Dirtbags (4 page)

The worst thing about living in a town the size of Lake Castor—mill or no mill—was ever trying to become something. Town that size has its fair share of mayors and preachers and what-have-you’s, but if a fella ain’t content with working at a tire shop or bagging groceries or sweeping the street, then forever he’ll nurse an itch that cannot be scratched. He’ll burrow a hole six feet deep from chasing his tail, running in circles all his life, and nothing, absolutely nothing, will ever do for him and never, ever will he matter a whip.

Such Calvin thought was his lot until ole Lionel Gibson made a move to unseat Judge Grimm Menkin, who’d carried on with things a while in Lake Castor and wanted everyone in town to know he intended to carry on with things a while longer. He asked on folks across the county to help him keep his seat, and Calvin answered and suddenly felt he’d found his calling. He loved passing out flyers, he loved registering folks to vote and he loved that, for once—
once
in his quiet and peaceful life—he’d managed to matter half a shit.

Calvin thought about that a lot. It was summer when they’d traveled door-to-door around the neighborhoods but he never found it too hot. It never rained. It was always sunny. He couldn’t stop thinking about how he constantly jabbered to his wife about going to college and making something of himself, and he couldn’t stop thinking about how he’d practically given it his all, those days volunteering for the campaign.

Most of all, he couldn’t stop thinking about that day Judge Menkin called him into his office. The day he sat him down and Calvin realized, not for the first time, that he’d only been alone with him one other time, and that was when he come to ask for the job. Menkin had somebody or another around him all other times. Whether it was Amon Calder, who worked more real estate in the county than anyone, or Harvey Forrester, who owned the last bank in town, it was somebody, and they did a lot of grousing. Calvin figured no man had more friends than Judge Menkin, but still, that last day, Menkin met him alone.

“Don’t bother sitting,” he said. He didn’t look Calvin in the eye. Judge Menkin was a severe man already, and Calvin found himself oddly intimidated. “I’m going to have to let you go.”

“Go where?”

“Somewhere else.” Judge Menkin brought his gaze to Calvin, who flinched.

“What seems to be the problem, sir?” Calvin’s thoughts raced. What did they have on him? “Did I do something wrong?”

“Did you do something wrong?” Judge Menkin’s gaze became more of a glare. His left hand took to trembling, and he dropped it below his desk and out of sight. Twice he started to say something, but each time is mouth clamped back shut. Only recently had the judge begun to get back some of that fire and brimstone of his earlier days, and Calvin feared a sudden thunder.

“Sir, I . . . ”

“What kind of work does your wife do, son?”

Calvin looked over his shoulder and through the window to her standing where he had been, laughing at something said by one of the computer boys. He turned back to the judge. “She’ll do whatever it is you want, Judge.”

“I mean, for money.” Judge Menkin crossed his arms. “What is her occupation?”

“She’s got a spot in a place out of town,” Calvin said.

“Would that place be the Club 809?” Judge Menkin’s chin quivered. He was a pepper sprout preparing to burst. “The dance hall? The
men’s
dance hall.”

“It’s how she pays the bills,” Calvin said. “Yes, sir.”

Judge Menkin took a deep breath. It seemed to calm him some. “Do you know who Lionel Gibson is, son?”

“Of course, I do. He’s the fella who’s running against you.” Calvin nodded. “I’m no idiot, sir.”

“That remains to be seen,” said the judge. “I’ve been running unopposed for going on sixteen years. That’s eight terms. Eight terms, and no one has dared say they can do my job better than me, and now some snot-nosed shit from Richmond—”

Judge Menkin removed a handkerchief from his pocket and put it to his brow. He dropped it onto his desk, then stared straight-faced at Calvin.

“I’m in the middle of a campaign for public office.” He drew the words out on a long, even line. “I’m running on trust. On dependability. On God and wisdom and experience and on the fact that I’ve been going to church with the voter since nineteen-seventy-something, and all Gibson has to do is run on the fact that I employ strippers to do my campaigning. Have you lost your mind?”

Calvin felt as if he’d been slapped. He had nothing to say. His mouth could not close.

“What have you to say for yourself, son?” Judge Menkin leveled with him. “Not only have you married a sinner, but you have brought her to my campaign.”

“We can use her,” Calvin stammered.

“What?”

“I said, we can use her.” Calvin spoke quickly. He thought quickly. “You said you want to beat Lionel Gibson, right? That you was running on God and country and all that? All you have to do is get her and Mr. Gibson together and catch her with him and—”

“What the hell are you saying?” Judge Menkin looked as if Calvin had crucified Christ himself.

“I’m saying we can blackmail him,” Calvin said. “This is what the campaign needs. If we—”

“Get out!” Menkin rose from his desk. His finger sliced the air and pointed to the door. “Get the hell out of my office.”

Calvin stood. “Judge Menkin, I was only—”

“Get out, now!” The judge shook violently. “And take that harlot with you!”

The chair sounded like dogs baying as it jerked back across the floor. Judge Menkin fought outspoken for gun rights, and folks knew he kept one in his jacket, his glove compartment and, more than likely, his desk drawer, so Calvin hopped to it and scurried out the office door. He grabbed his wife by the elbow and escorted her quickly out of the building.

“Where are we going, Calvin?” she asked. Her long red hair kicked in the breeze behind her as they headed for his car.

“We’re leaving,” he grumbled.

Fear was long gone, and something began to replace it. Right there in that parking lot, Calvin could feel the seed growing, and he had no idea what would germinate, what would sprout forth, nor what fruit it would bear, but felt it good and planted. He nudged her toward the passenger door and let go of her arm.

“Do whatever you have to do,” he had told her then and there, “but find yourself another job.”

Calvin had gone home and thought on it, but what he thought on most of all was how he hated himself for running out of the office like that. He hated himself more for it the next day, and the day after that, until it had multiplied over so much time there was never much more on his mind than the unmatched anger and shame and hate and a million other things he figured he would never possess the vocabulary to identify. Each day he worked harder and harder to think of something,
anything,
until finally he’d proposed a solution to himself on how, once again, Calvin Cantrell could matter in the grand scheme of things.

Since that day, Calvin felt he did his level best to keep his mind off Judge Menkin, but some days were harder than others. When Phillip came bounding back from the parking lot, sporting the Rambo-style survival knife still brand spanking new, and in its package, he could tell right away something was wrong. He looked at Calvin, then at the cat, then back at Calvin.

“Is everything all right with you?” Phillip asked.

“Yeah,” he snapped. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“What happened to the kitty?” Phillip pointed into Calvin’s arms.

Calvin looked down at the furry mess in his hands and realized for the first time that he’d been strangling the poor critter while his mind had been otherwise occupied. Its legs and paws hung limp, dangling over Calvin’s arms. Calvin dropped it,
thunked
it to the ground, and it landed on its side and stayed there, not getting up, not scampering away. He looked at it as if he expected it just might.

“So we won’t be needing the knife?” Phillip asked.

“We most certainly will,” Calvin said. “But first we will need another cat.”

4

The night before he left for Dallas, Calvin was packing a small blue shoulder bag when his wife came home from work. Rhonda Cantrell prattled around the house before finding him in the back bedroom, amid a pile of T-shirts and socks. He didn’t look up as she stood in the doorway. She walked into the room and sat softly on the bed, as if she feared jostling the mattress might further disturb his work.

She did not speak for several uncomfortable moments. When she did: “Are you going somewhere?”

“Phillip’s grandmother died,” he said.

“Who’s Phillip?” she asked. She shook her red hair free from its ponytail and ran her fingers briskly through it. Calvin noted its proximity to his belongings and moved them just out of reach, as if her hair may contaminate it.

“Phillip’s just six units over,” he said. He still hadn’t looked up at her.

“Why are you going to his grandmother’s funeral?”

“Because he asked me to.” That should have settled it, as far as he was concerned. He sniffed a couple pairs of underwear, then stuffed them into the bag. “Shouldn’t be gone longer than a week.”

She nodded. She looked up the wall and into the corner of the room. “Crazy night at work,” she said. Calvin kept packing. She sighed. “Yeah. A waiter didn’t show up, and we called around and couldn’t find him, then a twenty-top came in, but Tom was mad because they didn’t want the large group menu, so he didn’t make as much money, and since the waiter didn’t come in—”

“Honey, please,” Calvin said. He picked up the bag and dropped it back to the bed again. “I’ve got enough on my mind right now and really can’t be bothered with a bunch of restaurant shit.”

Her mouth opened, but no words came out.

Calvin made eye contact for the first time. “To me, it just comes out a bunch of blah-blah-blah and makes no sense at all. It’s a series of moving tables and chairs here or there and figuring on what wine goes with what sauce, and I don’t have the head for it.”

“You told me to find another job,” she said. Her face flushed.

“Sure I did,” he said. “I just didn’t expect you to make such a fuss about it.”

She sat under his gaze until unable to keep it, then she found something to look at on the floor. She rubbed her thighs up and down as though waiting for some moment to come, but it never did. Instead, he packed the rest of his clothes, and the next morning, he was gone for who knew how long.

***

“You ever been to New Orleans?” Calvin asked Phillip. They’d passed over the Louisiana state line some time ago, but hadn’t said much to each other since filling up somewhere in Mississippi. Phillip stared out the window and watched the South blur past the passenger window.

“No I ain’t,” he said. “I hear it’s supposed to be a lot of fun.”

“This is the closest I reckon I’ve ever been to it.” Calvin stared straight ahead at the ribbon of road laid before him, which, at this hour, was hard to tell where it began and ended, due to the color of the morning sky. More and more cars popped onto the interstate, all folks going to work or somewhere like it. “We should stop in there on the way back. You think?”

“You think we’ll have time?”

“You got somewhere to be?”

“I don’t reckon I do,” Phillip said, “but I ain’t the one that’s married. What did you tell your wife about where you’d be?”

“I told her your grandmother died,” Calvin answered. “Your grandmother lives in Vermont.”

“Vermont? Why on earth would I have a dead grandmother in Vermont?”

“It’s far enough away from Dallas,” Calvin said. “In case anyone comes asking. Which they won’t.”

“Fair enough. In that case, I’d love to go to New Orleans. I saw on the Internet they got a voodoo shop down there in the French Quarter. I’d like to take a look at that.”

Again, they rode in silence. Tires clacked across the pavement like a metronome. Cattle farms broke up stretches of nothing. Sycamores stripped bare of their leaves stood sentinel over creeks and rivers, their chalky tops stretching into skies gone grey.

Calvin spoke: “You ever heard of the Axeman of New Orleans?”

“The who?”

Calvin kept his hands on the wheel, but Phillip imagined he would prefer them on a flashlight held just under his face. “Some guy who rolled around New Orleans at the beginning of last century and chopped a bunch of guys up with an axe. Italian guys, specifically.”

“Italian guys? What’s that all about?”

“Who knows. They never caught the guy.”

“Never?” Phillip settled into his seat and chewed on it for a bit. He liked the stories where they got away. “What happened to him?”

“Just faded away.” The town they breezed through smelled like rotten, burning tires. “Strangest thing, too. He wrote a letter to the local paper saying he was a ghost or a spirit or something and would be passing over New Orleans just after midnight. The only way they could escape his bloody axe would be to play jazz music all night. Every house playing jazz would escape his terrible wrath.”

“You’re lying,” Phillip said.

“Not at all.”

“Did they play jazz music all night?”

Calvin nodded emphatically. “You bet they did. It was a party. They say on that night, jazz halls were filled to the brim, and you couldn’t find an off-duty musician in the whole town.”

“Disgusting,” Phillip muttered. “Some people will look for any excuse to party, even as their world crumbles around them.”

Calvin added: “But still, there is no holiday to commemorate this day. You would think they would celebrate the Axeman every year.”

Phillip whistled. “Your Internet search history has got to be completely screwed.”

“You have no idea.”

More countryside swept past them, all the world a cotton-field-headed fallow. The last of the fall foliage clung to the branches or fell into the wind like snow. The season’s paintbrush had been put away, and the colors dulled. As they neared Texas, everything took on shades of brown.

Phillip said: “What do you think happens to those that never get caught?”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean, for some, it’s like all they’re in it for is the getting caught. A weird and lengthy trial or some glorious, dramatic execution—”