Lindsay Hunter: Ugly Girls

“Hey,” he heard a man say. “Hey, Tipton?”

It was a newer prisoner, only been inside eight months or so, a child-toucher named Herman. Some guards made it a point to ignore any names, to refer to the prisoners only by their numbers, but Jim wasn’t like that.

Jim walked over to his cell. Herman had one blind eye that tended to roll around, making it hard to take him serious. Child-touchers had it rough in prison. Jim expected him to ask for more protection, or to see the warden, or even just to shoot the shit a little, make himself feel human for a while. “Speak,” Jim told him.

“Oh, hey, Tipton.” He aimed his good eye at Jim. “You got a daughter?”

Jim knew that prisoners were the most bored human beings on earth. Aside from forming gangs and working out and smuggling drugs and carving paraphernalia out of soap and having sex with each other and themselves, they loved to find ways to fuck with a person. It’s about control, triumph. This was something Jim understood. A man wearing a jumpsuit and shuffling around in plastic shoes and getting bent over if he ain’t watching close needs to find a way to stay a man. It was a truth that rang clear as a bell across the countryside.

Still, Jim stabbed his nightstick through the little slot in the door, right into Herman’s good eye. The prisoner lurched back, fell to the floor with his hands cupped over his face, sobbing like he was a boy after his first punch.

“Don’t you fucking ask me that again,” Jim said. He’d make sure the man saw a doctor, it’s what separated him from some of the other guards, and he didn’t often hit the prisoners. It’s just that from time to time that bell rung true for him, too.

WHEN SHE WAS YOUNGER, about Perry’s age, drinking with her friends made the nights feel plump with possibility. The way the streetlights could blur, the way music was never loud enough, the highway going east forever in one way and west forever in another. Even sitting in someone’s garage waiting around for something to happen — there was always the guarantee that something would happen. What could the future hold? It didn’t matter, as long as there was that feeling.

Myra felt that way now. Her body warm and relaxed, the pleasant yellow light of the living room, the whole world outside the trailer for her to join or ignore. A new friend two cushions over, the sting in her hands and knees just a dull throb. What could be wrong with trying to preserve that feeling?

“You should put up some twinkle lights,” Pete said.

“You think?” Myra was tickled. Such a young-person thing to say, and he was saying it to her like nothing. “Where, up around the television?”

“Maybe,” he said. “Or lining your windows. White ones, though, not them multicolored ones. Those are tacky.”

“You’re right.” Myra held her beer to her knee. It’d be swollen but the beer was cold enough to help that a little. If Jim didn’t want her to drink, why didn’t he pour it out, get rid of it, yell at her some? Jim just wanted her to be happy, that’s why. The thought made her feel safe. Loved. Maybe she’d do a little something for him. Make him a pot roast. A sandwich, at least.

Pete took a swig from his bottle. Myra loved that sound, that clean sound of the beer coming down the neck. He held his fist to his mouth, belched. But a quiet belch. Polite.

“You know,” he said, “I’ve seen you before.”

“Oh?” Myra didn’t like this. When had he seen her? When she was dressed for work? That’d be okay. Or when she was passing by her windows in her robe, red-eyed, hair all messed up, hungover? That would not be okay.

“Yep. I seen you and your daughter one day. Coming home from somewhere. You both looked pissed off.” At this he laughed a little, into his fist again.

“Yeah, that’s us all right,” Myra said. She took a drink, held the bottle to her other knee. “She’s a handful. You remember being a teenager?”

“Course I do. Wasn’t that long ago for me.”

He finished off his beer, his throat moving with each pull. Myra had said something wrong, had passed him an oar in the “Ain’t we old?” boat.

“No, no, that ain’t what I meant,” she said. “I know you’re still a young man. I just meant there’s a difference between your teenage years and your adulthood.”

“I get you,” he said.

Myra pushed herself up, limped into the kitchen to get more beer. “Of course,” she said, “it’s important to maintain some stuff from your teenage years.” She spoke to him across the tiny bar in between the kitchen and the living room. He didn’t turn his head toward her. What was she doing, talking to this strange person about being a teenager? “That excitement,” she added, “you know what I mean?”

He grunted, grunted again when she handed him a fresh beer. Myra lowered herself back onto the couch. After a while he said, “I didn’t have the most fun teenage years.”

Myra waited for him to go on, but he just took a swig and sat there. “Well,” Myra said, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Nice of you to say.”

“Me, I had a great time in high school. Back then everybody hung out with everybody. There wasn’t no cliques. Football players wouldn’t just go for the cheerleaders, if you get me. And I wasn’t no cheerleader.”

The beer was making her chatty. She could feel her mouth getting away from her, wanted to stop, but it felt too good, saying these things. Remembering.

“One time I—”

“Your daughter ain’t no cheerleader, either, am I right?”

She had been about to tell him about the time she had drag raced from one stoplight to another, one of those spur-of-the-moment events she treasured. She had won, had kissed the boy she’d raced full on the mouth right there in front of his girlfriend, that’s how filled with triumph she’d been. He had tasted like eggs and she had come to know that most mouths tasted like eggs when they were caught off guard like that. She was overcome with the memory of that night, that moment, her heart pounding, her mouth still open like she was going to keep right on talking, but Pete’s question had caught up with her, frozen her.

“No, she doesn’t cheerlead,” Myra said. “How you know that?”

“Well, like I said, I seen you before. And I ain’t never seen her in no cheerleader’s uniform.”

Was he making small talk? Why interrupt her story like that? Was she being a glory days bore?

“Uh-huh,” Myra said. “Nope, she’s not the peppy type.”

“Me neither,” he said. “Or I mean, I wasn’t the peppy type, back when I was in school. Do y’all get along? Fight a lot?”

“We get along fine,” Myra said. “We fight sometimes, but that’s normal.”

Myra knew what was going on. She’d overplayed her hand, taken this young man for a confidant, this man closer to her daughter’s age than her own. Now he was making polite conversation, was about two questions away from saying, Well, I better get going .

“She seems like a real spitfire,” he said.

“You could say that,” Myra said. Took in two gulps of her beer. That’d be a burp, one she’d be hard-pressed to hold in, guaranteed.

“Where’s she at?” he asked.

“Oh,” Myra said, “I don’t know. Out for an evening stroll, is what she told me.”

“You don’t seem too worried about her. What if she ain’t out for a walk? What if she’s out doing wrong? Or tied up in some maniac’s closet?”

Already Myra was thinking of the bath she’d take, how she’d pour a beer into a glass and take it with her, light a candle, maybe even fall to sleep in the tub for a while. Who was this Pete, asking her about her parenting?

“That’s on her,” Myra said. “She knows right from wrong.”