A Tree Born Crooked Read online

  She paused and gave James a knowing look. He didn’t understand.

  “Well, he liked to go sit out in the orchard on evenings. Like he always done. Go out there, sit on that stupid old stump way back near the fence. Far enough away that he could make like he ain’t hear me when I was shouting and needing something. So he’d been drinking, maybe a little too much, and went out there. Just like always. He usually didn’t take that tank out there with him. Said it interfered with his thinking. What in God’s name that means, I don’t got a clue. He just hated that oxygen thing.”

  James crossed his leg over his knee and his foot started shaking. He wasn’t aware of it.

  “Where’s this going?”

  “I don’t know if maybe he’s better off now. Sure did hate having to pull that contraption ‘round. That night he weren’t feeling right, I don’t think. He’d been drinking that afternoon at the store, and that’s nothing new, but then he took his oxygen with him out to the orchard. I guess he were having trouble breathing, but he went on out there anyways. Course, I seen him smoke on the oxygen before. Doctor told him it was dangerous, but you know Orville couldn’t go more’n twenty minutes without having him a smoke.”

  “Mama. You better tell me what happened right now.”

  Birdie Mae crossed her arms, irritated that James couldn’t figure it out on his own.

  “Can’t you guess? He blew himself up. And three tangerine trees back there, too. The fire truck even showed up.”

  James’ eyes were wide. He gripped the corduroy armrests, digging his nails into the upholstery.

  “Not that it did no good. Still lost them trees. And your daddy, too. Ambulance men said he was gone in a second. Not a whole lot of pain, considering. I guess there’s something to be thankful for.”

  James leaned forward until he was at the very edge of his seat.

  “Are you trying to tell me that his oxygen tank caught fire?”

  “Isn’t that what I just got done saying? Jesus. It were really more of an explosion, though. Neighbors said they could hear the boom all the way down the road. It were a pretty big fireball. They said he must’a turned the knob too high or something. Said something ‘bout maybe he were feeling out of breath and didn’t pay no attention to the numbers. Maybe he had been drinking too much. Doctor warned him ‘bout trying to smoke ‘round that damn thing. Orville just wouldn’t listen to nobody.”

  James stared at Birdie Mae with his mouth open. He had been expecting to hear about a heart attack or a car accident. Who the hell blows themselves up in the middle of a tangerine grove? His daddy, that’s who. James got up quickly and walked into the kitchen. There was still no beer. He stopped in the middle of the linoleum and put his hands into his hair. He pulled for a second and then let go.

  “When’s the funeral?”

  He hadn’t turned around, so he couldn’t see Birdie when she answered. For that, she was grateful.

  “Two weeks ago.”

  Her voice was flat. Not apologetic, not anything. He whirled around, incredulous, but she eyed him back with a blank stare. Her cigarette had gone out in the ashtray. He took two long strides toward her, unsure what he was going to say. What he was going to do. Birdie Mae’s pink lips began to part, but before any sound could come out, the trailer door rattled open. He twisted his head, still incensed, and was prepared to let loose a fury on whoever dared to interrupt him, but the face his eyes met changed everything. James’ breath caught in his throat as a man banged through the door and stomped his dirty Converse sneakers on the flowered welcome mat.

  “Mama, did you know there’s a piece a shit truck parked out front that looks just like—”

  He froze when he looked up from his shoes and saw James, but it only took him a second to recover.

  “Whew-eee! Look what the cat dragged in. Been wondering when you was gonna show up.”

  James narrowed his eyes.

  “Hello, Rabbit.”

  ~ ~ ~

  “Weren’t a bad ceremony, really. Most folks said it were real nice.”

  James grunted, but didn’t say anything. He dug the toe of his boot into the dirt, uncovering small rocks and tiny snail shells. He took a drink from the plastic bottle of vodka and handed it back. James let Rabbit prattle on while he took the opportunity to get a good look at his younger brother. Ezra Hart was three years behind James and at least a good three inches shorter. In photographs, people could tell that they were related, they had sort of the same bone structure in the face, but side-by-side in real life they looked nothing alike. Rabbit was pale, his skin almost completely devoid of color, with white blond hair and small eyes set too close together. He had long, ghostly eyelashes that blinked constantly. His eyes alone would have been enough to earn him his nickname, but on top of always blinking, he couldn’t sit still to save his life. He was forever fidgeting, picking things up and setting them back down, shifting from one foot to the other, always in motion. Even in his sleep, some part of him would be twitching. When he was four, Orville had said that he looked as nervous as a wild rabbit in a field full of hunting dogs. The name stuck.

  Despite his small size and skinny frame, Rabbit had been a much better football player than James and never let him forget it. Though not quite living up to Orville’s fame, Rabbit had been MVP of the high school team three years in a row. He was fast and quick, feet always dancing beneath him, eyes always searching the field. He was the starting quarterback his sophomore year and those last three years of high school were the best of his life. He was popular, had girls all over him, and his teachers looked the other way and passed him so he could stay on the team. Most importantly, his older brother had left town and his cousin Delmore had just landed in the state pen. He was the only Hart boy who really mattered around Crystal Springs then, and he had relished it.

  After high school, Rabbit had planned on being a Gator and playing for UF. He hadn’t won any football scholarships, but still thought he had a chance of making it in the big leagues one day. He drove over to Newberry on a Saturday and took the SAT, but did so poorly that he had to rethink things. His guidance counselor at Crystal Springs High, knowing Rabbit’s true academic potential, hadn’t wanted to break his heart by explaining how getting into college really worked. The counselor had neglected to tell Rabbit that he had to be smart to go to college. A buddy from school was going to Alachua Community College, so Rabbit signed up, hoping to move on to the University in the spring. After realizing, though, that he didn’t stand even a chance of passing Math for Morons or Literature for the Illiterate, Rabbit gave up on his football dreams. Fifteen years later, the bitterness, and vague sense of being cheated out of his future, still lingered, eating him up inside.

  “I thought it were right nice, myself. Course, it were a closed casket and all. They couldn’t show what he looked like on account there weren’t too much left, but there was white flowers all over the box. Mama fixed it up so it looked okay.”

  “And yet, somehow she didn’t get around to calling me.”

  “Now, I don’t know nothing ‘bout all that.”

  Rabbit stood up from the back steps of Birdie Mae’s trailer, passed the bottle back to James, and walked out into the yard to take a leak. He had come by to see if his mama could lend him fifty bucks, just for a couple of days, of course, and hadn’t been sure what to do or say when he found James standing in the middle of Birdie Mae’s trailer with a look on his face like he was about to spit nails. He and James had stood staring at each other for a moment before Birdie Mae took advantage of the opportunity and told Rabbit to take James on outside and catch up for a little while. Birdie Mae could have told Rabbit to go jump off the Highway 27 bridge and he would have done it, so he just shrugged his shoulders and went through the trailer to the back door, stopping in the kitchen to pull the plastic bottle of vodka out of the back corner of one of the bottom cabinets. Even though he didn’t live there anymore, he always knew where the liquor was hidden. James had no intention of goin
g to catch up with Rabbit, but Birdie Mae had already taken up the remote and the television was back on, the obnoxious laugh track blaring. James tried to step in front of the television, but Birdie Mae had her mouth set and her eyes away from him. She was done. He wanted to kick in the screen of her beloved black box, but checked himself. He wasn’t going to get the answers he wanted that way. And he really needed a drink.

  “You didn’t think maybe to ask Mama to try a little harder? Or tried calling me yourself?”

  James took another swallow and squeezed the plastic in his hand. Rabbit was still pissing off in the darkness.

  “I mean, for Chrissakes, Rabbit. Daddy dies and no one gets around to calling me? It’s too goddamn inconvenient for everyone?”

  “Whoa there, buddy.”

  Rabbit came back toward the steps and the edge of light from the trailer windows crept up his jeans as he zipped them. James couldn’t stop himself.

  “He was my daddy, too. And it’s all real nice that you had a beautiful funeral and everything was so goddamn pretty and all, but he was my daddy, too. And none of you assholes seem to have remembered that.”

  Rabbit took the bottle from James’ shaking hand and stepped back away from him. In the yellow light, his eyes appeared almost translucent.

  “I wouldn’t open that can a worms if I was you, ‘less you was ready to eat it.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  James stood up and Rabbit took another step backward, his eyes darting back and forth between James and the trailer windows. He shifted his feet, leaning his weight from side to side, and tried to change the subject.

  “You know where you staying tonight?”

  James took a step closer.

  “What was that supposed to mean, Rabbit?”

  James wanted nothing more than to tear someone apart right then and there. Rabbit knew it. He had seen the look in James’ eyes all through their childhood. Rabbit liked to run and James liked to fight. Rabbit would rather talk it out, make an excuse, buy someone a drink, whereas James would rather just hit something and walk away. It had been years since the two brothers had come to blows, but it always played out the same. James usually ended it after one punch. Out of pity.

  “It just means, well, come on, man. You can’t blame everybody else all the time.”

  Rabbit took a step back and James followed him.

  “Who are you suggesting that I blame, then?”

  Rabbit stepped back one more time. He was now almost completely in the darkness. For a moment, it felt like they were kids again, ready to duke it out over who called who a retard first. Rabbit always tried to get a word in and run before James could swing.

  “Blame yourself.”

  Rabbit had one foot behind him, ready, but he didn’t have to worry. The light went out of James’ eyes. It took a second, but James slowly loosened his fists. He stared at his brother for a moment, anxious in the shadows, and turned away. He started walking around the trailer. Rabbit relaxed.

  “Wait, where you going? Are you leaving?”

  James didn’t stop walking.

  “This place? Tonight? Yes.”

  Rabbit followed him and stood outside James’ truck as he got in. Rabbit winced when the door slammed.

  “You got someplace to stay? You can stay with me at Delmore’s if you want. It’s just out past Beggar’s Creek. We got a real sweet set-up out there.”

  James turned the key and revved the engine. He looked in his rearview mirror, away from Rabbit.

  “I’ll pass.”

  He put the truck in reverse.

  “Well, how ‘bout I give you my number? I got one of them prepaid phones now, so my number’s changing all the time. We can get breakfast tomorrow or something.”

  “I’m not much for breakfast.”

  Rabbit held onto the truck’s open window and tried to put his foot on the running board. James stepped on the gas for a second and the truck jerked backwards.

  “Hey, yeah, me neither. Never really understood things like waffles and shit. Too much syrup. Likes me some eggs, though.”

  James stuck his head out of the window and looked at his brother, fidgeting with the hem of his shirt in the headlights.

  “You got something else you want to say?”

  Rabbit looked up, flinching against the glare.

  “No. Just, if you’re still in town tomorrow night, well, it’ll be Sunday. I usually go up to The Blue Diamond for karaoke and they got a pretty good wing special, too. You can get a whole basket for, like, three dollars. If you’re still ‘round, stop by. I’ll buy you a beer. And some wings, if you want some. They’re good. Messy, but got a good heat, you know? I’ll buy you a basket.”

  James wanted to say that he would think about it, but didn’t. He looked in the rearview mirror and hit the gas. He left his brother standing in the dark.

  THREE

  James pushed the empty Budweiser bottle off the coaster.

  “Another?”

  James nodded to the bartender, an older man who looked vaguely familiar. He didn’t seem to recognize James, so he assumed the man wasn’t a friend of Orville’s. Maybe he was just someone from around town, a fellow who had become part of the landscape itself, as much a piece of downtown Crystal Springs as the cracked sidewalks and bad parking. James had already encountered many faces that gave him the same feeling.

  The heavy woman with a leathery face and thin, lizard lips who had checked him into the Sweet Dreams Lodge the night before had said hello to him as if she recognized him, but then couldn’t remember his name. James felt that she might have been the mother of someone he had gone to school with, but he wasn’t sure. The way she slowly dragged her arm across the counter to reach him his key, as if even moving her muscles would be too much for her to be expected to do, recalled in his mind someone’s mother passing him a paper plate of chicken nuggets across a Formica dining room table. Aside from the motel clerk, the only other person he had encountered last night was a strung-out truck driver who accosted him at the ice machine. The man was clearly just passing through town and had no idea who James was, but had still done his best to convince James to come back to his room and get high. The truck driver had seemed offended when he declined, but left him alone. When James returned to his own room, he had turned on the television to one of twenty random channels and fallen asleep with his boots still on and the unused bucket of ice melting on the sink counter. He had slept for twelve hours.

  “So, you here for the karaoke?”

  “Excuse me?”

  The bartender was pouring a shot of vodka into his Styrofoam cup of soda. He put the bottle back in the well and pressed the plastic lid onto his drink. He gestured around the bar that was beginning to fill up with women in tight shorts and strappy tank tops. Most of the crowd was either too old or too large to be showing so much skin. Still, from the way they flicked their burned and frosted hair back and clutched at their oversized knock-off bags, they thought they were something. James supposed that was all that mattered.

  “Well, most folks only come out to The Diamond on Sunday for one of two reasons.”

  James sipped his beer and leaned against the back of the bar stool so he could survey the small crowd better.

  “The wing special?”

  “God, no. And don’t order none, ‘less you want to spend the rest of the evening keeping company with the porcelain throne.”

  “Thanks for the warning.”

  The bartender nodded.

  “No, folks either come here to sing on that damn squawk box to hear their own pathetic voices, or to try and impress some girl enough to get laid.”

  James swiveled around on his bar stool and eyed the karaoke machine in the corner.

  “I thought I was in a bar. Don’t folks come here just to drink?”

  “Well, sure. You always got the regular drunks coming in to get a regular drunk on. But from the way you’re nursing those beers, I don’t reckon you plan on being
blacked out ‘fore midnight.”

  “No, not tonight anyway.”

  Behind James, a girl was screeching at her own joke about some dumb peckerwood. She was laughing just loud enough so that the dumb peckerwood would turn around and take notice of her.

  “And from the way you’re dressed, I’m guessing you’re not here to show off.”

  James looked down at his gray plaid button-down shirt and rolled up sleeves.

  “What’re you trying to say, exactly?”

  The bartender raised his eyebrows at James and turned away to ask a woman who had just walked up to the bar what she wanted to drink. James heard the woman giggle and order a Tequila Sunrise. He looked up into the cloudy mirror behind the bar and saw her eyes trying to make contact with his. He turned slightly toward her out of politeness. She smiled at him, biting her lower lip in an attempt to be sexy, but succeeding only in getting pink lipstick on her yellowed teeth. Her low-cut tank top was tight, shiny, and obviously designed to display the goods. She grinned at James with her lipsticked teeth and winked. He turned back to face the bar.

  The bartender lowered his voice as he passed by James to set a pale glass of beer on the bar.

  “I think she likes you.”

  “Despite the scenery, I’m actually here to meet my brother.”

  A boy who couldn’t have been more than nineteen picked up the pint glass and left two dollars on the bar. The bartender slid the bills into his pocket and turned to James.

  “Who’s your brother?”

  “Ezra Hart.”

  “No shit.”

  The bartender rested his palms on the wet bar mat and squared himself to look at James.

  “You’re Rabbit’s brother? So, you must be James Hart.”

  “Last time I checked.”

  James was starting to feel embarrassed, though he wasn’t exactly sure why. The bartender pulled a towel out of his back pocket and wiped his face with it. He reached down behind the bar and brought out two shot glasses. Soon they were both filled to the brim with whiskey and one was in front of James.