Red-Dirt Marijuana: And Other Tastes (14 page)

She was a small, wasted woman whose rougeless face was stark and very tired. Her movements, however, were abrupt and nervous, and her voice was strident. She held a baby high on her chest, its head facing away over her shoulder.

“That goddam crazy
monk!
” came the father’s voice as he laughed to himself again.

“What’d he do, huh?” she yelled in at him, her mouth anticipatorily forming a harsh, greedy smile of appreciation.

“Where’s Sid?” asked Vince, “D’he go for a paper?”

“He went for milk, you’ll have to wait on your cereal—bring your bowl and spoon, sugar and cereal’s on the table.”

Her manner of speech was extremely fast and wavering, as in a sort of restrained hysteria. When she left the kitchen, Vince followed her, taking a bowl and spoon from the wire dish rack.

“What’d he do, huh?” his mother demanded in the living room.

The father, however, was engrossed in some further development of the show. “Huh?”

“The
monkey,
what’d he do?”

The father took advantage of a station break to scoop some more egg into his mouth, at the same time chuckling to himself and shaking his head as if it were too complex or elusive a thing to reconstruct.

“Well, what’d he
do?
” his mother screamed.

“Aw, they put the hat on’im,” said the father, deprecating the incident now with a shrug.

“Oh,” said his mother, vaguely satisfied, then turned to Vince who was leaning against the divan. “Don’t sit on that arm, you’ll break it; what’s the matter, why’n’cha put cereal in your bowl so’s you’ll be ready when your brother gets back with the milk? Go on now, I want you to help me today with the wash. Tell’im, Ed.” She turned to the father who wiped his mouth and started talking at once to Vince: “Awright, yer gonna help yer mother today, y’unnerstan’, yer gonna help—”

At this moment, the door opened and Sid came in carrying a newspaper and a carton of milk in a sack. He placed them both on the table.

“They traded Heinke to the Giants,” he said as he walked into the kitchen.

“What?” said the mother. “You lookin’ for coffee, coffee’s on the table.”

The father grunted noncommittally, and Vince picked up the paper. “Free West Pledges Asian Defense,” the banner read.

The father stood up, stretched himself grotesquely, as Vince started going through the paper, page by page. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

His mother was watching the father. “There’s hot water on the stove,” she said to him, “you had your shave already, don’t take any more than you have to, I need it for the wash.”

The father belched heavily, yawned, and started out of the room.

“Who’d they get?” he said toward Sid in the kitchen.

At the lot Nick sat alone near the sidewalk, leaning against a refuse mound, munching a jelly roll as he slowly turned the pages of a fresh comic-book. Behind him, in the farthest reaches of the lot, the little boy with the giant pistol raced about in desperate, secret play.

At a near-by sound Nick raised his eyes momentarily, turning another page. Three boys were coming down the street past the lot. Their talk was loud and quarrelsome. They all seemed about Nick’s age, but one of the boys was a head taller than the others. Nick looked at them briefly and then back down at his comic-book, finishing the jelly roll in two large bites. In another minute he was aware that the three boys had stopped talking and were standing on the curb watching him, but he didn’t look up.

“Hey, kid,” said the tall boy after glancing around the deserted block. Nick continued to stare at the comic-book, finally turning another page.

“Maybe he don’t hear so good,” said the tall boy, speaking to the others.

“Maybe he oughtta have his ears cleaned out a little,” said the second boy. They watched him silently, until Nick raised his eyes.

“You talkin’ to me?” he asked.

“He wants to know if I’m talking to
him
,” said the tall boy.

“He’s nosey, ain’t he?” said the third boy, making his voice mockingly shrill and effeminate.

“C’mere,”
said the tall boy to Nick.

Nick slowly got up and walked toward them, folding the comic-book and stuffing it in his pocket.

“What’s the matter?” he asked before he got there.

“What’s-the-matter,”
echoed the third boy in his taunting falsetto. “He wants to know what’s-the-matter. Show’im what’s-the-matter, Gino.”

“Yeath, get Gino to show’im what’s-the-matter,” said the second boy.

Nick had stopped just out of arm’s length. The tall boy raised a finger and motioned him forward as for something confidential, while the other two boys moved out on both sides of Nick, blocking his escape in either direction.

“What’s that you stuck in your pocket?” asked the tall boy.

“What, this?” said Nick, taking out the comic-book and offering it to him. “Here, you can have it, I finished it awready.”

“Oh, get that,” said the third boy, “he finished it awready.”

Nick glanced down the street toward where Vince and Ritchie lived. It was deserted, except for a man walking idly along in the distance.

“Expecting somebody?” asked the second boy.

Nick started to put the comic-book back in his pocket, having held it extended for some time.

“Gimme,” said the tall boy, and Nick handed it over.

As the man approaching reached the spot where they were standing, the three boys fell silent, trying to assume casual attitudes while he passed. Nick, however, took advantage of the opportunity and tried to walk away. One of the boys grabbed his arm and the other two closed in, as the man, a few paces beyond, stopped, turned and slowly retraced his steps.

The three boys glared at the stranger with open hostility. He was a man of medium height and slight, wiry build, dapperly dressed and deeply tanned. Hatless, with a thick close-crop of silver-gray hair, he resembled one of those veteran movie actors who must keep trim and tanned to continue playing youthful, athletic roles. There was an extreme hardness about his eyes and mouth, however, and an unlit cigarette hung from his lips, so that perhaps more than an actor he looked like the romantic version of a highly successful criminal.

When he spoke to the boys, after a moment of silence, his voice was low and cold, with a slight, foreign accent.

“Okay,”
he said. “Beat it!”

The tall boy, half turning his head away, raised a hand derisively, muttering something like “Na-a-ah!” as though he couldn’t be bothered even slapping the older man, whereupon an extraordinary thing happened: with an animal-quick movement, the man seized the tall boy’s hand at the extended fingers, and in an abrupt, judo like twist sent him writhing to his knees, at the same time slapping him across the face with such resounding force that he cringed like a wounded cat.

“I din’ do nothin’!” he shrieked, “I din’ do nothin’!” while the other two boys, frozen wide-eyed for a moment, broke and ran.

“That’s my book he’s got,” said Nick piously, pointing at the comic-book that lay at the tall boy’s feet.

“Why don’t you give him back his book?” asked the man, twisting the arm so mercilessly the tall boy’s free hand trembled as he handed the book up to Nick.

“Now, beat it,” said the man, giving the arm a last vicious twist and poising his raised foot to show his willingness to kick out the tall boy’s teeth if necessary.
“Fast,”
he said softly, and the tall boy scrambled to his feet and fled, visibly shaking with sobs.

“Thanks,” said Nick, very impressed, as the man lit his cigarette and glanced easily around the lot.

“You got nothing better to do?” said the man, referring with a nod to the comic-book in Nick’s hand.

“Why, how’d you mean?” asked Nick, putting the book away, a little embarrassed.

The man shrugged and continued casually to survey the lot.

“Know where I could find the Panthers?” he asked after a pause.

Nick regarded him suspiciously.

“Why, what’d you want them for?”

“I thought I might put a little work their way,” said the man.

“Yeah. What kinda work?”

“
Easy
work.”

“I guess they’d wantta know what kinda work,” said Nick.

The man smiled, as though Nick were too young to be trusted in these matters. “Well,” he said, “I guess I’d wantta talk to
them
about that, wouldn’t I?” He reached into his shirt pocket and lifted out the corner of a heavy fold of currency. “But it’d be
easy
work,” he said.

“Well, you can keep talkin’, mister,” said Nick, “ ’cause you’re talkin’ to one of ’em right now, and the other two’ll be here in a minute.”

The man brightened slightly. “Oh,” he said. “Well, that’s great. Glad to know you.”

He took Nick’s hand in a firmly clasped handshake, at the same time raising his left in a signal toward one of the cars parked on the opposite side of the street a few doors away, and two other, more obvious plainclothes detectives got out and walked over to them.

“This is one of them,” said the man. “Put him in the car and keep him quiet. The other two will be along. I’ll give you a sign.”

“Awright, eat’cher cereal now,” Vince’s mother was saying. “I wantta get started with my wash.”

Vince was not listening, but having turned over the last page of the paper, he threw it aside so savagely that the movement startled and annoyed his mother, and she unleashed a torrent of sardonic bitterness against him.

“What’s the matter with you? Somethin’ in the paper you din’ like? What’s the matter, din’ get your pitcher in the paper? What’s the matter, din’ get your name in the paper? What’s the ma—”

“No!” shouted Vince, jumping to his feet. “No! No!”

His shouts set both babies crying, and his mother, enraged, began to hit at him wildly. At the same moment, he heard Ritchie calling his name from below and he made for the door.

“Where you think you’re goin’?” his mother demanded, fiercely holding his arm. “You heard what your father told you! Ed! Ed!”

Vince shoved her aside and got out the door, but there was a look of apprehension on his face, as though he already knew that something was very seriously wrong.

On the stairs, leaning out over the stairwell, he could see Ritchie’s face two flights below. Even at the distance it seemed livid and panicky.

They met on a dark landing halfway down the stairs.

“Vince,” said Ritchie, breathlessly, “He’s—he’s
dead!
”

Vince was confused, not wanting to believe it. “What—how—how’d you know that?”

“At the store,” said Ritchie, beginning to cry as he sensed Vince’s helplessness. “They’re all talkin’ about it—they got a wreath up awready—they said he . . .
suffocated!
”

The voice of Vince’s mother came down the stairwell, strident and loud.

“Vince! Vince!”

The two boys moved back against the dark wall, looking small and huddled now.

“What’re we goin’ to do, Vince?” asked Ritchie.

“C’mon,” said Vince at last, hopelessly, “we . . . we gotta get over to the lot and see Nick.”

At the lot the detective stood alone, smoking, looking down the street, waiting. It seemed very quiet.

Suddenly, rushing out from behind a heap of refuse, the little boy with the giant pistol was upon him.

“Kow! Kow! Kow!” he cried.

The detective was slightly taken aback, then he smiled wanly as the little boy seized his trouser leg and clung to it, holding the gun aloft in his outstretched hand.

“Kow. Kow.”

They were standing like that, in that strange embrace, the detective looking down with a certain sadness in his eyes as he stroked the boy’s head, and the tiny boy clinging to his leg, his face half hidden against it, voice muffled, wearily repeating, “Kow, kow, kow,” when the little girl with the cloth doll appeared down the sidewalk near the lot. Slowly approaching, carrying her cloth doll on one arm, she raised her eyes and saw them, gave them a serious look, and turned away in a wide arc to pass, cradling the doll in both arms now, shielding it from their sight.

T
HERE’S AN INTERESTING ROAD
leading south out of Axotle, Mexico, that you might like to try sometime. It isn’t on the Good Gulf Map, and it isn’t on those issued by the Mexican Government. It is on one map—I wonder if you’ve seen it?—a map of very soft colors, scroll-edged, like some great exotic banknote; and the imprint of the publisher is in small black script along the lower left, “Ryder H. Raven and Son—San Jose, California.” I came across it about a year ago.

The way it happened, I was with these two friends of mine in Mexico City—I say friends of mine though actually we’d met only a few days before, but anyway we were together this particular night, in their car—and the idea was to pick a town, such as the one we were in, and then to sort of drive away from it, in the opposite direction, so to speak. I knew what they had in mind, more or less, but it did seem that in being this strong on just-wanting-to-get-away-from, we might simply end up in the sea or desert. Then, too, at one point there was a kind of indecision as to the actual direction to take, like left or right—so I suggested that we look at a map. I knew there was a map in the car, because I had been with them earlier in the day when one of them, Emmanuel, bought a secondhand guidebook, of the kind that has folding maps in it.

“That is good, man,” said the other one, who was driving, Pablo.

That was the way they talked, “That is good, man”; “This is bad, man.” They were from Havana, and they spoke a fine, foppish sort of Spanish, but their English wasn’t the greatest. Still, they insisted on speaking it, despite the fact that my own Spanish was good—in fact, the Mexican dialect part of it was so good that they preferred me to speak, whenever it was necessary, to the Mexicans—and it pleased their vanity to argue that, if
I
spoke, it was less obvious we were tourists.

Emmanuel got the guidebook from the glove compartment now and handed it to me in the backseat. We were at a corner southwest of the town, out beyond the stockyards and the slaughterhouse—at a crossroads. There was nothing happening here, only the yellow light from an arc lamp above, the yellow light that came dying down through the dead gauze of red dust which slowly rose and wound, or so it seemed, and bled around the car. That was the setting.