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It took a second before Clifton realized Swamper had asked him a question. He stirred, turning his head from side to side, and said, "What? Are you asking me?"
"Yes, I'm asking you. Who else would I be asking? You ever cleaned a pregnant bass?"
"Yeah, sure. A couple of times I guess."
"Well, you know what it's like then. That stomach is all bulging and nearly busting like a full balloon. And then when you stick the knife in and slit the belly, all the eggs and everything else comes spilling out. That's what that boy's neck looked like. Except this was much bloodier. Blood all over the place. There was goopy strings of it hanging from the tiger's jaws, and immediately there were trainers with whips coming after the animal. I remember it was the school janitor, Mr. Vansulk, who was one of the first to jump in and help pull the tiger off the boy. I remember the rage on his face as he grabbed the nape of the tiger's neck and tried pulling it away. His arm muscles rippled like waves. The tiger turned on him and took out a small chunk of Mr. Vansulk's forearm with his claws before the trainers with the whips got the tiger under control.
"At first, the crowd was silent. I think people thought it was part of the show, but I knew for sure that it wasn't. But then the crowd started to erupt. Again, it was like slow motion. It was like the sound of one of those fighter jets that sometimes fly over. You know, you see the jet first, and then
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the thing is almost out of sight before the sound of the engines comes roaring overhead. And then there was complete panic. People began rushing for the exits, me and my buddies included. It was pandemonium as we all rustled out of there, like cattle getting herded through a gate.
"Now shortly after it all happened, I was in a state of shock. But as the days rolled on, I felt nothing but guilt. And this is my whole point. The boy died. They rushed him to the hospital in Roanoke, but he was DOA. And what I felt was probably the same as what you're feeling right now. Why didn't I do something? I was right there. I saw what was going to happen even before it actually did. I saw the boy stumble. I saw the tiger tense up and stare at its prey. If I'd just jumped up and grabbed the boy, I might've been able to save him. It took me a long time to get over that. It took me a long time to realize that, realistically, there was nothing I could've done.
"But that guilt stuck with me. And it didn't do no good but to just make me feel miserable. It's the same with that little girl. Maria, you called her. You saw her in that truck, but there wasn't nothing you could do except tell the cops, which is exactly what you did. Unlike me and that little boy, at least what you did might help save her. For that boy, there was nothing I could've done. At least you tried. That's more than I can say."
Clifton's mind continued to swim as he now lay completely
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horizontal, his head on the couch, his hair brushing the side of Swamper's leg. He looked up at the bottom of the old man's chin and throat, crinkled like a turkey's neck and covered with a light stubble of gray beard. As Clifton began to speak, he had trouble enunciating his words, as if his tongue had been coated in concrete. "But just like you said, there was nothing you could've done. I mean, you were a kid. You couldn't go up against a tiger."
Swamper gave a soft smile, as if to say that Clifton had understood his point whether he realized it or not. "Exactly right. And neither could you. You're just a kid too. Okay, maybe a young man, but it doesn't matter. You were going up against a tiger. That man, whoever he is, is just as much a predator as that tiger was. At least with the tiger, he was just following his instincts. That man, he's going against nature. He has chosen to do wrong. Has chosen evil. What the tiger did wasn't evil. It wasn't unnatural. So if you think about it, what you faced was far more dangerous than what I did when I was a little boy. That's why you got no reason to feel guilty, son. You should be proud you had the gumption, the balls, to call the police. Especially when you consider what those very same police once did to your father."
"How do you know what happened to my father?" asked Clifton. Swamper had alluded to it before, but Clifton had never had the courage to say anything. But the whiskey had
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made him braver. "I mean ... the police, the papers, they all said it was an accident. There was never a trial. Not really even an investigation."
"Like I told you before, it's a small town. People know. People ain't stupid."
Swamper set his arm across Clifton's chest and gently patted his shoulder. Clifton grabbed Swamper's forearm and gave it a gentle squeeze, as if saying thanks for understanding without using any words. The flannel of the sleeve was smooth in his hand, but he felt something underneath the material that intrigued him. The pads of his fingers probed at several bumps of tight, muscular tissue. As he pressed on the mysterious lesions, he sensed Swamper trying to pull away.
In his now drunken state, Clifton didn't even think about what might be considered proper etiquette. "What are those bumps, Swamper? They feel like tumors or something." Clifton continued to probe at the growths, trying to imagine what they looked like. If he pushed hard on one side, it was as if the whole mass of tissue would slip to the other side like a marble rolling beneath the skin.
"Those are just scars," he said, patting Clifton's shoulder again. "It's a long story and ain't nothing for you to be worried about."
But Clifton wasn't to be deterred. The alcohol had given
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him a newfound determination and confidence. "Well what happened? I got plenty of time."
Clifton, still lying down and looking up, saw the dewlaps of Swamper's throat quiver as he swallowed. "That's a story for another night. You need to get some sleep right now. You've had a long day." He tried to remove his arm and squirmed a little as if trying to get up, but Clifton wouldn't let him go.
"Come on, Swamper. Just tell me. You already told me about a kid getting eaten by a tiger. How much worse could it be?"
Swamper cleared his throat and forced a faint chuckle. "Well, I don't know if it's worse, necessarily. I guess that all depends on how you look at it. But it brings back painful memories, which ain't all that fun to dig up sometimes."
Even with the cloud of alcohol lurking in his brain and affecting his judgment, Clifton could still recognize that Swamper was uncomfortable. "That's okay. I understand. Sorry I brought it up."
"No, it's all right. You'll hear it sooner or later anyway, I reckon. Sometimes it's good for memories, painful or not, to occasionally be unearthed. These here scars," he said, now unbuttoning his cuff, folding it back, and scrunching it up to his elbow, "is from an accident that happened years ago while I was on the job."
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Clifton didn't sit up. Instead he gently grabbed Swamper's arm at the wrist and elbow and lifted it a little above his face in order to get a better view. "This happened at the pipe shop? Where my father used to work?" The knotty growths, about four or five in all, were hard in some places, mushy in others. The varying consistency and bruised purple color of the welts reminded Clifton of a basket of priced-to-go plums at the grocery store. Each blemish was about five inches long and was raised a good half inch in relief over Swamper's forearm. They looked like a band of giant crawling beetles.
"Yep, at the pipe shop. Long story short, there was an explosion and my arm got ripped up pretty good."
Clifton yawned and felt his eyelids getting heavy. "But what happened?" he asked, stretching his legs over the end of the couch arm. He felt fully relaxed. In the last hour, he hadn't once thought about his mother's predicament or the craziness of the day. "You gotta give me a little more than that."
"Well, what can I say? It was an evening shift and a lot of us were working overtime because we had a big order of drain pipe that was past due for a company over in West Virginia. They were building a mall over there and we were already two weeks late on filling the order. Anyway, I always worked with the same fella. A guy by the name of Bill Epperly, but everybody called him Sweets. Don't even know wh
ere the name came from, but I'd known him since we was in school
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together. Since the thirties I reckon, and we'd always called him Sweets. Me and Sweets worked for close to twenty-five years together. And I don't mean in the same building, I mean we was partners. We worked as a team. Usually had teams of two and we'd been together longer than anybody. Poured enough pipe to get from here to California and back, I reckon. Sweets and Swamper. Swamper and Sweets. We were like M&M's. Or salt and pepper.
"You work with somebody that long, you get to know him better than your own family. Hell, it got so when he went to the bathroom and came out, I could tell you what he ate for dinner the night before." Swamper gave a little laugh and then he got quiet, as if his mind had gone to a distant place. He pulled a ready-rolled cigarette from a box on the end table and lit it with his Zippo. He fingered the lighter for a moment, then set it on top of the pack.
"So that night, we were hustling because our foreman was on everybody. The foreman's boss was on his ass, so of course he was on ours. That pipe had to get poured. Now the whole process isn't that complicated, but you gotta be careful. Patience is the important thing. Just like pulling in those trot lines, it's something that takes practice and patience. Plus, you're working with extreme temperatures. Over a thousand degrees. So there's not a lot of room for screwing up. Anyway, me and Sweets was manning the mold and this ... this other
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guy was going to pour with his partner. Well these particular casts were cold, so it was vital that they pour the ore extra slow, and me and Sweets would monitor it, making sure it was smooth and was setting up right.
"At first, things was going fine, but then they started pouring too fast. Me and Sweets both started screaming for them to stop, but it was too loud or too steamy, or I don't know what, and they kept right on going. Well, the combination of the fast pour and the cold mold caused the ore to start bubbling over. Some of it spilled over on to a gas main, and before any of us knew what happened, there was a huge explosion. I got thrown clear across the room. Got knocked out instantly. I don't remember nothing for three full days after that. The last thing I remember was yelling at them two guys to stop pouring and then boom. Next thing I know I'm in the hospital. And I got lucky. Only thing wrong with me was these scars, a few broken ribs, and a busted shoulder from when I got shot across the room. The explosion leveled the whole side of the building. I mean leveled it. It rattled the windows in houses up to a mile away. Sent a fireball hurling into the air a hundred feet high. Of course, that's just what I've been told. I was out like a light.
"Anyway, long story short. Sweets and one of the pourers was killed instantly. Me and the other pourer survived with not much more than a few scars. Fire marshal said that me
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and that guy just happened to be on the lucky side. Sweets and the other pourer were on the side where the gas main decided to blow out. Only good thing is that they didn't have no time to suffer none."
Swamper went off to that distant place again, staring at the front door but not seeing it at all. His mind was elsewhere. But then he came back. He looked down at Clifton who was already asleep. Swamper had no way of knowing that Clifton had barely even heard him mention the name Sweets before he passed out.
Swamper mumbled something, halfway to himself and halfway to Clifton. "Well, it's better this way, I reckon. Because that man who survived with me, that man who poured too fast and killed Sweets, that man was your daddy. And I ain't never forgiven him until right this very second."
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***
Chapter 10
When Clifton awoke , sunlight already streamed through the front windows. It felt like a stack of knitting needles was piercing the hazy film of his eyes. As he lay on the couch, he couldn't seem to lift his head. And he was thirsty. His tongue felt like coarse sandpaper and all he could think about was a glass of water. When he raised himself to a sitting position on the edge of the couch, his head began to throb. If he moved too quickly, he swore he could feel his brain sloshing around, ricocheting off the inner walls of his cranium.
He rested his elbows on his knees and dropped his chin into his open palms. He let the tips of his fingers massage his temples and upper jaw as he tried to piece everything back together. Well, Swamper was right about one thing. I sure slept. And I never once thought about Maria or Mom or anything else. And that was true. But the problem was that now everything came
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flooding back to him two-fold. The fear and anxiety that he'd felt the day before, combined with the remnants of last night's alcohol, instantly made him queasy. Rolls of sweat beaded on his forehead and pangs of hunger gnawed at his gut.
He stood up and tried to make his way to the kitchen, but he found it difficult to keep his balance. He had to put his arms out in front of him and grab on to the back of the couch in order not to fall. God, why would Mom do this to herself every day on purpose? I'll never drink again. Never.
Clifton filled a glass from the spigot, trying to recall his conversation with Swamper. He remembered the story about the three-titted woman--that he remembered for sure. And the tiger. But then what? He vaguely remembered touching the scars on Swamper's arm. Or was that a dream? A work accident? He remembered Swamper talking about one of his friends at the pipe shop, but he couldn't recall his name. And then everything had gone fuzzy. He remembered looking up at Swamper's face as he spoke, but then his world began to spin. He'd closed his eyes to stop the spinning and then things began whirling around the inside of his head instead. And that was it. The next thing he knew, he'd woken up on the couch.
Now, as he drank the water, it felt like liquid gold sliding down his throat. He drank several glasses and got a little relief, though now the water slopped around in his hollow belly,
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making him feel nauseated. He went out to the porch and was surprised to see Bosco; he'd all but forgotten about him.
He patted Bosco on the head as the dog strained to greet him, but the jump rope around his collar had been tied to one of the vertical posts. Clifton definitely didn't remember doing that, so he assumed Swamper must have. He also assumed, judging by the tied-up dog and how quiet it was in the house, that Swamper wasn't there. He'd had a feeling that Swamper was gone when he'd first woken up, just like some people could sense being watched while they slept. He called out for the old man several times but was answered at first by silence and then by the horn of a morning train. When he looked down at the dock, he saw that the skiff was missing. A moment later, when the train rolled by and the wheels screeched along the rails, he thought his head might split in half. He pushed the heels of his hands into his temples and felt the blood pulsate through them. Never again.
When the train disappeared, he stretched his arms above him and breathed in the moist air coming off the river. The sunlight that had stung his eyes earlier had slipped behind a gray cloud, and as Clifton looked behind him, he saw a whole troop of similar clouds slowly rolling in from the west. Barn swallows swooped by in opposite directions as they searched out places of refuge, and the ovals of yellowed beech leaves
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fluttered by as the breeze gradually increased. It's gonna storm soon. If I leave right now, I might be able to beat it.
Five minutes later he had his shoes on--which he didn't remember removing--and had the jump rope in his hands. "Let's go, Bosco," he said as he looked up at the ever-darkening clouds roiling like wisps of black smoke. There was something about an approaching storm that had always thrilled him. Like life was put on hold for a few minutes. If nothing else, he was thankful for the storm because it was blocking out the unbearable July sun that would have played hell with his hangover.
The breeze, which continued to strengthen as he walked up the path toward the road, at least provided some relief from the humidity. And as miserable as he was, in a way he felt as if he'd earned a small badge of honor. His first hangover. It was like he could now shelve
that one away and mark it off his list. Not that he actually had a list, and even if he did, he didn't think getting a hangover would have been on it, but he still felt a small twinge of pride that he'd done it.
If he had had a list, one of the things on it would have been to see all fifty states. As it was, he'd seen only two: Virginia, of course, and West Virginia, where his parents had taken him to the state fair when he'd been little. He barely remembered it, but he still counted it. Another thing on the list would
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have been to catch a citation catfish. Not necessarily a state record, but just a fish big enough to earn him a certificate and get his name in the paper. He wanted to swim in the ocean. He didn't care which one, but he wanted to see the waves and bodysurf them. He wanted to snow ski. The mountains generally got a fair amount of snow in the winter, but there was nowhere to go skiing. He'd decided that once he saved up enough money, he was going to try to buy a car so he could go. And also to the beach. Yesterday, he'd even entertained-- just for that brief window of time when everything was going so well--that maybe he and Julie could go together. But the shutters on that window had closed quickly.
Those daydreams were extinguished once he reached the road. A heavy dose of reality hit. He realized he wouldn't be going near a beach, or anywhere else with Julie, anytime soon. Her sister was most likely dead. All at once he realized that he really needed to get home. Really needed to find out what was happening in Crocket's Mill. Had to find out if the man had been caught. Had to find out about Maria. Had to find out what he was going to do about getting his mother out of jail. Had to feed Bosco. Had to return Bosco.
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