as the gun had the distance. The memory made him nostalgic for his youth and he tried to remember what he had done with his old Daisy air rifle. Then it came to him that his dad had probably pawned it. He did that sort of thing now and then, when he fell off the wagon. Suddenly a lot of missing items over the years began to come together. He’d have to get him some kind of trunk with a lock on it and nail it to the floor or something. It wasn’t nailed down, it and everything in it might end up at the pawn shop for strangers to paw over.
They walked on and finally came to a long street with houses at the end of it and the lights there seemed less bright and the windows the lights came out of much smaller.
“That last house before the street crosses,” Buddy said, “that’s the one we want.”
Wilson and Jake looked where Buddy was pointing. The house was dark except for a smudgy porch light and a sick yellow glow that shone from behind a thick curtain. Someone was sitting on the front porch doing something with their hands. They couldn’t tell anything about the person or about what the person was doing. From that distance the figure could have been whittling or masturbating.
“Ain’t that niggertown on the other side of the street?” Jake said. “This gal we’re after, she a nigger? I don’t know I’m ready to fuck a nigger. I heard my old man say to a friend of his that Mammy Clewson will give a hand job for a dollar and a half. I might go that from a nigger, but I don’t know about putting it in one.”
“House we want is on this side of the street, before niggertown,” Buddy said. “That’s a full four-foot difference. She ain’t a nigger. She’s white trash.”
“Well…all right,” Jake said. “That’s different.”
“Everybody take a drink,” Buddy said, and he unscrewed the lid on the fruit jar and took a jolt. “Wheee. Straight from the horse.”
Buddy passed the jar to Wilson and Wilson drank and nearly threw it up. “Goddamn,” he said. “Goddamn. He must run that stuff through a radiator hose or something.”
Jake took a turn, shivered as if in the early throes of an epileptic fit. He gave the jar back to Buddy. Buddy screwed the lid on and they walked on down the street, stopped opposite the house they wanted and looked at the man on the front porch, for they could clearly see now it was a man. He was old and toothless and he was shelling peas from a big paper sack into a little white wash pan.
“That’s the pimp,” Buddy whispered. He opened up the jar and took a sip and closed it and gave it to Wilson to hold. “Give me your money.”
They gave him their five dollars.
“I’ll go across and make the arrangements,” Buddy said. “When I signal, come on over. The pimp might prefer we go in the house one at a time. Maybe you can sit on the porch. I don’t know yet.”
The three smiled at each other. The passion was building.
Buddy straightened his shoulders, pulled his pants up, and went across the street. He called a howdy to the man on the porch.
“Who the hell are you?” the old man said. It sounded as if his tongue got in the way of his words.
Buddy went boldly up to the house and stood at the porch steps. Wilson and Jake could hear him from where they stood, shuffling their feet and sipping from the jar. He said, “We come to buy a little pussy. I hear you’re the man to supply it.”
“What’s that?” the old man said, and he stood up. When he did, it was obvious he had a problem with his balls. The right side of his pants looked to have a baby’s head in it.
“I was him,” Jake whispered to Wilson, “I’d save up my share of that pussy money and get me a truss.”
“What is that now?” the old man was going on. “What is that you’re saying, you little shit?”
“Well now,” Buddy said, cocking a foot on the bottom step of the porch like someone who meant business, “I’m not asking for free. I’ve got fifteen dollars here. It’s five a piece, ain’t it? We’re not asking for anything fancy. We just want to lay a little pipe.”
A pale light went on inside the house and a plump, blond girl appeared at the screen door. She didn’t open it. She stood there looking out.
“Boy, what in hell are you talking about?” the old man said. “You got the wrong house.”
“No one here named Sally?” Buddy asked.
The old man turned his head toward the screen and looked at the plump girl.
“I don’t know him, Papa,” she said. “Honest.”
“You sonofabitch,” the old man said to Buddy, and he waddled down the step and swung an upward blow that hit Buddy under the chin and flicked his squirrel-looking hairdo out of shape, sent him hurtling into the front yard. The old man got a palm under his oversized balls and went after Buddy, walking like he had something heavy tied to one leg. Buddy twisted around to run and the old man kicked out and caught him one in the seat of the pants, knocked him stumbling into the street.
“You little bastard,” the old man yelled, “don’t you come sniffing around here after my daughter again, or I’ll cut your nuts off.”
Then the old man saw Wilson and Jake across the street. Jake, unable to stop himself, nervously lifted a hand and waved.
“Git on out of here, or I’ll let Blackie out,” the old man said. “He’ll tear your asses up.”
Buddy came on across the street trying to step casually, but moving briskly just the same. “I’m gonna get that fucking Butch,” he said.
The old man found a rock in the yard and threw it at them. It whizzed by Buddy’s ear and he and Jake and Wilson stepped away lively.
Behind them they heard a screen door slam and the plump girl whined something and there was a whapping sound, like a fan belt come loose on a big truck, then they heard the plump girl yelling for mercy and the old man cried “Slut” once, and they were out of there, across the street, into the black side of town.
They walked along a while, then Jake said, “I guess we could find Mammy Clewson.”
“Oh, shut up,” Buddy said. “Here’s your five dollars back. Here’s both your five dollars back. The both of you can get her to do it for you till your money runs out.”
“I was just kidding,” Jake said.
“Well don’t,” Buddy said. “That Butch, I catch him, right in the kisser, man. I don’t care how big and mean he is. Right in the kisser.”
They walked along the street and turned left up another. “Let’s get out of boogie town,” Buddy said. “All these niggers around here, it makes me nervous.”
When they were well up the street and there were no houses, they turned down a short direct street with a bridge in the middle of it that went over the Sabine River. It wasn’t a big bridge because the river was narrow there. Off to the right was a wide pasture. To the left a church. They crossed into the back church yard. There were a couple of wooden pews setting out there under an oak. Buddy went over to one and sat down.
“I thought you wanted to get away from the boogies?” Wilson said.
“Naw,” Buddy said. “This is all right. This is fine. I’d like for a nigger to start something. I would. That old man back there hadn’t been so old and had his balls fucked up like that, I’d have kicked his ass.”
“We wondered what was holding you back,” Wilson said.
Buddy looked at Wilson, didn’t see any signs of sarcasm.
“Yeah, well, that was it. Give me the jar. There’s some other women I know about. We might try something later on, we feel like it.”
But a cloud of unspoken resignation, as far as pussy was concerned, had passed over them and they labored beneath its darkness with their fruit jar of hooch. The sat and passed the jar around and the night got better and brighter. Behind them, off in the woods, they could hear the Sabine River running along. Now and then a car would go down or up the street, cross over the bridge with a rumble, and pass out of sight beyond the church, or if heading in the other direction, out of sight behind trees.
Buddy began to see the night’s fiasco as funny. He mellowed. “That Butch, he’s something, ain’t he? Some joke, huh?”
“It was pretty funny,” Jake said, “seeing that old man and his balls coming down the porch after you. That thing was any more ruptured, he’d need a wheelbarrow to get from room to room. Shit, I bet he couldn’t have turned no dog on us. He’d had one in there, it’d have barked.”
“Maybe he called Sally Blackie,” Wilson said. “Man, we’re better off she didn’t take money. You see that face. She could scare crows.”
