Vernon God Little

by DBC Pierre

  'Oh please,' says Lally. He squeezes his balls but forgets to let go.

  I glance over the bar. The ladies are way perked up. Land of Daytime Milk and Honey for them. I pose dramatically, hog-anger makes me do it. 'You think I lie? I guarantee his mother's gonna call here just now, hunting his ass. I guarantee it. Just ask her the story.' A smile comes to my face, know why? Because Lally's turning white. Everybody stares at him as he leans into the corner, wiping his face with his hand.

  'Tch, that's preposterous. The evil lies coming from this child's mouth.' He takes a heavy breath, then turns and spreads his arms to the ladies. 'Hands up who ever heard of a features reporter moonlighting as a repairman?' Everybody shakes their heads. 'And why might that be?'

  'Well, because – there's more money in reporting?' sniffs Mom. 'He wouldn't need to repair TVs, with all that extra money?

  'I rest my case.'

  'Wait up,' I say, 'I didn't say he moonlighted as anything – he's just a repairman with a whole pile of trouble left back in Nacogdoches. Look at his card, go on.'

  'Ladies,' says Lally, 'this is ridiculous. Do you know how many Ledesma Gutierrezes there are in this country? And have you ever seen me repair a TV?'

  'No,' they say.

  'Have you ever seen me on TV, presenting a feature report?'

  'Well sure,' they say, motioning the pastor to join in. 'We were in it with you!'

  'Thank you,' says Lally. He turns to stare at me. 'And now, in light of everything we've just heard, and, frankly, for our own protection – I'm calling the police.'

  'Oh no, Lally, please,' says Mom.

  'Sorry, Vanessa – I'm afraid it's my duty. The boy needs urgent help.'

  Then, just as my world starts to slip through my fingers, Fate plays a humdinger. The phone rings. Mom gasps to a halt, mid-fucken-sob. Everybody freezes.

  'I'll get that,' says Lally.

  'I don't think so,' I say, diving for the phone. 'Mom, come take this call.'

  My ole lady hunches off the sofa, all shiny around the nose and eyes, and does her finest victimmy shuffle to the phone table. She looks around at everybody, especially Lally, before picking up the phone. A pleading kind of look she gives Lally, real Kicked Dog. Then her voice smoothens like cream. 'Hello? Mr Ledesma, well sure – may I say who's calling?' She hands the phone to Lally. 'It's CNN.'

  I grab it back. 'Mrs Ledesma?'

  ' Vernon!' snaps Mom.

  'Remember me? From Martirio…?'

  'Who is this?' asks the young New Yorker on the phone. Lally snatches the receiver and turns to the wall.

  'Renee? Sorry about that – things are a little crazy down here. I got the series? fan-tastic!' He raises a thumb to the ladies. 'Conditional on what? Not a challenge, we still have the firearm piece, the suspect, and the townsfolk coming to terms with their grief. It can spin-off in a thousand directions.'

  'Well you know,' whispers Mom to the ladies, 'I couldn't decide between Vanessa and Rebecca...'

  'I was coping with Doris,' grunts George.

  Lally finishes the call. He dangles the receiver over the cradle, taking a moment to gaze at everybody. The ladies stare into his eyes, Pastor Gibbons toys in his pocket. Then Lally drops the handset, 'Crack', cups his balls through his robe, and strolls to the middle of the room. 'Before we open the champagne, I guess we have a rather more – human challenge to share.' His eyes snap to me. 'Pretty outlandish behavior we saw there, Vernon. Damn scary, actually, in light of everything.'

  'Fuck you to hell,' I say.

  'Vernon Gregory!' snaps Mom.

  Lally pushes a little spit around his mouth. 'Simple compassion dictates that it's time to turn this boy over to someone who can help. If we cling when he needs professional care, we may only damage his chances of recovery.'

  'You're the one who needs care,' I say. 'Lalo.'

  'You are under a psychiatric order, after all.' He pauses to chuckle, to reminisce. 'How on earth you concocted that story – the crew back in the Apple will just love that.' He checks his watch. 'Come to think of it, they're probably down at Bunty's right now.'

  Mom hisses a footnote to the ladies. 'They have this bar called Bunty's, you probably heard of it – Bunty's?'

  'Or at the Velvet Mode, for melon slammers,' says Lally. 'I might have to give them a call. Right after I contact the sheriff.'

  'Well Lally, please,' says Mom. 'Can't we just wait till morning, I mean, he had a stomach ache – he does have this, er – condition…'

  The phone rings. Everybody's face lights up, as if more big deals will trickle down the line. But Lally tightens. This is where the horse would stop doing math on stage. I reach for the handset. He beats me to it.

  'Le Bourget residence?' He tries to flash a good ole boy's grin to the ladies, but a quiver beats him to it. 'I'm sorry, you must have the wrong number.' His breathing quickens.

  I dive around his legs and hit the speaker button. Mrs Ledesma's voice wails out.

  'Lalo, oh my God, Lalo? I ran out of groceries, Lalo, please…'

  Lally's lips dance uncontrollably, his eyes flash across the room. 'Oh – oh it's you,' he trembles.

  'How could you leave me so long,' cries the lady. 'Es que no queda nada Eulalio, hasta mi cama se lo ban llevado…'

  'Tell us in English!' I yell toward the phone. Lally's foot whips off the floor, dislodging me backwards onto the rug. He switches off the speaker.

  'Oh you poor souls,' he says into the phone. 'I left strict instructions with the network to keep up my charity visits while I was away…' I go for the speaker button again, but he keeps me at bay with his leg. 'Yes, I know, sweetheart – but mental illness can be cured, that's why I contribute, that's why I share myself with your cause – you and all the other beautiful ladies at the home…'

  I reach the far side of the phone table on my belly, but Lally quickly says goodbye, and slams down the phone. It rings again. He rips the cable from the wall. All breathing in the room gets canceled, along with platelet aggregation and whatever else your body does for kicks.

  Lally turns to face everybody. 'I guess I have – something to share.' I squint through a waterline of smoke, to the dark of the sofa where the ladies sit, riveted. Their knees stick tight together. 'Some time ago, I decided to share my resources with the less fortunate.'

  'Amen,' says the pastor softly.

  Lally's face falls. 'I surprised myself – I'd been so ambitious, so wrapped up in Me. Then I became involved with real people – real problems.' He pauses to dab a ringer at the corner of his eye. 'The voice you just heard is one of my ladies – one of my Sunshine Souls.'

  'Wow, she sounded so together,' says Leona.

  'Shhh, Loni, God,' says George.

  'Tragic, isn't it?' says Lally. 'Confined through no fault of her own. They all are.'

  'Bull-shit,' I say.

  'Vernon Gregory, that's enough,' says Mom.

  'Were you – supporting them?' asks George.

  Lally sighs. 'Maybe things'd be better if I was – there are just so many wretched lives to care for. And I have so little to give…'

  'No, son,' scalds the pastor, 'you're giving the greatest gift of all – Christian love.'

  Lally shrugs helplessly. 'If you see me a little short of cash – you now know why. I just feel so guilty having anything at all.' His eyes crawl over the sofa, snuggling into the ladies' pouts, sliding down their weeping lashes, before collapsing on the floor. He shakes his head. 'I guess the real tragedy is – they now know where I'm staying.'

  It takes a full second for Spooked Deer to take hold of Mom. She twitches. 'Well – why is that tragic?'

  He flicks a glossy eye at me, sighs. 'The home's strictest rule is non-disclosure of carers' identities. If they found out about this, I could be prevented from giving in future. I don't know if I could survive a month without visiting my special girls. It means – I'll have to move along.'

  There's a stunned silence. Then my ole lady implodes. 'Well God, Lally, no,
I mean – no, God…'

  'I'm sorry, Doris. This is bigger than the two of us.'

  'But we can disconnect the phone, change the number… Lalito? You can't walk out after this whole month of bliss.'

  'Week of bliss,' corrects Lally. 'I'm sorry. Maybe if Vernon hadn't called the home, maybe if he didn't harbor such a grudge – but no. Things'll only get more challenging after I call the sheriff.'

  'Shoot,' says George, 'I'd call him myself if he wasn't tied up at the Barn meeting.'

  Trickles then torrents of blood and vein soak through the bottom of Mom's legs, her brownest organs sweat through her pores. In the end just these pleading eyes poke up, the eyes of a well-kicked dog. Squished Kitten even.

  Leona watches her quiver become a sob, then turns to Lally. 'There's space at my place.'

  'My God,' he says. 'The pure charity of this town…'

  Mom's eyes pop. 'Well, but, but, the home might find you there, as well – that woman, she could just as easy find you at Leona's as here…'

  'I'm unlisted,' says Leona with a shrug. 'I have call-screening and closed-circuit security.'

  Mom's eyes fall to the tan-line where her wedding ring once sat. 'Well but Vernon could just as easily give that number to the patients, you saw his behavior – couldn't you, Vernon, just give Leona's number to the home…?'

  'Ma, the guy's a goddam psycho, I swear to God.'

  'Well see? He could call them right now, see his attitude? I think Lally and I should take a room at the Seldome for a while… Lalito? And do all those other things you want to do, around town…?'

  'Tch, the Seldome's full.'

  'Well but they'd always find space for me, I mean, I was married at the Seldome.'

  Leona picks her bag off the sofa and fishes in it for her keys. 'Offer's open.'

  My ole lady's already halfway across the room. 'What's the Seldome's number?'

  Lally reaches out to stop her. ' Doris – that's not all.' He fumbles in his shirt pocket and pulls out two crumpled joints. ' Vernon didn't do such a good job hiding these.'

  'Cigarettes?' asks Mom.

  'Illegal drugs. You'll understand now why I can't be associated with the boy.' He throws the spliffs scornfully onto the coffee table, leaning past me to whisper, 'Thanks for the story.'

  In the background you hear Leona's car keys drop into George's lap. 'I guess I'll ride with Lally. Take the Eldorado when you're ready – it'll need some gas.'

  'We have a spare room,' says Betty. 'We haven't used Myron's studio since he died.'

  Lally and Leona clack out through the screen into a dirty afternoon. A promise of rain on dust puffs through the door behind them. To Mom I know it smells of their sex.

  'I'll be back for my stuff,' calls Lally. Mom's skin has all melted together. Her face drips down her arms onto her lap.

  I run a step after him. 'How'd you know it said Gutierrez on the card, motherfucker? How'd you know it said Ledesma Gutierrez, when you didn't even look at the card?' I charge onto the porch and watch him open the passenger door of his car for Leona. Then you see the Lechugas' drapes twitch open a crack. Leona flaps a little wave towards it, from behind her back. The drapes close.

  I'm a kid whose best friend took a gun into his mouth and blew off his hair, whose classmates are dead, who's being blamed for it all, who just broke his mama's heart – and as I drag myself inside under the weight of these slabs of moldy truth, into my dark, brown ole life – another learning flutters down to perch on top. A learning like a joke, that kicks the last breath from my system. The Lechugas' drapes. It's how Mom's so-called friends coordinate their uncannily timed assaults on my home. They still have a hotline to Nancie Lechuga's.

  eleven

  I stand on the porch this Sunday evening and try to force Mexico to appear in front of me. I tried it all day from the living-room window, but it didn't work. By this time tonight I imagined cactus, fiestas, and salty breath. The howls of men in the back of whose lives lurked women called Maria. Instead there's a house like Mrs Porter's across the street, a willow like the Lechugas' and a pump-jack next door, dressed as a mantis; pump, pump, pump. Vernon Gridlock Little.

  'Lord God in heaven please let me have a side-by-side, let me open my eyes and it be there…'

  Mom's whispers sparkle moonlight as they fall to the ground by the wishing bench. Then Kurt barks from Mrs Porter's yard. Kurt is in trouble with Mrs Porter. He spent all day on the wrong side of the fence from the Hoovers ' sausage sizzle, and eventually destroyed Mrs Porter's sofa out of frustration. Fucken Kurt, boy. His barks cover the creaking of planks as I step off the porch. It's a well-upholstered barking circuit tonight, on account of the Bar-B-Chew Barn hayride. A hayride, gimme a break. We don't even have fucken hay around here, they probably had to buy it on the web or something. But no, now it's the traditional Martirio Hayride.

  'Oh Lord God, bring Lally back, bring Lally back, bring Lally back…'

  It's been a long day. Cameras pinned me in the house since Lally left yesterday. Now they went to cover the hayride. Mom senses me approaching her willow; she sobs louder, and gets a hysterical edge to her voice, to make sure I don't miss the implication of things. A large flying bug scoots behind the mantis as I step close.

  'Wishing bench is airborne this end,' I say, to break the ice. 'Like the dirt's caving in underneath.'

  'Well Vernon just shutup! – you did this to me, all this – all this fucking shit.'

  She cussed me, boy. Hell. I study her ole hunched body. Her hair is sucked back into a helmet again, and she wears her regular toweling slippers with the butterflies on top, their rubber wings torn off by the white cat she used to have, before the Lechugas ran it over. I'm compelled to reach out and touch her. I touch her where the flab from her back dams under her armpit, and feel the clammy weight of her ole miserable shell, all warm and spent. She cries so cleanly you'd think her body was a drum full of tears that just spill out through the holes.

  I sit down beside her. 'Ma, I'm sorry.'

  She gives an ironic kind of laugh, I guess it's ironic when you laugh while you sob. After that she just stays sobbing. I look around at the night; things are liquid-clear, warm and dewy, with a snow of moths and bugs around the porch lights, and distant music from the hayride.

  'Papa always said I'd amount to nothing.'

  'Don't say that, Ma.'

  'Well it's true, look at me. It's always been true. "Just plain ungainly," Papa used to say, "Ornery and ungainly." Everyone was head of the cheerleading squad, and homecoming queen, and class president. Everyone was Betty, all sparkling and fresh…'

  'Betty Pritchard? Gimme a break.'

  'Well Vernon, you just know everything, don't you! Betty was class president in the fourth grade you know, and had all the bubbly parts in school plays – she never cussed or smoked or drank like the rest of us; bright as sunshine, she used to be. Until she started getting beaten black and blue by her father, whipped till she bled. So while you're all critical, and know everything about everyone, just remember the rest of us are only human. It's cause and effect, Vernon, you just don't realize – even Leona was relaxed and sweet, before her first husband went, you know – the other way.'

  'The one that died?'

  'No, not the one that died. The first one, and out of consideration you shouldn't even ask.'

  'Sorry.'

  She takes a breath, wiping her eyes with the palm of her hand. 'I lost a few pounds for the prom, though. I proved Papa wrong, just that once. Den Gurie asked me to be his date – Den Gurie, the linebacker! – I slept under the shawl of my prom dress all week.'

  'There you go – see?'

  'He picked me up in his brother's truck. I almost fainted from excitement, and from hunger, I guess, but he told me to relax, said it'd be like spending a night with my kin…' Mom starts to hiss from the back of her throat, like a cat. It's another way to weep, in case you didn't know. The early part of a strong weep.

  'So what happened?'

&n
bsp; 'We drove out of town, sang songs nearly all the way to Lockhart. Then he asked me to check the tailgate on the truck. When I climbed out, he drove away and left me. That's when I saw the hog farm by the road.'

  A bolt of anger takes me, about the fucken Guries, about the ways of this fucken town. The anger cuts through waves of sadness, cuts through pictures of young Jesus, the one who nailed himself to a fucken cross before anybody else could do it. That's why this town's angry. They didn't get a shot at him. But they don't have anger like I have anger brewing up. Anger cuts through a wide range of things. Cuts like a knife.

  After a second, I feel the dampness of Mom's hand on mine. She squeezes it. 'You're all I have in the world. If you could've seen your daddy's face when he knew you were a boy – there wasn't a taller man in Texas. All the great things you were going to be when you grew up…' She narrows puffy eyes into the distance, through Mrs Porter's house, through the town, and the world, to where the cream pie lives. The future, or the past, or wherever it fucken lives. Then she shoots me this brave little smile, a genuine smile, too quick for her to pull any victimmy shit. As she does it, violins shimmer into the air across town, like in a movie. Even Kurt hangs silent as a guitar picks its way out of the orchestra, and a Texan voice from long ago herds our souls up into the night. Christopher Cross starts to sing 'Sailing'. Mom's favorite tune from before I was even born, before her days fell dark. Type of song you listen to when you think nobody likes you. She gives a broken sigh. I know right away the song will remind me of her forever.

  It's not far down to paradise, at least it's not for me

  And if the wind is right you can sail away

  And find tranquility…

  Fate tunes. This one breaks my fucken heart. We sit listening as long as we can bear it, but I know the song has sunk a well into Mom's emotional glade, and I guess mine too. Dirty blood will gush high just now. The piano brings it on.

  'Well,' she says. 'George said she can only decoy the sheriff until tomorrow. And that isn't even counting the thing about the drugs.'