Sorrow Floats

by Tim Sandlin

  The very instant Ben Lawson pulled open Moby Dick’s side door, a butter-knife-slicing-cardboard voice shrieked, “Arrest her quick. Use your gun and arrest her.”

  “Who, son?”

  “That lady touched Uncle Shane’s wienie.”

  Critter beamed like a sunflower. “Far out, it’s Jumpin’ Jack Flash. You’re the spit-image of Mick Jagger. I mean, you two are twins.”

  Andrew yelled, “Shoot her with your gun!”

  I viewed Critter through Ben Lawson’s eyes—dirty bare feet, tapestry skirt, rag bikini over the pertest little breasts you ever saw. And that haircut. She cried out to be shot or fucked, it would be a tough choice.

  The babble continued: “I can tell you’re death karma on women. My girlfriend Longina would suck you off on sight, man. One line from ‘Satisfaction’ and she’d drop to her knees and stick out her tongue.”

  I broke in before she got us all shot or fucked. “Critter, he’s kind of sensitive on that subject.”

  “Longina goes to Velma-Alma High. She’s seen the Stones four times. Wrap your mind around that. She’d die to meet Mick, and stud, you’re as close as anyone in Velma-Alma will ever come.”

  His hand went to the sunglasses, but he changed his mind and left them on. “How old are you?”

  “Seventeen.”

  Andrew stamped his foot. I couldn’t believe it. Nobody outside women in Russian novels and trained horses stamps their feet. “Arrest her and throw her in jail to rot, and arrest Uncle Shane, too. He beats me.”

  Shane’s head bumped up and down as he did the good-natured laugh deal. He was sitting on Critter’s duffel bag, the perfect picture of a pervert. I’d have thrown the whole bunch of us in jail. Everyone had faces of atrocity, even Marcella and the baby.

  “We’re hoping Andrew grows up to write TV shows.” Shane laughed. “Such an imagination.” He held out his hands, which he’d twisted into gnarled, useless claws. “As you can see, I’m afflicted. My niece was helping me change my catheter, and little Andrew misinterpreted. Do you have any notion what it’s like to wear a catheter?”

  At niece, Andrew started to brat out, but Shane gave him a shut-up-or-die look and Andrew shut up.

  My feeling is Ben didn’t buy the gnarled hands or catheter rap, either one. He asked, “Are you sick?”

  When Shane shifted off the duffel bag, part of the folded-up wheelchair came into view in the junk behind him. Ben said, “I didn’t realize.”

  Shane stared glumly at the floor. “I lost my capacities fighting a forest fire in Montana. A deer had panicked and run into the fire and become trapped. I had to go in after it, otherwise I couldn’t have lived with myself.” He lifted his eyes to his twin reflection in Ben Lawson’s face. “I saved the deer, but a falling tree severed my spinal column.”

  Marcella said, “I am a Christian, Officer.”

  This time when Ben Lawson took his sunglasses off he folded them and slid them into his shirt pocket, right below the name tag. You could read his thoughts in his lips. Sympathy, cynicism, duty, resolution. He turned back to look at Lloyd standing next to me. “Are any felonies being committed here?”

  “We’re just simple travelers.”

  “You carrying any dope?”

  “Would someone driving this getup and hauling all that beer risk carrying dope?”

  Ben Lawson locked into Lloyd’s eyes. His lips kind of quivered at the experience. I knew what he felt, I’d locked into Lloyd’s eyes myself. That much sincerity makes a person weak in the stomach.

  Finally the lips formed speech. “I’ve got real criminals to chase. A bunch of clowns smuggling Coors must be harmless enough.”

  “That’s us,” I said. “Harmless clowns.”

  He backed away from Moby Dick, feeling his pocket. “One thing. Disguise the damn beer. You don’t have a chance in hell of making the East Coast without someone pulling you over. No use in being too stupid.”

  “We try not to be too stupid,” Lloyd said.

  Ben Lawson turned away and walked toward his patrol car. “Have a nice day, folks.”

  As I pulled Moby Dick onto the two lanes of asphalt, Shane went gleeful. “Banzai, motherfucker, we showed him. It’s all in the timing. I unveiled the chair at the perfect moment to maximize guilt.”

  “What’s a motherfucker?” Andrew demanded.

  “You told me you lost your legs in a motorcycle wreck,” Critter said.

  “I rode my motorcycle into the fire to save the deer. Let me explain the details.”

  Hugo Jr. started crying, the de-whiskered kitten sneaked back onto my lap to nurse on my shirt buttons. I drummed a finger rhythm on the steering wheel, considering what to name the precious half pint in the glove compartment.

  Lloyd leaned back and smiled for the first time since I joined forces with the AA duo. “Oklahoma’s pretty,” he said. “I could get used to this.”

  20

  Comanches are one of the tribes Hank Elkrunner approves of. He has strict standards when it comes to authentic Native Americans. The best are the mountain tribes with four-pole foundation tipis—Blackfoot, Flathead, Nez Percé—although he looks at Crow as a short step from Communists. He says the Plains tribes—Sioux and Cheyenne—are overrated because of the Custer thing, and Apaches are the only southwest Indians worth dealing with.

  “I dated a Hopi once,” he said. “All she talked about was TV. She watched Truth or Consequences while I humped her.”

  Bottom of Hank’s list of real Indians are the Civilized Tribes of Oklahoma, especially the Cherokee. “No better than white farmers,” he said, which meant no better than anyone.

  Comanche, Oklahoma, was a three-gas-station town with a Korean War air force fighter plane mounted on concrete in the city park. Critter had me turn right at this Humble station with old-fashioned pumps where you actually see the gasoline in a glass bubble on top. It was neat. Lloyd wanted me to stop so he could make the owner an offer.

  A mile or so west of town we came to a peeling white-frame farmhouse with a full-length porch, two huge pecan trees in the yard, and a half dozen Volkswagen buses and bugs parked at random, like they’d been tossed by a tornado. Every one of the Volks was painted with garish designs and hippy code words—LSD, Peace, Speed Kills, Wow, Love, 13, Gatorade.

  I’d seen hippy houses before. In Laramie we called them train stations—one bunch of people constantly coming and going, another bunch sitting there with nothing to do, and nobody cleans the bathroom.

  It was late afternoon and hotter than a popcorn popper when Critter’s arm came by my ear and she yelled, “There’s Freedom.”

  I spotted right off which one of the seven or eight vagrant types was Freedom. He stood dead center on the porch, hands on his hips and what you would have to call a sneer on his face. “Why isn’t Freedom’s hair long like the others?” I asked.

  “He hasn’t been out of jail long enough to grow it out.” Critter stuck her face out my window—which put her mouth at ear level—and shouted, “Freedom!”

  A couple of longhairs stood up to watch me park next to one of the pecan trees. A tanned woman with no shirt on came out the door and sat on the steps, nursing a baby. A dog rolled onto his back with all four legs sticking straight up.

  I said, “It’s Tobacco Road.”

  “No, that’s Zig Zag. He wants his belly rubbed, but don’t touch him unless you don’t mind fleas.”

  The dog looked the least flea-ridden of anyone in the yard. I’m not normally prejudiced against the counterculture, but there’s freaks who have long hair and get high but otherwise think roughly along the same lines as the rest of us, then there’s the other kind. These freaks were the other kind.

  Before Moby Dick came to a complete stop the side door popped open, and with a squeal, Critter streaked across the dirt yard and up the steps where she latched on. Freedo
m draped his right arm over her shoulders. He didn’t seem as happy to see Critter as she was to see him, because the expression on his face stayed the same. He didn’t even look down at her, just stared over her shoulder in our direction.

  “Maybe Sharon came through here,” Lloyd said.

  “Let’s go see what a guy who travels freely on the sixth level is like,” I said.

  Shane was strangely quiet. When I looked in back he was shoving his chair through the door with a bad-taste pucker on his mouth. Marcella was bent over, changing the baby’s diaper. She’d tightened her bun, as if we were making a social call. Andrew, amazingly enough, was asleep.

  All the way from Anadarko through Fort Sill, forty miles, he beat two rocks on an upturned plastic bucket and sang, “Here comes the bride, big, fat, and wide. Where is the groom, he’s in the dressing room. Why is he there, he forgot his underwear,” over and over and over until I was about ready to stop Moby Dick and strangle the kid dead in front of his mother.

  On the thirtieth big, fat, and wide I heard a clump. By the time I looked back he was asleep on a ratty army blanket, using the bowling bag as a pillow. I’d have given all the money I would ever own to be able to fall asleep like that.

  I climbed out my side and walked around to join Lloyd where he stood rubbing his leg and inspecting a charred Volkswagen bug.

  He touched the door handle and peered in the broken window. “It was the battery under the backseat. Sparked into the stuffing. I’ve seen a dozen burned like this.”

  Critter was on a rave. “Beefheart was totally cool, you wouldn’t believe the energy. I mean, when he sang ‘Dachau Blues’ waves of love washed from the crowd onto the stage. He picked up on it, too, I could tell by his aura lines.”

  Freedom kept his eyes on Shane’s wheelchair. “Where’s the stuff?”

  “Glenda split for Canada and I got a ride to Amarillo, where these straight people picked me up. I told them they could crash here tonight. Meet the straight people, Freedom. That’s Lloyd and Maurey. She’s an alcoholic, Shane’s the dude getting in the chair. There’s a whole family inside, but I forget their names.”

  Something about the way Critter said straight people made me think she was making a point in code. Freedom didn’t care. He said, “Where’s the goddamn stuff?”

  “Can’t we talk about that later?”

  “We’ll talk about it now.” He came down the steps and moved toward Moby Dick in these long strides—real purposeful, manly.

  Critter followed, childlike. “I got your stuff, Freedom. It’s okay. Now’s just not the time.”

  Shane threw his hands up in self-defense, but Freedom marched past the chair, reached into Moby Dick, and pulled out Critter’s duffel bag. She didn’t say anything, just stood there looking underage.

  Freedom had on a sleeveless undershirt, the kind Grandpa Pierce used to wear. He wore sandals, which matched him up with Lloyd. When Freedom’s hands yanked things out of Critter’s bag, you could see the brown stains on his fingertips. The knuckles of his left hand had Love tattooed in blue ink, one letter to a finger, and the knuckles on his right hand had Hate.

  Another tapestry skirt came out, and a pair of thongs. He pulled out a glass bulb thing with rubber tubes off the sides, which I took as a high-tech water pipe. Then Freedom started pulling out brown paper packages, each one shaped like a brick.

  I was pissed. Critter stared at the ground, where she could avoid eye contact. Lloyd’s eyes were on the wrapped bricks, and so were Marcella’s from the door of the ambulance. Shane looked at the ground, too, about the same spot as Critter.

  “You knew she had dope,” I said to Shane.

  Marcella squawked, “Dope.” She turned quickly and held her hand over Andrew’s eyes. He was asleep, but she wasn’t taking any chances.

  “Is that true?” Lloyd asked Shane.

  Shane looked at Lloyd—he still couldn’t face me. “We couldn’t leave her there. You would have left her if I told you.”

  I was way pissed. “We could have gone to jail, you fat jackass. Even your own sister. You risked all your friends just to impress a hippy dopehead you wanted to nail.”

  Freedom’s voice was harsh. “There’s only eight here, where’s the other four?”

  I knew right then he was a jerk because Critter was more afraid of him than she was of me, and I was ready to kill her. “I told you, Glenda split for Canada. She went for the free land.”

  “The cunt.”

  “It was her money, Freedom.”

  Can you believe a guy with the name Freedom using the cunt word? Here’s a truth: There’s not a man alive, no matter how liberated or advanced, who, when the conditions are right, won’t call a woman a cunt.

  ***

  “Owsley, go get me my pipe,” Freedom ordered.

  A boy I hadn’t noticed before said, “Get it yourself, I’m doing something.” The boy sat against a pecan tree trunk with a drawing notebook in his lap. Thirteen, maybe fourteen, he was the Hollywood version of an angel. Pure skin, soft cheekbones, eyes a light blue sliding into silver—but the beautiful element that jumped out and touched your heart was his hair. His hair was sunshine blond and thick and fell like a Yosemite waterfall over his shoulders to his waist. How this angel ended up in a yard full of scuzballs was the great mystery of Oklahoma.

  Freedom’s fingers tore into one of the packages. He didn’t raise his voice, but I got the idea he didn’t have to. A truly chilling threat works better as a whisper than a scream. “Owsley, bring me my pipe. Now.”

  “Why can’t somebody else fetch your stuff? I’m the only one out here doing anything.”

  “Owsley.”

  The boy pouted, but he moved. When he stood, he had the body of a football halfback. Good shoulders, no hips, just a trace of ass. He was about the same age as Sam Callahan when he and I de-virginated each other, but they were as different, visually, as a Kentucky Thoroughbred from a llama. Emotionally, they both tended to sulkiness.

  After Owsley went in the house, I drifted over to check out the drawing pad. It was a charcoal picture of a hawk with its wings spread and a snake in its claws. Came from one of those Don’t Tread on Me flags, I think. The drawing was really good for a kid. Really good for anyone. He knew how to fine shade with charcoal, which is something I never pulled off back at GroVont High art class.

  “Is that a narc?” Freedom pointed down the road at Hugo Sr. sitting in his Oldsmobile.

  I was flipping through Owsley’s art pad and took a moment to frame an answer that wouldn’t get Hugo Sr. shot at, but before I came up with anything Shane jumped in. He’d been quiet too long—extended contriteness was not his deal. “That’s my sister’s husband. She left him in Amarillo and he’s been following ever since. He’s harmless, unless you are married to him.”

  Freedom’s eyes went squinty. “Looks like a narc to me.”

  Marcella’s head came out of Moby Dick. “Hugo Sr. is a children’s portraitist, a very good one. Whatever a narc is, he isn’t that.”

  “He makes me nervous out there. DeGarmo, take care of it.”

  One of the anonymous scuz-types went into a whine. “You’ll smoke while I’m gone.”

  Freedom’s eyes snapped at the chosen scuz. “Jesus Christ, what is with you people today?”

  DeGarmo trotted off down the road toward Hugo Sr. His jeans had leather patches all over the butt, and some were peeling away so you could see the top half of his crack.

  “What’s he gonna do to Hugo?” Marcella asked.

  Freedom wasn’t even watching to see what DeGarmo did to Hugo. He was more interested in the pot sifting between his fingers. He said, “I better not have to send someone after Owsley.”

  The scuz lieutenant was still fifty feet away when Hugo Sr. started the Oldsmobile, did a three-step U-turn, and drove off toward Comanche. Guess he wasn’t as st
upid as I’d assumed. Hardly anyone ever is.

  Cocktail hour. The day was one to be proud of, so far; I’d driven all the way from Amarillo, Texas, with scarcely a tremor. My neck muscles hurt, and I had that fluttery stomach only alcohol can un-flutter, but I’d said, “No whiskey till Comanche,” and here I was. An alcoholic could never have shown my level of self-control.

  You want to talk addicts, you should have seen that pack of lost dogs that circled Freedom as he finger-sifted marijuana. Not a functioning frontal lobe in the bunch. I’d have been shocked to hear a two-clause sentence escape from any of those chapped lips. Their eye pupils were huge black holes—as compared to Freedom’s pupils, which were pinpricks. Most of their mouths weren’t quite closed. The Duh look.

  Winston, the married English professor, had pinprick pupils like Freedom’s. I think he was self-medicating or something because he couldn’t get a stiffie unless the girl was on top and he took frigging forever in coming. Or maybe that was an age thing. Winston would lie there, his arms thrown over his head, and babble something from Camus like “Mother died today. Or, maybe yesterday; I can’t be sure. The telegram from the home says: ‘Your mother passed away. Funeral tomorrow. Deep sympathy.’”

  I’d look down at his curly armpits and think, What’ve I got to do to make the intellectual dildo come? Christ, no grade is worth this.

  When Winston gave me a C, I put a full rubber in his car ashtray where I knew his wife would find it. Us self-proclaimed victim types can be nasty.

  21

  Years ago there was a fried-food drive-in in Jackson named the Purple Cow. The carhops wore uniforms like Swiss milkmaids yodeling over burgers named after strains of cattle—Angus, Holstein. The Charolais Burger came with bacon and Velveeta cheese. Whenever our family drove by the Purple Cow on our way to church or someplace, Dad would recite: “‘To each his own,’ said the old lady as she kissed the purple cow.”