Tag: redneck

Roads on Her Face #28: And Then Came a Settling

An hour later and Dad was gone. And this time, he stayed gone. You never bring the cops into the picture, ok Mary? Didn’t you ever learn?

I started out thinking I would only write about my childhood, the interesting part of my life so far. Then I realized that wouldn’t be the whole truth. I am trying to tell the truth, and it’s easier to tell the far-away truth of your childhood than the truth that comes closer to your present life, the time when you should have no excuses and should “know better.” The whole gallivanting around the country thing stopped when I was 12, when we settled in a little New Mexican mountain town called Glenwood. It has its share of interesting characters, stories, and beauty, and I’d be remiss not to include them lovingly – and sometimes not so much – in this accounting.

We weren’t going to settle. We had never settled before. It shouldn’t have been any different than the thousand other times we’d stayed somewhere for a while. Except that this time it was.

When you roll down the hill on 180 into the little green valley around Whitewater Creek and the Gila River, you pass a tiny campground on your right just a second before you roll right on through town in approximately 3 minutes, 2 if you’re speeding. I don’t recommend speeding, because there’s always a local cop who doesn’t have anything better to do waiting just after the bridge over the creek. You’re welcome. Big Horn Campground has maybe 10 spaces crammed into a parking-lot-size area near the wash that splits the parkland from private property. The private property across the creek is owned by one of the couple of families that own Glenwood, and have for many years. Likely since their ancestors settled here and homesteaded, but I never cared enough to do the research. They’ll make sure you know they’ve been here forever, goshdangit, so don’t you worry about how long exactly.

Like most Forest Service campgrounds, you could stay in this one for free. Though most people would stay for the weekend, we were definitely going to take advantage of the two weeks. And we did, plus maybe three weeks, until a nice ranger told us it was about time we moved on. I think Mom was struggling to put some roots down quickly. She had always loved this little town, and so had Dad. They’d dreamed and talked about staying here through the years, so close to where she’d picked him up hitchhiking in her little yellow Bug. She probably knew by then that those were just dreams, that she’d tied her life to a man that could never settle down and didn’t know much about roots.

The old patriarch of the family in town- I’ll call them the Luthers, and him Coy, just in case they’re out there Googling around (I used an online List of Redneck Names to name these people from my recent past, I hope they will forgive me)- had watched my mom come in to the general store/gas station that he owned with us kids for a while. Coy had watched Dad, too, I’m sure, stumbling back up the campground after drinking at the bar Coy owned. He probably sat in his house next to the old hotel that he owned, too, and thought about what he could do to help her out. That pretty little blonde thing with all them kids and a drunk-ass husband. Mom’s always been good at getting help without looking for it. I don’t know if she was asking around for a job, but in no time at all she had one bookkeeping for Coy and we had moved the trailer onto the private property just on the other side of the wash from the campground. We had electric hook-ups and running water! It was a goddamn windfall. Knowing that little town as well as I do now, I can just imagine the rumors and hearsay spreading scarlet-letter style through the grapevine, which had tendrils pushed into every house in a 10-mile radius. It didn’t come back to our insulated little family, and we kids were happily oblivious. What we knew was that we had a nice quiet place with water. We had lights that worked, and Dad set up an outdoor shower. We had met some  kids that lived on the other half of the land, in a house butted up against the hill that separated our little haven from the rest of town. Cole, Coy’s son, and his wife Lynne lived there with their three kids. Mom was even talking about enrolling us in school. Then Dad started drinking harder, and a pall hung over all of us. We could see the dark clouds gathering, and inside I resigned myself to moving on again soon. I hadn’t seen the hard light glittering in Mom’s eyes, though, or counted on the set of her jaw.

He was sitting in a camp chair behind the trailer, and the sun had just dropped behind the hill. Long shadows touched my feet. Mom was cooking dinner inside. He stood up and stomped on a beer can, the sound one I hear often when I think of him. Stomp, crush, stomp, crush. He hacked a loogie, another sound I hear because my brother takes after him.

Slightly off-balance, he pulled himself up the trailer steps and joined Mom in the kitchen. I didn’t go inside, but I could tell she wouldn’t be looking at him.

“Tomorrow, we need to pack all this shit up and get out of here,” he said. “It’s time to head back toward Arizona.” She didn’t say anything for a minute.

“I think this is a good place to stay for a while, don’t you? The kids like it here,” she said, quietly.

“We do what I say,” he said, his voice rising. “I don’t think I asked you what you thought.” The trailer rocked with the building anger.

It took about 15 minutes for the screaming and shouting to start. Five minutes after that Mom was rushing outside and grabbing my arm.

“Listen to me, ok?” Her blue eyes were rimmed in red, the pressure of all those unshed tears. “I need you to run down to Cole and Lynne’s house and ask her to call the police, ok?” I nodded and took off, the way I always did when she asked me to run. All the running practice made a difference at times like this.

An hour later and Dad was gone. And this time, he stayed gone. You never bring the cops into the picture, ok Mary? Didn’t you ever learn?

Pussy On Fire

D’Avina was feeing Doritos to the kitten. The kitten looked at her like she was batshit, but she daintily picked them up and crunch, crunch, crunch. The kitten’s face was orange but she was supposed to be grey.

“I always just feed her chips, ya know, like, cuz she like likes them,” D’Avina was twirling her greasy blonde hair vacuously round and round her hot pink manicure. She popped her gum like a champ. I was 9 years old and I knew this one would always be one shat short of a full pantsload. She must have been about 20, which seemed pretty old to me to be feeding chips to cats. I mean, I’d never had a cat but I was pretty sure I’d seen cat food at the store and it wasn’t in the same aisle as the chips.
Kitty Kitty finished her dinner and came to sit in my lap. She was a pretty smart kitty. I petted her and she purred and went to sleep. She had a tiny perfect face like a stuffed cat I’d had a few years back. That was before my brother had used it in the reenactment of a fiery car crash he’d seen on Dukes of Hazzard. (Not the General Lee, it never burned).

“You like Kitty don’t you sweetie? Well maybe when you’re big like me and you have a big strong man like Darrel he might buy you one for your birthday like Darrel did me. He’s just so sweet.” D’Avina popped her gum and got that faraway look in her eye. Wait, that was already there. Never mind.

Darrel was a big, ugly thug of a truck driver. He wore a belt buckle the size of Texas and had hair like a black fir tree. He wore a plaid shirt most of the time, and he had a mean look in his eye that made me avoid him the way I did my aunt that smelled like throw-up, but only when she was drinking sherry. Her name was Sherry.

“Uh huh,” I said because I’d been taught not to backtalk grown-ups unless I wanted a swift kick. Who wants one of those? All I knew was I hoped I never had a Darrel.

“Oh, there he is now!” D’Avina smiled her sticky lipgloss smile and showed her missing tooth. I always wondered what happened to it. Maybe a cavity.

I took Darrel’s big roaring truck noise outside as my cue to skedaddle. I’d be back that night to see if I could coax Kitty Kitty into coming outside to play with me. I had a ball of hair she might be interested in. My brother wasn’t anymore after I’d tied it to his shoe and told him to run because a spider was chasing him. I had about 3 good days of belly laughs out of that particular game. I still giggle every now and then when I remember the sheer terror in his round bulging eyes as that hair spider stayed exactly 5 inches away from him no matter how fast he ran. Man, I guess I was an asshole at 9.

About 10 pm when it was dark I snuck out of our Airstream trailer and slid through the dark like a ninja in pajamas. Darrel and D’Avina had a fire outside, and before I even got close enough to see them I heard Darrel yelling. He always sounded like a bullhorn, especially after he’d pounded enough Schlitz.
“You fuckin’ lil bitch!” He said, and tossed a beer can into the dark almost on my head. It was close enough to smell the piss-smell of the cheap brew. D’Avina wasn’t smiling now. She was turned mostly away from him and was staring out into the night. She did a lot of staring with those big blue cow-eyes. Kitty Kitty wasn’t into the yelling, I could tell. She cowered under D’Avina’s camp chair. She glared at Darrel like she wanted to kill him. I got to know her well over the next 18 years so I can safely say if she’d had a knife she’d have slit him dickhair to armpit in a second. If that cat had thumbs she would have ruled the world.”You listen to me you little CUNT!” Darrel spit, stumbling toward D’Avina. I didn’t move a muscle. I was good at ninja-ing and the nighttime never scared me. As long as it was dark I was safe.

Kitty Kitty hissed from under the chair, and D’Avina just cowered into a little ball like she knew what was coming. I don’t think she did this time, though, and Darrel snatched Kitty Kitty from under the chair and just chucked her right into the fire. I was already frozen but my breath stopped as she shrieked. She jumped so high she might have been a bird flying off into the night. D’Avina started sobbing and ran into their trailer, slamming the screen door after her, and Darrel took off after her like a drunk raging bull.Kitty Kitty found me in the dark, because cats can see better even than me. She had a couple of burns and no whiskers, but she was mostly ok. She was pissed off, though, and she growled her little growl the whole time as I cradled her in my arms and took her home with me. She slept with me that night, and next day Darrel and D’Avina were goners. They’d packed up and taken off in the night, and nothing could have made me happier. Me and Kitty Kitty always growled at dudes like that, from that point on.