A Tree Born Crooked Read online

  Rabbit made a gagging sound as his eyes watered and his face turned sallow. James could feel Rabbit’s pulse against his palms. The fire was raging inside him, the flames leaping up into his throat and for a moment, James wasn’t sure if it was his brother, or himself, that was strangling. He heard Rabbit make a small, animal whimper beneath his hands, and James knew that he had to let him go. He slammed Rabbit back against the wall one more time and released him. Rabbit fell to the floor, gasping and retching as he gripped the dirty carpet and swallowed mouthfuls of air. James backed away from him.

  “Get away from me. Get out of this room. Now.”

  Rabbit was coherent enough to raise his head and question James in ragged gasps.

  “What? Where am I gonna go?”

  Rabbit pushed himself up and stood leaning back against the wall, his chest heaving with the effort. James couldn’t look at him.

  “It doesn’t matter, just go somewhere. Go sleep in the Jeep. For Chrissakes, just get out of my face.”

  Rabbit continued to wheeze. When he didn’t move, James took a step toward him.

  “Now.”

  Rabbit lurched away from the wall, glaring at James as he yanked on his jacket and sidestepped around him. James could see the ugly red marks creating a wide “V” across Rabbit’s throat. He watched his brother’s every step until Rabbit finally slunk out of the motel room and banged the door closed behind him. Only then did James turn to Marlena. His shoulders sagged.

  “I expect you’re gonna tell me that I’m a cruel bastard and should go apologize. Or at least be sorry.”

  Marlena’s eyes were wide, but not from fear. They stared at each other and listened as the Jeep door opened and slammed shut in the torrent of rain. She spoke to him for the first time since he had held her in the drifting sunlight of the ruined house.

  “No. I was gonna tell you to sit down and make us two more drinks.”

  Marlena slid off the edge of the bed and sat down in the chair across from James.

  “He’s right, you know.”

  James slumped down into the hard chair.

  “About what?”

  James fumbled with a can of Sprite, but ripped the aluminum tab off trying to open it. Marlena reached across the table and gently took the can out of his hands. She quietly mixed the two drinks before answering.

  “I’m screwed.”

  He watched Marlena raise the cup to her lips. She took a small sip before setting it back down on the table, holding it tightly with both hands. They stared at each other for a long moment and whereas before James had only felt Marlena’s wall break down, now he was able to see the disintegration play out in the tightness of her jaw and the largeness of her eyes as she kept opening them wider and wider to keep the tears from spilling over. He could see the battle she was fighting to control her emotions in the minute twitches of her eyebrows and the slight trembling of her lower lip. He hadn’t been aware of the tremendous effort she had been putting forth to keep herself together. He had thought that her silence was only brooding. Now he saw that it was her only defense against the reality of her situation. James opened his mouth, but realized that he didn’t have anything to say. He clamped his mouth shut and waited for her to speak again.

  “I feel like I’m caught in that terrible place between waking and dreaming. When you know that you’re no longer asleep, but you can’t move your body. You want to move, to yell out to wake yourself up, but you’re trapped in the limbo of sleep.”

  “You don’t know that Waylon’s really dead. That’s just what those assholes were saying. They’re probably just trying to scare you.”

  James was pretty sure that he didn’t believe this himself, but he did his best to sound convincing for her.

  “We’ll go home, you’ll make some calls, talk to people, and find out what really happened. And you’ll go on. Life will go on.”

  James felt stupid as he said it and wasn’t surprised that Marlena ignored his optimism.

  “Turning and turning in the widening gyre—”

  Her voice trailed off. James cocked his head and took a drink.

  “What’s that?”

  She was gazing out at the rain again. It had let up somewhat and was now a steady drizzle, blanketing the night instead of attacking it.

  “It just came into my head. Some lines from a poem I read in college. I can’t recall all of it, or even what the title was.”

  “Say some more of it.”

  She turned back to him, trying to remember.

  “I think it goes: ‘Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer. Things fall apart, the center cannot hold, mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.’ And then there’s something about a bloody tide and then a beast coming out of the desert.”

  The hopelessness floating in Marlena’s wide eyes terrified James. Since he had met her, she had been the decisive one. She had taken charge of Rabbit’s situation and formulated the plan to go after Waylon. He had seen her angry, and frustrated, but always with some end in mind. She could fight what she could see, what she could define as the problem, the enemy. But now she was lost in a mire of uncertainty and idleness. She was vulnerable and, though he didn’t know why, James suddenly found this threatening. Once again, he couldn’t help himself from lashing out.

  “You think that’s what this is? Some anarchy thrown upon the world? That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard. This kinda thing happens to people every day.”

  Marlena’s eyes widened.

  “What’re you talking about?”

  James leaned back in his chair.

  “Well, it does. Waylon chose his path. We all choose our paths. And people who do what he did get hurt. Sometimes, they get killed.”

  The words tumbled out of him as he tried to stave off the desperation and desolation exuding outward from Marlena. Thin rivulets of tears broke from her eyes, and she didn’t bother to wipe them away as James’ voice grew louder and he stood up from the table. He knew he was spinning out of control, knew that he was tormenting her, but he couldn’t stop.

  “And if they did kill him, then you know what, he probably deserved it. Maybe you weren’t part of what he was doing, but this is the way it goes down, sweetheart. I guess you wouldn’t know that with your college learning and your fancy poems and your big, pretty house out in the middle of a field, but this is how it happens.”

  “Stop it.”

  Her voice was a whisper and even though James heard her, he kept going. He gulped down his drink and slammed the plastic cup back down on the table, splitting a hole in the side of it.

  “You wouldn’t believe the shit I seen done to people. Some who deserved it and some who ain’t. If you’re gonna be upset about something, be upset about the innocent people out there who get what they didn’t deserve.”

  “Stop it.”

  James couldn’t. He turned his back to her, talking to the room around him.

  “You sit there and you cry because, what? You don’t know what to do now? You don’t know what to do with your life? Your daddy may or may not be dead? Poor baby. My daddy’s dead. He blew himself up. You think he deserved that? You see me standing around crying ‘bout it?”

  “I said, stop it!”

  Before James could turn fully back around to confront her, he felt her fist connect with the side of his face. He grabbed her right wrist, but she swung with her left and caught him at the temple. She twisted away from him, her face slick with tears and rage.

  “Don’t you dare preach to me! You, who know nothing but anger and lashing out and running away from everything that scares you. You only know how to choke people, how to get pissed off and fight. Is that how you communicate with people? Is that how we do this? Alright then, fine, I can do that, too.”

  She went at him again, but this time James was ready and grabbed her forearm as she swung. He spun her around and tried to restrain her against his body, but she pushed herself forward and then slammed her elbo
w backwards into his ribs. He released his hold on her as he gasped in pain, but she didn’t let up. She pivoted around and raked her nails across his face. James caught her wrist again and this time managed to pin her with her arms trapped against his chest. Her body shook as she panted and sobbed at the same time.

  It looked like blood that ran down from the cut beneath James’ eye, but really it was his arrogance and pride, his loneliness and self-imposed extrication, seeping out of James like a ghost passing through an empty room. He desperately, desperately, wanted Marlena to understand him and help deliver him from the devils he held hostage inside of himself.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  He kept saying it between ragged breaths until Marlena moved to get free of him. He let her go and his arms fell limp at his sides. Marlena slowly wiped her face with the back of her hand and stepped away from him.

  “I know you’re sorry.”

  She pushed back her disheveled hair and stood up straighter, taking a deep breath.

  “But what are you sorry for?”

  James stood dumbly in front of her.

  “I mean, honestly, who cares if you’re sorry? The only one you’re hurting, every day, is yourself. You’re sticking the knife in your own back, not anyone else’s.”

  His voice, very small, was directed at the floor. He couldn’t look at her.

  “I know.”

  “I said before that we can’t change who we are. If we’ve been struck by lightning, we can’t expect not to bear the scars. But that doesn’t mean that we have to cover them up. We still have to keep on growing, even if we have to twist and contort to be able to adapt to the life we’ve been given.”

  James raised his eyes to meet hers, beseeching.

  “I don’t know how. I don’t know what to do.”

  Marlena walked to the motel room door and opened it.

  “Everything damnable inside of you, all of the demons, all of the shadows, it’s become what you live for. The pain and the anger remind you that you’re still alive.”

  She opened the door wider, framing herself against the rain and the night.

  “Instead of letting everyone else around you go, why not try letting go of yourself?”

  The door closed behind her and James was alone.

  THIRTEEN

  It was not quite dawn when James opened his eyes. He was disoriented at first, staring at the dented metal side of a window air conditioner unit. He blinked a few times against the weak, gray light filtering in through the grimy motel window, but remained on his side, twisted up in the scratchy sheets. He didn’t want to move. There had been an awful lot of waking up in strange rooms lately, and it took him a moment to recall just where exactly he was on this particular rough morning. Once he remembered, James sat up quickly and rubbed his face hard with the palms of his hands. He felt the blood rush to his head and begin to pound in his temples. Another hangover. At least he was waking up in a real bed, not a deck chair by the side of a pool.

  He slowly stood up and pulled on his jeans before looking around the room. It was empty aside from himself and the wreckage from the night before. Squashed potato chip bags and beef jerky wrappers littered the floor between the two double beds. There was a pile of crushed soda cans beneath the small table and an empty bottle of vodka underneath the television stand. James noticed that the other double bed had not been slept in. He stumbled to the bathroom and washed his face in the sink, trying to avoid looking in the mirror. He poured handfuls of cold water over his head and forced himself to wake up. As he dried his face and hair with a stiff miniature towel, the tender soreness beneath his eye suddenly brought back the events of the night before. He looked up into the small, grimy mirror. An ugly bruise was forming around the cut on his cheekbone and two long, thin scratches marred the side of his face. Had that really happened last night? As soon as James thought about Marlena, a heavy sickness punched him the stomach. He couldn’t even begin to deal with what had occurred between them. Instead, he tried to remember what had transpired with Rabbit. That was almost as bad, but he could handle his brother. James found the rest of his wrinkled clothes in a pile on the floor and went out to check on him.

  When James peered through the Jeep’s smudged windows, he saw Rabbit passed out in the back seat, knees bent awkwardly, one arm slung out toward the floorboards. A line of dried spit was crusted on one cheek. James decided not to wake him yet and instead walked across the parking lot to the Jiffy Mart on the other side of the road.

  The convenience store had just opened, and the woman pouring water into the coffee maker glared at him. She huffed as she banged the coffee pot down onto the warming plate and then left him to work on her hair and makeup in the bathroom. James snatched a Honey Bun off the wire display rack and split the package open. He leaned against the counter and chewed while he listened to the coffee percolate and slowly drip into the orange-handled pot.

  He didn’t know what they were supposed to do now. It was yet another thing he didn’t want to think about as the rising sun streamed in through the thick, cloudy store windows. But it was something they were going to have to face. James crumpled up the cellophane wrapper and shoved it through the cut out hole in the countertop above the hidden trashcan. He sucked a smudge of icing off his finger and wiped his hands on his jeans. The coffee was taking forever.

  Finally, the pot was full enough to get three small cups of coffee out of it. James pulled the glass container out from underneath the thin stream of brown liquid, but the coffee maker didn’t stop dripping as he assumed it would. The coffee popped and sizzled as it hit the hot metal base.

  “Dammit.”

  James shoved the coffee pot back under the stream, causing the liquid on the warmer to hiss and sputter even more as it burned the bottom of the coffee pot. James was snatching paper napkins out of the dispenser next to the empty boiled peanut cauldron when Rabbit came rushing through the front door, letting it swing and bang hard behind him. James turned around with a poof of napkins in one hand and a stack of tiny Styrofoam coffee cups in the other. He decided to get the apology over as quickly as possible.

  “Hey, man, sorry ‘bout last night. It was just the liquor talking. I didn’t mean any of what I said.”

  Rabbit caught his breath.

  “It don’t matter. I don’t care.”

  “No, seriously, I shouldn’t have—”

  Rabbit cut him off.

  “Shut up, I don’t care. I just got a voicemail from Mama. Something bad happened at home, James.”

  “What?”

  James set the napkins and cups down on the counter and crossed his arms, waiting for Rabbit to continue.

  “It was hard to understand what she saying on the message. Something ‘bout some men, and they trashed the store last night while she was out at the Walmart over in High Springs. She weren’t making much sense. James, you said it was over.”

  James turned back to the coffee maker. It had stopped dripping, and James arranged the three small cups in a row before pouring.

  “James!”

  “What?”

  James filled the cups and clamped a plastic travel lid onto each one. Rabbit’s voice was trembling.

  “You said it was over.”

  James handed two of the cups to Rabbit and pulled a crumpled five-dollar bill out his pocket. He set it under the powdered creamer shaker.

  “I know. And I was wrong.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Rabbit leaned forward from the back seat and hooked his arm around James’ headrest.

  “I still don’t understand why they had to go and hit up Mama’s store. I thought they said they was gonna leave us alone.”

  James moved his head away from Rabbit’s arm.

  “I’m not sure they were men of their word to begin with, Rabbit.”

  “Yeah, I suppose you’re right.”

  Marlena had been flying down Interstate 75 for the past two hours, passing 18-wheelers and minivans
full of children clutching sticky Popsicles and frazzled parents who never wanted to see Mickey Mouse again. James calculated that if they kept up this pace, they would be back in Crystal Springs by mid-afternoon. None of them brought up the night before. James had caught Marlena staring at the cut on his face, but neither one of them had spoken about it. They had spent the time in the Jeep making phone calls and endlessly asking each other the same questions and running through the same scenarios. They were no closer to figuring out what was going on than they had been when they pulled out of The Happy Flamingo parking lot.

  No one answered the phone at the Citrus Shop, no matter how long James let it ring. Birdie Mae’s house phone rang five times each time they called and then went to Birdie’s answering machine: “I’m busy, you know what to do.” James had left a message asking his mama to call him back, but so far neither James nor Rabbit had received a phone call since the one Birdie Mae had made in the middle of the night. James had asked Rabbit for Birdie’s cell phone number, but Rabbit had nothing for him. Birdie Mae stuck with landlines.

  Marlena wasn’t having any luck, either. Waylon’s cell phone had gone straight to voicemail, and Marlena had left yet another message begging him to call her back, knowing full well that she might be leaving a message for a dead man. She had called The Blue Diamond, and the phone rang the same way it did for the Citrus Shop. James suggested she try calling Hollis, but she told him that his phone had been disconnected months ago and he had never bothered to restore service. She had left a message for the neighbor who was watching Roscoe and then flung her phone down into the center console, fed up with listening to automated voices and hollow ring tones.

  Rabbit had continued to call Birdie Mae’s house, even after James left the message. He directed all of his nervous energy into hitting the redial button on his cell phone, listening until he heard Birdie’s recorded voice, and then hanging up. James had started to tell him to give it up already, but Marlena, eyes still on the road, shook her head slightly. James had sighed, but left his brother alone.