Give Us a Kiss: A Novel (18 page)

Anglin said, “Lordy, girl, whenever’d you roll your first joint, huh?”

Big Annie gave him a wink.

“I don’t recall,” she said. Her tone was just a li’l bit larded with pride. “At Freedom Hall, up in K.C., whenever it was the MC5 played there. Ever hear of them? Back in those days.”

Smoke crouched forward, held some fire to the joint, and Big Annie inhaled, nodding.

But—that dog! The dog seemed berserk, almost, yanking his chain and howling. Me and Niagra crossed glances, then sidled over to the open cabin doorway. It was hard to see much. Anglin had taken the smoke, had a suck, and said, “Oh, yeah, this’ll fetch the price.”

That’s when the shadows moved down by the barn, shadows doing various styles of crouching, stooping, but moving. I saw that long hair fly out from a dark form, a silhouette of vulture wings across the dirt yard.

“Get in the truck,” I told Niagra, then turned to Anglin. “Say, Dave?” Anglin’s face shifted some at my surly vocal pitch. “That girl out there, with all the hair?”

“My niece, on the wife’s side—what about her?”

“She needs a haircut.”

The ladystinger, it just bloomed into my hand, and I took casual aim at Anglin, who just stood there, joint in his mouth, looking like he was suddenly having to hear the
exact joke
he’d wanted to tell. I shot him somewhere around the kneecap, and blood and blue jean tufts, threads, really, flew. He fell forward, hurt leg blown straight back, and thudded on his chest.

“Hey!” Big Annie shouted. “Hey, hey, hey!”

“They’re out there,” I told them. “Dollys.”

26

BLOOD ON BLOOD

SMOKE AND ME leaked a blood trail. We’d both been punched open while sliding down from that dirt road to the gully. They’d gotten too close to us. Things happened so quickly—Dollys moving this way, that way, Tuffy the dog howling on his leash. I was still hearing Anglin’s fingers break, a pop like shingles snapping, from when he’d reached for his pistol, blood gurgling from around his knee, but Smoke reached him first. Anglin said some shit about Bunk, Bunk Dolly, and did we think they were all stupid, or what? Smoke treated Anglin’s fingers like celery stalks to arrange around a bowl of dip, and the man screamed in a truly memorable manner. I thought about killing him, but I thought too long, then the chance of it was gone.

Their numbers were just a guess—three, I reckon, and that damned dog. They’d sprayed us with shot up on the dirt road, birdshot or some such, certainly not buckshot or else the Redmond line would’ve ended, most likely, in the wet muck of that dark gully.

Smoke and me slammed ourselves into the thicket beyond the gully. We hurled our bodies into the brush and tangle of
limbs and rocks. Springer and the Dolly thug puppies were on the high road, shouting and chambering rounds. Their car sat there, steam rising from the hood, at least one tire flat, and the headlight Smoke and me both missed still shining.

I hugged the ground, put my nose in the dirt. I felt that my breathing was loud, amplified by tension, and might be a giveaway, even so far up as the road. My left haunch hurt, a bevy of stings, and I ran my hand along there and came back with blood.

Springer stood on the road, the metal thing over his nose I’d busted for him shining; I saw him quite clearly, and that damned Tuffy jumped and strained at his leash, eager to track us and eat us.

I’d shot off all my bullets.

I guess I knew this was
the
night, that long grisly night my reckless soul and sensibility have been haunting me, just fucking
haunting
me, to find and live out since practically the toddler stage.

The stink-cheese moon didn’t help us any to hide. Smoke had been hurt worse than me. The shotgun spray caught him all around and about his right armpit. The meat of his biceps looked ground, ready to pattie and fry. Even in the night I could see blood sliding down his arm to his fist.

Between us we’d chummed enough blood on the night wind that even I, with mere human capacity, could smell it, and any ol’ worthless dog would, too, and track us in under a minute.

We’d come out of Anglin’s cabin blasting away, as in a legendary moment from our ancestors’ lives. That girl with the hair, the hair and the dirt bike, zoomed ahead of us. I
believe she intended to lock the gate between the oak stumps, cage us in. But Niagra got the truck rolling along the red rut and caught up to the girl. She goosed the truck into the rear wheels of the dirt bike, and shoved the girl ass-over-tea-kettle ahead of us and into a giant shrub. The shrub caught the girl in its tangle, and the headlights made a picture of her, meshed in the limbs, four feet above ground, held there like a ritual offering to some potent god or other.

On down that dirt road, a road I don’t know the name of, me and Smoke told Niagra to let us hop out. Niagra screamed, “Did I kill her? Huh? Did I just kill someone?” I hadn’t an answer. Smoke said, “Get the truck to Panda’s. Stash it in the garage—you’ve got to get that load away from here!”

The ladies split, and I’d say we slowed the Dollys, sure enough.

Smoke scooted under the low branches, over to me. There were blood spots misted on his cheek, around his eyes. He leaned his face to mine, put his lips to my ear. His beard tickled.

“How’re you set, baby bro?”

“No more bullets.”

“Fuck this shit, anyhow.”

“I got shot in the ass.”

“I ain’t dying on my knees.”

And then I felt my brother’s hand, and I reached over and took hold of it. We held hands that way for a minute or so. The Dollys were shouting their version of our near futures at us, which I didn’t need to hear. The hand-holding offered comfort, as a last cigarette does, maybe, while the firing squad loads.

I heard Tuffy before I saw him, and when I saw him he was right on us. Up close, I’d say his heritage included a mastiff, and maybe a bluetick, something like that. He howled around our legs, jumped and snapped, and I kicked at him and he clamped onto my ankle. My scream made us a target.

I pulled my leg high, and that pulled Tuffy close, and I reached a hand under his jowls, and choked him. As my grip tightened his jaw relaxed, fell away from my ankle. The sounds he made will hang with me. I rolled him onto his back, put both hands to his throat. He beat at me with his paws, scratched me on the chest, along my chin and cheek. I put my body weight to work, dropped both knees to his belly, and squeezed my hands.

Shots were fired, and leaves gave off that sound, the one of rain in a gust. To be hunted like wild boars by dogs and Dollys in the forest where we’d been born—it seemed so right!

Tuffy’s tongue lolled from the side of his mouth, his paws still pawing but with no vigor, and I heard bones pop.

I fell away.

His paws sort of jerked again, then he was still and limp.

I started to cry, just blubber and bubble.

“I’m a damned
dog
killer, now!”

“Shh.”

My ankle felt like, like—a dog had bit it.

Smoke set off up the hill, one arm flopping, the other dangling the shotgun, moving slow and hesitantly but keeping his profile below the ridgeline. I copied him in route and style. The muscles in my hurt ass seemed to waffle, spasm, I guess, when I strained over logs or rocks or ruts.

We could hear the Dollys, on this side of the gully now, beating noisily in the woods like they were on safari, trying to flush beasts both stupid and wounded.

Big bro led up the slope and to the flank, away from the sounds of our hunters. Summer weeds broke beneath our feet, and green smells and bugs filled the air. We came to a clear-cut, an open zone, and that moonlight, in that bad-cheese shade, gave our skin and blood and faces the tint of olden pictures.

“Hush your cryin’,” Smoke whispered.

His tone was harsh.

I went to his side, ripped his shirt from him. His arm was all open and like a glob. I twisted the shirt around the bad section and knotted it.

“That dog, that got to me,” I said.

Over the ridge, maybe two miles distant, we could see the glow of town rising to the sky.

“Let’s split,” he said. “I’ll cut toward town, you head toward Big Annie’s. We need wheels, Doyle. You get yours, find me at Panda’s.”

I had no chance to respond, really. We hugged, and off he went, into the thick woods. I watched my brother’s back until it disappeared.

I stood there a moment, my ass hurtin’ and all these crazy comments filled my head. Stuff for Imaru, I guess.

Then I lit out, guessing for direction, but I made good time.

Not long after we split, the night cracked with gunfire, back behind me, and the sounds circled in the hills so I couldn’t be sure where they came from, though I
was
sure what they likely meant.

Uncontrollable blubbers and bubbles.

27

CALL THE TUNE

THEY ALL RAISED their voices at me: Imaru this! Imaru that! Imaru will! Imaru must!

Or, could be, it was just nerves, panic, the bedlam of sudden sorrow.

I hit Gum Creek kind of fast and the Volvo bounced angrily. I kept the headlights on, but seeing the rocks didn’t smooth them any. I feared ambush on the main road. The Volvo jostled and shimmied and rose and fell across the dry white roughness of the creek bed. My head thumped the roof, my butt felt the pain.

I drove on beyond the money garden a piece, kept on until Gum Creek was about to become the Howl River. I steered up the bank, but it was too steep, and I ruined a headlight against a willow sapling. I backed up and got a better run at the bank and churned the tires and booted the gas pedal and, finally, basically grated the Volvo through the dirt and debris. That cost me the muffler, but I crested onto clear ground, the back lawn of Tararum.

The car had acquired a tilt, and an angle. It didn’t go exactly where aimed anymore, but still traveled more or less
toward the target, only by a challenging sort of oblique flank trajectory.

At the cupola I noted the narrow walkway that wended elegantly between the trees and back up to the big house, the drumstick palace. I was on my own ground, I guess, according to those laws more ancient than law books. The Volvo fit on the path.

The unmuffled engine and the one walleyed headlight announced my presence, and as I neared Tararum I saw that eight or ten esteemed citizens in leisure togs had gathered to observe. It was midnight on Saturday, and some networking amongst the finer element was going on. I made an effort to not bust any statues, even in my grief. I skirted the swimming pool and clipped a table, just a li’l ol’ patio table, and sent several glassy objects crashing. My speed was down to a prudent level.

Sam T. Byrum himself stepped in front of the car and I hit the brake. Byrum was a fairly large, regal dude. He dressed spiffy and carried himself like a natural-born champ. The kind of man I always consider whipping, but seldom get a fair chance at.

“What in the motherfucking hell do you think you’re doin’?”

I leaned my head out the window. Several of Byrum’s guests were saying things along the lines of idiot, white-trash fool, the usual salutations. The car roared too loudly for me to hear all.

“Well, ain’t this Morningside Drive?”

“Morningside—you drunk son of a bitch.”

“Oh, shit, now, hoss,” I said, and pointed toward a big-ass tier of fancily trimmed and styled shrubs. “Must be that there’s it.”

I cut the wheel and punched the gas. The shrubs weren’t that stout. They fainted at the first push and folded under the Volvo like an upstairs maid to a randy Rockefeller.

I carry a bunch of anger with me. Who I carry it for rotates.

A couple of long-stemmed glasses bounded off the rear window.

I departed via the main gate, the car steering badly, moving sort of bug-fashion. Vapors wisped from the hood.

I was born for this.

Again, I mean.

The vapors had become a cloud by the time I pulled into Panda’s front yard. I crossed the yard to the door and spooked a cat, I think, and it scampered toward the graveyard. The shades were drawn, but the lights were on. A burned smell from the Volvo trailed me, and I could hear a radio playing from someone’s screened porch.

I let myself in, and they were all in the living room. Big Annie and Niagra sat on the arms of the couch, too pent-up to relax. The TV set blared
Saturday Night Live,
Steve Martin hosting, I think. Panda had a cigar in hand. His blackthorn cane rested between his knees. On the coffee table there was a platter, and on it were saltine crackers and pickled pigs’ feet. Only one of the pig’s feet had been eaten. The others lay there, pale and glistening in their own jelly. They caught my eye. I had to stare at them for a few seconds.

“Maybe you’ll tell me,” Panda said to me. “What the hell is goin’ on? These gals are vague. Mighty vague.”

“It ain’t good,” I said.

I shook my head, hard, and looked away from those pigs’ feet, that jelly stuff.

“I need an answer, boy. I been polite for over an hour. I laid out a spread of snacks, there, and I’ve been hospitable and patient—but no more.”

“Your face,” Niagra said. “Doyle—you’re all clawed to hell!”

She hustled to me, we hugged. I guess her hand slipped below the belt. She felt blood. She turned and held her bloody hand toward her mother, her mouth open in alarm.

“I caught a shot,” I said.

Big Annie’s face wrecked. The features mangled.

She said, “Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no—Smoke?”

Big bro’s name, raised in this fashion, brought Panda to his feet. He leaned on his cane and got in my face. His eyes, those blue, mean and dauntless fucking eyes, were all over me. I tried not looking into them, I tried scanning the photos on the wall, I tried to see, really see, the floral patterns in the faded wallpaper.

No use.

Our eyes met, and I couldn’t handle the potency. Even as we stared at each other I began to cry. The muscles in my hurt ass spasmed, and I just went to bawling. I let myself fall to the floor.

Big Annie shrieked, then Niagra chimed in.