Vernon God Little (22 page)

The truck parks by the bar, and I watch the driver climb down from the cab. He's smaller than me, with a bunch of growth on his face, and a hefty mustache. He takes off his hat to slide into the roadhouse, cool and straight, like he's wearing guns. Then, when he's nearly inside, he gives his balls a squeeze. A little boy jumps from the truck behind him. I shuffle into the building without touching my balls.

Nobody seems to mind. Inside, the air's tinged with muddy cooking oil from an alien kitchen. The driver stands at a rough wooden bar, and looks around at some tin tables where a couple of other dudes sit hunched over their beers. The bartender is Mexican-looking, except that he's white with red hair - go fucken figure.

The kid scampers to a table near a wall-mounted TV. Everybody else checks me out as I move to the bar with an idea in my head. A cold beer turns up for the truck driver. I pull a music disc out of my pack, point to it, then to the beer. The bartender frowns, looks the disc over, then thumps a cold bottle down in front of me. He hands the disc to the driver; they both nod. I know I should eat before I drink, but how do you say 'Milk and fucken cookies' in Mexican? After a minute, the men motion for my pack, and gently rummage through the discs. Their eyes also make the inevitable pilgrimage to the New Jacks on my feet. Finally, whenever a beer turns up for the truck driver, the bartender automatically looks at me. I nod, and a new beer shows up. My credit's established. I introduce myself.

The truck driver flashes some gold through his lips, and raises his bottle.

'Sa-lud! he says.

Don't fucken ask me when the first tequila arrived. Suddenly, later in life, glass-clear skies swim through the open side of the bar, with stars like droplets on a spider's web, and I find myself smoking sweet, oval-shaped cigarettes calledDelicados, apparently from my own pack. I'm loaded off my ass. These guys' mustaches are up where their hair should be, and huge fucken caves are howling underneath, full of gold and tonsils, just look at them, singing their hearts out. Other folk join in, one of them even kneels. The whole night is snatches of humdinger, me and the boys, yelling, laughing, playing bullfights, pretending to be iguanas - I swear you'd load your drawers if you saw this one guy, Antonio, being a fucken iguana. Dudes hug and bawl around me, they become my fathers, my brothers, my sons, in a surge of careless passion that makes back home seem like a fucken Jacuzzi that somebody forgot to switch on.

It must be the same oxygen in the air, the same gravitational suck as back home, but here it's all heated up and spun around until nothing, good or bad, matters more than anything else. I mean, home is fucken crawling with Mexicans, but you don't get any of this vibe where I come from. Take Lally; what difference is there in his genes that he ended up so fucken twisted? His ole man probably did iguana impersonations, in his day. Nah, Lally caught the back-home bug. The wanting bug.

Thoughts travel with me to the urinal, which I find is piled high with spent green limes, like they use in their drinks down here. I don't say it deodorizes a hundred percent, like you'd probably need them on the floor, and up the walls, but there's definitely a lemon-fresh effect, to boost up your thoughts. As I spray the limes, I realize there's a kind of immune system back home, to knock off your edges, wash out the feral genes, package you up with your knife. Like, forgive me if it's a crime to even say it, but remember my attorney, ole Abdini? They don't seem to have washed many of his genes out.

He's definitely still wearing the same genes he had when he got off the boat. Know why? Because they're make-a-fast-buck genes. Our favorite kind.

Down here, in another space and time, I spend a night among partners with correctly calibrated Mexican genes.

An aneurysm wakes me Friday morning. I'm curled up on the floor behind a table. A brick in my head smashes into the back of my eyes when I look around. I give up, and try to focus instead on a rough, lumpy-looking wooden cross on the wall above my head. My Nikes hang from it.

'Mira que te esta esperando Ledesma,' says the truck driver from the bar.

'Cual Ledesma cabrón,' says the bartender.

'Que le des mamones al nabo, buey.'

The driver drops a big ole load. You hear him spit on the floor. I sit up, and spy the boys at the bar straining to focus on the TV. I turn to the screen just as Lally's image is replaced by my school photo. Machine-gun bursts of Spanish rattle over the top. The boys don't seem concerned.

'¿Que le ves al güero?' says the barman.

'Si el güero eres tu, pendejo.'

'Ni madres.'

'Me cae - tas mas güero que la chingada, tu.'

I know 'chinga' is the fuck word, I learned that at school. There must be a few ways to spin it, but 'chinga' is definitely the mothership of local cussing. Don't even ask me the rest of it. The bartender picks up three shot glasses, wiping each one with the tail of his shirt, and lines them up on the bar. I watch my picture shrink into a corner of the TV screen, while a map of Texas assembles underneath.

Photos of strangers scatter across it. Glowing red dots appear, like throbbing pain sites on an aspirin commercial. Places I must've been sighted. Lubbock, Tyler, Austin, San Antonio.

No dot appears at Houston, though. God, I love that girl.

Suddenly, the driver's kid runs out of a back room, and switches channel to some cartoons. I tremble off the floor and make my way to the bar, island-hopping between tables for support. Then I notice something familiar about the bartender. He wears my fucken shirt. And my jeans. I turn to see if it's true about my Nikes, my soul, now hanging from another man's cross. It's fucken true. I stare at the bartender, and he points to my trouser pocket. I look down at myself, past a T-shirt with 'Guchi' printed on it, to some orange pants dangling loose above sandals with ole tires for soles. My body is a fucken shrine. I check the pants pockets. Two hundred pesos in local bills are stuffed inside. Vernon Gates Little, boy. Mexican Fate.

The boys serve up a shot they say will cure me. It stings, and as I drink it, a sunbeam bursts into the room, a blinding shaft that frames the crucifix on the wall, and lights up memories of last night.

Pelayo, the truck driver, is driving me south, to his home state of Guerrero. To the mud-flaps.

He lifts his kid into the truck as I stumble to the gas station to buy a phonecard. I check the mud-flaps as I pass. Heaven, boy. Between them are painted the words, 'ME VES Y SUFRES.' My vesty surfers, or something. Wait till I tell Taylor.

She answers after five rings.

Tayla.'

'Tay, hi, it's Vern.'

'What, who? Wait up …' Bumping noises come down the line, a man's voice rumbles, then quiet, like she moved into a closet or something. 'Yeah - who?'

'Vern.'

Dead fucken quiet for around a decade, then she comes back, real close to the receiver. 'Oh my God.'

'Tay, listen …'

'Like, I can't believe I'm talking to a serial killer.'

'Shit, I ain't no killer …'

'Yeah, right - they have bodies mounted up all the way to Victoria!'

'Get outta town,' I say. 'That can't be right.'

'But, like, you killed some people, right? Something happened - right?'

'Tay, please listen …'

'Oh, babe. Poor tortured babe. Where are you?'

'Mexico.'

'God, have you seen back home? It's like Miami Beach, the whole town's wired for cameras, with live web access, twenty-four seven. The company that set it up floated shares and bought Bar-B-Chew Barn - my dad submitted a proposal for a sushi bar, right where the unisex used to be! If it comes off, I'm moving back to manage it - can you believe it?'

I watch credits drip off my card like ketchup off a local fly. 'Tay I'm at a public phone …'

Pulsating music and crowd noises break onto the line. You hear the man's voice, then Taylor yells back: 'It's my friend from outta town - okay?!' The door slams. She takes a deep breath, like a backwards sigh. 'Sorry, I'm, like, real vulnerable right now.'

'Hell, I don't want to …'

'You need cash, right? I have, like, six hundred put away for my vacation.'

'It'd save my fucken life.'

She sniffles, then her voice drops a tone. 'You talkin dirty to me, killer?' I swell in my new polyester pants. 'But, hey - where to wire it? Did you stop somewhere? And what if they, like - you know …'

'Shit, I guess that's right.'

'Vern, call me from wherever, like a city, or a big hotel - I'll check with Western Union.'

Her Fate song rings in my ears as I put down the phone. Six hundred bucks will probably buy a fucken beach-house down here. I'm boosted up. I get smart, and decide to call Pam. The line clicks. I swat flies while she hoists a ton of arm-fat to her head.

'He-llo?'

'Pam, it's Vern …'

'Oh my God - Vernie? We're devastated - where are you?'

I detect Mom in the background. I should've known it, they're probably on their nine-millionth burrito by now. Her sniffle wavers up to the phone, but Pam fends her off. 'Are you eating properly?

Don't tell me you're not eating, don't tell me that, oh Lord …'

Mom snatches the receiver. 'Vernon, it's Mommy.' She immediately breaks into a runaway bawl. My eyes soak up with tears, which she feeds off, working up an even raunchier bawl. It's hard, this fucken moment in time.

'Ma - I'm just real sorry.'

'Well Vernon, the detectives say things'll be easier if you just come back.'

'I don't think I can do that.'

'But all this death Vernon, where are you? We know you were sighted near Marshall this morning …'

'Ma, I didn't kill nobody, I ain't running for that. I just have to make good, see? I'll maybe go to Canada, or Surinam or somewhere.' Bad fucken move. Mothers automatically detect the missing word in any multiple choice situation.

'Oh Vernon - Mexico? Oh my God, baby, Mexico?

'I said Canada or Surinam, Ma.'

'Well but the longer you stay away, the more trouble will be waiting for you, don't you see that?

Vernon? Mr Abdini says you have a defense, he's been poking around, he found some clues and all, and when Lalito moves back we can be a real family again, just like before.'

'You ain't still waiting on Lally …'

'Well but that old woman at the home never called back, so why not? Vernon? It's love, a woman knows these things.'

'Mom - when did you last speak to Lally?'

'Well he's very busy, you know that.'

I snort in an ironic kind of way. I guess it's ironic, when somebody passes off total bullshit as reality. Points drip off my phonecard as if they're points in my soul; I feel like I'll expire when they run out. I make a note to try and keep some points, in case they end up being cross-linked to my soul.

Another learning about deep shit: you get real fucken superstitious.

'Where are you? Just tell me that - Vernon?'

'Ask him when he last ate, Doris.'

'Mom, these credits are gonna run out - what's important is that I'm fine, and I'll call when I get settled.'

'Oh Vernon.' She starts bawling again.

I badly want to leave her some cream pie, tell her about my beach-house, and her visit and all.

But I just fucken can't. I just kill the call.

seventeen

'Ay, ay, ayeeeeeee, Lu-pita! Ay, ay ayeeeeeee …'

Tunes scratch out of the radio as we roll south in the truck, Pelayo, the kid, Jesus the Dead Mexican, and me. 'A veritable hotch-potch,' as bastard Mr Nuckles would call us. You'll drop a load when you hear the local hoe-down music; big ole polkas with guitar, bass, and accordion, and all these guys going 'Ay, ay, ay,' and shit. Even better is the station-breaks; announcers holler echoes like they're calling a fucken boxing match. I sit as high as a God on the passenger side of the truck, squinting through the slit of glass between an overgrown dashboard shrine of the Virgin, and a fringed curtain with baby soccer balls hanging off it. Pelayo's kid is in a game with me. His name is Lucas. Every time I look at him, he looks away real fast. So I keep him in the corner of my eye, train him to expect my eyes to move slow, until he's lulled into that pattern; then I suddenly cut back and catch him staring.

Ha! He blushes like crazy, and buries his face into his shoulder. For some reason I get waves from this little game, I really do, a flock of butterflies in my heart and all. Don't get me wrong, I'm still an asshole. I haven't gone The Other Way, or anything. But, just honestly, it's like one of those Simple Things in Life, that folk always talk about, but you never know what they fucken mean. Imagine a regular ten-year-old doing this, back home. I don't fucken think so. He would've already primed some cusses, just in case you fucken looked at him.

We heave deep into the guts of Mexico, past Matehuala and San Luis Potosi, where greener scenery blends with my hangover to weave frosted dreams, of home, and of Taylor. I try to push away the silken threads, the octopus flesh writhing, flashing purple and red, puffing tang-spray and honey, so I can air the musty, upholstered ole thoughts, lavender-smelling thoughts I get every day about the dead. Thoughts too big to even shiver at, thoughts just calmly there, to stay forever, like flounces on the satin in your casket. The thoughts combine with the climb into Mexico City to bring soundbites of everyone I know, crying behind their fly-screens, 'Devastated, devastated, devastated, the nightly news, the ni-ghtly newwws, the Nigh-tly Nooze …' until in my mind, I'm chased through skies of churning bile by a black and putrid vortex that swirls across whole states, whole fucken countries, just to gash me, hook out my guts, pulsating, and stomp them with boots and spurs, like a nest of baby rattlers,

'Get that end! Stomp! Cut that fuckin bastard, he's still movin!'

Vernon Godzilla Little.

By midnight on this foreign Friday in June, a permanent shiver hangs around me. I leave my flesh and bones at the northern edge of Mexico City, and just the noodles of my nervous system drive with me south. We only nearly get killed a dozen times. When we finally pop out of the city, we're in a dangerous condition to be driving. Just like everybody else around. Alpine forests we drive through, dodging humongous motorcoaches lit up like space shuttles, down to tropical places that give way to areas of rock and cactus, and empty noise on the radio. Everything adds up to make me edgy. I expect to see Dr Goosens's secretary out here, or the meatworks' marching band or something. I try to keep the dream weaving in my head, a thread of Taylor, a thread of beach, a thread of 'Sailing'. But the weaving gets harder, the threads get matted and replaced by veins. 'Devastated, devastated, devastated …'