T. Boyle - T. C. Boyle Stories

That was all Grace needed to hear. “No, no police!” she sobbed.

Mrs. Tranh perked up suddenly. “Your squirrel baby,” she said, “that’s what this is about, yes?” The flashing lights played off her face, shot sparks from her eyes. “In Bien-hoa we eat squirrel. Monkey too.” She was looking at Jet now, her mouth twisted tight with the effort of the words. “Tell your mother save people, not squirrel.”

Grace said something then that Jet would never believe had come from the lips of her mother, and she had to hold her back, the older woman’s arms straining against her as when their roles were reversed and Jet was the child. That was when her mother turned on her with a hiss: “One simple thing I ask from you, one simple thing, and look what happens—”

It was a mess, a real mess. Mrs. Tranh wouldn’t let Vincent pull the truck away from the car until the police came and wrote up their report, and though there wasn’t much traffic, Jet had to stand out in the middle of the street, shivering in her hooded sweatshirt, and wave the cars by with a flashlight. Her mother wanted to unload the squirrels and hide them back in the garage before the police came, but Jet talked her out of it, and finally Grace staggered across the street like a woman twice her age and hid herself in the darkened house.

After a while it began to rain, a soft breathing mist of a rain that took the curl out of Jet’s hair but didn’t seem to discourage the Tranhs, who sat grimly at the curb waiting for the law to arrive. It must have been nearly half past one when the police finally showed up, two gray-haired men in their forties, one Mexican, one white. They were half-asleep, rolling out of the car like the jelly doughnuts that sustained them, until Mrs. Tranh woke them up. “All right,” the white cop said in the chop of the lights and the swirl of mist that hung round him like a curtain, “who was driving here?”

The Tranhs looked to Jet and Jet looked to Vincent. It seemed to her he had a pleading sort of look in his eyes, the sort of look that was meant to convey a complex message about love and commitment, about guilt and responsibility and maybe even lapsed insurance payments. “He was,” she said finally, and she couldn’t help lifting her finger to point him out.

Grace never drank, not more than once or twice a year anyway, but as she sat in the darkened house and watched the lights clench and unclench the belly of the curtains while the Tranhs and her daughter and Vincent and half a dozen or so of the curious or bored moved back and forth in silhouette across the scene of the accident, she groped in the liquor cabinet for one of Bill’s bottles of liquor — any one — screwed off the cap and took a swallow. It was like drinking acid. Instantly her stomach was on fire and she wanted to spit the stuff back into the bottle, but it was too late. After a minute, though, she took another sip, and then another, and before long her heart stopped hammering at her rib cage. She had to be careful. She did. She could have another episode and that was the last thing she wanted — that wouldn’t do her babies any good, no, no good at all.

She peeked through the curtains, waiting now, waiting for the police to ask what was in the truck, as if they couldn’t hear — and smell — for themselves. And if they didn’t ask, Gladys Tranh would tell them, you could count on that. “Squirrels?” the policeman would say, and then: “Do you have a permit for these animals?” And if that happened it was just a matter of time before Officer Kray-bill showed up to have the last laugh. But maybe she should go out there, maybe she could distract them — or maybe, if she pleaded and begged and threatened to kill herself, they’d at least let her have Phil; Phil, that’s all she wanted—

But nothing happened. The rain fell. The odd car drove round the truck. Gladys Tranh went back into the house and one of the policemen wrote out his report while Jet, Vincent and Violet looked on. Then the police were gone and the Tranh house was dark and Jet was knocking at the door. “Ma? Are you in there?” Jet called. “Listen, Ma, is it okay if we call it off for tonight? Vincent’s tired. Ma? He says he doesn’t want to do it.”

Grace just stood there, the door between her and her daughter, the pacemaker keeping its rock-steady beat in her chest, and she didn’t say a word.

(1994)

I was just lifting the glass to my lips when she stormed through the swinging doors and slapped the drink out of my hand. “Step back,” she roared, “or suffer hellfire and eternal damnation,” and then she pulled a hatchet out from under her skirts and started to splinter up Doge’s new cherrywood bar. I ducked out of the way, ten-cent whiskey darkening the crotch of my pants, and watched her light into the glassware. It was like a typhoon in a distillery — nuggets of glass raining down like hail, the sweet bouquet of that Scots whisky and rum and rye going up in a mist till it teared your eyes. Then Doge came charging out of the back room like a fresh-gelded bull, rage and bewilderment tugging at the corners of his mustache, just in time to watch her annihilate the big four-by-six mirror in the teakwood frame he’d had shipped up from New Orleans. BOOM! it went, shards of light washing out over the floor. Doge grabbed her arm as she raised the hatchet to put another cleft in the portrait of Vivian DeLorbe, but the madwoman swung round and caught him with a left hook. Down he went — and Vivian DeLorbe followed him.

The only other soul in the barroom was Cal Hoon, the artist. He was passed out at one of the tables, a bottle of whiskey and a shot glass at his elbow. I was up against the back wall, ready to snatch up a chair and defend myself if necessary. The wild woman strode over to Cal’s table and shattered the bottle with a hammering blow that jarred the derby from his head and left the hatchet quivering in the tabletop. And then the place was still. Cal raised his head from the table, slow as an old tortoise. His eyes were like smashed tomatoes and something dangled from the corner of his mouth. The madwoman stared down at him, hands on her hips. “Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes?” she demanded. Cal goggled up at her, stupefied. She pointed a finger at his nose and concluded: “He who tarries long at the wine.” She must have been six feet tall. “Down on your knees!” she snarled, “and pray forgiveness of the Lord.” Suddenly she kicked the chair out from under him and he toppled to the floor. A few taps from the toe of her boot persuaded him to clamber to his knees. Then she turned to me. I was Editor in Chief of The Topeka Sun , a freethinker, one of the intellectual lights of the town. But my knees cracked all the same as I went down and clasped my hands together. We sang “Art thou weary, art thou languid?” Cal’s voice like a saw grinding through knotty pine, and then she was gone.

Two days later I was sitting at a table in the Copper Dollar Saloon over on Warsaw Street waiting for a steak and some fried eggs. John McGurk, my typesetter, was with me. It couldn’t have been more than nine-thirty in the morning. We’d been up all night getting out a special edition on McKinley’s chances for a second term and we were drooping like thirsty violets. McGurk no sooner called for whiskey and soda water than there she was, the madwoman, shoulders like a lumberjack’s, black soutane from her chin to the floor. A file of women in black bonnets and skirts whispered in behind her. “Look here!” guffawed one of the bad characters at the bar. “It’s recess time at the con-vent.” His cronies cackled like jays. McGurk laughed out loud. I grinned, watchful and wary.