Buffalo Plaid

Lucy stubbed out her cigarette on a bench near the portico of the Douglas Memorial emergency room. They wouldn’t think to look for her here. Then she marched to the main entrance and rode to the third floor. The hallway smelled of something strange, maybe sick people. She buried her nose in the day-old bouquet. The florist had given her a break on the price. She thought of last week and the perfume that hung so heavy in the funeral home. She suspected that it covered the smell of dead bodies in the basement. Half of Atwater, which was nearby and not much of a town, had come to church to pay their respects to her mama. Half the men had probably fucked her. Lucy wondered if the funeral guys had left her mama’s heart inside, at least the pieces. That’s what the Egyptians did, she was pretty sure. She thought the Vikings had it right. She was sure there was still some part of her mama they hadn’t buried, something in the house.

She wore the same dress they had given her for the funeral. Maybe it was bad luck to wear it when you visit someone in the hospital. The overheads bathed the hallway in soft light. While everyone spoke in hushed voices, her sneakers kept squawking on the vinyl floor. A man in baby-blue scrubs told her that Mr. Hutchinson was expecting her. He took the bouquet and observed that her backpack looked mighty heavy. She shrugged it away from him. He directed her to Hutchinson’s room. She glanced back and found him staring at her. 

She leaned into the room. A picture of some water lilies hung on the wall. The Cubs were playing somebody on the silent TV. A reading lamp recoiled on its hinge. Hutchinson’s eyes were open. Bandages swaddled much of his head. His right leg and left arm were cased in fiberglass and pulled taut by weights hung from pulleys on a metal frame over the bed. Lucy cleared her throat. She caught the flicker of his near eye. 

“So you’re Janey Walker’s kid,” he said. “Come over here.”

She did, slowly. 

He was sweating. The left side of his face below the eye had caved into a purple hollow. 

“Not much to look at, huh?” His smile dragged the rest of his face with it. 

Her eyes hurt. Her mama had left him lying in a ditch. She put her hand to his cheek. 

He grabbed her wrist with his good hand, hard enough to make her gasp. 

“Don’t do that.” He released her. “They’ll build me a new face when they get around to it.”

“Course they will.” She smiled and nodded.

“I can do without the powdered sugar, thanks. And do your crying somewheres else.” 

She turned her face. 

“Look at you,” he said. “You’re a mess. There’s Kleenex on that table.”

“I’m just sorry what my mama did.” She blew her nose. She focused on her feet and the fading blue diamonds in the floor.

“And that jacket. Thing’s bigger than you are. Anybody tell you it’s still summer?”

“It’s my daddy’s,” she said, pulling it tight. It was red and black, and she wore it all the time.

His voice softened. “How you doing?” 

“Better than you.” She cleared her throat. How did he pee and poop?

“Maybe not,” he said. “When I get out of here, I’ll still have a mama.”

Neither spoke for a while.

“I’m sorry what happened,” Lucy said again.

“I don’t recall you driving,” he said. “Matter of fact, I don’t recall much. I know I bought a chicken from Paul Krieger.” His eyes grew blank. “I guess I didn’t look both ways before crossing.” He grinned and jerked a little. “Can’t laugh much.” His smile faded. “Crawled quite a ways to get back to the road. Your mama must’ve put her foot down.”

“She was upset. She didn’t get a job.”

“I would’ve gladly gave her mine,” he said. He stayed quiet awhile. “I think I worked with your daddy once.” Hutchinson eyed her. “He with the Park Service?”

“Was,” she said. “Been gone a year.” This guy knew more than he let on, she thought.

“Oh? Where to?”

“California. He’s gonna send for us when he gets settled.” 

“Taking his time, is he?” 

“I’m going to find him.”

“What if he doesn’t want to be—”

“—I’ll find him.”

Her daddy’s hair was so blond it looked white in the summer. He was built wide and strong. Head came right out of his shoulders. When she was little, he would pick her up and balance her butt on his hand. He’d walk around with her, all frantic like she was a wobbly stack of plates. “Whoa!” he would say, and he’d stagger around the house like it was all he could do to keep her from falling on her head. “Whoa!”  Of course, he never dropped her. Except this once.

Hutchinson stared at her. “You on your own?”

Lucy glanced at her backpack. “I guess. They put me in a home, but it’s not a home home.”

Hutchinson angled his body toward her with a grunt. “I am sorry about your mama. Folks say she was right on the edge. Must be hell on you.”

She nodded. Hell would be a nice place.

The room grew quiet again. Hutchinson’s head gradually sank forward. His nostrils flared and his forehead shone with sweat. He pushed a button, and a nurse appeared with a needle. His head gradually nested back in the pillow. He closed his eyes for a time. “I’ll be a junkie by the time I get out of here.” He could chuckle now. “Glad it’s the end of the season.”

The attendant appeared with Lucy’s bouquet in a plastic vase. He smiled at her. She pulled the jacket tight.

“Why, thank you,” said Hutchinson.

She nodded. They were the only flowers in the room. She leaned forward a little, widened her eyes, and dropped her jaw just enough to part her lips.

“You carry a gun?” 

He frowned. “What kind of question is that?” 

She shrugged.

“Not when I’m leading a bunch of day-trippers on a nature hike. But I sure do when I’m on patrol.” 

She asked how come. 

“Let’s say you was running a trap line in the Park, maybe doing some shooting too and making good money at it, and I catch you with your side-by-side and a bag of birds again. Now you’re looking at hard time. What would you do? Reach for the sky or leave me in the mud somewheres?” He cocked his head. “Why?”

She didn’t know the why of it yet. “Can I come back and see you some more?”

“Hell,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“You going to come out of this all right?”

“So they say. Might not look as handsome. Once my guts start up and the bones grow together, they’ll move me to some place, teach me how to walk. Sounds like fun.” He eased himself to look at her square. “You’re good to talk to. Kind of sharp. Come back any time.”

She sat on the bench again and watched them unload an ambulance. Everybody looked so serious. A cigarette hung from her lips while she searched for a match. She scratched it with her thumbnail, something her daddy taught her when she was eleven. She smiled. Never got tired of lighting his cigarettes. It was easy to steal smokes because the two of them were always so involved. She remembered the old daydream where they caught her smoking and spanked her and lectured her about the dangers of tobacco and took away her library privileges. She liked the spanking and lecturing parts, but not the library part.

She checked her watch. Minnie’s hand was on four. She rode to the third floor.

Hutchinson looked at her out the corner of his eye. “When I said come back any time, I didn’t mean all the time.”

“I won’t come back,” she said. She spat a shred of tobacco off the tip of her tongue. “Can I ask you some more?”

Hutchinson glanced at the pack. “Shoot.”

She blinked. “You know where my daddy is?”

“Girl, I hardly knew the man. It was years ago.” He ran his hand across his forehead.

“There is something you can tell me about him.” She looked him in the eye. “Tell me.” 

He presented the show side of his face. “I doubt you’d want to know.”

“Go on.”

“I never could understand it. He wasn’t good-looking.”

It stung. She nodded with a smile of pity.

“And to tell you the truth, on the job he was more show than go.” Hutchinson was feeling her out, she thought, trying to figure what she could take. “I picked up a lot of his slack. Quite the ladies’ man, if you know what I mean.” He was still searching. “Do you know what I mean?” 

She sighed. “I’m almost fifteen.”

She would curl up under the covers while they screamed at each other because he couldn’t keep his dick in his pants and she was sucking the life out of him and it was her house so he could just leave don’t leave and things would break. It would end in tears and whispers, then soft laughter like they were in cahoots. She could close her eyes when the bed springs started to creak. 

“He’d take a group out on a nature walk, find some girl he liked, and that’d be the last I’d see of him. One day he plain didn’t show up. I can’t say as I missed him.” 

She pulled up some brass and gave him a grin. “I’ll say one thing for him—he sure knows how to disappear.” Then she cleared her throat. She widened her eyes again. 

“How much does a park ranger make?” 

He smiled. “You from the IRS?”

“You make enough to raise kids and all?”

He nodded. His smile went away. “I’d be obliged if they keep paying me.”

She glanced at his ring. “You got kids?”

He hesitated, too long she thought, then said, “No.”

“You ever meet my mama?”

“Not too long ago, they tell me.”

She put on her puzzled look.

“I met her once,” he said. “A real looker. You take after her—looks, I mean.” He squinted. “But you don’t spend much time dolling yourself up.” 

She stiffened. 

His eyes wandered off. “She was kind of loose put together.” 

Her mama had large ice-blue eyes and caramel-colored hair cut short as a farm boy’s. She wore a pink tube top under her jean jacket and white polyester shorts tight enough to follow her creases. She often smelled of sex, more so between jobs, and she had trouble with jobs.

“My daddy left his gun. Why do you suppose he’d do that?”

Hutchinson hesitated. “I’m sure I don’t know. Protection?”

“From poachers.” She stood up. “My mama’s loose put together. So, he takes off and forgets his gun? How stupid is that?”

Her mama had brought a stranger home one night, both of them drunk. Lucy sat with her back braced against her bedroom door, hearing them grunt, then finally crawled into bed when it got quiet. She awoke to find her mama gone and the stranger still there, naked save for her mama’s nightie, scraping his teeth with a fingernail. He smiled and crooked his finger. She pointed her daddy’s gun at him, wobbling in both hands, and when he came at her, she closed her eyes and squeezed. It hurt her ears something terrible. When she opened her eyes, the stranger had vanished. Poof! She found a hole in the ceiling over the kitchen sink. Her mama wouldn’t notice. She pulled the spent shell from the cylinder and replaced it with a new one from the box. Then she fit the casing carefully into the space where the cartridge had been. Her teeth chattered even though it was plenty hot out. She pawed through the closet and found her daddy’s old jacket. Then she wore it to the beach.

Hutchinson was eyeing her backpack. “What all’s in there?”

“Everything.”

“You’re set to go, aren’t you?”

“You going to call them on me?”

“I don’t know who ‘them’ is.” He raised the eyebrow on his good side and lowered his voice just above a whisper. “Why on earth do you want to find that man?”

“He’s alive, isn’t he?”

“Darlin’, he threw you away.” Hutchinson coughed carefully. “Go on back to that home. Stay a few weeks, see what you think. You can run later.” He was sweating again. “You got brains. You read everything you can get hold of. You got looks. Get on with it.”  

“Don’t call me darling,” she said, “I’m not your darling. I’m not anybody’s darling.” She slung the pack over her shoulder. Then she caught herself. “How do you know what I read?”

Hutchinson hit the nurse button like it was a telegraph key.

“You were fucking my mama.” Tears came to her at the worst times.

He opened his mouth, but said nothing.

“You look like a stupid person.”

“It was a long time ago,” he said. "I wasn’t married.”

She slipped past the nurse and heard him say, “I’m not like him.”

~

Hitching to her house, Lucy passed on the first two rides. Then a big woman in overalls picked her up.

“You on the run?”

She shook her head.

“I don’t care, really. I ran away when I was your age. How old are you?”

She said nothing.

“All right,” the woman said. “I don’t need to know. Your folks mean to you?”

“They’re dead.”

“Yeah? I ran a couple of times. They didn’t call the cops, nothing. That cured me.” She laughed. The woman glanced at her. “What’s your name, Hon?”

“Mary.”

“Mary what?”

“Gonzales.” 

The woman let her off where a gravel road climbed the woods to the house. She hadn’t seen it since the day they pulled her out of Algebra to tell her that her mama had fallen ill. Her grandpa had built the house when her mama was a little girl. Why he had built it so far from anywhere, her mama couldn’t say.

The sun had set, and the katydids were revving up. The air was thick. It could rain. She tossed the dress into the bushes and pulled on her jeans. As she walked on, the night chorus grew so loud she couldn’t hear her own footsteps.

A couple weeks ago, her mama had pounded on the front door as though it were locked and said the bastard who promised her a job gave it to some cunt he hardly knew and after she had given him everything. Lucy ushered her to the couch, crooning that everything would be all right. She held her mama to her breast, whispering “Poor Mama,” and stroked her head. Then she pulled her up and walked her to the bedroom where she helped her into her nightie. She tapped out the pill, set it on the tip of her mama’s tongue, and handed her the glass of water. Then she tucked her in. Her mama raised her head. “He’s gone,” she said in the darkness. “I can’t do it anymore.” Lucy mouthed the words along with her. “No father, no mother, no brother, no sister, not even a goddamned cousin. I’m alone.” She kissed her, lifted a couple of cigarettes from her purse, and closed the door. 

Now she wondered, had she listened to her mama instead of making fun of her, if she might still be alive.

The insect noise stopped when she shut the door behind her. She toggled the switch and found the electricity had been turned off again. Whenever the power company turned off their lights, her daddy would play “Haunted House.” He would hide in the darkness—how could a man big as that hide in a house so small?—and when she drew near enough, he would scream “Ghost!” It wasn’t much fun, and she always had to change her underpants. 

She groped for the flashlight under the sink, then checked out the livingroom and kitchen. No ghosts. On the counter sat the last stack of books from the Douglas Public Library. “Lucy’s List.” She swallowed. No matter what shitstorm raged through the house, her mama delivered the books. They were overdue. She ground a knuckle in her eye.

She stood at the door to her mother’s room. She had read you shouldn’t hyperventilate because it only makes things worse. Her lips were growing numb. Ghost. She turned the knob, then lost her nerve and released it. She focused on the patterns in the raw plywood walls, fragments of wood exploding in every direction, frozen like fossils. She shut her eyes and leaned against the door, which gave way. Ghost. She screamed and sprawled into the room, the flashlight rolling before her, lighting up the clumps of dust under her mama's rumpled bed. She pounced on the light and swept the room, but found nothing to be afraid of. 

She gathered the top sheet, lifted it with a snap, and sent it billowing over the mattress. She tucked it in, and covered it with the rose chenille spread, leaving enough slack to fold under the pillow. With both hands, she brushed the bedspread so that the ribbing ran straight from the foot of the bed to the pillow. There.

Then she stared across the hallway at the door to her room. Soon she was panting again but barged in as though it were the last thing in the world that would ever frighten her. The door banged against the wall and swung back toward her. She trained her light on the floor, the ceiling, the walls. The bed.

It was a coagulated pool, as though someone had poured it from a pitcher, dull like dried paint. She sat next to it and folded her hands in her lap. Then she leaned over and sniffed cautiously. It had no smell. She spread her fingers and, as though unsure if a fry pan was still hot, settled her hand on it. In a while, out of some distant curiosity, she began to pick at it until she broke loose a crumb. She tumbled it between her thumb and forefinger. Then she placed it on the tip of her tongue. It tasted of rust and salt. She began to rock, holding it in her mouth until it disintegrated. When she swallowed, everything slowed and she felt awfully tired. She curled on her side—just for a minute, she told herself. 

She awoke hungry. The moon had set and the flashlight beam had faded to yellow. She opened the nightstand drawer to retrieve a half pack of cigarettes, then wandered through the darkness to the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator from which rolled a stink that made her gag. She could make out a carton of milk bulging like an ominous football and slammed the door. She cranked open the faucet, but they had turned off the water as well. 

In the cupboard above the sink, she found a dented can of stew, which she opened and wolfed down while she stood. Then she sat on the couch—"Poor Mama”—and cleaned the SpaghettiOs out of a can that was dented as well. They were always dented or their labels torn or the sell-by had passed. Fake Newtons washed down with Flavor Aid. Days-old bread and Velveeta with a rind. Bologna and bologna and bologna. The food at that home was pretty good. So was the lunch program at school until somebody ratted on her daddy for having a job. It was a good job even if he didn’t do a good job. They had the money. She struck a match. No, he had the money. She stared at the flame, then blew it out. “Taking his time, is he?” She bashed the empty can against her forehead and wandered back to her room. 

Her mama put up with anything so long as he didn’t leave. That crybaby. “Loose put together.” That smell. She glanced over her shoulder. “Lucy’s List.” She laid her head on the crusted sheets and cried without a sound, as though the two of them were still brawling in the next room. Then she gathered the bedding into a bundle and set it against the floorboard in the hall.

She heard a distant rumble and wrapped the books in her mother’s old rain shell, tying the sleeves into a grip, and carried them across the road. She hunted in the weeds for the gas can they kept out back and lugged it into the house where she emptied it on the last part of her mother. Then she struck a match and tossed it. That’s what the Vikings did, she was pretty sure. It flickered out. She stepped closer and struck another. It had barely left her fingers when a flash and whump knocked her down. She scrambled out of the house on her hands and knees and sprinted across the road, skidding and falling, running her fingers over her face and hair, patting herself frantically. 

A glow within the house grew brighter until it blazed brilliant yellow, and the flames and black smoke blew out the windows and ate the siding to the roof. Then, above the flashover’s roar, she heard her father’s bullets cook off like popcorn. She stood and brought her hand to her throat. He had given her mama the gun. Maybe he even showed her how to use it. The uprights gave way and the roof collapsed. 

Lucy drifted around the edges of the fire, occasionally startled by a raindrop the size of a dime. The flames cooled to embers that flickered and cracked in the gray dawn. 

She slipped a cigarette into her mouth and patted her pockets for a match, then realized that her pack had gone up with the house. As her shoulders fell, her daddy’s jacket slid to the ground. She slung it into the wreckage where it melted and caught fire. 

Lightning crashed close enough to drop her to her knees. She hung her head and listened to the random puffs of steam that rose from the rubble. Then the rain came hard, and she closed her eyes and lifted her face. She heard a siren in the distance.