Wolf Whistle (10 page)

The Rider laughed, heh heh heh.

Roy Dale said, “Lady Montberclair took him home in her car.” This was schoolyard gossip, too. Roy Dale hoped it was true.

Blue John said, “White lady took him home.”

Rufus said, “I ain't did nothing, I ain't saying I did. Wasn't none of me told him to be flirting with a white lady. Little nigger better be wolf-whistling his own kind.”

They were coming to the end, the big finish, the guitars were strong.

Rufus said, “What I ain't did is kill nobody. I ain't kill no white boy for telling me to go fuck myself. That's the difference between a white man and a nigger. I jess talk. That's all I ever do, don't hurt nobody.”

Rage Gage sang,
But if you come to three-seventeen Esequeena Street
—”

Blue John said, “Ain't saved no lives, neither.”

Rage Gage sang,
I'll cut the buzzards out yo hair.

Blue John said, “All right, uh-huh.” And the song was over.

For a long time nobody said anything. The rain kept on falling.

Blue John put his guitar back in the case and put it aside.

Roy Dale took the monkey with him and set Rage Gage's box back in the corner of the barber shop for him and then sat back down again. The Rider held onto his guitar, across his lap.

Rage Gage said, “The buzzards is gone, leastways. Done flew back out to the swamp.”

Roy Dale said, “How come Jefferson Davis has just got one hand?”

Rage Gage said, “That monkey got named long time ago, Rufus.”

He was answering an earlier question.

“That's a
old
monkey. My daddy named that monkey.”

Rufus said, “Wouldn't be no better to name a monkey after a nigger, no-way.” Rufus was philosophical. He said, “Less he be named Rage Gage. That monkey kindly favor you.”

The Rider said, Heh heh heh. His pink skin looked pinker than ever.

Rufus said, “You know what make me mad every time I think about it?—name of this town, Arrow Catcher. That's a white-man name if I ever did hear one.”

Roy Dale said, “I'm going out for the arrow-catching team at school. Coach give me a bow and arrow to use.”

Rufus said, “See there? Ain't no arrow-catching team out at the college in Itta Bena, out at M.V.C. Basketball, football, but ain't no arrow-catching, not one. Where's the colored arrow-catching team? Then coloreds got to live in a town name of Arrow Catcher. See what I'm saying? It ain't right.”

Roy Dale said, “I shoot arrows right into the wall of my room and pretend like it's my mama and daddy.”

Rage Gage said, “Somebody be done made a mojo out of Jefferson Davis's hand.”

Rufus McKay said, “What somebody ought to do is get them a mojo and give it to that little Bobo boy. He gone need all the magic he can get.”

Blue John Jackson said, “You know what?”

Blue John didn't talk much. People looked in his direction. The Rider stared down into the center hole in his guitar.

Blue John said, “Arrow Catcher don't be so bad for a name. You know what'd be bad? What'd be bad was if they name this here town Spear Chunker. Now that'd be bad. That's what I'd call bad.”

For a long time nobody said anything. They just all looked at him.

Blue John said, “Then you could sign up for the high
school spear-chunking team, Rufus. Wouldn't need to be on no arrow-catching team.”

The Rider said, Heh heh heh.

Rufus McKay said, “You make a joke like that and you jess part of the problem, Blue John. You part of the reason that child done put his life in danger, make a joke like that. You, too, Rider, laughing at it, like you some kind of mystery on the mountain. You ain't no mystery. All y'all just guilty as sin, guilty as the gravedigger, guilty as me.”

T
HE
A
RROW
Hotel was not a hotel at all, but a great big, wood-frame, two-story boarding house, with feather pillows on the beds that smelled like Vitalis and Wildroot, no meals, room and bath, two dollars a night. There was not even a desk clerk to let you in—old Miss Peabody who owned the place had stopped coming altogether, and so you just went in, left your two dollars under a shot glass near the register-book, and found yourself a place to flop.

Across the street was a place that used to be a frozen meat locker, and then it turned into a chicken sexing plant, which attracted a lot of Japanese people to town, for some reason, and now it was mostly just an empty building, except when they could rent it out to the Pentecostals for revival meetings, who played “Easter Parade” for the benediction one time, if you can believe such a thing.

On the second floor of the Arrow, in a room seldom used, Solon Gregg was lying on the bed thinking he better kill somebody tonight. He couldn't think of no way else to keep from thinking about his boy that got burned up on account of him and was laying back home in an iron bed surrounded by Get Well cards. Kill
himself,
is what he had in mind.

Nobody else was staying in the Arrow Hotel tonight,
not hardly, anyway. Solon signed in the big book, “John Smith,” and left two one dollar bills under the shot glass on a low table next to the lamp.

Solon hoped his sister Juanita didn't have to sleep in a dump like this, or like the one he just left in New Orleans. He fingered the trigger of the little gun. He wondered how many shots he could get off into his own head, or his heart, say, before he dropped the pistol. He didn't think one shot would do the trick, even in the head, his gun was so light. Pretty soon Solon would be just like the dead man he helped pull out of the bed in New Orleans, if things went the way Solon was planning.

Solon was naked, he couldn't stand them wet clothes no longer. He took them off the minute he come in the door and slung them up in a corner. He wished he could take off his whole skin and hair. He wished the gas fire had burned all his skin off instead of his boy's. He wished he was the one laying up in an iron bed instead of his baby, that's what he wished.

The Arrow Hotel was best known as being a place to commit suicide. It had a pretty good reputation in the past, lot of people successfully died here. In the good old days you could end your sorry life in the Arrow Hotel and Miss Peabody or the housemaid would find you first thing next morning, when she's making up the bed. Or somebody would miss you at breakfast.

Well, them was the days. Now you could lay up in the Arrow for two weeks and rot before anybody found you, slow as business was since they stopped serving meals.

He was laying stretched out on the bed in a quarter inch of dust, didn't bother to turn back the covers. There was a street light outside his window, and so the room was not completely dark, there was yellow light and shadows, filtered through rain.

There was an empty chifferobe, that's about all the furniture there was. Enormous trees stood all around the hotel, ancient, really, and the rain falling through them was like whispers. Solon didn't know what the whispers were saying to him.
Kill somebody, you'll feel better.
Something like that.

Up on his bare stomach Solon had rested the pistol, the little .25 caliber revolver with the wooden handle-grips. He had took it out of his pants pocket when he slung his pants up in the corner to dry.

Just .25 caliber—it was most too light to kill anybody with, probably, less you hit them just right, vital organ, and then you couldn't really be sure, it was a crapshoot.

He put the pistol barrel in his mouth and pulled back the hammer with his thumb, until it cocked into place. He was surprised and pleased to find that the gun barrel tasted like oil.

Gun oil, well, sir, sweet as peaches. Just before he left New Orleans, he had wiped the gun off with an oily rag
and so most of the oil was still there, right where he left it, doing its job of preventing undue corrosion, in spite of this wet weather we been having. This fact just seemed extra nice to Solon, warmed up his sad heart a little bit.

The thing was, though, there was something he might could do to be helpful. He took the gun barrel out of his mouth.

What he could do was get dressed again and slip back over to his own house and go back around to his boy's window, Glenn, scope him out a little, you know, up under that light bulb his mama kept burning day and night, and shoot the child in his bed. Put him out of his misery, so to speak.

Seem like the least a daddy could do, after he caused so much trouble to the tyke. It'd be the one act of kindness Solon was ever responsible for. It gave Solon a good feeling to be thinking of others for a change. It made a difference in the way he thought about himself, too. It increased his self-esteem, which had done reached a low ebb lately, to be perfectly honest.

Plus, it'd be a nice way to go out, for him as well as Glenn. In a family setting, so to speak. And that's what he would do, of course, put the lights out on himself right afterwards.

He wished he had a heavier pistol. That was the one
drawback, this durn puny little pistol. If he had him a .38 pistol, why, hell, boy, it wouldn't be no question at all. He'd pretty much be obligated to do it, if he had a .38. If he had a .38, or even a .32, really, he'd feel completely at ease in sticking his arm into the bedroom window, snapping off a couple of quick shots at his boy and then asking Glenn's mama did she and the rest of the children want they lights put out, too, just make it a family affair, the more the merrier, seem like. Last himself, of course.

Well, wait, now, let's see, hold on, he better think about this. This durn thing don't hold but six bullets. He didn't have no extras, six was all he had left, all the excitement of coming back to Mississippi, he didn't think about picking up an extra box of hollow-points.

Shit. Now ain't that the limit. Goddamn, if it wont one dang thing, it's another. Well, okay, let's see, how many children did he have, anyway, counting Wanda. And Glenn. Four, wasn't it? Plus hisself and his wife, that's six.

Actually, that was perfect, if he didn't have to shoot anybody twice. Well, but, anyway, Wanda might want to just pass on her turn, see, with her getting married and all. Wanda might want to go on down to Missouri to the ranch, so, you know, Solon could shoot somebody twice, if necessary. That possibility certainly had to be taken into consideration. He'd just wait and ask Wanda, that was the
thing to do, now that he thought about it. Better safe than sorry, like the poet said. Solon didn't want to act impulsively, spoil the whole surprise.

Solon's pile of rain-drenched clothes was flopped over there in the corner of the room like wet roadkill. It looked like a big, cold carcass of a hellhound that's done shucked off its mortal coil with the help of a Kenworth hauling pulpwood out on Highway 61 to Memphis.

He didn't want to put back on some wet clothes, now that he was settled in. Comfort meant a lot to a man about to kill himself, even if others had to want.

He began to feel a little chilly, just thinking about putting those wet clothes back on. He fingered the trigger of the pistol and placed the barrel against his teeth and tongue again, tasting the sweet oil. This had been one long, hard day, have mercy, he felt like he deserved him a long rest.

He took the pistol barrel out of his mouth and thought about going in the bathroom down the hall and seeing did the tank have any hot water in it, he might like to take hisself a good steamy tub bath. Warm his bones, although right now he believed he'd try not to think about his bones.

Instead, he got up off the bed and turned the covers back and slid in between the sheets, oh Law, they felt good upon his nekkidness, yes they did.

He pulled the covers back up to his chin and felt the
warmth close around him. It seemed pretty durn lonely to die all by yourself in the Arrow Hotel. He looked at the pile of clothes. He might put them back on, go out one more time tonight.

He thought about New Orleans. Was it only yesterday, last night, he'd taken his earnings from the robberies and bought hisself a bus ticket and slept so sound to the music of the wheels, trucking on down on the road? He thought about himself asleep on that Greyhound, and the thought of it was so sweet it almost made him cry.

It was like he was outside of himself, watching Solon Gregg fall asleep in his seat. Looking at himself there, up by the tinted-glass window of that old Greyhound cruiser, it didn't seem possible that he was who he was, the robber and killer and wife beater. Confession makes the heart grow fonder, as his crazy wife used to say.

Who he really looked like to himself, sleeping there in that bus, was Bo Peep, the one in the song. Like he was Bo Peep.
She came trucking, back on down the line.

It scared him to think that murder and suicide might be just another vain dream, an ideal hope that, once it was accomplished, would turn out to be just like New Orleans, just like everything else in this life, nowhere near what it was cracked up to be, and only another way of feeling bad about himself.

He had the pistol under the cover with him, in his
hand, and he dreamed that he had killed everybody, his whole family and himself. Glenn, of course, laying dead and smiling in his bloody sheets. Killing him had healed his burns and taken away his scars. He was the same beautiful child he once was, with a Roy Rogers school satchel and a milk jug full of gasoline.

Even Wanda, too, and her new husband, who had said they didn't want to be left out. They were there, dead and covered with blood. Even Juanita and her pimp husband, and their sweet little nigger baby, covered with blood, hair all over the walls, legs and arms crisscrossed everywhere on the linoleum floor of the Gregg's house.

It was a happy dream, and filled with hope, although Solon wondered where he had come up with so many bullets. He must have won the bullet lottery. And he must have gotten holt of a heavier pistol too,. 38 caliber at least, Solon would have to guess, judging by the amount of carnage.