God's Pocket - Pete Dexter

by Pete Dexter

  Old Lucy acted like he didn't hear, and for fifteen, twenty minutes the kid kept with him. By eleven o'clock he'd walked by Peets ten times, carrying blocks or mortar, and every time there was something different in his eyes. One minute they were laughing, the next minute they were mad. And he was talking to himself the whole time. Not singsong like Old Lucy, but like there was somebody else there. "Don't ever tell anybody where I'll be," he said once. And another time, "Oh, sure. Right, anything you say .... "

  And once he'd seen the boy take a black pill out of his back pocket and center it on his tongue. Peets wished they were doing high work, maybe a second story. Where the fall wouldn't necessarily kill him.

  And all morning long, of course, the kid was bringing out the razor. Telling some story about him and a cat that got worse for the cat every time he told it. And whatever; the black pills was, it wasn't making him any slower. That razor came out like an idea in the boy's head, and disappeared just as fast. It was like there was a name he couldn't remember, and every ten minutes or so he'd think he had it, but it was always the same name he brought out, and it was always wrong. He'd smile and put the razor back, and the crew would go back to work.

  Peets' morning went by a minute at a time. He was watching the kid and couldn't do anything useful. From what he'd seen, the reason people wanted to be supervisors was so they wouldn't have to do what they did to get there. Not just construction, everywhere. Nobody wanted to do the real work, they all wanted to control it. Peets wasn't like that, he was the opposite.

  "I grabbed that fucker by the tail," the kid was saying, "you know, they hate that. I grabbed him, and held him upside down, and this flight attendant was screamin' to let him alone, and I says, 'I'll leave him alone, all right . . .' " The razor was out again. “And I cut him from the middle out, so he'd know what I was doin'."

  Peets looked at his watch. Eleven-fifteen. He'd been looking at his watch all morning. It was like a circle. The kid was telling himself the same story over and over, only it was never quite right. And every time he got to the part about the cat he'd stop work to tell it to the whole crew, and thirty-five minutes later he'd be at that same part again.

  Once, coming past him with cinder blocks in. both hands, the kid said, "Yeah, I got somethin' for you too, Peets." Peets said, "What?” but the boy didn't hear him. He was in some different part of the story, dealing with Peets. The kid came back to him now. "You say somethin', Leon?"

  The kid dropped the blocks and put his hand in his back pocket. "I didn't say a fuckin' word," he said. "I ain't said nothin' all morning." And a few minutes later, "I'd like to know what a white man is doin', haulin' block for some nigger's not even a bricklayer."

  Peets said, "He's the only one we got today, boy." The kid didn't hear him, but the rest of them did, and they went back to work. And Old Lucy just kept working, the same pace, the same rhythm. When the blocks weren't there, he never turned around to look for them. He just waited till they came. Then the kid would take another pill and five minutes later he was bringing them four and five at a time, as fast as he could walk, the corners of the blocks pinching his hands, putting little cuts in his fingers.

  Leon had worked six weeks and his hands was still like a baby's ass. And Lucy just let the blocks pile up, and used them as he needed them, and didn't hurry or slow down for anybody.

  And talked to himself in that singsong way that he probably didn't even know was out loud.

  Peets called lunch break twenty minutes before noon. He walked away from the crew and sat down in the cherry picker to eat some Kentucky Fried Chicken he'd bought on the way home from work Friday, sat up there to eat so he wouldn't have to look at anybody else while he did it. It was testing him today.

  The kid, of course, wasn't hungry. The rest of the crew—everybody but Old Lucy—sat on the cement sacks talking about an El Camino pickup one of them just bought. Peets listened, because there wasn't no choice, and it turned out what they were talking about was the sound system in the El Camino pickup one of them just bought.

  Old Lucy got his lunch box and walked up the wall to where he'd been working to eat. He sat on the ground with his back against the wall and looked at where he'd come from that morning. Peets watched him, thinking the old shine was the only one he had who cared that they were supposed to of done something when they'd finished for the day. There was others who would do what you told them, but Lucy was the only one wasn't just putting in the hours. Peets expected it wasn't their fault. No, what they was talking about was how the sound system in the El Camino pickup got somebody some pussy off a little hippy girl he'd I found up on South Street.

  Then Leon was cutting the air with the razor again. This time he said he'd almost cut the flight attendant's tits off after he took care of her cat. "I seen that happen to a girl once," he said.

  The kid Gary Sample stuttered, "Shit." The older men ignored it. Leon moved closer to Gary Sample, like he hadn't heard him. Peets stayed where he was. The kid who said that smiled to show he hadn't meant anything by it. “Really?"

  Leon stopped and saw some of the others were beginning to get away from him. He put the razor back in his pocket and backed off the story. "The truth is," he said, "I didn't get to see it happen. I seen the tits afterward, though."

  The way the rest of them looked at it, Leon said some things that were full of shit, but they did send him over from the union as a bricklayer, first class, and Jesus knows he had to be connected to get that. He said it was his stepfather, so it probably was. It had to be something, he didn't know nothing about work. And it didn't make a shit one way or the other anyway. The way the rest of them looked at it, Peets was scared of him and that was good enough for them.

  Peets sat in the cherry picker, holding a piece of cool gray chicken until he decided he didn't want to eat it. "At the end of the day," he said, "he's gone. One way or the other." Peets only talked to himself to make promises.

  He dropped the chicken leg back into the box and carefully closed the lid. He hated to see food wasted, it was the way he was brought up. While he was closing the box, Leon had moved over in front of Old Lucy.

  "I heard you talkin' about me," he said. "I don't give a shit personally, but I don't like a nigger talkin' about my business? Old Lucy chewed his sandwich, slow and all the way through. He never even acknowledged there was something standing in his light.

  "You want part of me, old man?" Leon said. "You and Peets, standin' there, tellin' me, lookin' at me behind my back . . ."

  Peets stayed where he was. Old Lucy didn't say nothing, he just ate his lunch. It was like some people Peets knew at home, they'd fish all afternoon out on Hard Labor Creek, and the mosquitoes never bothered them. They'd get bit once in a while, but they never got bothered. Peets would slap himself silly, killing mosquitoes, and the Hard Labor Creek never ran out.

  Leon looked back to the rest of the crew. "This old nigger has been talkin' about me all morning," he said. "I heard him, but you know, it's never out loud so you know what he's sayin'."

  Gary Sample laughed.

  Leon pulled the razor out, almost without thinking about it, and put the blade under Old Lucy's chin. The razor brought the chin up, and the old man's eyes came with it. Leon didn't recognize what he saw there. "You hear me now, don't you'?" he said.

  Old Lucy didn't move or speak. The kid pulled the razor away, and a thin pink line marked the place it had been.

  The line darkened, puddled, "and a tear of blood ran down the old man's neck into his shirt. Leon felt the weight of his eyes and began to laugh. He didn't mean to, he couldn't help himself.

  "Hey," he said. "I didn't mean to cut you, Lucy .... "

  Peets stayed in the cherry picker.

  "Hey, go get a Band-Aid," Leon said, "it's a hospital right here." He pointed at the hospital, and he couldn't say more than two words without this strange laugh coming up out of him. He looked at the men sitting on the cement sacks, dead still, and they were laughing too. But not out
loud, like he was. The sun was warm on the top of his head, he felt that, and he felt the weight of the old man's eyes, and he started to say something to the men sitting on the cement. But there was a cracking noise and he couldn't remember what it was, and somehow they couldn't hear him anyway. And for a long second he looked up into the sun and went blind in the light.

  * * *

  It developed before Peets could move. No, that wasn't exactly true. It developed without a place where he could interrupt it. The old shine had never asked him for help, and then the razor was sitting under his chin where Jesus knew what Leon had in mind, and then he'd taken it away and Peets had started out after him.

  The kid had turned to the others, and Old Lucy had put his sandwich down and stood up with a piece of half-inch pipe in his hand and brought it down on the back of Leon's head. The old man only hit him once. Leon reeled in the air and dropped on his side and slowly curled into himself in the dirt.

  Old Lucy watched a minute, then he sat down where he had been. He wiped blood off his chin and put the pipe next to him on the ground and then, because there was no way not to, he stared at the body. He didn't try to get away from it, it was his.

  Peets was out of the cherry picker. He didn't hurry, he'd heard the sound when the pipe hit Leon's head. It was like dropping it into mud. By the time Peets leaned over him, Leon Hubbard had already begun to shake. Spasms in the legs and hands. There was no blood Peets could see, but the back of his head was ruined.

  He stood up, avoiding Old Lucy's eyes, and called Gary Sample over from the sacks. "You better get somebody from the hospital," he said. The kid half-ran, half-walked to the front of the building. He didn't know what was appropriate.

  Old Lucy dabbed at the blood on his chin again, the rest of the crew gradually fell into half a circle around Peets and the body and the old man. "He's barely breathing," one of them said. Little pieces of dust were blowing up in front of his mouth. His eyes were open, but it was like they were looking in instead of out.

  And a minute after that, the dust settled. Peets was feeling the side of the boy's neck, and while his fingers were there the pulse stopped. All the tanglements to it were over, then. Peets was relieved.

  Gary Sample came back with a couple of nurses and a doctor, and they pounded on Leon's chest and held his nose shut while they blew into his mouth, but the tanglements were over. One of the nurses, a young one, was crying. She looked at Peets and said, "Don't any of you ever learn?" like it was the fifth one they'd killed that month.

  Old Lucy sat still and watched. The doctor and nurses tried for a few minutes, and then two men came out of the hospital pulling a stretcher. "He's so young," said the nurse who was crying. Peets thought she probably wasn't much use in an emergency room.

  They moved Leon onto the stretcher, and carried him inside. His razor was still lying in the dirt, and a few feet from that was a small spot of blood that had dripped from his ear. Peets picked up the razor and kicked dirt over the spot of blood, and all the tanglements to it were over.

  The police came five minutes later. There were two of them. One limped and looked out of place in his uniform, the other one was little and cold. He did the talking. He took out a note pad and a pencil and wrote down Peets' name, a letter at a time, like he was carving it in wood. In Peets' experience, there were some cops who got used to writing things down and there were others who never stopped resenting it. It's what made them cold.

  The little cop finished writing his name and said, "All right, what happened here?" The question was for anybody. Nobody answered.

  And then Peets did something against his policy, and mortgaged himself forever to everybody there. He said, "It was the cherry picker."

  They all looked at him, he looked at the little cop. "The U-bolt come loose," he said. He moved over to the boom and lifted the U-bolt. The cable bowed. The bolt didn't look as heavy as it was, and he handed it to the little cop the way the cop might of handed his gun over to his boy, so he could feel the weight and see it was serious.

  "Usually," Peets said, "the cable and the bolt are tied to the boom when we're not usin' it.” He picked up the smaller cable they used to tie the cable to the boom and handed it to the cop too. "The tie must of come loose, the cable swung out, and the U-bolt hit the boy right in the back of the head."

  The cop looked at the U-bolt, the boom, the cable in his hand, trying to see it. One of the men on the crew was nodding.

  "That's what happened," he said. "I seen the whole thing. The kid never knew what hit him."

  The cop turned to look at him, then he looked at the rest of them. "Anybody else?"

  Peets waited, and then somebody else said he'd seen it too, and then a couple of the others said they almost seen it. Gary Sample had eyes to say something different, but he didn't. Old Lucy just sat in the dirt, the pipe right there by his side and, as far as Peets could tell, he didn't hear any of it.

  The little cop walked from the cherry picker to the spot where the body fell, counting his steps. He estimated heights and distances and asked questions about Leon's job. "He was a bricklayer," Peets said. Shit, he might as well lie all the way.

  The little cop moved here and there, satisfying himself. His partner stood in one place, watching Peets, studying the rest of them too. The little cop turned to him. "Let's go get the groceries," he said.

  His partner's name tag said Eisenhower. The little cop walked toward the hospital entrance, Eisenhower stayed back. He had been watching Peets about fifteen minutes, and he moved closer to him now and spoke into his chest so only Peets could hear. "That kid," he said, nodding toward Gary Sample, "is about to make you some problems."

  Then he stepped around Peets and followed the little cop into the hospital.

  2

  The Pocket

  There wasn't a man on any shift in Central Detectives who didn't admire Calamity Eisenhower. Even the captain who brought him up on charges admired him, although he didn't miss him now he was gone, the way the detectives did.

  Calamity's brother How-Awful! had been lost at a police convention in Phoenix, Arizona, one year to the day before Calamity broke his hip falling down the stairs at South Detectives. How-Awful! had climbed out on the roof of a Holiday Inn at three o'clock in the morning and jumped into a swimming pool that had been drained for painting. At the time, it seemed to settle the question every cop in every corner of the city lived with every day of his life. How-Awful! was crazier than Calamity. But then Calamity had been found, broken-hipped and dressed in a rabbit suit, at the bottom of the stairs at South Detectives, and it was an open case again.

  There had been six detectives with him, all dressed in rabbit suits they'd rented from three different costume shops in three different cities—let internal affairs find that. They'd gone into South Detectives at high noon on a Wednesday a couple of days after South Detectives had beaten Central Detectives 22-2 in a game of slow-pitch softball, and shot the place up. They blew out the lights and put holes in the ceiling just to watch cops dive under desks.

  You do not steal home against Calamity Eisenhower with a twenty-run lead and hope it will be forgotten.

  They'd shot the place up and then run down the stairs and out the door, and Calamity, who was last to leave, who could not get enough of the way it looked, Calamity had tripped on his own rabbit's foot and rolled all the way down.

  The captain at South Detectives found him there fifteen minutes later. The detectives from Central were back at Sixth District before they noticed somebody was missing. They'd suspended Calamity for thirty days without pay and then assigned him to the radio room until his hip mended. When he could walk without a cane they stuck him in AID, where he spent his time sorting out how some kid got drunk and drowned trying to drive his car across a city reservoir.

  It was a shameful misuse of talent, and the partner they'd given him, Chuck Arbuckle, was simply a mistake in conception. Eisenhower wondered sometimes how a sperm could swim all that way knowing that'
s what he was going to turn into. They were taking the body from Holy Redeemer to the medical examiner's office at Thirty-fourth and Civic Center, and Arbuckle was going over it again.

  "It must of been the ape," he said, meaning Peets. "He probably never tied that thing up like it was supposed to. The kid comes walking through, thinking of all the money he's making, the thing moves and splat. We got to spend half the fuckin' day cleaning up the mess." Chuck Arbuckle did not like anybody under forty making more money than he did. He hated any doctor without gray hair.

  Eisenhower looked across the van at him. Arbuckle said, "I ain't saying it was his own fault, but you work around sloppy fuckers, you got to take it into consideration. You got to be aware of where trouble is coming from. Anything you do, the first rule is know where the problem is going to come from."

  Arbuckle was thirty-live years old. He'd investigated ninety-four fatal accidents in the last eighteen months, at great personal inconvenience. He got his name in the Daily Times once every two weeks. Eisenhower had been given Arbuckle in February, and in that time he'd noticed that Arbuckle never came away from a fatal accident without finding a lesson in it. It was Arbuckle's order of things that people deserved what they got, and his job was to figure out why, after they got it.

  Arbuckle thought that protected him.

  Of course, if he wasn't the way he was, Eisenhower thought, he'd of seen the foreman was lying. A fifteen-year-old kid would have seen that. In Eisenhower's experience, when everybody lied it was usually best to leave it alone. Shit, it's how religions got started. You could tell good people from the lies they told, and he'd liked Peets right away.

  Arbuckle turned left off Market Street and went into the University of Pennsylvania area, then around to the back of the M.E.'s building where they accepted deliveries. A kid in hospital clothes was waiting at the door, smoking a cigarette. Arbuckle backed the van up and got out. The body was zipped into a plastic bag, and the kid unzipped it while Arbuckle read to him from the hospital's certificate of death. "Male Caucasian, twenty-four years old, massive cerebral hemorrhaging . . ."