Karen G. Berry - Mayhem 01 - Love and Mayhem Page 16

  “Lord, I agree with thee.” He went to work.

  He stood with arms spread in the glow of his sign, lit with the cold glow of the fluorescent tubes, the wasting moon, and the words with which he could not argue.

  How vile men are, how depraved and loathsome; not one does anything good!

  —Psalms 14:1

  He was glad to be apart from mankind. He didn’t care that people scorned him for his solitary, unwashed existence. He didn’t care that people mocked his reader board ministry, or even worse, ignored it. He didn’t care that someone would soon rearrange the letters of his latest verse into a ribald rebuke that might contain the word ‘nigger.’ No, Asa Strug didn’t care.

  He had God on his side, after all.

  FOR ONCE, MEMPHIS had slept the night in his own bed. He woke, not to the alarm, and not to the birds, but to the jangle of the phone. “If I never,” he mumbled, stumbling to his feet, sliding on his stocking feet across the linoleum floor to the kitchen’s wall phone.

  His soft ‘hello’ was lost in her screech. “Memphis, I have SOLVED the MURDER!”

  His ears, his ears. “Rhondalee, I appreciate…”

  “Don’t interrupt me, Memphis! I KNOW who DID it! I’ll tell you in person! This phone might be TAPPED! This is a matter of, of… GRAVE NATIONAL SECURITY!” Then she slammed down the receiver.

  What a way to start the day. Memphis had no idea how his brother survived being married. He reminded himself, there but for the Grace of God.

  Memphis felt a little guilt over his brother’s life. But Tender had Raven, didn’t he, and that was something, to have a child, to have raised a young woman up. But he shouldn’t have given up playing. If Tender had stayed on the stage with his daughter, maybe she would have enjoyed it more. Maybe she would have stayed on the road as a musician, and not taken up trucking, and never ended up on the road on that night.

  But then again, he thought. But then again. Which part of life would you undo, not knowing what other parts would vanish because of it? Life had to be accepted. It was of a piece. Pull out a thread and you ruin the pattern.

  He stood for a moment at his open back door and looked out at the thirty acres of undisturbed land behind his house. Raven called it his “rock farm.” He whistled. John Lee pulled himself up and staggered to the door. “Come on, boy, let’s water the crop.” Memphis feared the limp was worse. The old dog could still lift his leg, Memphis was glad to see.

  He returned to the sunny kitchen and removed the cover from the finches. They poked their beaks out of the nest, then hopped out. Their sweet tones mingled with the strangely erotic sounds of his Mr. Coffee, a Christmas gift last year from Garth. The coffeemaker moaned so low and then so high, with what sounded like whimpers and groans in between. The noise intrigued and embarrassed him.

  John Lee went back to his corner, lay down and thumped his tail. The birds devoted themselves to seed tossing. Memphis stretched and gave his head a thoroughly satisfying scratching. He poured himself a cup of coffee and stood in the sunshine that streamed through his open back door. He didn’t have Jesus in his heart anymore, but on a morning like this, Memphis just had to believe in God.

  He set his coffee aside and picked up his fiddle. Memphis played from the chin, high, aching notes that bounced between the hard blue shell of the sky and the bleached-out dust of the horizon. He played a duet with his own echo, and his heart pulled to hear the answering tones of his brother’s silenced song.

  His phone rang again. “Why don’t I have it grafted to my blessed ear?” he snarled. He set down the fiddle and picked up the phone.

  It wasn’t a pleasant conversation. Not only did he have to hear about his brother’s arrest (“for assaulting Gator Rollins? Are you telling me my brother, who as far as I know has not laid a hand on anyone since he left school at age fifteen, has assaulted a man he doesn’t even know?”), but he had to listen to Hiram’s halting, apologetic, and completely inadequate defense as to why he hadn’t called Memphis and let him know that his own brother had been in jail. What was the excuse? “I figgered you was needing some sleep.”

  “Hiram, I am ALWAYS needing sleep.”

  “Well, Sheriff, what the heck.”

  He took a deep breath and cast around internally for some patience. “Well, let me get down there and get him out.”

  “Sheriff, he’s done made bail last night.”

  Memphis stood up very straight. “He made bail? Who bailed him out, Hiram?” He listened. “Hiram, are you sure that’s who it was?” He hung up, bowed his head, and prayed. Dear Lord, let there be some explanation for this that doesn’t end in my brother’s life being torn apart.

  Amen.

  A BIT LATER, in his creased uniform pants and shirt, he removed his hat and took a seat at the counter of the Daisy Diner.

  “The usual, Memphis?”

  “Please, Ranita.” He located and opened his little notebook, and looked down at his notes. He had too many games of Tic-Tac-Toe in there, and not enough leads.

  Ding! Order up. It was his eggs, and he forked them in without tasting.

  He thought about Gator Rollins. The man is an abomination, he thought. I mean, at least mosquitoes feed frogs and fish and wasps carry pollen and snakes keep the rodent population under control. But what is the point of a thing like Gator Rollins? A dead end, Memphis knew, but he wanted to chase the man into that dead end and have a few kicks at him. Apparently his brother had already done that, however. What on earth could have gotten into Tender to rouse him to violence?

  Ding! Order up.

  “Ranita?” He spoke softly, and she leaned in, the bliss of her bosom so close to his face. “I need the check.” She gave it to him with a smile.

  Ding! Daisy’s hand was awfully heavy on that bell.

  Memphis ambled out to his cruiser, taking a ritualistic moment to adjust the mirrors and fine-tune the angle of his hat. A loud rap on his window made him jump a like a kicked dog. Oh Lord, he thought, holding his heart and cranking down the window before she broke it. “Rhondalee? May I help you?”

  “Memphis, as I TOLD you, I have SOLVED the MURDER!”

  His ears, his ears. “Thank you, Rhondalee. You’ve saved me a great deal of work.”

  “Don’t TEASE me, Memphis! I KNOW who DID it! Quentin Romaine.”

  Memphis shook his head. “Quentin? Why do you say that, Rhondalee?”

  “Well, I was walking back from Sunday morning Coffee Klatch, and I saw him painting his lawn jockey white.”

  “And so?”

  “So? So? Don’t you UNDERSTAND? He beat the Reverend to death with that thing, and was painting it to cover up the TRACES!”

  Memphis sighed. “If Quentin Romaine tried to lift that, he’d have welled up and shot all over the Park like Old Faithful.” They took a moment to mentally consider the visual image.

  “Well, maybe he was inspired with rage. People are like that, you know, those old ladies lift up cars and such, Memphis.”

  “That’s just on the Lucy Show, Rhondalee. Besides, Quentin had filed a complaint because an Open Armer hit his jockey with a half-ton pickup and marred the paint. I’m sure he was repairing the damage. And both Beau Neely and Raven told me that Quentin was in the bar while the Reverend was meeting his maker.”

  Rhondalee looked him deeply in the eye, as if she were trying to hypnotize him. Memphis stared back, transfixed by her earrings, which appeared to be made from a pair of those tree-shaped air fresheners that hang from rear-view windows, all covered with glitter and braid. She noticed his stare and brightened at the attention. “Do you like these?” Rhondalee shook her head and set her earrings to clattering. Memphis caught a whiff of chemical evergreen. “We’re all going to make them at Crafts Circle, this Friday.”

  Memphis cleared his throat. “Now, it was a pleasure speaking with you, as always Rhondalee, but I have a call to make.” And in as mannerly a fashion as he could, the Sheriff rolled up his window and drove away.

  Memp
his felt shaken, and it wasn’t just Rhondalee’s earrings. I was sitting in that car looking at my hat, he thought. My hat. Someone could have snuck up on me with a gun and I would’ve just turned to meet my fate with just the right tilt to my brim.

  I’m getting old, he thought. I’m old, and if I want to be older yet before I die, I’d better be more watchful.

  THE MORNING SUN shone warm on the dusty banks of Ochre Water Creek. Two bamboo poles sat propped up and waiting for whatever fish in the world might like to nibble on hooks baited with miniature marshmallows. Clouds, high and striated like shredded paper napkins, kept the air from becoming too hot. A small plastic cooler full of RC Cola and Pabst Blue Ribbon sweated drops of condensation. Tender’s truck offered shade.

  Raven and Annie were fishing.

  Annie had stepped out so carefully that morning, carrying that little cooler, terrified that her grandma would catch her and ruin all their plans. “Mom,” she whispered. “I can’t find Gramps’ keys.”

  Raven tested the door of the truck. Unlocked, as usual. “Get in, Tadpole.” She lay on the floor of the truck under the steering column. “Watch and learn.” Raven made short work of it, and they soon drove out of the Park, making a point of bumping Quentin Romaine’s freshly painted lawn jockey on their way to the gate.

  They’d already eaten the bologna sandwiches that Annie surreptitiously assembled the night before. Raven turned her attention to the crackers.

  Annie picked up a rock, looked at it, and discarded it based on some criterion known only to her. She’d kept a pile of them. Raven squirted a little cheese onto a Ritz, held it out. Annie took it and shoved it whole into her mouth. “Mom? Guess what?” she said through orange goo and crumbs. “Guess what I’m doing with all those rocks?”

  “What?”

  “Guess.”

  “Hm. Let’s see. You’re piling up those rocks and you’re gonna stone Quentin Romaine to death for being an idiot.”

  “Nope.” Annie Leigh scraped at a rock with her jackknife. “I’m looking for some of that special stuff they used to find in Bone Pile.”

  “Uranium?”

  “Yeah. You can sell it for lots of money. But I don’t actually know what it exactly looks like.”

  “It don’t show. You have to find it with a Geiger counter, not a knife.”

  “What’s a Geiger counter?”

  “Something that clicks, and counts Geigers.”

  Annie folded her jackknife and sighed. “What’s uranium for, anyway?”

  “Bombs.”

  “That’s what it’s for? Bombs?”

  “Yup. Bombs that can blow up the world. But they don’t make those bombs no more, and anyway, the uranium around here ran out.”

  “Mom, then why do they call it Bone Pile?”

  “Well, before the uranium, they used to make potash there.”

  “And what’s potash?”

  “I can’t remember, just that there was a use for it during the World war, and they made it with bones. All the skeletons from the desert, and from cattle and horses. They had piles and piles of potash out there, and piles and piles of bones. Get it? Bone Pile.”

  “Is that all they made in Bone Pile, is stuff for wars?”

  “Yup. Uranium and potash and boys for the Army.”

  “They make music there.”

  “They sure do. But there’s no call for that in a war, I guess.”

  Annie abandoned the hunt for rocks and curled up next to her mother like a kitten at the teat. She ran her fingers along the scar, feeling where it started, the pink knot at the temple, tracing its raised path over the cheekbone. “It’s like you got a flame decal on this side of your face. Like a Mexican hotrod. You should put those flames on the left side of the truck, to match.”

  “I think detailing my face is enough.” Raven’s eyes sank shut.

  “Mom, are you going to do the talent show on Saturday night?”

  “Nope, I’m not.”

  “Why not?”

  Leaving Raven, of course, to remember why.

  IT WAS A long path that led from dreams of the Opry to the management of the Francie June Memorial Trailer Park, just outside of Ochre Water, California.

  They’d towed in a trailer full of spangled outfits, musical instruments, speakers and monitors. Her mother held a scrapbook in her lap that chronicled the rise and fall of one Roweena Gail LaCour, a young gospel singing sensation who wowed the fair circuit only to be cut down by scandal.

  The papers had said she was fifteen. Fifteen year-old gospel-singing sensation Rowena Gail LaCour was found naked in a motel room with the drummer of her band, Floyd Labor. Authorities reportedly found conspicuous amounts of tobacco, alcohol and a half ounce of marijuana. They arrested Floyd, wanting to charge him with furnishing alcohol to a minor. But she was eighteen, not fifteen, and they were in Nevada, so that charge evaporated, along with the idea of charging him with statutory rape. And the pot had been in the pocket of a denim jacket, a piece of tour swag that said, “Gospel Angels for Jesus” in rhinestones across the back. The jacket was hers, too. Floyd got off clean. Her career was cleanly leveled.

  Raven was an official public disgrace. She had ridden it all out with something suspiciously like a smile on her face. Anyone looking at her would have thought she was glad to be done with warbling gospel standards at revivals and state fairs. Rhondalee refused to sell any of the fortune in equipment. “We’ll need that,” she’d insisted. “We’ll need it for this little slut’s comeback.” Tender didn’t argue, of course, as Tender rarely raised a word in argument against his wife.

  Her Uncle Memphis had called and told them of an opening for a couple to be on-site managers for the Francie June Memorial Trailer Park. “Francie June! It’s an omen,” Rhondalee said. In the spirit of Francie June, Raven would rise like a phoenix from the ashes of her gospel career. Rhondalee would lower the necklines and tighten the skirts of all those spangled, fringed dresses that Raven had hated to wear so much. Who knew… maybe, just maybe, she and Raven would take to the stage together, like the Judds. Yes, said Rhondalee, It’s a sign. We’ll be back, and better than ever. Jerry Lee had some scandals in his day, too. We’ll be back.

  Tender had shaken his head. It was a sign, all right, thought Tender. A sign about going down in flames, and never rising again.

  Raven had just whistled. Her father offered Levi Skinner fifteen dollars they didn’t have to help unload. When they opened the trailer, Raven saw his eyes gleam like Aladdin’s when he looked into the treasure cave.

  With Levi’s help, she and her father had loaded all her mother’s hopes and dreams for her daughter’s musical future into the locked pole barn behind the Clubhouse. And with Levi’s help, Raven had opened that barn door every night to an assortment of local musicians who had heard about the remarkable deals available at the Park. She’d sold all three of her guitars without a blink. She’d sold the PA to Beau Neely to replace the aging system up at the Blue Moon Tap Room. He’d given her a fair price, impressed with her cold and calculating desire to rid of herself of a dream that had never been her own.

  Pageant mothers had stopped by, too. She’d sold every dress, every hat, every pair of boots including the little pink ones that said, “I love Jesus!” across the toes in rhinestones. She’d sold the curly blonde wigs that Rhondy pinned over her Indian-black hair. She felt her greatest satisfaction while unloading the case full of stage makeup she’d had to endure the application of every night she sang, to cover what her mother called that accursed scar that ruined your face.

  It had only taken a matter of days. All that remained of the Littlest Angel for Jesus was an old black guitar in a heavy case. A marker. Raven had brought it in on the night they moved to the Park. It wasn’t really hers, so Raven wouldn’t sell it. She’d forgotten it in the back of her closet.

  Rhondalee had screamed when she’d opened the door a week later. ROBBED! She’d fallen to the floor in a fit, and repeated the performance when she f
ound out what had really happened to all that equipment.

  Raven kept the money for trucking school, a commercial license and a nest egg that she would add to in order to get her own rig.

  The Littlest Angel was free to fly.

  “OKAY, I’M WAITING, Mom. Why not?”

  “I never liked being on stage.”

  “I don’t believe you.” Annie frowned.

  “What, you think your mom’s a liar?”

  Annie laughed. “Sing me one a your songs, okay?”

  “Okay. Let me think.”

  Her voice rose like the lapping of the river, cool and dark and deep.

  He is in me

  now and forever

  He fills me

  washing through me

  his river of blood, it cleans

  my sin, with sweet dreams

  of Heaven, and the Glory

  of Love’s eternal story

  of Grace, given freely

  to all God’s children,

  to me…

  “That’s pretty, Mom. Did you write that?”

  “I might have. I don’t remember. Pop and I wrote ’em together.”

  “I think it would be fun. Writing songs with your folks, singing ’em, everybody looking at you, listening to you. I’d like it.”

  “OK, tell you what. How about I paint your face a color it ain’t, and slap a great big blonde wig on you, big like Gramma’s hair, and then you can wear some fluffy dress like the Mexican girls wear on their Quinceañera, and call you Rowena Gail and make you sing about Jesus, and you tell me how fun you think it is.”

  “Oh no thank YOU, Mom.” They lay in the sun, their black hair flowing together like a spill of shiny crude oil. “I would like a hat.”

  “Would you, now.”

  “When you were my age, you had hats.”

  “Yup, but they were custom-blocked nightmares.”

  “I still want one.”

  “Well, I’ll get one for you as soon as I find one small enough for your hard little head.”