Hick - Andrea Portes [46]
They’re so caught up in the complexities of sprinkles and syrup and how much is too much and how much is not enough and maybe a Diet Coke, too, that they don’t even see us, engine idling, behind. If Eddie thinks some dumb ice cream cone is gonna wipe this pout off my face he’s got another thing coming, that’s for sure.
“You can get out, Luli, but then you don’t get an ice cream.”
“I don’t want a dumb ice cream. I don’t even like ice cream.”
“C’mon, Luli, everybody likes ice cream.”
“No, they don’t. I don’t. Ergo. Not everybody likes ice cream.”
“Ergo?”
“Yeah. Ergo. Therefore. Hence.”
“Where you learn all that?”
“My World Book Encyclopedia, thank you very much.”
“Well, next time look up strategy.”
“Tsh. My middle name is strategy.”
“Oh, well, then, you must be smart. Smart and pretty, that’s a deadly combination.”
“Hmph.”
“Deadly.”
“You think I’m pretty?”
“Guess.”
“Wull, do you or don’t you?”
“I think if it wasn’t for that horrible mouth of yours . . . some people, not me, of course, but some people might find you kinda somewhat attractive . . . in a furry little animal sort of way.”
The family of four waddles past us, stacked full, over to the plastic picnic bench, white and cream, taking too long adjusting, readjusting, big arms and legs, in and around the too-small bench. I guess people got fatter somewhere between then and now, or that bench shrunk, either way. They’re content, though, now that they got their banana split and their sundae and vanilla soft-serve swirl. You can lap up sprinkles and look up at the mountains and never think once to maybe venture up. You can sip a Diet Coke and talk about the weather if you have to talk about anything but why bother when you’ve got that fancy vanilla swirl spelling out happiness in a sugar cone.
“This whole fucking country is going to the dogs.”
We sit and watch the lappers lapping.
“it’s changing, Luli, it’s changing, and once it’s gone, it’s gone.”
He takes off his hat and squints at the brim. I wish you could see the bright blue sky behind him and the sun beating down and hear the movie music start to play. I have been looking for my leading man since my dad walked off the set in Palmyra, and, ladies and gentlemen, I have found him. He’s an Elvis-style cowboy with complicated ideas about how the West was lost, how the country was bought and sold, how the calf was fattened. You can’t see it now, but let me put him in hair and make-up and dust him off and shine the light. Let me set him up top of a white patch horse and cue the music and you just wait, you just wait, you’ll see it then, you’ll see it then.
He can ride up to the tippy-top of the wedding cake and I will meet him, I will meet him, I will climb up, tier by tier, and meet him smack-dab on top of the fifth layer of frosting and he’ll dip his Stetson and call me sweetheart and darlin and sugar-pie and you may not see it yet, but believe me, just wait, it’ll hit you like a ton of bricks.
“You want some ice cream or what?”
We stare at the lappers and the creamy shack, the gold Tetons in the distance, pulling up towards the sun.
“Nope.”
“Me neither.”
He guns the engine back and next thing you know it’s just him and me on the two-lane blacktop and I have a feeling that at any moment the wheels of the truck are gonna fly off the pavement and we’re gonna drive off into the clouds and leave this whole vanilla swirl carnival behind, pop bang swoosh, and into the big blue sky.
TWENTY–FOUR
We pull up to a run-down old shack, hidden behind some trees and a gutted white Impala, sitting there in the front like it’s gunning to take off.
“I thought you said you were gonna take me driving.”
Eddie cuts the engine and gets out, “We’re driving, ain’t we?”
“No, but I thought you