Boys of Life (35 page)

thpp«d through his Bible to where I could see he'd marked sentei with .i yello* highlighter. It made me feel son) Ibi him: ho* h< trying to muddle his way through all tins itufl he didn't understand. "Then th i /if unto htm little chikh read to me,

/ put his hands on them, and /"«'% " I'd nevei heard Earl

tumbling ovei tl but

\ ritten In regulai I nyway While he n

BOYSOFLIFE D

them," he read me. "But Jesus said, Suffer little children and forbid them not, to come unto me; for of such is the kingdom of heaven."

"That's just a lot of words," I said. "Come on and roll me what you're really trying to get at."

Earl closed his Bible and looked at me. He has those big sad eyes and bags under them like he doesn't get much sleep at night. He sat down on my bunk, which he'd never done before. I was sitting on the little stool at the foot of the bed, and it sort of surprised me when he sat down.

"My wife took my kids from me," he said. "She just took them away from me."

It wasn't what I'd guessed he was going to say next.

"I didn't know," I told him. "I'm really sorry about that." Which I meant.

Sometimes when you downshift on a car, you feel like you're inside this river that's widening out—that's what it was like. Downshifting.

"She said I wasn't fit, Tony. You've been around. Do you think I'm fit. 7 "

"Sure I think you're fit," I told him.

"They're in Ohio now," he said. "Last time I saw my kids was Christmastime. She accused me of brainwashing them."

"Brainwashing?" I said. I could tell how all this was eating at him. For some reason, people've always wanted to sit me down and tell mc their stories.

"You remind me of my boys," he said.

"No," I told him. I was shaking my head. "I'm sure I don't. You've got nice kids."

But he was off* on his own track, and he was going to follow it through.

"Sometimes," he went on, "when I lie down at night, I find myself having these thoughts, Tony. Like a dream, but it's not a dream—my eyes are wide open and I'm still awake. But I see it so clear. There I am with my rifle, and I'm hunting. It's the rifle I had when I was a kid. I haven't shot that thing in fifteen years. But now I'm hunting, like I used to do, only it's not deer or nothing. I'm hunting my wife

out, side by side facing up. And their eyes are open— that's something

□ PAUL RUSSELL

I notice, how they're staring up at me with these totally hlack eyes like deer eyes."

I thought it was all pretty scary—stuff I didn't want to know. I wanted to ask him, did he ever jerk off, thinking about things like that? But I didn't ask. I told him, "Everybody has bad dreams. You should see some of my dreams."

At least I could give him the comfort of my perspective.

"See," Earl reminded me, "this isn't a dream. I told you, mv eyes are open. I stand there looking down at them; then I take out my knife and slit open their bellies, like you'd gut a deer. But you know what.' It's not blood and guts inside—it's money. It's dollar bills, and then I remember how I stored that money there, inside my kids, instead of putting it in the bank. I'd gone and forgot that."

He started laughing—this out-of-control laugh, which I knew meant he didn't find any of it very funny. And I had to laugh too—not a laugh like Earl's, but just laughing along with him as far as I could go, and then him laughing his way along to whatever craziness it was taking him to. But all of a sudden Earl wasn't laughing. He was looking at me with this pleading look, like in the next instant I was going to Mow him away, and here he was begging sonic kind of men

His Bible was one of those floppy soft-covered kinds, And he was rolling it up between his hands like he was about to swat something with ir.

rnieday I'm going to wake up and think 1 was just dreaming n, and then I'm going to turn on the TV and find out 1 really went and did something. What makes me think things like that, Tony? 1 ike sometimes I'm going crazy. It scares me to death."

He was looking at me like I was really somebody who could tell him about th

"It's probably really hard," I told him, "not seeing your kids and rything." I didn't know what on earth to saj "You probabl) feci really rotten about your wife taking them ofl like that. 1 nevei knew ■

"I g iil said, "h.'u the sms of the fathers

1. >un through three generations and 1 1..is that have to be like that? What does ill that

I rr.ilU had to laugh that tim< pcrv I told him. "1 d

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B O Y S O F L I F E D

"Look, Tony," he told me. "Could we pray? Would you pray with

inc.'"

way," I said. What I thought was—even though you've got this belly on you like no tomorrow and your dick's too scary to think

about, I'd >t111 probably rather go down on you than go praying with you. I'd gotten through this much of lite without praying, and 1 wasn't about to start vet.

"It we just believe m the Lord, Torn, in Jesus Christ, and we prav, then there'll be a way to get through all this. You and me both, Torn. We need each other. You got to admit that. We need each other to prav together. To pray for each other together."

So this was where being a penitentiary guard got you. Asking to prav with prisoners.

I had this sudden picture: it was the last time in my lite I ever praved. Not that it was much of a prayer—just the last time I remember closing my eyes and saying the words, because I was still too young to really know any better, even though all the time I knew better. I must've been about eight and we were visiting my mom's mother a< the border in Tennessee. We'd go down there on a Saturday night, stay over for Sunday School the next morning, then drive back after Sunday dinner. My mom was never a church person—as you can prohahlv tell-but her mom was, though that didn't stop that old lady from being a prettv mean bitch most oi the time. She used to shoot at strav cats when they came in her yard, and she fixed razor blades on the stems of her shrubs because one Halloween night somebody pulled up something she'd just planted, and it they ever did that again they were going to get what was coming to them. But she was a hrm believer in church, which probably goes hand in hand with shooting stray cats, and so whenever we visited her, we'd do the n^ht thing. Church, that is. I hated it. This creepy old man named Mr. Polk taught the Sunday School class, which they held in this Quonset hut that was an annex to the regular building. He always used to come into the Sunday School

room with this wet spot on his trousers where he'd peed before class and didn't shake himself dry. He'd stand in front of this easel and draw us pictures with colored chalk while he talked: Bible scenes, I guess to keep us entertained. His favorite was Jonah and the whale. He'd draw this man you could see crouched down inside the wh.lie's belly, like he

was sleeping there. It always made me think of stomach Cancer—I don't know why. Evervhodv thought Mr. Polk was the greatest because he

drew those pictures and then colored them in, and the person who

□ PAUL RUSSELL

answered the most Bible questions right got to keep the picture of the day. I never paid much attention. I used to watch that wet spot on Mr. Polk's trousers, and I always knew Sunday School was almost over when that spot'd had time to completely dry up.

He always made us close our eyes and say the same prayer—though I've gone and totally forgotten what the words were.

But that was my experience praying, so I was pretty surprised when Earl was down on his knees before I knew it. "Hey," I said, "don't do that."

"I want to pray for you," he said. He was so insistent.

"It's not going to do any good," I told him. "Not tor me or tor you either."

I'd stood up, I guess in surprise at seeing him go down like that. I stood there looking down at him—it'd make a pretty odd Bight, the two of us, if somebody came along right then. "Dear Jesus," he was saying, with his eyes shut tight and this look on his face like somebody was hurting him—that look Carlos used to like in porn magazines when some young guy's getting it from behind. Only this was Earl, and he

praying. "Save this young man," he said. "Let vour might and toruiveness, oh Lord, release him from this hell of bondage."

"Oh please," I wanted to tell him. "It you really want to go releasing me, hand over the keys." Not that I was particularly itching to escape from a place I pretty much thought 1 deserved to be in.

I didn't s,i\ anything, though 1 did have tO wonder where he'd learned to prav like that. It didn't sound anything like the Earl I knew I gueSi I've tried tO respect other people's needs, whether its butt

fucking <>r praying, >\nd I could see this was something Earl needed to

in front oi iihv Probabt) he'd been looking tor somebody

like me foi a long time, evei since he started thinking those thoughts

oi hi tting turned on hv them. I sort oi admired him that he'd

tm.ilU got up the nerve to n\ and save me provided that's really what ■ >ught he w.is doii I w along with it, though. From start to finish,

the wh. A nt him than it w.is .ihoul me an\

Plus u w.is .1 little embarrassir n what I kept thinking

h

mod hi about hei that way It had tins huge catfish

ilk ugly thing with this pmk underbelly ■ it like I ind that

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whiskers the size of straightened-out clothes hangers. It had this hungry

look th.it COuld make you never want to cat again.

I'd think about Jonah, but what I thought it looked like now was Earl, and the hungry wa\ those prayers were coming out of his mouth. How he was gasping to breathe out of his element.

"I'm not going to pray with you," 1 told him. "I've got more respect tor what 1 did than that."

rl was starting to realize this wasn't going to work so well with me. He opened his eves that'd heen shut tight, and that gasping look went od his face.

iJenlv he seemed really hurt, like he'd tried to pick me up and

I'd snubbed him. I knew that look from the bars. It all comes down to the same thing, I remember thinking—the same thing dressed up in a

million different disguises.

Earl picked himself otf the floor. His face was all red, and he was panting a little. I was sorry tor him th.it this whole thing had haekhred like it did.

"Don't go worrying about me," I told him. "I'll he okas. Your kids'll he okay. Nothing's going to happen to them. You're not uoin^ to do anything to them."

He just stood and looked at me tor a minute—in that instant I thought I could tell he hated me.

"Suit yourself," he said.

"I've always tried to smr myself," I told him. "It's the only thing I ever had goin^ tor me."

It must've broken whatever special thing Earl thought there was

between us. He's heen hv a couple of times since that day. and he's not exactly unfriendly—hut there's this distance. Like he's embarrassed

hat happened. Or maybe it's that he's pissed he tried something and it didn't work out.

Sometimes I have to wonder what Earl's going to think when he reads all this stuff I've written down in here. Because, like- it or nut, he was the one who hrst pur me up to it. He never asks me about it, bur he knows th« ire piling up, and he must be curious t,» find

out what they say.

I wonder. Was he really trying to save m\ SOul like he said he Hid he really think that was what lie W8S doil

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went and released The Gospel starring me and Scott Farris, and everybody in Memphis knows ir\ me and I'm dv.w\.

But that passed in a flash, because I was starting to register .ill the pie were carrying, these big handpamted signs almost the size

of small billboards that it took five 01 mx people to hoist .ilott. wanted

FOR MURDER AND TORTURE OF CHILDREN read this one sign. MEMPHIANS FOR morality said another, and .mother said ART IS NOT A LICENSE TO KILL.

There was every kind of person out there in that crowd—blacks and whites, fat women in pants suits, serious-looking men in business suits, a couple of winos who were along tor the ride. There was even a bunch o( children wearing cardboard haloes and linl her with

thi> paper chain, and adults stood over them with a banner that read,

CHILD ABUSE IS SOUL MURDER.

Carlos had made a lot of movies, and I figured he'd kept on making them after I left—but they never, at least during the time I was with him, raised this kind of stir. It was something he'd love, I thought, and I loved it too—all those moral Memphians taking to the streets. I felt proud of Carlos, whatever it was he'd gone and done to shake people up like that. Whatever balance it was he'd finally found some way to tip.

I parked the pickup in an empty parking lot across rhe street where a building really had burned a few weeks before, re-opening soon: we're getting off our ashes said a sign, which seemed a little optimistic since the building was nothing but a burned-out shell these days. me of the people had started holding hands (1 nd singing "Onward, Christian Soldiers." They were s.. k and forth in a kind of chain that started r<> srrercL treet, until some policemen stepped in to force them back up onto the sidewalk. Tl with a big wooden cross tied by a leather thong around her neck kept calling out, with her hands cupped around her mouth. "Carlos Rei-chart, you repent! Carlos Reicharr, von repent!" Like he could I mething.

It felt totally strange to hear Carlos's name mouth. It was like something that might happen in tin earn