Stories (2011) (62 page)

Beems, the source of much of the sweat smell, thought: It’s
at least another hour before my wife gets home. Good.

Forrest drove him so hard Beems’s forehead slammed into the
wall, rocking the head of the wild boar that was mounted there, causing the
boar to look as if it had turned its head in response to a distant sound, a
peculiar sight.

“It’s not because I’m one of them kind I do this,” Beems
said. “It’s just, oh yeah, honey . . . The wife, you know, she don’t do nothing
for me. I mean, you got to get a little pleasure where you can. A man’s got to
get his pleasure, don’t you think . . . Oh, yes. That’s it . . . A man, he’s
got to get his pleasure, right? Even if there’s nothing funny about him?”

Forrest rested his hands on Beems’s naked shoulders, pushing
him down until his head rested on top of the couch cushion. Forrest cocked his
hips, drove forward with teeth clenched, penetrating deep into Beems’s ass. He
said, “Yeah. Sure.”

“You mean that? This don’t make me queer?”

“No,” Forrest panted. “Never has. Never will. Don’t mean
nothin’. Not a damn thing. It’s all right. You’re a man’s man. Let me
concentrate.”

Forrest had to concentrate. He hated this business, but it
was part of the job. And, of course, unknown to Beems, he was putting the meat
to Beems’s wife. So, if he wanted to keep doing that, he had to stay in with
the boss. And Mrs. Beems, of course, had no idea he was reaming her husband’s
dirty ditch, or that her husband had about as much interest in women as a pig
does a silver tea service.

What a joke. He was fucking Beems’s old lady, doing the dog
work for Beems, for a good price, and was reaming Beems’s asshole and assuring
Beems he wasn’t what he was, a fairy. And as an added benefit, he didn’t have
to fight the nigger tomorrow night. That was a big plus. That sonofabitch hit
like a mule kicked. He hoped this McBride would tap him good. The nigger died,
he’d make a point of shitting on his grave. Right at the head of it.

Well, maybe, Forrest decided, as he drove his hips forward
hard enough to make Beems scream a little, he didn’t hate this business after
all. Not completely. He took so much crap from Beems, this was kinda nice,
having the bastard bent over a couch, dicking him so hard his head slammed the
wall. Goddamn, nutless queer, insulting him in public, trying to act tough.

Forrest took the bottle of baby oil off the end table and
poured it onto Beems’s ass. He put the bottle back and realized he was going
soft. He tried to imagine he was plunging into Mrs. Beems, who had the
smoothest ass and the brightest blond pubic hair he had ever seen. “I’m almost
there,” Forrest said.

“Stroke, Forrest! Stroke, man. Stroke!”

In the moment of orgasm, Beems imagined that the dick
plunging into his hairy ass belonged to the big nigger, “Lil” Arthur. He
thought about “Lil” Arthur all the time. Ever since he had seen him fight naked
in a Battle Royale while wearing a Sambo mask for the enjoyment of the crowd.

And the way “Lil” Arthur had whipped Forrest. Oh, God. So
thoroughly. So expertly. Forrest had been the man until then, and that made him
want Forrest, but now, he wanted the nigger.

Oh God, Beems thought, to have him in me, wearing that mask,
that would do it for all time. Just once. Or twice. Jesus, I want it so bad I
got to be sure the nigger gets killed. I got to be sure I don’t try to pay the
nigger money to do this, because he lives after the fight with McBride, I know
I’ll break down and try. And I break down and he doesn’t do it, and word gets
around, or he does it, and word gets around, or I get caught . . . I couldn’t
bear that. This is bad enough. But a nigger . . . ?

Then there was McBride. He thought about him. He had touched
McBride’s balls and feigned disgust, but he hadn’t washed that hand yet, just
as McBride suggested.

McBride won the fight with the nigger, better yet, killed
him, maybe McBride would do it with him. McBride was a gent that liked money,
and he liked to hurt whoever he was fucking. Beems could tell that from the way
the redhead was battered. That would be good. That would be all right. McBride
was the type who’d fuck anyone or anything, Beems could tell.

He imagined it was McBride at work instead of Forrest.
McBride, naked, except for the bowler.

Forrest, in his moment of orgasm, grunted, said, “Oh yeah,”
and almost called Mrs. Beems’s name. He lifted his head as he finished, saw the
hard glass eyes of the stuffed wild boar. The eyes were full of sunlight. Then
the curtains fluttered and the eyes were full of darkness.

4:45 P.m.

The steamship
Pensacola,
outbound from Galveston,
reached the Gulf, and a wind reached the
Pensacola.
Captain Slater felt
his heart clench. The sea came high and savage from the east, and the ship rose
up and dived back down, and the waves, dark green and shadowed by the thick
clouds overhead, reared up on either side of the steamship, hissed, plunged
back down, and the
Pensacola
rode up.

Jake Bernard, the pilot commissioner, came onto the bridge
looking green as the waves. He was Slater’s guest on this voyage, and now he
wished he were back home. He couldn’t believe how ill he felt. Never, in all
his years, had he encountered seas like this, and he had thought himself immune
to seasickness.

“I don’t know about you, Slater,” Bernard said, “but I ain’t
had this much fun since a bulldog gutted my daddy.”

Slater tried to smile, but couldn’t make it. He saw that Bernard,
in spite of his joshing, didn’t look particularly jovial. Slater said, “Look at
the glass.”

Bernard checked the barometer. It was falling fast.

“Never seen it that low,” Bernard said.

“Me either,” Slater said. He ordered his crew then. Told
them to take in the awning, to batten the hatches, and to prepare for water.

Bernard, who had not left the barometer, said, “God. Look at
this, man!”

Slater looked. The barometer read
28.55.

Bernard said, “Way I heard it, ever gets that low, you’re
supposed to bend forward, kiss your root, and tell it good-bye.”

6:30 P.m.

The Coopers, Bill and Angelique and their eighteen-month-old
baby, Teddy, were on their way to dinner at a restaurant by buggy, when their
horse, Bess, a beautiful chocolate-colored mare, made a run at the crashing
sea.

It was the sea that frightened the horse, but in its moment
of fear, it had tried to plunge headlong toward the source of its fright,
assuring Bill that horses were, in fact, the most stupid animals in God’s
creation.

Bill jerked the reins and cussed the horse. Bess wheeled,
lurched the buggy so hard Bill thought they might tip, but the buggy bounced on
line, and he maneuvered Bess back on track.

Angelique, dark-haired and pretty, said, “I think I soiled
my bloomers . . . I smell it . . . No, that’s Teddy. Thank goodness.”

Bill stopped the buggy outside the restaurant, which was
situated on high posts near the beach, and Angelique changed the baby’s diaper,
put the soiled cloth in the back of the buggy.

When she was finished, they tied up the reins and went in
for a steak dinner. They sat by a window where they could see the buggy. The
horse bucked and reared and tugged so much, Bill feared she might break the
reins and bolt. Above them, they could hear the rocks that covered the flat
roof rolling and tumbling about like mice battling over morsels. Teddy sat in a
high chair provided by the restaurant, whammed a spoon in a plate of
applesauce.

“Had I known the weather was this bad,” Angelique said,
“we’d have stayed home. I’m sorry, Bill.”

“We stay home too much,” Bill said, realizing the crash of
the surf was causing him to raise his voice. “Building that upper deck on the
house isn’t doing much for my nerves either. I’m beginning to realize I’m not
much of a carpenter.”

Angelique widened her dark brown eyes. “No? You, not a
carpenter?”

Bill smiled at her.

“I could have told you that, just by listening to all the
cussing you were doing. How many times did you hit your thumb, dear?”

“Too many to count.”

Angelique grew serious. “Bill. Look.”

Many of the restaurant’s patrons had abandoned their meals
and were standing at the large windows, watching the sea. The tide was high and
it was washing up to the restaurant’s pilings, splashing against them hard,
throwing spray against the glass.

“Goodness,” Bill said. “It wasn’t this bad just minutes
ago.”

“Hurricane?” Angelique asked.

“Yeah. It’s a hurricane all right. The flags are up. I saw
them.”

“Why so nervous? We’ve had hurricanes before.”

“I don’t know. This feels different, I guess . . . It’s all
right. I’m just jittery is all.”

They ate quickly and drove the buggy home, Bess pulling
briskly all the way. The sea crashed behind them and the clouds raced above
them like apparitions.

8:00 P.m.

Captain Slater figured the wind was easily eighty knots. A
hurricane. The
Pensacola
was jumping like a frog. Crockery was crashing
below. A medicine chest so heavy two men couldn’t move it leaped up and struck
the window of the bridge, went through onto the deck, slid across it, hit the
railing, bounced high, and dropped into the boiling sea.

Slater and Bernard bumped heads so hard they nearly knocked
each other out. When Slater got off the floor, he got a thick rope out from
under a shelf and tossed it around a support post, made a couple of wraps, then
used the loose ends to tie bowlines around his and Bernard’s waists. That way,
he and Bernard could move about the bridge if they had to, but they wouldn’t
end up following the path of the medicine chest.

Slater tried to think of something to do, but all he knew to
do he had done. He’d had the crew drop anchor in the open Gulf, down to a
hundred fathoms, and he’d instructed them to find the best shelter possible
close to their posts, and to pray.

The
Pensacola
swung to the anchor, struggled like a
bull on a leash. Slater could hear the bolts and plates that held the ship
together screaming in agony. Those bolts broke, the plates cracked, he didn’t
need Captain Ahab to tell him they’d go down to Davy Jones’s locker so fast
they wouldn’t have time to take in a lungful of air.

Using the wall for support, Slater edged along to where the
bridge glass had been broken by the flying chest. Sea spray slammed against him
like needles shot from a cannon. He was concentrating on the foredeck, watching
it dip, when he heard Bernard make a noise that was not quite a word, yet more
expressive than a grunt.

Slater turned, saw Bernard clutching the latch on one of the
bridge windows so tightly he thought he would surely twist it off. Then he saw
what Bernard saw.

The sea had turned black as a Dutch oven, the sky the color
of gangrene, and between sea and sky there appeared to be something rising out
of the water, something huge and oddly shaped, and then Slater realized what it
was. It was a great wall of water, many times taller than the ship, and it was
moving directly toward and over them.

SaturdaY, SePtemBer 8,
3:30 a.m.

Bill Cooper opened his eyes. He had been overwhelmed by a
feeling of dread. He rose carefully, so as not to wake Angelique, went into the
bedroom across the hall and checked on Teddy. The boy slept soundly, his thumb
in his mouth.

Bill smiled at the child, reached down, and gently touched
him. The boy was sweaty, and Bill noted that the air in the room smelled foul.
He opened a window, stuck his head out, and looked up. The sky had cleared and
the moon was bright. Suddenly, he felt silly. Perhaps this storm business, the
deck he was building on the upper floor of the house, had made him restless and
worried. Certainly, it looked as if the storm had passed them by.

Then his feeling of satisfaction passed. For when he
examined the yard, he saw it had turned to molten silver. And then he realized
it was moonlight on water. The Gulf had crept all the way up to the house. A
small rowboat, loose from its moorings, floated by.

8:06 a.m.

Issac Cline had driven his buggy down the beach, warning
residents near the water to evacuate. Some had. Some had not. Most had
weathered many storms and felt they could weather another.

Still, many residents and tourists made for the long wooden
trestle bridge to mainland Texas. Already, the water was leaping to the bottom
of the bridge, slapping at it, testing its strength.

Wagons, buggies, horses, pedestrians were as thick on the
bridge as ants on gingerbread. The sky, which had been oddly clear and bright
and full of moon early that morning, had now grown gray and it was raining. Of
the three railway bridges that led to the mainland, one was already underwater.

3:45 P.m.

Henry Johnson, aided by “Lil” Arthur, climbed up on the
wagon beside his wife. Tina held an umbrella over their heads. In the back of
the wagon was the rest of the family, protected by upright posts planted in the
corners, covered with the tarp that had formerly been on the roof of the house.

All day Henry had debated whether they should leave. But by
2:00, he realized this wasn’t going to be just another storm. This was going to
be a goddamn, wetassed humdinger. He had organized his family, and now, by hook
or crook, he was leaving. He glanced at his shack, the water pouring through
the roof like the falls of Niagara. It wasn’t much, but it was all he had. He
doubted it could stand much of this storm, but he tried not to think about
that. He had greater concerns. He said to “Lil” Arthur, “You come on with us.”