Hick - Andrea Portes [3]
Now my dad is out the car and it’s an all-out brawl. There might as well be banjo music. she’s got my body, hunched over me like an old-fashioned vampire, nails digging little C’s into my back. He’s got my arm, pulling the both of us millimeter by millimeter to the car. This show’s a comedy and we’ll all be back next week.
We stay in this little clumsy tug-of-war for half a century, him pulling her, her clutching me, me trying to wriggle out, until all the sudden I feel two hands whisk me out and place me square four feet away.
“What the fuck is wrong with you people?”
It’s Ray. He must’ve been waiting in the wings. He’s got me beside him, holding his arm in front, protective. I wish he wouldn’t wait so long to make his entrance. He almost missed his cue. The light from the bar cuts a rectangle into the gravel as the dust settles. There’s a lot of huffing and puffing now.
“Look at yourselves. Jesus.”
Tammy and Dad stand there like two kids caught smoking. They stand there, side by side, waiting for the next line, cooling down. But somehow the shame thrown down missed them and hit me direct. They’re just trying to straighten their shirts. They’re just trying to figure out the most perfect closing line to get them the fuck offstage.
“C’mon, Luli,” Ray says. “I’ll give you a ride home. I’m sorry. I am truly sorry.”
He puts his hand on my shoulder and takes me with him while he tells the bar-back to cover, quick. He doesn’t want nothing to do with this show no more. He’s had it. There’s nothing grand or loud or pretty about the way he steers me across the gravel. There’s nothing flashy about the way he hoists me up into the truck, deep red, with giant wheels for winter. He just sets me up top the seat, simple, before strutting around and getting in the driver’s side. He starts the engine and pulls out the lot, with not even a wink back to remind us he’s the hero.
When we’re pulling out onto Highway 34, I look back and see my dad leaning on the hood of the Nova. You could practice for years and never lean with that picture perfect cowboy slunk.
And you would think that would be it and call it a night, I bet. But just wait cause two fence-posts past our drive Ray stops the truck and next thing you know I’m staring into the big black night with just two headlights, that’s it for miles. He starts mumbling something about there’s a funny noise he’s gotta check up on and there I am, feet up on the dash, thumb-twiddling.
If you’re wondering what I look like, just throw two giant eyes and one big mouth at a face too small to hold them. There must’ve been a mix-up that day on the assembly line, cause they got the proportions all wrong. I got made fun of for my big mouth before I even made it to day-care. Fish-face. Quacky-duck. Put it on my bill.
Seems like Ray’s doing a whole lot of nothing, tinkering with the engine and grunt grunt grunt but then, next thing you know, he’s got his head in my window like he’s the weatherman on the nightly news.
“Wull. I can’t figure it.”
“Figure what?”
“The noise. I can’t figure the noise.”
“Huh.”
“Look, Luli.”
Now he starts scratching the back of his neck, shifting leg to leg.
“I wanna show you something.”
Boy, he sure knows how to be boring.
Shift. Shift.
“Wull, what?”
Shift.
“Um, wull, how bout you close your eyes and open your mouth.”
“Wull, why would I wanna do that?”
“Just trust me. Trust me. You’ll like it. I promise.”
And now something in the air around me starts to vibrate and I get the feeling that funny noise was pure make-up and my thumbs stop mid-twiddle.
But there’s also a side of me that won’t ever look away from a dead bird or a car chase or a hold-up at the Alibi at 2 a.m. There’s this side that wants to grab that buzzing thing and pull it close and twirl it around and inspect it, like dissecting a frog, belly-splayed.
So I do it.
I do what he says and I close my eyes and open my mouth and the next thing I know he’s got his twenty-eight-year-old tongue in my thirteen-year-old mouth and all I can think is that I don’t think the hero is supposed