‘Did he say anything about Sarah?’
‘I just tole you what he said about you.’
‘No, my mom. Sarah is my mom.’
‘Sarah’s your mom’s name? Well, I sure wouldn’t use my mom’s name if I was going to try on being a saint!’ she snorts.
‘I didn’t mean to. It just happened.’ I flap my arms in exasperation. ‘What did he say about her?’
Pooh shakes her head. ‘Nothin’. He didn’t say nothin’ about her. But he knows Le Loup. So that’s one good thing I did! I saved your life by not telling Le Loup you were one of Glad’s, cause there ain’t no love lost between them two!’
I nod, hungry to hear more.
‘He knows trying to buy you ain’t gonna work, so he’s gonna send a truck.’
‘He’s gonna rescue me?!’ I hit Pooh’s arm in excitement.
‘I don’t think it’ll be him. He says he’ll never cross the Cheat. But he’s sending somebody.’
‘When? What should I do? What do I look for?’ I grab her with both arms.
‘Look.’ Pooh grabs me back. ‘All he says is sit tight. Just sit tight is what he said. That’s it. He didn’t say who, what, when, where, or the fuck how. Just sit tight! Now I gotta get changed and get out of here, because I wouldn’t put it past Le Loup to go back on the deal!’
Pooh and I make our way out of the bog and up the bank.
‘Sorry ‘bout your clothes, Pooh.’ I try wiping some of the moss off her.
‘It ain’t no problem. But you better get changed so Stacey don’t take the birch to you thinking you tried to make a run for it.’
‘Yeah, no shit.’
Pooh takes a step away from me and looks me up and down. ‘Well, you sure ain’t no Shirley Temple no more.’
I look her up and down likewise. ‘And you sure ain’t such a badass no more.’
We don’t say anything for a little bit, just look at each other.
‘I’ll look you up at Glad’s when I get settled in Hollywood.’
‘I’m gonna come visit you!’ I say in mock threat. ‘Get me in them pictures too!’ I laugh.
She puts out her hand to shake, I shake it, and somehow we pull into a hug.
‘You’re gonna have to pay if you’re gonna try to feel me up,’ Pooh whispers in my ear.
‘Ain’t nothing to feel,’ I whisper back.
We hold each other for a while, just listening to our breaths’ discordant rhythms.
We slowly release our embrace.
‘Wish I’d seen Lymon’s face, I’ll tell ya that!’ she laughs.
‘I can’t say it was worth it, but it was a sight.’
‘Well, you must’ve got him fired up something fierce, ’cause he’s back in the penitentiary.’
‘Why?’
‘Oh, he was so, umm, inspired? He took himself into town and tried to pick up a sweet little thing, who turned out to be the sheriff’s one and only daughter. He still had his probation on, so he ain’t gonna be seeing no natural light till Armageddon day.’
I shrug and Pooh shrugs.
‘Well, thanks, Pooh.’
Pooh nods and starts to walk away. ‘Le Loup really only paid you in Barbies?’ she asks without turning.
‘God’s truth.’
‘That man is slicker than cum on gold teeth.’ She keeps walking.
‘Sit tight,’ I say.
‘Yeah.’ She waves and disappears into the grasses.
I resume my vigilant habits, scanning the CB, and becoming observant of every new truck that pulls in. I even watch the night sky and study the habits of the various mammals, amphibians, birds, and reptiles in the area, knowing that Glad might use any manner of Choctaw magic to send me a signal.
I quit drinking and huffing, which gets me sick for a week, but I get through it.
A month passes and, as we move into summer, the wild azaleas, mountain laurel, trillium, and other blooming flowers put on a dazzling display. I feel awakened to every minute nuance of the earth and all those around me. Even my tricks notice a difference.
I hand over all my tips that even the drunk truckers start giving me.
‘Well, you sure are movin’ about like ya feet are on fire and ya ass is catchin’,’ Stacey comments as I sit between his legs while he shaves my head.
I nod and suppress a smile.
After over a month of no discernable indications of rescue, though, an insidious thought worms its way into my thoughts.
Maybe Pooh hadn’t called Glad.
She had again inquired about how Le Loup had paid me. Maybe she was just trying to find out if there really was hidden money somewhere.
Pooh might’ve called but could have told Glad I wasn’t here anymore.
The more I thought about it, the more I went over and over everything she said, the more I could come to only one conclusion: Pooh had made it up.
Why wouldn’t Glad send someone right away? Sit tight?! What is that? Glad would’ve had instructions, a plan, a strategy. Why didn’t Glad say anything about Sarah? He would’ve at least mentioned her, told Pooh how worried she’s been, something!
She fuckin’ made it up.
Maybe Glad and Le Loup do hate each other. Maybe she did tell Le Loup I was once one of Glad’s. Killing me wouldn’t be much worse!
Every day I bargain to hold on to my hope. I make deals with myself, like if there is no signal from Glad today, I will accept Pooh was short of the truth. And every day I usually find at least five to twenty different portents of imminent rescue.
Stacey had to move his TV, CB, and La-Z-Boy outside because it had become so stifling hot inside it caused sweat to pour off him in such copious amounts—a small flood has leaked through the cracked trailer floor and down to the foundation. His sweat is such a heady mix of sugar, lard, and flour it is like a Pied Piper’s call to all voles, shrews, raccoons, moles, mice, squirrels, jumping mice, rabbits, and weasels living beneath the trailer. They all came streaming out one day in search of the sweet odoriferous source. But there was a lone bat that also swooped in to join the frenzied rodents, and finding nothing particularly appealing inside, perched itself on Stacey’s La-Z-Boy and watched the tortuous Brazilian soaps with the rest of us. That bat, I recognized as a signal from Glad and made preparations for my rescue.
I heard that a white-tailed deer had mounted and impregnated one of the lizards in the main lot while she was on her way to the diner. Little deer hooves were said to be clearly visible through her swollen belly. I kept to myself that I knew that had to be Choctaw magic at work and clearly was a signal to me.
One of the huffers suddenly possessed an enchanted can of shoe glue. No matter how much he poured out and inhaled, the can stayed full. I had to keep myself from letting him know he had Glading Grateful ETC … to thank for the miracle and not Allah, who he decided was responsible and so, consequently, he transformed into an austere practicing Muslim.
But even with all those evident confirmations that any day liberation was impending, Glad, or anyone else from The Doves, came nowhere near the vicinity of Three Crutches.
After almost two months of thousands of signs, gestures, and indications, I finally, over a stolen trucker’s flask of 150 proof, accept that Pooh had in fact lied.
I sit on top of my outhouse perch and raise the silver flask in a toast to Pooh. ‘Here’s to decapitating Barbies!’ I take a big gulp and force myself to swallow. I make another toast. ‘To Sarah.’ A few more swigs and I lay myself down and pass out under the heavy expanse of the night.
I pursue inhaling intoxicants and drink moonshine with the tenacity of a cornered rat. To fund my increasing habit I do as many tricks as I can and steal as many wallets as I dare. Stacey tolerates my thefts with an indulgent sternness. Whenever a trucker comes raging that I’d stolen his wallet, Stacey makes a show of bellowing nonsense in Portuguese and stomps into the back to retrieve the stolen wallet. As he hands back the wallet, he always apologizes profusely for all the money being emptied out, and always offers to call in the sheriff. The truckers always understandably decline his offer, take their hollow wallets, and sulk off.
Stacey keeps the cash and hands over substances that leave me barely aware of my breath.
After summer harvests start winding down, before the winter coal shipments pick up, business gets slow. Truckers take their vacations and get to know their families again. Sometimes I go days without a rig to climb into. I have enough credit for Stacey to keep me supplied, but I miss having my dates. The other boys always talk about having to get high to help them do and then forget their tricks. But I’m pathetically aware, now I get high to fill the time between tricks. Because, no matter how rough or tough the trucker, that point of soundlessness, that instant before they are spent, is the sweetest contact anyone could ever have with anybody. I hold those moments—the tobacco and grease-stained hand lovingly caressing my throat, the lips parted in silent ecstasy, kissing my forehead like a parent placing a good-night kiss—I replay them in slow motion as if they took place with the prolonged consumed movements of someone running under water.
As fall settles in, with hardly any trucker dates for distraction, I wrap myself deep into a narcotic cocoon, until I can hardly rise out of bed even when there is a trick to turn.
Stacey finds me in bed. ‘I’ve put in a call for Le Loup to come deal with you,’ he says, mopping his rotund face with his yellowed undershirt while shaking the switch.
‘Okay,’ I say, not moving from my top bunk, where I lie, watching the ceiling spiders pluck their multicolored webs like harps.
‘I’m not givin’ myself any more blisters from whippin’ you,’ Stacey says in disgust. ‘You’re useless as hen shit on a pump handle.’ He breaks the thin birch stick in two and heads back outside to his La-Z-Boy. ‘Let Le Loup discipline you himself.’
‘Okay,’ I say and pass out in a wallpaper-glue haze.
‘He wants you, just you!’ The Thief is shaking me awake.
I keep my eyes closed and swallow a big green burp. ‘What?’ I mumble.
‘He wants you.’
‘Le Loup wants me?’ I murmur, and try to pull myself up. I force open my eyes. The idea of Le Loup wanting me, even if it is to break every bone in my body, is somehow very comforting.
‘You should get out there…’ The Thief lends me a hand as he yanks me up.
I shakily lower myself off the bunk. I check my flask, vaguely remembering it being empty. ‘Thief, loan me a lit.’ I feel the sickening potency of withdrawal asserting itself.
‘If I had somethin’, be long gone. You better get out there. You’re wanted bad.’
‘Well, nice knowing ya,’ I say sincerely. I am resigned with an indifference to the likelihood that Le Loup is going to kill me. If I’m lucky, at the least, do me great bodily damage.
‘Princess!’ Thief says disparagingly.
‘I was once,’ I say and steady myself with one hand as I walk away, sore from Stacey’s thrashings, too much bed rest, and a steady diet of intoxicants.
When I get outside to Stacey, he actually looks up from his soaps. The flashing reds and blues from the screen fill in the pockmarks on his face, making them look like overflowing volcanoes.
‘So! You decided to get your free-ride ass out of bed? What, you tired of pressing sheets?’
‘Where is he?’ I look around for Le Loup’s Trans Am.
‘Over there,’ he says and points to our lot, hidden behind a small clump of one-sided, wind-stunted red spruce and contorted yellow birch.
‘Stacey, lemme owe you for a few shots?’ I grab his meaty arm, hold out my empty flask, and try my once irresistible wide-eyed virginal look, but judging by the way he gapes back at me, I know I merely look bug-eyed and desperate. ‘Don’t make me face him empty!’
Stacey shakes my arm off his and slaps the flask out of my hand. ‘Get your ass outta here ’fore I tar it out more for you!’
‘Please!’ I am suddenly aware of feeling a very old familiar dread. ‘I can’t go without! Please! I’ve got the sickness!’
Stacy lets out a long sigh followed by an even louder passing of wind. ‘Don’t think this ain’t gonna add to your bill with Le Loup!’ he says, shaking the massive key ring he always wears. He pulls it out on its chain, unlocks a huge box next to his chair, and rummages around and brings up a clay jug. He retrieves my flask. I lick my lips as I watch him fill it. A viscerally clear recollection of Sarah’s face holding a similar expression while a bartender would fill her glass pops into my consciousness.
He barely finishes pouring by the time I get the flask to my lips.
‘Well, now you’re wetter than deer guts on a stick shift. Get your ass out there!’ Stacey reaches for the broken switch and tosses it at me.
‘Thanks, Stace. I’ll pay ya back next lifetime,’ I say sincerely.
‘You’ll pay me back a lot sooner than that! Now get!’
I head into the pathetic thatch of trees, having to stop every ten steps to keep my trajectory headed in the general vicinity of the lot. When I get to the clearing, I don’t see the purple shiny Trans Am I had prepared myself for. Just a truck similar to the one Pooh had led me to when she turned me over to Le Loup.
I turn my face straight up toward the atmosphere as I walk toward my fate. It’s one of those eerie black skies that has white cloud streaks that look like teeth marks.
I stumble over a raised chunk of roadway and fly, for what feels like a good ten minutes, over the mass, skidding on my hands and knees as if stealing home.
I lie there. I consider never getting up. Never moving. Just becoming one with the asphalt. I raise my head to look at the truck. It’s just sitting there, like a truck would in any lot. I try to distinguish something about the truck that might give me a clue as to what exactly Le Loup is going to do to me. The truck definitely has a somber air to it, similar to a hearse, I decide.
I twist my head to look at the woods and, in some faint part of my brain, consider making a run for it. The concept of running, no matter how remote, causes me to retch and I throw up a good portion of my drink.
I push myself up, wipe my mouth, and blow on my stinging hands. I’m partially aware of a wet sharp throb from my knees, but I don’t need to ascertain the damage. I have an image of Le Loup sitting me down, cleaning my scrapes with peroxide and mercurochrome, and squatting down to put Band-Aids on my sore knees. The way a death-row inmate will be revived from a suicide attempt, even if he’s to be put to death the next day.