From the Bottom of Bluerock Creek

Jessie jumps into her thirties.

Illustration Angela Rovnyak

I always feared that if I never skipped town by thirty, I’d turn into one of those people that don’t give a damn anymore. Well, today is my birthday. Or was. It’s near over.

It’s not so bad.

Only one person I know got out of town. Fled North like a runaway slave. Course she wasn’t. She was white as peeled potatoes, and slavery is so far back we got a black president now. But that’s all I see. Jess running through the trees, pine needles stuck to the bottoms of her bare feet. Hair shiny as water. Trails of sweat on her cheeks. The one Jess of two Jessicas in Bluerock Creek. The one that got away.

One day this one will get away maybe.

Pap was early this morning, which means he was only fifteen minutes late. At quarter past the door swung open and Pap strutted his skinny ass up to the bar. He had an old boot box in his hands and fifty-some years of hard times on his face. All dried up like a plum in the sun.

“Hey here’s my big girl,” he said, twisting the corners of his mouth like he was hiding a smile. Like it was some kind of joke.

I am a big girl and so what. Everyone in this town is either way underweight or overweight. We average each other out.

“Got a glass for your old man?”

“Depends.” I almost smiled. “What you got in the box?”

Pap sat at the bar and pulled a Kentucky’s Best from behind his ear. “Always ready to rush things aren’t you girl. What is this? Your big three-oh no?”

I nodded then shook my head. “You can’t smoke in here.”

Pap didn’t say anything but I felt his good eye trained on me as I scooped ice. The other eye was dead lazy. Turned back so far it was near white. Well, yellow.

“Here ya go, Pap.”

He sipped his bourbon like lemonade, smacking his cracked lips, sighing. “Ain’t no one else in here middle of the day. Roaches don’t mind me smoking a little. Hell, be good, a little fumigation.” He laughed his bullfrog laugh.

“No.” I sat next to him. My bar stool felt small like a bicycle seat. It wasn’t comfortable. “My boss’ll care when he gets here.”

Pap tapped the cigarette on the bar. “When he get here?”

I swiveled towards Pap. “Soon. You’re smoking, he’ll ask you politely to leave. Then you’ll get pissed off. And I ain’t going to see you getting pissed on my birthday.”

His mouth was twisted again but he didn’t look like he was hiding a smile.

We drank. On the clock over the bar, the second hand ticked a whole circle.

Pap sighed. “Shit’s different than it used to be, Jessie.”

“Ask me,” I said, gulping cold ale, “shit’s same as always.”

With his live eye, Pap stared at the bottles lined behind the bar like something worth looking at, like a museum collection. “I ain’t just talking about the smoking ban bullshit. I mean I don’t get angry like I used to. It’s just that when your mama left. You know.”

“Hell.”

He gulped the last of the bourbon. “That was long ago. Now guess I just don’t care about things. Nothing to get mad about when you don’t got nothing to get mad about.” He picked up the cigarette and rolled it between his swollen fingers. “Or maybe I got too much to care bout. All I know is I don’t know shit anymore. Another drink?”

I stood up. “Course.”

“Jessie. Put on the radio. You know, Rock Ninety-Seven. God awful quiet in here.”

I got the music going. When I set his drink down, Pap handed me the boot box like some kind of trade. I didn’t sit. I stood behind the bar and opened the unwrapped box.

Inside Pap’s boot box was a folded black cloth. I thought it was a flag. I pulled it out of the box and held it up. A tee shirt. Hard Rock Café Cleveland, with a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame logo on the sleeve. Double extra large.

“Happy Birthday,” Pap said.

“Thanks.” The shirt looked kind of small but I figured it would fit. “Wow Pap. You finally make it up there?”

“Where?”

I held the shirt for him to see.

“Hell, no,” he said. He tapped his glass with his finger. It was already empty, so I filled his third drink. The way he mumbled told me I better just work on my second beer and listen to the radio. Floyd. Skynyrd. When The Doors kicked in Pap said some choice words and rubbed his hands through what was left of his hair.

“The shirt,” he said. “I come home and there’s a package on the porch with an Ohio address on the return. And her name. Your mama’s.”

“She sent this to me?” I hadn’t seen her in years. I squeezed the shirt in my hand. “How’d she know my size?”

Pap bullfrog laughed and slapped the bar. “That’s my big girl,” he said.

“She sent this to me,” I said again, staring at Pap. “I thought she was in Pennsylvania last time you heard. Why would she send this? What. Does she think.”

I tried to say more but my throat was too tight.

Pap let me hide my face in my arms over the bar. “No note or nothing,” was all he said, followed by a Zippo click and the stink of a Kentucky’s Best. Guns N Roses blared from the radio. Same song a thousand times but different. I felt Pap’s hand on my back. More affection than he’d shown in years.

Shit is different.

Jess got away. Run off and she wasn’t my mama ever again. Just a name, same as mine on the birth certificate. That was Pap’s idea. Only time he ever called me by my full name was way back, when I was little and my mama was still around. He’d say, What’s better than one Jessica? What, my mama and I would say, laughing. Course we knew. We’d say it. Sometimes he’d ask again and again and I’d giggle and giggle. Then Pap would say, Now which Jessica am I supposed to hug? I always knew he’d go for me, lift me up and squeeze me, so I’d be crazy giggling, then my mama would hug too so I’d be squished between them. I’d giggle and squirm. I thought it was so funny. Two Jessicas.

Now and then, when she feels like more than a name, I write to her in my head.

Dear Mama. Sometimes I don’t hate you. Your daughter. Jessie.

I was nearly born in a dead dog’s doghouse, no kidding, it’s the big one out in the carrot flower field. My mama wasn’t hard to find, I hear, cause she howled like a beagle with every contraction. Pap drug her out by her legs and they got her on the hospital bed just as my hairless little head started to crown.

Ask Pap, and he’d say he never could figure why my mama hid. Ask again, and he’d say she’s crazy, ask again and again often as years pass and he’d say, in any variation of the words, enough now shut hell up goddamn no peace round here shit.

I know why she hid in the doghouse. My mama already had a feeling I was something that ruins, some kind of sin. So she squatted in the doghouse and held me in like she was refusing to go to the toilet. I know I was trying to get out, kicking, pushing. I know cause I’ve felt this way for twenty-nine years. Thirty.

My buddy Dave said he’d take me fishing for my birthday, to meet him once I got out of the bar. Down where the path turns past the trestle, where Bluerock Creek drains deep into the river. Where the fish are always hungry no matter what time of day.

When I left the bar, it was egg-frying hot. I drove the half mile out to the tracks and walked my sweaty ass to the trestle. I got there late afternoon and course Dave wasn’t. No one was hanging out on the ledge or swimming in the creek.

The water looked as cool and blue as a swimming pool. It’d been too long since I’d been in the creek, years, and I was pretty tempted to go for it, to jump in, rather than just standing there sweating in the sun, when a bird whistled funny from the forest.

It was Dave, hiding in the shade a ways back. No shirt and dripping sweat over his chest. All bones and meat like chicken pieces. Way underweight. He had a goofy grin and a six pack of the cheapest beer in the world. Or four pack, really. Dave had already emptied and crushed two of the cans.

“Happy birthday girl,” Dave said.

“Thanks.” I sat next to him. We were surrounded by thick clumps of ferns, the stalks as big and soft as turkey tail feathers. “How’s it going? Thought you were fishing.”

“Fish ain’t biting,” he said with a grin. “But you’re here. So it’s going alright.”

“Ain’t biting. Uh huh. How about a beer.”

Dave opened a can. “Is that a new shirt?”

“Yeah,” I said, and took the beer. “But it’s too damn hot to wear black.”

“Looks hot,” Dave said. He wrapped his arm around my shoulder. “Feels hot. Must be hot. So take it off.”

“God Dave, I just got here,” I said. But I took it off.

The beer was almost cool, which was good enough. I slammed half the can.

Dave used a strip of paper bag to roll a joint.

I brought up Pap. What happened in the bar. I told Dave about the tee shirt but he seemed focused on removing seeds from the weed. It was a shade lighter brown than the bag.

“I dreamed about you last night,” he said, changing the subject. He passed me the lit joint.

“A dream alright,” I said, puffing. The smoke tasted like river mud. “Where’d you get this poop weed?”

“It ain’t that bad,” Dave said. He rubbed his hand on my bare back and under my bra. The strap was wet with sweat but he didn’t care.

Neither did I.

Dave and me smoked the rest of the brown joint in silence. I figured after what I told him he didn’t know what to say.

“This thing is done,” Dave said in a thick voice, like he had a cold. He rubbed the pinch of joint into the moss under the ferns. He must have been thinking while we smoked, cause he started talking. “Damn Jessie. This is crazy. What a crazy thing to hear. Here’s a shirt from your mama you haven’t seen since Bush was President. The first Bush. Like, happy fucking birthday. What a shitty gift. What a shitty way to get back in touch. I can’t believe you wore it.”

“It’s a good shirt,” I said. My voice came out thick too.

“Sure.” Dave snorted. “And you got her return address. You going to go find her?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I could send Mama a real letter. “I don’t know.”

Dave looked at me. Like really locked his eyes with mine, though it’s weird, I can’t say what color his eyes are. I just saw him staring at me. Like he cared.

“You’re always talking about leaving,” he said. “Like you want to run off. You ain’t going to run off to Cleveland, are you?”

The weed must have been okay, cause all I could do was laugh.

Dear Mama. After you left, Pap couldn’t take care of me. He went mad. He shouted everything he said. He thought the whole world was against him. So Grandmama watched after me and wore herself to the grave. Me, I got fat. And that was all the best of it. It’s going to take more than a shirt to forgive you. Jessie.

I figured Dave would have rubbers but he figured the same of me.
Why the hell not. The ferns felt cool under my back.

“Hey look,” Dave said. “My dream came true.”

“Uh huh,” I said. I still felt big with Dave, but not bad.

His nipple rings pressed cold on my skin.

I could hear the creek rushing into the river a ways off. Jess was in there, I could see her, kicking her legs in the silver current. Jess rising from the water on the far side, running off, always running. Footprints sunk in the clay bank behind her.

I wish I never remembered my dreams. The sleeping dreams, those don’t matter much either way. It’s the other kind I can’t seem to forget.

Dear Mama. Fuck you. Jessie.

There is nothing left in the dead dog’s doghouse. My mama didn’t leave a shoe or hair pin or crazy fingernail scratches on the wall. Nothing real. But there is a secret world in there. I know because it was my playhouse until I grew too big.

In the summer it felt cooler and in the winter it felt warmer. Larger inside than it looked, too. When I was small I’d stretch out on the dirt floor and watch ladybugs. There were always ladybugs crawling up weird wood patterns.

The patterns swirled all over the walls and ceiling. I stared at them like paintings. I remember them all, Gun Man, Wedding Finger, Big Butt. I talked to them but I can’t say about what.

And the stack of M&M wrappers in the corner. If there’s anything in there anymore, actually, it would be that. I kept the wrappers under a blue rock the size of a fist that I’d found in the creek. It was a collection and I was proud of it.

Grandmama gave me some of her diner tips for school lunch, and by the end of the week I’d have enough change leftover for candy. Always M&Ms. Always saved the tan ones for last. Back when they still had those, before the blue ones.

God, tan M&Ms. I must be thirty.

Dave slid off and rested his head on my arm. “You’re soft as a pillow,” he said, and he must have meant it cause he coughed, closed his eyes and fell asleep.

I tried to see Jess doing something other than running away. I tried to see her in a place like Cleveland, as a person like Mama. I saw her, but she was still Jess and she was still running, only now on a city sidewalk, with winter snow blowing sideways. She was wearing a big puffy coat, the marshmallow kind. Face covered by a dark scarf.

Over me, the tree leaves glowed neon green. Cicadas whirred and ratcheted. It’s like they were heat activated. No flies somehow. It was pretty warm but not too hot in the shady ferns. Something poked my butt, an acorn. Something wet on my arm, Dave drooling. Probably dreaming. He wasn’t so bad.

Dave jokes sometimes, at least we don’t live in Possum Bottoms, or Swamp City, or Rapersville, which are all nearby towns. At least we live in Bluerock Creek.

When he says this I tell him, “Thanks for the perspective.”

I thought thirty would be too old to care about running. Well, the past still feels close enough. Thing is, while there’s plenty worth running from — words that will never fall out of my mouth to no one — I’m not sure if there is anything worth running to.

I did it. Of course. Why the hell not. No one was around and I was high and feeling fine. The creek called to me and I ran to it like a runaway slave. Course, I’m white as peeled potatoes and, you know, but that’s how I felt. And, Dave was sure to point out, I was still in my birthday suit. He thought he was so funny. He thought the whole thing was hilarious, me running stark naked off the ledge and cannonballing into the deep part of the creek. He said I made a splash the size of Walmart.

Funny guy.

Turns out the water was not as cool and blue as a swimming pool. It was warm and brown and there was a secret world down there. Silt and sticks, in a dim light like dawn. For the first time all day, I didn’t feel heavy or hot. I sank deep down with my eyes open. And as I sank I saw it, our town’s namesake, rising from the murk like a Volkswagon Bug coming through fog, and as big and shiny too. The huge blue rock. When it appeared I felt a hungry urge to inhale water and my legs kicked without my control. I stretched my hand and touched it. The rock was still as cold and smooth as winter ice and still the same blue as the summer sky. I hadn’t seen it in too many years. I was thirty, after all.

Thirty in Bluerock Creek.

When I was small Pap said salamanders size of junkyard dogs lived under the big blue rock, and if you touched it they’d swim out just as fast and bite off your hand. Dave said the rock was a magnetic meteorite, and it’d rip the rings right through your ears and nipples. Only thing happened was the water held me down there. I felt like I was wrapped in weight, like being hugged tight. Dear Mama, I thought. I have a question. If you get this send me the answer. What’s better than one Jessica? From the bottom of Bluerock Creek. Jessie. The moment I thought my name, the current lifted me, like something worth saving, to the surface for air.