December 1985
CANEY SWITCHED on the light
over his bed and reached for the last of last night's coffee . . . one
cold oily swallow at the bottom of a chipped stoneware mug.
He'd been trying to convince
himself he was still asleep ever since he'd heard the rattle of trash
cans behind the cafe sometime around three. At least he supposed it was
three. Molly O had unplugged the clock on his dresser so she could plug
in two sets of lights she'd strung around a scrawny Christmas tree standing
in the corner.
Caney had told her he didn't
want a tree in his room. He said the one she put up out front beside the
jukebox was one too many, but telling Molly O not to do something was
like telling a four-year-old not to stick a bean up her nose. So when
she started dragging in sacks of pinecones and tangled strands of red
tinsel, Caney kept his mouth shut and stayed out of her way. He'd lost
enough battles to know when to give up.
Encouraged by his silence,
Molly O had thrown herself into a decorating frenzy. After she finished
with the trees, she hung aluminum stars from the ceiling fan, but they
got tangled around the blades causing the motor to short out.
She draped silver icicles
over a length of clothesline stretched across the center of the room,
but every time the door opened, ici cles slipped off the line and drifted
down onto plates of spaghetti or bowls of vegetable stew.
She brought in a box of old
frizzy-haired Barbies that had belonged to her daughter, adorned each
one with mistletoe and perched them on top of all the napkin holders.
She had to position them straddle legged, as if they were doing splits,
the only way she could manage to tape them down, but the ungainly pose
brought lewd comments from a drilling crew that came in for breakfast
each morning.
Undaunted by minor flaws and
small minds, Molly O pressed on. She carted in candy canes, holiday plants
and plastic elves. She hung wreaths, strung popcorn and tacked up cardboard
bells. Finally, she made a trip to Wal-Mart where she found a nativity
scene made in Taiwan. She arranged it in the center of the lunch counter
and placed the tiny baby Jesus, who looked oddly Oriental, into the bamboo
manger.
Finished, Molly O surveyed
the Honk and said it looked like a Christmas wonderland. Caney said it
looked like a Chinese carnival.
But Christmas was not on his
mind as he squirmed, then threw back the covers, sending a paperback sailing
off the bed. After a mumbled apology to Louis L'Amour, Caney rubbed at
his temples where a headache was just beginning to build.
He thought once again about
sleep, but figured it was useless. He knew if he turned off the light
and sank back into his pillow, the same old pictures would play in his
head, reruns in which he was the only performer . . . a one-man show.
Three hundred miles away,
at a rest stop near Kansas City, Vena Takes Horse cracked the window of
the passenger door, lit a Winston and blew the smoke into the cold predawn
air. The driver of the eighteen-wheeler, a shriveled little man who called
himself Cobweb, was asleep in the bed behind the seat. He had tried to
get Vena to crawl into the back with him, but when she told him to go
to hell, he hadn't insisted. He said he reckoned sleep would do him more
good than sex, then left her sitting alone up in the front.
He'd picked her up on Interstate
59 just south of Sioux Falls, but they hadn't said much to each other.
Cobweb spent most of his talk on his CB, which was fine with Vena. She
didn't care much for conversation anyway.
She tossed the last of her
cigarette out the window, then put her head back and closed her eyes.
She hadn't slept since South Dakota and hoped, now, that sleep would take
her, but each time a truck rolled by on the highway, something tightened
in her chest that caused her heart to quicken. She wasn't good at staying
still.
She thought of trying to get
another lift, but a hard rain had begun to fall just before they stopped
and she had seen specks of ice in the drops that smacked against the windshield.
The cold didn't bother her much, but she didn't like the rain. She didn't
like the rain at all.
When she finally decided to
give up on sleep, she lifted her duffel bag onto the seat beside her and
fished out a half-eaten Hershey, but before she could peel back the wrapper,
she heard a noise, a strange sound she couldn't identify.
At first she thought it might
have come from Cobweb, a whimpering sound men sometimes make when they
dream, when they're not afraid to be afraid. But when she heard it again,
she knew it came from outside, from somewhere in the dark.
If she could have convinced
herself that what she heard was the whine of tires hugging the wet road
or the ping of ice pellets ricocheting off the truck . . . if she could
have made herself believe that, then she wouldn't have crawled out of
the cab and climbed to the ground, wouldn't have felt the sting of rain
and sleet pelting her face, plastering her hair to her head.
She started toward the light
poles ringing the rest stop, but when she heard the sound again, certain
it came from the highway, she turned and headed in that direction.
She could hear it more clearly
now, a high-pitched mournful wail As she crossed the grassy strip separating
the rest stop from the interstate, a car rounded a curve, headlights sweeping
across the darkness as it veered suddenly toward the median, and in a
brief slice of light, a moment before the car's passing, she saw something
lying on the highway.
She started to run then, but
when she reached the shoulder of the road, when she saw what was out there,
she slowed, the way people do when dread needs an extra breath.
In the middle of the far lane
was a small black dog, one leg ripped off at the bend of a knee where
a tendril of slick gray vein protruded, leaking blood onto the wet pavement.
The dog, flattened on its side, was trying to lick life into five lifeless
pups, vapors of steam rising from their still-warm bodies . . . and as
Vena started across the road, the dog looked up, found her face with its
eyes and managed one weak wag of its limp black tail.
Just down the road from Caney's
place, in the Cozy Oaks Trailer Park, Molly O peered out the window of
her fifty-foot Skyline, giving some serious thought to sneaking next door
and ripping down the wind chimes that were about to drive her nuts. She
might have done it, too, but she was afraid the silence would wake up
the whole neighborhood.
She had been up since three
and had known from the first that the day was going to be a disaster.
And she was right.
She'd started out by grabbing
a tube of Ben-Gay instead of toothpaste, cracking her hip against a dresser
drawer and losing one of her new fake nails down the drain. But that was
just the beginning.
She found mouse droppings
on the kitchen cabinet, a quart of soured milk in the fridge, exactly
four squares of toilet tissue left on the roll and a crimson rash running
up her neck.
What she didn't find was the
mate to her one fuzzy house shoe, enough water pressure to wash the taste
of Ben-Gay from her mouth or an extra roll of toilet paper.
She could have blamed her
troubles on insomnia—three hours of half sleep and distressing dreams
she couldn't shake until she got up and looked through Brenda's old scrapbook.
But a bad night was nothing new for MollyO. She'd been living with insomnia
for so long that it was as familiar as her cowlick, as comfortable as
her faded chenille robe.
No, her problem was worse
than a restless night, more serious than a rash. Her problem was Christmas.
Christmas without Brenda. And while the photographs she had looked at
earlier had soothed the sting of bad dreams, the images of Brenda would
be with her for the rest of the day.
Brenda, hair the
color of quince, face set in defiant scowl, posted under a Christmas tree.
. . a three-yevr-old sentry waiting up for Sandra Claus
At first, Molly O had tried
to turn Christmas off. Just think of December as another gray month, the
last thirty-one days of the year, four long weeks in which her propane
bill would double. But she couldn't avoid the Christmas parade down Main
Street, couldn't ignore the plywood reindeer on the lawn at City Hall,
couldn't shut out the sounds of the Methodist carolers singing "Joy to
the World."
Brenda at ten,
straw-thin legs crossed in a movie star pose, anklestrap shoes too adult
for her feet, head haloed in copper curls, mouth painted sunburst coral
with a tube of forbidden lipstick
But like a spoiled child demanding
attention, Christmas insisted on having its own way. Christmas was coming—with
its scent of pine needles and jingle of bells—and there was nothing
Molly O could do to stop it. She couldn't hide from it or get around it,
but she had to find a way to get through it, so she devised another plan.
She would perform her own
Christmas miracle to renew a joyless heart.
Brenda at thirteen,
hair by Clairol—raven black, eyelids shadowed midnight blue, short
leather skirt hugging her thighs as she climbs into a pickup, flashing
a woman's smile at the grinning boy behind the wheel
With renewed spirit and firm
resolve, Molly O started her new campaign by dropping five dollars in
the Salvation Army bucket, then taking a racing car set and two Dr. Seuss
books to the firehouse for the Toys for Tots collection. She bought two
trees from the Kiwanis lot, then pulled out cardboard boxes full of lights
and ornaments.
She watched Miracle on
34th Street, addressed Christmas cards and made a pan of fudge. Then
she sat down and cried.
Brenda at fifteen,
cowboy booted, western suited, hair bleached, teased and Romped, bottle
of Coors in one hand, guitar in the other, wedged between two slim-hipped
musicians, standing beside a beatup VW van with BRENDA B AND THE BAD AXE
BOYS painted on the side
Depressed by the sight of
so much Christmas, MollyO loaded up everything and took it to the Honk
where she spent three days decorating for Caney. She had pretended to
enjoy it and forced herself to smile. But it didn't work. The spirit she
faked was left at the cafe like an apron she could slip in and out of.
Here in her own trailer, there was nothing to suggest that Christmas was
just days away. Nothing at all.
Brenda, hair the
color of quince
a three-yevr-old senty
waiting up for Sandra Claus
* * *
Bui Khanh emptied the closet
quickly, but he had little to take a windbreaker, three pairs of pants,
a half dozen wrinkled shirts . . . ill-fitting castoffs from the Goodwill
where he shopped. He tossed everything into a paper sack, then scooped
out the contents of a dresser drawer.
He had just stepped into the
kitchen when he heard a car roll to a stop in the alley behind his apartment.
He switched off the light, then slipped to the window.
He knew the police would come,
but had hoped it would not be so soon, hoped he would already be gone.
He had seen the Houston police
many times in the neighborhoods of Little Saigon. Big men with hard voices
and hard eyes. Once he had seen two of them with their guns drawn, yelling
words he couldn't understand at a Thai boy in front of the U Minh Import
Shop.
Bui held his breath as he
inched aside a stiff window shade.
The sight of a man standing
ten feet away caused his knees to buckle. But when his eyes adjusted to
the darkness of the alley, he recognized the familiarity of another Vietnamese
face as the man staggered against the car, fumbled open his fly and relieved
himself.
Bui backed away from the window
and waited for his breathing to slow. He wanted to sit down and close
his eyes, but he knew if he did, he would see again the woman with yellow
hair.
He could not remember her
car pulling out of the darkness and into the path of his own, did not
remember the jolt of the wheel in his hand or the tearing of metal as
the cars came to rest at the side of the road. But he would never forget
the face of the woman with yellow hair as she stumbled from her car and
started to shout.
Bui told her he would take
her to a doctor and promised to pay the bill, but when he tried to wipe
the blood from her hair, she grabbed his arm and screamed words he had
never heard.
He tried to explain, told
her he had no license and no insurance for the car. Then he gave her all
the money in his pocket, but she kept shouting and pointing to her car.
Bui tried again to tell her,
to make her understand, but he didn't have enough American words. And
when he heard the sound of distant sirens, the Vietnamese words came too
fast and too loud. When he reached for her arm and begged her to listen,
she scratched at his face and tore the collar of his shirt.
He wished he could have helped
her, could have found the right words, but the woman was still shouting
when he ran away. And now, standing in the empty kitchen, he knew wishing
was too late.
The car in the alley was gone
when he peeked through the window again, but he left the room in darkness
as he felt his way to a corner cabinet, empty except for a heavy bag of
rice. Working quickly, he untied the bag, then ran his hand deep inside
and pulled out a thick leather pouch. He didn't take time to open it.
He could tell from the heft of it that the money was still inside.
The kitchen held nothing else
of value—no microwave or toaster, not even a coffeepot. Bui had made
do with one blackened saucepan, three plastic glasses and a stack of plastic
containers from the Cafe Lotus where he worked.
He had planned to buy nice
dishes later, when Nguyet came— white china bowls and teacups edged
in gold. He would buy beautiful chopsticks made of ivory and a tray painted
with red flowers, and Nguyet would prepare rau cai xao and còm
chiên vòí sauciss, not the canned fish and frozen pizzas
he sometimes ate.
Nguyet wouldn't like American
food, not at first, but Bui would teach her the taste of fried chicken
and baked apples. He would show her how Americans ate eggs with forks
and explain why they wanted their tea with ice. She wouldn't understand,
not in the beginning, but he would help her and she would be all right.
When she was with him again, everything would be all right.
The living room was even darker
than the kitchen, but Bui didn't need light to see where he was going.
He had been there many times in the dark. And now, before he left, he
would go there once more.
The shrine, on a rickety wooden
table in a corner of the room, was small and plain. But when he lit the
candle, the stone Buddha cast a giant shadow against the wall. Bui lit
three sticks of incense over the candle flame, then stepped back and knelt
on the floor.
He bowed his head and waved
the incense three times toward the altar, then, with his hands pressed
against his forehead, he prayed. He prayed for his ancestors, he prayed
for Nguyet and he prayed for the woman with yellow hair.
Excerpted from The Honk and Holler Opening Soon © Copyright 2009 by Billie Letts. Reprinted with permission by Time Warner Books. All rights reserved.
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