Tomato Red

  “Aw, I ain’t goin’ nowhere in life anyhow, so I might as well get there this way.”

  “Oh, baby, do I feel that theory.” She came in a step closer to the screen, which put her face to use as an attraction. “What about your job, Sammy?”

  She eased on out the door, to the slumped wood floor of the stoop, and held the screen open with her hip. There was no makeup now. Her hair had been wetted and combed down slick.

  “I’m gettin’ it back,” I said. “With a hike in pay, too, and a few special fringe benefits. The man said I’ll be startin’ the very next day after hell freezes over.”

  “That sounds promising.”

  She stepped backwards, into the house, and let the door shut between us. It was passing strange how different she looked in her own true clothes and her own true home, swaddled in her own true history. A big share of her sparkle dulled as that pooched-out screen door slammed her inside.

  Then she moved backwards, deeper into the shadow. All I could see was that she was barely there, like something you almost recall: the Pledge of Allegiance, your daddy’s real name.

  “Come on in, Sammy. Share the stink.”

  7

  Transferred to a Period

  JAMALEE AND JASON were living together like a brother and sister who’d maybe once tended to play a lot more “Doctor” together than is considered sightly. They acted familiar with areas of each other that most siblings probably keep private, but this knowledge seemed to bond them together even better instead of wedging them apart.

  The house was nearly a coop; you could’ve paced it off and counted the paces on fingers and toes. Jamalee had set up housekeeping in the dining nook, closed her zone in with a blanket curtain hanging from a clothesline she’d hammered to the walls. Jason had an actual room with a double-deck of bunk beds in it. He gave me the top, which is the new inmate’s rack in so many circumstances.

  I made do.

  I always have just wanted to fit in somewhere, and this is the bunch that would have me.

  The house belonged to a timber hauler who worked off the books and only showed his face two or three times a month to crash in my bunk. He was yonder and all over knockin’ down forests and hauling them to sawmills. His wife had hit the highway and taken the three kids with her. They’d been holding those kids as hostages to the welfare machine and drawing decent ransom checks. His name was Rod, and Rod wanted those checks to keep coming, so he’d installed Jamalee to answer the phone and mimic his woman. A piece of paper had been taped to the wall above the phone, and it had files, sort of, on his kids: birth dates, eye colors, school situations, excuses: so Jamalee could talk straight to any social welfare snoops.

  She got a cut, but I don’t think a big one. Her main reward was the free inhabiting of this coop.

  The Merridew kids shared the coop with Rod’s dog. It was a shaggy lazy dog named Biscuit who had the personality of a defeated old alcoholic uncle, more or less. Biscuit mainly just laid there and thumped his tail pleasantly. Once in a while he goes to the screen door and stands there scanning the street like he’s hopin’ to see the mailman bringing his disability check, then moans in disappointment and flops back down.

  It was as though I’d never left, I’d always been here.

  Jam and me split a cream soda on the porch stoop that first afternoon. Bev came strolling out from next door on the arm of a fella who was hard to remember. There was nothing to him at all except a green suit jacket and a Japanese car.

  “I reckon your mom’s payin’ the utilities with that fella.”

  “We don’t say mom, we say Bev.” There was a sharp bite to her sentence. “Bev’s a porcupine, Sammy. Know what that is?”

  “I’ve heard this one, but I forgot.”

  “If Bev had all the dicks that’ve been stuck in her stickin’ out of her, she’d look like a goddam porc-u-pine.”

  The man held the car door for Bev. She’d put on a nice print dress and those tall heels. I thought she gave us a glance, a short fox glance over the shoulder.

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s it. I’d forgot the punch line.”

  “You want to keep your distance from her.”

  Jam’s comment made no nevermind with me.

  I’m not the type who can exclude people socially just because they operate under some bad habits.

  SHE, IT TURNED out, had recently gotten to be nineteen, and he was about a quarter past seventeen. They’d felt as pointless in school as I had. Jason was an apprentice hairdresser at Romella’s, on the square. After so many hours and days of experience he could take the test to become licensed. Beyond that, see, Jamalee would manage a shop for him, not here but someplace in the high cotton, where folks spent money just so they didn’t have to carry it around anymore, and the rich ladies got snickered at if they didn’t have a beautiful boy “escort” that they were seen everywhere with.

  Apparently this region was thought to exist either in the Beverly Hills area or south Florida.

  Romella’s Salon was where the kids heard who of note might be out of town when, and broke into the houses of these customers of note and had practice sessions at acting well-to-do. They needed to learn a way to seem natural surrounded by plush, since plush was where they were aimed. Jamalee immediately set out to rebuild my front, get me facing in the direction she wanted to go.

  “I believe I’ll call you Samuel.”

  “No. I’m a Sammy. Always have been.”

  “But Samuel rings more like an adult.”

  “It ain’t my name.”

  “But Sammy as a name is a person that can only wash and wax the cars, whilst a Sam-u-el might own the dealership.”

  “My ma named me Sammy. It’s what’s on my birth certificate.”

  “Really? Truly? She named you Sammy? Flat-out Sammy?”

  “She sure did.”

  “Taggin’ that name on you, that was like casting a curse on you. Oh, baby, your ma made a sorry, shitty prediction on your whole life and hung a name on you that would help the sorry, shitty stuff come true.”

  “You ain’t bringin’ me any news.”

  “WE CAN SEE that you’re not all bad,” Jamalee said, “but we hope you’re bad enough.”

  This was the second of our days together, or maybe more than that. It could’ve been that second day, or a week later, but anyhow she and me were sitting in the waiting area at Romella’s, waiting on Jason.

  “I’m not sure bad is the label I want.”

  This was my first glimpse of Jason’s magic; there were three gals waiting for him to be free. They ignored the girl hairwashers and sat in a quiet, expectant row, waiting for Jason to scrub their heads, which at this stage was the most of what he was allowed to do. You could see their faces as his fingers worked across their scalps, ran through their wet hair, kneaded above their temples, and the expressions the gals displayed belonged over a diamond that wasn’t fake or during the first licks of love. Probably no man had touched their heads before who they weren’t “serious” with.

  “I’m a bad girl myself, Sammy,” Jamalee said, “but not that many people get the benefit of it.”

  “I prefer the word ‘rugged.’ Or ‘difficult.’ ”

  “You’re both, baby, if that’s what you want.”

  I kept an eye on Jason and, great balls of fire, that boy would be worth his weight in tips, almost daily. He had a spiffy future beggin’ for him to come on in, beautiful, and have all of what I’ve got.

  “Let me tell,” Jamalee said, leaning my way, her little hand resting on my forearm, “our plans.”

  This girl was tiny and relentless. Her head looked like an heirloom tomato after a rough, scrubbing cloudburst. If ever I could possess a ’65 Mustang, four-speed ragtop, I’d want it to be the color of her hair.

  “When I was busted for shoplifting the last time,” she said, “which was my fault—I got too bold, tried to stiff-leg a smoked ham out under my skirt—they sent me to a head doctor, a thought-shaper. He had
all sorts of qualifications framed on the wall. He decided my problem was one of nurture, bein’ here, you know, and asked where would you like to be, and I said, ‘Los Angeles.’ He said, ‘That could be done.’ Then I said, ‘In 1928.’ This got him leaning backwards. ‘Now, there’s your problem.’ And, of course, I already knew that.”

  “Uh-huh. I’d like to be back when the biggest man was fairly small, and I could be a giant.”

  “Right,” she said, and her hand stroked my arm. “Transferred to a period, a rare other time period, when I, me, would’ve been a happy standout, highly esteemed and just crushingly, crushingly special.”

  “But, here on earth, what’re you after?”

  Romella’s had a strong scent, the smells from various women and their sprays and perm solutions running side by side. Shoe heels clicked on the linoleum floor.

  “Better days.” She pointed at Jason, who seemed to glow from the attention of his customers. “There’s ways and ways to get to those better days; we’re going to make use,” she said, and waggled her finger toward her brother, “of what we’ve got. That right there. Now you, Sammy, might be able to make sure we get paid for using what we’ve got.”

  “That sure is an important part of any deal. Any good deal.”

  “That’s why we treat you big, Sammy. That’s why we want you in our lives. You make us feel safe—or safer, at least.”

  Over at the sink I saw Jason wrap a towel around the wet head of this pretty good-lookin’ gal, totally adult but fine, and they exchanged quick glances as if things had happened between them during that shampoo that they should try to keep secret.

  I realized I was weak to her.

  8

  Bleed toward the Beach

  AT NIGHT, ABANDONED house cats roamed the holler, their voices sounding like a pack of babies prowling the tall weeds and trash heaps, wailing for love. They hit notes in their cries that communicated stuff you don’t want to understand. They seemed all over out there, and their sounds terrorized Biscuit. He’d hear them and fall to his belly, then shimmy that way across the kitchen floor to the screen door and raise his head just high enough to sneak a peek.

  Bev swung by barefoot with a meat lover’s pizza one night, and diet pop, and her and Jason and me and Jamalee crowded the kitchen, our presence giving Biscuit enough guts to moan a bit. I sat on a straight-back chair with a dish towel clothespinned around my neck as a barber shawl. Jason had the equipment and needed practice, see, so he dove in on my hair and had at it. He said I’d cut a figure when he was done clipping and buzzing.

  “Cut a figure,” Bev said. “Right.”

  I said, “That seems a lot of hair sifting down.”

  “Be unique,” Jason said. “Be aloof and singular.”

  “Okay. Just, I don’t want to be a joke.”

  “Am I laughing?”

  “He’s sure not laughing,” Bev said. A chair was there for her, crowded in beside the fridge. She dressed to cast her daughter in a frumpy light. Her blond hair had been brushed down and choked into a bun. Her jeans were faded and enticing, snug enough I believe I could see the imprint of her moneymaker. And a black T-shirt.

  There was one-butt-wide worth of empty counter space beside the sink, and Jam had hopped up and sat there. The kitchen walls had become the color of baloney rind left in the sun.

  She held a road atlas split across her lap.

  “This map starts to get really interesting about a state and a half from here.”

  “Which way?” I asked.

  “Every which way, I’d say.”

  As seemed to be her habit around home, Jamalee wore an ankle-length and loose smock that covered her shape like a hiding spot she took with her everywhere. The colors, even, were flat: grayish, greenish, whitish. A few times she’d stood with the sun on the revealing side of her and I could see she had a tight tiny figure under there and tended toward little bitty dark panties.

  “Why do you think everything away from here is so hot?” I asked.

  Bev broke in, like a momma. “It’s this way, Sammy. When I was a young filly the Beatles showed up in our lives, and all the girls screamed and got soakin’ over which ones? Paul and John, of course. But, not me.” She shook her head and swallowed some pizza. “Huh-uh. I set my sights on Ringo, don’t you see? If a girl met him, a girl might truly have a chance, him with that nose and all, a chance she’d never ever have with Paul or John. My fantasies, don’t you see, had possibility in them. Now, Jamalee, though, she’s the sort that has got to have either of the superstar dreamboat Beatles or both, or she’ll pitch a hissy fit that’ll last to her grave.”

  I said, “Boil me down and I’m just a Beatles song. All I need is love, love, love.”

  “Oh, now, aren’t you a sweetie.”

  “Let me tell you,” Jam said, a bit hot, “a story about why.”

  He had the buzz cutter going along the top of my head, but I turned enough to see her.

  “Uh-oh,” Jason said, “which one?”

  “The school one.”

  “I think that’s maybe your best, hon.” Bev dropped a pizza crust back into the box, picked at some stuck cheese. “You’ve told it the most, anyhow”

  “Thank you, Beverly. Anyway, Sammy, some years back, when I went to school, I had gotten to be palsy-walsy with this girl, Tabitha Bain, whose family owns the Bain Furniture Factory over there, past—”

  The talking got suspended while a train hooted and bullied by, everyone stalling where they were as if a timeout in life had been whistled, until the tracks carried that racket away.

  “. . . the feed mill.”

  “Yeah. It’s near Happy Bark.”

  “That’s it. Now, the Bains are rich, plenty rich, got the great rich big house up on Penney Drive, starin’ down on the town, and Tabitha was just about smart enough to manage a C average if she worked hard. But she was lazy. I mean, she’d been born rich, why bust her hump? But her mother wanted her to go to a hot-shit college someday and land a beau who was at the national level of rich, take that next step, you know. So she hired me to do Tabitha’s papers for her. Now, every paper I wrote that was handed in with Tabitha’s name on them got an A, and my own papers with my own name on them never got higher than a B. Mostly C’s. To the teacher, don’t you know, a Bain was supposed to sail on, but a Merridew should just get pregnant or go to jail or jump off a cliff. The school here had designed us for the scrap heap. The heap that hangs out in crummy bars and does minimum-wage spot work.” She flipped a page of the atlas. “Our entire futures in West Table had been agreed on and settled the very day we were born.” She flipped a few more pages. “That’s why everywhere else looks good.”

  Her point was one I’d already felt, but I shared some of the blame in my version. I had been born shoved to the margins of the world, sure, but I had volunteered for the pits.

  I said, “I hear you, Jam.”

  Bev pulled a joint rolled in chocolate paper from her cigarette pack and held it beneath her nose. “Everything you told us there could’ve been turned to your advantage, but no, you’d rather stew and sulk and dream trippy dreams.”

  “You’re not smoking that in here. You know my rules.”

  “Oh, that’s right. No drugs in this house except for those pills you pop, hon.”

  “I need them. They give me tempo.”

  Jason said, “I don’t like arguments. Please stop here.”

  Bev got up and walked over and pushed out the screen door. “I’m goin’ home to have a joint and a highball and turn the TV on to something funny.”

  She let the door slam.

  That boy slaved over my skull. He clipped and studied and buzzed and studied and drug the comb through there.

  “You’re startin’ to really look tough. Are you tough?”

  “Me? Tough? Naw, naw, naw. I’m a great big ol’ crybaby. You’ll see me gettin’ rushed to the hospital every time there’s a loud noise or a bumblebee threatens me.”

  She didn’t
look up from the atlas.

  “He’s lyin’,” she said. “His daddy was a pit bull and his momma was a train wreck.”

  Then this instrument, a clarinet I thought, started to be played out there in the night. I could hear it clear but that music had traveled to reach me. It seemed to be from atop the ridge above the holler. The song was a kind of ragtime tune, sort of jaunty and limber. The cats took it for the call of a great leader, or something, and bawled their respect.

  The kids stared at each other for a tense, long glance; then Jason dropped his implements and basically lunged from the kitchen.

  I heard the door to his room slam.

  I guess my expression asked the question, because she said, “That’s Mr. Hart, the music teacher, practicing his dick-sucking on a clarinet. He pulls to the side of that road up there and tosses those musical numbers down here, alluring my brother on.”

  We both sat there with Biscuit, listening to Mr. Hart unroll his serenade.

  “He’s got Jason on his mind constantly, I do believe. He’s tried to convince Jason that he’s Mr. Hart’s breed of man.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “He’s right, too, but I need Jason to sleep with women.”

  “How’s that?”

  “There’re all these women calling and everything, offering for Jason to practice on them on Mondays, when Romella’s is closed. I need him to woo those ladies so we can get, like, dues from them and raise our getaway dough.” She retrieved the atlas and opened it to a map of the entire country. She put her finger in the Ozarks where we were. “Palm Beach, Florida. That’s the place for us.” Her finger moved slow from here toward there. “We get the money, pack up, get a car, and just sort of mosey slow across these other states, just bleed toward the beach down there.”

  I said, “I got a car.”

  She laughed me into my place and left me there.

  For about three or four more songs me and Biscuit sat on the stoop, feeling small together, taking in the music. He was pretty damned good. In fact, that Mr. Hart could play!

  I KICKED THE bedroom door open and shouted, “What in the hell did you do to my hair?”