Pop: An Illustrated Novel

SECTION 1

Greasy Gray Cloud

FEBRUARY 2016

NICOLETTE

I sat by myself on my great-uncle Hubert’s blue velour sectional, eating cornbread and buttermilk for breakfast. It was a school day, middle of February, but the Canard County Schools were closed. Eastern Kentucky’d been snowed under all January, but that day the sun was out bright as prison lights. The only snow lay like gauze patches at the edges of Hubert’s gravel yard. The trail was full of puddles clean out to the blacktop. The bare-branch woods sparkled like somebody’d shot a leaf blower full of glitter at them.

Hubert Jewell was close to a grandfather as I had. He lived out Long Ridge on top of the second-highest mountain in Kentucky in a house they’d added onto a hundred times. Some of it was brick. Some of it was plywood. Some of it was Tyvek and tar paper. The roof was a mishmash of red, blue, green, and tan metal sheets. All the doors had hung somewhere else, which suited that side of my mother’s family, cause the Jewells never let go of anything, and you never knew what was behind the next whopper-jawed door wouldn’t latch right.

But that day, Hubert hadn’t fooled with his own house in months. Hubert was a quarter mile down the trail, putting a kitchen in one of his new tourist cabins. They were coming to shoot a movie in Canard County, and Hubert was wanting to get some fat rent off them Hollywood people.

I could have been at my dad’s in Kingsport, Tennessee. He worked in a chemical plant, sometimes drove a forklift, sometimes drove a truck. My high school there had a better culinary program, and I had a grandmother there who backed me in whatever I did, but it can get hard to breathe in Kingsport, and not just because the smell coming off the chemical plant and paper plant and other plants they got.

I could have been with my mother. She was holed up at my dead Granny Cora’s out the Ridge past Hubert’s cabins. Mom was hiding out from life, weighed down by grief and stale honey buns. Sat on the computer all day commenting her life away. I could have been with her.

But I was at Hubert’s. Watching a man-cook yell at a bunch of young woman-cooks on Hubert’s humongous flatscreen. Man-cook thought he knew how to run a place, how to get people to do. I’m not sure he did. I’m not sure all his hollering and ugly talk helped the food taste any better or get done any quicker. But I watched him, trying to learn how a chef does, because that’s what I wanted to be. A chef.

I’d finished my breakfast and was doing curls with a ten-pound weight when my cousin Colbert came in the house, stood in front of the television. Colbert was a cop down in town, thin-skinned and sensitive as the bottom of a baby’s foot, the last person needed a badge. Colbert stood there, massaging his biceps, his pickled-egg head perfectly blocking my view.

I said, Why don’t you get out of the way, Little Colbert?

He said, Shut your dyke mouth, Nicolette.

I said, Takes one to know one, Little Colbert.

He jerked me up off the couch, jammed me against the paneling next to Hubert’s gun safe, knocked Hubert’s laminated Bocephus clock off the wall, and stuck the long bone in his arm up in my throat.

He said, Call me ‘Little Colbert’ again. I dare you.

I’d of taken Little Colbert’s dare in a heartbeat, but I couldn’t with my throat pressed shut like it was.

Little Colbert run his hand up under my belt, lifted me off the floor.

He said, Maybe you’d like me to make a woman of your skinny ass right here.

He got my belt loose, yanked it out of my pants with one hand. When he done that, I dropped that ten-pound weight on his foot, hit him square across the toes. He let go of me and I run out the door, darted sock-footed through the trucks and four-wheelers in the muddy front yard the quarter mile out Long Ridge to where Hubert was.

*   *   *

HUBERT LAY under the sink, and when I slammed the cabin door, he banged his head off the sink pipe.

He cussed, said, Why aint you in school?

I said, Snow day.

He shook his head and went back to plumbing.

I told Hubert what Little Colbert done.

He stopped working, lay there on his back, his belly pulsing like a jungle snake trying to digest a baby tiger.

I said, What you going to do?

He said, You go see your mother.

I said, What about Little Colbert?

He said, Do what I tell you.

I said, Dang, and started for the door.

Hubert said, Nicolette.

I said, What?

He scooted out from under the sink and sat up. He rubbed his raw red hand over his onion scalp.

He said, Bring me a pop.

I got him a Pepsi out of the cooler in the kitchen and turned to go.

He said, Nicolette.

I said, What?

He said, Put you on a pair of them, and pointed to a pile of boots next to the door.

I rubbed his head, put on the boots, and went to find my mother.

DAWN

I’d told my water-bug daughter not to go to Hubert’s, that she wouldn’t like it, that she’d get squashed. And I’d like to say I’m not like this, but when Nicolette busted in here, nothing on but a T-shirt, little skinny jeans, and some man’s rubber boots, face red as a beet, hollering about Little Colbert, first thing I said was:

I told you so.

See, Nicolette is a little thing, bones like coat hanger wire, stringy hair down in her eyes. She’d of made a good kite, had you stout enough plastic sheeting, string enough, stiff enough wind. As it was, she stood there, one hand on the kitchen counter, staring at me sitting at the computer.

She said, What are you doing?

I said, Playing Rook.

She said, Online?

I said, Yeah. What’s it to you?

She said, Nothing. Said, Who you playing with?

I said, Some woman in Knockbottom.

She said, Who you playing?

I said, Dude in Detroit and an old woman in Sassafras.

She said, You know them?

I said, Through this.

Nicolette waded through the pizza boxes and piles of clothes on the kitchen floor. She opened the refrigerator, said, Why’s it so dark in here?

I said, In the refrigerator?

She said, In this house.

I was gassy and having trouble holding a thought. I wasn’t ready for a bunch of daughter questions. Plus, Nicolette’s spindly arms were covered in goose pimples.

I said, Where’s your coat?

She said, I had to leave in a hurry.

I said, Where?

She said, Hubert’s.

I said, Why?

She said, Let’s go to the store.

I said, Why did you have to leave Hubert’s in a hurry?

Nicolette picked up a little square piece of paper off the counter had the name of a payday loan place across the top, said, Is this your list?

I said, Yeah, you take it and go.

She said, Why don’t you go with me?

I said, I can’t.

She said, Hubert says you’re scared to leave the house.

I stopped sucking the chocolate off the malted milk ball in my mouth. I bit into it, hoping the tiny magical crunch would turn back the hands of time and I would be alone by the laptop glow. It did not. Nicolette stood looking at me, lit from behind by the light under the stove hood.

I said, Why’d you have to leave Hubert’s?

She said, It don’t matter. Let’s go to the store.

I said, You’re killing me. Why you want to kill your mother?

She said, You sitting in this cave of a house scared to move is what’s killing you.

I said, What was Little Colbert doing over there?

I said, I told you not to go over there.

She started reading my grocery list. Fruit Pebs, P-Tarts, cheese corn, caramel corn, YD, Pepsi, cakes, donuts. Baloney.

I’ll be damned if that woman in Sassafras didn’t have the red two. Red two is the second-to-boss card in Rook. At least the way we play it. I was sure my partner had it. No point bidding high as we did if she didn’t have it.

I said, Shit.

Nicolette said, What?

I said, They set us again.

Nicolette said, Momma, you got to eat better.

I said, Damn sandbaggers.

She said, Look at me.

I looked up, give her a fake smile.

She said, So you don’t care Hubert thinks you’re scared?

I said, Do I look like I care?

She said, Well. Give me some money. If I’m going to the store.

I said, I aint got no money. You pay for it and I’ll pay you back.

She said, If I’m going to the store, I aint buying this junk.

I said, What are you going to get?

She said, Beans. Stuff for cornbread. Greens.

She’d got like this, ever since she’d been watching them food shows and going to these Appalachian food festivals and cooking competitions with my aunt June. She’d won a few ribbons and thought she was the hillbilly Julia Child.

I said, I aint cooking all that.

She said, I will.

I said, Look at you, little hillbilly hippie girl. Little hipsterbilly.

She sat down on the chair. Started crying.

I said, Oh my God. You are so tenderhearted.

She wiped snot off her nose and tears off her cheeks. I took her by the chin, said, What happened?

She didn’t answer. Got up and left. Not saying bye.

I hollered after her, Be careful. I love you.

She didn’t say a thing. Didn’t wave her hand. Didn’t nod her head. Sure as hell didn’t say she loved me.

And I thought to myself, to supposably be so smart, that child has some serious communication issues.

HUBERT

My brother Colbert’s boy had shoulders broad as a truck bumper. Short and stocky. Built perfect to work underground. But Little Colbert never went in the mines. Little Colbert hung around his daddy’s body shop. Dicked around up at the college until he went into law enforcement.

Little Colbert pretty much had things handed to him, but acted like he was the most put-upon man ever born. Chip on his shoulder. Bad to bully. Went through women like they was sticks of gum. I was put out with him already cause he’d made things hard on several friends of mine and they’d made things hard on me.

So when Nicolette told me what he done, I come back to the house.

He sat in there on the couch drinking a beer, watching television. One of the women was in the kitchen. I said for him to come outside and help me with something. Stood there too long while he got his shoes on. Followed him out on the porch.

I said, Talked to Gilly this morning.

Gilly was a state police officer, worked out of the Canard post.

Little Colbert said, Did you.

I said, He was telling me about this video he seen. You and Ashley in Pigeon Forge.

Ashley was Gilly’s wife.

Little Colbert said, Hunh.

I said, He asked me what I’d do if he was to kill you.

Little Colbert said, What’d you tell him?

I said, ‘It’d be hard to predict.’

Little Colbert looked at me, said, Sounds like I’m on my own.

I said, I don’t want you here.

He said, Where you want me?

I said, Not here.

I took six hundred dollars out of my shirt pocket and give it to him.

I said, I’ll go see Beaver in the morning. Tell him you had to go.

Beaver was the Canard police chief.

Little Colbert said, This aint right.

I said, You ever put your hands on Nicolette, or any of these kids, again, you won’t have to worry about Gilly. Gilly’ll be the least of your problems.

He looked at the money.

Said, Six hundred dollars aint enough to do nothing.

I said, Well then, give it back.

He said, You wouldn’t do this if Daddy was living.

I said, Go get your things together.

He said, You sure you want this?

I said, Done talking. Go on now.

To his credit, he did. Left that night.

And I swear on my brother’s grave I hoped he’d stay gone.

NICOLETTE

I’d worked this Episcopal woman’s catering job down in town, so I had a little money. I went over to Uncle Filbert’s car lot, got the keys to a wrecked Kia would still run, and drove it off the mountain, down to Canard.

I went in the Feed-Mor beside the hardware store, got Mom baloney and light bread, the Yellow Dog pop she wanted, some Grippo’s potato chips. Two boxes of off-brand Pop-Tarts. Seven cans of off-brand Beanee Weenees. Five cans of Vienna sausage. I brought it back and set it on Granny’s patio.

I spent the rest of the day sitting on a rock above Hubert’s cabins, watching him boss around the boys hung around waiting for him to tell them what to do. They swept and they fixed. Beat rugs and mopped. Stuff they’d of never done if it wasn’t Hubert telling them to do it. Or maybe did it cause they thought they might meet a movie star. I don’t know. I don’t like to spend too much time in the heads of Hubert’s boys.

I was aggravated at Hubert for not getting after Little Colbert and wished I wasn’t. Hubert showed me how to clean fish, how to make soup beans and cornbread, let me come with him to a hog killing. After my great-papaw Houston died, Hubert sang the old songs with me, Quil-o-Quay and Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground, the ones me and Houston used to sit in the High-Rise apartments in downtown Canard and sing.

It was near dark when the wind picked up, bit me through my hoodie, reminded me I needed to get my big coat out of Hubert’s place.

I love my big blue overcoat. I’d found it in my grandma Dot’s attic in the house where Daddy grew up. That coat made me look like I was in the navy. Or the Matrix. In the pocket of that coat was a stack of index cards tied with a ponytail holder. Cards had written on them recipes from Hubert’s mother, my great-grandmother. Stack cake. Apple butter. Chess pie. How to fix poke so it wouldn’t kill you. Stuff her mother told her when she first set up housekeeping.

They were lard stained and written in a young girl’s loopy hand, back when they taught handwriting in school.

I hustled back to Hubert’s through the rattling trees. I peeped in Hubert’s picture window. The lights were all on. I seen my coat on the rocking chair. Little Colbert was asleep on the couch. I come around the back of the house, come in through the kitchen, got my coat off the rocker and my belt off the floor, come back out on the porch. Little Colbert never stirred. It was getting cold again, cold as whiz. The moon was round and white, like a hole’d been punched in the night, the next day shining through like a heel in a ruined sock.

I stood on the porch with my hands in my pockets and my mind on my mom. She’d lost a lot of people over the years, and it had knocked the wind out of her. I don’t guess she’d mind me telling you, but she was in jail for a little while. Now she just stayed at Cora’s, puffed up like a big dead dog. Couldn’t stop eating. Drank a case a pop a day. Barely got out of bed. I wished I could do for her.

I felt in my coat pocket for the recipe cards. They weren’t there. I looked in the window. Little Colbert had got up and moved to the back room, packing his things. I snuck back in Hubert’s to hunt for my cards, scared shitless Little Colbert would hear me. He didn’t, but I never found my cards. I wished them cards was in my hand so hard I about cracked my skull wishing it. I walked out to Hubert’s cabins to hunt them cards and a place to sleep.

DAWN

My granny Cora’s house is three hundred yards past Hubert’s cabins. Sits up on a knob, a thick green lawn she kept tidy, flowerdy bushes all in the yard, pots of herbs lined up on the house side of a concrete carport. I should of just walked over to the cabins to see if Nicolette was with Hubert. But I didn’t. I was having issues. I can say that now. I was too much on the internet and the way it made the world seem horrible made me feel horrible. I couldn’t hardly leave the house. It’s embarrassing to admit.

I called Hubert on his cell phone.

I said, Did Little Colbert hurt Nicolette?

Hubert said, I reckon Little Colbert is leaving us.

That didn’t make no sense to me. Little Colbert loved swinging his big cop stick better anybody I’d ever seen.

I said, Bullshit he is.

Hubert said, Don’t believe me, hide and watch.

I said, What happened?

Hubert said, He set one too many sacks of shit in my lap.

I said, Where’s Nicolette?

Hubert said, Speak of the devil.

I said, What?

He said, She just walked in the door.

I said, Let me talk to her.

I heard him say to her, Talk to your mommy.

Then Hubert said to me, She says she can’t.

I said, Put Nicolette on the damn phone.

Nicolette said, Hello.

I said, You tell me what happened and you tell me right now.

She said, Somebody got my cards.

I said, What cards?

She said, My recipe cards I got from Granny Jewell.

I said, That’s what you was upset about?

She said, I loved those cards.

I said, I know you did, baby. I’m sorry.

She sniffed a little.

I said, Did you get my groceries?

She said, I put them on the patio.

I said, Well, I hope a bear aint got them.

She said, They’re hibernating.

I said, Your cousins aint.

She said, I love you, Momma.

I said, You coming back over here?

She said, Not tonight.

I said, Well. Keep your phone on.

She said, I will.

I said, I love you too, baby. You know that.

She said, Yeah.

She hung up. I sat there on the couch in my house shoes and pajama bottoms watching little videos of dogs jumping on the trampoline and men hollering in front of American flags about how the Democrats were going take away their AKs, make it impossible to buy bullets. I watched this man in Big Stony talk mush right on this woman’s Facebook wall while his wife was doing live commentary on it on her wall. They was also two blockheads, one in Buzztop, one moved to Lexington, arguing about who would win a fight between God and Superman. I had my leg thrown over the arm of an easy chair eating microwave popcorn and drinking them pops Nicolette brought me until I finally just slouched out on the floor and fell into a deep and pitiful sleep.

HUBERT

Nicolette set up a bed on the couch, pulled a sleeping bag up over her head. Didn’t say nothing else to me, so I didn’t say nothing else to her. I put a new ball in one of the toilets in the bathhouse, hooked up the hot water heater in one of the cabins, went to bed.

The movie people were coming the next afternoon. They were looking for places for a 150 people to stay for at least seven weeks. Word was they had five million dollars to spend. I was looking to help them do it. I had to pick up a washer-dryer in Tennessee. Figured I’d head down there when Nicolette left for school. Be back in time to show the movie people what we had. Come morning, I lit the stove, fried a pack of bacon. Nicolette come shuffling in, swallowed up in a ragsale overcoat, set down. I set a plateful of bacon on the table.

I said, You going to school?

She nodded, pointed at the plate, said, Can I take this?

I said she could.

She put the bacon in a bread bag, the bread bag in her backpack.

She said, You find my cards?

I said, No, honey. I sure didn’t.

She was at the door when I said, Colbert’s gone.

She said, Yeah, right.

I said, Honey, he’s gone.

She slipped out the door without a word, disappeared into fog thick as biscuit dough, went to catch the bus at the end of the road. I figured there’d be time to talk later.

NICOLETTE

The bus stop was the better part of a mile from Hubert’s cabin. I walked through the fog, dodging ruts and puddles, mind agitated. I come to where the gravel met the blacktop and the historical marker there, one I’d read a hundred times about a Civil War scuffle fought on Long Ridge over a fifty-pound corn pone, cooked over fire in an iron kettle and stolen back and forth for the better part of the fall of 1864. I let myself be distracted by the thought of the Battle of the Fifty-Pound Corn Pone, so as not to think about Little Colbert sitting in a cop car somewhere, waiting to mess with me. I distracted myself thinking how that Canard County Cornbread Campaign of 1864 might be good to reenact out there at Hubert’s tourist cabins. That might help Hubert rent out them cabins. We might could make our own movie about it.

I distracted myself with such, leaning against a tireless Ford pickup at the edge of the highway, when a giant come out of the fog. He wore bib overalls and hair slicked back with grease. He blinked like a baby. He was a stranger to me.

He raised his hands, said nothing, kept blinking. His head popped forward twice. He stretched his jaw like somebody’d just busted him in it.

He said, King’s daughter, she was sick.

I stood there like nothing was the matter. But I told myself to get ready to drop my backpack and run. Get ready to five-finger death punch him.

I said, Sick of what?

He stood there frozen, said, Sick unto death.

I said, Who are you?

He said, Jack took out his jar of good clear water and shook it.

Giant curled one hand and moved it like shaking a jar.

Giant said, Jack looked through the jar at the king’s daughter, and the burbles sank. Jack seen Death hovering over that girl’s bed, knew the king’s daughter had to die.

Giant’s eyes widened.

He said, Jack knew the king’d killed several tried to help his daughter and didn’t accomplish. Cut off their heads. Set the heads on posts outside his castle.

I said, Giant, I’m trying to get to school. And you best not be hindering me. I know the five-finger death punch.

Giant said, Jack didn’t tell the king his daughter had to die. Took out his sack, pulled it open, said, ‘Whickety-whack, into my sack.’ And Death flew into the sack.

I started walking back the way I’d come.

Giant said, Didn’t nobody die after that. Not for a thousand years.

I stopped walking, said, People have to die.

I turned, and the