Big Bad Love

  I made one long slow circle through Potlockney and DeLay and came back up through the Crocker Woods, cut through to Paris and back through the Webb Graveyard Road, but I didn’t see a blue Ford pickup parked anywhere. I knew he was back home by then, sitting on the floor in a dark room right in front of the television, his eyes blank, his hand cramming popcorn in his mouth, the lights of the “Bill Cosby Show” flickering across his face, his mother asleep on the couch behind him, unaware of the twisted needs in him, a mindless drooling idiot, someone without enough sense to turn the television off, chewing, thinking about my wife, where to try it tomorrow, a motherfucker you could crush.

  Later on that night I wound up at Daddy’s, drunk, as usual, when I went over there, him laying up there all by himself waiting for me, patient, never looking when you walked in like he was even expecting company. We never argued any. I always told him something or asked him something and he gave me some advice and I took it. It wasn’t any different this time.

  He turned his old flat gray eyes over to me real slow, his eyes as gray as his flattop, smoking one Camel after another on that old Army cot twenty years after the doctors told him lung cancer had killed him, a glass of whiskey nearby, Humphrey Bogart on the TV The Caine Mutiny. One of his favorites. Laying there in his long underwear without a shave in a week, indomitable, old boxer, warrior, lover, father.

  I told him somebody’d showed his dick to my wife.

  He wanted to know how big a dick it was.

  I told him she said it was just a small one. He paused. We watched Humphrey measure out some sand with a spoon. I felt almost out of control.

  Then he looked back around to me, swung his old flat gray eyes up there on my face and said, Son, a little dick’s sorta like a Volkswagen. It’s all right around the house but you don’t want to get out on the road with it. I didn’t know what to say. He told me to bring him some whiskey sometime. I left soon after.

  I’d quit my job after sixteen years and drawn that state retirement money out, way over ten thousand dollars. Back in those days I thought that money would last forever. I was just laying around the house drinking beer, poking Dorothea soon as she walked in the door. I did the same thing the guy at the Dumpsters did, only behind closed doors. I had a woman who looked good, who liked to wear a garter belt and black stockings and keep the light on.

  But that insult to her wore on me. I’d get in the truck to ride around and I’d get to thinking about it. I’d get to thinking about the humiliation she felt when that guy did that. I even called the sheriff’s department one day and reported it, and talked to a deputy about it. They knew who it was, and I like to fell over. They knew his name. They told me his name. I said Well, if this sick son of a bitch is running around out here jerking his pants down in front of people, why in the hell don’t y’all do something about it? They said he was harmless, that he’d already been arrested six times for doing it, twice in front of Kroger’s uptown when ladies tried to load up their groceries. I said, You think a son of a bitch like that is harmless? They said, Believe me, he’s harmless. They said, Believe me, there’s a lot worse than that going on that you don’t know nothing about. They said, If you did know what all was going on, you wouldn’t sleep at night.

  That made me uneasy and I decided to get in my truck and ride around some more. That retirement money was stacked up inside that bank account drawing 6.5 percent interest. I had beer and cigarettes unlimited. Dorothea had gotten that promotion and her boss liked her, took her out to lunch so she wouldn’t have to spend her own money. She had a real future in head of her.

  I put my gun in the truck. Squirrel season was open, and that meant rabbit, too, and once in a while after dark you’d see the green eyes standing out in the cut fields that meant deer. Hamburger meat was $1.89 a pound. Double-ought buckshot was thirty-three cents. Some nights I was Have Truck, Will Kill, Palladin with a scattergun.

  Those nights back then out on those country roads, with that sweet music playing and that beer cold between my legs and an endless supply of cigarettes and the knowledge that Dorothea was waiting back at home with her warm pubic hairs sometimes made me prolong the sheer pleasure of getting back to it, just riding around thinking about how good it was going to be when I got back. And then there was a little son of a bitch who didn’t have any, who’d never know what it was like or the heat that was in it, like a glove that fit you like a fist but better, warmer, wetter, no wonder he wanted some so bad it drove him to have one-way sex with strangers. Dorothea hadn’t said, but since she’d commented on the size of it, I figured his pud was down when he did it, not up. I wondered what he’d have done if some woman had walked over and slapped the shit out of him.

  I puzzled over it and puzzled over it and drove for nights on end looking for that blue pickup, but if there was one in the country I didn’t see it. I took back roads and side roads and pig trails that buzzards couldn’t hardly fly over when it rained, and I decided he’d done decided to take his goobergrabbing on down the road somewhere else. By then I wasn’t even mad and just wanted to talk to him, tell him calmly that he couldn’t run around doing stuff like that. I was sure by then that he’d been raised without a father, and I could imagine what their lives were like, him and his mother, eating their powdered eggs, and I couldn’t imagine how we could spend 1.5 billion dollars on a probe to look at Jupiter and yet couldn’t feed and clothe the people in our own country. I wanted a kinder, gentler world like everybody else, but I knew we couldn’t get it blasting it all off in space, or not providing for people like him. Who was to say that if he got cleaned up with some fresh duds, a little education, some new Reeboks, he couldn’t get a blowjob in Atlanta? Hell. Why not educate? Defumigate? Have changes we could instigate? Why couldn’t everybody, the whole country, participate?

  Then I saw his truck.

  It was backed up between some bushes on the side of the road. A cold feeling washed over me, made me lose all compassion. I said, Here this sick son of a bitch is sitting by the side of the road waiting for some innocent woman like my wife to come along and have car trouble, and instead of helping her change her tire he’s going to run out in the road flonging his dong, whipping his mule, and it gave me a bad case of the creeps. I said, I’m fixing to tell this son of a bitch a thing or two. I thought of Boo Radley, how sweet he turned out to be. But I knew this wasn’t nothing like that. I went on up to the end of the road and I turned around and came back. My shotgun was loaded. I pulled it over next to me. It was warm, the stock smooth—like Shane said, a tool only as good or as bad as the man who uses it—and I wondered if I could kill that man for what he’d done to my wife.

  He’d already pulled out, and you can tell when somebody wants you to pass. They’ll slow down, maybe because they’re drinking beer and don’t want to turn one up in front of you because they don’t know if you’re the law or not, since all they can see is your headlights. They’ll poke along and poke along, waiting for you to pass, slowing down to a crawl in the straightaways, and it’s maddening if it’s happening to you, if you’re riding around wondering why your wife’s boss keeps driving by the house and waving out the window, almost as if he’s looking to see who’s home, if you’re riding around wondering if you’re riding around a little too much.

  I got right on his bumper and rode that busted set of taillights and watched that stiff neck and that cap pulled down low over his eyes, that head turning every five seconds to the rearview mirror for eight or nine miles, him crawling, me crawling along behind him, letting him know that somebody was onto his game and following him all the way home. I went all the way down through Yocona bottom behind him, where it’s straight for three miles, nothing coming, him speeding up a little, me speeding up, too, thinking: You son of a bitch. Pull your dick out in front of her now. Swing that dick around like a billy club now.

  I kept drinking and following him and he started weaving and I did, too, and we almost ran off the road a few times, but I stayed right on his as
s until he got down to Twin Bridges and tried to outrun me, stayed right with him or pulled up beside him and then I eased off, thinking he might have a wreck. I didn’t want to kill him. I just wanted to talk to him. I kept telling myself that. I kept drinking. Everybody wanted pussy and pussy was good. But this guy had a hell of a way of going after it. I laid in there right on his ass, and when he turned around in George Fenway’s driveway, I turned right around with him and followed him almost all the way to Bobo.

  I let him get a little ahead of me. I knew where he lived. Deputy sheriff had told me, and his name was on the mailbox. I knew he was trying to run, hide, I knew by then that he knew he was caught somehow. I knew there had to be a whole lot of fear going through his mind, who was after him, what’d they want, all that kind of stuff. He just hadn’t thought about any of that when he flicked his Bic.

  When I got to where he lived, the truck was behind the house and there wasn’t a light on. I coasted by twice with the headlights off. Then I killed it by the side of the road and listened for a while. It was quiet. Some light wires were humming. That was it. Dorothea and her boss had taken some awful long lunches. I got out with the shotgun and a beer and closed the door. The law wasn’t there, and I was the law. Vigilante Justice. Patrick Swayze and somebody else. Dirty Dancing. But he never flashed his trash.

  The yard was mud, the house almost dark. I could just see that one little light inside that was Johnny Carson saying goodnight. I knew he might have a gun, and might be scared enough to use it. In my state I thought I could holler self-defense in his front yard.

  I hope I didn’t ruin their lives.

  The door was open, and the knob turned under my hand. The barrel of the gun slanted down from under my arm, and I tracked their mud on their floor. He didn’t have his cap on, and his hair wasn’t like what I’d imagined. It was gray, but neatly combed, and his mother was sobbing silently on the couch and feeding a pillow into her mouth.

  He said one thing, quietly: “Are you fixing to kill us?”

  Their eyes got me.

  I sat down, asking first if I could. That’s when I started telling both of them what my life then was like.

  Old Soldiers

  for Lisa

  I used to spend a lot of time with Mr. Aaron. He had a bench you could pass out on behind the stove and that’s where I was one day. We’d been after some antlerless deer that morning, or just whatever happened to run across the road in front of the dogs, but it was so cold their noses couldn’t smell anything. We’d resorted to whiskey. It was only one o’clock but I was messed up, I won’t deny it. My truck was parked at the store, and they dropped me off there at my request. I told them I’d be okay. They didn’t want to leave me, they were my friends, I’d made an impossible shot at 340 yards the day before on a running eight-point buck. We’d already eaten him. I told them to leave me, that I was in good hands.

  Mr. Aaron was quietly benevolent. He never said anything. You as a stranger could say hi to him and he’d just grunt. He was my kind of people. I got a small green glass Coke for my whiskey toddy, and I settled on the bench. I had part of a pint in my game bag. Before long he brought around a hot Budweiser and we toasted each other silently. He despised all the needless words that people said. It was his store and he didn’t like loudmouths. Our darker brothers he especially turned a deaf ear on. Once I saw a darker woman pull up outside and want her air checked. He checked it. But it took him about thirty minutes. When she left, all four tires were very low.

  He had a Mitsubishi TV we were watching with the sound turned off. My boots were thawing out beside the stove and water was puddling on the floor. Mr. Aaron brought a mop and swabbed and never said a word about the mess. He kept his beer in the candy case, hot. If kids came in giving him any shit he ran their asses off. I was almost swooning with delight. I knew he was ready with a war story.

  “By God, I miss your daddy,” he said.

  I was on my back, flat, drink on my belly. I didn’t even have to coax him sometimes. It was warm in there and I took off my coat. Here was a man who never turned down a drink of whiskey.

  “By God, it was rough, too. Your daddy knowed how it was. I seen him in Germany one time he was riding on a tank with a machine gun in his lap. Stopped the tank and he had a bottle of brandy and we got drunk. Run that tank through some woman’s wash line and through a post office. Course that was after the worst fighting was over. In France them French girls run to meet us holding their dresses up, was so glad to see American soldiers instead of German. They was probably not a one of them over twelve years old had not been raped by Germans at one time or another.”

  I felt like getting the crying jags over my father and him. But the whiskey will make you want to cry after it makes you want to laugh. I could have stayed with that old man forever. He had seventeen hundred silver dollars. He had two cars but he never went anywhere, and he ate Vienna sausage off the shelf. Had done it for thirty years.

  “How’s your leg?” I said. I always asked him about his leg. Most people who carried on their commerce there didn’t even know about his leg. I did. All the shrapnel had gone into the bone where they wouldn’t cut for it. There was a perfect circle of scar tissue on his calf that looked to me like a grenade ring.

  He waved the question away with his hand. “It’s all right,” he said. “They’d might near have to cut my whole leg off to get rid of it. It’s pitiful what the world’s going to now.”

  Somebody stopped beside the gas pump and waited five minutes for him to come out.

  “I ain’t getting up again,” he said, then got up immediately for another beer from the candy case. He brought me back a pack of pigskins and threw them in my lap. The car pulled away.

  “Damn niggers,” he said. “Think you ought to wait on em hand and foot. But you look at all this shit. Reason the government ain’t got no money right now is cause they shooting it all up in space. What damn good’s it do to beat the Russians to the moon? I ain’t going to the moon. Ain’t nobody in his right mind would even want to go to the moon. I don’t even think they been up there. I think they just took a buncha pictures over in Africa or somewhere.”

  I was standing outside the Kream Kup in Oxford the Sunday afternoon Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. We all looked up there. That was before I’d ever had any nooky. But by that afternoon in Mr. Aaron’s store, I’d had plenty.

  I must have fallen asleep. There was a long period when nothing was said. I tried to raise up and I couldn’t raise up. I heard a rhythmic noise. The front door was shut and the lights were off. In my socked feet I could sneak. From behind the curtain behind the counter came the rhythmic noises. They stopped. I peeked.

  Mr. Aaron was pulling a big one out of a lady who lived down the road. It looked like he might have hurt her with it the way she was taking on. I was back on the bench conked seemingly out when Miss Gladys Watson came through adjusting her white Dixie Delite uniform. Soon as the door slammed shut I raised up and said: “Who’s that?”

  Let me tell you something else Mr. Aaron did one time. He had this old dog named Bobo, whose whole body was crooked from being run over so many times. Mr. Aaron fed him potato chips. He’d go out once a day and dump a bag of pigskins or something on the ground and then go back in. As children we’d all sit around in front of the store, on upended Coke cases and such, and wait for a dogfight to occur. This was in the days before pit bulls, when a dog could get his ass whipped and just go on home. One day Mr. Mavis Edwards, an old man who lived across the road, had been sitting out there with us. But then he went off to the post office to get his mail and left a whole pound of baloney on top of a Coke case. Bobo grabbed it. And was chomping on it when Mr. Mavis came back. Mr. Mavis had been in the war, too, the First World War. He carried a cane and wore a Fu Manchu of snuff spittle. Of course he was incensed. Went to whipping Bobo about the ears and head with his cane. But you could see that the dog was ready to kill for that comparatively juicy snack. I mean, after a steady di
et of potato chips, he was eating the waxed paper along with the baloney. Mr. Aaron heard the commotion going on outside. Some other people were fixing flats. The bros who had pulled up beside the gas pumps were afraid Mr. Aaron would shoot them if they tried to pump their own. And we didn’t know but what Mr. Aaron might out with his 9MM and burn Mr. Mavis down. Mr. Mavis had sprayed everybody with snuff juice during his exhortations. Mr. Aaron came back to the door and thrust another paper sack at him. “Here!” he said to Mr. Mavis. Then he reared back and kicked the hell out of the dog.

  Mr. Mavis took the new baloney and said, “Why, hell, Aaron.” He never darkened the door again.

  One time I was up at the store after doing my tour in the service. He always had a soft spot in his heart for the men who toted the guns. I was going to town and asked him if he wanted me to bring him anything back and he said yes, whiskey. I bought it and returned. Miss Gladys came in, ostensibly to buy some flour, and fumblefucked around on the shelves for five minutes after she saw me sitting there. She left in a huff without making a purchase.