Give Us a Kiss: A Novel

  “How’s my boy?” he asked.

  Man, did Imaru hear that!

  No argument could sway Smoke. He dismissed them all as being so puny the hens wouldn’t peck them.

  “When I get this money I’m fixin’ to get, I’ll come up and set things right with the tired-ass law.”

  “And this’ll be when?” Mom asked.

  “Not long.”

  “And the money, I mean, darlin’, I don’t aim to pry, but where’s it comin’ from?”

  “This’n that.”

  “I see.” She smiled and fanned her face with a copy of the Scroll, her big forearms flexin’ like gator tails. Panda sat in the other room to watch the Cardinals, so it was just our li’l nuclear unit locked in debate. “Wouldn’t be anything criminal, would it?”

  “Not very, really,” Smoke said. He flapped a hand at me, an appeal for support.

  “It depends who you ask,” I said. “There’s various philosophies afield.”

  Boy howdy, did General Jo start to perk up at the mention of crime! The ol’ hound, God bless him, heard the bugle, smelled that smell. He popped up from the rocker he’d been in silently for ten minutes or so, drink in hand, and began to pace. The fingers on his free hand started to rub together, over and over. It was touching, and I couldn’t have loved him more. There was an appetite in him that hadn’t been satisfied, I don’t guess, since he made parole and squared up so long ago. When I’d passed through K.C. in Lizbeth’s Volvo, and we’d worked together, spray painting it, and ripping off local plates outside a pizza joint, he’d beamed and worked with an air of unleashed pleasure.

  The wall of dead, he needed their nods, too, as much as all of us.

  “What sort of crime is it?” he asked.

  “There’s various philosophies afield,” I said.

  “Plain spoken,” he said. “In English.”

  “Dope,” Smoke said. “Smokin’ dope.”

  “Ah,” General Jo responded, and you could see his hopes deflating. I mean, he was an armed robber by nature, see, not the breed of miscreant who sneaks around, growing shit in the woods and peddlin’ it by the Baggie. “Farmers.”

  “There’s money in it,” Smoke said. He walked over to General Jo and slapped a bear hug on him, raised him aloft, a sign of affection that has always made our dad, the ex-convict, giggle and wiggle and turn red in the face. When Smoke set him down, he said, “I was plannin’ to gift you two or three bricks, there, General Jo, but if it’s too chickenshitted for you, then the hell with it.”

  “What weight to the brick?” Mom asked. “And what do the kids pay for it these days?”

  “A couple of pounds to the brick,” I said. “General Jo, all those janitors you know, you could, maybe…”

  He waggled his head, then nodded.

  “But I’m a juicer.”

  “He don’t know the prices,” Mom said. “We’d need to know the prices of the different assortments, sizes, whatnot.”

  “Sell it for two hundred per fat ounce,” Smoke said, “and your janitor crew’ll think you’re Santa Claus.”

  So there we were, in the ancestral parlor, the eyes from the wall of dead taking us in, watching, making Imaru feel eternal, every dead head on our tree itching to nod.

  Mom’s and General Jo’s eyes met. I could practically hear their brain cells crunching the numbers, until Mom said, “Sixteen, ain’t it? Ounces to the pound?”

  “Times two hundred,” Smoke said.

  The folks acted cool until the numbers tallied. The promising math totals caused Mom to smile and begin to flush, and General Jo held his arms spread and said, “Give us a kiss.” Then they gave it up, guffawed and hugged and kissed each other, their old feet dancing, bodies whirling, making our house rock, and I looked at the hanging pictures, and, oh, yeah, I saw what I looked for.

  25

  TUFFY JUST BRISTLES UP AT THAT COLOR MOON

  THERE WAS A reddish rut, carved into the earth in sinuous curls and dips and pinched curves, leading up to Anglin’s cabin. We’d had to shove open a metal gate suspended between oak-stump posts when we turned from where the red rut met the rock road. The cabin sat on the backside of Anglin’s three hundred acres, across a ridge from his main house, and on a different road altogether.

  I rode in the truck bed, lollygagging atop our stack of harvested bricks. The bricks were all wrapped in black plastic, and they felt good in my hands, substantial and potent, and were pretty to look at. The smell of dope, that scent of exotic hay, a magical barn aroma, rose from the bricks and lay heavy and sweet on the wind.

  Niagra drove, slow-footed on the clutch but safely, while Big Annie occupied Smoke’s lap. She sat with her back to the passenger window, one arm extended around the cab, and she made several attempts to yank my ponytail. I could detect the fumes of scotch exhalations from both the cab and my own mouth. The gang of us had our hopes up high. Smoke and Big Annie had smooched and giggled since about Gum Creek, and funny things were apparently being said outside my earshot since so much laughter leaked from the cab and rippled back to me.

  The cabin came into view when we topped a swale, a li’l hillock bald of trees but thick with tall horseweed and the like.

  I smacked a hand against the rear glass of the cab.

  “Hold it a sec,” I said as Niagra slowed. “Let’s scope it out some.”

  The truck came to a complete halt, and the headlights were doused. The gang got out, walked to the front, stood by the grill, and stared down at the cabin.

  A dog barked, and you could hear a chain snapping as the hound strained. Peepers peeped, and lightning bugs were fanned out across the meadow, flickering by the dozens.

  Big Annie seemed to shiver, and she crossed her arms.

  “Is this in tune?” she asked.

  “Tune? What tune, darlin’?” Smoke said.

  “The right tune.”

  I imagine it was ten o’clock, give or take. The moon was low in the sky and fat, nearly full, and floated like a bobber in the sky. It had that yellow color, the hue of cheese gone bad, and the yellow light it cast seemed to tint objects as well as illuminate them. The cabin wasn’t much: an old woodsman’s shack, with a rough plank porch and rails made of seasoned saplings. Lanterns burned inside, throwing light out two big front windows. A stone chimney showed. Strangler vines grew up the porch and the porch rails and the chimney, too, and were inching toward the door. A new pickup truck sat near the porch steps.

  The howling dog was chained to the porch rail, and I could see silhouettes of a small barn and a toolshed on down the slope beyond the cabin.

  “Does this feel in tune?” Big Annie said again. Her hinky mood was infectious and encouraged flinches and second thoughts. “I’m not sure we’re in tune here.”

  The dog was barking his throat raw, and that didn’t soothe our intuitions any.

  “There ain’t no tune,” Smoke said. “There ain’t no goddamn tune at all.” He slapped the fender. “Let’s just go on down’n get rich.”

  Niagra pushed next to me, and I draped an arm over her shoulders.

  She whispered, “Your big brother is almost looney, know it? I mean, you’re both almost looney, but Smoke’s more almost.”

  “How can you tell?” I asked, but she didn’t answer.

  “Hop in,” she said. “Ride.”

  Loose in my own bones again, I hopped from the truck bed, waggling a select black brick. Anglin had come onto the plank wood porch, holding a bottle of beer, nodding. He’d missed a button on his blue, sleeveless work shirt, and his flab stretched the opening to showcase a hairy belly button.

  “Golly, yes,” he said. “Let’s do have a taste.”

  The light cast through the cabin windows was irregular in shape but bright enough. The dog howled and whimpered and howled.

  Niagra backed the truck in to the steps, then Smoke and Big Annie spilled from the cab. I made my way up the steps, but the strangler vines were in shadow and I stepped into them, boots trapped i
n the tangle, until I kicked my way free.

  On the porch Anglin reached for the brick, took it, then leaned in close to me and said, “Shit, budso, I figured it to be only just you and your brother, there. Didn’t figure you’d haul the girls along on a weed deal.”

  “They’re full partners.”

  “You got that right.” Anglin inhaled deeply, then released the air and expansively claimed, “That truck sure smells like money.” Then, he spun to the side. “Tuffy! Tuffy! Goddamnit—hush!”

  “What is with that dog?” Big Annie asked.

  “The moon,” Anglin offered. “Tuffy just bristles up at that color moon.” He glanced up at the yellow moon trolling across the sky like stinky-cheese bait for bottom feeders. He stepped aside then and waved the brick toward the cabin door. “Mi casa su casa, folks. We’ll twist a stick and do bizness—hey?”

  In the cabin, by lanterns’ glow, Big Annie bent over a barrel-top table to roll a joint. The barrel had bullet holes in the body and knife gouges on the top. Big Annie frowned some as she twisted the stick, the white skin between her brows bunching up. I observed her technique with the same variety of pleasure I might derive from close scrutiny of a manicurist or a fine mechanic. She pinched the weed out, minced it between fingertips onto a single Tops paper. The dog noises prompted her eyes to wander, but she rolled a perfect joint, then licked it into a moist and splendid symmetrical beauty.

  Anglin said, “Lordy, girl, whenever’d you roll your first joint, huh?”

  Big Annie gave him a wink.

  “I don’t recall,” she said. Her tone was just a li’l bit larded with pride. “At Freedom Hall, up in K.C., whenever it was the MC5 played there. Ever hear of them? Back in those days.”

  Smoke crouched forward, held some fire to the joint, and Big Annie inhaled, nodding.

  But—that dog! The dog seemed berserk, almost, yanking his chain and howling. Me and Niagra crossed glances, then sidled over to the open cabin doorway. It was hard to see much. Anglin had taken the smoke, had a suck, and said, “Oh, yeah, this’ll fetch the price.”

  That’s when the shadows moved down by the barn, shadows doing various styles of crouching, stooping, but moving. I saw that long hair fly out from a dark form, a silhouette of vulture wings across the dirt yard.

  “Get in the truck,” I told Niagra, then turned to Anglin. “Say, Dave?” Anglin’s face shifted some at my surly vocal pitch. “That girl out there, with all the hair?”

  “My niece, on the wife’s side—what about her?”

  “She needs a haircut.”

  The ladystinger, it just bloomed into my hand, and I took casual aim at Anglin, who just stood there, joint in his mouth, looking like he was suddenly having to hear the exact joke he’d wanted to tell. I shot him somewhere around the kneecap, and blood and blue jean tufts, threads, really, flew. He fell forward, hurt leg blown straight back, and thudded on his chest.

  “Hey!” Big Annie shouted. “Hey, hey, hey!”

  “They’re out there,” I told them. “Dollys.”

  26

  BLOOD ON BLOOD

  SMOKE AND ME leaked a blood trail. We’d both been punched open while sliding down from that dirt road to the gully. They’d gotten too close to us. Things happened so quickly—Dollys moving this way, that way, Tuffy the dog howling on his leash. I was still hearing Anglin’s fingers break, a pop like shingles snapping, from when he’d reached for his pistol, blood gurgling from around his knee, but Smoke reached him first. Anglin said some shit about Bunk, Bunk Dolly, and did we think they were all stupid, or what? Smoke treated Anglin’s fingers like celery stalks to arrange around a bowl of dip, and the man screamed in a truly memorable manner. I thought about killing him, but I thought too long, then the chance of it was gone.

  Their numbers were just a guess—three, I reckon, and that damned dog. They’d sprayed us with shot up on the dirt road, birdshot or some such, certainly not buckshot or else the Redmond line would’ve ended, most likely, in the wet muck of that dark gully.

  Smoke and me slammed ourselves into the thicket beyond the gully. We hurled our bodies into the brush and tangle of limbs and rocks. Springer and the Dolly thug puppies were on the high road, shouting and chambering rounds. Their car sat there, steam rising from the hood, at least one tire flat, and the headlight Smoke and me both missed still shining.

  I hugged the ground, put my nose in the dirt. I felt that my breathing was loud, amplified by tension, and might be a giveaway, even so far up as the road. My left haunch hurt, a bevy of stings, and I ran my hand along there and came back with blood.

  Springer stood on the road, the metal thing over his nose I’d busted for him shining; I saw him quite clearly, and that damned Tuffy jumped and strained at his leash, eager to track us and eat us.

  I’d shot off all my bullets.

  I guess I knew this was the night, that long grisly night my reckless soul and sensibility have been haunting me, just fucking haunting me, to find and live out since practically the toddler stage.

  The stink-cheese moon didn’t help us any to hide. Smoke had been hurt worse than me. The shotgun spray caught him all around and about his right armpit. The meat of his biceps looked ground, ready to pattie and fry. Even in the night I could see blood sliding down his arm to his fist.

  Between us we’d chummed enough blood on the night wind that even I, with mere human capacity, could smell it, and any ol’ worthless dog would, too, and track us in under a minute.

  We’d come out of Anglin’s cabin blasting away, as in a legendary moment from our ancestors’ lives. That girl with the hair, the hair and the dirt bike, zoomed ahead of us. I believe she intended to lock the gate between the oak stumps, cage us in. But Niagra got the truck rolling along the red rut and caught up to the girl. She goosed the truck into the rear wheels of the dirt bike, and shoved the girl ass-over-tea-kettle ahead of us and into a giant shrub. The shrub caught the girl in its tangle, and the headlights made a picture of her, meshed in the limbs, four feet above ground, held there like a ritual offering to some potent god or other.

  On down that dirt road, a road I don’t know the name of, me and Smoke told Niagra to let us hop out. Niagra screamed, “Did I kill her? Huh? Did I just kill someone?” I hadn’t an answer. Smoke said, “Get the truck to Panda’s. Stash it in the garage—you’ve got to get that load away from here!”

  The ladies split, and I’d say we slowed the Dollys, sure enough.

  Smoke scooted under the low branches, over to me. There were blood spots misted on his cheek, around his eyes. He leaned his face to mine, put his lips to my ear. His beard tickled.

  “How’re you set, baby bro?”

  “No more bullets.”

  “Fuck this shit, anyhow.”

  “I got shot in the ass.”

  “I ain’t dying on my knees.”

  And then I felt my brother’s hand, and I reached over and took hold of it. We held hands that way for a minute or so. The Dollys were shouting their version of our near futures at us, which I didn’t need to hear. The hand-holding offered comfort, as a last cigarette does, maybe, while the firing squad loads.

  I heard Tuffy before I saw him, and when I saw him he was right on us. Up close, I’d say his heritage included a mastiff, and maybe a bluetick, something like that. He howled around our legs, jumped and snapped, and I kicked at him and he clamped onto my ankle. My scream made us a target.

  I pulled my leg high, and that pulled Tuffy close, and I reached a hand under his jowls, and choked him. As my grip tightened his jaw relaxed, fell away from my ankle. The sounds he made will hang with me. I rolled him onto his back, put both hands to his throat. He beat at me with his paws, scratched me on the chest, along my chin and cheek. I put my body weight to work, dropped both knees to his belly, and squeezed my hands.

  Shots were fired, and leaves gave off that sound, the one of rain in a gust. To be hunted like wild boars by dogs and Dollys in the forest where we’d been born—it seemed so right
!

  Tuffy’s tongue lolled from the side of his mouth, his paws still pawing but with no vigor, and I heard bones pop.

  I fell away.

  His paws sort of jerked again, then he was still and limp.

  I started to cry, just blubber and bubble.

  “I’m a damned dog killer, now!”

  “Shh.”

  My ankle felt like, like—a dog had bit it.

  Smoke set off up the hill, one arm flopping, the other dangling the shotgun, moving slow and hesitantly but keeping his profile below the ridgeline. I copied him in route and style. The muscles in my hurt ass seemed to waffle, spasm, I guess, when I strained over logs or rocks or ruts.

  We could hear the Dollys, on this side of the gully now, beating noisily in the woods like they were on safari, trying to flush beasts both stupid and wounded.

  Big bro led up the slope and to the flank, away from the sounds of our hunters. Summer weeds broke beneath our feet, and green smells and bugs filled the air. We came to a clear-cut, an open zone, and that moonlight, in that bad-cheese shade, gave our skin and blood and faces the tint of olden pictures.

  “Hush your cryin’,” Smoke whispered.

  His tone was harsh.

  I went to his side, ripped his shirt from him. His arm was all open and like a glob. I twisted the shirt around the bad section and knotted it.

  “That dog, that got to me,” I said.

  Over the ridge, maybe two miles distant, we could see the glow of town rising to the sky.

  “Let’s split,” he said. “I’ll cut toward town, you head toward Big Annie’s. We need wheels, Doyle. You get yours, find me at Panda’s.”

  I had no chance to respond, really. We hugged, and off he went, into the thick woods. I watched my brother’s back until it disappeared.

  I stood there a moment, my ass hurtin’ and all these crazy comments filled my head. Stuff for Imaru, I guess.

  Then I lit out, guessing for direction, but I made good time.

  Not long after we split, the night cracked with gunfire, back behind me, and the sounds circled in the hills so I couldn’t be sure where they came from, though I was sure what they likely meant.