Aquaboogie

by Susan Straight

  This Rencie was from L.A. He’d heard her talking to another girl one day, while they sat on folding chairs in her yard. “I can’t believe Mama sent me to take care of this country-ass house. This a backward place, Rio Seco.”

  Huh, Lanier thought. This country? Best not send you to Grenada.

  “Shoot, yo cousin told me the court was tired a seein you. He said you had to get out the county.”

  “I only had to get outta Compton. She didn’t have to send me all the way out here and shit.”

  She never even spit on the greens tree that her aunt had planted ten years ago, along the chainlink fence. It yellowed and shrank away from the wire, and the apricots on the side-yard tree near Lanier’s morning glory fell and turned see-through brown, fruit flies misting everywhere.

  “Ain’t you gon pick em?” he asked her once, walking over to where she sat against the wall, watching the street. It was May then.

  “It’s too many. Keta the only one like em.” She had two girls, Naketa and Fatima, and a boy, Teddy.

  “You know your Aint Viola put up twenty-one jars of preserves offa that tree last year.”

  “Shit, it’s too hot to be in the kitchen. I buy me some preserves. And they givin em away at the government program, with that cheese. Grape jelly.”

  “That stuff just thick-up Kool Aid,” Lanier said. “It ain’t no good for your kids.”

  “They eat it. They ain’t dead. Why you so nosy? Ain’t you got cows or pigs or somethin to feed? Somebody told me you the original Old MacDonald.”

  “Just some hogs. People want fresh meat now and then, stead a that Burger King.” He looked at the empty bags near her chair.

  She half-closed her eyes. Her arms were thin, glistening iridescent in the folds at her elbow. “You must want to get in the kitchen for me, huh? I ain’t all up in your face. My kids stay on my side of the fence. Why you don’t do the same?”

  Now she said loudly to the boy, “Come on. I swear.” He shook his head, patted the pinstriping on the door. Rencie glanced at Lanier and turned back toward her house. “It’s plenty other niggas in the world,” she yelled at the boy, and the driver sped off the yard, leaving only faint marks in the packed-hard dirt. When the drums were gone again, Lanier could hear her kids further down the street. Even her cat lived on grasshoppers, came to Lanier’s yard to drink from the puddles around the peach tree.

  He was waiting for Floyd. Lee Myrtle said Floyd had come by the night before to borrow ten dollars.

  The aqua truck pulled up after four. Roscoe was with Floyd, who waved the money when he got close to the porch. “Shoot, almost had to send one a them boys home with heat stroke. Lee Myrtle got ice tea?”

  “Who said I want you on my porch? Take your stanky grass-smellin truck down the street where it belong,” Lanier said, going into the house for the sun tea.

  Roscoe sat on the steps, his baseball cap on his knee. “Been out to your place, Lanier,” he called. “Took a load of extra pallets about a hour ago. Seen two white men out there, pokin around.”

  “Don’t tell me I’ma have to get Tique out there again, put him in the trailer with a shotgun,” Lanier said.

  “Remember when that dude from Del Rosa tried to sneak up there, what was it, two years ago? How many he get?” Floyd asked.

  “He got four till I moved Tique in the trailer. Boy ain’t got no sense, but he do got ears,” Lanier said.

  “Naw, listen,” Roscoe interrupted. “These cats was from downtown, man. Ties, white shirts, county car. They was checkin fences and shit, lookin for you.”

  “Wasn’t they bulldozin that land on the other side of you, up on the ridge, Lanier?” Floyd asked. “Raisin all kinda dust.” He looked past the house from where he stood on the grass. “Uh oh, I see another cloud of dust. Red Man headin down the alley to what he call a garage.”

  After the grinding gears had stopped, Red Man came through the side yard. “You gon do a hog for me next month? We got that family reunion down at the park. Ain’t but once every five years, and all them people from Tulsa and L.A. some greedy eaters. Give em some to take home.”

  “Goddamn, don’t you even speak?” Floyd shouted. “Could say hello and shit.” He pointed down the long street, to where the end was hidden in the smog. “Ain’t you never gon clean up yo yard? Don’t you know I live near here?” He turned to Roscoe and Lanier. “Fool done brought home another truck, one a them king cabs.”

  “Hell,” Roscoe said. “Your property value ain’t shit anyway. You live there, and look at you.”

  “Man, you think you safe with that shit? Don’t you know they was down there at my end of Picasso last week, talking about a beautification project? Call theyselves about to build some big cement flower boxes all along the bank where it go up to that new development, where Green Hollows use to be.”

  “You a lie.”

  “Serious, now, they was walking all up and down in front of my yard, pointin and starin. Told me and Maitrue next door that in New York City, people did some study bout flowers and window boxes.” He imitated a woman’s voice. “People were so much more willing to spend time on upkeep when they had flowers, Mr. King.” Floyd put his hands behind his back. “Then she want to go and pull on my greens tree. ‘Now rather than allowing weeds to front yo fence, why not try flowers?’ she said. I told her, ‘Man, that’s my dinner you tuggin on! That’s one a Red Man’s greens trees, been there ten years.’”

  “Bout as long as his Cadillac been in the side yard,” Roscoe said, and Lanier laughed, but he thought about the city men and the holes in the fences.

  They came again the next week, while he stood in the truckbed. He had brownish heads of iceberg lettuce, soggy, dimple-skinned grapefruit, and more watermelon rinds. The men picked their way around the straw heap, and he could tell they didn’t see the sow’s twitching ears.

  “Mr. Chatham,” the taller one said, after shaking Lanier’s hand. “Your lot here is worth much more than you paid for it originally, I’m sure. When did you acquire the property, what is it, just over an acre?”

  “Long time ago,” Lanier said, watching the other one who shook his head slowly near the fences.

  “Was it around 1969?”

  If he know, why he askin? Lanier thought.

  “Have the, uh, hogs been here all that time?”

  “No. Twelve years.”

  “Well, I’m sure you know the situation. People are moving out to Rio Seco for affordable housing, people from L.A., and on a piece of acreage like this, ten houses could be built. That means your land here is going to bring a remarkable profit, I’m telling you. Is this farm running at much of a profit? How many hogs do you have?”

  “I don’t know, last count,” Lanier said, and the man’s head dipped like a bird drinking. “About a hundred, probably. It ain’t about profit.”

  “Huh,” he said. “Well, as you probably know, the city has owned the land abutting yours, here to the west, for years. We’d like to purchase yours in order to offer a parcel that would extend from the edge of the hillside there to the frontage road.” Lanier swung around to look at the steep ridge where the baby piglets tried to climb every year and rolled back down, their bellies sliding over the squirrel holes. He turned to the west, where the bulldozing was done.

  “That yours, too?” he asked the man.

  “That parcel’s already been sold. The developer has people lined up for the lots there, and he wants this adjacent parcel, too.”

  Parcels. This ain’t about no parcel post. The shorter man was behind him now. “How do you keep track of them all? It looks like you’ve got several holes, and they’re well used.”

  “They don’t run far,” Lanier said. “Always hungry.” He stared away from the two men, at the straw heap that looked like it was breathing, shuddering.

  The water pump was out on the Ford. Lanier pulled it under the spreading carob tree at the edge of the street so he could work in the shade. The heat was all day, all night, now, like M
ississippi. His wrists and shoulders seemed to buzz warm after he got off work, and he couldn’t sleep in the sweat that coated him when he lay down.

  Naketa watched Lee Myrtle pick peaches for a cobbler; she leaned against the fence, staring at the shaky leaves, the June bugs that whirred out angrily.

  “Here, baby, take a coupla these. I got too many. My kids ain’t comin out for the weekend,” Lee Myrtle said. Naketa edged around the fence. “You got kids?” “Two daughters and two grandbabies. They live in L.A.” “My birthday is next week. I’ma be eight.” Lee Myrtle laughed from inside the branches, Lanier heard. Naketa stood under her now. “Can I have some plums?”

  Lee Myrtle filled the lines of Naketa’s arms where they pressed against her belly in a cradle, and then Naketa walked across the yard, backward-slanted as Chuck Berry to balance the fruit against her chest.

  “Go on and give them to your mama, Keta,” Lee Myrtle called. Lanier saw the girl’s head turn quickly to the open door of her house, where the sounds of laughter came from the television, and then she scuttled past, to the far side of the yard. She rolled the plums carefully onto a piece of cardboard by the dying rosebush and crouched, eating the fruit so fast the juice dripped from her elbows into the dust.

  He washed his face with cold water inside, and Lee Myrtle followed him into the back room. “You know, Maitrue’s daughter told me Keta’s mama on that stuff they put in the pipe and smoke. She said they be sellin it at that pink house, down the way off Tenth. I swear, Lanier, a pipe. My mama smoke a pipe back in Grenada, remember? I like to died every time people seen her, so country.”

  “What they puttin in the pipe?”

  “Maitrue’s girl talkin about some rock cocaine, somethin crazy.”

  Lanier brushed her shoulder on the way outside. “Goin out there to check the fences.”

  “That’s all you ever worry about now—them fences.”

  He stopped for a moment. “That girl, Rencie, she think this is country.”

  On Sunday, he drove past the place and down the road to where the new model houses were being framed. The land was cut in flat squares up the ridge, like descending rice farms he’d seen pictures of somewhere.

  “He said they was waitin in line?” Floyd said a few hours later, when they brought the beer and dominoes. He squinted at the crow screaming from a telephone pole.

  “Man, you done told us a hundred times, all last month,” Red Man said, righting a barber chair that had tipped over. “What you fittin to do?”

  “Shoot, they slow,” Floyd said. “I knew L.A. was a nutcase back in 1965. Didn’t want my boys in all that, niggas shootin each other for a quarter.”

  Roscoe stood and threw a peach pit at the crow. “Westside was the only place we could buy. Now look, Carnell and Retha’s boy, what’s his name? Trent. Yeah, he bought into that fancy tract, the other side of the hill.”

  “Grayglen,” Red Man said. “I had a couple of yards up there.”

  “Trent probably the darkest thing even drive up there. Even they maids is all Mexican now,” Floyd said.

  Lanier thought. “Lee Myrtle used to work up there, in the older part. The Culvers. Ten dollars a week.”

  “What you mumblin and grumblin about, Lanier?” Floyd said. “Start countin your money. Give it to me—I’ll count it.”

  “I ain’t sellin,” Lanier said. The Snuffle-talk from the pens drifted through the slats into the quiet.

  “You a fool,” Floyd said. “You gon get you some cash.”

  “You ain’t makin no money off these hogs,” Red Man said. “I seen you pay for them damn pig pellets, if it wasn’t nobody givin you trash to feed em. And you always talkin about that corn cost money, when somebody finally poke you into killin one a these suckers.”

  “Meat taste fishy as seaweed he don’t give em that corn,” Floyd said. “Shit, he gon get enough money to buy lobster and who need pig?”

  “Shut up, man,” Roscoe shouted. “Play.”

  The city men came again, came to the porch of his house. “You really need to decide, Mr. Chatham. The developer is anxious to get started.”

  Like it ain’t no question, Lanier thought, but what bothered him more was taking the food morning and evening and not knowing whether they’d been at the place while he was asleep, touching the fenceposts, kicking at the pallets, laughing at the piglets with sashes widening around fat bellies. He couldn’t even put Tique out in the tiny trailer; Tique would love to shoot anyone. He couldn’t guard anything from the two men, and Lanier bet they breathed in the smell from the wallows and still frowned, many times as they’d stood there.

  In November, Red Man woke him early one morning, wobbling sheets of paper near Lanier’s face. “They done put notices on the trucks, both of em,” he shouted.

  “Don’t be hollerin,” Lee Myrtle said, standing behind him.

  The papers said that the trucks were public nuisances, that property owners in the neighborhood had complained about their being parked in the alley. The owners had thirty days to move the vehicles.

  “And ain’t put nothin on your Cadillac been in the street for a month now?” Lee Myrtle said. “Huh.”

  “Don’t start,” Red Man shouted, and Lanier grabbed the papers from him.

  “Catch yourself,” Lanier said, angry. “That’s my wife. Go on home.”

  His wrists ached from work, felt wider and wider, like the bones had tiny jacks inside pushing them apart. He went to the back, saw the dust still hanging ankle-high where Red Man had driven down the alley. He could hear Rencie’s music all the way back here, now that the too-early morning pulled away from his ears and eyes.

  The Mexican market on Seventh Street had been happy to give him spoiled loads now, too, because the city had closed the dump. He drove from there to the L&L, shovelled up the cabbage, carrot tops, cheese without thinking. But when he drove along the freeway, he remembered the dump, how far away it had seemed when he moved to Rio Seco. A few years ago, a new tract had been built across the arroyo from the landfill, and the houses were big, with bay windows, garages the size of his yard. The new people had complained about the smell when the wind blew from the east. Now it was twelve miles out to the county sanitation, and ten bucks a pop, Red Man told him, so the market had gotten word to him.

  “They gon change the zoning on you,” Floyd said every day. “Ain’t nothin you can do.”

  “Shit, change the zoning for us we don’t watch out,” Roscoe frowned. “Build all around the Westside and have them people complain about the smell of barbecue. They rewrite that zoning faster than you can holler ‘Got him by the toe.’”

  Lanier drove faster, the engine roaring so loud he could feel it in his hair. Make yo Mississippi ass feel at home, Roscoe had laughed. Lanier remembered driving out from L.A. with Lee Myrtle, seeing the miles of tumbleweeds pillowing over the fields. It had been November then, too, and they were round as his daughters’ Afros, thick at the centers.

  When he touched the fences, listening to the scrape of the pigs’ feet and the thuds of their bellies hitting each other, he pulled out the notices, balled them up, threw them into one of the greenish wallows where they floated light as popcorn on the water. One of the younger males ran frantically for them, splashing in to eat them quickly.

  “You see the signs?” Floyd asked. “What they callin it?”

  Lanier was silent. The three model homes had lawns now, instant sod, wrought-iron fences all around the yards. “Morning Ridge,” he said.

  “Shit,” Red Man laughed. “Been Rattlesnake Mountain down to this side since we got here.”

  “You can’t sell no rattlesnakes,” Roscoe said. “You have to name it right.”

  “I call it Traffic Ridge,” Red Man said. “Get up in the morning and face the traffic to L.A.” The dominoes clicked in his hand, and he slammed down the big six. “Go to the bone yard, Floyd. You ain’t got none a that,” he shouted.

  Floyd took three pieces from the scattering at the edge of
the table and added them to his hand. “Lanier, feed this dog of yours. You and your strays. This one so hungry he trying to eat the dirt off my pants cuff.”

  The chain hanging from the pepper tree laid a shadow over the table. “You pull out that Cadillac engine yesterday?” Lanier asked. “I still don’t believe it.”

  “I still don’t believe you gon make me move all my stuff off this place,” Red Man said. “My boys gon be moanin and groanin if they have to help me.”

  “You want the city to move it for you?” Floyd said. “Keep throwin away them notices, they do it. Only charge you thousands of dollars.” He slammed a domino on the table. “Which is what Conklin here could have tomorrow, dollars. Fore they take it away.”

  “Ain’t nobody takin nothin away,” Red Man said.

  “Talkin bout a eyesore and a health hazard? Shit,” Floyd shouted. “He better get him what he can now!”

  Every time he saw them, it was the same, and he heard their voices behind the machines at work, alongside the cars from the freeway, and in the crunching of dried out tortillas the pigs ate. He stood up, thighs bumping the table and making wide cracks between the lines of dominoes. “And if I fix all the fences? If y’all come out tomorrow and move all Red Man’s leavings…” He paused, felt the tickle of an ant crawl up his ankle. “If I act like the place ain’t even mine? They ain’t gon want it? I don’t want y’all out here. Don’t come. It ain’t your land, it ain’t your meat. Go sit on the Westside and jaw till hell freeze over.”

  Just before New Year’s, when the wind blew the pepper tree branches against his face like stockings hanging from the shower curtain, he and Lonzo, who always butchered the pigs, did two of the largest males. Feet, frosty-white tripe, chitlins and hog maws. Only two this time—Lanier took the meat around to the people who’d ordered it, and gave some to the Streeters out in San Bernardino who didn’t have the money this year. It was quiet at his house the day after New Year’s, when his daughters had gone back to L.A. already because they didn’t have any time off work. Lee Myrtle held a plate of shiny chitlins, grayish from the long cooking and then pink with Tabasco sauce. She called out to Rencie, who stood in her yard looking down the street for her kids.