How the Hula Girl Sings (17 page)

Milford Dulaire kept his composure. He straightened his thick brown tie and handed Junior the keys and Clutch the registration and all three of us howled and went outside and started that car up and drove, we just drove on and on until the sun had about set and then we went by the Gas-N-Go to fill that sweet car up again, and at about that time is when I noticed little Monte Slates, the kid who liked tossing water balloons down onto the interstate, sitting out beside the gas station there, crumpled up in a little ball, burying his face into his knees, hiding between a stack of used tires and some old cardboard cases of Valvoline and grease.

“Monte?” I mumbled, standing over him, trying to get a look at his face. “Monte, pal, you OK?”

He shook his head, still crying to himself. He stunk of dirt and sweat and that salty-sweet breath of tears.

“Monte, pal, you wanna talk? You come here to talk it out?”

He shook his head, still keeping his face buried beside his legs.

“Come on now, pal, look at me. You OK?” I asked.

He shook his head, then lifted his chin and I caught sight of something horrible on his face. There was a burn right on his cheek, the exact size of a cigarette tip, bright and red and blistered in his poor white skin. His face looked so old and round and sweet and his little cheeks shimmered with tears, slipping past that little burn.

A cigarette tip.

I gritted my teeth together and shook my head, turning my hands into hard fists at my side.

“He threw me out,” Monte cried, his eyes burning red with tears. “Now I got no place to stay.”

Junior and Clutch came up behind me and kept quiet, looking stern and serious and staring at the cigarette burn on poor Monte’s face. They peered down at the boy, then at me, and then shook their heads slowly, trying not to let Monte see how pitiful, how small and sad his poor face seemed.

“It’s gonna be OK,” I mumbled, trying to think of something better to say. I placed my hand on his tiny shoulder and helped him to his feet. “It’s gonna be OK, pal. You’ll see. We’re gonna take care of this right away.”

Clutch took little Monte’s hand and went over and unlocked the gas station and led him inside and treated him to a nice ice cream sandwich, patting him on the head once or twice, showing the poor kid his old faded tattoo, making that sweet island girl dance longingly as he moved his wrist.

Junior and I got inside that black car and drove right over to the Slates’s place. It still looked rundown as hell. There were insects crawling around and the stink of dirt and ignorance seeping right out of the boards someone had used to build that white porch.

“What do you want to do?” Junior asked me, tightening his lips into a stern frown.

I wasn’t really sure what he was asking. I knew what I was going to do. I walked up on that porch and pounded hard on their faded white front door. Then I heard him. I heard that weak little man wobble to the door, shifting his weight on his black-handled canes, pulling himself along like a broken ol’ snake, until he was at the door and had it unlocked. He stuck his miserable gray face out and gritted his teeth, because he caught sight of me, because he saw the look in my eyes and the darkness in my own face. He didn’t turn away. He didn’t make a sound, just stood there looking back at me like I had just caught him doing something he shouldn’t have ever done.

“Plea …” he muttered, but it was too late. I tore that goddamn door open and slammed my fist into his thin grayed face.

Junior stood over me as I slapped that fucker in his face with the flat of my palm, pinning him down against his dirty floor, slapping as hard as I could because hitting him with my fists might have left a bruise for poor Monte to see. His pink plastic feet struck together, hitting the floor with a hollow, unholy sound, like the teeth in my head were grinding together, like all the blood in my veins was coming apart.

“I warned you!!” I shouted. “I warned you to leave that boy alone!!”

Mr. Slates’s face was beginning to swell around his thin gray lips, his sad yellow eyes were full of tears, he clutched at my shirt, trying to push me off as I slapped him again hard across his mouth. Then I wrapped my hands around his greasy little throat.

“Wait,” Junior whispered. “Just wait.” He pulled me off by my shoulder and backed me away. Mr. Slates lay still on the floor, wiping the blood from his teeth.

“Charity …” Junior whispered, shaking his head. “Charity …”

He went over and picked Mr. Slates up by the front of his oily blue flannel shirt, then dragged him into the kitchen and threw the bastard hard against the tiny white stove. Then he lit the range. The fire whispered bright blue along the black metal grate. Junior lit the stovetop and turned the gas on up until the flame burned there bright and blue and hot.

He turned to me, and suddenly I could see all the hard things he had ever felt lit up upon his face.

“I will put it right on his skin,” Junior mumbled. “Make sure it is a word he doesn’t forget.”

He grabbed Mr. Slates’s hand and pushed it toward the flame, holding it there as Mr. Slates began to howl and scream and struggle to try to get free, but Junior was too strong and too angry and too full of hate, hate for all the ignorance he had seen, hate for the ignorant things that had been done to people like him and Monte and even me. I just closed my eyes and turned away. I could hear Mr. Slates scream. I stood on the porch and watched as all the neighbors came out to see what was the trouble. Not one of them had noticed Monte’s face? Not one of them had seen that boy sleeping outside, curled up in a ball underneath his dirty white front porch because his father had thrown him out? No, no, it was too hard to believe. Especially in this town.

Junior stepped out on the porch and nodded to me, and I looked back inside and saw Mr. Slates lying there on the floor, moaning and sobbing and holding his hand, and Junior glanced around and saw all the neighbors, blank-eyed and standing on their porches, staring at us and past us into the dirty white house, and he just shook his head and got into the black car and I followed and we pulled away, me feeling like we hadn’t done a thing.

That fire spread from right outside the Slates’s door and from those careless neighborhood eyes right across the hood of the most beautiful car in all the world. Just as me and Junior slept in our beds in the hotel, and poor Monte Slates in a bed in the guest room at Clutch’s house, and Clutch stayed awake all night, watching that boy sleep, afraid the kid might try to run or the law or some vindictive fool might come after him, just as the night passed soundlessly and still and dark in the sky, a fire was lit and swallowed Junior’s and mine and Clutch’s brand-new car in flames.

It started right along the hood and crept back to the gas tank and blew the damn thing off its wheels and into the middle of the street. I heard the explosion and pulled myself out of my bed and met Junior in the hall and we ran on down the stairs and outside and somewhere in my heart and his we both knew it was too late, even before we could see the tumultuous waves of fire and flame, before we could hear the windows crack from the pressure and heat, before all the oil burned on out in a pool of black gunk and the headlights shattered and shot on out, before all that filled our lousy eyes, that single shot of an explosion from down on the street filled our ears and our hearts as a kind of resignation we already knew. Before we were down off the front porch and out on the lawn and the orange glow flickered across our sore lips, it was all already done in our heads and hearts.

“It’s all over now.” Junior frowned. “All over now.”

“Mother of God,” I mumbled, scratching my chin. “This just ain’t right.”

The fire swallowed that poor car whole, making it nothing more than a heavy black metal corpse. From where I stood on the curb, right beside Junior Breen, it seemed all his dreams, all his tiny hopes of some new kind of opportunity, had been set aflame and left to smolder dully in the middle of that black-paved street.

“It’s done fer now,” he sighed.

By the time one of La Harpie’s three fire trucks arrived and me and Junior and even L.B., still low and unholy and still threatening Junior over his missing teeth, were all standing out on the curb across the street from where that fine automobile had been parked, we watched it smolder and burn.

“Serves you bastards right.” L.B. smiled. His bald head shone with the fire. “Serves you two bastards right thinking you’re such hot shit.”

Everyone came out on their porch and watched the car burn. Everyone just stood there whispering to themselves in their nightclothes, muttering and nodding at me and Junior, casting all the aspersions they could carry over their thin gray lips and dirty white teeth.

“Look at the wheels melt.” Junior frowned, sitting on the curb down the street from the hotel. The fire burned on as the firemen sprayed it down. “Look at that poor thing sag like that.” He smiled a little, then lifted his head. “Hell, it still looks fast.”

I patted his shoulder and spit at the ground. “This ain’t right. You didn’t have anything to do with Monte,” I said. “I never should have let you come with me.”

“I did it, not you. This is my own fault.”

I watched the orange flames move through his eyes, fading along his face.

“Didn’t think it would bring on anything like this. They all had to see that boy was being hurt.”

Junior nodded. “This ain’t over. You sure can feel it.”

After that night, Junior Breen didn’t say a damn word. He just locked himself in his room and sat there mumbling to himself until the next morning and didn’t even bother showing up for work. That pretty ol’ car had been his last hope. Nothing could remain close before it faded black and turned to dust. Not me or Clutch or little Monte Slates, not the car or the friends he made, not all the words he spelled out with his big hand or big hollow heart. Nothing could stay close before it became dull and empty of light.

Only her.

Only Eunice.

home

Come around the bend …

Down to the bank …

Come across the field and down to the bank …

Those days were like a crown of gold over her head. Her hair was a knotted nest of some tiny white and yellow flowers with little bluebells wrapped inside her curls. Maybe she’d bring him a sandwich or a bottle of Coca-Cola, all cold and full of beads of ice along the side. Wasn’t it all so pretty? Wasn’t it all so nice?

Then a thousand murmurs of the blade …

Then it was all gone and pushed far downstream.

Here was a man full of the grave old memories of his past. Junior would sit at work and stare out through the glass windows. He’d remember how it used to be, how it had been when he was still a boy, not more than fifteen, free and pure, without the most mortal of all sins holding him.

The best day in his life had been when he had saved Eunice from Forger Dunagree. He had seen something there in her eyes. He had seen something there of his own goodness hanging in the light above her head. She had promised him that he would become a smart man. A man with a nice clean soul.

“I’ll show you my parts for less’n a quarter and let you kiss me in my ear if you want.”

That Eunice was less than three years younger but smart as a whip and knew everything there was to know about making out and sex and having babies and French kissing. Eunice was the pretty little wild girl with deep red curls who would go around and kiss all the boys in school and offer them a full view of her private parts for a quarter or whatever pocket change they might have. There was nothing sinful or impure to it. Eunice was a girl who was proud of her own particularly high-spirited beauty and charm. That poor girl would shed her underpants at a moment’s notice or go off and kiss you inside the mouth if you just dared her to. She was the kind of girl that had nearly married every boy in school by the sixth grade and there was nothing her mother or teachers or parson could do to stop her from growing up that way. This girl kept getting wilder and more and more beautiful each undelicate year she lived. There were boys all over town who had carved her name on their arms and promised to buy her a ten-thousand-acre pumpkin farm and a brand-new silver Cadillac if she’d run away with them when they were old enough to elope. This girl was a golden-stemmed flower among some worn swampland and weeds. This girl was something that was too sweet or pretty or pure to outlast the lifetime of a ten-cent kiss.

“Do you got a quarter or not?” she asked Forger Dunagree, blowing a hot breath in his ear. “Or are you chicken to see?”

“I ain’t afraid to see.” This Forger Dunagree was the dirtiest kid in Colterville. He was only about thirteen and was missing nearly all of his adult teeth. He lost most of them in fights with other dirty kids and the rest to tooth decay and gum disease. Forger’s old man was a corn farmer who was known around town for getting drunk and falling asleep in his neighbors’ yards, half undressed. Forger had run his old man down with the tractor once while the old drunkard was passed out in the field. He managed to lop off a good portion of his father’s left foot before Forger heard his old man screaming. They had been too poor to afford plastic parts, so Mr. Dunagree replaced his lost appendage with cheap balsa wood that would sweat and creak when he walked.

“I ain’t afraid to see naked parts. I got a stack of magazines like that at home in the back of my dresser drawer.” Forger frowned. “Naked parts like that is old hat to me.”

“That so?” Eunice smiled. “Bet you never got to give a pretty girl like me a kiss?”

“Whoever said you were pretty was just fooling you for kicks. You’re about as pretty as a bug-eyed carp. Maybe a mealy-mouthed snail.”

“Do you got a quarter or not?” Eunice sighed.

“I got four bucks. What’ll I get for that?”

“’Cluding tax?” Eunice asked.

“Sure, sure, including tax.”

“I pick your cherry for you right now.” Eunice smiled.

“What?” Forger’s face shot bright red. He felt sweat break out along his greasy little chin. “You make it for only four bucks?”

“Less than that. But it costs more ’cause you’re so dirty.” Eunice smiled.