About that time, the manager, Bob came out from behind the counter. An older guy, red-haired, slightly gone to fat, not as big as Dinosaur, but I’d seen him throw out a couple of oil workers once for throwing ketchup-soaked fries against the Dairy Queen glass to see who could make theirs stick and not slide off. They didn’t get very far in that game.
What I remember best was one of those guys, after Bob had tossed them out like they were dirty laundry, pulled a knife and held it on Bob when he came outside to make sure they were leaving.
Bob laughed, said to that guy, “Should have brought yourself a peppermint stick, you oil field trash. They’re a hell of a lot easier to eat.”
This with the tip of the knife pressed to his stomach. The guy with the knife and his buddy believed Bob. Believed him sincerely. They were out of there so fast they practically left a vapor trail. It seemed they were standing there outside the Dairy Queen one moment, and the next their car’s taillights were shining red in the distant night.
Bob said to David and the others, “Alright, boys. Take it outside.”
I thought, shit. Outside isn’t going to be all that better for me.
We all started outside. Even Dinosaur didn’t want a piece of Bob.
As we were going, Bob put his hand on my shoulder. “You stay with me.”
The others turned and looked at Bob. “Unless I’ve developed a stutter, you know what I said.”
They hesitated about as long as it takes to blink, and went out.
Bob waited until they were outside and looking through the glass. He made a shooing movement with his hand, and they went away. After a moment I saw their car drive by the window and on out to the highway.
“They’ll be watching for you, son.”
“I know.”
“Hanging with niggers is frowned on. I got some nigger friends, but you got to know how to keep them at a distance. I go fishing with a couple of them, but I don’t have them around at my house, sitting in my chairs and eating at my table.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll remember that.”
“Still, no cause to pick on someone. You or the nigger. They don’t get to choose to be niggers. And you can get along with most anyone, and learn from most anyone, even a nigger. I learned how to catch catfish good from one.”
Well, Bob was better than the other four.
I bought a bag of chips and a Coca-Cola on ice to go, went out to my car, and drove to work. I was about halfway to the aluminum chair plant when Dinosaur, driving a Ford Mustang, pulled up behind me. The other three guys were in the car with him. They followed me to work. I parked close to the door and got out with my chips and Coca-Cola. I slurped at the Coca-Cola through a straw as I walked. I was saving the chips for dinner break. It was a light dinner, but I’d been trying to drop a few pounds. I was always prone to picking up weight, and I had to watch it.
I turned at the door into the plant and looked at them.
Dinosaur shot me the finger.
I shot him the finger back.
We had really showed each other. Funny how that can make people so mad. It’s their finger in the air, and that’s it. It has about as much actual effect as a leaf falling from a cherry tree in Japan.
They drove way, screeching tires as they left, and I went to work.
Next few days in school I’d see them in the hall, and I never once avoided them or tried to get out of the way. They were not always together, though sometimes they were, and Dinosaur bumped me a couple of times as he went by. I kept my cool. Once David said to me as he passed, “We’ll get you, nigger-lover.”
This went on for a while, and now and then they’d follow me to work, but they never did anything. I had a ball bat in my car, and they knew that, because I let them see it by holding it up once while driving, knowing they could see it from their Mustang, as they were so close on my ass. What I feared is they’d hold up a gun or guns in response, but that didn’t happen. Everyone wasn’t shooting everybody back then.
This went on through the semester, and then the spring came, and one day I went downtown to buy some blue jeans and a union shirt. The old white union shirts had become popular. Everyone was dying them, or tie-dying them, and I guess I didn’t want to be left out. What we had there in Marvel Creek was a kind of general store named Jack Woolens, and that’s where I went to buy the shirt, couple pairs of jeans, and maybe what we called desert boots, which were tan, low-cut, comfortable shoes. I thought I had enough to afford it all. I was thinking on that, figuring I could skip one pair of pants if I had to, and I’d have enough for sure that way to get the shirt, shoes, and one pair of Lee Riders.
My hair had grown longer, and I had to comb it behind my ears at school and push it up off my forehead into a pompadour so I didn’t get sent home. A bunch of us were wearing our hair longer, and there was even talk of a sit-in to protest how we were hassled by the principal, but I was the only one that showed up for the event. I ended up wandering around in the hall for a few minutes and went back to the lunchroom and had some Jell-O before going to math class. I had it washed and combed out this day, and it was bouncing loosely as I walked. I thought I was as cool as a razor edge in winter time.
I parked my junker and was walking along the sidewalk, almost to Jack Woolens. I could see the wooden barrels setting out front—one had walking canes in it and brooms, the other had axe and hoe handles.
As I came along the sidewalk, I saw Leonard coming toward me. He saw me and smiled. We hadn’t seen each other in a while, but when I saw him I knew I had missed him. He was like a stray dog that wandered in and out of my life, and I felt like when we were together that something missing was fulfilled. It was an odd combo, him being a homo and me being straight, him being black and me being white, and him being more redneck than I was. He didn’t like my long hair and had told me, and I didn’t like that he thought we needed a conservative president. He was a stray dog I liked, and I decided right then and there I wanted to keep him, even if he might bite. He probably thought I was the stray dog. I doubt he worried about my bite, however. He came down the sidewalk with one hand in his pants pocket, the other swinging by his side.
That’s when David and Dinosaur, and the other two thugs, got out of the Mustang parked across the street, having spotted me and caught me without my ball bat. They came across the street, almost skipping.
They got to me before Leonard.
They came up on the curb and managed their way around me in a half circle. The door to Jack Woolens was at my back. It was open. It was a cool day and air-conditioning wasn’t as common then, so it was left that way to let in the breeze as well as too many flies.
“Gotcha now,” David said.
“Gotcha what?” Leonard said, as he came up the sidewalk, both hands swinging by his sides now.
“You’re the other one we want to see,” said Dinosaur. “You and the girl, here.”
“Wow,” I said. “That bites. You see, Leonard, they’re calling me a girl because my hair is long.”
“It is too long,” Leonard said.
“They are really pushing the wit, calling me a girl, noticing I have long hair. These guys, they ought to be on Johnny Carson.”
“Fuck you,” Dinosaur said.
“You’re looking for us, well, you done found us,” Leonard said.
“That’s right,” I said. “You have.”
“We don’t like what we see,” David said.
“That’s because you are a blind motherfucker and don’t know a couple pretty fellas when you see them,” Leonard said. “I could be on a fucking magazine, I’m so pretty. Shit. You could hang my goddamn dick in the museum of fucking modern art. Damn, Big Pile, you know you want to kiss my black ass, right where the tunnel goes down into the sweet dark depths.”
“You gag me,” David said.
“Fuck you,” Dinosaur said.
“The big man is consistent with those two words,” I said.
I didn’t know what it was about
Leonard, but he brought out the double smartass in me. I figured if I was going to die, I might as well go out with a few good remarks. And with Leonard there, well, I felt I had a chance. That we had a chance.
Leonard looked at me. “Yeah. He repeats himself because it’s wishful thinking that slips out. Some of that Freudian stuff. Big white boy wants a piece of my fine, shiny, black ass I tell you, but his little ole dick dropped down there would be like tossing a noodle into a volcano.”
“Now I’m starting to get gagged,” I said.
“Ah, you’ll get over it, Hap,” Leonard said.
David said to Leonard, “You’re a goddamn dicksucking nigger and he’s a nigger-lover.”
“Nah,” Leonard said. “I mean, yeah. I’m a dicksucker, but me and Hap, we ain’t fucking, just hanging. Oh, I should also add, I don’t like being called a nigger, you cracker motherfucker.”
“You got some sand,” David said.
“I’m a whole goddamn beach,” Leonard said.
“What we’re thinking,” David said, “is we’re going to knock you two around until your shit mixes, until you get it through your head how things are supposed to be.”
“That a fact?” I said.
“Oh yeah,” Dinosaur said, “we’re gonna do that.”
Leonard grinned, said, “I guess you boys ought to get started. It’s already midday.”
“But the sun stays up for quite a while,” I said.
“Yeah, there’s that,” Leonard said. “We got plenty of time to whip their asses.”
“Smartass nigger,” David said, and glanced at Dinosaur, who moved forward.
That’s when an older black man stepped out of Jack Woolens and reached in one of the barrels and pulled out an axe handle.
“I hear you peckerwoods calling my nephew a nigger?” the man said.
David bowed up a little. “We ain’t got a thing against hitting an old nigger, or a lady nigger, or kicking around a dead nigger, which is what you’re gonna be, you ancient watermelon fart.”
That’s when the old man swung the axe handle and clipped David across the jaw and made him stagger. I almost felt sorry for David. Even more so when the handle whistled again and caught him behind the neck and laid him out flat on his face on the cement.
The other three thugs froze, then seemed to come unstuck and started toward the three of us. Me and Leonard took fighting stances. That’s when Jack Woolens came out behind us, a slightly paunchy old man with thinning dark hair.
“Stop it, goddamn it,” Jack said.
They stopped, but when Dinosaur saw who it was, he said, “You old Jew bastard.”
“Old Jew bastard fought Nazis, so he isn’t afraid of your kind. You aren’t a pimple on a Nazi’s ass, but you’re made of the same kind of pus.”
This stopped them. I don’t know why, but they hesitated.
The old Jew bastard pulled an axe handle from the barrel and stepped up beside the black man. “Way I see it,” he said, “is we have axe handles, and for now, you have teeth. You see it that way, Chester?”
Chester said, “Yeah. They got some teeth right now.”
Dinosaur looked a little nervous. “We ain’t even eighteen, and that nigger hit David with an axe handle.”
“Hard as he could,” Leonard said.
“That’s against the law,” Dinosaur said. “We’re underage. Minors.”
“Sometimes, you have extenuating circumstances,” Jack Woolens said. “I once strangled a Nazi when I was in the OSS. Look it up, you never heard of it. It wasn’t a social group. I strangled him and went back to the farmhouse where I was hiding in Austria, and slept tight. I knocked me off a piece the next day. Young German girl who thought I was German. I can speak it. I had the chance, I’d have strangled another fucking Nazi.”
“No shit?” Chester said. “You speak German?”
It was like they forgot the thugs were there.
“Yeah, I was born in Germany.”
“No shit?”
“Yeah. I did get a little scratch when I was strangling that Nazi by the way. I don’t want to sound like I come out clean. That would be lying.”
Jack Woolens put the axe handle back in the barrel, and showed Chester a cut across his elbow by nodding at it. It was a long white line.
“Knife,” Jack said. “I had to wear a bandage for a few days.”
“That ain’t shit,” Chester said. “Cracker tried to castrate me once. I got a scar on my thigh I can show you makes that look like hen scratch. I had twenty-five stitches and had to stand when I fucked for a while and reach under and hold my balls up so it didn’t slap my stitches. Want to see?”
“You win,” Jack said. “Keep your pants on.”
“I was moving when the cracker did that, cut me I mean,” Chester said. “Cracker didn’t turn out so well. They found his lily-white ass in the river, and there wasn’t no way of knowing how he got there. Some kind of accident like being beat to death and thrown in the river is my guess. You know, said the wrong thing to someone, tried to cut their balls off, something like that. I ain’t saying I know that to be a fact, him being dead in the Sabine River, but I’m going to start a real hard rumor about it right now.”
Jack turned back to the barrel and retrieved the axe handle, casual as if he were picking out a toothpick.
The thugs continued to stand there. As if just remembering the thugs were there, Chester thumped Dinosaur’s chest with the axe handle. “Pick up this sack of dog shit, and carry him off. Do it now, ’cause you don’t, it’ll be hard to do with broke legs. You boys carry him now, you won’t have to scoot and pull him away with your teeth, ones you got left. Gumming him might be difficult. One way or another, though, it ain’t gonna turn out spiffy for you fellows.”
Dinosaur looked at me, then Leonard, then the older men. He looked at his friends. Nobody bowed up. No smart remarks were made. Dinosaur seemed small right then. They picked up David like he was a dropped puppet, tried to get him to stand, but they might as well have been trying to teach a fish how to ride a tricycle. They had to drag him across the street and into their car.
When they got David inside, the others got in, and Dinosaur went around to the driver’s side. He shot us the finger. He said, “This ain’t over.”
“Better be,” Jack Woolens said.
Dinosaur drove his friends out of there.
“We could have handled it,” Leonard said.
“Maybe,” I said.
“Shit,” Leonard said. “We could.”
“Now they’re tough guys,” Jack said to Chester. “It’s all over, and now they’re tough.”
“We were tough enough,” Leonard said, “and we could have got tougher.”
“Leonard,” Chester said, pulling car keys out of his pocket. “Bring the car around, and don’t squeal the goddamn tires.”
“Like he can’t walk a few feet,” Jack said. “Like he’s got a lot to carry. A pair of shoes on lay-a-way he bought. He can walk.”
I looked at Leonard and he grinned at me. I loved that grin.
Chester said. “I got the lumbago.”
“Lumbago,” Jack said. “Now the lumbago he gets.”
Chester grunted, said to Leonard, “Get the car, kid.”
Leonard looked at me, smiled, and went away to get it.
4.
Down by the Riverside
We left the Dairy Queen, but neither of us wanted to go home. My gal Brett and my daughter Chance, along with our dog, Buffy, had gone out of town for a weekend, a drive to Houston to see Vince White and Kasey Lansdale perform in a small venue there. Dogs were allowed if they were well behaved and wore a muzzle, so that was part of the draw. They would be home tonight, but not right away, so we didn’t feel any urge to rush home.
Me and Leonard wanted to go as well. Kasey Lansdale is one of Leonard’s special favorites. We had this deal we were doing at the agency, but then after our girls left for the gig it fell through, the job we were supposed to have foll
owing this guy, and so we ended up with nothing special to occupy us. Sometimes, though, that’s the best thing in the world there is to do. Nothing.
We needed and liked time to ourselves now and again. It was like old times when it was only the two of us.
As we drove about talking, we left LaBorde, and I guess it was instinct that drove me to my old home town of Marvel Creek. A little burg of four thousand or so, the place where I grew up and where I had a few adventures before graduating high school and leaving. Actually, I came back once and had what I guess you could call an adventure. The end of it was back at Leonard’s place outside of LaBorde, and some people died. Badly. Leonard and I almost got a ticket too.
I didn’t like thinking about that, because then I thought about my ex-wife, Trudy, and that depressed me. I loved Brett dearly, more than any other woman in my life, but Trudy, she was the first, and though I realized in time (too slow a time actually) she was a manipulative shit, she had a place in my heart, deeply buried there like some kind of inoperable tumor.
Yet, here I was in Marvel Creek, thinking back on things, back on East Texas, back on the rough kind of life that was below the surface, the stuff that the people with money didn’t know about, or didn’t want to talk about. There were people back in the sixties, during the civil rights era, who said, “Oh, we all just got along fine. Black and white. They stayed over there, and we stayed right here. But I had nigger friends. We waved at each other in town.”
We crossed the long Sabine bridge that led into Marvel Creek. The moon was on the water.
I said, “I’ve had a few experiences on that river. You and me have had a few experiences.”
“Oh, yeah,” Leonard said.
“I quit a friend one day on the Sabine,” I said.
“What’s that mean, quit a friend?”
We were coming back from fishing in the river with cane poles, and we were carrying the poles back to our car. We had parked it up away from the river, because down close it was muddy, and we didn’t want to bog. We were sixteen, me and my friend Davis, though on that very day I decided I didn’t want to be his friend anymore.