by Trey Holt
For a few moments, Percy stopped his rambling and sat on the end of the bed. Scoured his face with his hands once more and pushed his hair back again. Seemed in some odd way to be attempting to allow his words to catch up with him, so maybe he could begin to understand what he had said. He got up and made his way to the window, peered into the failing daylight. Smiled.
“He shouldn’t have jerked me down off that table. I even told me as he came toward me that it was the last time I was goin’to speak. He said he knew it was. You know who comes down there a lot?” he asked me.
As I had been much of the time during the last couple of months, I had been only half-listening. Pretending to listen more than actually taking part in the activity itself.
“Huh?”
“Do you know who comes down there a lot?”
“Umh-uh,”I shook my head.
He took one last look out the window and then produced two cigarettes from the pack in his sock. A book of matches. He handed me a cigarette then stretched to light it. Took a drag off his own.
“That Smithson girl,”he said.“I guess her mother or her father must send her down there almost every day to get some fresh produce or something.”
“Really?” I said.
“Yeah,”he said.“It’s funny how I’ve been livin’here off and on for nine years and I’ve never really talked to her. Her or her brother.”
“Yeah, they’re kind’a funny people,”I said, beginning to return to my previous state of stray attention. Then it came to me what he had said, the span of time he had identified. As many things are when you’re embroiled in and living them, they just pass like a river does in the night. Silent and seemingly without motion. Just cut through the space that is cleared, through the ground that has been moved by forces and power unseen to the eye and unknown to the soul. He had been living with us off and on for nine years. Each time he had made his way home, the powers that were, namely Lucky and his sisters, would decide that his parents needed to be protected from this, their crazed son. In turn, they longed for and missed him; that was just as plain. Each time we had been there over this span, unless it had been a time when he had once again tried to live with them, they asked about him, his welfare, and it seemed that Lucky hid from them what Percy had become. Crazy. The more Lucky misrepresented, the more questions they asked, until the game, I think, had became the way they related. From the front room of their farmhouse, as they sat on a couch, gray and dusty, as I remember it, they seemed content to play the game, and just as content with their knowledge it was being played. It seemed in some way to comfort them. Lucky, though, had not seemed to fair so well. The worse Percy had gotten, the more estranged Lucky became from the place from which he had come, until he seemed almost a stranger there, but a welcome stranger, to be told by their smiles. During the first stint Percy had done in Central State, the much longer of the two, they had not known he was there until almost three months into it when Lucky could misrepresent it no more. I am unsure of when they learned of the things that happened in 1953.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Wake up! Wake up. You’re dreamin’.”
I felt myself lowering into the down mattress from the force he exerted on my chest every time he spoke my name. The hands moved from my chest to my shoulders, in an attempt, I assume, to slow my rise as I sat up. The full moon lit the white-washed walls and thus the night as gray.
“You were dreamin’,”he told me again.
“How the hell do you know what I was doin’?” I asked him.
His hair and face were wild, like somehow he might have been a stranger to who he was two weeks ago, when Lucky had pulled him off the fruit stand at Earl’s. For a few seconds, I was scared that I had overslept, missed my route time. But rarely did 3 a.m. ever pass without me waking. It seemed as much a part of me now as breathing.
“‘Cause I’ve been listenin’to ya. You were sayin’all kinds of wild things. You were talkin’about the wreck you and Tully had. You were beggin’your daddy not to hit you.”
“I’ve never, everbegged him not to hit me,”I proclaimed, like it was a badge of honor. Still more asleep than awake.
“Well, you were in the dream,”he said.“That’s all I can tell ya. You were goin’on about Sharon and Van. You said his name several times, then after you said it you’d say son of a bitch every time. I knew you and Van had some trouble this summer, but I hope it wasn’t near that bad.”
As I sat and stared at him, that feeling came over me that often does after just awaking from a dream: a sense of peace that the dream wasn’t in fact reality. The sense that leaves you when you realize you may not have the problems you had in your dream, but that you still have the ones you had when you went to sleep the night before.
“It hasn’t been great,”I told him.“But what ever is?”
He nodded and smiled half-ass. Offered me a cigarette.
I took it and drew deep from the thing, hoping the first jolt of nicotine would knock me back into place. I switched on the light and took a look at the Mickey Mouse on the night stand.
“It’s one-thirty,”I told him.“Where’ve you been?”
“Sittin’here for quite a while,”he said. He drew on the cigarette again and blew a bank of smoke toward the ceiling that dissipated as it exited the ring of light the lamp cast.“Watchin’you. This Sharon person must be somethin’else. Every time you’d talk about her, your voice would ease and this real peaceful smile came to your face, like you’d figured out you were in heaven or somethin’.”
In the weeks that preceded his going to the crazy house again and what would come after that, there were moments when he seemed crazy as hell. And then there were other moments, when whatever took hold of him had relinquished itself, when his sanity had rolled in, like clouds that quiet the land before a storm.
“Yeah, maybe I was,”I told him. I laughed.
“Is that the girl you been seein’?” he asked.
“Huh?” I said.
“Look,”he said,“I might be crazy, but I ain’t stupid. The stupidity was distributed among other members of my family.” He rolled his eyes toward the downstairs.
“Yeah,”I said finally.“It is. She’s gorgeous. And sweet…as sweet as sugar.”
He nodded. Smiled.
“How long you been seein’her?” he asked.
I’d marked the days in my head as clear as charcoal marks on the wall.“Twelve days.”
“Twelve days? I thought you went to a dance with her. Do you know how much I’d like to have gone to a dance with a girl? Everybody in high school, though, thought I was too odd to pal around with. Your daddy didn’t finish high school, did you know that?”
“Yeah, that’s what you said,”I told him. I drew on the cigarette for a moment, anger flashing through my chest. Assuming everybody should know as much about it as I did, even though I hadn’t breathed a word to anyone.“And I did go to a dance with her. She asked me…or at least asked me to ask her to her prom. That was after she had been out with Van. But he just didn’t measure up. His dick was too small,”I said, immediately reminding myself of him.
Percy laughed but didn’t look at me. Crushed his cigarette out with yellow fingers in the ashtray my mother kept upstairs for him.
“Her father and sister died two weeks ago,”I told him.“Didn’t make a curve down south just before you get to the Alabama line. Lost the car. It threw her daddy from the damn thing and then rolled up a fuckin’hill and came down on her sister. Pretty much cut her head off. Goddam Lucky made me go tell her that it had happened. He was prob’ly too chicken shit to do so.”
“You know, in my better moments…or worse ones, I’m not sure which…I like to be as hard on your father as possible. But I believe that happened the same day he ran me off the fruit stand. Wasn’t that a Saturday?”
I thought back, tried to remember two weeks ago that now seemed like two months, two years…something.“Yeah, as a matter of fact, I think it was a Saturday. It
was the first time that Van and I had spoke in a month. Tully had tricked us, got us together over at the Gilco. Then Lucky comes pullin’up and asks me to go see her Mama.”
“Yeah, I think he’d just finished with me at Earl’s. I think he had such hope for me at that job. Thought I’d own the fruit stand one day or somethin’.”
“Yeah, he’s like that,”I said.“He thinks everybody’ll rise to the place he did. I’ll be the sheriff!” I proclaimed. The nicotine and the sudden awakening had gone to my head like booze did some time, made me errant and giddy.
“Police Chief,”Percy corrected me.“Never get that wrong.”
“Don’t I know it,”I told him. I turned the cigarette up and drew on it like a bottle.“Anyway, that’s pretty much the day we got together.” I stopped, hesitant to tell him the rest.”That’s too bad about her father,”he said.“And her sister. Yeah, I’d heard about that. As a matter of fact, when I think back about it, one of the first things your father said to me was that he’d just gotten the call that two Franklin people had been killed just inside the state line.‘See what happens to some people’s family,’he told me.‘Some people got life and death incidents goin’on, not crazy bullshit like losin’a job for givin’a speech from the top of a table.’I tried to tell him that they hadn’t fired me yet. But in typical Dillard fashion, he wouldn’t listen to anything but the sounds coming out of his own mouth.”
He finished his cigarette and crushed it out in the ashtray, dug for his pack in his sock then remembered he had laid it on the nightstand. Handed me another, took another for himself.
“Lucky said you were naked,”I said.
“I most certainly wasn’t,”he assured me.“I had on my skivvies. My shoes. And my socks. Completely naked would surely offend my listeners to such a degree that they would hear none of my message. No, the goal of any orator is to draw to and hold attention by surprising enough to do so but not offending enough to turn away. The one time I’ve done otherwise was in that lot over off Strahl Street. In the yard of that house Sammy Samuels owns. That was a day they called Dillard right away.”
“Yeah, I remember hearin’about that one: that you were hollerin’about how some people thought that it was better to not rent a house than rent one to black people.”
“Dillard told you all that?”
“No…Van told Tully and he told me.”
“Yeah, now that you say that, I can remember Van there, goadin’me on. That doesn’t seem like somewhere you’d catch Van…with the poor and black people.”
“Do you remember the night we saw you when I was takin’Sharon home?” I asked.
He nodded.
“We were in front of her house. That’s where she lives. And that’s why Van was over there.”
“But he was comin’out of the empty house that afternoon.”
“Yeah, that house is right next to the Edwards’house.”
“Is her brother the one who sells the whiskey…brings it up from Alabama?”
“The one and only,”I told him.
“Van over there buyin’whiskey from him? Van’s crazy enough. He doesn’t need to drink.”
Downstairs, I heard the backdoor shut and Lucky start the barrage of coughing that seemed to accompany his presence every morning and most nights now. I followed its sound to what I guessed was his final destination, the chair in the living room. I said,“And no, he wasn’t there buyin’whiskey from Bobby Edwards.” I could feel the truth choking up in my throat, threatening to loose itself to another human being. I had breathed it to no one.“No, he wasn’t buyin’whiskey from Bobby Edwards,”I said. I could feel my hands shaking. I tried to steady the one I brought to my mouth to draw on the cigarette he’d given me.
“He prob’ly had a woman in there,”he said.“Or I guess a girl’s what they’re called at your age. It’s hard to discern between the two sometimes. I bet that’s who he had.”
I wanted to bust Percy right in the mouth, like I’d done with Van that day in June, the first and only time we’d actually come to blows. And I guess it really hadn’t been“we.” The first time I’d seen him with Sharon, her sitting right by him in Scoot’s car as they tooled down Columbia Pike and then through town on Main Street. I’d passed them going the other way then wheeled the Indian around, flagged them down and then just knocked the shit out of him when he stepped out of the car. Bloodied his nose. After he’d pulled himself up off one knee and Sharon was wailing and yelling at me, he simply pulled his handkerchief out and covered his nose with it and shook his head. Like I had been the fucking villain.
“He had Sharon in there,”I said.“Aren’t you listenin’to me?”
Percy nodded.“I’m tryin’,”he told me.
“He had Sharon in there because I had no more than gotten to where I thought I couldn’t live without her and the son of a bitch took her from me.” I could feel the tears pushing at the back of my eyes.“I made the mistake of tellin’him how I felt about her. I mean, I can’t tell you, Percy, how just bein’around her took me over. Worse than moonshine. When I was away from her, all I wanted to do was be with her again. And he knew that. The bastard knew that.”
Even though my brain sent the order to stop, my mouth was an unruly subject. It felt so good, like a good washing when too long dirty, for anyone to hear the words, even Percy. Crazy Percy.
“He knew that and he started workin’on takin’her from me from the night he saw us together at the dance. He couldn’t stand it that she liked me better than him!”
“I thought you said he went out with her first,”said Percy, who for that moment looked crazier than he ever had to me. And stupider.
“I did say that. But he only went out with her once…he didn’t even know her.“
“Maybe he didn’t know how much you liked her.”
“Didn’t you hear me awhile ago? I told you that I had talked to him about it! He’s just a goddam asshole. And you know, when you’ve tried to talk to me about things that matter to you, I’ve tried to listen. When you’ve gone over and over and over the same shit, I’ve tried my best to listen to what you were sayin’even if it didn’t interest me one damn bit.”
“You’ve slept through a lot of it, too.”
“And I’ve never tried to tell you what a good guy Lucky was when you were complainin’to me about him. And believe me, you’ve complained a hell of a lot over the last nine or so years. I can’t tell you how many nights I’ve either listened to you complain about him!”
Percy put his finger to his mouth, reminding me that I was likely to draw someone upstairs and that someone would likely be Lucky and Lucky would likely be pretty damned unhappy.
“All I’m sayin’”he said after another trip to the window,“is that Van’s not all bad and I’m not sure that he’d do something so it would hurt you. Maybe inadvertently he might do something that did hurt you but I think that was probably a side-effect of another goal, not his identified goal, so to speak.”
“I wish you’d speak English sometime.” I scowled at him, reminding myself of Lucky.
“All I’m saying is that people are much more likely to do things out of their own weakness or Basic Human Frailty than they are just to hurt you. I can even say that I think that’s true of Lucky, as you call him. None of us have pure motives, purely good or purely bad. We all, though, have self-interest and go about trying to carry that out in all kind of strange ways, which hurts other people sometimes.”
As he took a seat on the corner of the bed again and I stared at him insolently, I weighed his words for only a moment. I quickly decided that this was in no way true about Van…and that he was a son of a bitch, like I’d been calling him in the dream I couldn’t remember. What I would say next would prove it to be true and release from my gut what had been burning there all summer. Like most of the best and worst things in life, it could not be altered, but only spoken of.
My voice shook and tears fell from the corners of my eyes, in anger not grief I wanted to bel
ieve.“He was fuckin’her. That’s what he was doing in that goddam house you were talkin’your shit outside of. He was in there fuckin’the daylights out of her. And do you know why he was fuckin’her? He was fuckin’her for four reasons…and I’ve thought about this. Because sheand her sister wouldn’t do anything but barely kiss us when we’d gone out with them before...because she was a virgin And because I’d told him that I thought she and I were gonna do it soon. But most of all, for the first time in our lives it was something I had that he didn’t.”
“Besides football,”said Percy.“Or at least bein’as good as you are.”
“Yeah, I guess so. Besides that.”
As he sat listening to me, as I had so often been when he shared his words late at night, he seemed only half-listening and perhaps as we often are, lost in his own world. His eyes moved around the room several times, to the window; he even removed himself again and peered outside once more. Of course, this was before I knew the power had overtaken him, too. The power of finding solace in another human being, who at least for awhile, makes everything, the victories and defeats, the tragedies and good fortune, disappear as if they had never been in the first place. Renders them powerless.
“All I know,”he said,“is you seemed awful mad at him.”
“I was,”I told him.“But the son of a bitch still lives across the street. I still have to see his cocky ass when I come back from my paper route in the morning, stretching in his pajamas, looking out the window at me. I still have to see him at school…or I will when it starts back up. And this week, I’ll see him at football practice.”
“Does that start this week?”
“Yep,”I told him.“First week in August. The games don’t start till September, but Lucky won’t be able to wait and he’ll be there watchin’the practices from his squad car, chain’smokin’and catching swigs from the bottle when he thinks nobody’s lookin’.”
