Sarah (14 page)

Two of the lizards are hopeless sugar-whiskey drunks, working enough to buy the inflatedly priced flasks Stacey sells them. The other two are brokenhearted, left at Three Crutches by their former trucker lovers, and live only to drown their sorrows in inhaled bags of glue and the assorted solvents Stacey also sells to them with a significant markup. Stacey’s prices are so high that everyone ends up taking out loans from him and, before they know it, racking up a substantial debt. So, even if anyone fancies leaving, until they pay up, they ain’t going nowhere.

The boy closest to my age is a thief, finally caught trying to make it out the window of Three Crutches with the entire cash register and ten cans of liver mush. Like the rest, and me, he is indentured here, until the debt is paid.

Just like firemen we are on call 24/7, though it never gets too busy. Mostly everyone sleeps off their highs or sits on red metal folding chairs watching Stacey’s soaps.

The johns that mostly visit Stacey’s goodbuddy lizards are truckers too poor to afford the more expensive mare lizards in the main lot, and are too horny or drunk to care.

There is nothing delicate or gentle in their lovin’. Before Stacey sends me out on a little brother seatcover date, I buy off of one of the others a few gulps or whiffs, enough to get me through. I pay them with the tips I don’t turn over to Stacey like I’m supposed to. He’s caught me a few times and whipped me bad, but not bad enough to make me try to do those dates straight.

The johns don’t talk, don’t hardly look at me. They handle me rough, like a steering wheel they have to bully through a tight turn. They blame me if they’re too drunk and they blame me if they ain’t drunk enough. They mostly never ever tip and it took me a few weeks to break my old training from Glad’s of politely loitering until they hand over a tip. Also cost me a good number of black eyes and a few chips on my teeth. Eventually I figured out why I used to see those lizards with no pimps to protect them, leaping out of cabs like shots out of a cannon. When these tricks get done it’s best to haul out fast, ’cause some suddenly remember you’re just professional beaver, faggot beaver at that.

They have to beat us pretty good for Stacey to even bother to tell Le Loup about it. Stacey just hands over the key to the first aid kit and doesn’t mind you drinking up the ninety weight tucked in there.

The gay drivers usually send me back telling me I’m a road runt and they’re looking for a man. The dates I look forward to are the Lavender Larry drivers, the men who talk to me the way Lymon did when he fancied me a girl. Their hands quiver the same way, they touch real gentle, and talk of love. They’re the only ones I ever get a chance to practice developing my second sight on, but because they all want the same thing, there’s not much for me to practice with.

They always promise to come back for me on their return run. They enchant me with intricate tales on how they will rescue and adopt me as their son. After devotedly watching for a couple of them, diligently scanning the CB for a sign or signal all winter only to watch the snow thaw and still be waiting, I now stop any Larry from uttering a word of promises. I let them kiss my hand goodbye, assure them I don’t need or want them to rescue me, but I do look forward to their return. I stuff half their tip in my underwear and the other in my pocket for Stacey to snatch.

We’re not permitted to go to the diner, so I haven’t seen any of the diner folks in a long time. We eat cans of microwaved SpaghettiOs and pepperoni rolls from Clarksburg. Haven’t even seen Le Loup since the day he left me here. I watch for him, though. I watch the road from my private perch, on top of the old outhouses, where I get a clear view of the freeway. Every now and then I see his purple Trans Am heading toward us and I pray this’ll be the time he’ll turn down the dusty dirt road. He’ll tell me I’ve repaid my debt and I am free to leave. As a matter of fact he’ll take me home himself. But his car always passes by without even slowing.

The Thief tried to escape once. But there are only two ways out. Through the bogs is one way, and no one has ever heard of anything but dead bodies being hauled out on the other side. Then there’s the freeway. The forest runs too thick with untraversable laurel brakes on either side of the road, so any hitchhiker is forced to walk on the black tar pavement of the road itself. Wouldn’t be but ten minutes at the outside till Stacey overhears the talk on the CB about some foot tourist on the highway and before he asks for someone to lay an eye out as to what this road bird might look like. Usually somebody just recognizes one of Stacey’s lizards and lets him know he’s got a stray on the loose. Trying to get a trick to drive you out is worse. No matter how many Kentucky apple-fried pies Stacey has consumed, no matter if as a result he appears as glassy-eyed and catatonic as one of the glue sniffers, he has a superhuman knack for keeping track of all his boy’s dates and how long they’ve been gone. He has a talent for knowing when one of his is going to try to ride his way out. That truck would hardly get out onto the highway when the old air-raid siren up at the diner would sound. It was well known in the trucker community: Le Loup’s lizards were not to be taken out on loan. Any trucker snared trying got no sympathy for his broken bones and other assorted injuries. Dumber than a fence post and deserving whatever came his way, is what other truckers said about those who tried to sneak off with a lizard. The only lizards that usually ever have the balls to attempt it are the ones out of supplies, hoping to make their own glue or liquor run and cut Stacey out of the loop. They never get far, and they fare far from well after getting caught. I heard that the escaping thief had eagerly jumped into the purple Trans Am that had pulled over to pick him up. I heard he told the driver to step on it and he’d pay him well. I heard they drove a good five miles before The Thief looked over to see it was Le Loup himself driving, waiting to see how long it would take for The Thief to notice.

It was two months before anyone saw him again. And he still walks with a wobble to his hips, and his face, like a washed-out berry pie stain, still bears the remnants of the lesson he was taught.

My only hope has been the one Lavender Larry I truly trusted. I hushed his lips before he could swear to save me. I slipped him a note with the name Glading Grateful ETC … of The Doves Diner. ‘Please call and tell him I am stuck here,’ I said, as I tucked the folded paper into his chest pocket and pressed it with my hand, over his heart.

From my perch I watch, hoping one day I’ll see Glad rolling in. I’m pretty sure he’d buy me back if he knew where I was. I’m even pretty sure he’d cross the Cheat for me. It’d been months, but maybe Glad was waiting for the thaw.

Finally one spring day, sitting up on my roost, I see a familiar figure marching through the grassy sods toward me. I squint and try to make out who. It’s the walk, low to the ground but with a tough swagger. I leap down and run toward it, only to slow to a halt when I see it’s Pooh. She waves her arms and smiles as if we had had a tea party only yesterday. I want to turn and show her my back, just walk away, but seeing her fills me with hope for some reason.

‘Hey!’ Pooh whisper-shouts at me. ‘I heard I could find ya here.’ She positively sparkles in a red satin jumpsuit with knee-high boots and her hair done like a Nashville country star.

‘Jesus, Pooh! You look like a movie star!’ I say when she gets close enough.

‘And you…’ She takes a step back. ‘No offense, but you look like shit. I’d’ve thought your long curls would’ve done been grown back by now!’ She runs her hand over my crew-cut head.

I jerk my head away from her touch without thinking. A look of surprise and then something that resembles a mix of annoyance and hurt passes over her face as she leaves her hand suspended in the air.

I clear my throat. ‘I’m not allowed to grow my hair in.’ I look at her boots, lizard skin like Le Loup’s.

‘You’re kidding me?!’ She lowers her hand.

‘No. Le Loup’s orders. Stacey buzzes me himself every ten days on the dot.’

Pooh looks at me, shakes then turns her head and spits. ‘Well, funny you should say I look like a movie star, ’cause I am on my way to Hollywood!’

I squint at her. ‘Are you for real? Hollywood?’ She nods. ‘Le Loup is just lettin’ you go?’

‘A famous Hollywood agent heard of my fame, all the way out there in California, and he came here himself and you might as well have buttered his butt and called him a biscuit, ’cause he was mine right from the get-go!’ Pooh slaps her leg in laughter.

‘How’d you pull that off?’

‘Used my second sight to know all he wanted was to be wrapped in diapers, nursed with a bottle, and burped like an armbaby. He had never told a being in this world, bless his poor tortured soul, but I knew!’

‘Damn…’ I shake my head in impressed jealousy.

‘He bought me from Le Loup and now we’re leaving to begin on my film career! He says anyone with my gifts will have no problem convincing all the world’s famous directors and them studio heads of my inspiring and advantageous talent.’

‘Well, Pooh, congratulations. I wish you well. If you came to gloat, well, I hope if it makes ya feel all the better. I’ll make ya feel even more better by asking you if I could have your old flask as a souvenir.’

‘No, I actually…’

‘And I’ll further make your day by asking, beggin’ if you fancy, if you could find a way to fill it with that rotgut you swigged day and night.’

Pooh takes my arm. ‘Sarah…’

Hearing my mother’s name spoken out loud by someone else combined with a gentle touch unsteadies me. I grab Pooh back and hold on.

‘I actually came here to reattach some heads and limbs,’ she says softly.

We stand quietly watching a red-spotted newt totter over my worn sneakers.

‘Here.’ She lets go of me and reaches under her pant-suit blouse. She slowly works a leather thong from around her neck. She carefully removes it, mindful not to mess her hair.

‘This is yours.’ She holds out my raccoon penis bone.

I stare at it lying there in Pooh’s hand and it looks to me like an artifact from some lost civilization. I start laughing.

‘What?’ Pooh says, starting to laugh herself in contagion.

I laugh so hard I can’t speak. Finally I catch some breath, ‘Ya know, Pooh, you were right about me.’ I laugh some more. ‘I am greedy! I wanted a bigger fuckin’ bone, the hugest fuckin’ bone, and…’ I lift the necklace out of her hand and hold it up. ‘That’s what got me where the fuck I am today!’

‘Well,’ she starts.

‘So if you think giving me my bone back is reattaching any limbs…’ I stuff it into my pocket. ‘To be honest, it’d be way more than useful to have a jug of white lightning. Fuck, I’d even take Sterno poured through Wonder bread!’

‘I don’t have any of that no more,’ she says softly.

‘Well, then.’ I reach out my hand to shake hers. She gives me her hand limply and I shake it hard for the both of us. ‘Well, then you have yourself a great time out there in Hollywood! I’m a busy boy.’ I say the last word with corrosive spite. ‘Got dicks to suck and seats to bend over!’ I turn and start to walk away. ‘So you don’t mind if I excuse myself.’

‘Sarah!’ she calls.

I make fists and force myself to keep walking.

‘Sarah!’ I hear her start to run after me, and I start to run away. I move through the glade as fast as I can. I look over my shoulder briefly and see Pooh still chasing me. I don’t know why I’m running. I only know I have to. I get to the edge of a steep bank. I sprint down it, hopping over the low shrubs of groundberry, St. John’s wort, and bulrushes.

‘Sarah! Wait!’

I turn my head again and trip over a blueberry bush. ‘Fuck!’ I tumble down the embankment and land in the moss-covered bog shallow. ‘Fuck!’ I flail at the cranberry and cotton grass catching my limbs.

Pooh scurries down the bank toward me. ‘Here, gimme your hand.’ She stands panting over me, reaching out her hand.

I grab it and with all my might pull her in.

I watch her tumble like a gymnast doing floor exercises till she lands with a big splash not far from me.

‘Jesus! Fuck!’ She rises and spits out a green mat of water.

I nod, seeing she’s just fine, and start to pull myself out. All of a sudden I’m pulled backward, as she grabs hold of my leg and jerks me back down.

Then we’re rolling around in the water, not really fighting, just struggling against each other to escape.

‘It ain’t all my fault all what happened to you!’ Pooh pants between splashes.

‘I’d fuckin’ be home now if you didn’t hand fuckin’ deliver me to Le Loup!’ I shout and push away from her.

‘I know!’ she yells in my ear. ‘That’s why I called Glad!’

I keep battling her until her words register. ‘What’d you say?’

She stands up in the water and knocks the moss off her. ‘I said I called Glad.’

‘You did what?’ I say, still feeling like I’m hearing words too dear to be actually uttered.

‘Fuck! You really ruined my new outfit. Well at least my man’s rich, so it won’t matter none.’

‘Don’t fuck with me, Pooh.’ I stand up next to her, and realize in the time since I’ve seen her last, I’ve grown taller than her.

‘I called Glad.’ She suddenly lurches down to the water and I grab her arm, thinking she’s slipped. ‘Thanks,’ she says, and I see she was just reaching for something floating on the moss waterbed. ‘This…’ Pooh says and scoops out the coon bone necklace. ‘It wasn’t hard to find out what this means … I knew,’ she says and hands the necklace back to me. ‘I knew what it really meant.’

‘You—you called Glad?’

‘Look, I tried to get my agent to buy you out, but Le Loup wouldn’t sell. Not even for a fuckload of bucks. It’s a pride thing with him. A revenge thing. I think that’s why Le Loup and I aren’t no good with each other. We’re just too pigheaded and vengeful!’

‘He wouldn’t sell me?’

‘Nope. And he got offered a lot. And I know money means more to him than love, but I guess not more than revenge for his broken heart.’

‘Fuck! What did Glad say?!’ I grab on to her arm.

‘He said he’d been looking for you,
Cherry Vanilla.’
She says my old Doves name with a laugh. ‘He heard lots of crazy rumors, but never could track you down. Said the truth of it was crazier than any rumors he had heard.’