She lay there on that old musty sofa in that trailer with her kitten minions pawing every inch of available space in that hothouse. It was August and the sun was beating down on that sardine can, the silver shell shining like some particle beam. There was no quantum physics going on in that reactor, though. There was only an old couple in a bad way.
Pick wasn't hurting near as much as Linnie. Those damn shingles were on her again and she couldn't even get up off the couch.
I sat there in the overstuffed chair trying to ask how she was doing, but the sun bouncing off that silver suppository was making me sweat so much that it was hard to keep my concentration. And those fucking kittens. I'd never been there when there wasn't a new batch of kittens inside and out of that little piece of curved space where they lived. A huge bowl of scraps would be outside on the pallet that served as a front porch, and half of them would be out there and the other half inside. The flies would be, as well. And mosquitoes.
How Pick and Linnie lived like this and had done so for so many years was a mystery to me. But it seemed like that was the way with everyone in this little bit of nowhere. Since the Interstate had been built, this was one of those places that lost touch with the rest of the world. There was a downtown with stores, but they looked as if they would make a perfect set for the Twilight Zone. Nothing new had been built for decades and the whole place was falling apart. Maybe 300 folks left in the whole town.
Pick owned a junk store that used to be on the main highway between Little Rock and Memphis, Highway 70, and there would be cars driving by there like a parade not all that long ago. He'd made enough money so that when things dried up, he did own what was his. The bad news was that what was his didn't amount to much of nothing. That old store where he still went every day . . . That little piece of land where that Airstream trailer sat . . .
The old store was a brick-front building from the late 1800's with the high ceiling fans and that smell of death. He had so much crap in there that you could spend a day looking at it all and still not see anything that was worth more than twenty five cents. Old shoes and clothes and cups and glasses and big glass counters with more crap under there, like anyone would want to steal it. Pick would usually be laying on one of the old sofas in the back of the store where you couldn't even see him when you walked in, but he'd yell out, "Hey, Easy Money! C'mon in." Somehow, "Easy Money" has become a name that lots of folks give me. I don't know why and I don't argue; it sounds like a pretty good fit and I'm not one of those folks who get their feelings hurt easily.
One day I was in there and he gave me this sideways glance and looked over my shoulder, as if I had folks following me. He said, in a whisper, "You want to see something?" I said, "I guess." He got up on a little makeshift ladder and pulled something down from a hideaway shelf above the front door. He looked around again to see if anyone was coming down that deserted street and climbed down. It was an old photo of a black man being lynched. There were signatures on the bottom of some of the folks who'd been involved. Some of the surnames seemed familiar. "You ever seen anything like that?" he said.
It's easy to hate. I lost the ability somewhere along the way, I think. I just shake my head and try to understand the roots of it all.
And there's Linnie laying there on that thirty year old couch in that hot, hot trailer, unable to get up and just hoping that this is the last time the shingles hit her. Easy Money has had the shingles, too, so I ask her how far the band goes around. She says that it's only come around to under her arms. I remind her of the old saying that if they go all the way around and make a circle, they will most likely kill you.
Her milky eyes look at the dusty coffee table where she's got about twenty prescription bottles sitting, some with tops on, some with tops off, some laying on their sides. She looks at me with a weariness I can't imagine and says, "Sometimes I wish they would."