Sorrow Floats (24 page)

“We didn’t need money this bad,” I said to Lloyd. “You brought me here to make a point about alcoholism.”

He looked at me and said, “Alcoholism has no point.” Pithy son of a bitch.

Carl raised up and started dry heaving and fell out of his cot, pulling the needle out of his arm and his own bag of blood down on his head.

Dead Dad,

This is the Mississippi River, butt crack of the entire nation. I saw a dead boy. I sold my blood and met a woman who sold her flesh. Which of us would a cowboy call sleazy?

My adventuresome spirit is flagging. Could use your help.

Maurey

***

I paddled my canoe through the glass-still waters of Jenny Lake. At the far end of the boat a whore named Lily sunbathed on her back wearing a black bikini bottom and no top. She was very tanned, but I could see purple bruises on the insides of her arms. Lily stretched her arms over her head and leaned forward to lick between my legs. “You’re a woman,” I said. “Close your eyes and I’m anyone, ” she said. I closed my eyes and we drifted across the lake with her licking below and above my clitoris and me floating with the gentleness of the water. I almost came, I wanted to come, but I couldn’t quite get over the edge. When I opened my eyes Lily had changed. She had a black, full beard and hair on her arms and chest. I said, “You died, ” and Lily said in a man’s voice, “That was a mistake.” Then I was in the lake, drowning. I kicked, I fought, I screamed. Lily pulled my feet down where I no longer wanted to go. I was smothered again.

***

Neither Shane nor Brad were back by five. Lloyd woke me from a two-hour nap and some strange dreams, and got me out of the room by checkout. I stumbled down to the street to meet Marcella and the kids. The bottom half of Andrew’s face was purple. They’d gone to a Zippy Mart for yet more Pampers and snacks, and Andrew went wild in the Kool-Aid.

‘‘I got in trouble,” he said, proudly showing off his purple hands.

“I turned my back for ten seconds,” Marcella said, “to read the ingredients in Dolly Madison cakes, and he tore open all the packs of grape and half the cherry.”

“They taste the same,” Andrew said.

“Cost me every cent to get him out of the store. Now I still don’t have Pampers.”

I gave her five dollars of blood money and said I’d watch Andrew and Hugo Jr. while she made another run. Lloyd said something about electric taping the spark plug wires so they wouldn’t arc, and walked on down to Moby Dick. That left me sitting on the stoop with Hugo Jr. on my right arm, Andrew on my left leg, and the
mew
ing bowling ball bag between my feet.

“Do you have a husband?” Andrew asked.

“Not anymore.”

“Do you want one? My daddy knows lots of boys who want wives.”

“None for me, thanks, I’m done with husbands. Would you take your hands off my shirt? You’re making me purple.”

“You’re already purple.” He touched a big sucker of a bruise on my arm. While the nurse had been telling me which day she opened her life to Jesus Christ, she slid the pipe through my vein and poked out the other side.

“Women are hard to hit,” she said. “We don’t get many women in here.”

As Andrew came off on my clothes, a couple of hookers drifted over to admire Hugo Jr. By the time we got done with “Is he yours?” “No, mine’s cuter,” three more hookers joined the huddle.

“I had a baby when I was twelve,” said a pretty Spanish girl who looked fifteen. “Social Services took her. I don’t even know where she lives now.”

The oldest one in the crowd, who might have been my age, said, “My parents took mine. I went out to score one morning and when I came back they’d kidnapped her.”

“You shouldn’t have left a four-month-old alone,” the Spanish girl said.

“Better alone than take her to Lactose Larry’s. He abuses children. I wouldn’t go there myself, but…” She kind of tapered off.

After that each hooker had to tell her story of lost children. Every single woman, without exception, had gotten pregnant in her way-early teens and lost the child, just like me. Since then they’d had countless babies, miscarriages, and abortions, not to mention boyfriends who hit, husbands who stole, and cops, customers, and pimps who committed every disgusting act in creation, but I got the idea that the first lost baby was the one they mourned over. After that they’d given up on expectations.

“Felicia would be six now,” the pretty Spanish woman said.

“Bobby would be twelve.”

Soon the whores were sniffling like a bunch of little girls. It was weird. Andrew didn’t know what to make of being surrounded by a gang of weeping women. Neither did I. They weren’t anything like movie whores, which is the only kind I’d had contact with. We don’t have blatant, high-profile prostitution in GroVont. I suppose if I’d been raised in a city, I might have turned into one myself. Losing a child by fifteen seemed to be the only qualification.

About the time everyone but me was good and puddle-eyed, a battleship of a white limousine rolled up to the curb. The size of my garage, it had six smoked windows down the side and four radio antennas on the corners. The driver’s door opened and a coal black giant in a snappy uniform with loops on the shoulders stepped with amazing decorum to the trunk.

“Shane pulled it off,” I said.

Andrew jumped from my lap. “Uncle Shane is in there?”

“This is a scam. I don’t know how he arranged it, but this is a scam.”

The coal black lifted Shane’s wheelchair from the trunk like it was balsa. He carried it to the sidewalk, opened it, and I swear to God he pulled a white hankie from his back pocket and gave the seat a whisk.

I said, “It’s a scam.”

Ivory came out first. The chauffeur/professional wrestler offered her his arm and escorted her to the parking meter. She ignored the gaggle of jaw-dropping hookers.

‘‘Thank you, Milo,” she said.

“Pleased to be of service, Miss Tupelo.”

Marcella walked up with her purchases as Shane’s hands appeared on the door frame. As effortlessly as I lifted the baby into Marcella’s arms—and in the same cradling position—the black giant lifted Shane and carried him to the waiting chair.

“Will there be anything else, sir?” the giant asked.

Shane sent me a cutesy smile, then turned back. “Tell your mother to wash her hands in mustard with a little lemon, Milo. The smell will come right out.”

“She’ll be happy to hear that, Mr. Rinesfoos.”

Shane rolled over to the parking meter. “Remember what I said about vocational-technical school, Ivory. You’re too much a lady for this business.”

Ivory Tupelo couldn’t resist a glance at the assembled hookers. You could tell her life was made. Whatever had happened would be worked into every conversation from tomorrow till the day she died of old age in a rest home. But right now Ivory had one more moment to play it aloof. “Thank you, Mr. Rinesfoos. I’m sure that because of you I shall stop being a morning whore and make something useful out of my life.”

Shane reached for her hand and brought it to his lips. After applying a light kiss, he said, “Miss Tupelo, it has been a lovely day.”

Frankly, I could have shit.

Marcella, Andrew, and I walked and Shane rolled a block in silence before I couldn’t stand it anymore. I whined, “Because of you I will stop being a morning whore and make something useful of my life.”

“Ivory is actually a very talented young lady,” Shane said, although he didn’t explain what that meant.

“Milo’s mother cooks at an Italian restaurant on Beale Street. She likes the work, only the odor of garlic adheres to her fingers. Of course, I solved the problem.”

Marcella asked the question I would have died before asking. “Did you really see Elvis Presley?”

“We played miniature golf,” Shane said. “He has an eighteen-hole course embedded in the living room carpet.”

Andrew caromed down the sidewalk, bouncing from parking meters to building walls and back. He shouted, “I know Elvis Presley. He goes to my school. His mother bought him a ten-speed, but my mother’s mean and won’t buy me one.”

Marcella picked her way through a pile of urban squalor garbage spilling from a knocked-over trash can. “Was his wife nice?”

“Priscilla is genteel as a southern breeze, refined as Hawaiian sugar. She’s even more gracious than when I dated her.”

Which reminded me of a hole in Shane’s story. “I read where she was fourteen when she married Elvis. How old was Priscilla when you two dated?”

Shane ignored me. I knew he would. “Lunch was black caviar on toast, with peaches and cream,” he said. “The lawns are divine.”

I crossed over another passed-out wino, careful not to step in at least two visible body excretions. Like me, he had a Band-Aid sideways on his arm. “Hey, divine, did your good buddy Elvis loan us any money?”

Shane stopped the chair and swung it to face me. His head kind of twitched constantly now instead of the bob motion of a few days ago. “Of course not. He tried to press a thousand dollars on me, but I refused. Using Elvis for monetary gain would taint the purity of our memories.”

I held out my bruised arm. “I tainted myself for fourteen bucks, it wouldn’t have hurt you to drop your pride a notch. Not that I believe for an instant you actually luncheoned with the Presleys.”

His whole body twitched, except the legs. “Shane Rinesfoos never drops his pride.”

Andrew marched over to the unconscious wino and stomped on his hand. The wino screamed, rolled over, and resumed sleeping on his back. Andrew looked at me, his face a sunbeam. “This one’s not dead yet.”

***

When we got back to Moby Dick, Lloyd was talking with the parking lot attendant, not the one we’d beer-bribed that morning. This attendant wanted his own bribe. He said our time was up and we were hogging two spaces and the owner of the lot might show up any minute, which would get him in trouble because we didn’t have a ticket or a pass or something.

I searched the back end and found Brad’s art pad on the pile of coverless magazines. “Brad wouldn’t leave his pictures behind if he planned to ditch us,” I said.

Lloyd rubbed his forehead with the bill of his cat hat. “If we wait for him, it’ll cost us more than we made by stopping.”

For a change, I wasn’t in favor of dumping people. “We can’t drive off and leave him. Brad looks at us as family.”

“He only joined up yesterday,” Shane said.

“Some people latch on fast.”

Andrew shouted, “If we run away from Owsley, I’ll break windows.”

“Brad,” Marcella corrected him.

“Who’s Brad?”

So Lloyd rummaged through the horse trailer and came out with two more cases. The lug of an attendant hefted them up on one shoulder, but he didn’t seem in any hurry to go away—just stood there looking at Moby Dick. Finally he said, “Even with these you’ve got to split by midnight. That’s when the owner drops by to check on the lot.”

Split.
The clown said
split.
“You told us he might show up any minute,” I said.

“He might, but it’s more likely at midnight.”

Lloyd turned to me. You could tell he was sad about the deal. “We can’t wait longer than that anyway, Maurey.’’

“Brad’s not used to cities. What if he gets mugged or arrested or picked up by perverts?”

Shane did the
huh
sound. “Brad’s a lad who can take care of himself in a tight spot. Reminds me somewhat of myself when I was young.”

“You were never young,” I said.

Marcella took me literally. “Yes, he was. We were both young once.” That may be Marcella’s tragic flaw: she has no understanding of sarcasm.

***

While we waited she decided to mend all the clothes in the junk pile. There must have been a hundred shirts, slacks, coats, every stitch of it worn out and unwearable. Most of the rags didn’t even fit anyone in the troupe, although she did dig out a cotton pullover shirt with three-quarter sleeves that covered my bruise.

“You think I should style my hair?” she asked. “Annette Gilliam’s cousin is a beautician. Maybe if my hairdo had been modern as Annette Gilliam’s, Hugo wouldn’t have strayed.”

“The last time I changed hairdos, I gave myself a crew cut.”

Marcella tucked a loose strand back into her bun. “You always look like a model in
Redbook
, Maurey. Next to you, I feel frumpy.”

Andrew played a pretend baseball game by throwing a tennis ball against the cinder-block wall. He kept a running commentary going under his breath, every now and then shouting
“Home run!”
or
“Slide, you jerk”
or
“In your face, ump.”

Shane pulled out his harmonica to play “Love Me Tender” seven hundred times. Felt like seven hundred, anyway. Between riffs he fabricated bizarre details to go with his Elvis story. “He has a servant whose only job is to dust his shoulders for dandruff…Priscilla bathes in warm champagne…I shouldn’t tell you this, but the sideburns are tiny toupees.”

Lloyd had spent almost all his blood money on STP Oil Treatment and various other cleaners, fluids, and lubricants. Every few minutes he had me turn the key or rev the accelerator, push in the clutch, pull out the choke. The engine always sounded the same to me.

Personally, I was antsy—nervous stomach. Felt the way you do when the signs are all there that your period is about to happen, but it’s a week late and you’ve fooled around without protection. I sat on the side loading door ledge and studied Brad’s art pad. The only new picture was me, and I’d just as soon he’d stuck with bald-legged eagles. I suppose the drawing looked vaguely like me—Marcella said it was a spit image—but if so, I’d lost cheekbones and gained pouches. The woman in the picture looked forty. I don’t look forty. I’m twenty-two. Twenty-two is when a woman should be at her peak. The woman in the picture was way past her peak.

“When you were an alcoholic, what’s the worst thing you ever did to get a bottle?” I asked Shane.

He knocked spit from the harmonica onto the ground. “Why do you ask?”

“I need perspective here.”

“You need validation that you aren’t a real alcoholic because you’ve never done anything as disgusting as I have.”

“Something like that.”

Lloyd’s voice came from under the hood. “I pawned Sharon’s hope chest. Her grandfather built it himself for a tenth birthday present, and one Sunday while she was in church I threw a brick through a window and took the chest down to the Strip and hocked it. Bought me a fifth of gin.”

“Why’d you break the window?”

“I told Sharon the chest was stolen by migrants.” His head came out of the hood. “She knew better.”

Shane played a few bars of “Love Me Tender.” He stared at the setting sun off toward the Mississippi River, then he cleared his throat with a bullfrog pop. “Juarez, Mexico. Cinco de Mayo, 1968. I was broke and ill, going through the DTs. You’ve never gone through DTs, Maurey”—he called me Maurey—“they’re worse than whatever your imagination has constructed them to be. I traded my wheelchair for a bottle of mescal.”

“Jesus.”

“The day was hot as my hell and the old man I traded with left me lying in the dirt street. I pulled myself under a taxi and drank the whole bottle.”

“What happened?”

He shrugged. “Man who owned the taxi was AA. He showed me the choice between dying and living. You may not believe it now, but considering the alternative, living can be a lot of fun.”

***

After dark Shane wheeled off to find a pay phone and order a pizza. Didn’t bother to ask anyone what kind they wanted, just rolled himself away into the dark. I was reading Andrew cartoons from a
New Yorker
magazine while Marcella fussed with Hugo Jr. and Lloyd sat in the driver’s seat, staring at a photograph of Sharon.

Six-year-olds from Dumas have trouble relating to
New Yorker
humor. “You ever consider letting her go and getting on with your life?” I asked Lloyd.

“No.”

A three-quarter waxing moon came up through the buildings. By moonlight Moby Dick took on a fuzzy glow, as if the white paint had been mixed with Woolite. The ambulance looked more like a loaf-shaped space module than either a whale or an ambulance. I’d about decided to hell with subtle ethical shades, money is money and whiskey is whiskey, and I needed whiskey more than I needed money. My guts felt like I was ovulating a baseball.

I deserved a drink for letting that sadistic Jesus freak stab me. I deserved a drink because I hadn’t had one yet.

Shane appeared out of the dark, whistling “Heartbreak Hotel.” He seemed in a good mood. I don’t know why, none of the rest of us were. “Sausage and pineapple, it will be magnificent. They wouldn’t deliver to a parking lot until I personally guaranteed a five-dollar tip.”

Lloyd’s sad eyes pulled away from Sharon. “How you planning to pay for this sausage-and-pineapple pizza?”

Maybe black caviar on toast for lunch makes a person happy. Shane’s voice carried a lilt that had been missing since Amarillo.

“We’ll offer the delivery boy a six-pack. East Coast children go rabid at the sight of Coors.”

“Did you see Hugo Sr. while you were out there?” Marcella asked. “I’m worried about him.”

“That husband of yours is the Phantom. You never see the Phantom until he’s least expected, yet he knows your every move,” Shane said.

“Like Jesus,” Andrew crowed.

Marcella corrected. “Daddy is not Jesus.”

Lloyd put Sharon back in his overall’s breast pocket. “I wish you wouldn’t buy things until we’re sure they take beer.”

“They’ll take beer all right. Trust me.”

If I’d had a brain, that very moment I would have leapt from Moby Dick and run like the wind for the nearest liquor store. No one you can trust says “Trust me.”

***

The kid who delivered the pizza drove up in a Mazda minitruck with no doors and a red rag stuffed in the gas tank hole. He looked Brad’s age, wore thick horn-rims, both suspenders, and a belt, and he wouldn’t have touched a bottle of Coors for love or money.

“No beer. That’s nine dollars twenty cents cash, plus the five-dollar tip you promised.”

Shane held a bottle with one hand on the bottom and the other in back like on “Truth or Consequences” when the girl wanted to showcase a prize. He’d started the bidding with a six-pack and was already up to three cases. “You can market three cases for a hundred and twenty big ones. This is Coors, Rocky Mountain spring water, so rare you can’t buy it in Tennessee for any price.”

“My boss wants money, not beer. Now cough up fourteen dollars twenty cents or—”

“Or what, punk?” Shane growled.

Lloyd came over and lifted the pizza from Shane’s lap. Shane groaned as Lloyd turned and held the box out to the boy. “You’ll have to take it back. Here’s three dollars for your trouble. That’s all I’ve got.”

The kid didn’t touch either pizza or money. “Listen, mister, no returns. I have to pay for every pizza I take out.”

I was high-strung enough without this crap. “We don’t have money, peterhead. It’s Coors or take it back. Those are the choices.”

He blinked really fast. I’ve never seen such a quick blinker in my life. The glasses magnified the blinks so they looked like wings on a hummingbird. “I have one other choice. See that police car down there?”

We all turned in the direction of the Calhoun Arms, where a white City of Memphis Chevy idled against the curb with a hooker leaning in the window.

“Officer Hazen is a steady customer of mine. If I tell him a pack of hicks with a trailer full of illegal alcohol stiffed me for a pizza, he’s going to be real angry.”

“Hicks.” Shane covered his heart with his hand. “The extortionist called us hicks.”

Lloyd rubbed his forehead and leg at the same time. Looked like Pinocchio in overalls. “Kid, we don’t have money.”

Blink-blink.
“Fourteen twenty or jail.”

The screw in my lower back drilled through another half inch of spine. I said, “Shit. I knew this would happen. You owe me one, fatso. You owe me about a dozen.”

Shane wasn’t contrite at all—just grinned and yanked the pizza box out of Lloyd’s hands. He said, “You’ll thank me someday.”

“Over your dead body.”

I counted out the nine dollars. “There’s twenty cents here somewhere, let me look in the glove compartment.”

“And my five-dollar tip.”

What I wouldn’t give for Charley and one bullet. “You threaten us with jail and now you expect a tip?”

“The man who called promised a five-dollar tip.”

“If I had five dollars, I’d stick it up your ass.”

I needed a drink. The kid was about to cry. All he could get out was a choked “Officer Hazen.”

Lloyd stepped between us. Lloyd was always stepping between pissed-off people—a regular human buffer zone. “Take this three dollars as a tip. That leaves us without a dime. You should be satisfied with breaking us.”

Blink-blink.
“I was promised five.”

“You can settle for twelve and leave or cause our arrest and end up with nothing.”

Shane opened the box. “Balderdash, they left off the pineapple.”

***

Lloyd decided we better hit the road. “That kid’ll get three blocks and come back looking for his cop friend,” he said.

Marcella gave Andrew a piece, but he wanted a bigger one. “Why would he do such a thing?” she asked. “He already has the money.”