The Thicket (11 page)

She had hair dark as Eustace’s skin. It fell all the way down to her shoulders. Even from a distance I could tell her eyes were greener than the outside walls of the opry house, and it was also clear she had some very nice structure beneath those underclothes. She didn’t look any older than me.

“Ain’t you the redhead?” she said, as if I might not have noted it yet.

“Ma’am,” I said, and since I had my hat off, I kind of nodded.

“Ma’am?” she said. “Now, ain’t that cute? And all mannered, like a real gentleman.”

“I seen him,” said the man with the shotgun. “And right off I thought, now ain’t he cute and redheaded and all. I want to fuck him myself.”

“Oh, shut up, Steve,” she said.

He laughed a little.

I said, “I was just about to leave.”

“You ain’t even got here good yet,” she said. “You ain’t even all the way inside the door.”

I stepped forward a little.

“Would you like a nice ride?” she said. “It being a hot and miserable day.”

I just stood there.

Steve said, “She don’t mean a pony ride, son, and you don’t need to have brought a saddle.”

“I know that,” I said.

“Do you, now?” he said. “You look to me like a man that’s mostly worked his knob with his fist.”

I gave him a hard look.

“That part about it being hot and miserable ain’t that big a calling card,” Jimmie Sue said. “But if you’re going to be hot, you might as well be hot and bothered and end up with your ashes hauled and me with four bits in my poke.”

“Four bits?” I said.

“You got four bits, don’t you?” said Steve. “You ain’t, then we can end this pleasant conversation now. You can put your hat on your cute little red head and go.”

“I’ve got four bits,” I said, determined not to be made a low dog by Steve and his shotgun.

“Well, come on up,” Jimmie Sue said. She turned and started up the stairs.

I considered for a moment, and then followed. Steve said, “Don’t fall off, Red, or get bucked. You got to really get your spurs latched into that one.”

“Ignore him,” she said as we went up the stairs. “He’s an asshole.”

At the top of the stairs was a long hallway, and there were doors along it, and outside the doors were men’s boots. As I followed Jimmie Sue, the floor creaked and groaned. No one stuck their heads out of the doors, and I hitched along to where Jimmie Sue went through an open door. I went inside and stood by it.

“You can close it,” she said, “unless you like other people to watch. There’s some that do.”

I closed the door. I said, “First off, I’m going to give you the four bits. Eustace’s four bits. But it ain’t like you think.”

“Eustace? Is your name Eustace?”

“No. That’s the man who gave me the four bits.”

“Is he coming here, too?” she asked.

“No.”

“That’s good, because I don’t do two men for four bits. You’d both need four bits apiece, and if me and you and Eustace all get in bed at the same time, it’s extra.”

“Forget Eustace,” I said. “I got off on a different train track there. What I mean—”

“You are red as fire,” she said. “You’re all blushed, and you got cotton lint stuck to your face. That is so cute.”

“I don’t mean to be cute,” I said.

“That’s what makes it so cute. You ain’t never had any pussy, have you?”

“I’m not here to discuss that,” I said.

“There’s no discussing to do,” she said, and started taking her clothes off.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“If you want you a little, I do. You see, the hole is under the clothes.”

I could feel myself blushing. It was like hot water was rising up from inside me, boiling to the top of my head. Before I could say anything more, she had shucked her drawers and was standing there in her birthday suit. It was the first time I had ever seen a woman naked. My heart soared like a hawk. She looked so natural there, her small, round breasts riding high and the dark patch between her legs. All I could say was, “I’m actually looking for someone.”

“I’m the only one awake. You got someone else in mind, you’re shit out of luck.”

“It’s not that.”

She studied me, tilted her head, said, “And I don’t reckon you ever been here before to have someone in mind. You are a virgin, aren’t you?”

“That’s not important,” I said.

“Then you are one,” she said. “You might as well be waving a flag that says you are. I can tell. Come here, honey.”

I didn’t move.

She came over to me. She said, “I’ve taken a bath. There ain’t any other men on me or anything of theirs in me.”

“God, I hope not,” I said.

She took my hand. “Come here to bed.”

“I just want to talk, ask some questions.”

“I’ll teach you whatever you need to know. It ain’t like there’s a line of customers around the block, so I got time.”

“I want to know about a man,” I said.

She paused and let go of my hand. “You like men?” she said.

I had to figure on that a moment. “No. I’m looking for someone I think might be staying here.”

“Well, who is it?”

“I don’t know exactly.”

“You are perplexing, Red.”

“I don’t mean to be. I’m looking for someone who was involved in killing my grandfather and stole my sister.”

“So you don’t want me?”

I wanted to say no right out, but the word wouldn’t form in my mouth. Instead I said, “I didn’t say that. I mean, it’s natural, I guess.”

“It sure is. Can I see the four bits?”

I dug the four bits out of my pocket and opened my hand and showed it to her. “There it is,” I said. “And if you can help me find who I’m looking for, it’s yours.”

She ran a hand over my face. “You are so damn cute. I was going to leave this life, it would be for someone like you. I can tell you’re kind, too.”

“How can you tell that?” I said.

“In this job you get so you can tell a lot of things,” she said. “You get so you can read people pretty quick. Men especially. Come here, honey. Let’s go over here and lay on the bed, and then I’ll see I can straighten things out. I’ll go ahead and take the four bits now.”

I don’t even know exactly how it happened, but pretty soon I was naked and in bed with her, and she said, “I like that you’ve got red hair down there,” and then she started teaching me some things.

I caught on right away. When we were done, I was weak with delight. Some of the sin Grandpa warned me about had got hold of me, and hadn’t been near as unpleasant, disappointing, and soul-sapping as he had described it.

I lay there wishing for another four bits. It took me longer than it should have for me to realize why I was really there and that time was wasting, but before I could do anything about it, sin got hold of me again in the name of a free one, as she called it, and I did the deed once more. It was long and sweet, and the warm wind through the window fluttered the curtains and the bedsprings squeaked like mice and the cotton lint drifted in and settled over everything, including our sweaty bodies. Jimmie Sue moaned in a way that didn’t make me think she was wounded, and being a fellow who cared about his money, I thought: I am actually only paying two bits apiece here, and it’s Eustace’s money, and this way he will not be driven to drink. The last part was something I was proud of. I was protecting Eustace from himself.

“By the way,” she said, snuggling up to me when we were finished, “what’s your name?”

“Jack Parker,” I said.

She said, “Parker. I know some Parkers.”

“I doubt there’s a connection,” I said. “It’s a common name.”

“You ain’t any kin to Old Caleb Parker, are you?”

“That’s my grandfather,” I said, surprised she might know of him.

“Why, that old fart,” she said. “You and him are kin. Now, that’s a coincidence.”

“How’s that?” I said.

“Why, now I’ve diddled you both.”

I
started questioning her like she was on trial. She told me about Grandpa, and she described him right, said he liked to leave his union suit on and just unbutton the fly. She said, “If I’d known he was religious, I wouldn’t have told on him. Religious people like to keep this part of their life quiet, that and their drinking. Way I figure it, Jesus forgives, so why not enjoy yourself? He’ll understand.”

“I don’t know it works exactly that way,” I said.

“Well, it ought to,” she said.

I was stunned to find out Grandfather and I had shared more than the hole in the outhouse and the water dipper at the well. It was like finding out your face belonged to someone else. But I couldn’t dwell on it.

“I’m really here to find my sister,” I said.

“You could have fooled me,” she said. “Does she work here?”

“Nothing like that,” I said. “She’s a decent girl.”

Soon as I said it, I wished the words had not come out of my mouth. I could feel Jimmie Sue tense beside me. “Ain’t that something?” she said. “You rode me like I was the Rock Island Line, and now you want to say I ain’t decent.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I think you did.”

“All right,” I said. “I did. But I was wrong. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“I let you have it twice,” she said.

“And I’m grateful.”

“You ain’t going to be like your grandpa, now, are you? Make me kneel by the bed and say a prayer and promise how I’m going to give up the life, and then him tell me he’ll see me next month on the first Tuesday?”

“He came that often?”

“When his wife was alive he came to see the other girls, or so they’ve told me. I don’t know how long ago that was, but I was told when she died he came here more often, and…if you don’t mind me asking, how did she die?”

“She got run over by a cow,” I said.

Jimmie Sue almost spit. “A cow? She got run over by a goddamn cow? I ain’t never heard of that. Now, that is some shit, that is. A fucking cow.”

“Happens more than you might think,” I said. “Out in the country.”

“Well, I’ll be goddamn. A cow. It must have took some work to make a cow mad. It wasn’t a bull?”

“It was a milk cow,” I said.

“That is something,” she said. “Sorry. But that is just funny, that’s what that is. He never said a thing about it. I guess that isn’t something you go around spouting. My wife got murdered by a milk cow. Was the cow armed?”

“It’s not that funny,” I said.

“It’s kind of funny,” she said, and laughed a lot to prove it. When she laughed she looked even better, her teeth all firm and white and shiny, her face damp with sweat, her grass-green eyes so wide and deep I wanted to fall into them.

When she got hold of herself, she said, “About your grandfather. When I went to work here six months ago, he came to see me more than any once a month on Tuesday. He always says that, about being here once a month on Tuesday, because he likes to go to prayer meeting or some such thing on Wednesday, but he’s been coming to see me twice a month easy. How is the old prayer-spouting bastard?”

“Dead,” I said.

She sat up in bed. “Oh, I am sorry.”

“That’s all right.”

“A cow didn’t get him, did it?”

I looked at her.

“Sorry,” she said. “That wasn’t very nice. I just couldn’t resist. Was it a goat? Or a sheep, maybe?”

“That’s enough of that.”

“Sorry,” she said.

“I’m out to avenge him, actually. Well, I don’t really want to hurt anyone. I want to see them that killed him locked up. Mostly, though, I just want my sister back,” and then, without even knowing I was going to do it, I told her everything that had happened, and in a pretty detailed way, and when I was finished, I knew why it was supposed to be that generals and kings talked to their mistresses too much. Diddling, as she called it, makes you weak in both legs and mind.

“The one you said was fat, and missing some teeth,” Jimmie Sue said. “That’s Fatty.”

“Yeah, that’s what they called him,” I said.

“He was here last night, and still might be. I’ve seen him two or three times before, though he ain’t never been with me. I know it’s not good business sense, but there’s some so ugly or smelly I try to draw the line, as long as there’s someone else willing to take them on. And he’s got a cousin here who will.”

“A cousin?”

“Way Katy looks at it, it’s her business to take care of men, and he’s one, and they ain’t close cousins or nothing. Cousins marry all the time.”

“Not in my family,” I said, then I was up and pulling on my clothes. “So he’s here?”

“I don’t know if he’s left or not,” she said. Her face turned sour, or as sour as that sweet face could look. “Now I see what it was you really wanted. I misunderstood and have led you off your mission.”

“To be honest, I think what I got was what I really wanted,” I said.

“That’s kind of sweet.”

“I just didn’t know I wanted it.”

“It’s like finding out about chocolate cake. Once you’ve had it, from then on you crave it. Look, I can point Fatty out to you, but keep me out of it.” And then I could clearly see a thought land on her head, surely as if it were an eagle. “No. Better yet, Red, take me with you.”

“Why would I do that?”

“We can do what we were doing here for free if I go with you. I’m a good traveling companion. I’ve learned a lot of jokes working here. Don’t ask me to cook none, though. I can’t boil water without setting it on fire.”

“You can’t set boiling water on fire if you wanted to,” I said.

“That’s one of my jokes.”

“It isn’t a good one. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“You can damn sure boil it down until the pan catches on fire,” she said. “I’ve seen me do it.”

“You really want to run away with me?” I said.

“I want to get away from Steve,” she said. “He told me this was a fun life, but it ain’t. There’s some perks. There’s that whole thing about the place here having electric lights and a gas burner for cooking, but like I said, I don’t cook very well. And we got shitters inside. They’re down the hall in a room right here in the house. You can do your business in them and pull a chain and water will wash the mess away. Only place in town that’s got indoor shitters is this whorehouse. I like that plenty, cause you don’t have to go outside in the night and worry about some bug or snake crawling up your bare ass in the outdoor convenience. But as I was saying, this ain’t no fun life. That was a goddamn lie Steve told me. He found me at the train station in Austin when I got off. I had run away from home because Mama wanted me to be a goddamn seamstress like her, and I didn’t want to spend a life with needle pricks in my thumb. I wish now I was back there wearing a thimble. Course, I wrote her once and she wrote me back, but there wasn’t any invitation back home. She said not to write her anymore. And Steve, he said he loved me, and he’d take me away to better things, and the next thing I knew I’m here flat-backing, and this ain’t better than nothing except for what I was saying about gas and electricity and the shitter. And now and again there’s a man who is not bad to do it with.”

“You’ve enjoyed it with other men?” I said.

“You think I been just living here waiting on you, Red?”

“I guess not,” I said, but my confidence was a bit stepped on. I was thinking I had been so good with her my first time out she was ready to quit the whoring business and go off with me. But she mainly just wanted to quit the whoring business.

“I just met you, and now you want me to be the love of your life?” she said.

“No, but—”

“Listen here,” she said. “I like you. I do. But all I’m asking is you get me by Steve and out of here, and I’ll try to show you the fat man if he’s here. I’ll go with you for a while, and you can have all of me you want, except if I’m having a mood. I can get out of a bad mood if I’m getting paid, but if I’m not being paid, and it’s one of those dark times, I’m not as friendly as I ought to be. I thought I’d warn you ahead of time.”

I was discovering that Jimmie Sue was quite the chatterbox. I decided to get right to the point, or at least the point I was now the most concerned with.

“Won’t Steve shoot me if I try and take you away?”

“He will, and several times if he catches us,” she said. “He thinks he owns all of us, like we’re sheep or something. Some of the other girls, they’re all right with that. But me, I want to leave. I can do it, now that I’ve got someone to help me.”

“I didn’t agree to that,” I said.

“But you want to, don’t you?”

“I suppose,” I said. “But I don’t like that part about getting shot.”

“Then there it is. You’re going to help me, and we’re going to try and make sure you don’t get shot.”

“Try?”

“You think life ain’t got a risk or two, hon?”

“Yeah, but this is one I don’t have to take.”

“But you will, won’t you?”

I didn’t say anything, but she acted as if I agreed. When she was dressed, she picked up a little handbag that had a drawstring, put the four bits I had given her into it, and looped the bag over her wrist. She said, “Way we can tell if he’s still here is his boots.”

“Steve?” I said.

“No, hon. Fatty.”

Out in the hallway I looked both ways and saw the boots. I didn’t know one pair of boots from the other. But Jimmie Sue did. She pointed. “That’s his, the ones with the silver toes. He’s got them that way to kick people. He brags about it to some of the girls, how’s he’s kicked men in the knees and balls. Katy, his cousin, she thinks it’s funny.”

“I haven’t met her,” I said. “But I can tell you right now, hers is not an opinion I would hold highly on anything, especially family relations. You’re sure those are his boots?”

“Pretty sure.”

“How can you be completely sure?”

She crept down the hall and picked up the boots and held them head height, whispered to me. “Look, you see they got little blades under the toes.”

I went over and looked. There were indeed little blades that fit right under the toes and stuck out about an inch.

“It’s him, then?” I said.

“It is,” she said. We crept back down the hall and stood in front of her room. “If you break in the room and shoot him, that’ll cause a ruckus, and we won’t be going anywhere. So you want me to go with you, it’ll have to be another plan.”

“I need information from him,” I said. “We intend to interrogate him.”

“Interrogate him?” she said. “That sounds like something I do in the bedroom.”

“According to Shorty, it means we’ll pistol-whip the shit out of him until he talks. Those are his words.”

“Why didn’t you just say so, Red? I know what that means.”

I was thinking about a lot of things all of a sudden. Fatty, of course, and Grandpa, who had been a danged liar and a cheater on Grandma, before and after the cow incident. And from the way it sounded, them cow hooves hadn’t long been on Grandma’s head and her in the ground when he was here doing what he had been doing all along, only more regular.

If those thoughts weren’t bad enough, now I had Jimmie Sue to worry about, and pretty soon I’d have to explain her to Shorty and Eustace. I was also thinking about that boy lying in a ditch, and of course my sister out there in the wilds of somewhere, and here I was wasting time with a whore and not hating it too much. I was, in fact, wrapped up in a kind of cloud, having finally experienced what I’d heard men talk about. From my point of view, they hadn’t been exaggerating.

Back in Jimmie Sue’s room, we got the sheets and tore them and tied them together, making knots that could be grabbed on to. We fastened the sheets to the bedstead on one end and dropped the other end out the window. It was two stories down. The sheet rope wasn’t as long as we had hoped. I used my pocketknife to cut up a blanket, and we worked that in with the sheet. Now we had something that would almost reach the ground, leaving Jimmie Sue with only a short drop.

Plan was she’d go out that way and I’d go out the way I came, another satisfied customer. I helped Jimmie Sue out the window, and, clutching the sheet-and-blanket rope we had made, she started down. She was about halfway there when a knot slipped and she fell the rest of the way. It wasn’t a terrible drop, but she landed hard, on her butt, let out with a charge of air that at that moment seemed loud enough to be heard at the other end of town and maybe on up at the cotton gin.

She glanced up, gulped in some air, and got up. She waved me on.

I went out then, down the stairs, started out the door. I waved at Steve and his shotgun. He didn’t wave back. He just glared at me. I thought if I were him I would consider that sort of attitude bad for business. I went on out.

Outside, I moved carefully but briskly to the rear of the whorehouse, met Jimmie Sue coming around the corner.

“You okay?” I said.

“I think my ass is flat,” she said. “Can’t you tie a goddamn knot?”

“I did the best I could,” I said. “Way I remember it, it wasn’t me tied all the knots.”

“I can tie a knot,” she said. “I bet you a dollar to a bull’s nuts it was you who tied the knot that slipped.”

“It doesn’t matter now,” I said.

We went wide of the place, behind a couple of buildings, and came up behind the livery, where Shorty and Eustace were to sell the borrowed horse and have our mounts fed, watered, and rested.

We went around to the front of the livery and were about to go in so I could ask if the liveryman might know where Shorty and Eustace were, when I saw them coming toward us, Eustace with a tow sack slung over his shoulder, carrying the four-gauge in his other hand. Shorty seemed to bounce as he walked. Hog was with them, having reappeared from wherever he had been visiting. Even from a distance he looked a mess, with all manner of mud and greenery twisted up in his short, bristly hair.

“They have a hog with them,” she said.

“Noticed that, did you?”

“Why is a hog with them?”

“He’s a friend of Eustace’s,” I said.

“A friend.”

“Yep.”

“My God, that porker looks wild.”

“He is said to be,” I said.