well, welcome back to boring. Billie crossed the living room, peeked into the kitchen. Supper was still not ready to set out. Since Rose was unable to see her, Billie searched the swan ashtray, pulled out a medium-sized Lucky, and headed back upstairs.
From the window in Dessie’s part of the bedroom, Billie watched Lux ease down the hood of the Jeep, wipe the grease off his hands, and help Dessie up into the passenger seat. Alan Ray sat in the back, a bottle of Coke in one hand, a cigarette in the other, his long legs in green army fatigues stretched out across the whole backseat. Bertram stood on the footbridge watching, his hands idly tapping a pack of Luckies to settle the tobacco. The Jeep turned and splashed across the creek, climbing onto the main road. Black exhaust smoke hung in the air, the rumble and sputter of the engine mixed with the twang of pedal-steel guitars. And then only the wide, wet tire tracks remained.
Billie found the apron, trying to remember where she’d left the needle, thread, and pins. They were half hidden under Dessie’s quilt. She’d have to find Rose’s sewing box, finish hemming the apron, set the pocket, and then show it to her teacher for grading, so she could bring it home to surprise Rose. The idea came to Billie that since she already had a pattern, she could start another apron as an engagement present for Dessie in green fabric, with some pretty stitching. She could cut out a heart-shaped pocket to make it special.
Though she’d been living in this house for her entire life, sitting on the foot of Dessie’s bed, her sister’s half of the bedroom suddenly seemed different. It felt like the scenery in a school play, everything almost like real life, but instead, props rolled into place, waiting for the actors. Billie pictured the original room without a dividing wall. Big. Big enough that she could push both beds together and have one double bed. What if she could have that whole closet, which was very likely as big as a model’s closet? Billie looked down at the Seventeen magazine on the desk, the model’s big oval eyes, her smile wide and friendly. I’m a model, the model said, sort of telepathically. “I’m an actress,” Billie answered back. “Would you like my autograph?” Yes, please, the model answered. Billie took a pen and wrote her signature, Beverlee Ellen Price, diagonally across the cover of the magazine, making sure to place a large swirl for each of the capital letters, so they hooked together in a sort of alphabet chain.
She switched Dessie’s radio back on. “Next up,” the announcer was saying, “‘Light My Fire.’” Billie hurried to close the door, so she could make the radio louder. If Rose heard what she was listening to, she would be horrified. Of all the bands out there, Rose despised The Doors the most, declaring Jim Morrison a demon who’d made a pact with Satan for the souls of girls, although no one explained to Billie how that could be possible.
If only Dessie was there, they could sing along. Dessie could hit the high notes, and she’d take the lower ones. They’d be the performers as well as the audience. Now though, Dessie was further and further out of reach, like the moon, but circling a whole different planet, some different world she could barely glimpse with the naked eye, planet Lux, with his Jeep and his country music. Country boys, Billie thought. Who even cares about being popular with those guys? There are other guys out there. The Jim Morrison type—wild, enticing, too handsome, too shocking—or maybe the kind of guys in Seventeen, clean-shaven guys who wore polo shirts, who had sports cars, not Jeeps. Billie sat down on the top of Dessie’s desk, opened up the window a bit wider, checked to see if anyone could be watching, and lit up the half-size Lucky.
Across the yard, she could see her father’s shape as he walked toward the barn in the twilight. He would clean up the tools, sweep the workshop, come back to the house, and be ready to eat. If she stayed upstairs too long, Rose would come looking for her. Soon, after another puff or two on the cigarette, another chance to practice her smoke rings, soon, when this song was over, she would turn off the radio, wash her face, rinse her mouth, and head downstairs to help set out whatever Rose had cooked up for an ordinary Saturday night supper to the tune of the Family Gospel Quartet.
But not yet. Billie reached for the piece of mirror that Dessie had set on the desk. Her head tipped back, her dark hair settled along her neck, and she parted her lips ever so slightly, rehearsing her most mysterious smile. Her outstretched hand with the cigarette swayed to the music, back and forth in the chilly air. the last few beats of the organ and guitar, the final chords of the number one song in America. The music swirled and drifted like the warm strands of smoke, like those wraith-like, almost O’s in the cool evening air, out toward the vast universe, toward the distant planets, then gone.
THREE
IN A FLASH (1967)
Ten
Saturday the twentieth of May, 1967, the morning so hot the sweat drains down my spine, I sit back against the driver’s seat, Dessie riding shotgun, and off we go, heading up a logging road to the summit of Chestnut Ridge, stopping after we crest the ridgetop. A field of hay waves in the breeze, spring green, tassels shining, the morning sun above us, not a cloud in the sky and not a soul in sight.
My arm across her shoulder, her arm across my waist, our bodies fitting together, we make our way across the long narrow ridgetop field. From the far edge of the field, a trail weaves through pine-woods. The forest floor slopes down on the right as well as the left. The trail narrows, the trees turn scrawny, finally the woods give over to sky, the hillside drops off on both sides of the path, the soil changes to flat stepping stones of crumbling shale.
We stand at the edge of a windswept cliff. A couple hundred feet below, Decker’s Creek shimmers in the sunlight. A red-tailed hawk soars overhead, then swoops a wide circle toward the tree canopy beneath us in the valley.
Nine
Alan Ray sits at the AmVets, holding America’s best, a PBR. He is smoking his last Marlboro. The crumpled pack and his last three dollars are on the bar.
He stares at me like I’m off my nut. “Y’already lost an eye, now you want to cut your balls off, too? Go ahead, then,” he says. “Just don’t let me find out you dropped down on one knee and begged for it.” Then he says, “What the hell, it’s your life. Hey, I’ll buy. Drink up while you still can.”
Eight
My mother counted her babes like the months of the year, the ones she had and soon after lost. In January, Peter, in February, Ruth, in March, Mark, in April, April, named after the month she was born and the month she died. All laid out, little graves, fieldstones in a row up the hill, a gate of saplings wired together by Pa, some plastic flowers that bloom forever. Then I came along, the one who lived, the one who sucked her teeth right out of her mouth, as she used to say. She loved us equal, those who lived for only a day or two, those who lived a year, and me, walking on the shoulders of the other four. She called me Luther. She said it sounded holy.
After me, two more gone, Simon, Eliza, and then the stones were laid side by side for her and the one who did not receive a name.
Seven
Bertram stands beside his workbench in the barn. He and I puzzle over how to get the carburetor off the International Harvester, in the hopes that we can replace the fouled intake manifold and get the old SOB to keep running once it starts.
He cracks a grin, tells me, “You can’t have just her hand, Ace, you got to take the whole package.”
Later, with Bertram at my side, Rose sits on the piano bench. A narrow silver cross made from hand-hewn framing nails is mounted on the wall on a pine plaque.
Her gray owl eyes meet mine. She says, “There is a right way and a wrong way to do these things, Luther.” Then she says, “Do you mean to be a proper Christian husband to Dorothy? Will you be baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and will you take the Lord into your life as your Savior?”
Six
As a boy, I used to race to keep up with my mother. I used to watch the backs of her legs, her straight-seamed stockings knotted at the knees as she knelt in the church pew, the tied bow of an apron behind her waist as her Sunday heels clacked from room to room on our milled pine floor,