A love story you have not heard before.
Chapter Two
"Family"
Possum-Pounder and Harry had circled to the other side of the swamp when they heard Annie's breakfast bell ring. The dog stiffened with anticipation. Harry stopped and looked out over the mist rising from the water.
"Just smell this air, Pounder! Look at all this good stuff! What's your hurry? Annie let you sit at the table when I'm not home?" The dog looked up at him with his tongue hanging out and dripping.
Everything glistened with wet, and the only sound was Pounder's panting and the dew dripping from the leaves above. They heard the bell ring again but it sounded so far off and Harry was reluctant to go back just yet. "We'll go hunting again tomorrow, Pounder. Get up earlier, maybe. Get a rabbit.... The ones that are getting stoned on my reefer. Okay, we'll go back. Meat's not the most important thing in life. Is it?" Harry laughed, and shouldered his shotgun.
When he returned they were all waiting for him, sitting at the outdoor picnic table.
"The Great White Hunter," Janey said.
Harry looked at the fifteen years of wisdom he had helped to raise. "Go back in and put on a warmer shirt."
The girl did not move.
"Oh, Harry," Annie pleaded. "It's such a beautiful morning."
"Why do I have to chain up Pounder after you go hunting!?" Perry said.
"Because you're a kid." Harry walked past them and picked out a tree to urinate against -- out of sight. A swarm of gnats surrounded his fly as soon as he unzipped.
"Breakfast is getting cold."
"Marking territory?"
Harry sat down with them and tore into his bacon, eggs, grits, and toast with homemade blackberry jelly. "Who made the grits?"
"I did," Janey said.
"You finally got it right."
"Gee, thanks."
"Grits can't ever be right," Perry said, "'cause they'll always be grits."
"'Cause you're a dumb-ass, Perry!" Janey said.
Harry smashed his fist down hard on the table and the kids shut up. "I missed this home cooking, Annie. And I missed you, too. And this place. And these bratty kids here."
"We love you, too, Pop!" Perry said.
"Family is a precious thing," Harry said.
"Yup," Janey said.
"The county ambulance crew has two jobs open again," Annie said.
Harry frowned. "I hated that job, Annie."
"Come on. All the stories you used to tell! Anyway, I called them yesterday, just to check, right after you called us that you were coming home."
"For a couple days."
"Right."
"Annie, that job doesn't pay anything. And when there aren't any runs, they expect you to work in the hospital. Orderly stuff. Hold these old bags' asses up in the air for their barium enemas."
"So who does like to go to work?"
"I like my job in Miami."
"He likes the chicks down there," Janey said.
"Janey!" Annie shouted. "Shut up!"
"That baby died because you forgot to put the plastic liner in the wastebasket in the emergency room," Janey said to Harry.
"Huh, Janey?" Perry said. "I didn't hear that one."
"Don't listen to her, Harry."
"That baby died?"
"What baby?!" Perry demanded.
"Don't, Janey," Annie said.
"Well, before Daddy quit his ambulance job, there was this nigger going to have a baby only they couldn't find Daddy to turn the lights on in the operating room so they had to use the emergency room instead, only Daddy just finished cleaning up in there and he forgot to put a liner in the wastebasket at the end of the table – the one with the wheels on it – and..."
"Kick-bucket, it's called," Harry said.
"...and the afterbirth came first and it went right into the thing they catch the baby with, and then the baby fell out and it slid out of the nurse's hands right into the kick-bucket, and the whole mess scooted across the floor into the hall with the placenta trailing along behind." Janey laughed. "Smearing along behind."
"Oh, Janey!" Perry said. "That true, Dad?"
"Yeah, but..."
"That baby lived," Annie said.
"Hell, it was a year ago, anyway."
"It died later," Janey said. "From an infection from a cut on the edge of the – kick-bucket. My teacher works as a nurse's aide on weekends. She knows."
"Must be motor-mouth Nelouise," Harry said. "She's your teacher now?"
"English."
"One less porch monkey," Perry said.
Harry reached across the table but Perry ducked. "Perry! Anybody says nigger or monkey one more time and I beat their scrawny ass! Got it?"
"Oh, Harry," Annie said. "You're just as prejudiced as anyone. I've heard you say the word many a time."
"Annie...."
"He loves them," Janey said. "Miss Nelouise says that Daddy was always sniffing around the colored girls in the kitchen and calling them these Wild Kingdom names like foxes and stuff like that."
Harry leaned back a little and narrowed his eyes at his daughter.
Annie sighed. "Well, that's your father."
"Those big lips!" Perry said. "Yuk! And that awful hair! All frizzy, like Janey's!"
"Eat it, Perry."
"A lot of them are beautiful people," Harry said. "Most of them. You all are too blind to see it. Beautiful people, inside and outside."
"Daddy?" Perry said. "Aren't we beautiful people?"
"Well?" Janey said. "Aren't we?"
Harry sucked in a deep breath, and turned loose a long, resonant, bacon-and-eggs-and-grits burp.
"And Miss Nelouise said that one time Daddy told one of the kitchen niggers he wanted a kiss and that the nigger, I mean, negress, looked at him and said Git!"
Janey and Perry laughed.
"Is that true, Harry?" Annie said.
Harry shook his head. "Not a word. Besides, what teacher is going to tell a fifteen-year-old girl crap like that. Think about it."
"Nelouise Singletary," Janey said.
"Nelouise Dingleberry," Perry said.
"Nelouise Dead," Harry said. "They should roll a condom over her tongue."
"They're called balloons now, Dad."
Annie made a face. "Harry, they're learning worse stuff at this little country school here than they did back home."
"Oh! Dad! Janey almost got suspended while you were gone."
"That true, Janey?"
"He's lying."
"And all she cares about now is boys. Last week when we went into the science classroom somebody wrote JANEY SUCKS DICKS on the blackboard and everyone was making fun of me because she's my sister!"
"So why didn't you erase it, Dummy?" Janey said.
"Didn't you?" Annie said.
"I erased the word dicks."
"They're all dreaming," Janey said. "It's a dumb school, anyway. Back in Miami we had more kids on one grade than they have in the whole school here. And when they had another one of those re-runs of 'Roots' on TV the other night, the next day in school the teachers were making a big deal out of it and saying stuff like it proves communism isn't dead after all 'cause the commies still control television. They're so dumb!"
"Yeah, Daddy, and the teachers all call Kunte Kinte Toby!"
Annie grinned. "Well, that was his name!"
"Oh, Annie...." Harry extricated his legs from the picnic-table bench and started to walk away.
"Going fox hunting, Harry?"
"Git!" Janey hollered.
Harry headed for The Reefer Trail. "The Reefer Trail!" he said aloud, smiling. From the first day after they bought their place in the Florida panhandle, they began to name everything. After all, it was theirs now, the hills, the swamp, the animals.... They had "dominion". Except for The Reefer Trail, which started on their own place but followed a hillside down to the creek and then crossed their property line over to a huge tract which nobody around there seemed to know or care who owned. Harry never went to the courthouse to check, either. He didn't want to know. The trail was long and took the better part of an hour to walk. He enjoyed it -- not just because of the outlaw aspect of growing marijuana, but because the trail itself was secluded and beautiful, and cut through hardwood stands to open fields dotted with clover and huckleberry bushes, sparkleberry trees and wild azaleas.
When he neared the highest point on the narrow, almost imperceptible path, Harry stopped near a shallow sinkhole and sat down on a stump. He tried to see if he could spot his plants from this distance, figuring that they should be easily over three feet tall by now and it would be nice if they were still hard to see. He didn't want them to be ripped off before harvest time, or worse, get caught with them by the law -- what little law there was here. And then there were the state spotter planes.... Fucking war on drugs! He heard the cry of a hawk and looked up. The sky was clear and bright, and the hawk was a tiny swoop of black -- swift and deadly.
Hawks.... Eagles.... Did the same god who made them make me? Did He make Tracy? Jeannette? Ruby? Harry thought again about the time he had been so sick and Ruby had come over and held his hand and kissed him in his ear.
Should've gotten into her while I had the chance. Before she got married and moved away....
Those Bambi eyes....
That pink dress....
Harry sighed and got up, and began to head down the hill toward his plants. He remembered that he'd forgotten to bring a gun along again.
That chunky-little meat-ball ass....
Goosebumps suddenly rose on Harry's forearms, and a shiver ran up his back. He ran back to the sinkhole and hunkered down in it, the sun just high enough to light the red-clay banks and the chips of flint embedded in the sides. The natural depression was deeper than a foxhole and was one of Harry's favorite places. He waited, not knowing what had spooked him. He hadn't heard anything.... Had he seen something so nearly invisible that only his subconscious knew?
After a few minutes of a breathing exercise which Harry believed in, he raised himself up and looked around over the rim. Nothing. He climbed out and stood tall and looked back down into the field where he had tried to spot his plants earlier, and saw them. They were everywhere, nodding gently, silently, in the almost imperceptible breeze.
I'm crazy....
I shouldn't have done all that acid years ago.... LSD....
One trip too many, yeah.... Well, maybe the last two.
But I'm happy! Everybody's always telling me how they wish they could live like me!
Thank you, God. Thank you, Doctor Albert Hoffman!
Harry gathered up his wits and followed the trail down to his plants, placing one, black, Reebock original directly in line ahead of the other to keep the trail as narrow as deer would make. The spotter planes looked for trails in the middle of nowhere, when they were flying, that is, what with the recent state budget cuts, ha.
It was too early in the season for the plants to be showing their sex yet, but they were nice and tall. Spindly, though -- one here, one there -- rising above the scrub from the powdery ground.
Annie promised to keep them watered....
"We need rain, God."
He headed toward the burrow where they hid the irrigation pump. One of the hoses was coiled up and lying at the mouth of the cache-hole in plain sight. "Damn it, Annie!" He dragged out the pump, an item he had back-packed in that spring with much difficulty but satisfaction. The gas tank was empty. He reached back into the hole and pulled out the fuel can. Empty, also. The gas can was Perry's job.
Harry sat down on the can and tried to meditate himself into a peaceful state. He pictured himself walking back home with the empty can and returning with the gasoline. What a beautiful walk that would be! On such a pretty day! The pump he had built and was so proud of.... Machinery as art. Brass. Steel.. Leather. phump - phump - phump - phump - so steady and quiet and the water clear and gleaming as it ran under the grass and pooled around the plants.... And Annie would have something special for lunch when he got back to the trailer -- better than the shit sandwiches he would buy from the roach coach on the job back in Miami. Annie treated him like a king when he was home. Enjoy it!
Harry shifted his ass on the gas can. He was smiling now, remembering how he and Annie used to get high and then plan crimes that they would never commit. They had started doing this for fun – was it after seeing the movie "Bonnie and Clyde"? The children were small, and Ruby did not charge much for baby-sitting. Harry and Annie would case out a store, or a bank downtown, and figure where they would park the get-away car. It was always agreed that Annie would get to spend most of the proceeds and Harry could rape one of the tellers, or clerks, or whatever it was. Annie would dress for the part: heels and garter-belt and hose and a sexy, black bra under a respectable suit or dress. Annie always made sure that Harry brought rope along so he could tie her up properly, also. One time he let her tie him up and rape him, and they both said it was just as much fun. Behind grocery store dumpsters, in parking garages, in grown-over vacant lots which the Santeria Cubans weren't using to sacrifice chickens.... And then the whole business just sort of died out. They would talk about it sometimes, but it was over.
Harry tried to picture Ruby again.
One time, when they had left the children at home with her, they drove around the block and parked near their own house. They snuck into their back yard and made love on the grass (Annie tied up this time -- with her wrists to her feet, clothes off, heels on). From where they were they could see through the dining-room window: Ruby reading the kids a story, little Perry in his footy pajamas on Ruby's lap, his head against her shoulder.
Harry wondered what Ruby looked like now.
Annie had become so much older-looking through the years. He didn't think he had aged that much.... A few more and they'd both be forty. This very morning, before he got dressed, Annie had spotted him inspecting himself in the full-length mirror in their bedroom. He was standing to the side and pulling on his buttocks when she walked in.
"So you do that, too, huh Harry? It's okay. We're getting old. A droopy ass is natural."
"I have a droopy ass?" The shock of that idea! But Annie had quickly changed the subject.
"So why don't you move out of your flat down south and stay up here. You could just work part-time on the ambulance crew. I asked. I could work part-time at the chicken factory in DeFuniak Springs. How about it, Harry? We have everything paid off now. No mortgage like most people have – or rent. You could bring in more reefer if you stayed. The kids really love it when you're home, even if they don't always act like it, and..."
"You're not working at the chicken plant."
"And I don't want you working at that marina!"
"Boat-yard. Hey, I like working there! Besides, they've been letting me go on short runs with the boat-haulers. Key West, last week. I've always wanted to drive an eighteen wheeler. I'm getting the hang of it. They're planning on buying another truck soon. They deliver all forty-eight states! I can't quit now -- the money would be fantastic!"
Harry always pictured the money in a stack of fifty dollar bills.
"And besides, I'm never going to let you work at that chicken factory. The people who work there are all swingers and swappers and stuff. It's from working with all that blood. No way!"
"You mean you care, Harry?"
Harry could still hear her voice saying that. He shifted his ass again on the gas can and decided to get up.
"Yes, Annie, I care. I do. I care."
<end chapter-2>
Copyright 1979, 2005 John Aalborg
All rights reserved.
Email: aalborg@jbaal.com
Chapter Three
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Humanism with
attitude!
Rev: 17 March 2005