We stopped at a light and were quickly surrounded by urban types, lots of them black people. "Your midterm memory works," Lloyd said. "How"s the short? Where did you brush your teeth yesterday?"
I ran my tongue over my teeth. I"d brushed them after my shower today, but yesterday was off the list. "Where"d you get that cap?" I asked.
Lloyd seemed surprised by the question. He took the cap off and studied Cat, as if noticing it for the first time. "Policeman gave it to me. He said a crystal freak left it in his car during a bust last night. I don"t know what crystal is."
"Speed. Amphetamines you shoot up."
Lloyd shook his head. "Stay off the streets a couple years and they invent whole new ways to be self-destructive."
"It"s more a college thing, I think."
The light changed and the urban herd moved. In the middle of the street we met another herd coming toward us, and even though no one actually looked at anyone else, the two herds sifted through each other without a single body b.u.mp. I was impressed.
"The dead boy was only twenty-eight," Lloyd said, which surprised me. He"d looked fifty. "Claude Kepler from Opelika, Alabama. He had a hundred and fifty dollars in his pocket next to a Western Union receipt for two hundred somebody wired him yesterday."
"Sounds like he had a friend somewhere," I said.
"Never give a dest.i.tute alcoholic enough money to drink himself to death, because he will."
"Kindness kills thing, huh?" I said.
"Kindness should come in one-bottle amounts."
A blood bank in Memphis is about as far as you can come from a horse ranch in Wyoming. Just goes to show how my life had gone to pot in two weeks. I was raised in a beautiful environment, and I still wound up attempting suicide; I don"t see how people from ugly places do it.
The blood bank wasn"t nonhygienic, I guess. It just felt filthy. The room had the ambiance of a janitor"s mop closet-five cots, some folding chairs, a radio tuned to dentist music, a refrigerator, a cash register. The center of the room was taken up by this whirlyjigger machine with an ominous look-part carnival, part Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.
Two of the nurses were exhausted matrons, and the third was a teenager with braces on her teeth who testified for Jesus as she slid the pipe in your vein. d.a.m.n thing was thick as Shane"s tube. Evil-looking sucker.
"What"s that deal?" I pointed to the whirlyjigger machine.
"Centrifuge plasma separator," Lloyd said. "They give nine dollars for plasma and you can come back in three days, or fourteen dollars for blood, only you can"t sell but once a week. Winos who think of their future sell plasma."
"But drunks who live for today sell blood."
"We"ll do blood because we"re not planning on being around in three days."
"We h.e.l.l."
"Plus, you"ll be amazed how wasted you get tonight drinking with one less pint of blood in your body."
"Who said I"m drinking today?"
A steady stream of alcoholics, drug addicts, and an occasional college student trickled in, waited their turns, and went out with an extra-large Band-Aid taped sideways in the crook of their arms. No complimentary orange juice while you rest afterward like the Red Cross does it-this place was more of a backward gas station than a clinic. You pull up, plug in the hose, fill the tank, get your Band-Aid and cash, and you"re on the road again.
While I waited my turn an old codger the nurses called Carl stumbled through the door and fell over a chair. The harshest of the matrons moved to throw him out.
"Come back when you"re sober, Carl," she said. "Any poor patient gets your blood would die of alcohol poisoning."
"f.u.c.k you," said Carl.
I don"t know how these places judge too-drunk-to-give because Carl wandered back twenty minutes later and they took him. Maybe the difference was the second time he didn"t knock over any chairs.
You notice I said "waited my turn" there? I don"t know how Lloyd got me, but he got me. One minute I"m watching Nurse Harsh tie a rubber hose around his stringy upper arm and he says, "We"ll need more money, Maurey. Sign up," and the next minute I"m filling out a form saying I"ve never had hepat.i.tis and I"m not currently on medication-they take your word for that stuff-then ten more minutes and I"m dripping into a bag. Looked like the same brand of bag Shane peed in.
"Any chance of listening to Paul Harvey on the radio?" I asked the Jesus nurse.
"Sure. Don"t you think Paul Harvey has depth in his voice? I"ll bet he has the easiest veins to hit. I"d love to clamp him off and watch his antecubital vein swell." Different women rate men different ways. I suppose ease of hitting their veins is as good a method as any.
The winos and nurses got in a big argument as to what station was best for Paul Harvey, but finally the matter was settled and someone turned the dial. We"d missed Page One, which was okay by me, I didn"t go for the real news anyway. Lydia Callahan was the news junkie; I preferred the twenty-two-pound cantaloupes on Page Two.
Paul congratulated a couple for staying happily married for eighty-five years. He insinuated they still had good s.e.x, or maybe I just took it that way. Then he told an interesting story about his neighbor in the Missouri Ozarks who"d taught his pig to imitate Fidel Castro. Basically, the neighbor tied a fake beard and funny cap on the pig"s head, then let it smoke a cigar. That hog of Dad"s would have eaten the cigar, beard, and cap, then tried to bite the neighbor.
The story came out pretty funny, but you almost had to be there. With Paul Harvey, delivery is more important than content.
Here"s the day"s b.u.mper snicker: "Never take a snake by its tail or a woman by her word." s.e.xist pig.
There"s no better time in the world for evaluating where your life"s been and how close the reality matches the dreams than the twenty minutes or so it takes to sell a pint of blood. You lie there on the cot, watching your bodily fluids drip away and you think, So this is what I"ve come to. My body has eight pints of blood and I"m selling one for fourteen dollars. Is that what I"m worth?
Then you think how fast you"ll probably convert that pint of blood into a pint of whiskey, and the tendency is toward depression.
Two weeks ago I lived in a nice home and took care of a beautiful baby. I was surrounded by the wonderful mystery of the mountains. I showered in clean water and breathed faultless air. I had what half the women in America want, and I botched the gig. One lousy bottle of tequila shows up in a lion"s stuffings and zip-no home, no beautiful child, no paradise. Now I"m surrounded by addicted men who don"t bathe. I"m forced to walk on concrete, I have a needle sticking in my arm.
The contrast with Paul Harvey was too much.
"We didn"t need money this bad," I said to Lloyd. "You brought me here to make a point about alcoholism."
He looked at me and said, "Alcoholism has no point." Pithy son of a b.i.t.c.h.
Carl raised up and started dry heaving and fell out of his cot, pulling the needle out of his arm and his own bag of blood down on his head.
34.
Dead Dad, This is the Mississippi River, b.u.t.t crack of the entire nation. I saw a dead boy. I sold my blood and met a woman who sold her flesh. Which of us would a cowboy call sleazy?
My adventuresome spirit is flagging. Could use your help.
Maurey ***
I paddled my canoe through the gla.s.s-still waters of Jenny Lake. At the far end of the boat a wh.o.r.e named Lily sunbathed on her back wearing a black bikini bottom and no top. She was very tanned, but I could see purple bruises on the insides of her arms. Lily stretched her arms over her head and leaned forward to lick between my legs. "You"re a woman," I said. "Close your eyes and I"m anyone, " she said. I closed my eyes and we drifted across the lake with her licking below and above my c.l.i.toris and me floating with the gentleness of the water. I almost came, I wanted to come, but I couldn"t quite get over the edge. When I opened my eyes Lily had changed. She had a black, full beard and hair on her arms and chest. I said, "You died, " and Lily said in a man"s voice, "That was a mistake." Then I was in the lake, drowning. I kicked, I fought, I screamed. Lily pulled my feet down where I no longer wanted to go. I was smothered again.
Neither Shane nor Brad were back by five. Lloyd woke me from a two-hour nap and some strange dreams, and got me out of the room by checkout. I stumbled down to the street to meet Marcella and the kids. The bottom half of Andrew"s face was purple. They"d gone to a Zippy Mart for yet more Pampers and snacks, and Andrew went wild in the Kool-Aid.
""I got in trouble," he said, proudly showing off his purple hands.
"I turned my back for ten seconds," Marcella said, "to read the ingredients in Dolly Madison cakes, and he tore open all the packs of grape and half the cherry."
"They taste the same," Andrew said.
"Cost me every cent to get him out of the store. Now I still don"t have Pampers."
I gave her five dollars of blood money and said I"d watch Andrew and Hugo Jr. while she made another run. Lloyd said something about electric taping the spark plug wires so they wouldn"t arc, and walked on down to Moby d.i.c.k. That left me sitting on the stoop with Hugo Jr. on my right arm, Andrew on my left leg, and the mewing bowling ball bag between my feet.
"Do you have a husband?" Andrew asked.
"Not anymore."
"Do you want one? My daddy knows lots of boys who want wives."
"None for me, thanks, I"m done with husbands. Would you take your hands off my shirt? You"re making me purple."
"You"re already purple." He touched a big sucker of a bruise on my arm. While the nurse had been telling me which day she opened her life to Jesus Christ, she slid the pipe through my vein and poked out the other side.
"Women are hard to hit," she said. "We don"t get many women in here."
As Andrew came off on my clothes, a couple of hookers drifted over to admire Hugo Jr. By the time we got done with "Is he yours?" "No, mine"s cuter," three more hookers joined the huddle.
"I had a baby when I was twelve," said a pretty Spanish girl who looked fifteen. "Social Services took her. I don"t even know where she lives now."
The oldest one in the crowd, who might have been my age, said, "My parents took mine. I went out to score one morning and when I came back they"d kidnapped her."
"You shouldn"t have left a four-month-old alone," the Spanish girl said.
"Better alone than take her to Lactose Larry"s. He abuses children. I wouldn"t go there myself, but..." She kind of tapered off.
After that each hooker had to tell her story of lost children. Every single woman, without exception, had gotten pregnant in her way-early teens and lost the child, just like me. Since then they"d had countless babies, miscarriages, and abortions, not to mention boyfriends who hit, husbands who stole, and cops, customers, and pimps who committed every disgusting act in creation, but I got the idea that the first lost baby was the one they mourned over. After that they"d given up on expectations.
"Felicia would be six now," the pretty Spanish woman said.
"Bobby would be twelve."
Soon the wh.o.r.es were sniffling like a bunch of little girls. It was weird. Andrew didn"t know what to make of being surrounded by a gang of weeping women. Neither did I. They weren"t anything like movie wh.o.r.es, which is the only kind I"d had contact with. We don"t have blatant, high-profile prost.i.tution in GroVont. I suppose if I"d been raised in a city, I might have turned into one myself. Losing a child by fifteen seemed to be the only qualification.
About the time everyone but me was good and puddle-eyed, a battleship of a white limousine rolled up to the curb. The size of my garage, it had six smoked windows down the side and four radio antennas on the corners. The driver"s door opened and a coal black giant in a snappy uniform with loops on the shoulders stepped with amazing decorum to the trunk.
"Shane pulled it off," I said.
Andrew jumped from my lap. "Uncle Shane is in there?"
"This is a scam. I don"t know how he arranged it, but this is a scam."
The coal black lifted Shane"s wheelchair from the trunk like it was balsa. He carried it to the sidewalk, opened it, and I swear to G.o.d he pulled a white hankie from his back pocket and gave the seat a whisk.
I said, "It"s a scam."
Ivory came out first. The chauffeur/professional wrestler offered her his arm and escorted her to the parking meter. She ignored the gaggle of jaw-dropping hookers.
""Thank you, Milo," she said.
"Pleased to be of service, Miss Tupelo."
Marcella walked up with her purchases as Shane"s hands appeared on the door frame. As effortlessly as I lifted the baby into Marcella"s arms-and in the same cradling position-the black giant lifted Shane and carried him to the waiting chair.
"Will there be anything else, sir?" the giant asked.
Shane sent me a cutesy smile, then turned back. "Tell your mother to wash her hands in mustard with a little lemon, Milo. The smell will come right out."
"She"ll be happy to hear that, Mr. Rinesfoos."
Shane rolled over to the parking meter. "Remember what I said about vocational-technical school, Ivory. You"re too much a lady for this business."
Ivory Tupelo couldn"t resist a glance at the a.s.sembled hookers. You could tell her life was made. Whatever had happened would be worked into every conversation from tomorrow till the day she died of old age in a rest home. But right now Ivory had one more moment to play it aloof. "Thank you, Mr. Rinesfoos. I"m sure that because of you I shall stop being a morning wh.o.r.e and make something useful out of my life."
Shane reached for her hand and brought it to his lips. After applying a light kiss, he said, "Miss Tupelo, it has been a lovely day."
Frankly, I could have s.h.i.t.
35.
Marcella, Andrew, and I walked and Shane rolled a block in silence before I couldn"t stand it anymore. I whined, "Because of you I will stop being a morning wh.o.r.e and make something useful of my life."
"Ivory is actually a very talented young lady," Shane said, although he didn"t explain what that meant.
"Milo"s mother cooks at an Italian restaurant on Beale Street. She likes the work, only the odor of garlic adheres to her fingers. Of course, I solved the problem."
Marcella asked the question I would have died before asking. "Did you really see Elvis Presley?"
"We played miniature golf," Shane said. "He has an eighteen-hole course embedded in the living room carpet."