Facing the Music Page 7

  SAMARITANS

  I was smoking my last cigarette in a bar one day, around the middle of the afternoon. I was drinking heavy, too, for several reasons. It was hot and bright outside, and cool and dark inside the bar, so that’s one reason I was in there. But the main reason I was in there was because my wife had left me to go live with somebody else.

  A kid came in there unexpectedly, a young, young kid. And of course that’s not allowed. You can’t have kids coming in bars. People won’t put up with that. I was just on the verge of going out to my truck for another pack of smokes when he walked in. I don’t remember who all was in there. Some old guys, I guess, and probably, some drunks. I know there was one old man, a golfer, who came in there every afternoon with shaky hands, drank exactly three draft beers, and told these crummy dirty jokes that would make you just close your eyes and shake your head without smiling if you weren’t in a real good mood. And back then, I was never in much of a good mood. I knew they’d tell that kid to leave.

  But I don’t think anybody much wanted to. The kid didn’t look good. I thought there was something wrong the minute he stepped in. He had these panicky eyes.

  The bartender, Harry, was a big muscled-up guy with a beard. He was washing beer glasses at the time, and he looked up and saw him standing there. The only thing the kid had on was a pair of green gym shorts that were way too big for him. He looked like maybe he’d been walking down the side of a road for a long time, or something similar to that.

  Harry, he raised up a little and said, “What you want, kid?” I could see that the kid had some change in his hand. He was standing on the rail and he had his elbows hooked over the bar to hold himself up.

  I’m not trying to make this sound any worse than it was, but to me the kid just looked like maybe he hadn’t always had enough to eat. He was two or three months overdue for a haircut, too.

  “I need a pack a cigrets,” he said. I looked at Harry to see what he’d say. He was already shaking his head.

  “Can’t sell em to you, son,” he said. “Minor.”

  I thought the kid might give Harry some lip. He didn’t. He said, “Oh,” but he stayed where he was. He looked at me. I knew then that something was going on. But I tried not to think about it. I had troubles enough of my own.

  Harry went back to washing his dishes, and I took another drink of my beer. I was trying to cut down, but it was so damn hot outside, and I had a bunch of self-pity loading up on me at that time. The way I had it figured, if I could just stay where I was until the sun went down, and then make my way home without getting thrown in jail, I’d be okay. I had some catfish I was going to thaw out later.

  Nobody paid any attention to the kid after that. He wasn’t making any noise, wasn’t doing anything to cause people to look at him. He turned loose of the bar and stepped down off the rail, and I saw his head going along the far end toward the door.

  But then he stuck his face back around the corner, and motioned me toward him with his finger. I didn’t say a word, I just looked at him. I couldn’t see anything but his eyes sticking up, and that one finger, crooked at me, moving.

  I could have looked down at my beer and waited until he went away. I could have turned my back. I knew he couldn’t stay in there with us. He wasn’t old enough. You don’t have to get yourself involved in things like that. But I had to go out for my cigarettes, eventually. Right past him.

  I got up and went around there. He’d backed up into the dark part of the lounge.

  “Mister,” he said. “Will you loan me a dollar?”

  He already had money for cigarettes. I knew somebody outside had sent him inside.

  I said, “What do you need a dollar for?”

  He kind of looked around and fidgeted his feet in the shadows while he thought of what he was going to say.

  “I just need it,” he said. “I need to git me somethin.”

  He looked pretty bad. I pulled out a dollar and gave it to him. He didn’t say thanks or anything. He just turned and pushed open the door and went outside. I started not to follow him just then. But after a minute I did.

  The way the bar’s made, there’s a little enclosed porch you come into before you get into the lounge. There’s a glass door where you can stand inside and look outside. God, it was hot out there. There wasn’t even a dog walking around. The sun was burning down on the parking lot, and the car the kid was crawling into was about what I’d expected. A junky-ass old Rambler, wrecked on the right front end, with the paint almost faded off, and slick tires, and a rag hanging out of the grill. It was parked beside my truck and it was full of people. It looked like about four kids in the backseat. The woman who was driving put her arm over the seat, said something to the kid, and then reached out and whacked the hell out of him.

  I started to go back inside so I wouldn’t risk getting involved. But Harry didn’t have my brand and there was a pack on the dash. I could see them from where I was, sitting there in the sun, almost close enough for the woman to reach out and touch.

  I’d run over a dog with my truck that morning and I wasn’t feeling real good about it. The dog had actually been sleeping in the road. I thought he was already dead and was just going to straddle him until I got almost on top of him, when he raised up suddenly and saw me, and tried to run. Of course I didn’t have time to stop by then. If he’d just stayed down, he’d have been all right. The muffler wouldn’t have even hit him. It was just a small dog. But, boy, I heard it when it hit the bottom of my truck. It went WHOP! and the dog—it was a white dog—came rolling out from under my back bumper with all four legs stiff, yelping. White hair was flying everywhere. The air was full of it. I could see it in my rearview mirror. And I don’t know why I was thinking about that dog I’d killed while I was watching those people, but I was. It didn’t make me feel any better.

  They were having some kind of terrible argument out there in that suffocating hot car. There were quilts and pillows piled up in there, like they’d been camping out. There was an old woman on the front seat with the woman driving, the one who’d whacked hell out of her kid for coming back empty-handed.

  I thought maybe they’d leave if I waited for a while. I thought maybe they’d try to get their cigarettes somewhere else. And then I thought maybe their car wouldn’t crank. Maybe, I thought, they’re waiting for somebody to come along with some jumper cables and jump them off. But I didn’t have any jumper cables. I pushed open the door and went down the steps.

  There was about three feet of space between my truck and their car. They were all watching me. I went up to the window of my truck and got my cigarettes off the dash. The woman driving turned all the way around in the seat. You couldn’t tell how old she was. She was one of those women that you can’t tell about. But probably somewhere between thirty and fifty. She didn’t have liver spots. I noticed that.

  I couldn’t see all of the old woman from where I was standing. I could just see her old wrinkled knees, and this dirty slip she had sticking out from under the edge of her housecoat. And her daughter—I knew that was who she was—didn’t look much better. She had a couple of long black hairs growing out of this mole on her chin that was the size of a butter bean. Her hair kind of looked like a mophead after you’ve used it for a long time. One of the kids didn’t even have any pants on.

  She said, “Have they got some cold beer in yonder?” She shaded her eyes with one hand while she looked up at me.

  I said, “Well, yeah. They do. But they won’t sell cigarettes to a kid that little.”

  “It just depends on where they know ye or not,” she said. “If they don’t know ye then most times they won’t sell em to you. Is that not right?”

  I knew I was already into something. You can get into something like that before you know it. In a minute.

  “I guess so,” I said.

  “Have you got—why you got some, ain’t you? Can I git one of them off you?” She was pointing to the cigarettes in my hand. I opened the pack and gave
her one. The kid leaned out and wanted to know if he could have one, too.

  “Do you let him smoke?”

  “Why, he just does like he wants to,” she said. “Have you not got a light?”

  The kid was looking at me. I had one of those Bics, a red one, and when I held it out to her smoke, she touched my hand for a second and held it steady with hers. She looked up at me and tried to smile. I knew I needed to get back inside right away, before it got any worse. I turned to go and what she came out with stopped me dead in my tracks.

  “You wouldn’t buy a lady a nice cold beer, would you?” she said. I turned around. There was this sudden silence, and I knew that everybody in the car was straining to hear what I would say. It was serious. Hot, too. I’d already had about five and I was feeling them a little in the heat. I took a step back without meaning to and she opened her door.

  “I’ll be back in a little bit, Mama,” she said.

  I looked at those kids. Their hair was ratty and their legs were skinny. It was so damn hot you couldn’t stand to stay out in it. I said, “You gonna leave these kids out here in the sun?”

  “Aw, they’ll be all right,” she said. But she looked around kind of uncertainly. I was watching those kids. They were as quiet as dead people.

  I didn’t want to buy her a beer. But I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it, either. I didn’t want to keep looking at those kids. I just wanted to be done with it.

  “Lady,” I said, “I’ll buy you a beer. But those kids are burning up in that car. Why don’t you move it around there in the shade?”

  “Well.” She hesitated. “I reckon I could,” she said. She got back in and it cranked right up. The fan belt was squealing, and some smoke farted out from the back end. But she limped it around to the side and left it under a tree. Then we went inside together.

  The first Bud she got didn’t last two minutes. She sucked the can dry. She had on some kind of military pants and a man’s long-sleeved work shirt, and house shoes. Blue ones, with a little fuzzy white ball on each. She had the longest toes I’d ever seen.

  Finally I asked her if she wanted another beer. I knew she did.

  “Lord yes. And I need some cigrets too if you don’t care. Marlboro Lights. Not the menthol. Just reglar lights.”

  I didn’t know what to say to her. I thought about telling her I was going to the bathroom, and then slipping out the door. But I really wasn’t ready to leave just yet. I bought her another beer and got her some cigarettes.

  “I’m plumb give out,” she said. “Been drivin all day.”

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want anybody to think I was going with her.

  “We tryin to git to Morgan City Loozeanner. M’husband’s sposed to’ve got a job down there and we’s agoin to him. But I don’t know,” she said. “That old car’s about had it.”

  I looked around in the bar and looked at my face in the mirror behind the rows of bottles. The balls were clicking softly on the pool tables.

  “We left from Tuscalooser Alabama,” she said. “But them younguns has been yellin and fightin till they’ve give me a sick headache. It shore is nice to set down fer a minute. Ain’t it good and cool in here?”

  I watched her for a moment. She had her legs crossed on the bar stool and about two inches of ash hanging off her cigarette. I got up and went out the door, back to the little enclosed porch. By looking sideways I could see the Rambler parked under the shade. One of the kids was squatted down behind it, using the bathroom. I thought about things for a while and then went back in and sat down beside her.

  “Ain’t many men’ll hep out a woman in trouble,” she said. “Specially when she’s got a buncha kids.”

  I ordered myself another beer. The old one was hot. I set it up on the bar and she said, “You not goin to drank that?”

  “It’s hot,” I said.

  “I’ll drank it,” she said, and she pulled it over next to her. I didn’t want to look at her anymore. But she had her eyes locked on me and she wouldn’t take them off. She put her hand on my wrist. Her fingers were cold.

  “It’s some people in this world has got thangs and some that ain’t,” she said. “My deddy used to have money. Owned three service stations and a sale barn. Had four people drove trucks fer him. But you can lose it easy as you git it. You ought to see him now. We cain’t even afford to put him in a rest home.”

  I got up and went over to the jukebox and put two quarters in. I played some John Anderson and some Lynn Anderson and then I punched Narvel Felts. I didn’t want to have to listen to what she had to say.

  She was lighting a cigarette off the butt of another one when I sat down beside her again. She grabbed my hand as soon as it touched the bar.

  “Listen,” she said. “That’s my mama out yonder in that car. She’s seventy-eight year old and she ain’t never knowed nothin but hard work. She ain’t got a penny in this world. What good’s it done her to work all her life?”