Stabs at Happiness (2 page)

“
Amigo
.”

Soon food is brought in. Roast guinea pig, warm potatoes, pig's feet, tripe, peppers in three colors and yellow corn.

Tranh says to Hurt, “You are going home now. We are taking you home.”

But he is unsure of the response. He compares this painted face to the memory he has of a photograph featuring a smiling youth in tennis whites. There seems little doubt about the identification, but he has no idea what James Hurt has been through. It all began, though, with him walking away on his own. That much was clearly established long ago.

Hurt remains on his knees, with his eye downcast, and will only accept food if it is thrown on the ground.

It is evening, and there are entertainments for the guests.

First there is a dance, in which almost everyone in the village stands quivering in place, whereupon several boomboxes are turned on. They are not quite in sync, but the loudest one features (as they all do) a cassette of what sounds to Tranh like Haitian voodoo drumming. He wonders if these people have ever possessed drums of their own, or whether they just like this tape, this performance, it's a Hit.

The lively drum pattern has an emphatic pause after about ten seconds or so, and this pattern, followed by the pause, is repeated again and again. There are whistles or crude flutes in the music as well as what sounds like the “off “ beat punctuation of a piece of iron (or some kind of metal, not really a bell) being struck hard.

At each pause, the dancers stamp their left foot; then at the next pause, their right. This goes on and on. Tranh finds it oddly compelling for a while.

Then in a few minutes he is bored.

The second entertainment, maybe an hour later, features two pubescent boys, each with his right arm tied behind his back, engaging in a left-handed knife fight. One boy wears a yellow Pink Floyd t-shirt, the other's shrunken tee is pale blue and has something in white Arabic script. There is soon a lot of blood.

The men of the village hoot and holler enthusiastically while they watch. Tranh figures out that there has been heavy betting on this match.

It grows late.

Waldemar approaches Tranh at some point with embarrassment and asks him if he has any “spare” condoms. Actually, yes. Tranh keeps a few in his wallet at all times… because you never know.

Tranh sits up late by the fire, weary but uneasy about falling asleep here. He does not trust these villagers. Hurt lies in the dirt, curled up on his side, apparently accepting the transfer of title. Tranh smokes cigarettes. Occasionally he hears, he's not sure from what direction, an outcry of Belgian or German pain.

Tranh makes an effort to talk to James Patrick Hurt, but perhaps too easily gives up. He just doesn't know what to say to the man. There will be trained personnel to deal with him soon enough. The family can afford the very best. It's not Tranh's responsibility. He feels bad though. Meanwhile he checks the safety on his Glock.

When it is barely dawn, they are beginning to gather by the boat. Tranh and Waldemar discuss the mapless portion of the journey back. Tranh kept careful notes all the way here. Waldemar's mood is not the best. He may be hungover.

When Tranh has the map out, Hurt standing nearby, now dressed in khaki cargo pants and a Sonic Youth t-shirt, his face still bisected into red and black, it occurs to Tranh to offer the medium-blue pen to the freed captive, turning the folded-over in-adequate map so that Hurt may write a message—since he cannot speak.

Hurt writes, after seeming to give the opportunity some serious thought:

Who I really am

I am a bad person

I lie

I cheat

I steal

I am much worse than you can ever know

Tranh reads, then gazes into Hurt's calm blue eyes. Tranh is disturbed. He looks harder, looks harder, begins to say something, stops.

The headman, yawning in the morning light, comes to say goodbye. Tranh thanks him. They shake hands, after a manner. Handshakes as such are not a part of this culture.

Everyone is in the boat except for Waldemar and Tranh, who will push the boat off into the slow current downstream.

The headman says something else. Xoao translates:

“Would you recognize your dog if he went off white and came home black?”

Tranh does not answer.

After some time on the river Hurt begins to make a noise. When he will not stop, becomes louder, and seems restless, a prefilled syringe is employed. He quiets down as the intramuscular injection has its way.

When it torrentially rains, Hurt seems to take pleasure in the downpour. There is a different look upon his face. Eyes closed, he raises his face and opens his mouth.

After the rain stops, while the sun is drying everything, Tranh lights a cigarette. Then he notices how Hurt is watching, and offers him one too.

Hurt extends a trembling hand.

I
LOOKED BACK
at the house for a moment, wondering if I'd forgotten anything. This old dark blue Plymouth was parked in the shade under a tree. There was a wasp buzzing around, and I was worried it might fly into the car. It seemed that kind of a wasp. The driver's side window was rolled down.

Some kid came up on his bicycle. He looked about nine or ten. I recalled that taking care of Sivanderbilt's children was part of Olga's job.

“You can't go inside,” I told him. “Something bad happened here. Some bad guys came and did something. You're supposed to come with me to your aunt's. Where's she live again?”

“Pascagoula.”

“That's kind of out of the way. Where's your little sister?”

“She's at summer camp, mister. Where's my mom?”

“Already on her way to Biloxi. We got to leave. Right now. The bad guys might come back any time.”

“I need to pack some of my stuff.”

“No time for that. You'll just be gone a couple days.”

“All right, sir. Okay.”

And like a good boy he got in the passenger seat of the car. I got the keys in the ignition and started backing us out.

“What's your name?” I asked, once we were heading down the avenue. I didn't have a viable license, so I had to take it careful and slow.

“Axl.”

“You named after Axl Rose?”

“Yeah. I guess so.”

“Guns N Roses.”

“Right. My original mom liked them and stuff. I wish though, I wish…”

“What?”

“I wish she'd named me Slash.”

This caused me to laugh, and we laughed together, like it was funnier than it really was. I thought I had maybe heard a story about his original mom.

“What was he, Slash, the guitar player?”

“Yeah. He looked stupid though, with that hat and his hair.”

“Guns N Roses… they was supposed to be real bad dudes, right?”

“I don't know about any of that.”

“What happened to her, your original mom?”

“Sir, she lives in prison.”

We turned, and were speeding up, getting on the highway now.

“In Tutwiler?”

“Yes sir. That's just for women. But Sivanderbilt… he grew up in North Carolina.”

“Did he now? I spent some time up there myself. I was in Azalea, North Carolina.”

“I don't know that town.”

“Just up the road from Valley Springs.”

“Oh,” he said, Young Axl, pretending this was meaningful to him.

A little more than a half hour ago I'd been sitting down next to the kitchen table, there with my so-called friends. Some of them were folks I'd met up in North Carolina while they were paying their debt to society. I guess I might have been paying some kind of debt myself. Some would call it that. It's too damn easy to judge.

People have a way of doing things, little things maybe, that show how they really feel… underneath their phony smiles.

“And Donnie Ray here, hey, Donnie Ray would like a drum-stick, isn't that right?” Jimmy said. I did not want a drumstick. I never said I did. Those are for children.

Jimmy was smiling, red lips pulled back to show his snaggly old yellow teeth.

Sure, he and Sivanderbilt were pretty brave now, in the kitchen, drinking bourbon while Sivanderbilt's woman fried us up something to eat. It was a different story, I'm telling you, an hour previous at the bank in downtown Mobile. But now I could see these motherfuckers looking at each other, real sly, like they'd come up with some way to cheat me on the count.

Numbers, you see, man, numbers have a kind of life of their own. And when you get into dividing shit up, it's like, well… divided by
three
, divided by
four
… that's a whole lot different than divided by
one.
There's a lot of good sense in divided by one. That's what I was thinking there, drinking a Coke. If I didn't trust them, they could probably see this on my face, and then they didn't trust
me
, and you can't leave things like that.

Sivanderbilt's woman, Olga, she stayed over by the stove. There was some kind of a bandage on her bare foot. She didn't want to come over to the table or even let me look in her eyes. That was cool. I understood Olga good enough. She had a puffy lip.

It was hot out, and there were some flies there in the kitchen, past the hole in the screen door, and I was sweating, we all were, sweating while smelling the chicken grease, and if I got greasy fingers I'd never get nothing done.

I took a bite off a fork and said, “Olga, this is some fine potato salad.” She nodded, I could see her face, but she didn't say nothing back.

It was about then that I pulled a gun out from under my jacket.

“Hey kid—” began Jimmy—he was always talking, always had some expert opinion—and then, after I'd shot him in the face, Olga swung the skillet of hot grease in my direction, but kinda slow, almost in slow motion, so I shot her twice and then Sivanderbilt, once good. He caught himself most of the chicken fat and was beginning to object. I shot him dead.

I could always shoot. It's a gift.

Olga didn't seem too bad. She got up off her knees taking an old butcher knife and just about stabbed me. I put some more bullets in her then. They weighed her down. She just let out a deep sigh while she fell down on her face.

Goddamn. There was all this noise stuck in my ears. I was trying to avoid tracking blood on my shoes, ‘cause it was streaming all over the tile floor.

I never had nothing against Olga. She made me a sandwich once when I came over and no one was home. She couldn't speak English real good. I don't know where in the hell Sivanderbilt got her from. I felt sorry for her. But there was nothing to discuss, no way I could leave her be.

Everything was pretty quiet now, except for a few flies. Some fool dog kept barking a few backyards away.

I got what I needed: some weaponry, the money, some good pills I found that might come in handy, and when I came back to the kitchen I picked a piece of chicken up off the floor. I was hungry as hell just from all that cooking smell.

I used the salt shaker and then took a bite. The skin was crispy, the white meat just right. That Olga could sure cook.

The burner on the electric stove was some real bright orange, on high, it just kept getting brighter and brighter and hotter all the time.

I was pretty hungry now in the car. I had been just about to eat a meal before Fate intervened. Now I was troubled, sliding my eyes over at Axl, my foot on the gas. His presence complicated shit.

It felt like he knew.

“You missed the turn.”

“What?”

“Back there. For Pascagoula.”

“Oh, don't worry man. Hey. I just thought we'd go up here a little further, stop and get something to eat. Some Coca-Cola or maybe a Dr Pepper.”

This was getting hard.

“Axl, you have this look on your face.”

“I don't mean nothing, sir.”

“You look concerned.”

“I'm a little worried we missed the turn.”

“Everything will be all right. You believe me, don't you?”

“You promise?”

“Do I promise? Well. Axl, you ever visit your original mom in prison?”

“No sir.”

“Why not?”

“We have a better mom now.”

“Yeah,” I said, thinking it over. “She made a sandwich for me one time.”

O
N 9 APRIL, 1958
, the general strike is repressed, and about eighty revolutionaries or suspected revolutionaries are arrested, interrogated in the usual manner, and variously put to death.

Leonora Christina's hair is light as straw, and she's wearing a dress which leaves her shoulders bare. A gold wristwatch.

She stretches out her legs, sitting at an umbrella table in the outdoor courtyard of the restaurant, in the shade of a palm tree, smoking a cigarette. Lucky Strikes. She orders a hamburger, french fries, and a Coke.

Her father, who was a chemist, thought that Pepsi would pay him a million dollars if he could figure out the secret formula of Coca-Cola. A couple of times he came close, close enough so that his blindfolded family could not tell the difference, but the Pepsi people turned him away again and again. “Keep trying,” they told him, but in the process he went crazy. On the way to the doctor's office, his wife made the mistake of letting him drive, and he turned into the oncoming lane when he saw a big enough fast truck. The head-on collision left Leonora an orphan, but since it couldn't be proven suicide she collected insurance money, which well-tempered whatever grief she might have felt. She thought that her father must have known all along about the affair her mother had been having with Diego, the shoe salesman who lived just down the street. Her father hadn't been so crazy that he'd also gone deaf and blind.