184
riverbank, life to Clifton was a confused mix of innocence, peacefulness, hatred, anger, and death.
Swamper sat outside on his rocker, smoking a cigarette when he arrived. Bosco bounded onto the porch after Clifton let go of the leash, the plastic handle of the jump rope clicking against the edge of each step as he went. He went directly to the water bowl in the corner, which Swamper had set out earlier, and lapped vigorously, snorting through his nose and grunting but never slowing down to take a breath. When he'd finished, he walked next to Swamper's chair and plopped down on the warped boards of the porch, emitting a deep, content sigh. If Clifton could have seen Swamper's face in the darkness, he would have witnessed worry and strain disappear in the same way a wiper blade clears a fine film of mist from a windshield. One swipe and it's gone. But he couldn't see Swamper's face, nor did the man's voice give any indication of the anxiety he'd been experiencing while waiting for the boy's return.
"Get caught up in traffic or something?" He puffed on his cigarette with one hand and scratched Bosco's snout with the other. "And I thought the whole point was to take this flea-bag home."
And then Clifton broke. Everything that he'd gone through in the last several hours exploded out of him like a violent fit of vomiting. It was as if he had no control. No way of holding
185
anything back. The tears poured like water racing down that dry creek bed in the spring. He explained everything. About the kindly police officer, about his mother's mishap and how he had no idea how she was going to get out of jail or what fate she would face once she did, about a body being found, about how scared he'd been as he'd walked to his room to get his clothes, about how the little girl was Julie's sister. Everything. And the tears ran freely. He sobbed as he relayed the entire story. When he'd finished, he felt exhausted. Like all he wanted to do was fall asleep and forget about everything. Forget about life.
Swamper hadn't said a word during the entirety of Clifton's rant. He had only rocked in his chair, sitting stoically as Clifton unleashed his fears, his confusion, and his anger. And there had been a lot of anger. As he'd spilled his guts, he'd felt an intense, unexpected rage erupt against his mother. Against the man in the ice cream truck. Even against his father, saying that life would be so different if Mr. Carlson had just kept his mouth shut and hadn't ever talked back to Scarface. But mostly what Clifton expressed was his overwhelming guilt for not acting quicker to get help for Julie's sister. "For Maria," he'd said, the name almost painful to utter. That name seemed to split his lips wide open, stinging them as if they'd been exposed to freezing temperatures all day. As if they'd been burned by a brutal winter wind.
186
"Come on inside," said Swamper after Clifton had finished. "You've had a helluva day. You need to get some shuteye."
Swamper stood up, and Clifton mindlessly followed him into the house like a sleepwalker fumbling down a dark hallway. Bosco got up to follow, but Swamper clamped the screen door closed after nudging the dog away with the toe of his boot. "You got fleas, old buddy. You'll do just fine on the porch tonight."
Bosco let out another little sigh of apparent understanding and curled up on the worn, tattered welcome mat, his back pushing against the mesh of the screen. As if on cue, he twisted his head around and chomped at the base of his tail.
Swamper sat Clifton down on the couch and then went into the kitchen. A floor lamp in the corner sparsely lit the room. Clifton stared straight ahead at the eyes of the buck on the far wall, his mind almost completely free of thought. When Swamper came back a moment later, Clifton honestly couldn't say if he'd been sitting on the couch for a minute or an hour.
"Here," said Swamper, handing over a wide-mouthed Mason jar, a quarter filled with an amber liquid. Clifton reflexively reached out and took the jar, though he was still in an almost hypnotic state. Swamper had an identical jar in his hands, and he sat down on the couch next to Clifton. "Sip on
187
that for a little while. It'll help relax you some. Help you go to sleep."
The sharp smell of the whiskey broke Clifton from his stupor. Unlike most of his peers, he had never had the urge or desire to get drunk. He heard plenty of stories at school about kids going out and getting wasted, but it had never been something that interested him. It certainly would have been easy enough to do since his mother had bottles of wine sitting around the house at all times, but it was for exactly that reason that he'd never wanted to do it. Alcohol was why his mother had more or less dropped out of society. Why she'd also more or less dropped out of motherhood. It was the reason why she was spending the night in jail.
But things were different now. For the first time in his life, Clifton didn't care. For the first time, he felt himself giving up. His father had told him that he always had to fight. But he couldn't fight anymore. He was beaten. He peered down at the surface of the whiskey, the liquor resembling strong tea, and put the rim to his lips as he took a sip. It was warm and burned his throat. "Ugh, it tastes like battery acid."
Swamper showed a slight smile. "You ever tasted battery acid?"
"No, but it couldn't be any worse."
"Just take little sips. You'll get used to it. I ain't saying I
188
want you to become my drinking buddy or nothing, but it'll help loosen you up. Like I said, you'll be asleep in no time." Swamper took a healthy swig and let out an aah of satisfaction.
It wasn't long before the whiskey grabbed hold. He had taken only a few small sips, but already his head felt pleasantly lighter. His mood seemed to be improving. At least at first. He felt a rush of happiness as he told Swamper about how Julie had picked him up earlier in the day. But his thoughts of Julie quickly switched to thoughts of her sister. The alcohol was sending his emotions up and down like the undulating lines of a graph.
"Shit, Swamper, if I hadn't been such a pussy, I might have been able to save her. She might not be dead."
Swamper took another drink from his jar. "First off, you don't even know if it was that little girl's body they found. You said the cop was from over in Samford, right?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, there's plenty of shit going on over there. I'm not saying there's a murder every day or nothing like that, but they got more crime on that side of the river than we got over here, that's for sure. So that little girl could very well still be alive. The cop didn't say they'd found her body, did he?"
"No, sir."
"So it could have been anyone. And you did your part. We made a phone call. We did what we could. It ain't your damn
189
fault that some sicko decided to steal her away in that ice cream truck. Hell, if you hadn't seen her fall out of that closet, then those cops might not have nothing to go on. In fact, you've probably done more than anybody else in this world to help that little girl."
Swamper's words, along with a fresh spike of elation on the whiskey graph, made him feel better. But it didn't last long. "I know. But if I'd just called as soon as I saw it, they probably could've chased him down right away."
"That man threatened to kill you. He saw your house. There ain't nobody in this world that would blame you for not calling. You gotta get rid of that guilt because it ain't gonna do no good but to rip you up worse than if you'd swallowed a razor blade."
Clifton swiveled his torso and butt from side to side as he lowered himself deeper into the couch. He held the jar with both hands and rested it on his lap. He took another sip and let the liquid do its magic. "I hear what you're saying, but it wasn't you who saw it. I saw her, Swamper. I saw her all taped up and scared out of her mind. I could've done something and I didn't. And shit, now my mom's locked up. She could go to prison. What the hell am I gonna do?"
"The first damn thing you're gonna do is stop feeling sorry for yourself. Nowhere on your birth certificate does it say that life's gonna be easy. You got me?"
190
Clifton was a little taken aback, and f
or a moment he felt hurt. But he also realized that Swamper was right. It was almost as if his father was talking to him. He nodded and said, "Yes, sir."
"Another thing is, you gotta get over this guilt. Like I said, it ain't gonna do nobody no good. It ain't gonna bring that little girl home. It's the same thing as worrying. It don't do a damn bit of good."
Clifton nodded again. His head was swimming now, and he suddenly felt emotions bombarding him from all sides, bouncing around in his head like Ping-Pong balls. He didn't know if it was the whiskey or not, but one thing he recognized for sure was that as harsh as Swamper's words were, he had said them because he cared. And again, maybe it was the whiskey, but he realized that he cared about Swamper too. He recognized how much the man's friendship meant to him. They'd spent every day of the last month together, and though it wasn't a tremendous amount of time in the whole scheme of things, he felt like he'd known him his whole life. "Yes, sir, I got you."
"I'm gonna tell you a little story. It's something I haven't told nobody in a helluva long time. But I'm gonna tell you because I think it's important. There's a point to it, is what I'm saying." Swamper quickly rolled a cigarette and scooted an ashtray on the end table closer to him. "When I was a little
191
boy, probably a little younger than you, a circus came to town. Back then, and remember I'm talking about fifty years ago, every spring a traveling circus would come to the school. They'd set up their tents, their games, their freak shows, set them up all over the ball fields behind the school. My mama would squirrel away money for months in advance so I'd have enough to be able to go and maybe get a cotton candy and play a game or two. You can imagine what a big time it was. If you think there ain't much to do in Crocket's Mill these days, just imagine what it was like back then."
Swamper stopped and took a sip of whiskey and a pull from his cigarette. Clifton felt himself drifting away on a cloud of alcohol as he imagined the circus scene. It sounded so innocent. A different time when the only worry was scraping up some change to go see the circus. He slumped further into the couch as Swamper continued.
"They had two shows back then, for one day only. There was an afternoon show, and then later was the big one, with all the lights and everything. Pretty girls dressed up in sparkly outfits, walking on high wires, acrobats on the trapeze, elephants, tigers, clowns. They had it all. And sideshows too, where all the geeks were. A man who'd bite the head off a rattlesnake, a bearded lady. You name it, they had it. In fact, that's where I saw my first set of bare titties."
"At the circus?"
192
"Yep. Three of em."
"How'd you see three of them?"
"Well, this isn't the story I had in mind, but I'll tell it to you first. One of the freak shows had this lady they called the Trilogy. There was a painted sign outside of her tent that showed this beautiful woman. She was painted up like an Arab. You know, with silk and lace and one of those mask things hiding her mouth. In the painting, she had three arms and three legs. Well, me and my buddies had to see that, so we paid a dime apiece to go in. There was a fat man inside, dressed in white robes and had one of those little red hats on his head that looked like a little box. Like the Shriners wear. You know the ones?"
"Yeah. It's called a fez, I think."
"Right, a fez." He dragged on his cigarette and continued. "So he starts talking to us about the amazing Trilogy and all that. Getting us excited. Anyway, she finally comes out from behind the curtain and starts dancing around to this Arab-sounding music. Strange horns blowing and all that. At first she's only got two regular arms, and we thought we'd been had, but then she starts peeling off some of her silks and there's the third one. It was miniature. Almost like a kid's arm, and it stuck out from her side. Like the kid had been swallowed and was trying to bust free through the woman's ribs."
193
Clifton took a sip of the whiskey. "That's weird. What about her legs?"
"Well, we were waiting for that next, but then the fat man says, 'You know what else she's got three of?' He said it slyly, and kind of raised his eyebrows at us as he talked. Now we were young boys, but we knew what he was getting at. He said, 'For an extra dime, she'll show them to you.' We reached in our pockets and pulled those dimes out faster than you can say lickety-split. We couldn't believe it. We kept glancing behind us to see if any adults were coming, but it was just us boys. Well, she shakes around a little more, teasing us like she's a burlesque dancer or something, and then she drops her bra. Sure enough, there's three of em lined up in a perfect row. Except the middle one didn't have no nipple."
Clifton laughed. "Get out of here. You're messing with me."
"I shit you not, sitting there like a string of mountains."
Clifton laughed again. "Was she pretty?"
"Hell no. Had a face like the ass-end of a whipped mule. It was bad. Actually, if you want to know, I felt a little sorry for her."
"I don't know if I buy it."
"That's the God's honest truth," he said, holding his hand up in oath, the cigarette squeezed between his fingers. "If I happened to own a Bible, I'd swear on it right now. But that's
194
not the story I wanted to tell you," he said, taking a draw and then ashing it with a flick of his thumb. "That was the year before. Before the time I'm about to tell you about. So my buddies and me would go to both shows. After the first show, we'd hide away behind the folds of one of the canvas tents and try to sneak into the second show. Some years we got away with it, some years we didn't. This particular year, we managed to get away with it, so we had seats right up close-- on one of the bleachers in the front row, right in front of the ring where the tigers were."
Swamper took another draw off his cigarette and exhaled a stream of smoke that gravitated toward the top of the floor lamp in the corner. Then he extinguished it.
At this point, Clifton had stretched himself out on the couch, and before he realized it, his head was resting on Swamper's shoulder. The whiskey was making him sleepy, and he closed his eyes so he could see the circus in his mind's eye. The earlier horrors of the day had all but disappeared.
"Now back in those days, they didn't have no fences or gates to block the audience off from the actual circus. There were several rows of bleachers underneath the canopy of the tent, and in front of them there was a little area for people to walk as they made their way to their seats, and then just on the other side was the rings where the circus people and animals performed. The rings were sectioned off with wooden
195
posts lying on the ground--I guess they call them landscaping timbers today--but that was it. I could have run into the middle of the ring if I'd wanted to without nothing there to stop me.
"Anyway, the first part of the show was where they brought out the tigers. They had heavy steel collars around their necks and chains that was fastened to the collars on one end, and to metal spikes driven into the ground on the other end. The spikes were actually set into what was the infield of the baseball diamond. There were three tigers, and they were beautiful. Scary, to be sure, since they were only sitting about twenty feet away from me and my buddies in the front row, but they were beautiful. The three of them each had their own pedestal, and I'll never forget how their muscles pumped out of their fur when they leapt up on them. They were a sight to behold.
"Since they were the first act, a lot of latecomers were still straggling in, which made me mad because as they walked by, they were blocking our view. But we were so filled with excitement that it didn't matter all that much. Anyway, I was staring at the tiger that was closest to me, admiring it, when this little boy, probably no older than eight or nine, started screaming. He was standing just to the right of me, with a Coca-Cola bottle in his hand, and appeared to have gotten lost from his parents. It was loud in there, with all of the
196
excited chatter from the crowd and the ringmaster yelling through his bullhorn. But because the boy was so close
to me, I couldn't help but notice him. He was still screaming and looked scared as he started walking in front of me. He was looking up into the crowd, searching for his parents, and wasn't paying no attention to where he was walking. He stumbled over one of the timbers that formed the ring, and the next thing you know, he was actually on the other side, still looking up toward the crowd. He hadn't fallen, but I remember watching some of the Coke foam up over the mouth of the bottle. It's funny how sometimes the strangest little details stick with you.
"But what happened next, I'll never forget. It was like the whole thing happened in slow motion, and it was like I was the only one who seen what was unfolding. That tiger that was closest to me eyed that lost, screaming boy, and I saw the muscles of its back tense. And then it pounced. Because the boy was so close, and there was some play in the chain--not much but a little--the tiger had enough room. He jumped off the pedestal and clamped on to the boy's neck in less than a second. And remember, this happened right in front of me. I'd seen it coming but there was nothing I could do. In a matter of seconds, that boy was flat on the ground, no longer screaming, and the muscles of his neck was spread out all over the grass. Have you ever cleaned a pregnant bass before?"
Gray baby: a novel Page 14
