A World of Thieves

work site. Russell stopped the car next to the transport truck where two of the gun bulls stood in the shade and Jimmyboy asked them for directions to Rosenburg. Next thing the guards knew they had pistols in their faces. The boss bull hollered at the third guard, down near the end of the work line, to throw down his gun too, but the guy just stood there. “Like he was maybe thinking of trying to save the day,” Russell said.

Buck came up out of the ditch behind him and knocked the notion out of his head with a shovel.

“Should’ve seen it,” Buck said. “Old boy wobbled around in little circles with his eyes rolled up in his head like he was having a religious experience before he finally thought to fall down.”

Some of the cons went hightailing into the woods and some stood there like they wouldn’t know what to do until somebody told them. “Sorry bastards,” Buck said. “They’re exactly where they belong.”

While Jimmyboy held a pistol on the guards, Buck collected their guns and tossed them into the car. Russell opened a hood panel on the prison truck and yanked out the coil wire and put it in his pocket. They got back in the car and Russell wheeled it around and Buck said all he saw out the back window as they made their getaway was a yellow cloud of road dust.

He looked over at me and smiled—and I felt my grin get bigger.

The first time I did it was with Solise DuBois, in her family’s boathouse, only a few weeks before Buck’s escape from the Texas road gang. Over the following months I had the pleasure of lots of other schoolgirls as well and made my first visits to some of the Quarter’s best cathouses. With such experience under my belt, so to speak, I naturally thought I knew everything there was to know about sex. But it came as a revelation to me that Buck could still sport with the ladies despite lacking most of his pecker.

I received this enlightenment one evening when I was taking supper with him and Russell in a restaurant. They’d spent most of the afternoon in a speakeasy and were feeling pretty loose. As we watched the waitress sashay off to the kitchen with our order, Buck said he sure wouldn’t kick her out of bed. Then he caught my look and laughed.

“I can read your mind, kid,” he said. He aped a look of awe and tried to mimic my voice as he said, “Can he still cut the mustard, him?”

Some patrons at a neighboring table turned our way. Buck smiled and winked at them and they gave their attention back to their plates.

He leaned forward and in a lower voice informed me that there were all kinds of pleasures he could still take with women who didn’t scare easy at the sight of his stub. He still enjoyed what they could do for him with their mouth and hands, and he could still get off by just rubbing himself on a cooter. If he fit himself just right against it, he could get the woman off too. Between that and the things he could do for them with his own hands and mouth, there was plenty of fun to go around. He said he’d proved it with nearly a dozen women already, and only the first two of them whores.

“Hell, some of them’s told me the thing feels better than a whole one,” he said. “Say it gets them in the button better.”

Russell had known about the whores—the first time Buck tested himself after getting back from Texas was at Miss Quentin’s over on St. Ann’s, and Russell had gone with him—but the others were news to him and he asked how come Buck hadn’t said anything about them before.

“What?” Buck said. “I got to report to you every time I hump a broad? I got to keep a list for you? You practicing to be parole officer?”

“Hey man, I don’t give a damn who you hump or how you do it,” Russell said. “Just don’t tell me they like that stump better than they do a whole one.”

“I’m telling you what they tell me,” Buck said. “Not all of them, but some.”

We got more looks from the surrounding tables and I cleared my throat and cut my eyes sideways to let Buck and Russell know it.

Russell made a dismissive gesture, but he lowered his voice. “Look, a whore’ll do anybody and say anything, no questions asked except where’s my money. But a free woman saying she prefers a stump to a whole one? She’s either bullshitting or mighty damn drunk. No offense.”

None taken, Buck said. But we’d be surprised at the way a lot of women reacted to his mutilation—which he’d mention to them before they even got anywhere near a bed. He’d tell them he got it in the war.

“It’s like it’s some kind of challenge or something,” he said. “They have to see it. And once they do, they have to see what it feels like.”

“Challenge, my ass,” Russell said. “Pity freaks, more like it.”

“Could be,” Buck said. “All I know is I’m getting it more and getting it a lot easier than I used to with a whole one.”

Maybe so, Russell said, but if the devil himself came along and promised him all the poontang in the world in exchange for most of his dick, he’d keep what he had, thank you.

“I don’t blame you a bit,” Buck said. “Those three inches mean a lot to you, I know.”

“You dickless shitbird,” Russell said.

“You brainless asshole,” Buck said.

“I surely do enjoy being privy to these eloquent fraternal conversations,” I said.

They turned on me. “You smartmouth jackleg,” Russell said.

“You egghead pogue,” Buck said.

“Gentlemen,” I said, lowering my voice to a whisper and leaning over the table, “have you never before heard that profanity is the linguistic crutch of inarticulate fuckheads?”

Buck grabbed me by the throat and affected to choke me, and Russell hissed, “Snuff that smartass.”

“Yes sir,” I said in a mock-strangled voice, “eloquent’s the word for these little family chats.”

Then we were all laughing and trading punches on the arm and drawing stares from all over the dining room. The manager came over to ask frostily if everything was all right.

“Couldn’t be better,” I told him. “Thank you for asking.”

One chill February afternoon in my junior year I came home from school to find my mother on the kitchen floor. A few hours after going into the hospital she had a second stroke and it finished her. My wire got to Daddy while his tanker was loading oil in Texas City. He wired back he’d catch the next train. When I got home the apartment felt way too large. My throat tightened when I leafed through a few of her favorite books, and when I read her margin notes in her copy of Yeats—“So true!’’ “Yes, exactly!’’ “I love this!”—the tears came. Then I went through her closet and caught the smell on her clothes and wept even harder.

I met Daddy at the station the next day and his eyes too were redly glazed. For more than a week after the funeral he sat around and didn’t say much. His aspect was of someone sitting in an empty room. Then suddenly he was all in a rush to be back on a ship, as if the only solace possible to him was out on the open sea. On a cold morning of heavy yellow fog I went with him to the docks and he got a pierhead jump on a rustbucket called the Yorrike. It was bound for ports of call all over the Orient and not due to return for nine months. I was old enough to take care of myself and there was enough money in the family account to cover my expenses for several months. He would send more each time he got paid. He’d already asked Buck and Russell to watch out for me. He shook my hand at the foot of the gangplank and told me to study hard. Then went aboard and stood at the rail as the tugs nudged the ship out to the channel and it faded in the downriver mist.

He sent money about every six weeks, each time with a short letter mostly taken up with thumbnail descriptions of the places he’d most recently been—Colombo, Rangoon, Singapore, Manila. He tried hard to sound in good spirits but I could sense his persisting grief. He always closed with an admonishment to keep up my grades and a reminder that my mother would’ve been disappointed if I didn’t.

I shared his letters with Buck and Russell, who read them with glum faces. They never said anything about them except one time when Russell said, “I guess it’s rough when you really love them,” and Buck nodded and looked out the window.

They kept an eye on me as they’d promised Daddy they would. Except when they were out of town on business, as they always called it, I’d drop in on them about twice a week and we’d usually take supper together. They came to visit me just as often. Sometimes I’d have a girl with me when they stopped by and they’d apologize for the intrusion and take a hasty leave. The next time they’d see me they’d say I’d better not be spending so much time chasing after nooky that I was ignoring my schoolwork. I’d assure them I wasn’t and proved it with my monthly grade reports, which they had to sign with Daddy’s name for return to the headmaster. I was also on the boxing team again and they never missed a match, not even when it was held at some school in another parish. At