“I’ve heard a lot about you,” said Shep, “what a great athlete you were.”
“I played a little football,” said Joe Lon shortly, looking off toward the dark fortress-like wall of trees that surrounded his little campground.
“I told you he was modest,” said Berenice. “Didn’t I tell you he was modest?”
“You sure did,” said Shep, “and I just want to shake your hand.” He thrust out his hand.
Joe Lon reluctantly took it. “I ain’t been on a football field in two years,” he said.
For some reason he couldn’t meet the boy’s eyes. Or even Berenice’s. It was all too embarrassing, and that infuriated him. He kept wondering why she had sent him that letter. Why had she sent it?
“How’s Elf?” said Berenice.
Joe Lon felt his face get hot. “Okay,” he said. “She’s okay.” He was remembering the pale weak way her thin face looked in the light that morning and the blue smear of a bruise running up from her mouth.
“And the kids? What is it now? Two boys?”
“Yeah, two,” said Joe Lon.
“Both of them running backs. I’ll wager,” said Shep. He leaned forward and actually punched Joe Lon in the shoulder. “Must be great,” he said, “just great.”
Joe Lon took a step back. He was afraid he was going to snap and coldcock both of them right there. He didn’t know what he had been expecting or hoping for from Berenice but it sure as hell was not this.
“Look,” he said, “I gotta go.”
“Aw,” said Berenice, “really? I was hoping you could come over to the house and have a cup of coffee with us.”
“Sure, man,” said Shep, “I’d like to …”—here a little deep-throated radio announcer chuckle—“… talk some football with you.” Now a sudden seriousness about the beautiful girl’s eyes. “What do you think about Broadway Joe, anyway?”
“I’d like to talk, but,” Joe Lon said, waving his hand to include the campground, the people milling about, the booths where the crafts were being shown, “there’s a lot of things I have to take care of.”
“But we will get together?” said Berenice, taking his arm and squeezing it.
Joe Lon gritted his teeth. “Yeah, we’ll get together.”
He was turning to go when Shep caught his hand again and pumped it. “It certainly was a pleasure,” he said.
Joe Lon mumbled something and walked away between the rows of campers. He walked looking at the ground, feeling that he had somehow just been humiliated. By the time he got to the trailer his jaws were aching from his clamped teeth. Elfie was up and in the kitchen. She was wearing a pretty yellow apron upon which she had embroidered little flowers.
He remembered her working on it when she was pregnant with the second baby. It had ruffles across the top and tended to disguise her ballooning lower belly, for which he was thankful. She had her hair pulled back and tied with a ribbon. And even with the bruise that face powder had not quite been able to cover she looked very cheerful, even happy. He was glad for that because he had not welcomed the thought of facing her after last night.
“You ready for you some breakfast, Joe Lon, honey?” she asked from where she stood doing something at the sink.
“Just coffee,” he said.
“Joe Lon, you got to eat, honey.”
“Come on, Elf,” he said, “I got a little bit of a headache.”
“Really?” she said. “You want some aspern?” She hadn’t moved from the sink. “I got me some aspern yesterday at the store if you want some.”
He held on to the edge of the table and would not let himself say anything. She had already straightened up the trailer and washed and fed the babies. They were both in a playpen by the door in the living room where the sun came through the window. She had done all that and now she was only trying to help him and he knew that and knew also that she could not help it if everything she said drove him wild, nor could she help what had just happened out there to him at the campground. So he just sat at the little white Formica table, holding on to the edge of his chair, and looking out the window. She was watching him and he could feel the weight of her gaze.
“I’ll git the coffee, Joe Lon, honey,” she finally said.
He nodded but did not answer. His thoughts had already turned back to Berenice and the postcard and the Crisco Kid she had brought home with her. The Crisco Kid, yeah, that’s what he was. Second-string lardass on the debate team. Well, Mr. Crisco Kid, it may be you go one on one with Joe Lon Mackey before you get out of Mystic, Georgia. It may be you just-got yourself in more shit than you can stir with a stick.
“Honey, here’s some fresh hot.”
She set the coffee on the table and waited for him to taste it. He bent his head to the raised cup.
“Is it good?”
“Yeah,” he said, “it’s good, Elf.”
She stood where she was, smiling now, but with her mouth conspicuously closed. “You know what, Joe Lon, honey?”
“No, Elf.”
“I made me a phone call this morning first thing.”
“Okay, Elf.”
Through the window he watched the little lady under the white bonnet where she sat unmoving in the bright November sunlight sticking rattles onto a stretched canvas. To the right and in front of her the three-thousand-dollar, thousand-snake deer with the razor hooves kept killing and killing the already mutilated diamondback.
“You know who it was to?” said Elfie.
“No,” he said, “I don’t know who it was to.”
“To the dentist in Tifton.” Her voice was rising and lilting, full of surprised triumph. “I called the dentist, and I’m gone git these old sorry teeth of mine fixed.”
He turned his eyes from the window to look at her where she had retreated to the sink. He could see now what she was doing. She was washing out baby diapers. Although he had not before, he now smelled the ammonia from his son’s piss and he wished he didn’t. He forced himself to smile at her as she still watched him over her shoulder.
“That’s real good, Elf,” he said. “You done real good to do that for youself.” His throat felt very tight. “It’ll make you feel better.”
She left the sink and came to stand behind him. “I done it for you, Joe Lon, honey. I coulda done without it for myself.” She moved closer to the back of his chair. Her thin soft hands touched him, one on each shoulder. “Me’n the babies love you, Joe Lon, honey.”
He could only nod. He turned loose his coffee and took hold again of the table. He desperately wanted to howl.
***
Lottie Mae had dreamed of snakes. Snakes that were lumpy with rats. In a dream she killed one of them with a stick and the moment it stopped writhing and was dead, the stick in her hand was a snake. When she tried to turn it loose she saw that she could not because the snake was part of her. Her arm was a snake. And then the other arm was a snake. And her two arms that were snakes crawled about her neck, cold as ice and slick with snake slime.
There were other dreams, but when her mother, Maude, woke her, she could not remember them. But because she could not remember the dreams did not mean she had gotten rid of the snakes. Her mother’s hand where it touched her shoulder and gently shook her seemed snaky, the fingers cold with snake skin, and alive with a boneless writhing. She lay as still as stone under the snakes; all that moved was her eyes, which she cut toward her mother bending over her bed only to find the snakes had twisted themselves into the black braids of her mother’s hair.
“Chile, I got the miseries,” her mother said.
Lottie Mae said nothing but watched the snakes carefully.
“You got to go to Mistuh Big Joe’s and do for me.”