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1

“You know why you keep losing, cause, guess what, you’re a fucking loser.”

If I could grab you out your seat and make you fly past yourself and set you down in the middle of this red wooden shoebox, you’d be staring at my mama. You can see her now, ruddy-faced and getting a little too loud, some kind of aging Brigitte Bardot, ten years later and twenty pounds past what might have been, sitting there in a yellow tank, pink nails and blond flip-up hair. And the shoes, the shoes are the crowning glory, the angel on top of the tinsel tree, yellow plastic mules with a flower etched on the strap, just above her chipped pink toe-berries. My mama’s littlest toe looks like a shrimp. She’s half in the bag and not caring about bra strap showing or big brass laughing or acting slutty.

That’s my dad, there in the corner, hunched over the bar like some kind of beaten question mark. He’s staring fixed into his 7 & 7. Seven for give up. Seven for make do. Not much left over. There’s no doubt in my mind that if he could dive headfirst into the ice-cube clinking whiskey pool dangling at the end of his fingertips, he would.

If you threw Elvis and a scarecrow in a blender, topped the whole thing off with Seagram’s 7 and pressed dice, you would make my dad. He’s got tar black hair and shoulder- blades that cut through his undershirt like clipped wings. He looks like a gray-skinned, skinny-rat cowboy and I would be lying if I didn’t say that I am, maybe sorta kinda, keep it secret, in love with him.

And you would be, too, you would, if you met him before drink number five or six. Just meet him then. Get lost before things get ugly.

His name is Nick, but call him Nicholas, like that Russian royal from my yard-sale World Book, cause if anybody in Lancaster County looks like some displaced king, it’s my dad, shot through time like a diamond in a dirtbox.

My mama’s name is Tammy, last name Cutter. And the worst part about it is, my dad can’t stop being in love with her. Even as she sharpens her knife on the bones sticking out his back, even as she slurs her words, even as she makes goo-goo eyes at strangers, even then, he tilts his glass and shrugs and jiggles the change in his pocket and waits for her to love him back.

“I mean, they never win. They never win. Tom Osborne is just not a winning coach.”

She lowers her voice to a loud and confidential whisper.

“I mean, if you ask me, he’s just a dud. Just an old dud. He’s not hungry enough to win.”

And then, like she’s gonna show you what true hunger looks like, she throws her head back, sucks down the rest of her berry-lime cooler and slams the empty glass on the bar like a drunk German, itching for a fight.

If you want to know how to reach us, you can call us here. Let’s just say that’s your best shot. So, here’s the number, just ask for Nick. Let’s just say the phone may or may not be working back home. Let’s just say next to the line marked O for office, you can just put down the Alibi and Bob’s your uncle. If you want to track us down on foot, it’s that red neon sign three miles outside Lincoln, halfway down Highway 34 towards Palmyra. If you get to the water tower, you passed it.

“I hear they’re gonna build a mall down on Route 5, cross from the slaughterhouse.”

The bartender’s trying to save me from hanging my head down and memorizing the floorboards. His name is Ray and he’s known me since I was tall enough to put a quarter in the jukebox. The angels played a trick on him, giving him the body of a linebacker, then putting freckles all over him and topping the whole thing off with strawberry-blond hair. It’s like if Strawberry Shortcake had a big brother that looked like he wanted to kick your ass.

Sometimes I call him Uncle Ray because sometimes he’s the only one that makes sure I get home safe at night. He and I are in a secret club cause we both know the rest of the night by heart. We’ve watched this little drama played out, night after night, season by season, and Dad and Tammy are the stars of the show. That’s the way it’s gotta be, she wouldn’t have it any other way. She’s not stepping out of bed for just some two-line bit part.

Here’s what’s gonna happen. The little round glasses are gonna get filled and drained, filled and drained, over and over and over again. For about the first two drinks there’s gonna be a nice breeze going through, simple, easy, light FM, lemonade by the side of the road.

Then around drink number three or four, everybody’s gonna start having the time of their life. These guys are all gonna be best friends for good with everybody, that’s for sure. Somebody is gonna play “That’s Life” on the juke-box and everybody is gonna sing along and pat each other on the back and next thing you know, we’re all moving in together.

Lord knows, “That’s Life” is the anthem of drunks everywhere. If you want to make friends, just walk into any bar from here to Wahoo, find the juke-box, put in a quarter, play “That’s Life” and watch the souses slur and sway. Before you know it those gin-blossom faces will be sidled-up, just a little too close, going on six ways till sundown, about the one that got away.

But wait till drink number three or four. That’s when a fella could drop by from Timbuktu and be taken in as a brother, no matter what color or language or creed, we are all compadres here. He could be a Hatfield and the McCoys would sell him their sisters and offer him grits. Mi casa es tu casa. Mi bar es tu bar. Drinks are on me, amigos.

Then, around drink number five, everything is gonna get real quiet. I call this the calm before the storm. That is, when I call it anything, which is never, since the whole thing is so shamey, why talk about it in the first place? Why even mention it at all? Maybe let’s just talk about the weather or the new mall down on Route 5.

Okay, now, here comes drink number six, that’s a doozey. That’s really the party crasher, that one. He comes in and you know there’s gonna be trouble. You can hear the record scratch right when he walks through the door. Drink number six. Hold on to your hats.

Get out now, before drink number seven or eight come waltzing through the door, cause you can slice up the air with a butter knife. You can almost see the surliness rising up through the smoke, coming off the pool table. You could just tell drink number seven and eight to stay home, but they got invited with drink number one and they RSVP’d around drink number four. There is no way they are not coming to this party. They’ve been gussyed-up since happy hour.

So, here they are, drink number seven and eight, and here’s Tammy, starting the show off with a bang.

“Luli, you’re doomed, you know that. You are just fuckin doomed.”

She’s leaning in, serious, trying to get it through my head that this is the most important thing I ever heard ever. The words are dragging the side of her lip down, clumsy and falling slurred. She leers tipsy at my dad. If she could find a way to take back time by slicing up pieces off her husband, if she could turn his skin inside out and get a rebate, then she would cut and cut and not stop cutting until she’s deep into the bone and even then. She would slice and dice with pleasure.

“I mean…look at this drunk you got for a dad, Luli. Lookit him. Just lookit him.”

My mama likes to call my dad a drunk but she’s giving him a run for his money. He’s gonna sit in silence for a little while. He’s gonna sit there and clink the ice in his whiskey and nod and drain his glass and drain another. It’s gonna be a one-sided argument until he gets to drink number nine. That’s when the fireworks start.

Here’s what the argument is tonight. Tammy wants to go home. She doesn’t want to be with a drunk like my dad no more, just lookit him. He doesn’t want to leave. He’s perfectly content with drink number nine and is starting to get a crush on drink number ten. Drink number ten has been batting her eyes at him for the last five minutes and my dad just can’t resist. He’s no match for that drink number ten. Her demure charms and mysterious ways are like a tonic. Like a gin and tonic.

“I am not gonna jus sit here night after night,” Tammy says, “watchin my life pass me by, watchin you, lookin at you, thinkin that looky here what I got. This is the horse I bet on. Ha ha. That’s a good one. That is precious.”

None of this is new. This is like a script you’d follow if you were a vacuum-cleaner salesman. It’s automatic. Instant. Standard practice.

My dad slams down drink number ten. I guess number ten was just a fling, cause he’s out the door before the glass hits the bar. He’s out the door now, storming through the gravel towards the sky-blue Nova parked always, forever, in the corner of the dirt lot. He’s in that car and starting it up before you can say DUI.

I’m rushing along, trying to catch up, hoping this won’t be the night, please God, not this night, not this one, when my dad finally acts out his final, inevitable, scene. It’s the scene he’s been writing for himself for years. I can practically hear the music swell up from the car wrapped around that old oak on Highway 34. The sound of the horn, drone drone, as the headlights cut into the pitch-black nothing and my dad’s head turns the windshield into a glass spider web.

Not tonight. Please God, not tonight.

I’m almost to him by the time Tammy comes barreling past me on the left. He’s trying to back up, but before he can she grabs the driver’s side handle and wrenches the door open. She lurches in and throws herself over him, trying to grab the keys.

“You ain’t driving nowhere like that, you sonuvabitch.”

Oh, Lord, here we go.

“Tammy. You just shut the door, now. Just shut the door.”

You’d never know he’s on drink number ten now, cause that’s how he gets. Calm. Quiet. Collected. My mama is maybe not so collected.

“You sonuvabitch, you ain’t leavin me to raise Luli by myself, you selfish bastard.”

This is when my dad remembers that he has a daughter and that, guess what, there I am. Just right there, smack-dab in the middle of the parking lot, standing dumb.

“Luli, get in the car. Get in the car now and we’ll just leave your mama here. She’s hysterical.”

Now, that does it. Tammy throws hers arms around me like a spider devouring a fly and next thing you know she’s protecting me like my life depended on it. This is her showstopper, ladies and gentlemen. This is where she brings down the house.

“Noooo. No. Nooo. You are not killing my daughter tonight. No sir. You are not takin my daughter with you. She’s the only thing I have. My pride and joy.”

She starts sobbing now. Make no mistake, this here is her show.

“Oh, Luli, Luli, I jus wanna do right by you. I do. I know your dad just, just can’t hold down a job, just never could do nothin. I never shoulda married him, Luli. It’s my fault. It’s my fault. Blame me.”

Now she is sobbing to beat the band. She did plays in high school and this is what it comes down to, drunken confessions in a square dirt lot.

“Luli, get in the car.”

The song and dance tonight is called, “Who gets Luli?”, followed by a little ditty of tears, followed by a fine little number about apologies, complete with sparkly smiles and a flourish of “I’ll-never-do-it-again-I-promise.”

Until the next show.

Now my dad is out the car and it’s an all-out brawl. There might as well be banjo music. She’s got my body, hunched over me like an old-fashioned vampire, nails digging little C’s into my back. He’s got my arm, pulling the both of us millimeter by millimeter to the car. This show’s a comedy and we’ll all be back next week.

We stay in this little clumsy tug-of-war for half a century, him pulling her, her clutching me, me trying to wriggle out, until all the sudden I feel two hands whisk me out and place me square four feet away.

“What the fuck is wrong with you people?”

It’s Ray. He must’ve been waiting in the wings. He’s got me beside him, holding his arm in front, protective. I wish he wouldn’t wait so long to make his entrance. He almost missed his cue. The light from the bar cuts a rectangle into the gravel as the dust settles. There’s a lot of huffing and puffing now.

“Look at yourselves. Jesus.”

Tammy and Dad stand there like two kids caught smoking. They stand there, side by side, waiting for the next line, cooling down. But somehow the shame thrown down missed them and hit me direct. They’re just trying to straighten their shirts. They’re just trying to figure out the most perfect closing line to get them the fuck offstage.

“C’mon, Luli,” Ray says. “I’ll give you a ride home. I’m sorry. I am truly sorry.”

He puts his hand on my shoulder and takes me with him while he tells the bar-back to cover, quick. He doesn’t want nothing to do with this show no more. He’s had it. There’s nothing grand or loud or pretty about the way he steers me across the gravel. There’s nothing flashy about the way he hoists me up into the truck, deep red, with giant wheels for winter. He just sets me up top the seat, simple, before strutting around and getting in the driver’s side. He starts the engine and pulls out the lot, with not even a wink back to remind us he’s the hero.

When we’re pulling out onto Highway 34, I look back and see my dad leaning on the hood of the Nova. You could practice for years and never lean with that picture perfect cowboy slunk.

And you would think that would be it and call it a night, I bet. But just wait cause two fence-posts past our drive Ray stops the truck and next thing you know I’m staring into the big black night with just two headlights, that’s it for miles. He starts mumbling something about there’s a funny noise he’s gotta check up on and there I am, feet up on the dash, thumb-twiddling.

If you’re wondering what I look like, just throw two giant eyes and one big mouth at a face too small to hold them. There must’ve been a mix-up that day on the assembly line, cause they got the proportions all wrong. I got made fun of for my big mouth before I even made it to day-care. Fish-face. Quacky-duck. Put it on my bill.

Seems like Ray’s doing a whole lot of nothing, tinkering with the engine and grunt grunt grunt but then, next thing you know, he’s got his head in my window like he’s the weatherman on the nightly news.

“Wull. I can’t figure it.”

“Figure what?”

“The noise. I can’t figure the noise.”

“Huh.”

“Look, Luli.”

Now he starts scratching the back of his neck, shifting leg to leg.

“I wanna show you something.”

Boy, he sure knows how to be boring.

Shift. Shift.

“Wull, what?”

Shift.

“Um, wull, how bout you close your eyes and open your mouth.”

“Wull, why would I wanna do that?”

“Just trust me. Trust me. You’ll like it. I promise.”

And now something in the air around me starts to vibrate and I get the feeling that funny noise was pure make-up and my thumbs stop mid-twiddle.

But there’s also a side of me that won’t ever look away from a dead bird or a car chase or a hold-up at the Alibi at 2 a.m. There’s this side that wants to grab that buzzing thing and pull it close and twirl it around and inspect it, like dissecting a frog, belly-splayed.

So I do it.

I do what he says and I close my eyes and open my mouth and the next thing I know he’s got his twenty-eight-year-old tongue in my thirteen-year-old mouth and all I can think is that I don’t think the hero is supposed to be doing this.

He was supposed to grab me out the hullabaloo and gallop me off on a palomino horse, straight up into Orion’s Belt and up up up into the stars. Just leave out the step about making up truck noises and grumbling round the tires and then he’s got his tongue down my throat. Don’t tell that part. That part’s double-secret.

I squirm away and look at him like his marbles got lost. He looks at me, eyes swirling, and get this.

That thing swirling in his eyes, that thing, like he wants to jump into my body and devour me from the inside out, makes it like I could ask for whatever my little heart desired in this second and he would have to do it. He wouldn’t have a choice. Right here, in this second in the dead black night with nothing but two white beams and a fence-post waning, I could ask him to climb Chimney Rock or go rob a bank or take me to Lincoln, no, Omaha, no, Dallas. I could ask him, in this little speck of a moment, to jump off a cliff or spit on his mama or crash his truck into the Missouri and he’d do it. He’d have to do it.

And I don’t know if it’s the way I open my eyes or the way I gawk at his eyes swirling, but he steps back and looks at the ground and shuffles his feet and shakes his head. Then he gets back over to the driver’s seat, real quick.

Silent. Silent.

Two fence-posts back.

Silent.

Down the drive.

Silent.

Slam the door.

Silent.

Not even a good-bye. No sir. Not now.

And as I watch him crunching over the gravel, kicking up dust down the drive and into the nothing black night, I could jump for joy.

I could jump for joy, cause now I know I’ve got something. Fish-face. Quacky-duck’s got something. I’ve got something that cancels out too-broke Dad and cancels out dirt-lot brawls and cancels out that leaning, falling house I’m about to walk into. I got something that’s gonna throw me straight into the sun and leave this shitty little dust-bin behind and you just wait, you just wait, to see how I make it go boom.

2

Did you know I have a baby brother? Had one. It’s cause Tammy had a blue dress. Tammy had a baby-blue dress that came down not far enough and my dad liked her in that blue dress and then, the next thing you know, that blue dress started fitting tighter and tighter around her belly and, next thing you know, it looked like she swallowed a basketball and, next thing you know, my dad was skipping around talking about, “Luli, you’re gonna have a little baby brother, now, you’re gonna have to help your mama now, see.”

And even though I was only seven and didn’t know why Tammy swallowed a basketball or how that made a baby brother, you couldn’t help but smile when you saw my dad floating through the door and through the next, sashaying around Mama in her too-tight blue dress. And she’d say, “Now, c’mon, now, you don’t know it’s gonna be a boy, you just don’t know that, just shush.” And he’d say, “Yes, I do. I do sure know it like I know the sky is blue and I know the world is round and I know I married the most beautiful girl in the county, the state, the whole wide world, darlin, the whole big wide world.”

And this is the part where he’d sidle up behind her and start rocking back and forth and making her blush and play-swat him away, but she’s swaying, too, swaying there in that baby-blue dress, too.

And they had a Sunday with everyone coming over and bringing gifts and a cake and a little baby crib from Aunt Gina and Uncle Nipper, white with gold trim, like something you pulled out of a dollhouse and blew up life-size. And they were laughing and giggling and smiling thirty ways till sundown. And you would have been smiling, too, cause it was like all the good-mornings and all the hi-how-are-yas and all the well-hello-sunshines in the county had taken lunch all at once and decided to march down the dirt road and alight, just this once, just this one Sunday afternoon, and arrange themselves in a circle around my basketball-swallowing mama, sitting proud and pretty in that blue dress that started it all.

And maybe God and the angels took note of that blue dress, too, because when that baby came out the color of moonlight, we all knew something was wrong.

And he was a boy, all right, Dad got that part right, but he wasn’t the kind of boy you could take out front and throw a football to in four years or five or even six. No, sir, he was just born the color coming off the moon and sickly and sniffling and stiff. He was just born with a frown on his face, like he got dropped off at the wrong planet or maybe the angels left out a step or maybe he didn’t want nothing to do with it in the first place.

And he had to set in that incubator like some kind of otherworld baby chick while my dad and Aunt Gina and Uncle Nipper just waited and waited and whispered and whispered and spent more and more money they didn’t have in the first place, just to keep him down on this here planet.

And there was a doctor came in from Omaha and he took one look at that baby and said we best be bringing him up there, cause that’s where they’ve got the best doctors and the best treatment money can buy, and my dad smiled and nodded and said oh-yes-Doctor, and that baby stayed right there in that incubator for three days straight before deciding that maybe this wasn’t the place for him after all. Maybe this wasn’t the right planet or the right county or the right too-broke family from somewhere out in the sticks, anyways, and so he just upped and took to floating back up into the blue sky from whence he came, back up to wherever planet you get to go to when you get born the color of moonlight and your too-poor daddy can’t afford to send you up to Omaha, where they’ve got the best white-coated smiling doctors that know what the fuck to do anyways.

You see, it’s one thing to pretend you’re James Dean and pump gas in the summer and make the girls blush before heading back to your double-wide. It’s one thing to pack mules in the fall and live in a log cabin and dip your hat down before riding off into the setting sun. But when not being able to scrape two dimes together makes it so your baby boy, born the color of the night sky, has to stay put in that glowing tin-cup incubator instead of up with the experts in Omaha, well, then, there’s nothing glamorous about that, now, is there?

And she didn’t have to say it, my mama, when the bones fell out her body all at once and Aunt Gina and Uncle Nipper tried to hold her rag-doll body up by the elbows. She didn’t have to say it, my mama, when it was like God himself had his heel into her back, holding her head down into the linoleum. She didn’t have to say it, my mama, when my dad tried to shush her sobbing into the tile, when she pulled back, recoiled at just even the inkling, the beginning, the thought of his hand on her arm. She didn’t have to say it. None of it. We all knew. We all knew.

And Uncle Nipper knew to go to the house and get rid of that white crib with gold trim, before Mama could set eyes on it, please Lord, just do it. And Aunt Gina knew to take that baby-blue dress and just bury it, bury it deep in the back of her closet far, far away, before Sunday visits and swallowing basketballs and boys born the color coming off the moon. And I knew, this is when I first knew, this is when I learned how to throw myself over to the other side of the room and watch my dumb little life like I was watching a movie and you get the popcorn and we’ll sit a spell and see what else goes by.

And there goes Dad, he’s been slumping around for three weeks straight with his head hanging off his shoulders. And there goes Mama, she still can’t eat but bring her this macaroni salad, just in case. And there goes most of my little-kid playmates, cause no one wants a fucking thing to do with this house anymore, that’s for damn sure. And here comes Aunt Gina and Uncle Nipper with a few kind words and making sure I got at least some Malt-O-Meal and Chef Boyardee to tide me over, they’ll be back tomorrow. And there goes my baby blue brother, somewhere into the night sky above me, and I wonder if I get to see him someday and tell him about the white crib he missed out on and that I know it wasn’t much but we were real proud to have him and wanted him to stay, just wanted him to stay a spell, and I would have played whatever silly little dumb game he had in mind, really, I was just happy to have him, my baby brother born the color of dusk.

And you better just learn to throw yourself twenty feet across the room and let it play, just let it play. You better just learn to put each day and night up onto that screen and just keep on watching. Here’s what you’ll see. You get to see the incredible shrinking man. You get to see a man six foot tall turn in on himself and slump forward into nothing and then gone. Poof. You get to see a great tale of revenge and lust with a beautiful blond with flip-up hair. You get to see her get gussyed up each evening and put on lipstick and giggle loud and bat her eyelashes at strangers, straying a little bit behind the Alibi on a Saturday night, no, better, make that Sunday. Hell, she might run off with the devil himself if he walked in, leaned his elbow on the jukebox and tipped his hat just so.

You get to see all these attractions and then some. You get to see Elvis-style dreamboats and slutted-up little girls and eyes swirling wild by the side of the road. You get to see naughty pink parts and coming attractions and wait, just wait, there’s more, keep watching, keep watching, let it play, let it play.

 

3

People think we’re poor but I made a list of things we have, just to set them straight.

We have one seventy-year-old farmhouse, complete with barn, shack and an acre of tall wheat with weeds sticking up. We have all this luxury thanks to my grandpa who gave it to my mama when he died, on account of she was marrying a no good, ne’er-gonna-make-nothing-out-of-his-skinny-bone-self like my dad. Despite the fact that it is, at first glance, a farmhouse, we don’t farm it or anything like that. We wouldn’t even know where to start. Tammy’s been trying to grow an avocado tree out of a pit for three years.

All told, we got a yellow farmhouse and a green barn and a blue shack but they’re all faded to about the same color anyways. The paint’s cracked and the wood on each of these little monuments that make up our own private village is washed out to gray, light gray, gray-blue or dark gray. The barn has a huge loft in it full of hay and smelling like horses, even though there haven’t been horses here for twenty years. Just about the only animal life in there are the bats that flutter around thirty feet up top the loft making it Halloween all year round.

It’s so thick with cobwebs up there I’m surprised the bats don’t get caught and eaten up by some imaginary spider of hideous proportion with sinister, darting eyes. On the other side of the cobwebs, facing out into the wheat dusk air, is a white-circle silhouette of a horse centered on each side of the barn, staring proud off into the setting sun.

In front of the barn is our humble abode, which is faded yellow inside and out, with tiny-blue-flower wallpaper on a white-and-gold background in both the entry, which we never use, and the dining room, which we use even less. Everything in our rickety faded buttercup house, dead straight across from the biggest cemetery in Lancaster County, built around 1910, for the gravedigger and his wife, actually still runs properly, with the one exception of some hullabaloo about the water.

Some orange-vested worker men from Lincoln came out here a few years back, noodled with the well tap and warned us that we had too much lithium in our water, declaring that it’d be best for everyone if we just relocated. This is something we never did, of course, because we didn’t have nowhere to relocate to, and Mama says, “Shit, wull, if we have lithium in our water we might as well see it as some kinda healing bonus and make the best of it…some people might even pay extra for that.”

Sides all that, we got one RCA color TV with wood on the sides and that sky blue Chevy Nova my dad takes pride in scurrying around and underneath on weekends, fixing and tinkering and muttering to himself about trannies, alignment and pistons.

And I know that these things may not seem like much to some la-di-da snooty-pants from Omaha but there are plenty of people in Lancaster County who have less than that, so I know, for a fact, that we’re not poor.

Okay, this is what there is. Sometimes there’s macaroni and cheese, with tuna, for protein, but that’s pretty much as good as it gets. If you’re still hungry you can have blue frosting on graham crackers for dessert. There’s also the option, sometimes, of a sugar sandwich, which involves two slices of white bread, buttered thick and spread with plain white sugar. And then other times, depending on how many days my dad’s been gone, there’s even the possibility of me just stealing our dinner from the Piggly Wiggly in Fremont or Wahoo or Alliance in case it’s a special occasion…birthday, Christmas, Easter…usually something involving ham. Ham means it’s a holiday and wear a shirt.

Tammy did a fairly reasonable job of teaching me how to steal when I was ten, but the knack I have for it comes mostly from my last three years of experience and has little to do with her slightly naive take on shopkeepers and advantage-taking. You may be thinking, oh my good Lord, what kind of a mother would put her own offspring up to such mischief and certain jeopardy? But, in all actuality, there’s a trick to it.

You see, this way, if I get caught, she can scold me and pretend like she’s so ashamed, she raised me with the Lord Jesus Christ in my heart and how could I betray her, the baby Jesus and the blessed Virgin Mary like that. Believe me, she knows how to showboat.

By the end of it, she’d have the shopkeeper so caught up in his own journey, or lack of journey, towards Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior that they’d just go ahead and let us go. They’d be too busy feeling sorry for me that I had such a pious mama that was surely going to spend this lifetime and the next dragging me through fire and brimstone before flying up to heaven on a puffy Charmin cloud.

I am proud to say that, with the help of Jesus Christ and the Bible, I’ve stolen our special-occasion family dinner for three years straight and not once had to face up to any power higher than the day clerk at the Piggly Wiggly.

It’s the little things like that I try to think about when I know I’m about to start feeling sorry for myself in my little yellow house with my stupid life and nothing to eat.

Lookit, if you think you can just march out to the kitchen and say a fine howdedoo this morning, you got another thing coming, that’s for damn sure. No sir, here’s how it’s got to be if you know what’s good for you. Peek. Tippy-toe. Tippy-toe. Down the hall. Peek. Tippy-toe. Tippy-toe. Down the kitchen. Peek. Investigate the ashtray. You can read that ashtray like a weather-vane.

You know how most people turn on the TV to figure out the weather and how the day’s gonna turn out? Well, round here the ashtray is gonna tell you who’s three sheets to the wind and if the storm’s rolling in or already passed. You best learn to read it if you know what’s good for you.

Empty ashtray means partly sunny. Empty ashtray means the coast is clear. Go about your day. Nothing to see here.

Full ashtray ain’t bad either. Full ashtray means the storm’s passed. Don’t worry. They’re all in bed now, it’s over. Just hope for full or empty ashtray.

Full ashtray with lit cigarette?

Well, you can’t win em all. That lit cigarette means the storm’s rolling in. Brace yourself.

Now, if you think that’s bad, just wait till you find a full ashtray with more than one lit cigarette. That is the last thing you want to see. If there’s more than one lit cigarette in that ashtray, you might as well tippy-toe back down the hall, pull the covers over your head, huddle and wait out the storm. More than three lit cigarettes in that ashtray and you best evacuate. More than three cigarettes means it’s gonna be a doozey. Hold on tight. Category 5.

Look here, it’s bad enough if you get one lit cigarette. That means the night before got piggy-backed over into this morning and the drinks are still going strong. They could be out there carousing with drink number eight to thirteen, for God’s sake. Who’s even counting anymore anyways? Might as well just drink out the bottle.

But if you get more than three lit cigarettes in that thing, that means Dad corralled some barflies over in a fit of generosity, probably somewhere near the third chorus of “That’s Life.” Hey, folks, let’s go to my place, we’re all amigos here.

They’ll be sitting there, round the kitchen table, unwitting, smoke coming up off their fingers, dazzled by my dad. Sitting ducks. He’ll be telling them all about that day he got stuck in the mud down by Wahoo and then this happened and then that happened and can you believe he got out, no one thought he could. They’ll be in love with him just like I am, just like Tammy used to be. They’ll be thinking this guy is the greatest guy since sliced bread, that’s for sure. If there’s a lady in the crowd, she’ll be thinking bout how she can sidle up to him on the way to the bathroom, maybe. She’ll be checking her lipstick and hiking up her bra every time he looks away. She’s got plan for him. Big plans.

They’ll never see it coming. No sir. I almost feel sorry for them, smiling dumb round that ashtray. They don’t know that drink number eight or nine are gonna be dropping by soon, looking for a brawl. They don’t know they’ve got a date with drink number ten that involves a lot of hollering, throwing bottles and knocking that front door off its hinges. They got no idea. That front door has been slammed off its hinges so many times we haven’t even bothered to put it back since June.

Maybe tomorrow.

But this morning I am breathing a sigh of relief because that ashtray is empty, thank God. Bout time we had a little peace and quite around here.

There is one little thing wrong with the kitchen, though, at present, which is that there happens to be a man in a gray suit sitting smack-dab in the middle of it. That’s a new one.

It’s not that a beaten-up farmhouse ten minutes outside of Palmyra, Nebraska, is an especially dangerous place to be, but it has happened. Twenty minutes east of here, in Alliance, there was a whole family got shot in cold blood about five years back. Two guys from Dodge sashayed into town, walked in, lined all four of them up on the floor and fired, but not until each of them had taken a turn with their fourteen-year-old daughter who happened to be runner-up Modern Miss Teenage Nebraska.

She was wearing a light-blue nightgown when it happened and in the pictures of the aftermath it looked like it had a flower pattern on it from all the blood, dark-brown and red flowers, abstract and huge. The blood down the inside of her legs was crackled and dried up into little pieces. Her eyes were wide open and she looked like a shattered doll.

Not me.

I slink back to my room and get something girls aren’t supposed to have but I do. Uncle Nipper gave it to me for my thirteenth birthday, along with a T-shirt that says, “Take Me Drunk I’m Home.” It’s a cockroach colored .45 and just looking at it makes you feel mean. It looks bad and looks like it’ll bring bad with it.

It’s my pride and joy.

I got some hot moves I picked up from Clint Eastwood and here’s my chance. I must have practiced this scene ten times since my birthday. Watch me sidle down the hall, hugging the wall, eyes froze. Make him turn around first. That’s what Clint would do. You gotta wait till they see you and make yourself big. You gotta show them your soul got left back, long ago, before handing them their walking papers from this shiny life to the next.

He’s sitting at the head of the table like he owns the place. His back is towards me and his neck is just waiting there like a baked potato for me to take aim. His head shimmers, bald and stubbly, with a few moles here and there like towns spread out in Oklahoma. He’s got a briefcase on his lap, proper-like. There’s something in the way he’s holding his chin up or maybe it’s the slope of his nose that tells me he’s got money and that this place, my place, might as well be the outhouse outside a cathouse.

I prop myself up in the doorway, leaning slight to the side, making sure to hold the .45 real casual. I turn myself mean inside out, freeze my skin and say, 

“That’s my dad’s chair.”

His knee knocks up the table and he turns round, flustered and blustery. I could jump for joy, I really could, he looks like such an idiot, but instead I choose to concentrate on my intimidating tactics. Clint wouldn’t jump for joy.

“Well, my oh my, you sure gave me a scare.”

He pretends not to see my .45, reflecting around the room, whirling slowly in little bright circles that can only spell his doom. He nervous smiles but I don’t smile back. I just stare at him and raise my chin a little.

“Is your mother home?”

“Nope.”

“Do you know when she’ll be back?”

“Nope.”

“Do you know where she went?”

“Nope.”

“Do you always carry a gun like that?”

“Yep.”

“That’s a very, um, nice gun.”

“What gun?”

“That gun. It’s…interesting.”

“My gun is interesting?”

“Well, I mean, it seems to be very well crafted.”

“It’s not a gun. It’s a .45.”

“Um.”

“Smith and Wesson.”

“Maybe I could give you my card and you could tell her I dropped by…”

“Card?”

“Yes. Um. Here.”

He smiles and takes his card out. He reaches his arm towards me and dangles it out for me to grab. I don’t move.

“Who are you, Mister?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. How rude of me. My name’s Lux. Lux Feld. I’m in investments.”

“Investments?”

“You know, land, property, stuff like that.”

He laughs light and shrugs, making nice. I nod and laugh light back, shuffling my feet against the linoleum floor and slapping my thigh like I’m the inbred retard he takes me for.

He stops laughing and puts his card back in his jacket.

“You always break into people’s houses at…what time is it?”

“Eight o’clock.”

“At 8 o’clock in the morning?”

“Well, actually, the door was open, er, there was no door, I mean a screen door but…you know, well, I’m sorry, I didn’t see a buzzer so I just thought I’d—”

“Do you think I’m pretty?”

“Excuse me?”

“Do you think I’m pretty? Like if you saw me passing by would you want to kiss me or something?”

“Um. I don’t really think that’s—”

“Luli, what the hell are you doing?”

Tammy comes barreling down the staircase, pushing me aside, and I can tell she’s about to do something worse but then she sees Mr. Feld and it’s like she turns from a moth to a butterfly in two seconds flat. She straightens up and tightens her robe around her, fluffing her hair up and smiling pretty.

“Why, Mr. Feld. Whatever in the world are you doing here at this hour of the day, of the morning, I mean? It must be seven-thirty, seven even.”

“It’s actually eight, Mrs. Cutter.”

He looks at her kind of funny when he says her name, like there’s a little joke here they got between them. They’re both smiling now. Tammy starts looking a little red like she’s at the sock-hop. And I have seen this blushing before. It means my dad is on the outs again.

I’m surprised this mister is even talking to her looking like that, sunk-eyed and shabby in her frayed blue robe and last night’s makeup. She keeps adjusting and readjusting herself, like somewhere in the position of her belt lies true happiness.

“I mean, I wouldn’t even have woke up if it wasn’t for Luli and her loud laughing.”

She looks at me for that one. I smile back at her like I’m just as happy as she is and we’re all just one big happy family. She sees my .45 and grabs it out of my hand.

“Oh, Luli, you are just such a little card with that gun.”

She laughs, bashful, swatting her hand at Mr. Feld, covering.

“She don’t mean nothing. She just likes to play.”

“It’s not a gun. It’s a .45.” I repeat it, get it straight.

“Well, that’s nice, dear.”

Tammy smiles and the peeled worm takes a gulp.

“Okay, then, Mr. Feld, if you’ll just let me get dressed, I’ll be right back down.”

She turns my way and smiles like a TV commercial.

“Luli, you better start getting ready for school now.”

All smiles. New and improved soap.

“School don’t start for two weeks.”

She grabs my arm and steers me firm towards my room. I look back at her and she stares right back like she’s daring me to make a move. Tammy’s got a mean backhand. I turn and start getting dressed, careful to stand next to the door so I can keep up. I hear her sigh and giggle, then a little laughing and talking. A guilty little whisper. A sentence, hushed.

Then the screen door slams and just like that they’re gone.

I walk back out to the kitchen and listen to the sound of a smooth kind of car driving off into the distance. Well, that’s that then. If my calculations are correct, he’s not new to her cause there’s already a secret between them. She must have found him at the Hy-Vee or the Kwik-Mart or the Piggly Wiggly. He must have driven his cart into her cart, blushed and feigned an apology, polite. She would have turned round, seen money and they’d be off to the races.

Money.

I open the fridge for something to eat, but there’s nothing but brown peaches and a half-finished jar of relish.

I bet this morning my mama gets bacon and eggs with waffles on the side.

I look through the rest of the cupboards, clacking away, quicker and quicker, until some Saltines make their way into my hands and up to my mouth, stale.

Upstairs I hear the sound of my dad stirring.

I settle down into the chair, collected. He walks down the staircase and squints at me through the doorway.

“Where’s your mother?”

“She left.”

“With who?”

“Somebody.”

“Somebody who?”

“Some guy.”

Something changes in the whiskey sweat air around him. He freezes and gets a little taller altogether, shrinking and getting bigger in the same miracle breath. He looks at the wallpaper like he can see right through it, all the way to wherever and whatever that fancy car has driven off to.

“His name’s Lux. He’s kinda gay.”

“By gay do you mean that he’s a homosexual?”

“I don’t know.”

“Wull, some folks don’t like that word, so you should find a new one.”

“Like what?”

“I dunno, something sweet. You’re a girl, girls supposed to be sweet.”

Then he looks at what I’m wearing. Not much.

“You wearing that outta the house?”

“Maybe, why, what’s wrong with it?”

“Seems a little light on the clothing part, don’t you think?”

“Wull, what do you think?”

“I think you look like trouble.”

“Wull, I can change, I guess—”

“No use lookin for trouble, Luli, it’ll find you soon enough.”

He looks at me there, staring up at him from the foot of the staircase, and something strange and wistful takes over his face.

“You know, it’s funny…in this light…you look just like your mother when I first met her…just blond and pretty…before she got mean.”

I look up at him, wanting to tell him I’m sorry, wanting to fix him and make him hate her back.

“Don’t get mean, Luli, just stay little and pretty and sweet, how bout that?”

I try to make my face smile but I think I’m turning out more of a grimace, some little girl squint into the sunlight.

“Just stay sweet.”

He stares at me like that for what seems like two weeks.

Then he snaps out of it like some broken spell, looking at me like I’m this demonic Muppet sent to hurl him into the abyss with trouble dressing and stray-cat luring.

“Tell your mama, when you see her, tell her I had some business myself, tell her I had some business out in Shelby and I may be gone for a while, you know…paperwork.”

Paperwork.

Now I know that’s a lie.

The last time I saw my dad pick up a pen, I was eight.

Then he barrels past me, quick, grabs his keys off the wall and rushes out the screen door, letting it slam hard behind. I go to the door and watch as he drives away, churning up dust all the way down the dirt road and into the horizon.

He doesn’t look back.

 

4

I wander off to the barn to consider my options. It’s the day dying down, the hay and the wood smelling sweet and dusty. The grass and the heat of the day coming off the ground, up up up into the giant pink sky.

It may have been that word paperwork. It may have been the way the dust was flying up underneath the tires or the back side of the Nova as it shrunk into a glossy speck on the beige horizon, but something in my gut, sure as sugar, tells me this:

He ain’t coming back.

Now I’m not trying to cry wolf, since I’ve been accused of some such shenanigans before, but I just know this as a fact in the back of my neck and the bottom of my belly. He won’t be back. No way. Not after paperwork. I don’t think I’ve ever seen my dad sign a check, let alone take a stab at paperwork.

There are some things you just know, like when the sun goes down and you know something different is gonna happen that night. You may not know what it is and it may not turn out to be much, but something in the air changing around you or the night creeping up tells you this time you’re in for it.

I feel like that right now.

I’ve felt like that all day long and into the night, this night, that’s holding something behind its back.

The second idea muddling its way up the back of my head and into focus stems from the way my frazzled, blue-robed mama was looking at that bald-headed man. It cannot be denied. She has it between the legs for him.

I don’t know what he’s got for her, if it’s in his head or his heart or his wallet, but it doesn’t really matter now, does it? Because he’s got her. That’s his problem. Good luck. Once Tammy gets her hooks into something or somebody it’s hard to get her out or off or out of the picture. Like some kind of blond tick, she’ll just suck and suck until she’s swelled up with blood, sweat and tears, like a needy grape. Then she’ll either burst, leaving your inside carnage strewn out about the kitchen floor, or she’ll just hop off, casual-like, as if nothing ever happened.

You gotta watch her like that. See whether she’ll bite or just hop off. The problem is, she has that blond flip, lipstick, I-can-make-your-dreams-come-true disguise that makes a fella forget his own name. I’d feel sorry for that old gray-suit peeled worm, if he hadn’t come in, usurped my daddy and drove off with Tammy to moneyland, without a glance backwards, through the dust. As it is, though, I’ve got my own problems to worry about.

My two conclusions lead me to a third and final one, which goes something like this:

My time for the next few weeks, months, maybe years is gonna be spent either alone, like right now, swinging my feet out the barn with a gurgling stomach, or, possibly, with Tammy and that peeled worm in wealthypeopleworld with a fake smile and a quickie in the closet and a coming out the pantry out of breath, belt-buckling.

And though you might think I ought to clap my hands together, shout hallelujah and thank God the money train has somehow seen fit to stop outside my door, you yourself would be on the wrong track. This is cause you yourself would not be thinking about watching blushing and backrooms and groping of your for-sale mama while your dad is somewhere two sheets to drunksville. Look, the rich get richer and the poor get the picture. That’s what my daddy says and that is why I am not about to align myself on the mean side of Tammy’s meandering.

So, as neither of these two possibilities strikes me as a satisfactory way to spend my first official year as an American girl teenager, I choose to opt for a third and final possibility that I’ll call none of the above.

Now, let’s get something straight here, this will not be easy and could easily end in disaster, jail and death. But all three of these sad conclusions, to my mind, sure beat staying here with a grumbling stomach, staring at myself in the mirror, looking at my mouth, lips, tits, knees, feet and between my legs, trying to figure out what the difference is between me and all those girls in the magazines, on the TV and in the movies. Because, even with my quacky bill, I am just as easy on the eyes as they are, and they all seem to be happy and glowing and rich, so why aren’t I?

Lookit, there’s got to be a way to turn that thing, that thing with swirling eyes, into three meals a day and not have to steal them. I saw what I saw and I’m gonna make it go.

See you could take it, you could take that thing, that thing that makes their eyes go round and you could turn it up and cash it in for a rebate and not have to eat cold beans for lunch and vow to never, never care about love or romance or soap-opera promises. You could just cash in on that eye swirl.

So that’s it. I make up my mind to find a sugar-daddy who will fawn over me and feed me whenever I’m hungry, not just with sugar sandwiches but with rich-people food. He’ll pour out different-flavored Riunites in different-shaped glasses and blather on about oak-barrels and rainfall and grapes. I’ll say, It does go well with the fish, and smile, and he’ll be proud and want to buy me more stuff. He’ll take me shopping, watch me try on dresses and tell me he insists I get every one, even the red one. I’ll say, Oh no I can’t take this, but he’ll say, Yes you can and throw in this necklace, too, while you’re at it.

I’ll try that out for a while, see how I like it. Although, now that I think about it, it’s not going to be easy sitting in the middle of nowhere Nebraska looking for a leg up. We may have an abundance of shiftless ranch hands, but sugar-daddies are in short supply, no doubt about it. Nebraska is a poor state with poor people with nowhere to go and no hurry to get there.

No sir.

This is gonna take drastic action.

I weigh my options and realize I will have to head west. That’s where they grow cowboys with ten-gallon hats and big skies with cactus and bright gold jewelry with turquoise and snakes.

West it is. I’ll have to get out while the getting is good, before that gray-suit larva comes in and takes over, telling me what to do with some legal mumbo jumbo he learned in Lincoln. I do not want him doling out my chores while patting Tammy on the ass. That is for damn sure.

I’ll have to find someplace shiny-like and mean, with rich people throwing money away like they’re bragging by doing it. Someplace where I can sneak around the back sides of buildings, make my way with a smile and a few clever words, before striking. Someplace where there’s people to fool worth fooling…

And then it hits me clear as day.

Las Vegas.

That’s it, no question, no contest. Las Vegas, Nevada, where there’s desert and gambling and lights and drinking all through the night with no one to know me or tell me what to do or get in the way of all my ingenious money-making schemes. I’ll go there and make it mine, become one of the legends of the city, someone they talk about for years after, who came and went but no one really knew deep inside. They’ll whisper about me in dark rooms late at night, a character of mystery and intrigue who was feared and respected throughout the city, out into the desert and the netherworld beyond.

I better bring something to dazzle them.

I’ll need something that reeks of class and sophistication, like on Remington Steele. I burrow through Tammy’s closet and come up with some expert disguises. My new life will be dangerous but full of glamour. I picture myself with the lights coming up behind me in Vegas. I see myself framed by the cowboy made of neon looming up glittery with the promise of knocking my socks off.

Except there’s the issue of money. As fucking usual. But I’m way ahead on this one. Some mystery person, and I’m assuming it’s my mama, has got two hundred smackers saved up in a crumple behind the trash can, under the kitchen sink. That’s her brilliant idea of a secret. I found it by almost throwing it out. I figure it must be from that gray-suit peeled worm she’s running around with. My dad ain’t got money enough to bring home a box of Corn Pops, let alone two-hundred smackers. I guess Mr. Gray-Suit thinks he’s providing for his future family, bought and paid for.

I wish I could see her face when she sees it’s gone.

And now, last but not least, one fancy black bag I stole from this girl I hate. She belongs to the Knolls Country Club and has a habit of talking about it to everyone around her and inviting everyone in the class. Except me. I guess I’m not country club material. I guess I’m the girl with the ripped-up knee-socks and leftover clothes and an artichoke for lunch.

I get it.

Well, I took her bag and the only thing I regret is that I can’t give it back and take it again. And ten years down the line she’ll be begging me to be her country club guest and I’ll remind her I’m just the Twinkie-raised girl with the ripped-up knee-socks, no thanks. You can get a nose job while I fuck your husband in the back.

So long, suckers.

Now I’m down the stairs and out the gate.

I always knew I would fly off someday. I just never knew when, sitting in the barn, swinging my legs out, waiting for the starter pistol behind my eardrums to go pop. But it never came. It sidled up and pondered and wishy-washed itself around my skull, playing some kinda chorus of not yet. But the pop pop never came. Until now, this moment, here, where all my fears and doubts and misgivings have come to the dance to ask my dreams for a whirl. And just as I know that my daddy is probably deep into the panhandle by now, way past Alliance and not looking back, I know that now, this, this moment here, is the pop pop pop.

I wonder what they’ll say about me when I’m gone. I wonder how long it’ll take them to figure out I ain’t coming back. Just the thought of it makes me whistle and puts a zing in my shoe-step. I am not what they thought I was. No sir. I am bigger than this whole state put together and I have listened and I have waited and now I can hear it. Pop.

Here’s where I turn and start walking down the gravel road. I feel like there’s something coming up underneath my feet, something lifting me and moving me forward, something just waiting to throw me into the sun.

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