“Don’t none of this strike you peculiar?” she asked.
“Pretty much everything strikes me peculiar. So I guess nothing does, really.”
If I hadn’t been consumed with getting Leeli into the bungalow and the two of us shaking the walls so hard, the framed picture would shudder off its veil of dust and the palmetto bugs would prepare for the fall of creation, I might’ve had room for some helpful thoughts. I don’t suppose it matters, though. Chances are I wouldn’t have reached any conclusion. If I had, either I wouldn’t have acted on it or else it would have been the same half-assed conclusion I come to without even stretching my brain. Studying on things until you couldn’t tell whether what you thought was what you wanted to think and all that—it wasn’t my style. I had two ways of going at the world. One, I was a furnace of a man and everything I saw was viewed in terms of how it would do for fuel. The other, I was a pitiable creature who’d been walked on for so long there was a damn dog run wore down into my skull and whenever a shadow crossed my path, my instinct was to snap my teeth. Neither of those boys gave a sugary shit about situational fucking analysis.
Ava was kept busy that night tinkering with Squire’s self-esteem. Least that’s what I believed had sucked his fire down so low, his pilot light kicked off. It was like Leeli had been busted out of jail. She wanted one of everything with me. We come close to killing each other. Toward nine we took a break, borrowed Ava’s car, and brought back catfish and puppies and fries. Halfway through our greasy feast, we went at it again, smearing fish juice all over the bed. It would’ve took oven cleaner to scour the sheets. Long about midnight we smoked cigarettes on the steps. Fireflies bloomed in the hazy dark. The breeze hauled a smell of night-blooming cereus out from the shadows of the palms. A shine from the bulb over the office door fresh-tarred the blacktop. We had us one of those made-in-Nashville moments. Our arms around one another, heads together. Snap the photo, frame it with a heart, and stick in a word balloon with me saying something forever stupid like, Somepin’ wunnerful’s gonna happen to them peaches, honey. Hillbilly Hallmark. I gave Leeli a kiss that sparked a shiver and she settled in against me.
“I could stand another beer,” she said.
“Want me to fetch it?”
“Naw, it’s too much trouble.”
Skeeters whined. A night bird said its name about three hundred times in a row. The TV inside the office flickered a wicked green, an evil blue, a blast of white, as if Mrs. Gammage was receiving communication from an unholy sphere. I wouldn’t have much cared if the rest of everything was just this hot and black and quiet.
Squire seemed fine to me, especially for someone who looked to be a goner, but Ava was still acting mothery the next morning. Around noon she herded us into the car and drove to Silver Springs for, I guess, a give-Squire-love day. At a stall near the gift shop she bought a T-shirt with his face airbrushed on it by a genuine T-shirt artist. Squire had the good sense not to wear the thing. “Wanna go see the tropical fish?” she asked of Carl and Squire both. Squire said he didn’t know, whatever, and Carl repeated the word “fish” until he figured out how to spray spittle when saying it. We crammed into a glass-bottomed boat with a mob of lumpy fiftyish women in baggy slacks and floral blouses. I assumed they were a church group, because they appeared to be the cut-rate harem belonging to this balding, gray-haired individual with a banker’s belly and a sagging, doleful face, dressed like a Wal-Mart dummy in slacks with an elastic waistband and a sweated-through sports shirt. A pretty blond in a captain’s hat steered the boat and as we glided across the springs, her voice blatted from the speakers, identifying whatever portion of nature’s living rainbow we were then passing over. The man stood the whole trip, clutching a pole for balance, providing his own commentary and sneaking glances at Leeli, who was wearing short shorts. He was trying to make some general point relating to the fish. It had a charry Unitarian flavor, a serving of God and fried turnip slices. All the ladies nodded and favored him with doting gazes. Squashed between two of them was a chubby kid about fourteen who had the miserable air of a hostage. One of the women whispered urgently at him, probably telling him to pay attention or sit up straight. He stared cross-eyed into nowhere, dreaming of Columbining the bunch of us. I winked at him, wanting him to know that some of us so-called adults could be dangerous haters, too, when forced to ooh and aah over a glittery mess of edible sea bugs. This only got him hating me extra special. If somebody had slipped him a piece, they would’ve found me with my splattered head resting on a cellulite-riddled thigh.
After the boat ride we headed for a Howard Johnson’s restaurant down the road from the resort. The reverend and his flock had beaten us there and were crammed into a circular booth across from ours. The ladies chattered away, the kid stared at his fries like they were a heap of golden brown logs on which he was roasting his mom in miniature. Part of my problem was I’ve been cursed with this inept paranoia that sees danger everywhere except where danger lies. Though I’d done nothing criminal recently, the reverend’s presence made me feel criminally guilty. I fiddled with the suspicion that his turning up at the restaurant was police-related. That he’d recognized me for the perpetrator of a crime I’d committed and forgot. Now and then his fruity voice cut through the chatter. He was still going on about the damn fish.
“Did you notice,” he asked, “how the entire school turned as one? Indeed, all the actions of the underwater world seemed in concert, as though directed by a single mind. Is it such a leap to conceive that our actions are so directed?”
“Hell yes!” would’ve been my answer, but Carl thought this was about the best thing he’d ever heard. He jumped around in his seat, repeating portions of the reverend’s lesson and said to Ava, “You see? See what I mean?” like these phrases connected with an argument they’d been having.
“I know,” she said, and patted his hand to calm him.
“A single mind directed!” he said loudly.
Several of the ladies were shooting pissy looks his way. Ava shushed him and said they’d talk about it later. But Carl wanted to talk about it right then and there. I’d never seen him so heated up. Whenever the reverend’s voice carried to us, Carl would go to chuckling, spitting back the reverend’s words, saying, “Yes! Yes!” and sputtering other foolishness, giving this weird sort of affirmation, like he was a shouter in a retard church.
Eventually, urged on by his outraged ladies, the reverend scooted out of the booth and ambled over. He clasped his hands at his belly, delivered us a patient look, and asked Carl if he wouldn’t mind toning it down.
Carl beamed at him and said, “Yes! A single mind!”
Leeli said, “Can’t you see the man ain’t right!” Ava offered an apology and I said, “You best take your fat ass on back to the hen house, or they gonna need another rooster.”
The reverend armored his face with a smile and looked down on me from a peak of blessed understanding. “Young man,” he said. Actually he said a good bit more, but the words young man were all I heeded. When I was five Reverend Nichols from the First Baptist told my mama having such a sweet little fellow as me by his side would be an asset when he was doing fund-raising, and since this gave her more time for drinking, she loaned me out to him on a regular basis. “Young man,” he’d say once we were alone, “wanna sit my lap while I drive? Young man, I’m gonna open you to God’s greatest gift.” I didn’t much appreciate anybody calling me young man, and I sure as hell didn’t want it from a preacher. I caught him by the collar and yanked him down so he was gawking into the leavings of my chicken fried steak. The only thing I recall saying was, “Cocksucking holy Joe motherfucker,” but I know I expanded on that considerable. People were tugging at me, women were screaming, something struck the side of my head, but I was serene in the midst of it, talking to the reverend, showing him the ketchup-smeared edge of my steak knife.