back then, feet so tough you could saw on em for a while with your knife before you felt it.
“Anyway, Cecil, he takes him another swig, he’s already drunk as Cooter Brown, pops his knuckles, looks like a demented Tarzan shinnying up the tree and straddling that lower limb, not looking down, bout ten feet off the ground but the bluff out there was probably twenty, twenty-five feet down, a good long fall.”
Carl paused and took a swallow of his beer. “Now I sidle up to one of the other fellows by the fire there and say, ‘Watch this,’ just about the time Cecil gets the rope in his hand. We can barely see him it’s so dark. Trying to stab his foot in that loop. You knew he was drunk otherwise he’d a never scaled that tree much less jump. But about then he lets out a whoop and bails right off that limb. He’s yelling his Tarzan yell but about halfway into it we hear it change and sort of trail off, all of us down there at the edge, looking out, trying to see. And what we see? The dang rope comes a-flapping back empty, without Cecil. We hear this scream out there in the dark then a crash, way the heck down in them briars. We all looking at each other with our mouths hanging open, thinking, we done killed Cecil.
“But about then the cussing starts, way down in the bottom, sounds like it’s about a half mile off. Son-of-a- blank and mother blanker and G. D. this and G. D. that-”
“Carl-” his mother said, trying not to smile.
“Well, by now we was all falling down on the ground we was laughing so hard, poor old Cecil, he didn’t even have him a layer of clothes to absorb the briar and thorns.
“And when he finally come climbing back up the bank bout twenty minutes later he looked like he’d been in a cage with a bobcat, welts ever where, cut all to pieces, bleeding, got a big ole knot on his head. We’d long since stopped making noise we’s laughing so hard, I couldn’t even catch my breath, red in the face, bout to choke, Cecil standing there in the firelight with briars sticking out of his hair, but then when he seen us laughing that fool starts to laugh himself, holding out his bloody palm for his money.”
His father was shaking his head and smiling, his mother laughing and Larry, too.
“Where’s that tree?” Larry said, thinking he might take Cindy. “Is the rope still there?”
Glancing at him, his father said, “Naw.”
“What happened to it?”
“They cut it down. Mill did.” He pushed his plate aside and rose from the table. “Enjoyed it,” he said, got another beer from the refrigerator, and went into the den.
Larry and his mother sat a moment, the television clicking on in the living room.
“You best go,” she said. “Don’t keep her waiting.”
HE GOT OUT of the Buick at the Walker house, their car gone, which meant Cindy’s mother was at work. Cecil was waiting on the porch, smoking. He wore his usual greasy baseball cap and cut-off jeans and a dirty white T- shirt and no shoes.
“Hey, Cecil,” he said, crossing their yard, smiling thinking of him all tore up and bloody.
Cecil flicked his cigarette toward him. “Boy, it ain’t Cecil today ner ever again. It’s Mr. Walker now, got it?”
Larry stopped.
“I said you got it?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah what?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Get over here,” Cecil said.
Larry crossed the yard, glancing at the windows of the little house, hoping Cindy might come out.
“Is it something wrong, Ce-” he said, nearing the porch, “-I mean, Mr. Walker?”
He stopped at the bottom step, hoping Cecil was joking, that any second that ignorant smile with its missing bottom tooth might break open, that he would elbow Larry and say, “I’m messing with you, Larry boy. You something else.”
But the fist that grabbed his shirtfront and pulled him up the stairs was as hard as a sledgehammer, this man no lacerated winking fool. Cecil spun him and pushed him face-first into the coarse wall, its ancient gray boards and their faintly sweet tickle in his nose. Something, a tear, blood, ran down his cheek. Cecil had one hand behind Larry’s neck and the other in the small of his back, his whiskers prickling his cheeks as he ground his face so close Larry could smell beer and cigarettes and the old meat in his teeth.
“If you so much as get a finger in her,” Cecil hissed, “I’ll cut your little pecker off myself.” And now the grip at his neck was gone, but before Larry could move the hand had grabbed his testicles.
Larry’s knees gave way but the hand was back at his neck, pressing him into the wall.
“You get me, sissy boy?”
Larry thought he might vomit. When Cecil moved his hand Larry collapsed. He heard shoes on the porch boards and tried to move.
“I said you get me? And if you say one word to your daddy-”
“Cecil!” It was Cindy, between them, pushing at her stepfather.
He laughed, stepped over Larry on his way to the door. “Go on out with that one,” he said. “He ain’t gone do you no good tonight, you little whore.”
The screen door slammed.
Cindy tried to help him up but he shook his head and lay breathing.
“I’ll be right back,” she said.
His eyes were closed but he felt water-not even tears, just water-spilling over his cheekbones, dripping off his jaw and chin. He burped several times, the hot roast, it was everything he could do not to throw up. He heard them yelling inside.
Then the screen door screaked and slammed and she was back, pulling him to his feet. He was aware of her against him, her sweaty perfume and cigarettes.
“Can you walk?”
“Yeah.”
They went toward the car.
“He’s a son of a bitch,” Cindy said. “I hate his guts.”
He opened the door for her. She slipped in without saying thanks and he closed it and limped around the back of the car watching the house. He got in. She was looking out the window, across the road.
“It’s half a hour,” he said, “fore it gets dark.”
She didn’t answer.
“What you want to do first?”
“This,” Cindy said. “Scootch over.”
He slid toward her on the seat, surprised they’d kiss here and not at the drive-in, but instead she opened her door, got out, and ran around the car and climbed in the driver’s side.
Cecil came back out, lighting a cigarette.
“You get the beer?”
“Just two.”
“Shit. Well?”
He reached under the seat and handed her the first.
She took it and glanced at him. “It’s warm.”
“Sorry.”
When she popped the tab it spewed foam on her. “Shit,” she said, flinging beer off her fingers.
She cranked up the Buick and spun off, flipping out her middle finger to her stepfather, and Larry looked back to where Cecil had left his porch and was walking quickly toward them, even as they peeled away throwing gravel.
Cindy sipped the beer and grimaced. She clicked on the radio and began turning the dial, settling on a station playing the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive.” She lowered her window and had trouble lighting her cigarette and then rolled it back up and lit the smoke and lowered the window again, accelerating over the dirt road, holding the beer in one hand and the cigarette in the other. She had on a short skirt that lifted in the wind and he could see far up her legs, her thighs slightly apart and brown from all her lying out. If Carl found out somebody else drove the car, Larry would be in trouble. Would Cecil tell? Was he right now walking over to their house?
