The Acorn Stories
By Duane Simolke
Copyright 1999 Duane Simolke.
Smashwords Edition, Published by Smashwords, 2008/2009.
Smashwords Edition, License Notes:
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
“A lush tangle of small-town life branches out in this engrossing collection of short stories.” –Kirkus Discoveries
“I found this book to be a perfect vacation companion.” –A. Chandler,#1 Amazon.Com reviewer
“The ability to depict such a wide cross section of humanity, including details of each character’s breadth of knowledge and experience, takes a talented, insightful author, and Duane Simolke is such a writer.” –E. Conley, Betty’s Books
“If you liked WINESBURG, OHIO…rejoice.” –Watchword
“By the time you have finished reading these tales of the people who inhabit the fictitious town of Acorn, Texas, population 21,001, you will have met some endearing as well as irritating characters, from the Mayor to the local would-be gigolo; from the busy-bodies to the business owners; from those who grew up in Acorn and have tried to escape the small town to those who have moved to Acorn to escape from the real world.” –Ronald L. Donaghe, author of Uncle Sean
“A well-crafted collection of short stories.” –L. L. Lee, author of Taxing Tallula
“When you finish, when you put the book aside, Acorn will still be with you.” –E. Carter Jones, author of Absence of Faith
“I
highly
recommend this book!” –Richard
Carlson, author of Jeremy
Grabowski's Crazy Summer in Stormville!
“It
was a real pleasure to read about the fictional town of Acorn,
Texas.” –Mark Kendrick, author of Desert
Sons
“Simolke
makes good use of his vivid imagination in creating credible dialogue
and satirical images.” –Huda Orfali, author of Blue
Fire
“There are people that you like, some that you can't wait to see if they get theirs.” –Joe Wright, StoneWall Society
“Each of Simolke's stories lets us look into the lives of some of the most interesting characters I have ever read about.” –Amos Lassen, Literary Pride
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements.
Preface Quotes.
Acorn.
Flip, Turn.
Keeping a Secret.
Survival.
Paying the Rent.
Morgana Le Fay.
Your Daughter.
Knock.
Come With Me.
Dead Enough.
Mae.
Timothy Fast.
Mirrors: A Blackmail Letter.
Echoes.
Oak.
Acorn Pie.
More About the Author and His Works.
Acknowledgements.
Special thanks to my teachers (first grade through Ph.D.) for their knowledge, guidance, encouragement, and (especially) patience. Special thanks also to StoneWall Society (http://www.stonewallsociety.com/), for recognizing my books The Acorn Stories, Degranon, and Holding Me Together with Pride in the Arts literary awards.
I started writing this collection in 1988, though I wouldn’t decide on a West Texas setting until moving here. White Knight Publishing released The Acorn Stories as an electronically published book (eBook) in 1998. An early imprint of iUniverse brought it into paperback in 1999. The second edition, also published by iUniverse, is available internationally in paperback or hardcover. This eBook version, with only minor revisions from the second edition, first appeared in December 2007.
Duane Simolke
In that high place in the darkness the two oddly sensitive atoms held each other tightly and waited. In the mind of each was the same thought. “I have come to this lonely place and here is this other,” was the substance of the thing felt.
—from the story “Sophistication,” in Sherwood Anderson’s book Winesburg, Ohio
She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder.
—from Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God
“Welcome to Acorn, population 21,001, the Texas town with a little name and a big heart.”
—sign marking city limits of Acorn
Acorn
Part One. Regina Thibodeaux
tapped her fingernails on the kitchen table, watching Kyle, her new brother-in-law, pour the tea. She still couldn’t believe her baby sister had met the guy, dated him three times, then eloped and moved to West Texas with him. Rebecca had never even been outside Louisiana before. For that matter, she hadn’t been on many dates. Cute guy, thought Regina, except for the big nose and shoulder-length hair. But everything in his house was broken. Why marry someone who couldn’t fix anything?
“I’m sorry Becky had to start work today,” said Kyle. He sipped his tea as he sat down, making the annoying sucking noise one of Regina’s ex-boyfriends made when eating soup.
“Well, it’s given us a chance to—” A car pulled up in the driveway; she could hear it through the rent house’s thin walls. “Is that Rebecca?”
Kyle stood up, looked through the curtains. “No, it’s my friend Dirk.”
“Dirk from your photo album?” Regina had spent much of the morning looking through photo albums—nothing unusual for her.
Kyle laughed. “Yeah, that Dirk.” Smiling, he opened the door just as Dirk lifted his hand to knock. Kyle seemed to grin out of habit. “Come in. Meet my sister-in-law. She just got in from Louisiana.”
Regina’s eyes took in Dirk’s broad shoulders, his tight blue jeans and T-shirt, his short brown hair, his big brown eyes, everything, and most of it looked great. Well, he was a little too roundish just above the waist, but she could put him on a diet.
After introductions, Dirk looked at her like he knew her but hadn’t seen her in a long time. “Where’s Becky?” he asked.
“At work,” said Kyle. “Today’s her first day at the shoe store.”
“I’ll have to stop by some time. I need some new shoes.”
“Shouldn’t you get a new car first?” The smile again. Why did he always smile? That bothered Regina—too dorky.
“Thanks, Kyle.” Dirk rolled his eyes slightly.
“What’s wrong with your car?” asked Regina.
“It got totaled a few weeks ago, when I went to see my sister in Muleshoe. This old granny slammed into me.”
“Was everyone okay?”
“It just hurt my car. She was driving a boat.” Dirk reached his fingers inside his empty T-shirt pocket, as if looking for a cigarette.
“Well, I’ve got a new car.” Regina’s eyes directed Dirk toward the living room window.
“I noticed. I love Cadillacs.”
“Good. I’m bored stiff sitting around here. It would be nice if some long-time resident would show me around. I’ll let you drive.”
“Kyle’s lived here a long time.” Dirk stuttered a little while saying that, and he exaggerated the word “long.” She couldn’t believe such a good-looking guy acted so nervous around women.
“He has to wait for Rebecca. Besides, Kyle’s not an Acorn native, but you were born here.”
“Talking about me again?” asked Dirk, nudging Kyle’s arm.
Regina laughed at Dirk’s attempt to distract her from his nervousness. “Your face popped up in Kyle’s photo album. I couldn’t help but ask who you were and all that. Soo—” She reached inside her purse, immersing her fingers in the keys of her giant key ring, like grabbing an octopus. Pulling the key chain out, she could see the keys to past jobs, keys to the apartments of past friends and boyfriends, keys to the homes of relatives who welcomed her back with no sincerity in their voices, keys to apartments she lived in before starting over another time. She never returned keys, or even removed them from her chain.
Sometimes, a landlord or an ex would call or write to ask for a key back; rather than attempting to explain to herself or anyone else why she wanted to keep the key, she would just say she lost it.
Regina jingled the keys—the relics—then asked, “When do we leave?”
* * *
The tour only lasted a few minutes, because of Acorn’s size. Dirk knew every business, every street, and who lived in every house. A middle-aged man waved from his lawn chair as they drove through a residential area.
“A friend of yours?” asked Regina.
“No, just one of the guys from work. I don’t have many friends. I mostly hang around Kyle.”
“What about before Kyle moved here?”
Dirk hesitated before answering, “Kept to myself, I guess. That’s my house over there.”
“I want to see the inside.” I hope it looks better than the outside, she thought, noticing the dingy, half-peeled paint and the unusual lack of trees and grass in the yard. Regina had observed immediately that, unlike other West Texans, Acorn residents seemed especially fond of trees.
Though Regina planned to drive back to Louisiana the following day, Dirk kept asking her out, and she knew Rebecca wouldn’t mind her staying with them a few extra days. Dirk took Regina to a movie the first night, and to a play at Acorn College the next night. The third night, she wanted to stay in at his place and cook him a big dinner. She never cooked at her parents’ house; her mother always insisted on taking care of everything, complaining all the while about “having to do everything.” Even before meeting Dirk, Regina had started regretting her recent decision to move back home with her parents; checking up on little sister gave her a good excuse to get away from Skydown for a while.
“I’m surprised there’s so much to do in Acorn,” she said, while tearing up a head of lettuce in Dirk’s salad bowl. Dirk wore yet another colored T-shirt, a red one this time. The T-shirts showed his muscles, but they also showed his flab; besides, she wanted to see him in a dress shirt.
“Is there? I haven’t noticed.” He sat at the kitchen table, his feet against two of its rusted legs, his hands on the stained and rusted surface—a pattern of green windmills and purple kittens.
“We don’t have plays or anything like that in Skydown. We had a drive-in movie theater, but that closed down a few years ago.”
She cut a tomato down the middle, then in quarters, then across the sides, producing uniform chunks of red flesh. It reminded her of when she worked in a café. Never again, she thought. The customers all smarted off at her, and her co-workers all back-stabbed. One time, someone put a note in the suggestion box saying they shouldn’t have to clock out for cigarette breaks. The manager, as a supposed “favor,” made the suggestions anonymous, but then griped about the suggestion during a meeting, staring straight at Regina, who didn’t even smoke. “Anonymous” meant blame Regina for everything, burden Regina with everything.
After mixing the tomatoes with the lettuce, she turned off the oven then took out the lasagna and set it on the stove. “It needs to cool down a little,” she said, sitting down on the couch and patting the pillow beside her. “Let’s sit here. Those metal chairs hurt my back. Just bring your plate to the coffee table after you get everything.”
He stood up. “So I should go ahead and serve myself?”
“No, Dirk. It’s too hot. Come sit down.”
He sat down beside her, put his hand on hers. His hands were dark and callused, with deep lines that she traced with her fingernails.
“Be— Regina, I . . .” He stopped, looked at their intermingled hands.
“Yes?” He almost called her Becky. Oh well, her parents did that all the time.
“I’ve had a great time the past few days. I wish you could stay longer.”
“I’d like that.” She kissed him, pulled his body against hers.
Part Two. Dirk Palmer
pulled the bright orange boxer shorts from the Santa Claus wrapping paper, laughing harder than he’d laughed since before Regina had returned to Louisiana, a month earlier. After coming back that week, she’d found a job at the Quicknight Lodge and moved into the apartment complex next to it. It looked like a condo, the way Regina decorated it—glass tables, velvet couches, Chinese lamps. And pictures everywhere, in frames of all sizes and shapes.
“Well, do you like the boxers?” she asked, cradling a wrapped present in her lap like a newborn child.
He noticed the picture on the wall behind her, one of her and Becky; despite Regina’s seven extra years, they looked almost like twins. “They’re . . . unlike anything else in my underwear drawer.” He kissed her neck, finding the familiar smell of her perfume, a smell that mixed roses and cinnamon. He rarely liked short hair on women, but her short blonde hair seemed as perfect as her slender body and bright blue eyes.
“That’s not an answer.”
“Should I model them for you?”
“That’s why I bought them.” She jabbed his left knee, the knee he’d displaced when he went out for football, ruining his final attempt at high school popularity, leading to his dropping out. Jerking the knee away, he crossed his legs. “Sorry,” she said, “did I hurt you?”
“No.” He uncrossed his legs. “I missed you so much. I can’t believe you’re back.” She touched his hand, tracing his calluses with her fingernail. “I moved here for you. I guess you know I’m crazy about you.”
“The feeling’s mutual. Now open your present.” He tapped the square box.
“All right.” Regina pulled the ribbon off and stuck it on Dirk’s forehead, turned the gift over, carefully lifted the tape from the green wrapping paper with her fingernails, and unfolded the paper to find a box of bath beads and bubble bath mix. “Hmmm,” she said. “Actually, I could use a hot bath, after all the unpacking I did today. And after the headache I got from looking through the Quicknight’s files. Talk about unorganized and unprofessional! I’m just glad Aragon Carsons bought out the old owners; she seems more with it.”
Dirk rolled his eyes. “She bought that too? She’s having fun with her inheritance.”
“What’s wrong?” She winked. “Can’t handle strong women?”
“Only if they let me. Actually, I don’t know Aragon that well. I’m sure she’s a very nice person, but I’ve already found my strong woman.”
“And don’t you forget it. Well, I’d better get to my bath. The bubbles await me.”
“Well . . . .”
“Well . . . .” She shoved a photo album, thick as a family Bible, into his lap. “Here, you can look at this. I won’t be long.”
“Yeah. That’s what my sister says.”
“Rebecca too. But Mother would always have a major breakdown if one of us stayed in the bathroom more than twenty minutes, so we tried to hurry.”
“Becky’s nice.” Dirk pulled the ribbon from his forehead; the adhesive tape ripped some of his hair out, but he tried not to make a face.
“That’s true. But remember which of us you’re involved with.” She made this sound funny—an artificial threat—but he heard fear in her voice and wondered if she ever noticed how he looked at Becky. Of course, he never meant to stare.
“You’re the one I love.” His eyes followed her up.
“It’s nice to hear that. I—” Regina looked like she suddenly remembered something disturbing: her smile faded into a frown as she turned away.
“You what?” Dirk touched her hand.
“I made cheesecake. In fact, I made two, so you can take one home with you. Well, I’ll be right out.”
Dirk flipped through the photo album, finding pictures of Becky and Regina as children, copies of the ones on the wall. But he found only a few pictures of both girls together, and even fewer of the whole family together. He mostly found pictures of good-looking men in dress clothes, or of large groups of people eating, drinking, attending weddings—children playing, willow trees providing even more shade than the mesquite tree Dirk would sit under when his father worked late or went out with one of the women he called “just a friend.” These “friends” came too soon after the divorce that separated Dirk from his mother and his sister.
Sometimes, when his father worked overtime, the lonely ten-year-old watched approaching headlights and asked, “Are you my father?” If the car didn’t turn in, he would say, “You’re not my father.” He usually grew tired of this game long before his father came home, made a sandwich, went to bed. Shortly after Dirk’s eighteenth birthday, a foreman at the farm-tool factory called to say that his father had suffered a stroke and would never come home again. The same foreman hired Dirk to fill the vacant position.
“Dirk, what’s wrong?” Regina stood over him, wearing a long bathrobe, towel-drying her hair. He thought she looked best without make-up, but never said anything about it, since she liked make-up so much. Becky wore very little make-up and always looked great.
“Nothing. Why?” He closed the photo album, touched the hand that grabbed his shoulder.
“You were so deep in thought. You’re not gonna dump me, are you?”
He grunted. “Never. I was just wondering who all those people are.”
“Mostly relatives. I just take pictures for something to do during get-togethers. I don’t even know half those people, and I don’t know if I’d care to.”
He’d never heard her sound so cold. Even her gripes about Kyle and Becky never surpassed the type of nitpicking he expected of a sibling and an in-law. He’d only met his sister’s husband once before they promptly divorced, and that one meeting made him want to scream with boredom. The guy was obsessed with government conspiracies and would explain the same JFK assassination theories over and over.
Regina responded to his stare with an explanation. “Some of my relatives have drinking problems, and some are just flipped out. You can’t tell it from the pictures of the different weddings, but I always have at least two uncles hanging all over the bridesmaids. It’s really vulgar, and you’d expect people with mostly French blood to be sophisticated. My mother’s always warned us not to talk to some of the family more than we need to. I guess she thought they’d be a bad influence, but as much as they argue, and whine, and make racist remarks, I can’t imagine any child wanting to be like them. How about some cheesecake?”
He set the photo album on the glass coffee table. “All right.”
While hidden in the refrigerator, she asked, “Hey, we both have a few more days off. What would you think of a trip to Dallas?”
“Aren’t you tired of driving?”
“Not too tired for Dallas, if it’s with you.”
“How can I refuse your company?”
Part Three. Regina
looked at the phone, wondering if she should call Dirk and ask if she could come get him. At first, he always said yes, but lately, he’d started saying he had things to do around the house, or that he needed to go to bed early, or make some phone calls.
It started out perfect, as always. Dirk loved everything she loved, and everything about her. She never minded cooking for him or taking him places; as long as she could be with him, she didn’t care what she had to do. But it wasn’t enough. Why couldn’t it ever be enough? She couldn’t imagine Dirk cheating on her, like her past boyfriends, but she could imagine him letting go like them.
She picked up the phone then set it down, afraid to call, afraid not to call. But maybe he would run around after all. She thought about driving by his house to check for cars.
No, she told herself. That’s so degrading and desperate. Besides, he isn’t like the rest. He’s never done anything to hurt me. Maybe he just needs some space for a while. He told me he’d never been in “such an intense relationship.”
Regina shivered, turned on the heater.
Part Four. Dirk
could still smell the rosy perfume, still smell Regina’s skin, as he ran the soap across his chest. Closing his eyes for a second, he could feel her in the shower with him—or, at least, somewhere nearby, deciding which towel he should use or which clothes he should wear. The phone would ring soon enough, bringing him the same questions: “What are you doing? Are you busy? Can I come get you?”
“Can I come get you?” As if, as soon as he got off work, he immediately became available, desperate for company. Her attention flattered him at first. The meals she cooked him, the compliments—her life centered around him, her stone idol. But her worship became more like her admiration for her jewelry or her Cadillac. Regina had taken control of him as soon as she met him, when she grabbed that key chain with enough keys for Trump Tower and asked, “When do we leave?”
The phone rang as Dirk turned off the hot water knob. Running to the kitchen, wet and naked, he mumbled, “Can I come get you?”
Why did he even answer? Regina wanted to take him to a movie, “unless that’s a problem. I know you have your little chores and all.”
Dirk pushed his wet hair from the receiver. “No, that sounds great.” Why did he accept? Why didn’t he just stay home and read? At least most of the books he liked weren’t predictable, manipulated, controlled, orchestrated.
After the movie, Dirk and Regina sat on her couch, with almost a full cushion between them.
“Why don’t you get closer?” she asked, smiling. “I don’t bite. Well, maybe sometimes, but you should be used to it by now.” She pulled his hand from his lap, yanked it in her direction.
He found his back against her chest as she stroked his hand, traced every callus with her fingernails. This ritual sometimes lasted an hour, as if she had to retrace his features on a regular basis, or he would cease to exist. His atoms would scatter, with nothing to draw them back together.
He lifted Regina’s hand to his lips, disrupting the ritual.
“I think I might go to sleep early tonight,” he said, pulling away and leaning back beside her.
“I doubt that.” Regina lodged her bony knuckles into his ribs, left them there as she began talking about plans—another Dallas trip, dancing perhaps. “But you can only dance with me.” She pressed her ear against his chest as if awaiting the first heartbeat of her creation, then began talking about their first night together, sealing him in that first embrace, lifting up, turning him to stone with her glance.
Part Five. Regina
shivered as Dirk rolled away, pulling all the covers with him. Her nightgown too thin to keep her warm, she got up and wrapped her bathrobe around herself, tight as a cocoon, tripping over his dime-store tennis shoes. While watching him sleep, she picked up his clothes, folded them, and stacked them in a neat pile on the dresser. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, his face became clear, his almost-perfect face.
But she knew she would lose him soon. She could see all the hesitation, the avoidance. Once the distancing began, she knew not to reach across the freezing ground that separated her from whomever else. It only led to her getting hurt worse, him leaving sooner.
She wandered through the apartment, shivering, crying, turning up heaters. She had barely convinced him to come home with her this time, but she wanted him in her place, as her guest. Too many people pushed her out of their homes, forced her out like an intruder.
Part Six. Dirk
woke Sunday morning, flesh again, felt beside the bed for his clothes, but soon found them waiting on the dresser, folded and stacked for him to dress in proper sequence. He wondered what she would say if he pulled something from the middle of the stack, disrupting that sequence, as if the natural order of the universe would collapse if someone failed to follow Regina’s way.
He dressed as quickly as possible, feeling the redness of his face as the unspoken anger grew in his mind. How dare she disrupt his life, his routines, his freedom? How dare she casually take control of him?
Regina sat up and smiled. “Wake up on the wrong side of the bed?”
“Wrong side, wrong bed.” He sat on the edge of it, nearly sliding off while putting on his tennis shoes. Knowing she hated the sound of Velcro ripping open, he adjusted the straps several times before getting them even.
“I think I missed something here.” She twirled her fingers, pointing at nothing. “Please don’t do this. We’ve got—”
“We don’t have anything.” The statement rose from the bottom of his throat. Her face looked strained, as if wanting to cry but not knowing how. He noticed this expression, noticed how she removed him from her view while her eyes stared directly at him.
“Say something,” he finally told her, as a plea and a command. Though he wanted out, it somehow upset him that she said nothing to stop him from leaving, that she made no attempt to save their relationship. No words, no tears. Only silence. She seemed unaware of his presence. He felt banished, as if it were her decision for him to leave. It seemed crazy that it mattered, but he wanted to control the ending; he wanted that power. But she took it away.
“There’s nothing to say.”
After another long silence, Dirk said, “I’ll walk home.”
Regina seemed to contemplate that statement, then said, “Fine.”
Work at Briggs Co dragged the next day, despite talking to Kyle. They didn’t even mention Regina. Instead, they discussed the possible lay-offs, football, Kyle’s rundown truck—any safe topic. Dirk could never talk to anyone about his feelings, not even Regina.
After Kyle dropped him off at home, Dirk looked for something on TV. Normally, he preferred books, but his reading interests had dropped since meeting Regina, as if she replaced books, thought, and everything else but his job. He flipped the stations around for a while, but the channel surfing only reminded him of Regina with her car radio, riding the knob, listening only to bits of songs, creating medleys.
He stopped on a special about the Arctic. It showed scientists in a frozen, howling wasteland, alive with emptiness. No, not so empty. The narrator pointed out birds, wolves, seals, all kinds of animals.
He had considered leaving her many times before, but she would respond to his silence by asking what was wrong. “I’m not sure I’m good enough for you,” he once said.
“Perfect is good enough,” she replied, leaving the statement open to interpretation. Would she leave him to find the perfect man? Was he perfect? Or would she mold him into her concept of perfection?
He wondered how she took his decision, wondered if he announced it too suddenly, without warning, if Becky and Kyle would think he just casually dumped her, for no reason. He called her. No answer. He started to hang up after the fifth ring, but she picked up and said “Hello.”
“Regina? It’s me.”
A pause, then, “Yes, Dirk?” She sounded formal, like when she answered the phone at the hotel.
“I . . . just wanted to see what’s going on.” He felt stupid, ready to mention the weather forecast, the possible snow, anything.
“Well, work was dead, as usual. But I’m still trying to straighten out our filing system.”
“Are you all right?”
“Sure, I’m fine.” Her tone suggested that he shouldn’t ask such a question, that he had given up the right to ask her such a question. “I’m thinking about taking another road trip some time.”
“Dallas?”
“No, not Dallas.”
They grew silent again. He hated himself now, not for calling her, but for leaving her. She went through life alone, like him. What was so strange about them loving each other?
After they said goodbye, he kept thinking of the way she said she was fine, how it told him that she hurt and that she would always hurt, that she loved him but never knew how to love. He never knew either. He just knew he would call her back soon.
Flip, Turn
I pulled myself up enough to see the alarm clock just across my room. 10:15! It had happened again: after dreaming during the night that my alarm clock was buzzing, I had gotten up and turned it off, realized I was dreaming, stayed in bed wondering whether I had also dreamed turning it off, then fallen asleep without turning it back on.
“Swimming,” I mumbled into my pillow. I was supposed to have met Jimmy Jacobs at Acorn College’s indoor pool around ten. Since I hadn’t gone swimming in weeks, I had no idea where my alumni I.D. was. I searched my disintegrating wallet, pulling out shreds of napkins, envelopes, and newspaper with scribbled numbers. Some of the numbers looked like combinations for P.O. boxes or lockers, while others looked like phone numbers, but none of them had words on them. My wallet housed numbers detached from their purpose. I thought I should keep them in case I needed them one day. But how would I know if I needed them, or which ones to use? Then I found a phone number with a familiar handwriting.
I could have called all the phone numbers to see if I recognized the voices of the people who answered. Then I could just hang up. Maybe that’s what people are doing—the people who call me then hang up. Maybe they sorted through old wallets and purses, found my number on a scrap of paper. After finding my I.D. in the dark recesses of my wallet, I stuffed all the numbers back in to recreate whatever equation they had formed, knowing I would probably not see them again until my wallet fell apart.
After pulling on swim trunks, T-shirt, and tennis shoes, I walked outside into Mom and Dad’s yard sale and suddenly remembered that I really need to get my own place.
Jimmy Jacobs wasn’t even at the pool when I got there. I decided not to mention it to my mother—never mind that I’m twenty-eight—because she would just say, “I’ve told you about that Jacobs boy.” From junior high ‘till well past high school graduation, no teenagers within a forty-mile radius of Acorn could get drunk, stoned, beat up, arrested, or pregnant without their parents asking, “You’ve been hanging around with that Jacobs boy, haven’t you?” By the time I graduated from college—a lot of good that did me, the new assistant manager at Ice Cream Dream—he was a husband, a father, and the pastor of Zionosphere Baptist Church.
With the pool nearly deserted, I didn’t have much trouble finding a clear area for swimming back and forth. I had learned the “flip, turn” technique in my college swimming class, but I hadn’t used it for a while. I stuck a foot in, withdrew it because of the cold, then slowly climbed into the shallow side and began swimming freestyle toward the deep side, trying to stretch my arms forward while trying not to get chlorine in my eyes. The only other swimmer, an older man whose stomach covered his swimwear in the front, got out, leaving me with two lifeguards.
The far wall. I went under, flipping my body so that I turned in the other direction and continued swimming as I rose to the surface.
My parents hadn’t had a yard sale since the summer of 1979, when my older sister, Gwen, moved out. All the women from Acorn’s yard sale circuit inspected Gwen’s jewelry, black light posters, and unused make-up. An elderly woman with bifocals, obviously mistaking me for a thirteen-year-old psychologist, said that her husband had pushed her worn-out couch onto the porch, hoping someone would steal it, as if no one cares when someone steals broken things.
“My husband was broken, but I still cared when he ran off with whatshername,” she told me.
“Ah,” I replied.
Gwen pushed the yard shoppers along, a psychotic hen, sure that all those retired West Texas women wanted the trinkets and decorations of America’s last flower child.
The shallow area, the wall. Flip, turn. The other direction.
A week after she moved out, Gwen went with us to my uncle’s house in New Orleans. I walked around the house, fascinated by the purple flowers that surrounded it. My sister, looking like a hall monitor, asked me what I was doing. “Aren’t those flowers pretty?” I asked.
“Flowers are for girls,” she said, flaunting her Future Farmers of America wisdom. But if she could be a flower child, so could I.
The wall. Flip, turn.
After a reminder that she’d taken a karate class, Gwen convinced our parents it would be safe for her and me to visit Bourbon Street to watch Shark Attack at the Underwater Disco. When we left the shoe-gripping floors of the cinema, our shoes stuck to a different world, one that had dived into darkness and street jazz.
Two men walked by us, holding hands. Gwen twisted her already braided hair, making it look like licorice crammed into a jar. “Don’t tell Mom and Dad you saw that,” she said.
“I won’t.” I knew not to ask about anything like that because Mom and Dad had always told us not to ask any questions about Aunt Talia and the woman she’d lived with for the past forty-two years. They seemed really nice, and they always fixed Dad’s car when they came over, but they always brought a bizarre spell of silence onto our entire house. The one time I broke the no-questions rule by asking Dad why Aunt Talia lived with her friend instead of getting married, Dad just twisted his wedding ring and changed the subject.
Another man walked by us with a shower rod twisted around his shoulders, the curtain barely passing his bare knees. The sign hanging above his curtained chest explained that anyone could peak for a quarter or come inside for a dollar. “You missed the costume party, Monica,” he said to my sister, who never happened to be named Monica. We retreated into the crowd, which thinned as we entered an almost abandoned area of the French Quarter.
Across the street from us, an elderly couple gawked at a woman who had apparently just left the costume party. The woman, faithful to our Bible-belt heritage, had gone dressed as womankind’s first model. After tearing an adhesive leaf from her body, leaving only the three most strategically placed ones, she waved it at the old man and said, “This is how we’d be if we hadn’t of sinned.”
The old woman nearly tore her husband’s arm off his shoulder, yanking him along, saying, “Come on, John.”
John looked sad, like Lassie whenever her friends told her to hold down the fort.
“I didn’t see that,” I told Gwen.
“If Mom and Dad thought you saw that, they’d cancel your subscription to Wonder Woman’s comic book and convert us all to Catholicism.”
My face, which had been changing colors like a mood ring, grew cold from the night wind.
Flip, turn. New Orleans. Those flowers.
School began a week later. Mrs. Singleton, my language teacher, had decided to show us slides of her summer trip to London, the place where poets used to take opium then write about everything they tripped over. Though places like Westminster Abbey and Hank’s Pub looked interesting, I still started dozing. A beast-like snore from the back of the room woke me up in time to see, in front of some lord’s manor, the purple flowers from my uncle’s yard.
“Aren’t those the prettiest flowers you’ve ever seen?” asked Mrs. Singleton. She asked the question like the introduction to the next song in a corny musical, but she was right.
“My uncle has flowers like that at his house in New Orleans!” I exclaimed, waking the whole den of sleeping bears.
“I don’t think so, Ian.” She put her hands on her hips and stared me down. “That is a very rare flower that only grows in England’s climate. It would die in Louisiana.”
Everyone laughed. I can’t say I’d never told a lie, but I’d never been called a liar for telling the truth, and by the same person who always complained about none of us participating in class or sharing our experiences. How could she make a fool of me, in front of the whole class? I always thought Mrs. Singleton liked me, until that day.
Flip, turn. No one but Sherri Baker believed me. Sherri . . . .
Sherri was my first visitor in over a month, since I had been grounded for shooting off fireworks in the house. She arrived in my yard on her new ten-speed, adorned in blue shorts and a white T-shirt that said “Foxy Lady” in fat, purple letters. Her long blonde hair, over-developed figure, and purple lipstick made her an unlikely guest for an unpopular teenager.
“Hey.” The word barely escaped my mouth as she leaned the bike against our porch.
“Hey. Can I come in?”
I let her in but told her my parents weren’t home.
“Would they make me leave if they were here?”
“I . . . . Of course not. I don’t think so.”
“I hear you want to go out with me,” she said, falling into the love seat. I walked into the kitchen and got her a root beer.
“Who told you that?” It was true, but I hadn’t told anyone, so I was astonished by her female intuition.
“Does it matter?”
“No.” I gave her a can of root beer. She looked at it, gave it back to me. I set it on the coffee table.
“I think that was sorry, what Single Ton did to you this morning. Like you would lie about a flower. I like flowers.” She leaned forward and backed me into the wall behind me as her lips touched my left ear. My spinal column and rib cage unraveled into my legs. The back door opened, almost hitting Sherri.
My mother, a sack of groceries in her arms, asked, “What are you kids up to?”
“Sherri’s teaching me . . . the two-step.”
“I remember when your father was good at that.”
“Ah.”
Flip, turn.
Before we could have our first date, Sherri told me her family was moving to Levelland, so I gave my father what seemed like a reasonable suggestion.
As with the supposedly unspeakable Aunt Talia situation, Dad always twisted his wedding ring when thinking of something that made him uncomfortable. “Son, Sherri is a nice girl. Very nice girl.” Twist, twist. “But she’s still a girl. We just can’t have one of your female friends moving in with us. That just wouldn’t be right.” Twist, twist.
“Gwen’s a girl. And she’s moved out after me having a girl in the house all my life. This sudden change might be causing mental problems for me.” I didn’t believe any of what I said, but it sounded good. I only stopped out of fear that my father might unscrew his finger.
“You’ve been reading your mother’s pop-up psychology books again.”
“I think that’s pop psychology, Dad. Pop-up books are the ones with 3D cardboard pictures that stand up when you turn to the right page. Remember? My Statue of Liberty poked you in the eye with her torch.”
“I remember. I’d never realized how dangerous books could be. And the answer is no.” Twist, twist.
Flip, turn.
Sherri Baker. Someone who’d kept in touch with her gave me her number, the number I’d recognized. I decided to call her some day. Sherri . . . .
Flip, turn.
The girl who slid into the pool in a purple bikini looked familiar. Sociology class? Maybe. I wanted to ask but couldn’t remember her name.
Flip, turn.
Keeping a Secret
During graduation ceremonies at the police academy, Billy Friedman began thinking of his past. As he walked across the stage, he thought for sure he saw his father leaving, the father who had left them that night ten years earlier, long before their mother went back to college, long before Troy went off to Desert Storm, long before Billy decided to become someone who protects others from people like his father. But Billy hadn’t seen his father since that night and couldn’t imagine wanting to see him now.
Billy’s girlfriend, Aragon Carsons, caught his eye, and he could tell that she had noticed the sudden chilling of his happiness, his pride. As he looked over at Troy in his army captain’s uniform and at his mother with her new husband, he wondered if they had seen his father too, if their memories constantly went back to the days leading up to Kevin Friedman’s sudden departure from Acorn.
“We’ve got to go home,” said Billy, as he shoveled dirt onto the campfire. Billy considered himself the leader, since he was ten and his brother was only eight. “Mom will worry if we’re out past twelve.” He forced the shovel into the ground.
“Why do you always think Mom’s the one who worries?” asked Troy. “Dad worries, too. Besides, they know where we are. They can walk out to the porch and yell. They know how to yell.”
“We didn’t get permission to be out all night,” said Billy. He zipped his black jacket and pulled up the collar to block the West Texas night wind from his neck. His long black hair would have covered his neck a few days earlier, but his father told him it “looked queer” and made him get it cut short. “Mom might not know we’re still out here.”
“So? They’ll think we’re in bed.”
“If we were in bed, we wouldn’t be freezing.”
“You’re the one who put out the fire.”
“I put it out because we gotta go inside,” said Billy. “And I can’t leave you here by yourself.”
“So make me go home.”
“Just shut up, Troy.”
For a moment, they said nothing, listening to the sound of a passing train in place of the sounds inside: the noise of another argument. Troy finally broke the silence by asking, “Don’t you think it’s nice out here in the forest?”
“The forest? What forest?”
A large cluster of trees established the boundary of their new backyard. They owned the property, so Billy and Troy had built a small campsite between the trees. Billy’s parents would send them outside to play when they had something to “discuss.” It happened the most when bills came in.
Wednesday night’s discussion had begun with Billy’s father taking out his wallet and asking their mother if she could find any money in it. She replied by taking out his credit cards and telling him about how he always used those as if he had the money to pay them back. They didn’t see Billy watching from the doorway, didn’t know that he saw the blood run from his mother’s lips or that he had heard the stinging slap of a hand against the flesh of his mother’s face and that he had heard the thump of her fall. Tonight’s discussion had begun more peacefully, but Billy knew how to read the signs, the tone, the word choice, the spaces between words, the trembling hand that wanted to hurt someone.
“It’s a forest,” said Troy.
“It’s a pine tree orchard,” said Billy.
“It can’t be an orchard unless you planted it.”
“Says who?”
“Says Dad.”
“Well, who died and made him Johnny Appleseed?”
“I’m gonna tell him you said that,” said Troy, pointing at Billy.
“You better not.”
“And what if I do?”
“He’ll just stay mad, Troy. Is that what you want?”
“No.”
“Then don’t say anything that’ll make him have a fit. You better watch out. He might hit you one day.”
Staying mad had cost his father three jobs and a lease. Staying mad would mean their mother would cry, and they would argue more. Staying mad would mean everyone must sit quietly, saying nothing, because any word might lead to trouble. They did something to his father at his new job, something that made him meaner than he had ever been. At least before, his father was only mean sometimes. Billy wished his father would work somewhere else.
The beam of a flashlight moved across their waterproof tent as Billy’s father called their names. The beam stopped on Billy’s face.
“Do you boys know what time it is?” Their father stood over them, the neighbor’s porch light reflecting off his wire-rimmed glasses. With his recently grown beard and recently expanding stomach, he barely even looked like the same man.
“We didn’t bring a watch,” said Billy.
“Get inside. Your mother’s worried about you.”
Their father held his hand over the embers that still burned beneath the dirt.
“Dad, don’t stay out here,” said Troy. “Mom’ll worry.”
Billy nudged Troy into silence. Their father’s hands rested on their shoulders as they walked inside. Billy felt no anger in his father’s hand; it seemed strange that the same hand that gently guided him home could also cause his mother’s face to bleed.
They passed their silent, doll-like mother, and she continued to stare out the window even after they all walked inside. Though she didn’t say good night, Billy knew she would come in later to check on them. Billy had learned to be quiet, like his mother. Sometimes, when the angry words and looks began, she would leave the table or pick up a book. Other times, she fought back. Like Wednesday night. But their father had shut her up with the hand that now tapped on the table, tapping, tapping, like a terrible rain. He used the other hand to point toward the boys’ bedroom.
“Your mother and I are very tired,” he said. “Don’t keep us up, okay?”
They both said, “Okay”; then Troy said, “I love you, Dad.” Their father smiled. Troy also smiled, as if proud of his accomplishment.
“Yeah. Go on to bed,” said their father. They could still hear his voice after they turned out their lamp and closed the bedroom door. Though they could only make out certain words, the tone of those words filled the gaps between them.
“Why are they fighting?” asked Troy, as he got into bed.
“Because that’s what they do,” said Billy, pulling a blanket up to his chin. “Keep your voice down.”
“Answer me.”
“Troy, I don’t have the answer to every question in the universe. Mom and Dad just don’t get along anymore.”
“Are they getting a divorce?”
“I don’t know. If they get a divorce, we’ll have to decide which of them to stay with.”
“Who would you decide on?” asked Troy. He whispered the last word, because Billy was shushing him.
“Mom.”
“She doesn’t have a job.”
“She went to college for a year before I was born. She can get a job.”
“Well, I wouldn’t go with either of them. Then they would have to stay together.”
“Go to sleep,” said Billy.
Troy didn’t say anything else, and his occasional yawning soon gave way to light snoring. Billy stayed awake, listening for more angry words. Their mother walked through the room picking up the clothes they had thrown onto the floor while they were changing into their pajamas. Billy closed his eyes so she would think he was asleep. But he could see her face in his mind, see the tears in her eyes as she left the room holding their laundry against herself like a teddy bear.
Billy’s maternal grandmother made teddy bears for him and Troy one time. Billy remembered how his mother said they were so perfect and that she hugged his teddy bear even more than he did. Billy’s grandmother had visited their house in Ropesville a lot, while Billy’s father was at work. She would repeat all the stories she heard from her Choctaw father and her German mother. He wondered why she never visited their new house, if his father even let her visit. One day, Billy heard his grandmother call his father an evil man.
Billy wanted to call her and tell her that the evil man slapped her daughter. He wanted to run away, but he couldn’t leave Troy there, and he knew Troy wouldn’t go with him. Troy was so small that Billy worried that if his father hit Troy as hard as he had hit his mother it would kill Troy.
Billy shuddered, balled his fists so hard he could feel his fingernails leaving little oval imprints on his skin. Why couldn’t it be like at the old house? Why did his father have to destroy everything? He got mad back then, but never so mad that he would hit someone. Billy always thought of the day they left Ropesville as the day their old life ended, because they left the old house on that day. Everything changed that day.
* * *
School passed too quickly for Billy. School was the safe place he had to leave at three o’clock every weekday. There, he would do the work his teachers gave him, and no one yelled at each other. At home, he would usually finish his homework, but he wouldn’t always study for exams, knowing he would hear anger and threats no matter what he did. He spent his time reading comic books, drawing pictures of his favorite superheroes, and watching them on TV. There were a lot of superhero shows on back then. He especially liked the daily reruns of The Incredible Hulk. Billy’s cousin would come over to the old house to watch it with him, and they would try to guess when someone would make Dr. Banner mad, turning him into the Hulk.
* * *
As Billy wandered into the kitchen, trying to remember his cousin’s or his grandmother’s phone number, he heard his mother’s car pull up in the driveway. She already had two grocery bags in her arms when Billy walked outside, and he got a sack of potatoes from her old, twice-wrecked Mustang.
“Where’s your father?” she asked.
“He’s not here yet. He must be working over.”
Their father started working before daybreak and usually got home just before the boys.
“Just what we need,” she said, and her tone told Billy what she meant. “How was school?”
“Great.”
Smiling, Troy walked into the kitchen with his report card and gave it to their mother.
“With a beaming face like that, there must be some A’s on that report card.” Her eyes scanned the card. “Well, just in conduct. But all B’s looks good to me. Let’s see if your brother can compete.”
“No, ma’am,” said Troy, as she sat down at the table and Billy put away the groceries.
“Troy!” whispered Billy.
“Billy, let’s see it.” Watching Billy slowly open his backpack, she lit a cigarette and set it in the ashtray. She took a drag as he pulled out the card. “What’s wrong, Billy?”
“Nothing,” he said, as he gave her the card.
“You look worried. Did you—Billy, a C- in history? You’ve never made a C- before.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t study enough.”
“Apparently not. Honey, history is just as important as all your other subjects. Now I want nothing less than an A in history next time, so your mid-term average will be high. Okay?”
“But what if they take me out of the advanced classes and put me in the nigger classes? Dad said I have to stay in the advanced classes.”
She smashed her cigarette out in the ashtray. “Did I just hear an ugly word come out of your mouth? They’re called regular classes, not nigger classes.”
“That’s what Dad calls them.”
“Your father uses a lot of words that I hope you never pick up. But he is right about you being smart enough to stay on the advanced level. Your father never finished high school. He’s had to work the hardest jobs all his life, because he doesn’t have the education to work in some air-conditioned office. He’s just going to . . . . Well, I know this is wrong, but I’d better sign both of your cards. He probably won’t even remember the six weeks is up.” She looked over to her other son, who stood watching them. “Troy, don’t say a word about this to your father. Not a word.”
“Not a word,” said Troy, and Billy believed him.
* * *
When their father got home four hours later, he walked into the living room to find Billy lying on the floor in front of their small black and white TV with foil on its rabbit ear antenna.
“Billy, do you have to watch reruns of The Hulk every night? You must have seen every episode a billion times.”
“I’ve never seen this one,” he replied, without turning away from the snowy screen, where Bill Bixby warned a thug not to make him angry. The thug punched Bixby, who fell behind a table. A commercial came on.
“Where’s your brother?” their father asked, as he sat down in his recliner. He squirmed around, found that he was sitting on a toy, threw it across the room. “Never mind. I know. He’s leaving another trail of toys across the house. No wonder you kids always want more toys. You lose ‘em all. You probably left a few hundred dollars worth at the old house.”
The old house! Billy loved the old house, next door to his cousin. But their father got into a fight with the landlord over the lawn or something. It was always something stupid like that. Bixby’s muscles tore through his clothes as he became The Incredible Hulk. He came out from behind the table, tossing around thugs and furniture.
“What do you get out of watching this?” his father asked, getting up and switching off the TV.
“Nothing if you turn it off. It isn’t over yet!”
“Don’t raise your voice to me, boy.” He pointed at Billy and stepped near him. “I tell you something: if I’d of ever talked to my dad the way you talk to me sometimes, I wouldn’t be alive today. Now I’m just trying to carry on a conversation with you. I come home, your brother’s hiding in his room, and you’re watching TV. Do you boys even know I exist?”
“What does ‘exist’ mean?”
“Watch that smart mouth of yours.”
“Honey, I’ve got your supper warmed up on the stove,” said Billy’s mother, as she stuck her head into the narrow hall.
“What’s wrong with Billy?” he asked, as he stomped into the kitchen. “You’d think he was the one who had to work twelve hours, the way he’s moping around. My own children don’t even have time to talk to me.”
Going into the bedroom and shutting the door, Billy saw Troy pushing two tiny race cars around the room.
“Is The Hulk off already?”
“No. I don’t feel like watching it.”
“Dad said you’ve seen them all a million times.” Troy sat down on his bed and looked up at the pictures on the walls Billy had drawn of The Hulk, Spiderman, and Aquaman. “Can you draw a race car man for me?”
“I’ll try.” Billy kept remembering when they first moved into the new house. He had tripped over a coffee can filled with nails. They went everywhere. His father called him “stupid” and told him to stay out of the way. He wanted out of his father’s way, forever. How could his own father call him names like “stupid” and “retarded”? How could his own father make him feel so helpless, so worthless?
“Thanks,” said Troy.
“But quit telling me what Dad says. Grown-ups say stupid things when they’re mad. Dad does it more than anyone else.”
“Don’t talk about Dad that way.” Troy pointed at him.
“Do you want me to draw your race car man?”
“Yeah.”
“Then don’t worry about it. Dad can’t hear me in here. Did you finish your homework?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, maybe I can show you how to draw. I’ll need a sharp pencil, and it has to be a number two. I also need—” He heard the loud voices in the kitchen, yelling words he wasn’t supposed to say.
“They’re fighting again,” said Troy, his eyes wide with fear. “Make them stop.”
“I can’t,” said Billy. “I wish I could draw a picture of us, and all four of us be happy in the picture, and Dad could see it, and . . . .” Billy waived off the thought. “Never mind. He’d just ask why I waste so much paper.”
Billy thought of a conversation he and his mother had in the old house. He had asked her why she and his father lived upstairs but he and Troy lived downstairs.
“We like our privacy,” she said, after thinking about the question for a while. “You’ll understand when you’re older.”
But Billy now saw that they had lived upstairs so he and Troy couldn’t hear them fighting. Even in the old house, out in the open and innocent space of West Texas farmland, his father had wanted to yell at his mother, wanted to hit her. She seemed to think that as long as no one knew, as long as she kept it secret, it was somehow all right. Still, Billy would not let his father destroy all the good memories of the old house: a world populated by relatives and friends, real and imaginary—a world where no one hit the people they said they loved.
The high ceilings and the spiral staircase seemed to absorb his father’s anger, making it easier to stay away from. His father always complained about such a big house being hard to heat, but anger worked the same way—drifting off into a corner somewhere or going into so many different directions that no one noticed it. The new house grew hot quicker; just the one heater in the hall, or even just the oven, would heat the house up in a second. The same with the anger. It went down the hall, under the doors, into every rotting board, rusting nail, and peeling sheet of wallpaper, into the stained carpets, into blankets, pillows, towels, toys, and clothes.
* * *
“Where’s your report cards?” their father asked the next day. “All the guys at the factory were bragging about their kids’ grades. I didn’t even have anything to brag about.” He had walked by their mother without saying anything to her. Billy had noticed many times before how he could ignore her and pretend dinner magically appeared on the table. But his father’s tone suggested something worse than his usual punishment of her. It was the tone that sounded like a whine and a threat at the same time, the tone of his violence, the tone he used that night he slapped Billy’s mother to the floor.
“Mom signed them,” said Troy. “We gave them back today.” Troy’s glance to Billy looked like an apology of some sort, an explanation that he told on their mother out of fear of their father, an explanation that he already regretted breaking his promise not to tell.