Joe

by Larry Brown

  He went to the back and raised the camper door. It fell twice before he got it to stay up. There was a big yellow Covey cooler with a red top in the back. He pried the lid open and looked inside. There were eight or ten bottles of beer covered with ice and water. He got one and looked at it.

  “This here?” he said, holding it out.

  “Yeah,” Joe said, without looking up. The boy walked back and handed it to him. He put the ratchet down and twisted the top off the beer and tossed the cap out in the yard. He turned the beer up and took a good third of it down, then looked at his watch. Nearly eleven o’clock. Damned if he wasn’t starting earlier every day. He set it down on the fan shroud and balanced it precariously there and picked up another bolt.

  “You like beer?” the boy said.

  “Yeah. Do you?”

  “I ain’t never had one.”

  Joe looked around at him and grinned. “Ain’t never had one? How old did you say you were?”

  “I think I’m fifteen. That’s why I ain’t never got a Social Security card. I ain’t got no birth certificate.”

  “I thought everybody had a birth certificate.”

  “I ain’t. My mama said the place I was born you couldn’t get one.”

  “Why hell, I wouldn’t worry about it, then. You won’t even have to file income tax. Long as you don’t hold a public job. You won’t even have to register for the draft. You ever been to school?”

  “Nosir.”

  They stood looking at each other across the ten feet that separated them.

  “You can’t read.”

  “Nosir.”

  He picked up the beer again and drank some of it. “There’s worse things, I guess. How do you sign your name?”

  “I ain’t never had to.”

  He bent under the hood of the truck again. He couldn’t understand how the boy could have come this far without knowing what a church was.

  “Can I buy one of those beers from you?”

  He leaned around again and looked at him.

  “What?”

  “I’m kinda thirsty. I was headed up to the store to get me something to drink. Can I buy one of them from you?”

  Fifteen. Maybe. And never had a place to call his own, don’t know where he was born. He’d go up to the house one day and get him. See what kind of shape they were in up there.

  “I tell you what, son. You can drink one of them beers if you want it. I don’t reckon your daddy would care, would he?”

  “I don’t reckon.”

  “But you can’t buy one from me. Friends don’t buy things from one another.”

  “Yessir.”

  “And don’t say sir so much to me.”

  “Yessir.”

  Joe bent under the hood again.

  “You still want to give me two hundred dollars for this truck?”

  An hour later he had it running with the radiator full of water. He had changed his clothes and had most of the black grease washed off his hands. The boy had finished his third beer and was sitting in the yard.

  “Come on and get in,” Joe told him. “I need to go by the store and get some gas.”

  The boy climbed in the other side. He wasn’t saying much. He’d already noted how good those cold beers were. He understood now what the old man was after on all those nights and weekends and weeks sometimes, what he went for and what he wanted to feel. Nothing mattered now, he knew it the first time he met it. He was with the bossman, who was going to take care of him, and he probably wouldn’t even have to worry about walking back home. He was going to get the truck, some way, some day, and then he’d learn how to drive it.

  Later he remembered stopping by the store and getting ice and gas, the long ride to Bruce and the long wait in the hot sunshiny cab of the truck at the Weyerhauser plant, the big chain-link fence and the piles of logs as far as the eye could see, the water spraying over the stacked lengths of them. Joe stayed inside nearly forever, it seemed, and he got sleepy in the truck. They ate somewhere, thick hamburgers and fries in little white cardboard containers. A roadside stand had T-shirts and the bossman bought him one, AC/DC, although neither of them knew their music; the shirt was for a boy who needed one because he didn’t have one on and might need one wherever they wound up. Two kindred souls, one who sat on the tailgate drinking another beer while the other one kicked the bushes and stomped the clumps of grass beside the freshly skinned tree, whooping and hollering and looking all around. Many houses, many yards, one where Joe struck up a conversation with a pretty young housewife, making her laugh easily, admiring her with his eyes, her knowing it. No, but she hadn’t seen the dog. And now she had his number if she needed to call him. There was an old man in a rocking chair in another one. Joe pulled up right beside the porch, where the old man had a cane planted firmly between his shoes, hand-rolling his cigarettes, the little bag and paper pinched up tight against his chest, nodding or shaking his head; the bossman was genial and deferential to advanced age, good natured, easy, but each time, he pulled away from a house, saying Goddamn, I won’t never find him. Down dirt roads they drove, past houses off dirt roads, little yards enclosed by high woods and brush, enclaves carved out of the wilderness where deer came at night and sniffed at the children’s toys. Once he thought he slept. They were miles removed from where they had been, Joe having given up on asking folks and just riding the roads in a dry county and drinking whiskey, trying to find his dog, telling Gary over and over what a good dog he was. He wouldn’t have done anything to you, maybe just nipped you a little. Sometimes they met cruisers with uniformed deputies or even the real bad boys, the highway patrol, military, hardass, looking for people like them. Don’t never wave to them. They know you guilty of something when you wave. Days and nights in the ring at Fort Jackson when Joe held the middleweight title for sixteen months and defended it successfully nine times—Gary heard about that. Women and divorce and rolling the bones, jail and a grandbaby coming, he’d raised that dog from a puppy, had been the only friend he’d had in a while. Everybody thought he’d gone crazy but he hadn’t gone crazy. They tell ever kind of lie on me it is. The bastards would hang murder on me if they could get away with it. You listen to what I’m telling you. A poor man ain’t got a chance against the law. How can some rich son of a bitch do something and get off? And a poor man go to the pen? It’s money. The rich ones know the judge and play golf and shit with him. Hell, go out to the country club and have a few drinks. Weighs about a hundred pounds. He’s got long ears but a docked tail. Well yessir I meant to get around to doing that but I sorta did a halfway job on him. Oh, he’s a unique looking dog, I promise you that. But if you happen to see him. It don’t matter what time you call. Day or night. Yes sir. Thank you, sir. A deep green creek stirring beneath a steel and concrete bridge, the bossman wearing shades and holding his dick in one hand and a whiskey bottle in the other, grinning and saluting him where he stood pissing in the road. Having to jump in and zip up his pants quickly because somebody was coming. You ain’t drunk, are you? I used to know an old gal who lived around here. Now, son, you talk about some good stuff. I wonder where that damn dog is. He’s got to be around here somewhere. Some where. Stopping at a store for cigarettes, his head lolling out the window, pigskins to sober up on that were of the hot variety and made him drink more. He didn’t have to be home at any particular time, he was sure. Just drive yonder way, the boy kept saying. Just drive yonder way. He got it in his head that somebody had stolen the dog, or that the police might be holding him against his will. And there he was finally, standing not fifty yards from the tree Joe had hit, then loping, staying out of the road, where the cars whizzed by at sixty, even when they saw a man trying to get his dog by the side of the road. You got more sense than I thought you had. Get back there. Lay down and behave. We going home right now. The sun growing gentler and the evening light changing, going softer, touching the horizon beyond the road faintly blue, the clouds rolled up high in white masses steadily changing shapes. On
ce again roads that he knew or had been on if even briefly. Here the bridge where the man he had to hit with the rock. You point the motherfucker out to me. I’ll settle his goddamn hash. The same fat cows, the same lush grass. A doe deer feeding among them now, little wild cousin with lespedeza hanging from her working mouth, the heartprint hooves. Both of them drunk now, a roady buzz that would linger for a while. Lights beginning to come on in London Hill, the storefront lit, a flashing glimpse of the old man standing under the naked bulb where it hung from a cord in the soot-stained ceiling. I’ll drop you off if you’re ready to go. They stopped and let the dog out. Joe held him and made Gary pet him and the dog accepted it and licked his hand. The broad tongue raspy, pink, wide. The creased forehead with its knots of tooth-marked scars. Yeah, but all them dogs is dead. You better sober up a little before you go home. Oh? You ain’t ready to go home? Well, I could find some place else for us to go, yeah. Late evening coming, little flocks of nine and ten doves sailing over the light wires or perched on the same with their feathers ruffled and squatting in deep composure. Meeting people with parking lights on, the air suffused with the smell of things living, the trees green and standing with their grapevines twisted about them and their roots knurled deep in the good earth. A warm late spring or early summer evening with the branches beginning to merge together, for things in the distance to grow less plain, finally until night fell and all the lights had to be turned on and the day was another event.

  The old man was shaking where he lay next to the house, nearly fetal with his clenched hands pillowing his head. The blacks inside had run him out again and now he didn’t know what hour it was or day it had been or even where he lay. He would doze a little as sleep tried to close in on him, but always the fear he had of them kept his eyes opening and blinking him not to go to sleep, not here, where he feared they might cut his throat and lift the few bills he had and put him in the river for the turtles to feast on.

  The underside of the house close to where he rested was strewn with broken beer bottles, odd lengths of pipe, here and there money fallen through cracks in the floor. A few feet away lay a dead cat, its bones showing through the rotten hide like yellow tusks. The old man heard feet walking on the wood above. A questioning voice raised a question. An answering voice answered it. An exclamation. Once in a while an angry word. And once in a while the electric strokes of a guitarist choking down a neck with fingers greased by skill, and there were no voices then.

  He determined he would make it back inside and see what was happening. If maybe there was anything to eat. He could see a dark cow in the dark pasture looking at him under the house and swinging her tail. He rolled himself over onto his belly and crawled out from under his hiding place. He had to beat the dirt off his clothes. It bounced out in large brown puffs. He thought there was a piece of a drink left somewhere.

  He stumbled around in the back yard, which was littered with spare tires, grass grown up through the lug-bolt holes, with rotted wooden barrels sawn in half that had once held flowers. The back porch was of rough sawmill lumber and it leaned to the left. Screened in with rusty wire, patched with cotton thread. He lurched toward it feebly in the night. The cow raised her head and shook her horns, a gesture not lost on him. He’d already noted that the dogs didn’t like him worth a damn.

  There was his glass, left where he’d put it on the bottom step. He knelt and drank from it.

  The lights were on low and now there were no unfriendly growls to make a man nervous. They had a movie going on the TV and VCR but the sound was low, too. It was warm and cozy and the girls were showing plenty of leg. Joe had the one named Debi in the corner, talking to her. Gary was alone in another chair in the corner, eyes shifting, drinking a tenth beer. It was four a.m.

  Joe leaned over and poured another little shot of whiskey into her glass. “How late y’all stay open?” he said, then leaned over and kissed her again. She was a little chubby but marvelously assembled, no dog you couldn’t take home to Mama. Her hair was blond on one side and brown on the other, just the reverse between her legs.

  “Never past daylight. When me and you going back?”

  “Hell, I can’t do you no good.”

  “Since when?”

  “Hell, I’m about too old to fuck. I wouldn’t never get my money’s worth.”

  “I’ll give you your money’s worth, baby.”

  She leaned around him and looked across the room. “How’s your friend doing?”

  “I think he’s sobered up now. Goddamn, we been a long way today. He helped me find my dog.”

  She looked at him with a half smile.

  “I’m surprised you even over here. You seen Duncan?”

  “Naw, I ain’t seen him. Why, he lookin for me?”

  “I don’t figure he is,” she said.

  He looked at the boy and saw him pretending to watch the movie, but saw each time he lifted the bottle to his lips the quick darting movement of his eyes toward the girls giggling and whispering on the couch. Three of them in their underwear, two fat, one skinny. Joe leaned toward the one he had his arm around.

  “How’d you like to do me a favor?”

  She smiled and gave him a kiss. “Sure.”

  He pointed with his drink.

  “Break that boy in there.”

  She looked at the boy and then looked back at Joe. There was an amused little grin on her lips.

  “Him?”

  “Hell, he ain’t never had none.”

  “How you know?”

  Joe shook the ice in his glass and drank off the half inch of liquid that was there and sat up. He ran his fingers through his hair.

  “Shit. I need to get my ass up and go on home. What time is it?”

  “Little after four.”

  “A little after four.”

  “Yeah.”

  He set his glass on a table and leaned back on the couch. “Y’all got time to make it before daylight. Hell, it won’t take him but a minute.”

  “How you know how long it’ll take him?”

  “Cause. I remember when I was fifteen. Go on and take him back.”

  She looked at the boy and shook her head doubtfully.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “He looks mighty young. You sure he’s fifteen?”

  He reached in his pocket for a wad of money and peeled off a fifty and handed it to her. “Here,” he said. “I need to get him home before daylight.”

  She looked at the money for a second, looked at the boy, then put the money in a little purse that was hanging on her wrist.

  “Well, hell,” she said. “What’s his name again?”

  “Gary.”

  She seemed to resign herself to it. “Gary. All right.”

  She got up and smoothed her chemise and her stockings and put her cigarette out. Joe saw the boy watching her. His face kept lifting as she got closer until finally she was standing over him and he was looking up at her. She put one hand on her hip and said something to him. He nodded and said something back. She sat on the arm of his chair and crossed her legs. Joe smiled to see that the boy couldn’t take his eyes off her. She talked to him for a while and the boy kept nodding. She reached out and took his hand and pulled him up out of the chair. She started leading him out of the room, and he looked back at the bossman, his face terror-stricken, mute yet pleading, maybe for some words of instruction, explanation, until she pulled him out of sight.

  He went down the hall with her tugging on his hand and followed her into a room with a parachute tacked to the ceiling. There was a lamp in the room and a bed and a chair and a bowl of water on the floor. The covers on the bed were rumpled, the pillows lumped together. She pushed him down on the bed and he sat there looking at her with wild eyes.

  “You ain’t never done this before, have you?” she said.

  “Done what?”

  She bent over him and he looked into the deep cleavage she had.

  “This.” Her mouth came down on his and then quickly pulled
away. “Damn.”

  “What’s the matter?” he said.

  “Your breath is awful. Do you not ever brush your teeth?”

  “Naw.”

  “Well, you need to.”

  He just looked at her. She opened a door at the back of the room and light spilled out over him. He rose up a little. He could see a mirror and a sink, and towels hanging from rings on the wall. She stepped into the room and started running the water, looking through drawers.

  “Come in here,” she said.

  He got up and set his beer down and staggered into the bathroom. She held up a blue implement that was foreign to him, made of plastic and with white bristles. From a tube she squeezed a white paste onto it.

  “Here,” she said, and held it out to him. “Do me a favor and brush your teeth. I got some mouthwash, too. I ain’t gonna fuck you if I can’t even kiss you.”