Vernon God Little (10 page)

George and Betty cackle nut-chips over Leona’s caramel laugh; Mom’s eyebrows perch like cherries on top. Nobody will ask why Lally’s suddenly dicking my ma, the truth of things will just get wiped over with cream-pie lies. Don’t fucken ask me about this love people have of saying things are fine when they ain’t fucken fine at all. Lally’s toothbrush in my bathroom ain’t fucken fine at all. He avoids my eyes as he walks through the kitchen, like I was nobody, as if fucken nothing; he breaks open one of his ginseng bottles, tweaks his balls, and keeps right on grinning.

‘Hurry, Doris,’ says George. ‘It’s the Special Edition, go say something!’

‘Well, I’m not even dressed.’

‘Maybe I’ll drive to Houston,’ says Leona. ‘Buy some gymwear too …’ It’s a record-breaking fourth thing. Mom just smiles powerfully, and cozies back into Lally’s arms.

‘Shit, Doris, I’ll go tell them,’ says George. They’re unloading the damn thing already, look!’ I crane to the kitchen window; sure enough, a JC Penney’s truck is parked in front of the Lechugas’. A teddy bear lays pinned under the back wheel.

‘Well but, wait …’ says Mom.

There used to be a horse that could do math on stage. Everybody thought the horse was so fucken smart, he would tap the answer to math questions with his hoof, and always get it right. Turns out the horse couldn’t do math at all, could he fuck. He just kept tapping until he felt the tension in the audience break. Everybody relaxed when he’d tapped the right number, and he felt it, and just stopped tapping. Right now Lally takes a cue from the tension in the room, just like the horse that did math on stage.

‘Tch - the Special Edition?’ he says. ‘Babe, after they screwed you around so long I called and cancelled that order. I’m sorry - we’ll take a drive to San Antone, I need some more ginseng anyway.’

‘Well, oh my.’

‘But, you ordered almond-on-almond, didn’t you?’ asks George. ‘Look, they’re unloading a new almond Special Edition side-by-side into Nancie’s!’

‘What a day,’ says Leona. Her face goes blank trying to suck back the fourth brag. Too late now, honey chile.

My eyes trudge over the breakfast bar, past the power bill you can see tucked behind the cookie jar, and into the living room, grasping at any straw of human dignity. Then Brad walks in, wearing a brand-new pair of Timberlands. Fucken ‘Bang!’ goes the door. He hoists his nose and heads straight for the TV. He’ll go sit on the rug and lip-read the beeps on the Springer show, I guarantee it.

My face caves in. This is how I’m being grown up, this is my fucken struggle for learnings and glory. A gumbo of lies, cellulite, and fucken ‘Wuv’.

I turn to go to my room, but Lally grabs my head. He makes like he’s mussing my hair, but he’s actually holding me back. ‘Little big man - let’s go share some thoughts.’

‘Well sure,’ says Mom, ‘you retire for men’s business - I’ll fix a brew and fill the gals in on a certain somebody’s diet.’

‘What,’ asks Leona, ‘she went back to Weight Watchers?’

‘The Zone,’ says Mom.

I’m tuned out by the time Lally nudges me to the dark end of the living room. I get sat at Pam’s end of the sofa, the end closest to the floor. He spreads himself at the high end, and studies my shoes with a frown.

‘Tch, I can’t tell you what you’ve put your mother through. Can you imagine if I hadn’t been around to pick up the pieces?’

Is he fucken kidding or what? He’s been here seven days, and now he’s like my fucken blood? I just stare at the rug. A fucken yard of it dies.

‘To say we’re challenged, Vern, is to put it very mildly.’

I climb off the sofa. ‘They’re your damn pieces.’

‘What was that?’ He grabs my arm.

‘Fuck off,’ I say.

He slaps me with the flat of his hand. ‘Fuckin cuss at me.’

The noise draws Brad over, shuffling on his ass. Lally tightens his grip on my arm.

‘Lalito, how do you want your coffee?’ calls Mom.

‘Hot and sweet, like my woman.’ Lally flashes Brad a smile, and winks. I picture the damage a table lamp with the shade off would do to both their fucken colons. Lally pulls me close and starts to speak softly. ‘I hear talk of a firearm. You hear about another firearm?’

I just stay quiet.

He watches me for a moment, then hoists his eyebrows high. ‘Remind me to call Dr Goosens.’ He waits for a reaction, but I stay impassive. He waits a little longer, then settles back into the sofa and starts to scratch out the Dallas Cowboys label my dad sowed into the arm. ‘It’s not too late to shift the paradigm, Vern. In fact, if the paradigm doesn’t shift, the story will die. Nobody wins if the story dies. I’m waiting to hear if I’ve been commissioned for a whole series, in depth. Could cross over into feature rights, web events. We could turn your situation around three hundred and sixty degrees …’

‘Learn some fucken math.’

‘Well look!’ Mom walks in with the coffee. ‘He’s only twelve and he has a hundred million dollars! An e-mailionaire, look guys!’

It’s America’s Youngest Millionaires on TV. The ladies drift over like farts.

‘Small fry,’ says Brad. ‘My first billion’s in the bag.’

‘Attaboy, Bradley!’ says George.

Eyes move to the screen like sinners to fucken church. ‘A millionaire before he was ten,’ says the reporter, ‘Ricky is now well on the road to his second hundred million dollars.’ The way he says ‘doll-larrs’ you’d think he’d dipped his fucken tongue in molasses, or something. Pussy or something. Ricky just sits there like a spare prick, in front of the Lamborghini he can’t even drive. When they ask him if he feels great, he just shrugs and says, ‘Doesn’t everybody?’

‘What an incredible boy,’ says Mom. ‘I bet his mother’s on cloud nine.’

‘A billion dollars,’ sighs Leona. Her feet turn in like a little girl, and she leans over to whisper loud in Brad’s ear, ‘Remember who did all the driving in your humble years!’

A warm, fuzzy moment takes hold of the room. Then everybody’s eyes settle on me. I pull away from Lally and head up the hall.

‘Aren’t you staying for Millionaires?’ asks Mom.

I don’t have an answer. I just blow some air through my cheeks and shuffle away, to fucken Mexico, via my room.

‘C’mon, big man,’ calls Lally. ‘I’m only funnin.’ I let his words thud lonely on the rug behind me.

‘Wow, Nancie must’ve bought a new fridge,’ says Leona as I reach the hall. She’s good that way, Leona, how she keeps things moving along. I guess all these ole fakes are good that way, with their fucken pre-programmed coos and sighs and bullshit. One learning you should know: ladies like this can’t deal with silence.

I lock my bedroom door and stand still on the other side, scanning the empty holes Vaine Gurie left in my mess. My disc player is still here, with a few discs around it. I grab an ole Johnny Paycheck compilation and load it, cranking the volume way up. Clothes fly out of the closet into my Nike backpack. Even a jacket flies in, because you never know how long I’ll be gone. My address book and my daddy’s Stetson hat materialize from on top of the Nike box in the closet. I spy an ole birthday card from Mom amongst my chattels, with dumb-looking puppy-dogs on it. It brings a wave of sadness, but it won’t stop me.

When I’m all packed, I pause to listen at the door, mapping the voices in the living room. ‘Hell no,’ says George, from her usual chair. ‘Nancie’s still running on Hank’s insurance.’

‘Well I don’t know why they hem and haw about my Tyler’s payout,’ says Mom. She’s on her way back to the kitchen for cake, you can tell. ‘I mean, it’s been nearly a year.’

‘Honey - they need a body, you know that,’ says George.

I grab my pack, heave up the bedroom window, and jump out into the shady lea of the house. It’s directly in line with Mrs Lechuga’s window across the street, but her drapes are still pulled tight, and the media hangs mostly on the driveway side. I carefully pull down the window behind me, then run under the biggest willow, to the back fence. Who lives on the other side is a wealthy couple; at least their house is painted wealthy. It means they spend less time spying through their screen, not like Mrs Porter. Wealth makes you less nosey, in case you didn’t know. I climb over the fence, scare a hiss out of their cat on the other side, and scoot across their lawn to Arsenio Trace, the last street on this side of town. Everything’s calm, except for some loser selling watermelon at the dead end of the road. I turn away from him, pulling the hat brim low over my forehead, and lope toward town, real normal, even with a new kind of limp I invent to the tune of sprinklers along the way, ‘Mexico, Mexico, Mexico, fsk, fsk, fsk.’

Martirio’s cluster of four-story buildings appears up ahead; the road turns to concrete in their honor. A crowd gathers in front of the Seldome Motel, must be to catch a glimpse of some network stars. I hear Brian Gumball is down here, doing a live show. I ain’t stopping to check, though. Food stalls sizzle at the side of the motel, but I content myself with the thought of enchiladas when I get over the border. I guess Taylor likes enchiladas, not that I ever asked her. It’s one of the things I should’ve asked her, but never did. Tsk. It bums me to think how few things Taylor has actually said to my face; like, maybe twenty-nine words, in my whole fucken life. Eighteen of those were in the same sentence. A TV scientist wouldn’t give great odds of a college girl running away in the heat of the moment with a fifteen-year-old slimeball like me, not after a relationship spanning twenty-nine words. But that’s fucken TV scientists for you. Next thing they’ll be telling you not to eat meat.

Willard Down’s used-car lot shimmers on the corner of Gurie Street, looking faded since he cancelled his ‘Down’s Syndrome - Prices Down!’ campaign. He cancelled it on account of little Delroy Gurie. A flash of red catches my eye at the back of the lot. It’s Lally’s van, with a seventeen-hundred-dollar tag on the windscreen. Then, next thing you know, Fate puts Vaine Gurie in the Pizza Hut opposite my bank. She sits by the window, hunched over a wedge of pizza. Sitting by the window ain’t a sharp idea for a diet fugitive, but you can see the place is overflowing with strangers. I stop and fumble in my pack, watching her through the corner of my eye. Strangely, I get a wave of sadness watching her. Fat ole Vaine, stuffing emptiness into her void. Her eating strategy is to take six big bites, until her mouth’s crammed to bursting, then top up the gaps with little bites. Panic eating. Here’s me yearning for Mexico, there’s Vaine hogging herself slim, just another fragile fucken booger-sac of a life. I stare down at my New Jacks. Then back at Vaine; detached, sad, and furtive. I mean, what kind of fucken life is this?

I can’t risk going to the ATM right now. I turn my face away, and just keep walking to the Greyhound yard. I can check the timetable, hang out until the coast is clear. Heat shimmers clean at the end of the street, a pair of Stetsons wriggle through it. Dirk’s Eatery passes on my right, with all the specials painted on the window, and a couple of die-hards bent over their grits inside. The dog out front doesn’t look at me when I pass. He just twitches an eyebrow, you know how they do.

I limp into the Greyhound waiting room, all casual. A few other folk are here, nobody beautiful though, no cowgirls or anything. Next bus to San Antonio is in twenty minutes. She might already be on the bus, the cowgirl. Trying to blend into the place, I line up behind two Mexican ladies at the ticket counter. They talk in Spanish. It gives me a buzz, I have to say, that and the spicy smell of their clothes. It makes me picture my new beach-house, with Taylor’s laundry hung out on palm trees to dry, her panties and all. She’s probably naked in the house because her panties are all out to dry. Bikinis in the sun. Or tangas. Probably bikinis.

I chase some spit with my tongue, and watch an ole man at the back of the room flick through the Martirio Clarion, our so-called paper. The skin of his face hangs down in pockets, like he has lead implants. Character, they call it. It ain’t character, though; you know it’s feelings. Erosion from waves of disappointment and sadness. One thing I learned from watching folk these last days is that waves are mostly one-way; you collect them over a lifetime, until finally the least fucken thing makes you bawl.

I get quite comfortable, standing in line with my musings. Then the man’s paper flops open to a picture of me. ‘Guilty?’ asks the headline. The room turns icy. My eyes bounce, and I swear I see a flash of Jesus’ casket being wheeled in to catch the San Antonio bus. I shut my eyes, and when I open them there’s no casket. But I expect it, back in my soul. That, or some fucken shit. You know Fate.

Inch by inch, I shuffle behind the Mexican ladies toward check-in. My bravery has ebbed away. I decide to try my New York accent on the man at the ticket counter, just ask him some question; that way, if anybody comes looking for me later, he’ll say, ‘Nah, I only saw some kid from The Apple.’ The ladies finish and move away. The clerk stops tapping at his keyboard, and looks up. My mouth opens, but he doesn’t look at me, his eyes shoot over my shoulder.

‘Howdy Palmyra,’ he says.

Pam’s shadow falls over me. ‘Hell, Vernie, what’re you doing down here?’

‘Uh - looking for work.’

‘Lord, a boy can’t work on an empty belly - c’mon now, I’m on my way past the Barn to your place …’

Fuck. Everybody in the place looks up to watch Pam drag me out by the hand, like a goddam kid. The man with the newspaper nudges somebody next to him, and points. I feel the noose of this fucken town tighten around my throat.

nine

‘The dogs will also uncover firearms, and other devices,’ says the sheriff on TV. ‘So if a weapon is found, it’ll just be a matter of matching the fingerprints.’

‘And if you get a match - case closed?’ asks the reporter.

‘You bet.’

Mom switches off the TV on her scurry back to the kitchen. ‘Lord, Vernon, please don’t go to the Tragedy Sale in those shoes, you heard what everybody thinks. Please. I can’t believe there isn’t a pair of Tumbledowns in your size around town.’

‘Timberlands, Ma.’

‘Whatever. Look, here’s the pastor now. I know it’s not much of a job, but, as Lally says, it’s important to show the community you’re making good.’