Elizabeth Massie: Wire Mesh Mothers

“You ain’t my boss,” said Buddy, but his foot came up a bit on the accelerator, and the car slowed a fraction. He glanced at Leroy. “Tony ain’t boss,” he complained. Leroy shook his head but said nothing. When Tony used the tone , he paid attention. He knew he’d better.

“Gotta pee, gotta pee, Tony gotta wee wee!” sang DeeWee.

“Gotta shut your mouth hole, DeeWee.” Tony leaned over the back of the seat and put her teeth at Buddy’s ear. She said slowly, “Stop…the…fucking…car.”

“Back off, Tony,” said Leroy. But then he said, “Pull it over, Buddy.”

Buddy cursed and pulled the car over. It bit the gravel and then a baby rabbit that didn’t move fast enough into the poison ivy by the fencing. The car engine died.

Leroy turned and his knee came up on the seat, ramming into DeeWee’s side. DeeWee squawked. “What the hell’s wrong with you, Tony?” Tony could see his nose twitching. That was good. He was nervous. Tony liked it when he was nervous like that.

“I had enough of this shit,” she said.

“What shit?”

“Us. You see us? You know what you’re seeing? Don’t you want to just puke when you see us?”

Whitey sneezed.

“What you talking about?” said Leroy.

“Just what I said. We’re shit. We’re fucking babies, all this baby trash we do.”

Leroy’s eye hitched, but he held his ground. “What trash you talking about? Think them cows thought we was just a bunch of bitin’ flies when we hit their butts with them bb’s? We drew blood! Think them folks thought the tooth fairy took their mail to Never-Never Land?”

“Bitin’ flies!” giggled DeeWee. “Cows thought we was bitin’ flies!”

Tony scoffed, “Think Little Joe’s boots is baby? Huh? I’ll give you baby. That b.b. gun. Like that little kid in that movie they been showin’ over and over on channel 45. He wanted a bb gun for Christmas. Oh, ain’t he just so bad, now? Asked Santa for the gun.”

“You saying I got this gun from Santa?” said Leroy. He pulled off his sunglasses. His dark, snowman eyes looked even darker.

“You ain’t making sense,” said Whitey tentatively.

“And you pissin’ me off,” said Leroy. “Ain’t nothing I can’t hit with my bb gun. I can take off your pimply nose with it. I can take out your whole face if I wanted to, whiny baby. Bang-bang-bang, out like a star at the carnival shooting gallery. Nothing left but that shitty haircut on top your scalp.”

“Don’t ever call me whiny baby,” Tony said.

Leroy popped open the door. A tiny piece of cotton blew in on a breeze. “You want out right now, Tony? I’ll pull your ass over the seat and throw you out. Thought you was cool like a guy, Tony. You just whiny like a brat.”

“Whiny little brat,” said Buddy.

“Who asked you into this?” Tony knocked Buddy’s cap off and yanked a fistful of hair from his scalp. Blood beaded on the raw flesh. Buddy yelped and grabbed his head.

“Hold your tongue,” Tony said. “Or I’ll pull that out, too!” She threw the hair into Buddy’s lap. Some still clung to her fingers and she wiped it off on Buddy’s headrest. Whimpering, Buddy held the wad of hair to his head as if he might be able to put it back.

“Listen to me, everybody,” said Tony. “We should be doin’ big stuff. Real stuff. Or we should just go back to suckin’ Mama’s titties for all the good we are.”

“Like what stuff?”

“I been thinkin’ about a robbery.”

Leroy blew air through his teeth. “Big deal, Tony. We steal stuff all the time.”

“Not like that. Not stealing. Robbin’. There’s a difference, case you didn’t know. Show the firepower. Rob ‘em blind. Leave our mark on something besides cow asses.”

“Arm robbery! Steal a arm!” laughed DeeWee.

“Who we gonna rob?” said Whitey. “There ain’t nothin’ around here. And we ain’t got no cars that could make it all the way to Richmond or over to Portsmouth.”

Tony felt the blood stir in the backs of her hands. Hot, cold. Hot, cold. That new nigger at the Exxon would shit her lacy little drawers. Out the dirty window dry grasses strummed the air and the clouds boiled in the white sky; Tony could smell the shit and the sweat. “It’ll be the best,” she said. “Stick ’em up! Hand it over! Money in the bag, now, you stupid bitch!”

“What bitch?” said Leroy.

“’Possum!” shouted DeeWee.

A scraggly opossum had appeared on the roadside gravel. It waddled into some brush near the car.

Tony’s head was itching again, and she fought to keep her hand from scratching. “Bitch at a bank,” she said with a shrug, not caring to share her personal vendetta with the other Hot Heads because it didn’t matter. She’d kill two birds with one stone with the robbery she had planned. “Bitch at the store, the gas station, whatever, crying, ‘Oh, help me help me! Lord save me! Take what you want and leave me alone!’ Fucking pussies.”

Little Joe’s booted foot slipped down onto Tony’s and she slammed it back with a kick so hard to his shin she could hear the denim rip. Little Joe grimaced but made no sound.

“Well,” said Buddy. He looked at Leroy for direction.

“Well, well, well,” giggled DeeWee.

Leroy pulled the passenger door shut. He rubbed his mouth. “You know,” he said. “Ain’t too bad a idea, even if I didn’t come up with it myself.”

“A good idea?” said Buddy. “Sure, we just get our asses blowed off and for what? Some packs of cigarettes?”

“Back on the road, Buddy,” said Leroy.

“Leroy…,” said Buddy.

“Drive!”

The car pulled back onto the road. Nobody said anything for a few minutes. They passed a row of small signs, sitting deep in weeds. Each one bore a single word.

“Jesus.”

“Loves.”

“You.”

“Repent.”

“Or”

“Burn.”

“In.”

“Hell.”

“Hell!” giggled DeeWee, pointing at the final sign.

Another minute of silence. Tony sat back against the seat and grabbed her elbows with her hands. She pulled her arms tightly into her stomach until she couldn’t catch her breath. Let Leroy think it over. He was as bored as she was. He hated things as much as she did.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven….

Then Leroy said, “Tony’s right. We gotta do something to show we got balls.”

“Tony ain’t got balls,” said DeeWee. “Girls got holes!”

“What we gonna rob?” asked Little Joe. “Pippins ain’t got nothing but the grocery, the Exxon, churches, and the old engine shop. And Capron ain’t got more than Pippins.”

Something crawled from Tony’s ear to the nape of her neck. Maybe it was lice after all. She pinched her elbows to keep from scratching. “Exxon’s got a money machine we could whack off the wall. Got a cash register, too, and only Mrs. Martin works there in the day. We know the place. Ain’t no surprises. She don’t have a gun. We’d hold all the cards.”

DeeWee picked something out of his nose and rubbed it on his sleeve.

“We’ll make the news,” said Tony. “Be on T.V. Kids other places always making news for stuff they do. And their mamas, oh, shit, there they stand with their head up their asses lookin’ all surprised. They stand there lookin’ at the T.V. camera, wiping their eyes, crying, ‘I had no idea she would do that! Oh! It’s so terrible!’ Fuck it, it’d be great!” Ecstatic laughter bubbled up in the back of Tony’s throat; she swallowed it back.

In the rearview outside the passenger window, Tony saw Leroy’s jaw clench in and out and in and out. “Yeah, this is good, man, this is good. But we gotta wear something they can’t know who we is.”