God's Pocket

by Pete Dexter

  He pulled her panties off one foot. Pale blue panties with little white edges, ruffled. Panties like that didn’t come wrapped together in threes at J. C. Penney. He’d seen the bill that came to his wife one month from Nan Duskin. He thought of Jeanie living in the place she did, with the kind of husband she had, spending that kind of money on panties, and it broke his heart. Shellburn was touched by her underwear.

  He pulled his own down with his trousers, until he felt the cool air on his bottom, and then settled on top of her and pushed his way inside her, taking an inch, giving back an inch, taking an inch and a half. He moved slowly and kissed her eyes and her lips and her ears.

  She got wetter as it went on, and each time he pulled out of her the air touched his dick and cooled it, and it would feel that much warmer when he went back in.

  And then he pulled back off her and put her hand on her clitoris, trying to hold her eyes with his. She’d closed her eyes, though, and her mouth had opened. A thin line of spit went from her front teeth to her lower lip, and she had begun to breathe harder, and as he watched that happen, his own breath came harder, and she rode up into him, meeting him, and then just as she began to shudder, the collie sneezed in his ass.

  It took a few seconds to realize what it was. He hadn’t seen it when Jeanie said something was moving in the trees, and he hadn’t heard it come up behind him, even though it was wearing a choke collar and tags for rabies inoculations. There was, when he thought back on it, one warm blow of air, and then a lick—it was as much a question as a lick—that touched him dead in the crack of the ass. He jumped—he may have screamed—and came completely out of Jeanie Scarpato, and then rolled over onto his back, holding onto his bottom like he’d been shot. The collie dropped to its elbows and made that noise they make when they want to play. He was black-and-white and square, and there was mud hanging from the clumps of matted hair hanging off his edges, and leaves and Jesus knew what kind of other shit hanging from the mud.

  “Get out of here,” Shellburn said. Jeanie was sitting up, reaching for her blue-and-white lace panties. The dog ran close to the ground, doing a tight figure eight that ended where it had started, back in front of them. He had a head like a Concorde jet, and his mouth was bubbling out on both sides. Shellburn said, “Go on, boy,” but the dog had seen the cup on the blanket next to him, and he took a step closer to put his nose inside it.

  Shellburn let him. Jeanie had her pants back on and was edging away, making no sudden moves. “He won’t hurt you,” Shellburn said.

  “He must be lost,” she said.

  He tried to protect the afternoon. “No, there’s a farmhouse half a mile over that hill.…” He pointed over her shoulder, away from the water. He didn’t want her thinking about anything lost. The collie liked what was in the cup. Shellburn watched him splash little drops of it up on his muzzle and his head while he drank. “He’s probably just out having a look around.”

  “I thought he bit you,” she said.

  When the dog had finished the cup, Shellburn filled it again, and found new ones for himself and Jeanie, and filled them too. She took the drink but kept an eye on the dog. Shellburn reached out and patted the collie’s narrow head. Then he saw the uncomfortable way Jeanie was sitting, and he patted her too.

  “There’ll be plenty of other times,” he said.

  He leaned over to kiss her cheek, and his trousers dropped off his hips to his knees. The collie looked up from his wine. Shellburn pulled his pants back up and fastened the belt. The dog went back to his cup.

  Jeanie said, “I think I better get back,” and the afternoon was out of step.

  “It’s my fault,” he said, not wanting her to blame the place.

  “It’s a bad time,” she said. “There’s too much left to do at home.”

  Shellburn poured the collie a last round and collected the basket and the blanket. She straightened herself and he admired the flat drop of her stomach and the way her blouse clung to her sides. He thought of how warm she’d felt, but she was all business now. On the way to the car he stopped at the top of the hill and looked out over the cove. “You’re right,” he said, “it is beautiful,” but she’d already opened the car door and was getting in.

  The trip back was like the trip down, except when she didn’t talk he worried about what she was thinking. She sat still in her seat looking out the window, and about halfway back Shellburn had the feeling it might be hard to talk her into coming back.

  Mickey woke up when she slammed the car door. It was dark outside. He sat up in the chair, she came in the front door. He heard the car going up the street. A heavy car.

  She jumped when she saw him. “It’s going to be all right,” he said. She didn’t know what he was talking about.

  “Leon’s back at Jack Moran’s,” he said. “We’ll have the funeral Saturday afternoon.” He saw he was going too fast. “The services. We’ll get it all over Saturday.” She stumbled kicking off her shoes, he stood where he was. “It’s going to be all right,” he said.

  She smiled at him and started up the stairs. He followed her, keeping the same distance. “That reporter ain’t going to help nothin’,” he said. “When he gets what he wants, he’ll forget about you.”

  She stopped on the steps and turned around. He thought for a second that she was going to tell him that Richard Shellburn cared about the common man, but she just stood there looking. “It’s going to be all right,” he said. She went the rest of the way upstairs and into the bathroom. He heard the bath water running, and then it was quiet. It was quiet a long time.

  When the phone woke him up, he was in the chair again. He didn’t remember sitting down. There was a blanket over him, and a different kind of quiet upstairs. She was asleep, but she’d come down and covered him with a blanket. He got to the phone on the fourth ring, and from there he could see into the kitchen where there was a clock on the wall. It was two-thirty.

  “Yeah?”

  “Mick? It’s Bird.” He was whispering.

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m home,” Bird said, “and Sophie’s packin’. Askin’ do I need what color socks. You should of seen it, Mick.”

  “I heard about it,” Mickey said. “How the fuck did she get them?”

  “I don’t know,” Bird said. “When I got out there the one asshole was already in pieces. It was the guy went with us to Jersey Monday.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, when I got there he was already down. I didn’t even know she kept that fuckin’ thing loaded. They was hollow-points, too. They had to be. I got there, she moves me out of the way and points it at the door and waits, and sure as shit, a minute later this other guy comes runnin’ through and she blows a piece of his head off. A major piece.”

  “What the fuck?” Mickey said. “They goin’ to whack the whole world?”

  “I don’t know,” Bird said. “With these people, they could whack babies for cryin’. We’re leavin’ in a couple minutes, I ain’t going to make it easy for them. Me and Sophie are gettin’ in the Cadillac and headin’ south.”

  “Where?”

  “Don’t tell nobody this, make them find us.”

  “What do you think?” Mickey said. “I’m going to give you up?”

  “I mean nobody. Not even Jeanie. We’re goin’ down to Palatka, Florida, which nobody ever heard of. They got a trailer park there, a bunch of old people like Sophie. A river. Did you know the St. Johns River is one of only two rivers in the country that flows north? It’s very interesting.”

  “What the fuck are you talkin’ about?”

  “If that don’t work out,” Bird said, “we can try Miami, get lost down there in the Jews and the Cubans. Whatever, we gotta get out of here. I ain’t going to help ’em.” Mickey thought of Bird in Florida, coming out of the trailer in the morning to watch a river flow north.

  “Did they say anything?”

  “They didn’t get much of a chance,” Bird said. The connection went quie
t then, while they thought of waiting it out in Florida. Then Bird said, “Lissen to me, Mick. If you need a place to stay, you can always come to Palatka.”

  “Good,” he said.

  “Only don’t sneak up on Sophie. She’s probably up there puttin’ notches in the handle right now. Jesus, Mick, you should of seen her.”

  “And the people, they didn’t say nothin’?”

  Then Bird was talking to Aunt Sophie about what sweaters he wanted her to pack. “The last trip she took, she come to America,” he said when he was talking to Mickey again. “No, Soph, I don’t need no red pants.… Hey, Mick, I got to go.”

  And then the connection went dead, too fast, before Mickey agreed to it, and he sat in the living room looking at the phone. And the house seemed emptier than it had before.

  He slept in Leon’s room again. He got up at nine, Jeanie was still asleep, buried in a pile of pillows and blond hair. He brushed his teeth and washed his face and waited until he was downstairs to put his shoes on. The next time she saw him, he wanted it all done.

  He drove by the flower shop on the way to Little Eddie’s Automotive Emporium. He could still see flowers through the window, but the whole place had been roped off by the police, and there were barricades all around the front that said CRIME SCENE—DO NOT ENTER. There were cops inside. The first thing cops did after a shoot was see how many guys they could get in the room where it happened, and they stayed until they got another room somewhere else.

  The Cadillac was gone, Bird and Sophie with it. The cops would be going through their place across the street soon, trying to find them. Palatka. Mickey shook his head, thinking Bird must have found it in one of the geography books lying around the warehouse.

  “One of only two rivers in the country that runs north. It’s very interesting.”

  The cops would be back in the warehouse now, trying to put his business together. Mickey wasn’t worried that Bird kept records, but he had to get rid of the meat today anyway. He’d thought of one other restaurant, over by the Italian Market, where he knew a bar manager, and planned to stop there after he made the deal for the truck. If they didn’t want it there, he’d give it to somebody old.

  Little Eddie’s Automotive Emporium sat in a gap between two lines of row houses near Third Street and Emily. He had thirty-five cars on the lot and one colored man that was supposed to keep them all shiny. His office was eight feet square, and there was a deer head on one wall and a deer’s ass on the other. Little Eddie was close to eight feet square himself. Between deer parts was a sign that said 1/3 DOWN and above that one that said BUYERS ARE LIARS. People who knew them both from the old neighborhood said Little Eddie was funnier than Joey Bishop, and could of been that famous if he’d got a break.

  Mickey left the truck on the street where he could see it and went in. “Hey, Mick,” Eddie said, “you come to sell me your truck?” Whenever somebody bought a new car, Little Eddie would try to buy it from them for four hundred dollars. That was one of the ways he was humorous. He’d seen Mickey’s truck the week he bought it, at a bar where he was making a delivery. “Lemme buy that truck off you,” he’d said. “What’s somethin’ like that worth?”

  The truck was $19,000, but Mickey didn’t tell him. “I’ll give you four hundred, right now,” he’d said, and the whole bar laughed. Every time he saw Mickey after that, he asked about the truck. He’d say, “You takin’ care of my truck?” Every single time.

  Mickey looked around the office now, smiling. “Yeah,” he said. “I need to get rid of it.”

  Little Eddie’s face changed. “What’s wrong with it?” he said.

  “Nothin’. It’s a temporary financial problem.” Eddie stood halfway up and looked past Mickey to the street.

  “What’d you pay for that?” he said. Mickey pulled out the bill of sale. Eddie whistled. “They seen you comin’, didn’t they?”

  Mickey didn’t mind. “What can you do?” he said.

  Little Eddie shook his head and looked troubled. He lit a cigarette and said, “I don’t know where I’d get rid of somethin’ like that, Mick. It’s specialized, and what I got here is a young-couples/singles-oriented operation.”

  Mickey shrugged. Everybody he knew, they changed when they did business. Bird had told him once that it didn’t mean nothing, it’s what business was. Mickey never saw why you couldn’t be one way all the time. If you changed, then something was wrong one place or the other, maybe both.

  “What can you do?” he said.

  Little Eddie looked out the window again. “There’s nothin’ wrong with it?”

  “It’s got eight thousand miles,” Mickey said. “I changed the oil twice already, kept it in the garage. Here, start it.” He handed Little Eddie his keys, three pounds of them, holding onto the one that would start the truck. Little Eddie got out of his chair and went to the door. He had a layer of loose fat like a bear that was always a little behind whatever he did. He called the colored man, who was running an electric buffer over a six-year-old Camaro. His name was Stretch.

  Eddie watched him put the buffer down and start toward the office. “That is the slowest nigger God ever put on the face of the earth,” he said. “Sometimes I think he made the rest of them faster than us to make up for him.” Mickey didn’t like the way Little Eddie said “nigger.” Some people could say it careless, like it was just a word—which it was—and some people made it an insult.

  “He can start it,” Mickey said, “but I don’t want him takin’ it out.” Something crossed Little Eddie’s face. “I got some stuff in the back,” Mickey said.

  Little Eddie gave the keys to Stretch, talked to him a minute, and then closed the door. He sat back down behind his desk. Mickey saw his chair was a couch somebody had sawed in half. “I’ll tell you the truth,” Eddie said, “this is a motherfucker, this business. Sometimes I wonder what the fuck am I doin’ here. The nigger’s makin’ more money than me, and he can’t keep up. The cars look like shit. The kids come in, they know I ain’t going to get into any fuckin’ car for a test ride, so they say they want to see this car or that car, and you got to let them look, right? How are you going to sell somethin’ if you don’t let nobody see it?

  “So you give them the keys and they’re gone for half the day, and when they bring it back it’s got French fries and beer cans all over the floor, they burned half the oil out of the engine. You know what I mean here? Somebody’s always tryin’ to get over on you.”

  Outside, the colored man started the truck.

  Little Eddie opened a desk drawer and found his truck book. “What’s that, an eighty-two?” he said.

  “Yeah, it’s six months old.” Little Eddie ran his finger down a list of trucks.

  “I had this idea,” Eddie said, “to open up at night. Maybe seven, eight o’clock, after the sun goes down. Cars look better when the sun goes down. You don’t have to keep tellin’ the nigger he missed this or that, ’cause most of it you can’t see at night anyway. What do you think?”

  Mickey said, “What’s the book say?”

  “I might be able to get rid of it for you,” he said. “I’d have to make a couple of calls, you know. If it’s all right, I might get you seven and a half, eight.…” He shook his head. “It’s a bad time of year. Business stinks in spring, Mick. Everybody’s thinkin’ about pussy. I’m tellin’ you the truth.”

  Outside, Stretch was revving the engine. Mickey was sitting with his back to the window, watching Little Eddie, so he didn’t see it when the truck pulled out in front of a SEPTA bus and started north up Third Street. Little Eddie was talking about doing his business at night again, and suddenly Mickey noticed the sound of the engine was gone. He turned in his chair to see if Stretch was finished.

  Little Eddie said, “He’s just takin’ it around the block once, make sure everything works.” Mickey was on his feet, moving toward the door. “Hey, he’ll be back in a minute.…”

  He ran out the door and looked up Third Street. The truc
k was a block ahead, stopped in front of the bus. Little Eddie came out of the office. He said, “I can’t buy no truck without takin’ it out for a drive, Mickey. You know that.…”

  Mickey started after it. It’d been fifteen or twenty years since he ran anywhere but to keep something from falling, and then only if there was somebody underneath it. Running hadn’t felt dignified ever since he started working for himself, and he’d started that when he was a boy. It was something he’d never thought about much, and then one year every time you looked out the window, there was some guy forty-seven years old, in new sneakers and a faggot-colored headband, moving up the street half a mile an hour with this glazed look on his face.

  Mickey Scarpato was never swept up in the jogging craze. Jeanie, back when it was all right to talk to him, had said once that he was scared to be trendy.

  He hadn’t run for fifteen or twenty years, and he’d forgot what it was like. Toward the end of the first block it began to come back to him. There was a jolt every time his foot hit the cement. It went right to his head. His arms were tight and uncomfortable and every five steps there was something to get out of the way of. A school kid, a dog, a garbage can. There were uneven places in the sidewalk.

  He was closing in on the truck. It was still sitting at the stop sign, in front of the bus, but just as he got there the traffic began to move again, and then he was running in a cloud of diesel smoke, and the truck was out a block in front of him again. He could see the bus driver’s face in his mirror, smiling. He must of thought Mickey was trying to get on.

  He kept running, dodging kids and garbage cans, people watching him from their steps. The jolts when his feet hit the cement had changed. They weren’t getting to his head now, they all stopped in his chest. Two blocks, and it already hurt to breathe.

  The truck was still a block ahead of him. Stretch had his arm hanging straight down from the window, and Mickey could see his head moving up and down with the radio. A block farther—between Tasket and Moore—they were throwing a family out into the street. A woman was crying, holding a five- or six-year-old child, and two men were putting her furniture on the sidewalk, trying not to look at her as they worked.