ECHOES

Big Les Tolbert understood modern technological advances better than his children or grandchildren comprehended. He could use the camera on his phone. He’d successfully changed his outgoing message a number of times. On his laptop, he fixed the ESC key using a thin sliver of duct tape. Big Les deduced the importance of clearing his history. Whenever anyone up and down Shrine Club Road couldn’t figure out their big-screen TVs, they called Big Les. He’d been a tinkerer since being plain Les Tolbert, long before marrying Betty, then becoming the father to Little Les Tolbert—as a metal fabricator, as a small engine repair expert, as a jigsaw puzzle master starting on the day he retired four years earlier. Big Les recognized how cell phones emitted pings. And he certainly grasped the importance and notion of Amber Alerts.

“I’m taking Littlest over to the hardware store,” he said to Betty. “We’ll be back in a while.”

Betty sat at the kitchen table, working on a thousand-piece puzzle called The 1970s. The box cover showed what the puzzle looked like completed: the Beatles in one corner, Nixon in another, then Jimmy Carter, then Pol Pot. The puzzle’s interior evoked hippies, Bob Dylan, the Vietnam War, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Muhammad Ali, the TV show Saturday Night Live, Apollo 13, and the Ayatollah. There was a woman with an Afro and another in a miniskirt. Betty said, “I got the edges pulled out.”

Big Les looked over at his grandson, his head down close to his phone. Big Les thought, I might not know much about evolution, but this kid looks like a praying mantis. He said to Littlest, “Come on.” Littlest didn’t respond.

Betty said, “Who’s that woman who used to be a famous model?”

“Twiggy,” said Big Les.

Littlest was staying with his grandparents while his mom and dad underwent a second honeymoon down on the Gulf Coast in Crystal River, Florida, where they both wanted to see manatees. They had dropped off Littlest, and Little Les confided to his father, “I don’t really care that much about the manatees, but Myra thinks it’ll make her feel better about herself. She’s never been able to get the weight off since Littlest’s birth.”

“She should take up smoking,” Big Les said. “She should take up not eating six times a day. I might not know much about weight control, but somewhere along the line I read that if you burn off more calories than you consume, then nothing else can happen but shedding.”

His son Little Les looked like a manatee, too, thought Big Les. And both son and daughter-in-law were starting to list forward—maybe not like a praying mantis, but at least like an egret inspecting the shoreline.

Little Les said, “I’m just hoping this will get her over the depression.”

Big Les said, “Well, y’all have fun and take as long as you want. Maybe I can teach Littlest how to weld, or catch a baseball before it hits him in the head. Maybe I can teach him how to swing a hammer, clean a push mower’s gas filter, make eye contact, cook something a microwave can’t handle, or say a prayer. Does he even know how to swim yet?”

He could tell that his son didn’t hear him. Little Les said, “You’re the best.” He leaned down and kissed his father on the cheek. Little Les’s wife sat at the kitchen table with her mother-in-law, dipping pretzels into ranch dressing.

Big Les said, “Y’all get out of here. Littlest will be okay, I promise. I’ll treat him like he’s my own grandboy, ha ha ha.”

Two days later, Big Les underwent an epiphany that would redirect the Tolbert downward spiral. He called out to his wife, “That’s good! That’s the way to do a puzzle! If you can’t get the boundaries figured out from the get-go, it’s almost impossible.”

To Littlest he almost whispered, in the same way one might talk to a ride-happy dog, “You want to go down to the Dairy Queen and get a sundae? You want a milkshake?”

Littlest dropped his cell phone to his right knee. He stood up with one grunt. Big Les thought, I don’t know if I ever let out a grunt at age twelve. He thought, I didn’t let out a grunt until I climbed a twenty-four-foot extension ladder and dropped my tenth bundle of asphalt shingles on plywood for my own father, at the age of sixteen, roofing.

Littlest typed something and said to his grandfather, “I can finish this game later.” He shoved the phone in his front pants pocket.

“We’re going!” Big Les yelled to Betty.

She said, “If it weren’t for puzzles I don’t know that it would be worth living.”

“I got a better idea than going to Dairy Queen,” Big Les said to his grandson. “I mean, we can go there first, but then you want to take a ride down to Myrtle Beach? Let’s go down there—hell, your parents went to Florida—and check it out.”

Littlest had his cell phone back out. He watched a YouTube video that concerned a woman stung by yellow jackets. He watched a YouTube video about a boy who skateboarded, on his belly, down a washboard gravel road. He said to his grandfather, “Don’t you think maybe we should have packed suitcases?” He watched a YouTube video of some goats falling over.

“Put that phone away.” Big Les turned on the radio. He switched stations to the local NPR station and, although he didn’t care for classical music, he figured it would help erase the music he’d heard his grandson listen to after going to bed. Big Les had heard nothing but a bunch of racist terms through the wall the night before. Was his grandson some kind of white supremacist? he wondered.

Big Les turned left and right. He gunned the engine. He pulled into his best friend Echo’s house and hit the horn. Echo came out wearing tan canvas Dickie’s overalls. He spread his arms out and didn’t say, “What?”

“You want to go to Myrtle Beach with us?” Big Les said out of the driver’s side window.

“Myrtle Beach?” Echo said. His hair stood on end. His eyes looked like he’d just witnessed a crime. “No, but I wouldn’t mind you dropping me off in Darlington so’s I could visit my ex-brother-in-law. It’s on the way.”

“You ever met my grandson Littlest?”

“Hey,” said Echo.

“You stay in the back seat, Littlest,” Big said. His grandson didn’t make eye contact. “Darlington it is. We can leave you off there and pick you up a few days later. Come on, man, we’re in a hurry. It’ll be fun. You ain’t got nothing else to do.”

“I been meaning to go somewhere,” Echo said. “Okay. Hey, let me go put some dog food out for Slide.”

Echo happened to be the unofficial mascot for the rec center. He went to every baseball game. One time he watched a kid hit a ball up against the wall, and while the kid kept running bases toward an inside-the-park home run Echo yelled out, “Slide! Slide! Slide!” As it happened, a stray dog—a mutt, mottled brown and black and white—came running up out of nowhere, out of the woods, down the third base line, and sat where Echo stood. Slide!

Echo drove a water truck. Somehow, more than once, he slid down into the tank, through the open portholes up top, and would yell out Help until someone found him, following the echo of his voice.

“Just bring Slide with us,” Big Les said. To his grandson he said, “You won’t mind a dog sitting with you in the back seat, would you? You ever met a dog?”

“Okay,” said Echo. “Hole on.”

The Cadillac rumbled, idling. Big Les wondered if it could make it all the way down the entire length of South Carolina. He thought, what do I have to teach this kid when I get there? How to look for shark’s teeth? How to fish from the shore? Should I take him on a little excursion off the coast for spots, blues, reds? Should I take him to the marsh and show him how to oyster? Should I point out how some people—like his momma—shouldn’t wear bikinis out in public? Should I teach him how to drink beer out on the beach without anyone knowing? He thought, I need an entire year. I need twelve years!

Maybe fifteen seconds later Echo walked back with his dog Slide panting on the end of a piece of twine. Echo carried a large Samsonite in his left hand. Big Les said, “How in the world did you pack a suitcase that fast?”

“I told you I been meaning to go somewhere. I’ve had these clothes packed for a good two years. I hope they still fit.”

Littlest, in the back seat, said, “My parents say that I should stay away from dogs, seeing as they have rabies.”

Echo opened the back passenger door and Slide jumped in. He set the suitcase upright on the floorboard in front of his dog. Slide panted and looked around and licked Littlest’s left cheek. Echo got in next to Big Les and slammed his door.

“You can’t believe everything a Tolbert says,” Big Les said. He put the Cadillac in reverse and drove slowly out toward the highway. He said, “Hey, my man, why don’t you hand me your phone right now so the dog doesn’t slobber on it? Go ahead and give it to me.”

They still weren’t out of town, officially. Littlest said, “I’m hungry. I thought we were going to eat.”

“BLT,” Echo said. He turned to look in the back seat. He said, “Big Les Tolbert comes out ‘BLT.’ Your daddy comes out ‘LLT,’ which doesn’t mean anything. And then there’s you.”

Big Les Tolbert pulled off on the side of the road in front of a railroad crossing. He looked at his wristwatch. He said, “I’ll give it right back to you,” and opened the driver’s side door. He said, “I promise.”

From down the way, a train engineer blasted his horn. Two gates dropped down. Littlest said, “My mom says Grandma calls you Big Lies, instead of Big Les.”

The freight train moaned twice nearing. Big Les said, “Your momma told me that she calls you Littlest Mess, so shut up and hand me the phone.” He reached back and nabbed it.

With the phone in his right hand, Big Les threw it atop an open-topped coal car, on its way somewhere down south, to a place where cops, later, would say, “They’re in Atlanta…Birmingham…Jackson…New Orleans.” Big Les kept apprised of technology.

For forty miles no one said anything. Littlest didn’t speak because he wasn’t adept in, or accustomed to, the art of conversation. The radio station played Mozart, then Hadyn. Big Les seethed, to an extent, because of his grandson bringing up “Big Lies.” That had been twenty years ago. It happened once. Big Les comforted Lillian at Precision Metal, a secretary whose husband took off mid-marriage. What started out as a pat on the shoulder and a few “I’m so sorry”s moved quickly into convincing his business partner to let Lillian help Big Les repair some ironwork around a motel swimming pool, out on Highway 29. Once. Betty knew about the job and decided to surprise her husband with a picnic lunch. She thought it might be nice to sit around the pool, even though it held no water. She parked next to Big Les’s work truck, walked through the compromised fence, and set out a display of fried chicken, coleslaw, home fries, and iced tea. She sat in a metal chair with her back to the two-lane, thinking that Big Les might be in the lobby, talking to the client. And then she watched the door to #9 open, right across the way. Big Les came out smiling, slicking back his hair. Lillian hitched up her pants.

Every day for twenty years Big Les Tolbert thinks about his wife yelling out, “Big Lies! Big Lies!” then throwing the chair into the empty pool, followed by the lunch she’d brought, two tables, and a spring-rotted lounge chair.

Big Les said, there in the Cadillac, “We’re making good time. How you doing back there, Littlest?”

Echo said, “You got your name in ‘Littlest.’ It’s like a stutter.” Then he reached into the bib of his coveralls and pulled out a flask. He said, “I ain’t driving.”

“How do you know how to get where we’re going if you don’t have GPS in this car?” Littlest said. “What year is this thing, anyway?”

“It’s only South Carolina,” said Echo. “I’ve watered about every road in the state.”

“It’s a 1979 Coupe deVille. I bought it twenty years ago. Your grandmama wanted a Cadillac, and I obliged.”

“Twenty years ago was 1999,” Littlest said. He said, “Get away from me, dog,” and pushed Slide over. “Are you so old they didn’t teach math back when you went to school?”

“Bought it used, son. Twenty years old when I bought it twenty years ago. That comes to forty.”

Big Les stepped on the accelerator. He looked at the speedometer. It might’ve taken the car a solid minute to get from zero to sixty, but from sixty to eighty happened in no time at all. He said, “Pinball. That’s another thing I need to teach you, instead of those video games on your phone and computer.”

“Did you ever have part-time work at a funeral home? This car looks like something in a motorcade when they go from the funeral home to the cemetery.”

Big Les asked Echo to open the glove compartment. He said, “Pull out the map of South Carolina and hand it to Littlest, please.”

Echo pulled out folded roadside maps from Texaco and Gulf stations, ones from Esso and Phillips 66. He said out loud, “Alabama, Mississippi, Kansas, Virginia, Southeast United States, South Carolina.” He said, “Are you a collector of such vintage ephemera, Big Les?”

Big Les turned to his friend and said, “Where the hell did you learn such a word? What does that even mean?” He said, “Give the boy all of them, and let’s see if he can figure out the right state.” Big Les said, “This is one thing you need to learn, son, in case one day your goddamn GPS goes out, which it will do, once the Chinese and Russians take over our country. Figure out where we are and where we’re going.”

He hit the horn twice, but didn’t laugh. He thought of his son and daughter-in-law scaring manatees, of Florida canal waters rising once they submerged themselves. He daydreamed about local meteorologists breaking in on scheduled programming, saying something like, “Because of global warming, the sea levels have risen a foot…no, wait a minute. False alarm. It’s only two obese vacationers wishing to swim with the manatees.” Then he laughed.

He opened his and the passenger-side windows further. Wind whipped into the back seat. Slide raised his head, probably hoping to catch a whiff of something dead. Big Les looked in the rearview mirror and watched his grandson attempt to unfold the map.

Littlest said, “I know what you’re trying to do to me, Grandpa. I’m not stupid.”

Echo said, “Grandpa, I’m not stupid.”

Big Les Tolbert said, “Yeah, you’re right. I’m making it harder than it needs to be.” He rolled the windows up, turned on the air conditioner, and said, “Classic rock and roll. That’s what three studs and a mutt need to be listening to on their way to Myrtle Beach.”

He turned the radio knob to the right twice, hard, and landed on a station playing the very end of “Whole Lotta Love,” then straight into “Old Man.” Big Les took it as a sign. He said to Echo, “You sure your ex-brother-in-law won’t mind you showing up unannounced like this?”

Echo looked straight out the windshield. He said, “He’s allergic to dogs.”

Big Les believed that his son, then his grandson, lacked fear. Never encountering scary situations made a person soft, unattuned, overly trusting, and unprepared for fight-or-flight. In the old days, Big Les remembered, his parents took vacations, stayed in motels with barely lockable doors, dealt with strangers talking loudly right outside the room, and so on. They pulled into unguarded rest areas with little lighting and stayed alert should a predator lurk in the next-door stall. They ate at roadside diners protected by smell and sight only when it came to ptomaine. Nowadays, every exit had a variety of clean restrooms and restaurants, and every rest area remained lit up enough to play pick-up baseball at night.

Big Les looked over at Echo and said, “Darlington coming up. You swear you remember where he lives.”

“I’ve never known where he lives,” Echo said. “But he works at the racetrack. You let me off at the Darlington Speedway, and I’ll just ride home with him.”

Big Les turned to his grandson in the back seat and said, “This is what I’ve been trying to teach you, Littlest. Man like Echo here, he knows how to go with the flow.” To Echo he said, “When’s the last time you talked to him?”

“My ex-brother-in-law? About ten years ago.”

Big Les followed the sign off I-20 to the Darlington Speedway. “Ten years ago? Are you kidding me? What if he doesn’t work there anymore? Hell, he might be dead.”

Echo rolled his window down, then back up. He laughed. “Do you hear what you’re saying, Big Les? Damn, boy. You get a job at a racetrack called ‘Too Tough to Tame,’ you don’t leave it.”

“You got a point there,” Big Les said.

“Anyway, like I was saying. I guess y’all need to keep Slide until you come back to get me. I wouldn’t want to show up and cause an allergy attack. I don’t like being around people who sneeze two or three days in a row. It makes me jumpy.”

“What the fuck is your ex-brother-in-law’s name, anyway?” said Big Les.

In the back seat Littlest said, “Here you go,” and threw the maps back up front. He said, “We learned this in sixth grade.” Big Les looked down to find a large crane, an Old School pressman’s hat, some kind of flying dinosaur, and a carp. “Origami.”

“I been trying to remember it the whole way down,” Echo said. “I think it’s either Curt or Brian. He’s one of those guy’s his momma called him one thing, his daddy another. I know for a fact his last name’s Mungo. That was my ex’s maiden name, so that’s his last name, right? But for all I know he got remarried and took his new bride’s last name. I been hearing about modern people doing such.”

“Goddamn it to hell, Littlest. This is what they’re teaching you in school?”

Echo said, “I guess you can let me out here.” He pointed at a liquor store, maybe two miles from the track. He said, “Cuss-screaming makes me jumpy, too.”

Big Les pulled over. He said, “We ain’t got no phones, do we? Maybe we should’ve thought this through better.”

“We had one,” said Littlest.

“I tell you what, how about you come stand at this here liquor store every day at noon, starting tomorrow. Curt or Brian will have a lunch break, I’m betting. Wait like an hour. If we’re not here, come back the next day. Somewhere between tomorrow and a week from today.”

“I know how to hitchhike, too,” said Echo. “They ain’t changed the rules on that, have they? Thumb? Side of the road?”

Myrtle Beach didn’t look like it did in the 1960s, Big Les thought. They spilled out onto Ocean Boulevard. When the hell did they make all these high-rises? How come he never got sent down here to work on iron? He caught himself daydreaming about Lillian, how they would’ve never been caught had they been able to park the work truck in a parking garage, out of Betty’s sight. He wondered whatever happened to Lillian—she never returned to Precision Metal, and the last Big Les Tolbert heard about her went something like “Bought a .45” and “Moved to Charlotte” and “Found Jesus.”

Littlest remained in the back seat with the dog. Big Les took a right toward Garden City. He said, “You okay back there? You want to sit up here without that dog?”

“It’s safest back here,” Littlest said. “I’m wearing my seatbelt. I’m required to sit in the back seat at all times, due to safety.” Big Les thought, Required. “I’m surprised there are any back here.”

Big Les drove slowly until he came across a plague of L-shaped, cement-block motels. He said, “You want a motel on the beach side, or one across the street? It doesn’t matter to me,” though it did. He knew that beach-side motels cost twice as much.

And he knew his grandson’s answer. “It would be best if we stayed as far away from the ocean as possible. If a hurricane comes, especially during high tide, we would have a better chance to evacuate.”

Big Les turned on his right-hand blinker and turned into the Sand Dollar, a place that still advertised AC/Phones/Color TV/Pets Welcome. The parking lot held only pickup trucks, which meant roofers and painters stayed here cheaply, working construction from the last hurricane.

They’d been gone from home four hours. It might be enough time for Little Les to call Betty, for Betty to say she’d not seen Littlest in a while, for Little to call the police and report an abduction. Big Les said to his grandson, “You stay here. Maybe hunch down a little. That dog starts barking, hold its snout down and shush him like you might a snake.”

Littlest yelled out, “Is there a snake back here!”

Five minutes later, Big Les hustled back to the car after paying for a room in cash. “We’re in good shape, buddy. They take pets, sure enough. Get that dog out of here and let’s go to the room.” He looked left and right and thought, no one will find us here, and I have so much to do. “Who would’ve thought that you and me would end up here on the Atlantic Ocean with a dog? Hey, do you like shrimp? I want me a big old plate of fried shrimp. You can’t get good fried shrimp up where we live. I like flounder! I bet we can get some good flounder here. Fresh, fresh flounder.” He said, “One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish,” but Littlest didn’t seem to understand. He said, “Get it? Get it?”

Big Les felt reinvigorated. He thought, I am doing the right thing.

They walked toward the room. The motel pool stood to their left. Big Les thought about what happened the last time he walked to a room nine. They skirted the pool. Big Les said, “Let me take the dog,” and held out his hand for the twine leash.

Littlest huffed. He said, “I’m hungry. You’re a liar,” which made Big Les push him hard, right into the deep end of the pool. The dog followed involuntarily, half strangled by the twine.

“Goddamn it,” Big Les said. He didn’t move, though. He stood there thinking how his father threw him out of a boat at age five. Littlest held on to Slide’s leash, and Slide dogpaddled straight toward the shallow end. “Swim, swim!” Big Les yelled.

Construction workers and monthly residents swarmed out of every room of the Sand Dollar except for room nine, having peeked out of their heavy-draped windows, their peepholes, eyeing the new guests, sizing them up. Big Les wished he’d not dropped off Echo, for—although he possessed incurable faults and quirks—Echo would’ve jumped right in without thinking.

When Littlest surfaced right about the six-foot mark, he mimed the dog’s actions, as if imprinted. He let go of the leash. Slide clumped up the three cement steps, stood on the pool’s apron, shook hard, looked at Big Les, then took off running across Ocean Boulevard, dodging traffic, the leash trailing behind like a strange umbilical cord. Littlest dogpaddled right to the edge, even after his feet could’ve touched the bottom.

Big Les walked as fast as possible—bad knees, bad hips—to the other end of the pool, smiling. He said, “Don’t take off running for that dog.”

Someone behind him yelled out, “We’ve called 911.”

Big Les didn’t turn around. He picked up wet Littlest in his arms, said, “I’m so sorry,” and carried him, like an acetylene steel cylinder, back to the Cadillac. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to push you that hard, son.”

By the time Big Les pulled onto the street, Littlest had crawled over the backrest and sat beside his grandfather. He said, “We can’t leave the dog.” He rolled down the window and called out, “Slide! Slide! Slide!”

They passed Darlington. Big Les didn’t take 501, I-20, or I-26 back home. He kept both back windows half open, so Slide’s wet smell didn’t ruin the car. Littlest sat in back again, his left arm draped across Slick’s shoulders, his right hand continually slicking back the dog’s hair. In a town called Latta, Big Les pulled into Shuler’s BBQ and bought vinegar-based barbecue sandwiches. In Blenheim he bought a six-pack of hot ginger ale. In Lancaster, he slowed down at a place called Sambo’s and said to Littlest, “Don’t ever use this word.”

“What about Echo?” Littlest said.

“I’ll go back and get him tomorrow or the next day. You want to go with me? If I’m not in trouble, maybe we can take another road trip.”

“Swimming’s more fun than soccer,” Littlest said. “Or killing zombies.”

They arrived home to find two sheriff’s patrol cars in the driveway. Big Les expected such a welcoming party, though he thought it might be later in the week. He didn’t say, “Hey, do me a favor and tell a big lie, Littlest.” He didn’t say, “This might be the last time we spend time together.”

They walked into the house and Big Les said, “What’s going on?”

Two deputies stood at attention, though slack-jawed.

Betty stood up from her thousand-piece puzzle. She pointed down to a likeness of D.B. Cooper and said, “Who’s this?”