He hadn't slept more than three hours at a stretch since last Monday. Momma was gone by the time he left his room in the morning and during the bus ride, all he could picture was the industrial carpeting that webbed through the locker-lined walls of the high school. Nobody was waiting to high-five him when he got there, unlike his former Troop 64 members who met every day at the flag pole, laughing, being obnoxious and having an exclusively good time. Last year, Taylor Wilson had met him every morning in a similar manner, brandishing a new Amazing Spider-Man or explaining a new theory on Wolverine�s origins pre-Weapon X. Taylor had lost a staggering one hundred and ten pounds over this past summer however, and girls found him desirable now. When Dallas saw him at all, he was wrapped around one of them, trying to make sure he didn't kink up his gold necklace or wrinkle one of the turtlenecks he was into all of a sudden.
In class, teachers never called on the serious boy in the back corner. He never raised his hand and wouldn�t have known any answers if they�d decided to ask him anyway. He was too busy doodling; drawing obtusely muscled heroes and toothy monsters to pass his time. He always threw the sketches into the trash on his way out.
During break, he sat along one of the few locker-less halls reading comic books; Batman, mostly. He ate lunch alone with his book bag thrown up on the table for four and his feet propped up in the chair across from him. He watched the others congregate, talk, laugh and primp. If anyone even came near him, they didn�t speak. In fact, the last time anyone had spoken to him was months ago, right before Christmas break. Frank Johnston, a freshman looking to get in good with Dallas� old scout-mates, had asked him what, exactly, had happened at Camp Will Huskins. Dallas had said he �was in a boating accident� and left it at that.
It had been more than that, though. Hanging from Cougar Rock with his arms failing him, Dallas had made peace with the idea that he was going to die - he had accepted it and given himself to the current begging him over the waterfall... but he had been saved at the last minute by another scout. A girl scout, even. That's what scouts did, though, right? They were forces of good in the world. Still, he couldn�t shake the feeling that he should have died there� or that maybe he had. Watching everybody live around him, unaffected by his presence, he felt like a ghost; condemned to haunt the places he would have been if he had survived.
When his teachers asked the classes where they were going to college or where they planned to be in ten years, Dallas couldn't even fathom an answer. Beyond school lay a void.
On Tuesday, Dallas watched Mike Sherwood pummel Patrick "Pipsqueak" Collins and throw him, bloody and crying, into a dumpster. Dallas was only a few feet away, cupping a cigarette he�d stolen from his mom and ignoring the fact that it was too warm already for the workman's jacket he was wearing. He was in full view of the bully and his clique of cronies, which included several girls these days. Girls as big and ugly as the boys they adored. He thought that they would come after him next, alone and secluded around the back of the gym like he was, with no place to run, really. There was a track field nearby and trees bordered the school grounds, but he had to cross a lot of open field to get to either one and he doubted he could outrun the bigger boys. If Mike Sherwood bothered to say anything before the beating started, Dallas hoped he could spout off something brilliant.
No one in the group, though, gave any indication that they'd seen him. The cronies patted their Alpha Male on the back and congratulated him on a job well done. Then, they all went back towards the cafeteria without even glancing in the skinny redhead�s direction.
Dallas thought about helping the boy out of the dumpster, but settled for flicking his cigarette butt down the sidewalk. If he had reached for the dumpster lid, his hand would have probably gone through it, anyway.
On the way home, he sat in his usual seat at the front of the bus and watched his reflection watch everyone else on the bus as they chatted, laughed and got let off in town. Mama's new single-wide was the last stop on the route.
Less than two hours later, he was sitting on his bed, his Super Dave Osborne T-shirt and his jeans in the floor beside him. He was looking, via his mirrored reflection, at the safety pin in his left nipple and his gray boxer shorts when he came to his final option. The only way he could be sure that he was even alive anymore, was die. The irony struck him as almost funny, but if he COULD kill himself, then he had, in fact, been alive since Cougar Rock and was just taking up otherwise useful space.
Mama had kept a gun in her nightstand for years. When she and Deddy were together, it had been a Christmas gift to the wife.
"Fuh pruhtecshun," his father had said proudly to the alarmed and quizzical look on Mama's face. Dallas had been mesmerized as she twisted the sleek, dark weapon in her hand and had been conscious of its presence ever since. It lay unused in the nightstand drawer, next to her extra cigarette packs, until Mama and Deddy got their divorce last year. Not long after the move, Mama started hanging out with "the girls" from work. Late nights in honky tonks replaced early bedtimes after Murder She Wrote and the gun often went with her- �fuh pruhtecshun.�
She was at work, now, though. It was barely five o�clock. She'd been promoted recently and, according to her ranting when she came home at night, she had a lot of shit to clean up from her predecessor's ineptitude. She wouldn't be home until after eight.
Before going into Mama's room, Dallas put his clothes back on. No point in disrespecting her like that. None of this was her fault.
The gun was right where it always had been, though he was a little surprised to find it clean and shiny. There was no box of bullets nearby, so he tried finding that flip-switch he'd seen on TV that released the magazine. Nothing really moved, though. The gun was likely loaded anyway, he figured. Couldn't run from redneck rapists and load a gun at the same time.
He went back into his room and resumed his place on the bed in front of the mirror. He watched his reflection point the barrel to his head. He remembered the safety pin in his nipple. That had hurt like a bitch, but it ended quickly. Had he only imagined that pain? He looked at a thick scar on his finger he'd gotten while opening a can of soup. That, too was long ago, if ever. He thought about the little red heart on his shoulder. That had felt pretty interesting, he thought, and he could even recall some fleeting sense of empowerment that came with it... but that was long since gone. Buried.
He took his clothes off again -all of them. He recalled an image from several different science fiction movies where the scientists, upon subjecting themselves to their own experiments, always did it naked - just them. Au naturale. And what was more "naturale" than dying?
Dallas thought about looking off to the side, to see if he could watch his brains splatter everywhere in the second before his body knew he was dead. He was only mildly curious about the gore, though. If there was some sort of afterlife that he wasn't already in, then he might not want his own innards being the last image he had of his life. Or of himself. He looked over his thin, long face. His tiny nose, his too-big teeth, the shaved sides of his red hair and the curls on top. The shiny, black gun barrel pressed against the side, between his temple and his ear. Dallas took a last look at his blue eyes. His Dad's eyes. Hadn't somebody said something nice about them once? He shut them and squeezed the trigger.
"I knew I'd never use it," came Mama's voice immediately. Dallas opened bewildered eyes and saw her in the mirror, standing in the doorway behind him. Her eyes were glassing over quickly and she still had her keys in her hand. "I could threaten somebody with it, but not use it. I pawned it and bought a fake."
Dallas lowered the gun. The trigger hadn't budged. "When?"
Mama's eyes spilled over and a ragged sob stumbled out of her before she could answer. "...ah... about a month ago."
Dallas looked down at the weapon. He couldn't deny the tiny voice of relief, but most of him felt tricked and he suddenly covered himself with his bedspread. Mama stepped toward him and he threw the gun at her reflection, forgetting what he was looking at.
"Don't!" he boomed over the crashing glass. He kept his eyes on the particle board filling the mirror's frame as his face heated up.
"What is it, Honey?Tell me what's wrong."
"No."
"Tell me so I can fix it."
"You cain't fix it. I cain't even fix it."
"So what are you going to do?"
He thought that, maybe, he should get a real gun, but he wasn't going to tell her that. He'd have to be pretty low down to make Mama cry on purpose. So he said "Just deal I guess."
Mama sniffled wordlessly in the doorway while Dallas took a deep breath and closed his eyes. "I don't want to spend all night talking about this," Dallas offered matter-of-factly. "It's over. Just forget it."
Mama laughed at that. A quick, sarcastic "Huh."
Not likely, Dallas knew. He tried to change the subject. "Why are you home so early?"
"Because my day just had to get worse, I guess."
Dallas didn't respond. Or move. Or look away from the wall.
"...I got fired. Turns out most of the fuck-ups weren�t Dora�s fault. It�s the way the company�s set up. I told Ron and he said I had to fix it anyway. We got into an argument... and I lost."
Her heels suddenly clacked down the linoleum hallway to the bathroom. After a few minutes of staring at the wall and listening to her blow her nose, Dallas put his pants and T-shirt back on. He walked to the bathroom doorway and watched her re-use her umpteenth tissue.
"I've been there for four years," she said. "That ASSHOLE! There oughtta be a law or somethin'... Oh, God, I don't want to talk about this all night, either."
Dallas handed her the gun. "Your turn," he said somberly. Mama blinked, causing more tears to run down her face. She gurgled a laugh as she took the gun and held it to her head.
"Pi-Yow!" she said as she clenched the fake trigger. She looked at the gun again; shaking her head, then dropped it into the trash can, squashing a mountain of tissue wads. A smile pinched her puffy, red eyes and widened out her quivering lips as she looked back at her son, who was looking at her in the mirror now. She sighed at his ear, turning him back to her.
"Nice tattoo," she said. "Why don't we order a pizza and talk about how you got that, instead?"
Dallas felt his jaw unclench. He turned quickly from the doorway and disappeared behind the hall closet door as he yanked it open. When he reappeared, he was holding the broom and dustpan.
"No pineapple," he said, not looking at her as he walked into his room.
*****
The next day, Dallas sat cross-legged at a far corner of a hallway just like eighteen others in his school, following Batman as he used a metallic lining inside his cape as a cocoon, allowing him to slowly crawl through a series of lasers without setting off an alarm. Dallas was half-heartedly trying to turn this into a useful metaphor for getting through his funk when a wolf whistle shot down the hallway.
His eyes rolled up to the quick, attitude-marinated stride of a pair of combat boots. Black leggings sprouted up from them and disappeared into the frayed edges of cut-off jeans around the middle of a thin, feminine thigh. A red flannel flapped open over a white, softly rounded A-Shirt and a green, military knapsack swung from a claw with black fingernails. The face was one he recognized immediately - Elizabeth Meyers - but her long, red hair was cropped a full two feet shorter than yesterday, dyed jet black and her natural curls framed her pale, lean face like a tyrant's wrath. Honey brown eyes floated just under her serious, manicured eyebrows, focusing on the end of the hall. When they drifted over to Dallas, though, her blood red lips parted and sneered "Whatta YOU want, mouth-breather?"
The catcalls and epithets continued from the lunchroom end of the hallway, where several of the more obnoxious hillbillies were gathered to gawk at this strange, new creature. The boys never gave Elizabeth's thin frame a second glance until today and the girls had previously only commented on the "granny" dresses she'd worn as long as any of them could remember. Elizabeth was shy. A wallflower. Background. When she'd been noticed at all, she'd been called "nerd", "retard", "ugly" and "homely".
Now, however, the words "witch", "satanic" and "vampire" floated up the hall after her. Dallas had no more idea what to make of her than the other kids, but the connotation of "evil" seemed wrong to him. She was shockingly different all of a sudden, sure, but not evil. Dallas could see immediately that something in her had blossomed. Or snapped. He beheld a queen, great and terrible. Wicked, maybe, but not evil... evil didn't look so damn good.
Elizabeth kept her pace, her trajectory and as much of her dignity as was hers to control as she passed Dallas� popping eyeballs and open mouth. She snorted at him and rounded the corner, walking towards the library.
The kids at the other end of the hall snickered, swore, pronounced their fear of the "devil girl" and swaggered back to the lunchroom.
When they were gone, Dallas shoved the comic into his backpack and trotted off, too. Towards the library.
*****
The chicken wire embedded in the window glass around the library door made Dallas think of a prison. With all the people in there staring down at books or, at least, pretending to, he thought it was more like a concentration camp. He snickered at his own pun, fogging up the window.
Elizabeth didn't seem to be in there. Dallas continued down the hallway, even though halls past the library were off-limits during first lunch.
A rattle and a slam. Someone was at a locker nearby. Dallas ducked down a cul de sac of lockers and waited. Hollow thudding. Tiny feet in heavy shoes. Elizabeth Myers walked by, glancing furtively into the recess where Dallas stood and stopped cold. Dallas looked around quickly for a reason to explain his presence, but his locker wasn't here.
Elizabeth's heavily-lined eyes narrowed at him, waiting. More footsteps suddenly thumped down the coarsely carpeted hallway. Elizabeth looked back briefly and when she turned back, Dallas was right beside her, jerking his head towards a quiet hallway and looking seriously into her eyes. He headed off. She followed.
Around several corners in the honeycomb hallways, Dallas and Elizabeth stayed silent until they finally reached a door to the outside. Very slowly, Dallas pressed down on the bar. The classes nearby droned with teacher's recitals of years-old cirriculums as they slipped out into a warm spring day.
"Why the fuck are we out here?" Elizabeth asked.
"Gym" Dallas whispered with a finger to his lips. He led the way around the building, peeking around every corner before walking around it. Liz started humming something dramatic and dangerous, earning another shushing from her escort. This was the long way around the school, but class was in session on this side, so no adults were patrolling. They dashed across a small courtyard near the trailer classes and soon reached the isolated backside of the gym, where Pipsqueak Collins had been thrown away just days before. Elizabeth was lingering several yards behind Dallas, looking at him skeptically.
"We're safe," he said, reaching into his pocket. "Mister Harrison never comes back here. That's just a rumor to keep people out."
"I know that," she snarled, digging into her knapsack.
"No you don't," Dallas said as he pulled out a pack of Mama's Marlboro Lights and lighter out of his inside coat pocket.
"Oh, how the fuck would you know?" She jammed a GNC cigarette in her own mouth and stepped back as a flame sparked up in front of her face.
"Cause you're never back here, either," Dallas said, holding his lighter out for her, his own unlit cigarette resting lightly between his lips.
She took a quick drag from the flame, holding her cigarette between her thumb and forefinger. Dallas laughed a little. She ignored him and, once the flame had taken, held it properly between her first and second fingers, down and away from her body beyond her flipped wrist. Dallas cupped the flame for his own, and looked up at Elizabeth as he dragged his smoke to life. She was looking at him with an amused scrutiny that went just beyond simple curiosity.
"So..." Dallas started. How to phrase this and not seem silly? "What happened?"
Her eyebrows puckered in the middle and she looked away. She took another quick drag that she didn't inhale before she spoke.
"I got sick of this shit. All of it."
"Just like that?"
"Yeah. Just like that." She was snarling at him, those ruby lips pulled up in one corner. Dallas smiled.
"Me, too," he said. He expected her to snort or something, but she settled for a sideways appraisal of his clothes. T-shirt, jeans, workman's jacket, sneakers. Pretty normal compared to her. Her eyes lingered on how he was holding his cigarette in his cupped hand with the butt away from him, flipping it over as he put it to his mouth. He'd seen a TV movie called "The Man with Bogart's Face" on TV and that was, apparently, how Humphrey Bogart did it. That's how men smoked. So that's how he smoked.
They both smoked in silence, listening to the wind slip through the trees beyond the track field in front of them and the traffic whoosh down the by-pass out in front of the school. Dallas took small drags and tried to think of some justification for reaching out and touching her. Her shirt, maybe. Or her face. She glanced at him after a long while and he couldn't turn his eyes away, even though she'd caught him looking at her cut-offs.
"You come out here a lot?" she asked, falling into a choking cough.
Dallas nodded when she'd recovered. "Every couple a' days, I guess."
She puffed out the last of her cigarette and dropped it. She crushed it under her combat boot with relish. She turned a smile up to Dallas as he continued dragging his out. "Thanks."
"You're welcome." Dallas squinted as smoke drifted up in his face. He still saw her look him up and down again.
"I never pegged you for a smoker, Dallas," she said.
"I never pegged you for a vampire," he said with a smile. Her mirth dropped away immediately. She stuck her middle finger up at him.
"Fuck you, redneck," she said, turning.
Dallas was shocked for only a moment. "I mean I don't think you are. Whatever those people say. That was sarcasm, Elizabeth!"
She kept walking.
"Damn..."
She paused when she opened the gym door and looked back at him, her anger had cooled to a nice, even ponderance and she nodded slowly. "See you in a couple a' days." And she was gone.
Dallas blew out his last drag and flicked the butt down the concrete. The gym door slammed open and Elizabeth leaned out of it. "Hey! It's just 'Liz' now."
It was Dallas' turn to nod as her smirk pulled her back into the gym.
*****
Dallas lay awake that night, staring at the ceiling, wondering if it was made out of the same material as the floor and why those little metal flower things were necessary every two square feet to hold it up. He thought Liz might know. Yet another question on the list to ask her the next time they smoked together. That would be right after "why does the bus always smell?" and "what the fuck is salisbury steak?" Next time, he wouldn't let the silence linger like that, no matter how comfortable it was. He realized suddenly that he would have to steal some more cigarettes, as that had been the last one in the pack he'd swiped.
The gravel in the driveway crunched under rolling tires. Bright light sprayed shadows of the mini-blinds across Dallas' room and the familiar screeching of Mama's brakes signalled her return home. Dallas glanced over at the big red numbers atop his chest of drawers. 1:45 AM.
He had actually expected that she'd be home when he got off the bus and that she'd try to talk to him about yesterday. He had no doubt at all that the talk would happen, but as the hours crawled by, he relaxed, figuring that it wouldn't happen today. Maybe she was out looking for a job and she'd caught up with the girls from work once they got off for the day. Now, it was too late (or early) to talk about it. Yes! Safe!
Slam! There went her car door. Her feet cruched the gravel as she headed for the trailer door.
Slam! The passenger door.
Mama's voice: "Don't slam my door!"
A man's voice: "Ah, shit. Sorry, Baby."
Dallas sat up. That wasn't Deddy's voice. He got a brief flash of a skinny, tattooed guy named Butterfly, but he shook that away quickly.
He laid back in his bed and listened as Mama shushed the snickering stranger while dragging her key all around the lock on the front door. Even the outer wall of this trailer was good for blocking little more than sightlines.
"Shut up, now!" she hissed.
"Right, right. The baby's asleep." They both giggled and Dallas felt his face heat up.
"Well, he's not a baby, but he is MY baby," Mama said. "And if you wake him up, you sleepin' out here."
Only silence followed them in. They thumped down the carpet on the other end of the trailer and Mama's bedroom door clicked softly as it shut.
That motherfucker, thought Dallas. Literally! GOD! He wanted to sleep right now! This is the shit Eliz- Liz was talking about. How the hell was he supposed to grow up with any kind of decent head on his shoulders with his mother parading men in like this all the time... okay, not parading... and not ALL the time... okay never before. But this certainly wouldn't help.
He felt an old wound, deep inside, reopen and guilty humors invade his body. They didn't know he was awake, that he could hear them cooing and giggling. He needed to be asleep now. He didn't want to be awake for this. He pulled his comforter up from the foot of the bed, burying one ear against his pillow and covering the other. He thought again of simple, unimportant conversation pieces to present to Liz and how, if Mama was going to get on her with her life now, maybe he could, too. Maybe they wouldn't have to have their talk at all. Maybe she'd forgotten.
Dallas cringed at the man's moan, followed quickly by an "OW!". He pressed down and ignored or managed to block out other noises, but when the trailer started rocking, even that little bit, he was sure he was going to vomit. He tried not to think about what was going on in there. He tried not to think about the fact that the whole trailer was up on concrete blocks and that rocking like this might be dangerous. He focused on the darkness. On Batman. On school. On the picture he was drawing in Chemistry. He focused on Liz and the snarl she'd given him when she called him a mouth-breather.
Finally, the trailer stilled and whimpering was barely audible through the walls, the closed door and Dallas' sheets. It had been mercifully quick, and the relieved breath that Dallas let out was the last thing he was conscious of.
*****
The next day, Thursday, Dallas waited behind the gym by himself during the whole lunch period, smoking two extra cigarettes to cover the time it should take Liz to eat. But she never showed.
Classes were full of talk about her, though. Anyone who dressed like that was asking for it, he heard. Somebody ought to beat her ass and set her straight. Somebody else suggested she was a "rug muncher" and was just sick of hiding it. Dallas was spared having to ponder what that meant by poor Pipsqueak Collins, who was immediately thumped in the head by Mike Sherwood before the bully explained that it meant "a girl that likes to do a man's job on another girl. That's why she dresses like a boy."
"I've never seen you in hair dye and fishnets," Dallas thought. Everyone in the History class turned to look back at him in his corner by the door. Mike Sherwood seemed shocked. Dallas' heart jumped into his throat. He'd said that out loud.
"What the fuck did you say, Copper Top?" Dallas' eyes grew wide. When was the last time Mike Sherwood had said anything to him? Or any of these people had even looked at him?
Mister Grayson, their teacher, walked in at that moment, strident, late and talking already. "Hey, Guys. Sorry I'm late. The wife had to go to the hospital. She burned herself opening a Lunch Bucket."
The class tuned into the teacher, but Mike Sherwood and a few others kept low brows aimed at Dallas.
"You watch ya fuckin' mouth," Mike whispered before turning around. His cronies, Eric and Trey, followed suit.
When the bell rang almost forty-five minutes later, Dallas crumpled up the paper on his desk out of habit. It was blank, though, as they had been all day. He'd spent the first few minutes of class wondering what Mike was going to do to him after class and the rest dreaming up scenes where Liz heard what he'd said to Mike- either through the grapevine or if she'd actually been in class. He'd drawn no picture with his hands, but he could see her falling in love with him just as clearly as if he had. Out in the hall, Trey smacked him in the back of the head as he ran by to join Mike and Eric, off ahead of them. People around them sucked their teeth. Black boys went "OOOOOOOH!" and jumped back with their hands over their mouths.
"I told you ta watch ya mouth!" Mike said, approving of Trey's assault. Dallas shook his head at them and headed off for Algebra.
"You ain't gon' fight dat boy?" asked Leon, one of the "oooh"ers he had his next class with, too.
"What for?" Dallas asked. "I'd just get suspended and he'd still be an asshole."
"OOOOOOOH! DAMN! 'EY! 'Ey Mike Sherwood! Dis boy say you a' asshole!"
The noise in the hall was too much for Leon to be heard and Mike was probably off in another class by that point. Leon sucked his teeth and swung his arm down in front of him.
"Thanks, Leon." Dallas said.
"Shet da hell up. You don' know me." Leon pushed past him to get through the classroom door first, as though he really wanted to be in there.
*****
On Friday, Dallas ate his lunch quickly (pizza day), then made his roundabout way to the back of the gym. There was no point in missing a meal if she wasn't going to show up.
The night before, while Mama was out again, Dallas had lain awake again, thinking about that scene in the hallway; the energy it had caused among the people around him and even in himself. It had been the most... of anything that he'd felt in a long time. Although he couldn't really say it was all a good feeling, the act of feeling it was good. Not like Liz. That, by contrast, was a good feeling that the feeling of which was somehow scary. He squinted across the track, trying to pin his conclusion down.
"Fucking Harrison," Liz' voice said from right next to him. Dallas turned to her quickly and whipped out his recently stolen pack of Marlboro Lights, offering her one. "He saw me in the hallway and sent me back to the lunchroom. I had to sneak out through the front door. Right by the office. They're so busy looking everywhere else, there's nobody up there."
"You sure he didn't see you?" Dallas asked as she took a Marlboro.
"Nah. I waited at the gym door for a minute to see if he'd catch up to me, but he never walked through there."
Dallas nodded and they lit their cigarettes in silence. What was that he was going to ask her? Something about the bus...
"Heard you defended my honor to Mike Sherwood," she said. She was smiling. Those darkly painted eyes, the fair skin, the dark hair... Something jerked in Dallas' stomach and his head got swimmy for just a second. De ja vu.
"I heard some pretty mean shit from these people," she said, looking out as he was. "It's funny 'cause I never said anything bad about any of them and they're callin' me evil."
"Maybe you should," Dallas mused. "Maybe you should call them stupid ignorant rednecks."
"That'd just give 'em a reason." She took a drag- a real one. Her lips popped as they came off the cigarette. She'd been practicing.
"Not that they need one," Dallas said.
Liz blew her smoke out forcefully. "Are you tryin' to get me to fight somebody?"
"No."
"Well... I just wanted to say thanks."
Dallas nodded.
"Whatchya doin' this weekend? Anything?"
"...naw. You?"
"Nope."
Dallas waited for her to say something. She just smoked in silence; watching the trees or something farther away.
"I want to go see Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure," he said finally.
She looked sideways at him and blew out her smoke. Dallas watched her face, trying to figure out what she was thinking. She looked back out towards the trees and took another drag.
"I think it's playing here finally," he said. "It started about a month ago up in Charlotte, but I'm not sure."
"Yeah, it's playin'. I live right near the thee-ayter. I saw the sign on the way to school this mornin'."
"It looks pretty cool."
"Yeah."
Again, a moment of smoke-filled silence.
"If, uh... would you want to go see it? With me, I mean."
Liz crushed out her cigarette, her lips pursed thoughtfully. "Hmmmm... I guess." She broke into a smile and dug into her knapsack.
"I could meet you at your house and we could walk over, right? If you live near there."
"Yep." She pulled out a pack of Big Red gum and started fishing some sticks out of it.
"I'll call you when I know the showtimes."
"My number's unlisted. Here." She handed him some Big Red. "I could still smell the smoke on me in class last time. This shit is strong. Should cover it up."
"Thanks. Umm... so.. what's your phone number?"
"I'm just kiddin'." She looked up at him having replaced the gum in her bag. She smiled again, squinting into the sun as she slowly put her gum in her mouth. "It's in the phone book. We're the only Meyers in there."
"All right."
"Bye, Dallas," she said, turning. She almost skipped to the gym door and smiled back at him as she went in. Dallas was stock-still, holding his gum in his hand. Tomorrow- or tonight- or sometime this weekend, at least, he was going on a date with Liz Meyer.
"Holy shit."
*****
While Pizza Hut was without question the finest of dining in Chester for people who didn't care which side of the plate their fork went on, it was, sadly, out on the by-pass by the old mall (Wal-Mart's setting up just down the street had shut the whole thing down). Since Liz's house and the theater were near downtown, their only choice within walking distance for their pre-movie meal was Terry's, a diner dowtown that Dallas had never been to.
"I have," Liz had said on the phone. "It's mostly old people, but the food's really good... not that the food is why we're going."
Mama had been at home that evening, but only because she was changing out of her job-hunting nice clothes into her jeans and frills for yet another night out. Dallas watched her put on eyeliner as they discussed the travel arrangements. Mama would take him to Liz's but he'd have to use this twenty to get home. The powder blue station wagon that was the entirety of Chester's only taxi service- Wild Bill's Taxi- was to be his ride home.
"Why cain't I just call you?" he asked, knowing the answer.
"Cause you ain't the only one with a date, Honey," she said proudly.
"Oh, is it the moaner again?"
Mama's eyes and mouth popped wide and she turned bodily to him, reading his face.
"Nevermind," he said smiling at the shock he'd caused. She launched a bleating chuckle at him as he went back to his room to put his shoes on.
*****
The ride into town was quiet. Dallas always took it silently and, despite the fact that they were in Mama's Oldsmobile and not the smelly bus, the habit seemed unbreakable. The carefully crimped and puffed sculpture of Mama's hair added a full foot to her height with the help of an ungodly amount of hair spray, the lingering scent of which was still choking Dallas. She had forbidden him to roll down the windows, though, and turned on the ventilation, which barely helped at all. They'd traveled almost all the way to Liz's house before she spoke.
"I thought you were asleep, you know."
Dallas nodded, but didn't say anything. He didn't like the idea of his mom being with men who weren't Deddy, but it seemed like none of his business, really. Like the divorce hadn't really been about him, either. Probably best to ignore it. Concentrate on his own date.
"...I think this girl is good for you," she said after a moment.
"You don't even know her," Dallas said, looking sideways at her. God. Was she going to try the after-school special "I'm connecting with you" speech?
"I mean it'll keep your mind off things. Like guns." She had a purposefully wrinkled forehead cocked towards him.
"...Yep," was all Dallas could muster. That was true enough. He had been in a decidedly different state of mind since Elizabeth had... clomped down the hall that day. Dallas smiled to himself at that thought and Mama saw it. She patted him on the knee and turned the radio on to a peppy fiddle tune.
*****
The pink sky silhouetted the high, store-front covered hill of downtown Chester as Dallas held the Terry's door open for Liz.
"Thanks," she said. She was dressed in red tights, red lips and a red T-shirt. Everything else- her boots, frilly skirt, hair, leather coat and her eyes- all black. She walked straight up to the counter to place her order as Dallas, dressed in his jeans, and a nice green button-up Mama had ironed for him, scanned the wood paneled room. It felt as old as it likely was. Plastic covered seats on metal chairs skirted tables with the fake wood coverings chipped away at the corners to reveal the compressed particle board underneath. Along the walls were a few pictures, all black and white, of men holding huge fish or metal trophies dotting the spaces between deer heads.
There were only four other customers. One old couple who was scowling at Liz and two guys with their names on their blue shirts, silently mowing down their meatloaf in the back corner. The one facing into the diner was pretending not to look at Liz.
"I want the salisbury steak," Liz said with a smile to a portly woman holding a plate and trying to look blankly at her.
"What is salisbury steak?" Dallas asked.
"It's good," Liz said. "That's what it is. Get some"
The woman behind the counter broke into a smile, revealing several missing teeth. "Well, Honey, I didn't know what to make of your taste lately, but it cain't be all bad." She smiled at Dallas.
"I'll be the judge of that," he said with mock superiority. "Let me try some of that steak."
"She's got to finish my order first." Liz said, mockingly rolling her head around on her neck.
The woman laughed and said "You gotta like a man that goes after what he wants, now".
"I'll think about it," Liz said with a fake snarl.
She put together plates for both of them at the same time. Eight bucks and two sweet teas later, they slid into one of the vynil-covered booths around the edge of the room.
Terry's had access to a parking lot behind the diner and several big, round men waded in about halfway through the teenagers' meal. They were busting on a buddy of theirs who was due to catch up at any minute. He'd had to stop one more time, coming out of Charlotte, to pee because he'd had "all that damn coffee".
Dallas had to go, too, he realized. He told Liz he'd be right back and asked if she'd be okay. She smiled and said that they loved her here.
The men's room was small, but spotless. No grafitti anywhere on the white walls and nothing spotting up the concrete floor. It was almost like peeing at home except there were two urinals and a wood-paneled stall around the toilet.
He was done, washing his hands and looking for food in his teeth when a big, round trucker came in and their eyes- the same crystal blue- met in the mirror. Dallas froze. The trucker never broke his stride until he plugged himself into a urinal and let out a long sigh of relief. Dallas took several paper towels and dried his hands to give the man a second before he said anything. The man glanced over at him, then looked back up the wall.
"You watchin' ain't helpin', Dallas."
"I'm just trying to..." What? He didn't know what he was doing. The beard was new. Thick and red like the wiry curls that puffed out from under his green Mac Truck baseball cap. He was bigger around, too, but he always was every time he rolled into town.
Deddy looked down and sighed. "How you been, boy?"
"Fine."
"Ya mama takin' care a' ya?"
"Tryin' to," he said with a smile. That was one of Deddy's favorite sayings. He tried to keep things simple.
Deddy nodded. "Must be hard, with her goin' out every night." Dallas blanched as Deddy flushed the urinal and headed for the door. Dallas happened to be standing in front of it, though, causing him to pull up short. Dallas had remembered him as tall, but even after all this time, he seemed so big. Deddy's eyes moved quickly, back and forth between Dallas'. Over his face and down to his hands, still holding the paper towels. He sighed through his nose, and turned to the sink.
"Didn't take her long, did it?" he said, glancing up at Dallas in the mirror as he turned on the water. "She ain't slept with none of 'em, has she? I only heard she's been out a lot."
"Did you hear she got fired?"
Deddy paused in his rinsing. "Naw." He yanked out a few paper towels and very intensly dried his hands off. Dallas thought for a moment that they could just stay in there, talking all day. Talking privately, even, which was something they'd done only a few times, on long rides down dark country roads as the perpetual beer in his lap called up the wisdom of life's experiences for him to impart to his son.
"What are you all dressed up for?" Deddy, himself was in flannel and overalls.
"I, uh... I'm on a date. Out there."
Deddy smiled at him. His teeth were turning yellow. "No shit?"
"No, sir." Dallas smiled and his throat burned for some reason. Deddy looked him over again, like he'd forgotten what he'd learned the first time.
"How old are you now? Sixteen?"
"Yeah."
"... you got a car?"
"No. I ain't even took the driver's test yet."
"What? You got to take that, now. Drivin's a basic skill. You got ta have 'at. Tell yo mama to stay home and teach you how t' drive."
"You drive for a livin'," Dallas said, smiling. "Why don't you teach me?"
"'Cause I'm always drivin' somewhere else. That's why we got a divorce."
"Right... " Dallas knew that. He looked at the concrete for something else to say.
"I bet your date and your dinner's gettin' cold."
"Yeah. You gonna eat with ya friends?"
"You don't want me eatin' with you, do ya? Yer girlfriend might get spoiled havin' me around." He grinned. Dallas could hear it in his voice, even if he was still looking at the floor.
"Yeah. We gotta get goin' soon anyway."
Deddy started shuffling around him to get to the door. Dallas tried to think of some reason to reach out and touch that flannel. But it would have been wrong.
"Are you guys in a convoy?" Dallas asked as Deddy opened the door.
"All th' way to Fort Lauderdale. Lucky I live so close to the interstate."
"Yeah..."
Deddy held the door open for Dallas. "Hey. You better put ya face on 'fore you go back out there. Them eyes I gave ya ain't no good if they on the floor."
Dallas smiled and Deddy patted his shoulder with a big, thick hand, which he left there. "Let's see it now. Head up." Dallas picked his head up and smiled at Deddy. He was fighting a lump in his throat, even though Deddy was now giving the same after-school-special speech he'd cringed at the thought of Mama doing just an hour ago. Deddy squeezed his shoulder- too hard and it hurt like hell, but Dallas only flinched a little. Deddy looked around the bathroom for something to say.
"Awright... Be tough... Keep truckin'." He swatted Dallas lightly on the head and walked out of the bathroom. Dallas stood there for a minute, taking a deep breath and fighting off an odd quivering up his nose before following him out...
"I don't recall finishing my tea," Dallas said, sitting back down to his half-finished meal and an empty tea glass. Liz rolled her eyes innocently as she drained the other one next to her cleaned plate. Dallas smiled at her. "You ready?"
"You're not gonna finish?"
Dallas shook his head.
"Are you okay? You look spooked."
"I'm just white," he said plainly- reflexively, even. She laughed- explosive and spritely. Dallas felt a smile tug his ears back.
"That makes two of us," she said. "Movie starts soon." She squeaked across the vynil seat and Dallas saw Deddy take his seat at a table with his friends- all of them rowdy and laughing.
Seconds later, Dallas held the diner door open for Liz and caught Deddy watching them walk out. Deddy nodded and smiled a little. Dallas was barely able to smile back. He held the palm of his hand up and tilted it as he stepped out into the night.
They took their time walking towards the Cinema Twin, along one of the few sidewalks in Chester- all of them downtown. After a quiet few minutes, Liz took Dallas' hand and held it. He squeezed it, noting that it was small, the way he must have seemed to Deddy. He thought he should say something romantic, but it seemed more important to just hold on right now.
As they passed by the enormous, well-lit facade of the First Baptist Church, Liz spoke softly. "That guy was your dad, wasn't he?" Again, Dallas couldn't find words. She waited patiently, though. He walked quietly for some time before he cleared his throat.
"Yeah."
"Not hard to tell."
He squeezed her hand again. "Sorry to be so out of it. It'll pass."
"Will it?"
"...Always does."
"...Should it?"
Dallas thought that maybe it shouldn't. Maybe he should make an effort to let Deddy know just how much he wished he'd come home and stay home. Even if he and Mama couldn't make up, he'd still like to have the guy in-town at least. They could go on rides every couple of nights, Dallas could probably smoke with him. Deddy could drink and talk about the places he'd been, the things he'd learned... what was right and what was wrong. But that was never going to happen. He wouldn't stop it for Mama, he damn sure wouldn't stop it for Dallas.
"Yeah," he answered as the lights of the theater came into view. "I think it should."
She moved into him then, wrapping an arm around his waist. She propped her head against his shoulder and Dallas wondered if any of her black hair dye might come off on his shirt. She was warm and weighty and seemed somehow to fit into a pocket of space made especially for her. Dallas' left arm fit easily around her shoulders and they stopped for moment while he tested the other one around her middle. Dallas looked over towards the church while he smelled her hair and appreciated the way she squeezed him, pressing into him. He pulled back and looked down into her face.
"Thanks," she said. Dallas had been about to say the same thing.
"What for?"
"I needed that," she said. "I feel for you, Dallas. But sometimes, it's nice to know you're not the only one having to deal with this shit."
Dallas smiled. "All of it?"
"Yeah." No smile from her. She was serious.
She put her head back into his shoulder. He wrapped his arm around her and they walked on, silent and tangled.
