Gradle Bird

by J. C. Sasser

  “You look real nice,” she said, and that made him smile.

  It was nine-thirty in the morning, and although he didn’t have to be at The Piggly Wiggly until noon, he wanted to leave now. If he ran into trouble on the way, or if some outlaws trying to make his life a living hell ambushed him from the trees, he’d have plenty of time to kung-fu them off or challenge them to a duel. There were a lot of people out there jealous of his many talents, and he anticipated them trying to get in his way of signing a music contract.

  “We need to leave now,” he said, grabbing his guitar and his collection of sketches. “This could be a dangerous operation, and I might have to put on my World Wide Wrestling Federation outfit. You don’t know this about me, but I’m the Masked Man. Nobody knows my identity. I’ve saved Hulk Hogan on many occasions. I’ve wrestled “The Nature Boy” Ric Flair and George “The Animal” Steele, and I’ve slammed metal chairs into Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake when he turned bad. But shhhh,” he said, “don’t tell nobody.”

  He rushed out of his shack and stood by the passenger door of his 1970 Opel Kadett. He’d found it a few years back at the junkyard gutted clean to its skeleton. He spent six months fixing it up to what it was today, a turquoise and rust speed rocket that he’d fine-tuned not to be stingy on gas. He removed his hat and opened the car door for Gradle. The Opel Kadett knocked and roared to life. He rolled down the window to let the air swirl inside, and they were on their way to the Piggly Wiggly. He was so excited he couldn’t keep his knees from bouncing.

  The Opel Kadett skidded into the Piggly Wiggly’s lot. Over a dozen cars were parked in the lot, and people came in and out of the store, buying groceries before the day got too hot for anybody to move. He parked the Kadett in front on the pay phone and almost pinned the man who was talking into the receiver between his dented bumper and the phone booth.

  He got out of the car and circled the phone booth four times while he stared down the overall-wearing man with the best threatening eye he had. He paced back and forth, popped his knuckles, and practiced his fast draw and kung-fu moves, but his strategy didn’t seem to scare off the man who just kept talking about how his truck broke down up the road, so Delvis tried another tactic.

  “Hey mister,” he said. “I’m expectin’ a very important phone call and if you don’t get off the phone in two seconds flat, I’ll put a flyin’ knee kick to your face before you can say tid-bit.”

  “Jesus, Delvis,” the man said, “just give me a minute.”

  Delvis pushed his face into the man’s eyes. “How you know my name?”

  The man hung up the phone. “Everybody knows who you are,” he said, wiping the sweat from his upper lip. “You’re damn near a celebrity in this town.”

  “You want my autograph?” Delvis hollered at the man as he walked off.

  Gradle got out of the car, sat on the hood, and waited for two hours straight, while he protected the phone booth. He crouched like a badger when anyone came within three feet of his territory, and when an old lady with blue hair and dark glasses approached, he told her the phone had been possessed by aliens and that he was working on sending them back to Jupiter, so she better stand back—way back.

  After a while, the butcher stomped out of the front doors, wiping his bloody hands on his apron.

  “Delvis,” he said, “you can’t hog the phone. It’s a public phone, and my customers have the right to use it.” He looked at Gradle sitting on the hood of his Opel Kadett and stared at her for a long time. It made Delvis shifty and uncomfortable.

  “Listen here you hog-slayer,” he said, narrowing his eyes. He put his finger to the butcher’s nose and pressed it down like an on-button. “I got me a very important phone call waitin’ for me. And I promise if you try to ambush me like I think you’re tryin’ to do, I will put you in the Boston Crab.”

  “Do you want me to call the sheriff?” the butcher asked.

  “Go ahead and call the sheriff,” he said. “Half the law enforcement men around here ain’t nothin’ but a bunch of crooks anyway. Y’all think they’re protectin’ you? It ain’t them, it’s me that’s keepin’ this town safe. I work undercover 24-7, under the radar, and no type of monitoring device can find me.”

  The butcher walked through the front doors, shaking his head, and ten minutes later, Sheriff Hill pulled up beside Delvis’s Opel Kadett with his blue light flashing. Delvis was no stranger to this blue light. He’d seen it flash at him many times, like the time he refused not to drive past the stop sign at Roundtree and Lewis until the sign changed its words to GO, or the time the weather called for hail, and he spent all day in the park yelling at anyone who passed by to get down on their knees and repent before the Devil came to take their souls, or the time he wouldn’t let anyone use the diving board at the public pool, convinced the lifeguard on duty would drain all of the water out while the diver was mid-air. Citizen complaints is what the sheriff said they were, which Delvis supposed was what the sheriff was responding to now.

  The sheriff got out of his patrol car and shifted his chewed up cigar to the other side of his lip. “Hey, Delvis,” he said, rattling the change in his pocket. Sheriff Hill had eyes black and shiny as a bat’s and a strawberry birthmark that splotched his right cheek. Delvis had read all about birthmarks in a doctor’s magazine while he waited for Dr. Smith to get the frog out of his throat, so he knew all about them and half-way felt sorry for Sheriff Hill having to live with one so colorful and big on the side of his face, even though he was nothing but a crook on the inside.

  “Got a call from the butcher. Said you’re up here harassing the customers and won’t let anybody use the phone,” Sheriff Hill said.

  “I ain’t puttin’ no harassments to anybody. All I’m doin’ is guardin’ what’s mine,” Delvis said. “Ain’t that right, Gradle?”

  “He’s waiting for an important phone call, sir,” Gradle said, sliding down the car hood.

  “Are you with him?” Sheriff Hill asked Gradle.

  “Yes sir,” she said.

  The sheriff hung his eyes on Gradle, looking like he was sizing her up, trying to figure her out, and after he was through with that, he kept on staring at her, but in a different way. He looked bewildered. Bewildered was the word of the week in the town paper three months ago. Delvis made a point of adding all the words of the week to his vocabulary.

  “You that girl that moved into the old Spivey house earlier in the summer?” the sheriff asked.

  “Yes sir,” she said. “My name’s Gradle Bird.”

  “Moved in with your grandpa. He’s your grandpa, right?” the sheriff asked.

  “Yes sir.”

  “I’m glad somebody’s finally fixing up the place.” The sheriff finally got his eyes off Gradle and put them back on Delvis. He shifted his cigar to the other side of his mouth. “So Delvis, what is it that you think is yours?”

  “You tryin’ to trick me up? Tryin’ to get me to say somethin’ wrong so you can arrest me? You part of the trick?” Delvis shouted out the words.

  “What trick, Delvis?” he asked.

  “Don’t lie to me, ‘cause I’m trained at readin’ minds.”

  Sheriff Hill rested his foot on the Opel Kadett’s bumper and took his time to relight his cigar. “What am I thinkin’, Delvis?”

  Delvis looked at his gold-plated watch. It was five minutes ‘til twelve. His palms started to sweat. “I’m not authorized to say right this minute.”

  “This is what I’m thinking, Delvis. I think if you don’t move your car and let people use the phone, I’m gonna have to impound your vehicle and arrest you for disturbing the peace.”

  Delvis spat next to the sheriff’s shiny black shoes, moved into him, and seriously thought about putting him in a death-hold. “I know what you’re tryin’ to do. You and the butcher and everybody else who come up here tryin’ to get me away from this phone. Y’all jealous. Don’t want me to sign a contract with the Nashville music men ‘cause y’all wouldn’t kno
w how to swallow it.” He loosened his bolo tie. “Now listen to me, Sheriff Hill. I know you ain’t nothin’ but a crook. I know ‘cause I’m an undercover agent working for the FBI, and we got our eyes on you. If anybody’s arrestin’ anybody, it’s me arrestin’ you. I got my cuffs in the trunk.”

  “Blocking traffic. Disturbing the peace. Assaulting the county sheriff,” Sheriff Hill said. “Why don’t you and Gradle go on home. Town’s not the best environment for you. We’ve discussed this before. Now move your car and get on.”

  “I done had enough of you! You dirty outlaw, tryin’ to make my life a livin’ hell.” He rushed at the sheriff with his guitar and cocked it behind his shoulder. Before he could swing, Sheriff Hill put him in a wrist hold, spun him around, and cuffed his hands. His face slammed into the patrol car, and his white cowboy hat fell to the ground, crumpled and out of shape.

  “Don’t be so rough with him,” Gradle yelled, charging the sheriff. “He wasn’t hurting anybody!”

  “He was about to whack me upside the head with his guitar,” Sheriff Hill said. “All I’m trying to do here is make sure nobody gets hurt.”

  “He’s not dangerous. He’s just different,” she said, picked up his cowboy hat, and put it back on his head.

  “In this town, different is dangerous,” the sheriff said.

  “Uncuff him, and we’ll go home,” she said. “Won’t we, Delvis?”

  Delvis couldn’t tell if she was making a statement or if she was asking him a question. She sounded like there was no option, but he answered anyway. “After I get my phone call,” he said.

  As Sheriff Hill reached for his key chain, the pay phone rang. Delvis plowed forward. He bumped the sheriff out of his way and rushed from the patrol car to the phone. His hands were still locked up behind his back, and he couldn’t wiggle them free to pick up the receiver. The phone rang again.

  Gradle ran to his side, lifted the phone from its hook, and held it up to his ear. She looked as excited as he did.

  “D-5 Delvis Miles The Lone Singer speakin’,” he said. He put one eye on the sheriff to make sure he didn’t make any crook moves, but he didn’t look like he was going to make any moves anytime soon. Delvis had put the freeze on him.

  “Did you get my note?” the voice on the other end said.

  “Yes sir,” he said, smiling at Gradle. “I’m standin’ right up here at the Piggly Wiggly and can play you some of my originals whenever you get up here. Got my guitar and everything.”

  “I ain’t interested in your music,” the voice said.

  “Well, I brought my art up here too for you to take a look at it.”

  “I ain’t interested in that either,” the voice said real slow, like the grey clouds that moved like slugs across the sun. “What I’m interested in is that pretty little girlfriend of yours. I’m gonna steal her away from you.”

  “No, you ain’t you son of a bitch!” Delvis shouted. “I’ll hammer drop you in half a second flat. Besides, she ain’t my girlfriend. Uh-uh, I don’t look at her like that. She’s a real true friend, not no girlfriend.”

  “I already know she likes flowers. I gave her some the other day, and she couldn’t keep her nose out of them.”

  “Listen here you crippled hobo-monkey. I don’t ‘preciate you talkin’ ‘bout her like that.”

  “I may walk with a cane, but that don’t matter. I’m gonna take her away from you,” the voice said. “And you won’t ever get her back.”

  “Listen here you dirty outlaw. Now we can handle this like a couple of gentlemen. Or if you got the guts, meet me face to face, and we can draw up a contract for a clean and honest duel, Western style.”

  “Who is that?” Gradle asked.

  “That crippled boyfriend of yours.”

  The voice started talking again. “I’m gonna come in the night and take her right from under your nose.” There was a click and then silence.

  Gradle put the phone up to her ear. “Who is this? Ceif, is this you?” She listened for something from the other end.

  Delvis counted to ten, and she gently placed the phone back on its hook.

  “You satisfied, Mr. Miles?” the sheriff asked. “Was that them music men you were expecting?”

  “Hell no!” Delvis yelled. “Just some other crook tryin’ to sabotage my fame and take away what is mine.”

  “Come on Delvis,” Gradle said. “Let’s go home.”

  “I gotta stay up here ‘til those Nashville men call,” he said. His eyes stayed glued to the phone.

  “Delvis.” Her voice was low and sweet. She placed her hand on his bicep and gave him a little squeeze. “They’re not gonna call.”

  “At noon they said they would.”

  “The music men didn’t write that note,” she said.

  Sheriff Hill walked through the cloud of his cigar smoke and unlocked Delvis’s handcuffs. “Go on home, Delvis,” he said. He got in his patrol car, rolled down the window, and looked at Gradle real stern. “Be careful,” he told her, shut down his flashing lights, and drove off.

  On the ride home, Delvis’s mind was at war. His thoughts fired off like a machine gun spitting bullets. He thought about the boy’s plot to take Gradle away from him and how he might execute. The boy would probably pick the night to ambush him. He’d probably stake him out up in the oak tree right by the house. He wouldn’t be alone. They’d be two of them. Delvis was too much of a match for just one. Especially one that was crippled. No, he’d have his tattooed friend with him. They’d be hooded with masks so he couldn’t identify them. He thought about turning around and going back up to the Piggly Wiggly pay phone to call up Hulk Hogan to see if he’d be interested in tag-teaming with him like they had done against “The Nature Boy” Rick Flair and the Iron Sheik.

  He put the brakes on his thoughts and looked over at Gradle. She had the window rolled down. Her check was resting against the door like she was tired. Her eyes were closed and the wind pressed down her lashes. They wanted to take her away because she was his. She was his real true friend—not theirs.

  He almost ran off the road from looking at her too hard. He swerved and it startled her to lift her neck. She petted her dress down and rested her hands in her lap.

  “I’m sorry if you’re disappointed,” she said.

  “About what?” he asked.

  “The music men.”

  He swung the Opel Kadett into his yard and bumped into a pink plastic flamingo.

  “One day they’ll find me,” he said, and he put the Kadett in park. He walked around the car, removed his cowboy hat, and opened the door for her like a real genuine country music star would.

  “GRADLE!” DELVIS YELLED, as he busted through the front door and startled Gradle awake.

  Gradle peeled her cheek from the Dairy Queen booth’s sweaty red vinyl. “What is it, Delvis?” Gradle asked, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

  After Delvis laid his eyes on her his entire body sighed. “You weren’t inside, and I thought you was gone for good,” Delvis said. He surveyed his yard. “I thought somebody might have took you in the night.”

  “No, I just slept out here,” she said, sat up, and smoothed down her dress.

  “Why ain’t you sleepin’ inside?” Delvis asked.

  “I needed some fresh air, Delvis,” she said. “And a little privacy.”

  “Inside is private,” he said. He spat off the porch.

  “I needed to be alone,” she said.

  “You don’t like my company?” Delvis asked. “If you say no, it won’t make me mad. I can improve in that area.”

  “I love your company, Delvis. I just needed to be alone,” she said. Last night was the first time she had been alone since coming there, and to achieve her solitude, she had to sneak out, tiptoe around Delvis who lay snoring atop his bed pile of clothes with his pistol within arm’s reach. If she woke him, he would be right at her side, watching her and the air around her as if at any moment she would get whisked away. His attention to her was
extraordinary in the same way as Grandpa’s lack of it.

  “We gotta go divin’ before it gets picked over,” he said. “Splash your face and do your business if you have to. I’ll be waiting in the car.”

  Gradle cupped her hands in a bucket of rainwater, careful not to scoop out a wriggler in the process, and splashed her face. She splashed her armpits, rubbed them free of their stink with a scrap of rag, and went behind the house to take a pee. When she came back around, Delvis sat in the Opel Kadett, warming its engine.

  He opened her car door and she sat in. He slammed the door, put the car in drive, and sped down the dirt road to the county dump.

  Delvis rolled the Opel Kadett to a gentle stop. The dump was beautiful, how the sun blushed the trash mounds in pink, how wild morning glory twined through rusted car cadavers and farm plows, and how a pair of glistening buzzards sat atop a dumpster spreading their wings to dry off the dew. A tricycle sat apart from the rest of the junk, as if its child had missed it, come back in the middle of the night, and taken it for a ride.

  Delvis’s eyes glistened as he surveyed the dump’s precarious landscape. The abandoned and thrown-away seemed to appear as precious jewels in his eyes. He was excited, borderline jittery, which made Gradle even more tired than she was from staying up most of the night, wondering how Grandpa was getting along, if he was happier without her.

  He killed the engine, got out of the car, and handed Gradle a pair of gloves. “Since this is your first mission with a professional dumpster diver, I gotta teach you how to do it right. This is serious business here, and if you go in untrained, you’re liable to get hurt. First thing, you gotta be on watch out for is snakes and rats. They have all sorts of hide-ee holes, and if you run up on one, don’t, I say don’t, under no circumstances try to pet it. They might look cute and pretty but don’t be fooled. And there are other things, not critter-type things, that’ll bite you just as hard. There’s nails, torn tin, and barbed wire all over the place lookin’ for victims.” He gloved his hands and stretched his body. “Next,” he said, as he performed a forward lunge, “you gotta get your body warmed up and taffy-candy-like ‘cause this type of work is stressful. You don’t want any Charlie-horses or muscle tears.”