Facing the Music

by Larry Brown

The rich are leaving now. They are sliding onto their smooth leather seats, turning the keys in ignitions all over the world that set high-compression motors humming like well-fed cats. Their boats are docked and hosed down with fresh water. Their airplanes are getting refueled and restocked with liquor. Their accountants are preparing loopholes. Their lobsters are drowning in hot water, their caviar being chilled on beds of ice.

  Mr. Pellisher waves to the rich as they pull away from the curb. But the rich don’t look back.

  OLD FRANK AND JESUS

  Mr. Parker’s on the couch, reclining. He’s been there all morning, almost, trying to decide what to do.

  Things haven’t gone like he’s planned. They never do.

  The picture of his great-grandpa’s on the mantel looking down at him, a framed old dead gentleman with a hat and a long beard who just missed the Civil War. The picture’s fuzzy and faded, with this thing like a cloud coming up around his neck.

  They didn’t have good photography back then, Mr. P. thinks. That’s why the picture looks like it does.

  Out in the yard, his kids are screaming. They’re just playing, but to Mr. P. it sounds like somebody’s killing them. His wife’s gone to the beauty parlor to get her hair fixed. There’s a sick cow in his barn, but he hasn’t been down to see about her this morning. He was up all night with her, just about. She’s got something white and sticky running out from under her tail, and the vet’s already been out three times without doing her any good. He charges for his visits anyway, though, twenty-five smacks a whack.

  That’s . . . seventy-five bucks, he thinks, and the old white stuff’s just pouring out.

  Mr. P. clamps his eyes shut and rolls over on the couch, feels it up. He had cold toast four hours ago. He needs to be up and out in the cotton patch, trying to pull the last bolls off the stalks, but the bottom’s dropped out because foreign rayon’s ruined the market. He guesses that somewhere across the big pond, little Japanese girls are sewing pants together and getting off from their jobs and meeting boyfriends for drinks and movies after work, talking about their supervisors. Maybe they’re eating raw fish. They did that on Okinawa after they captured the place and everything settled down. He was on Okinawa. Mr. P. got shot on Okinawa.

  He reaches down and touches the place, just above his knee. They were full of shit as a Christmas turkey. Eight hundred yards from the beach under heavy machine-gun fire. No cover. Wide open. They could have gotten some sun if they’d just been taking a vacation. They had palm trees. Sandy beaches. No lotion. No towels, no jamboxes, no frosty cool brewskies. They waded through water up to their necks and bullets zipped in the surf around them killing men and fish. Nobody had any dry cigarettes. Some of their men got run over by their own carriers and some of the boys behind shot the boys in front. Mr. P. couldn’t tell who was shooting whom. He just shot. He stayed behind a concrete barrier for a while and saw some Japanese symbols molded into the cement, but he couldn’t read them. Every once in a while he’d stick his head out from behind the thing and just shoot.

  He hasn’t fired a shot in anger in years now, though. But he’s thinking seriously about shooting a hole in the screen door with a pistol. Just a little hole.

  He knows he needs to get up and go down to the bam and see about that cow, but he just can’t face it today. He knows she won’t be any better. She’ll be just like she was last night, not touching the water he’s drawn up in a barrel for her, not eating the hay he’s put next to her. That’s how it is with a cow when they get down, though. They just stay down. Even the vet knows that. The vet knows no shot he can give her will make her get up, go back on her feed. The vet’s been to school. He’s studied anatomy, biology. Other things, too. He knows all about animal husbandry and all.

  But Mr. P. thinks him not much of a vet. The reason is, last year, Mr. P. had a stud colt he wanted cut, and he had him tied and thrown with a blanket over his head when the vet came out, and Mr. P. did most of the cutting, but the only thing the vet did was dance in and out with advice because he was scared of getting kicked.

  The phone rings and Mr. P. stays on the couch and listens to it ring. It’s probably somebody calling with bad news. That’s about the only thing a phone’s good for anyway, Mr. P. thinks, to let somebody get ahold of you with some bad news. He knows people just can’t wait to tell bad news. Like if somebody dies, or if a man’s cows are out in the road, somebody’ll be sure to pick up the nearest phone and call somebody else and tell him or her all about it. And they’ll tell other things, too. Personal things. Mr. P. thinks it’d probably be better to just not have a phone. If you didn’t have a phone, they’d have to come over to your house personally to give you bad news, either drive over or walk. But with a phone, it’s easy to give it to you. All they have to do’s just pick it up and call, and there you are.

  But on second thought, he thinks, if your house caught on fire and you needed to call up the fire department and report it, and you didn’t have a phone, there you’d be again.

  Or the vet.

  The phone’s still ringing. It rings eight or nine times. Just ringing ringing ringing. There’s no telling who it is. It could be the FHA. They hold the mortgage on his place. Or, it could be the bank. They could be calling again to get real shitty about the note. He’s borrowed money from them for seed and fertilizer and things and they’ve got a lien. And, it could be the county forester calling to tell him, Yes, Mr. Parker, it’s just as we feared: your whole 160-acre tract of pine timber is heavily infested with the Southern pine beetle and you’ll have to sell all your wood for stumpage and lose your shirt on the whole deal. It rings again. Mr. P. finally gets up from the couch and goes over to it. He picks it up. “Hello,” he says.

  “Hello?”

  “Yes,” Mr. P. says.

  “Mr. Marvin Parker,” the phone says.

  “Speaking,” says Mr. P.

  “Jim Lyle calling, Mr. Parker. Amalgamated Pulpwood and Benevolent Society? Just checking our records here and see you’re a month behind on your premium. Just calling to check on the problem, Marv.”

  They always want their money, Mr. P. thinks. They don’t care about you. They wouldn’t give a damn if you got run over by a bush hog. They just want your money. Want you to pay that old premium.

  “I paid,” Mr. P. says. He can’t understand it. “I pay by bank draft every month.”

  A little cough comes from the phone.

  “Well yes,” the voice says. “But our draft went through on a day when you were overdrawn, Mr. Parker.”

  Well kiss my ass, Mr. P. thinks.

  Mr. P. can’t say anything to this man. He knows what it is. His wife’s been writing checks at the Fabric Center again. For material. What happened was, the girls needed dresses for the program at church, capes and wings and things. Plus, they had to spend $146.73 on a new clutch and pressure plate for the tractor. Mr. P. had to do all the mechanical stuff, pull the motor and all. Sometimes he couldn’t find the right wrenches and had to hunt around in the dirt for this and that. There was also an unfortunate incident with a throw-out bearing.

  Mr. P. closes his eyes and leans against the wall and wants to get back on the couch. Today, he just can’t get enough of that couch.

  “Can I borrow from the fund?” says Mr. P. He’s never borrowed from the fund before.

  “Borrow? Why. . . .”

  “Would it be all right?” Mr. P. says.

  “All right?”

  “I mean would everything be fixed up?”

  “Fixed up? You mean paid?” says the voice over the phone.

  “Yes,” says Mr. P. “Paid.”

  “Paid. Why, I suppose. . . .”

  “Don’t suppose,” says Mr. P. He’s not usually this ill with people like Jim Lyle of APABS. But he’s sick of staying up with that cow every night. He’s sick of his wife writing checks at the Fabric Center. He’s sick of a vet who’s scared of animals he’s sworn to heal. He doesn’t want Jim Lyle of APABS to suppose. He wants him
to know.

  “Well, yes sir, if that’s the way. . . .”

  “All right, then,” Mr. P. says, and he hangs up the phone.

  “Goodbye,” he says, after he hangs it up. He goes back to the couch and stretches out quick, lets out this little groan. He puts one forearm over his eyes.

  The kids are still screaming at the top of their lungs in the yard. He’s worried about them being outside. There’s been a rabies epidemic: foaming foxes and rabid raccoons running amuck. Even flying squirrels have attacked innocent people. And just last week, Mr. P. had to take his squirrel dog off, a little feist he had named Frank that was white with black spots over both eyes. He got him from a family of black folks down the road and they all swore up and down that his mama was a good one, had treed as many as sixteen in one morning. Mr. P. raised that dog from a puppy, played with him, fed him, let him sleep on his stomach and in front of the fire, and took him out in the summer with a dried squirrel skin and let him trail it all over the yard before he hung it up in a tree and let him tree it. He waited for old Frank to get a little older and then took him out the first frosty morning and shot a squirrel in front of him, didn’t kill it on purpose, just wounded it, and let old Frank get ahold of it and get bitten in the nose because he’d heard all his life that doing that would make a squirrel dog every time if the dog had it in him. And old Frank did. He caught that squirrel and fought it all over the ground, squalling, with the squirrel balled up on his nose, bleeding, and finally killed it. After that he hated squirrels so bad he’d tree every squirrel he smelled. They killed nine opening day, one over the limit. Mr. P. was proud of old Frank.

  But last week he took old Frank out in the pasture and shot him in the head with a .22 rifle because his wife said the rabies were getting too close to home.

  Now why did I do that? Mr. P. wonders. Why did I let her talk me into shooting old Frank? I remember he used to come in here and lay down on my legs while I was watching “Dragnet.” I’d pat him on the head and he’d close his eyes and curl up and just seem happy as anything. He’d even go to sleep sometimes, just sleep and sleep. And he wouldn’t mess in the house either. Never did. He’d scratch on the door till somebody let him out. Then he’d come back in and hop up here and go to sleep.

  Mr. P. feels around under the couch to see if it’s still there. It is. He just borrowed it a few days ago, from his neighbor, Hulet Steele. He doesn’t even know if it’ll work. But he figures it will. He told Hulet he wanted it for rats. He told Hulet he had some rats in his corncrib.

  Next thing he knows, somebody’s knocking on the front door. Knocking hard, like he can’t even see the kids out in the yard and send them in to call him out. He knows who it probably is, though. He knows it’s probably Hereford Mullins, another neighbor, about that break in the fence, where his cows are out in the road. Mr. P. knows the fence is down. He knows his cows are out in the road, too. But he just can’t seem to face it today. It seems like people just won’t leave him alone.

  He doesn’t much like Hereford Mullins anyway. Never has. Not since that night at the high school basketball game when their team won and Hereford Mullins tried to vault over the railing in front of the seats and landed on both knees on the court, five feet straight down, trying to grin like it didn’t hurt.

  Mr. P. thinks he might just get up and go out on the front porch and slap the shit out of Hereford Mullins. He gets up and goes out there.

  It’s Hereford, all right. Mr. P. stops inside the screen door. The kids are still screaming in the yard, getting their school clothes dirty. Any other time they’d be playing with old Frank. But old Frank can’t play with them now. Old Frank’s busy getting his eyeballs picked out right now probably by some buzzards down in the pasture.

  “Ye cows out in the road again,” says Hereford Mullins. “Thought I’d come up here and tell ye.”

  “All right,” says Mr. P. “You told me.”

  “Like to hit em while ago,” says Hereford Mullins. “I’d git em outa the road if they’s mine.”

  “I heard you the first time,” says Mr. P.

  “Feller come along and hit a cow in the road,” goes on Hereford Mullins, “he ain’t responsible. Cows ain’t sposed to be in the road. Sposed to be behind a fence.”

  “Get off my porch,” says Mr. P.

  “What?”

  “I said get your stupid ass off my porch,” Mr. P. says.

  Hereford kind of draws up, starts to say something, but leaves the porch huffy. Mr. P. knows he’ll be the owner of a dead cow within two minutes. That’ll make two dead cows, counting the one in the barn not quite dead yet that he’s already out seventy-five simoleans on.

  He goes back to the couch.

  Now there’ll be a lawsuit, probably. Herf’ll say his neck’s hurt, or his pickup’s hurt, or something else. Mr. P. reaches under the couch again and feels it again. It’s cold and hard, feels scary.

  Mr. P.’s never been much of a drinking man, but he knows there’s some whiskey in the kitchen cabinet. Sometimes when the kids get colds or the sore throat, he mixes up a little whiskey and lemon juice and honey and gives it to them in a teaspoon. That and a peppermint stick always helps their throats.

  He gets the whiskey, gets a little drink, and then gets another pretty good drink. It’s only ten o’clock. He should have had a lot of work done by now. Any other time he’d be out on the tractor or down in the field or up in the woods cutting firewood.

  Unless it was summer. If it was summer he’d be out in the garden picking butter beans or sticking tomatoes or cutting hay or fixing fences or working on the barn roof or digging up the septic tank or swinging a joe-blade along the driveway or cultivating the cotton or spraying or trying to borrow some more money to buy some more poison or painting the house or cutting the grass or doing a whole bunch of other things he doesn’t want to do anymore at all. All he wants to do now’s stay on the couch.

  Mr. P. turns over on the couch and sees the picture of Jesus on the wall. It’s been hanging up there for years. Old Jesus, he thinks. Mr. P. used to know Jesus. He used to talk to Jesus all the time. There was a time when he could have a little talk with Jesus and everything’d be all right. Four or five years ago he could. Things were better then, though. You could raise cotton and hire people to pick it. They even used to let the kids out of school to pick it. Not no more, though. Only thing kids wanted to do now was grow long hair and listen to the damn Beatles.

  Mr. P. knows about hair because he cuts it in his house. People come in at night and sit around the fire in his living room and spit tobacco juice on the hearth and Mr. P. cuts their hair. He talks to them about cotton and cows and shuffles, clockwise and counterclockwise around the chair they’re sitting in, in his house shoes and undershirt and overalls and snips here and there.

  Most of the time they watch TV, “Gunsmoke” or “Perry Mason.” Sometimes they watch Perry Como. And sometimes, they’ll get all involved and interested in a show and stay till the show’s over.

  One of Mr. P.’s customers—this man who lives down the road and doesn’t have a TV—comes every Wednesday night to get his haircut. But Mr. P. can’t cut much of his hair, having to cut it every week like that. He has to just snip the scissors around on his head some and make out like he’s cutting it, comb it a little, walk around his head a few times, to make him think he’s getting a real haircut. This man always comes in at 6:45 P.M., just as Mr. P. and his family are getting up from the supper table.

  This man always walks up, and old Frank used to bark at him when he’d come up in the yard. It was kind of like a signal that old Frank and Mr. P. had, just between them. But it wasn’t a secret code or anything. Mr. P. would be at the supper table, and he’d hear old Frank start barking, and if it was Wednesday night, he’d know to get up from the table and get his scissors. The Hillbillies always come on that night at seven, and it takes Mr. P. about fifteen minutes to cut somebody’s hair.

  This man starts laughing at the opening cre
dits of the Hillbillies, and shaking his head when it shows old Jed finding his black gold, his Texas tea, just as Mr. P.’s getting through with his head. So by the time he’s finished, the Hillbillies have already been on for one or two minutes. And then, when Mr. P. unpins the bedsheet around this man’s neck, if there’s nobody else sitting in his living room watching TV or waiting for a haircut, this man just stays in the chair, doesn’t get up, and says, “I bleve I’ll jest set here and watch the Hillbillies with ya’ll since they already started if ya’ll don’t care.”

  It’s every Wednesday night’s business.

  Mr. P. doesn’t have a license or anything, but he actually does more than a regular barber would do. For one thing, he’s got some little teenincy scissors he uses to clip hairs out of folks’ noses and ears. Plus, Mr. P.’s cheaper than the barbers in town. Mr. P.’ll lower your ears for fifty cents. He doesn’t do shaves, though. He’s got shaky hands. He couldn’t shave a balloon or anything. He could flat shave the damn Beatles though.

  Mr. P.’s wondering when the school bus will come along. It’s late today. What happened was, Johnny Crawford got it stuck in a ditch about a mile down the road trying to dodge one of Mr. P.’s cows. They’ve called for the wrecker, though, on Mr. P.’s phone. They gave out that little piece of bad news over his phone, and he thinks he heard the wrecker go down the road a while ago. He knows he needs to get up and go down there and fix that fence, get those cows up, but he doesn’t think he will. He thinks he’ll just stay right here on the couch and drink a little more of this whiskey.

  Mr. P. would rather somebody get him down on the ground and beat his ass like a drum than to have to fix that fence. The main thing is, he doesn’t have anybody to help him. His wife has ruined those kids of his, spoiled them, until the oldest boy, fourteen, can’t even tie his own shoelaces. Mr. P. can say something to him, tell him to come on and help him go do something for a minute, and he’ll act like he’s deaf and dumb. And if he does go, he whines and moans and groans and carries on about it until Mr. P. just sends him on back to the house so he won’t have to listen to it. Mr. P. can see now that he messed up with his kids a long time ago. He’s been too soft on them. They don’t even know what work is. It just amazes Mr. P. He wasn’t raised like that. He had to work when he was little. And it was rough as an old cob back then. Back then you couldn’t sit around on your ass all day long and listen to a bunch of long-haired hippies singing a bunch of rock and roll on the radio.