God's Pocket - Pete Dexter (6 page)

Sportsman Park and Arlington didn't fit him at all.
In Chicago, it was like nobody gave a shit who they were when they
got around money, and he went east and got a job with Dow Chemical,
hauling poison. Mostly to Florida. They needed a lot of poison in
Florida.

He'd met Bird at Garden State, sitting in the
reserved seats in the clubhouse. Bird had been to every track in the
East, and he was interested in Mickey's work. "Listen,"
he'd said once, "they give you a mask or somethin', handlin' all
that shit?" Mickey hadn't thought of that. It was always
something.

Garden State was a good track, old and comfortable,
and he and Bird were there the day it burned down. They stood in the
parking lot and watched it go. Four hours later, in a bar across the
highway from the track, Bird told him about the meat business. They
had the place to themselves because it was full of smoke.

The Cadillac had moved up and was sitting on his ass
now, close enough so he could see the faces in the front seat. Bird
was still talking, the other man looked straight ahead.

They went by the state trooper at sixty-two miles an
hour, which should of been safe. He came out behind them though, and
Mickey felt himself go weak. His hands were shaking and the cop was
coming. So the kid had gone inside and made a call! Well, he was a
kid. The man with Bird had hit him, and he'd called the cops. He was
a kid. The Cadillac pulled into the passing lane and went around him.
Mickey touched his brakes and looked over into the car, but the man
with Bird didn't look back.

Seven hundred dollars, that was his end. Half a day's
work, and some fuck who pissed on his own feet had decided the world
had an attitude. He was probably up there now, getting his story
together with Bird, how nothing had happened at the truck stop.

Mickey eased the truck down to fifty-five. The cop
was two hundred yards and coming. Mickey thought about the kid.

Whatever kind of shit this was, the kid was in worse.
The man in the car with Bird turned around to watch, and at that
moment the cop pulled into the passing lane, went around the truck,
and stopped the Cadillac.

It turned out they got a
ticket for following too close.

* * *

He got off 295 and headed over to 130, the old truck
route. There were lights and some traffic, but on 130 he wasn't as
worried about what the kid back at the truck stop might do. He still
got back to the flower shop twenty minutes ahead of Bird. He pulled
the truck around to the back, opened one side of the garage and drove
in, and left it there next to his own truck.

The sun was working, and the place was warmer than it
had been that morning. Mickey walked around the outside of the
building, and then went into the flower shop and talked with Mrs.
Capezio. She was worried that Bird was working too hard.

"Arthur's nerves ain't what they was," she
said. "He went to the doctor, they said his pressure's too high.
I don't know, I tell him to have faith in God but he don't seem to
think things is going to work out." The old woman shook her
head. "This is bad business, started with poor Mr. Bruno.
Arthur's thinkin' all the time, and you know that ain't good for him,
Mickey .... "

Fifteen minutes later Bird parked the car on the
sidewalk in front of the shop. The man with piss on his shoes was
gone. Bird came in and kissed his aunt on the cheek. "They
didn't get the electric back on, Sophie?"

"They say very soon, Arthur," she said.
"They say not to worry, have confidence in your electric
company."

Mickey followed Bird through the flower cooler and
the meat cooler, all the way back to the truck. There were windows
back there, covered with shades, about twelve feet up the walls, so
you could see without a flashlight. Bird wasn't talking, which wasn't
like him. "You got a problem with somebody?" Mickey asked.

"Sally? No, he's out of it. He was only along,
you know. To see it all went down." He ran his hands through his
hair. "We got a little business to talk over, Mick."

Mickey did not like the way that sounded.

"See, I got a problem. I didn't especially even
want to do the job today, even before the fuckin' electric went out,
and I got a cooler full of meat that's been in there a week already.
Even before that, I didn't want it because of a problem I'm havin'."

Mickey noticed again that Bird was scared. "You
don't have the seven hundred?" he said. Bird held out his arms.
Embarrassed and scared, trying to hold it together.

"Somethin' is goin' on," he said. "They
hit Angelo, all right. He was a nice old man, but they want A.C. Then
they hit Chicken Man. He gives them A.C., brings in shit the old man
wouldn't allow, I mean he's bringin' it in in suitcases, and they hit
him too. And Frank and Chickie and fourteen other guys, some of them
don't even make sense. Nobodies. And it's changin' things all over.
Business . . ." .

Mickey said, "Forget it. I'm doin' all right."
His lies always sounded like lies. "When you got it, you can
give it to me then.”

"Take some of the meat," Bird said. He took
a set of keys out of his shirt pocket and opened the locks on the
reefer. He opened one of the doors. The meat had been loaded in a
hurry, l50-pound sides thrown in there any way they landed. Each side
had been put into a gauze envelope for shipping. With arrows, it
could of been a hundred-year-old massacre.

"I can't do nothin' with that," Mickey
said. "It ain't even cut." Bird was staring into the
reefer.

"What the fuck, Mick? What the fuck are they
tryin' to tell me here?"

"I don't know these people, Bird,” he said. "I
never dealt with them, so I don't know. " Bird was still staring
into the truck. "Lemme help you get it in the cooler."

Mickey took off his shirt, and he and Bird picked up
one of the sides of beef. It kept slipping out of Bird's hands, but
they got it into the cooler, stumbling in the dark, and put it on a
hook.

They went back and looked into the truck again. Bird
couldn't stand it. "Fuck it," he said, “we'll leave it in
the truck."

"We ain't going to take the truck to Delaware?"
Mickey said. They always took the empties to a shopping center in
Delaware. "These people are going to want their truck back,
Bird."

"Fuck them," he said. He seemed healthier,
now he was pissed. “Let's get some of this shit in your truck,
Mick."

Mickey said, "I can't use it like this. I got
nowhere to cut it up." He saw Bird wasn't listening. "Bird?"

Bird jerked a side of beef down and Mickey helped him
get it out and carry it to his truck, and helped him put it in. They
stacked eight sides of beef, four on the left, four on the right,
putting most of the weight over the axle. Bird was out of breath when
they finished. "You sure you don't want a couple more?" he
said.

"This is enough,” Mickey said. "It only
keeps a week in there anyway." Bird went back over to the truck
and closed the door on the meat. It seemed to make him feel better,
not to be looking at it.

"Look," he said,
"we'll get the electric back on. Come back tomorrow and I'll get
somebody to cut it up for you." He put a long, thin arm around
Mickey's shoulders and walked him to his truck. He couldn't get him
out of there soon enough. Bird pulled the garage door up and waved as
Mickey backed out. Then he pulled on the rope to get the door started
back down again. The door was weighted, and hit bottom hard. It shut
while Bird was still looking out, before he expected it. It closed
down like bad weather.

* * *

It was two o'clock in the afternoon when Mickey got
home.

He put his truck in the garage, plugged in the
cooling unit, and checked his load. It was still where he'd put it.
Twelve hundred pounds of beef he couldn't sell to anybody. For
transporting a stolen truck across state lines. For getting the piss
scared out of him, for watching the kid with the Cleveland Indians
baseball hat turn inside out when the man with Bird hit him.
Business.

He'd sweated all the way from the truck stop, right
from what had happened with the kid. Then he'd lifted the eight sides
of beef—it would of been easier without Bird helping, but how do
you say that?—and that was a different kind of sweat, but he could
still smell the nervous kind in his shirt. He thought about having a
beer down at the Hollywood before he went in the house. He didn't
want to talk about Leon now. He did want to wash off the scared
smell, though.

The front door was unlocked, but he didn't hear the
radio. Jeanie listened to call-in shows all afternoon. He walked in,
and something was different. The house seemed still. "Jeanie?"

Nothing. "Jeanie, you here?"

He found her upstairs, lying on the bed, holding a
pale blue Princess telephone against her stomach. Her eyes followed
him, across the room and then as he sat down next to her on the bed.

"What is it?" he said. He didn't try to
touch her.

"Leon's dead,"
she said.

* * *

All morning long, the kid had been crazy. Crazy even
for him. One minute he was working nice as could be, keeping Old Lucy
in blocks and mortar, the next minute he was putting everything on
the wrong side, and a minute after that he was screaming about
working for a nigger. Threatening to file a complaint with the union.

Old Lucy never paid him any notice.

Peets thought for a while that Leon would quit. The
first time he screamed about doing yard work for the nigger, that
looked promising, but after that he picked up the blocks he'd dropped
to make the announcement, and then he took them to Old Lucy and put
them down on the right side. He said something to him too, like it
wasn't nothing personal, and he'd smiled.

Old Lucy acted like he didn't hear, and for fifteen,
twenty minutes the kid kept with him. By eleven o'clock he'd walked
by Peets ten times, carrying blocks or mortar, and every time there
was something different in his eyes. One minute they were laughing,
the next minute they were mad. And he was talking to himself the
whole time. Not singsong like Old Lucy, but like there was somebody
else there. "Don't ever tell anybody where I'll be," he
said once. And another time, "Oh, sure. Right, anything you say
.... "

And once he'd seen the boy take a black pill out of
his back pocket and center it on his tongue. Peets wished they were
doing high work, maybe a second story. Where the fall wouldn't
necessarily kill him.

And all morning long, of course, the kid was bringing
out the razor. Telling some story about him and a cat that got worse
for the cat every time he told it. And whatever; the black pills was,
it wasn't making him any slower. That razor came out like an idea in
the boy's head, and disappeared just as fast. It was like there was a
name he couldn't remember, and every ten minutes or so he'd think he
had it, but it was always the same name he brought out, and it was
always wrong. He'd smile and put the razor back, and the crew would
go back to work.

Peets' morning went by a minute at a time. He was
watching the kid and couldn't do anything useful. From what he'd
seen, the reason people wanted to be supervisors was so they wouldn't
have to do what they did to get there. Not just construction,
everywhere. Nobody wanted to do the real work, they all wanted to
control it. Peets wasn't like that, he was the opposite.

"I grabbed that fucker by the tail," the
kid was saying, "you know, they hate that. I grabbed him, and
held him upside down, and this flight attendant was screamin' to let
him alone, and I says, 'I'll leave him alone, all right . . .' "
The razor was out again. “And I cut him from the middle out, so
he'd know what I was doin'."

Peets looked at his watch. Eleven-fifteen. He'd been
looking at his watch all morning. It was like a circle. The kid was
telling himself the same story over and over, only it was never quite
right. And every time he got to the part about the cat he'd stop work
to tell it to the whole crew, and thirty-five minutes later he'd be
at that same part again.

Once, coming past him with cinder blocks in. both
hands, the kid said, "Yeah, I got somethin' for you too, Peets."
Peets said, "What?” but the boy didn't hear him. He was in
some different part of the story, dealing with Peets. The kid came
back to him now. "You say somethin', Leon?"

The kid dropped the blocks and put his hand in his
back pocket. "I didn't say a fuckin' word," he said. "I
ain't said nothin' all morning." And a few minutes later, "I'd
like to know what a white man is doin', haulin' block for some
nigger's not even a bricklayer."

Peets said, "He's the only one we got today,
boy." The kid didn't hear him, but the rest of them did, and
they went back to work. And Old Lucy just kept working, the same
pace, the same rhythm. When the blocks weren't there, he never turned
around to look for them. He just waited till they came. Then the kid
would take another pill and five minutes later he was bringing them
four and five at a time, as fast as he could walk, the corners of the
blocks pinching his hands, putting little cuts in his fingers.