THUGLIT Issue Thirteen

by Kevin Egan

  I rolled to the bottom of the hill, and there he was in the tunnel under the bridge. I knew somebody had found my spot before I saw him, because the tunnel was full up with his humming. He called it soul humming for his babies, all the hundreds of babies out there who he never had and nobody else ever had. People who died were babies too, floating up there in the in-between place. I tried to peek around the corner into the tunnel without making any sound, but he saw me.

  "Come here, girl." That's what he called me—just girl, never Delilah. "Come here and listen to these acoustics."

  I didn't know what acoustics were and I didn't really want to find out, but he'd seen me and the only place to run was out to the train yard. Pops told me people get cut in half in the train yard, so I couldn't do that. I went in the tunnel with him.

  "Girl, you have found the cathedral of Eureka. Did you know? These here are the motherfucking finest walls for singing in America. Not even Catholics in Europe could make a more beautiful hall. Come on now, hum with me."

  Beau Jean put his palms up and closed his eyes to start, but I kept mine open. Frogs live in there because the tunnel sends rainwater to wherever rainwater is supposed to go, so there's always puddles they can kick around in and drops of water dripping from the ceiling. I didn't want them crawling all over my shoes if I closed my eyes. It smells a little like piss in a creek bed, too.

  Then Beau Jean hummed. I've never been in a church or anything, but that must be what it sounds like. All deep and sad but also glad, sort of, and sleepy. It sounded like a hundred of him singing because of the echoes—plus the trains in the yard squealing and bumping together made like giant church ladies saying amen.

  When he finished up and opened his eyes, he asked if I was Officer Deacon's girl. I don't know how he knew, except that Pops probably tried to take him in a bunch of times. So maybe he knew what our family looked like. Anyway, I nodded.

  "But he isn't a cop anymore," I told him. He knew that too. Pops quit because they wouldn't let him drink anymore, but I guess everybody sort of knew that. It's not like Pops was secret about how much he liked to booze.

  So anyway that's how I met Beau Jean. Pops always thought he sought me out like a target, but it wasn't like that. It was an accident that we just found the same secret spot. He'd be there almost every time I went. Sometimes I ran off even when I didn't need to hide, just when I needed to see Beau Jean, and he'd be there soul humming. I'd hang around and catch frogs or throw rocks at them until he stopped. Then he'd tell me stories, like about his mama and how she fell in love with a witch doctor, or about the time he communed with our long dead fathers.

  It was me who went to his trailer first. I didn't go invited. It was on a day when the summer got so hot it felt like one thousand sweaty people crammed into one room even when it was just Pops and me on the couch. All we could do was sit in front of the window unit so the cold air blew on our sweat. Even the cicadas shut up that day.

  Mom wouldn't sit in the living room with Pops because he wouldn't put any shorts on. He just wanted to wear boxers and he hiked them up so the white hairy part of his legs got air too. Mom went in the bedroom to put on makeup like she does when she gets desperate. She works at the beauty parlor. I think all her life long she just wanted to make everybody beautiful because then she wouldn't have to look at anything ugly.

  A little bit later, the window unit busted. It made a scratching sound like dragging rocks across concrete, sighed one more puff of cold, then started blowing thick air hot as outside. Pops tried shaking it, and when that didn't work he hit it on the sides. That didn't work either, so he pried it out of the window to put it on the floor and kicked it. I could see his cheeks getting red, but I couldn't tell if it was the heat or rage.

  After a little bit of all that banging around, Pops called Mom from the bedroom. She came out with her makeup half done—one blue eyelid with fake lashes pasted on, blush all over, dark red lipstick that made it look like she just kissed a puddle of wet paint. I don't know what Pops expected her to do, but he kept yelling about our piece-of-shit situation. How we didn't have enough money to even take a shit on and she wasn't helping any with her goddamn beauty degree.

  That got her going. I can't remember what exactly she said, but it was something about Pops and what a low-life cop he'd been, and his little dick, and then he went for her. He just took two big steps, giant-like, with his hands out to grab her shoulders. I thought she'd crumple up and disappear. I wish she could have, but I guess all you can do when someone like that comes grabbing is turn your head and try to brace. He shook her and shook her and I just sat curled up in the corner of the couch. They must have forgot I was there.

  She kept saying, "Get your hands off. Get your dirty hands off me." But she was crying, so it came out broken. I think she tried to scratch Pop's face, and then he hit her. I'd never seen him do it. I don't think he ever had before—not to Mom, but he'd hit lots of other people. His hands are practiced. They know what kind of fist to make and just where the eye socket is. It's not like in the movies you watch Friday nights where somebody gets punched and it makes a snappy sound. You can hardly hear a punch at all—it just disappears, ptt, like hitting a giant bag of dirt.

  I guess I'd been frozen, but my running legs woke up then. I took off for the tunnel and got there in almost no time, all soaked in sweat and breathing hard. Beau Jean wasn't there, just the tiny wet frogs jumping from puddle to puddle and heat so thick I could see it moving around outside. I don't know what it's like to feel really lonely, like to have nobody in the entire world except yourself, but I think I felt it a little bit right then. I tried to grab one of the frogs so I could squish it, but they were too fast. I got one but it kicked its tiny legs all around in my cupped hands and then slipped out when I started to squeeze. I wiped my hands on my jeans and started walking for the trailer park.

  By the time I got there, I looked pretty sorry, I guess. Beau Jean didn't come out for a long time. I asked the fat lady in the moo-moo dress next door if it was really his trailer and she said yes so I sat down on the fold-out steps to wait. She waited with me in her fold-up lounge chair, fanning with a folded up magazine.

  "What you need Beau Jean for, honey?" she asked after a while.

  I shrugged and told her what was what. "I just need him," I said. She nodded like she knew all about that, needing Beau Jean.

  After a long time, he finally threw open the door. He stood up there tall like someone in charge, except he had big sweat circles under his armpits and looked tired, beat by the heat like everybody else.

  "What the fuck you doing here, girl?" he asked. "Get in."

  His trailer didn't look like anything I'd seen before. He must have torn down the flimsy walls so it made all one long room—until you got to one door at the far end that had to be his bedroom. He had shelves everywhere with jars on them and tubes and bowls of liquid, all glass so you could see through to what floated around inside. I put my nose up to one on a low shelf with something dark and purpley brown. It smelled sweeter than heavy syrup, but left a sour aftertaste at the back of my throat, like milk when you leave it out too long in the summer.

  Nothing looked to make any sense, at least not to me. I couldn't find any order to what belonged on which shelf. Plus there were wadded up pieces of paper stuffed between places and crusty forks sitting around, pairs of boots, a stuffed cat with real cat fur, stacks of newspapers so old they'd break in half and turn to dust if you picked them up. The only difference between the kitchen and the living room was a linoleum floor and a table with two chairs. Otherwise they had all the same stuff in them—jars and powders and liquids and spoons for scooping and sticks for stirring. In a couple of spots, sticks for burning—slow burning so they didn't flame, but smoked one long skinny smoke that made the air a little spicy.

  Beau Jean puddled into an old hairy couch sagging so you could see its bottom touch the floor. He looked me over, up and down.

  "Jesus God almighty, you're a little
thing. How the fuck did you get here?"

  "On my feet," I told him.

  He said, "Mmm," to that and kept looking me over like he'd find something that disappeared in his couch cushions a long time ago, like it would jump out from between my sweaty neck and the hair plastered there. Suddenly he sat forward.

  "How bad are you hurting, girl?"

  I didn't know what he meant—I wasn't scraped up or anything. I felt fine except a little thirsty, but I didn't see any cups. The sink had piles of stuff growing up so tall I couldn't see the faucet anyway, so I'd stopped being thirsty. No use being what you can't fix right off.

  "I'm not hurt," I said.

  "Bullshit! Everyone here is hurt or hurting or on the goddamn precipice of stepping off into their great goddamn hurt, and I contend that on a subconscious level everybody sees their toes, their big fuckin' toes curling over the edge. They see it before they step off. You just don't know any better, girl. Have you seen the Grand Canyon?"

  I had not.

  "That's why! You have yet to witness the motherfucking profound. But when you do, you'll know the truth—that there are some people with and a whole lot more without, and you'll never be able to un-know that."

  "What's in these jars?" I asked.

  "Goddamn, you are a nosy motherfucker!" He got himself up out of the couch and took me around the room. "This here is my mama's rosehip juice for stomach spazzing. That there is balm to keep from feeling old. This here…" he dipped a finger into the sweet and sour stuff I smelled first, "…will close your little throat off." He wiped it on his cotton shorts. There was powder to make you crazy, and some muddy stuff to make you sane, there was a jar for headaches and another for every other ache, a drink to make you see goddamn God Almighty and the tunnel of light. Beau Jean had everything for everything.

  Then he brought out a black box with a top he slid off. It was jam packed full of little bitty tubs of cream, like what Mom had for some of the glop she put on her lips all the time. Before he took one out to show me, he asked what was it like to live with a daddy like Officer Deacon.

  I shrugged. "It's like living with Pops."

  He said I had some balls for that. I didn't know what that had to do with living with Pops, but I liked him saying it. I swung a kid around once, right after everyone else went in from lunch, and popped his shoulder out. He'd called me a girl like it was a dirty word, like you'd call someone ugly or tell them they needed a shower even if they didn't, and somehow I grabbed hold of his wrist and heaved him around in a circle. Partway around, I felt him give up so his arm went soft. When I let go, he just fell down. At first I was afraid he'd start crying or call out, so I ran inside to make it seem like I'd been there the whole time, but he never made a sound. Somebody found him later and took him to the doctor but my name never came out. I kept waiting, but he never told, and after a while I wished someone had been around to see. I wished Pops had been there. Then he'd know I'd taken hold. He'd know that boy collapsed when I let go.

  "We are going to make ourselves a name," Beau Jean said as he pulled out a tub and unscrewed the top. I reached to dip a finger in but he slapped my hand hard away. "No, girl, you don't ever touch this shit. This is our shit now, you got it? This is our ticket, and you don't mess around with shit that's your ticket."

  Beau Jean gave me directions. He told me what time and what color clothes to wear, and what way to cradle the box of our shit so none of it dropped. He gave me a plastic watch from Wal-Mart so I could keep track for myself. It kept beeping at 3:13 pm for no reason, so I had to be gone from the house then, or at least away from Mom and Pops, or else they might ask where I got it. They didn't notice anything if it didn't make a noise.

  When the night came, I did everything Beau Jean told me. I snuck out through my window and went straight to the hiding spot we picked out. I moved the car tire and tugged up our box of shit from the shallow hole we dug. Then I held it just so and started for the train yard.

  I wasn't ever supposed to go in the train yard, I knew, especially not in the tar black part of night, which it was. People in the train yard get chopped in half, snap, just like that. That's what Pops did—he snapped his fingers, pop—when he told me about his buddy getting caught between two train cars. He said the guy's stomach came out all over the place because two trains came together and just smashed his middle while he stood there. Even after he got smashed he kept trying to push the one train off but he couldn't of course, because he was almost dead, but also because not even God could move a train if it trapped Him. They're too big and they come on slow so you don't know you're trapped until you are, and then your ribcage pops like a balloon.

  I didn't want my ribcage to pop but I didn't want to disappoint Beau Jean neither, so I sucked it up and slipped under the fence.

  There was a lot more light than you might think would be in a sleeping train yard. They had gigantic white lights burning, sort of like the long lights in halls at school but bigger and more like x-rays. I thought they had to see my bones. But I did just like Beau Jean told me and stayed flattened up against the fence until I got to the way far end, away from the bridge and the main part of the yard where things still breathed and squealed even in the middle of the night. At the dark end, they stash all the cars too ugly to go out and do their job. It's everything marked up with too much graffiti, or so rusted the wheels are going to spin off and kill all the cows in the middle of nowhere.

  I found the two guys Beau Jean told me would be there. They were smoking cigarettes in between two cars. I put our box of shit down so they couldn't just grab it, and stepped out so they could see.

  "What the fuck is a kid doing out here?"

  Beau Jean had made me practice saying what I would say so they'd know I was serious. He made me stand up straight and fill my lungs from the bottom up and then exhale and fill them up from the top down. Then he had me say what I would say over and over again while my voice projected. That's what they do in theater, so I was ready.

  "I have the shit. Where's the briefcase?"

  Man, they really busted up. I mean, they really doubled over—quiet so no one could hear, but you could tell they weren't hardly holding it in. They said I had to be shitting them and Beau Jean really was a crazy fuck and some other stuff about how he loved to play cops and robbers. I waited. I guess I'm used to waiting around for somebody to pay attention. Usually they don't, but eventually one of the guys calmed down enough to light another cigarette and ask me where Beau Jean was.

  "He's not here. I have the shit, so you have to give me the briefcase."

  He looked me up and down and pulled on his cigarette. Then he shrugged and said, "What the fuck."

  The other guy turned around to pick up a ratty leather suitcase and put it in front of me. That seemed about right, so I ducked under the train car where I left the box and took it out to them. They checked one of the little tubs by sniffing it and turning their eyes up in their heads, and then the one held out his hand. I shook it.

  "Okay," he said, and nodded with the cigarette in his mouth.

  Maybe you've felt like I felt then, like for once you belonged right there doing whatever thing you were doing because nothing got fucked up and the right people knew you didn't fuck anything up, and that's big. It makes you big.

  Beau Jean gave me thirty dollars out of the brown suitcase. I'd never had thirty dollars before. I didn't even know what thirty dollars meant, so first thing I went to the Quik-Mart. I bought one of the big bottles of Coke and as much candy as I could fit in my arms and that still didn't equal thirty dollars. I went back and gathered up some more stuff—caramel corn and beef jerky and a bunch of packets of gum, and that about did it. I didn't think about what I'd do with everything until I was halfway home and realized I couldn't take it there. So I sat down on the curb and ate it.

  All the chocolate had already melted, so I licked that stuff out of the wrapper. I drank all the Coke. By the time I got to the popcorn I was so full it could hardly fit. I f
inished the bag and sat there trying not to be full anymore. Then I stood up, and barfed everything out right there in the road. So that's what thirty dollars feels like inside you.

  I carried our shit for Beau Jean a few other times, every couple of weeks, usually to the same two guys smoking cigarettes in the train yard in the middle of the night with the bugs buzzing and clicking. I asked Beau Jean if what we were doing was illegal. He said goddamn no, girl. I asked him why I had to deliver our shit in secret and he said because if everybody knew what he knew, they'd make our shit illegal just to spite him. I was just happy to know I couldn't go to jail for anything.

  Sometimes I helped Beau Jean count the tubs and pack them in little black cases, just shoebox size. He'd have tubs stacked on the kitchen table to take one by one, inspect, then hand to me to pack. Every once in a while I know he swiped some of the shit, just a tiny bit, to rub under his nose. Quality control he called it. He never did much in front of me. He always tested the big batches before I got there, but I could tell when he'd used a bunch. He'd get bug-eyed with black holes for pupils and keep rubbing his hand slow across the top of his head, like his hair had turned to satin.

  I stole one of the tubs once, while we counted. I wondered what about it made your head worth touching all the time, so I slipped one into the pocket of my shorts and went on counting. Just like that. I didn't even think about it. It sat heavy there until we got to the end of the stack when Beau Jean noticed there was still one empty spot in my packing job. He stared at it hard. Then he looked at me straight and said, "Did you steal from me?"