addict turned Christian Scientist who was healing an unexplained open wound on her leg – more of a running sore, actually – with prayer. Jimmy said he was certain in time his girlfriend could cure it right up. For the time being, however, she had also consented to the use of gauze, peroxide, and adhesive tape, though this was not common knowledge she shared with her church.
Brett had a young daughter named Tillie, who lived in Denver. She said the last letter she got from Till, as Brett called her, was encouraging. Till said her pimp didn’t beat her as much these days and most of her old injuries had gone away, though she did sport a small white scar over her right eye, and on cold days she walked with a limp. She had bought a new spitz puppy she named Milo, but her pimp didn’t like it and shot it and she was kind of happy about that now because she didn’t really need a dog in a small apartment where she had to entertain men.
The apartment, Brett told me, was a room over an all-night garage, and most of her customers were brought there by taxi after reading her name off a Fina station’s shit-house wall. The pimp lived uptown in a condo. Brett finished by saying, “Guess I can’t be too hard on Tillie, she’s just doin’ for money what I used to do for free, though admittedly I didn’t advertise in the Fina station toilet.”
“I always felt bad about not having kids,” I said. “But I’m feeling better now.”
“I must admit, I’ve come to understand why certain animals eat their young,” Brett said. “But I wouldn’t have missed them growin’ up. I love them. The problem was their father was an asshole and I was too young to raise babies. It’s our fault they both turned out to be worthless pieces of shit. I had the first one when I was sixteen. The second one when I was eighteen. I did the best I could but I was a kid myself. Earl didn’t do a goddamn thing except suck the end of a bottle and hump truck-stop waitresses. After we were married for a while, Earl decided he liked to toss me over the TV set on Friday nights, bounce me around the bedroom, punch me, then butt-fuck me as a little treat when his arms got tired. This went on longer than I like to admit. I kept thinking I could change him.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.”
“That’s all right,” Brett said. “Nineteen eighty-five I finally got tired of it. I hit him in the head with a shovel while he was digging for fishing worms in the backyard. I seen him out in the yard digging, and just the night before he’d given me one of them beatings I was tellin’ you about, and he put a beer bottle up my ass and poured the beer into me, and I was not in a cheery mood about it. Anyway, I seen him out there, so I made my plans. I hit him in the head with that shovel and I’d brought some lighter fluid and kitchen matches with me, and after I hit him I set him on fire. You might call it premeditated. You may have seen something about it back then. It made all the papers and TV. I burned the back of my hand a little when I was doing it, but Earl got the worst of it. He’s in some kind of home now in Houston, a ward of the state, and he can’t do things for himself and has trouble with simple math problems. Stuff like, if you have two apples and you eat one, how many are left?”
“Jesus, Brett. Did you do some time?”
“Judge let me off. There was plenty of evidence Earl had it coming. I dressed nice that day, best hot pants I had – you remember hot pants, don’t you? Well, I wore pink hot pants and a tight top, and as the judge was a known lecher, he let me off on a kind of self-defense thing. Earl’s relatives tried to sue me, came back on me for every kind of thing there was for about six months, but after a while they got to feelin’ good about Earl being gone too. He was always borrowin’ money from ’em and he was known to conk the sisters now and then, and I figure he’d been fuckin’ the youngest one, ’cause she had a kinda twitch to her eye and didn’t like men much. Earl’s mama thought Earl was a lot like her husband, Earl’s daddy, who used to beat her. Her husband, Earl Senior, died of a heart attack one morning in a moment of fury over runny breakfast eggs. So, his family kinda got to respect me a little, ’cause down deep they didn’t like that sonofabitch Earl Junior neither. I’m not sayin’ they exactly thanked me for settin’ Earl’s head on fire and bangin’ his brain around, but they began to feel fortunate he didn’t have anything upstairs left to use for devious means. Instead, he was tryin’ not to mess himself too often and learn not to lick his fingers when he got single square breakthrough. That’s kind of his lifetime career now. Keepin’ shit off his fingers.”
“Always an important point,” I said.
“His family sent me a Christmas card for a few years after I moved away,” Brett said. “All this happened over in Gilmer, and I can’t say I’ve missed the place much or looked back, though I do miss the Yamboree now and then. You know, the big sweet tater celebration they have over there every year?”
“I’ve been to it.”
“What kills me is the main float they make. It’s always this big yam, or sweet tater, but it looks like this big brown turd. I rode on it back when I was in high school. I was the Yamboree Queen one year. I remember I drank some Boone’s Farm apple wine and rode on that turd down Main Street waving at people, got so goddamn tickled I nearly fell off. People thought I was just hysterically happy that I was that year’s turd queen. That’s back when I first was datin’ Earl. He wasn’t so bad then, and I’ve got some good memories, but the best one is the last one, when Earl was running across the yard with his head on fire, just before the neighbor tripped him and put out the blaze with a water hose.”
“Did he beat the flames out with the hose, or did he have the water on?”
Brett laughed. “He had the water on. When I think about that day I get a kind of warm feelin’ inside. Not as warm as Earl’s head got. But warm.”
“I don’t suppose any of your other relationships have ended in tragedy?”
“Don’t worry. Earl’s the only one I ever set on fire, and I haven’t taken up a shovel since, unless it was to plant flowers. It was just one of them things. Enough was enough. I burned up his car too. I was so goddamn angry after he got his head fire put out, I pulled his car into the drive, poured gasoline on it, and set it ablaze. I did that ’cause he treated that car better than me.”
“You certainly had a big day that day.”
“You betcha,” Brett said. “And you know what? I got a friend goin’ through that shit right now. You met Ella, didn’t you?”
“She’s a nurse too?”
“That’s the one,” she said. “She told me she talked to you. Her husband beats her regular, and she won’t leave. I’ve tried to get her to leave, but she won’t, and she ain’t for settin’ his head on fire.”
“Actually, that’s for the best, Brett.”
“I reckon, but she ought to do somethin’.”
“I wish her luck,” I said.
“Luck ain’t gonna have a goddamn thing to do with it,” Brett said.
After dinner I drove Brett back to her place and she made coffee, then dressed for work. While she dressed I sat on the sofa and drank my coffee and looked around the living room. It was neat and simple. She had a row of books, mostly nursing text books and a few bestsellers. A few knickknacks. No shovels or lighter fluid. There were photographs of her two kids. They were probably in their teens in the photos. Handsome kids. The girl looked as if she were going to grow up to resemble her mother. Probably did by now. Except for the scar and the limp. The boy was nice-looking. Probably wowed a lot of women in the aikido class during his discussions of Taoism. I wondered what he could do with a left jab to the nose, a swift kick to the gonads.
Brett came out wearing her nurse duds. “I’m sorry I had to deflate my titties,” she said, “but duty calls.”
“That’s all right. Would you like me to run you to work?”
“No. I got to come home sometime, and I don’t want to be dependent on you. I had a good time, really. I hope you did, even if you didn’t get any nookie.”
“Listen, Brett. You don’t need to keep that up. I like sex. Really. But I like you too. I want to know you better. I’d prefer not to spend a lot of time with you around shovels and lighter fluid, but I do want to know you better. You don’t have to come on so strong.”
“I guess you’re right. But I got to tell you, sweetie, when you been fending for yourself long as I have, you use ever’ tool you got in your toolbox. I guess I bring out the monkey wrench sometimes when a pair of pliers would do.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “I’ll see you again if you’ll let me.”
“You bet. And soon.”
“One thing,” I said. “You got any photos of you riding that turd in the Yamboree?”
“Somewhere. Next time we get together I’ll let you see ’em. I even got one of me when I was a baby on a fake bearskin rug I’ll show you.”
