dodge
© 1995 by jemiah jefferson
This is one of my very favorite stories I've ever written, and yet nobody seems to like it much.
He's fallen asleep at the computer again. On the monitor, a tangled haze of j's, m's, commas, and slash marks fill the screen, continuing from the only coherent line of text - "Dandelion yard, ocean of yellow uselesness". The keyboard has cut a gridded tattoo in red across his forehead and cheek.
Henry shakes his head and sits up, yawning. It's dark blue in the lean-to, twilight outside filling the small room with cricket noise. It was still light out when
Henry sat down at the little Macintosh with a couple of lines of work humming in his brain ; once he'd gotten the first few words down, the inevitable feeling of fatigue and distraction crept up as he stared at the burning pixels. He deletes the whole mess. It's time to eat something and have a few drinks now. Tina should be inside watching TV and heating some leftovers in the microwave, hopefully something he can scrounge.
Instead she's still in the driveway working on the Dart. She found the old heap at a lot in Milwaukie and it didn't even run enough to get it out of the lot - the fucked-up old geezer at the lot had to load it onto his flatbed and tow it all the way here to Southeast. In the light cast by the work-lamp her back is bent almost double and her head vanishes into the open mouth of the hood. "Honey, you've been working on that wreck all day," Henry complains.
"Pretty soon," she grunts, "it won't be a wreck anymore." She emerges from the hood. Her hair is back in a canvas baseball cap and her sleeveless arms are streaked with rust and black, sticky old engine oil. "Somebody flooded the engine one day, looks like about ten years ago, and didn't bother doing much elsebesides drain it. I'm going to have to get a new fan belt from Rocky tomorrow - will you be able to go pick it up?"
Henry stares into the guts of the car, splayed out in a helpless, surgical configuration. Christina's gleaming tools rest in a bag hanging from the hood, the only clean things in sight. "I dunno," Henry says. "I have to go to the post office and wait for my package."
"Your rejection slip, you mean." She smiles and hands him a greasy part, diving back into the engine. Her jeans slip down, revealing the blond down at the base of her spine and the beginning of the cleft of her behind. Henry blushes.
"Say no to crack," he says glibly, grabbing the belt loops and hoisting the jeans up. "What's his name at the magazine said he'd return my manuscripts. I have to send them out again right away - I've got an address and a submission check -"
"For how much?" Tina looks over her shoulder at him, her fingers hooked around a loose plate. Each of her pores is clearly delineated with a black speck, blond eyebrows slicked with sweaty dirt and grease, her always-red mouth drawn tight in a suspicious double bow. "The checking account's dead."
"I can get some money in there before it bounces."
"Yeah. Bullshit." She takes back the greasy chunk of metal and inserts it somewhere with her fingertips.
Henry stares around at the ground. "Are you hungry?"
"Make me a baloney sandwich. Mayo."
Henry goes into the house and into the kitchen. Tina has spent the last of the money in the bank account on the Dart, and their rent check has barely squeaked through. A few weeks ago Henry got on the phone to his granddad and asked for some money to help make the rent; he doesn't relish having to do it again tomorrow. Tina likes her baloney sandwiches with two slices of baloney with mayo spread in the middle. She likes baloney and would like it every day forever, but he gets faintly sick at the combination smell of baloney and gasoline. He gets himself a Tupperware tumbler of Evan Williams bourbon instead, and brings out the sandwich on a paper towel.
He edges sideways between the Camaro and the ancient Volvo sedan to reach the outer driveway where Christina is at work. "I've decided we should sell your computer," she says.
"What? Why? We can't sell my computer."
"We need the money. You barely use it. I think you should get a manual typewriter. I think it would be cool."
"I hate manual typewriters. I can never change the ribbons on those fucking things. Why don't we sell one of the cars? We have too many cars," he says.
"What are you talking about? That's your Volvo, and my Camaro, and this is just a little baby Dodge. We don't have too many cars. We don't have to sell the computer, but if we don't, you need to get a job." Henry sits on the bumper of the Volvo.
"I'm hungry, Henry. Did you make it with two slices?"
"Of course, Tina."
"My hands are dirty. Feed it to me."
Henry leans over her and holds out the sandwich edgewise carefully, and she takes bites over her shoulder as she tightens screws and slips louvers into place. He moves closer to her until he is pressed against her back; as she finishes the last bite of sandwich from between his fingers he slips his hands under her T-shirt.
"Cut it out," she says dryly.
Henry steps back. The Dart is certainly a good-looking car. This one's a sixty- seven, two-door, everything about it saying sporty, even in its pathetic condition. When Tnia saw it in the car lot she literally jumped over a fence to get nearer to it, then stood by it, cooing and cussing, her hands buried in the back pockets of her jeans. Henry stood back and watched her do it, shaking his head.
Henry goes into the house and watches the tiny color TV set. He doesn't get anything out of it. He keeps a pen and a memo pad next to him on the couch in case any poetry occurs to him during Cops or Roseanne, but nothing does. It's late and Henry has had a few more tumblers full of warmish bourbon. He stands up and feels his way to the front screen door. "Christina!" he shouts, trying to sound angry and masculine, but it comes out a little wheedling. "It's eleven o'clock! Leave that stupid Dart alone and come inside!"
"Five more minutes."
"Tina, please."
"Five minutes, Henry. Jesus Christ."
Henry goes back to the couch.
Tina comes in in five minutes. Sweat has made big fading circlets on the T-shirt under her arms and around the neck hole. She takes off the baseball cap and fingers out short, stiff, crackling bleached hair. "I know," Henry pipes up, "why don't you take a shower and have a drink, and then let's have sex."
"OK," she says.
She does just that; they have sex on the big creaky-springed bed that was in the house when they moved in. She said she liked to think of some horny Mexican couple balling away on the bed until the springs made a concerto of protest. Henry does all right seeing as he's had more drinks tonight than he ought to've. Tina smells like shampoo and toothpaste and motor oil; her kisses sting him like smoke. They lie together in the dark, yawning and not moving otherwise. "I'm going to call my grandfather again tomorrow," Henry says.
"If you think it'll help."
"I don't know what else to do, really."
"OK, Henry. That's fine with me." Tina rolls over and puts her shoulder blades against his chest. Henry puts his face against her soft clean damp hair and goes to sleep. As long as he can wrap his arms around her, he can sleep, everything seems as though it will work out all right. A few lines of poetry run through his head as he falls asleep, and he thinks to himself that he should get up and write them down.
When he does get up he realizes he's been asleep for quite some time. Christina is no longer beside him and he's been holding onto the pillow marked withthe scent of her newly washed hair. He gets up and hikes on a pair of boxer shorts that lie on the carpet beside the bed.
He doesn't find her in the house at all. Instead, he goes outside, the night air drawing the hairs on his chest upright like frightened rabbits on a hill.
Christina is in the back seat of the Dodge Dart, a picnic blanket drawn tightly around her body, one bare tan shoulder peeking out of the nubbled flannel. Her head is resting on the armrest and she is asleep, breathing deeply, smiling.