Celebration, p.22
Celebration, page 22
“Well, like I said. I smelled Ted as strong as if he’d been sitting there beside me. I couldn’t have smelled him any stronger if he had been a fresh-dropped cow patty, no disrespect intended, if you get my meaning.”
“I do get your meaning, honey,” said Too Much. “I’ve seen that movie myself, wrote it, produced it, directed it, and starred in it. There are men in this world that the more they stink, the better they smell. But believe me, I am sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Mabel said. “You came right to my main point without missing a beat, Too Much. Before I threw in that first handful, I was wet. By the second handful, I had a wet-on you could’ve drowned a puppy in. And poor old Johnson sitting up there running that boat had no idea about what was going on.”
“I wouldn’t let it worry me,” said Too Much. “Nobody talks about it much, but that kind of thing happens all the time. It’s as common as field peas.”
“And I can only say thank God for that. The last thing in the world I’m doing is worrying about it. On the other hand, there is a problem.” But Too Much had already seen the problem. She just didn’t know how she would go about solving it. So she let Mabel talk on. “The man I’m honing after . . . Do you know that saying, 'honing after’? Learned it from one of the socials the ladies and I have on Wednesday afternoon.”
Sure that’s where you learned it. A social, my ass, thought Too Much. Dishonest bitch. And then she wondered if she really disliked Mabel or just thought Mabel ought to be mutilated and then killed.
“But I’m getting right off my point.”
“Don’t think twice about it. I’ve got your point. I had your point before you ever made it,” said Too Much. “As I told you, Mabel, I’ve been around most of the blocks a woman can go around.”
“Girl, I sometimes think you’re touched with magic!” exclaimed Mabel. “It’s hard to believe, a young girl like you knowing what you know, being where you’ve been.”
“Honey, just between you and me, I’ve always thought I was touched with magic too. And you’re not the first one to think nearly everything about me’s hard to believe.”
Mabel leaned forward in her chair and hissed, “You're not even married to that chewed-up Stump either, are you?”
Too Much, who was working at her gum, didn’t miss a beat. “I believe we were having a little talk about the man you’re honing after. The one that’s already been eaten by whatever lives at the bottom of the swamp.”
“Precisely! And it’s a hard thing, me honing for a man that’s been burned up and eaten besides by all them blind things.”
“Blind things?”
“Johnson told me all about it. Everything that lives at the bottom of the swamp is blind.”
“If Johnson said it, it’s most likely true. He knows more about that swamp than anybody else in Forever and Forever, including Stump. Stump likes to pretend it’s not even out there.”
“Johnson knows more about it than’s good for him, I always thought.”
“Probably,” said Too Much. “But I don’t think he can help it.”
“God knows,” said Mabel. “It’s a lot in this old world we can’t help. Now, you take Ted. I guess I’ve got to kiss his beautiful ass goodbye—I guess I can talk like that with just the two of us here—him being dead and already in the fire besides. But God knows I sure would have liked to feed in his lilies. ‘Feed in his lilies’—that’s another one I learned at our Wednesday afternoon socials. God, that’s a good one. I can just say it out loud and get damp.” She put her hand to her mouth. “And me a lady of a certain age too.” And then she actually blushed.
Too Much only watched her blush and said nothing, but she thought, No, I don’t hardly think so. You pulled that one right out of the hat where all the rest of us keep ours. If you could only manage to live without being ashamed of everything you think or want, you wouldn’t be blushing now; if you could only come to peace with the hard truth that all the men and women of the world spend their lives looking at each other’s asses. Nothing very strange in that. It seems to be a natural law, like gravity.
“No use waiting for it to stop,” Too Much said. “Be grateful for what you’ve got. You could, you know, be suffering from a terminal case of dry socket. Women your age sometimes do, you know; not uncommon at all.”
“Dry socket?”
“A minor nuisance that can be solved with a tube of K-Y lubricating jelly.”
“What in the world’s that?”
“Damn, Mabel, where’d you live your life?”
Mabel shifted on her haunches and took another bonbon, then said, “I'm not sure I ever had a life until Johnson mopped me in the tub.” She put her chin in her hand and with the other hand rummaged through the box of empty bonbon wrappers. If Mabel was ever really in a pinch, Too Much wondered how many of those bonbons she could eat. “Being mopped in the tub woke something up in me,” she said in a musing voice, almost as if she were talking to herself. “It was like being . . . I don’t have the words for it. I can’t say it.”
“I can’t either,” said Too Much. “But I know. I surely know the place you’re talking about.”
Mabel looked up from the bonbon box, which was apparently empty, and said, “Damn, child, is there anywhere you haven’t been?”
“My head tells me yes,” said Too Much, “but my heart tells me no.”
“Does your heart tell you what I’m going to do with this problem of mine?” Her voice was suddenly rough-edged, almost barking.
“I hope that's not sarcasm I hear.”
“No such thing,” said Mabel, dropping the bonbon box to the floor, the little empty wrappers spilling out on the rug. “Just occurred to me we didn't seem to be getting anywhere with my problem—some sort of solution, I mean.”
“You got as far from your problem, and as close to it, as you’re ever going to get when they torched Ted and sent him home in a bottle.”
“What a horrible thing to say!”
“Why is it every time I tell the truth, that’s what somebody says to me?”
“It was still horrible.”
“And still true.”
“I guess.”
“Not guess, goddammit, you know.”
Mabel looked at the floor. “I know.”
“That’s better. Much better,” Too Much said. “Now, what does that tell you?”
“What does what tell me?”
“What you said.”
“Nothing.”
“Which is why you have me. What it tells us, Mabel, is that our best shot—our only shot—is Johnson.”
“It hurts me to say it, but there’s been a falling-off between Johnson and me.”
“I gathered as much when you started honing after a jarful of ashes.”
“If you were my daughter, you wouldn’t put things in such a dreadful way.”
“If you were my mother, you’d be dead. Makes us even.”
“The devil lives in your mouth. He could be the end of you yet, child.”
“A lot of people have commenced calling me child. And I can’t say as I like it. My goddam name is Too Much. And there's a good reason for me having that name. I know and see and feel and hate and love too fucking much. For instance, you didn't throw away all of Ted Johanson’s ashes, did you? You didn’t scatter all of Ted out there on the swamp. And you can go on and tell the truth, because I know it anyway.”
“How did you know that!”
“It wasn’t really hard to figure out.”
“The devil does more than just live in your mouth, Too Much. He lives in your heart. You scare me sometimes.”
“How much do you have left?”
“Of what?”
“Ted?”
“Lord God, I don’t want to talk about that.”
“You want me to help, do what I can? Then talk to me.”
“I’ve got about one good handful of Ted left. He’s in a Ziploc baggy over at the trailer. But I’ve got him put up real good, so Johnson won’t stumble up on him.”
“Johnson’s not the sort of man who would care one way or the other about a man who’s burned up and in a bottle anyhow. But you, Mabel, are the sort who might think about it a lot. Do you ever wonder what part of old Ted’s in that Ziploc?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Mabel said.
“Sure you do. You know exactly what I mean, thinking about it as much as you have. Could be a hand or maybe part of a foot, but late in the middle of the night, with old Johnson snoring away there beside you, we both know what’s in that Ziploc, don’t we, Mabel? At three o’clock in the morning and you burning up in a cold sweat, tossing in those sheets, it’s Ted’s cock in that Ziploc, am I right, Mabel?”
“You’re the devil, doing the devil’s work.”
“Tell me something. Have you ever, in the middle of the night with the sweat running cold over your body, gone to that Ziploc bag, opened it, and touched it?”
“For mercy’s sake, Too Much, touched what?”
“Mercy’s got nothing to do with it. And you know exactly what you touched. You did touch it, right?”
Mabel averted her eyes. “Yes, I touched it.”
“And that, Mabel, is precisely why you need my help.”
“I don’t see where it's any help you or anybody else can give.”
“Ah,” said Too Much, “but I’m not just anybody. I’m Too Much.”
“Always something to be grateful for,” Mabel said in a voice that was nearly a whisper.
“You’ve picked up Stump’s way of talking.”
“No offense intended.”
“None taken. We've got more important things to do than sit around being pissed off. We’ve got to get off our asses and go to war.”
Mabel’s wrinkled brow stretched as her eyes flared wider. “Did you say go to war?”
“I said it and I meant it, if that’s what it takes. But it won’t take war. A few threats maybe, but not war.”
“I was never very good at threatening my brothers and sisters.”
“One of my greatest virtues has always been threatening the human beast.”
“Human beast?”
“Manner of speaking. And you really ought to have your ears checked one of these days. But right now, shut up and listen. Where’s that fucking husband of yours?”
“You ought not to speak of Johnson like that.”
“Probably not, since his whole problem seems to be fucking—or in your case, not fucking.”
Mabel was blushing again. “None of this should have ever been brought out in the light of day. Some things were never meant to be public. We all have our crosses to bear.”
Too Much leaned across on the couch and took Mabel’s thin, birdlike shoulder in her hard little hand. “Mabel, you interested in the light of day and what ought to be public and bearing crosses, or you interested in nights loud with groaning and wet with the slap of sweating flesh? Now, which is it?”
Her eyes averted and blood running to the roots of her blue hair, Mabel said, “That other.”
“Which other? I can do a lot of things, but I can’t read minds. Say it! Which is it?”
“That last,” she said, her voice soft, her eyes holding a thousand-yard stare at the far wall.
“Sorry, old girl, but that doesn’t tell me enough. We’ll talk again when you can speak English. When you know what you want and you’re able to say it, say it all.”
Mabel’s head suddenly whipped around, and Mabel turned a face on Too Much she had never seen before. The lips were pulled back in a thin little snarl. Her hair seemed to have gone wild on her head, as her eyes, caught in a fine web of veins, leapt madly in their sockets. Tendons stretched and stood like wire in her thin neck. Her false teeth moved, and a little trail of drool slipped down her chin. Mabel took no notice of it.
When Mabel spoke, it was a sharp hissing a snake might have made. “You can’t leave anybody anything, can you? You’ve got to take everything and leave us naked and hurt. All right! I want the slap of wet meat in the middle of the night. I want to be out of my head, lost and not even caring, in the middle of groaning and moaning, and then . . . then, by Jesus, I want to come like the end of the world. Fucking come like the end of the fucking world!”
Too Much reached out and put both her arms around Mabel’s thin shoulders and drew her into a tight embrace. Mabel was crying now, making no sound but crying still, tears running on the horribly twisted, snarling face. Mabel allowed herself to be drawn in and comforted much as a child might do, but her own arms were rigid at her sides.
Too Much’s voice was soothing and gentle again, much like a mother might have used with a child. “There, you’ve said it. You’ve got it all out. Do you know what you just told me? Do you understand what you just admitted to me and to yourself?” Mabel did not speak, but her rigid arms went limp at her sides and her face fell back into its old lines of despair and desperation. Too Much said, “You’ve just said what the whole race of beasts want to say, scream for, beg for, even: They want to be young again and stay young forever, with the blood pumping all over again the way it once pumped, pumping again that way and never stopping.”
Mabel drew a little way back. “I never said nothing about wanting to be young.”
“Hush,” said Too Much. “It’s all right. It only makes you part of the beast in all of us.”
“Even if what you said was true—and I’m not saying it is—it wouldn’t do me any good. There’s nothing to do for what I am: old and worn out.” She made no sound, but tears burst from her eyes again and wet her cheeks. And it’s the worst, bitterest thing that ever happened to me.”
“You don't have to be anything you don't want to be.”
“Why not?”
“Because you've got me.” Too Much held up her small, thickly muscled hands. “Because we've got these. These and belief. There's life and death in these hands, Mabel, if you believe there is. Can you believe, Mabel?”
Mabel looked into Too Much's eyes for a long moment. “Yes, I can believe. With you to help me, Too Much, I can believe anything.”
“Let's go find Johnson and the Old Ones and Justice, and straighten out some things around here.”
Chapter Seventeen
They found Johnson sitting on a warped wooden bench in the partial shade of a dying magnolia tree on the high ground that sloped down toward the dock on the edge of the swamp. His thin legs were crossed at the knees and his hands were behind his head, his fingers interlocked.
“There he is, the old fart,” said Mabel, as soon as she saw him, “wasting his time just as hard as he can, just as he always does.”
“You let me handle this, Mabel,” said Too Much.
Johnson was watching the Old Ones being herded about a hundred yards or so down the slope by Justice, swatting first one of them, and then another with a thin stick he carried, swatting them not hard but not easy either, directing them to pick the tiniest bits of debris—pieces of cups, napkins, plastic spoons and forks, bits of white paper sacking—out of the grass and place them in a five-gallon metal bucket.
He carried his stick—a thin, limber branch he’d found somewhere—like an officer’s swagger stick, and as he strutted about, he slapped it against the loose folds of his denim trousers from time to time and called, “Come on now dere, git it up and git it out! Man don’t pay you to move lak yo sleepwalkin out here. Bend to it! Justice want to see him some sweat, want to see sumpin happnin. Git it and go, by God! I ain’t got dis whup to make me look purty. Come down on you an put a hump in yo back is whut I do. Wanta see nothin but assholes an elbows.”
Too Much and Mabel moved up behind the bench on which Johnson was sitting without him hearing them. He had his face tilted back, taking the sun.
“Johnson, what do you think you’re doing?” Too Much asked in a quiet, almost conversational voice.
Johnson did not even turn to look at her, and when he spoke, it was obvious he had been dozing. “Taking my ease, Too Much. Just taking my ease.” He paused and yawned, the old flesh that hung along his jaw stretching thin. “Taking my ease and taking care of business, just like you see out there, doing exactly what you told me to do.” He unlocked his liver-spotted hands from behind his head and waved one of them toward the Old Ones.
In a voice sudden and strident, Mabel said, “Who told you to let Justice beat those poor souls, Johnson Meechum? You’re in a world of hurt and don’t even know it.”
Johnson jumped at the sound of his wife’s voice, and his head swiveled on his thin neck as he looked up at her, his eyes wide and suddenly very much awake. “Didn’t know you were back there, honey. Thought it was just Too Much. Too Much told me to delegate authority to save me strain on myself. Ask her if she didn’t.”
“I don’t have to ask. And don’t be honeying me, sitting out here bossing the helpless and the hopeless.”
“I asked you to let me handle this,” said Too Much in the same quiet voice.
“I’ve spent sixty years trying to handle him. He can’t be handled. The space between his ears is all air. He was never in his whole life anything but a walking dick, and now he isn’t even that.”
“Now, Mabel, don’t act like this out here in front of Too Much,” Johnson said.
“Besides a walking dick, he was a thief as well, but the jailhouse squeezed the larceny right out of his blood, just like you’d squeeze the water out of a mop.” She looked about wildly for an instant, as though she had just suddenly remembered some horror she had forgotten, and then said, “Mop! I ought to wring your skinny neck like a chicken and throw you in a pot for the dogs to eat.”
“Mabel,” said Too Much, whose voice was entirely too calm to be anything but scary.
“What?”
“Shut up. Now! Right now! I don’t want to hear another word.”
Mabel’s red face went a shade darker, but she kept her thin lips clamped together as she looked from Johnson to Too Much and back again.
Johnson said, “You ladies can go on back in the trailer, where it’s cool. I’ve got everything covered out here.” He turned to focus on Too Much. “Don’t I have everything looking just like you said you wanted it? You said you wanted it clean, and it’s just about as clean as it can get, wouldn’t you say?”
