by Larry Brown
“Nothing.”
“You want to take the kids out to eat after the game?”
“Not really.”
“What you got planned?”
“Nothing.”
“You don’t enjoy this, do you?”
“Not really.”
She looked at me. “You hate being married, don’t you?”
“Why do you say that?”
She looked back at the game. “Because. I can tell.”
I watched them play for a while. Mothers were yelling. Once in a while a pop fly would sail over the fence. One kid got hit in the eye and started crying and had to be replaced. They gave him a towel with some ice in it, and somebody else held his hand and bought him a snow cone.
“You want a divorce?” she said.
“Not really.”
“Well,” she said. “I hate you’re so unhappy.”
Then she got up and left me sitting there.
We happened again about a week later. I’d had two beers and she came in. She didn’t even mess around with the jukebox, she just made a beeline for me and got me by the arm.
“Come on over to my house,” she said.
I thought, Hell’s bells. Thought, Why didn’t we do this before?
We rushed on over there, to a darkened apartment, and stumbled in, pulling our clothes off and kissing in the living room. She couldn’t wait for the bed, had to get down on the couch. She was moaning, and stuffing a pillow into her mouth, and that’s where we were when a vehicle pulled in up front, shining lights in through the picture window, all the way through the curtains. She started making some frantic motions but I thought it was just the heat of passion. Then the lights went off. They don’t have adequate parking in those places sometimes anyway, but the car door slammed so hard I thought something about it, and the next thing I knew the front door was opening and the light was on in the living room and there we were, with a big maniac with a lug wrench coming toward the couch. I jumped up and threw a pillow in his face, and he knocked the stuffing out of the couch where my leg had been. She screamed while he was calling me 900 motherfuckers, and I saw he was fixing to kill me. My dick was waving around in front of me just briefly. I didn’t mess around with any diplomacy, I picked up a kitchen chair and hit him in the face with it, and the way the blood flew was awful. I called her about 900 different kinds of bitch before I got my clothes on and got out of there, but I did get out of there, hoping like hell he wasn’t dead.
I didn’t know what to do after that, whether to go fishing or just say no to everything. I wanted to run off. I even figured out how long I could live in another town with the money in my checking account. But he didn’t know me, and I didn’t know him. Of course he’d seen my face, some of it anyway. He’d be trying his best to hurt me real bad for sure if he could. Somebody busted my face with a kitchen chair, I’d be looking to return the favor.
So I stayed home. Didn’t go out and hit any bars. I hung around the house and watched TV, drank coffee on the couch. Helped the kids with their homework. Played Daddy. I came in before her a couple of times and started supper and put clothes in to wash. Mopped the kitchen floor. Dusted the furniture. She got to glowing, and things were great between us in bed. But I wanted that other one again because it was different and it was dangerous now, and so the peace and tranquility only lasted about a week, nine days tops.
The last time I saw him, he came in the bar with her. I was sitting at my table in the corner, back to the wall, watching who came in the door. They saw me about the same time I saw them. She was drunk on her ass. They went to the bar but he eyeballed me, wouldn’t turn his back on me. Smart move. I saw him checking the exits. He kind of straddled a stool. They ordered drinks and the drinks came and she paid. I was wondering what to hit the son of a bitch with this time. There wasn’t anything in there but cue sticks and balls. There was probably a shotgun behind the counter, but I knew I’d never make it to that. There was always the side door, but I didn’t think I was quite ready for that. I wanted to see what her act was, what the game she was playing was, what I was gambling with over a small piece of nearly skinny ass.
I got up and put some money in the jukebox and sat back down. People get ready . . . And then Jeff Beck cut loose and filled the whole place up with his guitar. The people shooting pool moved to it. The drunks sitting around the bar wished it was them playing it. She swayed on the barstool and looked over her shoulder at me and winked, and his beer slammed down, and he was coming, and I picked up the wooden chair I was sitting in and gave it to him, this time straight across the teeth.
Nobody said a word when I walked out with her, especially not him.
We found some place off in the woods again, not the same place, not her house, not a motel room, just a place off in the woods. Crickets were chirping. Coon dogs or fox dogs somewhere were running. She fed the end of the joint to me and I fed it back to her and, while all that was going on in the face of what all had gone on, I wondered: what was the purpose? But I didn’t want to think about things much right then. She laid those lips on me, and we moved down in the seat, and I knew that it wouldn’t be but a little bit before those headlights, somebody’s, would ease around the curve.
Big Bad Love
My dog died. I went out there in the yard and looked at him and there he was, dead as a hammer. Boy, I hated it. I knew I’d have to look around and see about a shovel. But it didn’t look like he’d been dead long and there wasn’t any hurry, and I was wanting a drink somewhat, so I went on out a little further into the yard to see if my truck would crank and it would, so I left. Thought I’d bury the dog later. Before Mildred got home. Figured I had plenty of time.
Birds were singing, flowers were blooming. It was just wonderful. I hated for my old dog to be dead and miss all that, but I didn’t know if dogs cared about stuff like that or not. I didn’t have a whole lot of gas in my truck. I didn’t figure I needed to get started riding and drinking. I thought I’d just ride over and get something to drink and then ride back, sit on the porch and maybe cut my toenails until Mildred nearly got home, then start burying the dog to occupy myself.
Joe Barlow wasn’t home. I sat in front of his house for three minutes and blew the horn, but nobody came out. I left there and went to U.T. Oslin’s house. The whole place was boarded up, looked like nobody had lived there for three or four years. Weeds were all up in the yard and stuff. I left there and went by Manley Musgrove’s, but I figured he was asleep and didn’t want to wake up, so I just spurted on past his house, didn’t stop.
I’d had that old dog for a long time, from way past my first marriage. I was sure going to miss him. He had a few little idiosyncratic oddities about him that didn’t exactly endear him to some people, like rolling in fresh cattle droppings and then climbing up on somebody’s truck seats if they left the door open. Mildred had always been after me to shoot him, but I never had. He was bad about pointing baby possums and then catching them and dragging them up into the yard and then eating them, and Mildred was always so tenderhearted she never could stand to see a thing like that. She just never had seen her cat in action, though, the one she’d let in the house to pet and sleep on the couch, get hairs all over the throw pillows. That thing had a litter of kittens last summer, and I was standing out there in the yard one day while she had them stashed under the corn crib for safekeeping. I’d been out in the vegetable garden cussing and mashing cutworms off my tomatoes. I’d cuss those little fellows and pick them off and mash each one under the heel of my tennis shoe. Those little things were green and they had green guts. That cat went out in the garden for a minute and come back carrying a little baby rabbit in her mouth. It wasn’t dead. It was still kicking. What she was doing was training her babies to be killers. She laid that baby rabbit down right in the middle of those baby cats, and they didn’t know what to do with it. Of course the baby rabbit was squealing right pitiful and all and it ran off first thing. The old mama cat ran out there in the yard afte
r it and caught it again. Brought it back. Set it back down in the middle of those kittens. They started trying to bite it and stuff, growling these little bitty baby growls. That baby rabbit jumped up and ran off again. I stood there and watched that and thought about cats in general, and about what that baby rabbit was going through. She caught it and brought it back again and laid it down in the middle of her litter. They had enough sense to bite it some then, and it squealed some more and then jumped up and took off running out across the yard. Only it couldn’t run too good by then. She ran out there and caught it again, brought it back. They went to gnawing on it again. It jumped up and ran off again. She brought it back again. It was getting slower each time. I thought, Yeah, I ought to just go in the house here and get me about four rounds of Number 6 shot and load up my Light Twelve and clean these sadistic creatures out from under my corn crib. The only thing was they kept the rats away and I guess a man has to give up one or two things to get another thing or two, but I went and got me a hammer handle and put that baby rabbit out of its misery. I used to raise them a long time ago, rabbits. I was pretty familiar with the rabbit family. They were so cute when they were little. Just little balls of fur. They’d hop around there in the cage, eating lettuce, plus I fed them Purina Rabbit Chow, and they grew pretty fast on that, and it wouldn’t be but about eight weeks before they’d be ready to kill. They’ll dress out about two pounds of meat at that age. By then your doe’s bred again and expecting some more or maybe even having them by then, and they’ll eat you out of house and home if you don’t harden your heart and take eight or ten of them and a hammer handle out behind the corn crib and knock them in the head. I had some neighbor kids then. They played with those rabbits all the time. They’d hold them up beside their cheeks and just smile and smile and rub that fur with their faces. And here I was out behind the corn crib while the kids were in school, knocking rabbits in the head and dressing them and then telling the kids they got out of the cage and ran away. It finally made me so uneasy and torn in different directions I had to quit it. I gave my doe away and turned the buck loose, I guess the coyotes ate him. I was thinking about all that while I was riding around, looking for a drink. I knew Mildred wouldn’t be happy to see that dead dog in the yard. I knew she’d be happy to see it dead, only not in the yard.
I ran up on a Negro fishing by a bridge and stopped and hollered at him and asked him did he have anything to drink. It turned out it was Barthy, or Bartholemew, Pettigrew, a Negro I’d been knowing for most of my life. I had even picked some cotton with him a long time before, in my teenaged years. He didn’t want to let on like he had anything to drink, but I knew he did because he always did. He was an old-timey Negro, one that wouldn’t give you any sass. Of course I don’t think one man ought to have to bow down to another one because of the color of his skin. But I had to get down in the creek with him and squat down talking to him before he’d even let on that he might have anything to drink. And what he had wasn’t much. Three Old Milwaukees in some cool water that his minnows were swimming around in. We talked about cotton and cows for ten minutes and corn some, then finally I gave him a dollar and got one of his beers. He didn’t know where U. T. Oslin was.
By the time I’d gone about a mile I’d finished half of that one. I knew that wasn’t going to get it. I had a dog to bury, and I knew it would take more than one half-hot Old Milwaukee. I checked my billfold and I think I had four dollars. I kept driving slower and drinking slower, but the closer I got to the bottom, the hotter it got. I drank the rest of it and chunked the can out the window. I would have loved to’ve had about a cold six-pack iced down, and about ten dollars worth of gas in my truck. I could have rode and rode and drank then. I decided I might better get back to the house and see if I could find my checkbook.
Mildred wasn’t in yet. My old dog hadn’t moved any. I poked him a little with my tennis shoe toe. He just sort of moved inside his skin and came back to rest. I estimated the time before Mildred would be home. I judged it to be about forty-five minutes. That was enough time for a shower, piss on burying the dog. I figured I could do it when I come back in. I’d already taken that first drink and I wanted another one. And I told myself it wasn’t every day a man’s dog up and died.
I run inside and showered and shaved and slapped some shit on my hair. I drove uptown and wrote a twenty-dollar check at Kroger’s, picked up a hot sixer and a one twenty-nine bag of ice. I knew Mildred would be perturbed when she saw that I was out loose again. Lord love her, she had trouble keeping me home; her puss was just not that good. And so I would have to strike out occasionally, for parts and places unknown.
There was a nice place on the other side of town that didn’t look cross-eyed at country people coming in there just because they didn’t have a whole lot of class. The only thing wrong with it was that sometimes the people who came in there had so little class that often they would get to arguing and begin to shoot and cut one another. They wouldn’t do it when they were sober, it would just be after they were drinking. I figured it would be a good place to be sitting on a stool right about that time, before they all got to drinking heavy.
I parked my truck under a tree and went inside that establishment and it was dark and cool, like under a corn crib would be. I knew I had that six-pack to drive me all the way home. Mildred was sexually frustrated because of her over-large organ and it just wore me out trying to apply enough friction to that thing for her to achieve internal orgasm. So, it was titillating for me to sit on a stool and talk to the young waitresses who served drinks and just generally fantasize about their young normal organs and wonder what they would be like, although it was guilty work and unsettling and morally not right.
I ordered a beer, spoke to everybody in general, lit a cigarette. I felt quite at home. I had on a clean shirt and my teeth had been brushed. I saw by my wristwatch that Mildred would be pulling into our driveway in about five more minutes. My beer arrived and I held it up high in the air and, saluting, said, “Here’s to Mildred.” Several people looked at me funny.
This particular bar had a lot of red velvet in it. It also had numerous mirrors that looked like they had been splattered with gold paint. It was quite classy, particularly for a place that had so many people with so little or no class come into it.
After I drank a little, I went over to the jukebox and put some money in to help pass the time and help take my mind off thoughts of Mildred. They had fourteen Tom T. Hall songs, and I played every one of them. It seemed to put everybody in a good mood. I noticed several people looking at me kindly, as if to say thanks for playing all that Tom T. I knew that, by then, Mildred had seen my dead dog. I didn’t want to think about it, and I didn’t know what she would think about it. I knew that she would be unhappy with me for not going ahead and burying the dog, and also for being out late drinking and riding. We had been over this thing many times before, and we weren’t getting any closer to a solution. I just couldn’t do anything with her big Tunnel of Love. I could hit one side at a time, but not both sides. I didn’t feel like this was my fault, since I, like many other men or nearly all men, played high school basketball and football and baseball and hockey and have taken many showers with naked boys and know by casual observance that I am adequately hung. Perhaps even well hung. I have seen boys whose peters looked like acorns. Mildred would not have even known one of those boys had it inserted. I would have had to be the Moby Dick of love to adequately satisfy Mildred. But I had sworn before God and Church to always cherish her and I supposed I would always have to. I did not cherish my first, other wife; I threw her over for Mildred. But it did not keep me from wanting something a little different from the feeling of sticking my equipment out the window and having relations with the whole world.
I got back on my stool and drank a little more and thought about the time Mildred and I discussed corrective surgery for her deformity. Mildred, I should point out, had the most wonderful ass. That was the original point of interest that attracted
me to her. I have seen men pant, looking at her in a bathing suit. Mildred was always naturally hot-sexed. I knew it had to be frustrating for her to be like that. But she said she would be absolutely mortified to have to undergo an operation of that nature or even discuss it with a doctor or nurse. So, sitting there on that stool, I didn’t know much other way to turn. I knew she wasn’t going to like that dead dog lying in our front yard. I thought, Hey, baby, what about your cruel cats?
By the time I’d had my second beer, I’d thought about going home and hauling the shotgun out and killing every cat on the place. The last time I had counted them, there were lots of them. Rats and mice were no longer a problem. I was sure those rodents came up on the edge of the yard, took one look at all those cats, and said: No way, José.
Often people in bars don’t speak to one another, and often this is what happens to me. I am extremely friendly. I just don’t know what to say to people. I didn’t know what to say to Mildred the first time I met her. I met her in Destin, Florida, and saw that wonderful ass she had. She did all the talking. I was down there recuperating from my divorce that was almost pending. I was separated from my first wife, but divorce was not pending. It was just almost pending, and I was trying to recuperate from that and was going home to try and patch things up in a few days. When I saw Mildred, everything went out the window, good intentions, everything, the divorce became pending. Mildred represented herself as a virtuous woman with naturally hot tendencies and told me sincerely that she was technically a virgin, but on our wedding night I quickly formed the erroneous opinion that this was simply not the case. As a matter of fact, I thought on our wedding night that Mildred’s puss had simply been worn out from numerous encounters over a period of many years with some enormous number of men, which caused me and Mildred to almost divorce the next day, until she broke down crying at the Continental breakfast and confessed that I was only the first and one-half person to ever penetrate her. I took that as a compliment to mean the other person had only made it in halfway.