SCREAMING WITH THE CANNIBALS

Forty-One

309 Forty-One Goddammit, I wasn’t a northerner. And from what I had seen, I wasn’t a southerner, either; didn’t want to be; didn’t want any part of it. I didn’t know if there were any people called easterners, but it didn’t matter. I wasn’t going east. I was just another West Virginian stuck in a hate warp that I didn’t make but which, sure as hell, would suck me in if I stuck around and let it. So I was going west. The old Chevy rolled on toward the edge of the county, Yvonne driving, me hunkered down in the back seat with a blanket pulled up to my neck, ready to hide if a sheriff’s car went by. The blanket felt good. There was a hard chill in the air and the Chevy had no heater. But it was a Sunday morning and the roads were quiet and we got all the way to the county line without seeing anything that looked like trouble. Neither of us had said a word since we left Myrtle Beach. I watched the gray sky slide by the side window and thought about the sound that coins made when they dropped into the jukebox in the pavilion. Clunking, almost jingling sounds. The minutes of a life counted in the minutes of a song. Thought about how thick the air was when it drifted in off the ocean and wrapped around my back when I walked across the sand; the softness of the rain and how it tasted when it brushed my face while I was swimming. Thought about a woman wearing a dress and swimming to England. 310 Thought about flying off Wimpo’s hood and the shotgun going off and bits of chrome splintering from the dash. Thought about Polk lying there in the dirt, surrounded by all the legs of all the men who lived at Homeplace. Thought about Evangeline. Thought about being taken to Grandmama ’s house and how, every day, Evangeline and Grandmama would wash my cuts and gouges, and how I ate an entire cherry pie Grandmama had baked, dipping the pieces into the top of a glass of milk, the heavy cream sticking to the crust. “You going to stay in Myrtle?” She never turned her head. “Yes. I like it here, Jesse. Got a job at the college. With any luck, I’ll never set foot in Wimpo’s again.” She had always been the smart one in Crum and now she had a job in a real college, going to school there, too. “You think I could do that? Go to college?” “Sure, if you get rid of that accent.” She was grinning, looking at me out of side of her eyes. I didn’t know what she was talking about. Then her voice changed, low and soft and I had trouble hearing her over the noise of the old car. “I don’t know, Jesse. I think maybe you could, think you’re sure smart enough. But there’s something about you, Jesse. Something that just seems to follow you around, something that just seems to . . . stir things up.” “I don’t mean to do that. Don’t mean to do any of it.” “That’s just it, Jesse. You don’t do it on purpose—well, not most of it, anyway. But it’s always there.” Thought about Jason and John Three sitting on the front porch of the little church. You gonna get out of here, find some place safe? I had asked Jason. Boy, there isn’t someplace safe, don’t you know that? He had looked over at John Three. Nope, no place safe. I ain’t going nowhere, white boy. Guess I’ll just stay here and see what happens. 311 Thought about Evangeline coming into my room in the dark, telling me I couldn’t go back to work on John Three’s boat, telling me John and Jason had enough trouble without trying to cover my pale ass. Telling me it was her idea, me not going back to work on the boat. And I knew she was right, about everything. Thought about pulling her against me and her saying we couldn’t do it here in Grandmama’s house. Wouldn’t be right. But we found other places. Lots of them. Yvonne rolled the...