Dirty Work

by Larry Brown

  I got broke down then. He come over and patted me on the shoulder for a while. I got over it. I straightened myself up and He reached and got some Kleenex and wiped my nose and I got myself right.

  Had my voice meek because I remembered what They said about the lambs.

  “I just want to know if it gonna be much longer.”

  “No, Braiden. It won’t be much longer.”

  “Thank you, Lord.”

  Then He was gone. I opened my eyes. My savior was looking at me. I think he was wanting another beer.

  “I didn’t know where I was when I woke up. There wasn’t a sound anywhere. Like in the jungle at night when it’s so quiet you know something’s fixing to happen. I was lying on the front seat of her car. I had a bunch of dents in my face from being pressed up against the seat. I think she must have tried to move me at first. I was just too heavy for her. I’d burned a hole in my shirt with a cigarette. Spilled beer all over myself.

  “It was getting daylight. I sat up and looked around. I didn’t see her at first. I got me a cigarette and lit it. Beer was all down in the floorboards. I figured she was gone. Then I saw her sitting on a bank by the roadside. We were on a dirt road up in the woods. She had her knees drawn up and her head down on her arms. I don’t know if she’d been crying or what. I hated to even try to explain.

  “I got out. I had to tell her what it was. She raised her head when the interior light came on. But I went ahead and shut the door. I didn’t know what to tell her. It was awful. The truth won’t always set you free.

  “I walked over there where she was. Said I was sorry. I said I should have told her that it might happen. She didn’t say anything for a minute. Finally she said it was okay, she just hated to lose her job. I told her I’d talk to Earl and tell him that I’d talked her into it. She said she guessed she’d better get on back and face the music.

  “It was getting good daylight. I saw some crows flying by. I watched them until they went out of sight. She said she thought I’d died or something at first. Said Boy when it hits you, it hits you, don’t it? She wanted to know what it was. I just told her it was a war wound. She said she guessed I didn’t want to talk about it. I said Right, I don’t want to talk about it.

  “She got up and dusted off her pants. Told me to get in and she’d take me home. Hell, I didn’t want her to take me home. I told her I could walk. She wouldn’t hear it, though. She said she didn’t want me to have to tote all that beer all the way home. I didn’t really want to get back in with her. But I didn’t want to tote that beer, either. So I got in.

  “We didn’t talk much. I opened me another beer. I don’t know why it had to happen then. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t even believe I was in the car with her.

  “We got out to the highway and I told her I could just get out there. She wouldn’t hear that, either. Said she’d take me home. Hell, I didn’t want to walk. Didn’t want to do anything but go back to my room and hide. She took me on home. I guess Mother and Max saw me come in. She let me out right in front of the house. I got my beer out and I was trying to think of something to say. She said it was nice meeting me. And she did something really strange. Well, strange for me. She reached out and touched my hand. Said maybe we could talk sometime.

  “So I said, hell, sure. But I didn’t figure I’d see her again. She had to get on back and open the store. I was hoping Earl hadn’t come by yet and didn’t know the store had been closed half the night. I was hoping like hell he wouldn’t fire her if he did. Because the whole thing was my fault. Anyway she left. And I went on in and went to bed.”

  It come to me then, see, that Walter was the one. Cause like Jesus was a vision, man. But He was here with me, in this room. Sat right here on my bed. Man.

  See, Walter come in here and didn’t know nothing. Didn’t know they’d had him on the stretcher rolling him down the hall and he come alive and put one orderly’s head through a fire extinguisher box, had to have fourteen stitches in his head, and broke another one’s arm for him. Diva told me before she went home. I mean this morning before he even come in the ward. Said he was a wild man. Said his face was all clawed up from a accident down in Mississippi and she was just walking along behind the thing they was rolling him on. And said man this dude just raised up all of a sudden and grabbed this boy’s head and slammed it like somebody dunking a basketball against that box on the wall. Took four of them to hold him, she said. And wouldn’t have done it then if she hadn’t got the needle in him right then. So I knowed. I knowed.

  Hey, it’s all right. I ain’t manipulating nobody. Man just have to look at the whole thing himself.

  He laid there a while thinking his own stuff. Had them eyes just staring out the window. And it ain’t even nothing to see. Sky. Clouds.

  He asked me if I was tired of him talking and I said Naw man, go on, I’m listening to you. So he started, about his mama and them, why they ain’t with him, about his girl. He kept on talking about her, how she was gonna come and see him and all. But something was wrong. He acted like maybe he knowed more than he made out like he knowed. What he acted like was he knowed what had happened. I don’t know. Ain’t got to reading minds yet. But he had something heavy on his head, I tell you that.

  He’s talking about how she got her job at that store and he got his check every month. He’s talking about getting married to this girl. Talking about buying a trailer. Then got to talking about movies. Got to talking about something called Doctor Strange Glove. And who all was in it and how he was gonna let her watch it and all of a sudden he jumped over on James Earl Jones. My man. Asked me did I know he was from Tallahatchie County, Mississippi, and I said Shit.

  Said Man what you think I am a recluse? I mean I didn’t raise up much. Raised up a little. I said Man I know of my people who is famous. I said What you think I do, just lay up here and be ignorant of everything?

  I told him. We got a library here. Got plenty of good books, too. Only sometimes you might be wanting you a good book and don’t know what you want. I mean you don’t know the title or the arthur or none of that shit. All you got to do is just tell one of these striped ladies when they come around every afternoon you’d like something from the library and would she please get it. I told him one time I did that a long time ago, first time I did it, and well I said I want something about the Civil War. And this was a nice old lady. She went down there and brought me up about three or four big books on the Civil War with lots of pictures. And for a while she set there and turned the pages for me. Then she asked me would I like to see and read about the black soldiers in the Civil War and I looked at her and said Yes ma’am I believe I would. So we got to looking at that. Man them dudes looked bad back then. They some of em probably wasn’t but one generation off the boat. And it told right there in the book that some of them was the most feared regiments in the war. Said man they’d go to the bayonets in a minute. And you ought to seen them things. About eighteen inches long, razor tips, run you through like a sword. And I thought, man, steal you from one country and take you to another and have to wind up fighting for that country. Makes sense, though. What they did to us. Take us from our country over to their country and make you fight for that country.

  This old lady was good to me. She turned the pages for me a long time and then she got up and said she’d be back after a while. And which I got mad at her at first cause she’d stopped. Couldn’t do nothing by myself. Look at the covers. Started thinking all kinds of bad shit about white people again. Cause I wanted to look at them books.

  I told Walter after a while she come back. Had some stuff with her. It was two TV trays taped together on one end with this block of wood in the middle. Where one could lay flat on your lap and the other one stand up about forty-five degrees for you to lay a book on. So she laid that down on my nubs and it set there and she took one of them books and opened it up and it just laid there. I was fixing to thank her and I mean man I was feeling bad about what I’d been thinking about white
people in general like how they was the ones got me in this mess to begin with when she said she’d done figured out how for me to turn the pages, too. I said Naw. She said Yeah. Pulled out two little old wood sticks, and some tape. Taped them damn sticks up here on my arms so I could reach down and just catch the corner of that page and turn it. Hold the other page down with the other stick. I mean it took a while to get good with it. But I could lay there and read any damn book I wanted to. Magazine. Newspaper.

  And I told him that was how I knew all about James Earl Jones. Told him I read Jet a lot. I didn’t tell him how long I stay on the page got the sister in the bikini in it. Or the trips I take on that.

  But hell, I guess I fucked up anyway. Couldn’t wait, see. Had to go on and just jump right on him with it. Too impatient.

  Well he give me an opening anyway. Started talking about James Earl and The Great White Hope. And they just wasn’t nothing he could tell me. Cause I did it, I know it, but I raised so much hell up here one night with these motherfuckers that I made em turn it over on WTBS at twelve-oh-five so I could watch it. I watched it, too. I mean, they can watch these game shows and shit operas all day long. I want to see me some drama when the sun go down. I don’t want to be watching something thinking what’s in the frigerator, I want to be watching something thinking What is this dude gonna do now?

  But that’s what we got on the movies about. I asked him had he seen a good one, a old one but a good one, about them young lions. He said yeah. Sort of settled back in the bed. Said it was a damn good movie. Went to naming the actors. Brando. Clift. Dean Martin. You could tell he liked that movie and had watched it more than once.

  I asked him did he remember that German captain or whatever he was, the one who had that fine-looking snake that drank that vodka straight?

  He said yeah, he remembered her. Said damn she was fine. I said oom hoom she was. But I said You remember what happened to that guy? That German officer. Old Marlon’s boss.

  He said yeah, he got blinded and put in a hospital. He said but he was a dirty son of a bitch anyway. Said he shot that blinded guy after they ambushed his whole company. Said that’s how the Germans was. Said he knew how the Germans was. Said didn’t nobody have to tell him nothing about the Germans.

  And I don’t know why he went off on that. He didn’t say nothing for a minute. I asked him did he remember what happened to that German officer in that movie. About old Marlon going to see him and him asking Marlon to bring him something. He looked like he was thinking about something a long way off. He nodded his head real slow. And everything slowed down when he looked at me. Said it was a bayonet, and I said, yeah, that was right.

  I asked him did he remember when he saw that movie the first time sitting there thinking about what that guy wanted that bayonet for? And he said yes, he did.

  I asked him what did he think about that.

  All he did was look at me.

  Then he whispered, where I could just barely hear it, Why you son of a bitch.

  He reached and rang the buzzer but he never did quit looking at me. When the nurse come on and asked him what did he want he said something to make him sleep. She said well, it wasn’t time for no sleeping shot, it was more like time for lunch. He mashed that button again. When she answered that time he told her if he didn’t have a shot in him to make him sleep in two minutes he was fixing to get up and kick somebody’s ass.

  About a minute later one come in there and told him to roll over. She raised his nightgown and popped him in the ass with a needle. Pulled his gown down and rolled him back over. Then she left. He was still looking at me.

  He said You son of a bitch, and then closed his eyes.

  What the hell does he mean talking that kind of shit to me. Like I ain’t got enough on my mind already, don’t know what the hell happened, where everybody’s at, where’s Beth, did I know what he wanted with a goddamn bayonet. James Earl Jones. Be damned if I’ll drink any more of his damn beer. Where the hell’s he even getting it anyway. You can’t have that shit in a VA hospital. Damn I need to piss but I think I’ll just lay here a minute and then get up later and go do it. I bet I’m either in Montgomery, Alabama, or Memphis, Tennessee, one. Ought to go down and visit the nut ward, see if I can find old Sherman. See if his ass is still in the can. Crazy son of a gun. Like to never got him off that ledge. Would have splattered his brains all over those concrete steps. Just had all he could take. Two tours and two women. A twenty-one-year-old alcoholic. Boy he could pour that shit down. Probably kicked him out with a bad discharge. Just a zombie in a room with a U.S. Government robe on. Didn’t even know us. They had him tranked out probably. We don’t want you to hurt yourself or nobody else. Especially not none of us. Waste of a good man. Waste of a lot of good men. Boy I need to piss. Believe I’ll get up and go in just a minute. So sleepy though. Sweepy sweepy. Get me one of them bedpans. Call that nurse. Ma’am, would you come in here and hold my penis while I urinate? My member? You remember my member? And would you bring a long piece of surgical tubing so I can suck some suds without having to get up? Not have to move? Lay here and watch a movie. Old Gregory Peck or somebody. James Earl Jones. You better get up and go piss if you’re going to. If you’re going to.

  Well, after they stuck that shit in him it was all over with. I put too much on him too soon. Ought to knowed he was under a lot of stress. Couldn’t even talk to him then. Couldn’t do nothing but lay there and look at him.

  They take your arms and legs you can’t do nothing. Ain’t no existence for a man. Noticed he never said nigger. Don’t think it was in his vocabulary. He didn’t even say black son of a bitch. Just son of a bitch. Which made me think he was too good a man. But I knew it would take a very good man. Done told him I wished I was dead. So it wasn’t like it was unexpected. Just tried to lay it on him too soon.

  Didn’t know how long he’d stay out this time. Didn’t know how much they’d shot him with. Usually they give em enough to keep em down about four hours. That’s for a average-sized man. Somebody like him, somebody that big would more than likely have to have more. Like drinking. Goes by weight, not by size.

  Laid there all day. They come in and fed me lunch and supper. Figured they’d slap the glucose to him but they didn’t.

  I didn’t go nowhere. Thought about Jesus some. How anybody could be so mean to Him as to drive nails through Him. Them Romans was some sorry motherfuckers. No wonder all them volcanoes blowed up on em. You don’t think the Lord made that happen? Shit. He punished them people for years. Burnt em alive.

  Diva finally come in about dark. Brought some more beer and ice. Sat down and talked to me for a while. I told her what all happened. She said Well you just in too big a hurry. Trying to lay too much on him at one time. Say he all confused anyway, don’t even know what he gonna do himself. Said you gonna have to take it easy on him. She looked over at him. Wonder what he looked like before his face got all messed up, she said.

  Said she wanted to tell him what happened but she just couldn’t do it. Looked at me. Hadn’t been for you I woulda, she said. He don’t need to be in here. He done had enough happen to him. He don’t even know what all done happened to him. Then she started crying.

  I asked her how many times had I done told her not to be crying in here with me? She said she wasn’t crying over me. I said Then what the hell you crying over? Him? She just looked at him. Then she started crying again.

  Hell. Women. Can’t do nothing with em. Half the time they won’t even tell you what they crying over. And you just have to lay there and listen to it. It or the TV one.

  She finally quit. But she was acting strange. Kept looking at him like she knowed something I didn’t. I asked her did she bring us anything to smoke. She said yeah but it wasn’t no need in her giving it to me now. He don’t need it nohow, she said. And she said What you mean giving him that beer to drink? Said Don’t you know that’s bad for him? Said that was probably the reason he was in here right now, drinking too much with th
at head injury he had. Said Why don’t you think about somebody besides yourself once in a while?

  I said What the hell you going off on me for? I said the man wanted a beer, I give him one. Well don’t be giving him no more, she said. I said How in the hell do you know what’s wrong with him? She said Cause I done looked at his chart. Said he was on phenobarbital and wasn’t supposed to drink nothing.

  I said What time’d you get in last night? She said None of your business. I said yeah I knew what she was doing. Probably shacked up with somebody. I told her she better watch who she was messing with. Told her it wasn’t like it used to be. And she just sulled up then. Don’t like me telling her what to do.

  It made her get off my ass about giving him the beer, though.

  She kept on looking at him. I said You want that white man? She said I don’t want nothing from him. You the one wanting something from him, she said. Then she got all huffy and left.

  Left the beer, though.

  After it got dark he was still out. Laying in his bed like a log. Thought maybe they’d done put too much in him. And then he might have been just laying there like he was asleep. He didn’t move, though. I watched him. Wasn’t no wonder he got hot. Hated I asked him about that bayonet stuff then. Wanted to hear about that woman. That girl. I couldn’t figure out why she’d want to mess with him. I mean, I know that sound bad, but his face was a mess. I mean I ain’t exactly no social celebrity myself. But at least I got a face. May be all I got. He didn’t even have that, hardly.

  Got too dark to see him good finally. They don’t leave no lights on in here much. They just turn on a little one if they need it. They don’t hardly ever need it. Ain’t nobody in here going to get any worse than they already is.

  I thought about going somewhere. But that get old too. Done about wore my imagination out going places. And wasn’t sleepy. Wanted him to talk some more. Wanted Diva to come back and let my mind free.