Dead Nolte (9 page)

He directed his attention back to the reaper. Rocking up on
one cheek, he put a muffled fart into his diaper. A crooked smile crossed his
lips. “Farts are funny, AND an excellent icebreaker, if used properly.” Nolte
marveled at himself for the wit and bravery he displayed in the face of death.
“You know what, Fuckstain?” he asked as he brought up a gnarled, unsteady
finger to point at his death shadow. The warm feeling from the mescal had
started to morph into liquid courage. “You know what your fucking problem is?”
he hissed, as he moved his finger closer to the ghost, “You don’t know how to
laugh. Pull my finger you stinkin’ sonofabitch.”

The pain gripped his chest so hard and so sudden; it felt as
though it had always been there. Somehow it had become part of him when he
wasn’t paying attention and had set up shop in his chest cavity, forging large
needles, sharp knives, and hot pokers. It felt old and familiar, yet brand new
and blistering shiny.
 

Nolte looked at the shadowy figure across from him to see if
it was smiling. “It’s okay, Asshole, I found a loophole.”

The shadow had moved directly in front of him, almost
touching. He could feel how cold and empty it truly was. The calmness, Nolte
had found attractive was still there, but an enormous emptiness felt as though
it were just an inch away from his face, crushing huge and empty. It was as
though it contained everything and nothing at all at once.

The abyss had opened before Nolte and he could now see that
fear and loathing had no end. Like the gripping fade from reality, at the onset
of a seizure, it began to engulf him. He heard a distant child fearfully
singing Jesus Loves Me.

“Don’t tell your mom, don’t tell your mom, don’t tell your
mom.” He repeated with tiny puffs of air.

As the light dimmed and his last breath leaked out of him,
Nolte found himself wondering if he had remembered to set the trash cans out.
He pictured the neighbor’s dog digging through them.

Dying wasn’t so bad when you had a backup plan.

T
he
room smelled sweet and rusty. It was completely void of furniture other than a
burlap sack split halfsies and draped over the windows on either side of the
cramped hole. A tiny black woman, two days older than dirt, with a face as
wrinkled as a root cellar potato, sat on an upturned five-gallon bucket in the
far corner. She held a crooked candle in one hand and a small ball of opium on
the end of a toothpick in the other. Her sucking noises and the hiss of the
opium were the only sound, other than what Nolte assumed was his heartbeat.
Since he saw no other upturned buckets or furniture, Nolte stood by the door
and waited for her to acknowledge his presence.

“I can smell the fear on you, ta to, you know I real—don’t
ya boy?” She said finally, her voice so hoarse and grave, that Nolte
absentmindedly touched his fingers to his own throat. “I ain’t no Santeria
coon-ass, ta to, you know dis.” The flame of the candle danced and cast palsied
shadows on the face of the old woman, as she watched Nolte from the corner of
her eye. She made no attempt to hide her dislike of Nolte.

“This ain’t for you; dis shit makes da white boys sleepy.”
She sucked at the thin finger of smoke curling up from the end of the toothpick
and held it in deep in the bottoms of her ancient lungs. With a rush of blue
smoke, she blew out the candle and dropped it at her feet. Careful not to knock
the opium from its perch, she poked the toothpick into her matted hair, until
it all but disappeared. “Bring me there what you got for me, Chickenshit.” She
held her crooked hand out to Nolte. Her hands looked old and worn, yet moved
with a rehearsed grace.

Nolte wondered how many children had met their end, gulping
for air, wearing her hands around their neck? How many fools had those hands
castrated to provide flavor and enhance the potency of eye of eel, in one of
her witch’s brews?

Nolte stepped forward warily, fishing an envelope from his
back pocket. “This is a lot of money, for nothing more than information.” He
suppressed the ever present little coward in his head and tried to sound
fearless, but he sounded plucky at best. The look she flashed him told him he’d
probably said enough, probably too much. Though she looked old and decrepit,
the vibe she shared was similar to one a person might get from a dead
rattlesnake. It is okay to have your picture taken standing next to it, but
stroking the top of its lifeless head required a bit of intestinal fortitude.

“You want you dick fall off, White Boy? I kin make dat
happen, ta to. You da one come to me. You come to me ‘cuz you know only Mama
know this thing. You know dat Mama ain’t no Santeria coon-ass.” The old woman
snatched the envelope out of Nolte’s hand and quickly slapped his wrist with
it, as if she’d caught his hand in the cookie jar. Nolte stepped back into his
allotted space by the door, as the old woman poked her finger around inside the
envelope.

After she was satisfied with the contents, she put the
envelope between her butt and the bucket she sat on. Her face pinched and she
stared hard at Nolte. “This thing you need; they only be two left in da wide
world. Da Pope have one and a sandman in Israel have de other.” She picked up
the candle from between her bare feet and lit it with a Zippo. “C’mere White
Boy, hold out you hand.”

 
Nolte stepped toward
her and offered his sweaty hand. She carefully pressed a folded paper into his
palm and closed his fingers around it one at a time, in a manner that resembled
the un-peeling of an orange. Nolte would recall the action later and label it
‘mighty cool beans’ and adopt it into his repertoire of coolness.

 “Now give me de other one, Chickenshit.” The old woman
turned the candle to one side and let the wax drip into Nolte’s palm. He
flinched at the first drip but thought it best to cowboy up for the next four.
He didn’t want this crazy bitch thinking he was a complete pussy.

“Squeeze it, Chickenshit.” She ordered.

Nolte clenched his hand into a fist; he could feel the wax squirm
like a tomato worm in his grip as it cooled and hardened. She blew out the
candle and dropped it at her feet again. “Open you hand, White Boy.”

Nolte slowly uncurled his fingers one at a time, re-peeling
the orange, to find, not a tomato worm, nor wiggly wax, but an address neatly
written across his palm where the witch had dripped the molten liquid. He had
been told this bitch could do scary shit. Well, maybe the address thing wasn’t
that scary, but he sure found it unsettling, and what he had seen at the
whorehouse, the thing that had convinced him to come to the old hag, was more
than unsettling. It had completely reshuffled his deck. It had convinced him,
that what all he knew about the workings of this world, didn’t amount to shit.

“You go there. Talk to the man, dat fix da trumpets. You
sign da paper and you have de man send you ta git it, yerownself. If da trumpet
man touch dis thing you need, he will know what it be, and what it is you be
doin’. Den you done.” She grabbed Nolte’s wrist and squeezed with a strength
that seemed impossible from someone who looked so frail. It made him think of
strangled children again. “You want dis? You don’t tell him you talk to Mama.
You don’t even think about Mama. Dis man can know de shit dat be in you head.” She
paused and looked into Nolte’s eyes. “You tell him Linus Lucy from Plaquemines
tell you ‘bout da trumpet fixer, den you think about baseball, or pussy, or dat
fraidy cat you gots runnin’ ‘round in you head.” She released his wrist, but
her grip remained as a ghost. “Iffen he thinks you out ta cheat ol’ Scratch, he
call
off da deal and rain all manner a shit and
commotion on you head.”

The witch pulled her toothpick from her matted hair and
inspected the ball of opium.” When you git there, you lick da mark in you hand.
Da cipher on you hand, make you stupid. It
make
you
head hard ta read. Help you forgit ‘bout Mama” She looked up at Nolte and
cocked her head as if she was evaluating him. “Jes lick it one time, you
already look stupid enough for two people.” She motioned for him to step back.
“You git dis thing and come back to Mama. Mama fix you forever and ever.” She
picked up her candle. “Now, go away, White Boy, you harshin’ my buzz.”

***

N
olte’s
demeanor had changed the moment the dirt slipped from his hand and onto his
mother’s metallic sapphire coffin, a color Mommy had adored. Before that
moment, and all during the funeral, he had been all smiles and sunbeams. At one
point, when the smiling was bordering on maniacal grinning, Ron had nudged
Charlie. “What’s with the shit eating grin? He looks like he’s just won the
lottery.”

“Maybe he has,” Charlie smiled himself. “Mommy Dearest had
fat stacks tucked under her mattress, but I think he’s just tickled pink, to be
out from under her thumb.”

Mommy Dearest had been demanding, and then some. She
considered herself to be a genteel, southern belle, and presented herself as
such, as needy of affections and attentions, as one might expect from southern
royalty. It had been said, when she was in full bloom, her devious pretentions
could change the weather to suit her mood, if she had a mind to. It had also
been said, that she was a whiney, manipulative bitch, no man could satiate, nor
stomach for more than a few months at a time.

Nolte had always appeared to be oblivious to her
manipulations, but in truth, it had made him feel safe, that she had controlled
every aspect of the cretin’s existence from his cradle to her grave. Whatever
hold she had over him, was dark and secret and never to be spoken of and those around
them knew better than to ask.

His blind obedience might have been born from fear of the
violent ‘scolding’s’ young Nolte had received as a child. Her ‘scoldings’ were,
in fact, beatings. Severe beatings, with a fine tortoiseshell hairbrush. Any
and all infractions to her stringent, old world ideas and rules of child
rearing resulted in the same punishment and because she had allowed herself to
make the rules up as she went, the beatings were many.

Nolte’s father, whom the young lad was never allowed to come
in contact with, once remarked that, though she was quick to throw a beating on
the kid, he never saw her once reward him in any way, shape or form. It was
exactly this kind of lackadaisical attitude and progressive thinking that had
produced daddy number one’s walking papers.

Children were to be seen and not heard. Cleanliness is next
to Godliness. Spare the rod, spoil the child. Children were to earn their keep.
Money doesn’t grow on trees. (Though, not a rule, per se, it had might as well
have been, as often as it had been mentioned) Permission is only granted to
those who ask, “Mother may I?” Good boys always show their mothers, not
mommies, respect by referring to them as such. Even though she thoroughly hated
it, she had allowed young Nolte to call her Mommy, instead of Mother and it
remained Mommy until the day she passed.

The complete, unedited list of Mommy’s rules and
stipulations would require months to compile, (as there were new ones popping
up daily) and quite possibly, might take years to set to memory, but young
Nolte was expected to know them by rote. The slightest bending of one of
Mommy's commandments would manifest in the form of a hairbrush reformation.

Once she had beaten young Nolte so severely, the hairbrush
had snapped in two across his ass. The fine tortoiseshell head was sent
clattering across the floor, leaving the fine tortoiseshell handle impotent and
inert in Mommy’s clenched fist. Feeling the punishment incomplete, Mommy tested
the weight of the remaining portion of the handle, but found it insufficient as
far as leverage, even if she gripped it at the very end. The thought of
subjecting her bare hand to the ministrations was unacceptable, and so the fine
tortoise shell handle clattered across the floor, coming to rest near the fine
tortoise shell head and young Nolte was sent to a corner to serve the remainder
of his sentence.

The one time in his life that he had recounted the incident,
as a means to justify the beating he had just meted out on Charlie’s ass, was
quickly amended by the fact that his dearest mother had thrown the instrument
of punishment into the trash and never laid so much as a finger on him again.
The amendment had been preceded by a quick glance over his shoulder to see if
Mommy had overheard his indiscretion. She hadn’t of course, for she was at that
very instance, down in Texas bilking husband number six out of everything, but
his short and curlies.

There were other things young Nolte had to fear beyond the
hairbrush beatings, things less tangible, yet far more frightening, bums, for
instance. Although, young Nolte had never actually seen one in person,
according to Mommy, bums accounted for, not only the majority of sexual
assaults on nubile young lads, such as himself, but also the disappearances of said
lads. It was best to stay close to Mother. “Those dirty men want nothing more
than to get your britches down and touch you with their unwashed fingers.” At
first, Nolte was confused as to which he should fear most, the touching, or the
unclean hands of bums. He played it safe and avoided both.

Mommy Dearest may be dead, but her warnings of the boogie
man and the punishments that awaited bad boys were alive and well in Nolte’s
inner child. When all was said and done, and it had been said by many, ‘she had
sure fucked that boy up good.’

Most of Nolte’s life, it had just been the two of them,
Nolte and Mommy, except for the occasional appearance of a new Uncle-Daddy,
(some of the fellows Mommy had insisted he call Uncle and some she had demanded
he call Daddy) they had been left to fend for themselves with only their wits
and big stack of Uncle-Daddy money.

They were inseparable because of many obvious factors, but
the one thing that had held the two together through all the years, kept them
close, perhaps too close, mother and son, partners in secrets and lies, was the
one thing Nolte would never reveal, Yet, he had hinted at it from time to time,
when drunken stupors had loosened his tongue, but sadly, at this level of
inebriation, his ability to verbalize was limited to grunts and hints at
vowels; the secret was never in any real danger of being told.
 

Ron and Charlie had their own ideas, pertaining to the
unnatural bond; Ron thought it was some sorted incestual thing, initiated by
Mommy Dearest’s insatiable desire to remain in her twenties forever; Charlie
thought she had just kept Nolte on the teat too long.

The smiling and inappropriate grinning ceased the moment
Nolte dusted the grave dirt from his hands. His face, straightaway, became
drawn and grim. He’d turned and walked away from the graveside without a word.
Of course, Alice had chased after him in the role of ‘concerned daughter’, but
he’d shrugged her off and gone home alone.

The rest of the day he drank himself stupid, but whatever it
was, that had suddenly soured his attitude at the cemetery, remained a secret
and appeared to be resistant to alcohol.

Usually, almost always, whenever Nolte had
drank
himself up into the wind, no woman or girl in a dress
was safe from his pinching and squeezing. His hands moved with the dexterity of
a surgeon. His misdirection and sleight of hand rivaled the feint of any street
hustler to ever toss the broad, skills he took great pride in and lived to
demonstrate, but for the most part, on this day, he appeared oblivious to the
target rich environment. Women of all cup sizes went unmolested and roamed
freely.

The hands-off approach, Nolte had chosen for his grieving,
puzzled Ron and Charlie. They had grown up with the embarrassment and shame
that came with being the sons of Mr. McFeely.
 
Social settings were the worst and had forced both of them to master the
apologetic shrug to women who became victims of Nolte’s gropings. They would
shrug, shake their head, frown and look at the floor in hopes they, themselves,
would not be convicted by Nolte’s perverse behavior.