Stories (2011) (66 page)

McBride lifted the revolver and pulled the trigger. It
clicked, but nothing happened. He tried again, hoping against hope. It fired
this time and the dog took a blast in the skull and rolled off the house, and
hung by the chain, then sailed out of sight.

McBride said, “Poor thing.”

7:03 a.m.

The water was falling away rapidly, returning to the sea,
leaving in its wake thousands of bodies and the debris that had once been Galveston.
The stench was awful. Jack and Cooter, who had spent the night in a child’s
tree house, awoke, amazed they were alive.

The huge oak tree they were in was stripped of leaves and
limbs, but the tree house was unharmed. It was remarkable. They had washed
right up to it, just climbed off the lumber to which they had been clinging,
and went inside. It was dry in there, and they found three hard biscuits in a
tin and three hot bottles of that good ole Waco, Texas, drink, Dr Pepper. There
was a phone on the wall, but it was a fake, made of lumber and tin cans. Jack
had the urge to try it, as if it might be a line to God, for surely, it was God
who had brought them here.

Cooter had helped Jack remove his gloves, then they ate the
biscuits, drank a bottle of Dr Pepper apiece, then split the last bottle and
slept.

When it was good and light, they decided to climb down. The
ladder, a series of boards nailed to the tree, had washed away, but they made
it to the ground by sliding down like firemen on a pole.

When they reached the earth, they started walking, sloshing
through the mud and water that had rolled back to ankle-deep. The world they
had known was gone. Galveston was a wet mulch of bloated bodies— humans, dogs,
mules, and horses—and mashed lumber. In the distance they saw a bedraggled
family walking along like ducks in a row. Jack recognized them. He had seen
them around town. They were Issac Cline, his brother Joseph, Issac’s wife and
children. He wondered if they knew where they were going, or were they like him
and Cooter, just out there? He decided on the latter.

Jack and Cooter decided to head for higher ground, back
uptown. Soon they could see the tower of City Hall, in sad shape but still
standing, the clock having sprung a great spring. It poked from the face of the
mechanism like a twisted, metal tongue.

They hadn’t gone too far toward the tower when they
encountered a man coming toward them. He was wearing shorts and shoes like Jack
and was riding a chocolate-brown mare bareback. He had looped a piece of frayed
rope around the horse’s muzzle and was using that as a primitive bridle. His
hair was combed to perfection. It was McBride.

“Shit,” Cooter said. “Ain’t this somethin’? Well, Jack, you
take care, I gonna be seein’ you.”

“Asshole,” Jack said.

Cooter put his hands in his pockets and turned right, headed
over piles of junk and bodies on his way to who knew where.

McBride spotted Jack, yelled, “You somethin’, nigger. A
hurricane can’t even drown you.”

“You neither,” Jack said. They were within twenty feet of
one another now. Jack could see the revolver and the razor in McBride’s
waistband. The horse, a beautiful animal with a deep cut on its muzzle,
suddenly buckled and lay down with its legs folded beneath it, dropped its head
into the mud.

McBride stepped off the animal, said, “Can you believe that?
God-damn horse survived all this and it can’t carry me no ways at all.”

McBride pulled his pistol and shot the horse through the
head. It rolled over gently, lay on its side without so much as one last heave
of its belly. McBride turned back to Jack. The revolver lay loose in his hand.
He said, “Had it misfired, I’d have had to beat that horse to death with a
board. I don’t believe in animals suffering. Gun’s been underwater, and it’s
worked two out of three. Can you believe that?”

“That horse would have been all right,” Jack said.

“Nah, it wouldn’t,” McBride said. “Why don’t you shake it,
see if it’ll come around?” McBride pushed the revolver into the waistband of
his shorts. “How’s about you and me? Want to finish where we left off?”

“You got to be jokin’,” Jack said.

“You hear me laughin’?”

“I don’t know about you, peckerwood, but I feel like I been
in a hurricane, then swam a few miles in boxing gloves, then slept all night in
a tree house and had biscuits and Dr Pepper for breakfast.”

“I ain’t even had no breakfast, nigger. Listen here. I can’t
go home not knowing I can whip you or not. Hell, I might never get home. I

want to know I can take you. You want to know.”

“Yeah. I do. But I don’t want to fight no pistol and razor.”

McBride removed the pistol and razor from his trunks, found
a dry spot and put them there. He said, “Come on.”

“Where?”

“Here’s all we got.”

Jack turned and looked. He could see a slight rise of dirt
beyond the piles of wreckage. A house had stood there. One of its great support
poles was still visible.

“Over there,” Jack said.

They went over there and found a spot about the size of a
boxing ring. Down below them on each side were heaps of bodies and heaps of
gulls on the bodies, scrambling for soft flesh and eyeballs. McBride studied
the bodies, what was left of Galveston, turned to Jack, said, “Fuck the rules.”

They waded into each other, bare knuckle. It was obvious
after only moments that they were exhausted. They were throwing hammers, not
punches, and the sounds of their strikes mixed with the caws and cries of the
gulls. McBride ducked his head beneath Jack’s chin, drove it up. Jack locked
his hands behind McBride’s neck, kneed him in the groin.

They rolled on the ground and in the mud, then came apart.
They regained their feet and went at it again. Then the sounds of their blows
and the shrieks of the gulls were overwhelmed by a cry so unique and savage,
they ceased punching.

“Time,” Jack said.

“What in hell is that?” McBride said.

They walked toward the sound of the cry, leaned on the great
support post. Once a fine house had stood here, and now, there was only this.
McBride said, “I don’t know about you, nigger, but I’m one tired sonofabitch.”

The cry came again. Above him. He looked up. A baby was
nailed near the top of the support. Its upraised, nailed arm was covered in
caked blood. Gulls were flapping around its head, making a kind of halo.

“I’ll be goddamned,” Jack said. “Boost me, McBride.”

“What?”

“Boost me.”

“You got to be kidding.”

Jack lifted his leg. McBride sighed, made a stirrup with his
cupped hands, and Jack stood, got hold of the post and worked his way painfully
up. At the bottom, McBride picked up garbage and hurled it at the gulls.

“You gonna hit the baby, you jackass,” Jack said.

When he got up there, Jack found the nail was sticking out
of the baby’s wrist by an inch or so. He wrapped his legs tight around the
post, held on with one arm while he took hold of the nail and tried to work it
free with his fingers. It wouldn’t budge.

“Can’t get it loose,” Jack yelled down. He was about to
drop; his legs and arms had turned to butter.

“Hang on,” McBride said, and went away.

It seemed like forever before he came back. He had the
revolver with him. He looked up at Jack and the baby. He looked at them for a
long moment. Jack watched him, didn’t move. McBride said, “Listen up, nigger.
Catch this, use it to work out the nail.”

McBride emptied the remaining cartridges from the revolver
and tossed it up. Jack caught it on the third try. He used the trigger guard to
snag the nail, but mostly mashed the baby’s wrist. The baby had stopped crying.
It was making a kind of mewing sound, like a dying goat.

The nail came loose, and Jack nearly didn’t grab the baby in
time, and when he did, he got hold of its nailed arm and he felt and heard its
shoulder snap out of place. He was weakening, and he knew he was about to fall.

“McBride,” he said, “catch.”

The baby dropped and so did the revolver. McBride reached
out and grabbed the child. It screamed when he caught it, and McBride raised it
over his head and laughed.

He laid the baby on top of a pile of wide lumber and looked
at it.

Jack was about halfway down the post when he fell, landing
on his back, knocking the wind out of him. By the time he got it together
enough to get up and find the revolver and wobble over to McBride, McBride had
worked the child’s shoulder back into place and was cooing to him.

Jack said, “He ain’t gonna make it. He’s lost lots of
blood.”

McBride stood up with the baby on his shoulder. He said,
“Naw. He’s tough as a warthog. Worst this little shit will have is a scar.
Elastic as he is, there ain’t no real damage. And he didn’t bleed out bad
neither. He gets some milk in him, fifteen, sixteen years from now, he’ll be
chasin’ pussy. Course, best thing is, come around when he’s about two and go on
and kill him. He’ll just grow up to be men like us.”

McBride held the child out and away from him, looked him
over. The baby’s penis lifted and the child peed all over him. McBride laughed
uproariously.

“Well, shit, nigger. I reckon today ain’t my day, and it
ain’t the day you and me gonna find out who’s the best. Here. I don’t know no
one here. Take ’im.”

Jack took the child, gave McBride his revolver, said, “I
don’t know there’s anyone I know anymore.”

“I tell you, you’re one lucky nigger,” McBride said. “I’m
gonna forgo you a beating, maybe a killing.”

“That right?”

“Uh-huh. Someone’s got to tote this kid to safety, and if’n
I kept him, I might get tired of him in an hour. Put his little head
underwater.”

“You would, wouldn’t you?”

“I might. And you know, you’re a fool to give me back my
gun.”

“Naw. I broke it gettin’ that nail loose.”

McBride grinned, tossed the gun in the mud, shaded his eyes,
and looked at the sky. “Can you beat that? Looks like it’s gonna be a nice
day.”

Jack nodded. The baby sucked on his shoulder. He decided
McBride was right. This was one tough kid. It was snuggled against him as if
nothing had happened, trying to get milk. Jack wondered about the child’s
family. Wondered about his own. Where were they? Were they alive?

McBride grinned, said, “Nigger, you got a hell of an
uppercut.” Then he turned and walked away.

Jack patted the baby’s back, watched McBride find his razor,
then walk on. Jack watched him until he disappeared behind a swell of lumber
and bodies, and he never saw him again.

BUBBA HO-TEP

Elvis dreamed he had his dick out, checking to see if the
bump on the head of it had filled withpus again. If it had, he was going to
name the bump Priscilla, after his ex-wife, and bust it by jacking off. Or he
liked to think that’s what he’d do. Dreams let you think like that. The truth was,
he hadn’t had a hard-on in years.

That bitch, Priscilla. Gets a new hairdo and she’s gone,
just because she caught him fucking a big-tittied gospel singer. It wasn’t like
the singer had mattered. Priscilla ought to have understood that, so what was
with her making a big deal out of it?

Was it because she couldn’t hit a high note same and as good
as the singer when she came?

When had that happened anyway, Priscilla leaving?

Yesterday? Last year? Ten years ago?

Oh God, it came to him instantly as he slipped out of sleep
like a soft turd squeezed free of a loose asshole—for he could hardly think of
himself or life in any context other than sewage, since so often he was too
tired to do anything other than let it all fly in his sleep, wake up in an ocean
of piss or shit, waiting for the nurses or the aides to come in and wipe his
ass. But now it came to him. Suddenly he realized it had been years ago that he
had supposedly died, and longer years than that since Priscilla left, and how
old was she anyway? Sixty-five? Seventy?