Slice

VARNEY

Daniel would never have expected the girl to accept this weird turn of events in her life so easily. She was perfect. He sensed that he couldn't have done better if he'd had a hundred shots at picking up somebody who would suit his needs to the nth degree. Sissy was one of those people who, once dedicated to a person or a cause or a goal, hoped only to please. She required some direction or she would be aimless and rootless. She was not a self-starter. She needed positioning, guidance, but once she had that she could function with surprising smoothness.

Sissy was of a gentle and placid nature. A girl who had never known a father, or even a particularly strong maternal influence, she took to Daniel as would a duck to the wet stuff. He would tell her precisely what would be expected of her within the framework of each given day or event. Never really bossing her or being domineering, she felt, just telling her the way it was to be. He expected NOTHING from her in return. No sexual favors. Nothing. It was so new to her, this sort of a benevolent, guiding hand, and she took each word from the huge man as if it were handed to her engraved on stone.

She was used to BOYS not men. A boy who would want her only for sex or for companionship on a date, and who would say, “Hey, wanna go to the Steakhouse tonight?” and she'd say, “Sure, sounds great.” And then she'd think for a minute, thinking for both of them and say, “But, uh, Toby,” or Kevin, or whoever, “do you have any MONEY?"

“Um—uh, no,” he'd say. “Uh, can you let me borrow fifteen dollars?” And now here was a guy, a man, who would hand her thousands of dollars and trust her to do the right thing.

She fully expected he'd been conning her when he pulled her off Randolph Street but, God, wasn't it worth a shot to find out? He was so interesting and so convincing and obviously experienced.

Life had not been especially rewarding to Sissy Selkirk. People had told her she was pretty, she was this, she was that. But nothing had ever come of it. Only more of the same boredom and let downs and hand-me-downs. She had failed at school. A boy had taken her virginity. She had gone out into the workplace pregnant and been taken advantage of by an employer who saw in her only the easy sex and vulnerability, paid her minimum wage, abused her, and when she was big with child, abandoned her as her teenaged lover had. She had not picked her men well. She had given birth to a little boy. Guy, named after her unknown father, and she had failed at mothering. Her ways were “unconventional,” and they had taken Guy away from her, and called her unfit to be a mother and put Guy into a foster home somewhere.

This was the first time in years that it looked like something good could happen to her. So when Daniel came in from a hard day of work out in the fields, she was quite content to feed him and watch him leave again “on business” as he often did, with no more dialogue than “You can watch TV or read, okay?” To which she would nod and smile and say, “Sure.” She knew enough not to ask when he was coming back. And then late that night she would hear the rumbling engine of the black Caprice, which he now parked beside the old sharecropper's house.

This night he was heading on a northeast course, driving to Varney, tired from the day's work and his stomach a shrinking, aching tub that growled at him as he drove, putting him in an even darker, more violent mood.

Jesse Keys had been tossin’ down a couple in there makin’ eyes at ole Caroline and tryin’ to wind down after a hellarious week working for the Brewster outfit up at Hubbard City. He had swallered just about enough happy juice and looked at that little ole gal long enough he was ready to put the pork to a dead Mexican, an’ then he decided he better just cat on home and pork the ole lady instead, and he goes outside and gets a big whiffa that nasty fresh air and his sore, tired feet hit that concrete and he was right back where he started. In a bad-ass ornery mood.

The job at Brewster's was a bitch. He was breakin’ a new kid in who wouldn’ listen to shit, doin’ ever'thing his own way, and he figgured, Hell, about another day of that an’ I'm gonna cut him loose. He'd druther work by himself. Fuck up his own job. If that's all there was to it.

He'd be up at five a.m. and at seven he'd be on the job, and they'd be pourin’ if the weather held. Christ on a crutch, he hated concrete. He wished the devil'd never thought of it. It hurt your feet, he thought, even in new metal-toed, cleated ostrich kicks from Hubbard Western Wear, damn stuff wasn't fit to walk on.

All those years at McCullough's on that fuckin’ hard shit, that's what had really done him in. Hell, he blamed concrete for nearly every bad thing that ever happened to him. It got him so steamed, he made himself quit thinkin’ about it and started thinkin’ about the way that ole gal was comin’ on to him. Ooooooooooweeeeeeeeeee.

Damn! That little ole’ gal Caroline could start lookin’ good toward the end of the night when you was gettin’ about three sheets to the wind on that there bourbon and branch water. Why was it just as soon as he'd get about half-drunk them little ole’ fillies would all start up lookin’ like Dolly Parton to him? Shit he'd be damned if he wouldn't fuck a bush if he thought there was a snake in it. He was so horny right now he'd learn to play golf just so he could fuck the holes.

It was the story of his whole damn life and if THAT wasn't a soap opera—well, hot damn, nobody ever writ one. His tallywhacker had got him in a shitpot of trouble and he couldn't do nothing about it either. That was sad. Plum pitiful. If you cain't learn by your mistakes, you jes’ ain't worth whippin'.

He'd been with little Jane and then he'd met Darla Palmer and that stuff was all he could think about. Crap. Ole Darla could just squeeze a man to death with them big, hard-muscled legs of hers. First time he ever climbed up onner he started goin’ limp like a damn fairy. It was like you was puttin’ it to another man. HARD legs. She'd been a dancer, and ole’ Darla had them long, hard legs. Hot damn! She could wrap them around a man, and she knew other tricks too, that little bitch. Darla could fuck your brains out. And so he ended up puttin’ everything on a single toss of them ivories and crappin’ halfway out and him and Jane got into this big-ass courtroom battle and he swore, he said, “God, now I don't pray to you, as you know. But I'm jes’ asking this ONE favor, Lordy, oh yes, sir, I beg ya, jus’ give me Darla and them two boys and PC never take a drink nor fornicate outside my marriage bed again.” But the Lord punished him and only gave him one of them boys and that was better'n nothing, and he got Darla, but shit, it waddn't two months before he was out drunk ‘n tom-cattin’ but hell that was jes’ men, he reckoned. He couldn't help it none that he had certain desires. And they'd give him a big, stiff cock between his legs like tonight with little Caroline in there showin’ him everything she had, and what was a man to do?

He'd go home now and bomb the old lady. Make Jane so sorry she hadn't held on to him she'd faint, make Darla claw the damn walls. Put it to the woman till she flat out begged for mercy. Plum get some for serious and do the cowboy two-step till you drop, ladybug. He did a little shuffle in his Saturday-night boots.

Damn! He jes’ hated concrete with a passion. Jesse Keys thought how much he hated the son of a buck as he walked across the darkened expanse of parking lot, metal-cleated boots ringing on the hard surface. He wished right then that he had his nice soft work shoes on. Them earth shoes or whatever you call ‘em that Jane always bought him. Big, thick, soft-rubber soles between you and the hard world. Every step galled him in the boots. He wished he could turn the clock back sometimes. Shit.

He'd spent sixteen years standing on them damn feet eight hours a day and overtime on the main line at McCullough's, sixteen damn years less vacation and sick leave, standing in front of that big drill press and if he wasn't so bumfuzzled right now he could do that math in his head; sixteen times fifty, let's say, was shit how many weeks. Let's call her eight hundred. Okay, then take and multiply by forty hours plus. That's 3,200 or 32,000 hours he'd stood there, he couldn't make up his mind where the fackin’ zero was. He suspected it was 32,000 anyway. Call her 40,000 hours in front of those big fucks.

Oh, that concrete would get hard after six or seven hours. Stood there 40,000 hours with his young life sappin’ down through the soles of his feet. For what?—for some piddly-ass $474.15 when he left. Shit the damn punch-drunk shift foreman who done good to even read or write his name, he was draggin’ forty large a year plus on the side. Once in a while his boys'd steal somethin’ off the loading docks or outta the warehouse and kick it back partly to him. Only way Jesse never moved up the sumbitch threatened to kill him if he put in for promotion and the little bastard meant it. His shift boss had been a pug. Fought welterweight. He'd look at you real hard and you would go on and quit whatever you was doin’ and move along. Jesse'd seen him hit this one old boy, lifted him plum off'n his feet and he kicked the dude right in the fist with his foot as he went down and that's no lie. He'd never seen anybody get hit that hard.

But it wasn't a bad job. Man could work there blind or forever. Go in floatin’ on pills and wine at eight a.m., drink a couple beers, hit that morning break and him and Eddie Lawson and Slater and ole Joe Bob would go kill a pint between them and come back and coast. You could hold a job at McCullough's if you could crawl. Stand there on the big line—concrete as far as you could see—noisy ole machines a-goin'. Not that computerized shit. Hands on. You did it all, two-fisted. Had a Hammond when he quit. Couldn't remember what them other two had been. Sixteen fucking years. Him and Eddie had quit the same day; Eddie got himself a job driving for United Parcel, and Jesse started pouring the shit. Fucking concrete. His entire life had been fucked over by concrete and he hated the stuff.

He should have stayed at McCullough's. You never worried ‘bout shit. Never took nothin’ home with you at the end of the day. You could stand there and smoke even. Mellow out while you ran your press. If the bosses came you'd see ‘em a mile away and nobody could smell shit in there so everybody knew it was cool and they smoked pot and parried and hell's bells it wasn't like it was a damn death sentence or anything except that it killed your feet standing there like that.

He thought maybe he'd come back tomorrow night about an hour before they closed ‘er down and see if Caroline would like to go out and turkey-trot a little with this ole cowboy and he was moving across the hated concrete when the thing wrapped around him and sort of pulled his head like you'd wrap a string around a yo-yo or a top and as the string or in the case of this particular moment in the life and death of Jesse Keys the chain is pulled, the top is spun, and Jesse went a-spinning out in a violent centrifugation his head seeing a blur of lights in this spinning, blinding whirlwind that cracked out and spun him into a parked truck. It was the last thing he saw, the flashing lights of the spinning horizon, right before the intense pain and the sudden death.

You know how it is when you get hit real hard with a chain? Well, what happens is—nothing. See you don't feel anything right away but the impact of the blow just numbs you out. It's later, that second or two or ten seconds later when the feeling starts coming back that you start screaming and holding yourself and shitting all over your new $375 cowboy boots from the intensity and blinding shock of the unendurable agony because as you well know there is nothing quite like being hit by 21/[2] feet of taped tractor chain. It will flat out put your raggedy country-and-western ass in the big hurt locker. It was a good thing he died real soon thereafter as it spared him a lot of terrible pain.

Shows you there's a good side to almost everything.

It just ain't reasonable to expect you can two-step through life without kickin’ a little cow flop from time to time. It ain't nothin’ personal, it's just the way of the world. Once in a while you're gonna get them size 11 Justin Full Quill Ostrich jobs (regularly $495, special at Hubbard Western Wear only $375!), in the doo-doo. Life is not blue skies all the time. You got to be a philosopher about the thing. Into every life a little chain must fall.