Facing the Music (9 page)

I started to go back inside so I wouldn't risk getting involved. But Harry didn't have my brand and there was a pack on the dash. I could see them from where I was, sitting there in the sun, almost close enough for the woman to reach out and touch.

I'd run over a dog with my truck that morning and I wasn't feeling real good about it. The dog had actually been sleeping
in the road. I thought he was already dead and was just going to straddle him until I got almost on top of him, when he raised up suddenly and saw me, and tried to run. Of course I didn't have time to stop by then. If he'd just stayed down, he'd have been all right. The muffler wouldn't have even hit him. It was just a small dog. But, boy, I heard it when it hit the bottom of my truck. It went
WHOP!
and the dog—it was a white dog—came rolling out from under my back bumper with all four legs stiff, yelping. White hair was flying everywhere. The air was full of it. I could see it in my rearview mirror. And I don't know why I was thinking about that dog I'd killed while I was watching those people, but I was. It didn't make me feel any better.

They were having some kind of terrible argument out there in that suffocating hot car. There were quilts and pillows piled up in there, like they'd been camping out. There was an old woman on the front seat with the woman driving, the one who'd whacked hell out of her kid for coming back empty-handed.

I thought maybe they'd leave if I waited for a while. I thought maybe they'd try to get their cigarettes somewhere else. And then I thought maybe their car wouldn't crank. Maybe, I thought, they're waiting for somebody to come along with some jumper cables and jump them off. But I didn't have any jumper cables. I pushed open the door and went down the steps.

There was about three feet of space between my truck and their car. They were all watching me. I went up to the window of my truck and got my cigarettes off the dash. The woman driving turned all the way around in the seat. You couldn't tell
how old she was. She was one of those women that you can't tell about. But probably somewhere between thirty and fifty. She didn't have liver spots. I noticed that.

I couldn't see all of the old woman from where I was standing. I could just see her old wrinkled knees, and this dirty slip she had sticking out from under the edge of her housecoat. And her daughter—I knew that was who she was—didn't look much better. She had a couple of long black hairs growing out of this mole on her chin that was the size of a butter bean. Her hair kind of looked like a mophead after you've used it for a long time. One of the kids didn't even have any pants on.

She said, “Have they got some cold beer in yonder?” She shaded her eyes with one hand while she looked up at me.

I said, “Well, yeah. They do. But they won't sell cigarettes to a kid that little.”

“It just depends on where they know ye or not,” she said. “If they don't know ye then most times they won't sell em to you. Is that not right?”

I knew I was already into something. You can get into something like that before you know it. In a minute.

“I guess so,” I said.

“Have you got—why you got some, ain't you? Can I git one of them off you?” She was pointing to the cigarettes in my hand. I opened the pack and gave her one. The kid leaned out and wanted to know if he could have one, too.

“Do you let him smoke?”

“Why, he just does like he wants to,” she said. “Have you not got a light?”

The kid was looking at me. I had one of those Bics, a red one, and when I held it out to her smoke, she touched my hand for a second and held it steady with hers. She looked up at me and tried to smile. I knew I needed to get back inside right away, before it got any worse. I turned to go and what she came out with stopped me dead in my tracks.

“You wouldn't buy a lady a nice cold beer, would you?” she said. I turned around. There was this sudden silence, and I knew that everybody in the car was straining to hear what I would say. It was serious. Hot, too. I'd already had about five and I was feeling them a little in the heat. I took a step back without meaning to and she opened her door.

“I'll be back in a little bit, Mama,” she said.

I looked at those kids. Their hair was ratty and their legs were skinny. It was so damn hot you couldn't stand to stay out in it. I said, “You gonna leave these kids out here in the sun?”

“Aw, they'll be all right,” she said. But she looked around kind of uncertainly. I was watching those kids. They were as quiet as dead people.

I didn't want to buy her a beer. But I didn't want to make a big deal out of it, either. I didn't want to keep looking at those kids. I just wanted to be done with it.

“Lady,” I said, “I'll buy you a beer. But those kids are burning up in that car. Why don't you move it around there in the shade?”

“Well.” She hesitated. “I reckon I could,” she said. She got back in and it cranked right up. The fan belt was squealing, and some smoke farted out from the back end. But she limped
it around to the side and left it under a tree. Then we went inside together.

The first Bud she got didn't last two minutes. She sucked the can dry. She had on some kind of military pants and a man's long-sleeved work shirt, and house shoes. Blue ones, with a little fuzzy white ball on each. She had the longest toes I'd ever seen.

Finally I asked her if she wanted another beer. I knew she did.

“Lord yes. And I need some cigrets too if you don't care. Marlboro Lights. Not the menthol. Just reglar lights.”

I didn't know what to say to her. I thought about telling her I was going to the bathroom, and then slipping out the door. But I really wasn't ready to leave just yet. I bought her another beer and got her some cigarettes.

“I'm plumb give out,” she said. “Been drivin all day.”

I didn't say anything. I didn't want anybody to think I was going with her.

“We tryin to git to Morgan City Loozeanner. M'husband's sposed to've got a job down there and we's agoin to him. But I don't know,” she said. “That old car's about had it.”

I looked around in the bar and looked at my face in the mirror behind the rows of bottles. The balls were clicking softly on the pool tables.

“We left from Tuscalooser Alabama,” she said. “But them younguns has been yellin and fightin till they've give me a sick
headache. It shore is nice to set down fer a minute. Ain't it good and cool in here?”

I watched her for a moment. She had her legs crossed on the bar stool and about two inches of ash hanging off her cigarette. I got up and went out the door, back to the little enclosed porch. By looking sideways I could see the Rambler parked under the shade. One of the kids was squatted down behind it, using the bathroom. I thought about things for a while and then went back in and sat down beside her.

“Ain't many men'll hep out a woman in trouble,” she said. “Specially when she's got a buncha kids.”

I ordered myself another beer. The old one was hot. I set it up on the bar and she said, “You not goin to drank that?”

“It's hot,” I said.

“I'll drank it,” she said, and she pulled it over next to her. I didn't want to look at her anymore. But she had her eyes locked on me and she wouldn't take them off. She put her hand on my wrist. Her fingers were cold.

“It's some people in this world has got thangs and some that ain't,” she said. “My deddy used to have money. Owned three service stations and a sale barn. Had four people drove trucks fer him. But you can lose it easy as you git it. You ought to see him now. We cain't even afford to put him in a rest home.”

I got up and went over to the jukebox and put two quarters in. I played some John Anderson and some Lynn Anderson and then I punched Narvel Felts. I didn't want to have to listen to what she had to say.

She was lighting a cigarette off the butt of another one when I sat down beside her again. She grabbed my hand as soon as it touched the bar.

“Listen,” she said. “That's my mama out yonder in that car. She's seventy-eight year old and she ain't never knowed nothin but hard work. She ain't got a penny in this world. What good's it done her to work all her life?”

“Well,” I said, “she's got some grandchildren. She's got them.”

“Huh! I got a girl eighteen, was never in a bit a trouble her whole life. Just up and run off last year with a goddamn sand nigger. Now what about that?”

“I don't know,” I said.

“I need another beer!” she said, and she popped her can down on the bar pretty hard. Everybody turned and looked at us. I nodded to Harry and he brought a cold one over. But he looked a little pissed.

“Let me tell you somethin,” she said. “People don't give a shit if you ain't got a place to sleep ner nothin to eat. They don't care. That son of a bitch,” she said. “He won't be there when we git there. If we ever git there.” And she slammed her face down on the bar, and started crying, loud, holding onto both beers.

Everybody stopped what they were doing. The people shooting pool stopped. The guys on the shuffleboard machine just stopped and turned around.

“Get her out of here,” Harry said. “Frank, you brought her in here, you get her out.”

I got down off my stool and went around to the other side of her, and I took her arm.

“Come on,” I said. “Let's go back outside.”

I tugged on her arm. She raised her head and looked straight at Harry.

“Fuck
you,” she said. “You don't know nothin about me. You ain't fit to judge.”

“Out,” he said, and he pointed toward the door. “Frank,” he said.

“Come on,” I told her. “Let's go.”

It hadn't cooled off any, but the sun was a little lower in the sky. Three of the kids were asleep in the backseat, their hair plastered to their heads with sweat. The old woman was sitting in the car with her feet in the parking lot, spitting brown juice out the open door. She didn't even turn her head when we walked back to the car. The woman had the rest of the beer in one hand, the pack of Marlboro Lights in the other. She leaned against the fender when we stopped.

“You think your car will make it?” I said. I was looking at the tires and thinking of the miles they had to go. She shook her head slowly and stared at me.

“I done changed my mind,” she said. “I'm gonna stay here with you. I love you.”

Her eyes were all teary and bitter, drunk-looking already, and I knew that she had been stomped on all her life, and had probably been forced to do no telling what. And I just shook my head.

“You can't do that,” I said.

She looked at the motel across the street.

“Let's go over there and git us a room,” she said. “I want to.”

The kid who had come into the bar walked up out of the hot weeds and stood there looking at us for a minute. Then he got in the car. His grandmother had to pull up the front seat to let him in. She turned around and shut the door.

“I may just go to Texas,” the woman said. “I got a sister lives out there. I may just drop these kids off with her for a while and go on out to California. To Los Vegas.”

I started to tell her that Las Vegas was not in California, but it didn't matter. She turned the beer up and took a long drink of it, and I could see the muscles and cords in her throat pumping and working. She killed it. She dropped the can at her feet, and it hit with a tiny tinny sound and rolled under the car. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, tugging hard at her lips, and then she wiped her eyes.

“Don't nobody know what I been through,” she said. She was looking at the ground. “Havin to live on food stamps and feed four younguns.” She shook her head. “You cain't do it,” she said. “You cain't hardly blame nobody for wantin to run off from it. If they was any way I could run off myself I would.”

“That's bad,” I said.

“That's terrible,” I said.

She looked up and her eyes were hot.

“What do you care? All you goin to do is go right back in there and git drunk. You just like everybody else. You ain't
never had to go in a grocery store and buy stuff with food stamps and have everbody look at you. You ain't never had to go hungry. Have you?”

I didn't answer.

“Have you?”

“No.”

“All right, then,” she said. She jerked her head toward the building. “Go on back in there and drank ye goddamn beer. We made it this far without you.”

She turned her face to one side. I reached back for my wallet because I couldn't think of anything else to do. I couldn't stand to look at them anymore.

I pulled out thirty dollars and gave it to her. I knew that their troubles were more than she'd outlined, that they had awful things wrong with their lives that thirty dollars would never cure. But I don't know. You know how I felt? I felt like I feel when I see those commercials on TV, of all those people, women and kids, starving to death in Ethiopia and places, and I don't send money. I know that Jesus wants you to help feed the poor.

She looked at what was in her hand, and counted it, jerking the bills from one hand to the other, two tens and two fives. She folded it up and put it in her pocket, and leaned down and spoke to the old woman.

“Come on, Mama,” she said. The old woman got out of the car in her housecoat and I saw then that they were both wearing exactly the same kind of house shoes. She shuffled around to the front of the car, and her daughter took her arm.

They went slowly across the parking lot, the old woman limping a little in the heat, and I watched them until they went up the steps that led to the lounge and disappeared inside. The kid leaned out the window and shook his head sadly. I pulled out a cigarette and he looked up at me.

“Boy you a dumb sumbitch,” he said.

And in a way I had to agree with him.