The days were cooler now. School was starting back pretty soon and that’s why there was nobody home that afternoon. Johnette had taken the kids over to one of the malls at Tupelo to start getting them some notebooks and pencils and backpacks and tennis shoes and underwear and shorts and blouses, and Jimmy’s daddy knew there was no telling how much money she’d spend. Put it on a credit card. He wondered how much they owed on that damn credit card. He was scared to even find out, so he never asked. He’d been waiting for Johnette to ask him a bunch of questions about why he’d been out so late that night he’d been down at Lacey’s and she never had. But he had several stories ready in case she did. One involved a couple of flat tires. One involved running out of gas on a dirt road and having to walk a long way to Toccopola and wake a guy up. Another involved fishing and getting drunk with Seaborn. He wasn’t real sure about this last one because he didn’t remember if he’d been carrying his rod and reel with him that night or not. But he could always say he’d borrowed a cane pole from Seaborn.
He’d been kind of avoiding Lacey at work. Well not really avoiding her, just not sitting in the same area of the break room she did, and concentrating on talking to other people at break and lunch, and trying to make sure he didn’t make eye contact with her, although it had happened a few times. Maybe three or four. He’d just smiled and nodded and then quickly looked away. He’d thought some more about not using rubbers with her. He hoped she wasn’t pregnant. That would be too bad to even think about. He already had to think about John Wayne Payne all the time.
Jimmy’s daddy wanted to check the brake shoes on the back left because he’d heard something squealing this morning heading in to work, and it was a nice afternoon, so he got the jack from the trunk and found a piece of board and set the base of the jack on that. The car was pretty level where it was sitting and the hand brake didn’t work very well, so he didn’t set it. But he didn’t think it would fall. He jacked it up a little and then got the lug wrench and started loosening the nuts on the wheel. What he needed as soon as he could afford them were some really nice mag wheels. Maybe some chrome-plated Keystones. He’d checked the price on them at Gateway and they were $118 apiece plus tax, but they’d mount them for free, they said. It would probably be just a shade over five hundred. But damn, wouldn’t they look fine?
And if he did get divorced, where in the hell was he going to live? Would she want the trailer? What would happen to Jimmy? What if she married some other son of a bitch? Who would raise him? And those girls of hers. They’d run wild. Wind up pregnant by the time they were seventeen or something. Jimmy might fall in with the wrong crowd. Some of those kids in big pickups. And Jimmy’s daddy would miss him.
He guessed what he needed to do this fall was take him hunting. Maybe he could buy him a shotgun. A little single shot .410. That was a good beginner gun for a kid. Jimmy’s daddy could gather up some beer cans and take him down to the dump or the creek and let him get in some target practice. Blast a few beer cans.
When he got to thinking about stuff like that, stuff like teaching Jimmy how to use a gun and taking him hunting, and maybe one day starting to take him fishing, he didn’t want to get divorced so much. Sometimes, when he thought about it, he realized how good he had it. He got his clothes washed. He got his meals fixed. He got all his banking done for him. He had a nice bed to lie on while he watched his hunting videos and he only had to work forty hours a week. He had the ’55. He had Jimmy. He didn’t have much of a sex life with Johnette, true, but he had Lacey now. If he wanted her. He knew he was going back sometime, he just didn’t know when. He didn’t want everybody in the whole plant to know he was messing around with her. He guessed he’d have to explain that to her sometime. Surely she ought to be able to understand that. Women were funny, though. They got things in their heads. Like love.
He got four of the lug nuts off and then jacked the car on up until the wheel cleared the ground. Then he sat down next to the wheel and took off the last lug nut. He put it beside the others and started pulling the wheel off and before he knew it the car had come sideways toward him because the jack and the board he had set it on had slipped in the loose gravel and the wheel started to slip off and he tried to shove it back on to keep the car from falling all the way and it came down on top of his hands, pinning his hands between the wheel well and the tire tread and mashing the shit out of his fingers.
Jimmy’s daddy closed his eyes and screamed. “Oh shit!”
He tried to pull his hands loose, but it felt like it was going to tear the skin off them. The car had stopped moving. He tried to stretch his leg out and kick the jack erect, but nothing doing. He had his face up against the rear fender, and he had to scream again.
“Hey!” he screamed. “Hey!”
Son of a bitch! It was breaking his fucking hands! Oh my God! Jimmy’s daddy panted hard and tried again to pull them out. He could feel the blood getting squeezed out of his fingers. It hurt so bad he didn’t know what he was going to do. He knew one thing he was going to do if he couldn’t get his fingers out from under that wheel well. He was going to shit in his britches. His stomach hadn’t been in very good shape for the last few days, because he’d been drinking beer every evening for the last few days, and he’d had a light bout of diarrhea just after lunch today. And he’d meant to take a couple of Imodium before now, but he’d forgotten about it. And he’d felt another twinge of it just before he came out of the trailer with a cold beer to start jacking up the car, and it was just one of those little slips you make, not taking something when you needed to, planning on doing it later. It was bad timing. Which would get you every time.
“Hey!” he screamed. “Hey somebody! I need some help!”
Nobody answered. Nobody showed up. There was just the silent gravel road beside him. And how long would it take for somebody to come by? What if they didn’t stop? What if they saw him yelling and still didn’t stop? Oh God. His stomach was hurting and he was afraid he was going to shit on himself. He really didn’t want to do that.
“Hey! Hey! Heyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!”
Oh Jesus. It was breaking his fingers. Tears squeezed from his eyes, as hard as he tried not to let them. Oh shit. He couldn’t shit on himself and let somebody find him like this. What if he had to stay here until Johnette and them came back? No telling when that would be. It was only about five thirty. They probably weren’t nearly through shopping yet. Oh God it hurt. What he had to do was concentrate on not shitting on himself. What if the girls saw him like this? What would they think? How ridiculous did he look?
“Heyyyyyyyyyy!” A yelp for help lost in the wilderness.
And then they’d probably go eat. Maybe even at Seafood Junction. He thought they were open on Wednesdays. She’d probably eat two or three desserts. Shit. They might not be back until nine. That would be after dark. He didn’t think he could sit here that long, with the car mashing the shit out of his hands. But did he really have a choice?
“Please!” he yelled. “Somebody!”
He tried again to pull his hands loose. He could feel the rough metal of the wheel well cutting into his hands. Rusty. He’d probably need a tetanus shot. He was trying to think of other things to maybe keep from shitting on himself and he wondered how long it had been since he’d had a tetanus shot. He’d gotten one when he’d stepped on that rusty nail about six or seven years ago. He didn’t know how long tetanus shots lasted.
Jimmy’s daddy didn’t think he could take it any longer, but he didn’t know what he could do about it. His stomach was hurting worse and he needed to get to the bathroom pretty soon. He was going to have an accident if he didn’t. And if he had an accident he was going to have to sit here with his own shit smeared all over his ass until somebody came along who could reset the jack and get the car off his hands. If that old man who lived up the road could hear him, maybe he could jack it up. He looked like a farmer. He probably knew how to operate a jack.
He looked at the driver’s door. He wished he’d left it open. If he had left it open, he might have been able to reach out with his leg and maybe get to the steering wheel and start blowing the horn with his foot. If his leg was long enough. Hell, his leg wasn’t that long. He didn’t think. He stretched his leg out to see if it would reach, but he couldn’t make it go very far past the closing edge of the door.
What was he going to do? Just stay here? Hell. The blood in his hands was getting cut off. He might have gangrene to worry about. What if he lost his fingers? Why hell, he wouldn’t be able to work then. He’d be disabled. He’d have to go on disability. He wondered how much that paid. Probably not enough. How would he hunt? With no fingers he wouldn’t be able to pull the triggers on his guns. How would you throw the line out on your rod and reel? Or learn to play the guitar if you had one?
His stomach was hurting now. All this pain in his hands wasn’t helping anything. His stomach was letting him know that if he didn’t get to a bathroom pretty quick, something was going to happen to him that hadn’t happened to him since he’d been wearing a diaper. And he didn’t even remember any of that. He knew it must have happened, but he just couldn’t remember any of it. Oh Lordy. He couldn’t stand it much longer.
He couldn’t even scream anymore. There wasn’t anybody to hear. And sometimes hours passed before anybody came up or down this road. In a way that was good. Sometimes. Right now it wasn’t. Right now he felt like he was going to have a nasty accident in his pants. He didn’t think there was going to be anything he could do about it. He was trying not to. But he was afraid that trying wasn’t going to get it. His stomach was hurting too bad. Something had to give. Oh God. Oh God! And then it happened. Jimmy’s daddy cried while he shit on himself. He couldn’t get his hands loose to wipe his tears away, so he just wiped them on the shoulder of his shirt, the way he did sweat when he was too busy with his hands to mop it with them.
An hour later he was still there. He could see his watch just fine and it was six thirty. […] Nobody had come down the road in all that time. He’d been hoping that maybe some kid would come rolling down the road in one of those big pickups, but there hadn’t been a soul. He’d been hoping that maybe one of those caravans of four-wheelers would come down the road, but they hadn’t come by either. Now his hands just felt dead. There wasn’t much feeling in them at all. He was surely going to lose both of them.
By then he’d gotten to wondering if he was going to die. What if he had a heart attack while he was sitting here so stressed out? He wouldn’t even be able to get loose to go inside and call 911 for an ambulance. They’d find him here, dead, when they came in from shopping at Tupelo, and he could imagine how Jimmy would cry. He knew Jimmy loved him. And he loved Jimmy. He told himself one thing. If he got out of this alive, he was going to start treating Jimmy a lot better. Hell. How long would it take to take the chain off the go-kart and find a small-engine shop and get another chain? It wouldn’t take very long. He knew how much Jimmy loved driving that go-kart. And no wonder. What else did he have to do around here? Watch TV? Hang out with the girls?
Yes sir. A thing like this could make a man take a look at his life and see what all was wrong with it. And he’d been doing that already. Only now he was doing it a lot harder. He could do better. He could cut back on his beer drinking. It cost the shit out of him anyway. It was an expensive habit. You smoked about twice as many cigarettes when you were drinking. Burned twice as much gas because you were constantly riding around. Which wore your tires out quicker. Made you need an oil change sooner. Things snowballed on you.
Man, what he’d give for a cigarette. They were right there in his pocket. Not even six inches away from his chin, but they might as well have been on the moon.
Inside the trailer, the phone rang. It was probably Seaborn or Rusty. It was probably one of them calling to see what he was doing.
“I can’t come to the phone!” he yelled. It kept ringing. It rang and rang. Maybe it was one of the girls’ friends. They had friends who called them on the phone. But they never came over. Jimmy’s daddy had made it plain that he didn’t want a bunch of kids over at his trailer drinking up all the Cokes and messing the trailer up and talking on the phone to other kids and all that shit. Jimmy’s daddy liked peace and quiet. But maybe if he got out of this okay he should lighten up a little there, too. Jimmy’s daddy’s daddy and Jimmy’s daddy’s mother never would let him have company over when he was growing up. They just didn’t allow it. And Jimmy’s daddy never did get to go home with a friend and spend the night like other kids he knew did. What would that have hurt? The phone stopped ringing.
Jimmy’s daddy thought maybe something was happening to his brain to help him deal with his situation. The pain had eased, numbed itself, really, he guessed, and he was more peaceful than he would have thought he’d be. He guessed he’d accepted it. He’d had to. He’d shit on himself, yeah, but it wasn’t the end of the world, was it? It probably happened to people every day. And how long did the circulation have to be cut off before you’d lose one or more of your fingers? He had a little feeling in them, just not a whole lot. So that was probably a good sign. That probably meant that there was still at least a little bit of blood circulating through them. Maybe.
If he could have just gotten one hand loose, he could have done something. He could have at least smoked. This way he couldn’t do anything but sit here and hope for somebody to come along. And it didn’t look like anybody was going to come along.
And then somebody did. He heard the gravel crunching under the tires long before he saw the car, partly because it was going so slowly, partly because he couldn’t see past the fender of the ’55. So he waited. He got ready to give out a really big yell just as the car or truck or whatever it was passed the trailer. He didn’t care who it was. He didn’t care that he’d shit on himself and was sitting in it and that somebody might see it. He just wanted some help.
The gravel kept crunching and it got louder and he wondered why the person driving was going so slowly. He turned his head toward the gravel road, waiting, getting ready to suck in a big breath of air so that he could yell plenty loud, and he waited. And waited. And then the nose of a Mercury nosed past the front of his ’55 and he saw Lacey looking out at him from behind the wheel of the car. She grinned and waved. She was creeping at about one mile per hour. Maybe two.
“Stop!” he screamed, and she slammed on the brakes.
“Hey!” she said gaily, leaning her head out the window. She lifted a beer and took a drink. “What you doing?”
Jimmy’s daddy closed his eyes and shook his head. Could she not see what he was doing? Could she not see that he had shit on himself?
“Come here and help me!” he yelled.
“What about your wife?” she said. “She not home right now?”
“Get your ass over here and jack this fucking car up off me!” he screamed, and damn near fainted when she backed up and stopped and then pulled on in and got out to help him. She set her beer on her fender.
It almost hurt worse when it came back up. Lacey seemed pretty expert at setting up jacks because she took the base of the jack and scraped away the loose gravel down to hard ground and set it on that, and then she hunted around until she found a chunk of wood and set it behind the other rear tire to keep it from rolling. Then she jacked it up. Jimmy’s daddy winced as he felt the rough metal slowly releasing his hands, and it was such a relief that he almost cried again.
“Oh God,” he kept saying, over and over, and he looked back at Lacey to see that she was almost crying, too.
“Hold on, baby,” she said, pumping on the jack, her big boobs swinging. The fender well lifted off his hands and Jimmy’s daddy slammed himself backward, flat on his back on the gravel, and he was afraid to look at his hands. They felt all crabbed up. Finally he looked at them. Both his palms had tire tracks printed in them. They looked swollen. They were slightly purple. But miraculously, nothing seemed to be broken. He could wriggle his fingers.
He dragged himself backward, away from the car, and he rubbed his hands together. His thumbs felt numb. But in them there was starting up that little tingling feeling like a thousand needle points sticking him, just like it did when his legs went to sleep on a deer stand from not moving for so long. When he felt that, he knew he was going to be all right.
“Help me up,” he said, and she did.
She waited in the living room while he cleaned himself up in the bathroom. He was a nervous wreck because he knew he had to get her the hell out of here before Johnette and the kids came home. Hell. He’d just say he didn’t know who in the hell she was but that after she’d been good enough to stop and get the car off him, he’d invited her in for a beer.
His underwear and his pants were lying in the bathtub and he got some clean shorts from the drawer in his bedroom, then pulled a clean pair of jeans off a hanger in the closet. He walked into the kitchen and went to a cabinet at the side of the stove and opened the cabinet door. He got a Hefty garbage bag with yellow ties and looked at Lacey where she was sitting on the couch, having a smoke and drinking a fresh beer that she’d gotten from her Mercury. She looked pretty comfortable. Would she tell anybody that he’d shit on himself? He sure hoped not. They hadn’t talked about it. She’d seen what had happened to him. Couldn’t help but see. But she hadn’t said anything about it. Thank God.
“You got a nice trailer,” she said.
“Thank you,” he said. “I’ll be done in a minute. Then we got to get you the hell out a here.”
“I know it,” she said. “If she comes in while I’m setting here, just tell her you don’t know me from Adam and I just happened to come by.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” Jimmy’s daddy said, and took the garbage bag back to the bathroom and put the soiled underwear and pants inside it, rolled it up tightly, turned on the water in the tub and washed out the inside of it, then took the rolled-up garbage bag back to the kitchen and put it inside another garbage bag that was inside the garbage can. Then he bagged up the trash and took it outside and stuffed it down inside one of the metal garbage cans he kept out there and closed the lid over it. What the hell did she mean coming by here? And how in the hell had she found out where he lived? He was going to have to have a talk with her. But not today. And damn sure not here.
When he stepped back inside the trailer she was sitting there looking at some pictures of the kids and just generally checking everything out in the living room. She looked up at him and smiled.
“Let me get my boots on,” he said.
“I ain’t in no hurry,” she said.
“Yeah, but I am.”
He went back to the bedroom and put his boots back on and got his cap and went to the bathroom and popped a couple of Imodium from a bottle Johnette kept in the medicine cabinet. Then he went back out to the living room. But Lacey wasn’t in there.
“Lacey?” he called.
“I’m back here,” her dim voice called. Where the hell was she?
Holy shit. Was she in the back bathroom? “Back here in the bathroom.”
Back in the bathroom? Fuck! What if Johnette came in now?
“What are you doing?” he yelled.
“Taking a leak,” she called. “That dang beer runs right through me.”
“Well, hurry up,” he called. “You got to go!”
“I know it,” she said, and he heard the toilet flush.
Jimmy’s daddy’s hands were feeling better now, but they still had the tire tracks on them. They looked like they’d been imprinted on his skin. He’d already tried washing them and it wouldn’t come off. He didn’t know what he was going to tell anybody who asked. What was he going to tell Johnette if she asked? Who was he going to say got the car off him? Some passing kid in a big truck? Maybe so.
Lacey came up the hall, smoothing her black pants over her hips, straightening the bottom of her flowery blouse, and she walked up to him and stopped. He opened his mouth to say something and she raised one of her hands and placed her fingers over his lips.
“I know already what you’re gonna say,” she said. “I know I ain’t supposed to be in here. But I’m glad I come by when I did.”
“I’m glad you did, too,” Jimmy’s daddy said. And he really was.
“Don’t be mad cause I come driving by,” she said. “I was just out riding around, having a few beers. I wouldn’t have got you in no trouble. I’m heading home now. I’ll see you tomorrow at work.”
“Okay,” Jimmy’s daddy said. He could see love in her eyes for sure now. And he could see the hurt in her eyes, too. He didn’t know what it was from, only that she had it. She leaned a little closer.
“I’d give anything to kiss you right now,” she said.
Jimmy’s daddy stood there. He didn’t say anything because he didn’t know what to say. But he didn’t want to kiss her here. He was afraid he might not be able to stop himself from going ahead with her right here. Or taking her down the road somewhere. And maybe getting caught.
“But I know I got to go.”
“Yeah,” Jimmy’s daddy said. “I guess you’d better.”
“I don’t need to be here when your family comes in,” she said.
Then you better get your ass in the road, he thought.
“Bye,” she said, and she opened the door, stepped down the steps, then closed the door. Jimmy’s daddy sat down in a chair. He heard her open her door, heard the door close, heard the car start, heard the car pull out, heard the car go on down the road until the sound of it died away. He got up and went to the door and opened it. Lacey had put the wheel back on while he’d cleaned himself up. She had even put the jack and the lug wrench away. It looked like nothing had happened except for his tire-tracked hands.