Pie Town Page 11

  George remembered his spiritual director at seminary, who had recommended that George stay in domestic service, noting that the young man might find difficulties in being too isolated. He claimed that George’s desire to serve in an undeveloped country was more pathological than spiritual, and he was concerned that isolation for George would be more harmful than helpful. His spiritual director had said that George should wait for a few years, have a bit more supervision, before being sent abroad. The young man had disagreed with his mentor, but in typical fashion for George, he accepted what was handed down to him.

  “I wonder what Father Leon would say now,” he said to himself. “At least in Haiti I wouldn’t have to worry about somebody getting me drunk.” He sat up, resting on his arms, and waited for the room to stop spinning.

  He thought about what he had said, the words “getting me drunk.” He recalled that the other time he was intoxicated it had happened in exactly the same way … at the hands of somebody else. He leaned back against the bathroom wall, recalling the only other time he had felt this bad.

  After being harassed for weeks for not going out, not joining the other students for anything other than study groups, he had agreed to go with his roommates to Cincinnati to “blow off some steam,” as they called it, the semester before they would be taking their final vows. It seemed harmless enough to George. They told him their itinerary. They planned to take in a movie, go to a ball game, spend time at a shopping mall, and sample a few restaurants. Seeking guidance about the idea, George had discovered that even Father Leon agreed that the outing would be a good thing for him to do.

  George sat on the bathroom floor and remembered that weekend. For the first night and the first full day, it had been fun. He had found himself enjoying a bit of leisure. The guys had even commented that he looked more relaxed away from school and that the trip seemed to be good for him. And he thought it was. He liked the movie, loved the ball game, even enjoyed being in a shopping mall, seeing all the people. He was pleased with himself and his decision to join his friends, until the last night they were together.

  That night was the night, they later confessed, they had made a plan “to get George drunk.” It started innocently enough with a late dinner at a nice restaurant. Following the first course, he noticed that his iced tea tasted different. It wasn’t the iced tea he was used to. There was a sweet taste to it, syrupy, but it wasn’t a sugary sweetness. It was something else. When he wanted to complain or ask for something else to drink, the other guys had convinced him it was fine, and he had ended up having two refills.

  Later, when the roommates decided it would be fun to take a cab over to the river walk and find a club to hear some live music, George decided to head back to the hotel. He had told them that he wasn’t feeling very good, and after they admitted to him what he had been drinking, and after he had already been to the restroom three times, sick from the drinks, they agreed to go on without him. The plan to watch George get drunk didn’t produce the great excitement the others had expected. It was actually quite a letdown. So they believed him when he promised them that he was fine and would be able to find his way back to the hotel.

  He recalled that on the last day of the trip, hours after they had missed their bus back to seminary and minutes before they were getting ready to call the police to report that he was missing, he had stumbled into the hotel room, hungover, without his shirt or his wallet, claiming he had no memory of where he had been or what had happened.

  After a week they quit asking, quit feeling angry and guilty, and they never knew where George had been, never knew what had happened to him while they were listening to some bad karaoke and flirting with college girls. They also never invited him to join them on a weekend out of town again. Father Leon knew that there was some story to tell, that something had happened, but after three sessions in which George would speak only of his upcoming vows and what would be required of him upon graduation, refusing to answer questions about the trip or what happened, the older priest quit pressing as well. He simply denied the young man’s request for foreign service, thinking George needed more time to mature spiritually and socially, more time located near supervision and assistance before being sent somewhere out of the country.

  “Is this what you had in mind for me as a priest in the States, Father Leon? You think somebody would have gotten me drunk in Haiti after being there only four days?” He asked the questions out loud again, the words filling up the room. “You think New Mexico is all that much better than a foreign mission field?” He shook his head slowly, careful not to make the pounding worse. “You’re the one who needs to get out more,” he said. “This is a Third World country.”

  He pulled himself up from the floor and made his way, leaning against the wall, back to the bedroom. He took a deep breath and removed his clothes and hung them on the chair next to the bed. He pulled aside the covers, reached for his rosary on the table beside him, and crawled in. “Hail Mary, full of grace,” he started to pray, and then he stopped. He rubbed his eyes and started the rosary prayer again. “Hail Mary, full of grace, pray for us sinners now… .” And he stopped again.

  This time he quit praying because he thought he heard something outside. He listened, straining to hear whether the voices were real or just more sounds from earlier in the night that were rumbling across his mind. He opened his eyes. There were voices, he thought, coming very near his window. He clinched his fingers around the rosary and held his breath.

  “He’s home.” It was a whisper, male, very close to his head.

  “Shhhhh … get away from there.” Another voice, female, a little farther away.

  “No doubt, if he drank as much as everyone else did at the party, he’s dead to the world, I’m sure.”

  There were footsteps moving away from his window. Father George waited a few seconds, and then he sat up in bed and turned to face outside. He stayed perfectly still as he heard the voices moving farther away, heading in the direction of the church. He took in another breath, suddenly feeling much clearer, and leaned up to pull aside the curtains. As he did, he saw a young couple walking toward the back of the church. They were holding hands, the boy leading the girl. He watched them and was sure that the boy was someone he did not recognize, but the girl he was quite confident he knew.

  He dropped back down into the bed, threw the covers over his head, the rosary falling behind the pillow, and closed his eyes, deciding that he wasn’t in the mood to deal with young lovers, even if they were trespassing.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Trina was dreaming. There was a field, rows of corn, withered and brown like crops late in the season. The stalks were spindly, mostly devoured by grasshoppers, brittle from the summer sun. She walked through the rows, blindfolded, but she was not afraid. She walked, her arms stretched out on both sides, touching the stalks, feeling her way down the row. It seemed like some lesson she was learning, some means of testing her progress. There was someone near her, a woman, familiar, sweet-voiced, and kind, telling her to keep going, telling her that she was almost there. But Trina stopped when she felt the corn no longer beside her but now in front of her, blocking the way she had been going. She felt around, spinning, reaching out, and feeling the stalks in all directions. They were tall and close, and suddenly she was disoriented and could remember neither the direction she had come from nor where she was heading.

  “I’m lost,” she called out, waiting for the woman to answer. There was no response. “Aren’t you there?” Trina asked, hearing nothing. “Wait, don’t go, I don’t know where I am,” she yelled. “Can I take the blindfold off? Is it okay to look?” And Trina was reaching up to remove the covering over her eyes when she awoke to the sound of a knocking on her door.

  “Trina, are you awake?”

  She shook her head, clearing her mind of the dream that lingered along the edges of her consciousness, the dream she had had since she was a young teenager. She opened her eyes.

  “Trina,
it’s Roger. Are you up?”

  “Yeah,” she shouted. “Just a minute.” And she got up from the bed and hurried over to the door. She opened it, wearing only a T-shirt and panties. “Hey,” she said, blinking at the sun, bright and full behind the man standing at her door. She shielded her eyes with one hand.

  “Oh.” Roger quickly averted his eyes. “I’m sorry to get you up. It’s just that I never saw you come in last night, and now it’s the afternoon and I hadn’t seen any sign of life over here.” He cleared his throat. “Alex asked me to stop by.” He glanced down at the bottom of the stairs. Alex was sitting in his wheelchair. He waved at Trina.

  “Hey, you,” she said to the boy, stepping outside the door. “You checking up on me?”

  Alex blushed. He could see the girl was not dressed. He just shook his head.

  Trina smiled. “What time is it?” she asked Roger.

  “Four o’clock,” he answered.

  “Sunday?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “Wow” was all she said. She squinted again against the sun. “That was quite a birthday party, Alex,” she shouted down to the boy.

  He nodded. “Yeah, it was fun,” he replied.

  “I’m taking him back to Malene’s. We’ve been to Mass and driven over to Socorro for lunch.” Roger studied the young woman. “You need anything?” he asked. “Breakfast, coffee?”

  Trina shook her head. “No, I’ve got some cereal. I’ll be fine. Happy birthday again,” she yelled down to Alex.

  “Thanks, Trina,” he called back. “And thanks for the card. It’s my favorite.”

  Trina smiled. “Yeah, the homemade ones are best, I think.”

  “Okay then, again, I’m sorry I disturbed you. Alex just wanted to make sure nothing was wrong. He …” Roger paused. “He was just worried about you,” he said.

  Trina grinned and winked at the boy. “I like that,” she said. “You can check on me anytime,” she added, stepping out on the landing and leaning over the stair railing. “And one day we’re going to get you up here so you can see what I’ve done to the place.”

  Alex nodded. “That’d be nice,” he said.

  “Good,” Trina responded. “Y’all have fun and I’ll see you later.” She blew a kiss to the boy. “And you too, Sheriff.”

  Roger nodded and headed down the stairs. He watched as Alex waved again at the young woman. “Thanks, Grandpa,” the boy said when he made his way beside the older man.

  Roger just shook his head and squeezed the boy on the shoulder as he moved past him. “You and your bad feelings,” he said. “I told you she was fine.”

  “Yeah,” Alex responded. “But it was worth the view, don’t you think?” He grinned and spun his chair around to follow his grandfather.

  Trina watched from the small landing as the two of them moved toward the driveway and got in the van. She opened her screen door and walked back into the apartment. She glanced over at the clock to confirm what her landlord had said. It was four o’clock in the afternoon. She sighed and went back to the bed, heading under the covers. “What happened last night?” she asked herself. And then she closed her eyes and started to remember.

  Trina had decided to walk back to her apartment even though several people at the party had offered her a ride. She explained that she liked moonlight walks and that she felt as if she needed the exercise. That had been almost nine or nine-thirty, she thought. She figured it was about three or four miles from the school to her apartment. That was nothing compared to how many miles she used to walk in a day. She hadn’t gotten very far, a mile maybe, when the pickup truck stopped in front of her. It was an old Ford, red but the paint faded, short bed, new tires. The engine knocked a bit, and she guessed it was because of cheap gas. She had seen the driver before, in town, the second day she was there. She was walking then too, asking everybody she saw about a job. He had been standing in front of the hardware store when she went in to ask the manager if he had any openings. She felt the boy watching her then, but he hadn’t spoken to her. She remembered him from the party too.

  She walked just past the driver’s side and looked in.

  “You want a ride?” he asked. He had dark hair, brown eyes, tan, muscular arms.

  Trina smiled. “Where’s your girlfriend?” she asked, recalling that he hadn’t been standing alone for long in front of the hardware store before a girl came up and stuck her arm through his, the same girl he had been coupled with at the party. She was young, probably not more than fifteen or sixteen.

  “I took her home,” he answered, grinning.

  Trina studied the boy. He didn’t look much over sixteen himself. A little arrogant, she thought, but safe.

  “So, do you want a ride or not?” he asked again, this time looking straight ahead.

  “Is there anything else to do in this town?” Trina asked.

  He turned back to her, raising his eyebrows. “I know some places,” he replied.

  And with that, she opened up his door and climbed over him to sit on the passenger’s side.

  She was not a whore, like her father called her. She didn’t sell sex. She didn’t get money or ask for favors when she slept with a man. She didn’t think of the encounters she had as business opportunities or some means to an end. She just liked sex. She liked the way she felt as soon as she realized the flirting had begun. She liked the excitement of it, the pleasure it brought, the intimate way she joined with a boy, their bodies fitting so perfectly.

  She was not a slut either. She knew that type of girl too. A slut performed sex while always maintaining some hidden agenda. She slept around to gain access to another world or find opportunities to move out of the world in which she felt trapped. Sex for a slut was a way to better herself, make friends, have people she could call on. Trina didn’t need sex for money or to prove anything or to escape someplace. She had abandoned her messed-up little world a long time ago, and she hadn’t had to sleep her way out of it. She earned enough money to buy a bus ticket out of Lubbock, Texas, and she’d never had to use her body to get anywhere or get out of anything.

  It didn’t matter what her father had told everybody in town about her. She was smart. She was resourceful. She was fast on her feet. And she never had and she never would come crawling back to him for anything. He rode and broke her mother until she was nothing but a sorry drunk, lost and gone forever, but he would never get his hands on Trina. Not ever. Not again.

  The boy she rode with, the one in the Ford truck, was inexperienced, and in the end they only made out, with him getting his first blow job and her getting the pleasure of being teacher to a very eager student.

  His name was Rob—more like Robbie, she thought. “Little Robbie, high school darling, the apple of his mother’s eye, the pride of his hometown football team.” Trina smiled to think of how the boy was bound to be spoken of at home or among his friends. She thought about his girlfriend, a good Catholic girl who would only let him touch her outside her clothes, the one he had promised that it didn’t matter that she wasn’t ready for sex, the one he would eventually marry and cheat on by the time she was pregnant with their first child. Trina knew all about the Robbies of the world. She had met her fair share of them when she was in high school. A Robbie was the main reason she had left after tenth grade. By the time she had visited California, lived in Phoenix, and worked in Amarillo, she had discovered that there were Robbies everywhere. By the time she was nineteen, they no longer irritated her so much, and in fact they entertained her. After she left Texas for Tucson, she had learned everything there was to know about the Robbies.

  Trina rolled over on her side, recalling how he had driven her out to the high school and the field where he played football, the cemetery where he said his baby brother was buried, the path out to a few of the old settlement quarters, mud houses, some of which still stood, and finally to the church, the one place she asked to go, even though she didn’t explain, because she wanted to see where Father George was living.
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  It appeared as if he wanted her to see how easy it was for him to get inside the sanctuary. He had been an altar boy, he explained, and knew where they hid the key. She could see his plan. He intended to take her around back and let her inside, but she really wasn’t that impressed with the church or the boy who guaranteed her he could break in. She didn’t want to see the sanctuary or steal the communion wine. When they pulled up and she saw the station wagon with the driver’s door opened and the headlights on, it became clear, at least to her, why she had wanted him to drive her up there. She wanted to check on the priest. She knew he had gotten drunk on the punch. She knew he didn’t realize what he was drinking. And she was concerned. She wanted to make sure he’d gotten home safely.

  She got out of Robbie’s truck, turned off the pastor’s car lights, and quietly closed the door, hoping not to wake him. Robbie was stupid enough to get out as well and stand right beside the window, probably near his bed, and talk loud enough for him to hear. Trina had to pull him away from the house and back over toward the church. She promised he’d get the blow job only if he came away from where the priest was sleeping.

  Robbie was happy to oblige at that point. He led her around back, located the key, found the bottle of wine. She drank most of it, and he had the religious experience of his young life. Trina smiled when she realized that Robbie would never think of church in the same way again. She pulled the covers over her head. She figured Robbie would be back at her door soon enough, and she would have to deal with him and maybe even his girlfriend at a later time. For now, she just wanted to get back to sleep.

  Chapter Seventeen

  She was still asleep,” Roger explained to Malene after she asked if his tenant was okay. They were in the kitchen, Roger and Alex having just come in.