The Milk Wagon Page 5

  It was a shame Nate had finally volunteered to drive because the secondary effects of our meal were fouling up a truly pristine vehicle. Leather interior. Pioneer stereo with cassette player and equalizer. Eight speakers with a subwoofer, electric windows, and to top it off, a sunroof. If he put a fridge in the back and hotwired a TV, I think I could have lived there.

  “A name?” Nate asked, and looked over at me. I shrugged my shoulders, and he looked up in the rearview mirror. “Never crossed my mind. What do you think, Mark?”

  “I agree,” Mark said. “A truck without a name is just a truck.” The first three weeks had been a bit of an adjustment for Nate, but nothing out of the ordinary for a new student. He followed me around pretty close at the outset and soon bonded with Mark, due in part to their somewhat similar new-guy histories. Eventually he started to feel comfortable enough around us to chill out a bit and act like a normal person, even if, more often than not, he had a look on his face like he was perpetually lost in a room he had been in many times before.

  “I could go for a name,” Nate said.

  “Like the Milk Wagon.’”

  “Exactly. Like the Milk Wagon. How’d y’all come up with that anyway?”

  “It was actually pretty easy,” Mark said, “happened at Hop’s back to school party. Rush Atherton named it.”

  “Rush?”

  “Red-headed kid. Quiet; wears flannel all the time. Likes Van Halen.”

  “Oh yeah. I know who he is.”

  “So the party was pretty wild before Matt drove up in that beast. I mean one of the best ever. Full of chicks, lots to drink, and everyone dancing and absolutely just throwing down. Some folks had come outside to take a look, but it didn’t get too much attention up to that point, even though Matt parked it in the front yard.”

  “It was the perfect spot, if you ask me.”

  “Nobody asked. Anyway, Matt and I step out on the front porch to shotgun a few beers after Hop caught us drinking in the living room.”

  “Y’all were getting it on everything.”

  “You should have made that room off limits. The door was wide open. Can I finish the story?”

  “If you hurry up.”

  “We get through round one and are catching our breath when Rush walks up, longneck in hand, to take a leak. He leans up against a tree to do his business, and lays his eyes on that big hunk of junk for the first time.”

  “Careful now,” I said, “you’re talking about a classic.”

  “A classic?” Hop said, turning his cup upside down and banging it on the corners of his mouth to get at the ice. “A lot of words came to mind that night, but classic was not one of them.”

  “Bite me.”

  “So, we’re watching Rush, and the whole time he’s doing his business, he just stares at it. Like he couldn’t figure out what it was.”

  “The majesty of it put him in a trance.”

  “Shut up, Matt. Seriously. Then, he zips up, slams his beer, says ‘nice Milk Wagon,’ and goes back in and cranks up ‘Dance the Night Away.’ I looked at Matt, he looked at me, and we knew right then it was golden.”

  “And that’s how the legend began,” Hop said. “If memory serves me, we got nineteen people in it that night.”

  “Was that the time Sammy surfed it?”

  “Yeah. Guess he technically makes twenty.”

  “That was earlier in the night. We had a, uh, more intimate group of eight pile in it later.”

  “Eight?”

  “Four couples, Nate,” Mark said. “I’ll explain the details to you later. Geez.”

  “Oh, I get it now. Awesome.”

  “Yes. Awesome would be one way to describe it.”

  “You see?” Nate said. “Matt’s right. It is a classic.”

  “Thank you, sir.” I looked over at Nate and nodded, and Mark and Hop groaned. Then Nate upped the ante.

  “I wish I had one.”

  I blinked. Mark stared at him. Hop shook his head like a seven-year old refusing to go to bed. “No, no, no. Bullshit, no. Are you serious?”

  “Serious as a ghost.” Nate let out a goofy, staccato laugh that sounded like he was clearing his throat. It was the kind of noise people make when they are trying to fill a void after they’ve told a joke and suddenly realize it’s terrible.

  “As a what?” Mark asked. “Just how old are you? Five?”

  “Nate, you are a classic,” Hop said. “A classic dumb ass. That’s what we should call you. Nate the dumbass.” Hop made finger quotes when he said it. “Even better.”

  “An enigma,” Mark said, nodding – more to himself. He was proud to have worked such a word into the conversation and more proud that he knew that I knew it was spot on.

  “I guess what I’m trying to say is – anybody can have a new vehicle.”

  “Really?” Mark said, rolling his eyes. “Wrong.”

  “Y’all know what I mean,”

  “No, Nate, we don’t. I have never seen a new car in my driveway.”

  Neither had I, for that matter, and I didn’t expect to see one anytime soon, either. In fact, considering my family’s shaky financial situation, there was a real question as to whether I would even get to finish out at St. John. Tuition was a luxury, not a necessity, and things were tight around the Frazier house. Hop and Mark knew this was a real possibility for me, and Mark told me the finances weren’t exactly in the black for him either, but I didn’t want Nate to know. I was too embarrassed, so I moved off the topic, as usual, with an attempt at levity.

  “It hasn’t been too bad, actually. In fact, as Mark noted, the extra space has already served us well.”

  “Well, at least two of us,” Mark said, and leaned up to give me some skin.

  “My man.”

  “Not cool,” Hop said, “not cool at all.”

  “Sounds ideal to me,” Nate said. “Hey, speaking of extra space, does it really have a secret compartment? What do y’all call it? ‘The Trapper Keeper’ or ‘Trapper’ or something like that, right?”

  I whipped my head back around and glared at the second row. Knowledge of the Milk Wagon’s most distinctive feature was shared by a chosen few, and its existence was rarely discussed in public. Hop and Mark shook their heads. They didn’t tell.

  “How’d you hear about the Trapper?” I asked, probably with too much edge.

  “Em- Emily Miller mentioned it to me the other day.”

  “Emily?” My mind snapped back like a rubber band. Of course Emily did.

  Emily was the only other person in our class who actually had money – real money, and when Nate mentioned her name, I had a revelation that was not entirely comforting. Nate’s family, like Emily’s, appeared to be flush with cash. He was the only other person I knew who had been to Europe – he did a whole semester of ninth grade in Austria as part of an exchange program. It all made me wonder if their not-inconsistent histories would cause them to cross paths in a way that ended up in a coupling. She had already shared one of our cardinal secrets with him – even though she swore to me she would keep it between us. Who knows what else they discussed? I felt the ugly tinge of jealousy rear up, but I ignored it. I really wanted to like this cat. But I couldn’t quit thinking about Em.

  Hop took the sting out of the air.

  “Ferris,”

  “What?”

  “Ferris. I think we should name it Ferris.”

  “What the hell kind of name is that?” I asked, still a bit ticked off.

  “This truck reminds me of that Ferrari from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” Hop said, rubbing the finish on the seat. “Red. Sleek. Awesome.”

  “But Ferris didn’t even own that car,” Mark said. “It was Cameron’s.”

  “It was actually Cameron’s dad’s,” I said, “and if you recall, the Ferrari was destroyed after C
ameron had a breakdown because his old man was such a dick.”

  “Then let’s call it Ferris,” Nate said. We all got quiet for a second and thought about it.

  “But -”

  “That works,” Hop said.

  “It’s perfect,” Nate said, and continued north. We drove past my old stomping grounds in Lyman, and crept dangerously close to Saucier where the population started to resemble what most people think most of the people from Mississippi look like. We slowed down on Highway 53 and turned down an unmarked road not too far from a stable, then drove another mile through the woods to what looked to me like a dead end. It was not. The overgrown jumble of underbrush – woods, pine, pecan, and oak trees so dense the tree line transitioned from green to gray to black just a few feet off the shoulder – hid a road that led us to a well-manicured alcove flanked by two dwarf magnolias bordering a wrought iron gate with brick posts that must have been ten feet tall. Behind it, a cobblestone driveway twisted through a thicket until it disappeared. Looked like Sleepy Hollow to me – and this was during the day. I couldn’t imagine what it must look like at night.

  “Sweeeeet,” Hop said, leaning into the front seat and ducking his head down below the visors to get a better look. Mark rolled down his window and let out a slow whistle.

  “Daaaaamn.”

  Nate keyed in a code on the pad, and the gate started to open.

  “Perfect,” Nate said again, and put the truck in gear.

  Chapter 12

  I have been to all my friends’ houses at one time or another. Depending on the day, the season, and what was going on at that particular moment, we could spend a few minutes, an overnight, or even a weekend hanging out – and it was not altogether unusual to drop in uninvited.

  There were those houses where everyone gathered because they were comfortable, and the parents were conspicuously permissive – like Hop’s. His folks didn’t provide a lot of oversight, so their house was the default for spending the night when we didn’t want to go home because we were going to be out later than our respective curfews would allow.

  There were houses where everyone gathered for an entirely different reason: food. Mark’s Italian mom always had large pots on the stove or trays in the oven – lasagna, spaghetti and meatballs, ham – a buffet of samples from what Mark deemed “the motherland.” I had some of my finest meals at Mark’s house. Plus, they had one of those toilets with a cushioned seat.

  A few of our friends – Trey Kratz for example – had nice parents and sweet houses, but they were like museums on the inside. The furniture consisted mostly of antiques, and there were certain chairs we couldn’t sit in and certain towels we couldn’t use. When I was there, I felt like I was trapped at a perpetual dinner party and kept expecting old ladies to walk in carrying plates of shrimp cocktail and deviled eggs talking about their azaleas.

  Some houses were memorable because of the way they were decorated, and some houses I barely remember at all. A few were close to the beach, and some were within walking distance to Archie Park where we would play pick up games of basketball or football. Some came with siblings, which might not seem very important on its face, but to this day, I have not forgotten how Sammy’s older brother taught us how to undo the elusive front bra clasp with three fingers. I never quite understood why he kept a bra under his bed, but I never questioned it either. That skill ended up serving me all my life. Like typing.

  To a great extent, each house was different, and each house had its own personality – good and bad, and I thought we had seen it all.

  Until we went to Nate’s.

  When the gates swung open, Nate crept into the thicket, and we emerged on the other side into what must have been fifty acres of rolling hills. The truck snaked its way down the cobblestones, and we took it all in – Hop and I with our faces stuck to the windows, and Mark hanging halfway out the sunroof. We passed over a small bridge and drove through a pecan orchard that was being tended to by a lanky old yardman driving a golf cart. He had a big straw hat and stopped and watched us as we passed.

  We eventually turned onto the final stretch that led to an estate flanked by a tennis/basketball court; a small, prehistoric looking shed; and a freestanding garage. We parked in a circular brick drive with a fountain in the middle that had bronze birds perched around a little naked kid shooting water out at all directions into the bowls below it. It was like we had been dropped out of the suburbs of Gulfport into some alternate living area where they take photos for magazine covers.

  “How come I’ve never seen this place before?” I asked.

  “Probably because you weren’t supposed to.” Nate said. “Used to belong to an old money family from New Orleans. They liked to escape over here from the Big Easy to disappear for a day or two. They ended up dumping it after the wife found out there was some sneaking around going on that didn’t include her. When the house came up for sale, my dad jumped on it. He said he liked that it was out of the way and that it didn’t need a whole lot of work.”

  “How many of you Mayeses live here?” Mark asked.

  “Just me, my old man and my stepmom.”

  “Just three of you? You need a boarder?” Hop asked.

  “Stepmom?” Mark asked. “How’s that working out?”

  “About like you’d expect,” Nate said, “for a rebounder. Typical trophy wife.” He looked at Mark. “You’d probably like her.”

  “I might,” Mark said, raising an eyebrow. “And she might like me. I do have a reputation as quite the stallion, you know.”

  “Stallion, my ass,” Nate said. “When she sees you, Mark, she’ll wonder how the lawn man got inside.”

  It was actually a pretty good line for Nate.

  “Well, I look forward to meeting her, and, after I do, she may indeed want me to mow the lawn.” He smacked his lips and made a motorboat sound.

  “You are not right,” Nate said, “and you’re out of luck – at least for tonight. She works with my dad at the clinic managing the books, and they are heading out to dinner straight from the office.”

  “Cool,” Hop said as we started to walk in. “Hey, you going to pull Ferris around to that barn of a garage over there or leave it here? If we’re going to shoot hoops later, I should probably go ahead and get my glasses.”

  Nate checked his watch and then glanced at his truck. “We should be okay. Since I have to take y’all back tonight, I’ll just keep it parked here. They shouldn’t come back for some time, anyway.” He pushed open the door and looked over his shoulder at the gate.

  “Yeah,” he said, mostly to himself, still staring out towards the road. “I think we’ll be fine.”

  Chapter 13

  “Rack ’em,” Nate said, blowing the blue chalk off the top of his stick, “my break.”

  In the back of Nate’s house, overlooking the swimming pool was the ultimate game room. On one end was a sectional sofa and big screen, and on the other end, a pool table and a Black Knight pinball machine that looked like it came straight out of Aladdin’s Castle, the Edgewater Mall arcade that ate our quarters as fast as we could feed them into the slots. Nate had already whipped me and Hop in two games of cutthroat. Mark didn’t play, because once he found out Nate had a satellite, his one and only focus was trying to dial in the Playboy channel.

  The game room was a microcosm of the rest of the house; everything looked new, expensive, and to some degree, clinical. The place was spotless and uniform – even the towels in the bathroom were lined up and spaced out just right. I used one to dry my hands and did my best to put it back just how I found it, but it still looked like a homeless person had hung it up. I wondered if Nate kept his bedroom the same way as they kept the house – clean and orderly. I guess we would see soon enough. He just got Donkey Kong for his Nintendo, and we were going play a few games before a pizza run, which I hoped was not too far off because I was already starting to
get hungry again.

  “Hop, you in?” I asked.

  “I’m going to take a break. Mark’s looking kind of lonely over there.”

  “Okay, just don’t sit too close to each other. Y’all are making me nervous.” I grabbed the chalk. “Looks like it’s just you and me, Nate. Eight ball?”

  “Sure.”

  “I hope I get stripes. I’m always better with stripes.”

  I arranged the balls, making sure I put a few extra solids on the outside, and waited for him to break. He leaned over, pulled back his cue and took a couple of practice strokes. He reared back his elbow and tagged the ball as hard as I’ve ever seen one get hit. It made a beeline for the other side of the table, and I waited for the rewarding crack, hoping his shot would scatter the rack and set me up for a good run, but I never heard it.

  Before the cue ball could get there, the front door slammed open and crashed into the wall, whipping all of our heads around in unison. It scared us for sure, but it was just a teaser, because the screaming that followed it made my stomach hurt the way it did when my parents fought in front of me and my brothers.

  “DAMMIT, NATE.”

  It was an angry bellow, the kind spewed out with a pointed frown and clenched fists. The kind someone works up to over a period of seconds, if not minutes. The kind fueled by longstanding, deep-seated resentment. Perhaps most telling, it was the kind reserved for a soft target – upper hand vs. lower hand – where the one dropping the bomb does not expect any flack in return.

  The commotion caused Nate to jam his stick into the felt, leaving a powdery blue divot. It scared Hop and Mark straight off the couch, with Mark a second or two behind as he scrambled to change the channel. It jolted me too, and I looked over at Nate for context. He was white as a sheet.