an indictment. Grease stains and bones are all that remain of my dinner. Since Sarah has been gone this summer, I find I am eating more junk and fat. If she leaves Blackwell County to go off to college next year, I will need to get a grip on my eating habits or I will end up like Clan, whose heart surely must be beginning to resemble a stopped-up garbage disposal.
Seated beside my chair, his spine and legs straight in a rare demonstration of good posture, Woogie reproaches me with his soft brown eyes: if you can eat that junk, at least give me the bones.
“No!” I say, rising from the table with the box in my hand. If I throw the bones in the trash can in the house, the smell will drive him crazy, and though the bones, stripped of meat, seem almost flimsy, the disposal has been making a funny noise recently, as if it has been asked on too many occasions, much like my stomach in the last few weeks, to digest difficult objects. I head for the back door, with Woogie at my heels hoping I’ll spill the box or relent at the last moment. I go through my backyard to the metal trash cans by the diamond-shaped fence that separates my property from my neighbors’. The heat (it still must be close to ninety) of this long July day has begun to lift, but I do not linger outside, dropping the Colonel’s image unceremoniously into a plastic bag filled with the remains of a week’s garbage, and return immediately to the house to read Sarah’s latest letter, which I have saved as my dessert. Again seated at the kitchen table with Woogie and a Miller Lite for company, I rip open the envelope, but not before marveling that the return address is written in a hand (except for the way she makes the number seven-Americans risk confusing ones and sevens, but Colombians, like most of the rest of the world, do not) almost identical to her mother’s. Her initial torrent of correspondence has diminished to a trickle (a sign, according to Rainey, she is no longer homesick). In fact, this is only the second letter since I took her back over two weeks ago. She will be home Saturday-barely twenty-four hours before she leaves for “Camp Anytown,” her religious and atheist do-gooder camp sponsored by the National Conference of Christians and Jews.
Dear Dad,
We just had a mock trial, and I served on the jury.
Everyone else wanted to be a lawyer or star witness, so it was easy to get my first choice. It was a murder case. In some ways, it was just a chance for the boys to try to show off. Is that why you become lawyers or is it the money ?
I think I’m beginning to have more confidence in myself.
I was the only one on the jury who voted at first for an acquittal. They got mad and said I was just being stubborn.
I’ve decided my biggest problem is that I want everyone to like me, no matter what. I’ve always gotten a lot of attention at school because I look so much like Mom. It’seasier just to smile and keep my mouth shut. Was she really intelligent? You never have told me whether she was really good at her job or not. Did she want to be a doctor or did she think they are such jerks it wasn ‘t worth it? I’d like to know more about her what she was really like as a per son not just a mother.
I think it’s important that I go far away to college and get out of the South. It’s okay, and people are nice and everything, but it kind of lulls you to sleep like the most important thing is whether the Razorbacks (Razorblacks one of the kids here calls the basketball team) win or not.
I know I sound like a snob (some of these kids are but most are not). I realize how loyal you are to Arkansas and everything, but I think I need to go and see for myself what other places are like. Do you have the money to send me to college next year out of state? If not, I understand. But maybe I could get a scholarship and work part-time. If I had some math and science brains, I’d have more options!
I have no idea what I want to do with my life, but at least most of the kids here don’t either. If they all did, I’d really feel stupid. After this mock trail, I don’t think I want to be a lawyer. Too many egos and silly rules. It is hard to believe you were ever in the Peace Corps or a social worker. You don’t seem the type. I’m not putting you down, but you don’t seem to care that much about other people. I mean, I know you care about me (and maybe Rainey), but really, that’s about all. You have sort of an “us against the world” attitude. I wish I had known you and Mom back when you were in the Peace Corps. I bet it was neat! Remember I ‘m going to the NCCJ Camp Sunday.
Thanks for getting my money in!
Love, Your non-legally interested daughter, Sarah
I put the letter down and grab a beer and check the freezer:
a half-empty sack of Harvest Poods crushed wheat (no cholesterol) bread, and enough ice to build an igloo. No wonder I’m eating fried chicken: I’m starving to death. It seems so hot in the house I’m tempted to sleep in the refrigerator. I might as well use it for something. I sit back down at the table and, still irritated, reread Sarah’s letter while I sip at the Miller Lite. I realize my feelings are a little hurt. You can’t spend your whole life trying to save the world, damn it. Marriage and a family change things. Sarah can go off and escape our provincialism, but somebody has to pay for it. Woogie whimpers as if he is about to. stroke out. His panting tongue, pink as a slab of bacon beginning to fry on the stove, makes me think of Rosa’s Lamaze classes. I walk into the living room and check the thermostat. Damn, no wonder he is about to go into labor. It is eighty-five in the house even though I have it set on seventy-eight. Great. Another bill. Out the back door Woogie and I go to investigate the fuse box, which is behind a holly bush underneath my bedroom window. After scratching my hands on a leaf, I open the metal container to find that the circuit breakers are still in the “on” position. Having exhausted my technological knowledge, with Woogie at my heels I go back inside to cool off with a shower.
The cold water on my back sends an exquisite shock down my spine, but tingling with the mixture of pain and pleasure, I weenie out and switch the nozzle to warm and let it gently knead my neck muscles. When I open my eyes, it is painfully obvious that the pinkish tile in the shower could stand cleaning, but if it’s not going to bother me, then I won’t bother it tonight. Alcohol, heat, and water have their own healing qualities, and I feel myself begin to relax. After a while, with a little help from (as my kindergarten teacher used to call my hand) Mr. Thumb and his four friends, I soon get myself into a pleasant state thinking about Kim Keogh. Each time I have thought about sex in the past week and a half, my musings have been accompanied by a mental picture of my prostate swelling to the size of a watermelon and then exploding.
Following my premature hospital admission, Kim, sounding hung over but anxious, called the next morning, probably to see if I had died. Relieved at the truth (she had merely slept with a middle-aged man who is beginning to deteriorate), she shyly hinted that she would like to see me again. But feeling I had received a warning, I put her off, saying I would call her. I haven’t. Why don’t I have the guts to say that I am not interested in pursuing a relationship with her? Too hard.
For once, I feel deeply ashamed. She bared more than her body. No wonder women think men are jerks. I can hear the phone ringing and grab my towel.
“Gideon, what’re you doing?” Rainey asks. She sounds happy. I have been afraid to call her since I got her out of bed to take me to the hospital.
“Right now?” I ask, looking down between my legs. A disappearing act is taking place before my very eyes.
“Not much.”
“Want to get some yogurt?” she asks, running the words together as if they were the words to a song. No longer do I allow myself to think of Rainey as I have been thinking of Kim Keogh. I always feel too morose later.
I begin to rub myself briskly with the towel as Woogie, who has come into the room to keep me company, licks my wet legs.
“I’ll pick you up in fifteen minutes.”
I slip on a pair of denim cutoffs, a T-shirt, and my running shoes, thinking that forgiveness is a wonderful thing. Like the rain, it falls on the just and the unjust. Thank God for that.
She is waiting for me on her front steps. We are dressed identically, even to our T-shirts from the Blackwell County Pepsi 10K race two years ago.
“Twinkies,” I tell her, as she slides in beside me.
She barely glances at me and says, as she buckles on her seat belt, “I don’t have a prostate.”
