Joe

by Larry Brown

  Curt shook his head. “I ain’t seen him in about two weeks. I reckon he’s gone back to Texas to hang sheetrock. Melba said she don’t even know where he is.”

  “I wish to hell I knowed where he is. He owes me some damn money.”

  “He ain’t never paid you that yet? Damn. I figured he’d done paid you by now.”

  Joe drained the can of beer in his hand and tossed it into the boat, which was fourteen feet long and already three-quarters full of cans. “I can’t catch up with him,” he said. “If you see him, tell him I want to see him.”

  “I’ll tell him. What you fixin to do?”

  “I don’t know. Reckon Henry and them’s got a game tonight?”

  “I don’t know. The sumbitch won’t never tell me when they gonna have one no more. After I took a bunch of money off him he won’t. Bastard’s gonna make me mad sometime and I’m gonna whip his ass is what I’m gonna do.”

  “He might shoot your ass, too. George’ll shoot you in a goddamn minute.”

  “They ain’t gonna shoot nobody. They ain’t gonna shoot me.”

  Joe got himself another beer and opened it. He pulled out his cigarettes.

  “Let me get one of them off you,” Curt said immediately.

  “You the bumminest little fucker I ever seen,” said Joe, but he gave him one.

  “I just ain’t had no way to get to the store.”

  “You just too lazy to walk, Curt. Where’s Bobby?”

  “Still in jail, I reckon. I heard you got into it with Willie Russell other night.”

  “Naw. He kept fuckin with me and I just slapped the shit out of him was all. He was drunk. Runnin his mouth. “You know how he is.”

  “I’m surprised somebody ain’t done killed him by now.”

  “Somebody will.”

  Curt sipped his beer and looked out across the yard.

  “You know, though, I don’t think he’s been right at all since he mashed his balls off.”

  “Shit. I don’t believe he mashed em off.”

  “You don’t?”

  “I don’t. I’ve heard he’s got one ball and I’ve heard he mashed em both off, but I don’t know.”

  “Satch said he believes he’s queer.”

  “I don’t believe he’s queer neither. I just think he’s too fucked up for anybody to have him. That’s why you don’t never see him with a woman. Ain’t no woman’ll have him.”

  “I had a cousin one time like to lost his dick,” Curt said. “Zipped it up in his zipper. You know how you’ll do that when you’re little.”

  “Oh, hell yes. It’ll just about make you shit on yourself.”

  “He was grown, though. Zipped it up too fast and got some of the skin caught in it. And messed around and let it get infected before he went to the doctor. He like to went crazy over it. Thought they’s gonna have to amputate his dick. They had to take him down to Whitfield for a while. His dick like to rotted off.”

  “Well, what’d they do?”

  “His daddy told me they did a skin graft on it. Said they took some skin off his leg and sewed that on it.”

  Joe leaned back and sipped his beer and crossed his legs, gave off a little shiver.

  “Off his leg? Why hell, it don’t look like that would work. I don’t believe I’d want no skin off my leg on my dick.”

  “You might if they’s fixin to amputate it.”

  “They could amputate mine right now for all the good it does me,” he said. He got up suddenly. “Reckon when Franklin’11 be back?”

  Curt was eyeing the three remaining beers mournfully.

  “It ain’t no tellin about him,” he said.

  “He probably don’t even remember me letting him have it. Was drunk when he got it. I hate to have to chase down somebody that owes me money.”

  “I know it,” said Curt. He started drinking faster. “When you seen old Van House?” he said, stalling for time.

  “I ain’t seen him,” Joe said, and stepped down into the yard. “You tell Franklin when he comes back I want my money. I have to work for it just like everybody else and I ain’t rich.”

  “I’ll tell him. Let me get another one of these beers off you before you go.”

  Joe barely glanced at them. “Hell, get all of em. I got some more in the truck. Only reason I’m drinking beer’s cause it’s so hot.”

  He was almost to the truck when Curt came down the steps, two of the beers in one hand and another freshly opened in the other.

  “You ain’t fixin to go to town, are you?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. He went on around and got in the truck. “I don’t know where I’m fixin to go.” He hated now that he’d stopped.

  Unshaven, his hair wild, his clothes rumpled from sleeping in them, the man in the yard leaned in the open window of the truck to further detain this visitor, this rare company. “Let me ride up town with you,” he said.

  Joe looked at him, his eyes unreadable behind the dark glasses, his hand on the key and his foot on the clutch.

  “You got any money? I ain’t gonna buy your damn beer all night long.”

  “Oh, I got some money,” he said. “I got a check I can cash.”

  He was already opening the truck door and sliding in. There were three packs of cigarettes on the dash and a little cooler in the floor. He slammed the door and sat there, ready for takeoff.

  “Let’s see it,” Joe said.

  “What?”

  “Sumbitch, if you ain’t got no money you ain’t goin with me.”

  Curt set his beer in the floor and did a quick frisk of his pockets, grabbing himself all over with spread fingers.

  “It’s in the house,” he said. “Let me run get it.” He got out and started across the yard. “Wait on me!” he yelled back.

  Joe sat shaking his head, thinking: Fuckass around here all evening waiting for him to get ready to go.

  After a minute, Curt stuck his head out the screen door and said: “You got time for me to shave right quick?”

  “Hell naw. You come get your ass in if you’re goin. I’m fixing to leave.”

  He mashed the clutch and cranked the truck and revved the engine. Curt came flying out the door with a fresh shirt flapping around him, an envelope in his hand.

  “I got it,” he panted. He got back in and said: “I’m ready now. I got to stop somewhere and cash it, though.” He picked up his beer and reached into his shirt pocket. “Goddamn. Left my fuckin cigarettes in the house. Wait on me just a minute.”

  He opened the door and Joe let out on the clutch. They went rolling through the yard.

  “Wait a minute. I got to get my cigarettes.”

  “Just smoke some of mine. They’s some up on the dash.”

  Curt grabbed a pack and closed the door as they moved through the yard and down the driveway and out onto the road. Joe looked at his watch.

  “Don’t start no shit and expect me to finish it, now. What kind of a check you got?”

  “It’s a goverment check,” said Curt. “I can get it cashed anywhere. Grocery stores’ll cash em.”

  “What you doin with a government check? What are you drawin from the government?”

  “Aw, it’s Mama’s. I always cash hers for her.”

  “How much is it?”

  “A hundred and thirty dollars. It’s a pension check.”

  “Pension.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Your mama draws a hundred and thirty dollars a month?”

  “Yeah. Plus, she draws Social Security and welfare, too.”

  “What’s she doin lettin you have it?”

  “She don’t know I got it.”

  Joe shook his head. They went up the gravel road with the rich red mud squishing under the tires. Curt kept up a running commentary, expansive now with the promise of more beer and a night on the town. The woods thinned and opened up into green hills dotted with horses and cows and cultivated land gleaming wetly under the weak sun trying to break through the clouds. Tarp
aper shacks and shabby mobile homes, actually no more than campers, lined the road, the yards full of junked autos and stacked firewood overgrown with weeds and pulpwood trucks with the windows smashed out and the rear ends jacked up and propped on oil drums, El Dorados with mud halfway up the sides parked before porches of rough sawmill lumber. Here and there were school buses fixed up with furniture and beds on the inside, the awnings made of splintered fiberglass, and new brick homes within sight of firetraps where carports were cluttered with dogs and three-wheelers and washing machines.

  They turned onto the blacktop, and mud began slapping off the tires onto the undersides of the wheelwells. The bottomland lay untilled and dark with water, the brown rows of the past year’s crop still standing in the new grass threatening to bury it. Stumps the size of Volkswagens had been bulldozed into piles in the corners of the fields.

  “They gonna plant any of this this year?” said Joe.

  Curt tossed his can out the window and reached for another one. He felt of it. He looked at Joe. “You got any cold beers in that cooler?”

  “They’s a six-pack iced down in there. Goddamn, you done drank all them?”

  “Naw. I’m gonna swap one out with you.” He put the lukewarm beer in the cooler and took out a cold one and popped the top. “Hell, it’s been too wet,” he said. “It’s rained on it just about ever week. They tried cuttin part of it about three weeks ago and mired the tractor and brought a dozer over to pull it out and mired it. I reckon it’s still settin there if somebody ain’t done stole it.”

  They turned at a crossroads and headed back up into the hills.

  “I thought you’s goin to town,” Curt said.

  “I am. I got to stop and see Henry first and see if they’ve got a game up tonight. I need to win me a little money if I can.”

  They crossed the bottomland, the long rows whipping past and wheeling by like spokes. Butterflies wafted and flitted through the lush growth at the roadsides, snake doctors hovered like gunships. The road brightened and the shadow of a cloud stood immense and dark and held part of the land in shade, a line of demarcation halfway across the fields.

  “Look at that,” Joe said. “We got to try and work tomorrow if we can. It’s costin the shit out of me to lay out.”

  “Shit. If I had your money I’d throw mine away.”

  Joe grunted. He steered the truck between the holes in the road and tried to find some music on the radio. He’d been meaning to get a tape deck but he’d never gotten around to it. He punched a button and got WDIA.

  “Damn it,” he said. He twisted the dial around, and the radio snarled and whined while quick-speaking Spaniards exhorted their wares and somebody screamed CASH MONEY and twangy garbled country music flared and diminished amidst roaring and fuzz and static until finally he snapped it off. The road twisted through stands of pine, hills of hardwood timber green as Eden. They went down into a smaller bottom where one old unpainted house sat back from the road, with dead cotton stalks all around it, even in what should have been a yard. They pulled into a short driveway.

  “You goin it?” Joe said, after he’d killed the motor.

  Curt looked dubiously at the house.

  “Naw. I don’t want to go in. I’ll just set out here.”

  “Suit yourself,” he said, and he got out and slammed the door and went up the steps onto the porch. He knocked on the screen door and stuck his head inside.

  “Henry? Hey, Henry.” Somebody answered and he stepped into the hall. The house was built with a breezeway through the middle and rooms on each side. The old boards bowed and sagged under his weight. Joe opened a door on the right but there was nobody in there. Somebody said something again and he went to the back of the house. The door he opened belonged to the kitchen, and three men stood in there at a table, hacking and slicing on the carcass of a skinned deer, two holding, one cutting, all of them trying to keep it from sliding onto the floor.

  “Now how’d y’all know I wasn’t the game warden?” he said.

  “Hell, they all out on the lake robbin trotlines,” said Henry. “You know anything about cuttin up a deer?”

  He looked at the thing doubtfully.

  “I’ve cut up a few. I ain’t no expert.”

  He leaned up against the wall and surveyed the mess on the table. It was covered with cut hair and caked with enormous clots of blood.

  “What are y’all tryin to do, cut it up into steaks or what?”

  Henry waved his knife. He was an old man with long white hair, overalls, no shirt or shoes.

  “We just trying to get it so we can eat it. Thought we might cut it up in some roasts.”

  “I don’t believe I’d cut it all up into roasts,” Joe said. “Course you can do it any way you want to. I’d cut most of it up in steaks if it was mine.”

  “Well, you know how to do it? Stacy said he knowed how to cut it up and like to cut his fuckin arm off a while ago.”

  A drunk grinned and lifted a beer in a hand swathed with bloodsoaked paper towels. All the men were brothers.

  “Hell, let George cut it up,” said Joe. “George could cut it up if they give you enough time, couldn’t you, George?”

  “I could do as good as they doin,” said the blind brother.

  Joe unleaned himself from the wall and walked over to the table. “I hate to get a bunch of blood on these clothes. I’ll cut the loins off for you and show you how to cut up the hams. You can make roasts out of the shoulders if you want to. That’s about all they’re fit for anyway.”

  They stepped back.

  “Well, go to it,” said Henry.

  “You got a sharp knife?” he said, and laid his cigarettes down.

  “I got a filet knife right here,” said Henry.

  “Let me see that, then.”

  He had them turn the deer on its side and then he tested the edge of the blade against his thumb.

  “This is the best meat on it right here,” he said, and he put the tip of the knife just behind the shoulder and sank it into the meat.

  “Just hold it steady, now,” he said. He pushed the knife down until he felt it stop against the first rib and drew it down, slicing the backstrap away from the vertebrae all the way down to the hip.

  “Where did y’all get this deer?”

  “It was hung in a fence up at Mr. Lee’s old house a while ago,” Stacy said. “Me and Henry was comin back from town and seen it. I come home and got George’s pistol and shot it.”

  “What was it, a buck or a doe?”

  “It was a doe. Big old doe.”

  He cut in deeply just behind the shoulder and just ahead of the hip, then took the knife forward under the meat and sliced toward his belly with the tip until he could grasp a corner of the loin and pull it up. He worked the blade back and forth against the ribs, pulling the meat up in a single strip and keeping the blade close against the bones. It came up smoothly, the white sinew wrinkling over the dark burgundy flesh until he passed the knife all the way down the ribs and held in his hand a thick strip of meat almost two feet long. He laid it on the table.

  “That’s some good stuff there,” he said. “Look here.”

  He placed the top side down and cut and squared off the end and pushed the scrap aside with the knife. He cut off a loin steak two inches thick, then cut halfway through it again, so that when he spread it with his fingers it had doubled in size.

  “That’s how you do it. Butterfly steak. That’s the best meat on it.”

  He put the knife down and went over to the sink and started washing his hands.

  “Y’all can cut up the rest of it. Just saw the hams off and slice it all up in steak. I got to get on. When you gonna have another crap game?”

  “We gonna have one tonight,” Henry said.

  “What time?”

  “I don’t know. When everbody gets here. We got to get through with this deer first. We got to get some freezer paper somewhere. Reckon John Coleman’s got any at his store?”

 
“Yeah, he’s got some. He keeps it.”

  “Well, just stick around. Stacy and George can finish this.”

  Joe picked up his cigarettes and lit one. He leaned against the sink.