Tomato Red

by Daniel Woodrell

  “But, you know, hell, Bev, you know I don’t hate you. You’ve helped me in the past, been a big help, which I appreciate, and I truly would be sorry if them vicious Timlinsons dumped you and yours in a ditch and I had to find you.

  “Lord Almighty, I’d rather that don’t happen. I’d get awful nervous about my soul and shit, I truly would. But I wouldn’t keep it from occurring. I couldn’t, not really. Things are in motion bigger than all of us.

  “Bev, you know I don’t hate you, but I’ve got to say, sugar lamb, that you-all ain’t ever goin’ to get bow-legged from totin’ your brains, are you?”

  Parts of his uniform caught sunlight and brightened.

  He had got my head straining to sift through possible decisions I might attempt to follow.

  He went to the screen and actually turned his back to us, so casual and calm. This John Law was that breed of triple-mean sucker who is so obviously triple-mean he don’t bother to act more than irritable.

  “Why do you folks do it? Why do you make me come to this point? I’ll wager you don’t know why your own selves. Nope.

  “Or maybe, let’s try this one, say this car of some sort whooshes up beside your boy and somebody says to him in this excited voice, ‘Hey, pal, your sister’s been hurt—hop in and we’ll carry you to the hospital.’ Say the fella or fellas in that car have serious good reason to have an anger on toward the boy, the boy and his bunch, and there was a lesson to be taught that got out of hand. Say it went that way. Say he was only supposed to get the fear of the Almighty slapped into him. Plus the fear of certain individuals.

  “You could never prove nothin’. There’s nothin’ to prove. An accident resulted, and everybody wishes it didn’t, but you and me and the trolls under the bridge know it did.” Then he says to me, “Where the fuck are you from, boy?”

  “I’m from a different planet, boss. A different planet that happens to also be on this planet.”

  “I believe I know the spot. I visit there plenty.”

  You know, the regular well-to-do world should relax about us types. Us lower sorts. You can never mount a true war of us against the rich ’cause the rich can always hire us to kill each other. Which they and us have done plenty, and with brutal dumb glee. Just toss a five-dollar bill in the mud and sip wine and watch our bodies start flyin’ about, crashing headfirst into blunt objects, and our teeth sprinkle from our mouths, and the blood gets flowing in such amusing ways. Naw, it’s always just us against us—guess who loses?

  “Anyhow,” he says, standing right by the table with his hands on Jamalee’s shoulders, “the main thing is is to stop. Stop what you’re doin’, or think you’re doin’. Stop and button those lips. What nobody wants is a bunch of that word-of-mouth shit runnin’ around. A beehive of rumors that only spur trouble. Where’s the point?”

  I said, “Man, I’m thirsty.” I swung my head in the direction of the fridge. “I need a beer. Boss, you want a beer?”

  Jamalee said, “Uh, huh-uh, there’s no beer left.”

  “Sure there is. Let me get us a couple.”

  “I saw you drink the last one.”

  “Naw, I don’t believe you did. I got some more at Lake’s.”

  “I don’t want no beer,” William the John Law said. “Plus I told you to shut up.”

  “It’s so hot though, boss. How about some root beer? A tall glass of ice-cold root beer?”

  “What kind of root beer?”

  “Uh, let me go see. I’m not sure. I’ll go see.”

  “Uh-uh. No, no, nope. Just set back down there and let me finish. I’d prefer ice tea from the Howl Cafe, anyhow. It’s not so sweet.”

  “But, boss, this is good cold root beer. I ain’t kiddin’.”

  Jamalee said, “Hush up, Sammy! Sammy, hush up!”

  “She’s tellin’ you right, boy. She sure is. Now, here’s the deal, uh, but first I’ll tell you: Say you was to go messin’ with a bear and that bear gnashes down on your fingers and, hell, you know, that hurts, eh? Hurts the bejesus out of you, and plus it’s a pity. Now, if you was to go on back and mess with that bear some more and the bear eats you down to where all that’s left is a skull and rags—whose fault is that?”

  John Law gave us the eye, then reached inside his belt and raised a paper sack and held it over the table and poured money from it. Folding money, twenties and fives and their kin. It looked like a lot to me.

  “That, folks, is a Valentine’s card of cash from folks who’d rather all this hadn’t happened. Sincerely rather it hadn’t happened, which the money proves.”

  “It’s not all big bills,” Jamalee said. “There’s quite a few fives.”

  “A hat was passed amongst those who’ve took pity on you. There’s fifty-five hundred dollars there on that table. Let yourselves smell of it.”

  I said, “And the deal is?”

  “The deal is you-all button up your lips forever. You stop stirrin’ around in other people’s business. You accept this apology. What I’m goin’ to do is, I’m goin’ to leave this pile of money here with you. Then come tomorrow, see, I’ll fall by here and see if you’ve got enough sense amongst the three of you to see the sensible solution here.”

  Boss man eased a ways toward the door.

  “You want to give that money back to me—then that’s on you. Understand? That’ll make what happens your doin’. So you idiots can take the money, or take your chances.”

  As he went away he sang that song that says there’s miles and miles of Texas but sang it with ditches where Texas belonged. He didn’t sing it good, just sang it.

  I went fast to the fridge and pulled Rod’s pistol, which Bev saw in my hand and her mouth dropped open. I scanned out the screen and watched William slowly get into his car, and slowly start it, and slowly drive away.

  I said, “There’s ditches his size, too.”

  23

  Your Head in Dollars

  THE EMPTY HOUSE down the road used to once be the grandest sporting palace in the holler, with a porch mapped around three sides and wide enough to entertain on, dance upon in the night air, cuddle in shadows, and pitch woo at lavender-scented gals who’d willingly play out the corny skit of courtship with a fella but never ruin him finally with the word no. Passing years had knocked holes in that porch, worked it loose from the house so it tilted to earth like a ramp. The house had got sun-washed and windburned to that forlorn gray color that bespeaks history. In a few sheltered corners you could see red paint still clinging, still trying to appear sinful and beckoning to the pent-up horny on long-ago pay nights. There were two full stories to the joint, a peaked tin roof, maybe six or so bedrooms, one huge parlor, and not much kitchen at all. The house was still called Aunt Dot’s, and it rode on a hump of dirt but listed leeward like a mighty nice party boat from yesteryear that ran aground and never had gotten raised by any tide and washed back to sea.

  “I’ve got this sick feeling to my roots that we did something terrible,” Jamalee said. “Me and Jason and you, Sammy. We acted wrong as a bunch, but he paid the price for us all by his lonesome.”

  “I’d like to argue with that,” I said. “But it’d be a lie.”

  Our topic to discuss since we left the house had been square citizen stuff—you know, this can’t be allowed to pass, this death, the case must make a beeline for the halls of guilt, or whatever they call it, despite all risk or amounts of money, and be made right in the eyes of society who live across the tracks and avoid us. This topic had started over in Bev’s front room and run on for a while; then we went strolling for no special reason. Road dust powdered the breeze and the sun was in one of those moods. We walked on past the other shacks, past the stone church that had fallen in on itself when this century was a pup but a few racks of stone are stacked yet at the borders and trace the shape of the dead church like chalk around a body. A couple of crab-apple trees had got inside the old shape and laid down roots and become landlords. Quite a few generations of trash had been dumped down the c
hurch storm cellar and stared up.

  When we came to Aunt Dot’s, I said, “The part of this mess I really, really can’t cut is the part where the price is put on our heads. That’s a creepy sensation, see, to know there’s a price on your head in dollars and it’s kind of awful low.”

  “I’ve taken money for many a thing that was personal,” Bev said. She stood there nudging a whiskey bottle left by history with her big toe. They don’t make bottles that look that way these days. “But I can’t take money for my boy.”

  “Me neither,” Jam said. “The very idea of it is intended to make us want to hang ourselves. Hang ourselves for bein’ such scum as would take the money.”

  I said, “Also, take the dough and you’ve agreed to a price tag on such as us. They could poach the three of us, too, for less’n a new Ford costs. Think about it in those words, huh?”

  The pigeons seemed unhappy that we fell by and rattled the walls and shoved off from the house, their feet flecking white grit and pinfeathers from the eaves down our way, then flapped loud overhead, wheeling in swirling irritated circles, showing attitude.

  “Aunt Dot’s closed before I was even a girl,” Bev said, “just a tot. But I knew her. She died, Dot Gowrie, a funny death also.” Bev stood there on a patch of hot dirt that shimmered, shading her eyes, her head turning to track the pigeons. Her feet were bare, as so often they were, which I imagine made her feel like a kid on the loose for summer vacation, or somehow provoked forth some sensation of comfort from some soft spot in her memories. She had on a white T-shirt that recommended you eat at that restaurant near the Bootheel where they throw the rolls at you, and blue jean shorts that were frayed. “They said her truck fell off the cement blocks and mashed her while she tried to fix the muffler. A woman in her seventies, could barely walk or see, fixin’ her muffler, only she crawled under there with no tools and laid her head exactly under a wheel.” As the pigeons landed back on Aunt Dot’s eaves, Bev closed her eyes and rubbed at them, her face down. “I’ve put in a call to every-fuckin’-body I ever did know who might have some idea of what to do. What we should do. All they all say is to rest. Some say trust in Jesus, some say try and have another baby, and a few said keep your dumb-ass mouth shut and stay out of bigger trouble.”

  Jamalee said, “We’ll just leave that money sit, Bev. We’ll let those dollars rest till tomorrow, then fling them back by the fistful at that shit-ass. We’ll make him dig our point of view, eh, Sammy?”

  I didn’t say a thing. I was fairly well alarmed and captivated by that wrecked old house. That crippled sagging old whorehouse. I looked at the house and it was like looking at a snapshot of a crucial relative you never did know but instantly recognize. Do you know the feeling? The feeling that the picture is looking at you, too, and knows your whole story, even the rest of it, which it might tell you if you kneeled and listened hard.

  I misunderstood where I was for a while.

  I recalled where later when Jamalee said, “Why not go inside?”

  THE FLOORS HAD become incomplete. The good old wood, the slats, or whatever you’d say they were, had been pried out from sections of all the rooms downstairs and rot had gotten at several spots upstairs. You had to surrender yourself to your fate to step around fast in the shadows there. Who knew when you’d fall. There was a bounty of empty beer cans, brands you’d forgotten about, and assorted litter. Pigeon shit had fell down through the upstairs holes and made splatters that built and spread until they were the size of double-cheese pizzas. At some point a shotgun had been exercised inside the place, and big bites of wall and wallpaper had been blown loose and as the shot pattern spread freckles were applied to everything.

  Bev said, “There used to be a piano in here. And there were some soft chairs. Several. I took the green one home. Other stuff, too. That’s been awhile back, though. Pretty long while. The piano even then didn’t have any guts left. The strings and stuff had been taken so you couldn’t make music anymore but the husk still sat in here. By the stairs, there.”

  Jamalee stood by a window where the frame had tilted along with the house, the sunlight jumping on her back, and the light lit her hair extra red and her head lowered and raised like a red-sky sun that was trying to stay up late instead of setting. She said, “Would we really end up in a ditch the way he said?”

  “Hon, you only hear about such stuff all the time.”

  “Might as well see what’s upstairs,” Jamalee suddenly said. “With me?”

  Bev said, “Yeah, baby, you’re right, we might as well.”

  Then the two of them led the way around the pigeon pizzas and the trash from the bygones and deeper into the wreck, moving alongside each other, touching sometimes, like best girlfriends who’d begun a fresh strange adventure together neither would’ve started alone and both hoped not to regret.

  I reckon I always had been huntin’ for a place to plant my feet and go down swinging.

  My craving to be a hero started to swell, and I followed the gals up into the mess with a smile.

  24

  Hang the Blame

  THE MONEY HECKLED us and got us itchy so we stuffed the stuff into an oyster cracker box which was then shoved to the far back of Bev’s uppermost cupboard shelf. It had seemed unhealthy to our ideals to have those heckling bills of folding money stacked before us on the table, catching our eyes, making mathematics happen in our minds, winking, flirting, courting our weaker sides. Powerful faith in our weaker sides is, I imagine, why ol’ John Law left money in such an amount with us anyhow, left it to serve as an agitator toward us accepting his sense of things.

  We paced around in Bev’s shack and talked and talked but didn’t get much said worth repeating.

  That cupboard did get glanced at quite a few times.

  For a spell there was a woman in the road screaming at a house up the way. Her car was running and the headlights were on, but she stood on the road in the light beams with a kid hugging her leg screaming at the dark house in which she felt a husband-stealing slut hid. A slut who could have the sonofabitch, and welcome to him, if he’d make his stinkin’ child support payments like a man, though she knew he wasn’t much of one, but he could fake it that he was a decent man, couldn’t he? For the kid, for little Kenny?

  Midnight was close by, and Bev said, “We can’t fight them any way but one way.”

  Jamalee said, “You figure there’s even one way?”

  Tires howled in the road and I’d missed the response from the house where the slut hid, which I’d sincerely wanted to hear in case her excuse was a good one and I might find a use for it also someday.

  “The one way is if we put their secret shit in the street for all to know. We unload all my dirt about folks here to a minister, or a girl reporter, or like that.”

  Jamalee rocked in the squeaky rocker, making a tune of squeaks that got irritating.

  “I know you know some dirt,” she said. “You’ve gathered you some dirt, I’m sure.”

  I said, “Most times a bullet wins over dirt, don’t forget.”

  “Also, Bev, these days that between-the-sheets dirt doesn’t pack the same punch it used to.”

  “Okay, okay,” Bev said. “The hell with it. So we’ll cast around tonight and dredge up something. We’ll show we’re not only who we look like we are, not deep down.”

  At the slut’s shack the porch light came on. A dude and a gal came out to the porch and looked up the road, then hugged and laughed. The gal repeated the wife’s comments in a tone she’d use with a young child. This provoked snickers and hugs, then the light went off.

  A couple of cigarettes after midnight Jamalee stood and yawned, then leaned her head to my chest and hugged me.

  “I’ll leave you two alone,” she said. “I’m beat.”

  IN MY DREAMS I had one I’d had before where it’s all rainy and I’m about full grown but on my way to the elementary school in a yellow raincoat and no pants and all these kids with pants and umbrellas point at my legs and
hoot and I look down at my bare ankle and for some reason my butthole has moved down there and is leaking when I walk so I run and run and come to a raggedy house where the women in it have whiskers and tattoos and won’t unlatch the screen door for me.

  “You’ll track in shit, that’s why not.”

  That dream is a dream I hate. I totally don’t care for that vision in my head, but it has shown there several times and always shocks me awake.

  The sun hadn’t turned full on yet, but daybreak birds were tuning up their throats with short trills and quick song bursts. Smoke lolled about in layers toward the ceiling. Bev sat in a chair at the foot of the bed, smoking with her knees pulled up to her chest, sort of in a baby ball.

  “Sammy. Can we talk? Sammy, you didn’t care for what went on with Mr. Dell. You didn’t. You felt I’d done you wrong and I want you to know I might do it again at any time.”

  “I’ve got to where I’m cool with that.”

  “Cool? ”

  “I mean I ain’t goin’ to stab your patrons, or nothin’. I don’t think.”

  “That’s not exactly cool enough, hon.”

  “Well, I mean, if you’ll hang with me, I’ll hang with you.”

  I fell back in a flop and closed my eyes.

  When I came around again the heat had charged in and the sun seemed as bright as midmorning. Bev sat in the chair, still smoking.

  “What’s the deal?” I asked.

  “I’ve got feelings all stirred up. Things to ponder.”

  “Uh. Well. Time for coffee, I reckon.”

  “No, don’t get up.”

  “Huh?”

  “Don’t get up, hon.”

  She stood and pulled down her clothes and made a sight I’d never tire of seeing. She posed and so forth and made me stoked with a stiffie, then gave me a jump that must’ve lasted an hour.

  We rolled from bed and shared a cigarette. She followed me to the kitchen. A table chair had been pulled to the cupboard.