What Dies in Summer (15 page)

Hubert told a lot of stories about wild things he’d done with girls, but they were never girls I knew and you could never connect the stories to any particular time or place. I don’t
know why, but I got the feeling Hubert was more obsessed with girls than most guys just because he wasn’t very good with them in real life, and when you got right down to it I didn’t
think he even really liked them all that much. But in spite of this kind of stuff, and as over-the-fence as he could be in some ways, he was my consultant for certain things I couldn’t ask
L.A. about.

Speaking of L.A., Hubert was hopelessly hung up on her, and I really think he’d have let an alligator eat his foot just to get in good with her. He’d talk constantly to me about how
fine she was and how much he’d like to get together with her, like maybe I could help his case with her. Or would if I could. It was disgusting, like having a two-legged dog around, wagging
his tail and grinning all the time. He always wanted to watch whatever she was watching on TV or go wherever she wanted to go or eat whatever she wanted to eat, which was practically nothing. He
even smiled and complimented Gram’s cooking, which actually was pretty superior but tended to feature a lot less frying and a lot more vegetables than Hubert was used to.

“The only things he seems to understand as food are salt, grease and ketchup,” Gram had once said.

But that wasn’t the worst thing about him by a long shot.

“Oh, man,” he said once when it was just the two of us and the subject of L.A. came up. He moaned and held his crotch, saying, “I just gotta do her.”

Somehow this caused me to become aware of the blood pulsing in my hands and booming in my head. I said, “Get off it, asshole. You’re not her type.” I looked at him. “And
don’t talk that shit to me.”

I didn’t know what L.A.’s type was or what I was feeling exactly, but when Hubert looked at me to see if I was serious, whatever he saw was enough to shut him up once and for all
about doing L.A.

Now I slowed down to light the second half of the Chesterfield I had started the day before yesterday. I said, “Why do you think anybody’d cut on a person and kill them like they did
with those girls?”

He shrugged. “Why’s anybody do anything, man? Because that’s what they wanta do. Haven’t you heard of people that like to hurt girls they’re doing it with? Tie
’em up, whip ’em, stuff like that?”

I didn’t answer, trying unsuccessfully to imagine what relationship there could be between wanting someone and wanting to hurt them.

“And then you got your snuff movies,” he said.

“What’s a snuff movie?”

“It’s like they’re just making some porno movie, but then when they got the girl tied up and everything they go ahead and kill her.”

“That’s bullshit,” I said, the thought generating a twisting sensation in my gut.

He gave me a look.

But, thinking it through, I decided he could be telling the truth. It had been my experience that nobody ever went broke overestimating how bad people could be.

“Damn, man,” I said, feeling like I needed to take a bath or brush my teeth or something.

“Then there’s people that want to get hurt,” he said. “Mosko-something-or-others. I guess they get together with the ones that like to hurt people. Match made in
heaven.”

At this point I stopped even trying to track what he was saying because it seemed to have left reality too far behind. Or maybe because it hadn’t.

We angled down across the grass to the edge of the freeway between Illinois and Saner. Hot booming air rocked us on our heels as the traffic slammed by, both of us watching back to our left for
a break to get across. Hubert started bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet with his jaw out and his hair flying in the diesel-flavored wind, and I knew he’d take the first excuse for
an opening. All I wanted was to get to the other side alive, but for Hubert this crossing was always a grudge match. I took a last drag, dropped the butt and stepped on it.

Sure as hell, Hubert was off and running before I thought he had any kind of shot at all. Ignoring the horns and screaming tires, he made it across the inside lane about half an inch ahead of an
eighteen-wheeler, then kept on going across the median and onto the concrete of the far lanes without even seeming to break stride or look at the traffic. Then he was all the way across, dancing
around triumphantly with his arms above his head, both middle fingers up, giving a loud whistle through his teeth.

I waited for a real break and made the median, then a few seconds later got enough of a gap to cross the last two lanes. I caught up with Hubert and we headed on up the slope to hit Zang and
turn down toward the Jukebox.

We hadn’t been on Zang more than a minute when Uncle Cam pulled up beside us in his van. “Where ya goin?” he hollered.

“Jukebox,” I said.

“Hey, I’m goin’ that way,” he said. “Jump in.”

Hubert leaned aside to spit, then we piled into the van and Cam pulled away. Hubert got out an emery board and started filing the ragged calluses on the ends of his chording fingers.

I glanced at Cam as we drove along, noticing how his fine brown hair—which had always reminded me of baby hair—was getting farther back on his forehead. He was skinny, with arms that
didn’t look particularly strong, but had a soft little beer belly—a look I’d once heard Gram call “dissipated.” His mind always seemed to be somewhere else, and his
eyes didn’t look exactly the same, like they were considering two different things at the same time. His expressions tended to change all of a sudden too, meaning you could lose track of his
attitude if you weren’t careful. In my thinking all this was connected in one way or another with the fact that he was a musician. That and him being drunk most of the time.

“How’s it shakin’, Hube?” he said. Hubert had known Cam a couple of years, actually a little longer than he’d known me. They’d riffed together a few times
with the other two guys that Cam referred to as his band, the Nitecrawlers.

“Good, doin’ good, Cam,” said Hubert, putting up the file and popping his hands on his legs like a bongo player. “You workin’?”

“Fixin’ to start a regular Friday and Saturday night gig at the Legion Hall over here. We need a front guy that can actually sing, though.”

I could almost see and hear how Rachel would have reacted to this if she’d been here. She’d have frowned, pooched out her mouth, crossed her arms and sent Cam one of those looks of
hers, turning up the heat on him to get a real job and start bringing in some regular money so they could maybe get a little ahead for once instead of scratching by on what she made waiting tables
and cashiering at the Whistlin’ Dixie and her always having to wrestle with the drunk owner trying to get his hand up her dress.

But Hubert saw it a different way. Regardless of how little money he made, Cam was a professional, in Hubert’s eyes a wild man out walking the ragged edge, not answering to anybody,
staying up all night and smoking pot and pulling off guitar licks Hubert couldn’t even have a wet dream about. In other words, a god. There was nothing Hubert wouldn’t have done to get
into the group as an official member.

“You a celebrity now, Biscuit?” he said. “Found that dead girl and all?”

“I guess,” I said. A lot of times I didn’t know how to answer Cam’s questions, and the subject of the dead girl gave me a cold feeling inside.

“Musta really been something. What’d the body look like?”

“Pretty blue and stiff.”

“Heard y’all were on TV and everything.”

Which was true. L.A. and I had talked to several reporters and even been interviewed on camera by a thin man wearing a wig and a bow tie who had a voice like the Lone Ranger, the lights burning
down on us like a dozen suns.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Had to be a kick,” said Cam.

“Not really,” I said. “I was mainly afraid of saying something dumb.” I didn’t know why the hell I was telling Cam this, and in front of Hubert at that, but there
it was.

Cam decided to let it go and I was glad to do the same. I looked around the inside of the van, which was royally cluttered from end to end with beat-up concert speakers and amps, duffel bags,
toolboxes, an old guitar case and other odds and ends. Next to Cam’s seat on the floor was a pump-up air pistol that he used to shoot at squirrels and cats he saw as he drove around, and on
the dash there were two or three empty Raleigh packs, a can of lead pellets, half a roll of Life Savers, an old ballpoint and several matchbooks.

As a driver Cam never seemed to be in a hurry, but he stayed alert as he drove, kind of the opposite of Jack, who was one of those kill-or-be-killed drivers, always seeming to be on the verge of
having some kind of seizure when he was behind the wheel, like he was flying a fighter in a sky full of bogeys and he was out of bullets. Everything that happened in traffic seemed to catch Jack
off guard and make him yell. But riding with Cam you could actually relax a little.

Going on with his band problem, Cam said, “Last guy we had on the mike, I swear it sounded like you was frying live chickens. Way the guy juked and strutted around out there making all
those faces, musta thought we was at the bottom of Deep Ellum or something. Mighta made a halfway good show if you unplugged his mike.”

“What’d you do with him?” said Hubert, setting Cam up.

“Put him on the road with a red ass, whattaya think?”

Hubert laughed. Cam looked out the side windows and in his rear-view mirror.

“Here we are,” he said, pulling up in front of the store.

The sign over the door had the outline of a jukebox in different colors of neon. Below that it said
FROM BEGINNER TO PRO
. There were no other cars in the parking
lot. We got out and looked at the guitars, drums and horns in the window. Cam scratched under his chin as he stared at a pearl-inlaid bass guitar, a sure sign he wanted it, and I figured he was
thinking of ways to sell Rachel on the idea.

Finally he went inside, Hubert trailing along behind him. For a while I stayed at the window inspecting the merchandise. One of the guitars hung straight down from a cord looped around its neck.
Looking at it, I felt something twang inside me. I took a deep breath and went inside.

Cam was showing Hubert some tricky chord changes. I wandered around looking at the instruments until Cam and Hubert had worked their way through the display guitars and started a heavy
conference with the clerk about various kinds of strings. The clerk kept pushing his thick glasses up on his nose with his finger, and when he turned to get something Cam had pointed at, I saw
Hubert slip a couple of picks from the display into his back pocket. Then, when he saw he had the time, he grabbed a few more.

I didn’t know anything about music, but I liked the exact artistic look of the different instruments. I visualized myself learning on the sly to play guitar and then springing it on Gram
and L.A., ripping out some Slowhand or B. B. King for them. On optimistic days I thought it might be possible; I wasn’t tone deaf or anything, and L.A. and Diana even said I had a good sense
of rhythm. But somehow I could never get the hang of making music. I figured maybe it was like Hubert’s problem with algebra, just a locked door for me.

When Cam and Hubert finally settled on the right strings and Hubert paid the clerk from the tight wad of bills he brought out of his pocket, I was ready to get going. We climbed back into the
van.

“So how’s that girl of mine?” said Cam, glancing at me.

“Pretty good, really diving good. We go to the pool whenever we can.”

Cam looked up and down the streets and along the storefronts. We swung out into the traffic. “I need to pick up some stuff,” he said. “We’ll go by the studio and then
I’ll drop y’all off.”

Hubert, looking as happy as he ever did, nodded. Cam glanced at me with some sort of expression.

“She still seeing that head doctor?” he said.

“Yes sir.”

He never said so but I had the impression Cam didn’t much like the idea of L.A. seeing Dr. Ballard—because I figured he wouldn’t want her talking about him and Rachel and their
drinking, for one thing—but he said when Rachel and her mama got their heads together about something you could just forget about it, which was pretty much true.

“I just can’t picture that place in my mind,” he said, meaning the doctor’s office.

As a matter of fact, I couldn’t either. The best I could do was an image of L.A. walking into a room something like a principal’s office but better furnished and without the sense of
danger. All I really knew was that when she came out after an appointment she always had a little peppermint stick in her mouth. I shrugged.

Cam said, “Wonder if them headshrinkers can get you to tell stuff you don’t want to, like hypnotize you or something when you’re not looking.”

I thought about it for a minute. “Not L.A.,” I said.

No one said anything else until we stopped in front of the old Conoco station Cam’s parents had owned before they died. It had been closed for years but you could still see some of the
green and white paint on the brick. He called it his studio because he sometimes got the Nitecrawlers together there to practice new stuff they wanted to work into their act. Hubert had sat in on a
couple of these jams and later said, “Man, those guys are at light speed. No way I could keep up.” We waited in the van while Cam went in. Somebody had painted over the glass sometime
in the past, but I didn’t need to maintain visual contact to know Cam’s last stop would be the little refrigerator he kept beer in. Sure enough, when he came back out with the old
flight bag he carried his sheet music in, he was holding three opened bottles of Lone Star by their necks. He got in behind the wheel and offered one to each of us.

Hubert took one, but knowing I’d be coming up on Gram’s radar pretty soon, I passed.

“More for me,” said Cam, tucking the extra bottle between his legs.

Cam and Hubert threw their heads back and their bottles up together like a drill team, and I saw their throats working. A pleasant malty smell filled the van, and Hubert belched as we turned
toward the Illinois overpass. A minute later we drove past a blond girl in a red and yellow bathing suit washing a white Chevy Nova in her driveway, leaning over to reach a spot on the
windshield.