I finished my duty, slathering immense, fiery style onto my movements, Sergeant Liggett watching closely over me. When my shift was up, he said, “Today, Redmond, you were the best goddamn Marine I’ve ever seen you be.” On the ride back to the barracks he pulled the duty truck off the main road, onto a jungle rut, which I thought might just be the animal path to the center of the earth, and gave me a blow job I still think I remember. I don’t go for men that way, before nor since, but it was like a movie edited all wrong that I had no conscious part in. When I came I blossomed into a star, something brilliant in the jet stream.
I’ve had a slew of blow jobs since then, all from females, some on drugs, but, lordy, truth to tell, there was never none of them better at pure-dee cocksuckin’ than that ol’ sergeant of the guard.
“I feel funny,” Niagra said. “But good.”
The sun had gotten caught up in her hair, and she looked ready to burst into beams. On we floated. A thought hit me, and I chased after it until I could say it.
“You know,” I said, “when it comes to outlaws, the ones I most admire are the ones whose names you never hear. Really, that’s the kind to be.”
“I hear frogs. It’s too early for frogs. What’s that I hear?”
“I said something—could that be it?”
Cave mouths are abundant in the bluffs above the river, caves stocked with thumb bats and lizard bones, and the river decided which we should stop at. The current jammed the canoe onto a gravel bank, next to a slender path, and up the path yawned a cave.
We got out, knowing what would happen somewhere along that path or in that cave.
“I love you,” Niagra said. “And this river.”
“You, too,” I said.
Not far up the path she stopped. I was already yanking at her halter straps. She said, “You’n me, Doyle, we will do shit that lives on for forever. That’s my dream, and I mean it.”
Niagra gargled beer at the river’s edge, and I had my hands in the water, swishing and rubbing them.
I said, “I better wash that one finger mighty good.”
She gave me a look, a sidelong happy look, then spit foamy beer into the stream.
“Some of those things we just done, Doyle—I never knew normal men liked that.”
“I can’t speak for normal men—but I liked it, every bit.”
“Mm-hmm. You did.”
“You didn’t seem to hate a bit of it yourself, darlin’.”
“I’ve got no claim on normal, neither. Praise the Lord.”
About supper time we hit Blaney Bridge. I could see the Volvo parked in a clear spot beside the road.
We weren’t at all straight, yet, but the sunshine and elements had worn us down. The canoe deflated in a few minutes, we packed it into the trunk, and split.
There is this karmic force loose in my life that dictates that if I’ve, say, dropped mescaline and smoked weed and drunk beer and spent the afternoon along a riverbank fuckin’ ’til my toes curl back, I will be stopped by the law before I get home.
Sheriff Lilley pulled me over, lights flashing, on BB Highway, not ten minutes from Big Annie’s. I got out, stood by the driver’s door, and he whipped up and got in my face.
“I’ve had phone calls, Redmond,” he said. “From far off in Californey.”
“They can do anything these days, all the wires and poles and shit.”
His eyes hid behind mirrored shades. He grinned. That big mustache of his twitched as his lips moved.
“You know we’re related?”
“Yeah,” I said, “I know that.”
“That’s the only reason I didn’t just now bust you in your smart mouth and whip your ass all over this road in front of your girlfriend, there.” He shoved me, fingertips to my chest. “Your wife out yonder says this car is stolen, son. She’s been on the long-distance, fixin’ to get your butt tossed in jail.”
“That sounds like her.”
Sheriff Lilley bent down and looked at Niagra.
“Girl, you know this car was stolen?”
Niagra, bless her young heart, said, “No, sir. Not to my acknowledgment.”
“You know now,” he said. He seemed to relax some; in fact, he made a noise I can only call a chortle. “Listen, son, I’ve had breakups, I understand how ridiculous and mean these deals can get. Just send this car on back to the screamin’ lady. She holds the legal title.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “So her new boyfriend can drive it.”
That hit him where he lived.
“Oh, now I see. It’s that way, is it? She didn’t quite tell me that.”
I wanted a Lucky in the worst way. I got one to my lips, but the lighter, soaked, I guess, just gave off sparks and wouldn’t flame. The sideshow of sparks appealed to the mescaline yet in me, I think, because I really became obsessed with making that fucker light. After what may well have been a hundred or so fruitless flicks, Sheriff Lilley said, “Jesus Christ, son, you want some fire for that son of a bitch or you just aimin’ to make me crazy with that flick, flick, flick shit?”
“Fire,” I said.
He pulled out a burnished Zippo with a lariat etched into it, gave me a light.
“Damn,” he said. “Hope that cigarette tastes like heaven, son, you worked hard enough for it.”
“I guess I’m determined.”
“You’re somethin’, all right,” he said. “Somethin’ I could probly hang thirty days on you for, right here and now. But, hell, I ain’t in the mood.” He actually patted my shoulder, gave a squeeze, politicking me. Sheriffs have to get elected by such as I. “That car will go on hot sheets pretty soon. Now, I’m not gonna put it on tomorrow, ’cause these marital things are so chickenshit and all. I been there, my own self. But, hell, in about three days I’ll have to put out an alert, so you’ve got ’til then to settle this shit with your wife.”
“ ’Preciate it,” I said. “We’re cousins, right?”
“Just butthole cousins,” he said. He walked toward his car. “And don’t put too much stock in what that amounts to. You’ve got yourself three days, then you’ll see me again. You won’t be happy to see me.”
He left the lights whirling as he pulled away, and I just watched and watched, thinking, Imaru, Imaru, is this still research? Or am I livin’ it now?
23
INCAS DRINK FREE
JUKE JOINT, ROADHOUSE, honky-tonk, barrelhouse, nitespot, Devil’s Spigot, bucket of blood, and Serengeti watering hole—all are terms that applied to The Inca Club. It’s a barn-sized venue built of wooden ties, in an octagonal shape, with the look of a readily defensible frontier fort. There’s no sign out front, but there is a wide, chalk-dust parking lot and plenty of activity. The Inca Club has been spilling drunks onto Highway 160 since Highway 160 was merely Overlook Road, back about 1944.
Warriors returning from the Big One ached for a place to sit around in and get drunk hidden from civilian eyes, so Tom Wofford put a place up for them and named it The Inca Club, after a set of warriors who’d entirely disappeared. They say he lost money until the legendary shinding of July Fourth, 1947, after which he finally started charging veterans for each and every drink. Before then patriotism and sadness had combined to make him by far the most generous barkeep a Dogface, Squid, or Jarhead had ever known.
Big Annie knew a customer for our product named David Anglin, who I sort of knew, too, from research hours spent at The Inca Club when I’d hung about town “visiting” Panda, visits which ranged from a week or so to, if I was broke or Lizbeth was feeling inspired by my grittily evocative homeland and between teaching gigs, three or four months. Anglin was a pretty good ol’ boy, a former deputy who’d switched sides and sold a lot of weed up around St. Louis, and Carbondale, Illinois. He operated a crossroads market down Double-K Highway that didn’t seem nearly prosperous enough to afford his big house, bass and pontoon boats, young pretty wife dressed in Nudie’s of Nashville attire, or vacations to Marco Island.
“Anglin thin
ks he wants the whole crop,” Big Annie said. “But he’ll need to give it a taste first, naturally.”
I went to The Inca looking for Anglin, and I went alone. The gang felt jumpy, so the others were on gun patrol around the barn, the bricks of crop, our futures.
The Inca Club was, of course, a bit dark inside, the way drunks and rogue flirts want it to be. Mr. Wofford sat at the end of the bar watching his workers barely work. He wore fancy bib overalls, black with silver studs along the seams, and a starched short-sleeve white shirt. His face was dominated by shades with sort of red lenses, the kind optometrists make some folk wear, though he may have worn them purely for style.
He waved at me, said, “Hey, Dukie boy!” which is his usual greeting to everyone.
He was acquainted with me and all of mine. I know he knew me, though my front name might slip him.
I ordered beer in a bottle. There was a sign on the wall behind the bar that read INCAS DRINK FREE. There’s a bold promise that wouldn’t ever cost Mr. Wofford any bottles of brew. Not unless Imaru checked in with a new report, anyhow.
Anglin was there, toward the back, sitting on the fender of a red ’57 Chevy shell. Mr. Wofford had added the classic Chevy to the decor so customers could sit on the backseat, snuggle, and imbibe as they had when frisky and young, but it led to so many broken-bottle scraps over time allotments that he’d finally yanked the seats, but left the shell.
“Hey, Doyle,” Anglin said. “That is you, ain’t it?”
“Every damn day,” I said. “How you been?”
“Been gettin’ ham fat and dollar strong.” Anglin was probably forty-seven, forty-eight, and pretty proud of himself. He looked like a surly dumpling. As to size, he’d be a hard middleweight if he shed seventy pounds of soft suet. Only maybe five eight, but somehow haulin’ two hundred and thirty or forty pounds around. One of those. He dressed kind of uptown for our region: snakeskin boots, silky black shirt, string tie, custom cowpoke chapeau—all that ritzy Americana shit. “Big Annie run you over?”
“She didn’t come with.”
“Oh.” His career called for paranoia, and he sort of flinched. “Now I know her good,” he said, “but I never did know you this way, Doyle. No offense.”
“You know my name, though. You know my people.”
That stalled him. He took some deep breaths that set his fat loose so it shimmied. He tipped his hat.
“Damned right,” he said. “Pardon fuckin’ me, won’t you?”
It was about four in the afternoon, and the jukebox exclusively played shitkicker moans, loud. Workaday Jacks and Jills were getting early starts on their pay-night toots, and several construction workers and such were thanking God it’s Friday. The noise forced conversations to be practically pantomimed, so many comments requiring clarification that were best made by hand gestures and silent mouthings.
But I got Anglin’s point, and he got mine.
He walked me to the parking lot, and we shook hands, hee-hawed at an unfunny joke, slapped backs, enacting the whole cornpone skit of outlaw camaraderie. During his biggest smile I noted that his teeth were of the picture-perfect and false kind.
In the Volvo, driving away, my head just rang and rang with music, over and over, but the tune was never anything but “Peace in the Valley.”
Funny, huh?
24
THE POINT OF THE COUNTRY
SO, THE NEXT afternoon was a shady afternoon spent in Big Annie’s kitchen. The ladies were trimming buds with pinking shears, and Smoke and me used a trash compactor and liberal doses of Co-Cola to square up bricks of Razorback Red. Truthfully, we only halfway knew what we were doing. You wouldn’t call us serious dope growers, or outlaws shrewd about commerce. Our scales were big spenders, extra generous, I think. Some of those two-pound bricks seemed a lot closer to three.
The stereo accompanied us all day long with Johnny Cash and Steve Young and Koko Taylor and the Stray Cats, some Doors, Little Milton, Willie Nelson, and Santana, plus Niagra’s favorite, Marilyn Monroe sings Golden Hits. We drank pop that wouldn’t be required for the bricks, inhaled our fresh product, felt oh so happy and verging on rich, dreams alive and almost in hand.
Could life be better?
The phone blatted. Niagra answered it, said “Huh?” a few times, each “Huh?” a testimonial to the quality of our gardening results, then handed the receiver off to Smoke. He stood by the fridge, said, “Hey, how’re you?” and, “Yeah, okay. Sure.”
He hung up, grinned a li’l sickly grin.
“The folks are in town.”
“Uh-huh,” I said.
“They want a pow-wow, lickety-split, over at Panda’s.”
“Whatta you think, big bro?”
“Aw, shit—I owe it to ’em, I guess. They’ve stood up pretty good, all this time.” He shook his dreadlocks loose, took a big long suck on a joint the size of a carrot. “It’s just, I know what they’ll have to say.”
“Oh, you bet,” I said. “I can hear it all twice, here and now.”
Mom’s a stalwart sweetheart and slow to anger. She stands near five ten, a giant, practically, amongst her own generation, and has come to weigh near one eighty, beef to the heels, honestly, but affects a coquettish manner. She colors her hair chestnut, smiles to acknowledge or avoid, and flushes pink when she tells dirty jokes. Men who aren’t scared by her healthy stature have always flocked about her, responding to her macabre “I’m just a frail li’l blossom in a mighty high breeze” act, a scene I’d often witnessed, if never totally comprehended its success.
She spread a dinner for the pack of us as the hot edge faded from the afternoon. Fried baloney sandwiches with thick tomato slices, slathered in mayo. A plain meal that makes its point, and one of my favorites. It’s a sandwich that in therapy I learned was among my “comfort foods”—deep knowledge that failed to ruin it for me.
When I was younger and hard-hearted, with hot, hostile artistic ambitions I yearned to charge at the aloof, faceless “thems” of our world until they said Uncle, I believed the scariest words ever spoken to be “The apple never falls far from the tree.” That whole concept inspired clinging fears in the wee hours, and a halting miserable shyness in the presence of those who seemed to be the anointed. If I fell not far from the tree, was I then fated to be, not, say, a college prof of English, but inmate 2679785? A parolee who spends seventeen years on the night shift with Custodial Services at KU Med Center in K.C., instead of a Prize-Winning Novelist with a saltbox on the Cape? An unwholesome artsy freak, and not an esteemed citizen whose voting privileges have never been revoked?
I went through those pitiful, hangdog years being ashamed of my roots and origins, referring to home as “our place in the country,” and to my father as a “self-made man.” I hung my head and eenie-meenie-minie-moed when confronted at dinner tables by too many forks. I tried to give the impression that slapping an uppity snotnose silly was not the sort of act contained in my portfolio.
It must surely have been noticeable and insufferable to my folks, so obvious were my feelings, until, I don’t know why, the shame passed. My attitude shifted, the twang twanged once more into my speaking voice. Maybe it was all the Faulkner, or Algren, or Whitman. Anyway, I quickly came back down to the raising I had gotten above, and let every nuance of my sartorial style and social preferences and personal anecdotes cop to it right up front—I yam what I yam, and beg your pardon, sir, but go fuck yourself if you don’t like it.
On this evening, there Panda sat, as ever at the head of the table, battered and imperial, and I couldn’t watch Mom’s big hands halving those sandwiches without wondering: When their eyes met, were those goo-goo eyes?
A bottle each of Johnnie Red and Cutty Sark sat on the table, glass tributes to a petty argument General Jo and Panda have kept going for a decade or more; to wit, which is better?
I drank some of each, conflicted loyalties at work on me, ate a sandwich, and said, “This is just wonderful.”
“Ain’t it ju
st?” Mom said.
“I love it when we’re flocked this way,” General Jo said. “A family.” He showed his opinion of the Cutty by keeping it flowing, each new pour registering on Panda’s face like yet another pointed insult to his overall taste and scotch whisky expertise. General Jo is more my height than Smoke’s, though he weighs twenty pounds less. He’s got a lovely head of gray curly hair that many a toupeed millionaire might like to bid on or steal. There’s a dipshit jail tattoo of a Confederate flag on his right forearm, but the whole thing is in a faded blue color and not worth a damn. When he smiles, these very appealing dimples appear in his cheeks, and he smiles a lot for a career janitor whose done such hard time in Jeff City and Korea and, I imagine, his very own head.
I feel I’m his sequel. I feel I inherited my storytelling instincts from him, though I’ve somewhat refined them. General Jo tends to be snockered when he starts a story, and he’ll get to telling one, a memory of some interest, a local tragedy, say, and you’ll be listening tight, then he’ll get thoroughly bogged down in the inconsequential details, such as just what was the name of the fourth fella on the porch when the runaway timber truck hit the house, and pretty soon you’re not listening tight anymore, or even at all, until finally a silence butts in and you or I say, “Well, General Jo, the name don’t matter—it’s the truck that counts.”
General Jo reached across the table, poured a triple slug of Cutty into my glass, and smiled a great one.