Brad Watson - The Heaven of Mercury

Still, it was in the blood. Only one of them didn’t cheat on his wife was Rufus, and that because he was a drunk half the time and a teetotaling holy roller the rest, and between being drunk on whiskey and drunk on Jesus he hadn’t the time or the inclination for fucking around. Papa had set Rufus up in the barbershop years before. You never had to worry about Rufus being mean, that was for sure, only drunk. Earl always suspected he had a big heart and it was some kind of self-loathing kept Rufus such a gentle and ineffectual sap.

So he, Earl, would work hard and do well, finally set himself up in business, and extend a hand to Levi, helping to set him up with his own shoe store, too. Never mind competition, which was admittedly part of the plan, that with Levi as competition they could control things, keep a share each of different stock, swap around, lob customers back and forth between the stores like tennis balls. Never mind, of course, that Levi would order on the sly the same stock Earl was getting and offer it at lower prices, wouldn’t put it out where Earl might see it but would sidle up to customers and happen to drop that he could get her this or that shoe a little cheaper than Earl, and sometimes that stock actually being Earl’s own, which Levi would get out of Earl’s store at night or Sunday mornings until Earl got wise and took away his key and slapped him around a little when he, Levi, called him, Earl, a liar.

Got into league with their sister Merry against him. Depended on Earl, the both of them, and the both of them hated him for it. Merry’d get drunk and drive around town shopping for dresses, purses, makeup, flowers, groceries, even whiskey and gasoline, and telling the merchants Send the bill to my brother Earl down at his store. He’d round up whatever hadn’t been unwrapped or worn or drunk or eaten or shot through a carburetor and fired out the tail and take it back, make her pitiful cuckold husband R.W. pay for some, and would end up paying himself for the rest. Then she’d laugh at him over it. Say What do you care, you got plenty of money, nobody’d ever squeeze a nickel out of you Earl if they didn’t steal it.

Your problem, he’d often said to her in private, is no man can satisfy you in bed so you just want to cut off every pair of swinging balls comes within your reach, but you can’t have mine, you’ll just have to be satisfied with R.W.’s hanging from your neck and all those johns’ stuck somewhere in your craw but don’t come looking to me for the piece of bread to help choke them down.

And Levi’s problem he had no balls in the first place, and a brain about the size of a testicle itself. He’d ruined Earl’s relationship with Maurier down at the fish camp in Pascagoula when he’d kidnapped that new salesgirl he lost his head over and then beaten her up when she tried to run off down the beach. When Earl found out he wired him there, LEVI STOP CAN’T BELIEVE YOU WOULD JEOPARDIZE ALL WORKED FOR TAKE SOME GIRL OFF BEAT HER UP STOP DO NOT LEAVE STOP I WILL BE THERE QUICK STOP EARL. Hauling ass through the blackleaved tunnel of 11 to 49, blowing the shutters off little towns along the way and down the flackity flackity 98 to the dirt road to Maurier’s, dawn just breaking over the Sound, and busting into the cabin, their cabin, he even had to go and do that, and Levi there lying naked on the bed and the goddamn girl tied up in a little kitchen chair in the corner and screaming her head off, wearing just a powder-blue blouse and trying to hide herself with her legs. Maurier in right behind him yelling Cajun patois, took all he had in him not to simply beat the shit out of Levi right then and there — pointed, said, I’ll deal with you later. Levi laughing, crying, couldn’t tell which maybe both. Turned to Maurier, You shut up, too, I’ll have them both out of here in thirty minutes. Don’t never want to see him again! You’ll never see either one of us again, goddamnit. Bon! Finee!

Fairly knocked and wrestled whining Levi into some clothes and shoved him onto a bus in town, gave the driver a ten, drove back to Maurier’s, where he’d padlocked her in the room with the phone removed. Went to the office to pay the bill, Maurier in there fuming. Said, I got to make a phone call first. You pay for it! I’ll pay for it goddamnit. Took out another ten-dollar bill and threw it onto his floor.

— Fred, is Pinkie there. Well where is he. Never mind. What time is it. Seven o’clock. All right. Tell him to be on the corner of 5th Street and 22nd Avenue at ten sharp. Wait on me if I’m not there, I’ll be there around then. I’ll make it worth it.

Put her in the front passenger seat she wasn’t nothing then but a foul mouth on a couple of scratched-up skinny legs and a cigarette he kept burning in her waving hands, where in the hell did Levi find them, floored it after gaining 49 again and headed north. Took about three minutes before she began to realize something about the speed. Seventy, eighty, ninety, topped a hundred straight through Perkinston. Talking slowed, then she got real quiet. Damn near up on two wheels in the hard curve south of Wiggins, she screamed and grabbed the armrest and the dash. Up to then talky enough, You better get me a good job somewhere else is what you better do, I know about you and that woman in Tallahassee, your store down there, you get me something like that, you set me up somewhere or I’ll have your asses, I’ll get you son bitches thrown so deep in jail you won’t never see the light of day I’ll—

— You want to take everything I’ve got because of my fool brother, do you, Earl said. -Well you can take every goddamn thing he’s got for all I care, but you threaten me and you got a whole nother problem, sister.

— You don’t scare me.

— You offer this kind of arrangement to Levi he’ll kill you and you know it, and you think you can just sit here and threaten me, then? Was looking at her and barely got back in his lane to miss a tractor trailer rig barreling by, foghorn blasting, woman screaming You’ll kill us both!

— That may be, but if it happens, happens say in a car crash, won’t nobody be the wiser, you’ll be dead.

— Like you!

— I’ve lived a good life, made money, my family’s secure. You’re just a young woman, got your whole life ahead of you. You want to throw it all away like that?

She rips through a mindless wide-eyed recital of every cuss-word or phrase she knows, goddamn son of a bitch motherfucker dick pussy asshole shit piss cunt prick go to hell! runs through them three or four times in a row, Earl thinking how most had to do with bodily functions, how little they strayed, two about condemnation, one comparison to a dog.

— Well I don’t think that’ll do it, he says. He doesn’t slow up until just outside the city limits, coasts down the highway past the airport and the creosote plant, down 8th into town, turned down onto 22nd and stopped there at the corner of 5th. Sitting there engine idling, girl still breathing hard, staring straight ahead, steaming, finally and mercifully mute. Hands her five one-hundred-dollar bills in plain view.

— This ought to get you to another town and another job.

She grabs it.

— Don’t you think you’re done with me.

He nods to Pinkie standing at the lamppost in his uniform, twirling his nightstick, who tips his hat to Earl, the girl.

— Pinkie here just saw you take that and put it into your purse, he says. -Good friend of mine. He don’t know just what this is. You could be a street whore, for all Pinkie knows. Wouldn’t hurt my reputation much, but you wouldn’t want it on your record. So we got a deal.

She spits a few choice ones, get out, slams the door, walks off. He laughs to himself, lights a Camel, waves to Pinkie, and drives out to the country to cool off awhile. Later over to Levi’s house, Levi in the bedroom lying down, Rae sitting and smoking at the dining table, gives him a murderous look full of sloppy lipstick.