You know you've hit rock-bottom when you get kicked out of the trailer park.

That's what Curtis Ray thinks as he shoves his belongings into plastic garbage bags. There's not much to pack... or maybe there is, but he can't find it in the clutter of beer cans, dirty clothes, empty fast food containers, and all the things in the singlewide he broke when he got steamed at Deenie a few days ago.

"Just look at this place. Omigod, what have you done..."

Murlene Gillam, the owner of the E-Z Breeze Mobile Home Park, mutters that as she surveys the damage. Planting dimpled hands on expansive pink-polyestered hips, she glowers at Curtis Ray.

"I get back from my trip and my answering machine's full of messages from everyone in the park, complainin' 'bout you and the goin's-on here Saturday night." Broken glass from the ceiling fixture crunches under her shoe. "Listen, I run a nice park. I ain't gonna have my rentals tore up by -... "

Though she bites off the rest of the sentence, Curtis Ray knows what she was going to say: "... by trash like you."

"Deenie keeps up the place real good, Ma'am," Curtis Ray reminds her. "She's... been away... umm, visitin' her mama up in Charlotte. Why, I was just talkin' on the phone to her before you stopped by. Said to tell you 'hey' and she'll be back any day now."

Pretty convincin', he thinks, and it ain't a lie if you really wish what you're sayin' was true.

The woman starts to speak, but makes an ugly face instead, like she's bitten into a piece of fruit gone past its prime.

Curtis Ray knows he'd better talk fast if he doesn't want to be homeless tonight. "Listen, I'll get this place fixed up good as new. Can't have my Deenie comin' home to a sight like this."

He flashes the woman his "Puppy Eyes," as Deenie calls it... head tilted and bowed just enough so that he's peering through a soft fringe of unruly, boyish hair. Puppy Eyes had always worked on his mama and his teachers when they got mad, and it's never failed since to get cute girls in the sack and pissed-off bosses off his back and his own damn way all the time.

It isn't working on Miz Gillam, though, who's scowling so fiercely that all her features pinch together, as if tightened by a drawstring. "You're lucky I'm just th'owin' you out, Mr. Haskill, 'stead of callin' the police." She shakes her head in disgust and picks her way through the debris toward the door.

"Ma'am! Stop!" Curtis Ray reaches out and grabs her thick, wattly arm. "You can't throw me out. If you do, Deenie ain't got no home to come back to. She won't know where to find me... " His voice cracks, and he's afraid he's going to start bawling.

"Take your hands off me!" Miz Gillam jerks away from him. "You ain't gonna treat me the way you do that poor wife of yours. And I sure can th'ow you out. You ain't paid this month's rent and you're nothin' but bad news anyway." She walks out the door and down the steps. "And don't you know that girl ain't comin' back to you, fool? Least not if she got any sense in her head at all."

"That ain't true!" Curtis Ray yells. "Deenie always comes back!"

The woman makes a dismissive gesture in his direction like she's shooing away a troublesome mongrel as she waddles down the dirt road lined with old trailers, her lumpy buttocks squirming in the tight pants like wild things trying to escape from a sack.

"She's damn lucky she's a woman, otherwise I'd have belted her for the way she was talkin' to me."

That's what Curtis Ray says about the morning's episode to the guys at Tiny Tina's Tavern that night.

"Since when did someone being a woman stop you?" Tiny Tina remarks loudly as she uncaps another round of beer for them. At six-foot-two and two hundred fifty pounds, she has a well-earned reputation as a bouncer of disruptive drunks and a breaker-upper of fistfights and a female who won't take guff from any man.

Tina tosses off a shot of vodka and glowers at Curtis Ray. "Only thing that stops a guy like you is someone bigger an' meaner than you."

Curtis Ray takes a swig from his sweating bottle of Bud and cuts quick sideways glances at his companions. They're busy ignoring her comment-... as well they should, he thinks. Recently, Jimmie's girlfriend went through a spell of wearing big dark glasses all the time, even at night. She said her eyes were sensitive to the light, but everyone knew better. And Ron's wife never makes any effort to conceal the bruises that regularly ring her arms like ugly bracelets. In a strange way, Curtis Ray thinks, Cheryl displays them with a certain pride, like they're badges for service above and beyond the call of duty.

"Ain't gonna let no woman pussy-whip us, are we now," Jimmie says, nudging Curtis Ray.

An old man with a face as gnarly as a peach pit, who's been sitting at the end of the bar listening to their conversation, suddenly booms out, "Gotta put 'em in their place from time to time, les' they get all biggity like them blacks done."

Curtis Ray and the boys laugh. Guys understand these things, he thinks, as they take long pulls on their beers and knock more Marlboros out of their packs and share knowing looks.

"Bar sprouts" was what Deenie had christened his drinking buddies. "Women who hang around bars are called barflies," she said. "Well, you good ole boys spend so much time on those bar stools, you look like you're growing out of them."

Tonight, as usual, the bar sprouts are running their mouths. They're going to move somewhere else and make it big. Punch some son-of-a-bitch's lights out. Find themselves women who know how to keep a man satisfied. The conversation is always the same, Curtis Ray suddenly realizes. He's griped a thousand times about Deenie and bragged how he's going to quit working for Buster's Auto Repair, open his own garage and rip off the yuppie tourists when their BMWs break down.

But tonight, Curtis Ray just sits there silently, wondering if he sounds as stupid as the other bar sprouts do after a bad day and too many beers.

"Bullshit," he blurts out.

The men at the bar turn and stare at him.

"Y'all are full of it. You know damn well we ain't gonna do none of them things we talk about. We're gonna go to our crappy jobs and come here to piss and moan about how life sucks 'til we're as old and dried up as that turd down there," he says, jerking his head in the direction of the wizened man at the end of the bar.

"My, my, someone sure got a wild hair up his ass tonight, don't he," Tiny Tina remarks to nobody in particular. "Why, if he was a woman, everybody'd say he was on the rag. Wouldn't they now." The men laugh and go back to their griping.

Curtis Ray ignores them and orders a shot of Jack Daniel's. He can't shake his last memory of Deenie as she walked out-... her eyes all red and round as grapes from crying and the beginnings of a nasty bruise tattooing her cheek. She was clutching her side as if it pained her, and she wasn't taking anything with her-... not even her purse. "You know this is the end. I'm not coming back. I can't tolerate it any more. I mean it, Curtis Ray."

"Tomorrow you'll be beggin' me to forgive you," he'd hooted. "Only I ain't gonna. I'm sick of you, woman."

"I'd rather be dead than be with you."

That was the last thing Deenie had said to him before she drove away, and it sticks in his mind now like tar, dark and gummy and dreadful.

Curtis Ray orders another Jack and eyes the blonde drinking margaritas at a table alone. He doesn't really want her, but he needs a place to stay for the night. He knows his buddies aren't going to invite him home. Their women wouldn't abide it, and no bar sprout, no matter how big he talks, really wants another set-to with a female, though that's all they seem to have.

It's just a way of life that's been handed down to some of us, Curtis Ray thinks as he oozes off the bar stool and heads for the blonde. Same as eatin' black-eyed peas on New Year's Day or bein' poor or havin' what the Yankees call prejudices.

"I dream of makin' a million dollars in farmin', just like my daddy." That's what Curtis Ray had told Deenie before they got married.

Deenie wasn't like other girls. Without being bitchy or bossy, she somehow made him want to stand up straighter, try harder, act nicer. She liked to listen to him talk, and she was so good at it, she made him want to turn himself inside out like a sock and share every feeling and thought he'd ever had. Even Curtis Ray's mama had said, "You got a good woman there. Better than you deserve, boy. You won't find another like her."

Curtis Ray remembers this as he sits on the deserted beach at dawn. He's hung over from a long night with Jack Daniel's and the blonde barfly. When he'd awakened in an unfamiliar bed next to a stranger with smeared makeup and dark roots, he'd high-tailed it out of there as fast as he could, while she was still sleeping.

"Did your daddy really make a million dollars in farming?" That's what Deenie had asked him on that day long ago, her eyes so wide he felt like he could fall into them and swim in their sweet blue depths forever. He knew he could tell her anything, and she'd believe him, no matter what he said.

Curtis Ray wonders where Deenie is now. When she didn't come home after a couple of days, he'd called her mama in Charlotte, who hadn't heard from her either. "I've told my daughter a thousand times that you're the biggest mistake she ever made!" she'd screamed. "If anything's happened to her, it's all your fault, you bastard... "

Curtis Ray shakes his head, trying to shed memories like a dog with a wet coat. It's time for work and he's a mess, but he knows that Buster's customers won't give a damn. He struggles to his feet and tucks in his shirt.

That's when he spots a redhead in a Confederate flag swimsuit, striding toward him across the dunes. Even at a distance, he can see that she's young, maybe sixteen, and very beautiful. She's staring right at him and walking with a purposefulness that can only mean one thing.

She wants me.

He smoothes his hair, hooks his thumbs in his belt loops, adjusts his head to do Puppy Eyes. Even when he looks like hell, he knows women can't help but feel his heat and catch his scent and be sparked. Deenie used to say, "Sweetie, you ooze sex out of every pore."

The girl's a few feet away now. Her skin is a shimmering white, like vanilla ice cream, and Curtis Ray can hardly wait to run his tongue over her cool paleness. Suddenly, though, he realizes she isn't really looking at him, but out to sea. She walks by him without a glance, like he's not even there.

"Hey... " Curtis Ray calls, as she wades into the ocean and strokes straight out toward the horizon. Within moments, he loses sight of her. He desperately scans the waves, waiting for her to swim back. When she does, he won't do Puppy Eyes at her, he decides... he'll give her a good talking to. He rehearses what he'll say: "Young lady, you shouldn't be out there swimmin' by yourself or hangin' around lonely places where scummy guys like me are waitin' to jump your bones. You want to go home where it's safe."

His eyes ache from the merciless morning light. He slumps down on the sand and covers his face with his hands. Time passes, and when he looks up again, there's still no sign of her. She came ashore while I was restin' my eyes. That's what happened. Of course.

He checks his watch but it's stopped running, frozen at 7:59. At the sight of the motionless hands of the fancy Bulova that Deenie had given him ("You're worth it, sweetie," she'd said), Curtis Ray begins to sob.

The after-breakfast beach crowd arrives, with their ill-mannered children and well-stocked coolers. Over the rims of their designer sunglasses, they cast disapproving glances at the disheveled man huddled on the sand, staring out to sea and weeping uncontrollably. When they realize the eyesore isn't going to take the hint and go away, they make a mental note to select a more upscale vacation spot next time... maybe Kiawah or Hilton Head... and set up their oversized umbrellas and big beach chairs at a safe distance from him.

"No, my daddy never made a million dollars in farmin'. But he dreamed of it."

That's what Curtis Ray had replied to Deenie's question years ago. He'd explained how the family farm had been lost parcel by parcel, over many years and successive generations, until it was just a little unproductive piece of land that his daddy sold for next to nothing when Curtis Ray was just a boy.

"What happened then?" Deenie had looked as down-in-the-mouth as if it were her own farm they were discussing.

"Well," Curtis Ray had said, with a shrug that he hoped conveyed indifference, "Daddy had so many debts that there was nothing left after he paid 'em off. We went on the dole and moved into an apartment in the black section. It was the only place we could afford. Every mornin', my daddy went lookin' for work. One day, he didn't come back home. I-... I think he may have gone up North. He was... well, you know... ashamed 'cause he'd lost something he couldn't ever replace."

Deenie's face had crumpled like a dented fender.

"Don't be upset," he'd said, "it wasn't much of a farm anyway." He'd thought that would cheer her up, but tears had streamed down her pretty face anyway, just like they were streaming down his stubbly one now.

A child's beach ball bounces across the sand and comes to rest beside Curtis Ray. "Stay away from him," the balding father in Bermuda shorts cautions his little daughter. "I'll get it for you." The man pads over, picks up the ball, and scurries away.

Curtis Ray doesn't notice. He stares straight ahead, but he's not really looking at anything. He's just waiting. He's sure that if he waits long enough and wants it badly enough, she'll come back. And somehow, she will know he is here and come to take him home.

She will.

She will.

Copyright © 2003 Pheobe Kate Foster
All rights reserved

About the Author

Phoebe Kate Foster lives on the North Carolina coast, and is an associate editor at PopMatters, an online magazine of global culture, and assistant editor at The Dead Mule, a literary ezine.
 
Her short fiction has appeared/is forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Paumanok Review, Eclectica, Slow Trains, Vestal Review, Flashquake, The Mid-South Review, Megaera, Electric Acorn (Ireland), Fiction Warehouse, Spillway Review, Tattoo Highway and The Distillery: Artistic Spirits of the South, among others.
 
This year, she was nominated for the Pushcart Prize and e2ink: Best-of-the-Web Anthology. She's also completed two short story collections, The River of Strange (in collaboration with fellow Southern writer Valerie MacEwan) and Waiting for News of the Rest of Your Life, which hopefully will be coming out in 2004.

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