Killer Diller

by Edgerton, Clyde

  “It pops out of second gear,” says Vernon. “Daddy goes from first to third. You put it in first, then put in the clutch, then you put it in third.”

  “Yeah, okay. I know how to do that.”

  “Daddy lets me drive it in the parking lot sometimes, but I don’t ever get out of first. He lets me drive cars in and out of the shop, too. And when he finishes working on that bus, he’s going to let me drive that. It’s ours. We’re going to drive it to the Grand Canyon and live in it on the way and on the way back.”

  “That ought to be fun.” Wesley cranks the truck, drives out of the parking lot toward Food Lion. He is sitting high off the ground, higher than he’s ever been in a car. He can look down on the roofs of cars from up here. And this truck is loud, the busted muffler making a sweet, deep, powerful sound.

  “This thing is fun to drive.”

  “It’s a truck,” says Vernon.

  Chapter 6

  In Food Lion, Vernon pushes the cart. Wesley takes his time, picking through the okra until he gets enough small tender shoots for three people. Then he gets three big Irish potatoes, flour, cornmeal, and Wesson Oil.

  After he’s selected the pork chops, Wesley heads across the store along the pet supply aisle to see if he can find Vernon, who has wandered off. He needs to know what kind of dessert they like. He sees Vernon standing at the doughnut display, with one of the little doors slid back, reaching in.

  Vernon grabs a doughnut, looks at it, puts it back and gets another one, inspects that one.

  “Hey,” says Wesley. “You’re supposed to use those little sheets of paper. Right there.”

  “For what?”

  “To pick up the doughnut. You’re not supposed to use your fingers.”

  “My hands are clean.”

  “Just use one of those papers, Vernon.”

  “What about the people that makes them. Somebody makes them with their hands. Everybody handles everything with their hands.” Vernon nods toward produce. “Ain’t you ever seen people pick up fruit over yonder and look at it and then put it back?”

  “That’s different. That’s fruit.”

  “People eat fruit. People eat fruit; people eat doughnuts. The same naked hands that pick up fruit pick up doughnuts. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Just get some doughnuts and let’s go.”

  “I already got them. Lined up right in there. Those are the ones I picked. We need to get one of them apple pies and some ice cream, too.”

  Back at the garage, Wesley follows Vernon across the yard toward the house. The screen is loose and torn and the porch is very small, just large enough for three aluminum lawn chairs. As they go in through the screen door Wesley remembers the day he first saw Mattie Rigsbee’s porch, the day he came to steal the pound cake and was trying to open the inside screen latch with a match book cover through the crack when she came out there, not even catching on to what he was trying to do. He still visits her, and her porch is closed in with tight solid screen and is roomy, with potted plants, lots of chairs and a swing.

  Here at the Jacksons’, the light green front door to the house is soiled—a black halo around the door knob. One of the three little windows in the door—the bottom one—has no glass, and is covered from the inside with duct tape. The bottom corner of the door has been sawed off, to make a hole for a dog or cat, it looks like.

  Inside, a bare light bulb is in the middle of the living room ceiling. On a bare wooden floor sit two slipcovered chairs with ragged armrests, a couch, and against the wall, a piano with a metal folding chair at the keyboard. There’s a hole in the wall above the light switch near the entrance to the kitchen. On top of the piano is a cassette recorder and a stack of newspapers, and on top of the papers is something that looks like a hammer—with a funny head. On the wall is a picture of a boy in tight blue pants from the Middle Ages or something. It is in a plastic frame and covered over with clear plastic.

  Vernon and Wesley unpack the groceries in the small kitchen, and soon Wesley is working at the kitchen counter beside the sink. Vernon sits down at the power-line spool turned on its side for a kitchen table and rocks back and forth.

  “We just eat sandwiches mostly,” Vernon says. “One week ham, one week chicken salad, one week ham. Sometimes we eat bacon or frozen pizza.”

  Wesley is cutting okra on a dinner plate. “Y’all need some kind of cutting board,” he says.

  “We use knifes.”

  “No. I mean something to cut the stuff on. I know you use a knife.”

  “We got all the stuff Mama left, but we don’t use it, hardly.”

  “Come over here and I’ll show you how to do this okra. It’s fun. Where are the pots and pans? I need two frying pans, and a pot.”

  “Under there. Daddy don’t let me touch the stove or nothing that has electricity to it. I blowed up some things.”

  “Come here. Here, see how I’ve cut these up? Just little hunks about that big.”

  Vernon stands beside Wesley, watches, rocking.

  “This old lady taught me,” says Wesley. “I got to live with her for a few years. She gave me some great food, and told me about Jesus. Then . . . See? Like that. You just pour them in a paper sack like that and then pour in about . . . that much flour. See? Then you just shake it up.” Wesley shakes, puts the sack down. “Then . . . the pots and pans are under here?”

  “Yeah.” Vernon steps back while Wesley squats down and looks into the cabinet.

  Vernon stands with one hand on the counter, rocking.

  “Can’t you hold still?” Wesley asks. He finds a frying pan.

  Vernon freezes, breathes faster. “What do you mean?” he asks, looking down at Wesley.

  “All that rocking back and forth,” says Wesley, sitting back on his haunches and looking up at Vernon, whose eyes are getting bigger and bigger behind his thick wire-rimmed glasses. A redness is creeping up into his cheeks. A sneer comes to his mouth—which suddenly springs wide open. Vernon leans down toward Wesley’s face. Wesley leans back on his heels, loses his balance, then catches it. And then Vernon roars in Wesley’s face. He roars as if he were falling off a cliff. Wesley smells his breath, faint onion, something else.

  Then Vernon turns and runs out of the kitchen, through the living room, out the front door.

  Wesley, holding the knife and frying pan, goes to the front door, steps out on the porch.

  Vernon is standing in the middle of the yard, screaming, turning around and around in little short steps, his fists against his chest.

  Holister walks rapidly from the garage. When he reaches Vernon, he yells, “Hey! Hey. Hey,” right in Vernon’s face.

  Vernon blinks hard, once, twice, looks at Holister, stops turning, starts rocking. But he’s still crying out softly on each breath. Then all of a sudden, he screams again. Holister grabs his elbow and starts him toward the house. “Hey! Hey!”

  Wesley stands back as Holister pulls Vernon, screaming again, onto the porch, by him, into the house.

  “He just went crazy,” says Wesley as they pass by him.

  “He went crazy before he was born,” says Holister. “I got to go slice him a tomato.”

  “A tomato?” Wesley follows them in. Holister releases Vernon and Vernon heads toward a back room, stooped and swaying, moaning.

  “Yeah. What’d you say to him?” says Holister, going into the kitchen. “Something about his rocking?”

  “That was it.” Wesley follows.

  “Don’t do that anymore.” Holister opens the refrigerator, pulls out a tomato, gets a dish, looks around, takes the knife from Wesley and slices the tomato.

  “Okay. Sorry. I didn’t know. A tomato?”

  “A tomato. Got to slice him a tomato. You can hunk it if you ain’t got no plate.”

  Holister starts toward Vernon’s bedroom. He carries a plate holding a sliced tomato and a fork.

  There is a loud scream-yell from the back of the house.

  “I got it! Here it comes,”
shouts Holister, headed for Vernon. “Hold it! Hold it.”

  Wesley stops in the living room, sits on the piano bench, waits, looks around. In the corner there’s a cat’s basket. Inside is a navy-blue pillow covered with yellow fur.

  Holister and Vernon walk back into the living room. They both sit down on the couch.

  In through the hole in the bottom of the door comes a bony yellow cat with a crook in the end of his tail. Holister lifts both feet, slams them onto the floor. “Git!” The cat scrambles, springs for the hole.

  Vernon, rocking while he sits, eats the sliced tomato, cutting off pieces with his fork.

  “Tell him,” says Holister.

  “I’m sorry I got mad.” Vernon, rocking and chewing, looks at the floor.

  “That’s okay.”

  “It’s something we don’t talk about,” says Holister. “I should have told you. If you get in that problem again, a tomato will usually straighten everything out. I try to keep one in the truck. ‘Course I forget and they rot.” He goes out onto the front porch.

  Wesley rubs his fingers along the piano bench. He hears Holister open the porch door and spit. Wesley looks around, takes the hammer-looking thing from the top of the piano. “What’s this?”

  Vernon looks up. “That’s a piano tuner.”

  “He tunes the piano,” says Holister, coming back in. Then to Vernon: “You all right now?”

  “Yessir. Just need to finish this.” Vernon cuts off a piece of tomato with his fork, puts it in his mouth, chews.

  “I got to get back on that carburetor,” says Holister. “Behave yourself, now.”

  Back in the kitchen, Vernon watches as Wesley opens the bottom cabinet door again and gets out another frying pan and a small pot and places them on the counter and looks in them.

  “What’s that in there?” says Wesley.

  “Rat—” “Rat turds,” says Vernon. “We got roaches, too.”

  “Yeah? Well, we’ll rinse it out. You got any detergent?”

  “Over there.”

  “That’s soap.”

  “That’s what we use.”

  “Well, yeah, but . . . you think you got a bigger piece than that?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, let’s just clean this out and I’ll show you a little bit about cooking.”

  “That cat catches them rats but other’ns keep coming.”

  “That’s okay. You boil or fry something, it’s clean. Heat kills germs.” Wesley places the frying pans on the stove eyes. “There we go. Okay. Now. You can put some flour in a plate and kind of dunk these pork chops. About this much flour. See. Then we’ll fry them. Pour some of that Wesson Oil in that frying pan. Right there, that’s Wesson Oil.”

  “Why?”

  “To fry the pork chops.”

  Vernon picks up the bottle, stands there rocking, pours a few drops.

  “Fry, like french fries, fried chicken, fried whatever. You got to pour some more. That’s—WHOA. WHOA! No. No, man. Look. Now, we got to get rid of some of that.” Wesley’s hands are white with flour. “Can you pour that back in the bottle? Go slow. No. No. Use that little spout on the side of the pan. WHOA, it’s . . . here, let me do it.” Wesley pours the oil back into the bottle. “Now.” He looks around. “You need some paper towels to clean up that oil.”

  “We just got that rag hanging over there.”

  Wesley looks at the rag, looks around for something else.

  “We got some old newspapers, too.”

  “That’s okay. The rag’s all right. Let’s just get these pork chops on. Now, see the thing is we got to cook them so they don’t dry out. The way you do that is, once they get going good, we can put a little water in there, and leave the lid cracked on top so they don’t get soggy, but they don’t dry out either. Then we can turn up the heat at the end to crisp them up a little. See what I mean?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, you’ll see. Now we got to get this okra started. Now watch. You just cover the bottom of this pan good with oil. Turn it on medium high. Let it get hot. It’ll just take a minute. Now when it gets hot we’ll pour the okra, with the flour on it, in there and stir it up so the grease and flour kind of mixes and then they’ll fry and we’ll put a little salt on there and they’ll be the best things you ever eat. Okay, let’s drop one in there to see. . . . Yeah, see, it’s fizzling a little bit so we pour all of them in there, stir around a little bit. That’s going to be good.” Wesley does a drum roll on the counter.

  “Now we can mix up the cornbread. You can do that. Get a bowl out of there. . . . No, bigger than that. . . . That one’s good. We can cook it where the pork chops are when they get done. So now, pour some cornmeal in there. No. Cornmeal. Yeah, that’s cornmeal. Go ahead and pour some in there. Wait a minute. What was that?”

  “What?”

  “In the bottom of that bowl.”

  “I don’t know. You gone fry it, ain’t you? You said heat kills everything.”

  “Yeah—it’ll be all right. Now, just run some water in there from the faucet. Okay. . . . No, it’ll take more than that. . . . Good. . . . Now pour some salt in there and mix it all up. . . . That’s right. That’s it. Just mix it.”

  “That’s easy.” Vernon’s rocking is getting faster and faster. His head is rocking back and forth rapidly, his body rocking very slightly.

  “Oh hell, I forgot the potatoes,” says Wesley. “Can you peel a potato?”

  “I think so.”

  “Well, here, peel this, and I’ll peel these. Go ahead. I got to put some water on.”

  Wesley rinses out the pan. “These things ever been washed?”

  “They just been sitting in there since Mama left.”

  Vernon’s body is still while he peels his potato, but his head rocks back and forth rapidly.

  Wesley puts the pan, with water, on the stove, turns the eye on high, then peels and slices two potatoes, puts them in the pan, turns to get the potato Vernon has peeled. It’s on the counter: once the size of a baseball, now it’s a grape.

  “ Yow, you peeled it all right. Now, maybe you can just peel those peelings. Look, see, just get the peeling off here. You can eat all this. See, you want to leave all the white stuff you can—that’s the potato part.”

  “I know that. I know what the potato part is. I just had to get down deep to get everything off.”

  “I didn’t know you were doing that. Now, we’ll slice it and put it in with the others, and . . . you don’t have a potato masher, do you?”

  “Maybe over in that drawer.”

  Wesley opens the drawer, looks around. “Here’s one. Now let’s do that cornbread.”

  “Does that mean my mama used to cook mashed potatoes?”

  “I guess it does.”

  A short while before lights-out at BOTA House, Wesley gets comfortable on his bed, his back against a pillow which is against the headboard, the National Steel in his lap. He polishes slowly, carefully, with Ben’s Semi-Chrome polish. Then he shines the aluminum with one of his own undershirts.

  Ben, sitting by the window in the cane-bottomed chair, tilts back, pulls a joint from his shirt pocket, puts it in his mouth, and lights it with a kitchen match. He takes a drag, thinks about this white boy. He at least don’t look at you funny, don’t snoop around. He leaves your stuff alone, don’t steal, it seem like. Plays good bass. Crazy about the blues. Crazy about that old Dobro.

  “You going to get caught smoking that stuff,” says Wesley. “You get caught and you be in trouble sure enough.” Some people have a hard time learning when to grow up, he thinks. If it hadn’t been for Mrs. Rigsbee, Wesley is sure he’d still be involved in growing up. Mrs. Rigsbee and Jesus got him grown all the way. Got him mature about love anyway, he figures.

  “Anybody who knows what it is ain’t gone tell,” says Ben, “and Miss White, she think it’s pine straw burning.” He takes a drag, holds his breath, releases. “If I hear some strange footsteps I eat it. If I get burn it won
’t be no worse than pizza.” Ben thumps ashes into a gold-colored glass ashtray on the radiator. “I got the stuff hid so good I can’t even find it myself.”

  “You just better be careful. You could get on to something that’ll kill you.” Wesley thinks about how good a cold beer would taste, then pushes the thought from his mind. It comes back.

  “This stuff just make you feel good,” says Ben. “Relax you a little bit. You don’t go crazy to have it, and it ain’t no three hundred dollars a day. I seen too many like that, man.”

  “Did you have some kind of drug problem, you know, with the other stuff?”

  “Well, yeah.” Ben looks at Wesley. “I had some problems, and I took some dope. Yeah, that’s right. Don’t give me no—”

  “Hey, I won’t saying nothing. I didn’t mean nothing.” Wesley gently applies some more of Ben’s polish to the Dobro.

  “People got wine, liquor and coffee and shit, shnit, nit, whatever,” says Ben, “to get them away from the cold. You got people zonked out on caffeine, nicotine, all over the place. You got secretaries brewing it up and serving it to gray-suits in every office building in the United States, man. They on drugs all over the place. Glassy-eyed all over the place.” Ben drops the front legs of the chair to the floor, thumps ashes in the ashtray. “Then the man come down on me. But I admit in the long run it would have ruin my life. But this stuff ain’t nothing,” he says, looking at the joint between his fingers.

  Wesley thinks about how his own life used to be. Those three or four acid trips. The pot. Coke. The beer, grain alcohol and grape juice—Purple Jesuses. He thinks about David and the concubines, eyes Ben, wonders whether he should bring up something about Phoebe. He has roomed with Ben for six or eight weeks, knows him pretty well. Ben don’t mind talking about things. And he agreed to Wesley’s cuss words rule—put an n on the front.

  “You ever dated a big woman?” Wesley asks.

  “Yeah, I dated some big women. Then, too, I dated some that’s big in parts.”

  “I’m talking about big all over. In parts, too.”

  “Yeah. My cousin. In the eighth grade. Skating. She’d run into the damn wall and shake the whole place, the whole skating rink. I remember that, man.” Ben pinches the joint between his thumb and forefinger, puts it to his lips and draws. Then, holding the joint under his nose, he sniffs the drifting smoke. “Why? You thinking about taking out that rather large chick you been talking to over at the Fat House?”