Muckers (13 page)

“You got a number.” Cruz waves his flashlight across a row of monuments. “Congratulations, Rabbit. Pick out your plot, ’cause this is where you’ll be. Six feet under with a pile of shit on top of you. What should we put on your stone, Rabbit?
THE IDIOT IS RESTING
?”

“Not everybody who goes to war gets killed,” Rabbit says.

“You really want to take that chance?” I’ve caught Rabbit by surprise, and he cranes his neck to get a look at me.

“Somebody has to fight the commies in Korea,” Rabbit says. “It’s the right thing to do.”

“Says who?” Cruz lets his beam linger on the monuments. “How come you’ve gone changing all of a sudden, Rabbit? You’re acting like a stranger.”

“Nothing’s how it was anymore,” Rabbit says. “In case you haven’t noticed. And maybe you never knew me in the first place.”

“I know what won’t suit you,” Cruz says. “Like shooting things. You think having a gun in your hands makes you some kind of hero?”

“You think catching a football makes you one?”

“It’s not my fault you’re too small to play,” Cruz says.

“Is that what you think? That I’m sore about not playing?
I don’t care about football, and I don’t hate everyone who’s not from Hatley, Cruz.”

“Stop it!” I say. “Listen to the two of you fighting like you were enemies.”

“I just want to matter,” Rabbit says. “To count.”

The ground has flattened out, giving up most of its incline, and my burro dips his neck to graze. Cruz gets off Kissy and unleashes a flour sack.

“Gotta get rid of these brushes and cans,” he says, walking over to Rabbit.

“I’m going into the service, Cruz. You can’t stop me. I’m gonna be a private. Private Salvatore Palermo.”

Cruz drapes the sacks over his shoulders and slaps Kissy on the rump. The burro bucks out a little, then wanders off. “Just get to the bakery, Rabbit,” Cruz says, but he won’t look up. “And make like you’ve been baking while I’m gone. And you both better get that paint out of your fingernails and wherever else it’s on.”

“Where you going?” Rabbit calls after Cruz. He takes off his straw hat. Even in the dark you can tell Rabbit’s hair’s been shaved down to the nub.

“I’m gonna drive down to Cottonville and leave these in their schoolyard,” Cruz says. “Who else would want Hatley to go to hell?”

THE SUN ROSE PALE AND
quick above Nefertitty Hill, unsullied by sulfur smoke—they’re not allowed to blast on Sundays with Ruffner being a Roman Catholic. Now the sun’s hanging right above
HeLL
—there’s no mistaking that word—and both are bearing down on me as I walk to church thinking,
How could anyone know it was me who painted that word?

The church is nearly empty and the oak’s waxy and cool when I slide into our pew. It’s third from the back on the right-hand side, across from where Jesus is being stripped of his garments in station number ten. The
ofrendas
left over from Mexican Mass flicker in cherry-colored glass by the front window—the one that Ruffner took the stained glass out of so he’d have a clear view of the pit while he’s praying.

I know that’s what I should be doing. That I ought to be halfway through my first Hail Mary instead of thinking
about what people might be saying when they look up and catch sight of the hill.

I open the kneeler and it groans, coming to rest on the floor with a thump that reaches up to the sanctuary, where Jesus and the archangels are still in shadow, and I’m grateful that I don’t have to face them yet. Or the letters forming that word. My back’s to the hill, so it shouldn’t matter, but the fact is I’m caught between the Savior and the worst possible outcome, spelled out behind me in whitewash. And I don’t like being cornered. I’m better off when I can run. But our field’s thirty yards from here, outside that first window.

Somebody coughs a little baby cough up front, then a veiled head rises to meet the
ofrendas
and I see that it’s Rabbit’s mom. She gathers the lace ends of the scarf to her throat and hunches over, lighting the highest candle. Maybe for her brother; he died a year ago, I think.

“Hey, Ugly,” Cruz says, then takes hold of my shoulder since I just about jump out of my skin. “Relax,” he says, stroking his hair. It’s still wet from Bryl.

“What are you doing here?” I whisper. “Weren’t you at the Mexican Mass?”

“I slept in. Shove over.”

“You can’t sit here.”

“How come? You got room.” He punches me in the knee until I move. “Besides, you should be flattered. I usually take old man Ruffner’s pew for our Mass if it’s empty.”

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“What are they gonna do, throw me out? It’s a church,” Cruz says. “And I’m sitting next to our quarterback. Hey, there’s Mrs. Palermo. Hi, Mrs. P,” he calls, waving to her sitting next to the Buffo family. “How’d the Palermos get
the third row? Just because they donate their stale bread for Communion?”

“What’d you do?” I ask him. “Drink before you got here?”

“Huh?”

“ ’Cause you sure smell like it.”

“That’s not booze, stupid. It’s cologne.”

The church is filling up fast. Mrs. Murdock waddles into the pew behind us with her kid, Reuben, poking her elbows into my shoulders every time she looks around for someone to gossip with.

Reuben gets excited when he sees us and taps our shoulders, saying, “Go, Muckers!”

Beebe Vance walks by. I guess you’d call it more like gliding, the way the ice skaters do and those girls on the floats at the rodeo with the pageant crowns on their heads.

Cruz sticks his elbow into the aisle. It nicks Beebe’s handbag, so she stops and looks at Cruz like she’s seeing a ghost. Mrs. Vance shoos her away and Beebe blushes brighter than that pink lipstick of hers, taking the piece of mesh stuck to her hat and pulling it over her eyes with a little white glove.

Cruz rests his chin against that elbow and eyes Beebe all the way to her pew ten rows up by the Walshes. I don’t think I’ve seen Cruz this happy since he won the Ford Deluxe in that pool match that lasted three days. And I know I’d be doing the same thing if that’d been Angie and I was in Mexican Mass.

Mrs. Featherhoff starts playing up in the balcony. I turn and see her face in the mirror above the pipe organ—a fun-house-type mirror that makes her cheeks go all squatty like a cabbage. It takes a few violent pumps before the air sputters out and I recognize the deep, brooding hymn “Save
Our Souls.” Then Father Pierre walks up the aisle in layers of purple, wearing a biretta puffed up and crowned with a pom-pom bigger than the buttons on a clown suit. Leon Brewer’s tagging alongside him, with the Father using the top of Leon’s head as a cane.

Father’s gaze is too quick and he catches my eye, then he smiles, probably thinking I’m here because of him, which I’m not. Leon hobbles along the red carpet to keep up. He opens the gate to the sanctuary, where he and Father Pierre will stay, barricaded from us, until Mass is over. Father raises his hands to the ceiling, making the ends of his chasuble tremble. And we all make the sign of the cross before saying “Amen.”

“Who do you think did it?” Mrs. Murdock whispers to Mrs. Dearing. “I just can’t imagine who would’ve done a thing like that.”

“Idle hands, that’s who,” Mrs. Dearing says. “There’s not enough shifts to go around at the mine anymore.”

Cruz pokes out his chin to claim more room, as if he belongs at English Mass and just might come again if he feels like it. Me? I’m sweating. My good shirt’s stuck to my chest and I’m sitting too long when I should be standing or kneeling, swatting the back of my neck so Mrs. Murdock won’t bore a hole into it like those carpenter bees do on our porch.

“Whoever did it, that’s straight where they’re going,” Mrs. Murdock says. “H-E-L-L. What’s the town coming to?”

“Mommy, why’s hell so high up?” Reuben says. “Ain’t it down there, below China?” he asks, stomping his feet on the floor.

I focus on the statue of Jesus perched in his niche across from the altar, arms outstretched, with his heart ten times the size of any of ours. He looks sad, maybe even a little
disappointed at what’s happened to this town and how my part in it’s only adding to the pain.

“There’s the idiot,” Cruz whispers, looking over to the third row where Rabbit is. “Bet he won’t look back.”

“He doesn’t even know you’re here.”

“Aren’t you the cheerleader?” Cruz sniffs, adjusting the knot in his tie.

I ignore the jab and look at Rabbit’s big ears. We’ve got a clear view of them since the Heydorn kids are down by the kneelers in the pew behind Rabbit, unlacing people’s shoes.

Rabbit’s staring at the altar. It has a lamb painted on it, shorn pink and waiting to be slaughtered. The lamb looks calm, considering, with its eyes half shut and its legs folded like it’s about to go to sleep. They painted golden shafts of light around it and sat it on a fleshy pink carpet, as if that’s supposed to make a difference.

Rabbit’s even skinnier with that army buzz cut. He looks like he did when he was twelve.
Helpless
. Just like that lamb. He dozes off and sways to the left, his head landing on Mrs. Palermo’s shoulder. She smiles and lets him stay.

Maybe she didn’t light that candle for her brother. Maybe Mrs. Palermo lit it for Rabbit. I’ve read that those things are supposed to work either way: as a prayer for the dead or a wish for the living.

Father Pierre walks past the lamb to deliver his sermon. He leans into the railing as if he’s about to tumble over it, but then clenches his hand into a fist and punches it into the wood.

“The idiot’s up now,” Cruz says, nodding at Rabbit.

“Stop calling him that.”

Cruz gives me a dirty look. “Whose side are you on, anyway?” he says.

“Nobody’s.”

Father Pierre keeps scanning the congregation. “Only
He
knows who desecrated our hill,” he begins. “And when a sinner mocks the work of God, even the Lord gets angry.” He’s facing our direction now, glaring at me.
He knows
. I’m sure of it. My foot kicks the top of the kneeler, folding it back up and making a crashing sound like pieces of wood splitting in two.

“It’s those teenagers,” Mrs. Murdock whispers. “They don’t know the meaning of hard work.”

“They just want liquor,” Mrs. Dearing says. “Did you see the
Verde Miner
? It’s called alcoholism. I’m marking prohibition on my November ballot.”

“Look!” Reuben calls out. I turn around. He’s pointing at me and Cruz. The itch starts coming out of the wool in my suit collar, but there’s no way I’d move a finger.

“They know it’s us,” I whisper to Cruz.

“The kid’s pointing at the window. Stop being so jumpy,” he says.

A wasp’s flying around in the blue part where the window comes to a point, next to Jesus falling for the third time in station number nine.

Father’s going on about the unraveling of family values. How if you’re not a family, that somehow it makes you do bad things. But I can’t see his angry eyes anymore because of Mr. Weetman’s onion-shaped head.

The chandelier above us flickers and the rain begins. First a few fat taps like a BB gun firing, then stronger, gushing heavy against the glass.

And what does Father Pierre know about family anyway? Even if you have one, that doesn’t mean your world won’t get torn apart. Mary and Joseph are a perfect example of that,
standing in the altarpiece in their flowing robes. They’re acting all happy, gazing down at Jesus. And I wonder if Mary knew her son was going to die and how she took it after. They don’t tell you that in the Bible. She’s smiling down on him as if she couldn’t know.

A drip falls onto Cruz’s shoulder as the rain finds its way through the roof, and the ushers get out the buckets.

“Hey!” Reuben shouts. He’s been at the window taunting the wasp. “Hell’s gone.”

Mrs. Murdock rushes over and takes Reuben’s hand. “Would you look at that,” she says, peering outside. “The rain washed those letters away. All that’s left is the H.”

“Told you the paint was old,” Cruz whispers.

All eyes focus on Father Pierre.

“It appears we have the Lord to thank for cleansing our hill,” he proclaims.

Some of the men laugh.

“Yet—the sinner is marked.” Father’s eyes dance around the church like little rubber balls. “You know who you are.”

That gets the whole congregation muttering.

“What gall,” Mrs. Murdock says, putting up her umbrella. “To be here at Mass after doing a thing like that.”

I close my eyes and try to think of something cool, like icicles or polar bears, since I’m not getting dripped on and my body’s burning up.

The ushers start coming around with the offertory baskets, and I tell Cruz I’m not going to take Communion.

“Are you crazy?” he says. “You gotta go. If you don’t they’ll know for sure.”

The basket reaches across our row and Cruz fumbles with his pockets, jingling some coins until the usher’s about to leave. Then he grabs the rim of the basket and puts in
a five-dollar bill. “For the candles,” he says, dropping the money into the basket like a slow molasses pour.

“Where’d he get that kind of money?” Mrs. Murdock whispers.

“Probably stole it,” Mrs. Dearing says. “Don’t they live in a shack?”

“Are all the Anglos this distracted during Mass?” Cruz whispers, loud enough for them to hear. “
Our
women recite the rosary the whole time. I think they must know God better.”

“Well, I never,” Mrs. Murdock sniffs.

“Knock it off,” I tell him, “or you’re gonna get kicked out.”

“Not before you do. You’re doing everything wrong.”

“So you’re going?” I ask. “To Holy Communion?”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

The wooden kneelers for Communion are lined up on either side of the sanctuary against white spindle railings three feet high. Me and Cruz take the two places near the window, where Jesus is being condemned to death in the first station of the cross.

We wait for the Father, who’s on the other end spooning out morsels of soggy bread into a chorus of open mouths. Then a hint of liniment hits my nose, and the golden threads running stiff through his vestments brush against my hand as Leon lifts the white towel toward my chin like a bib.