Big Bad Love

by Larry Brown

  I put my face in my hand, and I cried, and promised myself that I would try to do better, for me, for everybody, for the kids especially. I hoped the promise would last.

  41

  The money started running low again, due to drinking and smoking too much and being a generous guy with drinks for drunks who had no money. There were people I knew who could make their way to a bar with no money, but sit there and drink by careful and calculated cunning. I couldn’t do it, but I knew plenty of people who did. I decided to write interesting stories about them, stay home, drink less. But when I got to writing all those drinking stories, it made me want to get drunk myself while I was writing them. So what I wound up doing was writing them in the bar, with my pencils and notebook and papers all spread out everywhere. And I’d sit there and smoke and have cigarette ashes thumped all over everything, be smoking like a fiend, scribbling all these words. They knew I was trying to put out some good stuff and nobody messed with me. They were proud of having me write in their bar. They didn’t know any published authors. But they knew one unpublished author.

  There was a little chickadee who started working in there. My heart sank the first time I saw her, because I knew I could never have her. She was just too good for me. She had long brown hair and she had on a jogging suit bottom with a red striped T-shirt over the top. She had a shy way of smiling when she talked to the other guys around the bar. Her beauty broke my heart.

  I was deep into some things about two guys fresh out of the penitentiary and some other guys moose-hunting with secret dopers in the Great Pacific Northwest and another little thing about dead children who got up and walked at night, when she came over and asked me what I was writing. This was after she had seen me do this for a couple of nights in a row.

  “I, uh, I’m writing some stories,” I said, and shielded my work with my hand. “Could I get another beer?”

  She smiled her shy little smile and got the beer for me, smiling while she was reaching in the cooler, smiling when she put it up on the bar in front of me. I laid two dollars on the bar. She took one and pushed the other one back.

  “Happy Hour,” she said, and I looked and it was four o’clock.

  “Thanks,” I said. I folded the other dollar and put it in her jar.

  For the next thirty minutes I wrote. I heard a couple of carpenter types come in a few times and wonder aloud what that motherfucker was doing over there in the corner, but I didn’t pay any attention to that because it was to be expected. I’d paid for my space and I figured I could use it like I wanted to, as long as I wasn’t dealing dope or selling insurance. I was trying to decide whether or not to let a story have an ambiguous ending, and also fretting over tone and symbolism in one particular piece, when she came back over.

  “You’re Leon Barlow, aren’t you?” she said.

  I just barely looked up. I knew I couldn’t get over with her. “Yeah, I’m him,” I said, and looked back down at my papers.

  “You know Monroe, don’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s the one told me you wrote. He was talking to me the other night about you. He said you were a real good writer.”

  I didn’t say, Well, the world’s out to fuck me. I said: “Well, I haven’t had anything published.”

  “I’d sure like to read some of your stuff sometime. I love to read.”

  I looked at her. That sweet little mouth. Fine little ass. Smooth skin I knew like my hand had never felt. Marilyn’s was lumpy and had scabs on it, stretch marks and cellulite and pones on her feet, plus she stunk up the bathroom something terrible. I figured this dainty thing didn’t even have to shit but just farted little fragrant poots when she had to. I didn’t know what a real dick would do to her. Probably kill her. I looked back down at my work.

  “I don’t let nobody look at my stuff except Monroe,” I muttered.

  42

  Alisha died right after that. They said it was crib death, SIDS, but I don’t think that’s what it was. I thought it was punishment to me for giving up my wife and my family and all the wrath of God howling after me all the days of my life to the ends of the earth. I wanted to go out into the forest and live like a madman with leaves for clothes and live in a hole in the ground and throw rocks at anybody who came near.

  My whole family was there. I was stunned with all the marijuana and liquor I could stuff into myself and still remain standing. I signed papers, made promises, heard prayers and screaming and gnashing of teeth. Cried till my eyes were sore. I took on a pain that would never leave me, never let me rest until years had passed, and then it would always remain like lead that had settled in the bottom of my heart, a little sad face smiling up, reminding me always, even when I lay on my deathbed, Alisha, born wrong, Alisha, child of God, Alisha a soul wafting out across space with her tiny hands clapping.

  43

  I got drunk and thrown in jail. They let me out, I got drunk again, they threw me in again. I had ample time to reflect upon my situation. It hadn’t been DUI, just public drunk, and then it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t happened to smart off to the arresting officers. They got me going down the street the first time and then coming up the street the second time. Same street.

  There were quite a few jailbirds in there, people doing long time. Everybody had the option of doing community service and reducing their sentences by half, but hardly anybody wanted to. I guess they were sorry, plus they had two squares a day and television, game shows mostly. I put up with it for two days, and then I told them to let me go pick up some trash or something.

  They put me to helping an old lady cook food for the prisoners in a kitchen halfway across town. She seemed suspicious of me at first, but I kept my nails clean and washed my hands a lot and said ma’am to her, and before long she was smiling and laughing and telling me about her grown kids. We talked a lot. I told her about Alisha. She let me eat all the time, and there was good stuff in there she fixed for me that the prisoners in the jail never saw. Ham, steaks, catfish. I washed pots and pans and wore a white apron and sat on the back steps sometimes, smoking cigarettes while the free people walked down the sidewalk next to the bank.

  There was a bar just down the alley that happened to be mine, and I’d sit out there watching the people going in and out, free as birds. I could see the exact spot where they’d nabbed me. There was a large Dempsey Dumpster that the cops hid behind and leaped out and grabbed drunks from, guys just trying to make their way back to their cars and sleep it off. It was the same method they’d used on me. She saw me sitting out there one afternoon and asked me what I was looking at.

  “I’m just watching those people,” I said.

  I could feel her standing behind me. Her husband had died of a heart attack the year before, the year before he’d been going to retire. They’d been planning on opening a small cafe together in their retirement years. They’d had it planned for over ten years. Now she was cooking two meals a day for the county.

  “Why don’t you go down there and drink you a beer?” she said. “Might help you get rid of the blues. If they come check on you I’ll tell them I sent you to the store for me.”

  “I ain’t got any money. They took it all away from me in the jail.”

  A five-dollar bill slid down over my left shoulder and stopped right in front of my pocket. I twisted my head around and looked at her. She was smiling down on me like an extra grandmother. I put my fingers on the money and held her hand for a moment.

  “My baby died, too,” she said. “Forty years ago. I can handle it for a couple of hours.”

  I wanted to cry because I felt so damn good that there was such kindness in the world. Instead I got up and took off my apron. I hung it on the nail where I always hung it and looked at her. She was stirring stuff on the stove, and the steam was rising off her pots and pans.

  I went to her and hugged her shoulders. She shook her head, patted me on the hand. I went out the door and down the alley, looking both ways for cars, looki
ng all ways for cops from the jail. I’d found out that once they got after you, they tended to stay after you, and I didn’t want them after me any more.

  The Happy Hour light was on. Beer was a dollar. If I drank fast I could get five down in a couple of hours. On the other hand, if I was obviously drunk when I went back to the jail, I’d probably get the nice old lady in trouble, might even cause her to lose her meal contract with the county. It was a dilemma, and I hated dilemmas. I sat down on a bar stool and waited for somebody to wait on me.

  There weren’t many people in there. A couple of guys in business suits, a couple more in carpenter’s overalls. Two middle-aged women with sunglasses who pulled them down and looked over the tops of them at me when I sat down. I wondered if it would be possible for me to make a break for it while I was out on my own like that. I only had three more days to serve, which actually meant a day and a half if I stayed in the kitchen with the sweet old lady. I was tired of listening to all the shit in the jail every night, though, lying there on that one-inch mattress and looking up at the ceiling. There were also some homosexual things going on in there at night that I didn’t particularly like to hear.

  Sweet thing popped up from behind the counter. She grinned real big when she saw me.

  “Well, hey,” she said. She came over and laced her fingers together on the bar. “Where you been so long?”

  “Jail. Can I get a Bud?”

  She got the bottle for me and gave me four back from my five.

  “Monroe told me you were in jail but I didn’t believe him. I thought he was just playing with me. What’d you do?”

  “Walked down the street. Had a little too much to drink. Got smart with a fucking officer of the law.”

  I was looking everywhere but at her, and she was steady watching me. I didn’t know why. I knew I looked awful. I hadn’t had a shave in about nine days and I knew my teeth were beyond funky. I knew I had to get my shit together pretty soon because this wasn’t getting it, no sir.

  “So how much longer you got to go?”

  “Couple of days. Three, I think. Can I get another beer?”

  I shouldn’t have been drinking that fast, but I was. At that rate I could make Happy Hour live up to its name. She got the beer and pushed away the dollar. I said to myself, Hmmmm.

  She went back behind the counter and started doing some other stuff. I had some generic cigarettes and I lit one of them. It tasted like a selected blend of dried horse turds. I didn’t want to go back to jail. I didn’t see how I could. I thought again about making a break. It would have been easy. All I had to do was walk out of town and stick out my thumb. But I knew they’d finally get me back, and it would probably be worse when they did. I sat there drinking. I drank two more. The little sweet thing kept smiling at me, but I’ve always somehow had this look on my face that makes people stay away. I don’t mean for it to be there. I don’t even know it’s there. But people have told me they’ve seen it before, and that it doesn’t look friendly. If I knew how to get rid of it I would.

  Finally I went on back to my kitchen. I had one dollar left. I gave it to her. She just smiled and patted my hand.

  44

  I laid on my rack at the jail that night and looked at the ceiling some more. People had written things all over it with either cigarette lighters or matches. Ugly things, sexual things, the ugliest things you could imagine and some you couldn’t. They never turned the lights off in there, let them stay on twenty-four hours a day. It made it very hard to sleep.

  I didn’t feel like a criminal, but here I was in with criminals. Some had stolen, some had killed or nearly killed people, some like me had just been caught publicly drunk. I would have written something if I’d had anything to write on, but finally I just went to sleep.

  45

  They let me out a couple of days later. I felt about as shabby as I’d felt in a while, unshaven, dirty, shamed. Nobody told me not to come back any more. I knew they were memorizing my face so they could nab me again the next time I even thought about fucking up.

  I walked outside. It was hot. I’d neglected to ask them if they’d towed my car, so I decided to walk back to the parking lot and see if it was still there.

  It was a long way over there on foot. I almost got run over a few times. Everybody seemed to be going somewhere in a hurry. It was dangerous to step off the curb that day.

  My old car was sitting all by itself in the middle of the parking lot. The tires were low. Somebody’d ripped off the radio antenna. It looked sort of sad and forlorn. I was just hoping it would crank.

  I opened the door and got in and sat down. The seats were burning hot. I put the key in and turned it over, and it went waw, awaw, waw. I let it rest a minute. Both of us had been through a lot. I was afraid I’d have to be jumped off, but I didn’t have any cables, and there didn’t seem to be anybody familiar around with a fresh hot battery. I said Lord, please.

  I turned it over again and it coughed and farted and finally ran. I sat there revving it up. The bar across the street was closed. I wondered if the little sweet thing would be there that night. I wondered if I went home and cleaned up and showered and shaved and cut my fingernails and brushed my teeth, if it would be possible for me to get over with her. Then I looked at myself and said Naaaaaaa.

  I looked at the gas gauge. It was damn near on empty, and I only had two dollars on me. However, I still had some of Uncle Lou’s money stashed.

  I limped out of town, almost whipped, my head hanging, and my hopes not too high. I wasn’t completely beaten. I just needed a breather in between rounds.

  46

  My house hadn’t burned down or anything while I’d been gone. There were a few notes from Monroe tacked on the front door. One of them said WHERE YOU AT? I’VE BEEN BY HERE THREE TIMES ALREADY. LET’S GO DRINK A BEER ONE NIGHT, MONROE. Another one said, I HEARD YOU WERE IN JAIL. I AIN’T GOT ANY MONEY OR I’D COME GET YOU OUT, MONROE. The last one said, LYNN SAID SHE SAW YOU THE OTHER DAY AND SHE SAID YOU SAID YOU WERE IN JAIL. IF YOU DON’T GET OUT PRETTY SOON I’LL SEE IF I CAN BORROW SOME MONEY FROM MAMA AND COME GET YOU OUT, MONROE. P.S. IF YOU WERE IN JAIL HOW COME THEY LET YOU GO DRINK BEER?

  I threw the notes in the trash and looked in the refrigerator. There just happened to be a couple of cold ones in there. I wondered who Lynn was and then realized she must have been the sweet little thing I wanted to murder with my dick. I got one of the beers and sat down on the couch and pulled my boots off. Just as soon as I did that, I realized that I had about nine days’ worth of mail stacked up in my mailbox. I left my beer on the coffee table and went down the driveway, my feet tender on the gravel, saying Ouch, damn, shit. The mailbox was crammed full of shit, a lot of it manila envelopes of my own fiction that had found its way home. There were letters from my ex-wife’s lawyer, letters from the funeral home, letters from the tombstone people. There was even a letter from the jail that had beat me home. I scooped it all out, didn’t examine it too closely, and carried it all back to the house, hot-footing it over the gravel, saying Oh, fuck, oo. My feet were too tender. I never did spend enough time going barefooted. Marilyn used to, though. Her feet were tough as hell. She could walk over nails, gravel, anything. She could lay a fucking on you, too. She really knew how to do it. She really knew how to get pregnant, too. She was about six and a half months gone when we finally got married. Her daddy wanted to shoot somebody, I think. On the other hand, I guess he was just glad to have somebody finally claim her.

  I got back to the house and collapsed on the couch with my mail, sucked down a big drink of the beer, and tossed out everything that didn’t pertain to my writing. The first thing I noticed was a manila envelope that I had sent off with a story inside that had come back without the story inside, which I knew meant something. I didn’t know if it meant what I was hoping it meant. It might not have meant anything at all. But it just happened to be from Ivory Towers, home of the great or maybe not-so-great Betti DeLoreo. I was in a quandary as to opening it
. I was scared to open it and scared not to open it. I had self-addressed the thing, true, and the great et cetera had sent it back to me minus my story. I could tell the story wasn’t inside it. I held it up to the light, but I couldn’t see a thing through the manila. What did it mean? Had she taken my story? Was everything fixing to be worth it? Had I broken through? Or had they just lost my story and were writing to apologize for it? It was hard to stand the pressure. I ripped the envelope open. There, inside, in Betti DeLoreo’s own handwriting, was a note to me:

  Dear Leon,

  I like your story a lot up here but I’m having trouble convincing the senior editor that we ought to publish it. I know this is very unorthodox to do this, but I want to keep it around here a while and nag him every chance I get. The only thing is, if I nag him too much, he’ll get pissed off and reject the story. I have to work on him real slowly and bring it up gradually. He’s trying to write his master’s thesis right now and things are very bad for him. However, your story, “Raping the Dead,” is a big favorite around here and a lot of people who don’t have the power to accept or reject a story like it. If I owned this magazine we’d publish it. Please have some patience. Your work is difficult and complex and everybody doesn’t understand it. I think it scared some people and some people are jealous of it too and some are failed writers or struggling writers and it’s just very hard to explain. I don’t like seeing the infighting that goes on here, and I hate to see good work by an unknown author rejected in favor of bad work by an established one. I want to give you all the encouragement I can. You’re too good a writer to remain unknown forever. You have to hang in there and if this tale does get rejected then you just have to send it out to somebody else. Write me, please. Or send something else. If this one doesn’t make it, maybe another one will. Please don’t give up.