An American Marriage(77)

I scanned the garage wall. Sure enough, the racket dangled from a little hook. I pulled it down and found it to be warped with age and disuse. When I bought this racket, it was the finest to be had in all of Hilton Head. Now it was reduced to corroding metal and catgut. The grip had gone gummy, but I mimed my backhand, butting up against the bumper of Celestial’s car. The first blow was an accident. The second, third, and fourth were more purposeful. The car alarm squealed in protest, but I didn’t stop until Celestial entered the garage with her bag on her shoulder and her keys in her hand.

“Honey, what are you doing?” She used a little remote to silence the alarm. “You okay?”

The pity in her voice scraped over my skin.

“I’m not okay. How am I supposed to be okay?”

She shook her head, and again there was that soft sadness. I have never struck a woman. Never have I wanted to. But at that moment, my hand itched to slap all that concern off her lovely face.

“Roy,” she said. “What do you want me to do?”

She knew full well what I wanted her to do. It wasn’t that complicated. I wanted her to be a proper wife and provide a place for me in my own home. I wanted her to wait for me like women have been waiting since before Jesus. She kept talking, but I didn’t have any patience for damp cheeks or noise about how she tried.

“Try spending some time as a special guest of the State of Louisiana. Try that. How hard could it be to stay off your back for five years? How hard could it be to make a tired man feel welcome? I picked soybeans when I was in prison. I have a degree from Morehouse College and I’m working the land like my great-great-granddaddy. So don’t tell me about how you tried.”

She was sniffling when I attacked the car again. The tennis racket wasn’t much match for the Volvo. I couldn’t even bust out the windows. I did get the alarm to wail, but Celestial silenced it immediately.

“Roy, stop it,” she said, sighing like an exhausted mother. “Set down that tennis racket.”

“I’m not your child,” I said. “I’m a grown man. Why can’t you talk to me like I’m a man?” I couldn’t stop seeing myself through her eyes: hot and funky in my Walmart clothes and high school sweater and swinging a raggedy tennis racket like some kind of weapon. I dropped it to the floor.

“Can you please calm down?”

I scanned the neatly labeled rows of tools, hoping to find a heavy wrench or a hammer that I could use to bust out every window on that vehicle. But there, just at arm’s length, was the double-sided axe and I liked the look of it. Lo and behold, as soon as I got my hand around that thick wooden handle, the room leaned in a different direction. Celestial sucked in her breath, and there was raw fear on her face. This grated, too, but it was better than her pity. I lifted the axe as best as I could in that cramped space between the Volvo and the garage wall. The window burst, sending safety glass everywhere. But even though she was terrified, Celestial had the presence of mind to again turn off the alarm, keeping things quiet.

Still gripping the axe, I walked toward her as she shrank back.

I laughed. “You think I’m dangerous now? Do you know me at all?” I walked out of the garage with the axe slung over my shoulder like Paul Bunyan, feeling like a man. Stepping out into that cold sunny day, I was set to head back to Eloe with nothing but the axe, my mama’s letter, and the fear in my wife’s eyes.

Isn’t there something in Genesis about not looking back? A stupid glance over my shoulder showed her expression relaxing, glad I wasn’t taking anything that couldn’t be replaced and glad I didn’t destroy anything that couldn’t be repaired.

“Do you care for me, Georgia?” I asked her. “Tell me you don’t and I’m out of your life forever.”

She stood in the driveway with her arms wrapped around herself like she was freezing. “Andre is on his way.”

“I didn’t ask you about no Andre.”

“He’ll be here in a minute.”

My head hurt, but I pressed her. “It’s a yes-or-no question.”

“Can we talk when Andre gets back? We can—”

“Stop talking about him. I want to know if you love me.”

“Andre . . .”

She said his name one time too many. For what happened next, she would have to take some of the blame. I asked her a simple question and she refused to give me a simple answer.

I turned from her and made a sharp left turn, pounding across the yard, feeling the dry grass crunch under my shoes. Six long strides put me at the base of the massive tree. I touched the rough bark, an instant of reflection, to give Old Hickey the benefit of the doubt. But in reality, a hickory tree was a useless hunk of wood. Tall, and that’s all. To break the shell of a hickory nut, you needed a hammer and an act of Congress, and even then you needed a screwdriver to get at the meat, which was about as tasty as a clod of limestone. Nobody would ever mourn a hickory tree except Celestial, and maybe Andre.

When I was a boy, so little I couldn’t manage much more than a George Washington hatchet, Big Roy taught me how to take down a tree. Bend your knees, swing hard and low, follow up with a straight chop. Celestial was crying like the baby we never had, yelping and mewing with every swing. Believe me when I say that I didn’t slow my pace, even though my shoulders burned and my arms strained and quivered. With every blow, wedges of fresh wood flew from the wounded trunk peppering my face with hot bites.