The Lost Get-Back Boogie

Later, reflecting on the events that were to follow, I would sometimes feel that a human being’s life is not shaped so much by what he is or what he pretends to be or even by the compulsions that he tries to root out and burn away; instead it can be just a matter of a wrong turn in an angry moment and a disregard for its consequences. But I didn’t know then that I would betray a friend and once more become involved in someone’s death.

NINE

I parked in the dark shadow of the maple tree in front of Beth’s house.

“You want me to wait or catch air?” I said.

“Come on in. She’s got some beer in the icebox.”

“This is your caper, daddy-o. I’m going to rain-check this one.”

He walked across the lawn and the dead leaves onto the wood porch. Under the door light, his body looked small and white. He had to lean against the wall for balance when he knocked again.

I guess I wanted to see Buddy ruin himself with Beth, but as I looked at him there, dissipated, his head crawling with snakes, the unfulfilled rut still in his loins, I wished I could get him back in the car and home again.

Beth opened the door, and I heard Buddy’s voice in its strained and careful attempt to sound sober. But the words came too fast, as though they had been rehearsed and pulled out like a piece of tape.

“Somebody burned out the old man’s barn this morning, and we were cruising around and decided to drop by.”

She didn’t open the screen, and there was a quiet moment while she said something to him, and then his arms went up in the air and he started to rock on both feet in the shadowy light.

“They’re my boys, too, ain’t they?” he said, and his voice became louder after a few seconds of silence. “I mean what the hell they have to go to bed so early for, anyway?” Then another pause while Beth spoke.

“You keep listening to that goddamn psychologist and they’re going to grow up in Warm Springs.” Another pause.

“I’ll roll out the whole fucking neighborhood if I want to. We’ll give all these straight cats something to talk about over their breakfast cereal for a week.”

I saw Beth open the screen, then latch it and turn off the porch light. I waited fifteen minutes in the darkness of the maple tree and listened to a hillbilly radio station in Spokane, then decided to go to the Oxford for a chicken-fried steak and a cup of coffee and leave Buddy to his self-flagellation.

But then the light came on again, and Beth stepped out on the porch in a pair of blue jeans and a denim shirt bleached almost white with Clorox. Her blue-black hair hung in a tangle on her shoulders, and her bare feet looked as cold as ivory in the light. She motioned at me, a gentle gesture of the fingers as though she were saying good-bye to someone, and I walked across the dry, stiff grass and dead leaves toward her with a quickening in my heart and emptiness in my legs that confirmed altogether too quickly what had been in my mind all day while I had let Buddy tear his chemistry apart with whiskey and guilt.

“Help me put him upstairs. I don’t want the children to see him,” she said.

Buddy was leaned back against the couch in the lamplight, his knees wide apart; his head rolled about on his shoulders like a balloon that wanted to break its string. He was talking at the far wall as though there were someone standing in front of him.

I tried to lift him by one arm, and he slapped at me with his hand, his hair over his eyes and ears.

“What the shit you doing, man?” he said. “You trying to get me kicked out of two places in one day?”

“We got to go to bed. Your old man wants us to finish the fence line by the slough tomorrow,” I said, though I should have known better than to patronize a drunk, particularly Buddy.

“Well, cool. Louisiana Zeno is looking out for the old man’s Angus after he went through the flames.” He tried to raise his head and focus on my face, but the effort was too much.

“What did he take today?” Beth said.

“Just a lot of booze.”

“No, he’s been using dope again, hasn’t he?”

I heard the boys’ voices shouting in the backyard. Beth shook him again by the shoulder.

“Get up,” she said. “Straighten up your head and stand.”

Buddy fell sideways against the arm of the couch, with one wrist bent back against his thigh. His face was as bloodless and empty as a child’s. The back screen slammed, and Beth walked hurriedly into the kitchen and told the children to stay outside. She returned with a wet towel in her hand and pressed it into Buddy’s face.

“Goddamn,” he said, his head rolling back.

“Walk to the stairs,” she said. “Lean forward and hold on to my arm. Damn you, Buddy, they’re not going to see you like this.”