She strips and pulls a set of crochet hooks out of a nightstand drawer next to the bed while I scan the want ads. The only people hiring are the Schläger brothers and their various businesses. The local Wagon Wash is hiring, but there’s no way I’m cleaning huge chunks of horseshit off people’s wagons.
Manuel walks in with my glass of liquor and puts it on the table next to me. When he sees what’s happening, he tries to leave quickly, but I don’t let him. I enjoy making people feel awkward and pretending I don’t know that it’s awkward for them. Maybe I do have a little gypsy in me.
“Manuel, do the Schläger brothers own every single business in this town now?”
“Almost. The only one they don’t own is that empty lot next to them Chinamen.”
“What place is that?” I ask as I fold my paper and tuck it underneath my scrotum.
“You know, the place next to where they feed dead people to their pigs to get rid of bodies for people who don’t want to pay for funerals?”
“Love that place. They serve exquisite squirrel dick there on sticks while you watch the bodies being eaten.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t know about that. I saw your Chinaman over there working the other day as I passed him on the way in. He lost a couple more teeth.”
“That happens when they’re made of mud. Perhaps I’ll stop by and pay him a visit. By the way, do you want to watch me screw?”
“You have to pay extra for that now. I need the cash.”
“You want me to pay, so I can teach you a lesson in fucking? Get the hell out of here.”
Manuel still doesn’t make eye contact as he leaves, so I pull the paper out from between my legs and throw it at him as he walks away. I glance over at the bed, where Claire is putting the finishing touches on a pair of mittens for me; the kind with the rounded ends, not the ones with fingers. From under the bed, she pulls out a fully knitted pajama onesie with a barn door for the front and the back. It’s monogrammed with the initials SJSJ on the front, right over the heart. I can tell she wants my approval.
“That looks like shit. What man would sleep in a onesie? Burn it and use the hand covers as queef mittens.”
“What’s a queef mitten?”
“Pretty self-explanatory. It’s a mitten you queef into. I’m gonna go; I’m pretty turned off by the baby gifts you made me.”
Claire starts to get emotional when I walk out, so I purposefully leave the door open so she can watch me walk directly into another whore’s bedroom next door. I throw a one down on the end table and begin having sex with the new whore in the other room against the wall, knowing full goddamn well Claire can hear us. As I bang away, louder and louder, Claire screams, “Please come back, Saint James! I’m so sorry!”
“Nope!”
Claire goes ballistic and starts slamming her hands on the wall that I’m banging against. I punch a hole through it, so she can see my face as I climax with the strength of a thousand zebras. That will hopefully teach her never to knit baby clothes for a grown man again. I stick my face through the wall, into her room, and scream at her. “You made me do this! I’m not a fucking baby! Also, the climate out here doesn’t ever call for clothing like that!”
I thrust in a hard final set of ten, letting her know that I came a lot. When I finally finish, I cup my hands like I’m wearing mittens and double-wave her good-bye, before pulling up my jeans and leaving.
On the way out I hear Manny call out to me, “You’re going to have to pay for that hole in the wall.”
I throw a one-dollar bill over my shoulder at him and leave. After that animalistic sex, I have a hankering for squirrel dick. Plus, it would be nice to see my Chinaman again. Not because I’ve missed him, but mostly because he is probably still poorer than me, and I need a pick-me-up in the old self-esteem department right about now. Rounding the corner of the saloon, I immediately hear the sounds of wild pigs ripping through the flesh of a dead body, while a few Chinamen laugh. I tap one of them on the shoulder.
“Who is that being eaten?”
“A schoolteacher,” one of the Chinamen replies with laughter.
The Chinese are hard-core and don’t give a fuck. If someone dies, they chuck the body and keep on working. It’s business first, and I respect that. A frail man fights his way through the small crowd that has gathered to watch the schoolteacher get devoured. He’s got twenty squirrel di tied to an old broomstick.I I hold my hand up, indicating I want five squirrel di.
As the man gets closer, I see that it’s my Chinaman. I fucking told you, they just keep working no matter what happens. He grins from ear to ear, and I can see there are only a couple of cones left in that ice-cream shop that he calls a mouth. He goes in for the one-armed hug, which I obviously avoid to keep my street cred. Plus, homeboy is fucking filthy.
“Good to see you, sir,” he says with the type of enthusiasm people that poor should never have.
“Isn’t it? How is the squirrel di industry?”
“Can’t complain. Just trying to save up enough money to fix up my father’s boat to go back to China and get the rest of my family.”
“Why’s that?”
“I heard they need people to build wailwoads. Sorry, most my teef are gone.”
“You should probably just say train tracks. Never mind. More important, your dad had a boat?”
“Yeah, how do you think we got here?”
“I’m gonna be honest, I thought you just prayed really hard, then magically showed up. You guys have a mystical culture.”
“Indeed we do. How are things with you?”
“A kid died, got dipped in gold. I killed a couple dozen people, went to jail, and became poor. It’s been a weird month.”
“So sorry to hear about that,” he says with genuine concern.
“Thanks. I’ve been getting through it all right, thanks to this shit.” I pull a half-empty bottle of laudanum out of my back pocket and take a pull.
“Oh, that made of opium. My people invented it; there is tons of it over there.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let me buy you some squirrel di, and I’ll explain.”
Normally, I would never eat with the help, but his laugh is genuine, something I haven’t heard for a while, and so I decide to break my own rules. We walk for the next hour or so, sharing squirrel di as I pretend to care about what he talks about, which for me is a lot. Usually I don’t even bother to pretend at all. The Chinese are really into their families and shit, so I’m sure he is talking about them a lot. As we walk to the edge of town and along the river, he points to a small dock, and I see his boat.
It looks like shit now, but you can tell it might have been sweet at some point. He shows me how much work has to be done, pointing out the trouble-spot areas, which are every two feet of the boat. There’s also an enormous amount of dried blood on the main deck. I don’t even bother to ask him whose blood it is, but he tells me anyway.
“That is my father’s blood. A swordfish jumped up in the boat and speared him in the heart a couple times.”
“A couple times?”
“The swordfish jumped twice.”
“Same one, huh? It must have really wanted to kill him.”
He nods his head yes, then stares out into the distance with enormous pride. I let him have this moment before asking him where I can take a shit. The squirrel di are running through me like a Class 5 rapid in the Rio Grande right about now. It’s probably because they have so much protein in it. Those little squirrel di are totally worth a small amount of ass discomfort.
My Chinaman leads me into a bathroom on the boat, below deck. Sitting on the wooden makeshift toilet, I notice that the interior of the boat is in pretty good shape. To relieve my butthole pain, I grab the bottle of laudanum out of my jeans, which are now around my ankles. The rest of my money that Van Buren gave me falls out when I remove the bottle. I notice my bottle is dwindling fast, and I need more. Doctors roamed from town to town back then, or else I would have
robbed that motherfucker by now. My eyes rapidly shift focus to the money on the floor and back to the bottle. Oh. My. God.
My Chinaman’s words begin playing over and over in my mind: “My people invented it . . . there is tons of it over there.” That’s when the lantern goes on. I need to start a drug cartel! Without wiping, I quickly pull up my pants and race up to the deck.
“If I help you fix up this boat and go to China with you to get your people, could they get me a shitload of opium?”
“We gonna need a bigger boat. We have fields of it!”
I’m so fucking happy I almost hug him. Obviously, I don’t. Instead, I extend my hand and offer it to him to shake like he is a fellow white man. Also, for the first time since I’ve known him, I finally decide to ask him, “By the way, what’s your name?”
Tears start to well up in his eyes. I can tell he’s been waiting for a long time for me to ask this. He regains his composure and says, “Samantha Davis.”
I pause for a moment, thinking I have heard him wrong. “I’m sorry, could you repeat that?”
“Samantha Davis. When my father first came over to America to see if it would be safe for us, he snuck onto a barge and locked himself inside the first suitcase he could find. The name tag said Samantha Davis on it. Those were the first words of English my father could pronounce when he sailed over, so this name was very special to him.”
I smile back at him. “How about I call you Sam for short?”
“Why?”
“Because that’s what friends do, we give each other nicknames. Today we have become true friends . . . but you’ll still work for me.”
* * *
I. “Di” is the proper plural when describing five or more squirrel dicks.
Chapter Twelve
WHEN ONE DOOR CLOSES, ANOTHER PERSON IS PROBABLY FUCKING BEHIND IT
Riding back to the house at night, I have a new sense of hope. Van Buren thinks he can ruin my life? Good fucking luck. Louretta, unfortunately, does not share the same enthusiasm when I tell her I am going to sail to China to go get opium with a man who’s legal name is Samantha Davis. To say she goes ballistic would be an understatement.
“What are me and the children going to do for money while you’re off in China for God knows how long?”
“Look, I’ll probably only be gone a month, a year at the longest. I haven’t really figured out their calendar yet. It’s all fucking animals, so who knows? Here’s sixteen dollars; this should cover everything while I’m gone.”
She slaps me hard across the face, but I don’t move one single inch. Instead, I raise my hand and gently pull her face into mine.
“Lou, I have to provide for this family. You said it before—I’m the fucking man, and I have to figure it out. This is me figuring it out. I need you to trust me.”
“I don’t know if I can do this all by myself without you. The three weeks you were in jail were hard enough. Now you want me to go a whole month?”
“It’s probably leaning more toward the year side, but yes, you’ll be fine. Look, I married you because you were a strong, unyielding woman. I know you’ll run this house stern but fair while I’m gone.”
I kiss her mouth hole like I might never see her again. On my way out, I leave the rest of the money that Van Buren gave me on the kitchen table. Like I said before, sometimes a man has to do what the fuck a man has to do. Also sometimes a man has to do whatever the fuck it takes to provide. Becoming a drug lord just feels right.
Outside, I see a light shining down in the front yard, coming from the upstairs window. I look up and see the silhouette of Daniel leaned up against his crutch, smoking a cigarette. He nods at me with a “you’re doing the right thing” look on his face. I reach into my back pocket, grab the bottle of laudanum, and throw it up to him.
“This is for you, son. For the hard times.”
He catches the bottle and stares at the remaining contents, both of us not sure when we’re going to see each other again. After about ten minutes, I finally say to him, “I’m going to need you to take a swig of that bottle and throw it back down. That’s the last of my stash, and I’ll probably need it.”
He quickly takes a sip and throws the bottle back down to me. In the window next to Daniel’s, I see Louretta gazing out at me, crying. I tip my hat to her and hop up on my steed. Resigned to the fact that I need to do this, she nods her head and quietly closes the curtains.
I ride hard and reach Samantha Davis’s boat just after midnight, and wouldn’t you know it, that motherfucker is still working on it. He looks up from the deck and waves at me as I arrive. When I come aboard, he hands me a block of wood with sandpaper wrapped around it and asks me to join him in sanding the deck. I wave him off and start laughing.
“No fucking way, Sam. It’s after midnight. I’m going to hit the sack, then try and catch a little shut-eye. Don’t even think about waking me till about nooner, got it?”
“Of course. Sorry.”
“It’s okay. I’m going to take the captain’s quarters, obviously,” I say as I walk down the steps to retire below.
Surprisingly, there’s a decent-sized bed in there. As I light my lantern (so I can watch myself jack off), I think about how many Asians were probably crammed into this very bed on their journey over. I wonder if they were afraid. I wonder if they had hopes and dreams on the long sail over to my country, just as I will have hopes and dreams on my way over to theirs. Mostly, I wonder if they were all women and what they looked like. With my pants pulled down, I reflect on this before drifting off to sleep to the sounds of wood being sanded. Double entendre and pun intended again.
For the next three weeks, we work on the boat day and night. Actually, I take the noon to 1 PM shift, while Sam works the rest of the day. I hate to admit it, but we are a great team. As a token of my appreciation, I carve him a set of wooden dentures out of a couple of the dried, bloody boards we remove from the deck that his father died on. Even though my wood-whittling skills are terrible, anything is better than what he has left in his mouth. It will be worth hearing him talk with a lisp for the remainder of the trip.
Once the boat is finished and deemed ready to sail, the only thing left to do is name it. Naming a boat is the most important thing. Sailors have often said that a good boat name will get you through rough seas if you’re about to face certain death. It’s not something to be taken lightly, so I decide to name the boat after Sam’s father, and paint the word “Twice” on the back. I still can’t believe that swordfish had the tenacity to jump again. Samantha weeps as I christen the boat by smashing the now-empty bottle of laudanum against the bow. The goddamn boat turned out pretty amazing.
Finally ready to sail, I put it on wheels, tie it to my steed, and head west for the Pacific Ocean with my new best friend, Samantha Davis. He instructs me to ride to San Francisco, which apparently his people are docking in and out of as an entry point into this country. He says we’ll be able to get a small crew of FOBs to work with us as cheap labor on the back-and-forth.
“What’s an FOB?”
“Fresh Off Boat.”
I laugh, not knowing how super candid he is about racism until this point. This camaraderie will help us on the long journey we are about to embark on.
My steed halts as we hit the shoreline of the Pacific Ocean sometime around early evening the next night. As the sun is going down, Samantha and I stare at the crisp blue water in silence, taking in its beauty. I have never seen the Pacific Ocean before, even though I’ve lived just a little more than a hundred miles from it most of my life. It is majestic. It also looks exactly like the Atlantic Ocean, I will later find out. What a fucking sham.
As we unhook the boat and push it out into the water, my steed stares at me as if to say, “Take me with you. I love Asian horses.” But this isn’t his journey, it is mine. Plus, this boat isn’t Noah’s fucking ark, and I don’t know how he’d survive, although I do give it a fair amount of thought. Instead, I whisper into his ear, “G
o home and look after the kids. Take Daniel on a dynamite montage.”
He reluctantly nods at me, and I hug him around the neck like he is my firstborn. I really don’t know what the fuck I am getting into out here, or if I will survive, so I want him to know I love him. Our embrace is broken up by the sounds of Samantha whistling loudly, followed by a handful of cheers from Chinamen walking out of sand bunkers they have hand-dug into the beach (which, as it turns out, they are sleeping in).
As they walk aboard the boat, I slap my steed on the ass, signaling him to take off. Confident he is going to be fine, I walk aboard the boat and immediately rip off my shirt to show that I’m in control. A handful of Chinamen, led by Samantha, push the boat off the sandbar, out into the water. I salute them as they climb aboard, and demand they raise the sails.
“Due west, men!”
“Is there another way?” Samantha asks.
“You will not address the captain like that.” I slap him hard across the face. “Grab a fucking mop!”
He smiles and immediately starts cleaning the decks. He knows it’s important for me to show the men who’s in charge on the first day. I don’t care how skilled these dudes are at sailing a boat across the Pacific, I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to take orders from someone, especially someone of a different race. This is 18-fucking-53.
The next several weeks sailing over to China go relatively smoothly. That is, if you count vomiting between your legs as you shit simultaneously on a toilet every twenty minutes as “smoothly.” If I’m being real, I can’t recall much of the trip after day three, when the scurvy set in. The last thing I do remember is foaming at the mouth as the Chinamen held me down and cut my arm open with a knife to release the tainted oxygen from my bloodstream.
The next thing I know, I wake up with a lime stuffed in my mouth and another one stuffed in my anus as Samantha stands over me shouting, “Welcome to China!”
At Night She Cries, While He Rides His Steed Page 12
