by Bobby Byrd
Six times over, you a dead man.
Lying by the side of the road, you a dead man.
Slumped in the seat of your car, you a dead man.
How do you like your blue-eyed boy now,
Mister Death?
Hit me again. Slice.
“What are you doing here?” Sherry asked.
It was the Christmas holidays. Spurred by morbid curiosity, I drove over to Sherry’s house in Sunset Valley, five miles south of Gulfgate. I and Velma ain’t stupid.
Yeah, right.
“What are you doing here?” Sherry stood with her hands on her hips, and she more hissed than spoke. She looked pretty, angry like she was.
“Charles called me, said he was getting off work at five. He said maybe you’d wanna go have a beer with us.”
“Charles knows better than that. Why are you lying to me?”
“Hey,” I said, crossing my wrists in front of me, “arrest me, okay? Guilty as charged. Maybe I just came to see a friend from the base.”
Sherry said nothing, but something about her tone, her body’s tone, the way she stood, the look in her eyes, told me for once in my life to shut up and listen. I lowered my hands.
“Sorry,” I whispered.
Sherry nodded her head to the right, so slightly that if her eyes hadn’t done the same I’d have missed the gesture. I moved where she instructed, around the corner of the house to a clump of shrubs, hiding us from the street.
“Did you see Denny on your way over, ’cause he’s on his way here now. Did he see you?”
“I don’t think so. I didn’t see him.”
“You better hope not. Look, kid, you maybe think you know something, that’s why you came here today. To tell somebody what you think you know. He doesn’t know it yet, but Denny is gonna fry for what he did. Nothing’s gonna change that. He is a sick and vicious man. You listening to me?”
“Yes. I hear you.”
“I am trying to keep you from getting hurt. He knows where you go to school. He mentioned a lake near Kemah, a lake so deep they’d never find a body. That’s what he told me. As long as Denny is out free, you are not safe, nobody who knows him is. You need to turn around and drive your car back home, enjoy your Christmastime with your folks, then get your butt back to high school and forget you ever knew anything about Ellington Air Force Base.”
I did as I was told.
Six years and several fruitless appeals later, Denny had his date with Old Sparky, the electric chair in Huntsville Federal Prison, and Sherry married a chef from the base. And still as I write, encouraged by zealous defenders of the people, the Texas treadmill creeps in its petty pace from day to day, lighting fools the way to dusty death.
Back in Pasadena, my old teachers have long-ago retired or died and the schools are integrated. I don’t get home that often anymore. My mother moved to San Antonio and only my sister lives near the coast. She married a former SoHo football player and they moved to Lake Jackson, where he starred for the post office till he retired.
The coastal town of Kemah, a few miles east of Ellington, is once again gutted houses and smelly seaweed, just as it was after Hurricane Carla in 1961. Hurricanes have a way of equalizing things, and in 2008, Ike fulfilled its purpose. I did attend my thirtieth high school reunion, and my fortieth as well. Charles was there, and we had a drink for old times. We didn’t speak of Denny. Late that evening, probably around three a.m., I drove by the gate to Ellington, but I didn’t linger there. Sometimes it’s better just to drive away.
PART II
BACK ROADS TEXAS
Jump in the river, stay drunk all the time …
—Henry Thomas
LUCK
BY JAMES CRUMLEY
Crumley, Texas
JASMINE
13th June, Slippery Rock
Little sister,
I fear that I waited too long to respond to your missive of early December. I hoped and prayed that I could find the time to write a short and sweet, perfectly reasonable explanation for the financial morass that seems to be dividing our true and deep sisterly love. (You understand.) So please forgive me if I rattle on in a dozen different directions before I discover the truth dancing in front of me, lost and fluttering like one of those monarch butterflies on his endless migrations.
The folks here in Slippery Rock seem to have recently arrived from some other time zone—the slow drip of molasses time zone, slow hands and deep pockets. But they have other advantages. They have no idea how the marble breaks down. Silver Slip had to twice physically restrain farmers who wanted to wager their bottom land against the illusive numbers. They went home, small slices of skin missing. They refused to believe a dwarf could be so quick. But, Lord, the women are so tight they won’t even spit on the ground or step into the honey-bucket flop. You know the kind of women I mean—like Momma—cat glasses, hair so tight in buns that their noses are pointed like the bills of the snapping turtles Daddy brought out of the Black River, hard, stingy eyes over skinny, pale mouths. They probably think a blow job is when you blow smoke in a guy’s ear. The things we could teach them, huh? (HA! Remember those two drummers at the Pow Wow Motel in Tucumcari? They should have been diamond miners.) But Jesus, they eat like lost hogs. Mounds of popcorn, miles of cotton candy, and enough Cokes to launch a ship, but they never shit. The whirlaround ride is shot, and this here’s a town that keeps little kids on the soft rides, these Slippery Rockers. Shit, the games are down 200 percent. Even the penny pits are losing money to the fucking rug rats. Which is why I’ve missed the last two payments. I’m sorry. We’re living on macaroni and welfare cheese. Maybe we need to put the shows back together. Maybe.
Speaking of rug rats—how’s little Harney doing? Same sort of straight dude his dad is? What is he now? Eighteen months? I hear little Pearl looks just like you. I know Harney would love to send you some money, but he’s still got those Kentucky peckerwoods on his back. It wasn’t Harn’s fault that the still caught fire. Hell, he nearly lost two fingers trying to put it out.
Well, baby sis, I gotta run. More soon.
Your loving sister,
Jasmine
GINGER
Flat River, August 31
Toad, it’s always a pleasure to get one of your wandering forays into the fucking miasma of your twisted, lying mind. You’re as ugly as Momma and twice as crooked. Stop whining and send the fucking money. Now. I’ve got a new sword swallower that will turn your bad news dwarf into mincemeat pie. And perhaps do a little cosmetic surgery so no one will ever mistake us again. Your excuse was late, mailed to the wrong place on purpose or by accident, no matter. The USPS is a fairly solid bet these days. Of course, there didn’t seem to be a check from you for $3,700, and no child support from Harney. Tell him I’ll put the sheriff on his ass and this time McAlaster will welcome him home. Or, hell, just forget it. I’ll come take the whole works, baby—in fact, forget everything. Like you always do. I didn’t fuck any drummers in Tucumcari, dear. I was in the governor’s suite with a fist full of cash and a mouth full of the governor’s press secretary’s cock. So we could get our permits restored, permits you’d lost with a rigged wheel. Then you told Harney it was me. That’s why I fucked him the first time. Or was that the first five hundred times? Who can keep it straight, bitch.
Wow. Time for a deep breath, a reassessment, then back to business. But before I forget, Pop didn’t leave because Mom wouldn’t go down on him. He left because she was boring, mean-spirited, and fairly stupid. And wall-eyed too. Just like you. Yeah, I can hear you sigh. She’s in denial again.
Maybe not, sis. Maybe not.
Look at it the real way, sister mine: you seduced him at thirteen for a pair Cherokee platform boots to impress Lauren Poltz. But you got Tommy Poltz in every orifice, didn’t you? Then it was off to Spokane to have the baby, then a flappy-ass job in the accounting wagon. While I shoveled Shetland pony shit and battled anklebiters as they covered me with baby shit, thin puke, and endless screams. I could have gone t
o college. You couldn’t finish grade school.
So when I was sixteen, I seduced the old bastard too, because he was the single most lonely man in the world, and I couldn’t stand it. He was a fine man. I don’t think he ever gave a shit about fucking you. You were so awful from the day you were born, you had to be forgiven for everything from the start. Or be throttled in the fucking crib.
And remember this too: Mom was too fastidious to nurse. She didn’t want too-big boobs to get in the way of her tumbles. So we were bottle babies. You were, at least until they discovered you had been stealing mine out of the crib in the dog cart.
You owe me the money. Or you’re ruined. That would be fine. On your own, sweetie, you’ll be in jail in six months. Where you’ve always belonged.
Pay or die, sister bitch.
Your sister in chains,
Ginger
HARNEY
I tried to stop it. I really did. I loved those women. Fire and ice, blood and guts, yin and Yankton, South Dakota.
The first time I saw them standing in a wheat stubble field outside Valentine, Nebraska, that long, stroking wind pushing their cheap dresses against their bodies so ripe … the sensation was this: lick your finger, then touch their skin, and try to get your finger back; touch them with your hand and pray that they don’t explode; hell, sometimes just looking at them made you think the whole fucking world was going to end in a single orgasm. Not with a bang, no, nor a whimper. But one long, glorious groan of infinite pleasure.
Romantic twaddle, I told myself as I bolted the aisle to the wheel. I’d been to several schools: Gunnison High, Colby, Soledad, and ten years drifting and grifting with the carnivals. I’ve learned some things. If you’ve never been locked up, you don’t know what the world is all about. Never trust anybody working the carnivals. Shit, never trust anybody. And never say romantic twaddle.
The first time with Jasmine, I thought I’d broken some ribs. The second time I was sure I’d broken my back. The third time I fainted.
I made a drunken mistake early on, in a citizen’s bar outside El Paso. I told the ring-a-ding guy about fainting. Drunk and in love until he said, “Shit, man, when she was a kid she used to jack off the Shetlands to keep them copacetic. Story is, man, she killed three of them one year.”
I ran. I came back. A dozen times. Jasmine was worse than Soledad. I knew that if I watched my back and walked their line, I’d get out. Eventually. Jasmine didn’t work that way. I stole her money; she had the roustabouts beat me until I cried. Something that never happened inside. I fucked her sister for a long time—great, but not the same—acknowledged our baby girl, and Jasmine laughed at me. She knew the worst.
Except for Ginger, the twin. How could two women be so different—bodies of long, sweeping curves frosted with glowing red-brown skin smoother than polished ivory and steaming with an internal fire—Jasmine seemed to laugh in flames when she came and her breath seemed hot enough to scorch my beard. Ginger was terrific, but ordinary. Jasmine was heaven and hell, cocaine and crank, star light and black hole.
I gave our little girl, Pearl, to a childless family outside Marengo, Iowa, and wished the people all the best luck. They seemed like nice people. If Pearl had been a cat, I would have had her fixed.
Jasmine had to be first, or I could have never finished it. After I cut her throat, I dumped her into a swamp outside Mud Lake, Wisconsin. In that shallow, muddy water, she floated like a queen. All I ever loved. Ginger was easier. She lifted her neck to the blade as if she’d been waiting for years. “Jasmine,” she whispered, as if she knew. Ginger’s yellow dress, blood like a flood, bobbed in the small Minnesota creek, drifted like a fading light. As always, I’d done what they wanted.
Now it was time for me. The raucous silence of Stillwater prison, the quiet needle smooth in the vein, the end of memories. Peace.
PREACHER’S KID
BY JESSICA POWERS
Andrews
Looking back on it, with everything that’s happened since, Sammy disappearing and all, I’m not sure I did the right thing. I’ve seen many things in my life, and I’ve learned to let many things slide, but it’s not just me, you see. It’s the wife. She cares about these things. So the second time Chief brought Sammy home, drunk as a skunk, saying he’d found him passed out just inside the Andrews County line, I felt I had to speak to the boy.
“You’re making your mother look bad to the church ladies,” I said, thinking he’d have some compassion for her feelings. They’d always been close. “Those are her friends. They’ve known you since you were a small boy, a good boy.”
He sneered.
There was something in that sneer that made me think twice about what I said next. But I went ahead, glancing at Charlene to see her reaction as I spoke. She was sitting on the couch in her bathrobe, looking as anxious as the bride I married thirty-three years ago.
“Drinking is the devil’s business,” I told the boy. “Don’t bring the devil’s business back to this house again.”
He looked at me then as if I’d said something curious, and that’s when I noticed the color of his eyes in the morning light—amber from one angle, green from the other, same as my own.
Later, I got to thinking. I got to thinking how maybe I should’ve asked him why. Why he was staying out all night. Why he was drinking. But at the time, I was just so concerned with what he was doing, why didn’t even occur to me. It was only after he disappeared for a while, then came back, then disappeared again for good, that I started thinking about how he’d looked haunted toward the end. Like something—or somebody—was driving him to drink.
In my line of business, I’ve seen worse than a drunk preacher’s kid, it’s true. Over to Seminole, just thirty-odd miles north, preacher’s kid went crazy in the middle of the night, strung up his parents in their bed with purple twine—purple!—and set fire to the bed. In Odessa, just south, preacher’s kid made news when they discovered he’d been doing drug deals on church property. The state came in and seized all the church’s assets, just like that, an entire church reduced to rubble in a matter of days.
Takes my breath away sometimes, the way evil can sink its teeth in somebody, shake them hard, until it’s their own neck broken and bleeding.
That’s what worried me about the boy and wherever it is he’d gone to.
It’s not easy to drink in Andrews. We’re a dry county. To buy any kind of liquor, you have to drive elsewhere. Out toward Odessa, just across the county line, you’ll find the first liquor store, just lying in wait. I’m not one to take up causes, but there’s something wrong when a town manages to keep itself free of sin yet has to contend with the devil permanently camping out on its perimeters.
For a while after our talk, Sammy didn’t drink, or if he did, it was in secret. Then one morning he wasn’t in his bed. Charlene wanted to call Chief right away and it’s true, I made her wait. I said, “There’s no reason to involve the police when, like as not, the boy’ll come dragging his sorry self through that door in another hour, barely able to stand on the two legs God gave him.”
I saw something in Charlene give then, in the way her eyes became all dark and soft. For a moment, it looked like she was resigned. But how could she be resigned to Sammy’s drinking? Or to his disappearing act? She had something tucked away in the back of her mind but I couldn’t figure it out.
One of us called the church secretary, I don’t even remember who, said I’d be in late that day. Then I sat myself down on the living room couch with a cup of coffee, waiting for the boy to show up so I could give him a piece of my mind.
I am not a fire-’n’-brimstone kind of preacher. The good church ladies who make up my congregation say I’m a salt-’n’-pepper kind of preacher instead, mostly pepper. “Too much pepper, Preacher,” one of them told me once as she left the church one day, never to return. “Too much pepper.”
That day, however, I was in a fire-’n’-brimstone kind of mood and I planned to give it to the boy when he came
home.
Only he didn’t come. Both of us waited as long as we could. Eventually, Charlene had to get on over to the hospital—we like to joke that her boss isn’t as understanding as mine—and by lunchtime, fingernails bitten off to the quick, I decided to get off to the church before I started gnawing on the flesh too. Andrews is a small town and people know where to find me. If the boy turned up in a compromising situation, the church would be the first place they’d call.
But he didn’t turn up that day or the next. He didn’t show up until Sunday, showed up in the back of the church, right in the middle of my sermon. I was preaching on the loaves and fishes, the miracles our Savior performs, the way He multiplies and provides. It’s hard to yell at your boy when he’s been gone so long, the only thing you want anymore is to see him walk through the door, and then he shows up right when you’re talking about the mercy of God.
So I never gave him a piece of my mind. And now I wish I had, because a few weeks later he disappeared and never came back.
I suppose that at first I thought Chief would take care of it. I suppose that I thought, It’s a small town. Chief will put this case first, he’ll realize the importance, he’ll put every resource toward finding the boy.
Until then, I hadn’t realized how different police work is from church work. Police work isn’t about saving anybody. Or, at least, it isn’t about saving a teenager who’s just gotten a little off track, a little lost, who needs somebody to find him, to help him home.
In fact, the first thing Chief brought up when we went to see him was our recent trouble. “Didn’t Sammy disappear for a few days awhile back?” he asked, scratching his stomach, drinking out of a big mug on his desk, and eyeing us over the rim. Chief had an odd tic I’d never noticed before, the eye shuddering in sudden rapid winks and the skin underneath it trembling and heaving. It was distracting.