by Laird Hunt
“Take your hands off me, you filthy show-goer,” he said.
By the time I walked on he had gone back to circling the basket, and the musket was again on the ground.
When Bud and Dale finally got to the car I asked them if they’d seen the old man.
“Crazy son-of-a-bitch,” said Bud. “Said he wanted to fight me. Said he would kill me if I took another step toward Marvel.”
“Bud picked him and his gun up and set them in some shade,” said Dale.
“I think the sun had fried his head,” said Bud. “He kept talking about Abraham Lincoln. And the Civil War.”
“Did he say Abraham Lincoln?”
“And General Lee. He said even General Lee would have spoke out against a lynching! I about died laughing. Crazy as they come.”
“That wasn’t crazy, that was old. Crazy’s different,” I said.
“What do you know about crazy?” said Bud.
Dale gave me a look. It wasn’t a mean look, might even have been soft, but I ignored it.
“Here come the buses,” I said.
As Bud started up the engine, four bright white buses headed in the direction of the church rolled by.
With the lengthening of the day the bugs had come up and as we left Ryansville they started to populate the windshield with their splatter marks. When he was out for a summertime drive, Bud liked to bet on how many bugs his car would accumulate on a stretch of road. He started talking the game up now.
“Let’s play how I could kill you instead,” I proposed.
“Hell, that’s something fun to do around the office, not out on the road.”
“I’d kill you using pencils.”
“You said that before we left. Let’s bet on these bugs instead.”
“Fresh Ticonderogas. A pair in each hand. Applied in opposing directions to your neck.”
“You’d never make it up close enough to me.”
“I’d do it while you was sleeping. You snore loud, Bud Lancer.”
“I don’t snore.”
“The two of you play that at work?” said Dale.
“I already told you about that game.”
“You told me about the guess-which-asshole’s-calling game.”
“I told you about both.”
“I do not snore, Ottie Henshaw.”
“Fine, you don’t.”
“Anyway, I’ll bet it’s going to be fourteen. Bugs, I mean,” said Dale.
I snorted.
“That may be lowballing it, friend Dale,” Bud said.
“That’s my bet,” Dale said.
“You sure about that?” Bud said.
“Oh, he’s sure, he’s always sure,” I said.
“What’s your bet then, Mrs. Know-It-All?” Dale said.
“Does that make you Mr. Know-It-All?” Bud said.
“You want to know what my bet is?” I said.
“We’re all waiting, we can’t hardly stand it.”
I looked at the windshield. Evening was coming on and we still had a good thirty miles at least to Marvel.
“Sixty-seven,” I said.
“Lord Almighty,” Dale said.
“I’m going to say forty-two, kinda split the difference,” Bud said. As he said this, a locust or some such hit the windshield with a kerplang! and left behind one of its wings.
For a while we counted each good smeary hit aloud and it wasn’t long before we’d bug-smashed our way through Dale’s sorry bet. Me and Bud laughed when we’d run past it but Dale crossed his arms over his chest and said just because we were past it didn’t mean we’d get anywhere close to the numbers Bud and me had put up. I laughed but not too loud because Dale had a point. That old crab apple chewed too much and paid too much attention to his pig but he did have a brain in his head. Bud was big and owned his insurance business and made deals on the side and had his car, but he was otherwise a cretin and Dale wasn’t the village fool. He knew how to raise an animal no matter what its troubles and you didn’t even want to ask him how many numbers he could multiply or divide in his head. My father had had a head for numbers and, when he wasn’t too drunk, could read the pages of a book backwards about as fast as forward but Dale had him beat.
I expect it was because Bud was thinking along the same lines as these and hoping he could get out of a bet, even a friendly one he might lose, that when we saw Pops Nelson huffing up ahead at the top of the side ditch, he pulled the car over and hollered, “Need a ride to the rope party?”
“Don’t think I’ve lost count,” Dale said.
“Aw, let’s leave off that, here’s Pops,” Bud said.
Pops, who had a great big sweat-soaked hat pulled down low on his head, hadn’t noticed us yet.
“Get out and see if he wants a ride,” Bud said.
“Get out yourself, I’m off the clock,” I said.
“What’s got you so grouchy?”
“Who says I’m grouchy?”
“The count is seventeen,” Dale said.
“We’re done with that,” Bud said.
“Doesn’t change the count,” Dale said. “What did you say the winner got?”
Bud shot him a look and Dale said, “All right, all right,” but I could tell in the way he said it that he figured he had notched up some great victory over me and Bud. Bud caught this too but he had other victories—or what he thought of as victories—in his pocket, and let it slide. He didn’t let it slide so much, though, that he didn’t slither his hand across the seats and poke my thigh hard enough to leave a mark. For his part of it, Dale, pleased with himself, leaned out the window and spit.
Bud got out of the car and caught up with Pops and a minute later brought him back. Pops had on his good overalls and a freshly starched shirt, but he had sweat so much it looked like he had just come up out of a dunking tub.
“Dale, Mrs. Henshaw,” he said, nodding as he jimmied his way in. The car creaked a considerable amount as he set himself down.
“You in, Pops?” Bud said.
“I sure do appreciate it,” Pops said.
Dale had shoved himself over to the side to give Pops more space. When the car had quit creaking and Bud had started it up again he fetched out his chaw pouch and offered it to Pops.
“Obliged,” Pops yelled.
“Why are you yelling?” I said.
“He can’t hear with the engine running,” Dale said.
“What?” Pops yelled and scooped out a mouthful of chaw.
Dale knew Pops from the grain elevator and it wasn’t long before the two of them were yelling back and forth at each other, both their voices nice and juicy from the tobacco.
Pops yelled, “Going to be a lynching,” and Dale yelled back, “Yes, sir.”
“I never have seen one yet,” yelled Pops.
“No, sir, me neither,” yelled Dale.
“You reckon they’ll do them all at once?” yelled Pops.
“Why, was there more than one of them?” yelled Dale.
“Three’s what I heard,” yelled Pops. “Was it three, Bud?” he yelled.
Bud held up three fingers, then yelled, “Got a errand to run.”
“What kind of a errand?” I said.
“What did she say?” Pops yelled.
“What kind of a errand?” Dale yelled.
“Hang on a minute, hang on a minute,” Pops yelled. It took some doing but he got his hand in his front pocket and pulled out a fold-up ear horn and strapped it onto his head.
“Might as well save our throat cords for the party later,” he said.
“We’ll need them,” Dale said.
“I was getting wore out on yelling,” Bud said.
“Thank you, Jesus Christ, Lord of Heaven,” I said.
We all took turnaround at considering Pops with his contraption on.
“That there looks like the end of a corncob pipe,” said Dale.
“Or a hollowed-out statue of a mushroom,” I said.
“My wife says it don’t look quite Ch
ristian,” Pops said. “She says it looks like some kind a devil horn.”
“Anyways, I got a errand to run over to Hayley,” said Bud.
“What kind of a errand?” I said.
“Is that what she was saying before?” Pops said.
We all laughed and Bud took us past the Russiaville turnoff, through woods and fields, then down the road and into town. I’d been through the residential part of Hayley once or twice and not thought too much of it and looking out the window at the scrappy lawns and houses didn’t change my mind much. After a while, Bud pulled us up outside a circular building that looked kind of like an oversize hatbox set down next to a spindly creek could have been the hat’s lost gray ribbon.
“You going dancing? Is that your errand?” said Dale.
“Dancing?” I said.
“Come on in and see,” said Bud.
We went in under a canvas sign marked DANCE HALL and—after Bud winked at her—straight past the ticket taker sweating hard behind her counter. I couldn’t have imagined anything worse to do than shuffle around up close next to someone in the heat they had for sale in there, but stab me straight down with God’s sharpest stick if there wasn’t a good dozen souls leaning into it while a orchestra of about four and a pony jingled out who knows what they thought it was on the stage. First the men leaned into the gals, then the gals leaned into the men. There was sweat splotches on the floor. Looked like you had to raise your arms up a lot.
What they needed was a real orchestra, some boys really knew how to blow and strum. Or a Victrola. Lord, even just that. Dale had got me one for our first anniversary. Bad off as we were, I had ten records I could plop down on that fine machine. You ever hear Hoagy Carmichael on the Victrola? It just doesn’t get any sweeter. Never mind what new player machines they have now. I don’t care about those. Dale liked that Victrola plenty for a while because after we’d listened to it and taken a turn or two his chances in the bedroom improved. He couldn’t dance worth a tin nickel but my good Lord, when I had some arms around my waist how I could make my dress float across the room. If I danced or twirled long enough, worked up enough heat and had my head set to spin, I liked to see Dale Henshaw coming at me. Dale Henshaw had his charms. He was chawing out his teeth and didn’t wash as frequent as he should but there was something to be said for a man who could move quick like he could and fly above you like a bird. He was tender in the bedroom. Just like sweet pasture butter with his ways.
When we were courting and well past that first year of our marriage he had sung songs and memorized poetry to say to me. Poetry! All it had taken was me telling him one night early on after we’d been at some whiskey that when my father, fresh from his final sales show in Iowa or somewhere and still wearing his suit, had come to take me away for good at last from the Spitzers, he had got down on a knee, spread his arms, and given up a sonnet. Didn’t matter that it was a sonnet he’d made up to try to sell strawberry tooth powder, Dale heard this and the next day he came walking out of the field with a flower in his hand and a poem in his mouth. Prettiest thing you ever heard. Prettier than my father’s sorry poem. Especially since when my father had bent his knee and said it he had been so drunk he hadn’t even noticed I had whip burns on the backs of my legs. Those days of poems and Dale coming into the bedroom after me were done, though, and now if I put the Victrola on all it did was make the dogs bark. Doesn’t matter how good you look or how nice you dance, you push a man away enough at just the wrong minute, he starts to turn his thoughts in other directions. “Come on, now, honey, let’s make us a family,” Dale had used to say, and he had said it kind, but for the better part of the past year I had made him stop. ’Course I had. There’s things you can’t chance. Now I looked at him. He was rubbing at a brown patch on his pant leg. Chaw stain. Probably thinking about his evil pig. I looked at him long enough that he looked back over at me.
“Staring contest,” I said quiet.
“You know you can’t win at that,” he replied.
This wasn’t true. Well, at least not all the time. We didn’t dance much anymore, and he had given up trying to follow me into the bedroom even if we did, but we did still lock eyes at each other from time to time.
“Right here, right now, Dale Henshaw, let’s see what you got,” I said. But he was back to rubbing at his pant leg.
While we stood at the side, Bud walked up to a man with one of those ugly rat-whisker mustaches sitting on a blue chair at the far corner of the dance floor. He was holding a wore-out bullhorn and fanning at himself with a piece of drippy cardboard. It was either one fly or two that was worrying his head. The man didn’t even look up when Bud leaned over and started to whisper in his ear, but after he’d heard what Bud had to say he shot straight up off his chair and yelled into the bullhorn: “Lynching over in Marvel!”
There wasn’t a one of those cobs of corn didn’t straightaway stop leaning back and forth into each other and start making plans about how to get to it quick. There was some pretty girls out on the floor and you could see how their nifty ways got to working in Bud’s eyes. Dale had quit scraping at his chaw stain but if he was looking at anything it wasn’t those ladies. A wandering eye wasn’t one of his sins. The bullhorn man shook Bud’s hand until it about fell off and then he shook Dale’s, mine, and Pops’s.
“Errand accomplished, folks,” Bud said, all proud and taking one more look at the dance hall, which was already starting to empty out. The band had kept playing a while after the announcement but now even they were packing it up.
“That was some errand,” said Pops, whistling appreciatively as we went out through the crowd.
“Cousin of mine and business associate of the tin can runs this place was at the catfish supper, asked me to swing by, said it might boost future business if the dancers heard here about the happy event,” said Bud.
“I expect they’ll all head over,” said Dale.
“Yes, I expect they will,” said Bud, pleased as Punch with himself and all but licking his lips over some of the sweaty dresses scurrying by. “They will and when they’re over there having the best time of their life tonight they’ll think of this place and round up their friends and come back for more.”
When we got out we had to stand and wait while all the parked cars unsnarled themselves. Bud talked on about opportunity, then set with the considerable saliva in his mouth to offering up commentary on the ladies he’d seen. One had had legs and the other had had arms and a third had had a face.
“Put a nickel in her mouth and I bet she’d talk to you with that face too,” I said.
“I thought that one in the pink dress had a purty look to her,” Pops said.
Bud took a peek at Dale, who was cleaning some crud off his shoe with a stick, then took a peek at me, first at my face and then at the rest. Then he shoved his hands into his pockets and let out a good long whistle.
“Lord, I love doing business,” he said.
“Let’s get on now,” Pops said.
“I want my staring contest, Dale Henshaw,” I said.
Then we all got back in Bud’s car.
We’d gone only about six and a half yards down the road from the dance hall when the man had been holding the microphone came trotting after us with a bag. Bud stopped the car and leaned his head out the window and the man looked both ways down the street then pulled out three pretty pint bottles. He handed them over and Bud thanked him loudly and the man said, “From the boss, he says he’ll see you over there! And I will too!” and trotted over to his own car. Bud was neck-holding the bottles and he pulled them back inside. “That errand idea just keeps looking better and better. Anyone besides me feeling thirsty?”
Bud gave a whoop, tossed two of the pint bottles into the backseat, took a swig of his own, and gunned the engine. Then he handed me his bottle and put the car in gear. I took a sip and spilled some of it on my chin when the car lurched. I had another sip and got more of it down. I can’t drink as much as I once could but I don’t d
isagree with the taste, even now. Bud was staring at my chest as I drank. He had that greedy look he couldn’t do anything worth talking about with in his eye.
“That’s the good stuff, Ottie,” he said.
“Well, then, you better have it back,” I said.
“Take another swig, take another swig,” he said.
He gave a wink and let his hand climb up my leg. Dale and Pops had their bottles in the air and were sucking at them like calves at the teat.
You would have thought it ought to have been dark by then, but it wasn’t evening by a long mile. The bugs kept coming to their end on the windshield but not even Dale was looking to that now that he had that pint bottle to play with. He hadn’t been much of a drinker when we first met but he had sure turned that around. And of course I’d learned first thing from my father how to throw them down. Matter of fact, morning of my sixteenth birthday, he had come into my room, dropped a bottle onto the bed beside me, and said, “Let’s drink to getting drunk.” And Lord, we had. Instead of cake there was just a day of heaving in the bushes and spitting liquor on the charred remains of the birthday card my incarcerated mother had sent.
Dale and Pops were clinking bottles with Bud and drinking it down and singing driving songs. Bud and Dale couldn’t carry either end of a tune, but Pops had a sweet voice. I have no doubt it fetched up fairer to me because I’d had my turn at Bud’s bottle, but then that’s the way the wood vine twineth with most things. I once heard a preacher had come to lay down some Christian law at us miscreants say eyes don’t see and hearts don’t feel until they get switched on. Bud’s and Dale’s ears hadn’t had their switch for good taste turned on and they kept caterwauling, so I told them to shut their hamburger holes and listen to Pops. Bud gave me a look and Dale gave me a kind of half-assed pinch, but they did quit trying to sing.
Pops, with the floor to himself, took out his ear horn so it wouldn’t throw him off and gave us “The Lonesome Valley” and “In the Pines,” pretty as you please. It was while he was finishing up the second of these and drawing out the word shiver that Bud got started on mouthing things in my direction. I didn’t catch what he was doing at first so I missed the gist and he had to mouth it again. To be sure about what he had said I had to mouth it back. This made him mouth his thing again at me, only it looked different this time. I mouthed the part of it I hadn’t understood and he shook his head and slapped at the steering wheel.