by Stan Hayes
“I was. Lindall didn’t shoot at anyone. Not that he wouldn’tve. Reba baptized ’im with a pot a’ coffee before he could throw down on Nels.”
By now half the bar was eavesdropping. “Is that right? The story goin’ around here says he shot and missed.”
“Reba shot,” said Moses after a swig of Red Cap. “Or the gun did, when she picked it up. By then Nels’d run out the back door; haven’t seen ’im since.”
“You can get odds either way that he’ll show up here tonight, now that Lindall’s in th’ lockup,” said Webster, glancing again toward the swinging doors. “I’m betting yes.”
“Looks like you win,” said Moses as a swarthy figure pushed through them.
“Hey, boys,” said Nelson Lord, stopping two steps inside as he checked the crowd. “…Whad’jall do with th’ women?”
Terry and Lynne stopped talking and turned earnest faces to Jack as he walked up to them. The homeroom bell had just rung, and the crowd in the yard began moving sluggishly toward the front steps of Bisque High, but the girls stayed put in their near-identical sweater sets and pleated skirts. Do they call each other in the morning to make sure they dress alike, he wondered, or set it up the day before? A darker thought flitted across his consciousness; they just know. Can’t argue with the effect, though, he concluded as Terry’s hazel eyes picked up the sky blue of her sweaters and shot it back at him as green highlights. “Hey, y’all,” he said.
“Jack,” said Terry, why didn’t you call me about what happened over there?”
“You mean that ole buzzard comin’ after Nelson? It’us all over by th’ time I got there. Coach kept us out at practice ’til ’way after six, and Mom didn’t say much about it. She was real tired, and went to bed pretty soon after we ate. Time I was done with homework, it’us after eleven, and all she said to me this morning was ‘get up, it’s almost eight,’ before she went down to th’ desk.”
“That man, Mr. Lindall? Lynne’s daddy said he was after Nelson Lord because he’d been foolin’ with ’is wife.”
“Yeah, that’s the story. I’ll ask Mose about it. Mom said he got the gun away from Reba; she picked it up and it went off. Sho emptied out th’ café in a hurry.”
"That Nelson Lord’s got a reputation for chasin’ anything in a skirt,” Lynne sniffed. “Why does your Mom keep him around?”
Jack looked at her as if she’d farted. “‘Keep ’im around?’ You know what’d happen to th’ hotel’s business if Nelson Lord left?” He blew a long Doppler-effect whistle, the still-familiar sound of a falling bomb, extending an arm with a turned-down thumb at its end. “That. Plus, he doesn’t work for the hotel; he works for the café, meaning Reba.Nelson’s not goin’ anywhere, ’less he decides to. And God help us if he does. Anyway, chasin’ skirts was legal last time I checked.”
“Not if they’re married, Mr. Know-it-all,” Lynne responded superciliously.
“Well, Miss Sure-as-hell-don’t-know-it-all, I never heard of a married skirt gettin’ chased that didn’t wanta get chased. I don’t reckon ole Nels’s gonna get locked up for acceptin’ an invitation.”
“No,” said Lynne scornfully, “Just shot.”
“Well,” said Jack with a grin, “Just shot at, almost, so far.”
Terry reached for Jack’s hand, pulling him none too gently toward the school steps. “That’s not funny, Jack. Nobody’d better be shootin’ at you like that. I jus’ might shoot you myself.”
The familiar squeal of ’42 Hudson brakes betrayed Serena’s station wagon’s poking its nose under the carport. Moses opened the door to let her in, but she hesitated, looking up at him. “I’d like to talk about what happened yesterday,” she said.
“Sure. Come in. Drink? ”
“Please. Whatever you’re having.”
He took a second to note that she was wearing blue jeans for, as far as he knew, the first time. They were the same brand, Dickies, that Bisque boys, and a few girls, had been wearing for a while by then, leaving the legs long and turning them up a couple of times to make gray-blue cuffs, local style dictating that they cover the tops of the wearer’s shoes. These, however, betrayed serious alterations that let them encase her hips without a wrinkle; she’d tucked the tails of a man’s pink oxford-cloth shirt inside them, with the top two buttons left open. Filling two squat glasses midway with Scotch, he splashed soda on top and handed one to her. “Confusion to our enemies,” he said, touching her glass with his.
“Haven’t heard that one in a while.”
“Classics go on forever.”
“I guess they do. Anyway, I’m here,” she said, “to apologize for what I said to you yesterday.”
“Oh. Hell, I knew you were pissed off. You had a right to be.”
“Maybe so. But what I said to you was awful. I didn’t mean it, and I had to let you know that.”
“Thanks. And I’m sorry too. Sometimes things just get outa hand. Fuckin’ around with Nels and his cronies guarantees trouble.”
“That’s for sure. And I’d been furious with you since I heard about you being in a foursome with him and those bimbos. Jesus Christ, I thought you’d drop by when you got horny.”
“Like I say, it was just a spur-of-the-moment thing. Not to be repeated.”
She snorted, taking a long swig of her drink. “I’d hardly think so. I don’t want you tied to my apron strings, but Jesus! People around here know what we are to each other, and doing what you did puts me in the same class with those goddamn people. You’d be raisin’ hell with me if I’d done something like that. At least I hope you would.”
“Yeah, I would. Because I love you.”
She looked at him almost as angrily as she had yesterday. “I love you, too, goddammit. I wish I didn’t, but I do. And there’s not a goddamn thing I can do about it.”
“Except give me hell,” Moses said with a smile.
“That’s about it.”
“I can think of something else,” he said.
“Oh, no. I thought we’d settled that.”
“And I don’t mean gettin’ rid a’that guy you married.”
“Hm,” she said, the threat of a smile animating the corners of her mouth. “What, then?”
He encouraged her smile with one of his own. “I’d like to see you in just the jeans- with your shirt off.”
“Not so fast, buddy. You haven’t seen my surprise.”
“Surprise?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“What is it?”
“Come over here.” She walked over to the kitchen sink and leaned on it, presenting her denim-sheathed butt for his inspection. “Like it?”
“Yeah, it’s spectacular. Is that the surprise?”
“Give me your hand,” she said, extending her hand behind her. As she pulled his hand to her, a thin streak of white split the denim blue in half. Spreading the heavy fabric with his thumb and forefinger, he touched drenched hair, then the slickness beyond, with the middle one.
“Now that’s,” he said, “a surprise.”
“Like it?” she asked over her shoulder. “I took the whole seam out.”
“Yes I do,” he said, probing deep inside her pussy first with one finger, then two, then finding the clit that still fascinated him with its size and stiffness.
“Well fuck me, Chili; I didn’t go to all this trouble for nothing.”
“Delighted. But let’s get that shirt off.”
“Pull it out, then; but put your dick in first.”
He did, moving inside her, impressed as always at the fierceness of her grip on him. “This is a beautiful sight; I wish you could see it. I miss seeing the little dimples at the tops of your cheeks, though.”
“Does that fat beautician have any?”
“I really don’t remember,” he grunted, thrusting deep to focus her attention.
She pitched her voice low, synchronizing her movement with his. “How’d you like to do Cordelia and me sometime?”
“Would you like it? You’
re the ménage a trois expert.”
“I’d love to do her with you- and she’d do it in a minute, particularly since you’re even more notorious, with that supporting role in the shootout yesterday.”
“It could’ve been the leadin’ role- he was pissed about her tits bein’ bruised. She was playing with herself in the car and asked me to twist her tits while she came, so I did. If he’d known that, I’m the one he’da been gunnin’ for.”
“Hmm. Mind showing me?”
“I’ve gotta go,” she said an hour later.
“OK,” he said, sitting up to drain the glass on the bedside table. “I’ll get your things. Hope you won’t feel too much of a draft on the way home.”
“Get my bag, too, will you? There’s a pair of blue panties in there that pretty well match the jeans. Hey.”
“What?”
“How’d you like to take me someplace when I’ve got ’em on and have me sit on your lap?”
“Without the matching panties, I presume.”
“Damn right without the panties. I’m sitting on your lap, say in the park in Augusta, we’re having a nice little picnic, and you unzip that Crosse & Blackwell and slip it into me while we eat fried chicken.”
“Just the two of us at this picnic?”
“No, four; you, me and these Technicolor titties.”
It was just after 8:30, 2:30 London time, when Moses turned on the beefy Zenith Transoceanic portable behind his desk to hear what Britons had to say about the Conservative party’s return to power yesterday, Churchill becoming Prime Minister for the second time, just weeks before his 77th birthday. The BBC announcer, much as he might announce a croquet match, observed that his acceptance speech, given to parliament at high noon, had called for a “new Elizabethan age,” calling on the British people to ‘excel as of yore.’
God knows they need him, Moses thought, but coming back at this age could kill him. The announcer read off the Conservatives’ list of objectives:
300,000 new houses to be built, mandated wage increases, returning the trucking and steel industries to private ownership. Reinvigorating the Empire. The announcer droned on; he might as well, Moses thought, add walkin’ on water to the list. Good luck, you magnificent old bastard. I’ll be watchin’ you.
“This just in to the WBQE newsroom- John V. Lindall, found guilty in Superior Court of attempted murder yesterday, has just been sentenced by Judge Rupert Mundy to five to seven years imprisonment. Lindall, who attacked a local restaurant employee with a shotgun earlier this year, will serve his sentence at Reidsville State Prison.”
Chapter XVI. The Rough English Equivalent
“That was Big Joe Turner doin’ Honey Hush; and alla y’all’ll hush up too, or maybe SCREAM YOUR HEADS OFF when you see Gort, Klatu’s giant robot sidekick, in The Day The Earth Stood Still, opening today at the Winston. Ol’ Klatu lands his flyin’ saucer in Washington with an important message for mankind, but he gets shot soon he sets his foot on the ground. Sounds like a Bisque Saturday niit, don’t it? Well, that’s just a little bit of the unearthly goin’s-on in this brand-new science fiction thriller. And wait’ll ya see what ol’ Gort with that fine-lookin’ Patricia Neal! Check it out at the Winston, Bique’s home of fiine motion picture entertainment. See y’all at the movies!”
“And what we'll be doing this afternoon, boys and girls, will be visiting homes here in Bisque, just saying a neighborly hello and inviting any unchurched people to join us in worship at First Baptist,” Miz Clark told us. She was the WMU lady in charge of getting all of the Sunday school kids out knocking on doors, where it seemed like to me we’d pretty likely be unwelcome. I didn't even have to go, but since Ricky did and Miz Terrell was acting so happy about us going together while she fed us way too much Sunday dinner, I figured I’d go along, even if we did have to leave our Sunday clothes on. We started out at the church; everybody had to be there at one-thirty, so the WMU ladies could put us together in teams. There were four kids on each team, and each team had a parent or a WMU lady to drive us out into the neighborhoods so we could start bothering people by 2:00. I guess they were trying to have the same number of girls and boys on each team; anyway, two girls, Virginia James and Bonnie Williams, were on our team. They were in our grade at school, but we didn't know them all that well. They were both what Ricky called ‘church-birds,’ who showed up at church any time in the doors were open, and if you wanted to be nice, you’d just call them plain.
We were going in Mr. James’s car, a ’50 Ford two-door, which seemed to make Virginia think she was in charge of the whole damn thing. Mr. James was a tall, skinny guy with black hair that he combed over the bald spot on top of his head. He seemed like he was used to taking orders from Virginia, and I expect from Mrs. James too. One thing for sure, he wadn't all that happy about what he was doing that afternoon; I didn't see him smile once the whole time. He didn't say much either; just “If any of y’all’re chewing gum, get rid of it before you get in the car. And be careful of the upholstery. ” Anyway, Ricky, Bonnie and I got in the back seat; Bonnie ended up in the middle, with one foot on each side of the bump in the floor. She was just about as big as we were, so we were packed pretty tight in there. She and Virginia talked about what they were going to say to the people all the way out to the neighborhood that we were supposed to work in. It was out in east Bisque, and about the only thing you could say was that nobody who lived there was anything like rich.
Most of the people who lived in these little houses, jammed together as tight as they could be, worked in the cotton mills. You could see the mill buildings, with their tall checkerboards of glass windows taking up as much of the walls as possible, from anyplace in the neighborhood. Mr. James stopped the car near the corner of one of the streets, said “ OK, kids, do your stuff,” and opened up the funnies section of the Sunday paper this week he'd brought along. “We're leavin’ at four, ready or not,” he said from behind Moon Mullins and Maggie and Jiggs, “and you don't wanta get left.” Bonnie was in such a hurry to get out that she almost flattened my ass in the process. She and Virginia headed across the street, white bibles and chubby asses bouncing up and down, and Ricky and I just watched them for minute, looking at each other and wondering how we got into this.
“Well,” Ricky said, “Guess we may as well get this shit over with. Let’s go, buddy.” We walked up to the house closest to the car; a taxicab, a pea-green ’49 Chevy with bald tires and a big dent in the trunk lid, was parked in the driveway. The wire-sprung screen door looked like it might fall off if you hit it, so Ricky knocked on the door-facing, just below a vertical “149” of black metal numbers nailed onto it. And even though I hoped it wouldn't, the door opened almost immediately. A short, stout man in an undershirt looked sleepily through the wavy brown wire at us. “Afternoon, sir,” Ricky said. “We're from the First Baptist Church of Bisque.”
“Oh,” the man said, scratching his bellybutton. “Whacha want?”
Ricky thought for a minute, then said, “How about a glass of water?”
The man thought for a minute, then said, “Sure. C'mon in.” It was just that easy. We stayed in the living room while the man walked into the kitchen. He'd been watching a baseball game on television; little ballplayers a couple of inches high pranced around the eight-inch screen in a light TV-snow blizzard. We were trying to figure out what teams they were when the man got back with two Bama jelly glasses, with little bits of their labels still stuck on the sides, full of water. “Here ya go, boys,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said. “Whatcha watchin?”
“Dodgers and Giants,” he said. “Exhibition game. Set a spell and watch ’er with me, if ya’ll got time. Name’s Edwards. Rocky Edwards,” he said, extending his hand.
“Jack Mason,” I said, shaking it. This is Ricky Terrell. ”
“Pleaseta meet’chall. Now whacha say we watch a little baseball?”
We sat down on his couch, where we could see the houses across the street as Virginia a
nd Bonnie walked in and out of them, staying five or 10 minutes a house. It was almost four when we saw them rounding the corner down at the far end of the street, still jabbering and waving those Bibles at each other. I poked Ricky and glanced at the window. He nodded and said “ Guess we better go, Rocky. ” He was payin’ serious attention to the game, and just waved a hand at us without shifting his eyes from the television. We got to the car before the girls did, wakin’ Mr. James from his nap as they walked up.
“Ready to go?” he asked. Everyone allowed as how they were, and it was a pretty quiet ride back to church, where the WMU ladies had a big basket of ladyfingers and red punch waiting for us. And I finally found out from their little flag they had hanging up that WMU means Woman’s Missionary Union. The only embarrassing part was when she asked us for the names of the people that we'd seen.
“Nobody told us to make any kind of a list,” Ricky said. She rolled her eyes up to heaven, but since it was getting late, that was all we heard about it. Anyway, I wonder what the missionary ladies would’ve said if old Rocky had shown up on the First Baptist steps next Sunday.
Diana Bishop, the winner of the latest heat in the sisters’ ongoing footrace to the driver’s seat, backed the white car out of its space in the Bisque High parking lot. Pulling the gearshift lever down into low, she headed across the lot and out the East entrance, turning right onto Cypress Street into the cool, rainy afternoon. Bisque’s retail businesses had been closed since noon, as they’d been every Wednesday afternoon for years. A cannon-shot down the middle of Lee Street on Wednesday at 12:01p.m., it was often said, would never hit a soul. “What’ll we do if he’s already gone?” Diana asked her sister.
“Drive out to ’is house, I guess,” said Dolores. “I bet he’ll still be there, though. He’s not like these old guys who run off fishin’ every damn Wednesday of the world. I’d liketa let the air out’ve the tires’ve the next car we see that has one of those damn “God Don’t Deduct Days Spent Fishing From Our Time On Earth” signs on it.”