Pistol Fanny's Hank & Delilah (2 page)

Curly hung around fanning Jesse until I made him go home. He walked away, his backpack hitting him in the back, giving me the third-finger bird all the way down the street. I looked down at Jesse. His tongue was hanging out the side of his mouth. Only a person with the name Presley could do it—he would have to suffice. He would have to summon up the ghost, just so I could get two girls to love me.

When Jesse finally came to, he was rambling and ripping about how his dead grandma came to him and warned him about playing with the dead. She had died of the fright and warned him that he might too. She swore to him on her dead body that it was going to be nothing but trouble for him.

I wondered how a dead person could swear over their own dead body, seeing as it rots away, but said nothing because his wheezing was getting worse and I didn’t feel like stopping and waiting in the hot sun until he woke up again. He was working up to a big one. I could tell.

“What am I supposed to do, anyway?” he asked while we made our way to the entrance of the woods.

“We have to light our cigarette and after you say
hunka, hunka, burnin’ love
three times, I take a puff of the ciggie and blow smoke out. You have to have the camera ready because when his face appears, you have to snap away. Then I can tell Cassie and Leslie that I saw Elvis.”

“They’re not going to believe you.”

“I know, but that’s what the camera is for. Then they’ll both kiss me.”

He stopped walking and took a deep breath. “Toots, I have a really bad feeling about this. I think I’m allergic to smoke. What if I pass out and Elvis decides he needs a pal or something?”

“Damn it, Jesse! You’re nothing but a big ole hypochondriac, you know that?” I snatched his Presley pack from his hands and he wheezed something terrible.

“I need that!” he barely got out.

“You can have it after we get to Wild Thang.”

Through the dimmed light of the woods, I saw a paper peeking out of the muddy floor. I shuffled my foot around the leaves, bending over to examine it. It was a bus ticket, the date set for that day, from Greenwood, Louisiana to Tupelo, Mississippi. I picked it up and stashed it in my pocket.

“But… but… Toots, you do a better Elvis impression than I do! You even have that curly lip thing going on that mother said she used to die for!”

I shook my head as I continued walking. Half of the time I had no idea why we hung out with Jesse. But the other half of the time I knew why. We hung out with him because he had the most colorful family in all of Tupelo, we were sure of it.

His mother was a hypochondriac Bible beater, and his daddy (although most of the time drunk off the sin juice) was the funniest man on earth. His mother went to church regularly and was always a part of church functions, but after his daddy would get to drinkin’ in the evenings, their house was anything but holy. His mother used to beat his daddy upside his head with the Bible, sometimes while he was passed out.

She would always say if she couldn’t preach the devil out of him, she would beat it out of him. A couple of times we thought we heard the sounds of the devil when he would moan and groan and ask her to beat him some more because it felt so damn good.

It never seemed to truly work, though. His daddy always drank and would ramble on about the most interesting subjects, even ones that didn’t make any sense. And the next day, he would have no idea what he had even said. During this time of his life, his rants had been aimed at the “supposed” issues that had been going on between two judges, Judge Maxwell Pilgrim and a new one who had just moved to town from up north, Judge Cyrus S. Booty.

“What did a northerner know about Southern politics? North and South mixed together just as well as fire and gasoline. And who has a name like Booty, anyway? A pirate, that’s who!” Jesse’s daddy had announced as though it was a declaration of the highest regard.

Then he went on to say that you could never trust a man with pirate running through his blood, because sooner or later, they’d always come for their lost booty.
That was the args truth!
Plus, he was built like a man you couldn’t trust. He had big, goofy feet.
You should never trust a man with feet like that because as soon as you turn your back on them, they’ll kick you in the ass.
He was just all-around untrustworthy.

His mother interrupted just then and sent his daddy in the kitchen because she said it was time for his exorcism. But before she could beat him, he passed out and tooted. That infuriated her so much, she told him he either had to sober up, or she was leaving him and taking Jesse and the rest of the kids to her sister’s. He had moaned something, and she told him that it was no toot, that he was really soiling himself, and if he didn’t get his soiling tail off her linoleum, she was going to mop the floor with him.

And she had.

Yeah, that’s why we loved Jesse’s place. June-bug was too proper to ever say the word “ass,” she always said “toosh,” and made us too. She thought it sounded French. I highly doubted she had ever seen my stepdad’s toosh. Seeing as he was always complaining that she never wanted to touch it.

I stopped walking for a moment and turned to Jesse. “Hey, before we walk all this way for nothing, did you bring the goods I told you to?”

He swatted away a gnat swarming around his face. “Yeah, I got it all. A camera and snacks.”

Our footsteps cracked and popped beneath us as we walked. “Good. What did you bring? I’m so hungry.”

“I don’t know. Mother packed it all.”

Just then, we walked up to a fierce, towering oak tree. This wasn’t Wild Thang, but Wild Thang was hidden inside, like a heart hidden behind a chest. The oak tree was massive. The one tree seemed like five. As the oak rose from the earth, its humungous branches split in different directions, almost like a hand turned forward, its fingers cradling a box. That box was Wild Thang. It was hidden in the palm of this massive tree. Vines and branches and green leaves swarmed it, wrapping around it, hiding it away from the rest of the world. It had to be the best-kept secret in Tupelo. No one else but us seemed to know about it.

We found it after we dared Dylan to climb the oak. He climbed up, and when we didn’t hear from him after a while, we called up to him. He poked his head out and told us he had found a hidden hut, right in the middle of the tree. We didn’t believe him, so we climbed up after him.

Sure enough, he wasn’t lying. It was a small shack, a little man hut, painted green and splintering in different spots from age, but it was like new to us. We had just found our new hangout. No one ever came to claim it, so we did. We claimed it by the law of Squatter’s Rights. Then we named it Wild Thang in honor of its surroundings.

I had finagled a rope ladder, and after we climbed up, we’d pull it up with us so no lurkers could follow. We were always leaving Curly below the tree just to get him riled enough to try and climb it on his own.

I stood staring at the tree for a bit. I could’a sworn we left the rope down last time. Oh well, we’d just have to climb it the regular way. Jesse went up first. I climbed up behind him. I felt a hand grab my foot. I fell right on my back and got the wind knocked out of me. I was the one wheezing and trying to catch my breath.

As I rolled around on the muddy ground, Jesse poked his head out and called, “Do you need one of my suga’ pills?”

I tried to talk, but all I could do was gasp. When I looked up again, Curly was standing over me, a slight smile on his face. I tried to grab his foot but he ran away, climbing up the tree like a curly-haired monkey. When I was finally able to breathe again, I climbed up and found Jesse and Curly laughing so hard, Jesse was starting to turn colors. I felt like I should stab him in the neck.

I threw my bag down, took the ticket out of my pocket, and tacked it to the wall of papers we had found that we thought were cool. There was an old cigarette pack and a drawing of a naked woman with stars as her fleshy boobies. I walked over to the stereo in the corner, took Dylan’s mixtape out, and put in REO Speedwagon.

Jesse plopped down in the big beanbag chair in the corner and started taking out the snacks Mrs. Presley had packed. He gave us each a Moon Pie and a RC Cola. The drink was hot and the pie was smashed and melting, but it was good anyways.

Curly took the blowup guitar from the shelf lined with baseballs and poker cards, strumming it like it was real. He started to sing along to the music, slashing his head back and forth, closing his eyes tight. Heaven Almighty, a real cootie bug. While Jesse started to count his suga’ pills, afraid he would run out, I started loading the camera up with film.

“Did you hear that?” Curly paused his solo, thumb ready to begin again once all was clear.

I shook my head and kept concentrating on what I was doing, trying not to get sticky goo from the Moon Pie on the film.

“Turn that lower.” He motioned to the radio.

Jesse leaned over and lowered the volume. I stopped fiddling with the camera, listening harder. It sounded like men’s voices, but we were all alone. Then I heard a scrambling noise and knew who it was right away. It was Wild Thang’s mascot, a squirrel we named Fat Squirrel. He was the fattest squirrel we had ever seen. He loved Moon Pies too. He was real friendly. He would take the food straight from your hands, and because he was too fat to run away, he waddled away.

Sure enough, a few minutes later, he came scurrying into the only window in the place. You could see out through the spaces in the thick branches, but you couldn’t see in.

Curly laughed and handed him a piece of his pie. Fat Squirrel sat in the window, his small hand-like paws holding his treat, just a-nipping at the graham cracker. It sounded like he was making a clicking sound with his teeth as his beady little eyes darted back and forth, watching us. His eyes were the only things quick about him.

I finished putting the roll of film in the camera, and as Jesse and Curly started discussing how disgusting Mrs. Beastie’s underarm sweat was during English, I heard more voices. I quieted them down as I moved to the window and peeped out through one of the gaps.

Judge Booty, the man Jesse’s dad didn’t trust, was standing about ten tall trees away from us. His back was to us, but there was another man in front of him and they were arguing. The other man was young, steadily smoking a cigarette. He was puffing so hard and so fast, the cherry seemed to continuously glow.

I could hear their voices rising. Booty kept throwing his hands up in the air, but he mostly pointed toward where we were. He was so mad, the next time he pointed, I actually stuck my back to the wall because I felt like he was pointing at me.

Jesse and Curly hovered around the window with me, watching.

“What do you think they’re arguing about?” Curly whispered.

I shook my head. “I don’t know. But be quiet, because whatever it is, it’s heated.”

Jesse’s face went pale. He looked more than a tad sick.

“Don’t worry.” I patted his shoulder. “If you want to go and hide in the closet, we’ll come and get you after they leave.”

We had found a secret closet that was built into the hut. It was the same color as the walls, and the line to the door matched the creases around the room. Like Wild Thang, we had found it horsing around one day. Dylan had slammed me into the wall and it popped open. It was small, only able to hold two of us, but it was fun to dare Jesse to go in there because he always passed out from the fright of being in a dark place.

Jesse shook his head, clutching his Presley pack to his chest.

“Toots, come see this,” Curly whispered so low, I hardly heard him.

I stood next to him. We watched as the two men continued to argue. This time, Booty pushed the guy. I grabbed the camera I had just loaded and stuck it between the bushes and clicked the button.

“What are you doing?” Jesse rasped-whispered. “What in the hell are you doing!” he said again, this time more panicked.

I waved my hand behind me. “Quiet.”

Booty pushed the man again. The man shook his head and started walking toward our tree.

“Oh shit!” Curly said.

I threw my hand over his mouth and shook my head.

“Oh—” Jesse let out a long wheeze “—shit, what?” he barely got out.

I narrowed my eyes at him, putting my pointer finger to my mouth. I continued to watch the man walk toward us, constantly pulling on his cigarette, cherry still glowing like a damn fire. When he was just a few feet away, he stopped and turned his back to us. He kept his front to Booty. Jesse’s daddy was right, people were afraid he was going to kick them in the ass. I kept the camera steady.

“You didn’t do what I asked,” Booty said, gritting his teeth, spitting from the side of his mouth.

“If you want to check the damn tree, you check it yourself. I checked it earlier. There was nothing there! Nothing, it’s just a tree!” The man took another long drag. He blew the smoke and I could see it rising, smell it filling my nostrils.

Booty pulled a gun from his pocket. The man lifted his hands. I pressed my finger down. Booty pulled the trigger. The camera clicked. The loud gunfire shocked Jesse so bad a huge wheeze erupted from his mouth, almost like a belch. He started to panic, pacing the floor and gasping for breathes. He was unzipping his Presley pack, searching frantically. His miracle pills and the syringe with the clear liquid went falling to the floor.