by J. C. Sasser
Sonny Joe ran his truck sideways into the yard. “Hey faggot!” he yelled out over the cat-screaming voice of Axl Rose blaring from the jam box.
Gradle shot from the swing and stood at the edge of the porch. Her toes curled over the ledge. “Hey faggot!” she yelled back at Sonny Joe.
Sonny Joe took a swig from his brown paper sack and grinned. “I wasn’t talking to you,” he said. He slammed the truck’s door and climbed the porch steps slow. The rain didn’t hinder his swagger, but rather over-accentuated his smoothness. His eyes stayed fixed on her, and once he got within sniffing distance, he stopped and leaned into her ear.
“You smell good,” he said. His booze-breath was hot and humid.
“You oughta be ashamed of yourself.”
“For telling a girl I like her perfume?” he asked. He held out his hand for Ceif to give it skin.
“For throwing firecrackers at Delvis’s house. What’s he done to you?”
“Other than fascinate the hell out of me, not much,” he said. “Appears you find him fascinating, too.”
“I don’t provoke him.”
“I’m sure you do,” he said. He sat down on the swing with his legs spread wide and picked up the letter. He snapped at Ceif to give him a drag, and as he smoked Ceif’s cigarette down to a pinch he read the words Delvis had put on the page. “Sounds like he finds you fascinating, too.” He held the letter out for Gradle, but as her hand reached for it he snatched it away and let it fall to the ground.
She bent to pick up the letter, and Sonny Joe stepped on it with his shoe, causing her to rip the letter in two.
Ceif whipped the back of Sonny Joe’s calf with his cane. “Don’t be yourself today,” he said, as Gradle placed the ripped letter inside its envelope.
“Where you been dick-breath?” Sonny Joe asked. “You hauled-ass at sunrise, and I ain’t seen you since.”
“He brought me flowers,” she said. “Walked all this way to apologize for the other day.”
“I didn’t realize that needed an apology.” He cut his eyes at Ceif, as if questioning his loyalty. “Don’t you know when somebody’s flirting with you, Gradle Bird?” he asked.
“No,” she said.
He took a swig from the brown paper sack and passed it to Gradle.
She took it, turned it up, and passed it back.
Sonny Joe grinned and tossed the cigarette from the porch. “You missed the fight,” he said, and slapped Ceif’s ribs. “Had to set up, tear down, and collect the cabbage without you.” He pulled out a roll of money from his pocket and fanned it under Ceif’s nose. “Fifty-two bucks. Enough for us to get drunk off well drinks at Jimmy’s and dominate the jukebox.”
“Who won?” Ceif asked, as he tapped tobacco in the crease of a rolling paper.
“Same fish she should have bet on last week,” he said. “We’re still going to Jimmy’s, right?”
Ceif licked the paper, rolled the cigarette, and twisted its ends. “Why would we break tradition? You wanna go to Jimmy’s with us tonight?” he asked Gradle, tipping his hat.
She stared out into the yard at the jam box sitting in the back window of Sonny Joe’s truck. “Can I play this?” She held up the cassette tape Delvis had made.
“You can play anything you want,” Sonny Joe said. He nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw Grandpa scaling down the house with a rope of quilts.
Grandpa landed in the bushes and dusted off a pair of plaid pants. He was the most handsome she had ever seen. He was dressed in a suit and hat, and his eyes were almost as shiny as the pennies sparkling in his loafers. He bent his elbow and held it out for someone to take hold and darted from the bushes into the rain. He opened the Chrysler’s passenger’s side door and held out his hand, as if helping someone inside. He circled around the car to the driver’s side, tipped his hat at Sonny Joe and Ceif, and started the engine.
“What in the hell ails him?” Sonny Joe asked.
Gradle chased the Chrysler into the street as far as she could and stared through the rear window at the back of Grandpa’s head. His body leaned toward the passenger’s side, as if drawn there by the gravity of romance. She didn’t know what in the hell ailed him either, but whatever it was, it made him happy.
Cigarette smoke, metal music, and the scent of sugar-loaded booze filled the truck’s cab with an air of cool as Sonny Joe cruised the town’s main drag like it had his name on it. Gradle sat between the two boys, nestling two bags of blue Crowntail bettas in her lap. One was the victor of the fight earlier that day, and the other was the next victim of the fight Sonny Joe had planned for the evening. Ceif shook out tobacco in a Zig-Zag resting on his Bible and rolled it into another cigarette while Sonny Joe took the occasional swig of Southern Comfort and rewound the Guns ‘N Roses cassette to his favorite song, “Mr. Brownstone.” The music thundered out loud, so loud Gradle’s attempt at suggesting Delvis’s cassette was swallowed up by the thundering drumbeat.
“Y’all hungry?” Sonny Joe asked. He swerved across the road as the cigarette hanging from his bottom lip held on. He made a left at a yellow neon sign with letters spelling out: THE WESTERN STEER. “Jimmy’s won’t be good and wild for a few more hours.”
Gradle felt the sweaty heat steaming through Sonny Joe’s palm as he placed it on the high part of her thigh. “Me and you are gonna make up tonight,” he said. He ran his other hand through his bleached blonde hair and released the scent of grease, fish, and the wooden church pew where he slept, and somewhere weaved between all of this was the leftover scent of her.
Sonny Joe’s hand pressed down harder on her thigh. “Ceif,” he said, “when’s the last time you ate?”
“Been a while,” Ceif said, looking out of the passenger window.
“You looking a little poor over there,” Sonny Joe said. “He’d starve to death if it wasn’t for me.”
“I’m the richest boy on earth,” Ceif said. He held Gradle’s hand and drew her attention to a cluster of swallowtails acrobating through the sky as if they were feeding on raindrops.
“Here’s your cut, even though you stood me up today,” Sonny Joe said. He reached in front of Gradle and tapped a roll of dollar bills down Ceif’s breast pocket, and when his hand came back, he tugged her hand away from the soft pocket of Ceif’s palm. “Thou shalt not steal,” he said, throwing Ceif a stern eye.
Sonny Joe parked the truck in the lot of THE WESTERN STEER, took Gradle’s hand, and assisted her to the ground.
“You stay here,” he told Ceif. “Watch over the fish.”
He led Gradle through the steak diner’s doors where they were met by a fireheaded waitress who seemed put out for having to extinguish her cigarette until her eyes snagged the bright color of Sonny Joe’s tattoo. She hiked her tits high in her bra and folded a stick of gum on her tongue.
“Who’s she?” the woman, who must have been a decade older, asked Sonny Joe.
“She’s new in town. We’ll take three specials. One to-go,” he said, led Gradle through the dining room, pulled out her chair, and seated her at table in the back corner even though there was a sign at the front that said Please Wait to be Seated.
Gradle situated her dress, saw the bloodstain, and tried to hide it with a fold of chiffon that wasn’t tainted. She felt out of place as she looked over the dining hall, its dark walls, cheap chandeliers, tables of regulars and transient highway traffic, colored-glass votives, and plastic orange trays that served meat, potatoes, and a choice of vegetable. It was the first time she had ever eaten in a restaurant.
Sonny Joe lit the tip of his cigarette with the candle on the table. He reached under and billowed her dress, exposing the bloodstain she had tried to hide. “I’m sorry I ruined your dress,” he said. His eyes were truehearted and hurt. “What’s with this dress anyway? Why do you wear it all the time?”
“It’s got sentimental value,” Gradle said.
“You don’t strike me as the sentimental type,” Sonny Joe said.
“
I’m sorry if I hurt you,” she said.
“I don’t know what hurt is, Gradle Bird,” he said, leaned back, and blew grey mist from his mouth.
“Is that why you hurt everybody?”
A steak dinner tray skidded across the table and stopped sideways in front of him. The waitress smacked her gum as she stared at Gradle and balanced a tray high above her shoulder. Gently, she placed it perfectly in front of Gradle, as perfect as the woman had re-painted her lips with bright red lipstick. “I can see why he likes you,” she said, and went on about her other business.
Gradle stared down at her steaming food with one thought in her head—Delvis Miles telling her that one flying dragon scale could get him a steak dinner at THE WESTERN STEER if he had a good mind to go eat up there.
“You gonna eat?” Sonny Joe asked. His teeth scraped a piece of steak from his fork.
“I’m not that hungry,” she said, even though hot saliva ran down the walls of her mouth, even though she found the food desirable, even though she had lived off SpaghettiOs and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for as long as she could remember.
“You can box it up to-go,” he said. He snapped his fingers at the waitress. “A box and the check. And the to-go plate,” he told her, dismissing her as fast as she was summoned.
After the waitress came back, Gradle transferred her steak dinner into the box, and Sonny Joe led her to the front to pay.
“Sixteen and a tip,” the waitress said. She stared at him and popped her gum.
Sonny Joe counted out sixteen bills from the wad in his pocket, counted them out real slow, one by one. When he got to sixteen, he stopped.
“That was some real shitty service, Marcy,” he said.
“Asshole,” the woman said, as her teary eyes tracked Sonny Joe through the door.
“I thought you did a great job,” Gradle told the woman.
“He’s gonna hurt you,” the waitress said, as Gradle followed Sonny Joe out into the rain.
Sonny Joe helped her into the cab. He held her box of food as she slid next to Ceif who was blessing the steak dinner Sonny Joe had ordered him to-go. Ceif said, “Amen,” and scarfed down the food as if he was starved.
“Fish alright?” Sonny Joe held up the bags of fish.
“Didn’t say a word,” Ceif said, with the last piece of string bean hanging out of his mouth.
Sonny Joe placed the bags of fish in Gradle’s lap, lit a cigarette, and put the truck in drive.
“Can we listen to this now?” she asked, pulling Delvis’s cassette from her bra.
Sonny Joe took the cassette and inspected the writing on each side. “We need to take the dirt roads and get high to listen to this.”
He sped down the town’s main drag and when they passed the city limits, he threw an empty liquor bottle at the sign. Wind whistled through the bottle’s mouth and the sign received another dent. He drove miles down the highway and turned off on a dirt road that split a field of blooming green tobacco. The rain slowed to a soft drizzle, and the moon rose low over the fields, round and full. Its light seeped through a thin gauze of cloud. When the tobacco fields turned to woods, he parked the truck.
“Roll one up, Ceif,” he said, as he broke the seal of a half-pint of Southern Comfort.
Ceif reached into his pocket and pulled out a plastic bag of weed and a pack of empty Zig-Zags. He searched his other pockets, the space around him, and he opened the glove box and searched it, too. “I’m out of papers,” he said.
“Are you fucking serious?” Sonny Joe asked. “I ain’t riding back into town.” He snatched Ceif’s Bible from his lap. He opened the Bible and tore out one of its pages.
“You mother fucker,” Ceif said. “That’s my Bible.”
He threw the Bible back at Ceif. “From the beginning,” he said, handing Ceif a torn out page from Genesis. “Roll it up, Ceif.”
Ceif pinched the marijuana into tiny pieces on the face of his Bible and rolled it into the torn out page. When he was done, Sonny Joe reached for the joint, but Ceif lit it and inhaled it first. “For dust thou art, and to dust shalt thou return,” he said, passing the joint to Sonny Joe.
Sonny Joe smiled and took a rip from the joint. “For dust thou art, and to dust shalt thou return,” he said, passing the joint to Gradle.
She took the joint from Sonny Joe and sucked in as hard as she could. Smoke burned down her throat, and she could feel it expand in her lungs. She held her breath and could feel their eyes on her. She passed the joint to Ceif and said, “For dust thou art, and to dust shalt thou return.” A thick plume of smoke hurled from her mouth and was followed by a series of violent, never- ending coughs that made her eyes feel raw.
“If you don’t cough, you don’t get off,” Sonny Joe said, as Ceif exhaled a purr of smoke and blew out small little rings with his small little mouth. He took the joint from Ceif and inhaled. “You may be new to most things, but seems you get them right the first time,” he said. He let smoke creep from his mouth, and snatched it back quick as he handed the joint to her. He rested his arm atop the bench seat, and his fingertips grazed her shoulders and sent a foreign awareness through her body that collected as wet heat between her legs.
She took a drag and stared at him, wondering what it would be like to be with him again. She looked over at Ceif and wondered what it would be like to be with him.
Sonny Joe cranked the truck and pulled out of the woods. They idled down the quiet dirt road. Veiled moonlight waxed the hood. Honeysuckle out-smelled the rain. Gradle felt her body grow gradually hazed, relaxed. Her muscles warmed and melted over her bones, and the blood traveling through her veins carried a cold, ticklish buzz.
“You stoned yet?” Sonny Joe asked.
“It feels like bees,” she said. “My ears are breathing.” She listened to the amplified sounds of rocks popping under the tires, grasshopper wings vibrating through the air, and the imperfect beat of Ceif’s heart. Yet, still, there was a mysterious silence, as if something was blatantly missing. She plundered through her brain, reaching for what it was, finding she couldn’t even remember what they were doing out on a dark country road. Finally she grabbed it. Music. There was no music.
She placed Delvis’s cassette in the jam box’s mouth and pressed play. Loud crackles came through the speakers followed by the sound of a chair being dragged across a wooden floor. She imagined Delvis, could picture him sitting down in the chair, leaning in close to the recorder, all dressed up in his white cowboy hat with his guitar cradled in his arms like a child.
Delvis cleared his throat. “Gradle,” he said, his voice like greased rust. “I made this tape for you. One side’s titled A and the other’s B. This first song is one of my originals. I got it dated in ‘79 but it was wrote in 1980. But anyways this here song’s titled, “When the Whippoorwills Holler at Night.” Delvis led with the guitar first. It was meticulously picked with an unconscious twang. He sang out the words:
I like to hear the whippoorwills holler
When things get peaceful and quiet
I love to hear them whippoorwills holler
When she’s in my arms so tight
I love to hold my love darlin’
I love to kiss her lips so tight
I love to hold her in my arms
When them whippoorwills hollers at night
I love to put my lips to her tightly
I love to hold her in my arms tight
When I can hear them whippoorwills holler
When they holler at night
I love to hold my love darlin’
I love to kiss her lips so tight
I love to hold her in my arms
When them whippoorwills hollers at night
“Damn,” Ceif said. He turned to Gradle, his eyes glassy and dark. “He’s good.”
Delvis cleared his throat. “Well, Gradle,” he said, “I hope you like some of the songs on here. I deeply appreciate a response from you. Otherwise, a few lines or a letter explaining how yo
u liked them or did not like them. I do want a picture of you if you don’t mind. For keepsake. I always like fans’ pictures.”
Sonny Joe leaned over and twisted the volume knob up.
“This is yours truly D-5 Delvis Miles The Lone Singer,” Delvis said. “Gradle, do write me by all means I’d appreciate it. If you say the songs ain’t no good, you won’t make me mad. If you think I can do better, when my sore finger gets better, I can do better. I’m gonna give you, not give you, but give you to play my original rock ‘n roll of mine which is copyrighted. All rights reserved for yours truly D-5 Delvis Miles The Lone Singer. All my songs on here are copyrighted so nobody else can copyright them.” He cleared his throat again. “I’m gonna step out of my complete style into another one of my own original styles, too. I’m gonna try to do this in my own rock ‘n roll type style. It’s one of my original songs. “I Want All You’ve Got to Give.”
Delvis belted out a song about a girl who had everything that a man could want. Beautiful legs. Eyes so blue. Lips red. And pretty black hair. The girl had everything to make a man want to live, and this man wanted all she had to give. They kept listening, none of them saying a word, as Delvis sang his repertoire of original songs. His subject matter was mainly about nature, pretty girls, and dancing. Only once he stepped out of his original songs and played “Wildwood Flower” by Maybelle Carter. One song in particular, called “Last Night I Heard You Crying,” was about his mama, about how he had heard her crying last night in her sleep. It made Gradle wonder if he had any family. It made her wonder about his mother, if she was anywhere around or if she was gone like hers.
Delvis cleared his throat again and introduced the next song. “This here song is a sad song. And it’s got special meanings to me. It’s a blues-type song. A wailing blues-type song. The title’s called ‘Rain’.”
Gradle put her ear against the speaker as Delvis sang.
You was beat and cryin’ when I found you
