Back Roads Read online

  Grandma used to say she never had a second one because she was too goddamned selfish, and Mom used to tell me not to repeat that.

  “Your house looks clean,” I offered.

  “Thank you,” she said, a little uncertainly.

  I knew she was going to take me to the Mike Jr. shrine, and she didn’t disappoint me. It was a sunporch off the kitchen that she innocently ushered her guests into, claiming it was the sunniest, most comfortable room in the house, and then appeared shocked and humbled to find every inch of wall and shelf space covered with her son.

  Up until the first time I set foot in it, I had always thought trophy cases were found only in school lobbies.

  “I see you’re still fond of Mike Junior,” I said, glancing around at the framed photos and all the little gold football players striving to break free from their jewel-tone pedestals of red and blue and green.

  “He is our son,” she said, hesitantly.

  “Yeah, well, not everybody likes their kids this much.”

  They had a picture of him in every imaginable football pose: running with the ball, leaping up and catching the ball, plowing into other players while carrying the ball, staring at the camera cradling the ball like a newborn.

  “Look at this,” I commented, walking from photo to photo, and pointing. “He can run. Knock people down. Catch a ball.”

  I came to a photo of him cradling a rifle instead of a ball, standing next to a strung-up buck with its belly slit open.

  “Kill,” I added.

  I turned to the gallery of him posing with all his many prom, Spring Fling, and homecoming dates.

  “Have intercourse.

  “No wonder you’re proud of him,” I ended with a big smile.

  “I think I’ll go get Mike,” she said, her face burning.

  “Can I use your bathroom?”

  “Yes.”

  I took the leak of a lifetime. There was an extra roll of toilet paper sitting on the back of the toilet wearing a pink crocheted covering with a blond doll head and arms coming out of the top. I figured out the crocheted part was supposed to be her dress. The whole time I pissed, she stared at me with empty blue eyes.

  When I got done, I took her off the roll and put her on my dick. I wasn’t planning on doing more than that but then I noticed she actually had tits, and her plastic red lips were parted a little, and I kind of liked the way she stared up at me and the way she had her arms thrown out to her sides like someone had just pushed her down. I started moving around inside her dress and her head started bobbing. I gripped tighter and pushed harder and the crocheted part pulled down lower showing more of her tiny tits. I didn’t stop until I jerked off inside her.

  I thought about taking her with me but I didn’t want to be accused of being a thief. I put her back on the roll instead, dripping with my cum.

  Uncle Mike was waiting in the shrine when I came back out. He had on working-in-the-yard threadbare jeans and a gray flannel shirt. He was drying his hands on a dish towel.

  He gave me a long, thoughtful stare.

  “Hi, there, Harley,” he said.

  “Hi, Uncle Mike.”

  “This is unexpected. Everything all right at home?”

  “Great.”

  “Something I can do for you?”

  He handed the towel to Aunt Jan, who was standing nearby watching me. I tried not to sway.

  “I wanted to apologize,” I said.

  “Apologize for what?”

  “The way I acted last time you came by. You tried to do a nice thing and I acted like a smart-ass and I’m sorry.”

  His expression softened a little. Aunt Jan’s didn’t.

  “You didn’t have to drive the whole way up here to say that,” he said. “You could have called.”

  “I don’t like phones. You can’t be sure people are paying attention to you when you’re talking to them.”

  “That’s true.”

  He took his bill cap off, ran a hand through his hair, and put the cap back on while eyeballing the room. I could have almost sworn he looked nervous.

  “Well, apology accepted,” he said when his eyes returned to me. “To tell the truth, I had forgotten all about it.”

  He glanced over at Aunt Jan. She hadn’t forgotten all about it.

  “Would you like to stay for dinner?”

  I gave Aunt Jan a big grin. I wanted to say yes more than anything in the world, but the last thing I wanted to do in the world was eat dinner with her.

  “I gotta get home and mow.” I tried to sound disappointed.

  Uncle Mike smiled back approvingly. “I did mine first thing this morning. It’s been threatening rain all day. You can stay for a beer, can’t you?”

  Aunt Jan walked over to him and started whispering to him.

  He leaned his head down. “What?” he asked.

  She whispered some more. Little hissing noises.

  He looked up frowning and shaking his head. “Your Aunt Jan thinks you’re drunk. Are you drunk?”

  Aunt Jan gave him an outraged stare.

  “No, sir,” I answered.

  “Satisfied? He’s not drunk,” he said to her, then he motioned at me to follow him out the back door.

  “How are the girls?” he asked, as we crossed the yard to the detached garage.

  “They’re fine.”

  “School’s out soon?”

  “Next week.”

  “I bet they’re looking forward to that.”

  “Oh, yeah. They love spending as much time as possible hanging around our house.”

  He had a refrigerator in his garage filled with nothing but beer. This was another thing I planned to have when I got married, along with my lunch hour blow jobs and honey-apple pork chops.

  He noticed me looking at his workbench taking up half the floor space.

  “Once the warm weather hits I take over the place and start parking the car and truck outside,” he explained, handing me a Bud Light. “Drives Jan crazy. But I need this much space to set up my bench and saw table.”

  He walked over and I followed.

  “I’m making a hope chest for Jan to store her mother’s quilts in.”

  “That’s beautiful wood,” I said, running my hand over its smooth, purple-red surface. “Cherry, right?”

  “Right,” he said, smiling. “You do any carpentry?”

  “No. I just like wood.”

  I took a couple gulps of my beer, thought about setting it down, but the workbench kept moving away from me.

  “I used to think it might be fun to try,” I added, “but I would’ve needed tools and wood and a place to do it. Dad wasn’t into the idea.”

  “I never could get Mike interested in it either,” Uncle Mike said. “He was always running off somewhere. That kid had some schedule. Practices. Rallies. Games. Parties.”

  I nodded sympathetically. “It’s not easy being a superstar.”

  He shot me a stern look. “I can never tell when you’re being serious, Harley.”

  “I’m always serious.”

  He started picking up tools off the workbench and setting them back down again.

  “It is hard being a superstar,” he said, examining a drill bit. “I’m happy for him though. He seems cut out for that kind of life. I just hope he can hold onto it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He put down the bit and picked up a chisel. “There are a helluva lot of kids playing first-string college ball out there and only a handful of pro slots open each year. You don’t have to be a genius to do the math. God help me when I point that out to his mother.”

  The chisel held his interest even less than the bit. He put it back down and took a healthy drink off his can.

  “I worry, that’s all. He’s got the brains to do other things and he’s going to have a college degree, but I don’t think he could be satisfied having a regular job. I don’t think he’s got the . . .”

  He snapped his fingers in the air, searching for the
right words.

  “Stomach for it?” I finished for him.

  “Why are you really here, Harley?” he asked, staring at me like he was seeing me for the first time. “Not that I doubt the sincerity of your apology, I just don’t see you coming out here for that. You haven’t been here since your dad’s funeral.”

  “I haven’t been invited.”

  “No, I guess maybe you haven’t.”

  The garage smelled like gas fumes and wood chips, two smells I liked alone, but they were making me sick mixed together with seven beers. I noticed one of the windows was propped open and headed for it, bumping into the saw table and then a Rubbermaid garbage can filled with all kinds of crap: a folded blue tarp, a broken fishing pole, a kite shaped like a shark, two child-sized football helmets encrusted with mud and grass, a Steeler sweatshirt spattered with white paint, three empty Pennzoil cans.

  Here was my chance again to walk away. I didn’t have to ask him anything. Nothing he could tell me would make my life any better. He could only add one more terrible truth to the other ones piling up inside me like dead sticks waiting for a match.

  “I want to know about Dad and Misty,” I said, putting my face up to the fresh air coming in the window. “I want to know what you know.”

  I wasn’t going to look at him. Nothing in the world could make me do that. I waited and slowly sipped at my beer and watched a goldfinch perch at the crystal-clear birdbath. The ones at our house were still straw-brown. This one had already turned brilliant yellow.

  The garage got so quiet I could hear the refrigerator running and the sound of beer rolling down my throat and echoing inside my empty stomach. I was beginning to think he had left when he said, “I just didn’t think it was natural, that’s all. Him paying so much attention to her when he had a perfectly good son.”

  “That’s it?” I said.

  I turned around laughing, I was so relieved.

  “That’s it?” I said again. “You’re going to accuse a guy of messing around with his daughter based on that? Did you ever see him do anything?”

  My relief swelled me with confidence. I walked back toward him, tripping over the star-shaped blades of a rototiller, but catching myself before I fell on the cement floor.

  “Why are you asking me about this now?” he said, his expression hardening into something unreadable like a face carved into a mountain. “What do you know?”

  “I know a lot of things,” I said importantly, wagging my finger at him. “I know you told Mom to leave Dad because you thought he was going to do something to Misty.”

  “Your Aunt Jan was right. You are drunk. Too drunk to have this conversation anyway.”

  He set his beer can down on his workbench and started to walk away.

  “How can you be too drunk to have this conversation?” I cried out, stumbling after him.

  I reached out and caught him by the sleeve. He stopped and grabbed me by the shoulder to help me keep my balance. He hadn’t touched me since my dad’s funeral. He was the closest blood relation I had to a dad now that my real one was dead, and he hadn’t touched me in two years. I remembered the way he had walked away from Mike Jr. at the funeral and put his arm around my shoulders. I remembered walking past the dead baby gravestones.

  I started crying.

  “Harley.”

  He shook me to get my attention. I wouldn’t look at him.

  “Listen to me. I did tell your mom to leave him. I told her some fifteen years ago. I told her the first time I saw him go after you and saw you stand there and take it like a grown man.”

  “No,” I moaned, backing away from him and shaking my head.

  The garage flew past me, back and forth, like I was watching its reflection in a shiny clock pendulum.

  “Don’t blame it on me,” I cried.

  “I’m not blaming anything on you. You said you wanted to know, Harley, so I’m telling you. I tried to get you kids out of there for a long time and she’d never go. By the time she finally decided to leave, I knew it was too late. I wasn’t trying to save anybody anymore. I was just trying to ease my own conscience.”

  “What about Misty?”

  “I had suspicions. That’s all they were. Suspicions.”

  I broke free from him.

  “Are you lying to me?” I yelled at him. “I’m sick of everybody lying to me about my own life.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  “You never saw him do anything to her?”

  “Jesus, Harley. I would have shot him myself.”

  “Mike? What’s going on out here?”

  Aunt Jan appeared at the side doorway. I turned my back on her and wiped at my face with Dad’s coat sleeve.

  “I heard shouting.”

  “What the hell, Janet?” Uncle Mike bristled. “Can’t we have a private conversation?”

  “Since when do you have private conversations? I’m always trying to get you to bring Mike Junior out here.”

  “I think I better go,” I said.

  “You don’t have to go,” Uncle Mike practically yelled at me.

  “I want to. Can I use your bathroom?” I asked Aunt Jan.

  “Well, yes,” she said, darting a funny look at Uncle Mike.

  They were arguing with each other as I walked jerkily out the door. I kept thinking I was going too slow, then I’d speed up, the garage would start spinning, and I’d slow down again.

  Halfway to the house, I thought for sure Aunt Jan had snuck up behind me and was spitting at me, but it turned out to be coming from the sky. I picked up the pace, passed through the shrine, and leaned back against the bathroom door breathing heavily once I closed it behind me.

  I got down on my knees in front of the toilet and waited to see if I was going to throw up. I didn’t so I stood up and pissed again. The crocheted doll watched me unimpressed.

  I grabbed her off the toilet paper and stuffed her in Dad’s pocket. She left a glistening smear of cum on the top of the roll. Knowing that eventually Aunt Jan would touch it—even if it was dried by then—made my whole trip worthwhile.

  I was hoping I’d be able to get out of the house without running into either one of them, but it had definitely not been my lucky day. They were both waiting for me near the front door, Uncle Mike holding a grocery bag full of food and Aunt Jan holding a small black Bible no bigger than my hand. I suddenly knew what starving Africans felt when they saw us coming, and it wasn’t gratitude.

  “This is your mother’s.” Aunt Jan held the Bible out to me.

  HOLY BIBLE was stamped in gold across the cracked, black leather cover. I took it and ran my index finger down the outside of the shiny-edged pages the way I used to do as a kid. They still felt like a red satin ribbon. I didn’t have to open it to know it was hers.

  “Your Aunt Diane gave it to us to return to you. She accidentally took it with her when she packed up your dad’s personal things,” Aunt Jan explained.

  “His effects,” I said, nodding.

  “Yes.”

  “Two years ago?”

  “I’m sorry but I put it in a drawer and forgot about it. I hope you haven’t been looking for it.”

  “I guess I figured she had it with her in jail. They let you take Bibles in, don’t they?”

  Uncle Mike shrugged. He had put a chew in and was working it around inside his lower lip. Aunt Jan said, “I wouldn’t know.”

  “I’ll walk you out to your truck,” Uncle Mike offered, and held open the door.

  “Give my best to the girls, Harley,” Aunt Jan said.

  I thought of that expression, Here’s mud in your eye. I gave her my best imitation of a Mike Jr. smile.

  Here’s cum on your hand, Aunt Jan.

  “Sure,” I said.

  Uncle Mike never gave a second thought to where he walked. He started down the clean white sidewalk, then tromped across the glorious green grass and even spit a stream of tobacco in it.

  I walked around to my side of the truck, got in, and leaned
over to open the passenger side door so he could slide in the bag of groceries. He closed the door but didn’t leave but didn’t look at me either. I leaned across the seat and rolled down the window.

  “I know I haven’t been very good to you and the girls these past couple years,” he apologized to the sky, “and I’m sorry about it.”

  I looked where he looked and saw a speck of a plane flying over. It left a white wispy line in the sky like a smoke signal with nothing left to say.

  “Things aren’t going to change though, are they?” I said.

  “I don’t think so,” he answered. “I hope you understand. It’s nothing personal.”

  He gave the hood of my truck a thump and started back to his house. Once he disappeared behind the gleaming gold knocker, I took the doll out of Dad’s pocket. I stuck my finger inside her to see if she was still gooey, then I tossed her on the floor in the trash with Callie’s art book and my mom and dad’s wedding picture. Aunt Jan was going to accuse me of stealing her, and Uncle Mike was going to defend me. I took some pleasure in knowing that. I laid the Bible on the seat beside me. I didn’t open it to see if the map was still inside.

  chapter ( 17 )

  It poured the whole way home. The rain came down in solid metallic sheets. My wheels spun trying to climb our mud-slick road.

  I parked next to a rut filled with water and stepped into it, soaking my jeans halfway up to the knees. I tromped across the yard carrying my case of beer minus a six-pack or so, and my brown bag of groceries with a carnival-striped loaf of Town Talk bread and a little black Bible sticking out of the top. I saw a pair of shiny eyes peering at me from inside the biggest rip in the back of the couch, and a pair of dark, empty ones peeking out between Mom’s sheers.

  I stopped walking and the dark eyes disappeared. I stood there in the rain and thought about Misty standing on the porch shooting at the turkeys. It had looked like she was aiming at me.

  I started shivering. It was the rain, I told myself. But the first thing I was going to do was hide the gun.

  Before going inside, I shook on the porch like a wet Elvis. I didn’t wipe my mud-caked boots. I didn’t have to. It was my fucking house. I wished Mom could have been there to see it because it used to be her house, and I wished Aunt Jan could have been there because it would have given her nightmares.