Lockjaw

Frontiers, 2004 by Farris, Holly

A woman worked with me around 1960, Brenda-and I recall her name well as my own-she had tetanus and lived to tell. Being deathly sick and the miracle that she got better without special medicine was a story she hinted at on our second day together at Shuff's roadside place. "My daddy had horses," she'd said, a pinch of history enough to tease or let me ignore. It was months before I heard all of it.

Brenda'd graduated high school, which is why Shuff put her on the store counter; she could count change faster than the dusty metal register. Brenda began each day vowing to come in until August, but already she had a Greyhound ticket to North Carolina. Seems the army expected her at summer's end to be at Fort Bragg training, showing the government she could climb and crawl as well as any other recruit. From there, the army planned to teach her what they wanted her to do for them indoors.

I'd quit high school, so I felt for the boys who would sneak down the worn dirt path from the high school to buy beer and soda any Wednesday. They'd lay out back of Shuff's store, tanked with whatever liquid would reward girls riding by to give up a few minutes-whether sharing cigarettes or a screw all the same to them. I know. I'd been screwed by one, a boy lied who said he was twenty-one, him now back attending tenth grade and me fat with the baby he left me.

Options. It's what Brenda had and I didn't.

May aimed to sag into June without much force, and it was about the Friday of Memorial weekend when Brenda and I got together. We'd been busy all morning, what with it bait day. High school customers loafing off from school who didn't drink beer got fishing crawlers or crickets plus a Pepsi that Brenda traded them across the pocked counter.

"Janelle." Brenda called my name when the screen hinge sang for the last time that hot morning. While she'd unlocked the door at eight o'clock, I kicked gravel mixed with beer caps under a sunnyside-up sun. Nothing over-easy about that day, I reckoned, wondering if I should try a grill job again. Not with those grease smells, I remembered, why I'd left.

Cigarettes in Brenda s left hand hooked out the back door. Self-centered, she always took her pack out back of Shuff's over noontime lunch and sproingea solitary on a set of rusted bedsprings we all used, it left over from when Shuff accepted furniture pawns.

"Screw the register, Janelle," Brenda said, making me guess she blamed me for something. Her cigarette-sanded voice floated inside to me kneeling in the dark cornmeal- and white bread-smelling back aisle. When I looked, I caught her jeans hooked up like for wading, knobby kneecaps pointing toward the sun where she'd flopped down.

Inside the store, I'd propped the glass cooler door open against my bare upper arm. I laid my cheek right down on the silver grid of the bottom shelf, sucking up refrigeration properly belonging to bait bugs once I had stacked the little packages inside. Crickets rustled at room temperature, tasting or sensing people's smell plugging lid holes of their paper containers, but the Canadian crawlers were quiet inside plastic tubs that chilled and looked like they held onion dip.

"Live bait, Brenda," I said, thinking she wanted me to watch the register while she spiffed up her tan. Bob's bait truck had just farted up the hill; Harry, carrying the peanut butter and cheese nabs, was due shortly. Fridays were given over to stocking shelves before fishermen and snackers hit Shuff's.

"Like I give a shit," Brenda called, blowing smoke rings through the back door screen mesh and waving one foot's toes free from her sandal. I wondered what I'd done to piss her off. My mornings were rocky, bait most likely to make me heave, so I normally courted the toilet until I heard Bob's voice. Bright orange cheese nabs, greasy bricks inside cellophane that I had to arrange for display, plus Harry's looking down my shirt with his one good eye, had kept me queasy the rest of Fridays, leaving Brenda to handle most of the shift. I'd make it up to her the second half of my pregnancy.

"You ever look at these things? " I said, trying to show off my steady stomach and a little spark of curiosity at the same time. "Cost a lot, the little bastards."

Worms I'd opened to the outside lay in their own sweet slime, lined up two by two, whichever ends were head and the tail, however one left off and another began. Crickets-I usually freed a few each week-existed in their buggy homes as solitary creatures, springing off for new adventures, each heading a different direction underneath the busted furniture outside.

"Lock the front, Janelle," Brenda said. Just for a minute I guessed she noticed a thief coming; then I saw her still smoking and lounging.

"My daddy had horses," Brenda said when I loafed beside the springs, and I knew I wanted to hear the whole tetanus story. Besides, her offering to tell it meant she wasn't pissed, at least not at me. "Pull us a beer," she said.

"Daddy was always working the barn," Brenda said, but I know he takes nights out to drink and run possums, just like my own daddy, whoever he is, probably does. "Left me and Dwight to amuse ourselves. Him being littler, me about six, we waded. Summer I most remember." Brenda'd drunk half our one beer, making me jealous she'd had that first-sip feeling, when the bitter and the bubbles climb up high in your mouth, connecting your brain, your ears, and your lips like at no other time. Everything turned out luckier for Brenda.