AFTER WE FINISHED the RCs and heard about how Froggy had caught one of her husbands, the guy with the hairy ears that she told the most stories about, in bed with her manicurist and shot off one of his thumbs with her derringer—“Ain’t what I meant to shoot off!”—we walked back out into the blazing sunlight.
When our eyes readjusted, we set up at the back of the lot with me at quarterback and L.A. at flanker, going out on my count for the timing pattern and playing it like she played everything, like her life plus the fate of the galaxy depended on it. She had just reached back on the run for a bad throw when, sure enough, the guy we’d seen inside came around the corner from the front of the store, stopped and smiled when he saw us. He stood there in the sun for a while, not even seeming to feel it, just smoking and watching us like somebody who didn’t have anyplace in particular he needed to be.
And naturally with an audience on hand L.A. and I started hot-dogging a little, heat or no heat. It was one of those times when things come together for you. I was getting a lot on the ball and L.A., with the sucker in her mouth, was pulling the ratty old Wilson in from every kind of impossible angle. When I led her too much on one route she dove and got the pass anyway, doing a tuck-and-roll as she hit the ground and coming up with the ball. The guy put his Camel between his lips and slowly applauded as L.A. raised her arms to the imaginary fans and bounced around in her victory dance. A trickle of red had started from the road rash on her elbow, but I knew she’d bleed out altogether before she’d show her pain to anybody, much less this character.
“Y’all pretty damn slick,” he said. “Reckon you could hit me with one a them bullets?”
I looked at him for a second, then said, “Sure, come on. You can run a post.”
“Post.” He nodded, moving the pack of cigarettes from the waist of his jeans to his sock. “You got it, podner.” He leaned out over the line of scrimmage, dangling his arm down and shaking his fingers to loosen them up, exactly like a real wide-out.
“On two,” I said. Looking over the defensive set, I yelled, “Hut! Two!” and slapped the ball. The guy dug out, juked left once and then cut in the afterburners, showing hellacious speed for an adult. He looked back after a dozen strides with the cigarette still in his mouth, and when I let the ball go he watched it spiral up, made a little adjustment to his route, got under it and cradled it in thirty-five yards downfield.
“Yeehawww!” he crowed, strutting like a rooster as he came back to the huddle.
“Where’d you learn to play?” I asked.
“Cornhole U.,” he said, leaning aside to spit. “Down Huntsville.”
We ran a few more patterns and the guy only dropped one ball.
Finally he said, “You troops wanta go out for a couple? See if I still got a wing here?”
“Sure, okay,” I said. L.A. looked down for a second and then nodded, dusting off her Levi’s.
“Okay, y’all, this here’s Niggers-Go-Long. Wide right,” he said with a strict look at each of us. “We are fixin’ to go downtown.”
We positioned ourselves to his right, and when he called, “Set!” then, “Hut! Hut!” and slapped the ball, we hauled ass. I did a little juke of my own to the outside for show, giving L.A. just enough of a jump to beat me downfield. The guy put everything he had into it, grunting as he let the ball go. Running all-out, L.A. got her fingertips on it and pulled it down just before she ran out of field at the edge of the sidewalk.
“Hey-hey, Hall of Fame, man!” the guy yelled.
L.A. wrinkled her nose as she walked back with the ball. We lined up again, and I caught the next couple of passes. We kept running routes until all of us were sweaty and winded.
“HoofuckinHAHH!” the guy said. “Jeez, that was great!” He sidled over to me, dropped his cigarette and ground it out in the gravel with the toe of his sneaker. He flicked a couple of sweat drops from his eyebrow with his thumb. “So hey, what’s your name, podner?”
“James.”
“More like Biscuit,” said L.A. from the milk crate against the wall where she had sat to retie her sneaker. My father had called me that years before because he said when I was little I’d do anything for a biscuit, and ever since then L.A. had taken an evil pleasure in doing the same, to the point that I didn’t waste energy anymore resisting it. Concentrating on her shoelace, she didn’t look up.
“Well, fuckin-A, Colonel Dogbiscuit, I presume.” A quick left-handed salute. “Permission to address the colonel as Biscuit, sir?”
“Sure.”
“My name’s Earl. Hot Earl, the Peckerwood Pearl.”
We shook hands. L.A. showed no interest.
“Where you from, Biscuitman?”
“Jacksboro.”
“Jacksboro. Good. Good town to be from.” He licked along the bottom of his mustache, still a little out of breath and looking thoughtful. “How about Miss Sweetmeat there, she with you?”
“Yes sir,” I said, realizing I wasn’t really answering the question the way he meant it. From the corner of my eye I saw L.A. picking at the seam of the football, frowning.
Earl twisted back over his shoulder toward L.A. “What’s your name, little sister?”
“Lee Ann,” she said. “We’re cousins. I’m not anybody’s sister.” She tossed her stubborn ponytail and unwrapped another sucker, a green one this time.
“Well, okay, then,” said Earl, winking his red-rimmed eye at me. “So, you got family in Jacksboro, Biscuit?”
“Not anymore. My dad’s dead.”
For some reason this news seemed to lift Earl’s spirits a little. By now L.A. was moving away along the store wall, tossing the ball up against the yellow brick and catching the carom, paying no attention to us.
“And what about her?” Earl said. “Where’s she from?”
“She’s from here,” I said. “Is your name really Hot Earl?”
Earl was pulling at his lower lip. His mind was somewhere else. “Say what?” he said. “Oh. Yeah, Daddy used to call me that. When I was a kid.” He smirked. “Called me other things when I got older.” Taking another look at L.A.
“You know, that ain’t bad stuff there at all, Biscuit.” He took me farther aside, threw his arm over my shoulder and gave me a squeeze. “You noticed the way she wears them little jeans like that?” he said softly. “I know you did.”
“No sir,” I said, wondering if he saw the lie in my face.
“How-dee-doo,” said Earl. His lunch-meat-and-cigarette breath was getting a little hot. I tried to pull back, but he just held on to me and stayed right there in my face.
“Won’t be long at all, young man like yourself be gettin’ some ideas,” he said, jerking his head toward L.A., who had stopped tossing the ball and was checking out her other sneaker. “Just lookie there.”
Earl obviously didn’t know much about my head if he thought we were going to have to wait for me to get ideas. I looked at L.A. bending over in her white Fair Park T-shirt with the red Ferris wheel on the front.
“You can see them little titties real good, can’t you?”
I flinched slightly because that’s exactly where I’d been looking.
Earl got more conspiratorial. “Listen, you guys like movies?” Talking now for L.A. to hear too.
“I guess,” I said.
“Some movies maybe,” said L.A., drifting our way.
“Fact is, I know how to make movies myself. Done made a bunch of ’em.”
I thought about this for a few seconds, beginning to show a little interest.
“Tell you what,” said Earl. “I could put you two monkeys in a movie.” He pointed at us with two fingers.
L.A. was listening to Earl now, seeming to shake off some of her attitude.
“No way,” I said.
“Damn straight,” said Earl.
It occurred to me I had no idea how movies actually got made. But surely it was more than just a one-man operation.
“A movie movie, or just some home movie or something?” L.A. said, continuing to sidle in closer. She took the sucker out of her mouth, inspected it for a second, then put it back. Making up her mind.
“Nothin’ but the real deal,” said Earl. “True Hollywood all the way. Guys and gals doin’ ever-what comes natural.”
L.A. kind of made a face, but Earl wasn’t looking at her. He was looking right into my eyes.
“Well, so where do you make the movies?” I said.
“My place,” Earl said, beginning to look excited. “Wanta check it out?”
Glancing at L.A., I saw a little glint come and go in her eye. She was always surprising me one way or another, but not today.
I said, “Where’s your place?”
“Right down the alley here,” he said. “Over the garage.”
L.A. shrugged and gave me the let’s do it look.
“Sure,” I said. “Let’s go.”