Flying Shoes (25 page)

Boudleaux said, “Right behind you.”

“Hey!” Sto’s muffled voice came from the john. “Who did this in the tub?”

Down on the sidewalk the ice was treacherous. Ernest wasn’t sure he could negotiate it, but if he could get to his car he could get his boots on. He grabbed a branch, which helped steady him, but it was slow going. When he reached the MG, he opened the trunk and exchanged his Cole Haan loafers for the hunting boots, which smelled vaguely of dog effluvia. The AK lay there. He might need it. One never knew. What if those frat bastards picked a fight again? He needed to be warm, but he felt that the heavy Danish officer’s coat detracted from the formal appearance he wished to present. It had an important feature. Inside was sewn a sturdy holster large enough to accommodate the AK, thanks to its ingenious folding feature designed by Peggy at Peggy’s Sew Nice Alterations. Peggy, happy to have something to do other than reconstruct prom and beauty review dresses for Hatchatalla Academy girls with disproportionate boob jobs, had installed the holster in exchange for a deer tenderloin from deep in Antenna’s carport freezer. He slipped the pet weapon inside the coat and slowly shuffled on to the JFC.

There was light on at the JFC; they must have gotten a generator. People scurried in and out, some forgetting to slow down when they hit the ice, busting their butts. A group stood talking excitedly in front of the sign painted on the building that said
do not stand here at any time for any reason
. Maybe Teever was around, and had something interesting going on. There was a major buzz in the air; Ernest could hear bits of conversation: “Water’s off, too.” “Sap was up already from that warm spell at Christmas; they were top-heavy.” Inside was like a used car lot, or the fun house at the Mississippi-Alabama State Fair. A few orange bulbs were strung around, not quite lighting the place. Back in the dark aisles people skulked with flashlights. A face would loom out of the dimness, smiling crookedly with panic and excitement, causing him to wonder if he’d done any mind stuff. At the checkout, he saw that they’d been foraging for things that normal people needed in an emergency: batteries, charcoal, matches, diapers, paper plates and cups, coolers. Kids were carrying suitcases of beer. A big damn picnic.

Outside again, he realized that even with his boots on he didn’t have enough traction. By the JFC Dumpster lay some pieces of chicken wire. He mashed a piece around each foot and stomped around. It was good. He needed to be
getting
some ass tonight, not busting it.

It was seriously cold.
It’s so cold
,
there ain’t six inches of peter on Main Street
, as Pothus always said. But he was comfortable. The Jägermeister antifreeze effect. The glaze of ice on everything was like the ice palace scene in Antenna’s favorite old movie,
Dr. Zhivago
. Against that romantic image or any others, Ernest swallowed another dexie. Ludes were nice but his was in the tub, and they had a way of taking the edge off. He liked an edge. He patted his left pocket for the Tanqueray, finishing it off and dropping the bottle. He would have to start over.

Plodding on, Ernest climbed over a few busted trees and dodged a falling limb, which came down slowly and surreally and shattered like glass. The broken trees were silhouetted, their fractured stumps raw and jagged against the icy glitter and the strange sky. It reminded Ernest of those peopleless German landscapes he had seen in the museum in Prague. “This is what the war will look like,” his refugee Croatian girlfriend had whispered. “Except that there will be people scurrying like rats, and the bodies of children.” He got a rush at the memory— his lovely woman with her pale, celadon skin. When she stood in front of the old brass lamp in his shabby room he could see through her amazing breasts.

He might be able to get Byrd to at least slip out for a cocktail, but how could he get in touch with her? Women were out there: frightened, cold, in a tizzy about the storm and needing the special kind of rescue that only Ernest could offer. It had been, what? Since New Year’s eve.
Last year
! Totally unacceptable. If he couldn’t find Byrd, he had half a mind to go up to Virginia and take care of that shit for her.

He decided to check out Dead Jerry’s and refuel. Normally, Dead Jerry’s was noisy with college kids shouting at each other above their loud retread music. The bar had actually hosted some epic live performances—Mose Allison, Junior Brown, David Lindley—but the frat boys just forked over the stiff covers to spin their lips the whole show complaining about the bands that
just did not know how to jam, man
. Ernest peered through the window. The AK banged against the glass. A candle glowed at a table far back in the cavelike room and he could make out the bartenders playing cards. They looked like the seven dwarfs: long hair, beards, toboggans. No sign of any patrons, let alone Mary Byrd or Teever. He went in anyway.

“This is quite the Disney moment,” he said. “Where’s Snow White?”

The bartenders turned, their glazed eyes half-concealed by drooping lids. “Hey now,” said one. “Oh, wow. A giant penguin,” said another. “What’s with your fucking
feet,
man?”

“It’s the latest,” said Ernest. “Y’all might think of getting some. Chicken wire goes pretty well with hippie couture. So can I get a drink or what?”

A dwarf whose red lips, moustache, and sparse soul patch made his face look like ladies’ private parts said, “Help yourself. Here’s the flashlight. We’ll take those bitchin’ tails in exchange for what you drink.” It was well known that when Ernest returned from Bosnia he’d gone on a bender and to pay his immense bar tab, he’d auctioned his costly Harris Tweed jacket. Some dick had bought it for forty dollars then traded it to Teever. “It don’t matter, bastards,” he’d said. “War is hell on a blazer.”

Ernest scanned the rows of bottles looking for the Kahlúa and vodka. A few White Russians were the way to go. Some nourishment, and the syrupy liquor would give him a little sugar buzz. Good: milk in the cooler with a yellow wedge of hoop cheese and a bowl of peeled eggs. He popped one of the eggs into his mouth and, not seeing a knife, bit off a few hits of cheese. Something else floating in the ice water caught his eye: a Baggie. Hoping for contraband he pulled it up and held it to the flashlight. A snout, claws, and dull little eyes looked back at him.

“Goddamn, y’all. What is
this
shit?” Ernest said.

“It bit Randy this morning,” said a dwarf. “On his thigh—very close to his stuff. We need to take it to the health department to see if it has rabies.”

“Jesus.” Ernest spat out the cheese and threw the Baggie back. To sterilize his mouth, he quickly slugged back some vodka, gargling far back in his throat. He built his White Russian and played with the flashlight. On the wall was the usual college bar décor—a Porky Pig cookie jar Ernest knew to be full of multicolored condoms, football gewgaws, cute happies the sorority girls had given the bartenders, a Shriner’s hat. What the fuck was Al Chymia? In Bosnia the bars were austere and strictly business. In a real bar nothing should distract you from your drink or your thoughts. Unless it was a woman. At a musty bar in Bratislava there had been an incredible medieval barmaid. For an extra five bucks she would lift one long breast from her dress and, giving a tug not unlike the pumping action on a gun, aim a thin stream of bluish milk into your slivovice, turning it a cloudy lavender. Plums and cream. For another five bucks she’d dip the breast in the drink and allow you to suck it off.

Ernest smoked a couple and polished off another drink. Awash in the milky sweetness of memory and White Russians, he grabbed a napkin and a pen off the bar and jotted down a quick Byronic ode,
Ode on a Gone Byrd.
He’d put it in the literary magazine. He loved Byron; a husband in the background never worried
him
, not even when the husband was his brother-in-law.

He felt fortified, but instead of the sugar rush he’d expected, he felt a sinking spell coming on. Rummaging around in his breast pocket, he found some blue pills. He couldn’t remember what they were, but it didn’t matter; they would alter the mood one way or another. Ernest shook them in his hand like dice, popping them in his mouth. He chewed them—time suddenly seemed of the essence—and washed them down with a swig of vodka. Deftly swiping the Kahlúa bottle, he tucked it into his cummerbund, hoping he wouldn’t fall and disembowel himself, or worse. He moved to the door. Party time. Backing out, Ernest drew the AK from his coat, snapping it in line. He fired at the Shriner’s hat and hustled quickly into the dark. The dwarfs screamed like girls.

Back on the dark street he worried that the bartenders might flag down some popo, but Hap West ought to have his hands full tonight with better things to do than harass decent partygoers who, after all, had the right to bear arms, especially on an unpredictable night like this. At the very least they’d confiscate the AK. At the worst—Christ, a night in the county jail. With no electricity. He needed to stay off the streets—but how? If anyone saw him creeping through a yard they’d think he was a burglar. A
looter
. He’d just have to keep low, stay on the trail, but not in the middle, off to the side, dodging into the brush at the approach of enemy vehicles. Okay. It could be done. He’d done it before.

The sky was weirder still—that bizarre orangeish glow from an unknown source. Transformers were blowing close by and in the distance and exploding like rockets. The fall of branches had slowed so that the crashes were more separate and distinct and more nerve-wracking. Even more like a war zone. Kalesija.

Ernest slunk along, tensely cradling his gun and thinking about Bosnia. He remembered a night like this. He had been trying to reach his room after drinking with Danish soldiers in the village café. Fighting had been going on intermittently all day a few streets away, near the river. But suddenly, it was in his street, all around him, and the few people who were out ran for cover. He had continued on stealthily through the village, ducking into doorways at every burst of gunfire. A young Serb with a shaved head, wearing only a sweatshirt, had toppled out of a darkened stoop, slumping to the street. Looking in the direction the shots had come from, Ernest had recognized one of the soldiers from the café, who’d been covering his ass. The soldier had looked Ernest in the eye but had given no sign of recognition and had moved off into the night. Ernest had crossed the street to the wounded man. A crummy knockoff Kalashnikov lay next to him. His stomach gaped through the shirt below Willy DeVille’s face and the guy’s heart pumped out his life across the icy, glittering cobbles.

Ernest shook off the gruesome memory. Just ahead were the silhouettes of several people standing around, looking like a group of meerkats. Damn. Too many sizes and shapes for it to be the police; a family? Each held something: Guns? Baseball bats? They turned to him, shining clublike flashlights. They moved up and with relief he recognized a familiar group of retarded guys from the local halfway house. What were they doing loose on a night like this? He recognized most of them, each of whom had a distinct public persona. There was a municipal worker guy, a suburban leisure guy in a powder-blue jumpsuit, a large set of cowboy twins, and a small, pin-headed black guy. Two more men he didn’t know; they had no act and might have been caretakers; sometimes it was hard to tell. Encountered individually the men were meek and amusing, but in a pack like this? Less like meerkats than surly bears startled out of hibernation by the storm. He readied his hand on the right places of the AK, but tried to hide it behind him. “Evening, gentlemen,” he said pleasantly. They moved in closer—too close. One said, working his hands, “Theter gun?” He had to move or shoot. He turned on the ice, heading back to another street. They let him go, calling out, “I like to have that suit!” and “Don’t go, mister! We fixin’ to make us a ice fort!”

He needed to get to that party. South Eleventh Street was iced but smooth—the city must have cleared it—and he pried the chicken wire from his feet. Without the booties but with the energy of the mystery pills and the grace of the White Russians, he found he was able to glide down the street. Only a few branches were in his way, and Ernest elegantly leapt over them. He gathered speed and confidence, an Olympic distance skater with the AK held behind his bent back, his right arm swinging in time to his strong, measured glides. He relaxed and held the gun before him and across his ribs, like a fur muff. The wooden stock of the AK was oddly warm in his hands and icy air and adrenaline burned his cheeks. The sky had finally cleared and stars twinkled gorgeously against it. Byrd, where the hell you at, girl? He didn’t want to rescue someone else. If he couldn’t find her tonight, if she’d gone up north, he was hatching another plan. She needed his help.

“It’s darker than Egypt,” he said to himself. All the broken pine and cedar made the air smell like Christmas. Lovely! He sailed down the long street. Hans Brinker on the canal, on his way to put a finger in, well, he hoped not a dyke.

He turned a corner onto the side street where the party was supposed to be. He saw the party house, softly lit, the last bungalow on a dead end. It looked like home, and he couldn’t wait to get out of the cold and confrontation. He could see a few people outside but they looked very small. Damn, he thought, this had better not be a platoon of mini-tards or something. It was three kids—little dudes frozen in place, arms held out stiffly from their sides by overbundling. They stared at the gun. Happy that he wasn’t going to be fucked with, he said, “What are you kids doing out here?” Maybe they were actually frozen. “I’m a nice guy. I’m not going to mess with you.” Ernest opened his long overcoat and stashed the gun in its droopy holster. He pulled out the Kahlúa, guzzled the last of it, and threw the bottle in the bushes where it shattered glassily.