The Bayou Trilogy: Under the Bright Lights, Muscle for the Wing, and The Ones You Do (42 page)

“Uh-huh,” Tip said. “He’s doin’ pretty good, too.”

“Ah, well,” John X. said, smiling, “I’m glad to hear that.”

Etta came over from the pinball machine in the back of the room and sat on a wooden chair and scooted it up to the table. Her attire consisted of the same cut-off jeans she’d had on when they put Mobile behind them, and the same grimy green T-shirt, but the cooler air had prompted her to wear a black-and-white checked shirt of Grampa Enoch’s like a sweater, and she’d ditched the thongs in favor of red sneakers. She plucked a frog leg from the platter and chomped into the meatiest part of it. Her lip color of
this
day was orange, and faint orange dabs had survived four frog legs and a soda before this, but now she smeared them off by wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “Riv-vet. Riii-vet,” she said, mocking her meal.

There was a strange, slim smile on Shade’s face as he looked at this Madonna-wanna-be who had so suddenly been shuffled into the family deck.

“How’d you do on the pinball?” he asked her.

“I brung it to its knees,” she said. “There’s a hard tilt on that sucker, so I whupped it good.” She grinned at him, and despite her attire and coif she looked ten years old. “Truthfully, it ate my quarters. I’m tapped out.”

“Tapped out, huh?” Shade said, repeating the gambling term. “You’re your daddy’s kid, alright.” He shoved a hand into his pants pocket and raised out a fistful of change which he plopped in front of her. “You’re not tapped out, now, Etta. Go get even.”

Etta dropped the frog leg, then used her right hand to slide the change to the table edge and held her left underneath to catch the falling coins.

“Thank you, Tip,” she said.

“No, no—I’m Rene.
He’s
Tip.”

“Shit,” she said, her head bowed. “I’m sorry.”

Then she shuffled toward the pinball machine.

The bar was nearly full, smoke clouds hanging beneath the ceiling, guys in shirtsleeves and tattoos arguing about football, romance, and burglary. At the pool table in the rear a couple of young dudes in olive factory uniforms were jawing out three-foot puppy shots, then pointing at the cue ball and loudly bragging, “But look at that shape.”

John X. kept glancing at them, sort of wistfully.

“Look, John,” Tip said. “What’re you and Etta goin’ to do here? How’ll you get by?”

John X. shrugged.

“I’ll nibble from the big hound’s bowl.”

“You’ll what?”

“I’ll take a little from those that’s got a lot.”

The brothers’ eyes met, then Shade said, “Okay, sport, you did it, you confused us.”

“Huh. Didn’t even break a sweat, neither.” John X. lifted his glass and rolled it in his hands. “I’ll just open a friendly poker game for me, and all the fellas like me around here. I’ll offer a square gamble to old-timers, and we’ll see what happens.” He sighed. “I can hardly even run a single rack anymore.”

“Well, hell,” Tip said, his pocked face sincerely composed. “I’ve got room. You’n the kid can flop with me, Dad.”

“That’s a nice-soundin’ stragedy,” John X. said. “It has a nice ring to it.”

Shade listened to this, and felt funny hearing it.

“You’re really stayin’?”

“Oh, yeah, son. You bet.”

Shade pushed his chair up close to the table. His eyes were honky-tonk red and he used both hands on his drink.

“Dad,” he said, “now
why was it
you ran out on us in the first place?”

The old man’s lips turned down in distaste. He glanced back to where Etta was pinging thousands of bonus points out of the pinball machine, then swung his eyes to the ceiling, then closed them.

He said, “See, fellas, long ago on a drunk night I lost my lucky penny, and ever since then I been on this endless pursuit of the one-armed man who found it and wouldn’t give it back. But lately I heard on the grapevine he’s turned up here again, back in the old hometown.”

5

L
UNCH
P
UMPHREY
allowed himself exactly seven cigarettes a day, and when he rolled off Rodney Chapman’s wife, Dolly, he immediately reached for his pack and put fire to Salem number three. He hungrily inhaled the mentholated smoke, then collapsed onto a soft porch chair that had a fabric depicting lush orchids. He smoked for a moment, trying to get his breathing in order, his fingernails idly scraping at a lipstick smear below his belly button.

“Whew!” he said. “That sure ought’ve been a cure for
some
thin’ or other, huh?”

“Oh, it was,” Dolly said. She was still on the couch, her left hand covering her eyes, her right dangling toward the floor. Dolly was of tender years with a sour face. She had store-bought blond hair hanging in long lanks, and her body was lean from sheer youth and powdered stimulants, with an all-over golden tan and black pubes shaved down to a naughty pinch. She was ol’ Rodney’s young wife and she dug him plenty, but if someone fell by with some good cocaine and a dick she’d make the connection. “Boredom maybe,” she said. “This could be a cure for that.”

Lunch said, “I think it’s a ancient one for that.”

They were on the back veranda of the Chapman place, perched above the shoreline along the Redneck Riviera. Lunch got up to better appreciate the setting, for the veranda was a point with a view to offer, a vista, and he stared out across the Gulf water, squinting against the afternoon sun, his line of sight going more or less toward Panama or
someplace of that type. He burned his cigarette down at a high rate, inhaling diligently, sweeping his eyes over a shimmery green expanse. There were a few motorboats and flapping sails out there. Tiny waves. Noisy birds of several sizes. Kind of interesting to look at, but not worth the real-estate prices by any stretch.

“Lunch, honey,” Dolly said. “Can I get into a little more of your blow?”

“You betcha,” he said. “Keep frisky.”

Lunch looked like a self-portrait by an Expressionist who’d been skipping his Lithium. His face reflected a duality in that one half was clear and smooth as a babyass and the other half was bruise. His right cheek was still swollen along the jawline all the way to the ear, and in a gaudy stage of the healing process. Blue, black, yellow, purple—an awful selection of hues clashed on his face. His bodyskin was pale as fresh canvas, and numerous county-jail artists had used it as such. From his shoulders to his ankles there were perhaps six rough sketches and fifteen completed works on his skin. There was a heart with a pitchfork jabbed into it on his right bicep, a heart with a banner around it that said Yesterday on his left. Up and down his body there were skulls and lightning bolts and other sinister images that carried useful symbolic freight in the lockups of the world. At some point Lunch had caught on to the techniques of the Holding Tank School of Art, and with a needle and string and a bottle of ink he’d attacked the canvas of himself with no design at all in mind. One upper thigh read Repent upside down with a faint X through it, and on the other, right side up, it said Born to Raise Hell. His left forearm bore the inscription Cubs Win! His compact body was well adorned by this art, and though his interest in such artistry had resulted in an occasional infection, it had also given him many indelible memories.

The cigarette had burned down to the filter and Lunch flicked it away. He ran a hand across his sweat-dampened red hair and it stuck up in short spikes. He turned and watched Dolly hunker over the coke tray, her nose down, snorting up a drug-hog portion.

“Mmm,” she went, her eyes shining.

“Uh-
huh
,” Lunch said. He shook his head in wonder at her simplicity. She seemed to think he was merely colorful or raffish or strangely cute or some such, and, really, she should look deeper’n that. She should look deeper’n that and recognize a few terrible qualities in him, and right away, too.

She was still beaming when the front door slammed.

Her eyes started to spin in her head and she nervously looked to Lunch, who said calmly, “I expect that’ll be your husband.”

She let go with a long, high-pitched whimper of panic, and before the sound of it faded Rodney Chapman showed up in the doorway, an empty wine bottle held in his hand like a club, his hand shaking. He stared at her for a long second, then moaned and spun away, this spin bringing naked Lunch into view.

Their eyes met and Lunch said, “You should’ve just took my calls, man—you know I’m remorseless this way.”

Rodney’s eyes began to water. His mouth hung open. He said, “Lunch.”

On the floor of the veranda was the black wad of Lunch’s undies. He put his left foot over the wad, clenched his toes, and, with a display of simian dexterity, raised the undies to his hand. After he stepped into the bikini briefs, he said, “Where is he?”

“He? Who, he?” Rodney said. Rodney Chapman had rounded the age of forty a few years back, and he had a rounded shape, sparse brown hair, and a simple story. Until that fortieth year he had tended his mother as she died, an act that, owing to her moral vigor and pioneer genes, had taken nearly two decades to be finalized. Her strength just went down by the thimbleful from year to year, and Rodney had no special life outside the abject duty of tending her until mommy
did
bite it, leaving him behind in this world with only considerable personal wealth to compensate for the loneliness. Being a man alone in the world with considerable personal wealth seemed to change the way all the eyes on the planet focused, for suddenly he was no longer seen as merely a kind of patrician nerd, but a fascinating throwback to a more genteel era. Many a glossy gal heard his tale from himself or others and jumped
on him with smiles ablaze and skirts lifted, relentlessly employing their charms. Dolly was one of the bronzed babes who saw him as the fabled main chance, and after a year he married her because she was the most inventively aggressive. In her arms he became a different man. Life brightened up and he acquired sensual vices. He grew a fluffy mustache and kept his fingernails trimmed down smooth. Now, on this sad afternoon, he looked at Dolly there on the couch, where she lay naked, crying gently, still wet from another man’s kisses, and he felt the entire fantasy of his new self just fall to pieces and scatter on the veranda.

“Where is he?” Lunch asked again. “Where the hell is ol’ Paw-Paw?”

Rodney deflated visibly, his shoulders sagging, chest heaving, head dropping. He wore a light blue sports coat over a deep blue shirt, with black slacks and shoes. He slumped to a soft chair, eyes down, and let the wine bottle fall from his hand.

He said, “Did John do that to your face?”

Lunch put his snap-brim black hat back on and said, “I ain’t after pity, man—it’s answers I’m here for.”

Ever since Mother Chapman passed on Rodney had made attempts to be outgoing and upbeat and a man about town, more or less, but after a few months he’d narrowed the town he was about down to just Enoch’s Ribs and Lounge. He sat at the bar there most nights, sipping Chablis, listening to the ’Bama Butterfly, gabbing with roguish John X., the widely traveled night bartender, for from three to six hours a visit.

“I didn’t even know John was leaving,” he said.

“He did it of a sudden I think,” Lunch said.

Dolly sat up on the couch, found her yellow sundress on the floor, and pulled it on. She sniffled loudly several times, then stamped her bare feet on the floor, banging out a fleshy tom-tom solo.

“Why are you here?” she asked Rodney when her heels began to hurt.

“Pardon?”

“At
this
time. Why are you here at
this
time?”

Rodney looked at his wife, his face giving expression to queasy
thoughts his mouth just couldn’t quite get around to uttering. Finally, he said, “The neighbors.”

“The
neigh—
bors?”

He nodded.

“The neighbors called me at the club because their children, their little-bitty children, could see you out here, you know, cavorting.”

Dolly raked her hands through her long blond hair and growled.

“The neighbors! The neighbors! I’ll burn their fuckin’ house down, little-bitty children and all!”

Lunch was calmly standing there on the sunny veranda in his bikini briefs and snap-brim hat, apparently amused.

“Looky here, Dolly,” he said, “don’t go blaming your neighbors for that phone call, ’cause, actually, it was me.” He pointed at Rodney. “You never returned any of the calls I made to you, man. You knew I’d be after ol’ Paw-Paw, your pal, so your answering machine quit knowin’ me.”

Dolly helped herself to a Salem from Lunch’s pack and lit up. She exhaled severely.

“When did you call him? I don’t remember you goin’ anywhere near the goddamn phone.”

“You were in the shower, darlin’,” Lunch said. “So you’d taste fresh—remember?”

The man of the house began to sob upon hearing this culinary detail, his rounded shoulders bouncing with each breath.

Dolly watched her hubby weep, then said, “You bastard. You son of a bitch. I used to think you were a nice little dude with a big unfair reputation hung on him, but now I know better.”

“You still don’t know the half of it,” Lunch said. “But you might before I leave here.”

Still sobbing, Rodney picked up the wine bottle. He chopped the air with it a few times, saying, “Why, I. Why, I oughta. Splat! Yes, sir. Why, I.”

“Hey,” Lunch said, “y’all can get into your conjugal boo-hoos later.” He pointed at his clothes sticking out from the chair seat beneath
Rodney. “I don’t want to tempt you by comin’ over there, son—so just hand me my britches, huh?”

Rodney, still seated, raised the wine bottle like he might throw it at Lunch.

“Oh, no, don’t,” Dolly said. “Don’t!” She scooted across the sun-dappled veranda and touched her husband lightly on his chest. “Don’t do it, baby—Lunch’ll kill you. He’s known for that.”

“That’s good advice she’s giving you,” Lunch said. “I oft times
do
have a place in the life cycle, when money’s at stake. So cool your jets down and drop that bottle.” The bottle dropped. “Now be the gentleman you are, Rodney, and kindly hand me my Levi’s. And pick ’em up by the belt loops, so you don’t dump my pocket change all over the floor, here.”