Lucky Strikes

by Louis Bayard

  “I’m sorry.… I’m sorry.…”

  Chapter

  TWENTY

  If I can learn you one thing about tar, it’s this. Don’t try to paint over it.

  Not on a summer morning when the mercury on the shop window’s already reading eighty-seven. Tar don’t want to be covered up, it wants to bubble and ooze. Throw a brush at it, and it’ll just grab on.

  Only thing you can do, really, is cool it down with ice till it gets brittle. Then scrape off what you can. Cool it down some more. Scrape some more. Then rub in some Wesson oil, real hard, till the last specks is gone. It ain’t the work of a few minutes, believe you me, and here it was Monday morning and the first truckers half an hour off.

  “Unless my eyes deceive me,” said Hiram, “it was just the columns that got hit.”

  “So what?”

  “So grab all the tarps you can find from the garage. I’ll grab some rope. We’re going to wrap these columns up but good.”

  “Supposing somebody asks what’s underneath.”

  “Tell them it’s a surprise.”

  Well, off we went, the two of us, and it were that very morning that Earle Hoyle decided to wake his damn self up. Guess he couldn’t live another second till he’d shared that porte cochere with humanity. So he come running on out, eyes sprung wide. It’s the one time I was ever sorry he could read.

  “That weren’t for you to see,” I said.

  He didn’t say nothing.

  “That’s just fools talking. Ain’t a lick of truth behind it.”

  Still nothing.

  “You ain’t to tell Janey now,” I said. “You ain’t to breathe a word.”

  Well, me and Hiram set to wrapping, and I’ll say this. Once we was done, there weren’t a splash of tar to be seen. Hiram checked his pocket watch.

  “Six fifty-five. I suggest we put some smiles on our faces. What do you say, Earle?”

  The boy was nowhere to be seen.

  We checked round the house, went calling up and down Strasburg Pike. Not a sign.

  Now, Earle was famous for lighting out whenever he got in a stew, but morning passed into afternoon, and he was as gone as ever.

  It was fearful hot that day. The air sharp as copper, steam rising off the asphalt. Mamas running from the sound of their own babies, and drummers and preachers chasing sales that weren’t never coming, and good old boys strutting round with cigarette packs in their rolled-up undershirt sleeves, looking for a fight. Ain’t no easy living to be had on a day such as this. More than once, I confess, I was moved to curse Earle’s name for leaving us in the lurch, but each time, I thought back to how he’d looked, reading those words.

  Five o’clock rolled by. Then six. A little after seven, I told Hiram I was going to take a walk, but all I did was stroll to the edge of the road and swing my head every which way, trying to picture where he might be. Lake John? Squabble Creek? Cauthorn Mill Road? Could’ve been any of those places or none.

  Just when the sun was starting to drop, I saw a figure far down the road. A lank, rawboned thing with a boy’s shoulders and man-sized arms. His face was in shadow, and he kept turning his head like he was talking to somebody.

  Dear God, I thought. That brother of mine has gone and lost his marbles.

  By now, Hiram and Janey had followed me out to the road. Earle saw us, I guess, ’cause his hand shot up. Then something came skittering out from behind him, and I knew that whatever he’d been talking to was flesh and blood.

  Four spindly legs, brittle as peppermint sticks. A coat the color of dead grass. A saggy head with black-rimmed eyes and ears at wrong angles to each other. And, sprouting from those ears, fringes of old-man hair.

  “Why, that little devil,” said Hiram.

  ’Bout ten feet away from us, the creature stopped and drooped its head so low you couldn’t even see its eyes.

  “This here’s our new guard dog,” said Earle.

  “Walks funny,” said Janey.

  “He can’t help that, he’s bowlegged. Look, I already taught him a trick. Hey, you, roll over!”

  Critter did just like it was asked, and it was the saddest thing you ever seen. And then, instead of springing back up, like a normal dog would do, he just laid there on the side of the road, scrunchy with fear.

  “Guard dog written all over him,” I said.

  “He ain’t never had nothing to guard before,” said Earle. “We give him a home, he’s gonna look after it.”

  “Don’t look too smart,” I said. “Probably wouldn’t know his own name.”

  “We ain’t named him yet.”

  “Or find his own food.”

  “I’ll feed him.”

  My eyes twitched down to that pale yellow belly, patchy and scabby.

  “I reckon he’s crawling with ticks and fleas,” I said. “We’ll all come down with lice before the week is done.”

  “I’ll brush him out.”

  Janey knelt down and commenced to scratching behind the thing’s ears. “Why,” she said, “he looks like a little deer, don’t he?”

  And now it was Hiram, running his fingers along the thing’s spine. “He just needs a job. Like any other working stiff.”

  I reckon I could’ve held out a while longer. ’Cause if only you could’ve seen this mutt—I mean, life had gone and washed its hands of him. But then I made the mistake of asking myself what Mama would’ve done.

  “He damn sure needs a bath,” I said.

  “’Course,” said Earle.

  “And I ain’t lifting a finger for him. Y’all can feed him and pick up his shit and whatever else.”

  “What’re we gonna call him?” said Earle.

  Janey didn’t miss a beat. “Gus.”

  “Why Gus?” I said.

  “Lord, Melia. That’s what he looks like.”

  I’m sorry you’re so dumb.

  “He don’t look no more like a Gus than a Walter,” I said. “Or a Pierre.”

  But the seed was already planted, and before I knew it, the other three was whispering it in his ear. “Hey, Gus.… You hear that, Gus?”

  Feeling a little encouraged, the dog made his way toward the store. Sniffed around by the door, then pushed his head under the stoop and come back out with something in his mouth.

  “Would you look at that?” cried Earle, eyes blazing. “He’s hunted down his first critter.”

  Whatever he’d hunted down, he weren’t in no hurry to show us. Dropped it at our feet like an apology.

  It was the redbird. The one that’d been pecking away at our window for all these weeks. Hardly a mark on him now—he’d gone to his maker long before Gus ever got there.

  I stood there, staring down at his stubby carcass, thinking, You should’ve quit while you was ahead.

  “Well, now,” I said, feeling my jaw go tense. “Maybe next time this fool dog will catch us something that weren’t already dead.”

  Chapter

  TWENTY-ONE

  First thing Earle did when we got in the house was serve that dog a plate of leftover chop suey. Gus wolfed it down in two seconds, threw it up a minute later.

  “We’ve got a shoulder bone left,” said Hiram.

  But the creature just squinted at it like it was Satan’s trickery. Finally, he drug it into a corner, but even then he wouldn’t gnaw at it. Nor bring himself to part with it. Just huddled over it, glancing back from time to time to see if we was coming to snatch it away.

  “He’s about the cowardliest dog I ever seen,” said Janey.

  “You don’t know nothing,” said Earle.

  Well, when bedtime come, I opened the front door and said, “Okay, Yellow Belly. Out you go.”

  “What you talking ’bout?” said Earle.

  “If he’s gonna earn his keep, he needs to be where the action is.”

  “You can’t just put him out like that.”

  “The hell I can’t.”

  Earle was about to come back with something smart, but Hiram put a h
and on the boy’s shoulder.

  “Gus’ll be fine. We’ll leave him some food and water, and I’ll check on him every hour, how would that be?”

  Well, Earle didn’t like it one bit. Couldn’t even look when we tied the dog to the chain and set out a bowl of Chappel’s Ken-L-Biskits and closed the door after. When I went out a few minutes later, Gus was right where we left him. Still staring at the door. I turned his head toward the road, but the moment I stepped away, that head spun right back toward the house.

  Best solution we could come up with was to have Hiram sleep out on the porch swing that night. Having company seemed to ease the dog’s mind, and when I come out the next morning, he was curled up like a radial. Not a single biscuit eaten.

  “Ain’t one bad thing happened all night,” said Earle. “That makes Gus a keeper.”

  “Makes him lucky is all.”

  Gus ate a little more that day, more the next, but he still treated food like it was going to turn around and eat him. He didn’t take well to being petted. Or looked at. Yet he didn’t mind a collar being put on him, and he didn’t snarl or fuss when he was washed or combed. And oh, did he love the sunlight! He’d lay on the porch for half a morning and all of an afternoon, the boards baking beneath him, the slits of his eyes trembling.

  “I believe he is a lizard,” I said.

  Day by day, we learned something new about him. He could spend an hour sniffing a cinder block or a downspout. He’d chase mice but wouldn’t kill them. He didn’t care for licking you (that were a relief), but he liked having his face right up in yours. If he was keen on you, he’d climb you—like you was a mountain. For exactly three minutes every day, he liked to run in circles, the faster the better, then flop down in a faint.

  He sipped his water dainty, but he wolfed down golden malted milk, and he chewed on Oxo bouillon cubes like they was opium.

  He never growled. And he never, ever barked.

  “Told you he weren’t no watchdog,” I said.

  Earle liked to point out that nothing bad had happened since Gus come along. I explained that was ’cause Harley Blevins was just waiting on his next chance.

  “So is Gus,” said Earle.

  The dog still needed someone to sit outside with him before he’d consent to go to sleep. Some nights it was Hiram, but on those evenings when he was at Ida’s, I’d just drag out a pillow and lay there on the porch swing.

  These were late-August nights. The scatter of bat wings and the screeching of cicadas and, off in the distance, the Southern Railway, heading for the same old parts. Most nights, it was hard to sleep and just as hard not to. I’d doze in and out, and sometimes I’d wake with a little snap, and the first thing I’d see, in the light from the front hall, was Gus staring back at me. Still not looking where he was supposed to.

  One night, I was sleeping full out when the swing give a lurch. My head jerked up, and my feet went scrambling for purchase.

  “Easy,” said Hiram.

  I set up, give my eyes a rub. “You’re back early.”

  I slid over to one side of the swing, and he set on the other. He pulled out a pack of Luckys. In the flare of match light, I could see Gus rolled up like an apple turnover, his chest rising and falling.

  “Say, what’s this?” said Hiram.

  Before I could stop him, he was snatching a book from under the swing. Green leather with gold-rimmed pages.

  He let out a soft whistle. “Thousand and One Nights.”

  “Well, what? You think I don’t know how to read?”

  “I just figured you didn’t have the time.”

  “I gotta make time. I got me a very demanding audience.”

  He took a drag off his cig. “Earle and Janey?”

  “Every blessed night.”

  With his thumb, he leafed through the pages. “Aren’t they a little old for this stuff?”

  “They was off it a good while, but once Mama took sick … well, to keep ’em easier in mind, I started telling the old stories. The ones she used to tell. Only I couldn’t bring ’em all to mind, so I ordered this here book through the mail. Now every time my tank’s running dry…”

  “You fill ’er up again.”

  I shrugged. “Those two are very particular when it comes to their Arabian Nights. You can’t just tell ’em the same tale over and over. They always want the next one.”

  “Why, Amelia Hoyle.” The ghost of a smile on his lips. “You’re practically Scheherazade yourself. Coughing up a new story every night.”

  “Least I don’t got no fool man threatening to kill me if I don’t.”

  “There is that.” He stretched out his legs, flexed his feet. “My mother used to read to me from the same book. Sadly, it had the wrong effect.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, I figured the world would be just like the book—never-ending adventure. So I dropped out of school after fourth grade and never looked back.”

  “Yeah? I made it halfway through fifth.”

  “Always have to show me up, don’t you?”

  I gave a low chuckle and stared out to the road. “School and me weren’t right for each other. All that do this, spell that, add this. I ain’t one for taking orders.”

  “So I’ve gathered.”

  “Or getting swatted for having an opinion. One day, I just up and decided I weren’t going no more. Oh, I still left the house of a morning, but I’d go for a walk in the woods, or pitch rocks cross the pond. Watch the cars go by. Then I’d stroll on home like nothing happened. Well, two weeks later, the truant officer shows up, and he has himself a long talk with Mama. She sets alone in the parlor for a spell. Then she calls me in. Well, here I am thinking I’m done for, but all Mama says is ‘Show me what they’re teaching you at that there school.’

  “So I write down some words, some numbers. World capitals and, I don’t know, 1066 and 1776. She looks it all over, and she says, ‘Well, hell, Melia, I can teach you this stuff. And I won’t hit you with no birch rod, neither.’”

  My finger made a slow sketch on my lips.

  “So every morning, me and her, we took our lessons. I didn’t have to write on a chalkboard or wear a dress. Best schoolhouse I ever had. Then every afternoon, we’d take apart some engine and put it back together. See, she figured me out, Hiram. She knew I was—I was made for the real world. Learning in the doing, that was our motto.”

  Hiram’s long bony finger gave the back of his cig a whack. “That’s how Earle learns. Show him how to build something, he gets it right off. I believe he’d make a fine woodworker or metalworker. Electrician, even.”

  “Ain’t gonna be no trades for that boy, he’s going to college.”

  Hiram’s head drew back. “We’re talking about the same boy?”

  “Oh, I know, homework ties him up in knots, and his handwriting’s a terror, but he’s got a way of keeping at things. He’ll make something of hisself.”

  “I don’t doubt it, but it won’t be from anything on a blackboard. Now if you’re asking me who in this family should go to college…”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “Me and my fifth-grade diploma.”

  “I’m talking about Janey.”

  It was like the name come lobbing out of the sky.

  “Janey?” I said.

  “Who better?”

  “Well … I know she’s got a head for figures.…”

  “She’s got more than that. Who do you think’s been balancing our books?”

  “Uh…” My eyes squeezed down by half. “Guess I reckoned it was you.”

  “For a while it was. Then one night, about a month ago, Janey came over and asked me what I was doing. I showed her, and once she saw how easy it was—well, she asked if she could try her hand. I’m telling you, Amelia, those ledgers got balanced in about half the usual time. I checked all her numbers, too, five nights running. They always came out square.”

  “Hold on. You’re telling me the bookkeeper for Brenda’s Oasis is a nine-year-old girl?”


  “And you’re not even paying her. Know what amazes me the most? She does it all in her head. No scrap paper, no adding machine. Pure brain power.”

  “But…” My hands met right at the top of my skull. “When was somebody gonna get round to telling me this?”

  “She didn’t want you to know.”

  “How come?”

  “She figured you had other plans for her.”

  “Well…” I dragged my hands back down my head. “Lord above, they ain’t my plans, they was Mama’s. Or somebody’s. I mean, girls has gotta cook and sew and, you know, get themselves a husband.”

  “That’s what they’re supposed to do?”

  “’Course.”

  “That’s what you’re doing?”

  I set there a second. Too stunned to speak. “You oughtn’t talk that way,” I said at last.

  “Why not?”

  “’Cause I’m a bad example. I’m what you call the baddest example ever was.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause.”

  I jerked my face away. Sat listening for a while to the cicadas.

  “If you must know,” I said, “I’m gonna die without a ring on my finger. And I ain’t asking for nobody’s pity, ’cause that’s just how I’m made, and I’m okey with it—but that ain’t what I want for Janey. That kind of life, Hiram, it’s a lonesome valley.”

  “You know what?” He dropped what was left of his Lucky to the ground. “The most lonesome people I’ve ever met have been married.”

  I opened my mouth to protest. Then I closed it. ’Cause washing into my mind’s view come Frances Bean. Setting all by herself at the end of that soda counter.

  And then Crazy Ida in that godforsaken movie theater. Her face opening like the leaves on a plant ’cause somebody was talking to her.

  And then, in a long sad line, the women at Mama’s wake. Married, all of ’em, and ’cept for Mina and Mrs. Goolsby, not a one of ’em had a husband in tow. They was all walking the lonesomest valley I’d ever seen.

  “Amelia,” said Hiram, “society’s already gone and washed their hands of us. Why don’t we wash our hands of them? Do what we want, live how we want, love who we want. How does that sound to you?”