She knocked on the glass of his side door and he bellowed a happy bellow when he pulled it open and got a look at her. It was the middle of the afternoon but quiet because, I imagine, of the holiday it apparently was. She spoke and Dell leaned to her, then slid his eyeglasses off and put them in his shirt pocket.
The man didn’t look like much. Do coroners pull down big side money? He didn’t look like he did. He looked about like one of those fellas who when you’re broke and on foot in Dallas or Natchez or Jackson you don’t even think about how maybe you could rob them. You let them walk right on by through the dark parking lot. You don’t even bother to check if anyone is watching or rehearse whatever stupid bone-chilling line you might use. No, he just looked like a fella who drove a tow truck but had lots of friends who voted.
You see, I know, that since Jason had died with help it fell to scum such as us to prove it. The good world hadn’t taken much notice. The ripples hadn’t reached them. There was not much official interest in the so-what death of a fella like Jason from an address like Venus Holler. If any rocks were to be kicked over or harsh questions asked, it’d fall to such as us to do the kicking and the asking, which it wasn’t much like our prior personalities to do.
The door shut when they went in.
I admit I was tickled at the idea of such as us doing the correct square thing, seeking justice, don’t you know, setting a wrong right. It hinted at more direction and purpose in life, I suppose, than I’d ever been saddled with before. I had this daffy notion I maybe could imitate such a person.
Me and Jamalee went over the street to the shade and sat on a step below an empty store over there.
Blinds lowered down the door glass and were twisted shut.
She’d forgot her cigarettes and I had one in the shade over there, watching for them through Dell’s big picture window.
Jamalee laughed when the blinds also fell across the big picture window. She laughed and poked me with her fingers a few times.
“Don’t sulk,” she said.
I lit a fresh smoke from the butt of the first. I flicked the butt at a light pole and hit it with a spray of sparks.
“Don’t act surprised,” she said. “Bev has always been sort of a kind of a kept woman, Sammy, only nobody keeps her more than overnight.”
I imagine all of us who are like me grow up with our own ticking bombs planted inside us. You know, the bombs of anger, fear, resentment, and plain ol’ not liking yourself to a healthy depth. Some of us carry the complete bunch. Sometimes the ticking from that bunch of bombs is so loud you can’t hear another word.
I said, “I guess he figures he’s hot shit, don’t he?”
WHEN BEV CAME out of that side door her hands were busy bringing herself back to order. She gave tugs at different aspects of her attire, you know, the hem, the bust, the sleeves. Places of that type. Those blinds had been down most of an hour. Over half an hour, anyhow. Her hair had mashed-down spots in it the way forest weeds and stuff get mashed where deer sleep. The pink had passed away from her lips.
The door shut behind her without me seeing Dell, which maybe was good for him.
There were these celebration balloons overhead, the kind with people in them, riding inside wicker things sort of like clothes hampers, somewhat, or laundry baskets. They sounded the way I expect dragons would. These short flames burst out with a dragon-hiss sound, but around the sides of the hiss you could hear people. They mainly suggested folks on the ground wave up at them or went Yahoo! Yahoo! There were five balloons up there in happy colors but they didn’t maintain a formation or design of any kind. I can’t say yet what that holiday was about or how the balloons fit with it. They flew right along Broadway but well above it and added to the sky like dime-store jewelry on a clean young neck.
Bev gave a look up but kept her feet shuffling, moving slow-footed toward my sunburned Pinto.
“Been busy,” I said, “ain’t she?”
Jamalee patted my shoulder, a crooked slight grin on her face. She came across close to tender toward me all day that day.
“That’s the way Bev lives, Sammy. You’ve got to get to where you’re pretty international in attitude toward what she does. Pretty international toward the ways of the world, and all that.”
I flicked another butt and appreciated the hostile burst of sparks.
“Something about her nails me.”
“I suspected that,” she said. She chewed her lips for just a nibble. “I’ve got everything she’s got, you know, only without all the mileage.”
“You say.”
We crossed the street from the shady side to where the car waited in the heat. I caught a whiff of myself with the breeze in my face that said I needed a prompt visit to a shower stall. Bev slouched by the car with her hands on her hips.
“Where are my goddam cigarettes?”
“I got ’em.”
“Give, Sammy. Give fast.”
I did and she got one burning.
“Well?” went Jamalee.
“Well, nothin’, hon.”
“What do you mean, nothin’?”
“I mean Mr. Dell didn’t spill any beans to speak of.”
Her voice stayed in the dull tones, flat.
I said, “You mean you sexed him down and everything and the big shot still didn’t show you the file?”
“I wouldn’t say I sexed him down, hon.”
“I mean, you fucked the dude.”
“I didn’t fuck him.”
“Aw,” I said, when I understood. “Geez, Bev.”
“Look—practically all men respond to french.”
Jamalee stood there giggling giggles with space between the giggles where I guess she was trying not to giggle.
“But he didn’t?” I said.
“Oh, he responded, okay, but he didn’t say anything.”
You know, the thought I had right then was of that glass case she had crammed full of cocktail glasses. Her souvenirs of sheet-twistin’ and titty-pinchin’ with fellas whose names were quickly lost but still those ol’ cocktail glasses were there in her front room to hint at hot trips she’d had sex on in the past and also be drunk from on occasion. Each name and each glass alone made me twitch sort of jealous, but all those glasses all together the way she had them meant I had to face it as the mere truth—Bev’s datebook had not ever been filled up with prayer meetings. It was the way her life had long been and remained.
Yet I twitched slightly still.
“You didn’t see the fuckin’ file?”
“It’s not here. It’s in the coroner’s actual office.”
“You didn’t see the file, and that slug got a blow job?”
“Oh, you know I’m a whore, hon. You’ve understood that all along—ain’t you?”
The noise of Jamalee’s giggles ran together then, like the noise of those ticks in my head.
“A free blow job,” she said; then the giggles made her gasp for air. “Which is, which is by far the worst kind—huh, Bev?”
Bev finished her smoke and dropped it and mashed it.
“Laughter,” she said. “Such a wonderful sound. If I wasn’t a whore, why I’d’ve gone into the laughter business, vaudeville or whatever. Hee Haw. The Tonight Show.”
“Is the big shot still inside there?”
She came near and laid an arm around my shoulder.
“Sammy, I know you want to go beat it out of him or something. You want to beat on him till he tells all. I know that’s how you’re thinking. But that won’t do, hon. It won’t do.”
“It’s done before.”
“Why don’t you drive straight to jail instead and book yourself in for a good long visit. ’Cause you touch that man, Sammy, and you’ll be on the spot real soon.”
Jamalee had quit giggling. She also came near and rested a tiny hand on my arm, just up from the wrist, so I could feel her tiny fingers squeezing.
“Aw,” I said. “Where’s this office at?”
YOU KNOW THE way
in which so many official places favor doors with glass that appears steamed over for good by a long shower and usually have a name in block letters on them? This one was that way. The door faced onto a cement walkway that came off the square and ran from the corner like a canyon, sort of, only with various shops and shit on both sides. It was a narrow place, and when I deposited my fist through the steamed glass the glass sprang loose in shards and fell back inside the office, but you could hear the tinkle carry awful clear down the canyon. The holiday situation suggested nobody was around to hear, but that was only a suggestion. Three punches were required. My fist had been wrapped in my shirt, which was checked by black and white checks, but still blood got drawn from my knuckles and rose up slow through the white checks like a bad red dew.
The women both stood several paces behind me, as if to say could be they know me and could be they don’t, and while I watched the red dew rise from my knuckles, Bev said, “That’s how you do it?”
“Yeah.”
“You do burglary like that?”
“You just saw me. I’m kind of directly to the point, I reckon.”
“It’s a wonder you don’t get caught.”
“Oh, I get caught.”
“I don’t doubt that you do, hon.”
“I’ve been caught, I mean, now and then.”
“I’ve become convinced of that, hon, watching you.”
“It happens,” I said. “Like winter does.”
Jamalee said, “Hush. This is not the time for this conversation.” Her head was in a steady spin, eyes frittering the landscape up and down and around us. “Let’s get in and get out, huh?”
It was dark in the office. I leaned my head in through the broke window and scanned the dark. A car I could hear was going around the square with a loud radio. I bounced up and down a few times to get limber, then bounced hard and hurled myself up and in through the window. The gals both sucked their breath in and held it. I bounced myself in at an angle, I guess, and came down to bounce again from a swivel chair, first, then into a giant brassy spit-bucket sort of thing that had umbrellas grouped together in it. That thing went tumbling in the gray light there and resulted in some clattering as the umbrellas broke loose and slid away, plus maybe a groan from me.
Jam said, “You should’ve landed on your feet—shouldn’t you?”
“Naw. That’s what I’ve got this head for.”
Truly, it was not all that dark in there. Light washed in around the closed blinds and in a few seconds it didn’t seem so dark, just murky. It didn’t amount to an office you’d dream of being given. The desks were that crappy metal type that cheap-ass government outfits get stuck with. There were two of them, and two flags crossed together high up on one wall. A bunch of leaders, I imagine, had their pictures hung; I know one was a Kennedy, the main Kennedy, the shot-in-the-head Kennedy who has got famous as a poon hound, also. Bev’s asshole friend had himself in a few photos there, holding up decent-sized fish and so forth, standing in bunches with the rednecks who voted him in.
I went back to the busted window.
“Now what? Where do I look?”
“Try,” Jamalee said, with that tone that says you ain’t too swift, is you?, “the file cabinets. They’re probably gray or black.”
“I see them.”
“Good. That’s good.”
“But try them how?”
“Come on. By the alphabet.”
“A B C D—which?”
“M for Merridew. Jason Merridew.”
I never had experienced an office job or anything of that nature, and I had some questions. “They could file them according to something else, like where they were found. Or what they died of: D for Drowned.”
“No,” she said. “They couldn’t.”
She was on the money. I found it in under a minute. The file on Jason was right there handy in the M section of an unlocked cabinet. The folder felt thin; not too many pages seemed involved. I looked inside and saw a sealed yellow envelope and some papers that were typed on all over.
Bev and Jam had their heads stuck in where the steamed glass had been, watching me.
“Help me out.”
They both yanked an arm of mine and got momentum for me then lost control and I went flop onto the concrete and maybe groaned again. I stood and tried to look them in the eyes, give them a nasty look, but neither let me. They ran their eyes elsewhere.
We started down the canyon away from the square. I’d left the Pinto down near the Tiny Spot Tavern to blend in among other junk heaps.
“Give me that folder,” Bev said. “It says OFFICIAL right on it. We can’t walk through town carrying that.”
“Probably not,” I said, and gave it to her.
She raised the front of her white dress to chest level, showing off her emerald panties, then flattened the file folder on her son’s murder flat against her tummy and planted a few inches of it inside her panties, then dropped that dress back down.
“Now,” she said, “we can go.”
I carried my shirt as we walked to catch the blood from my knuckles. At the car I tossed the shirt into the backseat and gave those knuckles a lick.
“We’ll need supper,” Jamalee said. “I’m about to fall over, I’m so hungry.”
“Mmm-hmm. I’ll tell you what,” Bev said. “You-all go clean up and cool off, and me too; then I’ll get a bucket of chicken from Tim, and we’ll eat out under the shade tree while the sun sets.”
“I’m there,” I said. “What about this file?”
“Oh, we’ll read it on full stomachs, hon. In case we need to puke, there’ll be something down there to come up.”
“Oh, God,” Jamalee said. “Good thinking.”
21
Haunt and Run Me Ragged
I STEPPED SQUEAKY clean away from the shower, wearing a white towel as a skirt, and she was there perched on the edge of Jason’s bunk in a purple robe looking deep.
She said, “Did you ever realize the future could be cut in half at any time?”
The shades were pulled shut to mute the sunlight. The color of light in there fairly well matched beer in a glass that set out since yesterday and lost all its bubbles.
“That would still leave half,” I said. “I never dared hope for that much.”
“It’s such a kind of shock. The future always had me and him in it together.” Jamalee’s hands were kneading the blanket, pushing and pulling. “Every picture I ever had in my head that was forward from here had him in it with me.”
“What happened was awful,” I said. “Might be we’ll find out who was behind it.”
“Sammy, you know, you’re taking lots of chances for us over this. You’ve jumped straight in. You’re running some risks.”
“Aw, well, shit. Jason was one of the bunch that would have me. You’ve got to hang tough for folks from your bunch.”
“Not so many would the way you are.”
“Also, there’s nowhere else for me to go, not really.”
Jamalee fell back on the bunk and stared up at the underbelly of the bunk where I slept. That purple robe cleaved open some and flashed a good spread of leg flesh. Then she rolled over and rolled the robe around herself and made eyes at the near wall. The smell she released reached over to me and whispered and made a good impression.
“All the tomorrows were planned around him. He was the beautiful one, the one with special talent, the one who could just stand in the right spot somewhere else and have the big breaks in life flock right to him, practically rip him to shreds trying to be crucial to him.”
Around then I sat on Jason’s bunk. I faced the other way from her, showed her my back if she looked, which I’d say she didn’t.
“His specialness might be what got him hurt,” I said. “Because he was fairly well special, at least for these parts.”
“For any parts.”
“Probably.”
I went over to the windowsill where I stored a few smokes I’d pinched from Be
v. I held the shades parted a slit wide. There was a two-year-old outside in the road in one of those little cars you pedal and the wheels squeaked and rattled as he went past driving crazy. I fired up and leaned toward the screen so as to blow the smoke outside.
“Sammy, wouldn’t you like to add up to something? In the future? Amount to something?”
The smoke only partially went out the screen; most of it hitched a ride on the breeze to come directly back at me.
“Naw. I just figure to roll on, stackin’ days, you know, till the day I fuck up big enough the future gets canceled. Or else all planned out for me, maybe. There’s a somewhat likely chance of that.”
“Man, Sammy, I can’t live thinking that way.”
“Well, I don’t think about it.”
“Uh-huh. It seems you’ve got you a talent for not thinking about stuff.”
“It’s just clear sight, Jam. I see what I see and don’t need to think much about it. I wouldn’t claim it’s a talent, but I always have had it.”
I went away from the window then, toward the john. I stood near the crapper, tapping ashes into the bowl of water. I reckon I’m no better than folks say. Could be I’d like to be, or not, fuck, who knows? After my last puff I let the butt fall like a MIG airplane I’d shot down in the high skies over Bull Shoals Lake or somewhere. I watched for survivors in the lake, but none made it, and I went on back to the room.
She laid there curled on that bottom bunk like a lonely lonely spoon so I spooned myself over her spoon. I spooned so my pecker nudged her ass. Her li’l ol’ lovely ass. We made spoons as the flat yellow light shaded into dusk. She didn’t scoot away. She didn’t scoot but she tightened herself tight in response. Her body felt like furniture or something.
“Is it time for this?” she asked.
“Seems like.”
“Everything’s not about sex.”
“A good bit is.”
A sound of claws scraping shingles fell from the roof. The claws sounded like an upset tiny hailstorm zinging across the shingles, then circling back in a frenzy. Probably this noise was of a cat trying to kick a fox squirrel’s butt up there. The tiny hailstorm leaped from the roof to the shade tree and made the limbs click together.