Big Bad Love (15 page)

“Oh. You ain't got my letter from my lawyer yet?”

“No.”

“You'll get it tomorrow, probably. He mailed it yesterday. I hope you're ready to fork over your alimony payment of three hundred and twenty-five dollars.”

“Three twenty-five? I thought it was one seventy-five.”

“You get to pay the lawyer fees. He don't like waiting on his money. You're paying him a hundred and fifty for five months. Then you can go back to one seventy-five but after that I'm going to ask the judge to raise it back to three twenty-five since I ain't getting enough with two kids to feed and a house payment to make. You fucked anybody in here tonight?”

I just looked at her for a minute.

“Why does there have to be all this ugliness? Why do you have to act like this? Do you hate me that bad?”

“You goddamn right I do. And I'm gonna make you pay for every night I have to stay by myself.”

“I don't have that kind of money.”

“You better shit it then. Your mama said you'd been painting houses.”

“Well. Some.”

“Well, the kids ain't asked about you. I told them you left us. You better paint plenty of houses is all I can say.”

“I'm not working that much. I'm trying to write, too.”

“Ha! You better forget that shit. You're not gonna divorce
me and then think you're gonna get to do what you want to. Uh uh, honey. Me and these kids come first. You brought em into this world and you're gonna take care of em till they're twenty-one. And if that don't leave you enough time for your life, tough shit.”

“Why do you have to make me so mad? Why do you have to make me want to bust your face open for you?”

“I just wish you'd try it. I'd have your ass stuck in that jail so fast it'd make your head swim.”

“When do I get the kids?”

“When I get ready.”

“That's not what the judge said.”

“Well, you just let me know when you want em. They can be sick sometimes, you know. They
can
be out of town.”

All she wanted was for me to fall on my knees and grab her leg and beg to be taken back, so she'd have the enjoyment of turning me down. All she wanted was to be filled with hatred and bitterness for the rest of her life, and to turn her life into a secret and twisted and perverted thing that would torment her as badly as it would me. You read about these killings in the paper, between men and women, husbands and wives, ex-Adams and Eves? This is how they happen.

If I killed anybody that night, I didn't know anything about it the next morning. I woke hot, sweating, dizzy with the heat. I pulled down all the windows and blinds, turned on the air conditioner, and made some coffee. While it was
perking I picked up a clock and looked at it. 11:30. The mail had already run, surely. I put on a pair of blue jeans and slipped my feet into my house shoes and went down the driveway. There were three manila envelopes inside the mailbox. I went back to the house with the little mothers tucked under my arm.

I poured myself a cup of coffee and stirred some sugar into it, didn't have any milk. I lit my first cigarette. I was almost out of beer again, but I hoped Monroe would leave me alone.

The news was bad, but it was news I was used to. I sat down on the couch with my coffee and my cigarettes and an ashtray and the three stories. All I could remember was her being nasty to me, and something about a pine tree being hung under my wheel on the way home. I looked at my tennis shoes on the floor. They had mud and pine needles on them. I opened the first envelope.

It was a plain rejection slip from
Spanish Fly.
On it was scrawled:
Nice, try again.
And some scribbled initials. What? Nice but not nice enough to publish? Nice enough to publish but you've got two years' worth of stories already accepted? Explain yourself here. Somebody might be getting ready to hang himself over this shit. What about Breece D'J Pancake? What about John Kennedy Toole?
Nice, try again
might have driven them over the edge.

I was silently weeping. I had anger. I tore open the second envelope. I knew it would be more of the same. There was a long, neatly typed letter from the assistant editor of
Ivory Towers
that said (along with Dear Leon):

This story came so close to being accepted. Majority rules and many people who read it misinterpreted it. We have had an argument for two weeks here over it. “White Girls with Black Asses,” do you think you could tone that down a little bit, maybe change it to something else? Because the story doesn't really fit the title. And although it works wonderfully, what is the reason that Cleve beats his wife? He is always remorseful after he does it, enough to where he lashes himself to the tree in the lightning storm. Some people were revulsed by it. I must say it's one of the strongest things I've seen in a while. I would never tell you how to write. But maybe if you changed the title another magazine might be interested in it. We would love to see anything else you would care to send us. Please keep writing. Don't let this be disappointing to you. You have great talent, and with material like this you will need great stamina.

All warmest wishes,

Betti DeLoreo

The next question was, what did Betti DeLoreo, Betti Del Oreo, look like? Was she married? Was she seventy years old? Would she be willing to meet with me and give me some of her nooky on the strength of my work? They were uncertain questions, and my hands were shaking just to think that a letter might come back one day minus the story I'd sent off.

I opened the third envelope. It contained a story that had been going around for two years. There was a rejection slip from
Blue Lace
attached to it. It seemed that my material was
not right for them; however, it was no reflection on the work itself, and they were sorry they were unable to make individual comments on each story because of their small staff, et cetera.

I went to town to get some more beer. I hadn't been answering my phone, even though it had rung several times. I knew it might be the lawyer, and I knew it might be Monroe, wanting me to go back to work. I had enough money to tide me over for a little while, and I didn't want to go back to painting houses until I had to. I knew the alimony payment would have to be reckoned with before long, and that was making me nervous, and I needed something to drink while I worked. It seemed like the harder I tried, the worse things became. I wondered how other people dealt with it. I tried to bury myself in my work, forget my feelings and my shortcomings and my fears and the sick weak hangovers that accompanied a night of writing and drinking. In winter it would be too cold to paint houses and what would I do then for money? I could work for the rest of the summer and try to save a little, but there wouldn't be any way I could save enough to pay the alimony. If I couldn't pay it, she'd have me put in jail. But maybe I'd be able to write in jail. I hoped I would.

I went into a grocery store to get the beer. Usually I went to wherever it was the cheapest. I got beer, barbecued pigskins, Slim Jims to munch on while writing. Sometimes when the muse wouldn't hit I had to have something to do and
sometimes chewing worked. I had to have a cart to hold everything. When I got to the checkout I had to wait in line. I saw people looking at the things in my basket. I ignored them and looked instead at the covers of
Cosmopolitan
and
The National Enquirer.
Religious freaks had made them hide the
Playboys
and
Penthouse
s under the counters several years before. The whole world seemed to be trying to be decent, and I seemed an indecent thing in it. I wanted titties, lots of them. I wanted to hear ZZ Top play “Legs.” I wanted to live in a house on a hill with a swimming pool and a cool back porch where my friends could listen to music after I mixed them drinks. I looked at what I wanted and then I looked at what I had. There was a great gulf between the two of them. My clothes were stained with paint, and my fingernails were dirty. I wanted my children somehow without their mother. The woman rang up my purchases and they came to $29.42, including tax.

I knew I hadn't exhausted the possibilities in New York, but they had nearly exhausted me. I knew that publishers were men and women like men and women here, that they breathed, ate, read, got bored, watched TV My novel had been to so many offices it had become dog-eared, but I didn't want to retype it. That would have been about a two-week job, possibly for nothing.

I sat there looking at it. It was just a stack of typed paper an inch and a half thick. But I knew there was nothing wrong
with it. I knew that all it would take would be for the right person to see it. So far that hadn't happened.

I opened my copy of
Writer's Market
to the section that lists commercial publishers and closed my eyes. I flipped pages this way and that, flipped some more, flipped some backwards, then forward again. I stabbed a page with my finger, and then opened my eyes. I located a name, an address, and copied them onto a large manila envelope. I mailed it without hope or dread, without a covering letter, without retyping it. I just mailed it.

The letter from the lawyer came in the mail. It said (along with Dear Mr. Leon Barlow):

My fees for handling your divorce trial and proceedings amount to $750.00. I would like to be paid as soon as possible, of course, but Mrs. Barlow has informed me that you are in a state of near penury. Therefore we have worked out a schedule of payments by figuring $150/month along with your alimony payment. This will be deducted by me before turning over the remainder to Mrs. Barlow each month. Your first payment is due immediately and four more payments thereafter on the 1st of each month. Please remit your payment by return mail.

It was signed by that lawyer, I didn't read his name. I had forty-seven dollars to my name. I wondered if the jail still fed
only twice a day. The only time I had been a weekend guest of that establishment, they had.

My uncle came by to see me. He was the brother of my mother, the only one who seemed to understand what I was trying to do. He had no love of reading or even movies except westerns, but he admired will and determination in a person no matter the odds, and he liked to see a man try to rise above his station in life.

“What are you doing?” he said.

“Nothing. Drinking a beer. You want one?”

“I might drink one. You're not writing anything?”

“Yessir, I'm writing. I'm writing every day. I'm just not publishing anything.”

“Why not?”

“I don't know.”

“Is it good enough to publish?”

“Yes. It is.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I read the other stuff they publish.”

“You think it's politics?”

“I don't know what it is.”

“How you fixed for money?”

“Pretty bad. I've got to get out and find some work.”

“You want me to give you a cow? I can give you a couple of cows if it would help you.”

“What good's a couple of cows gonna do me?”

“Hell, dumb butt. Carry em to the sale and sell em. They're worth five or six hundred apiece.”

“I hate to take anything from you. Marilyn's trying to wring my balls dry with alimony, though.”

“I know it. She'll do it, too. Any time a man gets divorced in Missippi he's gonna pay through the nose. She letting you see the kids?”

“No. I haven't seen them a time.”

“Take her back to court.”

“I'd owe a lawyer some more money then.”

“She's fucking over you, though. You just gonna lay here and take it?”

“I don't seem to have much choice.”

My uncle got up and snorted. “There's always a choice.” He drained his beer and tossed the can into the trash. “Come over to the house tomorrow and we'll catch those cows, load em up, haul em to the sale. They ought to bring eleven or twelve hundred anyway.”

“What time?”

“Early. We need to be at New Albany by two.”

“I'll be there. Thanks, Uncle Lou.”

“Don't mention it.”

My uncle had so many cows he didn't know exactly how many he had. He had cows he'd never even seen before. He was forever trying to catch them and put tags in their ears. He had started with two cows in 1949 and now he had around
four or five hundred head, and they intermingled and bred unchecked and ran more or less wild on his place, through woods and pastures and a river bottom.

I showed up at his house wearing cowboy boots, jeans, and a long-sleeved shirt. My uncle had learned to rope and ride cutting horses after the war and he had taught me how. He had a brown gelding named Thunderbolt, who was aptly named. Riding him was like riding a fifteen-hundred-pound jackrabbit. He could start so fast that he could slide you backwards out of the saddle and then make a turn and bounce you off his hip as he was leaving. I had learned to ride him at first by holding onto the horn with both hands. And then I had learned to move with the horse. He was worth $18,000.

My uncle came out of the house. Thunderbolt and another horse were standing saddled in the yard.

“Why don't you write a western?” he said. “I bet you could sell a western.”

“I don't want to write westerns.”

“I bet you could sell one, though.”

He pointed to Thunderbolt and I climbed up on him. He got on the other horse and we left through the gate. We kicked them a little and then cantered down through the pasture with the wind in our hair. The cows that had been standing in the bottom suddenly raised their tails like deer and took off running. The horses' hooves drummed in the earth. Clods of black dirt and grass were torn loose and kicked into the air behind us. Uncle Lou started swinging his rope. Most of the cows had horns, and some had Brahma blood. All of them were heavy and muscular and mean-tempered.
What I would have given for my little boy to be in the saddle with me.