Dirty Work

by Larry Brown

  If he was asleep, he wasn’t snoring.

  “You got a boyfriend?”

  “Not a steady one. Ain’t got time for it.”

  “I bet he wishes you’d make time for it. What do you do that keeps you so busy?”

  “Take care of him.”

  “All the time?”

  “Just about. I come see him on weekends when I’m off. See if he needs anything.”

  She sat back down on the bed. It was quiet in there. I laid there sipping my beer. I knew there was plenty more.

  “How much longer till daylight?” I said.

  She got up and looked out the window, then looked down at me.

  “Long time yet,” she said. “Sometimes the nights are long in here. You know what I mean?”

  “I thought nights were the same everywhere.”

  “Not quite,” she said. She patted my leg one time and said she’d see me later. I just nodded. I was listening to her nylons again, the little swishes fading away with the white glow of her dress.

  I didn’t say nothing. Just kept laying there with my eyes closed. Didn’t know how to begin again. Didn’t want him to ask for another shot. I wanted him to stay awake and talk to me. Wanted him to get some more of that beer in him. Knowed it wasn’t no problem. Just had to let him do a little thinking. Just thought I’d give him a little more time alone. See what we could come up with.

  A answer, if there was one.

  It was so easy to just lay there and drink beer. It was dark, and everybody was asleep, and nobody was going to catch me and take it away from me. Besides, I needed it. It was helping. But I was worried like hell.

  The only thing I could figure out was that Beth got scared again when it happened. She probably had to go for help. Or maybe she just went on home after they got me. It had to be something like that. It was no major problem. Mama would call, and I’d tell her I was all right, and then they could come get me and I could go home. I was ready for some home.

  I could explain everything to Max and Mama later. I knew they were worried about me. Something like this happens, you can’t help but worry. They’d already tried to talk me into having that operation. For years. And so much that I got tired of hearing it. I had a bad argument about it with Max one day. Here’s one example of the asshole I can be. I told him I’d slap the shit out of him if he didn’t shut up about it.

  I’m a real nice guy.

  Hell, all he was trying to do was help me. I passed out one day in the yard a while back and they like to never got me inside, they said. We were just out there looking at the garden. I’d told Mama I’d get out there that evening and hoe her peas and stuff. Then bam. Woke up at five o’clock the next morning, both of them on stools right next to the couch. Worried as hell. I just went on to my room. Didn’t say shit. Hello goodbye kiss my ass or nothing. But damn.

  They don’t know how I feel. People can’t tell you they know how you feel. Wear a face like this around for a while. See people cringe when they look at you. Then tell me you know how I feel. Start watching Easy Rider and wake up with snow on the screen. Then tell me you know how I feel. Max and them can’t tell me what I need to do. Because I don’t know what I need to do myself.

  I don’t guess I have to be such an asshole about it, though.

  The way I look at it, I only have a few hours left. Mama will call back in the morning. I can talk to her and find out about Beth and tell her to send Max after me. I can stand it that long, surely.

  I looked over at Braiden. Jesus, his arms. His legs. And twenty-two years on a bed. The shit just comes down and sometimes it lands on you. Or the guy next to you. If you’re lucky, the guy next to you.

  I got me another beer. I wasn’t a bit sleepy. I knew I could make it till daylight. Till time to leave, if that’s what they were going to let me do.

  Then I thought: I can leave. He can’t.

  I was even promising myself that I’d come back and see him, knowing all the time it was a damn lie. I couldn’t wait to get out of here. And I damn sure wasn’t coming back unless it was flat on my back.

  I didn’t have any answers ready when he started talking to me again.

  “Well. I see you still awake. Diva been in here? Aw. She done gone, huh?

  “Naw, I don’t think I want one right now. I might take one later. But you help yourself to all you want. Shit, man, I’m drawing a check, too. Got all kinds of money in the bank. I even got some CDs. It just goes in there and makes more money. Man. What I could do now if I could get up and around.

  “Man, you think about it. I’m drawing pretty good money now. Don’t even see it. It just goes into a draft. That old interest just piles up and piles up. Diva fixed it all up for me. She take care of all my stuff for me, my banking and all. It don’t cost me nothing to stay in here. Government pays for that. Twenty-two years, man, it adds up. They ain’t nothing I can do with it anyway. It ain’t doing me no good. Ain’t never going to spend none of it. Ain’t got nothing to buy.

  “Man, you take just a thousand dollars. Just say for a year. And just say seven percent interest. First year you got a thousand and seventy dollars. And you keep piling it up. And man in twenty-two years it done built up. That ain’t no small loaf of bread. I get a statement every so often. It’s a miracle what that money does when you let it stay in there. I had a guy come see me one day wanted me to invest in some stocks and bonds. I told him, Shit, I ain’t fucking with no stocks and bonds. What I want to be risking my money for when it’s insured where it is and making all that other money?

  “This hadn’t happened to me, I probably wouldn’t have nothing. Houseful of kids. Working in some factory somewhere. House payments.

  “I would have like to tried it, though. Just to see how it was. Yeah. Wife and kids. A whole family. Leg down every night if you want to. Supper on the table when you come in from work. Watch them younguns grow up.”

  “Hell, man. Diva said Mama called up here to talk to me. And they’ve been here. Her and Max. I can’t figure out what’s going on.

  “I reckon it was while they had me knocked out. I wish to hell somebody would tell me something. I hope they let me out of here in the morning.

  “I’ve got to cut down on my drinking. After tonight I will. I haven’t been taking my medicine. I know I drank too much that night.

  “We went up this old logging road. Got off the highway. I just wanted to talk to her. It wasn’t very late. We got the quilt and spread it out and got the beer out of the car. She had us a couple of joints rolled up. So we smoked about half of one of them. The moon was out. It was nice, you know? I mean I haven’t spent any time with a woman in so long.

  “Hell, you know what I mean.

  “Ache, yeah, right, you ache. Man. How you ache. I wanted to go slow. Be careful. I hadn’t figured out what was going on yet.

  “We messed around a little. Nothing heavy. It was nice just to be able to lay up next to her. We were so high, and everything was so slow. We just laid there and listened to it. There was all kinds of stuff to hear once you got to listening to it. You could hear cars way the hell off on the highway. Hear those tree frogs, and see like it was daylight.

  “It’s not like I’m telling the whole world or anything. I’m just telling you. Well, we got to messing around, and she unbuttoned her shirt. I think I told you she was built pretty good. And, man. Man.

  “You ready for a beer now? Let me get you one. Hell, I might as well drink one, too. Remind me to put some more in there later. Ill just get up here on your bed again.

  “There. I don’t know how to explain it. I’ll tell you what it was like, Braiden. It was like I was a baby. That’s how it was. I felt more comfort, and more safety, and … love, than I’ve felt in a hell of a long time.

  “I had a girl over there one time. Thought I was in love with her. I was gonna bring her back over here. Marry her. Have me some beautiful little black-headed kids. That’s when I was new. Nobody told me. I mean you stay out on the line for a co
uple of months and then come back in and get a little time off and you go back to see her, right? What? Did I expect her to stay pure? With eight thousand other marines with money in their pockets? I guess I did. Me and a guy from California had a real bad little scrape over her. I mean with knives. And she wasn’t even worth it. Just a whore.

  “Beth wasn’t like that. I was turned on to her. She looked good. It wasn’t just a sexual thing. I mean, there was that, sure, but then it was something else too. And see, she’d already given me a hint. I just hadn’t picked up on it. I should have known something, I guess. Hell, look at me. That should have told me something. I didn’t know why, but I knew we fit together, that we belonged together. That’s how I felt.”

  Yeah. Fit together. Lord didn’t we fit together. It was better with her than it was with Sharon Neal all those nights in the back of the truck. Right in the middle of the cotton patch. In the cotton pen. Anyplace. Every place. God she’s fat now. Huge. She was beautiful. Sixteen. Sweet sixteen.

  “Well, Beth started asking me all these questions. And I would have told her anything. She wanted to know what happened to me. So hell, I told her. Started telling her. Just about that day, going over there looking for them people and getting hit and all, all the time I stayed in the hospital at Subic Bay, what the bullet did to me. How I passed out sometimes. I said that was what had happened the night before. And then again the next afternoon. That afternoon. I just told her the whole thing. And she listened, never said a word, just held me. Until I got through.

  “Then she started talking in this real strange, quiet voice. Like what she was telling hadn’t happened to her, but to somebody else. And I found out what happened, why I was with her, why she thought we were supposed to be together.

  “She said they had this neighbor when she was little. And he had this big black Chow dog he kept in his back yard. She was scared of it. Wouldn’t even go near the fence. It had these eyes, she said, with something crazy inside for her. But only for her. The damn thing just terrified her. I think she was five. And her aunt and some of her kinfolks came over one day and her mama carried them all in the house and left her out in the yard. She said her daddy had fixed her up a sandbox and she went around in the back yard and started playing in it. She didn’t know whether he jumped the fence or what. She just heard something behind her and it was him. Said he didn’t even growl or nothing. Just started biting her. He had her foot to start with. She kicked him and got up and tried to run, but he grabbed her in her back and pulled her down. Said it was a big dog. Probably weighed more than she did if she was only five. She tried to push him off with her hands. He bit every one of her fingers, both thumbs. And she was screaming the whole time but nobody heard her. They were all sitting in there with the air conditioner running. I don’t know how long it went on. She said a long time. The dog had blood all over his head. Her blood. She said she guessed he would have killed her. But the garbagemen came up the driveway to get the garbage and saw her under him. She said she’d never forget that. She said this little short nigger man. Great big arms. He’d done bit her up and down both legs, all over her stomach. He’d bitten a bone in her left arm in two. And that guy ran up and grabbed him by the neck and pulled him off of her. He bit him one time, then the guy doubled up his fist and hit him between the eyes. They threw him down on the concrete and killed him with a shovel, she said. Beat him to death. And just kept on beating him. Stomped him. Just kept on stomping him. Which I guess it scared them. They probably thought she was dead. And I imagine she looked like she was. Hell, blood all over her. She lost almost three pints. Almost died. It’s a wonder she didn’t. Hell. A grown man will die from that sometimes. You’ve seen that. Shock and blood loss. I know I have. It could have gotten you, right? Sure. I mean you must have had some terrible damage. What? Did you have a corpsman tie everything off? That’s probably what saved you. What saved me, a corpsman. I had pretty massive blood loss out of the top of my head. But they had blood on the chopper that came for me. I don’t know how much they put through me. I had emergency surgery in a field hospital before they put me on the plane. I don’t remember any of that shit. That’s just what they told me.

  “What were you hit with? AK? Well. It’s a hell of a weapon.

  “She said her daddy liked to killed the guy who had the dog. They put him in jail over it. I didn’t know what to say. We lit us a couple of cigarettes and just laid there and smoked for a while. She said she hated for me to see her legs but she guessed sometime I’d have to. She didn’t think anybody would want her. That’s what it was.

  “Hell. What else could I do? I fastened her clothes back together. We got to talking about how one little thing could mess up your whole life. Just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Same with me, same with her. Hell, man. Same with you.

  “I mean you can’t change that shit, though. I’ve thought about it. You can’t change anything. She said her mama always thought God had punished her for things she’d done by letting that dog get ahold of her. Her mama died in Whitfield. Screaming about Jesus.

  “She’s caught a lot of shit not to be any older than she is.

  “See, they came after her mama, to take her off, and her daddy was about half blind. He hid her in a laundry hamper when they came in the house and told her to be quiet. I don’t know how old she was then. Probably seven or eight. He was afraid they’d take her, too. Thought he might be an unfit parent. She could remember hiding in that basket, hearing them come in after her mama, having to chase her down inside the house and all, her screaming and hollering all that crazy stuff, all that crazy shit. Some of this stuff, it was hard for her to tell me.

  “I don’t think her mother lived much longer. I don’t know when all this was. It couldn’t have been too many years ago.

  “I’ve got to get back home and see her. She may not even know if I’m alive. I don’t know if she talked to Mama or not. I don’t know what’s going on. I wish it would hurry up and get daylight. I’m ready to get out of here.”

  “I thought I was dead, Walter. I never had seen that much blood at one time. And all of it was coming out of me.

  “Ambushed us. Done it just like ours taught us to do it to them. It was the first and last firefight I was ever in in the daytime. Usually you know it would be at night. I was wounded once before this. Down here on my leg, where my leg used to be. That part of it gone now. Some sumbitch shot me and me standing behind a tree. I ain’t never figured out till yet how he done that. It wasn’t no bad wound, though. I had a pretty good set of legs on me back then. It come in right down here, about six inches above my knee, went on out the back. It was just a small caliber rifle. But you know it was on the outside of my leg, down here in this thick muscle. It didn’t hit a bone or nothing, it just went on out. Left a little hole about as big as your little finger. Didn’t even bleed that bad really. This other, though. Man I like to bled to death. Like to died from shock. Lose that much blood, it shocks your whole system. Like you said while ago. If they hadn’t had blood on the chopper that come for me, that’d been the end of me. And which it would have been a whole lot easier on everbody if it had. My mama took it hard. See, they didn’t tell her I’d lost my arms and legs. They just said I had numerous injuries. And which they had done amputated everything as quick as they got my blood pressure back up. Hell, they couldn’t do nothing else with me. I had two arteries wide open. And everything else, you know, they wasn’t no saving it. They couldn’t even tell exactly how many times I was shot. They estimated twenty rounds hit me. Might not have been that many. Might have been more. That’s what my wounds was like. But them guys was used to dealing with that kind of stuff. Some of them doctors was doctors in World War II. I had one of them tell me, he used to talk to me all the time, come in there and set with me, he said he did surgery on several men who was shot with fifty-caliber bullets, and hell, they lived, some of em. You know it just depends on where you get hit.

  “See, where I was at, and the way it
happened, there wasn’t nothing for me to get behind. We was going down this trail. I was on point. And you know what the point man’s chance is in a ambush. What they done was let the last ones get on in. And we was spread out a little wider than they were so I was almost out of range when they started. Six men was dead in the first five seconds. But I was trying to get back. Help my guys out. Our machine gunner was dead. Mortarman was dead. Squadleader was dead and my fire team leader, too. Then they started laying mortars in on us. Bullets flying everywhere. The damn bushes was just jumping. It was a hell of a line of fire coming from the left flank. I had one of them converted M14s. Throwed her on auto and laid about three clips into his ass. Silenced that one. People was hollering all kinds of shit, you know how it is, and you couldn’t stand up. They was this one old boy I used to drink beer with from Chicago, he was down and hollering for me. He died two days later, they said. And he was laying close to this little knoll but he was in the wide open. He wasn’t moving, just hollering. And we was starting to drive them back. Somebody recovered the M60 and got the bipod down, and another guy got the ammo. They started killing some people then. Smoke, damn, you couldn’t hardly breathe for the gunsmoke. But we had em down to about two guns then. Knew they’s fixing to run. I raised up just a little to put another clip in and they hit me right here on my right arm. Didn’t hit the bone. Tore a big hole in my bicep, though. And where I thought he was at, I thought he was down in front. Thought I could crawl up behind that little knoll and get Don. But the guy with the gun, he could see me. I started crawling to that little knoll and that’s when he cut loose. I felt them bullets run up my legs, man, just punching holes in me. Couldn’t move. Then he just raked me. Just all over. Lord he shot me all to pieces. Lord he hurt me.

  “But I would have done it to him if he’d give me the opportunity. I remember the first one I killed. I was new in country. Had my little flak jacket and helmet on, so damn scared my teeth was rattling. And they put me in this platoon with a bunch of wooly boogers. I don’t know how long it had been since they’d been out of the boonies. First day they said Well get your shit ready because we going out. Hell we took off and went out on a little patrol there, they had me back in the middle because I didn’t know shit. Man we was snoopin’ and poopin’. The recon had done been out and found some sign and snuck back, so we was looking. I just knew I was gonna get killed the very first day. I’d done said my prayers. I was steady talking to Jesus.