Give Us a Kiss: A Novel (12 page)

At the Rocky Drop cliff she paused to tease her audience. She crouched to stretch the muscles of her legs, ass toward water, then stood and raised her arms and heaved her chest with big sucks of air. All eyes on her, she posed on the rock. She waved to me and Damned Spot and said, “For you, baby.”

Her dive met the standards of poetics: style, form, execution, and significance. She sprang way out from the cliff, as in a lover’s leap, spun once, briefly assumed the swan, then entered the water like a drop, making hardly a splash except with the crowd.

17

SPOT THE SILICONE

FOR SUPPER WE grilled burgers on the deck, as the house was too hotted up to sit in. By dusk the window fans had blown the heat yonder, and the cooler evening air allowed for sitting inside, with only light sweating. The whole gang sat in front of the tube to watch videos the ladies had rented off the one-dollar rack at Pritchard’s on the square.

I fetched ice in a plastic bag for Niagra, who’d banged her head on the bottom rocks with her last beautiful dive at Rocky Drop. She had a bruise and a slight break in the skin near the hairline above her forehead. She sat on the couch, near the fan, and held the bag in place.

The flick was something silly, but it took place on a gorgeous beach somewhere in the beach-bearing portion of our nation. Some dweeb had inherited a Coney Dog stand near a boardwalk, and he and the other youngsters hit on the notion of using female pulchritude to market weenies. The gals involved as a sales force donned thongs and frequently less when a big sales day led to sandy frolics of success as the sun set.

It was watchable.

During the plot development scenes, when the banker threatens to foreclose if he doesn’t get a balloon payment by Friday, and the rich Arab oil-ghoul tries to buy the dweeb out because he reckons as owner he’d get to despoil the sales force, my thoughts wandered. A new book was starting to talk to me, and it wasn’t about The Hyena, but Imaru. A long novel of Imaru, and when we harvested that money garden I’d be in the position to take the time and write it. The opening was finding shape as a scene of the Big Bang, Imaru as an atom, a speck, then a newt. Yeah, it’d surely be the longest novel I’d written, by far.

“Those ain’t real!” Niagra said. She took the ice from her head and sat forward. “Fakers!”

“No shit, hon,” Big Annie said. “Those there are factory titties.”

“The lack of sincerity!”

“I know big tits, and they don’t behave like that.”

“Fake tits, fake faces—fake acting!”

The gals on screen did have breasts that displayed a haughty indifference to the laws of gravity. Thirty-eight D’s that don’t wobble or droop, real feats of bosom engineering.

“So what,” Smoke said as he lit a doobie. “Less I’m silly I believe these babes are gonna carry the day for the weenie stand.”

But Niagra had a total investment of dreams in that nineteen-inch screen, and had standards of expectation. Truly, I believe she wanted to live there, in the tube, on a screen that was smaller than actual life but so much nearer to rapture in terms of scenery and plot potential. Feature films
would rate even better, as then even her nostrils would be larger than a filled seat in the audience.

“See here,” Big Annie said. She left her chair. “Watch my tits.” She settled to the floor, laid on her back, and her breasts dove toward her armpits like rabbits into holes. “These mamas are real—and that’s how they really behave!”

“Co-rrect,” Niagra said. Her face had flushed pink from sunshine and indignation. I could see she actually was angry at those thespians who’d opted for implants. “It’s fuckin’ disgustin’!”

In her anger and use of foul language, Niagra was still endearing, like an angel telling fart jokes.

I tried to help.

“Those, there, the gal in blue, those are silicone.”

The whole flick got critiqued as to the use of breasts as mise-en-scène. The ladies came up with rather harsh denunciations. Occasionally an actress rated a grudging “Well, maybe. Hard to tell about those.”

Smoke found the aesthetic arguments put forth by the ladies to be vengeful, moot, hot air.

“Hooters is hooters. Christ!”

His comment failed to extinguish the discussion of the real versus the fake. This concern had much larger dimensions to it than just breasts, and I vowed to myself not to ever be phony with Niagra if I could help it.

I guess I was the only one who heard the car door slam. The flick had reached the happy finale, the banker was eating crow, the Arab was under arrest for fraud, and the dweeb had matured into a mere nerd and found true love. I looked
out the window, then calmly said, “A Chevy full of strangers just pulled in.”

Smoke jumped up, peeked out.

Damned Spot had started barking.

“Where’s your pistol?”

“On the shelf.”

“Put it in your belt, baby bro. That’s Roy Don Springer and what looks to be a few Dollys.”

“If they ain’t Dollys,” I said, “they’re Dolly imitators.”

“What is that they’re carryin’?”

18

HEY, NEIGHBOR

MEAT,” SPRINGER SAID. He gestured at one of the two surly thug-puppy Dollys who accompanied him, the one carrying a foil-wrapped object. “Venison. Twitchin’ fresh.”

“Poached her today, huh,” Smoke said.

“No, no—not poached,” Springer said. He was pushing fifty, I’d guess, with red skin, a permanent flush. I recognized him from round and about, though I’d never known his name. The male pattern problem had worked over his head, and what hair he had left was long, uncombed, and black. He stood near five ten, thick limbed, with a pony keg of beer for a gut. His stag-cut shirt had blood smears on the chest and his jeans looked stained along the thighs, and these duds were all wrinkled and drooping and seemed to be straining to cling on to him. “This doe here, she had a accident, just one of those things.”

“Of course,” Smoke said. He was acting cordial but his eyes were watchful. “You were test-firin’ at a barn door or somethin’—”

“Right, right. That’s the story. Just a test shot at a apple
tree, but out she sprang from nowhere, leaped right into the slug.”

“An emotionally stressed doe,” Smoke said. “Clearly suicide.”

“That’s it,” Springer said, an exemplar of the shit-eatin’ grin on his face. “That’s surely the way it happened, Mr. Smoke.” The thug puppies murmured their amusement, and the one female in the group shyly lowered her face. “Only you know them pissant laws—they don’t understand how nature truly is.”

“There’s lots of deer suicides,” I said. “Especially out of season.”

“They’re high-strung that way, sure ’nough.” He gestured at the package. “Ed, hand that meat over to Miss Annie, there.”

When Big Annie accepted the package, she said, “You’d like to have us eat some evidence for you, would you?”

“Sure would, Miss Annie,” Springer said. Then he gestured at his entourage. “These are my cousins, Ed Dolly, there, and Milton Dolly over here.” Ed and Milton aped Springer’s dress in every particular, including the ill-fitting clothes. They were in their early twenties and wore their hair about like Elvis, only instead of ducktails they had manes that flopped to midback. A home dye-job had been done on both of them so they had the jet-black locks of The King. Their eyebrows were blond still, imparting a two-tone, forest-creature aspect to their looks. “And this is my woman, Shareena.”

Shareena said a cautious “Hey.” Ozarker women who had
men the breed of Springer tended to avoid eye contact with other men, especially strangers. If possible, when meeting strange men these gals would stand back until they just blended into the draperies. Shareena was scarce-hipped, with short brown hair, and looked to have lived about thirty-three rough and frightened years.

“Too bad we’ve eaten,” Niagra said. She was in the kitchen, behind me and Smoke, leaning on the fridge. There wasn’t much welcome in her body language, but she flashed a showstopper smile. “Not long ago, either.”

“Now that is too bad, Miss Niagra.” Springer was one of those down-home types that affects a faux courtly style, so overly respectful in manner as to signify no respect at all. He then turned to me, hand out. “Haven’t had the pleasure, sir—you’d be?”

“I’d be the Nobel Prize winner,” I said, “if I could. But so far I’m just ol’ Doyle Redmond.”

I shook his hand, and he surveyed me pretty thoroughly.

“Roy Don Springer, sir.”

“Charmed,” I said.

“Ah. Another of Mr. Panda’s kids, are you?”

“Grandson.”

“If you say so, Mr. Doyle.”

The thug puppies eased back onto the deck and drifted out of sight. They looked like the sort of fellas who might spend their idle hours dropping thumbtacks on beaches. I tried to see them over Springer’s shoulder, but I couldn’t.

“Let’s have a beer,” I said. Niagra gave me a sour glance at that. “It’s hot. A couple of cold ones on the deck.”

“I’ve got some rum in the car,” Springer said. “Shareena, how about gettin’ it?”

“Huh—no,” Shareena said. “Not that one-fifty-one rum.”

“Beer’s fine,” Smoke said. “We’ve got plenty.”

“That one-fifty-one,” Shareena said, her glance averted from her man, “it stirs up crazy stuff.”

Springer took a sudden step toward Shareena and she flinched, but before he could raise a hand to her Big Annie shoved a beer can at him. He took it, popped the tab.

“Beer it is,” he said. He raised the can. “To all the lovely ladies,” he toasted, then had a loud slurp.

A few beers down the line, we males stood on the deck, swatting mosquitoes, doing a sort of talk-talk macho sparring, each of us subtly implying that we were secretly ultradangerous dudes who ought not be fucked with by less than a regiment. I’d say Springer was winning on points, as his innuendos and veiled boasts had the flavor of fact, whereas Smoke and me’s came across as mere warnings.

The thug puppies sat under a tree, away from the deck, sharing a tiny pipe of herb, petting Damned Spot. They’d been all over the grounds, down to the barn, around the house, skulking here and there, claiming they had to take leaks.

That ladystinger in my belt felt sweet to me.

I stayed in front of Springer the whole time. The man had the fingernail on his pinkie grown out an inch or better into a permanent coke spoon accoutrement. I hadn’t seen many fingernail coke spoons for some time, as others who’d sported them had munched them down to the bloody quick in detox
years ago. But this tush hog, Springer, stuck with the fashion of his younger manhood, I suppose. I couldn’t imagine me, for instance, wearing a roach-clip necklace or a Grand Funk Railroad T-shirt ever again, but this cat had found a groove he never wanted to leave.

The females were in the kitchen, sitting at the table, playing Trivial Pursuit. Country folk love their board games, the kind that can eat up a whole evening and be called entertainment.

Springer had fetched the one-fifty-one rum himself. I held a brew, Smoke, too, and Springer held the rum in one fist and a beer in the other. Peepers and crickets had set up a constant racket, like an edgy soundtrack to our socializing.

Springer said, for some reason, “Pipe bombs really are simple, you unnerstan’? They only take a few minutes to patch together.”

“I wouldn’t know,” I said.

“They make nice booms.”

“Seems like it’d take more’n a few minutes.”

“The boom impresses whoever hears it.”

“To do it right, seems like it’d take more’n a few minutes.”

“But C-4, that’s what I wish I had.”

“That’s serious stuff, C-4.”

“You bet it is. It’ll blast a hole in somebody’s front yard so deep they won’t never testify.”

“I’d guess that’s right.”

“I could use about a case of it,” he said. “They’re callin’ another grand jury, I reckon.”

Smoke said, “I hadn’t heard that.”

“Well, I have.” The man was well along to drunk.

“Them laws—they think we do everything. Dollys, you
know. My mom’s a Dolly, and that’s it to these laws round here—I must be guilty of somethin’.” He staggered a little stagger. “Or everything.”

“Boo-hoo,” I went, and Smoke laughed, but he nudged me and gave me a kind of “Be cool, bro” look.

“Huh?”

“That they do,” I said.

“Yeah, Mr. Doyle. That could be what you said. It ain’t what I
heard,
but…”

The ladies began to loudly fuss over something in the kitchen. We all glanced that way. They weren’t mad so much as excited. Big Annie stood next to the screen door and called for Smoke.

“Smoke, come here.” She turned back to the other contestants and said, “He’ll know.” As Smoke approached the door she asked, “ ‘The Galloping Ghost,’ that was a white guy, wasn’t it? Not Jim Brown.”

I heard Smoke chuckle, then he went inside to referee.

He said something along the lines of, That dude was way back, back when there
were
white running backs.

“Pussy at play,” Springer said. “Gives me raunchy thoughts.”

He thought he was funny, thought I wouldn’t mind him molesting our women in his mind. I had begun to resent his slovenly swagger, his confidence that he was the apex predator, straw boss of the food chain.

“You ever fuck a woman wasn’t scared of you?” I asked. “Or shit-faced drunk?”

He gave me his number-one killer look, a slit-eyed, impervious stare.

“Just your mama,” he said. At my silence, he gave me a li’l
shove. “Now, go on and laugh, Mr. Doyle, we’s just a couple of fellers, funnin’ around.”

In therapy, the straight therapy I’d gone through before entering regression therapy and discovering Imaru, I’d recounted my memories of life in pathetic detail. The lady therapist who was interpreting my history back at me said that one constant seemed to be a need in me to confront or fight both institutions of society and individuals where I had slim or no chance of victory. That my raising had planted in me a need to stand sullen and defiant, especially against those forces that could crush me like a Bass Weejun on a nightcrawler.

This trait is a frequent pain producer but, by God, it keeps life simmering.