Alfie Carter

by BJ Mayo

  My turn came, and the boy I was running with had thick glasses, tall and lean. He looked somewhat like a parrot with the glasses on his face. He was a little knock-kneed and did not wear socks with his track spikes. His hair was blondish red and we were quite a sight, as my hair was flaming red. Coach said, “Okay, little red and big red, take your marks.”

  The other boys laughed. He shot the gun and, to my surprise, big red could run like a deer. I stuck with him through the 300-yard mark and then pulled slightly in front of him. We were giving it all we had when we crossed the finish line with him tipping me out at the end. I thought I was going to throw up but managed to hold it in because no one else was puking. When the other boys had finished, we all gathered around the timekeeper coach to hear the results. He announced that he thought we had the makings of a 1,320-yard relay team and called out the times in order of best to worst. He began: “Tillman 39.50, Faulkner 39.70, Carter 39.72, and Brazille 40.14. Alternate will be Burris at 41.50.”

  I was ecstatic I was on the team. The top time was Efron Tillman, number two was the boy that looked like a parrot with his thick glasses, Robin Faulkner. Then me and Brazille. “Congratulations,” Coach said. “You will work out together throughout the school year. That will include you, Mr. Burris. One of these guys could break a leg, and then we will need a fill-in.”

  We all shook hands and introduced ourselves. We found out Mr. Burris was actually Billy Burris. Robin and I hit it off and paired up immediately. He told me he lived on Sycamore Street downtown. His father was a truck driver and his mama stayed at home. I told him my dad was a roughneck and my mama stayed at home as well, and did a little ironing on the side. He did not know what a roughneck was, so I explained it to him. It was a fella that worked on a drilling rig in the oilfield.

  Efren and Teo seemed okay that we were part of the team as long as we remembered our places. I think both of these boys were rich or something, because when their parents came and picked them up, they were driving fancy pickup trucks. These looked like the big kind you pull cattle or horse trailers with. Certainly a far cry from the 1963 used Ford Falcon my dad picked me up in. I always thought it was pretty cool, because it had an SMU sticker on the back window.

  Efron did lend me the courtesy of telling me goodbye before he got into his parents’ vehicle. He rolled his window down and said, “See you tomorrow, Little Red.” And with that, the name stuck like mortar to a brick. The other boys waiting for their folks laughed and began calling me Lil Red and Robin Big Red.

  I looked forward to the daily practices, to the point that it was difficult to focus on my schoolwork. I still hadn’t figured out how I was going to continue my weekend yard-mowing and cow sale–sorting jobs, with track meets being on the weekends. I would haul my father’s old Montgomery Ward lawnmower around our country neighborhood with a gallon of gas and knock on doors to see if someone would hire me to mow their grass. Sometimes I would make up to fifteen dollars a weekend mowing, and pick up another eight dollars or so if I was one of the first four boys picked to work at the Saturday cattle sale. If you were picked, they gave you a wooden cane or a hot shot, and your job was to move cattle from alley to pen as the auction went on. You had to have a social security number and beat the other boys to the mark to get hired at the sale.

  Anyway, I always gave Mama at least half and sometimes three-fourths of what I made, to help with groceries. She did not like taking my hard-earned money, but it was money enough to help buy a chuck roast or a couple of chickens at the store.

  Dad tended to drink up most of what he brought in from roughnecking. He never seemed to question where she got the money to buy a few extra groceries. I guess he thought the money fell off of trees.

  She took in ironing from time to time, to help ends meet, but it was never enough, especially when it came to buying clothes for herself and me. Dad was making $7.50 an hour and working well over eighty hours a week, but we never seemed to have enough to eat. He would disappear on Friday night, if he even came home, and we did not see him until Saturday evening. He would sleep it off and haul us to church on Sunday morning, saying amen to just about everything the preacher said, sitting all dignified with his clip-on red tie and black suit. I don’t guess anyone in the church knew what a sot he really was but me and Ma.

  I thought about trying to find something after track practice, maybe pumping gas at a filling station, but you probably had to be sixteen to do that. I was fifteen and would not turn sixteen until the summer. I was pretty good at finding places to make money, especially the poor-boy kind.

  It became quickly evident that we had the makings of something special with our newly formed 1,320-yard relay squad. Even with the evidence of some quirky personalities, everybody had lungs and legs, even if mine were skinny and white with little hair. I was starting to get a little hair on them, but not nearly as much as Efron and Teo. Coach quickly adopted our nicknames, which somehow seem to stick for life. He never called me Alfie, only Lil Red. Robin was to become “Big Red,” Efron became “Effie,” and Teo became “Tea-Cup.” Coach was the only one that could get away with penning the new nicknames on Efron and Tea-Cup. One thing was for sure: it kind of made you feel like you were in something special, because you had a nickname. Even if we were poor, I was part of something.

  Coach Bettis seemed to be getting a little excited as the squad prepared over the course of the next three weeks. Once we truly started getting our legs and lungs, we started to bond as a team. Even the alternate, Billy Burris, seemed to enjoy the camaraderie, but never seemed to truly fit into one of the “four,” as we liked to think of ourselves. In fact, we became somewhat inseparable while at school, particularly on a meet day. Our times were good enough to place us in the top two or so in most meets.

  We began to win nearly every meet we went to. Everyone’s time was trimmed down nicely to the 38.5 to 38.8 range. Having four guys that could run in the 38s was fairly unheard of back in the mid-seventies, but by gosh there we were. We won the city track meet my ninth-grade year, and had much to look forward to going into high school as sophomores. There, we would be competing for a leg on the mile relay team, which was often filled by seniors. We all took a vow that we were going to stick together and take all four spots on the mile relay. Pretty cocky for four freshmen.

  Effie’s mom invited the squad to the Tillman Ranch, south of Spring, for an end-of-school get-together. I did not have a ride out to the ranch, and was not going to be able to attend, until Big Red’s mom volunteered to come to our place and pick me up. Mama gave me permission to go, and made me promise I would be home before dark. The get-together was on a Friday afternoon after school, and if Pa held up to his normal tradition, he would not be home anyway. Mama would not have to explain where I was. He never found the time to come to any of my meets, and did not take much notice of the medals and ribbons I had pinned on my bedroom wall. His only competition was probably who could drink a beer the fastest at the bar. He was sure to win that.

  * * *

  Big Red’s mom came by our house at 4:00 on the afternoon of the Tillman get-together, and did not act like we were poor folks. She was polite when she came to the door and met my mama. We drove what seemed like an hour, and arrived at the beautiful entrance to the Tillman Ranch. The entrance to the ranch was a huge white rock archway, with the words Tillman Ranch embedded in the native rock. It had a cattle guard in the middle of it, and was really beautiful. I could see what appeared to be Black Angus cattle on both sides of the road. They had one thousand or so of them. These folks must really be rich, I thought. I knew a little about cows from working on Saturday mornings in the summer at the livestock sale. I listened to the auctioneer when he called them out.

  Running parallel with the main road to the ranch was a runway running north and south. There was an orange windsock on the south end and a large, white tin airplane hangar. Sitting outside the hanger were two small aircraft. I did not know anyone that had their own private runway and
planes. They must really be rich people.

  Big Red’s mom was nervous, with all of the cattle around, and was driving slowly. It was two miles or so to the main ranch house. I could see the Tillman brand on some of their cattle. It was a single “T” with a single line underneath it. The bulls we saw with the cows were massive and looked like they weighed a lot. They were not skinny cows, like the ones around our road. Their fences were made out of wire, straight and tight, not like the pallet fences down the road from my house, where Mr. Linch kept a few mixed-breed cows.

  I always daydreamed about being a cowboy with lots of land and cows. I loved working at the livestock auction; all you had to have was a social security number and get there early, and they would put you to work. They even wrote you a check at the end of the sale, with your name on it. We sometimes had to fight to keep our places, because there other boys would try to take our spots if they could.

  We finally arrived at the main ranch house, and to be truthful, I had never seen anything like it. Big Red’s eyes looked big through his thick glasses, so I couldn’t tell much about what he was thinking. But he had to be impressed. Our little oilfield shotgun house came off of a company lease and cost $2,200. Pa moved it in and set it down on cinderblocks. I think I heard him say that it had 868 square feet in it.

  The Tillman house was about twenty times as big as our house. It was built like a giant Spanish hacienda. White stucco with red Spanish tile roof. The front yard was about five acres of beautiful, carefully mowed and trimmed grass, with desert palms lining the driveway up to the house. The house was two stories and had a four-car garage built to match. There were two new vehicles under the roof, one Ford 4 x 4 Bronco, and one Chevrolet 4 x 4 Blazer. I did not know much about vehicle prices, but I guessed I was looking at over $50,000 dollars’ worth of them in one garage.

  Big Red’s mom slowed their car to a stop at the main house. Effie’s mom came out to greet us and invited us in. I had met her at our first track meet, and she and Effie’s dad came to every meet, whether it was in or out of town. They were both rampant supporters of the squad. They always had on fancy clothes that didn’t come from Montgomery Ward. I don’t know where they bought those kind of clothes, but they were fancy.

  She said that Effie and Tea-Cup were upstairs in the game room, playing pool. Big Red and I ran upstairs and into the game room. “Big Rade, Lil Rade, what it is?” hollered Effie, when we came through the door. “What’s up, cats?” He never said Big Red or Lil Red, he always put an -ade on it, making it sound like the -ade in Gatorade. Little Rade and Big Rade. Anyway, it didn’t sound so bad coming from Effie, in fact it kind of made me feel special, having a nickname. I sure did not know any other Big Reds or Little Reds. We shot a couple games of pool, and then went outside so Effie could show us the barns.

  There were four big barns to the east of the main ranch house. I guess with the prevailing south wind, the smell from the barn would not filter down to the house. There was a large set of cattle-working pens on the west end of the barns, with two large cattle-loading chutes for loading cattle trucks. It was quite an operation. There was an entrance made of large telephone poles, with one lain across the top. The wooden sign beneath it said “House Pens.” There was a large-horned cattle skull on each vertical post. I laughed to myself, thinking about my money-making cattle skulls.

  Mama was looking pretty teary-eyed, one Monday morning before I went to school. When I asked her what was wrong, she would not answer. I knew it was money. It was always money, or should I say, the lack of money. I made my mind up that I was going to find her some. When I came in from school, she was scouring the newspaper for ironing work, and laid the paper down to go fix us some soup. I picked up the paper, went and sat on the front steps, and began to look through the wanted ads.

  I tore off to the cotton field next to our house. I ran down the east turn row until I reached the mesquite grove next to the cow pasture. On the other side of the fence was the old, dead cow that had been there for the last two summers, bleached white by the sun, with a little black hair still on it. I climbed through the barbed wire fence and latched onto the head. It still had both horns on it. I chunked it over the fence and climbed back through. I grabbed it up and hurried back home. I lay it by the front porch and went in to wash up and eat.

  Mama said, “Where did you go in such a hurry?”

  “Nowhere in particular,” I said and smiled to myself.

  I ate my soup quickly and asked to be excused. Mama excused me but had a confused look on her face. I sneaked into the hallway, where the phone was, and called the number of the man buying cattle skulls in the paper. That same number was posted on a telephone pole near the cattle auction barns. I told him I had a really good cow skull, with both horns on, and he agreed to come out before dark and look at it. I hung the phone up and went outside, to pick a little hair off of the skull.

  The man arrived in an old Chevrolet truck about 6:00. There I was, standing there, holding the skull when he drove up. He saw the skull and offered me seventeen dollars for it.

  I took it as fast as he offered it. He said he used them to put turquoise and other pretty rocks on and sell at shows. He left and I walked into the house and gave Mama the money. She cried and tousled my hair. She called me her little man, kissed me on my cheek, and dabbed at her eyes with her apron. She hugged me for the longest time, and then held my face with her hands. It was not fun watching Mama cry and made me feel bad. Anyway, she could buy some good soup, baloney, bread, and pinto beans with it. We would get fat for a while.

  * * *

  We prowled around the barns for a long time. It was there we saw Efron’s brother hunkered over a gasoline can with a sack. He face was red. He was breathing in and out real deep. Efron slapped him on the back, hard, and said, “Get your ass away from that gasoline, you dopehead.”

  The boy looked up with eyes that did not seem to recognize who was talking to him, and went back to huffing on the bag. I had never seen anyone sniff vapors off of a gas can until then. It kind of scared me that someone would want to do that. They nearly made me sick when I was filling Pa’s lawnmower on my lawnmowing runs around the neighborhood.

  Efron said, “Hell, he’s hooked on that damn gas can like a calf to a tittie. He is a gasoline tittie boy. Ain’t that right, tittie boy?”

  He walked away laughing, but I wasn’t. We climbed up a ladder to the hay loft and jumped down to the hay-covered floor. It was piled up, ten feet deep and soft. This took my mind away from the huffing boy and was really fun. Big Red did a gainer off the top and landed on his back. Walking back to the main house, I had a sense of terrible foreboding about this place.

  Effie’s mom fed us at the main house. Big Red’s mama picked me up right before dark, and we made the journey to our little house. I really felt poor. At least we weren’t sniffing gasoline, like the rich folks were.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Beatrice sat quietly in her loveseat by the bay window. Tears moistened her dark eyes. She grieved quietly and often this time of year. Two days forward brought the anniversary of Patricia Jean’s death. It was always like an ocean wave approaching. She alone was never attended to by Alfie. In fact, she wanted it that way. It was always better if things were left unsaid and untouched. The long years passed by. Now, even after all these years, the old wounds began to open, and those distant memories resurrected themselves too routinely for what seemed like months. It was like a sprinkling of salt in an unhealed wound.

  Finally, just like her usual hard monthly, after a while the pain would dissipate. She knew that menopause would probably be very hard on her, if her monthly was any indication. She could envision tremendous hot flashes lasting for days.

  Here she was, alone again. Alfie taking off to the mountains like clockwork. He simply could not deal with it. Never could, and as far as she could tell, never would. He certainly never would talk about it or share his feelings. He simply held it all inside and said nothing. She knew that was
the real reason he went to the mountains.

  Of course, most men she knew were much the same way, except for the few she knew who were less coarse by nature. She remembered one she played hopscotch with when she was a child. He was a lot of fun. He was more like her than most of her girlfriends. They would hopscotch for hours in the summers.

  Beatrice often wondered what became of her friend Butch. She often wondered why Alfie turned out like he did. He was mostly raised by his mama, but he was a man. She loved him with all her heart, and had no greater respect for any man, but he was the hardest person she had ever known.

  Maybe he found some secret place and got drunk or found a woman. Maybe, perhaps, he had a secret woman in the area that she never knew about. For all she knew, he had fathered children with other women and went to see them every year.

  He never said. He just left, always returning in a week, sometimes two if he had enough vacation time built up. He never gave her his off-time. Maybe she didn’t deserve it. Who could blame him? She alone had deprived him of being a daddy. He certainly did not owe her anything.

  Every year, the same pattern prevailed, leading up to, during, and after the date of Patricia Jean’s death. The counseling she sought, at Dr. Lynn’s advice, never occurred. Alfie simply refused. “I am not a headcase. People lose babies all the time. Why in the hell would I want to pay money for some SOB to tell me I lost a child? I know I lost a child. I know it hurt like hell. I know we have gone on living. She ain’t here; we are. What else is there to know? I know we will never try to have one again. End of story, and don’t bring it up again,” most times storming out of the room. He would not speak for days until his pain receded, and then only speaking in short, tart phrases. It seemed like he never returned to his normal self until a week or so later.

  * * *