Homegrown【翻译】

TABLE OF CONTENTS
HOMEGROWN ………………………………………………………………………… 1
THE DEMONS ………………………………………………………………………….50
RICKY …………………………………………………………………………………..69
GRANDPA OLD BULL ………………………………………………...………………86
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1
HOMEGROWN
He’s driving his Mark Five to a club out in the country, submerged in music,
thought, and Seagram’s, when he sees a pair of bluejeaned legs protruding from under an
old bleached-blue pickup at the bottom of the hill. The figure crawls out and starts
waving him down, arms criss-crossing above his head like an airport worker guiding a
plane to its gate. He brakes to a crawl, turns down the radio, gravel pings and pops. First
thing he sees is a shotgun cradled in the rack on the rear window. The figure becomes a
tall black dude wearing overalls with no shirt, just denim against dark skin. Country, he
thinks. Probably harmless. He checks both sides of the road, looking for cohorts in an
ambush, then discards the thought it’s a ruse to jack his car and wallet. Fifteen-year-old
Lincoln and maybe fifty bucks? He thinks if the gun was for mischief or mayhem it
would have been hidden. He stops and powers the window all the way down. In front, the
sun is a fat tangerine globe, not as white and hateful as earlier. The guy leans in. “Yo,
man, can you help a brother out with a jack?” he says, one gold buck tooth gleaming. He
looks him over again. He doesn’t look nutty, or like a county-jail escapee. The Seagram’s
speaks up, says, “All right, cat daddy.”
He pulls over in front of the truck, making sure cars coming either way will have
room on the narrow road. He pushes the button for the trunk, kills the engine. He’s about
to get out when he sees a squatty dog galloping down the middle of the road like a bullet,
right in the sun’s glare. Little puffs of reddish dust rise beneath its blurry legs. As it nears
he sees it’s a brindle-colored pit bulldog, young, its hanging tongue the color of baseballcard
bubblegum. It streaks by, huffing, and in the mirror Jordan watches it jump against
the man’s thighs, stump of tail wagging like an admonishing finger.
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“That dog bite?” he yells out.
“Naw, it’s OK,” he answers. “He just a young pup.”
He gets out and the dog shoots over to him, head down. Jordan braces, but it only
wants to be petted. He leans down and scruffs the dog’s wide skull, feels its short stiff
fur. It grunts and whines, looks up at him with eyes rimmed in pink. Panting heavily, it
seems to want to go in four directions at once.
“Lucky I came by,” he tells the man while rummaging for the jack, pawing
through fishing rods, golf clubs and ball bats. “Just bought this car, so I hope it works.
It’ll be a trial by fire.”
Jordan offers him a beer. He takes it and without deliberation guzzles like he’s
about to die of thirst, Adam’s apple bouncing. He drinks the whole thing, stomps the can
flat with a tan work boot, belches.
“Not bad manners, just good beer,” he says, and takes the jack. “You mind if I
keep the can? I collects cans.”
“In that case,” he says, “I’ve got some more for you in the trunk.”
His pant legs are so short they don’t even come to the top of his boots. He
instantly feels sorry for him. Jordan himself had been taunted in school for wearing
“highwaters;” been told he was “flooding.”
He’s about six-five, lanky as a hoe handle. You can see the bones of his ribcage
around his chest, near the brass snaps of his overalls. His eyes are somehow pale yellow
and red at once. Like a shot of hot sauce on eggs. Looks higher than a kite, Jordan thinks.
He offers his hand and they shake.
3
“Jordan Coolwater.”
“Victor Caesar,” he says, strokes his moustache. “You already met Sheriff.”
Right leg lifted, Sheriff is shooting a golden stream on Jordan’s front tire.
“Looks like Sheriff is dehydrated. Probably needs water,” Jordan says.
Victor claps his hand and yells and Sheriff quickly finishes. Jordan laughs and
lights a cigarette, watches Victor kick his own jack out of the way and begin the
assembly, placing the square base on bottom, then the post into the triangular hole. He
trips the switch and the horse-head part clicks rapidly to the bottom, then he flips the
lever again and slides it back up, clacking. It works.
“Hell, yeah,” Victor drawls. “I appreciates this. My narrow black ass would have
been walking till sundown you hadn’t come along.”
Victor takes the tire tool and starts breaking off lug nuts, each one shrieking as it
comes loose. He begins to pump the jack, and the rear lifts ever slightly. Jordan checks to
make sure there’s something blocking the front wheel so it doesn’t roll into his Lincoln,
but Victor already has a big rock there. Jordan drains his beer and throws the empty in the
pickup bed where it joins a few dozen more.
“What you doin out here in a big Town Car like that?” Victor says, spinning the
lug nuts off all the way, twirling the tire tool like a baton. He stops and wipes off beads of
sweat from his forehead with a red bandana.
“It’s a Mark,” Jordan says. “Heading out to that blues club over in Rentiesville.
Heard of it?”
Victor pulls the wheel off. Jordan grabs it for him and throws it into the bed,
careful not to get dirt on his new shirt. He dusts off his hands.
4
“I’m from around here,” Victor says. “That place been around since I was a kid. It
was the Little Red Rooster back in the day. Don’t go there much nowadays, but I’ve had
my streaks.”
He’s wiggling on the fresh tire. Jordan looks down on top of Victor’s head and
sees the beginnings of a bald spot mixed in with the swirling curlicues of hair. It dawns
on him that Victor probably isn’t much older than he is. He remembers that there are two
jacks in his trunk. One he kept from the Renault (although it didn’t come with a regular
jack, he was sure to put one in there because he didn’t trust the flimsy horizontal platform
kind) and one came with the Lincoln. Before he says anything, though, he checks, and,
sure enough, he has two.
Victor is cranking down the pickup, flat now fixed. He seems a regular pro at it.
He disassembles the jack and is striding over to stow it in the trunk when Jordan tells him
to keep it.
“No shit?” he says, incredulous.
“Sure, Vick, I got another one in there anyway. It’s just a jack. Keep it, you might
need it.”
Victor has a squirrelly way of not looking you in the eye, sort of down at the
ground, the way someone with a bad tooth will cover their mouth when smiling, but he
does this time, truly appreciative, as if favors for him were an endangered species.
“You a whisky man?” Jordan asks.
“Showl is,” is what the reply sounds like, so he gets the Seagram’s from the chest.
Jordan uncaps it, takes the first shot and passes it.
“You must be a guardian angel,” Victor says.
5
“The devil’s in the bottle and he aims to kill you,” Jordan says. “My grandpa
would say that. He had a truck just like this. Used to ride around out here in the country
all the time, too.”
The whisky slides to his stomach like glowing coal. Behind him, a young rabbit
darts into the road then back into the brush when it sees them. Up ahead Sheriff is
sniffing around a brown and yellow box turtle that has stopped in the road. Damned if he
doesn’t lift a leg and urinate on it, makes the shell glisten.
“Your dog does piss a lot,” Jordan says.
“Tell me about it,” Victor says matter-of-factly, puffing on a thin, cherry-smelling
cigar.
They are at the back of the pickup, each with a foot on the bumper, classic
country style. Cans, fishing rods, plastic oil quarts, flat tire in the back. Smoke bends
from Victor’s mouth up into his nose holes and back out his mouth again. Victor looks to
see if Jordan was looking. Instinctively, Jordan blows a big smoke ring, and a smaller one
into that, and yet a smaller one into that. They both laugh.
“What’s up with the shotgun?” Jordan asks.
“That thing?” Victor says. “It’s just an old .410 my granddad gave me. Rabbits,
squirrels. If I’m lucky, a few quail.”
A car tops the hill before them and passes slowly, a man and woman both wave.
Sheriff chases, barking, but stops when Victor yells. He trots back, tongue lolling.
“I’ve never been to that club before,” Jordan tells him. “Today’ll be my first time.
Can you tell me how to get there?”
He’s sure he can find it on his own, but it doesn’t hurt to ask.
6
“See that crossroads?” Victor says, pointing west with his cigarillo. In profile,
Victor’s chin hair looks like curled metal shavings. “Cross it, then take the first left after
the horse apple tree. Keep going south down over Tishomingo Creek low-water bridge
and keep on, oh, I’d say, another mile. Before you hit the next intersection, they be a little
dirt road turns off right. Take it, and it’ll take you straight to the front door.”
“Any women?”
“Probably filthy tonight. Tonight Saturday ain’t it?”
Jordan nods. Victor smiles so big the heavy western sun glints off the gold tooth
again.
“Don’t get none on ya,” Victor says. “Thanks again, partner.”
Jordan drives off toward Tishomingo Creek, watching the truck grow smaller in
his mirror. When he looks back again, it’s gone. Never heard the truck start, didn’t see
any dust. Must have turned at the crossroads, he thinks.
He sees the horse apple tree and stops. He’s in no hurry, would like to drink a few
more before he gets there, anyway. He can see for miles all around. Weatherbeaten gray
barn off to the right, but no house. Old wooden windmill to the left. Two scissortails,
tailfeathers like slender, swooping peace signs, light on a highline wire. On top of the
pole are the bell-shaped lens-blue glass insulators Granny liked to collect. He picks up a
fat parrot-green horse apple, feels its furrows, gets a little of the white sticky glue on his
hands. He fires it at the birds for the fun of it, just to watch them fly. They soar off
together, violet flashing on their underbellies. A friend told him the Cheyennes use their
colorful breast and wing feathers in ceremonies. He walks around the car looking at how
dirty it’s gotten on this little backwoods road trip. Nothing but a little mud splatter along
7
the sideboard on the passenger’s side and red road dust covering the midnight-blue paint
all around.
Across the field, haze shimmers off scorched grass, and winged grasshoppers fly
near a pond, which is oval like a skating rink, shiny like a dime. It’s likely full of
copperheads and cottonmouths, stocked with baby bullheads and perch. Skinny white
cattle birds stand storklike in the shallows, plunge their heads in. There’s the regular buzz
of crickets and crackling sounds like cellophane unraveling. It’s as if the earth is frying.
Diamondbacks, chiggers, ticks, scorpions, centipedes, fiddleback spiders: He knows what
lies underneath. Caught Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever when he was a kid out of a field
like this. Had him seeing rats and giant rabbits on top of hospital TVs, and running a 103
temperature for days.
A bull moans from far off. Jordan’s Indian, but not much of a nature boy. He likes
to fish is about it. Rather see a play than kill animals, which is what he did a lot in San
Francisco, go to the theater. He usually went on the last day of previews, when admission
was a few canned goods for the homeless. He lived there while he was in a creativewriting
program, writing short stories, which is really what he’d rather do than work at a
paper, even though it pays good and has benefits. He’s published a few stories in literary
journals that come out two or three times a year. Couldn’t buy them anywhere within a
thousand miles even if you wanted. Meanwhile, he writes a colum for the Trib and it
comes out the next day all over the state.
Taking a leak, he aims at several fuzzy-headed dandelions and wipes them all
out. He remembers when his grandpa challenged him to shoot one and on the first shot
the BB popped it dead center and all the fuzz vanished. Poof! They never got over that
8
one. Drank two or three beers in his honor. This is his first time in the Oklahoma
countryside since his grandparents died two years ago within months of each other. He
died from lung cancer; she from cirrhosis compounded by a broken heart.
He tries to find a radio station, but there’s nothing but AM country and static, so
he pops in a tape, turns it down low, though. It’s so peaceful out in the country. When he
first returned from San Francisco he was aghast at how slow life moved here. It took a
while to get used to the slow traffic, the hem and haw at the grocery store, the chit-chat,
the wide-open spaces. He could actually see the stars!
Dropping down toward Tishomingo Creek, which runs into the Canadian, which
runs into the Arkansas, which runs into the Mississippi, he sees an Indian family fishing
at the corner of the bend. He recognizes the place as where his grandpa took him fishing
once. He goes real slow over the cement-slab spillway so to not create a lot of racket for
the fisherman. The angler raises his hand and they stare at each other quickly, checking to
see who knows who. The whole family, woman and three kids, wave, and he throws them
a peace sign. He’s sure if he got out and talked to them they’d know each other, or have
some common kinfolk or friends, but he drives on in respect of their privacy. It’s a
narrow but deep stream, full of tasty channel catfish and bullheads, willows forming a
canopy over the creek. You don’t even need to bring bait here, you can flip logs and root
around in the sand with a stick for the type of worm known as the Red Wiggler. He’s
hard to get on your hook, but you roll him in the sand and he becomes manageable. The
wiggler curls and twists and is irresistible to the cats, carp and drum  nigger fish, he’d
heard the latter two called.

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