by Larry Brown
She’s on a big death kick. Has been ever since Daddy died. Wants to join him. She lays in her room every night and prays to die. She thinks if she prays hard enough, God’ll let her die. Or make her die. You can’t talk any sense to her. So finally I just quit. I just started staying in my room all the time. Max can’t do anything with her. And when he gets off from work he doesn’t want to listen to that shit. You can’t blame him. It’s a wonder he hasn’t moved out. Both of us are probably stopping him from finding him a woman to marry and moving out and starting a family of his own.
Asking God to take her. How does anybody even know what God is? Other than love. I told her one time to look at it like this: Say you live off in the woods somewhere, like this tribe they found a while back. And you live a pretty good life, don’t murder or rape anybody, and then die. And you’ve never had a chance to receive the word of God just because the missionaries never could find you. Do you think God is going to send you to hell just because you were never allowed the opportunity to read a Bible? I said Hell, what if you couldn’t even read? She didn’t know how to answer that.
“Daddy started drinking a lot worse after I came back in the shape I’m in. We lost our place. He’d got us to where we had over two hundred acres. Now we’ve got two. He got deeper and deeper in debt. They finally foreclosed on him. It’s just a bunch of shit.”
He closed up on me again. Just turned his head away. Just get to going good and he’d hush. Eyes would roll away from me and you could tell he was thinking about something else.
It didn’t matter. Maybe he just didn’t want to talk while they was mopping the floor and all. We didn’t talk then. Aw I spoke to Hazel and them while they was cleaning up and changing bed sheets and all but he wouldn’t let them change his. Said he hadn’t been on them long enough to need changing.
I didn’t know what was the matter with him. But finally they left and he started talking again. After he got him another beer he did.
“I don’t know how many nights ago this was now. I don’t know how long I’ve been out. But I was in there in my room trying to read. The power was off and it was so hot you couldn’t stand to stay in there. Couldn’t even run the fan without the generator, and I was out of gas.
“I’ve got one of these little Honda generators. The power goes off so much, I bought one. I ran me a pipe through the wall to take the exhaust outside. I got tired of watching a movie and having the power go off. It’s pretty neat. You can hook your TV and your VCR into one outlet and the little sumbitch’ll just sit there and hum. Tell TVA to get fucked.
“Well, she was in there in her room, moaning and all. Praying to die. And Max came in. He goes into her room every night to check on her. And I mean she was just screaming and moaning and praying God to die until I got tired of listening to it. So I just climbed out the window and went down the road to the beer store. I usually just climb out the window instead of walking through the house. If I walk through the house and they see me, they try to talk me into coming out of my room. So it’s easier to just climb out the window. No muss, no fuss. That way they don’t know if I’m busy being passed out in there or what.
“I took a couple of beers with me, hell, it’s about three miles to the beer store. And it was hot as a fresh-fucked fox in a forest fire. I was about out of beer and ice both. Aw hell they told me in the Philippines that they could operate on my head, but it was a chance they might damage me. I didn’t want to take the chance. I’m on hundred percent disability anyway. That’s what I live off of. I just put up with these spells when I have them and wake up later. I wish to hell I knew what happened this time.
“I went around behind the house and looked in her window. I couldn’t tell if she was asleep or not. It was dark in there. I’ve tried to take care of her. Hell, I know it hurts her to not see me, but it hurts her to see me, too. So I just stay in my room a lot. I’ve got plenty to do.
“Night’s about the only time I go out. It’s better for me to move around then. I walk on the side of the road so if I pass out some son of a bitch won’t come along and run over me in the middle of the road thinking I’m a goddamn dog or something.
“It’s kind of nice not to have to work. It’s nice to have that check coming in every month. I keep myself entertained. That’s about all I do. I guess I was wasting my life until I met her. She’ll probably be here later on. Probably just any time. She hasn’t met my family yet. She’ll come see about me when she finds out where I am. Ill introduce you to her when she gets up here. She’s got a car. She can carry me home.
“What it was, she was working in this store I always go to. And it was like close to midnight when I left the house. I took this shortcut down through this old dry creek, Moore Creek. That’s where we were parked when I had this fit, I reckon. Or whatever I had. That’s the last thing I remember. We pulled down in there so nobody would see us. People go down there and fuck all the time. It’s a perfect place. The road’s not open anymore. The bridge caved in and they never built it back when they built the new road. They just took that curve out of it.”
I remember when it was all gravel. We walked everywhere we went. And later on carrying Max. That was while Daddy was still gone. A few days we hired out to Doyle Edwards to chop cotton and make a little money. Four dollars a day. He didn’t want to pay me four because he said I was too little. And she told him to go up to our place and look and see if there was any grass in our cotton. Bad the way a man, some men, anyway, will try to take advantage of a woman when her man’s not around. Couldn’t leave Max with anybody. There wasn’t anybody to leave him with. Had to leave him on a blanket in the shade by the creek at the end of the rows.
All day long in that sun. Swinging a hoe. For four dollars. To get something to eat. God.
He was talking and I was just looking at him. I kept looking at them scratches on his face. Wondered who put them there. And if he even knowed they was there.
He kept talking about this girl, this girl, and I thought, Man, where you gonna find a woman that would mess with you? Cause I mean his face was messed up big time. Just scar tissue. Places he had hair and places wasn’t no hair. Skin grafts. Aw he had a piece of a face but it wasn’t a real face. Them guys I guess do the best they can with what they got to work with. And he’d done said himself they’d do some more if he’d let them. I guess he’d done been in and out of VA hospitals so much he didn’t want to see another one.
I guess that was why he never did ask where he was. I guess he figured it didn’t make no difference.
“So anyhow I walked on over to the store and drank a beer on the way. I knew it was getting late. They’re not supposed to sell beer after midnight. But I went to high school with this old boy who owns it. He always lets me have it. Well I got over there and he wasn’t there. And it was almost one o’clock. I saw this girl sitting behind the counter, and hell, I didn’t know her. And you know, somebody who looks like me, coming in on her at that hour of the night. Shit, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t figure she’d let me have it. But I wanted some beer. I was gonna go back home and smoke some dope and watch One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. Watch old Will smother Jack again. Loved him so damn much he killed him. Which would be a hell of a thing to have to do for somebody. And then when he tears that damn sink out of the floor and throws it through the window. I’ll get high and rewind that last three or four minutes four or five times.
“So I didn’t know what to do. I was just standing out on the front there. She was watching me. I guess she thought I was some kind of a creep. I guess I looked like I was.
“But I went on in and spoke to her, you know, and she spoke, asked me what I wanted. I told her I wanted some beer. She said it was after midnight and she couldn’t sell me any.
“She’s got blond hair. She’s built real nice. I was looking at her breasts and I know she saw it. She’s really just a kid. But very grown up somehow. I’ve sort of got some guilty feelings about some of this. But I noticed she was dr
essed kind of funny for as hot as it was. She had on long pants and a long-sleeved shirt. I mean it was air-conditioned in the store, but it wasn’t that air-conditioned. I didn’t mean to stare at her. She just looked so good it was hard not to.
“I told her I knew Earl and all and we went to high school together and he always let me have it if it was late. And she says Earl was the one who told her not to sell it after midnight and Earl was the one who told her he’d fire her if he caught her doing it. So I felt like a dumbass. But I got kind of pissed off. I mean, you go over there and get a hole shot in your head and then come home and have to listen to some shit from a teenager about buying a little beer after hours. Hell. She wasn’t going to sell it to me. So I just politely went down to the cooler and got two six-packs of Bud and carried it and put it on the counter.
“She asked me what the hell I thought I was doing. I told her I was buying some beer. I told her my name was Walter and I lived down the road and I came in there and got it all the time. I told her not to get upset. She said she wasn’t upset, she just didn’t want to lose her job. I told her there wasn’t any reason to be scared of me. But, hell, it was late, and she was alone in there. She was upset. But I knew what the beer cost. I already had the money out. The sales tax, too. She told me I’d better just get out of there before she called the law. I wasn’t worried about that. I knew I could get away before the law got there. Unless I passed out first.
“Well, I put my money up on the counter. She wasn’t going to ring it up at first. I said fine, don’t ring it up. But I said there the money was anyway. And she just changed all of a sudden. I remember what she said. She said I’m sorry for looking at you. For staring at you, she said. I said well hell, that was okay, most people did. And she reached under the counter and got me a sack. Rang it up. Sacked up my beer. I told her I didn’t mean to scare her. But I told her, a lot of people were scared of me. She said she wasn’t scared, it was just the first job she’d ever had.
“Hell, I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t thinking about trying to get over on her or anything. I figured I’d just take my beer and go back home and watch Nicholson. Get high. She asked me if I was walking and I said yeah. Then she asked me how far away I lived. I told her it was about three miles. She said she knew me, that she’d heard of me, that she’d heard Earl mention me before. And hell, we just got to talking. She said I just surprised her because I walked up and she didn’t hear me, just looked out the window and I was standing there. She asked me if I was fixing to walk back home. I said yeah, but I was thinking about opening me one of those beers before I started, though. If she didn’t care. She said naw, she didn’t care. So I got me one. Then I asked her if she wanted one. She said she wasn’t supposed to drink on duty. I told her she wasn’t supposed to sell me the shit, either. I tried to give her one twice. She wouldn’t take one, though. Went back there and got her a Miller out of the cooler. I thought about getting me some chicken, but hell, they’d cooked it about dinnertime you could tell. It had flies on it and all. I decided I didn’t want any chicken.
“So hell she came on back up there and sat down and opened her beer and lit her a cigarette and told me her name was Beth. I mean it was getting cozy all of a sudden and I couldn’t understand why. And then guess what she does? Starts asking me about going over there. Hell. You don’t want to talk about that shit unless it’s with somebody who was over there. I didn’t want to talk about it. Told her I didn’t want to.
“So she asked me if I knew why I scared her so bad. She reached under the counter and pulled out a dinner plate loaded with sensimilla, about a lid. She’d been cleaning it. Asked me if I wanted to get high. I said Hell yeah. So she rolled one up right quick. It was as tight as a Marlboro. And I mean rolled it in like nothing flat. She said we just needed to go outside and smoke it. So I followed her out back there and we lit it up. We sat on this old drink cooler out there. I knew it was bad shit when I first hit it. I got fucked up almost immediately. It was the best I’d had in a while and I just kept smoking it. I think that’s what messed me up. I’ve noticed that it happens more often when I’ve been smoking a lot. So I try not to do it all the time. We smoked the whole thing, though. I couldn’t hardly talk. I got to looking at her again. And she didn’t care, man. She was sweet.
“We finally went on back inside. Got our beers. I gave her some Visine for the redeye. I was ready for the movie then. I knew it would take me all night to walk back home, just from everything slowing down. I got to thinking about how heavy those two six-packs of beer were gonna get. But, hell, I had to go. So I told her I was fixing to. She asked me what I’s gonna do. I told her just go home and watch a movie. And I don’t even know what in the hell we said. But the next thing I knew she’d done locked the store up and we were out in her car. I remember taking a drink or two of beer. And then the next thing I knew I was waking up.”
He hushed for a while. Turned his head away. I closed my eyes. I wanted to have a dream about Jesus and I had it. Had part of it and made up part of it. I’ve seen Jesus. He just looks like you and me. You could meet Him out on the street and you wouldn’t know Him. I know why He ain’t come back. The world would probably find some way to kill Him again. Don’t think He don’t know how the world is. Seen that when He come down the first time. He give this thing His okay, in a way. He sat on the side of my bed. Had gold dust on His sandals. Sat there scraping it off with one of them little wooden sticks they look down your throat with.
He said, “Listen, Braiden. Ain’t nothing for you to do but lay here. I can’t take your life. This guy over here, that’s something else. I ain’t got no control over what you talk him into. But be careful. You treading on shaky ground here. You know what I’m talking about.”
I said, “Jesus, you know I’m suffering.”
“Yeah, I know it. A lot of people are suffering. I know you believe in Me and God and all. I know you been laying here a long time. Lot of people been laying in a lot of places a long time. A lot of them longer than you.”
I said, “Jesus, I know everything You saying. You know my mama, don’t You?”
He wouldn’t look at me. “Yeah, I know your mama. I ain’t met many better than her. Don’t bring your mama into this. She’s happy where she’s at. But don’t ask no more questions along that line. Some things you ain’t meant to know.”
“Well I figgered You knowed her. She the one raised me. But listen here, how long You reckon I gonna have to lay here if nothin don’t happen?”
The Lord looked a little uneasy then. And see, He can’t tell no lie. I mean, He whipped the coondog shit out of them moneychangers in His temple, but that was something else. He ain’t gonna lie.
He said, “I wish you wouldn’t ask me that, Braiden.” Then He looked around. “You ain’t got any cigarettes in here, have you?”
I told Him they was some over here in this drawer. I told Him I didn’t know what He wanted to be smoking for. He got up and went over to the table and got a couple out. Said I just didn’t know what all He had to put up with. Asked me did I want Him to light me one while He was lighting Him one. I said yessir and please.
He got His going and got me one going and then sat there holding it for me while I smoked. You could tell He had a lot on His mind. And here I was worrying Him some more.
“Look, Braiden. I been around a long time. You know God made man in His image. Made him out of dust and blowed the breath of life into him. Give him Eden, and give him Eve. And they had two sons. And look what happened there. It ain’t been any different ever since. There has always been wars, and there is always going to be wars. Always been people mean enough to kill babies. Always going to be. Some people kill people all their lives, and then get caught, and sentenced to death, and then they want to be Christians. Just to keep from getting fried. And We can’t keep them out. You wouldn’t believe how many death-row murderers We’ve got up there right now.”
“That what You stand for, though,” I said. He let me take
a drag and then pulled it away. Thumped some ashes in the ashtray.
“Yeah, well, but I mean they’ve done stuff that just makes you sick to hear about it. And some little girl or somebody had to go through it. And then she’s got to run into him up there. It just makes for awkward conversation, Braiden.”
I flat out asked Him: “How long I gonna have to lay here, Jesus?”
He looked sad when I said that. He picked up His cigarette and looked out the window. One of them helicopters was starting to come down on the pad. Jesus looked awful sad.
“One more for me,” he said. I guess they was somebody dead on it.
“Jesus,” I said.
“You better talk right to this guy.”
“How long?”
“I can’t promise anything.”
“You know, though. Don’t You, Lord?”
“Yeah. I know.”
I ought not’ve done it. Raised my voice. Not to Him. “Then tell me! How long? How much longer I got to put up with this? Look how long I done put up with it!”
Sure oughten to have done it. Made Him hot. Seen why that little fig tree withered when it didn’t have no figs and He cursed it. Woo. Like to withered me.
“You don’t like living?” He said. “Life’s what He gave you, all of us.”
And damn if I didn’t mess up again.
“He didn’t intend for some of us to be fucked up like this.”
Oo He looked at me like I was the serpent himself. Eyes went cold, and just for a second He forgot Who He was. Voice went down a notch or two.
“Don’t you talk to me like that, Braiden. I don’t like that word.”
“All right, Lord,” I said. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry! But patience is hard after twenty-two years! You blink Your eyes in that length of time! Not me! Jesus, Jesus!”