No sooner was his hand off the car keys than he said, of all things, “Darla, have you ever seen a man’s pecker?”
She was shocked. She couldn’t help picturing her brothers and daddy when they went swimming in the Vickers’ pond. “Yes.”
“Well, let me tell you what I’m going to have to do. I’m going to have to take mine out and give it a beating. He’s been a naughty boy.”
What could she do? She felt like she was locked in a casket, and she got scared.
He sat right there under the steering wheel, unzipped his pants, and pulled out his thing. She looked out the window, but it was like looking into a mirror: the window reflected everything in the eerie green light of the dashboard.
“Oh, blessed Jesus,” he said right before he started masturbating, and she just looked out the window at the night. Her mind was blank, everything suspended-like, and suddenly there were headlights coming from behind them. A car whizzed by, but he kept at it: “Oh, blessed Jesus, would you look at me, Darla? Would you look at me?”
She couldn’t help seeing his reflection. He threw his head back and started his hand going faster and . . . her insides collapsed, her heart and her hopes. What was happening might as well have been physical for the hurt, the dirty and completely useless and invisible way it made her feel. She tried to look out the window, and he said, “Look, look, look,” and she said, “I can see you in the reflection, L. Ray. I’m not going to look at you. You take me home right now.” And he said, “Arrrrrrrrr. Hallelujah!” Then he opened his door, the inside light came on, and he slung his hand toward the ground.
He needed to be castrated—still needs it. There’s no telling how many times he’s done something like that, or worse. Maybe even far worse. Ruined people, girls, no telling how young.
“L. Ray, you take me home now,” she’d said, “or I’m going to tell Mr. Albright.”
“Okay.” As cool and calm as he could be. “Let me clean up a little here. Are you sure?”
“Yes!”
He got out his handkerchief. And in no time they were driving home. Total silence. She could feel her face and neck were red as a beet. He walked her to her door, said good night, and was gone. She would not look at him. Inside, on the table beside the couch, was the box and the green paper and white bow. The flap-and-snap bill-fold was in her pocketbook. She sat down on the couch and realized her legs were shaky. And then she started crying.
L. RAY WRITES, occasionally glancing out at the drizzle. We must start the effort of saving and salving down the whole green-and-brown ball, Earth, with some kind of awareness of suffering, some kind of balm, some kind of felt need to relieve the suffering of our old people. We can start it right here at Rosehaven. Within our neon-damaged culture, the act of relieving suffering, that commitment, can have real power to show up the greedy for what they are—and it’s the only thing that can do it. Each of us, separately, with eyes averted from our own or others’ suffering, individual beating hearts, each beat thumping a slight hunger for a little peace and quiet in the immensity of this wide universe’s galaxies of fire and vast vacancies of whisper-yawning space—each of us needs help. Praise the God in us all as we heal ourselves by tending to the noble old in those ways we would have ourselves tended to. We are about this, ladies: We are about a change in the world. We want to make the world of winter into a world of spring.
He tries to remember where he was that winter afternoon when he looked out of his motel window at the shopping center under construction across the street. Was it Philadelphia or Pittsburgh? The bare, drab earth scraped of all green, the weather miserable, the big building under construction with some kind of yellow siding that had large print on it, the telephone wires between him and the construction—like a sad photograph, all of it worked on him while he decided what to do with the rest of his life, whether to go home or go to the family of the woman who had died while he was trying to heal her, while he was doing his best to physically, with his hands, infuse the healing spirit of God into her bones and heart and brain, back when he believed that could be done. Well, hell, it could be done—he’d done it. But he sure didn’t understand it. He’d also faked it. On occasion.
So he had decided to start over, to change his name and start over, and soon after that came the shark attack, and now here he is in a damn nursing home, but with a hope in something big—something he can do. If he doesn’t make a difference now—if this movement doesn’t get launched—then that’s all she wrote. But by God, he’s found a slant that is fresh and powerful, a slant of all slants, handed to him by two old ladies, and he’s going to launch this thing, even though he can’t think or hear or see so well all the time. But part of a visionary’s, a prophet’s, job is to get people to behave in ways that will lead to the well-being of everyone. He can do that. The Bible prophets were mostly old people, old folks, geezers, seniors, silvers. None of those words sound bad or odd to him, now that he’s one of them himself and doing something worth a dime. He’s proud of his age. He’s by God sick of the big American marketing frenzy ignoring and thus belittling old people. And in the process of his movement, whenever it comes, the world’s tension level will drop by 10 or 20 percent, and that will set the stage for a time of new help for old people, of saving the silvers, bailing out the baldies, giving help where it is needed, for heaven’s sake, instead of craving candy, coveting cars, and wasting gasoline. He doesn’t have to worry too much about the details. Jesus didn’t—and look at what he launched. With a new slant. Jesus didn’t have a secretary either. But he did have disciples. They will come with time. Give it a little time. Get it launched, and then give it a little time. This bass player, that Carl fellow, can be a disciple.
He looks up, and here comes Carl along the walkway, behind Clara Cochran and Lil Olive, holding one umbrella over them as they push their walkers along, and another umbrella over his own head. Their walker satchels are stuffed with white shopping bags.
“You all been shopping?” asks L. Ray.
Carl is shaking off the umbrellas.
Clara brushes water off her sleeve. “That’s right. Got us some shoes. I need to get in and get some rest. My ass is dragging.”
“Clara!” says Lil.
L. Ray thinks again about Carl—a levelheaded young man. Carl might be the one to put his new sermons about the movement in a book, just in case L. Ray doesn’t last long enough. The fellow seems competent and doesn’t seem to have any of his own eggs to fry. Except he likes Anna. And who doesn’t.
DARLA WATCHES THEM ALL. AS the woman with the big eye walks past her, Darla decides that she’s the right one to tell first. “He masturbated in front of me.”
The woman stops. “What?”
“He masturbated in front of me.”
Clara has never really looked into those eyes—eyes with dark bags beneath them. “Who?”
“L. Ray Flowers.”
“Aw, bullshit. Sober up.”
Darla can’t believe it. This must be one of the crazy ones. “You get on inside where you belong, old woman. You old bitch. I know what happened.”
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
“Well, I’m not. I didn’t do anything wrong. He’s the one that did the wrong. You get away from me.”
That night back then, her mama and daddy weren’t home yet, and her little sister, Melanie, came in and said, “Where have you been?” Melanie was in her pajamas. She was seven then. They were soft pajamas, flannel, yellow with white ducks; they had been Darla’s when she was little. Melanie was wearing her glasses. She was farsighted.
“Where’s Mama and Daddy?” Darla asked her.
“They went to the drive-in.”
“Why didn’t you go?”
“They said I couldn’t. Where have you been?”
“To a dance.”
“Who did you go with?”
“A boy I know.”
“Who?”
“Just a boy.”
“Was it fun?�
�
“Yes.” That was her first lie about it, and then she didn’t say anything for, what, more than forty years? She’d been ashamed of it.
“Then why are you crying?” her sister had said. She jumped up on the couch beside Darla, crossed her legs, and grabbed her toes.
“I’m crying because I’m happy.”
Melanie looked at the wrapping paper. “What did you get for a present?”
“A billfold.”
“Can I have that bow?”
Darla focuses. Here comes another crazy one, with her nephew. Who should she tell now? The social worker? The owner? She starts rolling in, and the nephew holds the door for her.
She still has the billfold. That night was supposed to be the first big night of her life.
L. RAY IS STILL on the porch when his bass player, Carl, comes back out.
“You writing a song?” asks Carl.
“A sermon. I’m on a roll. Sit down.”
“I’ve just got a minute.” Carl looks at his watch.
He’s in a hurry, thinks L. Ray. But I can hook him. “I’m trying to give some credits. I was just thinking that my whole shark rebirth couldn’t have happened if I hadn’t read a book called Who Wrote the Bible? You haven’t read that, by chance, have you?”
“Nope. I think the last book reading I did was back in the eighth grade or somewhere in there. We had a paperback reading club. There was, let’s see, The Red Car and The Kid Comes Back, and . . . Did you ever read either one of those?”
“Can’t say as I did. But this Who Wrote the Bible? had a kind of transforming effect on me, along with some other transformations. It says a lot about the Bible and it’s convincing and it just gets me to thinking in ways that . . . You might not be interested.”
“I got about all the church I could handle when I was growing up.”
“Yeah, but the old hymns stay with you, don’t they?”
“I guess—yes, they do.”
“I think we ought to work up some. I’m going to do another little sermon Thursday night. I’ve written seven.” L. Ray is thinking that an advance man doesn’t have to believe anything. This fellow can be his advance man. Just somebody to set things up so he can come in and mow ’em down, rev ’em up, get some excitement going. “I used to be on the road, like I told you, back in the Midwest for a while, until I had some misfortune come along.”
“What happened?”
“Just an accident. I don’t like to think about it. I went through a pretty bad spell. There were several months I didn’t have anything much to eat. A lot of beans.” The accident, L. Ray thinks, was an accident, and that’s it. Nobody seems to realize that or believe that or something. It could have happened in a supermarket, on the street, anywhere. It was an accident. Accidents are part of life.
“Speaking of beans,” says Carl, “I took one of my workers home sick last week and went in with him, and he asked me to get him something out of the refrigerator. He had a six-pack of Budweiser in there, two packs of baloney, and a pound of bacon. That was it.”
“There’s another song for you.”
Thunder Road
MRS. CELIA ROGERS parks her car in the front parking lot at Rosehaven, near the porch. She drove from Greensboro to see her sister, Jenny Osborne, and because she’s afraid she might lose her keys inside that big building, or somewhere else—she’s losing and forgetting stuff left and right these days—she leaves her keys right there where she’ll remember. In the ignition. It’s an ’89 Olds. Maroon. Luggage rack on the trunk.
FROM THE PORCH, Lil can see the luggage rack on her car trunk, right there in the front parking lot, and she sees no reason to sit on the porch when she can ride in her car, even do a little shopping maybe. Carl hasn’t told her she can’t—yet. Her friends are right there beside her on the porch. She leans forward in her rocking chair and asks, “Do you all want to go for a little ride?”
“We can’t do that,” says Clara.
“My car is right there, and I have a driver’s license, for goodness’ sakes.”
“Oh.”
“Let me go get my pocketbook,” says little Maudie.
“You won’t need it. I got mine.” Lil picks it up from beside her chair. “Let’s see, where are my keys?”
“I might need it. I’ll be right back.”
“I wonder if Carl left the keys in there. He drove it last.”
SOMEHOW THIS DOES not feel quite like—drive like—her car. That Carl did something to it. She turns left onto one of the widest highways she has ever seen. “When in the world did they put this here?” she asks.
Clara is up front with Lil. Beatrice and Maudie are in back.
“It’s been here ever since they built it,” says Clara. “Don’t drift over to the middle like that.”
“I don’t even recognize where I am anymore,” says Maudie.
“They’ve built so many goddamned new buildings,” says Clara.
Beatrice leans forward. “I wish you wouldn’t use that language. It’s unbecoming.”
They ride awhile in silence. Lil remembers driving to the beach alone after Tad got so he couldn’t go. She thinks about the earlier time he went to the beach alone and stayed two weeks and she didn’t tell anybody, not even her sisters. That wasn’t long after that boy showed up. Should she tell Carl about all that? She pictures her torn-up marriage certificate.
“Lil, that light is red,” says Clara.
“What light?”
“That stoplight hanging up . . . Lil! You just ran that red light!”
“I never saw a red light.”
“My goodness. You’re going to kill us all.”
“I feel like I’m already dead most of the time,” says Beatrice.
Lil wonders if Clara is just seeing things.
“They have built a lot of new buildings,” says Maudie. “It seems like there are more buildings than there are companies.”
Beatrice, still getting settled, pulls at her slip through her skirt. “That’s because they’ve got more than one company in a building.”
Lil is thinking, Now, this one doesn’t have a clutch, does it? She leans back, tries to look into the floorboard. Maybe there was a red light. “Well, there wasn’t anybody coming, was there?”
“I don’t guess so,” says Clara, “else they’d be in here
with us.” She looks over her shoulder. “Maudie, if they had more than one company in a building, then there would be more companies than buildings, not more buildings than companies.”
“What did I say?”
What in the world are they talking about? thinks Lil. Where am I?
“You said there are more—Lil! There’s another red light. Damn! Stop!”
Lil sees it, hits the brake. Whoops! The brakes are sensitive. Tires screech. The car slides to a stop. Carl has had the brakes worked on. People crossing the street stare, draw back a little. Well, she thinks, at least my reflexes are still all right. She’d been looking for stoplights over there on a telephone pole on the corner, not hanging overhead. That’s all.
Clara leans toward Lil, stares at her with her one good eye. “Lil, can you by God see?”
“I certainly can. I just haven’t driven in a while is all. I was looking in the wrong place for stoplights. I’m out of practice. Carl has this idea that he don’t want me driving. You need to practice driving just like you need to practice anything else.”
“How about the way Carl played that guitar?” Beatrice says from the backseat.
Lil looks in the rearview mirror. She can see Beatrice but not little Maudie. “He always has been musical but just never got off to a good start.” Lil wonders what Carl will say about this driving. He won’t like it. But it’s her car, after all. It was good of him to tighten up those brakes.
“If you look in the yellow pages,” says somebody—it’s little Maudie—“you just have the names of companies listed, but if you drive along the street just about anywhere in Hansen County, certainly in
Summerlin, there is building after building after building. Lil, you can go now. The light’s green.”
What can we shop for today? thinks Lil as she drives across the intersection. “Why don’t we get something for Mr. Flowers’s new idea?”
“Our idea,” says Clara.
“That’s right.”
“That’s a good idea,” says Beatrice. “What?”
“Let’s get him a flag,” says Clara. “Every movement needs a flag.”
Maudie straightens, pushes up in her seat a bit. We need to stay out of that business, she thinks. “He’s going to get into trouble with all that. It’s blasphemous, number one, and number two, it might be connected to those one-world-government black helicopter groups. The man is messing with the basics of Christianity, trying to get all the other religions in on it.”
“Aw, Maudie,” says Clara, “lighten up.”
Lil is glad she said that.
“You mark my words.”
Lil fails to recognize any familiar landmarks. “That Eckerd wasn’t there before. The one I know is over at the intersection of Market and Dillard. Mr. Butler works there. He’s the pharmacist. Cliff Butler. He’s one of the best pharma—whoops!”
Clara grabs the dash. “Lil!? Holy smoke.”
“One of the best pharmacists and nicest men you’ll ever meet anywhere. Do any of you know him?”
“Oh, yes,” says Maudie. “I been knowing him since he—slow down, Lil—since he started working over there. Before him was Mr. Bordeaux, and I think he was just as nice as Mr. Butler, myself.”
Lil expects to come to Highway 98 right about now, but it’s nowhere to be seen. “I thought Highway Ninety-eight was right along here. Everything has changed so much.”
“Highway Ninety-eight is clear on the other side of town,” says Clara. “You turned left out of Rosehaven, not right.”
“Okay, then I need to turn around. How about right here?”
The car bounces into a strip-mall parking lot.
“Slow down, Lil. For crying out loud.”
“I don’t have a backseat driver. I got a front-seat driver.” Lil looks over at Clara and smiles.
Lunch at the Piccadilly Page 9
