Homeboy

by Seth Morgan

  “Here’s yer cap, amigo.” It was Earl, holding out the Dodgers cap. “One of McGee’s snitches stole it from you in the shower. I got it back yesterday.”

  Joe propped himself on his elbows, taking the cap. “Where’s McGee?” Just saying the name frosted his heart.

  “Dead, yeah. Fact he died ten feet from where you layin. Fell off the top tier here yesterday.”

  “Accident?”

  Earl shrugged.

  Joe slapped the cap against his thigh. “If only Whisper could be here. Someone finished the job.” Triumphantly he fitted the cap back on his head. “Thanks.”

  “Dont mention it, no.”

  Joe suddenly remembered they hadn’t spoken since the gambling confrontation. “Christ! Why are you here? After what I did to you? …”

  “I promised Jack Moran, yeah, to look after you. I failed back then. I was all the way wrong.”

  “Not as wrong as me. Christ, of all people I know what a habit can make you do. And all these months I’ve waited to set it right and now you’ve gone and beat me to it …”

  “Dont matter who set a thing right, just so it’s done.”

  “Got another square?” Joe’s head swam when he sat up. His bare feet on the floor were still numb. Earl passed him a lit cigaret.

  They smoked in silence. The lights in the opposite cell block came up with a blaze. Joe caught a glint of reflected blue from Earl’s eye.

  Earl said, “I got some more vital stats on the armadillo for you, yeah …”

  “No, no … anything but that.” Joe laughed weakly.

  “No, this you’ll appreciate. You realize the armadillo lived a million years without a natchl enemy? The world was his oyster, yeah. Till the next armored thing come along—the automobile. It become the armadillo’s only predator. See, what happens is them little suckers hypnotize theyselves nufflin around after roots and grubs and they dont notice the automobile till it’s right on top on them, no. Then up they jump in the air, legs spraddled, and get creamed …”

  “They should stay off the highway when they’re drinking that Lone Star beer. Besides, there aint no grubs and roots growin in concrete.”

  “Yeah you right,” he heard Earl respond thoughtfully.

  The next time Joe awoke, it was pitch black. The penitentiary was quiet as a tomb. It had to be three or four in the morning. Earl still sat on the toilet cover, his right eye a blue pilot light in the dark. Joe sat up and asked him for another cigaret and wondered at the silence.

  “The quiet before the storm,” Earl said portentously.

  Feeling black air rush into the hole opened suddenly in his stomach, Joe slumped back. “They’ve been sayin that for months.”

  “It’s truth this time. Riot comin, yeah. The kites are everywhere. It’s how the pen talks to itself, kites. They say hostages are gonna be taken and all the snitches killed. There’s a stack of em in Custody right now, ones they confiscated. Shit, cons are startin to send them to their favorite free personnel warnin em to take early vacations, yeah.”

  “Why dont they do something?”

  Earl laughed. “Errp errp … Why, Joe, aint you got it figgered yet? A riot’s just what the Department wants. The legislature’ll vote all kinda new money for them to steal. See, society aint gonna blame them for the riot. They’ll blame theyselves for not givin the Department what’s needed to contain and correct the conditions the convicts created. Heck, a riot’s the answer to their wildest prayers. Afterwards, no one’ll dare not give em all they want, no.”

  Thinking reactivated the Prolixin the way stepping in swamp mud releases its gases. Joe started slipping down those shiny walls again.

  “Tell me more about those army dildos, Earl. The more I hear about em, the more I think we should hitch up out there, you and me and Kitty and the kid, buy us some land and raise them lil drunk fuckers for dogfood, like you say.”

  Earl slapped a bony knee. “I knew you’d see the light, boy. Well, lemme see … Your basic dasypus novemcinctus, he come to the Mississippi River n he want to get across, yeah. How he gonna do that lil thing? … I’ll give you a hint, yeah. He got two choices.”

  “Some hint. You just made it twice as hard.”

  “Cmon, boy! …”

  “Okay. He can wait for the ferry or hitch a ride on a gator.”

  “Errp errp.” Earl leaned forward, hugging his hands between his knees. “Truth is he can hold his breath and walk cross the bottom,” softly, in a voice still with mystery, “or he can swim cross the top like a damn amphibious tank. That how he do it, yeah.”

  “Crazy ole fool,” Joe heard himself calling from across a rolling meadow trembling with wildflowers beneath a butteryellow sun. “Crazy ole fool.”

  THE FAT MAN HAS NO CLOTHES

  Kitty woke up with a hangover out of West Hell. Her head hammered, her heart fluttered, she felt spooky as a tree full of hootowls. Yesterday she signed the final estate papers and last night went out with Aunt Juanita to the dogtrack where they got higher than witchdoctors, sucking lemons and Jose Cuervo.

  “I’m buzzin like a cheap TV,” she relayed her latest symptom to Aunt Juanita over coffee. “It wouldnt be so bad cept I gotta watch Joey n I got so much to do today if we’re gonna hit the road tomorrow. For starters, I got to buy a tragic used car.”

  Say no more, said Aunt Juanita. She’d watch Joey, Kitty should just go on and do her thing. Only don’t forget to buy Pampers, they were almost out, and call if she’d be later than five when Juanita had to be at work. Kitty poured herself another cup of Java to chase the four Tylenols she found in the bottom of her purse, jumped in and out of the shower, and caught the bus to Houston.

  A kid sitting in front of her cradled a boombox on his arm playing rebop rhapsodies she remembered from her Blue Note nights. She leaned her cheek against the window where it was cool from the AC vents blowing up through the sill, surrendering herself to the very fears she drank off her mind the night before. Now that it was time to go, she was scared. She kept remembering what the cop told her about Joe stealing something from someone who would kill to get it back. A diamond, the cop had blurted in the garage. Until the baby came, she never questioned Joe not giving it up. He’d lucked into something big, something dangerous to parlay, yet danger was the real drug of the capering Life.

  But now that baby was here, she felt differently. Nothing was worth gambling its newborn life. But she couldn’t be sure Joe felt the same. Shitfire, she couldn’t even be sure Joe wanted the baby. Maybe potty training wasn’t what he had planned for his freedom. But Kitty wasn’t long for this sort of thinking. She bucked herself up remembering Joe’s last words to her—“Till the wheels fall off.” And what was it she was bringing him? A brand new wheel, that’s what.

  She stepped off the bus into the airtight heat of a dusty boulevard lined with scorched palmettos, where usedcar lots did battle for a threadbare dollar with secondhand appliance outlets and cutrate drilling riggers. She spotted the car she wanted from the sidewalk, a primercoated Chevrolet Caprice wagon on the back row of Smilin’ Jack’s World on Wheels.

  Smilin’ Jack wore a stringtie and aftershave that would have kept the flies off a dead carp. He sold all his cars with a ninetyday warranty, which was more than Kitty was willing to give his life if the Caprice broke down.

  “Lissen hard,” she said, “I’m pickin up Leroy at the Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville tomorrow. He just done a flat twenty for murder. The first place we’re goin is his mama’s for dinner, and if this lil wagon give us a problem n Leroy’s plate got cold … Well, let’s just put it this way, you wont be smilin past sundown, Jack.”

  Smilin’ Jack agreed eight hundred was a little high and had his mechanic change the oil and rotate the tires before giving it to her for five.

  Kitty drove to a mall where she counted her money. She still had twelve hundred left fr
om Dan’s dough and decided to kick herself down a few dead presidents for an outfit to wear meeting Joe. She spent the afternoon fretting and foraging through boutiques, settling at last on a Mexican peon blouse that bared her shoulders, a new pair of stonewashed 501’s, and cowboyboots with silver toe and heel brackets. She struck a pose in the fulllength mirror, tossing her hair and heaving her chichis … and started crying. It was all so innocent, she felt like a tragic teenager, and what if it wasn’t enough that Joe gave the diamond back, what if …

  She tossed her purchases in the back of the wagon and booked back Galveston way. Shitfire, girl, she ragged herself, speeding down the highway. You haven’t come this far to get spongy. The sun was setting by now, oozing orange and black along the rim of the Gulf, where offshore drilling rigs pumped like fornicating sea monsters. What you need is a drink, girl. Need? Whaddaya doin’, trading the cooker for a shotglass? Just one. Two tops.

  She passed up the roughneck jukejoints stringing the night with neon and the roadhouses licking it with steel guitar riffs. She wanted someplace quiet enough to hear her own blues. Whoa! Hit that turn signal, girl. A Ramada Inn, airconditioned lounge, WELCOME MID-SOUTH PLUMBING CONVENTION. It seemed just the anonymous purview for her troubled heart.

  Off the highway she steered into the crowded parking lot, aiming for the neon martini glass marking the lounge. She swung wide around a Peterbilt tractor trailer and nearly creamed a Lincoln Towncar backing out of a space.

  Inside was cool, sprinkled with spuriously sophisticated piano notes, flickered with the artificial intimacy of candles in red tulip glasses. Kitty took a stool where the bar doglegged to meet the wall and ordered a Wild Turkey and beer back.

  She’d hardly taken a swallow before some geek in a seersucker suit sidled up and offered to stand the next round. A little squirt with wirerimmed spectacles, he wore a Mid-South Plumber lapel pin. He shot his cuff before propping his elbow on the bar, making sure his Rolex gloated openly. As if Kitty could have cared less if it was a Kotex strapped to his wrist. Still, she enjoyed the squirt’s attention; it had been awhile since she’d felt attractive, and it was hard feeling blue at the same time. And a conventioneer! It was just like back at the Blue Note. She drilled her shot and arched her brow.

  “Encore,” calls this smooth operator to the bartender; back to her—“Harry Truman’s my name, no relation to the president … Whom do I have the pleasure of drinking with?”

  The squirt.

  “Vanna White, only no free spins.”

  “Ha ha!” His lip pulled back like a donkey’s, laughing hahahahaha until he figured out the joke was on him and huffed up. “Dont flatter yourself thinkin I’m tryin to pick you up,” he straightened Kitty out. “I already have a lady friend, thank you. A girl just as pretty as she wants to be. She’s jumpin out of a cake ten minutes from now in the banquet room, if you care to see for yourself.”

  “Girls actually do that?”

  Now it was the squirt’s turn to look askance, clearly signifying that he knew plenty of things girls actually did and was only being tactful sparing Kitty the details.

  Kitty tossed back the Wild Turkey. “This I gotta lamp.”

  The banquet room was jammed to the rafters with drunk plumbers. The smoke was thick as movie fog, but Kitty and the squirt found two chairs against the back wall. A threepiece cowboy combo was hoking it up on a makeshift stage, across which a banner was strung that boasted MID-SOUTH PLUMBERS LAY LONGER PIPE. The plumbers sat at long folding tables, sopping up the last of their chili dinner. From the shiny strained look around their eyes, Kitty guessed some weaponsgrade gas was brewing. The combo wrapped up “Mama, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys,” the guitar player picked a country fanfare, and a voice over the P.A. congratulated the Mid-South Plumbers Association on having fewer Chapter Elevens than any other national trade association, and hoped they’d all stay so flush. Guffaws. Then the lights dimmed and the voice rasped, “Run yer cattle up the hill n hide yer women cuz it’s dessert time!” The combo started in with “Happiest Girl in the Whole U.S.A.,” and two slobs rolled out a giant cake in the shape of a toilet.

  “Get ready,” warned Harry Truman, No Relation to the President.

  Kitty couldnt have guessed how ready she ought to be. Hardly had the squirt spoken than the toilet cake sort of exploded. What happened was, the girl inside tried to flip up the meringue lid, but somehow it was stuck. In a claustrophobic fit she started flailing around and first one arm broke through, now the other in a burst of icing; then the whole commodious confection disintegrated into angelfood rubble from which crawled to her feet a floyfloy floozie, platinum beehive gunked with pink frosting. She brandished a big cookie in the shape of a monkey wrench, wailing, “Gag me with a plunger!”

  The potted plumbers, being by profession accustomed to helping women in distress, rushed the stage, dabbing at her with napkins, dunking pitchers of beer over her head, ripping off their shirts to wipe her down. Two began licking the stuff off her legs. “What kinda mamas you got anyway?” she cried, breaking the monkey wrench over their heads. The squirt jumped on the stage and began pulling the others off, screaming, “That’s my Gypsy! You can look but you cant touch.” A big plumber laid his ass out.

  Kitty only stared. As the cake and frosting fell away, she saw that the naked girl had more tattoos than the Seventh Fleet. It was the one on her tummy, the half man, half motorcycle, that Kitty remembered. Shitfire, it was the same girl who’d worked at the Casbah Club with Kitty two years ago. A plainclothes Vice came in one night and asked if he could get oral sex and this tattooed tragedy told him all night long and they busted her. She told the judge she thought he meant talk about it, but he fined her a hundred clams anyway, and she quit the Casbah, telling Kitty she was going to go back to slinging pussy since she was paid up for the privilege anyway.

  Kitty jumped to her feet and cupped her hands to her mouth.

  “Rings’n’Things!”

  On his penthouse terrace, a nude Baby Jewels lay prone on a massage table custommade for his bulk. A masseur in white ducks and T-shirt stood on a footstool to reach the rounded pink heights of the flesh mountain. His hands blurred slappity slap, shivering talced blubber. The Fat Man hissed like a happy bicycle pump.

  “Boss!” Quick Cicero stepped through the sliding doors onto the terrace.

  The rhythmic hiss stretched into a wheeze of worldclass fatigue. “When will the weary be at rest and the wicked cease from troubling?”

  “This wont wait.”

  “Tch. That’s all for today, Eddie.” The Fat Man held out his arms for both men to hoist his enormity upright.

  When the masseur had left, Quick said: “Truck Infante called. He said his torpedo got zotzed.”

  “You mean McGee?” The eyes nailed into the fatty pod gimleted. “How?”

  Quick related the incident as it was reported by the Department of Corrections. “But Connie said the convicts used a torch to make cuts in the tier supports. He says Speaker’s tight with this prison outfit called the Aryan Brotherhood, a buncha Nazi morons who never liked McGee anyway. They did the same thing to him at San Quentin years ago and probably wanted to see if he still bounced. Connie says it sounded like their style.”

  Baby Jewels made abstract kissy sounds assessing this theory. “It sounds more like your style.”

  “Thanks!”

  “Saves us a coupla large,” wheezed the Fat Man. “And he lived long enough to tell us where the diamond is at least. With Speaker dead, we can take our time fishing it out.”

  “Speaker aint dead, boss.”

  The wheeze opened into a whoosh. “What the fuck you talkin about? McGee said …”

  “He said as good as dead.”

  “Tch. That means we gotta get the diamond right away.” The Fat Man balled his twinkling fists. “As for this Speaker character, he knows we’re on to him, he ha
s to be scared, and he might run to the cops. So we also gotta clip him … fast.”

  “Might be tough findin another guard fast …”

  “Then use a convict!” sprayed the Fat Man. “Killing’s how they got there. Call Connie Truck, Quick. The punk’s got it coming anyway. Clip Speaker.”

  “Yo, boss … Say, look!” Quick produced a golden lozenge tin from his pocket, tearing off the cellophane. “They just got a new flavor in from gay ole Paree … Mandarin orange.”

  Gurgling naughtily, Baby Jewels jerked a dimpled arm for the tin. But in so doing his eyes chanced down across his pink subcontinent of flesh. He started, knocking aside the tin, spattering the terrace with lozenges like candy hailstones.

  “What am I doing sitting here naked?”

  Quick was too engaged staring hurtfully into the empty tin to respond.

  “You see me naked, you’re supposed to tell me, you putz!”

  Rings was like, Eeek, who’s screamin my real name? It took her several seconds to make out the tall girl with black hair waving her arms in the back, another two or three tics to remember Kitty Litter from San Francisco, and about two shakes of a toilet brush to sock one plumber in the jaw and kick another in the nuts and run out of the banquet room.

  Theyre after me! was all she could think in the utility room, climbing into her Sandra Dee duds. She didn’t even take the time to rinse off the cake and frosting that hadn’t been sluiced or licked away. They comin to finish what they started in jail. She ran out a service entrance, leapfrogging across the hoods of cars, beelining for the highway, her thumb already unlimbered.

  “Girlfriend!” she heard behind her. “Rings baby! Wait. It’s Kitty Litter.”

  “Dont know you!” Hooking her arm around a lightpole, Rings swung a right angle and kept running.

  “Then why … huff huff … you beatin cheeks?”

  Cold logic always gave Rings pause. She turned, skipping lightly backward, holding up a finger. “Kasj. So I know you. Only I dont know what you want …”