John Roman ceased the dance and decided this was the worst possible outcome, to have danced himself to Mortimer. Nausea struck him. Danced to hell and didn’t even see. He wanted home to Bernice very badly. Old Sidney slid by, bumping in a kind of march, hands in the air, aimed toward a table where blond, blood-lipped whores laughed at him. This was enough.
“John Roman, the night is young! Come on now, man. You ain’t showing us nothing!” called Mortimer. “We in the Club! Get in the Club! Club of the Now!” He clamped his hand on Roman’s sleeve, and there was a too-mighty squeeze. Roman tore away. It was a nice coal-brown sports coat with a rep tie. Mortimer’s fingers themselves seemed coiled and toothed like serpents.
Roman did not realize he was bleeding from the wrist until he was in the car and cranking up. He leaned his head on the steering wheel. He felt sad, weak, small, eking away. His wife would die, he would be one leg in the grave. No more dancing. No song would speak to him. His wrist was wet and he raised it curiously. All his hand was drenched, sticky in its white dress shirt. He felt the pain and now saw the gash. What vicious tiny thing had snagged him? Then a car passed him in the lot with two lit skulls on the shelf of its rear windshield. Roman groaned.
I used to be a man. People did what I said. I advanced under fire. I had dignity. I walked toward crowds with my head up. Now I hold hands with nonsense. Gnats of spite around my head. I do not know where the fight is or where to give up.
Now he supposed he would have to kill Mortimer or start back going to church. With that ponytailed fool Byron Egan. Now that was a man who might have laid a couple out in his days. Lost his old uncle now. Like Roman had almost lost that nice old child Melanie Wooten for a friend. He started the car and drove home to hold the hand of his wife, Bernice.
Chet Baker was on the tape deck as Roman drove. Nothing. A painful irrelevance worse than silence especially in the love ballads. They seemed a fraud, they didn’t hurt enough, there wasn’t any shame in them, only that whimpering lapdog studio tribute to some ghost broad.
Vines climbed all over his housefront and there was a dim light within. Bernice would shoot the motherfucker, no doubt of that. And she’s still got a God, last I asked. I ain’t bothered her with him. She’s got the chemotherapy, she’s got the sleeps, she’s got the nausea and the marijuana pills, the THC. Now she’s a legal junky, but not even happy when she’s stoned. She’s got the baldness that’s humiliating her. That wonderful silvery hair gone. She didn’t want to look like no fortune-teller or woman wrestler.
All she wanted was her man and a house, waited half her life to get it. Set in the depopulated reaches of west-central Mississippi, Louisiana across the river. Swamps and flood on both sides, bayous. The great fertile lake that Roman had fished so good, so long. There was no starving here unless you meant money. People got by on enough. Too much electric have-to greed out there anyway. Roman thought he had gotten rid of the disease of want. His life was simple, near good fishing water. In their house he and Bernice shared the easy devotion that comes when you wait and wait. Little rhythms, unspoken speech of love. It seemed not to matter where a mad god was. They had earned this shelter beyond his wrath. Roman knew he was alive somewhere, this god. He had seen his work. And now he had seen Mortimer’s.
He held the handkerchief to his wet hand, his face cold. His shirt ruined too. Roman had seen such monsters in the service. Only question is whether Mortimer’s worth doing any kind of time for.
Chet Baker, what is it? It was always there, but we hear it only now and then.
Bernice was asleep.
One day you say I’m not moving, here is my country, I can’t help it, I’ve fallen into my place, no budging. I’ll die here with the ghosts of my old everybody. My Indians, my Africans, my uncles and aunts. Where half was grief, home was at least a hole to have it in.
The Allison boys still drove when they had gas, but they did not come near the house with their hot rod. They had washed it for free at several homes and car washes where there was a good machine. We may be next thing to dead children driving this old car, but we will run out our minutes in it. The car had come out of the water and was delivered by the sinkhole and they knew a true miracle because when Hare dragged it off to put on the last touches, it wasn’t but rust and slime yet and in five days he’d come back riding down the road in this. Even Dee was impressed by the car all painted and running, and she didn’t impress easily. Now, Isaac and Jacob believed, she had to give herself to Hare at the church not too long from now.
They dreamed Mrs. Suarez would hold them like puppies for a while and let them listen when her song started. She would sing and they would live high on these notes on her bosom before they were dead by Man Mortimer wanting the bones they had lost and the car they came in. They still had his pistol. Bam, bam, bam. But knowing Mrs. Suarez, they promised, we can’t kill, we can’t be mean no more.
The dogs were pleasant strays, all grateful, shivering. Made to be a friend of man. Happy for the hands that now led them and pulled the burrs, ticks and deer lice from their coats. The hands that gave them their heartworm medicine, their vaccinations. Their eyes were bright and their coats bushy and shined. They were a smiling lot, bidding for attention from Ulrich and Egan. They snuffled over Ulrich and took him down like a short rugby team, a scrum all over the laughing man. He required them for his soul, a new shape taking up its own just lately, and felt distinctly by Ulrich as a pain in his chest.
Fixed with Ulrich as his housemate, Egan was feeling better. Another five-hour surgery at University Hospital in Jackson was over. Ulrich drove him over and back daintily in the woody wagon, wanting to stop and chase down every stray on Highway 20 past Bovina, Edwards, Bolton and Clinton. Egan allowed only two severe cases, starving and spiny. The odor, road-carboned and grease-gamey, was not that bad. At home the dogs fell on a bucket of chicken and lapped water from bowls, then slept on old blankets of Feeney’s. One a spotted hound, one a corgi and shepherd mix they named Wayne. The other after a while they called Woody, for his profession.
Egan had shaved his head, which the surgeon liked. The black cross had re-formed whole, even blacker now that it was out of the gauze. With its Gothic menace. He wore the knife back to St. Peter, who cut off the centurion’s ear before Christ could stop him. Such bad faith, such minor work. He was not proud but he was scared.
Both of them missed Feeney very much. Ulrich was certain the old man was killed in the service of his animal ministry, but he did not tell this to Egan because he himself wished to die in this manner, it did not matter when. Just let him serve. Given this tenure, he was at peace. Without cigarettes, he was even something of a worker.
Egan had a good oblong head on him. Ulrich saw this as a sign of intelligence, although the biker hair never mattered to him, he who had just a pewter scrag on his own head, and large ears. Egan joined the part of the elders, and he spoke with them on the pier more as they cleared the burned hulk of the barge and began a new one. What else was there for Harvard?
One afternoon Egan told Ulrich, “It’s time we reached out to the orphans. Get up some of the friendlier dogs, say four, howabout? I’ll help. The kids’ll love petting them.”