Caleb
There are nights in your life where you just want the stars to stand still, for the world and all it’s wild ways to soak into your skin, just so you can remember what living feels like.
For as long as I’ve been breathin’, I've hardly held onto anything good for more than a little while. But I wanted to hang onto tonight, to all the little things about it that dulled the sting of my sadness, to her.
I didn't want her to leave. Not for a minute. But Hailey walked outta that room about as quick as she'd come in, while I choked on the dust of her ghost trails. She wasn't scared of being lonely, you could tell just by watching her eyes, the way she found comfort in never looking at anybody for too long. She could run a hundred miles just by looking away, and lately I kept having this feeling that as much as I wanted her to stay, she'd end up running away from me.
Maybe that was the right answer, for her anyway. She had a life outside all of this just waiting for her to come back to. Waiting for me to give her up so she could start living the way she was supposed to. But every time she came around, I stopped thinking about all that.
I stopped thinking about a lot of things, except her. She let me forget where I came from for a little while, and as selfish as that sounds, at least it meant a minute or two of peace for me. Couldn’t tell you if it was happiness exactly, but it was something a lot like it.
God knows I needed the change.
I'd been walking around the world the last few days with death on my shoulders. Every step I took further from the place where I left half my family to die, my feet sunk deeper into darkness. It was always there, like the pain, but quieter, waiting for me to let it catch up. She was the only thing left standing between me and all that terrible loneliness, but knowing she was somewhere nearby was enough to keep going.
The rain outside stole the heat out of the room through the rafters. The bath went cold a while back, but lying there watching the steam soar to the ceiling was better than trying to get to my feet without killing myself. Waiting for Dad's pain pills to kick in was one thing, trying to live through them wearing off was another story—the kind you didn't want anyone to see.
Pride is pride. But pain's a whole lot worse. Thirty seconds into pulling myself up outta that tub, the little hole over my hip starting burnin’ like it was brand new.
The heat hit me so hard that the whole room went black. Couldn't tell you much about what happened after that. I remember reaching for a towel but never really gettin' to it. The strength slipped outta my legs, and my back hit the cold bathroom tile.
I remember hoping to God that if I died like this, that Hailey wouldn't walk in on me sprawled on the floor, bare-assed naked, all cause I tried to get up on my own. If I’d clocked out right then, at least it would've saved me the trouble of having to explain why I'd decided on being stupid instead of asking for help.
But I kept on breathing, and woke up staring at the rain poundin’ puddles on the bathroom skylight.
Someone had my head in their hands, someone who I hoped was Hailey, but life never plays out how you want it to. Instead of looking up at my girl, or God’s pearly white gates, I got an upside down view of Georgia Jane’s pearly white dentures biting trenches into her bottom lip. Like I said, life never really plays out the way you want.
"You tryin to kill me boy?" She said.
All the wrinkles in her face must've multiplied cause she looked more scared than I'd ever seen her, that or I wasn’t seeing straight just yet.
"No, ma'am,"
"Unless you hit your head in that fall, you better correct yourself."
"Sorry, Georgia."
"That's alright. At least your up and talkin'. Here I was thinking I'd find you sitting around waiting on some spare clothes and I find this. What’d you do?”
“I fell.”
“Honey, I know you fell. What’s all this?”
She’d already done the one thing I didn’t want her or anyone else to do, look at all the things that were wrong me and my body, and get sappy or worried about it. Sometimes I don’t get why people just can’t keep on with their own lives instead of worrying about everyone else’s. My secrets were mine to deal with. Mine to hide, and the longer I kept things quiet, the less they seemed to exist.
That worked for me, anyway.
Problem was I’d let my body turn into a goddamn storybook, and there was nothing I could do to hide the pages. Everybody’s kinda like that though, everybody’s got some kinda trouble or tragedy painted on their faces. But growing up the way I had, I learned to never ask questions. So why in the hell did everybody else have to?
“It’s nothing,” I said.
“ ‘Nothing’ doesn’t look like this, boy. I was an army wife not too many years ago, you think I don’t know a gunshot when I see one?”
She reached out for a towel and covered me from the waist down so she could get a better look at my wound without having to see everything else. No man wants to look that helpless in front of anybody, especially a woman. But Georgia was tough, tough enough to look at you once and make you feel guilty for being pissed at her for worrying too much. My Ma was like that. She loved the hell out of everybody and everything, even if she never got that love back.
“Your husband was a military man?” I asked.
“Yes sir, now hold still. If you want this cleaned up right, you’ll keep quiet too.”
Georgia took her time getting to her feet but once she got to walkin’ she slipped outta sight. She came back a couple minutes later with a little white box and a couple bottles of clear stuff that looked like trouble.
“Where’s Hailey? You didn’t say anything about this to her, right? Does she know that I—“
“No. She’s downstairs, eatin’. The girl got so tired of waiting on you to finish washin’, I let her use my shower ‘cause I couldn’t stand seeing her walkin’ around hungry, lookin’ like a starvin’ mud child. Now, stop talking and bite down.”
She handed me one of the smallest terry cloths I’d ever seen and glared at me over her readin’ glasses ‘til I stuck it between my teeth. Tasted a lot like roses and a little like soap. But I forgot about the bitterness the second she poured liquid fire into my injury. The sting wasn’t bad enough to black out over, but the world went blurry ‘cause my body decided the pain was worth crying about.
Georgia held on to my hands, while I choked back whimpers behind a little pink towel. She didn’t seem to mind it much, only shook her head and clicked her teeth every time I squirmed around more than I was supposed to. Thank God for women, they’re the only ones who let you cry without feeling guilty about it.
“Who cleaned this up for you before I did?” She asked.
I spat her hand towel outta mouth as soon as she screwed on the cap to the fire bottle she’d been using to fix whatever I had wrong with me.
“My Dad.”
“Is he a military man?”
“Used to be.”
“I thought so. He did a nice job on ya’. Lucky he did or you woulda’ been in a world a’ trouble by now.”
I already was, she just didn’t know it yet.
“The service makes great men out of the good ones. My husband Dean was one of those, and I’m sure your Daddy is too.”
I wanted to laugh when she said that, not cause she meant it to be funny, but ‘cause my dad was a violent son-of-a-bitch. All that, "good men, great men," talk didn’t apply to my father. Good men don’t beat the shit out of their sons. Great men don’t need to drink to tell their boys that they mean something to them.
Georgia had the kind of husband whose ghost still made her happy. My dad did nothing but make me sicker or sadder than I already was. Georgia was one of the lucky ones. The war didn’t show up at her doorstep every night, drunk and angry, like mine did.
“You got a story behind these scars?” She asked.
“Not one I wanna tell.”
“You’ve gotta a lot of nerve, young man.”
“I know I do and I’m sorry, but I’m trying not to think about it, is all. Tonight was goin’ pretty good ‘till this happened,” I said.
“And why’s that?”
My face went red just thinking about it. Hailey’s pretty little hands in my hair, how cute she’d looked whenever I caught her off guard, everything. I’d hardly been around girls much before all this. Cillian, Marcus, and Liam had em’ all the time, but none of them stuck around long enough for Ma to meet em’.
None of us thought any girl in her right mind would stick around the family once they knew the kinda things that went on when no one was watching. So my brothers just played the field, did the kinda stuff boys do to break hearts but never bad enough to leave scars. At least, I hope they didn’t.
Truth was, Hailey’d turned out to be the first girl I really saw. Not just ‘cause Anderson told me about her, just cause she was something else. Something different. A good kinda different, and for the first time in my life I was starting to understand why my brothers were girl crazy. They get you high.
“You know anything about women, Georgia?”
Her bushy old eyebrows nearly flew off her forehead when I said that. Maybe it was a stupid question, but sometimes it’s easy to forget that old ladies were young girls at some point too.
“Just cuz I like camo and carryin’ around a gun doesn’t make me any less woman than anybody else, you hear?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, to start, women like men who wear clothes. Your wound’s got new dressin’ and the clothes I brought for you are waiting on that chair. So get dressed. Once you’re decent we’ll talk.”
We helped each other get to our feet and she shuffled her way back into the guestroom, while I took my time struggling into a old white t-shirt, faded blue mechanic’s overalls a couple sizes too big. The clothes smelled like someone else. It’s strange thinkin’ about how people always leave some part of them behind. Wherever he was, I hoped Dean was alright with me wearing his things for a little while. Georgia seemed to be.
“You dressed, boy?”
“Yeah, come in if you want.”
Georgia stood in the doorway for a couple seconds, just staring at me.
“Well, look at that. When you’re not cryin’ or feeling sorry for yourself, you don’t look half bad. I see why that girl’s with you, after a bath at least.”
“That’s the thing. I’m not with her.”
“Why not? Weren’t you the one who said she was your girlfriend?”
“It doesn’t matter what I said, the truth is, she’s not my girl. Not yet anyway, but I think I want her to be. It’s just, we haven’t known each other all that long. But do you have to? How long does it take to be sure about someone?”
Georgia cracked a smile so wide her lips wrinkled up at the corners. She waved me into the guest room, sat down on the bed, and waited for me to sit with her. I didn’t know what I’d said that made her perk up all of a sudden, but it was nice catching the light in her eyes.
It kinda felt like I saw her spirit. Some twenty-year-old girl smiling back at me, like she hadn’t aged a minute since then. I guess that was the girl that Dean saw. Lucky guy.
“Dean used to tell me that it only took him half a’ second to see a lifetime for the two of us. Took me half my life to believe it, but he was right. The strange thing was, first time we met I didn’t even know he was lookin’. I was nineteen when my Daddy took me along to Dean’s shop. Our truck was given us trouble, so I waited in the driver seat while my Pa handled all the paperwork. God, I was the ugliest thing you’ve ever seen, bucked toothed, straw haired, and chewing on enough bubblegum to rot yer teeth. You don’t like gum do you?”
“Not really,” I said.
“That’s a shame, I got a whole drawer downstairs. Anyway, it took me a little bit, but while I was waiting to leave. I caught Dean staring at me with the greasiest face I’d ever seen over the front counter. He was good at fixing things, but never really knew how to clean up to meet his customers. Dean liked getting his hands dirty, and hanging around the back of his shop stripping parts from old cars he thought he could bring to life again. He could turn something plain into something pretty, and that’s what he did with me. By the end of that day, we picked up the car and Dean picked up the courage to ask me on a date.”
“He asked you that quick?”
“Course he did. I told you, he knew what he wanted. Two weeks after that, Dean got drafted. The night before he left he gave me a twenty-cent ring. Nothing special, just an old washer he had lyin’ around the shop. But he said, that the first thing he planned on doing when he got back was making me his wife. Lots a boys ‘round town Dean’s age made promises like that, so I didn’t’ believe him, ‘til he showed up four months later with a real one. So like I said, if you think you know, you already do.”
I don’t know what it was about what Georgia’d said, but my heart broke a little bit. Not enough to kill me, but enough to crack the edges. Trying to stomach the idea that time or tragedy took Dean away from her, was tough enough. But what got me crying again was knowing that my Ma never had anybody love her like that.
She died before she could find a Dean, but God knows she deserved one. No matter how much me and my brothers loved her, sons can’t take the place of a husband. The worst feeling in the world is knowing you can’t love someone enough to fix em’. I’d felt like that every day since she died.
“Honey, what are you crying about, now? You’re alright. You’ve got too much trouble in you for somebody so young.”
I couldn’t even get a word out for a while it was so bad. But Georgia just let me lean on her and cry, like she knew that after I got all that sadness outta my system I’d be okay. I guess I just needed to start believing that too.
“You know what you need? Chicken and grits. Hailey helped me cook em’ and if you promise not to ruin my carpet I’ll let you eat em’ up here, alright?”
“Alright.”
She ripped out a handful of tissues from the night table and handed them to me so I could clean up. After I sopped up the mess I’d made of my face, I stopped her before she headed back downstairs for the night.
“You know somethin’?”
“What’s that, boy?”
“You’re a good woman, Georgia. Dean had it right.”
She steadied herself against the railing for a minute, closed her eyes, and smiled through a quiet sadness that flickered and faded outta sight as quickly as it appeared.
“Well, I hope so. If I’m right about you, you won’t keep that girl downstairs waitin’, you hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She didn’t care to correct me that time, just disappeared back down to the first floor like she hadn’t come up to see me at all.
Hailey nearly tripped herself coming up the stairs with that tray of chicken, grits, and biscuits I’d been looking forward to all night. But when she walked in, wearing what had to be one of Georgia’s nightgowns from her younger days, I forgot all about being hungry.
“What’s wrong with your eyes?” She said. Touché.
“You are.”
She set the food down next to me on the night table, and got awfully quiet. I guess I wasn’t as smooth as Dean was, but tryin’ never hurt anybody. Failing does.
“I, um, still had dirt in my hair after you washed it, you know.”
Hailey climbed onto the other side of the bed and came bouncing over just to see if I was telling the truth. Before I could say anything, she had her hands in my hair, combing through it slow and careful, enough to drive me a little bit crazy.
“Looks clean to me,” she said, borderline boasting, but not enough to complain about.
She settled down next to me, grinning like she’d never seen a bed before in her life. I guess she wasn’t as used to sleeping uncomfortably as I was. I liked seeing her smile about it though. Heck, I liked seeing her smile about anything as long as it was real.
“Did Georgia say anything to you?” I asked.
“No, was she supposed to?”
“Nope!”
I shoved six spoonfuls of grits into my mouth before she could catch me lying. I figured it was better she didn’t know what we’d talked about ‘til I was ready to tell her how I’d been feeling lately. Honest to goodness, she looked so nice in that pink nightgown, with her hair falling all over the place, I thought talking to her would be easy. But I couldn’t even look at her straight, so I just kept eating. Dug into my dinner plate ‘til there was nothing but bones and crumbs everywhere. Hailey stared at me like I was crazy.
“Slow down before you—“
I breathed in a piece a biscuit smaller than dust but big enough to cause trouble, and choked. Hailey helped me sit up straight and cough through the worst of it, while she tried her hardest to keep herself from laughing at how stupid I must’ve looked.
“You wouldn’t make a guy who nearly choked to death, sleep on the floor would you?” I asked.
She didn’t say a word to me, just reached over and clicked off both lights like being alone in the dark didn’t bother her any.
“’Night, Caleb.”
She jumped back on the bed and slid under the covers, while I tried my hardest to keep my heart from beating it’s way out of my chest. I tried convincing myself that I could fall asleep as peacefully as she seemed to, but that didn’t fix a damn thing. Mind over matter, doesn’t mean a much if your mind’s gone to mush. I kept thinking about all things I wasn’t supposed to, and then feeling awful for thinking like that in the first place.
Right when I thought about putting myself on the floor just to keep from going crazy, Hailey shifted a little, turned her back to me, and shuffled into the space between the two of us. With my nerves rattling worse than the rain on the tin roof, I took a leap of faith and reached out in the middle of all that darkness to hold on to the only girl who’d stuck with me through it. She fit into me like God had carved out a place just for her. I’d thank him for it later.
I held on to Hailey like that for a long while, terrified of the minute she’d wake up and start screaming. But she didn’t. Just laid there, warm and quiet, smelling a lot like roses and a little like soap, while I got used to the feeling of being a little less lonely.
Maybe Dean’s old clothes still had some magic in em’, ‘cause I knew right then, that this girl was my girl, whether she liked it or not.
God knows, I hoped she would, but I didn’t ask questions.