Stories of Breece D'J Pancake (8 page)

I snipe my cigarette, lay back on the bed with the light on, and think about Prince Albert with sinker crumbs in his beard, coffee stains on his shirt. I think how there must be ten of his kind in every town down to the delta, and how the odds on ending up that way must be pretty low. Something goes screwy and they grab the wrong wire, make a stupid move on the locks. But if nothing goes wrong, then they are on for a month, off for a month, and if they are lucky they can live that way the rest of their days.

I dress and go out again. It is still raining and the cold pavement shines with new ice. Between the buildings the burns are sleeping in the trash they have piled up, and I think about some nut in California who cut winos’ throats, but I can’t see the percentage. The stumblebums are like Prince Albert, they ran out of luck, hit the skids.

I turn onto First Avenue, walk slowly by the row of crowded taverns, look in the windows at all the lucky people getting partied up for New Year’s. Then I see her sitting at a table near the back door. I go in, take a stool at the bar, order a whiskey, neat. The smoke cloud is heavy, but I see her reflection in the mirror behind the bar. From the way her mouth is hanging limp I see she is pretty drunk. I don’t guess she knows she can’t drink her way out of this.

I look around. All these people have come down from their flops because there are no parties for them to go to. They are strangers who play a little pool or pinball, drink a little booze. All year they grit their teeth—they pump gas and wait tables and screw chippies and bait queers, and they don’t like any of it, but they know they are lucky to get it.

I look for her in the mirror but she is gone. I would have seen her going out the front, so I head for the back door to look for her. She is sitting against a building in the rain, passed out cold. When I shake her, I see that she has cut both wrists down to the leaders, but the cold rain has clotted the blood so that only a little oozes out when I move her. I go back inside.

“There’s some girl out back tried to kill herself.”

Four guys at the bar run out to her, carry her inside. The bartender grabs the phone. He says to me, “Do you know her?”

I say, “No. I just went for some air.” I go on out the door.

The bartender yells, “Hey, buddy, the cops’ll want to see you; hey, buddy…”

I walk along the avenue thinking how shit always sinks, and how all these towns dump their shit for the river to push it down to the delta. Then I think about that girl sitting in the alley, sitting in her own slough, and I shake my head. I have not gotten that low.

I stop in front of the bus station, look in on the waiting people, and think about all the places they are going. But I know they can’t run away from it or drink their way out of it or die to get rid of it. It’s always there, you just look at somebody and they give you a look like the Wrath of God. I turn toward the docks, walk down to see if the
Delmar
maybe put in early.

T
HE
passing of an autumn night left no mark on the patchwork blacktop of the secondary road that led to Parkins. A gray ooze of light began to crest the eastern hills above the hollow and sift a blue haze through the black bowels of linking oak branches. A small wind shivered, and sycamore leaves chattered across the pavement but were stopped by the fighting-green orchard grass on the berm.

The opossum lay quietly by the roadside. She had found no dead farm animals in which to build her winter den; not even a fine empty hole. She packed her young across the road and into the leaves where the leathery carcass of another opossum lay. She did not pause for sniffing or sentiment.

Metalclick. She stopped. Fire. She hunkered in tight fear against the ground, her young clutching closer to her fur. Soft, rhythmless clumpings excited her blood, and she sank lower. With day and danger advancing, fear was blushing in her as she backed cautiously into higher brush. From her hiding, she watched a giant enemy scuffling on the blacktop, and a red glow bouncing brightly in the remnant of her night.

Bo felt this to be the royal time of his day—these sparse, solitary moments when the rest of the world was either going to bed or not up yet. He was alone, knew the power in singularity, yet was afraid of it. Insecurity crawfished through his blood, leaving him powerless again. Soon he began a conversation to make the light seem closer to the road.

“Coffee, Bo,” he said to himself.

“Yeah, and Lucy, toosie,” he answered.

“And putin
tane.
”

“Yeah,” and he quickened his pace, imitating a train.

“P
ut
intane,
putin
tane, put
n
tane, p’
tane,
woooo.”

The opossum crouched lower. Her unready, yet born, offspring clung to her belly, nudging to nurse.

His pace lagged back. Maybe Lucy was a whore, but how in the hell would he know? He liked the way she leaned over the grill, showing slip and garters, and knowing it, still, acting vaguely embarrassed. He liked the way she would cock her head to the right, nod solemnly, brows pursed in wrinkled thought, while he talked about cities he had seen on TV. Or about his dad, who sucked so much mine gas, they had to bury him closed-coffin because he was blue as jeans. Bo would live out a reckless verbal future with Lucy. She listened. Occasionally she advised. Once he was going to run off to New York and get educated. Just chuck it all, leave his mother, and get educated in New York. He had felt silly and ashamed when Lucy said to finish high school first. Times like that, he left the dinette convinced Lucy was a whore.

From up the road, he could hear the rumble of Enoch’s truck. Instinctively, he jumped over the embankment, slipped into the brush, and squatted. A hiss came from within the brush. Bo turned to see a gray-white form in the fog beside him. It looked like a giant rat with eyebrows. They stared, neither wanting any part of the other—the opossum frozen between acting dead or running, Bo crouching lower as the headlights neared. It was only two more miles to Parkins, but if Enoch saw him he would stop; then Bo would be “crazy boy” at the garage for another week because he would rather walk than ride with his boss.

The truck clattered by, its pink wrecker rig swinging, erratic pendulum of pulley, hook, and cable.

Bo unzipped his pants and pissed with frozen opossum eyes looking on. Steam rose from the puddle, and he shuddered as it drifted to intermingle with the blue mist. He began wading leaves up the embankment.

As he trampled the orchard grass at the berm, another truck could be heard up the road, and he fought the urge to slide back down the slope. He could not explain why he wanted to walk, nor was he certain he wanted to walk anymore. He stepped onto the pavement feeling tired and moved a few paces until headlights flooded his path, showing up the highway steam and making the road give birth to little ghosts beneath his feet.

The truck thundered up behind, then let three high-pitched whines pierce the road spirits of the morning. Bo waited for the truck to stop. When it did, a voice called: “Git in er git ober.”

Bo whirled to look at the driver but found his eyes drawn to the white oblivion of the headlights. “Bill?” was all he was able to say as his eyes made red and purple dots appear in the lights.

“Hell yes. You blind?”

Bo looked to the gray hills to drag his attention from the lights, and slowly remembered every detail of Lucy’s body as it disintegrated into his brain. Breast hair. Jesus Christ, how long had he stood in that light like a fool? Bill would tell everybody that Bo Holly was out of his goddamned mind. He groped to the truck, rubbing the red dots into his eyes with his hands.

“Git in,” said Bill, while his eyes explored Bo with the same scrutiny he had once used to search a two-headed calf for stitches around either head. Bo gave a little sigh as he climbed into the truck’s cab, and Bill pounced with the question: “You sick?”

“Just not awake yet,” Bo lied. He felt professional about lying, and once started, would not stop. “Momma overslept. Got me up and out without coffee and half dressed. Said I was late to work. What time is it, Bill?” Questions and complex sentences, Bo had learned, were the great shield of liars. Bill studied his wristwatch, then sneered at the sky as if
The Black Draught Almanac
had been two days off on its sunrise schedule.

“Ten abter seben,” he growled, pounding his hand against the wheel.

“Shit,” Bo yelled, watching Bill jump a little. “But Enoch probably ain’t there yet. He’s always late. Didn’t come in last Saturday till eleven.”

“Ain’t none of
my
biz-whacks,” Bill snapped. “By god, I mind my own biz-whacks.” But Bo knew Bill would remember this as a gossip gift to a bored wife.

“I’s talkin’ to Larry up to the Union Hall,” said Bill, experimenting shamefully, “an’ he says yer faberite song’s that damn ‘Rockin’ Riber.’ ”

“ ‘Rollin’ on the River’?” Questions don’t give offense, he thought, besides, the song’s “Proud Mary.”

“Stupid song, Bo. You oughta know better.”

Bo said nothing.

“Son’ like that’s ber a riber town. We ain’t got no riber in Parkins.”

“Got the Elk in Upshur. Watch this pothole.” The truck jolted twice. “Guess it’s eat up the whole road.” Bill had to think to remember where he had left off. Elk?

“The Elk ain’t nothin’ to sing about,” he cackled. “Now, Merle Haggard, he can tell ya…”

“S’matter, Bill, ain’t you proud to be a West Virginian?”

“Sure, goddammit, but a song like that’s ber eberbody eber-where. You just don’t listen to no good stuff, do ya?”

Bo settled back in his seat, stuck his feet under the heater, and once they were warm enough to feel cold, decided why he liked Lucy: she was a genuine person.

In the silence, the opossum thawed, and was carefully slipping up the bank, sniffing after the danger once so close. It paused in the sycamore leaves and wet orchard grass, then scuttered across the blacktop and back into the woods the way it had come. It was almost morning.

When Bill’s truck topped the final grade into Parkins, the sun had already begun to ricochet from the western slopes, and the eastern hills cast a gray shadow over the town. From that grade, Bo could see who was up and who wasn’t by the positions of yellow squares of light on the houses. Lucy was in the kitchen of her boardinghouse, her tenants in the bathrooms. The two Duncan sisters, who did nothing, rose early to get on with it. They gossiped about their neighbors, mostly about Lucy. She ignored them. Bo thought she liked to be talked about.

Brownie Ross was opening his general store near the railroad; turning on lights, raising blinds, shoveling coal into the stove. Bo wondered why Brownie opened so early—Enoch, too. Brownie never sold anything bigger than a quarter-sack of nails before noon, and if your car broke down, you’d have to walk to Parkins for a phone.

Bill worked for the railroad—station manager—and Lucy boarded the few men the reopened mine demanded, so both had to be up and going by six. Enoch opened early because Brownie did, and Brownie was just old. Mornings changed very little in Parkins.

“Just let me off at the boardin’house, Bill. I want a cuppa coffee.”

“Ain’t none of
my
biz-whacks,” Bill snapped as the truck stopped beside the laughing yellow bear Brakes-and-Alignment sign. Out of the truck, Bo turned to thank the driver, but “Ain’t none of
yours
, neither” was fired back at him. The truck jumped forward, and Bo let the lurch shut the door. He walked to the garage-door window and peeked in: the yellow night-light was still burning, the workshop bench still scattered with tools and parts from the night before. The green Dodge was gone.

Musta done somethin’ right, he thought, they drove her away.

Neither Enoch nor wrecker were in sight. The portent of Bill’s attack hit home: Enoch was up to tricks again, but only the men were supposed to know. “Not even the angels in heaven shall know the hour of his coming.” Bo laughed as he entered the oppressive smell of red clay, grease, and gasoline. He straightened the tool bench, washed, locked up, and headed for Lucy’s.

The boardinghouse was ugly. It loomed three stories straight up from the flat hollow-basin, as plain and ponderous as the great boulders Bo had seen on TV westerns. Noise echoed through its walls; sounds of plumbing malfunctions and boarder disagreements. On the back, a lean-to had been converted into a dinette.

Inside, Bo rediscovered the aromas of breakfast. Ten miners were eating; Lucy was packing their lunches in arch-topped tin boxes. Bo swaggered to the jukebox, punched F-6 in defiant remembrance of Bill, and sauntered to the counter. But nobody had watched as he thought they would have. Ike Turner’s bass voice chanted the rhythm; Tina whispered in.

Lucy coldly asked if he wanted coffee. He did not answer, but got his coffee anyway. The miners left and the straw bosses came down. Unlike their men, who whispered labor and safety secrets, the straw bosses ate alone and silently.

Bo, withdrawn, watched them. He wondered why he could not claim kin to men by tolerating their music, their cards, their fox hunting, but he knew a scab of indifference to keep away sociability.

When the foremen left, Lucy refilled Bo’s cup. Too many color treatments had left her hair the same red as a rusty Brillo pad. She wore only a hint of green eye-makeup, and her skin was the texture and color of toadstools. On each hand she wore a diamond engagement ring. Bet ya can still throw’em, Bo thought.