Smith Henderson - Fourth of July Creek

The kid snorted or choked a little or coughed. From the stump Pete lifted Cecil, who swayed and giggled. His actual breath stank of gasoline.

“You laugh? Go on. But let me tell you a secret. Kids like you, they become the worst ones. Maybe because it’s too late to send in someone your age. I dunno. But something just quits in kids like you and you become bad men. You go in wild ungovernables and you come out bad men.”

Pete balled a fist and slugged Cecil in the gut and as he doubled over Pete grabbed his face with his right hand and hit the boy again just under the opposite rib, dropping him to his knees. On the ground, the boy quietly kecked. Pete knelt.

“You can’t believe it, can you?” he asked. “How could this be, you ask yourself.”

Cecil looked up at him, flushed and gagging. Pete had never laid a finger on a client before. Not once done a thing in anger. And he wasn’t angry now. He was as astonished as the boy.

“All right,” Pete said. “Quit moaning. You’re all right.”

He lifted him up and brushed the pebbles and twigs from both their knees. He straightened Cecil’s T-shirt and met his tearing, enraged eye.

“Your mama doesn’t want you anymore. The Cloningers are good people and you ruined that. Maybe for other kids too. But you have this uncle. So I want to know: will you stay here?”

Cecil balled and unballed his fists. Bewildered and scared and angry.

“Look, I ain’t the one that hit you,” Pete said.

The kid blinked at the naked lie.

“I ain’t,” Pete repeated. “Those punches sure as shit come through me but they were not mine. As meant for you as they were, they were not mine.”

“Fuck you, man,” Cecil whispered.

“I am not just an agent of the state. I’m an agent of your future. I’m a goddamn time traveler. And, I promise you, that little tune-up was just a preview.”

Elliot was lighting another butt off his second or maybe third cigarette when Pete got to the porch. He let the man take the reins of the situation, handing off the boy to him like a half-broke horse. He fetched the boy’s things from the car and followed them through the house as Elliot’s wife crossed her arms and asked why he smelled like gas. Cecil glowered at her, hunched and miserable. Elliot patiently showed Cecil where he would sleep and keep his things, as patient as a man taking his sister’s son, at least as patient as a man who needs money to do such a thing.

The kid might run. Pete might have to find him again and bring him back. You couldn’t know.

Pete crossed the brown and blasted grass. The dog heaved up at him, wheezing through the cut cords of its voice box. The chain went taut. The animal’s pads rose and patted the hard dirt. Its teeth snapped in the air.

Pete sat in the utter quiet of his car but for the fond wind and the ringing of the animal’s chain.

Was Jimmy nice enough with a big harmless face and so excited to see them that he’d ordered pizza and beer and Cokes?

He called them Cokes, but they were 7UPs, said would you like a 7UP Coke, I also have some Dr Pepper Cokes. Rachel was confused and said she’d have whatever kind of pop he had and he looked funny for a minute and checked the freezer and said they could run out for pops or ice cream after dinner.

What were pops?

Popsicles.

And pops were called Cokes?

Or sodas, yes.

Did Rachel and her mother and her mother’s “friend” go out for Popsicles?

They were gonna. They didn’t. They got to talking and talking and Mom laughing at every last thing he said and drinking Lone Stars and him showing them the tub where he kept his turtles and saying he just showered with them or in the truck stops mostly but he was fixin to have to get them an aquarium on account of them staying with him, staying with him he called it, not moving in and it was obvious from the get-go.

What was obvious from the get-go?

They weren’t staying.

Why?

Because. You could tell.

How?

He was terrified of them. Him asking did they want to see the inside of his semi-truck, and they all climbed in, and Rachel crawled into the sleeper cab and he turned on the lights and said he’d sleep in the truck, there was a room for Rachel and Beth could sleep in his room, and her mother said he didn’t need to do that, but he went ahead and did it anyway.

Was there a room for them?

There was a room for her and a fold-out couch and a dresser a closet half-full of boxes of Jimmy’s things about a hundred sweat-stained baseball caps and some old calendars of women splayed over machines, and in the middle of the night as she tried to sleep her mother went out to the truck. Rachel pretended to be asleep when her mother came in to check on her and kissed her good night with beery tobacco lips before she went to Jimmy’s bedroom.

What was it like in Waco?

Who knows? They never went anywhere. McDonald’s sometimes. She just watched TV.

What shows?

Love Boat. Fantasy Island.

The Facts of Life.

Venturing sometimes out into the trailer park. Signs of children, a Wiffle ball bat flattened as though hammered into the dirt drive, toddlers toddling, the women watching her grow uneasy under their gaze. She runs away when they ask her is she living at Jimmy’s.

And then Jimmy is gone. A week.

And then when he’s back, they are always just talking in the kitchen and she needs to play outside. Then when dinner’s ready they put her in front of the TV and talk in the back room. Then they talk outside in the dark. In his truck. Then Jimmy’s yelling at her mother to go inside, just go inside the damn trailer, it’s enough already.

Mom coming in to wyom in the trailer. Days and days wyoming. Jimmy on the road all the time, treating her like she’s lucky to be here. Goddamn turtles in the tub. This ain’t no Taj Mahal. Jimmy saying what does Beth have to complain about, living high on the hog, rent free and everything.

What about school?

Don’t ask. It’s horrible. Texas girls with big hair and cliques. She’d skip, but she doesn’t know where to go, the girls are awful. Jealous, her mother says.

Of what.

Of your breasts. Of the boys wanting you.

Tells Rachel to come here and let her have a good look. Turns her about and then crushes out her cigarette and hops out of bed in her underwear and opens the closet and Rachel thinks she’s going to get her a shirt or something to wear but she pulls down a shoe box from the back corner of the top shelf and inside is a pistol.

What’s it for?

To sell. It’s an antique. They’re gonna pawn it and have some fun, her mother says.

So they shop together?

Yes, and get their hair and nails done, and they talk about the boys loping through the mall, her mother saying watch now how they are looking at us, the two of us all done up.

But they aren’t looking at her, she’s too old.

Flirting with the shoe salesman now. God.

And does she keep Rachel home now, say for her to cut class and stay home?

Yes.

And do they watch TV all day and go for long drives and was it like they were always just waiting for Rachel to get old enough so they could be friends and tell each other everything?

That’s what her mother says.

And what is the everything Rachel tells, on the porch in the cooling of the evening?