The Animators(62)

Jared grunts, “Sick fuck.” Ashes with a backward snap of his wrist.

“So that’s Shauna’s house now, right?” Mel says.

Jared turns, peers in that direction. “Yeah, they knocked the old place down and rebuilt. She wanted to be close to Mom.”

“To count the number of times Kent’s car comes up the drive,” I mutter.

Jared snorts. “Probably.”

“Why’d they knock it down?” Mel asks.

Jared clears his throat. Says low, “Heard some of the stuff happened there.”

“Really?”

Jared nods.

“Shit.” Mel turns to me. “You were there, dude.”

Jared snaps to attention. “What?”

“Sharon used to play over there. When she was a kid.”

“No you didn’t,” Jared says to me. “Tell me you didn’t.”

“I used to play with Teddy Caudill,” I tell him. “We were the same age.”

His eyes are wide under the shadow of his hat brim. It’s the first time all night I’ve seen the color of his eyes, that milky cornflower blue. “Fuck. Are you okay?”

“Nothing happened to me,” I tell him. “I’m fine. We didn’t see his dad that much.” I snap my fingers at Mel’s cigarette, glaring at her: Shut up. She hands it over.

Jared stares at me, shaken. I think of him fathering three kids, of him having a teenage daughter. Melinda with her long legs and smartass reflexes. Him not yet forty, but close. I have never considered my brother a worrier.

The screen door slams shut on the hill and Shauna hustles out, purse over her shoulder. “Girls, I’m a-goin to Walmart. Who’s in?”

“I am.” Mel stubs her smoke out on her shoe. “I wanna see Faulkner. Sharon didn’t let us drive through on the way here.”

“Sharon’s ashamed of us,” Shauna sings, sashaying down. “Wanna go, Red?”

“Nah.”

Shauna pauses near us. “You still not drinking?”

“Sixty days.”

I look at Jared. He tugs at the bill of his hat.

“Good for you, babe.” She flicks her cell on. The light shines. She begins to toe carefully down the driveway in the dark. I see a large turtle plodding in the shadows. “I’m taking the good Chrysler cause I’m pissed at Brandon, so we gotta walk down. I can’t believe you all were screwing around by that old Chevy. Rattlesnakes just love to nest in those engines. Bites ain’t fun. Jaeden’ll tell you.”

We follow Shauna into the dark, whipping out our own cellphones and squinting at the ground. Halfway down, Mel whispers, “I got weed.”

I turn to her. “What?”

Shauna yells, “Hot damn. Let’s go,” and leans over to swat my butt before running ahead of us.





NIGHT RIDE


For maximum weed configuration, Mel takes shotgun. I’m in the backseat, where I glare at her and Shauna’s heads while we go the long way around Faulkner. Wind into the county’s upper kingdom in a chain of high hills, homes tucked so deeply out of sight the only marker is a wispy gravel driveway the width of one car. There is a fingernail moon in the sky.

Still there: the abandoned water treatment facility, a dingy blue glass building, side spray-painted: MENIFEE COUNTY EATS IT HARD. Saplings break through the concrete parking lot. Not there: the house where the lady we called Old Moses once maintained an actual burning bush in her front yard. The population sign that, when I was a kid, was perpetually pocked with bullet holes; a sign reading HOME OF THE 1968 KY STATE CLASS AA STATE BASKETBALL CHAMPIONS.

I lean toward Mel. “I thought you quit smoking.”

“I never said that.”

“I thought you meant to.”

“I said cut down. I never said quit. Besides, I think you’re in the clear now. Relax.”

She’s right, but I still don’t like it.

“What’s Sharon bellyaching about,” Shauna says.

“My wicked ways.”

“Woo,” Shauna hoots.

“Shut up,” I tell them.

We sweep south and run parallel to the county line for five or six miles, finding ourselves on the parkway before we take an exit and head back toward Hollins Gap on U.S. 60’s wide, dark vein. Shauna turns motormouth at puff one and Mel bends an eager ear, asking for stories about our high school, our parents. My shoulders loosen, my breathing slows.

“My family likes you better than they like me,” I complain to Mel.

“Quit bein stupid, Sharon. She’s being stupid.” Shauna leans in and fiddles with the radio, steering with one hand, away from Randy Travis playing on Faulkner107.7. (That’s your hometown station, one oh seven seven the Tomahawk! Oooga Chaka Oooga Chaka!) We’re cruising along the path of the northbound train now. Cars heaped with coal, steam rising from the chunks. Car after car, load after load. I let myself sink, stare at things I haven’t seen in years. I do not remember where I was or what I was doing the last time I saw coal loads chug by. Maybe I was a teenager, saw it with eyes dulled by the desire to be somewhere else, anywhere else. How could I have missed this? This is the kind of beauty that gives you the fever wish to make things. How could I have not grown up wanting to draw? I feel a flash of shame. I used to hate it here. How could I have possibly hated this? This is me. I sprang from this place.