by Cold Blood
She thumped down the stairs. He heard her opening and closing cupboard doors and throwing stuff around while talking to herself. “Where is it? I just had it out.” She ran back upstairs and climbed under the covers; it was cold downstairs and her feet were icy. She tucked them under Jack’s legs.
Jack looked over her shoulder while she flipped through the slender volume. “What’s this?”
“St. Brice High yearbook.”
“You went to school with him?” Jack nodded toward the television. Trip was still on the screen, but Jack had hit the mute button.
“Yup.” She pointed to his photo. In the sea of grinning teenage faces, Trip’s stood out for its dark seriousness.
“What made you think of him? You don’t see any of your old high school friends.”
“All-class reunion coming up. Anniversary of the founding of the school.”
“You’re going without me, I hope.”
“Without you,” she said. “But I would have remembered Trip regardless. Hard to forget. He asked me to the homecoming dance one year.”
“Didn’t know your standards were so low.”
“Funny.” She elbowed him in the ribs. “Didn’t go with him. Didn’t go at all that year.” She stopped paging for a minute and stared straight ahead. Remembering. “The guy I should have gone with… Denny… we had a fight. Made up after homecoming. Were planning on prom. He died that winter. With three other boys. Car accident. They’d been drinking. Roads were slick. Went off a curve and into a lake.” She turned to the first page of the yearbook and showed Jack the dedication. A photo of four boys in letter jackets. Grinning. Arms thrown around each other’s shoulders. Below that, lines from Longfellow:
We see but dimly through the mists and vapors;
Amid these earthly damps
What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers
May be heaven’s distant lamps.
Jack: “Four kids. Big loss, especially for a small school.”
“Horrible. I’ll always regret missing that homecoming dance with Denny.”
“What was the fight about?”
“Denny and his buddies beat up Sweet because he asked me out.”
“Sweet?”
“Trip’s nickname. One of the nicer ones. Another was Motorhead. Trippy. Freak.”
“Nice school you went to.”
“Small schools don’t have a lot of choices when it comes to cliques. If you don’t fit into one of a handful of groups, then you don’t fit in at all. Sweet was one of those kids who fell between the cracks. His creepy personality didn’t help him out. Check out what he wrote in my yearbook.” She turned to the last page and pointed to a neatly printed message in the upper right corner:
What goes around comes around, beautiful. Sweet Justice.
Jack’s eyes widened. “Damn.”
“Yeah. I’m sure he blamed me for the beating. I never had the courage to talk to him again, tell him it wasn’t my doing.”
“Maybe the reunion.”
“I don’t think Sweet’s one of those sentimental alums who misses the old gang.”
“What was your nickname?”
She turned to the section of the book with individual student photos and pointed to a line under hers: “A.k.a. Camel Rider, Potato Head and Betty.”
“I get the first two. What’s with Betty?”
“Private joke between me and Denny. He was a closet Flintstones fan. He’d shut the door to his bedroom after school and watch. He told me I was his Betty. I gave him a Flintstones coffee mug. He kept it in his car. Filled it with change. I know it sounds stupid, but I wanted it back when they recovered his car. It was gone. Probably sitting at the bottom of the lake.” She closed the yearbook and set it on her nightstand.
Jack shut off the television and handed her the remote. “Put this away, too. Bedrooms should be reserved for screwing and sleeping.”
“In that order?” She threw the remote on her nightstand.
“Bet your ass in that order.”
“Talk’s cheap, baby.” She slid down so she was flat on her back. He reached over and shut off the bedside lamp. He peeled off his boxers and leaned over her and pulled her tee shirt over her head. Jack crawled on top of her. She loved the weight and warmth of him; it was like being buried in sand at the beach. Hot and heavy and wet.
A passing barge pushed waves against the boat, but they didn’t notice. The rocking seemed part of the rhythm of their lovemaking.
SIX
WHAT A RUSH it had been. Being fawned over. Fought over. “I get the first live shot… Bullshit. I was here first… I set this up before you got here.” Treated with respect. Treated like someone with a mind. Called “Mister” every time he turned around. “You’re doing fine, Mr. Trip… Thank you for your time, Mr. Trip… How can we reach you later, Mr. Trip?” He was finished with all the television interviews by a little after ten o’clock Sunday night. Finally got to pull his hat back on. They didn’t go for his hat. Told him to take it off for the on-camera interviews. They said they couldn’t see his face when he had the hat on. He took it off to please the reporters. Especially the pretty women. All his life—with one exception—just the homely ones went for him, and then only when they were lonely. He’d slept with a lot of ugly, depressed women. He liked being liked by attractive women, and being liked by more than one person at any one time was a complete novelty.
The only other time he’d been showered with that sort of group approval was when he found that little girl’s necklace. A few years earlier. A Wisconsin town, outside of Eau Claire. The maintenance engineer for a manufacturing company said he’d buy a couple of five-gallon buckets of degreaser and a bunch of mops if Trip would help comb a farmer’s cornfield for a missing kid. Reluctantly, he went along. A hot August afternoon, and the corn was tall. He’d bent over to tie his shoes in between the rows and found the child’s jewelry. Then the cops found the kid. Alive. Then it started. Newspaper interviews. People stopping him on the sidewalk and shaking his hand. Strangers in the bar slapping him on the back, buying him beer. At first he was terrified of the fuss. Tried to numb his nerves with booze and pills. Took someone out one night when he wasn’t prepared. He wanted to leave town right away, but there were too many reporters waiting for interviews. He didn’t want to raise suspicions. He got scared when a cop noticed his cracked windshield the next day, but a couple of people stood up for him. Said the crack had been there all along. He’d never had anyone stand up for him like that. Not since Snow White. That’s when he warmed up to the attention, discovered it wasn’t so bad if it was positive. The town’s mayor, who owned a trophy shop, even gave him an award with his name engraved on it. A bowling trophy. The message said: Thank you, Justice Trip. You bowled us over with your help. Probably a leftover from a bowling tournament, but Trip didn’t care. He’d never before won a prize for anything.
MOST of his thirty-six years, he’d been afraid of any sort of attention. Self-conscious about his height—nearly seven feet—he walked hunched over. He stared down because looking up never got him anything but whispers and stares. Even in kindergarten he was big, and he was so afraid to draw attention to himself he’d pee in his pants rather than raise his hand and ask to go to the bathroom. He finally trained himself to go without water all day. Everyone expected him to play basketball when he got older, but he got tangled in his own legs. He was smart, but doing well in class would have drawn attention. He worked at mediocrity and kept his grades to C’s. Worst of all was the teasing about his stutter. The more the other kids teased, the worse it got. He’d try to go all day without talking. Then he’d hear: “What’s wrong? The c… c… cat g… got your t… t… tongue?” When he’d come home from school crying because of the mean kids, Pa would tell him they’d get theirs. He’d say, “What goes around comes around.”
His pa was tall, too, but he carried it well. Trip didn’t know what his ma was like; his pa had burned all her pictures right after Trip was born. All he knew
was her name. Anna. Whenever he asked about her, his pa would say, “Ran off with your big sister. That’s all I know.” Same words every time. All Trip knew about his big sister was her name. Mary. Two names. Anna and Mary. The only history Trip ever had of his immediate kin. When he was ten, he found a photo in a kitchen drawer, under the paper liner. Nothing written on the back. He assumed it was his sister. Black hair. Nice skin. Dark eyes. She was in a frilly dress. His pa found him holding the picture, ripped it out of his hands and shoved it in the sink.
“That my s… s… sister? That Mary?”
His pa’s answer was to turn on the garbage disposal.
Most days he and his pa got along. They were both neat. Kept the house fine. Neither one could cook worth a damn; ate a lot of TV dinners and instant oatmeal. Certain holidays, such as the Fourth of July and Flag Day and Halloween, his pa dressed in a white jumpsuit and passed out Fudgsicles from the front porch while “All Shook Up” blared from the cassette player. He’d make Trip wear a cowboy outfit: hat, vest, bandanna, spurs, holster, plastic six-shooter. That way his pa had his two favorites on the porch: Elvis and cowboys. The routine was supposed to be for the neighborhood kids, but the women came around, too. Pa charmed them. Called them all “ma’am,” whether they were junior-high girls or grandmas. His pa craved an audience the way Trip feared it. He was relieved when he finally outgrew the cowboy clothes.
Trip couldn’t decide if his life would have been better or worse if he hadn’t spent his childhood in the shadow of Graceland. His pa sold bootleg Elvis Presley paraphernalia at a strip mall in Memphis, right across the street from Graceland. Bumper stickers. Snow globes. Shirts. Hats. Action figures. Backscratchers. Salt and pepper shakers. The shop was a weird place to be when Elvis was alive. Always full of tourists talking about The King. The King. The King. When he was real young, Trip thought they were talking about Jesus because he’d heard about The King of the Jews in Sunday school. He thought Jesus starred in Jailhouse Rock and sang “Love Me Tender,” and wondered if The King was crucified and went to heaven, why was he still living in the big house across the street. The shop got weirder after Elvis died, and busier. His pa struggled to keep up. The stock of souvenirs multiplied nearly overnight; floor-to-ceiling snow globes and backscratchers. The stuff flew off the shelves, but the fans doing the buying weren’t happy anymore. They were all bawling when they came into the store, and his pa would bawl with them. Trip didn’t like any of it; he hid in the stockroom. His pa would yell for him: “Make yourself worthwhile.” The store became a jumbled mess.
Then his pa hired Snow White.
Cammie Lammont had skin the color of eggshells and black hair that reached down to her butt. She walked into the shop carrying a suitcase and wearing sunglasses and a wide-brimmed straw hat; she could have been a starlet on the run from her fans. Her dress was spray-painted on. She was nearly as tall as Trip, but she carried herself like a queen. Nose in the air. Back straight as an ironing board. She ripped the Help Wanted sign they’d posted in the shop window and brought it over to his pa. “Meet your help,” she said, and slapped the sign on the counter. When she took off her sunglasses, the expression on his pa’s face was strange. A combination of surprise and fear and curiosity. She moved in with them. Took the spare bedroom. She couldn’t cook and she didn’t know spit about Elvis, but she managed the inventory and did the bookkeeping. She saved the shop. His pa gave her a baseball hat on her six-month anniversary. She eyed the cap with suspicion. “What’s this E.P. stand for?” Trip thought his pa was going to pass out.
She was Trip’s first crush, and she knew it. She’d laugh and tell him, “For all you know, I’m old enough to be your mama.” Cammie was one of those women who slathered on the makeup and kept her age a big secret. She told him she’d run away from home because her ma’s boyfriend tried to get into her pants, so Trip suspected she wasn’t that much older than he. Still, she didn’t dress or act much like a teenager and she had a hard edge. She didn’t laugh or smile much, but she was good to him. Called him “Sweet Justice” or “Sweet.” She didn’t mind his stutter. Told him she used to stutter. He didn’t believe her; to his ears, she articulated like a radio announcer. They’d go to movies together. Cartoons. She loved anything by Walt Disney. One night some older kids from school saw the two of them together. She caught them giving Trip dirty looks. She grabbed his ass in front of them and kissed him hard on the mouth. One of them dropped his popcorn. Trip loved her for it. She took him to a motel after the movie. He was fourteen. Not long after, Cammie and Pa had an argument. Trip heard them yelling at each other one night, then Cammie crying. Trip rolled over and went to sleep. Cammie was one for dramatics. He figured the fight was over the bookkeeping. They always fought over the bookkeeping. Pa thought Cammie was doing a little skimming; he kept her on anyway. Whatever she was holding over his pa’s head, Trip was glad for it.
SHE was with them about a year, until she was struck by a car one autumn night while walking home from the shop. She’d left Trip’s pa behind to close up. Dark side street. No witnesses. Paramedics said she might have lived had they gotten to her a little sooner. Had the driver stopped and summoned help. The police never caught who did it. The only clues were two quarters wiped clean of prints. One placed on each side of her head. Cops guessed whoever killed her left the money as some kind of final insult, like she was a two-bit whore or something. Trip imagined the accident. Played it over and over in his head. In his mind’s eye, she was run over by a car filled with jealous teenagers like the ones at the movie theater. Sometimes they were headed to a dance and other times they were coming back from a football game. Always ended the same, though. Snow White sprawled on the street. Coins tossed out of a car window. Laughter coming from the car as it squealed away.
His pa was as broken up as he was. Trip wondered if they’d had another fight that night and that’s why she stomped off. When Trip asked him what had happened, the response was nearly the same as when he asked about his missing ma: “Ran off. That’s all I know.” His pa shipped her body down to Baton Rouge, where he said she had family. Trip wanted to go to the funeral but his old man told him they were headed in the other direction. They sold everything and moved to Minnesota—about as far north as they could drive without leaving the country. They kept a few Elvis souvenirs. A snow globe with a miniature of Graceland inside. A box of cigarette lighters engraved with a line drawing of Graceland. A clock with The King’s swinging legs as the pendulum. A green street sign that said Elvis Presley Boulevard. Trip made sure he took her E.P. hat; it carried her smell. Herbal shampoo and Charlie cologne.
His pa got work cleaning a Catholic high school in St. Paul. The principal gave Trip free tuition. Wasn’t any better or worse than public school in Tennessee. Like back in Memphis, the other students teased him about his stutter. They had the additional ammunition of his pa being the janitor. His accent was the biggest, easiest target, however. Between classes, the meanest ones yelled stuff down the hall in an exaggerated southern drawl. Yew-all this and yew-all that. How yew-all doin’, b… b… boy? Yew-all eat g… g… grits, b… b… boy? He worked on it and toned down his accent, but there was nothing he could do about his stutter. He’d had it all his life, since he could remember. Even in his dreams he stuttered. In elementary school, the nurse tried to get Trip some speech therapy, but his pa wouldn’t go for it. Said it would be a waste of time because stuttering ran in the family. Nothing to be done about it. Trip wondered what his pa was talking about; he didn’t know any relatives who talked like he did.
At home, Trip hid under the hood of a truck. All the neighbors in the trailer park brought their beaters to him and he worked on them until they purred. He loved it. Trucks didn’t care whether he could dribble a basketball or what he sounded like when he opened his mouth. All they recognized was his skill and genius at work on their engines and bodies. Behind the wheel of a truck, up so high off the ground, he didn’t have to look anybody in the face. The money he earne
d fixing trucks he spent on his own trucks, and on drugs and knives.
He loved fancy knives. Sharp and flashy, the way he wished he could be in public. His pa thought the knives were a waste, wanted him to get into hunting. “Buy a shotgun. Something worthwhile,” he’d tell Trip. His room had piles of catalogs with knives and swords and daggers in them. He ordered hundreds of them so there were always packages with wonderful surprises arriving at his door. Samurai swords. Battle-axes. Throwing knives. Daggers with dragons carved on the handle. Machetes. Folding knives. Stilettos. Bowie knives. A set of jackknives with Confederate officers etched on the handles, including General Robert E. Lee. He surrounded himself with his collection; they were his closest friends since Cammie. They hung on the walls of his room and rested in different wooden cases under his bed. At night, he’d spend hours getting stoned and listening to Black Sabbath and getting those blades sharper. Loved putting a good edge on a blade while listening to his music. Sharp metal and heavy metal.
SEVEN
MURPHY GOT UP before Jack to go for a run. Pulled on some sweats and a stocking cap and her shoes. Went out onto the dock, shutting the door quietly behind her. While she stretched she searched the decks of her nearest neighbors and saw signs of cold weather preparations. Covers draped over grills. Patio flowerpots emptied. Those who were planning to stay the winter but didn’t have well-insulated houseboats were already wrapping their exteriors in plastic. She’d recently beefed up her insulation to avoid doing that this year—one bit of practical maintenance she’d managed to accomplish. She wondered which of her neighbors would tough out another winter on the river and which would lock up their boats and get an apartment downtown. The cold didn’t get to them as much as the isolation. Even in the summer, not many people lived on the river full-time. In the winter, the numbers dropped to a hardy few. The wildlife artist and his photographer wife would stay; they utilized the scenery for their work. The architect would stay; his well-equipped boat even had a Jacuzzi in the master bath. She hoped Floyd Kvaal and his three-legged dog, Tripod, would stay another winter. Kvaal was a garage-door salesman and a musician. In the summer, he paddled his canoe around the neighborhood and played the sax. Last winter, the neighbors took turns having him play at their houses.
