Leather Maiden

9

There were all those months in Iraq, the earth the color of a dried-up tortilla, the sky a bright blaze of hot blue forever, and always the sounds of explosions and the smells of death, and me counting down the moments, knowing to the hour, almost to the minute, when my time was supposed to be up, expecting to have my stay extended, certain of it, feeling as if it would all never end. It was as if I had been dropped down onto another planet where the people and the world bore no relation to me.

There was the loss of my buddies and seeing innocent Iraqi people, as well as those who were not so innocent, lying dead and bloated and full of the stink of the bloody departed.

All those months, those days, those hours, those minutes, riding around in half-assed vehicles with hillbilly armor, stuff we made for ourselves out of whatever we could find and tack on to our rides. So there we were, cruising, expecting a blast to blow right through it all, knock shrapnel up our asses, then, to top it off, came Gabby’s letter and nothing much mattered anymore, except maybe dying, and then there was the big fight in the Baghdad street, and I caught some business, and some buddies of mine caught it too, killing two of them. I was injured, but saved.

Booger, he just got blown skyward, like some kind of goddamn circus act, and he did a few rolls and came up wearing smoking clothes, still had his piece in his hand, and baby, he let it rock. Rocked and rolled all over that street. I don’t know if he shot anyone, had anything to do with anything, but he rocked it and bopped it and bullets tore this way and that, and when it was over there was meat all over the place, pieces of cloth, disconnected Iraqi souls colliding together into a rising smudge of thick, dark smoke.

I was saved. Booger did it. And saved for what, if not to go home to Gabby, to make a life with her? I could imagine her with her long brown hair brushed until it was so lustrous it glowed like wet chocolate, and I could see her in one of the outfits she wore, a blue suit jacket with wide lapels and white pinstripes, and a skirt to match, and I could remember the way her high heels made her legs look, long and muscular in dark stockings, the way her eyes flashed and the way she smiled, her teeth perfect. And in my imaginings we would come together and kiss. I would be the conquering hero. We would go to her place, and I would slowly take her out of that suit and pull her boots off and gently guide her stockings off her legs, and we would make love, slowly and happily, like we had always done, but this time, it would be even more wonderful, because it would be a new beginning, and soon we would marry, and the sunlight would always be warm and the moonlight would always be romantic, and our days would be full of fine moments and even the rain would be gentle and sweet to the nose and rhythmic to the ears as it splashed to the ground.

Such are dreams.

It was a hard pill to swallow, even now, and to make it go down good, I drove out to a little bar that didn’t belong to my boss’s husband. When I got inside it was cool and dark as if it were hours later. The place had that peculiar smell bars have that is a mixture of spilt liquor and cigarette smoke, sweat and shit-filled dreams.

There was a pretty good-looking woman on one of the bar stools wearing a dark blouse and a short blue jean skirt and some oversized white shoes. I could tell from the way she sat there, smoking her cigarette, her legs crossed, one foot bobbing a shoe, the near empty glass on the counter in front of her, that she was as regular here as the rising and the setting of the sun.

I sat on the stool next to her and looked at her and showed her the smile my mother always said was electric. I said, “Can I buy you a drink?”

“Actually,” she said, “I’d rather just have the money.”

“That’s funny,” I said, but from the way she looked at me, I suspected that my electric smile was short of wattage today.

I reached in my pocket and got out five dollars and put it on the bar, and said, “Okay. There’s your money.”

She turned her head without moving her body, said, “Francis, this fuck is bothering me.”

A guy about the size of three guys came out of the back: The bartender. The bouncer. The owner.

He said, “You giving some trouble?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I just offered to buy the lady a drink.”

“And I don’t want it,” she said.

“She don’t want it,” he said.

“Okay,” I said, and picked up my five and went out. I went to a liquor store and bought a lot of beer and some Wild Turkey, drove around thinking about all sorts of things and none of them good.

I had a licensed conceal-carry pistol in the glove box of my car, and I remembered when I was in Iraq a soldier friend told me he thought about his piece all the time. Said he had read where Hemingway had called death a gift. I told him, if it is, you won’t have time to open that little present, it’ll happen so fast. But there I was driving around thinking of the pistol in the glove box and what that soldier had told me not so long ago about Hemingway’s gift.

I drove out past the old abandoned sawmills. There were still a couple where the center of Camp Rapture had once been, back when it was a timber town, back when my great-grandmother Sunset Jones had been the first woman constable in the history of East Texas, and until recent times, only one of two.

Driving out there, I felt lonely and strange, like when you hear the sound of a distant train whistle, the cry of a bird as night falls down, or see a sad face on a passing bus.

Maybe I just needed to get drunk.

I drove back along the edge of town. I could see the clock tower on the campus, standing tall and majestic. The lights were bright behind the great glass that showed not only the face of the clock, but the stylized gear work inside. And there were other lights, little quarter-moon windows full of gold that ran all the way down the face of the tower. I turned and put the clock tower in the rearview mirror.

I drove out to where the last of the motels were, scattered about like cracker boxes blown into place by a wild tornado. I parked at a motel that had a jumping frog on a neon sign; it leaped forward and back as I watched. I got a room that was a slot in the wall. It was hot even as the air conditioner struggled loud as a car wreck to cool it.

It was a room full of flies and mosquitoes that had slipped in through a cracked window that was frozen that way by a lousy paint job that had dried it tight and incapable of shutting. I sat in a chair in my underwear and watched TV and drank, and then I made my way to the bed and drank some more. When I awoke the TV was still on and I was lying on top of the sheets, having pissed myself. The room smelled of urine and alcohol and it seemed as if I had been lathered in Wild Turkey; basted was more like it. It was furnace-hot in there and I was baking in my juices and the flies and mosquitoes were loving me for a landing pad.

It took me half a day to get out of bed. I was followed by flies into the shower. I let the water run hot and long while I sat in the tub and it rained down on me. I would have been in there longer, but the hot water ran out and turned cold. I took that for a few seconds, got out and dried off with shaky hands.

I threw the pissy underwear in the waste can, got dressed and left. I felt as prideless and empty of heart as a Thanksgiving turkey.

I parked at the curb and saw another car parked in the drive behind Mom and Dad’s blue PT Cruiser. A black Hummer. Not new, but damn nice. I knew that would be my brother. Great. Mr. Successful, and now me, Mr. Drunk, soon to be under the same roof.

For a moment I thought about driving off, but there was really nowhere to go. I had some mints in my glove box. I got them out and put a few in my mouth and chewed them up and swallowed them, then popped another and sucked on it.

Just before I got out of the car, I realized that lying on the seat, where I had left it, was the mass of material Mercury had put together for me, all of it tucked into a kind of accordion file. I took a deep breath, picked up the file and got out of the car.

As I walked up the drive toward the front door, Jazzy called out.

“Hi.”

I looked up in the tree at her. She was wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt today, still no shoes. Her hair looked matted. “I didn’t notice you up there,” I said.

“I fool you all the time,” she said.

“Trust me,” I said, “you’re not the only one.”

“I’m pretty sneaky. My mama says it’s not bad to be sneaky. That part of life is being sneaky.”

Jazzy was certainly getting a special education.

“You don’t look so good,” Jazzy said.

“I don’t feel so good.”

“Did you get beat up?”

“Nothing like that. Unless you count life as the thug.”

“Do what?”

“I was attacked by a wild turkey and a big part of Milwaukee.”

“What?”

“I’m joking. I’m just tired.”

“You’re not funny.”

“I get that a lot too.”

“If you got beat up, you can tell me,” she said. “I been beat up.”

That’s all I needed to hear to top off a perfect day, something to charge on into the weekend with. Knowing the little girl that lived next door to us had had beatings. And my guess is she didn’t mean spankings, but exactly what she said. Beatings.

“Who beat you up?” I asked.

“I’m not supposed to tell.”

I understood exactly why my dad had knocked the shit out of Daddy Greg.

“You got bumps on your face,” she said. “Do you have pimples?”

“I have mosquito bites…Have you eaten, Jazzy?”

“I had a banana this morning.”

“You must be hungry.”

“We don’t have nothing but cornflakes and some beer. There’s not any milk to put on the cornflakes. Mama puts beer on hers, but I’m too young for that, she says.”

Thank goodness for small favors.

“She don’t cook much, but she can do a Rubik’s Cube. She’s real smart.”

“Are you going to school?”

“It’s summer, silly.”

“Did you go before summer?”

“Some. Mama slept late a lot and I didn’t always get a ride. She had places to go a lot of the time. Mostly I wasn’t here. I went all the time when I lived in Houston with Mee-maw. She died.”

I got it then. Foster care. And now with Mee-maw out of the picture, the mother had once again ended up with the child.

“Why don’t you come in with me, see if my mom can fix you something?” I said. I looked at my watch. It was after five. My folks ate dinner early. It was perfect timing.

“Your mama is nice. So’s your daddy.”

“They are at that. Come on. It’s all right when you’ve been invited.”