Red-Dirt Marijuana: And Other Tastes

by Terry Southern

  “Nothin’ goin’ on now, Officer,” said Wesley, “. . . them two got into argument . . . there weren’t no trouble otherwise.”

  “How you doin’, Blind Tom?” asked the second policeman.

  “Awright suh . . . who is it, Mistuh Kennedy?”

  The first had gone over to the bodies.

  “Put on some more light, Wesley . . . darker’n a well-digger’s ass in here—no wonder you have so much goddamn trouble.”

  He turned one of the men over and put his flashlight on him.

  “Goddamn they sure did it up right, didn’t they?”

  The other came over and gave a low whistle.

  “Boy, I reckon they did,” he said.

  “You know ’em, Wesley?”

  “Yessuh, I knows ’em.”

  One of the policemen crossed to the bar and took a small notebook out of his shirt-pocket. The other one went back out and sat in the car.

  The policeman at the bar looked up at the ceiling.

  “You still ain’t got any more light in here than that?”

  “Nosuh, waitin’ for my fixtures.”

  The policeman gave a humorless laugh as he looked for a blank page in the notebook.

  “You been waitin’ a long time now for them fixtures, ain’t you, Wesley?”

  “Yessuh.”

  “Okay, what’s their names?”

  “One of ’em name ‘C.K. Crow’ . . . and the other—”

  “Wait a minute. ‘C.K. Crow.’ Any address?”

  “Why I don’t rightly know they address. I think C.K. live out on the old Seth Stevens place, out near Indian River.”

  “You know how old he was?”

  “C.K.? Why, he was thuty-five, thuty-six year old I guess.”

  “How ’bout the other one?”

  “His name was Emmett—everybody call him ‘Big Nail.’ ”

  “Emmett what?”

  “Emmett Crow.”

  “They both named Crow?”

  “Yessuh, that’s right.”

  “What were they? Brothers?”

  “Yessuh, that’s right.”

  “Well, how old was he then?”

  “Why I don’t rightly know now which one of them was the oldest of the two. They was always sayin’ they was a year older than the other one, each one of ’em say that, that he a year older. Then Big Nail, Emmett, he was away, you see, up Nawth—in Chicago or New York City, I believe it was . . . but they was both thuty-five, thuty-six year old.”

  The policeman closed his book and put it in his pocket.

  “They got any folks here?”

  Old Wesley nodded. “We’ll look after ’em awright.”

  The policeman stood staring at the bodies for a minute.

  “What were they fightin’ about?”

  “Why now I don’t rightly know. They got into argument, you see . . . between themselves. Wasn’t nobody could stop it.”

  “What were they doin’, shootin’ craps?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t know nothin’ ’bout that—they sho’ weren’t shootin’ no crap in here, I know that much!”

  The policeman stopped at the door, and looked down at Tom.

  “Don’t reckon you seen anything out of the ordinary goin’ on lately, have you, Blind Tom?”

  Blind Tom laughed.

  “Nosuh, ah cain’t say that ah have.”

  “You gonna gimme a report on it though if you do, ain’t you, Blind Tom?”

  “Why sho’ ah is Mistuh Kennedy, you knows that ah is! Fust unusual thing ah see, why ah be down at de station an’ give a report, in full!”

  They both laughed and the policeman patted Blind Tom on the shoulder and left.

  When the car had pulled away, Harold came out of the room behind the curtain, and people began coming back into the bar.

  Blind Tom was singing the blues.

  “I jest wonder how C.K. feel,” said someone, “if he know he goin’ to be buried on Big Nail’s money. I bet he wouldn’t like it!”

  Old Wesley frowned. “C.K. predate a good send-off as well as the next man. Besides,” he added, “C.K. weren’t never one to hold a grudge for ver’ long.” He looked at Harold. “Ain’t that right, boy?”

  “I can’t listen to it again,” said his mother, walking past the kitchen table, one hand raised to her head. “You’ll have to tell him yourself—I’ll tell your grandad; there’s no use in him hearing it the way you tell it. But you’ll have to tell your daddy.”

  “Well, that’s the way it happened, dang it,” said Harold, frowning down at the empty plate in front of him.

  “Well, I don’t care, I don’t want to hear it. Now you tell him and then you go wash. We’re goin’ to have supper in a few minutes.”

  She walked out of the room and left Harold sitting alone at the table. Outside the dogs were barking, and he heard his father on the porch, stamping his feet, kicking the mud from his shoes; then the door opened and he came inside, still stamping his feet as though it were winter. He leaned the gun against the wall under a rack of others.

  “I want you to clean that gun after supper, son,” he said. “Where’s your mother?”

  “She’s upstairs,” said the boy.

  “Looka here, boy,” said his father, smiling now, holding up a brace of fat bob-white quail, “ain’t they good ’uns?”

  “C.K.’s dead, Dad,” said Harold, as he planned, as gravely as he could, not feeling anything except trying to measure up to the adult type of seriousness he believed the words must have.

  “What’re you talkin’ about, son?” demanded his father, scowling in anger and impatience, “didn’t you and him take that calf in . . .” He stamped over to the sink and lay the birds down there to turn and face the boy and have it out. “Now what’re you talkin’ about!”

  And for Harold it was only then, with the moment of his father’s disbelief, that the reality of it fell across his heart like a knife, and something jumped and caught inside his throat and knotted behind his eyes. He looked down at the table, shaking his head, wishing only to say that it wasn’t his fault—and then the thing inside his throat and burning behind his eyes broke loose, in a short terrible burst, and he stiffly raised one arm to his face to try and choke away the grotesque sobs, and the incredible tears—not the kind of tears he had known before, but tears of the first bewildering sorrow.

  His father said nothing, frowning; then he came over and stood by him, and finally put one hand on his shoulder.

  At the supper-table, no more was said about it, until once when Harold’s father sat for a moment gazing distraitly at the knife in his hand. “Damn niggers,” he said. “What did they git into a fight about anyway? A crap-game?”

  “Drink some more milk, son,” said his mother, raising the big pitcher.

  “What was it they were fightin’ about?” repeated his father.

  Harold watched the glass in his hand, the white milk tumbling in.

  “Aw I dunno,” he said, “they got into argument—about one thing and another, and then they got to fightin’—wasn’t nobody could stop it.”

  “Hadn’t been a-shootin’ craps?” said his old grandfather, wolf-lean, brown as leather, brooding forward over his plate toward the boy like a hawk.

  “No sir,” said Harold, “they weren’t doin’ nothin’ like that.”

  The old man grunted and recommenced eating.

  “I saw old Blind Tom the other day, Grandad,” said Harold after a minute, “. . . do you remember him?”

  “Who?”

  “Aw, you know, old Blind Tom Ransom—he asked to be remembered to you.”

  “Remember him?” said the old man, wiping his mouth, “why hell yes, I remember him. Now there was a goddamn good nigger, no two ways about it. Best hand in the county before his sight failed him.”

  “Was he as good as they say he was, Grandad?”

  “Picked a bale-a-day,” said the old man gravely, “rain or shine, rain or shine.”

  “Did
he sure enough pick seven-hun’red and twenty-three pounds in one day?”

  “Sure as hell did! They got me down from the house to see it weighed in, Seven-hun’red-twenty-three pounds, dry-load. Damndest thing I ever seen. I always meant to write to the Association about it.” His old eyes, glinting with brief challenge, moved swiftly around the impassive faces at the table. “Why, I’ll bet it’s a goddamn State record!”

  The Sun and the Still-born Stars

  SID PECKHAM AND HIS wife were coast farmers and Sid was a veteran of World War II. They were eking out the narrowest sort of existence on a little plot of ground just east of Corpus Christi, about an eighth of a mile from the Gulf.

  The cost of their farm was two hundred dollars. For one reason or another Sid had not been able to get a G.I. loan to buy the land outright, but he and Sarah had scraped together enough money for the down payment. Now, to meet the quarterly installments of twenty-five dollars, they depended entirely upon what could be raised there and sold for the vegetable markets of Corpus Christi, namely soft melons and squash.

  Sid and Sarah were of a line of unimaginative, one-acre farmers who very often had not owned the land they worked, and whose life’s spring was less connected to the proverbial love of the land than twisted somehow around a vague acceptance of work, God’s will, and the hopeless, unsurprising emptiness of life. The only book in their little house was the Bible, which they never read.

  For a time, before the war, they had lived on the even smaller farm of Sarah’s father, sharing a room in the back and working most of the day in the melon patch. Then Sid was gone, in the Army, for three years.

  They had one letter from France, but for all it said of what was happening it could have been written from Fly, two miles away, or even from his own family’s place across the road.

  Dear Sari

  They told us all to write. Hope you are all well. I am fine. The place here and the food is all right. Rain yesterday here, and today. I hope you and the family are all right.

  God keep you

  Sid Peckham

  In other respects, the letter was an epitome of their relationship. Speech between them was empty and hushed.

  Only sometimes now Sid spoke of the films he had seen in the Army. Then he was more expressive than at any other time.

  “That one were right good,” he would say, “I seen it on the boat.”

  Sarah would listen. They had never gone to see films before. But since the war, every Saturday they walked the two miles into Fly for the new movie. The movie in Fly played once on Saturday night and once again on Tuesday afternoon. Sid and Sarah went to the Saturday night showing, and they always left the house well before sundown in order to get good seats. All the seats were the same price, fifteen cents. They saw comedies and mysteries, westerns, dramas and classic histories, one a week for seven years.

  In the darkened cinema their faces were like a single wooden mask. Sometimes Sarah had difficulty in grasping the mood of a film at all. Then she would try to take her cue from Sid, leaning out to turn and peer at his face. But it never told her anything, and as soon as he noticed he would push her away again back down into her own seat.

  Only, if Sid had seen the film before, Sarah might watch him from the side, how he covered his mouth from time to time, nodding his head at the screen. The way this happened though, it never failed to strike Sarah as being different from what was happening at the same instant on the screen. And Sarah’s brow would go all dark furrowed, and she might draw her stiff fingers back and forth over the palm of her hand.

  Later, in the moonlight, on the narrow dirt road as they walked back to their place, Sarah would stay a little behind Sid and stare at the back of his head. Or else she might shoot a furtive, intent look at him from the side.

  “Nice film weren’t it, Sid?”

  “It weren’t a bad film,” Sid would say, and after a moment, “I seen it before now. I seen it in Englelan.”

  Sid Peckham had picked up one or two expressions in England. One of them was “piping” for hot, or more often to augment hotness. Only he had distorted it to “piper,” so that now they sometimes referred to the coffee of a morning as being “piper hot.” Or if Sarah simply asked, “How does this soup taste to you, Sid?” Sid might say, “It’s a right good soup, it’s piper hot.” Curiously too, through his experience, perhaps from a chance overheard conversation between two barracksmates in the faraway past, Sid had come to use the word “realist” to describe certain films; but, instead of “realist,” it sounded as though he were saying “reel-less.” And it was as if he might have somehow wholly confused the root stem of the word.

  “How’d you like it, Sid?”

  “It were good—it were one of them reel-less.”

  Or, perhaps, in the case of a musical or a cartoon:

  “There weren’t much to it—it weren’t no reel-less film.”

  But somewhere behind this, the mask of each expressed life, deep under the dead wooden simplicity of their ever separate, unspoken awareness, little things were crawling alive, breeding and taking on great, secret shape.

  During the day their labor was equally divided, until at last one Friday when Sarah was in the sixth month of her first pregnancy, it fell upon Sid to do most of the work in the patch. For her part, Sarah wondered if now, with the coming expense of the child, they would continue to go into Fly on Saturday for the movie. She wondered, too, how it would be after the child. And once, in a dream, she thought she saw the three of them sitting side by side in the darkness of the cinema, only their faces alight, as though she were seeing them from somewhere inside the screen. But she knew they had never, above the quarterly payments on the land, had money to spare at the time the payments were made. Moreover, with Sid working the patch alone, it was difficult to see how they would meet the next payment at all.

  Saturday, and Sarah awoke from a dreamless sleep, in a summer darkness long before dawn. At waking, this darkness was pure, and except for the night wind, perfectly still. She sought, but no notion of time could form in her mind, and she knew as soon that beneath the swift softness of the wind the night was alive with sound.

  She kept very still, her head straight against the flat cotton mattress. And, as out from the ceiling center, where the untrained vision lay, the room grew, like an image on a screen, slowly down around her to a vague, somehow familiar definition, she knew that he was awake too, and she touched his shoulder.

  “What’s that noise, Sid?”

  “It’s somethin’ in the patch,” he said without moving.

  A dry electric rustling filled the room. They lay motionless for another moment as the rustling stopped, then started up again, and Sid got stiffly out of bed and went to the window.

  “What is it?” asked Sarah. Sitting up now she could see Sid looking steadily out the window, but from the side, with his back almost flat against the wall. Then he was all crouched down, so that his eyes seemed at the level of the sill, peering out across the patch.

  Sarah left the bed and knelt beside him. At the window the sounds were not the same as before. There was a scratching, a dry tinsel sound. Leaf against leaf, and leaf against vine. And these were of the night, but in the heart of the patch where the dark form lay moving, just there, were the different sounds, the heavy, wet-mouth breaking of melons and the sound of breathing. And while the rustling of the leaf and vine stopped, the breathing went on—yet somehow heard by Sarah as indistinct, so that she shook her head and turned it first this way and then that, out against the night, and at last even to peer into Sid’s face.

  “Where, Sid?” she asked. “What is it?” Because she saw that his eyes stared straight unblinking into the dark.

  “It’s a critter I reckon,” said Sid. He stood up slowly and took his clothes off the chair. “I reckon it’s a hog.”

  Sarah stayed hunched at the sill, looking out the window and back at Sid as he put on his clothes.

  “It’s bigger than a hog,” she said.


  “I know it,” said Sid.

  In the room she saw his back as he left the door, and at once, out the window, how he appeared at the corner of the house, a shadow in the darkness, creeping along the fence of the patch. Opposite the window he stopped, crouched peering out over the patch. And where the heavier shadow lay, there was nothing now except the still night and the breathing.

  Then Sarah saw Sid rise, holding a large white rock. And she put out her hand, for in this light she saw him as though a film of oil lay stretched across the window. But in a sudden bound he was over the fence, throwing the stone and rushing ahead, as to Sarah at the window the two sounds were joined in a loud tearing sound of the breaking leaf and vine. And as quickly, the single shape was split, formed and reformed, and was lost twisting down through the darkness.

  She stayed at the window while the sounds broke away, dying across the patch, down toward the sea. Then she went to bed.

  Sometime after sunrise she awoke again, and was still alone in the room. When she was up and dressed, she made the bed and began to sweep the floor; but once, near the window, she stopped and stood there, staring out over the land. Across the piece of yard to the fence, over the patch and beyond the field, lay the dim sea, rising back high against the morning, and nothing stirred but the brilliant shooting patterns of the sun moving out across the land.

  Sarah fixed the breakfast and Sid had not returned. Then she went out into the patch and chopped weeds until she was sick. She was lying on the bed when Sid came in at almost noon. His clothes were wet and torn; there were short deep cuts on his face. “What is it, Sid?”

  For a moment he stood motionless in the doorway.

  “It was a hog,” he said then, “a sea hog.”

  Sarah waited.

  “I druv it back into the water,” said Sid. And he took off his clothes and lay down.

  In the late afternoon he awoke and got up hurriedly. Out in the patch he worked in a frenzy for two hours. Then he sat down on the back steps.

  In the kitchen, mending the torn clothes, Sarah saw his head turned away from the setting sun, and always south to the sea. After supper they went straight to bed.