Winter Loon(39)
“Yeah, yeah. Good.” I bent to pick up the dropped cup, but before I could Troy grabbed each of us by the nape of the neck and brought our heads together for a knocking. We stared each other down while he talked, his voice a low rumble. “You two peckerheads will not make a match of this. That girl is not a prize. Either one of you makes her feel bad in any way and I will personally tear you ear to asshole, you understand?” He nodded our heads for us, up and down, so that with each dip our foreheads conked. “Lester, I’m guessing you’re looking for Bull. He’s upstairs. And you, you’ve outstayed your welcome. Out, now. Let’s go.”
I said goodbye to Jolene with Troy standing usher at the door.
“Will you come back tomorrow?”
I looked at Troy, who gave me tacit consent with a chin-up nod.
AT THE TWO-LANE HIGHWAY THAT cut through town, I saw the convoy’s headlights. A long caravan of flatbeds with brightly painted equipment and colored bulbs and marquees and ticket booths strapped to the back and trucks pulling camping trailers rolled by, minding the speed limit, careful not to attract the wrong kind of attention. I checked each vehicle like it was a boxcar on a long train. Spot the driver, look for the cat on the dash. The blue Chevy stepside pickup, dented red Leer topper shell, was not there, at least not yet. The contract semis would come later, I knew, hauling the kiddie rides, the boxes full of Styrofoam-stuffed animals, crates of cooking oil, and boxed sugar for cotton candy. In a couple more days, the fair would open with livestock and apple pies, bingo and demolition derbies, the screaming and bell-ringing Barbosa midway, and maybe, just maybe, my father at the controls of the Dragon Boat casting back and forth in great green sweeps.
I ran the blocks back to the Hightowers’ under lit streetlamps and halted at the front steps. I’d packed out of one place after the next with my parents, set up house in trailer parks and low-slung apartment buildings, in houses no bigger than sheds. Maybe the longest we stayed put was in the last two years before Bright Lake. Six months here, maybe a year there. I’d stopped counting schools, stopped keeping friends. My mother would say she wanted a place of her own, my father seemed to care less about that, not troubled like I was to wake up in the black of night with dark confusion about which way my head was pointing and whether that door led to a bathroom or closet. I stood in front of the Hightowers’ crumbling house, shutters akimbo, a yard full of trash turned to treasure. My mother might have liked it here, the lived-in-ness of it, the way stuff piled up in a permanent way. Here was a home, but it wasn’t mine. I jumped, enough to get air. Came down two-footed. Solid earth, uncracked. Yes, the carnival was in town and my father maybe with it. But the fissure of it hadn’t spread from the highway to here quite yet. Jolene was on the couch still, blanket wrapped around her, a cup of something on the table. Troy was in the recliner next to her, Mariah on his lap. School would start after the weekend as the carnival left town, migrating south with better weather. September would bring cooler air, sweaters, and frost. After that, green would turn gold, red and brown leaves would give up the tree for ground, then fire, then earth. By November, hats and gloves, snow and ice would return. Troy leaned over to Jolene, adjusted her blanket, threw Mariah over his shoulder. This could all be in my rear view. By the end of the weekend, Loma could be yesterday. I quaked, thinking about the impending cold. I did not know where I would or should be.
MY GRANDPARENTS WERE AT EACH other when I got back home, the rent again, the bills again. Gip’s hours would be cut back come November, when the seed and feed business hit the seasonal low. They were at the end of it when I’d come to live with them in January, and I hadn’t heard much about the household bills during the summer months. My ears pricked up at the mention of Burt Rook, at the discussion of the cold shoulder he’d given Gip at the bank that morning after he’d let Gip know that late rent wouldn’t be tolerated anymore. Ruby said there were no more hours to be had at the poultry farm. She spread her hexed fingers and her knuckles popped and snapped. How much longer she could work like that she didn’t know and anyway, where was the taproom money, or did that all go to pay Gip’s tab and was he drinking more than he was serving. I’d been giving them money each week from my paycheck, but that, too, would come to an end soon, and was the lure they used to reel me into their row. Silver-and-red empties were tumped and crushed on the table. They’d been at this awhile.
“You find a job for the school year yet?” Gip asked. “You’re not freeloading again this winter.”
“Carnival’s in. I saw the trucks earlier.”
“What? You planning on joining the circus now?”
“No, I thought maybe Dad . . .”
Ruby stood from the table at that. “I told you. Waste of time.”
“I wish he would come for you. I do,” Gip said. He poked a calloused fingertip into his nostril and dug around until he came up with something he could roll between his fingers. “Not likely, knowing that four-flusher, but still.”
“Still you’d like me gone?”
He made an inspection of the glob, then wiped it on his trousers. “Thought you running with that Rook girl would grease the wheels for us maybe, but you must not be the shit after all. Ruby tells me that’s done. Too much girl for you?” He glowered at me with sour eyes, but when I tried to match his stare, he rejected it and me, turning back to his beer, his cigarettes, the newspaper splotched with stew.