Every conversation I had with Lloyd seemed like two unconnected conversations spliced together. "What were you doing in Dad"s creel?"
He looked up from his hands. "You threw it at me, remember? You said take what money I needed and you sprinted off to the lounge."
"I don"t think I sprinted."
Marcella turned to me with tears tracking down her cheeks. "You sprinted. We all agreed that was the word."
Hugo Sr. let the bag drop. He said, "If you leave, I will follow to the end of the Earth. My baby shall never cry without his father hearing and coming to his aid."
Andrew crawled under the truck with another matchstick. His voice came from behind the inside dual. "I saw you pork Mrs. Gilliam."
My body speaks its needs in one-word sentences. "Shower," it says. "Whiskey." "Sleep." Right then it said "Coffee." Whenever I need something I need it right now and I need it real bad.
I sat in the Golden Sandstorm Cafe in a window booth, listening to "Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree" on the dishroom radio. Some joker leaves prison and the whole darn bus cheers when his girlfriend takes him back. Had to rank with "Cotton Eye Joe" as the worst songs in world history. I"m not a sn.o.b or anything, but bad taste offends me.
Here"s what I thought about over coffee as I looked out the window at trucks kicking up dust on U.S. 287: I thought about the ever-closing gap between the time I first feel the urge for something and the absolute last moment I can go without it without screaming. My body needs were becoming n.a.z.is of immediate gratification.
Except in the one area where gratification used to count most. It"d been many months, maybe even years, since my body said "s.e.x." Had I lost the need, let it slip into wistful-stuff-from-my-youth, or had it merely gone into hibernation, someday to awaken with a hungry roar to devour whatever object with a p.e.n.i.s happened to be standing nearby?
Sometimes I hoped it was lost forever, other times I hoped to roar again. More starve-or-binge mentality. For someone who didn"t want s.e.x I sure thought about it a lot.
"Stand by for news!"
All right. I hadn"t known what time it was or what station carried Paul"s show or anything, and here he was. My lucky day. Of course, Amarillo might be the one town with Paul on every station, but you take your omens of an upswing wherever you find them.
Paul"s voice, or G.o.d"s, or Dad"s, depending on your suspension of disbelief, came echoing across America"s heartland with the Truth. All the Truth, nothing but the Truth, so help us G.o.d.
I wasn"t sure, didn"t even care, about Truth"s content-Paul was against hijacking, obscenity in schools in Illinois, and the nation of Argentina, for the workingman and Kerr canning jars, and split on Watergate. I think he took the everybody-does-it-so-get-off-Nixon"s-back stance. Or maybe he condemned the stance, the dish machine made it hard to follow. Paul had a funny line about Chuck Colson"s grandmother.
Content didn"t matter. What mattered was one person in the whole universe who was sure of something. Paul Harvey gave my life consistency. Like showers and Yukon Jack, he was there when all else broke up and floated away. When Paul read the daily b.u.mper snicker-"Have Grandchild, Will Baby-sit"-I almost wanted to cry. Cliff and Marjene Henderson were celebrating seventy-five years of wedded bliss. Take that, Dothan Talbot. A street woman in Little Rock had searched thirty years for the son she gave up as a baby, then was arrested for vagrancy and when she went up before the judge, glory be, there he was. The woman is now living comfortably in the judge"s guest room, cared for by her doting baby boy.
Only in America. How many mothers gave up their sons before one of them made it as a story on Paul Harvey News?
Marcella did her timid entry thing with Hugo Jr. through the screen door. After Paul, and the reunited family story, I actually didn"t mind her joining me. When Marcella ordered breakfast, I said, "I"ll take whatever she"s having."
What she was having was skimmed milk, Texas toast, and hash browns. Texas toast is when you take a loaf of white bread and drop it in the French fryer.
"Shane tells me your marriage failed also," Marcella said. Her bun leaked strands of black hair across her high cheekbones, and she hadn"t fixed her face after the tear session. Hugo Jr. drooled on her shoulder on this smock thing that covered her chain-store blouse. Gave her a Grapes of Wrath look.
"Yes, my marriage failed also."
"Did your husband commit adultery?"
"Dothan nailed anything that didn"t fight back."
Her hands reminded me of a lawn full of gra.s.shoppers in late summer. On first glance you think Peaceful lawn, but give it a second look and you realize peaceful is actually chaos.
Marcella"s face was void of a sense of humor. "Hugo Sr. is adulterous."
"Throw his a.s.s into the street."
We both paused over our fried bread to picture Marcella throwing anybody"s a.s.s anywhere. She adjusted the collar of her smock. "Is that how you treated your husband when he was"-pause-"with another?"
I thought about Dothan and Sugar and whose a.s.s wound up in the street. "That"s what I would do, not what I did. What I did was drink whiskey until I didn"t care anymore."
She stared into her milk the way I did coffee or alcohol. I don"t see how you can fathom deep stuff in milk because the surface doesn"t let in light.
"I"m tempted to drink whiskey, I really am." Her eyes lifted to mine. "Only I don"t think I could ever drink enough not to care that Hugo was intimate with Annette Gilliam. I"ll never be able to look at him again without seeing her kissing his lips. They even did it in the Oldsmobile once. Can you imagine doing it in a car-like an animal."
The tendency was to belittle-"What animal does it in a car, Marcella?"-but I squashed that tendency. The woman left her husband because he nailed on the side. Timid flower or not, she had more courage than I did.
"I can"t sleep," she said. "Whenever I close my eyes I see them in the public schools taking memory photos of the little children, then they go out in the parking lot and she touches him in the Oldsmobile, and he says, "I love you, Annette Gilliam." How could he do that, then come home and kiss our babies and touch me with the same hands that touched her?"
I gave my explanation. "Men are sc.u.m."
Marcella"s eyes were all need. "My life is a nightmare."
I"m no good at eye contact with women. I always think they can see what I"m hiding. I don"t know what I"m hiding, I never looked at it myself, but it"s dirty and weak and I can hide it from men but not from women.
I pulled away from her eyes to look out the window at Andrew, who seemed to be peeing into a Cadillac"s gas tank. "When I came back to GroVont from college, I decided I"d been hurt as much as I could stand. I married Dothan because I thought nothing he did would ever hurt me."
"If he can"t hurt you, you don"t love him."
"That"s the point, Marcella."
She stared at me. I know her background. She was raised to believe marriage for any reason other than love, even if the reason is to avoid pain, is the worst sin a woman can commit.
"Was it true?" she asked. "Has he ever hurt you?"
Andrew finished peeing and began stuffing gravel into the gas tank. I could see Hugo Sr. sitting in his Oldsmobile in front of the Zippy Mart next door. He was drinking something from a thermos. I thought about Dothan and the Wyoming Family Violence Protection Act that took my baby and gave it to him.
"No," I said. "He hasn"t found a way to hurt me."
"There"s Shane," I said. The wheelchair came around the west corner of the fake adobe motel. Far as I could tell, nothing existed beyond that corner but black dirt.
Marcella slid from the booth and stood up with Hugo Jr. on her hip. "I hope he didn"t spend the night outdoors. My brother is p.r.o.ne to pneumonia and death." Shane didn"t look p.r.o.ne to death. He was playing his harmonica and bobbing his head as a little girl in a costume pushed the chair.
"The doctors told him to get rest and never catch a cold."
"Why should Shane be more p.r.o.ne to pneumonia than you or me?" I asked.
"It"s his disease." Marcella fished in her vinyl purse and came out with a couple of crumpled dollar bills. At least someone else had money on this trip. "He has baseball disease. He"ll die of it for sure someday, but most people with baseball disease catch pneumonia and die before the other stuff gets them."
I did some extensive two-plus-two work. "You mean Lou Gehrig"s disease?"
"One of those players. I always forget which one." She leaned forward and squinched her eyes up to peer out the window. "Who"s that with him?"
18.
The little girl in costume wasn"t a little girl at all, at least not in the sense most people give little girl, which is young girl.
"You think it"s a blond Indian?" Marcella asked as we crossed the gravel lot between the cafe and motel.
"More like a surfer chick," I said, having never seen a surfer chick except on TV. The girl was blond, but not wheat blond, more legal-pad yellow, and she had a tan the color of granola. Her bangs were long and thick as the hair on the back of her head-the bowl look. She wore wire-rim gla.s.ses, a red rag bikini top, and an ankle-length skirt made from a tapestry. With every step she bounced on her toes, as if she had more energy than her body could handle. Between her head-bobs and Shane"s they looked like a pair of toys you"d set in the back window of your car.
When Marcella and I came within earshot, Lloyd was rubbing his leg like crazy. His voice carried a pitch high. "Does she have drugs on her? We can"t transport no drugs."
Shane took the girl"s hand off his shoulder and kissed her knuckles. I don"t know if he"d scored or what, but he sure wanted us to think so. His flabby face was all atwitch with winks, grins, and eyebrow arches. "Certainly she has no drugs. Critter is into pure nature highs. You aren"t transporting any illegal drugs are you, Critter?"
"Heck no, I promise." The girl with the G.o.d-awful name did a cross-my-heart-hope-to-die thing with her right hand. "I did them all up in Tuc.u.mcari. We fixed psychedelic mushroom spaghetti with ground hash meatb.a.l.l.s. Was a bit chewy, but boy, did it f.u.c.k your head. I was in Tuc.u.mcari for a Captain Beefheart concert." She leaned her face toward Marcella. "Are you into Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band?"
Marcella didn"t nod yes or shake no or anything, just looked at Critter like you look at a snake in a zoo. Even Andrew came over to give her his openmouthed attention.
"Captain Beefheart is my role model," Critter said. "Everything he does is meaningful on the third level. Have you ever listened really close to "Frying Pan"?"
She put her palms atop Shane"s head and lifted her eyes to the Texas sky. "Go downtown, you walk around, a man comes up, says he"s gonna put you down. You try to succeed to fulfill your need, then a car hits you and people watch you bleed." She bent to kiss Shane"s forehead. "Think about it," she said.
Shane pumped up proud enough to have an aneurysm. Both his shoes were untied, and his shirt was b.u.t.toned wrong. I didn"t put much stock in that. Shane"s the kind of guy would b.u.t.ton his shirt wrong on purpose to call attention to the fact he"d recently been disrobed.
He bent his head straight back and looked up at her chin and said, "I understand."
Critter raised on her toes and swiveled to me. "You"re the alcoholic, aren"t you? It"s not your fault, at least not the fault of the you you are now. Addiction is the spirit"s way of working out karma from another life."
I blinked twice and decided she wasn"t real. "We about ready to pull out?" I asked Lloyd.
He aimed his Jesus eyes at the gravel, which gave me a funny feeling. Bad news was on the way. Lloyd said, "Shane offered Critter a ride to Oklahoma. We"re going that way."
Her voice was an Okie accent mixed with fried brains, if that"s not a redundancy. "I really appreciate it, man. The chick Glenda I hitched out with split with one of Beefheart"s roadies to homestead in Canada. Land is free there. The guy knows a place that sells Jeeps packed in grease all the way from World War Two for fifty-five dollars. Wrap your mind around that. Homesteading in Canada would be such a trip. The guy has wolves in his yard and everything."
I broke in. "Wrap your mind around fat chance. Lloyd, what"s she, sixteen, seventeen tops?"
"Eighteen," Shane said.
"That"s runaway, not to mention statutory if Bozo here got his dipstick wet."
Shane winked. "I"ll never tell." Critter kissed his greasy head again.
I plowed on. "We"ve got a hundred cases of illegal Coors in the trailer. We can"t turn Moby d.i.c.k into a teenie-bopper bus line."
Critter touched me. I couldn"t believe the nerve. She reached across Shane and touched my arm. "You"re carrying some incredibly heavy medicine on your second level. I have a ma.s.sage technique that may ease your pain."
I said, "Jesus Christ."
Shane leaned back so his ear brushed her red bikini top. "The beer isn"t illegal until we cross the Arkansas line. Besides, little missy, it"s not your say, you are simply along for the ride. Moby d.i.c.k belongs to my good friend Lloyd."
"I"m buying the gas, I say she stays."
Shane took a stand. "If Critter stays, I stay."
We-me, Marcella, Shane, Critter, even little Andrew-looked to Lloyd. He made an unlikely leader, with his Adam"s apple and stringy arms, but we made an unlikely gang of followers. He gazed off across the Panhandle awhile, then nodded once and looked back at me. I knew I"d lost the power play. People forced to choose always first look at the person they"re about to disappoint.
He said, "Shane"s stuck with me for three years. He stood by me through detox. I can"t leave him behind."
Shane"s whole face went gloat.
Critter said, "Far out, man, I"m into loyalty."
Dear Dad, This picture is either a cowboy riding a very large rabbit or a rabbit under a very small cowboy. Proportion in Texas is shot to h.e.l.l. The state is like Wyoming, only flat and the sky and earth are the wrong color. Makes for disorientation.
I am living in an ugly cartoon.
Wish you weren"t dead, Maurey ***
Critter scampered back into the fields to fetch her duffel bag, and I walked over to Zippy Mart to drop my postcard in a mailbox. On the way back Hugo rolled down his window and motioned me over.
"Where are you taking her?" he asked.
I lied. "Mexico. We"re going to Mexico first, then maybe Costa Rica."
He said, "I"ll never stop following her."
I leaned one hand on the door handle. "If you want her so much and can"t live without her, why nail Annette Gilliam?"
He rolled the window shut.
Back at the motel Shane was circling the rig, organizing the transfer of Marcella"s suitcase, several spare tires, Sam Callahan"s tent, and a couple of engine parts I couldn"t identify from M.D. to the horse trailer. Whenever I tried to talk to him he pretended something urgent had come up and he took off, arms pumping.
I discovered a really neat way to get the attention of a man in a wheelchair. You take a tire tool and stick it between his spokes.
"What?" Shane demanded.