Peckerwood (5 page)

He sat behind his dad’s old typewriter and tried to channel Estrada. He’d written down the bones without changing the truth, but found he lacked the Mexican’s knack for words and was powerfully discouraged until he decided to include his revenge angle. Then he found that the passion flowed effortlessly and that the real erotic charge had been hiding beneath the motive, and not the cold mechanics, of her degradation.

Terry’s home-cooked connection, Earl Sutter, was out of business and probably not going to be seen for years, if ever again. Terry took that personal. Forced him to buy from Chowder Thompson, and Terry didn’t like supporting big business on principal.

So he did his part. Wrote his heart out and defiled the sheriff’s daughter in fiction and in ways at least inspired by the last few days, if not strictly factual. Kicker was, she’d probably dig it if she read it. Mondale’s little girl. Who’d have thought?

By morning he believed it was ready to send out.

Terry pulled up to the house Cal Dotson shared with his great aunt Jeannette all revving engine and squealing brakes. He blared the horn instead of pulling donuts on the lawn like he wanted to. After a ten second blast, Cal’s neighbor opened his door and shouted at him to knock it off.

“Make me,” countered Terry.

The skinny guy with the heavy stubble and stubborn patch of black hair dug in atop his head, where all others had long ago fled, closed his door behind him and started walking toward Terry who turned up the truck’s radio.
Rock ‘n roll ain’t noise pollution
. He revved the engine and got ready to dance.

The neighbor picked up an abandoned rake, leaning against his front porch and gripped it like a bat. Terry made a show of rolling up his window and slapping down the lock, but when the neighbor was within striking distance of the Chevrolet’s door, Terry whipped it open and caught the man in the kneecap.

The neighbor dropped to the ground clutching his leg to his chest and Terry jumped out of his truck and kicked him in the kidneys.

“Hey asshole, why don’t you make me, huh? Why don’t you fuckin make me, asshole? Make me, faggot.” The man yelled and Terry used his boot to snap his jaw shut, and the sharp click of his teeth excited him. The swallowed yell turned into a groan then into a low sob.

Cal Dotson’s door finally opened and his friend emerged with a rolled up magazine in one hand and a chicken drumstick in the other. He had apparently been in the commode. “Hoah, lookit who it is!”

Terry quit stomping the neighbor and turned to Cal coming outside. The neighbor groaned, tried and failed to stand. “Come on, we’ll hit Darlin’s
.
”

Cal went back for his good shirt and Terry sat in the car. The neighbor’s door opened again and a small boy wearing a t-shirt of karate turtles came out to their wooden porch and stood looking at Terry who lit a cigarette and winked at him. The boy looked at his father lying on the lawn and back at Terry who raised his eyebrows.

“You gonna do something about it?” he said under his breath from behind the glass.

The boy searched the lawn carefully to take in the whole story before making any rash decisions. His eyes lingered on the rake beside the prone figure of his father. Terry smiled.
Go for it.
But the kid was smarter than that.

Cal came back out wearing a collared shirt only slightly too small for him and ignoring the objections his great aunt was dishing out while locking up the house. He did pause in front of the car though.

“What?” said Terry.

“Help me out.” He was stooping to grab his neighbor under the arms to support him. “C’mon, Jeanette’ll think it’s me and call an ambulance or something.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake.” But he got out and helped.

Cal continued. “One time she called information for the number of some emergency room rummy who’d glued her skin back together. Remember when she slipped off the toilet and sliced her shin on that metal magazine rack she kept in there? Her skin was so thin, the doc said he couldn’t stitch it, so he glued it shut?”

Terry didn’t remember, but helped Cal drag the man back to his porch where he mussed the little boy’s hair. “Yeah, she ran that phone bill way the fuck up explaining to the Indian lady on the other end that her skin was like tissue paper. So, yeah, that’s when I took the batteries out of the mobile and re-installed that rotary in her room. She can’t keep a train of thought long enough to dial a number with that thing, but I’ll tell you what, that doctor’s saved me a whole lotta bill dodging. I ain’t been to the emergency room with her since. You gotta look for the stuff that says ‘non-toxic’ which means it’s no good for anything else, but it holds old ladies together okay. I bet if you was to make all the glue and duct tape on that old bat suddenly disappear, she’d fall apart a second later.”

The kid glared at Terry after helping his father lower himself gently to a seated position. Terry winked.

When they were on the road, Cal said, “Where the shit you been? You know I nearly got took last week at this mom n pop I hit in Neosho. Son of a bitch come at me with a knife. Surprised the shit outta me. Lookidit.” Cal pulled up his shirt revealing three angry red marks pocking the otherwise immaculate pale, doughy expanse of his torso. Sure enough, there was a clear gel crust covering all three and flaking at the edges. “Stabbed me.”

Terry squinted at his glue-lacquered wounds. “Over a couple hundred bucks? The fuck out.”

I’m telling you, man, I needed my partner. Watch my back.” Cal scratched at some of the flaking glue on his belly. “Yeah, everybody’s getting touchy about their money.”

“Well, I’m back.”

“Fuckin A. From where though?”

“I been around.”

Cal pulled his shirt down. “Doin what? Nobody’s seen you since spring break.”

“Affairs of the heart.”

“You sly dog. Who is it been squeezing your lemon?”

Terry leaned over and whispered salaciously, “Just take a wild guess.”

When they pulled into the lot, both were grinning stupidly and Cal was shaking his head. Terry’d been telling the tale of his time with the sheriff’s daughter and his decision to chronicle it with an eye toward publication.

“You wrote it all down? What if the sheriff has a gander at that?”

“I hope he does and everybody else too.”

“You’re my hero, man.”

“You heard about Earl Sutter, right?”

Cal nodded solemnly. “Took his house. He’s going away for a long time.”

“And over what? Chickenshit cook charge.”

“Intent.”

“Fuckin A, man. He was my sometime hookup, too.”

“Didn’t make him rich, did it?”

“Fuckin movies got it wrong. So fuck the po-lice.”

Cal smiled. “Fuck their daughters anyway.”

As devout and dedicated as they were to the philosophy and discipline of always having a good time, Terry noticed that more often than not, the two of them were likely to clear a party out. The social circle around the eternal pit-fire out front of Darlin’s was crowded when they arrived, but after two quick beers all the johns had moved on save one stubborn old fucker Terry’d seen there before, leaving Terry and Cal the run of the suddenly available stock.

Terry hosted a pudgy girl with wide hips and flesh spilling out every gap in her clothing, on his lap. He made her to be twenty, as she looked to be in the neighborhood of thirty. She pushed her chest into his chin and it reeked of five-dollar perfume, but smelled better than most other things in his life. He whispered into her cleavage. “What’s your name, girl?”

“Cinnamon,” she cooed, pressing his face deep into her gland canyon. “Call me Cinnamon, sugar.”

“What if I wanna take you to dinner, Cinnamon? What would I call you then?”

“You can’t afford to buy me dinner, sugar.”

What did that mean?

Irm Thompson came out of one of the trailers just then. She caught Terry’s eye and he called out to her. “Hey, I’m kindly needin some big girls tonight. You interested?”

Irm bristled as she passed, muttered, “Lick my cunt, shitbird.”

He called to her retreating backside. “Take you up on that, sweetie.” He had an appetite this night. He wasn’t interested in one of the stick-girls that looked like they might snap in two beneath him. He thought he’d need every inch and pound of Cinnamon to satisfy him. Recounting his exploits with Eileen Mondale for Cal, after kicking on the neighbor, had stoked a heat inside him. Not yet a flame, but he could tell it was going to burn bright and hot tonight and he wanted to build up to it proper. Cracking his third silver bullet he turned to the gnarly geezer.

“You sure are one horny old toad, huh? Waitin for that turtle to come out of its shell?”

The old man wore dingy, once-blue jeans so big on him a new hole’d had to be poked in the leather belt that was cinched up near his armpits. He had a J.B. Hunt ball cap high up on his forehead with long, stringy strands of gray hair poking out the back and he didn’t acknowledge Terry, but kept on staring into the fire, throwing in a plastic bottle now, a pine cone later.

Cal was having difficulty deciding who, among the professionals, to invest his great aunt’s government check in. He sought guidance from his friend. “What do you think, tonight? I can’t say blonde ever gets old, but y’know there is something a little dangerous about red.”

“So get both. What kind of cheap bastard are you?”

“Yeah, I like Vanilla and I like Strawberry and I sure as shit like Chocolate, but I don’t truck with Neapolitan. It don’t seem right.”

“First time I heard you use that logic to talk yourself out of a thing.” Terry turned to the old-timer, “What do you think?”

This time the geezer did speak, but he never looked out of the flames. “I think you talk too much.”

This brought a laugh from Cal. “You got his number, mister.” He turned to Terry. “He’s got your number.”

Terry admired with his hands the soft roll of skin exploding out between the top of Cinnamon’s jean shorts and beneath her blouse knotted at the midriff. He clutched two handfuls. “The hell you say?”

The elder poked a blackened pop can in the fire with a long stick and ignored Terry completely. Terry snaked one of his hands into Cinnamon’s jean shorts, but quickly ran out of room to maneuver. He sat there with his hand stuck and turned toward the ancient mariner. “I asked, ‘the hell did you say?’”

The old-timer turned and looked at him like a mirror, the way his son Wendell did when Terry could establish eye contact. Terry felt punched. It charged the moment in another fashion that he was not crazy about. When the man spoke, his gums rubbed together and made Terry want to plead with him to stop. “I said you talk too much. You think anybody likes to hear you talk? You think anybody likes you period? You think you got a reason to live? Shut the hell up.”

Cinnamon gave a grunt, the beginning and end of a short-lived bout of indignation, as she was ejected from Terry’s lap. Terry leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and gave the old-timer his full attention.

“Do you know me? Think you dish out the wisdom of the ages?”

Cal had put his important decision aside for a moment, watching the exchange with great interest.

“What’s a shriveled up piece like you do here other than burn trash and scare off the young girls?” Terry stood before the old man who leaned his head sharply to his right in order to look around Terry’s legs at the demise of a plastic bottle he’d pitched atop the fire. “Hey, old-timer, ain’t you got kids or descendents or something to spend your money on?”

“Nah, fuck that.” The geezer was trying to see the fire that Terry was crouched in front of. “Move out the way. I can’t see.”

Terry moved as best he could to block whatever the old-timer was staring at and received a sharp knock on the side of his knee from a stick the elder held in his fist. Terry yelped and hopped out of range of the stick. He came down clutching his knee.

Cal guffawed and Cinnamon covered her mouth, chuckling. Terry stood firmly on one foot and extended the other, kicking the old man’s chair over backward. Cal laughed harder, but Cinnamon gasped and rushed over to the old man’s aid. The old-timer was like a turtle on its back, unable to roll onto his side because of the chair’s arms.

When he was back on his feet, there was fire in the man’s eyes.

“Anything more to add?” asked Terry, fairly certain there wasn’t.

This time, the old man’s stick jutted straight into Terry’s stomach and knocked the wind out of him. He clutched his midsection and doubled over without any breath to curse the geezer with.

The old man turned and ran, which was more like a shuffle, and disappeared into the nearest covering of trees. Terry stumbled after him a couple of steps before stopping to rest his hands on his knees and pant.

Cal decided on red.

CHOWDER

From inside the trailer that served as Darlin’s office, Chowder watched the circle of regulars sitting around the bonfire outside. He was going over the receipts with Tate Dill. The skinny little shitheel was the closest thing to a manager he had to leave in charge if he ever left town. He was supposed to be training Irm to run all the businesses, but outside of muscle work, she’d shown little aptitude for it.