Redneck!
The Redneck is being made into a pop figure, romanticized and defanged. That may be just a tad premature.
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Red Turpin got real quiet like he does when he’s bothered. I whispered to Bobby Jack to keep an eye on the sumbitch because when Red quits being quiet he usually gets real loud and rambunctious in a hurry. Along between sundown and dark, Bobby Jack got real blue. He went to mumbling about owing on his new bedroom set and how much money his wife spent on home permanents and cussing the government for various things. Bobby Jack hated Harry Truman for some reason, and blamed him ever time a barmaid drawed a hot beer or he dropped a dime in a crack. Now it seemed like he was working up to blaming Truman for losing him his job. I didn’t much cared about Truman either way, but I’d liked President Roosevelt for ending hard times even though ole Eleanor traipsed all over the world and run with too many niggers. My daddy’s people come from Georgia before they settled over around Clarksville and hadn’t none of us ever been able to stomach niggers.
Bobby Jack kept getting downer and downer. Finally a flyboy from the Midland Air Base tapped his shoulder and asked if he had a match. “Sure, airplane jockey,” Bobby Jack said. “My ass and your face.” The flyboy grinned sickly. Before he could back off, Bobby Jack asked what he thought of Harry Truman. The flyboy mumbled about not being able to talk about his Commander-in-Chief. “I got your Commander-in-Chief swangin’,” Bobby Jack said, cupping his privates in one hand. “Come ‘ere and salute ‘em.” That flyboy set his beer down and took off like a nigger aviator, lurching this way and that.
Bobby Jack felt better for a bit; I even got him and Red Turpin to grinning a little by imitating Mister Poot when we’d cussed him. But it’s hard to keep married men perked up very long. I married a girl in beautician’s college in Abilene in ‘46, but we didn’t live together but five months. She was a hard-shell Baptist and talked to God while she ironed and pestered me to get a job in a office and finish high school at night. Her mother believed that when people died they come back as grub-worms.
Red Turpin went to the pay phone back by the men’s pisser to tell his wife to borrow her daddy’s pickup and come git him. He had to wait a long spell for her to come to the neighbor’s phone, and I could tell right off she wasn’t doing much rejoicing.
“Goddammit, Emma,” Red said. “We’ll thresh all that out later. Come git me and eat my ass out in person. It’s cheaper that doing it long-distance.” Red and Emma lived over in Midland behind the Culligan Bottled Water place. “Lissen,” Red said, “I sure never stole my own kid’s trike today, and I don’t know who did. I’ll whup his ass when I can find him, but all I’m trying to do right now is git a ride home. What? Well, alright, dammit, I don’t like hearing the little fartknocker cry neither. Promise ‘im we’ll buy ‘im anoher ‘un.” He listened for a minute, got real red, and yelled: “Lissen, Emma, just f—- you! How many meals you missed since we married?” From the way he banged the phone down I couldn’t tell for sure which one of ‘em had hung up first.
Two old cowboys come in about then, the pot-bellied one right tipsy. He was hollering “Ah Ha, Santa Flush!” and singing of how he was a plumb fool about Ida Red. He slammed me on the back and said “Howdy, stud! Gettin’ any strange?” He laughed when I said, “It’s all strange to me,” and went on in the pisser real happy. When Red followed the old cowhand in, I just naturally figured he’d went to take a leak.
I moseyed back to the bar. In a little bit Red Turpin slid back on his stool and started drinking Pearl again, big as you please. About a half a beer later the second cowboy went to the pisser and come out like a cannon had shot him, yelling for a doctor and the po-leece. “They done killed ole Dinger,” he hollared. “I seen that big ‘un go in right behind him. They’s enough blood in there to float a log.”
Four or five people run back toward the pisser; a general commotion started and I said real quick, “Come on. Let’s shuck outta here.” But Bobby Jack was hopping around cussing Red Turpin, asking what the hell he’d did. Red had a peculiar glaze in his eye; he just kept growling and slapping out at Bobby Jack like a bear swatting with his paw. The barkeep run up and said, “You boys hold what you got.” He taken a sawed-off shotgun from under the bar and throwed down on us. “Call the po-leece, Skeeter,” he yelled. “And don’t you damn Bohunks move a hair.” I wouldn’t a-moved for big money.
The old cowboy had been helped out of the pisser and was sitting all addled at a back table, getting the blood wiped off his face. He groaned too loud to be good dead and kept asking, “What happened?” which is what everybody was asking him. The barkeep relaxed his shotgun a smidgen, but when I offered him twelve dollar to let us go on our way, he just shook his head.
Two city cops come in, one fatter that the other; hog fat and jowly. They jangled with cuffs, sappers, and all kinds of hardwear: them sumbitches got more gear than Sears and Roebuck. The biggest cop huffed and puffed like he’d run a hill and said, “What kinda new shit we got stirred up, Frankie?”
The barkeep poked a thumb in our direction and said, “That big ole red-haired booger yonder beat up a Scharbauer Ranch cowboy.”
“What about it, Big ‘Un?” the big cop asked.
“I never hit him,” Red said.
“Oh, I see,” the big cop said. “That fellow just musta had bad luck and slipped and fell in somebody else’s blood.” I could tell he was enjoying hisself, that he would of po-leeced for free.
“I never hit him,” Red said again. He commenced to cry, which I found disgusting.
“Yeah, he did,” the barkeep said. “Near as I unnerstan it, the boomer hit the cowboy without a word passin’. Far as the cowboy knows, he mighta been hit by a runaway dump truck.”
“On your feet.” The big cop jerked Red off of the bar stool. He tightened his grip and lowered his voice and said, “You twitch just one of them fat ole shitty muscles, Big ‘Un, and I’ll sap you a new hat size. And if ‘at ain’t enough, my partner’ll shoot you where you real tender.” Red kept on blubbering while the short cop fumbled the cuffs on him; me and Bobby Jack looked away and was careful not to say nothing. One time up in Snyder, I ask this constable what a buddy’s fine would be when he was being hauled off for common public drunk, and the sumbitch taken me in, too. Next morning in court I found out the fine for common public drunk: $22 and costs.
The big cop went back and talked to the hurt cowboy awhile and wrote down in a notebook; now that his health was better, the hurt cowboy ask for another beer. The cop come walking back to us: “You peckerwoods holding cards in this game?” We naw-sirred him. The barkeep nodded. The big cop looked us over: “Where you boys work at?” We told him Morrison Brothers Construction. “Him too?” He nodded toward Red. “Well,” I said, “I heard he quit lately.” The cop grunted and tapped Bobby Jack on the ass with his billy club and said, “Keep it down to a dull roar, Hoss. I’m tard, and done had six Maggie-and-Jiggs calls. Old ladies throwin’ knives and pots at their husbands, or their husbands kickin’ the crap out of ‘em. I don’t wanta come back in this sumbitch ‘til my shift’s over and I’m scenting beer.”
They taken the old cowboy to the county hospital for stitches. When he passed by, being about half helt-up, I seen his face had been laid open like a busted watermelon. I guess maybe Red’s ring that he got in a meskin gyp-joint in that spick town acrost from Del Rio done it. Just seeing it made my belly swim and pitch. One time at Jal, New Mexico, I seen a driller gouge out a roughneck’s eye with a corkscrew when they fell out over wages, and I got the same feeling then only more so.
The Conroe woman in red slacks was sashaying around telling everybody with a set of ears how we’d broke a record insulting her just before Red beat up the old cowboy. They all kept looking at us. After we’d drank another beer to show they wasn’t spooking us, and dropped a quarter in the juke box like nothing had happened, we eased on out the door.
I wanted to hit Danceland on East Second because a lot of loose hair pie hung out there. Or the Ace of Clubs where they had a French Quarter stripper who could twirl her titty-tassels two different directions at once. But Bobby Jack said naw, hell, he reckoned he’d go on home. I walked with him up to where he turned down the alley running between the Phillips 66 Station and Furr’s Cafeteria. “Well,” Bobby Jack said, “at least ole Emma won’t have to sickle over here to give Red a ride to Midland. He’s got him a free bed in the crossbar hotel.” We talked a little about checking on how much Red’s bail had been set at, but didn’t much come of it. To tell the truth what he had did didn’t make much sense and ruined the best part of the night. Without saying so, we kinda agreed he’d brought it on hisself.
I went over to the Club Cafe and ate me a chicken-fried steak with a bowl of chili-beans on the side and listened to some ole humpbacked waitresses talk about their ailments and how much trouble their kids was. Next day I caught on with a drilling crew up in Gaines County and it wasn’t but about six weeks more than I joined the Army just in time to see sunny Korea, so I never did learn what all Red got charged with or how he come out.
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