The Outlaw Album (5 page)

“I didn’t know your son.”

“Me, neither, much. I guess that’s the awful part that’s got so clear now.”

“I’m sorry what happened happened.”

“You’n me need to talk. I’ll give you a call.”

The summer they’d been buddies fell between grades six and seven. They’d roamed the fields and deep woods, taunted bulls in green pastures, mocked girls on the town square, dawdled in the alleyways where interesting refuse might be found. The Davieses were new arrivals, moved down from Rolla, and Pelham’s mother told him to be nice to the freckled boy in thick glasses. Randall was not so hot at sports, but he was willing, and they joined other kids at the park for long, long games of corkball, Indian ball, 500, or, if their numbers swelled, double-headers of baseball with complete teams. They swam in Howl Creek, played slapjack on the screened porch when it rained, drank cream soda, and pegged rocks at pigeons in the empty railroad station. It was their last barefoot summer. Seventh grade brought many complications and new social concerns. Randall was of no help buttering up girls at the drive-in, or during a ritual scrap behind the school, more of a burden, really, a chronic liability, and before long, somehow, they didn’t hang around together anymore. Nothing angry happened, just a slow dwindling, and soon their friendship had shrunk to a glancing, rote exchange of greetings when passing: “How you doin’?”

“Not bad—you?”

“Can’t kick.”

Perfect weather pushed up from Arkansas, and all windows were open to the screen. Jill seemed buoyant and wore only a sheer light-blue nightie. The house breathed that night in the cadence of cicadas, drawing in the smells of honeysuckle and plowed dirt, dogwood and cattle in the distance. Pelham watched the final innings from St. Louis on the bedroom television, a tumbler of bourbon in his hand. Jill lay across the bed, face over the edge, book on the floor, the nightie smoothed to her skin. She snapped the book closed and sat up. “That one’s over.”

The announcer was praising the relief pitching, and Jill went to the bookcase, removed an aged hardback, and started moaning, then sniffling. “What?” he asked, and she pointed at the bookshelf where blood had flown and hidden behind the books, streaking the white paint. “Shit.” Pelham fetched a bucket of water and cleaning rags, the stiff brush that worked best, and they cleared the books from the shelf, stacked them on the floor. They scrubbed and scrubbed until the paint flaked and that streaking of blood was gone from sight. Pelham dropped the brush into the bucket and said, “I’ll be going to the river with his dad.”

They stood on big gray rocks and cast into the current. Shallows began just below the men, and the river murmured passing over the small stones and limestone gravel. Shadows covered the riverbed and halfway up the slope beyond. The current tugged the fishing line like there was a bite and made the rods bend, but the only things on the line were the river and the bait. Randall spoke with his back to Pelham. “What’d Randy say to you?”

“Not a word. He never spoke.”

“How is it you had a knife ready when he showed?”

“He only growled.”

“I can’t feature that part. I don’t get that. I guess I just don’t know what kind of shit really goes on over there.”

“It’s the same shit as always, Randall.”

Pelham broke from the stream and stepped to the riverbank. He reached into his knapsack and retrieved a bottle of bourbon, then hopped back onto the gray rocks. He held the bottle toward Randall. “You ever start drinkin’ whiskey?”

“Only had to start once.”

They sat on the rocks, listening to the river, drinking bourbon from the bottle, letting trout swim past. They sat in silence for ten minutes, twenty, slowly sharing the whiskey. Two kids in yellow kayaks whipped down the channel, racing each other and laughing, easily skirting boulders and skimming the shallows. Their young laughter could yet be heard when they’d floated from sight, far downriver.

“He got different. He was always kind of lonely, you know, not so sure how he stood in the world, always lookin’ for somehow to measure himself, prove somethin’, figure what size of man he was. Could be he found out and it broke him.”

“Randall—why me?”

“You know, he was plenty spooky sometimes—that stare, the hours’n hours when he wouldn’t talk. I could see he was hurtin’ in some way I never had to know, and he drank vodka in bed of a mornin’ with his boots on and took other stuff, too, right there in the house. So, anyhow, one time I went in there while he stared at the ceiling with his boots on the sheets, and asked him, ‘Son, you want to talk about it?’ And he looks at me like he ain’t certain sure we’ve met before, but he says, ‘Will do, bro. Here’s all your main answers: Yes. I lost count. Like tossin’ a bucket of chili into a fan. Pick up all you can, shovel the rest.’”

“There it is.” That very phrase took Pelham back to a time of rain. He screwed the cap onto the bottle and stood. He stretched his legs and turned upstream. He didn’t want to tremble facing Randall. He jumped from the rocks and crouched at the water’s edge, dunked his head and the cold sluiced through him and soaked his neck, drained down his spine. “Whiskey came a little early for me today.”

“Me, too.”

“Let’s go.”

That night Pelham taped his own boot camp photo onto the refrigerator, side by side with Junior’s. Jill looked into the teenage face of her husband and asked, “Is that even you? You looked like that?”

His head was shaved, skin lightly reddened, hat set too squarely, a slight bruise puffed beneath his left eye, expression flat and unblinking.

“For a while, there, I looked exactly that way.”

“Huh. I thought everybody was against Vietnam back then. That’s all you ever hear about, anyhow. ‘Hell no, we won’t go,’ that sort of stuff.”

“That wasn’t our neighborhood.”

He studied the two faces and drank a beer, then another. Jill was mostly at the counter, chopping chicken parts to marinate for guests coming by tomorrow. Citrus and garlic smells were strong. He could see something happening to both faces, that relinquishing of who you’d been replaced by reflexive obedience, a new familiarity with exhaustion. They’d grill dinner and avoid this topic, probably, maybe drink too much just to hear the laughter. He wouldn’t want guests to notice the photos, so he pulled them from the refrigerator, careful not to tear the edges, and held both in his hands. He switched the photos from one hand to the other, then back again. Jill became curious and stepped near, smelling of tomorrow, and looked over his shoulder.

“
Why
did you join again?” she asked, but didn’t wait for an answer.

Pelham stepped outside, onto the wooden deck. A big moon cut shadows from everything and flung them around. He laid the photos on a lawn chair, then pulled his shirt over his head and dropped it on top of them. Then he slipped from his shoes, dropped his jeans and skivvies, and stood naked near the rail. He leaned on the wood, tried an experimental little growl. The next growl was more sincere; the one after that was louder. Pelham stood upright and breathed deeply, spread his arms wide, growled and growled toward the perimeter, inviting shadows to cross his yard.

“Hon?”

W
hen she comes over it is in a rattly old thing. Color yellow it got white-ring tires that rhyme the way round and the exhaust has slipped loose and is dragging sparks from it. There are stickers from the many funny places she been to on the bumper and two or three of her ideas are pasted on the fenders. A band-aid that look just like a band-aid only it is a monster has been momma’d onto the hood like the rattly old thing got some child sore in the motor.

Now this official had mailed us a note that tell Wilma who is the woman who is my wife and me that this lady wants to visit. It seems she teach Cecil something useful at the prison.

The door flings out and she squats up out of the car coming my way. I have posted myself in the yard and she come straight at me smiling. Over her shoulder is a strap that holds up a big purse made of the sort of pale weeds they have in native lands I never saw.

She call me Mister McCoy right off like who I am is that clear-cut. Her name Frieda Buell she go on then flap out a hand for me to shake. I give her palm a little rub and tell her she is welcome.

When I see that sits with her good I tell her to come into the house.

That is something she would love to do she tells me.

This is a remark I don’t believe so I stand back and inventory her. She is young with shaggy blond hair but she knows something about painting her face as she has done it smashing well. Her shirt is red and puffy and her shoes have heels that tell me walking is not a thing she practices over much. Her britches are pale and slicked onto her booty like they started as steam puffs.

The porch has sunk down so it hunkers a distance in front of the house. I ask her to be careful and she is. Inside I give her the good chair but I keep standing.

Right away I tell her I want to know what this about.

What it is about is a lulu. My son Cecil is a gifted man she says. He has a talent that puts a rareness to the world or something along those lines.

Cecil? Cecil a thief I tell her. And not that sly a one neither.

Once was she says. No more.

Always was. My mind is made up on that. But what’s got me puzzled is what is this rareness he puts to the world or whatever?

Poetry is her answer. She reach her hand that has been overdone with various rings into the big purse and pulls out a booklet. She says Cecil has written it and the critics have claimed him as a natural in ability.

I take the booklet in my hands. It is of thick dry paper and the cover says “Dark Among the Grays” by Cecil McCoy. That is him all right I say. Tell me do this somehow line him up early for parole?

It could she says. She trying to face me bold enough but her eyes is playing hooky on her face and going places besides my own. She been teaching him for two years she says and what he has is a gift like she never seen before.

Gift I say. A gift is not like Cecil.

May I have the book she asks. I hand it to her. She opens it to a middle page. Like this listen to this. She begin to read to me from what apparently Cecil my son has written out. The name of it is “Soaring” and it is a string of words that say a bird is floating above the junkyard and has spotted a hot glowing old wreck below only the breeze sucks him down and he can’t help but land in it. When she done reading the thing she look up at me like I should maybe be ridiculous with pleasure. I can’t tell but that is my sense.

Is that the first chapter or what I want to know.

She lets out one of them whistly breaths that means I might overmatch her patience. These are poems of his life on the street she tells me. But they are brimful of accurate thoughts for all. Yet grounded in the tough streets of this area.

They have junkyards everywhere is my comeback to her.

But the bird Mister McCoy. The bird is soaring over death which is an old car wreck. The poet is wanting to be that white bird winging it free above death. What it really signifies is that Cecil want to be let off from having to die. That is the point of it she says.

Now to me this point is obvious but I feel sad for a second about Cecil. Two things he never going to be is a white bird.

Read on I suggest.

She slides out a smile for me that lets me know I’m catching on. Then she turn the book to another page. This was in some big-time poetry magazine she says. Then she read. The words of this one are about a situation I recognize. The poet has ripped off his momma’s paycheck to pay back some bad dudes he ain’t related to.

Hold it there I tell her. That is a poem that actually happen several times lady. Cecil a goddamn thief.

No no no. He wants to make amends for it. He wants to overcome the guilt of what he done.

I tell her it would be in the hundreds of dollars to do that. Is these poems going to get him that kind of money? My question is beneath her. She won’t answer it.

This poem has meanings for all the people she says. They look into it and see their selves.

That is nice and interesting I tell her but how come Wilma and me has to pay for this poem all alone? Everybody who looks in it and see their selves ought to pay some back to us.

This comment of mine puts pressure on her cool and she begins to pace about the room. The room is clean enough but the furniture is ragged. I have a hip weakness and janitor work pains it. Wilma has the job now.

The lady stops and looks out the window. Two cars is blocking traffic to say what’s going on to each other. Horns are honking. People get hurt over things like that.

Mister McCoy do you love Cecil?

There was a time I answer. It was a love that any daddy would have. But that was way back. If I love Cecil now it is like the way I love the Korean conflict. Something terrible I have lived through.

He has changed Mister McCoy. He has got in touch with his humanity. If he had a place to live he could be paroled to start fresh.

I believe I will sit down. As I say it I drop to the three-legged chair by the door. I am thinking of my son Cecil. He was one of a whole set of kids Wilma and me filled out because we had only each other. He ate from the same pot of chili as the rest but he turned out different. His eyes were shiny and his nose turned up instead of being flat. The better he knows you the more relaxed he is about stealing you blind. Same pot of chili but different.

I don’t believe we want to take him back I say.

But you are his family. There is no one else for him.

Family yes but main victims too lady. I reach up and pull the bridge from my mouth which leaves a bad fence of my teeth showing. See that? I ask. Cecil did that. He wasn’t but fifteen when he did that.

He has changed she says again. She says it like that settles it.

I don’t believe it. He may well write out poems that say he sorry and guilty but I am leery of him. You listen to this lady. This porch right here. I was standing on this porch right here when it was less sunk and Cecil was out there in the street with a mess of boys. They were little but practicing to be dangerous someday. One of them picks up a stone and tosses it at the high-up streetlight there. He misses it by a house or two. He ain’t close. I stood there on the porch out of curiosity and watched. They all flung stones at the light but none was close to shattering it. Then Cecil pick up a slice of brick and hardly aims but he smash that light to bits. As soon as it left his hand I seen that his aim for being bad was awful accurate.

Well she says. He seems sensitive to her.

Oh he can do that lady. He could do that years ago.

You are a hard nut she tells me. He is lost without you. His parole could be denied.

Tell me why do you care? I ask her this but my suspicion is she would like to give Cecil lessons in gaiety.

Because I admire his talent Mister McCoy. Cecil is a poet who is pissed off at the big things in this world and that give him a heat that happy poets got to stand back from.

You want us to take him home because he pissed off? That ain’t no change.

Artistically she say wheezing that put-down breath again.

Lady that ain’t enough I tell her. Let me show you the door.

When we are on the porch she wants to shake hands again but I don’t chew my cabbage twice. I have been there so I lead her across the yard. Her cheeks get red. I look up and down the neighborhood and all the homes are like mine and Wilma’s. The kind that if they were people they would cough a lot and spit up tangled stuff. Spit shit into the sink.

At her car she hands me the booklet. It is yours she says. Cecil insisted.

I take it in my hands. I say thank you.

She slips into the rattly old thing and starts the motor. A puff of oil smoke come out the back and there is a knocking sound.

I lean down to her window.

Look lady I say. Wish Cecil well but it is like this. He ain’t getting no more poems off of us.

Her head nods and she flips her hand at me. The monster band-aid on the hood has caught my eye again. What kind of craziness is that about I wonder. I want to ask her but she shifts the car and pulls away. So I am left standing there alone to guess just what it is she believe that band-aid fix.