Blacktop Wasteland(88)

Beauregard fell back against the headrest. There was numbness in his right leg that was now spreading to his right side. His left forearm was missing a chunk of flesh the size of a quarter. Blood raced down his arm and entwined his fingers. There was a hole in the right leg of his jeans that was weeping red tears. He took a deep breath. The world seemed to be contracting and expanding at the same time. He closed his eyes. He let his hands run over the polished wood grain steering wheel. Along the leather seats. He caressed the 8-ball shifter.

“You ready, Bug?”

Beauregard rolled his head to the right. His father was sitting in the passenger seat. He was wearing the exact same clothes he had been wearing the last time Beauregard saw him. White ribbed tank top under a short-sleeved black button-up shirt. A pack of cigarettes in the breast pocket. He grinned at him.

“Come on, boy. You ready to fly?” his father asked.

“You’re not real.”

His father blanched. “Boy, what the hell you talking about? Shut up that fool mess and let’s go.”

Beauregard turned his head and looked straight ahead. He heard sirens coming from the northern end of the county.

“You’re not real. You’re dead. Probably been that way for a while now. I never stopped loving you, though,” he croaked. He closed his eyes again and started the Duster. When he put the car in gear, he opened his eyes and glanced toward his right. The passenger seat was empty. Pushing the gas pedal was agony, but he bore it. Beauregard drove across the pasture. A few cows stared at him as he passed. The Duster turned left onto a dirt lane at the back end of the field. The lane went from red clay to gravel. Beauregard got to the end and turned left onto a narrow blacktop back road. Soon the sirens were just faint horns playing a mournful tune to an audience of beasts.





THIRTY-THREE



Kia entered Darren’s room carrying a teddy bear with a GET WELL balloon tied to its arm. The machines that monitored his vitals beeped and hummed as she sat down in the chair near his bed. She placed the teddy bear next to his slight form and took his tiny hand in hers.

“He’s gonna make it,” Beauregard said.

Kia didn’t turn her head to look at him. She didn’t even acknowledge him. Beauregard was standing in the far corner of the room. The glare from the fluorescent light over Darren’s bed gave his son a ghostly countenance. He moved from the shadows and pulled up a chair to the opposite side of Darren’s bed. The steady pulse of the EKG was comforting to him. It meant his son’s heart was still beating. Seconds turned to minutes and neither of them made a sound.

“You were right. I should have sold the car,” Beauregard said finally. Kia swallowed hard and wiped her eyes.

“You ain’t never gonna sell that car,” she said.

“You’re right. I told Boonie to crush it,” he said. Kia looked at him then.

“What do you mean, ‘crush it’?”

“I told him to get rid of it,” Beauregard said. Darren’s eyes were closed but his lids twitched. Quick spasmodic movements that teased Beauregard’s heart with the possibility of seeing his son open his eyes.

“I don’t believe that,” Kia said.

“You don’t have to. It’s getting done though. Probably happening right now,” Beauregard said.

“Why would you do that to the Duster? You love that car,” Kia said. Beauregard interlaced his fingers and stared at the dull linoleum floor.

“The men that came by the house, they won’t be coming back,” Beauregard said.

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do.”

Kia looked at him then. She made a noise that was halfway between a sob and a laugh.

“So, you took care of it,” she said. Beauregard rose from the chair. He went to the window and stared out across the hospital parking lot. The setting sun was an orange beacon in the hazy sky.

“A man can’t be two types of beast,” Beauregard said.

“What the hell do that mean, Bug?” Kia asked. Beauregard let his head hang.

“When my Daddy ran off, I felt like somebody had put my heart in a vise and kept tightening that motherfucker till they arm got tired. It ruined me. And my Mama, she couldn’t help because she felt like him leaving her was worse than him leaving us. I can’t say I blame her really. My Daddy was the kind of man who left a big hole behind. It was easy for her to fill that hole with hurt,” Beauregard said. He turned and faced Kia. She saw his eyes were rimmed in red.

“I couldn’t do that. I just couldn’t let myself hate him. So, I made him into my hero. I pretended that he wasn’t a gangsta or a drunk or a bad husband or a bad father. I got out and I fixed that Duster up. I’d ride around and I’d tell myself that even if he was all those things it didn’t matter because he loved me. But it does matter. It matters a lot. If your Daddy is the kind of man that can run people down with a car or shoot ’em in the face, it matters a whole hell of a lot. And there’s not enough love in the world to change that,” Beauregard said.

“Bug, you ain’t your Daddy,” Kia said. Tears danced on the edges of her eyes.

“You’re right. I’m worse. My Daddy never lied about who or what he was. He owned it. I was the one who put him on a pedestal. He never climbed up there. But me? I lied all the time. I lied to you. I lied to myself. I thought I could be an outlaw part of the time and the rest of the time be a daddy and a husband. That was the lie. Truth is I’m an outlaw all the time. I was playing at being a good man,” Beauregard said.