‘Ugh, fuck! Tell me what you did to those people, tell me you loved it.’
I don’t make a sound.
‘Tell me! Tell me you killed!’
She starts to tighten her legs, draw away, and I whisper until she relaxes, and pulls me back to her vee. I’ve heard about these kinds of girls.
‘Did you, Vern, did you do all that for me – for us . . .?’
I feel a fatal oscillation on the head of my man, press him into the bedclothes, rub the stitching across his veins. ‘Yeah,’ I moan. ‘I did it for you.’ I keep whispering, but a new reality seeps into me, heavy like the beginnings of an infection. Suddenly her pout turns to rubber, her breeze to raw shrimp and metal-butter. Something ain’t right. She scoots to the edge of the bed. Her cleft sneers through the silk of her panties as she bends over one last time. I know I’ve had the last of Taylor Figueroa. My world dissolves under my belly with a jet like stung snakes squirted out through their own eye-holes. Then quiet. Just a slow ocean moving slowly, and spit-curry after-poon drying cold on my face. Taylor pulls up her shorts, ties her sandals, flicks her hair in the mirror.
‘Okay!’ she says into the breast of her jacket.
The door opens and four men walk in. I shield my eyes from the glaring camera lights. ‘Vernon Gregory Little?’ asks one. Like – duh.
I could handle everybody in the lobby staring at me, if only one of them was Taylor. She doesn’t stare, or even look. She crouches next to a smiling technician, and listens to an earpiece connected to wires in her jacket.
Then she giggles into a microphone. ‘It’s so exciting. You really think I can anchor the show? Like, God, Lalito . . .’
I’m led away from her crouching ass, an ass barely dry with my spit and my dreams. Her careless laugh follows me from the lobby. People around the hotel entrance fall silent when I come through in hand and leg cuffs. You can actually hear indoor palms arustling in the air-conditioning, that’s how quiet things get. Quiet and icy-cold, I don’t have to tell you. A plane is waiting at the airport. Right away you know some money got invested in the story. Like, it’d be hard to tell some anchorman it was all just a big mistake. Anchormen across the land would drop mountainous loads if you tried to tell them that. I struggle to work up some cream pie. But I can’t, can I fuck. Instead I choke on aviation perfume, and the ‘Goodbye’ sound of jets whining, like when Nana used to go up north. Across the way, you can see stressed passengers shuffling to immigration without a thought in their heads except the shine on their mall-brand luggage. Me, I’m tied in a metal tube with two marshals who choose conversations according to how well they contrast with the fucken shit I’m in. Talk about their car, a steak dinner, a ball game. One of them farts.
I just sit and watch a flashbulb on the tip of the wing light up the dark outside. After a couple of hours of flashes, which is a lot, we descend through puffy tumors that hang over Houston Intercontinental airport. When the plane turns to land you get a view of eight thousand patrol cars on the ground, lights flashing off recently wet concrete, and probably sirens and game-show buzzers running as well. All for little Vernon, Vernon Little. After landing, the plane turns toward some bleachers set up around an empty section by the airport perimeter. We slow and park sideways to the stands, and I’m drenched through the window by flashlight from crowds of media. You physically feel the jackrabbit pulse that says, ‘There he is!’ It’s Tuesday, exactly three weeks since hell’s tumble-dryer went to work on our lives. Although it’s four in the morning, you just know every household in the land is tuned in. ‘There he fucken is!’
The marshals handle me down the steps of the plane, and parade me in front of the bleachers. Behind the bleachers is a fence, and behind the fence you can sense hordes of angry people, the type that show up wherever angry people are needed. I’m lifted into the back of a white truck, where some men in lab coats and helmets are waiting. They harness me into a chair, and we get escorted into town by half the world’s police cars. All the world’s helicopters ride overhead, beaming lights down like a Hollywood premiere, the fucken Slime Oscars, boy. One learning I can give you from here: patrol cars don’t smash up everywhere. Not at all. Nor do you get any simple ideas about how to distract the cops while you make a break for it, and leave them smashing into each other, and driving off bridges and shit. What’s more, as soon as you’re in a patrol car, you’re immediately visited by the certainty that it won’t happen. They drive fucken straight, take note.
Everybody has their fucken fun tonight, showing some future impartial jury how innocent I must be. Then I get banged back up to hell. Not back home, but down here, in Harris County, where all the big stuff happens.
I close my eyes in the cell, and do a re-cut of my life. In my cut of the thing, I ain’t even in shit at all. Instead, I’m the kid out there who hears about somebody else’s trouble, maybe some other kid took his dad’s assault rifle to class and blew away half his buddies, Lord knows it fucken happens. Maybe I’d be the kid just hearing about it. Hearing about some poor fuck, probably the quiet one, the wordsmith, the one with thoughts and shit, at the back of the class. Until the gun came to school. I’d be the guy just hearing about it, with the tickly kind of luxury of deciding whether to be sympathetic or devastated, or not even pay attention at all, the way people do when shit happens that doesn’t involve them. That’s the kind of day I re-shoot in my head. Still full of different melted things, and dogs and all, but with me the outsider, up the street getting ice-cream, ignoring my carefree years, the way we do, and just getting bored and ornery.
I’m trying to sleep when the other cons on my row are waking up. One of them hears me sigh, and tosses some words through his door. ‘Little? You a fuckin star!’
‘Yeah, right,’ I say. ‘Tell the prosecution.’
‘Hell, youse’ll get the bestest fuckin attorneys, hear what I’m sayin?’
‘My attorney can’t even speak fucken English.’
‘Nah,’ says the con, ‘they dissed his ass, he history. I saw on TV he said he still workin on it, but that’s bullshit, he ain’t even hired no more. You get big guns now, hear what I’m sayin?’
The guy eventually quiets up, and I snatch an hour of shitty sleep. Then a guard comes to maneuver me to a phone at the end of the row. He marches me proudly past all the other cells, kind of parades in front of them, and everybody jams up to their doors to watch me pass.
‘Yo, Burn! Burnem Little, yo!’
I get sat by the phone. The guard fits himself an earpiece, then dials home for me. The number’s disconnected. I get him to dial Pam’s.
‘Uh-huh?’ she answers through a mouthful of food. ‘Pam, it’s Vern.’
‘Vern? Oh my Lord, where are you?’
‘Houston.’
‘Hell, that’s right – we saw it on TV. Are they feeding you?’
The guard leans over and whispers, ‘Egg and chorizo, half an hour.’
‘Uh – egg and chorizo, we’re having.’
‘What, just that? Just chorizo and egg?’
The guard frowns. He makes the motions of a full tray of trimmings.
‘And a whole bunch of stuff,’ I say.
The guard shoots me a thumbs-up. Mom is already tussling for the phone, you can hear her in the background. She finally wins.
‘Vernon?’
‘Hi, Ma.’
‘Well are you okay?’
‘I guess so. Are you okay?’
‘Well Lally dumped Leona, so that’s one thing, not that we ever thought he wouldn’t. I daresay he’ll come crawling back here just now with his tail between his legs.’ She gives an ironic kind of grunt.
‘Ma, gimme a break.’
‘Well you just wouldn’t understand, he needs a strong woman around, with all that new responsibility – specially now he edged Vaine out of the picture . . .’
‘Responsi-bility?’
‘Well you must’ve heard, he bought the rights to your trial and everything. The company’s in ne
gotiations to buy the correctional facility at Huntsville too, and he’s just stretched to the limit, without someone who really understands him, who really cares.’ She listens to my stony quiet for a moment, then tries to pump some cream pie. ‘So – did you have a nice birthday?’
‘Not really.’
‘Well I left the cake this year, I didn’t know if you’d be in town. Anyway, if you showed up I could’ve grabbed one at Harris’s, their opening hours are extended till ten every night now, although Marjorie isn’t too comfortable with the new arrangement, not yet anyway. These things can take time, I guess.’
I’m still deciding if it’s a bad or a good thing, this syndrome of loved-ones not talking about obvious shit. In a way it’s kind of embarrassing, with this really obvious big maggot in my life, oozing and stinking in front of everybody. Nobody talks about it, though. I guess it speaks for itself.
A pretty good breakfast turns up after I finish the call, with toast, grits, and hash browns on the side of my egg and chorizo. Then my new attorney arrives, appointed by the State. They cast Brian Dennehy as my attorney, no fucken kidding, all burly and wise. Ole Ricochet Rabbit really did get fired, I guess. Another underdog replaced by overdogs. This Brian gives me some real hope, though, you know he always wins his cases. I’m damn hopeful, and I just know the jury will love him, they’ll be wishing he was their dad, all crusty and benign. I have a long talk with ole Brian, and tell him the way things are stacked.
‘You’re saying you’re innocent?’ he asks. ‘You weren’t even there at all?’
‘Well, I mean I was there at, like, the school, and I guess my body crossed the same ground as where Barry Gurie fell, but . . .’
He frowns and holds up a hand. ‘Your testimony may not inspire a jury. You with me?’
‘Uh – sure.’
‘It’s an important defense,’ he says from the door. ‘Let’s not push our luck. It’s important for you, and important for me.’
‘Glad to hear you say it.’
‘Oh sure,’ he nods. ‘Capital trials are the cutting edge of our justice system.’
‘So, Mr Little, you’ll be the first to trial the new system – excuse the pun.’ The man from the court chuckles, and looks away. Whenever he smiles he looks away. And he smiles plenty, sitting here all cozy on the bunk in my cell.
‘Before you decide, you should know there’s no pressure whatsoever to press the buzzer, which will be prominently mounted in your, um – security enclosure. A camera will be trained on it at all times, to guard against accidents. But, if at any moment during the proceedings you should feel inclined to change your plea, or to in any way revoke the information given so far, the buzzer will give you recourse to instant and positive action, as well as providing a valuable visual aid in the interpretation of justice for viewers across the globe . . .’
‘Is there a buzzer for being innocent?’
‘Vernon, you are innocent. Until proven guilty – remember?’ The man rolls my way and smiles into my face like I’m a very small child. ‘I assure you every precaution has been taken in the system’s design. Both the button and the lights it activates are green, thereby avoiding the more stressful implications of the color red. Also, although we jokingly call it a buzzer, the sound it makes is more of a chime ...’
Act IV
How my summer vacation spent me
nineteen
Every forty-three blinks, the flashing lights on the police cars that follow my van into Houston synchronize. They flash separately for a few turns, then start flashing in series, like leading-in lights. Then, for a second, they all flash at once.
What I learn as I’m driven into Houston under low, still clouds, and choppers, for the first day of my trial, is that life works the same way. Most of the time you feel the potential for synchrony, but only once in a while do things actually synch up. Things can synch good, or synch bad. Take me, for example. I stand accused of just about every murder in Texas between the time I left home and when they hauled my ass back. With my face all over the media, folks started seeing me everywhere, I guess. Recall, they call it. Watch out for that sucker. And I’m still accused of the tragedy. Everybody just forgot about Jesus. Everybody except me.
So the whole summer has passed since I last troubled you with my talkings. Yeah; I spent summer locked up, waiting for trial. Jesus kept me company, in a way. I just couldn’t talk. Life got real, I guess. Maybe I just plain grew up. Watch out for that sucker too, I mean it.
I turn to the bitty side-window in the van and watch fence posts slide by. An October damp has taken the landscape and wrung out the shine. Maybe it’s better wrung out. That’s what I think when I look back at the last weeks. For instance, my ole lady attempted suicide. Pam called secretly to ask me to be more encouraging about Lally, and the fridge and all. She said Mom closed up the house one day, turned the oven on full, and sat by its open door. Apparently it’s still a Cry For Help, even though our oven’s electric. Now Pam is feeding her up.
As for me today, I’m like a refrigerator myself, stale, empty, not even plugged in. My body has realized it doesn’t need sensory applications anymore, it just needs a real focused band of logic to survive. Just enough to play checkers and watch TV, that’s how smart the human body is, cutting back on things like that. And wouldn’t you know it – I needed glasses. The state discovered I have real bad eyesight, so it kindly got me these new glasses. I was none too sure at first, on account of they’re kind of big, and thick, with these clear plastic frames. But, with my head shaved clean, and all polished up, I have to admit they look okay, once you get used to them. The whole outfit’s kind of cool really, this pale blue pants suit, and my glasses with an elastic strap to keep them around my head. The strap was meant to hang around my neck, but I tightened it up to my head on account of it used to block my cross. Yeah – Mr Abdini gave me this crucifix on a chain. I couldn’t believe it, he was so nice and all. Ole Abdini drove all the way over here just to bring me this cross, with the little dude on it. Well, not even just a little dude, like – that’s Jesus on the cross. I mean, it’s hard to see all the details, but you just know it must be Jesus.
I had a talk with the psychologist here, told him I didn’t have any human qualities, like any skills or anything. But he said it wasn’t true, he said I had fine higher perceptions and sensitivity toward my fellow beings. In a way, I guess I do have those talents. I could sniff trouble before all this started, I say that must be a talent. It has to count for something. The other big news is that I quit cussing, believe it or not. I guess I’ve just used some of this time to, you know, watch TV, and not dwell on the bad side of things. Dwelling on the bad side of things has been identified as a problem area for me, that and being anal-fixated, if you’ll excuse me saying it, where all my thoughts end up relating to human waste matter, and undergarments, and what have you. Big problem area, but the psychologist says realization is the first step to change. I can’t even conjure tangs anymore, really. I’m just watching plenty of ole TV-movies, I guess checking back where I went wrong. The other day, a movie even brought a tear to my eye.
A lynch-mob crowds the streets around the courthouse, throwing things, screaming, and hammering on the van as I drive through. I see them through this tiny window, them and the cameras watching them. One thing, though, at the back there seems to be a crowd of supporters as well. The front of the courthouse has turned into the Astrodome, with camera and light towers, and live studios with National Personalities on them. Then there are catering wagons, hot-dog stands, power trucks, make-up trucks. T-shirt stands, lapel-pin stands, balloon sellers.
I don’t get taken straight to the courtroom, but into a make-up room behind the building; apparently on account of its being ‘Bathed in succulent, diffuse light,’ as the dude explains who sits me down and strokes my head. Some other court folks are here getting blush on their faces. They smile at me as if I was a colleague from the mailroom in their office, and talk about today as if it was a b
all game. I notice my make-up is kind of pale. Pale and gray.
I’m finally walked up a long corridor, like the barrel of a gun. Bright light cuts the outline of a door at the end, and I’m led through it into the courtroom. Here we go. I enter this court an innocent man, I have to say, and I believe I’ll leave it via the front door, once they hear my story. Truth always wins out in the end, see. I look around at the cast of my whole life, who sit waiting in the smell of finger-paintings and popcorn glued onto cut-outs of shepherd Joseph’s lambs. Cameras whir on swivel mounts, people’s heads turn with them to watch me being locked into this kind of zoo cage, with a microphone, and a big green button mounted on the front. The cage has shiny black bars set four inches apart, and stands three feet taller than my head when I stand. One guard unlocks a door at the back, while a second man handles me inside. A plaque on the cage door says it’s made from a new alloy that no man alone can destroy. I cast an eye around the room and see my mom there with her mouth all tight across, like a Muppet or something. Her wrists are bandaged, I guess from her Cry For Help. Pam sits next to her with a face that tells you they’re full of some plastic motel breakfast, of the kind where the ingredients come in matching shapes, like out of a clay mold. They just love hospital food, and motel breakfasts and stuff. Today Mom has her own camera position. No knife turning, though, you know it. My knife turns by itself these days, now that I’m all grown up. My conscience is what the knife ended up being, according to the psychologist. A knife is the greatest gift your folks can give you, according to him.