God's Pocket - Pete Dexter

by Pete Dexter

  "I just came from there," he said, “this afternoon. There's a cove where the river empties into the bay, and a meadow above it. I've had it a long time, and nobody knows."

  She sat down on the bed next to him. He let go of one of her hands, held onto the other one. She wasn't sure if this had something to do with Leon or not. "I go there at night sometimes," he said. "I drink too much and wake up there in the morning, with the birds coming in and things growing everywhere you look."

  He was looking at her now to see if she was following his drift, and she gave him that too. “I know," she said.

  "You do, don't you?" he said. And he let go of her hand and put his arms around her neck and pulled her into him. He was as soft as her sisters, and she could smell the alcohol in his skin. And it made her happy to sit there with him. Richard Shellburn, holding onto her for comfort. She had been with most kinds of men, but nobody ever acted like this. She didn't expect many did.

  She put her hand down, as much for balance as anything else, and it rested on his leg, just above the knee. She smelled the alcohol and cats, and then they were lying back, and he was showing her the fall of the land by the water with his hand. "The house was going to be on the hill," he said, "where you could wake up in the morning and see the whole picture."

  "I know," she said.

  "I was just there this morning," he said. And then he held her a long time, lying on Leon's bed, and didn't say anything else. She felt him relax, and then sometime later she felt him pull himself together. Little movements in his shoulders and arms. Not muscles. He didn't have muscles the way Mickey did, and he didn't rub her with his dick or try to get his hands up under her skirt or in her blouse. He had an erection, she could see that, but he never tried anything. She thought it was part of how sad he was.

  They'd been on the bed half an hour when she felt him moving, and then he sat up and blew air out of his mouth and felt his whiskers, and seemed to forget for a moment that she was there. It happened suddenly, and the skin where she had been against him felt cool and empty. She sat up and put one of her hands on his leg again. "You seem so sad," she said.

  He blew again and stood up. His notebook was on the floor next to the bed, and he picked that up and began looking at the pages on top, flipping back through five or six of them. "I don't know what I can do yet," he said, like it was all connected to Leon after all. And then she heard the front door open downstairs, and Mickey walking into the house.

  He called up the stairs. "Jeanie?" he said. "You up there?"

  Richard Shellburn ran a hand through his hair and straightened his shirt. She walked to the top of the stairs and looked down. Mickey was filthy. "I'm up here with Richard Shellburn," she said.

  She surprised herself, how natural that sounded.

  * * *

  Bird left the Cadillac outside the front window of the flower shop and walked in with his long, thin arm around Mickey's neck, and dropped all the money in his pockets on the counter, beside Aunt Sophie's eyeglasses. She'd left them there while she boxed corsages. The schools were having their dances this weekend, and it was busy.

  She looked at the money, then she looked at Mickey to see if Bird had stuck up a Purolator truck to get it. Mickey smiled at her and pulled himself loose from Bird. "He go wacko?" she said.

  Bird pulled the old lady toward him and kissed her head and her cheeks and her nose, leaving wet marks everywhere he went.

  "Sometimes it works," Mickey told her.

  Bird said, "I tried to get Mick to come with me on this horse, but he wouldn't listen."

  "Nobody listens to crazy men," she said.

  Bird hugged her again and said, "But they oughta. You listen to some of those old bums walkin' around on the street, talking to themself. They get like that, they can see somethin'." He picked up some of the money and held it in front of the old woman's face. "What do you see?" he said.

  "That's very nice," she said.

  "We're goin"to Florida," Bird said. "We're going to get out of here while all these people are fightin' each other over who docs business. We'll get suntans."

  "You going to leave your business, Arthur?" she said.

  "We'll let Tony run it," he said. "I don't care .... "

  "You be better off giving it to the nigger," she said. "Tony don't care about the business."

  "Then we'll give it to the nigger," he said. The old woman began to smile. Arthur could be so funny ....

  Mickey had to see Smilin' Jack. It was getting dark, and he didn't want to do it after Jack started to drink. "I'l1 see you tomorrow," he said, but Bird stopped him on the way back to the warehouse.

  He stopped him and shook his hand, and embarrassed him. "You always got a place," he said. "No matter what happens, you always got a place to stay. You're like my own fami1y."

  The old woman told Arthur to pick up his money off the counter so she could finish her work, and then she walked Mickey back through the flowers to the door that led to the warehouse. She kissed him on the cheek and said, "You looked after Arthur good, Mickey. That's a nice boy, not to let him do nothin' crazy."

  She turned on the lights in the warehouse and he walked through the meat cooler, and then out past the truck Bird hadn't given back, and got in his own truck. He didn't bother to check the load, it wasn't going to be his truck long enough to worry about.

  The neon light was still on in the window at Moran's Funeral Home. Mickey found Jack in the viewing room, leaning against a dark pink casket and its contents, an old woman wearing a fluffy sort of dress that just missed matching the color of the box. Jack had loosened his tie and his shoelaces and was drinking a can of Rolling Rock, and he hadn't heard the front door when Mickey came in.

  "Jack?"

  He jumped away from the casket and spilled the beer down the front of his suit. “Jesus, God," he said, "you scared the piss outta me." He wiped at the beer, then noticed some of it had spilled over the woman in the box. He forgot about himself and took care of her. He wiped at it with his hand and then blew on it and then wiped at it with the handkerchief from his suit coat pocket. "You think this is going to stain?" he said.

  Mickey looked at the woman closer. "I don't think so," he said.

  "This shit's organdy," Jack said. "Fuckin' water stains organdy .... " Mickey waited while Jack worked on the dress. "You want to know the way this business is?" he said. “Right now, if the family walked in here, they'd think I was feelin' her up." Jack stood back and took another drink of the beer. "You suppose people are going to smell this shit on her'?"

  Mickey shrugged. "At an Irish funeral?"

  Jack thought it over and calmed down. He looked at the spots on the woman's dress from different angles, then he got down into the casket and blew on it again.

  Mickey was waiting for the right moment to bring up the problem with Leon's funeral, but he saw there wasn't going to be one. "Jack," he said, "I got a problem with the money."

  Smilin' Jack stopped blowing on the old woman's chest and came out of the casket as still as the old woman herself. He turned around and picked up his beer, which he'd put on the rim of the casket while he blew on her. "That's too bad," he said.

  "It's nothin' permanent," Mickey said. "I was thinkin', if we could have the service, I could pay you in a couple weeks, a month tops. If I don't have it by then, I'd sell the truck. You know, it was just a bad time for it to happen."

  Smilin' Jack finished the beer. "How come it's a bad time?" he said. "How much money you got?"'

  "Seven hundred."

  Smilin' Jack threw the empty can into the wall over the casket. "What about the fuckin' money from the Hol1ywood?" he said. "There was more than seven hundred they collected there."

  Mickey said, "Things happen. You'll get your money, but I got to have this funeral on time, and it's got to be right. The mahogany box, everything. Jeanie's all fucked up over this."

  Jack said, "That's nothin' to me. It's your fuckin' woman and your fuckin' body unless I get paid." He wa
s shouting.

  Mickey closed his eyes. "Don't get hysterical," he said.

  "You ain't an old woman, and I don't want my business on the street."

  "You ain't got no fuckin' business," Jack said. He was still shouting. "What you got is somethin' on the side, right? No, you bet a game. That's it, you bet a fuckin' game .... "

  "What I did is nothin' to do with you," Mickey said. "What you got to worry about is makin' sure everything is right on Saturday. You'l1 get your money." He stood up and moved closer to him. Smilin' Jack relaxed and smiled the smile that sucker-punched Mole Ferrell.

  "Sure, Mick," he said. Mickey saw Jack was going to hit him. He wondered how many beers he'd had, fixing up the old woman in the casket. "Sure," he said.

  Mickey said, ?'Jack, put it out of your head .... "

  Which Smilin' Jack took to mean Mickey was scared. He said, "What? What are you talkin' about'?" He smiled again, then focused on Mickey's nose and then aimed a right hand that the old woman in the box would have ducked. Smilin' Jack followed the fist, stumbled, the word "motherfucker" stumbling out too, and Mickey grabbed his collar underneath his ear and kept him from falling. Then he straightened him up and slapped him across the face, harder than he meant to.

  "This ain't the time to panic," he said. "You'll get paid in two weeks, a month at the outside." He held him and said, "You understand me, Jack?"

  Jack's face was red and his eyes were watering and surprised. He shook his head. "Jesus," he said. "I don't know what's wrong with me. Me and the old man ain't been gettin' along, I don't know. Hey, let me get us a beer."

  Mickey sat down and waited. He heard Jack bumping into things in back, opening doors, cleaning himself up. In five minutes he was back, holding a couple of cans of cold beer. "Yo, Mick," he said, "I was wrong. I don't know what's got into me .... " He touched Mickey's beer with his own, and they drank a long toast.

  After that there wasn't much to say. "I'm sorry, Mick," Jack said.

  Mickey said, "I just didn't want none of this on the street Jeanie's all fucked up."

  "Yo, we'll take care of it, don't worry about the money .... "

  Mickey said, "I said you'll have it in two weeks, a month tops." Smilin' Jack leaned toward him and they touched beer cans again.

  “You and me got no arguments, Mick," he said.

  When the beer was gone, Smilin' Jack took Mickey to the ' side door, which opened to Lombard Street. "I hope you don't mind going out the side," he said. "I'm locked up in front."

  Mickey said, "I don't mind nothin'."

  Jack opened the door and the light from inside threw their shadows across a square cement step, eight feet on a side. There was a railing around three sides of the step, and the fourth side, to the right as he went out the door, led to a ramp, wide enough to handle a coffin.

  Jack said, "I got to get the light fixed out here."

  Mickey said, "I don't mind," and stepped out the door. On the way out he had the feeling Jack was getting ready to sucker him again. But he walked past and nothing happened. The air was cooler than it had been when he'd gone in half an hour before, and it was beginning to mist. "It's gettin' cold," he said. Jack said, "Yeah, it's a cold world," and shut the door.

  There was no handle on the outside. Mickey heard him on the other side, locking up. He put his hand on the railing and walked down the ramp. The railing was cold and wet, and he let go of it to shake the water off his hand, and that was when he stepped on Leon's leg and bounced the rest of the way to the sidewalk.

  He knew it was Leon before he looked, he knew it before he hit the sidewalk. He tucked himself in as he fell, and if he hadn't grabbed the railing and snapped his elbow out of its socket, all he would have had for damages would have been his ear, which felt like it was floating in a pan of hot boiling water.

  He sat up, holding the ear, and made himself breathe slow and even. He could hear his pulse in the ear and feel the elbow swelling. He moved his legs, one at a time, then his neck. Nothing else was hurt. The mist turned into a light rain.

  He stood up and felt for the body. It was lying across the width of the ramp, face up, the arms folded across the chest. He started to slip and caught himself his hand across Leon's face. He went from there down the front of his shirt and found his belt. He turned the body over and used the belt to lift him up off the ground. The body was stiff and awkward, the arms stayed close to the chest. There was an alley halfway between Twenty-sixth and Twenty-seventh, and Mickey took him there. He held the body as high as he could, but it was heavy and the head skipped on the sidewalk. He could not get rid of the feeling that there was something left in there.

  He dropped Leon face down a few yards into the alley and flexed the hand he had used to carry him. The elbow on the other side was beginning to hurt him more now, but he had tom it out before and knew what to expect. The ear was a surprise. That was on fire.

  He turned the body over and then lifted it by the collar until it was almost standing against the wall. He heard cats farther back in the alley. He remembered Leon telling him he and his friends hunted cats when they were growing up. They'd used softball bats. He left Leon in the alley and went for the truck.

  On the way, he stopped at the ramp and found a place where the railing was waist-high from the sidewalk. He pressed his chest into the railing, then reached through it with his good right arm, through and down, and touched his left hand. Without stopping or thinking it over, he lifted the hand slowly until the forearm was touching the rail. He was sweating now, hot and cold at the same time. He gave himself five seconds—not enough time for the pain to gather itself—and then lifted his left shoulder slow and steady against the railing, and at the same time he used his right hand to run his left hand over, until the palm was up.

  Finally, there was a popping noise in the joint, and the pain changed, took on a heat and steadied, and Mickey lowered his hand, slowly, and stepped away from the rail.

  He put his hand in his pants pocket to protect the elbow and walked around the comer. It was eight o'clock, but in the rain the street was empty. In the rain, it could have been midnight.

  Without stopping or thinking it over, he backed the truck into the mouth of the alley and left the engine running and the turn signals on. Leon had fallen and was lying next to the wall. The turn signals blinked yellow, and Mickey picked him up—clumsy now, working with only one hand—and dragged him toward the truck. Putting the elbow back together had left him weak, and he dragged the body, holding onto the collar, a length of his step at a time.

  The truck lights blinked on and off Leon's face, orange and black, until it looked like he was crawling. It looked like that, and then it looked like somebody was taking flash pictures of Mickey disposing of the body. He dragged Leon to the truck and left him on the ground while he opened the door. There was a small light inside that ran off the generator. The sides of beef Bird had given him were still laid out in gauze wrapping over the back axle. He climbed in and moved two of them farther back. As he bent over, his elbow moved and settled, but he kept working, without stopping or thinking it over. He knew not to give it a chance to all gather up on him. He listened to the sound of his own breathing and felt his pulse in his ear.

  It took a long time to make a place for Leon. He didn't know how long, it felt like half the night. Then he climbed out and picked Leon up one-handed, by the front of his shirt, until he was almost standing again, then leaned him back onto the floor of the truck. He got back in and dragged him to the spot he had cleared over the aide, between four sides of Kansas prime beef. He straightened Leon's hair—he didn't know why, but it seemed right—and then, after he'd looked at it a minute longer, he moved the hands so they looked a little neater on his chest.

  Then he drove the two blocks to his house, put the truck in the garage, plugged in the generator, and locked the door. Before he walked in the house he tucked in his shirt and brushed off his pants. Then, without stopping or thinking it over, he went in and called for Je
anie.

  He'd thought the place was empty at first, then somebody was moving upstairs. "Jeanie?" he said. And she came to the head of the stairs, and from her face he could see that he looked worse than he thought he did. He was about to tell her that it if wasn't nothing, but she said something first.

  She said, "I'm up here with Richard Shellburn," like that was the name of something that was supposed to be upstairs. A minute later the reporter was standing behind her, red-eyed and wrinkled, all out of focus. "He wanted to see Leon's room," she said. Her voice sounded weak; he thought she'd seen his arm. It was still swelling, and there was more heat in it all the time. But she came down the stairs without looking at it. In fact, without looking at him.

  "Richard Shellburn," she said. "This is my husband."

  Mickey didn't offer to shake hands. Shellburn was older than he looked in his picture. Older and grayer and messier. And afraid. Richard Shellburn wore that like a sandwich board. He was patting himself down now, looking for something. He found it in his coat pocket, a reporter's notebook. He took it out and checked the top pages. Shellburn said, "I think that's all we need for now . . ." and put the notebook back. Too fast. Jeanie walked him to the front door, and Mickey saw them looking at each other before he left. "There may be something that comes up," he said. "We may have to call you again."

  Jeanie said, "Please do. This is all I've got to do." And she thanked him for coming. Mickey watched them from the bottom of the stairs, on the spot he'd been standing when Jeanie told him she was up there with Richard Shellburn.

  She took the reporter's hand in both of hers and thanked him again. "If there's anything we can do . . ." Then Shellburn nodded at Mickey without exactly looking at him, and stepped out the door. Jeanie watched him cross the street and get into a car, and then she turned back into her own house.