Free Rumors from the Lost World by Alan Davis Page B

hear herself think here, tell her daddy things, stories he never had time for when he was drinking. He was always more interested in what she felt like under her dress than in what she might have to say. When her mother found out about it—the girl never told, the whole thing was all too complicated—she left him like she did the others and he always told the girl, mostly over the phone, how it dried him up. “I love you both,” was the last thing he said. She admits she liked him more when he wasn’t around, except for the times he took her to the airport. He was a liar and all like that, but even so, they were kindred spirits.
    The little Elvis comes with them for tacos, something the girl thought might happen. All the way to the taco joint, the girl sits in back and listens. Her mother sucks up while they pass through one of those pretty neighborhoods. It depresses the girl, all the houses with their big yards and enough space for a ghost to live in. The little Elvis, retard that he is, finally gets the picture, that her mother thinks he’s the real thing and all like that, and his fingers crawl along the backrest. The girl’s father used to do the same thing with his fingers on the bed when he came to tell the girl her bedtime story. Next thing the girl knows, those stubby Elvis fingers are massaging her mother’s collarbone, but little Elvis is dumb enough to look back at the girl and grin. “What about it, Pork Chop? You want a taco, a big sloppy burritto with all the juice running out?” The little Elvis laughs. The girl rolls her eyes so he can know she thinks he’s a dummy. “Take off them glasses, honey,” the little Elvis says. “Let me see your eyes real good.” The girl stares at him over the plastic frames like one of her two role models, the librarian at the branch library. He grins. “Whatever you want, sugar buns, it’s all on me.”
    â€œMama,” the girl whines, “tomorrow was my dancing day.” She’s wearing her only pair of leotards, pulled real fast from a rubber-coated line strung between the trailer and a pockmarked tree.
    â€œDon’t worry about it, sweetheart. The whole mystery of a woman’s life lies ahead of you. Don’t go attaching to some false idol.” Her mother honks at a tractor-trailer parked halfway into the two-lane. They’re in redneck country again, looking for something swanky, a Chi-Chi’s or like that, now that they know the little Elvis is picking up the tab. “Hurricane coming through these parts soon, anyway. Those trailers, they’ll be in Mobile Bay. Besides, those library books in the back seat are way overdue. Didn’t they come from Jackson? Honey, check the due date on them while you’re riding back there, will you do that?”
    There’s one book, that’s all. It’s dusty, stained with cola and forty miles of rough road. Same old, same old, the girl thinks, mimicking her dance instructor, her other role model. She teaches kids for free once a week in the high-school gym a mile from the trailer. “There’s not even a card in it, Mama. We lost the card.” It’s a book about organic gardening they keep to compensate for the fact they’ve never had a garden or even turned a spade. It’s one thing, like cooking, her mother refuses to do for any man, even in the very beginning.
    Remove all sods, weeds, and existing plants, the girl reads. Add peat moss, sand, and sheep manure. There’s a lot in the book about perennials, annuals. Shrubs have large, sprawling root systems and are dangerous to smaller plants.
    The restaurant looks like Mexico. “We’re on vacation!” her mother shouts. All the waitresses wear long flowered skirts. One long wall has a painting of an archway and a big hacienda. Everybody’s happy, and the girl wonders whether they stay that way once they leave. They order almost everything