Drink For The Thirst To Come Part 14

"Three point I don't give a c.r.a.p."

"Three point one four one five nine two..." He strung the number to a dozen places. "What's...o...b..tal velocity?"

DeAngelo couldn't say.

"Escape velocity? What's the escape asymptote? Where's the optimum launch place?"

"New Mexico!"

"Equa-tor! Dummy."

Reinhart capped the questions. He pointed at the tiny final stage. "Okay? That gets us to the moon. What gets us home? You forget that? You and Lenz ever make it back? Or were you too busy shooting mon-sters?"

DeAngelo had not worked it out; he had not forgotten. There were reasons. Secrets. Nothing to do with Lenz or being too busy. DeAngelo didn't say. He stared at Reinhart. Who knew pi, asymptotes and orbits; Reinhart was a book of knowing. He picked at problems but never drew solutions.

"Your buddy carries a trunk full of not and never has a pocket full of why," Pop-pop said.

Reinhart never burned with the joy of not knowing, never seemed to feel lovely terror. He never saw monsters in shadows because he knew there were no monsters. Water bugs from bas.e.m.e.nt drains? They were. He wasn't sure, but DeAngelo was pretty sure, Reinhart had not said prayers to be first, the first to set foot upon the moon, to be that first forever.

Reinhart's asymptotes and numbers made the moon possible. Reinhart leading, the trip could happen. DeAngelo could counter with nothing that would make sense. Not to Reinhart. How could he say, "Who'd want to go to your moon?"

What DeAngelo had was a cap and the Old Man's captain's bars. That was it. Captains led. No question. The trip was his. He'd wear Dad's rank and be first. Simple. The journey to that moon was a trip of joy.

The fight was simple and terrible, fought at St. Sophie's playground in April. Mahler was there, Hebhart, Hebhart's dog, Crazy Lenz and others. It was about something, a game, a game of no importance. But it was about mankind's first journey to the moon, no mistake about it, not for DeAngelo. Did Reinhart know? Who knew?

Reinhart insisted he should coach the game. DeAngelo said no, no, no, no, no. "I have the Captain's Cap."

"That makes you a Captain?" The Reinhart giggle followed.

They hurled at each other, grappled, rolled on the gra.s.s. n.o.body hurt.

Smoking over by the pavilion, Keegan and Niewig laughed and punched each other like sissies to demonstrate how little queers fought.

DeAngelo's nose bled a little, but it did that anyway, no punches needed. Reinhart's gla.s.ses were knocked off his face. Lenz grabbed and held them until. After tussles and grunts, DeAngelo got Reinhart turned on his stomach. He knelt in his back, twisted his arm. He looked over at Keegan and remembered how that hurt.

"Who's Captain?" he shouted in Reinhart's ear. "Who leads?"

Reinhart dissolved. "You do, you do, you do you do!"

When they separated and stood, snot ran down Reinhart's lip and made mud with the dirt there. He squinted away tears. Lenz handed his gla.s.ses back. They were bent. Not much. Reinhart twisted them to shape as he walked away. Niewig and Keegan hooted.

Reinhart and DeAngelo didn't talk until seventh grade. By then, it was too late.

Touchdown: Vietnam. DeAngelo in the NCO club, Da Nang. The tube above the bar flickered black and white. Hisses. Cronkite shut up. What the h.e.l.l was the time? The club was open. The war was on. Armstrong flickered past the camera, a slow-mo leap, touched the surface, rebounded. Looked like, DeAngelo thought. Sound cut in, out, breathing.

"Armstrong is on the moon..." Cronkite said.

"Say what?" someone down the bar said. "What'd he say on the moon?" guy said over Armstrong's first words.

DeAngelo sucked his beer. He'd heard. Slick but what the h.e.l.l? Everyone knew they'd make it.

"Think they'll make it back?" guy said.

"Figure you will?" another voice said in back. "Any us?"

A thousand-yard laugh from another corner of the dark.

DeAngelo drained his beer, called in another. Tipped it to the tube. "I wouldn't," he said, "wouldn't come back."

"Say what?" someone said from the side. "Why not?"

DeAngelo snorted. "h.e.l.l, getting there's the fun."

THE BOY'S ROOM

Everybody loved Rafe Tozier. Who wouldn't love a boy so filled with mischief and life? First she saw of him, though, Melissa Patricia Tozier thought he was awful, just awful. Later, considering her Mississippi cousin from the distance of her home in Chicago, Melissa Tozier realized he was the handsomest boy she'd ever seen, if awful.

Then Rafe went off and died in the war, still only a boy, so everyone loved him forever. "That's the way," someone said. "Live beloved, die lamented."

Sixty-some years after, Melissa Patricia realized the ghost story she had held to since childhood was not about "why"-hauntings always are about unfinished life, aren't they? No, the ghostly business served up that one night in the Boy's Room turned on the "who" of the haunting, not "why."

Her first night sleeping in handsome, awful, cousin Rafe's room, the so-called Boy's Room (called so by the southern Toziers), had been during the war, 1943. That first night, Melissa had lain, tingling, ready to jump. Bugs and such worried her, but her heart's fear was centered on what the family'd say, their looks, knowing she and Barbary Ann (who should have known better) had a.s.saulted the sanct.i.ty of that old Boy's Room. Melissa lay in darkness, imagining scowls and squints on rawboned Tozier faces. Those folds, dewlaps and jowls worried her more than the thought of creatures creeping over her in sleep.

Phooey to it. She shoved fear aside. That's me, so she thought. Maybe she ought not be there, but Criminies, cool air pleased her so. Seen from the heat of the big house, the rotting curtains of Spanish moss that draped the twisted oaks hung determinedly still and far off in breathless night. In that little shack, though, further even than the old outhouse, small breezes could be seen to stir the moss. From there, the air gathered some measure of chill from the shadows of those trees, then sighed across her body.

Melissa spread herself in damp moonlight. She crowded Barbary Ann into a sliver of bed. Lying wide, night breeze drew the sweat heat right out of her.

Well, cousin Rafe was gone, after all. No, she ought not to be there, Melissa Patricia knew, but phooey to sleepless night under the hot roof of the big house.

She dozed.

The shack at the foot of Tozier land always had been the Boy's Room. There never was more than one boy per generation, but always the place was where Tozier-that is said "TOE-zher" with a voiced z-h-it was where boy Toziers lived when they came to an age to be by themselves. "Gets them out of the home with their smells," Gran Nana said. "No man should be to home all th' time. Livin' there saves them a walk to the back building."

She meant it. If Old Strog, her mostly crippled husband ("One arm and no reliable leg."), chose not to use the back house down the property, why he or any man Tozier could certainly use the "Whites Only" at the Cities Service to do their uglies. ("Just a short quarter mile 'long Bay St. Louis Road, down by the Five Corners where Boulevard Parfume brushes the ca.n.a.l, 'long the near edge of Monocle? There you see the Cities' sign and cannot possibly miss it.") Gran Nana Tozier hated a grown man, any man, all his scents and ways, living fully under her roof. She was firm on the issue. Never mind she was not Tozier-born, roof, house, and land hers by Christian ceremony only. Never mind Old Strog had had the indoor facility made so he might not have to hobble all the way to that old back house. No, the indoor necessity was for ladies. Even if the indoor facility was hardly more than an indoor back house with a chain-pull flush and was barely indoors at that, being on a closed porch right by the kitchen window.

Understand, the Boy's Room was not a sanitary facility. It was a shack where a boy could grow and do things, things boys do coming to manhood. Those things. And from there a boy could use the back house, only a couple dozen feet away, for his necessaries. Washing up he might do in the big house. That might be all right, depending.

Toziers lived beyond the edge of the town, Monocle. To Melissa Patricia, Monocle was a sagged-down affair, a busted old town in a land full of the dead.

"G.o.d," she thought aloud when first she stood at the end of the dirt road that widened from country-breadth and opened into that dusty corridor of scabby white buildings and flopped-down dogs that was King's Road, Monocle, "this place was born dead!" She may not have said it for cousin Barbary Ann to hear, but so it seemed.

The land was steeped in ghosts, parched by tobacco, and vexed by reality. The town seemed fed by the same charred, eerie reality. The old barge ca.n.a.l lazed across Tozier land, its surface thick and green, its only business that of frog, fish, and mosquito egg. Closing on all sides were twisted oak and magnolia that seemed to arise already rotting from pale earth.

The Tozier home was pure white-folk. Not grand and antebellum, just a house that was built then grew by rambling during the years between Secession and sharecrop days that followed. Coloreds had lived across the old ca.n.a.l that connected Tozier fields to the world.

When Young Strog-whose proper name was Captain Strother G. Tozier-came home from Over There, still a boy, he limped horribly and his right sleeve arm was pinned to his shoulder. He stumped around the house a few days, then took residence in what had been the nearest Negro shack. So not to be a burden and to be closer to the back house and not have to limp so far.

He continued there even after his mamma died.

When Daddy Strog, the original Strother G., pa.s.sed, Cap hobbled up to the big house and took command. He married soon after and sired the boy, Bindle, who, at 12 year's age, went down to the Old Shack by the trees. Which is when it got to be called "the Boy's Room." By then, the ca.n.a.l had been abandoned in a burst of enthusiasm for road building, caught from Huey Long next-door in Louisiana. Where it crossed their land, the Toziers absorbed the waterway, towpath, and bridge across. The Boy's Room became just a nice little walk from the house.

In his time, Bindle grew and moved up to the home place and married himself a Wallace.

And so on.

Over decades, Cap Strog's war limp gave way to higher and higher amputations. Soon he was Old Strog. It was Bindle's son's boy, Raphael (Rafe), who was growing in the Boy's Room when Melissa Patricia-called by her southern kin, "M'lissa Trish?"-first came visiting from Chicago. There always was that hint of a question whenever any of the southern Toziers called her by name. "M'lissa Trish?" As though they could not quite understand just what she meant or where she was. Just a bitty-thing at the time, M'lissa Trish remembered pieces of the visit. What she remembered, she did so vividly. One memory was peeing (and worse) down at the stinky awful falling-down outhouse her cousins called "the back house," a thousand miles at least, and across a rickety bridge from where they lived. This was before Old Strog built the inside toilet.

Melissa remembered that long walk, crossing a trembling bridge. She remembered her cousin, the boy, Rafe, at whom she had just plain stared at the station and later at the house.

That memory had help. The day she'd arrived, Rafe came sneaking up to lean his long self against the back house door to block her in, trap her among smells and bugs. Rafe even covered the sickle-moon cutout in the door with his hand and made the whole black stinky place blacker and stinkier yet.

Trapped in dark, M'lissa Trish positively knew those million-legged things she knew skittered under the too-big wooden hole under her bony bottom would take this opportunity to come crawl between her legs.

"They gon' getcher," Rafe whispered through the dark, "black Woof spider gon' getcher little tee-tee place down there. H'll climb up inside 'n wringle out y'nose."

Melissa yelled and yelled. No one heard. A long acre smothers much on a buzzing summer day.

In a minute, cuz' Rafe got anxious about a game of toss-ball being missed. He left off covering the hole, propped a rake head against the handle and went off to do boy things.

Melissa banged and yelled and even then did not get free until her other cousin, Rafe's younger sister, Barbary Ann, came to use the facility. Ten, twenty minutes was all.

"That old Rafe, he does the same to me, cuz," Barbary Ann, sometimes called B.A., said, "same doggone thing! That Boy's Room place of his is so close, he knows every time you and me are, well, let's say he knows when."

That was one of Melissa's vivid memories.

Another was of heat. Her first night, she lay dying under the tin roof of the big house. Mississippi heat was a fierce something, a whole country, real and hard and mean. No breath of air crossed her body (nor, she gathered, was it likely to for the whole long August of her announced visit). Resentment fumed from Melissa as she shared a hot bed with cousin B.A. Rafe's "hospitality" indeed, and her, a guest, made to walk so-far just to you-know. Wretchedly awful (tousle-haired, golden) Rafe, beast-boy that he was (aglow in wriggly southern light), his awful smile (that dazzled her) that did not fool her put a pretty face on a dark, dark heart. "A boy like that." Melissa shook her head. "Southern hospitality. Hospitality indeed!"

Barbary Ann cooed, asked what she might do.

M'lissa sat up. How was Rafe permitted? Phooey on hiding her feelings, how could he lay asleep and comfortable by the trees? Why'd he enjoy that comfort when she, they, did not?

A moment of sympathy, perhaps, or maybe B.A. sought to soothe her guest's natural northern impatience, but Barbary Ann sat up and began the tale of Lady Ophelia, the Negro woman who, once upon a time, had lived where Rafe now spent nights doing only G.o.d knew what.

By all reckoning Ophelia was one scary old woman. First, she was a former slave who had lived almost forever. Second, she was a conjure-woman of great power. Most important, she had no kin or friend, no one knew where she was from. No one came by to say, "Ophelia! Why of course, she's from up in..." or "Ya.s.sir, she's kin to them folk down by..." then speak the names of known Negroes in another town or county. Barbary Ann told the tale as though the story came through her own eyes, that she'd seen the magics writhing in night-smoke, right there!

She had not. Ophelia may have lived almost forever, but of course was a woman dead by the time of B.A.'s great granddad's boyhood. B.A.'s tale told that hot night had been embellished by time and whim by others and now were further festooned by Barbary Ann's hospitality.

The Lady Ophelia had been the last woman resident of the place that, after, became the Tozier boys' Boy's Room. Already run down by life and hardship, she simply moved in one night. "Just as like it was her natural right! And no one, not Toziers, Wallaces, nor anyone dared say her nay! Some tried, none did!"

She never left, not ever again, not once in life. Folks did for her. And her, a colored woman! Toziers, other folks, white or Negro, town or country, anyone who came visiting, brought food, water, wood to burn in winter, they made up, cleaned out, kept the place repaired year-round.

"For her?"

"For her."

"Why?"

"Why? She was a conjure-woman for goodness sakes is why! The most pow'ful conjure-woman maybe ever. Folks feared and required her. A woman who works the darkness is important, for goodness sake. They protected her, did for her."

The Lady Ophelia dipped from the waters of Old Africa and made certain a bull was calved if a bull was needed, or a child was a born a boy if a boy was wanted. She cast darkness before despised neighbors, foretold time, dispensed futures, and unraveled dreams.

She died one day. "When next a visitor came bringing gifts and bearing secret need, he took one look into that old dark shack and ran himself all the way to Monocle calling alarm."

The colored pastor came and behind him, his congregation. They dug a hole in the forest. Nervous Christian words were said over the little dark bundle. "And folks were content only after she'd been lowered into the ground and certain things thrown in after."

"Things? What things?"

"Power things."

"What?"

"Never you mind. Things! And red dirt and dead moss sc.r.a.ped in and over it all. Even us Toziers attended, can you believe?"

"Well, what of it?" Melissa said. She was still hot and now tired of the story.

"Well, for goodness sake," Barbary-Ann said. "Ophelia says, 'When you set to study revenge for wrong, what you must do is take the vera' thin' done-you, and turn it back on the doer!' It's what she says."

"Yeah?" M'lissa started slowly.

B.A. was near asleep. The story was silly. To her, a hot night was nothing. In consequence she was somewhat irritable when she said, "I mean we could grab us one of those jumpin' spiders Rafe locked you with, and of which you are so afraid, silly you. Catch it by moon's full light and, before mornin', make it into old Rafe's breakfast chicory drink, and..." She yawned.

M'lissa shuddered, barely able to speak the eight-legged word. The thought of catching, grinding, drinking... Well, she shuddered. Thank Goodness there was no time for wait and worry. There it was above, full yellow moon rising, wet-hot and burning her eyes. She was too soaked-hot for sleep anyway. Worse, M'lissa knew by-and-by she'd HAVE to use the thunder mug under the bed, then have to carry the hateful thing, sloshing, across the lawn, over the bridge, past Rafe's Boy's Room, just to empty it into the hole in the back house and cousin Rafe watching what she carried!

In the minute it took Melissa to resolve to act, cousin B.A. was asleep. Melissa lay waiting. Moon heat and the metallic buzz of cicadas made sleep impossible to catch and hold. Jaspers, she thought, it has GOT to be darn near dawn. It was a mere hour after the tales had been told, but the awful moonlight barely crawled. The stars that survived full moon brightness wriggled along the rippled windowpanes above their bed. Criminies, Melissa thought, they move! Every few seconds a mosquito sang in her ear or stung the edge of an eyebrow. She whacked herself a crack every time and still the thing lived to sing again. Melissa was everywhere sweat-wet and skitter-bit. Between dozes, she rolled to and fro, angrier and angrier.

"Wake up!" Melissa finally said aloud and shoved her cousin off the bed.

"Criminies, M'lis' Trish?" B.A. said. "What. Are. You. Doin'?"

Melissa peered over the side of the bed. "Time to get us some, you-know, spider. Time to make us a revenge!" She was glad the moon was at her back, knowing she did not look as sure as her voice sounded.

With imagination, the wet gra.s.s in the long yard felt cold between her toes. M'lissa Trish's lady-nightie (her mother's, cut down, pinned up) dragged in the dew. Barbary Ann, in Rafe's left-back and snugged skivvy shorts and undershirt, shuffled behind. She hugged herself for shame. Bugs were now still in the hours between midnight and sun. A horse snickered in the distance. Somewhere there were frogs.

Barbary Ann carried an empty Prince Albert tobacco tin fished from her treasure box under the bed. The little red tin was about half the size of the hip flask Old Strog kept filled with bourbon whiskey and hidden among the Argosy and Police Gazette magazines in the raw attic next to the girl's finished room at the top of the house. Their way 'cross the yard was lit by the electric lamp Bindle Tozier used to hunt night-crawlers. They danced across the towpath road, following the lantern's yellow circles, M'lissa's city-soft feet cut to fancied b.l.o.o.d.y ruin on gravel spalls. The black ca.n.a.l water below the bridge stank of life and death and Melissa couldn't help but think it flowed too, too quiet. They gave the Boy's Room a wide pa.s.s and whispered through the long gra.s.s off the trail. Their way took them near the old trees and their weeping Spanish moss.

"In there," B.A. nodded toward the trees, "is where Ophelia lies buried!" Her whisper stirred the hanging moss.

"Hsssh," Melissa said. By full moonlight, the bare wood of the Boy's Room shone pure white. "Hush, can't you?"

When they reached the back house, Melissa's hands were shaking. Thoughts of spider, yes. Thoughts of Rafe, surely. They were about to begin eternal things, things she didn't altogether believe, but...