Vernon God Little (5 page)

'Hee, hee,' go the girls.

'So, Lally,' says Mom, 'do you sleep in the van, or …?'

'Right now I do - motels are full between here and Austin. I hear some generous townsfolk are taking in guests, but I haven't come across them yet.'

'Well, ahem,' Mom looks down the hall. 'I mean …'

'Doris, you're not going to let Vernon drink that stuff, are you?' It's George's distraction technique, look at it. It gives me mixed feelings. I mean, I'm glad she interrupted my ole lady from inviting Ledesma to stay. But now everybody's attention snaps to me.

'Oh, it's harmless,' says Lally. 'Great stress-buster.'

George watches me fondle the phial. Her eyes narrow, which is a bad fucken sign. 'Like you're real stressed, Vern. Got a job for the summer?'

'Nah,' I say, downing the ginseng. It tastes like dirt.

'Doris, you hear the Harris boy bought a truck? Paid cash for it too, a Ford truck. All the boys I know have summer jobs. Course, they all have haircuts too.'

'It ain't a Ford,' says Brad from the floor.

'Bradley,' says Betty, 'I wish you wouldn't say "ain't".'

'Pluck off.'

'Don't you talk to me like that, Bradley Everett Pritchard!'

'Goddam what? I said "Pluck" for chrissakes, I mean, shit!' He spits and squirms across the rug, then stomps up to Betty and smacks her in the gut.

'Bradley!'

'Pluck off, pluck off, PLUCK Off!'

I just stay quiet. Lally looks over, sees my eyes fixed longingly up the hall. He gulps his ginseng and says, 'I appreciate your help, big man - maybe your room would be a better working environment.' He turns to Mom. 'I hope it's no problem - Vern agreed to collate some local data for me

…'

'Oh, no problem Lally, gosh,' says Mom. 'Quickly, Vern! Hear that girls? It's a job for Lally, he's colliding data for Lally!'

I scurry away like a pack of rats. 'Only job he'll get looking like that,' says George. 'Guilty-looking hair, if you ask me. And those shoes don't help none either, same shoes as that psycho Meskin

…'

Fuck her. I kick a pile of laundry, and slam my bedroom door. What I'm seriously considering, in light of everybody's behavior, is just to evacuate through the laundry door; hop a bus to Nana's, and not even tell anybody. Just call up later or something. I mean, the whole world knows Jesus caused the fucken tragedy. But because he's dead, and they can't fucken kill him for it, they have to find a skate-goat. That's people for you. Me, I'd love to explain the sequence of events last Tuesday. But I'm in a bind, see. I have family honor to think of. And I have my ma to protect, now that I'm Man of the House and all. Anyway, whoever points a finger at me, just for being a guy's friend, has some deep remorse coming. Tears of fucken regret, when the truth comes marching in. And it always comes, you know it.

Watch any fucken movie.

I still hear everybody through my bedroom door, talking like bad actors, the way they do. 'It's a challenging time for everyone,' says Lally.

'I know, I know.'

'And Vaine's pushing things so hard,' says Leona. 'Can't she sense our grief?'

George barks a cough. 'My ole man's pushing Vaine hard - he gave her a month to pump some life into her conviction average, or she's history.'

'You mean he'd throw her off the force,' asks Mom, 'after all this time?'

'Worse. He'd probably make her Eileena's assistant.'

'Oh my God,' says Leona, 'but Eileena's like - the receptionist. That's as low as Barry's job!'

'Lower,' Pam chuckles darkly.

You hear a quiet gap. That means everybody's sighing. Then Mom goes, 'Well this is sure a big month for Vaine. And I can't say it's going too well, the way she's handling Vernon and all.'

'Tch,' goes Lally. 'Maybe the dogs'll shed some light.'

'Dogs?' asks Leona.

'Sniffer dogs, from Smith County.'

'Well but, what can dogs do now?' asks Mom.

'Can I call you Doris?' asks Lally. His voice drops a tone. 'You see, Doris, people are asking how anyone in their right mind could orchestrate such a rampage. They're starting to wonder if drugs were involved. If rumors about a drugs link are correct, these specialist dogs will tie it up as fast as cock a leg.'

'Well good,' huffs Mom, 'I feel like calling them over here right now, and putting a stop to this ridiculous business with Vernon.'

I take the drugs out of the shoebox in my closet, and drop them into my pocket. The joints leave my hand wet. Kurt barks outside.

five

To be fair, the rumors about ole Mr Deutschman didn't say he'd actually dicked any schoolgirls. Probably just touched them and shit, you know. Real slime though, don't get me wrong. He used to be a school principal or something, all righteous and upstanding, back in the days before they'd bust you for that type of thing. Maybe even before talk shows, back when you'd just get ostracized by word of mouth. He probably used to get his hair cut at the fancy unisex on Gurie Street, with the coffee machine and all. But not anymore. Now he slinks through the valley behind the abattoir, to the meatworks barber shoppe. Yeah, the meatworks has its own barber on Saturdays, It's just ole Mr Deutschman and me here this morning. And Mom.

'Well don't listen to Vernon, the unisex usually takes off a lot.'

Her head-scarf and shades supposedly make her invisible. The invisible twitching woman. Me, I wear the reddest T-shirt you ever saw, like a goddam six-year-old or something. I didn't want to wear it. She controls what you wear by keeping everything else damp in the laundry.

'Well go ahead, sir, it'll only grow back.'

'Hell, Ma …'

'Vernon I'm only trying to help you out. We'll have to find you some decent shoes too.'

Sweat starts to pool in my ass. The lights are off, just one ray glows sideways through the door onto these green tiles. The air reeks of flesh. Flies guard two historical barber chairs in the middle of the room; white leather turned brown, cracked and hardened to plastic. I check them for arm clamps.

I'm in one, Deutschman is in the other; his hands creep around under his gown. He seems happy to wait. Then a whistle blows outside, and the meatworks' marching band assembles on the gravel in the yard. 'Braaap, barp, bap,' band practice starts. One majorette I see through the door is about eighty-thousand years ole, her buns smack the backs of her legs as she marches. My eyes flee to a TV in the corner of the room.

'Look, Vernon, he doesn't have arms or legs, but he's neatly groomed. And he has a job, look -

he even invests on the stock market.'

They ask the kid on TV what it feels like to be so gifted. He just shrugs and says, 'Isn't everybody?'

The barber mostly slashes mid-air; two halves of a fly hit the deck. 'Barry was here. Said there could be a drugs link.'

'A drug slink, yes,' says Mr Deutschman.

'A drugs link, or another firearm.'

'Another farm, uh-huh. I heard it was a panty cult - you hear it was a panty cult?'

On balance, today sucks. You don't want to be here if they find any drugs. So I'm here with two spliffs, and two acid pearls in my pocket; nasty gels, according to Taylor, like your mind would projectile-exit your nose if you took one. I tried to ditch them on the way down, but Fate was against me. Fate's always fucken against me these days.

Load my pack, and lope away is what I'll do; all crusty and lonely, like you see on TV. Ditch Taylor's dope, and lope away. More successfully than last night, with Lally and the world's media camped outside. I only got four steps away from my porch before they came a-sniffing. Now they think I take out the trash in my backpack. Last night was long, boy, long and shivery with ghosts and realizations. Realizations that I have to act.

'Vaine's coming down with they dogs,' says the barber. 'I'll tell her we need a SWAT team, with some of they automatic guns, that rip the meat off offenders' bodies, not any ole dogs.' Click, slash; he evens up my skull. I scan the floor for ears.

'Meat's better'n dogs,' says Deutschman.

'Sit still, Vern,' says Mom.

'I have stuff to do.'

'Well, Harris' store might take you on.'

'What?'

'For a job, you know - Seb Harris even bought himself a truck!'

'That ain't what I'm talking about. Anyway, Seb's dad just happens to own the whole store.'

'Well, you're the man of the house now, I'm counting on you to make good. All the boys I know have jobs, that's all.'

'Like which boys, Ma, like just who?'

'Well - Randy and Eric?'

'Randy and Eric are dead.'

'Vernon Gregory, I'm just saying if you want to prove you're all grown up it's about time you got wise to the way things work in this world. Be a man.'

'Yeah, right.'

'And don't you get smart either, in front of everybody. Don't let's end up like that other time after I found those underpants.' Deutschman's hand twitches under his gown.

'Damn, Momma!'

'Go ahead, cuss your mother!'

'I ain't cussing!'

'My God, if your father was here …'

'Here's Vaine,' says the barber. I spin out of the chair, ripping the gown off over my head.

'Well go ahead, Vernon - go right ahead and humiliate your mother, after all that's happened to me.'

Fuck her. I bang out through the screen into the sun. Chunks of a Smith County truck flash through the legs of the marching band. Martirio may be a fucken joke, but you don't mess with the boys from Smith County. Smith County has armored personnel carriers, for chrissakes. Trombones spit glare, horns throw back pictures of me puckering, melting, shrinking into the bushes at the steep end of the compound.

Hot grasses heckle my face on the way up the hill; skeeterhawks twitch through the air, but dust is too bored to rise up. One cloud hangs in the sky, over my empty, desperate body. My ole lady won't run after me. She'll stay back, tell all my slime to the boys, so they can wear a knowing smile next time they see me. Underpants my ass. And there's no drugs link, is there fuck. Jesus never had the damn money. See Hysteriaville here? Science says there must be ten squillion brain cells in this town, but if you so much as belch before your twenty-first birthday they can only form two thoughts between them: you're fucken pregnant, or you're on drugs. Fuck it, I'm outta here. Life's simple when I'm angry. I know just what to do, and I fucken do it. Underpants my fucken ass.

I'll tell you a learning: knife-turners like my ole lady actually spend their waking hours connecting shit into a humongous web, just like spiders. It's true. They take every word in the fucken universe, and index it back to your knife. In the end it doesn't matter what words you say, you feel it on your blade. Like, 'Wow, see that car?' 'Well it's the same blue as that jacket you threw up on at the Christmas show, remember?' What I learned is that parents succeed by managing the database of your dumbness and your slime, ready for combat. They'll cut you down in a split fucken second, make no mistake; much quicker than you'd use the artillery you dream about. And I say, in idle moments, once the shine rubs off their kid - they start doing it just for fucken kicks.

I stop dead. Something crackles around the bend on the track. It's the red van, spinning a trail of fluff-balls down the hill. Like somebody with oldtimer's disease, who doesn't remember what's good for them, I glance at my T-shirt. 'Ping,' it jackrabbits to Lally. He stops with a crunch, forcing down the electric window with the flat of his hand. Tappets mark time with my heart, tic, tic, tic.

'Big man!'

I wave, like I'm in the freezer section at the fucken Mini-Mart or something. I should drop the drugs where I stand, but the dogs are close by. They'd know. Anyway, I ain't that decisive in life, not with all this grief on board, not with my anger evaporated. It fucken slays me. Van Damme's your man if you want the drugs dropped right here.

Lally calls me over. 'See those cops? They came from your place - jump in.'

Ginseng clinks around the floor as we cut a fresh trail toward home.

'Where's the rest of your head?' Lally slicks down his eyebrows in the mirror. You can tell the mirror hasn't pointed at the road awhile.

'Don't ask,' I say.

'You going somewhere?'

'Surinam.'

He laughs. 'How'd you get down here? I didn't see a car this morning …'

'We walked.' I'm supposed to say Mom's car is in the shop. But it ain't in the shop. The car paid for the new rug in the living room, the one Brad wipes his fingers on.

'What do you think the cops want?'

'Search me.'

'Tch.' Lally shakes his head. 'Things won't get any easier, you know. Take my advice - I could cut a report by sundown, it could air by tonight - Vern? I think it's time to tell your story. Your real, true story.'

'Maybe,' I say, slouching low in the seat. I feel Lally watching me.

'You don't even have to appear, I can patch it together from clips of friends and family.

Camera's loaded, big man. Just say the word.' I hear Lally's offer, but just sit wishing Marion Nuckles would tell his damn story. He knows I'm clean, he was there. I can't believe I get all the heat - me, who has family secrets to watch out for - while he lounges around in goddam silence. I mean, what's he holding back?

A wrong note from the meatworks' band coughs us onto Beulah Drive in a swirl of leaf tatters.

A baby marketplace has grown around the pumpjack since I've been gone. One stall sells Martirio barbecue aprons, just like Pam's. Next to it, some media men pay a buck a hit for some fudge from Houston. One of the fudge sellers gloomily puts on an apron. The apron sellers gloomily munch fudge.

My face goes Porked Monkey. It's the face for when life around you travels in fucken dog years, but you stay frozen still. For instance, a whole mall grows around the pumpjack, but I'm here with the same problems I went out with this morning. I just look down, herd ginseng with my foot.

'Take one,' says Lally.

'Say what?'

'Take some ginseng, keep your strength up.'

As he says it, I notice the ginseng is the same shade of piss as the acid pearls in my hand. Dogs would never smell through the ginseng. I reach down for a bottle, but Lally brakes to avoid a stray teddy under the Lechugas' willow; I overbalance, the dope cigarettes fall from my hand.