od I hate this truck

It shudders down the dirt road, lurching from rut to rut. We have just gone to get beer. I am sitting with my hand out the window, scooping air. In the side mirror, I can see the truck's patchworked body, and behind, the glittering blanket of dust that scoots out after us. It is held down uniformly by the heat of the day and thickness of air that threatens a storm.

"Feels like rain, hey girl?" he echoes.

I turn to see him leer at me, his mouth pulling wide in a smile that reminds me of broken glass. I trace the rows of earth as they flick by, stretching out beyond his head to the flat edges of the horizon. The fields shimmer in the distance, wavering in a heat that rolls off the ground and around his head to fritter away in the sky. I can only nod at him.

I have hated this truck since he first brought it home.

It sat growing rust for a few years on cinder blocks in the yard. Its wide, curved hood and shiny grill grinned at me from the kitchen window like a lunatic, winking out at me from the patch of weeds that shoved up around it. When he finally got it running, I thought I'd be happy to see it go, but I find myself watching out the window more than ever now. On the way home from the Chicken Drop last month, he'd passed out and driven it into a ditch, banging in the front fender. It is rattling incessantly, pulling at the edges of my concentration.

Large gray clouds are moving in quick, like a bunch of rowdy old drunks on a Saturday night. They threaten to blot out the sun. All the clothes are going to get soaked.

We lurch to a halt suddenly, brakes grinding. He struggles for a moment with the gearshift, and the truck chokes and settles.

"Damn thing . . ." He looks at me. "You want one of these?" he asks, leaning over and reaching between my legs to get a bottle that lies sweating on the floorboard.

He runs it, cool and slippery, up the inside of my calf, cracks open the top and holds it out to me. I move forward to take the beer, but he pulls it away, pushing his face close in to mine.

"Now what would your momma think about that?" he says.

I can smell the odor cooking off him, blasting out his mouth like a hot open oven, rancid alcohol and cigarettes mixing with the grime from a week of no bathing. The smell overpowers me. My vision ripples and drawing back to focus on his face, I realize that his hand is reaching out to touch my breast. I look down, cursing the thin cotton of my dress for betraying the bud of my nipple standing alert.

He laughs, then throwing back his head, gulps the beer. The line of his neck is smooth and sinewy and bobs up and down as he swallows. I am thirsty.

I turn to fumble with the door lock, pushing it up and down with a satisfying clump. He shifts to turn on the radio and the announcer's voice, oily and sharp as a shark, spills out into the silence. He is talking about a big dance in Gulfport; some white band coming down to play three shows. I've never been to a dance, but I imagine myself dressed in peach taffeta, holding a full dance card and surrounded by young men. The thought of this clamps down on my stomach, and his speaking draws me out with a jolt.

"Want a cigarette?" he asks, taking the pack out of his front pocket.

I shake my head no and, smoothing down my skirt, say, "I heard they're laying off down at the railroad."

He smirks, turning his head to look out at the fields. He lights the cigarette and rolls down the window before he answers.

"Yeah, I bet you hear a lot," he says to the window.

"Look at that storm coming on."

He takes another swig on his beer. The sun is still molten on the ground, but I can see the bruise of clouds spreading in the distance.

"Maybe I'll get a job picking cotton over at the Hillsend place. If the rain holds out, that is." He pauses, slapping his hand on his thigh, turning back to look at me. "Nothing to worry your little head about though. How's your momma doing?"

I look down at the red vinyl seat and trace my finger up and down the stitching.

"Well, you know. The same really." I stop. I am unsure as to whether or not I should go on. "Sits in her room most days, listening to gospel on the radio."

"She still put on that pink fluffy dress and talk out the window all day?"

I look up at him, then at the steering wheel. The radio fills the awkwardness with a doddering back beat.

"I stopped going to school a while ago to stay home with her and take care of the children."

I leave it there. The picture of momma, rocking away in her chair, talking to the jaybird that lives outside her window seeps in like watercolors. It seems too distant, too fragile to place out into the open.

"I bet you do a fine job, girl. Always were the smart one in the family," he grunts, reaching out to touch my cheek.

I tense, wanting to jump out of the truck and run. With huge effort, I turn my head to avoid his hand. I try to stare casually at the darkening sky, but instead, I am desperately trying to swallow down the lump in my throat.

He leans over and turns the radio up. A Chubby Checker number pushes through the heavy air inside the truck, clearing room for me to breathe. He stubs out his half-smoked cigarette on the bottle, throws it out of the truck, and rolls the window back up.

"What's the matter girl? You don't like me no more?" he asks, his hand already massaging my knee.

I hear the first fat drop of water hitting the truck. Suddenly, the sound of the radio fades into a tinkle of melody, threading itself through the steady, ragged beat of the rain. I ignore him and roll up my window.

His hand is on my thigh now, and no matter how hard I try concentrating on all the extra work I'll have to do tonight, my legs are still shaking. My skin pulls tight under the coldness of his fingers, still wet from the beer.

I stare at the dashboard, touching the chrome metalwork, one of the few parts of the truck that remains shiny and new. I follow the curve of the metal with my fingertip around the compartment that holds old paperwork and tools. I hear him sucking in air as he touches my flesh. I am looking out the side window because I cannot figure out what is shifting inside me, the want I feel or my disgust.

His fingers burn me, reach into my pink self and scorch, leaving grey tumors that I cannot cut out of myself. I feel tears stinging in my eyes.

I close my eyes and put my head back on the seat.

"Don't get so comfortable there, baby. I want you to do me," he says in my ear.

I do not remember commanding my body to move, but as he settles back into his side of the seat, the denim of his overalls screeching against the vinyl, I see my hand reach out to his fly, unbuttoning him. It is warm and nearly hard as I take it out. I am hypnotised for a moment by its blind stare, like I am watching a cobra dance. He sighs, making it jump, and puts his hand on the back of my head.

"Come on girl, you know what to do. Look, if you do it right, I'll give you some in a minute," he pauses, readjusting himself and resting his head against the gun rack on the back window. He stares at the domed ceiling of the truck.

"Watch them teeth now too, like I showed you."

The rain is pummelling down now, running in waves over the windshield. The sun, still burning through, illuminates the interior of the truck with its swiftly moving texture. The radio station is in a commercial break, and for a crystalline second, with the rain muffled sound of audience laughter crowding the blue tinged air, I feel safe. I know what I am needed to do. No hard choices, with his hand tightening its grip on the roots of my hair.

I did not feel the moment that the lighter part of myself slipped out of the truck to dance in the sunlit rain. I only know that there is now a silence inside of me, a silence that is drowning out the music and the storm, and the trapped bird of my heart beating itself senseless against my throat.

"Come on now girl," he lifts his head to look at me. " I ain't got all day."

He is choking me. My eyes blur. I am trying to keep down my breakfast and trying not to stare at the smooth ivory handle of his hunting knife stuck low under the seat. I knew it was there. I've seen him cut open a doe with it, watched as he strung up the twitching body and winched her up with this truck. He had stood around with his buddies, laughing and drinking beer while the blood ran out, steaming, from a long gash down the animal's gut. I have never forgotten the sight of its eyes, black and staring heavenward, and the wet crush of its innards in my arms.

He shifts away from me. "Get up and go over there," he motions. "Yeah, that's right."

I move to my side of the truck and lift the hem of my skirt. I am shaking so hard that I can barely hold the fabric.

"What's the matter, baby? I thought you liked this kind of thing. I thought you were gonna have a little fun with me," he says, pulling my jaw so that I am inches from his face. The muscles under his right eye are twitching.

My eyes flick to the right in a nervous panic.

He strikes me with his hand, open and flat, against my cheekbone. I am stunned by the power of his swing.

"I asked you a question!" he pants. "Now answer me. Tell me how much you like it."

I cannot see him anymore. My voice is hitching in my throat, I am trying to stop the cry that sits there. He grabs me by the neck and bangs my head hard against the back window of the truck.

"Guess I better find me somebody who does. Gettin' a bit mouthy ain't you?"

His face is so close to mine now as he speaks, his lips moving over my own, touching them almost as if we are kissing.

"That's right," he whispers, fumbling with the buttons of my dress. "That's what I thought." Flecks of spit fly out and hit my face. "Gonna get me a new girl, one who ain't all tired out, huh?"

I am thinking of little Jenny, how she will sit on my lap and stroke my face tomorrow, kiss my split mouth while I try to braid her hair. His voice is a soft coo now, almost indistinguishable from her voice.

He worries over one of the buttons for a minute, then in a fit, rips my dress down the front. Buttons pop and ping against the dashboard and hit my shins. It took me four weeks to sew this thing.

He is breathing fast now, looking at the space just below my face while his hands move furiously over my body. The tears that have been filling my eyes threaten to overspill and I look up quickly, blinking them back as fast as I can.

"Look at me!" he roars.

A drop that was trembling on the edge of my eyelid plunges down my cheek.

He goes rigid, his voice tightening.

"I'll give you something to cry about."

His hand flicks past my face into my hair. Before I can even react, he flips me over, my face pressed against the glass of the side window. He is shoving his arm through my legs and pulling me onto my knees. My shoulder is throbbing, pushed up tight against the hard knob of the door lock. His breath is a jagged seam of mutterings behind me. My own breath is a tiny cloud on the window that is spreading and disappearing fast. It blurs my vision of the fields outside, but I can hear the rain again, and the warbling of the trumpet on the radio that catcalls the thunder rolling in. It crushes out the song's rhythm. I am looking out at the window at the cotton when I feel an anger, like a cold hard stone, dropping through my body.

I hate this goddamned truck. I hate this truck and I hate his breath. I hate his ugly smile. I hate him.

Somehow, the thought surprises me, but it builds inside like a fire that promises to burn me out clean.

I hate the images of my sisters' faces that float out of the darkness before me like black little moons, and the fourth face I see at night, a satiny baby's face, eyes staring out at me from the lump of blankets and bodies across the room. I hate how I do not recognize its face, how it lays, cold and unmoving, in a shoebox in the backyard.

I hate lying under him, when I could have kicked or screamed or run, but I have just lain here, like a dead thing for so long. I have prayed so much just to hate him and this truck. And the silence, and momma's cold stares. I hated him for getting me pregnant in the first place, for killing the baby before it was even born, like he killed me ten years ago, pushed up against the back of our house with only my mind for a shield.

I hate how its wobbly, unformed body slipped out of me, dead as the string of kittens I found in the yard.

I hate how he sidles up, how my sisters cry out "Daddy" like a question, pushing each other to the door when they hear the pebbles crunching on the road. I hate how I just stand there as he flings them up into the bright gold air, shining, with laughs like bright copper pennies.

I hate how I felt this morning, how I was a ghost in my own body, how Momma, racing away in her chair, knew he was coming but only told me it was going to rain. I hate seeing the dust plumes rise over the bushes on our road, and how I feel this gnawing at the back of my brain, like a rat trying to get into a bag of feed.

Mostly, I hate his intentions, how they have buzzed through the thick air of this place and drifted into my ear like a mosquito, making my mind run backwards for a reason to explain why I am just sitting here now.

"Get up," he orders.

But I am really going now, though.

He pulls my arm, but I jerk it back. I feel the wet smack of my elbow in his mouth and then, his silence. I hear more than feel a thump on the back of my head. My forehead bounces off the window. Amazingly, I turn, and we are locked. Electricity pulses in the air, gathering itself for a groan. The light flashes off the handle of his hunting knife, and in a white moment, it is in my hand.

Thunder rumbles the truck, rolling in waves that grind out the sounds we are making. I am screaming, lunging forward, again and again, watching his face crinkle like a piece of paper, watching as he can do nothing but watch me in surprise.

For a second, he stills.

His head jerks to attention and he looks outside wildly, as if the storm itself has dealt him the blow. Time snags in and out of its cat's cradle. Then he looks down, stares in disbelief at the arc of urine that sprays from his still hard penis onto the steering wheel.

Then he knows, and he looks at me.

I am impaled here, paralyzed by his mightiest gaze. His neck bulges and his eyes pull open wide. I wait for retribution. But nothing happens.

The sun breaks through the clouds, throbbing brightly for a moment, and I see the blood on the windshield, all over my dress, seeping out of him, his eyes black and staring heavenward. I can see the steam, rising off the hot road like spirits winding their way out of the earth.

His head flops down onto his chest. He is broken.

I swing open the door of the truck and jump down off the sideboard onto the hard dirt. I stand motionless for a time, staring at the sky as the rain drives down. My dress hangs half opened around me, and I feel the water running down my skin. When I look down, I see that the rain is washing away the large red patches, going down my legs in pink rivulets that fill my socks and shoes.

The drone of the radio presenter floats up, out of the tune of the sun that glows fiercer now, and I startle. The knife glints in the light as it falls from my hand, but I am thinking of cotton. The way that it feels when you pick it, bristly in the middle near the bud.

[END]

© Tracy Falke 2002