scarred by a couple of hernia operations, and he hadn’t been one hundred and seventy-five pounds of base- running muscle in a long, long time.
The bricks in Ethan Russell’s belly heaved.
The pie cutter caught the light. The silver roses gleamed between Doug’s big fingers.
Doug blushed, making a tight fist around the roses.
He found a whetstone in the silverware drawer.
Metal whispered against stone in the quiet apartment.
Doug’s stomach growled. He went to work.
3:31 A.M.
The old piece-of-shit Ford truck takes the turn too hard and everyone yells-Griz Cody behind the wheel, Bat Bautista riding shotgun, Todd and Derwin and Marvis slouching in the back. Twelve-packs of screamin’ cold Bud Dry slide across the scarred bed toward the rear of the truck and Marvis is afraid that the tailgate is going to disintegrate because it’s pockmarked with rust and looks like it is suffering the advanced stages of leprosy. But the tailgate doesn’t have leprosy and it doesn’t disintegrate because it was made in Detroit by real American working men with union jobs and that means it is made of sterner stuff and can stand up to whole kegs of beer let alone miniscule and nearly powerless cans. So the twelve-packs slam against the tailgate and ricochet toward Marvis and Todd and Derwin just as the truck makes another sharp turn, this time onto a gravel road. Marvis is so drunk and high his teeth are numb and he can’t even feel the wind whipping his face or the itchy flakes of white powder under his nose- drunk as a house nigger on the day the massa died his daddy says-and the truck shudders out of the turn and he loses hold of the projector and it skids across the bed and threatens to batter the tailgate just like the beer did but a renegade twelve-pack heads it off, ramming the projector with all the intensity of a particularly vicious defensive lineman in a Bud Bowl commercial, stopping it cold in its tracks.
And those beers will never amount to anything, Marvis knows it, because his daddy says that sports ruin young beers and rob them of bright futures and hardly any of them ever get to be in a Bud Bowl. Derwin MacAskill doesn’t know that, Marvis’s daddy says, became he’s a Stepin Fetchit lawn-mowing kind of Negro who makes the rest of us ashamed. Marvis worries that his daddy spoke through his lips but it doesn’t seem likely because Derwin is laughing high and long at the Bud Bowl lineman caroming around the truck and Marvis would laugh like Derwin but Marvis’s father is in his head saying that lawn-mowing black idiot laughs like a baboon and someone should teach him some manners because he is an embarrassment. Marvis chuckles at that assessment because he is nothing like a baboon and certainly wouldn’t be mistaken for one under any circumstances but he can see that Derwin does kind of resemble an ape if you look at him the right way. He is not like butterscotch Marvis he is really black. Black as unsweetened chocolate and black as Guinness Stout. And then Marvis’s chuckling ends because it tickles his numb lips and he notices that Derwin’s laughter is gone because Griz Cody has put the pedal to the metal and the truck is roaring and Griz is roaring a rebel yell, damned ignorant cracker, Marvis’s father shouts, damned stupid redneck doesn’t he know that grit-eating cracker army was stomped into the ground back in 1865? And Todd chimes in with a rebel yell and even Derwin chimes in because he’s a lawn-mowing baboon, that stupid burrhead doesn’t even know what he’s doing that nigger needs to be taught a lesson! Marvis even thinks about shouting but his daddy is in his head and his lips are numb and he only manages a squeak like a little church mouse, like a little insectile shutterbug.
And even the horrible percussion of gravel battering the wheel wells is more joyous than Marvis’s impotent laughter. The gravelmetal sound is like the brittle rattle of gunfire and it scares Marvis and his balls shrivel up and hide inside his belly and then the next sound really scares him because it is the unmistakable sound of ancient Detroit-manufactured truck bumper smacking chain-link gate. The gate doesn’t give because it is American made just like the truck and the lock doesn’t give because it is a Masterlock and also known for purebred American toughness that cannot be challenged by a wide array of weapons with impressive calibers but the chain that secures lock to gate was unfortunately manufactured in Mexico and it pops as easy as a Tijuana wetback’s cherry. Marvis finds himself whispering, “God those people mess around with that Spanish Fly and they have too many kids and they put every damn one of them to work in some foundry turning out mile upon mile of inferior chain.” And his father agrees. It’s because they’re Catholics and you know about the Catholics with guns in their basements and orders from Rome to drive the rest of us straight into the gutters through overpopulation and they’ll all end up in this country every one of them with our jobs because they can break right through every chain at every border crossing and they know it because they planned it that way and that’s why they made the links weak.
And the truck races through a narrow gauntlet of pine-green trees dripping spicy scent, rusty trees sighing in the breeze breathing their last breaths, black dead trees ready to burn heavy with the smell of dirt and dust and Marvis sees them all racing away from him, the living and the dying and the dead running away from him and everything that runs is shadowed in demon red from the glowing taillights. And no one cuts the running trees because no one comes here anymore. All those trees surround this place and hide it from view but now the trees are running away even the dead ones.
And tonight it is important that they stay. Tonight an audience is a necessity. Marvis knows that because he holds one cold metal reason in his hands and another reason made of plastic is spooled and waiting in his pocket. The sky opens up above him and the gauntlet is gone and now the trees rimming the perimeter are so far away that they are lost in the shadows and their scent has been eclipsed by the smell of the salt air that rides the night, rolling from the black Pacific over low hills, and Marvis would turn and see where they are going but now the truck is airborne, climbing slight mounds, launching itself, landing, climbing again, launching again, and cold steel poles wait in the darkness, a line of them crossing each mound waiting to spear the truck and trap it like an unwary bug on an entomologist’s pin board. But Griz Cody is not willing to be pinned and the truck escapes danger and the passengers escape danger because they are so willing to challenge it, all of them except Marvis that is, and the only wounded are a few beer cans that jump and land and rupture open, leaking cool clean refreshment onto rusted metal and again Derwin laughs high and long and Marvis’s father starts up but Marvis is suddenly willing to challenge danger and tells his father to SHUT UP.
All is silent. Marvis’s father says nothing. The truck is dead on a mound under the cold moon, under a looming wall that is an empty white expanse of the gigantic variety pockmarked with gray, diseased with ashy barnacles that are killing it like Marvis imagines the rust is killing Griz Cody’s truck, like the rusty black blight that is killing the pine trees.
Doors slam. Someone helps Marvis to his feet. He stares at the drive-in screen. It is gray and almost dead but it is what he has always wanted always needed and he knew that he would have it some day. And now someday is here and he forgets everything.
He forgets the photo shop. He forgets Shelly Desmond and the other young girls who pose before his cameras. He forgets his nosy neighbors and the money hidden in his bedroom closet and the video recorders whirring in his basement. And he forgets the mysterious car in Joe Hamner’s driveway and the mysterious woman behind its wheel and he forgets the whirring rasp of a speed-winder and he forgets.
He forgets everything but the thing he dreamed about when he came to this place as a teenager. The pristine white screen looming above him and the movie painting it with color, his name up there so big that no one could ignore it so big that no one could forget it.
WORLD PREMIERE! A MARVIS HANKS, JR. PRODUCTION!
And it’s really going to happen. Griz sets the projector on the hood of the truck. Todd is saying something about the bulb, how it can’t be strong enough, but Griz says that’s why he parked so close idiot, that’s why he practically parked in the playground under the screen. And Todd gets mad and says, well, if you’re such a fucking genius how are you going to plug it in and Griz doesn’t say anything, he just unlocks the plastic storage box behind the truck cab and fires up a portable gas-powered generator and plugs in the projector cord and a small white square appears on the big screen and Derwin laughs high and loud.
Marvis’s dad doesn’t say anything. Marvis says, “It’s a world premiere.”
“Let’s celebrate, then!” Derwin says, and he does a line right off the hood of the truck, snorting Detroit rust and cocaine, and then he pops a beer. Todd does the same and Griz does the same. Bat is rooted in the shotgun
