Empty Pockets (19 page)

“How old are you?”

“Six.”

“Lemme explain it to you,” the storekeeper said. “People like you don't know the history of the South. After the war them niggras, or colored folk, whatever you want to call 'em, was as bad as could be. Hell, they was rapin' 'n' lootin' 'n' killin', getting all big headed, causing the worst of their own troubles. Now that's how the Ku Klux Klan rose up. Keep 'em from taking everything, see.”

Jack glanced over at the little boy, who was staring back at him. The other man, sitting back in the shadows, said, “Why you lookin' at my boy?”

“I'm not,” Jack said.

He took out five quarters and laid them on the counter, pushing them to the old man.

“You know why niggras have big nostrils?” the little man said.

Jack didn't answer.

“'Cause they got big fingers,” he said, laughing.

Jack took the apples and the Coke, glanced back at the two men and the little boy, and walked outside.

Far off across the road, rain was slashing down into a hillside of trees. The rain was blue gray with sunlight at the edges. He sat down on the bench and watched it lashing the trees in marching columns of shifting smoke, leaving everything behind a bright, gleaming green. He put the apples on the bench. The Coke bottle was cold from being in the icy water of the metal cooler and he pressed it against his temples and cheeks, then the sides of his neck, before drinking it.

He could hear the same voices coming from inside, but he wasn't listening to what they were saying. He didn't care what they were saying. He took the Coke down in several long, smooth swallows, feeling the burn in his nostrils and throat.

There was an open wood box by the doorway half-filled with empty pop bottles and he got up and put the bottle in one of the slots, then walked back and picked up the apples, taking them with him out into the heat, tucking them inside the duffel, and got on the bike, thinking how quickly the sky had clouded over.

He rode out onto the roadway, going up a slight hill along a split-log pine fence. Far up the hillside a band of horses stood side by side, not moving, nose to tail, tail to nose, heads drooped to the ground, not feeding, the heat too heavy for their bones.

As Jack came closer, the air extremely heavy now, he expected them to move or to look up, but they did neither, just stayed as they were. And suddenly the rain broke, silver sheets drenching everything, Jack could barely see, soaking everything through and through, everything immediately cool, three days and nights of steadily numbing heat gone in an instant, all the horses suddenly whirling, two sprinting off in the sheer joy of the rain, the bay revealing itself as a thoroughbred racing full out, rapidly away down the fence line, a brown blur washing out in the silver.

And just as suddenly the rain was gone, and Jack rode until dusk, sometimes walking, sometimes coasting, seeing nothing save the second-growth pine mixed with the deciduous trees and the thick tangles of brush. The pine was patched with blister rust, and once Jack thought he saw a snake vanishing into a dry clump of grasses and he didn't like the feeling it gave him.

That night he slept in an empty farmhouse on top of a broken kitchen table, hanging the duffel up on a nail so nothing could crawl into it, then taking his jeans off and folding them into a pillow. For a time he sat up in the dark, eating an apple, stretching his legs out, trying to get comfortable.

Jack lay down on his side. He was really, really tired. His foot really ached.

He wondered who it was that had lived in this house. The woods were thick right at the doorstep. It wasn't what was called a shotgun shack, one room with two doors, the front and back, so small that you could shoot a shotgun straight through it and not hit anything inside. There was still a faint dusty smell of kerosene, or was it coal oil? It had three rooms, the kitchen, the larger room, and a small room that must have been where they all slept. Since it had a kitchen, probably there were women and children who lived here as well as men.

A night bird called from somewhere, and then another and, closing his eyes, there weren't any mosquitoes, and in the morning when Jack woke he saw he hadn't turned at all. He was still on his left side, his legs bent under him, but they were so cramped he had to pound his thighs with his fists before he could straighten them out. Then he found he couldn't get his jeans on.

He took his pocketknife out and cut slits along the inseams, then slid his legs in.

He put his boots on and ate an apple and studied the map, seeing the road would take him almost into Meridian before veering off past the big highway into Jackson. He measured the distance he had come, it was already over a hundred miles, and then drank the last of his water and went outside with the bicycle and the duffel, finding a piece of shingle on the ground.

He broke it with his hands and went back inside, looking for a coat hanger or a bit of wire.

There wasn't anything in the front room, and as he walked back into the kitchen he saw a gray-and-black rattlesnake silently moving along the base of the kicked-in cabinets under the sink. It wasn't big, maybe a foot and a half in length, but thick and ugly.

Jack watched it for a moment.

It was going up into the cabinets.

He turned and went back outside. It wasn't rational, but he didn't want to fix the pedal now and, strapping the duffel onto the handlebars, he took the bike and pushed on out toward the road, going down the dirt track, watching carefully ahead into
the grass at the side of the ruts. There hadn't been any water in back in the well. The rusted pump handle hadn't worked. He'd dropped a rock inside the well, but only a stone sound came back. The snake was only trying to do what he had to do: get more water.

This idea of bicycling the back roads to Arkansas was really dumb. If it were cooler, it wouldn't be. Well, it wasn't cooler. He'd wanted to see the South. He was seeing it, all right, going about it as stupidly as he possibly could.

Calm down, he told himself. Just calm down.

Back on the bike, the air still warm, the sky everywhere a soft blue, his legs warming up, he felt a lot better, his foot not hurting that much. He took out an apple and began to eat it, but within a few miles heat lines began to rise off the asphalt, hovering in the distance, and the sky began turning white.

It was already hill country now, and he began walking the bike up each hill, then getting on and coasting the down slopes, the front wheel of the bike going into a wobble that threatened to wreck the bearings, not seeing anything, just feeling the heat and his own sweat, hearing the tires making the swishing sound.

He knew if he stopped his legs would cramp, but he had one apple left and he could eat it and for a while he'd be okay.

If the bicycle itself lasted.

Well, let it wreck itself, he thought. To keep on with the bicycle would be even dumber. He knew he couldn't take much more. He'd go until he heard a car coming, then he was going to quit and start hitchhiking again. He didn't care who was coming down the road.

Then he heard a car coming and pulled over and got off and waited. He couldn't see anything at first then saw a black car coming down around the curve of trees.

As it approached it slowed and went past, and then slowed again and began to stop, the taillights coming on, pulling over just below the next hill, dust coming up and powdering the car as it finally stopped and sat there, the engine pinging.

Heat lines shimmied off the hood.

Jack waited, holding on to the bike.

Behind the heat lines a large man in a white shirt and black slacks got out and stood by the door and called something out.

The man was hatless, and Jack called back, “Can't hear you.”

He started wheeling the bike down toward the man. Half-shielded by the car door, there was something wrong about the man as he stood there waiting.

“What did you say?” Jack called, closer to the car now, the engine still making that pinging sound.

“Don't make me say it again,” the man said, moving out from behind the car door.

“Say what again?”

“Ten bucks, boy.”

“Ten bucks?” Jack said, pushing the bike closer, seeing the man clearly now, a large man with gray hair combed sideways over a sweaty head, one brown eye that cast inward toward the nose, a silver crucifix dangling on a chain around a sweaty, double-chinned neck.

“Is that what you said? I thought you said something else.”

The man hesitated, “I said . . . I said I want to suck your cock.”

“You want to suck my cock?”

“Twenty dollars. I'll give you twenty dollars.”

“Sure,” Jack said, dropping the bike, doubling up his fists, moving fast toward the car. “You can suck it after I bust your goddamn, cross-eyed face!”

The man's eyes blinked and his face twisted and he turned and bolted, hurrying himself to get back in the car, hitting into the door, the door not closing, grinding the starter after the engine caught, crashing the gears, the door closing, a stream of dirty blue smoke spreading from under the bumper as the car
U
-turned and sped off back the way it came.

Jack watched it go.

Cicadas were whirring from everywhere in the woods.

It was weird that he hadn't noticed them before.

Jesus Christ, Jack thought, it's so goddamn hot. This fucking heat is going to kill me.

Walking back to the bike, he picked it up.

The droning mixed with the heat was starting to make him feel sick.

Slowly, he got back on the bike, starting to pedal up the long, gradual slope of the hill, every several seconds thinking, How much farther can I go, and, halfway up, had to get off and walk, unable to pump any longer.

He took out the apple, eating all of it, sucking on the seeds to keep moisture in his mouth, thinking I'll sit and rest, but there was no shade anywhere save off in the tangled thickets under the thousands of motionless trees.

Cicadas were whirring from everywhere.

No way was he going in there.

No other cars passed him at all, either coming or going.

All that existed was heat, the road, the thousands of trees, the thickets, the cicadas, the seeds in his mouth gone dry. He spat them out and just walked in the layers of heat, his body drenched in sweat.

He would need water soon.

He reached the top of the slope and got back on the bike and began coasting downhill, not braking, letting the bike go, the front wheel starting into its wobble, threatening to fly off as he hit the flat where he began furiously pedaling again to reach as much speed as he could to gain height onto this next hill coming up before getting off and walking again.

Funny how it was water you wanted. Nothing else.

He attacked three hills before he quit.

Going down this last long dry grade in the now crackling heat, the trees rushing by, he knew his legs were finished. There was no way he could turn around. He'd gone too far to go back. He'd just push the bike off to the side and just keep walking, but then it was easier to let the bike carry the duffel. What did he need the duffel for anyway? What was it carrying? Two
T
-shirts, a jacket, some socks, underwear, the map, the empty water bottle, some raisins?

The raisins. He'd forgotten about the raisins.

Jack stopped and took the duffel off, unclipping the snap from the brass eyelet, the metal singeing his fingers. He found the raisins and unwrapped them, the raisins half-melted together.

He heard another car coming and, looking up, saw a narrow red clay road going up into the woods and then a black-and-orange pickup truck appearing through some trees and then vanishing again, the engine growing louder all the time.

After a moment it came out along the road and turned onto the highway.

He stuck his thumb out.

It went by, dusty-looking, three white men inside.

He ate the raisins and picked up the bike again, strapping the duffel back on.

Jack walked along, wheeling the bike.

Around the curve was another hill.

Okay, he thought, this is it, the very last one. I'll do it. Walk up, coast the slope, then dump the bike. No one will pick me up if I have the bike.

Goddamn, Jack thought, I'm goddamn burning to death!

There were millions of cicadas sawing away as he walked. He didn't remember hearing them before. Of course he'd heard them before, heard that one long constant, unrelenting, endless drone. It was the heat. The goddamn heat was screwing up his head. His skin was burning. Now that he was listening he thought there were so many of them that the trees would begin lifting off the ground. He wiped his face. What was that thought? That their wings would lift up the trees?

Whose thoughts are these? he thought. Are these even your own thoughts? These aren't even your own thoughts. Just dump the bike.

Why don't you?

Jack kept moving, sweat dripping off his face, pacing slowly along the trees, not looking at anything.