Vermilion

“Eastern Promise” by Leah Dockrill

On one side of the register sat a rack of cellophane-wrapped Lance crackers, and on the other an enormous glass jar of boiled eggs and pigs feet and other things the boy couldn’t identify, all pickling in a mysterious cloudy liquid. Behind the counter, an oscillating fan turned its head, pushing air that smelled of overripe fruit and sawdust and motor oil.

“Gone, help yourself,” the old man said, tilting his head towards the jar. He reached down and pulled out gleaming silver tongs, the longest the boy had ever seen, and slid them across the counter.

“Nawsir.” The boy shoved his hands in his pockets.

The old man nodded, repositioned his Saints cap, and rang up their cold drinks. He pressed the change into the boy’s father’s palm and leaned in closer, studying his face. He looked to the boy, then back to his father, and winked.

“No doubt who that child belong to.”

Over the old man’s shoulder, the boy surveyed a careful line of school pictures thumbtacked to dark wood paneling: a girl, from snaggletoothed kindergartner to pimply teen in cap and gown. There were scotch-taped newspaper clippings and a framed prayer to Our Lady of Prompt Succor, like the one in his grand-mere’s trailer: Spare us during this hurricane season from all harm. He was mouthing the words when the man entered the store.

It wasn’t the snub-nosed revolver that frightened him, not at first. It was the man’s eyes. The whites visible all around, as if the eyelids had been surgically removed. As if the eyes would pop out and dangle from coiled springs, like mail order toy glasses in a comic book.

“Y’all motherfuckers wanna die?” the man was shouting, pointing the gun all around. He was shirtless and fish-belly pale, with lank, red-brown hair tucked behind his ears.

Daddy, the boy whispered.

His father did not answer. Instead, he took a step back from the armed man, then another. And he leaned, almost imperceptibly, behind his son.

It was all over in seconds. There was only the sound of the till plunked onto the counter and the man’s fingers clacking through the compartments. A dropped six-pack hissing and geysering. Then the little bell clattering on the door glass as the man ran out. He whooped once and slid into a primer gray Chevy, then peeled out and headed west on 14 towards Lake Charles.       

The old man saw the boy’s problem right away. He produced a maroon windbreaker and kneeled, grunting, and tied it around the boy’s waist to hide the wet front of his jeans. He struggled to his feet, shunning the offered hand even as his right knee buckled. For a moment, he locked eyes with the boy’s father, then looked away and made a contemptuous, sucking sound through his teeth.

“Listen,” the boy’s father began, in a voice both adamant and pleading. “I just--”

But the old man did not acknowledge his words. He turned his back and lumbered around behind the counter and dialed the phone.

Father and son walked out and stood a moment in the crumbling asphalt parking lot. The boy climbed into the pickup and pulled the heavy door shut, propped his knees against the glove box, and slid down the bench seat. His jeans and underwear were cold against his skin.

His father paced in front of the store, then strode out past the gas pumps, under fluttering banners strung between the steel canopy and a metal-framed Salem cigarettes sign. He nudged a flattened Schlitz can with his boot, then raised his eyes and stood motionless, staring across the highway at a field of burned cane, acres of fire-withered stalks stretching out to the tree line. After a little while, he walked back to the pickup.

Because there was nothing to say and nothing at all to be done, they did not speak on the ride home. The boy gazed out his window at the land rushing past. As they approached the river, rice and cane gave way to brackish marsh. He rolled his window up, the fetid air so humid, breathing felt like drowning. He bit his lip. He was not going to cry.

He was also never going to use that word again. Daddy. For a short time, his father would be Dad, and then, for the rest of his life, Andre. Which his father did not object to. Andre would live until 2008, and they would never speak of what happened in the store that day. Once, when he was 13 or so, the boy would wake in the night and feel in the same instant his father’s hunkered nearness and need for atonement. He would smell him in the dark, Jim Beam and Pepsi and the cane smoke that clung to his overalls. But he would lie still and pretend to be asleep until he heard the floorboards creak and, seconds later, his door sigh open and shut.

The lift bridge caught them at Bayou Vermilion, just before Abeville. For a second, he thought his father might try to outrun the lowering automatic arm. But he braked hard, fishtailed on the blacktop and came to a stop, then reversed back into the lane. He revved the engine once. Then he leaned forward and rested his forehead on the steering wheel as the rusted hulk rose.

About the author

Amelia Franz is a Pushcart-nominated writer whose fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Image, Hippocampus, The Texas Review, and other literary magazines. She lives in the Baltimore area and teaches online writing at The Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth.

about the artist

Leah Dockrill holds degrees in education, library science, and law. In addition she has built a thirty-year art practice which includes painting and collage. Her work has been exhibited in both Canada and the U.S. and she has earned many awards. In recent years images of Leah’s art have been published in over two dozen art and literature journals and reviews. Some of these are Split Rock Review, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, Mud Season Review,Cosumnes River Journal, Glassworks Magazine, Sunspot Lit, High Shelf Press, Chaleur Magazine, Gulf Stream Literary Magazine, The Esthetic Apostle, and ArtAscent: Art & Literature Journal (Gold Artist Award, August 2018, Bronze Artist Award, April 2019 and Distinguished Artist Award, January 2020.) Leah is represented by Tag Art Gallery, St. Catharines , Ontario and nowords Gallery, Cambridge, Ontario, Canada. She is an elected member of the Society of Canadian Artists and the Colour and Form Society (Canada). She and her husband and two Siberian cats live in Toronto, Canada. More of Leah’s work can be viewed at www.leahdockrill.net