"Yeah."
"Good. Have everything ready."
"I will. Anything else?"
"Yeah. Why the h.e.l.l do they call you Silent Mike?"
I was hoping he"d say Because I can keep a secret, but he didn"t. "When I was a kid, I thought that Christmas carol was about me. It just kind of stuck."
I didn"t ask, but halfway back to my car it came to me, and I started to laugh.
Silent Mike, holy Mike.
Sometimes the world we live in is a truly weird place.
3.
When Lee and Marina returned to the United States, they"d live in a sad procession of low-rent apartments, including the one in New Orleans I"d already visited, but based on Al"s notes, I thought there were only two I needed to focus on. One was at 214 West Neely Street, in Dallas. The other was in Fort Worth, and that was where I went after my visit to Silent Mike"s.
I had a map of the city, but still had to ask directions three times. In the end it was an elderly black woman clerking at a mom-n-pop who pointed me the right way. When I finally found what I was looking for, I wasn"t surprised that it had been hard to locate. The a.s.s end of Mercedes Street was unpaved hardpan lined with crumbling houses little better than sharecroppers" shacks. It spilled into a huge, mostly empty parking lot where tumbleweeds blew across the crumbling asphalt. Beyond the lot was the back of a cinderblock warehouse. Printed on it in whitewashed letters ten feet tall was PROPERTY OF MONTGOMERY WARD and TRESPa.s.sERS WILL BE PROSECUTED and POLICE TAKE NOTE.
The air stank of cracked petroleum from the direction of Odessa-Midland, and raw sewage much closer at hand. The sound of rock and roll spilled from open windows. I heard the Dovells, Johnny Burnette, Lee Dorsey, Chubby Checker . . . and that was in the first forty yards or so. Women were hanging clothes on rusty whirligigs. They were all wearing smocks that had probably been purchased at Zayre"s or Mammoth Mart, and they all appeared to be pregnant. A filthy little boy and an equally filthy little girl stood on a cracked clay driveway and watched me go by. They were holding hands and looked too much alike not to be twins. The boy, naked except for a single sock, was holding a cap pistol. The girl was wearing a saggy diaper below a Mickey Mouse Club tee-shirt. She was clutching a plastic babydoll as filthy as she was. Two bare-chested men were throwing a football back and forth between their respective yards, both of them with cigarettes hanging from the corners of their mouths. Beyond them, a rooster and two bedraggled chickens pecked in the dust near a scrawny dog that was either sleeping or dead.
I pulled up in front of 2703, the place to which Lee would bring his wife and daughter when he could no longer stand Marguerite Oswald"s pernicious brand of smotherlove. Two concrete strips led up to a bald patch of oil-stained ground where there would have been a garage in a better part of town. The wasteland of crabgra.s.s that pa.s.sed for a lawn was littered with cheap plastic toys. A little girl in ragged pink shorts was kicking a soccer ball repeatedly against the side of the house. Each time it hit the wooden siding, she said, "Chumbah!"
A woman with her hair in large blue rollers and a cigarette plugged in her gob shoved her head out the window and shouted, "You keep doin that, Rosette, I"m gone come out n beat you snotty!" Then she saw me. "Wha" choo want? If it"s a bill, I cain"t hep you. My husband does all that. He got work today."
"It"s not a bill," I said. Rosette kicked the soccer ball at me with a snarl that became a reluctant smile when I caught it with the side of my foot and booted it gently back. "I just wanted to speak to you for a second."
"Y"all gotta wait, then. I ain"t decent."
Her head disappeared. I waited. Rosette kicked the soccer ball high and wide this time ("Chumbah!"), but I managed to catch it on one palm before it hit the house.
"Ain"t s"pozed to use your hands, dirty old sumb.i.t.c.h," she said. "That"s a penalty."
"Rosette, what I told you about that G.o.ddam mouth?" Moms came out on the stoop, securing a filmy yellow scarf over her rollers. It made them look like coc.o.o.ned insects, the kind that might be poisonous when they hatched.
"Dirty old f.u.c.king sumb.i.t.c.h!" Rosette shrieked, and then scampered up Mercedes Street in the direction of the Monkey Ward warehouse, kicking her soccer ball and laughing maniacally.
"Wha" choo want?" Moms was twenty-two going on fifty. Several of her teeth were gone, and she had the fading remains of a black eye.
"Want to ask you some questions," I said.
"What makes my bi"ness your bi"ness?"
I took out my wallet and offered her a five-dollar bill. "Ask me no questions and I"ll tell you no lies."
"You ain"t from around here. Soun like a Yankee."
"Do you want this money or not, Missus?"
"Depends on the questions. I ain"t tellin you my G.o.ddam bra-size."
"I want to know how long you"ve been here, for a start."
"This place? Six weeks, I guess. Harry thought he might catch on at the Monkey Ward warehouse, but they ain"t hiring. So he went on over to Manpower. You know what that is?"
"Day-labor?"
"Yeah, n he workin with a bunch of n.i.g.g.e.rs." Only it wasn"t workin, it was woikin. "Nine dollars a day workin with a bunch of G.o.ddam n.i.g.g.e.rs side a the road. He says it"s like bein at West Texas Correctional again."
"How much rent do you pay?"
"Fifty a month."
"Furnished?"
"Semi. Well, you could say. Got a G.o.ddam bed and a G.o.ddam gas stove gone kill us all, most likely. And I ain"t takin you in, so don"t ax. I don"t know you from G.o.ddam Adam."
"Did it come with lamps and such?"
"You"re crazy, mister."
"Did it?"
"Yeah, couple. One that works and one that duddn"t. I ain"t stayin here, be G.o.dd.a.m.ned if I will. He tell how he don"t want to move back in with my mama down Mozelle, but tough t.i.tty said the kitty. I ain"t stayin here. You smell this place?"
"Yes, ma"am."
"That ain"t nothin but s.h.i.t, sonny jim. Not cats.h.i.t, not dogs.h.i.t, that"s peoples.h.i.t. Work with n.i.g.g.e.rs, that"s one thing, but live like one? Nosir. You done?"
I wasn"t, quite, although I wished I were. I was disgusted by her, and disgusted with myself for daring to judge. She was a prisoner of her time, her choices, and this s.h.i.t-smelling street. But it was the rollers under the yellow headscarf that I kept looking at. Fat blue bugs waiting to hatch.
"n.o.body stays here for long, I guess?"
"On "Cedes Street?" She waved her cigarette at the hardpan leading to the deserted parking lot and the vast warehouse filled with nice things she would never own. At the elbow-to-elbow shacks with their steps of crumbling cinderblock and their broken windows blocked up with pieces of cardboard. At the roiling kids. At the old, rust-eaten Fords and Hudsons and Studebaker Larks. At the unforgiving Texas sky. Then she uttered a terrible laugh filled with amus.e.m.e.nt and despair.
"Mister, this is a bus stop on the road to nowhere. Me"n Bratty Sue"s sailin back to Mozelle. If Harry won"t go with us, we"ll sail without him."
I took the map out of my hip pocket, tore off a strip, and scribbled my Jodie telephone number on it. Then I added another five-dollar bill. I held them out to her. She looked but didn"t take.
"What I want your telephone number for? I ain"t got no G.o.ddam phone. That there ain"t no DFW "shange, anyway. That"s G.o.ddam long distance."
"Call me when you get ready to move out. That"s all I want. You call me and say, "Mister, this is Rosette"s mama, and we"re moving." That"s all it is."
I could see her calculating. It didn"t take her long. Ten dollars was more than her husband would make working all day in the hot Texas sun. Because Manpower knew from nothing about time-and-a-half on holidays. And this would be ten dollars he knew from nothing about.
"Gimme another semny-fi cent," she said. "For the long distance."
"Here, take a buck. Live a little. And don"t forget."
"I won"t."
"No, you don"t want to. Because if you forgot, I might just be apt to find my way to your husband and tattle. This is important business, Missus. To me it is. What"s your name, anyway?"
"Ivy Templeton."
I stood there in the dirt and the weeds, smelling s.h.i.t, half-cooked oil, and the big farty aroma of natural gas.
"Mister? What"s wrong with you? You come over all funny."
"Nothing," I said. And maybe it was nothing. Templeton is far from an uncommon name. Of course a man can talk himself into anything, if he tries hard enough. I"m walking, talking proof of that.
"What"s your name?"
"Puddentane," I said. "Ask me again and I"ll tell you the same."
At this touch of grammar school raillery, she finally cracked a smile.
"You call me, Missus."
"Yeah, okay. Go on now. You was to run over that little h.e.l.l-b.i.t.c.h of mine on your way out, you"d prolly be doin me a favor."
I drove back to Jodie and found a note thumbtacked to my door: George- Would you call me? I need a favor.
Sadie (and that"s the trouble!!) Which meant exactly what? I went inside to call her and find out.
4.
Coach Borman"s mother, who lived in an Abilene nursing home, had broken her hip, and this coming Sat.u.r.day was the DCHS Sadie Hawkins Dance.
"Coach talked me into chaperoning the dance with him! He said, and I quote, "How can you resist going to a dance that"s practically named after you?" Just last week, this was. And like a fool I agreed. Now he"s going down to Abilene, and where does that leave me? Chaperoning two hundred s.e.x-crazed sixteen-year-olds doing the Twist and the Philly? I don"t think so! What if some of the boys bring beer?"
I thought it would be amazing if they didn"t, but felt it best not to say so.
"Or what if there"s a fight in the parking lot? Ellie Dockerty said a bunch of boys from Henderson crashed the dance last year and two of their kids and two of ours had to go to the hospital! George, can you help me out here? Please?"
"Have I just been Sadie Hawkinsed by Sadie Dunhill?" I was grinning. The idea of going to the dance with her did not exactly fill me with gloom.
"Don"t joke! It"s not funny!"
"Sadie, I"d be happy to go with you. Are you going to bring me a corsage?"
"I"d bring you a bottle of champagne, if that"s what it took." She considered this. "Well, no. Not on my salary. A bottle of Cold Duck, though."
"Doors open at seven-thirty?" Actually I knew they did. The posters were up all over the school.
"Right."
"And it"s just a record-hop. No band. That"s good."
"Why?"
"Live bands can cause problems. I shapped a dance once where the drummer sold home brew beer at intermission. That was a pleasant experience."
"Were there fights?" She sounded horrified. Also fascinated.
"Nope, but there was a whole lot of puking. The stuff was s.p.u.n.ky."
"This was in Florida?"
It had been at Lisbon High, in 2009, so I told her yes, in Florida. I also told her I"d be happy to co-chaperone the hop.
"Thank you so much, George."
"My pleasure, ma"am."
And it absolutely was.
5.
The Pep Club was in charge of the Sadie Hawkins, and they"d done a bang-up job: lots of crepe streamers wafting down from the gymnasium rafters (silver and gold, of course), lots of ginger ale punch, lemon-snap cookies, and red velvet cupcakes provided by the Future Homemakers of America. The Art Department-small but dedicated-contributed a cartoon mural that showed the immortal Miss Hawkins herself, chasing after the eligible bachelors of Dogpatch. Mattie Shaw and Mike"s girlfriend, Bobbi Jill, did most of the work, and they were justifiably proud. I wondered if they still would be seven or eight years from now, when the first wave of women"s libbers started burning their bras and demonstrating for full reproductive rights. Not to mention wearing tee-shirts that said things like I AM NOT PROPERTY and A WOMAN NEEDS A MAN LIKE A FISH NEEDS A BICYCLE.
The night"s DJ and master of ceremonies was Donald Bellingham, a soph.o.m.ore. He arrived with a totally ginchy record collection in not one but two Samsonite suitcases. With my permission (Sadie just looked bewildered), he hooked up his Webcor phonograph and his dad"s preamp to the school"s PA system. The gym was big enough to provide natural reverb, and after a few preliminary feedback shrieks, he got a booming sound that was awesome. Although born in Jodie, Donald was a permanent resident of Rockville, in the state of Daddy Cool. He wore pink-rimmed specs with thick lenses, belt-in-the-back slacks, and saddle shoes so grotesquely square they were authentically crazy, man. His face was an exploding zit-factory below a Brylcreem-loaded Bobby Rydell duck"s a.s.s. He looked like he might get his first kiss from a real live girl around the age of forty-two, but he was fast and funny with the mike, and his record collection (which he called "the stack-o-wax" and "Donny B."s round mound of sound") was, as previously noted, the ginchiest.