by Trey Holt
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“There are three basic components to all human behavior and happenings in this world, that’s where I began”proclaimed Percy, now standing on the hood of the Plymouth again. Not a soul had left. Across the way, I saw Van and Paul Chester. Down twenty feet from them, Lucky was laughing like he was certain the whole thing was a joke. My mother. Jean. Lucky motioned, sending them along to go ahead and do their shopping as Jean spat words of argument out her ugly puss. I’d just left them a few minutes before, after I’d finished cleaning out Lucky’s Ford. Jean had seen the ripped place, my bloody knee, when I was going into and she was coming out of the only bathroom in the house.
“You all right?” she had asked. Her hair was still wet, curly in ringlets. A trail of steam followed the tail of her fuzzy robe.
“Did you use up all the hot water?” I said.
“I don’t think so. Is your leg okay?”
“Yeah. I just went down on the bike. Took a corner a little sharp, wasn’t payin’attention.”
She took the towel from around her neck and wiped at the blood on my knee, long having dried as I had pulled into a vacant lot on the way home and sat by myself for near half an hour. Thinking about what had just happened. Wondering if the moonshine was still poisoning me. My brain now, not my stomach.
She wet it at the bathroom sink and wiped the blood away. Handed me the towel. Smiled.
“What’re you gonna do?” she asked.
“Clean up myself…then clean up Lucky’s car, I guess.”
She frowned—a look I usually wanted to slap off her face—and nodded. In the small part of herself that didn’t deny what he was, she knew what had happened.
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“Randomness, A Planned Nature of Things and Human Frailty,”he declared once more.”I’d like to ask you if any of you conceive an answer for these things? Is there an answer for these things?”
Having turned away from his historical material to more philosophical subject matter, he lost a few of the crowd around its edges. Lucky, most likely unable to bear the embarrassment, had disappeared. Sensing he was losing their attention, Percy turned it up a notch. Took off his britches, threw them on the top of the Plymouth.
“Tell me!” he hollered.“Is there an answer for these things?”
A few people up front wagged their heads. Across the way, I saw that Tully had made it. He looked like shit, circles the size of quarters under his eyes. But he, as usual, was spit-shined. Pressed shirt…pants with a crease in them that would cut you. Not a hair out of place. He waved as he was talking to Paul Chester. I waved back.
“The answer is grace, my friends! That’s the only answer for these three elements. No matter if it’s our weakness that brings pain and suffering into our lives…or some strange happening that happened by chance…or the Plan—and by that term, I mean where the energy that is moving through you, is directing you…directing everyone, trying to get everything in accordance. Move this existence somewhere that we can neither understand nor fathom, so we needn’t try.
“And what do I mean by‘grace’?” he asked.“I’ll tell you exactly what I mean: I mean the state in which we live. Like the air we breathe, it’s there with us at every moment. Sustaining us the same way.”
Percy now got a couple of amen’s from people a few back from the front. From the Pentecostal Church on the edge of town, I imagined. Most of the people who went there were considered as crazy as he was by the“normal”people around town. They were obviously able to overlook the fact that he was now on the top of the car with only his socks and underwear on.“Praise the Lord,”one of them hollered. A couple of black people chimed in, one taking his shirt off, too, waving it over his head.“Hallelujah,”another of the Pentecostals shouted.
“To live in grace is to live in the presence of the energy that flows through us. To be able to be what we are and act like no other. Because it is then, and only then, that we recognize the need for grace. Are able to come into contact with how imperfect we are…with our Human Frailty! Only when we acknowledge these things are we able to stop‘acting good’and allow the spirit of the Universe to create in us something that is good! As long as you are involved in acting good…acting like what you think other people want you to be…acting like what you yourself think you need to be…there is no room for the true spirit in you to come through. Falseness is the only thing birthed from fear. And nothing eternally good can ever come from falseness. Authenticity is birthed from strength…openness…grace.”
He had begun to lose the Pentecostals now…and the couple of black people a little away from the rest of the crowd. Ten or twenty other people had walked away in the last minute or so. Tully and Van and Paul Chester were talking to Marla and Rose Watkins and some other girls whom I couldn’t make out because their backs were to me.
“Where’s his brother?” I heard somebody murmur in the front.
“I thought I saw him a few minutes ago. Somebody ought to come end this stupid spectacle. It’s a shame to see somebody do this to themself. Right down here on Saturday,”said Jenny Bowmann, standing beside me, to nobody in particular.
Beside her, Jeannie McFadden said,“Somebody call Miss Helen Riley. Get her to get Lucky Hall down here. Lucky or Lucas Reasonver or Johnnie Forrest. Even Don Walton…anybody.”
“We’re afraid…afraid to be what we really are, which at its base is what God made us to be, is it not? Afraid of what’s going to happen to us after the day comes when we depart. After we leave this painful and beautiful place. Afraid of what might befall us while we’re here. Afraid, mostly, I think, of Randomness and Human Frailty. Afraid to admit to ourselves that we’re never static; that to live is fluid, to have the energy flowing through us that is behind the creation of this universe…this world…you…me…everything. That we are both separate from and joined with everything around us. That, indeed, God works in us every moment, no matter what we call him…call her! From the dark corners of the dirtiest beer joint in the county to the spic and span Sunday School Rooms of every church, God is there, working in lives that call him God…that call him nothing…that curse his name.”
Seeming to have recovered his bearings for the time being, he scanned the audience that I imagined, from his vantage point, reflected everything from interest to disdain to apathy. He reached for his sock and produced one of the two packs of cigarettes there, a book of matches. He lit one and drew deeply on it, his eyes cast to the back of the now diminishing crowd as Lucas Reasonover made his way through the people toward him. He appeared as if he contemplated exactly what to do as Lucas grew closer. Whether to start speaking again or to somehow wind his last diatribe back to Hood…the battle that seemed to haunt him like the pig that followed him. The one with the huge tusk that might devour him at any moment.
“That woman needs her car,”said Lucas.
Percy didn’t speak. Only looked at him with slight contempt.
“Percy, that woman needs her car. She’s been waitin’to leave for twenty minutes.”
Percy turned his eyes to the woman of whom Lucas Reasonover spoke: Carolyn Nedler, young wife of Mr. Nedler of The Academy. She had snagged him when he was near forty, she, in her early twenties, a cashier at the grocery store. Now she just kept house and wore low-cut blouses, short skirts and high heels around town.
Percy looked at her and smiled, which it was hard not to. Then, like a chastised school boy, said he was sorry and began to climb down from the hood of the car. Put his britches and his shirt back on.
“That’s all right,”she told him.“I didn’t have anything else to do. I kind of enjoyed hearing you.”
Like the realization in the middle of a dream that you are, in fact, naked, the cognizance of what he had done just seemed to be coming to him. Tapping him on the shoulder like a silent friend, reminding him of its presence.
Percy opened her car door and shut it after she got in then smiled at her and Lucas Reasonover, just like he had seen the both of them on the
street in the middle of a Saturday morning.
Chapter Seventeen
A mile and a half off Lewisburg Pike, through fields relatively flat for middle Tennessee, and past a couple of old farmhouses, lay the Carnton Mansion and the Confederate Cemetery. The flat piece of land itself, where so many bodies were laid after the Battle of Franklin, November 30, 1864. At Carnton, a mansion now empty and somewhat ramshackle, five generals, the most to die in any one battle in the war, had been laid on the porch, the faint blood stains still there eighty-one years later. Down Cleburne Street, through the stop sign at Adams, and then following the railroad track, it was maybe a mile the way a crow flies from our house. And, although he had not told me so, it was a journey I suspected Percy to often make at night. When the darkness would protect his anonymity, his strangeness. Keep people from calling and complaining to Lucky about what they saw. Anybody else that was out at this time of night, I suspected, as I imagine did he, was up to their own brand of no-good.
“Probably a bunch of goddam bootleggers is all we’ll see out at this time a’night,”said Van. He kicked down the tracks in front of us, swinging his cigarette at his side like a badge of honor. The night was hot, the air thick around us.
“What’d you know about bootleggers?” I asked him.
“As much as you,”he said. He took a drag off his cigarette like he knew what the hell he was doing.
“What’d either one of you know about bootleggers?” Ronnie said.
“He thinks he knows everything,”Van said.“He knows everything because his father is a police man. Fucking everything.”
We were just dawning as cussers. Just away from our parents long enough to start to experiment with new words. Their meanings. I knew Van was trying to impress Ronnie, too. Convince him he was older than he was. Maybe ten or eleven. After all, this was Ronnie Langford. I glanced back at him, just over my shoulder, an imposing presence next to my skinny body. Six foot tall, two hundred and twenty pounds if an ounce. His arms hung to his sides, swung like hams as he walked.
“You know, every once in awhile I see this strange fellah walkin’around back here. I used to see him pretty regular when I ran the mornin’paper. Then I didn’t see him for awhile. Now I’ve started seein’him again. Not as much…just every once in awhile.”
Listening to his voice, it seemed his calm demeanor, the confidence that permeated every part of him, seemed to have vanished. Perhaps had dissipated with his football days or was covered by the fear of what he was getting ready to do.
“Fred’s supposed to meet us back here,”he said.“S’posed to have stopped by Chester’s Store earlier…picked up some beer. I don’t care if you boys wanna split a bottle,”he told me. Or, I guess, us.
Van responded like he’d been talking to him.“Yeah. Great. I like beer.”
“When have you ever had beer?” I asked him.
“You don’t know everything I do.”
“No—but I do know your parents are stricter than mine and if Scoot or your mama catches you, either one of‘em’ll whip your ass.”
“I think Lucky likes the ass-whippin’s more than my parents,”said Van.
I nodded, knowing he was right. Took the air down deep into my lungs a couple of times, to forget what he’d said.
“My daddy was always big on them, too,”said Ronnie.“Sometimes I think he liked to whip my ass more than he liked to eat. But he don’t do it no more. He still gets a wildass hair and tries ever’once in awhile, but he just ain’t big enough no more. He don’t have a hold on me at all no more.”
I remembered what Lucky had told me. What Ronnie had said on this morning when we’d seen him in front of the theatre. Having to go pry Ronnie off his daddy a couple of times. His daddy trying to get him to take the University of Tennessee scholarship. Then telling him he could get married if he wanted. Anything to try to keep him from his desire to be a hero.
“I turn eighteen day after tomorra’ —hey, ain’t that Burkitt up there in the dark. Silly son of a bitch. Hey Burkitt! That you? Anyway—that is him, ain’t it?”
I told him yes. Him or somebody.
“Hey, Burkitt, we’re here! Anyway, I turn eighteen then, then the next day I leave. Paris Island, boys! Here I come!”
Like he was storming a beach somewhere, he ran, arms over head with what I guessed was an imaginary rifle, the moonlight strangely making him appear as if he were moving in slow motion. I watched him as he faded into the milky darkness toward Fred Burkitt.
“He’s one bad ass,”said Van.
“I guess,”I told him.
“Ain’t you glad we came?”
“I don’t know. I guess.”
What I did know, though, good and damn well, was that I wouldn’t be there if it weren’t for him. Whatever he gave off, even at ten, suggested that he was older than he was. Knew more than he actually did. What I also didn’t tell him was the fact of how much I feared seeing Percy. Lucky had taught me at an early age to be ashamed of him. To hide him whenever possible. Because people think things like that run in families. Because there’s never any telling what he’ll say. If I could find some way to keep his ass out there in Thompson’s Station, I’d sure as hell do it. Lucky’s voice usually rang in my ears like somebody had just fired a loud gunshot near me.
“Burkitt, come here, man! Come‘ere,”Ronnie motioned when he was close enough to make out that was in fact who it was. Burkitt waved until we got close then took a seat on a rail again, shining white-silver in the night. By him sat two cases of beer. Pabst Blue Ribbon.
“Goddam Burkitt, you went all out this time, didn’t ya?”
Burkitt nodded, raised a bottle at us, then finished it. He clanked it down beside him with three or four more.“Get the Japs,”he said, raising another bottle to us.“We finished off the Germans, now go get the Japs!”
“Me and Truman,”said Ronnie.“We’re gonna finish‘em off.”
“Coward bastards…slant-eyed bastards,”said Burkitt.
“I’m goin’,”said Ronnie.“Got the papers signed a couple of weeks ago…everything.”
I assumed since Ronnie Langford had quit school and decided to go into the armed services, he probably hadn’t seen Fred Burkitt. He had told me he didn’t see a reason to finish. If he was going to be a hero and everything.
Ronnie took a beer out of the box and sat on the railroad track beside Fred Burkitt. Clinked it against his when he raised it.
“I got two questions for ya,”said Burkitt.
Ronnie nodded.
“How’s your girl? And, who are these little shits?”
“She’s fine…still fuckin’me like a mad woman. And these two little shits are Henry and ....”
“Van!” Van chimed in.
“Van,”nodded Ronnie.“I taught Henry everything I know about throwin’papers.” He turned to me.“He’s your cousin, right? Lives across the street from ya. He’s the one that we pissed on his daddy’s paper a couple‘a times when it was rainin’, ain’t he? You said they wouldn’t know the difference.”
“Yeah, I knew the difference,”said Van the man,“and I switched it with his daddy’s before he took it in.”
“Lucky don’t take the paper in,”I told him.“He reads it in his car when he leaves. Has his coffee and reads the paper while he watches down Columbia Highway to see if anybody’s speedin’.”
“And smokes thirty or forty cigarettes.”
“At least he knows how to smoke one,”I said, motioning at the strange way he was holding the one he had.“He don’t smoke it like a queer. Like that queer fucker down at the funeral home.” Or at least that’s what Lucky had told me. Showed me how a regular man held one, how a queer did.
“Girls…girls,”said Ronnie Langford.“If y’all keep arguin’like that, then I’m gonna send ya packin’back home.”
Van positioned his cigarette different, his wrist bent more forward than backward, and shut up. Didn’t say another word like I knew he wanted to.
�
�Here,”said Burkitt. He held a beer out to Van then gave him an opener to pry the top off with. Van tried to look smooth as he fought it. Burkitt followed suit with me. I handed mine to Van after he had popped the top on his own; he opened it without comment. Propped himself against the rail on the same side as Ronnie.
“So…did y’all see the picture show today?” Ronnie asked after he took half of his beer in one slug.
Van sipped at his, trying not to making slurping noises. I turned my bottle up and down quick like I had seen Lucky do since I could remember with his whisky. Let the sweet-bitter taste run into my mouth, sit there long enough to burn my tongue and gums a little. Do the same to my throat when I swallowed.
‘Yeah,”said Van.“That girl…what’s her name? She was hotter than hell…than a July afternoon.”
“You mean Elizabeth Taylor,”said Burkitt.“She is a damn pretty girl. Stupid movie, though. A little bit sappy.”
“Yeah, Burkitt likes them war movies,”said Ronnie. He don’t like‘em where the guy ends up with the girl.‘At’s‘cause he ain’t ever had one. He’s too big. They’re all scared he’d crush‘em.”
Burkitt coughed out this deep sound I assumed was a laugh. As low and nasal as a cow. For the first time after my eyes had made the adjustment to the darkness I looked at him. He was a huge man. Made Ronnie, who was a big man himself, look small. They clinked their beer bottles together again, I guess, for old time’s sake.
“What Burkitt don’t realize is that you can be a war hero and get the girl, too. I’m gonna go over there, finish off the Germans and the Japs…and then come back to my wife Barbara.”
“I heard Truman might not fuck around like FDR did,”Burkitt said.“At least that’s what my daddy said.”
A little over a week before, FDR had died. Harry S. Truman, his vice-president, had taken over for him.