She said, “Gene, yes, I would.” Felt good to hear her call my name. Like somebody scratching between my ears.
The back door hung open where Dawn and her little girl had got out. They rummaged down the side of the road in the gravel. The dog sat there, head pulled forward. I got ahold of its leash. Dog raised its lip. I said, “Come on, Old Yeller, let’s me and you sniff this place out.” The dog come down out of the car. We got off in the grass, and she cut loose with the waterworks. I said to her,
But by then the dog was nosing in the gravel, trying to make her own sense of the world.
DAWN
Aunt June didn’t care much for air conditioning. She liked to keep things natural. All the way to Canard the air whipped through that Honda and our stinks mixed up together—mine, Nicolette’s, Pharoah’s, June’s, and Gene’s.
On the way home, Gene filled June up with stories of every yard he ever mowed, stories more tedious than my husband’s pimple-and-bowel-movement stories, more tedious than him telling me his dreams every morning and the plots of his comic books every night. Gene’s weedeater stories about gas-and-oil ratios and how to keep grass clippings off people’s porches and how he learned to tell the difference between weeds and stuff people had planted on purpose went on without end, and by the time we’d got back to Canard, June had him mowing my mother’s yard.
When we finally got to the foot of the hill in front of Momma’s house, Gene was going on about mowing over a nest of yellowjackets and I said to him,
Mamaw’s Escort parked on the street in front of us, on the other side of Momma’s steps. Mamaw got out, said, “Our Savior, arrived at last.”
June sat both hands on her steering wheel, said, “I can’t believe she’s still driving that thing.”
Mamaw came over and stood to where June couldn’t open the car door without hitting her. Me and Pharoah got out and stood in the street while Nicolette got loose from her car seat. “Do it myself” were Nicolette’s first words and she’d said them ever day since. Mamaw’s eyes fixed on Weedeater, who couldn’t get loose where June had the Honda jammed up against the bank. He’d got his shoulders above the top of the door, but his feet had got tangled up in all that plastic June lay down for him to sit on.
“Mamaw!” Nicolette hollered and ran to who was really my mamaw. Nicolette’s real mamaw—my mother—had not been around enough in the past three years for Nicolette to name her. She just called her Tricia or Trish, which is her name—Tricia Redding Jewell.
Weedeater finally got out and stood on the sidewalk above the bank. He squinted up at Momma’s house, which was at the top of seventy-three concrete steps, seventy-three steps pretty much straight up a hillside in downtown Canard.
Weedeater said, “Some yard.”
Mamaw said, “Who’s this?” standing close to June looking into the side of her head.
Nicolette looked at June like Mamaw was talking about some creature living inside June’s ear. I tapped Nicolette’s shoulder. She tilted her face up at me.
I said, “She’s talking about him,” pointing at Weedeater.
Nicolette looked at Weedeater, looked at June, then shot over to Mamaw and gave her a hug that might’ve knocked over some. Mamaw said, “Aint that something?”
Nicolette said, “I got to pee.”
GENE
Me and that parade of women headed up the steps and by the top I would have eat that baby for a smoke. I was winded, but That Woman’s mother, they called her Cora, wadn’t even drawing hard. She was built like a roll of rabbit wire and didn’t weigh much more.
“God Almighty,” Cora said from the screened-in porch. The rest of us strung down the steps, me and Dawn furthest down, looking out over town. That Woman said, “What, Momma,” and at the top we seen what.
It was as nice a house as I’d seen without a front door. It had big high ceilings and walls smooth with plaster. It was plain inside, no ductwork or drop ceilings. It was also a trashy mess—piles of frozen dinner and pizza boxes in the living room, clothes strewn, mail strewn. They was a line of sticky drips on the floor from the front door to a commode straight ahead against the back of the house. I tramped through the cans, the bottles, the shot-off fireworks, on my way to the bathroom. Once in there and going, I was afraid my pee would knock the commode through the rottenwood floor. That commode was one of many things not secure in that place.
When I come out of the restroom, Evie Bright stood in the door frame like it was our fault she didn’t have wind enough to get up the steps.
DAWN
“God Amighty,” Evie said. “There aint no point to that.”
I asked her what happened to Momma’s door. Evie was my age, but her and Momma partied together.
Evie said, “I don’t know. Somebody took it.”
I said, “Took a door?”
Evie said, “I don’t know, Dawn. How would I know? I’m not the door-woman. You want to know where the door is, come home and watch the door. Caint see the door from Tennessee, can you? Caint keep an eye on the door from there.”
I walked off. You can’t talk to high people.
Even though she was half my size, Evie used to take up for me. But by the summer of oh-four, she was a quarter my size. And dwindling. In high school though, she’s the one would fight when people would give me shit about how big I was or how I didn’t listen to the right music, or didn’t act like boys were interesting, or how I let my pit hair grow or whatever. Evie didn’t care. In high school, she’d fight for me over stuff she didn’t like about me herself. But it had been a while since high school.
Evie was also practically my sister-in-law though her and Albert never had been officially married. But between him and running around with Momma and ever other person that “partied,” she didn’t have much time for me. Truth be told, I didn’t much want to be around her by that July, least not what she’d become since she’d been taking pills. She used to be fun. We’d sit in my room at Mamaw’s house and wish warts on stupid girls’ private parts and disfiguring accidents on their faces. We’d steal stupid girls’ shoes. Steal their lunches. Steal their homework. Evie loved to tear up people’s homework. She didn’t care to key a car either. One time Evie stole a girl’s lipstick and used it on a cat’s butt and then put it back in the girl’s purse. That was my favorite.
I did everything with Evie back then. I was the one took her to the ER when she banged her head on the bathtub when she passed out piercing her own nipple with a safety pin. I’m the one huffed keyboard duster with her. Once. Cause keyboard duster will make the sides of your brain so they can’t talk to each other. Me and her would go to hear music every once in a while, always the music she liked. She liked rap and country, which I didn’t. Only person we both liked was Nelly. But we never saw him. I’d go with her to stuff though, just to go with her. But that got less and less after high school and I started going more and more to Tennessee and she went more and more to drugs until we’d got to where we were that summer—her being aggravated at me all the time. And truthfully I don’t know I missed her that much. That’s bad to say and I know it is probably also a lie. I was mad at her to hide how sad I was. It was a loss losing Evie