“You make it sound like some kind of showdown,” Russel said.
“Well,” Jim Bob said, “in a way, ain’t it?”
Russel nodded. “What say you take us out there to look at those scrawny hogs of yours, Jim Bob?”
“If you guys promise not to diddle them,” Jim Bob said, “they’re kind of shy.”
· · ·
So we went out and looked at these hogs of Jim Bob’s, and he must have had twenty, plus some piglets. They were huge things, white and big-eared and Jim Bob said they were called Yorkshires.
The hogs were housed in a roomy, air-conditioned building that had a flap door so they could go out into a big, fenced enclosure if they wished. There was the ripe smell of dung and urine in the air, but it wasn’t bad. The hogs were raised clean, and Jim Bob said the wetback, Raoul, came around once a day and changed the bedding and checked the water connections and made sure there was feed in the automatic feeders. When the hogs got fat enough, Jim Bob sold them, saving one for his own freezer, and some for breeding stock; now and then he replaced his boars and litter sows with younger more sexually ambitious swine he bought and brought in, so his bloodline wouldn’t foul, as he put it.
Out behind the hog house, he showed us a big wood and chicken-wire cage full of soiled hog bedding. “That’s my compost pile,” Jim Bob said. “Me and Raoul pull this crap out of the hog house and stack it here and let it heat up, and come spring it’s broken down and ready to spread. I hire this colored fella I know, Henry, to bring his mules over and bust up my land. Then me and Raoul, when he hasn’t been sent back to Mexico for a while by the Immigration, spread it around and plant early as we can. Pig shit, if composted right, can grow anything. Raoul keeps saying he’s gonna try putting a pussy hair out there and growing him a woman, but the only pussy hair he can get hold of is his wife’s and he damn sure don’t want another one of her.”
We walked down behind the compost pile and out into Jim Bob’s garden. We went between rows of corn with stalks nine feet high and bright green. There were mounds giving birth to squash plants with white pattie squash on them big as the crown in a cowboy hat. There were thick tomato vines staked on six-foot poles, and the strong, fine smell of the tomatoes was enough to make your nose hairs twitch. The tomatoes were firm as hardballs and red as a wound. Jim Bob picked us each one and we walked along the rows eating the warm, juicy tomatoes and marveling at the cucumber vines that ran renegade throughout the garden with cucumbers on them that Jim Bob said were “as big as Big Tex Dildoes.”
When we got to the far end of the garden, we turned left and walked around the edge of it, then started back between a row of turnip greens. The greens were thick and green and looked more like Venus flytraps than turnip greens. By the time we were out of the garden and heading back toward the house, I felt as if we had been expelled from the Garden of Eden.
29
“That’s Freddy’s house right there,” Jim Bob said.
It was late afternoon and the bottom of the sky had turned the color of a burst tomato and the gray was pushing it down and away. But we could still see where Jim Bob was pointing. We were across the street and about a half a block down from Freddy’s house. It was just a house. Light pink brick on a street full of houses built just like it, but some with gray and some with red brick. The lawn was mowed and I could see the knob of a sprinkler out in the yard. Freddy watered his grass. I wondered if he had a barbecue grill out back, and maybe a dog called Boscoe that had his own house with his name painted over the door.
“It could be another Fred Miller,” Russel said. “We don’t know this is Freddy.” There was something almost hopeful in Russet’s tone. I didn’t know if it was the years that were bothering him or what his son had become, or what he himself had become. Maybe all those things.
He shook out another cigarette and lipped it, lit it with his Bic lighter and inhaled, and about a quarter of the cigarette glowed and went to ash.
“You’re supposed to smoke those, not suck them,” Jim Bob said. “What you need’s a straw and something to drink. And this is Freddy’s house. I'll bet my left nut on that.”
“I don’t want your left nut,” Russel said.
“How about my right? I keep it a little cleaner.”
“Ha, ha,” Russel said, and sucked up another chunk of the cigarette and the ash fell off in his lap.
“Hey, watch the upholstery, and open a goddamn window,” Jim Bob said. “I feel like I’m in the fucking gas chamber.”
Russel brushed himself and the seat and rolled down his window and blew a mouthful of smoke out of it. Just watching him do that made me feel hotter than I was. The air-conditioned air in the car had died immediately when Jim Bob shut off the engine, and the air outside was only slightly less stale. At least it wasn’t full of smoke. I rolled down my window and stuck my head out and took a deep breath. It warmed my throat and lungs and made me thirsty. When I was finished with that, I pulled my sweaty shirt away from my back and leaned forward and said, “Now what?”
“Yeah, Ben,” Jim Bob said. “Now what?”
“I don’t know,” Russel said.
“You’re costing Dane money here,” Jim Bob said. “He’s footing the bill.”
“Nah,” I said, “that’s not the problem. I just want to do something. I’m getting itchy.”
“I just can’t do it yet,” Russel said.
Jim Bob sighed and rolled down his window. “Maybe you’d like to drive down to the other end, turn around, see the house from that angle.”
Jim Bob meant the comment sarcastically, but Russel, who wasn’t fully tuned in, said, “Okay.”
Jim Bob looked back at me and rolled his eyes. “All righty,” he said, and he rolled up his window and Russel and I did the same. Then he cranked the car and the air-conditioning panted through it and we went coasting down the street.
When we reached the dead end, Jim Bob backed the Bitch around as slowly and carefully as if it were made of eggs, and started back up the street.
Russel hadn’t even looked at the house when we passed it, and he didn’t act as if he were going to look this time. He had his eyes glued straight ahead.
“If we can get the colors of the house coordinated with the sprinkler knob,” Jim Bob said, “maybe we can buy Freddy some nice lawn furniture or something. A pink flamingo maybe.”
Jim Bob was going so slow and was so busy giving Russel a hard time, he didn’t notice the garage door at Freddy’s house going up or the blue Chevy Nova backing out of it down the short drive at top speed. I barely saw it, and by the time I yelled, the car was on us. The back of it hit the Red Bitch on the right-hand rear door, and sent my nonseatbelted self flying across the car.
I put my hands on the seat in front of me and straightened to a sitting position. Jim Bob had killed the engine and was cussing “Goddamn idiot, I’ll kick, his motherfucking ass.”
“It might be Freddy,” Russel said.
“I don’t give a damn if it’s God,” Jim Bob said, opened his door and got out.
Russel turned around and looked at me. “You okay, Dane?”
I rubbed my neck. “I think so. But maybe I should yell whiplash.”
I looked at the car that had backed into us and saw the driver’s door open and the driver get out. And get out. And get out. He was as big as King Kong, Mexican, and had a look on his face like he’d eat shit and sugar before taking a beating from anyone. Jim Bob included.
Jim Bob was almost to the Mexican, but his steps were a little slower. He stopped about four feet away and cocked his hat back.
Russel rolled down his window, said softly to me, “I’ve been waiting to see this. I even thought about this in prison. I’ve wanted to see Jim Bob get his ass kicked all my life. He never has that I know of.”