslaughter.”

  Wallace’s knees pinched tightly together and his heart began to pound with the sound of the approaching motor. Huller’s truck swerved into the driveway in a storm of spitting stones and dust. The dog leaped to greet him. Huller slammed the truck door and shoved the dog out of his way. His eyes narrowed on Wallace as he stalked up the steps. Then, pausing, he looked back.

  “You got that five on you?” he asked coldly.

  “Here,” Wallace said, thrusting it up to him.

  Huller glanced toward the kitchen door and then he sat down next to Wallace. For a time, neither man spoke. Huller pleated and repleated the five-dollar bill. The dog lay up on the porch now, close at his master’s back. He smelled like swamp gas, Wallace thought. Black and foul, like rot. Like death.

  “Dotty said you move around a lot,” Huller said, squinting up into the sun.

  Wallace nodded.

  “That must be the life,” Huller sighed. “No bills. No hassles. Just go where the work is.” He gestured bitterly over his shoulder. “And nobody bitching all the time. Just you and your kids.” Huller cupped his hand over his mouth and whispered. “Course if it was me, I’da left ’em all behind with the old lady.” Then, seeing the confusion on Wallace’s face, Huller said quickly, “Hey, I hope I didn’t say anything wrong, Pops. I just thought.… Your wife’s not dead, is she?”

  “Nope,” Wallace said.

  “Dotty says you’re close to home.” Huller looked at him. “That where you’re heading? Back to the wife?”

  “’Scuse me,” Wallace murmured. He stood and hurried off the porch steps and into the cabin. He lifted the toilet seat. His eyes blurred with pain as he stared at the sign tacked to the wall stud, DON’T FLUSH. A lump rose in his throat. Hyacinth had put up a sign once. It had been meant for him and the boys. It said, PUT THE SEAT UP OR USE A TREE.

  Wallace flipped the hamburgs. Alma and Jiggy hadn’t spoken a word all day. Dotty had that glassy-eyed look she got whenever she was soaring toward one of her breakdowns. With her frazzled hair and her trembly, nonstop voice, she reminded him of a storm-battered bird. Wallace had seen Huller give her two pills earlier on the porch when Alma was napping.

  Barefoot and still in her nightgown, she was all over the kitchen, opening a can of beer for Huller, running into the front room to prop up Alma’s feet on the hassock, wiping Krystal’s runny nose.

  “How ’bout salad?” she called out to Huller as she rummaged through the refrigerator. It’s light glowed through her nightie. Huller stared at her.

  “Scratch the salad,” she laughed. “No lettuce. Well, how ’bout some of this then?” she said, laying a saucer of fuzzy green mold in front of Huller. “Name this mystery dish and it’s yours, mister! Absolutely free of charge!”

  Huller shook his head disgustedly and pushed it away. “See what I have to put up with!” he said gruffly.

  “Aw, c’mon, Jig!” She mussed his hair. “It’s a joke!”

  “Some joke,” he pouted.

  She leaned over the table and brought her face close to his. “You got yourself all worked up over nothing,” she whispered, with a glance toward the living room and Alma’s lumped form.

  “No,” Huller said huskily, his eyes meeting her gaze. “Not over nothing.”

  Wallace turned back to the sputtering hamburgs, his mind made up. They were leaving tonight, no matter what.

  After supper, Alma went upstairs to lay down with Krystal, who was complaining of a stomachache. Kelly had been sent up in the middle of supper as punishment for spitting in Krystal’s milk. Alma told Dotty to be sure and wake her up if she fell asleep in Krystal’s bed.

  Wallace waited until Huller went into the bathroom and then he told Dotty that they were leaving tonight. She burst out laughing. “You gotta be kidding!”

  “I ain’t kidding. We’re goin’,” he said uneasily.

  “Goin’ where with eight lousy bucks to our name?” she hissed.

  His jaw dropped. “But you got twenty!” He still hadn’t told her that he had the unpaid rent money. The minute she found out she’d be pestering him for it.

  “I only got eight now.” She glanced anxiously toward the sound of flushing water beyond the door. “I had to pay for our meals, didn’t I?”

  The bathroom door opened and Huller came out, buckling his belt. His eyes were hard and bright. “Something wrong?”

  Dotty shrugged. “Poppy’s afraid we’re overstaying our welcome.” She laughed with a nervous glance at Wallace. “He says fish and company stinks after three days.”

  Huller frowned and put his arm around Wallace’s shoulder, leading him to the table. “Fish stinks and this house stinks and right now, I stink—but not you,” he said, poking the little man’s ribs. He grinned. “Friends don’t stink.”

  The dirty dishes were piled on the stove and in the sink. Alma was still upstairs. Canny had fallen asleep on the couch. Though no one was watching it, the television set was still on; Ed McMahon was introducing Johnny Carson. Wallace sat at the kitchen table, his eyes heavy with sleep.

  “So anyways, Poppy’s got it down to a real science,” Dotty was telling Huller. “He gets a lot of it from dumps and those GoodWill boxes, but his best stuff comes from garage sales. He waits until five or six on a Saturday night when all them sad sacks are all sunburnt and beat from standing out front of their houses all day and he drives up and tells them he’ll be glad to haul off whatever’s left they don’t want. And nine times outta ten, they not only say yes, but they help him load the car. And the next morning, he’s got it all tagged and selling at some flea market. Right, Poppy?”

  Wallace didn’t bother to nod; they weren’t even looking at him. Dotty had just taken two more pills.

  Huller shook his head. “I don’t think I got the right way with people for that.” He looked at Dotty. “I’m not too good at begging or even asking—if you know what I mean.”

  There was a pause. Under the table, the dog’s tail snapped against Wallace’s shinbone.

  “Well,” Dotty said, looking toward the front room and yawning. “I guess we better get Canny to bed.”

  Before she could change her mind, Wallace jumped up and had Canny’s limp, sweaty body in his arms. “I’ll be right over,” she said over her shoulder. “I’ll just clean up some, so Alma won’t have to in the morning.”

  Wallace
paused in the doorway, looking back at Dotty, at her wild hair glistening coppery red under the ceiling light. For a moment he felt dizzy and his arms weakened under Canny’s weight and the air seemed to glow with the bright sweat that slicked down Huller’s naked shoulders.

  Once in the cabin, he put Canny in bed and drew a sheet to her chin. Her hand groped for his. “Where’s Momma?” she asked sleepily.

  “She’ll be along,” he said, looking across the way as the kitchen light died.

  “My head’s itchy, Poppy.”

  “Jest don’t scratch,” he said, laying, down on his own bed with his hands clasped under his head.

  An hour had passed before Dotty tiptoed into the cabin.

  “Took you long enough,” he said through the darkness.

  “There was a lot of dishes.” She yawned.

  “You wash ’em all in the dark?”

  “Yessir,” she laughed. “Every damn one of ’em!”

  “He thinks I’m your father, don’t he?”

  “Shit, Aubie. I don’t know what the hell he thinks and I don’t really care.”

  “You tell him we’re heading back home?” His voice rose. “Back to …”

  “I told him nothin’! He’s just one of them guys you say one thing to and he hears another.” She sank down onto the bed beside Canny. “Now leave me alone. I’m beat after listening to that dumb hog bawl her brains out all day long.”

  He lifted his head. “Then why’d ya do it? Why don’t we jest go?”

  “’Cause,” she sighed. “I’m tryna figure a way out of this mess we’re in, that’s why.”

  “What mess?” And the minute he said it, he winced. She meant Canny.

  “What mess!” she groaned. “Jesus Christ, you drive me up a wall!”

  The next morning he tried to get Dotty alone so they could talk, but right after breakfast, she and Alma and Jiggy drove into town. They dropped Alma off at the welfare office. While Alma kept her appointment with her social worker, Dotty and Jiggy were supposed to be doing the food shopping.

  Later in the afternoon when they came back Alma flounced into the house, slamming the door behind her while Dotty and Jiggy giggled drunkenly in the truck.