GroVont: Sorrow Floats Part 30

Andrew caromed down the sidewalk, bouncing from parking meters to building walls and back. He shouted, "I know Elvis Presley. He goes to my school. His mother bought him a ten-speed, but my mother's mean and won't buy me one."

Marcella picked her way through a pile of urban squalor garbage spilling from a knocked-over trash can. "Was his wife nice?"

"Priscilla is genteel as a southern breeze, refined as Hawaiian sugar. She's even more gracious than when I dated her."

Which reminded me of a hole in Shane's story. "I read where she was fourteen when she married Elvis. How old was Priscilla when you two dated?"

Shane ignored me. I knew he would. "Lunch was black caviar on toast, with peaches and cream," he said. "The lawns are divine."

I crossed over another pa.s.sed-out wino, careful not to step in at least two visible body excretions. Like me, he had a Band-Aid sideways on his arm. "Hey, divine, did your good buddy Elvis loan us any money?"

Shane stopped the chair and swung it to face me. His head kind of twitched constantly now instead of the bob motion of a few days ago. "Of course not. He tried to press a thousand dollars on me, but I refused. Using Elvis for monetary gain would taint the purity of our memories."

I held out my bruised arm. "I tainted myself for fourteen bucks, it wouldn't have hurt you to drop your pride a notch. Not that I believe for an instant you actually luncheoned with the Presleys."

His whole body twitched, except the legs. "Shane Rinesfoos never drops his pride."

Andrew marched over to the unconscious wino and stomped on his hand. The wino screamed, rolled over, and resumed sleeping on his back. Andrew looked at me, his face a sunbeam. "This one's not dead yet."

When we got back to Moby d.i.c.k, Lloyd was talking with the parking lot attendant, not the one we'd beer-bribed that morning. This attendant wanted his own bribe. He said our time was up and we were hogging two s.p.a.ces and the owner of the lot might show up any minute, which would get him in trouble because we didn't have a ticket or a pa.s.s or something.

I searched the back end and found Brad's art pad on the pile of coverless magazines. "Brad wouldn't leave his pictures behind if he planned to ditch us," I said.

Lloyd rubbed his forehead with the bill of his cat hat. "If we wait for him, it'll cost us more than we made by stopping."

For a change, I wasn't in favor of dumping people. "We can't drive off and leave him. Brad looks at us as family."

"He only joined up yesterday," Shane said.

"Some people latch on fast."

Andrew shouted, "If we run away from Owsley, I'll break windows."

"Brad," Marcella corrected him.

"Who's Brad?"

So Lloyd rummaged through the horse trailer and came out with two more cases. The lug of an attendant hefted them up on one shoulder, but he didn't seem in any hurry to go away-just stood there looking at Moby d.i.c.k. Finally he said, "Even with these you've got to split by midnight. That's when the owner drops by to check on the lot."

Split. The clown said split. "You told us he might show up any minute," I said.

"He might, but it's more likely at midnight."

Lloyd turned to me. You could tell he was sad about the deal. "We can't wait longer than that anyway, Maurey.''

"Brad's not used to cities. What if he gets mugged or arrested or picked up by perverts?"

Shane did the huh sound. "Brad's a lad who can take care of himself in a tight spot. Reminds me somewhat of myself when I was young."

"You were never young," I said.

Marcella took me literally. "Yes, he was. We were both young once." That may be Marcella's tragic flaw: she has no understanding of sarcasm.

While we waited she decided to mend all the clothes in the junk pile. There must have been a hundred shirts, slacks, coats, every st.i.tch of it worn out and unwearable. Most of the rags didn't even fit anyone in the troupe, although she did dig out a cotton pullover shirt with three-quarter sleeves that covered my bruise.

"You think I should style my hair?" she asked. "Annette Gilliam's cousin is a beautician. Maybe if my hairdo had been modern as Annette Gilliam's, Hugo wouldn't have strayed."

"The last time I changed hairdos, I gave myself a crew cut."

Marcella tucked a loose strand back into her bun. "You always look like a model in Redbook, Maurey. Next to you, I feel frumpy."

Andrew played a pretend baseball game by throwing a tennis ball against the cinder-block wall. He kept a running commentary going under his breath, every now and then shouting "Home run!" or "Slide, you jerk" or "In your face, ump."

Shane pulled out his harmonica to play "Love Me Tender" seven hundred times. Felt like seven hundred, anyway. Between riffs he fabricated bizarre details to go with his Elvis story. "He has a servant whose only job is to dust his shoulders for dandruff...Priscilla bathes in warm champagne...I shouldn't tell you this, but the sideburns are tiny toupees."

Lloyd had spent almost all his blood money on STP Oil Treatment and various other cleaners, fluids, and lubricants. Every few minutes he had me turn the key or rev the accelerator, push in the clutch, pull out the choke. The engine always sounded the same to me.

Personally, I was antsy-nervous stomach. Felt the way you do when the signs are all there that your period is about to happen, but it's a week late and you've fooled around without protection. I sat on the side loading door ledge and studied Brad's art pad. The only new picture was me, and I'd just as soon he'd stuck with bald-legged eagles. I suppose the drawing looked vaguely like me-Marcella said it was a spit image-but if so, I'd lost cheekbones and gained pouches. The woman in the picture looked forty. I don't look forty. I'm twenty-two. Twenty-two is when a woman should be at her peak. The woman in the picture was way past her peak.

"When you were an alcoholic, what's the worst thing you ever did to get a bottle?" I asked Shane.

He knocked spit from the harmonica onto the ground. "Why do you ask?"

"I need perspective here."

"You need validation that you aren't a real alcoholic because you've never done anything as disgusting as I have."

"Something like that."

Lloyd's voice came from under the hood. "I p.a.w.ned Sharon's hope chest. Her grandfather built it himself for a tenth birthday present, and one Sunday while she was in church I threw a brick through a window and took the chest down to the Strip and hocked it. Bought me a fifth of gin."

"Why'd you break the window?"

"I told Sharon the chest was stolen by migrants." His head came out of the hood. "She knew better."

Shane played a few bars of "Love Me Tender." He stared at the setting sun off toward the Mississippi River, then he cleared his throat with a bullfrog pop. "Juarez, Mexico. Cinco de Mayo, 1968. I was broke and ill, going through the DTs. You've never gone through DTs, Maurey"-he called me Maurey-"they're worse than whatever your imagination has constructed them to be. I traded my wheelchair for a bottle of mescal."

"Jesus."

"The day was hot as my h.e.l.l and the old man I traded with left me lying in the dirt street. I pulled myself under a taxi and drank the whole bottle."

"What happened?"

He shrugged. "Man who owned the taxi was AA. He showed me the choice between dying and living. You may not believe it now, but considering the alternative, living can be a lot of fun."

After dark Shane wheeled off to find a pay phone and order a pizza. Didn't bother to ask anyone what kind they wanted, just rolled himself away into the dark. I was reading Andrew cartoons from a New Yorker magazine while Marcella fussed with Hugo Jr. and Lloyd sat in the driver's seat, staring at a photograph of Sharon.

Six-year-olds from Dumas have trouble relating to New Yorker humor. "You ever consider letting her go and getting on with your life?" I asked Lloyd.

"No."

A three-quarter waxing moon came up through the buildings. By moonlight Moby d.i.c.k took on a fuzzy glow, as if the white paint had been mixed with Woolite. The ambulance looked more like a loaf-shaped s.p.a.ce module than either a whale or an ambulance. I'd about decided to h.e.l.l with subtle ethical shades, money is money and whiskey is whiskey, and I needed whiskey more than I needed money. My guts felt like I was ovulating a baseball.

I deserved a drink for letting that s.a.d.i.s.tic Jesus freak stab me. I deserved a drink because I hadn't had one yet.

Shane appeared out of the dark, whistling "Heartbreak Hotel." He seemed in a good mood. I don't know why, none of the rest of us were. "Sausage and pineapple, it will be magnificent. They wouldn't deliver to a parking lot until I personally guaranteed a five-dollar tip."

Lloyd's sad eyes pulled away from Sharon. "How you planning to pay for this sausage-and-pineapple pizza?"

Maybe black caviar on toast for lunch makes a person happy. Shane's voice carried a lilt that had been missing since Amarillo.

"We'll offer the delivery boy a six-pack. East Coast children go rabid at the sight of Coors."

"Did you see Hugo Sr. while you were out there?" Marcella asked. "I'm worried about him."

"That husband of yours is the Phantom. You never see the Phantom until he's least expected, yet he knows your every move," Shane said.

"Like Jesus," Andrew crowed.

Marcella corrected. "Daddy is not Jesus."

Lloyd put Sharon back in his overall's breast pocket. "I wish you wouldn't buy things until we're sure they take beer."

"They'll take beer all right. Trust me."

If I'd had a brain, that very moment I would have leapt from Moby d.i.c.k and run like the wind for the nearest liquor store. No one you can trust says "Trust me."

The kid who delivered the pizza drove up in a Mazda minitruck with no doors and a red rag stuffed in the gas tank hole. He looked Brad's age, wore thick horn-rims, both suspenders, and a belt, and he wouldn't have touched a bottle of Coors for love or money.

"No beer. That's nine dollars twenty cents cash, plus the five-dollar tip you promised."

Shane held a bottle with one hand on the bottom and the other in back like on "Truth or Consequences" when the girl wanted to showcase a prize. He'd started the bidding with a six-pack and was already up to three cases. "You can market three cases for a hundred and twenty big ones. This is Coors, Rocky Mountain spring water, so rare you can't buy it in Tennessee for any price."

"My boss wants money, not beer. Now cough up fourteen dollars twenty cents or-"

"Or what, punk?" Shane growled.

Lloyd came over and lifted the pizza from Shane's lap. Shane groaned as Lloyd turned and held the box out to the boy. "You'll have to take it back. Here's three dollars for your trouble. That's all I've got."

The kid didn't touch either pizza or money. "Listen, mister, no returns. I have to pay for every pizza I take out."

I was high-strung enough without this c.r.a.p. "We don't have money, peterhead. It's Coors or take it back. Those are the choices."

He blinked really fast. I've never seen such a quick blinker in my life. The gla.s.ses magnified the blinks so they looked like wings on a hummingbird. "I have one other choice. See that police car down there?"

We all turned in the direction of the Calhoun Arms, where a white City of Memphis Chevy idled against the curb with a hooker leaning in the window.

"Officer Hazen is a steady customer of mine. If I tell him a pack of hicks with a trailer full of illegal alcohol stiffed me for a pizza, he's going to be real angry."

"Hicks." Shane covered his heart with his hand. "The extortionist called us hicks."

Lloyd rubbed his forehead and leg at the same time. Looked like Pinocchio in overalls. "Kid, we don't have money."

Blink-blink. "Fourteen twenty or jail."

The screw in my lower back drilled through another half inch of spine. I said, "s.h.i.t. I knew this would happen. You owe me one, fatso. You owe me about a dozen."

Shane wasn't contrite at all-just grinned and yanked the pizza box out of Lloyd's hands. He said, "You'll thank me someday."

"Over your dead body."

I counted out the nine dollars. "There's twenty cents here somewhere, let me look in the glove compartment."

"And my five-dollar tip."

What I wouldn't give for Charley and one bullet. "You threaten us with jail and now you expect a tip?"

"The man who called promised a five-dollar tip."

"If I had five dollars, I'd stick it up your a.s.s."

I needed a drink. The kid was about to cry. All he could get out was a choked "Officer Hazen."

Lloyd stepped between us. Lloyd was always stepping between p.i.s.sed-off people-a regular human buffer zone. "Take this three dollars as a tip. That leaves us without a dime. You should be satisfied with breaking us."

Blink-blink. "I was promised five."

"You can settle for twelve and leave or cause our arrest and end up with nothing."

Shane opened the box. "Balderdash, they left off the pineapple."

Lloyd decided we better hit the road. "That kid'll get three blocks and come back looking for his cop friend," he said.

Marcella gave Andrew a piece, but he wanted a bigger one. "Why would he do such a thing?" she asked. "He already has the money."

"Because he's that kind of person. In his mind we cheated him."

Andrew decided the bigger one was too big and the only piece for him was the one Shane was eating. Shane said, "Forget it," and Andrew started crying, said he wouldn't eat any, then, and the pizza was stupid.