Welcome to Fred (The Fred Books) (28 page)

It seemed the Fred we had returned to was somewhat different from the Fred we had left. Which was only fair. The Mark Cloud who returned was somewhat different from the one who had left. Although nobody knew that but me.

CHAPTER THREE
My newfound janitorial profit center was not of sufficient magnitude to allow me to retire from my former career as purveyor of the news. I resumed my
Grit
route on the Spyder bike, new driver’s license notwithstanding. Adding gasoline expenses to the overhead would have obliterated my profit margin.

Three weeks of back issues in the pouch threatened to topple me every time I took a corner. To my surprise, most of the usual customers opted for all three, and some even gave me a dollar and told me to keep the change. I hit a windfall at the Walker estate. Parker was in the half-finished gazebo drinking iced tea, a Bible next to him on the bench seat. I scored an extra dollar tip. In the euphoria of a capitalistic ecstasy, I pointed my chopper handlebars toward the river bottom, expanding my territory.

Predictably, my success rate fell. The river bottom is its own country. Despite the fact that I was a four-year resident of Fred, I had never seen the people who answered the door. Or who were sitting on the porch when I wheezed up the driveway. Greeting a stranger with something besides a shotgun was unusual for this demographic. Fortunately, a skinny kid on a bike posed little danger, but buying something from a stranger went against the grain. Particularly reading material.

I started to turn back several times, but I was seduced by what might be around the next corner. I might stumble upon a backwoods reading club searching for fresh material and move the entire stock!

But as each succeeding corner failed to reveal such a cultural anomaly, I was forced to consider a retreat. The light was failing, and I would have to turn back to get home before the prolonged East Texas twilight bled into night.

What lay around the last corner was a rarity in Fred—a hill denuded of pine trees, affording a panoramic view of the sunset. On the left side of the road, a rough plank house held the sun on its chimney. I viewed it with a critical eye, appraising it for telltale signs of the literati. It wasn’t a promising prospect. On the right side of the road, a green Pontiac Bonneville faced the house and sunset. A hand hung limply from the driver’s window. A thin tendril of smoke rose from a cigarette, like incense to the dying sun god.

Here at least was a sign of life. I leaned to the right and rolled to the open window of the Pontiac. With a practiced motion I pulled a paper from the pouch while extending a leg for support. “Would you like to buy a
Grit
? It’s a newspaper.”

The flaccid hand backed with coarse black hair rose slowly. My eyes were riveted to the cigarette resting in the center of the hand, between the middle and ring fingers. Or half fingers, I should say. The hand covered the bottom of the face as if to prevent a secret from escaping.

He took a drag from the cigarette and blew the smoke out his nose. I held up a
Grit
with my right hand, steadying the handlebars with my left. In the silence of the gloaming, we evaluated each other.

There wasn’t much for him to process—a skinny blond kid with hair in his eyes, shoving a paper in his face. The view from my side wouldn’t stop the presses either. Jet-black hair with a trace of gray at the temples, wide face with plenty of room for the wrinkles, bushy eyebrows, flat nose. He raised a Coke can to me with his right hand as if proposing a toast.

“Good evenin’.” He nodded and took a sip of Coke. I nodded back. “How much is yer paper?”

“A quarter.”

“What’s in it?”

“Human-interest stuff, puzzles, recipes, jokes. That kind of stuff.”

“No news of the war?”

“No, it’s not that kind of paper.”

He contemplated the purchase with another pull at the cigarette, fished a wad of bills from his shirt pocket, and peeled off a Washington. “Where you from?”

I dug in my pocket for some change.

He frowned and shook his head. “Keep it.” He tossed the paper into the passenger’s seat.

“Thanks!” That kind of tip didn’t come often in Fred. When it did, it was always from guys who were a little rough around the edges. Women were either exact in their purchase or gave me an extra quarter. “I live over near the school.”

“No, I asked where you from, not where you live. Yer not from around here, that’s fer certain.”

“I was born in Fort Worth.” I didn’t see the need to mention the four years in Ohio.

He regarded me with a penetrating stare that told me he suspected the four years but was too polite or lethargic to challenge my confession.

“OK.” A long silence hung between us, and I turned my bike. He flicked an ash toward me. “I ain’t seen ya out here before.”

“Nosir. I haven’t come down this road before.”

He nodded, admitting the factual nature of the statement. “How often does this paper come out?”

“Weekly.”

“Come a little earlier next time.”

“Yessir.”

He dismissed me with a nod and turned his attention back to the sunset. I turned my bike toward home and pedaled like mad.

The next week I directed my bike to the knobby knoll on my river bottom route. The Pontiac was absent. A girl in her early twenties was sitting on a glider swing on the porch at the house across the road. I stopped in the weeds that carpeted the yard and flashed a paper in her direction. “Would you like to buy a
Grit
?”

She sized me up without breaking her rhythm on the swing. “Nope.” She wore short cutoffs and a work shirt with the tail tied in a knot over her stomach. She might have been a prom queen at one time. Now she was just a girl on a porch on a Saturday afternoon, bored.

“Where’s the guy in the car?” I jerked my head toward the field.

The swing slowed to a stop. “What?”

“The guy in the Pontiac. He was parked over there last week.”

Her eyes narrowed. “He usually shows up a hour before sunset.”

“Oh.” I shoved the paper back in the pouch. “Thanks.”

She gave me a last look and kicked the swing back into action. I returned late in the afternoon. The Pontiac was there, the left hand hanging out the window, smoke rising from the cigarette. The girl was lengthwise on the swing leaning against an armrest, facing the old man in the car. She didn’t acknowledge my arrival. I returned the favor by veering to the car.

The man pulled his attention away from the sunset and raised the cigarette in my direction. I pulled out a paper in anticipation of another lucrative sale. He responded by pulling a Coke from a cooler in the backseat. It was glistening with moisture, unopened.

“I brought an extry in case ya showed up.” We exchanged the Coke and the paper. He tossed the paper in the back and a dollar on the passenger’s seat. “Hop in and take a load off. Enjoy the view.” He waved vaguely with the cigarette. I couldn’t tell if he was gesturing at the sunset or the girl.

I collapsed into the Pontiac. It smelled of stale smoke, dust, and a faint sweet, pungent whiff of whiskey. I looked around but didn’t see any cans or bottles. Just a pack of Lucky Strikes and a gold lighter on the dash, and a square medal with blue and white diagonal stripes hanging from the rearview mirror. I peeled the ring-tab off the Coke. It wasn’t Dr Pepper, but in the wilderness one cannot be choosy. I slid the ring-tab up my index finger. Heidi collected them, making chains she hung in her room.

“Thanks.”

He nodded in my direction, dismissing my appreciation without breaking the silence or his gaze toward the sunset and the swing. I followed his lead, staring at the clapboard house silhouetted against the yellow-orange sky and sipping the Coke, feeling the carbonation burn down my throat. We admired the view in silence for several minutes.

“Long way from” —he glanced sideways in my direction— “Fort Worth to Fred, ain’t it?”

“Pretty much.” I took another sip.

“Especially when it ain’t in a straight line, I figure.” He took a drag on the cigarette in the same fashion I had seen the week before, clapping his hand over his mouth. I noticed that most of the fingers on his left hand were lacking a joint or two.

“Yep.” I didn’t see any point in volunteering information. Besides, it wasn’t the fashion in Fred to grow garrulous on any given point.

He nodded as if satisfied with the answer, set his Coke on the dash, and shot his right hand toward me. “Vernon Crowley.”

I wiped my hand on my pants. “Mark Cloud.”

It was a firm grip on both sides; mine slightly calloused from bike handlebars, push brooms, rake handles, lawn mowers, and other random evidences of my serfdom as a teenager. His was smooth.

A few minutes later he broke the silence again. “Not a bad rag. What’s new this week?”

“Not much. A guy in Oregon grew a giant turnip. Won a prize or something.”

Vernon nodded. After awhile, he nodded toward the house. “Now there’s a fine specimen, all things considered. I believe she even won a prize in her time.” I followed his gaze. The girl reclined on the swing, studiously ignoring us. I grunted a response, relying on ambiguity to be interpreted as his leanings dictated.

“She does that ever’ time. Like a cat paradin’ in front of a dog on a leash, just out a reach.” He lit another cigarette, releasing the aroma of fresh tobacco. “Funny how they learn that without nobody teachin’ ’em. It’s the same the world over.”

I tried the idea out in my head. My experience of the gentler sex was limited. I had never considered the possibility that they might be disingenuous. A surprising ignorance, considering my knowledge of Jolene’s escapades.

He blew a twin stream of smoke through his nostrils. “I know; I seen it in enough countries.”

Most Fredonians could count the number of counties they had visited on one hand and still have fingers left over to pick their nose. This guy was talking about countries. And he had fewer fingers available for nose excavation than the average citizen. “Yeah?”

“Oh, yeah. England, Africa, Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Mexico . . . Texas. They don’t change, no matter where you grow ’em.” I studied him a little closer. He noticed. “The war. WWII.”

“Ah.”

“You can’t swing a dead cat in any city, no matter where nor how big nor small, without hittin’ two or three just like ’er. Full a themselves, like a ripe peach that’ll split open as soon as it hits the ground. But it’s all downhill fer her. High school is a playground fer the likes a her, but now she’s stuck out here, no stage ta strut around on. Soon enough her pa will get his fill a her sass and marry her off ta someone.”

He took a long contemplative draw from the cigarette. “Or she’ll get bored and run off with one a the punks down the river.”

I grunted to acknowledge his peroration. My contemplations of the opposite sex tended to focus on their physical attributes. And, from the look I had earlier in the day, I wouldn’t have objected if she had come throwing rocks at my bedroom window, proposing we run off together.

We sat in the gloom for awhile. Then he suddenly reached up and cranked the Pontiac to life. “I guess I better be gettin’ on home.” He shoved the car into gear and lurched forward.

“Hey!” I hollered, spilling Coke on my jeans. “Let me out first.”

“Oh.” He slammed on the brakes and jerked the car into park. I shot a hand against the dash to avoid a flat nose and jumped out. I held up the Coke. “Thanks.”

“Sure.” He slapped the car back into gear and rolled forward briefly before stopping with a thunk. He gunned the engine. The back wheels kicked up a cloud of dirt. I looked around the front of the car. He had run up against a stump about two feet high. He shoved the gearshift around, hit park, gunned it, and went nowhere. He slapped it again, hit neutral, and gunned it with the same results. He squinted at the gears and tried drive again, creating another cloud of dust.

“Hey,” I hollered through the passenger’s window. “You’re up against a stump.” He looked at me with a confused expression. I realized he was drunk. I took a chance. “Hey, how about if I throw my bike in the trunk and drive you home?”

He glared at me for a few seconds and nodded, the fierce expression still on his face. “Yep, I reckon that’s a doofer.”

“Huh?”

“It’ll doofer now.”

He got out of the car and walked with deliberate concentration around the front of the car to the passenger’s side, stumbling over the stump on the way. I pulled the keys from the ignition and opened the trunk. It was full of glass gallon jars, the kind with a small neck with a handle on it. I slammed the trunk and maneuvered the bike into the backseat.

“Which way?” I asked as I rolled past the stump.

He nodded to the right toward the river bottom. I followed the road until I came to a trailer up on blocks in front of a decaying frame house. I extracted my bike. He met me behind the car. I handed him the keys.

“This’ll just be our little secret.” He winked at me.

“Sure.”

I watched him climb the cinder-block steps to the door of the trailer. It was locked. He called through the open window. A dark-looking woman, black hair jerked back in a severe bun, threw the door open, began cussing, and backhanded him. He tumbled from the cinder blocks into the dirt. Before he hit the ground she had already turned away. I ran over. His lip was bleeding, but he waved me away and got up, brushing the dust from his clothes.