Kenny-Boy

Photographer - Tobi Brun

Kenny-Boy

Mary wasn’t born in Alabama, and she knew she certainly didn’t want to die there, either. The landscape flickered by outside her car window, longleaf pine trees streaking into a single flare of green. The smudged skyline of Birmingham faded behind them, its squat, gray buildings a miserable excuse for a skyline, and Mary’s throat tightened with disappointment. Her husband, Randy, nodded his head to the radio, drumming his hand along his upper thigh. He was off-beat, and though he pretended not to notice, Mary knew it bothered him. She heard it in his exhale. In the sudden, frustrated click of a tongue. A chorus, half a bridge, then the meaty staccato of his fingers stuttered. Paused. Began again. The 80’s station was punctuated with bouts of static and Mary felt the slow tendrils of a headache begin to tighten at her temples. She spoke.

“Could we change the station?” She asked.

Randy kept his eyes on the road.

“No,” he said, “I like this song. You know I like this song.”

Mary pressed her forehead against the cool surface of the window. This was a celebratory vacation. It was meant to be a grand hurrah. They had just left their forties behind in a fanfare of silver party balloons and a shared birthday cake, too many candles haphazardly stuck in its frosting. Their friends had hugged them close and left wine-stained kisses on their cheeks before heading home early to care for dogs or children or newly minted teenagers, of which Mary and Randy had none. Instead, they answered the summertime siren’s call of the beach and packed their suitcases.

They hadn’t been married long. Just a handful of years. Mary, her hair frizzled by years of bleach and ragged at the tips, struck up a conversation with Randy at the local pharmacy. She held a prescription for thyroid-support medication, her body recently gone soft amid middle-aged hormonal famine, and Randy palmed a blue-printed hand cream. He was nice enough. At 47, tired and the sole 2 owner of a 1500 square foot split level, nice enough was all Mary was looking for. They went on a date to the local pizzeria. She learned he hated fishing but loved trout at a restaurant, was kind to waiters but winced behind their backs, paid for dinner but only in $50 increments. He called her the next week, and they were married in six months.

The trip to the coast was cheap. With retirement looming, Randy was less willing to fork over a handful of cash that could be earning interest in their 401(k)’s. Mary hoped they would pack a few of their lightly used suitcases for a trip to Maldives or even spring villas in Tuscany. She wanted to lick marbled salt from her fingers after dinners of fish-and-chips in London and sear the top of her mouth on pizza in New York City. Heck, she said, one evening when their discussion reached an argumentative pitch, “I’d choke on a pita if it was on a cruise in the Mediterranean!”

Instead, they were driving down the hard-drawn center of the United States, leaving the leafy summer suburbs of Chicago for the wind-scraped beaches of the Gulf Coast. To his credit, Mary knew, Randy did make it sound exciting. Exotic, no. Glamorous? No. But quiet, and good. He did make it sound good.

He asked her before bed: “What do you think about driving down to the Alabama coast?”

A crossword puzzle was open across the hairy plain of his belly. His legs were spread long across bed, creating dual humps beneath the comforter.

“We could rent a car, grab some sandwiches or something and make a go of it. We’ll drive straight through the meat of the country.”

Mary chewed the inside of her cheek. Her face was soft, still damp from her evening moisturizer. She took off her glasses and placed them on the nightstand.

She answered, “I haven’t been all the way through the South. It might be nice.”

“Might be?,” Randy laughed. “I’m going to make it the best damn trip you’ve ever taken.” He sighed long and slow before humming to himself in a self-satisfied pulse. Mary rolled over and bit his shoulder, kissing it quick.

They left early on a Monday morning, striking the US hard through its greened middle on I-65. They drove through the sweeping cornfields of Indiana, stopping at a small barbecue joint for lunch and sharing cornbread by the whirr of an undulating fan. Their car was an old BMW model, a deep green with broad fenders. It looked formidable, the kind of impressive vehicle someone would have been proud to own in the 1970s, but the air conditioner was on the fritz and neither had remembered to get it serviced before they left town. It froze over quickly, until there was only a buzz from the air vents. Randy turned it on and off in spurts, their underarms and the tender place at their lower back growing damp. The American South bloomed across the state of Tennessee, an experience that spanned a quick few hours spent eating an early morning breakfast in Nashville and stopping for gas downtown. Mary knew her husband hated to be low on fuel, so she bit her tongue when he stopped every few hours.

By mid-afternoon on Tuesday, just past Birmingham, the creased lines of Randy’s neck had grown red with sunburn. The radio crackled in and out, unbidden stanzas broken and disjointed. Mary twisted herself over the passenger seat and stretched her arm backwards in search of the brown sack of snacks she had packed just that morning. The biscuits and gravy from breakfast left her body heavy and sodden. Randy barked at her, sweat dribbling down his temples.

“What did you bring?”

“Hold on.”

Mary felt something in her shoulder pop and she breathed in hard with pain.

“I’m freaking starving here. C’mon, babe.”

Randy’s eyes cut towards her then back at the road.

“Fine.”

She unbuckled her seatbelt and shifted herself entirely over the seat, leapfrogging her hand over empty water bottles and warmed soda cans before locating the half-crushed sack under the seat.

“It’s kind of messy back here.”

“I didn’t ask for a sermon, just something to eat.”

She handed him a bag of cut apples and Randy’s jaw jutted forward, mouth open.

“Really? Apples? Do you even know what they do to your gut?” “There’s fiber in them. They’re good for you.”

“They’re full of sugar, and if I’m going to have sugar on a road trip I’d rather it be some sort of piece of crap candy.”

A blue sign painted with fast food symbols streaked by the window, and Randy merged hard. The car vibrated as it jumped the rumble strip.

“Candy sounds great.”

They stopped at a Trucker Travel Stop. The brown, yellow and fleshy pink branding reminded Mary of the thick carpet and wood paneling at her grandmother’s house, forever frozen in the 1970’s. While her husband perused the candy aisle, Mary wandered towards the fountain drink station against the back wall. It was tattooed with soda; sugary liquid lacquered the metal countertop and grey tiled floor. A tray of hot dogs steamed next to it, sweating sausages spun between slick metal cylinders. She filled a dented Styrofoam cup high with ice before spurting streams of Coca-Cola on top. It fizzled and popped, the excess bubbles tickling at her nose.

“You ready to go, sourpuss?” Randy held two bags of sour gummy straw in his hands.

Mary never knew if he meant it, the nickname. She never laughed. He never stopped using it.

“Yeah, hold on.” Mary turned towards the waist high wall of snacks and knit the tender space between her eyes together.

Her eyebrows were thin and fair, so they never quite met. Still, the ridges were deep and spread from her hairline almost to the bridge of her nose. She chose a bag of sun faded cheese popcorn before second guessing herself and snatching a small carton of Goldfish crackers instead. She took a moment to straighten the forgotten popcorn back on the shelf before following her husband to the cash register. There were still a few more hours of sun before they would stop for the night, and the sugar cocktail or perhaps strange effects of the candy dye had Randy talking.

“You know, my parents listened to the radio all the time. Talk radio, you know. The occasional baseball game when we were out camping. But otherwise, it was just talk, talk, talk, all the time.” Mary murmered her assent.

Alabama was seeping towards Misissippi outside the window, the weeping kudzu stretching towards the road in sage, sweeping arcs.

“My dad, he was a real man. He’s why I drive so well,” Randy took both hands off the steering wheel and balanced it between his knees, jolting the car before he straightened it back on the highway. “I wish you knew him. You know, I know, he was a truck driver. Which I guess makes me a professionally trained driver. Taught by the kind of guy who can’t mess up.”

Mary realized she was gripping the doorhandle. She loosened her grip, her knuckles reddening with blood flow.

“He was smart. I like smart people, you do, too.” Randy bowled over her concerns, smiling. “That’s why you fell in love with me, right?”

Mary smiled tightly. Ruefully, she thought? Was it a rueful smile? Was there something dark in it, something bitter? She didn’t question Randy’s intelligence. Still, her was brash. Brazen. Unliked. The ebb and flow of electronic impulses in his brain were hardly governed by societal expectation or emotion, and instead he relinquished his ideas on unsuspecting audiences with little thought to their digestion. Brash and loud spoken, he hid the ugly flare of his self-doubt behind her. He could transfix a room with sordid tales of death culture in Central America or lighten a party with jokes that teased at the political dealings of the host. Even so, and perhaps because, he treated his mind as if it would suddenly dissipate. Sometimes the loudness of his voice was too brash for the moment, revealing sweat at his hairline and the untamed stench of insecurity. The air conditioning wheezed, and Randy turned it off to defrost. The cab boiled. Mary tapped her fingers at her temples, drawing her legs up onto the car seat, crossing them like a child. She noticed newly painted veins of dirt across her white tennis shoes.

She spoke. “If you would’ve known better, would you have wanted something different? With your life?”

Randy didn’t answer. Mary saw the tension build in his jaw as he clenched his teeth.

“Would you have wanted kids? To live somewhere else?” Mary’s voice was small, but there was an ache to it. Something tender and small, a question that required an honest answer.

Randy said nothing. The radio continued to play, the sound a tinny, country twang. Thunder growled in the cloudclotted sky. The storm muted the springtime sprawl of color outside the window. The craggy hills of the north had long since softened into flatlands, and even those were giving way to the Gulf region. Just past Montgomery, the highway rose above a streak of swampland and straddled the Mobile River. Trees cloaked in kudzu reached brazenly over the road, eerie, monstrous things. Outrageous, craggy, lifelike as they clawed at the cars speeding down the empty highway. The storm clouds trapped the heat low along the road. Randy glanced at the fuel gage once, twice, three times. No one had spoken in an hour.

“Let’s stop quick,” Randy said.

Mary pointed at the GPS. “We only have a half hour to go,” she said. Her voice was low.

Randy smirked. “A half hour is better spent with a full tank.”

A fleck of candy clung this right canine. The exit was almost hidden by the overhanging heft of tree branches, the blistering orange of synthetic lighting just beyond a bend in the road. There were two gas stations across from each other, each boasting empty bays. Tom & Jim’s Gas Stop boasted a slick tin roof, slanted at an impossible angle and pockmarked with dirt and uprooted vines, but light burned from inside. Mary saw an older man at the counter, leaning backwards with his arms crossed, head tilted towards what she was sure must have been a television hung towards the ceiling. It was too lonely, Mary thought, and she wordlessly pointed at the Chevron across the street. Randy obliged, turning the car hard into a brilliantly lit gas station chain, the concrete scabbed with spilled condiments and oil stains. The Alabama forest hung heavy behind the stark white and silver metal of the place, bending over the clean lines of capitalism as if bowing in reverence. The seat belt alert pinged as they both unbuckled, opening and closing their doors in unison, the staccato sound loud against the chatter of cicadas from the trees. Mary wondered how many were there, their beady eyes black against the night. Randy looked at her, eyebrows raised.

Mary said, “I need to stretch my legs.”

“Don’t go far,” Randy answered, tapping at the pump keypad.

Mary stood on the passenger side of the car; arms folded on its roof with her chin on her hands. She watched her husband’s back flex beneath the thin cotton of his shirt, noted the new lines that streamed across the back of his neck. She hardly knew his body. She’d only seen it for the past few years, already quiet and tempered by middle age. She didn’t know how the tautness of youth had calmed across his chest, small patches of fat cropping up at the bend in his waist and along his upper arms. Youth had long since left him, twisting his physical self towards someplace softer and unknown. Mary felt a sharp twinge of love for the person he must have been. The softer, kinder self. The emotion was easily overwhelming and just as quickly gone. Was it even real, she thought? This kinder person? The stranger walked out of the forest with little fanfare. He wasn’t there, then suddenly he was fully formed and breathing, just beyond the line of gas pumps, as if he’d been split from the earth. He walked with the slope of a wounded animal, tangy and wild with presence. Everything moved. His fingers plucked at one another, bloodying cuticles into crusty lumps, and his tongue worked behind the pockmarked stretch of his cheek. Haggard eyes darted back and forth, from Mary’s tight face to Randy’s curious scowl. “Well hey there, you two.” His voice was raspy with disuse.

“Hey, man.” Randy towards the man, pulling his hands from his pockets.

“You got a couple bucks to spare?” the man said.

He tapped his foot against the ground, the sole of his boot loose and flapping. Rap rap, it went. Rap rap.

“We don’t have anything,” Randy said.

“You expect me to believe that, with that high-oh car you’re drivin’?” There was expectation in his voice.

“We can’t help you out. Sorry.” Randy leveled his eyes at the man inching across the asphalt, incredulous with his defiance.

The man tilted his head and smiled, revealing a mouth full of straight, white teeth. The man’s right canine was broken, leveling the point into a jagged line.

He spoke, louder this time, “Hey man, you know who I am? My names Kenneth, Ken, Kenny-Boy. I live out past the tree line there.” He held his hands up in a mock surrender. “Pretty sure I was born there, too, but who knows? It was a long time ago.” His breathing hard and oddly distinctive, each exhale accompanied by a grating wheeze.

Kenny-Boy continued. “All I need is a couple bucks to get me through the night.”

“We don’t have anything for you,” Randy said. “But you sure as hell better stop right there.” Randy’s hackles were raised, the air lit with primitive territoriality.

“What’re you going to do?” Kenny-Boy stopped. “Hurt me?”

Randy pocketed his credit card and unhooked the pump nozzle from the car, placing it back in its cradle. Kenny-Boy moved closer, his voice wheedling. Dangerous. “Hey buddy. I’m talkin’ to you.” Kenny-Boy jerked his chin up, his left nostril twitching.

“Look man, I don’t have anything. I have a card. Do you want a card?” Randy sucked in his cheeks and squinted his eyes, incredulous. “Even if you get the damn card, I’m not tellin’ you my zip code, so good luck using it here.”

Mary breathed out, her body weakening against the car door. “Randy…”

Kenny-Boy spit. “Shut up, lady.”

Randy fired back. “That’s my wife, asshole.”

Mary couldn’t turn her gaze, couldn’t look at anything but the stranger’s face. It was sunburnt, but it couldn’t hide the leathery complexion and dirt-speckled expanse of it. The corners of his mouth bubbled with spit and blood, and thick flakes of skin peeled from his lips. Mary couldn’t smell him, but she knew he would be earthy and pungent with sweat.

“You give me some money, and we’re all good. And don’t offer no fuckin’ food. I don’t want it, I don’t need it.” His words fell hot on the pavement.

Randy sighed and turned back towards his wife, who was frozen on the passenger side of the car. He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head, his smile pitying. “Do you have anything?”

Ken, Kenneth, Kenny-Boy clucked his tongue once and his nostrils twitched in unison as he turned towards her. “Yeah, baby, you got anything?” He bit his lip and shrugged his eyebrows up and down suggestively. “I don’t have anything, he’s right. I’m sorry.” And she was. She was sorry, that she was meeting this man at a gas station in god-knows-where Alabama. That he’d walked out of the forest, the remote tropics of the American South, and had run into the brunt of her husband’s insecurity. She was sorry that he was alone and she felt alone. No one was guilty of anything but the accident of proximity, and she realized it just might be enough to ruin them all. Mary’s quickly escalating panic punctuated her words as she apologized again.

“I’m so sorry.” The edge of her sentence broke, and she felt the muscles in her stomach clench. She suddenly missed the five-dollar bill she spent on Goldfish and Coke that afternoon. Randy mistook her tone for fear, perhaps for panic and, he reacted hard.

“You hear her? She doesn’t have a damn thing. Neither of us do. So get the fuck out of here.” Mary thought about that night for years. Maybe if he’d sounded more apologetic, the man would’ve made off with a scowl and thick wad of phlegm spat to the pavement. Maybe if he had acted like the man mattered more, like his unwelcome presence held weight, that they would have ended up at the beach like they planned. Their world would have continued like they planned.

Kenny-Boy held out his hand. Grime striped his palms.

“Give me the keys,” he said. “I get the car.”

He jerked his head towards the forest, “you get the woods.”

“Are you fucking kidding me -”

Time moved quickly. It stumbled over itself, losing minutes to seconds as Ken, Kenneth, KennyBoy pulled a knife from the deep pocket of his cargo shorts and stabbed Randy in the stomach. Both men gasped in unison. One hand was sunk deep into another’s torso, where the thrump of blood, pushing and pressing onward, spilled up and around the blade. It was a secret place no one was meant to touch, perhaps only the being that knit blood to bone, but here they were. A colony of germs spread through Randy’s gut, latching onto blood vessels and spilling into tiny capillary canals. The blade, unseen and deadly, nicked the abdominal aorta and skewered his right kidney, unleashing a torrent of blood into his stomach. The delicate balance of Randy’s internal organs was upset and violated.

“Lady don’t you touch him! Don’t you move!” Kenny-Boy screamed across the car, eyes still trained on the gory scene in front of him. Mary held her hands up, bent at the elbows, pale fingers shaking against the clouded sky. The convenience store lights flickered, and the world went dark, the scene lost in the night for a moment before Ken, Kenneth, Kenny-Boy, the man from the swamp, the man from the woods, ran. If Mary had known any better, she would have prayed to the croaking depths of the Alabama wilderness to open its jaws and swallow him whole. She would have pleaded with the swaying kudzuchoked trees to tear the limp threads from his emaciated, tobacco-stained limbs, to leave them in shreds on submerged cypress branches. She would have prayed for a belch from the bayou, summoning alligators on their nocturnal night flights to train their eyes on his circuitous course through the trees. For their hunt to be silent but their enjoyment to be long, drawn out, the screams from their prey unwholesome to the human ear. If she had known, she would have sent a fiery strain of energy towards the sky, electrifying the tunneling wind channels and constellations with an arc of lightning so bright it would crack the darkness straight through the middle, igniting the man’s body with celestial fire.

Such is the grief of a woman, when a woman comes to know grief. Randy cradled his stomach and met his wife’s eyes with a rounded look of surprise. Pain seeped from the corners of his mouth, visible in the white strain of his lips, tunneling down his neck in a trail of wildly pumping arteries. Mary dropped her arms and sprinted around the car, hand skirting the dirty green hood. She gathered a crush of bug corpses in her palm. She caught her husband as he began to slide towards the concrete, wrestling the crook of her elbows underneath his armpits to soften the slump. Her arms burned as they sputtered awake, blood suddenly racing towards her fingertips.

“Hey, you’re okay. You’re okay.” She repeated herself, her words rote and meaningless.

She tossed them towards the gash in his belly as easily as if she was comforting a child, knees red from the itch of summertime grass. What damage could it have done, she thought, her mind clicking back and forth in time, dredging up models from high school anatomy class and off-base chemical equations. The kidneys, heart, liver and lungs, all nestled around each other in perfect pink and purple hues had seemed so approachable when they were flattened against the stretch of a poster board. It was so different from the sweating, bleeding, oozing body in front of her. Adrenaline sped through her limbs and ignited her throat as she screamed. Guttural and harsh, over and over again. She screamed. Kenneth, Ken, Kenny-Boy, did he hear her, Mary thought later? Did the sound of it twist itself around his chest, squeezing his heart as thoroughly as hers broke? Her screams, didn’t they sluice through the trees, gathering weight as they crackled through the saw grass and alligator weed? Grief was grief was grief, Mary thought. For the kind and the unkind. For the dead, the dying, and the ones who should be.

Meghan O'Brien is a graduate of the University of New Orleans MFA program, and works in the publishing and digital media industry.