Unwilling to be pressed or ridiculed further, Lex drove off in her rental.
The afternoon gave; the sun stepped out, leaving only its exhaustion and haze. A sticky film clung to her contacts, which she tried unsuccessfully to blink away. She found herself in the parking lot of Mudslide liquor watching people go in and out. The same actors. Different backdrop. Costumed in sweatpants and house-shoes. Pit-stains and leggings. She sighed. She flipped down her mirror; slapped it back up. Why even bother with make-up? Her sweat had turned it to a clay paste. She reached for her purse but the passenger seat was empty. Fuck. She reached backwards, slapping around the backseat like a blind man’s cane knowing full well her purse was sitting under a pile of clothes in her sister’s closet, hidden and buried away from the thieving grieving hands attending her nephew’s wake.
She ran through the car’s various and convoluted compartments. A paper-clip, the cap to a pen, and the splinters of a peppermint candy were the prizes won. Lex let her forehead fall against the steering wheel, her mouth resting atop the horn. The sun radiated off the dash. Sweat formed between her forehead and the leather. She started up the engine. She got back on the road.
Leave it well enough alone. You know better. It’s for the best.
Lex got a few blocks before caving. She wasn’t about to go back to her sister’s. There was no facing family. She flipped a U, the smell of burning rubber filling the car, and headed to Jim’s gas station, sinking into the sweet fleeting feeling of giving in.
An electronic chime played as Lex walked through the door. That was new; didn’t know country had license to such technology. Jim wasn’t in but his son, James Jr., was behind the counter counting out lottery stubs. In a bigger town, where don’t everybody know everybody, folks would never assume relation. Junior was meek in a way that seemed un-male and particularly, un-black. He wasn’t even bookish, which might’ve given him an excuse; would’ve been bullied for talking white but at least an excuse. And an escape. Instead he was just sensitive, useless, quick to tears and it had been Lex’s job to look out for him at school. They weren’t technically cousins but close enough for family to impose such an assignment.
Junior looked up from the stubs. There was a stalled, panicked moment. The return of the uppity bodyguard and with her, the never-forgotten memories of jeers and slurs and the ringing of that ugly kind of laughter only produced by a hungry pack of boys.
Junior came around the counter and hugged her. He smelled of cigarettes and energy drinks. The hug felt unpracticed and lasted too long. In her heels, Lex towered over him.
“Sorry about your nephew Lexus,” Junior said, finally letting go, shuffling a few steps back. “He was a good kid. I would’ve been there too but dad, you know, he was there and if he was there then I couldn’t be since no one would be here to do the register….you saw my dad right?
“Yes,” Lex mumbled. “He brought some nice flowers.”
“Good; good. That’s from all of us. Keisha too.”
His sister had been Lex’s best friend growing up. Used to be thick as thieves; hadn’t spoken in years. Actually, the black dress she had on used to belong to Kee-kee.
“How she doing?”
“She good, you know. In good spirits. She not too mobile right now. The sugars, you know. Even took one of her toes. The pinky on her left foot.”
Lex had to bite her lip to keep from laughing or crying. She’d been away eighteen years. A whole other lifetime in another city. Gone longer than all of nephew. This was only the fourth time she’d been back. Funeral, two weddings, and her brother’s graduation from a technical college.
“You need gas or anything?” Junior asked.
Lex shook her head. She could feel sweat matriculating under her arms and back. Her voice came out fast and shrill falling back on a Southern mouth she’d behind, “I left my purse back at Trina’s and I was thinking, well trying, to get something to drink and....I’ll come through tomorrow and pay what I owe. You know I’m good for it.”
There was a tremor in her hand, which Lex balled into a fist. She forced her eyes from the floor and before her was a Junior she did not recognize. His shoulders were pulled back, his leg that was always shaking had grown still, and a smile worked its way across his should-be handsome face. Junior had turned magnanimous, assured. Suddenly he had become what he and family had hope for an entire lifetime—his father’s son. He was no longer scrambling to find something to say—he’d seen this play before, he knew the play call—he’d seen father hand out kindness countless times and what little power afforded him in this world, Junior knew he had this.
“Nah nah nah. It’s on me. Take whatever you need. Least your cousin can do.”
Lex sat in the car sweating, heart still racing. It had kicked into double-time the second she opened that fridge; the smell of those delicious cooling chemical agents, feeling the cold waft down her dress to her toes, pulled her back to those sour desperate years.
Lex turned left onto Marigold Lane. With every wind and turn, the houses began to wake, breathe, stretch. Up and away. Lawns quickly became intentional as meant for more than just dumping ground for shit that might be fixed and useful one day. Every switchback revealed another window, another limb, lit and decorated with fall cheer. Gourds and pumpkins framed each door step. Palm-sized turkeys blotted out windows. Straw-stuffed scare-crows, sat, smiling on porch swings.
Lex could feel the families within. Manicured. Whole. White. She imagined the Father, spread before the Sunday Night Game, domestic in hand; the kids upstairs doing private-school homework. Oak banisters wrapped in sienna and pumpkin. Potpourri. A Golden Retriever laid before the open hearth, her ears pricked to the activity in the kitchen, for the possibility of a fallen scrap; the Mother, busying herself, stirring the spiced cider on the stove top, checking the chicken broiling beneath, opening and closing cabinets, searching for something she cannot name—is Lupe stealing again? You think you know someone; you invite them into your home—the TV in the kitchen turned to local news: another murder, the annual Pilgrim and Indian Picnic in Reagan Park, an Ebola scare at the airport, a weekend mattress sale.
Lex was surprised to be the only car up on the bluff. Back in high school this was the spot to sin; yourself a honey and a laugh and soon enough some fogged windows. These kids these days. Too busy with they cell-phones.
She cut the engine and drained the first beer in a two swallows. Six years. Gone. Just. Like. That.
She wanted it to mean more.
She went for another and with her other hand, danced the radio dial. Top-40, more country, praise music, a classical station full of static.
Lex had missed her nephew’s birth. She hadn’t been speaking with Katrina at the time. Wouldn’t have mattered much anyways; he came fast and early and upside down. To save the baby they cut Trina open like a smile.
Henry Carter Williams. A breath of a thing. More hair than body. They kept him in the NICU a whole month.
Slow to awareness, he was perpetually between accidents; a life lived mid-fall, constantly catching the edge of corners; his body a brilliant continuous collage of bruises.
Trina and Mike managed in the ways they’d been taught and kept their prayer-book close. It was no offense to say what Henry was, though Mike had been slow to accept it. “You just never think one of your kids will be like that,” he said.
To Mudslide, Henry was an amiable oaf; agreeable in most situations, disruptive in others—poor boy can’t help hisself—particularly when asked to remain still or quiet, which always made for a lively sermon, Pastor Davis laughed, and you would be hard-pressed to find anyone who enjoyed the hymns as much as dear brother Henry, and if that is not the holy spirit, then I don’t know what is.
Trina took pride in treating him just like her other three sons. Mike boasted how he took the belt to him like a normal boy. These were the words shared at his wake. Others came forth, enjoying the spotlight, giving what they wanted remembered, speaking of Henry the way one would of a puppy or pauper; with a mixture of bemusement, frustration, and much pity. Then someone said something about The Green Mile and Lex almost walked out then and there but held herself together when everyone around her hummed in Black agreement.
Lex needed to piss. She opened the door, stepped out, and fell over. Her heel was stuck in the wet earth like a post. “Fucking Mudslide,” she laughed brushing herself off. She undid her heels and threw them into the passenger seat.
The night was cold and she had no jacket. She walked down from the ridge and squatted behind a tree. Her hometown shone brilliantly before her. Her piss stank. As she stood and pulled down her dress, she nearly fell over again. At this point, everything was funny.
Light on her toes, Lex began skipping uphill, back towards the rental, and as she was cresting the ridge, another car suddenly pulled up, blinding her with their high-beams.
Henry, like his brothers, loved guns. His walls were blotted with posters and his floor littered with past issues of Guns&Ammo. On the boys’ thirteenth birthday, they each received their very own hunting rifle. On his thirteenth, Henry received a BB gun with plastic pellets. He ran outside and threw the gun into the gutter. Mike called him ungrateful and took off his belt.
Trina had no answer for Henry’s hurt when Mike and the boys went off for a hunt, Henry would barricade himself in his room leaving Trina to try and cajole with his favorite breakfast set before the open TV, where the remote would be all his. The breakfast sat till it turned cold. Tina would knock and tell her son it wasn’t her choice, it was his father’s, which allowed her to hide and call from behind what she knew to be right: a boy like him can’t have no gun; but still she clung to the hope of being the good one, the kind parent; for all this trouble and disappointment, for all that God asked of her, she deserved her son’s love.
And when his father and brothers returned home, high on pine and blood, Henry would watch them from the window high-fiving and untying the kill from the front of the truck, shoving and making fun of whichever brother wasn’t pulling his weight, father beaming.
Henry was fifteen when he broke into the gun safe, stole the truck, and went out to get him a kill. He left well before light and the troopers weren’t alerted till he was deep in the wood.
According to the report, when the troopers finally found Henry after hours of searching, he was laid atop a medium-sized doe, crying into its bloodied shoulder. The troopers called his name. They claimed not to have seen the rifle. Henry became visibly agitated and yelled, “Get away from her you fuckers! Get away!” Henry lifted the rifle. “His eyes were wide but didn’t look like anyone was home,” wrote Trooper Cowley; “He looked possessed,” wrote Trooper Lloyd. “Demonic really.” The troopers instructed Henry to drop the weapon and get on the ground. Henry did not listen. The troopers repeated their instructions. At which point Henry fired, missing both troopers. They did not.
“There you are,” the officer said, stepping out of his vehicle. He left the high-beams on and Lex couldn’t make him out till he was right up on her. She took a step back, feeling her bare heel graze the edge of the ridge.
“I got a call about a car parked up on the bluff. You know how these neighbors can be,” the officer said smiling like he and Lex were on the same team. “So here I am. Checking it out and what not. Mind telling me what you’re doing out here miss?”
“Thought I’d get some fresh air,” Lex said, swallowing the beer-bile, trying to keep from slurring.
The officer laughed. It was all air. Like someone gasping.
“Now that’s what I was thinking! Except you look kinda cold and you ain’t got no shoes on. What you a hippy or something?”
“My heel got caught in the mud.”
The officer clapped his big hands. “Now that explains the nice dress. Looks like you got a little mud on it though. You need some help cleaning that off?”
“No thanks.”
“Your date stand you up or something?”
“Something like that.”
“Ah forget the bastard,” the officer said. He pulled a slightly crushed pack of cigarettes from his pocket. He offered one to Lex and shrugged when she declined. In fact, Lex wanted one more than anything—the type to only smoke when she drank—but she couldn’t have him smelling the beer on her and he seemed like the type of white boy to insist on lighting your cigarette.
“Well,” Lex said, taking a deep breath, “thank you sir. I appreciate your concern—”
“—Call me Mark,” the officer interrupted. He looked absently over towards the rental car. Lex prayed the empty beer cans were visible from this angle.
“Okay Mark,” Lex said quickly, calling back his attention. “Thank you again. I appreciate it.”
Mark stretched his arms above his head, revealing some belly and hair. “Glad you appreciate it. Cause you know, I gotta come up here at least couple times a week cause of these damn kids doing bad things. Drinking, smoking pot, leaving condoms all over God’s green earth. The neighbors don’t like it. Which means my boss don’t like it. Which means I don’t like it. So I gotta ask miss: ya ain’t bad right?”
“No Mark, I’m tired.”
“Ya been drinking?” he asked, sticking a pinky deep into a back tooth, rattling loose whatever was stuck.
“No Mark, I’ve been crying.”
“You like him that much huh?”
“Something like that.”
They stood in silence. Mark finished the final drag on his cigarette and flicked it away. He winked at Lex like it was their secret; like it was okay to be a little bad as long as you had fun with it.
“Well I know the dress wasn’t meant for me but glad I got to see it all the same,” Mark said. “You want some advice?”
“Sure.”
“Go find you a guy who will treat you right,” he said smiling like he was the type of boy his mama raised right.
Mark leaned back against the hood of his patrol car, keeping his legs spread so the light wouldn’t be obscured. “Alright, you get on outta here. You have a good night miss. Drive safely.”
Lex tried not to shake as she walked to her car. She imagined his greedy mean eyes staring at her the whole way. She got the key in the ignition on the third try. Mark hadn’t moved from his spot. He smiled his yellow smile and waved. Lex forced herself to wave back, put the car in reverse, and left Officer Mark in the glow of his own headlights.
Lex should’ve gone home. Not back to her sister’s but all the way home; should’ve driven straight to the airport and caught the next flight back to LA. Instead, she swerved her way to a bar. But not down in Mudslide, where people would’ve known her, whispered about her, lied on her but looked out for her all the same, no, she stayed up on The Ridge and drove herself to the fanciest white bar Google could find.
Stepping out of the car, she brushed off as much mud as she could. The dress was black. It would be dark inside. No one would notice. Someone was gonna buy her a drink; someone was gonna turn her night around.
Lex clicked her heels across to the far end of the bar, so she could watch who walked in. The bartender turned to her. He was a bone-skinny white boy with Americana tattoos and dangling earrings. He wore a sailor’s cap and a sincere mustache. Lex sincerely thought he looked like a pirate. He couldn’t have been a day over twenty-one.
“What’s your poison?” he smiled. Lex didn’t know if she could take another white man smiling at her tonight.
It would’ve been so much better for everyone if she was carded. Had this child shook his head with remorse and sent her home with rules are rules miss, then Lex could’ve still pretended she would’ve burned it all down had it not been for this single, intractable obstacle.
“I’m actually meeting someone,” Lex answered. “I’ll take a water for now.”
“Sparkling or flat?” the bartender asked.
Lex sighed.
She wasn’t formally sober. She’d given it a try; went against her better judgment (lean into your tornado, a Buddhist self-help book had recommended) and attended a handful of AA meetings in North Hollywood, which she immediately found too cultish, too scene, too white. She felt out of place among these young transplants with stars in their eyes and Redbulls in their hands, their fingers stained with cigarettes, their mouths shaped to slogans, giddy with mantras, tied to oaths in the name of a shared god who’d recently reached 1m followers on Instagram.
Nah nigga.
She sobered up on her own, mostly, which to her meant she’d never really had a problem in the first place.
Lex sat there, making origami figures out of the bar napkins, nursing her glass of water till it ran flat.
There had been exactly one suitor. A short round man had stumbled over and spat some halitosis game. The man swayed like a metronome. He had a pony-tail. He was balding.
To the baby-bartender’s credit, he’d moved the guy on quickly. The man seemed to know the bartender’s parents and kept repeating something about respect and generations but still settled up with a handshake and what appeared to be a generous tip.
“Looks like you’re making a whole barn,” the bartender chuckled.
“Something like that.”
“You teach yourself? Looks like you’re good.”
“Had a lot of free time in college.”
The bartender whistled like they were both foreign concepts. Lex let the conversation go and the bartender walked off. A couple minutes later he returned with a pink concoction. There was a slice of pineapple and salt around the rim.
Lex worried it was gonna be some watermelon bullshit. Beyoncé had just released another hit-single and whites were all about that watermelon. Under his emphatic gaze, Lex begrudgingly brought the drink to her lips and took a sip.
Thank god.
“It’s delicious.”
“Great! I’m glad. It’s something I’ve been experimenting with. It’s a twist on a pink lemonade martini. I think I’ve finally got the recipe down. I’ve been taking this online mixology class—”
Lex laughed in his face.
She watched his delight fall to near tears. Motherfuckers are so sensitive these days but damn if she didn’t feel a little guilty for popping his small-town balloon.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t laughing at you.”
“No. I get it. It’s dumb.”
He moved as if to walk away. Lex grabbed his arm and slid her hand down to meet his. “I didn’t mean it like that,” she said giving his hand a squeeze.
The bartender’s eyes widened. “I’m Matthew,” he said stuttered and looked ready to admit his whole life to her when someone tapped their empty glass on the bar, growling for another.
Lex watched the boy try and catch up with her. He slammed two shots of whiskey back-to-back. They were the only two left in the bar. The front door was locked. The curtains drawn.
He poured himself a beer, came around the bar, and stood next to Lex.
“You gonna sit?”
“Sorry—I’m so used to standing.”
“And stop saying sorry so much.”
“Sorry!”
Lex laughed even though it wasn’t funny. She was still drunk but felt herself forcing it. She was entering the tired phase of the high. She could feel the headache coming on. If she moved her eyes too quickly, the room would spin and crash. The boy was saying something.
“I said I’m happy that you came in tonight.”
Lex ignored this and instead asked, “How old are you?”
“Sorry?” Matthew laughed.
“How old are you?”
“I’m twenty-three and was raised better than to ask a lady her age,” he said with a wink.
Another white boy with manners.
Lex had little interest in controlling herself any longer and laughed bitterly. Matthew pushed back his stool and stood up, “Jeez. Sorry for answering your question.” He looked around still as if unsure what to do next.
Lex grabbed him by the belt. It brandished a large buckle with a prairie scene etched into the metal. She looked up at him; his rust-colored hair, his acne scars, his hazelnut eyes. He began to lean over. She pulled on his belt again, forcing him to straighten up to avoid falling. Lex wasn’t here to kiss him; in fact the thought turned her stomach.
She undid the buckle.
Matthew made a sound that approximated joyous surprise.
“Please be quiet,” Lex said closing her eyes.
He tried calling her a car. Actually, he offered to take her back to his place (his roommate was gone for the weekend and he wanted to return the favor, he said, showing the pink of his tongue), then offered to drive her to wherever she was staying, then he offered to call the car.
“Can I at least get your number?”
“I don’t live here.”
“Were you here cause of that boy?”
Lex kept walking towards the front door.
“I figured. Sorry for what happened. It’s not right what them troopers did.”
Lex unlocked the front door.
“You’re real beautiful by the way,” Matthew called after her one last time.
Lex was half-way out the door when the compliment landed on her tired ears. She turned around and her eyes met Matthew’s fleeting hope. She could see the gears in his head moving; I knew she couldn’t resist, they seemed to say. She walked to the closest booth and in one sweep, knocked pint glasses and their warm dregs to the floor.
Lex began winding back down towards Mudslide. Her car rocked from liquor and her eyes darted back and forth between the road and her phone. She didn’t know what she wanted but figured it might be in her Facebook feed. She didn’t want to text anyone. She didn’t want anyone to know. Except maybe her ex. He should know. Except, no matter what she said, he wouldn’t get it. Cause he never got it.
“No knowing ass nigga,” Lex laughed sadly.
Thankfully something good was finally on the radio. Mariah was giving her a little life. True shit. Mariah. True shit. It’s all fantasy.
Lex yawned, rounded the corner, and slammed on her brakes. She found the scream she’d been building for a week. There sat Henry, crossed legged, in the middle of the road, stroking the head of a bloodied doe. It took a moment or two for him to notice Lex but when he did, he broke into a big smile and waved, opening and closing his hand, as if he were trying to catch the wind.
Lex flipped off her lights.
She sat in the darkness. There were so many stars in the sky it seemed gaudy. She counted to ten. When she flipped them back on, Henry was still there waving for the wind.
Contributor Notes
Matan Gold is a writer from the San Fernando Valley. His work has been featured or is forthcoming in Apogee, Quarterly West, Waxwing, Track//Four, among others. He lives with his partner in Portland, Oregon. Send him ramen recipes at www.matangold.com
