I turned the paper over, and now I read the back, and the words popped out at me like neon: “reckless,” “daring,” “fluent, unaccented American English,” “strange sense of humor.”
And across the bottom, in block letters in blue ink, had very recently been written: “THEY FORGOT TO MENTION ‘MASTER OF DISGUISE.’ ENJOY YOUR STEAK OUT. FF.”
Steve Yarbrough
The Rest of Her Life
from Missouri Review
The dog was a mixture of God knows how many breeds, but the vet had told them he had at least some rottweiler blood. You could see it in his shoulders, you could hear it when he barked, which he was doing that night when they pulled up at the gate and Chuckie cut the engine.
“Butch is out,” Dee Ann said. “That’s kind of strange.”
Chuckie didn’t say anything. He’d looked across the yard and seen her momma’s car in the driveway, and he was disappointed. Dee Ann’s momma had told her earlier that she was going to buy some garden supplies at Western Auto and then eat something at the Sonic, and she’d said if she got back home and unloaded her purchases in time, she might run over to Greenville with one of her friends and watch a movie. Dee Ann had relayed the news to Chuckie tonight when he picked her up from work. That had gotten his hopes up.
The last two Saturday nights her momma had gone to Greenville, and they’d made love on the couch. They’d done it before in the car, but Chuckie said it was a lot nicer when you did it in the house. As far as she was concerned, the major difference was that they stood a much greater chance of getting caught. If her momma had walked in on them, she would not have gone crazy and ordered Chuckie away, she would have stayed calm and sat down and warned them not to do something that could hurt them later on. “There’re things y’all can do now,” she would have said, “that can mess y’all’s lives up bad.”
Dee Ann leaned across the seat and kissed Chuckie. “You don’t smell too much like a Budweiser brewery,” she said. “Want to come in with me?”
“Sure.”
Butch was waiting at the gate, whimpering, his front paws up on the railing. Dee Ann released the latch, and they went in and walked across the yard, the dog trotting along behind them.
The front door was locked — a fact that Chuckie corroborated the next day. She knocked, but even though both the living room and the kitchen were lit up, her momma didn’t come. Dee Ann waited a few seconds, then rummaged through her purse and found the key. It didn’t occur to her that somebody might have come home with her momma, that they might be back in the bedroom together, doing what she and Chuckie had done. Her momma still believed that if she could tough it out a few more months, Dee Ann’s daddy would recover his senses and come back. Most of his belongings were still here.
Dee Ann unlocked the door and pushed it open. Crossing the threshold, she looked back over her shoulder at Chuckie. His eyes were shut. They didn’t stay shut for long, he was probably just blinking, but that instant in which she saw them closed was enough to frighten her. She quickly looked into the living room. Everything was as it should be: the black leather couch stood against the far wall, the glass coffee table in front of it, two armchairs pulled up to the table at forty-five degree angles. The paper lay on the mantelpiece, right where her momma always left it.
“Momma?” she called. “It’s me and Chuckie.”
As she waited for a reply, the dog rushed past her. He darted into the kitchen. Again they heard him whimper.
She made an effort to follow the dog, but Chuckie laid his hand on her shoulder. “Wait a minute,” he said. Afterwards he could never explain to anyone’s satisfaction, least of all his own, why he had restrained her.
Earlier that evening, as she stood behind the checkout counter at the grocery store where she was working that summer, she had seen her daddy. He was standing on the sidewalk, looking in through the thick plate glass window, grinning at her.
It was late, and as always on Saturday evening, downtown Loring was virtually deserted. If people wanted to shop or go someplace to eat, they’d be out on the highway, at the Sonic or the new Pizza Hut. If they had enough money, they’d just head for Greenville. It had been a long time since anything much went on downtown after dark, which made her daddy’s presence here that much more unusual. He waved, then walked over to the door.
The manager was in back, totalling the day’s receipts. Except for him and Dee Ann and one stock boy who was over in the dairy aisle sweeping up, the store was empty.
Her daddy wore a pair of khaki pants and a short-sleeved pullover with an alligator on the pocket. He had on his funny-looking leather cap that reminded her of the ones policemen wore. He liked to wear that cap when he was out driving the MG.
“Hey, sweets,” he said.
Even with the counter between them, she could smell whiskey on his breath. He had that strange light in his eyes.
“Hi, Daddy.”
“When’d you start working nights?”
“A couple of weeks back.”
“Don’t get in the way of you and Buckie, does it?”
She started to correct him, tell him her boyfriend’s name was Chuckie, but then she thought Why bother? He’d always been the kind of father who couldn’t remember how old she was or what grade she was in. Sometimes he had trouble remembering she existed: years ago he’d brought her to this same grocery store, and after buying some food for his hunting dog, he’d forgotten about her and left her sitting on the floor in front of the magazine rack. The store manager had carried her home.
“Working nights is okay,” she said. “My boyfriend’ll be picking me up in a few minutes.”
“Got a big night planned?”
“We’ll probably just ride around a little bit and then head on home.”
Her daddy reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He extracted a twenty and handed it to her. “Here,” he said. “You kids do something fun. On me. See a movie or get yourselves a six-pack of Dr. Pepper.”
He laughed, to show her he wasn’t serious about the Dr. Pepper, and then he stepped around the end of the counter and kissed her cheek. “You’re still the greatest little girl in the world,” he said. “Even if you’re not very little anymore.”
He was holding her close. In addition to whiskey, she could smell after-shave and deodorant and something else — a faint trace of perfume. She hadn’t seen the MG on the street, but it was probably parked in the lot outside, and she bet his girlfriend was in it. She was just three years older than Dee Ann, a junior up at Delta State, though people said she wasn’t going to school anymore. She and Dee Ann’s daddy were living together in an apartment near the flower shop he used to own and run. He’d sold the shop last fall, just before he left home.
He didn’t work anymore, and Dee Ann’s momma had said she didn’t know how he aimed to live, once the money from his business was gone. The other thing she didn’t know — because nobody had told her — was that folks said his girlfriend sold drugs. Folks said he might be involved in that too.
He pecked her on the cheek once more, told her to have a good time with her boyfriend and to tell her momma he said hello, and then he walked out the door. Just as he left, the manager hit the switch, and the aisle lights went off.
That last detail — the lights going off when he walked out of the store — must have been significant, because the next day, as Dee Ann sat on the couch at her grandmother’s house, knee to knee with the Loring County sheriff, Jim Wheeler, it kept coming up.