Vernon God Little (12 page)

‘It’s ten after two,’ says the kid. ‘See you in one hour.’

‘Wait up - my watch says quarter after.’

‘It’s fuckin ten after - take it or leave it.’

Whatever. I rip the gown off and stuff it into a box under the table, then I run crouched alongside the railroad tracks toward the green end of Liberty Drive. Preacher Gibbons’s voice echoes down the line behind me. ‘Speaking of refrigerators, did y’all hear the one about the rabbit?’

Glancing over my shoulder, I see Mom run crying to the rest-rooms behind the New Life Center. But I can’t afford any waves. I have to grab my bike and fly to Keeter’s. Strangers mill around Liberty Drive corner, next to a new sign erected in front of the Hearts of Mercy Hospice. ‘Coming Soon!’ it reads. ‘La Elegancia Convention Center.’ A real ole man scowls from the hospice porch. I pull my head in and start to cross the street, but a stranger calls out to me.

‘Little!’ I speed up, but he calls again. ‘Little, it’s not about you!’ The dude must be a reporter. He breaks from a group of roaming media, and steps up to me. ‘The red van that used to park next to your house - you seen it around?’

‘Yeah, it’s at Willard Down’s lot.’

‘I mean the guy that used to drive it …’

‘Eulalio, from CNN?’

‘Yeah, the guy from Nacogdoches - you seen him?’

‘Uh - Nacogdoches?’

‘Uh-huh, this guy here - the repairman.’ He pulls a crumpled business card from his shirt pocket. ‘Eulalio Ledesma Gutierrez,’ it reads, ‘President & Service Technician-In-Chief, Care Media Nacogdoches.,’

The stranger shakes his head. ‘Bastard owes me money.’

‘O Eulalio, yo! Lalio, yo! Lalio, share this fucken challenge now.’ That’s what I sing on the ride out to Keeter’s. I feel Jesus with me in the breeze, happier than usual, not so deathly, maybe because I finally got a fucken break. I’m going to call the number on this card, and get the slimy lowdown on Yoo-hoo-lalio. Then, when that reporter turns up at home later, for his cash, everybody will discover the fucken truth. It means I can leave town knowing my ole lady’s okay. This business card is all the artillery I need. What I learned in court is you need artillery.

Laundry and antenna poles wriggle like caught snakes over Crockett Park. This is a neighborhood where underwear sags low. For instance, ole Mr Deutschman lives up here, who used to be upstanding and decent. This is where you live if you used to be less worse. Folks who beat up on each other, and clean their own carburetors, live up here. It’s different from where I live, closer to town, where everything gets all bottled the fuck up. Just bottled the fuck up till it fucken explodes, so you spend the whole time waiting to see who’s going to pop next. I guess a kind of smelly honesty is what you find at Crockett’s. A smelly honesty, and clean carburetors.

The last payphone in town stands next to a corrugated metal fence on Keeter’s corner, the remotest edge of town. If you live in Crockett’s, this is your personal phone. Empty land stretches away behind it into the folds of the Balcones Escarpment, as far as you can imagine. The sign that says ‘Welcome to Martirio’ stands fifty yards away on the Johnson road. Somebody has crossed out the population number, and written ‘Watch this space’ over it. That’s fucken Crockett’s for you. Smelly honesty, and a sense of humor.

I lean my bike against the fence and step up to the phone. It’s twenty-nine minutes after two. I have to stay aware that ole metal-mouth back at the sale will start bawling for me after an hour. I wipe the phone mouthpiece on my pants leg, a thing you learn to do up this end of town, and call up CMN in Nacogdoches. CMN - CNN - Get it? Fucken Lally, boy. New York my fucken wiener.

The number rings. A real ole lady answers. ‘He-llo?’

‘Uh, hello - I’m wondering if Eulalio Ledesma works there?’

You hear the ole gal catch her breath. ‘Who is this?’

‘This is, uh - Bradley Pritchard, in Martirio.’

‘Well, I only have what’s left in my purse …’ Coins clatter onto a tabletop at her end. You sense it ain’t going to be a quick call.

‘Ma’am, I’m not calling for anything, I just wanted …’

‘Seven dollars and thirty cents - no - around eight dollars is all I have, for groceries.’

‘I didn’t mean to trouble you, ma’am - I thought this was a business number.’

‘That’s right - “Care” - I had cards printed for Lalo, “Care Media Nacogdoches,” that’s the name he chose. You tell Jeannie Wyler this was never a tinpot operation - we moved my bed into the hallway to make space for his office, to help him get started.’

Mixed feelings I get. Like Lally falling off a cliff chained to my nana. ‘Ma’am, I’m sorry I troubled you.’

‘Well, the president isn’t here right now.’

‘I know, he’s down here - you must’ve seen him on TV these days?’

‘That’s in very poor taste young man. Why, I’ve been blind for thirty years.’

‘I’m real sorry, ma’am.’

‘Have you seen him? Have you seen my Lalo?’

‘As a matter of fact, he’s staying at my - uh - friend’s house.’

‘Oh heavens, let me find a pen …’

Another bunch of stuff clatters down the line. I stand here and wonder how you read and write when you’re blind. I guess you etch lines that you can feel with your fingers, like in clay or something. Or cheese, carry cheese around all the time.

‘I know it’s here somewhere,’ she says. ‘You tell Lalo the finance company took everything, they wouldn’t wait another second for payment on the van, and now the Wylers are suing over their video camera. Imagine that! - and I was the one who talked them into repairing it in the first place. Those cameras don’t fix themselves overnight you know, that’s what I told her. I just wish everything wasn’t in my name …’

She finds the cheese, and I give her my phone number. My early joy has melted now, with the serious reality of things. I say goodbye to the lady and ride away towards the escarpment, to find the gun. Jesus rides with me in spirit. He stays silent. I’ve changed the course of Fate, and it weighs on me heavy.

Bushes on Keeter’s trail are bizarre, all spiky and gnarled, with just enough clearing between them so the unknown is never more than fifteen yards away. Not many creatures come this far into Keeter’s. Me and Jesus are the only ones I know. Last time I saw him alive at Keeter’s, he was in the far distance.

Ole man Keeter owns this empty slab of land, miles of it probably, outside town. He put a wrecking shop by the ole Johnson road, Keeter’s Spares & Repairs - just a mess of junk in the dirt, really. He doesn’t even run it anymore. When we say Keeter’s around here, we usually mean the land, not the auto shop. You might see some steers on it, or deer; but mostly just bleached beer cans and shit. The edge of the universe of town. Martirio boys suck their first taste of guns, girls and beer out here. You never forget the blade of wind that cuts across Keeter’s.

In the thick of the property lies a depression in the ground, sixty-one yards across, with wire and bushes matted around it. At the steepest end is an ole mine shaft. The den, we call it. We rigged up a door with some sheets of tin, and put a padlock on it and all. It was our headquarters, during those carefree years. That’s where I took a shit the other day, the day of the tragedy, if you need to know. That’s where the rifle is stashed.

It’s two thirty-eight in the afternoon. Hot and sticky, with fast-moving clouds bunched low across the sky. I get to within two hundred yards of the den and hear a hammer-blow. Something moves in the bushes up ahead. It’s ole Tyrie Lasseen, who runs Spares & Repairs, sinking markers into the ground. He’s dressed in a suit and tie. He jackrabbits before I can hide.

‘Okay, son?’ he calls. ‘Don’t be touchin nothin, could be dangerous.’

‘Sure, Mr Lasseen, I’m just cruising …’

‘I wouldn’t recommend you cruise around here, maybe you better head back to the road.’

Tyrie is the kind of Texan who takes his time telling you to fuck off. He shuffles three steps towards me, and wipes some sweat from the top of his head. His eyes crinkle like barbed wire snagged with horsehair, and his mouth hangs open a little. Ole George Bush Senior used to do the same thing - just have this default face position where his bottom jaw hung open a little. Like these guys listen through their mouths or something.

‘Sir, I’m just passing through to the San Marcos road, I won’t touch anything at all.’

Mr Lasseen stands there and listens, through his mouth; his tongue lolls like a snake inside. Then these rusty sounds slither onto the breeze. ‘The San Marcos road? The San Marcos road? Son, I don’t recommend takin this way to the San Marcos road. I recommend you head on back to the Johnson road, and ride around it.’

‘But, the thing is …’

‘Son, the best thing I recommend is to get yourself back onto the Johnson road. I recommend that, and don’t be pokin around here no more - this’ll be a restricted area just now.’ His jaw drops even lower, to hear any stray comeback, then he throws a finger at town. ‘Go on now.’

Weeds blow across the trail home, corrugated metal sheets flap, and with their creaks come the sound of dogs barking. I have only one chance left to reach the gun. When Lasseen is safely out of sight, I edge my front wheel off the track and rocket through the wilds in an arc that will take me around him, to the back of the den. Bushes squat lower on this part of Keeter’s, joined by tall grasses and chunks of household debris. I nearly smash into a nest of toilet bowls, abandoned in the undergrowth like some kind of vegetarian pinball machine. As I slalom through them, I see a Bar-B-Chew Barn cap up ahead. Voices waft down on a breeze.

‘Who cares about ole nature,’ says a kid.

‘It’s not just nature, Steven - there might be a gun.’

It’s the meatworks posse. I know it even before the marching band strikes up. I lay down the bike and huddle into the nest of bowls, trying to gauge the distance between me and the dogs working their way from the town side. It’s four minutes to three. Kids start to surround my position. I crouch low.

‘Bernie?’ says a little voice.

‘Wha?’ My nerves half electrocute me to fucken death.

I spin my head around. Behind a bush at my back crouches Ella Bouchard. She’s a girl from Crockett’s, who used to go to my junior school. Believe me, you don’t want to fucken know.

‘Hi, Bernie,’ she says, shuffling closer.

‘Shhh, willya! I’m tryin to rest a little here, God.’

‘Looks like you’re hidin out to me, that’s what it looks like, to me anyway …’

‘Ella - it’s real urgent that nobody disturbs me right now - okay?’

Her smile falters. She watches me through big blue eyes, like doll’s eyes or something. ‘Wanna see my south pole?’ Her dusty ole knees part a little, a flash of panty shines out.

‘Shit, come on, willya? Hell,’ I blow extra air out of my cheeks with the words, like a Democrat or whatever. I still look, though. It’s automatic with panties, don’t tell me it ain’t. Ole cotton there, stretched gray, like fucken airplanes use her to land on.

‘Can I just hang out - Bernie?’ She closes back her legs.

‘Shhh! Anyway, my name’s not even Bernie, duh.’

‘It is too Bernie, or somethin like that, it’s Bernie or somethin like that.’

‘Listen - can’t I owe you or something? Can’t we hang out another time?’

‘If it’s true, and for actual real, maybe. Like when?’

‘Well I don’t know, just sometime, next time or whatever.’

‘Promise?’

‘Yeah I promise.’

I feel her breath lapping at my face, Juicy-Fruit breath, hot and solid like piss. I turn my back, to invite her to crawl away, but she doesn’t. I can tell she’s staring.

‘Fucken what?’ I say, spinning around on her.

She throws a weak smile. ‘I love you Bernie.’ Then, with a thump of plastic sandal, and a swish of blue cotton, she’s gone. It’s five minutes after three. Your eyes automatically check when it’s time for deep shit, in case you hadn’t noticed.

‘Okay team, stop here for the first item in your snack-packs!’ yells a lady. ‘That’s the item with the red label, the red-label item only.’

‘Don’t go there, boys,’ you hear Tyrie Lasseen call in the distance. ‘That’s an ole mine shaft, stay well away.’ Relief scuds through me as Tyrie warns them away from the den. Then another cluster of voices comes near.

‘Todd,’ says a lady, ‘I told you to go before we left the meat-works. Just use one of these bushes, nobody can see.’ You hear a dorkball squeak something in back, then the lady says: ‘Well you ain’t gonna find one out here, this ain’t the mall, in case you hadn’t noticed.’

We don’t even have a fucken mall, by the way. Notice how folks always throw in that extra smart-assed thing when the media’s around. They just pick the first fucken thing to say, like the mall or whatever.

‘Use those toilet bowls, over there,’ calls some asshole in a fake girl’s voice.

‘Hey, yeah,’ says a lady, ‘I saw some toilet bowls around here somewhere - maybe that’ll help you pretend.’

‘Wait up!’ says Ella Bouchard. ‘You better not use them potties - snakes sleep in ‘em.’

‘Oh my God,’ says the lady. Todd, wait! I better come with you.’

They crackle through the bushes into my nest. I stand out of the dirt and pick up my bike, casually, like I’m in the freezer section at the Mini-Mart or something.

‘It’s the psycho!’ says the kid.

‘Shhh, Todd, don’t be silly,’ says the lady. She turns to me. ‘I don’t think I have your name down - did Bar-B-Chew Barn assign you a team color?’

‘Uh - green?’ I say.

‘Can’t be green, it can only be a color from their logo.’ She pulls out her phone. ‘I’ll call Mrs Gurie and check the list - what’s your name again?’

‘Uh - Brad Pritchard.’

‘Brad Pritchard? But we already have a Brad Pritchard …’

There comes a wet rustle from the bushes, like a dog eating lettuce, then Brad tiptoes into the clearing with Mini-Mart bags tied over his Timberlands. He points out a cloud with his nose. That’s nouvelle; having the convict look for his own gun.’

‘Vaine?’ says the lady into her phone. ‘I think we need some assistance.’

I jump onto my bike and hit the pedals hard. Dirt spews across the clearing.