The Novels of Lisa Alther

by Lisa Alther

  ‘Oh yeah?’ What was wrong with me that I hadn’t been driven wild too? If I were to be driven wild at some point in the future, would I know that I was being driven wild?

  Partway through our second assay, Clem leaned back on his knees and snarled, ‘Shit, woe-man, this is dumb.’

  I couldn’t have agreed more. I reviewed the undertaking and tried to figure out what I was doing wrong. We both sat up. Clem crawled in his studded blue jeans, which he hadn’t removed for the occasion — never removed so long as I was with him in fact, since he didn’t want me to see his shriveled leg — over to the shelves where he had once displayed his marbles and magic stones and bird nests. The shelves were now filled with paperback books. He scanned their spines and pulled one out and brought it over. Then he started reading:

  ‘…and so with a mighty heave on the crowbar, the heavy lid lifted. There she was, the only woman he had ever loved. Her flesh had dried up and fallen as dust to the floor of the coffin. All that remained of the warm mounds of flesh that he had stroked and nibbled were the underpinnings — bare bleached bones. The candle he was holding guttered in a damp draft of musty air. He leaned over and kissed her bare cheekbones. As he did so, strands of her bright hair intertwined with his…’

  Noting that Clem’s erection was miraculously reviving, I resolutely focused my attention on one of the posters. A voluptuous nude woman, built not unlike Do-It Pruitt herself, was kneeling on a low table, her pert ass in the air. A great brute of a man, masked and dressed all in black leather, stood behind her, his erection protruding from his black leather fly and partly inserted into her. He was pulling her toward himself with a chain wrapped tightly around her hips. Starved rats on the table gnawed the woman’s pendulous breasts, which were dripping blood. The expression on her face was of unreserved ecstasy.

  ‘Uh, Clem…’ The man in his story had just climbed into the coffin to embrace his loved one’s skeleton, and the lid had slammed shut on him. ‘I’ve got to be going now.’

  ‘What’s the rush, woe-man,’ he asked menacingly, in a tone I didn’t recognize as his. My armpits were clammy. Then I remembered with relief that the Major could destroy Clem’s family.

  “Where did you get all the wild pictures?’ I asked brightly, pulling up my underpants. As he stared at me, his face, cold and cruel, underwent a Jekyll-Hyde transformation, and he became ‘himself’ again.

  ‘In the mail. I ordered ‘em up at New York.’

  ‘Aren’t you worried that your father will find them?’ I inquired with interest, having Big Brother for a father myself.

  ‘This is my place. They leave me alone here. Always have. Anyhow, I got me eight locks on the place.’

  ‘I noticed,’ I said uneasily, eyeing them all.’ ‘Well! Guess I’d better be getting home. My father will be wondering where I am.’

  ‘Sure.’ He hopped up and discarded the orange neon condom and did up his fly.

  One night that summer we rode on the Harley down to the dump, me with Clem’s .22 rifle in my lap. Clem cut the motor a hundred yards away and rolled the cycle to the edge of the debris. He took the rifle and loaded it and held it experimentally to his shoulder, sighting. Then he gave me a handful of bullets.

  ‘Get ready, woe-man,’ he whispered.

  At his signal, I flipped on the cycle headlight. Poking through the layers of dirt down to the piles of decaying food were hundreds of rats. Clem aimed and fired. One of the rats was tossed into the air. Clem rapidly unloaded and reloaded, me handing him a bullet. The rat population was suddenly in a frenzy, scurrying around in frantic desperation, looking for hiding places. Clem had managed to pick off several rats by the time they had all vanished. The corpses lay twitching on heaps of dirt.

  Clem turned off the headlight and led me back into the woods. “We’ll wait until they come back out and try again,’ he promised.

  We sat on a fallen tree trunk while Clem smoked a Lucky Strike. I was having doubts about the validity of this pogrom as a pleasant way to spend an evening with the one you loved. But I had to admit that it beat the hell out of sex. ‘Uh, Clem.’

  ‘What’s the matter, woe-man? You don’t like it?’

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘Goddam vermin, that’s all they are.’

  ‘Yes, but why bother?’

  He didn’t answer. He took deep drags on his Lucky Strike, the tip flaring in the dark.

  ‘I mean, they aren’t hurting you, are they?’

  Finally he answered, seeming to wander from the point. ‘That day the tractor tipped on me — do you remember? Well, hit reared right up in the air. And while hit was turnin’, I just kept thinkin’, “Naw, she’ll straighten up. This ain’t happenin to me, Clem Cloyd.” Well, when she didn’t straighten up, I thought, “Clem boy, this is hit. You’ve had hit, buddy.” And I got so mad I started shakin’. Why me? I kept askin’. I’d been a good boy. I’d hepped my daddy with chores. I’d been polite at school. I’d kept myself washed and done my lessons. Why was this thing happenin’ to me?

  ‘Well, I know this sounds crazy like, that I could be thinkin’ all these things in the time hit took that tractor to tip. But I did. Hit seemed like hit took hours. I’d never been much on religion, but while that tractor was flippin’, and the dirt and sky were tiltin’ under me, I made this here bargain with the Lord. I promised Him I’d go to church ever week with Ma if He’d just straighten up that damn tractor. Well, we just kept on a turnin’, that tractor and me. And then I got real sad thinkin’ about all the chores Ma and Pa asked me to do that I hadn’t done, all the times Pa had had to whup me, thinkin’ of my lousy report cards, and like that. Thinkin’ maybe there was a hell, like Ma had always said, and I was goin’ straight to hit to roast on a spit forever.

  “Then I started missin’ people — Ma and Pa, Floyd…you. The farm, my springhouse. Never mind hell, I was imaginin’ what hit would be like if there weren’t nothin’ at all — ‘cepting black and cold and loneliness. I think I screamed then. Pa said he heard me scream,

  ‘But the funny thing was, by the time I hit the dirt, in fact while I was lyin’ there watchin’ that big red machine comin’ down on top of me, and knowin’ hit was gonna squash me like I weren’t nothin but a corn borer, I didn’t care no more. About nothin’. I wasn’t afraid, I wasn’t lonely, I wasn’t happy, I was nothin’. And when the tractor finally landed on me, hit didn’t even hurt, Ginny. Everything was — heat and light sort of. Dyin’ is no big deal. To tell you the truth, I was kinda disappointed to come to and find mysef still alive.’

  ‘So you’re doing the rats a favor by shooting them?’

  ‘I knew you wouldn’t understand. I don’t know why I tried to tell you.’

  We sat silent, me penitent for having missed his point and having squelched one of his few attempts to confide in me.

  ‘You should try goin’ through life crippled,’ he suddenly snarled, his face contorted with misery. ‘Why me? Why not you? What did I ever do to end up with a shriveled leg? How come you rich people get all the breaks and us poor people get crapped on all the time? Tell me, damn it!’ He was screaming by this time.

  ‘Shut up!’ I screamed back. ‘How the hell am I supposed to know? I can’t help it if you were dumb enough to turn a tractor over on yourself!’

  His expression darkened. ‘I tell you what, woe-man. I done paid my dues. Ain’t nothin’ nobody can do to ole Clem no more. They can’t touch me. I’m runnin’ the show now. I decide who gets hurt and when and how. I been dead, and I done come back alive, woe-man. So don’t mess around with ole Clem.’ We stared at each other with hatred for at least a minute in the semidark of the quarter moon.

  On the way home, Clem hit an open stretch of road and gunned the Harley. Little by little, we picked up speed until we were tearing along through the night with the speedometer reading 90 mph. I clutched Clem tightly around the waist and buried my face in his back, gagging on the stench of manure.

  Clem began screaming into the roari
ng wind, ‘Go ahead! Kill us, you bastard! I dare you to!’

  Gradually Clem’s hysteria spread itself to me, and I was barely able to prevent myself from joining in screaming and jeering at the gods. I was far too caught up in the thrill of the fatal high speed, and the wind howling in my ears, and my bouffant hairdo lashing my face, to worry about the likelihood of being smeared all across the highway like peanut butter on bread. Or to question the mental make-up of the boy to whom I was entrusting my precious and precarious life.

  Later that night in the bomb shelter, I sat fully clothed on the sleeping platform waiting to see what would happen next. I wasn’t really up for screwing — there was a question in my mind as to whether our couplings to date had been worth the effort. With a shrug, Clem removed his windbreaker and tossed it into the corner. The hollow eyes of his ugly blue tattoo stared at me from across the room. He limped over, the scrawniness of his chest painfully apparent in his T-shirt. He stood directly in front of me and unzipped the fly of his tight studded jeans. His swollen purple organ swatted my nose.

  ‘Eat me, woe-man,’ Clem suggested pleasantly.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ I said, equally pleasantly.

  ‘Don’t ask questions, woe-man. Just do it.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Eat me,’ he said, seizing my head with his hands and fitting my mouth around his cock and moving my head back and forth.

  ‘You’re kidding?’ I mumbled.

  ‘Do it, damn it, woe-man!’ Obediently, my legs crossed and my hands folded in my lap, I licked and nibbled at the thing as best I could. After all, this was love.

  After a couple of minutes, bored, I leaned my head back and looked up at Clem’s attractive face with its fine dark Melungeon features. His teeth were clenched and his mouth was set in a mean grimace. His eyes were tightly shut, as though he were steeling himself for something. ‘Well!’ I said efficiently. ‘I really need my beauty sleep. I guess I’d better be going.’

  His black eyes flew open, and he looked down at me in disbelief. Then, with his hand open, he swatted me hard across the face. The sharp sound echoed hollowly. I could feel the pain assuming the shape of a handprint. My tooth had punctured my upper lip, and I could taste blood. His hand was in the air, ready to hit me again.

  ‘I’ll scream,’ I announced with a calm of unknown origin. ‘My father will kill you and run your family out of town.’ We froze, glaring at each other with hatred.

  Then, Clem turned away muttering, ‘You goddam mother fuckin li’l cock tease.’

  By the time his jeans were zipped and his windbreaker snapped, his face had relaxed into a pleasant smile, as though he had never so much as thought of hitting me. ‘How about the Bloody Bucket tomorrow night, woe-man?’

  I hesitated. My instinct for self-preservation told me not to see him again. My instinct for self-preservation, however, wasn’t in the ascendancy. ‘Sure.’

  ‘Oh,’ he added as we were leaving the shelter, ‘will you wear this?’ He unhooked and thrust at me his name bracelet. On its plaque was engraved in block letters CLEM; the plaque was attached to a chain of large thick silver-plated links. It was a massive thing, and it clanked like a slave’s wrist iron as I proudly put it on.

  Maxine and I were becoming friends again, now that I had dropped flag swinging. I had begun imitating her mode of dress — a long-sleeved cardigan sweater buttoned up the back, with a bra that had pointed cups like party hats; a small gold cross on a fine gold chain, lodged between my breasts; a too-tight straight skirt that hugged my ass so closely as to make me look as though I were sitting down when I was still standing; black ballet slippers, which I shuffled as I walked. I had donated my madras shirtwaists and wraparound skirts and Villager blouses and tasseled Weejuns and London Fog raincoat to a Teen Team for Jesus rummage sale as my parting gesture. They were trying to raise money for Brother Buck to go spread the word to his European brothers and sisters that Death had lost its sting.

  One night that fall after Maxine had finished singing ‘Spoon with Me, Darlin’, ‘Cause You Dish It Out So Good,’ she shuffled over and sat down next to me. Clem was in the far corner threatening someone with his Swiss army knife.

  ‘Nice song.’

  ‘Glad you liked it.’

  I offered her my cup of moonshine, and she took a hefty gulp.

  ‘Hey, you know you’re strange?’ she said.

  ‘Who, me?’

  ‘Yeah. I can’t figure you out no more.’

  ‘You can’t?’

  ‘You remember that first night you come in here?’

  I nodded. How could I forget?

  ‘I tell you, that was the shock of my life to look up and see Ginny Babcock standin’ in the doorway of the Bloody Bucket.’

  ‘It was the shock of my life too.’

  ‘What I really thought was that you’d come to make fun of us.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘Well, you know, there you was in your fancy raincoat and all, kinda smirkin’.’

  ‘I was embarrassed. I didn’t know how to act. I’m sorry if I looked as though I were smirking. I really wasn’t.’

  ‘How come you to stop that flag swingin stuff over at the school?’

  ‘I don’t know. I got tired of it. It’s kind of dumb, don’t you think?’

  ‘Shit, if I could be flag swinger, do you think I’d hang around this dump?’ Her green eyes flashed. I looked at her with surprise. ‘And how come you to take up with ole Clem here when you had that Joe Bob Sparks hunk?’

  ‘Clem’s not so bad.’

  ‘Clem’s not so bad, but he’s no Joe Bob Sparks.’

  ‘Yes, but Joe Bob Sparks isn’t Joe Bob Sparks either.’

  She looked at me oddly.

  ‘Joe Bob’s not that great.’ I was feeling pangs of regret. I had thought I was stepping up in the scheme of things when I renounced flag swinging and Joe Bob. I had thought that Maxine and the Bloody Bucket clientele were sublimely indifferent to the standards of the flag swinging set. Could Maxine be merely a frustrated flag swinger?

  A middle-aged man sauntered over. He was dressed in green work clothes and needed a shave. A gaunt face, slicked down hair, a lanky but wiry frame. It was a configuration typical of the mountain men who had moved from the coalfields to work in the Major’s munitions plant.

  “How ya doin, Harry?’ Maxine asked, pushing out a chair.

  ‘Not bad. Who’s yer friend here, Maxine?’

  ‘Ginny Babcock. Her daddy’s Major Babcock.’

  The man’s eyes got wide and he sat up straighter in his chair. I restrained myself from kicking Maxine. ‘Well, I declare,’ he said with delight, sticking his hand, permanently stained with grease, across the table. I shook it gingerly. “We think your daddy’s pretty special around these parts. I work up at his plant. Building Maintenance division. Yes sir, he’s a great man, your daddy is — a patriot and a gentleman.’

  ‘I’m sure he’d be pleased…’ I mumbled.

  Harry said dreamily, almost to himself, ‘Yes sir, truly a fine man. Lord, you shoulda seen how we lived when I worked them mines up near Harlan. Wouldn’t no dog live that way. Roof falls and float dust. Shoot, you couldn’t pay me to go back there.’ He looked up as though seeing me for the first time. “What you doin’ in a place like this?’

  ‘I like it here,’ I said with resentment.

  Harry looked at me sadly and shook his head. ‘You like the Bloody Bucket. Does Daddy know where his l’il gal is at tonight?’

  ‘Uh, no. I mean, yes. Well, I mean he knows I’ve been here before. I don’t know if he knows I’m here tonight or not.’

  Harry sighed wearily. “I got me two daughters, and if either of ‘em ever showed up here, why, I’d…’

  ‘If you’ve got daughters and stuff, then what are you doing here?’ I inquired victoriously.

  A guilty look crept across his face. ‘Well, I was jest leavin’,’ he assured me, starting for the door. ‘I’m real pleased to have met you
, Miss Babcock. Listen, you tell that daddy of yours that Harry over at Building Maintenance sends him a great big howdy.’ He added with a cringing grin, ‘But maybe you might say we met downtown or somethin’?’

  One night at the Bloody Bucket a trap door in the plank floor was removed to reveal a cock-fighting pit. Chairs ringed the pit, their backs facing inward to form a wall between the spectators and the cocks. Eight or ten men straddled the chairs, and others stood behind them. Wads of money lay on one of the tables.

  Two tough-looking men in khaki work clothes took cocks from burlap feed sacks. One was red with a black tail and wing feathers. The other was gray and white striped. As soon as they saw each other, their neck feathers flared out like Elizabethan collars, and they started struggling to get at each other. Steel spurs were fitted onto their yellow legs. Bending over the pit from either side, the men released the cocks, who met each other spurs first in mid-air. The men backed away quickly and moved the chairs in to close off the circle.

  Soon blood and feathers were flying everywhere. Shouting was filling the room: ‘Shit! Kill that red bastard! Rip him to pieces, you mother fucker!’ Feet were stomping and fists were waving. Clem, sitting in the chair in front of me, didn’t even notice when I removed my hands from his bony shoulders and walked away. His eyes were glittering and were fixed on the pit, where the interlocked pair of mangled roosters kept bobbing up and down in a flurry of spattering gore.

  I stood by the windows, looking through the low-hanging willows at the moonlight glinting off the river. I liked this view at night. You couldn’t see how the Major’s factory had turned the river yellow and fringed it with white foam.

  Floyd sauntered over. ‘What’s the matter, baby?’ he asked, throwing his dark hair out of his eyes with an indolent toss of his handsome head. ‘You don’t like to watch things die?’

  ‘I guess not.’

  ‘Ain’t you runnin’ around with the wrong boyfriend, then?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Then find another,’ he suggested, putting his arm around me and pulling me up against his chest so that my nose rested on his elegant gold brocade vest. All I could think of was Floyd as a boy, trying to steal all of Clem’s Scrooge comic books.