No Birds Sing Here

by Daniel V. Meier Jr.

  “Now, wait a minute. I apologized, didn’t I? Now, I think that’s enough.”

  “Not for me, it isn’t.”

  A car flashed by, horn blaring, a dusty vortex boiling up where the car had momentarily left the pavement.

  “This is no place to discuss the race question,” Beckman insisted.

  Another car, coming from the opposite direction, swerved several times and, in a blast of blue-black smoke, roared around Malany’s Oldsmobile, its driver glaring and gesticulating.

  “That guy’s going to call the cops,” Beckman said.

  “Did he have a C.B.?” Hoss asked, looking around at the departing car, now partially shielded by a screen of dust and smoke.

  Malany, biting her lips pale, started off again. Hoss directed his attention to Beckman.

  “Where’d you learn a word like you used back there?”

  “Beckman thinks he’s a writer, obsessed with words. He’s drawn like Theseus into the labyrinth of their meanings. Right, Beckman?” Malany said.

  “Please, Malany. He’ll find out your position soon enough. Malany isn’t completely right. I’ve tried to use words that way as a writer, and maybe I have gotten lost in a labyrinth or two, but I also try to create words whenever I have the chance. It’s not easy.” Beckman glanced at Malany. “And she also reads other people’s books,” he added. Malany flinched but said nothing.

  “You been to college?” Hoss asked.

  “I didn’t finish,” Beckman said.

  “And you learned words like that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned. I guess there’s hope for all of us.”

  “I wouldn’t go so far as to say that, Hass,” Malany said, deliberately mispronouncing his name.

  “How about you there . . . Malany. You been to college?”

  Malany nodded.

  “Well then, that explains it.”

  “Explains what?”

  Silence.

  “Ah, why you can use them words, and why you’re so sure of yourself. College girls are always sure of themselves.”

  “Malany’s a poet, Hoss,” Beckman said.

  “That so? Well, how about that? Don’t read much poetry myself. In fact, haven’t read anything since high school. But from what I remember, it must take a special kind of person. Know what I mean?”

  “Her book is there beside you.”

  Hoss looked down. “This it?”

  “Yes,” Malany said.

  Hoss surveyed the cover and squinted at the title on the front.

  “Looks like somebody stepped on it.”

  “That happened at the last reading. The people were so anxious to get a copy that a few books were trampled in the rush,” Beckman said.

  “Damned if that don’t sound like the way to live,” Hoss said, opening the book, leafing through several pages, and stopping on a page in the middle of the book. He read the text with moving lips. His eyes moved slowly from word to word and occasionally searched for the next line. He closed the book and returned it to its corner of the car’s floor.

  “’Course I never did understand poetry. Round here, at least when I was a kid, if you were caught readin’ that stuff you got called a fag. I never really believed that boys who read poetry were fags but, you know, some of them acted faggy; limp-wristed, that kind of thang. My heroes was Elvis, Jimmy Dean, all them fast-livers. You never heard of them reading poetry. Guess that was the trouble, huh? The wrong kind of heroes. Shit, I could’a been slinging big words around, maybe writing books myself.”

  “Don’t feel bad, Hoss. Look where big words and college have gotten us,” Beckman said.

  “Hey, that’s right!” Hoss laughed. “I’d be no further than I am now. But then again, I had a buddy back in the service. He went on the GI Bill—studied some kind of engineering. Now he’s some kinda big shot over at Oak Ridge.”

  “The world always honors those who know its rules before it honors those who know its heart,” Malany said.

  “What does she mean by that?” Hoss asked.

  “She means that people with practical knowledge are considered more valuable; that is, what they can do is considered more important than what the artist does.”

  “Well, that only makes sense, don’t it?”

  Malany looked away in disgust.

  Hoss, seeing Malany’s reaction, quickly added, “What I mean is, artists are important too. But people got to eat first, don’t they? They got to clothe and shelter themselves, don’t they?”

  “That’s all utter and complete nonsense, Mr. Hoss. It is a question of what people think they need.”

  “Damn, boy, if she don’t talk crazy.”

  “She’s a pure idealist, Hoss. You see, she’s not supposed to care whether she eats or has a place to sleep or clothes to wear.”

  “No shit,” Hoss said, genuinely amazed.

  “It’s not difficult to understand, Hoss, but really very difficult to put into practice as Malany has. It takes a special kind of person to do it.”

  “Yeah,” Hoss said, looking at the back of Malany’s head. “I can see that. Well, if she’s one of them idealists, then what are you?” There was a demand in Hoss’s tone; not an angry demand, but one of urgency.

  “I don’t know,” Beckman said. “Sometimes I’m an idealist, other times I’m a materialist; but mostly, I simply don’t know.”

  “Hey, boy, that’s me,” Hoss said, excited. “Only I don’t know or give a damn all the time.” He laughed and slapped the back of the seat. “It’s the only way to be, ain’t it?”

  Beckman started to answer. He wanted to keep the conversation with Hoss rolling before it darted off into the rollicking, laughing, slap-happy nonsense chatter of the bored and misaligned. Before he could say anything, however, Hoss shouted for Malany to turn.

  They had entered the heavier traffic of the city of Nashville long before, and Beckman had not been paying attention to the road signs. He had completely forgotten, as he was sure Malany had, that Hoss wanted to buy clothes. Malany veered the car onto an exit, with all the energy of a last, desperate act of self-preservation.

  “Sorry to shake you up like that,” Hoss apologized. “But the turnoff came up on me so fast that I didn’t realize it. Damned if you ain’t pretty good behind the wheel.” Hoss patted her on the shoulder.

  Malany recoiled as though she had been touched by hot metal. “Why on earth did you make me leave the interstate?” she asked.

  “So I can go to the army-navy surplus store. You know, to buy some jeans. I can’t go to California in these.” He pointed to his clothes.

  “You’ll have to direct me. I’m lost.”

  “Don’t worry, Malany. I know this town inside and out, just straight down this street for a few blocks, and you’ll come to it.”

  Malany drove until the street terminated into a T intersection. “Hell, which way now?” she demanded.

  “Now wait a minute. I know where I’m at, just wait a minute.”

  Hoss put his hand to his forehead like a priest seized with intense prayer. Then, with the assuredness of a professional conjurer, said, “Turn right.”

  Malany did as instructed, throwing impatient, angry glances at Beckman. Beckman felt, for the first time, that bringing Hoss along may have been a mistake; and that Hoss, like some jesting court fool, was leading them into an inextricable vat of humanity.

  “Now turn left,” Hoss said.

  Malany did so at the moment the light changed to red. Halfway down the block and protruding slightly from the almost unbroken line of pawnshops, bargain stores, and porn shops, stood Lew’s Armie Navie Store.

  Malany parked the car under a large red, white, and blue sign done in the style of an American flag and bearing the warning Absolutely No Personal Checks Cashed and This Property Protected by Smith and Wesson.

  Hoss jumped out and stretched his body. Beckman started to follow, but Malany caught him by the arm.

  “Are you going in?”
she whispered with such vehemence that the words sounded like a single hiss.

  “I’m only curious. A would-be writer and thinker must be curious, don’t you agree?”

  “Not about this. It’s disgusting. He’s disgusting.” She flicked her head toward Hoss, who was heading toward the establishment entrance.

  “I don’t want to endure any more of him or his world.”

  “I want to go in, Malany. I’m curious, and stop acting like such a snob. That’s a privilege reserved for the non-poet class.”

  Malany loosened her grip, and Beckman pulled his arm away and stepped out of the car. Malany quickly leaned over and locked his door. She rolled the window up halfway, then, leaning into the opening, said, “Don’t be alarmed if I’m not here when you and ‘Igor’ return from shopping.”

  “Tolerance, Malany. Tol—”

  The window glass severed the word and the space between them, sealing Malany off in the private atmosphere of her Oldsmobile.

  Beckman followed Hoss into the “Army Navy” surplus store, hesitating briefly at the turnstile, which caught him at the level of his genitals. Beckman pushed against the bar with his hip, expecting to feel an electric shock. It flipped over with a hard machine clank, the other bar rotating behind him, banging against his other hip and pushing him into the retail area.

  Hoss was busy going through a stack of blue jeans, withdrawing the occasional pair and earnestly holding them up to his waist. Beckman wandered around, noticing that most of the clothing items were new and not generally of military quality. The only genuinely military clothes seemed to be in a pile of used and faded army fatigues.

  Several black teenagers with tasseled wool hats were looking through the boots. A short, nervous white man with a Prince Valiant haircut, wearing a shirt printed with sunbursts, stood behind the checkout counter.

  The counter was a large glass case containing what appeared to be an almost infinite variety of knives, the most prominent having blades of wavy chrome steel with imitation pearl handles. Others had blades curved or twisted in some ghastly manner. Next to that were rows of plastic Nazi helmets, plastic hand grenades and what appeared to be replica military rifles of World War I and World War II design.

  “He’p you with something, buddy?” the man behind the counter asked.

  “No thanks. I’m waiting for my friend.”

  The man looked past Beckman like a secret service agent scanning the crowd for a potential assassin. The two black teenagers came bouncing up to the counter, laughing too loudly at some private fun. They dropped a pair of boots on the counter.

  The man flinched. He avoided looking at them, but looked for a long time at the price tag. Beckman saw the man’s hand shaking while holding the price tag.

  “Just two days ago, I was robbed,” the man said after the black teenagers had left. He was suddenly friendly.

  “I’ve only been working here a month. The fella before me was robbed twice. Everyone that comes in here is starting to give me the willies.”

  He looked at the door. It was slowly closing behind the two black men.

  “I guess it’s just beginning to get to me, huh? Looking at a gun pointed at you, and you don’t know if the guy’s gonna use it or not. It makes you see things really different, and it seems so unfair—I mean, him having a gun and deciding whether or not you’re gonna live or die. Well, I’m ready next time.”

  The man’s voice became stronger. Then, with the speed of a magician’s coin trick, he held up a .45 caliber, M1911 pistol with faded bluing. The thing looked too heavy and massive for the man’s hand and seemed, after its sudden display, to overcome the man’s own strength as he slowly lowered it back below the counter.

  “I keep it on me all the time I’m away from here. I’ve been practicing too.” He pointed vigorously to the counter. “I can bring it out and fire it in less than two seconds flat.”

  “Have you ever really fired it?” Beckman asked.

  The man’s brow wrinkled. “No, not really. But don’t really have to until it becomes necessary, do I? Or it’s just a waste of money, ain’t it? Damn bullets cost nearly 75 cents apiece. But believe me, I don’t have the slightest bit of hesitancy about using it. Man’s got to defend hisself. It’s his right, ain’t it? One thing for sure, the police can’t do it.”

  The man seemed to relax but continued to watch Hoss. He stuffed the gun into his pants pocket, and Beckman imaginatively saw the man tugging desperately at the gun, which had caught on the edge of his pocket. That was always his problem as a kid playing cowboys and Indians, before the Christmas when he finally got the real leather police-type holster with the disappointing safety strap to hold the gun in. He had spent hours practicing his draw against the boy across the street, but the safety strap always seemed to interfere.

  It was his first real decision as a budding adult. The summer before the irreversible changes began to occur: hair began to grow on his body, his taste in food changed, girls excited him in strange ways. Cutting the strap off his real police holster meant not so much a denial, but a conscious decision against adult practicality, adult authority. Almost desperately, he chose childhood one last time before biology pulled him away forever.

  Beckman wanted to ask the cashier if he was afraid he might fumble, get the trigger caught in his pants—then the boy across the street says, “Bang, you’re dead.” And it will be the truth. But he didn’t ask. The man had made his decision about adulthood. Why should he interfere?

  Beckman still wanted to know, however, and he regretted again not having a fixed address so that the man could write and tell him what it was like to face another man in a real decision of life and death. There would be no falling dead act to reward the faster draw, no getting up again and demanding a rematch.

  Hoss had piled up two pair of jeans, an army fatigue jacket, two khaki shirts and a fishing hat with Budweiser labels covering it. The man busied himself ringing up each item, carefully double checking before he hit the keys. Hoss paid for the items, thanked the man, and started for the car wearing his new Budweiser hat. Beckman walked past the man. He felt the shock of an outer sphere of decay and doom enveloping him. Beckman said to the man that he hoped he would never have to use the gun. The man agreed but added, slapping his bulging pocket, that he was ready just in case.

  Malany had moved to the passenger’s seat, a clear indication that Beckman was to drive.

  “How can she stand it all closed up like that?” Hoss asked. “And listen,” he continued as Beckman reached for the driver’s door handle. “Why don’t I drive? I can get us out of this town and down the road to Memphis in no time.”

  “The limit’s fifty-five, Hoss.”

  “Oh, shit, I know that. Who don’t, and who cares? The cops in this state don’t enforce it.”

  Malany looked horrified at the prospect of Hoss driving.

  “Not!” was the only word Beckman heard of her protest.

  “Hey, whose car is this anyway?” Hoss asked.

  “Malany’s,” Beckman said.

  “Oh, well, I guess that makes her the Hoss then.”

  “Not exactly. Give her time, Hoss. She’s really all right and maybe even a little special.”

  Hoss grinned, apparently misinterpreting the comment.

  “Hoss, can’t you see she’s different and she wants, even likes it that way?”

  “Well,” Hoss continued grinning this time, pulling his Budweiser hat down over his eyes. “If you say so, buddy.” They were on their way again, Hoss changing into his new clothes, indifferent to the stares from passing cars. Malany, in a sudden flurry of thought, began writing without pause in her notebook. Beckman knew that they were on their way, really on their way now, emotionally committed. They were almost one-third of the way across the country, racing like a migrating bird toward warm climes where milk and honey flowed in abundance, rolling on hot tires, thumping like tight balloons on sections of the highway leading into Memphis.

  Beckman dreame
d of beautiful California girls clad in brief bikinis, beckoning to him from California beaches. Everywhere his dream turned there were white-topped mountains, sandy beaches, all the elements of a carefully composed billboard advertisement. Beckman allowed himself, regardless of how unreasonable, to enjoy this new vision. It was a fantastic extreme of what he felt to be most real, where self-murder was epidemic, and the sunlight often shone as yellow as a dingy light bulb. The reality was a trash can brimming with discarded humanity, but he held out hope for the beaches. Somewhere the fantasy had to touch the reality.

  Some went and preferred to stay, and not only people like him or Malany or Hoss, but real people with jobs, debts, and family who needed a clean place to spawn, people with a geography and family jewels. But could any place on earth offer what he and Malany and Hoss needed?

  “Malany,” Beckman blurted out. “What do you need?”

  Malany was thoughtful for a moment. “I don’t know. I suppose I need nothing.”

  “I need to take a piss,” Hoss said.

  “This gas station do?” Beckman said, turning into a self-service operation named GAS CITY.

  “Buddy, just a hole in the ground will do,” Hoss said.

  Beckman stopped next to one of the end pumps and started to get out. Hoss held him by the shoulder.

  “Wait here, I’ll get it,” Hoss said, scrambling out of the car and running slightly crouched, knees together, toward the men’s room.

  Malany, as usual, ignored him, then surprised Beckman by saying, “Let’s spend the night here. We all need a decent rest, and I have some friends here I would like to see.”

  “Okay, I could do with a rest. I don’t know what Hoss wants to do.”

  “Who cares?” Malany groaned.

  “Strangely enough, Malany, I do.”

  “Well, he’s your friend then and, I suppose, once you get used to him, he is easy to ignore.”

  Hoss was returning, smiling, and tipped his Budweiser hat at the teenage boy who was the sole operator of the place. Hoss switched a handle on the gas pump and started pumping gas into the car. Beckman heard only parts of what he was telling the attendant. It was something that sounded like how wonderful it was “just to be able to let it all go.”