T. C. Boyle Stories

by T. C. Boyle

  “Did you know that Phil is nearly twelve years old, Vincent—did you know that?” Grace said, struggling for control. She was rocking in Jet’s arms, the light of the streetlamp making a glistening doughy ball of her face. “That’s what Dr. Diaz estimates, anyway—and that’s ancient for a squirrel, almost like Methuselah, though they can live to be fifteen, so they say—” And then she did the unforgivable, her mind gone loose with age and anxiety or whatever, but she somehow made the connection between the squirrel’s birthday and Jet’s and before Jet could stop her she said, “But haven’t you got a birthday coming up?”

  “We’ve got to be going, Ma,” Jet said. “We’ve got to deliver your, your”—she couldn’t bring herself to use the term “babies,” not in front of Vincent—“these squirrels to six different addresses, one of them all the way out in Simi Valley.”

  But her mother wouldn’t quit. “You do have a birthday coming up, don’t you? December fifth. God,” she went on, “I can hardly believe you’re going to be twenty-nine—or is it thirty?”

  “Ma—” Jet said.

  Vincent said nothing, but Jet could feel him looking at her.

  The sound of a car engine half a block away inserted itself into the silence. Overhead, a jet scrawled its graffiti in the sky. Grace sighed. “We’re none of us getting any younger, I guess.”

  Vincent climbed back into the truck and Jet gave her mother a hug and told her not to worry, they’d take care of everything. And that would have been that, but for the fact that when Vincent swung wide out of the driveway he let the wheel slip out of his hands for an instant and the right front bumper of the truck cut a long screeching furrow into the side of Mrs. Tranh’s brand-new white Honda Accord, which was pulled up at the curb in front of her house. Instantly, the porchlight at the Tranhs’ went on and Mrs. Tranh and Violet stood there at the door, their necks craning into the light. It was amazing. You would have thought they’d been sleeping on the doormat or something. But that was nothing compared to Grace’s reaction. She let out with a long withering cry of despair that would have waked the dead, and the squirrels, jostled in their cages, responded with such a cacophony of yips, squeals and screeches you would have thought they’d been set afire—and in that moment Jet couldn’t help wishing they had.

  The truck was stalled in the middle of the street, emergency lights flashing, the incontrovertible evidence of Vincent’s miscalculation planted in the side of the Accord. Jet’s mother emitted a series of short piping screeches as she skittered across the road and began to claw at the rear door of the truck, which only provoked the squirrels all the more. By this time Vincent was standing on the pavement in the glare of the headlights, scratching his head and puzzling over the rent Accord as if it had dropped down from outer space, and the Tranhs, mother and daughter, were right there too, their voices clamoring in excitement and outrage. Jet climbed down out of the truck and attempted to calm her mother. “Ma,” she said, “Ma, the squirrels are all right, it’s nothing, just a fender bender, that’s all—”

  Unfortunately, Mrs. Tranh overheard this last and cried, “Fender bender, that all, huh? Nothing to you, huh? Huh?” She was dressed in a faded pink housecoat and her voice was high and unholy in the night. “I pay good money!” she screeched. And there was Violet, in shorts and bare feet, with a black leather jacket hastily thrown over a little black top, trying to calm her mother too. A long moment ticked by, the timpanic thump of the squirrels throwing themselves against the mesh of their cages punctuating Grace’s sobs, Vincent’s protestations of innocence and Mrs. Tranh’s angry outbursts, and then Violet leveled a look on Jet and said, “We’ll need to see your insurance and we’re going to have to call the police.”

  That was all Grace needed to hear. “No, no police!” she sobbed.

  Mrs. Tranh perked up suddenly. “Your squirrel baby,” she said, “that’s what this is about, yes?” The flashing lights played off her face, shot sparks from her eyes. “In Bien-hoa we eat squirrel. Monkey too.” She was looking at Jet now, her mouth twisted tight with the effort of the words. “Tell your mother save people, not squirrel.”

  Grace said something then that Jet would never believe had come from the lips of her mother, and she had to hold her back, the older woman’s arms straining against her as when their roles were reversed and Jet was the child. That was when her mother turned on her with a hiss: “One simple thing I ask from you, one simple thing, and look what happens—”

  It was a mess, a real mess. Mrs. Tranh wouldn’t let Vincent pull the truck away from the car until the police came and wrote up their report, and though there wasn’t much traffic, Jet had to stand out in the middle of the street, shivering in her hooded sweatshirt, and wave the cars by with a flashlight. Her mother wanted to unload the squirrels and hide them back in the garage before the police came, but Jet talked her out of it, and finally Grace staggered across the street like a woman twice her age and hid herself in the darkened house.

  After a while it began to rain, a soft breathing mist of a rain that took the curl out of Jet’s hair but didn’t seem to discourage the Tranhs, who sat grimly at the curb waiting for the law to arrive. It must have been nearly half past one when the police finally showed up, two gray-haired men in their forties, one Mexican, one white. They were half-asleep, rolling out of the car like the jelly doughnuts that sustained them, until Mrs. Tranh woke them up. “All right,” the white cop said in the chop of the lights and the swirl of mist that hung round him like a curtain, “who was driving here?”

  The Tranhs looked to Jet and Jet looked to Vincent. It seemed to her he had a pleading sort of look in his eyes, the sort of look that was meant to convey a complex message about love and commitment, about guilt and responsibility and maybe even lapsed insurance payments. “He was,” she said finally, and she couldn’t help lifting her finger to point him out.

  Grace never drank, not more than once or twice a year anyway, but as she sat in the darkened house and watched the lights clench and unclench the belly of the curtains while the Tranhs and her daughter and Vincent and half a dozen or so of the curious or bored moved back and forth in silhouette across the scene of the accident, she groped in the liquor cabinet for one of Bill’s bottles of liquor—any one—screwed off the cap and took a swallow. It was like drinking acid. Instantly her stomach was on fire and she wanted to spit the stuff back into the bottle, but it was too late. After a minute, though, she took another sip, and then another, and before long her heart stopped hammering at her rib cage. She had to be careful. She did. She could have another episode and that was the last thing she wanted—that wouldn’t do her babies any good, no, no good at all.

  She peeked through the curtains, waiting now, waiting for the police to ask what was in the truck, as if they couldn’t hear—and smell—for themselves. And if they didn’t ask, Gladys Tranh would tell them, you could count on that. “Squirrels?” the policeman would say, and then: “Do you have a permit for these animals?” And if that happened it was just a matter of time before Officer Kray-bill showed up to have the last laugh. But maybe she should go out there, maybe she could distract them—or maybe, if she pleaded and begged and threatened to kill herself, they’d at least let her have Phil; Phil, that’s all she wanted—

  But nothing happened. The rain fell. The odd car drove round the truck. Gladys Tranh went back into the house and one of the policemen wrote out his report while Jet, Vincent and Violet looked on. Then the police were gone and the Tranh house was dark and Jet was knocking at the door. “Ma? Are you in there?” Jet called. “Listen, Ma, is it okay if we call it off for tonight? Vincent’s tired. Ma? He says he doesn’t want to do it.”

  Grace just stood there, the door between her and her daughter, the pacemaker keeping its rock-steady beat in her chest, and she didn’t say a word.

  (1994)

  JOHN BARLEYCORN LIVES

  There were three men came out of the West,

  Their fortunes for to try.

  A
nd these three men made a solemn vow:

  John Barleycorn must die.

  —“John Barleycorn” (traditional)

  I was just lifting the glass to my lips when she stormed through the swinging doors and slapped the drink out of my hand. “Step back,” she roared, “or suffer hellfire and eternal damnation,” and then she pulled a hatchet out from under her skirts and started to splinter up Doge’s new cherrywood bar. I ducked out of the way, ten-cent whiskey darkening the crotch of my pants, and watched her light into the glassware. It was like a typhoon in a distillery—nuggets of glass raining down like hail, the sweet bouquet of that Scots whisky and rum and rye going up in a mist till it teared your eyes. Then Doge came charging out of the back room like a fresh-gelded bull, rage and bewilderment tugging at the corners of his mustache, just in time to watch her annihilate the big four-by-six mirror in the teakwood frame he’d had shipped up from New Orleans. BOOM! it went, shards of light washing out over the floor. Doge grabbed her arm as she raised the hatchet to put another cleft in the portrait of Vivian DeLorbe, but the madwoman swung round and caught him with a left hook. Down he went—and Vivian DeLorbe followed him.

  The only other soul in the barroom was Cal Hoon, the artist. He was passed out at one of the tables, a bottle of whiskey and a shot glass at his elbow. I was up against the back wall, ready to snatch up a chair and defend myself if necessary. The wild woman strode over to Cal’s table and shattered the bottle with a hammering blow that jarred the derby from his head and left the hatchet quivering in the tabletop. And then the place was still. Cal raised his head from the table, slow as an old tortoise. His eyes were like smashed tomatoes and something dangled from the corner of his mouth. The madwoman stared down at him, hands on her hips. “Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes?” she demanded. Cal goggled up at her, stupefied. She pointed a finger at his nose and concluded: “He who tarries long at the wine.” She must have been six feet tall. “Down on your knees!” she snarled, “and pray forgiveness of the Lord.” Suddenly she kicked the chair out from under him and he toppled to the floor. A few taps from the toe of her boot persuaded him to clamber to his knees. Then she turned to me. I was Editor in Chief of The Topeka Sun, a freethinker, one of the intellectual lights of the town. But my knees cracked all the same as I went down and clasped my hands together. We sang “Art thou weary, art thou languid?,” Cal’s voice like a saw grinding through knotty pine, and then she was gone.

  Two days later I was sitting at a table in the Copper Dollar Saloon over on Warsaw Street waiting for a steak and some fried eggs. John McGurk, my typesetter, was with me. It couldn’t have been more than nine-thirty in the morning. We’d been up all night getting out a special edition on McKinley’s chances for a second term and we were drooping like thirsty violets. McGurk no sooner called for whiskey and soda water than there she was, the madwoman, shoulders like a lumberjack’s, black soutane from her chin to the floor. A file of women in black bonnets and skirts whispered in behind her. “Look here!” guffawed one of the bad characters at the bar. “It’s recess time at the con-vent.” His cronies cackled like jays. McGurk laughed out loud. I grinned, watchful and wary.

  Her left eye was swollen closed, maroon and black; the other leered and goggled in a frightening, deranged way. She fixed the bad character with a look that would freeze a bowl of chili, and then she raised her arm and the women burst into song, their voices pitched high and fanatical, the rush of adrenaline and moral fervor swelling their bosoms and raking the rafters:

  Praise ye the Lord.

  Praise ye the Lord from the heavens:

  Praise ye Him in the heights.

  Praise ye Him, all ye angels:

  Praise ye Him, all His hosts.

  Praise ye Him, sun and moon.

  Praise ye Him, all ye stars of light.

  We were defeated, instantly and utterly. The bad character hung his head, the barkeep wrung his bar rag, two of the cronies actually joined in the singing. McGurk cursed under his breath while I fought the impulse to harmonize, a childhood of choir rehearsals and gleaming organ pipes welling up in my eyes. Then she brandished the hatchet, waving it high over her head like a Blackfoot brave, the other women following suit, drawing their weapons from the folds of their gowns. They laid waste to the barroom, splinter by splinter, howling hosannas all the while, and no one lifted a finger to stop them.

  I watched my beer foam out over the pitted counter, and somewhere, from the depths of the building, I recognized the odor of beefsteak burned to the bottom of an iron fry pan.

  We decided to strike back. The ruins of the Copper Dollar Saloon lay strewn about us: splinters and sawdust, the scalloped curls of broken glass, puddles of froth. I reached across the table and grabbed hold of McGurk’s wrist. “We’ll do an expose, front page,” I said, “and back it up with an editorial on civil liberties.” McGurk grinned like a weasel in a chicken coop. I told him to get on the wire and dig up something on Mrs. Mad that would take some of the teeth out of her bite. Then I trundled off home to get some sleep.

  An hour later he was knocking at my door. I threw on a robe and opened up, and he burst into the parlor, his eyes shrunk back and feverish. I offered him a chair and a brandy. He waved them away. “Name’s Carry Gloyd Nation,” he said. “Born in ‘46 in Kentucky. Married Charles Gloyd, M.D., in ‘67—and get this—she left him after two months because he was a rummy. She married Nation ten years later and he divorced her just a few months back on the grounds of desertion.”

  “Desertion?”

  “Yep. She’s been running around tearing up saloons and tobacco shops and Elks and Moose lodges all over the Midwest. Arrested in Fort Dodge for setting fire to a tobacco shop, in Lawrence for tearing the dress off a woman in the street because she was wearing a corset. Spent three days in jail in St. Louis for assaulting the owner of a Chinese restaurant. She claims Chinese food is immoral.”

  I held up my palm. “All right. Fine. Go home and get some sleep and then work this thing up for tomorrow’s paper. Especially the arrest record. We’ll take some of the edge off that hatchet, all right.”

  We ran the story next day. Two-inch headlines, front page. On the inside, just under a thought-provoking piece on the virtues of the motorcar as the waste-free vehicle of the future, I ran a crisp editorial on First and Fourth Amendment guarantees and the tyranny of the majority. It was a mistake.

  By 8 A.M. there were two hundred women outside the office singing “We Shall Overcome” and chaining themselves to the railing. Banners waved over the throng, DEMON ALCOHOL and JOHN BARLEYCORN MUST DIE, and one grim woman held up a caricature of me with a bottle in my hand and the sun sinking into its neck. The legend beneath it read: THE TOPEKA SUN SETS.

  None of my employees showed up for work—even McGurk deserted me. At eight-fifteen his son Jimmy slipped into the front office. He’d come to tell me his father was sick. Well so was I. I bolted the door after him and dodged into the back room to consult a bottle of Kentucky bourbon I kept on hand for emergencies. I took a long swallow while snatches of song, speechifying, cheers and shouts sifted in from the street. Then there was a crash in the front office. I peered through the doorway and saw that the window had been shattered—on the floor beneath it lay the gleaming blade, tough oaken handle of a hatchet.

  Someone was pounding on the front door. I crept to the window and peeped out. The crows now filled the street. Reverend Thorpe was there, a group of Mennonites in beards and black, another hundred women. I thought I saw McGurk’s wife Lucy in the press, obscured by the slow helix of smoke that rose from a heap of still-folded newspapers. I wondered where the Sheriff was.

  The door had now begun to heave on its hinges with each successive blow. It was at this point that I altered my line of perspective and saw that it was Mrs. Mad herself at the door, hammering away with the mallet head of her hatchet. “Open up!” she bellowed. “I demand a retraction of those Satan-servin
g lies! Open up -I say!” On hands and knees, like an Indian fighter or a scout for Teddy Roosevelt, I made my way to the back room, took another pull at the bung and then ducked out the loading entrance. I tugged the hat down over my brow and headed for Doge’s Place to regroup.

  Doge had replaced the swinging doors with a three-inch-thick oak slab, which was kept bolted at all times. I tapped at the door and a metal flap opened at eye level. “It’s me, Doge,” I said, and the bolt shot back. Inside, two workmen were busy with hammer and saw, and Cal sat at a table with canvas, palette and a bottle of whisky, shakily reproducing the portrait of Vivian DeLorbe from the defaced original. Beside him, hanging his head like a skunked coonhound, was McGurk.

  I stepped up to the improvised bar (a pair of sawhorses and a splintery plank) and threw down two quick whiskeys. Then I sauntered over to join Cal and McGurk. McGurk muttered an apology for leaving me to face the music alone. “Forget it, John,” I said.

  “They got Lucy, you know,” he said.

  “I know.”

  Doge pulled up a chair and for a long moment we sat there silent, watching Cal trace the quivering perimeter of Vivian DeLorbe’s bust. Then Doge asked me if I was going to retract the story. I told him hell would freeze over first. McGurk pointed out that we’d be out of business in a week if I didn’t. Doge cursed Mrs. Mad. McGurk cursed Temperance. We had a drink on it.

  Cal laid down his brush and gave me a watery-eyed stare. “Know how you git yerself rid of ‘er?”

  “I’d give a hundred silver dollars to know that, friend,” Doge said.

  “Simple,” Cal croaked, choking off to clear his throat and expectorate on the floor. “Git hold on that first husband of hers—Doc Gloyd. Sight of him and she’ll scare out of town like a horse with his ass-hairs afire.”