The Escape of Bobby Ray Hammer, A Novel of a '50s Family
"I don't want to shoot a roof, Charles," I tell him.
"I'll take it," says Melvin.
"Give it to me, Charles, I'll do it," says Wayne. "Give it to me. Bobby's wimping out again. Hurry, Charles. Give it to me." And Wayne's reaching for Lenny's pistol.
I'm just not taking any more shit from him, so this time I use my elbow, knock the breath out of him. Maybe hit him a little harder than I intended. While he's bent over sucking air, I take the pistol from Charles, feel the warm metal handle. Only it doesn't feel like it's the warmth from Charles' hand. It feels like Lenny's heat. This is the first time I've held his gun. I feel like I could turn that pistol on Charles real easy. Anyone in the car for that matter. I don't like anybody anymore. Right now I feel like there isn't anything in the world that I wouldn't do. And I know there's nothing worse than a nigger unless it's a white man who runs with niggers. I have this stinking nigger smell all over me. The window is down, cold rain coming in in big wet drops as the pistol turns toward the first house. So much water, I can't see too good. Just as I shoot, I see a light come on in a bedroom window. Fire shoots out the end of the barrel and the pistol jumps so bad, I almost drop it. Then I put a thud into another rooftop that already has a light on in the living room. Seems easy once I get started. I shoot again, then take out a window in the little store with an Oly sign on the front door. The sound of breaking glass is like music, so I put a couple more in that window. That brings me back to my senses or maybe it's that I know Wayne's about to hit me. I take the blow aimed for my head with my shoulder. Then I have my hand on his throat with my arm straight to hold him away from me and push that red head of his down to the floorboard, him with his knee in my chest. I've taken a blow to the left side of my head and I'm worried that my eye might be cut. I tighten my hand on his throat and feel this big round hose-like thing in his throat that his Adam's apple sits on. Think I will just rip it out, hope it kills him, but Charles pulls me. Wayne hits me again on the same side of the face, on the cheek this time.
Then Charles slaps me. That stops me and I take another blow from Wayne to my right eye this time before Melvin can get between me and him. I can't feel anything Wayne has done to me anymore. I just feel the burn on my cheek where Charles slapped me.
I'm staring at Charles and he's staring back. I take a swing at him but the punch doesn't go anywhere because Melvin catches my arm.
"Nobody slaps me and lives," I say to Charles.
"Punk," says Thomas. "You going to try to whip everybody in the car?"
"If I have to."
"Somebody's got to bring you back to your senses," says Charles.
"No man slaps me and lives."
Melvin's sitting between Wayne and me now.
"If you guys don't stop it, I'm going to have to kick all your asses," he says.
I stare Melvin down too. "You'd have more trouble with me tonight than you did out on Beacon Road," I tell him.
He laughs at me. "I don't doubt that. But lighten up a little, anyway." he says.
Wayne's sitting over there trying to talk but has this really hoarse voice that can only say a couple of words at a time. He's calling me Hammer now instead of Bobby and saying over and over that my time is coming and that I'm going to pay for what happened to Leroy and it's going to be just me and him. He's saying all that, two words at a time, so it takes a while.
My face still stings from where Charles slapped me. If he'd hit me with his fist, I could have handled it. But he didn't. He slapped me like I'm a little kid.
But what I just did with Lenny's pistol starts working on me. I don't even know where the pistol is so I look around a little and find it in the floorboard. While I'm sticking it in my coat pocket, I think about pointing it at each kid in the car and pulling the trigger. Feels good to think about killing each one of them.
I sulk for a couple of minutes, start to change back inside. I just can't believe I really did it. I shot Lenny's pistol into a house that had real people in it. While Thomas drives us over to our cars, I remember how I could see lights in that one house, see through its windows, see people inside. I keep seeing this scene. Maybe I didn't see everything that I think I did now and maybe I keep adding things to it, but I could see them inside, as if it was some man sitting there eating a late dinner at the table and it being real late at night, like maybe he'd been out working in some man's field all day and into the night and just got off work and was eating dinner or even breakfast, now it's so late, that his wife had to get up from sleeping to fix for him, his legs feeling real tired with his wet boots still on, his clothes all wet from the rain, and then he hears this gunshot and the bullet ripping through his attic and I imagine that he runs to check on the kids to make sure they didn't get hurt because it's me out there shooting at his roof and he runs up into a hall and has to go up a ladder to get into the attic where his kids sleep and his head disappears up into the darkness and he's looking around to see if his kids are okay and it's so dark I can't tell what he sees. Then another shot rips through the shingles.
When I start to get into my Chevy with the raining beating down hard on me, car exhaust fogging around me, fumes clogging my nose, Charles comes to me.
"I want the pistol back, Bobby."
I've had all of Charles that I'm good for this evening. "I don't know that you need it, Charles," I tell him. "Besides, it doesn't belong to you. It belongs to Lenny."
We're both ignoring the rain and it already has him soaking wet and it's starting to drip off of my nose and making my left eye sting.
"But he gave it to me. And now, he's dead."
I look at him straight, say nothing for a minute. "All the more reason. It's just cause I want it. It's mine." And I take a step toward him. "Mine just because I say it's mine." I have the pistol in my coat pocket. It feels cold against my hand. I have it pointed at him.
Charles stands there looking down at me for a minute, real straight faced. "I still can't believe you would fight me over a nigger girl. God, she's a dog, Bobby."
"Stay away from my family," I say. I could just squeeze that trigger and solve so many of my problems right now.
He laughs at me a little. "We had a fun time tonight, Bobby. Think about it. There's a lot more were that came from."
"That's what I'm afraid of."
"Okay. I guess the pistol belongs to you."
CHAPTER 32: Flood a Coming
It's early morning and I'm standing at the front window staring off through the cold rain toward town. We won't be working today. There's been more talk of a flood. Serious this time. Mama is in the kitchen banging skillets and what not. She always listens to the radio in the morning, this little station out of Merced that has the farm report. Papa's in the bathroom shaving. I just keep going back to last night, feeling Charles mouth on me, hearing that hog die, seeing inside that roof I shot, see this little baby dark boy, and I don't want to call him a nigger, and he's lying up in that attic and has this bullet hole in his body somewhere and he can't figure out why he woke up and hurts so bad and he doesn't know that he didn't wet his bed but that that's his blood he's laying in so he's crying and thinking that it's pee that's stinging him so bad and his daddy's trying to get to him but he can't find him in the dark.
I have decided to kill Charles. I walk down the dark hall listening to the hardwood floor creak, go back to my bedroom where Curt's still lying in bed asleep. I push the closet door back real quiet like, look at my red corduroy coat here in the dark. I don't know where I'm going to carry Lenny's pistol tonight when I go to town. Maybe I can just carry the pistol in my car, maybe under the seat like where Charles kept it all the time. But I might have to keep it on me if the only way I can get to him is inside some building, like maybe Farnesi's. I might shoot him in Farnesi's. My coat pocket may not be big enough for it. I'll have to try the pistol in my pants pocket. What's the use in waiting? Maybe I should go see Charles at his little shack. I listen to the rain against the window. That's what woke me early this m
orning. The rain.
Curt rolls over and looks at me through half-closed eyes, then rolls back. Looks like he's pissed off.
"You've been in another fight, Bobby Ray," he tells me.
But my eye is not swelled much this morning and it's not cut as bad as I thought it might be.
I go back in the kitchen. Mama says that a lot of rain fell in the mountains over night, then asks what I want for breakfast. But I'm just thinking about eating something light. I'm wondering what Charles is having for breakfast. His last breakfast. Most of the time Mama's just like a short order cook. She'll fix a different breakfast for each of us.
"You better not let your papa see that eye," she says.
Trish comes in yawning, still in her nightgown. She's in the refrigerator getting a glass of milk, and Mama wants to know what she wants to eat.
"What are you going to eat, Bobby Ray?" Trish's asking me.
I don't know if I'm usually mad at her, but I don't feel mad now and that's different. "I'm just thinking about a bowl of Cheerios," I tell her.
"Can I fix it for you?" she asks me.
"What do you want, baby girl?" Mama asks.
"That's okay, Mama," says Trish. "I'll eat a bowl of cereal too. There's not any use in you cooking a big breakfast unless Papa's got to have one. He'll be wanting one though. You can depend on that. Nothing ever changes in his life. Not if he can help it."
Maybe I'm just imagining all this stuff about her and Charles. She looks like she doesn't have a problem in the world.
Now I start thinking about consequences. If I do this to Charles, it won't just change my life. My life is over. As far as the police are concerned, Charles is innocent. He's never been caught for any of the things he does. If I do this, I'm going to jail or maybe I'll be on the run the rest of my life. That's it. Maybe after I kill Charles, I'll skip the country, go to Texas or some place like that where there's lot of outlaws and open space. And here I have Bev for a girlfriend again. If I stay around here it'll be jail for a while and then the Gas Chamber. Or is it the Electric Chair for us here in California?
Papa comes in rolling up his sleeves.
"Where'd you get the pants, Papa?" Trish wants to know.
He's wearing fresh clean clothes. A new pair of khakis.
"They've been in the closet a while. No sense in wearing a new pair to the field the first time."
"Why, hell no. Wouldn't want to look good out in the field, would you?"
Trish is always cussing in front of Papa. I sure won't do it. She embarrasses me. Strange thing is, he won't cuss much around her. He'll even cuss around Mama, particularly around Mama, depending on the circumstances. But not Trish. He quit it a few years ago when he found out she could out cuss him.
"Farmers are just damn hoboes anyway," she adds, taking a look over at him out of the corner of her eye. "Isn't that right, Papa?"
Papa knows better than to get into it with her.
Trish pours the milk in my bowl for me, over all those little round O's.
"Two spoons of sugar for me," I tell her.
I try to imagine the way he's going to look when I shoot him. Between spoonfuls of Cheerios, I think about Charles' back being turned. I shoot him right between the shoulder blades so that it shatters part of his spine as it goes in, him lurching backwards.
Mama tells Trish to be quiet because the radio's talking about the Ash Slough again. I'm watching Mama roll out the dough for biscuits. Radio says the next big swell in the Slough will be around midnight. Papa tells Mama to flip on the light so he can read a little of yesterday's Fresno Bee. Guess he'll be reading about me in tomorrow's paper. Mama's cutting out little round patties of dough with an empty Campbell's soup can then sops both sides in a thin layer of what Trish calls snake oil she has poured in the pan. That makes the biscuits crispy. I get to thinking about Charles, his father Karl. Little Karl. Just another dairy farmer. Has a few acres of cotton. Charles has two sisters. Gretta, the one that Lenny liked, was one year younger than him. I don't know where she lives now. The other one's older than Charles. How much older and what her name is, I don't know. But she's off somewhere married. Charles is the baby boy, the only boy. I wonder what they're going to think about me shooting their only brother? They probably don't know anything about how mean he is. This time I think about shooting him with him turned sideways so the bullet goes in his temple leaving a small red dot and brains and bone blow out the other side, maybe a little blond hair and blood stick to the wall behind him as he goes down.
Curt comes in. He's in one hell of a bad mood. Got calf licks all over his hair that's wet in spots. He gave up on it. He has hair like Lenny's. Brown and straight as a stick.
"What do you want to eat, Curt?" Mama wants to know, as she puts strips of bacon into a skillet that's hot enough to make them sizzle.
"Biscuits," is all Curt says, but he's looking at Trish and just waiting for her to say something. She's not looking at him for anything. I wonder what they have cooking?
I can see myself in a striped suit already. It's going to be prison for me from now on. Bread and water. Feels like I'm saying good-bye to everyone here at the breakfast table. I didn't know how good I have it.
"Go to town with me, Bobby Ray," Papa says through the paper. "You must be getting better with your fists. This time it's only one eye. I won't mind being seen with you."
I'm thinking about going with him, but I have to look up Charles. I have to get this over with while I still want to do it. I look out the window at the wind and rain twisting the old willow tree out back. But what the hell. I haven't been to town with Papa in a couple of months. Besides, this'll be the last time we'll be together. The last time I'll be out on the street.
"You going to leave him out in the pickup while you go in and talk for a week?" asks Curt. He has this look in his eyes, like he would really like to take Papa's head off. But Papa doesn't treat me like that since I got grown.
"What kind of a burr got in your shorts during the night?" Papa asks Curt.
"It's going to flood tonight," says Trish.
"Stay out of it," Curt says back.
*
Me and Papa are standing on the bank of the Ash Slough, over by the Danish Creamery. It's just past noon, but dark enough to be sundown. I can see the spot where me and Brenda parked the night after the dance. We're standing next to the bridge where the railroad track and old Highway 99 cross the Slough side by side. A crew of volunteers are bagging sand and a couple of tractors pushing dirt up where they can get to it. We're talking to Mr. Grissom about how strong the bank is. Or Papa's talking to him and I'm listening. Mr. Grissom has an unlit cigar in his mouth, looks like he's been chewing on it for a week. He's given me a couple of strange looks. He's saying that the bank's strong enough but that they're expecting another three or four feet of water sometime after midnight. It's going to be touch and go. People in town better get prepared, he says. Then damn if he doesn't turn on me. Takes that cigar out of his mouth and points it at me.
"Hey, Bobby, you little chickenshit. The next time you use one of my shacks to gang-bang a girl, you better leave your shotguns at home. Otherwise, you're going to spend a couple of nights in the county jail. You'll foot the repair bill too."
Then he turns back to talking to Papa about the possibility of a flood like nothing happened. Papa doesn't act like anything happened either. Except he blushes a deep red. I walk away from them. I've never seen anyone so sure enough of himself as Mr. Grissom. He chewed me up like a dog with a rabbit and Papa just standing there.
Here comes Leroy's Uncle Jess strolling up. He walks on past, down the Slough bank without saying anything, waves for me to follow. He has on a long sleeve flannel shirt so I don't get to see his tattoos. His skin's so dark, he looks a little like a colored himself. It's a little cold for no coat. "How you been making it without Leroy?" he wants to know when I catch up to him. "You two were close as brothers."
I don't know why he thinks that. "I get a li
ttle lonely now and then, but I'm doing pretty good."
"A little lonely, huh?"
"A little."
"Who you running around with now?"
"Different kids. Have a girlfriend."
"A girl named Bev and a friend named Charles Kunze."
I don't know how he knows about Bev. "Ya. I see Charles once in a while."
"Leroy saw him once in a while too. Can't say it did him much good." He pulls off his hat and the rain makes little drops in his greasy black hair.
"I got him into that. Took him out with me and Charles stealing hubcaps once." I look down at the ground, toe a muddy clod.
"I wouldn't think you'd do something like that."
"I've done some things I'm not too proud of recently."
"Haven't we all, Bobby. Haven't we all. I know Leroy had his problems before he died. He talked to me a little. He was interested in that girl you're going with. Bev."
"He always was interested in her, I guess, but wouldn't say anything. He was always trying to date her behind my back."
"He talked about you a lot. Always talked about all the stuff you had that he didn't."
"Seemed to me like he was always trying to con me out of everything I had."
"Leroy tried to push everybody around. He's the only one of my nephews that would bum cigarettes off me."
I have to laugh at that. "He beat me out of a few cigarettes, and a few more things, too. I probably shouldn't tell you this, but before he died, Leroy learned stealing. That's another thing I got him into."
"You mean he would steal from you?"
"No. Not Leroy. He wouldn't steal from me but he would con me."
A light drizzle falls and the water in the Slough is just a few feet from the top of the bank now. Looks like a slow moving lake.
"I've never seen the Slough look like this, Jess."
"It's been this way a couple of times in the twenty-five years I've been here."
"To me it's always been just a few mud puddles full of grass and cane. When we were little, me and Leroy used to come here in the summertime after school to hide in the grass and smoke cigarettes. Maybe shoot a few birds with a BB gun or a .22. Look, Jess. There's an old armchair out in the middle. At first I thought it was a drowning man." It floats slowly along in the muddy water, rolls, then hits a tree and stops until it can swing around, then gets going again.