A Place Called Wiregrass by Michael Morris

cocked it forward. Skateboards and bicycles scattered to the shoulder of the pavement, and the shiny black truck departed with my worn-out car.
     
    Cher was in the height of her glory riding with Laurel in the backseat of Miss Claudia’s big Lincoln.
    “Where to, Miss Cher and Miss Laurel?” I knew I shouldn’t have encouraged them to act like big shots, but I tried to remind myself that you’re only a young ’un once.
    “To the penthouse apartment, darling,” Laurel said a little too convincingly. All those trashy soap operas she watched, I thought.
    “Onward to the club,” Cher said in a throaty whisper. She leaned sideways onto Laurel and giggled. Cher’s silliness comforted me. Her developing body had not evaporated my little girl yet.
    Just because I wasn’t allowed to act silly doesn’t mean it will hurt anybody else, I decided early on with Cher. Maybe if Suzette could have escaped her problems in silly giggles and make-believe, she wouldn’t have had to escape her heartache with dope.
    After the girls were dropped off at the skating rink, I found myself not wanting to go back home. Emptiness seemed to be sucked into my pores from the very air that spewed from theair-conditioning vents. Would Kasi want to talk if I stopped by her place? But then the mental image of her getting all fixed up and spiking that hair out to go juking flashed across the windshield.
    I was sure Gerald Peterson was out on some date too. I pictured him cleaned up and capless, sitting at a restaurant cutting his T-bone with those big powerful hands. After a big meal, he would go out to a club and dance. Maybe one or two beers, but he wouldn’t overindulge. He’d keep one elbow on the bar and turn his head to grin at all his friends.
    As I turned up the soft echoes of the steel guitar on the radio, I tried to capture Gerald’s voice and guess what he would say to the girlfriend he may be with tonight. All I could think of was his hair and how wavy it was. For a second I caught myself wanting to put my hands in it. But who was I fooling? Speaking of hair, I remembered mine when he first laid eyes on me. Pulled back like some bald-headed fool with a ratty ponytail dangling down my spine. Gerald Peterson was the type of man who could only be with a brassy woman, probably some beautician who spent hours pulling out all her eyebrows and drawing perfect new ones on with a black pencil. I took my knocks, but nobody could ever call me stupid. I knew where I could be accepted.
    “Now, I hope I’m not bothering you or nothing,” I said under the dim yellow light of Miss Claudia’s porch.
    “Oh, don’t be silly,” she said, dressed in a long white silk robe with big butterflies and pink flowers. “I’m just in here looking at TV.” She held the front door open, and I entered with the McDonald’s bag.
    “I went on a hunch here. You like chocolate milkshakes?” I held the bag up trying to entice her.
    Whether she did or not, I would never know. She clamped her hand on her chest and closed her eyes. “It’s just what I needed right now.”
    We decided to take our milkshakes in the family room. It was warm and inviting, with fashionable furniture. Old photographs of Patricia and Richard were scattered on the mantel and the coffee tables. A big built-in bookshelf took up one wall of the room, and I wondered if she’d really read all those books or just had them there for show.
    “They tell me Gerald Peterson is just the salt of the earth,” Miss Claudia said when I updated her on my car. She paused to suck up the last remaining drops of milk chocolate from her straw.
    “My neighbor Kasi, she said he works all the time.” I sat with my bare feet insulated under the sofa cushion, and rolled my eyes to see if my bait had been accepted.
    “I expect he has to.”
    “Does he have a bunch of kids to feed or something?”
    “Erma Lee Jacobs. You ask more questions about him than I ever heard you ask about me.” She slapped the arm