Harry Crews - Blood and Grits

1979

For Harvey Heller,

without whose kindness and generosity

it all would have been more difficult

I cant believe that, said Alice.

Cant you? the Queen said in a

pitying tone. Try again; draw a long

breath, and shut your eyes.

Lewis Carroll,

Through the Looking-Glass

We came out of Johnson City, Tennessee, three of us in the cab of a pickup truck with an enormously fat mountain girl who worked in a Frosty-Freeze ice-cream parlor. She had on her Frosty-Freeze uniform, and a vague but insistent odor of sour milk floated out of the deep creases of her body. She lived in Erwin, Tennessee, which practically straddles the Appalachian Trail, and drove the pickup into Johnson City five times a week to the Frosty-Freeze, a distance of some fourteen miles.

What we were doing fourteen miles off the trail in Johnson City is boring and need not be related. Enough to say that Dog and I wanted to get drunk, and more than that, we wanted a decent-sized city to do it in. Dog and I were good and drunk. Charn was disgusted. She didnt mind the drinking particularly, even drank some herself, but she thought a sixteen-hour bout from one bar to the next was tacky and middle-class, showedshe saidpoor taste. We kept our packs on while we hiked around Johnson City, getting drunker and drunker. Its a Gods wonder some Grit didnt kill us. Grits dont take to long-haired freaks wearing packs in their bars.

We were squeezed tight inside the cab of the pickup. The girl, whose name was Frannyit was stitched over the pocket of her Frosty-Freeze uniformtook up half the seat by herself. Charn had to sit in my lap. Dog sat squeezed into Franny, his entire body imprinted and half-buried in her fat. He didnt seem to mind it.

Hed been licking the side of her neck. She didnt seem to mind it, or even notice it, for that matter. I wondered if maybe there was an old residue of Frosty-Freeze ice cream slathered up on the side of her neck. It was July, and I was sweating pure vodka into the little space between our steaming bodies and the windshield. The smell of sweat, vodka, and sour milk had made me incredibly thirsty. I was beginning to sober up and longed desperately for a beer.

You reckon we could stop and get us a beer, Franny? I said.

I could use a beer myself, Charn said. It stinks in here.

I aint familiar with beer joints, said Franny.

Ah, come on, Fanny, Dog said, taking a long lick at her neck. Hed called her Fanny ever since we got into the truck. She didnt seem to mind. I noticed the place hed been licking on her neck had changed colors. It was now considerably lighter than the rest of her neck. Dogs tongue, when he ran it out, was kind of pink. I thought he might have a little pancake makeup on it.

We nearly to Erwin, she said.

Dog licked her again.

I said: I dont want to go to Erwin. I dont care if I ever get to Erwin. I want a beer.

It is one lil ole place up here not far they say sells real cold draffs, she said.

I believe thats the place we been looking for, I said.

Fanny, Dog said, damn if I dont think Im in love with you.

She stared grimly through the windshield at the highway. I been divorced oncet already and got two younguns.

Hell, Dog said, I dont mind. I dont give one shit.

I could never care for a man that cussed, she said.

I could quit, Dog said. I got iron willpower. I quit smoking before.

She turned to look at him, her face a mask, as if she were considering some grim alternative, as if maybe he was a doctor and had just told her she had cancer but that he could take care of it for her.

All right, she said. All right, then.

She looked back toward the highway, and as she did, she raised her huge arm and drew Dog in. His head disappeared between the wall of her arm and the massive lump of tittie.

With Dogs head clamped under her arm, Franny let the old Dodge pickup have the rest of the gas pedal, and we shot down the highway for another couple of miles, where she swung into a red-dirt parking lot beside a wooden building. There were only two other cars parked there.

She slid to a stop and looked over at us. It dont seem like much, she said, but they got good cold draffs.

A cloud of red dust sifted over the truck and came to hang in the air between us. Dog fought his way from under her arm, a mashed look on his sweated face.

We here? he said. This it?

Charn was already out of the truck. I slid down behind her.

Me n hims gone talk a minute, said Franny.

Go on and order us a beer, said Dog. Well be right in.

Dont order us no beer, said Franny. Well be there to-rectly.

She looked like she was going in for that cancer operation and Dog looked like he wasnt real sure what the hell was going on. We left them sitting there, her arm still weighted around Dogs neck, and went on into the bar. After the bright sunlight, it was dark inside. Plain wooden floor, unpainted walls, about ten bare tables with chairs, a long unpainted bar with pickled pigs feet floating in jars and pickled eggs and potato chips on a dented rack.

One man sat at the bar, wearing a neatly pressed blue suit and a snap-brim hat with a red feather in it. He was slender and dark and gave the impression of tension, although I didnt know why, because he didnt move, didnt even glance at us. A bald man in a T-shirt read a newspaper behind the bar.

We went to a table by a window and sat down. I was watching the bartender. He looked up at us and then back at his paper. He didnt move off his stool. I had thought there might be some breeze by the window, but there wasnt. Through the screen we could look directly into the cab of the truck, which sat baking in the hard sunlight no more than fifteen feet away.

Charn glanced at the truck and said: We ought to move away from this window.

Its all right, I said. Only Frannys head was visible in the cab of the truck.

Its embarrassing, she said.

Theyre just talking, I said.

I wasnt about to take another table. I wanted to see. Thats the way I am.

The bartender still had not moved, except occasionally to turn a page of his newspaper. The man in the blue suit had not moved at all, and I realized thats what made him seem tight as sprung steel. He didnt turn his head, hadnt touched the full glass of beer in front of him, didnt seem even to be breathing.

Thats a strange one up there in the suit, I said.

This godforsaken placed make anybody strange, said Charn. Ill flip you to see who wakes up the bartender and gets us a beer.

I lost and went up for a big pitcher and four glasses. When I got back to the table, Charn said: I told you itd be embarrassing.

I poured myself a glass and looked through the screen. Damned if they hadnt rolled up the windows to the truck. The windshield had steamed over, and that old Dodge truck was rocking like a cradle. While I watched, an enormous flat foot rose foggily into view and pressed itself slowly but with tremendous strength against the glass directly below the rearview mirror.

This is better than a movie, I said.

Pervert, Charn said.

You from around here?

We both jerked around at the same time to see the man in the blue suit sit down across from us. He placed his glass of beer carefully on the table. His movements were strangely angular and precise, as though his body moved through space proscribed and exactly calibrated. His eyes were the color and texture of the screen wire. He asked us again if we were from around here.