He said, “The way you do it, I’d say it’s the character himself or, in your case, herself”—and he pointed, touched my arm—“making choices, turning herself into a cockroach, or a beetle.”
Ah! My spirits dropped. Wrong audience. Jerrod wasn’t in the swing after all. “But it’s
society
turning him into a bug. Society is implied, by the wage slavery…”
He listened, nodded. Tapped a finger to his lips.
I tucked my knees in, leaned toward him, and said, in a rush, “…the social expectation that we hold meaningless jobs, trade time for money, humanity for a paycheck.” This was a key point. Was that a grin behind Jerrod’s hand? I was on my favorite terrain now, and way too eager for understanding, afraid of being misunderstood. I said, “Like the whole system, capitalism, is one big roach motel and we’re all checked in, we’re not getting out.”
It was definitely a grin behind his fingers. Slowly he said, “Society, huh?” He said, “Well, I like your spirit, but you lose me in the logic.”
Drat. Of course he didn’t get it, because he was part of society, sworn to uphold society. Because he was, as I suspected, all that and middle-class too. Jerrod didn’t live the way Rex and I lived, as renegades, artists on the fringe. Putting the concept in simple terms, I said, “On a deserted island, nobody would be a transcriptionist. It’s a socially imposed role based on hierarchy—”
He said, “Sure, Sniff, but look around. There’s acres of stuff, right?” He gestured toward shelves of appliances, toys, sports gear, and car parts. The evidence room was practically a Wal-Mart.
“What’s stuff got to do with—”
“Everything here was part of a crime. And for every last bit, there’s somebody who’ll say it was society’s fault. I don’t buy it. I mean, maybe I’m just a cop, but I make my own choices. ‘Society’ seems like another word for a whole lot of people trying to shake responsibility…”
Fast, I said, “But not everybody has the same options. Some people are born into money, others are poor, compromised… forced to—”
He laughed then, and stood up. He bent and picked up a handful of golf balls from a bucket. “You’re talking to a kid from Baloneytown. If I let society push me around, the society I lived in? I’d’ve been dead a long time back.”
He tossed one golf ball in the air and caught it in the same hand. “I started making my own choices in grade school.” He gave a second toss, one ball again. Then two, and three, juggling, and then the first ball went out of bounds, too far in front. Jerrod caught it by a long reach. The second one came down close to his chest. He stepped back, then ducked as the third fell. It was a dance, the way he grabbed out and back, arms akimbo, knees bent, and his holster danced with him; the asp and cuffs jiggled and clanked. Then I was the audience, resting on our mattress. His awkward, heavy cop dance was cute, and out of control, and he missed one ball, then a second bounced against the linoleum.
When I laughed, he said, “See? I’m a clown too—made you laugh.” Fallen golf balls disappeared like mice into the plastic-wrapped evidence piles. “I have to warm up, but I can juggle, when I practice.”
“I believe it,” I said, though for a real juggler warming up doesn’t matter. The moves come naturally.
He bounced the last ball hard against the floor. It shot toward the ceiling, came down again, flew up, and was gone to a rattle and crash. He reached a hand, pulled me to my feet, and the two of us, trailed by Chance, started back toward the door. I pushed the lawn mower.
Jerrod said, “I’m kind of a performer myself. I’m not a real big cop, right?” He held his hands to his chest and walked backward a few steps in front of me. He wasn’t much taller than I was but he was solid. Strong. “Not half as big as most of the guys I go after. There’s an art to being tough, so I keep my act up, same as you.”
I said, “Don’t forget the gun. That’s a pretty good prop with the law on your side.” I maneuvered the mower around a spill of electric cables in broken boxes that cluttered the aisle. Jerrod kicked cables out of the way.
“Sure, and the art is to not use the gun. It’s a prop, exactly. You know what Chekhov said about guns.”
That caught me off guard. “Chekhov? The Russian author?”
“Who else?” He shrugged. “In school, I read all that stuff.”
So he’d read Kafka, and now Chekov too, it seemed. “They have you read the Russian classics in cop school?”
He pointed at me and said, “That, right there, is what I mean. People make assumptions. I’ve got an associate’s in English.”
I didn’t expect that at all.
“Anyway, Chekov said if you plant a gun in the first act, it’d better go off before the show ends. As a cop, that means I’d have to shoot somebody every time I flashed the weapon. And that’s probably about the way it goes down; a cop on the scene changes the story.”
“Bingo!” I said. “Exactly!” Precisely what Herman was afraid of.
He said, “So I keep the gun holstered.”
“You take law-enforcement tips from Chekhov?”
“And,” he said, “I read
Crime and Punishment
. I think about Raskolnikov and his moral code when I hit the streets of Baloneytown. I read
Les Misérables
.”
He was earnest and generous, and now, with literature, he was in the world of ideas—my favorite world. He held the door. Outside, morning had moved in, bright and hot. Chance blinked into the glare. I pushed the mower over the bump in the floor at the doorway and stepped gingerly forward. Under my bare feet the asphalt was soft, already ripe, rich with the smell of a hot city summer.
“Sure they won’t miss the lawn mower?”
Jerrod said, “If a case comes up, Raskolnikov, I’ll know where to find you. Otherwise, forget about it.” He shrugged. His thigh muscles were tight against the blue of his uniform pants. Golden hair along his arm glimmered in the morning sun.
I leaned over, let go of the lawn mower handle, and I kissed him. A quick kiss. His lips were open. His mouth was the taste of a stranger. I closed my eyes. I liked it. I liked his warmth and breath and mouth. His hand slid over the burnt polyester of my shirt, he held me by my arms. I half-opened my eyes, pulled away.
“Was that you, or society?” He grinned.
It was biology! Yikes. I moved out of his grip. “That,” I said, “was a thank-you. And it was nothing.” I walked ahead. But with my face turned, in the moment, tired and happy, I smiled. I couldn’t help but smile, any more than I could help the flush of heat that crept up my neck.
18.
Death Throes of a Chicken Flock
FLOATING ALONG IN JERROD’S COPMOBILE, IT WAS THE first time I rode in front, like a cop’s sidekick, like his girlfriend, like his wife. Chance climbed in back. Grit between my teeth was from soot on my lips. The seats of Jerrod’s cruiser were red and soft as a new couch, an expensive bed, a boat on calm water. I tipped my head back, looked out over the long stretch of hood, and breathed coconut air freshener. Through narrowed eyes the world was a dream that tasted of soot. My hands were hot, especially under the gauze. Chance panted, her damp nose pressed to the metal divide.
Jerrod said, “Maybe I’m a cop because I’ve always wanted to save a damsel in distress. That’s a cop’s job. And Sniff, you look pretty deep in distress to me.”
I opened my eyes, ran one soot-covered hand across my face. “If you’re charmed by incompetence, that’s just another kind of coulrophilia. Love of the buffoon.”
He said, “Coulro-what-ia?”
I looked out the window. Exhausted.
When I didn’t answer, he said, “One of these days, Sniff, it’ll be time to run away from the circus and find a home.”
“I have a home.” My home was wherever Rex lived. Our own clown alley. My skin ached, the burns throbbed. But the cop car was so steady, smooth and dreamy. That cop car was like Jerrod, far as I could tell. I held Plucky on my lap. Jerrod steered with one hand. “Speaking of…” Herman’s house came into view, complete with a party in full swing in the blackened pit of a yard. Herman was a mad conductor in a wild orchestration, while a swarm of people dodged his flailing arms. William was on his porch. One-Night Stan the Ice- Cream Man had his rig in the street.
In the air-conditioned cop car, the calm broke. I sat up fast. The seat belt snapped and jerked against my shoulder as though to keep me away from an accident.
Danger
.
And that seat belt was right, there was danger up ahead: I’d lose everything if I showed up in a copmobile. A seat belt couldn’t save me now.
“Stop here.” We moved closer. I tugged at the belt. “Stop!”
Jerrod put his foot on the brakes. The car skidded like a spooked horse on rough gravel. “We’re not there yet.” He let up on the brake, and the car lurched forward.
I took the seat belt off. “Stop, just stop. I’ll walk.”
Too late! William, Herman, and One-Night all watched the cop car from down the block, their faces round and shadowed as apple pies.
Jerrod said, “Those guys keep an eye out for police the way kids eyeball clowns.”
He was right.
“A cop car couldn’t get within miles, and they’d know. If you’re trying to hide, I should’ve let you out across town.”
I worked fast to put on my big clown shoes, now with the melted rubber toes. I opened the car door, climbed out, and bent low behind the open door like I was ready for a shoot-out. I swung the Pendulous Breasts over my shoulder. One sandbag boob hit me in the back. Ugh! My lungs spit out my breath, and from the crouch I fell over. I stayed low, caught my balance, and rose up enough to peer through the car window.
“See you later,” I whispered, and cradled the Fabulous Fat Ass. Still crouched down, with the front door open as a barricade, I let Chance out of the back of that red flag of a cop car. The dog and I ducked and loped to the shade at the side of the road. I ran like a hunchback, with one Pendulous Breast as my hunch while the other dangled forward as a goiter. I clutched the rubber chicken and the Ass, and huddled over the bundle like I carried a stolen child.
“Sniff, your mower,” Jerrod said.
Drat! He left the car running and went to the trunk. I hid near a thin tree until he had the mower out, push bar extended and wing nuts tightened down. He moved gracefully in the sun and brought the mower to the side of the road.
“Can you get all this?”
I piled the scorched Caboosey suit on top of the mower. Nodded.
He said, “If you need help, just call.” I nodded again, and waved him off. He gave me a salute good-bye. The melted-cheese shoes did their own shuffle to the lawn mower’s music as I moved toward the house. The rubber chicken dangled.
Herman’s voice drifted down the hot street: “I don’t have the reward. I don’t know anything about these chickens. We don’t need a dog—”
Then I saw the yellow of chickens in every hand, chicken dealers milling in the burnt yard.
“What’s that about?” One-Night called over. “Police, cab service, and yard care all one deal? Some shit like that.”
I ignored him.
“And clownin’,” he said. “Clownin’ around Baloneytown. Clownin’ with the cops.”
“Get off my lawn,” Herman said, and gave his invisible sheet another shake. One woman laughed.
“Ain’t no lawn here,” a man said, slapped his thigh with a yellow chicken and kicked the blackened ground.
A girl in a polka-dot dress said, “Think we’re going to trample the grass?” She had three rubber chickens, all different colors, like an act. Herman’s yard was a circus. He swatted chicken dealers off like flies. They circled and settled back where they started.
Herman saw me and pointed. “There’s your girl. In the stripes. Nita, pay somebody and get’em out of here.” He spit on the ground. “It gets worse every day.”
But I was a kid just home from the fair. “I’ve got my chicken back,” I said. I held her up by the neck and flashed a smile. What did I think—that they’d cheer?
Somebody groaned. One chicken hit the ground and kicked up a cloud of ash. Then another fell, like an apple off a tree. A man pushed his way out of the group. Another followed, then came two teenage girls with a baby. One girl gave her chicken to the baby, tucked it into the blankets. The crowd dispersed. Chickens dropped to the street, long and yellow and lifeless.
Behind me, One-Night said, “Can I have that?” I turned to see a skinny woman throw a chicken at the open door of the ice-cream truck. But while the chicken venture capitalists wandered away, one man came fast down the road. He was big, in a stained white muscle shirt, and walked like he had some place to be.
Herman turned to go inside. He said, “OK, Nita, the chicken show’s over. You manage the stragglers.”
The new guy tapped Herman on the shoulder. Herman shook the man off like a gnat. “We don’t need a rubber chicken,” he said. “And we don’t want your stray mutt.” He hunched his shoulder, as though to shake away another shoulder tap.
“Rubber chicken, my ass.” The man pulled back his fist and swung. Herman turned into it. Fist and face, they met with a crack. Herman’s head jerked and his ponytail made a silky leap just as his knees buckled, his mouth opened. He went down. Clocked.
“Shit, man?” Herman tried to crab-walk backward in the ash and dirt. His hands were black, his clothes covered in soot. The red fist painted on his jaw started to swell and he worked his mouth, open and closed. “ What’s up?”
The man stood in the burnt dirt and waited for Herman to get up again.
I said, “Jesus, should I get the cops?”
One-Night Stan quick-shifted his ice-cream truck into gear, a fast bleat of “Home on the Range,” and moseyed.
Herman’s eyes went wide. “No cops,” he hissed, still on the ground, a hand to his mouth.
“Bad piss.” The man pointed one fat finger at Herman. “You sold bad piss. Cost me my job, my girlfriend, weekends with my kid. You think that’s a joke?”
Herman, through his slack jaw, said, “Get out of here, Nita. It’s not your business.”
“Bad piss?” I said.
The guy said, “If I wanted dirty piss, I’d use my own.”
“It wasn’t dirty, man. I swear.” Herman stood up and leaned to one side, then tipped the other way, a sapling in the wind.
“Joke’s on me, asshole. Uppers, downers, foreign shit. Rehab, that’s what they say now. I’m supposed to go to rehab for drugs I don’t even know what the hell they are.”
Foreign shit? My Chinese pills, the nearly empty urine jug. I put it together.
The man said, “ Know how much that costs? More than drugs, that’s how much. More than clean piss.”
Herman rubbed his jaw.
“That’s a warning, asshole,” the guy said. “I won’t kill you this time. I’m not looking for life in prison. But mess with me again, your ass is meat.”
The man left in a cloud of soot. Chicken dealers watched from the street. The street was littered with chickens, a regular rubber slaughterhouse. I followed Herman as he staggered into the house, went right to the freezer, twisted the ice tray, and dumped ice on the countertop.
“You sold my urine?”
He put the ice in a plastic Baggie. Herman had a lot of plastic Baggies around his house. “Nita, lay off.”
I reached past him, into the fridge, grabbed my orange jug, and gave it a shake. The jug was nearly empty. Again? “You gave me a urine test. That’s what you did. You gave me a test and made yourself some cash.”
“Nita, you’re on drugs, and want to blame me for what happens?” Through his swollen jaw, behind the ice pack, he said, “Typical drug addict’s lack of accountability.”
“Herman, I was collecting that for a reason. For my health.”
“Maybe if you’d lay off the drugs, your health’d improve. Tell you, it’s the last thing I suspected, you on a bunch of shit… Listen, it doesn’t matter whose fault this was. I don’t blame you that guy almost killed me—”
“Blame me?” I said.
“—but here’s the deal: You can’t live here anymore. Find another place. I love you, Nita, but you’re bad juju. We can’t have it.”
“You sell my urine and I’m bad juju?” I had to laugh, a bitter laugh. “You’re insane. You’re right, I can’t live here.”
I went into my mudroom. “I’ll move out,” I yelled. “Right now, even.” I bundled up an armful of Rex’s costumes and shoved them in my pink vinyl prop bag on top of my balloons, the silver gun, and the makeup. I reached up into the closet and slid down the clay bust of Rex. The sock was still in place as a cork, my savings inside.
Herman was in the kitchen when I cut through. He leaned against the counter, a smoke dangling from his fat split lip. He held the ice pack to the side of his jaw. Water dripped off his elbow and puddled at his feet. “Where you goin’?” His speech was chopped by the smoke between his lips and his frozen, swollen jaw.
I said, “Like I’d tell a urine thief my new address.” I went out the side door.
He followed. My big shoes slapped the charred yard. What did I care? I kicked the ground on purpose, walked in a flurry of ash, stomped my way to the ambulance and flung open the double doors.
Herman said, “Listen, Nita. I don’t want things to end badly.”
The ambulance was hot inside after two days closed up in the sun. I knocked costumes and Goo Glue off the padded, backward-facing chair, and put the bust on the chair, as though that bust of Rex, with his sly smile, were an EMT ready to work.
Herman said, “We can do this in a good way.”
I turned around. “You steal my medical homework, clean out my urine till, and throw me out. Think that has an upside?” I started to make a bed for myself on the cot.
He leaned against the open back door, ice pack to his jaw. In the broken voice of his thick and frozen tongue, he said, “You goin’ to sleep out here?”
I didn’t answer.
He said, “’at’s cool.”
“Thanks for the blessing, Hermes, but you don’t own the street.”
“No, sure don’t,” he said. After a minute, he added, “Nita? Listen—you kin still come in. Use the bat’room, or whatever.”
I turned to look at him then. “Are you joking?”
He shook his head. Held his ice pack.
I said, “That’s real generous, Herman. But know what? You should pay me to use your toilet, that’s what you should do. I’d rather pee in the street.”
“Nita, be reas-noble. Y’burned up the yard,” he said, with his jaw still swelling further. “Almost burnt the house down. Date cops, bring people around, rubber chickens, stray dogs. I been answerin’ the door all day. I got my jaw busted. The least you could do is let the urine thing go. So I sold a li’l piss, so what?”
“I’m not dating cops,” I said. As I said the words, the bandage on my arm held me as though Jerrod’s hand were still there. A cop. The only cop. I was burned up and scabby, in my worn clown suit, but I had the bandage and I had the memory, a moment of being taken care of. A kiss. A breath. I said, “You’d think I could put aside a little piss and expect it to be there when I got back. That’s all I wanted. To keep one measly thing.”