Tomato Red (10 page)

“Don’t get used to it, ’cause we can’t take it on home with us.”

“Nope,” I said. “Sack won’t hold it.”

At the head of the aisle my stalker and her stalker appeared to be sharing war stories. I could see Jamalee did not care for this sort of treatment, hated it from her bones out, and just might run her tiny self up the aisle, there, and let her itty-bitty fists fly. At certain angles she sure enough did
look
like an Irish flyweight, a snappy li’l fighter with the most tomato-red hair in County Malarkey and a strangely cute face.

“Might be we should go outside,” I said. “Wait at the car.”

Bev said, “Might be you should. I can hunt the bacon. Let’s see if we can get all the way home, though, without any
warrants
bein’ sworn out, huh?”

“
All
the way?” Jam said.

“Yeah,” I said, “don’t set the pole
too
high for us, Bev.”

She swooped a hand to my face and had a pinch of my cheek. She was smiling, and I recognized that, with a month on a cottage cheese and pineapple diet, or the grapefruit one, or one such as them, she’d be up there around the mighty-damn-fetching level of looks, just a beauty mark and fattened lips shy of drop-dead gorgeous, for her age.

We moved and she moved.

The stalkers paused in their chitchat as Jam and me walked up the aisle. My stalker, I think, was overpraising himself inside the packed auditorium in his head, taking tall fancy credit for deterring savage me from, I imagine, robbing
and raping all through the frozen food section. The applause he was hearing was probably loud and gushy.

“These shop clerks,” Jam said, looking right at them. “Their attitude to me is, like, ‘You stink. Please come again.’ ”

“They followed me, too.”

“Well, yeah, but anybody
would
you.”

“I’ve forgot that once or twice.”

Our stalkers were dishing out some sour and insulting expressions to us. Mine got squirrelier the closer I got to his face skin and the pus pebbles displayed there, and I executed a pause upon reaching him and gave him some free advice: “Time comes when you attain sex with an actual woman that skin’ll start to clear up, hoss. Now hand jobs won’t do the same, but I don’t need to tell that to you, do I?”

He didn’t muster a response with me at sucker punch range, except his eyes pulsed more open for a second, but his fellow stalker got pink and openmouthed and turned her gray head away from him in sympathy or contempt or one of those feelings.

Tomato Red appreciated my gesture and put her hand in mine, then thought better of it and yanked loose.

Whatever.

I can’t say that yank didn’t sting.

At the car I plugged in a homemade music tape, stuff from off the radio in Memphis, and it was mostly Dale Hawkins and Billy Lee Riley and Link Wray and Charlie Feathers, Founding Father rockabilly, which is the music that is my anthem. I got to toe tappin’ and hip swayin’ in my seat, and sweat gurgled out from inside me, and even Jamalee bobbed along in tune at times.

I had parked facing the church. The church was bright white and pointed and seemed like a structure that would
rough me up with scolds and lectures and ghastly passages from the Book if ever I walked on that side of the street. The church steps were crowded. There was a barrage of tuxedos and taffeta and happy hopeful mugs.

The good world, regular happy life; I never had no hand in that, so it’s interesting for me to watch it. They seem so sure of their road and what they’ll pass by along the way and what they’ll find at the end.

Me, I couldn’t stand to know that much about what’s ahead. I expect I’d be crippled by the fright.

So Jam and me sat there listening to rockabilly and watching the church like they’d devised a stage show to amuse us, and then came the whoop.

The colored lights caught my eye in the rearview mirror, so I doused the music and sat up straight. When it’s full-on the noise from John Law is
whoop-whoop-whoop-whoop
, but the man this time just tapped the siren for a lone
whoop
.

I sat still in the car the way they want.

“Shit,” Jam said. “You don’t have any dope in here, I hope.”

My plates should run clean.

“No. There might be a couple of roaches somewhere.”

She had a hand held over her eyes and her head drooped.

“We’ve got to get our plan in gear. It has to happen—I’m so sick of this.”

When you look as if you are a person who should in any circumstances be considered a suspect, you get put through the drill plenty. Big boss man comes sidling up on the driver’s side, hand on his pistol butt, stayin’ just over my shoulder for a clear shot in case I might
snap
and want to blast my way free of a parking ticket. John Law has standard demands: license, registration, name of passenger. He runs the paperwork through the behemoth computer they’ve got that keeps
track of us un-mainstreamed residents till the day the rulers decide to stack us all in a pile and squash us like little irritants. The computer keeps us easy to find. On me the computer prints out that I’m temporarily clean, with no outstanding warrants and no more tail on my parole, either. Yet damned if I don’t
smell
guilty.

He hands my papers back and says, “There you go, Mr. Barlach.” He says my name wrong, then leans to my window. He smells of baby powder and Old Spice and has a mint clicking behind his teeth so he’s got sweet breath and is prepared to start kissin’ at any second. He says, “You and your vehicle match a description.”

“What’s that, cool cat in car? Is that the description?”

“Is that your tuxedo on the backseat, Mr. Barlach? See, the description was of a redneck with no shirt in a tuxedo jacket punching people’s mouths over in the East Main Trailer Court a month back. And this vehicle is the brand he drove away in. Also, now, a tuxedo—wouldn’t you know it?—is one of the items missin’ after a break-in at the McCubbin place on that
same
night. Why don’t you both step out of that car for me.”

I used my teeth to clamp my lips shut.

His face was blank space.

“Hands on the trunk,” he said. “You know the position—feet back and spread.”

“Hey, now,” Jam said, and she sounded pissed, “this metal is too fuckin’ hot.” It was, too, and she took her hands away and he shoved her back. “It’s burning me!”

“I don’t care, ma’am. You move again and I’ll lock your ass up.”

“You don’t need to shove her, moth—”

“Don’t say it,” he said. “That’s the word that’ll turn this ugly, boy.”

We’re in the search position, hands on trunk, facing the church, and this clearly with child gal in a bridal gown and a fella who everybody probably knows someone who he looks like come floating from the mouth of the church, and flung rice makes a small personal blizzard in the air and garters take off in it and fall to the ground. A few folks in the crowd are noticing our minor drama, but not enough to stall the happy cheers.

“Mr. Barlach, do I have your permission to search your vehicle?”

This has become a trick question, because there’s no way to answer it and no use trying. You can say yes, and be searched without good reason, or say no and be made to stand in the hot sun till a warrant arrives, and judges hand these sorts of warrants out as though they were snapshots of their grandkids.
Then
you get searched. The high courts have said John Law can now legally do dang near anything he wants with you and your property any
time
he wants. If he turns up a roach, your car might have a new berth in his driveway.

“Be my guest,” I said, “but don’t make a mess.”

It’s no use to squawk against these wrong laws—they’ve already won, baby, whether you slept through it or not.

The man begins to root for grubs in my car.

I saw the wedding bouquet in the air and saw this look of fear, sort of, on the face of the girl who caught it. She wore a little crown of flowers. She seemed only about thirteen, mostly long legs and knee knobs, but made a good catch.

Jam’s got her head hung low and is moaning and has steam shootin’ from her ears. When she spoke she sounded like she might break down bawling.

“God damn,” she says, “you know, that big rotten gap between who I am, and who I want to be, never does quit
hurtin’
to stare across.”

“Well, hell,” I said, feeling the Pinto wiggle as the cop rooted around, “that’s what dope is for.”

“Ah, if I was only stupid, it wouldn’t be so hard.”

“Shit, Jam, everybody who
ain’t
stupid has thought that thought, then been as stupid as they need to be for a spurt, then changed their minds back later.”

“Here comes the bacon with Bev carrying it.”

Bev ambles along, holding the bacon in a sack, and shows she’s got skills unimagined. She looks into my car, peers at John Law, then says, “William? . . . William, what’s the trouble here?”

William backs out of the car, holding the tuxedo jacket. He comes across sort of pleased to see Bev but not so pleased that I see he’s pleased. That variety of moment.

“Well, hey, Bev.”

“Hey to you too, William. What’s going on?”

“Are these your people?”

“Depends on what they’ve done.”

“Nothin’ I’m sure of.” He then held the tuxedo jacket up and let the sun beat on it. Mildew had attached to some sections and laid a faint green icing down the sleeves. “I’d like to know where this here came from.”

“You don’t know?” Bev barreled into him with her smile. “That’s ol’ Skeets Benvenuti’s clothes—you recall him?”

“
Skeets?
Oh, hell, yes.”

‘All that boy’s clothes came from Skeets’s ol’ suitcase. He was a careful dresser, you know?”

“Pretty sharp, all right.” He got a removed quality to his face for a snap of time, lost in a quick look backwards, I guess. “Skeets. Skeets. Is he dead, or what?”

“He never was as live as you are, William.”

“I always hated to arrest him. He was that fine of a guy, a li’l quick-tempered but great to have a few pops with, out at the Inca Club.”

Jam and me both pulled our hands from that scorching trunk and blew on them.

“Yeah,” Bev said. “Skeets was a mighty charming piece of shit when he wasn’t takin’ advantage of you.” She sprung her hips into a certain stance and showed a glow to her skin and smile and blond hair in the sunbeams. “Too bad somebody disappeared him.”

William tossed the jacket back into my car, then wiped his hands together. He spit twice, then began to nod at Bev.

He said, “I expect the world has gone on a lot better without Skeets than he ever did believe it could. He thought everything’d fly off-kilter without him. He thought he was that necessary, and entitled to certain privileges because he was.”

Bev tilted her head to the side and let her feet slide a little farther apart.

“You knew Skeets better’n I ever knew you did.”

The man had no smile now. He stared over at the wedding and had his hands hooked into his pistol belt.

“There’s been several silly break-ins at nice homes in recent months, and that’s got to stop. Not much has been stolen yet. Somebody’ll pay steep next time. Get your people home, Bev. It’s been nice to see you. To see you again, I mean.”

 

THE CAR FELT like a cookie oven. Jam was sort of upset at the roust by the law, and even more by the fact that Bev could fix the trouble. Jam griped plenty.

Bev sat in the back but leaned forward. She said, “Hon, you don’t confront trouble. You
flatter
it.”

The trees alongside the roads had gotten smug in the heat and stingy with their shade. The breeze had made a side deal with the trees to not blow, either, driving way up the value of shade.

“It’s not fuckin’ fair,” Jam said.

“
Fair?
” Bev said. “Poor baby. Look, you’re really sayin’ that the ways of life are glum and grim and nasty and I guess you want to turn crybaby about that, but what’s on
my
mind is, Whoever misled you things were otherwise, hon? What sugar factory spun
you
out with such silly candy-assed notions? For cryin’ out loud. There’s other staples I’ll break to you right now, too: The sun gives life but you’d be an ash flake if you got close to it, you got to swallow water to live but sometimes it kills you, Uncle Sam don’t
truly
count you as any relation, and God has gone blank on your name
and
face.

“Whew! Now, then, let’s have a beverage and a belly laugh and get on with living forward, huh?”

Jam sat there, deeply sulky. She could make her mood smother yours.

I put in, “Plus, love is a can of worms.”

The car hadn’t come to a stop in the drive when Jam shoved out and left the door yawning. I shut the Ford down and said, “She’s in a state.”

“Uh-huh.”

I pulled the seat forward so Bev could climb out the passenger door. She put her hand over mine. When I looked at her she looked back, and looked back electric and steady.

“Sammy, did you jack off thinkin’ about me last night?”

“Uh, no.”

“You
didn’t
? It
felt
like maybe you did.”

“I did jack off. I ain’t denyin’
that
.”

Her nose wiggled fast as a wink and was chased by a grin.

“I believe you just
answered
my question, hon. It was sweet of you.”

THEN CAME A Monday.

I knew it wouldn’t go well, but it went even worse.

“I can’t find my feeling for this. I have to
think, think, think
before every move.” Jason had his flabbergasted beautiful face in the pooched-out part of the screen-door screen, whispering to Jam and me. We both sat to the side of the stoop like trash cans, but he took our advice whenever he slunk to the screen and could hear us. “I don’t flow at this. I don’t flow at this at all.”