Tomato Red (19 page)

“But,” I said, “we’re still
tight
, right? You and me?”

“Well, yeah. I suppose. We’re still
something
.”

“We’re still tight, that’s what.”

“We’re around each other a bunch.”

I went ahead and had a cup of warm root beer. The bubbles helped me drink it down. I fired a fresh smoke and looked at the cup and dreamed it into a cup of rich black coffee. The smoke helped the dream almost work.

The phone rang on the wall there in the kitchen. Jamalee answered, and her eyes rolled and her shoulders fell.

“Uh-huh, yes, this is Mrs. Pelkey. . . . Uh-huh. They’re doin’ fine, just fine. . . . I didn’t fill it out? Huh. Could you mail it? With all these kids in summer and no car it’d make a hardship for me.” Jamalee stood by her crib sheet of details taped to the wall, her eyes scanning up and down the list of facts. “That’s Nova. . . . Yeah, she’s just great. . . . That’s cleared up. . . . Lita and Troy, right.”

A burst of voices came from the side yard, the tone of the voices asking for attention, and our eyes met in the kitchen.

I whispered, “Hear that? Is that Bev?”

She said, her eyes narrow, “But—but really it’d make a
hardship
for me. Three kids and no car on foot in this heat.” She used her hand to wave me toward the door to look out. “Well, I’d be sure and mail it straight back to you.”

It was Bev in the yard in only her red naughty-nightie with William the John Law marching her this way. He had a hand clamped on the back of her neck and he was squeezing. Her face showed discomfort. The sun came clear through her garment and you could see her rack wiggle and a tuft of private hair. John Law was saying things with his mouth real near her ear.

I spun toward the fridge and set that nagging pistol on the top shelf, where the milk would’ve been if we had any.

Jam said, “Somebody said that? Well, that
somebody
who said that is a liar. A
damn
liar.”

The screen door whipped wide and William shoved Bev in before him. The pistol at his hip had his other hand on its butt and the little doohickey was unsnapped.

He gave her a shove and unclamped from her neck.

Bev bumped the stove and kept her eyes down. She seemed to look at her feet, which were grass-stained faintly.

“William has some shit he wants to say.”

“
Has
to say,” he added. He caught Jamalee’s eye, then raised his front finger to his throat and did a slitting motion. “Hang up and listen, kid—
now
.”

“Ma’am?” Jamalee said. “Ma’am? My lord—Troy just fell from the apple tree and he’s bawling like he’s serious hurt. I’ll call you, hear?” She put the phone up, then said, “What’d we do?”

“Button up your lip, kid. Don’t
even
bullshit me. All of you sit your asses around that table, and keep your fuckin’ hands on the top of it, and button those lips. You’re fixin’ to hear the most weighty words you ever have heard. I’m fixin’ to tell you white-trash morons a thing or two that’s
vital
—do you know that word?
Vital
to any tomorrows you pecker-woods hope to lay around in and piss and moan the way you trash do.”

Bev said, “You’re from just barely over. . . .”

And he swatted her on top of the head and made a thump.

“Hush!”

I started to rise to take my swing but he eased that pistol halfway from the holster.

“Boy,” he said, “if I want I can make you go away this minute. There’s hardly a wrong thing that’s happened around here you couldn’t be found guilty of. You’re a natural fit for any flimsy frame, plus there’s the stupid junk you definitely
did
do.”

He had us placed where he wanted us. We bowed our heads in the heat, hands on the table, ears way open. He had the floor all to hisself and seemed to dig the way his words bounced from the walls and made us cringe.

“You poor silly sacks of shit. You ignorant white-trash scum. One, the kid
drowned
—do you understand? The sissy
boy wanted to show off that he was a gay blade and dove in that pond fully dressed and got unlucky. Two, okay, maybe he was tossed in that pond by somebody hereabouts who traced his
disease
back to the kid. A li’l problem in the blood that’s been blamed on your boy. Or, could be he asked the wrong ol’ hillbilly to let him suck his dick—that’s a scene that can go mighty sour, you know.

“Then you idiots go bustin’ into offices where you’ve practically advertised you were goin’. This is causing agitation amongst folks you’d really,
really
rather not agitate. You really don’t want to do that.

“Hey! Did I say yet that there’s at least three hundred miles of roadside ditches in this county, and that you-all’d be easy to drop in a deep one anywhere along there in all those miles? Did I point that out yet?

“But, you know, hell, Bev, you know I don’t
hate
you. You’ve helped me in the past, been a
big
help, which I appreciate, and I truly would be sorry if them vicious Timlinsons dumped you and yours in a ditch and I had to find you.

“Lord Almighty, I’d rather that don’t happen. I’d get awful nervous about my soul and shit, I truly would. But I wouldn’t keep it from occurring. I couldn’t, not really. Things are in motion bigger than all of us.

“Bev, you know I don’t hate you, but I’ve got to say, sugar lamb, that you-all ain’t ever goin’ to get bow-legged from totin’ your brains, are you?”

Parts of his uniform caught sunlight and brightened.

He had got my head straining to sift through possible decisions I might attempt to follow.

He went to the screen and actually
turned his back
to us, so casual and calm. This John Law was that breed of triple-mean sucker who is so obviously triple-mean he don’t bother to act more than irritable.

“Why do you folks do it? Why do you make me come to this point? I’ll wager you don’t know why your own selves. Nope.

“Or maybe, let’s try this one, say this car of some sort whooshes up beside your boy and somebody says to him in this excited voice, ‘Hey, pal, your sister’s been hurt—hop in and we’ll carry you to the hospital.’ Say the fella or fellas in that car have serious good reason to have an anger on toward the boy, the boy and his bunch, and there was a lesson to be taught that got out of hand. Say it went that way. Say he was only supposed to get the fear of the Almighty slapped into him. Plus the fear of certain individuals.

“You could never prove nothin’. There’s nothin’ to prove. An accident resulted, and everybody wishes it didn’t, but you and me and the trolls under the bridge know it did.” Then he says to me, “Where the fuck are you from, boy?”

“I’m from a different planet, boss. A different planet that happens to also be on this planet.”

“I believe I know the spot. I visit there plenty.”

You know, the regular well-to-do world should relax about us types. Us lower sorts. You can never mount a true war of us against the rich ’cause the rich can always hire us to kill each other. Which they and us have done plenty, and with brutal dumb glee. Just toss a five-dollar bill in the mud and sip wine and watch our bodies start flyin’ about, crashing headfirst into blunt objects, and our teeth sprinkle from our mouths, and the blood gets flowing in such amusing ways. Naw, it’s always just us against us—guess who loses?

“Anyhow,” he says, standing right by the table with his hands on Jamalee’s shoulders, “the main thing is is to stop. Stop what you’re doin’, or think you’re doin’. Stop and button those lips. What nobody wants is a bunch of that word-of-mouth shit runnin’ around. A beehive of rumors that only
spur trouble. Where’s the point?”

I said, “Man, I’m thirsty.” I swung my head in the direction of the fridge. “I need a beer. Boss, you want a beer?”

Jamalee said, “Uh, huh-uh, there’s no beer left.”

“Sure there is. Let me get us a couple.”

“I saw you drink the last one.”

“Naw, I don’t believe you did. I got some more at Lake’s.”

“I don’t want no beer,” William the John Law said. “Plus I told you to shut up.”

“It’s so hot though, boss. How about some root beer? A tall glass of ice-cold root beer?”

“What kind of root beer?”

“Uh, let me go see. I’m not sure. I’ll go see.”

“Uh-uh. No, no, nope. Just set back down there and let me finish. I’d prefer ice tea from the Howl Cafe, anyhow. It’s not so sweet.”

“But, boss, this is good cold root beer. I ain’t kiddin’.”

Jamalee said, “Hush up, Sammy! Sammy, hush up!”

“She’s tellin’ you right, boy. She sure is. Now, here’s the deal, uh, but first I’ll tell you: Say you was to go messin’ with a bear and that bear gnashes down on your fingers and, hell, you know, that
hurts
, eh? Hurts the bejesus out of you, and plus it’s a pity. Now, if you was to go on back and mess with that bear some more and the bear eats you down to where all that’s left is a skull and rags—whose fault is
that
?”

John Law gave us the eye, then reached inside his belt and raised a paper sack and held it over the table and poured money from it. Folding money, twenties and fives and their kin. It looked like a lot to me.

“That, folks, is a Valentine’s card of cash from folks who’d rather all this hadn’t happened.
Sincerely
rather it hadn’t happened, which the money proves.”

“It’s not all big bills,” Jamalee said. “There’s quite a few fives.”

“A hat was passed amongst those who’ve took pity on you. There’s fifty-five hundred dollars there on that table. Let yourselves smell of it.”

I said, “And the deal is?”

“The deal is you-all button up your lips forever. You stop stirrin’ around in other people’s business. You accept this apology. What I’m goin’ to do is, I’m goin’ to leave this pile of money here with you. Then come tomorrow, see, I’ll fall by here and see if you’ve got enough sense amongst the three of you to see the sensible solution here.”

Boss man eased a ways toward the door.

“You want to give that money back to me—then that’s on
you
. Understand? That’ll make what happens
your
doin’. So you idiots can take the money, or take your chances.”

As he went away he sang that song that says there’s miles and miles of Texas but sang it with
ditches
where
Texas
belonged. He didn’t sing it good, just sang it.

I went fast to the fridge and pulled Rod’s pistol, which Bev saw in my hand and her mouth dropped open. I scanned out the screen and watched William slowly get into his car, and slowly start it, and slowly drive away.

I said, “There’s ditches his size, too.”

THE EMPTY HOUSE down the road used to once be the grandest sporting palace in the holler, with a porch mapped around three sides and wide enough to entertain on, dance upon in the night air, cuddle in shadows, and pitch woo at lavender-scented gals who’d willingly play out the corny skit of courtship with a fella but never ruin him finally with the word no. Passing years had knocked holes in that porch, worked it loose from the house so it tilted to earth like a ramp. The house had got sun-washed and windburned to that forlorn gray color that bespeaks history. In a few sheltered corners you could see red paint still clinging, still trying to appear sinful and beckoning to the pent-up horny on long-ago pay nights. There were two full stories to the joint, a peaked tin roof, maybe six or so bedrooms, one huge parlor, and not much kitchen at all. The house was still called Aunt Dot’s, and it rode on a hump of dirt but listed leeward like a mighty nice party boat from yesteryear that ran aground and never had gotten raised by any tide and washed back to sea.

“I’ve got this sick feeling to my roots that we did something terrible,” Jamalee said. “Me and Jason and you, Sammy. We acted wrong as a bunch, but he paid the price for us all by his lonesome.”

“I’d like to argue with that,” I said. “But it’d be a lie.”

Our topic to discuss since we left the house had been square citizen stuff—you know, this can’t be allowed to pass, this death, the case must make a beeline for the halls of guilt,
or whatever they call it, despite all risk or amounts of money, and be made right in the eyes of society who live across the tracks and avoid us. This topic had started over in Bev’s front room and run on for a while; then we went strolling for no special reason. Road dust powdered the breeze and the sun was in one of those moods. We walked on past the other shacks, past the stone church that had fallen in on itself when this century was a pup but a few racks of stone are stacked yet at the borders and trace the shape of the dead church like chalk around a body. A couple of crab-apple trees had got inside the old shape and laid down roots and become landlords. Quite a few generations of trash had been dumped down the church storm cellar and stared up.

When we came to Aunt Dot’s, I said, “The part of this mess I really, really can’t cut is the part where the price is put on our heads. That’s a creepy sensation, see, to know there’s a price on your head in dollars and it’s
kind of awful low
.”

“I’ve taken money for many a thing that was personal,” Bev said. She stood there nudging a whiskey bottle left by history with her big toe. They don’t make bottles that look that way these days. “But I can’t take money for my boy.”

“Me neither,” Jam said. “The very idea of it is intended to make us want to hang ourselves. Hang ourselves for bein’ such scum as would
take
the money.”

I said, “Also, take the dough and you’ve agreed to a price tag on such as us. They could poach the three of us, too, for less’n a new Ford costs. Think about it in those words, huh?”

The pigeons seemed unhappy that we fell by and rattled the walls and shoved off from the house, their feet flecking white grit and pinfeathers from the eaves down our way, then flapped loud overhead, wheeling in swirling irritated circles, showing attitude.