What Dies in Summer (3 page)

When our eyes readjusted, we set up at the back of the lot with me at quarterback and L.A. at flanker, going out on my count for the timing pattern and playing it like she played everything,
like her life plus the fate of the galaxy depended on it. She had just reached back on the run for a bad throw when, sure enough, the guy we’d seen inside came around the corner from the
front of the store, stopped and smiled when he saw us. He stood there in the sun for a while, not even seeming to feel it, just smoking and watching us like somebody who didn’t have anyplace
in particular he needed to be.

And naturally with an audience on hand L.A. and I started hot-dogging a little, heat or no heat. It was one of those times when things come together for you. I was getting a lot on the ball and
L.A., with the sucker in her mouth, was pulling the ratty old Wilson in from every kind of impossible angle. When I led her too much on one route she dove and got the pass anyway, doing a
tuck-and-roll as she hit the ground and coming up with the ball. The guy put his Camel between his lips and slowly applauded as L.A. raised her arms to the imaginary fans and bounced around in her
victory dance. A trickle of red had started from the road rash on her elbow, but I knew she’d bleed out altogether before she’d show her pain to anybody, much less this character.

“Y’all pretty damn slick,” he said. “Reckon you could hit me with one a them bullets?”

I looked at him for a second, then said, “Sure, come on. You can run a post.”

“Post.” He nodded, moving the pack of cigarettes from the waist of his jeans to his sock. “You got it, podner.” He leaned out over the line of scrimmage, dangling his arm
down and shaking his fingers to loosen them up, exactly like a real wide-out.

“On
two
,” I said. Looking over the defensive set, I yelled, “Hut! Two!” and slapped the ball. The guy dug out, juked left once and then cut in the afterburners,
showing hellacious speed for an adult. He looked back after a dozen strides with the cigarette still in his mouth, and when I let the ball go he watched it spiral up, made a little adjustment to
his route, got under it and cradled it in thirty-five yards downfield.

“Yeehawww!” he crowed, strutting like a rooster as he came back to the huddle.

“Where’d you learn to play?” I asked.

“Cornhole U.,” he said, leaning aside to spit. “Down Huntsville.”

We ran a few more patterns and the guy only dropped one ball.

Finally he said, “You troops wanta go out for a couple? See if I still got a wing here?”

“Sure, okay,” I said. L.A. looked down for a second and then nodded, dusting off her Levi’s.

“Okay, y’all, this here’s Niggers-Go-Long. Wide right,” he said with a strict look at each of us. “We are fixin’ to go down
town
.”

We positioned ourselves to his right, and when he called, “Set!” then, “Hut! Hut!” and slapped the ball, we hauled ass. I did a little juke of my own to the outside for
show, giving L.A. just enough of a jump to beat me downfield. The guy put everything he had into it, grunting as he let the ball go. Running all-out, L.A. got her fingertips on it and pulled it
down just before she ran out of field at the edge of the sidewalk.

“Hey-hey, Hall of Fame, man!” the guy yelled.

L.A. wrinkled her nose as she walked back with the ball. We lined up again, and I caught the next couple of passes. We kept running routes until all of us were sweaty and winded.

“HoofuckinHAHH!” the guy said. “Jeez, that was great!” He sidled over to me, dropped his cigarette and ground it out in the gravel with the toe of his sneaker. He flicked
a couple of sweat drops from his eyebrow with his thumb. “So hey, what’s your name, podner?”

“James.”

“More like Biscuit,” said L.A. from the milk crate against the wall where she had sat to retie her sneaker. My father had called me that years before because he said when I was
little I’d do anything for a biscuit, and ever since then L.A. had taken an evil pleasure in doing the same, to the point that I didn’t waste energy anymore resisting it. Concentrating
on her shoelace, she didn’t look up.

“Well, fuckin-A, Colonel Dogbiscuit, I presume.” A quick left-handed salute. “Permission to address the colonel as Biscuit, sir?”

“Sure.”

“My name’s Earl. Hot Earl, the Peckerwood Pearl.”

We shook hands. L.A. showed no interest.

“Where you from, Biscuitman?”

“Jacksboro.”

“Jacksboro. Good. Good town to be from.” He licked along the bottom of his mustache, still a little out of breath and looking thoughtful. “How about Miss Sweetmeat there, she
with you?”

“Yes sir,” I said, realizing I wasn’t really answering the question the way he meant it. From the corner of my eye I saw L.A. picking at the seam of the football, frowning.

Earl twisted back over his shoulder toward L.A. “What’s your name, little sister?”

“Lee Ann,” she said. “We’re cousins. I’m not anybody’s sister.” She tossed her stubborn ponytail and unwrapped another sucker, a green one this
time.

“Well, okay, then,” said Earl, winking his red-rimmed eye at me. “So, you got family in Jacksboro, Biscuit?”

“Not anymore. My dad’s dead.”

For some reason this news seemed to lift Earl’s spirits a little. By now L.A. was moving away along the store wall, tossing the ball up against the yellow brick and catching the carom,
paying no attention to us.

“And what about her?” Earl said. “Where’s she from?”

“She’s from here,” I said. “Is your name really Hot Earl?”

Earl was pulling at his lower lip. His mind was somewhere else. “Say what?” he said. “Oh. Yeah, Daddy used to call me that. When I was a kid.” He smirked. “Called
me other things when I got older.” Taking another look at L.A.

“You know, that ain’t bad stuff there at all, Biscuit.” He took me farther aside, threw his arm over my shoulder and gave me a squeeze. “You noticed the way she wears
them little jeans like that?” he said softly. “I know you did.”

“No sir,” I said, wondering if he saw the lie in my face.

“How-dee-doo,” said Earl. His lunch-meat-and-cigarette breath was getting a little hot. I tried to pull back, but he just held on to me and stayed right there in my face.

“Won’t be long at all, young man like yourself be gettin’ some ideas,” he said, jerking his head toward L.A., who had stopped tossing the ball and was checking out her
other sneaker. “Just lookie there.”

Earl obviously didn’t know much about my head if he thought we were going to have to wait for me to get ideas. I looked at L.A. bending over in her white Fair Park T-shirt with the red
Ferris wheel on the front.

“You can see them little titties real good, can’t you?”

I flinched slightly because that’s exactly where I’d been looking.

Earl got more conspiratorial. “Listen, you guys like movies?” Talking now for L.A. to hear too.

“I guess,” I said.

“Some movies maybe,” said L.A., drifting our way.

“Fact is, I know how to make movies myself. Done made a bunch of ’em.”

I thought about this for a few seconds, beginning to show a little interest.

“Tell you what,” said Earl. “I could put you two monkeys in a movie.” He pointed at us with two fingers.

L.A. was listening to Earl now, seeming to shake off some of her attitude.

“No way,” I said.

“Damn straight,” said Earl.

It occurred to me I had no idea how movies actually got made. But surely it was more than just a one-man operation.

“A
movie
movie, or just some home movie or something?” L.A. said, continuing to sidle in closer. She took the sucker out of her mouth, inspected it for a second, then put it
back. Making up her mind.

“Nothin’ but the real deal,” said Earl. “True Hollywood all the way. Guys and gals doin’ ever-what comes natural.”

L.A. kind of made a face, but Earl wasn’t looking at her. He was looking right into my eyes.

“Well, so where do you make the movies?” I said.

“My place,” Earl said, beginning to look excited. “Wanta check it out?”

Glancing at L.A., I saw a little glint come and go in her eye. She was always surprising me one way or another, but not today.

I said, “Where’s your place?”

“Right down the alley here,” he said. “Over the garage.”

L.A. shrugged and gave me the
let’s do it
look.

“Sure,” I said. “Let’s go.”

EARL BOWED
and swept his arm through the air to usher us into the alley. He whistled quietly through his teeth and cracked his knuckles as we walked
along. The tune sounded like maybe something of Fats Domino’s. He dug his elbow into my ribs to demonstrate that we were into something good together.

We came to a leaning double garage with an unpainted apartment above it. The garage was empty and smelled of dust and old lawn mowers. Earl started us up the chancy-looking stairs on the outside
wall, L.A. first, then me, then himself. He sang a line about somebody’s baby being called
Shoo-Ra
under his breath as we climbed, and halfway up the stairs he leaned forward and
bumped his forehead lightly against the small of my back.

On the landing at the top of the stairs L.A. looked down over the railing and then back to Earl, and when he nodded she opened the unlocked door. We all went in. There wasn’t much light
but I could see a small square wooden table, a chair and a bed with no sheets, just an army-green blanket and a bare pillow. The little kitchen had a gas stove and a short refrigerator on the
counter, and between the bed and the table was a window with a roll-up shade pulled most of the way down. A million little stars of light sparked through the brown shade from the sun behind it. All
over the floor, on the table and bed, everywhere, there were dozens of pint and half-pint empties, all rum bottles with the caps missing.

Mom’s boyfriend Jack was a whiskey guy when he wasn’t drinking beer. The bottles he brought it home in were generally bigger, and he got rid of them when they were empty. I watched
L.A. pick up one of Earl’s flasks and sniff it.

“What does this stuff taste like?” she said.

“Never mind that,” said Earl. “Here, let me make you a place to sit.” He pushed the blanket and a couple of empty bottles back from the edge of the bed. He ignored L.A.,
but she came over and sat beside me anyway, rolling the football back and forth along her thigh. She looked around at the room.

“This is a nice place,” I said dishonestly. The bed smelled kind of like fish and wet dogs, which started a tickle of queasiness in my stomach. There was an old calendar on the wall
over the table that showed a couple of naked boys on a wide stone porch with a lake and snowy mountains in the background.

“Oh, you ain’t seen nothing yet,” said Earl, planting himself in the chair with his back to the door and his knee against mine.

“Where’s your TV?” I said.

“Don’t need that,” he said. “Plenty to stay entertained with.” He scratched at the black spider tattooed inside his left forearm, then pinched and pulled at his
crotch. “We can make our own fun.”

“How about the movie?” said L.A., cocking her head at him.

“Sure,” he said. “But listen, you guys want something first? Maybe a little Thunderbird to start us off right?”

L.A. shook her head. I said, “No, thanks.”

Earl seemed disappointed. He walked over and got a foil-wrapped package from the freezer compartment of the fridge and came back to sit down. He took a small twisted cigarette from the foil,
used a Zippo to light it and took a long drag. He held the smoke down for a while and then kind of groaned it out through his mouth and nose. The smoke smelled like burning rope.

“Want a little hit?” he said, holding the cigarette out first to L.A., who shook her head again, then to me.

I took it and tried to draw on it as he had done, which made me cough. My eyes watered. Then I tried again and this time managed to control my cough reflex.

Earl had a tiny gob of white spit at each corner of his mouth. “Maybe we ought to have a little game first,” he said. “I can think of some good ones. Y’all know Yellow
Dog?”

I drew in smoke again and had no trouble at all this time. Earl was looking back and forth from L.A. to me. He seemed anxious to get started.

L.A. twirled the football, shaking her head and glancing at Earl out of the corner of her eye, saying, “That’s pretty dumb.”

By now my stomach had somehow settled down completely, but I noticed the world was getting kind of cockeyed and I seemed to have dislocated my mind somehow. I began looking around Earl’s
place, smiling and wondering if he had any Twinkies.

“Hey, okay, you’re right,” said Earl. “That is dumb. I know what’d be good! Strip poker! How about that?”

I just couldn’t stop grinning, but L.A. was serious as Saint Peter. So was Earl, only in a frustrated kind of way. By now he was beginning to pay more attention to L.A., and it seemed to
bother him a lot that he couldn’t get her interested in anything. He was sweating harder than ever, and he kept looking from her to me and back again as if he were running out of ideas. The
time for Twinkies seemed to be about over, and I could sense L.A. silently changing gears.

Then Earl suddenly hunched forward and grabbed my leg, jamming his hand hard up along the inside of my thigh.

“Whoa,” I said.

In half a beat L.A. was up and over to the dirty window. She jerked the little doughnut on the string at the bottom of the shade and released it, letting it roll the rest of the way up, where it
whapped around a few times before stopping. Outside, there were treetops in every direction, and among them a few green-shingled rooftops.

“Hey, look, Bis!” said L.A., pointing. “You can see Gram’s house from here!” She looked excitedly back at me.

“Hah? What?” said Earl, standing up, turning his head to the window, bending to take her line of sight.

“Right there,” said L.A. “You can see Daddy’s new truck and everything. He must be going back on day watch this week. You should see, Bis, it’s like being up in a
tree.” She turned and caught my eye. I looked out the window.