“I just did. I mean she gave me a ride to the mall. But if I had a car we’d do something else. She’s really good looking in the face. I mean good looking.” Wesley shines a spot on the back of the Dobro. “She’s got these blue eyes and thick red hair and freckles, and I’ve dreamed about a woman like that all my life I guess, but never, you know, met somebody I could get my hands on—somebody I know. I mean I seen some in the movies. Like that Ringwald. What’s her name?”
“I don’t know no Ringwald. But that woman you’re talking about has got big tits, too. Big. I don’t have to say ‘nits,’ do I?”
“Naw. It’s just, you know, the bad words.”
“I got so I’m putting n on that stuff when I’m at work. I’ll be working on a tire and I’ll say, ‘Nodnamn.’ People look at you funny.”
“Good. Cussing is a bad habit.”
“You’re crazy, man.”
“But about Phoebe. You know, she’s like, proportioned well.”
“Yeah. But man, she’s fat. She’s real fat.”
“She’s losing though. She’s already lost right much, around ten or fifteen pounds, I think.” Wesley gets up, stands the National Steel in the corner, takes off his shirt, throws it into the closet. He sits down on the edge of the bed in his white T-shirt, looks over at Ben. Ben’s eyes are closed, his head is back.
“What I do,” says Wesley, “is I just think about her in one place at a time. Like her hands look regular, and I figure you get a small-enough place, it’s just like any other girl. Know what I mean? But it’s them blue eyes and all them freckles and that thick bushy red hair that I like. And I don’t mind the big tits, either.” Wesley gets back up on the bed, adjusts himself against the headboard.
Ben picks up an old Sports Illustrated and fans smoke out the open window. “Them big, giant, mountain tits. You let her fall on you and you be dead. You better be careful. She roll over on you she mash you flat. My brother broke his back one time on his motorcycle with this fat man riding behind him. The fat man landed on top of him and broke his back. This actually happened. He’s still hurting from it, and that happened in, let’s see, 1981. He gets pain so bad he can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t nothing.” Ben presses the joint in the ashtray, pulls a toothpick from his pocket and puts it in his mouth.
“Most I ever hurt was when I was ten and they went up my pisser,” says Wesley. Maybe he shouldn’t tell Ben either. “I was stopped up. Man, you talk about hurt.” Maybe he should. “They had something that looked like a fountain pen on the end of this long tubelike thing that was hooked to a machine,” says Wesley. “They touch that thing to the tip of your pisser, and it’s ice cold, and then they stick it in and start it up the channel.”
Ben crosses his legs—tight—takes his toothpick out of his mouth, covers his crotch with his hand. “Nodnamn.” He looks out across the empty lot and on across the road to the lights on the front porch at Nutrition House.
“It got me started to snapping my fingers when I hurt. And you know what? Listen to this. You know what they give me for pain?”
Ben looks back. “What? Bufferin?” He smiles with half his mouth. He’s thinking about when he hurt most. Easy.
“They give me a towel—to chew on,” says Wesley. “I tell you. I was telling Phoebe. Got her attention. I think I might have told her too much. Upset her or something.” Wesley leans forward and repositions the pillow behind his back, leans back again, tucks a strand of hair behind his ear. “She couldn’t take it.”
“Most I ever hurt,” says Ben, “was when I sprained my ankle and got it put in this cast. Next day it started swelling and it didn’t have nowhere to swell to.”
“Yow.”
“I even got shot in the back one time and that didn’t hurt like that ankle.”
“Shot in the back?”
“Yeah.” Ben props one foot on the radiator. “This guy side-swiped my car one time and kept going and I chased him down in my car. I had this honey with me. He was stopped at a stoplight, so I got out and opened his door. He turned sideways, holding onto the steering wheel, and kicked at me. So we got in a fight. His car was running, you know. He kicks me outen the car and then tries to run over me—with the car. I start running down the street and finally he gets me pinned in this doorway to this building—I think something snapped in him, you know. We were downtown Bishopville about two A.M.—and he starts ramming the building trying to get at me, but I’m back up in there where he can’t.”
“You mean he’s in his car?”
“Yeah, he’s in his car. It was the craziest thing I ever seen. I could see him in there behind the steering wheel, you know” —Ben holds a pretend steering wheel— “and his eyes were great big like this and he was going ram-bam, then he’d throw it in reverse, bum rubber, hit the brakes, drop it in drive, burn rubber, them eyes great big, and come at me again, ram-bam.”
“Like a cop show, sounds like, don’t it?”
“Well, yeah, sort of. Except it won’t. This was real. Then he leaves, and before I can walk back down to my car, he pulls up beside it—he’s done drove around the block and there he is, down the street in this parking lot beside my car. I start running, because the honey’s still in my car, you know. When I’m almost there he opens his car door, and he’s got a pistol in his hand but I don’t believe it’s real at first, see. He aims it at me and I keep running at him because I couldn’t believe this was like real. He shoots.” Ben stands up, spreads his legs. “And the bullet goes between my legs through my pants, man. I feel it zip through. Zip. Right there.” Ben zips his finger between his legs. “So I turn around and start the other way, dodging left and right like they do on TV—like this, you know—and he shoots twice more. The second one gets me down low in the back. Felt like somebody kicked me. I didn’t know it at the time but the bullet came out my stomach and fell in my underwear.” Ben turns around, sits again. “They found it when I got to the hospital. So, anyway, I round the corner at this building and turn down another street still running and get up on this porch and knock on the door. I’m feeling the blood down in my shoe, man. Slushing. This woman comes to the door, great big old eyes in these thick glasses looking like she’s looking every which way with both eyes, you know, and I tell her what’s wrong, and ask her to call me a ambulance. She goes in and, and comes back out with a mop handle and starts hitting me with it. No shit, no nit, man.”
“Hitting you?”
“Yeah, this is like some kind of nightmare.”
“Yeah.”
“So I leave there, and next I’m in this backyard where there’s a light up on this little deck. I get up the stairs and knock on the door and two guys come and I tell them what happened and then I lay down on their deck beside this little steak grill. They called the cops, and the last I remember is laying there on that porch, and blood swooshing out my shoe, and the lights from the cop car swirling all over the place. I tell you, I felt bad. Yeah, I felt bad.” Ben puts the toothpick back in his mouth. “But it won’t nothing like that ankle, as far as sheer pain is concerned.”
“Did they catch the guy?”
“Yeah. He got five years.” Ben puts his other foot on the radiator.
“That don’t seem like much. Seems like it was attempted murder.”
“They said they proved it wadn’t premeditated, that it was a ‘fit of passion’ or something. Damn.” Ben picks up the Sports Illustrated again and fans smoke out the open window.
Wesley reaches over, turns on the fan, stands up, empties change out of his pocket and puts it in the top dresser drawer. “I guess that did must of hurt—the ankle.” He gets his toothbrush and tube of Colgate off the dresser. “I’m turning in. I’m tired.”
“When I die it won’t hurt that bad.”
Wesley walks down the hall toward the bathroom and thinks about Phoebe. He wishes he hadn’t rushed things. When she loses that weight she just might turn out to be the most beautiful woman in the world. The Nutrition House has a good record.
People come from all over the United States to that place.
Wesley squeezes toothpaste onto the brush. Just a tiny, tiny bit. It costs money. Project Promise should make a difference with his money situation—it pays minimum wage. And might be a bridge to a full-time job or something.
He smiles in the mirror and looks at the teeth Mrs. Rigsbee gave him. They look good. Four crowns up top in front, and a partial plate on bottom—a little wire with two teeth on it. He keeps it in a handkerchief on his bedside table—takes it out after lights out. It gives him trouble when he’s eating sometimes. Tries to pop out.
Mrs. Rigsbee paid for it all. Decent teeth meant almost as much to her as Jesus. He sees her walking along her back sidewalk toward the garage, her sweater hiked up in back, going to feed that little dog. That little dog she’s still got, Perkie, and talks to like he’s got some sense.
He thinks about his job, jobs. There is something in laying brick that he can’t get from playing music, and there is something in playing music he can’t get from laying brick. By the time he’s twenty-seven or twenty-eight, he’ll be a full-time blues guitar player and maybe married. Phoebe will be down to fighting-weight by then, and even if she’s not . . . those blue eyes and freckles, light skin, and red hair go together like magic.
She won’t stay stuffy too long, he thinks. He can write her a song or something.
He leans over the sink and takes water in his mouth from the faucet, being careful not to touch the faucet. That’s another thing Mrs. Rigsbee hammered in—don’t put your mouth on the faucet. He rinses, spits, turns off the water and heads for bed.
I got teeth growing in my head,
Some have gone their way.
Othern’s came to fill the gaps,
I’m glad I didn’t have to pay.
Oh, Mrs. Rigsbee, thank you thank you
For everthing you do.
Now when I smile, now when I eat,
My mouth is just like new.
Chapter 7
Sunday, in the morning service, Phoebe is introduced as the new kindergarten teacher at Mt. Gilead Baptist Church, just off campus. Wesley had planned to sit with her, but he has decided not to push his luck. He watches her from his seat in the back. She sits way down front.
After church, Ted Sears, standing with some other men by the front steps, calls out to Wesley and walks over to meet him so they can talk in private a minute or so on the church lawn, here beside the trimmed hedges in the warm fall sun.
Sears holds out his hand. Wesley takes it, remembers to squeeze firmly. Wesley feels this guy’s power, and is wondering why in the world he would want to talk to him, Wesley.
“Wesley, son, it’s good to see you, and I felt like I ought to mention to you that your name has come up in my office as an example of some of the things we’re trying to do at Ballard in the name of Christian Education.”
Wesley looks into Sears’s squinting eyes, then notices tiny specks of white spit in the corners of his mouth.
Sears moves to avoid the direct sunlight. “If you’d be interested in taking a class or two, we want to help you out, see if we can’t sign you up. And I must add, in all fairness and sincerity, that I am a bit concerned about your faith while you’re living in the midst of people who don’t necessarily choose the Christian life.”
“How do you mean?” Wesley throws his hair back out of his eyes.
“Oh, just that the backgrounds of some of your fellow clients at BOTA House are not necessarily conducive to a Christian lifestyle.”
“Oh, yeah, well, they’ve had some weird things happen to them and all that. I, you know, try to help them with things about the Bible and all. My roommate has about stopped cussing.”
“That’s wonderful. Sounds like you’re witnessing by example. Did you know that that’s the Ballard University motto?”
“Yes sir. I seen it up at the top of some letters I been getting about Project Promise.”
“Right. And that looks like it’s going to be a darn good project, if I say so myself.” Sears glances over Wesley’s shoulder. “Well, son, just know that we’re thinking about you, praying for you. Every day.”
“Yes sir. Thank you. I’ll pray for you, too.”
“Good. Good. Stop in to see me sometime.” Sears is looking at Sally Lattis, who’s in charge of the flower arrangements. He needs to let her know he noticed the arrangement today—and appreciates it.
“Maybe I will,” says Wesley.
“What’s that, son?”
“Stop in to see you.”
“Oh, yes, you do that. I’ll be seeing you. I need to get over and speak to Mrs. Lattis.”
Wesley watches him walk off. He looks like he’s in pretty good shape, a fighter pilot, an old fighter pilot, but still a fighter pilot. Somebody said he swims a half mile every day.
On this Sunday, as on most Sundays after church, Wesley rides home with Mattie Rigsbee for Sunday dinner. When the weather’s good they sit out on the porch and eat ice cream.
“Good ice cream,” says Wesley, raking off the bottom of his spoon on the bowl’s edge.
Mrs. Rigsbee is sitting in a cane-bottom rocking chair with her arms resting on the rocker arms. She’s eighty-six years old, and seems to Wesley to have gotten a little smaller in the last few years. She’s wearing her old brown sweater with several sewn-up holes. “It’s Breyers,” she says. “I don’t usually get Breyers, but they had it on sale. If you bring your girlfriend from the diet house, we’ll have to hide it. Do you want a little more?”
“Yeah, if you got it.”
Mattie starts to rise from the chair, stops. “I thought I taught you to say ‘ma’am.’”
“Yes, ma’am. I just don’t get much chance to practice it. Except with Mrs. White.”
“You ought to have a chance to practice it around the college.” Mattie stands, starts for the kitchen, stops. “What did I get up for?”
“You asked me if I wanted some more ice cream. I can get it.”
“I got it. Sit down. Give me the bowl.”
She is a good old woman, thinks Wesley. He looks down the road at where he parked the car that time he was with his old girlfriend, Patricia—how many years ago?—when he was going to steal some of Mrs. Rigsbee’s pound cake. That was the day he was trying to open her screened-in porch door—the same day he had some of that pound cake which was better than anything he’d ever tasted.
“There you go,” says Mattie, handing Wesley the bowl. “You want a glass of water?”
“No ma’am.”
Mattie sits. “How’s your work coming?”
“Okay. I’ll be teaching this mentally retarded boy to lay brick. We start tomorrow.”
“A college student?”
“No. High school. Retarded.”
“Why are they teaching them?” Mattie rocks slowly in her chair.
“I don’t know.”
“Looks like they’d be teaching the ones who can learn something.”
“This one’s pretty smart, I think. He plays the piano, and can tune one. But he looks like a possum.”
“A problem?”
“A possum.”
“Oh, a possum. He looks like a possum?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Mattie sits still, looks at Wesley with an absent stare. “These are strange times.” She seems lost for a minute. “What about your new girlfriend? When you going to bring her by?”
Wesley thinks Mrs. Rigsbee looks more tired than usual. “Oh, I don’t know. I think you’ll like her—better than Patricia, anyway. She’s real nice.”
“Patricia was okay. If she just hadn’t wore so much make-up and had come out a little more. What’s the new one’s name?”
“Phoebe. She’s the one they introduced in church this morning—new in the kindergarten.”
“The big one?”
“That’s her.”
“She looked right nice.”
“How come you never told me about David sleeping with all t
hese concubines and all that?” Wesley asks. “And Song of Solomon?”
“What about it?”
“Don’t you know about Song of Solomon?”
“Well, I know a little about it. It was written by Solomon. It’s about Christ and the church, I think.”
“Oh, no it ain’t.”
Mattie hitches her skirt out from under her, smooths it on top. “Listen, before I forget it—I got so I can’t remember nothing much—let me tell you what happened to me yesterday. I about got hurt sure enough.
“It was so nice out I decided to sit out on the porch steps and cut my toenails. It wadn’t too cold, you know, for late October. Use your napkin, son. One of the worse things about cold weather is that you don’t have no place to cut your toenails without flinging them every which way in the den. And I’m getting so about the only way I can get to my feet is to be sitting down on some steps.
“Well, I was over there yesterday, top step, clipping away when the phone rang. Of course I had to get up. Well, scrunched down on those steps it takes me forever to get up, so finally I got straightened out, and you know those steps are pretty high—eight or nine steps up and I was at the top—so when I was turning around, my heel slipped over the edge of one and I started losing my balance backwards. The only thing to grab was the screen-door handle. I did, and pulled it open, toward me, you know, but I was going on backwards so I had to grab onto the door with my arms and legs and everything, and I want you to know I rode that door right on around until it was all the way open and I was up against the porch screen looking down in that rhododendron that’s there beside the steps. So I kind of kicked against the porch and the door goes swinging back till I can get back down on the steps and in the kitchen and answer that phone—on the last ring. It was Alora. She always lets it go nine rings. I was counting the whole time.”
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