Sorrow Floats

by Tim Sandlin

  “He’s just being stubborn. He’s afraid losing his family will make him look bad at the Presbyterian church.”

  “Hugo’s a religious adulterer?”

  “He joined the church to play softball. The Northside Presbyterians have the best team in the Panhandle.”

  Critter said, “God is in us all.”

  ***

  The road was weird. It was a four-lane divided highway but with curbs like a town street instead of shoulders like a normal highway. I kept being afraid the right trailer tire would drift over and scrape, so I tended to keep it close to the middle, which pissed off the Texans who wanted to pass. One man shook his fist at me. After years of watching people flip each other off, his expression of anger seemed almost wholesome.

  In Memphis, Texas, we turned east on this state highway about the width of a Ping-Pong table. Every time a semi-truck came at us we about crashed mirrors. Made me tense.

  A billboard for Mildred’s Manure read “We’re Number 1 with Number 2.” Four white crosses next to the road marked the spot where four people had died in traffic accidents. In Hollis, Oklahoma, a sign outside a church read “The road to God is always under construction.”

  “I know a man in Hollis can cover his entire nose with his lower lip,” Shane said. “Maybe we should stop and see him.”

  I felt fingers on my neck and almost jumped through the windshield.

  Critter said, “Relax, think about a cool place where the grass is green and the water pure and cold.”

  Home. “What the hell are you doing? Did I say you could touch me?”

  “These muscles are tight as guitar strings. I’ve never met anyone so Saturn-squared. Even Freedom isn’t this tight after an all-night run to Dallas.”

  My automatic impulse was to reject kindness from an airhead—it seemed the strong thing to do—but her fingers felt nice. All the way through the muscles and blood to the bones, everything gave an inch. “What’s Freedom?”

  She kneaded the base of my neck. “He’s my man. Freedom is kind and gentle. He travels freely on the sixth level. Wrap your mind around that. I’ve never even seen past the fog of level five. Sometimes I have corporeal thoughts, jealousy, hunger, yangy stuff like that.”

  “Nothing wrong with jealousy and hunger if that’s how you feel.”

  “Freedom is immune to pain. He has surrounded himself with an invisible hedge of protection.”

  Her fingers were firm and strong. Her words were the droolings of a droid whose brains had been scooped at birth, but I ignored the words and heard the voice. Her voice was a ballad sung to a baby by a mother who didn’t take her clothes off at rodeos. It was like being in the mountains alone. I must have been starved for human touch because I didn’t care that Critter was a girl or, even worse, a girl who said “karma” and “yangy” and had a man named Freedom. You know, sometimes it’s good for people to touch each other without sexual undertones. Some of my best friends are people I haven’t fucked.

  Critter’s voice drifted into a soft rhythm punctuated by the bass of Shane’s lecture on trucks or truck drivers or whatever. Driving the divide in the geometric design of road, telephone poles, fences, fields, I floated back to Lloyd’s offer to be there when I decided to stop. I’d taken the offer as a nose-in-my-business, but he meant well. Lloyd was wise to the point of being guruish when it came to things other than his wife.

  Fact: Someday, in the distant future, I would have to face reality and stop drinking alcohol. It would be a pain in the ass but I could stop. I could. Lloyd had stopped. Shane had stopped. Surely if old winos could pull themselves together enough to get off the juice, so could I. But it was such a cheat to be forced to stop. Other people drink whiskey all the time and no one says they are killing themselves.

  I would stop as soon as I hit that bottom they all talked about. What could be more bottom than driving with your baby on the roof?

  It’s just that I couldn’t conceive of living every day from now on until I died without a single drink. What would I do with my time? Watch TV? Bowl? I was too young to stop taking risks.

  Dothan, the jerk, was divorcing me, and soon I would find myself pushing thirty and single. Alone. Someday I might want male company again. How do non-drinking women find dates? Join a church? Come on, I wasn’t the type.

  What did non-drinking couples do on dates? I didn’t like men who didn’t drink. They were boring, insecure, uptight, and often weird; and you know what single men think of non-drinking women—frigid fish.

  Lloyd didn’t have to tell me I must stop drinking someday; I knew that damn well, only today wasn’t the day. I had to find a friend first. I’d never find one afterward.

  Critter dug into my shoulders with her thumbs. “Freedom could give you a prescription to relax your vibrancy points. He’s very good at mixing pharmaceuticals.”

  “I really would be in trouble if I started dabbling in pills.”

  “You really are in trouble now.”

  Shane couldn’t handle not being the one being rubbed and consoled. I heard him do the flop-on-the-floor thing, then he said, “My first level needs its plumbing changed. Critter, would you be the angel of mercy and assist with my catheter?”

  “You betcha.” Her hands moved off my shoulders, and I almost groaned. My touch neediness is so intense and the pay-out so sparse, maybe that’s one reason I substituted Yukon Jack for affection.

  “He doesn’t need help with his plumbing,” I said. “He’s using you to get his crank felt.”

  “What a sordid accusation,” Shane said.

  “He can fix it by himself.”

  Critter had already turned away from me. She said, “I know, but it doesn’t harm me and it makes Shaney happy.”

  “Shaney won’t appreciate you. He’ll think he took advantage of you and treat you like a fool.”

  “No, I shan’t,” Shane said. “I’ll think nothing of the kind.”

  “There’s no shame in giving a man what he wants,” Critter said.

  “Jesus, are you naive.”

  Andrew shouted, “She’s touching Uncle Shane’s wienie!”

  “Uncle Shane has a disease,” Marcella said, “and Critter is a nurse. Nurses are allowed to touch wienies.”

  “She’s no nurse—nurses wear shoes. Someone call the police and throw her in jail for touching Uncle Shane’s wienie.”

  “The penis is a beautiful and sacred object and should be held in glorification,” Critter said.

  I repeated, “Jesus, are you naive.”

  Shane and Marcella hit it in unison. “Don’t say ‘penis’ in front of Andrew.” That’s when I decided they really were brother and sister.

  Critter’s attitude of penis glorification may be warped, but no more than Shane and Marcella thinking it’s okay to whip it out for medical purposes but not okay to call it by its name. I never have figured the shades of decency that say it’s kosher to call an object one word but not another that means the same thing. Why is wienie harmless but penis filth? The thing is still a dick. Or take make love and fuck. What, one’s holy and beautiful and the other scummy dirt? They feel the same to me. How about passed over to San Francisco as opposed to dead? They both mean somebody I need disappeared.

  Something brushed my leg and I jumped like I’d been hot-shotted—second time in ten minutes.

  Lloyd said, “Only a cat.”

  I’d forgotten about the no-name kitten. He, or she, I think it was a he, crawled into my lap and broke into heartfelt purrs. Soon as my stomach settled, I scratched the little sucker behind the ears. He was a gray, short-hair, bony thing with normal whiskers on the right side of his nose and minuscule whiskers on his left, the result of Andrew and a pair of nail clippers. I don’t know if the whisker amputation caused it, but the cat couldn’t walk right. He had a way of lurching and catching himself, not unlike the way Shane
described people walking with their big toe cut off.

  When the kitten tucked his chin to his chest to receive my scratches, he reminded me of Sam Callahan’s old cat. Sam’s cat was cool, but she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, differentiate between a litter box and an open suitcase, which caused no end of unpleasant scenes with guests over the years.

  Shane launched into this story about a job he once had driving a school bus in Santa Teresa, California. I missed the front part and came in on the weird section.

  “I was driving the football team home from a victory over Palo Alto High. The September evening was incredibly hot, or the tragedy would have been averted.”

  “What tragedy was that?” Critter asked. “Lift up so I can clean under here. I’ve never seen one that wasn’t circumcised before.”

  “I came over a hill directly onto two Best Buy milk trucks parked on opposite shoulders. The Highway Patrol measured later, and they figured the drivers left the bus less than one inch of clearance. The press called it a miracle of driving skill that I slipped the school bus between them going fifty miles an hour without any of the three vehicles suffering so much as a scratch.”

  “My hero,” Critter said. I didn’t hear a drop of sarcasm in her voice.

  Shane went on. “Unfortunately, all the windows were open. As I flew through the gap, I heard this whap, whap whap sound. Sixteen boys on each side of the bus lost their arms.”

  Lloyd and I exchanged one of those looks that bind people later on.

  Critter said, “Yuck, why are you telling me this?”

  Shane seemed oblivious of the fact several people were about to get sick. “The screams didn’t start for three or four seconds. I don’t think even the boys who’d lost their arms knew what had happened. Then the situation reduced to chaos. If you pinch it some, the rubber slides on easier.”

  Critter said, “Like this?”

  “I thought perhaps some of the arms could be sewn back on, so I jumped from the bus and ran to the milk trucks. I’ll never forget the sight if I live to a hundred. Thirty-two arms lying on the highway. They didn’t look real, more like broken mannequin parts. Except for the blood and exposed muscles.”

  “I’ve heard this story before,” Marcella said.

  “I haven’t,” Lloyd said.

  Andrew was still fascinated by the wienie. “They’ll put you in jail.”

  “I told the milk truck drivers to throw the arms in their rigs and follow me to the hospital.” Shane lowered his booming voice. “Here’s the miracle: not one of those poor boys died. We saved every last soul. Of course it took the doctors too long to sort out which arm went with which boy, so they weren’t in time to sew any of them back together.

  “At graduation that spring the school gave me a special award in appreciation of my quick action. Whenever a boy came onstage for his diploma you could tell which side of the bus he’d sat on by which arm he had left.”

  Thirty-two arms on the roadway made an interesting image. Even Critter was grossed into a moment of silence. I asked Lloyd, “Why does he tell these lies?”

  Lloyd’s eyes were closer to Jesus than ever. “What makes you think they’re lies?”

  “The next spring the California Legislature passed a law against school bus windows that open from the bottom. It’s been almost twenty years, but the one-armed members of that football team still come together every September on the day they beat Palo Alto. They send me an invitation, but I don’t go. It doesn’t seem proper since I’m whole and all.”

  19

  “You might ought to pull over,” Lloyd said.

  “Why?”

  A red light flashed in the mirror, then I heard the siren.

  My impulse went to flight. “Let’s make a run for it. I’ll stop and wait for him to get out and walk up, then I’ll peel out.”

  “Peel out?” Lloyd rubbed his leg and blinked, as if I might really go Bonnie and Clyde on him. “We aren’t breaking any laws.”

  “Oh, yeah, I forgot.” As I opened Moby Dick’s door I glanced at the mess in the back end. It was hard to believe in that pile of trash and humans on the run we weren’t breaking a law. “Pull your pants up.”

  “This is a legitimate procedure. I shall not be rushed.”

  Lloyd spoke up. “I’ve kicked around a lot of years, Shane, and I’ve found no matter how legitimate the procedure, it’s always a mistake to show your dick to a cop.”

  Conjecture leapt to mind as to how Lloyd came by this experience. Too much conjecture. Handling the Highway Patrol would be less complex. Police figures are easy to deal with—don’t make eye contact, act dingy, dumb, and flirty, and tell them what they want to hear. In other words, fulfill their definition of feminine.

  The patrolman—thirty, sunglasses, nice ass—stood off to the road side of his car, writing on a clipboard balanced against his belt buckle. Mick Jagger lips—I swear they were plump and red as whole pimientos glued to his teeth.

  “You look like somebody,” I said.

  He opened his mouth and the sound came out Okie instead of English rock star. “You know that gentleman?” he asked.

  Hugo Sr. sat in his Oldsmobile fifty yards up the road, staring off at the lime green wheat.

  “I met him this morning. His estranged wife and children are in the ambulance.” I couldn’t come up with more explanation. I mean, I could have come up with more, but it was complicated and involved personal lives.

  The patrolman didn’t ask for explanation. “May I see your license, ma’am.”

  “Only if you call me Maurey. I’m not used to being called ma’am. Makes me nervous. What’s your name?”

  He didn’t answer my question, but I spotted a silver name tag on his pocket flap that said Ben Lawson, OHP. Good western sheriff-type name, nothing English or prissy like Mick. He held out his hand. “License.”

  I dug in my back pocket. “The picture’s not very good. My eyes came out red and the camera made me look ten pounds heavier than I was. I’ve heard they always do that.”

  The lips flexed. “Your license plate on the trailer is expired, ma’am.”

  Sure enough—1972. “It’s my father’s trailer. He got killed last fall. It was awful and I guess we haven’t taken the trailer on the road since then. I’m truly sorry.” I hate talking to sunglasses. You can’t tell if you’re getting goodwill or contempt or what. All you can see is two versions of yourself playing the fool.

  Ben Lawson compared the picture on the license to me. “Merle Pierce?”

  “Maurey Talbot. Maurey’s a nickname and I forgot to change the license after I got married. It didn’t seem to matter, or maybe I knew the marriage wouldn’t last. Little signs like that make you realize the deal was doomed from the start. Don’t you think so?”

  Ben Lawson stood close with his thumbs deep behind his belt buckle. “Get one thing straight, Mrs. Talbot. I’m not related to the faggot.”

  “You sure look like him.”

  “You are in no position to tell me I look like a faggot.”

  “I didn’t say you look like a faggot. He nails more chicks than any two men in Oklahoma.”

  “You’re in no position to make fun of Oklahoma, either.” Ben Lawson walked along the trailer, inspecting scratches and rust spots. At the wheel well he stopped and took off his sunglasses to stare at Moby Dick. Andrew waved from the rear window, but Ben Lawson didn’t wave back.

  He nodded at the trailer. “Hauling horses?”

  Lloyd’s door opened and Lloyd came hopping over the hitch, bony hand extended. “Hi, I’m Lloyd Carbonneau and I’m a recovering alcoholic. I own a salvage yard in Las Vegas, Nevada. The vehicle belongs to me, but I don’t drive it.” The hand not shaking with Ben Lawson offered Moby Dick’s registration.

  Ben Lawson sized up Lloyd from his sandals to the no shirt under the overalls, then he turned back to
me. “What’s in the trailer, ma’am?”

  A horse lie would have led to proof of inoculation and interstate livestock permits. “Household goods. My friends are moving to North Carolina and I offered to drive them.”

  He put his sunglasses back on his face, where they definitely doubled as a psychological prop. “Let’s see.”

  “What?”

  “Open the door, ma’am. I’d like to see the household goods.”

  “Wouldn’t you rather look at my registration?” Lloyd said.

  Thirty seconds of hemming and hawing later, Ben Lawson looked in at two battered suitcases, a tent, three bald tires and one rim, a dead battery, and one hundred cases of Coors. I hadn’t actually seen our contraband yet. It was in boxed cases with the Coors logo, which I think was ripped off from the Coca-Cola logo, above the script thing about pure Rocky Mountain spring water. The cases were stacked four wide and five high. Quick math put them at five cases deep back in the double-wide horse trailer. Plenty of room for more. I wondered why we didn’t buy more.

  Ben Lawson said, “Some household, ma’am.”

  “That’s not beer in the beer boxes. They packed those with books and dishes and stuff. Beer boxes stack nice,” I said.

  He stepped into the trailer to gently shake the top box of a stack. Glass clinked.

  “Sounds like we broke Marcella’s china,” I said to Lloyd, who did nothing to back me up.

  Sunglasses and lips hovered over me from about eight feet in the air. “Let’s go look in the vehicle.”

  As I followed him to the ambulance I once again reminded myself that a cute butt does not a nice guy make. You always hope beautiful people will behave themselves accordingly, when, in fact, it may be the opposite. I haven’t known enough nice guys to work out a pattern.

  I said a little prayer to God to please make Shane hide his private parts. My prayer was answered and wasted at the same time. Sam Callahan says be careful what you pray for because God has a preset quota of granted wishes for each person and they shouldn’t be wasted. It’s like when you enter a contest you don’t really care to win; you lower your odds in the contests that matter.