"Kudzu" by Madeline Jones

Madeline Jones is a writer originally from Charlotte, North Carolina. She holds an M.Phil. in Creative Writing from Trinity College Dublin and completed her undergraduate studies in Anthropology and Creative Writing at Wesleyan University. Madeline continues to take workshops and explore genre at Hugo House in Seattle.

Kudzu

The Nashville bar I worked at that summer was called Hog Creek. That’s where I met Dallis. It was the first bar of many on a long neon-studded stretch of asphalt which smelled faintly of vomit. “Ooh, that smell, the smell of death surrounds you,” he would sing. “You know, like the Lynyrd Skynyrd song?” I shook my head no like he was crazy even though I knew the reference.

The barroom at Hog Creek was sweaty and airless. It had low ceilings, a little wooden stage for our rotating country cover bands, and lots of loud tourists. Neon beer signs hummed along the paint-chipped walls, thick serpentine cords hanging like vines. There was a separate room with three thick pool tables, and behind that, a sticky hallway to the bathroom that glowed green from UV fly traps. Even farther back was a closet in which I hid from time to time, sitting on a bucket of god knows what taking big deep breaths. My manager Bill sometimes joined me. We’d just exist there in silence, even though it smelled like vinegar and I could hardly see him, which is always a dangerous bet as a woman. I never got scared in that closet or elsewhere. I kept a pocketknife in my sock and considered myself to have an impeccable wit and quickness that men couldn't hardly seem to keep up with.

That summer I was the new bouncer at Hog Creek and Dallis was a regular. 

I liked being a bouncer because I got to know a lot about people. State law dictated that I check everyone's IDs even if they were clearly of age. I got to know if people were organ donors, how much men lied about their height and women about their weight. It was part of my job to kick boisterous folks out although I sometimes let them slip back in to avoid a scene. This one time I saw a guy pee on our front sign, which featured a very human looking pig in a sun hat. When he started to walk back in the bar I said, “Not so fast Pee Pee McGee” but I don’t think he heard me and that was that.

The first time I saw Dallis and asked for his ID, he seemed startled. He was a flimsy man. I initially thought he was drunk but came to understand he simply had a feathery gait, a wind-chime sway around his thin bodily center. And delicate feminine hands. I noticed them when he handed me his ID, how they shook a little.

“I come here almost every day.”

“Well it’s my second day and I didn’t see you yesterday.” I leaned back on the stool with my arms crossed in a way I hoped made me look authoritative. I was wearing work pants and my legs were lightly man-spread, one foot cocked on the stool’s ridge. I thought I had a very confident butch lesbian air about me.

            “I get it. Just tying up the t’s and dotting the dots.” He padded his pockets for his wallet and looked up at me through stringy hair. He had a faint scar running from his eyebrow to his top lip. I thought it was very handsome.

            “Correct. I’m doing my due diligence. Tennessee law.”

His Arkansas-issued license said he was born in ‘85 which would make him forty. Twelve years older than me. I’d hardly ever been to Arkansas except for passing through. It didn’t feel like a real or worthwhile place. And apparently they didn’t have good public education, because who would name their child after an awful city much less misspell it? He must be very simple. I admired simplicity. I was more in the camp of having thoughts so buzzy I’d often google electroconvulsive shock therapy and chat with bots about pricing options.

            “Arkansas?”

            “Jonesboro, right over the state line.”

            “Never heard of it.” I sighed and put on a disinterested facade. Men liked when you were slightly mean to them.

            “Move it along lady,” an orange-tanned woman called out. I pointed over my shoulder breezily as if to say you may now enter my kingdom. He waved, twinkling his thin fingers.

            I started seeing him multiple times a week. Wednesdays were line dancing night at Hog Creek, attended mostly by out-of-towners and rhinestoned bachelorette parties that left wisps of glitter and coconut body spray like ghosts. Dallis came in with a large woman on his arm. She dwarfed him, as did his cartoonishly-large cowboy hat that was squished on one side like he’d slept in it. I was intrigued by how fragile he seemed. I wanted to pet his head like a dog. There, there, I’d whisper, detangling his greasy hair with my fingers.

            When my shift ended, I sat in the closet for ten minutes until Bill came in and started loudly eating a sandwich.

            “We’re real lucky to have you,” he said, mouth full. I could only make out his eyes, shiny and wet against the closet’s cool grey blur.

I started towards my car but doubled back. I wanted to observe Dallis and the woman. The crowd had thinned out when they took to the dancefloor. They were not especially good at line dancing but they didn’t seem to mind. The woman’s motions were clunky and a couple seconds late. Her body moved in the way it feels to stumble over words, to fail to spit it out. My fatal flaw, or hamartia as the Greeks call it, is that you wouldn’t catch me dead doing something I couldn't do well in public. After the band retired for the night, Bill put on old country hits. Dallis and the woman swung around each other clumsily, Dallis twirling her like an inflated ballerina toy. One of her ankles was three times the size of the other, and she waddled to make up for it. I looked it up on my phone and learned this could be caused by cellulitis, gout, arthritis, or even pregnancy and liver disease. I made a note to use this information as a conversation starter. I wanted to talk to him again. I tried to will it with an unbroken stare. He noticed.

“I figure it’s time for us to formally meet.” He tipped his hat and slid into the booth opposite me. I picked at my dish of boiled nuts.

“Have you ever noticed how peanuts taste like a stale attic or kinda like the smell of paint?” I asked, parking the small nut below my tongue and sucking out the salt. I stared at his neck. It had subtle lines like water-warped silt. I shifted my knees up, shins pressing into the sharp ridge of the table.

My least favorite co-worker Andrea brought over a basket of nachos and plopped it down in front of Dallis.

“Jesus. How about we treat paying customers with a modicum of respect,” I said.

“Shut up.” She flipped her hair and walked away.

“Don’t worry about her,” I assured him. “She’s hanging on by a thread at this establishment.”

He picked up a conglomerated stack of nachos, unhinging his jaw. Cheese smeared into his patchy beard. He didn’t notice.

            “You’re kinda vintage looking,” he said, washing down his bite with a swig of Heineken 0.0. I wondered if he was off the booze for health reasons.

            “How’s that?”

            “You’re like a mirage or something.” He extended his hand towards my cheek and then abruptly retracted it, cheese still smudged in his beard. “Why are you sitting here alone?”

            “I like my own company,” I lied.

            “What else do you like?”

            “Swimming at the lake. Hanging out with my little sister Shana. Corndogs, I don’t know. What about you?”

            “Recently, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.” He paused, waiting for me to say something, and then continued, “I’m dying soon.”

            Before I could respond, the woman hobbled over.

            “Mom, this is – well shoot, actually I don’t know your name.” He flushed a painful purplish red.

            “Call me Zora. It’s a pleasure to meet you, ma’am.”

            “And you as well, darlin’,” she huffed, wedging herself into the booth. I averted my gaze. Once she was settled she let out a rough gust of air and took a nacho.

            “Oh no, those are not for me,” she shook her head, face pinched. “What are y'all doin’ in that kitchen.” I couldn’t tell if she was making an offhand statement or looking for an actual answer.

            “I’m not really allowed back there on account of being a lady.”

            “Well maybe they need you back there. I do not like those at all.”

            “Mom ain’t a fan of bar food.” That news shocked me. Dallis looked at her with so much love, a look so simple and dripping it tickled the back of my throat.

            “I’ll tell y’all this – all you need for a good nacho is Velveeta. And I like to cut me up a little green onion if I’m feeling healthy.” They both belly laughed. We exchanged more recipes. I told them about my world famous dipping sauce, which was just relish, mustard, mayo, ketchup, and honey. I let them know it paired especially nice with corndogs.

            “Next time I see Bill I’ll tell him he’s missing out on a flavor connoisseur.”

            “Mom and Bill go way back. I always joke he coulda been my dad. In any event that’s why we’re always here.” I didn’t tell them I found Manager Bill to be a lame duck.

She sighed and eyed the door. He nodded with an intimate understanding that almost made me jealous. He took her hint and they left, his hand tenderly guiding on her lower back.

“I’m praying for your ankle,” I started to say, but they were already gone.

~~~~~~~~~~

My little sister Shana and I ended up in Nashville in a random way. I want to say I made the decision to leave Louisiana earlier that spring, all heroic and all, but by the time Shana and I left there was nothing else to do but go. Krotz Springs Louisiana, or Crotch Springs as I called it, was no longer hospitable to us. I packed up what was to keep of our old life in an afternoon. My journal, my favorite white and red checkered shirt, my middle school swimming medals, which I had to wrap up in an old pillowcase to keep from clinking against perfume bottles and ceramic circus animals. I was all dramatic about it. Shana wouldn’t stop crying. I told her to shush, that it was important to keep quiet so we didn’t wake him before we could slip out the door. “This is big for us,” I told her, “even bigger than the zit on your forehead.”

This particular boyfriend wasn’t too abusive if that’s what it seems like. Only the normal amount. He was a loser pure and simple. His name was Trevor and he worked at a hatchery. He got fish pregnant and monitored them like a prison guard. I can’t imagine Dallis would ever wield such king-like authority over any living creature.

Trevor began calling me the minute I left and ever since, from all types of different numbers. He even put on disguises. One day he’s a gay debt collector with a New York accent, the next he’s an elderly French funeral director calling to tell me my grandparents have finally kicked the can. I eventually stopped picking up the phone for the most part. Sometimes I answered if I was bored or lonely.

            I was only sad to leave because it meant I had to drop out of my college program. I’d been taking a biology class I really liked. The ocean oxygenates the entire planet and also holds the most butt-ugly frightening bug creatures. Duality, like me. How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is clearly Ocean. I don’t remember where I heard that quote, but I like it a lot.

~~~~~~~~~~

Shana and I lived with Aunt Lorraine that summer. She was the oddball of the family, but kind enough to let us move in on short notice. Her days followed a rigid rhythm – pray, garden, bologna sandwich, garden, pray, frozen dinner, movie on TV, pray again – and she had a set of strange rules. No chairs in the bedroom, because they invite demonic spirits to watch you sleep. No flushing the toilet after nine. Nothing bothered me much except the squirrels, who scratched at the walls at night. I couldn’t tell if they were playing or desperately trying to escape. I offered to call animal control, and she just laughed, shaking her head. “They were here way before you, honey.”

She kept a jar of sweets on the counter, but only Shana was allowed to take from it. I once reached for one and she slapped my hand so hard it left a mark. Lorraine also had a habit of narrating movies and critiquing the actors’ appearances, even when they were incredibly attractive. “That young man looks like he has lice,” she said, sucking on a hard candy. I nodded in agreement.

Anyways, Dallis showed up at Aunt Lorraine’s. When I walked in, he was sitting in the living room talking to her, and she was laughing in a way I’d never heard before. When he saw me, he shot upright so fast his knees almost buckled. His hair looked freshly washed, sparkling under the white ceiling light.

“Hey there. Sorry, I know this must be a surprise.” He looked nervous, like a high school boy asking my parents for permission to take me to prom. His iced tea sweated in his hands, and he wiped the moisture on his jeans.

“Why are you here? Do you guys know each other?” I asked, looking over at Aunt Lorraine, whose smile was still uncharacteristically wide.

“Now we do,” she said, winking in his direction. Dallis cleared his throat and looked down at his feet. Lorraine didn’t allow shoes in the house, ever. Seeing him in a mismatched pair of socks stripped him of any sort of mystery. Neutralized him in my eyes.

“I actually stopped by for you. Thought maybe I could show you around town, since you’re new here. I wish someone had done the same for me.”

I was flattered and decided what the hell. We went to the reservoir which was basically an ugly brown mining ditch. I was excited to see the water but there was none. More of a puddle at the bottom of a hill of dirt. It looked like a wound but Dallis said it was his favorite place to contemplate life.

“I bet if you fell in it would be impossible to get out ‘cause of how dry and crumbly the dirt is.”

He shook his head and looked out over the dump like it was the Grand Canyon. I felt the need to fill the space.

“I think if I was a man I would make a good miner cause I don’t care if I live or die.”

“Don’t ever say that again. Ever, ever.” He took my head in his hands and for a moment I thought he was going to kiss me. I imagined him trying and landing on the corner of my mouth. In a second his expression changed to something more neutral, then something like pity.

We sat on the bench for a long time. A family of four piled out of a minivan, took some pictures, then slumped back to the car dejected.

Kudzu grew over the pine trees and all surrounding vegetation like a blanket of infernal ivy. I sure hated that stuff. It used to scare me as a kid, driving along the highway and seeing it covering everything for miles, swallowing whole houses and cars. It looked like giving up.

“I believe this exact spot is an energy vortex.” He closed his eyes and put his hand on his knees. I read somewhere kudzu could grow feet in a single day. I imagined it wrapping around us and strangling our necks. Storm clouds blew in with a threatening pace, so full and heavy they looked purple. In the dull grey light, his under eyes looked the same, bloody and bursting; cheek skin crepey thin and stretched over his bones.

“I thought that was only in places out West, with big red rocks and stuff.”

            “You’re not listening close enough.”

“Why are you dying?”

“I just know it to be real as much as I know you are real sitting next to me. And I’m ok with it. Excited even.” He pulled out a knife and carved LOOK UP into the bench.

“The one aim of the philosopher is to practice for dying and death. That’s Socrates. Or Plato. Yeah, Plato.” He rubbed his neck. I looked up at the storm clouds and wondered if he was fed up with me. I thought it was childish that he carved something on the bench. Like a high school boy. It’s something my ex would have done but it would have been F U or Ur Gay or If ur reading this u a bitch or something to that degree. I didn’t bring up what I’d read of Spinoza in high school. The free person thinks least of all of death. Because the free person knows that there is nothing to think about. There was nothing to consider except the bench and the ditch and the dirt, the kudzu and his presence, which felt strangely calm like a loud radio buzz that didn’t allow you to think.

I swear the kudzu grew while we sat there, creeping towards the edge of the ditch. I didn’t tell Dallis I’d already seen a version of death. He had no scythe, just an iPhone and multiple sim cards. Maybe he was hiding in the kudzu with a fake moustache, watching us.

That night Shana told me about her new crush at school and her math teacher’s coffee breath. I told her about Dallis, how he was gentle like a senior dog or dementia patient.

~~~~~~~~~~

Before I moved us in with Trevor, Shana and I lived with our grandparents, who were well off. We never wanted for anything growing up. We went to a good school and vacationed at the beach every summer, sometimes Mississippi, sometimes Texas. I liked swimming, especially mid-August when the water was hot and brown. You couldn't see much in that dark water, so I was most scared of stingrays and always shuffled my feet to ward them off. I never came face to face with an insidious creature until I was stung by a jellyfish. It left long red lines on my thigh like I’d been brushed by mermaid hair. I thought it was so beautiful, those extraterrestrial kisses on my leg. I was devastated when the burns faded away and it was just me and my normal boring thigh again. It felt unfair, the proof of my experience being snatched away from me.

My grandma Ruthie was the type to wear blue eyeshadow and shimmery shell-printed shirts at the beach. Maybe a big statement necklace with pink pearls. Thinking about it now, I realize that is how, as a little girl, she probably imagined dressing as an adult. Sometimes I think about that, how you go from child to adult back to child. You know nothing, you know everything, you know nothing again. When she went into a home, I brought her a shell so she could hear the ocean. I think she was confused, because she began talking back to it. Who is this? I’ve had enough of all this. Enough.

After Shana and I left Trevor, I drove us all the way to Nashville, heads craned out the window for breeze.

~~~~~~~~~~

Dallis warned me the house was a disaster on account of his impending death, and I prepared myself. I had a very sensitive nose and was inclined towards dramatics. There was a smell, and it wasn’t radically different from that of Hog Creek. I don’t know how else to describe it other than it was black and sticky like lake mud.

“Hi little lady,” his mom called out from the sitting room. I kicked off my boots and walked in, dodging jenga towers of buckling cardboard boxes. She was sitting on the couch watching Family Feud. An oxygen tube ribboned across her moon face, almost dainty-like. I wondered why she hadn’t needed it at the bar.

“I’m not normally into that type but that Steve Harvey is a good looking man.” Her feet were cracked, pancaked against flimsy house shoes. I imagined Dallis painting her nails, looking lovingly up at her while she lusted after Steve Harvey.

“Come on back,” Dallis called out from the crowded kitchen, cabinets all knotty pine. “I just made biscuits.” He scraped them off the baking tray, padding each with a little butter, so gently it made my chest tighten.

“Nothing better than butter when you’re dying. It’s the little things.” He chuckled to himself and looked at his mom, who chirped in agreement. I couldn’t tell if they were performing their dynamic for me. Happy mother and son, happily dying and happily preparing for it. I brought her a biscuit before I served myself. 

“Thank you dearest Zora,” she winked, oxygen tube slithering like a water snake. “Honey, I’ve been packing up this house. You live long as me you start collecting more things than you can handle. Please take anything you like.” She looked at me with big eyes, expressing something like gratitude, something secret, just for us. I smiled at her like I trained myself to do with customers.

On a bookshelf crowded with magazines and DVDs there was a picture of Dallis as a kid in one of those rustic cabin frames. He had blonde hair and was sitting in a miniature train, maybe at an amusement park. The photo was slipping from the frame, revealing the cardboard backing. There was also a snow globe with two jumping dolphins, the base of which said CANCÚN. 

“Can I have this?” I asked, shaking and stirring up the glitter in the globe.

“Take it all,” she said, waving her hand.

Later we sat outside. The on- story house backed up to a forest that was draped in kudzu, like an impenetrable wall.

“You might ought to rent a cow or something to eat all that kudzu. It sure is an eyesore.”

“It’s all about perspective.”

“It’s butt ugly.”

 “It’s tenacious. It has a desire to live.”

“God, give me the strength.”

“Kudzu is actually used as a medicine, in like ancient cultures and stuff. Can even treat alcoholism I read somewhere.”

“I’m no alcy.”

“Just saying. They sell it in like, hippie stores.”

“Feels like a ploy by Big Vitamin.”

“Could be.”

He rested his hand on my thigh. It barely had weight.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m being watched.”

“God—or the universe—is always watching.”

            “I’ve never been afraid to fight a man.” I think I saw him raise an eyebrow.

~~~~~~~~~~

As kids Shana and I would go out on the river and catch baby sharks and catfish, and would always let them go, ease them gently back into the water and watch them slither away. I was very serious about letting them go, because I hated looking them in their dumb, pleading eyes.

My first heartbreak was when a catfish I caught all by myself swallowed the hook. I panicked, and tried to reach into its mouth, but it thrashed out of my hands, flopping around on the brown sand. It bled from the gills. Hot tears fell down my face, and the world was blurry. I desperately yanked the line. My hands were covered in fish slime and blood, and I tried to put it back in the water, but it didn’t move. I watched her go belly up, ribbons of red trailing behind like music. “She’s just resting,” I assured Shana.

My second was when my best friend got her first boyfriend the summer before seventh grade. Rhett Wardell. He had blond hair and wore American flag mud boots two sizes too big, stolen from his older brother who’d left for college at Louisiana State. I didn’t know why Annie liked him when she had me. That summer we all hung out in her front yard a lot. I sat a bit away from them and picked at the grass, looking for something to impress them.

“I’ll race you!” I challenged him, and took off down the neighborhood street, feet beating against hot pavement. I ran faster and faster, beaming, half-shocked he hadn’t caught up with me yet. When I got to the end of the street I bent over and laughed, ready to mock him, and realized he was still sitting in the yard with Annie, his stupid blonde head pressed against hers.

~~~~~~~~~~

One of the last times I saw Dallis he had to sit down the whole time. His body moved disparately, like each limb was running away from his core. We sat in lawn chairs by the lake in a shady patch marred with tree roots and vines.

“I wasn’t always like this, you know. Used to be more closed off, like you,” Dallis said.

“I’m an open book.” A bass jumped out of the water, writhing its slick body like it was being strangled below the surface.

“I may not be as educated as you but I can sniff out a lie good as anyone.” Shame pricked my cheeks like a sunburn. An unknown number called. I declined it quickly and wedged it under my leg. The black screen lit up again, sharp, slick heat under my bare thigh.

“What do you think I’m lying about,” I asked, scared to look over at him. He held his head in his hands. I comforted him the only way I knew how. I hugged him, his bony shoulder pressing into my side. I bent in to plant a kiss on his eyebrow.

“That’s not what this is.” He pressed his hand into my chest, with a weakness that seemed to surprise even him. “Have I ever told you about where I grew up?” His breath was metallic, fried wires. Like a malfunctioning piece of technology.

“I can’t barely imagine you as a kid. Tell me.”

“I grew up on the grounds of a mental hospital. Sounds like a joke. But seriously. Everyone says, oh, I’ve had a crazy life. Few people actually have. It’s like when people say they’re a good driver. Not everyone can be a good driver.

“So this place was like an old timey loony bin. Not something you would see today. It was part psychiatric facility, part drug and alcohol treatment, and all the staff lived on the grounds. Like my dad. And I lived with him at the time. He’d work these crazy shifts. Twelve, fourteen hours.”

“I can hardly do six at the Creek.” I collected the sweat on my soda can and drew flowers on my arm.

“So all the adults would be working all the time. And the kids, we’d just get into anything and everything. Made our own food, lived on our own basically. And I was the only white kid, you see, these jobs were shit and no Americans wanted any part of it. There were Indians, Guatemalans, Nigerians, you know, people who’d work for nothing. And we romped around the woods all day but truthfully it was traumatic. I mean I’m sure it was for the patients, too. But we’d hear screams all day, people banging against bars, chains rattling. Horror movie shit. They made a movie about it recently, paranormal ghost hunters went to the old grounds. Never watched it but you get what I’m saying. It was bad.”

“Did you ever try to run away or something?”

“Point is this. Despite all the bullshit, the screams, we still played as kids. Made our own fun. I guess I’m saying there’s no other option. Anything can become a jail if you want it to be.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Later that summer, when I went out back to dispose of the night’s trash, his truck idled in the parking lot. I went over to tell him I needed five more minutes to finish up. His torso was bent over the steering wheel. When I tried to shake him, his body gave all its weight against my palm, entirely and completely relaxed. It was gruesome, yes, but there was something unfathomable about its gruesomeness. Surely he was just sick and passed out maybe, or playing some dumb prank. I grabbed the dishwasher Ángel, and he held his ear to Dallis’s chest and mumbled something I couldn’t understand. “English,” I requested. He ignored me. He flipped a rag over his shoulder and did the sign of the cross. I thought it was poetic that his name was Angel. Maybe Dallis was an angel now. Maybe he was floating above our heads. Later that night, when I tried to cry, I couldn’t. Not because I’m a monster, but because I still felt that if I called him, he would pick up, groggy like I’d woken him from a nap. “What do you want,” he’d croak, pretending he wasn’t thrilled.