Sacred Dust (36 page)

“Tell me about her.”

“Who?”

“Don’t fuck with me, man. Tell me about her.”

“It’s private.”

“It’s fucked up.”

“That too.”

“You fucked up, screwed on backwards, missing a transistor, and I could blow your face off, call two friends down and it wouldn’t nobody find you till you was bones. Not that nobody would care enough to look that hard.”

A thrill like the one I had back on the street when she told me to beat it ran through me.

“She ran away with another man to Texas. I’m going to go get her and bring her back.”

Shasta bent double laughing. “You ain’t worth the hair on my ass!” Then she bent over me and gave my cheeks six or eight fast, hard little slaps. I smiled. There was shame in it, but I smiled.

“You’re getting warm,” I said, pretending I knew what I meant. I was having little spasms in my lower back.

“Willie take you five hundred. If I’m lucky, I see a buck and a quarter out of it. You splashing your money around. I see a shot at a couple hundred on the side. Do I?”

She saw more than I had ever seen. She scared me witless, but she was dead on target.

“Roll over.”

She slapped my ass until it must have been red. I couldn’t keep my buttocks from loosening and tightening. I was wriggling like a maniac.

“Hold on a minute.”

She was on the phone. “Earlie?” Her voice was higher, softer, sweet as butter. “I’m up here to the Royal Orlean with some sick piece of shit, baby. I can’t play house with you tonight, honey. You be all right, baby. It’ll come on down in a day or two. You just nervous.”

I took the opportunity to slip into the bathroom and take my clothes off. I unfastened one end of the spring rod that held the shower curtain and poked all the rest of my money except two hundred dollars into it and replaced it. I stood in front of the mirror.
I was right. My ass was beet red. My eyes were a little bloodshot. I crawled back under the covers.

“Earlie, I’ll take you to Planned Parenthood myself, Angel. You ain’t got nothing to fear. You be back on the street in a day.” Then she was whispering, giggling low and smacking the phone with her lips and making slurping sounds. “All right, honey.”

“What the mother fuck you looking at, cow face?” Her growl was back. She jerked the sheet off me. “Skinny little piece of shit.” I laid two hundred-dollar bills on the bedside table. She slapped me across the face. I was hard instantly. She jerked the lamp cord out of the wall and wrapped it around my neck, squeezing me. She slugged my stomach until I had to puke and she bloodied my nose. Then she turned me back over and pounded my ass with her purse. I couldn’t feel anything but happiness. She drew blood from my shoulders with her nails and slugged my face and I was crazy for her, begging her for more. She spread a rubber over her index finger and rammed it up my ass and she unrolled another one down my shaft and she sucked me until pleasure was shooting out of my fingers and toes, and then she bit me and she stopped, and I was ripping at her clothes and she was slapping me back, and I could taste my blood when I kissed her breasts, and I had her down on the floor now, I was inside her now, pounding her. I’m big, too big for Lily, and she was pulling my hair, calling me names, telling me to stop or she’d kill me, but I didn’t stop, I kept pounding and pounding and then I felt the rubber break, the thrill intensified and I was riding waves of bliss, higher and higher and fast and her fingernails were digging into my face when I shuddered and pure hot hell shot up and out of me, spurt after spurt of pleasure drew me on and I slowed down for a while, but I kept at it, kept at it, my insides tingling, my cheeks bleeding, her screaming and moaning calling me “motherfucker” because it had waked something in her too. She was giving it back to me now, squeezing down, hating me because she had started loving it, and she was Lily and I was Michael, and the first blue light of morning glowed outside the blinds when I rolled off of her and fell sound asleep on the floor.

E
dwina Johnston called over here around eleven clock that night and told me Dashnell had passed out drunk in her backyard. She asked me if she should call an ambulance and I told her yes. She said his hands were swollen and red and there was a bump on his forehead. I told her to send Jake up to the hospital with him. She said Jake and Marjean were in Chattanooga visiting their daughter. I knew that for a lie, because their daughter hadn’t spoken to them in three years over her living unmarried with a man and not holding down a job and owing them money. Jake and Marjean were off hiding someplace. Edwina said her husband, Kenneth, was working that night. He might’ve been. I know they needed the money, but something told me he was sitting there telling her what to say. Kenneth was in on the dark business. He had surely heard Dashnell was the main suspect and didn’t want any part of him.

It was almost midnight by the time I got to the hospital. The night receptionist told me that he’d suffered a slight concussion and that he was in a room asleep. She said he’d be out of there in the morning.

“Over my dead body,” I says. “He’s on a bender and he needs drying out.” That’s our hospital. Stick a Band-Aid on his head and send him home having DTs. I hadn’t gone traipsing halfway across the county at that hour of the night for my health. I wanted him
locked up someplace. I was scared to death of what he might do to me if he knew that I’d talked to the Alabama Bureau of Investigation. I also figured that Jake and his bunch would have an easier time of laying the whole thing on Dashnell if he was on a drunk. Sober he might not be so stupid.

“We don’t dry nobody out here,” the receptionist says, swaying her tiny shoulders as she talked. “You have to sign him in at the clinic over in Yellow.” That made me tired. It had to be done right away. There were a lot of forms to fill out. We had to pull a doctor out of bed to have the arrangements made. Everyone kept telling me it could wait until morning. I knew if Dashnell woke up sober and hung over it would take a team of bears to get him into that clinic in Yellow. Luckily he was out cold. They moved him from his room, put him into an ambulance, drove him twenty miles and placed him in another bed with him snoring the whole time.

I realized driving home from Yellow at two in the morning that what I hated about it the most was facing the facts square. I had to do something about ending my marriage to him. I had to pack up the lake house and move my things out. I had to see a lawyer and go through the divorce. I had to organize and formalize and publicly declare that most of my adult life had been a waste.

I wanted to feel sorry for myself or angry at him. All I could muster was a general and vague regret at my own lack of courage because I had accepted such an abominable existence. For that I fully intend to apologize to myself if I ever get the strength to stare into a mirror long enough.

I didn’t drive back to Mother’s. I turned off left by the courthouse and rode up to the lake. I knew I’d find a mess, but what he was living in ought to qualify for federal disaster relief. I started cleaning and I worked through the rest of the night, running laundry between everything else. I found five dozen empty bourbon bottles and untold beer cans. He’d used every plate in the house for ashtrays. I had it fairly straight by sunrise, but it would take a week to make it right.

At the very least, I figured I’d get him sobered up long enough for me to set him straight on a few things. I’d have time to sort through
and take what I wanted out of the house while I gave it a thorough going-over.

I went over home and saw about Mother and told her what was what, and then packed a few things and drove on back up to the lake. I wasn’t sleepy. I opened the kitchen door and set to work cleaning the oven, and that made such a mess of the floor that I went on and stripped the wax and recoated it. The day passed. It was dark again. It was fine to be back up there with the moon on the lake. It was wonderful to know that Dashnell was locked up and that Jake and Marjean were away.

I had been with Dashnell and I had been with Mother, but I hadn’t really been alone for more than a few hours in my entire life. It was a holy time.

I was there a week, packing and making things right. I made my runs for cleaning supplies early so I wouldn’t have to talk to people in Winn Dixie. I figured I’d sell the lake house. I wanted my money out of it before Dashnell burned it down or lost it in a card game.

Nadine’s oldest boy came on Saturday and helped me load the boxes onto Dashnell’s pickup, and we put them in Mother’s garage. Lily called me from Texas to find out if I’d seen or heard from Glen. She had called his office and found out he was missing.

A week after I signed Dashnell in for detoxification I went to see him. I was ready to talk to him about the divorce. I also wanted to find out if he knew I’d talked to those lawmen. I expected him to look and sound a whole lot better than he did. His face wasn’t bloated and I could see he’d lost some weight. But he was pale and lethargic and spoke very little. The nurse said he was near death when he got there and, all things considered, he was doing fine.

Of course legally he wasn’t fine. Dashnell was in more trouble than even he could imagine. Word was out all over town by now. Nadine had been calling with updates all through the week. His good Christian friends were lined up at the Alabama Bureau of Investigation telling the same story against him to a person. Jake had pulled them all together and rehearsed them to perfection.

Nadine stopped by the other morning. It was clear that she wanted more information than she gave. That husband of hers had
obviously sent her over. Across the years I had gathered from Dashnell’s end of telephone conversations that he was some kind of keeper of the keys within the Order. Sidney had heard that I’d been talking with the ABI. He wanted to know what I knew.

“Rose of Sharon, at first I couldn’t imagine why a woman your age would leave a hardworking man like Dashnell Lawler,” she started. I just looked at her. I had an idea where she was going with that. I was right.

“Well, of course, now that I know the straight of things, I understand it perfectly well.”

“That’s a private matter,” Mother interjected from the dining room where she was rummaging through drawers. I had cleaned silver all the day before and she was having a ball arranging knives and iced tea spoons.

“Well, the fool went off on a drunk and killed that black.” When Nadine says “black,” it comes out “blayuuuck” in a silly singsong. “Sidney says Dashnell is apt to lose all he has over this.” She was way out on thin ice and she knew it.

“What makes Sidney think Dashnell had anything to do with it?” I tried to sound as shocked as possible.

“Dashnell’s been bragging about it since the night it happened.”

Sidney is thick with Jake. He was up at my house the night they did it. So was Nadine for that matter.

“Not to me he hasn’t,” I says calmly. Mother kept trying to catch my eye, but I wouldn’t let her.

“Well, poor Sidney and Jake and them are just sick over it.”

“Sick over what, honey?”

“Well, the Alabama Bureau of Investigation, of course.”

“The Alabama Bureau of Investigation?” I tried to sound light.

“As decent, law-abiding Christian men, Jake and Sidney and them had no choice but to say what they knew when the ABI called them in.”

Mother slammed a drawer in the dining room. “There’s nothing decent about a single one of that brood of vipers,” she hissed. Nadine went as pale as rice.

It thrilled me when Mother said that. It wasn’t the obvious truth
of her words. Across the years even Nadine had allowed enough honesty out to betray the fact that she was hiding her brains in an effort to survive. It wasn’t any revelation to Nadine. Mother’s words revealed to me just how alive she really was. I felt obligated to stand tall with Mother, to turn her words into some kind of family statement.

“There comes a moment, Nadine, when the lies wear themselves thin and the facts shine through. So let’s quit playacting and admit how scared we all are.”

“Scared of what?” She wasn’t going to surrender a lifetime of willful ignorance without a fight.

“Living,” Mother purred, her eyes bathing me with pride as she entered the room.

Nadine made her excuses. She pushed that tired giggle and bobbed her head as always. But she was ruffled. At first I thought it was humiliation. Then I saw that it was dread. She had to go home and face Sidney. We hadn’t given her a thing he could use against us. He was sure to give her perfect hell for that.

I let three days pass and then I went back to see Dashnell. If he was ever going to listen to reason, that was the time. If he didn’t, I could go on my way knowing I’d done all I could for him. He still had a long way to go, but he looked better. The circles under his eyes had lightened some.

“You’re looking better, Dashnell.”

“Sign me out of here.”

“I said ‘better,’ not well.”

“You wanted me in hell. You got me here.”

“You’re turning into a nice looking man, Dashnell. You’ll have women chasing you in no time.”

“Bull crap.”

I told him about my plans for the divorce and what I wanted. He didn’t comment. When I told him how Jake and Sidney and the others had informed on him, he tried to make like he thought I was lying.

“What evidence has the ABI got?” he asked.

“Your print on Jake’s gun,” I said.

He didn’t say a word for five minutes. He couldn’t allow himself to conceive that they had all turned against him. At least not in front of me.

“Who brought the ABI in on this thing? You?”

“No.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.”

“Glen Pembroke brought the ABI in on this, and we both know it.”