Into the Inferno - Earl Emerson [5]
A few years ago, when my mother showed up at the airport on her way through the Northwest, dragging around her latest bleach-blond ex–surf bum, it became obvious from the far-off look in her eyes that she didn’t want to chew the fat with me over our history. The upshot of our conversation was that whatever had taken place in her life before she met my father was now locked away forever.
When I said I had a right to know who my real father was, Mother tossed a flag of dyed-black hair away from her face, sighed, and said, “They say a human body replaces all its cells every seven years. I’m not the woman I was then. I’m not even the woman I was when I left your father. You’re my son. That’s what matters. You know that, don’t you?”
“I just want to know who my father is.”
“God is your father.”
“So it was an immaculate conception?”
“Don’t be insolent. I told you all I’m going to tell.”
It was that simple.
I was a bastard.
Moreover, I got the queasy feeling had she dropped a hook into the waters of memory for a name, she wouldn’t be able to produce one, that I was the by-product of some impulsive heated liaison in the backseat of somebody’s father’s Chevrolet or the back room at a party. Mother had been wild in her youth. Everybody knew that. What nobody ever knew was how wild.
There were only three of us on duty that day late in June: myself; Karrie, who was downstairs telling lies for me; and Stan Beebe, who turned out was lurking in the shadows on a bunk not ten feet away. I hadn’t noticed him and jumped when he spoke. “Woman trouble?” he barked.
“No. Of course not. Why do you say that?”
“Because A: you always have woman trouble, and B: you look like you’re about to shit a brick.”
“I do not.”
“Do not what? Look like you’re about to shit a brick or always have woman trouble?”
“What makes you think it’s a woman?”
“What else would make you so nervous?”
“Come on, Stan.”
“I’m tellin’ the truth. You need to see yourself the way you are so you can change.”
When I looked down at my hands, I detected a slight tremor. It was the weirdest sensation, one I couldn’t remember feeling before. My hands had begun trembling the moment I spotted the Pontiac.
Jamming both fists into my uniform pants pockets to quiet them, I peered out the window. The Pontiac was still baking under the June sun in the bank parking lot.
“Who’s chasin’ you? Suzanne?”
“I told you I’m not going with her anymore.”
“The other Suzanne? The one you met at the river?”
“It’s the truck driver.”
“The short-hauler? Kelly?”
“Holly.”
“I liked Holly. You never should have dumped her.”
“I didn’t dump her. It was mutual. Or just about.”
“She carrying a pair of tin snips?”
“What would she need those for?”
Beebe laughed. “Sooner or later one of ’em’s going to take your family jewels. Call ’em spoils of war.”
A few minutes later I saw the Pontiac door closing. She’d walked from the station to the car while I was talking to Stan. Unable to see past the reflections on her windshield, I ducked back behind the window.
It was over, but she couldn’t accept that. I hoped she wasn’t here to tell me she was pregnant. Just when you think you’ve got your life straightened out, up jumps the devil with a dead rabbit in his hand. I already had two perfectly legitimate kids and, God knows, we certainly didn’t need any more bastards like me in the family.
“You think we’re jinxed?” Beebe asked from the bunk. He had his hands behind his head, legs crossed on top of the bedspread.
“I’m beginning to think I’m jinxed. At least where women are concerned.”
“No. I mean the fire department?”
“There’s no such thing as a jinx.”
“You just said you were jinxed.”
“Well, there’s no such thing.”
“I could make a case that we’re jinxed bad. That we’re going to die. All of us.”
“Everybody’s going to die.”
“No, I’m talking about here in this department. This summer.”
“You serious?”
“Within the next . . . say . . . few weeks. I mean you, me, Karrie, maybe even Click and Clack.”
“That’s crazy.”
“That’s what Marsha keeps telling me.”
“She