Tomato Red (12 page)

The other fella who’d brung her out is maybe forty-five, or in that phase of life, and he’s had a few drinks, I’d predict, and is standing there like a six-foot piss hard-on. He says, looking at the Merridew kids, “You people are the
lowest
scum in town.”

The crowd mutters and titters.

This expression of utter frankness takes over Jason’s beautiful face, and he says, “I don’t think we’re the
lowest
scum in town.” He didn’t argue that we weren’t scum, just disputed our position on the depth chart. It has always hung with me that it was
Jason
who spoke up for us. “Shoot, there’s folks—”

“Oh, shut your salad hole, nancy boy.” Mr. Piss Hard-on reaches over and pushes a finger into Jason’s chest and keeps pushing. “You are an abomination in the eyes of God, and you also get on my fuckin’ nerves. Disease-ridden—”

Baby Jam reached the man’s face with a swung purse; then her tomato head bent and she bulldozed it at his belly. He didn’t care much for that. He got his hands around her throat.

An old, elegant gent with whitish hair and a vanilla suit with a blue bow tie, said, “Hey now. Hey now, fellas, hold on here. Hold on!”

Jason hopped to it, bit the fingers of Mr. Piss until he let loose, then made a slack, floppy fist, not a very useful one, and kind of half threw a punch.

The man smiled like Santa Claus showed up unscheduled and brought him a punching bag that makes rewarding noises.

You could hear people suck for breath, mostly women, I think. One said, softly first, then again and again louder, “You don’t have to smack that boy.”

Jason tried to stand in there. His efforts were sort of valiant, but pathetic and comical, too, and mostly just a waste of his carbohydrate energy and nerve. The noises he made are probably still being imitated around there. He was handled as easy as a cat handles a guppy that has squirted out of the tank to the shag carpet.

Two members restrained Jamalee.

“You don’t have to smack that boy.”

There was a mean redness on one of the kid’s cheeks, a blood spot below his nose, a look of permanent humiliation.

I guess this is where you uncover what “together” actually adds up to. This is the bunch that would have me. Multiply that by plenty.

I can’t say I knew for sure what was called for.

I stepped to the side of the fuss and feathers and hit the man a stomach punch that tore him from his hinges and sat his ass down.

“Now I
am
calling the police.”

“Fair fight,” I said. I got my face close up to the man still standing. I let him understand that there was oodles of danger in me; my head wobbled loose, three ticks off center. This scary face is all them such as me has to show this other world, the world in charge of our world, that musters any authority, gets any reluctant respect at all. If us lower elements
didn’t show our teeth plenty and act fast to bite, we’d just be soft, loamy dirt anybody could walk on, anytime, and you know they would, too, since even with a show of teeth there’s a grassless path worn clear across our brains and backs. “He asked for it.”

I spotted a flicker in the man’s eyes, and that’s all I spotted before my ribs sprang loose and tried to eat my liver, or that’s what it felt like. My vision got suddenly consumed by black. Nose, cheek, chin scraped pavement. My breakfast bounced on me and splattered out. The crowd went “Uhh.”

“Fair fight,” somebody said, quoting me for ridicule. “He asked for it.”

I rolled over and looked up from the blistering pavement, and this dude in one of those ugly green uniforms janitors wear stood over me. He wasn’t a youngster—maybe fifty. He might’ve been five foot nine inches tall, but he seemed four feet wide. His hands had those humpy roadhouse knuckles that have been focused on in plenty of X-ray rooms on plenty of Saturday nights. His hair was gray, and the sun had burned him brown as meat loaf. The name over his pencil pocket said
Burt
. His eyes kept on me and he grinned and said, “That’s a special haircut you got, son. You mow it that way on purpose?”

If I’d’ve had that pistol handy, several histories would’ve took a hard turn at that exact instant. I would’ve let two rounds off in his fuckin’ kneecaps just to hear the bone-crack music. I would’ve put one in his motherfuckin’ head then and called it a happy accident. It was good, I suppose, that the pistol sat way across town, on a closet shelf, but it surely increased the heap of scorn dumped our way and received.

“Eat shit,” I said.

“Okay, son. I’ll need to roll you in batter and fry you up, first, prob’ly pour on ketchup.”

Oh, ol’ Burt was the comedy smash of the summer with the crowd of members, there, in that parking lot. They tee-heed, haw-hawed from down deep, snorted, pulled their sunglasses down and dabbed their giggly eyes.

That’s when Jamalee went off, lost it, stood back and let her rant come up and out of her, screaming.

She’d come all the way unleashed.

SOMETIMES NATURE HAS this look where you want to hoot and shout accusations because the look seems so unbelievable, an obvious fake. I study these looks for the brief reward of them, and that night nature tossed me such a look. Rain clouds, all dark and muttering, were mobbing up out west, but long finger bones of sunlight showed through and played the range of colors like a range of musical notes, making a tune of colors from pink to plum and back to yellow all across the rim of the world.

Then the look went down, sank away, and night took control. You could smell the rain marching this way, and hear it, but you couldn’t see the clouds. I occupied the Ford alone, as we’d all slunk our separate ways since getting whipped at the country club. I had the King singing to me. My knuckles had scraped down to the ooze, and my ribs kept messing with me, shooting pain like rockets if I moved too sudden.

I sat there trying to avoid certain thoughts—the kind that’ll chew the meat clean out of your head if you open their cage. I didn’t have any liquor. I wanted to block those certain thoughts. All I’d ate was beans and dessert. I could’ve stood some liquor, or crank, or maybe snorted some Mexican brown, even.

I didn’t know what to do anymore.

Now that I had
values
I was terrible slow in reaching decisions. You get to parsing out right from wrong, and half-right
from half-wrong, and sort-of this from sort-of that, on down to both ways suck horrible but this way sucks one horribleness less.

Jesus Christ. It can take you two days to decide on breakfast.

I don’t guess I was very long out there in the rumbling night before Bev came over and helped herself to the passenger’s seat. She had two bottles of beer, which smelled to me as gold would smell if it smelled.

“Beer man,” she sang low. “Cold beer here.”

“You are beautiful.”

Bev watched me do the deed to the first bottle. Then she held the other out to me. “Go on, Sammy, you take it, I’m
fine
.”

I took a deep drink.

“You sure? I mean, it’s your beer.”

“Slow down, slow down—I’m not going to ask for it back. You’ll start belchin’. Take sips for a while. I love this song. It gives me tingles.”

The song was “I’m Left, You’re Right, She’s Gone.”

“He ain’t called the King for no good reason.”

“I admire what you did today. What you tried to do.”

“I came up short. It’s happened before, but I almost can’t stand it.”

“Sounds like you don’t feel eager for that rough stuff.”

“I ain’t. I ain’t eager. I don’t like it at all, but it’s always on my menu.”

“That makes what you did even better, Sammy. You faced your fear and ate it.”

“It’s been eatin’ back some, but this beer’s slowin’ it down.”

She reached over to my face and fanned her fingers near the pavement scrapes on my cheek and chin and the thin
scab along the underside of my nose. They didn’t hurt much, really, but still that wind flutter felt nice; merely the attention helped, I’d guess.

“Don’t fret,” she said, staring at my face. “You weren’t that pretty to start with. If you get scars it’ll just add
mystery
to you.”

Her feet were bare. The toenails were painted pearl. She turned and sat with her back to the door and plopped her feet on my lap. There was an enchanting stripe of smell leaking from her toward me. She wore a pale green dress, with a thin strap around the neck to hold it on, but her shoulders weren’t covered and if she leaned forward part of her tits teased you from the side. Hot summertime attire; I’ve always dug it. Her hair was down and beaming in the dark.

“You don’t think I’m pretty?”

“You’re pretty tall. You’re pretty lean.”

“Pretty thirsty”

“Pretty horny—right?”

Well, she didn’t have to invite me twice. I gingerly hopped a little sideways and got to her, still holding that beer bottle ’cause there was no flat place to stand it, and started on her neck. I suppose I steered that free hand south a bit too eager to be called smooth.

“Whoa, now, Sammy take your time, take your time. I don’t turn into a pumpkin at midnight or nothing. You’ve got plenty of time. Kiss me awhile. I’m not about to run, hon. Kiss me on the lips.”

I tossed the bottle out the window. Maybe there was a swig left.

“I might not be at my best, Bev, all banged up this way.”

“Oh, relax. We’re just a couple of blondes, out in the night, willing to have fun. And fun is here. So have it, hon, have it.”

Raindrops pinged on the Ford, heavy drops falling straight to strike the hood or the roof and sound like rim shots. The music blended sort of okay. The wind got pushy.

I broke from one clinch for air, and said, “You ain’t havin’ me be Skeets Benvenuti in your mind, are you?”

“Why, no, huh-uh.”

“ ’Cause truly, I don’t care if you do. If you want.”

“No, listen, hon. What I’ve been needing is a little midnight redneck therapy, and, baby, that’s
you
.”

I went back in for more, and mumbled, or maybe it was murmured, “Aw, I’ve been in need of this.”

“I know, I know. Sometimes it’s the only cure, a medical treatment.”

“It’s medical tonight, Bev. I’m grateful you’re the doctor.”

“Let’s go in my house, hon, to the bed. I don’t want you to bruise your young self when I bounce you off the walls.”

 

SHE, TOO, FAVORED candles. Four or five flickered. The rain had turned serious and gusts tossed the white curtains around and made candle flames hop.

“Oh, boy, hon,” she said. “I forgot all my secrets for a minute there.” She sat up a bit and reached for a cigarette, lit it. “I’ll bet you’ll remember my name now.”

Apparently I’d said Marsha one time, at a moment she found funny.

Sex is the thing you can get the furthest behind in but catch up to the fastest. Three and a half months of want had been drained away, and I had two months more of want to tap into after a minute or so.

I said, “Do you think it speaks ill of me that I could be happy here?”

“Not
ill
, but it speaks of you.”

I always did like to figure I’ve done most everything between the sheets twice, but Bev had done most everything between the sheets twice with most
everybody
, and I couldn’t claim close to that. I sure couldn’t. I’ve pondered it a lot, but I couldn’t lay claim to such battalions of sack memories. Bev could wiggle here and wiggle there and get special feelings running wild in me without opening her eyes. Just a twitch and a lick and a secret touch and I was in way over my head and happy.

“Sammy, after you lay with a woman you don’t start thinkin’ it amounts to a big deal, do you? You don’t start to grab ahold, gum up the works, butt your own opinions in, do you?”

“Not lately.”

“Not
lately
?”

“Not ever. Except once.”

“Uh-huh. Marsha?”

“Don’t say that name.”

We made a trip to the kitchen, naked. Bev looked wonderful by candlelight and tasty by the light of the refrigerator. I had a beer, she had wine, we both had a joint. We stood around in there, naked, drinking, smoking, like we’d journeyed to one of those nightclubs I guess they have in Greenwich Village, or Hong Kong, or wherever. She rested my balls in her palm, closed her fingers around them, and looked out the window at rain laying siege to everywhere.

That other two months of want went away: standing there in the kitchen for about two weeks’ worth, up against the counter, then on back to bed for the big gush.

Candlelight, cigarette, slow breathing.

“You never say who you are, Sammy. Why is that?”

“You just said who I am.”

“But who’re your people?”

“You all are.”

“No, I mean your blood parents.”

“I can’t say much good talkin’ about them.”

“You can’t find a good thing to say about your mom, even?”

“She’s not around anymore. That’s a good thing.”

We both dozed. Lightning strikes and thunder rattled us up from deep good sleep. I stared at the ceiling quite a while; the shadows moved with interesting intentions there.

I thought I heard footsteps, then I
knew
I heard footsteps, and I had a fearful instant wondering whose footsteps those might be and was there a way out of here.

I shook Bev, and when her eyes opened the light was turned on.

“I thought so,” Jamalee said. “We need you, Sammy. Get some clothes on.”

She and Jason both dripped. They were in regular clothes, soaked. Mud rimmed their shoes.

“I’m kind of—”

“We
need
you. It’s important.”

Bev said, “You forget how to knock? On doors? I’ve always asked you to knock.”

“You been havin’ fun, Bev? Fucked you another Ringo, have you? That makes how many, now, in thousands?”