ANOTHER TIME, Miss Crystal’s brother Phelan bought this car in Germany and shipped it to New Orleans and we had to get it off the boat. There’s more to getting a car off a boat than you’d imagine. In the end Miss Crystal had to call her cousin Harry that’s a lawyer, and get him to call the owner of the shipyards and I don’t know what all. That was just to get it off the boat. Before we even started driving it to Texas.
Miss Crystal is the lady I work for. I nurse her little girl, Crystal Anne, and I run the house. They’re rich people, all the ones I’m talking about. Not that it does them much good that I can see. Miss Crystal’s married to this man she can’t stand. All the money in the world will not make up for that.
I’ll say one thing for her though, she manages to have herself a good time. Her and her cousin Harry are always up to something. And Mr. Phelan, her brother that bought the car. He’s always in on it too whenever he’s in town. He’s this big barrel-chested man that talks real low and looks at you out of the bottom of his eyes. Looks like he’s sighting you down the barrel of a gun. He’s always in Africa or getting married or something, sending Miss Crystal these clothes she don’t wear. Lace dresses and negligees, satin pants, tennis dresses with little flowers appliquéd on them, like that. That’s not her style. She like plain things. She never has flowers or writing on anything she wears.
I never had been to Texas before this trip. I’d heard all about it though. One time Mr. Phelan was in town and he got this screen and showed pictures of Texas, where he’s got his ranch, and some of Brazil, where he’d been shooting jaguars. He had just got home from Brazil and he had all this jewelry with him made out of jaguar parts. He give Miss Crystal a necklace with a jaguar claw on it to make her play tennis better. She tried it a number of times but it never worked. She was so busy rubbing the claw for luck she forgot to look at the ball.
Finally she got so mad one day she just tore it off her neck, chain and all, and gave it to me. I put it away with the other stuff she gives me, newspaper clippings from when we get our name in the paper for having parties, silver spoons that get caught in the disposal, her old wedding ring. From her other marriage, to King’s daddy. King’s her son that smokes dope. She gave me the ring one day when she was drunk. I tried and tried to give it back but she made me keep it.
Anyway, it was Mr. Phelan that sent this car. He’s her brother but they’re not a thing alike. Miss Crystal don’t like him very much. She’s always bad-mouthing him to Mr. Harry behind his back. Saying her daddy give him all her money. So now it’s nine o’clock in the morning and they’re calling her to come down to the docks and get this car he shipped over here. Then Mr. Phelan he calls from Texas and begs her to do it. “I can’t,” she says into the phone. “I’ve got a match at ten. I can’t leave people standing on the court to be your errand boy, Phelan. It’s your car, you come and get it.”
Well, he finally talked her into it and she puts me in the car with the baby, Crystal Anne, and off we go to the docks. First we have to go in this little smelly office and this Cajun wants her to fill out some forms about who owns the car. Act like he think we’re trying to steal it or something.
Well, she raises Cain about the forms and then she calls her cousin Harry and he comes over and gets it straightened out. Mr. Harry’s a lawyer, but he only works part time. He doesn’t keep regular hours or go in an office or anything. He just does enough to get by. So he dresses and comes on down, all the time we’re sitting in that office and I’m trying to keep Crystal Anne from touching anything, everything’s so dirty. So finally Mr. Harry comes in wearing this good-looking white suit, all shaved and looking like he owns the world. Miss Crystal’s crazy about Mr. Harry. She’s always in a good mood when he’s around. So he comes and makes all these calls, then everything is okay. Crystal Anne, she’s rubbed her hands all over the back of his pants but he doesn’t notice it. Miss Crystal’s in a better mood now that Mr. Harry has put the Cajun in his place.
What really cheers her up though is the car. “Look at that goddamn car,” she says. “Isn’t that car just like Phelan. Isn’t that the tackiest thing you’ve ever seen in your life?” We’re in a warehouse. Right down on the docks. It’s noisy as it can be and this Cajun is driving down a gangplank in the biggest, shiniest dark green car you have ever seen in your life. A Mercedes-Benz number six hundred. It’s as big as a hearse and heavy looking. “Just look at it,” Miss Crystal says. She’s laughing her head off. The driver had got out and was letting her look inside. “Where in the name of God did he get this car?”
“It’s the biggest one they make,” the Cajun said. “I’ve never seen one bigger and I unload them all the time.” Mr. Harry had the explanation. “He got it from the head of the Mercedes company. It was being custom made for the president of the company. Phelan bought it right off the line and he needs someone to drive it down to Texas. Come on, leave the other cars here. Let’s take it for a spin.” He gave the Cajun a check and a twenty-dollar tip for putting up with Miss Crystal and the four of us got in the car. Crystal Anne needed changing in the worst way. As soon as we got inside I whipped off the old diaper and put on a new one. She’d been happy as she could be all morning, just good as gold, watching everything the way she do and chewing on her pacifier.
“How much do you think Phelan paid for this thing?” Miss Crystal said. “I bet it cost a fortune. He’s gone too far this time, Harry. Even Phelan can’t justify this car.” She was playing with the radio dials, running the automatic antenna up and down outside the window.
“He needs it for his hunts,” Mr. Harry said. “To meet planes when people come down for the hunts. And he needs someone to get it down to Texas right away.”
“Well, it won’t be me,” she said. “I’m not his errand boy. Let him fly up here and get it himself if he needs it so bad.”
“He can’t. Some men from Jackson are going down this weekend. They’re paying two thousand dollars apiece to shoot a wild Russian boar. Phelan’s got everything he owns in this operation, Crystal. You ought to want to see him make a go of it. Those animals he imported cost a lot of money.”
“My money, Harry. My money. Every cent he spends is one more I’ll never inherit. What kind of hunt? What’s he up to now?” She turns her head and raises her eyes at me like only I can understand what she really means by anything.
“He’s got the Lost Horizon stocked with game animals,” Mr. Harry says, getting a serious expression on his face now he’s talking hunting. All the men in Miss Crystal’s family got that look. They put their elbows on their knees and their chins in their hand and put on that look whenever they got to talk about hunting anything, whether it’s animals or King the time he ran away to the hippie commune. Scare me to death when they look like that. “He’s got antelope and water buffalo and Russian boar. Well, the water buffalo aren’t there yet but they’re on their way. He’s arranging African safaris for people that don’t have time to go to Africa. It could be big, Crystal. He could get back all the money he lost in the duck decoy factory. He could make up for that land deal in Joburg.”
“He’s having safaris at the Lost Horizon? That little scraggly piece of land? There aren’t even any trees. I don’t believe anybody would pay two thousand dollars to go down there for anything.”
“You’d be surprised what people will do. I put some of my own money into it. So I think I’ll just drive the car on down there for him, to protect my investment.”
“Russian boar?” she said, like she couldn’t believe she heard right. “He’s importing Russian boar?”
“We better be getting Crystal Anne on home now,” I say from the back seat. “I need to be putting her down for a nap.” We were out in Jefferson Parish, almost to the lake, cruising along, it’s like riding in a big green cloud, air conditioning so quiet you can hear yourself breathe, big old tires going thump, thump.
“I think I’ll go with you to Texas,” Miss Crystal says. “I’ll take Traceleen and Crystal Anne and go along. It’s a perfect time. Manny’s out of town and King’s in Meridian with Big King. I want to see this operation. This boar hunt. Honest to God, Harry, Phelan’s outside the limits. He really is, you know he is.”
“You just can’t resist the car,” Mr. Harry says, laughing and smiling, laying his hand on her knee. “You want to keep riding in it as much as I do.”
“Let’s don’t forget to stock the bar,” she says. “I want to really fill it up. Fix it the way it ought to be.”
So the upshot of it is the very next morning Miss Crystal and Crystal Anne and Mr. Harry and me are driving out of town on I-10 headed for San Antonio. “I’ve never been to Texas in my life,” I said to Mark, getting my permission to go. Mark’s my husband, sweetest man you’ll ever know. He don’t stand in anybody’s way. “Go ahead,” he says. “See the country. I’ll be right here when you get back, right where you left me.” That’s how it always is with Mark and me. Miss Crystal, she can’t believe my luck in men. My first husband was just as sweet as Mark. I’ve had two since Miss Crystal knew me, one just as sweet as the other. “Your turn’ll come,” I tell her when she gets low. “You’ll find your true love before it’s over.” Well, it didn’t happen on this trip to Texas.
The first thing that happened was we stopped on the outskirts of Baton Rouge and stocked up the bar. They must have put two hundred dollars’ worth of whiskey in the car. One hundred ninety-six, seventy-eight, to be exact. I saw it on the cash register when Mr. Harry paid the bill. Crystal Anne, she picks up a plastic lemon and starts sucking on the cap so he bought that too. I started getting worried when I saw all that whiskey. Mr. Harry, he’s got a bad head for whiskey and much as I hate to say it Miss Crystal’s not much better. They started mixing drinks in these little silver cups that come with the car and by the time we’re to Lafayette I’m driving. Miss Crystal and Mr. Harry in the back seat drinking and singing country songs and me up front with Crystal Anne strapped in her seat sucking on the lemon. “Don’t let her swallow the cap, Traceleen,” Miss Crystal said. “Keep an eye on her.” As if I didn’t have enough to do driving the number six hundred down the road and it starting to rain. I mean rain. We were just outside of Crowley when it started coming down. Coming down in sheets!
People from other parts of the country they see us on television having our rains and floods and sometimes I wonder what they think it’s like. Because the thing the television can’t show them is the smell. Not a bad smell, a cold clean smell like breathing in water. We’re below the sea in south Louisiana and when the rains come we’re in the sea. The rain that day was the worst I’ve ever seen. I hadn’t been driving ten minutes outside of Crowley when I knew we’d have to stop. “I can’t see a thing,” I said. “I can’t see the road before me.”
“Pull over,” Mr. Harry said. “Let me take the wheel. Pull over on the side.” I tried to. Crystal Anne was screaming and standing up in her seat belt. And the rain was coming straight at us like a hurricane. I thought I saw a place to pull over beside a bridge. I turned the wheel and the next thing I knew we were sliding down a wall of mud headed for an oak tree. We hit it broadside and came to a stop not ten feet from a river. “It’s the Lacassine!” Mr. Harry yelled. “Goddamn, I’ve fished this river.”
“Oh, my God,” Miss Crystal said. She set down the glass she was holding and pulled Crystal Anne into the back seat. I’ll say one thing for Miss Crystal. She’s a good mother when she wants to be. “What are we going to do now, Harry?” she said. “What in the name of hell are we going to do?”
“I bet that door’ll cost a couple of grand,” he said. “At least two.”
“To hell with the door,” she said. “How are we getting out of here?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “Fix me another drink and let me think it over.” So, there we were and it kept on raining. Every now and then I’d feel the car squench down in the mud, like it was settling. You could see me shudder every time it did it. Miss Crystal, she fixed me a bourbon and Coke. That helped a little. Crystal Anne had fallen asleep on her momma, just screamed a few minutes and went on off.
I guess this would be as good a time as any to tell you about the inside of the car. It was all made of leather, everything was leather. There wasn’t anything that wasn’t covered with leather but the dials. Even the refrigerator had a leather cover, softest, sweetest-smelling leather you could dream of in a million years, dark tan with here and there a black stripe.
Every place you turned there was a little hidden mirror. One beside each seat. I couldn’t help but think of Mr. Phelan looking himself over while he’d be driving. The bar was in the middle so you could fix drinks from the front or the back and underneath was this nice little refrigerator that makes cubes the size of table dice. Net bags on the back of the seats for holding things. Just like on a Pullman. Oh, it was some car. And there we were, rammed up against a live oak and the rain coming down and no one knowing what to do next. “I’m for getting out and trying to make it up the bank,” I said. “It’s too big a chance to take, getting washed into the Lacassine inside a car.”
“This car’s not going anywhere,” Mr. Harry said. “It weighs a ton. The best thing we can do is stay right here. Just sit tight till it stops raining.”
“I think he’s right,” Miss Crystal said. “Let’s just make another drink and eat some of this lunch you had the sense to bring.” It was thanks to me there was anything to eat. I’d fixed a lunch of cream cheese sandwiches on Boston bread and radish roses and a little pie made of chicken scraps. Food tastes so good when you’re in danger. We ate it every bite.
The highway patrol finally came and got us out. I never have been so glad to see a policeman. A black man, black as me, not coffee colored. “How you doing, ma’am,” he said in the sweetest voice, sticking his head into the car. It was still raining but it was passing. “You hold on. We’re bringing a rope for you all to hold on to going up the hill. We’ll have you out of here before you know it.” Then they came with ropes and took us one by one up the hill, Crystal Anne first, awake now and screaming her head off and in a while we’re all up on the road and the policemen are writing everything down. The rain’s slacking up but it’s still falling.
Getting the car out was something else. They had to send for a wrecker and when that didn’t pull it they had to get a tractor and lay boards on the hill and I don’t know what all. Crystal Anne and I were sitting in the policeman’s car watching and talking to him about everything. His people are from Boutte where Mark’s from. Know everybody we know. Finally they got the wrecker and the boards all lined up and here come the car inching up the hill and back out onto the highway. Everybody clapping and cheering. The side that hit the tree didn’t look too bad after all. Not as bad as I thought it was going to. Of course the doors won’t open. All the men and policemen they’re walking around the car, admiring it and commenting on it, talking about how much it cost and after a while Mr. Harry got into the driver’s seat and turned the key and it started right up. Everybody cheered. “They make these things out of old tanks,” Mr. Harry said, laughing up at the policeman. “Those Krauts can make a car. You got to hand it to them. They can make a car.”
“Let’s get going then,” Miss Crystal said. She was starting to look pretty bad, her hair all coming out of her pageboy and her pants covered with mud. I can’t stand to see her like that, hard as I work ironing everything she owns.
“Get in,” Mr. Harry called out. “We’re back on the road. We’re on our way.” So we all piled back into the car, this time I’m in the back with Crystal Anne and they’re up front and as soon as we’re out of sight of the policeman Miss Crystal tells me to reach in the refrigerator and hand her a bottle of wine. “No more hard liquor till we get to Texas,” she said. “We’ve had enough trouble for one day.”
Then it seem like we’re driving forever. Like driving into a dream. First Beaumont, then Liberty, then Houston and we got to stop and let Mr. Harry get some Mexican food and call Mr. Phelan and tell him what’s going on. Then someplace called Clear Lake where Crystal Anne went to sleep for the third time, this time for good. Then Almeda, then Salt Lick, then Seville. I’m memorizing the names to tell Mark. Then we’re only six miles away on an asphalt road, then we turn onto gravel, then to dirt and we’re there. Country as flat as a pancake and dry, hardly a tree in sight. It’s the middle of the night and we’re at this Mexican-style house all sprawled out in the moonlight, must have twenty rooms. Mr. Phelan’s waiting for us in the yard, about six dogs with him. These big red dogs with skinny faces, like the ones Judge Winn have over on Henry Clay, look like they’d take your arm off. The minute I saw them I just held Crystal Anne closer to me.
“There he is,” Miss Crystal said. “Wearing black. Look at those pants, Harry. Can you believe he’s kin to us?”
Mr. Phelan always wears black. Every time he come up to New Orleans he’s got on black. Look like that’s his only style. This night he’s got on a long-sleeve shirt with a big collar and his pants are sewn up the side with white stitching. His hair all cut off real short. Look like it’s been shaved, and he’s standing with his hands in his pockets, standing real still and not letting anything show on his face. If he’s seen the side of the car he’s not letting on. Mr. Harry, he turn off the motor and get out and hug his cousin. “Goddammit, Phelan,” he says. “Put those dogs up. I’ve had enough trouble for one day without fooling with your dogs.”
“They won’t hurt you, Harry. They won’t move unless I tell them to. Sit,” he says to the dog pack. “Show Uncle Harry your manners.” Every last one of them sit down on their hindquarters the second he say it.
“Hello, Phelan,” Miss Crystal says, getting out. “Look in the back seat. There’s your niece. Well, come on, stop acting like a movie star and look at what we did. It isn’t all that bad.” She walked around to the bashed-in side and he followed her.
“Who was driving?” he says. He still hasn’t let on that he even cares.
“Traceleen,” Miss Crystal says. “And Crystal Anne was in the front seat with her. It’s a wonder she didn’t crack her head open. It’s a wonder we aren’t all at the bottom of the river.”
“You were letting Traceleen drive?” He let out his breath and moved in to put his hand on the bashed-in door. I moved back deeper into the back seat, keeping Crystal Anne between me and him. “Holy Christ, Crystal. You let the nigger maid drive my car? This goddamn car isn’t even insured. Well, Jesus fucking H. Christ… I don’t believe it… I can’t understand…” He stopped and stuck his hands back into his pockets. He looked off into the sky, this look coming onto his face like he is surrounded by a bunch of people that don’t know what to do and he is tired of fooling with it and might just disappear into the night some day. “Never mind,” he says. “I guess I’m lucky that it drives. I’ve got to use it tomorrow to pick up a party in San Antonio.” He bent over and tried to stick a piece of chrome back on that was falling off. I felt sort of sorry for him for a moment. He’d been having a rough time lately from all I hear Mr. Harry and Miss Crystal say. Up to his ears in debt and all like that.
“Well, come on in,” he was saying. “Come in and see the place.” We all went in together. You’ve never seen such a sight as was in that house. No words will describe it. Every animal you ever heard of was in there. A full-sized baby giraffe, that’s one thing. A big pile of elephant tusks. I don’t know how many. Lion heads and leopards and some kind of curved-horn sheep and several deer and this caped buffalo that almost killed him when he shot it. In between the animal heads was pictures of Mr. Phelan on his hunts. He’s kneeling over animals in every picture. Like a preacher. Every way you’d turn there’s another picture of him kneeling over something. I was thinking maybe if he was so broke he might think of starting him a museum.
“I want to go with you on the hunt tomorrow,” I heard Miss Crystal saying. “I want to watch you hunt a Russian boar.”
In the morning some new troubles started. Miss Lauren Gail. They were all around this big Mexican table eating breakfast and Miss Lauren Gail’s with them now. She’s Mr. Phelan’s new wife. And her little girls, Teresa and Lisalee. Miss Lauren Gail’s in a bad mood about the car. “He told me he bought a secondhand car over there,” she’s saying to Mr. Harry. “He didn’t tell me he bought it from the president of Mercedes-Benz. All he does is lie to me. He lies when he could tell the truth. Crystal, remember that ring I wanted in that antique store in New Orleans, that I called you about? It was only eight hundred dollars. Eight hundred dollars, that’s all, and he said we couldn’t afford it and now he turns up with this car. How much did it cost, Phelan? I want to know how much it cost.”
“I don’t want to hear any more about the car,” Mr. Phelan said. “That’s a business car, Lauren Gail. And anytime you don’t like what’s going on around here you just take your feet out from underneath my table and hit the road… I mean it, Lauren… and take that expression off your face. I’m not going to watch you pout all day. That’s it… start crying… because then I’ll just go pack for you myself.”
She straightened up her face and Mr. Harry tried to change the subject. He always is the peacemaker. “How many groups you had down here, Phelan?” he said. “Enough to start paying expenses?”
“We’re doing okay. Rainey’s got so much work he can’t get caught up. He’s got four heads waiting in the freezer. It’s going to go, Harry, don’t worry about that… I mean it, Lauren Gail,” he says, looking her way again. “Don’t pull that stuff on me when I have company.” He’s looking at her with his mouth set in a line.
Miss Lauren Gail she don’t say any more after that and it all passes. In a little while she take her little girls and go off to her end of the house and Mr. Phelan he leads the way to show us around the ranch. We got to go see the stables and the cisterns and the lookout tower and then he takes us to see the hunt animals. First we got to go look at the antelope. They’re in this corral with a barn behind it. “Haldeston shipped them from Wyoming,” Mr. Phelan’s saying. “We lost three on the truck and a couple since they got here. But they’re all right. I think this crowd’s going to make it. See that stallion over there. That’s the horse. That’s the ringleader. I’m saving him for myself.”
“I thought you were letting them run,” Mr. Harry said. “You told me you were going to keep them on the range.”
“In time,” Mr. Phelan said. “All in good time. Got to get them fattened up first. Come on, let’s go look at the boar. That’s the cash crop this year.” He had the Russian boars in a special pen about a mile from the house. We got to drive across a field to get there. It’s this pen behind a stand of pine trees, all surrounded by barb wire with some dogs outside and another fence around them. These dogs called mastiffs, all dusty and mean looking. Russian boar on the inside and mastiffs on the outside.
There are six boar altogether. Two real small looking, the other ones look okay. They’re all milling around. They don’t look like anything worth two thousand dollars to me, dead or alive. Just look like old wild pigs anybody can see up around Crowley. Only these boar got gray fur, with black hair around their faces and legs. Where you get them from? I kept wanting to ask but I don’t say it, I just hold on to Crystal Anne and keep my eyes and ears open.
“You’re charging people two thousand dollars to shoot one of those things?” Miss Crystal says. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“It costs a lot to keep them,” he says. “Have to air-condition the shed and God knows what else. They’re very delicate. It’s hard to keep them healthy.”
“You’ve lost your mind, Phelan,” she says. “Do you realize that?”
“Well, Sister,” he says, shutting the door to the pen and turning around to take us back. “Nobody asked you to come down here and tell me how to live my life. I don’t come up to New Orleans and stick my nose in your business, do I?”
“You’ve gone too far, Phelan. These pigs are just too far.” She was right up to him now, almost touching. There couldn’t have been an inch between them. It’s busting loose, I thought. It’s getting out of hand. I held on to the baby, holding in my breath. It was terrible, those mean-looking dogs leaning up against the fence and Miss Crystal, she’s got this bad hangover anyway, she’s right up in his face threatening him on his own ranch.
“I’m not the same person you used to kick around, Phelan,” she says. “I’m a powerful woman, strong and powerful. I wouldn’t mess around with me if I was you. I’m a different person than the one you used to know.”
“That may all be so, little sister,” he says. He hasn’t moved an inch. He is still as he can be. “On the other hand, it’s the same wall you’re up against.” I looked at him then and he did sort of look like a wall. I guess Miss Crystal thought so too because she took the baby out of my arms and started walking back to the car, holding up her head and swaying from side to side kind of devil-may-care.
We weren’t in the big car this time. We were in a little steel-covered jeep made in England. It was fitted out with all kinds of hunting things. We all squeezed back into it and headed back to the ranch. Jack was driving. He’s this black man Mr. Phelan took off to college with him when he was young. Call himself a chauffeur but he ain’t no better than a slave. “Jack was the first black man to go to Ole Miss,” Mr. Phelan’s saying. “He was there a long time before James Meredith, weren’t you, Jack? Jack was a KA, lived in the house with me. We even had him a pin made. Jack, you still got your KA pin? I want you to show it to Traceleen when we get back.” Jack didn’t say a word, just grinning from ear to ear.
Then Mr. Phelan and Mr. Harry took the new car and drove off to San Antonio to get the men for the hunt and the rest of us spent the afternoon in the air-conditioning listening to Miss Lauren Gail talk about Mr. Phelan won’t buy her anything. “Don’t say anything to the visitors about the pen with the boars in it,” he had said to me, taking me aside when he was leaving. “We pretend the boar just comes charging out of nowhere. It makes it more exciting.”
“Don’t worry about me,” I said. “I just came along to ride in the car.”
Later that afternoon Mr. Phelan and Mr. Harry come back with these two men and they all sit around and have drinks and hot pepper cheese and then they have this Mexican dinner. You ought to see that dining room. Forty feet long, fireplace on either end. Every wall covered with animal heads, this big brown bear standing in one corner with his teeth showing and his claws out. Mr. Phelan’s third wife shot it in Tennessee. Got her picture in a gun magazine for doing it. They got the story framed beside the bear in this glass frame that’s really for holding recipe books. “Lauren Gail thought that up,” Mr. Phelan said. “She should have been a decorator. Then she could have been in stores buying things all day long.” He hugged her to his side and she put on this sad look like what’s she supposed to do but take it.
In the middle of the room there’s this big mahogany table and hand-carved chairs with chairseats embroidered with Mr. Phelan’s coat-of-arms. He had a picture of it on the wall too, painted to match the chairseats. He kept asking Mr. Harry didn’t he want him to get him a coat-of-arms for his house but Mr. Harry said no, he already had everything on his walls he needed.
These two men from Jackson they’re having the time of their lives. One of the men was in the shoemaking business. He’d been playing chess with Mr. Phelan before dinner and he kept talking about how smart Mr. Phelan was. That he hadn’t ever played anybody could beat him so fast. The other man, he used to have a tent factory but the government closed it down by driving him crazy telling him what all to do. He kept complaining about the gov-ernment doing different things to him and getting drunker and drunker and Mr. Phelan kept pouring him wine and egging him on. “So I just closed the goddamn place and went to Vegas,” he kept saying. “Fuck ’em. Fuck ’em. I just closed it down and went to Vegas. Fuck ’em. That’s all I’ve got to say. Fuck ’em all.”
I took Crystal Anne and went off to bed as soon as I could. I don’t like her listening to talk like that. “Fock em, fock em, fock em,” she’s saying. “Fock em, fock em, fock em.” She parrot everything she hear. What’s going to happen when she shows up at nursery school talking like that? I could still hear them yelling while I’m walking down the hallway, talking all about the government and hunts they’d been on and what a wild Russian boar will do to you if you only wound it and don’t kill it right and how you have got to shoot it just so or you’ll mess it up for being stuffed. Mr. Phelan he was standing up when I left showing them a Russian boar nailed to a board, showing them where you have to make the bullets go in so you won’t mess up the face.
“We’re going on that hunt tomorrow, Traceleen,” Miss Crystal said when she came to get in bed with Crystal Anne and me. She just climbed right in with us. First time I’d ever sleep with a lady I work for. That’s how Miss Crystal is. Just act like she thinks she can make up the world. So she and Crystal Anne and me snuggle down into the covers. “Tomorrow you will see me in action, Traceleen,” she said. “Crystal Anne, I want you to remember what’s going to happen next.” I thought it was the whiskey talking.
Now morning comes and they all have a breakfast of tequila and lemons and bread and butter. Mr. Phelan insist that’s the right thing for hunters to have before they start a hunt. Miss Crystal, she’s drinking it with them. Then she and Mr. Harry and one of the men from Jackson get into the English truck and Mr. Phelan and the other man and this one named Rainey that’s the one stuffs the animals, they’re next in the jeep and Jack and me and Crystal Anne bringing up the rear in the number six hundred. Jack, he’s got on his cowboy hat and an African hunter’s vest and he’s been working on the bar. Got it fixed up more Mexican than we had it. Beer and tequila and some homemade drinks I never did learn the name of. So then we’re ready and the sun’s lighting up this big Texas field, looked like they hadn’t had any rain in a year. Crystal Anne she’s real excited to be going somewhere so early in the morning and she’s reaching up in the front seat trying to get Jack’s attention and pulling on his hat.
Off we go down that dirt road and out onto the asphalt and then back onto dirt and up in front I can see Mr. Phelan standing up behind the wheel pointing out things and talking. We come to a little used-up house by the road and we all stop and they come back to our car to get some more to drink and he’s talking all about the boar and how tricky they are. Them men from Jackson hanging on to his every word. He should have been a preacher. I’ve thought that before.
So we pack back up and this time we take off across a stubble-covered field and cross a little ditch on top of some two by fours don’t look like they’d hold a man much less a car, then we follow the ditch, it’s supposed to be a creek but there’s no water in it. It looks to me like we’re just driving around the ranch. I can’t see that we’ve gone three miles from home. We have another stop beside an old chimney that used to be a house and Mr. Phelan’s got the binoculars out now, sighting through them and letting the men use them and they’re sweeping the country he calls it. Then Mr. Phelan keeps on looking and looking at a spot over near a stand of pine trees and finally he takes down the binoculars and looks around on the ground for a while walking around and around in a circle looking for tracks. After a while he puts his arm around the tent man’s shoulders and the two of them come over to our car and fix a drink. “We’ll use that stand over there by the ridge. They’ve got to come this way sooner or later to get to water.” He pointed east. “Over there’s the only water source, a pond about a mile away. So we’ll lay for them on the rise.” He licked his finger and stuck it up into the air. “Yeah, the breeze is with us. They won’t be able to smell us until they’re here. They’ll come before too long. They’ve got to have water. The only tracks are two days old. You’re lucky, Charlie. This breeze is going to win you a shot. You’re a lucky man. I can tell that. I feel lucky just being with you.” He leaned into the car. “Jack, you come over when we get set. Traceleen, you and the baby stay in the car. We’re going up to the stand.” His voice is real low now and he’s pointing over to the east where the sun is getting up above the ground. There’s this little rise of land look like it was pushed up by a tractor. With a board screen like for a bullfight in a movie. They’re all real quiet now and put all the tequila glasses back in the car and take out all the guns and the men and Miss Crystal go walking off to the rise. Miss Crystal, she’s at the edge, look like she’s holding back. Off in the distance is the stand of pine trees in front of the wild Russian boar pen. I’m just hoping nobody will make a mistake and shoot at the car. “Now what’s going to happen?” I ask Jack.
“Now the boys will let ’em wait awhile and get all hot and bothered. Then they’ll let one of the boars go, back behind the trees, and it’ll come charging out and as soon as it sees people it’ll come running at them. Them boars go crazy when you let ’em loose, they’ll run at anything.”
“Then what?” I said.
“Then Mr. Phelan’ll let somebody shoot and he’ll shoot too in case they miss and then they’ll keep letting them loose till everybody that paid gets to shoot one. Then they’ll be through and Rainey’ll put the boars in a tarp and take them off to be stuffed unless somebody wants to drive home with it tied to the hood of the jeep. Sometimes they do that.” He stretched his arms and opened up the door. “Well, let me get my rifle out the trunk. He likes me to be standing by in case he should miss. You excuse me, Miss Traceleen. I got to get my gun out the trunk and load it up. I forgot to have it loaded.” Then Jack pushes a button to open the trunk and he get out and goes around the back of the car to get his gun.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” I say to Crystal Anne, thinking I’d better tell her what it’s going to sound like when they start shooting. So she won’t be surprised. But I never got time to tell her because about that time it all busted loose. Someone at the pen has let a boar loose and he’s coming across that field like a baseball. He’s coming so fast my heart almost stopped. I feel Jack jump into the trunk of the car. He let out a big yell and jump right in on top of his gun and here comes Miss Crystal running down off the hill and she jump into the driver’s seat and starts honking the horn as loud as she can and starts the car and then the car’s moving and she’s chasing the pig. Trying to save him or run over him one, I can’t decide. Then the pig he takes off in the direction of the sun and we’re chasing him in the car. Jack’s in the back with the trunk top flopping up and down and Crystal Anne’s laughing her head off, she thinks it’s wonderful. I look out the window and there’s Mr. Phelan, running after us with his gun in his hand. He’s sprinting like a deer, heavy as he is. He’s as mad as he can be.
Then we’re on the asphalt and Miss Crystal’s yelling. “Traceleen, roll up the window. Lock the doors.” Jack’s jumped out by then but the trunk top’s still waving up and down and we’re on the road. “Where’re we going?” I say. “What’s happening now?”
“We’re going for the antelope pen,” she says. “We’re going to ram it down.” Sure enough, she press her foot down on the pedal, lean into the wheel, the seat’s too far back for her but she doesn’t even stop to adjust it, and we’re headed for the ranch. Mr. Phelan’s still running after us, then I see him stop and help Jack up off the ground. We bust on down the road and turn on the gravel, one tire’s sliding off in the ditch but Miss Crystal, she holds it on the road. I wish you could have seen her, sitting there behind the steering wheel in her fringed vest and her hunting pants with sandpaper on the knees and her khaki-colored hunting shirt, her hair all messed up and wild looking. If I live a million years I won’t ever forget the look on her face that morning or the ride we had.
First we come to the automatic gate. What you call a Kentucky gate, you have to stop and pull a chain and it opens, then you got to close it by hand from the other side, but we don’t close it this time. We bust on down the road over the cattle gaps and go on past the house without even slowing up, almost run over a couple of dogs, then we’re to the antelope pen and Miss Crystal she just drive the car right into the gate, just ram it down. Then she backs up and rams it again. I could see it giving in and the radiator on the front of the car starting to smoke. This is no way to treat a Mercedes-Benz number six hundred that cost twenty-six thousand dollars I couldn’t help thinking. It would have been just as good to do it with the English truck. “Don’t hit it on the front,” I said, but she wasn’t listening. “Hit it more to the side, with the fender.” She don’t even hear me. She just back up and ram it one more time. This time the whole gate and half the fence fall forward like they was made out of paper.
Then antelope are everywhere, all around us. For a minute it seem like the windows are covered with antelope faces, then they’re gone, spreading out in every direction, their little white tails waving behind them.
The biggest one, the one Mr. Phelan call the horse, is taking off across the field behind the boar pen, two more following him. It’s a field that stretches way off and ends in a wood beside where that little dry river runs. I watched those ones until they disappeared into the trees.
Then we’re backing out over the boards and Miss Lauren Gail and her little girls and all the kitchen help are running out into the yard to see what’s happened. The radiator’s really smoking now, but Miss Crystal she backs and turns and pulls up in front of the kitchen stairs to yell to Miss Lauren Gail. “Send my clothes to New Orleans,” she yells out the window. “Tell Harry I’m sorry I had to leave him here.” Then we’re barreling back down the dirt road and through the gate and onto the asphalt.
“You think we ought to drive it with that steam coming out in front?” I said.
“It will run,” she says. “If we don’t stop it will get us where we’re going.” We make it through the gate and turn onto the main road and here comes Mr. Phelan in the jeep headed right at us. “God in Heaven,” I’m yelling. “Here he comes. What if he shoots?”
“I’ll run over him if he shoots at me,” she says. “I’ll knock his goddamn jeep off the road.” She was gripping the wheel like it was a horse she was riding. She was driving that car. I held Crystal Anne in my lap. When we passed Mr. Phelan I laid my head down so I wouldn’t have to see him. I was sure he would shoot out our tires but I guess even Mr. Phelan knows better than to shoot at people. We passed him on that narrow road with a swoosh, so close I could hear him screaming. I guess he could see the steam coming out the radiator. I was wondering if Miss Crystal caught his eye.
She had planned it all before it happened. Well, not the exact way but near enough. She had put a bag for Crystal Anne into the car and had her pockets stuffed with money and credit cards and we drove to San Antonio at ninety miles an hour and cruised into the parking lot at the airport and got out and left the car sitting there with steam coming out the bottom and the top. It had made it to San Antonio but I heard later that all it was good for after that was to sell in Mexico. I sure hated to leave that car like that. I ran my hand across the leather dashboard as I was getting out, admiring one last time the way the leather parts fit into the steel so fine you couldn’t tell where one began and the other ended. Even the button on the dashboard looked special, like it had grown there. Look like a navel on a baby, I was thinking. Or a navel orange.
We got a ticket on a United Airlines 747 and started for home. We were traveling first class, traveling in style. That’s how Miss Crystal does things. She’s always saying she’s going to stop and save some money but she can’t ever seem to find the right place to stop.
We strapped ourselves into these nice big seats, with Crystal Anne sitting in the middle, and Miss Crystal leaned back and took a moment’s rest for the first time since she’d opened her eyes that morning. She still had on her hunting clothes. Looked like some famous actress that had been on a location shot. She reached over and touched me on the arm. “We’re going home in triumph, Traceleen. What a trip. I could never have followed my conscience today if you hadn’t been there to help, you know that, don’t you?”
I accepted the compliment. I knew it was the truth. Nobody can get anything done all by theirself. That’s not the way the world is set up.
“It is very sad,” she said to me later, when the plane was in the air, and we had been served some French Columbard wine and were having our lunch. “When you cannot love your one and only brother. It breaks my heart, Traceleen, here he is in the modern world and still killing things all the time. Like he was from another century. He was such a smart little boy. He was destined for better things.”
“I wouldn’t waste too much time feeling sorry for Mr. Phelan,” I said. “He looks to me like he does about what he wants to do.”
“You’re right,” she says. “That wine was making my mind soft. Listen, Traceleen, let me tell you a story about what he did to me one time. I was thinking about it this morning while I was getting up my courage, waiting for the boar to come. This was a long time ago, when I was eight years old and he was twelve.” She took a big sip of her French Columbard wine and started telling the story.
“It was one Sunday, in Indiana, right in the middle of the Second World War. It was in this Spanish house we had. There was this living room, with very high cathedral ceilings, and I came downstairs one Sunday and there was Phelan, sitting at Momma’s card table driving an airplane. There were foot pedals for his feet and a steering wheel and a dashboard with all sorts of dials on it. It was a special kind of plane where the pilot is also the bombardier and Phelan was flying over Japan, dropping bombs on cities and ammunition dumps.
“Ack, ack, ack, his guns would roar. Ziiiiiinnnnnnnggggg, as the bombs fell. Then he would lift up into the clouds barely escaping the zeroes. I almost fainted with envy when I saw him. It drove me crazy. Finally I went over and asked him if I could fly it and he said no, it was against the law because I wasn’t a pilot.
“So I went to my room and got my new Monopoly set and brought it out and offered to trade. ‘No,’ he said. Then I went back into my room and got my butterfly collecting kit and I brought that out and still he wouldn’t let me have a turn.
“All day I kept adding to the pile of things beside the fireplace and still Phelan flew on and on as if I wasn’t even there. Ack, ack, ack, the guns would roar. Ziiiinnnnnnnggggggggg.
“Finally I went to my room and came out with the binoculars my great-uncle Philip Phillips had used in World War I and I said, ‘Phelan, I will trade you these binoculars for the plane.’
“He got up from the pilot’s seat and took the binoculars and the Monopoly set and my rubber printing stamps and several other things that interested him and we shook hands on the deal. At our house a deal was a deal forever. If you shook hands it was over. So Phelan took my stuff and I sat down at the plane and reached for the steering wheel. It was only an old piece of cardboard he had painted. I put my feet down on the pedals. They were two old shoeboxes with cardboard springs. Traceleen,” she said. Her voice was rising. “Traceleen, are you listening? Can you hear me? This is everything I know about love I’m telling you. Everything I know about everything.”
“Momma,” Crystal Anne said, laying her hand on her momma’s cheek to calm her down. “Momma’s talking.”