Vernon God Little (6 page)

‘What?'

‘For a job, you know – Seb Harris even bought himself a truck!'

‘That ain't what I'm talking about. Anyway, Seb's dad just happens to own the whole store.'

‘Well, you're the man of the house now, I'm counting on you to make good. All the boys I know have jobs, that's all.'

‘Like which boys, Ma, like just who?'

‘Well – Randy and Eric?'

‘Randy and Eric are dead.'

‘Vernon Gregory, I'm just saying if you want to prove you're all grown up it's about time you got wise to the way things work in this world. Be a
man
.'

‘Yeah,
right
.'

‘And don't you get smart either, in front of everybody. Don't let's end up like that other time after I found
those underpants
.' Deutschman's hand twitches under his gown.

‘
Damn
, Momma!'

‘Go ahead, cuss your mother!'

‘I ain't cussing!'

‘My
God
, if your
father
was here . . .'

‘Here's Vaine,' says the barber. I spin out of the chair, ripping the gown off over my head.

‘Well go ahead, Vernon – go right ahead and humiliate your mother, after all that's happened to me.'

Fuck her. I bang out through the screen into the sun. Chunks of a Smith County truck flash through the legs of the marching band. Martirio may be a fucken joke, but you don't mess with the boys from Smith County. Smith County has armored personnel carriers, for chrissakes. Trombones spit glare, horns throw back pictures of me puckering, melting, shrinking into the bushes at the steep end of the compound.

Hot grasses heckle my face on the way up the hill; skeeterhawks twitch through the air, but dust is too bored to rise up. One cloud hangs in the sky, over my empty, desperate body. My ole lady won't run after me. She'll stay back, tell all my slime to the boys, so they can wear a knowing smile next time they see me. Underpants my ass. And there's no drugs link, is there fuck. Jesus never had the damn money. See Hysteriaville here? Science says there must be ten squillion brain cells in this town, but if you so much as belch before your twenty-first birthday they can only form two thoughts between them: you're fucken
pregnant
, or you're on
drugs
. Fuck it, I'm outta here. Life's simple when I'm angry. I know just what to do, and I fucken do it. Underpants my fucken ass.

I'll tell you a learning: knife-turners like my ole lady actually spend their waking hours connecting shit into a humongous web, just like spiders. It's true. They take every word in the fucken universe, and index it back to your knife. In the end it doesn't matter what words you say, you feel it on your blade. Like, ‘Wow, see that car?' ‘
Well it's the same blue as that jacket you threw up on at the Christmas show, remember?
' What I learned is that parents succeed by managing the database of your dumbness and your slime, ready for combat. They'll cut you down in a split fucken second, make no mistake; much quicker than you'd use the artillery you dream about. And I say, in idle moments, once the shine rubs off their kid – they start doing it just for fucken
kicks
.

I stop dead. Something crackles around the bend on the track. It's the red van, spinning a trail of fluff-balls down the hill. Like somebody with oldtimer's disease, who doesn't remember what's good for them, I glance at my T-shirt. ‘Ping,' it jackrabbits to Lally. He stops with a crunch, forcing down the electric window with the flat of his hand. Tappets mark time with my heart, tic, tic, tic.

‘Big man!'

I wave, like I'm in the freezer section at the fucken Mini-Mart or something. I should drop the drugs where I stand, but the dogs
are close by. They'd know. Anyway, I ain't that decisive in life, not with all this grief on board, not with my anger evaporated. It fucken slays me. Van Damme's your man if you want the drugs dropped right here.

Lally calls me over. ‘See those cops? They came from your place – jump in.'

Ginseng clinks around the floor as we cut a fresh trail toward home.

‘Where's the rest of your head?' Lally slicks down his eyebrows in the mirror. You can tell the mirror hasn't pointed at the road awhile.

‘Don't ask,' I say.

‘You going somewhere?'

‘Surinam.'

He laughs. ‘How'd you get down here? I didn't see a car this morning . . .'

‘We walked.' I'm supposed to say Mom's car is in the shop. But it ain't in the shop. The car paid for the new rug in the living room, the one Brad wipes his fingers on.

‘What do you think the cops want?'

‘Search me.'

‘Tch.' Lally shakes his head. ‘Things won't get any easier, you know. Take my advice – I could cut a report by sundown, it could air by tonight – Vern? I think it's time to tell your story. Your real, true story.'

‘Maybe,' I say, slouching low in the seat. I feel Lally watching me.

‘You don't even have to appear, I can patch it together from clips of friends and family. Camera's loaded, big man. Just say the word.' I hear Lally's offer, but just sit wishing Marion Nuckles would tell
his
damn story. He knows I'm clean, he was there. I can't believe I get all the heat – me, who has family secrets to watch out for – while he lounges around in goddam silence. I mean, what's
he
holding back?

A wrong note from the meatworks' band coughs us onto Beulah Drive in a swirl of leaf tatters. A baby marketplace has grown around the pumpjack since I've been gone. One stall sells Martirio barbecue aprons, just like Pam's. Next to it, some media men pay a buck a hit for some fudge from Houston. One of the fudge sellers gloomily puts on an apron. The apron sellers gloomily munch fudge. My face goes Porked Monkey. It's the face for when life around you travels in fucken dog years, but you stay frozen still. For instance, a whole mall grows around the pumpjack, but I'm here with the same problems I went out with this morning. I just look down, herd ginseng with my foot.

‘Take one,' says Lally.

‘Say what?'

‘Take some ginseng, keep your strength up.'

As he says it, I notice the ginseng is the same shade of piss as the acid pearls in my hand. Dogs would never smell through the ginseng. I reach down for a bottle, but Lally brakes to avoid a stray teddy under the Lechugas' willow; I overbalance, the dope cigarettes fall from my hand.

Lally switches off the engine, looks at the joints, picks one off the floor, sniffs it, and grins. Then he looks at me. ‘Tch – you could've just said you didn't want to share.'

‘Uh, they ain't mine actually.'

‘Not for long, anyway,' he says, frowning into his mirror.

I spin around to see the Smith County truck nose onto Beulah Drive, a block behind us. Velcro fucken ant-farms seize my gut.

‘Here, give them to me,' says Lally. He lifts himself up, and stashes the joints through a tear in the seat.

‘Thanks – I'll be right back.' I fly across our lawn, into the house, and up the hall to my room, where I pick the cap off the ginseng. I take Taylor's LSD pearls and poke them into the bottle. They blend right into the piss, and the cap replaces like new. I drop the bottle into the Nike box, next to my padlock key, and hide it back in my closet. As I stroll onto the porch, all nonchalant,
cooled by a sweat of relief, I see Vaine Gurie, Mom, and a Smith County officer arrive in the truck. Air-conditioning blows their hair like seaweed underwater, except Mom's, which blows more like one of those tetchy anemone things. Lally sits quiet in the shade of the Lechugas' willow. I guess he turned out okay, ole Lally, in the end. ‘A good egg,' as the once-talkative Mr Goddam Nuckles would say.

Fate suddenly plays its regular card. Leona's Eldorado sashays past the pumpjack, full of musty, dry wombs and deep, bitter wants. Mom withers. The fucken timing of these ladies is astounding, I have to say, like they have scandal radar or something. They foam out of the car like suds from a sitcom washing machine, except for Brad, who stays in back. He's eating a booger, you can tell. Betty Pritchard gets out and starts to strut around the lawn like a fucken chicken.

‘I think I need the bathroom – I just can't be sure with this infection.'

Leona and George take the high ground by our willow. ‘Hi, Doris,' they wave. I almost make it back into the house, but Vaine Gurie unfolds faster than you'd expect from the cab of the truck. ‘Vernon Little, come down here please.'

‘Another setback, Doris?' asks Leona, hopefully.

‘Well it's nothing, girls,' says Mom. ‘There's some fudge inside.'

‘We don't have long,' says Leona, ‘they're coming to lay the sunken patio at three.'

‘Well, I thought it was the people with my Special Edition,' says Mom, scuttling over the dirt. ‘I saw the car, and thought the new fridge was here . . .'

‘Ma?' I call. She doesn't hear.

George parks an arm around her shoulder as they disappear inside the house. ‘Honey, of course they'll come after him if he insists on looking like that – that haircut's the
pits
.'

The screen clacks shut, Mom's voice trails away into the dark. ‘Well I couldn't sway him, you know how boys are . . .'

‘Vernon,' says Gurie. ‘Let's go for a little ride.'

I search her face for signs of uncovered truth, imminent apology. None appear. ‘Ma'am, I wasn't even there . . .'

‘Is that right. Makes it difficult to explain the fingerprints we found then, doesn't it.'

Picture a Smith County Sheriff's truck with me inside, sitting quiet on a road between three wooden houses. Bugs chitter in the willows, oblivious. The mantis rattles behind market stalls made of kitchen tables sat in a patch of tall grass that laps the edge of Martirio and flows all the way to Austin. Then Brad Pritchard appears at my window; nose to the sky, finger pointed at his shoes.

‘Air Maxes,' he states. ‘New.'

He stands with his eyes shut, waiting for me to blow a fucken kiss, or break down weeping or something. Asshole.

I lift my leg to the window. ‘Jordan New Jacks.'

He squints momentarily before pointing at my Nikes. ‘Old,' he explains patiently. Then he points at his. ‘NEW.'

I point at his, ‘Price of a Barbie Camper.' Then at mine, ‘Price of a medium-range corporate jet.'

‘Are not.'

‘Are fucken too.'

‘Enjoy jail.'

His shuffle across the lawn turns into a scamper up the porch steps. A single raised finger shines back at me through my own front doorway, until the screen cracks shut in front of it. Then, just as the officers start the truck, the screen swings open again. My ole lady bursts out, and hurries down to the road.

‘Vernon, I love you! Forget about before – even
murderers
are loved by their families, you know . . .'

‘Heck, Ma, I ain't a murderer!'

‘Well I know – it's just an
example
.'

Lally shoots me a stare from his van, motioning like a camera with his hands. ‘Just say the word!' he yells.

Mom stands helpless in the road behind us, and parks her chin on her chest. Her lips prime up for tears. The pain of it ploughs me over, inside out. I spin to see Lally through the back window as he rushes to her, puts a hand to her shoulder. Her ole soggy head leans toward it. He slides his shoulder under to absorb her tears, then stands tall, and stares gravely at my truck disappearing.

I can't take it. I lunge across Gurie and holler back through her window with all the air in the fucken world: ‘Do it, Lally –
tell 'em the fucken truth
.'

Jail is sour tonight. Dead like the air between your ass and your underwear when you're sitting down. A TV buzzes somewhere in the background; I listen out for a news-flash about my innocence, but instead the weather report theme plays. I hate that fucken theme. Then a voice bangs down the corridor. Footsteps approach.

‘Don't you let me find them burgers gone, I mean it. Sure, right, it's Dr Actions Diet Revolution now, huh. All your noise about Prettykins, and now – don't tell me – it's a fuckin burger diet, right? Sure, fuckin protein, uh-huh. What? Because there
is
no other news except your fuckin barn of an ass . . .'

The man stops outside my cell. Light through the grille outlines a fuck-you pout crowded with teeth.
Barry E Gurie – Detention Executive
, says the badge. He sees me awake, and presses the phone into his neck.

‘You ain't pullin your rod in there are ya, Little? You ain't chokin your chicken all day and night, are ya?' He laughs this smutty laugh, like Miss goddam Universe just sucked his boy or something. Even at long range his breath hits you like a solid block, just slithers down your face leaving a trail of onion-relish and lard. What a disgusting human being, I swear. If this is how much of an asshole everybody's going to be, about such a devastating fucken issue, then I better get the hell out of town. Maybe even out of Texas. Just until they get the story straight. Nana's
ain't even fucken far enough, the way folk are behaving right now.

Barry continues his rounds, lingering for the rest of the night down by the TV. I lay back onto the bunk in my cell, and drift into the important and scary business of my future. Remember that ole movie called
Against All Odds
, where this babe has a beach-house in Mexico? That's where I can run. Mom can visit after things die down. There she is, sobbing with joy, ole spankycheeked Doris Little, who could be played by Kathy Bates, who was in that movie
Misery
. Tears of pride at the excellent sanitation, and at my decent, orderly life. See how it works? It's the future now, young Vernon has been vindicated. Now he's buying her a clay donkey, or some of those salad utensils Mrs Lechuga makes such a big deal about. The salad utensil seller would say to me, ‘You want the same kind Mrs Lechuga got, or you want the
Deluxe
edition?' There's a fucken point up Mrs Lechuga's ass. See? That's definitely my new plan. I like the food just fine, burritos, and cappuccinos and whatever. They say money's cheap down there, hell – I could really make good. Folk must live in those beach-houses, for real.