Читать книгу Shallow Graves - Rev. Goat Carson - Страница 8

IT WAS DAWN when Steaks and I pulled into the small gravel parking lot behind our storefront loft. Her chic date from the party was sitting on the trunk of his red B.M.W. convertible with a cheap bouquet of flowers in his hand. She back gate, which was the entrance to our lofts. He groveled a bit and offered her breakfast at her favorite little sidewalk café in Beverly Hills. She asked me to join them. Although the thought of wolfman scarffing up Eggs Bennie on Rodeo drive was très amusant, I turned them down. Her date gave me a discrete “I owe you one” look and they disappeared in a cloud of dust. I unlocked the gate, walked down the back steps, past Steaks’ cactus garden and into my empty room. Halloween, at last, was over.

I stretched out on the couch and opened the envelope. I felt old as I turned the pages and looked at the photos. Texas came running back to me, hot and full of pain. I felt the burns from the sparks of the welding torch and the loneliness born of sorrow, for welding was a solitary task. Once the hood swung down over your face it was just you and the darkness staring through that small window of black glass at a ball of light twenty thousand times brighter than the sun. Sometimes it would get unbearable for Jimmy. He said all that high voltage electricity made his brain run faster and faster; things he’d done, things he’d said, fights with his wife, all spun and blurred together in the darkness under the hood until he felt his soul burning and melting like the metal at the tip of his welding rod. He’d stand up shaking, lift his hood and stare at nothing, his face dripping wet and black from the greasy smoke, then he’d sit his hood down and walk slowly to the shop office to ask the foreman to let him do something else for a while. After the summer he stopped welding all together.

We had worked together that summer welding huge sections of steel pipe big enough for a man to stand up inside. We stood up inside those pipes and welded. In July. In Texas. All day. It wasn’t so much the hundred and thirty degree heat or the thick smoke from the burning steel, but the sparks had no place else to go but through your clothes and into your skin and all you could do was cuss and bear it—you didn’t come out until you’d finished your seam. It was a government job, air vents for a copper mine, and welders could have all the overtime they wanted. Jimmy and his wife had just had a baby; he needed money to get out of debt. I had promised my girl a trip to Mexico. Two good reasons for two good Texans to stay in that living hell three good hours after closing time. We got to know each other during those long nights. I heard about Nam; he heard about college. I learned how to spit tobacco; he learned to split fractions. God, that was a long time ago.

I sat there for a moment, lost in time, then slowly it came to me Chris Boone had something to do with Rabbit’s death. Trouble had been brewing between Rabbit and his wife for a long time but it didn’t get violent until Chris became involved in the book I was writing. What power did this man have? How long had he been practicing the dark arts? Hypocrisy was the mainstay of evil, this I had learned from my research. Satan appears as an angel of light, the Bible says. All the pieces were there but how did they fit together? Why, after all this time, did he decide to return my book to me? I searched through the papers for the last chapter, the one about Jimmy’s death. If Jimmy’s ghost was haunting him maybe there was a clue in the last chapter that would tell me how Chris was accountable for Jimmy’s death. Something I had written down, without knowing, all those years ago could be the key I was looking for. I found the chapter and began to read.

CHAPTER 31

ASKING FOR IT

THE PLANT WAS HOT that July morning, and it stayed hot all day. Late in the afternoon a flatcar loaded with stacks of sheet metal pulled into the East Bay of the plant. The car creaked down the ancient railroad tracks that ran the length of the plant. Rabs loved the railroad, and every time a car like this came into the plant he’d tag it with his old hobo handle, Pecos Star.

“That way my buddies still think I’m riding the rails.”

“Ever think about going back on the bum?”

“Goaty, every night when I hear the train pass down in the bottoms, son. I slept better on the rails then I ever slept in my life; them old cars just rock you to sleep.”

Goat and Rabs had lunch together as usual with Frank, Rusty, Hunchy, Paps and myself. I taped a few more of Hunchy’s stories and took a few shots of the guys. (Chris Boone had put selling my book on indefinite hold for several months but I continued to work on it for my own satisfaction.) Goat told us all about last weekend’s big wedding, between his brother Chris and movie star Kathy White. Nobody seemed very impressed, which hurt Goat’s feelings. Goat idolized his brother and wanted to share what he thought was a big step up for everybody because, at last, the book would be published. Hunchy just laughed.

“Goat, your brother ain’t gonna’ do nothing but sit up there in that big house with his feet up and his dick hard. I know that’s what I’d do if I had fucked up on a fortune like he did.”

“You mean you wouldn’t help Frank a little?” Goat chided.

“Fuck Frank! He got a dick, too. Let him fuck his own self a fortune.”

“Bullshit!”

“No, you right I probably would help Frankie but I’m a fool; your brother ain’t a fool, you hear me. I been knowing all you Boones ever since you was kids and your daddy first came to work here. Don’t expect too much from your brother Chris, you hear me? If you had money I know what you’d do, you’d act like Sir Walter Raleigh an’ go broke helping folks. But your brother ain’t like you, you better listen to me ‘cause I don’t wanna’ see you get hurt.”

“He’s my brother.”

Things got quiet. One by one the men got up and left. I sat there with Goat, staring at the tape turning in my cassette recorder.

“He’s my brother.”

The buzzer sounded: end of lunch.

Rabs and Goat walked back to the welding shop together.

“I want that for my tombstone.” Rabbit pointed at the giant metal horse Goat Boone had been working on for the past many months.

“You ain’t gonna’ die anytime soon Rabs, this horse is for my kids.”

“You never know, son. Promise me you’ll put my name on it.”

“I’ll put your name on it.”

Goat had created the monster horse out of scrap pieces of metal rod he had found on the floor of the shop. It was seven feet tall and weighed three quarters of a ton. The horse was rearing up, its front legs pawing the air. The back legs were attached to a thick metal plate, about four feet long, in such a way that the weight of the horse balanced perfectly against the length and thickness of the base. So perfect was the balance that a small child could sit on the horse’s back and push his neck and the horse would rock. Because it was made of many small pieces welded together, the horse had the look of a Van Gogh worked in steel, yet, the musculature and shape were perfect enough to make the real horses in the field next to the plant, neigh and paw the ground. It was indeed a masterpiece.

“I need your help this weekend, Goat. I’m going over to Sylvia’s to get my car off the blocks.”

Jimmy and Sylvia had broken up a few months back. She had taken their child and car and gone to live with a Mexican Pimp. Since then Jimmy had been dating a legless woman, Sweet Marie, whose gentle nature seemed to soothe his pain but lately he’d taken up with an Indian woman he called Helen Highwater. She was wild. She had the word kiss tattooed to her upper lip. She ran guns and drugs for a motorcycle gang and, according to Jim, made love like a tiger in heat.

“I ain’t going over there. And I’ll tell you something else; you don’t need to be going over there either.”

“Gotta’ get my car, son.”

“Drive that Indian’s car like you been doing.”

“A man oughta’ have his own car.”

“You ain’t going over there for the car, Rabs.”

Jimmy just smiled and walked off.

By quittin’ time Rabs had Goat talked into helping him go get his car over the weekend. The next day was Friday. Rabbit came in early and sawed the barrel and stock down on his single shot shotgun. Goat came in late and never heard a thing about that.

As Rusty tells it, on Saturday morning Jimmy woke up and took his shotgun and blasted the walls out of the shack he was renting in the Trinity River Bottoms. He called Goat, but the line was busy. He called Helen and borrowed her truck. He went across the river and bought a case of beer and headed to Leroy’s house.

Leroy was another welder from down at the shop. He had a child’s heart, a good wife, two kids, and a strong desire to drink beer and watch Mighty Mouse on Saturday mornings.

This morning, he was broke and had resigned himself to just watching Mighty Mouse, when in walked Jim with a case of beer. Late in the afternoon they picked up another case of beer, and Rusty, and headed over to Sylvia’s to get Jim’s car.

Sylvia stood on the front porch of the duplex, next to the outside stairs that led to the apartment on the second floor. She held two year old “Little Jimmy” in her arms; it was as if she were waiting for Rabbit. As if she knew, beyond all doubt, that he’d be there before dark. When Jimmy pulled up she didn’t move. She just stood there, her red hair glowing even redder in the red rays of the setting sun. She looked hot and nervous in her white shorts and red tube top. Jimmy got out and stood beside the truck; Leroy and Rusty were already moving toward the house.

“Your car’s out back.” She said, and then turned to go back into the house.

Jimmy watched her a moment then turned his head slowly to his left, as if he’d seen something out of the corner of his eye. A dark man was leaning against a tree about ten feet away, smoking a cigarette. Jimmy turned back to his wife; she was about half way through the screen door. He shouted.

“Hey is that the son-of-a-bitch you’re with now?”

In a flash, Jimmy had reached under the front seat and pulled out his sawed-off. The dark man ran toward the house. Bam! Jimmy fired but the dark man was out of range and galloping up the stairs. Jimmy reloaded and slowly closed in. The dark man reappeared at the top of the stairs firing a .38. Jimmy took a shot in the neck, then one in the stomach; he doubled over and fell at the foot of the stairs. Leroy took a shot in the back of the head as he ran toward the truck and fell dead on the dry, yellow lawn. Rusty got hit in the arm as he ducked behind a tree. The tree took two shots and the dark man had to reload. Rusty ran to the truck, jumped in and peeled rubber for three solid blocks, but couldn’t leave Rabs behind. When he returned the dark man was stepping slowly down the stairs smiling at Sylvia as he blew the smoke from the barrel of his revolver. As the pimp stepped to the porch Jimmy jumped up and cut him in two with a blast point-blank from his sawed-off. Sylvia screamed, hysterical. Rabbit spun and held out the shotgun for her to see the .38 slug embedded in the stock. He slammed another shell in the chamber and shouted.

“Where’s the rest of these motherfuckers?!”

Sylvia knelt down and cradled the head of her fallen lover. She looked up at Jimmy, half crying, half sneering.

“Don’t go out back, Jimmy, just leave. Get out of here.”

Jimmy just smiled and walked slowly to the rickety wooden gate that led to the backyard.

I couldn’t finish reading the last of the chapter; the grim details of Jimmy’s death had been seared into my memory at the time it happened. Besides, at this point my eyes were burning and I hurt all over. I had to sleep.

I went into the bathroom and removed my wolfman make-up as best I could, considering my condition, and crawled into my unmade bed. There was a moment, right before I fell into a deep dead sleep, when I thought I felt a presence in the room with me. That’s all, just a moment, then silence, then black.