Testimony
So did you testify? Sandy Pratt asked me, before she quit the diner to go off to beauty school in Blacksburg.
Yes, I said. —I spoke on all the Lord’s done for me.
What about what you done for the Lord? She was smoking, with that real thoughtful, squinty look out toward the trash bins by the funeral parlor.
That’s part of it, too, I said, but really I’d never thought of that half before. Sandy started me thinking, What do I got to show for these eighteen years? I got a little money and I got thimbles collected from twenty-four of the fifty states. But what else in eighteen years of life? Partly it was on my mind because I’d just graduated high school with no future. She was going to beauty school and I would miss her so bad my toes would curl. She promised to come back and show me all the waxing and dyeing and how to do the wedge cuts that were in style, but I knew when she’d drive her little Datsun up that highway ramp, our friendship would fizzle.
She said, Destiny, you don’t need no beauty tips. Your blond hair, blue eyes—you got supermodel looks, maybe that’s your future. When she said that, I was sure she wouldn’t come back to show me tips and work tables at Mandy’s with me in summers. I knew it was over.
She went back on shift, but I smoked one more alone. What have I done for the Lord? I thought. I been lazy, I guess. What you want me to do? I asked Him.—You just let me know and I’ll do it. I was feeling pretty low, I quoted my Scripture—Who is this coming up from the desert leaning upon her lover? The Shulamite, the Shulamite. I was reading Song of Songs and learning the prettiest lines by heart.
What gummed up my future plans was the dark spot in my past. Buck getting killed in the demolition derby. It’d be four years that Thanksgiving, but the pain was still raw. I’d left out his death when I’d testified at Otterbein because his was a dumb way to die, boys crashing cars till one of them blew. He’d got my cherry, so he mattered special, but, with him dead, I prayed for a second virginity. I was intact now. In back of the kitchen at Mandy’s, smoking, I thought maybe I could play gospel in prisons, like the Nashville woman who’d sung after my testimony. But I didn’t play guitar and I sang through my nose. I should’ve asked her advice. I could do her tambourine.
The worst thing about it was, Buck was in hell and there wasn’t nothing I could do about that. Died in a fire and now it was everlasting flames. It made me shiver. So I left him out when I testified. He was the dark spot in my past that was spreading to my future, a stain I couldn’t wash out.
You let me know, I said to God, when there’s something You need done.
Right then a storm blew up, like God couldn’t just use words. Use words, I said, like Sandy always said to her two-year-old when he threw a tantrum. A big gust of hot rain soaked my dress and my Mandy’s Diner apron.
I am dark, but lovely, I said.—Awake, O north wind, and come, O south. What would you see in the Shulamite?
_____
Most days of the week, I crossed the street from Mandy’s over to Daddy’s store, working two jobs to save for what? Maybe a bus ticket, I was thinking that day, running in the rain with my apron over my hair. Maybe a car to blow out of here like Sandy.
I finished my prep work early, refilling the bulk seed jars and bagging up dog bones and sweeping. Twice a day I did the cement floor, even in between the pallets of fifty-pound feed sacks. Business was slow, so I was soon on my third go around, shoving dirt into a dustpan, when Trevor Loveless came to the door in a Metallica T-shirt with a decal of a skull on fire. I saw his feet before I saw him, sneakers with tongues swelled in thirst.
Have they come yet? Trevor asked me, so quiet.
I told him no, like the day before. He’d mail-ordered two baby turkeys from our hatchery catalog.
They come an awful long ways on the truck, I said, watching that skull flaming on his shirt. I didn’t look Trevor in the face because he had a real crooked nose and I always wondered if he blamed me for it because it was Buck and his brother Dillon who’d broke his nose about five years back. Beat him up for being a faggot. Sometimes kids said that about a boy who was just girly or talked with a lisp or did plays in the school auditorium. But Trevor Loveless was different—somebody’d broke into his locker and found porno magazines of naked cowboys, some of them on horses, some of them doing it in the center of a rodeo ring. You wouldn’t know it to look at him. Trevor was built stocky and tall, like a linebacker. But maybe you could see it in his eyes. He had real sad dark eyes, and that name, too, that broke your heart. Loveless.
He was silent, looked lost.
I’m sure they’ll be fine, I said.
Most people ordered broods of twenty-five turkeys from the hatchery, all for slaughter. The baby turkeys were the size of a fist when they came stuffed in a cardboard crate cut all over with air holes, the bottom covered in manure. Daddy would find a few suffocated, still soft, eyelids drawn pale. I didn’t know how Trevor’s two would come. Probably not in a crate. Maybe in a shoebox or something even smaller, one of them boxes for tins of snuff. I didn’t tell Trevor about the ones we found dead.
I asked if he had a place to keep them warm. He nodded. I still had some dirt, so I finished sweeping and dumped it. I thought he’d be good looking if he’d cut his long stringy hair, always whipping his bangs to the side. He had nice big arms that filled out the short sleeves of his Metallica shirt. His hands shook like Sandy’s when she smoked too much, but I don’t think he smoked. I’d been there when Buck and Dillon threw the punches in back of the pool hall. I’d looked the other way, toward a busted pinball machine set out to rust.
One time, back in school, Trevor won the writing contest Miss Maslow ran for the whole county. She made him read it in front of our English class. He’d typed it and everything, and he looked down at the paper the whole time and never made eye contact like I learned to do when giving my testimony. It was a horror story he wrote, and I still remembered the end, when the man was buried alive inside his coffin. Maybe that was why, when I imagined the set-up for his two baby turkeys, I pictured a box like a velvet-lined coffin, with a jerry-rigged light bulb for warmth and an upturned lid for water and another for feed. I thought how their feathers would be spiky and new, and when they’d sleep, he’d switch off the light bulb and his face would rise over them like a moon.
Two boys I didn’t know came into the store then. One was pretty cute, the other bulldog-like. Trevor and me were close to the front window and could see Holstein calves in the bed of their pickup, tied to the bar that went around the bed. On their way to the butcher. Daddy sold the boys Cokes and I heard the good looking one tell a joke about a twenty-two between the eyes. Sharp and mean. His joke made me look square into Trevor Loveless’s sad dark eyes—black as water in a deep well, the water you dream about falling into. His eyes said that, if he had to, he’d make a hole inside himself for them turkeys. A hole like a woman has a womb. He’d carve it out, behind the skull decal on his T-shirt, for two turkeys with knobby heads and clutchy feet.
It was right then the Lord spoke to me, and I knew, clear as day, just what He needed done.
The boys drove off with their Holsteins tottering in the back. Trevor stayed in the doorway like he had nothing left in the world but to wait for the truck from the hatchery, and I thought, That’s right, you just stay here with me. Nice and close.
_____
You’re the one said I got supermodel looks, I said to Sandy that night.—You told me it could be my future.
This ain’t what I had in mind. I meant you could model clothes for a catalog.
Well, I heard God speak so I got to try. I watched her from the trailer door as she packed up the Datsun. She’d just had her pixie cut shaped up and her tips frosted white. She lived high up on the ridge so you could see all of Lace from her front door, and the Ridley lights sprawled beyond. You even looked down on the interstate overpass, its roar just a kitten purr.
It’s what He gave me a second virginity for, I said.
God, that’s twisted.
If anybody can turn Trevor, I can.
Sure, she said, and pulled Jimmy’s fingers out his mouth. He waddled toward me and stuck them back in, grinning.—If anyone could turn him. There ain’t some switch you flip in bed to turn a gay boy straight.
Wanna bet?
No, I surely do not—Jimmy, quit. Sandy yanked his fingers out again and he started to cry. She picked him up and tried to stick a lamp in between boxes in the car. I took the lamp and did it for her.
She said, What’s it to you if he’s a homo or not?
The Lord set him one way and he went another—I’m supposed to bring him back.
Sandy grabbed my arm with the hand that wasn’t pinning Jimmy to her hip.—Is this about Buck?
This is about God, I said, but the thought had crossed my mind that maybe I could make up for something, for that night behind the pool hall.
Buck’s gone, and what he done he done, not you. You ain’t gotta pay his dues. Sandy set Jimmy in the dirt and shoved a rolled up rug into the car. Stuff was stacked to the roof and I worried the tires would blow. I peered down into the darkness in search of the Cumbeys’ Store sign lit with our sale prices. The town looked lonely, like a string of twinkle lights with most the bulbs burnt out.
Wish you weren’t leaving, I said.—You got the prettiest place in town.
I got a mobile home with busted plumbing.
You got a nice view.
You could come, you know.
No, I got work.
You gonna wait tables and weigh out dog bones the rest your damn life?
I got something God needs done. Then I’ll be on the next bus out.
You serious about this thing, Destiny?
He needs me, I said, and I believed it, too. I hugged myself in the summer night air, feeling sad to be losing Sandy but also feeling strong, like I was about to break open my future, like it was a ripe melon.
Well, just be sure to use a rubber when you do it. You don’t want no son turning out like him. She bumped her shoulder to mine to say she was teasing, to say don’t cry. To say she would miss me so bad her toes would curl. And I did plan to catch a bus after I’d done for the Lord. I’d show up at her door with my little hard-shell blue suitcase. I hugged her hard.
You call me from Blacksburg, Sandy Pratt.
I will.
Every day.
Every goddam day.
_____
But Sandy didn’t call for a week.
_____
Return, return, O Shulamite. I quoted Song of Songs and crushed my cigarette into the sand pail in back of Mandy’s.—I am a wall, and my breasts like towers, then I became in his eyes as one who found peace. That verse was in the last chapter and I whispered it, a secret riddle on my tongue.
I got out my compact mirror and rolled on more lipstick. Smolder, a deep rusty red, like lava. I brushed on more of my new blush, too, Matte Bronze, a real good color on me. If Sandy had been there she’d have rubbed it in along my cheek bones with her thumbs. No more Scripture would come to mind, though I’d learned a new one that morning, so I set to thinking about Trevor. He hadn’t come around again. I couldn’t catch his eye if he wasn’t there to see me, and I’d started to think, Well, maybe I’d heard the Lord wrong. Even so, all made up for glamour shots like I was, that day I got twice my normal tips at the diner.
After the lunch rush, I crossed to Daddy’s store. There in the lot was the truck from the hatchery. I looked up at the hot white summer sky and laughed. I thought, Lord, You sure got a funny way of clearing up doubts. I knew the two baby turkeys had come, and I knew who was about to deliver them right to Trevor Loveless’s door.
I borrowed Daddy’s truck and drove home to change. Mom and Gram were there, so I used the basement door and climbed the back stairs. I unzipped my dress and pulled on tight jeans and a halter top, no bra, I coaxed my breasts a little to get my nipples to show. I stuffed my black nylon slip into my purse and went barefoot to the truck, carrying my high red heels so Mom and Gram wouldn’t hear and ask where on earth I was headed looking like that.
I climbed in behind the wheel and the Scripture came, the one I’d tried to recall on my smoke break—Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love is as strong as death.
Yessir, I said, and I patted the cardboard crate beside me on the bench seat. His turkeys had come in a big drafty box after all. They scrambled and peeped when I took off for Glendale Road where I knew Trevor was staying in his granddaddy’s old farmhouse alone.
_____
The big house was a nice light blue, though the paint was peeling. I knocked on the frame of the screen door. The porch swing looked sweet and old-timey and I pictured the two of us sitting in it and how I would put his hands there and there and there to help him along, help bring him back to his natural senses. A peacock came around the corner of the house with its tail fanned out like pretty silk.
Hello? Trevor called and I jumped which made the turkeys in the box skitter and cry. I focused on my spike heels so I wouldn’t wobble.
Hi, I said.—I brung your order from the store.
I would’ve come in.
It ain’t no trouble, I said, and that peacock lowered its tail with a swishing sound. I licked my lips, put my free hand in my pocket to show a little gap of skin, my halter top slipping up and my jeans slipping down.—Can I come in?
Sure, he said, and pushed open the door. A red bandana held his long hair back so his face was wide open. Scruff shadowed his jaw line, he was barefoot, in loose jeans, with a snap-up plaid shirt rolled to the elbows. Just a little black chest hair showing at the top.
Where should I put them? I asked, adjusting my eyes to the afternoon dark of the living room. A box fan cooled me from the window.
Right here is fine.
I don’t see a good spot. Maybe back in the kitchen?
Right here is fine, Destiny. He said my name like I was a little girl acting out. Then he walked behind the couch and pointed to a wooden box filled with straw. No velvet lining, but otherwise it was just as I’d pictured it, with the heat lamp ready to warm the skittish turkeys into life.
That’s something, I said. He was silent as he opened the cardboard crate and brought each one out, gentle as a mother. His hands didn’t shake.
That’s really something, Trevor Loveless, I said again. But he just pet their heads and didn’t pay me no mind. There I stood in my high heels, my canvas purse over my shoulder, looking like a fool ready to go out dancing. Then Trevor smiled up at me from beside the wood box.
Thank you, he said.—I was about to have a beer. You want one?
Sure thing, I said, though I hadn’t drunk since I’d got saved. The Lord would understand this one.
Why don’t you take off those shoes, said Trevor. It made me think this would be easier than I’d thought. I felt hot in my armpits, thinking how he’d tell me to take things off. Settle down, I thought to myself. I slipped off my pumps and followed him into the kitchen, both of us barefoot. It had the same hardwood floors that the rest of the house had, no carpet or rugs even. The house felt rough, like it needed love.
You ain’t got carpet, I said.—Neither does Gram, and Mom took up the rugs when Granddaddy still lived with us, before he went to the Home, cause she thought he’d trip. Now Gram’s got rugs everyplace and wants to get carpet, too.
I like the wood, he said.
Sure, I like it okay. But I didn’t. I pictured us on the floor, making out, him on top, and the hard wood hurting my back the farther into it we got. Trevor opened two bottles of beer and we sat down across from each other at the kitchen table. I saw a pretty wire cage hanging above the sink, a yellow bird perched inside. I leaned forward so my top would show a little something.
So what’ve you been up to, Destiny Cumbey? he asked.
What do you mean?
I mean let’s catch up a little. You’re here in my kitchen. He made an arc with one hand like someone showing off. He didn’t seem lost like he had in the store, not here in this old house where his turkeys were safe now and the yellow bird twittered a song.—How’s life? he asked. He made slits of his dark eyes like maybe the joke was on me, like he was wise to me somehow. I sat up and fiddled with my canvas purse in my lap. I took a good swig of tangy beer.
I gave my testimony in church a while back.
Sorry to miss it.
Well, it wasn’t much. I mean, it’s not like I have a big tale to tell like folks who done drugs or something. There ain’t much to tell about me, I said, feeling kind of small and feeling my lipstick too cakey.—What about you? You still writing horror stories or just raising pet turkeys now? And I tried a flirty smile.
I still write stories.
Horror?
No.
What about then?
I write about birds.
Birds?
You wouldn’t understand. His narrowed eyes could cut.
How do you know I wouldn’t understand? But he just drank his beer and started picking at the label. I was getting bothered.
I remember your stories, I said.—I always wondered why you wrote about people suffering.
Because people suffer.
And that’s it?
Maybe.
And what about birds? But he went silent again.
Can I read one of your new stories? I asked. He twisted his bottle in a wet circle on the tabletop. Those hands had cupped the baby turkeys so gentle. I pictured them cupping my breasts, and I got mad and muddle-headed. A Scripture popped up in my mind from the Song of Songs—His left hand is under my head, and his right hand embraces me. I thought, You’re here for the Lord, don’t get so worked up, but I felt split, angry at how he was acting and so turned on I could’ve lit up a light bulb.
Are they like fables? I asked.—Do your birds talk?
Fuck it, he said.
_____
When I talked to Sandy on the phone that night, Jimmy was throwing a tantrum and she was edgy. She said daycare had turned him into a devil.
It didn’t go so hot, I said.
Well, what did you expect?
I don’t know. I guess I thought he’d want me. You should’ve seen my outfit. But I didn’t tell Sandy he’d made me feel like an empty-headed fool. And I didn’t tell her about the peacock or the yellow bird.
It ain’t you, girl, it’s him. You know you’re a looker. Just come on out here, I could use help with rent.
I gotta win him first, Sandy.
I got you a new thimble.
From where?
It’s from Virginia, but it’s different than the ones you already got. It’s blue.
I want one from states I never been to.
You can’t even get your ass to Blacksburg. Where to next, Alaska?
_____
I waited for Trevor to come back to the store, or to come in the diner. I went through all of Matte Bronze and moved on to Rich Coral and worked my tube of Smolder lipstick down to a nub. I figured I’d have to make another move.
One night I took a long bath and shaved my legs smooth, even the small coils at my groin, which stung from hardly ever being shaved, and I wished Sandy was there to show me how to do a bikini wax. I toweled off and put on my black nylon slip at the mirror. I brushed my hair and quoted the Shulamite—I arose to open for my beloved, and my hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with liquid myrrh, on the handles of the lock.
I knelt at my bed and prayed for Trevor Loveless who I knew was lost. May my plan work out tomorrow, I prayed.—Not my will but Yours, Lord. I put off the Amen for a bit. I said a little something for my granddaddy at the Home, for Sandy Pratt and her Jimmy. Then I prayed for Buck, like I sometimes did when I was half asleep, knowing it was stupid since you couldn’t pray somebody’s way out of Hell, but I got my pinky ring with the ice-pink stone from its box and prayed like a What If. What if he’d lived past fourteen? What if he’d outgrown his meanness and got to be gentle with things, tiny helpless things? What if we’d got married and started a new life someplace away from here, clean out of Virginia where nobody knew us and nothing scared us? I spread my arms over my white bedspread. What was I, really, besides arms and nice nails and nice blond hair and flesh and bone? Was I empty? Was there maybe no soul inside? Sometimes it seemed like there wasn’t much to me. My knees hurt. I had a picture in my mind of Buck and me in our house on some faraway ridge overlooking the world, and I let it go. I opened my hand wide to show that the picture could pass through my fingers like fine sand. I cried a little and then I saw Trevor and how his granddaddy’s farmhouse would look nice newly painted. I’d paint it a clear-sky blue.—Lord, I said, I know You’re depending on me, and I won’t let You down. Amen.
Before I went to sleep, I wiped my eyes dry and tried out my new eyeliner.
_____
How’re the turkeys? I asked through the screen door. I’d come down Glendale Road early in the morning with a sack of scratch feed and a pamphlet on How to Care for Poultry. I’d worn a tube top and jean cutoffs cut high.
Do you always make house calls? Trevor asked.
Always, I said, and let myself in. He stood in the hallway between the living room and kitchen, not quite dressed yet, bare-chested in those same loose jeans.
You gonna offer me a beer? I asked.
It’s only eight.
Breakfast then. The fringe of my cutoffs tickled my newly shaved legs as I followed him close. He turned and I put the sack of feed and the pamphlet into his hands, lingering my fingers on his. I hadn’t brought along my black slip, but I’d worn white lacy underpants.
All I got’s eggs.
What I’d expect from a bird man. You got a henhouse out back?
I bought the eggs.
Oh, I said. I slinked down into the kitchen chair and trailed my fingernails from knee to thigh, knee to thigh. He cracked eggs and whisked them. On the table lay typewritten pages and some forms.
More stories? I asked.
Yes. And a college application. He put the eggs to scramble and pulled on the undershirt slung over the back of the other chair. I sagged a little. The form said some college in New York.
That’s a good place for writers, I said.—My Uncle Jarvis lives there and writes for the New York paper.
What’s your aim, Destiny? What do you want? He held out the spatula, like it might be the thing I wanted.
I want to know why you like boys, I said, nervous, but I did not mean to fail this time.
What?
Why do you like boys?
Why do you?
Why do I? I don’t know, I said. I twirled my bare foot over the wood floor, like it would stir up an answer.—Because they’re sweet.
All of them? he asked. I met his eyes and his face and knew he was thinking of Buck and Dillon. I felt myself a Judas, without knowing for sure who I’d betrayed.
No, I said.—Not all of them.
I’m getting the hell out, Trevor said.—Someone will like my stories and give me a scholarship, and I’m gone. He turned back to the eggs and scraped because they’d cooked to the skillet.
Do you like me, Trevor Loveless?
I don’t even know you, he said.
I’m Destiny. I’m a girl who likes you. And I set my hand over my heart, right above my top on the bare skin. I slid my fingers along the elastic cotton and stopped in between my breasts.
He smirked—You liked me the night your cowboy messed up my face. Remember that? Liked me so much you had to watch? Trevor’s eyes pinned me, they stung.
I’m sorry, I said.—I didn’t know.
Didn’t know that I saw you?
That he could be cruel. My face was flushing a deep ugly red.
The eggs smoked and he put the angry skillet in the sink. I watched him watch the morning world out the window, the stillness of no cars passing on an unpaved Glendale Road. Above him, the pretty wire cage was empty.
Where’s your yellow bird? I asked.
I let it go.
_____
I watched for him for days, out the window at Mandy’s through the café curtains. I watched the Greyhound buses pull into the lot and pull out, each one with a sign above the big dash—Fort Lauderdale, Chicago, New Haven. One day I smoked out front instead of behind the kitchen, and when the driver went inside for coffee he left the bus door open a smidge. How easy it would be, I thought, to steal on and see where that bus would roll.
I’d just about given up, thinking I’d blown it with Trevor for good, when, a week later, here he came through the diner’s front door. I still figured he’d want nothing to do with me, but he walked right over to my section and took a booth. I had grilled cheese on my apron, and my hair felt flat.
What’ll it be? I asked, all cheery. Trevor was dressed in nice slacks, an ironed shirt, his hair in a neat ponytail. He still wore those big-tongue sneakers though.
Rhubarb pie, he said.
You celebrating?
I mailed off my application to New York University.
Really? I said, and he smiled a real smile, like I was the one he’d dressed up and come to town to tell the news to.—On the house then, I said.—On the house.
Later I went out back for my break and he was there waiting, hanging near the funeral parlor with his hands in his pockets.
How’d you know I’d come out here? I asked.
He looked down at his shoes and I lit the cigarette thinking, This is a sign, Lord, he’s gonna come around.
Trevor said, I built a pen for my turkeys. You want to come out and see it when you’re off work?
Sure do, I said.—How about nine? Gives me time to freshen up.
_____
I shut off Daddy’s truck engine, and the night lay quiet and dark. I could hear the tree frogs, the blackbirds. I could hear the grass swishing then I saw a rising and a falling, a shadow. The peacock’s tail. I sat in the truck cab and prayed silent. I whispered the newest Song of Songs I’d memorized—I sleep but my heart is awake, it is the voice of my beloved. He knocks, saying, Open for me, my dove, my perfect one.
I’d worn a thin summer dress Sandy’d mailed me from Blacksburg. This time I hadn’t worn any underpants at all.
Knock knock, I said at the door.
Over here. Trevor stood at the corner of the house, mostly in darkness, out of reach of the porch light.—They’re asleep, he said, and I followed him to the pen made of chicken wire mesh and two-by-fours. The turkeys had grown twice as big, filled out. One slept on top of the other with its beak tucked under its wing.
Real nice, I said. My eyes were getting used to just moonlight, almost a full moon, and I looked around the backyard. A couple more peacocks, another small pen with ducks and one with quail. A cage with a pair of doves. A birdfeeder hung with empty perches that would be full of wild birds in the daylight, but now just a few bats hovering. I pictured it happening in the grass, slow and soft and rhythmic.—You wanna take a walk? I asked.
There’s thistles, he said. He was barefoot again, so I took off my shoes.
I’ll risk it.
We walked through the tall grass lit here and there with lightning bugs. I took his hand and he let me. That’s it, I thought, that’s it. We came to a little grove of trees with a soft moss floor. I went to sit, but he pulled me back up.
You’re shaking, I said, but he said nothing. I slid up my dress and took his hand and rubbed it along my hip, my waist. I closed my eyes and waited for him to keep going, but he was stock still. I moved his hand again, along my belly, down my thigh. I was breathing heavy, but he wasn’t, he wasn’t breathing at all. I waited for him take over, like a natural man, to feel me up and lay me on the moss.
He was a statue. He said, Let’s go back to the house.
We don’t have to, I said, and I felt his front but he hadn’t swelled up at all.—It’s okay. And finally he moved, just a bit, slipped over my hip bone.—That’s it, I said. Then he let my dress fall from where I’d bunched it at my waist. It quivered around my legs like so many feathers, and it was the only thing moving. I felt sadness. The night sneaked under my dress skirt and up between my bare legs. I felt empty. I felt safe too.
_____
Girls are dyeing their hair coal black, Sandy said on the phone.—I never seen the like. And black-cat eyes with thick liner. Paula says they belong in Salem with the other witches. She’s a hoot, you’d like Paula.
Mmm, I said, only half listening.
You there or not, girl?
I’m here, I’m here. How’s Jimmy Dean?
A pistol. Got it in his head to do some finger-painting with my nail polish the other day, shit.
Sandy, you coming to visit me anytime soon?
I could ask you the same.
I know.
How’re things going with the homo?
Don’t call him that.
My god.
What?
You’re liable to fall for him if you don’t watch.
No, I’m not.
You are too, I can hear it in your voice. Sandy started giggling.—No luck in bed, I’m guessing? Or have you worked God a miracle?
I gotta go.
What, you got a date?
_____
I did have a date, but I didn’t tell Sandy Pratt. I drove Daddy’s truck out to the farmhouse and picked up Trevor, and we headed to the county fair in Ridley. He’d asked if I wanted to go see the falconer who holds falcons and hawks and owls on his arm and feeds them right from his hand.
We bought our tickets for the Raptor Show, then we had an hour to kill. We walked around the fairgrounds and I held his hand, but he’d slip away to play the ring toss or get us funnel cake. We huddled above the Styrofoam plate of sweet fried dough and I thought, He is as close to me as he is far.
I pulled him over to the Ferris wheel just as the man unhooked the chain and let kids through in twos and threes. We got the last seat, and then off we went, up to the sky. It took us up and showed us the whole world—the world I always liked to see on the grand scale, with me on top and all the racing lights down below, all the hands up skirts and balloons about to burst and boys kicked in the stomach outside the strong-man tent. All of it far away, like a dream, harmless as the stars and just as out of my reach. I wanted to see it all and soar, far above, like God. But it was brief. We sank back down along the curve of the wheel, my stomach dropping. The wind slid up my blouse and I wanted it to be Trevor Loveless’s hand, but it wasn’t. Up we went again—couldn’t we stay on top forever—holding out my arms so my sleeves fluttered like wings. Then down again, and Trevor turned and touched my cheek. My blond hair twirled upward, like I was sinking in water, and he said, Come with me to New York.
What? I didn’t think I’d heard him right, the wind was a roar.
Come with me.
Up we curved again, to the night sky, my stomach flip-flopping, the world stretching out. So much of it out there I’d never seen, maybe I could go after it. Maybe I could say yes to it.
I said in a whisper, I don’t have me a New York thimble.What? he asked.
I said okay—I’ll come with you. I’ll come with you, Trevor Loveless.
We went twice more on the Ferris wheel before going back to the Raptor Show, and when we got over to the stands, the falconer was on his last bird. A red-tail hawk clutched its talons around the leather glove. That hawk ate a cracker out the man’s bare hand, so gentle, like it was pulling out a child’s splinter. Trevor’s hand was in mine and I said my Scripture silent—Who is she who looks forth as the morning, fair as the moon? The Shulamite, the Shulamite. I lay his hand to my leg but he slipped away.
_____
It wasn’t long before Trevor got word that he’d been accepted to the school in New York. It came in a thick yellow envelope that he brought into the store to show me. There was a real nice part in the letter about his stories, from an English teacher who wrote that she was eager to meet him and that he had a bright future. Trevor said all we had to do now was get our bus tickets, he’d sell some of his granddaddy’s furniture. But I had something to show him, too. I pulled a thick wad of bills from my canvas purse.
I been saving my tips, I said.—Everything extra, I saved. It’s enough for two one-ways.
He hugged me tight, for a long time, right there by the feed sack pallets. I felt the sadness wash over me, like I did every time our bodies got close and easy together but stayed far apart, like magnets that should have joined but only pushed each other away. I wondered, What did he see when he saw me? I wondered, Did he love me? I’d quit talking about him with Sandy when she called, and she’d quit asking. There was lots on her mind anyhow—Jimmy’d got into trouble at daycare, or she had a pedicure test coming up, one thing or another. I didn’t tell her about my plan to go away, up north, in the opposite direction of Blacksburg.
I swept the cement floor after Trevor left with his thick envelope of news, and a Scripture came to mind, one that I hadn’t meant to memorize but I couldn’t help it—A garden barred is my sister, my bride, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.
After work, I bought us tickets for a bus coming through town the next evening. The tickets were sure in my hand and I held them, bent to the curve of the steering wheel, all the way down Glendale to Trevor’s drive.
Boards at eight pm, I said.
He swung on the porch swing holding one of the baby turkeys that wasn’t a baby anymore. Slowly he moved his hands away and the turkey stood on its own in his lap, like maybe it was held there by fine spider threads. Then it leapt off onto the porch floor and flew a short ways. It looked back then flew further into the woods.
Time to let them go, he said, and we went around back to pull the nail out the lock of each pen door. The quail fluttered quick. The doves moseyed, crying their mournful call. The other turkey followed after the first, but we had to run and flap our arms at the three peacocks.
Go on! I yelled, and finally the hens bolted, but the male raised his silk tail feathers at me. Trevor laughed and hung back.
Go on! I hollered again, rushing at it.—Get lost! You’re free now. The tail swished, up, down, the quietest swish.—I’m setting you loose, you understand? But it would not go. I knelt in the grass—Go on, go on, you. It just cocked its kingly head and eyed a grub or a cricket on the ground and pecked at it. Trevor sat down beside me, and I lay back in the grass, on a thistle but I didn’t care, and pulled him to me. I put his hand on my breast before he could pull away and I rubbed his front, but he stayed soft and limp and moved his hand to rest on my hard chest bone. I prayed silent—God, what is it you want from me? I didn’t know anymore. I’d been working out my testimony, shoring up my part of things like He’d asked, but I hadn’t turned Trevor the other way. Or maybe I had turned him and he’d turned me, too, like two kids playing Blind Man’s Bluff, spinning each other into a stumble. It was like there were two clear paths to take, and we were walking somewhere in between them, through the brush and the briers.
I knew only one thing for sure—that I’d gone and fallen in love with Trevor Loveless.
When I got home that night, I looked long at my hard-shell blue suitcase, still empty. I quoted from Song of Songs—By night on my bed I sought the one I love, I sought him, but I did not find him.
_____
The Greyhound bus pulled into Mandy’s Diner, and I went in back of the kitchen to smoke, even though I wasn’t on shift. Trevor knew where to find me. He carried a big duffle bag and was wearing those nice slacks, those sneakers, his hair pulled back so I could get a good full look at him.
You all ready? he asked me. I nodded and reached back to touch the ticket in my back pocket, the sharp corners I’d worried soft.
Where’s your suitcase? he asked. He held out his free hand. It shook a little. It was a hot evening and Mandy’s trash bins were stinking.
On the bus already, I said.—We better go, I heard the engine start up.
We walked around the diner to the parking lot, and I took his arm. I let go when he climbed the bus steps and handed his ticket to the driver then looked back at me standing there, my ticket still in my pocket.
Come on, he said, but I didn’t move.
I said, Trevor, I got a few things I still need to wrap up here.
What do you mean?
How bout I come up there in a few weeks?
What do you mean? You have your ticket.
You’ll be fine, Trevor Loveless.
You’re getting on this bus with me.
I’ll catch the next one.
Please, he said, and I looked away, across the lot to a crow landing.
I’ll be on the next bus out, I said.—I promise. You go on now. I pictured myself rushing up to kiss him goodbye, just to kiss him one time, but I could not move.
I’ll see you soon, I said—before you can blink your eyes—you know, Sandy’s coming home for a visit, and she’s gonna teach me how to give a good perm. I might show up in New York City with a head full of curls. And I twirled my hair and studied that black crow so I would not fall into Trevor’s deep-well eyes.
The driver shut the door.
You call me from up there, I yelled. I watched his face as it floated down the aisle past each window. It was hard to make him out through the tinted glass, and soon I wasn’t sure which one was him. I whispered with the Shulamite—Let me see your face, in the secret places of the cliff, let me hear your voice.
The bus pulled out and headed for the interstate, but I just stood there, like I was waiting for it to come back for me. Like I had only to run inside Mandy’s and grab my blue suitcase out from under the counter to go meet my future. It was growing dark, and the Cumbeys’ sign across the street lit up the sale prices, but I kept standing there, like I was waiting for God to speak.