Day Out of Days (11 page)

Jones cackles till his coughing fit starts up again then hauls his huge frame off the stool and hitches up his Wranglers. His Spanish-rowel spurs and jingle-bobs make their little music as he ambles toward the open door. This time of year the Great Basin air has the smell of high dryness, close to starched shirts. He pauses at the threshold to light a cigarette and blows smoke out across the Humboldt. “Looks like a good morning for it,” he proclaims with his back flat to me. “Meet you down at the pens,” and he strides off with the Lucky jutting out his jaw. Who am I to refuse?

Incredible these pictures of smoke and fire and meat and men sitting around squinting into the gleaming pit drinking heavy stuff red sticks spitting at their tall tales some true enough some dumb cracked guitars smells of horse and calves bawling their heads off for mama behind mesquite pens and one poor fool has actually brought his cell phone all the way out here and calls his hooker in Ft. Worth through digital hopeless roaming against the long splash of stars and yapping dogs in Llanos beyond belief.

On a hot blue day I’m heading out to Faith where the great saddle horses originate. I’m going to get me one. A buttermilk dun with a quarter-moon brand on his cheek. I’ve seen him in my dreams. That’s right. I’ve seen him from far away. I’m going to bring him back home and ride him down to get the mail. And when they ask me where he’s from, I’ll say I bought him out in Faith on a hot blue day.

I’m not talking to you about horses anymore. You understand absolutely nothing about horses and I’m not talking to you about them.

Then don’t.

I won’t. I should have known better than to bring them up at all.

I just don’t understand why you would need to get another one when you’ve got a whole pasture full already.

I don’t need a reason to need another one.

Apparently not.

Why would I need a reason?

I have no clue.

I just like having them around.

So why don’t you get another one then?

I will.

Good.

I don’t need a damn reason.

Man O’War died with an enormous erection that wouldn’t go down. It’s true. It’s well documented. Ask anyone over at the Jot ‘Em Down store. After repeated heart attacks at the age of thirty and servicing hundreds of mares, he finally succumbed. But his member remained permanently stiff. His member remembered. Obviously, there were no women present at his modest funeral just on the outskirts of Lexington. A black canvas sheet was draped ceremoniously over the rude appendage. Apparently two or three gentlemen in bowlers found it somewhat offensive, but they couldn’t deny his great preponderance.

William Shoemaker weighed barely a pound when he was born, in an adobe shack south of El Paso. He was hardly breathing as his grandmother gently cradled him in one hand. She put young William in a shoe box then lit the woodstove. She dropped the heavy oven door and placed the shoe box with little Willie in it, there to warm. It was in that shoe box that Willie came back to life and went on to win eight thousand, eight hundred and thirty-three races.

Met a man in Montana who was struck by lightning right on the top of his head. On the crown. He showed me the scar. It was deep brown, the color of fried beef liver; about the size of a quarter with a little black dot in the center. He had a whole article written up about him in a fish and game magazine and, for weeks, scientists from the university visited his hospital bedside because, I guess, there aren’t that many survivors of lightning strikes direct to the head like that. This man was a fishing guide up in the Absaroka mountain range and had taken a group of Japanese tourists out for trout when the sky turned suddenly black and began to crackle with yellow splinters. From long experience in the high country he knew full well to get the hell out of the water in conditions like that and told the tourists to break down their fancy titanium fishing rods and pack them away. As they were trekking out single file across an open field, this guide was in the lead and, being the tallest, the lightning sought him out. A human lightning rod. Later, when they interviewed the foreign fishermen, they all said the guide’s whole body lit up with a blue halo as though he were about to be lifted off to heaven. When the lightning escaped the guide’s ankle and grounded out, it then traveled down the entire line of Japanese tourists, knocking them all flat, one by one, like bowling pins. They said it happened so fast they didn’t know what hit them. There they were, laid out in a line in an open field at the foot of the mountains, thousands of miles from their homeland, next to an American fishing guide with smoke pouring out the top of his head.

These days now, the Lightning Man spends all his time sitting at a workbench in front of a window that looks out on those very same Absaroka mountains. He creates authentic-looking arrowheads with elk-bone tips, turkey feathers, and Osage shafts. He says he’s able to stay focused on the work for maybe an hour at a time but that they haven’t yet invented a painkiller that can touch the agony that runs like fiery gravity down through his legs.

Somebody told me once the Greeks had invented a magic elixir for chasing away the memory of all suffering and grief.

“Incredibly violent down there right now,” he says to me as he thunks himself into the B seat. I’m sitting in A by the window, minding my own business, perusing the thin
World Traveler
magazine and happen to hover over a glossy Acapulco beach scene; oiled bodies, turquoise water, palm trees—the usual tourist bait. I’m not even contemplating a Mexican trip. “Ten cops killed down there just last week, in fact,” he continues. “Kneecaps knocked off. Executed gang-style.” He points an index finger to his temple and pulls the trigger with a little click of his tongue.

“Is that right,” I say, hoping he’ll catch the cold drift, but he rattles right on, oblivious.

“Drugs, cartels—you know. The Big Dogs have moved into the fancy pink villas; taken over the beach, major hotels, the whole damn town. Armed to the teeth too. Easy to get caught in a crossfire. Never even know what hit you.” This time I just make a little
hmm
of acknowledgment as he grinds his slab hips from side to side trying to lash the seat belt around his tremendous middle. He’s already sweating profusely. I had the feeling he might be a sweater and now, here it comes, oozing from the deep folds in his neck, beading up on his forehead and chin. “Same thing as down in New Orleans,” he goes on (although I fail to make the connection). “Looters were armed better than the cops. AK-47s, Glocks, over and under shotguns—Believe me, I was down there.”

“Really?”

“Right in the middle of it. Never seen anything like it and I was born and bred down there. Cops just ran away and hid. Not that
you could blame them. It became a question of survival—purely. I count myself among the lucky, though. Friend of mine had a boat. Used to be Fats Domino’s bodyguard. Had one of those—what do you call ‘em?—’torpedo’?—no—’cigarette’ boats—you know.”

“Cigarette?”

“Yeah—long, skinny orange sucker with some kind of big-ass Buick engine in it, rumbling away—chrome manifolds—Blow you right out of the water you’re not careful. Don’t know where he copped the fuel. Must’ve had a tankful already. Anyway, he comes chugging along in this rig and sees me up on the roof of my crib, just clinging like an armadillo, and he honks his horn at me.”

“Honks his horn?”

“They have fancy horns, these cigarette boats. Sound like a European sports car. Just blares out with some dumb melody line like from
Goldfinger
or something. As though he’s cruising chicks. And here I am, straddled up there on the shingles in my BVDs and don’t recognize him from Adam, but he’s waving his Hawaiian shirt and yelling for me to jump down into the water and he’ll pick me up.”

“How high was the water?”

“High! I mean I’m talking up to the dormers and rising and it is some kind of ugly deep blackish-looking shit with all kinds of plastic milk bottles and chunks of car metal and TVs bobbing along—little dogs paddling around in circles with their eyes bugged out.”

“So you jumped?”

“Jumped? No, man—Slid! I am not a jumper, as you can plainly see. Slid my sorry ass all the way down into the slimy goo and he come and threw me a line—my friend.”

“The bodyguard?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, that was kind of heroic of him.”

“It was, indeed. He’s a heroic kinda fella. That’s his business. Protection. Security.”

“The hero business.”

“Exactly. Saved Fats’s life too.”

“Fats Domino?”

“The very man.”

“The
Fats Domino?”

“Mr. ‘Blueberry Hill’ hisself.”

“Wow, that’s hard to believe.”

“Why is that hard to believe?”

“Well, I mean, I used to listen to him in high school.”

“Didn’t we all?”

“I know, but—”

“He lives right down there in Ward Nine. That’s where we saved him. Right in his home haunt.”

“I heard that he was missing down there—”

“He was but we saved him.”

“Same day you—I mean the same day the guy in the orange cigarette boat picked you up?”

“He was headed over there to get Fats already when he saw me clinging to my A-frame.”

“So then, once he got you on board, you both sped over to Fats Domino’s house and saved him too? Is that what you’re saying? Is that what you want me to believe?”

“I don’t know about ‘sped.’ There wasn’t much speeding going on because of all the junk in the water. I mean there was full-grown pecan trees and refrigerators blowing by. You wouldn’t believe all the crap there was in that water.”

“People?”

“What?”

“Many people? Swimming?”

“Bodies. Floating.”

“Is that right?”

“You saw the pictures, didn’t you? Everybody saw the pictures. Bodies everywhere. Animals. Horses. You just couldn’t believe the power of that water.”

“I’ll bet—”

“You know, the way you normally look at water—just sitting there, flat and blue—pretty, with the sun hitting on it. Or at night, with the moon—kinda peaceful—Makes you want to fall in love or do something stupid? Uh-uh—That water was a raging monster, let me tell you. It was a stone terror.”

“And where did you find Fats? Where was he?”

“He was up on his roof too. Same like I was; grabbing on to the chimney bricks and trying to keep his balance. He had some kind of shiny patent leather dress shoes on—you know, the kind with the little black elastic bows. Cute. Musta been on his way to a gig or just come back from one or maybe that’s just what he’d been wearing around the house. I don’t know. Had the full tux on, though—the whole deal.”

“Full tux?”

“Cummerbund, cuff links—the whole nine yards. It was like the whole damn emergency had just caught him completely up short. Didn’t want to get any of it wet either. We told him to kick off the shoes so he could get a better grip but he wouldn’t. Said he just bought them shoes and they cost more’n the whole suit put together. He started slipping all over that roof on them fancy leather soles—and he’s not built for speed, you know—Fats. Built for comfort, just like me—right along the same lines as me. And now the two of us—me and the bodyguard, we’re sitting in the boat afraid he’s just going to go ass over teakettle off that pitched roof and drown hisself in the gravy. So, finally, we talk him into just setting down on his haunches, nice and easy, and then inching his way to us—Just more less like the way I done it.”

“And you got him on board?”

“We did. We managed to hoist him up on that orange cigarette boat, just through pure kindness and coercion. And he was panting kind of heavy and worked up—making funny sounds out his nose. And we could understand that on account of the situation he’d been in and his general kind of—physical condition. You
know—being right stout and everything. But then his shoulders start to shake up and down—his huge shoulders, and we see that he’s weeping. That’s what he’s doing—weeping. And we’re saying, ‘Fats, what’s the matter? What’s the matter, Fats? You’re okay now. You’re in the boat. We got you safe and sound now. We’re gonna get you outa here.’ But he just keeps right on moaning and weeping away like he’s lost his mama or something. So I ask him, ‘Is there someone left behind in your crib, Fats? Is there anyone else inside there?’ And that black water’s lapping up around the windows of his little white house and I’m thinking nothing could still be alive inside there because that water’s just too damn high and ugly. And then Fats says, ‘My piano’—just like that. That’s exactly what he says: ‘My piano’s in there.’ And right then—just exactly when he said that, we saw that piano of his go floating on by the front door. It must’ve busted itself out through a window or something, but there it was—kind of rocking back and forth like a little white city all its own. A baby grand. Just beautiful the way it pitched back and forth like it was playing a little silent waltz to itself. And Fats, when he saw it—I thought he was going to jump right back in the water. We had to hold him down and restrain his ass. He was, by God, ready to jump in and try and save that thing like it was his only child.”

“So, did you manage to save it for him? His piano?”

“We got ahold of it. Tied lines to the legs and started towing it real slow, out of the neighborhood, down Caffin Avenue. And you should’ve seen it—with Fats sitting right back there by the chrome motor, chugging along in his tuxedo and snappy Italian shoes and he never once took his eyes off that baby grand the whole while. Just glued to it like as though he thought if he looked away for a second it might just go down and disappear. And don’t you know what happens then—One of the legs of the piano snaps right off. Just as we hit about Montereau Street, trying to make that big loop out past the levee; the leg just cracks itself in half and that piano did a flip and went right under.”