Bastard Out of Carolina - Dorothy Allison [58]
“Your mama ever tell you about our daddy?” he began one afternoon, rolling a cigarette. “Man was something, all right. People called him ‘that Boatwright boy’ till the day he died. Took better care of his dogs than his wife or children—not that Mama needed much taking care of. Your granny is tougher than all her sons put together; she sure never seemed to expect much out of Daddy. Thing is, I think all of us, we’re just like him. Your uncle Beau is a drunk. You know that, but so is your uncle Nevil, and so am I, I suppose. But an’t none of us as shiftless as our daddy was, or as pretty, so we don’t get away with it the way he did. It’s why Teresa left me. She always said she wanted a man like a long, cool drink of water. Go on about it like women do when they’re laying in your arms all soft and wanting to talk, talking about that crystal spring, that pure essential liquid.”
He laughed a short, abrupt laugh, though I could see in his eyes no humor, just a gleam that seemed hard and angry. His fingers pressed down, inching the paper tight around the packed tobacco, then drawing the cigarette up so he could lick it closed.
“Teresa sure could talk. Lord God!” He looked off to the side as if remembering things he could not stand to face directly. I dropped my head. I didn’t want him to stop talking.
“Teresa used to tell me how I filled her up, satisfied her very soul. And every time, I’d think about our daddy—how Mama had to catch a drink of him now and then, so the man never filled her up, never actually eased her thirst. The woman always looked pinched and dry. I didn’t want to do that to Teresa. Didn’t want to be like that. I wanted to pour over that woman like a river of love. But shitfire! When she left me she told me I wasn’t even a full mouth of spit. Me, her long, cool drink of water! Damn!”
Uncle Earle brushed tobacco flakes off his lap. “I just don’t understand sometimes, Bone, how things got so messed up, the simplest things—me and Teresa, Mama and Daddy, your mama and Glen. Hell, even Ruth and Travis. You know, Travis left Ruth once when their kids were little, just took off for two months and never said a thing. And anybody can see how he loves her. Sometimes I just don’t understand.”
He tried to light the cigarette, but it fell apart in his hands. Looking down at the mess of damp tobacco all over his jeans, he swore and pushed himself up off the step. “Sad, an’t it,” he said, “a man who can’t even keep a cigarette together? Sad as hell.” He walked away, brushing his jeans as he went.
Aunt Ruth wanted to make sure I understood who our people were and what they had done. She devoted two whole days to the story of Great-Uncle Haslam Boatwright, who had driven a truck over at the JC Penney mill until he shot his wife and her lover on a weekend visit to Atlanta. He’d been locked away in the Georgia State Penitentiary ever since. She told me more about my real daddy and Lyle Parsons, and the whole story of how Daddy Glen had courted Mama through a solid year of lunches at the diner before she would ever date him. Best of all, she told me how Uncle Beau and Uncle Earle had tried to enlist in the army during the Korean War and had been thrown out of the recruiting office into the muddy street after the sergeant got their arrest records. Drunk and determined, they had made so much noise that the army boys called the county sheriff to lock them up.
“Oh, come on, son,” Beau was supposed to have told that sergeant after punching out the deputy and chewing on the ear of some innocent fool who’d made the mistake of trying to help. “You an’t gonna find better soldier material anywhere in the county. Hell, you can see we already know how to fight!”
Telling the story, Aunt Ruth snarled and twanged like Uncle Beau did when he’d been drinking, sounding so like him that I giggled to hear her.
“Bet they didn’t really want to be in no army,” I told her. “Bet they went down there on a dare or something.”
“Well, they an’t the type to play