A roll of thunder and the storm came stronger now. The wind pushed the rain beneath the covering in soft sprays and then Jack felt a sting in the back of his neck. The first sign that the bad one was coming. He put his hand to his neck and rubbed but the pain crawled. Up into his head and over behind his right ear. It had been ten hours since he washed the pills down the drain and it was coming now, like he expected it to but not right now. Not goddamn now, he thought and he shoved his fingers into his neck and squeezed his eyes shut and said little prayers of hope that it would hold off until he could find a way out of this place. But it kept crawling, past his ear and up into his eyes, and he gritted his teeth and dropped to a knee. Moved his hands to the sides of his head and pressed until his hands shook.
“Quit playing,” she said and then she told Ern to get the shovel and that other thing. He left them and she told the other two to wait right here. She reached down and took Jack by the arm. Helped him to his feet and led him inside and then he went down to both knees. Doubled over with his head on the floor and his body writhed as he fought the fire in his head. She took a beer from the bin and then she opened up a table drawer and took out a bag of pills.
“Get up,” she said.
He wrestled with it. Raised his head off the floor. His eyes squeezed shut but he opened them when he heard the beer open. She picked a red pill and a blue pill from the bag. Placed them in the palm of her open hand and extended her hand to him. He shook his head but she did not withdraw, she only held her hand there patiently until he gave in and moved his mouth closer to her hand and when he opened his mouth she dropped them in. She gave him the beer and he drank and swallowed and then she dropped the bag into her housecoat pocket.
“I keep waiting for something different from you but you’re more fucked up every time I see you,” she said. She moved to the window and watched the storm. “And you ain’t got no damn money cause if you did you’d be giving it to me. You ain’t got nothing to get no money with. Mr. Bank Man comes out here sometimes to get rubbed on and he says you can’t get no more from that place that woman gave you. I believe you maybe had it. I heard you was running pretty hot down in Natchez. But had ain’t the same thing as have.”
Big Momma Sweet then moved over to the table and picked up one of the knives. A long straight blade. A stainless steel handle. She held the pipe in her mouth and slid the blade between the rough skin of her fingertips. Ern returned and stood in the doorway. A shovel in one hand and the branding iron in the other. Jack put his hands on the arm of the sofa and raised to his feet. He held his hand over his eyes as if shielding from the sun and looked at her. At the men and the shovel and the branding iron.
“Turn the iron on, Ern,” she said.
Against the wall was a short and square safe Ern had found sunk down in the riverbank. He leaned the shovel against the wall and then reached inside the open door and lifted out a clothes iron and he plugged it into the wall. He set the clothes iron on top of the safe and pressed the brand against it.
“Don’t really need no fire,” Big Momma said. “We long since figured that out.”
Jack lowered his hand from his eyes and said I can get you paid.
“Untrue.”
“I can. I’ve got some more stuff I can sell. A whole shed full of furniture I took out of the house.”
“Listen to yourself.”
“I swear to God.”
“It’s too late,” she said.
“Goddamn it,” he said and he walked a small circle. He pressed at his temples with his middle fingers hoping to neutralize the pain long enough to get out of this.
“What’s wrong with him?” Ern asked.
“Nothing more than usual,” she said.
He pressed his temples harder and harder. Bent over and up again. He moved to the sofa and leaned against it and the pain held steady with the pressure.
“Just give me a day or two,” he mumbled. “I won’t go anywhere.”
“Nah. You won’t. But you also won’t have my money so I figure the only way for me to get it back is the oldfashioned way.”
He moved his hands from his head. Squinted at her and said I can’t do that no more.
“How come?”
“Can’t you see me? My damn head will explode.”
“You been fighting, I heard.”
“Those weren’t real fights and you know it. Not like you want to do. And I was full of dope.”
“You can get full of dope again,” she said and she held up the bag of pills. “And I think you will because your choice is this. Fight or don’t fight. You might get hurt with the first option. You will get hurt and worse from the second.”
“I’m not going to fight. Tomorrow I’ll bring you whatever money I got and I’ll figure out a way to get you the rest. The only reason I’m here now is to stay with Maryann.”
“Until one of you dies.”
“If you want to put it that way.”
She snapped her fingers and the men were on Jack. He swung wild but only grazed the top of Ern’s forehead and then they had his arms pinned and Ern busted Jack again and again in his ribcage while he screamed from the scorching pain in his head and neck. Ern cracked him once across the jaw and the blood came from his mouth and he slumped in the men’s grasp. Big Momma said hold it right there and Ern stepped back.
She removed the pipe from the corner of her mouth and set it down on the table with the knife. Ern grabbed the branding iron from the top of the safe and the men let Jack down to his knees, but they kept his arms held behind him.
She strolled across the room. Took the brand from Ern. She stood back from Jack and studied him as if he were some creature she had never seen before. Then she moved close and knelt beside him. Leaned her face close to Jack and said where do you want it. The blood trailed from his mouth and dripped onto the scarred plank floor. His breath came in small huffs of desperation and she was a blurred figure, his eyes watery and unfocused from the pain behind them, and he did not answer and only dropped his head.
She twirled the dollar sign under his nose.
“Hold his head,” she said.
The men held his arms tighter and Ern wrapped his strong hands around Jack’s ears. She moved the iron to the side of his neck, a slither of smoke past the corner of his eye, and he began to struggle again. His eyes wide as Ern pressed his hands against the sides of Jack’s head and the iron inching closer. A dribble of spit and blood down the side of his mouth and neck and then he let go. The tension falling from his body. His eyes to the floor. And he whispered. Stop. Please stop. I’ll do whatever you want.
Big Momma paused. Leaned her mouth close and spoke into his ear in a low, lustful voice. I wish you knew how bad I want to put you out of your misery. How bad I want to let them take you out and set the dogs on you. I wish you were the Jack I used to know but you ain’t no more. But for one night you will be. She held the iron in her thick fingers and eased it closer to his neck. Take this with you she said and she touched the edge of the hot brand to the skin. His eyes coming alive and he jerked but the men held him and she pressed the heat against his skin until she had made a sliver of a burn.
She inched the branding iron away. Watched the seared strip of skin turn red. A new scar to join the others. She then reached into her housecoat pocket and removed the bag of red and blue pills and she grabbed Jack’s hair and raised his head. Set her eyes close to his and said I don’t give a shit if your head explodes or if you catch on fire. You got one more fight in you cause that’s the only way I’m gonna get what I need out of you. I don’t want to hear no more fairy tales about getting me some money now and getting me some money later. You know it’s bullshit and what’s worse than that is I know it’s bullshit. You ain’t no good dead. You ain’t much good alive either. But you’re gonna fight. That little burn on the side of your neck ain’t nothing. It’ll be the full brand next time. That little headache you think you got now ain’t nothing. Screw me again and you’ll find out wha
t hurt is and then after I’m done you’ll help feed this sweet land of ours with your sorry skin and bones.
She looked up at the men holding him and they twisted his arms back further. He cried out in pain and she let him scream until she was satisfied and she told them to let go. Jack collapsed on the floor. Facedown next to Skelly, his expression frozen in pain and anguish for all of eternity and his eyes halfopen and looking at Jack as if to say you will be here soon. Jack gasped in agony and sucked in the wet and sour smell of death and he covered his mouth and nose with both hands and rolled away from the body.
Big Momma dropped the bag of pills on the floor next to him and then she stood. Straightened her housecoat across her bosom and belly and she patted her afro. “What’s today, Ern?” she asked.
“Wednesday, Big Momma.”
“Sounds to me like Friday night would be a good night for Jack’s comeback. We’ll take tomorrow to spread the word. I just hope you ain’t dead by then. What you think, Jack?”
He answered her with hard coughs.
“Go somewhere and take those pills. You better come back out here ready to put on a show.”
“And don’t try to run nowhere,” Ern said.
“He ain’t running. That’d be the same as putting a gun to his own head. He can’t sit and watch his momma die if he runs away neither. Now get this piece of shit out of here,” she said and the men reached to grab him again. But she clapped her hands at them and said that’s not what I’m talking about. She grabbed the shovel that leaned against the wall and she dropped it on the floor next to Jack, the shovel clanging and knocking against his back. And then she told Jack to get up. Wipe your own blood off my floor. And then get that trash you brought in here out of my house. Go put it in the ground. Deep where them damn dogs can’t dig it up.
13
HE DRAGGED SKELLY OUT INTO THE NIGHT. OUT BEYOND the graveyard and into the sunflowers that were beaten down by the rain. The storm had shifted again and the rain was straight and strong and slapping against the wet earth and he sloshed through the bottomless night like some creature returning wounded to its den.
He dropped the shovel next to the tarp and sank down in the mud. The drone of the storm and he imagined the rain to be some lubricant for his bones or a healing shower that would wash his hurt and sins away. He began to rock and there was thunder and he imagined himself sinking into the earth in a slow and peaceful draw as if returning to the nothing from which he had come. And as he imagined the great fingers of the world reaching up from the mud and pulling him under he gave himself up to the notion he had rejected his entire life. I don’t need help and whatever you got I can take it and there will be no prayers. This idea of clemency he had fought with anger and deadened with pills and supported with stubbornness. The storm bore down and he wrapped his arms around himself like he had done as a child when there was no one else to do it and for the first time in his life he called out for help.
He cried out into the black and flowing night to whoever or whatever might exist in this cavernous expanse of space and sky, cried out to the mother of nature and the breath of the world or to the idea of some infinite thing that could pull him up from his depths. He cried out for love and forgiveness and he begged for help. Please help me. Please. He dropped his arms and his head back and the water washing the blood down his neck and chest and washing the mud from his outstretched hands and he cried and called out with the despair of a forgotten child.
After rising from his knees and after burying Skelly. After making it to the truck cab and swallowing two pills and after tires spinning and slipping along the slushy road. After finding pavement and making it to the liquor store and after paying the frowning clerk with bills dripping with brown water and after making it to the motel room he stripped off his wet and mudcovered clothes and toweled his hair and stared at himself in the mirror and tried to find which muscles would give him the best chance of surviving one last fight. His body still lean and his shoulders still hard and his fists like stones but he saw only the body of a man who seemed to have been thrown down a flight of stairs and then dragged up to the top and thrown down them again. For years. He had begged for help as he knelt in the pit of night but he only saw deliverance in the pint bottles and the pills she had given him and the empty room.
He turned off the lights and sat down naked on the ribbed carpet. Shades of blueblack across the room. His back against the bed. He unscrewed the cap of the whiskey. He swallowed a pill and he drank and the lightning flashed behind the curtain and through the thin walls he heard the racket and howls of either a wrestling match or fornication. The bottle to his mouth and whiskey trails down his chin and he didn’t let the bottle touch the ground until it was empty and then he slung it against the wall. The bottle didn’t break but bounced and he crawled over to it and slung it again and it shattered. The noise from the other side paused at the crash but then cranked up again with more ferocity than before.
The room suddenly became strange to him and he held out his arms to steady himself. Another snap of lightning and he wanted to escape, stepping on broken glass as he crossed the room and opened the door. Naked in the rain and moving along the strip of motel rooms and calling out for Maryann because that was the only name he could remember and beating on doors and windows with limp fists. Lights coming on and eyes between separated curtains and threats shouted as locks clicked and reclicked. He stumbled and fell and stayed on his hands and knees. His forehead down to the concrete and all dark and wet and then the four hands on him. Lifting and dragging him to his room and throwing him on the bed and a voice commanding him to stay your ass right there or I’ll call the law and then the door slamming.
He sat up in the bed. Got to his feet and threw drunken punches into the air. Shifted his hips and lazily ducked and dodged. Kicked and gave a forearm and then grabbed the imaginary head of the imaginary opponent and delivered a headbutt that shattered the imaginary nose. Another array of punches and he lost his balance and fell against the table and crashed into the wall. The bottle on the table toppling and falling into his lap. He raised a shaking hand to the curtain and pushed it back. The water ran down the large window in crooked silver streaks and he opened the new bottle and drank.
His mind spun in circles of memory. Flashes of a whiteframed house and a shutter blown loose in a winter storm and the clap clap clap of the shutter banging against the house in the cold wind. A woman on her porch swing and another woman in the dark corner of a bar and a busted face against a dirt floor and the hot and blinding sun of a day spent catching frogs along a soggy creek bank. Flashing lights of the great floors of casinos and the cross smile of a slickhaired dealer and a baseball in the air and a boy in a red uniform trying to run under it. In his drunk and drugged stupor his life passed by in ghosts and apparitions and he searched for something specific to hold on to but his mind flowed like a river that both brought visions to him and carried them away. His head fallen against the window pane and his eyes out into the storm and the only thing he knew was that he had once been a boy and then he had become a hitchhiker through his own life. He stared at the silver trails of rain against the window and from somewhere far behind his eyes came the shrill cry of a hawk.
14
ANNETTE COULD NOT SLEEP. THE RAIN SLAPPING AT THE camper from all sides. A lantern on the small table. Sitting in the chair next to the table with her knees drawn up under her chin and the orange tip of a cigarette moving in the dim light and the claustrophobia of the limited space that she only felt when the weather turned nasty. The door was locked and the window above the table opened a few inches to let out the cigarette smoke. Next to the lantern a red pen she had been using to draw stars on the palm of her hand.
She had taken a shoebox from the tiny closet and set it on the table. And then she had placed the bulky envelope Baron had given her on top of the shoebox as if to create a witness stand where she could coerce the money into giving her the truth. For the last hour she had been
talking to it. Explaining to it that she knew it was there for a reason. I know you have a story. We all have a story but some are better than others and you and me both know there’s a tale twisted up in you. She would lean forward in the chair and put her mouth close to the envelope and pronounce her words with deliberation. She would pace around the small space waving her hands and tossing her shoulders, creating a nonverbal animation she hoped would trick the money into raising its head from the envelope flap and confessing.
She tried different tones of voice and emotional pleas and when the envelope would not talk back, she would lay her hands on it. Hold the cigarette in the side of her mouth and squint from the smoke up into her eyes and then whisper a prayer of coincidence from her pursed lips. We are bound by the same things, O God. You have delivered a message with strength, O God. You have delivered an answer to a great question, O God.
But what the hell is it?
For an hour she smoked and listened to the rain and prayed over the envelope and talked to the envelope and waited for answers and there was no thunder. No lightning. No rattle from the natural world that she felt like she needed to drive her toward a conclusion. Spiritual or otherwise. The storm gained strength as the night dragged on and her frustration escalated with the wind and the rain. And then there was thunder and then there was lightning and she smoked cigarette after cigarette while this unmistakable symbol of fate sat silently on top of the shoebox and as the wind began to rock the small camper she pleaded for the envelope to say something. Anything. And then she had to get out.
She opened the camper door and walked into the storm. Held her long black and purple hair up with her hands and felt the cool rain against her neck. An instant relief in the dark summer night. And in the storm she let go of her frustration and realized that the answer would come from the envelope when it was time. There was always a time for what was supposed to happen in her theological world and she felt guilty for trying to pressure the envelope into giving itself away, but she did not hold on to the guilt for long. There will be no more questions, she said into the night. No more questions. No more inquisitions. She twisted her hair up on top of her head and she closed her eyes. Just do what you have always done, she thought. Look and listen and be ready for the answer when it comes.
The Fighter Page 9
