I watched from Duane’s Chevy truck and filed a nail I’d broken locking the door at Dr. Johnson’s Family Clinic. Duane grabbed the dried armadillo carcass by the tail and slung it to the side of the road. Its stiff, little arms stuck up in the air and reminded me of a Pentecostal prayer meeting. Duane sniffed his fingers, wiping them on his blue jeans as he walked back to the truck. He tossed the croaker sack half full of aluminum cans into the back and dug around in a cardboard box until he found a Pabst can. He walked back to the armadillo and put the can in the animal’s grasp like it was lying there dead drunk.

Duane was the man the Scottsboro Daily Sentinel called the Drunk Armadillo Man and I was the only one who knew. Sweat dripped off Duane’s nose when he leaned out the window to take a picture.    

“How many is that?” I asked him, wiping off a little beer that had spilled on the front of my white nurse’s uniform when Duane had floored it, making his truck tires scratch up rocks on the roadside.

“Seventeen since Saturday,” Duane said, as he spit out the window. “But I don’t have no more Pabst cans. We got any Pabst at home?”

“Yeah, I bought a eighteen pack yesterday when I got groceries.”

That Lee Greenwood song about being proud to be an American came on the radio and Duane turned the volume up so he could sing along. Even after the song went off we rode along for ten minutes without either one of us making a peep, which was fine with me. My thoughts were somewhere else.

When we got to the intersection of Highway 146 to head up the mountain to Skyline, Duane pulled the truck off the road in front of the stop sign and hopped out. He reached into the back for the sack and started picking up beer cans people had thrown out over the weekend.

Duane worked hard all the time. Two or three mornings a week he’d cut and split a cord of firewood. In the afternoons he’d park his truck on side of Highway 72 and sell the wood. Then he’d pick up cans on the way home and make his drunk armadillos. With a man like that, it didn’t bother me that he had a bad temper sometimes. I knew it was just because he had so much pressure on him with a teenage son and having to pay off the boat when he had a house note and a truck payment, too.

I was watching Duane, but I was thinking about Dr. Johnson and how he had sat me up on his desk after everyone had gone home at five. My skin had tingled like I’d put my finger in a light socket when he pushed my skirt up and put his face down there. I could feel my face get hot just from thinking about it. I’d had boyfriends in high school, but none of them ever did anything like that. Duane would die if he knew. I didn’t know if he’d kill me first or Dr. Johnson, or just kick me out.

I opened my door and got out to help pick up cans.

“I’ll get this, Sherrie. Don’t get your dress dirty. That dry cleaning costs a lot.”

Duane was considerate like that. That’s one of the things I liked about him. That and his big arms. He was stronger than any man I knew. And he didn’t have too many tattoos. He just had the one strand of blue barbed wire around his muscle on his right arm and an armadillo standing up guzzling a beer. But that one was on his back and nobody could see it.

Duane treated me nicer than anyone I’d ever met, so I didn’t care that he was older than me. Thirty-six didn’t seem so old anyway, and I’d dated a couple of men older than that. I’m way more mature than other girls my age anyway, since I graduated high school early and left out from home two years ago on my eighteenth birthday to put myself through junior college.

I leaned against the truck and lit a Marlboro Mild Menthol while he finished kicking through the two-foot tall weeds. I wondered if I’d have to cook supper if Dr. Johnson split up with his wife and married me. I knew it wasn’t right to be thinking about marrying someone else while I was Duane’s girl, but just for fun it wouldn’t hurt to dream about being a doctor’s wife. I looked at my watch and saw it was past six. “Duane, we better get going, Hon. Duane Jr.’ll be home from football practice soon.”

Duane Jr. was sort of my stepson. Which was kind of funny. The thought had already crossed my mind that when he had his birthday in January I’d only be a year older than him.

“That’s all right,” Duane said. “I just need to get these few cans and maybe the ones up at the Skyline grocery dumpster, and then we can go home. I about got a load now that’s big enough to drive down to Scottsboro. What are we having for supper?”

 

 

Duane Jr. borrowed Duane’s truck keys and hit the back door as soon as he ate. He didn’t even wait for a bowl of ice cream. I’d finished drying the dishes and was standing at the sink folding the dishrag when I felt Duane’s big hands slide around my waist. He put his chin on my shoulder. Then he kissed my neck and I felt his right hand snake down between my legs. I liked him touching me, but my first thought was I hope he washed his hands good after he handled that armadillo.

“Duane, what are you doing?” I turned around and put my hands on his shoulders.

“What do you think I’m doing?” He had that big smile that I didn’t think any woman could say no to. My Momma kept warning me that he’d use that little-boy grin and his smooth talk to get me to do whatever he wanted. I think she was just jealous because they were almost the same age and he didn’t care much for her.

“Jr. might come back home.”

“He’s gone until 10:30, when Cindy’s daddy makes him leave. We got plenty of time.”

“Give me a minute.” I pushed Duane back and headed to the bathroom. I at least had to clean up with a washcloth from earlier.

 

 

I planned to call him Rayford, but when I closed the door behind me and turned around all I could say was “Dr. Johnson.” I’d practiced saying Rayford in my mind a hundred times that day, but when he looked me right in the eye I just couldn’t say his name out loud.

He’d been watching me from where he sat behind his computer, with the same smile Duane had when he looked at me the night before. “Is everyone gone?”

“Yes sir,” I said, feeling the blood rush to my face again calling him sir, but the words just came out that way.

He looked so handsome as he stood up in his pressed black slacks and long white coat and motioned me over to him. He pushed the files back from the middle of his desk. I knew he wanted me to sit up there. I did.

He pulled his chair up right between my legs and pushed my feet up to rest on the chair arms. I leaned my head back on the cool leather desktop and closed my eyes while he held my panties over to the side and did what he wanted. I wanted it, too, but I was glad I didn’t have to say so.

Duane was parked over at the edge of the parking lot where the truck got the little bit of shade from the tall pine tree beside the clinic. The weather was still hot to be so far into September and I knew he’d have the truck running with the air on high. I saw him blow smoke out through the opening at the top of the window. I locked the front door and slid the key into my purse. Dr. Johnson would leave out the side door as soon as we drove off.

Two empty Pabst cans lay on the seat next to the Polaroid camera and a new pack of film. Duane was drinking his third beer. He handed me a can from the Little Igloo ice chest on the seat. I popped the top as we drove off. The drive was fifteen miles from the clinic in Gurley back to where we lived in Skyline.

“I seen two armadillos over on Highway 35 this morning,” Duane said. “We can go home that way. With a little luck we can put out this whole six pack before supper.”

Duane never told me how long he’d been making drunk armadillos. I wanted to ask Becky, his second wife, who was my good friend before she split up with Duane. But she wouldn’t talk to me anymore. I tried telling her I didn’t have anything to do with Duane while she was married to him, but she didn’t believe me. It was mostly true. I only was with him a time or two when they were married, and I knew for a fact they were almost broke up by then. Heather had told me somebody saw Becky with Jimmy Whitehead down at Lake Guntersville drinking beer at the sandbar. Becky had already moved back to her mother’s trailer in Paint Rock when Duane and I hooked up. She shouldn’t still be mad at me.

On the way home Duane stopped four times to make drunk armadillos. At one place, there were three of the little critters belly up together. He said they ran in packs and when a car hit one the other ones would go check on it and get hit too. Duane was sort of an expert on armadillos. He propped all three with their backs up against the stop sign and gave each one a beer.

“They look like real party animals, don’t they,” Duane said. He thought that was the funniest thing ever.

 

 

I didn’t feel too good the next morning. Which was odd, since I only had a few beers the night before. But I felt better by lunchtime. Heather and I went to Hardee’s for lunch. All the way there and back, she never shut up asking me about Duane and were we going to get married and stuff. She’d been my best friend since I was a senior in high school, and even helped me get on at Dr. Johnson’s office when I passed my certified nurse’s assistant test. Heather was a real LPN. She was just the opposite of Momma, who said I was a fool and ought to get my own place. Momma had got on my last nerve and I was ready to scream if she said that thing about not buying the cow because of the free milk again.

I told Heather that Duane said we needed to wait until he got hired back on at Sherman Concrete and built back up his savings to think about getting married. He’d worked at the plant for a long time driving one of those white cement trucks until they lost the contract for the four-lane highway and he got laid off.

Momma said Duane was just using me, but I knew he loved me. He treated me good. Like the night before, after we had some loving, he held me tight and fell asleep with my head on his shoulder. I felt really safe snuggled up against him and wished I hadn’t started thinking about Dr. Johnson right in the middle of it.

I didn’t know what Momma would say about me and Dr. Johnson, but I thought she might be proud a real doctor had such an interest in me. Dr. Johnson told me I was beautiful and had a lovely soul. I once asked Duane if I was beautiful, and he said I was and that I had the prettiest long blonde hair. But he never said anything about my soul being lovely.

I’d noticed on the scales before breakfast that I’d gained two pounds. As I laid there on Duane’s arm way past midnight, I thought about maybe going back to junior college to be an LPN and I hoped I would start my period soon. Dr. Johnson says that a LPN can make three thousand dollars more than a certified nurse’s assistant.

After lunch, Heather and I took our smoke break out back of the clinic at the wooden picnic table under the big oak tree. She read Dear Abby to me about some woman who wanted to know if it was all right to tell her husband’s daddy not to smack his food at the table and ruin Thanksgiving for everyone. Then Heather flipped through the rest of the paper, when all of a sudden she busted out laughing.

“What are you laughing about?’

“That Drunk Armadillo Man. Have you heard of him?”

I’d promised Duane I could keep a secret. “Yeah. I heard of him. He was in the Scottsboro paper and people been talking about him.”

“Look at this picture,” she’d said, turning the newspaper toward me. A color photograph covered a fourth of the page with an armadillo on his back holding a Pabst can. I recognized the scene from the Curves Ahead road sign in the background and knew the exact location on Highway 146 coming down the mountain from Skyline.

 

 

I handed Duane the Huntsville Times that Heather had given me. He stared at the picture for a long time, holding the page with both hands. Then he got a big grin. “Damn, I’m going to be famous. Look at that.”

I was thinking that nobody knows who gives the armadillos a beer, so how are you famous. But I didn’t say that.

“Why are you doing the armadillos?”

Duane turned red in the face and I saw him ball up his fist, but he didn’t say a word. I didn’t mean there was anything wrong with the armadillos, but I knew not to say anything else. He shook his head and looked at me like I must be dumb as a stump, but he didn’t say anything. Finally, he walked over to the big kitchen drawer and rummaged around until he found scissors and Scotch tape. He cut out the news article and taped it up on the refrigerator door between the pizza coupons and a picture of six of us standing behind a eight-foot tall pyramid of beer cans we made down at the sandbar when we camped all weekend. That night in the kitchen was the first time Duane wasn’t sweet to me.

 

 

The next day was Saturday. Duane got up at first light. A guy named Earl something or other had called the night before and said the crappie were biting on Lake Guntersville. The three of us were to meet at seven o’clock down at Goose Pond Colony boat landing. Duane was outside loading up the Bass Tracker when I brought him a cup of black coffee.

Duane put down the cane pole he had been rigging up with new line and kissed me on the forehead. “Good morning, Sunshine.”

I smiled, but inside I didn’t feel like putting on a happy face. “How’d you feel if I didn’t go with you today?” The way I felt, I knew riding in the boat would be about as much fun as getting a root canal from a plumber. The sun through the pines was pretty, all streaky and red, and it was nice and cool outside right then, but I knew it’d be hot as Hades on the seat of that metal boat when the sun got on up. Hitting all those waves would have me chumming in no time.

“It’s all right with me. What are you going to do?”

“I’ll just be here cleaning up the house a little. I might call Heather to come over and ride me down to the Unclaimed Baggage Store. I want to find a coat to wear to work when it turns cold.” What I really needed was to tell her that the little strip had a plus that turned pink this morning.

 

 

All day at work on Monday I practiced what to say to Dr. Johnson. As soon as the other girls were out the front door he hung up a chart he was studying and walked over to where I was bent over putting files away. I kept my head down. He stood behind me and put his hands on my hips and pressed himself into me. I could feel he was getting stirred. I stood up and put a hand on his chest. “The door isn’t locked.”

He walked over and flipped the dead bolt, then walked back and stood just inches in front of me. I leaned back into the counter.

He put out a hand to the side of my face, rubbing down to my neck. He was so gentle I felt a lump in my throat. His other hand came up to my breast and he stood there with his palm just touching me tenderly through my white blouse. He looked me right in the eye. “You look so sexy in that tight skirt.”

I felt my face burning. No one could make me feel as pretty as he did. I looked down. I wanted him to go ahead with what he was doing. But I knew if I didn’t say what I had to say right off I might not be able to. “I got to tell you something, Rayford.” It was the first time I had used his first name.

He kept circling my nipple with his palm and I had to look down when I talked.

“I’m pregnant.”

His left hand dropped from my breast and the one that had been on my neck moved down and gripped my shoulder tight enough to hurt a little. “What? Are you sure?”

“I’m pretty sure.”

Instead of hugging me the way I’d expected, he let go of my arm and turned around with his back to me. He put both hands on the back counter and leaned over with his head down. He wouldn’t look at me. I just stood there with my arms folded across my chest and bit the side of my mouth to keep my chin from quivering.

“So now I’m Rayford,” he said without looking around at me.

This wasn’t the scene I had in my mind when I practiced what to say. I guess I expected him to say we had to get married or something like that.

Instead, he just asked, “How far along are you?”

I couldn’t think of how that mattered, but I answered him. “Three weeks late.”

“Sherrie, there are a lot of ways to look at this situation.”

I didn’t like him calling my baby a situation, but he kept talking and I couldn’t think of a thing to say.

“You’re not ready to have a child. You don’t have to, you know.”

I heard gravel crunch under car tires turning in to the parking lot. I walked over to the window and peeked through the little white plastic blinds. Duane was early. Of all the days to be early for the first time, he had to pick today.

“I got to go,” I said, swallowing hard. I grabbed my purse. I used my sleeve to dry my eyes before I opened the door.

“Sherrie, have you told Duane? I’m sure this is his baby, you know. He needs to know if he’s going to have a baby.”

I turned around, holding my purse against my chest. “I got to go.”

“Can we talk tomorrow? Promise me? You’re not going to tell him about me are you?”

I nodded, but I didn’t promise. I went out the door and locked it behind me.

 

That evening Duane and Duane Jr. and I had a good supper of fried chicken I cut up from a whole fryer myself. It had cooled off some so we ate in the back yard at the picnic table Duane built out of two by fours. We sat outside until dark drinking Pabst. Duane tried to fix the wires on his boat trailer so the lights would work. He pumped his fist when he finally got the one on the left side to stay on. I thought this might be a good night to tell him about our baby.

I decided to wait until bedtime to say anything to Duane. After I thought some, I knew this baby must be his. Dr. Johnson was a doctor, and he should know about things like this.

We watched the news on television. Duane had started watching all the time now, ever since that article came out in the Huntsville newspaper with a color picture of one of his armadillos.

“You’re not really famous until they put you on the TV,” Duane had said one day.

So now we watched the news at ten every single night before bed. That night they just talked about the new tire factory coming to Huntsville and how dry the weather still was in north Alabama. There wasn’t anything about armadillos.

We were in bed with the lights off, but I could see from the streetlight that stayed on out back at the shed. Duane was finishing his bedtime cigarette and blowing smoke up toward the ceiling through the little shafts of blue light that came through the bamboo blinds.

“Duane?” 

“Yeah?” 

“I think we’re going to have a baby.”

I guess what happened shouldn’t have surprised me. Just like Dr. Johnson, Duane didn’t say anything at first. I wondered if silence was how men always reacted to hearing they were having a baby.

“I thought you was on the pill.” His voice sounded like in some kind of horror movie when he hissed the words at me.

“I am, well, I was. But that weekend we camped down at the sandbar at the Fourth of July I forgot to take my pills with me. I took three extra pills when we got back, but I guess taking four all at once didn’t work.”

Duane just lay there not talking, taking such big breaths I could hear the air whistle through his teeth. Then he sat up and leaned over me. His hands gripped my arms and pressed me into the mattress. “Did you get pregnant to trap me? No woman is going to trap me, you know.”

“I wasn’t trying to have a baby.” 

“I already got a son and I’m not ready to start over with a crying baby now that I about got him out of the house. All you girls think about is having a damn baby.”

I shook my head and gritted my teeth to keep from crying. “I said I wasn’t trying to have a baby, didn’t you hear me.”

“You ain’t even been here long enough for me to get you pregnant, you little slut.” The words hit me in the face like a load of buckshot, then I got the other barrel when the back of his hand smacked me in the mouth. I didn’t fight back. It was my fault for springing it on him like that.

Duane stood up and put his jeans on and stomped out. As I stared up at the ceiling licking the blood off my swollen lips, I heard the truck crank up. The words had hurt my feelings more than his old thick hand could ever hurt. But I didn’t cry. That wasn’t the first time I’d got hit.

 

 

I looked out the window over Momma’s sink. Red and gold leaves floated down in a breeze and covered up the grass in the side yard where my rusty swing set had stood for over ten years. I wondered if we could get new seats made and paint the bars up like new.

I helped Momma clear the breakfast dishes off the table and stacked them one-by-one in her new dishwasher. It felt funny reaching so far over to pick up dishes from the counter. “Momma, I’m proud you got you a dishwasher put in. It’s real nice.”

“Yeah, I’m trying to fix up the place special. That baby needs a good home.” I was a little surprised at how kind Momma had been. I’d been living with her for nearly two months and we hadn’t had an argument since the first week. I looked at her for a minute while she folded towels out of the dryer. Maybe I’d been wrong about her being selfish and wanting to run my life, which was why I’d left her house the day I turned eighteen and not come back for two years until now. We had yelled at each other out on the front porch that morning while I threw clothes into Heather’s back seat. I felt real bad for having said back then I hated her.

“Momma, do you think I should go ahead and enroll at the junior college to finish those last three courses? I want to get my LPN and find a new job. I just know this baby is a girl, so I’m going to need to make some money for her to have nice things. Girls need nice things so they can grow up special.”

Momma pulled the last towels out and closed the dryer. “We’ll see, Sherrie. Don’t worry about that for now. We’ll fix this place up and get that little girl whatever she needs. Don’t you worry about that none.”

I looked down at my stomach and slipped my hand between the front buttons of my yellow sun dress to feel the baby move. “We have to take extra care of Baby Girl. I love her so much already. When I hold my hand on my belly like this I can feel her there loving me. I can tell she’s going to be special. I have big plans for her.”

Somehow Momma had enough money for us. I’d go back to work after the baby came, but it felt good to have Momma taking care of me right now. I decided not to worry about it any more. “Momma, I love you.”

She just smiled at me and went back to folding towels.

The night before I’d seen Duane on the television. They said he’d called the TV station and told them he was the one making drunk armadillos. They interviewed him sitting on his front porch without his shirt to show off his armadillo tattoo. He was holding up his scrapbook of all the Polaroid pictures he’d taken to prove he was the real Drunk Armadillo Man. He said he was an artist and the world was his palette.

He was real handsome, but he should’ve combed his hair better. I wish I could’ve been there to make sure he wore something nicer than his old blue jeans. I didn’t tell Momma about seeing Duane on the news. The one big fight Momma and I had when I’d first come home was about why he wasn’t supporting me. I’d had to tell her about Dr. Johnson and how maybe it wasn’t Duane’s fault for sure.

Sometimes I wish I could go back to work with Dr. Johnson. Not so much to see him, I just miss being there. But after Momma went down and talked to Dr. Johnson about my job, she said it was best if I just stay home from the clinic until the baby is born. Dr. Johnson understood. She said we don’t have to worry about money because she had some coming in.

“Momma, come here and feel this.”

She folded the last pink towel and set the basket near the hall bathroom door. She walked over and put her hand on my stomach and smiled. “I can feel her kicking.”

“She’s not kicking Momma. Baby Girl’s dancing to let me know she’s happy.”

“I’m sure she is, Sherrie. I feel like dancing with her.” Momma had never been so sweet.