Armadillo

ARMADILLO /Laura Hendrie JACK SAYS there's nothing out here but a lot of nothing, nothing but a lot of space. He says he likes it that way, all sky and dirt spreading out from one side to the next with nothing in between but highway and bean fields and arroyos pointing toward the little black dots that are us. When we drive, he looks straight ahead. He says you've got to take things as they come, watch your landmarks, and not want more than what you've got to begin with, otherwise you get lost and go blow away like dust. He says if you take what's there to begin with, then what happens won't sneak up behind you. That's why he traps the wild dogs that live down in the arroyo. He brings them home and locks them up in the old Chevrolet out back. Those dogs are so mean you have to poke their food in through the side window with a stick so you don't get your hand bit off. Slobber and dog fur on the windshield so thick sometimes you can't see what's inside, but boy, can you ever hear them when you walk by. Miss Jewel, Tom Go, and the rest, they try to keep the dogs off with guns and poison, but Jack traps them alive. Three years ago, a pack of them broke through Miss Jewel's fence and carried off two pies and her pet chihuahua, but none of them will ever come around our place anymore. They know better than to come sneaking around when they hear their friends yeowling inside the Chevy. He has always been my father, but I've always called him Jack. I don't know what I called my mother because she left a long time ago with my little sister, whose name was Luce. Me, I am Reba, and always have been Reba, and probably always will be, just because Jack won't let them re-name me anything else. They all re-named each other— Lucky, Tom Go, Jewel, and the rest—but they will never re-name me because Jack says that the very day they re-named the town Sweetwater , the day the bean factory opened, that was the day the water started smelling like old rotten farts. And Jack says the water will be that way until they decide to go back to the old name, Platter. Jack says you got to take what's there to begin with because faith is a fool. But me, I've had dreams about running across the dirt at night, like a straight line above the ground, like a light shooting out from behind a just-opened door at night, streaking out and splitting the dark in two, howling high over the beanfields, rock, wire, and dirt, out beyond the highway and over the lion-lit sky. I've woken up wet, like Td been running for real, with my legs still twitching in the tangled-up sheet and my hands held out in front and my ears still buzzing. I7 Reba, plain Reba, have done this; I've woken up and felt watched. But I know 116 · The Missouri Review better than to tell Jack. Tom Go is the one who told me my mother was a beauty. Jack says Tom Go's nothing but a rummy anymore, but me, I don't mind sitting with him anyhow. He told me the whole town fell under a cloud for Jack's sorrow the day she left with my sister Luce. He said there'd not been a man on this earth with so many tears to cry as Jack'd had, not over a woman, not unless it was crocodile tears. Said Jack couldn't even make folks their drinks anymore, nor take their money, nor even go to the trouble of locking up at night. "Had to serve ourselves," he said, " 'cause Jack was too busy bawlin' his eyes off." I can't see Jack with such a sorrow as to ever make him cry or give up tending bar like that, but Tom...