Even before I could make out his silhouette against the screen door, I saw Dixie Lee's battered pink Cadillac convertible parked with two wheels on the edge of my grass. The top was up, but I could see that the backseat was loaded with suitcases, boxes of clothing and cowboy boots, hangered western suits racked on a wire.
His sudden change of fortune, his plans for himself, his rehearsed entreaty, were altogether too obvious and predictable. I didn't open the door. I was even a bit ashamed at my lack of sympathy. But it had been a bad day, and I really didn't need Dixie Lee in it. He was eloquent in his desperation, though. He had marshaled all the raw energies of a drunk who knew that he was operating on the last fuel in his tank.
"Things are coming apart up there at the lake," he said.
"You were right, Sal's a shit. No, that ain't right. He's a crazy person. He wants your ass cooked in a pot. I couldn't abide it. I had to get out."
"Watch your language. My daughter's here."
"I'm sorry. But you don't know what Sal's like when lights start going off in his head. He's got this twisted-up look on his face. Nobody can say anything around him unless you want your head snapped off. One of the broads is eating her dessert at the dinner table, and Sal keeps smoking his cigarette and looking at her like she crawled up out of a drain hole. Her eyes are blinking and she's trying to smile and be pretty and cute and get off the hook, then he says, "You eat too much," and puts out his cigarette in her food.
"He hates you, Dave. You really got to him. You bend up the wheels inside a guy like Sally Dee, and smoke starts to come out of the box. I don't want to be around it. That's where it stands. You tell me to get out of your life, I can relate to it. But I picked myself into some thin cotton, son, and I got nowhere to turn. I'll be straight with you on something else, too. I'm in to Sal for fifteen thou. That's how much flake I put up my nose on the tab. So I got that old Caddy out there, thirty-seven dollars in my pocket, and a quarter tank of gas. I'm'trying to keep it all in E major, but I blew out my amps on this one."
"Save the rock 'n' roll corn pone for somebody else," I said.
"I had Charlie Dodds in my house this morning."
"Dodds? I thought he went back to Vegas last night. What was he doing here?"
"You don't know?"
"You mean he's a mechanic? I didn't know. I swear in front of God I didn't. I thought he was one of Sal's mules. Is that how you got that purple knot on your head?"
"Something like that."
"Man, I'm sorry. I didn't have any idea. The guy didn't say three words when he was around me. I thought he was retarded. All those mules got that meltdown look in their eyes. They swallow balloons full of skag, fly in and out of canyons, land on dirt roads at night. We're talking about the dumbest white people you ever met."
"I think he might have a backup man still after me. Is there some other new guy hanging around Sal's place?"
"No."
"You're sure?"
"Yeah."
"Anyway, I can't help you, Dixie."
He looked at me blankly through the screen. He swallowed, glanced up the street as though something of significance were waiting for him there, then started to speak again.
"I've got too many problems of my own. That's about it, partner," I said.
"No way, huh?"
"I'm afraid not."
He blew his breath up into his face.
"I can't blame you," he said.
"I just ain't got many selections right now."
"Start over."
"Yeah, why not? It ain't my first time washing dishes or living in a hallelujah mission. Hey, I want you to remember one thing, though, Dave. I ain't all bad. I never set out to harm anybody. It just worked out that way."
"Whatever you do, good luck with it, Dixie," I said, and closed the inside door on him and went back to the kitchen table, where Alafair had already started in on her dessert.
I looked at my watch it was a quarter to six now and tried to finish supper. The food seemed tasteless, and I couldn't concentrate on something Alafair was telling me about the neighbor's cat chasing grasshoppers in the flower bed.
"What's wrong?" she said.
"Nothing. It's just a little headache. It'll pass."
"That man made you mad or something?"
"No, he's just one of those guys who'll always have his elevator stuck between floors."
"What?"
"Nothing, little guy. Don't worry about it."
I chewed my food and looked silently out the window at the shadows and the cool gold light on the backyard. I heard Alafair wash her dishes in the sink, then walk toward the front of the house. A moment later she was back in the kitchen.
"That man's still out there. Just sitting in his car. What's he doing, Dave?" she said.
"Probably figuring out ways to sell the Rocky Mountains to Arab strip miners."
"What?"
"Just ignore him."
But I couldn't. Or at least I couldn't ignore the twelfth-step AA principle that requires us to help those who are afflicted in the same way we are. Or maybe I knew that I had asked for all my own troubles, and it wasn't right any longer to blame it on Dixie Lee. I set my knife and fork down on my plate and walked outside to his car. He was deep in thought, a cigarette burned almost down to his fingers, which rested on top of the steering wheel. His face jerked around with surprise when he heard me behind him.
"Lord God, you liked to give me a heart attack," he said.
"You can't drink while you stay with us," I said.
"If you do or if you come home with it on your breath, you're eighty-sixed. No discussion, no second chance. I don't want any profanity in front of my daughter, and you go outside if you want to smoke. You share the' cooking and the cleaning, you go to bed when we do. The AA group down the street has a job service. If they find you some work, you take it, whatever it is, and you pay one third of the groceries and the rent. That's the deal, Dixie. If there are any rules here you can't live with, now's the time to tell me."
"Son, you say 'Frog' and I'll say 'How high?' "
He began unloading the backseat of his car. His face wore the expression of a man who might have been plucked unexpectedly from the roof of a burning building. As he piled his boxes and suitcases and clothes on the sidewalk, he talked without stop about the 1950s, Tommy Sands, Ruth Brown, the Big Bopper, the mob, cons in Huntsville, the actress wife who paid goons to beat him up behind Co amp;k's Hoe Down in Houston. I looked at my watch. It was five minutes to six.
He was still talking while I looked up the number of the Eastgate Lounge.
"-called him 'the hippy-dippy from Mississippi, yes indeed, Mister Jimmy Reed,' " he said.
"When that cat went into 'Big Boss Man,' you knew he'd been on Parchman Farm, son. You don't fake them kind of feelings. You don't grow it in New York City, either. You don't put no mojo in your sounds unless you picked cotton four cents a pound and ate a mess of them good ole butter beans. My daddy said he give up on me, that somebody snuck me into the crib, that I must have been a nigra turned inside out."
Alafair sat delighted and amazed as she listened to Dixie Lee's marathon storytelling. I dialed the Eastgate Lounge, then listened to the hum and clatter of noise in the background while a woman called Clete to the phone. I heard him scrape the receiver off a hard surface and place it to his ear.
"Streak?"
"Yep."
"Did I surprise you? Did you think maybe your old partner had headed for Taco Greaso Land again?"
"I wasn't sure."
"I don't rattle, mon. At least not over the shit bags."
"Maybe you should be careful what you tell me."
"Do I sound like I'm sweating it? When are you going to stop pretending you still got your cherry?"
"You're starting to get to me, Clete."
"What else is new? All I did was save your life today."
"Is there something you want to say?"
"Yeah. Get your butt over here. You know where the East-gate is?"