“And I love you…you been drinking?”
“No.”
Then came the overwhelming sound of Death’s horn. One harsh blast that shook the house, and the headbeams shone brightly through the window and the cracks lit up the shack like a cheap nightclub act.
“Who in the world?” Margie asked.
“Him. But he said…stay here.”
Alex got his shotgun out of the closet. He went out on the porch. Death’s car was pointed toward the house, and the headbeams seemed to hold Alex, like a fly in butter.
Death was standing on the bottom step, waiting.
Alex pointed the shotgun at him. “You git. You gave her back. You gave your word.”
“And I kept it. But I said for a while.”
“That wasn’t any time at all.”
“It was all I could give. My present.”
“Short time like that’s worse than no time at all.”
“Be good about it, Alex. Let her go. I got records and they have to be kept. I’m going to take her anyway, you understand that?”
“Not tonight, you ain’t.” Alex pulled back the hammers on the shotgun. “Not tomorrow night neither. Not anytime soon.”
“That gun won’t do you any good, Alex. You know that. You can’t stop Death. I can stand here and snap my fingers three times, or click my tongue, or go back to the car and honk my horn, and she’s as good as mine. But I’m trying to reason with you, Alex. You’re a brave man. I did you a favor because you bested me. I didn’t want to just take her back without telling you. That’s why I came here to talk. But she’s got to go. Now.”
Alex lowered the shotgun. “Can’t…can’t you take me in her place? You can do that, can’t you?”
“I…I don’t know. It’s highly irregular.”
“Yeah, you can do that. Take me. Leave Margie.”
“Well, I suppose.”
The screen door creaked open and Margie stood there in her housecoat. “You’re forgetting, Alex, I don’t want to be left alone.”
“Go in the house, Margie,” Alex said.
“I know who this is: I heard you talking, Mr. Death. I don’t want you taking my Alex. I’m the one you came for. I ought to have the right to go.”
There was a pause, no one speaking. Then Alex said, “Take both of us. You can do that, can’t you? I know I’m on that list of yours, and pretty high up. Man my age couldn’t have too many years left. You can take me a little before my time, can’t you? Well, can’t you?”
Margie and Alex sat in their rocking chairs, their shawls over their knees. There was no fire in the fireplace. Behind them the bucket collected water and outside the wind whistled. They held hands. Death stood in front of them. He was holding a King Edward cigar box.
“You’re sure of this?” Death asked. “You don’t both have to go.”
Alex looked at Margie, then back at Death.
“We’re sure,” he said. “Do it.”
Death nodded. He opened the cigar box and held it out on one palm. He used his free hand to snap his fingers.
Once. (the wind picked up, howled)
Twice. (the rain beat like drumsticks on the roof)
Three times. (lightning ripped and thunder roared)
“And in you go,” Death said.
The bodies of Alex and Margie slumped and their heads fell together between the rocking chairs. Their fingers were still entwined.
Death put the box under his arm and went out to the car. The rain beat on his derby hat and the wind sawed at his bare arms and T-shirt. He didn’t seem to mind.
Opening the trunk, he started to put the box inside, then hesitated.
He closed the trunk.
“Damn,” he said, “if I’m not getting to be a sentimental old fool.”
He opened the box. Two blue lights rose out of it, elongated, touched ground. They took on the shape of Alex and Margie. They glowed against the night.
“Want to ride up front?” Death asked.
“That would be nice,” Margie said.
“Yes, nice,” Alex said.
Death opened the door and Alex and Margie slid inside. Death climbed in behind the wheel. He checked the clipboard dangling from the dash. There was a woman in a Tyler hospital, dying of brain damage. That would be his next stop.
He put the clipboard down and started the car that was not from Detroit.
“Sounds well-tuned,” Alex said.
“I try to keep it that way,” Death said.
They drove out of there then, and as they went, Death broke into song. “Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream,” and Margie and Alex chimed in with, “Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.”
Off they went down the highway, the taillights fading, the song dying, the black metal of the car melting into the fabric of night, and then there was only the whispery sound of good tires on wet cement and finally not even that. Just the blowing sound of the wind and the rain.
Cowboy
I got off the plane at Atlanta and caught the shuttle to what I thought was my hotel. But there was some kind of mix-up, and it wasn’t my hotel at all. They told me I could go out to the curb and catch this other shuttle and it would take me over to another hotel in their chain, and that it was a short walk from there to where I wanted to go. I thought that was okay, considering I had gotten on the wrong shuttle in the first place.
I sat outside the hotel on a bench and waited for the shuttle. It was October and kind of cool, but not really uncomfortable. The air felt damp.
I had a Western paperback and I got it out of my coat pocket and read a few pages. From time to time I looked up for the shuttle, then at my watch, then back at the paperback. It wasn’t a very good Western.
While I was sitting there a little black boy on skates with an empty toy pistol scabbard strapped around his waist went by. He looked at me. His head was practically shaved and his snap-button cowboy shirt was ripped in front. I guess he was about eleven.
I looked back at my book and started reading, then I heard him skate over in front of me. I looked up and saw that he was looking at the picture on the front of the paperback.
“That a cowboy book?” he said.
I told him it was.
“It any good?”
“I don’t care much for it. It’s a little too much like the last three or four I read.”
“I like cowboy books and movies but they don’t get some things right.”
“I like them too.”
“I’m a cowboy,” he said, and his tone was a trifle defiant.
“You are?”
“You was thinking niggers can’t be cowboys.”
“I wasn’t thinking that. Don’t call yourself that.”
“Nigger? It’s okay if I’m doing it. I wouldn’t want you to say that.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Anyone says that they got me to fight.”
“I don’t want to fight. Where’s your pistol?”
He didn’t answer that. “A black boy can be a cowboy, you know.”
“I’m sure of it.”
“They weren’t all cooks.”
“Course not.”
“That’s way the movies and books got it. There any black cowboys in that book?”
“Not so far.”
“There gonna be?”
“I don’t know,” I said. But I did know. I’d read a lot of cowboy books.
“White boys at school said there weren’t any black cowboys. They said no nigger cowboys. They said we couldn’t fight Indians and stuff.”
“Don’t listen to them.”
“I’m not going to. I went over to the playground at the school and they took my pistol. There was three of them.”
It came clear to me then. His shirt being ripped and the gun missing.
“I’m sorry. That wasn’t nice.”
“They said a nigger didn’t need no cowboy gun. Said I needed me a frying pan or a broom. I used to ride the rang
e and rope steers and stuff. They don’t know nothing.”
“Is that all you did on the range, rope steers?”
“I did all kinds of things. I did everything cowboys do.”
“Was it hard work?”
“It was so hard you wouldn’t believe it. I did all kinds of things. Cowboys don’t call one another nigger.”
“Do your mom and dad work on the range with you?”
“No, my mama has a job. She does clean-up work. My daddy he got killed in Vietnam. He got some medals and stuff. He wasn’t a cowboy like me.”
I looked up and saw the shuttle. I picked up my suitcase and stood.
“I got to go now,” I said. “I hope you get your gun back. Lot of good cowboys lose fights from time to time.”
“There was three of them.”
“There you are. Adios.” As an afterthought I gave him the Western book.
“It hasn’t got any black cowboys in it I bet,” he said, and gave it back to me.
“I want one with black cowboys in it. I’m not reading any more of ‘em unless they got black cowboys in them.”
“I’m sure there are some,” I said.
“There ought to be.”
I got on the shuttle and it carried me to the other hotel. I got off and walked to where I was supposed to be, and on the way over there I put the book in one of those wire trash baskets that line the streets.
Steppin’ Out, Summer, ‘68
Buddy drank another swig of beer and when he brought the bottle down he said to Jake and Wilson, “I could sure use some pussy.”
“We could all use some,” Wilson said, “problem is we don’t never get any.”
“That’s the way I see it too,” Jake said.
“You don’t get any,” Buddy said. “I get plenty, you can count on that.”
“Uh huh,” Wilson said. “You talk pussy plenty good, but I don’t ever see you with a date. I ain’t never even seen you walking a dog, let alone a girl. You don’t even have a car, so how you gonna get with a girl?”
“That’s the way I see it too,” Jake said.
“You see what you want,” Buddy said. “I’m gonna be getting me a Chevy soon. I got my eye on one.”
“Yeah?” Wilson said. “What one?”
“Drew Carrington’s old crate.”
“Shit,” Wilson said, “that motherfucker caught on fire at a streetlight and he run it off in the creek.”
“They got it out,” Buddy said.
“They say them flames jumped twenty feet out from under the hood before he run it off in there,” Jake said.
“Water put the fire out,” Buddy said.
“Uh huh,” Wilson said, “after the motor blowed up through the hood. They found that motherfucker in a tree out back of Old Maud Page’s place. One of the pistons fell out of it and hit her on the head while she was picking up apples. She was in the hospital three days.”
“Yeah,” Jake said. “And I hear Carrington’s in Dallas now, never got better from the accident. Near drowned and some of the engine blew back into the car and hit him in the nuts, castrated him, fucked up his legs. He can’t walk. He’s on a wheeled board or something, got some retard that pulls him around.”
“Them’s just stories,” Buddy said. “Motor’s still in the car. Carrington got him a job in Dallas as a mechanic. He didn’t get hurt at all. Old Woman Page didn’t get hit by no piston either. It missed her by a foot. Scared her so bad she had a little stroke. That’s why she was in the hospital.”
“You seen the motor?” Wilson asked. “Tell me you’ve seen it.”
“No,” Buddy said, “but I’ve heard about it from good sources, and they say it can be fixed.”
“Jack it up and drive another car under it,” Wilson said, “it’ll be all right.”
“That’s the way I see it too,” Jake said.
“Listen to you two,” Buddy said. “You know it all. You’re real operators. I’ll tell you morons one thing, I line up a little of the hole that winks and stinks, like I’m doing tonight, you won’t get none of it.”
Wilson and Jake shuffled and eyed each other. An unspoken but clear message passed between them. They had never known Buddy to actually get any, or anyone else to know of him getting any, but he had a couple of years on them, and he might have gotten some, way he talked about it, and they damn sure knew they weren’t getting any, and if there was a chance of it, things had to be patched up.
“Car like that,” Wilson said, “if you worked hard enough, you might get it to run. Some new pistons or something… What you got lined up for tonight?”
Buddy’s face put on some importance. “I know a gal likes to do the circle, you know what I mean?”
Wilson hated to admit it, but he didn’t. “The circle?”
“Pull the train,” Buddy said. “Do the team. You know, fuck a bunch of guys, one after the other.”
“Oh,” Wilson said.
“I knew that,” Jake said.
“Yeah,” Wilson said. “Yeah sure you did.” Then to Buddy: “When you gonna see this gal?”
Buddy, still important, took a swig of beer and pursed his lips and studied the afternoon sky. “Figured I’d walk on over there little after dark. It’s a mile or so.”
“Say she likes to do more than one guy?” Wilson asked.
“Way I hear it,” Buddy said, “she’ll do ‘em till they ain’t able to do. My cousin, Butch, he told me about her.”
Butch. The magic word. Wilson and Jake eyed each other again. There could be something in this after all. Butch was twenty, had a fast car, could play a little bit on the harmonica, bought his own beer, cussed in front of adults, and most importantly, he had been seen with women.
Buddy continued. “Her name’s Sally. Butch said she cost five dollars. He’s done her a few times. Got her name off a bathroom wall.”
“She costs?” Wilson asked.
“Think some gal’s going to do us all without some money for it?” Buddy said.
Again, an unspoken signal passed between Wilson and Jake. There could be truth in that.
“Butch gave me her address, said her pimp sits on the front porch and you go right up and negotiate with him. Says you talk right, he might take four.”
“I don’t know,” Wilson said. “I ain’t never paid for it.”
“Me neither,” said Jake.
“Ain’t neither one of you ever had any at all, let alone paid for it,” Buddy said.
Once more, Wilson and Jake were struck with the hard and painful facts.
Buddy looked at their faces and smiled. He took another sip of beer. “Well, you bring your five dollars, and I reckon you can tag along with me. Come by the house about dark and we’ll walk over together.”
“Yeah, well, all right,” Wilson said. “I wish we had a car.”
“Keep wishing,” Buddy said. “You boys hang with me, we’ll all be riding in Carrington’s old Chevy before long. I’ve got some prospects.”
It was just about dark when Wilson and Jake got over to Buddy’s neighborhood, which was a long street with four houses on it widely spaced. Buddy’s house was the ugliest of the four. It looked ready to nod off its concrete blocks at any moment and go crashing into the unkempt yard and die in a heap of rotting lumber and squeaking nails. Great strips of graying Sherwin-Williams flat-white paint hung from it in patches, giving it the appearance of having a skin disease. The roof was tin and loved the sun and pulled it in and held it so that the interior basked in a sort of slow simmer until well after sundown. Even now, late in the day, a rush of heat came off the roof and rippled down the street like the last results of a nuclear wind.
Wilson and Jake came up on the house from the side, not wanting to go to the door. Buddy’s mother was a grumpy old bitch in a brown bathrobe and bunny rabbit slippers with an ear missing on the left foot. No one had ever seen her wearing anything else, except now and then she added a shower cap to her uniform, and no one had ever seen her, with or without th
e shower cap, except through the screenwire door. She wasn’t thought to leave the house. She played radio contests and had to be near the radio at strategic times throughout the day so she could phone if she knew the answer to something. She claimed to be listening for household tips, but no one had ever seen her apply any. She also watched her daughter’s soap operas, though she never owned up to it. She always pretended to be reading, kept a Reader’s Digest cracked so she could look over it and see the TV.
She wasn’t friendly either. Times Wilson and Jake had come over before, she’d met them at the screen door and wouldn’t let them in. She wouldn’t even talk to them. She’d call back to Buddy inside, “Hey, those hoodlum friends of yours are here.”
Neither Wilson or Jake could see any sort of relationship developing between them and Buddy’s mother and they had stopped trying. They hung around outside the house under the open windows until Buddy came out. There were always interesting things to hear while they waited. Wilson told Jake it was educational.
This time, as before, they sidled up close to the house where they could hear. The television was on. A laugh track drifted out to them. That meant Buddy’s sister LuWanda was in there watching. If it wasn’t on, it meant she was asleep. Like her mother, she was drawing a check. Back problems plagued the family. Except for Buddy’s pa. His back was good. He was in prison for sticking up a liquor store. What little check he was getting for making license plates probably didn’t amount to much.
Now they could hear Buddy’s mother. Her voice had a quality that made you think of someone trying to talk while fatally injured; like she was lying under an overturned refrigerator, or had been thrown free of a car and had hit a tree.
“LuWanda, turn that thing down. You know I got bad feet.”
“You don’t listen none with your feet, Mama,” LuWanda said. Her voice was kind of slow and lazy, faintly squeaky, as if hoisted from her throat by a hand-over pulley.
“No,” Buddy’s mother said. “But I got to get up on my old tired feet and come in here and tell you to turn it down.”
“I can hear you yelling from the bedroom good enough when your radio ain’t too high.”