Tomato Red

by Daniel Woodrell

  Jason laid on his bunk, belly down. His eyes were red and there were sniffles.

  “Oh, don’t be mad. It’s a style called ‘flattop with fenders. ’ ”

  “Mad? I love it, man! You do truly have a talent, kid.”

  “Don’t try to cheer me up.”

  “I’m not. I love what you did here, on my head.”

  “Don’t tell me that if it’s not true.”

  This style of hair said things, made claims. On top it was a flattop, but the sides were long and slicked back to create puffy fenders. It was a hairstyle that’d signify cool cat rock-ability , darlin’, if I plucked the upright bass at Hernando’s Hideaway in 1956. It was the revealing presentation of that special inner me I’d been looking for, and that boy had found it and gifted it to me.

  “Listen, Jason, I’m sincere.” I slid my hand across the flat part. “You gave me a trademark. I didn’t have one of my own before.”

  A small wall lamp burned beside his rack. He gave me a couple of looks, looking to see if I was messing with him, then swung around and sat up on the edge of his bunk.

  “You’ll need some Butch Wax.” Jason stood, then, and cocked an eyebrow and sucked on his lips and closely examined my head like he just might bid on it. “Now, that is good,” he said. “The élan and balance, you know, it’s all there.”

  “Whatever. I like it and thank you, kid, and that’s all the thankin’ I’m gonna do.”

  “You’re certainly welcome, Sammy, sir.”

  The light in there was small and vague. Shadows angled and rounded from the corners and the ceiling, and that one puny pat of light sat surrounded by them.

  I could see Jason put a hand up to his head, the hand made into a seashell he cupped to an ear. He leaned toward the window where gray moths and brown bugs beat a rhythm against the screen, paused, leaned farther.

  “The clarinet,” he said. “I don’t hear it.”

  “I think your music friend split.”

  “Friend? ” Jason, you know, turned and faced my way, but he was wrapped up in an angled shadow so his expression was kept from me. “That’s not the word. That word won’t exactly do. I wonder, though, could I talk to you, Sammy? I need to talk to somebody, and I feel like, you and me, we are friends.”

  He used that word, the word I’d used wrong, but it’s the right word to use on me.

  I climbed up to my rack and plumped my pillow and stretched out like a mud puddle in a wheel rut.

  “What about?”

  What I’ll say about what Jason said: There had been tumult in his young emotions and recent experiences, and Mr. Hart set off revelations in him and his pecker, and I think Jason knew how he and his pecker truly felt about Mr. Hart, but he needed to be soothed some, patted on the back, told it was okay to go on and be who he was and do those things with Mr. Hart to his true taste again and again, which is a picture I don’t care to paint.

  Jason finally said, “I felt like he’d wangled and wangled to get me on that field trip. I’d been pretty swept away. You could say I didn’t fight as hard as I could’ve. I can’t say it was awful. Ever since then Mr. Hart has been woo-woo all over me.”

  “Think of what you want, kid, what you want to happen or not happen, then make it clear.”

  “Well, I mean, Sammy, could you do it the other way? The sex stuff? The sex stuff with men?”

  “They say you can learn to if you draw life.”

  “What’s that answer mean?”

  “I ain’t drawn life.”

  Jason, you can see by now, was a really good kid, basically. I had respect for him and concerns, too. A country queer like that is going to have his interior qualities tested a whole lot. You’ve got to have a suitcase of respect for such as come through that, and come through it daily—nightly, too, I imagine, and likely the lunch hour as well. It ain’t the easiest walk to take amongst your throng of fellow humankind.

  “But now, Sammy, my next question to you is, What do you do for heartache?”

  That question sprang me from the top bunk to the floor. I wanted to put a finish to this chat.

  “Take a switch to it,” I said. I let my feet loose. “That’s the limit of what I know.”

  JAMALEE HUMMED IN the kitchen, bent inside the fridge, and the fridge light threw a shadow inside her nightie tent that gave me a notion, so I grabbed her ass. That palaver with Jason had got me all stoked for pussy, don’t ask me why. Her rump was a firm small melon which my two hands cradled perfect.

  She whacked my hands away with hers. She almost turned to look at me, then didn’t bother.

  “No, no, huh-uh. That’s not in the cards, Sammy.”

  “I’m all stoked, Jam. Awful stoked.”

  “It’s not my fault you got yourself a stiffie.”

  “I really want you, darlin’. Bad.”

  “Uh-huh, let me guess: You probably already love me, right?”

  “That must be it. This feeling.”

  “Well now, that is your downfall, baby. Why don’t you take yourself on over next door, here, and visit Bev or something. Visit ol’ Bev and get yourself stoned and unwound.”

  I felt dismissed. She snatched a stalk of celery and moved away, into her nook. She slung the curtain closed fast. Biscuit followed me out the screen door. That mutt sympathized, I’m almost sure. He’d witnessed how she shot me down. His look and posture said he knew how it was, man. Chin up and stuff.

  Where the yards weren’t scuffed to bare dirt they needed to be cut. The grass grew in tough stranded knots, like forgotten islands if the dirt was sea, and these islands could trip you fast in the dark. Jam had been fairly harsh with me, but her advice seemed sound. Biscuit kept near my heels as I tripped and plunged across the yard.

  That mysterioso style of TV light filled Bev’s front room. Each new picture on the tube flashed a different variety of light and filled the room with jumpy shadows and a pale glow.

  “I see you,” she said, before I even knocked. “Let yourself in.” Biscuit followed me inside, and she added, “Did you boys get yourselves banished from baby Jamalee’s clubhouse?”

  “A little,” I said.

  She sat in a squat soft chair, green, I think, and her feet were up on a stool, or whatever they’re officially called, and she wore a pink and cool cotton nightdress and a yellow turban around her hair and her face had a blue face mask on it, shrinking those pores.

  “Could I have a beer?”

  “If there is any.”

  There was, and I sat across from Bev in the squeaky rocker. It squeaked whenever you shifted weight and sounded tortured if you actually rocked. It did not enjoy what it had been made to do.

  “Need a glass?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, have a glass. I like to see them used.”

  She went barefoot to the case in the corner and pulled a cocktail glass and handed it to me.

  The label said Sloppy Joe’s. I poured beer into it, and she sat down and watched me chew through the foam to get at that beer.

  “There’s a couple of chocolate roaches in that ashtray beside you, Sammy.”

  Fairly quick after that, the late-night funny boy on the TV got me to laughing. He had a dog on there, a mixed breed that could pull a man’s shoes and socks off and hang them in the closet. Funny Boy dug it enough he laid down and had the dog do him, too, and unleashed his funny facial expressions during each blank second. The dog made a big hit as a personal servant.

  I couldn’t get Biscuit to even watch.

  When the next late-night funny-boy show came on, Bev came up out of her chair and said, “I’m sick of seeing that shirt, hon. Don’t you have any clothes?”

  “Uh. They’re bein’ held in lieu.”

  “In lieu?”

  “Of rent.”

  “Ah.”

  She went somewhere and came back and set a suitcase in front of me. The suitcase was dusty, webby, and creamy tan.

  “Open it, Sammy. Those clothes used to belong to Skeets B
envenuti.”

  “Who’s that? That sounds like a gangster.”

  “Skeets was just a mean sonofabitch, hon, a hustler from Dallas, not truly a gangster.” She lit a cigarette with her thin golden lighter and let a funnel of smoke rise before her blue face. “I fell in love with him by accident. I don’t believe he did all that much wrong, really, other than, I heard, con games and once in a while hurtin’ people for fun.”

  “I ain’t takin’ his clothes.”

  “Relax. I’ve been holding them for ten years, hon. Skeets got his money from somewhere I never asked about, but somebody thought they knew, I reckon, and wanted it back. It seems Skeets is no longer with us. That’s the indications, anyhow.”

  I skinned from my dirty shirt and broke into the suitcase. It was mostly shirts and they were mostly button-up grampastyle shirts, with stripes thick enough to be panels or checks of several colors or else exploded across by flowers. The shirts hung on me kind of loose, but that’d be fine with this style of clothes. The pants fit beautiful.

  With the haircut and the new duds I was getting to be an interesting figure. Bev had gone off and rinsed her face and now smiled, winked, smiled again at this fresh version of me.

  “You know, Bev,” I said, and raised my hands tenderly to her shoulders, but she backed away before I finished my soulful pitch.

  “Don’t bother,” she said. “Save it. You’re cute and young, and I’m occasionally agreeable, but uh-uh.” She sat down again. She raised her highball and did away with it. “I’ve been too agreeable. Too agreeable for them to care about.”

  I kept brushing my hands across my new clothes, and stroking Biscuit, and feeling pretty summery and on the beat. Then the TV ran one of those wee hours call-me-and-jack-off commercials, and a thin moan escaped me. Girls in lingerie lounged on pink silken bedspreads, purring about their phone numbers and your loneliness and how much they’d charge you by the minute to fake they were your special friend whilst you pulled your pud.

  Bev laughed and laughed, more or less at me. She raised her feet to the stool, and her legs were no secret up to about mid-thigh. She laughed some more, looking at the poses those girls on the screen slung at me. They easily had me convinced as to what I needed and drooling for it.

  “Poor Sammy,” Bev said. Her smile worked great, really hung out an invitation. “I know you have you some dirty hopes, hon, but I want you to understand that I’m not encouraging you when I smile.”

  9

  That’ll Make Five

  IT’S AROUND THREE in the afternoon, or close to it, when Rod drops by. I heard his truck out front, heard the pistons sigh when he killed the engine. A door went thunk and I looked outside and he had Biscuit leaping high to lick his face, which had a mustache, the bandito style.

  Rod wore a T-shirt that claimed him for REO Speed-wagon. He displayed the exact look of Classic Rock: large showy belt buckle, tight torn jeans, long black hair hanging from the spots where he hadn’t gone bald. You looked at him and you could just almost hear bigheaded guitar riffs and a cheesy drum solo and an FM disc jockey waxing heavy about those olden times.

  “Who’re you?”

  “I’m Sammy. I been stayin’ here.”

  “Are you in the air force, army, one of those?”

  “Naw.”

  “That haircut.”

  “It’s fresh—just got it.”

  “Jason?”

  “I really like it.”

  “Good. Good.”

  His truck was a pickup, a Dodge that’d been thumped around plenty and not washed much. The color used to be yellow but had gotten to be adorned with a patchwork of black and gray primer sprayed over repair spots. A large orange ice chest and some rusty logging chains lay in the bed.

  “Now, who the fuck are you again?”

  ROD HAD BEEN called home by a legal problem. He had ninety days reserved for him in the Howl County Jail.

  Him, me, Jam, Jason sat around in the kitchen, me and him knocking down a jug of bourbon and a twelve-pack of brew. Rod figured to dive drunk into the time he had to do, which began after supper.

  Once he heard I was from Arkansas we started to trade jokes to each other, all those wheezing old jokes based on what state you came from, except I told them on my own state and Rod did the same. It got to be like we had a contest to see who could run their home state down the furthest the fastest.

  “Then the Missourian says, ‘It ain’t the mule’s legs that’s too long, it’s his ears.’ ”

  “She says, ‘Doctor, I can’t seem to use the Pill; every time I stand up, it just falls right back out.’ ”

  “Then the Missourian studies the scrawl of yellow snow and says, ‘Don’t you think I recognize my own daughter’s handwriting?’ ”

  “He says, ‘I’ve got a case of diarrhea,’ and the other old Arkansawyer says, ‘Well, put it on ice, I’ll be over to help you drink it later.’ ”

  “It wasn’t his legs was too long, it was . . .”

  We killed time talking that way, testing each other, adding the refreshments to our bloodstreams. Jamalee and Jason hardly said a word except about the welfare checks, the weather, the problem in the bathroom plumbing and so forth. They only barely tolerated Rod in his own house.

  “I’ll leave my truck parked here,” Rod said, at about the time when the evening TV news comes on. “Since it’s my place and all.” He fell sideways from his chair, grabbed my shoulder, pulled me toward the door. “There’s somethin’ I need to show you, bud.”

  He took me to his truck. Biscuit slept underneath in the shade behind a tire. That evening heat hung around and made sure nobody enjoyed the outdoors too much. Some old boy across the road and down a few houses kept up a racket trying to cut the grass of his entire yard with a Weedwacker. He stopped and dragged an ice chest along behind him after every five or six paces of whacking. His woman stood on the porch glaring with two crumb snatchers trying to shinny up her legs. He drank fast in the heat and tossed the empties into the road and dragged that ice chest and made his noise.

  “I need you to hold this.” Rod pulled a pistol from his truck. “It might get ripped off if I left it here and shoot some sonofabitch and get me blamed. My luck can run that way.”

  The pistol shined like a Shreveport pimp’s favorite teeth. The fine print on the barrel said OLIVETTI FIREARMS and claimed the caliber was thirty-eight though it had a shape I think of as a forty-five. He had one box of bullets. There’s a song I know that says a pistol is the Devil’s right hand. In my hand it’s oiled, loaded, and in my head it’s already nagging.

  “Where do I put it?”

  “Fuck do I care? Just keep it, that’s all.”

  We got to the door and he says, “Now, you ain’t goin’ to go robbin’ silly places, are you? You look like you’d stick up a Chinese laundry just for the conversation.”

  “Naw, they barely ever say anything.”

  “I know it. Lord knows I know it.”

  Rod wouldn’t eat, but I had a can of beans with a hot dog sliced into it. I acted responsible and switched to beer only. There was butter bread to sop around in the bean juice. Jamalee and Jason thought Rod and me were plastered and went away from our fumes and kept away.

  Rod said, “I never did get nowhere with her.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Jamalee. I never did get to see if that li’l girl’s cuffs matched her collar or they didn’t. Not even close.”

  “She’s got standards.”

  “She’s got a cob up her ass, is what she’s got. Her hair used to be a normal color, too. Brown, I think. And that Jason, Jesus Christ, my old lady always went on and on like a fuckin’ groupie over how handsome that faggot was. How his eyes was liquid and deep, or some shit of that sort.”

  “He is pretty damn cute.”

  “If his nose was broke a couple of times he’d be a better man. Some sort of man. I thought about helpin’ him that way a few times, too, when my bitch kept sayin’, ‘Jason Merridew i
s the prettiest boy in the total Ozarks, and the prettiest person, period, in town, here.’ ”

  “You can’t hold that against him.”

  “Nope. I whipped her ass, though. Bitch talkin’ about another man that way, right before my face. ‘He’s so pretty.’ She left me not long after, took my kids from me, but I reckon I made my point. I reckon she feels my point yet, wherever she’s got to.”

  HE GAVE ME a warning in my black Ford. I had to drive him to the jail. He said, “Beverly—you know, I ain’t tellin’ tales out of school, bud—but she snitched on some fellas, once I know of for sure. I wouldn’t care to be lyin’ next to her in bed if them or their friends come callin’. They’re vicious, vicious tush hogs, man—Timlinson’s from Shannon County. They posed as state cops, a few years back, and robbed pot growers all around here, and folks say they shot two or three poor fuckers. Dead. Shot them dead. Bev fucked ’em, then dropped a dime.”

  I didn’t say a word.

  That could easy have been me involved.

  I didn’t trust my voice.

  “Just thought I’d say so, in case you wanted to know.”

  The jail sat way over at the other edge of town. It was a new one, bigger than you’d figure was needed, made of big slabs of concrete curried to look like stone, with long thin windows up high and bright lights.

  I drove the way I was convinced I would if I hadn’t drunk three or four shots of bourbon and a few beers. I held my head straight with concentration.

  “This is my fourth drunk drivin’,” Rod said as I pulled over. He said it with a shrug and a smile, as if this meant he was a real sport, a party-animal fun junkie. “If they catch me the night of the day I get out . . .”

  “That’ll make five,” I said. “I read you clear.”

  10

  Spared the Expectation

  WHICH IS THE proper response to a written invitation? When introducing couples what name is given first, the gal’s or the dude’s? When does a man take his hat off, and why is he wearin’ one anyhow? What is the usual hour of the day to start passing the jug around at an informal wine-tasting party? Does shrimp cocktail call for this fork or that fork or some other goofy utensil you never heard of and wouldn’t recognize if the First Lady stabbed it into the back of your fuckin’ hand?