Gutbucket Quest (16 page)

“But even if we get the Gutbucket back,” Slim said, “won’t Pickens just keep on trying to get us?”

“Not if we do it right,” Nadine said. “Why do you think he’s trying to get us? If we can get the Gutbucket, then we can destroy him, we can kill him. It won’t solve the whole problem with the businesses, but it will eliminate the worst part of it.”

“I don’t want to kill people, Nadine. I don’t like the idea of that.” Slim fingered the gris-gris pouch around his neck. “I just don’t have it in me.”

“You think Daddy or I like it?” Nadine said angrily. “Sometimes you just don’t have any choice. This isn’t play. T-Bone’s going to try to nullify you or kill us. That’s the way it is. If you can’t deal with it, you’d better say so now.”

“No,” Slim said. “I’ll do whatever I have to do. I don’t have to like it, though. I’m not even sure I buy it yet. What do
you
think about blues power?”

Nadine seemed to shiver for a moment, even in the hot summer air from the open window of the van. “I’m not the person to ask,” she said quietly. “I’ve seen Daddy use it, and I’ve seen you use it—use it like no one else. And you played the pants off of anybody I’ve ever seen, by the way. But Daddy’s right, I am scared of the power.”

“You use it, though.”

“I guess. Daddy says what I do is called enchantivating. I don’t do it on purpose, it just happens.” She sighed deeply, and her smile was wan and wistful. “All I ever wanted to do was sing. The rest of it doesn’t have anything to do with me. It seems like cheating, somehow. I’ve seen you and Daddy do it, and it feels okay, but not for me. If I try to do it, it doesn’t feel right, doesn’t feel fair. That scares me. I’m sort of afraid that if I use it, I’ll lose what I already have. I just want it to be
me
up there on that stage. Nothing else.”

“But it
is
just you,” Slim protested.

“That’s what Daddy keeps telling me. But it doesn’t
feel
like it. I want to know that it’s
me
the people like, not the power.”

Slim couldn’t find an answer for that. It was a feeling he knew only too well.

They pulled into Mitchell’s and, once inside, he noticed an insurance-agency calendar, an auto-parts-store calendar, two naked-women calendars, and four scenic-landscape calendars. Also on the walls were photos of the players and singers Slim assumed had eaten there, the Tejas Declaration of Independence, and a waterfall lithograph. Small, black and white hexagonal tiles covered the floor.

He experienced a sensation of reassurance, and in a moment he placed it: he
knew
there would be no foul Glory Hand turning up here again. That made it safe in a special way.

The only other people there were two old men, one black and one white, with faces which looked as if they had enjoyed long and satisfying usage. Carrying their arms folded behind them, they greeted
each other with a light feminine touching of fingertips which spoke of the duration of their friendship. It made Slim happy and he was still smiling when he sat at a table with Nadine.

“You know,” he said. “I asked Progress what he believed in, but I haven’t asked you. How about it?”

Nadine shrugged. “You met Mother Phillips,” she said. “That’s part of it. Mostly, what I believe is something my mama used to tell me. She said that in the beginning of the world, after the people had emerged from the underground world, Spider Grandmother gave them two rules only. She told them not to hurt each other, and to try to understand things. So that’s what I believe. I haven’t found anything yet that it didn’t cover.”

“I like that,” Slim said. “I like that a lot. You miss your mom, don’t you?”

“Yes. Yes, I do. She was my friend. She and Daddy taught me what love was supposed to be like. And they never said do this or do that. They encouraged me to make my own decisions, all the way back when I was a little girl. They let me find my own ways to think. And Mama taught me about nature, what was there and why, how to find it and how to treat it.”

“What about what Heap of Bears said?” Slim asked.

“That—that hurt at first. Like a betrayal. Now, well, it sounds like something Mama
would
do. I don’t think she would ever mean me harm. She just didn’t know I would fall so hard or get so carried away.”

The waitress came and they ordered: cheeseburger, fries and a bowl of chili for Slim; ham, eggs and hash browns for Nadine.

“You have hamburgers for breakfast often?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Slim said. “Whenever I can. I love hamburgers. I guess I’d eat ’em for every meal if I could. Or maybe not. I suppose I’d need a little variety now and then. Most people go crazy over steak or
prime rib or whatever. But for me, a big meal is a chili-cheeseburger and a whole bunch of half-greasy fries and a big Coke. Man, that’s good eating.”

“You’re crazy, Slim.”

“Yeah, I know. You’re not the first person to notice. It’s just the way I am, I guess. I’m nearly forty and I haven’t changed yet. I don’t expect I will. Some people say it’s my best quality.”

The waitress brought their food and Slim spooned some chili onto his cheeseburger, then commenced dipping his fries into what was left in the bowl. He looked up between bites and saw Nadine watching him.

“What?” he said.

“You haven’t been very happy, have you?” she asked.

“No,” he replied. “It’s hard to explain. I don’t think I’ve ever been happy until now. My life seemed somehow to move from crisis to crisis, broken heart to broken heart. I think maybe I hold on to the crises as all I had. Maybe they gave me significance or something. It’s like, after so many broken hearts, I lost belief in the world. So without the tragedy I had nothing. The thing that’s sad, or that I find sad, is that all I ever wanted was to find someone who loved me no matter what.”

Nadine’s beautiful caramel skin turned a shade darker, and Slim thought she might be blushing. Then she looked him in the eye.

“
I love you
,”
she said.

Slim was speechless.
She’d said it.
Finally. He thought that it must have taken some courage and thought for her to say it to him. He was so affected by the simple declaration, he could hardly look at her.

“Thanks, Nadine,” he said. “That means a lot.”

“Why are you so scared, Slim?”

As always, she seemed to go right to the weakness in him. “I’ve been hurt too much,” he said. “I’ve loved too hard and been let down too many times. And I’m terrified that this whole thing might just be a dream. I mean, let’s face it, people just don’t get blown into other
worlds, especially when that other world is so close to what they’d like it to be. In my world, people used to say, ‘Watch what you wish for, you might get it.’ Well, I got it, and now I’m waiting for the catch in it.”

“What if there isn’t any catch?” Nadine asked.

“There has to be. Everything has a catch. Everything’s got a hook. It’s like a song. It’s no good without the hook. So I know it has to be here, waiting to get me.”

“Look,” Nadine said. “I love you. That’s not an easy thing for me, but
I do. And Daddy loves you, too, in his own way. There’s no hook in that. Maybe it’s in
you.
You’re having to go through an awful lot of hard changes. You’re having to grow and adapt. Maybe that’s the catch, for you to let go of your hurt and anger and grow up, get rid of your stupidity and clumsiness. You’re a nice guy. Maybe the catch is that you just have to admit it to yourself and go on from there.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Slim said, now uncomfortable. “I don’t know. I’m just going along with everything, trying to do my best. I don’t know yet if I can believe in all of it. It’s too good to be true. It’s almost as if I need that Glory Hand, to threaten me and scare me, to prove that this world has some bad things too. Otherwise it would be impossible to believe in it.”

Nadine took his hand across the table. “Look, Slim,” she said. “Believe in me, in you and me. That’s real. If you can’t get beyond that, it’s okay, but believe in that.”

There was no answer but for Slim to nod his head and smile.

15

Among all the forces capable of bewitching spirit
,
forces which it must both submit to and revolt against
—
poetry, painting, spectacles, war, misery
,
debauchery, revolution, life and its inseparable companion, death
—
is it possible to refuse music a place among them, perhaps a very important place?

—Paul Nouge,
Music Is Dangerous

B
reakfast was done before Slim was ready. The night, and the morning with Nadine had been the best times of his life, and he was greedy for more. It had been a long time since he had talked so much to anyone, so honestly. Nadine seemed to draw the honesty out of him, made him want,
need
to tell her all those things that he would normally have kept hidden inside. It was lucky he wasn’t a spy, he thought, because the simple torture of her sweet touch would compel him to tell all.

And it had been a long time since he had slept with anyone. Nadine somehow knew the exactly perfect way he needed to sleep, cupped belly to back, dick to butt, and hand stretched over, holding her breast. That position made him feel secure and peaceful, and it was only those times he had slept with someone, in that position, that he’d gotten a full night’s refreshing sleep. Otherwise, he slept and woke intermittently
throughout the night, always insecure and anxious, depressed or manic or just exhausted.

His feelings for Nadine went far beyond anything he had any experience of. He could feel that there was an essential truth in his feelings, in their feelings for one another. He wondered how it was possible for two people to fall so far in love, so fast. Was it just their hunger and readiness that had caused it? Or were there hidden forces that had been connecting and intertwining their lives? Slim wondered if he cared. Both of them had been looking for a way out of loneliness, a way out of the walls they’d built around themselves.

Trying to stretch time he asked Nadine, “What are we gonna do today, baby?”

“What do you want to do?”

“Spend the day in bed?”

“Okay,” Nadine said. “Let’s go, then.”

They stood and, after paying the tab, walked outside. It was, for summer, a beautiful day. The sun was hot, but not excessively so, and there was a slight breeze from the northwest. If Slim hadn’t been so consumed by his thoughts and enjoyment of Nadine, he might have paid more attention to the several black cars parked variously in the street and parking lot surrounding Mitchell’s. He might have noticed the black-suited men that were rapidly approaching them from all around. As it was, he wasn’t aware there was anything wrong until the first of the suited men grabbed Nadine and jerked her away from him.

He turned and reached for her, but someone grabbed his arms. He twisted and turned but his captor’s grasp was as tight as steel. He saw Nadine kick and punch the man who held her down to the pavement. But even as he went down in pain, four more men in black replaced him and, though Nadine fought viciously, valiantly, accounting for at least three of the men being injured, there were just too many of them for her.

Slim tried to slip the hold he was in, and had almost succeeded, when something very swift and very hard slammed into the back of his head. Though he tried to retain his consciousness, everything quickly went dark, matching the pavement he was soon lying on.

When he woke, he stumble-ran to the van and got in. He fumbled with the keys, started the motor, and was ready to haul ass chasing Nadine. Then he realized he had no idea where to go, where the men would have taken her. He wanted very badly to cry, but instead, he forced himself to be reasonably calm and to begin driving to Progress’ house. He dreaded telling the gold-toothed old man that he’d lost Nadine, that the men in black had kidnapped her. If he just hadn’t been so fascinated by her, so wrapped up in the love that was growing between them. If he’d just paid more attention, if he hadn’t been stupid enough to relax, to think they had it made once everything was set up. If only he’d fought harder, had more courage. If only, if only. There were a thousand if-only’s he could think about, but it all came down to one simple fact in Slim’s mind. It was, he was sure, his fault.

There was a desperate, empty feeling inside him. And, for the first time, he realized that he could kill, happily and without conscience. He’d never considered it before. He’d spent some years studying martial arts in his youth, and his instructor had told him he would have to consider killing in self-defense. But Slim had always been the one in any crowd to advocate peaceful solutions to any problem. He’d been the one to walk away from arguments, to leave any bar where violence was brewing, to back down at his own cost rather than allow himself to be drawn into fighting.

But now, if T-Bone had hurt Nadine, Slim would gleefully fold, spindle and mutilate the man without a second thought. Would that make him cruel or coldhearted? He didn’t think so. He thought, perhaps, it only made him human.

Two forces warred inside his soul. There was a childish, irrational urge to commit himself to some grand, futile gesture, ending in his death, most likely, trying to heroically rescue Nadine. There was that within him that was drawn to that death, that within him which believed it would prove the truth and purity of his love. Opposed to that was the part of Slim that knew death would accomplish nothing, that he’d rather live with Nadine than die for her. And, as they had all his sad life, his grand gesture would likely do more harm than good. It would be misunderstood, as had been all the grand gestures he had made. People would see only the stupid futility in it, not the love and need behind it. Besides, he thought, pulling into the driveway, Progress would know what to do.

Progress was sitting in the yard, picking at an old battered guitar when Slim walked up to him. His eyes widened and he put down the guitar, stood up and grabbed Slim’s arm.

“What happened, son?” he said. “You knows you got blood all over you?”

“Blood?” Slim said weakly. He rubbed his hand on the back of his head. His fingers came away sticky red. There must have been a sick look on his face because Progress led him inside the house and sat him down at the table.

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” Progress said, going into the kitchen for a washrag. “You tell me what’s happened.”

“They got Nadine,” Slim said, wincing as Progress washed his head gently. “It was my fault, all my fault. I wasn’t paying attention. We were coming out of Mitchell’s and all of a sudden they were all around us. Nadine fought. Man, she fought good” he said proudly. “There were just too many for her, though. They were holding on to me. I tried to get loose, to help her, but one of ’em bashed me on the head, knocked me out. Oh, man, Progress. It’s all my fault”

Progress folded the bloodstained washrag and threw it back into the sink. “You hush, now,” he said. “I gots to say, yes, you should
have been payin’ more attention. But so should Nadine have. It ain’t your fault, get it through your head. You fought and you tried. Your heart was in it. I can see by this lump and cut on your head that you wasn’t in no shape to be movin’ around or goin’ after ’em much. So you just gets the idea of fault out of you. It won’t do you no good. You puts the blame right where it belongs, on T-Bone. You keep on blamin’ your own self, you won’t be no good at all gettin’ Nadine back.”

“How do we do that, Progress?”

“I got me some ideas. Lot of it goin’ to be up to you. Right now, we needs Belizaire and a gun.”

“Why,” Sum asked, “do we need a gun? I don’t like guns.”

“There’s liable to be some mighty nasty folks shootin’ at us, son. Can you handle a gun?”

“I can shoot,” Slim said thoughtfully. “I mean, I can handle a gun for like target shooting and stuff. But I don’t think I could do much of anything about someone shooting
at
me. I don’t like guns, so I never learned much about them.”

“Don’t like ’em much my own self,” Progress said. “But Belizaire, he can shoot the grease out of a biscuit and never break the crust. He’s got that and he’s got the gris-gris. Might be we could use somebody that can shoot if need be.”

“I guess you’re right,” Slim said.

“You knows I am, son. Now, why don’t you take you a shower while I call up Belizaire. Then we’ll go out on the porch and listen to the wind walk and talk for a while.”

The dry heat of the day felt good, and Slim’s head had almost stopped pounding by the time Belizaire drove up in his rusty old truck. He looked as if he was still wearing the same clothes, with the same food stains on the stomach of his overalls, but now he was carrying a long, heavy-looking rifle.

When he saw Progress, he held the rifle up, shaking it as if it weighed nothing. “Dis be a bad business, papa,” he said grimly. “Me, I don’t be using no gun ‘less death, she be at the door.”

“That’s where it be,” Progress said. “You bring the bones?”

“Yeah. Me, I brung dem.”

“Bones?” Slim asked. “What bones?”

Belizaire reached into his pocket. Then he walked around, bouncing, snapping his wrists, making sharp, rapid clacks with four things that looked like big ivory dominoes.

“Dese de bones,” he said. He showed Slim how to hold the bones, one on each side of the middle fingers. Then he flung out his his wrist and sounded a pop like the crack of a whip. “Try dem in your hands, you,” he said, handing them to Slim.

The bones were smooth, like old jade. Slim carefully inserted them between his fingers and snapped his wrist. Only a small, weak
clack-clack
was produced.

“You don’t got it,” Belizaire said. “Dese bones, dey carved from a buffalo steer’s leg. You got to have de right bone, or da sound, she muffle. And de steer got to be big for da good ringing bones. I work at dis forty years, me. And just now getting good. Dat’s why only ole, ole men play da good bones.”

“Where’d you learn them?” Slim asked,

“Old man, he work on da zeppelin. He’s got nuttin’, him, but he loves da music, so he play da bones. He one day show me da carvin’ and da playin’. Now, people axe me, ‘Play da bones.’ But da bones, I use dem only for da gris-gris.”

“So what are we gonna do with ’em?” Slim asked.

“Belizaire’s gonna help you find Nadine,” Progress said.

“How are we gonna do that?”

“I’m goin’ play de bones, me. And you goin’ sing a finding song. You hooked up close wit’ Nadine. You da only one can find her. You sing de right song, then you know what to do.”

“But
how?
”

“The power, son. You gots it, now you’re gonna learn how to use it. Just sing,” Progress said. “Find the right song in you and wrap it around Nadine. You’ll know.”

Belizaire started playing the bones, clacking slowly, barely in a rhythm, waiting. Slim tried to think of a song that would connect him with Nadine. He thought, first, of “The Miss Meal Blues,” since Nadine was connected in his mind, somehow, with food. But that didn’t feel right. He listened more carefully to the clacking, snapping of the bones, his eyes closed. The clacking seemed to evolve into a pattern, a rhythm that pulled a strange and obscure old jug-band song from inside him. “Fishin’ in the Dark.” It wasn’t the kind of song he’d have thought of with Nadine. But, if he stopped to analyze it, which he did, maybe it was right. Blues songs always meant more than the simple words; there was always an undercurrent of expression. Fishing, in the blues, was a euphemism for sex, and fishing, itself, was a kind of finding or searching.

As the bones continued clacking, holding the rhythm, Slim began to sing without thinking of anything but Nadine,

“
Now look here, when I go fishin’, that’s no crime
,

When I’m fishin’, I’m fishin’ after somethin’ of mine
,

Aw, fishin’ in the dark
,

Fishin’ in the dark’

Aw fishin’ in the dark
,

Honey, that’s my birthmark.

Goin’ down to the river, jump in the spring
,

I catch the first fish, it don’t mean a thing
,

Aw, fishin in the dark
. . .”

As he sang, Slim felt a connection growing, or the connection already there solidifying and changing. It was like a hunger, a craving.

He could
feel
Nadine, alive and hidden and hurting. There was a hook in his heart pulling him to her. He didn’t know where she was, but he knew, beyond any doubt, that he could find her. He could also sense machinery around her—powerful, dangerous machinery. And when he felt that, he knew that, even if Pickens wasn’t personally on the scene, it was his power that held her.

Progress had told him that the man was basically a coward, always hiding in his office while other people did his dirty work. That was why they were having the festival. Progress thought it was the only way to draw T-Bone out personally. “He has all the Vipers he needs,” Progress had said. “We could fight ’em for years without touchin’ T-Bone.” Slim felt Nadine in danger, felt her hurt and fear. He would find her, he determined. And somehow, he would hurt T-Bone. Hurt him bad. He waved his hands and the bones went silent.