Leather Maiden (5 page)

9

There were all those months in Iraq, the earth the color of a dried-up tortilla, the sky a bright blaze of hot blue forever, and always the sounds of explosions and the smells of death, and me counting down the moments, knowing to the hour, almost to the minute, when my time was supposed to be up, expecting to have my stay extended, certain of it, feeling as if it would all never end. It was as if I had been dropped down onto another planet where the people and the world bore no relation to me.

There was the loss of my buddies and seeing innocent Iraqi people, as well as those who were not so innocent, lying dead and bloated and full of the stink of the bloody departed.

All those months, those days, those hours, those minutes, riding around in half-assed vehicles with hillbilly armor, stuff we made for ourselves out of whatever we could find and tack on to our rides. So there we were, cruising, expecting a blast to blow right through it all, knock shrapnel up our asses, then, to top it off, came Gabby's letter and nothing much mattered anymore, except maybe dying, and then there was the big fight in the Baghdad street, and I caught some business, and some buddies of mine caught it too, killing two of them. I was injured, but saved.

Booger, he just got blown skyward, like some kind of goddamn circus act, and he did a few rolls and came up wearing smoking clothes, still had his piece in his hand, and baby, he let it rock. Rocked and rolled all over that street. I don't know if he shot anyone, had anything to do with anything, but he rocked it and bopped it and bullets tore this way and that, and when it was over there was meat all over the place, pieces of cloth, disconnected Iraqi souls colliding together into a rising smudge of thick, dark smoke.

I was saved. Booger did it. And saved for what, if not to go home to Gabby, to make a life with her? I could imagine her with her long brown hair brushed until it was so lustrous it glowed like wet chocolate, and I could see her in one of the outfits she wore, a blue suit jacket with wide lapels and white pinstripes, and a skirt to match, and I could remember the way her high heels made her legs look, long and muscular in dark stockings, the way her eyes flashed and the way she smiled, her teeth perfect. And in my imaginings we would come together and kiss. I would be the conquering hero. We would go to her place, and I would slowly take her out of that suit and pull her boots off and gently guide her stockings off her legs, and we would make love, slowly and happily, like we had always done, but this time, it would be even more wonderful, because it would be a new beginning, and soon we would marry, and the sunlight would always be warm and the moonlight would always be romantic, and our days would be full of fine moments and even the rain would be gentle and sweet to the nose and rhythmic to the ears as it splashed to the ground.

Such are dreams.

It was a hard pill to swallow, even now, and to make it go down good, I drove out to a little bar that didn't belong to my boss's husband. When I got inside it was cool and dark as if it were hours later. The place had that peculiar smell bars have that is a mixture of spilt liquor and cigarette smoke, sweat and shit-filled dreams.

There was a pretty good-looking woman on one of the bar stools wearing a dark blouse and a short blue jean skirt and some oversized white shoes. I could tell from the way she sat there, smoking her cigarette, her legs crossed, one foot bobbing a shoe, the near empty glass on the counter in front of her, that she was as regular here as the rising and the setting of the sun.

I sat on the stool next to her and looked at her and showed her the smile my mother always said was electric. I said, “Can I buy you a drink?”

“Actually,” she said, “I'd rather just have the money.”

“That's funny,” I said, but from the way she looked at me, I suspected that my electric smile was short of wattage today.

I reached in my pocket and got out five dollars and put it on the bar, and said, “Okay. There's your money.”

She turned her head without moving her body, said, “Francis, this fuck is bothering me.”

A guy about the size of three guys came out of the back: The bartender. The bouncer. The owner.

He said, “You giving some trouble?”

“I don't think so,” I said. “I just offered to buy the lady a drink.”

“And I don't want it,” she said.

“She don't want it,” he said.

“Okay,” I said, and picked up my five and went out. I went to a liquor store and bought a lot of beer and some Wild Turkey, drove around thinking about all sorts of things and none of them good.

I had a licensed conceal-carry pistol in the glove box of my car, and I remembered when I was in Iraq a soldier friend told me he thought about his piece all the time. Said he had read where Hemingway had called death a gift. I told him, if it is, you won't have time to open that little present, it'll happen so fast. But there I was driving around thinking of the pistol in the glove box and what that soldier had told me not so long ago about Hemingway's gift.

I drove out past the old abandoned sawmills. There were still a couple where the center of Camp Rapture had once been, back when it was a timber town, back when my great-grandmother Sunset Jones had been the first woman constable in the history of East Texas, and until recent times, only one of two.

Driving out there, I felt lonely and strange, like when you hear the sound of a distant train whistle, the cry of a bird as night falls down, or see a sad face on a passing bus.

Maybe I just needed to get drunk.

         

I drove back along the edge of town. I could see the clock tower on the campus, standing tall and majestic. The lights were bright behind the great glass that showed not only the face of the clock, but the stylized gear work inside. And there were other lights, little quarter-moon windows full of gold that ran all the way down the face of the tower. I turned and put the clock tower in the rearview mirror.

I drove out to where the last of the motels were, scattered about like cracker boxes blown into place by a wild tornado. I parked at a motel that had a jumping frog on a neon sign; it leaped forward and back as I watched. I got a room that was a slot in the wall. It was hot even as the air conditioner struggled loud as a car wreck to cool it.

It was a room full of flies and mosquitoes that had slipped in through a cracked window that was frozen that way by a lousy paint job that had dried it tight and incapable of shutting. I sat in a chair in my underwear and watched TV and drank, and then I made my way to the bed and drank some more. When I awoke the TV was still on and I was lying on top of the sheets, having pissed myself. The room smelled of urine and alcohol and it seemed as if I had been lathered in Wild Turkey; basted was more like it. It was furnace-hot in there and I was baking in my juices and the flies and mosquitoes were loving me for a landing pad.

It took me half a day to get out of bed. I was followed by flies into the shower. I let the water run hot and long while I sat in the tub and it rained down on me. I would have been in there longer, but the hot water ran out and turned cold. I took that for a few seconds, got out and dried off with shaky hands.

I threw the pissy underwear in the waste can, got dressed and left. I felt as prideless and empty of heart as a Thanksgiving turkey.

         

I parked at the curb and saw another car parked in the drive behind Mom and Dad's blue PT Cruiser. A black Hummer. Not new, but damn nice. I knew that would be my brother. Great. Mr. Successful, and now me, Mr. Drunk, soon to be under the same roof.

For a moment I thought about driving off, but there was really nowhere to go. I had some mints in my glove box. I got them out and put a few in my mouth and chewed them up and swallowed them, then popped another and sucked on it.

Just before I got out of the car, I realized that lying on the seat, where I had left it, was the mass of material Mercury had put together for me, all of it tucked into a kind of accordion file. I took a deep breath, picked up the file and got out of the car.

As I walked up the drive toward the front door, Jazzy called out.

“Hi.”

I looked up in the tree at her. She was wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt today, still no shoes. Her hair looked matted. “I didn't notice you up there,” I said.

“I fool you all the time,” she said.

“Trust me,” I said, “you're not the only one.”

“I'm pretty sneaky. My mama says it's not bad to be sneaky. That part of life is being sneaky.”

Jazzy was certainly getting a special education.

“You don't look so good,” Jazzy said.

“I don't feel so good.”

“Did you get beat up?”

“Nothing like that. Unless you count life as the thug.”

“Do what?”

“I was attacked by a wild turkey and a big part of Milwaukee.”

“What?”

“I'm joking. I'm just tired.”

“You're not funny.”

“I get that a lot too.”

“If you got beat up, you can tell me,” she said. “I been beat up.”

That's all I needed to hear to top off a perfect day, something to charge on into the weekend with. Knowing the little girl that lived next door to us had had beatings. And my guess is she didn't mean spankings, but exactly what she said. Beatings.

“Who beat you up?” I asked.

“I'm not supposed to tell.”

I understood exactly why my dad had knocked the shit out of Daddy Greg.

“You got bumps on your face,” she said. “Do you have pimples?”

“I have mosquito bites…Have you eaten, Jazzy?”

“I had a banana this morning.”

“You must be hungry.”

“We don't have nothing but cornflakes and some beer. There's not any milk to put on the cornflakes. Mama puts beer on hers, but I'm too young for that, she says.”

Thank goodness for small favors.

“She don't cook much, but she can do a Rubik's Cube. She's real smart.”

“Are you going to school?”

“It's summer, silly.”

“Did you go before summer?”

“Some. Mama slept late a lot and I didn't always get a ride. She had places to go a lot of the time. Mostly I wasn't here. I went all the time when I lived in Houston with Mee-maw. She died.”

I got it then. Foster care. And now with Mee-maw out of the picture, the mother had once again ended up with the child.

“Why don't you come in with me, see if my mom can fix you something?” I said. I looked at my watch. It was after five. My folks ate dinner early. It was perfect timing.

“Your mama is nice. So's your daddy.”

“They are at that. Come on. It's all right when you've been invited.”

10

Jazzy climbed down and reached out and took my hand. I hoped that wasn't something she did with any stranger. She smiled at me and I smiled back. Jazzy smelled a little like the elm, a pleasant smell that comes from broken leaves.

I walked her through the open garage and to the side door that led into the kitchen. I wanted to make sure she got a meal, and I thought if she was with me, Mom and Dad might be less inclined to ask me where I was the night before. At least it would help me avoid a thorough investigation: fingerprints, a urine specimen, a cavity search and a DNA swab.

Inside, the house was a little warm, the kitchen full of the smell of something cooking and the smell was a good smell and it made my stomach roll both from too much liquor and not having anything to eat for some time. Mom was at the stove with a long wooden spoon, turning something in a boiling pot. She looked at me, and though she smiled, her eyes told me she had been worried about me. Of course, she knew I had been drinking.

“Jazzy's come to visit,” I said.

“Oh, good,” Mom said, as if it was the best idea she had ever heard. “Come in, Jazzy. Why don't you go to the bathroom and wash your face and hands. Supper is almost on the table.”

Jazzy darted for the bathroom. I went over and kissed Mom on the cheek.

“Hello, sweetie,” Mom said. “When Jazzy gets out, brush your teeth. I think there's a hops farm in your mouth, maybe a nest of wild turkeys, if you know what I mean. And those mints you chewed, they just make your breath all the more nasty.”

“You still have that super nose, don't you?”

“I do. And you might put some alcohol—the rubbing kind—on those bites. Did you sleep under a tree?”

“Just a place with open windows.”

Mom studied me for a moment, then patted my arm. “Go in and see your brother and Trixie. I've got a chicken in the oven, and it'll be ready soon.”

In the living room, Dad was on the couch next to Jimmy. He was laughing about something Jimmy was telling him. Jimmy was thin and looked as if he worked out. He had strips of white hair over his ears. It gave him an air of sophistication.

Trixie, looking fetching in blue jeans and a loose green jersey, a silver-white necklace lying against her dark brown skin, sat with her legs crossed, flip-flops on her feet. She smiled when I came in. Her hair was like a golden helmet and she seemed to have more teeth than a human should have, but they were good and bright and straight teeth. She was so good-looking if you stared at her for long you might need a trip to the ER for heat exhaustion.

I went over as she got up and gave her a big hug, making sure I kept my brewery breath behind her shoulder.

I shook hands with my brother, smiled at my dad, sat down on the end of the couch, laying my file folder on the coffee table.

“Abducted by aliens last night?” Dad said.

“Yeah,” I said, “but they gave me back.”

“The anal probe,” Jimmy said. “They didn't like what they found.”

Dad nodded at the file on the coffee table. “Homework?”

“Kind of,” I said.

“You look like you been in a fire-ant hill,” Trixie said, in that peculiar voice of hers. It was Southern as all get-out, and it sounded as if it came from a throat that had just swallowed broken glass and followed it with a hundred-proof whiskey chaser.

“Mosquitoes,” I said. Then to Jimmy: “See you got a big ride out there, brother.”

“Gas-guzzler,” Dad said. “Just supporting the goddamn oil companies. Don't they make enough money without you helping them?”

“Now they're making more,” Jimmy said, “and off of me. I got it slightly used. We don't run it all the time. Trixie has a smaller car. We use it most of the time. That make you feel better, Dad?”

“Just a fraction.”

The conversation changed then. We talked about this and that. Jimmy and I laughed about some past events. Trixie, making sure Jazzy was with Mom, told a very off-color joke, which I loved. We did all this as sounds and smells from the kitchen filled the background.

I finally went and brushed my teeth, then messed them up again because we ate chicken and dressing, mashed potatoes and gravy, had gallons of ice tea to drink, pies for dessert, apple and pear.

         

When we finished eating we spent some time bragging properly on how good the meal was, then me and Jimmy slipped off and went to our old room. He looked at the planes hanging from the ceiling. “I used to lie on the top bunk and look at those planes, pretend I was in them, and that I was flying away,” he said.

“Where were you going?”

“Everywhere. Anywhere. Sometimes I was flying through a hole at the South Pole, going into the center of the earth where there was a world full of dinosaurs and cavemen and beautiful women who couldn't live without my intense manly loving.”

“At the Earth's Core.”

“We read the same books.”

“And played the same games,” I said.

“You played Tarzan,” Jimmy said. “Remember that? I had to be the monkey, and you were Tarzan. I don't know how you worked that out, but that was the way it was. You remember.”

“I do,” I said. “I climbed up in that elm where Jazzy stays, in my underwear, and got the sunburn from hell.”

“You kept giving the cry of the bull ape, demanding all apes come to your aid. But none of them would.”

“The bastards.”

“But that didn't stop you from calling. You called all day long, and Mom couldn't get you to come down, and she called Daddy at work, and he said, he gets ready to come down he will, but it didn't much look like you were gonna get ready. You called until your voice played out and you sounded less like a bull ape and more like a dying goose. And you had on those loose underwear and your balls hung out, and you got sunburned there. Remember?”

“How can I forget? I still have a scar from when the skin started peeling off. Wanna see?”

“No thanks. I'll take your word for it.”

We moved around the room as we talked, kind of time traveling. Jimmy came to his frogs and rats, and a feeling of guilt ran through me. I had purposely pushed them over the other night, and I suppose if you were a Freudian, you could find some deeply disturbing reason for that.

“I ought to throw this crap away,” he said. “It really looks rough.”

He opened the drawers on his desk, looked at the contents. He shut the drawer, said, “It's good to have you back in town, Cason.”

“Thanks.”

“The newspaper job is probably just the thing,” he said.

“To tell you the truth, my feelings are mixed about being back in town.”

“Gabby?”

“Part of it.”

“You know she called me about you. She said you keep sending her notes, calling. It upsets her.”

“It's just that I find it hard to believe.”

Jimmy turned and looked at me as if he had just realized I had two heads. “Do you remember when we were kids, and you found out there was no Santa Claus?”

“Yeah.”

“Thing is, you wouldn't accept it. You went for months believing it anyway. Persistent. You had fights with kids at school that told you there wasn't any Santa Claus. Dad finally sat down and talked to you. So you know what you did?”

“I do, but you're going to tell me anyway.”

“You thought you were being tested. That Dad had been told by Santa Claus to test your faith.”

“I remember quite clearly. And I hope this isn't something you tell to the faculty at the university.”

“You believed this so much, you just wouldn't accept there wasn't a Santa Claus. You fixated on it. For you, January on until the next December, it was going to be all about Santa Claus and how you knew he existed and were going to prove it, and you could meet the challenge. No matter how many times you were told it wasn't true, that there was no such thing, you would not fold. You hung in there, thinking, in the end, you would be especially rewarded for keeping the faith. And you know what? One day, about mid-June, you came in here, and you had all this stuff on Santa Claus, books, comics, I don't remember. But all manner of stuff. And you put it all in a box and had Mom put it up in the attic for you. Remember?”

“I remember. I didn't make it until December.”

“You were stubborn, you were obsessed with the idea that the truth was being thwarted, that Santa was testing you. You hung on to that past any time any reasonable person might. And then one day, you got it. You knew the truth. It wasn't about hearing it. It wasn't even about understanding it. It was about believing it.”

“I get the point.”

“Look at me, Cason. She doesn't love you. I'm sorry. It's sad. I like Gabby, and I love you, but she doesn't. It's time you took all the Gabby stuff, the memories, put it in a box and put it in the attic, so to speak. You have to put it out of your mind.”

“You make it sound easy.”

“I know it isn't. The doctor, what did he say?”

“That I'm obsessed. That I have problems from the war. That and a buck fifty might get me a ride on the horsey out front of the Wal-Mart.”

“Knowing and believing is the way you solve it.”

“Sounds like a bumper sticker.”

“I suppose it does.”

Jimmy got up and went to the window and I sat down at my desk. We stayed like that for a long time. Finally, I said, “Thing I'm looking into at work, it sort of crosses with your life.”

He turned from the window, leaned against the wall. “How's that?”

“A missing-person story. Probably a murder.”

“Oh.”

“Caroline Allison. She was a history major.”

Jimmy moved away from the wall and went to his old desk and sat down in his chair and picked up a pencil and used it to poke at his stuffed frogs and mice.

“What brought that up?” he said.

“The job,” I said. “Looking for a place to get started. Columns to write. The lady who was there before me picked it out. I looked it over, liked the idea of it. All she had were some notes. I've been looking up a few things. You must have known her, right?”

“Everyone in the department was very aware of her. She was quite beautiful.”

“I've seen her photographs. She was more than beautiful. She looks, or should I say looked, sort of otherworldly.”

“She did. Yes.” He pushed at the frog with the pencil until it fell over. I didn't feel quite as bad for messing with his keepsakes.

“Maybe you know something I could put in the article. Something about her.”

“All I can tell you was she was gorgeous. Everyone in the department liked her. The guys anyway. I mean, you know how it is, good-looking girl and all. She was smart, and she was going to be a crack historian.”

“You said everyone in the department, the guys anyway, liked her. What about outside the department?”

“Her personal life?”

“What do you know of it?”

“Nothing really. She didn't talk much about her life.”

“If the guys liked her, how did the women feel?”

“Jealous. They knew she was a force of nature though. If you're getting at someone in the history department hating her enough to kidnap or kill her because she was a fox, I don't think so.”

“A woman looked that way could drive someone crazy, even if she didn't know them. Might make them do things they might not normally do.”

“So it's her fault?” Jimmy said.

“I don't mean it that way. Of course, whoever did what they did to her, they made the choice. Just saying, if there was someone out there two ounces short a pound, a woman like that, it could be the thing to set them off…Is this bothering you, Jimmy?”

He nodded. “She was a good kid. Just disappearing like that, it was painful. She'd been in a couple classes I taught. She had a great future. I was quite sick about it.”

“Sorry.”

“No biggie. It's what it is. No point in wishing things were different. She's gone…You know what? I think I'd like a cup of coffee. How about you?”

It wasn't a clever change of subject, but it was successful enough. Jimmy was already up and moving out of the room when I said, “Dying for one.”

         

When we passed through the living room on the way to the kitchen, we saw that Jazzy was asleep on the couch. Someone, Mom probably, had covered her with a blanket.

Coming into the kitchen, Jimmy said, “Jazzy is out for the count.”

Mom and Dad and Trixie were sitting at the table, already enjoying coffee. Mom said, “Keep it down. She's exhausted. I bet she slept in that tree last night. Sometimes they lock her out.”

“Why won't someone do something?” Jimmy asked.

“That's what we'd like to know,” Dad said. “We haven't even seen her mother or her latest shitass come out of the house in a couple days.”

“Pete, don't talk like that,” Mom said.

Dad ignored her as usual. “Her mother stays inside most of the time, like she's afraid of the light. I don't think she works, unless it's over the telephone. The new daddy, he has a van with something about upholstery work written on the side, so maybe he does upholstery at home. But my guess is he isn't a working fool. And then there's the former Daddy Greg, who I guess is just Greg now. He comes around now and then. No telling what Jazzy sees. That girl needs a better home life.”

“Bless her heart,” Mom said. “Jazzy is a smart little thing. She can learn anything.”

“She's being wasted,” Dad said.

Mom patted Dad's hand. “I know, but all we can do is stay on Protective Services.”

Jimmy and I went over to the cabinet for some coffee cups, got coffee from the coffeemaker and sat down at the table.

“She'll spend the night here,” Mom said. “And I bet her mother and her newest daddy won't even miss her.”