Fender Lizards Read online

  When I got over to the trailer park, I saw Raylynn’s ride sitting out front, looking cleaner and shinier than it really was. It was just the way the light was on it. All the tires were flat.

  I parked behind it, got out and looked at her tires. I figured they’d been knife poked. I could see the slits in the sides of the left rear and the left front. I decided I didn’t need to examine the other side. I knew it was Tim’s work without any real evidence.

  I called out to her. That’s a thing we do, us Shermans. It’s an old country holdover. You get out of your car, and you start calling out the name of the person who lives there.

  I’ve noted not everyone does that, and I asked Mama about it, and she said to ask Grandma, and I did, and she said, it’s a holdover from the old days when a person rode up on a horse in the middle of the night, and you didn’t know if it was friend or foe, so you wanted them to announce themselves right off. The other side of the coin was the person doing the announcing didn’t want to startle nobody and get shot before they could knock on the door.

  I didn’t get an answer to my call, so I decided to be brave, but loud. I went up and knocked on the door and called out Raylynn’s name. Nobody answered. I knocked louder, and she still didn’t answer. Neither did her boyfriend. If he was the one going to answer, I hoped he had on some pants, something other than his undershorts. But since his pickup wasn’t there, I didn’t figure he was home.

  I walked around back and tapped on the window glass where the bedroom was. There was an air conditioner in the window next to the one I was tapping on. It was humming loudly. That could be why I hadn’t been heard when I was calling and knocking at the front door. I tapped harder.

  After a moment I heard stirring inside, and then the window came up. I could see Raylynn’s shape in the dark room, and I could hear the baby crying.

  “You done woke her up with all that knocking,” she said.

  “I was worried about you.”

  “I’m all right.”

  “You don’t sound all right.”

  “I got a cold.”

  “A cold?”

  “Yeah,” Raylynn said. “A cold. You’ve heard of them.”

  “You sure are cranky,” I said.

  “I got to tend to the baby now,” she said.

  “Let me come in and help you.”

  “That’s all right. You go on home.”

  “I’ve been at work,” I said. “Like you’re supposed to be.”

  “I didn’t feel like coming today.”

  “So you didn’t call, didn’t answer your phone?”

  “That’s the size of it,” she said. “Go back to work.”

  Raylynn reached to pull the window down, and as she did, she come into the light and I saw her face. She had dark spots on her cheeks and under her eyes. She looked like a raccoon that had survived being hit by a car.

  “Heavens, Raylynn. What happened?”

  She leaned back out of view, into the shadows of the darkened room. The baby cried louder.

  “I had a fall in the night,” she said.

  “Looks to me like you fell half a dozen times,” I said.

  “Mind your own business,” she said.

  “Let me in or I’ll knock the window glass out and crawl inside,” I said.

  I meant it, and she knew it. She may be the older sister, but I’m the tougher one.

  “Come around front,” she said, “and I’ll let you in.”

  I went around. The door was open by the time I got there. Raylynn had the baby against her shoulder. She still hadn’t turned on any lights.

  I went inside and turned the kitchen light on and looked at her.

  She was a little stooped and was marked up worse than she had appeared at first.

  I said, “He hit you, didn’t he?”

  “This isn’t a fashion statement,” she said.

  “Tell me,” I said. “I want to hear you say it. He hit you.”

  “He did, and several times.”

  “You don’t have to put up with that,” I said.

  “He gets mad now and then, but he gets over it.”

  “Yeah, but you got to get over getting hit,” I said. “He’s just got to get over being drunk. You don’t have to put up with crap. This is ridiculous. You got to get out of here.”

  I went over to the refrigerator, got an ice tray out, plucked a towel down from the rack over the kitchen sink, and broke the tray open into it. I folded the towel around the ice, made Raylynn sit down. I gave her the cold damp towel and had her press it against her face.

  “He can’t find a job, and it frustrates him,” Raylynn said.

  “There’s lots of folks can’t find a job and are frustrated,” I said, “but they don’t have to hit people over it. Hitting you won’t get him a job. Fact is, I think he could get one if he wanted it.”

  “He just doesn’t want to do something humiliating.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “He’s quite the upper crust, isn’t he?”

  “I love him,” Raylynn said.

  “Please,” I said.

  “Well, you ain’t in love,” she said.

  “No. And if what you got is love, then I don’t want any.”

  Raylynn started to cry.

  “Sorry, Raylynn,” I said.

  “It’s all right,” she said between sniffs. “I just don’t know what to do.”

  Raylynn went in to check on Jake and to put the baby back in the crib. I went with her. We talked softly.

  “I put them to bed early, and they went right to sleep,” she said. “I think all the yelling and Tim hitting on me scared them.”

  “You think?”

  “Don’t make me feel worse than I do,” she said.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  Jake was asleep in the bed where Raylynn had been, and Constance was in her crib and had gone back to sleep even while she had been on Raylynn’s shoulder. Constance was pretty big for the crib, but that’s what they had.

  We both stood and looked down at the baby. All I could think was that goon had hit my sister and the kids had been here to see it.

  “He coming home tonight?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s better he don’t come back too soon, cause it just leads to more hitting if he hasn’t got sober. If he has a day to think about things, he comes back and he’s real sorry.”

  “He is, huh?”

  “Yeah, and he means it.”

  “Every time?”

  “You just don’t understand,” Raylynn said.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t.”

  (7)

  Raylynn and I talked briefly, but she hurt a lot and had to lay down. It wasn’t anytime at all until she was asleep.

  I went out in the yard. It was good and dark now. The air was cool. I leaned on my car and thought about things for a long time and looked at the sky. Finally I got in my car and drove down the street a piece and parked in a church parking lot, and walked back.

  There were some rotting boards shoved up under the trailer from when Tim was going to build a porch off the front door instead of just having concrete steps. He had plans to screen it in so he could sit out there and smoke cigarettes and think about the jobs he didn’t have, or being a rock star, or what have you, but of course he hadn’t done a thing. The weather and bugs had been at the boards, and they had warped.

  I pulled a short two-by-four out from under the trailer, a stout one that wasn’t too warped. There was a lawn chair at the edge of the yard, under the shadow of a big oak. I pulled the chair up by the tree trunk and sat down and held the board.

  It got late and I nodded off a little, but the sound of Tim’s truck pulling into the drive woke me up. I watched from where I sat as he got out of his truck, weaving a bit, having been driving drunk as a pig in corn mash. He was feeling around in his pocket for his keys. He found them, waddled toward the steps. I got up with the two-by-four and walked up quick behind him.

  “Timmy,�
� I said. “Look at me.”

  He turned, and I swung that board really hard, clipped him across the knees. He made a noise and I hit him again. For legal purposes, I’ll have to say I don’t remember exactly how many times I hit him, but adding a personal note, it could be said maybe more times than I should have, but not anymore times than he needed.

  When he was lying on the ground groaning, I squatted down close to his ear, and said, “You hit my sister again, or you ever touch the babies with the faintest bit of mean spirit in you, they’re going to have to get a tow truck to get this board out of the spot where I’m gonna put it. You got me, Timmy?”

  “You didn’t have no call to do that,” he said. And he tried to put his arms under him and get up.

  I hit him again.

  He lay down and was still. I was afraid for a moment I had killed him. I was kind of hopeful of it at the same time. “You still with me, Timmy?” I said.

  He grunted.

  I repeated my previous message.

  “I’ll get you too,” he said.

  “No,” I said. “No, you won’t.”

  I hit him again, and it was a pretty good lick, in the head. I know how that sounds, but all I can tell you is I didn’t lean into it.

  He didn’t say anything, and I checked his pulse. He was still alive, just knocked out. I got the keys he dropped and put them in my pocket, went inside the trailer and woke Raylynn up.

  “Timmy fell down,” I said. “A couple of times.”

  “Fell down?” Raylynn said.

  “A small two-by-four helped him,” I said.

  “Oh, Sis.”

  “Don’t Oh, Sis me. Get the babies. We’re leaving. Tim’s face down in the yard. When he wakes up, I’m pretty sure he’s going to be mad.”

  Raylynn surprised me by listening. She got up and got some things together, mostly stuff for the kids, and we went outside.

  Tim was still on the ground. I took his keys out of my pocket and tossed them in the direction of the oak tree. Then with Raylynn carrying the baby, and me carrying her goods in a cardboard box, we walked down to my car in the church lot, and I drove us away from there.

  (8)

  On Tuesday I’m pretty ashamed about what I did to Tim, but the rest of the week I feel pretty good about it. At least that’s how I felt the first week, and then Mama got a call from a lawyer and the word was passed to me. I was wanted in court. Tim had called the law on me. Mama said if I had to spend time in jail she’d be sure and bring me something to eat at least once a week, though it might be from the Dairy Bob. I think that was a sad kind of joke, but I wasn’t sure. Grandma said I might find my father there, as she figured that’s how he ended up. In prison.

  I had two days before I had to show, cause the judge was on vacation.

  On top of all that, Raylynn and her kids ended up in my bed, and I had to share with Grandma, which I did one night only. Grandma had a gas problem. Next night I made myself a pallet on the floor and slept there, managing to get a crick in my neck about every other day.

  I didn’t tell Elbert any of this, but with Raylynn and her kids moving in, and Mama being a blabbermouth, he knew all there was to know about it right away.

  One morning I was having some toast, some milk and sugar mixed in with a drop of coffee. Elbert was sitting across the table from me, looking at me like an old dog that wanted to know if I was going to take him out to pee. He said, “So, you got to go to court?”

  “Did Mama tell you my shoe size too?”

  “Six.”

  “Seven,” I said.

  He smiled. “No. She didn’t tell me. You did.”

  “Very funny,” I said.

  “Was it worth it?”

  “Smacking Tim with a board?”

  “Yep.”

  “You know,” I said. “I think it was. It sure felt good hitting him, knowing what he had done to Raylynn. Yeah. I guess it felt all right. But, I’d still rather not go to jail.”

  “You won’t go to jail,” Elbert said. “You could, but I doubt you will, being young and all. The situation like it is. You might have to pay some kind of fine. Do some community work or something.”

  “I hope that’s all,” I said.

  I sipped some coffee and got up and grabbed my skates and was starting out the door. Elbert, as he always did, tagged me with a conversation piece.

  “You know,” he said. “I used to skate.”

  “Did you also water ski? Or maybe leap barrels on a horse?”

  “You have a bad attitude, Dot.”

  “I do. There it is. I have a bad attitude. Besides, you told me before you skated, so now you’ve told me twice.”

  I reached for the door knob.

  “You can’t go around hitting people with boards,” he said.

  “I don’t go around hitting people with boards. Just him.”

  “Listen, I know you don’t know me and probably don’t think I know my ass from my elbow, but you’re an angry girl. You keep on being angry, you’ll be just like the guy you beat with a board. What’s his name? Tim?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’ll be like him.”

  “I’ll turn into a guy that beats his girlfriend and sits around in his underwear drinking beer, watching game shows?”

  Elbert sighed.

  “Just listen to me briefly, and I’ll let you go, and I’ll have had my say on the matter. You should have just grabbed your sister and left. You waited on Tim, snuck up on him and clobbered him.”

  “I figured it would work out better that way. Really. I got to go.”

  “You have a chance to get out of here, out of this life, out of your background, like a bird flying out of a cage. But you’re not careful, you’ll be just what you don’t like. I don’t blame you for being angry. You’re working hard. No high school education. Tough situation all around. But you got to quit blaming things and start fixing things.”

  “Is this ex-con advice on how to live my life?”

  “Jail didn’t make me better, but getting older did, and I can tell you, way you’re acting, you’re going to ruin any chance you got.”

  “I don’t plan to rob a bank,” I said.

  “Look. I don’t blame you. I’m not saying I know much, and I’m not saying Tim didn’t have it coming. I might have done the same thing. I’m just saying you got a lot more going on than you think. You got a brain. You got a heart, if an angry one. You got potential. I just want you to have your shot.”

  “That’s nice,” I said. “I’m going to work. I got the morning shift for a while. Day’s the day I switch over.”

  I went outside and stood by the long concrete drive. I put on my skates and started skating. I liked to do that when I could, even if I was about to go to work and skate all day. I love the skates. I love being on them. I felt in those moments as if I was part girl and part machine. It was a clean feeling of being one with the wind. When I skated free like that, not carrying trays, or thinking about orders or tips, I felt swift and powerful. It’s a wonderful feeling, skating along with the wind in your face and the wheels on the skates whirling.

  I only skated awhile, but it helped me feel better.

  When I came back up the drive, I stopped at my car and opened the door and took off my skates and put on my shoes, and with them I put back on my worries.

  I tossed my skates on the passenger seat beside me, climbed in behind the steering wheel, looked down at my blue jean covered knees and just sat there, even though I knew my work time was starting to tick. Bob was already mad at me for leaving work the other day, though truth was he wasn’t all that mad. Unlike Elbert, he thought what I had done was pretty neat and gave me a few pointers on how to crack a man’s ankles when he’s down so he can’t get up and chase you.

  I filed those pointers away.

  I thought about what Elbert said too. About what I could do, what I could accomplish. And that I was smart and had an angry heart.

  I figured it was easy for someone
to talk about things I could do, but a lot harder for me to actually do them. Sometimes I felt like I was a rat in one of those cages with a wheel in it and I was inside the wheel. Running, faster and faster, but just like that rat, I wasn’t really getting anywhere.

  And the rat didn’t have an appointment with a judge.

  (9)

  “Do you think they’ll send you to the Big House,” Sue said that morning while we were at work. She was joking, but it didn’t strike me as all that funny.

  We were both outside of the Dairy Bob. I was on the morning shift, but today I was putting in extra time to make back money I had lost from when I bailed on Bob. It was just an hour or so extra a day for a week, but I had to come in even more early than usual when I was on the morning shift. The breakfast crowd with their sausage and biscuits and coffee were a real pain in the neck. Worse than the lunch rush. I really wasn’t supposed to work that much according to law, but I wouldn’t tell if Bob didn’t. He paid me in cash when I did extra hours, off the books. I needed it. The last check, due to my missing hours, had been a little slim. After I gave mama some of it, there wasn’t enough change left to rattle in my pocket.

  Me and Sue had been skating food out all morning. Gay was primping in the bathroom. There were other girls and other shifts, but we didn’t work with them normally, unless someone swapped out a shift or some such thing. Or, like I said, I got some sneaky hours off the books.

  Today we were working with some of the other girls. We didn’t know them well. That made things difficult. Me and Sue and Gay and Raylynn worked well together, even if Gay was kind of an airhead sometimes and took the wrong car, stepped on our toes that way.

  Raylynn was inside working the tables. She was still getting over some body blows Tim had laid on her, and it was easier to work the tables than to skate. Skating, unlike what you might think, takes it out of you.

  Raylynn said that when Tim was hitting her to the body, he’d say, “That there’s an upper cut. That there’s a hook.”