Godless City

Spyder woke to rain chewing the tin roof and the smell of somebody else’s cigarettes. For a second he reached where Teresa used to be, fingers finding only cold sheet and a torn seam he kept promising himself he’d stitch. He lay there and listened until obligation got him upright.

His knees cracked when he swung them off the mattress. Forty-seven and already moving like a hinge in need of oil. He put on his work pants from the chair, the ones with joint compound hardened at the knees, and tugged a T-shirt across his chest. In the bathroom he splashed water, rubbed the night from his face, brushed his teeth with the last of a flattened tube, and spit blue into the sink.

The kitchen had warped linoleum and a light flickering like it had nerve damage. The coffee pot was clean because he’d been trying to live right. He scooped grounds with the same spoon he used for cereal, counted to four and then a little extra because it was a soggy morning. The drip started and the smell lifted his shoulders.

On the counter lay a folded sheet of notebook paper with Jasmine’s handwriting.

Dad, working Lenny’s late shift. Collard’s picking me up after. We’re going to the fair. Don’t wait. There’s leftover baked ziti in the fridge. Love you. —J.

The coffee machine coughed toward finished. He poured into a damaged mug with a tourist lighthouse from a beach they never went to, took a hot sip, then heard the bleating. He put down the mug and groaned.

At the door he saw her umbrella, the clear plastic one with daisies. He took it because the rain had a mind to ruin his day. On the porch the wood felt soft under his heel. A step needed replacing. He stood in the doorway and watched the yard turned into chocolate milk.

The trailer park they lived in was called Dell’s Paradise, though everybody had taken to calling it Godless City after the old preacher died and the new one ran off with church funds. It wasn’t a city, and it wasn’t godless either. There were people praying all the time, you just couldn’t hear them. He looked out at trailers that sat like parked boats.

Gordon’s truck horn bleated again in short miserable notes. Spyder jogged through the rain, the umbrella banging his shoulder. Gordon leaned over and pushed the passenger door open.

“You’re late,” Gordon said. “Or I’m early. Either way, I’m wet.”

“You been wet since I met you,” Spyder said. He collapsed the umbrella, wedged it between his boots, and slammed the door. The cab smelled of rainy dog and chainsaw oil. Gordon drove like a man half his size, head floating over the steering wheel. Wipers waved against the windshield.

“Got a double up on Kings Road,” Gordon said. “Hang, tape, and texture. She wants it to look like clouds. People want clouds on their walls when real ones flooding their yard. You can’t talk to folks.”

Spyder watched a school bus full of fogged windows sputter through an intersection. He wondered if Jasmine was on it or if she’d let Collard drive her again in his mama’s Prius. Collard was all right as far as boys went. He was not mean or careless. His hair was long, and his clothes baggy, but Spyder had promised not to dislike him on sight. He disliked him anyway in a warm way, like disliking a painting for being crooked.

“You hear about the fair?” Gordon asked. “Ground’s a swamp. But they’ll still spin folks until their breakfast comes out.”

“Jasmine wants to go.”

“You gonna stop her?”

“She’s seventeen.”

“So that’s a no.”

Gordon tapped ash out the window, the rain mutating it to gray paste. “You ever think about how old seventeen is? I mean, it ain’t nothing from the outside. But it’s the biggest number that ever happened when it’s happening.”

“She was real small once,” Spyder said. “You could hold her like a puppy. She had this cry that sounded like somebody opening a screen door.”

Gordon cut him a look. “You getting soft on me?”

“Been soft. That’s my curse.”

They turned off the highway at the Pot Belly Pig Xing sign, a joke somebody had hammered up fifteen years ago, and nobody remembered to take down. Beyond it, a flat stretch of houses went by, front porches performing along the road. On one, a woman smoked with a toddler at her hip. On another, a man tried fixing a lawnmower.

Kings Road had a ranch with a blue tarp on the roof and sheetrock powder in flight. The homeowner was a woman wearing a shirt that said MAKE TODAY AMAZING, her hair gathered up in a wheat-straw nest.

“The leak’s there and there and there,” she said, pointing three different places that looked the same.

“We’ll make it right,” Gordon said, a thing he liked to say even when making things right had nothing to do with leaks.

The day became one with no edges — tape lines, tape bubbles, setting mud that wasn’t ready to sand but got sanded anyway, the drone of a wet-dry vac, the homeowner’s lapdog doing tours and yapping around the yard. Spyder liked how ugly drywall could be skimmed fine, parched, sandpapered, brushed away, and then, if you stood across the room, looked like it never had any problems.

By noon the rain had slowed to drizzle. Gordon sat on a bucket and ate Vienna sausages from a can with a Swiss army knife.

“Teresa called last night,” Spyder said.

Gordon raised eyebrows. “Your Teresa?”

“She ain’t my anything but a memory and a signature on paper. But yeah.”

“What she want?”

“To tell me Dan proposed.”

Gordon drove the Swiss army into another sausage. “Is that the one with the boat?”

“Two boats. Bass and deck.”

“Man with two boats wants for something.”

“She sounded happy.”

Spyder had thought that detail wouldn’t sound so laid-back.

“You happy for her?” Gordon asked.

“I’m trying to be.”

“That ain’t a yes.”

Gordon set the can down and wiped his mouth with his shirt. “You sober?”

“Today.”

“That ain’t a brag.”

“It ain’t nothing either.”

Spyder could already feel the part of his brain that felt for the bottle and what it promised. He’d thrown out the last rye two weeks ago. Each night at nine he wanted to go dig it out of the trash and it wasn’t there.

“Jasmine still playing clarinet?” Gordon asked, changing the subject like a pal.

“She says the band director don’t like her tone. Says she’s got a ‘wiry sound.’”

“Sounds like some bullshit,” Gordon said, and chewed through the last sausage.

At three the woman with the MAKE TODAY AMAZING shirt stood in the doorway with a tray of store-brand cookies and two glasses of lemonade. “Y’all are artists,” she said. “My first husband couldn’t hang a picture without making the wall look like it’d been to Iraq.”

“We’ll finish the texture tomorrow when the mud sets,” Gordon said.

“You mean I get to see you again?” she said, her voice perky, her eyes yearning.

Back in the truck, Spyder cracked his knuckles one at a time.

“I gotta swing by Lenny’s.”

Gordon grunted in agreement. He understood that some men built their afternoons around places they pretended they were just passing through.

Lenny’s smelled like exhausted cigarettes and spilled pickle juice and the sort of candy nobody bought except when they remembered a childhood memory. The bell on the door didn’t ring so much as whine. Lenny stood behind the counter, forearms like rolled dough, thinning hair in a conspiratorial comb over.

“Afternoon, gentlemen,” he said. “Rain made everybody come out and buy milk like a hurricane’s coming so we out.”

Jasmine kneeled in the cooler aisle, sliding bottles of water over a white grill. She wore her work polo and the expression she put on when she wanted to be hidden. Spyder watched the way she touched each bottle with care. When she saw him, she half-smiled.

“Hey, Dad.”

“You eat anything?”

“I’ll grab something later.”

“You working late?”

“’Til eight, maybe nine if Kiana goes home sick again.”

He nodded, standing there holding his own hands.

“You need a ride?”

“Collard’s picking me up. We’re going to see about the fair.”

She said it careful like it was a test.

“You think it’s safe?”

“Dad.”

“Okay.”

“They got that ride that slingshots you in a ball,” she said, the first real bright in her voice.

“You don’t get on that,” he said. “It’ll snap – and if it don’t snap, you’ll throw up on someone’s hat.”

“You’re a scientist now.”

“Been one. Long time.”

She looked down at the case of water and then back at him. “You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Liar.”

He grinned in a way that admitted it. She touched his forearm and then was back to work. He walked to the counter with a loaf of bread, a half tank of gas and a package of sunflower seeds Jasmine liked.

“You hear?” Lenny asked, leaning in.

“About what.”

“Dan asked Teresa to marry him.”

“You a radio station for news I don’t care to revisit?”

“She asked me if I thought you’d be okay.”

“What’d you say?”

“I said you’re tougher than you act and softer than you look.”

“That’s the worst thing anybody ever said about me.”

“It’s true.”

Lenny slid the change across the counter.

“Hey—you still got that outboard? The angry Johnson?”

“Why?”

“Got a guy wants one for his jon boat. Says he’ll pay cash.”

Spyder thought of the motor, how he’d taken it apart and put it back together twice, the machine still kicking like a stubborn mule. He thought of what cash could fix and what it couldn’t. “Tell him to come by Saturday. I’ll let him hear it cuss.”

He stopped at the pawnshop on his way home. The glass cases were filled with the jewelry of the almost-hopeful. Engagement rings, religious pendants, guitars people never learned to play. The owner was a woman with sleeves of flowers and fish swimming along her arms.

“You got a white gold heart with a nick in the left side,” Spyder said.

“You mean a ring?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

She pulled a tray out and scanned the inventory. “Any of these?’

“No,” he said. “The nick is like a mouth.”

She nodded and went in the back. When she returned, she had a tinier tray, where the ring was.

“I want to get it out,” he said.

“You got a ticket?”

 “It’s been a minute.”

“Honey, nothing leaves here without a ticket or a price.”

“What’s the price?”

She wrote a number on a Post-it and slid it toward him. He exhaled small.

“Can you hold it ’til Saturday?” he asked.

“I can’t hold nothing but a grudge,” she said and put the tray back in the safe slow.

That night the rain hung around like a guest who wouldn’t take a hint, still eating the roof. Spyder nuked the ziti in wonton plastic because the Tupperware had gone missing when Teresa moved to Dan’s. He ate standing up at the counter, washed the wonton plastic and fork and left them to dry. He sat on the couch and looked at the TV, the remote heavy in his palm. At nine he thought about the drink he wasn’t going to have. He thought about calling Teresa and telling her he was happy for her. He thought about driving to the fair to see if Jasmine rode the slingshot ball.

Around ten, the door opened, and Jasmine walked in with a smell of funnel cake.

“You go?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“How was it?”

“Wet.”

“You ride that ball?”

“No. Some kid puked in it. It was like somebody shot a paint can. It was gross.”

He laughed a real laugh, belly, throat and eyes. She smiled for real then, too. She went to the fridge and ate a cold meatball with her fingers.

“Collard’s nice,” she said.

“I didn’t say he wasn’t.”

“You thought it.”

“Maybe.”

“He’s got this idea about Orlando,” she said, closing the fridge.

“What about it?”

“His cousin can get us jobs at a hotel. Front desk if I cut my hair right.”

“You like your hair.”

“I like money, too.”

“You’re fifteen months from a diploma.”

“I’m sixteen months from rent.”

He opened his mouth to say the things fathers say when they’re trying to do good — about college and the way the world devours girls who go hungry for things like fake love and front desk jobs —but what came out was, “You want bread?”

She laughed and shook her head and went down the hall to the little room with a bed she’d painted yellow. He stood looking at the bread like it had remedies.

*

The next morning the sky looked like cancer. Spyder and Gordon finished the Kings Road job, the woman with MAKE TODAY AMAZING tearing up a little at the way the ceiling now looked like a ceiling. She tipped them in bills and winked. They stopped for lunch at the taco place that used to be a pancake place and ate outside, the tone of the air like Delta Blues.

“You going to tell her about that ring?” Gordon asked, mouth full of ground beef and guac.

“When it’s on her finger.”

“Why’s it so important?” Gordon asked.

Spyder wiped salsa from his hand. “It was Teresa’s grandma’s. Teresa wore it, then she put it away because she said it made her finger itch, and then when things got bad, I was a man with a pawn ticket. Jasmine used to put it on when she was little and walk around like somebody had told her she was the prettiest girl in the county. I want her to have that again. The feeling. The ring’s just the box the feeling comes in.”

“You’re getting poetic in your old age,” Gordon said.

Saturday brought a heat that strained moisture from his eyes. Spyder dragged the old Johnson out from under the tarp and propped it by the tailgate. The bristly man from Lenny’s was already there with eyes like that looked plugged into a socket.

“She fire up?” he asked.

“She fires up,” Spyder said. He primed the bulb, pulled the cord, and it kicked back. On the third pull it rattled, spitting smoke.

“Got her quirks,” the man shouted over the noise.

“Don’t we all.”

They shook hands on a number. The man left with the motor clamped to a wooden sawhorse, and Spyder watched the truck taillights get smaller until they bent around the curve by the mailbox. He washed his hands at the outdoor spigot, the water shocking cold.

At the pawnshop the same woman with the tattoos stood up. Spyder slid the money across the counter.

“You’re back sooner than I figured,” she said.

“You’re kinder than you look,” he said. “I know you been saving that ring.”

“You’re a real wishful thinker,” she said.

He drove to Lenny’s and bought a six-pack of Topo Chico because it looked like something you drank when you had your life together. He bought a cake that said HAPPY BIRTHDAY JASMINE in red letters.

He set the cake on the passenger seat and buckled it in.

At the trailer he cleaned the kitchen table and the counters and even the top of the refrigerator. He put a vase on the table with three plastic daisies from the dollar store because real ones die. He put the ring in the pocket and kept patting it like a man checking for heart palpitations.

Jasmine came in late from her shift, hair flattened with humidity, polo collar wrinkled. When she saw the cake, she squinted.

“My birthday’s Thursday,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “We ain’t doing nothing Thursday because I gotta finish a job and you’re working, so I brought Thursday here.”

She giggled and covered her mouth like she shouldn’t. “You’re ridiculous.”

“Yeah.”

“You get Topo Chico? Who are you, Hollywood?”

“I’m a man trying to be fancy with my water is all.”

They ate cake with forks in the pan, red letters on their lips, and she took a selfie of them and sent it to someone who sent back a string of hearts. Then she sent a GIF of a little girl breaking a birthday cake and began laughing. He waited until she finished to say, “I got you something.”

“You didn’t have to —”

“I know.”

He pulled the ring from his pocket and opened his hand.

She didn’t move at first. Then she did, fast, fingers over her lips, eyes misting.

“Dad.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s —how did you —”

“I made some trades.”

“This is for me?”

She asked the question, knowing it was a useless one.

“For when you want it,” he said. “Not for any dumb thing. For when you want to remember you come from strong stock. For when you think you ain’t enough.”

She slid it on her finger. It was a little big but looked right anyway. They were quiet for a minute, and then she said so soft he almost didn’t hear.

“I might be pregnant.”

Spyder felt something move through him, not a train but its noise and speed of disorientation.

“How long you think?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Couple weeks late. I took a test, but it was one of those cheap ones and I didn’t do it right and then I did another one, but I drank a bunch of water and —”

“Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

She looked tiny in the kitchen light, the ring catching the cheap bulb. He wanted to be the man who stood up and told her exactly what would happen next and made her trust it. He wanted to be the man who scared away the hard part just by covering her in his arms. He wanted to be the man he hadn’t been. He reached across the table and put his hand over hers.

“You scared?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“You love him?”

She shrugged.

“I love who I am when I think about getting away.”

He nodded.

“That’s a kind of love.”

“What do I do?”

“We go to the clinic Monday. A place with nurses with good hands. We find out what’s what.”

“What if —” she started.

“If it’s a what, we go from there.”

She wiped her nose with the back of her hand.

“You mad?”

“Little bit at the world,” he said. “Not at you.”

“You disappointed?”

“I been disappointed at so many dumb things I ain’t got room left for you.”

She laughed a childlike laugh.

He stood and she came around the table, and he put his arms around his girl and felt for a hug.

Th next night he didn’t think about rye at nine. He thought about a crib. He thought about diapers and math and the smell of a baby’s head and the way a baby changes a man into something he’s not ready to be. He thought about being a grandfather at forty-seven and how the word sounded silly. What was a grand father anyway? He’d never known one.

*

On Monday, Gordon let him off the job. Spyder and Jasmine drove to the clinic in a downpour. The waiting room had flyers about things nobody wanted and a man on a TV talking about new tires. They sat with their knees not touching and looked at a potted plant in the window.

A nurse called Jasmine’s name and Spyder stood before the nurse said, “Just you, sweetheart,” and he sat like a man who’d been mistaken for somebody else. He watched the door shut. He thought about calling Teresa and didn’t. He thought about how much life and death is waiting in rooms.

When Jasmine came out, she looked at her shoes and up at him, and he saw it in her face.

“Okay,” he said.

“Okay,” she said.

They walked to the car. The day had that bright post-storm glare that made everything specific. He opened the passenger door for her.

“Hungry?” he asked.

“Always,” she said.

They ate burgers in the parking lot of a bank where a man in a skinny tie argued into his phone. Jasmine took small bites and then big ones. She wiped ketchup from her lip with the heel of her hand and then with a napkin because she was trying to be adult. He looked down at her hand and saw the ring, a tiny moon.

“What are you going to do about Orlando?” he asked, gentler than the words.

“Not go,” she said.

“You sure?”

“No,” she said. “But yeah.”

“What about Collard?”

“He says he’ll stay if I stay. He might mean it.”

Her voice didn’t say he did.

“You ain’t gotta decide everything this afternoon,” he said.

She nodded, leaned her head back against the seat, and closed her eyes.

*

The weeks after had the quality of days being arranged carefully. Spyder got the ring resized at a jeweler. Jasmine kept her shifts at Lenny’s. She didn’t tell Collard right away. When she did, the boy did the thing boys do.  He promised everything, offered less, convinced himself he could do more.

“I ain’t mad at him,” Jasmine said one night. “He’s scared.”

“Everyone deals,” Spyder said.

Teresa called and he told her, and she cried.  He listened to her inhale between words. “We’ll manage,” he said in a voice he hoped offered solutions. Dan sent an email saying he had a friend in insurance who knew about responsible choices, which was the kind of thing Dan did. Spyder did not answer the email. He went outside and replaced the rotten step on the porch with a fresh plank. He put a second coat of paint on the porch rail. He mowed the little square of grass until it was a buzz cut.

At night, when the itch came, he went to the shed and sanded the edges of a shelf he’d made back when Jasmine was a child and wanted a place for plastic ponies. He sanded until the wood lost its texture. He drank Topo Chico too fast and burped. He slept a little. He dreamed he was carrying a baby through a storm.

When the baby came, it was spring. The hospital room was all hard light and cautious voices. Spyder stood where the nurse told him, hands clasped. He watched his daughter become a mother and observed a new face take its place in the world, slimy and magnificent and outraged at being asked to wake up. They named the baby Alma after Jasmine’s granmother. Collard held her and cried in a way that made Spyder feel tender toward him. Teresa brought a basket of things the internet said you need. Dan stood in the hallway, and Spyder shook his hand because he was worn out.

When they took Alma home, Jasmine fell asleep in the chair with Alma on her chest, both mouths open, both hands curled, the ring shining.

When the rain eased, he went inside and kissed his granddaughter on the smoothest part of her head, that aroma of powdery sunshine. He pulled a blanket up over Jasmine. He strolled back to the porch and sat in the almost quiet and watched the last of the drops walk themselves off the edge of the roof. He waited for the next thing, which he knew by now would come whether he wanted it or not, and he felt sturdy. In a place some people called godless, Spyder let himself believe for once in how the ordinary way a life can be saved. By staying, by holding, by trying to keep the ground from swallowing what you love.