Karen G. Berry - Mayhem 01 - Love and Mayhem Read online

  The Invisible Committee had nothing to say in return.

  INSIDE, MOST OF the chairs were already taken. Rhondalee would have liked to sit at the dais table, but only Minah Bourne sat up there, even though there were always two chairs. But Minah’s handbag was so large that it required a seat of its own, so Rhondalee had to take a seat to the left of Jeeter Tyson. Jeeter was the stupidest man in the Park, and also the only resident stupid enough to attend the Church of the Open Arms. His wife Vonda sat to his right. Rhondalee didn’t like sitting by the Tysons, and it was all Tender’s fault that she had to, because he’d detained her outside.

  Minah Bourne took a prefatory sip of Kool-Aid and gave a sharp tug on her wig. She followed with a sharper rap of her gavel. “I call this meeting to attention.” She peered over bifocals at the agenda before her. “I see we’re suppose to talk about Parking. All in favor of this discussion say ‘AYE’.” The AYE was rousing. Minah slammed the gavel. She reached into her tote bag and took out a mass of baby blue acrylic yarn. Her crochet hook flashed in and out as she spoke. “I thought we talked about using Space 13 for the overflow and guest parking, Rhondalee. I thought you were going to see about dumping another load of gravel there, but there seems to be a tenant there now.”

  Rhondalee rose to her feet. “Well, yes. I let the space to some boys from over by Bone Pile.” These boys had showed up, five of them, needing a temporary spot for a travel-trailer. They had offered to pay in cash. Rhondalee LaCour and her shoebox had a fondness for tenants who paid in cash.

  “Well, they fit right in at Space 13. And I don’t suppose that space will stay full for too long, anyway.” The tenants tittered, but it was a nervous titter. Space 13 was cursed. Whenever someone set their mobile home there, it succumbed to an electrical fire or some kind of structural collapse that couldn’t be shored up with jacks or cinderblocks. Minah continued. “I guess we don’t need to devote space all week long to parking, when it’s only on Sundays when we have all these parking troubles.” She looked over her half-glasses at Rhondalee. There was no mistaking the message in that owlish gaze. “Perhaps the answer is a little more simple than that. Perhaps what we need to discuss is whether or not we need to rent out our Clubhouse on Sundays to a church attended by folks who don’t even live in this park.”

  A soulful baritone boomed out over the crowd. “Sister Minah? Might I address the brothers and sisters?”

  Minah rapped her gavel. “The chair recognizes the Right Reverend Henry Heaven at this time.”

  The Reverend stood up to address the multitudes. The man had presence, thought Rhondalee. And could he ever dress himself. Now, there was a man who had done something with his life, even though his musical career hadn’t worked out. She would have to ask her daughter if she remembered this man.

  He took the podium and spread his hands in a benevolent gesture of welcome. As he moved his long fingers, the tenants couldn’t help but admire the reflection cast by all eight of his rings. They glittered, they dazzled, they sent out reflected spots like a mirrored ball in a disco. “Today, Brothers and Sisters of the Francie June Memorial Trailer Park, I’d like to urge you to be patient.”

  “I’d like to urge you to blow yourself,” muttered someone.

  “Patience, Brothers and Sisters, we need to pray for patience.”

  “HALLELUJAH TO THAT, REVEREND!” Jeeter Tyson was a little confused. There was the clubhouse, the chairs, the Reverend. He apparently thought he was in church.

  “Whatta buncha hooey,” hissed Harley Ridgeway.

  Minah scowled. “Harley, I haven’t recognized you.”

  “Hell, Minah, I been your neighbor for fifteen years, now. If you don’t recognize me by now, you ought to get your eyes checked.”

  The Right Reverend Henry Heaven spoke as if he had not heard this minor heckling. “Now, I know you all, as Christians, must understand that my congregation is affected with Heavenly Haste, brothers and sisters. These folks are in a hurry to get to God.”

  “AMEN, REVEREND!” shouted Jeeter Tyson.

  “This ain’t church,” Harley scoffed, “and this ain’t Heavenly Haste, neither. This is purely and simply a lack of consideration for the God-given parking rights of the fee-paying tenants of this here Park!”

  Jeeter waved his arms. “PRAISE JESUS!”

  Rhondalee elbowed his arm. “Hush, Jeeter,” she whispered, “this is not church.”

  “AND VERILY THE LORD SAYETH UNTO YOU!” called out Jeeter.

  Quentin Romaine stood up, all six-foot, 275 pounds of him. With his upper lip beaded with oily sweat and his face turning an unhealthy shade of purple, Quentin looked as ready to pop as the snaps of his plaid shirt. He shook a righteous fist. “If some holy-rolling hillbilly drives a primer-painted Ford Truck into my little colored lawn jockey one more time, I tell you what, Reverend, I’ll shoot out some bald tires for Jesus!”

  Wanda Hask stood up and waved her plump hand to get Minah’s attention. “Those stupid holy rollers can knock that lawn jockey down all they want!” Wanda, as evening sales manager at a Lane Bryant at the Ochre Rivers Mall, was one of the few career women in the Park. “They can knock it right out of this park! I’ll put a bounty on that thing, myself!”

  “It’s a tribute to my Southern roots, Dammit!”

  “A tribute? That’s nothing but a little iron racial stereotype! And I would like to point out that we have a resident of COLOR, here!”

  “You mean that crazy old Asa?” Quentin looked like he would erupt. “He don’t care about that lawn jockey! Nobody cares about it but you! And I know why you hate it, Wanda! Where I come from, we have NAMES for women like you!”

  Wanda drew herself up and spoke with dignified fury. “Quentin, you’d never have the guts to say those names out loud unless you were wearing your WHITE SHEET!”

  “PRAISE THE LORD!” hollered a confused Jeeter, while Rhondalee and Vonda slapped at his forearms.

  “Order! Order!” Minah Bourne rapped the gavel maniacally. “Reverend, I suggest you listen to these complaints.”

  The Reverend scoffed, as only the deeply Christian can. It was a scoff full of disdain and self-congratulatory hypocrisy. “What? Let these petty and earthly concerns affect my attendance count? I won’t let parking come between my flock and the Heavenly Father!” He shook a finger at the crowd and lowered his brows. “Let me remind you, Brothers and Sisters, when it comes to parking, I have to answer to GOD!”

  Minah’s rules of order were forgotten as the community center erupted. The anger rode the crowd like sheet lightning rides the horizon. It skimmed across the bi-level shag haircuts, the home permanents, the combovers, the frost and tips. Yes, anger gathered, and rose, and joined the other forces that seemed to fill the Park, adding a note to the soundless howl of whatever hovered there. Jeeter Tyson spoke in tongues.

  It was trailer park mayhem.

  Rhondalee felt that this Babel proved that Minah Bourne was too old to be running this show. She was about to stand up and holler for order, to claim her rightful place at the dais, when Tender staggered into the room, waving his arms.

  Her husband was a sight, his hair loose and ropey, his silver eyes glowing like quicksilver, one foot bare, his shirt unsnapped to show a brown, hairless chest covered with beads of panicked perspiration. “What is WRONG with you people?” he shouted at all the gaping faces. “Well?” His tone was majestic. “Well, aren’t you all about done fighting over nothing?” Silver sparks lit his eyes, and his hair flew out behind him like a cape. “Here you sit, talking about parking. Parking.” His arms swept majestically toward the open front doors. “Listen, maybe I never thought my destiny was to manage a mobile home park 2,000 miles from where I was born, but a home is a home. This Park is my home. This place is home to ALL of you. And something is wrong here.”

  There was a long pause. Averted eyes, cleared throats, shaken heads. Quentin took his chair with a crimson face. Wanda’s third husband, who was white and therefore proof that a woman
who went black might indeed go back, pulled his angry wife back to her seat. Jeeter Tyson fell into some kind of quiet religious trance. The Reverend spread his hands in one last unctuous gesture designed to make himself look like a peacemaker, and sat.

  No one could move.

  Rhondalee wanted to weep with shame. This, she told the Invisible Committee, is the LIMIT. Look at his FEET. One of his boots is gone. He has a hole in the toe of his sock. Out of her sight for a half-hour or less, and he was falling down drunk.

  Minah acted, finally. She took her plump little self from behind the table, went to him, and took his arm. “Tender? Are you feeling all right? You don’t seem yourself this evening.”

  He looked around, shook his head. “Minah? Can’t you hear it?”

  His anger had left him. His terror remained.

  “It seems to me you need to sit down, Tender.” She led him up to the dais. He plopped his long body down, dislodging the purse. Thankfully it was packed so tightly that nothing fell out.

  Tender removed his other boot with exaggerated delicacy. He sat for a moment, looking out at all of them. Then he raised his head high, his eyes full of fear. “Listen, everyone! Listen! Do you hear it? Do you?” He shook his head. “It’s making me crazy. It’s been there all day.” Tender’s eyes scanned the crown frantically, finally finding his wife. “Rhondy, please tell me you can hear that.” He put his head in his arms. Rhondalee watched the dead sag of his long body as he lost consciousness. Her nails sank deep enough into her palms to draw blood. She shut out the looks of her neighbors, the sight of her husband, and the remembered, sneering voice of her own dead father. She looked away from the spectacle that her handsome husband had made of himself. If anyone had dared to touch her, she would have crumbled to dust.

  Minah patted Tender’s arm as he began to snore. Having retrieved her purse, she selected a Kleenex and loudly blew her nose. “Well.” She looked at her notes, cleared her throat. She tugged at her wig and rapped her gavel. “I move to adjourn.”

  “Seconded!”

  “All in favor!”

  “AYE.”

  She rapped her gavel as hard as she could. “So passed. Let’s go home.”

  Rhondalee waited by the door with a stack of newsletters in her hand as everyone stood to go. The tenants streamed out, each dutifully taking a copy. Some, like Minah, took two. Almost all of them made a point of scanning it, too, letting her know that she and her duties were taken seriously here at the Park.

  Somehow, pity was worse than mockery.

  The worst was Minah, gently suggesting that her husband might need to see a doctor. A doctor. There was nothing wrong with Tender, nothing besides being drunk.

  Rhondalee cleaned up alone, yanking the tablecloth from under her husband’s crossed arms, leaving the chairs up for the Open Armers’ service in the morning. She stacked and swept and stashed. She had the place pristine in no time. Then it was time to walk her husband home.

  He staggered along beside her, leaning on her shoulders. Like carrying a gutted deer on a pole, she thought, and she blinked a little, too mad to let herself cry. She couldn’t manage to throw the deadbolt on the Clubhouse door, but the office was certainly secure. The same key opened both locks. Aside from the piano, the vacuum cleaner, and the folding chairs, there was nothing much to steal from the Clubhouse.

  They managed to get home, where she could hide from the pitying glances of her neighbors. She propped him up against his truck while she removed her espadrilles and put on her slippers. Then she walked Tender in the door and across the living room and let him fall into his recliner. Rhondalee peeled off his filthy socks. She’d retrieve his boot from the meeting room tomorrow, and go on a hunt for the other one, wherever that had gone to. She covered him up with his navy blue velour robe, the one she bought for him because she thought the gold embroidered crest over the heart would make him look regal.

  Regal.

  Well, did you see that? She asked of the Invisible Committee. My husband has made a mockery of himself. My humiliation knows no mortal bounds.

  The Invisible Committee had nothing to say.

  Her own recliner was the same make and color as Tender’s, but in much better shape as she, herself, slept in a bed. She sat lightly in it as Tender groaned and shivered. “I hear it!” he shouted in his sleep. One of his long arms snaked out and knocked a ceramic imitation Hummel from the end table. Rhondalee refused to pick it up. She just wouldn’t, that was all there was to it. She took the TV Guide and a pencil from her remote caddy and got busy on the crossword.

  It’s an amazing thing, she told the Committee, how I can sit in the room with that man while he snores and knocks innocent knickknacks to the floor, and I don’t care to do a thing about it. Why, I’m sitting here doing my crossword, and I don’t even want to take my Princess House crystal bud vase and crack it over his head. Amazing, isn’t it?

  The Invisible Committee said nothing.

  But Tender, roused by whatever haunted his dreams, pressed his hands over his ears, and stared at her like the drunken beast she feared him to be. He whispered. “Make it stop.”

  “Make WHAT stop?”

  “Someone has to make this stop.”

  “I wish you’d stop, Tender. You keep going on and on about whatever you’re hearing, and I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  He shook his head, shook it again, listened. “Don’t you hear?” His voice was a plea, not a shout. “I can’t shut it out.” He stood, limping toward the door like a wounded stag that had wandered inside by accident.

  “Tender, don’t you DARE leave this house.”

  The front door slammed in reply.

  Well, her no-good husband was off again. At least his keys were up at the Clubhouse. He might stumble back up to the bar, but he wouldn’t drive anywhere. I believe it’s always darkest before the dawn, she told herself. She jotted that one down in the margin of her TV Guide.

  She closed her eyes and remembered another time. She remembered the two dashing brothers she’d met back in Tennessee, both coming around to court her. Both so tall, with their black hair and their grey eyes, no beards to speak of and such fine, large hands. And their name… LaCour. Though she doubted it had been legally bestowed on their Indian mother by their white father, that name was so distinguished, so different from her own, Hempel. Rhondalee Hempel. No wonder she’d never been able to get onstage.

  But back to the brothers. There was Memphis, with that voice as deep as the Grand Canyon. So reserved and protective, so thoughtful. And then there was Tender, with that easy walk, those flashing silver eyes that promised passion behind his modesty and shyness. They were both her suitors, but Tender had charmed her with songs he wrote for her, about her, songs he played on his guitar while she played coy, pretending she didn’t know which one she wanted—him or his taller, older, quieter brother. Oh, she’d driven herself like a wedge between those young men, savored her power, gloried in it, really. To be wanted that much by two men, two brothers who actually loved her more than they loved each other. The thrill of it.

  Yes, she’d made her choice. And now Tender was nothing but a drunk.

  Exhaustion, her only suitor, took her in his quiet arms and rocked her to the deepest sleep of her life.

  RAVEN DROVE FAST during the day. She was good in passes, through canyons, along rivers. She had a way of taking the road, letting it lead her, with the sun in her eyes and her ears full of music.

  The only reason she drove all night was to get home.

  His bare-naked serenade half-registered in her memory on the way south, his big hands on the neck of that guitar, the way his body had filled up her cab. The man had shed tears over her song about a runaway to Mexico. She switched CDs, found Emmylou singing that same song. That was a big part of the problem, these romantic songs about Mexico. Those spoiled college boys always ran to Mexico at the first hint of trouble. They had no idea how many never came back, and the ones who didn’t return weren’
t sitting down there drinking margaritas and banging senoritas. They were dead, or worse, locked up in a Mexican prison, where they’d skin a white boy alive for five American dollars and a pair of boots. How many broken boys had she driven back north, shamed and desperate to get back to the land of due process?

  She reached up and touched that single hand-rolled smoke, then pulled her hand away. She thought about Isaac in a Mexican prison. He was a strong one, a little narrow through the shoulders, but his arms were massive and hard. Looked like someone had stuffed a few Idaho bakers in each of his biceps. Soft in the belly, but those taut legs went on for miles, and his white ass in the moonlight looked like a perfect curve in Monument Valley. Nope, she thought. He was pretty. Didn’t matter how tall he was, how strong. Those Mexican rump riders would figure out a way to turn him over and hold him down.

  If he’d been heading to Canada, she’d have let him go. But Memphis said he had no priors. Maybe six months. Better to do those in an American jail, any day. Yup, she decided, picking some flecks of tobacco from her teeth with her pinkie nail. She’d done right, going through his wallet while he slept, calling her uncle Memphis.

  She had absolutely done the right thing when she turned him in.

  Night time, halogen lights in the lanes to her left, tired eyes, Lucinda singing, the crackle of the CB, the white on black of highway lines, the white on green of highway signs. Coming home. She used to love to drive at night. Twenty-six and tired. I’ll never last in this line of work, she thought, then remembered that she hadn’t exactly slept the night before. She had a pang of regret. He could have been riding beside her, his thick fingers on the strings of his guitar, singing in that gruff, low voice, sharing her smokes, snooping through her CDs and scoffing at all the country, asking, did she have any Björk?

  She looked at his guitar next to her on the seat. It could join that old guitar at home, held in lieu of money a man lost to her in a card game. She’d held on to it for a decade, waiting for that dried-out old poker player to come reclaim it. It’d been the strangest thing. She was sixteen and playing cards in a trailer, waiting to go onstage at a state fair. She’d heard a man with a bleached-out voice say, I’m looking for a girl with a scar. One of the guitar players pointed to Raven. He wasn’t really a stranger. He was often in the crowds at Gospel shows, listening, nodding, carrying a guitar case he never opened. It was said by some that he was the Devil, but Raven thought it more likely that he was a washed-up guitar player with a bad liver. The stranger had come her way, smiling, studying her face for the scar under the makeup her mother plastered over it. Once he’d found it, he’d sat down and lost an unheard-of sum of money to Raven as methodically as if he were doing it on purpose.