Stories (2011) (43 page)

"You gonna push one time too much, Dave. One time too
much."

"I'm just kidding, man. Lighten up. You don't ever
lighten up. Don't we deserve some fun after working like niggers all day?"

Merle sighed. "You got to use that nigger stuff? I
don't like it. It makes you sound ignorant. Will, he's colored and I like him.
He's done me all right. Man like that, he don't deserve to be called
nigger."

"He's all right at the plant, but you go by his house
and ask for a loan."

"I don't want to borrow nothing from him. I'm just
saying people ought to get their due, no matter what color they are. Nigger is
an ugly word."

"You like boogie better, Martin Luther? How about coon
or shine? I was always kind of fond of burrhead or wooly myself."

"There's just no talking to you, is there?"

"Hell, you like niggers so much, next date we set up,
we'll make it a nigger. Shit, I'd fuck a nigger. It's all pink on the inside,
ain't that what you've heard?"

"You're a bigot is what you are."

"If that means I'm not wanting to buddy up to coons,
then, yeah, that's what I am." Dave thumped his cigarette butt out the
window. "You got to learn to lighten up, Merle. You don't, you'll die. My
uncle, he couldn't never lighten up. Gave him a spastic colon, all that
tension. He swelled up until he couldn't wear his pants. Had to get some
stretch pants, one of those running suits, just so he could have on clothes. He
eventually got so bad they had to go in and operate. You can bet he wishes he
didn't do all that worrying now. It didn't get him a thing but sick. He didn't
get a better life on account of that worry, now did he? Still lives over in
that apartment where he's been living, on account of he got so sick from worry
he couldn't work. They're about to throw him out of there, and him a grown man
and sixty years old. Lost his good job, his wife -- which he ought to know is a
good thing -- and now he's doing little odd shit here and there to make ends
meet. Going down to catch the day work truck with the winos and niggers --
excuse me. Afro-Americans, Colored Folks, whatever you prefer.

"Before he got to worrying over nothing, he had him
some serious savings and was about ready to put some money down on a couple of
acres and a good double wide."

"I was planning on buying me a double wide, that'd make
me worry. Them old trailers ain't worth a shit. Comes a tornado, or just a good
wind, and you can find those fuckers at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico next
to the regular trailers. Tornado will take a double wide easy as any of the
others."

Dave shook his head. "You go from one thing to the
other, don't you? I know what a tornado can do. It can take a house, too. Your house.
That don't matter. I'm not talking about mobile homes here, Merle. I'm talking
about living. It's a thing you better attend to. You're forty goddamn years
old. Your life's half over . . . I know that's a cold thing to say, but there
you have it. It's out of my mouth. I'm forty this next birthday, so I'm not
just putting the doom on you. It's a thing ever man's got to face. Getting over
the hill. Before I die, I'd like to think I did something fun with my life.
It's the little things that count. I want to enjoy things, not worry them away.
Hear what I'm saying, Merle?"

"Hard not to, being in the goddamn car with you."

"Look here, way we work, we deserve to lighten up a
little. You haul your ashes first. That'll take some edge off."

"Well . . ."

"Naw, go on."

"All right . . . but, one thing . . ."

"What?"

"Don't do me no more butt hole jokes, okay? One friend
to another, Dave, no more butt hole jokes."

"It bothers you that bad, okay. Deal."

Merle climbed over the seat and got on his knees in the
floorboard. He took hold of the back seat and pulled. It was rigged with a
hinge. It folded down. He got on top of the folded-down seat and bent and
looked into the exposed trunk. The young woman's face was turned toward him,
half of her cheek was hidden by the spare tire. There was a smudge of grease on
her nose.

"We should have put a blanket back here," Merle
said. "Wrapped her in that. I don't like 'em dirty."

"She's got pants on," Dave said. "You take
them off, the part that counts won't be dirty."

"That part's always dirty. They pee and bleed out of it
don't they? Hell, hot as it is back here, she's already starting to
smell."

"Oh, bullshit." Dave turned and looked over the
seat at Merle. "You can't get pleased, can you? She ain't stinking. She
didn't even shit her pants when she checked out. And she ain't been dead long
enough to smell, and you know it. Quit being so goddamn contrary." Dave
turned back around and shook out a cigarette and lit it.

"Blow that out the window, damnit," Merle said.
"You know that smoke works my allergies."

Dave shook his head and blew smoke out the window. He turned
up the speaker. The ads and commercials were over. The movie was starting.

"And don't be looking back here at me neither,"
Merle said.

Merle rolled the woman out of the trunk, across the seat,
onto the floorboard and up against him. He pushed the seat back into place and
got hold of the woman and hoisted her onto the back seat. He pushed her T-shirt
up over her breasts. He fondled her breasts. They were big and firm and rubbery-cold.
He unfastened her shorts and pulled them over her shoes and ripped her panties
apart at one side. He pushed one of her legs onto the floorboard and gripped
her hips and pulled her ass down a little, got it cocked to a position he
liked. He unfastened and pulled down his jeans and boxer shorts and got on her.

Dave roamed an eye to the rearview mirror, caught sight of
Merle's butt bobbing. He grinned and puffed at his cigarette. After a while, he
turned his attention to the movie.

* * *

When Merle was finished he looked at the woman's dead eyes.
He couldn't see their color in the dark, but he guessed blue. Her hair he could
tell was blond.

"How was it?" Dave asked.

"It was pussy. Hand me the flashlight."

Dave reached over and got the light out of the glove box and
handed it over the seat. Merle took it. He put it close to the woman's face and
turned it on.

"She's got blue eyes," Merle said.

"I noticed that right off when we grabbed her,"
Dave said. "I thought then you'd like that, being how you are about blue
eyes."

Merle turned off the flashlight, handed it to Dave, pulled
up his pants and climbed over the seat. On the screen a worm-like monster was
coming out of the sand on a beach.

"This flick isn't half bad," Dave said. "It's
kind of funny, really. You don't get too good a look at the monster though . .
. that all the pussy you gonna get?"

"Maybe some later," Merle said.

"You feeling any better?"

"Some."

"Yeah, well, why don't you eat some popcorn while I get
me a little. Want a cigarette? You like a cigarette after sex, don't you?"

"All right."

Dave gave Merle a cigarette, lit it. Merle sucked the smoke
in deeply.

"Better?" Dave asked.

"Yeah, I guess."

"Good." Dave thumped his cigarette out the window.
"I'm gonna take my turn now. Don't let nothing happen on the movie. Make
it wait."

"Sure."

Dave climbed over the seat. Merle tried to watch the movie.
After a moment, he quit. He turned and looked out his window. Six speakers down
he could see a Chevy rocking.

"Got to be something more to life than this?"
Merle said without turning to look at Dave.

"I been telling you," Dave said, "this is
life, and you better start enjoying. Get you some orientation before it's too
late and it's all over but the dirt in the face . . . talk to me later. Right
now this is what I want out of life. Little later, I might want a drink."

Merle shook his head.

Dave lifted the woman's leg and hooked her ankle over the
front seat. Merle looked at her foot, the ankle bracelet dangling from it.
"I bet that damn foot's more a size eleven than a ten," Merle said.
"Probably buys her shoes at the ski shop."

Dave hooked her other ankle over the back seat, on the
package shelf. "Like I said, it's not the feet I'm interested in."

Merle shook his head again. He rolled down his window and
thumped out some ash and turned his attention to the Chevy again. It was still
rocking.

Dave shifted into position in the back seat. The Ford began
to rock. The foot next to Merle vibrated, made little dead hops.

From the back seat Dave began to chant: "Give it to me,
baby. Give it to me. Am I your Prince, baby? Am I your goddamn King? Take that
anaconda, bitch. Take it!"

"For heaven's sake," Merle said.

Five minutes later Dave climbed into the front seat, said,
"Damn. Damn good piece."

"You act like she had something to do with it,"
Merle said.

"Her pussy, ain't it?"

"We're doing all the work. We could cut a hole in the
seat back there and get it that good."

"That ain't true. It ain't the hole does it, and it
damn sure ain't the personality, it's how they look. That flesh under you.
Young. Firm. Try coming in an ugly or fat woman and you'll see what I mean.
You'll have some troubles. Or maybe you won't."

"I don't like 'em old or fat."

"Yeah, well, I don't see the live ones like either one
of us all that much. The old ones or the fat ones. Face it, we've got no way
with live women. And I don't like the courting. I like to know I see one I
like, I can have her if I can catch her."

Merle reached over and shoved the woman's foot off the seat.
It fell heavily into the floorboard. "I'm tired of looking at that slat.
Feet like that, they ought to have paper bags over them."

* * *

When the second feature was over, they drove to Dave's house
and parked out back next to the tall board fence. They killed the lights and
sat there for a while, watching, listening.

No movement at the neighbors.

"You get the gate," Dave said, 'Til get the
meat."

"We could just go on and dump her," Merle said.
"We could call it a night."

"It's best to be careful. The law can look at sput now
and know who it comes from. We got to clean her up some."

Merle got out and opened the gate and Dave got out and
opened the trunk and pulled the woman out by the foot and let her fall on her
face to the ground. He reached in and got her shorts and put them in the crook
of his arm, then bent and ripped her torn panties the rest of the way off and
stuffed them in a pocket of her shorts, and stuffed the shorts into the front
of his pants. He got hold of her ankle and dragged her through the gate.

Merle closed the gate as Dave and the corpse came through.
"You got to drag her on her face?" he said.

"She don't care," Dave said.

"I know, but I don't like her messed up."

"We're through with her."

"When we let her off, I want her to be, you know,
okay."

"She ain't okay now, Merle. She's dead."

"I'm don't want her messed up."

Dave shrugged. He crossed her ankles and flipped her on her
back and dragged her over next to the house and let go of her by the water
hose. He uncoiled the hose and took the nozzle and inserted it up the woman
with a sound like a boot being withdrawn from mud, and turned the water on low.

When he looked up from his work, Merle was coming out of the
house with a six-pack of beer. He carried it over to the redwood picnic table
and sat down. Dave joined him.

"Have a Lone Star," Merle said.

Dave twisted the top off one. "You're thinking on
something, I can tell."

"I was thinking we ought to take them alive,"
Merle said.

Dave lit a cigarette and looked at him. "We been over
this. We take one alive she might scream or get away. We could get caught easy
enough."

"We could kill her when we're finished. Way we're
doing, we could buy one of those blow-up dolls, put it in the glove box and
bring it to the drive-in."

"I've never cottoned to something like that. Even
jacking off bothers me. A man ought to have a woman."

"A dead woman?"

"That's the best kind. She's quiet. You haven't got to
put up with clothes and makeup jabber, keeping up with the Jones' jabber,
getting that promotion jabber. She's not gonna tell you no in the middle of the
night. Ain't gonna complain about how you put it to her. One stroke's as good
as the next to a dead bitch."

"I kind of like hearing 'em grunt, though. I like being
kissed."

"Rape some girl, think she'll want to kiss you?"

"I can make her."

"Dead's better. You don't have to worry yourself about
how happy she is. You don't pay for nothing. If you got a live woman, one
you're married to even, you're still paying for pussy. If you don't pay in
money, you'll pay in pain. They'll smile and coo for a time, but stay out late
with the boys, have a little financial stress, they all revert to just what my
mama was. A bitch. She drove my daddy into an early grave, way she nagged, and
the old sow lived to be ninety. No wonder women live longer than men. They
worry men to death.

"Like my uncle I was talking about. All that worry . .
. hell, that was his wife put it on him. Wanting this and wanting that. When he
got sick, had that operation and had to dip into his savings, she was out of
there. They'd been married thirty years, but things got tough, you could see
what those thirty years meant. He didn't even come out of that deal with a
place to put his dick at night."

"Ain't all women that way."

"Yeah they are. They can't help it. I'm not blaming
them. It's in them, like germs. In time, they all turn out just the same."