God's Pocket - Pete Dexter

by Pete Dexter

  She'd shake her head and say, "Can you imagine how you'd feel if your child did something like that?"

  "A lot of paper boys just throw the paper any which way," Mole Ferrell was saying, "but Leon always put it in the door. He was a good boy." As Mole Ferrell spoke, his eyes went big and out of focus, and he seemed to be seeing it again. Mole had been hit in the head a lot and was famous for moving around in time.

  He glanced at Jack as he talked, and then looked at him again. Jack was smiling his funeral director's smile, and when Mole Ferrell looked at him, he remembered the night when Jack smiled that smile and then sucker-punched him. Or maybe it was that night again.

  Whichever, one minute Mole was looking at Jeanie, saying how important it was to know your Daily Times would be in the same place every morning, and the next minute he screamed, "All right, motherfucker," and hit Jack Moran dead in the middle of the face. The punch came halfway across the entranceway to the funeral parlor and knocked Jack off the steps. Mole Ferrell was big and slow and did not struggle when the minister grabbed him around the waist. "Please, sir," the minister said, "remember where you are." Of course, it was the minister who'd never been in God's Pocket before.

  Smilin' Jack lay flat on the ground for a few seconds, and then he sat up, covering his nose with his hand. Blood leaked through the fingers. He sat and stared at Mole Ferrell, who was still wearing the minister around his waist, staring back. Jeanie had stopped crying. Mickey noticed that, and when Jack moved his hand, he noticed that his nose had been moved an inch off center. "This man is drunk,” said the minister.

  Mole looked down at the top of Jack's head, then at Mickey, then at Jeanie. Changing gears. "He always left it right in the door," Mole said. "Leon was a good boy."

  Then he said, "Father, I got to go.” He pried himself out of the minister's arms, shook hands with Mickey again, and then walked through the little white gate and headed back down the street toward the Hollywood. `

  Smilin' Jack's housekeeper had heard the noise and came out the door just as Mole Ferrell was leaving. Jack was still on the ground, and he'd thrown his head back, trying to get the bleeding to stop. She knelt next to him and began wiping at his face with her apron. "Mr. Moran," she said, "what is happened to you now?"

  Jack let himself be cleaned up. She handled his face gently, shaking her head like he was her own child, and when most of the blood was gone, she ran her finger along the bridge of his nose until she found the place where the cartilage separated.

  "Oh, dear," she said, “you all busted up, ain't you?"`

  Smilin' Jack didn't answer. When she took her linger off his nose, he stood up, still looking at the sky, and headed back into the funeral parlor. The housekeeper tried to take his arm but he pulled away. Mickey opened the door for him and Jack walked in, bleeding. Jack closed the door behind him, in his housekeeper's face. She seemed to notice the blood on her hands then, and they all waited on the front steps and didn't know what to do. Fifteen or twenty people were standing on the sidewalk when it happened, and they hadn't moved either.

  "Dear Jesus," the housekeeper said, "three o'clock Saturday ain't the time for no funeral." She folded her arms to hide her hands. The coffin was in the hearse, the hearse was still running.

  They stood on the steps and waited.

  ln a few minutes they heard Jack upstairs, arguing with the old man. They stood on the steps in their best clothes and listened. Mickey said, "You want to go back to the house and wait?" Jeanie didn't answer him. She was looking over at the hearse now.

  Upstairs it got louder. Mickey wished he had somebody to talk to. The housekeeper smiled at him, a sweet old gold-tooth smile full of apologies. It was her family, and it wasn't. "He shouldn't talk that way to his father," Mickey said, looking up there.

  The old woman shook her head. "It don't matter," she said. "The old gentleman, he don't hear none of it. He just sit there in the wheelchair."

  Mickey looked at her to make sure he'd understood. "The old man's deaf?"

  She smiled at him and shook her head. "He don't know morning from night," she said.

  * * *

  It was getting dark before they got back from the cemetery. They'd waited at the funeral home an hour, and then Jack Moran had come out wearing a clean shirt. He'd stuifed cotton into both sides of his nose, but he hadn't changed suits, and Jeanie saw the bloodstains in the material.

  He'd come out looking angry and gone to the hearse without apologizing. She and Mickey and the minister got into the Cadillac behind it, and her sisters followed that in Joanie's Ford wagon. At the grave they put the coffin under a tent, and the minister read from the Bible. "To everything there is a season . . ."

  She had to admit it was a beautiful coffin.

  Mickey looked straight ahead, the sisters stood together, apart from the others. Jack Moran's nose was bleeding again. She saw they were all tired of Leon now, they wanted to get it over. She thought she wanted to get it over too, but when the service had ended, she couldn't leave him there alone. The minister had tried to talk to her. "There's nothing more you can do now, Jeanie," he'd said.

  "A few minutes," she'd said. And she'd stood out there under the tent for an hour, because she cou1dn't stand to leave him alone. Finally Mickey had come close to her, touched her arm.

  "They're closin' the cemetery," he'd said. .

  And she'd pulled away from him, and walked alone back to the Cadillac. She didn't want to be near him, or her sisters. She didn't want to be near anybody she knew. She turned to the window and stared outside the whole trip back.

  At the house, Mickey had wanted to talk, but she'd gone upstairs, into the bathroom, and stared at her face in the mirror. Stared a long time, until it felt like a trance. It was like that at the graveyard too, standing beside the coffin. Time didn't come into it anymore. After a while, she washed her face, and then she began putting on makeup again, slowly, without a plan. She put it on that way to see what she would be when it was finished. Sometime later the phone rang, eight or nine times. Mickey must have gone out. She picked it up and waited.

  “Jeanie?"

  "Hello," she said. It was Richard Shellburn.

  "Is it finished'?"

  She said, "Why does everybody want it to be finished? He was mine, not anybody else's."

  "I'll pick you up tomorrow," he said. "We can have lunch and talk. If you want to, we could take a drive out to the place."

  "l don't know," she said.

  "That's the reason to do it," he said. "I'll pick you up."

  "No,” she said. "Not yet." Not ever, she thought.

  "Let's go to the place," he said. "It'll do you good, just to be out in the fresh air."

  "It's not my place," she said.

  "It will be," he said. "I'll pick you up." She let the line go quiet for a minute. "You don't have a place of your own," he said.

  "I know it," she said. He was saying something else when she hung up. Then she went back to the mirror and darkened her lips and lightened her cheeks, and after a few minutes it came to her that she didn't know what she looked like anymore.

  She closed her eyes to clear her head and saw the casket.

  Sitting under the tent at the cemetery, and she saw herself standing next to it. She saw the black dress and her hair, but she couldn't see her face. She could see Leon's though, she could see him awake, curled over on his side somewhere in the box. Awake and blinking. It was a beautiful casket, but it was too big for him. And when she opened her eyes and saw herself in the mirror, she was surprised—for the half second she could see it—how bad this had hurt her. She thought it must be like a car accident, when you couldn't tell for yourself how bad you were hurt. Your body lied to you at first, you had to wait and see.

  Then she couldn't even remember where she'd seen the damage in her face. She studied herself a long time and then washed off the makeup, and began her face over again, without a plan, to see if it would be happy again when she finished.

  5 />
  DEAD ISSUES

  Sunday afternoon Old Lucy thought they'd finally come to get him. He was sitting in his chair by the window, looking out across the street when he heard the police cars. Minnie Devine was at church. The noise they made wasn't a siren anymore, it was a panic noise.

  It started out a long ways away, and then got closer, like a heart attack. There was two of them, then three, maybe more. Lucien was glad Minnie wasn't here to see it, he'd worried her enough, not eating. He came to the table, but he couldn't eat. He felt too tired.

  He thought maybe he ought to get dressed, but he guessed they'd tell him what to wear. The noise got louder, until it seemed to be coming from the kitchen. He felt himself trembling.

  He'd never been in jail before, never even been in the hospital. "Well, boy," he said out loud, "it's all comin' to settle now."

  In the week since he'd killed Leon Hubbard, Lucien had come to think of the boy and himself in it together. The last couple of days, he'd found himself talking to him, guiding him through what was happening. He felt friendly toward him, and when he thought of him that way it took the pressure off what he'd did.

  He got up out of the chair, feeling heavy and tired, and pulled his jacket off the hat tree. He thought it would be cold where they'd put him. He put the jacket on and stepped out the front door, wearing his slippers. He didn't want them coming into Minnie's house to get him.

  He stepped outside, and one of the police cars came around the corner, making that panicky sound that seemed to match his heart. He thought they'd made a mistake when they went past him, but there was another car right behind, and it went past too. And then a third one. And then the children from the neighborhood was all running and skating toward Broad Street, where the police had finally stopped.

  It came to him that it was the Korean. The Muslims had finally settled with him. He sat down on the steps and waited. The children would be back soon and tell him what happened. It was likely they shot him in the night.

  The Korean would have been asleep in the doorway, they wouldn't of even had to get out of the car, just slow down, roll down the window, and shoot. The Korean might never of even woke up. That's the way Koreans was.

  He shook his head, thinking about it. There was things that God meant to happen, he believed that. But there was also things wasn't decided until they came around, and the Korean had gave up his family and his house to wait for them. He thought again that the Muslims probably come for him at night. That's the way they was.

  He wondered how long the Korean had been sitting there before somebody noticed he was dead, and how many people noticed it before somebody called the police. It didn't make no sense, sittin' there waitin' for them to kill him. It didn't make no sense that the Korean didn't have a plan of his own. Everybody dies, he thought, it's all settled in the end, but it's no sense in waitin' for them to come by in the night.

  A few minutes later, one of the children came back from the Korean's direction. She was a wild girl, never paid no attention to her mother. Lucien knew everybody in the neighborhood from listening to Minnie over the last week. Thirteen, fourteen years old, she already been pregnant. "Clorese," he said, "what all them police doin'?"

  She had a pinch of chewing tobacco under her lip and a scar from her nose to her ear,'and she looked him over like he was For Sale. "They offed one of them Ko-reans," she said.

  "When they did it?" he said.

  "I mind my own bi'niss," she said.

  "That's what I heard," he said. She shrugged and began to walk away. "The police be askin' questions?” he said. He wondered what he'd say if the police asked him.

  "You askin' all the questions," she said. "All they doin' is cleanin' him up off the sidewalk." She shrugged. "He didn't give no fuck if he died. They's some people around like that."

  Lucien saw that she meant him. "I mind my own bi'niss," she said.

  He sat on the steps, and in fifteen or twenty minutes an ambulance came around the comer, screaming like there was something left to do, and it stopped up where the police cars was. There was still a crowd, but it didn't have a bloody spirit. He could tell that from where he was. It was just a Korean.

  He thought of the boy again, and the way the blade had felt up under his chin. He worked his whole life, nobody ever tried to take nothin' away from him before. At least they never tried where he couldn't get around it. So he'd picked up the pipe, and the feeling when he'd hit him had went all the way down to his shoulder, solid as a bag of cement. "It wasn't all your fault, boy," he said. "You was takin' more than you knew."

  He looked down the street, trying to see if Channel 6 had the Action Cam live on the scene, but it was too far to tell. He saw them carrying something from the street to the ambulance, though. He guessed it was the Korean. Then the ambulance left, and the people hung around the spot.

  They was still there when Minnie Devine come back from church. She was wearing a light blue hat with webbing that come down over her face. "How was the services?" he said.

  She said, "Reverend asked for you, said was you sick."

  "What'd you say?"

  "I said you was out of sorts."

  "What'd he say?"

  "He said Jesus was good for that." She noticed then he was sitting outside in his slippers. "Lucien, what come over you now?"

  "I heard the noise," he said, "and there wasn't no time to get dressed." She made a face, but she didn't say anything. He looked back down the street, where she had come from. "Did you see the police carry him off?"

  “I seen it," she said. "I couldn't do nothin' but seen it, all the children they got runnin' around blockin' things up. Nobody goin' to church no more. .. ." She looked at him.

  "They must of finally shot him in the night," Lucien said. It wasn't like him to think so much about other people's business. He guessed that's what happened when you quit work and didn't have no business of your own.

  She shook her head. "Ain't nobody shot that Korean," she said. She started up the steps past him, but he reached out and touched her hand. She saw he didn't understand. "They didn't do nothin' to him," she said. "He died by hisself."

  She went past him into the house, hung up her coat and hat, and put her church Bible away in the drawer where she kept it. She went into the kitchen and began to fix a chicken for dinner.

  "He just died by hisself?" he said, close behind her.

  The voice startled her, but she answered without turning around. "All by hisself." she said. "I believe that's what he wanted."

  "They ain't nobody wants to die sittin' in a doorway," he said.

  "Then what else was he doin' there, Lucien?" she said. And when he didn't answer, she went back to fixing the chicken.

  * * *

  Shellburn sat dead still.

  She'd hung up on him. She'd said the place in Maryland wasn't hers, he'd said it could be, and he'd felt her moving away then, even before she'd hung up. The more he thought about it, the worse it seemed. He went over it again, getting so lost in it that when the phone rang he thought he was saved. Only it wasn't Jeanie. "Richard? It's Billy."

  Shellburn sighed.

  "Is it a bad time? I can get back to you later." Billy was always worried that it was the wrong time. The boy must have been born premature. "I got a call from T. D. is why I'm calling you."

  "What'd he want?" Shellburn said.

  "You," he said. "He wanted to know if you'd seen the Daily Times."

  "I've seen it every day for twenty years," Shellburn said. "It's beautiful, tell him."

  "It's the God's Pocket thing," Billy said. "We got your construction worker dying again. Tuesday we wrote he was killed on a construction job and today we got him dying in a traffic accident at Third and Fitzwater. He says you could of prevented the whole thing .... "

  Shellburn said, "He's trying to blame me?" He shook his head in the empty room.

  “The way he sounded, he was getting heat from somewhere," Billy said. "And you know if he's getting heat, he's
going to hand it to somebody else. They already fired some girl only been there a week."

  Shellburn said, "That sounds right."

  "What he said was, the neighborhood's losing its faith in the Daily Times." Billy said.

  Shellburn laughed out loud. "Fuck, what does it say?" Billy Deebol read it to him and waited. ·

  "You want me to read it again?" he said. Shellburn hadn't said anything, he was putting it together with Jeanie on the phone.

  "Once is enough," he said.

  "T. D. wanted you to call him," Billy said. "He says he wants you to go out there and straighten it out, like you were supposed to do."

  "Fuck T. D.," Shellburn said, and saying that, a column began to come to him, in a shape. He bought a paper at the bar where he ate dinner—four beers and an egg sandwich—and then he drove over to the office. The whole place was empty on Saturday night, quiet. He sat down in front of his typewriter and thought of ways to start it. Thinking of Jeanie reading it, thinking of T. D. reading it. He was breaking his hardest rule: you don't let anybody else into it. If you did, it always showed. The only person you could imagine reading it was yourself, and if it didn't make you cringe, then you could go ahead and write it.

  The truest thing in the world was that you showed who you were writing a column. He said that at his lectures, and they always took that to mean politics or how you feel about the death penalty. Which had nothing to do with it. There were as many dick shrivelers that wanted to ban nuclear sites and love the brother as there were that wanted to bomb Russia. It was almost incidental, what you had for issues. But how you saw things, how physical things went into your eyes and what your brain took and what it threw back, that told who you were.

  "Until the coming of New Journalism," he wrote, "you only got to die once in this city, even if you came from God's Pocket." He read that over a couple of times, then changed "coming” to "advent."