by Tito Perdue
The Smut Book
by
Tito Perdue
Books by Tito Perdue
Lee (1991)
The New Austerities (1994)
Opportunities in Alabama Agriculture (1994)
The Sweet-Scented Manuscript (2004)
Fields of Asphodel (2007)
The Node (2011)
Morning Crafts (2013)
Reuben (2014)
The Builder: William’s House I (2016)
The Churl: William’s House II (2o16)
The Engineer: William’s House III (2016)
The Bachelor: William’s House IV (2016)
Cynosura (2017)
Philip (2017)
Though We Be Dead, Yet Our Day Will Come (2018)
The Bent Pyramid (2018)
The Philatelist (2018)
The Smut Book
by
Tito Perdue
Counter-Currents Publishing Ltd.
San Francisco
2018
Copyright © 2018 Tito Perdue
All rights reserved
Cover design by: Kevin Slaughter
Published in the United States by
COUNTER-CURRENTS PUBLISHING LTD.
P.O. Box 22638
San Francisco, CA 94122 USA
http://www.counter-currents.com/
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-64264-109-7
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-64264-110-3
E-book ISBN: 978-1-64264-111-0
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Perdue, Tito, author.
Title: The smut book / by Tito Perdue.
Description: San Francisco: Counter-Currents Publishing Ltd., 2018.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018030819 (print) | LCCN 2018031721 (ebook) | ISBN
9781642641110 (e-book) | ISBN 9781642641097 (hardcover: alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781642641103 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Classification: LCC PS3566.E691225 (ebook) | LCC PS3566.E691225 S68 2018
(print) | DDC 813/.54--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018030819
CONTENTS
Chapter One ❖ 1
Chapter Two ❖ 3
Chapter Three ❖ 29
Chapter Four ❖ 42
Chapter Five ❖ 53
Chapter Six ❖ 68
Chapter Seven ❖ 110
Chapter Eight ❖ 121
Chapter Nine ❖ 133
Chapter Ten ❖ 140
Chapter Eleven ❖ 161
Chapter Twelve ❖ 166
Chapter Thirteen ❖ 168
Chapter Fourteen ❖ 180
Chapter Fifteen ❖ 184
About the Author ❖ 198
One
He still remembered some of the things that had happened in days gone by—dark moments growing forever smaller in the backwash of time.
And the weather—he could remember when it rained all night and then gave way to sunshine just in time. Glancing skyward, he perceived a muster of calico clouds probing the harbors of the sky. And that one of the neighborhood women had left off sweeping her porch and was watching him with concern. Turning in that direction, Lee bowed sweepingly and then picked up traveling northwardly again while avoiding the cracks in the sidewalk, a project made more difficult by the very numerous leaves that in recent days had begun to fall. He hummed. He was carrying a pencil box, two books bound together with a strap, and a pineapple sandwich in a brown paper bag. His clothes, too, were characteristic of him, save that today’s shirt, which had come down to him from his cousin, wasn’t something he would have chosen.
He halted at the intersection, and, while waiting on the traffic, scanned the row of houses that extended from block to block, even unto perpetuity as it seemed. Somewhere down there, there where the buildings became indistinct, that was where Cherise dwelled, a blonde-headed girl who had been accompanying Lee from grade to grade since the beginning of things. Had she already moved past this point on her trek to school, or should he tarry here in case she hadn’t?
Each block had seven houses, each house had a woman sweeping off her porch, the morning news on the radio, and a yard jockey to which in old days one could have tethered his horse. Moving straight forward, he crossed over into a district of three-story homes, dark ones containing stained-glass lampshades and, often as not, a retired gentleman reading the newspaper in an armchair. No doubt it was the comfortableness of these places, the high ceilings and gilded portraits on the wall, that had first inspired in Lee the wish to be retired also. Truth was, he did not understand why he wasn’t retired already, why he had to walk to school instead of willing himself there, or how time itself could be as slow as it was and last so long.
Cherise never came, and Lee was reduced to waving back in a more or less friendly fashion to Preston, dashing past on his bicycle. Suddenly Lee stopped, disturbed to have noticed a quart of milk still waiting on Mrs. Jenson’s porch, where it was bound to lose its flavor. He sought for her newspaper, relieved to find that it, at least, had been fetched inside. But he knew better than to gather up the milk and put it away in the woman’s refrigerator, only then to end up being punished for it.
By this time, he had left the three-story homes behind and was migrating through a poorer sort of district where the economy had fallen into ruins. Eyes straight forward, he gathered speed, preferring not to look at the overflowing garbage cans, disabled vehicles, and the dogs who proved more and more militant as the homes they defended declined in worth. He knew a good deal about this area and some of the things that went on here. A house was losing its paint and was missing several of its roof tiles, deficiencies that his own father would have mended before they had taken place. A dead cat lay in the gutter—he did not understand these people—its belly broken open. Glad was he that Cherise didn’t have to see it.
Soon he would have arrived at school and still have time left over to confer with Cecil and the others. That was when it came to him that he had left his pencil box at home, or even perhaps had lost it. Dizzied by it, he checked his pocket and hands. His money, however, was intact, as he testified by drawing out the coins one by one and counting each in turn. His health was satisfactory, and he had completed his homework in good fashion, as also Cecil’s. And if he weighed on average about fifteen pounds less than the greater number of his acquaintances, yet was he also about eighteen months younger than the greater part of them by far.
Two
Conditions improved as he drew near to school. The Catholic church came up, out front the unforgettable sign of a bleeding heart encased in barbed wire. Moving on tiptoes, he progressed up to where the first of the shops began to appear among the homes—a florist, music store, and a narrow place vending cigarettes and magazines. Two blocks ahead, he could view the movie theatre, dormant at this time of day. He had expected, wrongly, that Green Dolphin Street might have exhausted its run by now. Just then two girls went by on bicycles, neither of them giving heed to Lee. Far away he heard a whistle shrilling, calling men to work. Autumn was even more advanced in the countryside, evidenced by the smell of far-away pumpkins rotting, neglected, on the stem. A dog, lost and mournful, beckoned from the hills that lapped the town. Lee harkened to it, waiting in the shade of a maple dropping leaves as big as manuscript paper, and just as crisp. The bees were lazy, and the last of the honeysuckle was throwing off the season’s final spores.
It wasn’t as if Lee had any grudge against Green Dolphin Street, but rather only that he had been promised King Solomon’s Mines, scheduled for this week. However, it had always been like this, and he should have understood by now that for him it were best to expect nothing whatsoever from life. Thinking of it, he put on a dead expression and began to walk somewhat robotically t
oward the half-acre field where some hundred students had broken into groups and were whispering among themselves. Right away he found Cherise waiting in the shadow of the building, together with the plain-looking girl who chaperoned her everywhere. Indeed, as he thought about it, he realized that both of the beautiful girls formed an island of her own, each of them supported by two or three others wanting to share in the glow. His eye, Lee’s, traveled from Cherise to Barbara and her followers, and thence to the water fountain where Linda wore a bright red jacket, together with an analogous ribbon in her hair. The very last he had expected was for the girl to notice him and then throw up her hand and wave back cheerfully in spite of their troubled history with each other. Her smile was transfixing—he couldn’t endure it—and made her more beautiful still. He was even thinking of going and joining her, which is to say until he was preempted by one of the most contemptible of boys, a rangy person with chafed elbows and the beginnings of a nasty little moustache. This comported with Lee’s usual luck, however, and he could find no one to blame for it except the boy.
“You get that math done?”
Lee jumped back, startled and flattered that Cecil had come up quietly and was standing just behind him. His papers, Lee’s, were confused; even so he soon identified the two-page assignment that he had tried to render in Cecil’s primitive handwriting.
“Now you didn’t go and get all of ’em right, did you?”
“Naw, I put a couple of errors in there.”
Satisfied, the boy looked them over, folded the pages, and stashed them away in the vest pocket of his leathern jacket. He was dressed in boots, jeans, and a bright yellow shirt open at the collar. He was five feet and seven inches tall, his hair was the color of sand, and he weighed one hundred forty-five pounds. He had powerful teeth, perfectly formed, that looked like kernels of white corn. With but few possible exceptions, Lee doubted there was anyone in the entire system who could have stood up to him in a race or fight or in automobile mechanics. Having duplicated the second and third grades, he was some two years older than Lee, and possibly more.
“Want a cig?” (The boy offered him one.)
“Naw. Maybe later.”
He didn’t want, Lee, smoke in his eyes, not with so many girls standing about. Within the past half-minute, he had identified Sonya Hunter standing among her usual circle, all of them talking at the same time. Had they seen him conferring with Cecil? He waved to Darlene and then, putting on a bored expression, shifted his gaze to a ninth-grade girl in lipstick. Already nervous, he grew even more so when, for one brief moment, he thought she might be looking back at him. No, actually it was Cecil she was watching, as he should have known.
“She’s looking.”
“That’s okay, I don’t charge for that.”
She was still looking!
“Do you think I might grow up,” Lee started to ask, “and be somewhat like you?” “I think she wants you to go over there,” he said in fact.
“Let her come over here, she wants to. What, she got a broke leg or something?”
No, Leland saw nothing in her that was broken.
“Good Lord, she’s still looking!”
“Embarrassing, ain’t it?” Suddenly the boy reached out and messed up Leland’s hairdo, a complicated arrangement that was parted on both sides. Each time he moved—(this refers to Cecil)—the chains about his boots gave off a chime. He had a package of cigarettes in the pocket of his jacket and an identification bracelet that weighed several pounds. His face was as disciplined and unsmiling as a soldier’s, but Lee could not very well see the boy’s expression when it was lost, as now, in morning light.
There were other girls, other boys, too, all of them taking up their respective positions in his memory bank as he climbed the stairs. He stepped past Carl, the sole individual in the whole class who was smaller than himself. Lee liked him. Came next the boy called Smitty, and then a smattering of girls in shoes, socks, and pastel dresses cut in such a way as not absolutely to prevent a person from identifying that veinous little area behind each female knee. They were not thinking about him, certainly, these myriads of girls who preferred to be talking or smiling or, as the case may have been, pouting about something or another with their little faces. What he wanted really was to round up the mess of them and store them away in his pencil box.
They entered with solemnity and saluted the school’s favorite teacher, an elderly person, mostly blind, easily confused by students exchanging names with each other or entering and leaving the room while walking backward. Lee particularly loved to see her take off her glasses and, bending near the script, squint at the list of names.
“James?”
Dorothy raised her hand. She was a brunette exhibit who weighed commensurately with her age and size. Her measurements were unimportant at that time, but fell within the range. Today her dress was violet and squeezed together at the waist—this done deliberately—with a sash of the same color. Of all the girls, Lee ranked her as perhaps the eighth or ninth prettiest, owing primarily to her hair, her calves, and her figure, thus far a potentiality only, but one in which he had great confidence.
She had also several pieces of kindred jewelry at chest, wrist, and her midnight hair.
“Will you read, please?” the teacher asked of her.
And did so, her voice spilling forward hastily over the words, which she treated as hindrances to be overcome. He ranked her as possibly the third-most intelligent among the girls. Listening to her, he nearly fell off to sleep again—the previous night had been hard on him, and with but three hours of sleep to his credit, he was having trouble. Just then Preston handed a folded note to him and went through a series of facial expressions that mandated Lee to pass it along to the next person. It had come, that note, from the other side of the room, and was destined for a boy who sat near to the front. Lee watched as he unwrapped the message and then read it over with satisfaction. How, really, did it feel to receive a note like that from a girl like the one who had sent it?
Ten minutes went by. Across the way, Lee observed that Darlene had put her head down, and either had gone back to sleep again or else was trying to relieve the weight of her heavy black curls, now lying partly on and partly off the desk. The teacher meantime had left off speaking and was going slowly and confusedly through a pile of papers that she could not recall having ever seen before. The day had only just begun, and already Lee could feel the boredom moving up and down the room like a weather condition. Far away, a dog was yapping, while down in the street below a car was having trouble with its gears. Cecil, who sat just in front of Lee, alphabetically speaking, had arisen and, after striving in vain to get a view of the vehicle, began treading slowly backwards till he had vacated the room altogether.
It was the finest town in Alabama, and Leland could not be happier than if he had fallen to Earth in Montgomery or Birmingham, or places even more famous than those. He watched in admiration as Dwayne now also got slowly to his feet, stretched, and then headed off toward the boys’ facility at the end of the hall. The class was getting smaller. Lifting her seventy-five-year-old head, the teacher looked out over the room, scanning, as it were, for lost scholars drifting out to sea.
The facility was crowded by the time Lee came to it, and he had no intention of trying to urinate within the hearing of Cecil and the others. And then, too, each cell already had a boy in it, each boy identifiable by his shoes or by the conversation they were carrying on with the poker players seated in the center of the room. Lee went at first to stand behind Cecil, but then changed his mind when he remembered that he was already too closely associated with that person in the public mind. Suddenly he jumped back, disconcerted to see some dozen or more dollar bills lying at hazard in the middle of the ring. School had been in session for but three weeks, and every day they were playing for larger and larger stakes. That was when Smitty glanced his way and studied him sadly for the space of several seconds.
“Lee?”
“Yes?”
“Want a coke?”
“Sure!”
“Okay, bring me one, too, okay?”
“Now?”
“Well, hell yeah, now! Tired of waiting.”
Lee hopped to it. He had to thread his way between the poker players and then proceed down the row of framed dignitaries who lined both walls of the darkened hall. One would have thought the building vacant save for an opened room where an audience of girls sat staring up at the picture of a uterus etched on the blackboard in colored chalk. Here Lee stopped, turning his attention from the drawing to the girls. He could identify several persons in there, including a girl he had dated when he was nine. He nodded to her, and when that didn’t produce anything, threw up his hand and waved. Which is to say until the teacher came and shut the door in his face.
Nothing surprised him anymore, neither girls nor teachers nor people willing to undervalue their own best memories. The day was not as new as just an hour ago, and the morning light now revealed just how many dust particles were adrift in the corridor—a very great many, indeed. In spite of the unimportance of such matters, this scene entered his memory where he foresaw that it would—but why?—forever remain.
He had to cross the street. The town, too, was empty, save for a few adults wandering purposelessly here and there—a woman with a child, a man, and others of that kind. Nor was the Teen Canteen (so-called) doing business at this hour. He entered nevertheless and, keeping his face to one side, addressed the rather hard-looking man who appeared to be looking back at him with the same kind of cynicism and disappointment that Lee was accustomed to seeing in Smitty and in the boy called sometimes “Lloyd” and sometimes Charlie T.