Seventeen Years Earlier
“Call in with your requests to K99.4. We want to know what you want. Tell us what you want! Let us please you!” Brendan King, K99.4’s late night host, called out over the static-filled speakers of our small radio. “Looks like we’ve got a caller! Say hello to Sherrie, from… Where you from Sherrie?”
A softer voice cut in and out as the cicadas sang out their own late night tunes around us. “Lonoke! Hi, Brendan! I’m so excited I got through to you!”
“Tell me how I can please you on this hot summer night, Sherrie. You want something nice and slow or something a little harder?”
Sherrie giggled and the sweltering summer heat notched up even higher. “Something nice and slow tonight. I’m driving back from a party and I want something to remember the night with.”
“Nice and slow it is, baby. You be careful getting home, now.” Brendan’s voice faded out as the soft strumming of a guitar filled our back yard.
It was too hot to be sitting outside. Inside was even hotter, though. Everywhere was hot. It was the end of July in the south; there was no escaping the heat. The humidity was even worse. Sweat gathered on every inch of skin as soon as we stepped out.
In two beach chairs that we’d inherited from Cash’s parents, we sat facing the chain link fence at the back of our yard. A small metal table rested between us, holding two bottles of lukewarm beer. Neither of us were twenty-one yet, but Cash had been a soldier for two years and that was enough to let a man drink a beer, he said.
A bullfrog called out from its perch across the way and I wondered if it was calling out for a mate. Was it calling out like Brendan, asking another frog to tell him what it wanted?
The flowers I’d dug up on the side of the ditch in front of Masie Duke’s old place were wilted and falling over like a row of drunks at a Mardi Gras parade. One after another, they hung their heads and watched their feet as a light breeze made them dance along to the grinding sound of acoustic guitar through blown-out speakers.
We hadn’t blown the speakers out. It was Cash’s little brother’s radio. Even our trash wasn’t our own.
I leaned back in my chair, my toes tangled in a dying section of grass. I should’ve mowed. I looked out at the dirt patches, more patches than the baby’s hand-me-downs in a pastor’s family, and grimaced. What little grass there was, was brown and too tall.
I wouldn’t have been surprised if a tumbleweed blew through our yard. I’d just watched a documentary that talked about tumbleweeds. The dying plants unearthed themselves and rolled until they found suitable soil and water. Then, like nothing had ever happened, they stuck their dried roots back in the ground and started growing again. No tumbleweeds were stopping in our yard. Nothing was stopping in our yard.
Cash barely stopped in our yard.
I’d painted my toenails red. My skin was tan from not having anything better to do than sit outside in the sun. I wore the same ragged dress I wore every time Cash came home. It reminded me of Julia Roberts in Sleeping with the Enemy. Flowy and buttoned down the front, it was navy blue with little white flower clusters. I’d gotten in from Goodwill for four dollars.
I felt about as red, white, and blue as a girl could feel, and it still didn’t feel like enough. The soldier sitting next to me couldn’t have been less interested.
“That one was for Sherrie, my people. Now I’m going to speed it up with something old, from my man, Tom Petty. Keep the requests coming!” Brendan’s voice faded again and Tom Petty started singing about an American girl.
My mom had played it when I was young, while reminiscing about how her life was Before. Before meant a lot of things to Mom. When she said Before, she could be talking about before Dad, before me, or even before George Bush, Sr. got elected into office. All I knew was that Before was better. Before was her own red, white, and blue freedom.
“You like Petty?” Cash’s deep voice stirred the night, his head rolling towards me from where it rested on his own beach chair.
I shrugged. I didn’t know if I liked him. The music was good, but it made me sad for someone else’s nostalgia. “Do you?”
“I prefer Johnny Cash, but I’ll take Petty any day.” It was the longest sentence he’d spoken to me since he’d gotten home that morning. Ten words in a meaningless sentence.
I pulled my dress up so I could feel the breeze across the tops of my thighs and fanned myself with a paper plate. The hot dog was long gone, but I kept accidentally dipping my finger in the spot of mustard that remained. “Johnny Cash. I guess you have to like him most, right?”
“Guess so.”
A dog barked a few houses down, the bullfrog went quiet, and the cicadas grew even louder, almost drowning out Petty’s ode to his own sad girl.
“This song is sad.” I wasn’t sure why I’d said it or if I wanted to excuse myself from the conversation to avoid owning it, but I sat there, silently waiting for Cash to say something back to me.
He stretched his long legs out and looked up at the night sky. A million stars sparkled in the reflection of his eyes. “It doesn’t sound sad.”
“He says that she couldn’t help thinking that there was more life somewhere else. She’s sad where she is. Stagnant.”
Cash didn’t look back at me. “The chorus sounds fun, though.”
My cheeks flamed as the chorus repeated again and I realized what it said. I bit my lip to keep myself from saying anything else and closed my eyes, hoping to close out everything around me.
Most of the time, I was fine. Stagnant, sure. Sad, sure. Lonely, more than anyone could know. But I was fine. It was the rare moments when Cash was home that I wasn’t fine. I was uncomfortable in my own skin and suddenly nothing in the house felt like my own. It was like I’d been crashing at his house while he was away and I was waiting for him to tell me to beat it.
Of course, I wasn’t crashing. It was our house. Our dead yard, our dying flowers, our beat-up beach chairs with missing straps so your butt hung out of the bottom of the pink one. The space was ours, but I felt like an imposter.
Finally, the song faded and another slow one came on without Brendan’s interruption. A motorcycle went by on the street and cut out the lyrics for half a minute of the song.
“Clara?”
I didn’t say anything, just kept quiet.
“I’m going back tomorrow. I just have tonight here.”
My fingers bunched up the fabric resting on top of my thighs and I had to work to keep a straight face. “Okay.”
It was better, anyway. I didn’t know what to do or say when he was around. Things were easier when he was gone. Not happier or more okay, just easier and that was something.
“What do you think about going to catch a movie tonight?” His head rolled back over to face me. “There’s a good scary movie at the drive-in.”
I swallowed too loudly and met his dark stare. Something flipped in my stomach as I did and I pressed my knuckles against it, dreading the feeling. “Um, sure. If that’s what you want.”
Cash, always decisive and ready to do whatever he wanted, stood up and stared down at me. I thought I noticed his eyes move towards my legs, but I’d seen the type of girls Cash dated before me. I wasn’t his type. No matter what our marriage license said.
“Come on. I’ve missed driving my truck.”
I followed him into our house and stopped in the living room to grab my purse. I paused and ran my finger along the frayed edges of the faux leather bag, thinking of the day I’d bought it from the flea market down the street. I’d needed something to carry back and forth while paying bills, and I’d been proud of it at first. In the lighting at the store, I swore I could smell the real leather. The worn patches looked vintage and deliberate, the fraying purposeful and pretty. At home, next to Cash, it looked cheap and out of place. Like me.
“Are you sure you don’t want to go out with your brothers? Since you’re only home for the night, they’d probably like to see you.”
“I saw them yesterday and stayed with them last night. They’ve had enough of me. Tonight will just be me and you.”
I blinked as I realized he’d been in town longer than the day. I shouldn’t have been surprised that he visited everyone before me. I wanted to stay home. I wanted to strip off the stupid dress and drag on a pair of pajamas before sitting out back with a book. My wants were silly when held up next to the desires of a man like Cash.
“Okay.”
Cash smiled suddenly and his face lost all the hard edges of war. Instead, the boy I’d known since I was thirteen was standing in front of me, holding out his elbow like we touched all the time, like his touch didn’t stop my heart. “You sure you can handle a big, bad, scary movie?”
I nodded. “I watched an old Halloween movie just last week. I’m not scared.”
To be fair, I’d watched long enough to see a young co-ed get slashed and then I’d grabbed for the remote so fast that I sent it flying across the room. I was more of a romantic comedy kind of girl. Not that I would admit that to him.
“Wow. A Halloween movie. The girl I remember couldn’t sit through an episode of Goosebumps.” He pulled open the front door and shook his head. “Things sure have changed.”
I threw my strap over my shoulder and followed him out. Things had changed. Maybe not what shows and movies I could watch, but other things, like our relationship. We’d been best friends for years. There was nothing that we couldn’t talk about. I never felt uncomfortable or weird around him. He never did the whole stoic thing with me. I missed those times. I’d ruined it all.
I ducked under Cash’s arm and stepped down the narrow front steps. The hem of my dress got caught under my sandal and my arms windmilled as I toppled forward, off the miniscule porch and towards the dusty front walkway. A pathetic squeak of panic came out of my mouth and I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for the pain to hit.
Instead, a steel band locked around my waist and I dangled in the air for a second before being jerked back into something solid enough to knock the air out of my lungs. I scrambled to find my footing and instead tangled my legs around Cash’s much longer ones. My arms were still flailing, until Cash cleared his throat.
“I’ve got you, Clara.” He twisted around until I was between him and the door he’d managed to close and lock. “You’re not going anywhere.”
I held my breath as I slid down his body. His arm stayed around me, catching me right under my breasts as my feet touched the porch, and something hard of his poked me in my back. I was innocent, but I knew what it was.
Suddenly breathing too fast, I rested my forehead against the door and balled my hands into fists. “I think I ripped my dress.”
Cash’s laugh was just a gust of wind against the back of my neck. “It was old anyway.”
The dig hurt but I couldn’t think past his body pressing against mine. We’d never been that close, as close as sin and the devil, not in all our time as friends. We were married, just on paper, but the way Cash was pressed against me was going to ignite that paper if he didn’t step back. I’d never felt the things he was making me feel.
“Clara?”
“And this one is for all the lovers out there. Stay in and have a little fun tonight, kids.” Brendan King’s voice carried, suddenly louder than the night, from the back yard. We’d forgotten to turn the radio off. There went the batteries.
As a slow song started, Cash reached down and unlocked the door. “Maybe we should stay in and get that ripped dress off of you, C.”
He hadn’t called me C in years. I sucked in a sharp breath, pressing the bottom of my breasts harder against his forearm, and looked back at him. It was the wrong move. If I wanted to keep my dress on that night.
Cash had magma in his blood and it burned me through the heat in his eyes. “What do you say, C?”
There wasn’t anything I could say.