Part 29 (1/2)

We stopped at a light and were quickly surrounded by urban types, lots of them black people. ”Your midterm memory works,” Lloyd said. ”How's the short? Where did you brush your teeth yesterday?”

I ran my tongue over my teeth. I'd brushed them after my shower today, but yesterday was off the list. ”Where'd you get that cap?” I asked.

Lloyd seemed surprised by the question. He took the cap off and studied Cat, as if noticing it for the first time. ”Policeman gave it to me. He said a crystal freak left it in his car during a bust last night. I don't know what crystal is.”

”Speed. Amphetamines you shoot up.”

Lloyd shook his head. ”Stay off the streets a couple years and they invent whole new ways to be self-destructive.”

”It's more a college thing, I think.”

The light changed and the urban herd moved. In the middle of the street we met another herd coming toward us, and even though no one actually looked at anyone else, the two herds sifted through each other without a single body b.u.mp. I was impressed.

”The dead boy was only twenty-eight,” Lloyd said, which surprised me. He'd looked fifty. ”Claude Kepler from Opelika, Alabama. He had a hundred and fifty dollars in his pocket next to a Western Union receipt for two hundred somebody wired him yesterday.”

”Sounds like he had a friend somewhere,” I said.

”Never give a dest.i.tute alcoholic enough money to drink himself to death, because he will.”

”Kindness kills thing, huh?” I said.

”Kindness should come in one-bottle amounts.”

A blood bank in Memphis is about as far as you can come from a horse ranch in Wyoming. Just goes to show how my life had gone to pot in two weeks. I was raised in a beautiful environment, and I still wound up attempting suicide; I don't see how people from ugly places do it.

The blood bank wasn't nonhygienic, I guess. It just felt filthy. The room had the ambiance of a janitor's mop closet-five cots, some folding chairs, a radio tuned to dentist music, a refrigerator, a cash register. The center of the room was taken up by this whirlyjigger machine with an ominous look-part carnival, part Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.

Two of the nurses were exhausted matrons, and the third was a teenager with braces on her teeth who testified for Jesus as she slid the pipe in your vein. d.a.m.n thing was thick as Shane's tube. Evil-looking sucker.

”What's that deal?” I pointed to the whirlyjigger machine.

”Centrifuge plasma separator,” Lloyd said. ”They give nine dollars for plasma and you can come back in three days, or fourteen dollars for blood, only you can't sell but once a week. Winos who think of their future sell plasma.”

”But drunks who live for today sell blood.”

”We'll do blood because we're not planning on being around in three days.”

”We h.e.l.l.”

”Plus, you'll be amazed how wasted you get tonight drinking with one less pint of blood in your body.”

”Who said I'm drinking today?”

A steady stream of alcoholics, drug addicts, and an occasional college student trickled in, waited their turns, and went out with an extra-large Band-Aid taped sideways in the crook of their arms. No complimentary orange juice while you rest afterward like the Red Cross does it-this place was more of a backward gas station than a clinic. You pull up, plug in the hose, fill the tank, get your Band-Aid and cash, and you're on the road again.

While I waited my turn an old codger the nurses called Carl stumbled through the door and fell over a chair. The harshest of the matrons moved to throw him out.

”Come back when you're sober, Carl,” she said. ”Any poor patient gets your blood would die of alcohol poisoning.”

”f.u.c.k you,” said Carl.

I don't know how these places judge too-drunk-to-give because Carl wandered back twenty minutes later and they took him. Maybe the difference was the second time he didn't knock over any chairs.

You notice I said ”waited my turn” there? I don't know how Lloyd got me, but he got me. One minute I'm watching Nurse Harsh tie a rubber hose around his stringy upper arm and he says, ”We'll need more money, Maurey. Sign up,” and the next minute I'm filling out a form saying I've never had hepat.i.tis and I'm not currently on medication-they take your word for that stuff-then ten more minutes and I'm dripping into a bag. Looked like the same brand of bag Shane peed in.

”Any chance of listening to Paul Harvey on the radio?” I asked the Jesus nurse.

”Sure. Don't you think Paul Harvey has depth in his voice? I'll bet he has the easiest veins to hit. I'd love to clamp him off and watch his antecubital vein swell.” Different women rate men different ways. I suppose ease of hitting their veins is as good a method as any.

The winos and nurses got in a big argument as to what station was best for Paul Harvey, but finally the matter was settled and someone turned the dial. We'd missed Page One, which was okay by me, I didn't go for the real news anyway. Lydia Callahan was the news junkie; I preferred the twenty-two-pound cantaloupes on Page Two.

Paul congratulated a couple for staying happily married for eighty-five years. He insinuated they still had good s.e.x, or maybe I just took it that way. Then he told an interesting story about his neighbor in the Missouri Ozarks who'd taught his pig to imitate Fidel Castro. Basically, the neighbor tied a fake beard and funny cap on the pig's head, then let it smoke a cigar. That hog of Dad's would have eaten the cigar, beard, and cap, then tried to bite the neighbor.

The story came out pretty funny, but you almost had to be there. With Paul Harvey, delivery is more important than content.

Here's the day's b.u.mper snicker: ”Never take a snake by its tail or a woman by her word.” s.e.xist pig.

There's no better time in the world for evaluating where your life's been and how close the reality matches the dreams than the twenty minutes or so it takes to sell a pint of blood. You lie there on the cot, watching your bodily fluids drip away and you think, So this is what I've come to. My body has eight pints of blood and I'm selling one for fourteen dollars. Is that what I'm worth?

Then you think how fast you'll probably convert that pint of blood into a pint of whiskey, and the tendency is toward depression.

Two weeks ago I lived in a nice home and took care of a beautiful baby. I was surrounded by the wonderful mystery of the mountains. I showered in clean water and breathed faultless air. I had what half the women in America want, and I botched the gig. One lousy bottle of tequila shows up in a lion's stuffings and zip-no home, no beautiful child, no paradise. Now I'm surrounded by addicted men who don't bathe. I'm forced to walk on concrete, I have a needle sticking in my arm.

The contrast with Paul Harvey was too much.

”We didn't need money this bad,” I said to Lloyd. ”You brought me here to make a point about alcoholism.”

He looked at me and said, ”Alcoholism has no point.” Pithy son of a b.i.t.c.h.

Carl raised up and started dry heaving and fell out of his cot, pulling the needle out of his arm and his own bag of blood down on his head.

34.

Dead Dad, This is the Mississippi River, b.u.t.t crack of the entire nation. I saw a dead boy. I sold my blood and met a woman who sold her flesh. Which of us would a cowboy call sleazy?

My adventuresome spirit is flagging. Could use your help.

Maurey ***

I paddled my canoe through the gla.s.s-still waters of Jenny Lake. At the far end of the boat a wh.o.r.e named Lily sunbathed on her back wearing a black bikini bottom and no top. She was very tanned, but I could see purple bruises on the insides of her arms. Lily stretched her arms over her head and leaned forward to lick between my legs. ”You're a woman,” I said. ”Close your eyes and I'm anyone, ” she said. I closed my eyes and we drifted across the lake with her licking below and above my c.l.i.toris and me floating with the gentleness of the water. I almost came, I wanted to come, but I couldn't quite get over the edge. When I opened my eyes Lily had changed. She had a black, full beard and hair on her arms and chest. I said, ”You died, ” and Lily said in a man's voice, ”That was a mistake.” Then I was in the lake, drowning. I kicked, I fought, I screamed. Lily pulled my feet down where I no longer wanted to go. I was smothered again.