The Smut Book

by Tito Perdue

  “What’d you git?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Chickenshit.”

  “I was helping Charlie T.! Anyway, what did you get?”

  The boy looked off in the two directions, and after turning his back to the street, slowly and mysteriously rolled up his sleeve. Lee jumped back—three separate wristwatches running up his arm.

  “Good Lord!”

  “Would you just kindly shut up, for Christ’s sakes! You get me in trouble, and I’ll have to beat the shit out of you.”

  Charlie came up. He had still not succeeded in taking the drill set which, in any case, weighed several pounds.

  “Want to go back in?”

  “No,” said Lee, using his real voice. “Besides, it’s getting late.”

  “It ain’t that late.”

  “It’s pretty late.”

  That was true.

  “And besides, I’m getting hungry.”

  “You just had a candy bar, for Christ’s sakes!”

  But Lee’s attention was for a group of negro band people, some twenty of them or more, moving down the sidewalk. Their uniforms were purple with crimson streaks, and each member wore a plumed hat with a glossy bill—the best outfit Lee had ever seen.

  “Good Lord!” he whispered. “Look at ’em!”

  “Shit!”

  “Hey, how come they get to wear those? Shit, that’s a lot better than what we got.”

  “No, that’s just the way things are these days. Don’t get me started.”

  They stood aside, allowing the black musicians to pass by in their lofty fashion, an uppity people in feathers and gold.

  “Look at ’em. Say, how come they always get everything while us, we don’t get nothing!”

  “Yeah, and we’re the ones what have to pay for it. Taxes.”

  “Well, leastwise you ain’t paying no taxes on them wallets.”

  That was true. A restaurant had come up on the left-hand side, a big one with a plate glass window facing the road. It startled him to see people eating in full view, a form of advertisement, he had to suppose, designed to show off the food. Coming nearer, he locked eyes with a fat man in a bib, his fork heavy-laden and suspended in mid-air. It was steak he was eating, steak pure and simple, along with a pale green beverage with a detritus of some kind floating on top.

  “Look at that steak,” Charlie said, coming nearer and pointing to it. “Bleeding, it looks like to me.”

  “He likes it that way.”

  “Shit, I bet that old bastard eats steak every day.”

  “Yeah. And his eyes are fat, too.”

  (They were.)

  “Good Lord. Feel sorry for his wife.”

  “Yeah. ’Course now we don’t know what she looks like.”

  “Wife, my ass. What, would you marry him?”

  They came nearer. The man was showing signs of irritation. Smitty had glued his face to the glass and was making evil faces at a distance of about eighteen inches from the actual person.

  There were other people in the window, most of them more or less normal-looking for Tuscaloosa. He saw a boy and his family—two standard adults and an eleven- or twelve-year-old with an angelic face. He was weak, Lee was certain of it, and didn’t have anything remotely like the sort of spiritual force that Lee demanded in people. Yea, and someday he (Lee) would be able to enter crowded buildings and know that he was the best man there.

  The area was noisier than they had expected, and they had to wait an appreciable time before at last the hostess came, looked them over disappointedly, and then conducted them to a booth far enough from the window that no Tuscaloosians would have to see them. The menu was a massive affair as big as a newspaper, and had a picture of a swan on it. Lee had one bill in his original wallet, a bequest from his father. The menu had nothing as cheap as that.

  “Shit!” (Smitty) “Look at them prices!”

  “No, that’s just the way it is these days. Nothing surprises me anymore.”

  “And what the hell is this?” Clarence asked, trying and failing to read the French. Lee noticed that they were being watched.

  “Maybe we ought to leave.”

  “I ain’t leaving!”

  “Me neither,” Lee said. “Heck, no.”

  Five minutes went by as they went through the pages of the beige-colored brochure with its ribbon and coat of arms. Bored with it, and having given up on the French, Clarence had taken out a deck of playing cards (stolen) and was checking through them carefully, as if looking for missing numbers. Two tables away, Lee’s glance settled upon a middle-aged lady sitting in such a way that a person could see deep into her mouth and part way up her nose, had anyone wanted. They had less than an hour to fodder themselves and return to the bus. Suddenly (and here Lee’s heart leapt up in joy), Cecil came and claimed a chair, followed shortly by his girl.

  “Okay, boys,” he said. “Let’s see what you got.”

  They were cautious about showing what they had stolen, which is to say until Lee shyly drew out one of his wallets and laid it in general view.

  “What’s this?”

  “Billfold.”

  “Yeah, but they ain’t no money in it? Nothing, right?”

  True. Lee took it back and returned it to its place. He was waiting for Smitty to show his watches; instead, that was when Cecil seized upon Gwen’s purse, opened it, and showed several large pieces of female jewelry. It was just like him—stealing on behalf of others.

  “Good Lord!”

  “Sure. We need it more than they do.”

  Outside a policeman walked past, a heavy person with a stick, a sullen face, and an unknown attitude toward musicians. Came then the waitress, a shriveled person with, however, a great pile of iridescent hair that sparkled in the obscurity. No one had been born to look like that. And then, too, her face wore an annoyed expression. Cecil looked at her, called her “honey,” and then, after drawing leisurely on his cigar, ordered two cheeseburgers and as many Orange Drinks. The woman made a face and let her writing pad hang at her side.

  “You fellows ought to try Herbie’s. They have what you want.”

  “And two pieces of chocolate pie.” (He was also ordering for Gwen—it was like him.)

  Slowly, the waitress brought her writing pad up to where she could write on it.

  “And you?”

  “I don’t want nothing,” Clarence said.

  “He’ll take a cheeseburger,” Cecil said.

  “And Orange Drink.”

  “Me, too.” (Smitty.)

  The woman now shifted her gaze to Lee. Smaller than the others, his chin came up to the tabletop and no further. He did love the privacy of booths, especially when they were populated by the three or four persons he would naturally have chosen for that purpose.

  “Cheeseburger,” Lee ordered.

  “And Orange Drink?”

  He thought about it, opting for the affirmative after a few moments had gone by. Across the way, the fat man was deep into an ice cream preparation of some sort and had gotten some of the material on his nose. For Lee, this was the time to transfer his personal papers over into his new wallet, a nerve-wracking process that required him to make a series of decisions as to where each thing most aptly fitted. He was fastidious, a trait that seemed to annoy his tablemates.

  “Look at him. Piddling around over there.”

  “He’s nervous.”

  “Hell, yeah, he’s nervous! He lives inside a glass ball, is what he told me.”

  “You got to get over that, Sloan. If you want to be one of us.”

  “It’s his liver.”

  “There ain’t nothing wrong with that liver. Anyway, I’d rather be like him than like you,” the girl said, turning and looking directly into Cecil’s face. “He’s got a future.”

  “I don’t got a future?”

  “Nope. None of us do.”

  They laughed. Lee laughed, too, who was beginning to feel better in light of what the girl had said. Later on,
assuming he was still living, he would make it a point to help them with their futures.

  The food, when it came, turned out to be exactly what was needed. Cecil could eat no onions, and his girl could eat no cheese; between the two of them, they flushed both burgers down with Orange Drinks. As for Clarence, he had not eaten in days, and with Cecil paying, he managed to consume two of the things in a shorter time than Lee could form a bib out of the enormous napkin with the image of a swan on it. Smitty meantime had pushed back and was smoking on a cigarette, a long, brown, and very thin item of his own manufacture that sizzled and popped whenever the flame came into touch with the inferior tobacco. Soon, within half an hour or less, they would be on stage and in front of hundreds of people, a development that made Lee shiver.

  “Cecil?”

  “Hm?” (They had finished their burgers, Gwen and he, and had both drawn off into the corner, where they were smooching with each other in plain open view.)

  “We don’t have much time.”

  The boy didn’t answer. He had his right hand on the girl’s waist, or in other words about midway between her two female regions. His eyes were open, but the girl’s were closed, the reversal of the way Lee would want it.

  “We’re supposed to be on the bus in . . . nineteen minutes.”

  “Lee?”

  “Yes?”

  “Shut up.”

  Lee went back to his wallet. He had a photo of his former dog, the best of a long line, now dead. Had the signed certificate of a Boy Scout merit badge in archery, a legal permit allowing him to drive an outboard motor, and a dollar bill. Had a silver medal with the engraving of an eagle on it and two faded coins that had set up impressions of themselves in the leather of his original wallet. Had other things as well, including a newspaper article that described a long-ago action of one of his uncles in another part of the state. All these he put away in the best-fitting compartments and then handed off the obsolete wallet to Clarence, who took it without a word. Gwen, he saw, was wearing the necklace given her by Cecil, a complex artifact in which the various beads and seashells had been dipped in several kinds of paint. “We’ve only got fourteen minutes!” Lee started to say, before changing his mind and saying nothing. The fat man had gone, leaving behind a full dollar tip scrolled up in the handle of his coffee cup, the largest gratuity that ever Lee had seen.

  They hit the road as darkness came and began to move at speed against the grain of the pedestrians, a bored-looking people who appeared to be moving away from, instead of toward, the concert hall. Arriving at the bus, Lee went direct to his place, where the girl was missing. He had seven minutes and not one moment more to lubricate the joints of his clarinet and put the thing together. Already Cecil had taken out his trumpet, had burnished it, and was blowing a few notes from the top of the register, a fierce noise that sounded like screaming. Suddenly the bus lurched and ran forward a few yards before turning into a side street that might almost be too narrow to negotiate. Among the noise of this mobile rehearsal, Lee could pick out Steven’s saxophone, certain members of the trombone section, and Smitty’s snare drum giving off a funereal sound. The driver was drunk, or at any rate intoxicated, judging by his face in the mirror. That was when someone tapped Lee on the shoulder, causing him to realize that the girl had been there all along, lurking in the dark. They grinned at each other. His impulse was to jump on top of her while the band was playing; instead he pulled out his new wallet and showed it to her.

  “Oh!” she said. “You didn’t steal that, did you?”

  “Sure.”

  “You’re so bad. What are we going to do with you?”

  She was not as indignant as she might have been. Suddenly, recognizing that he was talking face to face with a ninth grader, he began to tremble.

  “I didn’t steal as much as Cecil!”

  “Well, I reckon not! Anyway, I won’t tell.”

  There was no further question now, but that she, too, had some evil in her, and it was sparkling in her eyes. Further, she had put on her saffron braided uniform, giving her a look that was both military and yet girlish at one and the same time.

  “I don’t have a reed,” he said.

  “Poor thing. What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. Get into trouble, I guess.”

  “You’re always getting into trouble, aren’t you?”

  It was true. Close to tears, Lee nodded and gazed off into a crowd of moribund adults sitting about in a coffee shop. The bus meanwhile was running down an alley inside the city of Tuscaloosa, making loud music wherever they went.

  The hall, when they came to it, looked a great deal to him like a photograph of General Washington’s home in Mount Vernon. With his hair standing up on ends and his nerves about ready to finish him off, he exited the bus with a bored expression and fell into Cecil’s shadow. It bothered him that another band, bigger than his own, was just now leaving the place in a spirit of glee, as if they had won the blue ribbon already and were carrying it home. They passed in silence, which is to say until the two opposing squads of woodwinds encountered each other on the sidewalk. He heard a snide comment coming from the bassoonist, a large boy with red hair and a face like a northern Yankee’s. Lee waited.

  “Y’all might just as well go on home,” this boy announced, planting himself in the middle of the walk. “Shit, we’ve already won all the prizes.”

  “Ha, ha, ha,” Preston said. “You don’t have any idea!”

  “What’d you say?”

  “Idea.”

  “Oh, leave him alone,” said one of the girls. (Always trying to make peace, girls were, it seemed to Lee.) “Anyway, it don’t matter.”

  “Don’t matter? Don’t matter? You heard what he said!”

  By now the two bands were bogged down halfway between the building and the highway. Preston wanted an end to it.

  “I guess we’ll just have to see about that,” he said.

  “You bet we’ll see! Shit, you people couldn’t play your way out of a wet paper bag!”

  “What’d you say?”

  “Bag.”

  “Okay, that does it. Just wait right here, okay? Will you?”

  “Sure! What’cha going to do, go get somebody else?”

  Cecil was near to the head of the line. Leaving him in reserve, Lee continued on to Reese and tugged at his belt, getting his attention.

  “He insulted us,” Lee said, stuttering. “Said we couldn’t play our way out of a wet paper bag!”

  “Who?”

  “Guy over there. See him?”

  “That one?”

  “Yeah, that’s it! Said we don’t know how to play!”

  He groaned wearily, Reese, but then disaggregated his arm from the majorette’s and began to follow Lee. Lee had always appreciated the way he would march up to people, first spitting on the ground and then going up to within half a foot of the person.

  “You got something you want to say?”

  The Yankee took on a pinched expression. “I was talking to him.”

  “Talk to me.”

  Several things now began to happen: first, the girls had continued toward the building and would not look back; two, Reese’s left hand was opening and shutting, sometimes forming a fist and sometimes looking like a spatula; three, Lee was saying, “Hit him! You can do it!”; and four, the bandleader was working his way toward them.

  The auditorium itself was capacious and had many green-covered seats in it. Lee counted somewhere between five hundred and a thousand people in it, most of them musicians from other schools. One last time he searched for a reed, looking beneath the upholstery in the little padded suitcase that held his horn. He needed to urinate, a concomitant of having very soon to go up on stage without a reed. His last consolation—that the band currently on stage was worse than his own. Bending nearer, he could detect certain musical derelictions in the performance, as also in the rather tawdry uniforms that tended to blur any distinction between the boys and girls. As t
o the conductor—(Lee wanted to laugh)—he was a frightened-looking little man in glasses, the sort his own teacher could have destroyed with a single blow.

  “Not very good, are they?” said Lee to the boy next to him, a pale individual supposed to be an oboist, also in glasses.

  The boy never answered, wherefore Lee turned to his left, finding there that same Mildred Weston who abominated the sight of him.

  “Not very good, are they?” he submitted.

  Mildred never answered, not until several seconds had gone by.

  “Are you going to talk? Or listen?”

  “Talk.”

  “Then go sit somewhere else.”

  Lee never moved. In the meantime Steve was blowing silently into his fist, preparing for his solo as Lee supposed. Himself, he had more lief to forfeit one arm and one leg respectively than stand up in front of a mass of ungrateful people while striving to make music on a nonfunctioning clarinet. Just then, through the open doors, a new orchestra began to file inside, this one with a harpist in a snow-white toga. He loved her. Sadly, she was being followed and proceeded by scads of crude-looking boys, trombonists and the like, with scuff marks on them. A lily among wiregrass, she seemed to him, reminding him of the sad fate that lay in wait for women and girls.

  Followed then a certain interval, more or less, during which a violin quartet went up on stage and played the sort of music appropriate to that instrument. Lee, focusing on the harpist, perceived how her hair had been done up in a mass of curls that rested lightly on her collar, her neck, and still other curls. As to her underlying personality, he could determine only so much from her profile, but what he did determine looked satisfactory to him, certainly. That was when the quartet suddenly stood up and waited for the applause, which was thin and seemed to come from far away. Soon, within thirty seconds or less, his own organization would rise and walk toward the stage.

  Having arisen, Lee hurried forward and fell in behind Cecil. His habit, Cecil’s, was to carry his trumpet like a football where no one could get at it. Lee spoke up loud and clear, getting the boy’s attention: “Well, I guess this is it.”

  “Yup.”

  “I doubt we’ll win anything.”