And I did not care to remember then that even that most predatory of birds, the shrike, can sing.
Chapter 2
About two in the morning the phone rang. I got up, and went to the kitchen and answered it. I don't think Trudy even heard it.
It was Leonard.
"That bitch there?"
"Yeah."
"Shit. You're fucked again."
"It's different this time. I'm only getting laid. Remember what you said about a hard dick not knowing a conscience? You were right."
"Bullshit, don't give me that macho crap. I was just talking that way. You don't think like that and you know it. It's always got to be something to you. This is Leonard you're talking to here, Mr. Hap Collins, not some rose field nigger."
'Leonard, you are a rose field nigger, and so am I. Only I'm a white version."
'You know what I mean."
"What are you doing up at two in the morning minding my business?"
"Drinking, goddammit. Trying to get drunk."
"How are you doing?"
"I'd rate it about a five on a one-to-ten scale."
"Is that Hank Williams I hear in the background?"
"Not his ownself, but yes. 40 Greatest Hits, Volume 2, 'Setting the Woods On Fire.' "
"What key's he singing in?"
"You're not as funny as you think, Hap. Shit, I wish that whore wouldn't come around."
"Don't call her that."
"That's what she is. She comes around and you start acting funny."
"How funny do I get?"
"All moon-eyed and puppylike, talking about the good old days, giving me that self-righteous sixties stuff. I was there, buddy, and it was just the eighties with tie-dyed tee-shirts."
"You numb nuts, you talk about the sixties as much as I do."
"But I hated them. Shit, man, Trudy gets you all out of perspective. She gets to telling you how it was and how it ought to be now, and you get to believing her. I like you cynical. It's closer to the ground. I tell you, that bitch will say anything to get her way. She's fake as pro wrestling. She's out there on a limb, brother, and she's inviting you out there with her. When the limb cracks, you're both gonna bust your ass. Get down from the tree, Hap."
"She's all right, Leonard."
"In the sack, maybe. In the head, uh-uh."
"No, she's all right."
"Sure, and wow, the sixties, man, like neat."
"This time is different."
"And next time I shit it'll come out in sweet-smelling little squares. Goodnight, you dumb sonofabitch."
He hung up, and I went over and got a glass out of the cabinet, filled it with water, drank it, leaned my naked rear into the counter and thought about things. What I thought about mostly was how cold it was.
I went back to the bedroom to get my robe, and looked down at Trudy. There was enough moonlight that I could see her face. The blanket had fallen off of her and she was lying on her side with her arms cuddling her pillow. I could see a smooth shoulder, the shape of one fine breast and the curve of her hip. She looked so sweet and young there in the moonlight. Looked too innocent to have been the one in my bed a short time ago, grabbing her ankles, screaming and groaning, and finally singing like a bird.
But she didn't look so innocent and I wasn't stirred. I thought about waking her, but didn't. I covered her gently, got my robe off the bedpost, went back to the kitchen and filled my glass with water again, took a chair at the table across from the window and looked out. With the curtains pulled back like they were, I could see the moonlit field where Leonard and I had shot skeet, could see the line of pines beyond it, looking oddly enough like the outline of a distant mountain range.
I sat there and drank my water and thought about things, thought about Trudy and the sixties and what Leonard had said, and knew he was right. Last time she had come around and gone away, I had started on a monumental drunk that embarrassed the winos down at the highway mission, which was where Leonard found me—three months later. I had no idea where I'd gotten the money for the liquor, and I didn't know how much I'd drunk, couldn't even remember having started.
Since that time I had sworn off. Trudy, not the liquor. But now she was in my house again, in my bed, and I was thinking about her, considering all the wrong things, knowing full well I had fallen off the wagon again.
Until it had gone wrong between us (and it was a mystery to me as to when and how), our relationship had been as beautiful as a dream. And there were times when I felt it might have been just that.
We met at LaBorde University. I had made a late start due to no money and lots of hard work at the iron foundry trying to get me some. The foundry was a hot, horrible job where you wore a hard hat, watched sparks jump and heard the clang of steel pipe all day.
But it was money, and I thought it would allow me to go to college, get some kind of degree and find a way to make an easier living than my old man had; a way for me to get my slice of the American Dream.
Pretty soon I was wrapped up in the learning, though, and not for what it could get me financially. There was something in the books and lectures that went beyond the sports page and the martial arts I practiced, the color article section of the TV Guide. There was more to life than a beer with the buddies, a gold watch and a pension. It was the sixties, the time of love and peace and social upheaval— contradictions that walked side by side. Women's rights. Civil rights. The Vietnam War. I got it in my head I could do some good out there, make things better for the underprivileged. I changed my major from business to sociology and went to anti-war rallies and sang some folk songs, collected Beatles albums, and let my hair grow long.
At one rally held at a Unitarian church, I met Trudy. I looked across the heads of long, straight hair and Afros and saw her on the other side of the room talking to a pear-shaped girl in a flowered dress that belled and dragged the floor.
God, but Trudy was beautiful. Painfully young, a proto type for Eve. Long gold hair rippled to her waist and her eyes were so bright green they looked supernatural. Spangles of silver hung from her ears. She was wearing a white midi-blouse, a blue jean mini-skirt and wooden clog shoes. Beneath the midi was a flat brown stomach and a marvelous belly button, and beneath the mini were legs like God would have given his very own woman.
I got over there without running and introduced myself. We made shameless small talk, mostly stupid mumblings, some of it about the war.
Pretty soon we had our arms around each other and we were out of there. We both lived in dorms then, and as the dorm mothers were furiously against fucking, I took her to the parking place that was to become our haven, and we did what we had wanted to do since the first moment we laid eyes on one another. We generated so much electricity upon that pine-covered hill, I'm surprised we didn't cause a forest fire. I feel certain we didn't do the shocks in my old Chevy much good.
This went on for a time, and things got better and hotter. And on the night of my fondest memory, when she wore the zebra-striped outfit, we decided to rent an apartment and move in together.
We pooled our money and found a little room on the grubby side of town and lived there for two months. It got better yet, and we decided to get married. It was a simple wedding with lots of flowers and barefoot guests and a female minister younger than Trudy.
God, those were odd times. If you missed them, and you know someone who went through them, soaked it all in, and you catch them late at night, after maybe a beer or two, or the kids are all in bed and the TV's dead, and you say, "Hey, what were the sixties really like?" There's a good chance they'll say, "It was magical," or "It was special."
For a time it sure seemed that way. Peace and love seemed like more than words. We thought everyone could live in a world full of mutual respect, long hair, and cooperation. It was as if the sky had split open and God had given us a ray of light, and in its glow, wonderful things happened.