Читать книгу The Last Queen of the Gypsies - William Cobb - Страница 8

2

Piper, Florida

June 1964

In the small town of Piper, Florida, there lived a young man—or boy, though it would not be entirely accurate to call him a boy, since he was mature before his time, having endured the first fourteen years of his life in the same rundown house with a drunken father, who beat the boy regularly for the first ten years and then got his due from the boy for the last four—tall and muscular, handsome, appealing to women of all ages but choosing to spend that portion of his time he spent with the female sex with an eighty-three-year-old woman suffering from advanced senility.

It was not that he was not attracted to girls his own age; he was. But once he was close enough to see behind the rouge and lipstick and beribboned hair he found them silly, unserious to a fault. They represented the type of people who populated the world, or at least as much of the world as he knew, with their babblings and petty arguments and insincere compliments, and he rejected them and rejected their world as well. He was more than content to walk alone.

Piper was a town of two thousand people, in the western Panhandle, on one of the main routes to the Gulf beaches. It was the type of place that people only passed through going elsewhere, stopping maybe for gas or at the numerous fruit stands lining the highway north toward the Alabama border, oranges and grapefruit mostly, melons, none of which was any fresher really than they could buy in their grocery stores in Birmingham or Atlanta or Chattanooga, since Piper was two hundred miles from the fruit-growing region down in the central part of the state, the fruit stand owners relying on the motorists’ sudden awareness that soon they would leave Florida and their realization that they hadn’t bought enough fruit to take home with them. Piper had little in common with the beach towns with their gaudy pretensions to happiness and escape—the broken promises and the desperation. Piper didn’t even have a single motel, only an ancient tourist home sitting in stoic defiance of the obvious illogic of stopping when you’re a mere two hours from the beach. Nobody ever stopped there.

It was a perfect early summer evening, not too hot, and the boy, whose name was Lester Ray Holsomback, walked along a dirt road—actually a street of the town—that ran along the river. He wore tight jeans and a white T-shirt, with a package of Camels rolled up in the sleeve. He was clearly visible in the bright moonlight, would have been even if he had not had on the T-shirt. He was just under six feet tall, with shoulders so wide they strained the T-shirt in the back. His hair was silky black, short, cut about half an inch all over, not so much cut as just there. He had a birthmark on the left side of his crown, white hairs in a misshapen V, as though some God or Fate had reached down and said thoughtfully, “Hmmmm, okay, him,” and put a check mark there. His eyes were a light blue, sometimes in certain lights almost gray, providing a contrast with the sun-darkened skin of his face. The only odd thing about him this night was that he wore on his face a Frank Sinatra mask, made of rubber, fastened with elastic bands in the back. He came around toward the end of the road, a turn-around at the river, behind the city dump, paused in the moon shadows, and stood looking at the car parked there.

It was an old Chevrolet coupe, black with a red top. He knew whose it was: Billy Blankenship, a senior next year at the high school, whose father ran a business supply store downtown. Lester Ray stood in the shadows and lit a cigarette. He was not concerned about being seen. He knew he wouldn’t be, because the occupants of the car would be too busy. He could not see them, but he knew they were in there. He had watched them come down here before, had seen them pass by his house earlier on this night, Billy and his girl friend, named Lucy Hatter, nicknamed “Lucy Goosey.” A fat girl. Giggled all the time.

Lester Ray had quit school in the sixth grade. He did not know this couple very well personally, since he spent most of his time hanging out with Mrs. McCrory and doing yard work for her, or working in the pool room—sweeping out the place, racking balls—and, with whatever money he could put together, drinking beer at Saddler’s Lounge, on the edge of town. He was not likely to see either one of them in one of those places. He just knew who they were. He moved out into the clearing of the turn-around, took a last drag on the cigarette and flipped it out into the road, the butt making a little golden rocket arch before it hit the sand. He walked up closer to the car. He peered into the open window. They were in the back seat.

He could see Billy Blankenship’s plump ass pumping up and down, the girl’s knees sticking up on each side. There was complete silence, not even any heavy breathing, much less moaning or whispering or crying out. Lester Ray fingered the switchblade knife in his pocket. He straightened the Frank Sinatra mask, made sure it was tight. He reached into the window and tapped Billy Blankenship on his ass; the boy froze.

“What’s the matter?” Lucy Hatter said.

Billy still did not move. After a few moments he said, “Awww, now, Bubba, is that you? You crazy son-of-a-bitch.”

“What is it?” the girl said.

“Somebody playin a trick,” the boy said.

“Somebody’s here? Git up offa me!”

They scrambled up, struggling in the narrow space. They were both buck naked. Lester Ray could see the girl’s big meaty breasts waggling. They were both trying to see out the car window.

“Ain’t no Bubba here,” Lester Ray said.

“What the fuck?” Billy Blankenship said, gaping at the Frank Sinatra mask outside in the moonlight.

“Frankie boy is here,” Lester Ray said, “get out of the car.”

“What the fuck?” Billy said again.

“Get outta the car,” Lester Ray said, “I ain’t gonna tell you a second time.” Lester Ray pulled out the knife and snapped it open. He held the blade up, letting it glint in the moonlight.

“Jesus,” Billy Blankenship said.

“No, just old Frankie Sinatra,” Lester Ray said, and laughed.

Billy Blankenship cocked his head to the side, trying to get a better look at him. “Who in the fuck are you?” he said. “Fuck, this ain’t Halloween!”

“Get outta the car, hand me your pants and her purse. Now.”

“Wait. Let her get her clothes on,” Billy said.

“Hell no. Out!”

Billy clambered out, naked, his pecker still about half hard, drooping, pointing to the ground. The girl followed, heavy hipped, bulbous breasts wallowing. Lester Ray checked out her big bush of black hair under the hand that she tried to shield herself with. She was standing pigeon-toed, with her other arm across her breasts.

“What do you want?” the girl asked, in a high whine.

“I told you,” Lester Ray said, “I want your money. Give me your pants and your purse, and don’t try nothin or I’ll cut your balls and tits off.”

“Give it to him, Billy, for God’s sakes,” Lucy said.

Billy was rummaging around behind him in the car. “If this is a damn trick, I’m gonna . . .”

“Believe me, this ain’t no trick,” Lester Ray said. He was wary of him, poised, in case he came out with a tire iron or something. But Lester Ray was a head taller than Billy and fifty pounds heavier, and he would have bet good money that the boy would do nothing to defend himself or the girl.

The boy pulled his pants out and handed them toward Lester Ray. “Give me the wallet and all your change,” Lester Ray said, motioning with the knife. Billy held out a handful of change and Lester Ray took it and put it in his pocket. He reached into the proffered wallet and slid the bills out; he could see that there were ones and fives. And some tens. Billy’s folks were well-off. He flung the wallet out into the road. “Now your purse, lady,” he said. She was shaking all over. She got the purse and handed it to him. He snapped it open with one hand, holding the knife on them. There was a red, plastic billfold in there with nothing in it but a one-dollar bill. He took that and flung the purse after Billy’s billfold. “Give me your car keys,” Lester Ray said.

“What the fuck?” Billy said. Lester Ray waved the knife. “Okay, okay.” He reached in and snatched the keys out of the dash. Lester Ray took them and pegged them toward the river, into a stand of twisted live oaks along the bank. “Shit, man,” Billy said. “You not even gonna steal my car?”

“No. Now reach in there, real easy, and hand me all your clothes. Underwear, all of it.”

“Come on, man,” Billy said. “What the hell you doin this for then?”

“Because I don’t like you,” Lester Ray said.

Neither of them moved. “Now!” Lester Ray said. Both of them scrambled around in the car, gathering up their clothes. They handed the bundle to Lester Ray.

“Now get back into the car. Go back to fuckin if you want to. But don’t get out for another half an hour. You understand that, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” the girl said, climbing back into the car.

“Shit,” Billy said. “If I find out . . .”

“You ain’t gonna do nothin, piss-ant,” Lester Ray said. “And if you report this to the police, I’m gonna come lookin for you.”

After they were back in the car, Lester Ray walked back up the road toward his house. He passed a place where some old tires were burning and he tossed their clothes onto the fire. He laughed out loud.

He would never feel sorry for himself again. Not since those days when he didn’t know any better, when he was a little boy and thought his mother had run off because of him, and he would never see her again and there was nothing he could do about it. Maybe she had. Run off because of him. But now he knew it didn’t really matter why she had left but simply that she had. His daddy had told him a thousand stories, all different, about what she was like, who she was and where she must have gone—Key West, Mobile, a whorehouse in Memphis, on and on—and his daddy would cry and moan and cuss her for the sorry bitch he said she was until he passed out, sometimes face down on the old secondhand Formica table with his arms flayed out to the side, like he was trying to fly down through the surface of the table.

His daddy’s name was Earl Holsomback, and the two of them lived on that same sandy unpaved street that Lester Ray had walked down on his way to the turn-around on the river. It was a rented house, unpainted, two rooms and a kitchen, with a narrow falling down porch, little more than a stoop, on the front. There was paltry furniture; Lester Ray slept on a settee in what they called the living room, while his father had the bedroom where there was an ancient iron bed that had once been painted a gold color, to look like brass, with a mattress that they had found in the city dump where it had been discarded, probably by some rich man in town who had not even gotten the good out of it. Lester Ray did not sleep in the bed on any of his father’s many long absences—when Lester Ray had no knowledge at all of his father’s whereabouts, nor what he might be doing—because his father had pissed the mattress and the dingy sheets so often and so thoroughly that Lester Ray could hardly stand to walk into the bedroom, it stank so much. He was content with the settee, anyway, though it was almost too short for him. He was content with a lot of things, because he knew he was just biding his time until he could leave, until he could get some kind of car or motorcycle, anything, and go in search of his mother. That was the driving force of his young life: finding his mother.

His father was at home when he got there. He sat at the kitchen table in a shabby sleeveless undershirt, Pabst Blue Ribbon cans scattered all over the tabletop.

“Where the shit have you been?” his father said.

“I might say the same thing to you,” Lester Ray said. His father had been gone for two months. He would do that, just suddenly pop up and act like he’d been down to the store for a loaf of bread when he had just disappeared without a word one day to stay away months at a time.

“Don’t get smart with me, boy,” he said. “You got any cigarettes?”

“No,” Lester Ray said, though he knew his father could plainly see the package of Camels rolled up in his T-shirt sleeve. But his father didn’t see them; he was so drunk that his eyes were opaque and watery, and he just sat there, staring at the beer can in his hand. Looking at it like he was surprised to see it, that he had never seen it before. Maybe he was so blind drunk that he hadn’t even known he was holding it until he caught sight of it. What was the use of drinking it if you didn’t even know you were doing it?

“Git yourself a beer,” his father said, and Lester Ray crossed over to the ice box and pulled out a Pabst. He popped the top and sat down, taking a long sip. The beer was ice cold.

“You didn’t tell me where you been,” his father said.

“Like it’s any of your business,” Lester Ray said.

“I’m your daddy, boy,” he said.

“You ain’t nothin but a fuckin drunk,” Lester Ray said.

“No, I’m a fuckin drunk and your daddy,” his father said.

“You think that makes any difference?”

“Not a whole lot, no.”

He didn’t know how old his father was, but he looked like a very old man. He was losing his hair, the bald spot spreading outward from his crown, and he only had a few teeth left, one on the bottom in the front, so that his cheeks caved in and his lips formed a single narrow line above his chin. He was so thin he looked like a skeleton. “Git me another one, will you?” he said, and Lester Ray went back over to the ice box and pulled out another Pabst and opened it. He handed it to his father.

“Where you been?” Lester Ray asked.

“Down to Panama City,” his father said, “had me a job cuttin grass on a golf course.”

“And you got fired for drinkin on the job.”

“Story of my life, ain’t it?” his father said. He leaned back and drained about half the beer. Then he looked at Lester Ray. “I’m headin over to Crestview when I sleep this here off,” he said. “Know a feller over there.”

“Well, I might not be here when you get back,” Lester Ray said. “This time.”

His father laughed. It was a low chuckle, deep down in his throat, and he seemed to choke on it, losing his breath. When he righted himself he hacked and coughed up a wad of phlegm, which he spit onto the floor. “Still think you’re goin lookin for your mama, huh? Boy, you better just give that up.”

“Never,” Lester Ray said.

“I’ve done told you, she was a whore, hooked up with a bunch of gypsies come through, ain’t no tellin where in the hell she’s at now. She had road dust in her veins. Couldn’t set still. She’s halfway round the world, far as I know.”

“I don’t care,” Lester Ray said. “If you’d just tell me her name . . .”

“She didn’t have no name. She was . . . what you say? . . . unusual. She was unusual. She wasn’t born outta no woman, I’ll tell you that.”

“You’re full of shit,” Lester Ray said.

“Naw, now, she was . . . peculiar. Is all I’m sayin.”

“You been tellin me this shit since I was old enough to understand what you were sayin,” Lester Ray said. “You’re so full of shit you need a bucket to tote it around in.”

“That ain’t no way to talk to your daddy, son,” his father said.

“Fuck you,” Lester Ray said.

His father shrugged. He drank down the rest of the beer. “Listen here,” he said, “you got any money?”

“No,” Lester Ray said. He unrolled his pack of Camels and shook one out. He stuck it between his lips and lit it with his Zippo. There was no way he would ever let himself get like his father, he thought. His father was like a piece of driftwood that had washed up behind a dam and was just bobbing there. His life had no direction at all, never had, as far as Lester Ray knew. Lester Ray wondered if that was why his mother had left him, or if he had gotten that way because she left him.

“I thought you said you didn’t have no cigarettes,” his father said.

“I did say that,” he said. He tossed the pack onto the table, and his father took one. Lester Ray lit it for him. He watched his father suck the smoke deeply into his lungs. He stood there watching his father smoke.

Lester Ray was antsy, anxious. He could feel the days of his youth piling up, like blown leaves up against a fence. He didn’t want to get as old and worn down as his father before he found his mother. He had thought of just going, sticking his thumb out, taking off in whatever direction the first ride took him. He was not frightened of being off on his own, not knowing where he was nor where he was going nor what he would eat when he got hungry. In a way it would be a comfort, a new kind of freedom. Except that he knew he would never find her if he just took off, with no plan, no idea whatsoever where she might be. He kept thinking that sooner or later he was going to get a handle on it, that his father would slip up and tell him something that would help him find her.

All he knew was that she had just left one day, without a word to his father, when Lester Ray was almost a year old. He had only the vaguest memory of her: her hands, soft, smelling of Jergens lotion. Maybe it wasn’t a memory at all, just a sense of her that had lodged itself inside his mind and stayed there. His father told him that a Gypsy caravan came through Piper, on the way to one of their burying places down near Fort Myers, camping outside town out in a field behind Saddler’s Lounge, and his father figured she had gone with them. “She was a Gypsy anyhow, that’s where she come from,” Earl has said.

“How do you know that?” Lester Ray had asked, “you don’t know that. Tell me. How you know she was a Gypsy?”

“I just know,” his father said.

“Did she look like a Gypsy?”

“I don’t know,” his father said, “look in a mirror and see.” His father, even though he stayed drunk for a solid year—and had been drunk most every day since—and cried in the night and moaned about how much he missed her, had never tried to find out where she’d gone. Or at least to Lester Ray’s knowledge he hadn’t. Lester Ray could not understand that; he would have followed her and brought her back, even if he’d had to hogtie her.

He had known, when he got six or seven, that his father knew a lot more than he was telling, though how he knew it Lester Ray didn’t know. He suspected that his father knew exactly where his mother was. It was maddening to him. He had searched through everything his father had: an old coming-apart cardboard suitcase that contained a few old yellowed bills that had never been paid, two or three pieces of hard candy in the bottom; his clothes, a few pairs of pants and shirts, most of them torn and put up dirty, underwear with the elastic stretched out of them. One day he had hit the jackpot, or as close to a jackpot, he had decided, as he was likely to hit: he had found a picture of his mother, in an old Bible with an imitation leather cover that was cracked and peeling. Or a picture of a woman that he was sure was his mother, even though his father swore that it wasn’t. It was a black and white photograph, faded, with a checked border around it. The woman was sitting on the fender of a dark automobile, her elbow on her knee and her chin propped on her fist. She had on a light colored dress, maybe white, and her skirt draped around her legs. She was looking straight into the camera and smiling. Her dark hair was long and straight, parted in the middle of her forehead. It was impossible to tell from the picture whether she was a Gypsy, but she was beautiful. Her eyes were squinted, as though the sunlight was high and bright.

“That’s my sister,” Earl had said when Lester Ray showed it to him. “Where’d you get that?”

“In the Bible, where you ain’t looked in twenty years,” Lester Ray said. “Nor me either, ever.”

“My sister,” his father said again.

“What’s her name?”

Earl, drunk, hesitated just long enough for Lester Ray to know for sure he was lying and said, “Daisy. She died of the polio.”

“You’re lyin. That’s my mama, I know it is.”

“No it ain’t, boy,” Earl said, “give it here.” He reached for it and Lester Ray snatched it away.

“No, it’s mine now,” Lester Ray said.

“Maybe Daisy was your mama. Maybe your mama died of the polio, and I been just tryin to spare you.”

“All right,” Lester Ray said, “my mother’s name was Daisy, then.”

“I ain’t said that.”

“Yes you did. You just did.”

“My sister’s name was Daisy. She died of the polio, I’m tellin you.”

“Awww, fuck it, then,” Lester Ray said, and he stormed out of the house, letting the rattly old screen door slam to behind him. He sat down by the river for a long time, looking at the picture. He waited until his daddy was passed out and then hid the picture in a Prince Albert can behind a loose brick under the house.

Mrs. McCrory, from behind the thick tangle of wisteria vines draping her back porch—ancient vines, several of them as big around as a man’s thigh—watched Mrs. Wrinstine’s old tomcat cross her backyard. The cat crawled close to the ground, wary, suspicious; it seemed to know it was only a matter of time before the jay struck. Mrs. McCrory had heard the jay squawking earlier, raucous and shrill, but it was silent now. It was playing possum to trap the dumb cat. The cat scooted forward a few feet, then was still. The heavy wisteria blossoms hung like bright lavender-red Japanese lanterns, and bumblebees floated indolently around them. The wisteria showered a fine perfume down upon Mrs. McCrory. She watched eagerly, anticipating the moment when the jay would strike. It would serve the old cat right. The old cat would sometimes come up on her porch during the night and puke on the floor. Leaving Mrs. McCrory a surprise. Mrs. McCrory was put out with all of Mrs. Wrinstine’s animals. Just that morning she had seen the woman’s milk cow flying over the fence, flying as though it had wings, up and away toward the river and beyond. It was not the first time she had seen the cow fly, but she could not immediately recall when the other time had been.

Mrs. McCrory never left her house any more. The boy went and bought her groceries, and in the winter he carted in the coal scuttles from the shed in back for the Warm Morning heater in her kitchen. Her son Orville had bought and installed the heater for her. Before that, for many years, she had relied on narrow coal fireplaces; there was one in every room of the old house, but she used only two or three of the rooms. Her son Orville had liked pronouncing the name of the heater: Warm Morning, he would say, like it was something out of the Bible, something you couldn’t say like normal things, stove or fireplace or table or something like that. She was supposed to be very grateful to him for buying her a Warm Morning and not just some ordinary heater. She only had to run it about two months out of the year, anyway, and she didn’t see how it was that big a deal. The boy cut her grass and raked her leaves, and he swept up for her, too, and dusted the house, and washed up whatever few dishes she used; she mostly ate her meager meals off a folded newspaper. She liked canned peaches and canned mandarin orange slices, Vienna sausages and potted meat.

Orville hardly ever visited her. He lived in Atlanta and was very busy. He was a traveling salesman for International Harvester. She couldn’t remember if he was married or not, or the name of his wife and children if he was. Her grandchildren. She couldn’t even remember her own grandchildren, or even if she had any. “I get older and stupider,” she would say to the boy. “You ain’t stupid,” the boy would say, “you’re eighty-three years old.”

“Am I?” she said.

“That’s what you said,” he answered her.

“When did I say that?”

“One day.”

“One day when?”

“Can I have some Kool-Aid?” he asked.

She had known the boy for years, since he was a little old bitty thing and she had watched him playing in her backyard and asked him to come up on the porch for some Kool-Aid. He had told her right off the bat that his mother had left, run off, leaving him with just his father. He was just a baby when she left, so he didn’t remember his mother. He was a good boy, strong and willing to work when he was not more than six years old. And he had grown into a strapping, good-looking young man at fourteen, who seemed to be able to do most anything he set his mind to. His daddy was the town drunk, and they lived in a battered little house on the next street down toward the river, near the city dump. He was at her house all the time. She gave him books to read, books that had belonged to her husband. The boy liked reading about the Greeks, the myths and legends and gods.

Mrs. McCrory was a big woman, not fat, tall with the figure of a much younger woman. Sinking breasts, a narrow waist, a widening behind that looked more like middle age than eighty-three. The skin of her face was smooth, with plump rounded cheeks and deep-set dark brown eyes. Her hair was completely gray, but curly and springy and thick. She was still a handsome woman, and sometimes when she caught sight of herself in a mirror she thought she was someone else. She watched the cat; it seemed to be searching in the grass for bugs, its ears cocked. It had forgotten the jay. Mrs. McCrory caught a flash of blue out of the corner of her eye at the top of a pine tree, then watched the jay dart down like a dive bomber and peck the cat on top of his head, then caterwaul off, wings flapping, squawking, while the cat hissed and rolled over and swatted at empty air with its paws. Mrs. McCrory cackled with glee. She laughed and laughed. “That’ll teach you, you mangy pussy,” she shouted at the cat, as the cat scrambled back across the yard and disappeared under Mrs. Wrinstine’s garage. The jay was preening, back in the top of the pine, pleased with itself.

Mrs. McCrory stood there a long time, gazing into the now empty backyard. She knew Orville was going to try to get her into a nursing home as soon as he could. An old folks’ home. He said that was best for her. He wanted the house, to sell it. She didn’t think it was worth very much. She remembered her Aunt Clara being in a nursing home in De Quincy Springs; she remembered the attendants asking her Aunt Clara if she “wanted to go potty.” Mrs. McCrory didn’t want to be anywhere where grown people asked other grown people if they “wanted to go potty.” That must have been what they did all the time at that nursing home, go potty, because the whole place smelled like one gigantic old person’s fart. Now who, exactly, was my Aunt Clara, Mrs. McCrory thought. What was her name, anyway?

Everything was suddenly gone from her mind, like the blue jay sweeping upward. Her thoughts were empty, a blank. Her head was like the inside of a child’s balloon. She tried to recall what she had been looking at in the backyard, but she couldn’t. She just stood there. She peered out at the world through gray eyes going blear. As though she were trying hard to see whatever she was looking at, even though she had no idea what it might be. She had been a widow for twenty years, but sometimes she thought it was only one or two years; sometimes she even talked to Winston, her husband, over the kitchen table or in the bed at night. She could feel the bed sagging when he got in and stretched his big frame out. No time had passed at all since she was a girl, being courted by the nice-looking young man she would marry, would spend thirty years with, would share everything with: their house, the many holidays, their triumphant days and their sad days, their son that neither one of them particularly liked as he grew up, Orville, with his sneaky eyes and greasy hair, and wherever in the world he got those eyes and that hair she did not know, could not imagine. She thought maybe that God had sent her this other boy, what was his name? Lester Ray. That God had sent her Lester Ray to make up for Orville, to be the son she should have had all along.

He was a good boy. She smelled beer on him sometimes, but it was many a good man’s failing. Winston drank, too. He drank a lot, for a long time: moonshine, bootleg, good dark whiskey in a sealed bottle, it didn’t matter to him. She didn’t know what Lester Ray drank, and she wasn’t going to ask him, all she knew was that he was a good boy. When she had showed Lester Ray the almost five thousand dollars she had saved out of her husband’s pension check and kept in a shoebox in the pantry, he had insisted that she put it in the bank where it would be safe. But she wouldn’t do that; she didn’t want anybody to know she had it, especially Orville. Lester Ray, for a while, had taken to sleeping on the glider on her back porch, to protect her, he said, from somebody breaking in and stealing her money. And maybe harming her. She made him come inside and sleep on the sun porch. Which he did for a while, until Orville found out and pitched a fit.

She remembered that day. Orville had been on the way to a sales meeting in Jacksonville and had stopped by to see her. She hadn’t known he was coming, and Lester Ray was asleep on the sun porch when he got there.

“Well, la do dah, what do we have here?” Orville said. His voice woke Lester Ray up and the boy sat straight up in the bed, a startled look on his face. “What the hell do you think you’re doin, boy?” Orville said.

“He’s my friend, son,” Mrs. McCrory said. She was standing in the doorway, looking around her son.

“Your friend? Whattaya mean, your friend?”

“I invited him to sleep here, Orville, is what I mean. It ain’t any of your business anyway.”

“Mama, you can’t be invitin every white trash boy that comes along into the house to sleep, for Christ’s sakes.”

“I can do whatever I want,” Mrs. McCrory said. She pushed her way into the sun porch.

“Your mind’s goin, Mama,” Orville said, a whine in his voice that had been there since he was a child. “If this don’t prove it I don’t know what would.” Though it was still fairly early in the morning, Orville’s white shirt was splotched with sweat, his tie loose and hanging onto his copious belly that strained the buttons in front. His hair was slicked back with Vitalis, the scent of it permeating the room.

“I don’t even know who you are, come bustin in here like this,” she said.

“There, you see?” He looked at Lester Ray as if for confirmation. “Don’t even know her own son.”

“You ain’t called me in three months,” she said. “Like I care.”

“I’ve tried, for Christ’s sakes,” he said, “your damn phone’s out of order.”

“I had it took out,” she said, “didn’t nobody else but you ever call me, so I figured it wasn’t worth the money.”

“Well fine, then, I can’t call you,” he said.

“That’s right,” she said, “who are you, anyhow?”

“Jesus, Mama,” he said.

“That’s right,” she said, “that boy there is Jesus.”

“Oh, for shit’s sakes,” he said. He went over to the bed and pulled Lester Ray by the arm. “Git up, boy, and git your ass outta here. You hear me?” Lester Ray rolled out of the bed and stood up. All he had on was a pair of white jockey shorts. Orville seemed momentarily startled at that, and how tall and big he was.

Mrs. McCrory saw it plain as day. He was! He was Jesus, only he didn’t have a beard, and, anyway, Mrs. McCrory had always wondered how all those people knew Jesus had a beard anyway, and what he looked like with that long hair like a girl and all.

“I’m gonna call the sheriff on you, boy,” Orville said, “breakin into an old lady’s house, standin around half naked. What are you up to, anyway?!”

“I’ve seen tallywhackers before, Orville,” Mrs. McCrory said, “it ain’t like I ain’t cleaned yours plenty of times.”

“All right, that’s it! That’s it! Where’s the phone?” He looked around. “Rape, is what it is. Or attempted rape. Whatever you want to call it. Where’s the phone?” He looked around. “Well, shit, there ain’t no phone,” he said.

“Don’t be stupid, Orville,” Mrs. McCrory said. “You call the law, I’ll tell em you broke in, that I don’t know who you are.”

“They know me, Mama. I grew up here, remember? No, I don’t guess you do.”

“Mr. McCrory,” Lester Ray said. Both of them looked at him. He was pulling on his blue jeans. “I’ll leave.”

“No, you won’t” she said, “he ain’t runnin Jesus off.”

“I’m not Jesus, Mrs. McCrory,” Lester Ray said.

“You are, too. Don’t I know who you are?”

“Apparently not,” said Orville under his breath.

“Look, I don’t want any trouble,” Lester Ray said, slipping his T-shirt over his head. He didn’t want any trouble—not for himself; he wasn’t afraid of Orville McCrory—but he was concerned for Mrs. McCrory. He figured the man had caused her enough heartache. He was familiar with that kind of heartbreak, of course, except from the other direction, his own pain being caused mother to son and not the other way around, and Lester Ray could not understand what Orville was doing. He hated it, because he knew that if he just had one minute with his mother, could even just see her for the briefest moment, even if it had to be just a glimpse, he would give anything he had or ever hoped to have. And so he could not comprehend Orville McCrory’s obvious disdain and lack of feeling for his mother. If that’s what it was. Lester Ray would be the first to admit that he didn’t comprehend Orville; the man just seemed to dislike his mother intensely, for no reason that Lester Ray could see. Else he wouldn’t talk to her the way he did and make her go to an old folks’ home when she so desperately didn’t want to.

“I don’t guess you do want to cause trouble, hot shot,” Orville said.

Lester Ray was fighting the rage that had begun to seep into him. He knew that his remark about not wanting any trouble had emboldened Orville, had made him almost cocky. He wanted badly to smack the smug look off of his face, to flatten his already wide and flat nose even more. He wondered if the man was a success as a salesman; he wouldn’t buy anything from him. Maybe you had to be a complete asshole to make it in the business world. That wouldn’t surprise Lester Ray.

“You go on downstairs, Lester Ray,” Mrs. McCrory said, “I’ll fix you some breakfast.”

“Awwww, Mama, you gonna fix him some breakfast? What is this, anyway?”

“I’ve told you, Orville, it’s not your concern.”

Lester Ray walked out the door and walked slowly down the stairs, the old boards creaking as he went.

“And I’ve told you, Mama,” Orville said, after he was gone, “I’ve got the authority to put you in a home if you can’t take care of yourself, and here I find you takin in a boy off the street that you don’t know from Adam’s house cat, and let me tell you somethin, there ain’t a judge in this world that wouldn’t see that exactly the way I see it, dangerous and irresponsible, crazy as hell is what it is, not able worth a damn to take care of yourself. That boy could knock you in the head and take everything in this house, and he would, too, in a minute.”

“What’s he gonna take? You already hauled off the silver and my good China.”

“That’s family stuff, Mama—valuable antiques—and you ain’t in any shape to be responsible for it, and if you need proof of that he’s down there in the kitchen right this minute, waitin to be served breakfast like some prince.”

“Orville,” she said, interrupting him, “you break my heart.”

“What?” he said. He was startled. He could see tears rising in her eyes, glistening. He was momentarily taken aback; what she said was like a kick in the chest. He was suddenly aware of the room they were in; it was the sun porch, and it had been his old room. The same massive old live oak outside the window that he used to climb down, the branches evenly spaced like a well-planned ladder. The bed was his bed. He felt a jolt of nostalgia that moistened his eyes, at the same time a sharp, bitter resentment that his old room had been desecrated. The warring emotions froze his tongue, confused his mind, and he stood looking helplessly at his mother. The depth of his feelings astonished him. He felt vulnerable, naked and open, frightened. Tears were running down his mother’s weathered cheeks, that looked chapped and rough, not smooth the way he remembered them from his childhood. He had to protect himself.

“Don’t pull that on me, Mama,” he heard himself say, “I can see right through it.”

His mother just stared at him. She did not bother to wipe the tears from her face. They just looked at each other for a long time. Then, she said, “You’re a sad man, Orville. Very sad.”

“Yeah, well,” he said, “I know my responsibility. Don’t think I don’t.”

Lester Ray and Mrs. McCrory sat at the table for a long while after Orville had left, drinking black coffee. It was already hot and stuffy in the kitchen, the sun higher in the sky, moving toward mid-morning. “He said two or three weeks,” Mrs. McCrory said. “I’m on a waiting list.” Her mind seemed particularly sharp this morning; possibly it was seeing her son, being mentally jerked back into a time when her thinking was clear.

“Yes, ma’am,” Lester Ray said. Maybe there was something he could do. If there were, he would do it. In a minute. He was well aware that Mrs. McCrory was his only friend, unless you counted the several guys that hung out at Saddler’s Lounge, and he didn’t consider them friends at all. He only just stopped in to pick up a six-pack now and then. She was the only person in the world he felt comfortable with, could relax around, the only person who, even in her sometimes addled way, seemed to understand him.

“Maybe you could fix Mr. McCrory’s old car,” she said, “and we could just take off.”

It was a thought that Lester Ray had had before. He had no idea if the old car would ever run again. It was an Oldsmobile, a 1939 model sedan, and it had been sitting in her sagging garage for as long as Lester Ray could remember. She had once told him that it had never been driven one time since her husband had died, twenty years ago, so it had been there that long. And she did not remember how to drive it if she ever knew. It was black and had a huge back seat, the kind of old hump-backed car that would be noticed anywhere it went, Lester Ray was sure, not an ideal car for a getaway. Lester Ray had spent a few nights sleeping in the back seat, when his daddy had come home drunk and mean and wanting to beat him up, the old rough upholstery smelling sharply of ancient dust and dully of vintage, out-of-date motor oil. It had a tall gear shift lever for the transmission and a choke on the dash. It was covered with dust and cobwebs and there was a dirt dauber nest in the tailpipe. He figured the thing had long since rusted through.

He had once raised the hood and looked at the motor. He knew little about cars, but he could see the rust and the spider webs, an old rat’s nest atop the engine. He knew enough to know it would be a long shot to get it to run again. But it was sure as hell worth a try.

“I’ll see if I can find somebody to help me fix the thing,” Lester Ray said. “But I’ll need some money.”

“Don’t you worry about that, Lester Ray, honey,” she said, “and I know you can do just about anything you set your mind to.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

He could see the open road stretching out in front of them, fading into the distance, beyond the horizon a vast, mysterious cloud that hid his mother and contained all the secrets of his life and his world. He knew, had no doubt, that it was within his reach. If only he had the means to go there, and maybe now he did. If they could get the car fixed.