by Alex Taylor
Beam leaned his elbows on the bar. At one end, a gallon pickling jar sat half-full with what looked to be human teeth. A handwritten sign taped to the side of the jar read: ANY TEETH LOST DURING A FIGHT INSIDE THE BAR BECOME THE PROPERTY OF DARYLS. Beam stared at the jar until someone shouted, “There he is!”
When Beam turned, his eyes met those of the old ginseng hunter from the forest who sat at one of the newspapered picnic tables, a beady bottle of Milwaukee’s Best and what appeared to be a microwave pizza placed in front of him. His ginseng tote sack lay under the table at his feet.
“Where you been?” he asked, waving Beam over. “We ain’t been doing nothing but waiting on you.”
Beam crossed the floor to him. The old man smiled broadly, his lips cracking open like dry earth. He nodded for him to sit, but Beam was wary, still searching the shadows of the bar for the trucker, and remained standing.
“Did a trucker wearing a suit just come in here?” he asked.
The old man lifted his beer and took a drink, then set the bottle back down in front of him. “I don’t know if he was a trucker or not, but a fellow did come in here dressed slick as a Methodist minister.” He bobbed his head toward the hallway. “Went back yonder with one of the girls. Believe he aims to take up residence.”
Beam looked toward the hallway. The duffel suddenly felt heavy on his back and he shrugged it off so that it fell to the floor behind him. “He’s got my money,” he said.
The old man picked an olive from his pizza and tossed it into his mouth. “That don’t sound good,” he said. “Did you give it to him?”
“No. He stole it from me while I was asleep.”
“How much did he peel off you?”
“Seventy dollars.”
The ginseng hunter took a bite of pizza, chewed and swallowed, then brushed his hands together. From his shirt pocket, he pulled a roll of bills banded together with a wire twisttie. He untied the roll and peeled off three twenties and a ten and slid the money across the table toward Beam.
“There you go,” he said. “You’re square now, so I’d go on and get out of here and not worry about it none.”
Beam looked at the money lying on the table. He hadn’t expected this, not from a man he’d spoken to only once. He’d never accepted charity before, even when he needed it during lean times on the ferry, and it seemed insulting that he hadn’t the nerve to ask for it now but that the old man had simply offered it.
“Why’d you do that?” he asked.
The old man drank from his beer again and then stared at Beam. “You need it more than me,” he said. “Besides, you don’t want the kind of trouble looking for money in a place like this will get you.”
“I don’t need your money,” Beam said. “I got my own.”
“No.” The old man shook his head. “By what you just told me, that feller in them fancy clothes has got your money.” He patted the bills with his hand. “You best take these dollars and head on out to wherever it was you were going to when I come across you this morning.”
“I ain’t leaving here without my own money,” Beam said.
The old man placed his hands on the table. “How old are you?” he asked.
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“A lot,” he said. “You’re young, I can tell. Man your age, he thinks the world will break if he hits it hard enough. He thinks it’s something he can best, but that’s not the way it works.” The old man moved his hands so that they rested with the palms turned up on the smeared newsprint. “The world can’t be broken,” he said. “The best a man can do is get out of its way and hope it doesn’t notice him.” He reached out and scooted the money closer to Beam’s side of the table. “Take that,” he said. “Take that and get your ass out of here before somebody notices you ain’t where you’re supposed to be.”
“Like I said, I got my own money.” Beam turned to go back to the hallway of doors where the trucker had disappeared, but the old man shot a clawed brown hand out and grabbed his arm.
“You can’t go just yet,” he insisted.
Beam jerked at the old man’s touch, but his fingers were fastened to his arm. “And why the hell not?” he asked.
“You can’t go cause you ain’t asked what the goat is for.” The old man pointed toward the stage where the goat stood with the bed sheet in its mouth, its white beard twitching while it chewed. “That goat is a devil,” he said, releasing Beam’s arm. “His name’s Samhill Doug, and he’s some popular with the girls out here.” The old man cocked a single blue eye at Beam. “You understand what I mean by that?” he asked.
Beam looked at the goat with the limp coverlet in its mouth, its cold eyes regarding him with something akin to a sad indifference, as if he were only one more unlucky wayfarer to pass through these grim and ancient halls.
“I ain’t worried about any goat,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m worried about getting my money back.” Beam strode off quickly to the hallway, his boots clomping on the boards as he slipped deeper into the darkness, as if his very body were something the shadows were absconding with.
The first door he came to felt cool to the touch when he pressed his ear against it, but he heard nothing on the other side and went on to the next. A woman spoke beyond the scored oak. Her voice bubbled and spritzed with laughter, and then the trucker coughed and giggled.
When Beam kicked the door, the bolt sheared away from the lockbracing in a mist of wood pulp and sawdust. The woman, who was lying on a rumpled bed, screamed and pulled a sheet over her large breasts that were so white they appeared powdered with confectioner’s sugar.
The trucker sat on the edge of the mattress unlacing his boots. When he saw Beam, he stopped and smiled.
“Now see, bud, you can’t just come in here like that. It ain’t natural,” he said. “Anyway, I’m afraid you’ll have to take seconds as I’m first in line for the pussy today.”
Beam stood in the doorway. “Where’s my money?” he asked.
“Money? You got money?”
“I did until you stole if off me while I was sleeping.”
Beam stepped deeper into the room and the smell of sudsy water and rank bedding flung itself at him. The whore, who’d backed against the wall still holding the sheet to her chest, snarled at him. “Fuck you!” she said. “You ain’t got no right to bust up in my room without paying first.”
Beam ignored her and held his empty hand out to the trucker. “Give me my money back.”
The trucker’s smile tightened. He took off the steel-toed boot he’d been unlacing and sat it in his lap. “You best go on back outside,” he said. “I got business to attend to right here and you’re holding me up.”
Beam let his hand fall to his side. The air inside the room had turned heavy and tainted.
“I got to have my money,” he said. “You took it and you got to give it back.”
The trucker jerked his head once. “Come on and get it, then,” he said.
There was a brief pause, and then Beam rushed at the trucker, who slammed the steel-toed boot against the side of his head, sending him sprawling back into the wall, his arm knocking over a glass lamp, which shattered on the floor. Beam tried to right himself, but the trucker kicked him in the ribs. Beam slumped against the baseboard, curling his knees up into his gut and covering his head with his hands as the trucker began to beat him with the boot.
Then it all suddenly stopped. The trucker stepped away and flung the boot into a corner, and when Beam uncovered his face, Daryl Vanlandingham was standing in the room, the red stumps of his arms crooked at his sides. Beside him were two other men, in jeans and grimy t-shirts. Each of them held wooden tire-knockers.
“I don’t like trouble in this place unless I’m the one to bring it,” said Daryl. He wobbled over to Beam and looked down at him. The paunch of his belly curled over the waist of his jeans, and his sweaty bald scalp and bloated green face gave him the appearance of a seasick snowman. He was sucking hard at
the stifling air in the room.
“What is all this?” he wheezed.
“I’d call it a friendly misunderstanding,” said the trucker.
Daryl turned and took in the sight of the man standing there in his blue sport coat and pressed slacks.
“Why in all holy fuck are you dressed like that?” he asked.
“It’s for business purposes,” he said, straightening the cuffs of his shirt.
“Business purposes?” Daryl turned to the whore seated on the bed. “Shelly, what happened in here?”
The whore shook her head, and a loose smile curled beneath her nose. “That one,” she said, pointing at Beam on the floor, “bust in here wanting money from this one.” She tossed her hand in the trucker’s direction and then let it fall into her lap. “That’s all the know of it I got.”
Daryl snorted and peered down at Beam. The trucker’s boot had cut him just beneath the ear at his jawline, and blood spilled over his neck and into the collar of his shirt.
“That true?” Daryl asked, nudging him with his shoe. “You bust my door down like Shelly said?”
Beam mumbled and shook his head. He tried to look up at Daryl, but his sight had gone cloudy so that he could make out only the vaguest shapes of things.
“Who are you?” Daryl asked. “You look like somebody I ought to know.” He turned to the men standing in the broken doorway. “Fetch this one out to the bar so we can get a better look at him.”
The men lifted Beam by the arms and dragged him out of the room and down the hallway to the front of the Quonset hut where the light was better. They left him seated on the floor with his back propped against the bar. One of the men used his tire-knocker to hoist his chin up.
“You’re Beam Sheetmire, ain’t you?” Daryl said. “Clem and Derna’s boy?”
Beam shook his head, then leaned over and spat a red stream of blood and saliva onto the wood floor.
Daryl and the men looked at one another. The trucker and the whore had come out to the front of the Quonset hut, and they stood leaning on the bar, meek smiles drifting across their lips.
“I know you,” Daryl said, nudging Beam with his shoe once again. “I seen you plenty tending to that broke down old ferry your daddy owns.” He jerked his chin and one of the men came and unbuttoned his shirt and slid it off his body. Daryl’s torso was creamy gray and hairless but for a few black flecks sprouting from his nipples, and the curdy flesh about his abdomen was striped with streaky blue veins.
“You see this?” he asked Beam, bending a pink stump toward him, the cleft flesh slick and glistening in its folds like the body of a blind worm. “Your daddy is the cause of this. I aim to make a few cuts on you to settle that account. Get on the phone and holler up to Loat’s,” Daryl told one of the men holding a tire knocker. “Tell him we caught us a possum he might like a gander at.”
Someone began to stroke a rotary phone. Beam felt the blood filling his mouth again. He spat and closed his eyes. Then someone said, “Step away from that boy” and he opened them again.
In the doorway of the Quonset stood the old ginseng hunter. At his hip, he held a two barrel over-under shotgun.
“This business don’t belong to you, Pete,” Daryl said to the old man. “You best clear on out of here unless you feel like scalding your ass in hell tonight.”
The old man broke the gun open and loaded a shell into each barrel and then swung it upward so the breech snapped closed. “I got all the hell I need right here,” he said. “Now get away from that boy. I’m taking him with me.”
Daryl said nothing for a few moments. Then he wagged his large oblong head and fetched a swift kick to Beam’s groin, who doubled up in agony against the bar. “You’re quite the prize, Beam,” Daryl said. “Even old worn out drunks want you.”
“Back off, Daryl,” said the ginseng hunter. “I’ll cut you in half with this gun and not bat an eye.”
Slowly, Daryl stepped away from Beam. Behind him, the man on the phone hung the receiver back in its cradle.
“Loat’s on his way,” he said.
“Heard that didn’t you, Pete,” said Daryl. “This ain’t some heathen land where you can barge in a man’s place of business with a shotgun and not pay the price.”
Pete moved slowly toward the bar, keeping the gun leveled at Daryl’s belly. “I’m taking this boy,” he said. “Loat don’t figure into what I do.” He bent and slung Beam’s arm over his shoulder and lifted him up. Beam felt like he was going to pass out, but the old man jabbed a thumb under his ribs and the pain brought him round again so that he managed to get his legs under him.
The two of them backed toward the doors slowly. When they reached the exit, Pete kicked the doors open and dragged Beam into the lewd heat of the parking lot. Beam felt loose gravel under his feet, then the uneven metal of a truck bed beneath him. The truck’s mangy engine barked alive and he soon felt the rush of motion swim over him, then the blackness of sleep.
X
THURSDAY
Beam awoke to the crackle of a campfire as it snapped at knots of hickory kindling, the surrounding dark loud with crickets and the soughing of trees in the wind.
He lay on his back atop a green tarpaulin. Someone had pillowed his head with a sack full of pine chips, and the blood had been washed from his face with pumice soap that left his cheeks scoured and flecked with clean grit.
Pete, the old ginseng hunter, sat across from him on a fallen elm log tending the fire with a two-pronged skewer. Flames sprouted up through a metal grille atop the flat rocks of the fire pit and licked the sides of a bean tin, but what cooked there was not beans as it smelled vaguely of shoe polish. In the light of the fire, Pete’s worn features seemed soft and nearly angelic so that Beam believed he might have passed into a heaven shoddy and incongruous where night and flame had become the colors raised to declare a ramshackle salvation.
Beam turned his head and looked out into the darkness. Beyond the hem of firelight, he made out the shapes of headstones. Crumbling marble and some of Quikrete, the homemade cenotaphs of the poor and unmoneyed. Tussocks of foxtail and yucca grew around the markers, and a dead cedar had fallen over one of the graves so that its stone spilled in a wild broken chaos across the black-grown earth.
“You’re in a cemetery,” said Pete. “In case you were wondering.”
Beam dragged the hair from his eyes. He tried to sit up, but it was too painful, so he lay back again, looking up at the night sky that seemed with its spread of stars like a sherdpiece of charred crockery, cracks of weltering light zagging off through the void, the bone-fingers of comet trails holding up the dark bowl of the fissured heavens. Stars were failing up there. Planets were being felled, shooting off in arcing traceries and burning out in vague plumes that flared and then were gone, but he was here in this world beside a fire in the warm night.
“You aim to bury me out here?” Beam asked.
Pete’s shoulders jostled with quiet laughter. “No,” he said. “You’re stove up, but miles off from being dead just yet.” He rested his elbows on his knees and folded his hands together. “Do you hurt?”
Beam rested his hands on his chest. His head ached and a long sluice of pain seemed to run behind his eyeballs, and some of his ribs were possibly broken as each breath made his lungs feel like a pair of old worn out accordions.
“No. I don’t hurt,” he said. “Not even a little bit.”
Pete pushed a log deeper into the fire with his boot. “Go ‘head. Tell another one.”
The smoke from the bean tin thickened and blew over Beam so that he caught its rank and sour smell.
“What is that you’re cooking?” he asked.
“Salve.”
“Salve?”
“Yes.” Pete crouched closer to the fire and drew a rag from his back pocket. He wrapped it around the tin of beans and lifted it from the grille. Some of the liquid, which was a thick syrupy brown, spilled over the side onto his fingers and he cursed and pushed his thumb into h
is mouth. “Hot,” he said. Then he winced and spat. “But not too tasty.”
At his side was a possibles bag that appeared fashioned from calf skin. Pete folded the flap over and took out a ring of aluminum measuring spoons, leaning into the firelight and squinting until he had selected the right one. “Daughter says I need cataract surgery but I say good sense makes up for a double round of walking blindness,” he said. “Course, my eyes are so bad anymore I got to put my glasses on to go to sleep.”
Finally finding the correct spoon, he took out a small baggie filled with what appeared to be ground red pepper. He measured out a dose and stirred it into the salve, the liquid thickening as it cooled to the consistency and color of paving tar, its smell growing loud and woodsy.
“Soon as this gets cool enough I’ll doctor on you,” said Pete.
“Right,” said Beam. “Tell another one.”
Pete looked across the fire at him. “This stuff here is a fix,” he said. “You don’t got to take it but I’d not advise that. You was beat pretty bad back there at Daryl’s and this salve will put you on the mend.”
“What’s in it?”
Pete lifted a gallon milk jug filled with water and poured some into the tin, causing a thick steam to boil up. “Oh,” he said, “few newts and toads. Dick bone from a crooked back coon. A little paint thinner for flavoring.”
Beam stared at the old man. He didn’t feel much like joking at the moment. The past few days had sent his mind plummeting through an electric maze until his nerves felt like the bitten and frayed ends of wiring in a house too long left vacant. He didn’t know that trouble could actually hunt a man, but that seemed to be the case with him, as every move he made only sank him lower and lower in the quicksand of bad news and wrongdoings. He thought suddenly of how the stranger on the ferry had said that the river had no bottom. Now, he wondered if trouble had a bottom, and if he’d ever find it.
