“Goddamn it, Panda,” he said when he got close enough. His voice was thinner than he was, high and scratchy, but his face was stern. “You been warned to not come in here.”
Panda gave him a straight stare.
“My mind, she is old, rattly,” Panda said. “Things have melted out a here.” He pushed a finger hard against his head. “Such as do this, don’t do that.”
“The lady is pissed,” Terence said, then saw me come over the lip of the bank, naked. “And who is this, bareassed and grinnin’ like the wave atop a slop bucket?”
“Doyle,” I said. “Redmond.”
Terence nodded some, did a little fine-tuning of his handlebars.
“Oh, sure, Doyle, the little Redmond.”
I’m six two in boots, haulin’ two hundred pounds, but to many herebouts I am still Smoke’s li’l bro. I stood there, shakin’ water drops loose like a dog. I smelled strongly of Howl River, but that’s a stink I never could hate. I started to pull my jeans on, and I noted that, up the hill, there, Helene hadn’t looked away from me once, or gone into a high-toned, elegant swoon, either. In fact, she had a hand held above her eyes to clarify distant objects.
I cupped some fingers under my love works and made a show of whippin’ river drops off. I made it appear to be a heavy job.
When I pulled my jeans up, her hand dropped.
Suddenly she was immensely likable, and the huge socioeconomic gulf between us seemed narrowed down to a mere crack that one good jump could carry me across.
Sheriff Lilley began to slowly amble around the Volvo, looking at its bad color in the fading light.
“Who did this paint job?”
“Oh, I forgot the name.”
“Around here?”
“Kansas City.”
“I’d sue,” he said. He backed a few steps from the Volvo and the sad-assed paint job me and General Jo had done, trying to spray over yellow with blue. “I see paint jobs that a way when kids have stolt a car or something.”
“I like it,” I said. “It’s different.”
“It’s real different,” he said. Then he faced me and said, “You see Smoke, and I know you will, tell him to settle things with those Kansas cops. They’ve had a man down here twice, and they’re pesterin’ the hell out of me.”
“If I see him, I’ll tell him.”
“Quit it—you’ll see him. I’ve seen him a few times, and I could find him again if I gave two shits about what he done up in the city.”
I imagine Sheriff Lilley’s lack of resolve vis-à-vis Smoke traces back to us bein’ butthole cousins. A butthole cousin is a cousin, sure enough, but it’s such a distant, hard-to-trace blood mixin’ that such relatives are called butthole cousins. It doesn’t mean you’re friends or swap Christmas cards or any of that, but it means you’re kin of a sort, and kin of any sort means a little something in the Ozarks.
“You know,” he said, “my wife fetched home one of your books, Doyle. She’s a reader, I’m not, really. I never did finish it—too violent and silly.”
I stood there and took it, this capsule review from a sheriff who’d once been the object of ridicule for spelling “law enforcement” as “law engorgement” on a campaign poster. I had learned to be calm before such philistines.
“And you,” he said, whirling on Panda, “this is the last time I catch you trespassin’ on Byrum land and don’t ring you up. I mean it, Panda, goddamn it. You’re an old man and all, but I’ll ring your ass up good next time.”
“I could do ninety days without changin’ cigars,” Panda said.
“Next time we’ll see if that’s so.”
I picked the bullhead up, finger in the gills, which I guess I shouldn’t have.
“And that fish is an illegal catch,” Sheriff Lilley said. He came a little closer for a look at the bullhead. There was good eating on that bullhead, and it was still floppin’ fresh. “I could ring you both for that right now, but I’m headed home.” He held a beckoning hand toward me and I let him take the fish. “Now I’m gonna overlook your crimes if you get your asses out of here right now—’cause my, oh, my, that bullhead looks tasty.”
3
FLAME LICKS
WHENEVER SMOKE AND me got together, something not too savory seemed to happen. In our teenage years we were like car wrecks that you knew would happen again, almost nightly, at the same old crossroads of Hormones and Liquor. I suppose I figured a little more age might have made us brothers less combustible companions, though I’m not sure it wasn’t those dangerous possibilities that had me on this family errand at all.
The morning was hot by breakfast. There was a slight, hot breeze carrying the scent of the feedlot, which is a good stink, a stink cattlemen always say smells like money. There was lots of loot in the wind. Now and again, in the gustier moments, you could hear the beef bawling richly down in the pens.
I set out to find Smoke using Panda’s directions. The drive would not be long, but it would take me into the countryside of our home territory, which is the same as going to church for me.
I was going slow down a rock road that had split away from Jewel Road, and the trees from both sides had joined branches above to make a secular cathedral of limb and leaf. When the rock road went into a low-water spot and I had forded a few inches of creek, I looked for the first dirt lane headed south.
There was, by happenstance, or nature’s weird foreshadowing, I’ll never know, a road-killed carcass at the first lane headed south. The carcass was hairy and stretched full-length, paws fully extended. It was a coyote, and its yellow fur was busted open in the rib cage area and alive with maggots, so that it seemed to be breathing, busted open or not. One of my past-life voices (the girl on ancient Crete who milked goats and was barren) broke through the veil and said, “Look closely, Imaru!” Imaru is what they all call me, even the more recently past ones. The exposed meat of the coyote showed signs of having been pecked and torn at by all manner of lesser creatures who would have fled before the beast when he lived. I guess I sensed the message but didn’t rightly absorb it.
I drove slowly past the carcass and down the lane. The lane was only clear enough for one car to pass, and branches and weeds and stems beat against the Volvo, snapping and cracking encouragement to back up, get out of here. No voice guided me though, as they only come in tune enough to make out in a frustrating hit- or-miss style, like trying to dial in the Chicago blues station on the radio driving across Kansas at night. You might catch a few notes but you can’t call the song, let alone the lyrics.
I bounced down the rut holes and bent back the branches and pushed on. A house busted into view before too long. It was kind of an A-frame, but with double-A peaks, and a cedar deck, and an old yellow mobile home snug along the deck as an add-on. The deck was partly covered, and many a wind chime, all varieties, were hung from the roof. There were potted Norfolk pines about head-high growing near the porch rail, and a few peacocks and guinea hens and a couple of cats and a mutt looked at me as I pulled up.
The peacocks let rip with that wicked screeching they favor.
I got out, fired a Lucky, and sat on the hood. The mutt came over, wagging his tail low to the ground like a whisk broom, signaling in this manner of dog-lingo body language that he acknowledged my superiority and would enjoy being friends. He was longhaired, basically white, and spotted the color of an oil stain in the driveway. I petted him, and he grinned and jumped so I could reach behind his ears more easily. We were tight buddies in a matter of seconds.
Then the screen door slammed, and out came this vision of hillbillyette beauty. She held a pistol in her hand in a fairly neighborly and utterly charming fashion. Her long hair was a perfect champagne blond, and she had cutoff jeans on and a T-shirt that said COUNTRY BEAVER AND THE RHYTHM DRIFTERS. Sunglasses with a white frame hid her eyes. Her red cowgirl boots went up her bare legs like flame licks from hell.
She was studying me, a scholarly expression on her face. I couldn’t quite speak, and sh
e kept poring over me. Finally she sat the gun on the porch rail and said, “I know who you are.” She slid her shades down her nose, and I saw for the first time her stunning green eyes, so smart, fearless, and ethereal. “I seen your picture on Smoke’s books.”
“Is that right?” I said, which wasn’t much, but I was happy to hear myself speak.
“I’ve read ’em all,” she said.
“Is that right?”
“Every one of ’em. Every word.”
She was leaning on the rail, stretching like a fearless cat.
“Is that right?”
“You scared of me?” she asked.
“No, no. Just bein’, I don’t know—polite.”
“Uh-huh. Well, you’re Doyle, I know that.” She came down the steps and over to me, her hand stuck out for a straight shake. “I’m Niagra,” she said, and we shook. “Niagra Mattux, only Niagra is misspelled.”
“Is that right?”
“There’s an a missin’. Big Annie got it a li’l wrong on the birth notice.”
She’d already said the right words to make a writer feel smitten, but then there was her, physically. I’d guess she was seventeen, though as I get older it’s harder for me to judge. I suppose I was over-viewing her, physically, because she said, “See somethin’ you like?”
“There ain’t enough to them shorts,” I said, “to wad a shotgun.”
Niagra laughed and canted her hips so they flexed and became enchantments. Then she put her hands in her pockets and grinned.
“You act bashful, Doyle,” she said. “I always thought you book writers were real pussy getters. Not so?”
“Sometimes,” I said. This young girl was making a horse’s patoot out of me. “It’s just those shorts, they’re, you know, real, like, short.”
“Uh-huh. Gettin’ you hot or somethin’?”
“That’s not my point.”
“I think it is.”
“All right. You got me, Niagra.”
“I know,” she said with a dramatic flip of her wrist. “And if I should ever want you, we’d be in business, wouldn’t we?”
This kid made a heck of a first impression. She sashayed up the steps to the deck and said, “Want a beer?”
“Love one.”
She went inside, came back with a couple of canned Stag beers, a brand you don’t see in the places I’d been livin’ in lately, but it was a brand I associated with being fourteen, out drinking with Smoke, barreling around in his ’63 Dodge.
There were some wicker chairs, and I sat down on one, popped the beer, then realized it wasn’t but about nine A.M. The beer was cold, and, though not special in terms of flavor, I sentimentally decided to love the taste and drain the nectar in one long pull like a teenaged rakehell.
The dog sat at my feet, tail swishing.
The peacocks cooled their screeching and went on about their peacock business.
Niagra curled herself into a chair, boots tucked up tight, and sipped at her beer. We sat that way for a while. I smoked a couple of Luckies and looked around. I saw they had a satellite dish rigged up on the other side of the mobile home. There was a barn down a pasture of scrub a ways, and a little pond.
After several minutes she said, “Smoke’s not far. Big Annie’s with him, and they like to cavort in the yard. We should wait a while.”
“Okay by me.”
“They love to rut in the mornin’, under the shade trees where the grass is all dewy and slick and stuff,” she said. “You got a wife, don’t you?”
“Legally,” I said. “Not so’s you’d notice.”
“Hmm,” she went, making a purr of it. “Another beer?”
“I might could drink another,” I said.
She fetched it, I drank it, and she and me and the dog waited for my brother and her mama to be done rutting somewhere out there in the slick mornin’ dew.
4
SPIT STORM
IT WAS EDGING toward noon, I imagine, before Big Annie came walking up from behind the barn. She was almost dressed. That is, she had a cotton print skirt on, the kind you wrap around and tie, but she carried her shirt in her hand. I had expected someone named Big Annie to possibly be a chunkette type, extra-weighted and all, but no. She stood pretty tall and had thick dark hair, but no way around it, she was called Big Annie because of those sizable tits, big melon tits that pulled down heavy on her chest.
When she saw me on the deck she turned her back and slid into her shirt. The shirt proclaimed that she preferred Dukakis in the upcoming presidential pissin’ match. Then she came on up.
Niagra said, “Big Annie, this fella is Doyle, Smoke’s brother.”
“Welcome,” she said, and by the outstretching of her arms I knew she wanted me up for a hug, an instant fellowship embrace. I am not by nature the instant fellowship sort, ready with a cheek kiss for strangers or the hearty unearned hug. But this time I went along with it, and Big Annie’s hug was powerful. She must’ve stood five nine and her arms were hard. “I’m Big Annie,” she said.
“I see that,” I said. “I’m Smoke’s baby brother.”
“We know,” Niagra said. “The baby brother that jumped grades in school and went to several colleges and won’t work for The Man, ever.”
Big Annie slid into one of the wicker chairs. She looked hard rode and put-up wet, but she had a smile, a blissful expression. I came to learn that blissful was her norm, and she had an in-tune-with-nature-and-the-cosmos sort of constant sunbeam of personality. She’d been formed by the hippie era and never found cause to remodel her outlook or ways.
For me, I suppose it was the few beers I’d now had, or the imminent reunion with Smoke, or the mention of college, but I started flashing heavy on a robbery me and Smoke had pulled when I was almost nineteen and only freshly booted out of the Marines. It was one of the times when the extreme measure seems like a lovely solution. I was up in Kansas City, crashing with a sullen bunch of our nation’s naughty and wrongheaded young near Forty-first and Campbell, more or less in Westport. This bunch had developed crushes on needle drugs, but so far, despite my susceptibility to varieties of self-abuse, I hadn’t took to the spike, though it came out of the shoe box and made the rounds more and more. For the most part we were just postponing the workaday phase of our lives from ever starting. This bunch was about to pull me along into some fatalistic mischief when Smoke tracked me down.
Smoke fell by the pad with a plan. He’d had a union job at Kenworth Trucks, but they’d been out on strike for five months and, in fact, he was never recalled.
“Buy you lunch,” he said, and we went to Mario’s Deli and laid waste to some meatball sandwiches and marinated tomato salads.
After the meal, a delight to me since I’d been eating out of cans for a while, as none of the bunch I stayed with were into, like, cooking, we went down the street to Kelly’s, where my being underage never came up, and dipped into a few bourbons with beer backs.
“I’ve got an extra pistol,” Smoke said. In those days he wore his hair real neat, clipped short, and paid a lot of attention to his sporty attire. “And a plan.”
His plan was pretty thin, on a simple level, and really all it amounted to was he knew who we should rob. Smoke had scouted the Git’N Quik convenience stores and discovered there was just this one cash collector for half a dozen stores. The stores were on the Kansas side of town, and, as I recall, my only comment was silly. “We should rob on the Missouri side, Smoke. That way if we get jumped up and sent down, why, we’ll go to Jeff City, where Uncle Bill is. Uncle Bill could make it good for us there.”
“That,” Smoke said, “is a piss-poor way to think goin’ in on a job. Banish it.”
Anyway, it was coming up to Christmas when we grabbed the cash man over on Quivira Road. We worked naked, not wearing masks that passersby might spot and stare at. The cash man had a pistol but never got it out, as I believe he’d had a few Yuletide beverages. We’d approached him jollily, as if the spirit of the season was runnin
g full-throttle through us. The sky was gunmetal gray and ominous, but we got the man in the trunk, and it was all a lot easier than it should have been. Then the weather started, a twilight Kansas spit storm of sleet and snow. We were in a stolen car, naturally, and the streets were thick with Christmas shoppers, and before long the traction was slippy and slidy. We made our getaway on residential streets to Olathe, fleeing at about fourteen miles an hour, sailing on ice patches, the man in the trunk kicking at the lid.
I sweated horribly, I remember that, but Smoke was cool, maybe elated, as at ease in the middle of a crime as a brown trout in the White River.
We left the car in a strip mall parking lot and that was it. Fortunately the man in the trunk was heard and released before he froze, and he couldn’t seem to describe us, neither. In fact, the Star wrote the deal up and gave our estimated heights and ages, but somehow we were translated as black dudes, black dudes who had gotten three times what we truly had, no matter how many times we counted it.
Smoke had seen I was getting too thick with that Westport bunch and pulled me out of it, so I could seek the education I desired. I declared residency at Mom and General Jo’s for the in-state tuition. Then I took my cut, bought a white pickup truck, and headed west three hundred miles to Fort Hays Kansas State College for the winter semester. I had a GED from the Marines and a lifelong thirst for book learning, and now I had the tuition money, thanks to Smoke. Fort Hays was far from the city life and its myriad temptations, and they had varsity rodeo out there, and a fondness for red beer and books galore.
I dove right in to college life, and for quite a few years I stayed there, though at a variety of institutions, wallowing with relish in the sea of ideas and ideals and English Lit. and art history and studied poses, trying on different personalities, looking for a clean fit. Eventually I became who I am, a somewhat educated hillbilly who keeps his diction stunted down out of crippling allegiance to his roots.
All my scattershot erudition, so haphazard and difficult to find a use for—such as Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) suffered night sweats from childhood, or pointillism is just painted dots that require distance for viewing—and my several onionskins of graduation, are owed to Smoke and his simple plan.