Sleepovers Read online

  “You’re a bad man, Donnie Dunlow,” she says.

  I stand there and hold her out from me on the bed and she likes that. She’s wiggling out of her jeans, flinging them to the corner of the room. She’s making good noise. I want to feel her shaking while I’m inside her. So hard inside her.

  “That’s right, I am a bad man,” I tell her.

  She’s trying to reach for me, clawing for me like it’s all she knows how to do.

  “Fuck me, Donnie.” She gets louder. “I said I want you to FUCK me.”

  A kid starts screaming, comes flying down the hall. And the bedroom door starts beating, the doorknob shaking, turning so fast.

  I let go of Krystal’s hair and she falls on the bed. The bathroom light makes my shadow on her. She turns over to face me and I see now all of her naked body. Her chest heaves, her legs stretch.

  “I’ll be there in a minute, Baby,” she yells to the door. She starts to get up and stops in front of me, looks at me like she’s about to cry.

  I’m back where I started and I can see everything now for what it is. And all I can do is slap her. I slap the shit out of her, slap her as hard as I can.

  I pick her hair out from ’round my fingers and watch the beating door. When I open it the middle girl’s standing under me wringing her hands.

  “Tell them to stop chasing me with that spider,” she points down the hall.

  They’re all looking at me from the end of the hall. But I still wipe my face and pull myself together. And I tell them I gotta bass in the back of my truck.

  Heading out the trailer the cats come up underneath my feet, ’bout to damn trip me. The baby runs straight into the baby pool, fast as lightning. Even with all the rain it still looks like the water’s been standing in it for months. The middle girl grabs him, wipes the green shit off his fat little legs. The boys crawl up the sides and lean in over the truck bed. I open up the cooler, and he don’t look the same anymore. He don’t look as beautiful. He’s starting to die.

  “Now that there is the prettiest bass I’ve ever seen!” The oldest takes a picture of him on his phone. “You’ll have to take me with you next time man.”

  One of the cats jumps in the truck bed, looks like it’s got a stomach full of worms. The oldest boy picks it up and starts scratching its head.

  “Lookee!” The girl holds up the baby and the baby sticks it’s head in the cooler.

  The bass moves his tail fin and barely makes the water slosh. The cat perks up. The baby squeals. It’s right pitiful.

  “What you gon’ do with him, Mithter Donnie?” The middle boy has a lisp. “He’s so big, he’d liable to take up the whole wall!” He holds his hands out real wide above his head and the rest of them laugh.

  I look out towards Hertford County and it looks like another storm cloud is coming. It’ll be raining again soon. I tell the kids to head back in the house. And Big Bay Odom and all the trash sitting in their front yards, smoking cigarettes in Arrowhead, sees me leave out of there.

  I sit in the truck outside my house and I tell myself that I caught a bass and that my wife will be happy. And that I am a good man coming home to my family. I am a good man.

  When I walk in the house, first thing Melissa says to me is, “Where’s the diapers?”

  She hits the side of the skillet with the spoon and puts her other hand on her hip, “I told you this morning ’fore you went out that Bailey needs some more diapers.”

  Bailey’s on the floor reaching for her Mama with cheerios stuck to her chest.

  I grab Melissa and kiss her on the mouth.

  “Golly, honey,” she says. “What’s gotten into you?”

  I tell her to close her eyes. I watch her a little there with her eyes closed wiping her hands on a dish rag. “Did you get them pork chops like I asked,” she pushes a curl out her face.

  I run and grab the bass out of the cooler and the baby laughs at me when I come in. And when I tell Melissa to open her eyes she is so happy. She says how special the bass is. She tells the baby her Daddy ought to go in the paper for a bass like this. I’m standing there in the kitchen holding it and I be damn if he ain’t dead yet. His gills open and close so slow. Melissa don’t even notice. She’s kissing me, taking off my cap. She’s taking a picture of me and him on her phone.

  “I’ll caption it: MY GREATEST CATCH,” she says. She giggles at her own joke. She looks at me like she loves me.

  “Let me put him down,” I tell her. I put him on the cutting board and he lays there real still. We stand over him together and I put my hands around her waist.

  “He’s so pretty Donnie,” she says. “You ought to mount him. We could put him above the TV!”

  I watch him stop moving.

  Melissa moves my hand to be on her belly. “We could mount him and put him in our little man’s room,” she says it so sweet like.

  But I don’t want to think about that. I tell her let’s eat him. He’ll be good and nice with all the vitamins and all that stuff our babies need. I can’t believe how happy I sound saying it. And I rub her belly and she puts her hands on mine.

  Melissa says she’ll clean him, that she’ll finish taking care of supper. She tells me I deserve it. I pour a glass of tea and I sit on the couch and look at the baby in front of the TV. Melissa keeps going on about the bass.

  I scratch my beard and some glitter falls outta it. What did Krystal say to those youngins when they all jumped in front of each other showing her the horses they made for her? I don’t remember. I watch the ice melt in my glass, watch the glass drip on the outside. It’s gonna make a ring on the end table. I feel like the glitter is all over me. I feel like it’s shining all over me. Then Melissa hollers for me.

  She’s standing there with blood on her hands.

  “I can’t do it,” she says, “you’re gonna have to get the head. His bones are too strong.”

  When I bring the knife down it feels like the rest of his body jerks. His backbone is so strong I have to really work at it until it breaks in two. Krystal said she knew I’d been hurting. I ’bout can’t stand it.

  Melissa puts her hand on my shoulder and then puts his head in a bowl in the sink.

  And I go take a shower and get all the glitter and blood and everything off of me.

  When Melissa says the blessing, she opens her eyes to me and rubs her belly.

  “He just kicked,” she says. “He’s so excited about his Daddy’s bass.”

  I know damn well that’s not true. She’s not even showing yet. But I feel excited that she feels excited. And that makes me feel like it’s something I can smile about.

  Melissa fries the bass perfect. And he’s big enough for me and Melissa to split a filet. And she eats him like she’s starving, like she’s been waiting for him all along. It makes me feel good. In between mouthfuls she asks me what work Wayne had for me today, and I tell her nothing.

  “Didn’t even have nothing at the shop?” she says and pinches off some filet to give to the baby.

  I shake my head.

  The baby smooshes her fingers in the pretty white meat.

  “Well, y’all will be out in the field soon enough.” Melissa wipes the baby’s face and hands. “Weatherman says this rain will be easing off soon.”

  I take my first bite and he don’t taste musty or anything, cleanest fish I ever tasted.

  “What about Krystal,” Melissa says. “You get up with her?”

  “Well, yeah,” I say.

  “You didn’t charge her nothing did you?” Melissa says. “You know she can’t barely afford any shoes for those kids.”

  I try to remember if those kids had any shoes on.

  “I told the women’s auxiliary that we need to take up a love offering for ’em.” Melissa talks to the baby, getting her out of the highchair. “Ain’t that right, sweet baby girl?” Then she stops and looks at me on her way from the table, “And you know what I’ll put a plate together and you can take it to her tomorrow. We’ve got enough
to feed an army.”

  I think of Krystal poking my bass apart with her fingernails, feeding all those youngins like little birds. Them underneath each side of her, reaching up with their open mouths.

  “You’re a good woman, Melissa,” I say.

  I clean off the table. And then I get the rest of my bass out the sink. I take him out and dump him at the edge of the yard.

  Bailey sleeps in our bed between us. She don’t move or wake up for nothing. Melissa thinks it’s sweet.

  Melissa puts her Bible down on her stomach and I can tell she’s praying, praying for everybody, but I know she’s praying for me. I’ve known that since she found me out there in the pond. And I know she wants to tell me that she knows that’s where I caught that bass. But she won’t say it because she don’t want to hurt me.

  “Don’t forget the Bradley man’s wake is tomorrow,” she says.

  I think about that Bradley man sitting alone in his recliner, alone in his empty house, in the middle of the afternoon. He probably had the blinds pulled. But he didn’t want to be there for days until someone found him. Have his children come in and find him like that. That’s why he called the rescue squad.

  “Did he say anything when y’all got there?” I say. “I mean, was he able to talk?”

  “Honey, I don’t want to remember.” She touches my cheek like a baby animal and then puts her hand on my chest.

  “Well a man that kills himself ain’t a man at all,” I say. I feel like that’s important for me to say. That’s what my daddy said when L.G. Cook found out he had cancer and shot himself down one of his paths. That was the first time I remember knowing about anything like that.

  “I think I’m proud of you, Donnie Dunlow,” she says.

  I can’t do nothing but turn over away from her.

  She tells me she loves me.

  I look out and watch the rain start to hit the window and I tell her I love her too.

  Melissa’s pager goes off at about 11:45. She kisses the baby and is gone. I turn on the scanner on the nightstand and listen to her. She says there’s a bad wreck out on Galatia Church Road.

  Way off I can hear the sirens. I get my Grizzly from under the dresser and I slap it harder and harder. I put in my dip and look at my hands. I look at the back of them and I look at the front, I turn them over and over. I go to the gun cabinet and find half a bottle of Rich and Rare and sit it next to me. I spit out my dip and start to drink.

  Melissa’s still on the scanner. The baby’s still asleep. And I sit and watch the rain go sideways, hear the lighting come. Next thing I know I near ’bout finish off the bottle.

  I head out the house and it’s so dark I can’t see nothing. I walk into the push mower. It’s already rusting, sinking in the mud. Every man ought to have a shed for his tools. But that don’t matter now. The rain makes the bottle slip in my hands, but I drink it damn straight. Right there in my backyard, right there in front of the fields.

  And don’t you know the damn coons and dogs came out in the storm and took the last parts of my bass. I’m down on my hands feeling for him. I want to find where I broke him in two.

  The Bear

  Mama’s sitting behind me on the porch telling me when to flip the salmon cakes. Like she can see when they’re brown enough. Since she’s been sick, she’s been getting me to do more cooking. I’m old enough to do it by myself, I tell her. But she has to have it her way. Just like I know this one she’s trying to tell me to flip ain’t ready yet. It ain’t brown like I want it to be on the bottom, I’ve been checking, but I do what she says anyways.

  Mama’s swatting flies. Don’t know how they all get in the porch. Mama says Abner lets them in. And that don’t make sense either. Everything’s always Abner’s fault with Mama and that ain’t fair.

  She says she got Daddy to screen in this porch so she could sit out here and enjoy it.

  I turn around and watch her swat and kill another one. It was sitting on the arm of her rocking chair.

  “That one there was a horsefly,” she says.

  She flicks it off her chair and looks out towards the swamp field.

  I look too—the clouds back towards town look heavy.

  “Looks like the bottom’s gonna fall out,” she says.

  We all hope it does. We’ve been needing rain real bad. The corn’s hurting, it won’t be worth five cents. We’ve been praying for it at church. Worst dry spell we’ve had since I can remember. The animals don’t even have any water. The creek down the swamp path has run dry. There’s a bear that lives down there. We’ve seen him rambling for something to drink. He’ll sway from ditch to ditch.

  Wayne saw him last week laying in that fallow field next to Hiram’s house. And he went up to him to see if he was alright. He figured the bear’d been hit on the highway. But when he got real close, the bear got up slow and went off real sleepy-like to the edge of the woods. Mama says he was probably laying out there to get cool, probably rolling in a patch of dirt. Mama says animals will act funny like that when they’re dehydrated.

  The dust comes up the path and Mama hollers through the porch window. She tells Sister to put ice in the glasses. I put the last salmon cakes on the platter and help Mama to the table. Daddy and Wayne and Abner come in to wash up. I pour tea in the glasses. Daddy tells Abner to wait for the blessing.

  And Mama says the blessing, “For this and all your many gifts of love Lord, bless this to the nourishment of our bodies and our bodies to your service.”

  “And please send us rain,” Daddy says.

  “In Jesus’ name we pray,” Mama says.

  And we all say, “Amen.”

  Abner is a grown man now, he’s 25. But he smacks when he eats. And he never looks up at any of us. I can’t stand it. And he ain’t been getting any better. And he smacks so hard. Heaving forkfulls into his mouth, gasping for breaths in between. But Mama don’t say nothing about it, she just talks over it. She asks Daddy if he got up with Donnie about cutting timber. She asks Wayne if he tended to the paint for the hunting lodge.

  “Yes, Mama,” they both say.

  She’s been asking them all week.

  Mama tells Sister she did real good on the biscuits. Sister smiles but just for a second.

  Abner grabs the bowl of butterbeans and almost spills them on the table.

  “Slow down, son,” Mama says.

  Mama’s always talked to us in orders.

  Abner looks at Mama for the first time in a long time it feels like and then he looks back down at his plate. He asks me to pass him the salmon cakes.

  Then Wayne says, “Well somebody’s shot that bear.”

  I can’t believe it. I don’t want to.

  “I found him out there in the middle of that fallow field,” Wayne says and he reaches for his tea.

  Wayne says he figures somebody rode by there and saw him wallowing in that dirt and thought he had rabies and called the law. Daddy says it was probably the new hot-to-trot sheriff, leaving that bear out there like that. His body out there swelling in the sun.

  “Common,” Mama says. “Common, if I’ve ever heard it.”

  “That bear was a pretty thing, too,” Wayne says. He figures that bear was at least 300 pounds.

  “You think he suffered?” Sister asks.

  “He bled to death out there, I know that,” Wayne says. “Shot him like they didn’t know what the hell they was doing.”

  I started thinking about that bear waiting to die out there in that hot field.

  “Funny that he stayed out there to die,” Mama says. “Bears go off in the woods, find a thick patch of briar or a fallen tree to lay up under to die. They get in a ball up underneath something. I read it in the paper.”

  I look down at my salmon cake and it tastes good even though I didn’t get it as brown as I wanted and I’m trying to finish my plate because Mama says there’s folks out in the world that ain’t got nothing to eat but I can’t help it—I keep thinking about that bear.

  When
Abner was okay he read all these books about Indians. He told us at the dinner table one night that the Indians around here prayed to the bears for strength before big battles. And he told us that after an Indian died, his spirit stayed with his favorite arrowhead he made when he was living. And when Abner used to talk about the Indians so much I reckon he thought none of us was listening. But I was. And I wish he’d show me all those arrowheads he’s got in his bedroom like he used to do. He’d tell me and Sister the story behind every one of em, what it killed and what it was made out of and how old it was and sometimes even how far it’d come from, all the way from Eskimos sometimes, places with snow and big mountains, big rivers and elks.

  I look up at Abner and I want to tell everybody that it makes sense to me the bear was out there rolling around in the fallow field because he knew that’s where he’d find arrowheads. And when he got shot, of course, he stayed out there to die because he wanted to die in the company of his friends, the Indian spirits. Maybe they were even singing him a song to get to Heaven.

  But I don’t say none of this because Abner pushes his chair back and it makes the table shake. He gets up and walks towards the sink and then he walks back to the kitchen table. He goes back and forth, wringing his hands over his knuckles, squeezing them, cracking them. They’re starting to get red.

  “Sit down, Abner,” Mama says to him. “Now, come on and finish your dinner.”

  Daddy looks at Mama and says, “Let him be, Mama.”

  Then Mama says louder, “You know I thought I heard something this morning.” She looks at Sister. “Didn’t I tell you this morning that I heard a gunshot out towards Hiram’s?” Sister nods her head yes, but everyone at the table knows that all morning Mama’d been at Lena’s looking at wigs she had to special order. Mama has to act like she knows everything, even things she won’t there for.

  Daddy looks at Wayne and says they’ll have to take care of the bear, because ol’ Hiram sure can’t. “Better do it ’fore dark,” Mama says. “’Fore them dogs get to it.” Mama’s always complaining about the dogs ripping and rearing around Hiram’s house. She says they’re wild and they just turn up there because Hiram feeds them. She says he ought to know better than that.