Vernon God Little (7 page)

But the pessimist in me says, ‘Kid, forget vacations, what yez need is a cake wid a fuckin bomb in it.' My pessimist has a New York accent, don't ask me why. I ignore it. The question of the babe needs thought; you never see guys running alone, admit it. Who to take is Taylor Figueroa. She's in Houston now, in college or something, on account of being older than me. But she's the fox to take. Moist air stirs me through the bars of my cage, and in my mind it becomes a shunt of hormone from the lip of her skirt. I'll take that girl to Mexico, see if I don't. Now that I'm grown up, now that I've been to jail and all. I wasn't close to her at school, even though we nearly made out once. I say nearly because, fucken typical of me, I had her on a plate and I let her go. You're just never taught when to be an asshole in life. There was this senior party that I wasn't invited to, and Taylor was there, face as soft as
panties, just her big wet eyes seeped out. She left the party and crashed on the back seat of a Buick in the Church parking lot, where I just happened to be with my bike. She was wasted. She called me over. Her voice was sticky like freshly bitten cake. Some drugs fell out of her clothes onto the ground by the car. I picked them up. She said to keep them for her, in case she passed out or whatever. I kept them too, you know it. Boy was she fucken bent though. She started saying my name, and writhing around the back seat of the car. Don't even ask me who drives a fucken Buick at our school, but she added some value to his back seat. I helped unpeel her shorts a little, ‘So she could breathe' – her words, not mine – I didn't even know you could breathe from down there. Brown Wella Balsam hair licked her body all the way down to her buns, where gray cotton tangas peeped out; clefted heaven in workaday dew. She was wasted, but conscious.

So guess what your fucken hero did, take a shot. Vernon Gonad Little went into the party and sent her best friend out to mind her. I never got a finger to her panties, even though I was close enough to catch the lick-your-own-skin-and-sniff-it disease that wastes me today; fucken hauntings of hollows between elastic and thigh, tang ablaze with cotton and apricot muffin, cream cheese and pee. But no, duh, I went inside. I even kind of strode in, like a TV doctor, all fucken mature. It fucken slays me, she was right there. I tried to look her up again, but Fate deployed the shutdown routine you get whenever you miss a ripe opportunity in a dumb way. A billion reasons she can't be located, and fucken blah, blah, blah. So much for Taylor Figueroa.

Tonight, though, my hand is her mouth. Every stroke of my boy brings her cotton closer, burrows vents for her fruit-air to escape and waste me. Mexican fruit-air, boy, if I have my way. As I abandon myself to the dream, muffled wisps of the TV-news fanfare travel the corridor like an infection. Then a prisoner snorts with laughter.

‘Y
ou touch bag?
Make fingerprince?' This is what Mr Abdini asks me. Don't even ask me the rest of his name.

‘Fingerprints? Uh – I guess so.' I'm uneasy enough today, without having to meet folk like this.

Abdini is fat the way an anvil is fat, but his face is probably swept back by the velocity of his talking. He's my attorney. The judge appointed him. I guess nobody else works Sundays around here. I know you're not allowed to say it anymore, about other places being different and all, but, between you and me, you can tell Abdini is the product of centuries of fast-talking and doubledealing. Ricochet Abdini, ‘Bing, ping,
ping
!' He's dressed in white, like the Cuban Ambassador or something. A jury would convict on his fucken shoes alone, not that his shoes are my biggest problem. They're the least of my fucken problems, know why? Because if you take a bunch of flabby white folk, of the kind that organize bake-sales and such, and put them in a jury, then throw in some fast-talker from God-knows-where, chances are they won't buy a thing he says. They can tell he's slimy, but they're not allowed to officially
do
anything, on account of everybody has to pretend to get along these days. So they just don't buy what he says. It's a learning I made.

Therefore, Mr Something Fucken Abdini Something stands sweating in my cell, getting ready to say ‘Therefore' probably. His eyes bounce across a file in his hand, which is all about me. He grunts.

‘You tell me whappen.'

‘Uh – excuse me?'

‘Tell me whappen in school.'

‘Well, see, I was out of class, and when I came back . . .'

Abdini holds up a hand. ‘You went batroom?'

‘Uh – yeah, but that wasn't . . .'

‘Very impotent evidence,' he hisses, scribbling in the file.

‘No, see, I was . . .'

Just then the guard clanks at the door. ‘Shh,' goes Abdini, patting my arm. ‘I fine out. You don tsetse fly today. We try bail.'

Barry ain't around this morning; another guard escorts us through the sheriff's back door, and down the alley behind Gurie Street. Abdini said there couldn't be any media in court today, on account of me being a juvenile. Anyway, everybody's at the funerals. ‘An option holding limited appeal,' as the now-dumbstruck Mr Asshole Nuckles would say. It's bitterly hot today; unusual this early in summer. And quiet like when you hold your breath, though you can still sense cotton dresses over on Gurie Street, and kids jumping through sprinklers. Typical Sunday things, but with the damp fizz of tears about them. They come with their own wave of sadness.

Three buildings along from the sheriff's office stands Martirio's ole whorehouse, one of the Wild West's most beautiful buildings. The fun gals are gone though, now it's next to the courthouse. The only gal left is Vaine Gurie, a whole barrel-load of fucken laughs. She waits for us at the back. Her eyebrow rides high today. I'm led up some stairs into the mostly empty courtroom, where the guard maneuvers me into a small wooden corral, with a fence around it. It's almost possible to be brave in here, if you add up your Nikes, your Calvin Kleins, your youth, and your actual innocence. What shunts you over the edge is the smell. Court smells like your first-grade classroom; you automatically look around for finger-paintings. I don't know if it's on purpose, like to regress you and freak you out. Truth be told, there's probably an air-freshener for courtrooms and first-grade classrooms, just to keep you in line. ‘Guilt-O-Sol' or something, so in school you feel like you're already in court, and when you wind up in court you feel like you're back in school.
You're primed for finger-paintings, but what you get is a lady behind one of those sawn-off typewriters. Court, boy. Fuck.

I look around while everybody shuffles papers. Mom couldn't make it, which ain't such a bad thing. I learned that the authorized world doesn't recognize the knife. Your knife is invisible, that's what makes it so convenient to use. See how things work? It's what drives folk to the blackest crimes, and to sickness, I know it; the thing of everyone turning the knife just by saying hello, or something equally innocent-sounding. The courts of law would shit their pants laughing if you tried to say somebody was turning the knife just with their calendar-dog whimpers. But here's why they'd laugh: not because they couldn't
see
the knife, but because they knew nobody
else
would buy it. You could stand before twelve good people, all with some kind of psycho-knife stuck in them that loved-ones could twist on a whim, and they wouldn't admit it. They'd forget how things really are, and slip into TV-movie mode where everything has to be obvious. I guarantee it.

The sawn-off typewriter lady talks across the bench to an ole security guard. ‘Oh my, it's a fact. We had a copy of that same catalog, me and my girls.'

‘No kidding,' says the guard, ‘that same one, huh?' His tongue pushes some spit around his mouth. That means he's picturing whatever she just said. He shunts some spit around, picturing it for a moment, then he says, ‘Don't forget the judge has girls too.'

‘That's a fact,' says the typist.

They turn to stare daggers at me. The typist's daggers come wrapped in Kleenex, I guess so they don't get shit on them. I just stare at my Nikes. Things have gone beyond a fucken joke. You just know the justice system ain't set up for folk like me. It's set up for more obvious folk, like you see in movies. Nah, if the facts don't arrive today, if everybody doesn't apologize and send me home, I'll jump bail and run over the fucken border.
Against All Odds
. I'll vanish into the cool of tonight, see if I fucken don't,
hum cross-country with the moths, with my innocent-headed learnings and my ole panty dreams.

‘All-a rise,' says an officer.

A bright-eyed lady with short gray hair and bifocal glasses glides behind the tallest desk.
Judge Helen E Gurie
says the sign. Her swivel chair rattles politely when she sits. The Chair of God.

‘Vaine,' she says, ‘it'd have to be one of your cases, now wouldn't it?'

‘Gh-
rrr
. We have a suspect, Judge.'

Abdini stands. ‘We apply pearlymoney herring, your honor.'

The judge squints over her glasses. ‘A preliminary hearing? Wait one darned minute, I draw both your attentions to the Texas Family Code – this is a juvenile matter. Vaine, I sure hope you observed the provisions for service of process that apply in this instance.'

‘Gh-
r
.'

‘And why is no record of interview filed with the complaint?'

Just now the main door creaks open behind me. Sheriff Porkorney scrapes into the room and takes off his hat. Vaine stiffens like a bone.

‘We hoped a particular piece of evidence would come in first, ma'am,' she says.

‘You
hoped
the evidence would come in? You hoped it would just
fly right in
? How long has this young man been in custody?'

‘Gh . . .' Vaine's eye flicks back to the sheriff. He just stands by the door, arms folded, real quiet.

‘Good Lord!' Judge Gurie snatches a paper from her desktop. ‘You're seeking
indictment
?' She removes her glasses, fixing a stare at Vaine. ‘And fingerprints is all you have?'

‘Let me explain, ma'am, that . . .'

‘Deputy, I doubt you'll cook up a grand jury on one set of prints. Won't even defrost 'em.'

‘It's more than one set, your honor.'

‘Doesn't matter how many you have, they're all from the same exhibit, the sports bag. I mean –
please
. Maybe if it was a
gun
...'

‘Ma'am, some new information came into the public domain last night, which I thought . . .'

‘The court isn't interested in what you
thought
, Vaine. When you take the pointed end of a stick and wake this whole tangled process up with it, we want to hear what you damn well
know
.'

‘Well, the boy also lied, and he ran away from his interview . . . gh . . .'

Judge Gurie clasps her hands like a first-grade teacher. ‘Vaine Millicent Gurie – I remind you the child is not on trial here. Given the particulars before me, I'm inclined to release your suspect and have a damn long talk with the sheriff about the quality of procedure reaching this bench.'

Her gaze penetrates Vaine's every hole, however many that is. At the back of the room, the sheriff's lips tighten. He puts on his hat and creaks back out through the door. I don't know about where you live, but around here we teach life's hard lessons with our lips.

Abdini stands. ‘Objection!'

‘Pipe down, Mr Abdini, we have other attorneys on call,' says the judge.

Gurie lifts her eyebrow. ‘Your honor, this new information, you know . . .'

‘No, I do not know. What I know ain't a whole lot so far.'

The typist and Gurie exchange a glance. They sigh. The ole court officer immediately turns to frown my way. ‘She ain't seen it yet,' the guard behind me says under his breath. Everybody tightens their lips.

‘What is going on here?' asks the judge. ‘Has this court slipped into a parallel universe? Have I been left behind?'

‘Ma'am, some new facts came to light – we're following them up right now.'

‘Then I'm going to release your suspect until you can show me some particulars. I also expect you to apologize for all this trouble.'

A high-voltage tremor cracks through me, of hope, excitement, and ass-naked fear. You think I'm going to stick around for the
so-called justice system to get its shit together? Am I fuck. Buses leave Martirio every two hours for Austin or San Antonio. The automatic teller machine with fifty-two dollars in it, from Nana's lawnmowing fund, is a block from the Greyhound station. Which is five blocks from here.

The typist sighs, and tightens her lips some more. Then she leans up to the bench and cups a hand to the judge's ear. Judge Gurie listens, frowning. She puts on her glasses and looks at me. Then at the typist.

‘When's the next report? Lunchtime?'

The typist nods; one righteous eye darts to Vaine. The judge reaches for her hammer. ‘Court is adjourned until two o'clock.'

‘Bam.'

‘All-a rise,' says the guard.

Men hardened by the friction of learning, steel men of savvy quietly applied, crusty ole boys of rough-hewn glory, probably smoke a lonely cigarette in their cells during lunch breaks from court. They probably don't have to talk to their moms.

‘Well Vernon, what I mean is, do you have your own room, or did they put you with other – you know, other
men
. . .?'

Barry stands leering by the phone, eyes puckered into goats' cunts. It seems Eileena's eyebrows perch high this lunchtime too, as far as her wooden hair allows. I don't know about where you live, but around here we take the moral high ground with our eyebrows.

‘Well you know,' says Mom, ‘you hear about the nice boys, the clean boys, always getting – you know, you hear about bigger men, hardened criminals, always getting the nice boys and . . .'