Desert Blues

by Bill Albert

  She got up from the bed, opened the door and went out into the hall.

  “Please, darling, can you turn it down just a little? It is after twelve o’clock.”

  Harold didn’t answer, but he did lower the volume. She went back into her room and lay down again. As long as it wasn’t too loud the music didn’t really bother her, but Archie was going to be a different story.

  “It’s the goddamn crickets, babe. Can’t you hear the little bastards? Out there hissing themselves stupid. Jesus! I thought it was supposed to be quiet in the desert. How am I supposed to sleep with that racket going on?”

  Crickets. Archie was worried about crickets. He had to wear earplugs to get to sleep. What chance was he going to have with Harold’s music?

  She looked at the phone by the side of the bed. Tomorrow. It could wait a while longer. She would definitely call Archie tomorrow.

  “It is after twelve o’clock.”

  Through the door and over the Fat Man’s music Aunt Enid sounded like his mother. The same voice. His mother had yelled a lot more. Still, it was early days.

  He pulled a record out of one of the boxes. Joe Turner, “Shake, Rattle and Roll,” Atlantic, 1954, yellow and black. He had bought it at that place off of Vine Street. Alvin had put him on to the music.

  “Shee-it, Harold-boy, it’s those white boys making the money with that stuff. Now you just listen to this. I know y’all like this heavy beat stuff. But then you wanna listen to the real gin-u-wine sound.”

  Harold liked the sound, he liked it a lot and long arguments followed at school over the relative merits of Bill Haley and Big Joe Turner. Most of his friends had never heard of Joe Turner or Lowell Fulson, Elmore James, Johnny Watson or any of the others. Until he brought the record to school, they wouldn’t believe that Big Mama Thornton, a Negro woman, had actually recorded “Hound Dog” four years before Elvis. Peacock, 1952, red and silver, flip side “Night Mare.” For most of the other kids it was all Bill Haley, Elvis or for the real retards, Tab Hunter, Paul Anka, and Pat Boone. Elvis had been OK up until “Love Me Tender,” but Pat Boone!

  He slipped the record back in the box. J. Turner right behind I. Turner.

  The Fats Domino record finished, the arm lifted and returned to the rest, the turntable stopped.

  Harold couldn’t understand how people survived the summers in Palm Springs. It was almost one in the morning and it was still baking hot. There was no air to breathe. He took off his clothes, put on his pajamas and turned off the light.

  There was a full moon. Outside everything was a soft blue. From where he lay he could look out the window and see the thin arm of an ocotillo cactus, a telegraph pole, and a slice of the big mountain that rose up immediately to the west of the town. He thought it all looked much better at night.

  Private school. What was that going to be like? “Lots of individual attention.” That could be trouble. Once in a while a teacher at Fairfax had yelled at him, but most of the time they didn’t bother and that was fine with Harold. He didn’t want anything to do with individual attention.

  In the moonlight the heavy-petaled roses on the walls looked like faces. Hundreds of dark faces. All staring at him. All giving him individual attention. He closed his eyes.

  The phone rang next to her bed. She turned away, pulled the pillow over her head and tried to ignore the insistent noise. The ringing continued. It followed her under the pillow and into her sleep. Finally, with eyes still closed she fumbled on the table for the receiver. She put it to her ear and listened. Over the crackle on the line was the indistinct echoing voice announcing something over a loudspeaker.

  “Hello?” she said, her voice husky with sleep, her eyes shut.

  “That will be one dollar and twenty-five cents for the first three minutes, please.’

  There was a pause.

  “Hello, babe, howya doing?”

  “Archie?”

  “Yeah. Sorry to wake you up so early. I wanted to talk to you.”

  She opened her eyes and looked at the clock. It was half past five. Archie never called that early. Something had to be wrong. Enid pulled herself awake. She sat up in bed.

  “You there, Enid?”

  “Sure, darling, I’m here. What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing, sweetheart. Nothing’s the matter. Only something’s come up with one of our people in Mexico and I’ve got to go down there for a week or so to straighten things out. In fact, I’m at the airport right now. On my way back I thought I’d come through LA and then fly down and see you. Spend some time. How about it? And, there’s a few little things we gotta talk over.”

  Her stomach fluttered. What could Archie have in mind? He sounded friendly enough. No hint of bad news in his voice. Still, what he said made her apprehensive.

  “What ‘little things’ do we have to talk over, Archie?”

  “Can’t really tell you about it over the phone, babe. Don’t worry about it, I’ll be there soon enough and we can discuss it then.”

  “Archie, don’t tease me, please.”

  “Hey, I’m not teasing, sweetheart, honest I’m not. I can’t wait to see you.”

  “Me too,” said Enid. “It would be just marvelous, Archie darling. But, I didn’t expect you for another month or two. You know, when it gets a little cooler.”

  “What’s the matter, babe,” he laughed. “You got something going on there I shouldn’t know about?”

  “You know better than that, Archie. Come on now.”

  “Only kidding, doll. You know me, always a joke.”

  “Sure, Archie. I know you.”

  “So how’s every little thing with you, babe?”

  Now, thought Enid. I could just let it slip into the conversation. She saw Archie standing by a pay phone in the airport, lots of people walking back and forth, him looking at his watch, thinking about getting on the plane. Was it really the best time to tell him about Harold? To try to explain it all. Maybe not.

  “Great. Everything’s just great.”

  “You don’t sound so sure about it.”

  “I only just got up, Archie. I’m still a little dozy.”

  “Yeah, sure thing. I’m sorry, honey. Listen, they just called my plane. I gotta run. I’ll drop you a note from Mexico. Tell you when I’m arriving.”

  Only then did it occur to Enid that Archie was about to disappear. How would she get in touch with him in Mexico? There would be no way to tell him about anything before he arrived in Palm Springs.

  “Archie, listen, darling, I’ve got to . . .”

  “Please deposit another seventy-five cents for the next three minutes.”

  “Operator, please,” Enid shouted down the phone. “I’ll pay . . .”

  There was a distant click. The phone went dead. She’d left it too late. Archie was on his way.

  He was in the corridor at high school. Metal lockers on either side. An acre of green linoleum floor. No one else was there. The bell was ringing for the end of class, but it was too quiet. No running feet, no shouting, no nothing. The bell rang again. Harold woke up.

  He was facing the wall next to the bed. A couple of inches away was a large red rose. Eyes half shut, he tried to transform the rose into something else. It wouldn’t change. The phone rang. It sounded particularly loud in the quiet house. The cooler hadn’t been switched on yet. He rolled over. Every morning he somehow expected them to be gone. Every morning they were there waiting for him. Last night’s moonlight faces—morning roses. Surrounding, suffocating him. Another ring. The walls of the room enveloped him as if he were caught up in the soft lining of a woman’s bathrobe. Aunt Enid had said she would get him new wallpaper or have someone paint the walls. Today he would definitely have to ask her about it.

  Again the phone rang. Now he was fully awake. He sat up in bed, looked out the window. Only the top third of
the mountain was lit by the sun. A door slammed somewhere in the house. He looked at his watch. It was five-thirty in the morning. His stomach tightened. Something bad had happened. It was much too early for good news. He had had all the bad news he imagined there was. What more?

  Aunt Enid was in the bathroom. The squeak from the medicine cabinet door, the toilet seat being put down, the rustle of the shower curtain, water running. She would be in there for at least half an hour. First a long shower, then all the makeup, and whatever else she did to herself. Harold couldn’t wait. He had to pee. The more he thought about it, heard the water splashing, the more overwhelming was the urge. His penis was painfully stretched in a full-bladder morning-piss hard-on. Discomfort filled up all his space, driving out worry about the phone call.

  After fifteen minutes he couldn’t stand the pressure any longer. He went outside and peed in the oleander bushes which lined the fence near the swimming pool. As he came back into the house, Enid was just emerging from the bathroom wrapped in a large green towel. When she saw an unexpected Harold stumbling through from the backyard she screamed. Harold replied with a startled shout of his own. They stood very still for a moment eyeing each other. Then they both laughed. It was the first time Enid could remember Harold laughing since he came to live with her. She smiled at him.

  “Harold darling, you gave me such a fright,” she said, pulling the towel tight around her body.

  “Are you alright, dear?”

  “Yeah, I’m OK.”

  “Why were you outside just now?”

  “I had to pee, and . . .”

  She smiled at him.

  “Of course. It’s just that it’s so early I didn’t expect to see you up.”

  “It was the phone woke me.”

  At the mention of the word “phone” her smile broadened and then cracked.

  “Yes, I’m sorry about that, it’s just that . . .”

  She sat down heavily on a hard-backed chair and began to sob. Her shoulders shook and the towel started to slip. Harold watched, trying to divorce his fascination with her slowly emerging breasts from his disquiet about her crying.

  He had been right, the early phone call had been bad news. Where would he have to go now? Who would take care of him? Self-pity started to close in.

  “I’m sorry, Harold. I’ll be OK in a minute.”

  He couldn’t bring himself to ask her what was wrong. If he sat very still maybe it would pass. He sat very still.

  “Let me get dressed and then we can talk. OK, darling?”

  Clearly it was not going to pass.

  “No thanks, Aunt Enid, I don’t like coffee.’”

  “Of course, dear, I forgot. I’m sorry.”

  They sat facing each other at the dining room table. Harold pushed a few stray cornflakes around the sides of his bowl with a spoon. Enid stirred her coffee.

  Archie was going to arrive unprepared. Enid thought the least she had better do was prepare Harold. That way she would only have one of them to worry about when the plane landed.

  “Harold dear, there is someone coming to visit us in a couple of weeks and I wanted to talk to you about him before he gets here.”

  Harold was trying to line up the milk-soaked cornflakes so they made a yellow ring around the inside of the bowl. He maneuvered one from the bottom toward the rim.

  “Are you still with me, darling?”

  “Yeah, someone’s coming to visit you said.”

  He was waiting for the punch line. The early phone call, the crying. It couldn’t be just a simple visit. He concentrated on arranging the cornflakes.

  “His name is Archie,” she said very slowly and deliberately, “Archie Blatt and he comes from St. Louis.”

  The tone of her voice and the studied pace of the delivery made Harold feel as if he was being given a geography lesson. Aunt Enid obviously wanted him to know exactly where Archie Blatt came from.

  She watched Harold closely as she spoke. He was messing around with his cereal, tensed, waiting for a blow to fall as if he knew already. How could be know?

  “Now, Archie is a very old friend of mine, Harold and, well it’s difficult to explain it, but . . . He sort of takes care of me . . . That is, not takes care of me actually, but we have this arrangement. He sort of pays for things, and . . . he comes to see me every once in a while . . . and . . .”

  Harold glanced up from his bowl. He ducked his head when he met Enid’s eyes coming at him from across the table. What was she trying to tell him?

  “ . . . he’s sort of my boyfriend, if you know what I mean. Although he’s no boy, but . . .”

  Harold thought he knew what she meant, although he didn’t know what it meant for him.

  “I told her that she was nothing better than a prostitute. Imagine, taking money like that.”

  “You shouldn’t be so hard on her, Sylvia. It hasn’t been easy for her.”

  “It hasn’t been easy for us, Norman! That’s no excuse for what she’s doing there. Anyway, why are you defending her all of a sudden? You don’t even like my sister. Wait a minute, do you like my sister?”

  “That’s not the point here. She likes the guy, right? If he wants to help her out . . .”

  It was one of his parents’ many conversations which he had heard but hadn’t been able to put together with anything. He tried now but he didn’t see how it fit with the phone call and the tears. There was something missing and that made him uneasy.

  At least she had his attention. He had put down his spoon and looked at her. Maybe it wasn’t going to be so difficult after all. She took a deep breath.

  “When he comes I want you to be good friends with Archie, Harold. OK?”

  It seemed important for Aunt Enid, and he didn’t see what he had to lose.

  “Sure, Aunt Enid. That’s OK with me.”

  Meetings

  He leaned his arms on the top rail of the rough wooden fence and watched the horses. Three of them stood together in the far corner of the corral. Only their tails moved, flicking away the flies. The smell was not nearly as bad as he had expected. In fact, he found he didn’t mind the powerful rancid-sweet odor of horse shit and straw. That surprised him, for his only experience with horses had been a brief and unhappy one.

  When he was little, about five or six, his mother had taken him to Pony Land near a big amusement park on Beverly near La Cienega. His legs too small to grip the animal’s fat sides, he held on to the pommel and was bounced violently up and down as the pony trotted away from his mother and around the track. The ride seemed to last for hours. It was painful and he was so scared he wet his pants. They never went back. The only horses he saw after that were on television during the Rose Parade or in Westerns.

  He loved Westerns. He cut school to go up to Hollywood to see the latest films like Shane, Hondo, The Searchers, 3:10 to Yuma and tried not to miss anything on television. But it was the simple ritual formula that appealed to him, the good guys and the bad guys, not the horses. Real horses were for hayseeds, guys that talked slow and liked all that cornball, shitkicking music.

  He was there at the stables, had braved the afternoon heat to escape from one of Aunt Enid’s friends who had come to visit. Even horses were preferable.

  “Harold, I want you to meet my very, very best friend, Charlene Briggs.”

  “Oh, it is so nice to see you, Harold. I’ve heard so much about you, dear, from your aunt,” said Charlene, as if she was reciting from a book.

  She stuck out her hand. Harold offered his. She took it in both of hers and didn’t let go. Heavy rings dug into his knuckles. She was a tall, beefy woman who wore too much makeup. Her bouffant hairdo was stiff with lacquer.

  “So, Harold, how are you liking our little ol’ town?” she asked, giving him a warm smile and exchanging her accent for something much more Southern.

  He
couldn’t get his hand back. She had a tight grip and seemed to be pulling him toward her. It was like being sucked into quicksand.

  “Oh, um, ah . . . it’s fine, I guess.”

  His ears felt hot, the palms of his hands sweaty. He knew he was blushing. Finally she let go. He almost fell over backwards. Both women laughed.

  “Ain’t he just the cutest little ol’ thing?” said Charlene, winking at Harold and patting Enid on the thigh.

  He mumbled something about getting a drink and rushed out of the room. When he reached the kitchen he kept going, the screen door banging loudly behind him. Aunt Enid called out after him, but he didn’t listen. He put his head down and walked off toward the apparent shelter of the tamarisk trees at the end of the road. To his surprise, he had found the corral on the other side of the trees.

  Now someone was walking toward him. Harold thought he looked familiar but he couldn’t remember where he’d seen him.

  “Hey, Harold, how they hangin’?”

  Harold’s memory of his sunstroke incident was not very clear, but from Aunt Enid’s description he realized the boy must be the one who brought him home. Who else would know his name?

  “Fine, yeah, thanks.”

  The boy stopped a few feet away and began to look Harold up and down as if he were a horse he might want to buy. The boy’s stare made Harold uncomfortable.

  “About the other day,” said Harold, “ . . . uh, thanks a lot for getting me home and all that.”

  “No sweat, partner. Couldn’t let you lay out there and fry, could I? Wouldn’t have been neighborly.”

  The boy seemed to have made up his mind. He laughed and punched Harold softly on the shoulder. Harold did not like being punched anywhere, however softly. Kids at school did it to each other all the time. Punching, slapping, wrestling, sometimes friendly sometimes not. On the whole, Harold found it easier to deal with the unfriendly, at least he didn’t have to pretend to like it.

  “No, I guess not,” he said.

  “You like horses?”

  “Horses? Ah, I haven’t had a lot to do with horses, if you know what I mean.”