Rumble Tumble

5

On the way to Brett’s house, I felt her mood go dark. She had suddenly realized just what kind of people her daughter was involved with. It’s not that she hadn’t known before, or hadn’t tried to convince Tillie to give it up, but now, with Tillie wanting out, and her seeing scum like Red and Wilber, she knew the world of her daughter firsthand. It’s one thing to wave at the devil from afar, quite another to shake the bastard’s hand.

Brett didn’t say a word about how she felt, but I could feel the change in her, tangible as the taste of a stinkbug in your last spoonful of custard.

And speaking of which, the lovebugs were worse. They came at the car like bullets, splattered and spurted their grease across the windshield until it was impossible to see. Brett had to pull over at a serve-yourself filling station. I got out and pumped gas and tried to clean the windshield with the water hose and a paper towel, but it wasn’t a very good job. The water just mixed with the bug goo and spread itself over the windshield like film over a dying eye.

Back in the car, I said, “How about that light lunch?”

“Sure,” Brett said, then she began to cry. I slid over and put my arm around her and kissed her cheek, which was wet with tears. She said, “I know now she’s in trouble. Hell, I’ve known that all along. Why didn’t I do something?”

“You tried to talk her out of it.”

“I should have gone up there and got her.”

“She wouldn’t have come.”

“She wants out now.”

“That’s now,” I said.

“She could be dead.”

“No reason to think that. Guy like this Big Jim, he doesn’t kill his stock over something like that. Meat on the hoof is how he sees it. It’ll probably be like Red said. A punishment of some kind. Hooking where she wouldn’t want to hook.”

“I can understand fucking,” Brett said, “but for money, and with anybody, and with someone telling you what to do. And all kinds of disease. Some of the men …”

“I know.”

“I can’t believe I’m boo-hooing like this. It’s embarrassing.”

“Shouldn’t be.”

“But it is.”

“Hell, I cry, Brett.”

“Does it mess up your eye makeup?”

“Absolutely.”

She smiled, said, “I could call the cops, and maybe do something there, but a hooker, I don’t think they’re going to be all that concerned. They were, this Big Jim wouldn’t be doing business like he’s doing.”

“Some cops are concerned,” I said. “Most. It’s just not that simple. Guys like Big Jim know how to do bad business and have people know it’s bad business, and still get away with it.”

“Then I’ve got to go get her. Hap, I have to.”

“I know.”

The light lunch was at Brett’s place, a tunafish sandwich with sweet apple slices in it, ice tea with lots of ice and no sugar, potato chips, and sweet pickles forked from a jar. We sat at the kitchen table and ate slowly and talked awhile, tried to figure what to do.

I said, “You know this isn’t going to be a walk in the park?”

“Yes. I know.”

“We’re not going to drive up there and say ‘We’ve come to get Tillie. Sleepover is finished.’ It’s not that easy.”

“I know.”

“It could turn ugly.”

“I understand that. I’m not askin’ you …”

“You are and you aren’t,” I said. “We’ve been over that. I’m not saying I won’t go. I’ve already said I would. All I’m doing is warning you. We go up there, it could still turn out bad for Tillie.”

“You think, as is, it’s going to get better?”

“No, I don’t. I guess I’m actually telling you what you can expect for yourself. It might be best you stay here, let me go.”

“I wouldn’t let you go by yourself.”

“Leonard and I would go.”

“You don’t know he’ll go.”

“Yes, I do. But if he didn’t, couldn’t, I’d still go. And this is more something me and him can handle.”

“You’re sure?”

“No. But it sounds good.”

Brett turned her glass of ice tea around and around in her hand, said, “I can’t let you go by yourself. You go, with or without Leonard, I go too.”

“What about your job?” I asked.

“What about yours?”

“I can leave it. It’s not like I wasn’t looking for a job when I found that one.”

“I can get off too.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure. It might make my supervisor’s butt hole suck wind, but I’ve got some more vacation time coming. I need to get off, I can.”

“All right,” I said. “But you got to consider some things. These guys, they probably knew Tillie, all right. They may have worked for this Big Jim, but we don’t know they’re telling the exact truth.”

“I guess I have some doubts, them driving all the way down here for five hundred dollars.”

“Actually, I buy that,” I said. “Scum like that, they’ll do anything for a buck. They’ve probably robbed and looted every damn thing they could on their way down here. They figured since they were en route to Mexico, they might as well stop by and pick up five hundred bucks from you. We don’t even know for sure Tillie wants you to come get her, or that she told them to ask for five hundred dollars. They may just know you’re her mother, and nothing else. This could all be some story they made up. A grain of truth here and there, like a couple of whole corn kernels that have passed through the bowels on their way to becoming shit.”

“That’s metaphorical talk for you think they could be lying a lot. Right?”

“Right.”

Somehow we drifted toward the bedroom, and it was very cool in there, and the sheets were soft and sweet-smelling and Brett was warm and even sweeter, and I kissed her lips, then her breasts, pausing to roll my tongue around and over her hard nipples. I ran my tongue down the length of her long legs, and kissed where she had shaved herself, then I kissed everything else there was to kiss, rolled her on her stomach, moved her legs apart, and entered her.

Brett had the CD going, playing The Best of Percy Sledge—which means anything he ever sang. The song was “When a Man Loves a Woman,” and the way he sang made time stop. We made love for a long time, and eventually I had no idea which song was playing, and finally, when we finished, both of us satiated, I was somehow startled to realize we lay hugging each other in silence.

After a while, Brett said, “Now, that was some fuck.”

“Yeah,” I said, “and next time, I’m going to put my whole thing in.”

“Yeah, right,” Brett said. “What I meant to say, was that was some fuck, considering what you have to work with, and I don’t mean me, pardner.”

“Oh ho.”

“Ho ho.”

“Ho, ho, ho.”

“Oh, ho, ho, ho.”

We lay there for a while, kissing. Brett said, “You know, what we been talking about. About you and me.”

“Me moving in?”

“Yeah. I still want that. But right now, I don’t know we should. I don’t know how things are—”

“I understand.”

“—and Tillie, we go get her, well, I may need to keep her here, and with you and me trying to work things out together right now, I don’t know.”

“I understand.”

“Well, don’t understand too goddamn quick, mister. I want to do it, but maybe right now isn’t good. It could put a strain on all of us that we don’t need at the moment.”

“It’ll be all right.”

“I love you, Hap.”

“And I love you.”

“It’s okay we wait?”

“Sure.”

“Want to stroke the bald beaver again?”

“Will it bite?”

“Absolutely.”

We made love again. Less passionate this time, but satisfying nonetheless, then we lay with pillows propped behind our heads and Brett got the remote off the nightstand and turned the television on.

We lay there and watched some stupid talk show with a pig that was supposed to play a harmonica. The pig seemed bored. His owner held the harmonica, and the pig, a red neckerchief tied around its throat, tried to be cooperative and made a halfhearted attempt to blow into it. He could make a noise, but I wouldn’t call it music. The pig’s owner claimed it was taps.

Frankly, unless the sonofabitch can hit more than one note, I’m not that impressed with harmonica-playing pigs. In fact, way I feel these days, I don’t know one could actually play taps, or even “The Star Spangled Banner,” would excite me much.

We lay there holding each other, watching this pig, and finally some other program even more bland, then nothing. We fell asleep in each other’s arms, the TV going, and when we awoke in the late afternoon a famous talk show host was trying to help some whitebread woman in a five-hundred-dollar dress sell a book she’d written on the power of love; about how all we had to do to make things right was just believe in love and it would fill the air.

Pollution fills the air, honey, you believe in it or not. Love takes more work than that. And unlike pollution, sometimes love goes away.