Me, I couldn’t stand to know that much about what’s ahead. I expect I’d be crippled by the fright.
So Jam and me sat there listening to rockabilly and watching the church like they’d devised a stage show to amuse us, and then came the whoop.
The colored lights caught my eye in the rearview mirror, so I doused the music and sat up straight. When it’s full-on the noise from John Law is whoop-whoop-whoop-whoop, but the man this time just tapped the siren for a lone whoop.
I sat still in the car the way they want.
“Shit,” Jam said. “You don’t have any dope in here, I hope.”
My plates should run clean.
“No. There might be a couple of roaches somewhere.”
She had a hand held over her eyes and her head drooped.
“We’ve got to get our plan in gear. It has to happen—I’m so sick of this.”
When you look as if you are a person who should in any circumstances be considered a suspect, you get put through the drill plenty. Big boss man comes sidling up on the driver’s side, hand on his pistol butt, stayin’ just over my shoulder for a clear shot in case I might snap and want to blast my way free of a parking ticket. John Law has standard demands: license, registration, name of passenger. He runs the paperwork through the behemoth computer they’ve got that keeps track of us un-mainstreamed residents till the day the rulers decide to stack us all in a pile and squash us like little irritants. The computer keeps us easy to find. On me the computer prints out that I’m temporarily clean, with no outstanding warrants and no more tail on my parole, either. Yet damned if I don’t smell guilty.
He hands my papers back and says, “There you go, Mr. Barlach.” He says my name wrong, then leans to my window. He smells of baby powder and Old Spice and has a mint clicking behind his teeth so he’s got sweet breath and is prepared to start kissin’ at any second. He says, “You and your vehicle match a description.”
“What’s that, cool cat in car? Is that the description?”
“Is that your tuxedo on the backseat, Mr. Barlach? See, the description was of a redneck with no shirt in a tuxedo jacket punching people’s mouths over in the East Main Trailer Court a month back. And this vehicle is the brand he drove away in. Also, now, a tuxedo—wouldn’t you know it?—is one of the items missin’ after a break-in at the McCubbin place on that same night. Why don’t you both step out of that car for me.”
I used my teeth to clamp my lips shut.
His face was blank space.
“Hands on the trunk,” he said. “You know the position—feet back and spread.”
“Hey, now,” Jam said, and she sounded pissed, “this metal is too fuckin’ hot.” It was, too, and she took her hands away and he shoved her back. “It’s burning me!”
“I don’t care, ma’am. You move again and I’ll lock your ass up.”
“You don’t need to shove her, moth—”
“Don’t say it,” he said. “That’s the word that’ll turn this ugly, boy.”
We’re in the search position, hands on trunk, facing the church, and this clearly with child gal in a bridal gown and a fella who everybody probably knows someone who he looks like come floating from the mouth of the church, and flung rice makes a small personal blizzard in the air and garters take off in it and fall to the ground. A few folks in the crowd are noticing our minor drama, but not enough to stall the happy cheers.
“Mr. Barlach, do I have your permission to search your vehicle?”
This has become a trick question, because there’s no way to answer it and no use trying. You can say yes, and be searched without good reason, or say no and be made to stand in the hot sun till a warrant arrives, and judges hand these sorts of warrants out as though they were snapshots of their grandkids. Then you get searched. The high courts have said John Law can now legally do dang near anything he wants with you and your property any time he wants. If he turns up a roach, your car might have a new berth in his driveway.
“Be my guest,” I said, “but don’t make a mess.”
It’s no use to squawk against these wrong laws—they’ve already won, baby, whether you slept through it or not.
The man begins to root for grubs in my car.
I saw the wedding bouquet in the air and saw this look of fear, sort of, on the face of the girl who caught it. She wore a little crown of flowers. She seemed only about thirteen, mostly long legs and knee knobs, but made a good catch.
Jam’s got her head hung low and is moaning and has steam shootin’ from her ears. When she spoke she sounded like she might break down bawling.
“God damn,” she says, “you know, that big rotten gap between who I am, and who I want to be, never does quit hurtin’ to stare across.”
“Well, hell,” I said, feeling the Pinto wiggle as the cop rooted around, “that’s what dope is for.”
“Ah, if I was only stupid, it wouldn’t be so hard.”
“Shit, Jam, everybody who ain’t stupid has thought that thought, then been as stupid as they need to be for a spurt, then changed their minds back later.”
“Here comes the bacon with Bev carrying it.”
Bev ambles along, holding the bacon in a sack, and shows she’s got skills unimagined. She looks into my car, peers at John Law, then says, “William? . . . William, what’s the trouble here?”
William backs out of the car, holding the tuxedo jacket. He comes across sort of pleased to see Bev but not so pleased that I see he’s pleased. That variety of moment.
“Well, hey, Bev.”
“Hey to you too, William. What’s going on?”
“Are these your people?”
“Depends on what they’ve done.”
“Nothin’ I’m sure of.” He then held the tuxedo jacket up and let the sun beat on it. Mildew had attached to some sections and laid a faint green icing down the sleeves. “I’d like to know where this here came from.”
“You don’t know?” Bev barreled into him with her smile. “That’s ol’ Skeets Benvenuti’s clothes—you recall him?”
“Skeets? Oh, hell, yes.”
‘All that boy’s clothes came from Skeets’s ol’ suitcase. He was a careful dresser, you know?”
“Pretty sharp, all right.” He got a removed quality to his face for a snap of time, lost in a quick look backwards, I guess. “Skeets. Skeets. Is he dead, or what?”
“He never was as live as you are, William.”
“I always hated to arrest him. He was that fine of a guy, a li’l quick-tempered but great to have a few pops with, out at the Inca Club.”
Jam and me both pulled our hands from that scorching trunk and blew on them.
“Yeah,” Bev said. “Skeets was a mighty charming piece of shit when he wasn’t takin’ advantage of you.” She sprung her hips into a certain stance and showed a glow to her skin and smile and blond hair in the sunbeams. “Too bad somebody disappeared him.”
William tossed the jacket back into my car, then wiped his hands together. He spit twice, then began to nod at Bev.
He said, “I expect the world has gone on a lot better without Skeets than he ever did believe it could. He thought everything’d fly off-kilter without him. He thought he was that necessary, and entitled to certain privileges because he was.”
Bev tilted her head to the side and let her feet slide a little farther apart.
“You knew Skeets better’n I ever knew you did.”
The man had no smile now. He stared over at the wedding and had his hands hooked into his pistol belt.
“There’s been several silly break-ins at nice homes in recent months, and that’s got to stop. Not much has been stolen yet. Somebody’ll pay steep next time. Get your people home, Bev. It’s been nice to see you. To see you again, I mean.”
THE CAR FELT like a cookie oven. Jam was sort of upset at the roust by the law, and even more by the fact that Bev could fix the trouble. Jam griped plenty.
Bev sat in the back but leaned forward. She said, “
Hon, you don’t confront trouble. You flatter it.”
The trees alongside the roads had gotten smug in the heat and stingy with their shade. The breeze had made a side deal with the trees to not blow, either, driving way up the value of shade.
“It’s not fuckin’ fair,” Jam said.
“Fair? ” Bev said. “Poor baby. Look, you’re really sayin’ that the ways of life are glum and grim and nasty and I guess you want to turn crybaby about that, but what’s on my mind is, Whoever misled you things were otherwise, hon? What sugar factory spun you out with such silly candy-assed notions? For cryin’ out loud. There’s other staples I’ll break to you right now, too: The sun gives life but you’d be an ash flake if you got close to it, you got to swallow water to live but sometimes it kills you, Uncle Sam don’t truly count you as any relation, and God has gone blank on your name and face.
“Whew! Now, then, let’s have a beverage and a belly laugh and get on with living forward, huh?”
Jam sat there, deeply sulky. She could make her mood smother yours.
I put in, “Plus, love is a can of worms.”
The car hadn’t come to a stop in the drive when Jam shoved out and left the door yawning. I shut the Ford down and said, “She’s in a state.”
“Uh-huh.”
I pulled the seat forward so Bev could climb out the passenger door. She put her hand over mine. When I looked at her she looked back, and looked back electric and steady.
“Sammy, did you jack off thinkin’ about me last night?”
“Uh, no.”
“You didn’t? It felt like maybe you did.”
“I did jack off. I ain’t denyin’ that.”
Her nose wiggled fast as a wink and was chased by a grin.
“I believe you just answered my question, hon. It was sweet of you.”
12
So-so Desire
THEN CAME A Monday.
I knew it wouldn’t go well, but it went even worse.
“I can’t find my feeling for this. I have to think, think, think before every move.” Jason had his flabbergasted beautiful face in the pooched-out part of the screen-door screen, whispering to Jam and me. We both sat to the side of the stoop like trash cans, but he took our advice whenever he slunk to the screen and could hear us. “I don’t flow at this. I don’t flow at this at all.”
The woman’s car sat in the drive, and it was a glistening blue boat of a car, a Caddy, and its presence in our dirt-rut drive asked the question, What’s wrong with this picture? The woman had gone into the powder room, but not to powder from the sounds of it. She’d had a shampoo, a set, a manicure, and had gotten so flirty toward Jason with her words and tone and squeezing fingers that he’d started to freak.
I whispered, “Put your hand on her thigh.”
“Then what?”
“Uh, well, slide your hand up under her skirt, there, and say, ‘How ’bout I take your temperature, ma’am?’ ”
“What? ”
Jamalee shoved me and made a sound of pity.
“That’s awful, Sammy. That’s pitiful. That might work on the pigs you’ve gone with but, huh-uh, not with this gal.”
“What then?” There were beads of sweat in his voice. “And give it to me quick. I hear the toilet paper rolling.”
“Jason,” I said, “don’t do anything except respond. All you’ve got to do is stand still, don’t run, and give her a smile or two. Believe me, she’ll ransack you on her own any minute now—she’s probably in the john puttin’ her thing in.”
“Her wh—?”
The woman wore heels that took charge as she walked, went snap snap snap across the floor. Her smell reached out to me—outside, there, even, on the dirt—and it did the job. That smell set a mood, set a mood so I wanted to sprint in there and tell Jason to scamper his fabulous skinny ass out of the way and let the big dog eat.
His face through the screen expressed doom.
He turned to face the footsteps.
“Now, Mrs. Mallahan, perhaps I should practice my head-and-neck massage. Would you care for a cup of tea first?”
“What I’d care for, tiger, is if you’d call me Linda, as I keep askin’.”
“Okay, Linda. I have herbal tea or regular-tea tea.”
“Sit by me on the couch, there, tiger, and explain herbal flavors to me. I’m a bourbon person, most often. You, pretty fella, are takin’ me to new places.”
“You sure you want me to—uh, you know, sit by you? Linda?”
Those footsteps started snapping.
“Did I sound like I was confused about what I want?”
He started to follow.
“Not too much.”
He was, I think, guessin’ every inch of the way. Jason, I’m sure, hadn’t had any pussy since pussy had him. He’s on the couch, there, pretty quick, guessing his way toward her fulfillment, throwing every guess he’s got at the woman, and he only had one guess or two in his bag to start with. All he had to offer her was his beauty and that so-so desire.
Me and Jamalee are anxious lumps beside the stoop, at the ready to give coaching instructions during any time-outs. Our spot is under the porch rail. There are bugs under there, cobwebs and fallen wasp combs, and old sharp-edged bottle tops you discover suddenly with your butt.
“Did you ever even ask that boy if he could fuck a woman?”
“I don’t ask questions I don’t want to hear the answer of.”
The sky had turned ash gray and greasy with sweat, like a heart attack was coming up from the south. The dirt smelled inviting. The sounds from the couch carried through the tiny shack and sifted out the screen door, down to us where we squatted.
“It’s never just life,” Jamalee said. As she listened to her brother and the woman, her posture became one of low tide, drained and slack. “It’s always a tired-ass lesson from life.”
DOORS HAD BEEN slammed shut in the dream house.
The three of us moped in the kitchen, Jamalee chewing her lips and Jason drying his eyes, trying to breathe slow and wipe the red from his face.
He said, “I knew it. I knew it would be like that.”
“Come on,” I said. “It’s not all bad.”
“I’ll never be normal now.”
“Kid, you weren’t ever goin’ to be normal. Not you. Normal belongs to other folks.”
A passing train cast its spell, put us on hold where we stood, took time from our lives and ate it. The spell was long, loud, welcome.
Jason dunked his head in the sink again, washing his face for the eighty-seventh time or close to it. That woman had worked the boy like a rented mule that hated the work and kept trying to run toward open pasture and had to be reined in hard and bossed.
At the end she’d giggled and giggled and called him “Dear child.”
It didn’t occur to her, apparently, to leave him a wad of cash.
“I suppose what we’ll do,” Jamalee said, “is we’ll just the three of us have us a nice sad pity party. We’ll cower here, shiver and shake, and share stories about our weaknesses. All the lame things about us that make us pointless. Which we are, we’re pointless.”
“Now listen,” Jason said. His voice ran high on him. “If you want, Sis, we can be totally honest about you—brutally honest, even—but I’d very much prefer it if we’d keep sugar-coating anything said about me. Is that so much to expect?”
Beyond the screen door I spotted this snake. A milk snake, I’d say. It came into view from near where we’d squatted as trash cans. The snake went by slow and unconcerned, as if it thought it was playing a round of golf or something. I saw it ripple toward a grass knot and suddenly it was gone, totally gone, as if it had never been there, like a truth you didn’t tell.
In a short time it became only me and Jamalee standing there. She had half circles of dirt dusted on her smock where her squatting butt had met the dirt. Dust moons as a designer’s touch. They drew my eyes.
“I’ll need a job,” Tomato Red said. “My brot
her won’t do at all as a stud.”
“I had my doubts,” I said. I raised my hands to my flattop, then rubbed the fenders. “But he’s got these other talents.”
“So, I’ll get a job, raise the money that way. I can get a job, how about you?”
“They’ll have to hang me first. Then I’ll hunt up some sort of grunt work. Grunt work is my main calling, but I like to be dead when I do it.”
“Aw, shit, Sammy, that future sounds awful.” This was a sorry day for baby Jam, the day the transmission fell plumb out of her plan. It left her skittery and raw and wondering. “It’s not right.”
“Ah,” I said, “we are havin’ one.”
“One what?”
“Pity party. Like you said: my lifelong boo-hoos, your lifelong boo-hoos; we’ll celebrate them, talk them out into the complete wide open.”
Oh, now Jamalee did not care for my comment. She gave me a look that suggested she just might dismiss gravity or some such until I learned my fuckin’ place. I won’t claim she managed to do that, but if I did it’d certainly make a fresh excuse for me. No?
13
Fuss and Feathers
YOU WEREN’T BORN choking on no silver spoon, you know how it goes when you go looking for a job and you need one: You wait in the first indifferent room, ink in the forms, apply in another room with linoleum that’s waxy and squeaks and overhead lights that don’t miss a thing; then there’s the desk and the person behind it who thinks he’s an admiral, or it’s a she and she thinks she’s now in line for the throne to somewhere, and next you’re kissing ass and aw-shucksing toward the desk, telling how bad all your life you’ve been wanting to be night janitor in a chemical plant, or hog wrangler in a slaughterhouse, or pizza delivery boy, how you’ve laid awake in bed gettin’ goose bumps just from imagining how high and wide your life might someday be lived if ever you could average five dollars and forty cents an hour.
But there’re these questions, as always: Could you explain what you did from February of that one year until July of the next? And also that other year, from May to September?