Sorrow Floats

by Tim Sandlin

  At the time I thought the saying was meaningless silliness meant to amuse us kids, like Mom’s “Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy,” but now I see the old lady in a deeper vein. Dad was never meaningless like Mom. I think what he meant was weird people are okay. Just because your brother is gay, or worse, or the only nice boy you’ve run into in months has a reputation for jack-jobbing animals, that’s no reason to condemn them. Some people live in Wyoming, some in New York City. Some people eat TV dinners off aluminum foil trays, and some people kiss cows. There is no better or worse, only to each his own.

  I considered the different-strokes-for-different-folks stance as I put Dustin in my mouth and Freedom put his pipe in his. Dustin was the name I’d chosen for Lloyd’s half-pint because Dustin Hoffman played a half-pint in Midnight Cowboy.

  Freedom’s pipe was a real pipe, the U-joint kind plumbers find things in under the sink. It was two feet long with the hole out on the end covered by a scooped piece of screen from a screen door. It held a fistful of pot at once, and when Freedom exhaled his nostrils blew like Frostbite on a twenty-below day.

  Dustin was ice cream, fresh air, pretty dresses on little girls, and riding Frostbite over a fence, all rolled into one fine swallow. I took delight in whiskey.

  When Shannon was eight months old she would shake her head side to side and laugh the cutest laugh you could imagine. Sam Callahan said she was making herself dizzy on purpose for fun, which proved the need to get high was innate in the human species, as inbred as the sucking reflex and crying when you stub your toe.

  Lydia said Sam’s nature-wants-us-stoned theory was nothing but an excuse for stealing her Valiums.

  Park told me anthropologists have studied hundreds of cultures around the globe and there are only two universal characteristics: every culture has a way to get fucked up, and they all have a rule against nailing your mother.

  So—I wasn’t to blame. Freedom’s method was illegal, mine was addictive, Indians used peyote, and scaredy cats used Jesus. It all came down to reality avoidance.

  “Really prime stuff, huh?” Critter said to Freedom, who didn’t appear ready to share with the milling pack. “I handled it just the way you said, tested from two kilos, weighed them all, pretended it was commercial crap, which was pretty hard, believe you me. That stuff had me seeing tracers.”

  Freedom hit deep twice more. “Clean up the kitchen. Dog Whiffer made chili and left a mess.”

  “Did I do good, Freedom?”

  He squinted his eyes at her through the blue smoke. “You’re four pounds short.”

  “I need to pee.” I said. “You got a bathroom in the house?”

  Critter’s eyes weren’t the same flashy, pert sparkles they’d been in Amarillo. It’s like we’d entered a zone of stagnation. “Sure,” she said. “All houses have bathrooms.”

  “Toilet’s plugged,” Owsley said from under the tree.

  “I just fixed the toilet last week,” Critter said.

  Owsley didn’t look up from his drawing pad. The angel face showed remarkable concentration. “Dolf got paranoid and flushed the plants.”

  Freedom said, “Dumb shit.”

  Lloyd already had Moby Dick’s hood up, and Shane was zeroing his chair in on the topless nurser. Looked as if they planned to stay awhile. As I walked toward the house with Critter, she touched my arm. Touching seemed to be something she was used to and I wasn’t.

  With her other hand she tugged the red bikini top up on her mound breasts. “I feel real yangy about lying about the pot. The karma adjustment will have me lotused all afternoon tomorrow.”

  “I’m not mad at you, you needed a ride and did what had to be done to get it. Shane’s the one I’m pissed at. We’ve entered this business partnership and he can’t be trusted. The jerk.”

  “You should be kinder to Shane. He says you are racked with guilt because he quit drinking and you can’t even though you are young and healthy.”

  Shane was leaning forward in his chair, pretending to admire the baby while he poked his nose into tanned cleavage. His body kind of spazzed and he went into a coughing fit that left drool off his chin.

  I said, “There’s enough guilt in my life. Shane isn’t on the list.”

  ***

  Inside, the house was typical of what I’d seen of train stations—four thousand dollars sunk into the stereo system and maybe fifty cents on the rest of the furnishings. Everything was close to the floor. The two couches and a chair seemed to have their legs cut off. Some corn-on-the-cob crates were covered with pop cans and paper plates on which ashes and dried chili made a holocaust-colored mess. The rug had multiple burn holes, especially in front of the couches and stereo, and the only decoration higher than my waist was a hand-painted sign over the kitchen door: Getting a job means admitting that you can’t take care of yourself.

  Five or six versions of the people outside sprawled around the room in big-pupiled stupor. One guy was frozen in an uncomfortable kneeling position in front of the record stack. He’d gone catatonic with two fingers stuck in a Doobie Brothers album cover. Another guy lying on his back on the floor suddenly hurled his hand at the ceiling, then drew it slowly back in until it touched the tip of his nose, then hurled it up again. A girl with Eat Me written in red fingernail polish on her forehead danced to no music in the corner.

  One December back in Laramie, Joe Bob’s fraternity elected him Finals Week Procurement Officer. That meant Joe Bob had to find and buy diet pills so the frat boys could wire themselves into all-night study sessions where they talked nonstop, chewed gum like cows, and sweat the stinkingest sweat that ever came off a man.

  Joe Bob took me to a train station out by the Medicine Bow Mountains where some needle people had a speed factory set up in what used to be a tack room. The needle people had a black Lab with about thirteen two-month-old puppies that wandered the house eating anything that hit the floor and crapping.

  That much shit was way beyond hippy handling capacities, so they’d bought a hundred-pound drum of lime, and whenever someone vaguely coherent spotted puppy poop they’d dump a McDonald’s medium soft drink cup of lime on the pile and forget about it. The system worked pretty well so long as you looked where you stepped, but personally I was disgusted. Hundreds of white, dusty piles gave the house a surrealistic, moonscape appearance.

  Disgusting as the needles-and-dogshit people were, this bunch in Oklahoma had them beat.

  “Don’t sit on that couch,” Critter said, indicating a Forest Service-green divan being slept on by a person of unknown sexual persuasion. “That’s Arlo’s couch, and anyone else who uses it is in big trouble.”

  “Is Arlo dangerous?”

  “This science professor at OU is studying body lice, and on Wednesday afternoons he pays a dollar apiece for every live one Arlo brings in.”

  “The couch is a crab farm?”

  “Arlo is a crab farm. He made seventy-five bucks off his pubes last week but spent it all on drugs to numb the itch. I wish Freedom would make him split. I hate little spiders. I better not find any on me.”

  “Fuck you, Critter,” Arlo said. He wasn’t asleep after all. “Give me any more grief and I’ll sit on your pillow.”

  ***

  Let’s skip a detailed description of the bathroom. Some things are better left unexamined.

  ***

  Back in the kitchen, the Eat Me girl danced and ate ice cream out of the carton with a fork. You can always tell a train station where the people are into narcotics by the shortage of spoons. Her dance was a kind of Tibetan hula thing with lots of flow and no rhythm.

  Critter stood in front of the electric stove holding a steel wool pad that looked remarkably like my mother’s hairdo.

  “Maurey, this is Dog Whiffer.”

  The notorious Dog Whiffer who made chili and didn’t clean up after herself. �
�Freedom’s in the crappiest mood. He got ripped off or something in Dallas. Went down for five thousand Seconals and came back with twenty-five hits of mescaline.”

  Critter stared at the brown crust on the burners, apparently stymied by where-to-begin. She asked, “Save any for me?”

  “Freedom said not to. He says you get funny on mescaline.”

  “I like that.”

  “Last time you went deep on us.”

  Critter gave up on the steel pad and dipped herself a bowl of chili. “Want some? It’s not vegetarian or anything. We transcended the petty divisiveness of moral judgments based on food.”

  I went into what-the-hell, you-only-live-once, and accepted a wooden bowl and a fork. To be safe, I sloshed in some Dustin before I ate.

  Dog Whiffer did a counterclockwise twirl on her toes. “Freedom was ungodly till he copped some Dilaudid. You should have heard the fight with Owsley. The kid hasn’t been going to school and a truant officer showed up at the door.”

  “Kids today don’t know how easy they got it,” Critter said, as if her generation walked barefoot through the snow to a one-room schoolhouse.

  “What’s the age difference between you and Owsley?” I asked.

  “Three years. But they’re vital years.”

  The chili was tasty stuff. Dog Whiffer had put in more beans than most cooks in Wyoming. Wyomingites eat lots of cow, especially the men. Usually men consider other men who cook as effeminate, only the stigma doesn’t count with straight cow things—chili, rare steaks barbecued outside, whole calves reamed lengthwise and turned slowly over hot coals.

  Shane’s voice boomed from the living room. “South America, the southern tip of Paraguay, I contracted terminal malaria. A native shaman mixed up a cocktail our Negro guide said was used to kill zombies. With some uncertainty, I quaffed the brew. In less than an hour, I was free of malaria, but I’ve had no feeling in my legs ever since. I’ll give you twenty dollars if you let me tweak those exquisite breasts.”

  Critter’s fork stopped in midair as we listened for an outcome. A moment later, Shane went into W. C. Fields. “I’m a little short today, but I will gladly pay you next Tuesday.” He got a laugh instead of a slap. Rankled me no end.

  “You think the others might do food?” Critter asked.

  “I’ll take a couple bowls to Marcella and Lloyd. You can ask Shane yourself.”

  Critter dipped a tin cup into the pot. “You better work out this envy thing with Shane. If he dies before you’ve reconciled the friction, the burden may slop as far as your next three lifetimes.”

  “That blob’s not going to die.”

  Shane’s stupid, lying story must have unstuck the catatonic because the walls suddenly vibrated with Doobie Brothers. I slid Dustin into my back pocket and took the two bowls from Critter. That’s the up side of half-pints—they fit in the back pocket of a pair of Wrangler’s.

  As I left the kitchen, Dog Whiffer shouted over the music, “I hope you don’t mind, but I balled Freedom while you were gone. He said it was okay.”

  22

  Marcella wouldn’t touch the chili. She shied back to the far side of Moby Dick as if I’d offered her a bowl of smallpox.

  “Don’t you go giving Andrew any of that stuff, neither. He’s too young to be addicted.”

  Take it from me, you’re never too young to be addicted. “Where is the sprout, anyway?” I asked.

  She pointed across the yard. “He refuses to come inside. They won’t give him dope, will they? I’ll be real angry if they give him dope.”

  Andrew was playing over by some of the more energetic hippies who were taking turns flinging painted horseshoes at each other. Seemed to be at each other because no one hit within five feet of the ringer poles. They held bottled beer—thankfully not Coors—in their left hand, threw with their right hand, and alternated between saying Wow and Shit. Freedom sat on a folding chair, smoking cigarettes and scowling at the ineptitude of his troops. A man wearing nothing but Jockey undershorts ohmed dangerously close to the flight path. He had erect posture, his feet pretzeled over his knees, his fingers poised in prayerful O’s, and his eyes closed in on his soul. So to speak. As it were.

  Andrew studied the meditator closely, then stepped up, drew back his child-size cowboy boot, and kicked him in the sternum.

  One eye opened briefly, then closed again. Ohm, ohm, hairy krispy, hairy krispy.

  Andrew yelled, “Eee-yah!” and karate-chopped the guy in his Adam’s apple. No reaction. We’re talking Don Quixote’s attack on the windmill.

  I took Marcella’s bowl over to Owsley, which was more or less what I’d planned all along. He sat under the pecan tree in the dying Oklahoma light, concentrating on his eagle and snake.

  When I handed Owsley the bowl he said, “You’re the alcoholic, aren’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Tell the scared lady there’s an all-night truck cafe out on Highway 81. That’s where I eat when everything at this house is poisoned.”

  “Does that happen often?”

  He shrugged and went to work on the chili. I stood next to him, looking down at his unbelievably beautiful hair. I wanted to touch it the way you want to touch a pulsating coal in a dying campfire. “Is that a golden eagle or an immature bald?”

  Owsley glanced at the picture, then up at me. “What’s it to you?”

  “The golden has feathers all the way to the toes, you’ve drawn the legs bare.”

  “Well, I guess it’s an immature bald eagle, then.”

  I tried to take my eyes off his hair and look at the drawing, but it took effort and I wasn’t in the mood for effort. “But you didn’t know you’d drawn an immature bald until I told you. That’s sloppy art. I looked through your work while you were inside and you’re good, way too good to put a golden body on bald legs.”

  The angel eyes snapped in such a way that I knew for certain Freedom was his father. “You touched my stuff while I wasn’t here?”

  “Are you listening? A person with your talent has a responsibility to draw nature the way it is and not cross animals or put things where they don’t belong. You can be Picasso and screw it up, but only if you know the right way first.”

  He threw the bowl and what was left of the chili toward the mailbox post. “People in this dump touch anything they please. It makes me sick. If only straight pigs have privacy, I’d rather be a straight pig.”

  Evidently, I’d rubbed a sore spot. “Owsley, I’m sorry I touched your personal pictures. I was just looking at them. You have a great talent.”

  “Don’t let it happen again.” With that he picked up his charcoal and went back to studying the picture. I’d been dismissed.

  Can’t leave without one last shot: “You want to grow up to be a straight pig you better stay in school. Fool.”

  ***

  Andrew had found a tree limb and was beating the religious zealot across the head and shoulders. Several of the horseshoe throwers stood in a rough semicircle, watching without judgment. Beating had no effect, so Andrew jabbed the ragged limb butt in the guy’s chest and twisted. The guy showed amazing self-discipline, not something I would have expected to run into in a train station.

  Lloyd leaned his back against Moby Dick and watched Andrew’s antics while he ate. His fingers were black grease to the knuckles. “Sharon hasn’t been here,” he said.

  “You’re lucky on that one.”

  His head went down and up in what passed for a nod. “I suppose. Only, I wish I’d find one person who’d seen her, even a year or two ago would be enough. How could a girl that beautiful disappear without anyone remembering her?”

  I’d seen the photo, and Sharon was nice, but not beautiful, which just goes to show you the old eyes-of-the-beholder thing is true. And Lloyd had the eyes. His eyes under Owsley’s hair on Steve McQueen’s body would be God his ow
n self.

  “It’s a big country, Lloyd, assuming she stayed in the country.”

  “I’ll find her in Florida. I know.”

  Andrew picked up a horseshoe and started for his target, but one of the hippies intervened—first sign of involvement from anyone on the place.

  The chili bowl was empty. “Spark plug wires are arcing,” Lloyd said. “We ought to replace them.”

  “Will they hold to Carolina?” Lloyd didn’t answer, which I read as yes. “I’ve spent my quota on car parts. It’s gasoline and maybe oil from here on.”

  He handed me the bowl, careful that our fingers didn’t touch. “How about hay?”

  Andrew was trying to light a match and failing. “Cars don’t run on hay, Lloyd. Even I’m not that dense.”

  “The patrolman was right, we have to disguise the beer.”

  “We could draw a funny nose on each bottle.”

  Lloyd didn’t smile. “I figure twelve bales of hay will seal the Coors from view. Freedom says a place down the road will sell it to me. He buys manure there for his marijuana plants.” Lloyd knew the power of his eyes. You could tell because he held them back until he wanted something.

  He used them now. “I’ll be needing some money.”

  Freedom must have heard his name. I smelled him behind me before he spoke. Smelled like burned rubber.

  “Hey, man, I can use that stuff.”

  I jerked away from his voice. Anyone else would have sensed my repulsion and gone away. “Just what I’ve been looking for,” he said.

  “What’s just what you’ve been looking for?”

  He leaned under Moby Dick’s hood, over the battery. “This’ll teach those bastards.”

  Freedom produced a pocketknife and a clear, plastic globe, the kind toys come in for a quarter at the grocery store. Shannon used to see a toy halfway up the dispenser machine and beg for quarters, hoping that particular toy would drop out the slot. Once, it even did. Sam Callahan took this as a sign that Shannon was born to win. He ignored the five hundred times the machine spit out the wrong toy.

  Freedom carefully scraped the white corrosion off the battery poles, positive first, then negative. Dad told me if I touched that stuff it would eat off my fingers, then I would go blind. I don’t know if Dad exaggerated, but I noticed Freedom avoided direct contact with the moldy powder.