We sat on the porch every Saturday evening and watched the Tucker boys stumble up the road like a bunch of three legged dogs, staggering and weaving-- young men with too much time on their hands, on their way to town to get more liquored up than they already were. When they'd go past our house, Daddy'd look up and say, "You, stay away from boys like that." Daddy couldn't stand them Tuckers.

Sometimes, the ruckus they made would jar me awake and I'd lie in the heat of the summer darkness with the sheet pulled back, listening to them, just outside my window, slowly making their way home, laughing, hooting and singing.

Sunday mornings, I'd find their discarded bottles along the road as I waited for the Sunday School bus. When no one was looking, I'd pick one up, put my nose to the neck of the bottle and deeply breathe it in. Something in the smell of whiskey made the hair on my neck and my arms stand up. Something inside those empty bottles wafted out and took hold of me, sent me to some dimly lit and smoky place where I knew I had no business being. I know well why some old-timers call them spirits.

I took the bus to Sunday School because after Mama died, Daddy quit going to church. I quit for a while myself 'til Ms. Spivey cornered me in the store and asked me when I was coming back. I shrugged and looked at the dirt in the cracks of the plank floor, wanting to sink down and join it.

"You know you need to be in church, now don't you?"

I nodded slowly, feeling ashamed. "Yes...yes, Ma'am."

"I'll see you there Sunday, then."

I nodded again, though she hadn't exactly been asking.

I'd stand waiting for that rusted blue bus to come bouncing down the dirt road while I studied the Tucker boys' footprints. I could tell who was the drunkest by the measure of their scattered steps. I knew Li'l Roy flanked his brothers on their right and either couldn't hold his liquor as well or drank more. Li'l Roy's feet were the smallest, too. Ronnie flanked the left and though his prints left no specific pattern, they weren't as strewn as Li'l Roy's. Lenville belonged to the big prints in the middle and most times his were almost straight. I could always hear Lenville over the rest of them on those late Saturday nights. His voice woke me and sometimes, I'd catch myself softly singing along. . Lenville could sing. Sometimes you'd swear it was the ghost of Hank Williams himself stumbling down that road, howling his way through 'Kaw-Liga' or moaning 'Lovesick Blues.'

Sunday afternoons, I'd be awash with guilt coming home from church. I knew where my sinful thoughts would get me. I'd spend the entire Sunday morning ritual in a wicked kind of fog. Toward the end of service, when the invitation was offered and the backsliders and the offenders of Christ would slowly make their way to the altar, I'd sit with Preacher Sturgill's words tugging at my heart, my hands in a sinner's grip on the pew, resisting the persuasive notion that he spoke directly to me, and knew all my filthy thoughts. And so did Jesus.

***

What started as a dream slowly became a plan.

I sat up in that bed for what seemed like hours in the pitch black in the pressing heat with my heart racing and my stomach full of flutters. I'd made sure the window was already opened before it got too late, afraid that the slightest noise would wake Daddy. I had breeches on already under the sheet and a cap on my head, an effort to look nonchalant, and sort of older. A look Daddy hated on me.

I think I fell asleep, but only for a bit, because suddenly they were there, like they just appeared out of the mist, the familiar sound of their laughter filling the night air with that intangible they carried with them. I let them get by for a ways as I lay there questioning my assurance and confidence and then I slipped out the window as soft and as silent as a shadow.

When my feet hit the ground out and the night air it was all I could do to stop myself from laughing out loud. I felt I had unearthed every phantom pole and post that held the signs forbidding entry into the secret world -- a world where the air was electric and something in the atmosphere made your heart speed up and your conscience lighter -- and every No Trespassing sign in the universe toppled from my sheer will.

I looked up at a night sky as immense as summer was short. I got lost for a stolen piece of time in the stars. It was as if freedom and willfulness had suddenly spread endlessly in all directions and blanketed life with wild possibility. The stars and constellations were so bold and numerous that they were all newly strange and unrecognizable.

I crept along and followed the boys a ways, crouching and tiptoeing, not that they would've noticed if someone had come through on a fire engine. I got closer and then I cut down the bank and went past them, keeping an ear out, trying to make sure I didn't out run them by too far. After a bit, I stumbled through the overgrowth, catching scratches on my face and arms, and came back up onto the road. I doubled back in their direction so as to meet them head on.

They were so drunk they didn't even see me coming. I let all three get right up on me and with them being that close to me -- close enough to reach out and touch -- my mouth went dry for a moment, and I thought I might throw up. I stood my ground and fell into the role that I had written for myself since the first Saturday of summer.

"Evenin,'" I nodded, just as confidently as I could. They went silent and their faces crumpled in confusion. "One a y'all got a cigarette?"

Lenville Tucker laughed out loud. "What the hell we got here?"

I smiled sheepishly and looked down at his large feet.

"Stay away from boys like that." I heard my daddy's voice in my head as I leaned in for the cigarette. A grinning Lenville held it high and upright in front of his shining eyes between his thumb and forefinger.

They let Li'l Roy take me first. He'd never been with a girl before.

§ § §

Don Caudill has lived in Nashville for four years now. He has performed around Nashville as a comic and doing open mic singer/songwriter shows.

His written work has appeared in Drang Cultural and Literary Magazine, Cotworld, and Unlikely Stories.

Email: Don.Caudill@bellsouth.com.

 

This piece was first published in INK POT #1 - 2003, a literary journal.

 

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