Getting Mother's Body (18 page)

We drive slow.

Outside of Fort Stockton we pass a chain gang.

“Look, there's your brother,” Dill says joking, but I don't look cause I done already looked, a quick glance into the faces and profiles of each man. None of them's Siam-Iz, and besides, he's in Huntsville and that's way east of here.

We ride for a whole three hours in silence.

“I remember Willa Mae,” I says.

“She's hard to forget,” Dill says.

I think I'm talking in my head but when Dill answers I realize that I'm talking out loud.

“When folks talk about her all they tell is stories about her flash and whatnot,” I says. Dill's face frowns up and she looks at her cloth bag. “But I don't think of Willa Mae like that atall,” I add quickly.

“She was something,” Dill says.

“She was always singing,” I says. “Always making up songs and singing them.” Dill nods. We ride in silence. Town signs pass.

Something else comes into my head. I wait for a lot of miles before I say it, then I figure what the hell. “What's it like, being a man?” I ask Dill.

She looks at me, her eyes like two slow snakes. Dill is more of a man than I am. She's had Willa Mae and she's had herself. That's two women more than I've had.

“Don't you know what it's like?”

“Not yet.”

“How old are you?” she wants to know. I tell her.

“Yr twenty years old and you still ain't had no woman?” she says.

“Not for lack of trying,” I says.

“You should talk to Poochie Daniels,” Dill says. “She's friendly enough and I could put in a good word for you.”

“I already done talked to Poochie,” I says. “Goddamn Poochie turned me down.”

WILLA MAE BEEDE

Ain't the long road long

Ain't the big load heavy

Ain't my old soul weary

Ain't that so.

Ain't the way you treat me

Just a mistreat-treating

Ain't I out that door

Ain't I gone.

Ain't I gone

Ain't I gone

Long gone longer than yr arms is long

Ain't I gone

Ain't I gone

Long gone longer than yr legs is long

Ain't the way you treat me

Just a mistreat-treating

All that's left is this here song.

BILLY BEEDE

Mother said that the stretch of highway from Pecos to El Paso was probably the most boring road in the world, and she had been on a lot of roads. She said there was more interesting country but it was someplace else. When me and her would drive, if the scenery weren't much, she'd liven up the view by telling me about the better places she'd seen. When we came out this way that last time she was talking about how we was gonna drive all the way to California. She'd meet Mr. Right in Hollywood and she was gonna get married again, this time for good, and we was gonna drive up California, from Hollywood all the way to Oakland where she knew some people. There's a road running right up the coast and you can see the ocean the whole way. That's a road worth driving, she said. We was gonna get her new husband to get us a brand-new convertible and she would drive, and I would ride shotgun like I liked to and we'd let the new husband sit in the back. We would drive along the water and have picnics whenever we wanted.

Aunt June looks up from her map. “Where's Teddy and Homer?” she asks.

“I guess they took off,” I says.

“Teddy'll make Homer slow down. He knows we ain't sure where Blood stays at,” Aunt June says. She looks out the window, watching the grass clumps and red dirt go by. We're only going forty. There's a bush of a white puffy flower every ten feet. “That's Queen Anne's lace,” Aunt June says.

“Who's Queen Anne?”

“Dunno. It'd go nice next to my rosebush. How bout we stop, I'd like to pull some up.”

I press the gas pedal down a little harder. We go forty-five. “If we stop we ain't never gonna get there,” I says.

“It'd only be for a minute. You could jump out for me, rip a clump up by the roots, and then we'd get back on the road.” Her voice is pleading, like a child.

“We'll stop on the way back,” I says. She pats the flat part of her dress where her leg used to be. She looks let down but I ain't stopping right now.

“Devil's claw, wild weed, Holy Ghost, Rosy Everlasting,” she says, pointing out and naming the flowers as we pass.

“They got nice names,” I says. “On the way back we'll stop lots, you'll see.”

We ride in silence.

Mother and me would go for these long drives but always come back. We was living at Dill's house then. Some days, usually when the weather was hot and Mother said she could smell the pigs, we would get in the car and drive. She would tell Dill we was just going around the block. We would stay out all day, heading for someplace she thought sounded good. Lampasas, Zephyr, Crystal City, Navasota. She drove fast like we was running late, the sky just whipping by and her taking little sips from a bottle that she held between her legs. Sipping as she drove. Sometimes getting drunk. She had a ritual before she turned on the engine. She would take her diamond ring and her pearls off and thread them into the lining of her skirt. For safekeeping. Her “real stuff” as she called it would be kept safe and she wore the fakes while she drove. Just in case, she would mention, but just in case of what she never did say. Once she forgot where she put her pearls and cussed me out for stealing em, then remembering, she pulled em from the hem of her skirt like a magic trick. Once we was in a jail in Galveston and she got the sheriff to bring her some Lucky Strikes. Mostly we'd just drive. We'd get to one of them good-sounding places, creeping down the dirt road main street, the folks on porches desperate from the heat, the kids and dogs all lolling in the shade. Nobody doing nothing.

“I heard this town was where the Happenings was at,” she would say. There'd be anger in her voice. The town's bright name had let her down.

We'd stop and I'd sit in the car or near it while she went to talk to people. Various people. In juke joints if there was a piano, she would let me come in and she would sing. Mostly I'd just sit in the car and wait for her to come back.

We hardly never stayed out late. Just sometimes. It'd always get cooler in the evening and Mother would feel the cold air and say she could stand the place now, and I knew she meant the pig smell and we would head back. A few times we was out late though. We'd come home in the middle of the next afternoon.

“Where you been?” Dill wanted to know one time. Her face was all twisted from no sleep and too much worry.

“I been to London to see the Queen,” Mother said.

Dill hit her, knocking her to the floor, then went outside to do the chores. I watched her laying there thinking she was dead. She lay on the floor for the rest of the day and I started thinking I guess I was gonna be a pig farmer for sure now, and maybe that wouldn't be so bad, and then I heard her snoring, laying there snoring. She'd fallen asleep.

Aunt June is looking at me driving and looking at my belly.

“I guess you won't be naming your baby Snipes,” Aunt June says.

“I ain't naming it nothing.”

Every time we hit a bump, my belly almost touches the steering wheel.

“Maybe it'll be a boy,” Aunt June says brightly.

“It ain't gonna be at all,” I says.

She's looking at my belly, but I look evil at her, making her look at something else. She studies her map then glances out the window.

“Claret cup cactus,” she announces, seeing some.

“Willa Mae and me was headed out here to meet her new husband-to-be,” I say. “They had the wedding all planned and then she died.”

“Is that so,” Aunt June says.

I can tell she don't believe me. I decide to do what Mother called “ice the cake”—when you put a finish on something and it don't matter what the person watching thinks. “I was at her bedside when she died,” I says. “I was holding her one hand and her husband-to-be, the richest man I ever seen, he was holding her other hand. You shoulda seen him cry when she passed.”

“Is that so,” Aunt June says again.

“Believe whatchu please,” I says, steering towards a big hole and hitting it hard and watching the shock on Aunt June's face. “Believe what you please, but I'm telling you the truth.”

OFFICER MASTERSON

I just pulled over a late-model red Mercury convertible going over eighty miles an hour. It's got two Negroes in it. I can hear the people up in New York and Chicago and Warshington and Hollywood. I can hear all them talking. Calling me a white supremacist cause I done pulled over two speeding Negroes in what looks like a brand-new car.

There's a young one driving and an older one riding with him. I told them to both get out the car and stand with they hands on the hood and they legs spread. I radioed for assistance, but Sheriff Jim Baylor's taking his day off, fishing.

“I'ma have to look at your license,” I say to the young one.

He don't say nothing. The older one looks at him and then the young one speaks. “It's in my billfold,” he says.

He's got on tight brown pants. His back pocket's got a bump in it. I touch the bump with my baton.

“That your wallet there?”

“Whatchu think?”

The older one, his hands cupped on the car hood to save his palms from the heat, turns his head a little and looks at the younger one again. “That your billfold?” he asks him.

“Yes, sir,” the younger says, answering the older Negro, not me.

“Go take it outcha pants,” the old one tells him and he does what he's told, taking out his wallet and holding it in his hand with his arm out straight from his body. Usually a fella with his hand out like that under these circumstances would have his hand shaking. The young fella's hand is firm. Almost like he's resting his arm on something. On his innocence, or his crime.

“I got a billfold too,” the old one says.

“Where's it at?”

“In my coat pocket.”

“Go head and get it then.”

He reaches in slow, removing the wallet, paper-thin black leather, placing it a few inches away from his hand on the car hood.

“Homer,” I says. The license's got his whole name but I can't make head or tail of the last one. Sheriff says all niggers should be named Joe Washington. Says we oughta pass a law to make it so. Negroes and Negras both. All Joe Washington. I had the stupidity to ask how then would we know one from the other and Sheriff said we can't tell them apart now anyway so what's the difference. He laughed and I laughed.

“Stand here while I radio in your information,” I says. I tell Shirley back at the station what I caught and she checks through the postings but there ain't no one looking for what I got.

They stand with their hands still on the hood. Their heads are down. I could let them go. Give them a ticket for going too fast and let them go. I pride myself in being fair. I could just let them on their way with a speeding ticket. But Sheriff wouldn't never let me hear the end of it. If I was to let them go there'd be plenty of laughs and talkings behind my back. I might even stop getting the days off I put in for. Things like that happen.

“This your car, Beady?” I says, looking at the older man. Him and his son was out driving fast, and I'll put money on them being father and son, even though they don't got the same name.

“Bead,” the older says.

It's got an “e” on the end, but I guess you don't say it. “This yr car, Bead?”

“No, sir.”

“Is it stolen?”

“I am not no thief.”

The old man is looking up at me, the light from the hood of the car makes his face glow. He got a way about him, like he's somebody or used to be somebody and he even looks familiar, but Negroes got a way of looking familiar when you don't know them, especially when they've done something wrong.

The younger fella looks up and smiles. “There's a twenty in my billfold. It's yours if you want it,” he says.

I open the wallet and pocket the twenty. “I'm gonna have to take you both in,” I says. And they both hang they heads. I feel a little jolt, of pleasure, maybe. The hanging heads of men, any men, and the power of the law.

Problem is I only got one set of handcuffs. I cuff one to the other and lead them both to my squad car, opening the back door and letting them get in.

“That's my car,” the young one says struggling a little.

“Don't you worry about it,” I says.

A pickup truck drives up. Two Negras in it.

“Teddy!” the woman yells.

“I'm taking them in,” I says. Then I remember I'm a fair man and add, “If you like you can follow us.”

A younger gal leans over the older one, narrowing her eyes at me. Damn if she don't look familiar too. “Whatchu gonna do with Homer's car?” she asks.

“We'll just leave it here,” I says. “Won't no one take it.”

I get in my car and head toward town. In the back they sit quiet like they're made of stone. “We gonna have you spend the night courtesy of the town of Tryler, Texas,” I says.

“Tryler? That's what this town's called?” the older one asks.

“That's right,” I says.

We pass the sign that says the name of the town.

Something about the town of Tryler makes the older Negro start laughing. The younger one looks mad but the older one, I'm watching him in my rearview, the older one's laughing to hisself. Then he's crying. Tears coming down his cheeks but a shake like laughing still jolting his body. Like I said before, Negroes is funny.

HOMER BEEDE ROCHFOUCAULT

His boss comes in all excited. Two caught niggers. Him with his cap full of fishing lures on his head and his big stomach hanging well over his belt. His subordinate, the one who caught us and cuffed us and hauled us in here, took just my pictures and fingerprints but put us both in the cell.