The Complete Drive-In

4

When I caught up with the others, they were standing beside the street looking out between a couple of shacks made of mud and sticks, staring at a man hanging from the limb of a big oak tree. He was spinning around, kicking his feet and working his elbows as if in a square dance. The elbows were all he could work of his arms, since his hands were tied behind his back.

On a bench near the oak sat two men and a woman. They looked like benched baseball players waiting for their turn at an inning.

“Suicide tree I told you about,” Grace said. “Come on.”

“I don’t want to see that,” I said.

“Me neither,” Bob said.

“I’ll pass too,” Crier said.

“Do what you want,” Grace said to me, “but they’re going to hang themselves anyway and you fellas need pants.”

“Pants?” I said.

“You think those folks are gonna need them later?”

“I got pants,” Crier said. “They’re ragged, but they’re pants. I’ll just hang out.”

Grace led Bob and me over to the tree. I looked up at the guy. His face was purple as a plum and his neck was swollen out in such a way it was starting to spread over the rope. His tongue was flopping against his chin and he was biting through it. His eyes were crossed and the lid of one was drooped halfway down and the other eye looked like a table tennis ball being pushed out of the hole from behind.

We went over to the bench. The woman was sitting on the end near us and the men were sitting next to each other. She looked at us. The hair on one side of her head had been burned off, and the hair on the other side wasn’t anything to be proud of. It was dirty-brown and kinky as wire. I’ve seen Brillo pads with more class. She had on a filthy T-shirt and her nipples were punching through it. The jeans she had on were thin enough to shit through. Her face wasn’t any kind of special. It was covered with pimples and red welts. She was barefoot.

The two guys weren’t fashion models either. They had beards full of dirt, bugs and fruit seeds. Their dark coloring wasn’t the result of the sun’s rays. You could have packed lunches on the pores of their skin.

I hated to think what I looked like.

“Bench is full,” the woman said. “Come back tomorrow. Three’s about it for a day. Them’s the rules.”

“We’re not here to hang ourselves,” Grace said.

“If you’re going to watch,” she said, “stay back out of the way. This bastard won’t never choke. I bet he’s been up there an hour.”

“He looks about gone to me,” I said.

The man beside her, the skinnier of the two, said, “Who can tell how long he’s been up there. Time isn’t worth a duck fart here. But you should have seen him just a little while ago. He looked worse than this. I think he’s gotten him a second wind.”

“Maybe he’s changed his mind,” I said.

At that the hanging man began to kick his legs vigorously. “No, don’t think so,” the woman said.

“Look at him,” I said.

“You can’t pay that any mind. It doesn’t mean a thing. He wanted to go worse than the rest of us. He bit Clarence there to get first in line.”

Clarence was the skinny fella. He held up a sticklike arm and pushed his short sleeve back. There was a crescent of teeth wounds.

“He called me some things I’ve never heard,” said Clarence, “then he pushed me on the ground and bit me. I told him to go ahead. Hell, I wasn’t even next in line. Fran was. But look who he bit. That’s the way it’s always been for me. I tied his hands for him and boosted him into the rope. More than he deserved, I’ll tell you. Which reminds me, you folks around when Gene here goes, maybe you could tie his hands for him. It works better that way, otherwise you claw at the rope, no matter how bad you want to go.”

“I’ll make do,” Gene said. He got up and went over to the hanging man and jumped on him and swung back and forth like a kid on a tire swing. The hanging man’s neck lengthened.

“We probably won’t be around long enough to help Gene,” Grace said, “but we wanted to try and talk you out of your pants, just you fellas. Jack and Bob here don’t have anything but these dresses.”

“Noticed that,” Clarence said, “and I’ll tell you boys, you haven’t got the legs for it.”

From the hanging man came a sound like a semi tire blowing out at high speed.

“Goddamn,” Clarence said, “there’s the signal.”

“Yeah,” Fran said. “It’s nature’s way of saying ‘ Sayonara, motherfucker.’”

“It’s nature’s way of filling your pants with shit, is what it is,” Clarence said. “Get off of him, Gene. Let’s get him down and get Fran up there. Come on, get off of him, goddamnit.”

“About those pants,” Grace said.

“Guess you want them before I hang myself,” Clarence said.

“Well,” Grace said, “you know how it is, nature’s sayonara and all.”

Clarence nodded and undressed. He didn’t have on any underwear. He tossed the clothes at me. “Take all of it. Shoes too, if they fit. Hell, if they don’t fit.”

I gathered up the clothes and held them. They smelled a little ripe.

“Hey Gene,” Clarence said. “Want to help the other fella out?”

Gene had finally got off the dead man, and he came over to the bench and sat down. He took off his clothes, except for some soiled, green boxer shorts, and gave them to Bob.

“Go on, enjoy them,” Clarence said. “You want to thank us later, well, we’ll be hanging around.”

Clarence loved that. He laughed like a drunk hyena.

He was tying Fran’s hands for her when we went away.