Empty Pockets (20 page)

Just before the crest of the hill, where the trees came in over the road, he saw another diamondback, this one run over just before it had reached the centerline, dead, crushed just behind
the head, blood puddled out on the asphalt.

He stopped and looked, the unrelenting droning of the cicadas going on.

The rattler was over four feet long, thick as a forearm, all gray and black, deadly looking, bits of mangled pinkish flesh sticking out from under the thin layer of yellowish top skin over the pattern of diamonds.

That pickup must have got him. That orange-and-black pickup. He's on this side of the road. He must have just come out of the woods. Two bottle flies were walking in the blood by the head, their bodies iridescent green. The snake's eyes were brightly dark under the hood. The blood was still wet.

Jack was afraid to touch him.

The ride you didn't get, he thought.

What makes you think it's a him?

Good Christ, he thought, listen to yourself.

You need water, he thought. You really, really need water.

Jack turned and began pushing the bike again. It hurt now to step on his right foot. His mouth was chalky, his tongue fat and stuck against the roof of his mouth. He never should have kept those seeds. Maybe it was the raisins. He really wanted to drink. He'd drink anything that was wet. It didn't have to be water.

Listen to that, he thought. You've got to get some water.

He reached the crest and got on the bicycle, looking far down the slope, seeing that even in this heat how beautiful the woods looked, the dark road curving out of view around the trees on the right, and then he pushed off only to find he couldn't put any kind of pressure on his foot.

He began pedaling with his left leg only, holding his right leg out free from the turning crank.

The slope was gradual in descent, and he slowly picked up speed, and though hot, there was wind, the flow of it over his face and neck a relief, the speed picking up, and then down and around the long curve he went, almost leaning over, the road plunging now into a long straight toward the floor of what was a little valley with the front wheel gone into its furious wobble and
the treed landscape rushing by, and suddenly he felt good and thought, Hell, one more hill. I can do that. I'll do just one more.

The flat was like the bottom curve of a large round bowl and, though the woods ran close on the left, on the right lay a long yellowing field of waist-high weeds and grasses that ran half a hundred yards back to a small, empty-looking, bare boarded house with a shaded front porch up on blocks set back against a hillside heavy with trees.

Two small black children came running out from the house and, just as Jack reached the flat, began racing through the tall weeds toward the road. They were waving their arms, yelling as they came, two little whips of a black boy and girl, their shirts a royal blue, their shouts lost in the wind.

Going as fast as he'd ever gone, the front wheel shaking, taking him almost out of control, flying past the kids, Jack began pedaling again, not feeling any pain at all, pushing himself even harder. Let's see how far you can go, he thought. You can go farther, maybe you're not done at all.

Going past the end of the field, heading up the grade, the bike already slowing, the front wheel no longer wobbling, Jack continued hard, gaining more distance, then his left leg seized up, a knifing pain burning down his thigh right through the knee and into his foot. He tried to pedal once more, and again the pain seared through him, and he totally and completely quit. He just couldn't do it. That was it. He was completely done. It was over.

The bike slowed, Jack letting it, and then slowly stopped, the droning of the cicadas just maniacal, sweat pouring off him.

Looking back around, he saw the children standing halfway up the slope to the road, silently looking at him.

Okay, he thought, and slowly got off, and turned with the bike and walked back toward them, thinking maybe they have some water in the house. If I can get some water and take a rest I can go on with the bike.

The children were motionless as Jack approached, the boy standing in the weeds slightly in front of the girl, both thin as
string, skin so pure a black that in the direct sunlight it had a gunmetal, bluish sheen, with close-cropped heads that seemed too large for their bodies.

“Hello,” Jack said.

They didn't answer, their large dark eyes completely watching him.

“Do you know where I can get a drink of water?”

Suddenly the boy dipped his head, turned, and then both of them began running flat out through the tall grasses back toward the house.

Jack watched them go, both moving fast across the field.

Just a stride ahead of the girl, the boy reached the house and was up the steps and inside, the little girl following.

The dirt track from the road up to the house looked as if only people walking had made it. Jack didn't know what to do. The narrow porch fronting the house was dark and empty.

He stood still, holding on to the bike.

Save for the cicadas, everything was silent. Then a woman came out onto the porch. She was a very big black woman, as big as a big man, in a brilliant maroon housedress, a red bandanna capping her head. She stopped at the top of the steps and stared out at Jack. Then the little boy stepped out, his arm raised and pointing, excitedly talking, looking back into the shadowed doorway.

Then more women came out: one, two, three, four of them, each nearly as large as the big woman, each deeply black, each wearing a different colored bandanna tied about her head, each in a differently colored floral-print dress: turquoise, purple, green, yellow . . .

Then the big woman waved, motioning Jack to come to them, all the women staring out at him.

Jack got back on the bike and pushed off, coasting back down the road to the dirt track, then turned in and bumped down the slope and let go, letting the bike fall into the weeds, unstrapping the duffel from the handlebars.

He counted five women as he walked with the duffel toward the house, along with the little boy and now the little girl appearing
again. Then three other women came out on the porch: the first two small and thin, the third one tall and light-skinned, each dressed in bright floral-print housedresses, each in a head scarf of a brilliant blue or red or black, all eight of them standing there with the children, watching as he approached up the path.

The big woman wore tennis shoes; all the others were barefoot. The thinnest one had her hands on the little girl's shoulders, an older woman. The big woman had the boy, holding his narrow arm by the bicep, the boy gone silent now, his eyes wide as he watched Jack.

Jack reached the steps and stopped, tiny dark spots floating across his eyes.

He and the big woman looked at each other for a moment. She had a strong, broad face with smooth, rounded-looking cheekbones, a wide, flat nose, and almost black, impossible to read eyes.

Jack suddenly felt dizzy.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hello,” Jack answered, glancing at the boy, then back at her. “Could I trouble you for a drink of water?

“I'm very thirsty.”

“Of course, child,” the big woman said. “C'mon up here,” and she turned to the woman that held the little girl and said, “Momma.”

This woman turned and went inside the doorway.

“May the children look at your bicycle?”

The boy's eyes were moving on Jack's eyes, the big woman still holding him close.

“Sure,” Jack said, wiping his face, trying to clear his vision. “They can have it.”

The little boy's eyes went wider, his face turning to the big woman for confirmation.

‘“They can have it?'”

“It's yours,” he said to the boy. “Yours and your sister's.”

“Oh, hallelujah!” the big woman said, letting the boy go, and down the steps he flew, his sister right behind him, racing out past Jack, the little girl yelling, “Me first. Me first!”

“Oh, praise Jesus!” the big woman said, “Oh, thank you, Jesus!

“You mean it?” she said, looking down at Jack.

“Absolutely,” Jack said. “I'm finished. I can't pedal it any farther.”

“Oh, Jesus be praised!” she said, and suddenly all the other women began echoing her. “Oh, Jesus be praised! Oh, Jesus be praised!” Each saying over and over, “Oh, thank you, Jesus! Oh, Jesus be praised! Oh, dear sweet Jesus! Oh, thank you, Jesus . . .”

“Now y'all comes on up here 'n' gets out of the sun,” the big woman said, all the women now smiling at him, their voices all crossing in a chorus, all saying, “Oh, yes, oh, my yes, oh, thank you, Jesus, oh, thank you, dear sweet Jesus, oh, thank you, oh, thank you, Jesus,” and as Jack started up the steps somehow a chair was produced, and the big woman was telling him she would invite him in, but there was only one room, and Gram'momma was down sick, and she was sorry, “Oh, praise Jesus,” her face very happy, all the other women continuing, “Oh, thank you, Lord, oh, praise be to Jesus,” then the woman called Momma came out with a large blue glass, handing it to Jack, the glass very cold to the touch, of a fluted, translucent, deep aqua blue, as large as a milkshake container, holding, as he lifted it to his mouth and drank, the coldest, cleanest, most pure water he had ever tasted.

He couldn't believe it.

Dropping the duffel, Jack drank and drank and drank, all the women continuing to thank Jesus, telling him they all had been praying since before last Christmas for a bicycle for the children and had been telling them to trust that Jesus would not disappoint them and when they saw him coming down the hill they knew he was coming with their bicycle.

“No way coulds I keep 'em back from runnin' out to meets you,” the big woman said.

The water was absolute bliss.

They got him another glassful, and a third, and a cold wash-rag, and Jack cooled his face and the back of his neck, and the whole time the women kept saying, “Oh, praise, Jesus,” and
finally, cooled down, he got up, handing the beautiful blue glass back to the big woman, thanked them all, nodding to the older woman called Momma, looked into the house, a hot, musty smell coming from inside the small, dark room, then turned, taking up his duffel, and stiffly walked back down the steps out into the strength-sapping heat and sunlight, and out onto the dusty track going by the little girl up on the seat of the bicycle being pushed by the boy, both very happy, and on past the yellowing grasses and finally up onto the heated road where almost before he had time to turn and wave to the women, all standing on the porch watching, he was picked up by a middle-aged white guy with a truck driver's belly and red sideburns with a yellow, plastic snap-tabbed baseball hat driving a blue-and-white Colonial Bread step van who, when they were passed by two blacks in an old Chevrolet a few miles farther on, floored the van and raced after them flat out at fifty-five miles an hour, the van actually shuddering the whole time, not even for a second coming within sight of the Chevy, the speedometer needle quivering right around the fifty-five mark, completely pissed off that two blacks had had the nerve to pass him, saying, “That's what that fuckin' cocksucker John Kennedy 'n' his brother Bobby did to this country. Lettin' all them niggras think they can run everybody, them cocksuckers are takin' over everything!”

Morrison, he said his name was, racing the van like that all the way into Meridian, spilling most of the bread off the side shelves in the process, in between offering Jack drinks of J.T.S. Brown from a glass bottle.

“The best bourbon,” he said, “in the whole entire goddamn United States of America.”

Rawlins

I
t was blowing again when Davis walked back, the wind coming hard down the cut along the switching tracks, the parked rows of empty boxcars hot sided and dead looking against the hillside of fine blowing dust sheeting behind them. A haze of dust was drifting east down the roofs of the cars, and coming back to the motel there were fire engines in the alley, the burned tool shed still smoldering, with the smoke mixing in the dust and the wino off one of the freights, who had apparently gone in, started a fire, and fallen asleep, being carried out badly burned and not expected to live.

In the room Kathy and Glen were no longer playing Monopoly and the sequence of pills had worked, Joni was finished, and the doctor was coming out of the little bathroom with the steel pan full of the yellowish clear fluid mixed with blood standing there showing them the fetus. It was tiny, curled, and pinkish like a shrimp, and the fluid stank, and Kathy wouldn't look at it, but Joni did and didn't say anything, then said, “That's my baby,” and said it again, disgusting Glen who went outside with the doctor to give him the other five hundred.

Glen's little brother was the one who had gotten Joni pregnant, with Glen getting him out of it, and Joni was crying now and was still crying when Glen came back in. He told her to knock it off, to not confuse, “What could be with what is.”

Then they started another game of Monopoly without Joni.

She had a fever and Kathy kept leaving the game to go ice her down. Finally Glen won the game, having two hotels each on Park Place and on Boardwalk, which broke everyone.