The Smut Book

by Tito Perdue

  Could anything be more inefficient than walking through rain? And if he wanted to be somewhere, why couldn’t he get there through the workings of thought alone? Suddenly he stopped, pleased that the girl at the back of the bus was watching sadly as he disappeared into the distance. Putting on a tragic face, he slumped forward, indifferent to the condition of his shoes and socks and the rivulets running down his spine. All his life he had wanted to die by lightning strike, either that or in hand-to-hand combat with a crowd of Yankees.

  The home, when he came to it, was not nearly as picture-worthy as he had thought. A child had left its toys out in the rain, including a clothen bear with a pained expression. Lee knocked twice, using his left hand at first and then the brass apparatus affixed to the door. From inside he heard the voice of Gabriel Heatter speaking over the radio, and then footsteps coming in his direction.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, putting on a sincere expression, “seems like our bus broke down and . . .”

  “Why, you’re soaked to the skin! Can’t you see it’s raining out there?”

  She was a white woman with a maternal instinct, somewhere about forty or fifty years in age, judging from her neck and upper arms. She wore large fur slippers and had pretty clearly given up on her appearance. She had more immediate concerns, Lee supposed, and her husband and no longer noticed.

  “Yes, ma’am. But he told me to come on over here.”

  “Well, shame on him. Is that your bus?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Broken.”

  “I see! And who are all those people?”

  “Just a bunch of kids. We’re going to Tuscaloosa.”

  “Well, gracious. Maybe my husband could pull it out with our tractor.”

  “No, ma’am; it still wouldn’t run. Anyway, Cecil can fix it if he has a screwdriver. I’ll bring it right back.”

  “My husband is pretty good at things like that.”

  “No, ma’am; Cecil can do it.”

  She left him at the door, just as he had known she would. It was dry inside and he saw a number of formal-looking portraits on the wall of stern-looking people in golden frames. A child sat crying on the staircase, and the kitchen had a negress in it. Feeling that he was getting bored, Lee stripped off his shirt and was wringing it out when the lady came back and offered him a selection of two screwdrivers, neither of them of entirely appropriate size. He mulled over the choice, finally settling on the newest one.

  “We sure do appreciate it,” he said, smiling endearingly.

  “But don’t you need an umbrella or something?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Well, let me get you one!”

  “No, ma’am. ’Cause then I’d have to bring it back.”

  “But you’d be dry, at least.”

  “No, ma’am. ’Cause then I’d just have to go back again without any umbrella.”

  There was some sense in that, as at last she seemed to understand.

  “Well, why don’t you just keep that old screwdriver, then? We don’t need it.”

  “No, ma’am; he wouldn’t let me.”

  “Well, for goodness sakes. All right, now you be careful, you hear?”

  Lee took off running. He had a chance to salvage the trip, earning credit with the director and at least some of the girls. He saw then that Cecil had himself fetched a wrench and screwdriver from somewhere, and already was at work with a flashlight that presumably he had borrowed as well. Meantime on board the bus, the other musicians had taken out their sandwiches and Orange Drinks and were enjoying themselves in the conditions there. Gorge rising, he went to the director and, taking his courage, spoke out loud and clear: “I did what you said.”

  “Hm?”

  “Borrowed a screwdriver!”

  “Good, good. You didn’t borrow a reed, too, did you?”

  That did it. Lee stomped off and went a few feet down the highway before turning and coming back. In his clarinet case he had packed a cheeseburger and pickle, assuming no one had confiscated them already. And yet, all-in-all, he still preferred to be out here with Cecil and the adult than in there with seventh and eighth-grade people.

  Followed then another ten minutes during which no one had anything to say, which is to say until 1:15, when Cecil came out and began brushing off the leaves and mud. He had injured himself and had a significant amount of blood betwixt his knuckles. Lee had seen this before when dealing with nuts and bolts.

  “Think it’ll be all right now,” he said modestly, wearing a rugged expression.

  “Told you,” Lee said. “Told you he could fix it.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “Shoot, he could fix an airplane, if he had to!”

  “Okay, calm down, Lee. Now let’s see if we can get this thing rolling again.”

  They all climbed on board, Lee, Cecil, and the adult. It was not in the driver’s contract to do mechanical work, and in fact the man was too busy with his own lunch, which included a beverage of some kind in a Mason jar.

  “Gracious,” said the girl, who now once again was sitting just behind him, “you’re drenched!”

  “Naw, I’m used to it.”

  “And I think Cecil is bleeding!” she went on, whispering the information.

  “Yeah, but we don’t care about stuff like that.”

  Outside the rain continued, assailing the roof. Let him have a set of dry clothes and cup of hot chocolate and he might have been perfectly happy just now. That was when the bandleader rose and worked his way down the aisle, bringing to Lee his golden uniform.

  “Get those clothes off,” he ordered “and get into your costume. ’Less you want to get pneumonia. Where’s Cecil?”

  Lee pointed to him, a wounded figure seated in the extreme corner of the bus. To him the bandleader now turned, startled to find him seated next to a girl he had never seen before.

  “Oh, good.”

  “It’s okay; I invited her.”

  “Good, good. Let me see that wound.”

  Cecil removed the girl’s handkerchief and displayed the injury, a not very serious affair that had worked its way along the base of his thumb.

  “You’ll need a couple of stitches.”

  “Naw, shoot no.”

  “Okay, here’s your uniform. Go ahead and put it on now before you get . . .”

  “Pneumonia,” Lee helped.

  They were left alone, Cecil and Lee, along with the three boys and two girls who shared that region. In the matter of changing clothes, Lee would have preferred to be left alone; instead, Cecil immediately hefted off his shirt and already was unlinking his belt when the girls got up and ran away.

  The uniform, a bright yellow business made from a corded material of some kind, was heavy and warm and had braid on it, the most splendid suit he’d ever possess. Looking straight forward in his soldierly fashion, he counted slowly to ten and then turned and spoke to Cecil: “Hey, Cecil.”

  “Hm?” He was smoking without using his hands—it was only the third or fourth time that Lee had seen him do that—while the other hand, the one left over, was wrapped around Gwen.

  “I forgot to take the screwdriver back.”

  “No hope for a dope.”

  Relieved, Lee sheltered his eyes and scanned the area behind him, an obscure realm still occupied by the ninth-grade girl he presumed.

  “I wadn’t sure we’d be able to fix it,” said Lee, squinting into the dim.

  “But you did, though.”

  “I’m not saying it was easy.”

  “Well, I guess not!”

  “But everything seems to be all right now.”

  She laughed out loud at him. She had finished her Orange Drink, and the empty bottle was wont to roll about on the floor until she retrieved it and put it elsewhere. Next to her, Cecil had gotten into a kiss with Gwen and was drawing it out to maximum length. Lee counted up to six and kept on going, stopping only when he came to thirteen, the longest kiss he had ever seen.

  “They’re in love,
” he said, whispering to the dark girl. “And so it’s okay.”

  “I know.”

  They looked at each other.

  They came into the city of Tuscaloosa at just after four and drove through the grounds of the world-famous university named after the state. Lee hewed to the window, impatient to catch a view of some of the college coed girls and varsity football players who characterized this particular town. He spied an old man walking a dog, and when that passed from view, two male youths, one of them in glasses. They passed a brick building in which some dozen scientific-looking persons were hovering over an experiment of some kind, to judge from the white coats they were wearing. The brains of these people, their dedication—he began to feel quite small again when he compared himself.

  “Look at that one,” Cecil whispered, indicating an elderly man in a beard. “You think you’re so smart, shit, he could spell every word there is. They got microscopes in there, too. See ’em? And women. Shit, they got more women here than you could . . .”

  Gwen hit him. The radio meantime was giving off the same sort of music familiar to him from his own hometown. Radiating in all directions, the beautiful “Tennessee Waltz” had crossed the Coosa already on its long journey across the South. It made Lee proud that his little slice of life had been cut from the 1950s. On the other hand, Tuscaloosa itself seemed wrongly configured, the authorities having chosen to harbor their negroes east of town.

  Came now the downtown section, stores on top of stores, beauty parlors and a government building. Lee was interested in a Woolworth’s that took up the better part of a block, and next to that a hardware and fishing tackle outlet. He did not expect at this particular time to find a hobby shop selling stamps and coins, and in fact he never did come across such a place during his whole stay in Tuscaloosa. He perceived a pool hall with some of the same kind of people in it as in the halls of his own hometown—lean men fond of whiskey who rarely shaved. Saw a fat woman carrying too many bundles, and behind her a lost boy who only just now seemed to recognize that he was following the wrong mother. And then, finally, saw a boy of a certain type and kind who was so much like himself that it gave Lee an uncanny feeling. Apparently, they had been growing up analogously, side-by-side as it were, albeit on opposite sides of Alabama. They looked at each other.

  The bus stopped at an intersection in the core of the city and idled quietly as the bandleader got to his feet and spoke: “All right, yes, we’re here. And you’ve got just exactly . . .”—he glanced at his watch—“. . . exactly two hours and twelve minutes before you’re on stage. Yes? And so we’ll meet right here”—he bent and touched the floor with his index finger—“right here at five o’clock exactly. What did I say, Charlie?”

  “Five o’clock.”

  “Good! Five o’clock and not one minute later. You read me, Cecil?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Five o’clock, American time.”

  They agreed to it. Leland’s heart had meantime begun to palpitate. He checked for his wallet and pencil box, finding that he had left one of them behind. Never had he been so far from native ground. Coming to the head of the line, he stepped down into the living Tuscaloosa, and after testing the sidewalk, brought his other foot with him.

  He noticed several things at once, but especially the people. He saw an old man pushing a carriage full of groceries in lieu of children. Where was Cecil? An unleashed dog now came up and, after analyzing Leland’s shoes, turned and went the other way. He began to feel confused, Lee did, caught up in this gyre of activity. Saw a blind negro with an accordion, dark glasses, and a begging cup. Putting on a bored expression, Lee marched straight forward for a distance of about fifty yards, ignoring the world around him until he ran up against a pawnshop window full of a variety of things. He saw knives with ten-inch blades, a box of watches and chains, a dozen leather-bound books, rings and pins, and—and here he stopped—a stamp album opened to Lithuania.

  It hurt him to see a thing like that. A thousand years might go by before he’d have the cash to buy a collection like that—complicated, well-organized, and loaded with rarities. Or perhaps he could overcome his liking for such things and learn to hate them instead, a test of his increasing Will. Suddenly he jumped back, surprised to find the expelled boy Clarence standing at his side. He wasn’t supposed to have come along.

  “I seen you standing over here.”

  “Yeah,” Lee said.

  “Look at all that shit. Hey, I wouldn’t mind having that one,” he said, indicating toward one of the knives with a forest scene engraved on the blade. “Shit!”

  Lee agreed. He had rather hoped the boy might move away now and go about his business; instead, he came up nearer to Lee and examined his face.

  “What’s the deal with you, actually? And where’s that goddamn little box you’re always carrying around?”

  “I left it,” Lee said, pointing toward the bus.”

  “Well, well. Is that a fact? So you decided to carry that screwdriver instead.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You stole anything yet?”

  “I just got here!”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  Lee looked off. He could not understand why this person wanted to link up with him, who had not stolen anything in years. The boy came nearer.

  “Say, what are you worrying about all the time—that’s what I want to know. Hey, you want to go over yonder”—he pointed to the Woolworth’s mentioned earlier—“and steal some stuff?”

  Lee didn’t want to. “Sure,” he said.

  Later on, looking back upon it, he would have said the place had more merchandise in it than he had thought. And then, too, this time he had come with a full dollar bill, the gift of his father. It provided him a choice of buying or stealing, depending upon conditions.

  “Hey! Don’t be following me around all the time, okay?”

  They separated, the other boy moving off quickly toward the rear of the store. Himself, Lee was in the market for a billfold, a leather one with pockets in it, a long-time desideratum of his. Encouraged by the dearth of saleswomen, he strolled past a counter of yo-yos, comic books, and other unguarded artifacts that would have appealed to him as recently as several months ago, before he had gone bad. Came next a pile of female purses, and then at the very bottom of the counter, an appreciable selection of men’s paraphernalia, including wallets, cufflinks, tie clasps, and the like. Changing over into a naïve expression, he picked up one item after another and looked them over in such a way as to suggest that he didn’t know what they were. The woman, a tired-looking quantity in a dress, smiled at him perfunctorily and then went back to gazing out over his head to the outside traffic. It ought to be easy, Lee thought, to take one of the billfolds by exchanging it for his own. Half a minute went by as he stood waiting for his nerves to settle. Across the way a woman and child were smiling at his uniform, while fifty yards further on Clarence had taken up an air rifle and was aiming it at various people in the store.

  He gathered up a wallet, Lee, and explored it for pockets and hidden places. No one was watching, or anyway no one with authority enough to arrest him. His inclination was to return the thing to its place and abandon the store to Clarence; instead, without thinking very clearly about it, he threw the thing into his back pocket, arranging it face-to-face with his existing wallet.

  He thought that he would faint. He felt a headache coming on. But both of these problems soon faded away, and in their place he experienced a strange and very evil exultation that he had felt before upon certain occasions. Head held high, his face giving off a somewhat indignant expression, he exited the place and strolled very slowly down the sidewalk for about fifty yards in one direction and twenty in another.

  “What’d you git?” Clarence asked, once they had found each other. He was three years older than Lee, his teeth were bad, and he wore a continual expression that made it seem he was suffering from gas.

  “Billfold.”

  “Sho
w me.”

  Lee showed it.

  “Okay, that’s all right. You’re one of us now.”

  Himself, the boy had stolen some half-dozen candy bars, one of which he now handed off to Lee.

  “Want to go back? Steal some more?”

  Lee didn’t want to. “Sure.”

  They entered from long distance, each boy choosing the portal that best comported with him. There was a girl in there—Lee hadn’t noticed her earlier—a girl. Of course, he could not be sure that she would admire his uniform or whether, like some people, she would point and grin. That was when he discovered Charlie T. on the far side of the store, where he was very obviously confiscating some items of his own. World enough and time, they could have cleaned out the whole store—this was the realization that now came over Lee. Never had Tuscaloosa seen such people.

  They gathered on the sidewalk, joined this time by Charlie T.

  “What’d you git?”

  “Two more wallets.”

  “Gimme one.”

  Lee handed it over. Charlie had taken a plastic box full of drill bits, but had not managed to come away with the drill itself. Meantime the day had turned perceptibly cooler, and to defray the chill they all three were eating candy bars while standing about and looking at each another.

  “Want to go back?”

  “No!” Lee started to say. “Sure.”

  But this time the girl was gone. Accordingly, he trod up and down the aisle for a certain time, aware that the woman no longer was casting maternal smiles in his direction. She was smart. He yawned, checked his watch, and then took up a paperback book, opened it, and sampled the writing, hoping in this way to divert the lady from Charlie T. working the next aisle. Outside, he saw other band members from other schools, some in uniform, others not, others chewing gum and some not. They included a girl in a kepi, a baton, and a skirt that was shorter even than those in his own hometown. Having completed the first paragraphs, Lee shut the book with a disappointed expression and returned to the out-of-doors, where Clarence was waiting for him.