The Escape of Bobby Ray Hammer, A Novel of a '50s Family

  She doesn't slam the car door. She doesn't race the engine. She doesn't peal rubber. She just leaves.

  So Leroy asked Bev for a date. I will fix his ass for that.

  Mama is on the front porch glaring. "Bobby Ray. I told you to go get your papa."

  "Oh, Mama."

  She's never had me do this before.

  CHAPTER 9: Where Lenny died

  I'm standing just inside the door of the Cotton Club waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dark so I can find out if Papa is in here. Curt's sitting in Papa's pickup and mad as hell. My shadow is standing in a wedge of light that's falling on the wood floor, and that wedge gets slimmer and slimmer, and my eyes get better and better as the door slowly closes behind me.

  "Hey, Hershel. Look at that." It's a man's voice, but I can't tell whose. "What the hell happened to you, Bobby?" the man asks, pulls back from the bar a little and I recognize him as Maxwell Gerald. He has a little place out on the Boulevard.

  A girl in tight Levis steps away from the bar, away from Papa, I think, walks down to the far end, turns to look me over top to bottom. I see Papa get off a bar stool real slow, like he's going to get a whipping. He walks toward me putting his old beat up hat on.

  "Time to go now, son?" he wants to know, like maybe I dropped him off and had something else to do, and now that I'm all through, it's time to go.

  "Yeah. Mama is real worried, Papa," I say quiet like.

  The corners of his mouth are both turned down real bad, so I think maybe he's going to cry. I wonder who's going to pay for this?

  *

  I'm standing at the edge of the ditch watching Curt cry. He's trying to set a siphon pipe in the tall grass. Sun is just about down now, and I look off into the horizon as I walk on down the ditch away from Curt. God, it seems like our family just can't get over feeling bad. Curt just took the worst beating from Papa I've ever seen him give out. I know that Curt is not the best kid in the world, but Papa just shouldn't hit him like that. I know what that belt feels like. And Trish just keeps egging Curt on because she knows Papa won't hit her, and all the stuff Papa should give her, he gives to Curt. So Curt gets his share and then he gets Trish's too. I think Trish learned something this time though.

  When we got home from the Cotton Club, Curt went on inside, but Papa and me stayed outside to check the pickup tires that he said weren't wearing right. Just trying to bide his time, if you ask me, before facing Mama. But finally I guess Papa figured he better go in and take his medicine. Just as we walked in the front door, Curt hollered at Mama. "You can go to hell too," is what Curt said. He was mad enough to say a lot more because he'd been sitting in that pickup a long time, with Papa in the Cotton Club, and he was ready to crawl anybody within reach. I figure he'd started with Trish as soon as he opened the front door, then Mama started on him. She'll correct Curt, but not when Papa is around. It sets Papa off. This time Mama hollered back before she knew Papa was in the house. "Watch your mouth when you're talking to me, young man. I'm your mother," is what she said. That was enough to convict Curt in Papa's eyes with the drinks in him. Curt was in the bedroom just off the living room when me and Papa came in, so he was trapped because there's not another way out. Papa didn't say anything, but I knew the belt was already hot from the hiss it made when Papa jerked it out of his pants.

  Trish looked like the world just caved in on her. "It's okay, Papa. I started it," is what Trish said. But it didn't make Papa any difference. He'd already drawn his bead on Curt. "Papa," said Trish. "Whip me, Papa. It was my fault." And she started to cry. Trish ran at Papa screaming like she couldn't stand what was about to happen. "Please, Papa, please whip me, Papa. I deserve it not him. It was my fault, Papa." Papa hasn't ever whipped her, and I guess he never will. Mama whipped her when she was little, but never Papa. Seems like that's a load too hard for Trish to carry. Sometimes I think she hates Curt because of it.

  I started to walk in and tell Papa he couldn't do that to Curt. But I figured he is our papa. Maybe he knows best. But he always buys belts with metal tips. I kept looking at little Curt cowering in the corner, and then I would turn away.

  Trish walked into a corner of the living room and just stood there shaking and crying.

  Curt took the belt on his arms first, till they hurt too bad, then rolled over on his stomach trying to spread the pain, but he couldn't take much of that either, so he stood and took the last few lashes that I saw face on, blinking and flinching every time the belt whacked him across the shoulders, but he still stood straight. Papa was using a forehand then a backhand. Papa never said a word, didn't even look mad. And Curt never cried. I've never seen a grown man look as brave as Curt. I had to walk off. Went to our bedroom, sat on the bed looking at the space between the boards in the hardwood floor like I did when Lenny died, listened to the silence in the whole house that followed Curt's beating.

  I don't know what happened to Trish.

  I'm looking out over the hay field that we've finally collected all the hay off of. We'll finish watering this field by morning. I can already tell the difference in the shade of green where we've watered. I see a couple of fresh gopher mounds in some of our borders and figure we'll soon be having trouble with our water getting out. Gopher holes make the water just disappear and reappear somewhere else. Like maybe out in Mr. Grissom's field.

  I walk back to Curt, but he's still having trouble setting that siphon pipe at the high end of the ditch where the water is low, so I go over to help him, and he's mad and cussing the pipe and acting like that's the reason he's crying. When he's bent over, his old white T-shirt pulls out of his pants, and I see the welts Papa left on his back.

  I know how Curt feels. Everything I do, I get into trouble. Right now I'm probably getting in trouble and don't even know it. Everywhere I go I get into trouble. If I go off and hide, I get into trouble. If I just talk to somebody, I get into trouble. If I don't talk to somebody, I get into trouble. Seems like I don't ever get a rest from this life. Sometimes I just want to shout, "Stop! Stop! for just a minute and let me think about some of this." Just let me not live for a minute, and maybe I can get caught up. But no. It just goes on and on and on. Seems like I am running about a week behind everybody else. By the time I find out what's going on so that I can do it right, I got something brand new to do, and already it's not working. It's just like somebody booby-trapped my life. All I have to do is show up and things are already going wrong.

  "Come on, Curt, that siphon pipe got you by the ass?" I ask.

  "I don't know. I just can't seem to get it started. Why doesn't Papa do this anyway? Why do we have to do his dirty work?"

  "Hell, Curt," I tell him, "I saw him take a half hour to set one of the big ones the other day and sometimes he can't set 'em at all. It gets expensive when he does it. Once I saw him cuss the pipe first, then he beat it on the ground until it flew up and hit him in the face, then he took it over to a fence post and beat the pipe double, threw it across the fence into Mr. Grissom's junkyard. I think he sends us to change the water because he knows we'll do it right."

  Curt laughs at that, sniffs but keeps on crying.

  "Ya, those pipes are about as hard to get along with as Trish," I say. He doesn't laugh this time. I feel like I have to do something for him, but when I try to help set the pipe, he turns his back on me and walks on to the pickup. I notice how big his arms are getting. He's beginning to muscle up, just like me.

  I get all the pipes set, watch the ditch to make sure the water level stays put. Then I walk real slow back to the pickup were Curt is, get in to drive and set there listening to him sniff and watching him wipe his nose on his shirt sleeve.

  I drive past the house, go north a ways, then out east of the Boulevard on Avenue 23 1/2 with Curt asking me where I'm going, but I won't tell him. We go past the Cemetery where Lenny's buried, and when we come to the big dip where the Berenda Slough crosses the road, Curt quits crying because he knows this place. The concrete road is flat in the bottom of the s
lough bed that's about a hundred yards wide. Not a whole lot of water crosses the road, it being fall, and that only at the far east bank. I stop on the west bank, pull off onto the sand and get out. Curt's never stopped here before. Mama and Papa won't allow it. I've been by here a lot. Sometimes I come by when I go to the fairgrounds, but I've only stopped once myself. That was the day after Lenny died. I came with Papa to look for Lenny's baseball cap and wallet. I don't think Papa even knew I was with him.

  Curt doesn't need me to tell him what happened here, but I tell him anyway. "Lenny was killed over there by that tree, about the same time of evening as now. Did you know that, Curt?"

  He won't answer. The water never reaches up this high on the bank. Not unless it's a flood year. Lenny's blood is still soaked into the ground here. The rain just washes it a little deeper. The ground's still sacred.

  "It was spring instead of fall, though," I tell him. "The sun was just set, and Lenny was coming home in his car."

  "Lenny's car was broken down," he says like he thinks I'm lying.

  "Lenny's car had been broken down until a couple of days before, that's right. Him and Papa put in a new transmission. He'd been taking his time with it, but something happened and he got it fixed in a hurry. Lenny had dropped the transmission dragging."

  "How do you know he was dragging? You weren't there."

  "I don't, but that's what I heard at school. It's not the story Lenny told Papa though. You can bet on that. I was helping him and Papa put in the new transmission. Papa was mad as hell. Chewed on Lenny all the time they were under the car. Thought he was going to use a wrench on him. Papa scared the hell out of me then."

  "And I suppose he doesn't now?"

  "Not really."

  "Then how come you don't stand up to him?"

  "Being afraid and not knowing what's the right thing to do are two different things, Curt."

  I take Curt about ten yards off the road to the foot of an old cottonwood tree.

  "That's where Lenny was lying when they found him," I say. "All wrapped up in that car of his, a piece of metal sticking through his head."

  Curt flinches when I tell him that and starts crying again. "Stop it, Bobby Ray," he says.

  But I figure he ought to hear it all. Feels good to say it out loud anyway. I go back to the pickup to get the lemonade thermos Mama fixed for us. "Sit down," I tell him, motioning to the foot of the tree. "We're going to stay a while."

  "Papa's going to be mad," says Curt, and he's still sniffing a little.

  I turn up the thermos. Like that sour sweetness. "Papa's not whipping you any more. I've made up my mind."

  Curt laughs at me, sniffs again. "I made up my mind too when he was in the Cotton Club, but he did it anyway."

  I hand him the thermos and he finishes it.

  "Did you know somebody killed Lenny?" And now I'm just sort of trying the words out, not even sure what I am saying.

  "It was an accident."

  "Yeah, you're right," I tell him. "The police said Lenny just went off the road and hit the tree. But there's really two stories to him getting killed. The other one is Papa's story. I don't know all of it, but I do know a little."

  "You're making this up, Bobby Ray." And he stands up. "I want to go home."

  "No, you don't either. Sit down. I need to talk about this cause I've been thinking lately."

  "Mama's going to be scared."

  "Me thinking is not that scary. Besides, she's scared of everything."

  He laughs again. "Ain't that the truth."

  "Sit down."

  "I don't want another whipping."

  "Pull up your shirt, let me see your welts."

  "You get a kick out of seeing where I hurt?"

  "Oh shit," I say. "Put it back down. I changed my mind. Curt," and I must be feeling brave or I wouldn't ask even Curt this. "Do you remember Lenny's funeral?"

  "A little." And he says it real quiet, like he's bracing himself for something.

  "What was Papa shooting at?"

  "At the funeral?"

  "Yeah. You remember the gun shots?"

  "Papa didn't shoot anything."

  "Sure he did. He had his pistol with him. He shot something."

  "That was someone else. Papa didn't have a gun. You were there."

  "If he didn't, who did?"

  "I don't know. Mama got me out of there real fast once the action started."

  "Come on, Curt. This is important. I've got to know who it was and what they were shooting at."

  "I was little then, Bobby Ray. Why don't you remember?"

  "I was strange then Curt. Real strange. Sick. Besides Aunt Loretta kept me from seeing most of it. What do you think about her? Is she weird or what?"

  "Not any weirder than you. You still should remember. All I remember is that some one shot my dog that I used to play with all the time."

  "Rascal?"

  "Ya. I think that was his name. He was my dog."

  "No he wasn't. And I know this for sure. He was Lenny's dog."

  "Well, I used to play with him all the time."

  "You probably did. You didn't have to work then. So tell me who shot Rascal."

  "I don't know. You should remember the rest."

  "But I don't. All I remember is that a few days later that policeman, Brock, came out to see Papa. I thought he was going to haul Papa off to jail for killing someone. I didn't know it was a dog. I thought somebody got shot. Brock and Papa stood right out there on the front porch and talked. Papa was saying it wasn't an accident. Brock said it was. And they were talking about Lenny getting killed."

  "If you want to know about it, why don't you ask Papa?"

  "You know better than that."

  "So you're not afraid of Papa, huh?"

  "Well, maybe about some things."

  "Ask Mama."

  "Mama's mean too, Curt. She won't answer a whole lot of questions about Lenny. The police were convinced it was an accident. Maybe Papa was wrong."

  I quit talking, and Curt and I sit here feeling the dampness of the grass under us soaking into our bodies, it getting darker and darker and maybe even a little cool with fall coming on, everything around us dying, and Mama and Papa worrying about us not coming home from changing the water. When it comes sundown now, we have to all be home or Mama cries. I know we are getting in trouble again, at least I know they'll be all over my butt. But I'm feeling so close to Lenny, I don't want to even move. I get to feeling real strange about him dying here where we're sitting. Sacred ground. I just imagine I'm Lenny with that piece of metal sticking through my head and my blood and brains pouring out onto the ground and my body twisted into all that metal, try to feel him hurting, and think what a terrible time it was to die in the spring with high school almost over, graduation just around the corner, cotton and corn all planted, seeds sprouting and the County Fair coming up.

  I suppose Papa favored Lenny because he was the only one of us born in Oklahoma. Papa used to talk about Mama changing Lenny's diapers while he watched the wind blow all his topsoil into Arkansas.

  I look at little Curt, his old work shoes all muddy and split partway down the side, his Levis wet halfway up the knee, and him needing a haircut. Those welts are showing underneath his shirt again. Strange how Papa's belt leaves marks. It's like the edge on each side cuts into the skin, and the middle part must really pop because it just gets red and swells there. Where that tips hits, that's where the blue places are, blue with a little blood under the skin. That metal tip is wicked.

  I didn't realize until now how Mama and Papa neglect Curt. They notice Trish because she works on them all the time. She's working on Curt's ass all the time too. Lenny was always on me because of the way I treated Trish, but he didn't understand about her. Maybe she's wised up. Mama and Papa are so lost in their own heartache, they don't even know they have Curt. It's almost like they are blind. So much they can't see. I wonder if there isn't some kind of sickness, a disease, that keeps you from seeing some th
ings. It's almost like they have the flu, but instead of it affecting their body, it's affected their brain. Maybe someday doctors will give people a shot, and it'll get them over something like what Mama and Papa have. But a lot of it I know is my fault, them being sick and me giving them so much trouble.

  I should help Curt too. I wonder what I can say to him now? Seems like I ought to be able to help. Sometimes it seems like it's just me and Curt against the rest of them.

  "You remember Lenny's best friend?" I ask.

  "I remember a tall skinny kid that used to come over sometimes."

  "Curly, blond hair?"

  "Maybe."

  "That's him. Only he's not so skinny anymore. That's Charles Kunze. He's been gone ever since Lenny died. But now he's back in town."

  "Why don't you ask him about the shooting, if you got to know. He must have been there."

  "He was, Curt."

  "Well, go look him up then, jees. Why you coming to me?"

  "God. I've never seen anybody as mad as you."

  "Everybody stays on my case all the time. Just get off my case."

  "I have seen him."

  "Then why didn't you ask him, moron?"

  "Asking questions is not my strong point. Besides I'm afraid of him."

  "Poor little Bobby Ray. He's not afraid of Papa but is afraid of Charles."

  "Curt," and now I'm just about in a mood to kick his ass myself, "you're going to be so good at high school. That mouth will really go over big. I've been afraid of Charles for a long time, probably cause he used to run around with Lenny."

  I finally get another laugh out of Curt. But it's not like he wants to. "So where'd you see him?" he says. "The suspense is killing me."

  "You know the evening I picked up my car at Pistoresi's?"

  "So what?"

  "He was working there. He wants me to go out with him. He's going to show me all the things he used to do with Lenny."

  "He was raised here. He's just another Chowchilla deadhead."

  "He's a nice guy, Curt. No wonder Lenny liked to run around with him."

  "So what are you going to do together?"

  "Shoot rabbits. That's what he was talking about."