“His hairdo was not unreminiscent, was it, of Woody Woodpecker?” Mr. Irony asked.
“I thought so myself,” I said, and I had, precisely. The coiffure looked artificially blown up, almost teased, into a topknot at the front of the fellow’s head, and it was in fact carrot-colored. Mr. Irony and I, by this sight, were reassured that we had made the correct choice of transport. We sat together on the cooler of beer Duke had advised us to prepare for our ride with the pulp-wood niggers, patient in our waiting, for Duke had also advised that, though we would arrive at the destination (Dillon, S.C.) well before the insurance salesman would have gotten us there, we might depart up to two hours later.
The pulpwood niggers were three. The driver was white, wearing a blue mesh cap that read I’m a Rebel and Damn PROUD OF IT. At shotgun was a black with his hair plaited into spikes, over which he had tied a black nylon scarf in Arab fashion, with two nylon tails down his back. “Healthy-looking individual,” Mr. Irony remarked of him. “Got them Husqvarna arms.” In the middle of the seat was a suggestion of human form, as a cicada hull on a pine tree suggests an insect. He was chinless, chestless, slumped down bleary-eyed between his larger colleagues. We came to learn he was “the oiler,” by which title was signified his entire raison d’être: when the other two ran equipment, he carried and administered the lubricants. If it was chain saws, he carried a pistol-style oil can, squirting the hot blades, muttering every time, “Self-oilers don’t work for shit.”
The driver, with a motion of his thumb, indicated we were to get on the truck flatbed. We got aboard and were arranging ourselves on the boat cushions we bought with the cooler when the cab rear window slid open and the oiler extended both arms through it. Mr. Irony and I managed to interpret this, and I handed the oiler two cold beers.
“Fatherlaw died last week,” he said, pulling back into the cab with the beer. With a jolt we were off.
Several miles down the road his arms came back through the window, and he was delivered two more beers. “Wife daddy died,” he said, going back in.
Through a rare, obvious communion, Mr. Irony and I were clearly taking extreme pleasure in the ludicrousness of our scene, glancing squarely and without expression at one another during these utterances from the oiler. We were bouncing clear off the truck, on a clay road that now had over it behind us a cloud of dust as far as we could see.
We braked to a halt, and while Mr. Irony and I were still struggling for balance, the driver and the black guy were pissing in the road beside open cab doors. “Pit stop,” the oiler informed us, a bit gratuitously. We got off to piss.
Mr. Irony was boring into the clay in front of him when the black dude said to him, “Nice boots, homeboy.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Pointy-like. Match your head.”
“They do, sir.”
“Spensive, bet. How much they coss, homeboy?”
“Three.”
The oiler interrupted this discourse by letting himself out of the truck and collapsing on the roadside.
“Lumpy daddy died!” he said, rocking on the ground like a child in a crib. Mr. Irony bent to inspect the bereaved form.
“Pay no mine, homeboy,” the black said to Mr. Irony. “He in moning. Would like them boots.”
“For the asking, sir.” Mr. Irony was already seated on the truck bed pulling hard on one of his Luccheses. It was this willingness, this anticipation, I think, that saved Mr. Irony’s boots. The black looked with just a hint of surprise at Mr. Irony sitting unshod, swinging his socked feet.
“I just try ’em on, homeboy. You all right.”
“Might I kick a few clods in those brogans?”
“Righteous. You bit crazy.”
The two of them exchanged footwear, and the black walked awkwardly around, stopping with the boots under the prostrate, grieving face of the oiler.
“How these look on me, Taint?”
“Leave him alone, Rooster,” the driver said. “Pick him up.” He was smoking, leaning against the truck studying his calloused hands.
“How they look, Taint?” Rooster repeated.
“Lumpy daddy died.”
Rooster leaned over, off balance, and with one arm picked the oiler up, setting him down on his feet hard, giving him the slightest steadying shake. “Get hole on yourself, man.” The oiler suddenly reminded me of a creature I saw once in an aquarium that I thought merely remained still for a very long time and that I later discovered to have been all along dead, hollowed out.
The driver flicked his cigarette into the woods and got in the truck. “That fag magazine don’t pay us shit for this shit. You boys get on.”
Mr. Irony, who had been speaking with Rooster, unhooked the boom cable and Rooster released the winch. Mr. Irony pulled ten feet of cable out and got aboard with it. “Homeboy want him a seat belt,” Rooster said, to no one. He stuffed the oiler in the rider’s door. “Homeboy I think may be hisself part nigger. Here. Peench like motherfuck anyway.” Mr. Irony’s Luccheses came through the rear window, and Rooster’s brogans, loaded with beer, went in.
Mr. Irony put two half hitches of cable around his waist and looked to me with a gesture offering some cable, which I declined. He took another half hitch for himself and we settled in, looking backwards, for the ride to Dillon.
Once we had a head of steam and the dust trail behind us well up, Rooster’s arm came through the window and touched the winch control. Mr. Irony put two beers in his jacket, felt his waist, took a deep breath, gave Rooster a thumbs-up, and Rooster winched him free of the bed. He swung out and back, spinning, and settled bed-high beneath the log boom, blowing, turning, already taking on the color of clay, assuming the orientations of a sky diver, the expression on his face rapt.
Just before he disappeared for good into the thick clay air, Mr. Irony managed to face forward, horizontal, with arms out front, and shout, “Superman at His Best!”
“Life insurance is the best investment money can buy. You are investing in your life—and what could be a better investment than that? What?”
“Don’t you have to die to cash in?”
“Alack! No, ladies. That’s a thing I read in a Shakespeare story. Nooo, ladies, you do not have to die to enjoy the extreme uncomparable benefits of cash-value life insurance. You may borrow against your policy, and it may mature and pay before you die, and—”
“What’s this?”
“What?”
“It says, ODOR KILLER — CITRUS. AN ENTIRE ORANGE GROVE IN A BOTTLE.”
“Hey! Don’t squirt too much of that!”
“Open the windows, for God’s sake.”
“Entire orange grove in an entire goddamn car.”
“Well, I told you—”
“What’s this? It stinks.” Pampa sniffs a cardboard coaster suspended from the rearview mirror; on the coaster is a painting of a largemouth bass.