Paris Trout - Pete Dexter

by Pete Dexter

  When she finished, there was a circle cleaned around the bites, and streaks of dirty water ran down the girl's calf and over her ankles. The nurse threw the washrag into a pail and then scrubbed her hands. It took her longer to scrub her hands than it had to clean the bites.

  When the doctor came back into the room, he was carrying a needle. The needle was long enough to go in one side of her and out the other. "What that for?" she said.

  The doctor looked tired. "Rabies shots," he said. She shook her head no and edged farther back into the chair. "If you got bit by a fox," he said, "you got to have shots." He held the needle up for her to see.

  "They go in your stomach."

  "I don't want nothin' like that inside my stomach less I swallow it," she said.

  "Now, you're sure it wasn't some dog," he said. "If it was a dog, the police just take you home, maybe ask what it looked like. As simple as pie, if it was a dog." She saw him looking at her; she couldn't see what he wanted.

  "The police doesn't know where I live," she said.

  "They take you where I tell them," he said.

  "I never heard of that," she said.

  "It's for when you get bit," he said. "Once somebody brought you here, the police got to take you home."

  The girl sat still a moment, looking at the needle. "I believe I take the ride home," she said.

  The doctor laid the needle down on the glass counter. "Then it wasn't no fox," he said. He looked at her as he said that and shook his head no.

  "No sir," she said.

  "A lot of them dogs," he said, "they look like a fox, don't they?"

  And then he was gone from the room again, and a minute later the nurse led her out the back of the clinic and waited there with her until a police came to pick her up.

  He put her in the back seat and then got in himself behind the wheel.

  "Where to, miss?" he said.

  She did not answer at first.

  He turned in his seat. "Where's your house at?"

  "The Bottoms," she said.

  He put the car into gear and started out of the alley. "I heard that's a nice neighborhood," he said. She saw him smile.

  He turned left at the end of the alley, and they drove back through town. The girl pressed her face into the window, and as they passed Main Street she saw the lady again, heading back in the direction of the store. The lady had lost the purpose in her walk, though, as if she hadn't made up her mind where to go.

  THE POLICE FOLLOWED the road that followed the railroad. The ride was smooth until they were out of town, and then the car slowed and began to bounce. The window bumped against the girl's forehead and her teeth until she moved away, leaving wet marks on the glass.

  The road passed through brush and then separated two large pine trees. The back seat of the car was suddenly darker, and she heard the branches scrape the sides. Then they were back in the open, and she saw the railroad tracks again, and then the sawmill, and beyond that Damp Bottom.

  She was excited, as if she had been away a long time, and she wondered what the neighbors would think to see her coming home in a police car.

  "The car stopped, and the police turned again in his seat. "Home sweet home," he said.

  "Yessir," she said.

  "This is it?"

  She looked out the window. Half the Bottoms were standing out on their porches, to see what the police was up to now. It was an out-of-the-way thing, to see a single police car in the Bottoms. When they came, they brought everybody but Baby Jesus.

  The police got out, the car dipped and rose, and then he opened her door.

  "Which is your house?" he said.

  She nodded to the tar-roof shack just ahead of the car. Most of her brothers and sisters were outside; there was no sign of her mother. No sign of the visitor. The police began to walk in that direction, and suddenly she did not want him near the house. She didn't know why.

  He was smiling, enjoying something she did not understand. He was a big man, not old at all, and where his neck came out of his collar, it looked swollen up. He walked ahead of her all the way to the porch steps.

  "I be home now," she said quietly.

  He smiled and shook his head. "I got to deliver you to your mammy," he said. "It's a city law."

  Rosie felt it again, that the police should not be near the house. She felt it and stopped. He walked ahead, forgetting her, up two steps to the porch and through her brothers and sisters to the door. When he was there, he turned to her and winked.

  He knocked, and she saw the visitor in the side window.

  He was standing against the wall, a shadow in a shadow, his chest rising and falling as if something had chased him a long ways. The police knocked again, and the girl's mother answered the door. At the same time the visitor climbed into the window frame, squatting, and the girl saw he was holding a knife in his teeth.

  It resembled a smile.

  "Miz Sayers," the police was saying, "I am Officer Andrews, and I brung you something home."

  The girl's mother looked around the police until she saw her.

  '°What's she did?"

  The police's head moved back until a roll of skin formed over his collar. "Nothin'," he said. "But a white lady fetched her to the clinic on account she said she been bit by something."

  The visitor's eyes were scared and crazy. He perched on the ledge of the window without moving, not even a finger, but the girl could see everything inside him was jumping one side to the other.

  "I ain't got no money for foolishlessness," her mother said to the police. "That girl got no bi'nis in no clinic."

  The police said, "I don't know nothin, about that. I just brung her home." He looked around the porch as he said that, smiling, and then he looked into the house. The visitor jumped from the ledge and hit the ground running. The knife was still in his teeth.

  A changing number of children had collected along the side of the house to watch the police talk to Rosie Sayers's mother, and when the visitor jumped, one of them shouted, and then all of them shouted, and the police took two quick steps to the side of the porch and saw the visitor for himself

  "Sonofabitch," he said, and he took off his hat and his shoes and socks and set out after him.

  When he was gone some of the children moved in for a closer look at the police's shoes. Rosie Sayers stood where she was and her mother went to the side of the porch, her hands on her rump, and shouted after the police. "You ain't got no call to chase that man," she said. "That man ain't did nothin'."

  But even the children knew that was a story. If you run away, the police was supposed to chase you.

  The visitor disappeared into the sawmill, and a minute later he came out the other side and started up a long, grassy pasture that led to a place called Sleepy Heights. Some of the girls who lived in the Bottoms were maids in Sleepy Heights, and it was a bad-luck place for an out-of-town nigger to be running away from a police.

  The police stayed on the visitor's trail, running about the same speed, and then seemed to make up ground going uphill through the pasture.

  The girl's mother watched until the visitor had disappeared and the police had disappeared after him, and then she turned and laid her eyes on Rosie. The girl stepped backwards, stumbling. And a second later, before she knew she was talking, she heard words coming out of her mouth.

  And the words said that she was bit by a poisonous fox.

  Her mother's look changed then. She seemed to forget the visitor and the police and all the pickaninnies in the yard. She seemed to forget the child herself. "The devil got you for his own, don't he?" she said finally.

  "No, ma'am," the girl said.

  Her mother closed her eyes, listening to God. She always closed her eyes to listen to God, and she nodded as He gave her the words. She opened her eyes again and spoke what He had told her. "You wasn't born of love," she said. "You was the child of Satan."

  "It might been a dog," she said, but it was too late.

  Her mot
her was scowling at the sky. "The Lord told me all along," she said, "and now I listened."

  The girl looked down at herself to see if anything had changed, but she was the same, except for the bandage covering the places where the fox had torn her skin. Two shots went off: somewhere in the distance.

  Her mother had just spoken to the Lord and was not concerned with the affairs of humans in Sleepy Heights. "l will not have Satan's child under my roof," she said, sounding something like the Lord herself.

  The girl could not find an answer. She waited to see if her mother would change her mind.

  * * *

  AN HOUR PASSED, and the police came out of Sleepy Heights. Rosie watched him, walking downhill through the pasture, barefoot. He crossed the creek and then the railroad tracks. He passed wide around the sawmill yard.

  By the time he reached the Bottoms, the children had scattered back into their houses, or under their houses. Rosie stood by herself, with no place to go when the police came to collect his shoes and hat, no place to hide if he was mad.

  The police's hair was cut so close she could see his head through it, and when he got into the yard she noticed the beads of sweat there, and running every direction down his face and neck into his uniform. The dust had collected in the sweat and streaked. His shoes lay together on the ground where he had left them, untouched. His hat was a few feet away.

  She stood still, hoping he wouldn't see her. He picked up his things and opened the door to his car. He sat half in and half out to put on his socks and shoes, and then he stood up to check that it was comfortable. And when he had done all that, he suddenly looked up, right at her, and winked again.

  "That rascal was tricky," he said.

  "Yessir."

  He slapped some of the dust off his pants and shirt sleeves. "What's the boy's name?"

  "He ain't nobody I know," she said.

  The police smiled at her. "He ain't your brother, is he?"

  "No sir, he ain't nobody."

  "Well," the police said, "he can run, I'll say that."

  "Yessir," she said, and looked at her feet.

  "I don't know what he was running for, but I expect he had his reasons." Then he laughed out loud, but it wasn't much of a laugh. If it was funny to him, he wouldn' have walked out of his way around the sawmill, where the men would think it was funny too.

  He said, "That boy about led me into a yard had a police dog that don't like police." The police looked her over, and she stood still as the air. "Your mammy ain't going to tell me who it was either, is she?"

  "No sir."

  And he laughed again, but it didn't mean it was funny. She believed he was going to take somebody into town and crack open his head. But then he said, "Well, if he comes back, you tell him for me that him and me will have another time. You tell him that, hear?"

  "Yessir," she said.

  And he looked around once, not another soul in sight, and then got into his car and drove out to the end of the Bottoms. He stopped there a minute, still looking, and then the car moved again, back in the direction of town, leaving a cloud of orange dust to settle after he was

  gone.

  * * *

  THE VISITOR'S NAME was Alvin Crooms, and he came back at dusk. He climbed in the same window he had jumped out of that afternoon, and Rosie heard him later inside with her mother, telling the story. The story was like liquor, and she heard them go back to it again and again, until it had made them drunk.

  She sat outside, her back against a neighbor's bricks, where she could watch the house. The night turned cold; she didn't move. She waited for her mother to change her mind.

  Once, when they were all asleep inside, a nightmare started while she was still awake. She bit her hand and stopped it.

  A rooster woke her in the morning. She jumped at the sound, not knowing where she was. The sky was pink over Sleepy Heights, the rooster crowed again, and she was wide-awake.

  It was a long time before there were stirring noises inside the house. Her mother liked to stay in bed when she had visitors, she liked people to see the good-looking ones when they left her house.

  The girl ached and changed her position on the ground.

  * * *

  THE SUN BROKE THE line of the sky, and she heard them inside, talking. One of her sisters looked out a window at her, then disappeared. The next person in the window was the visitor himself, and he noticed her in a certain way that caused her to press herself into the bricks.

  There was the smell of fires in the air, people cooking breakfast. She heard voices she knew, but in some way they were unfamiliar. Her bottom ached, and there was a throbbing in the place where the fox had bitten her leg. She looked down at the bandage and saw that she had swollen all around it.

  The sun gathered itself in the sky, smaller and hotter, and presently the girl's mother and the visitor came out onto the porch. Her mother did not look in her direction. The visitor leaned into her mother's shoulder and told her a secret. She laughed out loud, putting her hand on the visitor's arm as if to hold herself up.

  Her mother wanted the neighbors to notice that her visitor had come back. He patted her bottom and then left the porch, taking the two steps down with one stride. He pointed his finger at the girl and motioned for her to get up.

  She stayed where she was.

  "Come on, girl," he said.

  "No sir," she said.

  He took a step toward her and she scooted that far away. "Your momma said for me to tote you along," he said.

  The girl shook her head. The visitor looked back toward the porch, and the girl looked there too. Her mother would not meet her eyes. "I get you the strap," she said to him. "She do what you said then."

  Her mother disappeared into the house and came out a moment later with a thick black belt. The girl didn't move until she handed it to the visitor. It looked different in his hand, and she got to her feet, pushing off the ground from behind, suddenly dizzy to be standing up.

  "You keep that as long as you need," her mother said.

  The visitor fixed on how fast the strap had gotten the girl off the ground. "The girl surely don't like this here," he said. He seemed to test the weight of it in his hand. Then he moved behind her, keeping a certain distance, and she backed out of the yard.

  "That's right," he said. "Now you walk up that road where we goin'."

  "I ain't never been nowhere," she said. She recalled he was from Macon, and she knew she would never get back from there after her mother changed her mind.

  "Whatever I tell you," he said, "that's where you go."

  * * *

  IT TURNED OUT THE visitor wasn't from Macon.

  He was from Indian Heights, near the river and the asylum. He walked her through the middle of town, past the college and the bank, then turned out toward the cemetery. The girl was afraid he would take off her clothes, but whatever interest he had in that, her mother had used it up. He wanted to lay the strap across her back, she could tell that, but once they got into Cotton Point, there were people everywhere on the street, and the chance was gone.

  It took most of the morning to get from the Bottoms to Indian Heights. The visitor talked some; the girl did not answer. She had never been to Indian Heights before, but she had heard of the place and knew where she was when she saw the river.

  The houses in the Heights were nicer than in the Bottoms, and there were more of them. There were no weeds in the road, and there were babies everywhere. She wondered how many of them belonged to the visitor. They walked to the end of the road and then turned left, away from the river, to another road.

  The people in the porches spoke to the man, asked him what did he have with him now. She heard his name when they called him. It was Alvin. "I got me a maid," he said back. "Her momma give her to me for my sweetness."

  The visitor moved ahead of her once they were in the Heights, and she followed him. She did not know anything else to do.

  His house was hidden behind a larger house, about
twenty feet off the road. It sat on stacked bricks. There was a rocker on the porch, and the front door was laid from there to the ground, in place of steps.

  She followed him up onto the porch and then inside the house. There were two rooms. One of them had a wood stove, the other one had a narrow bed. There was a rope hung from one wall to the other, crossing both rooms, and the visitor had hung his clothes from it on hangers. He had more clothes than all her brothers put together. He moved behind her while she looked at his clothes, and when he spoke, it was close to her ear. "This here is what you 'posed to maid," he said.

  She looked around the room, wondering what was in his head.

  "You got to keep it right," he said.

  She nodded her head, more afraid of him inside than outside. He seemed bigger here in the room. "I ain't brought no broom," she said.

  "My, my," he said, "then what good is you to me?"

  The girl looked at the ceiling. The slats had warped, and she could see pieces of blue sky where the tar paper had torn. She did not think the man had lived here long. She took a step farther in, and the floor creaked and seemed to move.

  "You like it here?" he said. He was still behind her, and he was still holding the strap.

  "No sir."

  She saw that she'd given him the wrong answer. "Your momma said you was a smarty," he said. He took her arm then — the first time he'd touched her — just above the elbow. He twisted it, and she bent the way he twisted. He slapped at her legs with the strap, and she yelled.

  She turned her head to the side and saw him looking at her. She was afraid he would take her clothes off now, but it wasn't what he wanted. He brought the strap across her legs again, and then her bottom.

  And she yelled for real, to be with someone who liked to hurt her. He stopped, still holding her arm. The blood buzzed in her head and her vision blurred. The back of her legs felt burned. She tried to be good to him. "Oh, please," she said.

  He seemed to like that, but he came down with the strap again anyway. She held the yell inside this time, hoping it would make him stop. Her eyes began to tear. And he hit her again, lower, across the back of the knees. Her legs buckled, and she cried out without meaning to.