LITMIR.BIZ

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He peered into the open window. They were in the back seat.

      He could see Billy Blankenship’s plump ass pumping up and down, the girl’s knees sticking up on each side. There was complete silence, not even any heavy breathing, much less moaning or whispering or crying out. Lester Ray fingered the switchblade knife in his pocket. He straightened the Frank Sinatra mask, made sure it was tight. He reached into the window and tapped Billy Blankenship on his ass; the boy froze.

      “What’s the matter?” Lucy Hatter said.

      Billy still did not move. After a few moments he said, “Awww, now, Bubba, is that you? You crazy son-of-a-bitch.”

      “What is it?” the girl said.

      “Somebody playin a trick,” the boy said.

      “Somebody’s here? Git up offa me!”

      They scrambled up, struggling in the narrow space. They were both buck naked. Lester Ray could see the girl’s big meaty breasts waggling. They were both trying to see out the car window.

      “Ain’t no Bubba here,” Lester Ray said.

      “What the fuck?” Billy Blankenship said, gaping at the Frank Sinatra mask outside in the moonlight.

      “Frankie boy is here,” Lester Ray said, “get out of the car.”

      “What the fuck?” Billy said again.

      “Get outta the car,” Lester Ray said, “I ain’t gonna tell you a second time.” Lester Ray pulled out the knife and snapped it open. He held the blade up, letting it glint in the moonlight.

      “Jesus,” Billy Blankenship said.

      “No, just old Frankie Sinatra,” Lester Ray said, and laughed.

      Billy Blankenship cocked his head to the side, trying to get a better look at him. “Who in the fuck are you?” he said. “Fuck, this ain’t Halloween!”

      “Get outta the car, hand me your pants and her purse. Now.”

      “Wait. Let her get her clothes on,” Billy said.

      “Hell no. Out!”

      Billy clambered out, naked, his pecker still about half hard, drooping, pointing to the ground. The girl followed, heavy hipped, bulbous breasts wallowing. Lester Ray checked out her big bush of black hair under the hand that she tried to shield herself with. She was standing pigeon-toed, with her other arm across her breasts.

      “What do you want?” the girl asked, in a high whine.

      “I told you,” Lester Ray said, “I want your money. Give me your pants and your purse, and don’t try nothin or I’ll cut your balls and tits off.”

      “Give it to him, Billy, for God’s sakes,” Lucy said.

      Billy was rummaging around behind him in the car. “If this is a damn trick, I’m gonna . . .”

      “Believe me, this ain’t no trick,” Lester Ray said. He was wary of him, poised, in case he came out with a tire iron or something. But Lester Ray was a head taller than Billy and fifty pounds heavier, and he would have bet good money that the boy would do nothing to defend himself or the girl.

      The boy pulled his pants out and handed them toward Lester Ray. “Give me the wallet and all your change,” Lester Ray said, motioning with the knife. Billy held out a handful of change and Lester Ray took it and put it in his pocket. He reached into the proffered wallet and slid the bills out; he could see that there were ones and fives. And some tens. Billy’s folks were well-off. He flung the wallet out into the road. “Now your purse, lady,” he said. She was shaking all over. She got the purse and handed it to him. He snapped it open with one hand, holding the knife on them. There was a red, plastic billfold in there with nothing in it but a one-dollar bill. He took that and flung the purse after Billy’s billfold. “Give me your car keys,” Lester Ray said.

      “What the fuck?” Billy said. Lester Ray waved the knife. “Okay, okay.” He reached in and snatched the keys out of the dash. Lester Ray took them and pegged them toward the river, into a stand of twisted live oaks along the bank. “Shit, man,” Billy said. “You not even gonna steal my car?”

      “No. Now reach in there, real easy, and hand me all your clothes. Underwear, all of it.”

      “Come on, man,” Billy said. “What the hell you doin this for then?”

      “Because I don’t like you,” Lester Ray said.

      Neither of them moved. “Now!” Lester Ray said. Both of them scrambled around in the car, gathering up their clothes. They handed the bundle to Lester Ray.

      “Now get back into the car. Go back to fuckin if you want to. But don’t get out for another half an hour. You understand that, don’t you?”

      “Yes, sir,” the girl said, climbing back into the car.

      “Shit,” Billy said. “If I find out . . .”

      “You ain’t gonna do nothin, piss-ant,” Lester Ray said. “And if you report this to the police, I’m gonna come lookin for you.”

      After they were back in the car, Lester Ray walked back up the road toward his house. He passed a place where some old tires were burning and he tossed their clothes onto the fire. He laughed out loud.

      He would never feel sorry for himself again. Not since those days when he didn’t know any better, when he was a little boy and thought his mother had run off because of him, and he would never see her again and there was nothing he could do about it. Maybe she had. Run off because of him. But now he knew it didn’t really matter why she had left but simply that she had. His daddy had told him a thousand stories, all different, about what she was like, who she was and where she must have gone—Key West, Mobile, a whorehouse in Memphis, on and on—and his daddy would cry and moan and cuss her for the sorry bitch he said she was until he passed out, sometimes face down on the old secondhand Formica table with his arms flayed out to the side, like he was trying to fly down through the surface of the table.

      His daddy’s name was Earl Holsomback, and the two of them lived on that same sandy unpaved street that Lester Ray had walked down on his way to the turn-around on the river. It was a rented house, unpainted, two rooms and a kitchen, with a narrow falling down porch, little more than a stoop, on the front. There was paltry furniture; Lester Ray slept on a settee in what they called the living room, while his father had the bedroom where there was an ancient iron bed that had once been painted a gold color, to look like brass, with a mattress that they had found in the city dump where it had been discarded, probably by some rich man in town who had not even gotten the good out of it. Lester Ray did not sleep in the bed on any of his father’s many long absences—when Lester Ray had no knowledge at all of his father’s whereabouts, nor what he might be doing—because his father had pissed the mattress and the dingy sheets so often and so thoroughly that Lester Ray could hardly stand to walk into the bedroom, it stank so much. He was content with the settee, anyway, though it was almost too short for him. He was content with a lot of things, because he knew he was just biding his time until he could leave, until he could get some kind of car or motorcycle, anything, and go in search of his mother. That was the driving force of his young life: finding his mother.

      His father was at home when he got there. He sat at the kitchen table in a shabby sleeveless undershirt, Pabst Blue Ribbon cans scattered all over the tabletop.

      “Where the shit have you been?” his father said.

      “I might say the same thing to you,” Lester Ray said. His father had been gone for two months. He would do that, just suddenly pop up and act like he’d been down to the store for a loaf of bread when he had just disappeared without a word one day to stay away months at a time.

      “Don’t get smart with me, boy,” he said. “You got any cigarettes?”

      “No,” Lester Ray said, though he knew his father could plainly see the package of Camels rolled up in his T-shirt sleeve.

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