GroVont: Sorrow Floats Part 19

"Maurey, this is Dog Whiffer."

The notorious Dog Whiffer who made chili and didn't clean up after herself. "Freedom's in the c.r.a.ppiest 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-h.e.l.l, 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 unG.o.dly 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 c.o.c.ktail 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s."

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 d.i.c.k 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 s.h.i.t. Freedom sat on a folding chair, smoking cigarettes and scowling at the inept.i.tude 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 Pica.s.so 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 b.u.t.t 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 d.i.c.k 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d his own self.

"It's a big country, Lloyd, a.s.suming 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 d.i.c.k's hood, over the battery. "This'll teach those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds."

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 sc.r.a.ped 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.

Lloyd realized the deal. "You're going to sell that to someone as drugs."

Freedom tapped the globe with his finger. "f.u.c.k, no, I'm not selling this to no one. Honest men need not fear my medicine."

"You'll carry it on you and let them steal it," I said.

Freedom grinned, exposing gaps between his teeth. "You're pretty smart for a wino."

Lloyd's voice was soft and sad. "When they shoot it up they'll die."

"Ain't that a shame," Freedom said.

I'm hard to shock by weirdness, but, Jeeze Louise, there has to be limits. "Stealing isn't worth killing anyone over," I said.

"Is when they steal from me."

"No, it's not."

Freedom turned on me, crouched like a rabid dog-or how I imagined a rabid dog would crouch. "n.o.body rips off Freedom. Got that? n.o.body. Any a.s.shole f.u.c.ks with me dies and d.a.m.n well deserves to."

"You just went off the disgusting scale."

"Oh, yeah? Which one of us is the alcoholic?"

Freedom had never-ending depths in which to sink. I was beginning to think this sixth-level jive meant sectors of h.e.l.l. After I got Lloyd's money from the creel under the front seat, he asked me which one of them I was boffing.

"Boffing?"

"I bet on the cripple. You're the kind of butch b.i.t.c.h who wants control. I bet you sit on his face, give him a smell, then run around the room making him crawl for it."

"I'm not sick enough to imagine the s.h.i.t you take for granted."

"Or you're doing it for both of them-f.u.c.k the skinny one and make the fat one watch."

"You're right, Freedom. I f.u.c.k the skinny one and make the fat one watch."

23.

I told Lloyd to buy the cheapest straw they had. "Don't get hay," I said. "This is for hiding, not feeding."

"What's the difference?" he asked.