wernt no easy thing

The slovenly way she met my laughter got her a lick. She called herself red velvet, not a nickname-her color. Said mamma was white as the driven snow cept a little Cocoa and a dash’a red food colorin. At a certain age I started realizing that I was gonna be mostly for myself, like my cousin Fay. I took to strippin like anybody’s business. First night in, this little Indian girl told me we do private parties, all naked. I couldn’t see much difference anyhow. It was illegitimate and the girls were indifferent to the men sucking on their titties and stuff. It just suited me fine.

I told Grady that he was to keep my little sister outta my world. There was only room in Carthage for one Cobb stripper.

The striker clicked down and something happened but it sure did not fire a round. White slipstream stepped quickly and quietly inside and hit the man with the gun in the throat. That noise is a thing. Everyone knew he’d done killed him. Grady remembered Niccki Bercham getting punched just so and dying. He guessed he coulda just knocked the gun away. Somewhere, someone was probably holding a little nigglet waiting on daddy to call. Itd be a wait.

There were eight Cobbs all said but they slithered off, most of em anyway, to Bama and Nam and Peru. Doesn’t matter too much because once they left sight of the Mississippi River, they was good as dead.

Why’d they decide to try and kill him? Grady had a small warrant out on him that left the Boss little choice. That’s what I heard.

Theys four of us around and we all came. Amber, Bo, Katy, and me. Grady stood up from a Shaker stool he loved.

Grady said they’d maybe come for one of us.

They got Katy Rob two nights later, sent in her fron tooth wit they diamond set in it. Fucked up but shed done talked about rippin it out her own self.

Similies was supposed to be a real swanky joint but it was not. Owner by strategery has built a damn motel in the back. Lord have mercy, sulphur factory. I went to pills in the first month. Once you have gonna church and believe, shit gets real hard to do…after the first couple times anyway.

Grady wadnt blood related to all the girls and he knew to divide his attentions. You cant just go around fighting the whole wrestling team. Amber was neck-tatted and out from around at 14. Our older cousins had done some strippin down on the redneck riveria and I reckon it called her harder’n dope.

Katy took to the hard life too but came back to me and Daddy, Momma and her never cared to talk to one another. She came back quieter and only wore beige and grey. She wrote long letters to Amber and cried some but I would have had her cry all the time if’n she’d just stay.

You'se too young buddy.

I knew you'd say that shit.

Amber drove up in a fucking Infinity with something clanking under the jappy hood. I knew Grady wouldn’t even look at her, not even one time.

Amber and me gonna go talk to Joe-Block. See if we can figure something out.

There wasn’t any reason to hate Grady for being what he was but I had me a weapon too.

I never knew a way to complete the things that cannot be completed. When I saw those men take Katy and beat Daddy, there was some sort of wet click and I seemed of a sudden to be able to see it all. The vast expanse and the precipitous nature of the wealthy and the bright left us all killing each other over a double wide and an abortion.

I watched myself, knowin somehow I had made a decision that was about being a man, about being a Cobb n' a Toten but there wasn't anything movie about it. I stole a ladies cruiser out front a the Winn Dixie and played with myself all the way to Biloxi. I felt greasy and popped a pimple on my back. Somehow the Ruger felt lighter the further south we went, like it was becoming less offended by its own.

I was in love with the purity of my little brother. He would never talk to me in front of other people but in private he asked after my girlfriends and me. Once I got a bit too graphic and he white’nd up so I was sure he was gonna kill me. I think he’s still a virgin at 24.

Kidnapping

I had made 1200. I have no damn clue where that fucking money is now. Jessie and I were working on a routine, she had this idea for a ‘concept piece’ with Moors and an allusion to the Hearst family but we just wound up kissing and smoking cigarettes till it was our turn.

They could see her now. More whispers to Letty, “This place gone turn out.”

“mmm”

“Im gone go bump th doe man and see if he got a piece.”

Letty smiled a ray of rancid rainbow.

5’1 or 5’3 he guessed. Wadnt no 5’2. Tatted up like her momma didn’t give a fuck. A little bump in his chest somewhere reminded him of another girl, another stripper, another piece of meat in the wily trades of men.

She caught his eye and may have winked, which sent Letty whom everyone called Lessy to the potty to laugh in the stall.

Men with huge dicks walk a bit different she whispered to man sticking a 10 in her g. Lets the whole world who cares to know. The roxi’s in her were turning everything a little less than, like life was amped up but she was at regular speed. Pulling his head she thought momentarily of licking his ear but these was Halibuton boys, fresh oft the rig and in Hub City to be jackass’s but not to take a good shower.

When she threw up the front row moved toward anywhere that wasn’t there. Same time a rukus in the john and a gunshot out the back.

A week later a tall boy walks in and politely asks after Robert-Earl. No one really wanted to tell him.

Everything I did the hardest I ever done. I worked all my life with Daddy at whatever we was doing then so I always knowed I could throw a bale a bit harder than most. I was always taught to be polite even if they wernt, so I thought Id just ask after Katys old boss. Figured with his lip Id go on ahead. His eye popped out with that first one, his ocular cavity crushed, and I walked toward the back looking at the mirrors for boys coming up on me. I know I punched some girls and I hope to high hell they aint no videotape a me but when it started in earnest it couldn’t be helped. I know one of em kissed me on the back of my neck while I was stomping on this colored boys. Heard later he got paralyzed some. Gottim a check anyway.

I learned that night why mama said them Carthage boys is hard. Robert-Earl. I had a drown his brother in front a him and it wernt no easy thing.

Amocitea

Your Daddy aint gonna recognize you.

Still that little girl. When under all of it, peach flame tripped along at the word. She wanted so much for him to swoop, it was pure. A clean thing, her vision of Daddy just doing what all real animals did. Maybe he was too human.

That golden blanket that she just expected to keep on being, didn’t; and she stepped out really believing that they was gentlemen in this South, in this here state. One night looking deep in her own eyes while everyone elses in the room were on her crotch she realized that this southern thang was a crock. She spected Margaret Mitchell probably just cold wishin like every other Dixie brat split-tail. It was a precious pity that she thought in that manner, she thought…probably affecting her self-image or the like.

She’s hurt I felt. Hurt people, hurt people but with such a swirlin tide, a man just got to decide when to jump in, not if.

Once I heard that Grady involved everybody in his business, I knew I hadda get us outta town. I didn’t really think Momm’d come wit her doctors here and whatever else she was into. Since Id come back from the Wilderness I had taken to wearing full length skirts and not shaving. I know my flesh well and I knew that just like this skirt, I could put it back on rrrrrreeeeeaaaalllllly quick. And that’s the plan, back to the hotel to make us some money.

Half-way from the bus-stop to the club I thought just maybe I was being a bit drastic, but I cant remember what my next thought was after that.

Bo adjusted the mirror on the 91 Olds to see if he’d indeed gotten dip on his collar. A birth canal in the back seat caused him to blink for a second longer than average. The strip-club owners Daddy used to be a Marine and it showed. Punching and biting his way out of the trunk into the car was a feat, Bo’d be the first to tell ya. He’d blindfolded, zip tied and hit the man with 75000 Watts but this Minotaur was now in the backseat. Fucking Carthaginians.

They realized quick they’d done fucked up with this one. She prayed aloud all day long, was unfailingly polite and every chance she got she tried to kill em. Lessy had knocked her tooth out purely on accident but after he reckoned the diamond to be fake, he sent it to the boss. More had received some care from a witch the Dixie Mafia used for dogs. Little bitch had fought harder than any man ever would. In the end she’d ripped of a testicle and with that they put her in box. She calmly told em she couldn’t breath.