Byzantium (5 page)

A giant girl in shiny basketball shorts, curly hair sweat-plastered to her head, stared at her cell phone as texts came in and called out to everyone that the tornado had crossed Dudley Road. Then the power went out and the bawling girl screamed. In school they’d told us a tornado was supposed to sound like a freight train, but I didn’t hear anything. We all sat there in silence, except the guy in the camo shirt, who for no reason burst out laughing a couple of times, maniacal. Twenty minutes later a janitor came in and said we could get up, the tornado was gone. It had veered just after Dudley and sliced through another part of town.

For a moment disappointment seeped through the hall, then we rallied. Everyone tried their cell phones, but the tower must have been down, so we filed out of the building and while some went to their cars I settled in with the rest—the three girls among them—who walked under the now-calm sky to look for destruction. We headed east, where the janitor and sweaty-haired girl’s reports had last placed the tornado, and at Henderson Boulevard we found a police barricade already put up. A hushed crowd had gathered along it, bristling with arms that wheeled about at the whims of greedy, pointing fingers. Across from the barricade the doughnut shop had folded in on itself, its refrigerator of milks tilting out what remained of the front door, the cartons spoiling in the sun. I could only muster a whispered “Holy shit” as I marveled.

Half a block up the famous barbecue place had vanished into a pile, its blue vans picked up and sprinkled across the street. Paramedics were there, ministering to people with cuts. Beyond, in the neighborhood that spread from behind the strip of restaurants, splintery twists of wood curled up out of the ground, the remains of trees, and the houses looked like knocked-out drunks, windows empty and black, bits of everything vomited everywhere, glass, mail, china, pictures, stuffed animals, appliances large and small. A police cruiser was parked at the head of the street, lights flashing, and at some of the houses people had come into their yards. It was like looking at zoo animals in their habitats. Beside me a knot of men estimated death counts. Ten, twenty. One fevered guy in a green Subway shirt said it’d be a hundred at least. Some police had stopped in for footlong tunas, and that’s what he’d heard, a hundred, and then he’d clocked out and left to come see. The number jittered through me. I looked around for the three girls, hoping I could be the one to tell them, but they were off who knew where.

As it happened, by the end of the day the count had dropped to one, a ninety-year-old man, Earl Vancey, who hardly anybody knew. Didn’t go to any church, sat by himself each morning at the Circle Café, same coffee and oatmeal, same denim shirt. When the tornado came he’d crouched in his bathtub and the wall above him had fallen in. Everyone said they were relieved it was only the one, a blessing, especially with him being so old. But now the president and the governor wouldn’t come, and there’d be no movie stars or other famous people to escort through the wreckage. We were lucky to make the scroll on the bottom of the twenty-four-hour news. Still, the destruction was enough to attract Baptist men’s clubs, who roved the tornado site wielding chain saws, and mission groups with their crates of bottled water and sacks of donated clothes. It was enough to get me this job and Angela in my arms.

AFTER THE GREENHILLS DROP Jimmy looped us back to 259, but instead of keeping straight on toward Longview he turned left on 31. “Stop one, need to swing by the house,” he said.

We’d never before gone home while on the clock. Pulled over for tacos, lingered in convenience stores, taken long routes, sure, but this was a line we were crossing. Still, I hadn’t bargained for a veto, so I kept my mouth shut, crossed my fingers, and soothed myself with images of me at The Hangout, right on time.

I didn’t know where Jimmy lived and was surprised when he took the ramp onto 135 and we drove past the oilfield shops that lined the edge of town. Out here there was no trace of the tornado, but it was ugly all the same. The road was four-lane, a big highway in the middle of nowhere, and after we got to the last of five identical mustard-colored buildings with their attendant gravel lots, we pulled into a potholed driveway. Houses floated around us in a sea of tall grass. They sat on metal beams, hides of shagged tarpaper gathered about grayed, termite-ridden wood. Jimmy drove past them to a yard of smoothly packed dirt where a house in only slightly better shape than the others squatted on cement-block feet.

“My dad buys them,” Jimmy said, when he noticed me looking back at the houses in the field. “He’s going to turn them into lake cabins.”

He leaped out of the truck and, passing the front porch, started climbing through a window. I didn’t want to think about why, and staring out at the field of houses I ignored his legs wiggling over the sill and let my mind drift to the moon-flesh beneath Angela’s shirt. I struggled with my inadequate map, itched at not knowing how much ground had been lost to the guy from Jasper. Then a banging on the hood set my heart knocking in my chest. Jimmy. He opened my door and started pushing me toward the steering wheel.

“You’re going to drive,” he said. He’d shoved me halfway across the cab and now lifted himself up to where I’d been sitting, pulled a joint out from his pocket, and punched the truck’s lighter with his thumb. “I’m going to smoke.”

“We both have so much to live for,” I said. To no avail—one last push had me behind the wheel. I sucked at driving the trucks and I didn’t have my CDL. But the afternoon tugged, and fighting Jimmy would mean losing more time. I did some active visualization, me returned to the yard safe, then started the truck, backed around to straighten us up, and pretended not to be frightened as I got us past all those houses and onto 135, shifting through the gears and popping the stick until the engine stopped making its horrible grinding noises.

A mile gone, the lighter released and Jimmy grabbed it and touched it to the end of his joint. “Snow cones,” he said. “That’s stop two.”

THE SNOW-CONE STAND JIMMY WANTED was on the edge of the Family Dollar parking lot in Sabine. As I drove us there the truck kept losing its smooth gear, bucking and heaving until I tamed it with blind shoves of the stick. Meanwhile, Jimmy preened: he took off his glasses, undid his ponytail, combed his fingers through his hair, all with the joint pinched between his lips. When I at last got us to the stand he said, “Keep going, keep going,” until we were clear on the other side of the lot. I lurched the truck to a stop in a row of empty spaces, but Jimmy didn’t shift from his seat. Instead, he pulled a five from his pocket, passed it to me, and told me to get him a pink lemon.

“You’re not getting out?”

“Does it look like I’m getting out?” Then, calm again, “Get yourself something, too.”

“Okay, but you’re driving after this.”

“Fine. Just let me finish.” He held up the end of his joint.

I walked across the asphalt toward the stand, a cube of slapped together plywood painted white. On each side, above red, yellow, and blue circles, stenciled letters spelled “Sno-Cone.” Inside the stand a blond girl leaned against the back counter and paged through a magazine covered with exposé photos of some celebrity’s fat-curdled belly. A donation canister for the tornado victims sat beneath the list of flavors.

“One pink lemon, one blue coconut,” I said, putting Jimmy’s five on the counter. The girl flicked her eyes at me, smacked her gum, and repeated, “One pink lemon, one blue coconut,” as if they were the two most boring flavors ever. She dropped the magazine on the counter and took two cups from the stack beside her, then turned around and filled them with shaved ice. The stand was raised up so that my eyes pointed directly at her butt. I envisioned myself somehow lodged in the tuck of denim between cheek and thigh.

“Is that Jimmy in that truck?” the girl said, back still to me as she stood at the jugs of syrups and pumped the cones with color.

“Which Jimmy?”

“You know which Jimmy,” she said.

“Well,” I said, “within the infinite possibilities of Jimmys, that very well could be the Jimmy you want it to be.”

She set the snow cones down. “Whatever. You can tell that infinite Jimmy to stop bothering me. Next time I see him I’m going to slap him upside his head.”

“I’ll pass that on to the Jimmys I know,” I said.

She picked up a rag and gave me a slit-eyed scowl. “Whatever it is you want, you ain’t getting it.” Then she turned around and ran the rag along the shelf beneath the syrups, where drips collected from the gummed and crusted nozzles. “But you can go right ahead and stare at my ass again.”

I blushed, didn’t say anything, and took the snow cones back to the truck. Jimmy was slouched in the driver’s seat, his head just above the window, watching the girl. I gave him his pink lemon, told him what she’d said, and for a few seconds we studied her together.

“She dispenses nectar,” Jimmy said, and scraped his teeth over the syrupy ice, slow and reverent. Sure, he had ape muscles and went to parties where people got drunk and naked, but he read fantasy novels, too.

After he tipped the last of the snow cone into his mouth he put the truck in gear and guided us to the street. Loose asphalt crackled beneath our tires. I ran over one more time what I’d decided to say to Angela that night. First I would ask her if she wanted a Mountain Dew, and when I brought her one I would put my hand on her arm and look her in the eyes and say she might be going back to Nacogdoches and I might be moving to Dallas someday, but now that we lived in a world with tornadoes what did that matter, we had tonight. Then I’d stay quiet for a moment and she wouldn’t say anything, just nod and let me take her to her car. And that would lead to other nights. Nacogdoches was only an hour away. I could drive there at least once a week.

IT WAS FOUR O’CLOCK when we got to Longview.

“I need something to eat,” Jimmy said. He looked at me, his eyes gone soft. It was the first he’d spoken since we left the snow-cone stand.

“Two stops is two stops,” I said.

“I’ll be quick. Please. You do something good, something good will happen to you. Rule of the universe.”

“Ha.”

“Your call,” Jimmy said. Then he smiled. “Angela Grimes.”

An acid shudder flashed through my stomach. “You know about Angela?”

Jimmy pretended not to hear me, slapped his palms on the steering wheel to the drum solo being spat out by 97X.

“What do you know?”

The solo finished, he said, “I’m too hungry and upset to remember.”

I looked at the green numbers of the clock. We could still make five if we hurried. “You’ll be quick?”

“You won’t even see me eat.”

Jimmy drove us to the Waffle Shoppe, a twenty-four-hour place on the corner of 80 and McCann with a sign that had a waffle the shape of Texas on it, a big pat of melting butter where Waco would be. Counting minutes, I’d suggested McDonald’s, but Jimmy had said he didn’t believe in McDonald’s, and then he’d repeated Angela’s name. Inside we took one of the stunted booths next to the counter, and when the brown-shirted waitress came by Jimmy ordered a jalapeño omelet. She looked at me and I said I didn’t want anything, but Jimmy winked at her and told her to bring me a pecan waffle.

“So that girl at the snow-cone stand,” Jimmy said when the waitress left. “Beth. Last weekend I was at this party and her friend got me into a room and pulled down her pants and was like, ‘Fuck me,’ and so I did. And then Beth comes into the room all like, ‘What are you doing fucking my friend on my little sister’s bed?’”

“What’s this got to do with Angela?”

Jimmy blinked at me. “Nothing. I just needed to clear out my own shit. Beth’s the one I want and she’s just mean to me.”

The waitress returned, and plates and silverware clattered onto our table. Jimmy gave the woman his wide grin, said thanks, and sliced the end off his omelet and shoved it into his mouth.

“So,” I said. “You’ve got food in you now.”

“Oh, yeah, sweet little Angela. We go back.” He forked in more omelet. “Her brother throws big parties in Pine Tree. I was at one last night and she told me you loved up on her.”

I poured syrup on my waffle, let it pool over the edges.

“She said, hey, you know this guy, I think he works where you work, he felt me up in the parking lot, and I said I bet he was gentle, and then she said she was about to piss her panties and went in the bathroom. She had her frogs with her after some guy had snuck in her room and tried to lick them.”

“Did she tell you why she’s been ignoring me? Because she’s been ignoring me.”

Jimmy shrugged. “She’s always been one of those secret shy girls. You know, you think she’s all cool talking but then she gets spooked.” He licked mashed omelet off his lips. “I can tell you something, though. She’s primed. I’ve got a nose for it. You need to get your finger wet.”

He held his own finger up and danced it in a slow twirl. I slid down in my booth. Its seat was stitched with duct tape, the stuffing a memory, and the coils pushed back like they wanted to spring me out.

“It’ll be you or somebody else, and if it’s you you’ll hook her.”

A dizzy tingle skittered up my nerves. I darted an eye to the tables around us, empty except for one, a guy with a trucker’s beard and a folded-up newspaper. Jimmy’s plate was empty now, speckled with yellow grease and jalapeño seeds. On my own plate my waffle remained untouched, a soggy moon.

“We should go,” I said, and Jimmy turned his twirling finger at the waitress and asked for the check.

AT THE OAK RANCH DEVELOPMENT we drove past staked-off lots of plowed-over red clay and cul-de-sacs of two-by-four pine skeletons until we came to a small herd of near-finished houses. A second tornado, in the same storm, had touched down here, but it was smaller than the one in our town and had only scraped along the empty streets, tearing up roofs and breaking windows. Jimmy did his routine with the head roofer, a guy in a clean buttoned shirt and matching ball cap stitched with his company’s name. The man looked at the two of us, smiled, and told us he’d keep his twenty.

“Fuck him,” Jimmy said. He climbed up onto the bed and flung the pallet as far as he could from the house. “He wants to lug them, we’ll make him lug them. Get over there.”