!Woodsmen
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by Anna @ 2016 | edit 3/13/24
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Chapter 3: Paradise city
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Before I turned twenty five, two men loved me and
maybe two women. Mike I met at the Chester body shop
in Lexington after he got back from Kuwait.  He
fixed Humvees and Bradley fighting vehicles while
American bombs carpeted Saddam's retreating soldiers
in the hot, dry distance. He smoked crack while oil
wells burned.

He replaced door panels, changed tires and oil,
checked fluids, repacked wheel bearings, replaced
cranks on windows, put in a few windshields, then
he was back in Fayetteville where he briefly sat
in the brig for posession. It was the second time
he was busted for it.

When his time was up, the discharge was honorable
and he drove the little Nissan truck west over the
mountains. He spent a night in the county jail,
found a guy on Man O'War who fronted him two rocks
on credit, and got a job working for Floyd at the
body shop.

Mike put the right front fender on my Tercel after
the wreck. He was high when I met him, so he was
charming as hell. I gave him my sister's number. We
saw Skid Row and Guns 'N Roses at the arena. When
Floyd fired Mike, the unemployment office found him
work at the Okonite wire rope plant.

I worked at the Minit Mart on 25 by the depot and
lived with my sister til I moved in with him. He
nursed me through an abortion, then for no real
reason I ran from him to Memphis. I stole his Nissan
pickup and our puppy.

I was 24 years old and I'd never really done
anything. Mike had been to a war, but for me war was
at most just something to talk about, like weather.
Mike loved me, but I'd never even loved anybody like
I wanted to.

From mountains I drove through hills, from hills
through tobacco. Then I drove througn cotton. I'd
never seen so much cotton! Pickle slept in the
footwell, looked out the window, laid her head on my
lap.

Then I drove through houses with yards. Then I was
in the city. Where did I think I was going? I looked
for a cheap motel, with weekly rates.

My first day working at the Huddle House, I found I
was in a place where race was not a theoretical
thing. I knew nothing about race relations. I don't
know if I'd ever talked to a black person before.
Teresa Hutchins, the other white server, decided to
educate me.

On break, eating a waffle and smoking, she said, The
trouble with these people is you can't tell what
they know. When they open their mouths up they're so
fulla shit, but they're not dumb, you know.

I didn't know what to say back. The more time I
spent around black staff, black customers, the more
I started to see white customers different. I saw 
the spider veins on their cheeks, liver spots on
their arms, nose shapes, stuff I'd never paid
attention to before.

I didn't speak the thoughts slowly taking shape in
my head over those first few weeks, but I started to
feel protective, maybe even posessive of black
people. I wanted to stick up for them when I heard
white people be mean. I thought about what I'd say
after the fact, on my way home or laying in the bed.

The motel where I lived was full of alcoholics and
day-laborers, as far as I could tell. Men smoked in
their beds, smoked when they took a shit, left the
TV on loud when they slept, grunted, groaned through
the walls, farted, scratched, and watched me. I
don't think other women lived there; they just came
for short visits---ten minutes, an hour.

One of the best things about it was they overlooked
my dog. I'm sure they saw me walk Pickle at night
out across Lamar avenue and down Kimball Road. I
took her to the Nonconnah creek drainage canal and
sat while she ran joyfully off-leash til I called
her back with a treat.

I met Ronald at the Huddle House. Over his breakfast
he discovered I was new in town, asked what I knew
about Memphis soul music in the '60s. He took me to
the Stax soul museum, loaned me tapes to listen to,
and badgered me until I got a library card.

He came in late mornings after he got off work for
his coffee and big boy breakfast with country ham
and the eggs over easy and me. He wanted me to tell
him about what I'd read.

You turning him into a regular, Shonda said one
morning. He tip good?

I started reading autobiographies to learn about
people, especially women, who'd done something. I
read on break, read in my motel room, and most of
all read on the concrete bank of the Nonconnah while
Pickle ran. I needed to keep up my tempo so I'd
always have something new to tell Ronald.

I set my pad on the table, slid into the booth, and
treated him to a tidbit about Tammy Faye Bakker's
childhood, or the Staple Sisters' days of singing
gospel in church. When he saw how much I liked
autobiographies, he encouraged me to read Malcolm
X's. 

Ronald invited me dancing. I wanted to, but the
relative emptiness of my daily life---a server job
and a dog to walk---got in the way. I was honored. I
was anxious. I didn't want him to see where I lived. 
Would it be a black club? I had to get some clothes.
What vibe? I went to the Whitehaven Mall.

The second time we went dancing at Budgie's, I drove
the pickup and met him there. I was the only white
person in the club but who cared? Ronald was a good
dancer. I was smiling, glowing. It was cold outside.
I was comfortable, in no hurry. 

Coming out of a toilet stall, upbeat DJ Squeeky mix
muffled by the door, a woman slammed my back against
the bathroom wall. She knocked the breath out of me,
grabbed a handful of my hair, slapped and hit my
face. My cheek was scratched. My nose dripped blood.
She did it quiet. I was quiet too, the only sounds
thumps and thuds, slap, grunt, cough.

Bewildered, I tried to catch the dripping blood,
keep it off my new clothes. Bent over, I dripped
through my fingers on the floor. She spoke low and
quiet and serious as what she just did.

He's *free*. He's smart, he's good. He's *alive*.
You don't just get to kill them, incarcerate them,
take them into your bed. He's *ours*, not yours,
bitch. Remember that.

Then coughing, I cried, dripping blood from my nose,
alone. Two women came in laughing, reversed back
out. I caught my breath, found toilet paper for my
nose, sat on the toilet, waited til I was ready to
go. I stood, exited the stall again, splashed water 
on my face.

He was waiting outside the bathroom door among the
beat, lights, bodies. Kangol hat, pretty shoes,
concern. He didn't want me to brush him aside and
ditch him like I was doing. He said, Baby. Other
words and gestures of concern and care swam out of
his portion of this place I shouldn't be.

Even outside where cold bit, he was in my vicinity
as I crunched my heels through the snow that was not
there, outside my door as I pulled out. He spoke in
a way that should have comforted me.

No snow fell, it was just cold and windy, but I felt
like snow carpeted everything quicker than made
sense. I didn't know how to drive on it. Slow,
flashers on, I let the two wheel drive pull itself.
No cop stopped me for driving so stupidly.
Buttcheeks squeezed the whole way, I was terrified
imagined snow'd throw me sliding, crumpled steel
and crushed glass.

I got home at almost three AM. I breathed through my
mouth so I wouldn't blow out the clots, tromped in 
heels through the cold to the covered concrete steps
to the second floor. I put on shoes and a jacket,
walked Pickle to the Nonconnah, sat shivering while
Pickle ran a linear track back and forth,
rambunctious, til she finally peed.

I sat in my motel room with ice on my face and half
a leftover pizza on the bedside table. *The
Autobiography of Malcolm X* lay on my bedsheets.
Pickle lay curled in my armpit. Snow lay outside
deep enough to stop the city.

On the TV, between storm stories, a grim reporter
said Dr. David Gunn was shot in the back outside his
abortion clinic in Pensacola, Florida. The shooter
told the police, We need an ambulance.

A pastor from Operation Rescue said a murderer was
stopped that day; with one killing the shooter'd
stopped hundreds.

The shooter walked in cuffs and looked at the camera
so peaceful, so resolute. Then he sat in the cruiser
in the clip that played again and again.

The Dow Jones was always up. Browns beat the
Chargers. Police were after a drug dealer who was
busted with two retarded women on disability chained
in his basement. Snow might come west to Memphis,
roads might be impassable all weekend. Stores might 
close, power go out, ambulances get snowed in.

Further east, where heavy snow fell, people were
dying from using charcoal grills indoors, a
firefighter chief said. Grilling indoors can kill
you with fire or carbon monoxide. In deep enough 
snow there's no one to save you. In the event of a
severe weather emergency the city would open
shelters. Keep watching for locations.

In my dreams, Mike held me. I was his deer rifle. I
ate a big buck, just took a bite out of its flank.
The sky was full of angels. The angels weren't 
white. They had no race. They held beautiful babies.
I ate one of them too. Mike put me in the cab of the
Nissan pickup, put the buck and the angel baby in
the bed.

When I woke I walked Pickle, stomping through the
snow, eye bruised and face scratched. I washed four
pair of panties in the sink and hung them in the
shower, called mom from the phone in my room.

I didn't tell mom I'd been beat up. Pickle's getting
big, I said.

They still let you keep him there?

They haven't said anything about her yet. I really
don't think they care, mom. They have worse things
than people with dogs to deal with.

You find a vet yet?

I had. Jake had proposed to Carley on a fishing boat
on the reservoir and she'd said yes. We all went to
school at Model together. Mom didn't know he'd once
lit a cat on fire. I wouldn't be the one to tell.

Mom asked if I was still seeing Ronald. She called
him That Man. You still seeing that man, she asked.
I hadn't told her his race. Didn't know if she'd
care but I wasn't ready to find out.

We went out Thursday night, I said. He's crazy about
me. No man's ever made me feel so right.

You hardly know him, Katharine. Don't invent a man.
Just get to know him. He have cats?

No, I said.

Good, she said.

He has me reading. I'm on my third book this month.
He asks me about my reading and doesn't tell me what
to think. He's a good dancer, mom. He's kind.

What does he do, she asked.

Garbageman, I said.

That's a good job, she said. When was the last time
you talked to Carley?

It had been a while.

Well she told me Mike got beat up pretty bad by that
man he worked for at the body shop, hasn't been back
to work since it happened. Your dad's home.

I hung up and thought about what she'd said.

I don't know why Mike got fired from the body shop.
We got drunk the day they indicted the police who
beat up Rodney King and we argued about it. When I
saw him again he was sober, working at Okonite
driving a forklift.

He told me about his new job while he paid me for 
his rental of Total Recall. He leaned on the counter
at the Minit Mart and asked if I'd come watch it
with him. It played on his TV but I don't remember
much. The oil wells were burning in Kuwait when I
fell asleep in his arms. When I woke up he still
held me, asleep.

When his pickup transmission went out I drove him to
work for a week and a half and stayed over every
night. I liked the hardness of his body and the 
pleasure it got from mine. I liked watching him eat.
I liked driving fast on country roads with him
listening to Motley Crue and Aerosmith and drinking
beer by a bonfire and how he made me laugh.

My sister asked me where his family was. She didn't
like how he came out of nowhere but I did. She
didn't know that he paid for the abortion and made
me Campbells soup when we got back to his house. She
didn't know how he made up stupid stories to take my
mind off my desolation long enough for me to get up,
get dressed, and go to work.

She just saw me at work when the desolation came
back. She leaned on the counter, chewing gum.

Katharine, he's paranoid, she said. He's nuts.

I don't know, I said.

You don't know what, Katharine? You told me yourself
what he said when Magic Johnson told everybody he
has AIDS.

It's not a big deal, I said.

You look like you're the one who's dying, my sister
said. Listen to me, Katharine. You don't know
anything about him. He's secretive. He thinks the 
government's out to get us. He won't tell you
anything about his family---

The Chesters are basically his family, I said.

Right, she said. Basically his family. Floyd
Chester's basically his dad. Floyd Chester who
mysteriously fired him. Floyd Chester the outlaw 
bootlegger. They go hunting when it isn't hunting
season, Katharine. I don't want to see you die.

I wasn't dying. I was just sad. Sadness washed over
me for weeks. I got most of my stuff from my
sister's house. Did she think I had AIDS? Mike swore
he never injected. I couldn't have it.

Then I quit being sad, and my spunk or something got
me quarrelsome. I fled Mike's place mid-argument. 
Carley met me at her door, looked at me.

Clean out the tub after you shower, she said.
There's still sheets on the couch. I'm going to bed.

When the sun through the window in her door woke me
up, I started coffee, found my toothbrush in the
drawer under her sink, and looked at myself. I saw
daddy's eyes, mama's smile, well-water teeth, pores
I wish were smaller, hair I wished would stay put.

I saw I was done grieving. I knitted together after
the abortion into both a mother and not a mother,
one possibility of another pair of my daddy's eyes
in the world incinerated, but grieved.

I saw I was going to steal Mike's pickup. I saw I'd
go to Memphis, where I'd never been and knew no one.
Halfway here Pickle threw up on the seat. 

I turned the TV on. The same news. Clinic shooting
in Pensacola. Talking heads, bystander interviews. A
reporter went to the house of the sister of the
abortion doctor who was shot. Her husband met him at
the door with a shotgun. The snow, white and heavy,
might hit Memphis.

Pickle whined. I slipped on wet shoes and walked
her out into the cold again.

Ronald, unflappable the intense month I'd known him,
was mad I ditched him at Budgie's, mad I ignored my
phone, mad I wasn't forthcoming about where I lived,
mad because he was scared. Mad because he'd only 
known me a month. I was supposed to be a sweet
breeze of someplace else, not another person his
love and concern couldn't protect.

Ronald remained decent, even mad. He couldn't reach
me til my next Huddle House shift, but he could find
things out. He found out the woman who beat me up in
the bathroom was the sister of Theresa, the
bartender. I think he felt hurt I didn't let him
help, guilty he put me in danger, scared I
disappered and there was nothing he could do.

When he came in for his next big boy breakfast, he
came late, and he didn't come alone. The bartender's
sister walked in behind him, scowling. I didn't come
around the counter and slide into the booth. From 
behind the counter I said, Ronald, ma'am, can I take
y'alls orders?

Ronald spoke. You know what I want. Get her a coffee
to go. Now listen.

He turned his eyes on the woman who didn't want to
be there.

What? she said.

You know what.

She looked at me. Katherine, I'm Angelique. My
brother's in prison and he shouldn't be. I didn't
know my dad. My husband was shot and killed last
month when he walked out of work because the car 
looked like the one the people were looking for.
Both my sons having trouble in school. My mother's
father was one of the last men lynched in Tennessee.

She looked back at Ronald.

You aren't done, he said.

She looked back at me, flashing anger, a challenge
in her voice. Tell me about the men you know. The
men in your family.

Caught off guard, I started crying. Shonda on the
register and Keith on the grill saw me cry. I
wouldn't let this woman beat me twice, so I spoke.

Yeah, yeah, okay ma'am. Okay. I don't have kids, I
had an abortion. Would have been a son. My ex-
boyfriend was beaten within an inch of his life a
little over a month ago by a liquor bootlegger. My
dad was hurt in Vietnam. He sits in his armchair on 
narcotic pills. That's what he's done my whole life.
When he's bad he won't get up to go to the bathroom
and we put diapers on him. The VA should be more
help but we're grateful. My first boyfriend killed
himself I guess. Mamaw's dad was a---I searched for
words. A monster. Then there's Ronald. I just pray
to God he's different. I've known him a month---

He's a good man, Angelique said, but she looked 
shocked, like I felt.

I had to work. I checked my mascara in the bathroom,
took an order at the next booth, saw her get up, go
out to sit in Ronald's car.

I passed omelets, country ham, pancakes, bacon,
sausage patties, toast, refilled coffee and sugar
shakers. I returned to Ronald's booth.

Your ham good? I asked.

Katherine, you broke my heart this weekend, he said.

I'm sorry, I said.

I appreciate that. 
====================================================
STILL TYPING...                               --ANNA