A Tree Born Crooked Read online

  “I think I’m just gonna go back to bed now.”

  Rabbit shut the door, leaving James standing outside, facing Marlena. His hands were loose at his side and his shoulders slumped; the anger and fire had gone out of him. He waited for her to say something, but she didn’t. Instead, she put her cigarette between her lips and stepped inside her room. She returned with a bottle of Jack and two cups still wrapped in plastic. Marlena walked past him toward the pool while James stared at the closed door of his room. He finally sighed and ran a hand through his hair before turning and following her.

  “Might as well start pouring.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Marlena stubbed her cigarette out on the smooth, cement pool deck, creating a streak of ash, and looked up into the night sky. A layer of high clouds had gathered, blocking out the stars.

  “Just remember that you’re not the only one with family that does shit like that.”

  James raised his eyebrows.

  “That so? It feels like it sometimes.”

  “That’s because you’re not looking outside of yourself. You’re the center of your world.”

  “Oh, and that doesn’t make me sound like an asshole does it? You certainly got a way of saying things to make a guy feel good about himself.”

  James picked up the half-empty bottle of whiskey and poured another shot into the translucent plastic cup. It was his third in fifteen minutes. He was waiting for Marlena to tell him to slow down, but she didn’t seem to care. Her eyes were always somewhere else, but James had the strange sensation that she was aware of his every movement. It was disconcerting and comforting at the same time. It confused him, but it was a confusion he wanted, a way to trick his mind so that he could escape from his own internal labyrinth.

  They sat quietly together, James on the edge of one of the faded plastic deck chairs and Marlena next to the flickering, cerulean water. In the daylight, the tiny swimming pool had seemed septic and desolate, a repository of brittle pine needles, drowned lizards, and children’s disappointments. At two in the morning, the water was enigmatic and bewitching. The pale light surfacing from the bottom of the pool created a fusion of blues and greens that reflected off of Marlena’s features, making her seem as fluid as the water she trailed her fingers through. James and Marlena were separated by the length of their arms to the bottle between them, but drawn to each other by a dynamism they could not understand. And didn’t want to.

  “I wasn’t calling you an asshole. I just mean that you’ve built this wall up around yourself. To keep others out, or keep yourself in, I don’t know. But it’s made you blind to the world opening up around you.”

  “You think so?”

  “I do.”

  James lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. He wanted to feel the burn in his throat and the tightness in his chest. There was nothing. He suddenly wanted to feel something, anything, to connect, to open his eyes and not be drowning in the dark, frozen sea of his own inception. The alcohol running through his blood buoyed him and gave him a rush of invincibility. He let out his breath and took a chance.

  “I had this dream, back when I was a kid. Over and over. I still have it sometimes.”

  James paused to see if Marlena was really listening to him. Her eyes were on the wet maple leaf she was twirling between her fingers, but the tilt of her head told him that she was with him and she was waiting. He threw his plastic cup into the pool. It bobbed and then slowly filled with water.

  “In this dream, well, it’s strange. I’m not me. I mean, I am, but I’m not a person. I’m a tree.”

  He waited for her to smile, but she didn’t. Her face didn’t change.

  “I’m this tree out alone in a field. I’m always the same tree. I think maybe some type of oak tree. It must be winter, ‘cause I don’t have any leaves, just branches, kinda spindly like. But I’m not dead or anything.”

  James paused, faltering, but knowing he would burst inside if he didn’t finish.

  “And this storm comes. A thunderstorm, with lightning everywhere. I can see it all around me in the sky, even though I’m the tree. And then there’s a flash, like everything goes all white, and then this sound. It sounds like the earth opening up or something. But it’s not that, it’s me. I mean, the tree. I can hear it, but I can’t feel it. I’ve been struck by the lightning and I’m splitting right down the middle. I know you seen trees been hit like that. But I don’t catch on fire, and I don’t die. I’m just broken. And I know that I’m gonna keep on growing, but only crooked. And then I guess I wake up.”

  James looked down at his callused hands. He had never told anyone about this dream, even though he had woken up from it next to other women who might have listened or guys sharing a road trip van who could have helped him to laugh it off. It had always been a secret part of him, shrapnel that no one could see and mostly he didn’t feel, but if he thought about it, he knew it was there, needling deep inside of him.

  Marlena dropped the leaf into the water and turned toward him. He raised his head and let himself be swallowed up in her eyes.

  “I was there when my Aunt Ruth died. Not when Mama died, she didn’t want no one around, but I was there, right next to my aunt, in that house that’s mine now, when she passed. Before she did, she turned to me and said something that didn’t really make sense, but it was the way she said it. She looked right at me and said, a tree born crooked never could grow straight. Those were her last words to me.”

  Marlena stood up and wiped the back of her jeans with her palms. She stepped over the liquor bottle and sat down on the deck chair across from James, their knees brushing.

  “For a while, I thought she was mad at me, damning me or something. I even thought she might come back as a ghost maybe and haunt me. I never came up with a meaning that made any sense to me, but I carried the weight of those words around with me like a totem.”

  “And now?”

  There was torment behind both of their eyes as they stared at one another. A shadow of isolation and loneliness, of recklessness and desperation. And yet, also, the faintest glimmer of irrational hunger and a tiny sliver of hope.

  “Now, I think what she said to me was a blessing, not a curse. We can’t escape who we are, be that twisted or crooked or broken or even struck by lightning. We can’t change ourselves. We can’t expect that one day we’re suddenly going to grow straight. The important thing is just what you said, that you keep on growing. You keep living, and you keep breathing, even when it feels like your lungs are going to collapse and your heart is only an empty shell, you still keep on breathing.”

  Something broke inside of James. He was seized with a lightness that wasn’t the product of alcohol or fast cars or his fist against someone’s skin or playing with the edge of death. It was something else. James felt Marlena’s hand on his wrist, and the lightness surrounded him, blinded him, and that was all that mattered.

  TEN

  “Christ, man. I ain’t sure which one of us looks worse.”

  James opened his eyes and slid his hands along the dew-covered plastic arms of the deck chair he had fallen asleep in. He hauled himself into a sitting position and swung his legs down onto the cement pool deck. Instantly, he could feel the blood pounding in his ears and along the sides of his head. He squeezed his temples with the palms of his hands and stared at the cracked leather of his boots until the fist of nausea gripping his stomach loosened. He kept his head down, but reached out for the cup of coffee Rabbit offered. James took a sip, burned his tongue, and took another sip anyway. The smell of the scorched motel coffee at least masked the sickeningly sweet reek of alcohol oozing from his pores.

  “It’s gotta be you.”

  “Maybe. But least I slept in a bed last night. What were you doing? Fishing for trout in the swimming pool?”

  James stood up, but kept his neck tilted down until the hammering in his forehead eased off a little. When he finally looked up at Rabbit, he realized that he must look really bad if there was even t
he possibility of a comparison. Tiny red capillaries had burst beneath Rabbit’s eyelids, and his face was blotchy and sallow, but he appeared sober. For now, at least.

  “Where’s Marlena?”

  “Talking to the manager up in the office. She told me to get you some coffee. Said you might need it, and looks like she weren’t kidding. You and her have a good time last night?”

  “So now I wasn’t fishing for trout?”

  James yanked his partially tucked shirt all the way out of his jeans and smoothed out his rumpled, rolled-up sleeves. He checked his pockets for a cigarette, but they were empty. Rabbit lit one and passed it to him.

  “Thanks. So what’s the deal? Why’s Marlena talking to the manager?”

  “Don’t know. She woke my ass up and told me to wake your ass up.”

  “That’s what she said?”

  “In so many words, yeah. Then she said something else ‘bout some truck still being out in the parking lot. Not sure what she was talking ‘bout with that.”

  “Dammit.”

  “What? Do that mean something?”

  James handed the cigarette back to Rabbit.

  “You don’t want it?”

  “I’m gonna take a shower. Be ready to go in ten minutes, okay?”

  James walked away before Rabbit could ask any more questions. He went into the motel room and locked the bathroom door behind him. He turned the shower on and stooped underneath the cold water, trying to get the frigid temperature to shock the hangover out of him. He tried to remember exactly how much he had to drink, but quickly gave that up. He had seen the empty glass bottle lying on its side at the edge of the pool when Rabbit had woken him up.

  As the nausea began to subside, James slowly turned the temperature of the water up until the bathroom was filled with steam. He closed his eyes and leaned against the filmy shower wall, letting the hard bolts of water pound against his chest. He forced his thoughts away from the spiking pain in the back of his skull and tried to focus on the problem in front of him. Marlena must have figured it out already. He hadn’t spoken to her about it yet, but he was sure that she knew something.

  It had all been too easy. If these men coming after Rabbit were who Marlena thought they were, and if they meant what they said about wanting Rabbit, why hadn’t they found them yet? Between Rabbit running off for oxy and James drinking himself into a stupor, they were an easy target. If these Alligator Mafia boys had wanted to make a move, it would have been a cakewalk for them. James knew what truck Marlena had been talking about. A silver Tundra, 4-door with tinted windows, much more expensive than anything else James had seen in this part of town. It had been parked at the end of the lot when they had walked back across the street from the KFC. When James had gone out looking for Rabbit, it was still there, only parked closer, and it was still there when he had brought Rabbit back. James hadn’t thought too much of it last night. He just figured that some rich pervert was getting his rocks off by cheating on his wife with a hooker and a bag of cocaine in a room that didn’t need a license or credit card.

  James ducked his head under the spray and turned his face upwards to let the water hammer his eyelids. Ten years ago, even five, James would have been paranoid about an unusual vehicle, especially when there was every cause to think someone was out to get him. Rabbit had been right to assume that James would be able to help him with a robbery and to know exactly what to do when it went wrong.

  For years after he had dropped out of flight school, James had been right in the middle of the wrong side of the law: heisting cars, selling stolen stereos, and running around like he was untouchable and unbreakable. He never looked past the next day, never thought about where he would end up; he just didn’t think that it mattered. It was an exciting and dangerous life, everything that James had thought he wanted. Eventually, though, things began to change. His sometimes girlfriend Rhonda had left him for a man with a real job, and his best friend Harlon had gotten himself killed in a holdup outside of Montgomery. And it wasn’t just them. It had been a string of girls walking out, of friends getting put away, in prison or in the ground, and James had finally left it all and walked away. He had gone back to Florida, though most of his family hadn’t even been aware that he had left in the first place, and tried to live it clean. He worked on cars instead of stealing them, and shot at targets on the local range instead of at people. He went to different bars to avoid having to make friends and stayed away from women unless he was wasted and knew that they wouldn’t expect breakfast in the morning. He did laundry, bought groceries, paid his bills, and kept his head down.

  And it had made him stupid. James turned off the water and stood in the middle of the shallow tub, dripping. This Alligator Mafia man, Sully Whoever-He-Was, had to know that Rabbit didn’t have the money. Anybody who took a five-second look at Rabbit knew that if he did have the money, he’d be parading it all around town, burning it up like wildfire until the cops came. It didn’t make sense. He let the water drip down his face and replayed the events of the past three days over and over in his head until it hit him. The men weren’t after Rabbit himself; they were following him, following them all, because they were going to find Waylon and Waylon had the money. They knew everything.

  James wiped the water out of his eyes and reached for one of the stiff towels piled on the back of the toilet. He got dressed and tossed the room key on the bed on his way out. Marlena and Rabbit were waiting for him at the Jeep.

  Marlena jumped out of the driver’s seat and stood on the black, steadily warming asphalt. She was in jeans and a clean black shirt, with her hair loose and sunglasses perched on top of her head. James noticed that her jaw was clenched.

  “They know we’re here?”

  Marlena nodded, running her nails along the edge of the rolled down window. James was right to think that Marlena had assessed the situation before he had. Rabbit, however, still had no idea what was going on.

  “What? Who’s here?”

  Marlena answered Rabbit without looking at him. Her eyes were scanning the road next to the motel.

  “The men you don’t want to meet.”

  Rabbit quickly turned to James, his eyes accusing.

  “How’d you know? What the hell is going on here?”

  James ignored Rabbit and spoke to Marlena.

  “The silver Tundra? The one parked here last night?”

  “That’s the one. It was driving off this morning when I walked out to the parking lot to look at the plates, but I’m sure it was them.”

  “Whoa, hold on now.”

  Marlena and James both turned toward Rabbit, annoyed. James felt another wave of nausea pass through him again and he leaned against the side of the Jeep. He knew that Marlena had been drinking with him, but it was obvious now that he had been the one to finish the bottle. There were smoky shadows beneath her eyes, but she didn’t seem about to run behind the car and puke in the ditch, as James wanted to do. What he wanted the most, though, was for Rabbit to stop being so goddamn loud. James rubbed his forehead.

  “What?”

  Rabbit put his hands on his hips.

  “Are you saying we’re being followed? And you two just forgot to tell me? You were too busy having a pool party by yourselves to think that something like that might be something I’d like to know?”

  James snapped back at him.

  “Well, you were too busy smoking oxy, and God knows what else, down the road for me to think you could handle knowing anything beyond how stupid you were acting. And are acting.”

  Rabbit glanced nervously over at Marlena, but she had taken out her cell phone and was scrolling through numbers. Rabbit gritted his teeth and glared at James, but he just rolled his eyes.

  “She knows already. Jesus, Rabbit.”

  Marlena spoke without looking up from her phone.

  “And she doesn’t care.”

  She snapped her phone shut and slid it into her back pocket.

  “But you gotta stop pretendin
g like you were just born yesterday. You’ve got to know more. What else was in that bag?”

  “What’re you talking ‘bout?”

  Rabbit was outraged. He stepped backwards, stamping the ground and slapping his hands against his thighs. Marlena stared at him coolly.

  “Rabbit, those boys have been following us this whole way. And I got a feeling they’re going to continue to follow us, all the way to Mississippi if they have to, and that makes me wonder.”

  Rabbit swallowed and rubbed his nose violently. His eyes darted back and forth between Marlena and James.

  “Wonder what?”

  “If there was more than twenty thousand in that bag.”

  “I still don’t know what you’re talking ‘bout.”

  James, beginning to see what Marlena was getting at, stepped between them.

  “What she’s saying is that these guys are going through an awful lot of trouble to get that money back.”

  The sun was only just beginning to radiate up from the pavement, but Rabbit was already sweating. He wiped the back of his neck and then wiped his hand on his jeans.

  “Well, yeah. That’s a lot of cash. I’d be hunting down somebody too if they stole that from me.”

  Marlena groaned in frustration.

  “You’re not shipping oxy up to Appalachia by the busload either.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  James took a deep breath before turning back to Rabbit.

  “It means, that someone pulling in a hundred grand a week might be pissed about losing twenty, but not concerned enough to waste his time playing cat and mouse. He’d just break your kneecaps or burn your trailer down or whatever these psychos do. The only reason they’re following us, but not going after us, is because they must think Waylon took a lot more than just twenty thousand dollars. They gotta know that you don’t have it, and they’re just waiting for us to lead ‘em to it.”