A Very Montgomery Christmas Who: Adelaide Hawkins, James Hawkins, & Ian Terrell Where: From Montgomery, Tennessee to Austin, Texas What: A Hawkins Christmas Special. When: Christmas 1998 - Christmas 2018
i was born with a thorn in my side, and it hurt but i never could cry. dug deeper and deeper 'till i wanted to die, but you stay and i'll never know why.
toys r us, hendersonville, tn. six days before christmas, december 1998.
James isn't sure just what in the hell a Furby is supposed to be, but he knows once he gets his hands on one he's gonna make damn sure Adelaide doesn't expose it to sunlight or let it get wet or feed it after midnight.
No doubt he's the youngest person standing in line outside the toy store at midnight, shivering in Daddy's old leather jacket that he's quickly growing into. He took a bus two hours out to Hendersonville, the closest store he called that promised a shipment of the weird robot alien toy everyone has been losing their shit over this year. Adelaide didn't ask for one, and even at her young age of nearly-three already seems quite skeptical of things everyone else likes, but James will be damned if she doesn't get one. It ain't just about the toy. It's the first Christmas since Daddy died, and it's also the first Christmas his baby sister has any chance of remembering in the future. James knows it has to be perfect, that he has to make sure his sister has only happy memories of the earliest Christmas she's likely to recall when she's older.
He wanted her to have every Christmas cliche in the book, so early on in the month he made a list and he’s been working hard to complete each item:
Take a picture with Santa. (The Clarksville Mall was too far away and James was sure they couldn't afford an audience with the real Santa, so he and Ian stuck a hat on Old Ruthers while the silver-bearded giant was nodding off on his front porch, propped Addie on his knee and snapped a photo.)
Build a gingerbread house. (Which, thanks to Adelaide's skill with gumdrop adornments, came out pretty fuckin' awesome.)
Watch Christmas movies. (Sure, there were the standard classics, the claymation Rudolph, the tear-jerker about the goddamn long-eared donkey, the surly green Grinch, but James also introduced his baby girl to the best and most important Christmas movie of all time: Die Hard.)
See Christmas lights. (The parents on the nice side of town took their kids to Nashville to see the Dancing Lights, but Adelaide seemed plenty thrilled with the block of houses on Martha's Chapel that cover their lawns with a stampede of light-up reindeer and angels and baby Jesuses.)
Go ice skating. (It was $30 to get in and rent skates at the rink in the YMCA, so James borrowed two sets of roller skates from the pawn shop for $4 instead and made an "ice pond" with saran wrap and blue cellophane in the backyard for them to skate on.)
Go Christmas caroling. (This might have been one of Adelaide's favorite activities, though at first she seemed a bit confused and kept shouting "trick or treat!" when folks answered the door.)
Cut down a tree and decorate it. (Some suckers pay for a Christmas tree. Not James Hawkins. He and Ian carted Addie Belle out into the woods behind the trailer park on his shoulders, and together the three of them picked out a small noble fir sapling and cut it down with Ian's Daddy's axe. They dragged it home, propped it up in an old stand from a tree they'd had when Mama still tried, and spent the night wrapping it in strands of colored bulbs, making popcorn garland and paper chains, hanging up kitschy old ornaments that were likely from when Mama or Daddy were kids, and of course it wasn't done 'till he lifted Addie up to place a Barbie doll stand-in for an angel at the top of the tree.)
Write a letter to Santa. (James let Adelaide write it herself, and he's kept the page full of illiterate crayon scribbles folded in his wallet ever since.)
Get the most popular toy of the year.
It's the last piece of the puzzle, the final item on the checklist. Every year, everyone gets that one toy, the one parents trample each other over in the stores, the one that shows up on the news for causing riots, the one stores stay open all night to sell. James can remember some of them from when he was small-- Super Nintendo, Creepy Crawlers, Beanie Babies and Nerf guns. He can remember coming back to school after the winter break to see all the kids carting around their Christmas spoils, talking about the trendy toys they'd gotten. If he was lucky, all he had to show for Christmas was a set of plastic cowboys and indians from the checkout lane at the liquor store. If he was less lucky, it was a black eye. He can't let that be the kind of memories his sister has of Christmas. He never wants her to miss out on anything, not even this, and if he has to stow away on a bus to a town two hours from home, stand in line until midnight on a school night, and fork over all the cash he made pawning Daddy's old watch to make it happen, that's what he'll damn well do.
The rest of the presents-- a fairly meager offering of stuff stolen or cheaply bought-- are already wrapped in newspaper and duct tape, ready to go under the tree while Shortcake sleeps on Christmas Eve. He's got everything planned to make sure her Christmas is perfect: they'll eat tomato soup and grilled cheese on Christmas Eve, put out cookies and milk for Santa, and watch Rudolph again (she seemed to like that one best.) Once Adelaide nods off, he'll tuck her in her bed and stack all her presents up under the tree. He'll write back to her as Santa and when he eats the cookies he knows he'll have to remember to leave one with only a single bite taken from it for the authentic Santa experience. Then he'll snooze on his couchbed until Adelaide stirs after dawn, 'cause part of a proper Christmas is being the first one up, walking out to see the tree piled with presents in the stillness of the morning and believing you're the first one to see them since Santa left them there. He knows it should be Adelaide waking him up on Christmas morning, and he prays she seems as excited and pleased as he wants her to be.
Because it needs to be perfect.
She deserves better than what he had. He wants to protect her from the pain he's known, from joyless Decembers that end with cold Christmas mornings. From Mamas who tell you Santa didn't come, not even to drop off a pile of coal, 'cause you're so bad he couldn't even stand to look at your name on his list long enough to cross it out. From classmates who parade their presents around and make it impossible to forget that you don't get to be like the other kids. That you don't get to be a kid at all, 'cause you gotta be a man.
But Adelaide will always have a Christmas, because if he has to be a man, then he'll be the man who will do anything to give her everything.
east fork cemetery, oak ridge, tn. eight days before christmas, december 2003.
"So I told her what we was doin', and she was like, 'God, you're so insensitive," Rodeo tells them, pitching his voice into an obnoxious falsetto as he imitates his girl-of-the-week. "And I was like, damn, it ain't my fault your gramps made such a good Santa Claus. You should be honored somebody in your briar-hoppin' family was good for somethin'."
It just so happens that Rodeo's girl of the week is Jackie Ruthers, the old man's granddaughter, and it also just so happens that the man who had unknowingly become a staple of their Christmas tradition had passed away in his porch chair just last month, before they could snap their annual Christmas photo with him. Jackie didn't take too well to Rodeo informing her that he was headed out in the morning to take a Christmas photo at her granddaddy's grave, which is why Rodeo has to explain the red-purple bruise on his cheek as they pick their way across the frosty cemetery. The grass crunches under their feet, silvery and frozen, glinting like the granite gravestones. He and Sarge even polished up a little for the photo op-- Rodeo's jaw-length hair is slicked back, his dark red flannel has no holes or missing buttons, and his jeans are fairly clean and unstained. Ever since he snuck the picture of Adelaide on Old Ruthers’ knee, taking their Christmas pictures with their favorite sleepy Santa became an annual tradition that ain't about to end now that the motherfucker's dead. As far as he's concerned the best way to honor the old man's memory is by sticking a beat-up old Santa hat on top of his grave and taking a picture with it.
"I mean, insensitive. Please. I'm totally a sensitive guy. Last week I donated a nickel to those shitheads with the bells outside the Dollar Hut."
Adelaide told some of the girls in her class today about this outing to the cemetery, and most of them thought it was either creepy or weird - except for Ruby Roth, who laughed over it with her and asked what she would wear, and Adelaide decided then and there that Ruby was alright and the rest of them could go hang.
At seven-almost-eight years old, Adelaide is already a creature drawn to tradition, to what is hers and what is familiar. But despite that proclivity, she was not exactly sorry to hear that old man Ruthers is gone. It was always fun creeping up on him while he napped, stifling laughs with Jims and Sarge while they got the picture, but the old man smelled weirder every year and being the one to creep up to his knee was a little bit awkward when she’d never even met the guy awake.
So this replacement plan for their annual photo op seems like a win-win for Adelaide, and she picks her way through the graveyard in black boots that were picked out special for the photo. Dressing nice for their Old Ruthers photo has become a bit of tradition, too, and Adelaide took care when choosing her oversized sweater and leggings, and the big knitted hat with a pom-pom that sits on her long fall of bright red hair - long enough that she can sit on it, now. She’s already told Jims and Sarge they both look real good, though she went right over to straighten Sarge’s collar for him at the same time.
She’s kicking crunchy leaves while Jims tells his story, holding onto his hand with her other one tucked into her pocket and Sarge on her other side, and she shares a droll look with Sarge before she rolls her gray eyes up toward Jims' face. "I can’t believe you let a girl clock you," she laughs, shaking her head. This past summer when Jims was sent away, coming back with new tattoos and new muscles and a new nickname, has been firmly put behind them, and Adelaide is so sure in his promises of good behavior that his antics now never fail to amuse her. "You sure know how to pick ‘em."
Rodeo lets out the kind of rolling, delighted laugh that only Adelaide can elicit from him, tugging on her hand a little to pull her ahead of him a couple steps and then stooping down, scooping her up along the way easily, wrapping her up in his arms and bringing her to rest on his hip. She's light, so small for her age, and she still lets him pick her up like this so he does as often as he can, 'cause he knows those days are numbered.
"Why you gotta say it like that?" he asks, as he pauses to do a little two-step and spin on Leon Huxtable's grave, one of Daddy's old associates. He carries on as if he hadn't stopped for the brief dance on the dead bastard's grave, hiking Addie up on his side. "Just 'cause she's a girl? Girls can punch. You can clock a boy too. Right in the kisser. You know how. Show me that hook," Rodeo goads, holding up one of his big hands for Adelaide to punch just like he showed her with the focus mitt last week.
She laughs when they spin, her left arm laying easy across the back of his shoulders, comfortable as can be being carted around by him and not a speck of guilt for the dance on a grave. This is home, the three of them and all their jokes and understanding, all the things only they know, and she’s never so bright and easy as when she’s right here. Nothing can touch them, certainly not some dead guy.
Her brows furrow and she raises up that little fist, thumb outside just like he showed her. Her arm is skinny but her form is spot on just like her aim and her fist smacks into his palm, knowing he can take it.
"‘Course I can punch, too," she says, feigning exasperation even though there’s nothing but fondness in her eyes. "There’s girls and then there’s girls, Jims, don’t pretend like you don’t know the difference." She has that righteous little conviction that comes along with having always had her opinions counted. She pulls back one more time, gives him an arch look as they near the spot where the newer graves are laid out. "Anybody who says ‘insensitive’ like that probably throws a pretty sad punch," she adds, punctuating it with one more shot.
Rodeo sniggers happily, grinning when Adelaide's tiny fist smacks into his palm. He's barely looking where he's going as he walks, his gaze stuck on Adelaide, but he picks easily around headstones and over plaques, his strides sure and confident even with only the occasional glance up at the path ahead of him.
"I know the difference. And I'll tell ya, I'm real lucky she don't have a right hook as mean as yours, baby girl." As Adelaide goes in for a second hit, he barks out a laugh at her words and then shifts the hand she hit to the side of her head, crushing her in against his chest to plant kisses all over her forehead. "Ya hear that?" he asks Sarge, still squeezing Addie in a boa constrictor hug, the kind that keeps tightening little by little until he's squished all the laughter out of her. "From now on, we just gotta get folks to say 'insensitive,' and if they sound anything like Jackie doin' it, we're in the clear."
(TO BE COMPLETED...)
the playhouse, two days before Christmas, december 2006.
Adelaide will be eleven in a month, and there will be no Christmas this year.
Inside, Mama is on a tirade. There are days she weeps for hours on end, makeup running down her face, over her miserable life, her lost devil of a husband, her wayward son behind bars where she always knew he would end up. She weeps and weeps until Adelaide wants to smother her, would smother her, except she refuses to end up behind bars like Jims.
Then there are days like today.
Today Lottie Hawkins has got it into her carefully coiffed head that the trailer needs cleansing. For an hour now the banging has gone on, the manic scramble, and by the time Adelaide locked her bedroom door from the inside and climbed out the little window, just about everything in all the cupboards and closets was strewn across the trailer, and Mama was stuffing everything she could find that reminded her of Jims into tall paper lawn bags she must have bought special, because 14 Tansy Lane doesn't even have a damned lawn.
Adelaide keeps everything of value - the Prembus decorations, the memory box, her ring with the little purple stone, her gun and any she found around the trailer, Daddy's flask and Jims' flannel and the little carved horses that Sarge made for her ages ago - all in her room anyhow, safe away from tidal waves just like this one. So when another crash resounds and sounds like pure destruction, Adelaide just pulls up her knees onto the beanbag chair and waits.
She's holed up inside the old playhouse Jims and Sarge built one sunny Saturday while she made lemonade and grilled cheese sandwiches and told them where each window and door should go. There's a fleece blanket on her lap now, the little space heater plugged into the fat extension cord humming away. A rumble of hunger rolls in her stomach, but she won't go inside for hours yet. She'd rather starve than deal with Mama, and maybe there's a small part of her that thinks this crash and clamor serves that damnable old trailer right.
With a look of irritation Adelaide reaches into the backpack beside her. They gave out gingerbread cookies today at school before the end of the half day, everyone all glowing with holiday excitement, and Adelaide stuffed her cookie into her bag without comment. Now she draws the cookie out, considers it. She hears Mama's voice, shrill and horrible, from inside and the sound of her banging on the door to Adelaide's bedroom as she passes back and forth on her crazed mission. You come out of there and help your mother, girl! and We'll scrub that rotten boy out from under our nails!
In the end she breaks off bits of gingerbread and throws them out the play house's little window piece by piece, watching the black squirrels come and steal them and run off. Gingerbread is the last thing she wants this year, and it doesn't goddamn matter how hungry she is.
Since he was kicked out of the decrepit heap of wood and metal siding he was supposed to call home Sarge has been living with one of the few people who like Christmas even less than him. Bob owns a tiny house not too far away from the trailer park, and just last night he threw a beer at some Carolers trying to spread some Christmas cheer - only to curse about the wasting of a perfectly fine drink seconds later.
There is no cheer to be had at any point on any year, but especially not with this one.
Sarge has found a job with a carpenter a few weeks ago and hasn't been fired yet, much to his surprise. He actually kind of likes working with wood, always has, and as usual when things are kind of working out he is waiting for something bad to happen. For some reason he has developed a habit of being half an hour early, and they let him use wood scraps and the equipment in the shop, which has opened up a new world of possibilities for someone who is used to an old knife and a file that is so worn off that it barely does what it's supposed to.
But they closed early for Christmas because the owner is driving to Utah to visit his daughter, and Sarge finds himself with more free time than he can handle. Breakfast was a late affair at a diner Bob frequents, with an elderly waitress that keeps trying to pinch his cheeks and a young one that keeps pointing out how she got dumped by her no good boyfriend and now has nobody that will take her to some Christmas dance. Sarge ignored her, had her pack up his food and an extra order of pancakes and headed out to the trailer park to visit Addie.
Every time he stops by he makes sure not to look at his old trailer, much. The piece of shit Ford his old man drives is gone, so he isn't home or it was impounded again, which happens about every other month. Or it broke down again, which happens at least once a month, because Ford stands for Found On Road Dead. He snorts and pulls into the driveway of his second sort of, not quite home. As soon as the loud sputtering stops he can hear the frantic noises and the rambling, so he swerves away from the front door and walks around the trailer, noticing the open window as he goes to check on the play house they built for Adelaide.
"You know someone that’s gonna eat all them pancakes I got in my truck," he asks as he crouches down next to the window, squinting at the squirrels running away. There was a time when he taught himself how to set traps for them, and they taste surprisingly good. At least to a boy who hasn't eaten in days.
There is a tug of war inside Adelaide over Sarge, these days.
She sees him and her heart leaps, relief washes over her, interest spikes where it has flagged these past months in the face of so many dull, gray people who she just doesn’t care about. If Jims is the sun of her young life, then Sarge is the moon, the only other one allowed behind the front lines, the only other one who can reach her in any real way and make her feel as if she isn’t entirely alone.
Which is both a good and a bad thing, these days.
Adelaide is not naive, and she realizes that that caring is a double-edged sword. It’s the reason for so many happy times, and it’s the reason she can and has been brought so low by Jims’ mistakes. And so when she sees Sarge approaching her eyes light up, and then he watches them shutter while she comes to the window to kneel, forearms crossed over the sill, so much more careful than any young girl should need to be, but still not unfriendly. She’s too relieved to see someone she cares for to be remotely cold.
Her stomach gives a snarl at the mention of pancakes, and she raises her brows. "It sounds like I got somebody who might be up for the job," she says, and then she seems to consider for a second before she speaks up again. "You got time to go for a ride?" she asks, both lonely enough and comfortable enough with him to ask for a little more. "I don’t think she’s plannin’ on burning the trailer down, ‘least not today."
The decision to come here was mostly unconscious, but considering the fact that he ordered her pancakes, stopped by the gas station for drinks and some Skittles, and has a box with a complete Prembus nativity scene he made out of those wood scraps at work does suggest that it was not a spur of the moment decision at all. Complete with a little couch and a hobo and a little girl handing him a present they just need to be painted, and that is a job he considers best suited for Addie since his motor skills seem to be reserved exclusively for making bullets, cleaning guns and making silly wood figurines.
Eyes drifting over to the trailer he pulls up his shoulders in a gesture he will soon learn to forget, showing just how uncomfortable he is here, in this place he tried so hard to get away from but will come back to as long as they are here. His hands in the pockets of his frayed jeans are balled into fists, another telltale sign but he tends to do that most of the time these days, as if he is afraid that if he leaves his hands out in the open he could be more tempted to put them somewhere they don't belong - like people's faces.
"I got nothin' but time until next year, they closed down the... shop." It occurs to him that he can't even remember telling her that he has a job now, one with a payroll and taxes being deducted, and he still feels very self-conscious about it because it's not going to last, anyway."Was thinkin' of maybe goin' to Knoxville. Or somethin'," he says, shrugging as if it doesn't matter to him. Which it doesn't, technically. If she wants to go somewhere else they will go, but he wants her to get some time away from this, and if they could do some Christmas shopping on the side, maybe, that would be great, Sarge already knows what to get for Bob, a bottle is always a good idea, even if he'll get cursed at for attempting to do the whole Christmas bullshit. But he knows he'll get one in return, so it's all good.
That is plenty enough to convince Adelaide, and she shucks off her fleece blanket, folds it tidily onto her bean bag chair, and reaches over to shut off her little space heater. She emerges from the playhouse with her backpack - cornflower blue with off-white polkadots, which she’d walked into town to buy herself at the start of the school year because sure as hell Mama wasn’t going to take her school shopping. She slings it up on her shoulder and looks up at Sarge, falling into step. She’s shot up a whole three inches since Rodeo went away, but it’s still pretty clear that she’ll never be any kind of giant like her brother. She’s looked more like a miniature adult than a small girl for ages now, anyway. There is no talk of telling Mama where they’re off to - both of them know that won’t go over well anyway and Adelaide is just plain not interested to that kind of start for this outing.
She quirks a brow at Sarge instead. "Which shop?" she asks, ever with that uncanny ability to cut through and pick out just the thing he doesn’t want to talk about - and probably ought to. The idea of Sarge with a real job appeals to her like rain to a flower, makes her serious gray eyes shine with the hope of a real life anchor for one of them. Sarge is just twenty, but Adelaide wouldn’t mind seeing him pick up something that won’t land him in the same place Jims is now. "You workin’ at Ray’s?" she asks, referring to the auto shop where Jims hangs around sometimes.
The backpack serves as a reminder of what Sarge should have done instead of bumbling around with wood, but for now he files that thought away, because he can't travel back in time just yet and he will take her Christmas shopping and make sure that they get all their Christmas traditions done even though Rodeo isn't here. If he has to he will even help her with that gingerbread house, a task that seems about as fun as getting a root canal. Which is a good comparison in his mind, even though he has yet to have one. In spite of less than stellar conditions growing up his teeth seem as resilient as he is, not a single hole to be found, just a little chipping in the front because of a blunt object.
Once they are in his truck he hands her the box with the pancakes, as if the food would distract her from the unpleasant topic at hand. Huffing and muttering he finds a cigarette in his shirt pocket and lights it before backing out of the short little driveway. "Nah, Ferguson's. Carpenter," he mutters, the last word barely audible over the rumbling of the old motor. From the look on his face one could think he was just forced to admit one of his darkest secrets which, in a twisted sort of way, isn't so far from the truth.
Adelaide accepts the food without fuss. Accepting things from people outside the family is usually an awkward thing for her, a prideful thing, but Sarge sure as heck counts as family and this isn’t the first time he’s kept her fed. That surge of fondness wells up once more while he grumbles, and she crosses her legs on the truck’s bench and decides, once and for all, that no matter how mad she is at Jims for going away, it ain’t Sarge’s fault and anyway she couldn’t not care about him if she tried, just like Jims. She might as well take the comfort that he is, revel a while in the company of someone whose company she loves.
All available syrup is utilized in the eating of these pancakes, but Sarge doesn’t need to worry about sticky upholstery - Adelaide has been the tidiest person he’s known since she was tiny. When she nods at his answer, her satisfaction and approval are plain as day. "That’s real good," she says after a bite. "Better’n Ray’s. Boys down at Ray’s are all just trouble, anyway," she says, a stern and decisive ruling from a girl of almost-eleven. Then she pauses with another bite poised, and looks over at his profile while he drives. "Don’t go makin’ anybody else any unicorns over there, will you? That’s a one-of-a-kind Sarge original."
An old mixtape is jammed into the radio, somewhere in his small room at Bob's he has a car stereo with a CD player he acquired in a not quite legal manner and never got around to put in, so he is stuck with four or five tapes that usually find their way onto the floor and under the seats, where they keep various burger wrappers and forgotten tools company. This is the first vehicle he has ever owned and even though it is more of a glorified garbage can at this point it is also his, and that's all that matters.
With a grunt he looks over at Addie, quickly because he is driving and they are not in some stupid movie, and because he is absolutely uncomfortable with the topic at hand. "Who in the world else would I be makin' unicorns for?" he asks, managing to sound his version of outraged at the sheer thought of that. Then he remembers his gift, and nods at the cardboard box that is sitting on the dashboard in front of her. "Reckon you can apply your art skills to that?"
Adelaide likes Sarge's music, mostly because it is his. The tapes in this truck are so familiar that when one song ends she is already hearing the one she knows is next, especially on this mix. Jims, master of the mixtape, made this one two years ago when they drove down to Nashville for the zombie walk, and they listened to it over and over while she slept curled up between them on the way. For the rest of Adelaide's life when Led Zeppelin's Ramble On ends, she'll automatically be expecting AC/DC's Problem Child to start up after.
Sarge's method of presenting a gift is designed so that many wouldn't even know that's what he's doing - but Adelaide has been on this end of things enough times that she recognizes what's going on easily and lights up with curiosity. Even for someone so used to being doted on as she is, she's briefly sidetracked with gratitude - without Jims around, Adelaide knows even at her young age that she's utterly alone in the world - except for Sarge. He's got no obligation to her at all, but he's here, he's thought of her, and Adelaide's miserable little no-Jims world is made brighter, today.
Nestling the takeout container between her knees, she reaches forward for the box and takes a look inside. Turning over the pieces, she is quick to catch on to the meaning, especially once she lifts out a piece shaped like last year's Prembus sofa. Her grin is wide. "Prembus," she laughs. "I'll paint the sofa to match the new one every year," she vows. She forgets, just for the moment, her vow that she'll have no Christmas this year, no Prembus without Jims. Just for the moment, she feels like maybe she could maybe give in and celebrate just a little.
14 tansy lane, bell & crown estates, montgomery tn. december 2, 2011.
Adelaide Hawkins is fifteen years old, which in Rodeo’s opinion is plenty old enough to be knocking back shots of whiskey in the kitchen with her brother.
Generally, he relies on Adelaide to be the sober one during an endeavor such as this. This crafty business is her forte, sure as hell not his. She instructs him well and he does some structural work where needed, but to be true the gingerbread houses they’ve constructed the past few years have been her design. He’s not really sure how he wound up feeding her Jack Daniels, but now she’s got flushed cheeks and she’s laughin’ at everything he says and he just frosted a candy cane fence post upside-down.
"Shit." He licks the frosting off the incorrect side and flips it over, trying again. "You know, we oughta enter that Christmas craft contest at St. Ambrose. I mean, check this shit out. This would blow them cat sweater ladies and their bead ornaments outta the water. Bet none o’ their gingerbread houses got working shutters. That’s high tech! This ain’t your grandaddy’s gingerbread house! It just says ‘expert strangler of Irishmen’ in the window for different reasons."
Being drunk with Jims right now has a whole pile of effects, and Adelaide is feeling them about as much as she’s feeling the burn of her cheeks. She has always been treated just like she was a very small adult, but sharing a bottle of Jack with her brother is a relatively new one and she’d be lying if she said it didn’t make her feel just that touch more legitimate.
It has not actually made her icing scrollwork much more legitimate, though, and she’s frowning at the roofline of their clapboard Victorian, icing bag held at eye level. She snorts at his tirade, a lazy laugh and her eyes slide over to his face while her grin spreads, also lazy. It appears that booze makes Adelaide into a leisurely-moving, languid-eyed purring putty of some kind, that or the heat of her cheeks melts her from inside out. She’s still sharp as a tack, but she’s sure taking her time about it.
"You wanna enter into contests, Jims, you gotta quit licking the product," she says, pointing one little finger to swipe away a swirl that doesn’t pass muster, and that errant frosting goes right in her mouth, too. "And where’s the fun in that? Besides," she declares. "I don’t needa submit us for their approval. I already approve of us."
Adelaide is having fun with him. It's something he doesn't take for granted these days, when much of his time is spent neck-deep in trouble, a gun in the waistband of his jeans, stacks of cash lining his wallet. For a long time he was on his best behavior, but his time walking the line ended with his parole three years ago. It started off small-- a friend at the garage asking for his help, asking him just to come along as protection on a run he had to make, money to bail his wife out of county lockup for an unpaid speeding ticket. The fella had never worked with him before but he knew his reputation, and Rodeo thought he could handle backing him up on one little run. He'd just be there if anything went wrong, and as long as nothing went wrong, it was just one and done.
But when it went wrong and Rodeo had to pull the gun he hadn't fired under duress in years, it'd be a lie if he said it wasn't the outcome he'd been hoping for.
And just like that, he was back. He tried to fight it at first, but not for long. Like Mama claws and craves and raves for the bottle, he chases the thrill of high stakes like an addict. One taste was all it took. He'd been foolish to believe otherwise-- or maybe he knew all along.
Ever since he's been back in it, he's been on top of a crew that seems to grow by the day. The deals keep getting sweeter, their territory larger, their enemies meaner and their pockets deeper. He's getting sharper, smarter, stronger, more formidable and fired up by his success every day. Meanwhile, his sister has been changing too-- when in the past she has always been so glad for him, sometimes he feels like all he does is upset and disappoint her these days. Maybe that's why he started giving her the liquor. Booze her up, loosen her up, hope it warms her up to him and keeps her chill at bay. It seems to be working, because she's laughing and she hasn't given him that sad gray-eyed look even once so far, which is better than he deserves tonight.
"'Course you already approve of us," he says on a scoff. His icing bag sure looks a helluva lot different from Adelaide's. She's been squeezing hers neatly, from the top down, and her hands are clean and tidy. Rodeo has already exploded two bags by squeezing too hard, and the one he's working on now is sticky with frosting, his fingers caked with it after his many mishaps. There's some on his cheek, some in his hair, even a handprint on his jeans that will probably remain there unwashed until it flakes off. "We're the best. I'm just sayin', shit like this, it deserves a prize. But probably not whatever prize they're givin' out at the church craft fair. I mean, this shit is 'brand new car!' amazing, not fuckin'... hand-crocheted tea kettle coozy or whateverthefuck they're givin' out for first place down there."
Adelaide wouldn’t let anybody with Jims’ kind of precision come anywhere near her gingerbread house, unless they were Jims. Well, or Sarge, but he’s never been overly determined to participate in this particular activity, and with Bennie O’Dell running his big mouth all over the place talking about crushes, Adelaide isn’t in a position to be asking for him, either.
But Jims' sticky state amuses her, and the bottomless well of her adoration for him makes the smudges and crooked fenceposts endearing rather than irritating. Every year since she was little - with the exception of those dark years he was gone, of course - the house they produce has had a tidy side and a Jims side, and by now she likes it that way. It means he was here, they were together, and in the end that’s all she really cares about.
She adds a new bit of scrollwork to the apex of the house’s front, knees pulled up and leaning forward, doing a better job of it this time and looking satisfied when she makes a little "mm-hm" of approval. She is in agreement that their work deserves accolades, but submitting herself to judgement of some people as if she cares what they think is just not her style, even in jest. Still, she looks over at him again from her piping with laughing eyes.
"Who needs a brand new car when I’ve got you to fix up my truck for me?" she points out, and reaches across to deftly place a dot of frosting on his nose.
The truck is something they’ve been doing together - a classic Ford she taped and painted seafoam green herself, and it’s almost running, just in time for her sixteenth birthday. But it’s been taking ages, in Adelaide’s opinion, because Jims is always out, always ‘working’, always dropping in home to grab some things or a bite to eat before he’s gone again. She knows if she asked him to stay he’d stay, but she’ll be damned if she has to ask for his time. It’s not like she doesn’t know what he’s up to.
And that’s why she’s taking tonight for all it’s worth, this tradition he would never forget anchoring him here with her. "Don’t worry, my ego will be plenty appeased by all the likes it’ll get on Instagram," she adds, admiring the even spread of the shingles on the roof. "Your Motorhead birthday cake got over five hundred."
The truck has become more of a long-term project than he anticipated. He had expected to have it done long before her birthday, but conflicts with a crew of goddamn gangbangers from Nashville who reckon he's cut into their business have kept him tied up in a dangerous chess game. His boys have never gone up against a crew with as much pull as this one, and Rodeo's been on the road more than ever lately, often for days at a time, building alliances and securing his foothold in his rival's territory. But, even in the midst of a brewing war, he knows he'll have it finished for her before Christmas. The last parts he ordered came in at the garage last week, and it won't take long for him to put the finishing touches on. She hasn't told him yet that she's disappointed by how long it's taken him to get the truck running, but Rodeo knows she must be and he can only hope it doesn't dampen her enjoyment of the news when he finally does finish it.
Rodeo snorts when she dots his nose, lifting up his thumb to brush the icing away-- but his thumb is caked with frosting too, and he just smears more on with the effort. "That truck's gonna be growlin' real soon, baby girl. I'm droppin' in that intake and a four-barrel carb, make that V8 a monster. You'll be gettin' your first speedin' ticket in no time."
The subject turns to Instagram, and Rodeo gets the same look about him that he always gets when he hears that word. He still uses prepaid flip phones from Walmart, even though he has a phone plan with all the bells and whistles for Adelaide. He's more than a little intimidated by the technology of a touchscreen phone like the one she uses, considering the fact that he can barely work the flip phones that seem to keep changing every time he gets used to purchasing a particular model. But apparently his sister is a real big on social media, whatever that means, and Rodeo hates that he's not part of that. He can barely even remember the name of the application half the time (though he always makes an attempt that often lands far from the mark) but he can't help feeling wildly, maddeningly curious to know what she's posting on there.
"Well shit, 'course it did. But see, I bet they all don't know it didn't just look badass. It tasted badass, too. Did you tell 'em that?" Rodeo purses his lips, focusing a bit too intently on the fence post he's trying to get to stand straight. "See, this is why I need to get on there. 'Cause I could tell 'em. That cake was fuckin' brutally delicious. It tasted like high fiving Satan while riding a saber toothed tiger." Rodeo gives up on the fencepost and reaches for the bottle, taking a swig and then sliding it towards Adelaide, the neck now sticky with globs of frosting. "Would you care if I got one o' those? Them phones with the Intergram?"
With the truck - and the reasons she knows he’s been delayed on it - in the forefront of her mind now Adelaide is dimming, and she takes hold of that bottle and tips it back just a bit more deeply than she has before. She takes the burn of it well, figures it’s probably in her blood to do so, and follows it up by squeezing out a line of frosting on her finger and brings it to her mouth. She cracks a little smile, and he can see the shade of those things that have stood between them lately, just barely creeping in. It’s harder for her to consciously put it aside, when the bourbon starts to buzz. "I bet speeding tickets are a gateway crime," she jokes, drawing another line of frosting to replace the one she sucked away, and this time covering it with a little rain of green sugar crystals. "My first step into the family business."
There’s a tactic that she often uses, unconsciously, when there is something bothering her that her pride doesn’t really want to bring up. She’ll allude to the problem, and then straightaway tack on an unrelated little something, like an escape route or a smokescreen. Like then her message is out, but then maybe she won’t have to deal with the consequences. When she moves to adjust a gingerbread shutter that is tipping a little drunkenly, that’s just what she does. "Well heck Jims, when have I ever objected to you being in anything?" she asks, lifting her brows at him and giving a crooked smile. "I’ll teach you how to use the Intergram myself. The people need that saber toothed tiger metaphor, Jims."
Rodeo is always acutely, intensely focused on his sister and her every nuance, every expression, every word, every move. He puts stock in everything she says and does, always has. The problem is that he tends to take most of what she says and does at face value, and her diversionary tactics often work on him. She makes the joke about the family business and he smirks, but he catches the ghost of that sad-eyed look and his brow furrows faintly. He feels a spike of panic, afraid he lost it, afraid the next thing she'll be telling him is how rotten he is, but then she continues on about the Telegram same as him and he believes it was just a fluke, just a momentary sadness. He believes she's still having a good time with him, that she's too sloshed to be concerned with his sins. The stitch in his brow loosens and he relaxes, grateful she's moved on. He smiles, looking pleased as punch that she's inviting him into her Intercram club. If any unhappiness lingers in her, he's entirely oblivious to it, too busy gluing down fenceposts with newfound enthusiasm as he considers the permission she's given him.
"Maybe we can go tomorrow," he suggests, wincing as he accidentally leaves a frosting fingerprint on the lawn. "I mean, if you got the whole day, that is. 'Cause I reckon it might take me a while to get a hang of it, and you gotta come help me pick it." He'd taken a girl he was fucking around with at the time to pick out Adelaide's. The bitch always had her nose to her phone screen, and after teasing her mercilessly one time at the bar with all the boys he snapped his fingers and pointed her to the door, informing her that if she was gonna make that damn thing her life, the least she could do was help him get the right phone for his sister. And though she hadn't been good for much else, she at least seemed to have chosen a phone Adelaide likes. Rodeo never mentioned how he chose her phone, and he likely won't ever unless she starts asking questions. "I got an e-mail," he adds, as if that's already half the battle. He set it up in his sophomore computer class years ago, on account of them ads claiming there were girls ready to meet him NOW that kept popping up whenever he was using the internet to search for motorcycle videos and Slayer lyrics between rounds of Minesweeper. "I never did use it for much, after it turned out Ivana was just playin' cruel games with my heart."
The promise of a whole day with him is too bright a thing to deny, in contrast with the dark way things have been going lately, and she's too flayed open by the bottle to stop her eyes shining at the request.
It feels like drowning, lately, pulled down every day by the weights he takes on, by the stakes she can see in his eyes and the risks she can feel in his absences, weights hooked on to her without her consent, because the dangers he chases are by default hers, too. A strangling frustrated feeling has been building slow in her chest these past years because there is only one thing Adelaide wants from her brother and it's the only thing he won't give her. These days that frustration has built to a point where it feels like it will burst, like it's reached critical mass and it has to burst. No matter how strong and how smart and how ruthless he is, this world is designed to take down men like him. The system is too big and too established, and there are no wild west corners left in this world for men like him to strut.
They can't continue to teeter here on this razor edge forever. She can't hold her breath forever.
And that's why she grabs on to this offer of time with him, like it's a grateful gulp of air for a girl who is sinking - because it is. There is a small part of her mind that despises just how eager she is for the day, because it will be just that - one day. It won't mean anything's changed.
But she wants it, and so she swipes some frosting and presses her thumb down next to Jims' big print in the lawn, making it their signature, and she pulls up a smile. "Oh sorry, I got waaaay too many things to do with all my other favorite humans in the universe," she says, making sure to lay on the exaggeration so that he doesn't miss it. "I don't know who Ivana is, but I recommend trying someone else. Maybe Sarge, he's very high tech."
Rodeo always worries there will come a time when he seems lame to her. Most teenagers seem to grow weary of their parental figures around her age, and though he's her brother there's no doubt what role he really fulfills in her life. Most of the time, Rodeo is entirely positive he is the coolest of the cool, but he is definitely not cooler than his baby sister. So when Adelaide doesn't hesitate to agree to spending the day tutoring him so he can join her Pictogram club, Rodeo is so glad he leans around the gingerbread house to press a scratchy scruffy kiss to her cheek.
"Sarge?" Rodeo blows a raspberry, putting in the last fence post and then sitting back to pat a sticky hand to his shirt pocket, taking out a pack of cigarettes and biting one out of the pack. "We better take that motherfucker tomorrow too. If you're grading on a curve, I'm gonna need him. I'll bet my boots he snaps that phone in half 'fore day's end."
Adelaide leans into that kiss, her warm and fuzzy drunk edges craving after the affection, the tangible surety of him there with her. With the last fencepost placed and her scrollwork completed, and their fingerprints marking the base Adelaide is prepared to call it done, and she pushes the whole thing to a clear spot on the table, then goes around to tuck in beside Jims so they can admire it.
She’s glad her cheeks were already flushed from the booze, because lately - ever since Bennie O’Dell started opening his big mouth - whenever Sarge’s name comes up in conversation she feels a slow burn build in her cheeks and she hates that. Sarge is one of them, theirs and always has been, and Adelaide is usually much harder to mortify than this, but when Sarge ever had to speak up and tell Bennie to shut it… well, the aggrieved look on his face was a bit more than even Adelaide’s ego could take. She’ll be damned if she’ll let something stupid like Bennie O’Dell or a crush come between their family, though, and so she’s been acting determinedly as if nothing at all happened - except for her cheeks. She can’t seem to keep them from flushing up, no matter how cool her demeanor.
It ain’t like she expects anything, anyway.
So grateful for the bourbon flush, she laughs, shakes her head as natural as can be. "If you even get him to pick up that phone in the first place, I’ll be impressed," she says, fondly amused. "I’m gonna make you some smartphone lingo flashcards so you can get it all right and not sound like Ruby’s Nana. She still calls Facebook "The SpaceBook"," she grins.
"Jesus, Ruby's Nana is on SpaceBook?" Rodeo shakes his head, leaning back to drape his arm along the back of the booth behind her. He takes a drag on his Lucky, lifting his brows. "Even Nanas are more high-tech than me. We gotta do something about this, baby girl." His arm curls forward, hooking around Adelaide's shoulders to yank her in, hugging her against his chest as he leans in and nuzzles his cheek against the top of her head, eyes on their finished gingerbread house. "Thanks for lettin' me screw up your masterpiece, Shortcake. Hope I didn't cost ya no likes on the In-sto-graph with my shoddy fencework."
"Yes, but only old people use Facebook anymore anyway. Under my tutelage you'll be an Instagram master and you'll leave Nana in the dust," she promises, as she happily lets herself get corralled into Jims' hold, pressing her cheek against him and comforted by the ages old familiar scent of his smoke. She scoffs within his grip, pulls up her knees again all the better to nestle in against him. "If they don't like your fencework they can all go hang," she declares, her decisive vengeance spoiled some by the yawn that comes along after it - drinking makes her cozy, but also sleepy, apparently. Then she laughs a bit. "The other day I put up a shot of you and Sarge playin' Stump. I wasn't gonna tell you about all the marriage proposals, but I guess now you'll find 'em anyway."
"Listen, I already learned my lesson about girls on the internet. They're all just make believe. Did you know this? Robots, all of 'em. It's crazy. It's some fuckin' Skynet shit." Rodeo delivers this news with the earnest conviction of someone of someone who honestly believes they have earth-shattering, entirely legitimate information. "No ma'am, I ain't gonna fall for it again. Ivana-bot won't never get another shot at breakin' my heart. You can tell those teasin' ladytrons that I decline and the joke's on them 'cause I ain't even got a bank account number."
Adelaide snorts and shakes her head. "‘Course not. That’s what the ceiling-safe is for," she says, referring to the nook between the fiberglass of the ceiling tiles and the dented aluminum of the trailer’s top, where Adelaide happens to know a relatively giant stash of cash is kept, where Mama doesn’t know about it. "Banks are for crazies." She’s sure not about to correct Jims’ notions about internet women - he finds a damn sight too many as it is. "I’m glad you ain’t falling for any more bots," she says, solemnly. "It’s too bad they aren’t real, though, ‘cause soon enough you’ll have worked your way through all of Tennessee and then what?" she asks, nudging his ribs playfully.
It always reassures Rodeo when his sister mentions the safe he built into their ceiling, so seamlessly hidden that there ain't a chance in hell their drunk mama or anyone else could find it-- and even if they did, everything is kept in lockboxes with combinations only he, Adelaide, and Sarge know. But when she mentions the money he's hidden up there-- exactly $24,775 at last count, plus a small cache of stolen jewelry, guns, and ammunition-- it comforts him to know that she knows it's there, that if anything ever happened to him she would know what to do. It's not enough to live off of forever, but it'd be enough to keep her afloat while the boys step in to pick up the slack. There's not a single man in his crew he doesn't trust to care for his sister in his absence-- it's a prerequisite to riding with him. When he's vetting hang-arounds, deciding who to bring into his crew, nearly half the criteria he grades on is based around whether or not he'd trust them with his sister, and whether or not his sister trusts them. Not making a good impression on Adelaide means you'll be running errands and guarding the door of the bar during business meetings indefinitely, banished to permanent auxiliary status. It's a system that's served him exceptionally well so far-- Adelaide's judgement is consistently flawless.
"That's what it's for, my baby darlin' lil' girl," Rodeo confirms, speaking against her temple as he brushes another scratchy kiss there. He rests his forehead down on the top of her head, closing his eyes as he savors the smell of her hair, which to him still seems to smell the same as it did when she was an infant clutched in his arms. When she makes her joke about him working his way through all of Tennessee, he cracks a grin and lets out a laugh, sitting up enough to slide his arm under her legs, the other bracing behind her back to scoop her right up. "Well I'm not sure, but I'll tell ya one thing, I sure won't be settlin' down." He slides out of the booth with Adelaide in his arms. She might be a teenager now, but she's still so damn small and light, he holds her like she's weightless and spins around the kitchen with her as he starts to sing an old song she knows well. "'Cause I am the wild one, I believe in travelin' light. Just me and my 'cycle speedin' through the night. I love a lot o' women, I take 'em all to town, but I am the wild one, I'll never settle down."
They spin and she laughs, lifts her arms to sing a harmony. She trusts him to swoop her about without holding on - Jims would never let her fall, as long as he is here. Right now he's here, and she's just the right level of tipsy, and so she tips her head back and sings. As long as he is here.
10 clary st, apt 3, cambridge, ma. 3 days before christmas, december 2013.
Adelaide will be eighteen in a month, and there will be no more Christmases for her.
Still, she is making a gingerbread house. But it isn’t her gingerbread house.
Guster plays low from her laptop on the table, and her supplies are lined tidily in front of her, candies in bowls, frosting bags in different colors all still smudgeless, though the Craftsman style gingerbread creation is nearly finished. She examines the house on its turntable, back and forth comparing it to the reference photos on her screen.
This is a commission, one that came in online and gave her pause. She skipped Christmas entirely last year, fresh off of Jims' verdict when everything, everything had been an open wound. This year doesn't feel any different, but Adelaide is giving herself less leeway now. Jims is gone and this is life, and those reminders of him everywhere won't ever go away. If someone is offering her money to do goddamn arts and crafts for them? She'd damn well better take it and her aching heart be damned. She's accepted by now that it's going to keep on aching either way.
She sighs, while the outside door to the apartment opens downstairs, probably Talia returning home from a late night shift at the bar. Her other roommates are sleeping - Adelaide hadn't wanted company in this and that's when 3AM night owl tendencies come in handy.
Her examination finds the gingerbread house to be done, all clean lines and precise replication, a near-perfect miniature of somebody else's home down to the handprints in the front walk. She stands up, shuts her laptop so she can slip away to bed before Talia has a chance to come up and start chit chatting. Pastry bags are piled into a bowl, stuck into the fridge, and Adelaide flicks off the kitchen light before she stops, frowning back at the gingerbread Craftsman in the dark.
Everything has changed. There’s no Jims side, with smudges everywhere and crooked pre-licked fence posts. There won’t be, not ever again, and it leaves Adelaide cold down to the bone. But she’d better get used to it. Still, she moves back in the dark and adds one last thing.
It's entirely likely that the finishing touch of an icing thumbprint in the lawn of this dessert is some kind of health code violation, or at the very least will win Adelaide a point off on a Yelp! review or something. She is less than inclined to care. Merry goddamn Christmas, she thinks, while she looks over that lonely print, and goes to bed.