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  “Let me make it clear that it was a regular church. It was Methodist. Then out of nowhere Barb started thinking that everyone concerned about the Greenhouse Effect was some kind of Satanist. She thought they had some kind of made-up agenda in order to make money. Why would a bunch of scientists make up such stuff about glaciers disappearing? There were pictures and videos of it! Why would they go to the trouble of faking videos of ice melting on both ends of the planet, that’s what I ask you. And what I asked her.”

  I called Now, but not Later. I said, “Come here, Now.” He did. He sat down by my side and stared at me. I could tell by the look in his eyes that he wanted me to put on some blues music. Now liked blues. Later liked Miles Davis and Miles Davis only. Some dog psychologist could explain it all, I’m sure.

  “So Barb decided that God meant for everything to be. She took the notion of no free will to extreme measures. She said, ‘All actions are Good. It’s how God wants us to be. “Good” and “God” are close together in spelling for a reason. If He wants me to drive around throwing Styrofoam containers out my car window, then it’s because He invented Man, who invented Styrofoam, and we can do with it what we will. God invented the earth six thousand years ago, and He did so understanding that we would go through cycles in climate.’ I tell you what, when she said it to me, Mr. Beaumont, it was if a zombie spoke. She had a blank look. Her voice came out not unlike what a hand-turned sausage grinder sounds like with, I don’t know, maybe paperclips shoved down the funnel.”

  I opened and drank from the beer. There was no way I was going to tell my story. And at this point I didn’t trust Mack Morris Murray yet. I never promised to tell my story, even though he volunteered his. I said, “It makes you wonder.” I had no clue what else to say.

  “It makes you wonder, it does!” Mack Morris Murray said. He threw back his head and laughed in a way that I couldn’t tell if it was fake or not. I know this: He opened his mouth wide, and I noticed for the first time that he had a large black spot on his tongue. He had a spotted tongue in the same way that a half-Chow, half-Lab does. At first I thought maybe he suffered from tongue cancer, and that he sold house numbers in order to pay for radiation, or chemo, or amputation. He reached for the peppermint schnapps.

  I pulled back the bottle. I said, “You shouldn’t be drinking this stuff. I think it might’ve gone bad. You shouldn’t be drinking it.” I felt bad, but I didn’t want a tongue cancer victim putting his lips to my bottle. Or a possible mixed-breed devil.

  “No, I shouldn’t. I have a bunch of people to meet this afternoon,” he said. He looked up at the two machetes, then turned around and looked into the den where another dozen were displayed on the walls. “They say a crow can tell if a man’s armed with a pistol or not. They say a snake knows if someone walking nearby has a machete in his possession. What’s the fascination with machetes, Mr. Beaumont? You afraid of snakes?”

  I said, “My name’s not really Beaumont. I made up that name.”

  Mack Morris Murray showed that godawful spotted tongue again. I’ll give him this, though—his tongue wasn’t forked, at least not physically. He said, “Your name’s Leonard Scott, but people call you Pinetop. Somebody told me. That guy in the house down the road told me. Don’t worry, it happens all the time. I should write one of those baby name books using only the fake names I’ve come across in this line of work.” He reached for the schnapps again, and I let him take it.

  I said, “They call me Pinetop? What does that mean?”

  Mack Morris Murray pushed the bottle back my way. “It’s not a secret, from what your neighbor said. You go out at night and destroy, or at least maim, the trees in the new developments. Then you go back later and try to sell them clippings from your Leyland cypresses, seeing as they can be grown from sprigs, or clippings, or whatever you call them. I steal numbers, you steal the lives of trees. So what? My wife would think that what you do is God’s plan. Me, she’d think it was God’s plan only if He invented numbers and wanted us all to abuse the things.”

  I said, “Come here, Later.”

  Mack Morris Murray said, “I used to have a regular job as a teacher. I know you probably won’t believe half of what I tell you, but I used to be a teacher. This wasn’t that long ago. I taught math. Hell, I even worked as a scorer for one of those national education testing services, you know.”

  I said, “Your tongue looks like my dog Later’s tongue. Are you all right, or did you just chew up some licorice before you came over here? What’s that stuff—did you chew some clove gum before you came over here?” I said, “I thought all those tests were scored by a computer.”

  “I did one of the other tests. I scored one of those tests that matter more. I scored one of the tests that gives out partial points even if the final answer turns out wrong.” Mack Morris Murray closed his mouth hard. He stared down at both Now and Later. The dogs didn’t seem to want to growl at him, like I thought they would, which could’ve only meant that the guy didn’t really have three first names. Mack Morris Murray nodded his head a couple times, almost imperceptibly. He said, “I’ve always wanted to own a nursery, though. Nurseries kind of run like math. You have two plants, you have four plants, you have sixteen plants. I’m talking about hybrids now. Like your Leyland cypresses.”

  I said, “I wonder what your ex-wife thinks about hybrid cars. Why would God let Man invent a hybrid car if we were all meant to use up gas and oil and throw Styrofoam and used tires out the car windows.”

  “I never finished my story,” Mack Morris said. “I got sidetracked. It’s not your fault—I get sidetracked more and more these days. You’re right. All that stuff about all that stuff. Yeah. So Barb took all the money we had in the bank and moved off to one of those places, and gave it all to one of those preachers. At least that’s what I’ve gathered.”

  I said, “My wife’s name was Audrey. It’s not the same story. My wife left me because she said I was too…”

  My dogs started barking all at once. I got up and went to the side door to look out and see if someone else had showed up, maybe to sell me gutters he’d stolen off the house while Mack Morris and I talked at the kitchen table. No one stood outside, though. There was no car. I walked around to the front door and only saw the mini-trunk with the beautiful clasps. I opened the door, made sure it was unlocked, went outside, and retrieved the box of numbers. I brought them inside—a mini-trunk of numbers weighs more than you’d think—and was going to set it down on the kitchen floor, but I came in to find Mack Morris Murray holding my two kitchen machetes in each hand.

  “You were too what?”

  “Trusting,” I said. “Put those back on the wall, please.” I’d never timed myself dropping a mini-trunk of numbers in the kitchen, running into the den, and wielding two of those machetes off the wall. The only reason why I kept so many machetes, I understood, was to prove to Audrey that I wasn’t too trusting, and so on, should she ever return.

  Mack Morris Murray said, “I’m just messing with you. I could’ve cut your head off twice if I wanted to, but I’m not that kind of man. Like I said, Gold Rule. Barb would probably cut off your head and say with a straight face that God meant for her to do it, you know.”

  I still held the trunk. Mack Morris Murray put one machete back on the wall, ran his thumb down the blade of the other, then placed it below the first. I said, “Goddamn you. I have to go pee.” I went outside and looked through the kitchen window to keep tabs on his movements. He placed his head on the table, forehead and nose straight down. Back inside I said, “So that’s my story. She said I let people take advantage of me. She said I sold plants too cheap, or believed people when they said they would come back on Friday to pay me in full. Then she left. Last I heard Audrey worked for a tax filing outfit. Last I heard, she dressed up like either the Statue of Liberty or Uncle Sam and tried to flag down taxpayers driving down the road between January first and April fifteenth.”

  “It’s all about inventory. It’s all about i
nventory with women. Well, no, maybe not women. With your ex-wife and my ex-wife. Speaking of which.” Mack Morris Murray opened his second can of beer. He took his trunk of numbers from me and set it on the table. I unscrewed the peach schnapps and took two slugs. Mack Morris said, “I have to do this. It’ll mean good things will happen to me later.” He pulled out two ceramic 1s, two 3s, a 9, and a 7. He lined them up to read 193317. “Here,” he said.

  Then he took all the other numbers out and asked me to help him divide them up into style, and number. We stacked them up. He had a lot of ones, as it ended up, which made sense seeing as every street block needs ones. We went on down the line. He had more ceramic numbers than metal, more metal than plastic. When we finished I said, “That’s kind of weird that you only have three sixes.”

  He stuck out his tongue and showed me that black spot.

  I pulled out my wallet, dug out twelve dollars, and handed it over. I would’ve given him a tip, but I realized that I’d need to drive over to the closest hardware store and buy six or eight new bolt locks for my doors. Mack Morris Murray said, “Between you and me, it’s a despicable world out there.” He pointed with his chin. He refilled his mini-trunk haphazardly.

  I said, “It can only get better,” which I didn’t quite believe, but tried to.

  “Nice doing business with you, Mr. Beaumont. Or Leonard. Or Mr. Scott,” Mack Morris Murray said. “Or Pinetop. You ain’t no different than I am. Don’t go around thinking that you’re any different.”

  And then he left. I checked the door so it wouldn’t lock behind me, and watched as he clomped through the middle of my front yard, appearing to know where I’d dug holes and covered them with pinestraw and switches. He took all the right veers, and high-stepped in exact places. At Snipes Road he looked both ways, then took a right hand turn toward the residential developments. Because it’s the country, and because sound travels, I could make out his whistling from afar. Was it “Onward Christian Soldier”? Was it “Amazing Grace”? Was it that song I didn’t know the name of that everyone heard when a bride walked down the church aisle?

  Back inside, I opened the silverware drawer. My wife’s wedding band and engagement ring were gone. They no longer rested where Audrey placed them before she left, each inside silver napkin holders we had never used.

  THIS ITCHES, Y’ALL

  AS A CHILD I STARRED IN WHAT I CONSIDERED THE LEAD role of an educational television-produced documentary on head lice. To this day I can remember my entire monologue: “This itches, y’all.” The man playing my father was a veterinarian by profession, but he had several community playhouse credits down at the Aiken Little Theatre. My mom in this affair was a Charleston ex-debutante who might’ve made it on Broadway had she not developed a loss of feeling in her left foot, which caused her to gimp around, slapping her sole down sporadically. Later on she starred in a documentary involving cockroaches and silverfish, from what I understand. The doctor was a regular pediatrician, or so he said. This was 1970. The entire nation transformed itself. At the time, though, no one talked about anything else outside of the head-lice epidemic that infiltrated our South Carolina schools.

  “I don’t know why we can’t say that there’s a direct reason why these lices showed up on our white children’s heads at the same time our schools took in the others,” my TV mom said during a break. I sat in makeup; a woman took a red Magic Marker and plowed long furrows on my scalp. She parted my towhead six or eight times sharply, then pulled the felt tip backwards, exactly opposite of how a Boy Scout den leader might teach.

  I thought, This itches, y’all.

  The regular pediatrician—who got a number of lines involving the history of bloodsucking, parasitic arthropods—rolled up and funneled his script. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but it’s true. Black people don’t serve as hosts to the head louse. A louse is white. It needs to camouflage itself. So they don’t go to black scalps. I don’t know anything about people in between, like Arabs or the Chinese, but this is a white man’s problem here in the South, lady.” He tapped the top of his head.

  I thought, This itches, y’all. This itches, y’all. This itches, y’all. “There’s a black girl named Shirley in my class who showed me the bottom of her feet and the palms of her hands. They’re white,” I said. I kind of liked her. I kind of thought of her as my girlfriend, really, unless she had head lice on those places.

  The guy running the little operation said, “That’s enough. Okay. Do we have the kid ready? Let’s get this thing done. It’s not brain surgery. Hell, it ain’t even manual labor.”

  I’d gotten the part because I raised my hand when Mrs. Waymer asked who knew the difference between ticks and tics. She wrote it out on the board, and asked what each one meant. I knew both. My father owned what would be later on known as Tourette’s Syndrome. So I raised my hand and explained it all. Mrs. Waymer never said anything like, “Who wants to be considered for a head lice documentary that might be aired over ETV?” or, “Who wants to be considered for a movie that might be shown in ninth grade across the state when we teach everyone about sexual intercourse, too?” She only said, “Bennie Frewer wins.”

  I signed a document, my parents got all excited and signed another document, and the next thing I knew I sat in a room in our state capital, along with a dozen other no-experience actors, ranging from fourth to eighth graders. This was a Saturday morning. Everyone else considered had black hair. They gave us our lines, and I have to admit that almost everyone, except for this boy from Due West with a slight speech impediment, got out, “This itches, y’all,” perfectly.

  They introduced us to the ex-debutante, who at the time I thought was a hundred years old, seeing as she was at least forty, and they brought out the veterinarian who would be my father. They shook hands with each of us and acted as if we should’ve asked for autographs. Maybe they’d starred in other state-supported documentaries, outside of their community work in Guys and Dolls, Oklahoma, The Sound of Music, I don’t know.

  The pediatrician playing the doctor came out and pointed at me. “It has to be this boy,” he said. At the moment I thought he’d accused me of being the only person available who had a strong chance of having hosted head lice at one time in his life. He looked at me with his head bowed down somewhat, as if he knew I’d later on tell people I grew up so poor that I could only afford ringworms for pets.

  My parents drove around Columbia, South Carolina, looking for a warehouse that sold condiments at wholesale prices. My father wanted to get some different barbecue sauce, mayonnaise, and mustard. As he dropped me off he said, “When we come fucking back and you fucking win that head fucking lice part I want to fucking have a fucking big fuck party for all the fucking neighbors, fuck.” To this day I can’t watch a good Hollywood mafia movie without thinking how my daddy missed his own special roles in life.

  I walked into the sound room. I left my competitors in their sad queue. A couple of them cried when they didn’t get the head-lice part; more of them said, “I didn’t want it anyway,” all crybaby.

  I didn’t skip my way inside, or point and ha-ha-ha. I shrugged my shoulders and followed the real doctor. I said, “This itches, y’all,” that’s it.

  After my head got liced up realistically I sat in a barber’s chair. This story line wasn’t even close—somehow it went that I showed up for a haircut with both my parents, a barber saw the head lice, and a doctor happened to be hanging around waiting for his own haircut. Another little theater actor played the barber, a man who taught drama at a college down in Greenwood that eventually should’ve lost its accreditation. I caught this fake barber guy kissing my documentary father in the wings soon after the shoot, but that’s another story.

  I’M NOT ONE of those people whose facial features change drastically twice or more in a lifetime. I’m not one of those people who looked one way before puberty, another directly after sprouting hairs and changing voices, then another, say, at ages twenty-one, thirty, and so on. If I
lived to be 150 and my classmates did so, too, I could go to a high school reunion and look exactly like I did in the yearbook. So the entire time I lived in my hometown of picayune Forty-Five I had people come up to me—my age and older, then way younger as the years went by—and ask about my scalp. They said things like, “You done good getting them lices off,” or, “Hey, I know you—you the man with what clamps down finally toward the skull bone.”

  I’m talking that I dealt with these pallet-heads who couldn’t understand the difference between movie characters and real life for the rest of my days in Forty-Five. I’d be willing to bet that anybody in my graduating class who ever saw Night of the Living Dead or whatever thought that zombies traversed our planet. If one of them ever saw Forrest Gump he probably tried to sue the movie company for telling his own life story.

  So, needless to say, I didn’t get any dates throughout my high school years, seeing as—I’ll give my hometown people this—the notion of a willing suspension of disbelief worked too well. Every girl I ever encountered who’d seen the documentary thought that certainly I had head lice as a child and probably would harbor crabs as an adult.

  Sometimes I wished that educational television had cast me in a movie concerning aliens, rich kids, dapper horse breeders, and so on. I often wished that I took part in a documentary about voodoo children and the spells they’re able to cast. Only now can I understand how I wish my parents would’ve seen what happened to other real child actors, how their lives turned into horrendous escapades involving drugs, crime, violence, bouts of depression, and severe second-guessing about forsaking public education for the set of a show that revolved around dissimilar characters stuck under one roof.

  I had no choice but to study hard, score well on standardized tests, and leave the entire state for college. I took off from my parents and didn’t think about what small biannual residual check came their way when my head-lice documentary got shown on ETV-sponsored distance learning channels across the junior highs of South Carolina.