“Tiny’s on the roof! Tiny’s on the roof!”
That’s all they can talk about down there. So what, I’m on the roof. What they don’t know is I may just never get off.
I didn’t mean to be so dramatic. Would have simply gone to my room and slammed the door, but my mother was in my room. So I slammed out the kitchen door. And there was a ladder, to the roof.
I flung myself down, still in a tizzy, and took some sips from my flask of Jack Daniel’s. Well, I declare, I thought, it’s right nice up here. Sheltered, but with a view of the pastures and the Rio Grande and Mount Cristo Rey. Real pleasant. Especially now that Esther has me all set up with an extension cord. A radio, electric blanket, crossword puzzles. She empties my chamber pot and brings me food and bourbon. For sure I’ll be up here until after Christmas.
Christmas.
Tyler knows how I hate and despise Christmas. He and Rex Kipp run plumb amok every year … donating to charities, toys to crippled children, food to old folks. I heard them plotting to drop toys and food on Juarez shantytown Christmas Eve. Any excuse to show off, spend money, and act like a couple of royal assholes.
This year Tyler said I was in for a big surprise. A surprise for me? I’m embarrassed to admit this. You know I actually imagined that he was taking me to Bermuda or Hawaii. Never in my wildest dreams did I figure on a family reunion.
He finally admitted he was really doing it for Bella Lynn. Bella Lynn is our spoiled rotten daughter who’s back home now that her husband, Cletis, left her. “She’s so blue,” Tyler says. “She needs a sense of roots.” Roots? I’d rather see Gila monsters in my hatbox.
First off he invites my mother. Up and takes her out of the Bluebonnet nursing home. Where they keep her tied up, where she belongs. Then he asks his one-eyed alcoholic brother, John, and his alcoholic sister, Mary. Now, I drink. Jack Daniel’s is my friend. But I still have my sense of humor, not mean like her. Besides she has incestuous feelings for Tyler, always has. Plus he asks her boring boring husband, who didn’t come, praise the Lord. Their daughter Lou is here, with a baby. Her husband left her too. She’s about as empty-headed as my Bella Lynn. Oh well, in no time they’ll both be running off with some new illiterate misfits.
Tyler went and invited eighty people to a party Christmas Eve. That’s tomorrow. This is when our new maid Lupe went and stole our ivory-handled carving knives. She hid them in her girdle, bent over for some fool reason crossing the bridge to Juarez. Stabbed herself, almost bled to death and it all ended up Tyler’s fault. He had to pay for the ambulance and the hospital and a huge old fine because she was a wetback. And of course they found out about the wetback gardeners and the wash woman. So now there’s no help at all. Just poor Esther and some part-time strangers. Thieves.
But the worst worst top of everything is he invited my relatives from Longview and Sweetwater. Terrible people. They are all very thin or grotesquely fat, and all they do is eat. They all look as if they have seen hard times. Drought. Tornadoes. Point is these are people I don’t even know, don’t ever want to know. People I married him for so I’d never have to see again.
Not that I need any more reasons to stay up here, but there is another one. Once in a while, clear as a bell, I can hear every single word Tyler and Rex are saying down in the shop.
I’m ashamed to admit this, but, what the hell, it’s the truth. I’m jealous of Rex Kipp. Now I know Tyler’s been sleeping with that tacky little secretary of his, Kate. Well, I.C.C.L. Which means I couldn’t care less. Keeps him from huffin and puffin top of me.
But Rex. Now Rex is year in, year out. We spent half of our honeymoon at Cloudcroft, other half on Rex’s ranch. Those two fish and hunt and gamble together and fly all around Lord knows where in Rex’s plane. What galls me the most is how they talk together, out in the shop, for hours and hours. I mean to say this has nagged me to death. What in Sam Hill are those old farts talking about out there?
Well, now I know.
Rex: You know, Ty, this is a damn good whiskey.
Tyler: Yep. Damn good.
Rex: Goes down like mother’s milk.
Tyler: Smooth as silk.
(They’ve only been swilling that rotgut for forty-some years.)
Rex: Look at them old clouds … billowing and tumbling.
Tyler: Yep.
Rex: I expect that’s my favorite kind of cloud. Cumulus. Full of rain for my cattle and just as pretty as can be.
Tyler: Not me. Not my favorite.
Rex: How come?
Tyler: Too much commotion.
Rex: That’s what’s fine, Ty, the commotion, It’s majestic as all git out.
Tyler: God damn, this is a nice mellow hooch.
Rex: That is just one hell of a beautiful sky.
(Long silence.)
Tyler: My kind of sky is a cirrus sky.
Rex: What? Them wispy no-count little clouds?
Tyler: Yep. Now up in Ruidoso, that sky is blue. With those light cirrus clouds skipping along so light and easy.
Rex: I know that very sky you’re talking about. Day I shot me two buck antelope.
(That’s it. The entire conversation. Here’s one more:)
Rex: But do Mexkin kids like the same toys white kids do?
Tyler: Course they do.
Rex: Seems to me they play with things like sardine cans for boats.
Tyler: That’s the whole point of our Juarez operation. Real toys. But, what kind? How bout guns?
Rex: Give Mexkins guns? No way.
Tyler: They’re all crazy about cars. And the women about babies.
Rex: That’s it! Cars and dolls!
Tyler: Tinker toys and erector sets!
Rex: Balls. Real baseballs and footballs!
Tyler: We’ve got everything figured out just fine, Rex.
Rex: Perfect.
(I mean, what existential dilemma these dickheads got figured out beats all hell out of me.)
Tyler: How you going to find it, flying in the dark?
Rex: I can find anyplace. Anyhow, we’ll have the star.
Tyler: What star?
Rex: The star of Bethlehem!
I watched the whole party from up here. Boy was I a relaxed hostess, lying under the starry sky, my little radio playing “Away in a Manger” and “White Christmas.”
Esther was up at four, cooking and cleaning. Have to admit Bella and Lou helped her out. The florist arrived and the caterers with more food and booze, bartenders in tuxedos. A truck came to deliver a giant bubble machine Tyler had set up inside the front door. I can’t think about my carpet. Loudspeakers started blaring Roy Rogers and Dale Evans singing “Jingle Bells” and “I Saw Momma Kissing Santa Claus.” Then cars and more cars kept on coming with even more people I never want to see again in my life. Esther, bless her heart, brought me up a tray of food and pitcher of eggnog, a fresh bottle of old Jack. She was all dressed up in black, with a white lace apron, her white hair coiled in braids around her head. She looked like a queen. She’s the only person I like in this whole wide world or maybe it’s that she’s the only one who likes me.
“What’s my slut of a sister-in-law up to?” I asked her.
“Playing cards. Some men started up a poker game in the library and she asks real sweet, ‘Ooh, can I play?’”
“That’ll teach them.”
“That’s the very thing I says to myself minute she started to shuffle. Zip zip zip.”
“And my mama?”
“She’s running around telling folks Jesus is our blessit redeemer.”
I didn’t have to ask her about Bella Lynn, who was on the back porch swing with old Jed Ralston. His wife, mongoose Martha, we call her, probably too loaded down with diamonds to walk, find out what he’s up to. Then Lou comes out with Orel, Willa’s boy, an overgrown mutant who plays tight end for the Texas Aggies. The four of them start strolling around the garden, giggling and squealing, ice cubes rattling. Strolling? Those girls were half-lit, their skirts so tight and their spike heels so high they could barely walk. I yelled down at them,
“Tar-paper floozies! White trash!”
“What’s that?” Jed asks.
“It’s just Mama. Up on the roof.”
“Tiny’s on the roof?”
So I lay me back down, went back to looking up at the stars. Turned my Christmas music high to drown out the party. I sang, too, to myself. It came upon a midnight clear. Fog came from my mouth and I sounded like a child, singing. I just lay there and sang and sang.
It was around ten when Tyler and Rex and the two girls came sneaking out, whispering and stumbling in the dark. They loaded our Lincoln with two big sacks, drove in two cars down the back pasture to the field by the ditch where Rex lands the Piper Cub. The four of them tied the bags onto the outside of the plane and then Tyler and Rex climbed in. Bella Lynn and Lou turned on the car’s headlights to light Rex up a runway. Although seems like it was such a clear night he could have seen by stars.
The plane was so loaded down it barely got off the ground. When it finally did it took a god-awful time to get any altitude. Just missed the wires and then the cottonwoods at the river. The wings dipped a few times, and he wasn’t showing off. At last he was headed for Juarez and the tiny red taillight disappeared. I breathed and said thank God and drank.
I lay back down, shaking. I couldn’t bear it if Tyler were to crash. Just then the radio played “Silent Night,” which always gets me. I cried, just plain bawled my eyes out. It’s not true, what I said about him and Kate. I mind it a lot.
The girls were waiting in the dark by the tamarisk bushes. Fifteen, twenty minutes, seemed like hours. I didn’t see the plane, but they must have, because they turned the car lights on and it landed.
I couldn’t hear a word because of the racket from the party and they had the shop door and windows shut, but I could see the four of them in front of the fireplace. It looked so sweet just like A Christmas Carol with them toasting champagne, their faces all glowing and happy.
That’s about when the news came on my radio. “A short while ago a mystery Santa dropped toys and much needed food onto Juarez shantytown. But marring this Christmas surprise is the tragic news that an elderly shepherd has been killed, allegedly struck by a falling can of ham. More details at midnight.”
“Tyler! Tyler!” I hollered.
Rex opened the shop door and came out.
“What is it? Who’s there?”
“It’s me. Tiny.”
“Tiny? Tiny’s still on the roof!”
“Get Tyler, dick-face.”
Tyler came out and I told him about the bulletin, said how Rex better hightail it on out to Silver City.
They drove back down to light him out. By the time they got back the house was quiet, except for Esther, cleaning up. The girls went inside. Tyler came over, underneath where I was. I held my breath, listening to him whisper Tiny? Tiny? for a while and then I leaned over the ledge.
“What do you want?”
“Come down off that roof now, Tiny. Please.”