Ford Country Read online

  “You boys been drinking?” he asked.

  “We've had a few,” Aggie said.

  “But we won't charge you extra for the alcohol,” Calvin added quickly, then both roared with laughter.

  “What size needle you want?” the man asked, and all humor vanished.

  They swore in writing that they had no known allergies or diseases. “Who's first?”

  Neither budged. “Mr. Agnor,” the man said, “follow me.” Aggie followed him through a door and into a large square room with two beds on the right side and three on the left. Lying on the first bed on the right was a thick'chested white woman in gym sweats and hiking boots. A tube ran from her left arm down to a clear plastic bag that was half-filled with a dark red liquid. Aggie glanced at the tube, the bag, the arm, then realized that there was a needle stuck through the skin. He fainted headfirst and landed with a loud thud on the tiled floor.

  Calvin, in a plastic chair near the front door nervously flip- ping through a magazine with one eye on the dying addict, heard a loud noise in the back but thought nothing of it.

  Cold water and ammonia brought Aggie around, and he even' tually managed to crawl onto one of the beds where a tiny Asian lady with her mouth covered by white gauze began explaining, in a thick accent, that he was going to be fine and there was noth' ing to worry about. “Keep your eyes closed,” she said repeatedly.

  “I really don't need fifty bucks,” Aggie said, his head spin-ning. She did not understand. When she placed a tray filled with accessories next to him, he took one look and felt faint again.

  “Close eyes, please,” she said as she scrubbed his left forearm with alcohol, the odor of which made him nauseous.

  “You can have the money,” he said. She produced a large black blindfold, stuck it to his face, and suddenly Aggie's world was completely dark.

  The attendant returned to the front and Calvin jumped from his chair. “Follow me,” the man said, and Calvin did so. When he entered the square room, and when he saw the woman in the hiking boots on one side and Aggie wearing a strange blindfold on the other side, he, too, collapsed and fell hard near the spot where his friend had landed just minutes earlier.

  “Who are these bozos?” asked the woman in the hiking boots.

  “Mississippi,” the attendant said as he patiently hovered over Calvin and waited for him to come around. Cold water and am' monia helped again. Aggie listened to it all from behind his shroud.

  Two pints were eventually extracted. A hundred dollars changed hands. At ten minutes after 2:00 a.m., the battle-scarred Dodge slid into the parking lot of the Desperado, and the two wild bucks arrived for the final hour of the party. Lighter on blood but heavier on testosterone, they paid the cover charge while looking for the lying bouncer who'd sent them off to Lutheran Hospital. He was not there. Inside, the crowd had thinned and the girls were exhausted. An aging stripper went through the mo-tions onstage.

  They were led to a table near their first one, and, sure enough, within seconds Amber appeared and said, “What'll it be, boys? Three'drink minimum.”

  “We're back,” Calvin said proudly.

  “Wonderful. What'll it be?”

  “Beer.”

  “You got it,” she said and vanished.

  “I don't think she remembers us,” Calvin said, wounded.

  “Plop down twenty bucks and she'll remember you,” Aggie said. “You ain't wastin' money on a lap dance, are you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You're as stupid as Roger.”

  “No one's that stupid. Reckon where he is.”

  “Floatin' downriver with his throat cut.”

  “What's his daddy gonna say?”

  “He should say, 'That boy was always stupid.' How the hell do I know what he's gonna say? Do you really care?”

  Across the room, some corporate types in dark suits were get' ting plastered. One put his arm around the waist of a waitress, and she quickly jerked away. A bouncer appeared, pointed at the man, and said harshly, “Don't touch the girls!” The suits roared with laughter. Everything was funny.

  As soon as Amber delivered their six glasses of beer, Calvin couldn't wait to blurt out, “How 'bout a lap dance?”

  She frowned, then said, “Maybe later. I'm pretty tired.” Then she was gone.

  “She's tryin' to save your money for you,” Aggie said. Calvin was crushed. For hours he had relived the brief moment when Amber had straddled his enormous loins and gyrated happily to the music. He could feel her, touch her, even smell her cheap perfume.

  A rather large and flabby young lady appeared onstage and began dancing badly. She was soon unclothed but drew little attention. “Must be the graveyard shift,” Aggie said. Calvin hardly noticed. He was watching Amber as she sashayed through the club. She was definitely moving slower. It was almost time to go home.

  Much to Calvin's dismay, one of the corporate suits enticed Amber into a lap dance. She found the enthusiasm and was soon grinding away as his friends offered all manner of commentary. She was surrounded by gawking drunks. The one upon whom she •was dancing evidently lost control of himself. Against club policy and also in violation of a Memphis city ordinance, he reached forward with both hands and grabbed her breasts. It was an enormous mistake.

  In a split second, several things happened at once. There was the flash of a camera, and someone yelled, “Vice, you're under arrest!” While this was taking place, Amber jumped from the man's lap and yelled something about his filthy hands. Since the bouncers had been watching the suits closely, they, the bouncers, were at the table instantly. Two cops in plain clothes rushed forward. One was holding a camera, and the other kept saying, “Memphis vice, Memphis vice.”

  Someone yelled, “Cops!” There was pushing and shoving and lots of profanity. The music stopped cold. The crowd backed away. Things were under control during the first few seconds, until Amber somehow stumbled and fell over a chair. This caused her to wail in an affected, dramatic manner, and it also caused Calvin to rush into the melee and throw the first punch. He swung at the suit who'd groped his girl, and he hit him very hard in the mouth. At that moment, at least eleven grown men, half of them drunk, began throwing punches in every direction and at every target. Calvin was hit hard by a bouncer, and this brought Aggie into the brawl. The suits were swinging wildly at the bouncers, the cops, and the rednecks. Someone threw a glass of beer that landed across the room near a table of middle-aged bikers, who, until that moment, had done nothing more than shout encouragement to everyone throwing punches. However, the breaking glass upset the bikers. They charged. Outside the Desperado, two uniformed cops had been waiting patiently to help carry away victims of the vice squad, and when they were alerted to the excitement inside, they quickly entered the club. When they realized the fight was more like a full-blown riot, they instinctively pulled out their nightsticks and began looking for a skull or two to crack. Aggie's was first, and while he was on the floor, a cop beat him senseless. Glass was shattered. The cheap tables and chairs were splintered. Two of the bikers picked up wooden chair legs and attacked the bouncers. The melee roared on •with loyalties shifting rapidly and bodies falling to the floor. Casualties mounted until the cops and the bouncers gained the upper hand and eventually subdued the corporate suits, the bikers, the boys from Ford County, and a few others who'd joined the fun. Blood was everywhere—on the floor, on shirts and jackets, and especially on faces and arms.

  More police arrived, then the ambulances. Aggie was unconscious and rapidly losing blood from his already diminished supply. The medics were alarmed at his condition and rushed him into the first ambulance. He was taken to Mercy Hospital. One of the suits had also received a number of blows from a cop's nightstick, and he, too, was unresponsive. He was placed in a second ambulance. Calvin was handcuffed and manhandled into the rear seat of a police car, where he was joined by an angry man in a gray suit and a white shirt soaked with blood.

  Calvin's right eye was swollen shut, and thro
ugh his left he caught a glimpse of Aggie's Dodge pickup sitting forlornly in the parking lot.

  Five hours later, from a pay phone in the Shelby County jail, Calvin was finally allowed to make a collect phone call to his mother in Box Hill. Without dwelling on the facts, he explained that he was in jail, that he was charged with felony assault on a police officer, which, according to one of his cell mates, carried up to ten years in prison, and that Aggie was in Mercy Hospital with a busted skull. He had no idea where Roger was. There was no mention of Bailey.

  The phone call rippled through the community, and within an hour a carload of friends was headed to Memphis to assess the damage. They learned that Aggie had survived a surgical procedure to remove a blood clot in the brain, and that he, too, was charged with felony assault on a police officer. A doctor told the family that he would be in the hospital for at least a week. The family had no insurance. His truck had been seized by the police, and the procedures required to retrieve it appeared impenetrable.

  Calvin's family learned that his bond was $50,000, an unrealistic sum for them to consider. He would be represented by a public defender unless they could raise enough cash to hire a Memphis lawyer. Late Friday afternoon, an uncle was finally allowed to talk to Calvin in the visitors' room of the jail. Calvin wore an orange jumpsuit and orange rubber shower shoes and looked awful. His face was bruised and swollen, his right eye still closed. He was scared and depressed and offered few details.

  Still no word from Roger.

  After two days in the hospital, Bailey's progress was remarkable. His right leg was broken, not crushed, and his other injuries were minor cuts, bruises, and a very sore chest. His employer arranged for an ambulance, and at noon Saturday Bailey left Methodist Hospital and was driven straight to his mother's house in Box Hill, where he was welcomed home like a prisoner of war. Hours passed before he was told of the efforts by his friends to donate their blood.

  Eight days later, Aggie came home to recuperate. His doctor expected a full recovery, but it would take time. His lawyer had managed to reduce the charges to a simple assault. In light of the damage inflicted by the cops, it seemed fair to give Aggie a break. His girlfriend stopped by, but only to end the romance. The leg' end of the road trip and the brawl in the Memphis strip club •would haunt them forever, and she wanted no part of it. Plus, there •were significant rumors that perhaps Aggie was a bit brain damaged, and she already had her eye on another boy.

  Three months later, Calvin returned to Ford County. His lawyer negotiated a plea to reduce the assault from a felony to a misdemeanor, but the deal required three months in the Shelby County Penal Farm. Calvin didn't like the deal, but the prospect of going to trial in a Memphis courtroom and facing the Memphis police was not appealing. If found guilty on the felony, he would spend years in prison.

  In the days following the melee, to the surprise of everyone, the bloody corpse of Roger Tucker was not found in some back alley in downtown Memphis. He wasn't found at all; not that anyone was actively searching for him. A month after the road trip, he called his father from a pay phone near Denver. He claimed to be hitchhiking around the country, alone, and having a grand time. Two months later he was arrested for shoplifting in Spokane, and served sixty days in a city jail.

  Almost a year passed before Roger came home.

  Fetching Raymond

  Mr. McBride ran his upholstery shop in the old icehouse on Lee Street, a few blocks off the square in downtown Clanton. To haul the sofas and chairs back and forth, he used a white Ford cargo van with “McBride Upholstery” stenciled in thick black letters above a phone number and the address on Lee. The van, always clean and never in a hurry, was a common sight in Clanton, and Mr. McBride was fairly well-known because he was the only upholsterer in town. He rarely lent his van to anyone, though the requests were more frequent than he would have liked. His usual response was a polite “No, I have some deliveries.”

  He said yes to Leon Graney, though, and did so for two reasons. First, the circumstances surrounding the request were quite unusual, and, second, Leon’s boss at the lamp factory was Mr. McBride’s third cousin. Small-town relationships being what they are, Leon Graney arrived at the upholstery shop as scheduled at four o’clock on a hot Wednesday afternoon in late July.

  Most of Ford County was listening to the radio, and it was widely known that things were not going well for the Graney family. Mr. McBride walked with Leon to the van, handed over the key, and said, “You take care of it, now.”

  Leon took the key and said, “I’m much obliged.”

  “I filled up the tank. Should be plenty to get you there and back.”

  “How much do I owe?”

  Mr. McBride shook his head and spat on the gravel beside the van. “Nothing. It’s on me. Just bring it back with a full tank.”

  “I’d feel better if I could pay something,” Leon protested.

  “No.”

  “Well, thank you, then.”

  “I need it back by noon tomorrow.”

  “It’ll be here. Mind if I leave my truck?” Leon nodded to an old Japanese pickup wedged between two cars across the lot.

  “That’ll be fine.”

  Leon opened the door and got inside the van. He started the engine, adjusted the seat and the mirrors. Mr. McBride walked to the driver’s door, lit an unfiltered cigarette, and watched Leon. “You know, some folks don’t like this,” he said.

  “Thank you, but most folks around here don’t care,” Leon replied. He was preoccupied and not in the mood for small talk.

  “Me, I think it’s wrong.”

  “Thank you. I’ll be back before noon,” Leon said softly, then backed away and disappeared down the street. He settled into the seat, tested the brakes, slowly gunned the engine to check the power. Twenty minutes later he was far from Clanton, deep in the hills of northern Ford County. Out from the settlement of Pleasant Ridge, the road became gravel, the homes smaller and farther apart. Leon turned in to a short driveway that stopped at a boxlike house with weeds at the doors and an asphalt shingle roof in need of replacement. It was the Graney home, the place he’d been raised along with his brothers, the only constant in their sad and chaotic lives. A jerry-rigged plywood ramp ran to the side door so that his mother, Inez Graney, could come and go in her wheelchair.

  By the time Leon turned off the engine, the side door was open and Inez was rolling out and onto the ramp. Behind her was the hulking mass of her middle son, Butch, who still lived with his mother because he’d never lived anywhere else, at least not in the free world. Sixteen of his forty-six years had been behind bars, and he looked the part of the career criminal—long ponytail, studs in his ears, all manner of facial hair, massive biceps, and a collection of cheap tattoos a prison artist had sold him for cigarettes. In spite of his past, Butch handled his mother and her wheelchair with great tenderness and care, speaking softly to her as they negotiated the ramp.

  Leon watched and waited, then walked to the rear of the van and opened its double doors. He and Butch gently lifted their mother up and sat her inside the van. Butch pushed her forward to the console that separated the two bucket seats bolted into the floor. Leon latched the wheelchair into place with strips of packing twine someone at McBride’s had left in the van, and when Inez was secure, her boys got settled in their seats. The journey began. Within minutes they were back on the asphalt and headed for a long night.

  Inez was seventy-two, a mother of three, grandmother of at least four, a lonely old woman in failing health who couldn’t remember her last bit of good luck. Though she’d considered herself single for almost thirty years, she was not, at least to her knowledge, officially divorced from the miserable creature who’d practically raped her when she was seventeen, married her when she was eighteen, fathered her three boys, then mercifully disappeared from the face of the earth. When she prayed on occasion, she never failed to toss in an earnest request that Ernie be kept away from her, be kept wherever his miserable life had t
aken him, if in fact his life had not already ended in some painful manner, which was really what she dreamed of but didn’t have the audacity to ask of the Lord. Ernie was still blamed for everything—for her bad health and poverty, her reduced status in life, her seclusion, her lack of friends, even the scorn of her own family. But her harshest condemnation of Ernie was for his despicable treatment of his three sons. Abandoning them was far more merciful than beating them.

  By the time they reached the highway, all three needed a cigarette. “Reckon McBride’ll mind if we smoke?” Butch said. At three packs a day he was always reaching for a pocket.

  “Somebody’s been smokin’ in here,” Inez said. “Smells like a tar pit. Is the air conditioner on, Leon?”

  “Yes, but you can’t tell it if the windows are down.”

  With little concern for Mr. McBride’s preferences on smoking in his van, they were soon puffing away with the windows down, the warm wind rushing in and swirling about. Once inside the van, the wind had no exit, no other windows, no vents, nothing to let it out, so it roared back toward the front and engulfed the three Graneys, who were staring at the road, smoking intently, seemingly oblivious to everything as the van moved along the county road. Butch and Leon casually flicked their ashes out of the windows. Inez gently tapped hers into her cupped left hand.

  “How much did McBride charge you?” Butch asked from the passenger’s seat.

  Leon shook his head. “Nothing. Even filled up the tank. Said he didn’t agree with this. Claimed a lot of folks don’t like it.”

  “I’m not sure I believe that.”

  “I don’t.”

  When the three cigarettes were finished, Leon and Butch rolled up their windows and fiddled with the air conditioner and the vents. Hot air shot out and minutes passed before the heat was broken. All three were sweating.

  “You okay back there?” Leon asked, glancing over his shoulder and smiling at his mother.

  “I’m fine. Thank you. Does the air conditioner work?”

  “Yes, it’s gettin’ cooler now.”