Bad Juju & Other Tales of Madness and Mayhem (25 page)

He enters the premises, where a young black man with suspicious eyes and a Rasta do stands with hands below the counter. A loaded sawed off is just a grab away.

Alberto smiles. His stomach churns with hunger.

“Which way Dallas?” he asks.

“Whadja say, man?” scowls the attendant.

“Dallas. Which direction,
por favor
?”

“You talk funny, man. This here’s Defoeville where you at.”

“Only which way Dallas, please.”

“If ya want directions, ya need ta buy somethin’. Ain’t no free lunch, if you get my message, bro.”

“Buy food?”

“Whatever whacks your wick, man.”

Alberto walks up and down the aisles, grabbing Twinkies, Doritos, beef jerky, a Kit-Kat bar and more. He sets the armful of junk food on the counter. The attendant runs each item past the scanner.

“Twelve dollars and 84 cents.”

Alberto fumbles in his sports bag and comes up with two fives and two ones.

“Ya still owe me 84 cents.”

Alberto gives him a blank look.

“Gimme another dollar, peckerwood.” He makes change. “Now listen up.” He turns and points through the flyblown window. “See that road over there? That gets ya to the Interstate. From there, Dallas be about an hour an a half.”

The attendant puts Alberto’s cornucopia of junk food in a plastic sack and pushes it across the counter. Alberto nods and smiles. It’s all coming together. Soon I will be in paradise, he thinks.

16.

At 10 minutes past three o’clock Lydia Floodway grovels before her supervisor, Tom de Silva. His sallow complexion reminds her of a drainage ditch, his eyes are scaly. She could never sleep with him.

“This headache’s about drilled to the center of my brain,” she says, hand resting on the doorframe of Tom’s office. Her sleeveless blouse reveals wisps of wiry underarm hair, bearing witness to Lydia’s slacker bohemianism. She’s the banker’s wild daughter, before he shot himself on the eve of his indictment for grand theft and embezzlement.

Tom folds his hands on the desktop and studies her with an intense lacertian gaze. He’d just as soon fire her as look at her. He knows she won’t ever fuck him.

“You’ve used up all you sick days,” he says.

“It’s after three, for Christ’s sake.”

“There’s no fuckin’ way, José, that Jesus needs to be a participant in this discussion.”

“What I mean is, the day’s shot.”

“You took a two-hour lunch.”

She gives Tom a shitass smile.

“I had to run home, check on Zeke, Jr.,” she lies through her choppers. “He’s running a fever. In fact, I’m probably gettin’ what he has. Could be one a those tropical fevers movin’ north cause a global warming. Like in that movie…” For the life of her, Lydia can’t remember the name of the movie. “The one where everybody dies at the end.”

The words DENGUE FEVER flash on and off at the back of Tom’s eyeballs. He has the urge to jump up and slam the door in her face. Rush to the men’s room and wash his hands.

“Get your ass outa here, Lydia. You can work extra hours tomorrow.”

Lydia grabs her purse, slams her desk drawer, and is out of there.

At three-thirty traffic is light, except for the gravel trucks passing through to some new construction by the Interstate. An outlet mall according to the
Cottonwood County Times Herald.

She stops at Malone’s for a dozen cold Shiner longnecks, spaghetti, Paul Newman’s spaghetti sauce, hamburger, the fixin’s for garlic toast and a bottle of
vin
rouge
from Lubbock. Her headache is gone.

Back in the Bronco she twists open one of the Shiners and drinks half of it in one swallow.
It’s funny how boffing at lunchtime always makes me thirsty
, she thinks. The longneck ends up in the ditch. She opens the glove compartment to get a Kool and finds Brian Beetle’s business card. Crumpled, it arcs after the beer bottle.

A Lyle Lovett tune twangs on the radio.

After her father killed himself, her mother took to bed and was eventually institutionalized. Not a great gene pool. But men find Lydia enormously attractive. Skin buttery as aged white cheddar. Heavy milk-and-honey breasts. Hairy crotch. Trim but not boney.

The fact of men’s unquenchable hunger for the rut both pleases her and pisses her off. Sorting through these emotions, she drives too fast through the black neighborhood, past children walking home from school and the Gas and Go, with its rap rhapsodies blaring. A grizzled black man with a Day-Glo yellow vest and handheld stop sign motions for her to slow down. She doesn’t see him.

In her head Lydia makes a list of the 69 things she can do on her Tuesday and Thursday lunch hours after she dumps Brian. Maybe Zeke’ll buy her a bowl of chili.

Next Tuesday she’ll tell Brian it’s
fini
, as her grandmother used to say. I hope to hell he doesn’t throw a hissy fit, she thinks, grinding her teeth.

Suddenly she’s aware of a man walking down the road in front of her. The Bronco’s moving way too fast. She swerves, runs through a shallow culvert and up a slope to the edge of a cotton field, then back down again to the blacktop, where the Bronco jerks to a stop. Sitting, head bent, hands grasping the wheel, she drinks in goblets of air. She’s afraid to turn her head or even glance in the rearview, imagining a blood-spattered corpse splayed across the macadam.

When she finally looks behind, the man is standing at the edge of the road starring at her. An athletic bag hangs by a strap from his shoulder. Slim, nut-colored, conservative in black pants and a peach-colored dress shirt.
Hispanic? There’s something different about him
, she thinks.

“Sorry,” she calls too loudly through the already open front passenger window. “
Lo siento
.”

He makes no response.

“Where ya headed, streak?”

He steps toward the Bronco. “Going to Interstate. To Dallas.”

Funny accent, she thinks. Not Latino. Looking into his eyes, she finds nothing there. No fear of dying. No anger at nearly being run down on some two-bit Texas byway. No expectations or recriminations.
Nada
.

“Interstate’s a couple a miles. Jump in an I’ll give ya a lift.” It’s the least she can do.

Seconds later they pass Lydia’s house. She glances at its distinctive and reassuring profile. A curtain moves aside and Maud, naked, stands in one of the windows of Lydia’s and Zeke’s bedroom.

What the hell!?
Lydia thinks.

She looks at the stranger, who’s mumbling to himself, his lips moving soundlessly.

“You’ll have to excuse me,” Lydia says. “But I’ve got to stop at the house. You can have a cold drink.”

17.

From Carl’s Tap, Zeke makes his way two blocks up and two over to the Double Bubble Lounge, an oblong cement-block bunker painted burnt umber. Against this background wasabi green bubbles effervescing from a wasabi green champagne glass spell out the bar’s name.

Inside, the action is slow, the barman sullen. A couple of aging goodtime gals sporting frizzy perms and freeze-dried facelifts are entertaining two off-work truckers, the four of them tucked away in a maroon-vinyl booth near the toilets. Shrieks of inebriant laughter ricochet off the stained ceiling tiles like the bleating of sheep bound for the abattoir.

All Zeke can think about is Lydia lying beneath the grotesquely heaving flesh of some anonymous male with a JD degree and an uncircumcised dick.

He chugs his beer and leaves.

Outside the light and heat assault him like a two-by-four across the brow. He shields his eyes with one hand. Suddenly, his nerve-jangled stomach retches and he spews sour beer into the weeds of the vacant lot next to the Double Bubble.

Recovering his composure, Zeke heads for the sanctuary of the Elks Lodge, one flight up in the Elk’s Block. A poker game’s starting up in the front room, but he declines an invitation to join. He has no interest in cards, even when he’s sober.

But the well drinks at the Elks are cheap and he settles in, hunching over the bar in savage silence. Merle, the 74-year-old barman, keeps up an incomprehensible banter. Something about a nephew down in Beaumont born with six toes. Or is it a frog with wings?

The shots of Tullamore Dew go down easy, pumping up Zeke’s anger, until he wants to rage on home and beat the shit out of Lydia ’til she begs for forgiveness. For that, he needs a ride back to his truck.

As luck would have it, Reardon Greene, ex-fire chief and ex-mayor, humps onto the next stool and orders a vodka tonic with a twist. He puts a hand on Zeke’s shoulder.

“How’s it hangin’, Zeke, old buddy?”

“Get your paws off me, man,” snarls Zeke.

“Touchy. Touchy,” mocks Reardon. “You never could hold your booze like your old man.”

“Fuck my old man. And the horse he rode in on.”

“My, my. We are having a bad day.”

“Reardon. There are eight bar stools and five tables in this room and all a them are empty except the one I’m sittin’ on and the one next to it. I’d be obliged it you’d plant your butt somewhere besides in my face.”

“No way, José am I moving one lousy inch. This is the last free country in the world. So I’ll sit where I damn well please.”

Reardon grins and takes a long gulp on his drink. Though he’s sixty-five, he’s still as mean as a stud bull and always ready for a scuffle. He looks sideways at Zeke, considering his bleak and furrowed gaze.

“If I was to take an educated guess, I’d say your rat shit disposition is due to one of two factors. Either you’re short of cash or that wife of yours is actin’ up. A wild Irish girl, if there ever was one.”

“If you don’t leave it be, I’m going to cram this stool down your throat.”

“An idle threat, if ever I heard one.” Reardon downs the dregs of his drink and nods to Merle for a refill. “Listen to me, young Floodway. In my day I’ve had my share of gash. When the heat gets ’em restless, the best you can do is beat the crap out of ’em.”

“Thanks for the advice, daddy-o.”

Suddenly Zeke wants to be home before Lydia comes in from work, waiting for her in the musty shadows of the old family kitchen. Fuck her right there on the kitchen floor, ripping off her clothes and plunging his love pump deep inside her ’til his seed spews out like a river and she screams for him to never stop.

The infusions of eighty proof pot-distilled whiskey racing through Zeke’s capillaries make him stagger as he dismounts from the barstool. For an instant the floor races upward to smash into his face. Or is it the other way around? When he puts one hand on the bar, the room stops gyrating.

“You gonna be alright?” asks Reardon.

Zeke draws his face back and tries to focus on Reardon.

“Be fine,” he says. “Just need to get to my truck. Out on the Old Dixie Road.”

“I’ll give you a lift,” Reardon says. “Got nothin’ better to do than take care of wayward drunks.” He winks at Merle.

18.

Deputy Ned Ritter shuts off the Impala’s engine and, reaching for the six-pack of Tecate in the passenger seat, pulls a can free from its plastic holder. Beyond the open car windows, the road dust is already settling. When he presses open the beer can’s spout, carbonation fizzles forth like a miniature fart.

Ritter takes a deep drawdown on the 12 oz. The taste is ice cold and bitterly refreshing. Draining the can, he tosses it on the passenger-side floor.

From where he’s parked, the land tilts down to a mud embankment above the sluggish channel of the Upper Big Sandy River. An ecosystem of pickerel weed, coontail and giant bulrushes rambles along the water’s edge.

No way, José, am I getting involved in a shootout with a pair of mass murderers,
Ritter thinks.
They’re all yours, Sonny.
He hoists his second beer in mock salute to his boss.
Hope they don’t blow your pecker off, like in that Hemingway book.

Exiting the police cruiser, Ritter moseys down the shallow grade to the river’s edge, holding the remaining four beers by an empty plastic ring. He halts in the shade of a hackberry. A dragonfly flits by like a pinprick of blue neon light.

The rumble of a souped-up car engine coming up the river road devours the stillness of the declining day. From out of a dust cloud, a white Camaro with a blonde female driver heaves into view, bouncing like a jack-in-the-box on the rutted road.

Parking next to the Impala, Brandy St. Pierre, buxom and blowsy in a white tube-top and pink short-shorts with the word
juicy
spelled across her butt, bounds forth and makes a beeline for Ritter. Ritter already has a hard-on.

19.

A wad of cigar phlegm floats in the back of Dietz’s throat like a wet Go stone, but there’s nowhere to spit cruising 80 m.p.h. on the southbound Interstate. Dietz squirms sideways and extricates a cloth handkerchief from his back pocket. Cupping it in front of his mouth, he gags up the glob of mucus.

Jimmy Cuervo, in the passenger seat, makes a face. Jimmy is Dietz’s neighbor in the one-bedroom across the hall. Four days a week Jimmy works as a security guard at Northpark Mall.

“Hey, Jimmy,” says Dietz. “Gimme the pint of Dickel in the glovebox.”

No way, José,
Jimmy wants to say.
Drinking and driving just isn’t cool.
Instead he complies with Dietz’s request.

Dietz takes a swig. His lips purse with satisfaction.

Jimmy re-stows the bottle on top of the .38 caliber police special and stares out the side window at the monotony of pastureland and scrub windbreaks whizzing by. Dietz shifts back into a comfortable driving position, one elbow thrust through the open window of the ancient Volvo. A warm wind blows through the interior, scurrying among the old magazines and other crap strewn in the back seat. The air-conditioning is history.
A passing sign reads:
Defoeville Next 4 Exits.

Swinging off at the second exit, they pass through a mixed neighborhood of shacks, trailers, and prewar brick cottages. At a blind intersection, a gravel truck bounds around the corner at high speed, airbrushing the front bumper of the Volvo. The truck driver waves.