American Polymath 1 - July 2009
Fiction
Fighting
Jon Sealy
I came from the cotton mills, Carolina textiles, Springs Industries. Two generations back, my people trudged up the hill of the Gayle at daybreak to the crumbled brick building, the clack and whirr of looms and shellac, shuttle fillers, the 6 a.m. whistle bell, lintheads and bobbindodgers in weave room #6. Chopped up fingers, bone fragments, blood, a great aunt’s hair caught in a machine, her scalp ripped off at one, back at work by four, an arc of stitches on the side of her head, a football seam. Chinaberry, cane patches, oak, a cotton lint cloud, prototype asbestos, and finally, finally: long evenings on the porch dead tired, getting drunk on bootleg and playing bluegrass, hacking up brown lung.
I’ve turned my back on that life, shunned my family, my roots. My father became an engineer and married well—a New England woman—and though I grew up in the Piedmont, mine was a different world. I used to visit my grandparents in York County, would spend a week or more with them during breaks from school. They were my window into the blue-collar mill world, but I’ve long since closed it. The last time I spent the night under their roof I was in the sixth grade. They lived in a nice residential bungalow in Rock Hill, not far from a golf course. At the time, my cousin Joyce was living with them because her parents had just gotten divorced. Her mother had landed in jail and my uncle Raymond wasn’t much of a father. I didn’t have any siblings, and my parents both worked, so I was looking forward to the company. I was a loner, caught in the threshold between redneck and white-collar prep—kids whose parents were doctors, professors, businessmen. I didn’t belong with either group, and still don’t. I’ve made a niche for myself in a small, Liberal Arts college, the history department, and like my father, have married well, but my sense of belonging ended when I was twelve.
That day, I was with my grandparents in Rock Hill, Joyce with her father down in York, set to return later that afternoon. My grandfather was in his bedroom, probably watching an old movie, and my grandmother and I were in the den watching a gardening special. The phone rang, and my grandmother went to the kitchen to answer it. After a short conversation, my grandfather called from his bedroom, Who was that?
What? My grandmother paused in the doorway between the kitchen and the den. She brought her hand up to her throat, rubbed at her neck, said, that was Joyce.
What’d she want? His voice was loud and irritated, as when he watched a football game and his team was losing. He liked the Redskins, and they’d just lost the Super Bowl to the Raiders. He would sit in his bedroom and yell, Ah, shit, or, Come on, now.
I’m going to ride down there in a little while to pick her up.
He mumbled something, and I could picture him leaning back in the Lazyboy, scowling and muttering about Raymond, never to be the Prodigal Son. My father was a successful engineer who never visited but who made money, but Ray was a drunk, not often employed, and after the last time he’d gotten a DUI and lost his job, any mention of him set my grandfather off.
My grandmother yelled toward the back of the house, What now?
Wasn’t he supposed to drop her off in time for church this morning?
She said his car’s in the shop, so I told her I’d go down and pick her up.
I’m sure it is. Betty, when are you going to stop putting up with that boy’s shit?
She came back to the living room, and sat down heavily on the armchair beside me. Her right eyelid had some kind of grit on the skin that hid her eye in shadow. Her jaw quivered, and when she took the last bite of her sandwich she chewed carefully, as though she were worried that her teeth were loose in their sockets. She cleared our plates from the coffeetable and returned to the kitchen. The house rattled as my grandfather hobbled down the hallway. His bad hips made him walk like a duck, with his feet angled out.
Where are you going? he asked. I was still in the den, but I figured she’d grabbed her purse and was washing dishes with it over her shoulder, trying to do everything at once.
I’m about to go get Joyce.
From Raymond’s?
Yes. Then, I just told you, she called and said she needed a ride.
Why can’t he bring her?
I already told you, his car’s in the shop.
Now, why’s his car in the shop on a Sunday?
I don’t know. She spoke these last three words with the thick country accent that came out when she was frustrated, the two long o’s pronounced with a short u between them: duh-on’t knu-oh.
Jesus, Betty, he said.
I can’t understand why he took out his issues with Ray on his wife, and I wanted to tell him to stop yelling, but I stayed where I was. He waddle-stomped into the den and looked at me. What do you want to do this afternoon, boy?
The den was dark. Clear mid-spring sunlight filtered through the dirty windows, but the coffee-colored wall paneling swallowed most of the light. I said, I wanted to play with Joyce when she gets here.
Well, she won’t be here until later. Your uncle’s off getting drunk with that woman he’s shacking up with, so your Granny’s got to go pick her up.
That’s what I hear.
He sucked his teeth. I might ride down to the hardware store later. You can give me a hand fixing the toilet in my bathroom. He looked back at the kitchen. Or you can go down to York with your Granny. It don’t matter.
Staying sounded like a bad idea. He’d get wrapped up with his plumbing project and would start cursing when whatever part he’d bought didn’t fit right. His hands would shake trying to force the part into place, and I could see myself in the bathroom with him, a burst pipe and water spraying everywhere and him yelling at me to stand in the flood and hold something.
I might go with Granny, I said.
We didn’t talk much in the car. My grandmother pulled into the bank parking lot on the way out of town, and I sat in the car with the windows down. She’d left the engine idling, and I scanned the radio. Mostly country and talk shows, but I found a pop station out of Charlotte playing Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean. I hummed along, believing I knew what the lyrics were about. I thought Billie Jean is not my lover was a sign of unrequited love, that he wanted her to be his lover, and I thought, Yeah, dig it Michael. I feel you, even though, at twelve, all I’d felt were crushes, and I was too shy to ever act on one. But I liked the song, and listened while my grandmother stood at the ATM, pulled a brown lunch bag out of her purse and put the money in it, then stuffed the bag back into her purse.
Ray was dating this woman who wasn’t good for him. My parents have since referred to his days with Fatal Attraction. Doreen had stringy blond hair and started fights when she got drunk, broke a beer bottle over his head once, and another time chased him down a hall with a steak knife. The one time I’d met her, we were at my grandparents’ house for Christmas. Ray’s girlfriends came and went in those years, from the mid-seventies until the late eighties, when his drinking took over until the end, so I hadn’t paid her much attention. Her kids—a son and a daughter—spent most of the day on the back deck. Doreen hardly spoke to anyone herself, and she kept stepping out back to smoke.
In a crowded neighborhood full of factory workers in downtown York, Ray’s house was small, two rooms and a kitchen. Dark wood floors, bare walls, furniture littered with old mail, an empty pizza box, beer cans. Dozens of Kools and Virginia Slims butts were stubbed out in a brass ashtray on the coffeetable. Ray and Doreen sat in the living room watching the race. She stood up to greet us, but he stayed on the couch and said, Hey, Momma.
Doreen offered us something to drink, said, The kids are hanging out down by the church. Her voice was dry, as though her vocal cords were rubbing against sandpaper.
My grandmother sat down and put her purse on the coffeetable, the lunch bag still in there, dry, tattered, old. She said, You can go on to play with Joyce, if you want.
I walked towards the church, leaving the adults to do whatever it was they did. The street was unlined, and crab grass, clover, and gravel-filled dirt covered the roadside. A tall, chain link fence emerged to my left as the woods cleared. Dogwoods ran along the edge of the baseball diamond, covered in white flowers and green buds. Fatal Attraction’s kids, Carla and Wes, and my cousin were lounging on the two brown dumpsters in the parking lot by the road. Joyce ran over and gave me a hug, and she was tiny. With her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, she looked like a mouse, and the bumps of her ribs and back pressed through her cotton shirt.
Wes nodded at me, and I jumped onto the dumpster beside him. I could tell he was bad. He wore baggy pants and a red do-rag over his shaved head. He was the guy you threw yogurt at in the fourth grade, then lightning quick fell to your knees and squeaked out, I’m sorry. Though he was only a year older than Joyce and I, he had the square jaw, stubble, and sinuous muscles of a boxer from the south side of town, whereas I was short and thin for my age, and perched on the dumpster beside him like a sparrow.
Joyce and Carla stood in the road, stared through the fence at a boy driving a mower across the ball field. Wes shook a Kool halfway out of the pack, brought it up to his face, and tugged the cigarette the rest of the way out with his lips. You smoke?
I was old enough to want to try one, but was afraid to smoke in front of Joyce because I figured she’d tell my parents. I tried to be cool, swiveled my head like I was a regular smoker who was trying to quit.
He shrugged and sparked his lighter. I swung my feet back and forth, and with each kick the metal of the dumpster thudded and echoed. I wore the new pair of black and white basketball shoes I’d gotten for Christmas, and they were big and clunky and awkward on my small frame. Wes’s smoke dried my throat, first a tickle and then a burn. I stifled a cough. Wind blew into our faces, smelled faintly of asphalt. I coughed in the dust, and Wes turned toward me, moved the cigarette to his other hand, and held it away from me. Allergies, I muttered, my face hot.
The boy on the mower was long gone, but Carla and Joyce were still by the fence, far enough where I couldn’t hear what they were saying. The wind picked up, shook the fence, and tossed around all our hair. Carla was heavy, but she looked especially large standing next to Joyce. The skin on her arms hung loose and seemed to jiggle in the wind. She was eleven, hadn’t developed curves that made older women, even women with meat on their bones, attractive. She was stumpy, like a potato.
She glanced away from the park and up the street toward Ray’s house. She frowned, elbowed Joyce, and pointed. Another boy walked up, tall and thin and clad in baggy pants and a blue baseball cap on backwards. I kicked my big ugly shoes against the dumpster again and wished I had a hat that I could turn around.
Carla stomped into the middle of the street. Ricky! What are you doing here?
Ricky raised his hands to his sides, palms up. They said some things I couldn’t hear, and Wes jumped off the dumpster and stormed over to Ricky and the three of them argued some more. I tensed, ready to run over and do something. I’d never been in a fight before, but I thought I could handle it. I watched Bruce Lee movies, I took Tae Kwon Do. Ricky was nothing—skeletal-thin, a fishhook on his ball cap.
Wes flicked his cigarette at his sister, and then he and Ricky traipsed off.
Carla said, Yeah, you best get out of here.
Without turning his head around or slowing his pace, Wes raised his left hand and flipped us all off.
God, she said.
I slid off the dumpster and walked over to them. Her eyes were watery, but her face was tough, her jaw clenched. What was that about? I asked.
Nothing. Let’s get out of here. She started toward the fence.
I looked to Joyce. They fight sometimes, she said.
Why?
He’s mean.
I followed them to the fence, and they both jumped up and grabbed the bar at the top of the chain links. I’d never hopped a fence before. I grew up in a small town, and other than a few strings of barbwire, there weren’t many fences to hop. It was easy enough to jump and grab the top of the fence and slide over, but the jagged links snagged the crotch of my jeans and sent me tumbling into the park.
We sat on a set of bleachers until dusk, Joyce, Carla, and I. We didn’t do anything, just sat. Joyce and Carla had things to say because they’d known each other for a while, but I didn’t have anything to say. I didn’t know Carla that well, and I didn’t talk much around girls, even if I didn’t have a crush on them. Carla was glad to do most of the talking, which surprised me because she hadn’t said a word at Christmas. Here, she was loud and forceful, though I didn’t take anything she said seriously because she was a fifth grader. Just a kid.
At dusk, she at up fast and said, Get down! We got to hide!
I looked around but didn’t see anything. The park was deserted save for an elderly couple walking on the track around the ballpark. The sun hung low in the sky and shone that carrot-colored evening light that hurts your eyes no matter which way you look. The wind slowed to a breeze, and the limbs of the dogwoods clicked gently against each other.
Get down, Carla said again, hissing this time. She and Joyce hunkered down in the bleachers, awkward and not really hidden from anything because the bleachers were just steps. Plus Carla was so big that she could have tried to hide behind a Volkswagen and still wouldn’t have been out of sight.
Why? I asked. It’s just old people.
Look, this is York. Not whatever hick town you’re from. You got to be smart.
I rolled my eyes. Nobody could hurt me, even I was from a town that wasn’t more than a set of railroad tracks and a row of shops on Main Street. Shit, I’d deliver a roundhouse kick to the side of the head, anyone tried to come up in my face. This town could kiss it.
The couple hurried by us, and I raised my eyebrows to Carla. She shrugged and said, You never know.
I thought I was a tough kid, but looking back at it, I wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. My family was comfortable—my father was an engineer, my mother a social worker—and I grew up in a one-story house in a two-story subdivision, not far from Lake Hartwell and the Blue Ridge. I’ve got a temper these days, especially with traffic, though I don’t know if it has anything to do with my childhood. The other day I was in a parking garage, and a car almost backed out into me. It was an honest mistake, hard to see, maybe they weren’t paying close attention. I yelled, ran to the side, and stomped my foot into the passenger door. They got out and yelled after me as I jogged on, but I didn’t stop. I even went up an extra flight of stairs, then down on the other side of the lot so they wouldn’t see me get into my car and try to start something. A few years ago, I was driving home after one too many beers at a party with graduate students, and I almost hit a couple of jaywalkers. They were the drunken freshman type: popped collars, gelled hair, the cocksure strut of the innocent. I pulled over and threw a road cone at them. It skidded at their feet, but the leader of the three ran over and slammed me—a middle-aged college professor—against a light pole a couple of times.
Across the park, the sun had almost set over the pine woods, the last smear of daylight. Mosquitoes gnawed at my flesh. The walkers had long gone, and I was hungry. My parents ate at six on the dot, and it was seven or eight now.
When are we eating?
You know how Daddy is, Joyce said. He don’t like to eat until eight or nine.
I know it.
Where are you from again? Carla asked.
Issaqueena, I told her. Two sharp, staccato beats, then I looked down at my feet.
Right.
I glanced back up, and she smirked, eyebrows raised. A line of cars hummed by on the highway across the park. Their headlights streaked across the faraway woods.
Joyce stood up to go and said, I guess we could go see if dinner’s ready.
We got up off the bleachers and headed toward the fence. When we reached the trees, Joyce leaned in and whispered, I think Carla likes you.
I blinked a few times and slowed down to let the girls get a few paces ahead. Brambles snagged on my pants, and limbs that Joyce had pushed away swung back and caught me in the face, scratched my skin. The leaves underfoot crunched and rustled. The trees blocked out the remaining rays of sunlight and the glimmer from the streetlamps in the park. At the fence, vines and limbs snaked around the shadowy Xs in front of me. The woods rattled and shook with the sounds of the oncoming night. As the wire-thin metal dug into my hands, and as my thick shoes scraped at the links, slick and sliding as they sought a toehold, I managed to flop over the fence once again and landed in soft earth.
The house was an old one-story with wood floors and wood siding. The white paint on the siding was chipped, but the inside was cozy. A big television sat on the floor in the corner of the living room, tuned to a car race, and warm yellow light fell in from the kitchen at the back of the house. The couch, chair, and coffeetable were in shadows, the silhouette of cigarette butts and fresh cans of beer on the table. My grandmother sat on the chair, Doreen on the couch, right where I’d left them. Ray’d cooked burgers, and he came from the backyard into the kitchen with a plate of them, half of them covered in cheese.
Everyone except Doreen fixed a helping of food, and the six of us crammed into the living room. I sat on the floor, my plate in my lap. Carla and Joyce each sat in a chair that they’d brought in from the kitchen and whispered between themselves. The race was still on the television, but I couldn’t tell what was happening because it was always the same shot, cars going round and round. Ray and Doreen each had a fresh can of beer, and she sat on the edge of the couch and stared blankly at the screen, the kind of woman you’d expect to be a welfare mother—thin and mousey, with stringy blond hair and crusty tan skin with dark spots and dents.
Back then my grandfather spoke all sorts of trash about Ray’s girlfriends to anyone who would listen who was not Ray, how my uncle had enough trouble without having to support trailer trash as well. Christmas dinner ended in a near blow-up between the two. Doreen had stepped out to smoke, and my grandfather muttered about paying for her and Ray to get drunk, and Ray stood up like he was about to defend their honor, but instead he’d stormed out to the porch. My grandmother came out of the kitchen and followed him, and my grandfather huffed back to his bedroom. My parents and I sat primly in the living room, ignoring the scene, and I didn’t see either man for the rest of the day.
Now, Ray sat beside Fatal Attraction, watching the race and hunched over his burger. Deep lines ran across his red face, and hair stuck out in all angles from under his Navy SEALS ballcap. My grandmother sat in the chair beside him, and she nibbled at her food and looked at the television, but she didn’t watch the race. Her eyelids drooped and, as before lunch, her jaw quivered when she chewed. Her purse lay in the shadows beside the chair, and I couldn’t see whether it was open or zipped up, or whether the brown sack was still there. I wondered what she was thinking, how she felt about her son drinking beer in front of her, how she felt about trembling when she ate, how it felt to be forced to choose between her husband and her son. And where was my grandfather now? Was he still watching old movies? Had he made it to the hardware store? He was pissed off at Ray and my grandmother, I knew that, but was he pissed off at me for choosing to come to York rather than side with him and spend the day doing manual labor?
I’d spent weeks of my life visiting them. I knew the basic story of their lives, how they married young, had two children, moved around a lot and finally settled in Rock Hill, but that didn’t tell me who this woman was. I didn’t know how she felt about having one son, my father, whom she hardly saw because he worked long hours and traveled often. My mother and I visited occasionally, but my grandparents didn’t have much involvement with our lives. And what did she think of her other son, here in the living room, drinking cheap beer and shacking up with what my parents and grandfather would call white trash?
Carla and Joyce finished first and went back outside. Ray took the rest of our plates to the kitchen and came back with two cans of beer. When he popped the tabs, they hissed, and still no one spoke. With the three adults stared at the screen. A few minutes later, Joyce came back in and leaned over to me, her eyes bulging, said, Come out here. She tugged on my sleeve, so I stood up and followed her out.
It was full dark now, a cloudless night with a chill in the air. Joyce led me half a block toward the church, where a gang of kids stood in a ring. My feet thunked against the hard blacktop. Carla and Ricky stood in the middle, squared off and ready to fight.
Wes guarded the sidelines with two other boys, bouncing up and down, yelling, Come on, Ricky, you fucking pussy! Do it man, kill her.
The sleeves of his Starter jacket sloshed as he pumped of his fists. He was drunk. The rank sweet smell of cheap beer, the same smell from inside the house, hung in the air.
Ricky bounced on his toes and kicked into the air, shadowboxing. His limbs dangled from his lank body. Carla stood planted, five feet from him, her hands in fists and resting at her side. Her nostrils flared, her face red. Ricky bounced some more, then jump-kicked into the air between them. Carla lunged forward and shoved him back a few steps. He recovered and started toward her, and she shoved him again.
Goddammit, Ricky! Wes yelled.
I clenched and unclenched my hands. Wes’s baritone voice grew louder and higher pitched. He squeaked, Do it man, fucking kill her already.
The air was dry and cool, and wind blew from the park and up the sleeves of my t-shirt. Goose bumps rose on my bone-thin arms. Wes’s nylon jacket snapped back and forth. He curled his shoulders, and, like a defensive lineman, inched into the ring.
Carla and Ricky shoved at each other, and I stood to the side, ready, I thought, to step in and do something, break up the fight. A lone streetlamp fifty feet away splayed amber light on the scene. I looked to Joyce to see what we should do, but her face was hidden in shadows. Dust from the bitter asphalt blended with the sour smell of the papermill across town. Cars whipped down the nearby highway, their engines pulsing. Wes’s raspy voice cracked—Come on! Do it!—and my heart drummed in my chest, my palms clammy with sweat. Then, Fuck you, Ricky, I’ll do it myself.
Ricky was no longer in front of Carla. Wes was. He was on top of her, she was on the ground, a bulge beneath a faded Starter jacket. Over and over, he pounded his sister and screamed and swung his arms. I knew I needed to run over and do something, kick him in the nose, let the weight of my shoe pop his head back and knock him unconscious at my feet. I would be the man, like Rocky or Clint Eastwood.
But I couldn’t move. Wes’s arms swung, Carla beneath him, and then it was over. Wes stood up, kicked the lump on the ground, shoved Ricky and stomped off, his boys trailing after him. Carla lay in a heap in the road. As Joyce and I eased over to her, I could tell she wasn’t dead, but I didn’t know what to do. She sat up, drew her knees to her chest, and stared down at the pavement. Red-faced and sniffling, she rocked slowly, and Joyce leaned down to help her up. Carla sniffed, then cried in short, rhythmic sobs, like shaking a box of gravel. After she’d calmed, she looked up at me, her eyes bloodshot, and said hoarsely, Why didn’t y’all do something?
She may have said y’all, but she meant me. Wet streaks of dirt lined her red cheeks, her blond hair soiled and knotted. Joyce and I walked her to the house, and they went inside. I hung back a moment, examined the grains of wood and the flecks of paint on the porch. Then I stepped into the living room, where Ray and Fatal Attraction were still on the couch.
Is she okay?
Yeah, she’s okay, Fatal Attraction said without looking up from the race.
Nearly a dozen beer cans smothered the coffeetable. Ray sat beside her, and he did look up at me. He squinted one eye and gave a half-grin. I didn’t know what to make of his look, whether it was the goofiness of a man who’s had too many beers, or if he saw what a coward I was and was laughing at me. He was only in his mid-forties, but the lines on his face and his tough skin made him look sixty. He had small, crooked teeth, and when he grinned his cheeks seemed to have traces of babyfat that could have made him look much younger if he took care of himself. But he didn’t. My grandmother’s purse had disappeared, and I didn’t know if she’d given him the money, and if he’d use that money to continue sitting there, drinking Bud Light and watching the race with this woman and her violent family. We stared at each other for several moments. The announcer on TV laughed at one of his own jokes. Fatal Attraction squeezed her can of beer and the can crinkled as the sides gave. Ray took a swig of beer and turned back to the race.
I stepped back outside and leaned against the rail and stared at the woods and wondered where Wes was, if he was still in the neighborhood or off at someone’s house. I hoped he’d emerge from the shadows. I wouldn’t be a coward again. I saw myself stepping off the porch, raising my arms, palms up, and marching straight up and punching him, a right hook to the temple, knocking him to the ground. Or maybe I’d kick him in the groin, double him over, and follow up with an uppercut to the chin or nose.
The clouds parted, revealed a three-quarter moon and faint gray whispers. The trees around the fence rose black and jagged into the slate-colored sky. A streetlight glowed faintly, and I started towards it. Dew had begun to settle on the grass, and the cold air choked the faint smell of the papermill and the asphalt. My nose was numb. I snapped my fingers quickly—alternating hands—left right left right left right—and the further away from the house I got, the slower I walked. I was back to the spot where the fight had taken place not thirty minutes ago, and the church and the dumpster loomed ahead, under the cone of light from the streetlamp.
And that’s how it ends, not with me finding Wes, exacting some kind of revenge—Wes would have stomped me into the ground anyway. Still, I can still see Wes pounding the lump on the ground, his friends standing by and laughing. And I can see myself in the spot later, clenching my fists and feeling the scorch of shame. Later that night, we got back to my grandparents’ house and found that my grandfather had indeed tried to fix the toilet himself, and that his hand had slipped when he tried to force something. He’d cut his thumb badly, ripped a tendon, and now his arm was in a salmon-colored cast. He stayed in his bedroom for the rest of the week, hardly speaking. He had a heart attack later that year, and my grandmother worked hard to take care of him, wore herself out, grew weary, and died. He lived another ten years before he died as well. Ray and Doreen split up soon, and Ray died from cancer a few years ago. Joyce married and divorced twice before I lost touch with her. I don’t know where she is now. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her, a long time since I’ve seen any of them. My parents are getting old now, and my wife and I send our two daughters to visit them for a week here or there, and I sometimes think about that day at Ray’s house, how I walked back out after the fight was over. Out of all the decisions I’ve made, impulses I’ve followed, that moment somehow seems to matter still, though I could be mistaken. All that time boils down to is a string of memories, cold air, dust.
Jon Sealy grew up in upstate South Carolina and holds an MFA from Purdue. His fiction has appeared in Freight Stories and is forthcoming in the South Carolina Review.
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