The Rotting Tree by Mark Sumioka

The Rotting Tree by Mark Sumioka

The town of Jollyville named me “Superstar” Toby Kenmore as an act of mockery. I was the promising catcher who blew a full scholarship to the University of Texas at Austin, who was drafted late in the second round out of high school by the Chicago White Sox yet (to this day) remained unsigned. They also knew me as the guy who’d gone to Hollywood to audition for American Idol, where I made a laughingstock of myself on national television.

After getting back to Texas I made a beeline to see my parents at the family owned diner in Jollyville. My big sister Edie was the first to console me. She gave me a hug and whispered it’d be best to crash at her place. Meanwhile the rest of my family acted like the incident had never happened. Ma put me right to work. She kept me in the back washing dishes and told me not to show my face to the customers. The gossip had swirled about town; word was out I’d returned to Jollyville with my tail between my legs. They’d all seen the television show.

Coach Atlas came in to see me. He took me out back by the dumpster and gave me an earful.

“But I didn’t quit the team,” I reasoned.

“You missed two games and a week’s practice!”

“Yessir, but I never quit.”

“While you was off in Hollywood trying to be a superstar we was losing two games and I had to have Thompson catch!” Coach Atlas held up three fingers like twigs. “He coughed up three passed balls.” He spat. “You let the team down, son.”

I stood quiet. Coach Atlas paced in a long circle kicking at the ground every now and again. I could tell he was steamed. He walked over to me.

“Finish up your shift, get some rest, then get on back to practice tomorrow,” he said.

By and by one week turned to three, and it became easy enough to get back into the swing of things. I went to school classes again and didn’t miss a practice or game. At night I kept to myself, lying around and drinking beer in Edie’s cottage behind my parents’ house.

The townspeople were cruel. They stared and whispered to one another. They were always laughing. At school I kept my head low and went straight to class. But they were lurking about, ready to jump in front of me and call me “shit for pants” at any given moment.

And then one night after a long night of drinking I got to Edie’s wasted drunk. My team had won an eleven-inning game where Billy doubled to right center and I’d bowled over their catcher at home plate for the win. We were twelve games into the season and I’d already hit five homers for eleven RBIs. I was woozy and could barely get in the cottage door. Inside, Edie was fast asleep on the couch. I saw the empty bottle of wine, and the prescription bottle of Mom’s pills. It was those sleeping pills that set me off. We didn’t need two pill poppers in the family. We didn’t need another pumped stomach and near death overdose.

I got her in a seated position and slapped her face to wake her, but she was groggy so I got panicked and shook her like a rag doll. Her eyes were languid and then like a switch they were wide and alert.

“Get yer hands off’a me!” Edie said and struck me in the throat like I’d taught her when we were kids. I fell back gasping. She hadn’t realized it was me. Once she came to we argued over the pills and about Ma and we both took hold of the prescription bottle and when she wouldn’t let go they spilled everywhere. That was when matters got out of hand and the arms started flailing.

Most everyone in my family shut me out after that. I was seen as a criminal. Unlike the rest of the family, Edie was forgiving and didn’t treat me like a villain. I’d become the only one in the family that Ma didn’t ask to help out at the diner no more. Edie practically ran the place herself. She waited tables, cleaned, crunched the numbers for Ma, and did all the ordering with distributors. My younger brother Kelvin cooked and complained like he always did. And my other brother Lester was off somewhere living (what my folks called) a model life.

Over time Edie and I managed to bury the incident. I was still staying with her. We’d sworn the secret wouldn’t go beyond our family. There was the family business to keep untarnished; it kept a squeaky clean reputation around town. Jollyville loved a good scandal. Add to that the town’s somewhat intense Christian values and there was plenty of reason to keep our spat a secret.

It was about a week later when I got pulled over by a cop. I was driving Edie’s car to pick up Chinese takeout. Son of a bitch if the cop wasn’t Lester’s fiancée’s brother, Harold, a real jerk. He cuffed me with my face eating the hood just so he could humiliate me.

“Heard about you and yer sister,” Harold said. “Beatin’ on yer sis, now that’s a shame. Act of a coward, ya ask me.”

I tried to get off the hood to a stance and he pushed his weight against my back.

“Am I under arrest?” I grunted.

Harold chuckled.

“Nah, just wanted to be sure ya wasn’t fixin’ tuh get all crazy on me like ya did her,” he said. “Ya come at me and yer gonna have a real go.”

“Who you been talking to?”

“No one special,” he said sucking the moisture from the back of his upper teeth.

“It was a misunderstanding.”

“Is that a fact now?”

“Can you take the cuffs off now?” I was still on the hood. “Harold?”

He stood me up and unlocked the cuffs, whistling a tune like we were having the nicest time.

“This not being yer car’n all, I’ll have to impound it unless ya wanna get on the horn and get yer sister up here to fetch it.”

“You’re not writing me a ticket but you’re going to impound Edie’s car?”

“I’m just jerkin’ yer chain. Get a sensa humor,” he said then opened the driver side door for me.

After I got in the car, he turned to go, but then came back.

“What is it?” I said.

“Y’all stay outta trouble, ya hear?” Harold rapped the car door. “Oh, and keep them britches clean.” He cackled all the way to his patrol car.

Harold was soon to be my brother-in-law. He loved pushing my buttons. And that gun and badge scared me to wits. I could feel his presence even after he drove off in his patrol car.

Now I was on edge. Jollyville wasn’t a big town. If Harold knew about my mishap with Edie, news was bound to get around and cause uproar. Edie was a saint in this town. I’d be a laughingstock – again – and the women in town would fear me.

I became impulsive, and just like that, prepared to leave Jollyville for a spell. I went back to Edie’s and got a backpack from her closet. I stuffed my clothes into it.

On the way to the bus stop, something made me pass by and proceed another quarter mile to my parents’ diner. I stood outside watching Edie buzz around the place waiting on tables. No slack in her rope. And through the little window of the kitchen I saw Kelvin’s face two or three times when he rang the little bell and hollered. Pa was in the corner booth, as usual, doing the crossword. Ma was nowhere in sight.

A car pulled into the parking lot. Pastor Craig got out of the car. A grip of fright whipped through me. In that instant it was as though an entire congregation were standing before me. Pastor Craig turned and gave me a long look. He was deep in thought. Suddenly he smiled and waved then went into the diner.

I’d had my fill of the place and walked up the street to the bus stop. When I got there, a man I’d met standing in line at the bank came running up to me. From the looks of it he had an agenda. Funniest thing was that the fella still had a napkin tucked into the collar of his shirt. At the time it hadn’t occurred to me where he’d come from. He stood staring at me with a strange look on his face while picking his teeth with the nail of his pinky. His name was Easley. I only knew him by his last name and never thought to ask his first.

“Well if it ain’t superstar Toby Kenmore!” he said grinning.

I glared at him and he shrank a little.

“I guess you’re still sour about the American Idol show. Personally, I say you was hilarious, something right up there with I Love Lucy. Too bad all folks don’t see it the way I do. Say, that was all an act, right, sorta like Jerry Lewis?” His fingers massaged his goatee. “But you are a real superstar ball player. Me, I ain’t got no time I ever could say I was super at nothing. You know I caught you back at that game against Oklahoma. My neighbors got me the extra ticket. You hit two homers and threw out three runners at second. You were a monster last season. Bigger than all hell! I heard all about it because my sister, who I don’t talk to much no more, she got a friend with a son about your age was playing for Oklahoma, well not really playing because he was riding the pine. Big game like Oklahoma, he didn’t get out the dugout. Say, how’s your team doing anyway?”

I got bullheaded quiet and cracked my neck to the sides to loosen up. Easley took a moment to light a cigarette and offered me one. I declined. He smoked and we stood there in silence. He kept tapping his foot against the dirt. Tiny puffs of dirt jumped each time he did. I kept looking up the road for the bus, hoping he wouldn’t talk about the baseball team.

“That’s a nice backpack you got there,” he said.

He dropped his cigarette on the ground and let it burn out on its own. Then he picked up where he left off asking me about the team again, but after I didn’t say anything he talked about the Dallas Cowboys, then guns, then steaks, then feeling on curvy women – everything he said that made men men in Texas. He said he had an icebox full of beer and invited me to his trailer. So I went.

He limped badly as we walked and it took us a long time to get to his trailer home. We drank lots of beers. Every time he got up and limped to the icebox he’d come back with two more beers, one stacked atop the other, while his long fingernail tapped the top of the can to cut down on foam. That beer was going right through him. He was going to the john about every fifteen minutes, coming back sniffing, and acting like a new man every time. Some times he choked on the spit at the back of his throat. A few times he got quiet suddenly and just sat there like he was in a trance.

All of a sudden he grabbed hold of my beer.

“Say, you ain’t got no game tomorrow, do ya?”

I shook my head. It was all I could do right then.

“Well okay then,” he said and let his hand off it.

I’d gone over it a thousand times, how maybe I shouldn’t have gotten so lippy with Coach Atlas. Then I thought about how I wouldn’t have been myself by holding my tongue. But Coach just wouldn’t let up. He kept riding me. There comes a point when a man has to act like a man and show some integrity when he’s being disrespected.

The Baylor rivalry was an intense game whenever we played. I was hopped up on Skoal and energy drinks. The game was close. The runner off first had a huge lead. My decision to throw to first to nail the runner would’ve been genius had I not overthrown Chad, thereby allowing the eventual winning run to score. In the locker room Coach Atlas had come at me.

“It’s you!” he’d said. “You allowed this to happen! Jennings was pitching a gem!”

Some of the time I think putting my hands on him was the only way to get through, but then the rest of me realized it was much bigger than I saw it at the time.

Eventually, Easley told me about a man who had crossed him and stolen ten thousand of his dollars. I asked why. He confessed it had been made through dealing meth.

“Just hear me out. The old man’s crooked as a dog’s hind leg.

“But how did he steal the money from you?” I asked.

“That’s how much I didn’t get from the last deal,” he said.

“So was he dealing too? You two are partners and he’s holding out on you?” I said trying to figure out the mess.

“Sorta,” he said crunching up his face like he’d just eaten something sour. Then he hawked spit and swallowed. “No, not like that. It’s confusing. Just forget it.”

“I’ll say it’s confusing,” I said, holding my breath a little so I could keep the foam from coming up my throat. A belch followed.

“What the hell you eat for supper, boy?” Easley said waving the air between us.

“That old man you mentioned,” I said, “he doesn’t seem real capable of doing such a thing. You mean to tell me that that old man deals meth?” My suspicion was growing. I gave the trailer a once over. There were all sorts of trinkets lining the shelves with clear plastic wrap around them. But they were dusty and the plastic wrap had become opaque.

“You don’t know him like I do!” he shouted. “He’s crooked as a barrel of fish hooks.”

I think Easley got the idea I wasn’t real comfortable at that point because he got quiet though his eyes were still wide. He said in earnest, “You got to believe me, boy.”

“That scrawny guy from the mini market?” The more I thought about it the more it didn’t make any sense. I somewhat doubted Easley had been in possession of ten thousand dollars his entire life. “I should probably get along,” I said and got up.

He jumped to his feet.

“Well let me take a leak first.” He was looking back at me as he made his way to the bathroom. “Sit down. I’ve got more beer, or Kessler, if you want.”

Once the bathroom door clicked shut, I turned and looked around the trailer again. I could hear him pissing this time. For some reason, I thought I caught a whiff of something that came in through the window with the breeze. But it hadn’t come from outside. The wind had come in and wafted the nasty smell from the crusted dirty plates in the itty-bitty kitchen sink. I spotted what looked like dried ketchup. On the floor below there were pieces of burnt toast eaten to the corners.

“Tell me,” I said loudly so he could hear me, “That old guy really into you for that much money?”

He burst out the bathroom like he’d been locked in there an hour, the door banging the wall.

“You can bet the farm on it!”

He staggered to the sink and ran the faucet, wetting the tips of his fingers and sticking them up his nostrils to sniff.

“Goddamn,” he said still sniffing and then went to the icebox and got two more cans. I was only a quarter down on my beer. Then Easley went to the far end of the trailer to his bed. He crawled over it to where the pillows were bunched up, a yellow-brown hue to them. He came back with a gold envelope, worn and soft.

I examined the tiny creases of the envelope, lines like spider webs. Then he started rubbing the envelope long ways as though he were freezing cold.

“It’s all I got,” he said opening it. Inside was a fairly neat stack of currency.

“How much?”

“Two grand,” he said. “There’s at least five times that in the old man’s closet.”

“How come you’re showing me this? You and me, we just got together a couple of hours ago. Why on God’s green earth would you be telling me?”

“Because you need the cash. Well don’tcha?” Easley lifted his eyebrows and made them stay up. “And you can get in there better than me,” he said and waited just a moment, long enough to bite down on his bottom lip, “And you got that matter with your sister goin’ round town like the plague.”

“What matter with my sister?” I sat back down.

“C’mon fella,” he said, mouth gaped, tilting his head and showing me those damn missing teeth on the bottom row again.

“What do you know?”

“Sister got a beatin’…” he said and started dancing, holding an invisible woman’s hands.

“Alright, enough. Sit down,” I said sternly.

And he sat, just like that.

“There’s lots of money in that closet. Two separate shoeboxes in the back left corner with FRYE on the box on the left and NIKE on the one on the right,” he said. He leaned over and patted my knee in a fatherly fashion. “They won’t lynch you obviously, but you sure don’t want no part of this town if word gets out about you beatin’ on that sister you got. The word of the Bible is strong round here. But I don’t need to tell you that.”

“It wasn’t no beatin’,” I said.

I was still thinking about the bus and what on earth I was doing in that trailer. Suddenly I realized there was the door and I was free to leave at any moment. But why didn’t I go? I stared at the tin can door that even Edie could kick in.

Easley got up. “You want some Kessler?”

“No, I’m alright,” I said. “Why don’t you sit down? Why are you so jumpy?”

“Who’s jumpy?” he said sitting. His shoes kept tapping. “Look, it’s one tiny job. You go in. I’ll get you the key.”

“From who?”

“A source.”

“What the hell is this? The CIA?”

“Trust me, I’ll have a key ready.”

“For crying out loud,” I said with a start. “How do you know all these details about this money and where he’s got it? How the hell do I know he’s got any money at all?” I’d had enough and stood again, “You’re trying to rope me.”

“I ain’t!”

“You’re roping me.”

“I tell you I ain’t.”

He put his hands on my forearm to sit me down. I lifted my arm with a burst and he backed away.

“You think I’m just some guy who’ll go and do whatever you say because you gave me a couple of beers. I’m not doing any of this. And how do I know you weren’t just looking for an excuse to get me into your trailer?”

He was perplexed. “Huh?”

I gave him a funny look.

“Hey,” Easley said, catching my drift. “I ain’t like that. I ain’t like that at all.” He took a deep breath and exhaled. “Now calm down, boy. This is legit. Look, you’re on your way outta town anyway, right? That’s why you were at the bus stop, right? That’s why you got your backpack full to the gills. You got clothes in there? It’s a damn good thing I caught you just as I was comin’ from supper. C’mon now, as I sit here in this here trailer, I say to you truthfully with the Lord as my witness, I’m promisin’ you that I ain’t no homo or gay person of any sort.”

His arms were out like he was showing me the length of a nice-size fish.

I thought about it and drank some more. I nearly downed a full beer and Easley ran over to the icebox and stacked the cans again, tapping the top one before opening it.

“You mean the old guy with the mini mart on Main Street, right? Short guy?”

“Not that short,” he said. “Look, I’ll get the key for you. You go in when he’s takin’ his nap. The guy is on all sorts of meds. Once he’s out, he’s out! You get into the shoeboxes. He don’t wake up. You come out in no time smellin’ like a rose.” He opened the gold envelope again. “And more of this.”

I gave it some thought. “What’s my take?”

“Forty percent.”

“Why forty?”

“I get forty too. The woman who took care of him when he was in bed rest gets twenty.”

“Who’s she?”

“My informant. Never mind, she’s nobody. Some home nurse. Don’t worry about her. She’s a Mexican. I know where she’s livin’.”

“And why can’t you just go in there, do it yourself and take eighty percent?”

“With this limp I’d be lucky to get halfway down the damn steps if he woke up.”

“Thought you said he wouldn’t wake up?”

“He won’t. I’m sayin’ just in case.”

“Right,” I said narrowing my eyes. “And the nurse, why not have her do it?”

“Well, because the fella ain’t in bed rest no more.”

Then we didn’t talk for a while. He sat there acting like it was no big thing, but I could feel the thick air. This wasn’t as easy as being at the plate with the bases loaded and two outs and being a run down. I didn’t have a problem with that. I also didn’t have a problem with all those kids and drunken men running beside me on the street, laughing and calling out, “Hey, shit for pants! Where ya goin’ shit for pants?” I put this right up there with being alone in that room with Coach Atlas just before I quit the team.

I kept shaking my head. But then I’d take a swig of beer and find myself nodding. This went on for ten minutes until I was about halfway down my new beer. Easley got up and got us two more. I wondered how he afforded all those beers with the attitude that he could just invite any stranger over and hand him beers over and over again. And whether or not he was trying to rope me, he’d done exactly that.

I opened the new beer he gave me and let the half-full one get warm. I sat and thought about it. Eventually, when it really took me over, I started drinking from the warm beer and didn’t notice the difference.

I am a talented man, I said to myself the next day as I went through the kitchen door of the old man’s house a few hours before sundown. The living room was pointing southwest, which was usually the hottest and coldest room in any house. The dimming light came into through the window blinds. I could see the dust hanging in the air. I waved a hand through to see what would happen even though I knew. It swirled around my arm then mingled with the others. Only two open doors and a cross breeze might get those sons of bitches out.

My feet moved lightly over the stained carpet. I ventured to guess it came with the house, a hundred years ago. It looked no different than the carpet at my folks’ place, six blocks away. It suddenly occurred to me that this old man and I should have gotten acquainted at some point in the past. It seemed inevitable that in this town with him owning the mini mart we had never sat next to each other in a bar, nor had we ever sat at the town barbecue looking at the same rack of steaming ribs and burgers from off the grill. But then I’d have had no reason to be in that house, ready to break his neck and get into the shoeboxes in the closet to get the cash. I felt like breaking Easley’s neck about that time.

I got to an old phonograph player and stopped. For a second I wondered how much the diamond needle on the tip would fetch. But I let it go and moved toward the kitchen. Lucky for me this house was the exact same model as the one I’d grown up in. I got to the swinging door at the kitchen and stopped again, staring at the thin coat of paint. It had been painted recently. There were yellow-brown moisture trails that were dried as they ran down the door, like the color of the sunset in winter. I was careful opening the door, assuming it creaked like ours at home. But it made no sound. So I pushed a little harder and the door moved quickly past its stopping point, just about giving me a heart attack.

In the kitchen the old man had his drawers all mixed up. The forks and spoons were in the drawer farthest from the sink. In my folks’ home the utensils were in the drawer nearest the sink; just made better sense that way. He had a nice knife set on the counter. I picked out a big sharp one. It was shiny and I looked at myself in its reflection, though all I saw were my buckteeth and puffy red cheeks. The knife was for insurance. I cut a thread off my shirt to be sure. I stuffed it gently into my back pocket, the one with a hole already torn, so it made perfect sense. The tip of the blade went through the hole and the rest of the long knife was sticking out of the pocket about ready to fall out so I jammed it through more and heard it tear.

I was stalling sure enough and couldn’t stop sweating. The short sleeves of my shirt were saturated from rubbing my forehead on them. And there was the beating of my heart, the strongest I could remember in ages. I got a sip of water off the faucet and made sure to wipe the handle. It was important to touch as little as possible. But I couldn’t help opening the icebox. I wanted to see what the old man had. About the best item in there was a nice log of salami. I had the idea of stuffing it into my pants but thought better of it. Salami had a habit of giving me indigestion.

I got to the stairs and went up, moving as close to the wall as possible because I assumed they creaked in the center like at my folks’ home. The door to the master bedroom was slightly open. I couldn’t hear any snoring. Easley hadn’t told me whether or not he snored. I checked my watch. I still had about half an hour before the old man would wake, that is, if Easley were accurate with his information. I pushed the door open about an inch. I saw the side of a bed. I moved to the left. The old man’s trousers were draped over the edge of the bed. He was lying in a fetal position wearing boxers and a white t-shirt. He made a faint noise through his nostrils.

About that time I started getting light-headed. My stomach was empty from not eating all day. And I was still hung over from drinking with Easley. Actually, I’d gone home and kept drinking even after leaving Easley’s trailer, trying not to think about the deed so much before I went and did it. My head wasn’t right. But I went on anyway. I wanted to get it done. I certainly wasn’t the type of man who would go back on his word. Luckily the old man was on his side faced the other way. I snuck to the closet on the right side of the room. It was wide open. There were clothes strewn on the ground where the shoes were. At that point I regretted not going into the old man’s icebox and swiping a snack. He was out cold.

I got on all fours, crawling deep into the closet, to the left corner, just like Easley told me. For some reason there were three shoeboxes and not two. It stopped me in my tracks.

So there was an extra box. No big deal. I flipped the lids off all three shoeboxes. But there wasn’t any money in them. Just shoes. I froze when the old man snarled in his sleep. Then I looked up at the clothes hanging over me. The tips of his shirts tickled my nose. There was the heavy smell of mothballs. I looked to the other corner, though there were no shoeboxes. I kept looking back to make sure the old man was still faced the other way but as I turned, he was rolling onto his back. I got down lower, and then moved like a spider toward the bed just under him. It was the strangest feeling; my body was tightened with suspension, like I was descending down one of them steep rollercoaster drops. God as my witness I was scared worse than ever. I tried to calm myself, lying flat on my stomach. My heartbeat thumped against the wood floor. I might have peeked to see him but didn’t have the nerve. I waited a couple of minutes for sounds other than the high pitched ringing between my ears, like I’d just come out of a loud concert. There weren’t any other sounds so I went back toward the closet. I could feel the knife there in my back pocket, annoying me with its steel flatness. So I pulled it out and slid it under the old man’s bed and moved on.

But before I could get back to the closet I heard the old man shift again.

“What are you doing there?” his weak voice said. And then he became panicked, “Who are you? What is it you want? Help! Someone help!”

I made for the door. I couldn’t help but look at him for a split second. He was watching me with bug eyes.

“Stop! Stop!” I heard behind me. I leaped toward the stairwell and thumped down the stairs. At that point all bets were off. I didn’t care about the money or even leaving fingerprints. And there it was again, that diarrheal feeling in my bowels, just like at the audition in Hollywood.

I positively had to hold it this time!

The front door was locked and I yanked at the knob before sense told me to slide the deadbolt. And I ran out of that house like my hair was on fire.

“Superstar Toby Kenmore, where you going?” someone said on the street.

I glanced back and it was a kid I’d never seen before.

I ran all the way to Edie’s cottage. She was sitting in an old wooden chair on the porch with a glass of iced tea in her hand as she smoked a cigarette.

“What ya doin’?” she said with that look she always gave me.

“Nothing,” I said blowing past her into the cottage.

“Ya like my hair?” she yelled from outside.

I went straight to the bathroom and did my painful business. My heart was still racing, the sweat pouring out of me. I fixed myself clean then sprayed the floral scented can before I left the bathroom.

“Did ya hear me?” Edie was saying. “I said do ya like my hair? Toby, where ya at?”

I stopped at the telephone where she’d written down another baseball coach’s phone number, this one from A&M. That made three who wanted me to transfer. Then I made my way to the screen door and opened it slowly. She had cut her hair short. It was nice looking, sort of like a boy’s haircut, but feminine enough for her to pull off.

“Looks easy enough to manage,” I said.

“Is that all ya got to say?” she said.

I was still huffing. “It’s nice.”

“Just like a man,” she said and took a drag. She exhaled, “Cost me sixty dollars. Seventy with tip.”

The thing about Edie that made us get along so well was that she wasn’t full of meddling questions. For example, she couldn’t care less why I came sprinting home.

“Mama told me to tell ya to come to the diner,” Edie said and set her iced tea on the porch.

“What for?”

“Didn’t ask. Suppose she’s ready to make nice.”

“I doubt that,” I said. There were two flies, a big and little one, circling Edie’s head like kids playing in the yard. “You make sweet tea?”

She exhaled smoke, leaned over, picked up her glass and handed it to me. It was sweating worse than me. I took a sip. It tasted like heaven on earth.

“I got more in the icebox. Go on.” She waved her hand at me to keep it.

When I looked at Edie it was as though the last hour of my life hadn’t happened. I hadn’t gone into the old man’s house. I hadn’t run out of there with him watching me with those eyes. I suspected the old man had called the cops. I suspected lots of things.

I sat on the ground in front of the door with my head leaning back against the dirty screen. We didn’t say anything for a while. I watched her ash the cigarette, pull out another and light it.

“Well I think ya need to go and make things right,” she said.

“What, so I got to go and keep working my ass off at the diner like you and Kelvin?”

She looked at me. “Now did I say that?”

“You don’t say lots of things, but it doesn’t mean I can’t figure them out just the same,” I said.

“It ain’t about the diner. Y’all need to focus. Y’all are in college. And you’re gonna be twenty-one soon. Ya got a chance to be the second one to graduate college, after Lester. Ya can’t be runnin’ around like your hair is on fire doin’ stupid things like goin’ to Hollywood and tryin’ to be a superstar. Makes no sense and ya know I don’t got to say this because look at ya, back here where ya belong.”

“I suppose.”

Edie leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. She motioned to me with her cigarette. “I knew ya’d come back.”

“So what is it you’re saying exactly?” I said.

“Toby, listen to me. Your family is here in Texas.” She looked up at that same rotting tree like she always did. It wasn’t even brown anymore. It was grey with thick wrinkles like an old elephant. “Lately, y’all are the only one who never comes round no more.”
“What about Lester? He still coming round?”

“Lester may have his faults, but he’s a working man with a home. And he’ll be married to Eva soon enough.”

I shook my head. She got up and went into the cottage, then came back with another glass of sweet tea.

“Nice day it was,” she said sitting again with a little grunt.

I nodded when she looked at me. I didn’t want to wreck her vision.

“And the customers, I tell ya they was tippin’ good today, even them cheapskates at the counter.” She smirked and told the rotting tree, “God knows what bird got in their ears.”

“I suppose I’ll go and talk to Ma then.”

“See that ya do,” she said and let silence fill the space between. She was good at that, letting go of discussions without drawing them out for hours.

I waited, and then as expected Edie changed subjects.

“Word’s out about you and me,” she said. “Our tussle.”

I glanced at her. She had a look on her face like she was holding in a fart.

“You already knew that yesterday when I told you about Harold pulling me over for nothing.”

“I was just sayin’ for the sake of sayin’,” she said.

I was still thinking about the old man and how he was probably talking to the cops. I couldn’t shake the feeling, the awful feeling that I had done something bad again and was about to pay for it. And now all my mishaps were beginning to overlap. I had the attempted burglary, as well as the incident with Edie, and finally, the catastrophe on national television in Hollywood, all those people in town laughing at me and calling me “superstar” because they’d seen me shit my pants on American Idol. I had stood there like a deer in headlights, panicked, with both hands holding my ass at the back of my Wranglers, and the three judges with tilted heads like dogs, and those television cameras all pointed at me. Why the director decided to air my audition was beyond me. Though I’d heard the ratings for that particular episode were through the roof.

“So what now?” I said feeling fairly numb, because I didn’t care if the town laughed anymore. I didn’t care if I went to jail for breaking into the old man’s house. Right then and there all I cared about was my sister. She’d kept our secret. She’d been the only one, tried and true, by my side.

“So what now?” Edie repeated. “Nothin’.”

The ice cubes clinked in her glass when she set it on the floor next to her bare feet.

I stood up and brushed off the seat of my pants.

“I suppose I’ll go and talk to Ma then,” I said again.

She smiled.

“And then ya be sure to come right back and I’ll fix ya somethin’ to eat,” she said. “Ya hearin’ me Toby? Come right back.”

I stopped at the edge of the porch.

“What if I decide to eat there?” I said with the idea that anything could happen.

“Ya don’t want to eat there, not with the likes of Dennis Hall, Sloppy Burt, and Little Easley all sittin’ there at the counter ready to give ya hell.”

Her words hit me sharp.

“Did you say Easley?”

“Why, ya know him?” she said then shook her head.

Something was wrong. Edie was acting funny. I followed her eyes and they were on that tree again. She watched it as though it were God himself telling her the answers.

I worked it through my mind. Edie was double-dealing. It made sense.

Her cigarette was on the arm of the chair. It had a long ash making a plume of faint white smoke.

“You told someone about the fight,” I said.

Edie guffawed.

“Well didn’t you?”

Her eyes were unmoved, fixed on the tree.

Then with a frog in her throat she said, “You’re talkin’ crazy.”

“Who’d you tell?” I said.

She glanced at me, mussing her new hairdo. “Toby, don’t be silly.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You’re bein’ silly is what ya are.”

“Look, Edie–”

“No,” she cut in. Ever since we were kids, my big sister was always pulling rank. It didn’t matter who was right or wrong. Didn’t matter that Lester was older than her. Next to Ma and Pop she was the boss. Her voice was still horse, “Now there ain’t nothin’ more to say over the matter.”

And when she reached for her cigarette, her fingers fumbled and it rolled off the chair and fell to the porch in a tiny explosion of ashes.

“I know it was you who told,” I said lying.

“You know nothin’.”

We were so close it was impossible for me.

“Damn you, Edie,” I said disappointed. “I wish you’d just come clean. You know it’d mean a whole lot.”

She turned away from me, her chin up toward that rotting tree. Maybe it was a place of comfort to rest her eyes. I didn’t know. Whatever the case, I wanted to take a chainsaw and cut that son of a bitch down.

I moved forward and touched her shoulder. And when she turned to me her eyes were teary. So I just stood there nodding my head that it was okay.

Finally I said, “What’s done is done.” Then nudged her. She knew the routine, the same since we were kids. After arguments and fights and small family calamities we all said it to signify it was water under the bridge.

“Edie,” I nudged her again, “what’s done is done.”

She wiped her eyes, her voice a whisper, “What’s done is done.”

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright Mark Sumioka 2025

Image Source: Dey from Fictom.com