Sorrow Floats

by Tim Sandlin

  Bernard raised his gun higher. “This is all the jurisdiction I need. You snuck up on a law officer. I could legally shoot you. Do you want that?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “So, shut up.”

  A.B. hurried over. He had this little, skinny mustache no thicker than the fuzz on Sugar Cannelioski’s lip. “Where’d she come from?”

  I said, “Wyoming.”

  Bernard said, “I said shut up.”

  Lloyd joined in. “Shut up, Maurey.”

  I plowed right on through. “We’re moving to North Carolina where they don’t sell Coors, and I love Coors beer.” Biggest lie I ever told in my life.

  “So do I,” A.B. said.

  “Well, I filled the trailer with Coors so I could always own a taste of the mountains. It’s all for personal consumption. We’ll never sell a drop. You officers are welcome to a bottle if you wish.”

  Bernard had the posture of a pregnant woman—splayed feet, shoulders holding up too much weight, left hand resting on his gut. The right hand still pointed a pistol at me.

  “We’ll take more than a bottle if we wish. I think you’re a smart broad.” He stared directly at my breasts. “I hate smart broads. Open that trailer, A.B.”

  A.B. swung open the doors and two bales of straw fell out on the road.

  “Looks like you’re hiding something,” Bernard said.

  “We’ve got horses to feed,” I said, figuring the idiot didn’t know straw from hay, either.

  A.B. ran his light over the batteries and tires to the stacked beer. “There she is, as promised,” he said. It was worse than I expected—fifty cases, tops. Because Freedom ripped us off for three hundred dollars we’d traded away two thousand dollars’ worth of Coors. I almost could have pulled off the personal consumption defense if they’d been intent on arresting us.

  Which they weren’t. Arresting us meant turning in the Coors as evidence, and these were good ol’ southern boys. They viewed beer with a finders-keepers mentality.

  Bernard holstered his gun and picked up his flashlight. “You.” He motioned to Lloyd. “Inside.”

  “Think it’ll all fit?” A.B. asked.

  “If it don’t, we’ll make two trips.”

  ***

  They formed a bucket brigade. Lloyd brought a case to the rear of the trailer and passed it down to A.B., who carried it to Bernard, who stacked it in the backseat of the Chattanooga patrol car. I stood off to the side and felt helpless. That was my Coors those jerks were stealing. I’d gone to a lot of trouble to get that beer and keep it, and now two cracker Tennessee cops were taking it away from me. If I only had Charley, I could have tried a bulletless bluff, but I’d gotten drunk and lost him, too. All my life I’d felt helpless because all my life I’d been helpless.

  Bernard was an efficient stacker. He squeezed cases in four across and three high on the seat plus another six on the floor. When the interior filled up he pulled out his keys and opened the trunk. That’s when he saw me hovering in the darkness.

  “Quit hiding like a nigger,” he said. “You make me nervous. Go on up and stay with the others, and no funny business. I won’t tolerate sneaking around.”

  “Yes, massah.”

  “Git.”

  I thought about running for help. A few house lights glimmered at the far end of the straightaway. One thing I’d noticed about the South is you’re practically always within a mile or two of a house. Nothing like Wyoming. But what would I say to the people in the houses—“Two policemen are stealing my illegal beer. Call the cops”?

  I climbed in the driver’s side and sat behind the wheel.

  “What’s going on out there?” Marcella asked.

  “They’re taking the Coors.”

  Shane made a sound like a little dog when you step on its tail. “That’s my beer. They can’t steal my beer.”

  “Go tell them that.”

  “I might condone an arrest. Criminality was an accepted risk, but for lawmen to steal from us…” For once, Shane ran out of big words.

  Andrew was on his feet. “We should always obey the policeman. He is our friend.”

  “That’s a lie they teach you in the first grade,” I said. “The police hate you and will hurt you whenever they can.”

  Popped that little sucker’s bubble. He turned to Marcella for the truth, but she could hardly deny it. “Where’s Hugo?” she asked.

  “I suppose we lost him. He didn’t expect us to double back,” I said.

  I studied my crew. Andrew was scared, Brad defiant. My guess is he’d been involved in rip-offs before. Marcella’s hands kept traveling from Andrew to Hugo Jr. and back, either reassuring them or herself.

  Shane’s face was a torment of twitches. “The villains can’t take all the beer. It won’t fit.”

  “They’re planning several trips. I imagine one will hold us here while the other one goes off somewhere to unload.”

  Shane said, “Abomination”; after that we were quiet. I found Injun Joe, but only to hold him, not to drink. Normally, I was a pint woman because real alcoholics drank fifths and I wasn’t a real alcoholic. Being a fifth, Joe had thrown me off the pace of my buzz.

  I thought of a fact. “They can’t arrest us or they’ll lose the beer.”

  “First thing tomorrow I shall report this behavior to their superiors,” Shane said.

  Andrew was more direct. “If I had my pistol I’d shoot the policeman.”

  “That’s the way,” Brad said. “Freedom wasn’t wrong about everything. He told me a million times, ‘Never trust a pig.’”

  Marcella protested use of the word pig even if they were thieves. Shane told about nailing a policewoman in her squad car in Ogden, Utah. Andrew pretended to shoot cops—“BANG, BANG-BANG.”

  The babble roiled around my already confused brain, but like a drowning victim on a stick, I held on to my fact. “If I drive off, there’s nothing they can do to stop me without losing their beer.”

  Nobody spoke. From behind us came the sound of Lloyd walking up and down in the trailer. Way off to the right the lights of Chattanooga soaked into the clouds. I thought I heard thunder.

  “So drive off,” Brad said.

  Shane was nervous. “Maurey’s too drunk to drive.”

  I pulled out the choke, pumped the gas pedal twice, and flipped the ignition switch. Moby Dick coughed to life. I yelled, “Banzai, motherfuckers!” then I jammed the Dick into first and we got the hell out of Dodge.

  39

  God knows I tried to peel out in a wail of squealing rubber, but Moby Dick didn’t have it in him. Probably for the best, his tires had no squealing rubber to spare.

  We did move right along, though. Lloyd’s tinkering and Brad’s new spark plug wires had the engine humming, not to mention by now most of the trailer weight was long gone. Hard to say without a speedometer, but I’d estimate we hit sixty before old Bernard even stuck his key in the keyhole.

  “Hope we didn’t lose Lloyd out the back end,” I said, gearing down for the first turn.

  “Watch out, for Christ’s sake,” Shane yelled as I swerved to miss a possum. I should have splattered it. Nobody risks death to save a possum.

  Brad climbed between the seats into the passenger spot. “Think we can outrun the pigs?”

  “Hell, no. But we can get far enough ahead for them to figure one carload of beer is enough.”

  “Are they following?”

  I checked the side mirror. Sure enough—red, blue, red, blue. “Shit.”

  “Coors isn’t worth dying for,” Shane shouted.

  “I have children back here,” Marcella called, unnecessarily since they were both howling.

  “This is like being in a movie,” Brad said.

  It would have been except chase scenes in movies were choreographed and driven by sob
er guys in helmets. As we blew over a hill I remembered something Shane might find interesting.

  “Did you know Herbie the Love Bug Volkswagen had a Porsche engine?”

  Shane yelled, “I don’t give a fuck.” I hit a mother of a chuck-hole that bounced him off his perch onto the floor. Marcella scrambled to upright him, but from the sound of things Shane and the entire junk pile were rolling out of control back there. Marcella passed Hugo Jr. up to Brad so the baby wouldn’t get killed by a flying jack.

  “I never held a baby before,” Brad said.

  “Hold his head so it doesn’t flop.”

  “This diaper’s all wet.”

  Bernard and A.B. caught us on a hill full of tight curves. I moved Moby Dick dead center of the blacktop, figuring anyone coming down would have the brains to get out of my way. Hunter-and-prey stalemate—they couldn’t stop us and we couldn’t escape.

  “What are you going to do?” Brad asked.

  “I don’t know. Let me think.”

  Their advantage was they knew the roads and we didn’t. For all I knew, we could be hurtling down a dead end into a brick wall. Our advantage was they didn’t want other law enforcement attention any more than we did. That’s why they hadn’t turned on the siren. Also, if this thing lasted all night, we had a full tank of gas. Neither one was much of an advantage.

  “Look at the map and see where the hell we are,” I said to Brad.

  Instead, he peered out at the mirror on his side. “Someone else is chasing us.”

  I looked and didn’t see anything, then we hit a flat spot and I saw it—behind the police car another set of headlights, closing fast.

  “You think it’s Hugo Sr.?” I asked.

  Brad rolled down his window for a better look. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  In the middle of the flat spot we flew up and over a railroad crossing that sent Shane spinning back to the floor. The trailer jumped clear off the ground, came down, bounced, went up, and came down again.

  “I bet this is real exciting for Lloyd,” Brad said.

  “Hand me that bottle.”

  I heard a noise and looked in the mirror just as the police car swerved to the wrong side of the road, hit the ditch, and rolled.

  “Holy shit,” Brad said.

  It rolled all the way around onto its roof, then onto its wheels, then onto its roof again. I hit the brakes hard.

  ***

  Life simply stopped for about five seconds. It was kind of eerie, as if everyone froze in the moment, afraid to go on to the next moment, which might be even more bizarre than this one. I looked in back where Shane, Marcella, and Andrew were sprawled on the floor under an avalanche of magazines, used clothing, and automobile parts. They were all breathing, and I didn’t see any blood. The three were alive and would stay that way, although I doubt if that fact had dawned on them yet.

  “You shouldn’t stop so fast,” Brad said. He’d behaved like a hero—gathered Hugo Jr. in his arms and twisted at the last instant so his shoulder, instead of the baby, banged the glove box. The jar seemed to have knocked the tears out of Hugo. He looked content.

  “They flipped,” I said.

  “Us going through the windshield won’t make them unflip.”

  I jumped out and ran to the back of the trailer. Lloyd stood on the road, leaning forward so he wouldn’t bleed on his overalls. He had a nasty cut across his upper lip.

  “He didn’t have to do that,” Lloyd said.

  “What he?”

  The Jesus eyes flashed like heat lightning. “You didn’t have to do that, either.”

  “I was trying to save the beer.”

  “You broke most of what was left.”

  I squinted through the pale darkness toward the police car and saw the pickup camper. The driver stepped out and walked to the far shoulder to view the damage. He carried a flashlight in his left hand and a pistol in his right.

  “What’d he do?” I asked.

  “Shot their tires, I imagine.”

  Brad came up carrying a torn T-shirt, which he handed to Lloyd. “Marcella has her baby.”

  “Thank you,” Lloyd said. He pressed the T-shirt against his cut.

  “That truck was back at the cafe,” Brad said.

  Our savior returned to his cab and drove up to where we stood next to the trailer. He rolled down his window and smiled at me. I smiled back. His eyes were amused, and he had this tiny gap in his front teeth that made him appear impish.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi.”

  He turned his attention to Lloyd. “Are you okay?”

  The shirt muffled Lloyd’s voice. “It wasn’t worth killing anybody.”

  “You folks were in trouble and I had to help.” He waved the pistol vaguely back in the direction of the upside-down patrol car. “Neither one is hurt—just shook up some. They won’t be pursuing anyone else today.”

  Bernard was stooped over with one hand on the car and the other hand on his lower back. A.B. pulled himself out a broken window. When he stood up I heard a groan. Both had that stunned posture men get right after they’ve been popped in the face with a baseball bat.

  The man in the truck leaned a hairy arm on the windowsill. “Their car is full of broken glass and smells like a brewery. Why were they after you?”

  Lloyd said, “Long story.”

  I figured somebody should thank the guy. Even though I wasn’t nuts about his methods, he had just saved our asses. “Thanks for helping us,” I said. “I don’t know what we’d have done if you hadn’t come along.”

  He stared right at me. For the first time all trip I was conscious of the no-bra deal. “Glad to have been of service. I specialize in saving damsels in distress.”

  Lloyd spit blood.

  There didn’t seem like anything to do but watch Bernard and A.B. stumble around their car. They were looking for something—an upper bridge or a contact lens or something, I don’t know what. The air had that smell like right after it starts raining, the same smell you get when a neighbor changes his oil. The road glistened, so it must have been raining lately and stopped. I wondered what was supposed to happen next. Bernard had to come up with a story explaining a tits-up patrol car full of broken beer bottles. Would he leave us out, or would the countryside soon be crawling with armed-to-the-teeth cops with orders to shoot to kill anyone in a big white ambulance pulling a horse trailer?

  The hairy man must have read my mind. “You folks better follow over to my place. It might be a good thought to lay low for a day or so.”

  Lloyd was studying our rescuer. “We don’t have much choice,” he said.

  The man nodded, as if the plan were settled. He kept his eyes on me while he talked. “I live thirty miles up the Hiwassee River. It’s remote, they’ll never find you.”

  As Lloyd, Brad, and I walked up front to Moby Dick, Brad said, “I don’t trust that guy. He smiles like Freedom.”

  I couldn’t decide if I trusted him or not. He was intriguing—dangerous and southern—the way I always pictured Stonewall Jackson.

  “So far he’s behaved like a gentleman,” I said. “He saved us when we were in trouble. He didn’t have to save us.” I opened the driver’s door. “What do you think, Lloyd—evil snake or knight in shining armor?”

  “I think…” Lloyd dropped the blood-soaked T-shirt into my hand. His eyes were angry. “I’ll drive from here on.”

  40

  His name was Armand Castle. He was a sculptor. To prove it he led Marcella and me into the barn-turned-studio, where iron skeletons lay around in various levels of completion. What Armand did was he found scraps of metal and junk in old dumps and welded them into these conglomerations he gave names like Mobocracy and Pain. The camper was full of bed frames and brake shoes and unidentifiable angle iron he’d picked up driving across the state.
/>   “I will wager you could use a drink,” Armand said.

  “How’d you guess?”

  “That was one heck of a job of driving. One heck of a job. How about you, Miss Marcella, ready for a toddy?”

  Marcella touched her bun. “Maybe just one.” Shocked the hell out of me.

  Armand stuck his head in the trailer, where Brad held two flashlights while Lloyd sorted through the chaos. “You fellas hungry? You want a drink?”

  Lloyd said, “No.” Not “No, thank you” or “Thanks just the same.” His voice held no hint of politeness. Rudeness wasn’t like him. In fact, rudeness was less like Lloyd than any other person I knew except maybe Dot Pollard back at the Killdeer Cafe. I decided he was jealous. Armand was good-looking and creative and he’d rescued us, and Lloyd couldn’t handle not being top dog on the block.

  From Shane, on the other hand, I expected rudeness.

  “Are you kin to the family who founded the White Castle restaurant chain?” He was bent over loosening his ankle clamp so he could drain onto the front yard.

  “I believe the White Castle restaurants are named after the shape of their first building, not the family who owns them. I’m kin to the Virginia Castles,” Armand said.

  “You look as if you own White Castle. They sell the worst hash browns in the food industry, although the term bad hash browns is redundant.”

  “I avoid hash browns altogether.”

  “Did you make your money on square hamburger patties?”

  Armand was being amazingly patient, considering he’s the kind of man would shoot the tires off a cop car. “I made my money by outliving my father.”

  “That explains a lot about you.”

  “Pay no attention to my friends,” I said. “They’re ex-alcoholics, and ex-alcoholics are always holier-than-thou jackasses.”

  Shane turned his head to give me a hard look. I expected a mean shot back, but it was more like he decided I wasn’t worth fighting with. That’s the feeling I got, anyway. Instead, he said, “Your escapade seems to have affected the seals on my reservoir.”